[ExI] fallout and female pop artists:: was: RE: lotta splainin to do

Wed Nov 23 23:16:23 UTC 2022

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
Sent: Wednesday, 23 November, 2022 11:49 AM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Cc: William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] fallout and female pop artists:: was: RE: lotta splainin to do

I don't think I will be re-reading the Ridley book and will be sending it to you along with other one I promised - if you want it…

Good chance Billw intended this as an offlist.

Sure do Billw.  I returned to the von Neumann book after being distracted by the excellent chapters on game theory.  Fascinating subject.

>…How do you even know Swift if you don't have a TV?

The internet is better than TV.

>…  And does not having one deprive Isaac of learning about the contemporary culture?...

It does that, but plenty of homes are similarly devoid of TV for the same reasons mine is: passive input of information without user control results in an I/O channel which is too slow, faaarrr too slow and too limited.  Many people now in their teens, raised on video games, have not the attention span to suffer through any Hollywood movie made before about 1975: the pace is too slow.

Demonstration: find and download an episode of Perry Mason.  Excellent drama, well-written scripts.  Waaaay too slow a pace for modern audiences.

Demonstration: those of us who remember the first Star Wars in about the mid 70s recall how it felt like a roller coaster: the pace of the movie was just faster.  OK view the first Star Wars now.  Feels pretty normal, ja?

>…Swift - it's not only the pretty face, it's the expressions she makes.  If in some other universe she pointed a finger at me, I'd go along meekly without question.  Women never did know the power they had over me if they had been more open about their attraction to me.  In one case I would certainly have married her if she had been open about it…

For most of us, it wouldn’t even require some other universe.  This one will do.

.>…The Renaissance did great things reducing the power of the church.  If Jesus had come along seven hundred years ago he would have done much more than throw out the moneychangers.  More needs doing…

Every time I read that story, I feel sorry for the moneychangers.  They were providing a perfectly legitimate service: Hey man, I need two lambs and five shekels to pay off a temple harlot and one of the lambs to repent afterwards, the other for lunch tomorrow.  Can you break a sheep?

>…I have not thought about it enough to form an opinion, but Ridley makes a good case for changing the patent laws, which he says stifles innovation and invention.  Ditto for intellectual property in general…

Ja the classic dilemma: information wants to be free, but content providers want to be paid.  In civilizations where information really is free and has been for a long time, they have bred a society with a general scarcity of inventors.

>…But what happens to the poor writer, composer, who loses control over his creations as soon as he publishes them?  Are we not ripping them off?...

Of course we are.  Read on please.

>…My college students did not care about the artists when Napster was ripping off the song composers.  I called it theft and they just shrugged. …bill w

Billw, this is an important observation.  Back in the days when you and I were younger than we are now, there were the big bands, the Dorsey Brothers, Glenn Miller,  and so on, then the bands shrunk to save money.  Then later, the Beatles and such as that only had four fabulous performers, but as content became freer, its value went down.  So now most of the garbage on the radio is made by one guy who doesn’t even know how to sing, or if he does, he doesn’t actually demonstrate it.  He just recites angry poetry in a foreign language.  All this because your students ripped off actual artists, such as the Beatles, on Napster.

spike

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