From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri May 1 03:28:57 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:28:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0904292252t4d46e87k3f4545c9bc5b08e0@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904292314l7e8f3ee3l9afd931381492c25@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 6:31 PM, Emlyn wrote: > > People in paid work don't feel like they need to give back. It's a > social norm, that being in paid work means you are "doing your bit" > for society. So not a very strong drive to volunteer. ### Do paid workers do it for their "bit" or simply because they want to buy a flat screen TV? Do the unemployed volunteer a lot? --------------- > > 1: Let's say that sewers need cleaning. Then, why would we want to > make a person do it? It's a job for a machine. The only reason we > think it's ok for a person to do it now is because we are used to > people doing crap like this. ### There are two reasons why humans do it: because some people need to have their sewers cleaned and because people who clean sewers are cheaper to hire than people who make sewer cleaning robots. This may change in favor the robot makers but even then somebody will need to commit resources (time, capital) to cleaning sewers, and that person will need to be rewarded for their sacrifice, in some sort of material, or spiritual coin. ------------------- If a universal income made it really hard > to employ people to do this, then it would provide incentive to > private industry (or a free project!) to automate the job once and for > all. ### Since you would need to tax private industry into oblivion to provide an universal income guarantee, nothing would get automated. And why would you expect that there would be a sufficient amount of voluntary contribution to sewer cleaning or building and maintenance of sewer cleaning equipment? How many volunteer sewer cleaners have you met recently? -------------- > > 2: I actually think you'd still have people volunteering to do work > like this. Absent the need to earn a living, people still need to find > meaning in their lives. Many find meaning by doing something they know > is needed by others, no matter that it's a bit shitty. I'm constantly > surprised, for instance, at the depth of driver support on Linux. > These drivers are mostly maintained by volunteers I think. ### What percentage of the population spend 8 or more hours a day producing good quality Linux software? 0.01%? 0.00001%? Somewhere around the lower bound, I think. If it was true that a lot of people could find all their meaning in serving others, there would be no monetary economy - some of such servants would be farmers, feeding other servants, who would produce all the goods needed to keep all servants alive (in effect generating their own income guarantee), and all of them would then spend all their extra time providing free flat screen TV's, haircuts and blowjobs to all comers. Since it's not happening, it's a proof that the vast majority of humans are not charitable, although most would like to pretend they are. Rafal From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 1 03:58:24 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:58:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Message Message-ID: <49FA7360.50700@rawbw.com> Hopefully, all unpleasantness is behind us. The list owners have graciously permitted my return. I'm unaware of the contents of anything posted between early Tuesday morning and just now (I just now see a post by Rafal, and just before that one from Will Steinberg), and I'm not interested in any such posts, at least not any that referred to me. Thanks, Lee From emlynoregan at gmail.com Fri May 1 04:11:52 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 13:41:52 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904302110v23a72a85k5a8db992b181777d@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904302110v23a72a85k5a8db992b181777d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0904302111x2c0b319l11fdfd20ab975a24@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/1 Rafal Smigrodzki : > On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 6:31 PM, Emlyn wrote: > >> >> People in paid work don't feel like they need to give back. It's a >> social norm, that being in paid work means you are "doing your bit" >> for society. So not a very strong drive to volunteer. > > ### Do paid workers do it for their "bit" or simply because they want > to buy a flat screen TV? Both. We want our flat screen TVs (or indeed 3 square meals) and we also want to find meaning in our lives. We have a social truth that paid work is meaningful, and to the extent that we individually buy that notion, we can find our meaning in it as well as our subsistence. Even if we don't, there seems to be a fallback truth that if you are working, you need feel no other pressure to contribute. > > Do the unemployed volunteer a lot? It probably depends where you are and why people are unemployed. Unemployed people I've known who have volunteered have said they still felt the stigma of being "unemployed". Also in Australia, the welfare system frowns on unemployed people volunteering more than a little, because of course they are supposed to be finding a job! >> >> 1: Let's say that sewers need cleaning. Then, why would we want to >> make a person do it? It's a job for a machine. The only reason we >> think it's ok for a person to do it now is because we are used to >> people doing crap like this. > > ### There are two reasons why humans do it: because some people need > to have their sewers cleaned and because people who clean sewers are > cheaper to hire than people who make sewer cleaning robots. You don't need to hire people who make sewer cleaning robots, you need to buy or hire the robots themselves, and probably hire robot tend maintenance staff (presumably far fewer people than your original sewer cleaners). When you look at this with a transhumanist hat on, doesn't it drive you crazy? That people lives are so cheap that we can't afford the up front investment to automate away their drudgery? > This may > change in favor the robot makers but even then somebody will need to > commit resources (time, capital) to cleaning sewers, and that person > will need to be rewarded for their sacrifice, in some sort of > material, or spiritual coin. If few people are required (say robot makers, and robot tenders), then you don't need to find a motivation that works for everyone (eg: work or starve). You just need a motivation that appeals to enough of the right people to do the work. When that becomes a small enough percentage of the population, reputation plus inner motivation can be enough, especially considering that people in this scenario are not having to also separately work to feed themselves. The opportunity cost of volunteering in a modern western economy is very high. I think the situation changes if you can drop that way down. > > ------------------- > > ?If a universal income made it really hard >> to employ people to do this, then it would provide incentive to >> private industry (or a free project!) to automate the job once and for >> all. > > ### Since you would need to tax private industry into oblivion to > provide an universal income guarantee, nothing would get automated. > And why would you expect that there would be a sufficient amount of > voluntary contribution to sewer cleaning or building and maintenance > of sewer cleaning equipment? How many volunteer sewer cleaners have > you met recently? Well it might be that we need more automation, so that we are not trying to replace full employment with full volunteerism. Also, when people are waking up in the morning and finding they are not compelled to do anything, there'll be a good chunk of people who will do "good honest work" like this, for the wuffie, and for the internal motivation. I should mention that there is also a halfway point; you could also pay them but tax that payment of course. Many many people will want more than the base income even if the base income is pretty good. Resource hoarding is a status game; many people want flat screen TVs (or large wasteful cars), for signalling purposes presumably. > > -------------- >> >> 2: I actually think you'd still have people volunteering to do work >> like this. Absent the need to earn a living, people still need to find >> meaning in their lives. Many find meaning by doing something they know >> is needed by others, no matter that it's a bit shitty. I'm constantly >> surprised, for instance, at the depth of driver support on Linux. >> These drivers are mostly maintained by volunteers I think. > > ### What percentage of the population spend 8 or more hours a day > producing good quality Linux software? 0.01%? 0.00001%? Somewhere > around the lower bound, I think. > That doesn't matter, as long as there are enough. There is no per-user cost for software. This is the whole point. More technology = more useful product from less human labour. Why we have an idea that we need to keep everyone labouring is beyond me. > If it was true that a lot of people could find all their meaning in > serving others, there would be no monetary economy - some of such > servants would be farmers, feeding other servants, who would produce > all the goods needed to keep all servants alive (in effect generating > their own income guarantee), and all of them would then spend all > their extra time providing free flat screen TV's, haircuts and > blowjobs to all comers. Since it's not happening, it's a proof that > the vast majority of humans are not charitable, although most would > like to pretend they are. > > Rafal No way. This is a network effect problem. Why do we work for money? Because when we predict the behaviour of others, we know that we wont be able to live without money to trade. Isolated volunteers will live in poverty. If on the other hand everyone did everything voluntarily, you'd have the same problem with money; if you insisted on being paid, you'd have nothing to do. You'd probably find it very difficult to spend money, because no one would take it. You can see it in microcosms even now; try to buy a book in library, or buy a premium social networking service. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 1 04:13:46 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:13:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances Message-ID: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> Early on, I naturally believed in group selection, and Darwin did too; it seemed rather obvious and logical. Then along came Dawkins who spread the views of the critics of Wynne-Edwards (a great group selection advocate), and finally in "The Selfish Gene", "The Extended Phenotype", or "The Blind Watchmater" Dawkins penetrated my thick skull. Think about it. Suppose that a gene (e.g. one for genuine altruism) is of no genetic benefit whatsoever to the individual who possesses it, and is even a detriment, i.e., however much it helps his mates (because of actions he'd take), it lowers his own fitness. How could such a mutation possibly spread? Well, every so often I'd ponder this and write notes to myself entitled "Group Selection Can Exist!", but waver back and forth. Then in 1995 or so, "The Origins of Virtue" was published by Ridley, which made it perfectly clear that genuine altruism almost surely exists, and that there are clear ways that it could have evolved. But these ways did *not* include group selection. So does group selection exist, or not? Then in 1998 Sober and Wilson published "Unto Others", where they outlined at least one concrete and evidently irrefutable mechanism whereby true group selection can and will obtain. See the whole story, new to me, with its latest developments, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection Of course, humans hardly need such genes for group selection, since memes serve so much more powerfully. But it is a relief to know that when one senses that one has committed what seems to be a genuinely altruistic act, it's not necessarily true that one is fooling himself. "The problem with group selection is that for a whole group to get a single trait, it must spread through the whole group first by regular evolution. But, as J. L. Mackie suggested, when there are many different groups, each with a different Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS), there is selection between the different ESSs, since some are worse than others[20]. For example, a group where altruism arose would outcompete a group where every creature acted in its own interest." This brings up the fascinating question, explored here a bit a few months ago, of sociopathy and how it fits into all this. But I should save that for another time and another thread. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 1 05:00:41 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:00:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Message In-Reply-To: <49FA7360.50700@rawbw.com> References: <49FA7360.50700@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <49FA81F9.10309@rawbw.com> Hopefully, all unpleasantness is behind us. The list owners have graciously permitted my return. I'm unaware of the contents of anything posted between early Tuesday morning and just now (I just now see a post by Rafal, and just before that one from Will Steinberg), and I'm not interested in any such posts, at least not any that referred to me. Thanks, Lee From max at maxmore.com Fri May 1 05:00:46 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] META: Temporary moderator Message-ID: <200905010500.n4150xg0002664@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Now that I have access to the controls, I shall be acting temporarily as Moderator until one or more list members are chosen to take over. I have not used the controls before, so bear with me if I'm not an expert right away. Regarding Lee Corbin: Lee should now be able to post to the list once again. Onward! Max Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com From spike66 at att.net Fri May 1 04:47:27 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:47:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <43EB0C5358A04EFBAEABD26D8D52E9AA@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Lee Corbin > Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances > > Early on, I naturally believed in group selection, and Darwin > did too; it seemed rather obvious and logical. > > Then along came Dawkins who spread the views of the critics > of Wynne-Edwards (a great group selection advocate), and > finally in "The Selfish Gene", "The Extended Phenotype", or > "The Blind Watchmater" Dawkins penetrated my thick skull. ... > Lee When debates over group selection in evolution take place, humans get into the picture. Perhaps we have a hard time discussing humans in evolution because we are too close to the situation. Furthermore humans evidently have all these meta-memes which mess with our instincts. For this reason it is perhaps easier to debate the topic by looking at the example of the Irish elk, which apparently evolved themselves into a corner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Elk The canonical version of the story is that the Irish Elk went extinct about 10k years ago because the females persisted in choosing the mates with the largest antlers, to the point where the females could not bear their weight upon being mounted, which eventually made it impossible to copulate successfully. There is plenty of room to doubt that theory, altho it does make a good story. But what if that version is true? Then we have an example of group selection, for there are elk genera that did survive. We still have elk today. The Irish elk and his ilk perished, but related species did not. So wouldn't that be an example of group selection? The elk that did not get turned on by huge antlers, as a group, had a survival advantage over those that did so, to their detriment. The notion of group selection appears to me to be too readily dismissed, perhaps because we do not like the implications it could have on humanity. If one reads Origin of Species, Darwin apparently anticipated the problem of the philosophical implications of evolution. His solution was to leave humans out of the book, or leave it for a later work, the Ascent of Man. Following his example, I focus on the elk. I don't see why, in principle, group selection is impossible. Group selection could even lead to speciation, altho it isn't clear that it did in the elk example. Your first comment was "...I naturally believed in group selection..." Why? "...Darwin did too..." Why? I know Dawkins makes a strong case, but why do we naturally believe in group selection before we read Dawkins and Gould? spike From max at maxmore.com Fri May 1 05:37:31 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 00:37:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Yielding to Ideology Over Science, by Ron Bailey Message-ID: <200905010537.n415bbp4022090@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Another good piece by Ron Bailey: Yielding to Ideology Over Science Why don't environmentalists celebrate modern farming on Earth Day? http://www.reason.com/news/show/132997.html Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com From emlynoregan at gmail.com Fri May 1 07:14:55 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 16:44:55 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Yielding to Ideology Over Science, by Ron Bailey In-Reply-To: <200905010537.n415bbp4022090@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905010537.n415bbp4022090@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905010014n7798ac4n2368bd4866dc956b@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/1 Max More : > Another good piece by Ron Bailey: > > Yielding to Ideology Over Science > > > Why don't environmentalists celebrate modern farming on Earth Day? > > http://www.reason.com/news/show/132997.html I think this is shaky ground. While modern farming looks to be a good thing for the environment per se, improved agricultural technology seems to just let us increase the total population. More people == more environmental stressors. Environmentalists don't approve of this. Me, I'm for more people. Go people! -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From emlynoregan at gmail.com Fri May 1 08:15:33 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 17:45:33 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Attack of the (ant) clones Message-ID: <710b78fc0905010115p5732c4f4r91ea2369c0e858f0@mail.gmail.com> One for Spike, and food for genetic thought: Rare All-Female Ant Society That Reproduces By Cloning Discovered http://www.impactlab.com/2009/04/18/rare-all-female-ant-society-that-reproduces-by-cloning-discovered/ A group of Amazonian ants have evolved an extremely unusual social system: They are all female and reproduce via cloning. Though their sexual organs have virtually disappeared, they have also gained some extraordinary abilities. University of Arizona biologist Anna Himler orginally began studying the ants, called Mycocepurus smithii, because they had incredible success as farmers. Many breeds of ant keep domesticated ?farms? where they breed various kinds of fungus for nourishment. But Mycocepurus smithii was able to breed fungus far more successfully, and in greater varieties, than other ants Himler had encountered. As she and her team studied the insects, they realized there were no male ants anywhere to be found. Himler told the BBC that it?s possible the ants evolved so as ?not to operate under the usual constraints of sexual reproduction.? Interestingly, the fungi that the ants cultivate also reproduce asexually. But why would these ants choose to emulate the reproductive cycle favored by their crops? Himler explains: ?It avoids the energetic cost of producing males, and doubles the number of reproductive females produced each generation from 50% to 100% of the offspring.? All the members of the colony are clones of the queen. While that means the queen can control every aspect of the population, it also makes the colony vulnerable to pandemics. A virus that can kill one ant can kill all of them, since they all have the exact same immune systems. On the other hand, it seems that a lack of men gave these women more time and energy to cultivate some of the most elaborate forms of ant agriculture ever studied. According to Himler, ants often evolve highly unusual reproductive strategies. But all-female ant societies are highly rare. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 1 13:08:17 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 06:08:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Yielding to Ideology Over Science, by Ron Bailey Message-ID: <84078.41697.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/1/09, Emlyn wrote: >> http://www.reason.com/news/show/132997.html > > I think this is shaky ground. While modern farming looks to > be a good > thing for the environment per se, improved agricultural > technology > seems to just let us increase the total population. More > people == > more environmental stressors. Environmentalists don't > approve of this. Yes, though the same thing could be said of anything that lessens demands or impact: it allows for more of it under the same conditions. The environmental movement, too, is not uniform. Some environmentalists are just purely anti-human; others are not. I think the latter are more in tune with the rest of humanity than the former. > Me, I'm for more people. Go people! I don't believe one is forced to choose. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 1 15:25:11 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 08:25:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Economic laws/was Re: retrainability of plebeians Message-ID: <946178.5644.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/28/09, BillK wrote: > On 4/28/09, Dan wrote: >> No.? The law of supply and demand is not a >> law people merely adhere to casually >> -- because they're too stupid to see real value -- or >> a law that they adhere to >> because of ideological predilections.? It merely >> states what's inescapable. >> The reason some people in the entertainment industry >> are paid a lot is because >> they are, for whatever reason, highly demanded or >> (inclusive "or") in short supply >> as compared with others -- say, farmers, mathematics >> professors, trauma surgeons, and caretakers. >> >>? What you've stumbled onto, too, is the what >> diamonds and water paradox: >>? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_value > > That's what I said.? :)? You have to start > discussing complex theories of 'value'. Well, this is what's under discussion, no? And I don't think they [value theories in economics] are all that complex. The chief problem is that people often seek objective values and try to compare values interpersonally. Subjective value theory has, IMO, shown this not to work -- not in economics, anyhow -- and resolves the classical values paradoxes. (And this theory was mostly complete before the end of the 19th century. That intelligent people seem unaware of this is partly a failure of education and likely partly due to ideology. On the latter, subjective value theory establishes some pretty firm limits on what economists as economists can say about preferences and values. Also, economics itself, especially in its praxeology form, is fairly unpopular with elites because it basically shows why most rationalizations for elite rule are flimsy and why social order is the result of human action rather than some wise leaders planning things and guiding the herd.) > Supply and demand is not a law. I disagree. > Lots of things the public wants, they > can't get. And lots of things available, they don't really > want. But > you have to make do with what is available. Well, praxeologically speaking, one starts with action and works back to preferences -- wants.? Strictly speaking, actions demostrate preferences.? In that sense, if a person chooses A over B, then they want B -- even if, perhaps, given another choice, C, she might have choosen C or even if she might have preferred choices other than A and B.? And this is the demand covered in the law of supply and demand -- not some hypothetical demand where a person can wish for anything at all. In fact, a key problem, in my mind, with much mainstream economic theory -- where it deviates from a more rigorous theory -- is presuming some idealized choices and then faulting real world people (and institutions) for not choosing (or allowing) for the idealized choices.? (This goes along with many other unrealistic assumptions of mainstream theory, such as perfect information, no time lags, and equilibrium conditions.? Real world people and real world markets lack perfect information, have time lags (and these differ between people, between markets, and between times), and are often if not always in disequilibrium.? This doesn't at all invalidate the Law of Supply and Demand.? That law, like most praxeological laws, doesn't require perfect economic actors or perfect markets.? Also, that real world markets are far from any dreamed of ideal does NOT mean that interventions will actually make things better.? In fact, sound economic theory mainly demonstrates that, despite these imperfections, interventions will only make things worse -- often much worse.) > In olden times, you had to pay the strolling minstrel to > hear him > sing. Nowadays, everyone that sees or hears anything could > be > recording it. > I've been to concerts where the band announced they would > not be > playing anything from their latest recordings because of > the danger of > surreptitious recording. So the audience were treated to > 'Their > greatest Hits' of years past.? (Still enjoyable). I'm not sure how this relates to the Law of Supply and Demand...? Do you mean that that law would only work if supply is limited or if people always get absolutely what they expect? >>? I'd also point out, too, that with regard to >> entertainers who make a lot of money, >> the judgment that they make too much (or too little) >> is subjective and merely >> signals the judge's particular subjective >> values.? Yeah, you and I probably think >> that a highly paid sports star is not of any value to >> us.? But the thing she or he is >> obviously of value to others -- that is, they value >> her or his entertainment more >> than other options, hence they're willing to trade >> other values (e.g., money) for it. >> (And all that would happen if you or I or Rafal or a >> group of people were to decide >> who gets paid what is merely to substitute our value >> judgments for those of the >> people who actually pay lots, say, to see their >> favorite team play.)* >> >>? Of course, this is ignoring the myriad >> government interferences in the market, > > Not the evil government again!? Boo! Hiss!? ;) > It is also ignoring all the 'entertainment industry' > interference in > the market, with all the manufactured boy bands, > promotions, etc. > manipulating the market. > It is also ignoring all the crooked dealers in the market, > like the > financiers out for as much as they can con people for. Not at all.? There is a difference between coercive interference and non-coercive participation.? And the former is not limited to government, though government interference tends to have a broader and more long lasting impact, partly because governments tend to be big players (the Big Player Effect) and tend to have legitimacy in their actions (or they would be overthrown, no?). Also, to be for free markets and a libertarian society in general is not to ignore that people often do rotten and low things. They do, but the best we can do is deal with them non-coercively until they use actual coercion. In the case of music you don't like -- e.g., you seem to have an aversion to boy bands (that's your taste, but I don't see any good reason why your taste should dictate the choices available to everyone else) -- you don't have to listen to it or buy the music and you can even speak out against and offer, creative, or promote alternatives. The non-libertarian alternative is not to make things better per se -- as who knows what the right tastes should be if there are even a right set of tastes -- but simply to allow an elite to force everyone else to support some laundry list of musicians currently favored by that elite. To use an analogy, would you do that with science? Would you say scientists left to their devices come up with wrong theories and that there should be no free market in science ideas, but a highly regulated one to prevent junk science from taking over? I hope not. Such an outcome would not be Extropian. We'd end up with officials deciding and planning what to pursue -- instead of an open-ended, free inquiry where, yes, some will make stupid choices, but the overall entreprise is better for that than under the regulated alternative. > 'Supply and demand' is like the 'free market'. They are > mythical > beasts that never appear in our day to day world. Not at all. The free market is an ideal. However, economic laws, like the Law of Supply and Demand, apply to non-ideal conditions. This is why that law is applied fruitfully to regulated markets. For instance, the reason why many economists argue against rent control and minimum wage laws (and other price controls) is because the Law of Supply and Demand shows how, all else being equal, these interventions will not have the intended outcomes -- unless the intention is to, respectively, cause housing shortages and increase unemployment. (The Law, of course, does not mathematically predict the amount of real world shortages or gluts.) Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 1 15:00:25 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 08:00:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Crying "fire" in a crowded theater: Rothbard's view Message-ID: <891418.15007.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 4/29/09, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > I'm talking about a formal contract that people accept > freely. > Obviously, people that don't accept the contract of mutual > defence is probably left alone to fend off for themselves in > case of troubles. > Or would be forced to pay more to be defended. They couldn't be forced; they could only be charged.? And no one could stop them from relying on others -- as in the case of charity.? E.g., were I living in a libertarian society and some person were being attacked, I might come to her or his rescue even if I don't know her or his status in terms of having a formal mutual defense contract with me. >> How does this relate to Rothbard's view of Holmes >> crying-fire-in-a-crowded-theater argument? > > My understanding is that Rothbard addresses the > crying-fire-in-a-crowded-theater argument as a problem of > free speech, where the Schenck v. United States is not a > free speech argument but a series of unlawful acts > undermining the war efforts of the US. Actually, that's not exactly the way the Court viewed it: the majority opinion was this was a case about where freedom of speech is limited. In other words, it was about the boundaries of freedom of speech. Of course, to be sure, these limits were, for the Court, set by the nation being at war. However, your take on this -- agreeing with the Court, it seems -- is not libertarian, but legalistic. Yes, if one agrees with a statist court interpreting law in a statist fashion, then you can agree with said limit. Rothbard -- and here he is not standing outside strict libertarianism -- does not agree. Also, the crying-fire-in-a-crowded-theater argument is just what Holmes uses to establish that freedom of speech can be limited. It's an analogy he uses, I take it, because simply arguing as you do would not in his [Holmes'] mind not settle the issue. (In fact, another constitutional interpretation could be that the First Amendment supersedes any congressional declaration of war -- so that merely by declaring a war, the First Amendment cannot be set aside. Note: this is not a libertarian interpretation. The strict libertarian interpretation is that the federal government has NO right to set limits of rights, including setting limits on free expression or drafting individuals. This strict view seems to me to fit with Extropianism better than the alternative -- the alternative being that governments have a right to abridge individual rights. The latter -- governmental interpretation and abridgement of rights -- seems to me to be a call for regression and turning back civilization from an advance toward posthumanity to barbarism.) >> In my understanding of Schenck v. United States, I >> completely and >> wholeheartedly disagree.? Schenck was not under >> contractual >> obligation to the federal government not to express >> his opinion >> concerning the draft and the war. > > In fact, Schenck was not incriminated for printing the > leaflets and distributing them to the wide public or stating > his opinion in public, but to sending them to drafted men to > incite them to resist the draft and disobey to lawful orders > and the words he used were not rational albeit passionate; > they were directed to incite fear and other strong emotions > in young men that were vulnerable to them. > > The proper way to prevent the draftees to be sent in war > was to change the Congress opinion or the electors opinion, > not push the draftees to mutiny and rebellion. That's the not the "proper way" from a libertarian perspective, but from a statist one. The libertarian view would be to call the draft itself unjust and thus to be resisted period. (The only limits to said resistance would be that no one's rights be violated in the process. That the Congress declared war gives it and the rest of the government no special right to ensalve (to draft) and no right to prevent someone from expressing views that will undermine the government's efforts to enslave or to make war.) >> Even if he were under some sort of >> obligation for common defence -- something that >> remains to be proved >> -- it's hard to see how that same government's >> involvement in a >> European war had anything to do with the common >> defence. > > This would become a longer thread, so maybe it is better > not start it now. I limit myself to note that the best way > to help people after a earthquake is to build earthquake > resistant homes before the earthquake. And while US involvement in World War One is a long debate, the actual outcome was not to make, to stick with your metaphor, "earthquake resistant home," but to make the homes more vulnerable to earthquakes. After all, it set the stage for a much worse conflict and the aftermath of that was the Cold War. (My opinion is US involvement in World War One actually made the world safe for the British and French states to expand into the Middle East and for fascism and communism to rise -- the fruits of which we're still seeing to this day. Hard to say what might have been, but my guess is had the US stayed out of that European war, Germany would've eventually been forced to negotiate, but the outcome would've been much more limited -- rather than the British and French dictating terms to the losers.) >> At best, >> it'd be a matter of opinion and one could easily >> imagine a reasonable >> opinion against that war being for common defence. > > In fact, I'm sure many were against the war but only a few > went if jail. But the point is many were silenced. In fact, the government (or any criminal gang) need only make an example or two to silence many more. This is exactly the kind of thing I think goes against an open and Extropian society: the fear that expressing an opinion that goes against official policy, especially during a supposed emergency, is quashed. In fact, it's during crises and emergencies when elites all too often suppress contrary views and rationalize this suppression in the name of the greater good -- a greater good which they, notably, define and supposedly speak for. Regards, Dan From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 1 17:22:29 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 17:22:29 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Economic laws/was Re: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <946178.5644.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <946178.5644.