From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 1 00:42:53 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 31 May 2020 17:42:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] bond villain In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00c401d637ad$969e3970$c3daac50$@rainier66.com> >?> On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] bond villain >?It is exciting for now, though it?ll eventually become routine. I recall reading that the public kind of lost interest in the Apollo program after the first Moon landing, and then the Apollo 13 disaster happened, but after that interest seemed to decline again. >?The big deal about this flight got me is it seems an important milestone along the path to routine and far less expensive access to space. SpaceX even has tourist missions planned for next year. Personally, I want this to become so routine, safe, and cheap that it becomes boring. Regards, Dan Hi Dan, ja, the launches were very popular in the 60s. I remember the tourists from New York lining up along the river. The launches were an exciting and dangerous stunt. By the 70s, they had become safe and routine. Fun aside: one of the most memorable things to me were the people who came down in motor homes and parked along the Indian River. We thought those things were outrageously cool toys: drive you home wherever you want to go. People we knew could never afford such an extravagant toy as that. A small Airstream camper was high-end to us. These people had this enormous Winnebago luxury liner. I had the notion that everyone up north was rich. That space tourism notion is great: I don?t know what else to use the station for other than a really expensive hotel. The sooner we can sell it to Mr. Musk the better. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Jun 1 01:28:50 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 31 May 2020 20:28:50 -0500 Subject: [ExI] bond villain In-Reply-To: <00c401d637ad$969e3970$c3daac50$@rainier66.com> References: <00c401d637ad$969e3970$c3daac50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: That space tourism notion is great: I don?t know what else to use the station for other than a really expensive hotel. The sooner we can sell it to Mr. Musk the better. spike I thought important science experiments were done there. It's the only place where you can see the stars without an atmosphere in the way, eh? Or is Hubble still hanging on? bill w On Sun, May 31, 2020 at 7:45 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *>?*> *On Behalf Of *Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] bond villain > > > > >?It is exciting for now, though it?ll eventually become routine. I recall > reading that the public kind of lost interest in the Apollo program after > the first Moon landing, and then the Apollo 13 disaster happened, but after > that interest seemed to decline again. > > > > >?The big deal about this flight got me is it seems an important milestone > along the path to routine and far less expensive access to space. SpaceX > even has tourist missions planned for next year. Personally, I want this to > become so routine, safe, and cheap that it becomes boring. > > Regards, > > > > Dan > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Hi Dan, ja, the launches were very popular in the 60s. I remember the > tourists from New York lining up along the river. The launches were an > exciting and dangerous stunt. By the 70s, they had become safe and routine. > > > > Fun aside: one of the most memorable things to me were the people who came > down in motor homes and parked along the Indian River. We thought those > things were outrageously cool toys: drive you home wherever you want to > go. People we knew could never afford such an extravagant toy as that. A > small Airstream camper was high-end to us. These people had this enormous > Winnebago luxury liner. I had the notion that everyone up north was rich. > > > > That space tourism notion is great: I don?t know what else to use the > station for other than a really expensive hotel. The sooner we can sell it > to Mr. Musk the better. > > > > 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 Mon Jun 1 02:23:49 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 31 May 2020 19:23:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] bond villain In-Reply-To: References: <00c401d637ad$969e3970$c3daac50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00e501d637bb$b0004cb0$1000e610$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] bond villain That space tourism notion is great: I don?t know what else to use the station for other than a really expensive hotel. The sooner we can sell it to Mr. Musk the better. spike I thought important science experiments were done there. It's the only place where you can see the stars without an atmosphere in the way, eh? Or is Hubble still hanging on? bill w Hubble is still hanging on, and ja we are very proud of that Lockheed product. Note that is Lockheed, not Lockheed Martin. We built that before Martin came along. Even cooler: in March or April (if all goes well) the Hubble will be joined by the awesome James Webb telescope. Oh what a time to be living. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Jun 1 05:21:55 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 31 May 2020 22:21:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Is a copy of you really you? In-Reply-To: <8ABC3630-0D4D-4B3D-988B-1244DB8A72E8@gmu.edu> References: <8ABC3630-0D4D-4B3D-988B-1244DB8A72E8@gmu.edu> Message-ID: On Sun, May 31, 2020 at 7:43 AM Robin D Hanson wrote: > > On May 30, 2020, at 6:17 PM, Keith Henson via extropy-chat wrote: > > Robin D Hanson wrote: > > (re my objection to copies) > > I disagree; I wrote a whole book describing a reasonable world where many copies are made: > >> And you might be right, nobody has a lock on what the future will turn >> out to be, certainly not me. > >> However, I have two objections. My work in evolutionary psychology >> leads me to feel very uncomfortable about using humans as a model for >> building minds. Humans have traits like capture-bonding and those >> which lead up to wars that were selected. Having one of those (or ones >> we don't know about) activate in a powerful AI seems intolerably >> dangerous. > > > That same argument would suggest trying to eliminate the human minds in meat brains, as well as those in artificial brains. We tolerate meat brains (no choice actually) because most individual humans have relatively litle power to mess up the world. What concerns me is giving a human mind copy vastly more power in an artificial brain. Humans seem to have evolved psychological mechanisms that detect "looming privation," resource shortages, and for good evolutionary reasons respond by attacking neighbors and taking their resources. (After a perious to build up xenophobic memes.) Consider a raw human mind mapped into a powerful AI with substantial enhancement. Would such a mind have increased concern about a future resource crisis? I suspect that might be the case. Would this concern turn on the evolved psychological mechanisms and lead to an irrational path to war? I don't know. However, I would suggest caution. > But if you see human brains as holding most of the value in the world, you?ll want more of them. Within limits, yes. Falling income per capita seems to flip the behavior switch into war mode, while rising income per capita seems to turn it off. Rising income per capita seems to be what caused the IRA to go out of business. Optimum human numbers might be a lot higher than the current, especially if we spread into space. But I suspect that very large numbers where the resources per person were sharply limited would not be a good idea. >> The other objection is right out of economics. If it is cheap to copy >> something its value falls to the marginal cost. I.e., one Michael >> Jordan is valuable, at least to him. 10,000 of them would have an >> interesting time finding teams to play with. > > > The fact of diminishing marginal value is not at all an economic argument against larger quantities of anything. I don't understand economics, but this feels wrong or at least incomplete. If you have a poker chip and there is a way to make them cheaply by the thousands, well, you are not hurt and may be better off if you have use for lots of poker chips. But if you, yourself, are duplicated by the thousands, millions, or billions and there is some limit on the number of poker chips that can be made, then a large numbers of copies of you are going to make you poor in terms of chips. It seems to me that there is a fundamental difference between things that can be owned and things (people?, ems?) who owns stuff. If an ems' mental organization is copied from humans, are they more like people or poker chips? Keith PS Jack Vance's story "The Last Castle" describes the revolt of the "Mechs," an alien race that has some similarites to ems. > But, as I freely admit, you might be right and a vast number of copies > could be the path to utopia. > > > I?m not claiming utopia; I?m not sure the concept is even coherent. > > Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu > Future of Humanity Inst., Oxford University > Assoc. Prof. Economics, George Mason University > See my books: http://ageofem.com http://elephantinthebrain.com > > > > > > > > > From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Jun 1 10:52:16 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 06:52:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 30, 2020 at 11:32 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > *>Ja I know, this guy?s a comedian, not a scientist. But this commentary > has a ring of truth to it:* > > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28I5WyLp15o&feature=youtu.be > Those remarks were made on May 1 and today is now June 1, since those words were spoken at least 40,442 more Americans have died of COVID-19 and many times that number have gotten very sick. Incidentally while I was watching the current riots on TV I couldn't help but wonder if the most damaging thing about them is they could be virus super spreader events leading to an explosion of new cases and a new wave of death. On the one hand they were outside which is good, but there was a lot of running around yelling and exhaling and coughing due to tear gas which is bad. In 1918 there were bond parades in Philadelphia and Detroit and today they are known to have been super spreader events for the flu even though they were held outside, so that's not encouraging either. If we see a big spike of new cases in about 2 weeks then we'll know. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Jun 1 12:18:05 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 08:18:05 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Is a copy of you really you? In-Reply-To: References: <8ABC3630-0D4D-4B3D-988B-1244DB8A72E8@gmu.edu> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 1:25 AM Keith Henson via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > * > What concerns me is giving a human mind copy vastly more power in an > artificial brain. Humans seem to have evolved psychological mechanisms that > detect "looming privation," resource shortages, and for good evolutionary > reasons respond by attacking neighbors and taking their resources. (After a > perious to build up xenophobic memes.) Consider a raw human mind mapped > into a powerful AI with substantial enhancement. * I have doubts about your theory but even if it's true I don't see it or Darwinian Evolution in general playing a significant part in the future; the evolution of memes will be more important than the evolution of genes because minds are involved thus it's vastly faster. And the faster minds become the faster memes will change. Rather than worrying about outmoded behavioral programming inherited from our stone age past I'm much more concerned with what will happen when we have full conscious control of our emotional control panel. Suppose there was some task that you knew you should do but don't want to because you're naturally lazy and the task is dull, so you just turn one knob on your emotional control panel and now you're no longer lazy, now you love nothing better than hard work, and you then turn another knob and now you find your job of putting thousands of caps on thousands of toothpaste tubes to be utterly fascinating, fulfilling, and endlessly enjoyable. It seems to me that having too much self control would lead to a positive feedback loop, and those things tend to head for extreames and rarely produce anything productive, they usually end up producing either no output or an explosive output. Sometimes literally explosive. * > if you, yourself, are duplicated by the thousands, millions, or > billions and there is some limit on the number of poker chips that can be > made, then a large numbers of copies of you are going to make you poor in > terms of chips.* If there is a consensus among the many copies of me that there are just too many of us then we could decide to merge back together. The resulting being would then remember doing different things in different places at exactly the same time, but that would be OK with me. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 1 12:58:48 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 05:58:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] ring of truth On Sat, May 30, 2020 at 11:32 PM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: >Ja I know, this guy?s a comedian, not a scientist. But this commentary has a ring of truth to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28I5WyLp15o &feature=youtu.be >?Those remarks were made on May 1 and today is now June 1? Do you suppose the video would be different if made today? How? >? watching the current riots on TV I couldn't help but wonder if the most damaging thing about them is they could be virus super spreader events? but there was a lot of running around yelling and exhaling and coughing due to tear gas which is bad? Heeeeeyyyy business opportunity: disinfectant teargas! >?If we see a big spike of new cases in about 2 weeks then we'll know? John K Clark If there is, will it be the cop?s fault or the rioters fault? I would blame those rioters who went to the event in spite of their not feeling well and those rioters who defied the social distancing guidelines. Perhaps it is the governor?s fault for failing to temporarily ban murderous riots. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 1 13:17:57 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 06:17:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <008601d63817$1171eb10$3455c130$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat Sent: Monday, June 1, 2020 3:52 AM >>? the current riots ? could be virus super spreader events? John K Clark >? disinfectant teargas! ? These riots have me thinking about the future of retail. (I do that a lot.) In California they recently decided that larceny of items of value below 950 bucks is a misdemeanor, which makes it functionally legal. Remaining retail stores are particularly hard hit, for now they not only need to compete with steadily growing online sales from outfits with lower overheard, they now can fall victim to anyone walking out of their stores with whatever they want. The local constabulary will probably not even show up if a homeless person walks out with a new sleeping bag and tent. In response, the local sporting goods store doesn?t carry those items anymore. This leads to problems: https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/modesto/modesto-big-5-worker-attacked-by-customer/103-11aecb0a-b275-4b0f-86f3-4c87cf7c298f We have a Big 5 nearby which recently threw in the towel. It is now to become a Chick-Fil-A, which is fine by me, for I buy all my sporting goods online, but I cannot buy a CFA value meal 1 deluxe online (oh those are good, ja?) The current quarantine has demonstrated the practicality of going entirely to online sales. This jump-started a process which has been practical for some time, and has enormous benefits, starting with the obvious: the recipient takes the risk of theft rather than the vendor, which helps reduce prices for everyone. It reduces traffic. It allows greater competition among vendors. It reduces some high-risk low-pay employment, but it increases lower-end employment opportunities (to contract delivery drivers.) It frees up real estate in former retail which can be converted to homeless shelters. By cutting out one of the middle-humans, it increases incentive to shorten supply chains, which helps localize manufacturing, which brings jobs back home from overseas. Anything else? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Jun 1 13:17:43 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 09:17:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 9:01 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > *Perhaps it is the governor?s fault for failing to temporarily ban > murderous riots.* Perhaps it's the police commissioner's fault for hiring murderous cops. Typically it takes between 10 and 20 minutes for a hanging person's heart to stop, the cop kneeling on George Floyd's neck managed to stop his heart in 8 minutes and 46 seconds. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 1 13:41:43 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 06:41:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] ring of truth On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 9:01 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: >> Perhaps it is the governor?s fault for failing to temporarily ban murderous riots. >?Perhaps it's the police commissioner's fault for hiring murderous cops. ?John K Clark Clearly they had a bad apple on staff. Having worked with organizations (Boy Scouts) it is clear how difficult it is to select a group of people while filtering out every bad apple and still avoiding discrimination. No matter how carefully it is done, people can hide their bad intentions and character flaws. Google on teachers caught with students. Note they don?t even bother with men, for that is so common. The above query returns almost all women, for that is a fun novelty which still makes the headlines. All of these teachers made it thru the screening process. In scouts, we have the decision for accepting leaders resting with a group of volunteers, none of whom are professionally trained to spot bad apples, all while under the threat of lawsuit if they discriminate. We see that professionally-trained employment experts (indemnified from personal liability and covered by state funding) make mistakes, plenty of them. But a privately funded volunteer organization is sued to bankruptcy for missing the occasional bad apple. We have bad cops. We get that. Regarding the riots: there are at least three elements in play: the locals protesting police brutality, the opportunists from outside the area wishing to score on some loot, and anarchists from outside hoping to create chaos for political gain. The local constabulary report that most of those they manage to arrest are in the second two categories. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Jun 1 13:55:39 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 08:55:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I don't think that there is anything at all positive about the protests. Are they sending a message to the people that think this is OK? No. Nobody thinks this is OK except perhaps for the white supremacists. Millions of dollars of damage and looting affect totally innocent people. Oh yeah, and some people get killed. What a waste of a human being. Protesters showing up with guns and rifles. Nothing good about that. Police get hurt too. If I thought that protests would do the slightest bit of good I would not say what I said above. But I don't. Men are going on trial for murder, so the government did the right thing. What else can they do? bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 1 13:56:59 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 06:56:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00bf01d6381c$853c7560$8fb56020$@rainier66.com> On Sat, May 30, 2020 at 11:32 PM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: >Ja I know, this guy?s a comedian, not a scientist. But this commentary has a ring of truth to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28I5WyLp15o &feature=youtu.be We are seeing the worldwide new cases go up as the southern hemisphere numbers go up (it?s flu season down there, with more people indoors, while the northern hemisphere has fewer.) Now I am again thinking about herd immunity. We recognize that it is inherently difficult to know if herd immunity is a significant factor, for the antibody tests are known to be unreliable if the immune system reacted quickly upon exposure and just took care of the virus (the antibodies are too sparse and difficult to detect.) We have two models of a similar virus: the 1918 epidemic in which the second season was brutal, and the 2003 SARS outbreak, which apparently was stopped (by herd immunity?) after one season. A vaccine was never found for either of the previous pandemics. Now we face the second season of Covid-19 with way fewer options to shut down society: the second time around, a larger segment of the public will not follow orders. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Mon Jun 1 15:30:09 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 08:30:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1E2FA703-A2F0-4B44-80D0-EFC539995A88@gmail.com> On Jun 1, 2020, at 6:26 AM, John Clark via extropy-chat wrote: >> On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 9:01 AM spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: >> >> > Perhaps it is the governor?s fault for failing to temporarily ban murderous riots. > > Perhaps it's the police commissioner's fault for hiring murderous cops. Typically it takes between 10 and 20 minutes for a hanging person's heart to stop, the cop kneeling on George Floyd's neck managed to stop his heart in 8 minutes and 46 seconds. The whole legal system works to dampen disincentives for police violence: A few years old, but basically still true: https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/8/13/17938234/police-shootings-killings-prosecutions-court Had George Floyd?s killer and his four accomplices been civilians, they would?ve all been arrested on the spot and probably charged by the next day. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 1 15:55:46 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 08:55:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <008601d63817$1171eb10$3455c130$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <008601d63817$1171eb10$3455c130$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <014301d6382d$1d9d7330$58d85990$@rainier66.com> From: spike at rainier66.com Sent: Monday, June 1, 2020 6:18 AM To: 'ExI chat list' Cc: spike at rainier66.com Subject: RE: [ExI] ring of truth > On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat Sent: Monday, June 1, 2020 3:52 AM >>? the current riots ? could be virus super spreader events? John K Clark >? disinfectant teargas! ? Imagine using an aqueous ammonium hydroxide solution instead of teargas at the riots. It isn?t specifically toxic in the doses one might get in a crowd dispersal event, but makes a great surfactant and disinfectant, which is why it is used in Windex. We all know what happens when we get a good whiff of that stuff: owwwww, damn. Heh. That?ll disperse a furious crowd grabbing up the Nikes. It will not leave a trace of residue, it will have few if any long-term health impact in those concentrations, it is cheap and will even kill bugs. Hurt like hell, but less than rubber bullets. What if? there is a big Antifa riot where the constables used ammonium hydroxide, then we discover that the people who were gassed do not catch Covid but those at the same riot who did not get a whiff of the stuff catch it? That would be a kick in the ass. If it turns out that way, just remember you saw it here first. {8^D spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Jun 1 16:01:39 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 12:01:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 9:43 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > *> Clearly they had a bad apple on staff.* > It's not that simple, there were 4 "bad apples", one was a murderer and 3 were accomplices who just watched somebody being strangled to death right in front of them for 8 minutes and 46 seconds and they did absolutely nothing to stop it even though they were armed and their job was to uphold the law against murder. The fact that all 4 were at the same place at the same time makes me suspect for statistical reasons that such "bad apples" could not be all that rare on the police force. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 1 16:55:14 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 09:55:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] predictit gone? Message-ID: <018801d63835$6c5ee9b0$451cbd10$@rainier66.com> Since Robin Hanson is back among us and may be considered the father of meme betting, he might find interesting the latest development. Robin started Ideas Futures, which was a play-money betting site. We had a blast playing that back in the long time agos. Plenty of us who think about the future realized it would eventually morph into a real-money version, which it did. Many of the patterns on real money sites are ones we saw and learned well on Ideas Futures. On Predictit and the other real money sites, such as the most popular betting is on which candidate will win an election. One of the predictions I made about real money sites is that they will all eventually take the money and run. This of course never happened on play money betting, which is why I liked that better: Robin was never tempted to grab up everybody?s play money and flee with it to Tahiti, which is why he is not there now, sipping Mai Tais on the beach with bikini beauties tending to his every whim. But? Apparently whoever runs Predictit is there now, for the site suddenly went dead yesterday and is not back today. https://www.predictit.org/ No biggie to me: my total investment there is 17 bucks. Theoretically they are holding 73 dollars of mine (my initial investment from 4 yrs ago plus winnings) but I realized all along by studying the betting volume that whoever runs the site was holding an ever-increasing pile of money. I realized it was only a matter of time before she realized the future profit potential of keeping the site pales in comparison to the immediate profit of skipping town with everyone?s money. I have always treated that 73 bucks as play money, knowing that this (and every other online betting site) is a Ponzi scheme. I didn?t know when, but there was little question of if: this site and every other growing real money betting site will eventually terminate with the CEO?s disappearance, taking everyone?s money. If anyone knows otherwise with regard to Predictit, do offer me a clue please. Perhaps the CEO of Predictit was shocked SHOCKED! to learn that GAMBLING was is going on in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Mon Jun 1 16:58:35 2020 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 12:58:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] predictit gone? In-Reply-To: <018801d63835$6c5ee9b0$451cbd10$@rainier66.com> References: <018801d63835$6c5ee9b0$451cbd10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Spike- FYI, it's up now so your $17 appears safe! On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 12:56 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > Since Robin Hanson is back among us and may be considered the father of > meme betting, he might find interesting the latest development. > > > > Robin started Ideas Futures, which was a play-money betting site. We had > a blast playing that back in the long time agos. Plenty of us who think > about the future realized it would eventually morph into a real-money > version, which it did. > > > > Many of the patterns on real money sites are ones we saw and learned well > on Ideas Futures. On Predictit and the other real money sites, such as the > most popular betting is on which candidate will win an election. > > > > One of the predictions I made about real money sites is that they will all > eventually take the money and run. This of course never happened on play > money betting, which is why I liked that better: Robin was never tempted to > grab up everybody?s play money and flee with it to Tahiti, which is why he > is not there now, sipping Mai Tais on the beach with bikini beauties > tending to his every whim. > > > > But? > > > > Apparently whoever runs Predictit is there now, for the site suddenly went > dead yesterday and is not back today. > > > > https://www.predictit.org/ > > > > No biggie to me: my total investment there is 17 bucks. Theoretically > they are holding 73 dollars of mine (my initial investment from 4 yrs ago > plus winnings) but I realized all along by studying the betting volume that > whoever runs the site was holding an ever-increasing pile of money. I > realized it was only a matter of time before she realized the future profit > potential of keeping the site pales in comparison to the immediate profit > of skipping town with everyone?s money. > > > > I have always treated that 73 bucks as play money, knowing that this (and > every other online betting site) is a Ponzi scheme. I didn?t know when, > but there was little question of if: this site and every other growing real > money betting site will eventually terminate with the CEO?s disappearance, > taking everyone?s money. > > > > If anyone knows otherwise with regard to Predictit, do offer me a clue > please. Perhaps the CEO of Predictit was shocked SHOCKED! to learn that > GAMBLING was is going on in here: > > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME > > > > 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 Jun 1 17:02:28 2020 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 13:02:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 9:57 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > If I thought that protests would do the slightest bit of good I would not > say what I said above. But I don't. Men are going on trial for murder, > so the government did the right thing. What else can they do? > The cop in question had a series of complaints and zero reprimands. Policitians and law enforcement leadership could do a lot more to prevent police brutality. Police unions are too powerful, Qualified immunity gives cops carte blanche. Militarization of police forces has to stop. The drug war has to end. Citizens of all races have put up with poor treatment by the police they hire to "protect and serve" them. They tried peaceful protests--remember the NFL taking a knee?--and that wasn't acceptable. This has been a problem too long to expect the victims to be patient and polite. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 1 17:18:43 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 10:18:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] predictit gone? In-Reply-To: References: <018801d63835$6c5ee9b0$451cbd10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <01a001d63838$b3e6f4f0$1bb4ded0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] predictit gone? Spike- >?FYI, it's up now so your $17 appears safe! Thanks Dylan! Ja, 17 bucks or 73, depending on how I look at it: kinda like Schrodinger?s cat. Those are virtual dollars in there. My prediction stands: even if not now, then eventually, this site and every site doing the same thing will suddenly disappear without a trace. There is no real legal infrastructure to stop it, or any willingness to chase down the newly rich perp. So? over time the incentive to skip town increases like the rising waters behind an earthen dam. Sooner or later, the collapse comes. If they allowed me to do so, I would introduce a scaled meme, where people can bet on the date Predictit will fold and flee, taking your money. I suspect Predictit would not allow that meme. {8^D I will leave my 17 or 73 virtual bucks in there for now, just for the entertainment value and the insights it produces. spike On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 12:56 PM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: Since Robin Hanson is back among us and may be considered the father of meme betting, he might find interesting the latest development. ? Apparently whoever runs Predictit is there now, for the site suddenly went dead yesterday and is not back today. https://www.predictit.org/ ? 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 Mon Jun 1 18:25:16 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 11:25:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Is a copy of you really you? In-Reply-To: <8ABC3630-0D4D-4B3D-988B-1244DB8A72E8@gmu.edu> References: <8ABC3630-0D4D-4B3D-988B-1244DB8A72E8@gmu.edu> Message-ID: I note: we are including copies of each others' emails in this chain, and replying to them as if they are the originals. > Are they the originals? Or are they close enough that for all practical purposes they are? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Jun 1 18:43:42 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 14:43:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Is a copy of you really you? In-Reply-To: References: <8ABC3630-0D4D-4B3D-988B-1244DB8A72E8@gmu.edu> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 2:28 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: * > I note: we are including copies of each others' emails in this chain, > and replying to them as if they are the originals. Are they the > originals? * > No they're just copies, and that's why regardless of the topic I've never been able to convince anybody that I'm right about anything. Nobody on this list has ever seen one of my glorious *ORIGINAL* Emails, all you've seen are humble copies of them, if you had seen the *originals* then you'd all be instantly convinced that I've always been right about everything. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 1 19:23:49 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 12:23:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Is a copy of you really you? In-Reply-To: References: <8ABC3630-0D4D-4B3D-988B-1244DB8A72E8@gmu.edu> Message-ID: <01f101d6384a$2e0c9440$8a25bcc0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Is a copy of you really you? On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 2:28 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat > wrote: > I note: we are including copies of each others' emails in this chain, and replying to them as if they are the originals. Are they the originals? >?No they're just copies, and that's why regardless of the topic I've never been able to convince anybody that I'm right about anything. Nobody on this list has ever seen one of my glorious ORIGINAL Emails, all you've seen are humble copies of them, if you had seen the originals then you'd all be instantly convinced that I've always been right about everything. John K Clark Think of the bright side John: you can blame your copies for those posts that appeared to come from you. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Jun 1 22:05:38 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 15:05:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Is a copy of you really you? Message-ID: John Clark wrote: On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 1:25 AM Keith Henson via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > * > What concerns me is giving a human mind copy vastly more power in an > artificial brain. Humans seem to have evolved psychological mechanisms that > detect "looming privation," resource shortages, and for good evolutionary > reasons respond by attacking neighbors and taking their resources. (After a > period to build up xenophobic memes.) Consider a raw human mind mapped > into a powerful AI with substantial enhancement. * > have doubts about your theory but even if it's true I don't see it or Darwinian Evolution in general playing a significant part in the future; I agree. My work in this area is looking at what stone age evolution has left us with in terms of psychological traits. I find it terrifying that human behavior can switch into modes that give rise to the many violent episodes in historical times and ongoing ones like the current rash of destructive riots. But I am not entirely confident about the end of Darwinian evolution. I sincerely hope our civilization does not fall, but if it does, it will not be the first time. That could put Darwinian selection back in the driver's seat. > the evolution of memes will be more important than the evolution of genes because minds are involved thus it's vastly faster. And the faster minds become the faster memes will change. I think most of extropy-chat readers have seen the article I wrote where humans could experience 50 million years of subjective existence before the end of this century. https://web.archive.org/web/20121130232045/http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/ The original seems to be off the net. > Rather than worrying about outmoded behavioral programming inherited from our stone-age past I'm much more concerned with what will happen when we have full conscious control of our emotional control panel. Marvin Minsky wrote extensively about the dangers of mind modification. We are (perhaps, fortunately) a long way from having such controls. In the meantime, the stone-age psychological traits of going to war due to resource shortages may keep us from making progress in emotional controls. > Suppose there was some task that you knew you should do but don't want to because you're naturally lazy and the task is dull, so you just turn one knob on your emotional control panel and now you're no longer lazy, now you love nothing better than hard work, and you then turn another knob and now you find your job of putting thousands of caps on thousands of toothpaste tubes to be utterly fascinating, fulfilling, and endlessly enjoyable. It seems to me that having too much self-control would lead to a positive feedback loop, and those things tend to head for extremes and rarely produce anything productive, they usually end up producing either no output or an explosive output. Sometimes literally explosive. Mind modification of this sort is something to approach with a great deal of caution. * > if you, yourself, are duplicated by the thousands, millions, or > billions and there is some limit on the number of poker chips that can be > made, then a large numbers of copies of you are going to make you poor in > terms of chips.* > If there is a consensus among the many copies of me that there are just too many of us then we could decide to merge back together. The resulting being would then remember doing different things in different places at exactly the same time, but that would be OK with me. I suspect this may have problems besides parallel memories. But this is rank speculation. I don't know how much (if any) of humanity will survive the changes we see coming. Keith From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 1 22:29:46 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 15:29:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] riots, was: RE: Is a copy of you really you? Message-ID: <024601d63864$27faa0f0$77efe2d0$@rainier66.com> Keith Henson via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > ... I find it terrifying that human behavior can switch into modes that give rise to the many violent episodes in historical times and ongoing ones like the current rash of destructive riots...Keith _______________________________________________ Ja. I have friends posting me in despair, certain that civilization is coming to an end. But consider this first. Imagine a streaming video camera hard mounted on every street intersection, looking both ways. I don't even know how to estimate how many intersections exist in the world, but since the USA is having riot season, let's just look at that beleaguered nation. I would estimate there are about 300 intersections in my town, and it has about 1/4000th of the US population, so we could estimate there are about a million intersections. We want to gaze all four directions, so 4 million cameras peering out and reporting back. Of those, I would be surprised if anything exciting or scary is happening in more than about 1000 of those fields of view, so these terrible riots are in about one in perhaps 4000 cameras. Sure. But hey, everything doesn't need to happen near an intersection. Let's have cameras every 100 meters, regardless of where they are. Now I would be surprised if anything exciting is happening in more than 1 in about 100,000 cameras. My point: we have troubles. But it is very localized, and the participants are in the trouble zone by choice (even the cops.) The cop who murdered that man on camera sparked it, but something like this was going to happen: you can't just shut down civilization because of a bad flu virus. It stresses society to the breaking point. However... this lockdown was very educational. We learned how effective our online meeting tools can be, and many of us learned to use them effectively. We learned that much retail is an obsolete holdover from the olden days: we can replace it with something else which is more efficient. Civilization is not coming to an end. Civilization is coming to start. spike From sen.otaku at gmail.com Mon Jun 1 22:58:14 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 17:58:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I can agree John. And as the saying goes, ?A rotten apple spoils the whole bunch.? SR Ballard > On Jun 1, 2020, at 11:01 AM, John Clark via extropy-chat wrote: > >> On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 9:43 AM spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > >> > Clearly they had a bad apple on staff. >> > > It's not that simple, there were 4 "bad apples", one was a murderer and 3 were accomplices who just watched somebody being strangled to death right in front of them for 8 minutes and 46 seconds and they did absolutely nothing to stop it even though they were armed and their job was to uphold the law against murder. The fact that all 4 were at the same place at the same time makes me suspect for statistical reasons that such "bad apples" could not be all that rare on the police force. > > 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 Mon Jun 1 23:26:54 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 16:26:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of SR Ballard via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] ring of truth I can agree John. And as the saying goes, ?A rotten apple spoils the whole bunch.? SR Ballard Hi SR, ja, so tragic. The whole bunch refers to bad bananas (with a greasy black peel.) The rotten apple spoils the barrel. I saw something interesting today: the peaceful (and justified) police brutality protestors grabbed an anarchist and handed him over to the police: https://twitter.com/i/status/1267240521052946432 That one act did more to promote their cause than anything else they could have done. These protestors have a good point. The anarchists and looters do not. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Mon Jun 1 23:37:47 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 16:37:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> References: <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Jun 1, 2020, at 4:29 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > > On Behalf Of SR Ballard via extropy-chat > Subject: Re: [ExI] ring of truth > > I can agree John. And as the saying goes, ?A rotten apple spoils the whole bunch.? > > SR Ballard > > > Hi SR, ja, so tragic. The whole bunch refers to bad bananas (with a greasy black peel.) The rotten apple spoils the barrel. > > I saw something interesting today: the peaceful (and justified) police brutality protestors grabbed an anarchist and handed him over to the police: > > https://twitter.com/i/status/1267240521052946432 > > That one act did more to promote their cause than anything else they could have done. These protestors have a good point. The anarchists and looters do not. > > spike How to you just person is an anarchist? Do you believe anarchists as anarchists (rather than as anything else) don?t have a right to protest or promote their views? It seems to me you?re defining anarchist in a way that goes against the original meaning of the term and also against how many actual anarchists (myself included) use the term. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Mon Jun 1 23:45:49 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 16:45:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] riots, was: RE: Is a copy of you really you? In-Reply-To: <024601d63864$27faa0f0$77efe2d0$@rainier66.com> References: <024601d63864$27faa0f0$77efe2d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <62984A9E-5AB1-4BE0-95A5-AD6327BEE789@gmail.com> On Jun 1, 2020, at 3:31 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > Keith Henson via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >> ... I find it terrifying that human behavior can switch into modes that > give rise to the many violent episodes in historical times and ongoing ones > like the current rash of destructive riots...Keith > _______________________________________________ > > > Ja. I have friends posting me in despair, certain that civilization is > coming to an end. But consider this first. > > Imagine a streaming video camera hard mounted on every street intersection, > looking both ways. I don't even know how to estimate how many intersections > exist in the world, but since the USA is having riot season, let's just look > at that beleaguered nation. I would estimate there are about 300 > intersections in my town, and it has about 1/4000th of the US population, so > we could estimate there are about a million intersections. > > We want to gaze all four directions, so 4 million cameras peering out and > reporting back. > > Of those, I would be surprised if anything exciting or scary is happening in > more than about 1000 of those fields of view, so these terrible riots are in > about one in perhaps 4000 cameras. > > Sure. But hey, everything doesn't need to happen near an intersection. > Let's have cameras every 100 meters, regardless of where they are. Now I > would be surprised if anything exciting is happening in more than 1 in about > 100,000 cameras. > > My point: we have troubles. But it is very localized, and the participants > are in the trouble zone by choice (even the cops.) > > The cop who murdered that man on camera sparked it, but something like this > was going to happen: you can't just shut down civilization because of a bad > flu virus. It stresses society to the breaking point. > > However... this lockdown was very educational. We learned how effective our > online meeting tools can be, and many of us learned to use them effectively. > We learned that much retail is an obsolete holdover from the olden days: we > can replace it with something else which is more efficient. > > Civilization is not coming to an end. Civilization is coming to start. While I agree this is nowhere near a civilization-ending thing, I don?t think it?s the start of one either. Civilization will muddle along. A better point is that those who think this is even close to collapsing civilization are almost certainly drama queens with little perspective. If these demonstrations could end civilization, one would?ve expected the many other demonstrations in recent decades to have done so many times over. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 00:01:56 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 17:01:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <003d01d63871$089a7b10$19cf7130$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] ring of truth On Jun 1, 2020, at 4:29 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: >?How to you just person is an anarchist? Do you believe anarchists as anarchists (rather than as anything else) don?t have a right to protest or promote their views?... Hi Dan, I saw in the video a bunch of guys with a perfectly legitimate and justifiable cause (protesting police brutality) having their protest hijacked by anarchists and looters. The hammer guy was beating on the curb to break off chunks of concrete with which he would enable others to hurl at windows and police. Naturally the protestors are annoyed by anarchists and looters, both of which discredit their message. So, the nabbed the sleazeball and handed him over. Good for them. Of course anarchists have a right to protest. They don?t have a right to destroy property or cause injury. >?It seems to me you?re defining anarchist in a way that goes against the original meaning of the term and also against how many actual anarchists (myself included) use the term. Regards, Dan OK no worries: the guy who was chipping off weapons to use against the police (and perhaps National Guard who are perfectly innocent here, just doing a job) has no right to that. I suspect the other protestors he will share a cell with tonight will also take a dim view of his actions. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 00:14:33 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 17:14:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <003d01d63871$089a7b10$19cf7130$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d63871$089a7b10$19cf7130$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Jun 1, 2020, at 5:03 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > Subject: Re: [ExI] ring of truth > > On Jun 1, 2020, at 4:29 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > > >?How to you just person is an anarchist? Do you believe anarchists as anarchists (rather than as anything else) don?t have a right to protest or promote their views?... > > Hi Dan, I saw in the video a bunch of guys with a perfectly legitimate and justifiable cause (protesting police brutality) having their protest hijacked by anarchists and looters. The hammer guy was beating on the curb to break off chunks of concrete with which he would enable others to hurl at windows and police. Naturally the protestors are annoyed by anarchists and looters, both of which discredit their message. So, the nabbed the sleazeball and handed him over. Good for them. > > Of course anarchists have a right to protest. They don?t have a right to destroy property or cause injury. > > >?It seems to me you?re defining anarchist in a way that goes against the original meaning of the term and also against how many actual anarchists (myself included) use the term. > > Regards, > > Dan > > OK no worries: the guy who was chipping off weapons to use against the police (and perhaps National Guard who are perfectly innocent here, just doing a job) has no right to that. I suspect the other protestors he will share a cell with tonight will also take a dim view of his actions. Again, why do you believe the person in the video is an anarchist? It seems you are conflating the term anarchist with someone who dies destructive things. Is that your virw? Let me show you a video of an anarchist: https://youtu.be/ejMh0HdS9yE Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 00:22:21 2020 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 10:22:21 +1000 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 09:28, spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *SR Ballard via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] ring of truth > > > > I can agree John. And as the saying goes, ?A rotten apple spoils the whole > bunch.? > > SR Ballard > > > > > > Hi SR, ja, so tragic. The whole bunch refers to bad bananas (with a > greasy black peel.) The rotten apple spoils the barrel. > > > > I saw something interesting today: the peaceful (and justified) police > brutality protestors grabbed an anarchist and handed him over to the police: > > > > https://twitter.com/i/status/1267240521052946432 > > > > That one act did more to promote their cause than anything else they could > have done. These protestors have a good point. The anarchists and looters > do not. > The protestors, anarchists and looters don?t seem to have a lot of guns. >From what you said before, the main purpose of citizens having guns is just such an occasion as this: so that they can resist when the authorities come to bend them to their will. What would the police and the army do if the protesters all had guns: leave them alone, or respond mire aggressively? It?s not a theoretical question, because the guns do exist somewhere, and it could be coming next. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 00:42:58 2020 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 20:42:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: OTOH, you may have noticed the only shops not being destroyed were protected by owners asserting their 2nd amendment rights. On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 8:23 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 09:28, spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> >> >> > *On Behalf Of *SR Ballard via extropy-chat >> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] ring of truth >> >> >> >> I can agree John. And as the saying goes, ?A rotten apple spoils the >> whole bunch.? >> >> SR Ballard >> >> >> >> >> >> Hi SR, ja, so tragic. The whole bunch refers to bad bananas (with a >> greasy black peel.) The rotten apple spoils the barrel. >> >> >> >> I saw something interesting today: the peaceful (and justified) police >> brutality protestors grabbed an anarchist and handed him over to the police: >> >> >> >> https://twitter.com/i/status/1267240521052946432 >> >> >> >> That one act did more to promote their cause than anything else they >> could have done. These protestors have a good point. The anarchists and >> looters do not. >> > The protestors, anarchists and looters don?t seem to have a lot of guns. > From what you said before, the main purpose of citizens having guns is just > such an occasion as this: so that they can resist when the authorities come > to bend them to their will. What would the police and the army do if the > protesters all had guns: leave them alone, or respond mire aggressively? > It?s not a theoretical question, because the guns do exist somewhere, and > it could be coming next. > >> -- > Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > 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 stathisp at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 01:00:38 2020 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 11:00:38 +1000 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 10:45, Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > OTOH, you may have noticed the only shops not being destroyed were > protected by owners asserting their 2nd amendment rights. > I didn?t notice that, but what I was asking was if the mobs decided to assert their ?second amendment rights? on the grounds that they were forming a militia to protect themselves from the authoritarian state. What would be the response of the police and the armed forces? On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 8:23 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 09:28, spike jones via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> > *On Behalf Of *SR Ballard via extropy-chat >>> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] ring of truth >>> >>> >>> >>> I can agree John. And as the saying goes, ?A rotten apple spoils the >>> whole bunch.? >>> >>> SR Ballard >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Hi SR, ja, so tragic. The whole bunch refers to bad bananas (with a >>> greasy black peel.) The rotten apple spoils the barrel. >>> >>> >>> >>> I saw something interesting today: the peaceful (and justified) police >>> brutality protestors grabbed an anarchist and handed him over to the police: >>> >>> >>> >>> https://twitter.com/i/status/1267240521052946432 >>> >>> >>> >>> That one act did more to promote their cause than anything else they >>> could have done. These protestors have a good point. The anarchists and >>> looters do not. >>> >> The protestors, anarchists and looters don?t seem to have a lot of guns. >> From what you said before, the main purpose of citizens having guns is just >> such an occasion as this: so that they can resist when the authorities come >> to bend them to their will. What would the police and the army do if the >> protesters all had guns: leave them alone, or respond mire aggressively? >> It?s not a theoretical question, because the guns do exist somewhere, and >> it could be coming next. >> >>> -- >> Stathis Papaioannou >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 01:08:37 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 18:08:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d63871$089a7b10$19cf7130$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <008d01d6387a$58cfb060$0a6f1120$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat Again, why do you believe the person in the video is an anarchist? It seems you are conflating the term anarchist with someone who dies destructive things. Is that your virw? Let me show you a video of an anarchist: https://youtu.be/ejMh0HdS9yE Regards, Dan Granted it is an interpretation Dan. Most of the protestors seemed to want a peaceful legitimate protest. This one reprehensible bastard was banging loose chunks of concrete. My imagination filled in a motive (attacking police, destroying property.) I imagined (and still do) that he had in mind using the chunks as projectiles. The protestors handed him over, and continued with their peaceful protest, honoring Martin Luther King and the memory of George Floyd. Good for them. Bad for hammer boy. I hope this sends a message: police brutality protestors, over here. People wishing to destroy property and harm police, over there. Looters: nowhere. Three different things. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 01:12:39 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 18:12:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <009401d6387a$e9098890$bb1c99b0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat Sent: Monday, June 1, 2020 5:22 PM To: ExI chat list Cc: Stathis Papaioannou Subject: Re: [ExI] ring of truth On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 09:28, spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: > On Behalf Of SR Ballard via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] ring of truth I can agree John. And as the saying goes, ?A rotten apple spoils the whole bunch.? SR Ballard Hi SR, ja, so tragic. The whole bunch refers to bad bananas (with a greasy black peel.) The rotten apple spoils the barrel. I saw something interesting today: the peaceful (and justified) police brutality protestors grabbed an anarchist and handed him over to the police: https://twitter.com/i/status/1267240521052946432 That one act did more to promote their cause than anything else they could have done. These protestors have a good point. The anarchists and looters do not. >?The protestors, anarchists and looters don?t seem to have a lot of guns? Stathis, why is that? Think about it. >? From what you said before, the main purpose of citizens having guns is just such an occasion as this? If the looters and rioters began shooting, be sure we have the advantage. That?s why we have guns. >? What would the police and the army do if the protesters all had guns? Probably shoot them. Peaceful protestors don?t need guns and damn well better not carry them to that occasion. >? It?s not a theoretical question, because the guns do exist somewhere, and it could be coming next. -- Stathis Papaioannou I doubt it. The rioters would have to recognize how outgunned they are. They are facing the army, the national guard, the police and an armed citizenry. I suggest they drop the property destruction and demonstrate peacefully. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 01:15:51 2020 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 11:15:51 +1000 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <008d01d6387a$58cfb060$0a6f1120$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d63871$089a7b10$19cf7130$@rainier66.com> <008d01d6387a$58cfb060$0a6f1120$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 11:10, spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > > > > Again, why do you believe the person in the video is an anarchist? It > seems you are conflating the term anarchist with someone who dies > destructive things. Is that your virw? Let me show you a video of an > anarchist: > > > > https://youtu.be/ejMh0HdS9yE > > Regards, > > > > Dan > > > > > > Granted it is an interpretation Dan. Most of the protestors seemed to > want a peaceful legitimate protest. This one reprehensible bastard was > banging loose chunks of concrete. My imagination filled in a motive > (attacking police, destroying property.) > > > > I imagined (and still do) that he had in mind using the chunks as > projectiles. The protestors handed him over, and continued with their > peaceful protest, honoring Martin Luther King and the memory of George > Floyd. Good for them. Bad for hammer boy. I hope this sends a message: > police brutality protestors, over here. People wishing to destroy property > and harm police, over there. Looters: nowhere. Three different things. > The term ?anarchist? does not mean ?someone who randomly loots and destroys?. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 01:25:43 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 18:25:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <008d01d6387a$58cfb060$0a6f1120$@rainier66.com> References: <008d01d6387a$58cfb060$0a6f1120$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Jun 1, 2020, at 6:10 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > > > Again, why do you believe the person in the video is an anarchist? It seems you are conflating the term anarchist with someone who dies destructive things. Is that your virw? Let me show you a video of an anarchist: > > https://youtu.be/ejMh0HdS9yE > > Regards, > > Dan > > > Granted it is an interpretation Dan. Most of the protestors seemed to want a peaceful legitimate protest. This one reprehensible bastard was banging loose chunks of concrete. My imagination filled in a motive (attacking police, destroying property.) > > I imagined (and still do) that he had in mind using the chunks as projectiles. The protestors handed him over, and continued with their peaceful protest, honoring Martin Luther King and the memory of George Floyd. Good for them. Bad for hammer boy. I hope this sends a message: police brutality protestors, over here. People wishing to destroy property and harm police, over there. Looters: nowhere. Three different things. Again, why do _you_ believe that person is an anarchist? Do you believe what that person is doing is something necessarily anarchists must do? I showed you a video of an anarchist. (In particular, it was anarchist philosopher Roderick T. Long.) Did you watch the video at all? If you did, were you waiting for him to smash something or maybe attack an audience member because, well, he?s an anarchist? Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 01:33:16 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 18:33:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00be01d6387d$ca824210$5f86c630$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] ring of truth On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 10:45, Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat > wrote: OTOH, you may have noticed the only shops not being destroyed were protected by owners asserting their 2nd amendment rights. >?I didn?t notice that, but what I was asking was if the mobs decided to assert their ?second amendment rights? on the grounds that they were forming a militia to protect themselves from the authoritarian state. What would be the response of the police and the armed forces? The authoritarian state isn?t out there rioting, looting and burning. The militia is there to maintain law and order in the event that the police force and army are overwhelmed. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 01:41:17 2020 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 11:41:17 +1000 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <009401d6387a$e9098890$bb1c99b0$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> <009401d6387a$e9098890$bb1c99b0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 11:17, spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat > *Sent:* Monday, June 1, 2020 5:22 PM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Cc:* Stathis Papaioannou > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] ring of truth > > > > > > > > On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 09:28, spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *SR Ballard via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] ring of truth > > > > I can agree John. And as the saying goes, ?A rotten apple spoils the whole > bunch.? > > SR Ballard > > > > > > Hi SR, ja, so tragic. The whole bunch refers to bad bananas (with a > greasy black peel.) The rotten apple spoils the barrel. > > > > I saw something interesting today: the peaceful (and justified) police > brutality protestors grabbed an anarchist and handed him over to the police: > > > > https://twitter.com/i/status/1267240521052946432 > > > > That one act did more to promote their cause than anything else they could > have done. These protestors have a good point. The anarchists and looters > do not. > > >?The protestors, anarchists and looters don?t seem to have a lot of guns? > > > > Stathis, why is that? Think about it. > > > > >? From what you said before, the main purpose of citizens having guns is > just such an occasion as this? > > > > If the looters and rioters began shooting, be sure we have the advantage. > That?s why we have guns. > > > > >? What would the police and the army do if the protesters all had guns? > > > > Probably shoot them. Peaceful protestors don?t need guns and damn well > better not carry them to that occasion. > > > > >? It?s not a theoretical question, because the guns do exist somewhere, > and it could be coming next. > > -- > > Stathis Papaioannou > > > > I doubt it. The rioters would have to recognize how outgunned they are. > They are facing the army, the national guard, the police and an armed > citizenry. > The army, national guard and police would outgun armed citizens aggrieved with the government, which is what we are seeing, and which is what you said was the check on the state or their agents acting tyrannically. It seems to me that the only real check is that the army, national guard, police and those ordering them to act would not want to cause a massacre, not that they fear they would lose in a fight against citizens with guns. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 01:43:54 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 18:43:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d63871$089a7b10$19cf7130$@rainier66.com> <008d01d6387a$58cfb060$0a6f1120$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00d101d6387f$46aa5b60$d3ff1220$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat The term ?anarchist? does not mean ?someone who randomly loots and destroys?. -- Stathis Papaioannou OK cool thanks for that. But someone who randomly loots and destroys is an anarchist, or one particular type of anarchist. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 01:44:23 2020 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 11:44:23 +1000 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <00be01d6387d$ca824210$5f86c630$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> <00be01d6387d$ca824210$5f86c630$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 11:37, spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] ring of truth > > > > > > > > On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 10:45, Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > OTOH, you may have noticed the only shops not being destroyed were > protected by owners asserting their 2nd amendment rights. > > > > >?I didn?t notice that, but what I was asking was if the mobs decided to > assert their ?second amendment rights? on the grounds that they were > forming a militia to protect themselves from the authoritarian state. What > would be the response of the police and the armed forces? > > > > > > > > > > > > The authoritarian state isn?t out there rioting, looting and burning. The > militia is there to maintain law and order in the event that the police > force and army are overwhelmed. > I thought you said previously that the militia was there to protect the people from government going bad. (I admit, I had previously assumed the guns were for hunting and to scare off burglars.) > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 02:16:43 2020 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 12:16:43 +1000 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <00d101d6387f$46aa5b60$d3ff1220$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d63871$089a7b10$19cf7130$@rainier66.com> <008d01d6387a$58cfb060$0a6f1120$@rainier66.com> <00d101d6387f$46aa5b60$d3ff1220$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 11:49, spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat > > The term ?anarchist? does not mean ?someone who randomly loots and > destroys?. > > -- > > Stathis Papaioannou > > > > > > OK cool thanks for that. But someone who randomly loots and destroys is > an anarchist, or one particular type of anarchist. > There are various types of anarchists but none of them advocate random looting and destroying. Particular anarchists might in particular situations, but so might particular monarchists, capitalists or socialists. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 03:27:05 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 20:27:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> <009401d6387a$e9098890$bb1c99b0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <011601d6388d$b1456e70$13d04b50$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat I doubt it. The rioters would have to recognize how outgunned they are. They are facing the army, the national guard, the police and an armed citizenry. The army, national guard and police would outgun armed citizens aggrieved with the government, which is what we are seeing, and which is what you said was the check on the state or their agents acting tyrannically. It seems to me that the only real check is that the army, national guard, police and those ordering them to act would not want to cause a massacre, not that they fear they would lose in a fight against citizens with guns. -- Stathis Papaioannou Stathis, the aggrieved citizens protest, they capture and hand over anarchists to the National Guard, as you saw on the video. The armed citizenry sympathizes with the protestors, who are all in agreement: there are bad cops, but not all cops are bad. The good cops, the National Guard, the army, the militia, the armed citizens not part of the militia, are all on the same side. That?s why we have a militia and an armed citizenry. A well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. We want a secure free state. That?s why we have a well-regulated militia and a well-armed citizenry. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 03:32:56 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 20:32:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> <00be01d6387d$ca824210$5f86c630$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <011d01d6388e$826fe110$874fa330$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On The authoritarian state isn?t out there rioting, looting and burning. The militia is there to maintain law and order in the event that the police force and army are overwhelmed. >?I thought you said previously that the militia was there to protect the people from government going bad? If that happens, ja. But it hasn?t. >? (I admit, I had previously assumed the guns were for hunting and to scare off burglars.) -- Stathis Papaioannou No, but that is what we are told. But that isn?t what they are for, even though they can be used for both. The US Constitution doesn?t guarantee the right to hunt. I wouldn?t necessarily scare off a burglar: I would just shoot a burglar, then scare her if she survives that. Reasoning: anyone who would break in to an occupied home where the citizens have the right to bear arms has a death wish or wish to cause death. I choose to grant them their death wish. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 03:37:44 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 20:37:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d63871$089a7b10$19cf7130$@rainier66.com> <008d01d6387a$58cfb060$0a6f1120$@rainier66.com> <00d101d6387f$46aa5b60$d3ff1220$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <012401d6388f$2ddd3980$8997ac80$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On OK cool thanks for that. But someone who randomly loots and destroys is an anarchist, or one particular type of anarchist. >?There are various types of anarchists but none of them advocate random looting and destroying. Particular anarchists might in particular situations, but so might particular monarchists, capitalists or socialists. -- Stathis Papaioannou I see. So you are arguing those who are setting fires, destroying property and looting stores are not anarchists? They meet my definition. I can definitely see why the protestors handed over hammer boy to the National Guard. The legitimate protestors recognize that the looters and rioters are not the protestors? friends. They are crass opportunists. Those groups are the common enemy of everyone. Note that the one video of the protestors handing over hammer guy did more to advance their cause than anything: they demonstrate they don?t generalize the crime of the bad cops in Minneapolis to all police or all National Guard. Good for them. I stand with them in solidarity. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 03:47:20 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 20:47:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <00d101d6387f$46aa5b60$d3ff1220$@rainier66.com> References: <00d101d6387f$46aa5b60$d3ff1220$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Jun 1, 2020, at 6:49 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat > > The term ?anarchist? does not mean ?someone who randomly loots and destroys?. > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > > > OK cool thanks for that. But someone who randomly loots and destroys is an anarchist, or one particular type of anarchist. No, a person who randomly loots and destroys is usually termed a vandal or a looter. (Maybe you meant loots an dc randomly destroys as looting seems to not be random. Also, the person filmed didn?t seem to be looting.) Not the last word on the subject, but you might start here rather than simply using the term as a synonym for something you don?t like: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 03:51:59 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 20:51:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <012401d6388f$2ddd3980$8997ac80$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d63871$089a7b10$19cf7130$@rainier66.com> <008d01d6387a$58cfb060$0a6f1120$@rainier66.com> <00d101d6387f$46aa5b60$d3ff1220$@rainier66.com> <012401d6388f$2ddd3980$8997ac80$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <013f01d63891$2b8a0fd0$829e2f70$@rainier66.com> From: spike at rainier66.com >?Note that the one video of the protestors handing over hammer guy did more to advance their cause than anything: they demonstrate they don?t generalize the crime of the bad cops in Minneapolis to all police or all National Guard. Good for them. I stand with them in solidarity. ?spike This happened up the street a few miles. Ja, I can see why the protestors resent the hell outta being conflated with these kinds of people: https://twitter.com/i/status/1267269872045764608 If this isn?t anarchy, it bears a striking resemblance to it. It is easy to imagine plenty of these bricks and mortar stores will call it a day with this double catastrophe: the shutdown followed by looters pretending to be protestors. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 04:17:22 2020 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 14:17:22 +1000 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <011601d6388d$b1456e70$13d04b50$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> <009401d6387a$e9098890$bb1c99b0$@rainier66.com> <011601d6388d$b1456e70$13d04b50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 13:29, spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat > > I doubt it. The rioters would have to recognize how outgunned they are. > They are facing the army, the national guard, the police and an armed > citizenry. > > The army, national guard and police would outgun armed citizens aggrieved > with the government, which is what we are seeing, and which is what you > said was the check on the state or their agents acting tyrannically. It > seems to me that the only real check is that the army, national guard, > police and those ordering them to act would not want to cause a massacre, > not that they fear they would lose in a fight against citizens with guns. > > -- > > Stathis Papaioannou > > > > > > Stathis, the aggrieved citizens protest, they capture and hand over > anarchists to the National Guard, as you saw on the video. The armed > citizenry sympathizes with the protestors, who are all in agreement: there > are bad cops, but not all cops are bad. The good cops, the National Guard, > the army, the militia, the armed citizens not part of the militia, are all > on the same side. That?s why we have a militia and an armed citizenry. > > > > A well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. We > want a secure free state. That?s why we have a well-regulated militia and > a well-armed citizenry. > The well-armed citizenry might decide that the police chief, governor and president all need to go. The police chief, governor and president might disagree, and call the well-armed citizenry terrorists and thugs (and even, using the term incorrectly, anarchists). What happens then? > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 04:35:08 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 21:35:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> <009401d6387a$e9098890$bb1c99b0$@rainier66.com> <011601d6388d$b1456e70$13d04b50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <017c01d63897$32bf8e00$983eaa00$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat A well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. We want a secure free state. That?s why we have a well-regulated militia and a well-armed citizenry. >?The well-armed citizenry might decide that the police chief, governor and president all need to go. The police chief, governor and president might disagree, and call the well-armed citizenry terrorists and thugs (and even, using the term incorrectly, anarchists). What happens then? -- Stathis Papaioannou The police chief is removed by putting political pressure on the mayor. The governor and the president have an election every four years and are term limited. They are removed by donating to their competitor. The holders of these offices are free to call the American people names if they wish (a recent unsuccessful POTUS candidate called Americans deplorables (this ended her political career)) but it would likely lead to their failure to win their next term. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 04:37:15 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 00:37:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Who is Enoch Root? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 3:06 AM Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Who is Enoch Root? > > Neal Stephenson?s ?Fall; or, Dodge in Hell? (2019) is a festival of > ideas centered on mind uploading and simulated realities... > > https://turingchurch.net/who-is-enoch-root-11b9c157613c > > ___ ### I reviewed "Fall" here last year, if I remember correctly. I really didn't like it. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 04:44:49 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 00:44:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] olive oil In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 10:58 AM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > I am sure that, like Kale or Natto, many gross things are very good for > me. > ### I like the smell of olive oil, which I perceive as grassy and slightly minty. I started using a lot of olive oil mixed 1:1 with balsamic vinegar in my daily salad in the past couple of years. Strangely, my DNAmPhenoAge_gen biological age estimator improved by a few years concomitantly, so there you are, a new medical anecdote to ponder. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 04:51:21 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 21:51:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] riots, was: RE: Is a copy of you really you? Message-ID: wrote: Keith Henson via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> ... I find it terrifying that human behavior can switch into modes that give rise to the many violent episodes in historical times and ongoing ones like the current rash of destructive riots...Keith _______________________________________________ > Ja. I have friends posting me in despair, certain that civilization is coming to an end. But consider this first. > Imagine a streaming video camera hard mounted on every street intersection, looking both ways. I live in Van Nuys (northern Los Angeles) now. Being a high tech person I look at things on poles. There are already cameras on every intersection for many miles around here. This has not inhibited protests or looting, which is going on within a mile of where I am writing this. Of course, the activated psychological mode in the stone age had warriors going off to a 50% chance of being killed. I doubt cameras are going to make much of a change in behavior. snip > The cop who murdered that man on camera sparked it, but something like this was going to happen: you can't just shut down civilization because of a bad flu virus. Depending on age and other factors, getting COVID-19 has a high probability of a particularly nasty death on a ventilator. There is no vaccine (yet) so the only available solution for people of my age is to stay away from other people. But you are right, " It stresses society to the breaking point." I don't have the analytical tools to determine how much of the current social unrest is due to the shutdown, but when the tools are developed, my guess is it will be determined to be considerable. We are a long way from seeing the end of this. There have been well over 100,000 deaths in the US so far. Around 4% of the LA and Santa Clara populations has antibodies. Assuming 70% for herd immunity, we are around 1/17th of the way through this pandemic. If that's accurate and nothing like a vaccine comes along, the US death toll will not be much short of 2 million. The lockdown has been protective of overloading the hospitals, but the cost to the economy has been extreme. And we are a *long* way from seeing the ripple through effects on food prices. Meat may become unaffordable for a substantial part of the population. > However... this lockdown was very educational. We learned how effective our online meeting tools can be, and many of us learned to use them effectively. I have been using Skype and hangouts for a long time. I really don't know how many learned to use the tools, but it's obvious that whole segments of the population have no access to the tools. A substantial fraction of the school-age population has no wifi even if the schools can loan them a laptop. > We learned that much retail is an obsolete holdover from the olden days: we can replace it with something else which is more efficient. I have been living on delivered food since March 13. If things ever go back to where I can go to a store, I will not bitch about the time and effort of shopping because ordering/delivery is more of a pain in the ass and considerably more expensive. I used to shop over a few weeks at half a dozen places. The delivery cost has reduced that to one. (I tip enough for the delivery people to at least make minimum wage.) > Civilization is not coming to an end. The center of civilization is moving through. The US has done a miserable job compared to the Chinese. > Civilization is coming to start. How much do you think the pandemic has delayed AI and nanotech work? Perhaps we should be thankful because either could destroy humanity entirely (while not necessarily ending something like civilization). Consider the ending of "the clinic seed" where humans are biologically extinct or Stross's two novels where lonely sex robots are all that's maintaining civilization. My, I am in a bad mood tonight. Too much drifting smoke from the looting to the west. Keith From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 04:53:50 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 21:53:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Who is Enoch Root? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <019c01d63899$cf909880$6eb1c980$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat ### I reviewed "Fall" here last year, if I remember correctly. I really didn't like it. Rafal I didn?t like it either Rafal: way too rambly. As a contrast, note Cryptonomicon, which really had momentum! Of course, you never knew which direction, but it had momentum. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 05:19:59 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 01:19:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] elon opens In-Reply-To: References: <01ef01d627f0$0a168290$1e4387b0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 11:10 AM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > On the other hand, I worry about the precedent for ignoring public health > officials. What if we really do ?get the big one?? > > ### We should ignore public health officials. Even genuine peer-reviewed top-level scientists and physicians know little, often are pompous fools and when interacting with politicians suffer from further degradation of their analytic capacity (see Ferguson, Fauci or that woman Kizzmekia). Public health officials are a couple of notches below scientists. Hardly any of them have any genuine medical or science background. The Alameda health lady has a degree in sociology, or something of that kind. Predicting the future is difficult, and even very smart scientists have difficulties with this task, to say nothing of the diverse officials who are eager to guide us. We should distrust everybody and especially when they try to sell us very expensive goods, like a war or a mass house arrest. When the big epidemic hits, we'll know it soon enough, and we could respond appropriately not out of faith in officials but based on a reasonable assessment of the situation. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 05:35:51 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 01:35:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] drugs and diagnosis In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 1:44 PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Well, as with most things, there's a history here. > > Medicine in america /was/ pretty unregulated. > > Then in 1932 a major national sports celebrity, Eben Byers, died from > spending 5 years of chugging so much radium water his skeleton started > dissolving. He died of, basically, cancer-of-the-everything. > > The federal government, which was already in a > flexing-it's-muscles expansive kind of mood, used the incident to build the > foundations of our modern medical regulatory state. > > ### Government is a low-feedback, slow-acting, self-interested hierarchical machine, almost always guaranteed to deliver goods and services of lower quality than the strong-feedback, fast-acting, polycentric and consumer-oriented truth-finding machine of the market. Medical regulation is no exception here - if delivered by the FDA it is crude, behind-the-times and a net harm compared to regulation created directly by providers and consumers of health care. Delusional losers will harm themselves no matter what, unless locked up in an asylum but they are no excuse to put us all in there. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 05:38:07 2020 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 15:38:07 +1000 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <017c01d63897$32bf8e00$983eaa00$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> <009401d6387a$e9098890$bb1c99b0$@rainier66.com> <011601d6388d$b1456e70$13d04b50$@rainier66.com> <017c01d63897$32bf8e00$983eaa00$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 at 14:36, spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat > > > A well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. We > want a secure free state. That?s why we have a well-regulated militia and > a well-armed citizenry. > > >?The well-armed citizenry might decide that the police chief, governor > and president all need to go. The police chief, governor and president > might disagree, and call the well-armed citizenry terrorists and thugs (and > even, using the term incorrectly, anarchists). What happens then? > > -- > > Stathis Papaioannou > > > > > > > > > > The police chief is removed by putting political pressure on the mayor. > The governor and the president have an election every four years and are > term limited. They are removed by donating to their competitor. The > holders of these offices are free to call the American people names if they > wish (a recent unsuccessful POTUS candidate called Americans deplorables > (this ended her political career)) but it would likely lead to their > failure to win their next term. > This is the way things are normally done, but the arms the citizens have are not needed if everything works as it?s meant to, only if they believe that the normal processes are unfair or corrupted. That is what the protestors seem to think at the moment. They haven?t gone as far as attempting an overthrow, but they might. In that case, there would be an armed clash between the government forces and the citizens? militia, each claiming to be the true patriots. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 06:04:05 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 02:04:05 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The plural of "me" is not "us" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 7:12 AM Re Rose via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > But the real concern here is YOU being YOU! Just consider that you violate > no physical law of anything by existing contemporaneously with this new > being with your uploaded copy of your brain. So, la la la, you are hanging > out with your copy one day. Having coffee, maybe. And a scone. It's > pleasant and the coffee is good. You want to die now? Do you think you will > magically inhabit this nice new being made from your upload, seeing from > its eyes and gathering information from its sensors, because you now die? > Nope. That won't happen, sadly. All that will happen is that you will die. > ### I would not see it as anything really sad, if I knew with sufficient degree of confidence that the person I share scones with contains enough of my memories and proclivities. It's a bit like living through your children - most of us like the idea of our children living on, in part because of the shared genes, in part because of the shared memories. Of course, your child is also quite different from you, so the consolation you gain from the child's survival is weak. But a fresh copy of me shares almost all that makes me into me, so I would not be much upset about the death of me, if I knew there is another me left alive. You notice how I am using language in a strange way - we and our language have not evolved ways of analyzing uploaded copies, since copies do not happen in nature. Our inbuilt, dedicated self-analysis circuitry which is located in the parietal cortex is not equipped to look at copies and correctly categorize them. It throws a divide by zero error and quits, leaving you with a feeling of something being wrong. It's hard to think about a plural of "me" as a single identity - we automatically default to using "us", a collection of distinct entities, more-or-less diverse people rather than exact copies of one person. In the world with uploading the plural of "me" is not "us". Once uploading become possible we'll need to invent a new collective/singular pronoun to refer to multiples of one person. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 06:52:21 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 02:52:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Uploaded property rights In-Reply-To: References: <82b33da3-950b-09ce-d3e8-b688a3dd9683@zaiboc.net> Message-ID: > > *> If your theory of identity can't be used to derive a workable set of >> property rights laws, it's not much good for anything. * > > > Both have a equally valid claim to be called Darin Sunley so regardless of > who eventually gets to live in that house Darin Sunley will feel that > justice has been achieved and Darin Sunley will feel that a profound > injustice has been committed and Darin Sunley will be absolutely correct. > If that seems weird well that's why it's called a Singularity. > ### It's actually an interesting question, over and above philosophising about the whichness of me-ness. Let's say your enemies get a hold of your personal information and use it to create a copy of you. The copy comes over into your house and says it's his, too. What should the law say? But let's say you made a copy of yourself voluntarily but then had a change of heart, being creeped out like when you are watching yourself on video. The copy says it's his house, you say it's your house. What should the law say? Or the wife says two of you is just too much for her and serves you both papers. What should the law say? Who pays the alimony? I would think that the law should pay attention to the parent-process responsible for creating the copy-process. If a copy of you is made by your enemies, they are to be held responsible for making that copy whole in legal terms - such as giving him wealth equal to the wealth owned by the original. If you create a copy of you voluntarily, the law could say you also create property rights for that copy. For example, depending on your beliefs (which are by definition identical to the beliefs held by the copy), the property might be split, or a coin could be thrown to decide which of yous gets your money. Or maybe it would be OK for the copy to own nothing and let the copy be used as a slave by its original - after all, it would be you abusing yourself, so it's nobody else's business. But let's say a criminal on death row makes a copy of himself and says to take a randomly selected one of him to the gas chamber. Should the law be satisfied with gassing one or insist on gassing both? Iain Banks, the religion-hater that he was, wrote about religious people making copies of sinners and sending them to extreme torture in a simulation of hell - is it OK to take vengeance on copies for the sins of the originals? What should the law say? Verily, uploading creates lots of fascinating questions for the legally-inclined mind. Any law worth of respect has to meet many constraints and must respond to a very complicated social reality, so of course the philosophy of personal identity is not a sufficient foundation to create the law of uploads. Doubtless it will take multitudes of well-paid lawyers to create this law as we bumble our way through the singularity. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 07:25:46 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 03:25:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Essential Upload Data In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, May 20, 2020 at 6:58 AM Re Rose via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: Of course a copy of you can be someone other than you. It is. It is a new > person. It is not you, even if it thinks it is you. > ### I hope you are not telling me what attitude I should have towards me or me's? I do not tell you how you should feel about a person who has body and thoughts that happen to be 99.999% identical to your current body and thoughts but is sitting next to you. How do you feel about that person it your personal matter, not mine. There are people who feel like me, or Ben or John and there are people who feel like you. Our opinions differ but then being me is a matter of opinion, not fact, more like liking the taste of olive oil than adding two and two. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 07:34:02 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 03:34:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Virus testing In-Reply-To: References: <185086D3-7454-4602-9BE2-171F059FEB6B@gmail.com> <005401d62f7a$b7a44500$26eccf00$@rainier66.com> <00b801d62f85$400eb5b0$c02c2110$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 12:09 PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > We have just witnessed nothing less than the most public failure possible > of the basic concept of the technocratic state public health apparatus. And > them throwing nonsensical meaningless number after nonsensical meaningless > number at us is just a desperate attempt to get us to not notice this. > ### Yes!!! I couldn't say it better. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 07:39:18 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 03:39:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Summer weather and COVID-19 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 12:07 AM Keith Henson via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > The consequences for older > folks (me for example) are dire (about 30% death rate for my age > bracket). ### Do you mean IFR of 30%? Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 08:00:54 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 04:00:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Evolution In-Reply-To: <413981387.2016131.1590091701600@mail.yahoo.com> References: <5303e4d1-3b53-a30b-74b8-d0fe4405ae8d@zaiboc.net> <413981387.2016131.1590091701600@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 4:10 PM The Avantguardian via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > But the error rate that you and John complain about is an essential part > of evolution. If DNA replication was 100% accurate then none of us would be > here. Life would never have progressed beyond the RNA world or whatever the > prototypical life scenario was. The ability to modulate the error rate and > fine tune it over time and space is a feature of DNA-based wetware, and not > a bug. Perfect fidelity is unnatural and changing environmental conditions > will inevitably render any "perfect" organism extinct. ### You are right but there is more to the story - while some non-zero error rate is needed as the grist for evolution, the error rate also puts limits on the amount of information that can be stored per generation in an organism. The higher the error rate, the faster an organism loses genetic information and with high error rate only small amounts of information can be stored. It takes only a couple hundred genes to just survive as the simplest possible organism in some environments but it takes thousands of genes to make an organism capable of writing these words, so humans need better DNA repair than mycoplasma. If our genome was more stable, we might be able to achieve much higher performance, at least as long as our population was large enough to generate sufficient variation for evolution to act on. I don't know if human evolution is constrained by insufficient diversity generation (which is proportional to mutation rate) or by information loss (which also increases with mutation rate but is not described by the same formula). My guess is that the latter is a bigger obstacle to human greatness but I am too lazy at this time of the night to do a proper literature search. