[extropy-chat] Alert for Suspicious Farmers' Almanacs

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I don't think something as minor as a Farmer's
> Almanac is what they are
> talking about. It seemed to me that they were
> talking about those 1000
> page plus reference alamanacs you can buy that have
> data about tons of
> things covering the whole country to a far greter
> degree than the
> average road atlas.

It's the same problem.  The damage the FBI does to our
economy and our nation by placing an aura of fear
around such things, thus in effect restricting their
legitimate commercial uses, far outweighs the likely
possible terrorist damage over the current expected
lifetime of anyone involved.  (Not accounting for the
Singularity or other causes of increased longevity.)
But the FBI doesn't have to pay more than lip service
to legitimate uses.  If it can help them brand
someone a terrorist, then it furthers their careers,
whether or not it actually keeps people safe.

> That is, however, the nature of leftism, the
> concept that
> people are too dumb for their own good and need to
> be told how to spend
> their money.

If that's leftism, then I'm not leftist, and yet I
oppose this particular action too.  I oppose it
primarily because it *is*, in effect, keeping people
in ignorance, and telling them how to spend their
money (or, in this case, how not to: don't spend on
almanacs, whether or not you might otherwise want to).

> I do recall that the books that bin Laden & company
> developed to train
> their people did in fact mention referencing
> almanacs. If a number of
> al quaeda seized here in the US have been found with
> them in their
> posession, then this is in fact a good tip to
> discern possible suspects
> in the future.

The number of almanac users far outstrips the number
of al Quaeda operatives.  The anti-terrorist officials
have demonstrated a lack of appreciation of this type
of thing before, for instance when they suggested that
all Middle Eastern males in a certain age range be
harrassed by the INS, by being made to register with
the (to the public) apparently arbitrary risk of
indefinite arrest without charges.  The courts, upon
investigating, excoriated these arrests for lack of
any evidence of actual wrongdoing, or any reason for
the arrest at all besides happening to fit a certain
profile.

They've been demonstrating a certain consistent
logical fallacy, which causes great harm to the public
when put into action without actually increasing
security.  This alert shows all the same signs.

> Suggest you consider that
> intelligence people may have
> much better information sources than you do.

And they may be making things up to please the
administration, as they have been previously shown to
do.  We can only judge on the evidence we are aware
of; it does not help that, in the few cases they
claim "national security" but that claim is breached,
there usually turns out to have been weak or no
actual justification in the first place.  (How far
things have changed from times of old, when such
breaches, when they happened, usually turned up actual
substance - or so I hear.)

It's the same issue as with scientific claims: they
need to be backed up with evidence, and in practice,
those who hide their "evidence" often turn out to have
done so because they have no evidence.