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 5/1/09, dan_ust wrote: > Not at all. The free market is an ideal. However, economic laws, like the Law > of Supply and Demand, apply to non-ideal conditions. This is why that law is > applied fruitfully to regulated markets. For instance, the reason why many > economists argue against rent control and minimum wage laws (and other price > controls) is because the Law of Supply and Demand shows how, all else being > equal, these interventions will not have the intended outcomes -- unless the > intention is to, respectively, cause housing shortages and increase unemployment. > (The Law, of course, does not mathematically predict the amount of real world > shortages or gluts.) > I have responded in more detail to a later post than the one you quoted. But, to summarize, I feel it is a very odd sort of law that has unpredictable outcomes. Because 'all else is *never* equal' every situation has to be examined on its merits. As just one example, if GM cut the price of their cars by 10%, consumers probably wouldn't rush to buy. Why not? Where has the 'law' gone that says cut prices = sell more? It is because of expectations that next month prices will be even cheaper. Or, maybe, GM might go bust, so they wouldn't buy a GM car at any price. Or, maybe, they just don't like GM cars. This applies to every price change. You have to examine the special circumstances every time. Put prices up, sales increase. Why? Because the goods now have an added 'expensive' image. There are other explanations as well. It might as well be random. I much prefer a 'law' that says if you do x, then y will *always* happen. That's my kind of law. BillK From spike66 at att.net Fri May 1 17:12:58 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 10:12:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <43EB0C5358A04EFBAEABD26D8D52E9AA@spike> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <43EB0C5358A04EFBAEABD26D8D52E9AA@spike> Message-ID: <956A3E442C544284AC0562796AEA2565@spike> > ...On Behalf Of spike > Subject: Re: [ExI] Group Selection Advances > > ... > > Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances > > > > Early on, I naturally believed in group selection, and > Darwin did too; it seemed rather obvious and logical... Lee > > When debates over group selection in evolution take place, > humans get into the picture. Perhaps we have a hard time > discussing humans in evolution because we are too close to > the situation. Furthermore humans evidently have all these > meta-memes which mess with our instincts. For this reason it > is perhaps easier to debate the topic by looking at the > example of the Irish elk, which apparently evolved themselves > into a corner: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Elk ... > spike It seems that with the survival of the species at stake, some sporty young Irish elk couple would have come up with an alternate position, in which the stag's massive antlers could somehow rest on the ground. It is difficult to form a mental image of that. Are humans the only species with more than one mating position? Intraspecies war (as far as I know) is seen in only four species, chimps, gorillas, humans and ants. The anthropologists argue to this day whether the chimp and gorilla intraspecies fights qualify as war. Some are more comfortable comparing that phenom to a gang rumble, for they tend to be chaotic and short-lived with little apparent overall plan or goal, and the territory capture aspect is questioned. So intraspecies war would then be considered something that is seen in nature but is extremely rare if one ignores humankind as an oddball species. Even the ants would be considered a special case, because the actual fighting is be done exclusively by the non-breeders, as neither the queen nor the drones get involved in duking it out, or in this case mandibling it out. It is the workers which open a can of whoop-abdomen. It isn't clear to me that this case of war would lead to group selection, for the losing side maintains its reproductive capacity. Imagine a group of hungry pre-technology humans, where some extropian minded individual comes up with the idea of agriculture. Some agree this is a great hi-tech way to get reliable food, but the majority insist on the traditional way of praying to Etaoin Shrdlu for divine guidance in finding roots, berries and squirrels. Over time, the agriculturalists have a more reliable food source, become richer and more numerous, and eventually everyone is an agriculturalist. If this is not a clear example of group selection I don't know what else to call it. I can imagine that group selection is analogous to intraspecies war: present in nature but extremely rare. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 1 17:55:29 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 12:55:29 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <956A3E442C544284AC0562796AEA2565@spike> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <43EB0C5358A04EFBAEABD26D8D52E9AA@spike> <956A3E442C544284AC0562796AEA2565@spike> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090501124926.0227b970@satx.rr.com> At 10:12 AM 5/1/2009 -0700, spike wrote: >Imagine a group of hungry pre-technology humans, where some extropian minded >individual comes up with the idea of agriculture. Some agree this is a >great hi-tech way to get reliable food, but the majority insist on the >traditional way of praying to Etaoin Shrdlu for divine guidance in finding >roots, berries and squirrels. Over time, the agriculturalists have a more >reliable food source, become richer and more numerous, and eventually >everyone is an agriculturalist. If this is not a clear example of group >selection I don't know what else to call it. Learning? There'd be some genetic components to that--aptitude for observation and analysis, maybe, or for following a persuasive leader--but I'd imagine there could be many diverse paths to agriculture or industry or Twitter. Big brains, even hidebound conservative big brains, beat the hell outta blind watchmakers. Damien Broderick From aware at awareresearch.com Fri May 1 17:43:26 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 10:43:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Economic laws/was Re: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <946178.5644.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 10:22 AM, BillK wrote: > I much prefer a 'law' that says if you do x, then y will *always* happen. > That's my kind of law. Nothing at all wrong with such "laws", or rather principles describing observed regularities. The problem here (as often within these "rationalist" forums), is one of context. The meaning of x (its semantics, its observed nature in terms of the dynamics of the system) is *always* dependent on context, and when context is taken into account, the value of the principle is a reflection of its extreme consistency (within an extremely general context.) - Jef From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 1 18:09:14 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 13:09:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.co m> References: <710b78fc0904292252t4d46e87k3f4545c9bc5b08e0@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904292314l7e8f3ee3l9afd931381492c25@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> At 11:28 PM 4/30/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: > > If a universal income made it really hard > > to employ people to do this, then it would provide incentive to > > private industry (or a free project!) to automate the job once and for > > all. > >### Since you would need to tax private industry into oblivion to >provide an universal income guarantee, nothing would get automated. The thread-context has been lost, I think. My sense is that this thread started as an enquiry into what happens as machines drive more and more people out of work--can such people be retained, and for what jobs? Even so, in my own long post summarizing early analyses of guaranteed income proposals, I cited one economist's estimate that introducing such a scheme in the 1960s or 1970s would have cost the equivalent of a small war. There has been a number of wars since then, large and small, paid for by taxpayers, yet private industry is still around (even if it's currently battered by other failures, usually of its own making). Damien Broderick From aware at awareresearch.com Fri May 1 18:19:41 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 11:19:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090501124926.0227b970@satx.rr.com> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <43EB0C5358A04EFBAEABD26D8D52E9AA@spike> <956A3E442C544284AC0562796AEA2565@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501124926.0227b970@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: The arguments about "group" or "multilevel" selection remind me of similar silliness about the evolvability of modularity in genetic programming. * Yes, it's mathematically demonstrable that the alleles of individuals within a group will not evolve in favor of fitness acting at the level of the group. * Yes, given static objectives, there is no increased fitness to offset the added cost of functional modularity. But, characteristically, I'd like to point out it's a matter of context. * Groups do tend to split and then evolve independently, such that their distinct genes do tend to eventually compete at the group level. * Environments do tend to change, conferring increased fitness on modular reuse of functional building blocks. And overall, evolution isn't about genes or particular modules, but about exploiting increasingly synergistic (extropic, multi-level) solutions maximizing freedom with least action (at least within the system.) - Jef From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 1 18:21:48 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 18:21:48 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Economic laws/was Re: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <946178.5644.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 5/1/09, Aware wrote: > Nothing at all wrong with such "laws", or rather principles describing > observed regularities. The problem here (as often within these > "rationalist" forums), is one of context. The meaning of x (its > semantics, its observed nature in terms of the dynamics of the system) > is *always* dependent on context, and when context is taken into > account, the value of the principle is a reflection of its extreme > consistency (within an extremely general context.) > Perhaps surprisingly, I agree! :) As I said, every situation has to be examined on its own merits. I am objecting to simplistic economic statements like 'reduce prices and sell more'. Sometimes that happens, but not always. Like the years of economic depression we are in now, prices will be falling for many years, but there will be little, if any, increase in sales for a long time to come. BillK From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 1 18:41:33 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 11:41:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Economic laws Message-ID: <916515.16069.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/1/09, Aware wrote: > BillK wrote: > >> I much prefer a 'law' that says if you do x, then y >> will *always* happen. That's my kind of law. > > Nothing at all wrong with such "laws", or rather principles > describing > observed regularities.? The problem here (as often > within these > "rationalist" forums), is one of context.? The meaning > of x (its > semantics, its observed nature in terms of the dynamics of > the system) > is *always* dependent on context, and when context is taken > into > account, the value of the principle is a reflection of its > extreme > consistency (within an extremely general context.) There's another point to be made here too. Economic laws -- and laws in general of this sort -- are literally incontrovertible and they don't result merely, as I've pointed out before, because one casually decides to accept this or that context. They actually apply to the context of human action. The form they take in particular case, of course, depends on the particulars of that case. I hope to respond more directly to Bill's rejoinder later. Regards, Dan From benboc at lineone.net Fri May 1 19:30:37 2009 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 20:30:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <49FB4DDD.5010509@lineone.net> Dan wrote: > --- On Tue, 4/21/09, John K Clark wrote: > > "Keith Henson" > > >> > > Of course I agree with you.How would you go about > > reducing the cost? > > > > Use lunar materials, but you don't like that idea. A space > > elevator would be > > nice but I don't expect to see one anytime soon. > I would say: lunar or (inclusive) other off-world materials. Plenty of NEOs to mine. > Of course, to be sure, there is far less data on their composition and structure -- as > well as many other unknowns regarding them. OK, I'm way behind on this list, so someone may have asked this already, but I'm interested in the issue of NEOs as a source of raw materials, and whether this is even remotely feasible. I'm thinking NEOs, like most things in space, go fast, relative to the earth. Really fast. Getting to them, extracting useful resources and getting back with those resources isn't at all like drilling for oil or digging up metal ore here on earth. I suspect it's possible that the energy required to get there and get the hydrocarbons or ores or whatever back, would far outweigh their value. Anybody know some hard facts about this? Ben Zaiboc From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 1 19:59:30 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 21:59:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905011259o60543cefkabcd689d03d16912@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 6:13 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > But these ways did *not* include group selection. > So does group selection exist, or not? > > Of course, humans hardly need such genes for group > selection, since memes serve so much more powerfully. In fact, most of the debate is concerned with our own, somewhat "special", position. I think it is best however to examine first the issue in general terms, temporarily excluding whatever might be peculiar to the human species from the tableau, since this ends up clarifying issues which have a broader interest *and* remain relevant for our own case - irrespective of the addenda and qualifications that may concern only us. I will read with interest the material at the link indicated, and for the time being much of what I know and find more persuasive on the subject is related either to gene selection (sociobiologists' main explanation of altruism in nature) or to game theory. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 1 20:14:30 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 22:14:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <1240886493_3274@s5.cableone.net> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer> <49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net> <49F6011F.90406@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com> <49F6359E.6090300@libero.it> <1240886493_3274@s5.cableone.net> Message-ID: <580930c20905011314h48de2dcfkdd8de97b23bbd675@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 4:33 AM, hkhenson wrote: > It would have to be structured carefully so at the end the customers were > getting cheap power (and synthetic oil). In fact, natural fossil and other chemical fuels and the possible scarcity thereof are really not an issue when you have abundant, cheap energy from another source. Not only because the latter can replace the former for most purposes, but also because they can easily - albeit obviously with energy-negative processes - synthesised in arbitrary quantities. The point on which I have increasing doubts is whether they are really suited to carry a significant mass of matter out of deep gravity wells. In fact, were the earth more massive, it might even be impossible, if I am not mistaken, to achieve escape velocity with chemical-reaction rockets, given that any such fuel would not contain enough energy to lift itself, let alone any useful payload and the necessary vehicle. And even from planets of earth mass, the margin available for the latter with which we have to work is very limited indeed, so that no engineering magic can do more than working on decimals... -- Stefano Vaj From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 1 20:10:23 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 13:10:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Resource extraction from NEOs/was Re: Power satellites Message-ID: <93018.71988.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/1/09, ben wrote: > Dan wrote: >> I would say: lunar or (inclusive) other off-world >> materials.? Plenty of NEOs to mine. >> Of course, to be sure, there is far less data on their >> composition and structure -- as >> well as many other unknowns regarding them. > > OK, I'm way behind on this list, so someone may have asked > this already, but I'm interested in the issue of NEOs as a > source of raw materials, and whether this is even remotely > feasible. Well, I think the two big problems with NEOs as a source of raw materials is finding out what they're composed of and their overall structure. My guess is they probably fall into a few classes and each member of the class differs in ways that would mean one would have to do some prospecting... However, things are not too different with Luna -- save that there's lots more data. But, still, no one has done a lot of prospecting and from only a handful of sites have samples been taken. The rest is guess and surmise based on the samples and remote sensing. > I'm thinking NEOs, like most things in space, go fast, > relative to the earth.? Really fast.? Getting to > them, extracting useful resources and getting back with > those resources isn't at all like drilling for oil or > digging up metal ore here on earth. The difference: no atmosphere and extremely low gravity. Once you're above the Earth's atmosphere, as the saying does, you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system. Also, the usual proposal for lunar extraction involves using mass drivers -- not taking off with a space ship loaded with ore. (I actually don't see why a lot of processing can't be done on location on Luna -- or on an asteroid.) No reason the same can't be done with a NEO. Of course, rendezvousing with a NEO involves problems, but there are a few in fairly regular orbits. Soem are Earth-crossers, so they come closer, but then, yes, the speeds are high. I don't think it's impossible -- just a little harder than lunar prospecting and landing. (Partly because the latter has been done before, partly because Luna's orbit/positions are really well mapped out, and partly because Luna is a really big target compared with the average NEO.) > I suspect it's > possible that the energy required to get there and get the > hydrocarbons or ores or whatever back, would far outweigh > their value. I actually think you're wrong here, but this is my guess. First off, regarding volatiles, Luna has none (or so it seems) and hauling them up from Earth would be very expensive. Mass drivering (word?) them off a NEO would seem -- and this my guess - fairly low cost. (Prospecting the NEO, mining it, and placing a mass driver on it would seem to me to be where the large costs would in the whole operation. But Luna has similar costs -- it ain't free.) They could be launched into a solar orbit to be caught at whatever desire location and the mass driver could be solar powered. > Anybody know some hard facts about this? Well, it's speculation for now. The only sure numbers we have are past and current prices on hauling stuff up the gravity well. Regards, Dan From hkhenson at rogers.com Fri May 1 20:21:27 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 13:21:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <43EB0C5358A04EFBAEABD26D8D52E9AA@spike> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <43EB0C5358A04EFBAEABD26D8D52E9AA@spike> Message-ID: <1241209746_17598@S3.cableone.net> At 09:47 PM 4/30/2009, you wrote: > > > ...On Behalf Of Lee Corbin > > Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances > > > > Early on, I naturally believed in group selection, and Darwin > > did too; it seemed rather obvious and logical. > > > > Then along came Dawkins who spread the views of the critics > > of Wynne-Edwards (a great group selection advocate), and > > finally in "The Selfish Gene", "The Extended Phenotype", or > > "The Blind Watchmater" Dawkins penetrated my thick skull. >... > > Lee > >When debates over group selection in evolution take place, humans get into >the picture. Perhaps we have a hard time discussing humans in evolution >because we are too close to the situation. Furthermore humans evidently >have all these meta-memes which mess with our instincts. Could you be more specific? I don't know what you might mean by this. I have never seen a proposed group selection trait that could not be accounted for with standard selfish gene theory. Keith From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 1 21:21:09 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 23:21:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <1241209746_17598@S3.cableone.net> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <43EB0C5358A04EFBAEABD26D8D52E9AA@spike> <1241209746_17598@S3.cableone.net> Message-ID: <580930c20905011421s376041caxb9d8f88b2d2c21f@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 10:21 PM, hkhenson wrote: > I have never seen a proposed group selection trait that could not be > accounted for with standard selfish gene theory. Yes and no. The original hypothesis had mostly to do AFAIK with the relative genetic proximity of the altruist behaviour's beneficiaries - offspring, hive, family, herd, tribe, etc. OTOH, on the basis of a game theory approach, it is sufficient that dividends in terms of increased success, offered by the genetic traits inclining towards group loyalty, exceed the related costs for the relevant traits to thrive. More or less as in the case of an agreement amongst a few players at a poker table. You are right however in the sense that even in the second scenario the only ultimate beneficiary may only be the replicator that codifies for the trait - or the trait would never evolved and be maintained in the first place. -- Stefano Vaj From hkhenson at rogers.com Fri May 1 21:00:06 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 14:00:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <1241198068_18421@s1.cableone.net> At 09:13 PM 4/30/2009, Lee quoted from: >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection > >"The problem with group selection is that for a whole group to get a >single trait, it must spread through the whole group first by >regular evolution. But, as J. L. Mackie suggested, when there are >many different groups, each with a different Evolutionarily Stable >Strategy (ESS), there is selection between the different ESSs, since >some are worse than others[20]. For example, a group where altruism >arose would outcompete a group where every creature acted in its own interest." The last sentence is not true, because creatures *DO NOT* act in their own self interest. They act in the self interest of their genes. Most of the time that *looks* like self interest. Then along comes a situation where it is clear that the interest of the creature and it's genes have diverged--and the genes dictate the response. If you have been listening to me in the last few years at all, you can plug in the common examples I have used. If you have not and don't want to look in the archives, ask. Keith From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 1 21:37:38 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 21:37:38 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <1241198068_18421@s1.cableone.net> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <1241198068_18421@s1.cableone.net> Message-ID: On 5/1/09, hkhenson wrote: > The last sentence is not true, because creatures *DO NOT* act in their own > self interest. They act in the self interest of their genes. Most of the > time that *looks* like self interest. Then along comes a situation where it > is clear that the interest of the creature and it's genes have diverged--and > the genes dictate the response. > Isn't this disproved by the falling birth rates in first world societies? Developed societies are deciding that riches and a comfortable lifestyle is preferable to the trouble and expense of raising children. Surely it isn't in the self interest of the genes to reduce reproduction? BillK From hkhenson at rogers.com Fri May 1 21:17:08 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 14:17:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <956A3E442C544284AC0562796AEA2565@spike> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <43EB0C5358A04EFBAEABD26D8D52E9AA@spike> <956A3E442C544284AC0562796AEA2565@spike> Message-ID: <1241213087_18138@s6.cableone.net> At 10:12 AM 5/1/2009, spike wrote: snip >It seems that with the survival of the species at stake, some sporty young >Irish elk couple would have come up with an alternate position, in which the >stag's massive antlers could somehow rest on the ground. It is difficult to >form a mental image of that. Are humans the only species with more than one >mating position? You should read the wiki article. The antlers are not thought to have been the problem. >Intraspecies war (as far as I know) is seen in only four species, chimps, >gorillas, humans and ants. What gorillas do can't really be called war. It's displacement of one harem master with another. Lions come closer because one group of brothers will fight another group for the females in a pride. You can make a case for wolves and hyenas where social groups fight other social groups, generally at the territory edges. The same may be true of cooperative breeding birds, where a group hold the territory and one pair breeds. >The anthropologists argue to this day whether >the chimp and gorilla intraspecies fights qualify as war. Some are more >comfortable comparing that phenom to a gang rumble, for they tend to be >chaotic and short-lived with little apparent overall plan or goal, and the >territory capture aspect is questioned. Read Goodall on this subject. Her group at Gombe was severely reduced and their territory much reduced at one point. A splinter groups was killed to the very last individual, and in other places whole groups have been subjected to genocide. What's really interesting is that Bonobos, who are as closely related to us as chimps, don't seem to do this. >So intraspecies war would then be >considered something that is seen in nature but is extremely rare if one >ignores humankind as an oddball species. Even the ants would be considered >a special case, because the actual fighting is be done exclusively by the >non-breeders, as neither the queen nor the drones get involved in duking it >out, or in this case mandibling it out. It is the workers which open a can >of whoop-abdomen. It isn't clear to me that this case of war would lead to >group selection, for the losing side maintains its reproductive capacity. Over time, much reduced capacity is "failing to reproduce." >Imagine a group of hungry pre-technology humans, where some extropian minded >individual comes up with the idea of agriculture. Some agree this is a >great hi-tech way to get reliable food, but the majority insist on the >traditional way of praying to Etaoin Shrdlu for divine guidance in finding >roots, berries and squirrels. Over time, the agriculturalists have a more >reliable food source, become richer and more numerous, and eventually >everyone is an agriculturalist. If this is not a clear example of group >selection I don't know what else to call it. It's not. It is a simple case of one trait (farming) pushing out another (hunter gatherer). Happened a number of times. Farmers were not better off, but there were typically 200 times as many of them. >I can imagine that group selection is analogous to intraspecies war: present >in nature but extremely rare. I don't think anyone has made a cogent argument for group selection. I have never seen one that can't be better understood with ordinary evolution. Keith From hkhenson at rogers.com Fri May 1 21:51:26 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 14:51:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <49FB4DDD.5010509@lineone.net> References: <49FB4DDD.5010509@lineone.net> Message-ID: <1241215145_18153@s8.cableone.net> At 12:30 PM 5/1/2009, Ben Zaiboc wrote: snip >OK, I'm way behind on this list, so someone may have asked this >already, but I'm interested in the issue of NEOs as a source of raw >materials, and whether this is even remotely feasible. Sure. A reasonable mass budget for a processing plant is ~50,000 t or 5 million kg. At current launch prices, it would cost $1000 billion just to launch it. >I'm thinking NEOs, like most things in space, go fast, relative to >the earth. Really fast. Getting to them, extracting useful >resources and getting back with those resources isn't at all like >drilling for oil or digging up metal ore here on earth. I suspect >it's possible that the energy required to get there and get the >hydrocarbons or ores or whatever back, would far outweigh their value. >Anybody know some hard facts about this? In the context of a power sat construction project that is using a million tons per year of materials, it's just a matter of delta V and payback time. For example, GEO and asteroid 1986 DA are only 140 m/sec from each other. If the processing plant was turning out 2% of its mass per day, in say Invar, it would take 50 days for the investment in the processing plant to repay its mass. Simple math. It does take some design thought. My suggestion is an open ended induction furnace where the metal is drawn off in a fast moving rod. Keith From hkhenson at rogers.com Fri May 1 22:08:28 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 15:08:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <580930c20905011314h48de2dcfkdd8de97b23bbd675@mail.gmail.co m> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer> <49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net> <49F6011F.90406@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com> <49F6359E.6090300@libero.it> <1240886493_3274@s5.cableone.net> <580930c20905011314h48de2dcfkdd8de97b23bbd675@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1241202078_18611@s1.cableone.net> At 01:14 PM 5/1/2009, Stefano wrote: >On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 4:33 AM, hkhenson wrote: > > It would have to be structured carefully so at the end the customers were > > getting cheap power (and synthetic oil). > >In fact, natural fossil and other chemical fuels and the possible >scarcity thereof are really not an issue when you have abundant, cheap >energy from another source. Not only because the latter can replace >the former for most purposes, but also because they can easily - >albeit obviously with energy-negative processes - synthesised in >arbitrary quantities. Details including capital cost here: http://htyp.org/Dollar_a_gallon_gasoline >The point on which I have increasing doubts is whether they are really >suited to carry a significant mass of matter out of deep gravity >wells. For almost a year I have been talking about how to do this: http://htyp.org/Hundred_dollars_a_kg Compared to using chemical rockets for the same traffic, using lasers ablation propulsion for the second stage reduced the lift off mass (per hour) by a fact of 5, from one 6000 ton rocket to four 300 ton rockets. This provides at least a five to one reduction in transport cost to GEO. >In fact, were the earth more massive, it might even be impossible, if >I am not mistaken, to achieve escape velocity with chemical-reaction >rockets, given that any such fuel would not contain enough energy to >lift itself, let alone any useful payload and the necessary vehicle. The key word you use here is "useful." But you can put number on it. If you want to say anything about space you really have to understand the rocket equation. Even a graphical understanding of it is good enough. Look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Deltavs.svg and check out what mass ratio you need for a delta V of just 3 times the exhaust velocity. >And even from planets of earth mass, the margin available for the >latter with which we have to work is very limited indeed, so that no >engineering magic can do more than working on decimals... The problem is not getting off *our* rock. It is getting off cheaply. Keith From hkhenson at rogers.com Fri May 1 22:14:11 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 15:14:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <1241198068_18421@s1.cableone.net> Message-ID: <1241202415_18624@s1.cableone.net> At 02:37 PM 5/1/2009, Billk wrote: >On 5/1/09, hkhenson wrote: > > The last sentence is not true, because creatures *DO NOT* act in their own > > self interest. They act in the self interest of their genes. Most of the > > time that *looks* like self interest. Then along comes a > situation where it > > is clear that the interest of the creature and it's genes have > diverged--and > > the genes dictate the response. > > >Isn't this disproved by the falling birth rates in first world societies? No. The only thing this shows is a temporary mismatch between the environment (including culture as environmental element) and the genes. Come back and see what genes are around after 20 generations. >Developed societies are deciding that riches and a comfortable >lifestyle is preferable to the trouble and expense of raising >children. > >Surely it isn't in the self interest of the genes to reduce reproduction? Never. By definition. Keith From hkhenson at rogers.com Fri May 1 21:38:50 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 14:38:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Yielding to Ideology Over Science, by Ron Bailey In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905010014n7798ac4n2368bd4866dc956b@mail.gmail.com > References: <200905010537.n415bbp4022090@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0905010014n7798ac4n2368bd4866dc956b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1241214389_16947@s5.cableone.net> At 12:14 AM 5/1/2009, Emlyn wrote: >2009/5/1 Max More : > > Another good piece by Ron Bailey: > > > > Yielding to Ideology Over Science > > > > > > Why don't environmentalists celebrate modern farming on Earth Day? > > > > http://www.reason.com/news/show/132997.html > >I think this is shaky ground. While modern farming looks to be a good >thing for the environment per se, improved agricultural technology >seems to just let us increase the total population. More people == >more environmental stressors. Environmentalists don't approve of this. > >Me, I'm for more people. Go people! This is a good idea *only* if the resources (economy) are increasing faster than the population. Otherwise, it is a prescription for wars. Keith From aware at awareresearch.com Fri May 1 22:32:57 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 15:32:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <1241213087_18138@s6.cableone.net> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <43EB0C5358A04EFBAEABD26D8D52E9AA@spike> <956A3E442C544284AC0562796AEA2565@spike> <1241213087_18138@s6.cableone.net> Message-ID: On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 2:17 PM, hkhenson wrote: > I don't think anyone has made a cogent argument for group selection. ?I have > never seen one that can't be better understood with ordinary evolution. This looks like a good response to your question: Why Multilevel Selection Matters And we haven't even touched yet upon epigenetics. - Jef From spike66 at att.net Fri May 1 22:22:38 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 15:22:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <1241198068_18421@s1.cableone.net> Message-ID: <028D540D17874492953C86C844BDC583@spike> .... > > Isn't this disproved by the falling birth rates in first > world societies? > > Developed societies are deciding that riches and a > comfortable lifestyle is preferable to the trouble and > expense of raising children. > > Surely it isn't in the self interest of the genes to reduce > reproduction? > > BillK >>humans evidently have all these meta-memes which mess with our instincts. spike >Could you be more specific? I don't know what you might mean by this. Keith Keith and BillK, this gets to what I meant with the instincts comment. Humans don't act only on instinct. We think, we look at the bigger picture. If we operated on instinct, we would mate like crazy. Hmmm, we do mate like crazy. OK bad example. {8^D We wouldn't work in an office 9 to 5 that's for sure. We choose our mates partly based their wealth for instance, or perceived stability, instead of the more standard instinctive stuff like the size and shape of the body, or perceived fertility, the stuff that is so popular in the rest of the animal kingdom. Lucky for me. {8^D This makes us a difficult subject to study from an evolutionary point of view. spike From spike66 at att.net Fri May 1 22:11:36 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 15:11:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <580930c20905011314h48de2dcfkdd8de97b23bbd675@mail.gmail.com> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com><1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer><49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net><49F6011F.90406@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com><49F6359E.6090300@libero.it> <1240886493_3274@s5.cableone.net> <580930c20905011314h48de2dcfkdd8de97b23bbd675@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <046D94F45FCD4AEF9F4800338D648EED@spike> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Stefano Vaj > ... > > In fact, were the earth more massive, it might even be > impossible, if I am not mistaken, to achieve escape velocity > with chemical-reaction rockets, given that any such fuel > would not contain enough energy to lift itself, let alone any > useful payload and the necessary vehicle... > > -- > Stefano Vaj No. Well, not exactly. If the earth were more massive, there is not a point where achieving escape becomes *impossible* but rather it does quickly approach impractical. The process is exponential, but with no brick wall stopping the whole parade. >...given that any such fuel would not contain enough energy to lift itself... Keep in mind that *the fuel* doesn't actually need to lift itself. I think you meant if the earth were very much larger, we couldn't build a first stage that could take off vertically. Even this isn't quite right, depending on how much one is willing to go to extraordinary lengths. If we were willing to fire up a Saturn V to get one kg to LEO, the earth could be more massive and we could still get there. The more interesting question, and perhaps the one you were getting to, was this: *Is it possible to do single stage to orbit?* That question is still open. My best answer is yes it is, but you hafta go without payload and no humans aboard, if you intend to recover the vehicle. Without needing to recover the bird, there is not much point in going single stage, ja? I started my career in aerospace weight engineering. The annual conventions back then had a side session where the smart guys would present designs for SSTO and argue if it is possible. They still repeat the same arguments 25 years later, and the numbers haven't changed appreciably in that time. My attitude has been SSTO is possible, but not practical, with chemical rockets. The earth is just big enough to spoil the fun. Lockheeed worked on it for a while, then abandoned it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-33 I intentionally stayed off the project, for I never could convince myself that the X-33 approach would work. In any case, this much I can assure you: NASA screwed this project, Lockheeed didn't. NASA refused to use known, practical technology, aluminum structure, opting instead to insist on a composite tank which I am confident wouldn't have worked. The reason I know (from bitter personal experience) is one must always take into account the following law of nature: composite tanks are always more problems than you anticipate. Even if you take law that into account and anticipate more problems than you anticipate, they are still more problems than you anticipate. Keith's pop up and push notion, where (one version) is a chemical propelled/laser ablation hybrid, might get us there. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 1 22:43:12 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 17:43:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <1241202415_18624@s1.cableone.net> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <1241198068_18421@s1.cableone.net> <1241202415_18624@s1.cableone.net> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090501173010.022ba2c8@satx.rr.com> At 03:14 PM 5/1/2009 -0700, Keith wrote: >>[BillK:] >>Isn't this disproved by the falling birth rates in first world societies? > >No. The only thing this shows is a temporary mismatch between the >environment (including culture as environmental element) and the genes. >> >>Surely it isn't in the self interest of the genes to reduce reproduction? > >Never. By definition. And hence, by definition, an appeal to the "self interest" of genes alone is insufficient. Keith, you're a meme guy. Calling culture an "environmental element" is dangerously simplistic. Culture is a turbulent memetic structure instantiated inside the phenotypes that are the cutting surface of selection, and distributed across mutually reachable phenotypes. So a gene-set builds a brain that hosts and expresses a mishmash of memes at various levels of abstraction and power and persistence, and that creates a Baldwin effect that helps shape the genomes of subsequent generations, so we're always talking about *co*-evolutionary elements and sets. I wouldn't be surprised if something like Benford's datavores and kenes (see THE SPIKE) already traverse the computational cloud of contiguous minds that can communicate and manipulate and reward each other. "National character" might be a first crude approximation at identifying such hypermind entities, and scientific paradigms and warrior faiths might be two more classes. Just musing... Damien Broderick From aware at awareresearch.com Fri May 1 23:11:54 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 16:11:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090501173010.022ba2c8@satx.rr.com> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <1241198068_18421@s1.cableone.net> <1241202415_18624@s1.cableone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501173010.022ba2c8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: > At 03:14 PM 5/1/2009 -0700, Keith wrote: >> [BillK:] >> Isn't this disproved by the falling birth rates in first world societies? > > No. ?The only thing this shows is a temporary mismatch between the > environment (including culture as environmental element) and the genes. >> >> Surely it isn't in the self interest of the genes to reduce reproduction? > > Never. ?By definition. Actually, that depends entirely on whether we mean reduce the reproduction *rate*, which would seem to be the only sensible interpretation, since the alternative amounts to a tautology. And of course throttling the reproduction rate is not only good for the longer-term persistence of the gene, but quite quickly become necessary for any organism in any environment given the ruinous consequences of unthrottled doubling. - Jef From hkhenson at rogers.com Sat May 2 01:43:12 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 18:43:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <028D540D17874492953C86C844BDC583@spike> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <1241198068_18421@s1.cableone.net> <028D540D17874492953C86C844BDC583@spike> Message-ID: <1241229051_17556@s5.cableone.net> At 03:22 PM 5/1/2009, spike wrote: >.... > > > > Isn't this disproved by the falling birth rates in first > > world societies? > > > > Developed societies are deciding that riches and a > > comfortable lifestyle is preferable to the trouble and > > expense of raising children. > > > > Surely it isn't in the self interest of the genes to reduce > > reproduction? > > > > BillK > > >>humans evidently have all these meta-memes which mess with our instincts. >spike > > >Could you be more specific? I don't know what you might mean by this. >Keith > >Keith and BillK, this gets to what I meant with the instincts comment. >Humans don't act only on instinct. We think, we look at the bigger picture. >If we operated on instinct, we would mate like crazy. Hmmm, we do mate like >crazy. OK bad example. {8^D We wouldn't work in an office 9 to 5 that's >for sure. Humans will do just about anything that gets them the wherewithal to live. I am sure people were trading things far, far back into prehistory and doing things like chipping rocks for tribe members not so skilled at that. >We choose our mates partly based their wealth for instance, or >perceived stability, instead of the more standard instinctive stuff like the >size and shape of the body, or perceived fertility, the stuff that is so >popular in the rest of the animal kingdom. Lucky for me. {8^D Ah, that's not exactly true. Men are attracted to signs of fertility, of course, but especially when it comes to long term relations, i.e., the possibility of children, both men and women rate smartness very highly. >This makes us a difficult subject to study from an evolutionary point of >view. Maybe so, but there are a load of people doing it. Keith From hkhenson at rogers.com Sat May 2 01:51:44 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 18:51:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <43EB0C5358A04EFBAEABD26D8D52E9AA@spike> <956A3E442C544284AC0562796AEA2565@spike> <1241213087_18138@s6.cableone.net> Message-ID: <1241215177_19140@s1.cableone.net> At 03:32 PM 5/1/2009, you wrote: >On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 2:17 PM, hkhenson wrote: > > I don't think anyone has made a cogent argument for group > selection. I have > > never seen one that can't be better understood with ordinary evolution. > >This looks like a good response to your question: > >Why Multilevel Selection Matters > I read that paper when it came out. It is poorly written and full of BS. If you want me to go into detail, post the whole thing right here and I will tear it apart. I am not saying that there can't be group selection, it just that nobody has *ever* come up with an example that cannot be completely explained by a combination of memetics and biological evolution. Keith >And we haven't even touched yet upon epigenetics. > >- Jef >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From hkhenson at rogers.com Sat May 2 02:06:16 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 19:06:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090501173010.022ba2c8@satx.rr.com> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <1241198068_18421@s1.cableone.net> <1241202415_18624@s1.cableone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501173010.022ba2c8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1241216029_19172@s1.cableone.net> At 03:43 PM 5/1/2009, you wrote: >At 03:14 PM 5/1/2009 -0700, Keith wrote: >>>[BillK:] >>>Isn't this disproved by the falling birth rates in first world societies? >> >>No. The only thing this shows is a temporary mismatch between the >>environment (including culture as environmental element) and the genes. >>> >>>Surely it isn't in the self interest of the genes to reduce reproduction? >> >>Never. By definition. > >And hence, by definition, an appeal to the "self interest" of genes >alone is insufficient. Keith, you're a meme guy. Calling culture an >"environmental element" is dangerously simplistic. Culture is a >turbulent memetic structure It is now, but there have been *long* periods of human evolution where it was damn near a constant. For over a million years the "hand ax" (killer frisbie) was a cultural constant. >instantiated inside the phenotypes that are the cutting surface of >selection, and distributed across mutually reachable phenotypes. So >a gene-set builds a brain that hosts and expresses a mishmash of >memes at various levels of abstraction and power and persistence, >and that creates a Baldwin effect that helps shape the genomes of >subsequent generations, so we're always talking about >*co*-evolutionary elements and sets. Hey, *I* am the Dr. Clark fan. If you buy into his well supported model, then the culture set new selection conditions for genes, selecting a set of personality genes that were not favored in waring hunter gatherers. Definitely co-evolution. >I wouldn't be surprised if something like Benford's datavores and >kenes (see THE SPIKE) already traverse the computational cloud of >contiguous minds that can communicate and manipulate and reward each >other. "National character" might be a first crude approximation at >identifying such hypermind entities, and scientific paradigms and >warrior faiths might be two more classes. And that doesn't count the information that replicates in computer space. Talk about THE SPIKE, I seriously doubt physical state humans will be here by the end of the century. Keith >Just musing... > >Damien Broderick > > >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From emlynoregan at gmail.com Sat May 2 03:30:09 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 13:00:09 +0930 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> References: <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905012030r774a4fa0i88d2a34265bc344d@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/2 Damien Broderick : > At 11:28 PM 4/30/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: > >> ?> If a universal income made it really hard >> > to employ people to do this, then it would provide incentive to >> > private industry (or a free project!) to automate the job once and for >> > all. >> >> ### Since you would need to tax private industry into oblivion to >> provide an universal income guarantee, nothing would get automated. > > The thread-context has been lost, I think. My sense is that this thread > started as an enquiry into what happens as machines drive more and more > people out of work--can such people be retained, and for what jobs? Even so, > in my own long post summarizing early analyses of guaranteed income > proposals, I cited one economist's estimate that introducing such a scheme > in the 1960s or 1970s would have cost the equivalent of a small war. There > has been a number of wars since then, large and small, paid for by > taxpayers, yet private industry is still around (even if it's currently > battered by other failures, usually of its own making). > > Damien Broderick > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > Yes thread context lost. Reboot. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 2 04:39:52 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 00:39:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Is Global Warming Junk Science? In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com> <400DD6F6CAD341159389CC225A6CDD8E@MyComputer> <49ED20CD.4030608@comcast.net> <7641ddc60904202313i72f0b4dg42b6301482c05e6c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904220951h638df3e0m9ceed3134c1dde8f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904271932k71a8dd29gf68fe07130a2bb05@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905012139l277fd2c9pb6043a4bb4c57698@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 1:55 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > > Unless we do something like power satellites or a huge nuclear > construction program, it is easy to see the price of fuel going up by > an order of magnitude. ### No matter how I strain, I can't see it coming, unless you are talking about fuel prices increase caused by a global nuclear war or global environmental hysteria. Oil is cheap and plentiful, and even if it runs out in 50 or 100 years, it can be made cheaply from coal, or gas. Just run the numbers. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 2 05:19:47 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 01:19:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> References: <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 2:09 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > > The thread-context has been lost, I think. My sense is that this thread > started as an enquiry into what happens as machines drive more and more > people out of work--can such people be retained, and for what jobs? Even so, > in my own long post summarizing early analyses of guaranteed income > proposals, I cited one economist's estimate that introducing such a scheme > in the 1960s or 1970s would have cost the equivalent of a small war. There > has been a number of wars since then, large and small, paid for by > taxpayers, yet private industry is still around (even if it's currently > battered by other failures, usually of its own making). ### That economist may have been a commie. It's silly think that GI would cost as much as a small war! No, it would cost as much as a medium large never ending civil war. The real cost is not the piddling amount of money initially committed to the parasites. The real cost of such schemes is totally different from the primary initial costs and it is driven by secondary effects over long periods of time. For example, the monetary cost of Social Security increased by orders of magnitude due to various selection effects and political pressuring. At the same time Social Security reduced investment - people do not invest for retirement if they think the state will give them money later, and besides they have now less money to invest because the state is taxing it away to pay off previous "investors", just like Bernie Madoff. This contributed to the catastrophic slowing of long term economic growth which fell to as little as 3 - 4% a year from the 10% or more normally expected in a well-functioning industrial economy. Or take the War on Drugs - the cost of paying the narcs is a tiny fraction of the full cost of the war. You have to add the impact of inducing widespread corruption, strengthening of gangs, destruction of neighborhoods, inducing destruction of other countries, increasing revenues of terrorist organizations, direct and opportunity cost of keeping millions of people in prison, and soon you are talking about real money. Same with GI - the problem is in feeding the parasites and punishing workers over long time. At first just a few parasites, and not punishing much but as parasites breed, they vote for more money, so the burden on workers is higher, so there are fewer workers and more parasites, and the positive feedback effects feed on each other, until something breaks. Luckily, the black rain will kill us all way before so we don't really have to worry about the long run. Rafal From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat May 2 06:05:13 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 02 May 2009 01:05:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.co m> References: <710b78fc0904292352w114346f6y9894c64ed43491dc@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090502005902.022f41e8@satx.rr.com> At 01:19 AM 5/2/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: > > I cited one economist's estimate that introducing such a scheme > > in the 1960s or 1970s would have cost the equivalent of a small war. There > > has been a number of wars since then, large and small, paid for by > > taxpayers, yet private industry is still around (even if it's currently > > battered by other failures, usually of its own making). > >### That economist may have been a commie. Milton Friedman was making the same case at the same time. I've never heard him described as a commie. Of course, in 1971 Rothbard wrote: "Milton Friedman is the Establishment's Court Libertarian." I guess that's like a commie. Damien Broderick From hkhenson at rogers.com Sat May 2 05:43:32 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 22:43:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Is Global Warming Junk Science? In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905012139l277fd2c9pb6043a4bb4c57698@mail.gmail.co m> References: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com> <400DD6F6CAD341159389CC225A6CDD8E@MyComputer> <49ED20CD.4030608@comcast.net> <7641ddc60904202313i72f0b4dg42b6301482c05e6c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904220951h638df3e0m9ceed3134c1dde8f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904271932k71a8dd29gf68fe07130a2bb05@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905012139l277fd2c9pb6043a4bb4c57698@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1241243472_19126@S4.cableone.net> At 09:39 PM 5/1/2009, Rafal wrote: >On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 1:55 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > > > > > Unless we do something like power satellites or a huge nuclear > > construction program, it is easy to see the price of fuel going up by > > an order of magnitude. > >### No matter how I strain, I can't see it coming, unless you are >talking about fuel prices increase caused by a global nuclear war or >global environmental hysteria. Oil is cheap and plentiful, and even if >it runs out in 50 or 100 years, it can be made cheaply from coal, or >gas. Just run the numbers. I have. www.htyp.org/dtc If you have your version of the numbers up on the net somewhere, let me know. Keith From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 2 06:34:05 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 02:34:05 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090502005902.022f41e8@satx.rr.com> References: <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090502005902.022f41e8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905012334i1bdf0570y1daec5bbdb806f25@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 2:05 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 01:19 AM 5/2/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: > >> > I cited one economist's estimate that introducing such a scheme >> > in the 1960s or 1970s would have cost the equivalent of a small war. >> > There >> > has been a number of wars since then, large and small, paid for by >> > taxpayers, yet private industry is still around (even if it's currently >> > battered by other failures, usually of its own making). >> >> ### That economist may have been a commie. > > Milton Friedman was making the same case at the same time. I've never heard > him described as a commie. Of course, in 1971 Rothbard wrote: "Milton > Friedman is the Establishment's Court Libertarian." I guess that's like a > commie. > > > > ### Yeah, if you are a Murray N. Rothbard, or a Rafal M. Smigrodzki, almost everybody is almost a commie. And BTW, private industry doesn't have "failures" - only government does. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 2 06:41:12 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 02:41:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Is Global Warming Junk Science? In-Reply-To: <1241243472_19126@S4.cableone.net> References: <580930c20904201056n23a7bfcepae3cef50846f047@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904202313i72f0b4dg42b6301482c05e6c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904220951h638df3e0m9ceed3134c1dde8f@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904271932k71a8dd29gf68fe07130a2bb05@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905012139l277fd2c9pb6043a4bb4c57698@mail.gmail.com> <1241243472_19126@S4.cableone.net> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905012341w35b7bb71u91fc0d7b37445834@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 1:43 AM, hkhenson wrote: > At 09:39 PM 5/1/2009, Rafal wrote: >> >> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 1:55 AM, Keith Henson >> wrote: >> >> > >> > Unless we do something like power satellites or a huge nuclear >> > construction program, it is easy to see the price of fuel going up by >> > an order of magnitude. >> >> ### No matter how I strain, I can't see it coming, unless you are >> talking about fuel prices increase caused by a global nuclear war or >> global environmental hysteria. Oil is cheap and plentiful, and even if >> it runs out in 50 or 100 years, it can be made cheaply from coal, or >> gas. Just run the numbers. > > I have. ?www.htyp.org/dtc ?If you have your version of the numbers up on the > net somewhere, let me know. ### Yeah, you describe dollar a gallon synthetic gasoline from syngas - so how does that support your contention that fuel prices are going to rise by an order of magnitude? Rafal From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 2 10:30:42 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 20:30:42 +1000 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/2 Rafal Smigrodzki : > Same with GI - the problem is in feeding the parasites and punishing > workers over long time. At first just a few parasites, and not > punishing much but as parasites breed, they vote for more money, so > the burden on workers is higher, so there are fewer workers and more > parasites, and the positive feedback effects feed on each other, until > something breaks. Something breaks when, after a few years of this, the population realises they are becoming increasingly worse off relative to those countries that have better economic systems. So in the end every country in the world should converge towards low taxes and low government spending, if that does indeed lead to better outcomes. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 2 12:58:01 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 14:58:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <046D94F45FCD4AEF9F4800338D648EED@spike> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net> <49F6011F.90406@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com> <49F6359E.6090300@libero.it> <1240886493_3274@s5.cableone.net> <580930c20905011314h48de2dcfkdd8de97b23bbd675@mail.gmail.com> <046D94F45FCD4AEF9F4800338D648EED@spike> Message-ID: <580930c20905020558r2915315clec1b293a54a32c31@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 12:11 AM, spike wrote: >> Stefano Vaj: >> In fact, were the earth more massive, it might even be >> impossible, if I am not mistaken, to achieve escape velocity >> with chemical-reaction rockets, given that any such fuel >> would not contain enough energy to lift itself, let alone any >> useful payload and the necessary vehicle... > > No. ?Well, not exactly. ?If the earth were more massive, there is not a > point where achieving escape becomes *impossible* but rather it does quickly > approach impractical. ?The process is exponential, but with no brick wall > stopping the whole parade. Please forgive me if I am saying something stupid in terms of elementary physics, but let us say that chemical reaction x liberates energy y for any kilo of reagents. If you keep increasing gravity, the work required to lift any given quantity of reagents may well sooner or later exceed the work that can be obtained from the same quantity thereof, or not? In other terms, when the gravity is strong enough, a Saturn V does not take off at all, let alone gets to orbit, irrespective of its payload, right? I insist on this concept because I am afraid that on earth we are only marginally distant from this scenario. This is why I am attracted by Project Orion-like vehicles, in spite of their obvious inconvenients... But of course the ablation system sounds like a brilliant solution, at least on paper, since you would not have to bring all the energy along. -- Stefano Vaj From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sat May 2 15:14:29 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 11:14:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com><1AD4F6A677044EDC84C84FACF30A545D@MyComputer><49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net><49F6011F.90406@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com><49F6359E.6090300@libero.it> <1240886493_3274@s5.cableone.net> <580930c20905011314h48de2dcfkdd8de97b23bbd675@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <9255572BBBFE4BB7AFF14ACFE6D64203@MyComputer> "Stefano Vaj" > natural fossil and other chemical fuels and > the possible scarcity thereof are really not > an issue when you have abundant, cheap > energy from another source. At the present time there are only 2 abundant sources of energy, solar and nuclear fission; neither is anywhere close to being cheap, especially solar, space based or otherwise. Environmentalists love to say otherwise, but they're kidding themselves and trying to kid us. >In fact, were the earth more massive, it might even be impossible No just impractical. John K Clark From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 2 15:35:32 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 02 May 2009 17:35:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> Il 02/05/2009 12.30, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/5/2 Rafal Smigrodzki: > >> Same with GI - the problem is in feeding the parasites and punishing >> workers over long time. At first just a few parasites, and not >> punishing much but as parasites breed, they vote for more money, so >> the burden on workers is higher, so there are fewer workers and more >> parasites, and the positive feedback effects feed on each other, until >> something breaks. > > Something breaks when, after a few years of this, the population > realises they are becoming increasingly worse off relative to those > countries that have better economic systems. So in the end every > country in the world should converge towards low taxes and low > government spending, if that does indeed lead to better outcomes. This is because so many countries have public education. To fill young head with trash about economy. Over this, many groups have interests in filling the head of people of strange ideas about economy. Nothing really new, as Bastiat wrote about this 200 years ago. Mirco From spike66 at att.net Sat May 2 15:10:11 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 08:10:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <580930c20905020558r2915315clec1b293a54a32c31@mail.gmail.com> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net><49F6011F.90406@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com><49F6359E.6090300@libero.it> <1240886493_3274@s5.cableone.net><580930c20905011314h48de2dcfkdd8de97b23bbd675@mail.gmail.com><046D94F45FCD4AEF9F4800338D648EED@spike> <580930c20905020558r2915315clec1b293a54a32c31@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <399D1D657B6B483D89F6CFB5923DD655@spike> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Stefano Vaj > Sent: Saturday, May 02, 2009 5:58 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Power satellites > > On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 12:11 AM, spike wrote: > >> Stefano Vaj: ... > > > > No. ?Well, not exactly. ?If the earth were more massive, > there is not > > a point where achieving escape becomes *impossible* but > rather it does > > quickly approach impractical. ?The process is exponential, > but with no > > brick wall stopping the whole parade. > > Please forgive me if I am saying something stupid in terms of > elementary physics, but let us say that chemical reaction x > liberates energy y for any kilo of reagents... Not stupid at all. The same argument was used for a long time by British physicists before the war to assure Churchill that the nazis couldn't use rockets to drop bombs on London. Then the nazis demonstrated the error of their ways in a most dramatic fashion, thru the magic of multiple staging. >... If you keep > increasing gravity, the work required to lift any given > quantity of reagents may well sooner or later exceed the work > that can be obtained from the same quantity thereof, or not?... Keep in mind the *work* that is needed. The overwhelming majority of the fuel and oxidizer aboard the Saturn V on the launch pad doesn't actually go all that high out of the gravity well. > > In other terms, when the gravity is strong enough, a Saturn V > does not take off at all, let alone gets to orbit, > irrespective of its payload, right?...Stefano Vaj Right, but if the gravity well were stronger, we wouldn't use a Saturn V. We would have a first stage that would spend itself sooner that the V does. Think of a Saturn V first stage but imagine it with ten nozzles instead of 5, so it makes a lot more initial thrust but spends itself much more quickly. Then the second stage with four nozzles instead of 2, then a third stage, which instead of making it to orbit only gets to 20 km up and 3 km per second. Then a fourth stage kicks in which takes you to 40 km and 5 km/sec, then a fifth stage about a quarter the mass of the fourth, and so on, until you finally make it to orbit velocity and altitude, but with perhaps a dozen stages and only a kg of payload. There is no absolute physical limit, but there are practical limits. As Eugen put it, the rocket equation is a cruel thing. Yes this is a big planet for chemical rockets. spike From natasha at natasha.cc Sat May 2 16:05:51 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 11:05:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] META: List Over Posting In-Reply-To: <1241215145_18153@s8.cableone.net> References: <49FB4DDD.5010509@lineone.net> <1241215145_18153@s8.cableone.net> Message-ID: <58ACDEAE1556495F977471BD17CF590C@DFC68LF1> Please watch the number of posts. Thank you. Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of hkhenson Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 4:51 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Power satellites At 12:30 PM 5/1/2009, Ben Zaiboc wrote: snip >OK, I'm way behind on this list, so someone may have asked this >already, but I'm interested in the issue of NEOs as a source of raw >materials, and whether this is even remotely feasible. Sure. A reasonable mass budget for a processing plant is ~50,000 t or 5 million kg. At current launch prices, it would cost $1000 billion just to launch it. >I'm thinking NEOs, like most things in space, go fast, relative to the >earth. Really fast. Getting to them, extracting useful resources and >getting back with those resources isn't at all like drilling for oil or >digging up metal ore here on earth. I suspect it's possible that the >energy required to get there and get the hydrocarbons or ores or >whatever back, would far outweigh their value. >Anybody know some hard facts about this? In the context of a power sat construction project that is using a million tons per year of materials, it's just a matter of delta V and payback time. For example, GEO and asteroid 1986 DA are only 140 m/sec from each other. If the processing plant was turning out 2% of its mass per day, in say Invar, it would take 50 days for the investment in the processing plant to repay its mass. Simple math. It does take some design thought. My suggestion is an open ended induction furnace where the metal is drawn off in a fast moving rod. Keith _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 2 16:15:57 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 02 May 2009 18:15:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Economic laws/was Re: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <946178.5644.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49FC71BD.9090603@libero.it> Il 01/05/2009 19.22, BillK ha scritto: > But, to summarize, I feel it is a very odd sort of law that has > unpredictable outcomes. Because 'all else is *never* equal' every > situation has to be examined on its merits. This would imply that there is no reason to do scientific experiments, as "all else is never equal". > As just one example, if GM cut the price of their cars by 10%, > consumers probably wouldn't rush to buy. Why not? Where has the 'law' > gone that says cut prices = sell more? It is because of expectations > that next month prices will be even cheaper. This show that you don't really understand the law. It say that if prices go down the number of car sold will not go down. They could stay the same or they could go up. And there is no prior way to know exactly how many more cars would be sold, as this depend on the preferences of the single persons. If GM sell 1M car at 20K $/car, slashing the price 10% will not guarantee that the number of car sold will grow, but only that the number of car sold will not reduce. > It might as well be random. It appear to be random if you don't understand what is happening. > I much prefer a 'law' that says if you do x, then y will *always* happen. > That's my kind of law. And the law tell you this. If you slash the prices you will never sell less (all other stay equal). Mirco From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 2 16:44:28 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 18:44:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <9255572BBBFE4BB7AFF14ACFE6D64203@MyComputer> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net> <49F6011F.90406@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com> <49F6359E.6090300@libero.it> <1240886493_3274@s5.cableone.net> <580930c20905011314h48de2dcfkdd8de97b23bbd675@mail.gmail.com> <9255572BBBFE4BB7AFF14ACFE6D64203@MyComputer> Message-ID: <580930c20905020944g7852753esd4f811bfd75b9411@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 5:14 PM, John K Clark wrote: > "Stefano Vaj" >> natural fossil and other chemical fuels and >> the possible scarcity thereof are really not >> an issue when you have abundant, cheap >> energy from another source. > > At the present time there are only 2 abundant sources of energy, solar and > nuclear fission; neither is anywhere close to being cheap, especially solar, > space based or otherwise. Environmentalists love to say otherwise, but > they're kidding themselves and trying to kid us. "When you have" meaning of course "If you had". As to the chances of the hypothetical ever becoming true, the best candidates for me are nuclear fusion, space power satellites, and deep geothermy. Nuclear fission is a so-so, and the rest is IMHO a joke, unless for very specific and limited purposes. -- Stefano Vaj From eric at m056832107.syzygy.com Sat May 2 16:53:32 2009 From: eric at m056832107.syzygy.com (Eric Messick) Date: 2 May 2009 16:53:32 -0000 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <399D1D657B6B483D89F6CFB5923DD655@spike> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net><49F6011F.90406@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com><49F6359E.6090300@libero.it> <1240886493_3274@s5.cableone.net><580930c20905011314h48de2dcfkdd8de97b23bbd675@mail.gmail.com><046D94F45FCD4AEF9F4800338D648EED@spike> <580930c20905020558r2915315clec1b293a54a32c31@mail.gmail.com> <399D1D657B6B483D89F6CFB5923DD655@spike> Message-ID: <20090502165332.5.qmail@syzygy.com> spike writes: >There is no absolute physical limit, but there are practical limits. As >Eugen put it, the rocket equation is a cruel thing. Yes this is a big >planet for chemical rockets. Well, actually there is an absolute physical limit. Get the mass of the 'planet' up high enough, and you get an event horizon. I'll admit, the limit is pretty far from where we are, but it is there. A question to Keith about 'pop up and push': With a fixed array of lasers on the ground, might it make sense to do the last bit of the pop up part by laser? The geometry may be such that you couldn't reuse the push lasers for this, which would limit the usefulness. If you're cranking out a production line of those lasers anyway, it could make sense to throw a set near the launch site, though. Maybe you eventually end up with a completely laser powered launch. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 2 17:01:25 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 19:01:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <20090502165332.5.qmail@syzygy.com> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49F6011F.90406@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com> <49F6359E.6090300@libero.it> <1240886493_3274@s5.cableone.net> <580930c20905011314h48de2dcfkdd8de97b23bbd675@mail.gmail.com> <046D94F45FCD4AEF9F4800338D648EED@spike> <580930c20905020558r2915315clec1b293a54a32c31@mail.gmail.com> <399D1D657B6B483D89F6CFB5923DD655@spike> <20090502165332.5.qmail@syzygy.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905021001w398be3b6j24335b329855a4c2@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 6:53 PM, Eric Messick wrote: > Well, actually there is an absolute physical limit. ?Get the mass of > the 'planet' up high enough, and you get an event horizon. ?I'll > admit, the limit is pretty far from where we are, but it is there. Yes, this also came to my mind. But even much below that limit, can we actually lift wood to orbit by making use of the energy that can be extracted by burning it, if we are not concerned with the relative size of the payload? :-/ -- Stefano Vaj From spike66 at att.net Sat May 2 17:05:32 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 10:05:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <399D1D657B6B483D89F6CFB5923DD655@spike> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it><1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net><49F6011F.90406@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com><49F6359E.6090300@libero.it><1240886493_3274@s5.cableone.net><580930c20905011314h48de2dcfkdd8de97b23bbd675@mail.gmail.com><046D94F45FCD4AEF9F4800338D648EED@spike><580930c20905020558r2915315clec1b293a54a32c31@mail.gmail.com> <399D1D657B6B483D89F6CFB5923DD655@spike> Message-ID: <90CF41CCA74443018F615F380D8AB51E@spike> > ...On Behalf Of spike .... > > ...until you finally make it to > orbit velocity and altitude, but with perhaps a dozen stages > and only a kg of payload. > > There is no absolute physical limit, but there are practical > limits. As Eugen put it, the rocket equation is a cruel > thing. Yes this is a big planet for chemical rockets. > > spike Interesting aside: had we a much larger gravity well, we would have waited until better miniaturization technology was available to go into space. Consider that modern rocketry was developed to deliver bombs, and the really cool multistage stuff was for intercontinental nuke delivery. The miniaturization of nukes and re-entry bodies after the first ICBM was dramatic. The first ICBMs carried only one warhead, but the modern ones carry a dozen or more. Even that understates in a way because we now realize the most potent nukes are not the traditional mushroom cloud stuff but rather an electromagnetic pulse bomb which wipes out electronics while pretty much leaving the flora and fauna unharmed, for the time being. The EMPs are smaller still. Look at how much miniaturization has impacted us by comparing your laptop, or for that matter your phone, to the HP3000 I used in my misspent youth. Chemical rockets may even be sufficient for interstellar travel, assuming we get nanotechnology going in order to reduce the payload to a few grams class. Then our Atlas class rockets could accelerate that few grams to... let me calculate... 