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 08:39:12 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 04:39:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Does anybody still think a US dictatorship is impossible? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, May 28, 2020 at 5:18 PM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Freedom of the press was nice while it lasted. > > Trump's executive order target's social media companies > > > ### Seen from outside of the bubble you live in, the real story is the 180-degree opposite - our freedom of speech is increasingly eliminated by oligarchic and monopolistic owners of internet platforms and Trump is here to feebly protest this enemy takeover. The problem with networks is that their value is created by their ubiquity and in network-dependent industries meaningful competition is eliminated if the network is large enough and controlled by a single entity. Youtube, Google, Twitter, Amazon are all network companies, they are all controlled by a very small group of decision-makers, and they have an enormous ability to control information, the lifeblood of our society, for their own goals and often against our, normal citizens', interests. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 08:40:50 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 04:40:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Is a copy of you really you? In-Reply-To: <002501d6360b$7ce6d0d0$76b47270$@rainier66.com> References: <002501d6360b$7ce6d0d0$76b47270$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 29, 2020 at 6:52 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Robin! Is it the REAL you, or just a copy? > > > > spike > > > ### +1 ! Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 08:47:38 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 04:47:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 9:57 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: Nobody thinks this is OK except perhaps for the white supremacists. > ### Have you been watching a lot of CNN recently? Also, "white supremacist" is a racial slur. You should not use it lightly. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 09:01:21 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 05:01:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 1:14 PM Dave Sill via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 9:57 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> If I thought that protests would do the slightest bit of good I would not >> say what I said above. But I don't. Men are going on trial for murder, >> so the government did the right thing. What else can they do? >> > > The cop in question had a series of complaints and zero reprimands. > Policitians and law enforcement leadership could do a lot more to prevent > police brutality. Police unions are too powerful, Qualified immunity gives > cops carte blanche. Militarization of police forces has to stop. The drug > war has to end. > > Citizens of all races have put up with poor treatment by the police they > hire to "protect and serve" them. They tried peaceful protests--remember > the NFL taking a knee?--and that wasn't acceptable. This has been a problem > too long to expect the victims to be patient and polite. > > ### All you say is correct. The Democrats such as Klobuchar did a lot to encourage police brutality - but does it justify antifa thugs and random other black and white thugs robbing stores and torching businesses? Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 09:09:25 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 05:09:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] riots, was: RE: Is a copy of you really you? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 12:59 AM Keith Henson via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > We are a long way from seeing the end of this. There have been well > over 100,000 deaths in the US so far. Around 4% of the LA and Santa > Clara populations has antibodies. Assuming 70% for herd immunity, we > are around 1/17th of the way through this pandemic. If that's > accurate and nothing like a vaccine comes along, the US death toll > will not be much short of 2 million. ### You are off by more than an order of magnitude. We are getting close to herd immunity in many locations, eyeballing the curve we are about 2/3rd of the way through the pandemic, so the total will be around 150k, maybe up to 200k at the most. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 12:16:59 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 08:16:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Does anybody still think a US dictatorship is impossible? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 4:42 AM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> Freedom of the press was nice while it lasted. > > Trump's executive order target's social media companies >> >> > > > *### Seen from outside of the bubble you live in,* > You mean in the world of MAGA Hatters, Alex Jones, and Neo-Nazis? > * > the real story is the 180-degree opposite - our freedom of speech is > increasingly eliminated by oligarchic and monopolistic owners of internet > platforms and Trump is here to feebly protest this enemy takeover. * > Enemy takeover?! I'm a libertarian (small l), perhaps you've heard of it, so I believe in the Free Market, especially for ideas, thus I have no animosity against people who got rich off if it although I think they sometimes act unwisely and against their own best interests. I also don't think monopolistic online platforms are inherently evil but are a result of the nature of the Internet and of networks in general; but if you disagree and don't like them then why do you want the ultimate monopoly, why do you want just one giant one in charge of everything and controlled by BIg Brother? And if internet providers were held to the same idiotic liability laws as newspapers and had to have their lawyers give their OK for every Email or text message or personal web page as Trump wants then how on earth could we still have them? We couldn't, banning those things is the entire point and is the clearest sign yet of impending dictatorship. The next step would be for Trump to order American army troops into the streets of American cities despite the wishes of those involved, like the Governors and Mayors and even the local civilian police. > *> The problem with networks is that their value is created by their > ubiquity and in network-dependent industries meaningful competition is > eliminated if the network is large enough and controlled by a single > entity. Youtube, Google, Twitter, Amazon are all network companies, they > are all controlled by a very small group of decision-makers,* > And you believe the solution to that is for networks to be controlled by an even smaller group, the US government, and you think the perfect man to control the government is Donald J Trump who is currently averaging 23.8 public lies a day, that's one public lie every 40 waking minutes. You think that's the best way for the American people to get the real truth. I disagree, I don't think government should get into the truth determining business, especially not a government led by a congenital liar. > *> and they have an enormous ability to control information, the lifeblood > of our society, for their own goals and often against our, normal > citizens', interests.* > And all this started not because Twitter deleted a Trump tweet but because the Twitter company dared to add a link to it where somebody could fact check it after Trump told a lie that was particularly egregious even by his own very very low standards for honesty. Rafal, are we on the same page here, are we even talking the same language? Do you consider 1984 to be a dystopian or a utopian novel? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 12:26:57 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 08:26:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] riots, was: RE: Is a copy of you really you? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 5:12 AM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > *t**he total will be around 150k, maybe up to 200k at the most.* > 10 to 20 million... tops John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 12:27:49 2020 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 08:27:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <00d101d6387f$46aa5b60$d3ff1220$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d63871$089a7b10$19cf7130$@rainier66.com> <008d01d6387a$58cfb060$0a6f1120$@rainier66.com> <00d101d6387f$46aa5b60$d3ff1220$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 9:50 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > OK cool thanks for that. But someone who randomly loots and destroys is > an anarchist, or one particular type of anarchist. > No. WTF are you thinking? -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 12:39:51 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 05:39:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d63871$089a7b10$19cf7130$@rainier66.com> <008d01d6387a$58cfb060$0a6f1120$@rainier66.com> <00d101d6387f$46aa5b60$d3ff1220$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00b601d638da$e9f8f000$bdead000$@rainier66.com> From: Dave Sill Subject: Re: [ExI] ring of truth On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 9:50 PM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: OK cool thanks for that. But someone who randomly loots and destroys is an anarchist, or one particular type of anarchist. >?No. WTF are you thinking? -Dave Legitimate peaceful anarchists don?t like being identified with looters and rioters any more than the protestors do. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 12:56:23 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 08:56:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 4:57 AM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > "white supremacist" is a racial slur. You should not use it lightly. > I don't think calling somebody who is chanting "Jews will not replace us" is carrying a torch and is giving the Nazi salute a "white supremacist" is a racial slur; I think it's a statement of fact and remains true even if the person is also a good old boy MAGA Hatter. John K Clark > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 13:25:02 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 09:25:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 9:58 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > I don't think that there is anything at all positive about the protests. > Not even peaceful protests? Last night before the curfew there was a perfectly peaceful and legal protest in Lafayette Square, suddenly without any warning police thugs turned up and charged the protesters with flash bangs and tear gas. Why? Because Trump wanted them to clear a path so he could have a 17 minute photo op and have his picture taken holding a bible upside down and standing in front of a church looking like a complete dipshit. All it needs is "I am a hypocrite" tattooed on his forehead John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 14:36:04 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 07:36:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> <009401d6387a$e9098890$bb1c99b0$@rainier66.com> <011601d6388d$b1456e70$13d04b50$@rainier66.com> <017c01d63897$32bf8e00$983eaa00$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00fa01d638eb$25fb8940$71f29bc0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat >?This is the way things are normally done, but the arms the citizens have are not needed if everything works as it?s meant to, only if they believe that the normal processes are unfair or corrupted. That is what the protestors seem to think at the moment. They haven?t gone as far as attempting an overthrow, but they might. In that case, there would be an armed clash between the government forces and the citizens? militia, each claiming to be the true patriots. -- Stathis Papaioannou Hi Stathis, it isn?t the militia out there doing the rioting and looting. Rioters and looters are anarchists, and they besmirch legitimate anarchists. Legitimate anarchists don?t even like to share the name anarchists with the looters and rioters. The government and the militia are on the same side. >?normal processes are unfair or corrupted? It seems to be looking up. In the USA, we have caught a lot of corruption way up at the top recently. We uncovered a huge conspiracy right up at the top of the FBI and Department of Justice. A judge accused the DoJ of questionable motives in dropping their case against the former National Security Advisor. The DoJ answered back that the FBI falsified or fabricated the only evidence they had against him. Now, we caught em. Sunlight disinfects. >? but the arms the citizens have are not needed? The arms of the citizens are always needed, even if they are not used. The fact that we have them is very important. We are well armed with plenty of ammo and plenty of training. We are not dependent on government funding to exist, which is good, for if government doesn?t pay the military, they cease to exist. But we don?t. We are here to protect. A well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 14:53:31 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 07:53:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Virus testing In-Reply-To: References: <185086D3-7454-4602-9BE2-171F059FEB6B@gmail.com> <005401d62f7a$b7a44500$26eccf00$@rainier66.com> <00b801d62f85$400eb5b0$c02c2110$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <011101d638ed$9592f890$c0b8e9b0$@rainier66.com> On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 12:09 PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat > wrote: We have just witnessed nothing less than the most public failure possible of the basic concept of the technocratic state public health apparatus. And them throwing nonsensical meaningless number after nonsensical meaningless number at us is just a desperate attempt to get us to not notice this? Darin Truer words are seldom posted, Darin, thanks for that. We already know we are to compare numbers that are not directly comparable. Covid deaths were intentionally over-reported in the USA and not reported at all in China. Northern Europe was hit the hardest from what I can tell, with Chile and Brazil about to pass even the hardest-hit nation which was Belgium. It is very possible that China might end up being the hardest-hit nation once we get the overall death rates from everywhere and subtract out background rates. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 15:14:41 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 10:14:41 -0500 Subject: [ExI] home defense Message-ID: It used to be the case (and I cannot remember whether it was federal or state law) that a homeowner had to back up to the farthest part of his house before he could shoot an intruder. That got changed awhile back. Who knows what the federal standard is? Or is that a state thing, or what? bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 15:40:20 2020 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 11:40:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 5:04 AM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > ### All you say is correct. The Democrats such as Klobuchar did a lot to > encourage police brutality - but does it justify antifa thugs and random > other black and white thugs robbing stores and torching businesses? > I'm only trying to understand and explain, not justify. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 15:43:18 2020 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 11:43:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <00fa01d638eb$25fb8940$71f29bc0$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> <009401d6387a$e9098890$bb1c99b0$@rainier66.com> <011601d6388d$b1456e70$13d04b50$@rainier66.com> <017c01d63897$32bf8e00$983eaa00$@rainier66.com> <00fa01d638eb$25fb8940$71f29bc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 10:38 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > Rioters and looters are anarchists, and they besmirch legitimate > anarchists. > I don't know if you're trying to be clever or funny, but this is offensive and wrong. Please stop. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 15:44:37 2020 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 11:44:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] home defense In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 11:17 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > It used to be the case (and I cannot remember whether it was federal or > state law) that a homeowner had to back up to the farthest part of his > house before he could shoot an intruder. That got changed awhile back. > > Who knows what the federal standard is? Or is that a state thing, or what? > It's a state thing. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 15:52:21 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 08:52:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] home defense In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <003101d638f5$cddd1750$699745f0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: [ExI] home defense >?It used to be the case (and I cannot remember whether it was federal or state law) that a homeowner had to back up to the farthest part of his house before he could shoot an intruder. That got changed awhile back? That one is easy: I couldn?t hit the bastard from the farthest back part of my house. There are walls in the way. >?Who knows what the federal standard is? Depends on the round. For 5.56 ammo, the standard is .223 +/- .0001 diameter, 53 grain mass for the #1410 hollow point. >. ?Or is that a state thing, or what? bill w Bill you live in Mississippi. The law is on your side. Always think safety first: drill a hole in the sleazy bastard, then if necessary, drag her corpse to the back of your house, then call 911 and beg them to rescue you from a dangerous intruder. When they show up about an hour later, good chance they won?t mention that her earthly remains have already cooled to nearly room temperature. Safety first BillW: in any nation where the citizens have the right to bear arms, anyone who breaks in to an occupied home intends to slay. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 15:55:12 2020 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 11:55:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> <009401d6387a$e9098890$bb1c99b0$@rainier66.com> <011601d6388d$b1456e70$13d04b50$@rainier66.com> <017c01d63897$32bf8e00$983eaa00$@rainier66.com> <00fa01d638eb$25fb8940$71f29bc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I understand that if you follow anarchy as a political philosophy why you might find Spike's use of the term offensive, but his use of it is well understood as a legitimate meaning of the word in the English language: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anarchist In fact, among the general populace, I would suspect Spike's definition is the only one most people are familiar with. On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 11:49 AM Dave Sill via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 10:38 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> Rioters and looters are anarchists, and they besmirch legitimate >> anarchists. >> > > I don't know if you're trying to be clever or funny, but this is offensive > and wrong. Please stop. > > -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 Tue Jun 2 15:56:32 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 08:56:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> <009401d6387a$e9098890$bb1c99b0$@rainier66.com> <011601d6388d$b1456e70$13d04b50$@rainier66.com> <017c01d63897$32bf8e00$983eaa00$@rainier66.com> <00fa01d638eb$25fb8940$71f29bc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <003d01d638f6$638b9290$2aa2b7b0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Dave Sill via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] ring of truth On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 10:38 AM spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: Rioters and looters are anarchists, and they besmirch legitimate anarchists. >?I don't know if you're trying to be clever or funny, but this is offensive and wrong. Please stop. -Dave Neither of these Dave. There are perfectly legitimate anarchists, those who believe society can exist without a top-down government. Native Americans existed on this continent for millennia without central government. There is no offense or entertainment intended. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 16:05:58 2020 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 12:05:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] home defense In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Typically found under Stand your ground or Castle doctrine. Stand your ground applies to outside of the home, and in many blue states, you have a duty to retreat before application of lethal force if possible. In other states, there is no obligation. Most states do recognize the Castle doctrine that allows you to apply lethal force within your home to defend yourself. On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 11:55 AM Dave Sill via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 11:17 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> It used to be the case (and I cannot remember whether it was federal or >> state law) that a homeowner had to back up to the farthest part of his >> house before he could shoot an intruder. That got changed awhile back. >> >> Who knows what the federal standard is? Or is that a state thing, or >> what? >> > > It's a state thing. > > -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 danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 16:11:10 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 09:11:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <00fa01d638eb$25fb8940$71f29bc0$@rainier66.com> References: <00fa01d638eb$25fb8940$71f29bc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Jun 2, 2020, at 7:44 AM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat > > >?This is the way things are normally done, but the arms the citizens have are not needed if everything works as it?s meant to, only if they believe that the normal processes are unfair or corrupted. That is what the protestors seem to think at the moment. They haven?t gone as far as attempting an overthrow, but they might. In that case, there would be an armed clash between the government forces and the citizens? militia, each claiming to be the true patriots. > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > > > Hi Stathis, it isn?t the militia out there doing the rioting and looting. Rioters and looters are anarchists, and they besmirch legitimate anarchists. Legitimate anarchists don?t even like to share the name anarchists with the looters and rioters. The government and the militia are on the same side. You introduced the term anarchist to describe the person in that video. I?ve asked time and again to tell how you know the person is an anarchist and what you mean by this. Rioters and looters are not anarchists; they?re, respectively rioters and looters. It?s you who besmirch all anarchists by using the term ?anarchist? as a synonym for rioter, looter, or vandal. > >?normal processes are unfair or corrupted? > > It seems to be looking up. As measured by corruption indices, the US has become slightly more corrupt over the last few years: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/corruption-index and: https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2018/results/usa So, if these indices are reliable, things are not looking up. It?s not like they?ve falling off a cliff either, but a slight uptick in corruption is no cause for celebration, IMO. > In the USA, we have caught a lot of corruption way up at the top recently. We uncovered a huge conspiracy right up at the top of the FBI and Department of Justice. A judge accused the DoJ of questionable motives in dropping their case against the former National Security Advisor. The DoJ answered back that the FBI falsified or fabricated the only evidence they had against him. Now, we caught em. Sunlight disinfects. This seems way more complicated than you make it to be. And, in fact, it seems more to lean in the direction of the DoJ being corrupted for political reasons. See: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/01/judge-questions-unusual-justice-department-filing-in-flynn-case-294330 Note the unusual nature of the dismissal of the charges at DoJ. Add to this, the earlier guilty plea. (Granted, plea bargaining was involved here.) And Barr appointing another Trump appointee to review the case. This doesn?t exacting look like sunlight disinfecting the process. Instead, it might be a case of the process being ever more subverted to politics. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 16:13:41 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 09:13:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4D5D1131-9EE1-4BE4-A4F6-79B4B3AA0D50@gmail.com> On Jun 2, 2020, at 8:50 AM, Dave Sill via extropy-chat wrote:? > >> On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 10:38 AM spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > >> Rioters and looters are anarchists, and they besmirch legitimate anarchists. >> > > I don't know if you're trying to be clever or funny, but this is offensive and wrong. Please stop. I find it highly offensive too. And I find it wrong as I?ve tried to explain here. But so far, Spike seems to be ignoring the gist of my comments. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 16:19:40 2020 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 10:19:40 -0600 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> <009401d6387a$e9098890$bb1c99b0$@rainier66.com> <011601d6388d$b1456e70$13d04b50$@rainier66.com> <017c01d63897$32bf8e00$983eaa00$@rainier66.com> <00fa01d638eb$25fb8940$71f29bc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: "I see you accept /society's/ definition of "anarchist!" Obligatory SMBC: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-09-16 On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 10:10 AM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > I understand that if you follow anarchy as a political philosophy why you > might find Spike's use of the term offensive, but his use of it is well > understood as a legitimate meaning of the word in the English language: > > https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anarchist > > In fact, among the general populace, I would suspect Spike's definition is > the only one most people are familiar with. > > On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 11:49 AM Dave Sill via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 10:38 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> Rioters and looters are anarchists, and they besmirch legitimate >>> anarchists. >>> >> >> I don't know if you're trying to be clever or funny, but this is >> offensive and wrong. Please stop. >> >> -Dave >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 16:23:49 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 09:23:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <61F4FFDE-60CA-4127-AF2B-D7DB782877CB@gmail.com> On Jun 2, 2020, at 8:43 AM, Dave Sill via extropy-chat wrote: >> On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 5:04 AM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat wrote: > >> >> ### All you say is correct. The Democrats such as Klobuchar did a lot to encourage police brutality - but does it justify antifa thugs and random other black and white thugs robbing stores and torching businesses? > > I'm only trying to understand and explain, not justify. See, for a different take: https://c4ss.org/content/52928 No doubt, some will be triggered by the author?s use of chud and fash. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 16:23:54 2020 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 10:23:54 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Is a copy of you really you? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi Robin, Thanks for this info. I am not much of a reader of novels, so haven?t read this book. But do you talk about ?eefing of the ineffable? or merging consciousness at all? For example, if you had a neural ponytail that functions like the corpus callosum (only instead of just computationally binding 2 hemispheres, It would merge 4), you could then experience all of the experiences, not just half. This would let you know things like if your redness was like your partner?s greenness and such. I agree there will be lots of copies, but they will also be ?computationally bound?, and such, so more like one larger individual consciousness (the way our brain has two computationally bound hemispheres for one individual), than multiple individuals. On Fri, May 29, 2020 at 3:02 PM Robin D Hanson via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > I disagree; I wrote a whole book describing a reasonable world where many > copies are made: > http://ageofem.com > > > On May 29, 2020, at 10:40 AM, Keith Henson via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > This is still my conclusion, and yes this thing was beaten to death > > long ago. Not solved - > > It was understood, not solved because there was nothing to solve. > > It was also understood that except for corner cases, like crews for > starships, that making copies of people was a bad idea. > > > > Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu > Future of Humanity Inst., Oxford University > Assoc. Prof. Economics, George Mason University > See my books: http://ageofem.com http://elephantinthebrain.com > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 16:28:01 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 09:28:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <003d01d638f6$638b9290$2aa2b7b0$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d638f6$638b9290$2aa2b7b0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Jun 2, 2020, at 9:16 AM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > On Behalf Of Dave Sill via extropy-chat > Subject: Re: [ExI] ring of truth > > On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 10:38 AM spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > Rioters and looters are anarchists, and they besmirch legitimate anarchists. > > >?I don't know if you're trying to be clever or funny, but this is offensive and wrong. Please stop. > > -Dave > > > Neither of these Dave. There are perfectly legitimate anarchists, those who believe society can exist without a top-down government. Native Americans existed on this continent for millennia without central government. > > There is no offense or entertainment intended. > > spike If no offense is intended, would you please stop using the term ?anarchist? as a synonym for rioter and looters? You didn?t do that in the quoted text. In fact, you start off with ?Rioters and looters are anarchists...? Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 16:28:05 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 09:28:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> <009401d6387a$e9098890$bb1c99b0$@rainier66.com> <011601d6388d$b1456e70$13d04b50$@rainier66.com> <017c01d63897$32bf8e00$983eaa00$@rainier66.com> <00fa01d638eb$25fb8940$71f29bc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <006a01d638fa$cc2dc760$64895620$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] ring of truth >?I understand that if you follow anarchy as a political philosophy why you might find Spike's use of the term offensive, but his use of it is well understood as a legitimate meaning of the word in the English language: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anarchist In fact, among the general populace, I would suspect Spike's definition is the only one most people are familiar with? Ja, thanks for the reminder Dylan and Dave. There are different brands of anarchist, just as there are very different brands of libertarian or any other label, often very incompatible with each other, sharing the name. Often the most bitter animosity is between different brands of similarly-named parties (we see that in the Libertarian party.) I don?t understand the details of anarchism, because I am not an anarchist: I believe a top-level government is beneficial, if it is carefully limited and defined by a constitution. When I see rioters burning buildings and cars, destroying property, attacking store owners, to me they are committing acts of anarchy, which makes them anarchists (one particular brand.) I recognize (and know personally) another brand of anarchist who doesn?t do these things. He believes people will be OK with no top-level government. He isn?t crazy or deluded, he is not a bad guy at all. We just disagree on that, perfectly peacefully. I would consider us friends: he?s a pleasant chap, tolerant of others, as am I. We just disagree on that topic full stop. In the USA, there is a thing called a minarchist, with a subset being a minarcho-capitalist. This is a guy who agrees a central government must exist, to do things like provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, establish justice, secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty, you know, the thing. But a minarcho-capitalist would argue that the heavy lifting in government is done at the state level, because states have more options in how to raise funds than does the Federal government, which really has only the income tax. spike On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 11:49 AM Dave Sill via extropy-chat > wrote: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 10:38 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: Rioters and looters are anarchists, and they besmirch legitimate anarchists. I don't know if you're trying to be clever or funny, but this is offensive and wrong. Please stop. -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 johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 16:59:46 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 12:59:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <00fa01d638eb$25fb8940$71f29bc0$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> <009401d6387a$e9098890$bb1c99b0$@rainier66.com> <011601d6388d$b1456e70$13d04b50$@rainier66.com> <017c01d63897$32bf8e00$983eaa00$@rainier66.com> <00fa01d638eb$25fb8940$71f29bc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 10:39 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > *The government and the militia are on the same side.* > If so then the MAGA Hatter militia can help Trump become a dictator as he already controls 2 and a half out of the 3 branches of government. > A judge accused the DoJ of questionable motives in dropping their case > against the former National Security Advisor. The DoJ answered back that > the FBI falsified or fabricated the only evidence they had against him. > Now, we caught em. Sunlight disinfects. > Yep no question about it, Trump's Doj and his lackey William Barr were shown to be contemptible lying frauds. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 17:05:44 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 10:05:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <4D5D1131-9EE1-4BE4-A4F6-79B4B3AA0D50@gmail.com> References: <4D5D1131-9EE1-4BE4-A4F6-79B4B3AA0D50@gmail.com> Message-ID: <003301d63900$0dfd5de0$29f819a0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat Sent: Tuesday, June 2, 2020 9:14 AM To: ExI chat list Cc: Dan TheBookMan Subject: Re: [ExI] ring of truth On Jun 2, 2020, at 8:50 AM, Dave Sill via extropy-chat > wrote:? On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 10:38 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: Rioters and looters are anarchists, and they besmirch legitimate anarchists. I don't know if you're trying to be clever or funny, but this is offensive and wrong. Please stop. I find it highly offensive too. And I find it wrong as I?ve tried to explain here. But so far, Spike seems to be ignoring the gist of my comments. Regards, Dan OK no problem, I see where you are going. No offense intended Dan or anyone else. There are Libertarians and small l libertarians, which are two different things. One is a committed party follower (cap L) and the other is a loose-fitting catch-many term which includes those who believe in smaller limited federal government, the minarchists of all brands, those who believe in government primarily at the state level, and so forth. Rather than distinguish between cap A Anarchists and the rioters who are committing acts of anarchy but are not Anarchists, I will refrain from using the term to refer to opportunists (looters) and anger-driven destructobots, which also two different groups with generally differing motives. The protestors are generally not anarchists: they want law and order, applied fairly and equally. So do we. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 17:07:41 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 12:07:41 -0500 Subject: [ExI] home defense In-Reply-To: <003101d638f5$cddd1750$699745f0$@rainier66.com> References: <003101d638f5$cddd1750$699745f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Spike, I do not agree with you about the intention of an intruder to kill someone. If I had to, I would shoot to disable and if that didn't work I'd empty the gun, no question. But the ones who are caught here are always trying to rob the place, and they get shot or killed more often than the homeowner does. We had an old black guy trying to come in the front door in broad daylight, and my wife was pushing him away. Should I have shot him? He went back on the street and we saw a cop car out there. Someone else had called 911. Mentally handicapped. Harmless. I would have felt extremely guilty if had shot him, much less killed him. I have known many harmless, confused mental patients. I would not have wanted to be one of the people who had killed such a person simply out of my fear. There are too many of those killed by cops. He comes in with a gun? Fine. We go to war. bill w On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 11:02 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > *Subject:* [ExI] home defense > > > > > > > > >?It used to be the case (and I cannot remember whether it was federal or > state law) that a homeowner had to back up to the farthest part of his > house before he could shoot an intruder. That got changed awhile back? > > > > That one is easy: I couldn?t hit the bastard from the farthest back part > of my house. There are walls in the way. > > > > > > >?Who knows what the federal standard is? > > > > Depends on the round. For 5.56 ammo, the standard is .223 +/- .0001 > diameter, 53 grain mass for the #1410 hollow point. > > > > > > >. ?Or is that a state thing, or what? bill w > > > > Bill you live in Mississippi. The law is on your side. > > > > Always think safety first: drill a hole in the sleazy bastard, then if > necessary, drag her corpse to the back of your house, then call 911 and > beg them to rescue you from a dangerous intruder. When they show up about > an hour later, good chance they won?t mention that her earthly remains have > already cooled to nearly room temperature. > > > > Safety first BillW: in any nation where the citizens have the right to > bear arms, anyone who breaks in to an occupied home intends to slay. > > > > 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 Tue Jun 2 17:44:18 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 10:44:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] riots, was: RE: Is a copy of you really you? Message-ID: Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 12:59 AM Keith Henson via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > We are a long way from seeing the end of this. There have been well > over 100,000 deaths in the US so far. Around 4% of the LA and Santa > Clara populations has antibodies. Assuming 70% for herd immunity, we > are around 1/17th of the way through this pandemic. If that's > accurate and nothing like a vaccine comes along, the US death toll > will not be much short of 2 million. ### You are off by more than an order of magnitude. I hope what I posted above is wrong and you are right. What do you think is wrong with my analysis? The range I have seen on herd immunity is 60 to 80% so I used 70% for analysis. If you have a better number for me to use, what is it? The antibody testing results for the two California locations are centered around 4%. I am aware there is some uncertainty in this number, but if herd immunity takes 70%, then 70/4 is around a factor of ~17. That indicates to me that the pandemic has quite a way to go at least in California. ### We are getting close to herd immunity in many locations, I am not aware of such locations, not even Sweeden. Can you point me to some of them? ### eyeballing the curve we are about 2/3rd of the way through the pandemic, so the total will be around 150k, maybe up to 200k at the most. You might look up the curve for Iran which is undergoing a secondary peak of about the same size as the first one. As I said, I hope you are right and my rough analysis is wrong. Of course, a vaccine would change the picture entirely. Keith From sparge at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 17:45:51 2020 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 13:45:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: <006a01d638fa$cc2dc760$64895620$@rainier66.com> References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> <009401d6387a$e9098890$bb1c99b0$@rainier66.com> <011601d6388d$b1456e70$13d04b50$@rainier66.com> <017c01d63897$32bf8e00$983eaa00$@rainier66.com> <00fa01d638eb$25fb8940$71f29bc0$@rainier66.com> <006a01d638fa$cc2dc760$64895620$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 1:18 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > When I see rioters burning buildings and cars, destroying property, > attacking store owners, to me they are committing acts of anarchy, which > makes them anarchists (one particular brand.) > You're attributing a cause to their actions without evidence that that's why they're doing what they're doing. They *could* be anarchists, but they could also just be destroying things for fun, looting because they want free stuff, reacting out of fear/anger, etc. Now that you know labeling them as anarchists is offensive, kindly stop doing that. Stick with observable labels like rioters or looters. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 17:48:21 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 12:48:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] better than Google Message-ID: You guys and gals. What I want to know is whatever happened to the neutron bomb? Wasn't it supposed to kill people but leave buildings intact? Maybe it was really dirty, radiation-wise. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 17:52:19 2020 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 13:52:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d636fb$b542bf70$1fc83e50$@rainier66.com> <005701d63814$64b6a0c0$2e23e240$@rainier66.com> <009a01d6381a$632bd350$298379f0$@rainier66.com> <002301d6386c$239af6b0$6ad0e410$@rainier66.com> <009401d6387a$e9098890$bb1c99b0$@rainier66.com> <011601d6388d$b1456e70$13d04b50$@rainier66.com> <017c01d63897$32bf8e00$983eaa00$@rainier66.com> <00fa01d638eb$25fb8940$71f29bc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 12:10 PM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > I understand that if you follow anarchy as a political philosophy why you > might find Spike's use of the term offensive, but his use of it is well > understood as a legitimate meaning of the word in the English language: > > https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anarchist > > In fact, among the general populace, I would suspect Spike's definition is > the only one most people are familiar with. > I'd like to think we're at a level above the general populace. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 18:05:34 2020 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 14:05:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] better than Google In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 2:00 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > You guys and gals. What I want to know is whatever happened to the > neutron bomb? Wasn't it supposed to kill people but leave buildings > intact? Maybe it was really dirty, radiation-wise. > It was considered uncouth to kill people without also destroying buildings. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 18:08:00 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 11:08:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] better than Google In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: They're about as strategically useful as other nuclear WMDs - which is to say, the amount of indiscriminate death they inflict would trigger a nuclear war if they were used against an enemy. That said, the ones that have been produced can't penetrate modern tank armor, which caused them to fall out of favor: if you can't use them against enemy military, having them around is a clear sign that you want to use them against enemy civilians, which is a no-no. (You can have stuff that in practice might mostly hurt civilians, but you can't be seen to be preparing to specifically target civilians and not military.) On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 10:59 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > You guys and gals. What I want to know is whatever happened to the > neutron bomb? Wasn't it supposed to kill people but leave buildings > intact? Maybe it was really dirty, radiation-wise. 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 Jun 2 18:30:30 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 11:30:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] better than Google In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <004a01d6390b$e5e434d0$b1ac9e70$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: [ExI] better than Google You guys and gals. What I want to know is whatever happened to the neutron bomb? Wasn't it supposed to kill people but leave buildings intact? Maybe it was really dirty, radiation-wise. bill w BillW, it was nearly useless as a weapon. The ideal weapon would do the opposite: wreck the equipment and leave the people intact. That?s why we hear so much more about the EMP, which wrecks the communications, the computers, the electrical infrastructure, the engines and such, but the people don?t even notice until their solitaire game won?t turn on. Then FaceBook is gone, and oh dear, they realize they just lost World War 4. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 18:59:55 2020 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 14:59:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <61F4FFDE-60CA-4127-AF2B-D7DB782877CB@gmail.com> References: <61F4FFDE-60CA-4127-AF2B-D7DB782877CB@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 12:59 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > On Jun 2, 2020, at 8:43 AM, Dave Sill via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 5:04 AM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> ### All you say is correct. The Democrats such as Klobuchar did a lot to >> encourage police brutality - but does it justify antifa thugs and random >> other black and white thugs robbing stores and torching businesses? >> > > I'm only trying to understand and explain, not justify. > > > See, for a different take: https://c4ss.org/content/52928 > > No doubt, some will be triggered by the author?s use of chud and fash. > That was...different, as promised. :-) Hard to read even with my Urban Dictionary open. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 19:10:48 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 12:10:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: <61F4FFDE-60CA-4127-AF2B-D7DB782877CB@gmail.com> Message-ID: <007101d63911$875721b0$96056510$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dave Sill via On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 12:59 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: See, for a different take: https://c4ss.org/content/52928 No doubt, some will be triggered by the author?s use of chud and fash. That was...different, as promised. :-) Hard to read even with my Urban Dictionary open. -Dave Ja, even the Urban Dictionary didn?t help that much. Words which have not been around very long have no consensus definition. I can?t be triggered by words I don?t understand. I removed those mystery words and tried to comprehend the meaning of the article from context. No luck. Perhaps if the author were to rewrite using only the words in the current edition of Miriam Webster using the definitions found there, the meaning would be clear. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mbb386 at main.nc.us Tue Jun 2 19:14:22 2020 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 15:14:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <007101d63911$875721b0$96056510$@rainier66.com> References: <61F4FFDE-60CA-4127-AF2B-D7DB782877CB@gmail.com> <007101d63911$875721b0$96056510$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <7b3f41d53d6fec7e5ca6089b8fbf9cc2.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> On Tue, June 2, 2020 15:10, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > Perhaps if the author were to rewrite using only the words in the current > edition of Miriam Webster using the definitions found there, the meaning > would be clear. > > Ah, but the author isn't writing for *us*... we're outsiders (because we don't already know and use those words). He's writing for the elect, those who already know what he's saying. :( Regards, MB From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 19:34:55 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 12:34:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ring of truth In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <56F16947-D35A-460F-9314-12F05B9A6237@gmail.com> On Jun 2, 2020, at 11:14 AM, Dave Sill via extropy-chat wrote: > >> On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 12:10 PM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat wrote: > >> I understand that if you follow anarchy as a political philosophy why you might find Spike's use of the term offensive, but his use of it is well understood as a legitimate meaning of the word in the English language: >> >> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anarchist >> >> In fact, among the general populace, I would suspect Spike's definition is the only one most people are familiar with. > > I'd like to think we're at a level above the general populace. > > -Dave I was going to post the same point. Colloquially, most people also think atheists are amoral if not immoral. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 20:06:30 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 15:06:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] better than Google In-Reply-To: <004a01d6390b$e5e434d0$b1ac9e70$@rainier66.com> References: <004a01d6390b$e5e434d0$b1ac9e70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Well is there anything between nuclear and the conventional bombs? It would be nice, in a gruesome kind of way, to have bombs capable of killing the same number of whatever as nuclear ones but no radiation. Has a total, all out war, sparing nothing, been fought in modern times? All those little piddly wars between FRance and Britain were largely fought with mercenaries. Why didn't they put every man who could carry a weapon into the wars? That would be a very very short war. But no, they fought limited wars, and mostly nobody won. bill w On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 1:36 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > *Subject:* [ExI] better than Google > > > > You guys and gals. What I want to know is whatever happened to the > neutron bomb? Wasn't it supposed to kill people but leave buildings > intact? Maybe it was really dirty, radiation-wise. bill w > > > > > > BillW, it was nearly useless as a weapon. The ideal weapon would do the > opposite: wreck the equipment and leave the people intact. That?s why we > hear so much more about the EMP, which wrecks the communications, the > computers, the electrical infrastructure, the engines and such, but the > people don?t even notice until their solitaire game won?t turn on. Then > FaceBook is gone, and oh dear, they realize they just lost World War 4. > > > > 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 Tue Jun 2 21:20:31 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 14:20:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] better than Google In-Reply-To: References: <004a01d6390b$e5e434d0$b1ac9e70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <002901d63923$a60878e0$f2196aa0$@rainier66.com> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] better than Google Well is there anything between nuclear and the conventional bombs?... Let?s hope not. Fusion devices are weapons of peace: they are too big to use. That in-between business is what made neutron bombs so controversial and unpopular: they might be used. They called them tactical nukes. That?s a good way to trigger a nuclear holocaust. >? piddly wars between FRance and Britain were largely fought with mercenaries. Why didn't they put every man who could carry a weapon into the wars? bill w How would the kings feed them? Who would be left back to produce the war material? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 2 21:15:49 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 14:15:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <7b3f41d53d6fec7e5ca6089b8fbf9cc2.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <61F4FFDE-60CA-4127-AF2B-D7DB782877CB@gmail.com> <007101d63911$875721b0$96056510$@rainier66.com> <7b3f41d53d6fec7e5ca6089b8fbf9cc2.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <002801d63922$fda998f0$f8fccad0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of MB via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Protest On Tue, June 2, 2020 15:10, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > Perhaps if the author were to rewrite using only the words in the > current edition of Miriam Webster using the definitions found there, > the meaning would be clear. > > >...Ah, but the author isn't writing for *us*... we're outsiders (because we don't already know and use those words). He's writing for the elect, those who already know what he's saying. :( Regards, MB _______________________________________________ Sure, OK I think you are right MB. We can read Le Miserables and Don Quixote in a sense via the translations. These writers can translate it for the rest of us. If these political operatives wish to use intentionally obscure language filled with privately-defined terms, they are merely breathing their own fumes. spike From sen.otaku at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 20:37:33 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 15:37:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] home defense In-Reply-To: References: <003101d638f5$cddd1750$699745f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: In my town, and also where I lived in Florida, Castle Doctrine was only for shoot-to-kill. If you were not trying to kill them it?s 10 years for discharge or 20 years for injury. Life for murder but 0 for self defense under castle doctrine. So it?s actually better for you if you kill them. At least here. Might be different in Bluer or Redder places. SR Ballard > On Jun 2, 2020, at 12:07 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > Spike, I do not agree with you about the intention of an intruder to kill someone. If I had to, I would shoot to disable and if that didn't work I'd empty the gun, no question. But the ones who are caught here are always trying to rob the place, and they get shot or killed more often than the homeowner does. > > We had an old black guy trying to come in the front door in broad daylight, and my wife was pushing him away. Should I have shot him? He went back on the street and we saw a cop car out there. Someone else had called 911. Mentally handicapped. Harmless. I would have felt extremely guilty if had shot him, much less killed him. I have known many harmless, confused mental patients. I would not have wanted to be one of the people who had killed such a person simply out of my fear. There are too many of those killed by cops. > > He comes in with a gun? Fine. We go to war. > > bill w > >> On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 11:02 AM spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: >> >> >> >> >> > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat >> Subject: [ExI] home defense >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >?It used to be the case (and I cannot remember whether it was federal or state law) that a homeowner had to back up to the farthest part of his house before he could shoot an intruder. That got changed awhile back? >> >> >> >> That one is easy: I couldn?t hit the bastard from the farthest back part of my house. There are walls in the way. >> >> >> >> >> >> >?Who knows what the federal standard is? >> >> >> >> Depends on the round. For 5.56 ammo, the standard is .223 +/- .0001 diameter, 53 grain mass for the #1410 hollow point. >> >> >> >> >> >> >. ?Or is that a state thing, or what? bill w >> >> >> >> Bill you live in Mississippi. The law is on your side. >> >> >> >> Always think safety first: drill a hole in the sleazy bastard, then if necessary, drag her corpse to the back of your house, then call 911 and beg them to rescue you from a dangerous intruder. When they show up about an hour later, good chance they won?t mention that her earthly remains have already cooled to nearly room temperature. >> >> >> >> Safety first BillW: in any nation where the citizens have the right to bear arms, anyone who breaks in to an occupied home intends to slay. >> >> >> >> spike >> >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 21:41:49 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 14:41:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] better than Google In-Reply-To: References: <004a01d6390b$e5e434d0$b1ac9e70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 1:08 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Well is there anything between nuclear and the conventional bombs? It > would be nice, in a gruesome kind of way, to have bombs capable of killing > the same number of whatever as nuclear ones but no radiation. Has a total, > all out war, sparing nothing, been fought in modern times? > Not even WWII was as total as all out nuclear war would be. And that gets to the problem: while some may see it as a nice fantasy, in practice there has never been nor will there likely ever be a situation wherein complete nuclear annihilation of the enemy will be the best approach, at least not for any country able to manufacture and launch long-range nuclear weapons. Iran and North Korea might be close - and certainly, their ideologies blind them to the reality that their regimes (and quite possibly most of their countries) would be annihilated if they conducted a nuclear first attack - but that same fundamentalism has diminished their technical capability: see what has actually happened when they have tried so far. For countries that do have the technical capability, they are well aware that the only guaranteed result if they struck first would be nuclear reprisals from enough of the world that, no matter what happens to their foes, they would lose. MOAB and similar are the largest bombs for which an actual use in modern war has been identified - and even then, it's been rare. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 20:39:45 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 16:39:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] better than Google In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 2:00 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > You guys and gals. What I want to know is whatever happened to the > neutron bomb? Wasn't it supposed to kill people but leave buildings > intact? Maybe it was really dirty, radiation-wise. bill w > Actually a neutron bomb is very clean, it produces far less radioactive fallout than a regular garden variety nuclear bomb because most of its energy is not in the form of a sudden release of heat (aka explosive power) but in a burst of extremely high energy neutrons, a burst that lasts for just a small fraction of a second but would be enough to be lethal even if you were inside a Soviet tank in the 1980s that was invading Europe. A Neutron Bomb is just a special type of thermonuclear H-bomb in which the fission trigger is made as small as possible and the fusion secondary is made as large as possible. The main reason Neutron Bombs never became popular is not ethical its economic, it's a very expensive way to kill people, there are much cheaper ways to achieve megadeath. For a any type of H-bomb to work it needs lots of Tritium and Neutron Bombs are no exception, regular H-bombs make their own Tritium instantly on the spot when the Fission trigger goes off, but for that to happen a lot of fallout is produced, so for the Neutron Bomb a bombmaker must supply lots of Tritium beforehand on his own. The trouble is pound for pound Tritium is MUCH more expensive to make that either U-235 or Plutonium, and even worse its half life is only 12.5 years, so your nuclear stockpile would need lots of constant and very expensive maintenance to remain workable. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 22:18:05 2020 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 16:18:05 -0600 Subject: [ExI] better than Google In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The biggest fuel-air explosive bombs get, iirc, just barely into the range of the smallest tactical nukes. On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 3:51 PM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 2:00 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > You guys and gals. What I want to know is whatever happened to the >> neutron bomb? Wasn't it supposed to kill people but leave buildings >> intact? Maybe it was really dirty, radiation-wise. bill w >> > > Actually a neutron bomb is very clean, it produces far less radioactive > fallout than a regular garden variety nuclear bomb because most of its > energy is not in the form of a sudden release of heat (aka explosive power) > but in a burst of extremely high energy neutrons, a burst that lasts for > just a small fraction of a second but would be enough to be lethal even if > you were inside a Soviet tank in the 1980s that was invading Europe. A > Neutron Bomb is just a special type of thermonuclear H-bomb in which the > fission trigger is made as small as possible and the fusion secondary is > made as large as possible. The main reason Neutron Bombs never became > popular is not ethical its economic, it's a very expensive way to kill > people, there are much cheaper ways to achieve megadeath. > > For a any type of H-bomb to work it needs lots of Tritium and Neutron > Bombs are no exception, regular H-bombs make their own Tritium instantly on > the spot when the Fission trigger goes off, but for that to happen a lot of > fallout is produced, so for the Neutron Bomb a bombmaker must supply lots > of Tritium beforehand on his own. The trouble is pound for pound Tritium is > MUCH more expensive to make that either U-235 or Plutonium, and even > worse its half life is only 12.5 years, so your nuclear stockpile would > need lots of constant and very expensive maintenance to remain workable. > > 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 danust2012 at gmail.com Wed Jun 3 01:38:19 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 18:38:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <007101d63911$875721b0$96056510$@rainier66.com> References: <007101d63911$875721b0$96056510$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Jun 2, 2020, at 12:12 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > > From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dave Sill via > > On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 12:59 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: > > > See, for a different take: https://c4ss.org/content/52928 > > No doubt, some will be triggered by the author?s use of chud and fash. > > That was...different, as promised. :-) Hard to read even with my Urban Dictionary open. > > -Dave > > > Ja, even the Urban Dictionary didn?t help that much. Words which have not been around very long have no consensus definition. I can?t be triggered by words I don?t understand. I removed those mystery words and tried to comprehend the meaning of the article from context. No luck. > > Perhaps if the author were to rewrite using only the words in the current edition of Miriam Webster using the definitions found there, the meaning would be clear. Let me try to guess the words that might have given some difficulty with the piece, roughly in order of appearance chud -- term of opprobrium used against the alt-right; think of it as calling someone an asshole POC -- person of colour fashy/fash -- fascist (adjective/noun) apparatchik -- official or bureaucrat, usually meant as a snear woke -- enlightened or aware, as in consciousness raising protest managerial class -- group of people, usually politicians, who attempt to control protests for their class or personal interests By the way, I don't know enough about Hardesty. Her advocating a curfew and all that might be her caving to pressure or from fear what the police might do, but it could be just that she's following the long line of radicals who, once elected and having become part of the ruling class, suddenly discover they don't want radical change. Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Wed Jun 3 01:39:41 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 18:39:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <7b3f41d53d6fec7e5ca6089b8fbf9cc2.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <7b3f41d53d6fec7e5ca6089b8fbf9cc2.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <5EC43454-CA3A-480C-B6A1-5543D8CE6B28@gmail.com> On Jun 2, 2020, at 12:26 PM, MB via extropy-chat wrote: > >> On Tue, June 2, 2020 15:10, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: >> >> Perhaps if the author were to rewrite using only the words in the current >> edition of Miriam Webster using the definitions found there, the meaning >> would be clear. >> >> > > Ah, but the author isn't writing for *us*... we're outsiders (because we > don't already know and use those words). He's writing for the elect, > those who already know what he's saying. :( In another post, I tried to translate some of the terms that I felt might be confusing. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the various online political movements and their interaction, but I think many of the terms he uses -- well, not POC and apparatchik, terms that have a longer history than chud -- are in currency online. I'm guessing the college aged "woke" person on Twitter, FB, etc. would know what they mean. This isn't jargon used by little academic circle at Ann Arbor or Berkeley. :) If you want the gist of the piece, Gillis believes the Establishment wants to split off liberal people of colour from the wider Left and especially from folks who want a more radical change in policing -- whether that's strict accountability (in other words, treating the police as having no more legal rights than the people) or abolition. In other words, divide et impera -- or divide and conquer. This is typical of how any establishment has dealt with widespread dissent and protest: attempt to pull away some of the more moderate elements to weaken the overall movement. Sometimes this strategy -- or range of strategies -- works, sometimes it backfires. Regards, Dan From danust2012 at gmail.com Wed Jun 3 01:41:30 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 18:41:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <002801d63922$fda998f0$f8fccad0$@rainier66.com> References: <002801d63922$fda998f0$f8fccad0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <246E843B-2F52-4E88-A70B-0CB62D646DC3@gmail.com> On Jun 2, 2020, at 2:30 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > >> On Behalf Of MB via extropy-chat > Subject: Re: [ExI] Protest > >> ...Ah, but the author isn't writing for *us*... we're outsiders (because we > don't already know and use those words). He's writing for the elect, those > who already know what he's saying. :( > > Regards, > MB > > _______________________________________________ > > > Sure, OK I think you are right MB. We can read Le Miserables and Don > Quixote in a sense via the translations. These writers can translate it for > the rest of us. If these political operatives wish to use intentionally > obscure language filled with privately-defined terms, they are merely > breathing their own fumes. See my other posts where I discuss some of what I think are the problem terms and also what (I think) William Gillis meant (the TL;DR, in other words) in this piece. You might disagree with that, but there it is. Calling Gillis a political operative is a bit much. Usually, when people use the term political operative, they mean someone working on a campaign staff for a politician or in the politician's office after they're elected. For a fictional account, see a TV series like the UK's The Thick of It or the US's Veep. (Both fun to watch because they're comedies, but also face-paced.) Real life examples are campaign managers like Ron Robinson. Gillis is unlike these. He's an anarchist and an activist who writes opinion pieces like this one. As far as I know, he's not involved in any election races, either managing them or doing grunt work. I doubt anyone else would call him a political operative. Or tell me what you mean by the term. Put another way, he's as much a political operative as you or me are political operatives. Regards, Dan From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 3 04:47:19 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 21:47:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: <007101d63911$875721b0$96056510$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00ee01d63962$112c6a30$33853e90$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat Perhaps if the author were to rewrite using only the words in the current edition of Miriam Webster using the definitions found there, the meaning would be clear. Let me try to guess the words that might have given some difficulty with the piece, roughly in order of appearance chud -- term of opprobrium used against the alt-right; think of it as calling someone an asshole POC -- person of colour fashy/fash -- fascist (adjective/noun) apparatchik -- official or bureaucrat, usually meant as a snear woke -- enlightened or aware, as in consciousness raising protest managerial class -- group of people, usually politicians, who attempt to control protests for their class or personal interests? Regards, Dan Hi Dan, since these novel terms have no consensus definitions, I am free to assign my own meaning until the author translates the document into a standardized form. chud: a variation or misspelling of chad, which is a bit of paper. POC: point of contact. Fashy/fash: one who follows the latest fashion trends. Apparatchik: a Russian government worker Woke: what I did this morning at the end of my slumber Protest managerial class: a instructional gathering designed for those who would lead a company, specifically focused on how to handle disagreements. We standardize language for a reason. Insider dialects are fine, so long as they are not intended to convey meaning to those outside the community. Perhaps that was never the intention. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 3 04:51:54 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 21:51:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <5EC43454-CA3A-480C-B6A1-5543D8CE6B28@gmail.com> References: <7b3f41d53d6fec7e5ca6089b8fbf9cc2.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <5EC43454-CA3A-480C-B6A1-5543D8CE6B28@gmail.com> Message-ID: <00f501d63962$b502b4c0$1f081e40$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan >...-- or divide and conquer. This is typical of how any establishment has dealt with widespread dissent and protest: attempt to pull away some of the more moderate elements to weaken the overall movement. ...Regards, Dan _______________________________________________ That would explain the legitimate protestors handing over the vandal to the cops. We read Saul Alinsky Rules of Radicals too. spike From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed Jun 3 08:27:42 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2020 04:27:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] riots, was: RE: Is a copy of you really you? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 1:46 PM Keith Henson via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > I hope what I posted above is wrong and you are right. What do you > think is wrong with my analysis? The range I have seen on herd > immunity is 60 to 80% so I used 70% for analysis. If you have a > better number for me to use, what is it? > > The antibody testing results for the two California locations are > centered around 4%. I am aware there is some uncertainty in this > number, but if herd immunity takes 70%, then 70/4 is around a factor > of ~17. That indicates to me that the pandemic has quite a way to go > at least in California. > ### The infectivity of Covid-19 is relatively low, much less than initially suspected. Observations of household transmission show that as few as 15% but perhaps as many as 50% of household members become infected from the index case. Household transmission means 7 days in close proximity to the index case, indoors, for many hours a day, at close quarters, so this level of transmission implies low infectivity in general. There is a relationship between R0 and the herd immunity level - the higher R0 the higher the percentage needed for herd immunity. Downward revision of R0 based on household transmission implies that herd immunity should be achieved at lower levels. The exact percentage will of course vary in different locations - it will be much higher in NY city than in suburban CA - but it will be much lower than the initial estimate of 80%. We know that the seasonal influenza infects usually less than 15 - 25% of the population per year, and there are good reasons to expect C-19 will be similar or less. We know that there is a substantial prevalence of immunity to C-19 in the population at baseline, due to cross-reactivity and cross-immunity between C-19 and the coronaviruses responsible for the common cold. This is similar to influenza, where some cross-immunity exists between strains active in different years. This means we are not 1/17th of the way to herd immunity. Most likely we are at least 1/3 there as a country, maybe even 2/3, and NY is almost at herd immunity level now (see their curve of new cases). Of course, the Iran second wave is worrisome. On the other hand, Spain, Germany, Sweden and most other countries seem to be doing well, lockdown or not. It's also useful to remember that between 40 and 80% of C-19 deaths occur in nursing homes. If you are not in a nursing home, your risk is much lower, even if elderly. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Wed Jun 3 08:31:33 2020 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2020 10:31:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] No Prof. Deudney, the skies are brighter than your lockdown Message-ID: A review of a recently published book by a political scientist who forcefully argues against space expansion. Of course, my review is very critical and negative. No Prof. Deudney, the skies are brighter than your lockdown Recent events have shown what happens to people locked down in a retirement home. https://turingchurch.net/no-prof-deudney-the-skies-are-brighter-than-your-lockdown-4387e523604e From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Jun 3 11:43:09 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2020 07:43:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] riots, was: RE: Is a copy of you really you? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 4:31 AM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: *> There is a relationship between R0 and the herd immunity level - the > higher R0 the higher the percentage needed for herd immunity. Downward > revision of R0 based on household transmission implies that herd immunity > should be achieved at lower levels. The exact percentage will of course > vary in different locations - it will be much higher in NY city than in > suburban CA * For herd immunity to COVID-19 to kick in most think at least 60% of the population must be resistant to it, and probably closer to 80%; and even after it's reached the pandemic doesn't suddenly stop it just slows down, it can continue for many months after that. The people of New York City have the highest levels of antibodies against COVID-19 not just in the country but in the entire world and it's only 19.9%. Sweden is betting heavily on herd immunity but in Stockholm only 7.3% have the antibody and it's far lower in less densely populated regions of the country; there was a report it was 27% but it turned out that was just for Swedish hospital emergency room workers. To add to the uncertainty we're not even sure that high antibody levels correspond to immunity to the disease, it might take more than just that. And even though they spend far less on medical care than the USA the Swedish population was much healthier than the American population to start with so would likely suffer a higher death toll than the Swedes. >*but it will be much lower than the initial estimate of 80%.* A R0 number is only meaningful in a given context because it depends crucially on human behavior, the R0 was much higher before people changed their behavior and the shutdown and social distancing went into effect, in fact that was the entire point of it. And initially there was no shutdown or social distancing, when that changes the R0 will change too. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Jun 3 16:12:04 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2020 09:12:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] No Prof. Deudney, the skies are brighter than your lockdown In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Of course, if Deudney ever reads your article, he will ignore it. It makes too much sense. On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 1:38 AM Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > A review of a recently published book by a political scientist who > forcefully argues against space expansion. Of course, my review is > very critical and negative. > > No Prof. Deudney, the skies are brighter than your lockdown > > Recent events have shown what happens to people locked down in a > retirement home. > > > https://turingchurch.net/no-prof-deudney-the-skies-are-brighter-than-your-lockdown-4387e523604e > _______________________________________________ > 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 giulio at gmail.com Wed Jun 3 16:22:54 2020 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2020 18:22:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] No Prof. Deudney, the skies are brighter than your lockdown In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Probably, but perhaps others will discuss it. Robin has tweeted it, and others are sharing it on FB etc. On 2020. Jun 3., Wed at 18:14, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Of course, if Deudney ever reads your article, he will ignore it. It > makes too much sense. > > On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 1:38 AM Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> A review of a recently published book by a political scientist who >> forcefully argues against space expansion. Of course, my review is >> very critical and negative. >> >> No Prof. Deudney, the skies are brighter than your lockdown >> >> Recent events have shown what happens to people locked down in a >> retirement home. >> >> >> https://turingchurch.net/no-prof-deudney-the-skies-are-brighter-than-your-lockdown-4387e523604e >> > _______________________________________________ >> 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Jun 4 11:51:52 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 07:51:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Human Challenge Trials Message-ID: Through the website https://1daysooner.org/ more than 26,000 young healthy people have volunteered to be deliberately infected with COVID-19 so a vaccine can be tested and developed faster. Even most bioethicists, who are notoriously squeamish about this sort of thing, say this would be ethically acceptable because in that age group there is only one chance in 3000 of dying and because each and every day such trials DON'T happen several thousand more people will die. But even though nobody can find a good reason for not conducting Human Challenge Trials for some inexplicable reason nobody has taken any of those 26,000 people up on their offer and such trials are not taking place. That website is well named because if you can find a way to develop a vaccine just one day sooner then you have found a way to save several thousand people from dying. And the clock is still ticking and so are the deaths. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Jun 4 12:35:16 2020 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 08:35:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Human Challenge Trials In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 4, 2020, 7:55 AM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Through the website https://1daysooner.org/ more than 26,000 young > healthy people have volunteered to be deliberately infected with COVID-19 > so a vaccine can be tested and developed faster. > Why do we have to infect people who have not already been exposed? Aren't there already plenty of people who have been exposed and recovered from whatever level of symptoms? The way medicine is practiced in US, the population of survivors has an unusual prevalence of eating pb&j for lunch... so eating pb&j for lunch (but only lunch) becomes standard prophylaxis for covid. Maybe there is a drug that "helps" but given the overplayed hand of pharma, I'm going to remain skeptical of any single pill or miracle cure. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Jun 4 13:19:21 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 09:19:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Human Challenge Trials In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 8:38 AM Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: *> Why do we have to infect people who have not already been exposed? > Aren't there already plenty of people who have been exposed and recovered > from whatever level of symptoms? * I don't understand your questions. How on earth can somebody who has already recovered from COVID-19 on their own help us figure out if a new experimental vaccine works or not? *> The way medicine is practiced in US, the population of survivors has an > unusual prevalence of eating pb&j for lunch... so eating pb&j for lunch > (but only lunch) becomes standard prophylaxis for covid.* > Huh?! *> Maybe there is a drug that "helps" but given the overplayed hand of > pharma, I'm going to remain skeptical of any single pill or miracle cure. * > I don't understand your point. Why not a miracle cure against COVID-19? We've had a "miracle cure", aka a vaccine, against Smallpox for centuries and today we have additional "miracle cures" against Polio, Diphtheria, Measles, Mumps, Shingles, Tetanus, Chickenpox, Cholera and dozens of other deadly diseases, and those vaccines have saved the lives of BILLIONS of people over the years. So why not a vaccine against COVID-19 too? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Jun 4 14:38:26 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 09:38:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder Message-ID: Remember him? He is famous for saying that the big strong black men you see in the NFL came from slaveowners using their biggest, strongest slave to impregnate all the women so as to have the biggest strongest babies. We never heard from him again. Some blacks said that was not racism - that was just the truth, like it or not. So anyhow, we do have a lot of those men. So what? So police are afraid of them. Police have fears just like anyone else. The cop who stopped your car for speeding takes his life in his hands when he does so, and he knows that. So add black man to the description of the person you the cop are trying to arrest and you have a double fear situation. Is it racism to be more afraid of blacks? I don't think so - not for cops. Of course that excuses nothing, but it does help explain why more force is used on blacks than on others. Excellent article in my paper today about demilitarizing cops and their equipment, training cops, requiring body cameras, requiring liability insurance for cops, and ending qualified immunity (already discussed in Congress). Let's add 'protect and serve' and get away from 'shock and awe'. Requiring reporting of wrong behavior by fellow cops should happen, but that won't happen, I think. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Jun 4 14:43:29 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 10:43:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character Message-ID: The University of California system has permanently banned SAT and ACT test results from being a factor in deciding who will be admitted to their Universities. It's likely many other Universities in the US will follow this lead. They said they did it because standardized testing is racially biased due to the fact that rich white people can hire tutors to help their kids score high on the tests but poor black kids can't. So from now on admission will be based on subjective qualities like "well-roundedness" and "character". Apparently the ability to kick a ball on a field or play water polo in a pool or row a boat in a river shows great well-roundedness and character. I agree with Quantum Computer expert Scott Aaronson when he said: *"As a result, admissions to the top US universities?and hence, most chances for social advancement in the US?will henceforth be based entirely on shifting and nebulous criteria that rich, well-connected kids and their parents spend most of their lives figuring out, rather than merely mostly based on such criteria. The last side door for smart nonconformist kids is now being slammed shut."* Aaronson says if such a polacy had been in place when he was a kid he would have never been admitted to any university much less gone to graduate school and gotten a Phd. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Jun 4 14:50:29 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 10:50:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 10:41 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Is it racism to be more afraid of blacks? I don't think so - not for > cops. Is it racism for innocent people to be afraid of white cops? I don't think so - not for blacks. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Jun 4 15:59:20 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 10:59:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 9:58 AM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 10:41 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > Is it racism to be more afraid of blacks? I don't think so - not for >> cops. > > > Is it racism for innocent people to be afraid of white cops? I don't think > so - not for blacks. > > John K Clark > Or whites either. Look at them: military uniform, dark glasses, stern bearing, aggressive attitude, armed to the teeth - I have met exactly one officer, a highway patrol man, who did not do the intimidation thing and talked to me like I was a person. 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 giulio at gmail.com Thu Jun 4 16:06:55 2020 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 18:06:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: OMG, what unbelievable (and backfiring) unthinking politically correct bullshit. Here?s Scott Aaronson?s post: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4816 On 2020. Jun 4., Thu at 16:48, John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > The University of California system has permanently banned SAT and ACT > test results from being a factor in deciding who will be admitted to their > Universities. It's likely many other Universities in the US will follow > this lead. They said they did it because standardized testing is racially > biased due to the fact that rich white people can hire tutors to help their > kids score high on the tests but poor black kids can't. So from now on > admission will be based on subjective qualities like "well-roundedness" and > "character". Apparently the ability to kick a ball on a field or play water > polo in a pool or row a boat in a river shows great well-roundedness and > character. > > I agree with Quantum Computer expert Scott Aaronson when he said: > > *"As a result, admissions to the top US universities?and hence, most > chances for social advancement in the US?will henceforth be based entirely > on shifting and nebulous criteria that rich, well-connected kids and their > parents spend most of their lives figuring out, rather than merely mostly > based on such criteria. The last side door for smart nonconformist kids is > now being slammed shut."* > > Aaronson says if such a polacy had been in place when he was a kid he > would have never been admitted to any university much less gone to graduate > school and gotten a Phd. > > 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 Thu Jun 4 16:12:21 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 11:12:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: That's BS. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of colleges where just about anyone can get into. The only standard they have is 'the check did not bounce'. Actually you can get into lots of colleges without a high school diploma if you agree to take remedial work. Not that I agree with vague and nonacademic standards, you hear. bill w On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 9:49 AM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > The University of California system has permanently banned SAT and ACT > test results from being a factor in deciding who will be admitted to their > Universities. It's likely many other Universities in the US will follow > this lead. They said they did it because standardized testing is racially > biased due to the fact that rich white people can hire tutors to help their > kids score high on the tests but poor black kids can't. So from now on > admission will be based on subjective qualities like "well-roundedness" and > "character". Apparently the ability to kick a ball on a field or play water > polo in a pool or row a boat in a river shows great well-roundedness and > character. > > I agree with Quantum Computer expert Scott Aaronson when he said: > > *"As a result, admissions to the top US universities?and hence, most > chances for social advancement in the US?will henceforth be based entirely > on shifting and nebulous criteria that rich, well-connected kids and their > parents spend most of their lives figuring out, rather than merely mostly > based on such criteria. The last side door for smart nonconformist kids is > now being slammed shut."* > > Aaronson says if such a polacy had been in place when he was a kid he > would have never been admitted to any university much less gone to graduate > school and gotten a Phd. > > 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 steinberg.will at gmail.com Thu Jun 4 16:18:10 2020 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 12:18:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hopefully they don't do this at University of Chicago where I went. It would suck to have less smart people there cuz that's kinda their thing. Though they are already trying to be the next Harvard and started admitting tons of normies On Thu, Jun 4, 2020, 12:15 William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > That's BS. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of colleges where > just about anyone can get into. The only standard they have is 'the check > did not bounce'. Actually you can get into lots of colleges without a high > school diploma if you agree to take remedial work. Not that I agree with > vague and nonacademic standards, you hear. bill w > > On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 9:49 AM John Clark via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> The University of California system has permanently banned SAT and ACT >> test results from being a factor in deciding who will be admitted to their >> Universities. It's likely many other Universities in the US will follow >> this lead. They said they did it because standardized testing is racially >> biased due to the fact that rich white people can hire tutors to help their >> kids score high on the tests but poor black kids can't. So from now on >> admission will be based on subjective qualities like "well-roundedness" and >> "character". Apparently the ability to kick a ball on a field or play water >> polo in a pool or row a boat in a river shows great well-roundedness and >> character. >> >> I agree with Quantum Computer expert Scott Aaronson when he said: >> >> *"As a result, admissions to the top US universities?and hence, most >> chances for social advancement in the US?will henceforth be based entirely >> on shifting and nebulous criteria that rich, well-connected kids and their >> parents spend most of their lives figuring out, rather than merely mostly >> based on such criteria. The last side door for smart nonconformist kids is >> now being slammed shut."* >> >> Aaronson says if such a polacy had been in place when he was a kid he >> would have never been admitted to any university much less gone to graduate >> school and gotten a Phd. >> >> John K Clark >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Jun 4 16:37:09 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 09:37:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 9:01 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 9:58 AM John Clark via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 10:41 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >> > Is it racism to be more afraid of blacks? I don't think so - not for >>> cops. >> >> >> Is it racism for innocent people to be afraid of white cops? I don't >> think so - not for blacks. >> >> John K Clark >> > > Or whites either. Look at them: military uniform, dark glasses, stern > bearing, aggressive attitude, armed to the teeth - I have met exactly one > officer, a highway patrol man, who did not do the intimidation thing and > talked to me like I was a person. > I guess that's why we're starting to see https://twitter.com/emilymvson/status/1268190940130394112 (with more context toward the end of https://twitter.com/s_Allahverdi/status/1267240521052946432 ). (If you don't want to click: protestor in riot armor & paintball mask. Tosses tear gas canisters back at the cops, but in another clip, thanks them when they arrest someone who was instigating property damage among the protestors.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 4 16:40:06 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 09:40:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00a001d63a8e$ce560800$6b021800$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character >?The University of California system has permanently banned SAT and ACT test results from being a factor in deciding who will be admitted to their Universities. It's likely many other Universities in the US will follow this lead. They said they did it because standardized testing is racially biased due to the fact that rich white people can hire tutors to help their kids score high on the tests but poor black kids can't?John K Clark This comment doesn?t say if rich black families and poor white families can hire SAT tutors. Ideas? But no worries, we can work this. Instead of academics, we can have classes, clubs and tutors teaching roundedness. If we do however, it is unclear to me how we define ?top? universities. If we de-emphasize academics, how do we know which those are? Do we judge them on their football team? Basketball? Can we create a roundedness tournament? What would the events be? If sports are a measure of roundedness, we can create sports which can be ranked for the most roundedness per unit time invested. We can cluster sports in such a way that instead of having the traditional track and field team, we can have the javelin team, the shot put team, the 100 meter team, the pole vault team and so forth, so that the usual participation level on the track and field team would count as several separate sports teams. We can create clusters of clubs that meet at the same time in the same room, so that attendance counts for each. The student with the most clubs and sports wins! Meanwhile? our local immigrants from India and China are not fooled by any of this silly nonsense. They know what is important. Never letting a profit opportunity go to waste, there is a new local private company down the street which administers the SAT and ACT. It is unclear if the SAT team and the ACT team will count as sports, but we can hope. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 4 16:51:04 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 09:51:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: <00a001d63a8e$ce560800$6b021800$@rainier66.com> References: <00a001d63a8e$ce560800$6b021800$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00c901d63a90$569252e0$03b6f8a0$@rainier66.com> From: spike at rainier66.com Subject: RE: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character > On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character >>?The University of California system has permanently banned SAT and ACT test results from being a factor in deciding who will be admitted to their Universities? >?Meanwhile? our local immigrants from India and China are not fooled by any of this silly nonsense. They know what is important. ?spike Below I pasted in a page from the American Mathematics Competition distinguished honor roll. Look at that third column. Please, what do you see there? I am not kidding here, my friends. Do we see what is happening here? Do we care? spike 23.0 Q HU 8 George H. Moody Middle School Henrico, VA 23.0 K HU 7 Pacific Cascade Middle School Issaquah, WA 23.0 A HU 8 river trail middle school johns creek, GA 23.0 H HU 8 SHARON MIDDLE SCHOOL SHARON, MA 23.0 R HU 7 Thomas Hart Middle Pleasanton, CA 23.0 W HUANG 8 FORT SETTLEMENT MS SUGAR LAND, TX 23.0 L HUANG 8 Great Neck South Middle School Great Neck, NY 23.0 J HUANG 8 ST ANNE'S-BELFIELD SCHOOL CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA 23.0 C HUO 7 BERGEN CO ACADEMIES HACKENSACK, NJ 23.0 V INDRAKUMAR 8 Hyde Park Middle School Las Vegas, NV 23.0 S JIANG 8 Goldenlink Academy Markham, ON 23.0 L JIANG 6 HAMDEN HALL COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL HAMDEN, CT 23.0 K JIANG 8 Hopkins Junior High School Fremont, CA 23.0 N JIANG 8 Hopkins Junior High School Fremont, CA 23.0 D JIANG 8 MARIE CURIE MS 158Q BAYSIDE, NY 23.0 A JIANG 8 Schimelpfenig Middle School Plano, TX 23.0 A JIANG 7 Victoria International College North York, ON 23.0 I JO 8 Ephraim Curtis Middle School Sudbury, MA 23.0 I JONES 8 Thomas Russell Middle School Milpitas, CA 23.0 A JUN 8 Quail Valley Middle School Missouri City, TX 23.0 C JUNG 8 Edison Regional Gifted Center Chicago, IL 23.0 S KABBUR 8 AoPS Academy - Bellevue Bellevue, WA 23.0 P KANDI 8 Russian School of Mathematics Plano, TX 23.0 A KIM 8 Eastchester Middle School Eastchester, NY 23.0 E KIM 8 Tenafly Middle School Tenafly, NJ 23.0 M KIM 7 Union middle San Jose, CA 23.0 Y KIM 7 UT Dallas Richardson, TX 23.0 N KOLHE 8 Joaquin Miller middle school san jose, CA 23.0 J KOU 8 West Ridge Middle School Austin, TX 23.0 W KU 8 Overland Trail Middle School Overland Park, KS 23.0 R KUO 5 CHAPARRAL MIDDLE SCHOOL DIAMOND BAR, CA 23.0 S KURETI 0 Harmony School of EXcellence Houston, TX 23.0 D LAI 8 Orange County Math Circle Santa Ana, CA 23.0 R LAW 8 Frank S. Greene Jr. Middle School Palo Alto, CA 23.0 H LE 8 AoPS Academy Johns Creek Suwanee, GA 23.0 E LEE 8 Chaboya Middle School San Jose, CA 23.0 J LEE 6 Spring Branch Academic Institute Houston, TX 23.0 A LEIS 8 Jane Addams MS Seattle, WA 23.0 J LEWIN 7 Kealing Middle School Austin, TX 23.0 R LI 7 BASIS Independent Fremont Fremont, CA 23.0 M LI 7 Debang College Richmond, BC 23.0 E LI 7 Evergreen Middle School Redmond, WA 23.0 K LI 8 HUNTER COLLEGE HS NEW YORK, NY 23.0 M LI 8 Langara College Vancouver, BC 23.0 D LI 7 Saint Georges Junior School Vancouver, BC -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Jun 4 16:53:23 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 09:53:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] riots, was: RE: Is a copy of you really you? Message-ID: Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: snip > This means we are not 1/17th of the way to herd immunity. Most likely we are at least 1/3 there as a country, maybe even 2/3, and NY is almost at herd immunity level now (see their curve of new cases). If the death rate to date stays the same, the US will see another ~200,000 deaths if your 1/3rd number is correct, another ~100,000 if 2/3rds is correct. I don't find either of those numbers comforting, but they are less terrifying than the worst case. snip > It's also useful to remember that between 40 and 80% of C-19 deaths occur in nursing homes. If you are not in a nursing home, your risk is much lower, even if elderly. There are two factors here. First is getting infected which has been high for nursing homes (similar to ships), and second if you do get it, dying. I have not seen this sorted out. Keith From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Jun 4 17:13:18 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 12:13:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: <00c901d63a90$569252e0$03b6f8a0$@rainier66.com> References: <00a001d63a8e$ce560800$6b021800$@rainier66.com> <00c901d63a90$569252e0$03b6f8a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: The results as just exactly what you would expect if two countries each with a billion people send us many of their top people, some of whom become citizens. We are outnumbered by a factor of around 7. And what do these Asians get that we don't, starting in kindergarten? Better math education for sure. ACtually, I think we would expect these results even if their education is no better than ours, solely on the basis of numbers. bill w On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 11:53 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* spike at rainier66.com > *Subject:* RE: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character > > > > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *John Clark via extropy-chat > *Subject:* [ExI] Well-roundedness and character > > > > >>?The University of California system has permanently banned SAT and ACT > test results from being a factor in deciding who will be admitted to their > Universities? > > > > >?Meanwhile? our local immigrants from India and China are not fooled by > any of this silly nonsense. They know what is important. ?spike > > > > > > Below I pasted in a page from the American Mathematics Competition > distinguished honor roll. Look at that third column. Please, what do you > see there? > > > > I am not kidding here, my friends. Do we see what is happening here? Do > we care? > > > > spike > > > > > > 23.0 > > Q > > HU > > 8 > > George H. Moody Middle School > > Henrico, VA > > 23.0 > > K > > HU > > 7 > > Pacific Cascade Middle School > > Issaquah, WA > > 23.0 > > A > > HU > > 8 > > river trail middle school > > johns creek, GA > > 23.0 > > H > > HU > > 8 > > SHARON MIDDLE SCHOOL > > SHARON, MA > > 23.0 > > R > > HU > > 7 > > Thomas Hart Middle > > Pleasanton, CA > > 23.0 > > W > > HUANG > > 8 > > FORT SETTLEMENT MS > > SUGAR LAND, TX > > 23.0 > > L > > HUANG > > 8 > > Great Neck South Middle School > > Great Neck, NY > > 23.0 > > J > > HUANG > > 8 > > ST ANNE'S-BELFIELD SCHOOL > > CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA > > 23.0 > > C > > HUO > > 7 > > BERGEN CO ACADEMIES > > HACKENSACK, NJ > > 23.0 > > V > > INDRAKUMAR > > 8 > > Hyde Park Middle School > > Las Vegas, NV > > 23.0 > > S > > JIANG > > 8 > > Goldenlink Academy > > Markham, ON > > 23.0 > > L > > JIANG > > 6 > > HAMDEN HALL COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL > > HAMDEN, CT > > 23.0 > > K > > JIANG > > 8 > > Hopkins Junior High School > > Fremont, CA > > 23.0 > > N > > JIANG > > 8 > > Hopkins Junior High School > > Fremont, CA > > 23.0 > > D > > JIANG > > 8 > > MARIE CURIE MS 158Q > > BAYSIDE, NY > > 23.0 > > A > > JIANG > > 8 > > Schimelpfenig Middle School > > Plano, TX > > 23.0 > > A > > JIANG > > 7 > > Victoria International College > > North York, ON > > 23.0 > > I > > JO > > 8 > > Ephraim Curtis Middle School > > Sudbury, MA > > 23.0 > > I > > JONES > > 8 > > Thomas Russell Middle School > > Milpitas, CA > > 23.0 > > A > > JUN > > 8 > > Quail Valley Middle School > > Missouri City, TX > > 23.0 > > C > > JUNG > > 8 > > Edison Regional Gifted Center > > Chicago, IL > > 23.0 > > S > > KABBUR > > 8 > > AoPS Academy - Bellevue > > Bellevue, WA > > 23.0 > > P > > KANDI > > 8 > > Russian School of Mathematics > > Plano, TX > > 23.0 > > A > > KIM > > 8 > > Eastchester Middle School > > Eastchester, NY > > 23.0 > > E > > KIM > > 8 > > Tenafly Middle School > > Tenafly, NJ > > 23.0 > > M > > KIM > > 7 > > Union middle > > San Jose, CA > > 23.0 > > Y > > KIM > > 7 > > UT Dallas > > Richardson, TX > > 23.0 > > N > > KOLHE > > 8 > > Joaquin Miller middle school > > san jose, CA > > 23.0 > > J > > KOU > > 8 > > West Ridge Middle School > > Austin, TX > > 23.0 > > W > > KU > > 8 > > Overland Trail Middle School > > Overland Park, KS > > 23.0 > > R > > KUO > > 5 > > CHAPARRAL MIDDLE SCHOOL > > DIAMOND BAR, CA > > 23.0 > > S > > KURETI > > 0 > > Harmony School of EXcellence > > Houston, TX > > 23.0 > > D > > LAI > > 8 > > Orange County Math Circle > > Santa Ana, CA > > 23.0 > > R > > LAW > > 8 > > Frank S. Greene Jr. Middle School > > Palo Alto, CA > > 23.0 > > H > > LE > > 8 > > AoPS Academy Johns Creek > > Suwanee, GA > > 23.0 > > E > > LEE > > 8 > > Chaboya Middle School > > San Jose, CA > > 23.0 > > J > > LEE > > 6 > > Spring Branch Academic Institute > > Houston, TX > > 23.0 > > A > > LEIS > > 8 > > Jane Addams MS > > Seattle, WA > > 23.0 > > J > > LEWIN > > 7 > > Kealing Middle School > > Austin, TX > > 23.0 > > R > > LI > > 7 > > BASIS Independent Fremont > > Fremont, CA > > 23.0 > > M > > LI > > 7 > > Debang College > > Richmond, BC > > 23.0 > > E > > LI > > 7 > > Evergreen Middle School > > Redmond, WA > > 23.0 > > K > > LI > > 8 > > HUNTER COLLEGE HS > > NEW YORK, NY > > 23.0 > > M > > LI > > 8 > > Langara College > > Vancouver, BC > > 23.0 > > D > > LI > > 7 > > Saint Georges Junior School > > Vancouver, BC > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 mbb386 at main.nc.us Thu Jun 4 17:23:25 2020 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 13:23:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: References: <00a001d63a8e$ce560800$6b021800$@rainier66.com> <00c901d63a90$569252e0$03b6f8a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <4df8701b8ce233a77288a5d6a563bccb.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Congrats to Isaac, Spike. :) His hard work is showing. Asimov would be pleased. Regards, MB >> >> 23.0 >> >> I >> >> JONES >> >> 8 >> >> Thomas Russell Middle School >> >> Milpitas, CA >> >> From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 4 17:30:23 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 10:30:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: References: <00a001d63a8e$ce560800$6b021800$@rainier66.com> <00c901d63a90$569252e0$03b6f8a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <000f01d63a95$d47e1860$7d7a4920$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character The results as just exactly what you would expect if two countries each with a billion people send us many of their top people, some of whom become citizens. We are outnumbered by a factor of around 7. And what do these Asians get that we don't, starting in kindergarten? Better math education for sure. ACtually, I think we would expect these results even if their education is no better than ours, solely on the basis of numbers. bill w Hi BillW, ja, there is that of course: we get top-level families from India and China coming to the states and there are a lot of them. But there is something else too: If I scroll down a page, I see this: 23.0 R LI 7 BASIS Independent Fremont Fremont, CA 23.0 M LI 7 Debang College Richmond, BC 23.0 E LI 7 Evergreen Middle School Redmond, WA 23.0 K LI 8 HUNTER COLLEGE HS NEW YORK, NY 23.0 M LI 8 Langara College Vancouver, BC 23.0 D LI 7 Saint Georges Junior School Vancouver, BC 23.0 D LI 8 STANFORD (JANE LATHROP) MIDDLE Palo Alto, CA 23.0 J LI 8 Toronto Harvard Intl Academy Toronto, ON 23.0 T LI 4 Toronto Harvard Intl Academy Toronto, ON 23.0 E LI 8 Treasure Valley Math & Science Center Boise, ID 23.0 J LICEN 8 TAKOMA PARK MS SILVER SPRING, MD 23.0 M LIEN 8 WARREN E HYDE MIDDLE SCHOOL CUPERTINO, CA 23.0 E LIN 8 IS 187 - Christa McAuliffe Brooklyn, NY 23.0 Y LIU 5 DANBURY MATH ACADEMY, WCSU Danbury, CT 23.0 K LIU 8 Daniel Wright Junior High Lincolnshire, IL 23.0 J LIU 5 Debang College Richmond, BC 23.0 J LIU 8 harvest park middle school pleasanton, CA 23.0 R LIU 8 Joaquin Miller middle school san jose, CA 23.0 Y LIU 6 Langara College Vancouver, BC 23.0 P LIU 6 Odle Middle School Bellevue, WA 23.0 Z LIU 8 Plum Grove Junior High Rolling Meadows, IL 23.0 K LIU 8 Princeton Academy Princeton, NJ 23.0 J LIU 8 RSM - Newton Newton, MA 23.0 L LIU 8 University of Chicago Lab School Chicago, IL 23.0 V LOH 8 Winchester Thurston School Pittsburgh, PA 23.0 J LU 8 Daniel Wright Junior High Lincolnshire, IL 23.0 M LU 8 Stonybrook University, Department of Mathematics Stony Brook, NY 23.0 A LU 6 TAKOMA PARK MS SILVER SPRING, MD 23.0 V LUU 7 Orange County Math Circle Santa Ana, CA 23.0 A MA 8 Arizona College Prep Junior High Chandler, AZ 23.0 S MA 8 Deerlake Middle Tallahassee, FL 23.0 J MA 7 Schimelpfenig Middle School Plano, TX 23.0 R MADHUKER 8 Carnage Middle School Raleigh, NC 23.0 O MAHESH 8 Ellen Fletcher MS palo alto, CA 23.0 C MAHESHWARI 8 Harmony School of EXcellence Houston, TX 23.0 A MALLANNA 7 William Diamond Middle School Lexington, MA 23.0 S MAO 5 Argonault Elementary School Saratoga, CA 23.0 S MAO 7 Redwood Middle saratoga, CA 23.0 R MARRI 8 Falcon Cove Middle Weston, FL 23.0 N MATHIHALLI 8 Redwood Middle saratoga, CA Not only is there fewer than one seventh traditional European-sounding names, on most pages there are none. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 4 18:20:36 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 11:20:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: <4df8701b8ce233a77288a5d6a563bccb.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <00a001d63a8e$ce560800$6b021800$@rainier66.com> <00c901d63a90$569252e0$03b6f8a0$@rainier66.com> <4df8701b8ce233a77288a5d6a563bccb.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <002901d63a9c$d8f8c6e0$8aea54a0$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- > On Behalf Of MB via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character >...Congrats to Isaac, Spike. :) His hard work is showing. Asimov would be pleased. Regards, MB Thanks MB, and thanks also for referencing Asimov. He is the writer I would say influenced me more than any other, but not from his SciFi (which I found suffered in comparison to others of his age (but rather from his many works of non-fiction (specifically the essay collections.))) I feel like I should be doing something, but I have no contacts in academia. I showed him my differential equations book from college, a subject over which I sweated bullets after three years of college math, including the calculus series. He is tearing through that like a hot chainsaw thru butter. So I scanned and archived the pages of his notebook, to show that yea verily, there are talented 8th graders who can get this stuff. MB, I will post a link offlist. Any suggestions welcome. What should I be doing? spike From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Jun 4 18:47:39 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 13:47:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: <002901d63a9c$d8f8c6e0$8aea54a0$@rainier66.com> References: <00a001d63a8e$ce560800$6b021800$@rainier66.com> <00c901d63a90$569252e0$03b6f8a0$@rainier66.com> <4df8701b8ce233a77288a5d6a563bccb.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <002901d63a9c$d8f8c6e0$8aea54a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: What should I be doing? spike You should be recommending an essay collection of Asimov's. Conservative? Liberal? Mixed? Mostly political? Mostly not? Thanks! bill w On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 1:23 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > > > On Behalf Of MB via extropy-chat > Subject: Re: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character > > >...Congrats to Isaac, Spike. :) His hard work is showing. Asimov would > be > pleased. > > Regards, > MB > > > > Thanks MB, and thanks also for referencing Asimov. He is the writer I > would > say influenced me more than any other, but not from his SciFi (which I > found > suffered in comparison to others of his age (but rather from his many works > of non-fiction (specifically the essay collections.))) > > I feel like I should be doing something, but I have no contacts in > academia. > I showed him my differential equations book from college, a subject over > which I sweated bullets after three years of college math, including the > calculus series. He is tearing through that like a hot chainsaw thru > butter. So I scanned and archived the pages of his notebook, to show that > yea verily, there are talented 8th graders who can get this stuff. MB, I > will post a link offlist. > > Any suggestions welcome. What should I be doing? > > 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 danust2012 at gmail.com Thu Jun 4 18:54:24 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 11:54:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Asimov was a progressive overall and supported Democratic Party candidates. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst > On Jun 4, 2020, at 11:50 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > ? > What should I be doing? > > spike > You should be recommending an essay collection of Asimov's. Conservative? Liberal? Mixed? Mostly political? Mostly not? Thanks! bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 4 19:05:45 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 12:05:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: References: <00a001d63a8e$ce560800$6b021800$@rainier66.com> <00c901d63a90$569252e0$03b6f8a0$@rainier66.com> <4df8701b8ce233a77288a5d6a563bccb.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <002901d63a9c$d8f8c6e0$8aea54a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <003b01d63aa3$27480580$75d81080$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character What should I be doing? spike You should be recommending an essay collection of Asimov's. Conservative? Liberal? Mixed? Mostly political? Mostly not? Thanks! bill w Hi BillW, ja those essays are excellent. I don?t recall any of them on the topic of politics, so I can?t answer your question. Here?s a list of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Essay_collections_by_Isaac_Asimov I read every one. Typically they would come out every two years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adding_a_Dimension spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hibbard at wisc.edu Thu Jun 4 19:51:28 2020 From: hibbard at wisc.edu (Bill Hibbard) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 14:51:28 -0500 (CDT) Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character Message-ID: Spike wrote: > I showed him my differential equations book from college, a subject over > which I sweated bullets after three years of college math, including the > calculus series. He is tearing through that like a hot chainsaw thru > butter. So I scanned and archived the pages of his notebook, to show > that yea verily, there are talented 8th graders who can get this stuff. Brings back memories. In 1962 I nearly flunked 8th grade spelling (got an "E", do they give E's anymore?) but my spelling notebook was filled with calculus, learned from my dad's Granville Smith and Longley. My 7th grade math teacher, whose principal subject was shop, routed me to low-track math for 8th grade. Fun times! Best wishes to you and Isaac! Regarding the U of C dropping SAT and ACT, the son of a friend skipped school every day in high school, skipped college altogether, and is now a very successful computer programmer. And I believe that Eliezer Yudkowsky skipped college but has been very effecive. From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Jun 4 21:16:27 2020 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 17:16:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Human Challenge Trials In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 4, 2020, 9:22 AM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 8:38 AM Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > *> Maybe there is a drug that "helps" but given the overplayed hand of >> pharma, I'm going to remain skeptical of any single pill or miracle cure. * >> > > I don't understand your point. Why not a miracle cure against COVID-19? > We've had a "miracle cure", aka a vaccine, against Smallpox for centuries > and today we have additional "miracle cures" against Polio, Diphtheria, > Measles, Mumps, Shingles, Tetanus, Chickenpox, Cholera and dozens of other > deadly diseases, and those vaccines have saved the lives of BILLIONS of > people over the years. So why not a vaccine against COVID-19 too? > Vaccine is not a miracle cure. I was refering to early blather that hydroxychloroquine would prevent covid despite no real testing... would be a miracle. Like snake oil is a miracle. I never understood why anyone ever needed to oil a snake, but maybe they dry - I'm no herpetologist I wouldn't call anything we understand a "miracle" I don't want to inject anything i don't understand. Even with understanding the how/why of vaccines in general, i don't trust the same government that is murdering people for having the wrong skin color to be injecting billions of lowest-bid supplies of version 1 cocktails. I'll admit to being a jittery paranoid monkey. I think that trait served my ancestors well enough that I exist, so I'll keep it as a feature instead of a defect. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 4 23:43:47 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 16:43:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: <000f01d63a95$d47e1860$7d7a4920$@rainier66.com> References: <00a001d63a8e$ce560800$6b021800$@rainier66.com> <00c901d63a90$569252e0$03b6f8a0$@rainier66.com> <000f01d63a95$d47e1860$7d7a4920$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <004901d63ac9$fe34d0c0$fa9e7240$@rainier66.com> From: spike at rainier66.com >?Not only is there fewer than one seventh traditional European-sounding names, on most pages there are none?spike Math competitions are objective: there is only one right answer. There is no way to bullshit your way through a math test or a physics test. The machine which scores the test doesn?t know or care whose answer sheet it is. Universities are trending toward de-emphasizing objective metrics for admissions. Otherwise, their campus would be almost entirely Asian. Some schools find this unacceptable, so they look for ways around it. Conclusion: de-emphasizing objective metrics of academic prowess is a way to express racism. spike 23.0 R LI 7 BASIS Independent Fremont Fremont, CA 23.0 M LI 7 Debang College Richmond, BC 23.0 E LI 7 Evergreen Middle School Redmond, WA 23.0 K LI 8 HUNTER COLLEGE HS NEW YORK, NY 23.0 M LI 8 Langara College Vancouver, BC 23.0 D LI 7 Saint Georges Junior School Vancouver, BC 23.0 D LI 8 STANFORD (JANE LATHROP) MIDDLE Palo Alto, CA 23.0 J LI 8 Toronto Harvard Intl Academy Toronto, ON 23.0 T LI 4 Toronto Harvard Intl Academy Toronto, ON 23.0 E LI 8 Treasure Valley Math & Science Center Boise, ID 23.0 J LICEN 8 TAKOMA PARK MS SILVER SPRING, MD 23.0 M LIEN 8 WARREN E HYDE MIDDLE SCHOOL CUPERTINO, CA 23.0 E LIN 8 IS 187 - Christa McAuliffe Brooklyn, NY 23.0 Y LIU 5 DANBURY MATH ACADEMY, WCSU Danbury, CT 23.0 K LIU 8 Daniel Wright Junior High Lincolnshire, IL 23.0 J LIU 5 Debang College Richmond, BC 23.0 J LIU 8 harvest park middle school pleasanton, CA 23.0 R LIU 8 Joaquin Miller middle school san jose, CA 23.0 Y LIU 6 Langara College Vancouver, BC 23.0 P LIU 6 Odle Middle School Bellevue, WA 23.0 Z LIU 8 Plum Grove Junior High Rolling Meadows, IL 23.0 K LIU 8 Princeton Academy Princeton, NJ 23.0 J LIU 8 RSM - Newton Newton, MA 23.0 L LIU 8 University of Chicago Lab School Chicago, IL 23.0 V LOH 8 Winchester Thurston School Pittsburgh, PA 23.0 J LU 8 Daniel Wright Junior High Lincolnshire, IL 23.0 M LU 8 Stonybrook University, Dept of Math Stony Brook, NY 23.0 A LU 6 TAKOMA PARK MS SILVER SPRING, MD 23.0 V LUU 7 Orange County Math Circle Santa Ana, CA 23.0 A MA 8 Arizona College Prep Junior High Chandler, AZ 23.0 S MA 8 Deerlake Middle Tallahassee, FL 23.0 J MA 7 Schimelpfenig Middle School Plano, TX 23.0 R MADHUKER 8 Carnage Middle School Raleigh, NC 23.0 O MAHESH 8 Ellen Fletcher MS palo alto, CA 23.0 C MAHESHWARI 8 Harmony School of EXcellence Houston, TX 23.0 A MALLANNA 7 William Diamond Middle School Lexington, MA 23.0 S MAO 5 Argonault Elementary School Saratoga, CA 23.0 S MAO 7 Redwood Middle saratoga, CA 23.0 R MARRI 8 Falcon Cove Middle Weston, FL 23.0 N MATHIHALLI 8 Redwood Middle saratoga, CA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 00:25:25 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 17:25:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> On Jun 4, 2020, at 7:47 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > Remember him? He is famous for saying that the big strong black men you see in the NFL came from slaveowners using their biggest, strongest slave to impregnate all the women so as to have the biggest strongest babies. We never heard from him again. > > Some blacks said that was not racism - that was just the truth, like it or not. So anyhow, we do have a lot of those men. So what? > > So police are afraid of them. Police have fears just like anyone else. The cop who stopped your car for speeding takes his life in his hands when he does so, and he knows that. > > So add black man to the description of the person you the cop are trying to arrest and you have a double fear situation. > > Is it racism to be more afraid of blacks? I don't think so - not for cops. > > Of course that excuses nothing, but it does help explain why more force is used on blacks than on others. > > Excellent article in my paper today about demilitarizing cops and their equipment, training cops, requiring body cameras, requiring liability insurance for cops, and ending qualified immunity (already discussed in Congress). Let's add 'protect and serve' and get away from 'shock and awe'. > > Requiring reporting of wrong behavior by fellow cops should happen, but that won't happen, I think. > > bill w A few years ago, there was a study that seemed to show this is the perception but not the reality. In other words, darker-skinned people were perceived by US-Americans as being bigger, stronger, and scarier. To me, that seems more a result of racism permeating the culture -- that most people in the US have ?breathed in? these views to the point that this becomes second nature. It doesn't mean it's the reality. In the same way, many US-Americans think if someone is an immigrant, they're more likely to be a criminal. Stats show exactly the opposite: lower levels of criminal behavior among immigrants, documented or undocumented, than among non-immigrants. But the perception is there and should be combated by reasonable people rather than embraced. This applies to cops too. Maybe they have the perception that their job is dangerous, but their job is far less dangerous than many others and people interacting with the police are far more likely to come to serious harm, even to be killed, than vice versa. Last year (02019), 89 cops died ?in the line of duty.? But cops killed approximately 1100 people during that same year! A ratio of more than an order of magnitude in the opposite direction of the perception. Again, I bring up abolishing the police. It should always be on the table, IMO. Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 00:27:21 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2020 17:27:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <98BF1FB0-482F-4795-9FC1-71B4486BBA74@gmail.com> On Jun 4, 2020, at 7:56 AM, John Clark via extropy-chat wrote:? > > The University of California system has permanently banned SAT and ACT test results from being a factor in deciding who will be admitted to their Universities. It's likely many other Universities in the US will follow this lead. They said they did it because standardized testing is racially biased due to the fact that rich white people can hire tutors to help their kids score high on the tests but poor black kids can't. So from now on admission will be based on subjective qualities like "well-roundedness" and "character". Apparently the ability to kick a ball on a field or play water polo in a pool or row a boat in a river shows great well-roundedness and character. > > I agree with Quantum Computer expert Scott Aaronson when he said: > > "As a result, admissions to the top US universities?and hence, most chances for social advancement in the US?will henceforth be based entirely on shifting and nebulous criteria that rich, well-connected kids and their parents spend most of their lives figuring out, rather than merely mostly based on such criteria. The last side door for smart nonconformist kids is now being slammed shut." > > Aaronson says if such a polacy had been in place when he was a kid he would have never been admitted to any university much less gone to graduate school and gotten a Phd. Regarding higher education, isn't there already a baked in unfairness in that the poorer members of the tax base pay for basically upper middle class kids to go to these schools? I mean it's sort of like a light rail system. Sure, poor people can pay the fare, but it's mainly built for upper middle class people and generally goes to and from where they want to go. Buses would be much cheaper than a light rail, but then that would serve the poorer members of society better -- and the poor, generally, don't organize and vote, aren't much of a threat to the elite. (Any elite to stay on top have to recognize the biggest threat are those who can and do organize and are likely to oust them. So the prizes are there to offset these threats. I'm not saying this is always a conscious policy. It's more Darwinian: elites that don't disrupt or co-opt internal threats will be replaced sooner or later.) Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 05:52:24 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 01:52:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: <004901d63ac9$fe34d0c0$fa9e7240$@rainier66.com> References: <00a001d63a8e$ce560800$6b021800$@rainier66.com> <00c901d63a90$569252e0$03b6f8a0$@rainier66.com> <000f01d63a95$d47e1860$7d7a4920$@rainier66.com> <004901d63ac9$fe34d0c0$fa9e7240$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 7:46 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Universities are trending toward de-emphasizing objective metrics for > admissions. Otherwise, their campus would be almost entirely Asian. Some > schools find this unacceptable, so they look for ways around it. > ### This is a topic of some interest to me, sincy my daughter who was born last week is half-Polish and half-Han. I had to answer questions about the race of her parents on the birth certificate and I filled her father's race as "Other" (Polish). Her mother wrote "Asian". In retrospect this was not the best approach. We could have both filled "Other" (Unknown). I am thinking about identifying as African-American, or maybe Latino. After all, if your gender is nowadays not determined by your sex chromosomes or your genitals but by how you identify, then race, which on good authority does not objectively exist and is a social construct, should be also open to individual interpretation. We have Ms Dolezal, genetically Czech but very black with the help of some heavy-duty tan cream and hair-curlers, so why not? Getting a 200 to 400 point boost on admission to an Ivy is definitely worth it. I'll start filling out all forms asking for race with "Other", "Unknown" for now but then let the events guide further interpretations. You never know if Oceania would continue to be at war with Eastasia forever, so flexibility may be very useful. I am reasonably confident though that filling in "Other" (American) would be seen as very suspect, possibly seditious and altogether racist. Failing to mention race every five minutes is the loudest dog-whistle we have for racists, as we all know, so saying you are American would be the death-knell for one's chances of success in our society. I'll get some tanning cream and give it a try. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 06:06:46 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 02:06:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 8:27 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Again, I bring up abolishing the police. It should always be on the table, > IMO. > > > ### This is a brilliant idea and I entirely support it. No, seriously! Then I would be able to hire Al's Protection Racket, who come recommended by Vernor Vinge, or the Red Hand, recommended by John Varley, and I would feel much safer. The Red Hand are no slouches - nobody messes with the Red Hand! (Extra points for identifying the books!) Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 06:29:14 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 02:29:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] riots, was: RE: Is a copy of you really you? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 1:06 PM Keith Henson via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > There are two factors here. First is getting infected which has been > high for nursing homes (similar to ships), and second if you do get > it, dying. I have not seen this sorted out. ### Being in a nursing home is indeed a double whammy. First, most residents are there because they are much sicker at baseline than age-matched controls and therefore are hit harder if infected. And second, nursing aides who change your diapers tend to smear all manner of infectious agents on the butts of multiple residents per day, so if you infect one, you infect all - this is only a minor exaggeration. Failure to strictly quarantine nursing homes probably increased Chicom-19 mortality by tens of thousands in the US (and closing schools failed to save a single life, but that's a different story). If I get less lazy, I'll put together my interim C-19 summary and literature review in a post soon. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 5 12:31:40 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 05:31:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> Message-ID: <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 8:27 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > wrote: Again, I bring up abolishing the police. It should always be on the table, IMO. There ya go, Dan. That notion should put to bed any remaining suggestion that Americans do not need to own a gun. Even the possibility that an entire police force could just get pissed and walk off the job (as they did in St. Louis this week) should be a clear unambiguous reminder that a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. If we abolish the police, we also abolish all gun control laws, all of them. Without a professional police force, we all need to have and to carry guns. We have the opportunity to educate our society on the meaning of the phrase ??shall not be infringed.? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 5 12:53:10 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 05:53:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: References: <00a001d63a8e$ce560800$6b021800$@rainier66.com> <00c901d63a90$569252e0$03b6f8a0$@rainier66.com> <000f01d63a95$d47e1860$7d7a4920$@rainier66.com> <004901d63ac9$fe34d0c0$fa9e7240$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <004f01d63b38$44e14670$cea3d350$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 7:46 PM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: Universities are trending toward de-emphasizing objective metrics for admissions. Otherwise, their campus would be almost entirely Asian. Some schools find this unacceptable, so they look for ways around it. ### This is a topic of some interest to me, sincy my daughter who was born last week is half-Polish and half-Han? Rafal! Best wishes to you and your bride with that baby. I am very happy for you sir. >? I am thinking about identifying as African-American ?I'll get some tanning cream and give it a try. Rafal >From what I can tell, we are free to choose our race but not to alter our appearance. Of all oddball things for a society to decide is the apex cardinal sin, it turns out to be darkening one?s skin. Some of us have the DNA to prove our recent African ancestry, but I have determined to never use that for any kind of advancement purpose, anything other than an amusing bit of scientific self-knowledge. When I received my results from Ancestry.com and 23&Me (both tests indicated the 3% African) one of my black 4th cousins did the hard work of tracing it back. Her cousins (not related to me) were intrigued by seeing a white guy in their cousin?s DNA matches list (but not their own.) Long story short, it had kind of a bitter outcome: we discovered that my 4th cousin and I are directly descended from a former slave, but that her black cousins are not (their ancestors immigrated from Africa after slavery was abolished.) To avoid such heartbreak, I recommend not doing those nifty 60 dollar DNA tests from Ancestry.com. Stop thinking about doing a DNA test. Stop that, I say! You are thinking of DNA tests right now, ja? Stop! Don?t think about DNA tests at all, I implore you, don?t think about it at all. But if you decide otherwise, feel free to post me offlist and I will show you some cool stuff you can do with interpreting the results, as well as how to do that while maintaining anonymity. That last bit is important because I discovered that one of the DNA majors left the HTML of their results page accessible to those you invite. Details available on request. Now stop thinking about doing that nifty 60 dollar DNA test! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 13:11:09 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 08:11:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Some of you want no taxes, some no police, some no government at all (does that mean no laws at all?), but not one of you has offered a single answer to how things would work without them. bill w On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 7:34 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 8:27 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > Again, I bring up abolishing the police. It should always be on the table, > IMO. > > > > There ya go, Dan. That notion should put to bed any remaining suggestion > that Americans do not need to own a gun. Even the possibility that an > entire police force could just get pissed and walk off the job (as they did > in St. Louis this week) should be a clear unambiguous reminder that a > well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. > > > > If we abolish the police, we also abolish all gun control laws, all of > them. Without a professional police force, we all need to have and to > carry guns. > > > > We have the opportunity to educate our society on the meaning of the > phrase ??shall not be infringed.? > > > > 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 Jun 5 13:54:38 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 06:54:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <007b01d63b40$db76f3c0$9264db40$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder Some of you want no taxes, some no police, some no government at all (does that mean no laws at all?), but not one of you has offered a single answer to how things would work without them. bill w BillW, to clarify: I am not in favor of abolishing police. I believe in government, strictly controlled. I am an archist perhaps more archist than most. I oppose the notion of abolishing police, but we must face the possibility that some police forces may be abolished by consensus and some may be abolished by a collective failure of city governments, some may be abolished by the police union walking off the job because the rioters they arrested yesterday are all back out there with revenge on their minds. Result: Americans need to have guns, in any of these scenarios. How things would work without a police force: badly. spike On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 7:34 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 8:27 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > wrote: Again, I bring up abolishing the police. It should always be on the table, IMO. There ya go, Dan. That notion should put to bed any remaining suggestion that Americans do not need to own a gun. Even the possibility that an entire police force could just get pissed and walk off the job (as they did in St. Louis this week) should be a clear unambiguous reminder that a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. If we abolish the police, we also abolish all gun control laws, all of them. Without a professional police force, we all need to have and to carry guns. We have the opportunity to educate our society on the meaning of the phrase ??shall not be infringed.? 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 Jun 5 15:04:59 2020 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 11:04:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 9:14 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Some of you want no taxes, some no police, some no government at all (does > that mean no laws at all?), but not one of you has offered a single answer > to how things would work without them. > No taxes: other forms or revenue, cutting spending No police: private security No government: I don't know; I'm more of a minarchist There's plenty of literature covering these topics. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 16:22:11 2020 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 12:22:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: No police is a horrible idea just because the alternative is protection rackets as Rafal mentioned. Good way for security forces to become WAY more militarized (competition) while also becoming basically the mafia. In fact I'm sure a lot of private protection squads would be LITERALLY run by organized crime. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 5 16:39:06 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 09:39:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00fb01d63b57$d5097a50$7f1c6ef0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Will Steinberg via extropy-chat Sent: Friday, June 5, 2020 9:22 AM To: ExI chat list Cc: Will Steinberg Subject: Re: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder >?No police is a horrible idea just because the alternative is protection rackets as Rafal mentioned. Good way for security forces to become WAY more militarized (competition) while also becoming basically the mafia. In fact I'm sure a lot of private protection squads would be LITERALLY run by organized crime? Agreed Will. Among legitimate protestors are those who are there for the loot and those who promote the idea of disbanding police forces in order to establish protection rackets. The protestors would benefit if they could identify those in their ranks who are the latter two categories and hand them over. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 5 17:17:55 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 10:17:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Will Steinberg via extropy-chat ubject: Re: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder >?No police is a horrible idea just because the alternative is protection rackets as Rafal mentioned. Good way for security forces to become WAY more militarized (competition) while also becoming basically the mafia. In fact I'm sure a lot of private protection squads would be LITERALLY run by organized crime? Will Since the start of the quarantine, I have been pondering the fact that we have built up cities with a population density high enough to make street traffic mostly impractical, social distancing nearly impossible and causing the proletariat to rely on mass transit, which we already know is inherently dangerous. For safety reasons, that level of population density must come down. We don?t know how exactly. The biggest rioting is coming from those areas where population density is the highest. The loudest calls to disband the police force is coming from those dense areas. Suppose the local constabulary decides nearly unanimously that law enforcement is too dangerous as a way to make a living. Or city governments decide to disband the force. In that scenario, the really dense cities will likely start to empty out. Living there or even working there has become too risky. I predict that peak population density has passed, and peak motive to live or work in a high density area has passed. Can anyone suggest a reason why either prediction is wrong? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 17:34:33 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 10:34:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 10:21 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Since the start of the quarantine, I have been pondering the fact that we > have built up cities with a population density high enough to make street > traffic mostly impractical, social distancing nearly impossible and causing > the proletariat to rely on mass transit, which we already know is > inherently dangerous. > > > > For safety reasons, that level of population density must come down. We > don?t know how exactly. > Contrasting that is the fact that certain services - including ones we have come to depend on, such as schools and hospitals - are only practical with certain minimum population densities, and become more efficient - better able to serve more people on the same budget - with higher population densities. Pandemics like this, and other such density-magnified traumas - are a tiny minority of our time. This might seem ludicrous right now, while we are in the middle of this pandemic, but take an honest look back at the past 100 or 200 years, considering how much of the time we are not thus afflicted, and you will see that it is true. Further, solutions to density-magnified traumas can be developed. We collectively dropped the ball on this one. Famously, Bill Gates saw it coming and tried to develop solutions - but even his resources were not enough on their own. But let's say that this coronavirus is largely beat by this time next year, and a repeat will come in 10 years. Do you think that we will be as unprepared then as we were when this one struck? Do you think that our response next time will be as severe, or any less effective for being less severe but better directed? Likewise, every single danger of mass transit can be mitigated - if resources are put toward mitigating them, which resources can be either freed up by or generated from the increased population density. (Although, ironically, one of the mitigations is to douse the BS that all jobs must be done on site, that most workers can not be trusted to work from home. There are some jobs that must be done in person, but there was already a wide recognition that many jobs done in the office could have been done from home if only bosses would allow it. Well, today many bosses are forced to allow it, and inertia may make that an industry standard, lowering the fraction of the workforce that needs mass or private transit to and from an office.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 17:40:38 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 12:40:38 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: If a boss does not know how long a job should take a person working from home, then they need to be retrained or fired. bill w On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 12:36 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 10:21 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Since the start of the quarantine, I have been pondering the fact that we >> have built up cities with a population density high enough to make street >> traffic mostly impractical, social distancing nearly impossible and causing >> the proletariat to rely on mass transit, which we already know is >> inherently dangerous. >> >> >> >> For safety reasons, that level of population density must come down. We >> don?t know how exactly. >> > > Contrasting that is the fact that certain services - including ones we > have come to depend on, such as schools and hospitals - are only practical > with certain minimum population densities, and become more efficient - > better able to serve more people on the same budget - with higher > population densities. > > Pandemics like this, and other such density-magnified traumas - are a tiny > minority of our time. This might seem ludicrous right now, while we are in > the middle of this pandemic, but take an honest look back at the past 100 > or 200 years, considering how much of the time we are not thus afflicted, > and you will see that it is true. > > Further, solutions to density-magnified traumas can be developed. We > collectively dropped the ball on this one. Famously, Bill Gates saw it > coming and tried to develop solutions - but even his resources were not > enough on their own. But let's say that this coronavirus is largely beat > by this time next year, and a repeat will come in 10 years. Do you think > that we will be as unprepared then as we were when this one struck? Do you > think that our response next time will be as severe, or any less effective > for being less severe but better directed? > > Likewise, every single danger of mass transit can be mitigated - if > resources are put toward mitigating them, which resources can be either > freed up by or generated from the increased population density. (Although, > ironically, one of the mitigations is to douse the BS that all jobs must be > done on site, that most workers can not be trusted to work from home. > There are some jobs that must be done in person, but there was already a > wide recognition that many jobs done in the office could have been done > from home if only bosses would allow it. Well, today many bosses are > forced to allow it, and inertia may make that an industry standard, > lowering the fraction of the workforce that needs mass or private transit > to and from an office.) > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 5 17:56:58 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 10:56:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <001901d63b62$b63e2c50$22ba84f0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 10:21 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: >>?Since the start of the quarantine, I have been pondering the fact that we have built up cities with a population density high enough to make street traffic mostly impractical, social distancing nearly impossible and causing the proletariat to rely on mass transit, which we already know is inherently dangerous. For safety reasons, that level of population density must come down. We don?t know how exactly. >?Contrasting that is the fact that certain services - including ones we have come to depend on, such as schools and hospitals - are only practical with certain minimum population densities, and become more efficient - better able to serve more people on the same budget - with higher population densities?.Well, today many bosses are forced to allow it, and inertia may make that an industry standard, lowering the fraction of the workforce that needs mass or private transit to and from an office.) Well stated, Adrian. I agree with all. In the meantime, I am still thinking about a means of isolating people aboard mass transit, using something analogous to an electric wheelchair device with a plastic clamshell barrier around it. The passenger just gets in, the chair rolls onto the train, rolls back off, goes to the office, without further instruction from the sleeping prole within. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From robot at ultimax.com Fri Jun 5 17:44:59 2020 From: robot at ultimax.com (robot at ultimax.com) Date: Fri, 05 Jun 2020 13:44:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <05a0a51941c2ccd2857a189866b1f1df@ultimax.com> 1. /Marooned in Realtime/, (1992). Changed my worldview. 2. Sounds like /The Ophiuchi Hotline/, but there are quite a few other stories from that common setting, too. Btw, the Sicilian mafia did start out as a self-protection organization, a hybrid of grass-roots militia and vigilantes, when Sicily was invaded by Crusaders. After that, they experienced what might be called "mission creep" or "loss of focus". Like all human organizations, they were not immune from the Iron Laws of Bureaucracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle's_iron_law_of_bureaucracy a special case derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy K3 On 2020-06-05 12:39, extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org wrote: > Message: 4 > Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 02:06:46 -0400 > From: Rafal Smigrodzki > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder > > On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 8:27 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >> Again, I bring up abolishing the police. It should always be on the >> table, >> IMO. > ### This is a brilliant idea and I entirely support it. No, seriously! > > Then I would be able to hire Al's Protection Racket, who come > recommended > by Vernor Vinge, or the Red Hand, recommended by John Varley, and I > would > feel much safer. The Red Hand are no slouches - nobody messes with the > Red > Hand! > > (Extra points for identifying the books!) . ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ From interzone at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 18:03:24 2020 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 14:03:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <001901d63b62$b63e2c50$22ba84f0$@rainier66.com> References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> <001901d63b62$b63e2c50$22ba84f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: The problem with any of these solutions for social distancing on mass transit is they SEVERELY reduce the number of passengers per car which is unsustainable from both a revenue generating perspective and a practical one. I saw the Phillipines had kitted out a demo car to enforce proper spacing, and it reduced the passenger limit by an order of magnitude from 1600 to around 160. On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 1:58 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder > > > > On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 10:21 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > >>?Since the start of the quarantine, I have been pondering the fact that > we have built up cities with a population density high enough to make > street traffic mostly impractical, social distancing nearly impossible and > causing the proletariat to rely on mass transit, which we already know is > inherently dangerous. > > For safety reasons, that level of population density must come down. We > don?t know how exactly. > > > > >?Contrasting that is the fact that certain services - including ones we > have come to depend on, such as schools and hospitals - are only practical > with certain minimum population densities, and become more efficient - > better able to serve more people on the same budget - with higher > population densities?.Well, today many bosses are forced to allow it, and > inertia may make that an industry standard, lowering the fraction of the > workforce that needs mass or private transit to and from an office.) > > > > > > Well stated, Adrian. I agree with all. > > > > In the meantime, I am still thinking about a means of isolating people > aboard mass transit, using something analogous to an electric wheelchair > device with a plastic clamshell barrier around it. The passenger just gets > in, the chair rolls onto the train, rolls back off, goes to the office, > without further instruction from the sleeping prole within. > > > > 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 Jun 5 18:20:17 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 11:20:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 10:48 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > If a boss does not know how long a job should take a person working from > home, then they need to be retrained or fired. > Yes, but who's going to do that retraining or firing? Usually someone else with even less idea, thus they never commit to that retraining or firing in order to preserve their own illusion of competence. Thus it took an outside force, such as the coronavirus epidemic, to force this change in far too many institutions. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Fri Jun 5 18:20:16 2020 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Fri, 05 Jun 2020 14:20:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: <004f01d63b38$44e14670$cea3d350$@rainier66.com> References: <00a001d63a8e$ce560800$6b021800$@rainier66.com> <00c901d63a90$569252e0$03b6f8a0$@rainier66.com> <000f01d63a95$d47e1860$7d7a4920$@rainier66.com> <004901d63ac9$fe34d0c0$fa9e7240$@rainier66.com> <004f01d63b38$44e14670$cea3d350$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <202006051821.055IL7oD020890@athena.zia.io> Spike wrote: > From what I can tell, we are free to choose our race but not to > alter our appearance. Of all oddball things for a society to > decide is the apex cardinal sin, it turns out to be darkening one's > skin. Some of us have the DNA to prove our recent African > ancestry, but I have determined to never use that for any kind of > advancement purpose, anything other than an amusing bit of > scientific self-knowledge. My mother's Austro-Hungarian Jewish father was a portrait photographer in West Philly. He was not prejudiced and needed to earn a living. So he had black customers but was simultaneously attune to the sensibilities of the day. She remembers he had her brother deliver wedding photos to a black family in the Forties, to avoid his less-tolerant neighbors starting talking if they'd come by to pick them up. But the family thanked him for the sensitivity of having them delivered by "one of our kind." My uncle had curly black hair and dark skin; he was often mistaken for "mulatto." Most of us have his curly hair; I assume the darker shade came from Hungarian Jewish. Two of my cousins have his coloration. I doubt they ever relied on it to pass for a "person of color" but no one would doubt that claim if they made it. I'm curious if my uncle was ever stopped for DWB or was refused admission to somewhere designated whites-only. And, if so, what transpired. My guess is it's likelier someone mistook him for "eye-talian" instead, a lesser stigma than either being Jewish or black. -- David. From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 5 18:33:17 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 11:33:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> <001901d63b62$b63e2c50$22ba84f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <001601d63b67$c845dba0$58d192e0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder >?The problem with any of these solutions for social distancing on mass transit is they SEVERELY reduce the number of passengers per car which is unsustainable from both a revenue generating perspective and a practical one. I saw the Phillipines had kitted out a demo car to enforce proper spacing, and it reduced the passenger limit by an order of magnitude from 1600 to around 160? Dylan Ja. Dylan, my concern is that even with a tenth the capacity, a subway car is still dangerous. Homeless people will still use them as a rolling bedroom, around the clock, and it is still an enclosed space. Criminals can still use them to victimize people, a problem which might be even worse with lower passenger counts. Is there any way to compensate by increasing the number of cars? Do those rigs need human operators? If not, could we have a deal where there are 5 to 10 times as many trains, get as many roller-eggs in there as possible by taking out the seats and the grab-on poles (are those things structural elements? (Ashamed of me for not knowing that (I don?t ride them (I don?t like big cities (oy vey, mercy.)))) spike On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 1:58 PM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: > On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 10:21 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: >>?Since the start of the quarantine, I have been pondering the fact that we have built up cities with a population density high enough to make street traffic mostly impractical, social distancing nearly impossible and causing the proletariat to rely on mass transit, which we already know is inherently dangerous. For safety reasons, that level of population density must come down. We don?t know how exactly. >?Contrasting that is the fact that certain services - including ones we have come to depend on, such as schools and hospitals - are only practical with certain minimum population densities, and become more efficient - better able to serve more people on the same budget - with higher population densities?.Well, today many bosses are forced to allow it, and inertia may make that an industry standard, lowering the fraction of the workforce that needs mass or private transit to and from an office.) Well stated, Adrian. I agree with all. In the meantime, I am still thinking about a means of isolating people aboard mass transit, using something analogous to an electric wheelchair device with a plastic clamshell barrier around it. The passenger just gets in, the chair rolls onto the train, rolls back off, goes to the office, without further instruction from the sleeping prole within. 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 dsunley at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 19:19:35 2020 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 13:19:35 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <001601d63b67$c845dba0$58d192e0$@rainier66.com> References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> <001901d63b62$b63e2c50$22ba84f0$@rainier66.com> <001601d63b67$c845dba0$58d192e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I think a rapidly-growing sentiment is that what we have with our current police forces is already a protection racket - merely a supremely well-entrenched one that operates at too high a level of jurisdiction, and that it might be time to uproot the current one and rebuild from local community protection rackets. You know, the way our police forces started in the first place. On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 12:47 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder > > > > >?The problem with any of these solutions for social distancing on mass > transit is they SEVERELY reduce the number of passengers per car which is > unsustainable from both a revenue generating perspective and a practical > one. I saw the Phillipines had kitted out a demo car to enforce proper > spacing, and it reduced the passenger limit by an order of magnitude from > 1600 to around 160? Dylan > > > > > > > > > > Ja. Dylan, my concern is that even with a tenth the capacity, a subway > car is still dangerous. Homeless people will still use them as a rolling > bedroom, around the clock, and it is still an enclosed space. Criminals > can still use them to victimize people, a problem which might be even worse > with lower passenger counts. > > > > Is there any way to compensate by increasing the number of cars? Do those > rigs need human operators? If not, could we have a deal where there are 5 > to 10 times as many trains, get as many roller-eggs in there as possible by > taking out the seats and the grab-on poles (are those things structural > elements? (Ashamed of me for not knowing that (I don?t ride them (I don?t > like big cities (oy vey, mercy.)))) > > > > spike > > > > > > > > On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 1:58 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder > > > > On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 10:21 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > >>?Since the start of the quarantine, I have been pondering the fact that > we have built up cities with a population density high enough to make > street traffic mostly impractical, social distancing nearly impossible and > causing the proletariat to rely on mass transit, which we already know is > inherently dangerous. > > For safety reasons, that level of population density must come down. We > don?t know how exactly. > > > > >?Contrasting that is the fact that certain services - including ones we > have come to depend on, such as schools and hospitals - are only practical > with certain minimum population densities, and become more efficient - > better able to serve more people on the same budget - with higher > population densities?.Well, today many bosses are forced to allow it, and > inertia may make that an industry standard, lowering the fraction of the > workforce that needs mass or private transit to and from an office.) > > > > > > Well stated, Adrian. I agree with all. > > > > In the meantime, I am still thinking about a means of isolating people > aboard mass transit, using something analogous to an electric wheelchair > device with a plastic clamshell barrier around it. The passenger just gets > in, the chair rolls onto the train, rolls back off, goes to the office, > without further instruction from the sleeping prole within. > > > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 19:27:04 2020 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 15:27:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: <202006051821.055IL7oD020890@athena.zia.io> References: <00a001d63a8e$ce560800$6b021800$@rainier66.com> <00c901d63a90$569252e0$03b6f8a0$@rainier66.com> <000f01d63a95$d47e1860$7d7a4920$@rainier66.com> <004901d63ac9$fe34d0c0$fa9e7240$@rainier66.com> <004f01d63b38$44e14670$cea3d350$@rainier66.com> <202006051821.055IL7oD020890@athena.zia.io> Message-ID: @spike: Math competitions are not objective. Wins are often doled out based on parsimony and beauty--at least for higher level competitions. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 19:46:20 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 14:46:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Adrian, if a company, big or small, cannot measure productivity it will be full of lazy people asap. Somebody at some level has to know. bill w On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 1:29 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 10:48 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> If a boss does not know how long a job should take a person working from >> home, then they need to be retrained or fired. >> > > Yes, but who's going to do that retraining or firing? Usually someone > else with even less idea, thus they never commit to that retraining or > firing in order to preserve their own illusion of competence. > > Thus it took an outside force, such as the coronavirus epidemic, to force > this change in far too many institutions. > _______________________________________________ > 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 sen.otaku at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 20:38:55 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 15:38:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <9EB02C66-59C9-4113-A190-F5ECBFC53C01@gmail.com> When people say ?no police? they mean that the police force and prison system as they currently exist should be completely and totally dismantled and a new thing created in their place. Why? Police Shooting/Killing/Maiming the Disabled/Mentally ill and/or their caregivers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Charles_Kinsey https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_James_Boyd https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jeremy_McDole https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3377699/amp/Teen-left-bloodied-bruised-cop-sicced-K-9-dog-mother-called-911-fears-son-suicidal.html Police shooting people for being near/in cars: https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/31/us/florida-police-shooting/index.html https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Philando_Castile Police suffocating/choking people to death: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jonny_Gammage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_George_Floyd Airsoft Deaths: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Andy_Lopez https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Tamir_Rice No-knock Warrants: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Breonna_Taylor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Duncan_Lemp (hey, he was in a militia!) Suspicious deaths in police custody: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Sandra_Bland Shot/killed while protesting, or being near protests: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Sean_Monterrosa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_David_McAtee Mistaken Identify: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Alton_Sterling Officers joke about murdering people: https://www.newsweek.com/sean-reed-justice-indianapolis-police-shooting-facebook-1502502 Cops shooting dogs: https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/870601/police-killing-dogs-is-an-epidemic-according-to-the-justice-department/amp/ Police officers committing domestic violence: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/380329/ The fact that ?SWATTING? exists: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting https://web.archive.org/web/20150216193032/http://newsok.com/court-document-reveals-more-about-sentinel-ok-bomb-threat/article/5386857 https://web.archive.org/web/20180709154458/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kansas-swatting/california-man-two-others-indicted-in-fatal-kansas-swatting-case-idUSKCN1IP065 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/fortnite-world-champion-swatted-while-streaming-on-twitch/ Cops are ?scared? at work but there are plenty of other more deadly occupations: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/1002500001 https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/work-related-homicides-the-facts.pdf Bullshit police calls: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2020/05/27/stop-calling-the-police-on-black-people/amp/ Cavity Searches: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.azcentral.com/amp/1873153001 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/us/tampon-san-antonio.amp.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/michigan-lawsuit-officer-daniel-mack-illegal-body-cavity-search.amp Civil Forfeiture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States Planting evidence: https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/4692-cops-planting-evidence Sexual misconduct: https://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/women-and-criminal-justice/nypd-police-officers-union-wants-keep-sexual And all of that compounded by police ?unions? and the ?blue code of silence?. Anecdotally I have: - had police show up to my home when I (3) ?play dialed? 911 on a phone I thought wasn?t plugged in and my entire family had to go into the lawn, in front of our neighbors, in our underwear - had a police officer pull a hard u-turn in front of me, blocking the road, and accusing me (12) of being a runaway - had a police officer pull a hard u-turn across 4 lanes of traffic to accuse me (14) of being a prostitute when my bus was late - had a police officer threaten to commit me (17) for a letter I wrote to a friend; when he said I could leave I fled, crying, and was later detained by him and threatened with arrest for slamming a door - had a police officer blame me (18) for my own rape, and belittled for my father threatening to kill me; despite that, they felt the need to handcuff my parents and threaten to shoot them - was handcuffed when I (19) told my councilor I was suicidal - had the cops called on me (23) for knocking on doors to find my lost dog - had cops jump my fence, enter my home without knocking through my back door, and draw their guns on me because I (24) was taking a nap with the AC off and the back door open - had cops pull me (25) over on suspicion of drug use when I was learning how to drive And you know when I did NOT call the police? Oh wait, I have never called the police. (Unless you count that ?call? when I was like 4.) I have been raped (filed a report), threatened to be killed (filed a report) and had a gun brandished and pointed at me (Trump had just been elected and I was ?too white?, I did not file a report, I just moved). In maybe 99% of cases, calling police makes any situation worse. So maybe just... don?t. There?s no need to arrest or accost people for minor violations, or shoot people for having loud parties. Just fine them and be done with it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 20:41:34 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 13:41:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <001601d63b67$c845dba0$58d192e0$@rainier66.com> References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> <001901d63b62$b63e2c50$22ba84f0$@rainier66.com> <001601d63b67$c845dba0$58d192e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 11:47 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Is there any way to compensate by increasing the number of cars? Do those > rigs need human operators? If not, could we have a deal where there are 5 > to 10 times as many trains, get as many roller-eggs in there as possible by > taking out the seats and the grab-on poles (are those things structural > elements? (Ashamed of me for not knowing that (I don?t ride them (I don?t > like big cities (oy vey, mercy.)))) > There have been proposals for higher numbers of much smaller cars - maybe just enough for 3-5 (there being a number of cases where one person is escorting another, such as a parent with multiple children). Manufacturing and then repeatedly transporting the mass of the extra walls and doors makes these proposals less efficient, but there are counterarguments, such as having to clean less (or, worst case, take less of a train out of service) when someone uses it as a toilet. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 20:42:05 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 13:42:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: They know. But they believe they are incentivized not to do anything. On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 12:49 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Adrian, if a company, big or small, cannot measure productivity it will be > full of lazy people asap. Somebody at some level has to know. bill w > > On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 1:29 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 10:48 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> If a boss does not know how long a job should take a person working from >>> home, then they need to be retrained or fired. >>> >> >> Yes, but who's going to do that retraining or firing? Usually someone >> else with even less idea, thus they never commit to that retraining or >> firing in order to preserve their own illusion of competence. >> >> Thus it took an outside force, such as the coronavirus epidemic, to force >> this change in far too many institutions. >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 atymes at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 20:52:26 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 13:52:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <9EB02C66-59C9-4113-A190-F5ECBFC53C01@gmail.com> References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> <9EB02C66-59C9-4113-A190-F5ECBFC53C01@gmail.com> Message-ID: Huh. You've certainly got me beat. I just have this one time when the cops raided my house pretending to have a warrant (they had a manila envelope w/blank paper), dragged my brother out to the front lawn and cuffed him on the ground, then kicked open my (16, I think) bedroom door w/gun drawn on me, all because they were pursuing an ex-Apple employee who used to live at my address who had committed petty theft on his way out of his job. (At my place, they found one cable - equivalent of a USB cable today - he had left behind.) On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 1:40 PM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > When people say ?no police? they mean that the police force and prison > system as they currently exist should be completely and totally dismantled > and a new thing created in their place. > > Why? > > Police Shooting/Killing/Maiming the Disabled/Mentally ill and/or their > caregivers: > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Charles_Kinsey > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_James_Boyd > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jeremy_McDole > > https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3377699/amp/Teen-left-bloodied-bruised-cop-sicced-K-9-dog-mother-called-911-fears-son-suicidal.html > > Police shooting people for being near/in cars: > https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/31/us/florida-police-shooting/index.html > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Philando_Castile > > Police suffocating/choking people to death: > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jonny_Gammage > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_George_Floyd > > Airsoft Deaths: > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Andy_Lopez > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Tamir_Rice > > No-knock Warrants: > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Breonna_Taylor > > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Duncan_Lemp (hey, he was in a > militia!) > > Suspicious deaths in police custody: > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Sandra_Bland > > Shot/killed while protesting, or being near protests: > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Sean_Monterrosa > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_David_McAtee > > Mistaken Identify: > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Alton_Sterling > > Officers joke about murdering people: > > https://www.newsweek.com/sean-reed-justice-indianapolis-police-shooting-facebook-1502502 > > Cops shooting dogs: > > https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/870601/police-killing-dogs-is-an-epidemic-according-to-the-justice-department/amp/ > > Police officers committing domestic violence: > https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/380329/ > > The fact that ?SWATTING? exists: > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting > > https://web.archive.org/web/20150216193032/http://newsok.com/court-document-reveals-more-about-sentinel-ok-bomb-threat/article/5386857 > > https://web.archive.org/web/20180709154458/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kansas-swatting/california-man-two-others-indicted-in-fatal-kansas-swatting-case-idUSKCN1IP065 > > https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/fortnite-world-champion-swatted-while-streaming-on-twitch/ > > Cops are ?scared? at work but there are plenty of other more deadly > occupations: > https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/1002500001 > https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/work-related-homicides-the-facts.pdf > > Bullshit police calls: > > https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2020/05/27/stop-calling-the-police-on-black-people/amp/ > > Cavity Searches: > https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.azcentral.com/amp/1873153001 > https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/us/tampon-san-antonio.amp.html > > https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/michigan-lawsuit-officer-daniel-mack-illegal-body-cavity-search.amp > > Civil Forfeiture: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States > > Planting evidence: > https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/4692-cops-planting-evidence > > Sexual misconduct: > > https://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/women-and-criminal-justice/nypd-police-officers-union-wants-keep-sexual > > And all of that compounded by police ?unions? and the ?blue code of > silence?. > > Anecdotally I have: > - had police show up to my home when I (3) ?play dialed? 911 on a phone I > thought wasn?t plugged in and my entire family had to go into the lawn, in > front of our neighbors, in our underwear > - had a police officer pull a hard u-turn in front of me, blocking the > road, and accusing me (12) of being a runaway > - had a police officer pull a hard u-turn across 4 lanes of traffic to > accuse me (14) of being a prostitute when my bus was late > - had a police officer threaten to commit me (17) for a letter I wrote to > a friend; when he said I could leave I fled, crying, and was later detained > by him and threatened with arrest for slamming a door > - had a police officer blame me (18) for my own rape, and belittled for my > father threatening to kill me; despite that, they felt the need to handcuff > my parents and threaten to shoot them > - was handcuffed when I (19) told my councilor I was suicidal > - had the cops called on me (23) for knocking on doors to find my lost dog > - had cops jump my fence, enter my home without knocking through my back > door, and draw their guns on me because I (24) was taking a nap with the AC > off and the back door open > - had cops pull me (25) over on suspicion of drug use when I was learning > how to drive > > And you know when I did NOT call the police? Oh wait, I have never called > the police. (Unless you count that ?call? when I was like 4.) > > I have been raped (filed a report), threatened to be killed (filed a > report) and had a gun brandished and pointed at me (Trump had just been > elected and I was ?too white?, I did not file a report, I just moved). > > In maybe 99% of cases, calling police makes any situation worse. So maybe > just... don?t. There?s no need to arrest or accost people for minor > violations, or shoot people for having loud parties. Just fine them and be > done with it. > _______________________________________________ > 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 sen.otaku at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 21:49:05 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 16:49:05 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> <9EB02C66-59C9-4113-A190-F5ECBFC53C01@gmail.com> Message-ID: <3912C301-F651-424D-B955-F249CF8A05E5@gmail.com> That still sounds pretty bad. SR Ballard > On Jun 5, 2020, at 3:52 PM, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat wrote: > > Huh. You've certainly got me beat. I just have this one time when the cops raided my house pretending to have a warrant (they had a manila envelope w/blank paper), dragged my brother out to the front lawn and cuffed him on the ground, then kicked open my (16, I think) bedroom door w/gun drawn on me, all because they were pursuing an ex-Apple employee who used to live at my address who had committed petty theft on his way out of his job. (At my place, they found one cable - equivalent of a USB cable today - he had left behind.) > >> On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 1:40 PM SR Ballard via extropy-chat wrote: >> When people say ?no police? they mean that the police force and prison system as they currently exist should be completely and totally dismantled and a new thing created in their place. >> >> Why? >> >> Police Shooting/Killing/Maiming the Disabled/Mentally ill and/or their caregivers: >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Charles_Kinsey >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_James_Boyd >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jeremy_McDole >> https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3377699/amp/Teen-left-bloodied-bruised-cop-sicced-K-9-dog-mother-called-911-fears-son-suicidal.html >> >> Police shooting people for being near/in cars: >> https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/31/us/florida-police-shooting/index.html >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Philando_Castile >> >> Police suffocating/choking people to death: >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jonny_Gammage >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_George_Floyd >> >> Airsoft Deaths: >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Andy_Lopez >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Tamir_Rice >> >> No-knock Warrants: >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Breonna_Taylor >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Duncan_Lemp (hey, he was in a militia!) >> >> Suspicious deaths in police custody: >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Sandra_Bland >> >> Shot/killed while protesting, or being near protests: >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Sean_Monterrosa >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_David_McAtee >> >> Mistaken Identify: >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Alton_Sterling >> >> Officers joke about murdering people: >> https://www.newsweek.com/sean-reed-justice-indianapolis-police-shooting-facebook-1502502 >> >> Cops shooting dogs: >> https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/870601/police-killing-dogs-is-an-epidemic-according-to-the-justice-department/amp/ >> >> Police officers committing domestic violence: >> https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/380329/ >> >> The fact that ?SWATTING? exists: >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting >> https://web.archive.org/web/20150216193032/http://newsok.com/court-document-reveals-more-about-sentinel-ok-bomb-threat/article/5386857 >> https://web.archive.org/web/20180709154458/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kansas-swatting/california-man-two-others-indicted-in-fatal-kansas-swatting-case-idUSKCN1IP065 >> https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/fortnite-world-champion-swatted-while-streaming-on-twitch/ >> >> Cops are ?scared? at work but there are plenty of other more deadly occupations: >> https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/1002500001 >> https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/work-related-homicides-the-facts.pdf >> >> Bullshit police calls: >> https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2020/05/27/stop-calling-the-police-on-black-people/amp/ >> >> Cavity Searches: >> https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.azcentral.com/amp/1873153001 >> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/us/tampon-san-antonio.amp.html >> https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/michigan-lawsuit-officer-daniel-mack-illegal-body-cavity-search.amp >> >> Civil Forfeiture: >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States >> >> Planting evidence: >> https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/4692-cops-planting-evidence >> >> Sexual misconduct: >> https://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/women-and-criminal-justice/nypd-police-officers-union-wants-keep-sexual >> >> And all of that compounded by police ?unions? and the ?blue code of silence?. >> >> Anecdotally I have: >> - had police show up to my home when I (3) ?play dialed? 911 on a phone I thought wasn?t plugged in and my entire family had to go into the lawn, in front of our neighbors, in our underwear >> - had a police officer pull a hard u-turn in front of me, blocking the road, and accusing me (12) of being a runaway >> - had a police officer pull a hard u-turn across 4 lanes of traffic to accuse me (14) of being a prostitute when my bus was late >> - had a police officer threaten to commit me (17) for a letter I wrote to a friend; when he said I could leave I fled, crying, and was later detained by him and threatened with arrest for slamming a door >> - had a police officer blame me (18) for my own rape, and belittled for my father threatening to kill me; despite that, they felt the need to handcuff my parents and threaten to shoot them >> - was handcuffed when I (19) told my councilor I was suicidal >> - had the cops called on me (23) for knocking on doors to find my lost dog >> - had cops jump my fence, enter my home without knocking through my back door, and draw their guns on me because I (24) was taking a nap with the AC off and the back door open >> - had cops pull me (25) over on suspicion of drug use when I was learning how to drive >> >> And you know when I did NOT call the police? Oh wait, I have never called the police. (Unless you count that ?call? when I was like 4.) >> >> I have been raped (filed a report), threatened to be killed (filed a report) and had a gun brandished and pointed at me (Trump had just been elected and I was ?too white?, I did not file a report, I just moved). >> >> In maybe 99% of cases, calling police makes any situation worse. So maybe just... don?t. There?s no need to arrest or accost people for minor violations, or shoot people for having loud parties. Just fine them and be done with it. >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 atymes at gmail.com Fri Jun 5 22:08:12 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 15:08:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <3912C301-F651-424D-B955-F249CF8A05E5@gmail.com> References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> <9EB02C66-59C9-4113-A190-F5ECBFC53C01@gmail.com> <3912C301-F651-424D-B955-F249CF8A05E5@gmail.com> Message-ID: It was bad enough. I have wondered, if Bernie had won (I have no illusions that Hillary would have done this) and been in the President's seat today, if he might have issued a statement like the following: "I advise most police to march with, not against, the protestors. There are three main reasons: "1) So you can escort the protestors, and keep them separate from those who would do them harm. If you've got good community relations, perhaps you can even guide the protests; for most departments, at least you'll know where they're going so you can get out in front and direct traffic away. If you can keep a block's distance between the protestors and traffic, that's a block's warning should any car break through and try to ram the protest. "2) Most of you should be mad about the killing, just like the protestors are. This was murder. it is being charged as murder. Police are not supposed to murder. Those responsible for this act may have worn the uniform and badge, but they were not police officers in any but the official sense. There are many Americans who could use reassurance that you are there to serve and protect them, not just to execute them. You have every moral right to be protesting the murder alongside your fellow citizens. "3) Being among the protestors will help you more quickly spot and intercept those few individuals who wish to spark violence, and to remove them before their actions agitate others into violence. The choice between arresting one individual who starts breaking windows, and standing back until multiple buildings are set on fire, should be an easy one. (Any police officer who thinks the latter is the right thing to do, see point 2.)" On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 2:51 PM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > That still sounds pretty bad. > > SR Ballard > > On Jun 5, 2020, at 3:52 PM, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Huh. You've certainly got me beat. I just have this one time when the > cops raided my house pretending to have a warrant (they had a manila > envelope w/blank paper), dragged my brother out to the front lawn and > cuffed him on the ground, then kicked open my (16, I think) bedroom door > w/gun drawn on me, all because they were pursuing an ex-Apple employee who > used to live at my address who had committed petty theft on his way out of > his job. (At my place, they found one cable - equivalent of a USB cable > today - he had left behind.) > > On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 1:40 PM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> When people say ?no police? they mean that the police force and prison >> system as they currently exist should be completely and totally dismantled >> and a new thing created in their place. >> >> Why? >> >> Police Shooting/Killing/Maiming the Disabled/Mentally ill and/or their >> caregivers: >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Charles_Kinsey >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_James_Boyd >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jeremy_McDole >> >> https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3377699/amp/Teen-left-bloodied-bruised-cop-sicced-K-9-dog-mother-called-911-fears-son-suicidal.html >> >> Police shooting people for being near/in cars: >> https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/31/us/florida-police-shooting/index.html >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Philando_Castile >> >> Police suffocating/choking people to death: >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jonny_Gammage >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_George_Floyd >> >> Airsoft Deaths: >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Andy_Lopez >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Tamir_Rice >> >> No-knock Warrants: >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Breonna_Taylor >> >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Duncan_Lemp (hey, he was in >> a militia!) >> >> Suspicious deaths in police custody: >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Sandra_Bland >> >> Shot/killed while protesting, or being near protests: >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Sean_Monterrosa >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_David_McAtee >> >> Mistaken Identify: >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Alton_Sterling >> >> Officers joke about murdering people: >> >> https://www.newsweek.com/sean-reed-justice-indianapolis-police-shooting-facebook-1502502 >> >> Cops shooting dogs: >> >> https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/870601/police-killing-dogs-is-an-epidemic-according-to-the-justice-department/amp/ >> >> Police officers committing domestic violence: >> https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/380329/ >> >> The fact that ?SWATTING? exists: >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting >> >> https://web.archive.org/web/20150216193032/http://newsok.com/court-document-reveals-more-about-sentinel-ok-bomb-threat/article/5386857 >> >> https://web.archive.org/web/20180709154458/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kansas-swatting/california-man-two-others-indicted-in-fatal-kansas-swatting-case-idUSKCN1IP065 >> >> https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/fortnite-world-champion-swatted-while-streaming-on-twitch/ >> >> Cops are ?scared? at work but there are plenty of other more deadly >> occupations: >> https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/1002500001 >> https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/work-related-homicides-the-facts.pdf >> >> Bullshit police calls: >> >> https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2020/05/27/stop-calling-the-police-on-black-people/amp/ >> >> Cavity Searches: >> https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.azcentral.com/amp/1873153001 >> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/us/tampon-san-antonio.amp.html >> >> https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/michigan-lawsuit-officer-daniel-mack-illegal-body-cavity-search.amp >> >> Civil Forfeiture: >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States >> >> Planting evidence: >> https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/4692-cops-planting-evidence >> >> Sexual misconduct: >> >> https://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/women-and-criminal-justice/nypd-police-officers-union-wants-keep-sexual >> >> And all of that compounded by police ?unions? and the ?blue code of >> silence?. >> >> Anecdotally I have: >> - had police show up to my home when I (3) ?play dialed? 911 on a phone I >> thought wasn?t plugged in and my entire family had to go into the lawn, in >> front of our neighbors, in our underwear >> - had a police officer pull a hard u-turn in front of me, blocking the >> road, and accusing me (12) of being a runaway >> - had a police officer pull a hard u-turn across 4 lanes of traffic to >> accuse me (14) of being a prostitute when my bus was late >> - had a police officer threaten to commit me (17) for a letter I wrote to >> a friend; when he said I could leave I fled, crying, and was later detained >> by him and threatened with arrest for slamming a door >> - had a police officer blame me (18) for my own rape, and belittled for >> my father threatening to kill me; despite that, they felt the need to >> handcuff my parents and threaten to shoot them >> - was handcuffed when I (19) told my councilor I was suicidal >> - had the cops called on me (23) for knocking on doors to find my lost dog >> - had cops jump my fence, enter my home without knocking through my back >> door, and draw their guns on me because I (24) was taking a nap with the AC >> off and the back door open >> - had cops pull me (25) over on suspicion of drug use when I was learning >> how to drive >> >> And you know when I did NOT call the police? Oh wait, I have never called >> the police. (Unless you count that ?call? when I was like 4.) >> >> I have been raped (filed a report), threatened to be killed (filed a >> report) and had a gun brandished and pointed at me (Trump had just been >> elected and I was ?too white?, I did not file a report, I just moved). >> >> In maybe 99% of cases, calling police makes any situation worse. So maybe >> just... don?t. There?s no need to arrest or accost people for minor >> violations, or shoot people for having loud parties. Just fine them and be >> done with it. >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 5 22:19:18 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 17:19:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> <9EB02C66-59C9-4113-A190-F5ECBFC53C01@gmail.com> <3912C301-F651-424D-B955-F249CF8A05E5@gmail.com> Message-ID: I think those are absolutely terrific ideas, and it would take an extremely creative and independent police chief to try those. I won't hold my breath. bill w On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 5:10 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > It was bad enough. > > I have wondered, if Bernie had won (I have no illusions that Hillary would > have done this) and been in the President's seat today, if he might have > issued a statement like the following: > > "I advise most police to march with, not against, the protestors. There > are three main reasons: > > "1) So you can escort the protestors, and keep them separate from those > who would do them harm. If you've got good community relations, perhaps > you can even guide the protests; for most departments, at least you'll know > where they're going so you can get out in front and direct traffic away. > If you can keep a block's distance between the protestors and traffic, > that's a block's warning should any car break through and try to ram the > protest. > > "2) Most of you should be mad about the killing, just like the protestors > are. This was murder. it is being charged as murder. Police are not > supposed to murder. Those responsible for this act may have worn the > uniform and badge, but they were not police officers in any but the > official sense. There are many Americans who could use reassurance that > you are there to serve and protect them, not just to execute them. You > have every moral right to be protesting the murder alongside your fellow > citizens. > > "3) Being among the protestors will help you more quickly spot and > intercept those few individuals who wish to spark violence, and to remove > them before their actions agitate others into violence. The choice between > arresting one individual who starts breaking windows, and standing back > until multiple buildings are set on fire, should be an easy one. (Any > police officer who thinks the latter is the right thing to do, see point > 2.)" > > On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 2:51 PM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> That still sounds pretty bad. >> >> SR Ballard >> >> On Jun 5, 2020, at 3:52 PM, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >> Huh. You've certainly got me beat. I just have this one time when the >> cops raided my house pretending to have a warrant (they had a manila >> envelope w/blank paper), dragged my brother out to the front lawn and >> cuffed him on the ground, then kicked open my (16, I think) bedroom door >> w/gun drawn on me, all because they were pursuing an ex-Apple employee who >> used to live at my address who had committed petty theft on his way out of >> his job. (At my place, they found one cable - equivalent of a USB cable >> today - he had left behind.) >> >> On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 1:40 PM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> When people say ?no police? they mean that the police force and prison >>> system as they currently exist should be completely and totally dismantled >>> and a new thing created in their place. >>> >>> Why? >>> >>> Police Shooting/Killing/Maiming the Disabled/Mentally ill and/or their >>> caregivers: >>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Charles_Kinsey >>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_James_Boyd >>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jeremy_McDole >>> >>> https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3377699/amp/Teen-left-bloodied-bruised-cop-sicced-K-9-dog-mother-called-911-fears-son-suicidal.html >>> >>> Police shooting people for being near/in cars: >>> https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/31/us/florida-police-shooting/index.html >>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Philando_Castile >>> >>> Police suffocating/choking people to death: >>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner >>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jonny_Gammage >>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_George_Floyd >>> >>> Airsoft Deaths: >>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Andy_Lopez >>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Tamir_Rice >>> >>> No-knock Warrants: >>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Breonna_Taylor >>> >>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Duncan_Lemp (hey, he was in >>> a militia!) >>> >>> Suspicious deaths in police custody: >>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Sandra_Bland >>> >>> Shot/killed while protesting, or being near protests: >>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Sean_Monterrosa >>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_David_McAtee >>> >>> Mistaken Identify: >>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Alton_Sterling >>> >>> Officers joke about murdering people: >>> >>> https://www.newsweek.com/sean-reed-justice-indianapolis-police-shooting-facebook-1502502 >>> >>> Cops shooting dogs: >>> >>> https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/870601/police-killing-dogs-is-an-epidemic-according-to-the-justice-department/amp/ >>> >>> Police officers committing domestic violence: >>> https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/380329/ >>> >>> The fact that ?SWATTING? exists: >>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting >>> >>> https://web.archive.org/web/20150216193032/http://newsok.com/court-document-reveals-more-about-sentinel-ok-bomb-threat/article/5386857 >>> >>> https://web.archive.org/web/20180709154458/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kansas-swatting/california-man-two-others-indicted-in-fatal-kansas-swatting-case-idUSKCN1IP065 >>> >>> https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/fortnite-world-champion-swatted-while-streaming-on-twitch/ >>> >>> Cops are ?scared? at work but there are plenty of other more deadly >>> occupations: >>> https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/1002500001 >>> https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/work-related-homicides-the-facts.pdf >>> >>> Bullshit police calls: >>> >>> https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2020/05/27/stop-calling-the-police-on-black-people/amp/ >>> >>> Cavity Searches: >>> https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.azcentral.com/amp/1873153001 >>> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/us/tampon-san-antonio.amp.html >>> >>> https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/michigan-lawsuit-officer-daniel-mack-illegal-body-cavity-search.amp >>> >>> Civil Forfeiture: >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States >>> >>> Planting evidence: >>> https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/4692-cops-planting-evidence >>> >>> Sexual misconduct: >>> >>> https://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/women-and-criminal-justice/nypd-police-officers-union-wants-keep-sexual >>> >>> And all of that compounded by police ?unions? and the ?blue code of >>> silence?. >>> >>> Anecdotally I have: >>> - had police show up to my home when I (3) ?play dialed? 