[extropy-chat] Alert for Suspicious Farmers' Almanacs

[Samantha Atkins]

On Tue, 30 Dec 2003 11:57:48 -0800 (PST)
"Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury at aeiveos.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> 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.
>

If the policies are indeed stupid then they are ineffectual in protecting you.  If they are not only stupid but highly intrusive on our freedoms and ability to proceed on extropian agendas then they are a deeper threat than terrorism itself.
 
> 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.  

Some perhaps.  But not anything, everything some bureaucrat comes up with and inflicts on the population.  At the least we must retain the power  access, change and limit where necessary the types and degree of government involvment.  It is part of our responsibility.

> 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 have no problem with marshalls on planes.  I would be happier with citizens on planes having the right to carry their own appropriate to airplane defense arms.  But limiting knowledge, the lifeblood of progress and acheiving our dreams, is a different matter entirely.

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


Yeah, I shudder to think of what evil you could accomplish!   Hmmm, if the Feds raided my house ("compound") and checked out my library they would probably paint me as an evil and dangerous individual indeed.   Which is why we need to seprate out very carefully actual active threats from mere potential.   We don't prosecute for potential - yet.   We should not go to "enemy combatant" level surveillance and intervention on mere potential either.  If we do then you can forget about the Fourth Amendment rights we in the US supposedly have.   That worries me far more than the threat from any terrorist or group of terrorists.

- samantha