[extropy-chat] Alert for Suspicious Farmers' Almanacs

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Tue, 30 Dec 2003, Samantha Atkins wrote:

> So, Robert, you believe that playing ostrich is the best guarantee of
> safety?  Let no one know anything without a (supposedly governmental)
> need to know?  What becomes of our extropian dreams then?

No -- let us not be ostrichs.  But each of us have different hazard
profiles (remember how I'm always going on about hazard functions...).
In my particular case I've flown probably something like 600,000+ miles
over the last couple of decades.  I would guess that is significantly
higher than the average person.  So it would be wiser for me to take
that into account when looking at aggressive (some might say stupid)
policies by governments to capture terrorists.  One only has to look
at the recent assasination attempts in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and
the daily death count in Iraq to understand that these people mean
business.  We have had long discussions in the past about the cultural
clashes and what the best solutions might be.

Ignoring anything from terrorist threats to Mad Cow disease can
eliminate ones Extropian dream.  In both cases it may require
a little more government oversight or interference to fix the
problems and/or minimize the risks.  If you had asked me 3
years ago whether I would be in favor of more power to big
brother I would have looked at you like you were crazy (remember
I'm the person whose father almost threw him out of the house
for refusing to return his draft card in the mid-'70s).  If
you ask me now -- I still don't like many of the people in
power and I think the patriot act(s) are mostly very poor laws.
But if you ask me if we should have officials drawing attention
to Almanacs and requiring marshals on planes then I'm going
to have to think long and hard now about whether the risks
outweight the benefits.

I also found another couple of Almanacs in my book collection
so now I'm up to 5.  I'm clearly a dangerous person.  :-)

Robert