911 on a phone >>> I thought wasn?t plugged in and my entire family had to go into the lawn, >>> in front of our neighbors, in our underwear >>> - had a police officer pull a hard u-turn in front of me, blocking the >>> road, and accusing me (12) of being a runaway >>> - had a police officer pull a hard u-turn across 4 lanes of traffic to >>> accuse me (14) of being a prostitute when my bus was late >>> - had a police officer threaten to commit me (17) for a letter I wrote >>> to a friend; when he said I could leave I fled, crying, and was later >>> detained by him and threatened with arrest for slamming a door >>> - had a police officer blame me (18) for my own rape, and belittled for >>> my father threatening to kill me; despite that, they felt the need to >>> handcuff my parents and threaten to shoot them >>> - was handcuffed when I (19) told my councilor I was suicidal >>> - had the cops called on me (23) for knocking on doors to find my lost >>> dog >>> - had cops jump my fence, enter my home without knocking through my back >>> door, and draw their guns on me because I (24) was taking a nap with the AC >>> off and the back door open >>> - had cops pull me (25) over on suspicion of drug use when I was >>> learning how to drive >>> >>> And you know when I did NOT call the police? Oh wait, I have never >>> called the police. (Unless you count that ?call? when I was like 4.) >>> >>> I have been raped (filed a report), threatened to be killed (filed a >>> report) and had a gun brandished and pointed at me (Trump had just been >>> elected and I was ?too white?, I did not file a report, I just moved). >>> >>> In maybe 99% of cases, calling police makes any situation worse. So >>> maybe just... don?t. There?s no need to arrest or accost people for minor >>> violations, or shoot people for having loud parties. Just fine them and be >>> done with it. >>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 avant at sollegro.com Sat Jun 6 06:35:14 2020 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Fri, 05 Jun 2020 23:35:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20200605233514.Horde.IvWMXpUbX7VSTjrMWayWFvH@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Quoting SR Ballard : > When people say ?no police? they mean that the police force and > prison system as they currently exist should be completely and > totally dismantled and a new thing created in their place. > Why? [snipped a lot of good reasons] How about this not getting rid of cops. Make patrol and beat cops mostly women. Make SWAT and other paramilitary cops mostly men. When a woman beat cop radios for backup for a situation she can't handle, only then do the testoterone laden assholes with assault rifles show up. Kind of like primary care versus a specialist. We could probably do this relatively easily by offering signing bonuses for women veterans, martial artists, combat sports athletes etc. Just a thought. Stuart LaForge From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 10:52:23 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 06:52:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> <9EB02C66-59C9-4113-A190-F5ECBFC53C01@gmail.com> <3912C301-F651-424D-B955-F249CF8A05E5@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 6:10 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: *> I have wondered, if Bernie had won (I have no illusions that Hillary > would have done this) and been in the President's seat today, if he might > have issued a statement like the following: "I advise most police to march > with, not against, the protestors. * > You're probably right about that, but at least Hillary would NOT have advised governors to "*dominate the battlespace*" with "*vicious dogs*" and with "*the most ominous weapons I have ever seen*". And she would have at least pretended to have some sympathy for the people marching in the streets, even Nixon gave Vietnam War protesters that much respect. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 11:26:23 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 07:26:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 8:28 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: *> Again, I bring up abolishing the police. It should always be on the > table, IMO.* Even that very radical move wouldn't necessarily solve the current problem. The Commander In Chief asked about using tanks to quell dissent, and Senator Tom Cotton (a Republacan of course) recommended putting the 101st Airborne division of the US Army into the streets of American cities to keep people in line. And it's still 5 months till November. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Jun 6 12:31:08 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 05:31:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <20200605233514.Horde.IvWMXpUbX7VSTjrMWayWFvH@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20200605233514.Horde.IvWMXpUbX7VSTjrMWayWFvH@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: <002801d63bfe$5bb1cfc0$13156f40$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder Quoting SR Ballard : > When people say ?no police? they mean that the police force and prison > system as they currently exist should be completely and totally > dismantled and a new thing created in their place. > Why? [snipped a lot of good reasons] How about this not getting rid of cops. Make patrol and beat cops mostly women. Make SWAT and other paramilitary cops mostly men. When a woman beat cop radios for backup for a situation she can't handle, only then do the testoterone laden assholes with assault rifles show up. Kind of like primary care versus a specialist. We could probably do this relatively easily by offering signing bonuses for women veterans, martial artists, combat sports athletes etc. Just a thought. Stuart LaForge _______________________________________________ Stuart all of that assumes there is some objective way to tell the difference between "men" and "women." There was once thought to be such a criterion, but that has been debunked. Our gender is now fluid, it is whatever we say it is, and can change without surgery. I would still claim whatever gender is necessary at the time to collect the sign-on bonus of course. It's nothing personal, just business. People who advocate for disbanding police forces and emptying prisons have never visited a prison (oy vey, mercy.) If the constables decide to make a living some other way, we will miss them. Those who do not have guns will miss them even more. spike From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 14:18:08 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 09:18:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes Message-ID: Musicthatmakesyoudumb -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 14:25:35 2020 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 10:25:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> <9EB02C66-59C9-4113-A190-F5ECBFC53C01@gmail.com> <3912C301-F651-424D-B955-F249CF8A05E5@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 6:55 AM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > "*the most ominous weapons I have ever seen*" > I thought this was such a strange thing to say. What, does he have necromancers he's gonna unleash or something? Who the fuck calls their weapons ominous -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 14:50:13 2020 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 08:50:13 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> <9EB02C66-59C9-4113-A190-F5ECBFC53C01@gmail.com> <3912C301-F651-424D-B955-F249CF8A05E5@gmail.com> Message-ID: Tanks on the streets don't worry me anywhere /near/ as much as Air Force strike aircraft flyovers of major sporting events. "Hi. Here's your friendly neighborhood first world military with a friendly reminder that we could kill ten thousand of you with a single pull of this trigger, and another 2-3k if we linger around looking for stragglers! Have a GREAT weekend! ;) " Coming from a country where the air force acrobatics team uses cute little 60's-vintage jet trainers: yikes. On Sat, Jun 6, 2020, 8:32 AM Will Steinberg via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 6:55 AM John Clark via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> "*the most ominous weapons I have ever seen*" >> > > I thought this was such a strange thing to say. What, does he have > necromancers he's gonna unleash or something? Who the fuck calls their > weapons ominous > _______________________________________________ > 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 sen.otaku at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 16:08:03 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 11:08:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Link doesn?t work. > On Jun 6, 2020, at 9:18 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > > > Musicthatmakesyoudumb > > _______________________________________________ > 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 sen.otaku at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 16:10:44 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 11:10:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <20200605233514.Horde.IvWMXpUbX7VSTjrMWayWFvH@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20200605233514.Horde.IvWMXpUbX7VSTjrMWayWFvH@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: <05C456BC-2138-4AB7-BAF2-8CAC9BCFF3EC@gmail.com> I actually think female police might be more likely to use deadly force due to lower average muscle mass in women. And I think nearly anyone would see the plan as intolerably sexist. SR Ballard > On Jun 6, 2020, at 1:35 AM, Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat wrote: > > > Quoting SR Ballard : > >> When people say ?no police? they mean that the police force and prison system as they currently exist should be completely and totally dismantled and a new thing created in their place. >> Why? > [snipped a lot of good reasons] > > How about this not getting rid of cops. Make patrol and beat cops mostly women. Make SWAT and other paramilitary cops mostly men. When a woman beat cop radios for backup for a situation she can't handle, only then do the testoterone laden assholes with assault rifles show up. Kind of like primary care versus a specialist. > > We could probably do this relatively easily by offering signing bonuses for women veterans, martial artists, combat sports athletes etc. > > Just a thought. > > Stuart LaForge > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 16:10:49 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 12:10:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> <9EB02C66-59C9-4113-A190-F5ECBFC53C01@gmail.com> <3912C301-F651-424D-B955-F249CF8A05E5@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 10:52 AM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: *> Tanks on the streets don't worry me anywhere /near/ as much as Air Force > strike aircraft flyovers of major sporting events.* > They've already ordered military helicopters to hover low over protestors to intimidate them with the deafening noise and very powerful downward rotor wash. DC Guard To Investigate Helicopter Maneuvers To Show Force John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 16:11:37 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 11:11:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I just copied the image into the email. You can't see it? bill w On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 11:10 AM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Link doesn?t work. > > On Jun 6, 2020, at 9:18 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > Musicthatmakesyoudumb > > _______________________________________________ > 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 17:23:03 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 13:23:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] NASA Scientists Plan To Approach Girl Message-ID: NASA Scientists Plan To Approach Girl John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 18:02:21 2020 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 12:02:21 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> <9EB02C66-59C9-4113-A190-F5ECBFC53C01@gmail.com> <3912C301-F651-424D-B955-F249CF8A05E5@gmail.com> Message-ID: Substantially less odds of killing or permanently injuring people than billy clubs, rubber bullets and tear gas - I think I'm ok with that one. Fairly decent thinking outside the box for the authorities. There is, in contrast, /no/ way to employ a strike aircraft as a non-lethal weapon. [And darned few ways to use a tank non-lethally, for that matter.] On Sat, Jun 6, 2020, 10:28 AM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 10:52 AM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > *> Tanks on the streets don't worry me anywhere /near/ as much as Air >> Force strike aircraft flyovers of major sporting events.* >> > > They've already ordered military helicopters to hover low over protestors > to intimidate them with the deafening noise and very powerful downward > rotor wash. > > DC Guard To Investigate Helicopter Maneuvers To Show Force > > > 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 Sat Jun 6 18:26:06 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 13:26:06 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <05C456BC-2138-4AB7-BAF2-8CAC9BCFF3EC@gmail.com> References: <20200605233514.Horde.IvWMXpUbX7VSTjrMWayWFvH@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> <05C456BC-2138-4AB7-BAF2-8CAC9BCFF3EC@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 11:18 AM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > I actually think female police might be more likely to use deadly force > due to lower average muscle mass in women. > > And I think nearly anyone would see the plan as intolerably sexist. > > SR Ballard > Margaret Mead said that the reason wars weren't fought by women was that > if they were the human race would now be extinct. Women are fierce, take > no prisoners - total destruction, once they get their dander up. bill w > > On Jun 6, 2020, at 1:35 AM, Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > Quoting SR Ballard : > > > >> When people say ?no police? they mean that the police force and prison > system as they currently exist should be completely and totally dismantled > and a new thing created in their place. > >> Why? > > [snipped a lot of good reasons] > > > > How about this not getting rid of cops. Make patrol and beat cops mostly > women. Make SWAT and other paramilitary cops mostly men. When a woman beat > cop radios for backup for a situation she can't handle, only then do the > testoterone laden assholes with assault rifles show up. Kind of like > primary care versus a specialist. > > > > We could probably do this relatively easily by offering signing bonuses > for women veterans, martial artists, combat sports athletes etc. > > > > Just a thought. > > > > Stuart LaForge > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 Sat Jun 6 18:29:12 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 13:29:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <33FD9673-6CF6-4F68-A993-41BCCF3135A7@gmail.com> <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63b5d$411e4b30$c35ae190$@rainier66.com> <9EB02C66-59C9-4113-A190-F5ECBFC53C01@gmail.com> <3912C301-F651-424D-B955-F249CF8A05E5@gmail.com> Message-ID: I can understand using force for the looting and the destruction of property. But we do have a Constitution, as Spike keeps reminding us, and it lets us peacefully assemble. Unless the peace part fails, there should be no efforts whatsoever to stop a protest. bill w On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 1:04 PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Substantially less odds of killing or permanently injuring people than > billy clubs, rubber bullets and tear gas - I think I'm ok with that one. > Fairly decent thinking outside the box for the authorities. > > There is, in contrast, /no/ way to employ a strike aircraft as a > non-lethal weapon. [And darned few ways to use a tank non-lethally, for > that matter.] > > On Sat, Jun 6, 2020, 10:28 AM John Clark via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 10:52 AM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >> *> Tanks on the streets don't worry me anywhere /near/ as much as Air >>> Force strike aircraft flyovers of major sporting events.* >>> >> >> They've already ordered military helicopters to hover low over protestors >> to intimidate them with the deafening noise and very powerful downward >> rotor wash. >> >> DC Guard To Investigate Helicopter Maneuvers To Show Force >> >> >> John K Clark >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 19:08:45 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 14:08:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] scan Message-ID: For those of us who need --well, you know. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 19:18:59 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 14:18:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] let's try again Message-ID: For those of us who need --well, you know. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-wearable-brain-scanner-technology-imaging.html bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 20:20:30 2020 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 16:20:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] scan In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ??? On Sat, Jun 6, 2020, 3:09 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > For those of us who need --well, you know. > > 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 sen.otaku at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 20:38:10 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 15:38:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <002801d63bfe$5bb1cfc0$13156f40$@rainier66.com> References: <20200605233514.Horde.IvWMXpUbX7VSTjrMWayWFvH@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> <002801d63bfe$5bb1cfc0$13156f40$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <2E23C85C-7506-4C34-A376-81CD32407D78@gmail.com> Spike, when you go on that there is no ?objective way? to determine now, you act as if people will easily and willingly claim a gender their delivery doctor wouldn?t expect. There are very real social and personal costs for being publicly trans. It is not likely someone would put on such an emotionally difficult charade for a sign on bonus. In a highly competitive, cut throat situation like high-level athleticism I think it is very plausible, but gendered bonuses are illegal in most Anglophone countries, rendering those pressure null. I have never visited a jail prison but have lived and worked closely with former prisoners. My father was incarcerated for a year on non-payment of child support. That seems a bit inhumane to me. I don?t think that requires jail. I did applications for restoration of felon?s voting rights when I worked in politics. A shockingly large number were fairly normal barring the fact that they usually couldn?t read and never finished high school. A friend of mine in high school did time for selling weed. He?s just a normal dude. Furthering that, a large percent of prisoners in the US are mentally ill. They would be better served in a psychiatric institution that was dismantled a while back. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentally_ill_people_in_United_States_jails_and_prisons#Prevalence Psychiatric institutions, curiously, have usually suffered violence from nurses rather than other patients. Patients are medicated out of their violence (that is it?s own set of issues). I have spent time at various psych hospitals and most of the people there have been to jail or prison, perfectly fine to me and there was no gang violence or stabbings. Women?s shelter was the same. Most of the women had been to jail or prison but were perfectly pleasant. In jail and prison, you do what you must to survive. Did you know in other countries that they have prisons without the issues our prisons have? SR Ballard > Stuart all of that assumes there is some objective way to tell the > difference between "men" and "women." There was once thought to be such a > criterion, but that has been debunked. Our gender is now fluid, it is > whatever we say it is, and can change without surgery. I would still claim > whatever gender is necessary at the time to collect the sign-on bonus of > course. It's nothing personal, just business. > > People who advocate for disbanding police forces and emptying prisons have > never visited a prison (oy vey, mercy.) If the constables decide to make a > living some other way, we will miss them. Those who do not have guns will > miss them even more. > > 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 sen.otaku at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 20:40:28 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 15:40:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> There was a link at the bottom SR Ballard > On Jun 6, 2020, at 11:11 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > I just copied the image into the email. You can't see it? bill w > >> On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 11:10 AM SR Ballard via extropy-chat wrote: >> Link doesn?t work. >> >>> On Jun 6, 2020, at 9:18 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> Musicthatmakesyoudumb >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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 > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 6 20:53:35 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 13:53:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <2E23C85C-7506-4C34-A376-81CD32407D78@gmail.com> References: <20200605233514.Horde.IvWMXpUbX7VSTjrMWayWFvH@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> <002801d63bfe$5bb1cfc0$13156f40$@rainier66.com> <2E23C85C-7506-4C34-A376-81CD32407D78@gmail.com> Message-ID: <001d01d63c44$8c62b490$a5281db0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of SR Ballard via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder >?Spike, when you go on that there is no ?objective way? to determine now, you act as if people will easily and willingly claim a gender their delivery doctor wouldn?t expect? Delivery doctor? I am pretty sure mine has died a long time ago. In any case, modern doctors will have no expectations. >?There are very real social and personal costs for being publicly trans. It is not likely someone would put on such an emotionally difficult charade for a sign on bonus? SR, in the world I am being thrust into, we are all trans. We are told that gender is a state of mind. Well, OK, who am I to question that? I don?t know what goes on in other peoples? minds. >?In a highly competitive, cut throat situation like high-level athleticism I think it is very plausible, but gendered bonuses are illegal in most Anglophone countries, rendering those pressure null? Ja. I have no intentions of claiming to be female SR. >?Furthering that, a large percent of prisoners in the US are mentally ill. They would be better served in a psychiatric institution that was dismantled a while back? Ja. If we didn?t have prisons, we would be in one hell of a jam. Regarding psychiatric institutions being dismantled, most people do not know why that was done. But we do: lack of customers. >?Did you know in other countries that they have prisons without the issues our prisons have? SR Ballard SR, how can we know? It could be that in other countries they can legally incarcerate psychiatric patients and they do this out of sight. We wouldn?t know if they were doing that. In the US, we cannot hold psychiatric patients against their will unless they have committed a crime and have been convicted. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 21:08:10 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 16:08:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> References: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> Message-ID: But did you get the image? The chart? bill w On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 3:48 PM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > There was a link at the bottom > > SR Ballard > > On Jun 6, 2020, at 11:11 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > I just copied the image into the email. You can't see it? bill w > > On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 11:10 AM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Link doesn?t work. >> >> On Jun 6, 2020, at 9:18 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >> >> Musicthatmakesyoudumb >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 >> > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sat Jun 6 21:25:58 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 14:25:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> References: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> Message-ID: <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of SR Ballard via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes There was a link at the bottom SR Ballard Here it is: https://www.labnol.org/internet/music-taste-linked-to-intelligence/7489/ The title of the article claims one?s taste in music can reveal how smart or dumb you are, but that isn?t right. The SAT score can reveal how smart or dumb you are, and how smart or dumb you are might reveal (to some extent) what your taste in music might be. The article has it backwards. In any case? it worked. I looked up my SAT score (OK, well off the right side of the scale (sheesh no wonder I was clobbered at the Humility Olympics)) and found Sufjan Stevens. Never heard of him or her, so? Google, found him, I like it. Down there on the wrong end is Hip Hop, Lil Wayne (never heard of him) Beyonce (isn?t she model or something?) T.I. (never heard of him or her) sheesh most of this stuff I never heard of on both ends of the scale. I fear that I am terminally not hip. I see two of my favorites in there, Eagles, Beatles, Johnny Cash, Josh Groban. Some of these I really don?t get: Bob Dylan? Most of the time he wasn?t even trying to sing as far as I could tell. Where is Roy Orbison on this chart? Glenn Campbell? John Denver? Can anyone suggest a reason why it is that our musical taste seems to be somehow determined in our childhood, then doesn?t change much after that for most of us? BillW or anyone, why? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 21:42:14 2020 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 15:42:14 -0600 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> References: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: The plot may not be... /entirely/ rigorous, seeing as how "Beethoven" and "Classical" are on opposite ends of the spread. :) On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 3:29 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *SR Ballard via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes > > > > There was a link at the bottom > > SR Ballard > > > > > > > > > > Here it is: > > > > https://www.labnol.org/internet/music-taste-linked-to-intelligence/7489/ > > > > The title of the article claims one?s taste in music can reveal how smart > or dumb you are, but that isn?t right. The SAT score can reveal how smart > or dumb you are, and how smart or dumb you are might reveal (to some > extent) what your taste in music might be. > > > > The article has it backwards. > > > > In any case? it worked. I looked up my SAT score (OK, well off the right > side of the scale (sheesh no wonder I was clobbered at the Humility > Olympics)) and found Sufjan Stevens. Never heard of him or her, so? > Google, found him, I like it. > > > > Down there on the wrong end is Hip Hop, Lil Wayne (never heard of him) > Beyonce (isn?t she model or something?) T.I. (never heard of him or her) > sheesh most of this stuff I never heard of on both ends of the scale. I > fear that I am terminally not hip. > > > > I see two of my favorites in there, Eagles, Beatles, Johnny Cash, Josh > Groban. > > > > Some of these I really don?t get: Bob Dylan? Most of the time he wasn?t > even trying to sing as far as I could tell. Where is Roy Orbison on this > chart? Glenn Campbell? John Denver? > > > > Can anyone suggest a reason why it is that our musical taste seems to be > somehow determined in our childhood, then doesn?t change much after that > for most of us? BillW or anyone, why? > > > > 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 steinberg.will at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 21:44:35 2020 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 17:44:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> References: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Lol @ Spike discovering Sufjan Stevens XD Decade or two too late my friend :P SAT scores only show how prepared you are to take the SAT. Can be for a variety of reasons. Some very very smart people who I know also did not great on the SAT. I missed one question off a perfect SAT score but I love Little Wayne (his wordplay is excellent.) On Sat, Jun 6, 2020, 17:28 spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *SR Ballard via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes > > > > There was a link at the bottom > > SR Ballard > > > > > > > > > > Here it is: > > > > https://www.labnol.org/internet/music-taste-linked-to-intelligence/7489/ > > > > The title of the article claims one?s taste in music can reveal how smart > or dumb you are, but that isn?t right. The SAT score can reveal how smart > or dumb you are, and how smart or dumb you are might reveal (to some > extent) what your taste in music might be. > > > > The article has it backwards. > > > > In any case? it worked. I looked up my SAT score (OK, well off the right > side of the scale (sheesh no wonder I was clobbered at the Humility > Olympics)) and found Sufjan Stevens. Never heard of him or her, so? > Google, found him, I like it. > > > > Down there on the wrong end is Hip Hop, Lil Wayne (never heard of him) > Beyonce (isn?t she model or something?) T.I. (never heard of him or her) > sheesh most of this stuff I never heard of on both ends of the scale. I > fear that I am terminally not hip. > > > > I see two of my favorites in there, Eagles, Beatles, Johnny Cash, Josh > Groban. > > > > Some of these I really don?t get: Bob Dylan? Most of the time he wasn?t > even trying to sing as far as I could tell. Where is Roy Orbison on this > chart? Glenn Campbell? John Denver? > > > > Can anyone suggest a reason why it is that our musical taste seems to be > somehow determined in our childhood, then doesn?t change much after that > for most of us? BillW or anyone, why? > > > > 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 Sat Jun 6 21:57:03 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 16:57:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> References: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: No idea Spike. Taste gels around age 35 is the only data with which I am familiar. However, I must be an unusual case since I have accepted some really atonal composers when I was long past 35. But - my tastes in pop music gelled in the 70s (I say that, but truthfully I have not listened to pop since then - only occasionally scanning the radio dial in the car and finding nothing to like). There's a lot of female vocalists around now and I don't care for their timbre, and their 'can't seem to find the note' styles - gimme tenors, but strong ones, not teen falsetto ones screaming. Cash one of the very few basses in pop/country. What did the chart get backward? And here's a case of no proofreading (naughty, naughty) I see two of my favorites in there, Eagles, Beatles, Johnny Cash, Josh Groban. The first time I saw Roy Orbison play and sing I thought he was doing a parody. Never did like most of the Beatles - Eagles are great. Cash and GRoban I don't know (heard of Cash). This is interesting to me because I see some indication that when some dementia starts the person's tastes get lower, such as when my former chairman who had a stroke got addicted to soap operas. bill w On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 4:29 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *SR Ballard via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes > > > > There was a link at the bottom > > SR Ballard > > > > > > > > > > Here it is: > > > > https://www.labnol.org/internet/music-taste-linked-to-intelligence/7489/ > > > > The title of the article claims one?s taste in music can reveal how smart > or dumb you are, but that isn?t right. The SAT score can reveal how smart > or dumb you are, and how smart or dumb you are might reveal (to some > extent) what your taste in music might be. > > > > The article has it backwards. > > > > In any case? it worked. I looked up my SAT score (OK, well off the right > side of the scale (sheesh no wonder I was clobbered at the Humility > Olympics)) and found Sufjan Stevens. Never heard of him or her, so? > Google, found him, I like it. > > > > Down there on the wrong end is Hip Hop, Lil Wayne (never heard of him) > Beyonce (isn?t she model or something?) T.I. (never heard of him or her) > sheesh most of this stuff I never heard of on both ends of the scale. I > fear that I am terminally not hip. > > > > I see two of my favorites in there, Eagles, Beatles, Johnny Cash, Josh > Groban. > > > > Some of these I really don?t get: Bob Dylan? Most of the time he wasn?t > even trying to sing as far as I could tell. Where is Roy Orbison on this > chart? Glenn Campbell? John Denver? > > > > Can anyone suggest a reason why it is that our musical taste seems to be > somehow determined in our childhood, then doesn?t change much after that > for most of us? BillW or anyone, why? > > > > 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 Sat Jun 6 21:57:40 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 16:57:40 -0500 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: References: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Yeah, Darin, I saw that too. ??? bill w On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 4:45 PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > The plot may not be... /entirely/ rigorous, seeing as how "Beethoven" and > "Classical" are on opposite ends of the spread. :) > > On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 3:29 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> >> >> > *On Behalf Of *SR Ballard via extropy-chat >> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes >> >> >> >> There was a link at the bottom >> >> SR Ballard >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Here it is: >> >> >> >> https://www.labnol.org/internet/music-taste-linked-to-intelligence/7489/ >> >> >> >> The title of the article claims one?s taste in music can reveal how smart >> or dumb you are, but that isn?t right. The SAT score can reveal how smart >> or dumb you are, and how smart or dumb you are might reveal (to some >> extent) what your taste in music might be. >> >> >> >> The article has it backwards. >> >> >> >> In any case? it worked. I looked up my SAT score (OK, well off the right >> side of the scale (sheesh no wonder I was clobbered at the Humility >> Olympics)) and found Sufjan Stevens. Never heard of him or her, so? >> Google, found him, I like it. >> >> >> >> Down there on the wrong end is Hip Hop, Lil Wayne (never heard of him) >> Beyonce (isn?t she model or something?) T.I. (never heard of him or her) >> sheesh most of this stuff I never heard of on both ends of the scale. I >> fear that I am terminally not hip. >> >> >> >> I see two of my favorites in there, Eagles, Beatles, Johnny Cash, Josh >> Groban. >> >> >> >> Some of these I really don?t get: Bob Dylan? Most of the time he wasn?t >> even trying to sing as far as I could tell. Where is Roy Orbison on this >> chart? Glenn Campbell? John Denver? >> >> >> >> Can anyone suggest a reason why it is that our musical taste seems to be >> somehow determined in our childhood, then doesn?t change much after that >> for most of us? BillW or anyone, why? >> >> >> >> spike >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 22:24:03 2020 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 08:24:03 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <001d01d63c44$8c62b490$a5281db0$@rainier66.com> References: <20200605233514.Horde.IvWMXpUbX7VSTjrMWayWFvH@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> <002801d63bfe$5bb1cfc0$13156f40$@rainier66.com> <2E23C85C-7506-4C34-A376-81CD32407D78@gmail.com> <001d01d63c44$8c62b490$a5281db0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 7 Jun 2020 at 06:58, spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *SR Ballard via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder > > > > > > > > > > > > >?Spike, when you go on that there is no ?objective way? to determine now, > you act as if people will easily and willingly claim a gender their > delivery doctor wouldn?t expect? > > > > Delivery doctor? I am pretty sure mine has died a long time ago. In any > case, modern doctors will have no expectations. > > > > >?There are very real social and personal costs for being publicly trans. > It is not likely someone would put on such an emotionally difficult charade > for a sign on bonus? > > > > SR, in the world I am being thrust into, we are all trans. We are told > that gender is a state of mind. Well, OK, who am I to question that? I > don?t know what goes on in other peoples? minds. > > > > >?In a highly competitive, cut throat situation like high-level > athleticism I think it is very plausible, but gendered bonuses are illegal > in most Anglophone countries, rendering those pressure null? > > > > Ja. I have no intentions of claiming to be female SR. > > > > >?Furthering that, a large percent of prisoners in the US are mentally > ill. They would be better served in a psychiatric institution that was > dismantled a while back? > > > > Ja. If we didn?t have prisons, we would be in one hell of a jam. > Regarding psychiatric institutions being dismantled, most people do not > know why that was done. But we do: lack of customers. > > > > >?Did you know in other countries that they have prisons without the > issues our prisons have? SR Ballard > > SR, how can we know? It could be that in other countries they can legally > incarcerate psychiatric patients and they do this out of sight. We > wouldn?t know if they were doing that. In the US, we cannot hold > psychiatric patients against their will unless they have committed a crime > and have been convicted. > That?s not true. Laws differ from state to state, but there are legal mechanisms to detain and treat people who present a serious risk to themselves or others due to mental illness. I don?t think there is anywhere in the world where someone with dementia or psychosis, for example, would be allowed to wander into traffic on the grounds that they have not been convicted of a crime. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Jun 6 22:25:51 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 15:25:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: References: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <004c01d63c51$702cf3a0$5086dae0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Will Steinberg via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes >?Lol @ Spike discovering Sufjan Stevens XD >?Decade or two too late my friend ?? Hi Will hey, I have been busy the last decade or two: finishing up a career, then being a fulltime parent. {8^D I am not alone: I can imagine plenty of music non-hipsters in our world today, who would like Sufjan Stevens if they ever heard of him. A lot of us play our own CDs in the car and we are too busy with other matters at home, so we don?t know the latest hip sounds on Americaaaaan Top Fortyyyyyyyy (is Casey Kasem still doing those? (no I suppose not (he would hafta be about 90 yrs old by now (but we loved that radio show.)))) If you want a good laugh: my car still has a cassette tape player and it still works really well. My cassettes are worn out so I don?t use them much now. >?SAT scores only show how prepared you are to take the SAT. Can be for a variety of reasons. Some very very smart people who I know also did not great on the SAT? Ja the argument claims that the prepared do better on the SAT, so it isn?t a fair test. Sheesh. OK cool, let?s look at it another way. Suppose we could (somehow) prevent anyone from preparing, so everyone went into the SAT cold. Then what would happen? Would the spread be smaller? Or just different? And why do we assume that there is some kind of class thing going on? My notion is that middle or lower middle class people are hungry but not too discouraged to try harder. So they are the ones who really put their shoulder into the test prep and do well. This would work against stratification of society with the same people generation after generation at the top, ja? I have vague doubts there was any serious research that went into the chart. It would make for a fun sociology experiment to try to make a real chart like this. I can see a problem with trying to correlate these: most people don?t remember their SAT scores unless they were extraordinary and on the right end of the spectrum. spike Here it is: https://www.labnol.org/internet/music-taste-linked-to-intelligence/7489/ spike _______________________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Jun 6 22:59:36 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 15:59:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <20200605233514.Horde.IvWMXpUbX7VSTjrMWayWFvH@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> <002801d63bfe$5bb1cfc0$13156f40$@rainier66.com> <2E23C85C-7506-4C34-A376-81CD32407D78@gmail.com> <001d01d63c44$8c62b490$a5281db0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <007801d63c56$26d02ec0$74708c40$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat SR, how can we know? It could be that in other countries they can legally incarcerate psychiatric patients and they do this out of sight. We wouldn?t know if they were doing that. In the US, we cannot hold psychiatric patients against their will unless they have committed a crime and have been convicted. That?s not true. Laws differ from state to state, but there are legal mechanisms to detain and treat people who present a serious risk to themselves or others due to mental illness. I don?t think there is anywhere in the world where someone with dementia or psychosis, for example, would be allowed to wander into traffic on the grounds that they have not been convicted of a crime. -- Stathis Papaioannou Hi Stathis, this touches on a controversial subject. There are emergency interventions, but in general being crazy alone cannot result in long-term commitment against a person?s will. Wandering in traffic is a legal infraction, so they could be arrested for that, then held. Dementia: oh dear what a morass is that question. In our society, we regularly put AD patients in lockdown when the patient is clearly suffering but haven?t committed a crime. An example case is where an AD sufferer starts tearing out a back patio with a crowbar and clearly hasn?t the capacity to build what she wants in its place. Well, it isn?t a crime to wreck your own house. It isn?t a crime to go wandering outdoors in one?s pajamas. Another example, grandma doesn?t recognize the man she has been married to for 55 years and sometimes goes into a panic when he comes home. Well? it?s his house too. But shrieking for help isn?t a crime. AD is a terrifying disease: the patient is often OK or mostly so in the morning, but they fade as the day progresses. We often do the equivalent of incarceration for those patients. They don?t want to be there, but have never committed a crime. A burden I have long carried is the notion that AD patients would likely be better if they had mental stimulation, which we damn well do have the technology to provide. I would invent that, but I suck. I am hoping people who do not will invent that, and get on it quickly. Make us some really good mental stimulation software, so we can fight back against Alzheimers. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 23:15:01 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 18:15:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <20200605233514.Horde.IvWMXpUbX7VSTjrMWayWFvH@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> <002801d63bfe$5bb1cfc0$13156f40$@rainier66.com> <2E23C85C-7506-4C34-A376-81CD32407D78@gmail.com> <001d01d63c44$8c62b490$a5281db0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Ja. If we didn?t have prisons, we would be in one hell of a jam. Regarding psychiatric institutions being dismantled, most people do not know why that was done. But we do: lack of customers spike Now Spike let's not run off without data. In 1973 the feds sued Alabama (and George Wallace): insufficient everything at the state psychiatric and the state mentally retarded institutions. (Some patients had been in there for decades and had nothing on their charts - no treatment of any kind. Lureen Wallace was governor because George could not run again. She came to Tuscaloosa, visited the institutions and gave a TV interview while crying and vowed to go back to Montgomery and get more money. Since George was really running the state you can guess how far she got.) Result, a lot of money was needed and the state didn't have it or wouldn't give it. Also at that time there were theories coming out that said that immersing a person in their own community was the answer, not putting them in large, inadequate institutions. So community mental health was started. One benefit was that many of the patients could stay at home and get drugs and therapy on an outpatient basis. I would say overall that it has not worked as intended but it did get a lot of economic pressure off fed and state govs. Yes, (as someone said) there are many psychiatric patients in local jails and in prisons. There is no other place to put them. They get little if any care. Some have died from lack of drugs, and some prisoners too who did not get their diabetes medicine or the like). The theory must be: just keep them off the streets (at about $30K a year in the prisons, so cost effectiveness is very poor here). AGain, to emphasize what I said in an earlier email, they have to be picked up and often no one will do that, or come up with bail in the case of misdeaneanors and felonies by the mental patients. Side effect: many criminals have to be let out on minimal bail because there is not room for them, even after putting many of them together - like 4 men to a 2 person cell. In 1973 Partlow, the MR place, had 4K people and was built for 2K. I do not know of a class of people in this country that are treated worse - as in 3rd world worse. Henry - jump in any time and update me and the group. I have not kept up with this issue. bill w On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 5:27 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > On Sun, 7 Jun 2020 at 06:58, spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> >> >> *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf >> Of *SR Ballard via extropy-chat >> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >?Spike, when you go on that there is no ?objective way? to determine >> now, you act as if people will easily and willingly claim a gender their >> delivery doctor wouldn?t expect? >> >> >> >> Delivery doctor? I am pretty sure mine has died a long time ago. In any >> case, modern doctors will have no expectations. >> >> >> >> >?There are very real social and personal costs for being publicly trans. >> It is not likely someone would put on such an emotionally difficult charade >> for a sign on bonus? >> >> >> >> SR, in the world I am being thrust into, we are all trans. We are told >> that gender is a state of mind. Well, OK, who am I to question that? I >> don?t know what goes on in other peoples? minds. >> >> >> >> >?In a highly competitive, cut throat situation like high-level >> athleticism I think it is very plausible, but gendered bonuses are illegal >> in most Anglophone countries, rendering those pressure null? >> >> >> >> Ja. I have no intentions of claiming to be female SR. >> >> >> >> >?Furthering that, a large percent of prisoners in the US are mentally >> ill. They would be better served in a psychiatric institution that was >> dismantled a while back? >> >> >> >> Ja. If we didn?t have prisons, we would be in one hell of a jam. >> Regarding psychiatric institutions being dismantled, most people do not >> know why that was done. But we do: lack of customers. >> >> >> >> >?Did you know in other countries that they have prisons without the >> issues our prisons have? SR Ballard >> >> SR, how can we know? It could be that in other countries they can >> legally incarcerate psychiatric patients and they do this out of sight. We >> wouldn?t know if they were doing that. In the US, we cannot hold >> psychiatric patients against their will unless they have committed a crime >> and have been convicted. >> > That?s not true. Laws differ from state to state, but there are legal > mechanisms to detain and treat people who present a serious risk to > themselves or others due to mental illness. I don?t think there is anywhere > in the world where someone with dementia or psychosis, for example, would > be allowed to wander into traffic on the grounds that they have not been > convicted of a crime. > >> -- > Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 6 23:26:01 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 18:26:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <007801d63c56$26d02ec0$74708c40$@rainier66.com> References: <20200605233514.Horde.IvWMXpUbX7VSTjrMWayWFvH@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> <002801d63bfe$5bb1cfc0$13156f40$@rainier66.com> <2E23C85C-7506-4C34-A376-81CD32407D78@gmail.com> <001d01d63c44$8c62b490$a5281db0$@rainier66.com> <007801d63c56$26d02ec0$74708c40$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: being crazy alone cannot result in long-term commitment against a person?s will. spike In most states a judge and a psychiatrist, or psychologist, or sometimes just an MD can get a person involuntarily incarcerated - but not for a long time; that has to be determined after admission. I saw a case where a man was put in a mental hospital because he refused to have an appendectomy. Not at all mentally ill. So they operated and he died. There are judges who, given certain promises, can do anything they like. bill w On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 6:01 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat > > SR, how can we know? It could be that in other countries they can legally > incarcerate psychiatric patients and they do this out of sight. We > wouldn?t know if they were doing that. In the US, we cannot hold > psychiatric patients against their will unless they have committed a crime > and have been convicted. > > That?s not true. Laws differ from state to state, but there are legal > mechanisms to detain and treat people who present a serious risk to > themselves or others due to mental illness. I don?t think there is anywhere > in the world where someone with dementia or psychosis, for example, would > be allowed to wander into traffic on the grounds that they have not been > convicted of a crime. > > -- > > Stathis Papaioannou > > > > > > > > Hi Stathis, this touches on a controversial subject. There are emergency > interventions, but in general being crazy alone cannot result in long-term > commitment against a person?s will. Wandering in traffic is a legal > infraction, so they could be arrested for that, then held. > > > > Dementia: oh dear what a morass is that question. In our society, we > regularly put AD patients in lockdown when the patient is clearly suffering > but haven?t committed a crime. An example case is where an AD sufferer > starts tearing out a back patio with a crowbar and clearly hasn?t the > capacity to build what she wants in its place. Well, it isn?t a crime to > wreck your own house. It isn?t a crime to go wandering outdoors in one?s > pajamas. Another example, grandma doesn?t recognize the man she has been > married to for 55 years and sometimes goes into a panic when he comes > home. Well? it?s his house too. But shrieking for help isn?t a crime. > > > > AD is a terrifying disease: the patient is often OK or mostly so in the > morning, but they fade as the day progresses. > > > > We often do the equivalent of incarceration for those patients. They > don?t want to be there, but have never committed a crime. > > > > A burden I have long carried is the notion that AD patients would likely > be better if they had mental stimulation, which we damn well do have the > technology to provide. I would invent that, but I suck. I am hoping > people who do not will invent that, and get on it quickly. Make us some > really good mental stimulation software, so we can fight back against > Alzheimers. > > > > 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 stathisp at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 23:26:35 2020 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 09:26:35 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <007801d63c56$26d02ec0$74708c40$@rainier66.com> References: <20200605233514.Horde.IvWMXpUbX7VSTjrMWayWFvH@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> <002801d63bfe$5bb1cfc0$13156f40$@rainier66.com> <2E23C85C-7506-4C34-A376-81CD32407D78@gmail.com> <001d01d63c44$8c62b490$a5281db0$@rainier66.com> <007801d63c56$26d02ec0$74708c40$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 7 Jun 2020 at 09:01, spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat > > SR, how can we know? It could be that in other countries they can legally > incarcerate psychiatric patients and they do this out of sight. We > wouldn?t know if they were doing that. In the US, we cannot hold > psychiatric patients against their will unless they have committed a crime > and have been convicted. > > That?s not true. Laws differ from state to state, but there are legal > mechanisms to detain and treat people who present a serious risk to > themselves or others due to mental illness. I don?t think there is anywhere > in the world where someone with dementia or psychosis, for example, would > be allowed to wander into traffic on the grounds that they have not been > convicted of a crime. > > -- > > Stathis Papaioannou > > > > > > > > Hi Stathis, this touches on a controversial subject. There are emergency > interventions, but in general being crazy alone cannot result in long-term > commitment against a person?s will. Wandering in traffic is a legal > infraction, so they could be arrested for that, then held. > > > > Dementia: oh dear what a morass is that question. In our society, we > regularly put AD patients in lockdown when the patient is clearly suffering > but haven?t committed a crime. An example case is where an AD sufferer > starts tearing out a back patio with a crowbar and clearly hasn?t the > capacity to build what she wants in its place. Well, it isn?t a crime to > wreck your own house. It isn?t a crime to go wandering outdoors in one?s > pajamas. Another example, grandma doesn?t recognize the man she has been > married to for 55 years and sometimes goes into a panic when he comes > home. Well? it?s his house too. But shrieking for help isn?t a crime. > > > > AD is a terrifying disease: the patient is often OK or mostly so in the > morning, but they fade as the day progresses. > > > > We often do the equivalent of incarceration for those patients. They > don?t want to be there, but have never committed a crime. > > > > A burden I have long carried is the notion that AD patients would likely > be better if they had mental stimulation, which we damn well do have the > technology to provide. I would invent that, but I suck. I am hoping > people who do not will invent that, and get on it quickly. Make us some > really good mental stimulation software, so we can fight back against > Alzheimers. > The criterion bot involuntary treatment in most jurisdictions is that the person has a mental illness and, as a result of this, presents a serious risk to themselves or others. Some jurisdictions define ?serious risk? more loosely than others. For example, if your child refuses to come out of their room and stops eating because they hear voices telling them you have poisoned their food, and they refuse treatment or even assessment because they don?t believe they are unwell, should they be treated against their will? This is not an uncommon presentation of a young person with schizophrenia. Some jurisdictions would allow early intervention, others would wait until they were actually showing signs of starvation. But to actually let them die because of a treatable condition that takes away their ability to reason would be a tragedy. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 23:35:10 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 18:35:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: <004c01d63c51$702cf3a0$5086dae0$@rainier66.com> References: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> <004c01d63c51$702cf3a0$5086dae0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Ja the argument claims that the prepared do better on the SAT, so it isn?t a fair test. Sheesh. You would have to live pretty far out in the boonies not to know that SAT prep was free all over the web. Me, I took the ACT. Context: you had to be in ROTC in 1960 - land grant college. So we marched here, filled out stuff, marched there, filled out stuff, etc. One of the things was the ACT. I marked answers at random and put my head down and took a long nap. Later college officials would look at my score, look at me, and ask how I got into Honors English. I think I made a 4 or something absurd (etymology of 'absurd' = away from the normal - I sure was). As far as 'fair' is concerned, there aren't any fair tests. You can always come up with some cultural variable background and claim unfairness. But fair for most? Yes And only those who make low scores complain. High ones never do, though some did get high scores by chance. Very few, though. bill w On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 5:35 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *Will Steinberg via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes > > > > >?Lol @ Spike discovering Sufjan Stevens XD > > > > >?Decade or two too late my friend ?? > > > > Hi Will hey, I have been busy the last decade or two: finishing up a > career, then being a fulltime parent. {8^D > > > > I am not alone: I can imagine plenty of music non-hipsters in our world > today, who would like Sufjan Stevens if they ever heard of him. A lot of > us play our own CDs in the car and we are too busy with other matters at > home, so we don?t know the latest hip sounds on Americaaaaan Top > Fortyyyyyyyy (is Casey Kasem still doing those? (no I suppose not (he would > hafta be about 90 yrs old by now (but we loved that radio show.)))) > > > > If you want a good laugh: my car still has a cassette tape player and it > still works really well. My cassettes are worn out so I don?t use them > much now. > > > > >?SAT scores only show how prepared you are to take the SAT. Can be for a > variety of reasons. Some very very smart people who I know also did not > great on the SAT? > > > > Ja the argument claims that the prepared do better on the SAT, so it isn?t > a fair test. Sheesh. > > > > OK cool, let?s look at it another way. Suppose we could (somehow) prevent > anyone from preparing, so everyone went into the SAT cold. Then what would > happen? Would the spread be smaller? Or just different? And why do we > assume that there is some kind of class thing going on? My notion is that > middle or lower middle class people are hungry but not too discouraged to > try harder. So they are the ones who really put their shoulder into the > test prep and do well. This would work against stratification of society > with the same people generation after generation at the top, ja? > > > > I have vague doubts there was any serious research that went into the > chart. > > > > It would make for a fun sociology experiment to try to make a real chart > like this. > > > > I can see a problem with trying to correlate these: most people don?t > remember their SAT scores unless they were extraordinary and on the right > end of the spectrum. > > > > spike > > > > > > > > Here it is: > > > > https://www.labnol.org/internet/music-taste-linked-to-intelligence/7489/ > > > > 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 Sun Jun 7 00:03:51 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 17:03:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder Message-ID: SR Ballard wrote: > I actually think female police might be more likely to use deadly force due to lower average muscle mass in women. That's something where there are probable numbers. But the police force is some significant fraction female. I can't think of a case where a female officer was involved in a non-justified killing, but there may be some. There are around 1000 killings by police every year. If female cops are 10%, then (if they kill at the same rate) they should be killing about a hundred a year. BTW, the rate of killing by the cops is going down in some places that emphasize de-escalation in training police. > And I think nearly anyone would see the plan as intolerably sexist. That might be the case, but it isn't a new idea. About 15 years ago, in "UpLift", a chapter that goes with "the clinic seed" I wrote: **** "Kanati mentioned your brother Ricky got in some kind of trouble," Floyd said. "Oh my God, did he." Marc shook his head. "My fool brother put the sound of racking a 12 gage pump shotgun on his cell phone as the ring tone. He was in a Pizza Hut line when the damned phone went off. Guy in front of him was undercover RCMP who some biker had threatened with a shotgun earlier that day." "What happened"? Floyd asked. "The Mountie tried to pull his gun and turn around. The gun went off, slug hit the floor and bits of lead and floor chopped up a little kid's legs. Fortunately, it wasn't too bad. The cops arrested Ricky. They were asking for bail. Before I could wire the money, the tribal lawyer got him released. The lawyer talked to the Crown attorney. The Crown told the RCMP a charge of threatening an officer with a cell phone ring tone wouldn't fly." Marc sighed. "At least he wasn't murdered by the cops like Leroy Shenandoah. My great uncle served in the Green Berets with him and grandfather was working with him in Philadelphia when that went down. Wish I could get Ricky to try for a job here, but his girlfriend won't consider it." Floyd commiserated on the time he had to bail out his brother and went on, "At least he wouldn't have to worry about nervous macho cops here." One of the directors of UpLift held strong opinions about police, so the entire force was female. ***** Keith From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun Jun 7 04:58:02 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 21:58:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder Message-ID: SR Ballard snip > Anecdotally I have: > - had police show up snip That's an impressive list. Until I got involved with the scientologists, my actual contact with the police was minimal, especially when you consider all the really dicey things we did with recreational explosives, cannons, rockets, cases of dynamite, and such. After I got involved with that fight, the clam cult corrupted cops, district attornies, court records, and judges. They have intimidated the FBI, the FDA, and other agencies. Perhaps the worse was when a SWAT team took down me and a friend in a shopping mall. We were in a car when we were jumped. The friend had been trained in escape driving as am embassy guard. It came to sub-seconds when he almost backed over two cops. I am sure the rest would have fired machine guns through us and right into the food court at a mall if that had happened. The friend had PTSD for the next year or two. All this is deeply documented if anyone ever has the nerve to go after the cult. Keith From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Jun 7 10:02:52 2020 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 06:02:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Signing your death warrant Message-ID: Recently the hospital administration, in their wisdom, decreed that I have to ask each and every patient I admit about his preferences regarding resuscitation. Previously I did not do it, the default being full resuscitation, that is doctors making all efforts to restart the patient's heart and breathing should they stop but be potentially recoverable. Now I have been asking the same questions multiple times a day and I am shocked about the answers I hear. Let's not discuss much those who say they do want to be resuscitated - aside from mentioning that sometimes people are distressed by having the question posed to them. Do they wonder if I am, well, hesitant to do everything to help them? That I am eager to let them drop dead, if they would give me an excuse? From the way many react I gather they get suspicious and I immediately reassure them that I only ask the question because "they make me do it". But very often, when I ask "If your heart stopped, would you like the doctors to help you or not?" they say "No, do not resuscitate, I have the papers, living will, advanced life directives and whatnot", as if they knew what we are talking about. If I stopped questioning right there, the order DNR would be entered on chart. But I always follow up with "So let me make sure we understand each other - if your heart stopped, and we could get it restarted, with an electric shock and medications, and get you back to your normal life, you want the doctors to stand around while you are dying and do nothing? Are you sure?". Nine times out of ten the patient, even the ones with all the papers filled out and signed and validated by lawyers, will say "Well, if you can get me back to normal, help me, I don't want to die, I just don't want to be hooked to a machine and never get off it". There is a common misunderstanding among patients that when they sign their DNR papers they just make sure that their lives would not end in a futile and painful ICU stay, on life support, to be eventually terminated without ever going back to a life worth living. But in fact, DNR means much more - it means no efforts will be made to help them even if their chance of recovery is high. I once had a patient who coded almost ten times, and was resuscitated successfully, usually within less than a minute by one or two defibrillator shots, and walked home none the worse for wear, with a new pacemaker. This situation, a sudden cardiac arrest in the hospital on telemetry (heart monitoring) is completely different from an unmonitored cardiac arrest, or arrest in the course of progressive and irreversible disease. The former has a very good prognosis, as in my patient with ten lives. The latter is what DNR should be about - situations when efforts are often futile and result in wrongful life - short, painful, meaningless survival of the body while the mind is already too far gone, even if not strictly speaking brain dead. Unfortunately the DNR papers don't really make a distinction between them, or the distinction is lost on many patients when they talk to their lawyers. How many hundreds of thousands of Americans are admitted to the hospital every day? How many tens of thousands have DNR orders they never really meant to authorize? What if your doctor just takes your "No, no, just let me go" at face value, and marks you for death you don't really want? My guess is it happens all the time but nobody pays attention because those who are harmed are all dead and speechless, and the paperwork is ok. If a doctor, a lawyer or another huckster asks you if you want to have DNR orders be sure you really know what the story is about. You don't want to sign your own death warrant accidentally, do you? Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Sun Jun 7 14:50:53 2020 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 10:50:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: References: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> <004c01d63c51$702cf3a0$5086dae0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Here is something I always wondered--and maybe should be ashamed of thinking because I studied statistics in grad school: So guessing on the SAT is weighted so the expected value of a question is the same no matter whether you guess or leave it blank--negative 1/4 points for a guess. However, if you don't answer a question, you lower your maximum score, no questions asked. Now if wrong answers lost you more points to make the expected value of guessing lower than not answering, I would find it hard to recommend guessing. But all things being equal, does guessing not have a hidden value--that you MAY still get those points? This is what I always thought. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Jun 7 15:07:14 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 11:07:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: References: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> <004c01d63c51$702cf3a0$5086dae0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Where is Weird Al Yankovic on this chart? He should be somewhere to the right of Beethoven but I don't see him. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 7 15:29:44 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 08:29:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: References: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> <004c01d63c51$702cf3a0$5086dae0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <008301d63ce0$78a294b0$69e7be10$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat Sent: Sunday, June 7, 2020 8:07 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes Where is Weird Al Yankovic on this chart? He should be somewhere to the right of Beethoven but I don't see him. John K Clark Weird Al was himself a brilliant student, according to those who knew him personally. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Jun 7 15:43:32 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 11:43:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: <008301d63ce0$78a294b0$69e7be10$@rainier66.com> References: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> <004c01d63c51$702cf3a0$5086dae0$@rainier66.com> <008301d63ce0$78a294b0$69e7be10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 11:33 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: *> Weird Al was himself a brilliant student, according to those who knew > him personally. * > I can believe that. BOB John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 7 15:51:36 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 08:51:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: <008301d63ce0$78a294b0$69e7be10$@rainier66.com> References: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> <004c01d63c51$702cf3a0$5086dae0$@rainier66.com> <008301d63ce0$78a294b0$69e7be10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00b101d63ce3$86b8a960$9429fc20$@rainier66.com> From: spike at rainier66.com > On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat Sent: Sunday, June 7, 2020 8:07 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes >?Where is Weird Al Yankovic on this chart? He should be somewhere to the right of Beethoven but I don't see him. John K Clark I am thinking of that chart again, and how to use it. We don?t need to be told how smart we are, since we already have our SAT scores (or ACT or equivalent.) We want to use the chart to figure out who would be a genre of music we might like, as I did with Sufjan over on the right side of the chart. We could expand that concept and use it to sell music to people who usually aren?t in the market. Rather than correlate music genres with SAT scores, we could correlate it with taste in cars, political attitudes (that one might be really interesting) favorite sports, personal wealth, favorite foods, and so forth, but really what we need is some way to reduce each of these things to a number. SAT scores do that for us, but how would we reduce any of this other stuff to a single number so we can graph that metric on the horizontal axis? Even SAT score is multidimensional (more than just the two main ones, math and English skill) so it could be we are mostly fooling ourselves if we pretend that can be effectively reduced to one number. How can we express favorite sports in one number? Of those categories I named, personal wealth might be the one which most readily reduces to one number. This looks like a terrific sociology experiment: get a bunch of undergrads to choose a factor, try to correlate music groups with it. Then we create a multi-dimensional matrix with their data, use our mathematical tricks we enginerds worked so hard to master, let proles find themselves in that multi-space by entering in the computer their favorite sports, their favorite cars, personal wealth, political preferences and so on, then calculate music groups they might like. In the meantime? we now have in our extremely valuable database? some extremely valuable data. We know their favorite cars and how much money they have. We have their email @. We send the richest proles focused advertising for their favorite cars, we make a cubic buttload. Or rather I do, but I will say nice things about you for giving me the idea to start with. Thanks BillW! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 7 16:18:41 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 09:18:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: References: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> <004c01d63c51$702cf3a0$5086dae0$@rainier66.com> <008301d63ce0$78a294b0$69e7be10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00da01d63ce7$4f563510$ee029f30$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 11:33 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: > Weird Al was himself a brilliant student, according to those who knew him personally. I can believe that. BOB John K Clark For fellow hardcore Weird Al fans willing to invest 7 delightful minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvSvz2_d9R8 Fun aside: there was an equation on the board in the background in a one-second shot from White and Nerdy. The equation is anatomically correct. That?s attention to detail. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun Jun 7 16:31:27 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 11:31:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes In-Reply-To: <00b101d63ce3$86b8a960$9429fc20$@rainier66.com> References: <0E61F0A1-3B1D-4839-80CD-2566A81C0578@gmail.com> <002d01d63c49$126b9d50$3742d7f0$@rainier66.com> <004c01d63c51$702cf3a0$5086dae0$@rainier66.com> <008301d63ce0$78a294b0$69e7be10$@rainier66.com> <00b101d63ce3$86b8a960$9429fc20$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: When I buy a book on Amazon I get a selection of books other people bought who bought my book. It's always books, but it could just as easily be music or clothes or anything. Or if I buy music it could recommend books. All you need is the data, and Amazon has it from hundreds of millions of people. I don't know how Spike can make any money from it but Amazon can. What seems to be needed is a different massaging of the data Amazon already has, looking for correlations between books bought and music bought (and any other combination one can think of). I have no way to do this. If you present the idea to Amazon they will just steal it and say they were already doing that.. bill w On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 10:56 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* spike at rainier66.com > > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *John Clark via extropy-chat > *Sent:* Sunday, June 7, 2020 8:07 AM > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] sat scores and musical tastes > > > > >?Where is Weird Al Yankovic on this chart? He should be somewhere to the > right of Beethoven but I don't see him. > > John K Clark > > > > > > I am thinking of that chart again, and how to use it. We don?t need to be > told how smart we are, since we already have our SAT scores (or ACT or > equivalent.) We want to use the chart to figure out who would be a genre > of music we might like, as I did with Sufjan over on the right side of the > chart. > > > > We could expand that concept and use it to sell music to people who > usually aren?t in the market. > > > > Rather than correlate music genres with SAT scores, we could correlate it > with taste in cars, political attitudes (that one might be really > interesting) favorite sports, personal wealth, favorite foods, and so > forth, but really what we need is some way to reduce each of these things > to a number. SAT scores do that for us, but how would we reduce any of > this other stuff to a single number so we can graph that metric on the > horizontal axis? > > > > Even SAT score is multidimensional (more than just the two main ones, math > and English skill) so it could be we are mostly fooling ourselves if we > pretend that can be effectively reduced to one number. How can we express > favorite sports in one number? Of those categories I named, personal > wealth might be the one which most readily reduces to one number. > > > > This looks like a terrific sociology experiment: get a bunch of undergrads > to choose a factor, try to correlate music groups with it. Then we create > a multi-dimensional matrix with their data, use our mathematical tricks we > enginerds worked so hard to master, let proles find themselves in that > multi-space by entering in the computer their favorite sports, their > favorite cars, personal wealth, political preferences and so on, then > calculate music groups they might like. > > > > In the meantime? we now have in our extremely valuable database? some > extremely valuable data. We know their favorite cars and how much money > they have. We have their email @. We send the richest proles focused > advertising for their favorite cars, we make a cubic buttload. Or rather I > do, but I will say nice things about you for giving me the idea to start > with. Thanks 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Sun Jun 7 17:04:40 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 12:04:40 -0500 Subject: [ExI] help me and Spike Message-ID: We are looking for the word that describes the software that recommends music or books to you based on what you bought. Thanks! bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Sun Jun 7 17:11:04 2020 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 13:11:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] help me and Spike In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: They're called recommender systems: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recommender_system On Sun, Jun 7, 2020, 1:08 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > We are looking for the word that describes the software that recommends > music or books to you based on what you bought. > > Thanks! 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 sen.otaku at gmail.com Sun Jun 7 17:36:36 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 12:36:36 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9CDEBA20-8CB6-49F5-956A-66973F2B63E2@gmail.com> Very shocking that it happened to you personally. I?m very aware of the situation, unfortunately. SR Ballard > On Jun 6, 2020, at 11:58 PM, Keith Henson via extropy-chat wrote: > > SR Ballard > > snip > >> Anecdotally I have: >> - had police show up > > snip > > That's an impressive list. > > Until I got involved with the scientologists, my actual contact with > the police was minimal, especially when you consider all the really > dicey things we did with recreational explosives, cannons, rockets, > cases of dynamite, and such. > > After I got involved with that fight, the clam cult corrupted cops, > district attornies, court records, and judges. They have intimidated > the FBI, the FDA, and other agencies. > > Perhaps the worse was when a SWAT team took down me and a friend in a > shopping mall. We were in a car when we were jumped. The friend had > been trained in escape driving as am embassy guard. It came to > sub-seconds when he almost backed over two cops. I am sure the rest > would have fired machine guns through us and right into the food court > at a mall if that had happened. The friend had PTSD for the next year > or two. > > All this is deeply documented if anyone ever has the nerve to go after the cult. > > Keith > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From sen.otaku at gmail.com Sun Jun 7 17:59:34 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 12:59:34 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Signing your death warrant In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Why can?t we have a separate classification of like... ?Limited Resuscitation? Orders? If they are a thing, I?ve never heard of them. And I have to admit, people are really not that knowledgeable about their own healthcare options and it?s very sad. On the other hand, I have family experience with doctors just straight up ignoring DNRs that they are painfully aware of, for both my aunt and grandmother. (Neither of them appreciated that, by the way. My aunt has a pain disorder and they did chest compressions on her. She lives in... basically agony everyday because of it.) Oh well... SR Ballard > On Jun 7, 2020, at 5:02 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat wrote: > > Recently the hospital administration, in their wisdom, decreed that I have to ask each and every patient I admit about his preferences regarding resuscitation. Previously I did not do it, the default being full resuscitation, that is doctors making all efforts to restart the patient's heart and breathing should they stop but be potentially recoverable. Now I have been asking the same questions multiple times a day and I am shocked about the answers I hear. > > Let's not discuss much those who say they do want to be resuscitated - aside from mentioning that sometimes people are distressed by having the question posed to them. Do they wonder if I am, well, hesitant to do everything to help them? That I am eager to let them drop dead, if they would give me an excuse? From the way many react I gather they get suspicious and I immediately reassure them that I only ask the question because "they make me do it". > > But very often, when I ask "If your heart stopped, would you like the doctors to help you or not?" they say "No, do not resuscitate, I have the papers, living will, advanced life directives and whatnot", as if they knew what we are talking about. If I stopped questioning right there, the order DNR would be entered on chart. But I always follow up with "So let me make sure we understand each other - if your heart stopped, and we could get it restarted, with an electric shock and medications, and get you back to your normal life, you want the doctors to stand around while you are dying and do nothing? Are you sure?". Nine times out of ten the patient, even the ones with all the papers filled out and signed and validated by lawyers, will say "Well, if you can get me back to normal, help me, I don't want to die, I just don't want to be hooked to a machine and never get off it". > > There is a common misunderstanding among patients that when they sign their DNR papers they just make sure that their lives would not end in a futile and painful ICU stay, on life support, to be eventually terminated without ever going back to a life worth living. But in fact, DNR means much more - it means no efforts will be made to help them even if their chance of recovery is high. I once had a patient who coded almost ten times, and was resuscitated successfully, usually within less than a minute by one or two defibrillator shots, and walked home none the worse for wear, with a new pacemaker. This situation, a sudden cardiac arrest in the hospital on telemetry (heart monitoring) is completely different from an unmonitored cardiac arrest, or arrest in the course of progressive and irreversible disease. The former has a very good prognosis, as in my patient with ten lives. The latter is what DNR should be about - situations when efforts are often futile and result in wrongful life - short, painful, meaningless survival of the body while the mind is already too far gone, even if not strictly speaking brain dead. > > Unfortunately the DNR papers don't really make a distinction between them, or the distinction is lost on many patients when they talk to their lawyers. How many hundreds of thousands of Americans are admitted to the hospital every day? How many tens of thousands have DNR orders they never really meant to authorize? What if your doctor just takes your "No, no, just let me go" at face value, and marks you for death you don't really want? > > My guess is it happens all the time but nobody pays attention because those who are harmed are all dead and speechless, and the paperwork is ok. > > If a doctor, a lawyer or another huckster asks you if you want to have DNR orders be sure you really know what the story is about. You don't want to sign your own death warrant accidentally, do you? > > Rafal > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 7 18:17:20 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 11:17:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Signing your death warrant In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <008301d63cf7$e2e649e0$a8b2dda0$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of SR Ballard via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Signing your death warrant >...Why can?t we have a separate classification of like... ?Limited Resuscitation? Orders? If they are a thing, I?ve never heard of them. ... >...Oh well... SR Ballard Rafal and SR, we must deal with the way ICU patients are cared for and paid for. If a person has no insurance, then a few weeks in the ICU would impoverish their family, then I can completely see why a person would want nothing to do with that. I wouldn't want that either. Ideally we should have some means of doing a limited-liability insurance policy whereby a person or family can buy some fixed amount, say 200k, to cover ICU expenses. Then by agreement, when that money is gone, I'm gone. spike > On Jun 7, 2020, at 5:02 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat wrote: > > Recently the hospital administration, in their wisdom, decreed that I have to ask each and every patient I admit about his preferences regarding resuscitation. Previously I did not do it... > > Rafal > _______________________________________________ From brent.allsop at gmail.com Sun Jun 7 19:07:04 2020 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 13:07:04 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Signing your death warrant In-Reply-To: <008301d63cf7$e2e649e0$a8b2dda0$@rainier66.com> References: <008301d63cf7$e2e649e0$a8b2dda0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Thanks for bringing this up Rafal, I'm completely frustrated with not knowing what to do with this, or what kind of "advanced life directive" I need. I'm signed up with Alcor, and expected they would provide me with one. I asked them, probably only once, in passing, quite a while ago, so it is probably my fault, but I am completely frustrated that they aren't at least providing a sample one, and telling me what is and isn't important, for Alcor to be most likely able to do what they need to do. Where does one go, to find a sample "advanced life directive" that is compatible with being signed up with Alcor? Do any of you Alcor people out there have one? Could I see a copy? Brent On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 12:21 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of > SR Ballard via extropy-chat > > Subject: Re: [ExI] Signing your death warrant > > >...Why can?t we have a separate classification of like... ?Limited > Resuscitation? Orders? If they are a thing, I?ve never heard of them. > ... > >...Oh well... > > SR Ballard > > > > > > > Rafal and SR, we must deal with the way ICU patients are cared for and > paid for. If a person has no insurance, then a few weeks in the ICU would > impoverish their family, then I can completely see why a person would want > nothing to do with that. I wouldn't want that either. > > Ideally we should have some means of doing a limited-liability insurance > policy whereby a person or family can buy some fixed amount, say 200k, to > cover ICU expenses. Then by agreement, when that money is gone, I'm gone. > > spike > > > > > > > On Jun 7, 2020, at 5:02 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > Recently the hospital administration, in their wisdom, decreed that I > have to ask each and every patient I admit about his preferences regarding > resuscitation. Previously I did not do it... > > > > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Sun Jun 7 19:33:13 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 14:33:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] resusitation Message-ID: Can't there be a form whereby we can legally defer our decision to a family member or friend, or just anyone we put on the list? bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 7 19:49:46 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 12:49:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] resusitation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <002c01d63d04$ccad47c0$6607d740$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: [ExI] resusitation >?Can't there be a form whereby we can legally defer our decision to a family member or friend, or just anyone we put on the list? bill w Hmmm, perhaps, but the family?s judgment might disagree with my own. When I am in need of resuscitation, my money is their money. I would opt to call in Alcor, they might opt to try to spend money they are going to need to keep my heart beating a little longer. I lived, I had fun. Now it is their turn. I was in the hospital in December. If being alive means being in that place, I want to save the money and let my family have that. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun Jun 7 20:02:31 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 15:02:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] resusitation In-Reply-To: <002c01d63d04$ccad47c0$6607d740$@rainier66.com> References: <002c01d63d04$ccad47c0$6607d740$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: The key is: what are the odds that resuscitation brings me back to a life worth living. Heart attacks really don't count here. Zap me back into life and give me pills or a pacemaker and I am back to nearly normal. Severe strokes count heavily: if they affect my frontal lobes I won't be the same person - maybe like having end stage Alzheimer's. Who wants that for a life? Partly paralyzed I can handle. All of which would be discussed with the people on my list. I assume calling 911 is equal to saying that I want to be resuscitated asap. Any decisions would be made later at the hospital after seeing what good the emts did. Legal question: can a person with power of attorney make the hospital let me go home even if I am in ICU? I am guessing no physician would sign a release form in that case. bill w On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 2:51 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > *Subject:* [ExI] resusitation > > > > >?Can't there be a form whereby we can legally defer our decision to a > family member or friend, or just anyone we put on the list? bill w > > > > > > > > Hmmm, perhaps, but the family?s judgment might disagree with my own. When > I am in need of resuscitation, my money is their money. I would opt to > call in Alcor, they might opt to try to spend money they are going to need > to keep my heart beating a little longer. I lived, I had fun. Now it is > their turn. > > > > I was in the hospital in December. If being alive means being in that > place, I want to save the money and let my family have that. > > > > 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 rhanson at gmu.edu Sun Jun 7 13:22:25 2020 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin D Hanson) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 13:22:25 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Signing your death warrant In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <04C8C973-E75D-43EE-8DD9-E879633FD994@gmu.edu> This seems important enough to be worth writing up into something for a wider audience. On Jun 7, 2020, at 6:02 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat > wrote: Recently the hospital administration, in their wisdom, decreed that I have to ask each and every patient I admit about his preferences regarding resuscitation. Previously I did not do it, the default being full resuscitation, that is doctors making all efforts to restart the patient's heart and breathing should they stop but be potentially recoverable. Now I have been asking the same questions multiple times a day and I am shocked about the answers I hear. Let's not discuss much those who say they do want to be resuscitated - aside from mentioning that sometimes people are distressed by having the question posed to them. Do they wonder if I am, well, hesitant to do everything to help them? That I am eager to let them drop dead, if they would give me an excuse? From the way many react I gather they get suspicious and I immediately reassure them that I only ask the question because "they make me do it". But very often, when I ask "If your heart stopped, would you like the doctors to help you or not?" they say "No, do not resuscitate, I have the papers, living will, advanced life directives and whatnot", as if they knew what we are talking about. If I stopped questioning right there, the order DNR would be entered on chart. But I always follow up with "So let me make sure we understand each other - if your heart stopped, and we could get it restarted, with an electric shock and medications, and get you back to your normal life, you want the doctors to stand around while you are dying and do nothing? Are you sure?". Nine times out of ten the patient, even the ones with all the papers filled out and signed and validated by lawyers, will say "Well, if you can get me back to normal, help me, I don't want to die, I just don't want to be hooked to a machine and never get off it". There is a common misunderstanding among patients that when they sign their DNR papers they just make sure that their lives would not end in a futile and painful ICU stay, on life support, to be eventually terminated without ever going back to a life worth living. But in fact, DNR means much more - it means no efforts will be made to help them even if their chance of recovery is high. I once had a patient who coded almost ten times, and was resuscitated successfully, usually within less than a minute by one or two defibrillator shots, and walked home none the worse for wear, with a new pacemaker. This situation, a sudden cardiac arrest in the hospital on telemetry (heart monitoring) is completely different from an unmonitored cardiac arrest, or arrest in the course of progressive and irreversible disease. The former has a very good prognosis, as in my patient with ten lives. The latter is what DNR should be about - situations when efforts are often futile and result in wrongful life - short, painful, meaningless survival of the body while the mind is already too far gone, even if not strictly speaking brain dead. Unfortunately the DNR papers don't really make a distinction between them, or the distinction is lost on many patients when they talk to their lawyers. How many hundreds of thousands of Americans are admitted to the hospital every day? How many tens of thousands have DNR orders they never really meant to authorize? What if your doctor just takes your "No, no, just let me go" at face value, and marks you for death you don't really want? My guess is it happens all the time but nobody pays attention because those who are harmed are all dead and speechless, and the paperwork is ok. If a doctor, a lawyer or another huckster asks you if you want to have DNR orders be sure you really know what the story is about. You don't want to sign your own death warrant accidentally, do you? Rafal _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://secure-web.cisco.com/10a5ofT94oMFk_WQFsmFPo6ykVuPq1zrgvTZIxiUP1NOML1bnQOIkE3GL_UpAmgMd9jhH-X7Zp4Yj4-D2z0-Vp24AHnIHwuT_LRJ-7k-3esqxbHGFcvBYtRnKy38SsOSvEIz1taovyje806LXmkKm3sQ2EMHd2jOfTOgARJv18NnX_ZCGz0--HGJj4DJc9DwAC6_7JNlU3mMATSMa13DvygOBZ0MGRV-scEP4yrF1OW1hM8sIv-nPRi5nSOB4pQPuQpEWvTCMLP4B-l4O1fAhZYmouajHccShF6eDBQlFOiDr-0FeudzbYSk-Aa7vHrf_Y5vdyBqTVT5TnSa_ZAyMC8iyNA09Ylol3Q7G1xv7nsWdfEqRAl3oi10n3HRmlNGhOm7C3Ks_hQeHvQDwIKmOoTkq5cCxwQh_CGM_NCf4ocfVL9XGxD-Z8kRp7e1b2vfx/http%3A%2F%2Flists.extropy.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo.cgi%2Fextropy-chat Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu Future of Humanity Inst., Oxford University Assoc. Prof. Economics, George Mason University See my books: http://ageofem.com http://elephantinthebrain.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 7 21:53:00 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 14:53:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Signing your death warrant In-Reply-To: <04C8C973-E75D-43EE-8DD9-E879633FD994@gmu.edu> References: <04C8C973-E75D-43EE-8DD9-E879633FD994@gmu.edu> Message-ID: <003401d63d16$03b42200$0b1c6600$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Robin D Hanson via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Signing your death warrant >.This seems important enough to be worth writing up into something for a wider audience. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu I agree with Robin. A doctor is also a teacher: part of the job is to teach your patient how to not do whatever it is that landed her in your office. I learned a lot from Rafal's post. Please may I forward it to the local Alcor community? spike On Jun 7, 2020, at 6:02 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat > wrote: Recently the hospital administration, in their wisdom, decreed that I have to ask each and every patient I admit about his preferences regarding resuscitation. . If a doctor, a lawyer or another huckster asks you if you want to have DNR orders be sure you really know what the story is about. You don't want to sign your own death warrant accidentally, do you? Rafal _______________________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Sun Jun 7 22:23:50 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 15:23:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <078C8A72-5A49-4AC8-90BD-148DEE4FB893@gmail.com> On Jun 4, 2020, at 10:55 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat wrote: > >> On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 7:46 PM spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: >> >> Universities are trending toward de-emphasizing objective metrics for admissions. Otherwise, their campus would be almost entirely Asian. Some schools find this unacceptable, so they look for ways around it. >> > > ### This is a topic of some interest to me, sincy my daughter who was born last week is half-Polish and half-Han. I had to answer questions about the race of her parents on the birth certificate and I filled her father's race as "Other" (Polish). Her mother wrote "Asian". In retrospect this was not the best approach. We could have both filled "Other" (Unknown). > > I am thinking about identifying as African-American, or maybe Latino. After all, if your gender is nowadays not determined by your sex chromosomes or your genitals but by how you identify, then race, which on good authority does not objectively exist and is a social construct, should be also open to individual interpretation. We have Ms Dolezal, genetically Czech but very black with the help of some heavy-duty tan cream and hair-curlers, so why not? Getting a 200 to 400 point boost on admission to an Ivy is definitely worth it. > > I'll start filling out all forms asking for race with "Other", "Unknown" for now but then let the events guide further interpretations. You never know if Oceania would continue to be at war with Eastasia forever, so flexibility may be very useful. > > I am reasonably confident though that filling in "Other" (American) would be seen as very suspect, possibly seditious and altogether racist. Failing to mention race every five minutes is the loudest dog-whistle we have for racists, as we all know, so saying you are American would be the death-knell for one's chances of success in our society. > > I'll get some tanning cream and give it a try. The view that either or both gender and race are social constructs doesn't exactly mean they're not objective -- at least not in the sense that they're totally whimsical. Think of money or language. Both are social constructs, but it's not true that anything goes with either. For instance, money relies on other people accepting what someone views as money. And gender and race are somewhat like this -- as one can see by variations on both across societies. For instance, with race, judging who's Black depends both on overall social rules and how people present themselves. On the latter, someone who can pass as White often does (and did more so in the past) and they were often accepted as White. (And what's White in the US varies over time and across communities.) And who's White or not doesn't map onto ancestry per se. Rachel Anne Dolezal certainly couldn't have passed the other way if this were not so. I'm wonder if you met her before she was "exposed," if you'd have thought she was passing or not -- as opposed to being a "light-skinned" African-American. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Jun 7 23:55:41 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 16:55:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: <078C8A72-5A49-4AC8-90BD-148DEE4FB893@gmail.com> References: <078C8A72-5A49-4AC8-90BD-148DEE4FB893@gmail.com> Message-ID: <005801d63d27$2745c0f0$75d142d0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat >?judging who's Black depends both on overall social rules and how people present themselves?Dan Hi Dan, since we have DNA tests now, why not just have a number? Numbers are such marvelous things. We can find a SubSaharan African group where we can be confident there is little outside genetic material, get some DNA tests, get some from here, from there, then when one does the test, we just see how much DNA they share with an identifiable group. This would be completely objective and independent on how one presents herself. This latest part is particularly of interest, because of the recent comment and apology by a politician (whose name I cannot recall) who suggested one?s political choices determines one?s race. Dan, regarding the comment ??depends?how people present themselves?? I ask: does that determine in any way one?s race? These DNA tests are really only reliable back about 6 generations or so, but my own African ancestor is only 5 generations back. The 60 dollar DNA tests picked it up in all of us who are on that branch of the family tree. So I have an actual number (verified by multiple DNA tests (two different services for several relatives (rather than a breezy claim (or a dark complexion (which can be faked.))))) Numbers are my friends. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 8 02:51:27 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 19:51:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] that's why Message-ID: <000001d63d3f$b4d9b990$1e8d2cb0$@rainier66.com> Many have questioned the justification for the 2nd amendment in modern America. Today we hear Minneapolis city council wants to defund their police force. What if? the citizens of Minneapolis had no right to bear arms. What would they do without a police force and without guns? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 03:16:32 2020 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2020 23:16:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: <005801d63d27$2745c0f0$75d142d0$@rainier66.com> References: <078C8A72-5A49-4AC8-90BD-148DEE4FB893@gmail.com> <005801d63d27$2745c0f0$75d142d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Jun 7, 2020, 7:58 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > These DNA tests are really only reliable back about 6 generations or so, > but my own African ancestor is only 5 generations back. The 60 dollar DNA > tests picked it up in all of us who are on that branch of the family tree. > So I have an actual number (verified by multiple DNA tests (two different > services for several relatives (rather than a breezy claim (or a dark > complexion (which can be faked.))))) > So genetic racism? Please spin me a tale about how DNA testing is going to make bigotry obsolete instead of double-down on hating those who are fundamentally "different" (even if those most prejudiced have no idea what the numbers actually mean) I think we're very clever to be reading sourcecode for a person's hardware, but i don't think we're mature enough to be using the information responsibly. Yeah, it's all great fun & games... for now. Other than gross incompetence being the saviour from dystopian futures, how are we building the ethical framework and legal protection to ensure we're not hog-tied and horse-whipped "by the numbers" that DNA exposes in every living thing on earth? > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 04:16:45 2020 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 14:16:45 +1000 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: <000001d63d3f$b4d9b990$1e8d2cb0$@rainier66.com> References: <000001d63d3f$b4d9b990$1e8d2cb0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 8 Jun 2020 at 12:54, spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > > Many have questioned the justification for the 2nd amendment in modern > America. Today we hear Minneapolis city council wants to defund their > police force. > > > > What if? the citizens of Minneapolis had no right to bear arms. What > would they do without a police force and without guns? > They are proposing replacing the existing police force with a better one: ?In Minneapolis and in cities across the US, it is clear that our system of policing is not keeping our communities safe,? said Lisa Bender, the Minneapolis city council president, at the event. ?Our efforts at incremental reform have failed, period. Our commitment is to do what?s necessary to keep every single member of our community safe and to tell the truth: that the Minneapolis police are not doing that. Our commitment is to end policing as we know it and to recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe.? https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/07/minneapolis-city-council-defund-police-george-floyd Even the poorest, most deprived states in the world generally find the resources to maintain a police force. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rocket at earthlight.com Mon Jun 8 11:11:34 2020 From: rocket at earthlight.com (Re Rose) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 07:11:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Signing your death warrant Message-ID: Rafal, I think this is a hugely important point! My late husband had a DNR, and then was in a catastrophic bicycle accident back in 2000. >From many prior discussions we had had about his DNR thoughts and wishes, I knew clearly his decison to have a DNR on file was only because he did not want to live with his life supported by machines, in chronic pain, or in full paralysis. The doctors did not know this, and I was asked repeatedly to allow them to take him off life support. As long as I thought he might, maybe, be brought back to health, I refused, against his team of the doctor's daily advice (as well as some family). I felt no hesitation at all, because if there was any chance for his recovery, I was not going to make an irrevocable decision with his precious life, against what I understood of his wishes. Only after it was clear that he could not possibly recover did I move forward and honor his specific wishes as expressed in his DNR, because now they were applicable. Survival for him would mean on a breathing apparatus and fully paralyzed. He did not want that, and I was clear on it. This understanding and distinction is so important! I'm so glad you brought this DNR issue up. The position of interpreting the wishes of the person who signed the DNR could fall on a family member as well as or in addition to on the patient's medical team. As a family member you can have this conversation with your loved ones before anything happens, so you can be sure you are carrying out their wishes, and with a clear concience. -Regina I also agree with whoever pointed out that Alcor has not given enough guidance on this -- maybe their paperwork on this could be clarified and/or updated. I ------------------------------------------------------ > On Jun 7, 2020, at 5:02 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Recently the hospital administration, in their wisdom, decreed that I have to ask each and every patient I admit about his preferences regarding resuscitation. Previously I did not do it, the default being full resuscitation, that is doctors making all efforts to restart the patient's heart and breathing should they stop but be potentially recoverable. Now I have been asking the same questions multiple times a day and I am shocked about the answers I hear. > > Let's not discuss much those who say they do want to be resuscitated - aside from mentioning that sometimes people are distressed by having the question posed to them. Do they wonder if I am, well, hesitant to do everything to help them? That I am eager to let them drop dead, if they would give me an excuse? From the way many react I gather they get suspicious and I immediately reassure them that I only ask the question because "they make me do it". > > But very often, when I ask "If your heart stopped, would you like the doctors to help you or not?" they say "No, do not resuscitate, I have the papers, living will, advanced life directives and whatnot", as if they knew what we are talking about. If I stopped questioning right there, the order DNR would be entered on chart. But I always follow up with "So let me make sure we understand each other - if your heart stopped, and we could get it restarted, with an electric shock and medications, and get you back to your normal life, you want the doctors to stand around while you are dying and do nothing? Are you sure?". Nine times out of ten the patient, even the ones with all the papers filled out and signed and validated by lawyers, will say "Well, if you can get me back to normal, help me, I don't want to die, I just don't want to be hooked to a machine and never get off it". > > There is a common misunderstanding among patients that when they sign their DNR papers they just make sure that their lives would not end in a futile and painful ICU stay, on life support, to be eventually terminated without ever going back to a life worth living. But in fact, DNR means much more - it means no efforts will be made to help them even if their chance of recovery is high. I once had a patient who coded almost ten times, and was resuscitated successfully, usually within less than a minute by one or two defibrillator shots, and walked home none the worse for wear, with a new pacemaker. This situation, a sudden cardiac arrest in the hospital on telemetry (heart monitoring) is completely different from an unmonitored cardiac arrest, or arrest in the course of progressive and irreversible disease. The former has a very good prognosis, as in my patient with ten lives. The latter is what DNR should be about - situations when efforts are often futile and result in wro! ngful life - short, painful, meaningless survival of the body while the mind is already too far gone, even if not strictly speaking brain dead. > > Unfortunately the DNR papers don't really make a distinction between them, or the distinction is lost on many patients when they talk to their lawyers. How many hundreds of thousands of Americans are admitted to the hospital every day? How many tens of thousands have DNR orders they never really meant to authorize? What if your doctor just takes your "No, no, just let me go" at face value, and marks you for death you don't really want? > > My guess is it happens all the time but nobody pays attention because those who are harmed are all dead and speechless, and the paperwork is ok. > > If a doctor, a lawyer or another huckster asks you if you want to have DNR orders be sure you really know what the story is about. You don't want to sign your own death warrant accidentally, do you? > > Rafal > ______________________________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 12:07:55 2020 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 08:07:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: References: <000001d63d3f$b4d9b990$1e8d2cb0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 12:19 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > They are proposing replacing the existing police force with a better one: > > ?In Minneapolis and in cities across the US, it is clear that our system > of policing is not keeping our communities safe,? said Lisa Bender, the > Minneapolis city council president, at the event. ?Our efforts at > incremental reform have failed, period. Our commitment is to do what?s > necessary to keep every single member of our community safe and to tell the > truth: that the Minneapolis police are not doing that. Our commitment is to > end policing as we know it and to recreate systems of public safety that > actually keep us safe.? > > > https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/07/minneapolis-city-council-defund-police-george-floyd > > Even the poorest, most deprived states in the world generally find the > resources to maintain a police force. > The problems with policing in the US are pretty well-known: - too-strong police unions - bad actors rarely punished by the police force - qualified immunity - bad actors rarely punished in civil court - militarization - military weapons and equipment without real need or proper training - excessive use of force - see https://8cantwait.org/ - culture of disrespect for citizens - us vs. them mentality instead of "protect & serve" - too many victimless crime laws - the Drug War does more harm than good - attracts bad actors - if you're racist and/or you want to be a badass, it's the place to work etc. Starting with a clean slate might fix some of them but it won't fix all of them. Politicians have to stand up to the unions. Congress has to end qualified immunity (there's a bill in the House now). Transfer of military equipment to police needs to stop. I think every use of force or allegation of wrongdoing by an officer should be reviewed by a citizen's review board empowered to recommend disciplinary actions, criminal charges, or firing, and these results should be a permanent part of every officer's record. State and federal governments will have to decriminalize drugs. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sen.otaku at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 15:05:12 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 10:05:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: References: <000001d63d3f$b4d9b990$1e8d2cb0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Completely agree. SR Ballard > On Jun 8, 2020, at 7:07 AM, Dave Sill via extropy-chat wrote: > >> On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 12:19 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat wrote: > >> >> They are proposing replacing the existing police force with a better one: >> >> ?In Minneapolis and in cities across the US, it is clear that our system of policing is not keeping our communities safe,? said Lisa Bender, the Minneapolis city council president, at the event. ?Our efforts at incremental reform have failed, period. Our commitment is to do what?s necessary to keep every single member of our community safe and to tell the truth: that the Minneapolis police are not doing that. Our commitment is to end policing as we know it and to recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe.? >> >> https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/07/minneapolis-city-council-defund-police-george-floyd >> >> Even the poorest, most deprived states in the world generally find the resources to maintain a police force. > > The problems with policing in the US are pretty well-known: > > - too-strong police unions - bad actors rarely punished by the police force > - qualified immunity - bad actors rarely punished in civil court > - militarization - military weapons and equipment without real need or proper training > - excessive use of force - see https://8cantwait.org/ > - culture of disrespect for citizens - us vs. them mentality instead of "protect & serve" > - too many victimless crime laws - the Drug War does more harm than good > - attracts bad actors - if you're racist and/or you want to be a badass, it's the place to work > etc. > > Starting with a clean slate might fix some of them but it won't fix all of them. > > Politicians have to stand up to the unions. Congress has to end qualified immunity (there's a bill in the House now). Transfer of military equipment to police needs to stop. I think every use of force or allegation of wrongdoing by an officer should be reviewed by a citizen's review board empowered to recommend disciplinary actions, criminal charges, or firing, and these results should be a permanent part of every officer's record. State and federal governments will have to decriminalize drugs. > > -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 Jun 8 15:24:55 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 08:24:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling Message-ID: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> I have been pondering the end game if retail stores in general give way to online stores. Some areas of retail are better suited for online sales than others. Plenty of us here have long-since moved to buying electronic equipment online: there is not much point in going to a bricks and mortar store for that, ja? OK so if electronics stuff is perhaps the best-suited for online sales, what is the worst suited? It is tempting to answer clothing, because that generally needs to be tried on, but that is a mixed bag: plenty of clothing can be bought without trying on. We have had catalog sales for clothing since back in the days when the catalogs had a useful alternative application. High-end clothing and tailored clothing needs a shop generally, but plenty of us don?t wear that kind of stuff. What else? Cars? I have bought three cars online sight unseen (all three new (the first one in 1998.)) Alternative? Who gets hit the hardest if bricks and mortar shuts down? Perhaps a good answer is jewelry stores. I claim no expertise on this, for I have never bought jewelry of any kind (my bride doesn?t wear it (any of it (her parents oppose it (on religious grounds)))) but that is an industry perhaps most dependent on bricks and mortar retail outlets. Yesterday we saw an antifa guy threatening to torch the diamond district in New York. If a bunch of them coordinate an attack, they could show up at midnight with a battering ram, smash through, toss in a few cans of fuel, torch enormous quantities of wealth. That would be some of the most productive wealth-destruction they could do. This morning I see this: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/great-diamond-glut-miners-stuck-040022775.html spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 15:28:02 2020 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 09:28:02 -0600 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: References: <000001d63d3f$b4d9b990$1e8d2cb0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: There's a basic structural problem with policing, as an institution. It is fundamentally the wrong solution for many of the tasks we've handed over to it. "Part of our misunderstanding about the nature of policing is we keep imagining that we can turn police into social workers. That we can make them nice, friendly community outreach workers. But police are violence workers. That's what distinguishes them from all other government functions. ... They have the legal capacity to use violence in situations where the average citizen would be arrested. So when we turn a problem [i.e. homelessness, mental health, narcotics abuse, disruptive behavior in schools, etc] over to the police to manage, there will be violence, because those are ultimately the tools that they are most equipped to utilize: handcuffs, threats, guns, arrests. That's what really is at the root of policing. So if we don't want violence, we should try to figure out how to not get the police involved." https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/03/457251670/how-much-do-we-need-the-police https://www.amazon.com/End-Policing-Alex-S-Vitale-ebook/dp/B01I85OOZA/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 9:09 AM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Completely agree. > > SR Ballard > > On Jun 8, 2020, at 7:07 AM, Dave Sill via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 12:19 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> They are proposing replacing the existing police force with a better one: >> >> ?In Minneapolis and in cities across the US, it is clear that our system >> of policing is not keeping our communities safe,? said Lisa Bender, the >> Minneapolis city council president, at the event. ?Our efforts at >> incremental reform have failed, period. Our commitment is to do what?s >> necessary to keep every single member of our community safe and to tell the >> truth: that the Minneapolis police are not doing that. Our commitment is to >> end policing as we know it and to recreate systems of public safety that >> actually keep us safe.? >> >> >> https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/07/minneapolis-city-council-defund-police-george-floyd >> >> Even the poorest, most deprived states in the world generally find the >> resources to maintain a police force. >> > > The problems with policing in the US are pretty well-known: > > - too-strong police unions - bad actors rarely punished by the police force > - qualified immunity - bad actors rarely punished in civil court > - militarization - military weapons and equipment without real need or > proper training > - excessive use of force - see https://8cantwait.org/ > - culture of disrespect for citizens - us vs. them mentality instead of > "protect & serve" > - too many victimless crime laws - the Drug War does more harm than good > - attracts bad actors - if you're racist and/or you want to be a badass, > it's the place to work > etc. > > Starting with a clean slate might fix some of them but it won't fix all of > them. > > Politicians have to stand up to the unions. Congress has to end qualified > immunity (there's a bill in the House now). Transfer of military equipment > to police needs to stop. I think every use of force or allegation of > wrongdoing by an officer should be reviewed by a citizen's review board > empowered to recommend disciplinary actions, criminal charges, or firing, > and these results should be a permanent part of every officer's record. > State and federal governments will have to decriminalize drugs. > > -Dave > > _______________________________________________ > 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 sparge at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 15:59:30 2020 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 11:59:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: References: <000001d63d3f$b4d9b990$1e8d2cb0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 11:37 AM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > There's a basic structural problem with policing, as an institution. It is > fundamentally the wrong solution for many of the tasks we've handed over to > it. > There's certainly a mismatch between what we want police to do and what they actually do. > "Part of our misunderstanding about the nature of policing is we keep > imagining that we can turn police into social workers. That we can make > them nice, friendly community outreach workers. But police are violence > workers. That's what distinguishes them from all other government > functions. ... They have the legal capacity to use violence in situations > where the average citizen would be arrested. > Police need to be more than one-trick ponies: hired thugs that violently counter every threat, damn the collateral damage. It's not asking too much that they be able to use violence as a last resort. The presumption of innocence should apply to dealing with the public. So when we turn a problem [i.e. homelessness, mental health, narcotics > abuse, disruptive behavior in schools, etc] over to the police to manage, > there will be violence, because those are ultimately the tools that they > are most equipped to utilize: handcuffs, threats, guns, arrests. That's > what really is at the root of policing. So if we don't want violence, we > should try to figure out how to not get the police involved." > Yeah, in major metropolitan areas we could have separate departments for all of those things. In the other 98% of the country, the police need to wear multiple hats--at least as first-responders. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 16:00:43 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 11:00:43 -0500 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: References: <000001d63d3f$b4d9b990$1e8d2cb0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: We are always going to need people to meet fire with fire. Violent people won't stop just because you ask them too. They have to be arrested and contained. I agree that cops often incite violence where there was no threat of it before. I see no reason for cops to go to a school unless weapons are seen or are being used. Send in the social workers! I see no reason why cops should show up at protests in riot gear. If the situation turns nasty, with shooting and looting, then you will have kept the riot gear cops nearby in reserve for just that reason. Routine protests should not find rifles in the hands of anyone. Why should a protestor show up with guns? Who are they going to shoot? Cops? We don't need protestors who want 'death by cop'. I like the idea of the protestors policing the looters, but think most won't do it, and looters will have weapons, so this is a job for cops, I am afraid. As for the mentally ill, perhaps police departments could have psychiatric workers on call or on the payroll to go to incidents involving the mentally ill. When cops show up for that they only have one thing to use: a gun. I read where tasers just don't often work. Take along someone who knows what to do with mental patients. If you get combative with them, they'll get combative with you. I worked as an aide for three months in a big mental hospital, so I do know something about this. But you do have to watchout for the paranoids, who will often have a weapon - then it's the cops who have to deal with it. bill w Complete retraining for all cops starting now. But who would retrain them? Same old same old? Maybe professors in criminal justice have some ideas (don't they always?), and some might even be good. Professors aren't always lost in the ivory tower. On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 10:37 AM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > There's a basic structural problem with policing, as an institution. It is > fundamentally the wrong solution for many of the tasks we've handed over to > it. > > > "Part of our misunderstanding about the nature of policing is we keep > imagining that we can turn police into social workers. That we can make > them nice, friendly community outreach workers. But police are violence > workers. That's what distinguishes them from all other government > functions. ... They have the legal capacity to use violence in situations > where the average citizen would be arrested. > > So when we turn a problem [i.e. homelessness, mental health, narcotics > abuse, disruptive behavior in schools, etc] over to the police to manage, > there will be violence, because those are ultimately the tools that they > are most equipped to utilize: handcuffs, threats, guns, arrests. That's > what really is at the root of policing. So if we don't want violence, we > should try to figure out how to not get the police involved." > > > > https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/03/457251670/how-much-do-we-need-the-police > > > > > https://www.amazon.com/End-Policing-Alex-S-Vitale-ebook/dp/B01I85OOZA/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= > > > On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 9:09 AM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Completely agree. >> >> SR Ballard >> >> On Jun 8, 2020, at 7:07 AM, Dave Sill via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >> On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 12:19 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> They are proposing replacing the existing police force with a better one: >>> >>> ?In Minneapolis and in cities across the US, it is clear that our system >>> of policing is not keeping our communities safe,? said Lisa Bender, the >>> Minneapolis city council president, at the event. ?Our efforts at >>> incremental reform have failed, period. Our commitment is to do what?s >>> necessary to keep every single member of our community safe and to tell the >>> truth: that the Minneapolis police are not doing that. Our commitment is to >>> end policing as we know it and to recreate systems of public safety that >>> actually keep us safe.? >>> >>> >>> https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/07/minneapolis-city-council-defund-police-george-floyd >>> >>> Even the poorest, most deprived states in the world generally find the >>> resources to maintain a police force. >>> >> >> The problems with policing in the US are pretty well-known: >> >> - too-strong police unions - bad actors rarely punished by the police >> force >> - qualified immunity - bad actors rarely punished in civil court >> - militarization - military weapons and equipment without real need or >> proper training >> - excessive use of force - see https://8cantwait.org/ >> - culture of disrespect for citizens - us vs. them mentality instead of >> "protect & serve" >> - too many victimless crime laws - the Drug War does more harm than good >> - attracts bad actors - if you're racist and/or you want to be a badass, >> it's the place to work >> etc. >> >> Starting with a clean slate might fix some of them but it won't fix all >> of them. >> >> Politicians have to stand up to the unions. Congress has to end qualified >> immunity (there's a bill in the House now). Transfer of military equipment >> to police needs to stop. I think every use of force or allegation of >> wrongdoing by an officer should be reviewed by a citizen's review board >> empowered to recommend disciplinary actions, criminal charges, or firing, >> and these results should be a permanent part of every officer's record. >> State and federal governments will have to decriminalize drugs. >> >> -Dave >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 >> > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mon Jun 8 16:14:39 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 09:14:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Signing your death warrant Message-ID: Brent Allsop wrote: snip > I'm completely frustrated with not knowing what to do with this, or what kind of "advanced life directive" I need. I'm signed up with Alcor, and expected they would provide me with one. I asked them, probably only once, in passing, quite a while ago, so it is probably my fault, but I am completely frustrated that they aren't at least providing a sample one, and telling me what is and isn't important, for Alcor to be most likely able to do what they need to do. That surprises me since when I signed up in 1985 an "advanced life directive" or whatever they called it was part of the signup paperwork. As was a power of attorney for health care. > Where does one go, to find a sample "advanced life directive" that is compatible with being signed up with Alcor? Do any of you Alcor people out there have one? Could I see a copy? I have one but don't know if it is the current version. As I recall, my directive says resuscitate until/unless Alcor is on-site and then do whatever they ask. I cc'ed Diane Cremeens, Director of Membership at diane at alcor.org. She should be able to email you the current form. Keith From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 16:17:17 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 12:17:17 -0400 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 11:28 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: *> OK so if electronics stuff is perhaps the best-suited for online sales, > what is the worst suited? * Bordellos. And I wonder about movie theaters, will they come back after a vaccine is found or will people have gotten so used to watching movies at home on very high quality TVs they will have gotten out of the habit of going out to see a movie? > *Yesterday we saw an antifa guy threatening to torch the diamond district > in New York.* It's possable but I doubt it, most looters or rioters or peaceful protestors or human beings in general have never even heard of "antifa" and couldn't spell it much less be a member of it; presumably it's an acronym but I have no idea what it stands for, but I'll bet a Qanon member would know. *> they could show up at midnight with a battering ram, smash through, toss > in a few cans of fuel, torch enormous quantities of wealth.* Probably not, most wood ignites at 572F but in air diamonds needs 1652F to burn, and they're probably in a fireproof safe. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 8 16:27:02 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 09:27:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: References: <000001d63d3f$b4d9b990$1e8d2cb0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00e901d63db1$a46a8b80$ed3fa280$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat >.... >?Complete retraining for all cops starting now. But who would retrain them? Same old same old? Maybe professors in criminal justice have some ideas (don't they always?)? bill w The officer who killed George Floyd was a trainer. Two of the other three who were charged were trainees at the time. This is what happened last week locally: https://twitter.com/i/status/1267925521377222660 spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 17:13:54 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 12:13:54 -0500 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: <00e901d63db1$a46a8b80$ed3fa280$@rainier66.com> References: <000001d63d3f$b4d9b990$1e8d2cb0$@rainier66.com> <00e901d63db1$a46a8b80$ed3fa280$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Has anyone run the statistics to see just how widespread police brutality is? Just guessing: probably way less than 1% in police-public interactions. Defunding police: exactly the wrong thing to do. I don't know what their thinking is on this, but we need more, not less: 1 - better pay equals better people applying for jobs, 2 - they need to hire or somehow fund the mental health workers I mentioned in my previous email 3 - they need more time for training 4 - they need to hire consultants to restructure police departments and training. Probably more good reasons. Defunding could lower cop pay. It punishes the 99% plus majority of cops who are never brutal. (again, I do not know the statistics) bill w On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 11:39 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > > *>...*. > > > > >?Complete retraining for all cops starting now. But who would retrain > them? Same old same old? Maybe professors in criminal justice have some > ideas (don't they always?)? bill w > > > > > > The officer who killed George Floyd was a trainer. Two of the other three > who were charged were trainees at the time. > > > > This is what happened last week locally: > > > > https://twitter.com/i/status/1267925521377222660 > > > > 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 robot at ultimax.com Mon Jun 8 17:16:00 2020 From: robot at ultimax.com (robot at ultimax.com) Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2020 13:16:00 -0400 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6062e59a51463cb74f00ce5de887764d@ultimax.com> +1 K3 On 2020-06-08 11:28, extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org wrote: > Message: 6 > Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 08:07:55 -0400 > From: Dave Sill > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] that's why > > On Mon, 8 Jun 2020 at 12:54, spike jones via extropy-chat < >> They are proposing replacing the existing police force with a better >> one: >> Message: 6 > > - too-strong police unions - bad actors rarely punished by the police > force > - qualified immunity - bad actors rarely punished in civil court > - militarization - military weapons and equipment without real need or > proper training > - excessive use of force - see https://8cantwait.org/ > - culture of disrespect for citizens - us vs. them mentality instead of > "protect & serve" > - too many victimless crime laws - the Drug War does more harm than > good > - attracts bad actors - if you're racist and/or you want to be a > badass, > it's the place to work > etc. > > Starting with a clean slate might fix some of them but it won't fix all > of > them. > > Politicians have to stand up to the unions. Congress has to end > qualified > immunity (there's a bill in the House now). Transfer of military > equipment > to police needs to stop. I think every use of force or allegation of > wrongdoing by an officer should be reviewed by a citizen's review board > empowered to recommend disciplinary actions, criminal charges, or > firing, > and these results should be a permanent part of every officer's record. > State and federal governments will have to decriminalize drugs. > > -Dave [snip] > > Message: 7 > Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 10:05:12 -0500 > From: SR Ballard > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] that's why > > Completely agree. > > SR Ballard From atymes at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 17:58:40 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 10:58:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 9:28 AM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > most looters or rioters or peaceful protestors or human beings in general > have never even heard of "antifa" and couldn't spell it much less be a > member of it; presumably it's an acronym but I have no idea what it stands > for > > AntiFa, for anti-fascist. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(United_States) for details; especially note that there are a bunch of groups calling themselves "antifa" with no coordination, so what "antifa" is to one person may vary wildly from what "antifa" is to someone else right next to them. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 18:24:53 2020 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 14:24:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 12:27 PM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > *Yesterday we saw an antifa guy threatening to torch the diamond >> district in New York.* > > > It's possable but I doubt it, most looters or rioters or peaceful > protestors or human beings in general have never even heard of "antifa" and > couldn't spell it much less be a member of it; presumably it's an acronym > but I have no idea what it stands for, but I'll bet a Qanon member would > know. > > John, not sure if you truly have no idea who they are since they were all over even the mainstream news when they were destroying things and hurting people in Portland, Berkeley, and other areas, but if so, you can ask the Attorney General of Minnesota for more info. He's a big fan of theirs from way back: https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-keith-ellison-antifa-handbook-tweet-20180104-story.html You can also read the handbook he's holding in the picture related to the above story for more information like this snippet: In truth, violence represents a small though vital sliver of anti-fascist activity. There are three main arguments that anti-fascists use to justify their occasional violence. First, as explained in Chapter 4, anti-fascists make a historical argument based on the accurate observation that ?rational debate? and the institutions of government have failed to consistently halt the rise of fascism. Given that fact, they argue that the only hope to prevent a sequel is to physically prevent any potential fascist advance. Second, they point to the many successful examples of militant anti-fascism shutting down or severely hampering far-right organizing since the end of World War II. Third, fascist violence often necessitates self-defense?although anti-fascists challenge conventional interpretations of self-defense grounded in individualistic personal ethics by legitimating offensive tactics in order to forestall the potential need for literal self-defense down the line. In other words, anti-fascists don?t wait for a fascist threat to become violent before acting to shut it down, physically if necessary. As Murray from Baltimore ARA explained it, You fight them by writing letters and making phone calls so you don?t have to fight them with fists. You fight them with fists so you don?t have to fight them with knives. You fight them with knives so you don?t have to fight them with guns. You fight them with guns so you don?t have to fight them with tanks.398 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 19:02:53 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 15:02:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 2:29 PM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > *John, not sure if you truly have no idea who they* [antifa] *are* > I knew "antifa" were the MAGA Hatter and Qanon bogeyman, and if both those groups didn't like them I figured they can't be all bad, and that's all I knew. Now you tell me it means "anti-fascists", thank you I've learned something. So I guess that means I'm "antifa" too because the truth is I don't like fascists very much. You also say "antifa" doesn't want fascists to become violent before they can shut them down, physically if necessary. Maybe I'm missing something but that sounds like an entirely rational way to deal with fascists to me. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 19:09:37 2020 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 15:09:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: It's interesting you don't feel the same way about the folks who followed their beliefs in shutting down the telescope. On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 3:04 PM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 2:29 PM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > You also say "antifa" doesn't want fascists to become violent before they >> can shut them down, physically if necessary. Maybe I'm missing something >> but that sounds like an entirely rational way to deal with fascists to me. >> > > 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 danust2012 at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 19:41:57 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 12:41:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7F829503-2718-4AFD-AF4D-4A0A99E89694@gmail.com> On Jun 8, 2020, at 10:16 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > Has anyone run the statistics to see just how widespread police brutality is? Just guessing: probably way less than 1% in police-public interactions. > > Defunding police: exactly the wrong thing to do. I don't know what their thinking is on this, but we need more, not less: 1 - better pay equals better people applying for jobs, 2 - they need to hire or somehow fund the mental health workers I mentioned in my previous email 3 - they need more time for training 4 - they need to hire consultants to restructure police departments and training. Probably more good reasons. Defunding could lower cop pay. It punishes the 99% plus majority of cops who are never brutal. (again, I do not know the statistics) It's hard to track brutality because much of this stuff is quashed at the local level. I mean the stories and reports are quashed at that level. And until recently, there weren't the kinds of databases one comes to expect from other government operations. I can't imagine why anyone would think there's a need for more police. Overall, violent and property crime has declined since the early 1990s. So, if the argument is there's ever more need for policing (to combat crimes of violence and property), this flies in the face of the crime data. (And this trend is both national and global. Yes, there are exceptions, but the US and the West are not exceptional with this trend.) As for how to penalize police misconduct, the problem goes further than, say, a bad apple in the bunch. The recent George Floyd case illustrates the typical police brutality narrative: one cop does wrong and the other cops on the scene do nothing to prevent or stop the wrong. They simply allow it to play out. In this case, yes, the other cops were charged, but that's what's atypical about the case. The usual case seems to be: one or more cops brutalize someone, the others look on, and they all face no penalties for misconduct. Training and such also has little value if the incentives for misconduct remain in place. And all this depends on buy-in from the police, their unions, pro-cop groups, and pro-cop politicians. My guess is most of these reforms will be minuscule and more along the lines of making the protests die down before things return to business as usual. This is why abolition is the best approach: excise the problem rather than try to manage it. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 19:57:16 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 14:57:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: <7F829503-2718-4AFD-AF4D-4A0A99E89694@gmail.com> References: <7F829503-2718-4AFD-AF4D-4A0A99E89694@gmail.com> Message-ID: As usual, Dan, you offer to get rid of something but do not supply anything to replace it to deal with crime. Spike, I think, pointed out that the cops who were with the accused one were trainees - a reasonable, though not valid, reason why they didn't try to stop it, remark on it, or anything. bill w On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 2:45 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Jun 8, 2020, at 10:16 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Has anyone run the statistics to see just how widespread police brutality > is? Just guessing: probably way less than 1% in police-public > interactions. > > Defunding police: exactly the wrong thing to do. I don't know what their > thinking is on this, but we need more, not less: 1 - better pay equals > better people applying for jobs, 2 - they need to hire or somehow fund the > mental health workers I mentioned in my previous email 3 - they need more > time for training 4 - they need to hire consultants to restructure police > departments and training. Probably more good reasons. Defunding could > lower cop pay. It punishes the 99% plus majority of cops who are never > brutal. (again, I do not know the statistics) > > > It's hard to track brutality because much of this stuff is quashed at the > local level. I mean the stories and reports are quashed at that level. And > until recently, there weren't the kinds of databases one comes to expect > from other government operations. > > I can't imagine why anyone would think there's a need for more police. > Overall, violent and property crime has declined since the early 1990s. So, > if the argument is there's ever more need for policing (to combat crimes of > violence and property), this flies in the face of the crime data. (And this > trend is both national and global. Yes, there are exceptions, but the US > and the West are not exceptional with this trend.) > > As for how to penalize police misconduct, the problem goes further than, > say, a bad apple in the bunch. The recent George Floyd case illustrates the > typical police brutality narrative: one cop does wrong and the other cops > on the scene do nothing to prevent or stop the wrong. They simply allow it > to play out. In this case, yes, the other cops were charged, but that's > what's atypical about the case. The usual case seems to be: one or more > cops brutalize someone, the others look on, and they all face no penalties > for misconduct. > > Training and such also has little value if the incentives for misconduct > remain in place. And all this depends on buy-in from the police, their > unions, pro-cop groups, and pro-cop politicians. My guess is most of these > reforms will be minuscule and more along the lines of making the protests > die down before things return to business as usual. This is why abolition > is the best approach: excise the problem rather than try to manage it. > > Regards, > > Dan > Sample my Kindle books at: > > http://author.to/DanUst > _______________________________________________ > 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 interzone at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 20:03:23 2020 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 16:03:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: References: <7F829503-2718-4AFD-AF4D-4A0A99E89694@gmail.com> Message-ID: I agree, Bill. I'd love to see what this replacement would look like. I am no fan of the police by any stretch of the imagination but I also acknowledge their utility. I'm curious to see what Minneapolis will look like if the council gets its way in completely disbanding the police force (and not replacing it with a reformed one). On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 3:59 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > As usual, Dan, you offer to get rid of something but do not supply > anything to replace it to deal with crime. > > Spike, I think, pointed out that the cops who were with the accused one > were trainees - a reasonable, though not valid, reason why they didn't try > to stop it, remark on it, or anything. > > bill w > > On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 2:45 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> On Jun 8, 2020, at 10:16 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >> Has anyone run the statistics to see just how widespread police brutality >> is? Just guessing: probably way less than 1% in police-public >> interactions. >> >> Defunding police: exactly the wrong thing to do. I don't know what >> their thinking is on this, but we need more, not less: 1 - better pay >> equals better people applying for jobs, 2 - they need to hire or somehow >> fund the mental health workers I mentioned in my previous email 3 - they >> need more time for training 4 - they need to hire consultants to >> restructure police departments and training. Probably more good reasons. >> Defunding could lower cop pay. It punishes the 99% plus majority of cops >> who are never brutal. (again, I do not know the statistics) >> >> >> It's hard to track brutality because much of this stuff is quashed at the >> local level. I mean the stories and reports are quashed at that level. And >> until recently, there weren't the kinds of databases one comes to expect >> from other government operations. >> >> I can't imagine why anyone would think there's a need for more police. >> Overall, violent and property crime has declined since the early 1990s. So, >> if the argument is there's ever more need for policing (to combat crimes of >> violence and property), this flies in the face of the crime data. (And this >> trend is both national and global. Yes, there are exceptions, but the US >> and the West are not exceptional with this trend.) >> >> As for how to penalize police misconduct, the problem goes further than, >> say, a bad apple in the bunch. The recent George Floyd case illustrates the >> typical police brutality narrative: one cop does wrong and the other cops >> on the scene do nothing to prevent or stop the wrong. They simply allow it >> to play out. In this case, yes, the other cops were charged, but that's >> what's atypical about the case. The usual case seems to be: one or more >> cops brutalize someone, the others look on, and they all face no penalties >> for misconduct. >> >> Training and such also has little value if the incentives for misconduct >> remain in place. And all this depends on buy-in from the police, their >> unions, pro-cop groups, and pro-cop politicians. My guess is most of these >> reforms will be minuscule and more along the lines of making the protests >> die down before things return to business as usual. This is why abolition >> is the best approach: excise the problem rather than try to manage it. >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan >> Sample my Kindle books at: >> >> http://author.to/DanUst >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 danust2012 at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 20:32:23 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 13:32:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Minneapolis will, if it actually disbanded its police force, not be the first place to ever do so. In some cases, this has meant merely getting rid of them to rebuild them along new lines, as in Camden, New Jersey, US. In others, like Blandford, Massachusetts, policing was outsourced to another police department. It?s a bit dated, but Bruce Benson examined cases where full privatization took place in his _The Enterprise of Law: Justice without the State_. I don?t have a copy handy and I haven?t read his newer work in this area. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst > On Jun 8, 2020, at 1:08 PM, Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat wrote: > > ? > I agree, Bill. I'd love to see what this replacement would look like. I am no fan of the police by any stretch of the imagination but I also acknowledge their utility. I'm curious to see what Minneapolis will look like if the council gets its way in completely disbanding the police force (and not replacing it with a reformed one). > >> On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 3:59 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: >> As usual, Dan, you offer to get rid of something but do not supply anything to replace it to deal with crime. >> >> Spike, I think, pointed out that the cops who were with the accused one were trainees - a reasonable, though not valid, reason why they didn't try to stop it, remark on it, or anything. >> >> bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 20:40:36 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 13:40:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: No, you generally ignore when I do respond to you on stuff like this. I?d say read _The Enterprise of Law: Justice without the State_ for ideas on what to do about actual crime. But many of these things are overstated. Crime is getting lower and policing doesn?t seem to be the main reason for it going down. So it?s almost like you?re asking for a solution that generally doesn?t work to be kept and even expanded. One can imagine the ardent drug warrior arguing we need a bigger, badder, better trained DEA rather than an end to drug prohibition. You?re also sticking to close to one case. Yeah, sure, that might be true of the Floyd killing, but generally we see cops do bad things and fellow officers usually overlook this. Robert Higgs, of _Crisis and Leviathan_ fame (and not the Higgs Boson;), went much further than this: https://medium.com/@petrostsimigatos98981989/all-cops-are-bad-people-by-dr-robert-higgs-a0a42ca8deee Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst > On Jun 8, 2020, at 1:00 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > ? > As usual, Dan, you offer to get rid of something but do not supply anything to replace it to deal with crime. > > Spike, I think, pointed out that the cops who were with the accused one were trainees - a reasonable, though not valid, reason why they didn't try to stop it, remark on it, or anything. > > bill w > >> On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 2:45 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: >>> On Jun 8, 2020, at 10:16 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: >>> Has anyone run the statistics to see just how widespread police brutality is? Just guessing: probably way less than 1% in police-public interactions. >>> >>> Defunding police: exactly the wrong thing to do. I don't know what their thinking is on this, but we need more, not less: 1 - better pay equals better people applying for jobs, 2 - they need to hire or somehow fund the mental health workers I mentioned in my previous email 3 - they need more time for training 4 - they need to hire consultants to restructure police departments and training. Probably more good reasons. Defunding could lower cop pay. It punishes the 99% plus majority of cops who are never brutal. (again, I do not know the statistics) >> >> It's hard to track brutality because much of this stuff is quashed at the local level. I mean the stories and reports are quashed at that level. And until recently, there weren't the kinds of databases one comes to expect from other government operations. >> >> I can't imagine why anyone would think there's a need for more police. Overall, violent and property crime has declined since the early 1990s. So, if the argument is there's ever more need for policing (to combat crimes of violence and property), this flies in the face of the crime data. (And this trend is both national and global. Yes, there are exceptions, but the US and the West are not exceptional with this trend.) >> >> As for how to penalize police misconduct, the problem goes further than, say, a bad apple in the bunch. The recent George Floyd case illustrates the typical police brutality narrative: one cop does wrong and the other cops on the scene do nothing to prevent or stop the wrong. They simply allow it to play out. In this case, yes, the other cops were charged, but that's what's atypical about the case. The usual case seems to be: one or more cops brutalize someone, the others look on, and they all face no penalties for misconduct. >> >> Training and such also has little value if the incentives for misconduct remain in place. And all this depends on buy-in from the police, their unions, pro-cop groups, and pro-cop politicians. My guess is most of these reforms will be minuscule and more along the lines of making the protests die down before things return to business as usual. This is why abolition is the best approach: excise the problem rather than try to manage it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 20:47:46 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 13:47:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> References: <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <7284FB27-798A-4E82-906B-3E025A693546@gmail.com> On Jun 5, 2020, at 5:44 AM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 8:27 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: > > Again, I bring up abolishing the police. It should always be on the table, IMO. > > > > There ya go, Dan. That notion should put to bed any remaining suggestion that Americans do not need to own a gun. Even the possibility that an entire police force could just get pissed and walk off the job (as they did in St. Louis this week) should be a clear unambiguous reminder that a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. > > If we abolish the police, we also abolish all gun control laws, all of them. Without a professional police force, we all need to have and to carry guns. > > We have the opportunity to educate our society on the meaning of the phrase ??shall not be infringed.? > > spike It seems you believe I'm against people defending themselves and others. Is this so? In fact, I've argued for arming the masses -- not just the US-American masses, but worldwide. This is the correct Left position on this issue. (In fact, traditionally, the Right wants the masses disarmed to prevent them getting uppity. The strange thing is that many modern Leftists seem to want the opposite: disarmed masses and armed elites. To me, this is typically how those in the Left eventually turn to the Right on issues once they have power.) In fact, I'd argue that immigrants and other marginal people need to be armed and defended more so than your average person. For instance, immigrants in the US tend to commit less crime but suffer more crime than non-immigrants. This is so even though, as studies have shown, immigrants tend to under-report crimes committed against them. Ditto for trans people and for 'mentally ill' people.* That said, overall violence is down. I don't agree with the view that somehow having no police around all the thugs will go on a crime spree. That's like a Hollywood movie scenario. Real life, however, almost never looks like that. A case in point is almost any natural disaster. We generally don't see Mad Max: Fury Road playing out, but people usually helping each other. (Yet just about any movie about a natural disaster shows people turning vicious and against each other. Again, look at the real world events and data -- rather than movie or TV narrative.) As for your citing the COTUS, you should note well that the right has been infringed, and that should call into question your seeing the COTUS as some sort of shield against injustice. Either the COTUS authorized those infringements or did nothing to stop them. Or as Lysander Spooner (1808-1887) put it: 'But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain ? that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.' Regards, Dan * I'm not the only one calling for this. See Jane Louise's piece from five years ago: https://c4ss.org/content/3966 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 8 20:48:37 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 13:48:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: References: <000001d63d3f$b4d9b990$1e8d2cb0$@rainier66.com> <00e901d63db1$a46a8b80$ed3fa280$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00ac01d63dd6$2f7598e0$8e60caa0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] that's why >?Defunding police: exactly the wrong thing to do. I don't know what their thinking is on this, but we need more, not less: 1 - better pay equals better people applying for jobs, 2 - they need to hire or somehow fund the mental health workers I mentioned in my previous email 3 - they need more time for training 4 - they need to hire consultants to restructure police departments and training. Probably more good reasons. Defunding could lower cop pay. It punishes the 99% plus majority of cops who are never brutal. (again, I do not know the statistics) bill w OK but somebody somewhere has to try this experiment. Theory has it that if they defund the police and use ?the? money to fund re-education plans to help those who would otherwise turn to lives of crime find jobs, then all will be well. I disagree for several reasons, but Minneapolis is going to try it, so I am glad we will get to see the theory being tested. I might be wrong, and all will be well there. I would be very pleased to be wrong. Somebody somewhere has to test it, and I am glad that somewhere is far away from me. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 20:49:09 2020 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 16:49:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I'm familiar with the Camden scenario. For those interested, Tyler Cowen (an economist I'd recommend for those unfamiliar regardless of your political/economic leanings) just had a piece on it: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/revisiting-camden.html I don't get the feeling that the city council is proposing either of these approaches though based on their public comments. Hopefully I'm wrong. On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 4:34 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Minneapolis will, if it actually disbanded its police force, not be the > first place to ever do so. In some cases, this has meant merely getting rid > of them to rebuild them along new lines, as in Camden, New Jersey, US. In > others, like Blandford, Massachusetts, policing was outsourced to another > police department. > > It?s a bit dated, but Bruce Benson examined cases where full privatization > took place in his _The Enterprise of Law: Justice without the State_. I > don?t have a copy handy and I haven?t read his newer work in this area. > > Regards, > > Dan > Sample my Kindle books at: > > http://author.to/DanUst > > On Jun 8, 2020, at 1:08 PM, Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > ? > I agree, Bill. I'd love to see what this replacement would look like. I > am no fan of the police by any stretch of the imagination but I also > acknowledge their utility. I'm curious to see what Minneapolis will look > like if the council gets its way in completely disbanding the police force > (and not replacing it with a reformed one). > > On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 3:59 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> As usual, Dan, you offer to get rid of something but do not supply >> anything to replace it to deal with crime. >> >> Spike, I think, pointed out that the cops who were with the accused one >> were trainees - a reasonable, though not valid, reason why they didn't try >> to stop it, remark on it, or anything. >> >> 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 danust2012 at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 20:57:55 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 13:57:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <00ee01d63962$112c6a30$33853e90$@rainier66.com> References: <00ee01d63962$112c6a30$33853e90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Jun 2, 2020, at 9:57 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > > From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > > Perhaps if the author were to rewrite using only the words in the current edition of Miriam Webster using the definitions found there, the meaning would be clear. > > Let me try to guess the words that might have given some difficulty with the piece, roughly in order of appearance > > chud -- term of opprobrium used against the alt-right; think of it as calling someone an asshole > POC -- person of colour > fashy/fash -- fascist (adjective/noun) > apparatchik -- official or bureaucrat, usually meant as a snear > woke -- enlightened or aware, as in consciousness raising > protest managerial class -- group of people, usually politicians, who attempt to control protests for their class or personal interests? > > > Regards, > > Dan > > > Hi Dan, since these novel terms have no consensus definitions, I am free to assign my own meaning until the author translates the document into a standardized form. > > chud: a variation or misspelling of chad, which is a bit of paper. > POC: point of contact. > Fashy/fash: one who follows the latest fashion trends. > Apparatchik: a Russian government worker > Woke: what I did this morning at the end of my slumber > Protest managerial class: a instructional gathering designed for those who would lead a company, specifically focused on how to handle disagreements. > > We standardize language for a reason. Insider dialects are fine, so long as they are not intended to convey meaning to those outside the community. Perhaps that was never the intention. > > spike New terms and new uses for old terms arise all the time. Standardization happens when a term or new use of a term gains ground. That's just part of normal language change. (Don't believe me. Look up how the terms 'girl' and 'silly' changed over time.) Does this mean _you_ will eschew using any new terms or using any old terms in new ways? I doubt it. In this particular instance, there's very little problem understanding the piece if you simply put in a tiny amount of effort. Yeah, one can play around pretending you don't understand that in a political analysis piece that 'fash' almost certainly means 'fascist' rather than 'fashionable' or that saying 'Jane is a POC' means 'Jane is a point of contact,' but that's just being obstinate. Maybe the obstinacy is for humorous effect, but I feel it was more dog piling to avoid respond to the analysis. Further, yeah, Gillis has a target audience that probably doesn?t include everyone. In fact, I?d say almost all topical pieces are speaking to an audience that?s a tiny fraction of the whole language community. This is nothing new. If you read ancient literature, many times it requires scholarship because you need to grasp who was speaking to whom rather than pretend everything is crystal clear to everyone at all times. (And this isn?t because any of these folks are being intentionally obscure. It?s just simply that it?s hard to guess how one will be misunderstood and often topical works have an immediate pragmatic aim, such as persuading someone right at the time of something ? and not worrying that someone ten years or in another audience will find it hard to understand.) Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 21:00:08 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 14:00:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <00f501d63962$b502b4c0$1f081e40$@rainier66.com> References: <00f501d63962$b502b4c0$1f081e40$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <023F1C32-1A2E-4643-801E-DE396CDFE9EF@gmail.com> On Jun 2, 2020, at 10:04 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan > >> ...-- or divide and conquer. This is typical of how any establishment has > dealt with widespread dissent and protest: attempt to pull away some of the > more moderate elements to weaken the overall movement. ...Regards, Dan > > _______________________________________________ > > That would explain the legitimate protestors handing over the vandal to the > cops. > > We read Saul Alinsky Rules of Radicals too. > > spike You keep mentioning Saul Alinsky as if he invented the protest. Bringing him up is no answer to the issues raised. By the way, it's actually questionable when protesting police misconduct _if_ turning over a vandal or a looter to the police is the right thing to do. There are other ways to deal with such people rather than turning them over to a group of people who are known to brutalize other people. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 8 21:13:06 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 14:13:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] that's why In-Reply-To: References: <7F829503-2718-4AFD-AF4D-4A0A99E89694@gmail.com> Message-ID: <00cf01d63dd9$9b74f7e0$d25ee7a0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] that's why >?As usual, Dan, you offer to get rid of something but do not supply anything to replace it to deal with crime?bill w How about sharia law? That doesn?t actually cost anything, and the sharia people really know how to deal with crime. So? go ahead, defund the Minneapolis police. The fidels can go about enforcing strict sharia law on the hapless unbelievers, and may evolution have mercy on those who decide to stay there. I have no heartburn with their trying that experiment in Minneapolis. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 8 21:27:57 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 14:27:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <7284FB27-798A-4E82-906B-3E025A693546@gmail.com> References: <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <7284FB27-798A-4E82-906B-3E025A693546@gmail.com> Message-ID: <00e801d63ddb$af475c70$0dd61550$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat >?For instance, immigrants in the US tend to commit less crime but suffer more crime than non-immigrants. This is so even though, as studies have shown, immigrants tend to under-report crimes committed against them. ? Ja, this is well known in my own community, which became a destination for Vietnamese people in the 90s. A big problem was home invasion. The explanation given to me by a Vietnamese friend is that these homes were far more likely to have cash (because they don?t trust the banks (imagine that)) and they are far less likely to report (because they don?t trust law-enforcement (imagine that.)) >? We generally don't see Mad Max: Fury Road playing out, but people usually helping each other? Dan Ja again. One of the big problems easily foreseeable is that plenty of cities will deal with their criminals by sentencing them to a one-way bus ticket to Minneapolis. I might be wrong on this (I hope so) and all will be well. But if not, then Minneapolis may find it is waaaay the hell more expensive to try rebuilding what they took down than it was to just keep it. The new cops coming in can see this is a dangerous area and will want hazard pay. Perhaps they will be rock-hard veterans of other dangerous areas going in to try to clean up a mess. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 8 21:37:01 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 14:37:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: <00ee01d63962$112c6a30$33853e90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00ef01d63ddc$f2176fd0$d6464f70$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat >?New terms and new uses for old terms arise all the time. Standardization happens when a term or new use of a term gains ground. That's just part of normal language change. (Don't believe me. Look up how the terms 'girl' and 'silly' changed over time.) Does this mean _you_ will eschew using any new terms or using any old terms in new ways? I doubt it?.Dan Dan it isn?t terms. There are underlying assumptions also written into these kinds of essays which are very foreign to plenty of us. But since you bring up fash, we have a term antifa, which we are told means anti-fascist. Sure, OK. But the way the term fascist (and perhaps fash) is being used today is for any political view with which the speaker disagrees. To me historic Fascism is defined by the 1930s Italian revolutionaries, where the majority overruled everything. In that sense, the call in the USA to eliminate the electoral college is fascist, for it would mean the majority of the voters would always get their way. The minority states would have little say. It would fail to protect minorities. In my view, the heavy lifting in governance should be done at the state level, for states have a lot more options for raising money than does the federal government. The rights of state government is preserved by the electoral college, which historic fascism does not need or want. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 21:39:28 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 16:39:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <7284FB27-798A-4E82-906B-3E025A693546@gmail.com> References: <003401d63b35$44a974f0$cdfc5ed0$@rainier66.com> <7284FB27-798A-4E82-906B-3E025A693546@gmail.com> Message-ID: dan wrote - I don't agree with the view that somehow having no police around all the thugs will go on a crime spree Fine. But even if crime is less there have to be people to deal with it. What do you suggest? bill w On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 3:53 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Jun 5, 2020, at 5:44 AM, spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 8:27 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > Again, I bring up abolishing the police. It should always be on the table, > IMO. > > > > There ya go, Dan. That notion should put to bed any remaining suggestion > that Americans do not need to own a gun. Even the possibility that an > entire police force could just get pissed and walk off the job (as they did > in St. Louis this week) should be a clear unambiguous reminder that a > well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. > > > > If we abolish the police, we also abolish all gun control laws, all of > them. Without a professional police force, we all need to have and to > carry guns. > > > > We have the opportunity to educate our society on the meaning of the > phrase ??shall not be infringed.? > > > > spike > > > It seems you believe I'm against people defending themselves and others. > Is this so? In fact, I've argued for arming the masses -- not just the > US-American masses, but worldwide. This is the correct Left position on > this issue. (In fact, traditionally, the Right wants the masses disarmed to > prevent them getting uppity. The strange thing is that many modern Leftists > seem to want the opposite: disarmed masses and armed elites. To me, this is > typically how those in the Left eventually turn to the Right on issues once > they have power.) > > In fact, I'd argue that immigrants and other marginal people need to be > armed and defended more so than your average person. For instance, > immigrants in the US tend to commit less crime but suffer more crime than > non-immigrants. This is so even though, as studies have shown, immigrants > tend to under-report crimes committed against them. Ditto for trans people > and for 'mentally ill' people.* > > That said, overall violence is down. I don't agree with the view that > somehow having no police around all the thugs will go on a crime spree. > That's like a Hollywood movie scenario. Real life, however, almost never > looks like that. A case in point is almost any natural disaster. We > generally don't see Mad Max: Fury Road playing out, but people usually > helping each other. (Yet just about any movie about a natural disaster > shows people turning vicious and against each other. Again, look at the > real world events and data -- rather than movie or TV narrative.) > > As for your citing the COTUS, you should note well that the right has been > infringed, and that should call into question your seeing the COTUS as some > sort of shield against injustice. Either the COTUS authorized those > infringements or did nothing to stop them. Or as Lysander Spooner > (1808-1887) put it: > > 'But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much > is certain ? that it has either authorized such a government as we have > had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to > exist.' > > Regards, > > Dan > > * I'm not the only one calling for this. See Jane Louise's piece from five > years ago: > > https://c4ss.org/content/3966 > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mon Jun 8 21:42:24 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 16:42:24 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <023F1C32-1A2E-4643-801E-DE396CDFE9EF@gmail.com> References: <00f501d63962$b502b4c0$1f081e40$@rainier66.com> <023F1C32-1A2E-4643-801E-DE396CDFE9EF@gmail.com> Message-ID: There are other ways to deal with such people rather than turning them over to a group of people who are known to brutalize other people. Regards, Dan You want to give them a good talking to? Eh? Urge them to try therapy or positive psychology? bill w On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 4:37 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Jun 2, 2020, at 10:04 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of > Dan > > ...-- or divide and conquer. This is typical of how any establishment has > > dealt with widespread dissent and protest: attempt to pull away some of the > more moderate elements to weaken the overall movement. ...Regards, Dan > > _______________________________________________ > > That would explain the legitimate protestors handing over the vandal to the > cops. > > We read Saul Alinsky Rules of Radicals too. > > spike > > > You keep mentioning Saul Alinsky as if he invented the protest. Bringing > him up is no answer to the issues raised. > > By the way, it's actually questionable when protesting police misconduct > _if_ turning over a vandal or a looter to the police is the right thing to > do. There are other ways to deal with such people rather than turning them > over to a group of people who are known to brutalize other people. > > Regards, > > Dan > Sample my Kindle books at: > > http://author.to/DanUst > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mon Jun 8 21:56:30 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 17:56:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 3:18 PM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: *> It's interesting you don't feel the same way about the folks who > followed their beliefs in shutting down the telescope.* > That's because shutting down a telescope is not an anti-fascist activity but protesting murder by police is. I don't advocate that fools follow their beliefs, and shutting down a telescope is an anti-enlightenment activity. It still appalls me that so many members of this list thought it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I had thought Extropians were better than that. John K Clark > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Jun 8 22:03:38 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 15:03:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <023F1C32-1A2E-4643-801E-DE396CDFE9EF@gmail.com> References: <00f501d63962$b502b4c0$1f081e40$@rainier66.com> <023F1C32-1A2E-4643-801E-DE396CDFE9EF@gmail.com> Message-ID: <012801d63de0$aa2e7bb0$fe8b7310$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat _______________________________________________ That would explain the legitimate protestors handing over the vandal to the cops. We read Saul Alinsky Rules of Radicals too. spike >?You keep mentioning Saul Alinsky as if he invented the protest. Bringing him up is no answer to the issues raised. >?By the way, it's actually questionable when protesting police misconduct _if_ turning over a vandal or a looter to the police is the right thing to do. There are other ways to deal with such people rather than turning them over to a group of people who are known to brutalize other people. Regards, Dan Hi Dan, I went to a local BLM protest march yesterday. It was peaceful, the chief of police was there, city leaders were there, school teachers, ordinary citizens of all races, people came to speak their mind and do their thing. There were plenty of whites and browns there. I didn?t feel threatened at any time. I took only one photo, this to remind me of the incident long in the future. The big problem that BLM people are having is that they keep being conflated with two other groups (at least two) who are pushing their own agendas and riding the perfectly legitimate cause of BLM. This was pointed out by one of the speakers. Antifa (from what I can tell) wants to rebuild society in their image. There are angry vandals among them. Vandalism does not advance the cause of BLM, it detracts from it. People are revolted by property destruction, for perfectly good reasons: it is too easy to envision bands of vandals roaming neighborhoods smashing car windows and slashing tires. There are looters who are there for profit (well hell at least I understand their motive, even if I disagree with their means.) They are opportunists. They too are being conflated with BLM, to the detriment of the latter. What I sense is that those with political power would like to join with and lift up BLM, for we agree: everyone should have equal opportunities and rights. We would also like to crush vandals, regardless of what motivates them. We would like to crush looters, for we know what motivates them and we disagree with it. I agree with what the crowd at the BLM rally did in handing the vandal over to the guard. Their action was what motivated me to go to that local BLM rally yesterday. They did the right thing. The BLM people are not vandals, they do not wish to harm the police, destroy property, tear down government, any of that. They want to be treated with respect. They are just like the rest of us. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 12926 bytes Desc: not available URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 22:05:16 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 15:05:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling Message-ID: Dylan Distasio wrote: snip > There are three main arguments that anti-fascists use to justify their occasional violence. First, as explained in Chapter 4, anti-fascists make a historical argument based on the accurate observation that ?rational debate? and the institutions of government have failed to consistently halt the rise of fascism. That's an argument consistent with the evolutionary psychology models I have promoted for a couple of decades. Essentially, when the economic conditions are right for a hitler, one will arise. Unfortunately, the model for how the traits for war or related social disruption evolved seems to be too difficult for all but a very few to grok. Keith From interzone at gmail.com Mon Jun 8 23:08:04 2020 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 19:08:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: John- My point was that Antifa gets to decide who the fascists are and then proactively use violence on them. If you're actually in favor of free speech, I'm not sure how you can reconcile that belief with it being ok for one group to do everything possible through both non-violent and violent means to shut down the free speech of anyone they don't agree with. It's how Antifa operates, and that standard operating procedure has been inculcated on campuses throughout the country. The chickens are coming home to roost, both in the actions and toleration of Antifa, and those protesters you had such a hard time with in Hawaii. I'm against what both of them are up to. On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 6:32 PM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 3:18 PM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > *> It's interesting you don't feel the same way about the folks who >> followed their beliefs in shutting down the telescope.* >> > > That's because shutting down a telescope is not an anti-fascist activity > but protesting murder by police is. I don't advocate that fools follow > their beliefs, and shutting down a telescope is an anti-enlightenment > activity. It still appalls me that so many members of this list thought it > was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I had thought Extropians were > better than that. > > 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 danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 00:54:23 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 17:54:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <00ef01d63ddc$f2176fd0$d6464f70$@rainier66.com> References: <00ef01d63ddc$f2176fd0$d6464f70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <59CCC0F9-9105-4864-BF84-2A60B9095A80@gmail.com> Italian fascism wasn?t majoritarian in any meaningful sense. In fact, early on, the parliament passed a law guaranteeing the party with the plurality equal to or greater than 25% got two thirds of the seats in parliament. This meant getting 25% of the deputies actually garnered 67%. This law was tailored to allow the fascists to play at elections yet safely never face an actual challenge to their power. The fascists merely had to prevent any other single party from getting enough votes. (This sort of thing only works in a multiparty system ? which is what Italy had back then. Were it a two party system, no doubt, the Italian fascists would?ve sang a different song as their goal was to obtain and keep power ? not to beholden to any particular law regarding elections.) That?s very different from majority rule ? where in order to get a majority of seats in a parliament, you?d have to win a majority of seats and not apportion them more to some plurality. Thus the call to have direct elections for president in the US is not at all like the fascist election law. Also, Italian fascism was ?defined? in the 1920s. That?s when the party took power and also when the election law was passed. (The law was passed in 1924. That was the last competitive election in Italy until after the war. No doubt, had Italians had competitive elections during the 1920s and 1930s, fascists would?ve lost power. That was a risk they weren?t going to take.) Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst > On Jun 8, 2020, at 3:07 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > ? > > > From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > > > >?New terms and new uses for old terms arise all the time. Standardization happens when a term or new use of a term gains ground. That's just part of normal language change. (Don't believe me. Look up how the terms 'girl' and 'silly' changed over time.) Does this mean _you_ will eschew using any new terms or using any old terms in new ways? I doubt it?.Dan > > > Dan it isn?t terms. There are underlying assumptions also written into these kinds of essays which are very foreign to plenty of us. > > But since you bring up fash, we have a term antifa, which we are told means anti-fascist. Sure, OK. But the way the term fascist (and perhaps fash) is being used today is for any political view with which the speaker disagrees. > > To me historic Fascism is defined by the 1930s Italian revolutionaries, where the majority overruled everything. In that sense, the call in the USA to eliminate the electoral college is fascist, for it would mean the majority of the voters would always get their way. The minority states would have little say. It would fail to protect minorities. > > In my view, the heavy lifting in governance should be done at the state level, for states have a lot more options for raising money than does the federal government. The rights of state government is preserved by the electoral college, which historic fascism does not need or want. > > spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 03:22:56 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 20:22:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest Message-ID: wrote: snip > To me historic Fascism . . . Spike, perhaps 30 years ago I noted that economic downturns in the US were associated _every time_ with an upsurge in neo-Nazis. It was a mystery at the time. Now I understand why. It is as mechanistic as a ball falling to the floor. Keith PS. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-navy-exclusive/exclusive-u-s-navy-test-shows-60-percent-of-carrier-crew-have-coronavirus-antibodies-idUSKBN23F29Z Which gives an idea of how many have to get COVID for the infection to burn out. From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 10:39:02 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 06:39:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 7:12 PM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: *> John- My point was that Antifa gets to decide who the fascists are and > then proactively use violence on them. * > Well yes, but In the final analysis that's not just true for Antifa, everybody must decide for themselves who is a fascist and who is not and what cause is worth fighting for and what cause is not. I think trying to stop the police from murdering people is worth fighting for, and so is trying to slow down the country's current march towards fascism, but stopping the construction of an instrument that would help the human race learn more about the universe is not worth fighting for. At least that's what I've decided, what about you? > *If you're actually in favor of free speech,* > I think a person has the right to say anything they want no matter how stupid, and I have a right to say they are unwise for doing so. * > I'm not sure how you can reconcile that belief with it being ok for one > group to do everything possible through both non-violent and violent means > to shut down the free speech of anyone they don't agree with. * > Considering the huge scale of these protests there has been very little violence from the protesters, I wish I could say the same thing about the police. A police riot is the worst kind of riot. > *> It's how Antifa operates, and that standard operating procedure has > been inculcated on campuses throughout the country.* > I've looked into this a little, in the real world outside of the fever dreams of MAGA Hatters and QAnon nutcases it seems to me Antifa rarely operates at all, and when they do it's usually to organize students protesting college administrators using student tuition money to pay a MAGA Hatter to give a Fascist speech on campus. I have no problem with that, you have the right to say whatever you want but you don't have the right to make me pay you to say it. Of course sometimes they protest speakers who are not Fascist like Richard Dawkins, and I do have a problem with that, but even then it's not a First Amendment issue it's just bad judgement. And of course Antifa is notoriously anti-capitalistic which is pretty silly. John K Clark > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 11:50:49 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 07:50:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap Message-ID: Forty million Americans have filed for unemployment during the economic lockdown and 113,106 have died from COVID-19, but between mid March and mid May the net worth of American billionaires increased by $434 billion. I find it amazing that so many people think this acceleration of the wealth gap can continue indefinitely without blood flowing in the streets. American billionaires got $434 billion richer during the pandemic John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 9 12:36:54 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 05:36:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <007701d63e5a$a866b390$f9341ab0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat >?everybody must decide for themselves who is a fascist and who is not and what cause is worth fighting for and what cause is not? >? of course Antifa is notoriously anti-capitalistic which is pretty silly. John K Clark No, this is a good thing. People who are anti-capitalistic tend to have less money, resulting in their being less well-armed. Any rioting mob committing acts of violence and vandalism is fascist. We (the well-organized militia and allies) have the right to fight them. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 15:19:14 2020 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 09:19:14 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I guarantee that that's part of the dynamic driving the riots and looting, though you can always count on the MSM to fail to mention anything that might imply inform a narrative of economic-based class warfare [as opposed to race warefare, which they are all about]. On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 5:53 AM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Forty million Americans have filed for unemployment during the economic > lockdown and 113,106 have died from COVID-19, but between mid March and mid > May the net worth of American billionaires increased by $434 billion. I > find it amazing that so many people think this acceleration of the wealth > gap can continue indefinitely without blood flowing in the streets. > > American billionaires got $434 billion richer during the pandemic > > > John K Clark > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 9 16:06:12 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 09:06:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00f401d63e77$e5f5f460$b1e1dd20$@rainier66.com> >? On Behalf Of Darin Sunley via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap >?I guarantee that that's part of the dynamic driving the riots and looting, though you can always count on the MSM to fail to mention anything that might imply inform a narrative of economic-based class warfare [as opposed to race warefare, which they are all about]. Which side of the gap are these guys on? https://nypost.com/2020/06/03/looters-flee-in-luxury-suvs-after-ransacking-nyc-stores-video/ spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 16:13:10 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 12:13:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: <007701d63e5a$a866b390$f9341ab0$@rainier66.com> References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> <007701d63e5a$a866b390$f9341ab0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 8:39 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > *Any rioting mob committing acts of violence and vandalism is fascist. * What if, as in this case, the violent mob consists primarily of police? And a lot of the violence wasn't done by the regular police, it was done by the *SECRET POLICE*, many of the rioting cops had their names and badge numbers and any other way of identifying them carefully hidden. *> We (the well-organized militia and allies) have the right to fight them.* Is a gaggle of self described "militia members" running around in MAGA hats wielding torches and shotguns chanting "Jews will not replace us" a mob? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 16:48:26 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 12:48:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 11:23 AM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: *> I guarantee that that's part of the dynamic driving the riots and > looting,* > I agree, and the more the wealth gap, not just grows but accelerates, the more the rioting and looting will accelerate. People need to put their political ideology on hold for a moment, and I don't care if it's right or left or libertarian or fascist, and concentrate on what will work, that is to say embrace the Scientific Method; because we're all in this together and the acceleration needs to be stopped for our civilization to continue. To blissfully expect that this wealth gap acceleration can go on for eternity without producing any morbidly dangerous social consequences would just be dumb. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 16:49:38 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 09:49:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <012801d63de0$aa2e7bb0$fe8b7310$@rainier66.com> References: <012801d63de0$aa2e7bb0$fe8b7310$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Jun 8, 2020, at 3:49 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > > > On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > > > _______________________________________________ > > That would explain the legitimate protestors handing over the vandal to the > cops. > > We read Saul Alinsky Rules of Radicals too. > > spike > > >?You keep mentioning Saul Alinsky as if he invented the protest. Bringing him up is no answer to the issues raised. > > >?By the way, it's actually questionable when protesting police misconduct _if_ turning over a vandal or a looter to the police is the right thing to do. There are other ways to deal with such people rather than turning them over to a group of people who are known to brutalize other people. > > Regards, > > Dan > > > Hi Dan, > > I went to a local BLM protest march yesterday. It was peaceful, the chief of police was there, city leaders were there, school teachers, ordinary citizens of all races, people came to speak their mind and do their thing. There were plenty of whites and browns there. I didn?t feel threatened at any time. > > I took only one photo, this to remind me of the incident long in the future. > > > > The big problem that BLM people are having is that they keep being conflated with two other groups (at least two) who are pushing their own agendas and riding the perfectly legitimate cause of BLM. This was pointed out by one of the speakers. Antifa (from what I can tell) wants to rebuild society in their image. There are angry vandals among them. Vandalism does not advance the cause of BLM, it detracts from it. People are revolted by property destruction, for perfectly good reasons: it is too easy to envision bands of vandals roaming neighborhoods smashing car windows and slashing tires. > > There are looters who are there for profit (well hell at least I understand their motive, even if I disagree with their means.) They are opportunists. They too are being conflated with BLM, to the detriment of the latter. > > What I sense is that those with political power would like to join with and lift up BLM, for we agree: everyone should have equal opportunities and rights. We would also like to crush vandals, regardless of what motivates them. We would like to crush looters, for we know what motivates them and we disagree with it. > > I agree with what the crowd at the BLM rally did in handing the vandal over to the guard. Their action was what motivated me to go to that local BLM rally yesterday. They did the right thing. The BLM people are not vandals, they do not wish to harm the police, destroy property, tear down government, any of that. They want to be treated with respect. They are just like the rest of us. > > spike Would you be willing to ?crush? the vandals revealed in this video: https://www.motherjones.com/anti-racism-police-protest/2020/06/videos-show-cops-slashing-car-tires-at-protests-in-minneapolis/ Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 16:50:59 2020 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 10:50:59 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: <00f401d63e77$e5f5f460$b1e1dd20$@rainier66.com> References: <00f401d63e77$e5f5f460$b1e1dd20$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Twitter consensus seems to peg them as nouveau riche entrepreneurs of unlicensed pharmaceuticals, so the poor side, psychologically. On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 10:09 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *>?* *On Behalf Of *Darin Sunley via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap > > > > >?I guarantee that that's part of the dynamic driving the riots and > looting, though you can always count on the MSM to fail to mention anything > that might imply inform a narrative of economic-based class warfare [as > opposed to race warefare, which they are all about]. > > > > > > > > Which side of the gap are these guys on? > > > > > https://nypost.com/2020/06/03/looters-flee-in-luxury-suvs-after-ransacking-nyc-stores-video/ > > > > spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 17:03:00 2020 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 11:03:00 -0600 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> <007701d63e5a$a866b390$f9341ab0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: "Mob" isn't just a word for "scary people I don't like." Whether or not a group of armed people intending violence and destruction is a "mob" depends largely on leadership and coordination, n'est-ce pas? That gaggle of NRA members sounds like it has a plan that they are taking coordinated action to pursue. So no, not a mob. On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 10:20 AM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 8:39 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > *Any rioting mob committing acts of violence and vandalism is >> fascist. * > > > What if, as in this case, the violent mob consists primarily of police? > And a lot of the violence wasn't done by the regular police, it was done > by the *SECRET POLICE*, many of the rioting cops had their names and > badge numbers and any other way of identifying them carefully hidden. > > *> We (the well-organized militia and allies) have the right to fight >> them.* > > > Is a gaggle of self described "militia members" running around in MAGA > hats wielding torches and shotguns chanting "Jews will not replace us" a > mob? > > John K Clark > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 9 17:07:12 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 10:07:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> <007701d63e5a$a866b390$f9341ab0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <012701d63e80$6b80fdc0$4282f940$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] diamonds falling On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 8:39 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: > Any rioting mob committing acts of violence and vandalism is fascist. >?What if, as in this case, the violent mob consists primarily of police? It should be easy enough to figure out using face recognition technology. > We (the well-organized militia and allies) have the right to fight them. >?Is a gaggle of self described "militia members" Self described? The militia is unambiguously defined: all American male citizens between the ages of 17 and 45. >?running around in MAGA hats? MAGA hats? Indeed? How many of those have you seen John? >?wielding torches? Torches? Indeed? Are you referring to the arsonists? Do they use torches for that? >?and shotguns? Why would they have shotguns of all things? >?chanting "Jews will not replace us" a mob? John K Clark Replace us? A good portion of the militia are Jews. John I do not know of the fantasy world where you imagined any of this, but it doesn?t sound like pleasant place. I have never seen or heard of any of this stuff. If this is the dark vision that is haunting you, do let me reassure you please: none of this will ever happen. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 17:29:14 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 13:29:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> <007701d63e5a$a866b390$f9341ab0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 1:24 PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > *Whether or not a group of armed people intending violence and > destruction is a "mob" depends largely on leadership and coordination, > n'est-ce pas? That gaggle of NRA members sounds like it has a plan that > they are taking coordinated action to pursue. So no, not a mob.* > A lynch mob has a coordinated action they want to pursue, so why is that called a "mob"? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 9 17:37:13 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 10:37:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: <012801d63de0$aa2e7bb0$fe8b7310$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <017801d63e84$9ca284b0$d5e78e10$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Protest On Jun 8, 2020, at 3:49 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: > On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat Hi Dan, >? We would like to crush looters, for we know what motivates them and we disagree with it?I agree with what the crowd at the BLM rally did in handing the vandal over to the guard. Their action was what motivated me to go to that local BLM rally yesterday. They did the right thing. ? spike >?Would you be willing to ?crush? the vandals revealed in this video: https://www.motherjones.com/anti-racism-police-protest/2020/06/videos-show-cops-slashing-car-tires-at-protests-in-minneapolis/ Regards, Dan If this guy in the uniform is an actual vandal, of course I want to crush him. They dress like police and cause all manner of chaos. But they might be actual police, using an enforcement technique that makes perfect sense. Imagine this scenario. It isn?t hard to do: https://www.rt.com/usa/490582-looting-califorina-protest-video/ After hours, store closed, somebody gets a forklift or other piece of heavy equipment to break into an electronics store, there is a mob present for some mysterious reason, perhaps for having been on an email circle, they rush in, grab something of value, run out, drive off. This last part is important because that mall in Fairfield as well as plenty of others, would need a vehicle. They can?t really carry off enough loot in their hands to justify the risk, and many (if not most) of these looters may not be from anywhere around Fairfield (I am guessing they aren?t.) OK. Looters need to park near the entrance so they can carry enough packages out the door in a short enough time. So? police come in, don?t go into the store, just disable every car near the entrance. Looter comes out, perhaps don?t notice at first, get out on the freeway with a trunk full of stolen loot, police car calmly falls in behind, the tire comes off the rim a few minutes later, we get an entertaining video of the felon deciding if she wants to flee, resulting in those dramatic showering sparks of bare rim on pavement. Or she just gives up (more likely scenario.) Then the prosecutors make a deal: hand over the identities of the others, they go easy. Then they trace down the others, go to their houses, collect the stolen loot, the merchandise you and I paid for (through markups from insurance costs to retailers) is partially recovered. Fewer injuries that way than getting into a battle with the mob at the mall. If that is a real cop slashing tires, he would have had a law-enforcement reason to do that. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 9 17:39:33 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 10:39:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: References: <00f401d63e77$e5f5f460$b1e1dd20$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <017f01d63e84$f053b070$d0fb1150$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Darin Sunley via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap >>?Which side of the gap are these guys on? https://nypost.com/2020/06/03/looters-flee-in-luxury-suvs-after-ransacking-nyc-stores-video/ spike >?Twitter consensus seems to peg them as nouveau riche entrepreneurs of unlicensed pharmaceuticals, so the poor side, psychologically? I see, so if they are poor psychologically but rich monetarily, which side of the wealth gap are they on? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 17:58:50 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 13:58:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: <012701d63e80$6b80fdc0$4282f940$@rainier66.com> References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> <007701d63e5a$a866b390$f9341ab0$@rainier66.com> <012701d63e80$6b80fdc0$4282f940$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 1:39 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>?chanting "Jews will not replace us" a mob? > > *>Replace us? A good portion of the militia are Jews. I have never seen > or heard of any of this stuff. * > Charlottesville Nazis Chant 'Jews Will Not Replace Us' Through Streets *> Torches? Indeed?* Yes indeed, and Trump called them "good people": Torch-wielding white supremacists march through University of Virginia John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 9 18:03:10 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 11:03:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> <007701d63e5a$a866b390$f9341ab0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <01b001d63e88$3d71c970$b8555c50$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Darin Sunley via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] diamonds falling >?"Mob" isn't just a word for "scary people I don't like." ? >?That gaggle of NRA members sounds like it has a plan that they are taking coordinated action to pursue. So no, not a mob? Hi Darin, I agree. Anyone who is afraid at an NRA rally or a gun show has never been to one. Do attend to one. You will never be safer anywhere, for there are plenty of people there with concealed firearms, responsible, legal, skilled in the sport. You are perfectly safe there. Looters and rioters will not be seen. Of course there is a risk. One might observe that the crowd there is polite, respectful, good people. No one has a torch. I suppose there is the occasional shotgun, but that would be a very small fraction of the firearms present. They are not stupid. They are not violent. They are not rioters. Attendance there might cause one to begin doubting the narrative of a dangerous pitchfork and torch-wielding redneck mob. One might discover this crowd really isn?t violent, they aren?t stupid, they are against violence and stupidity. They stand between you and violence. One might come to recognize deplorable arrogance in oneself based on a Hollywood caricature of the NRA mob. It could lead to an episode of soul-cleansing humility. Horrors! Go there. See. Listen. Learn. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 34475 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 18:36:06 2020 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 12:36:06 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: <017f01d63e84$f053b070$d0fb1150$@rainier66.com> References: <00f401d63e77$e5f5f460$b1e1dd20$@rainier66.com> <017f01d63e84$f053b070$d0fb1150$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: As with so many things, it depends on what you're wanting to use the answer to that question for. If you're looking to assign blameworthiness in a deontological moral framework, then objectively, they're rich. But if you want to model and predict their behavior, you'll get much better results modeling them as poor. On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 12:08 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *Darin Sunley via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap > > > > > > >>?Which side of the gap are these guys on? > > > https://nypost.com/2020/06/03/looters-flee-in-luxury-suvs-after-ransacking-nyc-stores-video/ > > spike > > > > > > >?Twitter consensus seems to peg them as nouveau riche entrepreneurs of > unlicensed pharmaceuticals, so the poor side, psychologically? > > > > > > I see, so if they are poor psychologically but rich monetarily, which side > of the wealth gap are they on? > > > > 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 dsunley at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 18:43:03 2020 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 12:43:03 -0600 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> <007701d63e5a$a866b390$f9341ab0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: To the extent that the "mob" in "lynch mob" isn't simply an ad hominem for "scary people I don't like", it probably has to do with their dependence [or lack thereof], on centralized, top down leadership for tactical decisions on a intermediate (10-15 minutes) time scale. A mob can share a strategy and a goal, but it's mobbish-ness derives from that fact that there's no one they look to for tactical direction. Which is probably not the case with the MAGA-aligned protesters you mentioned earlier. On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 11:49 AM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 1:24 PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > *Whether or not a group of armed people intending violence and >> destruction is a "mob" depends largely on leadership and coordination, >> n'est-ce pas? That gaggle of NRA members sounds like it has a plan that >> they are taking coordinated action to pursue. So no, not a mob.* >> > > A lynch mob has a coordinated action they want to pursue, so why is that > called a "mob"? > > 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 Tue Jun 9 18:49:24 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 11:49:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: References: <00f401d63e77$e5f5f460$b1e1dd20$@rainier66.com> <017f01d63e84$f053b070$d0fb1150$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <01e601d63e8e$b26d6440$17482cc0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Darin Sunley via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap >?As with so many things, it depends on what you're wanting to use the answer to that question for. >?If you're looking to assign blameworthiness in a deontological moral framework, then objectively, they're rich? Ja, OK. If a mob is looting, it is already clear to me they are to blame. That?s the easy part. >?But if you want to model and predict their behavior, you'll get much better results modeling them as poor? I would model them as crazy. Somebody has a $300k Rolls, and they are risking that to grab a few hundred or perhaps a few thousand bucks worth of loot? Does that make sense to you? Doesn?t to me either. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 9 18:59:49 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 11:59:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] diamonds falling In-Reply-To: References: <008101d63da8$f76304b0$e6290e10$@rainier66.com> <007701d63e5a$a866b390$f9341ab0$@rainier66.com> <012701d63e80$6b80fdc0$4282f940$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <020201d63e90$26e28340$74a789c0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] diamonds falling On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 1:39 PM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: >>?chanting "Jews will not replace us" a mob? >Replace us? A good portion of the militia are Jews. I have never seen or heard of any of this stuff. Charlottesville Nazis Chant 'Jews Will Not Replace Us' Through Streets > Torches? Indeed? >?Yes indeed, and Trump? Campaigning? Here? >?Torch-wielding white supremacists march through University of Virginia John K Clark A Nazi rally? John is this your world? Do you shape your worldview based on a Nazi rally? I heard of exactly one Nazi rally, but we are seeing looters everywhere regularly, we are seeing vandalism, everywhere, not just in one place. This is why we have a militia, because of Nazi rallies and looting mobs. The militia has Jews, gentiles, black, white, everything. The militia is there to assist the army if things get beyond their ability to control the mobs. Regarding torches at the Nazi rally, I notice they didn?t use those to commit arson, and I didn?t see any shotguns. Shotguns, how bizarre is that? On the other hand? This is what happened up the street from here in 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwFzOW2tZf0 I am part Jewish (genetically, not culturally.) I don?t worry about Nazis, there aren?t enough of them. Fascists, such as the ones calling themselves antifa, are much more a concern to me: there are way more of them, and they are openly promoting violence. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 19:04:41 2020 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 13:04:41 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: <01e601d63e8e$b26d6440$17482cc0$@rainier66.com> References: <00f401d63e77$e5f5f460$b1e1dd20$@rainier66.com> <017f01d63e84$f053b070$d0fb1150$@rainier66.com> <01e601d63e8e$b26d6440$17482cc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: People who, due to their circumstances, literally do not believe in the future, any future, frequently do things that can very reasonably be called "crazy". When you hyperbolicly discount any projected future utility more than a month or so out down to zero due to genuinely real uncertainty about still being alive and healthy then, a lot of very extreme actions start to seem rational. When a critical mass of the population of an area becomes this nihilistic, the nihilism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 12:56 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *Darin Sunley via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap > > > > > > > > > > > > >?As with so many things, it depends on what you're wanting to use the > answer to that question for. > > > > >?If you're looking to assign blameworthiness in a deontological moral > framework, then objectively, they're rich? > > > > Ja, OK. If a mob is looting, it is already clear to me they are to > blame. That?s the easy part. > > > > > > >?But if you want to model and predict their behavior, you'll get much > better results modeling them as poor? > > > > I would model them as crazy. Somebody has a $300k Rolls, and they are > risking that to grab a few hundred or perhaps a few thousand bucks worth of > loot? Does that make sense to you? Doesn?t to me either. > > > > spike > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 19:10:58 2020 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 13:10:58 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: <01e601d63e8e$b26d6440$17482cc0$@rainier66.com> References: <00f401d63e77$e5f5f460$b1e1dd20$@rainier66.com> <017f01d63e84$f053b070$d0fb1150$@rainier66.com> <01e601d63e8e$b26d6440$17482cc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Also, "crazy" isn't a behavioral model, it's merely an implicit confession that their behavior confuses you and you don't know how to model their behavior. On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 12:56 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *Darin Sunley via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap > > > > > > > > > > > > >?As with so many things, it depends on what you're wanting to use the > answer to that question for. > > > > >?If you're looking to assign blameworthiness in a deontological moral > framework, then objectively, they're rich? > > > > Ja, OK. If a mob is looting, it is already clear to me they are to > blame. That?s the easy part. > > > > > > >?But if you want to model and predict their behavior, you'll get much > better results modeling them as poor? > > > > I would model them as crazy. Somebody has a $300k Rolls, and they are > risking that to grab a few hundred or perhaps a few thousand bucks worth of > loot? Does that make sense to you? Doesn?t to me either. > > > > spike > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 19:30:36 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 12:30:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Lockdowns Message-ID: " Lockdowns and other distancing measures have had resounding success at thwarting the new coronavirus, according to two independently conducted studies. One found that stay-at-home orders and policies that restrict face-to-face contact were especially effective in 11 European countries, reducing transmission by 81%. The combination of policies aimed at slowing the virus?s spread prevented more than 3 million deaths from the epidemic?s start to early May. Another study that looked at China, the United States and 4 more countries showed that across all 6 countries, anti-transmission measures averted roughly 500 million infections." >From Nature I would modify the article. "Prevented" should be "delayed" and "averted" should be "temporarily averted" assuming we get neither a vaccine nor effective treatments. Keith From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 19:33:13 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 14:33:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: <01e601d63e8e$b26d6440$17482cc0$@rainier66.com> References: <00f401d63e77$e5f5f460$b1e1dd20$@rainier66.com> <017f01d63e84$f053b070$d0fb1150$@rainier66.com> <01e601d63e8e$b26d6440$17482cc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: would model them as crazy. Somebody has a $300k Rolls, and they are risking that to grab a few hundred or perhaps a few thousand bucks worth of loot? Does that make sense to you? Doesn?t to me either. spike It's the thrill. LIke the billionaire's wife who gets arrested for shoplifting an $80 scarf at Macy''s bill w On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 1:56 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *Darin Sunley via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap > > > > > > > > > > > > >?As with so many things, it depends on what you're wanting to use the > answer to that question for. > > > > >?If you're looking to assign blameworthiness in a deontological moral > framework, then objectively, they're rich? > > > > Ja, OK. If a mob is looting, it is already clear to me they are to > blame. That?s the easy part. > > > > > > >?But if you want to model and predict their behavior, you'll get much > better results modeling them as poor? > > > > I would model them as crazy. Somebody has a $300k Rolls, and they are > risking that to grab a few hundred or perhaps a few thousand bucks worth of > loot? Does that make sense to you? Doesn?t to me either. > > > > spike > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 9 19:34:48 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 12:34:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: References: <00f401d63e77$e5f5f460$b1e1dd20$@rainier66.com> <017f01d63e84$f053b070$d0fb1150$@rainier66.com> <01e601d63e8e$b26d6440$17482cc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <001501d63e95$0a2d2bb0$1e878310$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Darin Sunley via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap >?People who, due to their circumstances, literally do not believe in the future, any future, frequently do things that can very reasonably be called "crazy"? Darin Hi Darin, well sure. I don?t see how that no-future scenario would apply to the owner of that Rolls who was participating in the looting, who clearly has a lot of money. She could flee that benighted suburb, move out into the country, live a nice peaceful life out there with no concerns with finances. The future sure looks bright to me for that owner. Since the no-future argument doesn?t really apply there, perhaps someone can offer an explanation for why one would drive one?s Rolls to such an event. Why not just rent a car for that purpose? One could hire looters I suppose, to reduce the risk to oneself. Anyone who owns something of value has something of value to lose. Ownership instills a sense of responsibility. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 20:01:57 2020 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 14:01:57 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: <001501d63e95$0a2d2bb0$1e878310$@rainier66.com> References: <00f401d63e77$e5f5f460$b1e1dd20$@rainier66.com> <017f01d63e84$f053b070$d0fb1150$@rainier66.com> <01e601d63e8e$b26d6440$17482cc0$@rainier66.com> <001501d63e95$0a2d2bb0$1e878310$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: To an inner city drug dealer, it absolutely applies. That Rolls is the result of maybe a few really good deals, and could be gone tomorrow. Ownership does not necessarily instill a responsibility on a Hobbesian state of nature. Here today, gone tomorrow. On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 1:51 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *Darin Sunley via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap > > > > >?People who, due to their circumstances, literally do not believe in the > future, any future, frequently do things that can very reasonably be called > "crazy"? Darin > > > > Hi Darin, well sure. I don?t see how that no-future scenario would apply > to the owner of that Rolls who was participating in the looting, who > clearly has a lot of money. She could flee that benighted suburb, move out > into the country, live a nice peaceful life out there with no concerns with > finances. The future sure looks bright to me for that owner. > > > > Since the no-future argument doesn?t really apply there, perhaps someone > can offer an explanation for why one would drive one?s Rolls to such an > event. Why not just rent a car for that purpose? One could hire looters I > suppose, to reduce the risk to oneself. Anyone who owns something of value > has something of value to lose. Ownership instills a sense of > responsibility. > > > > 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 Tue Jun 9 20:12:09 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 13:12:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: References: <00f401d63e77$e5f5f460$b1e1dd20$@rainier66.com> <017f01d63e84$f053b070$d0fb1150$@rainier66.com> <01e601d63e8e$b26d6440$17482cc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <005201d63e9a$4199ea20$c4cdbe60$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Darin Sunley via extropy-chat Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 12:11 PM To: ExI chat list Cc: Darin Sunley Subject: Re: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap >?Also, "crazy" isn't a behavioral model, it's merely an implicit confession that their behavior confuses you and you don't know how to model their behavior? OK Darin, I will certainly admit I don?t understand how to model the behavior of driving a $300k Rolls to loot a department store. Can you make sense of that? Looters may imagine they are stealing from the rich, but in fact they are stealing from the poor. The insurance premiums will go up on all businesses anywhere near where rioting took place. This increases the prices of everything, which hits the poor the hardest. Since their local stores are burned out and my not be rebuilt, the poor now need to travel a greater distance to do their trading. Looters are the opposite of Robin Hood: they steal from the poor and give to themselves. Note the comments made by the mayor of Chicago: "I've been on calls and text messages with people all day who fought hard to bring economic development to areas of the city, only to see the Walgreens, the CVS, the grocery store, everything vanish in an eye blink. It's going to take a Herculean effort on the part of all of us to convince businesses not to disappear, to come back. We're prepared to fight that fight." "I haven't seen shit like this before. The number of places all over the South and West sides in particular that have been hit today has just been off the charts. Literally hundreds, if not thousands, of locations. Big stores, small stores, strip malls, many corner places, it is all over the city." The mayor did have an uplifting comment on the local residents form a volunteer guard, hoping to protect what is left. This is important considering the obvious new challenge: the remaining businesses are all they have left. ?The new guards are unarmed and solely in place to monitor activity on commercial corridors and notify the Chicago Police Department if any illegal activity occurs. None of the security guards have policing powers, but are another set of eyes and ears to support efforts to deter looters. All security officers will wear visible identification.? Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, 31 May 2020 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 20:16:11 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 13:16:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I don't have all the answers here, but personal self-defense and voluntary defense associations for those extremely rare occasions when violent confrontations happen. Private security already plays a role in current US-American society, such as security guards inside shopping malls and the like. So I don't see any reason why people can't specialize in security and things like detection and apprehension of suspects. What wouldn't exist under such a system is a group of people who have special privileges because of this specialization. (And self-help wouldn't be outlawed.) Elsewhere I mentioned Bruce L. Benson's 1990 book _The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State_. He goes over much of this in far more depth than me. Also, market anarchists have been discussing how to deal with crime without the state for decades now. This is all part of the literature of libertarian thought, no? (What shocks me is meeting people who call themselves libertarians who seem unaware of this work. Have you heard of Benson's work? That's not his only book. How about George H. Smith? Have you read his essay "Justice Entrepreneurship In a Free Market"? He wrote on this subject back in 1979!) Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst > On Jun 8, 2020, at 3:21 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > ? > dan wrote - I don't agree with the view that somehow having no police around all the thugs will go on a crime spree > > Fine. But even if crime is less there have to be people to deal with it. What do you suggest? > > bill w >> >> It seems you believe I'm against people defending themselves and others. Is this so? In fact, I've argued for arming the masses -- not just the US-American masses, but worldwide. This is the correct Left position on this issue. (In fact, traditionally, the Right wants the masses disarmed to prevent them getting uppity. The strange thing is that many modern Leftists seem to want the opposite: disarmed masses and armed elites. To me, this is typically how those in the Left eventually turn to the Right on issues once they have power.) >> >> In fact, I'd argue that immigrants and other marginal people need to be armed and defended more so than your average person. For instance, immigrants in the US tend to commit less crime but suffer more crime than non-immigrants. This is so even though, as studies have shown, immigrants tend to under-report crimes committed against them. Ditto for trans people and for 'mentally ill' people.* >> >> That said, overall violence is down. I don't agree with the view that somehow having no police around all the thugs will go on a crime spree. That's like a Hollywood movie scenario. Real life, however, almost never looks like that. A case in point is almost any natural disaster. We generally don't see Mad Max: Fury Road playing out, but people usually helping each other. (Yet just about any movie about a natural disaster shows people turning vicious and against each other. Again, look at the real world events and data -- rather than movie or TV narrative.) >> >> As for your citing the COTUS, you should note well that the right has been infringed, and that should call into question your seeing the COTUS as some sort of shield against injustice. Either the COTUS authorized those infringements or did nothing to stop them. Or as Lysander Spooner (1808-1887) put it: >> >> 'But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain ? that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.' >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan >> >> * I'm not the only one calling for this. See Jane Louise's piece from five years ago: >> >> https://c4ss.org/content/3966 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 20:17:23 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 13:17:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Jun 9, 2020, at 12:16 PM, Darin Sunley via extropy-chat wrote:? > > People who, due to their circumstances, literally do not believe in the future, any future, frequently do things that can very reasonably be called "crazy". > > When you hyperbolicly discount any projected future utility more than a month or so out down to zero due to genuinely real uncertainty about still being alive and healthy then, a lot of very extreme actions start to seem rational. > > When a critical mass of the population of an area becomes this nihilistic, the nihilism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ever hear of Crinton Bane's _The Anatomy of Revolution_? I seem to recall him positing that revolutions happen when there are rising expectations -- rising hopes -- but the near-term prospects are being thwarted or seem grim. Sort of fits with your view, though it's not about seeing no future or no hope, but about seeing a better future being taken away unless they act. Or that's what I got from the book when I read it in high school. (If it's not what Bane meant, and I'm seeing the book is much older than I thought; I probably read a revised edition in paperback, but even the last revised edition is older than me. And add to this, I'm sure Bane is not the last word on the subject.) Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 20:21:10 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 13:21:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6865B53E-A3C8-44AC-B24D-60313B3D92DB@gmail.com> On Jun 8, 2020, at 3:31 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote:? > > There are other ways to deal with such people rather than turning them over to a group of people who are known to brutalize other people. > > Regards, > > Dan > > You want to give them a good talking to? Eh? Urge them to try therapy or positive psychology? > bill w Well, first you can stop them from doing the vandalizing. That seems to have happened, no? Some people there stopped him forcibly from whatever it was he was doing. That's part of what I meant. And, yes, talking works too. Or do you think talking never works? How do people, including police in other Western nations, quite frequently de-escalate situations like fights? Usually through talk, no? (How do UK police get along with most of them not carrying guns?) But it doesn't strike you at all as ironic that when protesting police misconduct, especially if as a protester you believe this is rampant and systemic, that you'd turn anyone over to the police? (My guess is most people, including many if not most protesters, lack imagination and insight here. This is a terrible sin. The average person gets upset at police misconduct -- though only after decades of such and only after it's finally widely publicized to the point it's impossible to ignore. I don't expect the average person to think of all the ramifications here and that the problem almost certainly won't be solved by a few reforms.) Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst >> On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 4:37 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: >> >> You keep mentioning Saul Alinsky as if he invented the protest. Bringing him up is no answer to the issues raised. >> >> By the way, it's actually questionable when protesting police misconduct _if_ turning over a vandal or a looter to the police is the right thing to do. There are other ways to deal with such people rather than turning them over to a group of people who are known to brutalize other people. >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 20:40:09 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 13:40:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <017801d63e84$9ca284b0$d5e78e10$@rainier66.com> References: <017801d63e84$9ca284b0$d5e78e10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <03535B26-81B5-4739-952C-2DF786CFCE4D@gmail.com> On Jun 9, 2020, at 10:58 AM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > > > On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > Subject: Re: [ExI] Protest > > On Jun 8, 2020, at 3:49 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > > > On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > > > > > Hi Dan, > > >? We would like to crush looters, for we know what motivates them and we disagree with it?I agree with what the crowd at the BLM rally did in handing the vandal over to the guard. Their action was what motivated me to go to that local BLM rally yesterday. They did the right thing. ? > > spike > > >?Would you be willing to ?crush? the vandals revealed in this video: > > https://www.motherjones.com/anti-racism-police-protest/2020/06/videos-show-cops-slashing-car-tires-at-protests-in-minneapolis/ > > Regards, > > Dan > > > If this guy in the uniform is an actual vandal, of course I want to crush him. They dress like police and cause all manner of chaos. > > But they might be actual police, using an enforcement technique that makes perfect sense. > > Imagine this scenario. It isn?t hard to do: > > https://www.rt.com/usa/490582-looting-califorina-protest-video/ > > After hours, store closed, somebody gets a forklift or other piece of heavy equipment to break into an electronics store, there is a mob present for some mysterious reason, perhaps for having been on an email circle, they rush in, grab something of value, run out, drive off. This last part is important because that mall in Fairfield as well as plenty of others, would need a vehicle. They can?t really carry off enough loot in their hands to justify the risk, and many (if not most) of these looters may not be from anywhere around Fairfield (I am guessing they aren?t.) > > OK. Looters need to park near the entrance so they can carry enough packages out the door in a short enough time. So? police come in, don?t go into the store, just disable every car near the entrance. Looter comes out, perhaps don?t notice at first, get out on the freeway with a trunk full of stolen loot, police car calmly falls in behind, the tire comes off the rim a few minutes later, we get an entertaining video of the felon deciding if she wants to flee, resulting in those dramatic showering sparks of bare rim on pavement. Or she just gives up (more likely scenario.) > > Then the prosecutors make a deal: hand over the identities of the others, they go easy. Then they trace down the others, go to their houses, collect the stolen loot, the merchandise you and I paid for (through markups from insurance costs to retailers) is partially recovered. Fewer injuries that way than getting into a battle with the mob at the mall. > > If that is a real cop slashing tires, he would have had a law-enforcement reason to do that. > > spike If you read the article, you'd have seen, in the first paragraph: "The Star Tribune has identified the officers puncturing tires as state troopers and deputies from the Anoka County Sheriff?s Office." This was two days after the story broke. Initially, though, the state troopers denied involvement and the sheriff's office didn't respond: "The officers appear to be state troopers or county police, though it?s not clear from the videos. Neither the Minnesota State Patrol nor the Hennepin County Sheriff?s Office responded to requests from Mother Jones. The Minneapolis Police Department and Minnesota National Guard denied involvement." This initial denial would call into question whether this action had the rationale offered. After all, a rationale that would seem fit as well is they were just making life miserable for any (out of state?) protesters without regard to whether the latter were peaceful or carrying anything suspicious around. That makes sense too, no? Or do you seriously believe the police never do anything wrong or vindictive? It's interesting, though, that your first instinct here is not to identify them as police, but as perhaps "vandals" "dress[ing] like police and caus[ing] all manner of chaos." Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 20:40:39 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 15:40:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I am simply not interested enough in it to read a book. But just a hint or two about how to deal with crime without police would be a help. bill w On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 3:37 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > I don't have all the answers here, but personal self-defense and voluntary > defense associations for those extremely rare occasions when violent > confrontations happen. Private security already plays a role in current > US-American society, such as security guards inside shopping malls and the > like. So I don't see any reason why people can't specialize in security and > things like detection and apprehension of suspects. What wouldn't exist > under such a system is a group of people who have special privileges > because of this specialization. (And self-help wouldn't be outlawed.) > > Elsewhere I mentioned Bruce L. Benson's 1990 book _The Enterprise of > Law: Justice Without the State_. He goes over much of this in far more > depth than me. Also, market anarchists have been discussing how to deal > with crime without the state for decades now. This is all part of the > literature of libertarian thought, no? (What shocks me is meeting people > who call themselves libertarians who seem unaware of this work. Have you > heard of Benson's work? That's not his only book. How about George H. > Smith? Have you read his essay "Justice Entrepreneurship In a Free Market"? > He wrote on this subject back in 1979!) > > Regards, > > Dan > Sample my Kindle books at: > > http://author.to/DanUst > > On Jun 8, 2020, at 3:21 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > ? > dan wrote - I don't agree with the view that somehow having no police > around all the thugs will go on a crime spree > > Fine. But even if crime is less there have to be people to deal with it. > What do you suggest? > > bill w > >> >> It seems you believe I'm against people defending themselves and others. >> Is this so? In fact, I've argued for arming the masses -- not just the >> US-American masses, but worldwide. This is the correct Left position on >> this issue. (In fact, traditionally, the Right wants the masses disarmed to >> prevent them getting uppity. The strange thing is that many modern Leftists >> seem to want the opposite: disarmed masses and armed elites. To me, this is >> typically how those in the Left eventually turn to the Right on issues once >> they have power.) >> >> In fact, I'd argue that immigrants and other marginal people need to be >> armed and defended more so than your average person. For instance, >> immigrants in the US tend to commit less crime but suffer more crime than >> non-immigrants. This is so even though, as studies have shown, immigrants >> tend to under-report crimes committed against them. Ditto for trans people >> and for 'mentally ill' people.* >> >> That said, overall violence is down. I don't agree with the view that >> somehow having no police around all the thugs will go on a crime spree. >> That's like a Hollywood movie scenario. Real life, however, almost never >> looks like that. A case in point is almost any natural disaster. We >> generally don't see Mad Max: Fury Road playing out, but people usually >> helping each other. (Yet just about any movie about a natural disaster >> shows people turning vicious and against each other. Again, look at the >> real world events and data -- rather than movie or TV narrative.) >> >> As for your citing the COTUS, you should note well that the right has >> been infringed, and that should call into question your seeing the COTUS as >> some sort of shield against injustice. Either the COTUS authorized those >> infringements or did nothing to stop them. Or as Lysander Spooner >> (1808-1887) put it: >> >> 'But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much >> is certain ? that it has either authorized such a government as we have >> had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to >> exist.' >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan >> >> * I'm not the only one calling for this. See Jane Louise's piece from >> five years ago: >> >> https://c4ss.org/content/3966 >> > _______________________________________________ > 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 danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 20:45:57 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 13:45:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Jun 9, 2020, at 1:06 PM, Darin Sunley via extropy-chat wrote: > To an inner city drug dealer, it absolutely applies. That Rolls is the result of maybe a few really good deals, and could be gone tomorrow. Ownership does not necessarily instill a responsibility on a Hobbesian state of nature. Here today, gone tomorrow. I've read, too, that the _average_ drug dealer isn't making a fortune -- not enough to be buying at sticker value that SUV. However, it's usually enough to justify the risks given the lack of other lucrative opportunities. (I recall reading a Quora member mentioning making tens of thousands of USD a year. This was a lot of money for that person, but it's not like someone making a six figure salary in a decent job with a retirement fund, paid medical, etc. is going to quit to start dealing on the street.) By the way, the problem you talk about ? securing property rights when one is involved in a black market ? is a problem Hernando de Soto covered in his _The Other Path_. He wasn?t dealing with the recreational drug trade, but things like housing and street vending in Peru. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 20:47:38 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 13:47:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: <005201d63e9a$4199ea20$c4cdbe60$@rainier66.com> References: <005201d63e9a$4199ea20$c4cdbe60$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <392705C6-873B-4049-8C5B-C18048E8B883@gmail.com> On Jun 9, 2020, at 1:19 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > > From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Darin Sunley via extropy-chat > Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 12:11 PM > To: ExI chat list > Cc: Darin Sunley > Subject: Re: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap > > >?Also, "crazy" isn't a behavioral model, it's merely an implicit confession that their behavior confuses you and you don't know how to model their behavior? > > > OK Darin, I will certainly admit I don?t understand how to model the behavior of driving a $300k Rolls to loot a department store. Can you make sense of that? > > Looters may imagine they are stealing from the rich, but in fact they are stealing from the poor. The insurance premiums will go up on all businesses anywhere near where rioting took place. This increases the prices of everything, which hits the poor the hardest. Since their local stores are burned out and my not be rebuilt, the poor now need to travel a greater distance to do their trading. Looters are the opposite of Robin Hood: they steal from the poor and give to themselves. > > Note the comments made by the mayor of Chicago: > > "I've been on calls and text messages with people all day who fought hard to bring economic development to areas of the city, only to see the Walgreens, the CVS, the grocery store, everything vanish in an eye blink. It's going to take a Herculean effort on the part of all of us to convince businesses not to disappear, to come back. We're prepared to fight that fight." > > "I haven't seen shit like this before. The number of places all over the South and West sides in particular that have been hit today has just been off the charts. Literally hundreds, if not thousands, of locations. Big stores, small stores, strip malls, many corner places, it is all over the city." > > The mayor did have an uplifting comment on the local residents form a volunteer guard, hoping to protect what is left. This is important considering the obvious new challenge: the remaining businesses are all they have left. > > ?The new guards are unarmed and solely in place to monitor activity on commercial corridors and notify the Chicago Police Department if any illegal activity occurs. None of the security guards have policing powers, but are another set of eyes and ears to support efforts to deter looters. All security officers will wear visible identification.? Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, 31 May 2020 You're presuming those who loot in general are making a political statement and have a genuine political philosophy behind it. Why wouldn't many of these case seem to be merely crimes of opportunity? The logic might be more like: There's stuff there easy for me to grab, so why not grab it? If I don't grab, someone else will (if I'm really thinking that far ahead). One time I was near a riot -- an anti-police one at that or one inspired by an off duty cop killing two outside a bar -- it was clear that those who did the looting, a few I knew, really cared much more about getting free stuff and just having some excitement. Finally, while these particular looters drove off in a very expensive ride, my guess is they're not typical for looters. Certainly, the aforementioned kids I knew who looted weren't driving around in ultra-high end SUVs. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 21:10:19 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 16:10:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <6865B53E-A3C8-44AC-B24D-60313B3D92DB@gmail.com> References: <6865B53E-A3C8-44AC-B24D-60313B3D92DB@gmail.com> Message-ID: Murder, aggravated assault, rape, armed robbery and more - you think you are going to talk them out of it? Maybe a few cases. But these crimes need strong police force - but no battery on the criminals, which happens a lot, including at the police station. Carrying a gun in the UK is a very serious offense I think, so the bobbies are not usually confronted with armed criminals. I dunno about other places. bill w On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 3:57 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Jun 8, 2020, at 3:31 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:? > > There are other ways to deal with such people rather than turning them > over to a group of people who are known to brutalize other people. > > Regards, > > Dan > > You want to give them a good talking to? Eh? Urge them to try therapy or > positive psychology? > bill w > > > Well, first you can stop them from doing the vandalizing. That seems to > have happened, no? Some people there stopped him forcibly from whatever it > was he was doing. That's part of what I meant. And, yes, talking works too. > Or do you think talking never works? How do people, including police in > other Western nations, quite frequently de-escalate situations like fights? > Usually through talk, no? (How do UK police get along with most of them not > carrying guns?) > > But it doesn't strike you at all as ironic that when protesting police > misconduct, especially if as a protester you believe this is rampant and > systemic, that you'd turn anyone over to the police? > > (My guess is most people, including many if not most protesters, lack > imagination and insight here. This is a terrible sin. The average person > gets upset at police misconduct -- though only after decades of such and > only after it's finally widely publicized to the point it's impossible to > ignore. I don't expect the average person to think of all the ramifications > here and that the problem almost certainly won't be solved by a few > reforms.) > > Regards, > > Dan > Sample my Kindle books at: > > http://author.to/DanUst > > > On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 4:37 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> You keep mentioning Saul Alinsky as if he invented the protest. Bringing >> him up is no answer to the issues raised. >> >> By the way, it's actually questionable when protesting police misconduct >> _if_ turning over a vandal or a looter to the police is the right thing to >> do. There are other ways to deal with such people rather than turning them >> over to a group of people who are known to brutalize other people. >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan >> > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 9 21:32:31 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 14:32:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <6865B53E-A3C8-44AC-B24D-60313B3D92DB@gmail.com> References: <6865B53E-A3C8-44AC-B24D-60313B3D92DB@gmail.com> Message-ID: <002d01d63ea5$7c09c7b0$741d5710$@rainier66.com> >? On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Protest >?But it doesn't strike you at all as ironic that when protesting police misconduct, especially if as a protester you believe this is rampant and systemic, that you'd turn anyone over to the police? Dan There?s more to it than that. Black Lives Matter are protesting a particular type of police misconduct: racially-motivated police brutality. They don?t want to be conflated with these other groups who are taking advantage of them. I need to look again, but as I understood it, the guy they handed over was white and the people they gave him to were not the police, they were national guard. In any case, images are a powerful thing. That one short video differentiated BLM from vandals, anarchists, looters and those who specifically want to harm law enforcement. That one short video changed more minds than any fiery speech. It demonstrated that BLM is us: they want to stop racism. Well so do we. They want fairness for everyone, regardless of race. So do we. We are all with Black Lives Matter. We are against anarchy, against antifa, against vandalism, against harming police. We are in unison with Black Lives Matter. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Jun 9 21:53:06 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 14:53:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: <392705C6-873B-4049-8C5B-C18048E8B883@gmail.com> References: <005201d63e9a$4199ea20$c4cdbe60$@rainier66.com> <392705C6-873B-4049-8C5B-C18048E8B883@gmail.com> Message-ID: <005101d63ea8$5bf4dc50$13de94f0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat >>? It's going to take a Herculean effort on the part of all of us to convince businesses not to disappear, to come back. We're prepared to fight that fight." Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, 31 May 2020 >?You're presuming those who loot in general are making a political statement and have a genuine political philosophy behind it? No not really. I realize they are in it for profit and that the looters are they because it is an opportunity. One would think a thief would take into account who they are stealing from. Perhaps they imagine they are stealing from a big rich insurance company, but insurance companies will always cover their losses by some means. Mayor Lightfoot?s comment seems to imply that businesses coming back is some kind of PR thing, or a political fight. It isn?t. Businesses do not respond to political pressure to come back. They respond to potential profit to be made at the site. They respond to availability of insurance to cover these stores, the price of which just went up dramatically. Some types of business might not be able to get insurance to operate there at all. So? they won?t be back. The buildings might not even be rebuilt. You can go to some parts of LA where buildings burned in the 1980s which never did get rebuilt. I speculate that ten years from now, some of these sites will still be vacant lots. They can?t even safely rebuild the structures, never mind rent them to businesses. Too dangerous down there. >?Finally, while these particular looters drove off in a very expensive ride, my guess is they're not typical for looters. ?Dan Agreed. The Rolls driver did more to damage the image of the looters than hammer-boy did to the image of ideology-driven vandals. We now identify both groups with hammer-boy and Rolls looter. Images are powerful things. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 22:06:25 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 15:06:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] (no subject) Message-ID: Darin Sunley wrote: > People who, due to their circumstances, literally do not believe in the future, any future, frequently do things that can very reasonably be called "crazy". Which might lead you to wonder how such behavior (or the psychological traits behind it) could have evolved? > When you hyperbolicly discount any projected future utility more than a month or so out down to zero due to genuinely real uncertainty about still being alive and healthy then, a lot of very extreme actions start to seem rational. It is worse than individuals feeling this way because of memes. > When a critical mass of the population of an area becomes this nihilistic, the nihilism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the stone age, when a critical mass of the population became wound up, they went to war. This usually solved the problem (which was almost always a resource crisis) with an orgy of killing that reduced the population and improved the future outlook for the ones who were left. Bummer, but having to kill your own species to control population seems to be a feature of top predators. By comparison, birth control is a really good idea. Keith From rhanson at gmu.edu Tue Jun 9 22:14:05 2020 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin D Hanson) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 22:14:05 +0000 Subject: [ExI] No Recent Automation Revolution In-Reply-To: <005101d63ea8$5bf4dc50$13de94f0$@rainier66.com> References: <005201d63e9a$4199ea20$c4cdbe60$@rainier66.com> <392705C6-873B-4049-8C5B-C18048E8B883@gmail.com> <005101d63ea8$5bf4dc50$13de94f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <9037F08B-DEF7-438D-A8A0-97EBC2271299@gmu.edu> Unless you?ve been living under a rock, you know that for many years the media has been almost screaming that we entering a big automation revolution, with huge associated job losses, due to new AI tech, especially deep learning. ? Last December, Keller Scholl and I posted a working paper suggesting that this whole narrative is bullshit, at least so far. An automation revolution driven by a new kind of automation tech should induce changes in the total amount and rate of automation, and in which kinds of jobs get more automated. But looking at all U.S. jobs 1999-2019, we find no change whatsoever in the kinds of jobs more likely to be automated. We don?t even see a net change in overall level of automation, though language habits may be masking such changes. And having a job get more automated is not correlated at all with changes in its pay or employment. Our working paper is now published in a peer-reviewed journal. http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/06/no-recent-automation-revolution.html https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1bCkWbZedqLrV Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu Future of Humanity Inst., Oxford University Assoc. Prof. Economics, George Mason University See my books: http://ageofem.com http://elephantinthebrain.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 22:18:29 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 15:18:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] e: Acceleration of the wealth gap Message-ID: wrote: > OK Darin, I will certainly admit I don?t understand how to model the behavior of driving a $300k Rolls to loot a department store. Can you make sense of that? My guess would be the Rolls was stolen. > Looters may imagine they are stealing from the rich, but in fact they are stealing from the poor. Spike, if you captured a 1000 looters, and quizzed them, how many of them would understand this relatively simple analysis? Keith PS I find Spike's long lines and too much white space to be hard to read. Is is just me? From interzone at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 22:48:10 2020 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 18:48:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] No Recent Automation Revolution In-Reply-To: <9037F08B-DEF7-438D-A8A0-97EBC2271299@gmu.edu> References: <005201d63e9a$4199ea20$c4cdbe60$@rainier66.com> <392705C6-873B-4049-8C5B-C18048E8B883@gmail.com> <005101d63ea8$5bf4dc50$13de94f0$@rainier66.com> <9037F08B-DEF7-438D-A8A0-97EBC2271299@gmu.edu> Message-ID: Thanks much for posting this. I'm VERY interested to read your paper as this has been my gut instinct based on anecdotal review of automation and deep learning initiatives. Apple is a good example of attempting to automate an entire production line for the iPhone and failing miserably despite a ton of talent and money thrown at it. It's very hard to replace the versatility of a human being for most tasks at this point outside of some specialized use cases. Tesla is another one. On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 6:30 PM Robin D Hanson via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Unless you?ve been living under a rock, you know that for many years the > media has been almost screaming that we entering a big automation > revolution, with huge associated job losses, due to new AI tech, especially > deep learning. ? Last December, Keller Scholl and I posted a working > paper suggesting that this whole narrative is bullshit, at least so far. > An automation revolution driven by a new kind of automation tech should > induce changes in the total amount and rate of automation, and in which > kinds of jobs get more automated. But looking at all U.S. jobs 1999-2019, > we find no change whatsoever in the kinds of jobs more likely to be > automated. We don?t even see a net change in overall level of automation, > though language habits may be masking such changes. And having a job get > more automated is not correlated at all with changes in its pay or > employment. Our working paper is now published in a peer-reviewed journal. > > http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/06/no-recent-automation-revolution.html > https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1bCkWbZedqLrV > > Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu > Future of Humanity Inst., Oxford University > Assoc. Prof. Economics, George Mason University > See my books: http://ageofem.com http://elephantinthebrain.com > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 9 23:15:35 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 18:15:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <002d01d63ea5$7c09c7b0$741d5710$@rainier66.com> References: <6865B53E-A3C8-44AC-B24D-60313B3D92DB@gmail.com> <002d01d63ea5$7c09c7b0$741d5710$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I hope things change. I truly do. But I am a cynic about change, whether in individuals trying to lose weight, or some other habit, or in bigots who are holding on tightly to their delusions and isms. You can pass laws but you cannot legislate morality. If the laws on limited immunity get quashed, there will be multimillion dollar lawsuits against police brutality, and winning a few of those will change things more than anything else, in my entirely valid and correct opinion. Government at any level will notice and do something to stop the lawsuits. bill w On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 4:57 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *>?* *On Behalf Of *Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Protest > > > > > > >?But it doesn't strike you at all as ironic that when protesting police > misconduct, especially if as a protester you believe this is rampant and > systemic, that you'd turn anyone over to the police? > > Dan > > > > > > There?s more to it than that. Black Lives Matter are protesting a > particular type of police misconduct: racially-motivated police brutality. > They don?t want to be conflated with these other groups who are taking > advantage of them. > > > > I need to look again, but as I understood it, the guy they handed over was > white and the people they gave him to were not the police, they were > national guard. > > > > In any case, images are a powerful thing. That one short video > differentiated BLM from vandals, anarchists, looters and those who > specifically want to harm law enforcement. That one short video changed > more minds than any fiery speech. It demonstrated that BLM is us: they > want to stop racism. Well so do we. They want fairness for everyone, > regardless of race. So do we. We are all with Black Lives Matter. > > > > We are against anarchy, against antifa, against vandalism, against harming > police. We are in unison with Black Lives Matter. > > > > 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 Tue Jun 9 23:19:32 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 18:19:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] e: Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Spike, if you captured a 1000 looters, and quizzed them, how many of them would understand this relatively simple analysis? Keith I think it would be difficult to find any looter that cared whom his theft hurt. bill w On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 5:40 PM Keith Henson via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > wrote: > > > OK Darin, I will certainly admit I don?t understand how to model the > behavior of driving a $300k Rolls to loot a department store. Can you make > sense of that? > > My guess would be the Rolls was stolen. > > > Looters may imagine they are stealing from the rich, but in fact they > are stealing from the poor. > > Spike, if you captured a 1000 looters, and quizzed them, how many of > them would understand this relatively simple analysis? > > Keith > > PS > > I find Spike's long lines and too much white space to be hard to read. > Is is just me? > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 10 00:03:59 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 17:03:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] e: Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <002d01d63eba$a4a58b40$edf0a1c0$@rainier66.com> ...> On Behalf Of Keith Henson via extropy-chat Subject: [ExI] e: Acceleration of the wealth gap wrote: ...>> OK Darin, I will certainly admit I don?t understand how to model the behavior of driving a $300k Rolls to loot a department store. Can you make sense of that? >...My guess would be the Rolls was stolen. >>... Looters may imagine they are stealing from the rich, but in fact they are stealing from the poor. >...Spike, if you captured a 1000 looters, and quizzed them, how many of them would understand this relatively simple analysis? Keith PS I find Spike's long lines and too much white space to be hard to read. Is is just me? _______________________________________________ Hi Keith, I don't know why it looks different on your end with the lines and white space. kilolooter: I can imagine most of them go somewhere else to do their looting. Their big problem is that somewhere else comes to their neighborhood and burns their neighborhood stores. So many of these businesses got such a huge one-two punch with the virus, then the looters, it is easy to imagine few of them ever return to business. If that happens, some of the most tightly-packed cities will start to deflate. spike From danust2012 at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 00:05:10 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 17:05:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6548C2AC-60B2-436C-A989-F68EE12D2062@gmail.com> You shifted from what to do with a vandal In a protest situation like in the video versus everything else. Again, my point was they could handle that particular person without turning him (I?m presuming it was a guy) over to the police. And, once more, if you?re protesting police misconduct it seems painfully ironic to not seek another solution. In fact, they were already there: they stopped him from his act of vandalism. Did they need to do more? Maybe. Perhaps they could?ve told him to leave the area while taking away his hammer and other tools. Perhaps they could?ve photographed him and threatened to dox him of he was caught around the area again. Do you disagree here? You really think it was a great idea to turn him over to the police? You feel there was zero possibility that the police ? known for killing people for minor offenses like shoplifting or even just on w whim ? might abuse him? At least you get points here for not bringing up Saul Alinsky. ;) Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst > On Jun 9, 2020, at 2:49 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > ? > Murder, aggravated assault, rape, armed robbery and more - you think you are going to talk them out of it? Maybe a few cases. But these crimes need strong police force - but no battery on the criminals, which happens a lot, including at the police station. > > Carrying a gun in the UK is a very serious offense I think, so the bobbies are not usually confronted with armed criminals. I dunno about other places. bill w > >> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 3:57 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: >> On Jun 8, 2020, at 3:31 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote:? >>> >>> There are other ways to deal with such people rather than turning them over to a group of people who are known to brutalize other people. >>> >>> Regards, >>> >>> Dan >>> >>> You want to give them a good talking to? Eh? Urge them to try therapy or positive psychology? >>> bill w >> >> Well, first you can stop them from doing the vandalizing. That seems to have happened, no? Some people there stopped him forcibly from whatever it was he was doing. That's part of what I meant. And, yes, talking works too. Or do you think talking never works? How do people, including police in other Western nations, quite frequently de-escalate situations like fights? Usually through talk, no? (How do UK police get along with most of them not carrying guns?) >> >> But it doesn't strike you at all as ironic that when protesting police misconduct, especially if as a protester you believe this is rampant and systemic, that you'd turn anyone over to the police? >> >> (My guess is most people, including many if not most protesters, lack imagination and insight here. This is a terrible sin. The average person gets upset at police misconduct -- though only after decades of such and only after it's finally widely publicized to the point it's impossible to ignore. I don't expect the average person to think of all the ramifications here and that the problem almost certainly won't be solved by a few reforms.) >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 00:13:02 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 17:13:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: You must have missed the three examples I gave in my first two sentences: 1. ?personal self-defense? 2. ?voluntary defense associations for those extremely rare occasions when violent confrontations happen? 3. ?Private security? I brought up the Benson book and the Smith essay as examples of a vast literature by libertarians on how to deal with this issue. Not only is the literature vast, but it goes back decades. The idea of dismantling the police and government in general are not really all that new in libertarian circles. Again, they?ve been discussed and written about before I was born. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst > On Jun 9, 2020, at 2:21 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > I am simply not interested enough in it to read a book. But just a hint or two about how to deal with crime without police would be a help. bill w > >> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 3:37 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: >> I don't have all the answers here, but personal self-defense and voluntary defense associations for those extremely rare occasions when violent confrontations happen. Private security already plays a role in current US-American society, such as security guards inside shopping malls and the like. So I don't see any reason why people can't specialize in security and things like detection and apprehension of suspects. What wouldn't exist under such a system is a group of people who have special privileges because of this specialization. (And self-help wouldn't be outlawed.) >> >> Elsewhere I mentioned Bruce L. Benson's 1990 book _The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State_. He goes over much of this in far more depth than me. Also, market anarchists have been discussing how to deal with crime without the state for decades now. This is all part of the literature of libertarian thought, no? (What shocks me is meeting people who call themselves libertarians who seem unaware of this work. Have you heard of Benson's work? That's not his only book. How about George H. Smith? Have you read his essay "Justice Entrepreneurship In a Free Market"? He wrote on this subject back in 1979!) >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 10 00:47:42 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 17:47:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <6548C2AC-60B2-436C-A989-F68EE12D2062@gmail.com> References: <6548C2AC-60B2-436C-A989-F68EE12D2062@gmail.com> Message-ID: <006301d63ec0$c06b0390$41410ab0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Protest >?You shifted from what to do with a vandal In a protest situation like in the video versus everything else. Again, my point was they could handle that particular person without turning him (I?m presuming it was a guy) over to the police? I disagree. He needs to be in police custody. The BLM protestors handing him over to the police is the right thing. If their protest is that police are brutal only to black suspects, and this sleazy bastard is white, then they would argue he is perfectly safe in police custody. >?And, once more, if you?re protesting police misconduct it seems painfully ironic to not seek another solution? Not to me. The protestors are not vandals. The protestors do not like vandals. The protestors do not want to be equated with vandals, they want to distance themselves from vandals. So? they handed him over. He is white, so no problem, ja? >?In fact, they were already there: they stopped him from his act of vandalism? Good for them. >?Did they need to do more? Maybe. Perhaps they could?ve told him to leave the area while taking away his hammer and other tools. Perhaps they could?ve photographed him and threatened to dox him of he was caught around the area again. Do you disagree here? I do. Dan, images are everything. That image of BLM protestors handing the vandal over to the National Guard is a powerful image. It established their credibility as a protest movement. >?You really think it was a great idea to turn him over to the police? I do. >?You feel there was zero possibility that the police ? known for killing people for minor offenses like shoplifting or even just on w whim ? might abuse him? He is white. According to BLM point of view, he is safe in police custody. >?At least you get points here for not bringing up Saul Alinsky. ;) Regards, Dan Give me time Dan, I will think of something. OK, hmmm, I?m busted on that. But think about it: the Black Lives Matter movement is about police fearing black people and being more eager to use lethal force. Well hell, they are right about that. BLM has a good point. We get it. The BLM movement isn?t against policing, it is against police brutality particularly when it involves black people. Well OK we get that. but the BLM movement isn?t against policing. Plenty of them are from areas where they damn well know they need police. They aren?t arguing that all police are bad. They aren?t specifically anti-police they are anti-police brutality. Well, we are too. At the local BLM rally Sunday, the police chief spoke. There were a few hecklers in the audience, but these guys were seeing each other?s points of view. BLM wants peaceful rallies. They don?t want to fight the cops, they don?t want vandalism, they don?t want looters. All three of those groups detract from their message. Handing over the vandal was not only the right thing, it was the most powerful few seconds of video in their favor I have seen to date. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 00:54:06 2020 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 18:54:06 -0600 Subject: [ExI] No Recent Automation Revolution In-Reply-To: References: <005201d63e9a$4199ea20$c4cdbe60$@rainier66.com> <392705C6-873B-4049-8C5B-C18048E8B883@gmail.com> <005101d63ea8$5bf4dc50$13de94f0$@rainier66.com> <9037F08B-DEF7-438D-A8A0-97EBC2271299@gmu.edu> Message-ID: Yea, funny how fast the herd flipps. You now see lots of articles like this: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/columnists/daniel-howes/2020/01/16/self-driving-vehicle-hype-reckoning-reality/4481239002/ while 6 month ago it was the opposite. On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 4:49 PM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Thanks much for posting this. I'm VERY interested to read your paper as > this has been my gut instinct based on anecdotal review of automation and > deep learning initiatives. Apple is a good example of attempting to > automate an entire production line for the iPhone and failing miserably > despite a ton of talent and money thrown at it. It's very hard to replace > the versatility of a human being for most tasks at this point outside of > some specialized use cases. Tesla is another one. > > On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 6:30 PM Robin D Hanson via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Unless you?ve been living under a rock, you know that for many years the >> media has been almost screaming that we entering a big automation >> revolution, with huge associated job losses, due to new AI tech, especially >> deep learning. ? Last December, Keller Scholl and I posted a working >> paper suggesting that this whole narrative is bullshit, at least so far. >> An automation revolution driven by a new kind of automation tech should >> induce changes in the total amount and rate of automation, and in which >> kinds of jobs get more automated. But looking at all U.S. jobs 1999-2019, >> we find no change whatsoever in the kinds of jobs more likely to be >> automated. We don?t even see a net change in overall level of automation, >> though language habits may be masking such changes. And having a job get >> more automated is not correlated at all with changes in its pay or >> employment. Our working paper is now published in a peer-reviewed journal. >> >> http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/06/no-recent-automation-revolution.html >> https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1bCkWbZedqLrV >> >> Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu >> Future of Humanity Inst., Oxford University >> Assoc. Prof. Economics, George Mason University >> See my books: http://ageofem.com http://elephantinthebrain.com >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 atymes at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 01:03:37 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 18:03:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Clearly communicating the concept behind "defund the police" Message-ID: Thinking about the nomenclature problem with "defund the police"... (Politics being politics, there is potential to diverge into a number of related threads. I am explicitly declaring that I am thinking just of this subset of the problem, so as to carve off a problem small enough to be solvable in one step. All related problems are acknowledged and can be solved separately.) The issue is that people stop listening after hearing those three words. "Defund the police and then spend the money on...", people stop listening before "and then", and insert their own wild takes. So instead, how about, "relieve the police"? That doesn't seem as prone to such wild takes - meaning the usual reaction will be to ask, "relieve them of what"? That then gives an opening to explain: "relieve the police of non-police duties, by shifting funding: instead of paying the police for mental health duties, pay mental health experts, so the police can concentrate on police duties". This also allows changes beyond just funding shifts to remove non-police duties from the police - for example, changing laws and regulations so that 911 calls in response to someone defecating on the street would be routed to social services, rather than sending a cop as the first response. Exactly what "police duties" are can be debated, but there's a wide range of stuff that even the cops say they shouldn't be doing. Implicit in this is that, with less funding, there'll be less cops; even the unions and review boards won't be able to keep everyone on, leaving room to start actually removing the worst performers (starting with those who actively and routinely threaten human lives without legal cause; I'd say "moral cause", but too often they claim "because he was black" as sufficient moral cause to kill or injure someone). In the worst cases where an entire department needs to be cleaned out and restarted, that is "relieving" them in a more thorough sense, for those cases which engage in too many non-police duties. (Oppression of minorities being "not a valid police duty" in this context.) But this is not every case, unlike what "defund the police" implies. Does "relieve the police" seem a more useful (and ultimately at least as accurate) term as "defund the police"? (This won't replace "defund the police". People who are super-angry will keep chanting that. "Relieve the police" is suggested for those who wish to focus on convincing those currently opposed to police reform.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 01:12:01 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 20:12:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Perhaps I missed them because I thought when I read them that they were ludicrous. Personal defense is a good idea, but most people never get attacked. Private security would, I assume cost more than what we get with tax dollars and poor people could not afford it. Voluntary police: I can see this working if a town is not larger than a few hundred. Numerous problems here, including training, insurance if hurt, and the likelihood that an ordinary citizen would go on a call where shooting is occuring. I just can't see getting thousands of volunteers in big cities where violent crime is not rare at all but happens many times a day. Just to give one example: which of the above would deal with maniacs driving 120 mph on city streets? bill w On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 7:31 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > You must have missed the three examples I gave in my first two sentences: > > 1. ?personal self-defense? > > 2. ?voluntary defense associations for those extremely rare occasions when > violent confrontations happen? > > 3. ?Private security? > > I brought up the Benson book and the Smith essay as examples of a vast > literature by libertarians on how to deal with this issue. Not only is the > literature vast, but it goes back decades. The idea of dismantling the > police and government in general are not really all that new in libertarian > circles. Again, they?ve been discussed and written about before I was born. > > Regards, > > Dan > Sample my Kindle books at: > > http://author.to/DanUst > > On Jun 9, 2020, at 2:21 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > I am simply not interested enough in it to read a book. But just a hint > or two about how to deal with crime without police would be a help. bill w > > On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 3:37 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> I don't have all the answers here, but personal self-defense and >> voluntary defense associations for those extremely rare occasions when >> violent confrontations happen. Private security already plays a role in >> current US-American society, such as security guards inside shopping malls >> and the like. So I don't see any reason why people can't specialize in >> security and things like detection and apprehension of suspects. What >> wouldn't exist under such a system is a group of people who have special >> privileges because of this specialization. (And self-help wouldn't be >> outlawed.) >> >> Elsewhere I mentioned Bruce L. Benson's 1990 book _The Enterprise of >> Law: Justice Without the State_. He goes over much of this in far more >> depth than me. Also, market anarchists have been discussing how to deal >> with crime without the state for decades now. This is all part of the >> literature of libertarian thought, no? (What shocks me is meeting people >> who call themselves libertarians who seem unaware of this work. Have you >> heard of Benson's work? That's not his only book. How about George H. >> Smith? Have you read his essay "Justice Entrepreneurship In a Free Market"? >> He wrote on this subject back in 1979!) >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan >> >> _______________________________________________ > 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 Wed Jun 10 01:26:18 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 18:26:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Clearly communicating the concept behind "defund the police" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <009501d63ec6$2498d1d0$6dca7570$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat >?So instead, how about, "relieve the police"? That doesn't seem as prone to such wild takes - meaning the usual reaction will be to ask, "relieve them of what"? Excellent thinking Adrian, well done, me lad. Relieve them of enforcing drug law? That is a good start. Good chance police departments will be defunded in plenty of places, whether they wanted that or not. In the places were businesses were burned, the city revenue will be way down. So they will be defunding police departments anyway. So? they must find ways to relieve them of some of their duties. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 01:36:52 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 18:36:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Clearly communicating the concept behind "defund the police" In-Reply-To: <009501d63ec6$2498d1d0$6dca7570$@rainier66.com> References: <009501d63ec6$2498d1d0$6dca7570$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 6:29 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Relieve them of enforcing drug law? That is a good start. > 1) Leave that to specialist cops, who are trained in dealing with overdoses and other drug-related issues. 2) If they insist they need to enforce all the laws, then alter the laws to make it explicit that these are not ones that normal police may enforce. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 02:34:20 2020 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 22:34:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Clearly communicating the concept behind "defund the police" In-Reply-To: References: <009501d63ec6$2498d1d0$6dca7570$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Earlier today I suggested "Check the police" As in keep them in-check and also check as in make sure of. Also, tbh, check with and check on... because in some cases they have information or unmet needs like the elderly neighbor with no AC during summer heat & humidity. If a good-natured counterpoint to ensuring police are functioning properly seems too soft, we can use the hockey definition to check the police. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 02:55:02 2020 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 12:55:02 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Clearly communicating the concept behind "defund the police" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, 10 Jun 2020 at 11:15, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Thinking about the nomenclature problem with "defund the police"... > > (Politics being politics, there is potential to diverge into a number of > related threads. I am explicitly declaring that I am thinking just of this > subset of the problem, so as to carve off a problem small enough to be > solvable in one step. All related problems are acknowledged and can be > solved separately.) > > The issue is that people stop listening after hearing those three words. > "Defund the police and then spend the money on...", people stop listening > before "and then", and insert their own wild takes. > > So instead, how about, "relieve the police"? That doesn't seem as prone to > such wild takes - meaning the usual reaction will be to ask, "relieve them > of what"? > > That then gives an opening to explain: "relieve the police of non-police > duties, by shifting funding: instead of paying the police for mental health > duties, pay mental health experts, so the police can concentrate on police > duties". This also allows changes beyond just funding shifts to remove > non-police duties from the police - for example, changing laws and > regulations so that 911 calls in response to someone defecating on the > street would be routed to social services, rather than sending a cop as the > first response. > > Exactly what "police duties" are can be debated, but there's a wide range > of stuff that even the cops say they shouldn't be doing. Implicit in this > is that, with less funding, there'll be less cops; even the unions and > review boards won't be able to keep everyone on, leaving room to start > actually removing the worst performers (starting with those who actively > and routinely threaten human lives without legal cause; I'd say "moral > cause", but too often they claim "because he was black" as sufficient moral > cause to kill or injure someone). > > In the worst cases where an entire department needs to be cleaned out and > restarted, that is "relieving" them in a more thorough sense, for those > cases which engage in too many non-police duties. (Oppression of minorities > being "not a valid police duty" in this context.) But this is not every > case, unlike what "defund the police" implies. > > Does "relieve the police" seem a more useful (and ultimately at least as > accurate) term as "defund the police"? > > (This won't replace "defund the police". People who are super-angry will > keep chanting that. "Relieve the police" is suggested for those who wish to > focus on convincing those currently opposed to police reform.) > They did "defund the police" in Camden, New Jersey, in 2012 and it apparently turned out OK: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/disband-police-camden-new-jersey-trnd/index.html -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 10 12:58:25 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 05:58:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] twittebots? Message-ID: <005401d63f26$d49c0470$7dd40d50$@rainier66.com> It occurred to me that we could perhaps create twitterbots. I don?t know how that service works; I have never used it. But from what I can tell, the level of discourse there isn?t high, and patterns are easy to recognize. We could perhaps create software which would generate tweets from any give point of view and create a massive tweetstorm. For instance, we could have the twitterbots create tweets on the theme that vandalism is bad, or looting is bad, then generate them by the millions, or perhaps a few hundred on each account. Perhaps this is already being done. How do we know this stuff we hear about on twitter isn?t already software-generated? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 13:15:16 2020 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 09:15:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] twittebots? In-Reply-To: <005401d63f26$d49c0470$7dd40d50$@rainier66.com> References: <005401d63f26$d49c0470$7dd40d50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 9:02 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > It occurred to me that we could perhaps create twitterbots. I don?t know > how that service works; I have never used it. But from what I can tell, > the level of discourse there isn?t high, and patterns are easy to > recognize. We could perhaps create software which would generate tweets > from any give point of view and create a massive tweetstorm. > How much garbage do you have to throw into the landfill before anyone notices the theme of your particular garbage? > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 13:45:39 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 08:45:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Clearly communicating the concept behind "defund the police" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The Camden police replacement story is excellent, even if missing a lot of details. How did they know who to rehire? I really like the part about the cops going up to houses and apartments, knocking on the door and getting to know the residents. Sounds like a good thing for every police department. Hard to argue with the results. bill w On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 9:58 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > On Wed, 10 Jun 2020 at 11:15, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Thinking about the nomenclature problem with "defund the police"... >> >> (Politics being politics, there is potential to diverge into a number of >> related threads. I am explicitly declaring that I am thinking just of this >> subset of the problem, so as to carve off a problem small enough to be >> solvable in one step. All related problems are acknowledged and can be >> solved separately.) >> >> The issue is that people stop listening after hearing those three words. >> "Defund the police and then spend the money on...", people stop listening >> before "and then", and insert their own wild takes. >> >> So instead, how about, "relieve the police"? That doesn't seem as prone >> to such wild takes - meaning the usual reaction will be to ask, "relieve >> them of what"? >> >> That then gives an opening to explain: "relieve the police of non-police >> duties, by shifting funding: instead of paying the police for mental health >> duties, pay mental health experts, so the police can concentrate on police >> duties". This also allows changes beyond just funding shifts to remove >> non-police duties from the police - for example, changing laws and >> regulations so that 911 calls in response to someone defecating on the >> street would be routed to social services, rather than sending a cop as the >> first response. >> >> Exactly what "police duties" are can be debated, but there's a wide range >> of stuff that even the cops say they shouldn't be doing. Implicit in this >> is that, with less funding, there'll be less cops; even the unions and >> review boards won't be able to keep everyone on, leaving room to start >> actually removing the worst performers (starting with those who actively >> and routinely threaten human lives without legal cause; I'd say "moral >> cause", but too often they claim "because he was black" as sufficient moral >> cause to kill or injure someone). >> >> In the worst cases where an entire department needs to be cleaned out and >> restarted, that is "relieving" them in a more thorough sense, for those >> cases which engage in too many non-police duties. (Oppression of minorities >> being "not a valid police duty" in this context.) But this is not every >> case, unlike what "defund the police" implies. >> >> Does "relieve the police" seem a more useful (and ultimately at least as >> accurate) term as "defund the police"? >> >> (This won't replace "defund the police". People who are super-angry will >> keep chanting that. "Relieve the police" is suggested for those who wish to >> focus on convincing those currently opposed to police reform.) >> > > They did "defund the police" in Camden, New Jersey, in 2012 and it > apparently turned out OK: > > > https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/disband-police-camden-new-jersey-trnd/index.html > > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > 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 Wed Jun 10 13:56:56 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 06:56:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] twittebots? In-Reply-To: References: <005401d63f26$d49c0470$7dd40d50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <007b01d63f2f$014b6760$03e23620$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] twittebots? On Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 9:02 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: It occurred to me that we could perhaps create twitterbots. I don?t know how that service works; I have never used it. But from what I can tell, the level of discourse there isn?t high, and patterns are easy to recognize. We could perhaps create software which would generate tweets from any give point of view and create a massive tweetstorm. >?How much garbage do you have to throw into the landfill before anyone notices the theme of your particular garbage? That would be the challenge: making the tweets enough different from each other that they wouldn?t be recognized as coming from software. Might be we give it a theme and a number of different words. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sen.otaku at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 15:01:17 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 10:01:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Clearly communicating the concept behind "defund the police" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20317AA6-1EA5-4391-B625-4187AB387180@gmail.com> The ?koban? community policing style in Japan is very good. Police are a normal and respected part of people?s day. They help you find your lost phone or wallet, they give you directions (like a gas station would here in the states). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K?ban We could also do the ?311 transition? like NYC did, where non-emergency ?police? calls, for things like homeless people loitering, parking violations, etc are done through 311 and have a different tone to interactions. https://www.ny.gov/agencies/nyc-311 https://www.nyhabitat.com/blog/2019/04/01/nyc-311-tenants-guide/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.govtech.com/public-safety/New-York-Launches-311-Citizen-Service.html%3fAMP It might also be a good time to look at the Peelian Principles of Policing. Notably: (1) To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to [...] severity of legal punishment. (2) To recognise always that the power of the police [...] is dependent on public approval [...] and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect. (4) To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives. (5) To seek and preserve public favour [...] by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law [... and] by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life. (6) To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective. (7) To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public (8) To refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary, of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles > On Jun 10, 2020, at 8:45 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > The Camden police replacement story is excellent, even if missing a lot of details. How did they know who to rehire? I really like the part about the cops going up to houses and apartments, knocking on the door and getting to know the residents. Sounds like a good thing for every police department. Hard to argue with the results. bill w > >> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 9:58 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat wrote: >> >> >>> On Wed, 10 Jun 2020 at 11:15, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat wrote: >>> Thinking about the nomenclature problem with "defund the police"... >>> >>> (Politics being politics, there is potential to diverge into a number of related threads. I am explicitly declaring that I am thinking just of this subset of the problem, so as to carve off a problem small enough to be solvable in one step. All related problems are acknowledged and can be solved separately.) >>> >>> The issue is that people stop listening after hearing those three words. "Defund the police and then spend the money on...", people stop listening before "and then", and insert their own wild takes. >>> >>> So instead, how about, "relieve the police"? That doesn't seem as prone to such wild takes - meaning the usual reaction will be to ask, "relieve them of what"? >>> >>> That then gives an opening to explain: "relieve the police of non-police duties, by shifting funding: instead of paying the police for mental health duties, pay mental health experts, so the police can concentrate on police duties". This also allows changes beyond just funding shifts to remove non-police duties from the police - for example, changing laws and regulations so that 911 calls in response to someone defecating on the street would be routed to social services, rather than sending a cop as the first response. >>> >>> Exactly what "police duties" are can be debated, but there's a wide range of stuff that even the cops say they shouldn't be doing. Implicit in this is that, with less funding, there'll be less cops; even the unions and review boards won't be able to keep everyone on, leaving room to start actually removing the worst performers (starting with those who actively and routinely threaten human lives without legal cause; I'd say "moral cause", but too often they claim "because he was black" as sufficient moral cause to kill or injure someone). >>> >>> In the worst cases where an entire department needs to be cleaned out and restarted, that is "relieving" them in a more thorough sense, for those cases which engage in too many non-police duties. (Oppression of minorities being "not a valid police duty" in this context.) But this is not every case, unlike what "defund the police" implies. >>> >>> Does "relieve the police" seem a more useful (and ultimately at least as accurate) term as "defund the police"? >>> >>> (This won't replace "defund the police". People who are super-angry will keep chanting that. "Relieve the police" is suggested for those who wish to focus on convincing those currently opposed to police reform.) >> >> They did "defund the police" in Camden, New Jersey, in 2012 and it apparently turned out OK: >> >> https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/disband-police-camden-new-jersey-trnd/index.html >> >> >> -- >> Stathis Papaioannou >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 pharos at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 15:16:29 2020 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 16:16:29 +0100 Subject: [ExI] twittebots? In-Reply-To: <005401d63f26$d49c0470$7dd40d50$@rainier66.com> References: <005401d63f26$d49c0470$7dd40d50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 10 Jun 2020 at 14:03, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > It occurred to me that we could perhaps create twitterbots. I don?t know how that service works; I have never used it. But from what I can tell, the level of discourse there isn?t high, and patterns are easy to recognize. We could perhaps create software which would generate tweets from any give point of view and create a massive tweetstorm. For instance, we could have the twitterbots create tweets on the theme that vandalism is bad, or looting is bad, then generate them by the millions, or perhaps a few hundred on each account. > > Perhaps this is already being done. How do we know this stuff we hear about on twitter isn?t already software-generated? > It has already been done. See: Quote: Proper usage includes broadcasting helpful information, automatically generating interesting or creative content, and automatically replying to users via direct message. Improper usage includes circumventing API rate limits, violating user privacy, spamming and sockpuppeting. Concerns about political Twitter bots include the promulgation of malicious content, increased polarization, and the spreading of fake news. ------------- BillK From sen.otaku at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 15:15:06 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 10:15:06 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <25A769F4-159F-4676-8044-93EFD841CBEF@gmail.com> I think maniacs driving 120mph are somewhat self limiting. But studies show that high speed chases are the wrong approach. https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a9096/why-high-speed-police-chases-are-going-away-15532838/ Voluntary police can still work IF the areas are made small enough. For example, someone would not want to police all of manhattan. But 4 blocks? I think they?d be willing to. And there?s enough dudes who try to be heroes anyway, so I think ?shots fired? would still get responded to. Withe voluntary community policing, crime becomes a personal affront. Whether that?s good or bad is a different story. SR Ballard > On Jun 9, 2020, at 8:12 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > Perhaps I missed them because I thought when I read them that they were ludicrous. Personal defense is a good idea, but most people never get attacked. Private security would, I assume cost more than what we get with tax dollars and poor people could not afford it. > > Voluntary police: I can see this working if a town is not larger than a few hundred. Numerous problems here, including training, insurance if hurt, and the likelihood that an ordinary citizen would go on a call where shooting is occuring. I just can't see getting thousands of volunteers in big cities where violent crime is not rare at all but happens many times a day. > > Just to give one example: which of the above would deal with maniacs driving 120 mph on city streets? bill w > >> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 7:31 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: >> You must have missed the three examples I gave in my first two sentences: >> >> 1. ?personal self-defense? >> >> 2. ?voluntary defense associations for those extremely rare occasions when violent confrontations happen? >> >> 3. ?Private security? >> >> I brought up the Benson book and the Smith essay as examples of a vast literature by libertarians on how to deal with this issue. Not only is the literature vast, but it goes back decades. The idea of dismantling the police and government in general are not really all that new in libertarian circles. Again, they?ve been discussed and written about before I was born. >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan >> Sample my Kindle books at: >> http://author.to/DanUst >> >>> On Jun 9, 2020, at 2:21 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: >>> >>> I am simply not interested enough in it to read a book. But just a hint or two about how to deal with crime without police would be a help. bill w >>> >>>> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 3:37 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: >>>> I don't have all the answers here, but personal self-defense and voluntary defense associations for those extremely rare occasions when violent confrontations happen. Private security already plays a role in current US-American society, such as security guards inside shopping malls and the like. So I don't see any reason why people can't specialize in security and things like detection and apprehension of suspects. What wouldn't exist under such a system is a group of people who have special privileges because of this specialization. (And self-help wouldn't be outlawed.) >>>> >>>> Elsewhere I mentioned Bruce L. Benson's 1990 book _The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State_. He goes over much of this in far more depth than me. Also, market anarchists have been discussing how to deal with crime without the state for decades now. This is all part of the literature of libertarian thought, no? (What shocks me is meeting people who call themselves libertarians who seem unaware of this work. Have you heard of Benson's work? That's not his only book. How about George H. Smith? Have you read his essay "Justice Entrepreneurship In a Free Market"? He wrote on this subject back in 1979!) >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> >>>> Dan >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 atymes at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 15:25:08 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 08:25:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] twittebots? In-Reply-To: <005401d63f26$d49c0470$7dd40d50$@rainier66.com> References: <005401d63f26$d49c0470$7dd40d50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 6:01 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Perhaps this is already being done. How do we know this stuff we hear > about on twitter isn?t already software-generated? > Oh, dear sweet summer child... https://www.google.com/search?q=twitter+bots (Summary: not only have Twitter bots existed for a long time, they have been weaponized, and detection measures extensively studied.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 15:26:59 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 08:26:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] e: Acceleration of the wealth gap Message-ID: wrote: > Hi Keith, I don't know why it looks different on your end with the lines and white space. Whatever you did fixed it. > kilolooter: I can imagine most of them go somewhere else to do their looting. Their big problem is that somewhere else comes to their neighborhood and burns their neighborhood stores. It's more complicated than you might think. Last night on a zoom chat, there was someone who has looked into the large scale organized looting. The vehicles involved are mostly stolen. Large scale demonstrations with the potential to turn into riots keep the police occupied so looking for stolen vehicles falls way down their list. As for the looters, " It ain?t just a question of misunderstood; Deep down inside him, he?s no good!" https://genius.com/Leonard-bernstein-gee-officer-krupke-film-lyrics Genetics isn't entirely fate, but recombination makes it sure that some out of every generation are just "no good." Something on the order of 1 percent are bad enough that people around them kill them. Over a long time, this has weeded out the worst characteristics of the race. Human domestication is a work in progress. The first time I heard about such a case was in the late 60s or early 70s. There was a young woman, Debby French, in Tucson who was so hard on the people around her that the 'peace and love' hippies took up a collection to have her killed. She heard about it, and skipped to Denver. The locals forward the collection to someone in Denver and sure enough, she wound up dead in a ditch. > So many of these businesses got such a huge one-two punch with the virus, then the looters, it is easy to imagine few of them ever return to business. If that happens, some of the most tightly-packed cities will start to deflate. Not likely. The reason people are packed into slums is that they can't afford to live anywhere else. See Jay Forrester's _Urban Dynamics_ for how this works. Keith From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 10 15:41:57 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 08:41:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] twittebots? In-Reply-To: References: <005401d63f26$d49c0470$7dd40d50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <005001d63f3d$acff8470$06fe8d50$@rainier66.com> >...> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] twittebots? On Wed, 10 Jun 2020 at 14:03, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > ... > >> Perhaps this is already being done. How do we know this stuff we hear about on twitter isn?t already software-generated? > It has already been done. See: Quote: >...Proper usage includes broadcasting helpful information, automatically generating interesting or creative content, and automatically replying to users via direct message. Improper usage includes circumventing API rate limits, violating user privacy, spamming and sockpuppeting. Concerns about political Twitter bots include the promulgation of malicious content, increased polarization, and the spreading of fake news. ------------- BillK _______________________________________________ BillK, we missed ya bigtime, me lad. Welcome back. We have been struggling to cut down on our howling at the moon, in order to bring back our high-quality posters, such as you. I have vowed to restrict my howling to only when the moon is full. Do pardon me phony Scottish brogue. I traced me family tree and found one of the latest immigrants to the colonies, from Scotland in about the 1730s. spike From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 10 15:51:05 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 08:51:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] twittebots? In-Reply-To: References: <005401d63f26$d49c0470$7dd40d50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <005601d63f3e$f3698770$da3c9650$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2020 8:25 AM To: ExI chat list Cc: Adrian Tymes Subject: Re: [ExI] twittebots? On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 6:01 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: Perhaps this is already being done. How do we know this stuff we hear about on twitter isn?t already software-generated? Oh, dear sweet summer child... https://www.google.com/search?q=twitter+bots (Summary: not only have Twitter bots existed for a long time, they have been weaponized, and detection measures extensively studied.) Oh mercy, Adrian I am terminally not hip. That?s why I have you young hipsters as advisers. Cool I learn another new hip thing this day: summer child. Urban dictionary says it is someone who is na?ve and unaware of the horrors of the real world. HAH! Little do they know. This hipster urban dictionary knows nothing, NOTHING of the horrors of the engineering world. Blissfully ignorant are they of the impacts of 10.7 cm radiation on the upper atmosphere, and the resulting hazardous ionization potential created as a satellite passes through the diurnal bulge. Na?ve they are, perhaps thinking the dreaded diurnal bulge is when a man gets exited in the middle of the afternoon. These urban Websters are sooo not hip in MY world! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 15:52:35 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 10:52:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: <25A769F4-159F-4676-8044-93EFD841CBEF@gmail.com> References: <25A769F4-159F-4676-8044-93EFD841CBEF@gmail.com> Message-ID: The last thing we need is people who go out and try to be heroes. And I doubt you'd get any volunteers to police Harlem. You are right about high speed chases, but calling ahead and putting down tire destroyers (or whatever they are called) does work. I think that volunteers could easily be added to neighborhoods - unarmed, strolling around saying Hi to people and getting to know them, wearing a badge but no uniform or other equipment. These volunteers could get to know the criminals, the places too easy to rob, and so on. But I cannot see relying on them alone. Maybeyou could put a volunteer together with a cop in a patrol car. Sometimes you need two people in the cop car, but they don't have to both be cops. Someone to call 'officer in trouble' would come in handy. bill w On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 10:31 AM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > I think maniacs driving 120mph are somewhat self limiting. But studies > show that high speed chases are the wrong approach. > > > https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a9096/why-high-speed-police-chases-are-going-away-15532838/ > > Voluntary police can still work IF the areas are made small enough. For > example, someone would not want to police all of manhattan. But 4 blocks? I > think they?d be willing to. > > And there?s enough dudes who try to be heroes anyway, so I think ?shots > fired? would still get responded to. > > Withe voluntary community policing, crime becomes a personal affront. > Whether that?s good or bad is a different story. > > SR Ballard > > On Jun 9, 2020, at 8:12 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Perhaps I missed them because I thought when I read them that they were > ludicrous. Personal defense is a good idea, but most people never get > attacked. Private security would, I assume cost more than what we get with > tax dollars and poor people could not afford it. > > Voluntary police: I can see this working if a town is not larger than a > few hundred. Numerous problems here, including training, insurance if > hurt, and the likelihood that an ordinary citizen would go on a call where > shooting is occuring. I just can't see getting thousands of volunteers in > big cities where violent crime is not rare at all but happens many times a > day. > > Just to give one example: which of the above would deal with maniacs > driving 120 mph on city streets? bill w > > On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 7:31 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> You must have missed the three examples I gave in my first two sentences: >> >> 1. ?personal self-defense? >> >> 2. ?voluntary defense associations for those extremely rare occasions >> when violent confrontations happen? >> >> 3. ?Private security? >> >> I brought up the Benson book and the Smith essay as examples of a vast >> literature by libertarians on how to deal with this issue. Not only is the >> literature vast, but it goes back decades. The idea of dismantling the >> police and government in general are not really all that new in libertarian >> circles. Again, they?ve been discussed and written about before I was born. >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan >> Sample my Kindle books at: >> >> http://author.to/DanUst >> >> On Jun 9, 2020, at 2:21 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >> I am simply not interested enough in it to read a book. But just a hint >> or two about how to deal with crime without police would be a help. bill w >> >> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 3:37 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> I don't have all the answers here, but personal self-defense and >>> voluntary defense associations for those extremely rare occasions when >>> violent confrontations happen. Private security already plays a role in >>> current US-American society, such as security guards inside shopping malls >>> and the like. So I don't see any reason why people can't specialize in >>> security and things like detection and apprehension of suspects. What >>> wouldn't exist under such a system is a group of people who have special >>> privileges because of this specialization. (And self-help wouldn't be >>> outlawed.) >>> >>> Elsewhere I mentioned Bruce L. Benson's 1990 book _The Enterprise of >>> Law: Justice Without the State_. He goes over much of this in far more >>> depth than me. Also, market anarchists have been discussing how to deal >>> with crime without the state for decades now. This is all part of the >>> literature of libertarian thought, no? (What shocks me is meeting people >>> who call themselves libertarians who seem unaware of this work. Have you >>> heard of Benson's work? That's not his only book. How about George H. >>> Smith? Have you read his essay "Justice Entrepreneurship In a Free Market"? >>> He wrote on this subject back in 1979!) >>> >>> Regards, >>> >>> Dan >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >> 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 > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 10 15:56:41 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 10:56:41 -0500 Subject: [ExI] e: Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The first time I heard about such a case was in the late 60s or early 70s. There was a young woman, Debby French, in Tucson who was so hard on the people around her that the 'peace and love' hippies took up a collection to have her killed. She heard about it, and skipped to Denver. The locals forward the collection to someone in Denver and sure enough, she wound up dead in a ditch. keith If I've said it before, well, I'll say it again: if you want to find women with abnormally high testosterone levels, look in women's prisons. Women who act as bad as bad men. What they could use is hormone treatments: female hormones to counteract the testosterones. No, I have not heard of any such treatment, but it makes a lot of sense to me. Rafal? bill w On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 10:47 AM Keith Henson via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > wrote: > > > Hi Keith, I don't know why it looks different on your end with the lines > and > white space. > > Whatever you did fixed it. > > > kilolooter: I can imagine most of them go somewhere else to do their > looting. Their big problem is that somewhere else comes to their > neighborhood and burns their neighborhood stores. > > It's more complicated than you might think. Last night on a zoom > chat, there was someone who has looked into the large scale organized > looting. The vehicles involved are mostly stolen. Large scale > demonstrations with the potential to turn into riots keep the police > occupied so looking for stolen vehicles falls way down their list. > > As for the looters, > > " It ain?t just a question of misunderstood; > Deep down inside him, he?s no good!" > > https://genius.com/Leonard-bernstein-gee-officer-krupke-film-lyrics > > Genetics isn't entirely fate, but recombination makes it sure that > some out of every generation are just "no good." Something on the > order of 1 percent are bad enough that people around them kill them. > Over a long time, this has weeded out the worst characteristics of the > race. Human domestication is a work in progress. > > The first time I heard about such a case was in the late 60s or early > 70s. There was a young woman, Debby French, in Tucson who was so hard > on the people around her that the 'peace and love' hippies took up a > collection to have her killed. She heard about it, and skipped to > Denver. The locals forward the collection to someone in Denver and > sure enough, she wound up dead in a ditch. > > > So many of these businesses got such a huge one-two punch with the virus, > then the looters, it is easy to imagine few of them ever return to > business. > If that happens, some of the most tightly-packed cities will start to > deflate. > > Not likely. The reason people are packed into slums is that they > can't afford to live anywhere else. See Jay Forrester's _Urban > Dynamics_ for how this works. > > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 15:58:30 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 10:58:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] twittebots? In-Reply-To: <005001d63f3d$acff8470$06fe8d50$@rainier66.com> References: <005401d63f26$d49c0470$7dd40d50$@rainier66.com> <005001d63f3d$acff8470$06fe8d50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Do pardon me phony Scottish brogue. I traced me family tree and found one of the latest immigrants to the colonies, from Scotland in about the 1730s. spike *I have read that people from Ireland populated Scotland. So add St. Paddy's Day to Kwanzai for your holiday celebrations. bill w* On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 10:54 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > >...> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat > Subject: Re: [ExI] twittebots? > > On Wed, 10 Jun 2020 at 14:03, spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > ... > > > >> Perhaps this is already being done. How do we know this stuff we hear > about on twitter isn?t already software-generated? > > > > > It has already been done. > > See: > Quote: > >...Proper usage includes broadcasting helpful information, automatically > generating interesting or creative content, and automatically replying to > users via direct message. Improper usage includes circumventing API rate > limits, violating user privacy, spamming and sockpuppeting. > Concerns about political Twitter bots include the promulgation of > malicious content, increased polarization, and the spreading of fake news. > ------------- > > BillK > > _______________________________________________ > > > BillK, we missed ya bigtime, me lad. Welcome back. We have been > struggling to cut down on our howling at the moon, in order to bring back > our high-quality posters, such as you. I have vowed to restrict my howling > to only when the moon is full. > > Do pardon me phony Scottish brogue. I traced me family tree and found one > of the latest immigrants to the colonies, from Scotland in about the 1730s. > > 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 Wed Jun 10 16:22:19 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 09:22:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] e: Acceleration of the wealth gap In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <007201d63f43$51096fe0$f31c4fa0$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Keith Henson via extropy-chat Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2020 8:27 AM To: ExI chat list Cc: Keith Henson Subject: Re: [ExI] e: Acceleration of the wealth gap wrote: > Hi Keith, I don't know why it looks different on your end with the > lines and white space. Whatever you did fixed it. >> kilolooter: I can imagine most of them go somewhere else to do their looting. Their big problem is that somewhere else comes to their neighborhood and burns their neighborhood stores. >...It's more complicated than you might think. Last night on a zoom chat, there was someone who has looked into the large scale organized looting. The vehicles involved are mostly stolen... This caper in Fairfield with the forklift has me thinking. Front door is bashed in, after the store is closed. Mysteriously there is a crowd already there in the closed store parking lot, as if they knew something like that was going to happen. There are perhaps 100 or more looters and not that many police, but even if they had enough, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to rush in and start fighting the looters. A better, cheaper alternative: slash exactly one drive tire on every car in the parking lot. Theory: every car there has looting on its mind. Bad guys put the loot in trunk, drive off with a flat tire, constables calmly bag the perp a coupla miles down the freeway with the evidence in her trunk, recover the loot and the stolen car in good condition (minus one tire (tires are cheap)) arrest the looter under safer conditions than the chaotic parking lot at the mall. >...As for the looters, >..." It ain?t just a question of misunderstood; Deep down inside him, he?s no good!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7TT4jnnWys Keith thanks for that. All my life I have heard people quote from West Side Story, but I never actually saw the musical. I like all the songs from it, so now I will finally get around to viewing that classic. >... The locals forward the collection to someone in Denver and sure enough, she wound up dead in a ditch... Do you ever worry about the dark web and strong encryption? Perhaps many of these latest Chicago murders are a result of someone making a deal with a hit-human who resides on the dark web and accepts Bit Coin. I worry about that. >>...If that happens, some of the most tightly-packed cities will start to deflate. >...Not likely. The reason people are packed into slums is that they can't afford to live anywhere else. See Jay Forrester's _Urban Dynamics_ for how this works. Keith _______________________________________________ In some of the most dangerous slums, conditions will change dramatically as a result of the looting. In Chicago, they are looking around in some of those wards trying to locate the nearest remaining pharmacy and grocery store, and finding it is a long ways off. There is some critically important infrastructure that has been damaged or destroyed. I am working thru the math trying to estimate the challenges involved in rebuilding at least some of that. Can you even imagine? In many cases the building itself was damaged or destroyed by fire, so in the very best case (which I do not expect) just getting a new building could take at least a coupla years. spike From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 10 17:06:18 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 10:06:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] twittebots? In-Reply-To: References: <005401d63f26$d49c0470$7dd40d50$@rainier66.com> <005001d63f3d$acff8470$06fe8d50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00b301d63f49$7603a080$620ae180$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] twittebots? Do pardon me phony Scottish brogue. I traced me family tree and found one of the latest immigrants to the colonies, from Scotland in about the 1730s. spike I have read that people from Ireland populated Scotland. So add St. Paddy's Day to Kwanzai for your holiday celebrations. bill w Bzzzzt BillW, St. Paddy?s is specific to Ireland. The Scottish people are careful to differentiate themselves from their benighted Irish cousins, with a good example being to don the Scotch tartan rather than the extravagant Irish plaid. Wastrels are these Irish lads, scandalously profligate, they are! BillW, in the spirit of your post however, I would add to my Kwanzaa and Hogmanay celebrations the solemn festival of Yom Kippur. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sen.otaku at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 17:24:59 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 12:24:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <25A769F4-159F-4676-8044-93EFD841CBEF@gmail.com> Message-ID: If you live in Harlem, policing your own block isn?t such a big deal. You know them and they know you. But I do think a professional ?police officer? and a civilian ?peace officer? doing patrols together would be a really good thing. The type of people who do Cop Watch come to mind. Very unlikely to turn off a body cam, and very likely to report improprieties. By switching up the pairs on a semi-regular basis, and allowing anonymous reports, I think that would be a good option. Another option: 1 cop, 1 social worker. SR Ballard > On Jun 10, 2020, at 10:52 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > The last thing we need is people who go out and try to be heroes. And I doubt you'd get any volunteers to police Harlem. You are right about high speed chases, but calling ahead and putting down tire destroyers (or whatever they are called) does work. I think that volunteers could easily be added to neighborhoods - unarmed, strolling around saying Hi to people and getting to know them, wearing a badge but no uniform or other equipment. These volunteers could get to know the criminals, the places too easy to rob, and so on. But I cannot see relying on them alone. Maybeyou could put a volunteer together with a cop in a patrol car. Sometimes you need two people in the cop car, but they don't have to both be cops. Someone to call 'officer in trouble' would come in handy. > > bill w > >> On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 10:31 AM SR Ballard via extropy-chat wrote: >> I think maniacs driving 120mph are somewhat self limiting. But studies show that high speed chases are the wrong approach. >> >> https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a9096/why-high-speed-police-chases-are-going-away-15532838/ >> >> Voluntary police can still work IF the areas are made small enough. For example, someone would not want to police all of manhattan. But 4 blocks? I think they?d be willing to. >> >> And there?s enough dudes who try to be heroes anyway, so I think ?shots fired? would still get responded to. >> >> Withe voluntary community policing, crime becomes a personal affront. Whether that?s good or bad is a different story. >> >> SR Ballard >> >>> On Jun 9, 2020, at 8:12 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: >>> >>> Perhaps I missed them because I thought when I read them that they were ludicrous. Personal defense is a good idea, but most people never get attacked. Private security would, I assume cost more than what we get with tax dollars and poor people could not afford it. >>> >>> Voluntary police: I can see this working if a town is not larger than a few hundred. Numerous problems here, including training, insurance if hurt, and the likelihood that an ordinary citizen would go on a call where shooting is occuring. I just can't see getting thousands of volunteers in big cities where violent crime is not rare at all but happens many times a day. >>> >>> Just to give one example: which of the above would deal with maniacs driving 120 mph on city streets? bill w >>> >>>> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 7:31 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: >>>> You must have missed the three examples I gave in my first two sentences: >>>> >>>> 1. ?personal self-defense? >>>> >>>> 2. ?voluntary defense associations for those extremely rare occasions when violent confrontations happen? >>>> >>>> 3. ?Private security? >>>> >>>> I brought up the Benson book and the Smith essay as examples of a vast literature by libertarians on how to deal with this issue. Not only is the literature vast, but it goes back decades. The idea of dismantling the police and government in general are not really all that new in libertarian circles. Again, they?ve been discussed and written about before I was born. >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> >>>> Dan >>>> Sample my Kindle books at: >>>> http://author.to/DanUst >>>> >>>>> On Jun 9, 2020, at 2:21 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: >>>>> >>>>> I am simply not interested enough in it to read a book. But just a hint or two about how to deal with crime without police would be a help. bill w >>>>> >>>>>> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 3:37 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: >>>>>> I don't have all the answers here, but personal self-defense and voluntary defense associations for those extremely rare occasions when violent confrontations happen. Private security already plays a role in current US-American society, such as security guards inside shopping malls and the like. So I don't see any reason why people can't specialize in security and things like detection and apprehension of suspects. What wouldn't exist under such a system is a group of people who have special privileges because of this specialization. (And self-help wouldn't be outlawed.) >>>>>> >>>>>> Elsewhere I mentioned Bruce L. Benson's 1990 book _The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State_. He goes over much of this in far more depth than me. Also, market anarchists have been discussing how to deal with crime without the state for decades now. This is all part of the literature of libertarian thought, no? (What shocks me is meeting people who call themselves libertarians who seem unaware of this work. Have you heard of Benson's work? That's not his only book. How about George H. Smith? Have you read his essay "Justice Entrepreneurship In a Free Market"? He wrote on this subject back in 1979!) >>>>>> >>>>>> Regards, >>>>>> >>>>>> Dan >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> 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 >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 Wed Jun 10 17:29:16 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 12:29:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder In-Reply-To: References: <25A769F4-159F-4676-8044-93EFD841CBEF@gmail.com> Message-ID: Make that a psychiatric social worker. I agree with all of what you wrote. bill w On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 12:27 PM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > If you live in Harlem, policing your own block isn?t such a big deal. You > know them and they know you. > > But I do think a professional ?police officer? and a civilian ?peace > officer? doing patrols together would be a really good thing. The type of > people who do Cop Watch come to mind. Very unlikely to turn off a body cam, > and very likely to report improprieties. > > By switching up the pairs on a semi-regular basis, and allowing anonymous > reports, I think that would be a good option. > > Another option: 1 cop, 1 social worker. > > SR Ballard > > On Jun 10, 2020, at 10:52 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > The last thing we need is people who go out and try to be heroes. And I > doubt you'd get any volunteers to police Harlem. You are right about high > speed chases, but calling ahead and putting down tire destroyers (or > whatever they are called) does work. I think that volunteers could easily > be added to neighborhoods - unarmed, strolling around saying Hi to people > and getting to know them, wearing a badge but no uniform or other > equipment. These volunteers could get to know the criminals, the places > too easy to rob, and so on. But I cannot see relying on them alone. > Maybeyou could put a volunteer together with a cop in a patrol car. > Sometimes you need two people in the cop car, but they don't have to both > be cops. Someone to call 'officer in trouble' would come in handy. > > bill w > > On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 10:31 AM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> I think maniacs driving 120mph are somewhat self limiting. But studies >> show that high speed chases are the wrong approach. >> >> >> https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a9096/why-high-speed-police-chases-are-going-away-15532838/ >> >> Voluntary police can still work IF the areas are made small enough. For >> example, someone would not want to police all of manhattan. But 4 blocks? I >> think they?d be willing to. >> >> And there?s enough dudes who try to be heroes anyway, so I think ?shots >> fired? would still get responded to. >> >> Withe voluntary community policing, crime becomes a personal affront. >> Whether that?s good or bad is a different story. >> >> SR Ballard >> >> On Jun 9, 2020, at 8:12 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >> Perhaps I missed them because I thought when I read them that they were >> ludicrous. Personal defense is a good idea, but most people never get >> attacked. Private security would, I assume cost more than what we get with >> tax dollars and poor people could not afford it. >> >> Voluntary police: I can see this working if a town is not larger than a >> few hundred. Numerous problems here, including training, insurance if >> hurt, and the likelihood that an ordinary citizen would go on a call where >> shooting is occuring. I just can't see getting thousands of volunteers in >> big cities where violent crime is not rare at all but happens many times a >> day. >> >> Just to give one example: which of the above would deal with maniacs >> driving 120 mph on city streets? bill w >> >> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 7:31 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> You must have missed the three examples I gave in my first two sentences: >>> >>> 1. ?personal self-defense? >>> >>> 2. ?voluntary defense associations for those extremely rare occasions >>> when violent confrontations happen? >>> >>> 3. ?Private security? >>> >>> I brought up the Benson book and the Smith essay as examples of a vast >>> literature by libertarians on how to deal with this issue. Not only is the >>> literature vast, but it goes back decades. The idea of dismantling the >>> police and government in general are not really all that new in libertarian >>> circles. Again, they?ve been discussed and written about before I was born. >>> >>> Regards, >>> >>> Dan >>> Sample my Kindle books at: >>> >>> http://author.to/DanUst >>> >>> On Jun 9, 2020, at 2:21 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>> I am simply not interested enough in it to read a book. But just a hint >>> or two about how to deal with crime without police would be a help. bill w >>> >>> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 3:37 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> I don't have all the answers here, but personal self-defense and >>>> voluntary defense associations for those extremely rare occasions when >>>> violent confrontations happen. Private security already plays a role in >>>> current US-American society, such as security guards inside shopping malls >>>> and the like. So I don't see any reason why people can't specialize in >>>> security and things like detection and apprehension of suspects. What >>>> wouldn't exist under such a system is a group of people who have special >>>> privileges because of this specialization. (And self-help wouldn't be >>>> outlawed.) >>>> >>>> Elsewhere I mentioned Bruce L. Benson's 1990 book _The Enterprise of >>>> Law: Justice Without the State_. He goes over much of this in far more >>>> depth than me. Also, market anarchists have been discussing how to deal >>>> with crime without the state for decades now. This is all part of the >>>> literature of libertarian thought, no? (What shocks me is meeting people >>>> who call themselves libertarians who seem unaware of this work. Have you >>>> heard of Benson's work? That's not his only book. How about George H. >>>> Smith? Have you read his essay "Justice Entrepreneurship In a Free Market"? >>>> He wrote on this subject back in 1979!) >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> >>>> Dan >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 10 19:20:45 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 14:20:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] hope it doesn't happen Message-ID: In my 30 years of teaching ending in 1997, I saw several black professors hired, one in my department. Not one was academically qualified. The faculty objected in every case and the dean said that if we wanted to get paid, we had to show the legislators that we were serious about hiring blacks. I led a search committee for a new psych prof. The first thing I was told was to advertise in a black journal whose prices were out of sight. When we picked our final candidate I was grilled repeatedly about the ads, which got no response. Our pay was way out of line with what qualified black professionals could get at major universities. So what we could get were the unqualified ones, and you can imagine that they did not get a roaring reception by the faculty, all of whom knew the circumstances in which the black profs were hired. I can only see more of this happening. White faculty will be pushed out, white applicants will get little attention, until some quota is met in the eyes of the authorities - legislature, president,governor, etc. I hope that qualified blacks get exactly the same opportunities that other qualified candidates get, but that won't happen. What you will see is that the frustration will be passed from the blacks to the whites. Some will think that's what should happen. I, of course, treated the black profs at Montevallo the same as I treated anyone, but they did not get that from everyone, I can assure you. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed Jun 10 20:20:50 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 13:20:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] new catalog Message-ID: <012401d63f64$a2b7c3c0$e8274b40$@rainier66.com> Here ya go, first view this 44 second video of a fashion catalog: https://youtu.be/8siezzLXbNo Then I will tell you that every one of these images, including the movement of the models, is generated by AI. None of these are real people. Tragic is this, because I was already getting attached to some of them. Which leads to the next industry-crusher: once AI obviates fashion models by generating photo-realistic images to model their clothing, the same AI could be created to create photo-realistic images without the clothing. Horrors! This could devastate the porno industry. Models willing to show it all may no longer be needed. Tragic is this, because I was already getting attached to some of them. While I struggle to get over that, it occurs to me that this is important in my notion of making software avatars to converse with and entertain the elderly. It adds an entire new dimension to the term "entertain." spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 20:29:34 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 15:29:34 -0500 Subject: [ExI] new catalog In-Reply-To: <012401d63f64$a2b7c3c0$e8274b40$@rainier66.com> References: <012401d63f64$a2b7c3c0$e8274b40$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: That is the most dispirited dancing I ever saw. I don't know what they got but they ain't got rhythm. bill w On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 3:23 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > > Here ya go, first view this 44 second video of a fashion catalog: > > > > https://youtu.be/8siezzLXbNo > > > > Then I will tell you that every one of these images, including the > movement of the models, is generated by AI. None of these are real > people. Tragic is this, because I was already getting attached to some of > them. > > > > Which leads to the next industry-crusher: once AI obviates fashion models > by generating photo-realistic images to model their clothing, the same AI > could be created to create photo-realistic images without the clothing. > Horrors! This could devastate the porno industry. Models willing to show > it all may no longer be needed. Tragic is this, because I was already > getting attached to some of them. > > > > While I struggle to get over that, it occurs to me that this is important > in my notion of making software avatars to converse with and entertain the > elderly. It adds an entire new dimension to the term ?entertain.? > > > > 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 20:42:53 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 16:42:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dropping Flynn case is "a gross abuse of prosecutorial power" court-appointed lawyer says Message-ID: This just came out: UNITED STATES DISTRICT *"The facts surrounding the filing of the Government's motion constitute clear evidence of gross prosecutorial abuse. They reveal an unconvincing effort to disguise as legitimate a decision to dismiss that is based solely on the fact that Flynn is a political ally of President Trump *[...] *The Justice Department abdicated the responsibility to prosecute defendants without fear or favor by attempting to provide special treatment to a favored friend and political ally of the President of the United States [...] **It has treated the case like no other, and in doing so has undermined the public's confidence in the rule of law"* John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 20:47:15 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 13:47:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dropping Flynn case is "a gross abuse of prosecutorial power" court-appointed lawyer says In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: That's just the replacement prosecutor's statement. We'll see if the court follows through and rejects the motion to dismiss, though it appears likely that it will. On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 1:44 PM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > This just came out: > > UNITED STATES DISTRICT > > > *"The facts surrounding the filing of the Government's motion constitute > clear evidence of gross prosecutorial abuse. They reveal an unconvincing > effort to disguise as legitimate a decision to dismiss that is based solely > on the fact that Flynn is a political ally of President Trump *[...] *The > Justice Department abdicated the responsibility to prosecute defendants > without fear or favor by attempting to provide special treatment to a > favored friend and political ally of the President of the United States > [...] **It has treated the case like no other, and in doing so has > undermined the public's confidence in the rule of law"* > > 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 Wed Jun 10 20:52:35 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 13:52:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] new catalog In-Reply-To: References: <012401d63f64$a2b7c3c0$e8274b40$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <013901d63f69$11d55d40$358017c0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] new catalog >?That is the most dispirited dancing I ever saw? Sure, so dancers? careers are safe. For now. But you notice the dispirited dancing of the group was in perfect unison: not one avatar was screwing up. Software spirited dancing is coming. I can already imagine that avatars would do all the background stuff, while the modern Fred Estaire does his thing with a software-generated troupe behind him. >?I don't know what they got but they ain't got rhythm. bill w They don?t yet. Stand by sir. The future doesn?t need us. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Wed Jun 10 21:15:49 2020 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 17:15:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] new catalog In-Reply-To: <013901d63f69$11d55d40$358017c0$@rainier66.com> References: <013901d63f69$11d55d40$358017c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <741524E9-91EE-4073-9A5B-F0B88B5524A6@alumni.virginia.edu> Deep fakes are a real threat: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robtoews/2020/05/25/deepfakes-are-going-to-wreak-havoc-on-society-we-are-not-prepared/ I?m not so worried about the adult entertainment uses of this technology however: https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/06/01/new-ar-app-will-let-you-model-a-virtual-companion-on-anyone-you-want/ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arworld/650999899?ref=46nkc0&token=d946d61d -Henry >> On Jun 10, 2020, at 5:00 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > ? > > > > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > Subject: Re: [ExI] new catalog > > > > >?That is the most dispirited dancing I ever saw? > > Sure, so dancers? careers are safe. For now. But you notice the dispirited dancing of the group was in perfect unison: not one avatar was screwing up. Software spirited dancing is coming. > > I can already imagine that avatars would do all the background stuff, while the modern Fred Estaire does his thing with a software-generated troupe behind him. > > >?I don't know what they got but they ain't got rhythm. bill w > > They don?t yet. Stand by sir. The future doesn?t need us. > > 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 Wed Jun 10 21:44:21 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 16:44:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] monumental change Message-ID: And I am not kidding. NASCAR is unbelievably huge in the South, where rednecks wearing Confederate flags on their heads, cars, etc. party at the races.. NASCAR just banned Confederate flags at all their events. This could destroy their popularity. In other words, it was a huge step for them and a courageous one. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hibbard at wisc.edu Wed Jun 10 21:45:36 2020 From: hibbard at wisc.edu (Bill Hibbard) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 16:45:36 -0500 (CDT) Subject: [ExI] new catalog Message-ID: > This could devastate the porno industry. Already in the works, due to Covid-19: https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/arts-entertainment/sex-scenes-movies-replaced-cgi-coronavirus-safety From atymes at gmail.com Wed Jun 10 22:17:16 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 15:17:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] twittebots? In-Reply-To: <005601d63f3e$f3698770$da3c9650$@rainier66.com> References: <005401d63f26$d49c0470$7dd40d50$@rainier66.com> <005601d63f3e$f3698770$da3c9650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 9:01 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Cool I learn another new hip thing this day: summer child. Urban > dictionary says it is someone who is na?ve and unaware of the horrors of > the real world. > > > > HAH! Little do they know. This hipster urban dictionary knows nothing, > NOTHING of the horrors of the engineering world. Blissfully ignorant are > they of the impacts of 10.7 cm radiation on the upper atmosphere, and the > resulting hazardous ionization potential created as a satellite passes > through the diurnal bulge. Na?ve they are, perhaps thinking the dreaded > diurnal bulge is when a man gets exited in the middle of the afternoon. > These urban Websters are sooo not hip in MY world! > Indeed, but in this case it is accurate. For all the dangers of the world that you know and can conquer, there remain entire categories of menaces that you have been sheltered from, one of which you are only today learning of. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 11 01:01:50 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 18:01:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] new catalog In-Reply-To: <741524E9-91EE-4073-9A5B-F0B88B5524A6@alumni.virginia.edu> References: <013901d63f69$11d55d40$358017c0$@rainier66.com> <741524E9-91EE-4073-9A5B-F0B88B5524A6@alumni.virginia.edu> Message-ID: <007f01d63f8b$e4330040$ac9900c0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Henry Rivera via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] new catalog Deep fakes are a real threat: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robtoews/2020/05/25/deepfakes-are-going-to-wreak-havoc-on-society-we-are-not-prepared/ -Henry Henry we are lucky this is being introduced in commercials and comedy shows, so we can be aware of the technology. You may not be up on Al Pacino, but do let me assure you, we Pacino fans loooove this: https://youtu.be/kjI-JaRWG7s Having this guy morph into a young Pacino and back was a treat. I am still laughing about that bit. Of course this is a huge threat to the political system. We get that. This technology had gotten quite good. On the presidential race, both of the leading candidates (neither name I can recall at the moment) have actually said such goofy comments that it will be unclear which is genuine and which is fake. It may not really matter I suppose. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Jun 11 04:49:56 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 21:49:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] they put him down Message-ID: <00aa01d63fab$c1ad35c0$4507a140$@rainier66.com> I still think they could have just unfunded him, but the clamoring mob insisted: https://babylonbee.com/news/mcgruff-the-crime-dog-put-down spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Thu Jun 11 04:56:46 2020 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2020 00:56:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] they put him down In-Reply-To: <00aa01d63fab$c1ad35c0$4507a140$@rainier66.com> References: <00aa01d63fab$c1ad35c0$4507a140$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: When I saw the subject, I thought this would be about one of the many statues destroyed recently by the peaceful protesters. On Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 12:51 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > I still think they could have just unfunded him, but the clamoring mob > insisted: > > > > https://babylonbee.com/news/mcgruff-the-crime-dog-put-down > > > > 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 giulio at gmail.com Thu Jun 11 06:50:28 2020 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2020 08:50:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The philosophy of Italian futurism: Riccardo Campa Message-ID: The philosophy of Italian futurism: Riccardo Campa I have been reading a very good book by my friend Riccardo Campa on the philosophy of Italian futurism... the writings of Italian futurists are full of transhumanist ideas... https://turingchurch.net/the-philosophy-of-italian-futurism-riccardo-campa-15469e317150 From danust2012 at gmail.com Thu Jun 11 11:02:34 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2020 04:02:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cory Massimino on advocating police abolition Message-ID: <475C9E2D-4FF5-457A-ADE9-548ED6E0034B@gmail.com> The idea of abolishing the police seems to be having something of a surge in popularity, even among people who wouldn't ordinarily consider such radical proposals. Nevertheless, many principled opponents of police violence (and some not so principled) are urging the rest of us not to emphasize abolition because it could alienate many people who would otherwise be on board with a basic case for extensive police reform. After all, incremental change is better than no change at all. Now, if you don't actually want to abolish the police, then obviously you shouldn't go around arguing to abolish the police. But if you do want to abolish the police, should you instead adopt a more moderate approach in the public discourse right now? I don't think so. Here are a few reasons why: 1. If someone disagrees with you about abolition but agrees with you about reform, then calling for abolition will not magically make them stop supporting reform. Abolitionism is not at odds with reform. It actually presupposes support for (genuine) reform since that's what gets you closer to actual abolition. 2. Focusing on reform over abolition simply reinforces the status quo, which there's already -- by definition -- a surplus of. Putting abolition on the table is the only long run way to shift the window of permissible views. Adopting the same view as everyone else will do nothing to affect change and instead drown your views in a sea of people dogmatically sticking to the party line. 3. A good chunk of the population is dismissive of the case for abolishing *anything* whether its police, prisons, militaries, borders, capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, central banks, taxes, etc. How far does one go in hiding their real opinions in all these different areas? 4. Engaging in rhetorical underhandedness, especially for uncertain strategic ends, is just wrong. Interlocutors deserve sincerity and transparency. If you don't express your real views out of a desire to nudge your interlocutor along the right gradual path, I don't think your treating your interlocutor as much of an equal, but instead someone to be manipulated into agreeing more with you than they already do. To conceal one's true views would also tend to undermine the very conditions that make discourse a fruitful, knowledge-generating process. 5. If I were instead living centuries ago, I wouldn't compromise the case for abolishing slavery one bit, despite knowing full well I would be in a radical minority. If your theory of social change demands you moderate your views on slavery, then it seems to me you should go back and reconsider your theory of social change rather than become a moderate regarding one of the most horrific of evils in all of human history. So, yes, don't hesitate to demand the immediate, unconditional abolition of the police. Here are two quotes to leave you with that I think are particularly relevant right now: "We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia... a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty, which is not too severely practical, and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible. We need intellectual leaders who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization. They must be men who are willing to stick to principles and to fight for their full realization, however remote... Free trade and freedom of opportunity are ideals which still may arouse the imaginations of large numbers, but a mere ?reasonable freedom of trade? or a mere ?relaxation of controls? is neither intellectually respectable nor likely to inspire any enthusiasm.... Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this had rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost." - F.A. Hayek, 1949 ?I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; ? but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest ? I will not equivocate ? I will not excuse ? I will not retreat a single inch ? AND I WILL BE HEARD.? - William Lloyd Garrison, 1831 ?? The above applies, mutatis mutandis, to just about any advocacy of a radical position, no? Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Jun 11 12:23:58 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2020 08:23:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cory Massimino on advocating police abolition In-Reply-To: <475C9E2D-4FF5-457A-ADE9-548ED6E0034B@gmail.com> References: <475C9E2D-4FF5-457A-ADE9-548ED6E0034B@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 7:05 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: *> The idea of abolishing the police seems to be having something of a > surge in popularity,* > Defunding the police is not the same as abolishing the police. Camden New Jersey defunded the police seven years ago and it turned out well. Back then Camden had the highest murder rate in the country and police corruption was so firmly entrenched that reform was impossible, and because of super powerful police unions it cost over $182,000 per officer so they only had 175 of them. Camden decided to start from scratch and fired the entire police force and started a new one; if an officer wanted to stay on the force he had to submit a job application just like everybody else. The move broke the powerful police union so now it only cost $99,600 to hire an officer, and so there are now over 400 of them. The result of all of this is today the murder rate is only a third what it was seven years ago before the police were defunded, and the Relationship between the police and the black community is much improved, the current police chief of Camden actually marched with the black lives matter people. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Jun 11 13:40:12 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2020 08:40:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] antifa Message-ID: *KNOW THE SIGNS: HOW TO TELL IF YOUR GRANDPARENT HAS BECOME AN ANTIFA AGENT* For your birthday, she knits you an unwanted scarf. To be used as a balaclava? She belongs to a decentralized group with no leadership structure that claims to be discussing a ?book,? but no one ever reads the book and all they seem to do is drink wine. Is always talking on the phone with an ?aunt? you have never actually met in person. Aunt TIFA???? Always walking into rooms and claiming not to know why he walked into the room. Likely. He ?trips? over and breaks your child?s Lego police station when walking through the living room in the dark. Total and bewildering lack of nostalgia for good old days. Gathers with loose-knit, disorderly group of figures you have never met to play ?mah-jongg,? governed by mysterious ?rule cards? issued annually from a nebulous central authority. Suddenly, for no reason, will appear or pretend to be asleep. Insists on producing container of nuts whenever there is company. Why? Code of some kind? Carries peppermints (chemical irritant?) in purse at all times. Is taking Centrum Silver. But for what reason? Surely to build up strength for the coming confrontation. Keeps forwarding you what appear on the surface to be emails of jokes someone has typed out from a Reader?s Digest; claims to think you would ?enjoy?; must be some sort of recruitment or propaganda or hidden message. Hired a clown for your child?s birthday ? part of the Juggalo command structure? Big tin of Christmas popcorn mysteriously replenishes itself. WHO IS HELPING?! You gave her a Precious Moments figurine of a law enforcement officer, but she hasn?t displayed it. Remembers things from the past in incredible, exhausting detail, but recent ones only sporadically? Cover of some kind. She claims not to know how to use her phone, yet always appears upside-down on FaceTime, which should be impossible without hacking capabilities. If he is to be believed, he spends hours playing bridge. He is walking non-threateningly at a public protest. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Thu Jun 11 13:46:03 2020 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2020 09:46:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] new catalog Message-ID: ?I am a big fan of Pacino?s! I had never seen that vid. How weird and freaky. Like people in the comments there noted, I can imagine some people unaware of the admitted manipulation saying, ?Whoa, did you see that too?!? >> On Jun 10, 2020, at 9:02 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > ? > > > > On Behalf Of Henry Rivera via extropy-chat > Subject: Re: [ExI] new catalog > > Deep fakes are a real threat: > https://www.forbes.com/sites/robtoews/2020/05/25/deepfakes-are-going-to-wreak-havoc-on-society-we-are-not-prepared/ > > > -Henry > > Henry we are lucky this is being introduced in commercials and comedy shows, so we can be aware of the technology. > > You may not be up on Al Pacino, but do let me assure you, we Pacino fans loooove this: > > https://youtu.be/kjI-JaRWG7s > > Having this guy morph into a young Pacino and back was a treat. I am still laughing about that bit. > > Of course this is a huge threat to the political system. We get that. This technology had gotten quite good. On the presidential race, both of the leading candidates (neither name I can recall at the moment) have actually said such goofy comments that it will be unclear which is genuine and which is fake. It may not really matter I suppose. > > 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 Jun 11 14:23:49 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2020 07:23:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] new catalog In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <004b01d63ffb$ed557430$c8005c90$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Henry Rivera via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] new catalog ?>?I am a big fan of Pacino?s! >?I had never seen that vid. How weird and freaky. Like people in the comments there noted, I can imagine some people unaware of the admitted manipulation saying, ?Whoa, did you see that too?!? I want to make one of these. I can do a pretty good Jimmy Stewart, and already look enough like him to make that work. Does anyone here know what kind of software they used? I might try doing Stewart?s Mr. Hobbs character. https://youtu.be/kjI-JaRWG7s If they make that software a commercial product, I can imagine all kindsa fun we could have with it. Then something really freaky occurred to me: I could morph into my grandfather. I have plenty of still images of him when we was the age I am now, and I know his speech patterns well. I can do the West Virginia mountain brogue and so forth. But it might upset my cousins bigtime. I better think twice or three times and perhaps a few more times before I do something like that. OK alternative: I could morph into my younger self from 40 yrs ago. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Jun 11 17:16:17 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2020 10:16:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] e: Acceleration of the wealth gap Message-ID: wrote: snip > This caper in Fairfield with the forklift has me thinking. Front door is bashed in, after the store is closed. Mysteriously there is a crowd already there in the closed store parking lot, as if they knew something like that was going to happen. There are perhaps 100 or more looters and not that many police, but even if they had enough, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to rush in and start fighting the looters. A better, cheaper alternative: slash exactly one drive tire on every car in the parking lot. Theory: every car there has looting on its mind. > Bad guys put the loot in trunk, drive off with a flat tire, constables calmly bag the perp a coupla miles down the freeway with the evidence in her trunk, recover the loot and the stolen car in good condition (minus one tire (tires are cheap)) arrest the looter under safer conditions than the chaotic parking lot at the mall. It takes a dozen cops to stop someone on the freeway. The essence of riots/looting is that the cops are outnumbered. Besides, the looter's vehicles are unlikely to be far enough to go on a freeway. snip > Do you ever worry about the dark web and strong encryption? I knew Tim May and hung out on the cypherpunks list for a long time. > Perhaps many of these latest Chicago murders are a result of someone making a deal with a hit-human who resides on the dark web and accepts Bit Coin. I worry about that. Not a chance. A lot is random violence, stray bullets, but the chances of a street punk being involved with something as complex as bitcoin is close to zero. If you look at Oakland deaths over the years, it was a sawtooth. (Have not looked for years.) Every time the top drug dealer was taken out by law enforcement, there would be a high level of murders for the next year or two while the competing enterprises settled down >>...If that happens, some of the most tightly-packed cities will start to deflate. >...Not likely. The reason people are packed into slums is that they can't afford to live anywhere else. See Jay Forrester's _Urban Dynamics_ for how this works. Keith _______________________________________________ > In some of the most dangerous slums, conditions will change dramatically as a result of the looting. In Chicago, they are looking around in some of those wards trying to locate the nearest remaining pharmacy and grocery store, and finding it is a long ways off. There is some critically important infrastructure that has been damaged or destroyed. Problems are that these people have no place to go, no money to get there and very often few skills. > I am working thru the math trying to estimate the challenges involved in rebuilding at least some of that. Can you even imagine? In many cases, the building itself was damaged or destroyed by fire, so in the very best case (which I do not expect) just getting a new building could take at least a coupla years. You will see pharmacies and grocery stores set up in tents. The alternative would be famine areas in the cities. Keith From robot at ultimax.com Fri Jun 12 01:11:07 2020 From: robot at ultimax.com (robot at ultimax.com) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2020 21:11:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] by tomorrow, more Americans will have died of COVID-19 than in WWI In-Reply-To: <5e6414a091b45bc817ad2d50a0b8159a@ultimax.com> References: <430dd5d80c31266c4a19a88ae41f27eb@ultimax.com> <5e6414a091b45bc817ad2d50a0b8159a@ultimax.com> Message-ID: <3b4724c0706281e313a7efe09edc76fb@ultimax.com> As I write this tonight, C19's toll is 115+K. US fatalities in Europe (combat AND non-combat) in WWI: 116,708. Which I expect us to hit by tomorrow night. My forecast in late April was off by six weeks. Sorry 'bout that, but these curves are only going to get more squirrelly as time goes on. It should sober you that less than 1% of the population is known to have been infected. K3 On 2020-04-19 16:05, robot at ultimax.com wrote: > Yesterday, I posted an incorrect estimate because I hit "SEND" before > thinking the post thru and re-checking my numbers. I regret the > error. > > Fatalities per day yesterday were half what I wrote, 2.5K/day not > 5K/day. > And, the second derivative has been negative for a week. > (However, anything on than first derivatives are notoriously > squirrely.) > Cumulative figure as of midday is 40K Americans. > So "next stop Vietnam" won't be until sometime next week. > > We came close to, but did not exceed, a 9/11 per day. > I hope we never do, but I am a student of history. > > K3 > > On 2020-04-18 10:51, robot at ultimax.com wrote: >> 37K, per Johns Hopkins -- we're past Korea now. >> >> "Next stop: Vietnam!" (per Country Joe McDonald live @ Woodstock) >> >> That is, at the current rate of accumulation of fatalities (~5K/day), >> we should hit that sad milestone, 58K, by early-middle next week. >> >> Next to come would be total American military deaths in WWI (combat + >> disease), 118K, which is just about double the butcher's bill for >> Vietnam. Again, at current rates of dying, we should expect to see >> that milestone hit by the 1st of May. >> >> Whether or not we do hit that will indicate whether those projections >> we're hearing from the White House ("plateau at 60K") are worth >> anything or not. Absent continued intervention, positive-feedback >> processes tend to run to completion, so it's difficult for me to >> believe that this one we're in is going to come to a sudden screeching >> halt in just a week. >> >> Wait and see, or, wait and not see... >> >> K3 >> >> PS. This listserver's subject line management needs tightening up. >> This discourse in this thread hasn't been about the ostensible subject >> line for a long time now, hundreds of posts. >> >> PPS. I've been studying pandemics and history for a long time. >> See: http://www.ultimax.com/whitepapers/deadmediarev.html . >> For decades, I've been citing >> Hans Zinsser's /Rats Lice and History/ (1935 & 1960), >> William McNeill's /Plagues and Peoples/ (1976) (he was required >> reading in National Security Studies), and >> Jared Diamond's /Guns Germs and Steel/ (1997). >> You should read them too if you want to understand what really shapes >> human history. >> Just started a book recommended by a hacker friend: /The Fate of Rome/ >> by Kyle Harper, 2017, Princeton University Press. Good interview here >> on Utah public radio: "Plagues And The Fate Of Rome" >> https://radiowest.kuer.org/post/plagues-and-fate-rome . >> >> >> On 2020-04-18 09:20, extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org wrote: >>> Message: 12 >>> Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2020 05:04:37 -0400 >>> From: John Clark >>> To: rafal at smigrodzki.org, ExI chat list >>> >>> Subject: Re: [ExI] More Americans died of COVID-19 than died in >>> battle >>> in Korea >>> On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 8:29 PM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>> *> Universal quarantine should have never started* >>> >>> Any particular reason why? We know from centuries of experience with >>> diseases that quarantines work. From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 02:04:54 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2020 19:04:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] by tomorrow, more Americans will have died of COVID-19 than in WWI In-Reply-To: <3b4724c0706281e313a7efe09edc76fb@ultimax.com> References: <3b4724c0706281e313a7efe09edc76fb@ultimax.com> Message-ID: <39C67DFA-AF1D-4299-9FA6-AC74D2AC8868@gmail.com> On Jun 11, 2020, at 6:30 PM, Robert G. Kennedy III, PE via extropy-chat wrote: > > ?As I write this tonight, C19's toll is 115+K. > US fatalities in Europe (combat AND non-combat) in WWI: 116,708. > Which I expect us to hit by tomorrow night. > > My forecast in late April was off by six weeks. Sorry 'bout that, but these curves are only going to get more squirrelly as time goes on. It should sober you that less than 1% of the population is known to have been infected. > > K3 More than half of the US WW1 deaths were due to influenza. Not that that alters your point. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 03:14:32 2020 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 13:14:32 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <006301d63ec0$c06b0390$41410ab0$@rainier66.com> References: <6548C2AC-60B2-436C-A989-F68EE12D2062@gmail.com> <006301d63ec0$c06b0390$41410ab0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 10 Jun 2020 at 10:49, spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Protest > > > > >?You shifted from what to do with a vandal In a protest situation like > in the video versus everything else. Again, my point was they could handle > that particular person without turning him (I?m presuming it was a guy) > over to the police? > > > > I disagree. He needs to be in police custody. The BLM protestors handing > him over to the police is the right thing. If their protest is that > police are brutal only to black suspects, and this sleazy bastard is white, > then they would argue he is perfectly safe in police custody. > > > > > > > > >?And, once more, if you?re protesting police misconduct it seems > painfully ironic to not seek another solution? > > > > Not to me. The protestors are not vandals. The protestors do not like > vandals. The protestors do not want to be equated with vandals, they want > to distance themselves from vandals. So? they handed him over. He is > white, so no problem, ja? > > > > >?In fact, they were already there: they stopped him from his act of > vandalism? > > > > Good for them. > > > > >?Did they need to do more? Maybe. Perhaps they could?ve told him to leave > the area while taking away his hammer and other tools. Perhaps they > could?ve photographed him and threatened to dox him of he was caught around > the area again. Do you disagree here? > > > > I do. Dan, images are everything. That image of BLM protestors handing > the vandal over to the National Guard is a powerful image. It established > their credibility as a protest movement. > > > > >?You really think it was a great idea to turn him over to the police? > > > > I do. > > > > >?You feel there was zero possibility that the police ? known for killing > people for minor offenses like shoplifting or even just on w whim ? might > abuse him? > > > > He is white. According to BLM point of view, he is safe in police custody. > > > > >?At least you get points here for not bringing up Saul Alinsky. ;) > > > > Regards, Dan > > > > Give me time Dan, I will think of something. > > > > OK, hmmm, I?m busted on that. But think about it: the Black Lives Matter > movement is about police fearing black people and being more eager to use > lethal force. Well hell, they are right about that. BLM has a good > point. We get it. > > > > The BLM movement isn?t against policing, it is against police brutality > particularly when it involves black people. Well OK we get that. but the > BLM movement isn?t against policing. Plenty of them are from areas where > they damn well know they need police. They aren?t arguing that all police > are bad. They aren?t specifically anti-police they are anti-police > brutality. Well, we are too. > > > > At the local BLM rally Sunday, the police chief spoke. There were a few > hecklers in the audience, but these guys were seeing each other?s points of > view. BLM wants peaceful rallies. They don?t want to fight the cops, they > don?t want vandalism, they don?t want looters. All three of those groups > detract from their message. > > > > Handing over the vandal was not only the right thing, it was the most > powerful few seconds of video in their favor I have seen to date. > What I find disturbing about the Black Lives Matter protests around the world is that participants seem to think black lives don?t matter if death is due to the coronavirus. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 03:38:03 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2020 20:38:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: <6548C2AC-60B2-436C-A989-F68EE12D2062@gmail.com> <006301d63ec0$c06b0390$41410ab0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 8:18 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > What I find disturbing about the Black Lives Matter protests around the > world is that participants seem to think black lives don?t matter if death > is due to the coronavirus. > The coronavirus does not consciously treat black lives as not mattering. It kills humans approximately the same regardless of their skin color (after controlling for local health care, disparities in which are more an issue of wealth inequality than skin color). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 12 03:48:29 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2020 20:48:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: <6548C2AC-60B2-436C-A989-F68EE12D2062@gmail.com> <006301d63ec0$c06b0390$41410ab0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <000b01d6406c$5637a020$02a6e060$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat >?What I find disturbing about the Black Lives Matter protests around the world is that participants seem to think black lives don?t matter if death is due to the coronavirus. -- Stathis Papaioannou On the contrary Stathis. George Floyd was C-19 positive. He still gets to count as a C-19 related fatality, even if he had contributing health issues, such as being asphyxiated by law enforcement. Our system is weird that way. China?s is weird too. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 04:42:23 2020 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 14:42:23 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: <6548C2AC-60B2-436C-A989-F68EE12D2062@gmail.com> <006301d63ec0$c06b0390$41410ab0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 12 Jun 2020 at 13:39, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 8:18 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> What I find disturbing about the Black Lives Matter protests around the >> world is that participants seem to think black lives don?t matter if death >> is due to the coronavirus. >> > > The coronavirus does not consciously treat black lives as not mattering. > It kills humans approximately the same regardless of their skin color > (after controlling for local health care, disparities in which are more an > issue of wealth inequality than skin color). > Protesting crowds will propagate the virus, killing some of those infected. The protestors presumably know this, but decide to protest anyway. It would make sense if more lives were likely to be saved by protesting than lost, but I don?t think anyone could reasonably argue that that would be the case. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 11:19:24 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 07:19:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] by tomorrow, more Americans will have died of COVID-19 than in WWI In-Reply-To: <3b4724c0706281e313a7efe09edc76fb@ultimax.com> References: <430dd5d80c31266c4a19a88ae41f27eb@ultimax.com> <5e6414a091b45bc817ad2d50a0b8159a@ultimax.com> <3b4724c0706281e313a7efe09edc76fb@ultimax.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 9:31 PM Robert G. Kennedy III, PE via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: *> As I write this tonight, C19's toll is 115+K. US fatalities in Europe > (combat AND non-combat) in WWI: 116,708. Which I expect us to hit by > tomorrow night.* > And it's just June and the deaths only started in March, yet Incredibly some still say the shutdown was a "huge overreaction"! And Trump is going to stage another of his nitwit rallies in Tulsa Oklahoma on July 19 and concentrate thousands of screaming spittle scattering MAGA Hatters into one indoor room, and we can expect that few if any of them will be wearing face masks because Trump has turned that matter of personal hygiene into a political statement. But before anyone is allowed inside the BOC Center (capacity 19,199) they must sign a disclaimer so that neither Trump or his companies or the BOC Center can get sued: *"By attending the Rally, you and any guests voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19 and agree not to hold Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.; BOK Center; ASM Global; or any of their affiliates, directors, officers, employees, agents, contractors, or volunteers liable for any illness or injury." * This is leadership in a time of crisis? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 12:09:32 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 08:09:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <000b01d6406c$5637a020$02a6e060$@rainier66.com> References: <6548C2AC-60B2-436C-A989-F68EE12D2062@gmail.com> <006301d63ec0$c06b0390$41410ab0$@rainier66.com> <000b01d6406c$5637a020$02a6e060$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 11:52 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: *> George Floyd was C-19 positive. * I know. > *He still gets to count as a C-19 related fatality, * Where in the world did you get that idea?! George Floyd was autopsied, *TWICE*, and both said the case of death was homicide; one said the death was caused "as a result of mechanical asphyxiation" and the other said it was due to "cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint and neck compression". Neither autopsie said COVID-19 had anything to do with it. Everybody who tests positive for COVID-19 and dies is NOT Automatically counted as a COVID-19 casualty. *> Our system is weird that way. China?s is weird too.* So now you think China is overestimating the number of its citizens that have died from COVID-19, if so then China has done an even better job at containing the disease than they claim. A month ago you were saying the opposite, you were saying China was MASSIVELY underestimating the number that have died. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 12:57:52 2020 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 08:57:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] antifa In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: This may be the first time the word 'Juggalo' has ever been printed on this list! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 12:58:18 2020 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 08:58:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] antifa In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 8:57 AM Will Steinberg wrote: > This may be the first time the word 'Juggalo' has ever been printed on > this list! > (The ExI listhost) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 12 13:01:43 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 06:01:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: <6548C2AC-60B2-436C-A989-F68EE12D2062@gmail.com> <006301d63ec0$c06b0390$41410ab0$@rainier66.com> <000b01d6406c$5637a020$02a6e060$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <002e01d640b9$a01841c0$e048c540$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Protest On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 11:52 PM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: > George Floyd was C-19 positive. I know. >> He still gets to count as a C-19 related fatality, >?Where in the world did you get that idea?! Here: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/white-house-taking-very-liberal-approach-counting-covid-19-deaths If a person has C-19, the hospital gets to bill the government for the expenses. >> Our system is weird that way. China?s is weird too. >?So now you think China is overestimating the number of its citizens that have died from COVID-19? John K Clark I only said it was weird. I didn?t say they were overestimating. Neither country is estimating. We are over-reporting, they are under-reporting, both for clearly understandable reasons. Even if the discovered a vaccine or a complete cure, the covid case load in China did not suddenly go to zero. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 14:21:40 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 07:21:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ML maps deep geologic structures Message-ID: https://phys.org/news/2020-06-scientists-unexpected-widespread-earth-core.html Hoping this can be used to put together ever more features of the early Earth. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sen.otaku at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 14:53:41 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 09:53:41 -0500 Subject: [ExI] antifa In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8DEB0EE6-BEE5-464F-832D-B0A8D5143878@gmail.com> And hopefully the last. Or I?ll be forced to share factoids. SR Ballard > On Jun 12, 2020, at 7:57 AM, Will Steinberg via extropy-chat wrote: > > This may be the first time the word 'Juggalo' has ever been printed on this list! > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 15:16:02 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 10:16:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] antifa In-Reply-To: <8DEB0EE6-BEE5-464F-832D-B0A8D5143878@gmail.com> References: <8DEB0EE6-BEE5-464F-832D-B0A8D5143878@gmail.com> Message-ID: Oh c'mon SR, we love factoids . Release them at will, or any one of us. bill w On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 9:55 AM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > And hopefully the last. Or I?ll be forced to share factoids. > > SR Ballard > > > On Jun 12, 2020, at 7:57 AM, Will Steinberg via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > This may be the first time the word 'Juggalo' has ever been printed on > this list! > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 15:15:47 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 11:15:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <002e01d640b9$a01841c0$e048c540$@rainier66.com> References: <6548C2AC-60B2-436C-A989-F68EE12D2062@gmail.com> <006301d63ec0$c06b0390$41410ab0$@rainier66.com> <000b01d6406c$5637a020$02a6e060$@rainier66.com> <002e01d640b9$a01841c0$e048c540$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 9:23 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> *He still gets to count as a C-19 related fatality, * > > >?Where in the world did you get that idea?! > > > *> Here:* > > > > > https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/white-house-taking-very-liberal-approach-counting-covid-19-deaths > Things change quickly in a pandemic. That article is ANCIENT, it's from the olden days of April 11 when the American death toll from the virus was only 24,121, as of today at 15:14 GMT it has killed 116,132. And as of April 11 very few virus tests had even been performed in the USA, at a time when other countries were testing tens of thousands of their citizens for the virus every day the US was testing fewer than a hundred, so undoubtedly lots of people died from COVID-19 but the death certificate said death was caused by pneumonia or the common seasonal flu. There is more evidence the number of COVID-19 deaths has been consistently underreported, even though the number of deaths from car accidents is lower this year than last the total number of deaths from all causes in the US is considerably higher this year than last even when you add in the official number of deaths from COVID-19. Something is clearly missing. Also, you could find better places to get your news, "justthenews.com" does not just give the news, it's a conservative pro Trump website that hired conspiracy theorist Sharyl Attkisson who still loves Benghazi and claims that vaccines cause autism, a malignant meme virus that could prove deadly to those infected with it. It is a very hard virus to kill even though the scientific community has rejected it as nonsense over and over again. *> If a person has C-19, the hospital gets to bill the government for the > expenses.* > And where in the world did you get that idea?! *> We are over-reporting, they* [China] *are under-reporting* And you know that to be true because you want it to be true. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 12 15:30:52 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 08:30:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] antifa In-Reply-To: <8DEB0EE6-BEE5-464F-832D-B0A8D5143878@gmail.com> References: <8DEB0EE6-BEE5-464F-832D-B0A8D5143878@gmail.com> Message-ID: <003701d640ce$75e6d0f0$61b472d0$@rainier66.com> >...> On Behalf Of SR Ballard via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] antifa >...And hopefully the last. Or I?ll be forced to share factoids. SR Ballard But SR, we like it when you share factoids. Share away. That's what friends are for. spike From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 12 15:58:29 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 08:58:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: <6548C2AC-60B2-436C-A989-F68EE12D2062@gmail.com> <006301d63ec0$c06b0390$41410ab0$@rainier66.com> <000b01d6406c$5637a020$02a6e060$@rainier66.com> <002e01d640b9$a01841c0$e048c540$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <005701d640d2$51728da0$f457a8e0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat Sent: Friday, June 12, 2020 8:16 AM To: ExI chat list Cc: John Clark Subject: Re: [ExI] Protest On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 9:23 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: >> He still gets to count as a C-19 related fatality, >?Where in the world did you get that idea?! > Here: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/white-house-taking-very-liberal-approach-counting-covid-19-deaths Things change quickly in a pandemic. That article is ANCIENT? >?Also, you could find better places to get your news, "justthenews.com " does not just give the news, it's a conservative pro ? Is C-Span conservative? I never really thought of them as a conservative group https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4868448/user-clip-liberal-approach-mortality but if you insist, I shall flee to a safe space, such as Mother Jones (no relation.) Oh, I see that CNN and MSNBC are also in on the conservative conspiracy, as well as the other news majors. Oh wait, Mother Jones ran that clip too. Are Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci part of the conspiracy? There are no safe spaces left, what shall we do? I Googled ??took a very liberal approach to covid mortality? and justthenews was the first one that came up. John, everyone here is not political. The way countries count covid mortality is not necessarily politically driven, there are other motives, such as financial reasons. In the US, there was no conspiracy needed: hospitals set up a special billing fund if the patient died of covid. So, they tested the patients for covid after they were already dead. They tested George Floyd after he was already dead and they knew he had a co-morbidity (asphyxiation.) >?Trump? As soon as you mention the name of any politician or party, we know you are back to your incessant campaigning, haranguing this list where it isn?t appropriate or welcome, as we have told you repeatedly. Please take it elsewhere. Even if many on this list agree in principal, the constant howling at the moon is most annoying and counterproductive. The reason many of our most valued posters have left this space John, is that the constant campaigning is not what we are here for. If we want politics, we know where to find that. If you are campaigning in a post about covid, it comes across as if you are cheering for the virus. Separate those two concepts please. Then kindly eliminate the one: we are tired of it. When Kennedy posts about covid, he doesn?t campaign, and it doesn?t come across as cheering for the virus. The virus is not an opportunity, it?s a crisis. Some crises should go to waste. > We are over-reporting, they [China] are under-reporting >?And you know that to be true because you want it to be true. John K Clark Do you believe China?s case load suddenly dropped to zero and has never come back? Every other country, including those where the government has the authority to shut down everything until their people starve still has cases. China is reporting zero. China gave this horrifying epidemic to this planet through their dishonesty in attempting a coverup back when we had time to react. I don?t believe China. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 17:26:42 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 13:26:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <005701d640d2$51728da0$f457a8e0$@rainier66.com> References: <6548C2AC-60B2-436C-A989-F68EE12D2062@gmail.com> <006301d63ec0$c06b0390$41410ab0$@rainier66.com> <000b01d6406c$5637a020$02a6e060$@rainier66.com> <002e01d640b9$a01841c0$e048c540$@rainier66.com> <005701d640d2$51728da0$f457a8e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 12:01 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: *> John, everyone here is not political. * You could've fooled me! >?Trump? > > > *> As soon as you mention the name of any politician....* Odd... back when Obama was president I don't recall the mere mention of his name setting off a similar flow of angry comments. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 17:57:00 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 10:57:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest Message-ID: wrote: snip On the contrary Stathis. George Floyd was C-19 positive. He tested positive for _antibodies_ to COVID-19. Which means he had the virus and got over it. That's relatively common for Blacks and Latinos and is entirely accounted for by the kinds of high contact jobs they do. Unless we get a vaccine, everyone will eventually be subject to being infected. Keith From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 12 18:19:07 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 11:19:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: <6548C2AC-60B2-436C-A989-F68EE12D2062@gmail.com> <006301d63ec0$c06b0390$41410ab0$@rainier66.com> <000b01d6406c$5637a020$02a6e060$@rainier66.com> <002e01d640b9$a01841c0$e048c540$@rainier66.com> <005701d640d2$51728da0$f457a8e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00d201d640e5$f7c30550$e7490ff0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Protest On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 12:01 PM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: > John, everyone here is not political. You could've fooled me! >?Trump? > As soon as you mention the name of any politician.... Odd... back when Obama was president I don't recall the mere mention of his name setting off a similar flow of angry comments. John K Clark Ja. His name wasn?t mentioned often. I didn?t remember his name, so I know I didn?t. This is all US politics. We have posters from all over the world. Many of the most valued posters are not from the USA and aren?t interested in the minutia of our political system. I am a US citizen and even I am not interested in the minutia of our political system. I don?t know or care who is running Australia, Britain or Italy. All of those places have valuable contributors. As you already know, I do care about one particular aspect of American politics: the runaway debt. It often feels to me like none of the current crop of politicians see the enormous risk growing with each oversized budget. From that perspective, the current crop of politicians and parties are indistinguishable. Do let us keep an international perspective. We are science and technology people here with eyes on the future. We just witnessed a rocket privately owned by a company take two guys to orbit. For the first time in history, space exploration is becoming a commercial pursuit. There is no reason to be pessimistic. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 12 18:37:38 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 11:37:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00ea01d640e8$8e4efd60$aaecf820$@rainier66.com> >...> On Behalf Of Keith Henson via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Protest wrote: snip On the contrary Stathis. George Floyd was C-19 positive. He tested positive for _antibodies_ to COVID-19. Which means he had the virus and got over it. That's relatively common for Blacks and Latinos and is entirely accounted for by the kinds of high contact jobs they do. Unless we get a vaccine, everyone will eventually be subject to being infected. Keith _______________________________________________ Hi Keith, ja. What I have heard (I hope someone here can comment) is that more effective treatments have been found, such as using a ventilator only as a desperate last resort. They gave me an oxygen mask when was in the hospital in December with viral pneumonia. That worked. Do let us hope covid-19 follows the 2003 SARS epidemic, which just went away, rather than the horrifying 1918 second wave. Those covid case spikes in California worry me. Keith I heard many of those are happening in your area down there, oy vey, mercy. Best wishes that you and your bride stay healthy. Do have your groceries and supplies delivered, ja? spike From jasonresch at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 18:46:22 2020 From: jasonresch at gmail.com (Jason Resch) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 13:46:22 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The present and future of AI Message-ID: I wrote an analysis of the current capabilities of modern AI systems: https://alwaysasking.com/when-will-ai-take-over/ I found what some systems are capable of, especially in terms of computational creativity, and general purpose learning algorithms, to be shocking. For instance, DeepMind has a single AI that has learned to play every Atari game better than any human. GANs have been made that produce original art pieces and can take a single photo and envision it as a talking head. Google's Duplex can make phone calls and hold conversations so well the person at the other end of the line doesn't realize they're talking to a machine. I am curious how close members on this list feel we are from achieving AGI. Most estimates seem to put it around 2040 plus or minus 10 years. Is that the general consensus? Could it happen much sooner? Does anyone here believe it will happen much later than that? Jason -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 12 19:13:56 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 12:13:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] unfiltered news: was RE: The present and future of AI Message-ID: <011901d640ed$9eb5cdf0$dc2169d0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Jason Resch via extropy-chat Subject: [ExI] The present and future of AI >? Google's Duplex can make phone calls and hold conversations so well the person at the other end of the line doesn't realize they're talking to a machine?Jason Hi Jason, I want to see what happens if we get two Google Duplex systems talking to each other. If they did, would either of them realize it is talking to another machine? What would two machines talk about? Could we give them a general topic, then see where the discussion drifts? Perhaps the topic would be as interesting and chaotic as ExI discussions, which morph quickly and unpredictably. Which machine would catch on first? How fast would the conversations be? The reason I changed the subject line: we recognize that news organizations filter news according to their own viewpoint of what news is worth printing. But what if? we had a fixed camera/microphone watching and listening to something, offering it up via livestreaming, without filtering or commentary. That would be like being there. I think we could do this: the equipment would be privately owned with the message going out to all. I do want to see how things are going in the CHAZ area, specifically how they are getting supplies in there, and if they are getting in there in sufficient quantities to support the locals and guests. We capitalists have been generally unsuccessful in dealing with the growing problem of homelessness. Do let us see if those who took over CHAZ are any more successful than we are. If they fail too, perhaps we can get two Google Duplex systems to discuss the problem and find new solutions we carbon units never discovered. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 19:42:33 2020 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 20:42:33 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The present and future of AI In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, 12 Jun 2020 at 19:50, Jason Resch via extropy-chat wrote: > > I wrote an analysis of the current capabilities of modern AI systems: > https://alwaysasking.com/when-will-ai-take-over/ > > I found what some systems are capable of, especially in terms of computational creativity, and general purpose learning algorithms, to be shocking. > > For instance, DeepMind has a single AI that has learned to play every Atari game better than any human. GANs have been made that produce original art pieces and can take a single photo and envision it as a talking head. Google's Duplex can make phone calls and hold conversations so well the person at the other end of the line doesn't realize they're talking to a machine. > > I am curious how close members on this list feel we are from achieving AGI. Most estimates seem to put it around 2040 plus or minus 10 years. Is that the general consensus? Could it happen much sooner? Does anyone here believe it will happen much later than that? > > Jason > _______________________________________________ Brian Wang has a recent article considering AGI development. Estimates depend on whether you believe that progress will be exponential or linear. Also whether financial / political / climate / environment / epidemic etc. disasters might derail the train of progress. The military and politicians are beginning to think of superhuman AGI in the same way that they think of nuclear weapons. So researchers will not be left alone when they appear to be nearing successful development. BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 19:46:28 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 14:46:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] facial recognition software Message-ID: I see where Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM have started refusing to sell this software to police depts. until the issue is settled at the federal level. I am of two minds about that software: to some extent it keeps us safe by identifying perps for the cops to bring in. But it is also an invasion of privacy, and I think that outweighs the good usage above. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 19:52:09 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 14:52:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] word usage-picky picky Message-ID: Estimates depend on whether you believe that progress will be exponential or linear. bill k Exponents can be negative. I read where something is a fraction of something else. Fractions can be 15/7 or 767/5. Hardly communicating something small. I suggest 'small fraction'. More clarity in language, please. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 20:14:07 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 13:14:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] antifa derangement syndrome In-Reply-To: <1920782879.49906.1591991533979@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1920782879.49906.1591991533979@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3C58FFF0-1107-4467-ACE7-417E72857A9C@gmail.com> Which is related to Saul Alinsky derangement syndrome... https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/northwest/shocked-locals-make-public-apology-to-spokane-family-harassed-in-forks/ This story from nearby shows what happens when some people start to see antifa behind every tree and bush. There's a lack of common sense here that was noticed before. Recall the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi back in 2001. Sodhi was shot to death by Frank Silva Roque. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 20:25:57 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 13:25:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cory Massimino on advocating police abolition In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Jun 11, 2020, at 5:26 AM, John Clark via extropy-chat wrote:? >> On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 7:05 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: >> >> > The idea of abolishing the police seems to be having something of a surge in popularity, > > Defunding the police is not the same as abolishing the police. Camden New Jersey defunded the police seven years ago and it turned out well. Back then Camden had the highest murder rate in the country and police corruption was so firmly entrenched that reform was impossible, and because of super powerful police unions it cost over $182,000 per officer so they only had 175 of them. Camden decided to start from scratch and fired the entire police force and started a new one; if an officer wanted to stay on the force he had to submit a job application just like everybody else. The move broke the powerful police union so now it only cost $99,600 to hire an officer, and so there are now over 400 of them. The result of all of this is today the murder rate is only a third what it was seven years ago before the police were defunded, and the Relationship between the police and the black community is much improved, the current police chief of Camden actually marched with the black lives matter people. No shit, but Cory _was_ discussing police abolition -- not confusing it with defunding the police. Or did you not read my subject line and his first sentence? Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 20:27:21 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 13:27:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] monumental change In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <05026C47-538A-4CB5-AC7C-A4EEEE08F6B7@gmail.com> On Jun 10, 2020, at 2:54 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > And I am not kidding. NASCAR is unbelievably huge in the South, where rednecks wearing Confederate flags on their heads, cars, etc. party at the races.. NASCAR just banned Confederate flags at all their events. This could destroy their popularity. > > In other words, it was a huge step for them and a courageous one. > > bill w Call me cynical, but I feel it's not courageous now. Ten or twenty years ago, it would've been courageous. But now it's merely good marketing. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 20:29:00 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 13:29:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <713126007.49569.1591990498196@mail.yahoo.com> References: <713126007.49569.1591990498196@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3E4B038F-9527-424A-8524-E1A8DB0D0EC5@gmail.com> Regarding Trump, I think the problem is and remains similar to an observation Hunter S. Thompson made with regard to Nixon: 'The slow-rising central horror of "Watergate" is not that it might grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow fail to learn something from it.' Naturally, as a libertarian, the chief lesson should be not to have political authority at all. Or for those who can't embrace the idea because of lack of imagination or psychological blinders: to severely limit political authority. (The latter is at best a holding operation as any concentration of political power tends to grow over time simply because crises and emergencies will arise and people will forget what happened the last time around. Especially those who claim to love liberty will be susceptible to increasing/concentrating political authority because they'll imagine somehow they're like doctors who can't get sick.) Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 21:39:15 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 14:39:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: <005801d63d27$2745c0f0$75d142d0$@rainier66.com> References: <005801d63d27$2745c0f0$75d142d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Jun 7, 2020, at 5:06 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > ?From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > > >?judging who's Black depends both on overall social rules and how people present themselves?Dan > > > Hi Dan, since we have DNA tests now, why not just have a number? Numbers are such marvelous things. > > We can find a SubSaharan African group where we can be confident there is little outside genetic material, get some DNA tests, get some from here, from there, then when one does the test, we just see how much DNA they share with an identifiable group. > > This would be completely objective and independent on how one presents herself. This latest part is particularly of interest, because of the recent comment and apology by a politician (whose name I cannot recall) who suggested one?s political choices determines one?s race. Dan, regarding the comment ??depends?how people present themselves?? I ask: does that determine in any way one?s race? > > These DNA tests are really only reliable back about 6 generations or so, but my own African ancestor is only 5 generations back. The 60 dollar DNA tests picked it up in all of us who are on that branch of the family tree. So I have an actual number (verified by multiple DNA tests (two different services for several relatives (rather than a breezy claim (or a dark complexion (which can be faked.))))) > > Numbers are my friends. > > spike What would the number signify and why would it matter? The everyday concept of race really doesn't map onto biological concept of a population group. In fact, any clear look at the numbers here shows, for instance, that everyday racial groups overlap different biological populations. And if one were to use a ruthlessly population biology view, there are some serious problems. How many populations are there? There's no clear line between populations, but are there five or fifty or a thousand? And the highest level of genetic differences is between sub-Saharan African populations. So, if you knew nothing else about humans and were just armed with genomic evidence, you might conclude there were dozens of "races" but most of them were in sub-Saharan Africa. Consider here the work of Joshua Glasgow and Sally Haslander. In particular, I recommend the former's ?Another Look at the Reality of Race, by which I Mean Racef? in _New Waves in Metaphysics_ and the latter's "(What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?" The latter is available online at: http://www.mit.edu/~shaslang/papers/WIGRnous.pdf On how people present themselves, I bring up again the Rachel Dolezal case. She presented herself as Black or African American and up until her parents "outed" her as White, she was very successful at this. I'm guessing had you met her before she was outed, you might have simply thought her a light-skinned African American. Add to this, the everyday concept of race (the one most people use and mean when they say person X is a member of race Y; and all this varies by community*) tends to look for social markers as well as physical ones. This doesn't mean everyone can pass, but it shows that the everyday concept of race isn't really related to underlying DNA or such. (How would an Australian aborigine be classified if they moved to the US, spoke English like an American, and lived in, say, LA or Seattle, but didn't tell anyone that they were an Australian aborigine? My guess is you and almost everyone else would see them as African American without question.) The everyday concept, too, when it underlies racism, tends to also put certain psychological traits into the same bucket. Thus, members of a given race might be seen as lazy, dishonest, criminally inclined, of lesser intelligence, cowardly, violent, overly emotional, and the like. (Or their opposites, if the race is seen as a superior one.) Another interesting phenomena with regard to race is how the view of a given group changes over time. I mentioned the Irish in America above. There's also the case of Italians. Initially, they were seen as basically non-White and during the middle of the 20th century, this view started to shift. Thaddeus Russell goes over this in his popular book _A Renegade History of the United States_. The pattern is basically new groups generally get identified as Blacks or near Blacks and move up over time, eventually even being accepted as Whites in cases like the Irish and Italians. (Older people I know can attest to this too: they viewed Italians and other immigrants from Southern Europe basically basically as Blacks or semi-Blacks.) Regards, Dan * Why would the Irish be thought of as of another race by US-Americans when they first started immigrating here? Do you know of Ben Franklin's views of Germans and Swedes? He didn't think they were related to the British at all and that they were inferior. This is at a period when modern racism and modern racial concepts were forming. Historian Anthony Comegna discusses some earlier Colonial origins of American racism here: https://reason.com/2020/05/31/i-got-tear-gassed-at-baltimores-city-hall/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 22:00:56 2020 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 16:00:56 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: References: <005801d63d27$2745c0f0$75d142d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I don't think race, per se, was an issue with the Irish. The issue was that they were, Catholic! Catholics tended to be treated as a lower species, and it didn't matter much whether they were pale redheads from the north or brown-skinned Mediterranean types. On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 3:42 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Jun 7, 2020, at 5:06 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > ?*From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > > > > *>?*judging who's Black depends both on overall social rules and how > people present themselves?Dan > > > > > Hi Dan, since we have DNA tests now, why not just have a number? Numbers > are such marvelous things. > > > > We can find a SubSaharan African group where we can be confident there is > little outside genetic material, get some DNA tests, get some from here, > from there, then when one does the test, we just see how much DNA they > share with an identifiable group. > > > > This would be completely objective and independent on how one presents > herself. This latest part is particularly of interest, because of the > recent comment and apology by a politician (whose name I cannot recall) who > suggested one?s political choices determines one?s race. Dan, regarding > the comment ??depends?how people present themselves?? I ask: does that > determine in any way one?s race? > > > > These DNA tests are really only reliable back about 6 generations or so, > but my own African ancestor is only 5 generations back. The 60 dollar DNA > tests picked it up in all of us who are on that branch of the family tree. > So I have an actual number (verified by multiple DNA tests (two different > services for several relatives (rather than a breezy claim (or a dark > complexion (which can be faked.))))) > > > > Numbers are my friends. > > > > spike > > > What would the number signify and why would it matter? The everyday > concept of race really doesn't map onto biological concept of a population > group. In fact, any clear look at the numbers here shows, for instance, > that everyday racial groups overlap different biological populations. And > if one were to use a ruthlessly population biology view, there are some > serious problems. How many populations are there? There's no clear line > between populations, but are there five or fifty or a thousand? And the > highest level of genetic differences is between sub-Saharan African > populations. So, if you knew nothing else about humans and were just armed > with genomic evidence, you might conclude there were dozens of "races" but > most of them were in sub-Saharan Africa. > > Consider here the work of Joshua Glasgow and Sally Haslander. In > particular, I recommend the former's ?Another Look at the Reality of Race, > by which I Mean Racef? in _New Waves in Metaphysics_ and the latter's > "(What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?" The latter is available > online at: > > http://www.mit.edu/~shaslang/papers/WIGRnous.pdf > > On how people present themselves, I bring up again the Rachel Dolezal > case. She presented herself as Black or African American and up until her > parents "outed" her as White, she was very successful at this. I'm guessing > had you met her before she was outed, you might have simply thought her a > light-skinned African American. Add to this, the everyday concept of race > (the one most people use and mean when they say person X is a member of > race Y; and all this varies by community*) tends to look for social markers > as well as physical ones. This doesn't mean everyone can pass, but it shows > that the everyday concept of race isn't really related to underlying DNA or > such. (How would an Australian aborigine be classified if they moved to the > US, spoke English like an American, and lived in, say, LA or Seattle, but > didn't tell anyone that they were an Australian aborigine? My guess is you > and almost everyone else would see them as African American without > question.) > > The everyday concept, too, when it underlies racism, tends to also put > certain psychological traits into the same bucket. Thus, members of a given > race might be seen as lazy, dishonest, criminally inclined, of lesser > intelligence, cowardly, violent, overly emotional, and the like. (Or their > opposites, if the race is seen as a superior one.) > > Another interesting phenomena with regard to race is how the view of a > given group changes over time. I mentioned the Irish in America above. > There's also the case of Italians. Initially, they were seen as basically > non-White and during the middle of the 20th century, this view started to > shift. Thaddeus Russell goes over this in his popular book _A Renegade > History of the United States_. The pattern is basically new groups > generally get identified as Blacks or near Blacks and move up over time, > eventually even being accepted as Whites in cases like the Irish and > Italians. (Older people I know can attest to this too: they viewed Italians > and other immigrants from Southern Europe basically basically as Blacks or > semi-Blacks.) > > Regards, > > Dan > > * Why would the Irish be thought of as of another race by US-Americans > when they first started immigrating here? Do you know of Ben Franklin's > views of Germans and Swedes? He didn't think they were related to the > British at all and that they were inferior. This is at a period when modern > racism and modern racial concepts were forming. Historian Anthony Comegna > discusses some earlier Colonial origins of American racism here: > > https://reason.com/2020/05/31/i-got-tear-gassed-at-baltimores-city-hall/ > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 12 22:05:12 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 15:05:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] antifa derangement syndrome In-Reply-To: <3C58FFF0-1107-4467-ACE7-417E72857A9C@gmail.com> References: <1920782879.49906.1591991533979@mail.yahoo.com> <3C58FFF0-1107-4467-ACE7-417E72857A9C@gmail.com> Message-ID: <01fc01d64105$8c164540$a442cfc0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat Sent: Friday, June 12, 2020 1:14 PM To: ExI chat list Cc: Dan TheBookMan Subject: [ExI] antifa derangement syndrome Which is related to Saul Alinsky derangement syndrome... https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/northwest/shocked-locals-make-public-apology-to-spokane-family-harassed-in-forks/ This story from nearby shows what happens when some people start to see antifa behind every tree and bush. There's a lack of common sense here that was noticed before. Recall the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi back in 2001. Sodhi was shot to death by Frank Silva Roque. Regards, Dan Hi Dan, thanks for posting this. My father in law has lived in Spokane for the last 47 years and is acquainted personally with this family in the article. I heard about that incident from him. That poor family is terrorized and my father in law is convinced the apocalypse is upon us. {8^D They have a home-brew camper made from a retired school bus, which they painted but it is still ugly. Turns out, a friend of my brother in law from Olympia gave us a pretty good description of what happened in Forks. They cut down the trees to block them in, tense moments ensued, but they talked and listened, realized they blew it bigtime. Some locals got their chainsaws, cut up and removed the trees that they had dropped across the road, tried their best to patch it up but I there is a good chance that family will vacation to the east rather than to the west. They are forgiving sorts, but they were traumatized. Fun aside: I have been to that area, camping (it is gorgeous out there (but oh boy, if you want to see backward, you haven?t seen it until you out there on the Olympic Pen (if you ever saw the movie Rambo, that back there is where the sergeant gets into it with the local police force.))) What if? you lived in that Seattle neighborhood surrounding the CHAZ, and you owned a business. What would it be like, knowing all those people in there are getting steadily hungrier? That must be most unpleasant. If you want a beautiful place to camp, the Olympic National Park is hard to beat. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Fri Jun 12 22:05:36 2020 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 22:05:36 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ExI] The present and future of AI In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <103167237.77264.1591999536605@mail.yahoo.com> I would say that we are close enough that we need to have a better definition of AGI. For example does a honeybee have "general intelligence"? If so, we are already really close because we can currently compute neural networks with the complexity of a honeybee brain. Assuming neuron number is a correlate of intelligence, it will be about 44 years until Moore's law reaches human brain parity. But we might reach rat or raven parity in about 14 years. See old thread "Benchmarking the SIngularity" for more info: ?http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2019-July/097196.html Stuart LaForge On Friday, June 12, 2020, 11:48:45 AM PDT, Jason Resch via extropy-chat wrote: I wrote an analysis of the current capabilities of modern AI systems:? https://alwaysasking.com/when-will-ai-take-over/ I found what some systems are capable of, especially in terms of computational creativity, and general purpose learning algorithms, to be shocking. For instance, DeepMind has a single AI that has learned to play every Atari game better than any human.? GANs have been made that produce original art pieces and can take a single photo and envision it as a talking head. Google's Duplex can make phone calls and hold conversations so well the person at the other end of the line doesn't realize they're talking to a machine. I am curious how close members on this list feel we are from achieving?AGI. Most estimates seem to put it around 2040 plus or minus 10 years. Is that the general consensus? Could it happen much sooner? Does anyone here believe it will happen much later than that? Jason From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 22:15:15 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 18:15:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The present and future of AI In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 2:50 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: *> I am curious how close members on this list feel we are from > achieving AGI. Most estimates seem to put it around 2040 plus or minus 10 > years. Is that the general consensus? * That would be my best guess but it's only a guess; the inherent iterative nature of the thing makes predicting a future timeline difacult. *> Could it happen much sooner? * Sure, it could come suddenly out of the blue with little warning; if for example somebody developed a computer program that could improve software as well as Alphazero can improve gameplay for GO or Chess with no assistance from humans needed. If that happened then we could wake up one morning and find ourselves in the possession of a high level computer language that was so easy to use that grade school kids could learn it with no problem but ran as efficiently as the very best machine code produced by expert human programmers could with the help of assembly language. *> Does anyone here believe it will happen much later than that?* It could be later but if it does I think it would be due to societal factors and not because of technological limitations. I say this because thanks to biology we know of an upper limit on the amount of complexity a seed AI would need. In the entire human genome there are only 3 billion base pairs, there are 4 bases so each base can represent 2 bits, there are 8 bits per byte so that comes out to 750 meg which you could fit on an old fashioned CD audio disk. And there is a huge amount of redundancy in the genome so with file compression you'd probably need less than a third of that CD audio disk, and of course much of the genome is about stuff that has nothing to do with the brain or intelligence. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 22:20:24 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 18:20:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cory Massimino on advocating police abolition In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 4:29 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > *No shit, but Cory _was_ discussing police abolition -- not confusing it > with defunding the police. Or did you not read my subject line and his > first sentence?* > The police are not going to be abolished, it just ain't gonna happen. Pretending otherwise is a fantasy. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 22:25:35 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 15:25:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] monumental change In-Reply-To: <05026C47-538A-4CB5-AC7C-A4EEEE08F6B7@gmail.com> References: <05026C47-538A-4CB5-AC7C-A4EEEE08F6B7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 1:36 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Call me cynical, but I feel it's not courageous now. Ten or twenty years > ago, it would've been courageous. But now it's merely good marketing. > If all it takes to enact this sort of change is to make it good marketing, I'll take it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 22:28:46 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 15:28:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: <6548C2AC-60B2-436C-A989-F68EE12D2062@gmail.com> <006301d63ec0$c06b0390$41410ab0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 9:44 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Protesting crowds will propagate the virus, killing some of those > infected. The protestors presumably know this, but decide to protest > anyway. It would make sense if more lives were likely to be saved by > protesting than lost, but I don?t think anyone could reasonably argue that > that would be the case. > I'm not so sure - especially if you count the lasting effect of changes that would not have happened if not for the protests. This particular coronavirus will kill a number of people this year, and probably a number next year, perhaps also more than zero in 2022. Racism has been cutting lives short for over a century. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 22:37:33 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 15:37:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0E173799-07E9-40C7-94C7-9978FD8F5803@gmail.com> On Jun 12, 2020, at 3:13 PM, Darin Sunley via extropy-chat wrote: > > I don't think race, per se, was an issue with the Irish. The issue was that they were, Catholic! > > Catholics tended to be treated as a lower species, and it didn't matter much whether they were pale redheads from the north or brown-skinned Mediterranean types. I agree religion played a role, but it wasn?t an either/or here. The Irish were seen as both members of another faith and of another race. And their eventual integration into the broader White community involved differentiating themselves from African Americans in the eyes of other Whites. There?d be little need for such differentiation if they were already seen as White. And there were Catholic groups in America before the Irish started migrating in large numbers, particularly the French. The latter were viewed as Whites. Again, race is socially constructed. This is how French Catholics in Acadia were White whilst Irish Catholic immigrants in Boston or NY were not (for decades), and the pattern was repeated with Italian immigrants decades later. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 22:44:27 2020 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 18:44:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The present and future of AI In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 6:30 PM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > *> Does anyone here believe it will happen much later than that?* > > > It could be later but if it does I think it would be due to societal > factors and not because of technological limitations. I say this because > thanks to biology we know of an upper limit on the amount of complexity a > seed AI would need. In the entire human genome there are only 3 billion > base pairs, there are 4 bases so each base can represent 2 bits, there are > 8 bits per byte so that comes out to 750 meg which you could fit on an old > fashioned CD audio disk. And there is a huge amount of redundancy in the > genome so with file compression you'd probably need less than a third of > that CD audio disk, and of course much of the genome is about stuff that > has nothing to do with the brain or intelligence. > > John K Clark > > You're missing a lot of additional information involved in creating a human being from scratch. The minimum information required goes very far beyond knowing the sequence of the genome and is still not clear. The order in which genes are turned on and off and in what order during development is crucial, and additionally vary by tissue type. Additionally, the information encoded in the exome alone just tells you the linear order of amino acids strung together. It tells you nothing about the information encoded in the 3 dimensional folding of that protein and its interactions with other proteins. That's not even touching on the impact of methylation in promoting or suppressing genes. I realize we're most interested in the brain here, but it may be very difficult to disentangle from these other factors in coming up with an understanding how to build a brain from scratch. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Jun 12 22:48:10 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 15:48:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: References: <005801d63d27$2745c0f0$75d142d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <025501d6410b$8cf090f0$a6d1b2d0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat >?What would the number signify and why would it matter? The everyday concept of race really doesn't map onto biological concept of a population group. In fact, any clear look at the numbers here shows, for instance, that everyday racial groups overlap different biological populations?. Regards, Dan Hi Dan, the number is mostly to educate people about themselves. That?s what it did for me. I did one of these commercial DNA tests when they dropped to 100 bucks. Now they are 60, but in the past 6 yrs, I have bought 34 kits for relatives and done DNA mapping to try to figure out connections with genetic diseases. That?s how I found out about the black ancestor: all of us on that branch show it, none of us knew. But now we do. Here?s bit of American history you might find interesting. The traditional version of slavery in the south suggests that escaped slaves went north to freedom, but it is a little more subtle than that. If they were in Georgia, some went south into Florida, which was sparsely populated and they could join the local population. You can see the evidence in the Seminole tribe, which did not evacuate Florida but accepted the Africans. In Virginia, the escapees from the slave plantations could head north, but their better chances were in heading west, to get over the Appalachians. Over on the west side, in what is now West Virginia but was then part of Virginia, they still had (theoretically) legal slavery but no one owned slaves out there from what I can tell from the census records. My great^3 grandfather was a fiery Methodist minister who spoke often and thunderously on this topic. So the slaves would sometimes go west, get over the mountains and set up camp in the hollers on the west side, often going into the coal business, where they could be free, work harder than before under far more dangerous conditions, while still being as destitute as they were as slaves. But they were free, and they were equal to the local whites there. Decades went by. My grandmother was born and grew up there. She was telling me how life was in the mountain country. There was a choice of careers: you could do anything you like, as long as you like coal mining. There the black men and white men were truly equals: after a half an hour in the mine, everyone was the same color. The black and white families lived in the same row of company-owned shotgun houses. They accepted each other as equals. This explains a long-standing puzzle: we couldn?t figure out why my great^3 grandmother ended up there of all places, from Georgia. Reason: she was Scotch-Irish with an African baby. She ended up in the coal country of West Virginia, where they had no heartburn with that kind of thing. The 1920s came along. The miners decided they would politely ask the company to lift a finger to help keep them alive, the company politely refused, the miners began to unionize, the company brought in strike-breakers from Italy. The labor force detested the Italians, but black and (non-Italian) white were friends, united in common cause against Italians. Race is both more and less than DNA, if it is anything at all. With that in mind as a background, you may come to understand why your comments on the DNA-component of race interests me. You can do some interesting tricks with these low-cost DNA tests, but perhaps the most important one of all is that it educates people about themselves. It did that for me. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 22:49:38 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 18:49:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] word usage-picky picky In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 4:10 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > *Exponents can be negative. * > Yes, and in that case the rate of change would be moving faster and faster toward zero at an exponential rate. *> I read where something is a fraction of something else. Fractions can > be 15/7 or 767/5. Hardly communicating something small. I suggest 'small > fraction'. More clarity in language, please.* > That would not bring more clarity because we're talking about rates of change and not constants. A "small fractional" change would be a linear change such as Y= nX where n is a constant such as 2/3. A geometric change would be Y= X^n. And an exponential change would be Y=n^X. These are 3 different types of changes with fundamentally different properties. Exponential change grows (positively or negatively depending on specifics) vastly faster than the other two and should not be confused. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 22:55:17 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 17:55:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] monumental change In-Reply-To: References: <05026C47-538A-4CB5-AC7C-A4EEEE08F6B7@gmail.com> Message-ID: dan and adrian Call me cynical, but I feel it's not courageous now. Ten or twenty years ago, it would've been courageous. But now it's merely good marketing. If all it takes to enact this sort of change is to make it good marketing, I'll take it. I am guessing that neither of you has any idea how popular NASCAR is in the South or places like the South - Hamilton OH, for one. We'll know the first race where people are allowed. Or maybe not. Maybe they will be so starved for racing that they come even though they are angry with NASCAR. In any case, just dis the Confederate flag south of the Mason Dixon line and see what happens. The move was quite courageous and marketing had nothing to do with it. Blacks just don't go to those races. bill w On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 5:49 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 1:36 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Call me cynical, but I feel it's not courageous now. Ten or twenty years >> ago, it would've been courageous. But now it's merely good marketing. >> > > If all it takes to enact this sort of change is to make it good marketing, > I'll take it. > _______________________________________________ > 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 jasonresch at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 22:57:18 2020 From: jasonresch at gmail.com (Jason Resch) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 17:57:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The present and future of AI In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 2:45 PM BillK via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Fri, 12 Jun 2020 at 19:50, Jason Resch via extropy-chat > wrote: > > > > I wrote an analysis of the current capabilities of modern AI systems: > > https://alwaysasking.com/when-will-ai-take-over/ > > > > I found what some systems are capable of, especially in terms of > computational creativity, and general purpose learning algorithms, to be > shocking. > > > > For instance, DeepMind has a single AI that has learned to play every > Atari game better than any human. GANs have been made that produce > original art pieces and can take a single photo and envision it as a > talking head. Google's Duplex can make phone calls and hold conversations > so well the person at the other end of the line doesn't realize they're > talking to a machine. > > > > I am curious how close members on this list feel we are from achieving > AGI. Most estimates seem to put it around 2040 plus or minus 10 years. Is > that the general consensus? Could it happen much sooner? Does anyone here > believe it will happen much later than that? > > > > Jason > > _______________________________________________ > > > Brian Wang has a recent article considering AGI development. > < > https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2020/05/time-for-iterations-and-costs-going-from-inferior-agi-to-superhuman-agi.html > > > > Estimates depend on whether you believe that progress will be > exponential or linear. > Also whether financial / political / climate / environment / epidemic > etc. disasters might derail the train of progress. > > The military and politicians are beginning to think of superhuman AGI > in the same way that they think of nuclear weapons. So researchers > will not be left alone when they appear to be nearing successful > development. > > > The difference is it took a meaningful percentage of national electricity to refine uranium. The tools of AI are open source, and the necessary equipment available for anyone to purchase on Amazon's or Google's clouds. The algorithms behind learning, creativity, and understanding are already known. I think the only thing standing in the way of superhuman AI is the compute resources and perhaps the data sets necessary for training. Jason -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jasonresch at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 23:01:25 2020 From: jasonresch at gmail.com (Jason Resch) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 18:01:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: The present and future of AI In-Reply-To: References: <6EC6AE90-369C-40A4-9488-0531BC2AEDD3@gmu.edu> Message-ID: (Sorry re-sending, sen't to wrong address) On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 3:14 PM Robin D Hanson wrote: > Yes of course I?m considering exp progress in stuff that has been exp, and > linear progress in stuff that has been linear. > The hard part about human AI is doing every thing WELL. You can?t really > pick an ability X and say ?no AI can do X?. > Almost always, there is some system that does X, except just very BADLY. > I came up with the following list of human-specific traits of intelligence: - Communicate via natural language - Learn, adapt, and grow - Move through a dynamic environment - Recognize sights and sounds - Be creative in music, art, writing and invention - Reason with logic and rationality to solve problems Is there anything important that I've forgotten? Because there has been major progress in each of these domains. It's hard to imagine that after a 1,000 or million-fold increase in compute they won't be vastly superior. This is where we stand today, if we put everything together in one system: "We would get an AI that could hold a conversation in any of 100 languages over the phone. It would beat everyone at Jeopardy, Chess, Go, Poker, as well any old video game. The AI would be able to recognize any object or face ? even detect cancer better than most doctors. It would also be accomplished and creative, having invented things, discovered laws of physics, and identified new drugs. The AI could compose as well as Bach and paint as well as van Gogh. It would also be seen as highly original in its own artistic styles." ?Let?s put all these together,? and then it will be smart. -- Marvin Minsky Jason > > On Jun 12, 2020, at 3:12 PM, Jason Resch wrote: > > On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 1:57 PM Robin D Hanson wrote: > >> There have been substantial advances in the last decade. But then there >> have been substantial advances every decade since 1950. We are still a LONG >> way from broad human level abilities; it will take a LOT longer than 10-30 >> years to get there. >> >> What do you see as the most difficult aspects of human ability we have > yet to achieve? > > Also, are you considering exponential progress in your 10-30 year > projection over the future (which could see a billion-fold increase in > computing power? > > > Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu > Future of Humanity Inst., Oxford University > Assoc. Prof. Economics, George Mason University > See my books: http://ageofem.com http://elephantinthebrain.com > > > > > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 23:03:02 2020 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 16:03:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] facial recognition software In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: It's broken, misidentifying people n far too many cases. Police relying on it would thus conduct enforcement against innocent people in far too many cases. Say what you will about privacy, but "the cops would arrest the wrong person if they used it" seems like a good enough reason not to use it, even for people who do not care about the privacy of others. On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 12:59 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > I see where Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM have started refusing to sell this > software to police depts. until the issue is settled at the federal level. > > I am of two minds about that software: to some extent it keeps us safe by > identifying perps for the cops to bring in. > > But it is also an invasion of privacy, and I think that outweighs the good > usage above. > > 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 danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 23:03:31 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 16:03:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] antifa derangement syndrome In-Reply-To: <01fc01d64105$8c164540$a442cfc0$@rainier66.com> References: <01fc01d64105$8c164540$a442cfc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst On Jun 12, 2020, at 3:20 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > Sent: Friday, June 12, 2020 1:14 PM > To: ExI chat list > Cc: Dan TheBookMan > Subject: [ExI] antifa derangement syndrome > > Which is related to Saul Alinsky derangement syndrome... > > https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/northwest/shocked-locals-make-public-apology-to-spokane-family-harassed-in-forks/ > > This story from nearby shows what happens when some people start to see antifa behind every tree and bush. There's a lack of common sense here that was noticed before. Recall the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi back in 2001. Sodhi was shot to death by Frank Silva Roque. > > Regards, > > > Dan > > > Hi Dan, thanks for posting this. My father in law has lived in Spokane for the last 47 years and is acquainted personally with this family in the article. Small world. > I heard about that incident from him. That poor family is terrorized and my father in law is convinced the apocalypse is upon us. {8^D They have a home-brew camper made from a retired school bus, which they painted but it is still ugly. > > Turns out, a friend of my brother in law from Olympia gave us a pretty good description of what happened in Forks. They cut down the trees to block them in, tense moments ensued, but they talked and listened, realized they blew it bigtime. Some locals got their chainsaws, cut up and removed the trees that they had dropped across the road, tried their best to patch it up but I there is a good chance that family will vacation to the east rather than to the west. They are forgiving sorts, but they were traumatized. > > Fun aside: I have been to that area, camping (it is gorgeous out there (but oh boy, if you want to see backward, you haven?t seen it until you out there on the Olympic Pen (if you ever saw the movie Rambo, that back there is where the sergeant gets into it with the local police force.))) I think I saw it when I was very young. A year or two ago, I decided to watch the Twin Peaks series. Nothing to do with Forks. Actually, it?s set in a fictional town near the border with Idaho and Canada. But it was mostly filmed around Bend. There?s a lot of other stuff set around here that either does or doesn?t match things... The funniest is The Killing, an American remake of a Danish series. Set in Seattle, there are a few location shots and then the rest is really Toronto. And, of course, there?s lots of rain in the series ? downpours that are unusual for this area. (Despite my watching two seasons of it, it wasn?t that good. Haven?t seen the Danish original.) > What if? you lived in that Seattle neighborhood surrounding the CHAZ, and you owned a business. What would it be like, knowing all those people in there are getting steadily hungrier? That must be most unpleasant. > > If you want a beautiful place to camp, the Olympic National Park is hard to beat. > > spike I love hiking in the Olympics, but being a day hiker limits me to going to places like Mount Townsend or Lake of the Angels. I usually hike in the Cascades, typically in the Northern Cascades. Were it now for COVID-19 and all that, I?d probably be hiking near Teanaway as the North Cascades are still under a lot of snow this year. Unlike many, I see CHAZ as opening up possibilities rather than closing them down. I?m guessing it?ll only last so long before the police move in again. From what I?ve seen, it looks peaceful inside the Zone. Don?t tell me you think it?s Mad Max: Fury Road there. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 23:06:58 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 16:06:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cory Massimino on advocating police abolition In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <23C853C8-9D21-4480-98D6-700154C40D36@gmail.com> On Jun 12, 2020, at 3:46 PM, John Clark via extropy-chat wrote: > >> On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 4:29 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: >> >> > No shit, but Cory _was_ discussing police abolition -- not confusing it with defunding the police. Or did you not read my subject line and his first sentence? > > The police are not going to be abolished, it just ain't gonna happen. Pretending otherwise is a fantasy. That?s what you believe, but it still doesn?t explain why you thought Cory (or yours truly) confused abolition with defunding. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 23:09:12 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 16:09:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] monumental change In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6CCE6573-0478-4B04-8DB9-409712EEAD1B@gmail.com> On Jun 12, 2020, at 3:56 PM, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat wrote: > >> On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 1:36 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: > >> Call me cynical, but I feel it's not courageous now. Ten or twenty years ago, it would've been courageous. But now it's merely good marketing. > > If all it takes to enact this sort of change is to make it good marketing, I'll take it. But let?s not call good marketing courageous. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 23:29:57 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 19:29:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The present and future of AI Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 6:45 PM Dylan Distasio wrote: *> You're missing a lot of additional information involved in creating a > human being from scratch. The minimum information required goes very far > beyond knowing the sequence of the genome and is still not clear. The > order in which genes are turned on and off and in what order during > development is crucial, and additionally vary by tissue type. * > Yes, and that order information is also encoded in the genome. > *Additionally, the information encoded in the exome alone just tells you > the linear order of amino acids strung together. It tells you nothing > about the information encoded in the 3 dimensional folding of that protein* > The genome doesn't need to encode the 3D shape of a protein because the minimum amount of information required to produce that is just information about the linear sequence of amino acids, the additional information needed to fold into the proper shape is obtained from the environment. And a seed AI would start out as being pretty stupid, and Einstein wasn't very intelligent when he was first born either, but he learned from the environment and the seed AI would do the same. A seed AI is the amount of information needed to produce super intelligence that the environment cannot supply. *> That's not even touching on the impact of methylation in promoting or > suppressing genes.* > There can only be 2 places where the information about what bases in the DNA molecule get a methyl group attached to them and which bases don't can come from, the genome itself or the environment. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sen.otaku at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 23:33:17 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 18:33:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] antifa In-Reply-To: <003701d640ce$75e6d0f0$61b472d0$@rainier66.com> References: <8DEB0EE6-BEE5-464F-832D-B0A8D5143878@gmail.com> <003701d640ce$75e6d0f0$61b472d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: ICP once ruined an entire venue, as in their fans completely trashed all the metal and all the flooring, from spraying so much faygo (IPC?s iconic drink from their hometown). Other venues fear the same: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.inverse.com/article/7357-san-diego-insane-clown-posse-show-cancelled-because-of-fear-of-faygo-damage/amp SR Ballard > On Jun 12, 2020, at 10:30 AM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > >> ...> On Behalf Of SR Ballard via extropy-chat > Subject: Re: [ExI] antifa > >> ...And hopefully the last. Or I?ll be forced to share factoids. > > SR Ballard > > > But SR, we like it when you share factoids. Share away. That's what friends are for. > > 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 Fri Jun 12 23:34:25 2020 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 16:34:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest Message-ID: wrote: snip ? Do you believe China?s case load suddenly dropped to zero and has never come back? Yes, though in fact there were a couple of large scale lockdowns after the original one. But lies about this topic would rapidly be exposed. > Every other country, including those where the government has the authority to shut down everything until their people starve still has cases. China is reporting zero. They are also reporting zero for the original SARS virus. > China gave this horrifying epidemic to this planet through their dishonesty in attempting a coverup back when we had time to react. That's not the case. The US threw away the early warning they got. > I don?t believe China. It's always worth considerating source and motivation. In this case, they have no motivation to give out false data. China is correct in imposing a quarantine on people coming in. But it is currently stupid for the US to limit air travel from China. Keith From jasonresch at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 23:36:33 2020 From: jasonresch at gmail.com (Jason Resch) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 18:36:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The present and future of AI In-Reply-To: <103167237.77264.1591999536605@mail.yahoo.com> References: <103167237.77264.1591999536605@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 5:22 PM The Avantguardian via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > I would say that we are close enough that we need to have a better > definition of AGI. For example does a honeybee have "general intelligence"? > If so, we are already really close because we can currently compute neural > networks with the complexity of a honeybee brain. Assuming neuron number is > a correlate of intelligence, it will be about 44 years until Moore's law > reaches human brain parity. But we might reach rat or raven parity in about > 14 years. > > See old thread "Benchmarking the SIngularity" for more info: > > http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2019-July/097196.html > > Stuart, Thanks for sharing that, it was very interesting. Regarding parity of the human brain, how are you estimating the computational complexity of the brain? The Summit supercomputer can perform as many Ops/second as a generous estimate of total synaptic firings the human brain can have per second. Jason -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Jun 12 23:40:45 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 18:40:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] word usage-picky picky In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Actually, John, I was just talking about simple fractions, not exponents. "She got a fraction of the estate" - just too vague. bill w On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 6:38 PM John Clark via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 4:10 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > *Exponents can be negative. * >> > > Yes, and in that case the rate of change would be moving faster and faster > toward zero at an exponential rate. > > *> I read where something is a fraction of something else. Fractions can >> be 15/7 or 767/5. Hardly communicating something small. I suggest 'small >> fraction'. More clarity in language, please.* >> > > That would not bring more clarity because we're talking about rates of > change and not constants. A "small fractional" change would be a linear > change such as Y= nX where n is a constant such as 2/3. A geometric change > would be Y= X^n. And an exponential change would be Y=n^X. These are 3 > different types of changes with fundamentally different properties. > Exponential change grows (positively or negatively depending on specifics) > vastly faster than the other two and should not be confused. > > 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 Fri Jun 12 23:44:47 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 18:44:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: <6548C2AC-60B2-436C-A989-F68EE12D2062@gmail.com> <006301d63ec0$c06b0390$41410ab0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Racism has been cutting lives short for over a century. adrian How about ever since different races appeared? I keep saying that racism, sexism and some other isms are perfectly normal; expected. It would be astonishing if they weren't bases for discrimination (not prejudice - we in the South know blacks quite well and are not prejudiced. Discriminatory, of course.) bill w On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 5:58 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 9:44 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Protesting crowds will propagate the virus, killing some of those >> infected. The protestors presumably know this, but decide to protest >> anyway. It would make sense if more lives were likely to be saved by >> protesting than lost, but I don?t think anyone could reasonably argue that >> that would be the case. >> > > I'm not so sure - especially if you count the lasting effect of changes > that would not have happened if not for the protests. > > This particular coronavirus will kill a number of people this year, and > probably a number next year, perhaps also more than zero in 2022. > > Racism has been cutting lives short for over a century. > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 12 23:50:59 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 18:50:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: <025501d6410b$8cf090f0$a6d1b2d0$@rainier66.com> References: <005801d63d27$2745c0f0$75d142d0$@rainier66.com> <025501d6410b$8cf090f0$a6d1b2d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: You can do some interesting tricks with these low-cost DNA tests, but perhaps the most important one of all is that it educates people about themselves. It did that for me. spike *If one is totally free of racism, then it should not matter what color your ancestors were. As a matter of historical interest, sure. bill w* On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 6:27 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > > > > >?What would the number signify and why would it matter? The everyday > concept of race really doesn't map onto biological concept of a population > group. In fact, any clear look at the numbers here shows, for instance, > that everyday racial groups overlap different biological populations?. > Regards, Dan > > > > > > Hi Dan, the number is mostly to educate people about themselves. That?s > what it did for me. > > > > I did one of these commercial DNA tests when they dropped to 100 bucks. > Now they are 60, but in the past 6 yrs, I have bought 34 kits for relatives > and done DNA mapping to try to figure out connections with genetic > diseases. That?s how I found out about the black ancestor: all of us on > that branch show it, none of us knew. But now we do. > > > > Here?s bit of American history you might find interesting. The > traditional version of slavery in the south suggests that escaped slaves > went north to freedom, but it is a little more subtle than that. If they > were in Georgia, some went south into Florida, which was sparsely populated > and they could join the local population. You can see the evidence in the > Seminole tribe, which did not evacuate Florida but accepted the Africans. > > > > In Virginia, the escapees from the slave plantations could head north, but > their better chances were in heading west, to get over the Appalachians. > Over on the west side, in what is now West Virginia but was then part of > Virginia, they still had (theoretically) legal slavery but no one owned > slaves out there from what I can tell from the census records. My great^3 > grandfather was a fiery Methodist minister who spoke often and thunderously > on this topic. So the slaves would sometimes go west, get over the > mountains and set up camp in the hollers on the west side, often going into > the coal business, where they could be free, work harder than before under > far more dangerous conditions, while still being as destitute as they were > as slaves. But they were free, and they were equal to the local whites > there. > > > > Decades went by. My grandmother was born and grew up there. She was > telling me how life was in the mountain country. There was a choice of > careers: you could do anything you like, as long as you like coal mining. > There the black men and white men were truly equals: after a half an hour > in the mine, everyone was the same color. The black and white families > lived in the same row of company-owned shotgun houses. They accepted each > other as equals. > > > > This explains a long-standing puzzle: we couldn?t figure out why my > great^3 grandmother ended up there of all places, from Georgia. Reason: > she was Scotch-Irish with an African baby. She ended up in the coal > country of West Virginia, where they had no heartburn with that kind of > thing. > > > > The 1920s came along. The miners decided they would politely ask the > company to lift a finger to help keep them alive, the company politely > refused, the miners began to unionize, the company brought in > strike-breakers from Italy. The labor force detested the Italians, but > black and (non-Italian) white were friends, united in common cause against > Italians. > > > > Race is both more and less than DNA, if it is anything at all. > > > > With that in mind as a background, you may come to understand why your > comments on the DNA-component of race interests me. You can do some > interesting tricks with these low-cost DNA tests, but perhaps the most > important one of all is that it educates people about themselves. It did > that for me. > > > > 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 Sat Jun 13 00:19:43 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 19:19:43 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: The present and future of AI In-Reply-To: References: <6EC6AE90-369C-40A4-9488-0531BC2AEDD3@gmu.edu> Message-ID: I came up with the following list of human-specific traits of intelligence: - Communicate via natural language - Learn, adapt, and grow - Move through a dynamic environment - Recognize sights and sounds - Be creative in music, art, writing and invention - Reason with logic and rationality to solve problems Jason Every one of these traits is found all over the animal kingdom, excepting the creativity part (and birds may make up songs),. Language is not spoken, literally, but whales and dolphins, for example, communicate by mouth sounds - not all instinct. Rats may not have formal logic, but they can think their way out of a maze - they would amaze you with their intelligence. bill w On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 7:04 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > (Sorry re-sending, sen't to wrong address) > > > > On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 3:14 PM Robin D Hanson wrote: > >> Yes of course I?m considering exp progress in stuff that has been exp, >> and linear progress in stuff that has been linear. >> The hard part about human AI is doing every thing WELL. You can?t really >> pick an ability X and say ?no AI can do X?. >> Almost always, there is some system that does X, except just very BADLY. >> > > I came up with the following list of human-specific traits of intelligence: > > > - Communicate via natural language > - Learn, adapt, and grow > - Move through a dynamic environment > - Recognize sights and sounds > - Be creative in music, art, writing and invention > - Reason with logic and rationality to solve problems > > Is there anything important that I've forgotten? Because there has been > major progress in each of these domains. It's hard to imagine that after a > 1,000 or million-fold increase in compute they won't be vastly superior. > > This is where we stand today, if we put everything together in one system: > > "We would get an AI that could hold a conversation in any of 100 languages > over the phone. It would beat everyone at Jeopardy, Chess, Go, Poker, as > well any old video game. The AI would be able to recognize any object or > face ? even detect cancer better than most doctors. It would also be > accomplished and creative, having invented things, discovered laws of > physics, and identified new drugs. The AI could compose as well as Bach and > paint as well as van Gogh. It would also be seen as highly original in its > own artistic styles." > > ?Let?s put all these together,? and then it will be smart. -- Marvin > Minsky > > > Jason > > > >> >> On Jun 12, 2020, at 3:12 PM, Jason Resch wrote: >> >> On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 1:57 PM Robin D Hanson wrote: >> >>> There have been substantial advances in the last decade. But then there >>> have been substantial advances every decade since 1950. We are still a LONG >>> way from broad human level abilities; it will take a LOT longer than 10-30 >>> years to get there. >>> >>> What do you see as the most difficult aspects of human ability we have >> yet to achieve? >> >> Also, are you considering exponential progress in your 10-30 year >> projection over the future (which could see a billion-fold increase in >> computing power? >> >> >> Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu >> Future of Humanity Inst., Oxford University >> Assoc. Prof. Economics, George Mason University >> See my books: http://ageofem.com http://elephantinthebrain.com >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 13 01:30:23 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 18:30:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] antifa derangement syndrome In-Reply-To: References: <01fc01d64105$8c164540$a442cfc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <009f01d64122$363a4410$a2aecc30$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat >>?If you want a beautiful place to camp, the Olympic National Park is hard to beat. spike >?I love hiking in the Olympics, but being a day hiker limits me to going to places like Mount Townsend or Lake of the Angels. I usually hike in the Cascades, typically in the Northern Cascades. Were it now for COVID-19 and all that, I?d probably be hiking near Teanaway as the North Cascades are still under a lot of snow this year? Hi Dan, ja that worries me. My bride managed to score permits for the west side of Mount Rainier so we have a 4-day thru hike next month from Mowich Lake to Longmire. >?Unlike many, I see CHAZ as opening up possibilities rather than closing them down. I?m guessing it?ll only last so long before the police move in again. From what I?ve seen, it looks peaceful inside the Zone. Don?t tell me you think it?s Mad Max: Fury Road there. Regards, Dan Dan we don?t know who is the new authority in CHAZ, but it really doesn?t matter that no one has been elected, making CHAZ an autocracy, but it would be irrelevant anyway, for the real power is entirely in the hands of? the insurance company. If the insurance company pulls out (well, imagine that, over a bit of uncertainty on who exactly are the law enforcement?) then businesses must come to an end. Businesses cannot operate without insurance, for someone or something with money (lots of it) must insure all the merchandize in every retail outlet against theft, riot, arson, etc. Otherwise the suppliers cannot risk sending in supplies. OK, we get that. Suppose you are the insurance underwriter. Would you bet on CHAZ? I would. But I would want a bit of a rate hike. I want a factor of 10 over what I was getting before. Eh, make it 20, just to be safe, because I already know I have zero competitors in that market and no risk of new ones coming in the foreseeable. I looked at Pike and 12th in Google maps street view (I know that area vaguely but needed reminding) and noted that there are many condos and apartment buildings, many of which are likely rentals. Rentals need insurance as well. Who will underwrite that? I will. But I want a tooooonnnnn of money to do it. Otherwise? the landlords cannot accept the liability. The tenants must go. Unless they accept a rather dramatic rent cost of course. OK, we lose the businesses and the renters, but not the homeless. They can stay. Until they run out of food. Insurance companies are in charge. A police force makes the insurance affordable. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sat Jun 13 02:01:41 2020 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2020 12:01:41 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <005701d640d2$51728da0$f457a8e0$@rainier66.com> References: <6548C2AC-60B2-436C-A989-F68EE12D2062@gmail.com> <006301d63ec0$c06b0390$41410ab0$@rainier66.com> <000b01d6406c$5637a020$02a6e060$@rainier66.com> <002e01d640b9$a01841c0$e048c540$@rainier66.com> <005701d640d2$51728da0$f457a8e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 13 Jun 2020 at 02:00, spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *John Clark via extropy-chat > *Sent:* Friday, June 12, 2020 8:16 AM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Cc:* John Clark > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Protest > > > > On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 9:23 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > >> *He still gets to count as a C-19 related fatality, * > > >?Where in the world did you get that idea?! > > *> **Here:* > > > https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/white-house-taking-very-liberal-approach-counting-covid-19-deaths > > > > Things change quickly in a pandemic. That article is ANCIENT? > > > > >?Also, you could find better places to get your news, "justthenews.com" > does not just give the news, it's a conservative pro ? > > > > Is C-Span conservative? I never really thought of them as a conservative > group > > > > https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4868448/user-clip-liberal-approach-mortality > > > > but if you insist, I shall flee to a safe space, such as Mother Jones (no > relation.) Oh, I see that CNN and MSNBC are also in on the conservative > conspiracy, as well as the other news majors. Oh wait, Mother Jones ran > that clip too. Are Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci part of the conspiracy? There > are no safe spaces left, what shall we do? > > > > I Googled ??took a very liberal approach to covid mortality? and > justthenews was the first one that came up. > > > > John, everyone here is not political. The way countries count covid > mortality is not necessarily politically driven, there are other motives, > such as financial reasons. In the US, there was no conspiracy needed: > hospitals set up a special billing fund if the patient died of covid. So, > they tested the patients for covid after they were already dead. They > tested George Floyd after he was already dead and they knew he had a > co-morbidity (asphyxiation.) > > > > >?Trump? > > > > As soon as you mention the name of any politician or party, we know you > are back to your incessant campaigning, haranguing this list where it isn?t > appropriate or welcome, as we have told you repeatedly. Please take it > elsewhere. Even if many on this list agree in principal, the constant > howling at the moon is most annoying and counterproductive. The reason > many of our most valued posters have left this space John, is that the > constant campaigning is not what we are here for. If we want politics, we > know where to find that. > > > > If you are campaigning in a post about covid, it comes across as if you > are cheering for the virus. Separate those two concepts please. Then > kindly eliminate the one: we are tired of it. When Kennedy posts about > covid, he doesn?t campaign, and it doesn?t come across as cheering for the > virus. The virus is not an opportunity, it?s a crisis. Some crises should > go to waste. > > > > *> **We are over-reporting, they* [China] *are under-reporting* > > > > >?And you know that to be true because you want it to be true. John K > Clark > > > > Do you believe China?s case load suddenly dropped to zero and has never > come back? Every other country, including those where the government has > the authority to shut down everything until their people starve still has > cases. China is reporting zero. China gave this horrifying epidemic to > this planet through their dishonesty in attempting a coverup back when we > had time to react. I don?t believe China. > There are several countries that have done very well containing and limiting cases. Taiwan is an example, even though it is densely populated and close to China. The behaviour of the virus is non-linear, and relatively small differences in management of the situation can make large differences in the numbers. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Sat Jun 13 02:16:17 2020 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 20:16:17 -0600 Subject: [ExI] facial recognition software In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: All I hear when people say they want to stay anonymous is: "I want to slap you, anonymously, today, so I can continue to slap you every day, also anonymously, for the foreseeable future." Society can't work without a good identity system, can it? On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 6:12 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > It's broken, misidentifying people n far too many cases. > > Police relying on it would thus conduct enforcement against > innocent people in far too many cases. > > Say what you will about privacy, but "the cops would arrest the wrong > person if they used it" seems like a good enough reason not to use it, even > for people who do not care about the privacy of others. > > On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 12:59 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> I see where Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM have started refusing to sell this >> software to police depts. until the issue is settled at the federal level. >> >> I am of two minds about that software: to some extent it keeps us safe >> by identifying perps for the cops to bring in. >> >> But it is also an invasion of privacy, and I think that outweighs the >> good usage above. >> >> 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 danust2012 at gmail.com Sat Jun 13 02:33:12 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 19:33:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7EB6E298-2AA7-4BD9-9E5B-2BDEBBE9D5DE@gmail.com> On Jun 12, 2020, at 6:45 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > Racism has been cutting lives short for over a century. adrian > > How about ever since different races appeared? I keep saying that racism, sexism and some other isms are perfectly normal; expected. It would be astonishing if they weren't bases for discrimination (not prejudice - we in the South know blacks quite well and are not prejudiced. Discriminatory, of course.) > > bill w Not really. If you go back far enough, yeah, people do discriminate, but it?s along different lines. For instance, recall the piece I sent citing Bacon?s Rebellion. That was mostly a class rebellion but the authorities managed to drive a wedge between lower class Whites and Blacks. This meant that before the rebellion Blacks and Whites were working together against the upper class. Of course, if meant when modern racial classifications took root, okay, but those were fairly recent. They start in the modern period and particularly pick up steam in the late 18th century. They don?t go back to prehistory or even ancient times. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Jun 13 02:33:35 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 19:33:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character In-Reply-To: References: <005801d63d27$2745c0f0$75d142d0$@rainier66.com> <025501d6410b$8cf090f0$a6d1b2d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00f501d6412b$0a0a88b0$1e1f9a10$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Sent: Friday, June 12, 2020 4:51 PM To: ExI chat list Cc: William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character >>?You can do some interesting tricks with these low-cost DNA tests, but perhaps the most important one of all is that it educates people about themselves. It did that for me. spike >?If one is totally free of racism, then it should not matter what color your ancestors were. As a matter of historical interest, sure. bill w Ja, it allowed me to find out extremely detailed bits of history I never would have understood or cared about had I not discovered the history. It has led to learning some astonishing detail in obscure historical narratives, incidents which have been recorded perhaps once in millions of history books. Regarding that finding on my great^3 grandmother, I read the account by looking up the only reference I could find to her name, year of birth and state of birth, read the story, vaguely concluded this was someone else, later found out she was the subject of that story, recorded in one family history book written perhaps 100 years ago, in a print volume in the Sutro genealogical library. I found the story by looking up a name, read the story because it was interesting, found out 30 years later that was my own ancestor. I like knowing about that. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sat Jun 13 05:09:21 2020 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2020 05:09:21 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ExI] The present and future of AI In-Reply-To: References: <103167237.77264.1591999536605@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1026670232.155653.1592024961743@mail.yahoo.com> My pleasure, Jason. I must apologize for top posting but Yahoo seems to bounce my emails back to me as attempted spam if I don't top post on this account. I did not factor in the time-complexity of the human brain at all. I simply extrapolated the average memory cost for individual neurons and synapse weights in tensorflow for AlphaGo and scaled up the number of neurons and synapse weights to that of the human brain in a linear fashion. So my analysis was more based on the Kolmogorov complexity than computational complexity. I do realize that this results in oversimplification, but it was more of a back of the envelope first approximation rather than an in-depth analysis.? If you factor in time complexity, then AGI will already be superhuman before space-complexity parity with the human brain is reached due to the speed differences. How effectively one can trade space for time in AI is a fascinating question. I think it would necessarily be limited by the required non-linearity of the neural activation function. Let me think more on this. Stuart LaForge On Friday, June 12, 2020, 06:27:17 PM PDT, Jason Resch via extropy-chat wrote: On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 5:22 PM The Avantguardian via extropy-chat wrote: > I would say that we are close enough that we need to have a better definition of AGI. For example does a honeybee have "general intelligence"? If so, we are already really close because we can currently compute neural networks with the complexity of a honeybee brain. Assuming neuron number is a correlate of intelligence, it will be about 44 years until Moore's law reaches human brain parity. But we might reach rat or raven parity in about 14 years. > > See old thread "Benchmarking the SIngularity" for more info: > > ?http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2019-July/097196.html > Stuart, Thanks for sharing that, it was very interesting. Regarding parity of the human brain, how are you estimating the computational complexity of the brain? The Summit supercomputer can perform as many Ops/second as a generous estimate of total synaptic firings the human brain can have per second. Jason? _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From giulio at gmail.com Sat Jun 13 06:57:47 2020 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2020 08:57:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What happens to US space programs after November? Message-ID: As I see things: 1. If Trump wins US astronauts will probably walk on the Moon before the end of the decade. Not by 2024 (the last year of Trump's second term), which doesn't seem feasible. But enough money will have been spent on Artemis by the end of 2014 to make it impossible for the next administration to cancel the program. So, humans on the Moon by the end of the decade. But this would be yet another unsustainable stunt without a clear follow-up strategy. 2. If Trump loses, good bye Artemis and the hope to return to the Moon. The US space program will be limited to politically correct Earth and climate science missions, with some token planetary and space science missions. 3. There's no hope of real bipartisan support for ambitious space programs. Not in these days of toxic political polarization between two camps that hate each other and don't want to work together for the common good. 4. China wins. Did I miss something? From danust2012 at gmail.com Sat Jun 13 08:21:36 2020 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2020 01:21:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens to US space programs after November? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Have you looked at what happened prior to Trump, especially under Obama? The COTS program (sure, started under Bush fils, but came to fruition during Obama?s tenure), for instance, and the various interplanetary missions. Actually, there?s no reason everyone can?t win in space. I don?t see Chinese success as negating anyone else?s. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst > On Jun 13, 2020, at 12:01 AM, Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat wrote: > > ?As I see things: > > 1. If Trump wins US astronauts will probably walk on the Moon before > the end of the decade. Not by 2024 (the last year of Trump's second > term), which doesn't seem feasible. But enough money will have been > spent on Artemis by the end of 2014 to make it impossible for the next > administration to cancel the program. So, humans on the Moon by the > end of the decade. But this would be yet another unsustainable stunt > without a clear follow-up strategy. > > 2. If Trump loses, good bye Artemis and the hope to return to the > Moon. The US space program will be limited to politically correct > Earth and climate science missions, with some token planetary and > space science missions. > > 3. There's no hope of real bipartisan support for ambitious space > programs. Not in these days of toxic political polarization between > two camps that hate each other and don't want to work together for the > common good. > > 4. China wins. > > Did I miss something? > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Jun 13 11:25:36 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2020 07:25:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cory Massimino on advocating police abolition In-Reply-To: <23C853C8-9D21-4480-98D6-700154C40D36@gmail.com> References: <23C853C8-9D21-4480-98D6-700154C40D36@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 8:34 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> The police are not going to be abolished, it just ain't gonna happen. >> Pretending otherwise is a fantasy. > > > > That?s what you believe, but it still doesn?t explain why you thought > Cory (or yours truly) confused abolition with defunding. > Because the phrase "defund the police" is suddenly all in the news and is basically a good idea, however it's a very poor name to give it because it's practically begging to be misinterpreted; right wingers have tried with some success to tar those who advocate it with the very silly idea of abolishing the police. What "defund the police" really means is to stop using cops to give tickets for minor violations of the traffic laws (robot cameras or the equivalent of meter maids could just write down license plate numbers) and decriminalized the drug laws so police would not be needed to enforce that either, thus the budgets of police departments could be reduced significantly and the money saved used for more important things like drug rehabilitation; unfortunately all that won't fit on a bumper sticker. But they've got to find a better phrase than "defund the police". John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Jun 13 11:42:44 2020 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2020 07:42:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] monumental change In-Reply-To: <6CCE6573-0478-4B04-8DB9-409712EEAD1B@gmail.com> References: <6CCE6573-0478-4B04-8DB9-409712EEAD1B@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 8:41 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > *let?s not call good marketing courageous. * > OK, but I still think you should give NASCAR some credit for doing the right thing even if it was late in the day. At least their racism was not so ingrained that they rejected an obviously good marketing idea, and there are prominent examples of people in very high positions of power who have done exactly that. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sen.otaku at gmail.com Sat Jun 13 13:11:22 2020 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2020 08:11:22 -0500 Subject: [ExI] facial recognition software In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I think lack of in person anonymity causes issues also. When one makes a mistake it can never be outrun. One cannot ?go to the frontier? or ?go into the wilds? or any such thing. One cannot take up a different name and live a different life, never to be reminded of their past. You can NEVER start over. Employers are legally required to dredge up your past even for fast food jobs. There will always be evidence of that baby you gave up for adoption, or what have you. I don?t think that?s good. SR Ballard > On Jun 12, 2020, at 9:16 PM, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat wrote: > > > All I hear when people say they want to stay anonymous is: > > "I want to slap you, anonymously, today, so I can continue to slap you every day, also anonymously, for the foreseeable future." > > Society can't work without a good identity system, can it? > > >> On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 6:12 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat wrote: >> It's broken, misidentifying people n far too many cases. >> >> Police relying on it would thus conduct enforcement against innocent people in far too many cases. >> >> Say what you will about privacy, but "the cops would arrest the wrong person if they used it" seems like a good enough reason not to use it, even for people who do not care about the privacy of others. >> >>> On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 12:59 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: >>> I see where Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM have started refusing to sell this software to police depts. until the issue is settled at the federal level. >>> >>> I am of two minds about that software: to some extent it keeps us safe by identifying perps for the cops to bring in. >>> >>> But it is also an invasion of privacy, and I think that outweighs the good usage above. >>> >>> 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 > _______________________________________________ > 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 Jun 13 13:12:44 2020 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2020 06:12:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What happens to US space programs after November? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <003401d64184$54a33940$fde9abc0$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat Subject: [ExI] What happens to US space programs after November? As I see things: >...1. If Trump wins ... >...2. If Trump loses... Oy vey, now ya dun it. >...3. There's no hope of real bipartisan support for ... That has been gone some time ago. >...4. China wins... Ja. That has been coming for some time. >...Did I miss something? Ja, the role that business plays vs government. The US government must find the least efficient way to do any space program because it needs to spread the contracts over all the states, in order to get senators and representatives to support it (presidents can make suggestions if they want, but congress must allocate the funds.) China doesn't do that: it has a different form of government. Private business doesn't do that either: it finds the most efficient way to get things done. Last week we saw a privately owned rocket carry two guys to the station in style and the first stage landed with dignity on its feet. We have a lotta smart guys, such as Elon Musk and our own Adrian doing commercialization of space. They are the future of space. Governments stand down, let private industry take over. spike _______________________________________________ From steinberg.will at gmail.com Sat Jun 13 13:13:25 2020 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2020 09:13:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] antifa In-Reply-To: References: <8DEB0EE6-BEE5-464F-832D-B0A8D5143878@gmail.com> <003701d640ce$75e6d0f0$61b472d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Fwiw the Gathering of the Juggalos looks really chill from documentary stuff I've seen about it. People seem extremely accepting and mostly anti-conflict On Fri, Jun 12, 2020, 20:58 SR Ballard via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > ICP once ruined an entire venue, as in their fans completely trashed all > the metal and all the flooring, from spraying so much faygo (IPC?s iconic > drink from their hometown). > > Other venues fear the same: > https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.inverse.com/article/7357-san-diego-insane-clown-posse-show-cancelled-because-of-fear-of-faygo-damage/amp > > SR Ballard > > On Jun 12, 2020, at 10:30 AM, spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > ...> On Behalf Of SR Ballard via extropy-chat > > Subject: Re: [ExI] antifa > > ...And hopefully the last. Or I?ll be forced to share factoids. > > > SR Ballard > > > But SR, we like it when you share factoids. Share away. That's what > friends are for. > > spike > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Jun 13 13:26:25 2020 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2020 08:26:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Protest In-Reply-To: <7EB6E298-2AA7-4BD9-9E5B-2BDEBBE9D5DE@gmail.com> References: <7EB6E298-2AA7-4BD9-9E5B-2BDEBBE9D5DE@gmail.com> Message-ID: Can we agree that for a long time humans existed as tribes? Good. Then you have tribalism - your tribe is right about everything. The neighboring tribe isd a bunch of robbers and rapists etc. A person with different clothes, face paint etc. was one to fear. This gave rise to xenophobia - in the genes I assume. So humans discrim