300 km per second-ish, a milli-c, get us to the neighbors' place in a little over 4000 years. Of course upon arrival it would likely find another earth-originated spacecraft already there, which was launched on a smaller rocket with a muuuch smaller payload than a few grams. spike From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sat May 2 17:29:56 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 13:29:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49F4DC98.8030500@libero.it> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net><49F6011F.90406@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com><49F6359E.6090300@libero.it> <1240886493_3274@s5.cableone.net><580930c20905011314h48de2dcfkdd8de97b23bbd675@mail.gmail.com><9255572BBBFE4BB7AFF14ACFE6D64203@MyComputer> <580930c20905020944g7852753esd4f811bfd75b9411@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: "Stefano Vaj" > the best candidates for me are nuclear fusion We don't know how to do that. > space power satellites We don't know how to do that either. > and deep geothermy. That's not abundant. > Nuclear fission is a so-so But we do know how to do that. John K Clark From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat May 2 17:34:11 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 02 May 2009 12:34:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Economic laws/was Re: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <49FC71BD.9090603@libero.it> References: <946178.5644.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49FC71BD.9090603@libero.it> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090502121929.025bc4f0@satx.rr.com> >>As just one example, if GM cut the price of their cars by 10%, >>consumers probably wouldn't rush to buy. Why not? Where has the 'law' >>gone that says cut prices = sell more? It is because of expectations >>that next month prices will be even cheaper. > >This show that you don't really understand the law. >It say that if prices go down the number of car sold will not go >down. They could stay the same or they could go up. And there is no >prior way to know exactly how many more cars would be sold, as this >depend on the preferences of the single persons. Actually "there is no prior way ever to know how many cars would be sold" just as there was no way at the end of the 19th century to know how many horses would be sold by 1950. It's quantification of guesswork. How many SUVs will be sold if the price of oil goes up intolerably? >If GM sell 1M car at 20K $/car, slashing the price 10% will not >guarantee that the number of car sold will grow, but only that the >number of car sold will not reduce. This explains why the number of buggy whips, manual typewriters and ice boxes sold each year has never fallen even though price has plummeted. (You might reply that demand for these items has been affected by more than price alone. That's true. Add another epicycle to that effect.) From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 2 17:49:13 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 19:49:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1240791741_8412@s1.cableone.net> <49F6011F.90406@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com> <49F6359E.6090300@libero.it> <1240886493_3274@s5.cableone.net> <580930c20905011314h48de2dcfkdd8de97b23bbd675@mail.gmail.com> <9255572BBBFE4BB7AFF14ACFE6D64203@MyComputer> <580930c20905020944g7852753esd4f811bfd75b9411@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905021049w6dae4e25wbbff4210bf2fd4e3@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 7:29 PM, John K Clark wrote: > "Stefano Vaj" >> the best candidates for me are nuclear fusion > We don't know how to do that. Right. And we might not for a long time, given the current investment level... >> space power satellites > We don't know how to do that either. Why, Keith appears to have something interesting to say on the subject. >> and deep geothermy. > That's not abundant. Wrong. Right objection is again "We don't know how to do that". >> Nuclear fission is a so-so > But we do know how to do that. Granted. -- Stefano Vaj From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 2 18:12:12 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 14:12:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905021112y79b134e2mefccdc3c7b9c0545@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 6:30 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/2 Rafal Smigrodzki : > >> Same with GI - the problem is in feeding the parasites and punishing >> workers over long time. At first just a few parasites, and not >> punishing much but as parasites breed, they vote for more money, so >> the burden on workers is higher, so there are fewer workers and more >> parasites, and the positive feedback effects feed on each other, until >> something breaks. > > Something breaks when, after a few years of this, the population > realises they are becoming increasingly worse off relative to those > countries that have better economic systems. So in the end every > country in the world should converge towards low taxes and low > government spending, if that does indeed lead to better outcomes. > ### Yeah, this happened and I was actually there - in Eastern Europe in the early 90's. Except it took not a few but between 40 and 70 years for the masses to snap out of it and demand real change (as opposed to Obama-change). And of course once the capitalist prosperity arrives it takes less than 30 years for the society as a whole to forget where it came from. They start thinking prosperity is something that just happens, and a birthright, too, so of course soon taxes and government power start growing again. And thus the never ending cycle continues, the yang of wisdom, capitalism, and progress is again smothered by the yin of stupidity and envy. Actually, the effective average tax rates on accumulated wealth in primitive societies are in excess 85% (according to Tyler Cowen), so today's 30 - 60% is some progress already - but it took 10,000 years to achieve. Rafal From spike66 at att.net Sat May 2 18:03:21 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 11:03:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites In-Reply-To: <580930c20905021001w398be3b6j24335b329855a4c2@mail.gmail.com> References: <547466.39250.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com><49F6011F.90406@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090427144609.05a85fd8@satx.rr.com><49F6359E.6090300@libero.it> <1240886493_3274@s5.cableone.net><580930c20905011314h48de2dcfkdd8de97b23bbd675@mail.gmail.com><046D94F45FCD4AEF9F4800338D648EED@spike><580930c20905020558r2915315clec1b293a54a32c31@mail.gmail.com><399D1D657B6B483D89F6CFB5923DD655@spike><20090502165332.5.qmail@syzygy.com> <580930c20905021001w398be3b6j24335b329855a4c2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj > Subject: Re: [ExI] Power satellites > > On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 6:53 PM, Eric Messick > wrote: > > Well, actually there is an absolute physical limit. ?Get > the mass of > > the 'planet' up high enough, and you get an event horizon. ?I'll > > admit, the limit is pretty far from where we are, but it is there. > > Yes, this also came to my mind. But even much below that > limit, can we actually lift wood to orbit by making use of > the energy that can be extracted by burning it, if we are not > concerned with the relative size of the payload? :-/ > > -- > Stefano Vaj Oh, ja if we are near black hole scales, we can't get there outta that gravity well. We can't even talk to the stellar neighbors, never mind visiting them. Can we make a wood burning rocket? Yes. You would take your logs, grind them to dust finer than flour, blow that into a heated pressurized chamber with only hydrogen present, then load that product aboard your rocket, pump it into your combustion chamber with LOX at about 6 atm, boom, up you go. Or just start with flour instead of wood, this being sufficiently similar chemically for this purpose. If you are asking could you use wood as a rocket fuel in the form of two by fours? Sure, take it up to almost orbit velocity in the traditional fashion, burn your two-bys in a chamber with pure oxygen, dump the heat into xenon or better yet radon as your propellant, pick up some delta vee. Or you could dump the hot CO2 and H2O out the back as your propellant too if you prefer. It would be far better to preprocess your wood on the ground however, put all that carbon to work carrying hydrogen. I pulled a fast one on you with that first idea. By grinding and adding hydrogen and energy, you functionally convert the wood to kerosene, which is what the Saturn first stage burns. Stefano, good thing for me you have a sense of humor. {8^D I love rocket jokes. Oy, I am such a geek. spike From hartmut.prochaska at gmail.com Fri May 1 14:21:51 2009 From: hartmut.prochaska at gmail.com (Hartmut Prochaska) Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 14:21:51 +0000 Subject: [ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0904292242l733b443fl6e6d484d02677e2a@mail.gmail.com> References: <200904282319.n3SNJSok001659@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0904292242l733b443fl6e6d484d02677e2a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49FB057F.9000901@gmail.com> Hi, > It'd be nice to use some kind of karma system, or something a bit more > crowd-sourcey, to replace moderation. Unfortunately, just about every > scheme I can think of would require a website (there are no feedback > buttons in an email). And this will always be an email list. they only way to get the karma system into the mails I could currently imagine is to enhance the signature with a links like http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat//karmaup or http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat//karmaargh with login on the website. So if the mail is realy very good or bad you will click on this link, log in and give karma points. This is a little bit inconvinient, so I guess it would realy only be used for the "extreme" cases and otherwise ignored. Also I guess some members of this list will argue againt cluttering the signature :) bye Hartmut From natasha at natasha.cc Sat May 2 22:04:53 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 17:04:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Train Station Dance Message-ID: I thought you all might enjoy this: http://video.yahoo.com/watch/4816051/12849087 Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 731 bytes Desc: not available URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 2 22:43:31 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 00:43:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Economic laws/was Re: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090502121929.025bc4f0@satx.rr.com> References: <946178.5644.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49FC71BD.9090603@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090502121929.025bc4f0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <49FCCC93.9050607@libero.it> Il 02/05/2009 19.34, Damien Broderick ha scritto: >> If GM sell 1M car at 20K $/car, slashing the price 10% will not >> guarantee that the number of car sold will grow, but only that the >> number of car sold will not reduce. > This explains why the number of buggy whips, manual typewriters and ice > boxes sold each year has never fallen even though price has plummeted. > (You might reply that demand for these items has been affected by more > than price alone. That's true. Add another epicycle to that effect.) "All other equal" is the game name. By the way, I'm sure enough that "buggy whips, manual typewriters and ice boxes" are more costly now than in the past, mainly because no one sell them any more as there is no one buying them any more. Mirco From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Sun May 3 00:05:42 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 17:05:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Train Station Dance Message-ID: <160899.61407.qm@web110402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> That was fantastic!!!? Now that's energy!!!? ? Anna? ? --- On Sat, 5/2/09, Natasha Vita-More wrote: From: Natasha Vita-More Subject: [ExI] Train Station Dance To: "'ExI chat list'" , "'World Transhumanist Association Discussion List'" , extrobritannia at yahoogroups.com, ART-tac at yahoogroups.com Received: Saturday, May 2, 2009, 6:04 PM I thought you all might enjoy this: ? http://video.yahoo.com/watch/4816051/12849087 ? ?Natasha Vita-More ? -----Inline Attachment Follows----- _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat __________________________________________________________________ The new Internet Explorer? 8 - Faster, safer, easier. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 731 bytes Desc: not available URL: From emlynoregan at gmail.com Sun May 3 01:45:09 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 11:15:09 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Train Station Dance In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <710b78fc0905021845l34a336a6m9d1af3918550ea8b@mail.gmail.com> That's awesome. 2009/5/3 Natasha Vita-More : > I thought you all might enjoy this: > > > http://video.yahoo.com/watch/4816051/12849087 > > > ?Natasha Vita-More > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 3 02:35:49 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 02 May 2009 21:35:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Train Station Dance In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905021845l34a336a6m9d1af3918550ea8b@mail.gmail.co m> References: <710b78fc0905021845l34a336a6m9d1af3918550ea8b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090502213106.0230ac98@satx.rr.com> At 11:15 AM 5/3/2009 +0930, Emlyn wrote: >That's awesome. The crowd kinetics is awesome, the emergent choreography; pity the music is such kitsch. I'd love to watch it set to something less treacly. Philip Glass, maybe, or alternatively a rock band with some grit. Damien Broderick From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Sun May 3 02:54:21 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 19:54:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Train Station Dance Message-ID: <537521.78300.qm@web110402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> I thought it was entertaining, well thought and stratigic. I thought the coordination with that many people at one time was fascinating as it takes so much energy for everyone to be on the same page. The lasting impression imo is the one of so many people appearing to be in a harmonius mood and enjoying the moment. Yeah probably doesn't have the grasp of Philip Glass but maybe he wasn't very much fun:) Anna --- On Sat, 5/2/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > From: Damien Broderick > Subject: Re: [ExI] Train Station Dance > To: "ExI chat list" > Received: Saturday, May 2, 2009, 10:35 PM > At 11:15 AM 5/3/2009 +0930, Emlyn > wrote: > > > That's awesome. > > The crowd kinetics is awesome, the emergent choreography; > pity the music is such kitsch. I'd love to watch it set to > something less treacly. Philip Glass, maybe, or > alternatively a rock band with some grit. > > Damien Broderick > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > __________________________________________________________________ Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new Internet Explorer? 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/ From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 3 03:00:54 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 02 May 2009 22:00:54 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Train Station Dance In-Reply-To: <537521.78300.qm@web110402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <537521.78300.qm@web110402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090502215908.026f2fc8@satx.rr.com> >I thought the coordination with that many people at one time was >fascinating as it takes so much energy for everyone to be on the same page. So much preparation, training and practice, I'd have thought, carefully masked by its gradual emergence. (If someone now reveals that there was only a handful of choreographed dancers, and the rest just copied them, I'll be utterly flabbergasted and *really* impressed.) Damien Broderick From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Sun May 3 02:35:15 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 19:35:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Memes, Genes and Chance Message-ID: <280462.19989.qm@web110410.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> >From science we know that memes and genes play a significant role in determining our make up. What they don't say is what our memes and genes know what we ourselves don't. Think about how genes have existed without our awareness. Suggested by Gregor Mendel only in the year 1822, we literally had no idea of the basic biology of the gene. Without our knowledge, generations of families where brought forth through genes that wanted to evolve, change or be produced. Memes on the other hand are handed down through generations of information, everything we read, see, hear, smell and touch such as religious beliefs, war like attitude behaviour and/or the glamour delusions. They are ideas that certain generations, cultures and/or races have brought forth to set minds with imitation beliefs. At one point people believed that the earth was flat. We now know it's not. Why do we know? We know because we have the means and knowledge today to set forth by trial and error and not repeat the same mistakes we once made. I am curious about the why's that some memes and genes last while others simply disappear. Do most believe that there may be some other alternative reasons as to why we exist or do most believe that we simply are in existence based on the chance that we where lucky enough to be born in the right place, with the right genes? What memes do most want to be passed along to future generations? How important is culture in a chosen society and what cultural traits would benefit societies? There must be some basis of group selection that benefits the society at large? Just a few basic questions on my mind if anybody has any good links or ideas... Thanks Anna __________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com. From emlynoregan at gmail.com Sun May 3 03:10:46 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 12:40:46 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Train Station Dance In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090502213106.0230ac98@satx.rr.com> References: <710b78fc0905021845l34a336a6m9d1af3918550ea8b@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090502213106.0230ac98@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905022010s1b97441q26339252a60d9a12@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/3 Damien Broderick : > At 11:15 AM 5/3/2009 +0930, Emlyn wrote: > >> That's awesome. > > The crowd kinetics is awesome, the emergent choreography; pity the music is > such kitsch. I'd love to watch it set to something less treacly. Philip > Glass, maybe, or alternatively a rock band with some grit. > > Damien Broderick It's not emergent, it's faux emergent faux flash mob http://www.google.com.au/search?q=do+re+mi+flash+mob&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a "In a promotional stunt for a Belgian television program, more than 200 dancers performed a version of ?Do Re Mi? ? Flash Mob- style ? in the Central Station of Antwerp. They were able to pull it off with just 2 rehearsals." -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Sun May 3 02:56:15 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 19:56:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Train Station Dance Message-ID: <585440.86212.qm@web110416.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Funny I would make a mistake on strategic...lol --- On Sat, 5/2/09, Anna Taylor wrote: > From: Anna Taylor > Subject: Re: [ExI] Train Station Dance > To: "ExI chat list" > Received: Saturday, May 2, 2009, 10:54 PM > > I thought it was entertaining, well thought and > stratigic.? I thought the coordination with that many > people at one time was fascinating as it takes so much > energy for everyone to be on the same page.? The > lasting impression imo is the one of so many people > appearing to be in a harmonius mood and enjoying the > moment.? > > Yeah probably doesn't have the grasp of Philip Glass but > maybe he wasn't very much fun:) > > Anna > > > > --- On Sat, 5/2/09, Damien Broderick > wrote: > > > From: Damien Broderick > > Subject: Re: [ExI] Train Station Dance > > To: "ExI chat list" > > Received: Saturday, May 2, 2009, 10:35 PM > > At 11:15 AM 5/3/2009 +0930, Emlyn > > wrote: > > > > > That's awesome. > > > > The crowd kinetics is awesome, the emergent > choreography; > > pity the music is such kitsch. I'd love to watch it > set to > > something less treacly. Philip Glass, maybe, or > > alternatively a rock band with some grit. > > > > Damien Broderick > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > > ? ? ? > __________________________________________________________________ > Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new > Internet Explorer? 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for > Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/ > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > __________________________________________________________________ Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/gift/ From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 3 03:37:39 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 13:37:39 +1000 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> References: <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/3 painlord2k at libero.it : >> Something breaks when, after a few years of this, the population >> realises they are becoming increasingly worse off relative to those >> countries that have better economic systems. So in the end every >> country in the world should converge towards low taxes and low >> government spending, if that does indeed lead to better outcomes. > > This is because so many countries have public education. > To fill young head with trash about economy. > Over this, many groups have interests in filling the head of people of > strange ideas about economy. > Nothing really new, as Bastiat wrote about this 200 years ago. In Eastern Europe for decades the people were fed propaganda and locked up (or worse) if they dissented; and still they saw that they were worse off than their neighbours and threw out the communists. Are you saying that the anti-capitalist propaganda and other impediments to political and economic change are even worse in modern democracies that in the Soviet Union? -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 3 04:06:54 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 14:06:54 +1000 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905021112y79b134e2mefccdc3c7b9c0545@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905021112y79b134e2mefccdc3c7b9c0545@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/3 Rafal Smigrodzki : > ### Yeah, this happened and I was actually there - in Eastern Europe > in the early 90's. Except it took not a few but between 40 and 70 > years for the masses to snap out of it and demand real change (as > opposed to Obama-change). Are you saying it would have taken this long if people had been allowed free access to information, freedom of travel, freedom of expression, freedom to form political parties and free elections? If so, then communism in Eastern Europe wasn't nearly as bad as is often made out. > And of course once the capitalist prosperity > arrives it takes less than 30 years for the society as a whole to > forget where it came from. They start thinking prosperity is something > that just happens, and a birthright, too, so of course soon taxes and > government power start growing again. And thus the never ending cycle > continues, the yang of wisdom, capitalism, and progress is again > smothered by the yin of stupidity and envy. You don't need memory or economic savy. Even with no particular purpose in mind, levels of taxation and government services vary over time within a state and between states. The more successful systems will prevail, and this evolutionary process is only retarded, not stopped, by totalitarian government, as shown by the example of Eastern Europe. -- Stathis Papaioannou From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Sun May 3 03:58:06 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 20:58:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Train Station Dance Message-ID: <105399.90970.qm@web110414.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> So I guess line dancing is out of the picture:) Anna --- On Sat, 5/2/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > From: Damien Broderick > Subject: Re: [ExI] Train Station Dance > To: "ExI chat list" > Received: Saturday, May 2, 2009, 11:00 PM > > > I thought the coordination with that many people at > one time was fascinating as it takes so much energy for > everyone to be on the same page. > > So much preparation, training and practice, I'd have > thought, carefully masked by its gradual emergence. > > (If someone now reveals that there was only a handful of > choreographed dancers, and the rest just copied them, I'll > be utterly flabbergasted and *really* impressed.) > > Damien Broderick > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > __________________________________________________________________ Ask a question on any topic and get answers from real people. Go to Yahoo! Answers and share what you know at http://ca.answers.yahoo.com From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun May 3 05:03:38 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 01:03:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905022203x73ef35c9l894a37f3a4dfeb68@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 11:37 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > In Eastern Europe for decades the people were fed propaganda and > locked up (or worse) if they dissented; and still they saw that they > were worse off than their neighbours and threw out the communists. Are > you saying that the anti-capitalist propaganda and other impediments > to political and economic change are even worse in modern democracies > that in the Soviet Union? ### Yes. Soviets were crude and brutal which detracted from their ability to sustain belief, and of course whenever people were allowed to visit a capitalist country, all the conditioning and propaganda tended to evaporate in confrontation with reality. US government and its propaganda outlets such as schools, universities, and media outfits staffed by alumni of state-funded schools are much more subtle. They feed into common human biases - the authoritarian bias, envy, make-work bias, anti-foreign bias, anti-market bias. It makes it easier to discredit freedom and convince the public that the oppressors are the solution rather than the disease, and of course you can't travel somewhere and see a capitalist society to get a comparison. Rafal From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 3 05:15:32 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 00:15:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905022203x73ef35c9l894a37f3a4dfeb68@mail.gmail.co m> References: <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <7641ddc60905022203x73ef35c9l894a37f3a4dfeb68@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503001206.023ba380@satx.rr.com> At 01:03 AM 5/3/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: > of course you >can't travel somewhere and see a capitalist society to get a >comparison. Why, given the overwhelming superiority of this kind of society? This is starting to sound like those claims that cheap fusion power and eternal light bulbs have been developed but ruthlessly suppressed by the International Bankers. Damien Broderick From spike66 at att.net Sun May 3 05:53:38 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 22:53:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com><7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> Message-ID: > >> ...Are you saying that the anti-capitalist > propaganda and other impediments to political and economic > change are even worse in modern democracies that in the Soviet Union? > -- > Stathis Papaioannou Ja! In the last US presidential election, the news media were so one sided, it was obvious to even the Russians, who know a thing or two about propaganda. Consider only the vice presidential candidates. Sarah Palin ran such a clean gaffe-free campaign that the media complex needed to have a comedienne do an impression of her in order to produce phony gaffes. A study showed that the *majority* of the voters thought Palin said "I can see Russia from my house." It was Tina Fey doing Palin who actually said that. At the same time vice presidential nominee Joe Biden uttered some of the stupidest comments imaginable for such a candidate, such as saying Roosevelt went on television in 1929 and reassured the people, etc. This idiot makes Dan Quayle look brilliant by comparison. There were *hundreds* of reporters digging thru Palin's garbage, looking for *anything* scandalous, while no one even bothered to ask Obama where he got the money to snort that 100 dollar a gram cocaine while in high school, nor where all his money came from in the years following. These news people wonder why we aren't buying their products? spike From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun May 3 06:37:27 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 23:37:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians References: <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com><710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com><7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com><710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com><7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com><7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com><49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> Message-ID: <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> From: "spike" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Saturday, May 02, 2009 10:53 PM >A study showed that the *majority* of the voters thought Palin said "I can >see > Russia from my house." It was Tina Fey doing Palin who actually said > that. This is what Palin really said: "And, Charlie, you're in Alaska. We have that very narrow maritime border between the United States, and the 49th state, Alaska, and Russia. They are our next door neighbors.We need to have a good relationship with them. They're very, very important to us and they are our next door neighbor. GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you? PALIN: They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska." From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 3 07:19:20 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 17:19:20 +1000 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/3 spike : > >> >> ...Are you saying that the anti-capitalist >> propaganda and other impediments to political and economic >> change are even worse in modern democracies that in the Soviet Union? >> -- >> Stathis Papaioannou > > > Ja! ?In the last US presidential election, the news media were so one sided, > it was obvious to even the Russians, who know a thing or two about > propaganda. ?Consider only the vice presidential candidates. ?Sarah Palin > ran such a clean gaffe-free campaign that the media complex needed to have a > comedienne do an impression of her in order to produce phony gaffes. ?A > study showed that the *majority* of the voters thought Palin said "I can see > Russia from my house." ?It was Tina Fey doing Palin who actually said that. > At the same time vice presidential nominee Joe Biden uttered some of the > stupidest comments imaginable for such a candidate, such as saying Roosevelt > went on television in 1929 and reassured the people, etc. ?This idiot makes > Dan Quayle look brilliant by comparison. > > There were *hundreds* of reporters digging thru Palin's garbage, looking for > *anything* scandalous, while no one even bothered to ask Obama where he got > the money to snort that 100 dollar a gram cocaine while in high school, nor > where all his money came from in the years following. ?These news people > wonder why we aren't buying their products? And what would the media have made of the candidate from the Socialist Party USA, had there in fact been one? -- Stathis Papaioannou From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 3 08:25:20 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 08:25:20 +0000 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> Message-ID: On 5/3/09, spike wrote: > Ja! In the last US presidential election, the news media were so one sided, > it was obvious to even the Russians, who know a thing or two about > propaganda. Spike, It wasn't the evil media. The Republicans *wanted* to lose the election. That's why they picked such poor candidates. They knew the economy was collapsing and whoever is in charge is going to get blamed for not fixing it. (And don't think it all over and getting better. There is much worse still to come). So now Obama is taking the fall for the years of economic depression and unemployment. It's called politics. BillK From eschatoon at gmail.com Sun May 3 09:07:15 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 11:07:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] More straw man attacks from eugenicist bioluddites Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905030207p6a755ea5x1f90cf71e256f1a7@mail.gmail.com> Bioluddites like to accuse transhumanists of being "eugenicists", of course without bothering to substantiate their crap with any actual fact or quote. But sometimes they expose themselves for what they really are, and make fools of themselves: http://transumanar.com/index.php/site/more_straw_man_attacks_from_eugenicist_bioluddites/ -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From natasha at natasha.cc Sun May 3 12:24:37 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 07:24:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Train Station Dance In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905022010s1b97441q26339252a60d9a12@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0905021845l34a336a6m9d1af3918550ea8b@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090502213106.0230ac98@satx.rr.com> <710b78fc0905022010s1b97441q26339252a60d9a12@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: I prefer the simple sound track for the preformance. That is the beauty of it. Philippe Glass is not right for this piece, especially a number where people can learn the steps quickly. There was never any doubt that it was a planned sequence, in part. I loved that aspect of it. I also love the way the bystanders joined in. Just enjoy it. Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Emlyn Sent: Saturday, May 02, 2009 10:11 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Train Station Dance 2009/5/3 Damien Broderick : > At 11:15 AM 5/3/2009 +0930, Emlyn wrote: > >> That's awesome. > > The crowd kinetics is awesome, the emergent choreography; pity the > music is such kitsch. I'd love to watch it set to something less > treacly. Philip Glass, maybe, or alternatively a rock band with some grit. > > Damien Broderick It's not emergent, it's faux emergent faux flash mob http://www.google.com.au/search?q=do+re+mi+flash+mob&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t& rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a "In a promotional stunt for a Belgian television program, more than 200 dancers performed a version of "Do Re Mi" - Flash Mob- style - in the Central Station of Antwerp. They were able to pull it off with just 2 rehearsals." -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike66 at att.net Sun May 3 14:59:54 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 07:59:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> References: <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com><710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com><7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com><710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com><7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com><7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com><49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: Olga wrote: ... > > This is what Palin really said: > > "... > They're very, very important to us and they are our next door > neighbor. > > GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in > the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you? > > PALIN: They're our next door neighbors and you can actually > see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska." Both of Palin's comments are perfectly true, unlike Biden's silly gaffes which he continues to spew almost daily even now. Gibson was a transparently hostile interrogator. He also asked Palin about the Bush doctrine. There wouldn't be one person in a hundred that could guess what he meant by that. Did Bush have only one doctrine? Palin didn't want to reveal sensitive information about international relationships, so she sidestepped the question. Likewise with the Couric interview: had she revealed her news sources (probably Fox) she would be giving an endorsement. To both lines of inquiry perhaps Palin should have said something like "I choose to not answer that." Now, imagine if someone had asked Obama the most obvious question, the one that is *still there* waiting for some reporter anywhere: where did you get your money? Let him reply "I choose to not answer that." What else could he say? >It wasn't the evil media. The Republicans *wanted* to lose the election. That's why they picked such poor candidates...BillK BillK I buy into half of that. The republicans did want to lose this one, and I can clearly see why. I kept getting that vibe from McCain, who was truly a dud, but the media played into it bigtime, and I haven't been able to figure out what was in it for them. Why would they want to protect the republicans? Why did they want to see the democrats take on a job they knew couldn't succeed? It is clear to me that the two major parties had converged to the point of indistingushability, where any real difference was meaningless, and now a duel to the death is taking place. Problem is this duel will do tragic damage to the nation. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 3 16:40:07 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 11:40:07 -0500 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503113631.025e34a8@satx.rr.com> At 07:59 AM 5/3/2009 -0700, spike wrote: >imagine if someone had asked Obama the most obvious question, the one >that is *still there* waiting for some reporter anywhere: where did you get >your money? Let him reply "I choose to not answer that." What else could >he say? Which money, exactly? His personal wealth? His campaign coffers? What do you suspect the evil covered-up truth to be? Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 3 16:59:04 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 16:59:04 +0000 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503113631.025e34a8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503113631.025e34a8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 5/3/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > Which money, exactly? His personal wealth? His campaign coffers? What do > you suspect the evil covered-up truth to be? > Spike may be referring to the internet rumors explained by Snopes BillK From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun May 3 16:55:41 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 09:55:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians References: <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com><710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com><7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com><710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com><7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com><7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com><49FC6844.8040607@libero.it><8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> From: "spike" To: "'ExI chat list'" > > Now, imagine if someone had asked Obama the most obvious question, the one > that is *still there* waiting for some reporter anywhere: where did you > get > your money? Let him reply "I choose to not answer that." What else could > he say? What are you implying? That Buffett gave Obama money? What? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090502/ap_on_bi_ge/us_berkshire_shareholders;_ylt=Anrfao0Eey0Tquj0VJEU09Os0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTJyNHVzcWU3BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkwNTAyL3VzX2JlcmtzaGlyZV9zaGFyZWhvbGRlcnMEY3BvcwM1BHBvcwMxNARzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3J5BHNsawNidWZmZXR0c2F5c2c- OK, I'm biased ... but it seems to me that Obama has done more positive things in 100 days than Bush did in 8 years. Olga From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 3 17:49:14 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 12:49:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503113631.025e34a8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503124529.0227c340@satx.rr.com> At 04:59 PM 5/3/2009 +0000, BillK wrote: >Spike may be referring to the internet rumors explained by Snopes > > That would be my guess. But hey, *who do you think bought all those books that made him so rich*??? Would real Americans actually pay good money to buy a book by a Muslim *who isn't even an American citizen*???!!! From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun May 3 17:54:48 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 13:54:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503001206.023ba380@satx.rr.com> References: <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <7641ddc60905022203x73ef35c9l894a37f3a4dfeb68@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503001206.023ba380@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905031054l76c8d272v8f3078712f93e562@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 1:15 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 01:03 AM 5/3/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: > >> ?of course you >> can't travel somewhere and see a capitalist society to get a >> comparison. > > Why, given the overwhelming superiority of this kind of society? This is > starting to sound like those claims that cheap fusion power and eternal > light bulbs have been developed but ruthlessly suppressed by the > International Bankers. ### Ruthlessly suppressed by the Internationale, yes. Think about it this way: from our general knowledge of science and perusing the Tesla website we can be reasonably sure that you can build good electric cars (like the T roadster) but unfortunately there is not enough lithium available to make them cheap as well. Same with capitalism - we know from theory and from occasional lucky situations (Hong Kong, Singapore) that you can build a more capitalist society than the US is, and that it would be a much better society. Unfortunately, building a capitalist society takes a lot of things that are in short supply - intelligence, humility, freedom from natural human biases, and that's why it isn't happening. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun May 3 17:59:27 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 13:59:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 4:25 AM, BillK wrote: > > So now Obama is taking the fall for the years of economic depression > and unemployment. > > It's called politics. > ### According to many economic indicators, the recession is going to end in about 6 weeks (despite the best efforts of the idiots who run this country) and there was never a depression, not by a long shot. Pity that the pieces of garbage currently in power will get credit for that. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun May 3 18:05:18 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 14:05:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905031105g2b15edc5w460b06dd5df6fcd6@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 10:59 AM, spike wrote: > > It is clear to me that the two major parties had converged to the point of > indistingushability, where any real difference was meaningless, and now a > duel to the death is taking place. ?Problem is this duel will do tragic > damage to the nation. > ### Duel? Nah, more like a courtly dance. The two nominal factions of the state need each other - you couldn't distract the proles if there was just one party which would get blamed for everything like the commies back home, who got blamed for low quality toilet paper (and yes, they actually deserved it). Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun May 3 18:12:33 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 14:12:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905031112t5be42eebl77d1fa5d8491ac4@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 12:55 PM, Olga Bourlin wrote: > OK, I'm biased ... but it seems to me that Obama has done more positive > things in 100 days than Bush did in 8 years. ### Like giving trillions of dollars to his buddies at Goldman-Sachs and other corrupt businesses? So many ppl tend to believe state propaganda, and think that the candidates manufactured by the state differ substantially from each other. As if there was any major difference between Bush, Obama, Nixon, or Carter. Rafal From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 3 18:25:57 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 13:25:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.co m> References: <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com> At 01:59 PM 5/3/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: >### According to many economic indicators, the recession is going to >end in about 6 weeks Could you elaborate on these economic indicators? (Not being snarky here, I'll really like to know.) Damien Broderick From sockpuppet99 at hotmail.com Sun May 3 12:37:20 2009 From: sockpuppet99 at hotmail.com (Belva Plain) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 06:37:20 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Train Station Dance In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0905021845l34a336a6m9d1af3918550ea8b@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090502213106.0230ac98@satx.rr.com> <710b78fc0905022010s1b97441q26339252a60d9a12@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: If you're into artificial, commercially-planned flash mob dancing, this one's better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0jcQ5OmdfE TomD _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail? has a new way to see what's up with your friends. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/WhatsNew?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_WhatsNew1_052009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sun May 3 19:30:04 2009 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 13:30:04 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Train Station Dance In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0905021845l34a336a6m9d1af3918550ea8b@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090502213106.0230ac98@satx.rr.com> <710b78fc0905022010s1b97441q26339252a60d9a12@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49FDF0BC.1090107@comcast.net> Natasha, Yes, that was wonderful, I entered it as my 8th favorite short online video: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/35/12 One thing I despise about traditional musical performances, is the way the performers are up on a stage isolated form the audience. I always love it when the performers work to tear down that barrier. (performers going out into the audience, or bringing the audience up on stage, theater in the round....) but of course the ultimate perfection is what is occurring here. Everyone is the same, on the same level, and intermixing, and the more people join in and intermix the better. Sure, it is obvious that many of them have practiced, but this is hidden as much as possible so that it doesn't separate the practiced from everyone else. Thanks!! Brent Natasha Vita-More wrote: > I prefer the simple sound track for the preformance. That is the beauty of > it. Philippe Glass is not right for this piece, especially a number where > people can learn the steps quickly. > > There was never any doubt that it was a planned sequence, in part. I loved > that aspect of it. I also love the way the bystanders joined in. > > Just enjoy it. > > Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Emlyn > Sent: Saturday, May 02, 2009 10:11 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Train Station Dance > > 2009/5/3 Damien Broderick : > >> At 11:15 AM 5/3/2009 +0930, Emlyn wrote: >> >> >>> That's awesome. >>> >> The crowd kinetics is awesome, the emergent choreography; pity the >> music is such kitsch. I'd love to watch it set to something less >> treacly. Philip Glass, maybe, or alternatively a rock band with some grit. >> >> Damien Broderick >> > > It's not emergent, it's faux emergent faux flash mob > > http://www.google.com.au/search?q=do+re+mi+flash+mob&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t& > rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a > > "In a promotional stunt for a Belgian television program, more than 200 > dancers performed a version of "Do Re Mi" - Flash Mob- style - in the > Central Station of Antwerp. They were able to pull it off with just 2 > rehearsals." > > -- > Emlyn > > http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com > - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site > _______________________________________________ > 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 > > From max at maxmore.com Sun May 3 19:31:53 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 14:31:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians Message-ID: <200905031932.n43JW3lY001104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Olga, you might want to read this: Obama's Vision Deficit: http://www.reason.com/news/show/133157.html Max >OK, I'm biased ... but it seems to me that Obama has done more positive >things in 100 days than Bush did in 8 years. > >Olga From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 3 19:35:22 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 21:35:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 6:03 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Strategically, do you think that it is a good idea > to prohibit reasoned attacks on religion, insults > of races, religions, or the Mayor's daughter? > Where do you draw the line? > > And beyond strategy, where in a free society do > you draw the line ethically? What can be said is that for any doom-monger's assumption that unless free speech is limited on a given subject society would collapse, it is easy enough to offer example where societies managed to a reasonable extent to thrive in spite of the fact that the "necessary" prohibition was not in place. All in all, I think that most limitations to free speech are very hard to justify on empirical grounds. Not to mention on political terms for any political regime that claims to be based on informed consensus. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 3 19:46:09 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 21:46:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <200905031932.n43JW3lY001104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905031932.n43JW3lY001104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905031246x67111d82y1639c9ccd74996d6@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 9:31 PM, Max More wrote: > Olga, you might want to read this: > > Obama's Vision Deficit: > http://www.reason.com/news/show/133157.html Interesting... It must be said that in Europe Obama has been getting such a huge credit across the *whole* political spectrum - from the far left to the far right to the establishment, from libertarians to third-worldist to clericalist to socialdemocrats, from sionists to anti-semites to immigrants, from insider traders to union leaders to intellectuals - that it is hard to imagine that he might be doing anything wrong at all. And let me confess that I have been having a few expectations for change myself... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From natasha at natasha.cc Sun May 3 19:55:41 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 14:55:41 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Train Station Dance In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0905021845l34a336a6m9d1af3918550ea8b@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090502213106.0230ac98@satx.rr.com><710b78fc0905022010s1b97441q26339252a60d9a12@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <9D6B6214977D48D3B8BA78D526B0B2D0@DFC68LF1> I'm not sure one needs to be better than the other. Let's 1,000 dancers bloom - real, artificial, whatever. Who cares. It is just dance for goodness sakes. Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More _____ From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Belva Plain Sent: Sunday, May 03, 2009 7:37 AM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [ExI] Train Station Dance If you're into artificial, commercially-planned flash mob dancing, this one's better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0jcQ5OmdfE TomD _____ HotmailR has a new way to see what's up with your friends. Check it out. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 731 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jrd1415 at gmail.com Sun May 3 20:10:30 2009 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 13:10:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] bye In-Reply-To: <49F74614.3050606@rawbw.com> References: <49F74614.3050606@rawbw.com> Message-ID: Reports of your "expulsion" and consequent permanent departure having been highly exaggerated, I expect you to report back for duty as soon as your time in the penalty box has expired. Your postings are annoying, tedious, and strikingly wrong-headed for the most part, but your unrelenting civility makes you the poster-child for free speech protection: the guy who challenges (if feebly) my smug self-assurance. Without memetic antigens we develop no antibodies to the dreaded Corbin-Creutzfeld disease. I've been offline for a couple of weeks, so this is the first I've heard of this kerfluffle. As always, I support and remain confident of your continued participation on the list. Hope you and yours are well, and that fortune favors you in your extropic endeavors. Best, Jeff On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 11:08 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Hi Extropy friends, or at least those who've been > active in the last month or so. > > Yesterday, I was placed on "moderation", and then > today, I was expelled from the Extropy list this > morning at 7:26am, having received my last Extropy > post at 7:18am. > > I'm not writing for sympathy, or to complain, but > to say goodbye, and to say sorry that I didn't get > around to replying to several posts in time, some > going back a week or more. > > And also, of course, to say thanks for the very > splendid conversations I've had with all of you, > and all the insights I've gained. > > It's been a fruitful 13 years, at least for me :-) > > Best wishes in all your endeavors, > > yours, > Lee > From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 3 21:21:49 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 21:21:49 +0000 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 5/3/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 01:59 PM 5/3/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: > > ### According to many economic indicators, the recession is going to > > end in about 6 weeks > > > > Could you elaborate on these economic indicators? (Not being snarky here, > I'll really like to know.) > As a general rule, the bust takes about the same amount of time as the boom. So. you get a quick boom, followed by a quick bust and then recovery. Unfortunately, this last boom was the biggest bubble ever, and in all the world economies at the same time, so we are now in unknown territory. As trillions of free money, in all currencies, has been produced out of thin air, I would expect this to have some effect. (Exactly what effect, nobody knows). But as I see it, a quite likely scenario is a mini-recovery accompanied by shouts of 'Free money!', then an absolutely horrendous crash. Mainly because none of the underlying problems have yet been fixed. I shall be most surprised if the solution to debt problems caused by spending money that you don't have is to spend trillions more money that you don't have. BillK From jrd1415 at gmail.com Sun May 3 21:25:07 2009 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 14:25:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <49F59A67.5020704@libero.it> Message-ID: Whoaaa!!! Thanks for the context, John. Puts "fire in a crowded theater", EW Holmes, and the supreme court in a whole new light. Like Scalia's action-under-color-of-authority to stop the Florida recount in 2000. Another silly notion -- judicial integrity -- laid to rest. I've given up on the US. The experiment is over. The patient walks about in denial, as the end looms. But not to worry, the past is prologue. Life goes on, and the best of American values will live on -- somewhere else -- even as the hegemonic beast withers and dies from their repudiation. Best, Jeff Davis On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 8:40 AM, John K Clark wrote: > Wrote: > It was coined by Supreme Court Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes in his Schenck v. > United States decision. It involved prosecuting a man who wrote against the > draft during World War 1. This is what Justice Holmes wrote in his decision > to put the man in prison: > > "the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in > falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic." > > And this is what Justice Holmes thought would cause a panic and justified > the imprisonment of Mr. Schenck the author: > > "Do not submit to intimidation, assert your rights. If you do not assert and > support your rights, you are helping to deny or disparage rights which it is > the solemn duty of all citizens and residents of the United States to > retain. To draw this country into the horrors of the present war in Europe, > to force the youth of our land into the shambles and bloody trenches of > war-crazy nations, would be a crime the magnitude of which defies > description. Words could not express the condemnation such cold-blooded > ruthlessness deserves." From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 3 22:14:53 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 17:14:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503165631.024b8a68@satx.rr.com> While I still regard some form of GI as a plausible mechanism to ease the transition from a toil economy to one based on cheap or free matter compilers, etc, I'm also struck (as someone who was powerfully moved by Heinlein and Rand as a teen and young adult) with the stern, resolute Protestant Ethic of Rothbard in his assault on Friedman Sr.: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard43.html <...the supply of welfare clients is inversely proportion to another vitally important factor: the cultural or value disincentive of going on welfare. If this disincentive is strong, if, for example, an individual or group strongly believes that it is evil to go on welfare, they will not do it, period. If, on the other hand, they do not care about the stigma of welfare, or, worse yet, they regard welfare payments as their right ? a right to exert a compulsory, looting claim upon production ? then the number of people on welfare will increase astronomically, as has happened in recent years. There are several recent examples of the "stigma effect." It has been shown that, given the same level of income, more people tend to go on welfare in urban than in rural areas, presumably as a function of the greater visibility of welfare clients and hence the greater stigma in the more sparsely populated region. More important, there is the glowing fact that certain religious groups, even when significantly poorer than the rest of the population, simply do not go on welfare because of their deeply held ethical beliefs. Thus, the Chinese-Americans, while largely poor, are almost never to be found on welfare. ... Another example is the Mormon Church, very few of whose members are on public welfare. For the Mormons not only inculcate in their members the virtues of thrift, self-help, and independence, they also take care of their own needy through church charity programs which are grounded on the principle of helping people to help themselves, and thereby getting them off charity as quickly as possible. Thus, the Mormon Church counsels its members that "to seek and accept direct public relief all too often invites the curse of idleness and fosters the other evils of dole. It destroys one?s independence, industry, thrift, and self-respect." Hence, the Church?s highly successful private welfare program is based on the principles that the Church has encouraged its members to establish and maintain their economic independence: it has encouraged thrift and fostered the establishment of employment-creating industries; it has stood ready at all times to help needy faithful members. And: Our primary purpose was to set up, in so far as it might be possible, a system under which the curse of idleness would be done away with, the evils of a dole abolished, and independence, industry, thrift, and self-respect be once more established among our people. The aim of the Church is to help the people help themselves. Work is to be re-enthroned as the ruling principles of the lives of our Church membership. . . . Faithful to this principle, welfare workers will earnestly teach and urge Church members to be selfsustaining to the full extent of their powers. No true latterday Saint will, while physically able, voluntarily shift from himself the burden of his own support. The Libertarian approach to the welfare problem, then, is to abolish all coercive, public welfare, and to substitute for it private charity based on the principle of encouraging self-help, bolstered also by inculcating the virtues of self-reliance and independence throughout society. But the Friedman plan, on the contrary, moves in precisely the opposite direction, for it establishes welfare payments as an automatic right, an automatic, coercive claim upon the producers. It thereby removes the stigma effect altogether, disastrously discourages productive work by steep taxation, and by establishing a guaranteed income for not working, which encourages loafing. In addition, by establishing an income floor as a coercive "right," it encourages welfare clients to lobby for ever-higher floors, thus continually aggravating the entire problem. > I haven't read much Rothbard in recent decades, so I find myself wondering: does he--and other libertarians who maintain this view--argue equally for the confiscation of inherited wealth? (Confiscation by whom? I realize this is a problem in even forming the question, since it seems so ineluctably... statist. Still.) After all, the offspring or other parasitical beneficaries of the dead wealthy are liable to immediate, continuing and soul-ablating ruin of the kind, as we have learned from Rothbard, that destroys the "the virtues of self-reliance and independence" in welfare recipients. This is a serious question. The usual responses, in my experience, ignore that issue and fiercely defend the "right" of all wealthy humans to dispose of their (lawfully-acquired) legacies in whatever way they choose. But do we want to see wealthy wastrels wrecking their own lives and squandering wealth that might have been invested wisely by those instilled with the virtues of self-reliance and independence? (Or is this loafing subset of society--the ParisHiltonariat--too small to bother worrying about?) Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 3 22:22:28 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 17:22:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> Of course there's plenty on this topic on the web. For example: is a smorgasbord of different opinions. And inevitably: which doesn't touch the problem I raised of wastrel heirs ruined by their unearned dough. From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 3 22:57:00 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 17:57:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503174815.024cec10@satx.rr.com> At 05:22 PM 5/3/2009 -0500, I wrote: > > >which doesn't touch the problem I raised of wastrel heirs ruined by >their unearned dough. One fiery rant from 1991 that does comments: Obviously this is not the case with some libertarians, such as Rafal who escaped from the Belly of the Beast with only the shirt on his back, and now drives a small starship on a freeway he built with his own bare hands. Damien Broderick From moulton at moulton.com Mon May 4 00:16:20 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 17:16:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503174815.024cec10@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503174815.024cec10@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1241396180.6853.128.camel@hayek> Someone made an editing change to the material quoted which gives an impression that is not there is the original. Of course I am sure this was just a simple mistake and not a dishonest attempt to cast a false impression about Rothbard in particular or libertarians in general. Someone quoted: > The great > anarchistic "Mr. Libertarian", Murray Rothbard, joined with an > arch-fascist [LaRouche]... The original in the URL cited is: "The great anarchistic "Mr. Libertarian", Murray Rothbard, joined with an arch-fascist; most state-level positions have been lost to the conservatarians." http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/lastlib.html Please note that there is no mention of or reference to LaRouche in the entire sentence. There is only one mention of LaRouche in the entire article which is a brief mention of LaRouche taking over the Chicago Democrats. And by pointing out the association of LaRouche with the Democratic Party I am not trying to imply that Democrats as a whole are affiliated with LaRouche. LaRouche and followers are just parasites that latched on to the Democrats as an unwilling host. And to state what I expect is already known to most people on this list the LaRouche group hates libertarians. And libertarians despise and loath LaRouche and followers. Much of the article appears to be bit of rant about the Libertarian Party. As we all should know if one is interested in libertarianism one should not waste time looking at the Libertarian Party. And then the author of the rant includes this: "The first Randians I ran into decided I wasn't good material for their cause on account of my habit of winding up dead drunk in the gutter in strange towns on weekends." Now I could make a snarky reply about how I (and I expect many others here) also was not born to wealth but that I never had a habit of winding up drunk in the gutter in a strange town; instead I did spent many weekends in work and study and this prepared me to be ready when good fortune and the good will and assistance of others presented itself. But that reply while correct might cause us to miss a point that I think is worth making so let me instead give the following reply: There are people who have experienced misfortune or have other difficulties. That is why I urge people to donate to charitable causes. I wrote a small piece about this in my blog a few months ago: http://blog.lightingonemorecandle.com/2009/02/charities.html How about sometime during the month of May everyone on this list who is able make a donation to a charity intended to assist those who need a helping hand. As I said in blog that now a lot of charities are hurting so a this is a good month to give. Fred From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 4 00:42:03 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 19:42:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <1241396180.6853.128.camel@hayek> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503174815.024cec10@satx.rr.com> <1241396180.6853.128.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503193750.023d9d88@satx.rr.com> At 05:16 PM 5/3/2009 -0700, Fred C. Moulton wrote: >Someone made an editing change to the material quoted which gives an >impression that is not there is the original. Of course I am sure this >was just a simple mistake and not a dishonest attempt to cast a false >impression about Rothbard in particular or libertarians in general. >Someone quoted: > > > The great > > anarchistic "Mr. Libertarian", Murray Rothbard, joined with an > > arch-fascist [LaRouche]... > >The original in the URL cited is: >"The great anarchistic "Mr. Libertarian", Murray Rothbard, joined with >an arch-fascist; most state-level positions have been lost to the >conservatarians." >http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/lastlib.html > >Please note that there is no mention of or reference to LaRouche in the >entire sentence. Perhaps I jumped erroneously to that conclusion. How is that possible? Because the Rothbard essay on Friedman I've been quoting is urled at http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard43.html and (again, maybe even more erroneously) I associate those two names. Careless of me. Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 4 00:43:57 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 19:43:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <1241396180.6853.128.camel@hayek> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503174815.024cec10@satx.rr.com> <1241396180.6853.128.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503194222.0228dad8@satx.rr.com> At 05:16 PM 5/3/2009 -0700, Fred wrote: >The original in the URL cited is: >"The great anarchistic "Mr. Libertarian", Murray Rothbard, joined with >an arch-fascist; most state-level positions have been lost to the >conservatarians." >http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/lastlib.html Which arch-fascist do you think he meant? Is this a baseless calumny? From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon May 4 01:49:06 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 21:49:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905031849p19cc7919ibc55bb171ba10370@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 2:25 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 01:59 PM 5/3/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: > >> ### According to many economic indicators, the recession is going to >> end in about 6 weeks > > Could you elaborate on these economic indicators? (Not being snarky here, > I'll really like to know.) ### See here: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/04/did-jobless-claims-peak-in-early-april.html, and a bunch of more recent posts. Carpe Diem is very close to the top of my blog favorites tab, mainly because it consists to a large degree of charts and graphs. I carpe them posts every day. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon May 4 01:58:58 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 21:58:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905031858o410de272h22fc34901a2e63e6@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 5:21 PM, BillK wrote: > As a general rule, the bust takes about the same amount of time as the boom. > > So. you get a quick boom, followed by a quick bust and then recovery. > > Unfortunately, this last boom was the biggest bubble ever, ### ???? ----------------------- and in all > the world economies at the same time, so we are now in unknown > territory. As trillions of free ?money, in all currencies, has been > produced out of thin air, I would expect this to have some effect. > (Exactly what effect, nobody knows). ### Everybody knows the effect of diluting currency - inflation. But don't worry, the US economy is bigger today than ever, so even the unusually large amount of poison injected during this round of stupidity is not likely to kill it. Yet. ------------------ But as I see it, a quite likely > scenario is a mini-recovery accompanied by shouts of 'Free money!', > then an absolutely horrendous crash. Mainly because none of the > underlying problems have yet been fixed. ### Unfortunately, you could be right here, although the misallocation of resources into home-building has somewhat abated. Really hard to tell what is gonna happen, which is the usual situation when it comes to predicting the future. We have to remember that capital productivity continues to increase, and so far has been keeping up with the feeding frenzy of voters and politicians. If scientific progress continues, we may live to see the black rain of the singularity with our bank accounts in good shape. Rafal P.S. Yes, I really think the singularity will kill us. Aren't you ppl worried about this? From brentn at freeshell.org Mon May 4 01:58:36 2009 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 21:58:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905031849p19cc7919ibc55bb171ba10370@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905031849p19cc7919ibc55bb171ba10370@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 3 May, 2009, at 21:49, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > > and a bunch of more recent posts. Carpe Diem is very close to the top > of my blog favorites tab, mainly because it consists to a large degree > of charts and graphs. > > I carpe them posts every day. > I find his logic unconvincing. In this particular instance, as in the 1930s, economic contraction is being driven by deflation and lack of real spending power (brought on, of course, by the stupidity of bankers and too much debt and blah blah blah.) The recovery will happen when there is sufficient demand to *grow* payrolls, not to prevent them from contracting. These data are collected - by the Labor Department as well as by private survey - so there's no excuse in not using both unemployment and payroll to make the judgement as to whether we're seeing a recovery. Just because he argues from a chart doesn't mean his argument isn't bullshit. :) B -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon May 4 02:48:09 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 22:48:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503165631.024b8a68@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503165631.024b8a68@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905031948w19d12d49gbd9f3401451a55e6@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 6:14 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > > This is a serious question. The usual responses, in my experience, ignore > that issue and fiercely defend the "right" of all wealthy humans to dispose > of their (lawfully-acquired) legacies in whatever way they choose. But do we > want to see wealthy wastrels wrecking their own lives and squandering wealth > that might have been invested wisely by those instilled with the virtues of > self-reliance and independence? (Or is this loafing subset of society--the > ParisHiltonariat--too small to bother worrying about?) ### The main problem is not depriving Paris Hilton of the chance to go whoring in style but rather the long term costs of constructing the organization and the system of expectations about the workings of the society that allow such interference in private affairs. Think about it: There is wealth that is not legitimately yours since it was created by Mr Hilton and therefore should remain his, as a reward for his efforts, and a signal to others that hard work will make them rich. Still, you want to "invest it wisely". How do you go about it? It seems that you need to create an organization capable of wresting the wealth away from workers like Mr Hilton. That organization should be wiser than Mr Hilton, unerringly capable of determining the right and the wrong uses of workers' monies (e.g. if giving money to your granddaughter who decides to out-slut others is wrong, is it also wrong to bequest a really nice car? A house? A penny more than the average? How about spending on a non-hybrid or God forbid, foreign car?) All kinds of questions will inevitably occur to the officers of this organization, and I have a hunch that they will favor one answer - Give us the cash, and shut up. The good Officers would have to be saintly devoted to investing for the benefit of us all, while wielding the guns, prisons, and other devices needed for separating men from their cash and giving nothing in return. And of course workers like Mr Hilton who see it happening will now think twice about trying to get rich, thus depriving us of, for example, the chance to check in to a well-run hotel at a reasonable price. Do you think it is possible to sculpt such an organization out of the crooked timber of humanity? I don't. Plus, I have no envy, I don't get upset when I see rich brats in Porches passing my humble Mustang. I am a consequentialist, which is where I differ from Rothbard, and I am convinced that giving the state the right to order us all about just to spite Paris Hilton is a really bad idea. Rafal From emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon May 4 02:56:42 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 12:26:42 +0930 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <200905031932.n43JW3lY001104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905031932.n43JW3lY001104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905031956u2f70355dsfcda1a350a60787c@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/4 Max More : > Olga, you might want to read this: > > Obama's Vision Deficit: > http://www.reason.com/news/show/133157.html > > Max > >> OK, I'm biased ... but it seems to me that Obama has done more positive >> things in 100 days than Bush did in 8 years. >> >> Olga I'm not sure I understand what's so compelling about that Reason article. Yep, Obama is doing big centralized infrastructure spending. There's nothing wrong with that per se. The article seems to point that out, then fail to argue the case for it being bad. It just kind of says "Hey he's not being libertarian therefore he's terrible". Transport: the argument seems to be "oh trains are so last century or so". But really, isn't this an ideological squabble, between a centralized, state controlled kind of technology (trains) and a decentralized private industry approaches (deregulated airports, private roads, couldn't quite understand what was being proposed there actually). Actually I don't like trains much either, but I'd like to see personal rapid transit systems (seems to me they could combine the best of trains and cars if done right). Bailout: Well there's a vexed question, to bailout or not to bailout? Whichever way you go, people will scream at you. I can't say what's the best approach, and I'm glad it's not my job to make those decisions. Centralized spending on education; again, argue the detail. Centralized spending on "Alternative Energy", well, that stuff should just be "Energy" by now, it's about time. I love that this is being done. Comparing it to Jimmy Carter is meaningless to me, what's actually bad about it? Centralized spending on health is a really, really good idea. I don't know how US citizens don't freak out every day, dealing with the health system you've got. No wonder there's so much focus on getting rich; you have to, just in case you get sick. The national service thing, it's old fashioned conservative values there I would have thought. Once wouldn't have been to my taste, but I have a bit of sympathy for it. Overall, I can't see how he hasn't been true to his campaigning. He was never pretending to be Captain Future of the 24th century, where we'd all get flying cars. His message was always "let's cut the crap and get some sensible change going". Very pragmatic stuff, not going with the left or right party lines (from outside the US, this is the "right" or "far far right" party lines). Really, given the shit storm that hit late in the campaign (oops we broke the world), it's amazing that the new administration is running so true to the original campaign vision. They've really got some serious shit to handle. If you want a comparison, think about how McCain might have handled this. Or W, darwin save us all! -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon May 4 03:11:12 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 23:11:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905031956u2f70355dsfcda1a350a60787c@mail.gmail.com> References: <200905031932.n43JW3lY001104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0905031956u2f70355dsfcda1a350a60787c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905032011j4c8ae9f3s6c3a6bb682dde1d9@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 10:56 PM, Emlyn wrote: > > Overall, I can't see how he hasn't been true to his campaigning. He > was never pretending to be Captain Future of the 24th century, where > we'd all get flying cars. His message was always "let's cut the crap > and get some sensible change going". Very pragmatic stuff, not going > with the left or right party lines (from outside the US, this is the > "right" or "far far right" party lines). ### Gee, you *are* a commie, and supporting a big-business candidate, of all things. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon May 4 03:14:53 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 23:14:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: References: <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905031849p19cc7919ibc55bb171ba10370@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905032014j6c31550bpa53eeaec906c7c49@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 9:58 PM, Brent Neal wrote: > > I find his logic unconvincing. In this particular instance, as in the 1930s, > economic contraction is being driven by deflation and lack of real spending > power (brought on, of course, by the stupidity of bankers and too much debt > and blah blah blah.) The recovery will happen when there is sufficient > demand to *grow* payrolls, not to prevent them from contracting. These data > are collected - by the Labor Department as well as by private survey - so > there's no excuse in not using both unemployment and payroll to make the > judgement as to whether we're seeing a recovery. ### He is pointing to the observations from the previous 6 recessions - did you follow the link? (http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2009/04/another_green_s.html) Rafal From moulton at moulton.com Mon May 4 03:04:34 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 20:04:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503194222.0228dad8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503174815.024cec10@satx.rr.com> <1241396180.6853.128.camel@hayek> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503194222.0228dad8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1241406274.6853.138.camel@hayek> On Sun, 2009-05-03 at 19:43 -0500, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 05:16 PM 5/3/2009 -0700, Fred wrote: > > >The original in the URL cited is: > >"The great anarchistic "Mr. Libertarian", Murray Rothbard, joined with > >an arch-fascist; most state-level positions have been lost to the > >conservatarians." > >http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/lastlib.html > > Which arch-fascist do you think he meant? Is this a baseless calumny? The author of that piece does not seem to have a good grasp on things so I am not going to try to guess what he was talking about. Even if we tracked him down and asked him it is likely that whatever answer we got would be as incoherent and poorly reasoned as what we have already seen. One thing I have noticed about the Internet is that you can find uninformed rants about almost anything and I have not found it to be profitable to try to decipher them. Fred From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon May 4 03:43:16 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 23:43:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Debt tsunami Message-ID: <7641ddc60905032043r7165ffdav254a34f6845bd1dd@mail.gmail.com> For people interested in the truth rather than slogans, here is the Congressional Budget Office: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10014/Chapter1.5.1.shtml#1091929 Please direct your attention especially figure 1-2. Rafal From emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon May 4 04:01:54 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 13:31:54 +0930 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905032011j4c8ae9f3s6c3a6bb682dde1d9@mail.gmail.com> References: <200905031932.n43JW3lY001104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0905031956u2f70355dsfcda1a350a60787c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905032011j4c8ae9f3s6c3a6bb682dde1d9@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905032101u6c7b8edciaf9bf35abce9c948@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/4 Rafal Smigrodzki : > On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 10:56 PM, Emlyn wrote: > >> >> Overall, I can't see how he hasn't been true to his campaigning. He >> was never pretending to be Captain Future of the 24th century, where >> we'd all get flying cars. His message was always "let's cut the crap >> and get some sensible change going". Very pragmatic stuff, not going >> with the left or right party lines (from outside the US, this is the >> "right" or "far far right" party lines). > > ### Gee, you *are* a commie, and supporting a big-business candidate, > of all things. > > Rafal Wat yoo talkin bout, comrade? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 4 04:13:45 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 23:13:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Debt tsunami In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905032043r7165ffdav254a34f6845bd1dd@mail.gmail.co m> References: <7641ddc60905032043r7165ffdav254a34f6845bd1dd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503231241.022c5c08@satx.rr.com> At 11:43 PM 5/3/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: >http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10014/Chapter1.5.1.shtml#1091929 > >Please direct your attention especially figure 1-2. This sort of thing? From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon May 4 04:14:27 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 00:14:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905032101u6c7b8edciaf9bf35abce9c948@mail.gmail.com> References: <200905031932.n43JW3lY001104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0905031956u2f70355dsfcda1a350a60787c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905032011j4c8ae9f3s6c3a6bb682dde1d9@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0905032101u6c7b8edciaf9bf35abce9c948@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905032114q473a6415x243c387128e1358@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 12:01 AM, Emlyn wrote: > 2009/5/4 Rafal Smigrodzki : >> On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 10:56 PM, Emlyn wrote: >> >>> >>> Overall, I can't see how he hasn't been true to his campaigning. He >>> was never pretending to be Captain Future of the 24th century, where >>> we'd all get flying cars. His message was always "let's cut the crap >>> and get some sensible change going". Very pragmatic stuff, not going >>> with the left or right party lines (from outside the US, this is the >>> "right" or "far far right" party lines). >> >> ### Gee, you *are* a commie, and supporting a big-business candidate, >> of all things. >> >> Rafal > > Wat yoo talkin bout, comrade? ### The dude who excluded small business from ARRA funding, gives more cash taken from workers to multimillionaires, and is supporting large businesses with high barriers to entry, like railways, while trying to destroy small time operators, like truck drivers. But his dad was a card-carrying commie, his mom was as well, and he talks the talk, so he remains untouchable, no matter what he actually does, right? Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon May 4 04:20:15 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 00:20:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Debt tsunami In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503231241.022c5c08@satx.rr.com> References: <7641ddc60905032043r7165ffdav254a34f6845bd1dd@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503231241.022c5c08@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905032120s4cf22e0bp33a8596aa0d15714@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 11:43 PM 5/3/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: > >> http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10014/Chapter1.5.1.shtml#1091929 >> >> Please direct your attention especially figure 1-2. > > This sort of thing? > > year to 19.9 percent in 2013 and remain at roughly 20 percent of GDP > thereafter. Much of that increase results from the growing impact of the > alter?native minimum tax (AMT) and, even more significant, the scheduled > expiration in December 2010 of provisions originally enacted in the Economic > Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA) and the Jobs and > Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (JGTRRA), as well as tax > provisions enacted in ARRA. > > As a percent age of GDP, outlays in the baseline peak in 2009 at 27.4 > percent of GDP and then fall to 21.7 percent in 2012. They remain roughly > constant thereafter, at about 22 percent of GDP from 2013 to 2019.> > ### Damien, did you read what they mean by "baseline" in this context? Baseline is roughly what would have happened if Obama didn't exist. The predictions about Obama's impact are all referred to as "Presiden't" budget, spending or whatever. They are hair-rising scary, and he's hardly begun. Rafal From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 4 04:38:47 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 23:38:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Debt tsunami In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905032120s4cf22e0bp33a8596aa0d15714@mail.gmail.co m> References: <7641ddc60905032043r7165ffdav254a34f6845bd1dd@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503231241.022c5c08@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905032120s4cf22e0bp33a8596aa0d15714@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503233009.022c09e0@satx.rr.com> At 12:20 AM 5/4/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: >### Damien, did you read what they mean by "baseline" in this context? >Baseline is roughly what would have happened if Obama didn't exist. Ah. Christ, I'm really having a bad day with the munged quotes. But it would have helped the magpie mind if you'd cited Table 1-4 rather than Table 1-2. Damien Broderick From emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon May 4 04:39:51 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 14:09:51 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905031948w19d12d49gbd9f3401451a55e6@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503165631.024b8a68@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905031948w19d12d49gbd9f3401451a55e6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905032139g42c9322g613eaa28b29f4ac6@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/4 Rafal Smigrodzki : > Plus, I have no envy, I don't get > upset when I see rich brats in Porches passing my humble Mustang. Not even downward envy? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon May 4 06:58:10 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 02:58:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905032139g42c9322g613eaa28b29f4ac6@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503165631.024b8a68@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905031948w19d12d49gbd9f3401451a55e6@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0905032139g42c9322g613eaa28b29f4ac6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905032358h296d0389w312248c289653de4@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 12:39 AM, Emlyn wrote: > 2009/5/4 Rafal Smigrodzki : >> Plus, I have no envy, I don't get >> upset when I see rich brats in Porches passing my humble Mustang. > > Not even downward envy? ### What is downward envy? Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon May 4 07:13:27 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 03:13:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Debt tsunami In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503233009.022c09e0@satx.rr.com> References: <7641ddc60905032043r7165ffdav254a34f6845bd1dd@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503231241.022c5c08@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905032120s4cf22e0bp33a8596aa0d15714@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503233009.022c09e0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905040013n31317284tdd579da684f783b@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 12:38 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 12:20 AM 5/4/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: > >> ### Damien, did you read what they mean by "baseline" in this context? >> Baseline is roughly what would have happened if Obama didn't exist. > > Ah. Christ, I'm really having a bad day with the munged quotes. But it would > have helped the magpie mind if you'd cited Table 1-4 rather than Table 1-2. > > of GDP, or nearly $1.4 trillion, CBO estimates--$241 billion more than the > deficit of $1.1 trillion that CBO projects under current laws and > policies... That difference is largely attributable to additional spending > for the government?s actions to stabilize financial markets ($125 billion); > defense spending, primarily for ongoing military opera?tions in Iraq and > Afghanistan and other activities related to the war on terrorism ($50 > billion); and various revenue reductions ($45 billion). In total, outlays > next year would measure 25.5 percent of GDP under the President?s poli?cies, > and revenues would amount to 15.9 percent. ### Or translated: A 21% increase (i.e. the "change") in budget deficit over politics as usual after only 100 days in power. And a projected deficit of 9.270 trillion (yes, trillion, not billion) by 2019. Nine trillion dollars is big money. Not exactly record-breaking as USG accounting trickery goes (the title here goes to unfunded SS liabilities, about 44 trillion dollars) but still impressive. Rafao From brentn at freeshell.org Mon May 4 10:36:45 2009 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 06:36:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905032014j6c31550bpa53eeaec906c7c49@mail.gmail.com> References: <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905031849p19cc7919ibc55bb171ba10370@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905032014j6c31550bpa53eeaec906c7c49@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 3 May, 2009, at 23:14, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### He is pointing to the observations from the previous 6 recessions > - did you follow the link? > (http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2009/04/another_green_s.html) Yes. This recession is highly deflationary, much more so than the recessions from the 70s onward, making the necessary conditions for recovery different. B -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From brentn at freeshell.org Mon May 4 10:41:54 2009 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 06:41:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Debt tsunami In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905040013n31317284tdd579da684f783b@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60905032043r7165ffdav254a34f6845bd1dd@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503231241.022c5c08@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905032120s4cf22e0bp33a8596aa0d15714@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503233009.022c09e0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905040013n31317284tdd579da684f783b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3265ADB5-6698-4001-87DE-E0F395895CE2@freeshell.org> On 4 May, 2009, at 3:13, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### Or translated: A 21% increase (i.e. the "change") in budget > deficit over politics as usual after only 100 days in power. And a > projected deficit of 9.270 trillion (yes, trillion, not billion) by > 2019. > > Nine trillion dollars is big money. Not exactly record-breaking as USG > accounting trickery goes (the title here goes to unfunded SS > liabilities, about 44 trillion dollars) but still impressive. This may be exactly the right thing to do. In a deflationary cycle, you -want- an inflationary fiscal policy to prevent a downward wage- price spiral. No doubt, I'd be a lot more comfortable with this if we'd managed to sock more money away in the Clinton-Bush years. You know, like good businesses/people/gov'ts ought to do - save during the fat years to prepare for the lean. But with Bush II dumping dollars into the desert like a madman, alas, it was not to be. We'll have to hope that the investments we're making now will pay off well enough to cover the bill later. B -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From mbb386 at main.nc.us Mon May 4 10:49:47 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 06:49:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905031956u2f70355dsfcda1a350a60787c@mail.gmail.com> References: <200905031932.n43JW3lY001104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0905031956u2f70355dsfcda1a350a60787c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <33620.12.77.168.184.1241434187.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > > Centralized spending on health is a really, really good idea. I don't > know how US citizens don't freak out every day, dealing with the > health system you've got. No wonder there's so much focus on getting > rich; you have to, just in case you get sick. > I simply do not see it this way. I've been very pleased with my health care. I've been able to choose my doctors, I've been able to get appointments when I needed them, service was speedy. And yes, there have been medical problems, illness which was hard to diagnose, frustrating to treat. My best friend dealt with the Veteran's Administration (gov't run) hospital service. Often I was his chauffeur and any appointment took the entire day - wait wait wait. Meds were delayed hours, and there were big waiting rooms just for the pharmacy. Each visit to the VA reinforced my joy and relief at dealing with the private sector. Regards, MB From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 4 10:55:16 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 10:55:16 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Debt tsunami In-Reply-To: <3265ADB5-6698-4001-87DE-E0F395895CE2@freeshell.org> References: <7641ddc60905032043r7165ffdav254a34f6845bd1dd@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503231241.022c5c08@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905032120s4cf22e0bp33a8596aa0d15714@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503233009.022c09e0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905040013n31317284tdd579da684f783b@mail.gmail.com> <3265ADB5-6698-4001-87DE-E0F395895CE2@freeshell.org> Message-ID: On 5/4/09, Brent Neal wrote: > This may be exactly the right thing to do. In a deflationary cycle, you > -want- an inflationary fiscal policy to prevent a downward wage-price > spiral. No doubt, I'd be a lot more comfortable with this if we'd managed to > sock more money away in the Clinton-Bush years. You know, like good > businesses/people/gov'ts ought to do - save during the fat years to prepare > for the lean. But with Bush II dumping dollars into the desert like a > madman, alas, it was not to be. We'll have to hope that the investments > we're making now will pay off well enough to cover the bill later. > That hope is exactly what has caused this economic collapse. 'Spend now, worry about paying the bills later', has been the way of life for the last ten or so years. Now that the house of cards has collapsed, people are saying that the motto now is 'Pay my debts off first, then try to save some rainy day money, then *if* cash is available, buy something'. Economists call this deflation. The people call it survival. BillK From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 4 11:49:00 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 21:49:00 +1000 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905031054l76c8d272v8f3078712f93e562@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <7641ddc60905022203x73ef35c9l894a37f3a4dfeb68@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503001206.023ba380@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905031054l76c8d272v8f3078712f93e562@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/4 Rafal Smigrodzki : > Think about it this way: from our general knowledge of science and > perusing the Tesla website we can be reasonably sure that you can > build good electric cars (like the T roadster) but unfortunately there > is not enough lithium available to make them cheap as well. Same with > capitalism - we know from theory and from occasional lucky situations > (Hong Kong, Singapore) that you can build a more capitalist society > than the US is, and that it would be a much better society. > Unfortunately, building a capitalist society takes a lot of things > that are in short supply - intelligence, humility, freedom from > natural human biases, and that's why it isn't happening. It doesn't matter what it takes, once everyone sees how good it is they will copy it or be left behind. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 4 13:35:09 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 23:35:09 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503165631.024b8a68@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503165631.024b8a68@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/4 Damien Broderick : > <...the supply of welfare clients is inversely proportion to another vitally > important factor: the cultural or value disincentive of going on welfare. If > this disincentive is strong, if, for example, an individual or group > strongly believes that it is evil to go on welfare, they will not do it, > period. If, on the other hand, they do not care about the stigma of welfare, > or, worse yet, they regard welfare payments as their right ? a right to > exert a compulsory, looting claim upon production ? then the number of > people on welfare will increase astronomically, as has happened in recent > years. This is an alien view of welfare for me. In the client group I deal with, the mentally ill, welfare payments are regarded unquestioningly as a right, but despite that, I don't know anyone who actually wants to *stay* on welfare if they are able to work. This is because they feel better about themselves and also make more money if they work. I can't say I've met many who could work but prefer not to because they can get welfare payments. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 4 13:54:26 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 23:54:26 +1000 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <33620.12.77.168.184.1241434187.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <200905031932.n43JW3lY001104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0905031956u2f70355dsfcda1a350a60787c@mail.gmail.com> <33620.12.77.168.184.1241434187.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: 2009/5/4 MB : > >> >> Centralized spending on health is a really, really good idea. I don't >> know how US citizens don't freak out every day, dealing with the >> health system you've got. No wonder there's so much focus on getting >> rich; you have to, just in case you get sick. >> > > I simply do not see it this way. > > I've been very pleased with my health care. I've been able to choose my doctors, > I've been able to get appointments when I needed them, service was speedy. ?And yes, > there have been medical problems, illness which was hard to diagnose, frustrating to > treat. > > My best friend dealt with the Veteran's Administration (gov't run) hospital service. > ?Often I was his chauffeur and any appointment took the entire day - wait wait wait. > Meds were delayed hours, and there were big waiting rooms just for the pharmacy. > Each visit to the VA reinforced my joy and relief at dealing with the private > sector. An interesting compromise is publicly funded, privately provided health care, like in Australia. The government acts as a big health insurer, ensuring that everyone is covered and that less money is wasted through (I guess) inefficient competing private health funds. The per capita absolute spending on health care in Australia is about half that in the US, for about equal health outcomes. The main disadvantage is that if you are rich you pay a higher proportion of your income through the compulsory levy than you would if you only paid for private insurance. -- Stathis Papaioannou From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon May 4 13:54:40 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 07:54:40 -0600 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905031849p19cc7919ibc55bb171ba10370@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905032014j6c31550bpa53eeaec906c7c49@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905040654h3a69066bi8d1de74774f69256@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 4:36 AM, Brent Neal wrote: > On 3 May, 2009, at 23:14, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > >> ### He is pointing to the observations from the previous 6 recessions >> - did you follow the link? >> (http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2009/04/another_green_s.html) > > > Yes. This recession is highly deflationary, much more so than the recessions > from the 70s onward, making the necessary conditions for recovery different. > ### Do you have relevant references to published work by economists specializing in business cycle theory? Rafal From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 4 13:40:24 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 06:40:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax Message-ID: <790144.86965.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Sun, 5/3/09, Damien Broderick wrote: [snip] > I haven't read much Rothbard in recent decades, so I find > myself wondering: does he--and other libertarians who > maintain this view--argue equally for the confiscation of > inherited wealth? No. One can find something morally repugnant and argue for people to voluntarily stop it while not calling for the use of force. The big problem in our world today as many accept initiating force. Often this is under the guise of morality/ethics, where people judge something wrong and then decide this means force should be used to stop it. (I believe this partly accounts for the usual polical divide between the species of fascists in America -- dubbed "liberals" (a misnomer, since the term original meant something very close to libertarian) and "conservatives." Both seem to accept that it's right to use force to impose morality or virtue via force -- whereas the only virtue that should be directly involved with force is justice. They just disagree over which morality should be enforced. Also, there is another distinction between those who hold the same, but then argue against morality as such: they accept that morality should be imposed, but just believe there is no morality or, at least, no objective morality. This leads to the view if there just were some true or objective morality, it could be beaten into people, but, sadly, there is none, so we must let everyone alone. Some libertarians seem to hold this view.) > (Confiscation by whom? I realize this is a > problem in even forming the question, since it seems so > ineluctably... statist. Still.) After all, the offspring or > other parasitical beneficaries of the dead wealthy are > liable to immediate, continuing and soul-ablating ruin of > the kind, as we have learned from Rothbard, that destroys > the "the virtues of self-reliance and independence" in > welfare recipients. > > This is a serious question. The usual responses, in my > experience, ignore that issue and fiercely defend the > "right" of all wealthy humans to dispose of their > (lawfully-acquired) legacies in whatever way they choose. > But do we want to see wealthy wastrels wrecking their own > lives and squandering wealth that might have been invested > wisely by those instilled with the virtues of self-reliance > and independence? (Or is this loafing subset of society--the > ParisHiltonariat--too small to bother worrying about?) Actually, it's not a right, according to libertarianism, of "all wealthy humans to dispose of their (lawfully-acquired) legacies in whatever way they choose," but a right of all individuals (wealthy or no) to dispose of their just property (some of which might be illegally acquired) as they choose (provided, of course, it violates no one else's rights*). Also, given the context of your statement, the difference between a GI, negative income tax, and other such public wealth transfers and all forms of private ones is that the former must violate property rights -- someone is forced to pay. In both cases, yes, free-loaders or dead beats might be created -- in the sense of people who might have otherwise been productive choosing instead to layabout** -- but in the former people are forced to pay others for this. This also leads to another point: when it's done publicly, it seems the natural limits on this problem are much higher. A wealthy person's fortune is soon gobbled up by her lazy family members; when the public coffers are empty from wealth transfers, all that need be done is increase the tax load, increase the public debt, or inflate (or some combination of all three***). Yes, there are limits even on this, but they are much more loose -- the difference between a tightly coupled and loosely coupled system of incentives. Finally, as an aside, I think a problem is that having forced wealth transfers will eventually have a cultural impact -- as some people will work (often with the best of intentions) to legitamize them and people who benefit directly or indirectly from them will work to make them seem less like force wealth transfers and more like "charity" or "entitlements." This is, in fact, just how American culture changed over the 20th century. As this happens, the scope of forced wealth transfers will widen -- because, as it becomes socially acceptable, ever more people will seek out such wealth. (And, naturally, those who are already wealthy tend to be very good at doing this; thus we have spectacle of the upper and upper middle classes having wealth transfers in their favor from the working poor and lower middle class. Think, e.g., of public colleges. The working poor's children are unlikely to go to college, but their taxes pay so that middle class kids can attend them -- training the next generation of the middle level elite who will lord over the working poor and, likewise, demand more wealth transfers, e.g., for things like light rails and playgrounds for their kids.) Regards, Dan, aspiring free loader * You can't, e.g., dispose of your garbage on someone else's lawn without her consent. ** By the way, if anyone wants to test this with me, please please please support me and my lifestyle. I will spend my day surfing the web, studying Latin poetry, watching DVDs, and the like. Again, please please please let's test this out. :) *** Notably, there are fads in this. At times, higher taxes are all the rage -- usually offered up as the need to keep debt down and balance the [government] budget. At others, taxes are anathema and borrowing or inflation become more popular. (Debt and inflation tend to be popular more often than taxes because the payments is put off to the future and it's harder to tell who will actually be left with the bill. With debt (assuming no inflation), e.g., taxes will have to be raised at some future time, but no one can divine who those taxes will be levied on. With an inflationary system, there's an indirect tax as the value of all inflated money declines, but that's hard to trace, so, even worse than debt, who pays becomes ever harder to know -- save for generalities such as big debtors will benifit first and at the expense of all others and people on fixed incomes will likely suffer more.)) From emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon May 4 14:33:08 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 00:03:08 +0930 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <200905031932.n43JW3lY001104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0905031956u2f70355dsfcda1a350a60787c@mail.gmail.com> <33620.12.77.168.184.1241434187.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905040733w52ae0734h841174aa1e72a3ef@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/4 Stathis Papaioannou : > 2009/5/4 MB : >> >>> >>> Centralized spending on health is a really, really good idea. I don't >>> know how US citizens don't freak out every day, dealing with the >>> health system you've got. No wonder there's so much focus on getting >>> rich; you have to, just in case you get sick. >>> >> >> I simply do not see it this way. >> >> I've been very pleased with my health care. I've been able to choose my doctors, >> I've been able to get appointments when I needed them, service was speedy. ?And yes, >> there have been medical problems, illness which was hard to diagnose, frustrating to >> treat. >> >> My best friend dealt with the Veteran's Administration (gov't run) hospital service. >> ?Often I was his chauffeur and any appointment took the entire day - wait wait wait. >> Meds were delayed hours, and there were big waiting rooms just for the pharmacy. >> Each visit to the VA reinforced my joy and relief at dealing with the private >> sector. > > An interesting compromise is publicly funded, privately provided > health care, like in Australia. The government acts as a big health > insurer, ensuring that everyone is covered and that less money is > wasted through (I guess) inefficient competing private health funds. > The per capita absolute spending on health care in Australia is about > half that in the US, for about equal health outcomes. The main > disadvantage is that if you are rich you pay a higher proportion of > your income through the compulsory levy than you would if you only > paid for private insurance. > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou You don't have to pay the levy if you have health insurance though, no? Or do you still pay the basic levy? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon May 4 14:45:15 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 10:45:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503174815.024cec10@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: "Damien Broderick" > One of my biggest problems is with "inheritance." On the one hand I > do not support inheritance taxes as they strengthen the State. > On the other hand, I'm sick of hearing Libertarians and Objectivists > say how everything in life must be earned and then they look away > and whistle when I say, "True, but how about inheritance? > It's not earned." I must admit you may not be entirely wrong about that. I'm not a big fan of any tax but inheritance tax would be the LAST one I'd remove. I'd also say that Libertarians are right in advocating Ivy League universities stop their affirmative action admittance policy, but they should also get rid of their legacy admittance policy. John K Clark From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 4 14:48:23 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 07:48:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax Message-ID: <337950.87574.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/4/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/4 Damien Broderick : > > > <...the supply of welfare clients is inversely > proportion to another vitally > > important factor: the cultural or value disincentive > of going on welfare. If > > this disincentive is strong, if, for example, an > individual or group > > strongly believes that it is evil to go on welfare, > they will not do it, > > period. If, on the other hand, they do not care about > the stigma of welfare, > > or, worse yet, they regard welfare payments as their > right ? a right to > > exert a compulsory, looting claim upon production ? > then the number of > > people on welfare will increase astronomically, as has > happened in recent > > years. > > This is an alien view of welfare for me. In the client > group I deal > with, the mentally ill, welfare payments are regarded > unquestioningly > as a right, but despite that, I don't know anyone who > actually wants > to *stay* on welfare if they are able to work. This is > because they > feel better about themselves and also make more money if > they work. I > can't say I've met many who could work but prefer not to > because they > can get welfare payments. Doesn't that fall under a "value disincentive" explanation? Yes, some might take the payments, but there's a strong disincentive for it under at least some conditions. Once their condition changes, they no longer take it -- whether that includes merely the availability of jobs to feel good about or because the income is higher. (Of course, on the latter, one might expect marginal effects -- as when someone might be disinclined to work merely to make a small improvement in income. In this case, what's small depends on the person. Were this, too, not the case with most people, I'd expect we'd see lots more people working ever longer hours to make ever more money. In fact, even people not on the dole often make a certain level of income and then prefer leisure or non-work to more money. I've found myself in this position often too.) Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 4 15:10:42 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 08:10:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance Message-ID: <210452.59148.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/4/09, John K Clark wrote: > "Damien Broderick" > >> One of my biggest problems is with "inheritance." On >> the one hand I >> do not support inheritance taxes as they strengthen >> the State. >> On the other hand, I'm sick of hearing Libertarians >> and Objectivists >> say how everything in life must be earned and then >> they look away >> and whistle when I say, "True, but how about >> inheritance? It's not earned." > > I must admit you may not be entirely wrong about that. I'm > not a big fan of > any tax but inheritance tax would be the LAST one I'd > remove. I'd also say > that Libertarians are right in advocating Ivy League > universities stop their > affirmative action admittance policy, but they should also > get rid of their > legacy admittance policy. As a strict libertarian, in terms of justice, I'm only worried about what's justly acquired -- not necessarily earned. In this case, the person who justly acquired property has a right to give it to her heirs as she sees fit. No, as a person, I might find it repugnant when a person who worked hard all her life, spoils her kids and then leaves them a big fat inheritence. But I wouldn't initiate force to change her decision. Regarding inheritence in general, too, I think the outcome of enforcing taxes on it has been to increase the power of the state and dependency on it by making sure rival wealth centers either don't arise or are hampered. Instead of allowing people to build family fortunes -- and I find nothing wrong per se with building and maintaining such fortunes -- instead these are often destroyed, limited, or shifted into less productive areas (to protect them). As an aside, this actually prevents elite cycling -- where old elites are replaced -- as the established elites make it harder for different groups to move up the ladder. (Notably, the super-wealthy don't suffer much from such taxes. It's the people at the bottom or in the middle who tend to suffer the most, especially as they often lack the skills to maneuvere around arcane tax laws.) Finally, true libertarians would not be against, as libertarians, any admissions policies universities choose -- but they would be against anything that initiated force, such as public monies going to universities (which should all be privatized) or forcing them to have certain admissions policies. Thus, in a just world, universities would not be tax funded and could select their admissions policies. One might expect a diversity of policies with some being more prevalent -- instead of one policy for all public universities. Regards, Dan From fauxever at sprynet.com Mon May 4 14:59:35 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 07:59:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090503174815.024cec10@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <5CABDD3807744154B62C08F8A4882DFB@patrick4ezsk6z> From: "John K Clark" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 7:45 AM > I must admit you may not be entirely wrong about that. I'm not a big fan > of > any tax but inheritance tax would be the LAST one I'd remove. I'd also say > that Libertarians are right in advocating Ivy League universities stop > their > affirmative action admittance policy, but they should also get rid of > their > legacy admittance policy. Ah, yes ... legacy admittance policy, one of the many benefits (there have been others, e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/books/review/28KOTZL.html) bestowed on certain Americans "when affirmative action was white?" ;)). Olga From brentn at freeshell.org Mon May 4 17:01:14 2009 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 13:01:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905040654h3a69066bi8d1de74774f69256@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905031849p19cc7919ibc55bb171ba10370@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905032014j6c31550bpa53eeaec906c7c49@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905040654h3a69066bi8d1de74774f69256@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 4 May, 2009, at 9:54, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 4:36 AM, Brent Neal > wrote: >> On 3 May, 2009, at 23:14, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> >>> ### He is pointing to the observations from the previous 6 >>> recessions >>> - did you follow the link? >>> (http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2009/04/another_green_s.html) >> >> >> Yes. This recession is highly deflationary, much more so than the >> recessions >> from the 70s onward, making the necessary conditions for recovery >> different. >> > ### Do you have relevant references to published work by economists > specializing in business cycle theory? > > Rafal >> > I'm sure I can dig them out. This isn't something that should be a surprising revelation to anyone following the news. Check out, e.g., the PPI data over the past six months relative to other downward cycles. B > > -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From brentn at freeshell.org Mon May 4 17:21:31 2009 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 13:21:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905031849p19cc7919ibc55bb171ba10370@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905032014j6c31550bpa53eeaec906c7c49@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905040654h3a69066bi8d1de74774f69256@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 4 May, 2009, at 13:01, Brent Neal wrote: >>> >> > > I'm sure I can dig them out. This isn't something that should be a > surprising revelation to anyone following the news. Check out, e.g., > the PPI data over the past six months relative to other downward > cycles. This represents about 30 seconds of Googling. Unless you think that the von Mises Institute is too left wing for you, of course. :) > http://mises.org/story/2948 This shows that in only 2 of the past 8 recessions were deflationary pressures felt. The PPI data for the past 6 months shows our current deflationary situation. The question at hand is the one being talked about in the GI thread, though. It is entirely feasible that these are the growing pains towards an economy that where the wage-income link is weakened, something that the folks mired in industrial age economics can't wrap their heads around. As we begin to understand that ideas and memes will often be more valuable than stuff, there will inevitably be some rough spots as we transition from an economy based on atoms, arranged just so and moved from point A to point B , to an economy based on bits, arranged just so and moved from point A to point B. (Where they would then be "minted" into the right sort of atoms, perhaps. Or perhaps not.) B -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon May 4 19:38:21 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 15:38:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance References: <210452.59148.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7694E9EC93EE4D129C0B0089E8456EEF@MyComputer> "Dan" > Regarding inheritence in general, too, I think the outcome of enforcing > taxes on it has been to increase the power of the state and dependency on > it Well sure, but that's in the nature of all taxes and in the real world we're not likely to see the elimination of all taxes anytime soon; but we might be able to get rid of some of them and inheritance taxes would not be on my list of taxes that need to be eliminated immediately. > As a strict libertarian, in terms of justice I'm a Libertarian too and I like justice as well as the next man, but given the choice between justice and a decision in my favor there is simply no contest; don't look at me like that, at least I'm willing to admit it. When was the last time you heard a baseball player screaming at a umpire "What do you mean I'm safe, are you blind, clearly I was out!". And if any list member is a billionaire and also wants to mention me in his will I promise I won't flame you about it, in fact I promise to say only good things about you. Not only that but I'll be glad to pack your parachute for your next skydive too. John K Clark From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 4 19:58:32 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 12:58:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance Message-ID: <140672.11828.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/4/09, John K Clark wrote: > "Dan" >> Regarding inheritence in general, too, I think the >> outcome of enforcing >> taxes on it has been to increase the power of the >> state and dependency on it > > Well sure, but that's in the nature of all taxes and in the > real world we're > not likely to see the elimination of all taxes anytime > soon; but we might be > able to get rid of some of them and inheritance taxes would > not be on my > list of taxes that need to be eliminated immediately. I'm not sure how I'd rank which taxes to get rid of first. There was some economist a while back -- he was completely anti-tax (in other words, consistent, logical, and sane) -- but argued that certain taxes were worse than others, but his ranking was based on the scope of taxation -- that is, whether a tax affected a narrower or greater range of activities. I forget exactly how he weighed in or his reasoning, though his ultimate aim was elimination of all taxes (and the state with it; again, the consistent, logical, and sane position). >> As a strict libertarian,? in terms of >> justice > > I'm a Libertarian too and I like justice as well as the > next man, but given > the choice between justice and a decision in my favor there > is simply no > contest; don't look at me like that, at least I'm willing > to admit it. When > was the last time you heard a baseball player screaming at > a umpire > "What do you mean I'm safe, are you blind, clearly I was > out!". Then, to that degree, you are not a libertarian. You will set aside your libertarian views when it suits you. How this any different than a person who admits he's not a libertarian, emphatically states he's not one, and just says, "Well, I won't initiate forces most of the time, but when it's to my benefit I will."? > And if any list member is a billionaire and also wants to > mention me in his > will I promise I won't flame you about it, in fact I > promise to say only > good things about you. > > Not only that but I'll be glad to pack your parachute for > your next skydive too. This reminds me of a private poker game I attended a few years ago. I asked the person running the game if he trusted the dealer. He told me, "Yeah, but only about 80% of the time." I quipped, "Then you don't trust the dealer." Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 4 20:18:05 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 13:18:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" Message-ID: <644945.87757.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Sun, 5/3/09, BillK wrote: > On 5/3/09, Damien Broderick wrote: >> At 01:59 PM 5/3/2009 -0400, Rafal wrote: >>> ### According to many economic indicators, the >>> recession is going to >>> end in about 6 weeks >> >>? Could you elaborate on these economic >> indicators? (Not being snarky here, >> I'll really like to know.) > > As a general rule, the bust takes about the same amount of > time as the boom. I'd like to see some evidence for this. Prima facie, I think the relationship would be accidental. In fact, my guess would be the duration of the bust or recession -- where the markets attempt to get to a more realistic price and production structure -- would depend not only on how deep the boom was -- that is, how much it messed up relative prices and the structure of production -- but what remedies are attempted. I'd also guess that busts can be over relatively quickly if there's little interference -- i.e., prices are allowed to adjust because, say, there are no attempts to prop up prices, bail out firms, or other further interfere in the market. The 1920-1 recession seems a good example of how quick a bust can be over -- and, if one judges the boom to have been from 1917 to 1920, then the recession was around three years, while the recession was about half that. > So. you get a quick boom, followed by a quick bust and then > recovery. > > Unfortunately, this last boom was the biggest bubble ever, > and in all > the world economies at the same time, so we are now in > unknown > territory. As trillions of free? money, in all > currencies, has been > produced out of thin air, I would expect this to have some > effect. And a lot of this new money was created after the recession started -- in an attempt to "reflate." > (Exactly what effect, nobody knows). But as I see it, a > quite likely > scenario is a mini-recovery accompanied by shouts of 'Free > money!', > then an absolutely horrendous crash. Mainly because none of > the > underlying problems have yet been fixed. I agree here, though my powers of economic forecasting leave a lot to be desired. :/ > I shall be most surprised if the solution to debt problems > caused by > spending money that you don't have is to spend trillions > more money > that you don't have. Well, if that worked (rhetorical question), why the original recession? If merely creating new money to pay off real debts worked, then one would never expect to see the business cycle. Regards, Dan From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon May 4 20:53:14 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 16:53:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance References: <140672.11828.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: "Dan" > he was completely anti-tax in other words, consistent, logical, and sane That is redundant. > You will set aside your libertarian views when it suits you. Fuck libertarian, I will set aside absolutely anything when it suits me, and the liberty I feel when I do that is breathtaking. I love it! > you are not a libertarian Buddy, I believe I could dance libertarian circles around you; at least nobody has beaten me on the libertarian matter on this list in the last 15 years. Think I'm talking bullshit, well then challenge me! John K Clark From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 4 21:17:32 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 14:17:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance Message-ID: <789426.33168.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/4/09, John K Clark wrote: > "Dan" > > > he was completely anti-tax in other words, consistent, > logical, and sane > > That is redundant. And? >> You will set aside your libertarian views when it >> suits you. > > Fuck libertarian, I will set aside absolutely anything when > it suits me, and > the liberty I feel when I do that is breathtaking. I love > it! And how is this any different from any non-libertarian -- say, for example, a gangster or a fascist? >> you are not a libertarian > > Buddy, I believe I could dance libertarian circles around > you; at least > nobody has beaten me on the libertarian matter on this list > in the last 15 > years. Think I'm talking bullshit, well then challenge me! My point was not meant to insult you; didn't mean for you to take this personally. I certainly don't mean for you to get upset. I was merely stating this: if you profess to be a libertarian and then proclaim you would set aside all things libertarian in a pinch, then you're not really a libertarian after all. This is not a matter of whether you might be able to do libertarian analysis better than many (or even me) or whether you might work out where libertarian principles lead. (E.g., I'm an atheist, but I've debated with Biblical literalists the meaning of this or that theological point. Being able to do so doesn't require me to believe in God -- much less to become a Biblical literalist.) Regards, Dan From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon May 4 22:13:56 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 18:13:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance References: <789426.33168.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <8A1800A1413D4D559420D46AE3CF4EC2@MyComputer> "Dan" >> > he was completely anti-tax in other words, consistent, logical, and >> > sane Me: >> That is redundant. You: > And? And after saying that somebody is completely anti-tax it is redundant to say they are logical. > My point was not meant to insult you; didn't mean for you to take this > personally. I certainly don't mean for you to get upset. OK maybe I overreacted, it's just that I get defensive whenever anybody claims they are a better liberation that me; because the fact of the matter is it can't be denied that MINE IS BIGGER THAN YOURS!! Sorry sorry, ignore that last, I overreacted yet again. John K Clark From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Mon May 4 22:08:30 2009 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 22:08:30 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] Paris Hilton's inheritance (was Re: Friedman and negative income tax) Message-ID: <438933.95419.qm@web27004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Actually, Paris Hilton may not be the best example for your inheritance examples. The founder of the Hilton hotel chain grew up seeing his dad nearly run a hotel into the ground. He tried to do better, and in the wake of the Great Depression he was able to sell his ideas on how to improve hotels to bankers who'd give him mortgages on hotels that were available at knockdown prices following the crash. When he built his fortune, he was worried that leaving too much to his kids might spoil them, so he didn't leave much in the will. His son challenged the will and got a huge chunk of money, leading to his family being loaded and Paris being free to spend her money on designer dresses, partying and cryonics. Chalk this one up as a victory for American justice for people who don't think Daddy left them enough. Inheritance taxes do leave room for some interesting economic stimuli - by taxing money left to people but letting charitable donations be tax-free, it allows people to weigh up how much to give their folks (and give the govt a chunk) or whether to blow it all on their favourite cause, just to deny the taxman his share. In the UK, a few things get special treatment for Inheritance tax - shares of at least 25% in a family firm (encourages their continuation, not necessarily economically efficient but voters feel comfortable with it), farms (the family farm being an instituion seen as worth preserving), and forestry - as deciduous trees can take longer to mature than an investor has to live, people wouldn't grow them without a tax break. Did Australia abolish its inheritance tax a few years back? I remember reading that one state abolished it locally, and the government was considering scrapping it nationally. I'm sure one of our list Aussies can give the example from their home country. From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 4 22:57:48 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 17:57:48 -0500 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <8A1800A1413D4D559420D46AE3CF4EC2@MyComputer> References: <789426.33168.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <8A1800A1413D4D559420D46AE3CF4EC2@MyComputer> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090504175044.023144e0@satx.rr.com> At 06:13 PM 5/4/2009 -0400, John K Clark wrote: >I get defensive whenever anybody >claims they are a better liberation that me Rather than defensive, I get baffled. What could they possible *mean* by claiming to be "a better liberation"? Wait--could this be a typo? A better libation? A better libration? A better librarian? A better Liberian? No no no... it's on the tip of my-- Damien Broderick From hkhenson at rogers.com Mon May 4 22:20:18 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 15:20:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Silly (was libertarians and inheritance) In-Reply-To: <789426.33168.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <789426.33168.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1241476081_2878@s6.cableone.net> This entire topic as well as most in the past few days have little to do with extropian or transhumanis thinking. Someone has to *die* for someone else to get an inheritance. In a post nanotech world death should be rare indeed, especially if you are using a backup service. Keith From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon May 4 23:25:24 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 19:25:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance References: <789426.33168.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com><8A1800A1413D4D559420D46AE3CF4EC2@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090504175044.023144e0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <9D57F09BDDBB4E80B8CC6FA438CAC742@MyComputer> "Damien Broderick" thespike at satx.rr.com: > what could they possible *mean* > by claiming to be "a better liberation"? I'm not the one to ask. I have no idea. John K Clark From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon May 4 23:30:44 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 19:30:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Silly (was libertarians and inheritance) References: <789426.33168.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1241476081_2878@s6.cableone.net> Message-ID: "hkhenson" > In a post nanotech world death should be rare indeed Yea but the clock is ticking. Will you or I make it in time? John K Clark From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon May 4 23:41:51 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 16:41:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Silly (was libertarians and inheritance) In-Reply-To: References: <789426.33168.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1241476081_2878@s6.cableone.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 4:30 PM, John K Clark wrote: > "hkhenson" > >> ?In a post nanotech world death should be rare indeed > > Yea but the clock is ticking. Will you or I make it in time? If you are *not* signed up for cryonics, why not? Keith From hkhenson at rogers.com Mon May 4 23:35:50 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 16:35:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Silly (was libertarians and inheritance) In-Reply-To: References: <789426.33168.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1241476081_2878@s6.cableone.net> Message-ID: <1241480613_1507@S4.cableone.net> At 04:30 PM 5/4/2009, John K Clark wrote: >"hkhenson" > >> In a post nanotech world death should be rare indeed > >Yea but the clock is ticking. Will you or I make it in time? If you are *not* signed up for cryonics, why not? Keith From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 5 00:22:34 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 10:22:34 +1000 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905040733w52ae0734h841174aa1e72a3ef@mail.gmail.com> References: <200905031932.n43JW3lY001104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0905031956u2f70355dsfcda1a350a60787c@mail.gmail.com> <33620.12.77.168.184.1241434187.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <710b78fc0905040733w52ae0734h841174aa1e72a3ef@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/5 Emlyn : >> An interesting compromise is publicly funded, privately provided >> health care, like in Australia. The government acts as a big health >> insurer, ensuring that everyone is covered and that less money is >> wasted through (I guess) inefficient competing private health funds. >> The per capita absolute spending on health care in Australia is about >> half that in the US, for about equal health outcomes. The main >> disadvantage is that if you are rich you pay a higher proportion of >> your income through the compulsory levy than you would if you only >> paid for private insurance. >> >> >> -- >> Stathis Papaioannou > > You don't have to pay the levy if you have health insurance though, > no? Or do you still pay the basic levy? Everyone except very low income earners pays the basic levy of 1.5%. High income earners also pay a surcharge of 1%, unless they have private health insurance. http://www.ato.gov.au/individuals/content.asp?doc=/content/17482.htm -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 5 00:52:44 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 10:52:44 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <337950.87574.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <337950.87574.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/5 Dan : > Doesn't that fall under a "value disincentive" explanation? ?Yes, some might take the payments, but there's a strong disincentive for it under at least some conditions. ?Once their condition changes, they no longer take it -- whether that includes merely the availability of jobs to feel good about or because the income is higher. ?(Of course, on the latter, one might expect marginal effects -- as when someone might be disinclined to work merely to make a small improvement in income. ?In this case, what's small depends on the person. ?Were this, too, not the case with most people, I'd expect we'd see lots more people working ever longer hours to make ever more money. ?In fact, even people not on the dole often make a certain level of income and then prefer leisure or non-work to more money. ?I've found myself in this position often too.) Yes, and that's fine. It would only be a problem if there were a disincentive for anyone to work, although then wages would probably rise to compensate. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 5 03:31:55 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 13:31:55 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Paris Hilton's inheritance (was Re: Friedman and negative income tax) In-Reply-To: <438933.95419.qm@web27004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <438933.95419.qm@web27004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/5 Tom Nowell : > Did Australia abolish its inheritance tax a few years back? I remember reading that one state abolished it locally, and the government was considering scrapping it nationally. I'm sure one of our list Aussies can give the example from their home country. No tax on inheritance in Australia. No tax when you win gambling, either. -- Stathis Papaioannou From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Tue May 5 03:54:42 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 20:54:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Silly (was libertarians and inheritance) Message-ID: <192961.89957.qm@web110409.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/4/09, John K Clark wrote: > Yea but the clock is ticking. Will you or I make it in > time? I hope so or at least it's worth trying:) Anna __________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com. From scerir at tiscali.it Tue May 5 06:03:30 2009 From: scerir at tiscali.it (scerir at tiscali.it) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 08:03:30 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" Message-ID: <3208155.70281241503410315.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> Rafal: He is pointing to the observations from the previous 6 recessions - did you follow the link? (http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2009/04/another_green_s.html ) # The best paper about all that (to my knowledge) is the following http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/rogoff/files/Aftermath.pdf The Aftermath of Financial Crises Carmen M. Reinhart University of Maryland. NBER and CEPR Kenneth S. Rogoff Harvard University and NBER January 2009 ABSTRACT This paper examines the depth and duration of the slump that invariably follows severe financial crises, which tend to be protracted affairs. We find that asset market collapses are deep and prolonged. On a peak-to-trough basis, real housing price declines average 35 percent stretched out over six years, while equity price collapses average 55 percent over a downturn of about three and a half years. Not surprisingly, banking crises are associated with profound declines in output and employment. The unemployment rate rises an average of 7 percentage points over the down phase of the cycle, which lasts on average over four years. Output falls an average of over 9 percent, although the duration of the downturn is considerably shorter than for unemployment. The real value of government debt tends to explode, rising an average of 86 percent in the major post?World War II episodes. The main cause of debt explosions is usually not the widely cited costs of bailing out and recapitalizing the banking system. The collapse in tax revenues in the wake of deep and prolonged economic contractions is a critical factor in explaining the large budget deficits and increases in debt that follow the crisis. Our estimates of the rise in government debt are likely to be conservative, as these do not include increases in government guarantees, which also expand briskly during these episodes. Arriva Tiscali Mobile! Acquista la tua SIM Tiscali a soli ?5 e scopri la semplicit? e la convenienza del nuovo servizio per il tuo cellulare. Passa a Tiscali Mobile http://abbonati.tiscali.it/promo/tiscalimobile/ From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 5 06:10:43 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 23:10:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <1241215177_19140@s1.cableone.net> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <43EB0C5358A04EFBAEABD26D8D52E9AA@spike> <956A3E442C544284AC0562796AEA2565@spike> <1241213087_18138@s6.cableone.net> <1241215177_19140@s1.cableone.net> Message-ID: <49FFD863.4080601@rawbw.com> Keith wrote >> Why Multilevel Selection Matters >> > > I read that paper when it came out. It is poorly written and full of > BS. If you want me to go into detail, post the whole thing right here > and I will tear it apart. > > I am not saying that there can't be group selection, it just that nobody > has *ever* come up with an example that cannot be completely explained > by a combination of memetics and biological evolution. Yes, but what may be bothering other people---and as I explained in my last post bothers me---is that the most reductionistic explanation isn't always the best. Let's consider the relatively simple example first discussed in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection Some mosquito-transmitted rabbit viruses, for instance, are only transmitted to uninfected rabbits from infected rabbits which are still alive. This creates a selective pressure on every group of viruses already infecting a rabbit not to become too virulent and kill their host rabbit before enough mosquitoes have bitten it. In natural systems such viruses display much lower virulence levels than do mutants of the same viruses that in laboratory culture readily out-compete non-virulent variants (or than do tick-transmitted viruses?ticks, unlike mosquitoes, bite dead rabbits). Of course we can force a reductionistic Dawkins style explanation: What do you see now? Oh, you see lower virulence? Well, see, the genes ended up doing what was best for their survival. So long as we keep in mind the reductionistic basis underlying any given phenomenon, is there really anything so awful about describing the foregoing as "group selection"? If the phenomenon is to be described in terms of reified qualities (and we all do this all the time), then one ought to be willing to say that "the less virulent group outcompeted the virulent group". And this by no means commits us to the common errors illustrated by, for example, many of Wynne-Edwards' claims. Any description in complete defiance of the reductionistic, gene-centered view, has to be wrong. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 5 05:48:26 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 22:48:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Group Selection Advances In-Reply-To: <1241198068_18421@s1.cableone.net> References: <49FA76FA.8000104@rawbw.com> <1241198068_18421@s1.cableone.net> Message-ID: <49FFD32A.5000901@rawbw.com> hkhenson wrote: > At 09:13 PM 4/30/2009, Lee quoted from: > >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection >> >> "The problem with group selection is that for a whole group to get a >> single trait, it must spread through the whole group first by regular >> evolution. But, as J. L. Mackie suggested, when there are many >> different groups, each with a different Evolutionarily Stable Strategy >> (ESS), there is selection between the different ESSs, since some are >> worse than others[20]. For example, a group where altruism arose would >> outcompete a group where every creature acted in its own interest." > > The last sentence is not true, because creatures *DO NOT* act in their > own self interest. They act in the self interest of their genes. Good spot. It's very easy to become confused (or at least to confuse others) when trying to explain a phenomenon taking place at the individual level (e.g. altruistic behavior of an individual). But do you really wish to endorse the statement "individuals act only in the interest of their genes"? The context is important, of course. Focus in this particular post prevents me, unfortunately, trying to penetrate the real differences between Dawkins and Sober & Wilson, for example. > Most of the time that *looks* like self interest. Then > along comes a situation where it is clear that the > interest of the creature and its genes have diverged > ---and the genes dictate the response. Quite right. Spike wrote (in the first reply to my original post) > Your first comment was "...I naturally believed > in group selection..." Why? "...Darwin did too..." > Why? I know Dawkins makes a strong case, but why > do we naturally believe in group selection before > we read Dawkins and Gould? Because the general Darwinian principle is so easy to understand, and applies to so many things. For example, when one reads that Indo-European speakers displaced other languages groups, a kind of Darwinian selection immediately comes to mind. And this is quite independent of whether conquest occurred, or the non- Indo-European speakers were simply assimilated and changed their habits, or whatever. One very valid description obviously is that the groups of Indo- European speakers survived or replaced other groups. People can pick at your example, "farmers displacing hunter gatherers", but the descriptions "farming groups outcompeted hunter groups" remains valid. What is really going on is the difference between descriptions at different levels. To say that there are chemical principles, such as "Le Chatelier's" or thermodynamic principles, such as "The Second Law" in no way means that something extra has to be added to fundamental physical laws. One just has to be careful not to read into a higher order principle more than is intended. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 5 06:45:33 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 23:45:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60904300035u7bd39ebyad0d91eb520e4f39@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300043n749e8778ne4e5893a6e48b38c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49FFE08D.6020801@rawbw.com> Stathis wrote: > 2009/5/2 Rafal Smigrodzki : > >> Same with GI - the problem is in feeding the parasites and punishing >> workers over long time. At first just a few parasites, and not >> punishing much but as parasites breed, they vote for more money, so >> the burden on workers is higher, so there are fewer workers and more >> parasites, and the positive feedback effects feed on each other, until >> something breaks. > > Something breaks when, after a few years of this, the population > realises they are becoming increasingly worse off relative to those > countries that have better economic systems. So in the end every > country in the world should converge towards low taxes and low > government spending, if that does indeed lead to better outcomes. Peoples' belief systems play too strong a role for this to happen as expeditiously as we'd like, or rather, as you are implying would be the case. For example, any German who looks into it becomes well aware of the differences between the American economy and his own. Everyone knows about the differences in productivity and unemployment. Yet, typically, a non-libertarian German will just retort that "American conditions" are too high a price to pay for a better economic situation. Most want to keep their job security and social welfare safety net measures, and so on. So---if you are right, and the allure of greater economic prosperity in the end always dominates ---one might envision a completely fanciful development one hundred years from now in which (somehow) everything else has remained the same, but the U.S. economy has grown at a rate one or two percent higher than the German economy. But you may be wrong: even though in this scenario, vast, vast differences would be all too obvious, there is no guarantee that the economically superior system would be admired by all. Lee From brian at posthuman.com Tue May 5 06:52:11 2009 From: brian at posthuman.com (Brian Atkins) Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 01:52:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <3208155.70281241503410315.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> References: <3208155.70281241503410315.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> Message-ID: <49FFE21B.7080501@posthuman.com> Rafal, see pg. 18 of the following paper. The current market rally, "green shoots" etc. are likely just a small brief blip of moderation in the downward slide you can see in this model's predictive charts for 2009. This model has an historical r^2 around .75 for explaining employment changes 12 months into the future. And as you can see on the out of sample prediction on pg. 18 the actual data so far is tracking below what the model predicts. Even if this tightens up and improves a bit above the model's average estimate then the recession is not over. The paper was written about in the WSJ and various blogs a few weeks back if you want to read more about it. Credit Market Shocks and Economic Fluctuations: Evidence from Corporate Bond and Stock Markets http://people.bu.edu/sgilchri/research/GYZ_30Mar2009.pdf -- Brian Atkins Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.singinst.org/ From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 5 07:13:39 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 00:13:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> Stefano wrote: > On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 6:03 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > >> Strategically, do you think that it is a good idea >> to prohibit reasoned attacks on religion, insults >> of races, religions, or the Mayor's daughter? >> Where do you draw the line? >> >> And beyond strategy, where in a free society do >> you draw the line ethically? > > What can be said is that for any doom-monger's assumption that unless > free speech is limited on a given subject society would collapse, it > is easy enough to offer examples where societies managed to a > reasonable extent to thrive in spite of the fact that the "necessary" > prohibition was not in place. Good point. In other words, the burden of proof seems to fall on those who would ban speech. What historical examples are there where "it's a damned good thing that people were prohibited from saying X"? I appeal, of course, to our shared values. Consider the converse: "when was it a damned bad idea to suppress people saying X"? There are many, many thousands of examples! To produce as many as you'd like, simply consider the prohibitions invariably produced by totalitarian or authoritarian dictatorships, or ruling oligarchies. > All in all, I think that most limitations to free speech are very hard > to justify on empirical grounds. Not to mention on political terms for > any political regime that claims to be based on informed consensus. The only cases I can think of where prohibitions on free speech make sense fall into a category that I call "justified elitism". At a given elementary school, for example, the adults---who really are much wiser than the children---may prohibit one group of children from calling another group of children names. I also think that in the back of the minds of those who call for prohibitions on free speech lurks exactly the same kind of elitism. "You never know," I can almost hear them saying, "how such memes may spread when picked up by the ignorant masses, and what woeful effects will result". I am---by the way---thereby raising the question of just how much elitism by people on this list or people in western societies who are well educated is justified. Lee From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue May 5 09:34:13 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 05:34:13 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" References: <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com><7641ddc60905031849p19cc7919ibc55bb171ba10370@mail.gmail.com><7641ddc60905032014j6c31550bpa53eeaec906c7c49@mail.gmail.com><7641ddc60905040654h3a69066bi8d1de74774f69256@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Boy oh boy I hope you're right. John K Clark From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 5 10:15:21 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 20:15:21 +1000 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <210452.59148.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <210452.59148.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/5 Dan : > As a strict libertarian, in terms of justice, I'm only worried about what's justly acquired -- not necessarily earned. ?In this case, the person who justly acquired property has a right to give it to her heirs as she sees fit. ?No, as a person, I might find it repugnant when a person who worked hard all her life, spoils her kids and then leaves them a big fat inheritence. ?But I wouldn't initiate force to change her decision. It depends on your definition of "justice". Some people think taxation is theft, others don't. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 5 10:33:55 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 12:33:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905050333r788ddd0ekbf35b1f8f993faef@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:13 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Good point. In other words, the burden of proof seems > to fall on those who would ban speech. What historical > examples are there where "it's a damned good thing that > people were prohibited from saying X"? > > I appeal, of course, to our shared values. Even without that last qualification, one has to wonder whether in the long term such prohibitions worked in average so well for their partisans themselves... > I also think that in the back of the minds of those > who call for prohibitions on free speech lurks > exactly the same kind of elitism. "You never know," > I can almost hear them saying, "how such memes may > spread when picked up by the ignorant masses, and > what woeful effects will result". > > I am---by the way---thereby raising the question > of just how much elitism by people on this list > or people in western societies who are well educated > is justified. Indeed. In fact, the argument requires are three distinct claims: - "we know better (what is right/true/correct/better to believe in any event"; - "to let those with different opinions speak, and/or to let other people form their own view on it would be too dangerous"; - "the danger can effectively be avoided by the attempt of enforcing a prohibition". Unless evidence to one's satisfaction can be offered on all three of them, limitations to free speech do not seem such a good idea. Moreover, as I am preaching that all discussions should be kept as much as possible on-topic, I should submit that the transhumanist discourse is itself exposed to a few risks of formal and informal censorship in a number of contexts, while it is very hard to see where, when and why it would ever profit from free-speech limitations. -- Stefano Vaj From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 5 10:52:08 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 10:52:08 +0000 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On 5/5/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > The only cases I can think of where prohibitions on > free speech make sense fall into a category that I > call "justified elitism". At a given elementary school, > for example, the adults---who really are much wiser > than the children---may prohibit one group of children > from calling another group of children names. > > I also think that in the back of the minds of those > who call for prohibitions on free speech lurks > exactly the same kind of elitism. "You never know," > I can almost hear them saying, "how such memes may > spread when picked up by the ignorant masses, and > what woeful effects will result". > I would lump this under 'etiquette' or 'how to behave properly in company'. What sort of a society do you want to live in? Do you want to live in a society where people behave like savages? Swearing, farting, belching, peeing in public, rudely commenting on women present, grabbing the best party food first, disparaging other people, etc. etc. Free speech is fine. But discuss your views only with people who want to listen. Forcing your 'free speech' on unwilling listeners is initiating aggression towards them. BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 5 11:30:54 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 13:30:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Silly (was libertarians and inheritance) In-Reply-To: <1241476081_2878@s6.cableone.net> References: <789426.33168.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1241476081_2878@s6.cableone.net> Message-ID: <580930c20905050430v2a47dbf8ne6adf1ce2582387@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:20 AM, hkhenson wrote: > This entire topic as well as most in the past few days have little to do > with extropian or transhumanis thinking. Now, I do not know whether this is true, but as in other circumstances I have to remark that nobody is discussing "what would be more consistent with transhumanist thinking?", "what solution would be more favourable to the success of extropian views?", "what would be conducive to a posthuman change?", and everybody is engaged in a more general discussion which might took place anywhere and everywhere. I do not suppose for a moment that somebody could or should think along those lines on a full-time basis. But it should perhaps be clarified whether this is a list *on* extropian ideas or simply *of* more-or-less extropists whe are happy to get together here rather than elsewhere to discuss whatever subject might come up, from culinary tastes to the best painters of Italian renaissance to... immigration. Just to know... Max? Natasha? -- Stefano Vaj From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 5 13:08:56 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 06:08:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Silly Message-ID: <44433.38460.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/4/09, hkhenson wrote: > From: hkhenson > Subject: Re: [ExI] Silly (was libertarians and inheritance) > To: "ExI chat list" > Date: Monday, May 4, 2009, 7:35 PM > At 04:30 PM 5/4/2009, John K Clark > wrote: > >"hkhenson" > > > >>? In a post nanotech world death should be > rare indeed > > > >Yea but the clock is ticking. Will you or I make it in > time? > > If you are *not* signed up for cryonics, why not? Will cryonics even work? And even if it does, it depends on everything going right until you get revived. If, say, the laws are changed to completely confiscated all your funds and wealth after legal death -- so that other, "wiser" people (i.e., those in the political or corporate elites) decide where your wealth goes -- then you might be left to rot. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 5 13:39:18 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 06:39:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance Message-ID: <217012.32935.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/4/09, John K Clark wrote: > "Dan" >> My point was not meant to insult you; didn't mean for >> you to take this >> personally. I certainly don't mean for you to get >> upset. > > OK maybe I overreacted, it's just that I get defensive > whenever anybody > claims they are a better liberation that me; That was not my statement. My statement was and remains that you're _not_ a libertarian.* That is not meant as an insult either. It's meant as an observation -- and it's backed by your statements and the reasoning I presented earlier. > because the > fact of the matter > is it can't be denied that MINE IS BIGGER THAN YOURS!! That's an empirical claim and that can be easily settled. :) > Sorry sorry, ignore that last, I overreacted yet again. Regards, Dan * Sure, you might be sympathetic to libertarian views and, on occasion apply libertarian principles in your life and thinking. You might also even be very good at drawing conclusions from these principles -- much as, I pointed out yesterday, an atheist can draw conclusions from theological principles she believes are partly or completely false. Again, no insult intended. The ability to draw conclusions about some point of view does not mean one is an adherent of that point of view. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 5 13:53:50 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 06:53:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax Message-ID: <770438.64458.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/4/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/5 Dan : > > > Doesn't that fall under a "value disincentive" > explanation? ?Yes, some might take the payments, but > there's a strong disincentive for it under at least some > conditions. ?Once their condition changes, they no longer > take it -- whether that includes merely the availability of > jobs to feel good about or because the income is higher. > ?(Of course, on the latter, one might expect marginal > effects -- as when someone might be disinclined to work > merely to make a small improvement in income. ?In this > case, what's small depends on the person. ?Were this, too, > not the case with most people, I'd expect we'd see lots more > people working ever longer hours to make ever more money. > ?In fact, even people not on the dole often make a certain > level of income and then prefer leisure or non-work to more > money. ?I've found myself in this position often too.) > > Yes, and that's fine. It would only be a problem if there > were a > disincentive for anyone to work, although then wages would > probably > rise to compensate. Might or might not. There's no a priori reason to expect that to happen -- and there seems a large amount of data on people who will stayed unemployed for a lifetime provided they have enough financial support to do so. And I don't mean people who get grants and write operas or have a go at deciphering the Indus Valley symbols. (I've lived in neighborhoods full of able-bodied pre-retired people who just collected check.) Of course, you were talking about people with a specific problem who get support as part of the package to help with that, correct? That might be far from the general case. (It's also true that in a free society, such people could be taken care of through private charity rather than coerced support.) Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 5 13:55:21 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 06:55:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Silly Message-ID: <240743.48539.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/4/09, Anna Taylor wrote: > --- On Mon, 5/4/09, John K Clark > wrote: > > > Yea but the clock is ticking. Will you or I make it > in > > time? > > I hope so or at least it's worth trying:) Reminds me of the joke: I'm going to live forever -- or die trying! Regards, Dan From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 5 14:12:49 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 00:12:49 +1000 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <49FFE08D.6020801@rawbw.com> References: <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE08D.6020801@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/5 Lee Corbin : >> Something breaks when, after a few years of this, the population >> realises they are becoming increasingly worse off relative to those >> countries that have better economic systems. So in the end every >> country in the world should converge towards low taxes and low >> government spending, if that does indeed lead to better outcomes. > > Peoples' belief systems play too strong a role > for this to happen as expeditiously as we'd like, > or rather, as you are implying would be the case. > > For example, any German who looks into it becomes > well aware of the differences between the American > economy and his own. Everyone knows about the > differences in productivity and unemployment. > > Yet, typically, a non-libertarian German will just > retort that "American conditions" are too high a > price to pay for a better economic situation. Most > want to keep their job security and social welfare > safety net measures, and so on. > > So---if you are right, and the allure of greater > economic prosperity in the end always dominates > ---one might envision a completely fanciful > development one hundred years from now in which > (somehow) everything else has remained the same, > but the U.S. economy has grown at a rate one or > two percent higher than the German economy. > > But you may be wrong: even though in this scenario, > vast, vast differences would be all too obvious, > there is no guarantee that the economically superior > system would be admired by all. It isn't just economic growth that is important, it's quality of life. That includes not only per capita income, but also how equitably that income is distributed, job security, working hours, whether your boss is a bastard, and so on. Part of the reason the US has a slightly higher GDP per capita than some Western European countries is that working hours are longer in the US. The Europeans have decided that they like it better their way. Nevertheless, per capita GDP is a very important component in the quality of life equation, and a GDP growth differential of even a small amount sustained over decades will make a big difference; for example, a differential of 1.5% will cause the GDP of one country to double relative to that of the slower-growing one in 50 years. But this is not what has happened in Western Europe compared to the US, even though most Western European states have had what by US standards are socialist governments for the last 50 years. For example, Sweden has had explicitly and proudly socialist governments for the best part a century, and in this time it has gone from one of the poorest and most backward countries in Europe to one of the wealthiest. In the early nineties Sweden went through a severe recession, following a real estate bubble similar to the one leading to the recent financial crisis. During the recovery phase the currency was devalued and government welfare spending was cut, as it was heading towards an unmanageable level. But this is the point I was making: if an economic policy has the effect of making people worse off, then people notice and the policy is adjusted. Not even a totalitarian government controlling information and suppressing dissent can prevent this happening in the long run. -- Stathis Papaioannou From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 5 14:07:20 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 07:07:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance Message-ID: <206907.9320.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/5/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/5 Dan : > >> As a strict libertarian, in terms of justice, I'm only >> worried about what's justly acquired -- not necessarily >> earned. ?In this case, the person who justly acquired >> property has a right to give it to her heirs as she sees >> fit. ?No, as a person, I might find it repugnant when a >> person who worked hard all her life, spoils her kids and >> then leaves them a big fat inheritence. ?But I wouldn't >> initiate force to change her decision. > > It depends on your definition of "justice". Some people > think taxation is theft, others don't. The statement was made and applies to the libertarian notion of justice -- not to non-libertarian notions of such. To wit, the libertarian view of force is it can't be justifiably initiated. You might respond, well, some people think it can be. Yes, well, true, but those people are not libertarians; they disagree with the defining principle of libertarianism.* As a side note, too, I wonder if those arguing against inheritance -- or for heavily taxing it -- would recognize any general limit on interference in other people's lives or property, especially when those other people are doing things you strongly disagree with. If not, then what sort of world do you hope to live in? Naturally, I'd expect, one where your desires trump everyone else's, but imagine what's more likely: no limits on interferences in life and property -- pretty much what we have now. Are Extropians and transhumanists likely to benefit on net from this? Or would they benefit more from living in a more or less libertarian world, where, yes, some rich idiots might support families of lay-abouts, but everyone else's rights are generally respected? Regards, Dan * This, of course, does not justify or validate the libertarian view of justice or of initiating force. My only point was to explicate the libertarian view here: not to ground it in something deeper. (This doesn't mean I think such a grounding is impossible.) From fauxever at sprynet.com Tue May 5 14:36:57 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 07:36:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians References: <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com><7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE08D.6020801@rawbw.com> Message-ID: From: "Stathis Papaioannou" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 7:12 AM > It isn't just economic growth that is important, it's quality of life. > That includes not only per capita income, but also how equitably that > income is distributed, job security, working hours, whether your boss > is a bastard, and so on. Part of the reason the US has a slightly > higher GDP per capita than some Western European countries is that > working hours are longer in the US. The Europeans have decided that > they like it better their way. Stathis, I am glad you are pointing out the "quality of life" aspect. This article about Finland also touches on the subject (and doesn't pussyfoot around in saying there are tradeoffs): http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090501/cm_csm/ycorson Olga From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 5 14:40:31 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 00:40:31 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <770438.64458.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <770438.64458.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/5 Dan : > Might or might not. ?There's no a priori reason to expect that to happen -- and there seems a large amount of data on people who will stayed unemployed for a lifetime provided they have enough financial support to do so. ?And I don't mean people who get grants and write operas or have a go at deciphering the Indus Valley symbols. ?(I've lived in neighborhoods full of able-bodied pre-retired people who just collected check.) I suppose it depends on your definitions. If people retire at 65 and collect a government pension, even though they are still able-bodied, is that wrong? > Of course, you were talking about people with a specific problem who get support as part of the package to help with that, correct? ?That might be far from the general case. Yes, I was referring to those on a disability pension. There are also payments for the aged and the unemployed. It's difficult to fake being old but it probably isn't too hard to fake being unemployed: welfare recipients may work covertly or they may present themselves in job interviews (they have to show evidence of looking for work) in such a way as to ensure that they won't be hired. (It's also true that in a free society, such people could be taken care of through private charity rather than coerced support.) I would feel very bad accepting private charity, but I would feel quite comfortable accepting government welfare if I were eligible. Government welfare is like collecting the insurance if my house burns down: I pay the premiums and if I need it, that's part of the deal. The deal with government welfare is that if I work, I pay taxes. I'm forced to pay my taxes, but I'm also forced to pay professional indemnity insurance by my employer. If I don't want to pay either I don't have to work. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 5 15:18:24 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 01:18:24 +1000 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE08D.6020801@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/6 Olga Bourlin : > Stathis, I am glad you are pointing out the "quality of life" aspect. > > This article about Finland also touches on the subject (and doesn't > pussyfoot around in saying there are tradeoffs): > > http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090501/cm_csm/ycorson I wouldn't say Finland is an economic slouch, either. More evidence that socialist policies do not necessarily adversely affect technical innovation and industrial efficiency: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1026/p01s03-woeu.htm -- Stathis Papaioannou From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue May 5 15:21:42 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 11:21:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance References: <217012.32935.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: "Dan" > My statement was and remains that you're _not_ a libertarian [.] The > ability to draw conclusions about some point of view does not mean one is > an adherent of that point of view. So according to you to be a supporter of an idea a belief in good results derived from that idea is not sufficient to become a true adherent. You think there must be something else, something more important than the conclusions derived from a point of view. I can't imagine what that something else could be except faith. I don't have faith in anything and think it's a vice not a virtue. If I come to the conclusion that one of my ideas is not as productive as a competing idea I have absolutely no loyalty and will switch sides in one second flat. If somebody has a better argument than I have I will drop my old point of view and embrace the new one as my own. I'm a libertarian but even that doesn't get a free pass, it has to earn its way. John K Clark From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 5 15:12:54 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 08:12:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion/was Re: Friedman and negative income tax Message-ID: <894943.79823.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/5/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/5 Dan : > >> Might or might not. ?There's no a priori reason to >> expect that to happen -- and there seems a large amount of >> data on people who will stayed unemployed for a lifetime >> provided they have enough financial support to do so. ?And >> I don't mean people who get grants and write operas or have >> a go at deciphering the Indus Valley symbols. ?(I've lived >> in neighborhoods full of able-bodied pre-retired people who >> just collected check.) > > I suppose it depends on your definitions. If people retire > at 65 and > collect a government pension, even though they are still > able-bodied, > is that wrong? Oh no, my experience was not of people that old. I was talking about people who were well under 65, able-bodied, and not working at all. That's why I added in "pre-retired." >> Of course, you were talking about people with a >> specific problem who get support as part of the package to >> help with that, correct? ?That might be far from the >> general case. > > Yes, I was referring to those on a disability pension. > There are also > payments for the aged and the unemployed. It's difficult to > fake being > old but it probably isn't too hard to fake being > unemployed: welfare > recipients may work covertly or they may present themselves > in job > interviews (they have to show evidence of looking for work) > in such a way as to ensure that they won't be hired. It's also not hard to fake certain types of disability -- or to play them up. (I speak from experience here, so don't interpret this the wrong way.) >> (It's also true that in a free society, such people >> could be taken care of through private charity rather >> than coerced support.) > > I would feel very bad accepting private charity, but I > would feel > quite comfortable accepting government welfare if I were > eligible. This actually tells us why private charity would be better: it's inherently much more self-limiting. Those who really need it -- and, to be honest, I've relied on it in my life (and I've also helped others) -- will accept it, while those who don't (and this is subjective, of course) will be less likely to accept it. > Government welfare is like collecting the insurance if my > house burns > down: I pay the premiums and if I need it, that's part of > the deal. > The deal with government welfare is that if I work, I pay > taxes. I'm > forced to pay my taxes, but I'm also forced to pay > professional > indemnity insurance by my employer. The key point is: it's forced. The whole system is based on coercion and on perpetuating coercion: you were robbed, so you're entitled. Where does your entitlement come from? Well, from robbing others to keep the system going. From an Extropian perspective, is this the kind of thinking and system we want to perpetuate? > If I don't want to pay either I > don't have to work. That's sort of like saying, "If I don't want to pay the local crime syndicate, I can just avoid having a business in town." Regards, Dan From aware at awareresearch.com Tue May 5 15:06:31 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 08:06:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <206907.9320.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <206907.9320.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 7:07 AM, Dan wrote: > ...then what sort of world do you hope to live in? ?Naturally, I'd expect, one where your desires trump everyone else's, but imagine what's more likely: no limits on interferences in life and property... Dan, I've long appreciated your sharp mind and crystalline concepts. Your skill at reducing an issue to its bare essentials is exemplary. You highlight the cold calculus by which success or failure is determined, and by which the rational actor exercises his will upon a literally uncaring world. The absence of anthropomorphizing, wishing-makes-it-true, and muddle-headed mysticism or vague uncertainty is both refreshing and exhilarating. Over the top, I admit. But entirely true--within context. - Jef From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 5 16:12:57 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 09:12:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The What and the Why/was Re: libertarians and inheritance Message-ID: <190053.56640.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/5/09, John K Clark wrote: > "Dan" > >> My statement was and remains that you're _not_ a >> libertarian [.] The >> ability to draw conclusions about some point of view >> does not mean one is >> an adherent of that point of view. > > So according to you to be a supporter of an idea a belief > in good results > derived from that idea is not sufficient to become a true > adherent. You > think there must be something else, something more > important than the > conclusions derived from a point of view. I can't imagine > what that > something else could be except faith. Not at all. A libertarian is someone who believes in and follows (as much as possible) libertarian principles -- with the defining principle being non-initiation of force. To be a libertarian is to fit that definition. Now, why one is a libertarian is another matter all together. One might be one, for instance, because one is basically a neo-Aristotelean (e.g., Eric Mack) or an Objectivist (e.g., George H. Smith) or a neo-Kantian (e.g., early Robert Nozick) and has worked out philosophical reasoning for this. (Reasoning from principles does NOT mean one ignores experience or consequences. Neo-Aristoteleans and Objectivists would call that a false dichotomy between reason and experience or theory and fact. Neo-Kantians might offer that all experience has to be funneled through pre-experiential intuitions or models.) Or one might be religious or even just accept the principles out of habit. But my point is you've already told us you would lay aside these principles and under what circumstances -- particularly, that you'd murder someone if enough money were involved. How is that different from someone saying, "Well, I'm no libertarian at all. I won't use force in most cases, but when it suits me -- if, say, enough money is involved or I just don't like the shirt you're wearing -- I'll initiate force."? > I don't have faith in anything and think it's a vice not a > virtue. If I come > to the conclusion that one of my ideas is not as productive > as a competing > idea I have absolutely no loyalty and will switch sides in > one second flat. > If somebody has a better argument than I have I will drop > my old point of > view and embrace the new one as my own. I'm a libertarian > but even that > doesn't get a free pass, it has to earn its way. See above. I believe you're making a category error: confusing the reason for adhering to a principle with the actual adherence to it -- conflating the What with the Why... Perhaps an analogy might prove helpful here. Imagine someone were to be a Neptunist -- basically, the view that rocks formed by crystalizing from seawater -- not just some, but all. One might hold that view because one has looked over a lot of evidence and heard and seriously believed the arguments. This wouldn't be irrational. After all, Neptunists one time held sway in geology AND their evidence and reasoning was not off the wall: it fit a lot of the known facts. Now, imagine this Neptunist stumbles on to more modern theories and more recent evidence. She becomes convinced that Neptunism really doesn't explain much; at best, it only works for sedimentary rock. Now, is she still a Neptunist? Or has she moved on and become a non-Neptunist? In your case, you've already admitted moving on. Whether this was the right thing to do is open to debate, but why maintain that you're still a libertarian? Regards, Dan From brentn at freeshell.org Tue May 5 16:41:15 2009 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 12:41:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: References: <217012.32935.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 5 May, 2009, at 11:21, John K Clark wrote: > "Dan" > >> My statement was and remains that you're _not_ a libertarian [.] The >> ability to draw conclusions about some point of view does not mean >> one is >> an adherent of that point of view. > > So according to you to be a supporter of an idea a belief in good > results > derived from that idea is not sufficient to become a true adherent. > You > think there must be something else, something more important than the > conclusions derived from a point of view. I can't imagine what that > something else could be except faith. > > I don't have faith in anything and think it's a vice not a virtue. > If I come > to the conclusion that one of my ideas is not as productive as a > competing > idea I have absolutely no loyalty and will switch sides in one > second flat. > If somebody has a better argument than I have I will drop my old > point of > view and embrace the new one as my own. I'm a libertarian but even > that > doesn't get a free pass, it has to earn its way. I think the more salient issue at hand is that Dan's argument is predicated on some Platonic ideal of a libertarian, or perhaps some ideal purity of libertarianism. Having been to LP meetings in my sordid youth and then looking at the standard deviation of the mean in a wide variety of ideologies and beliefs, I will assert that there is no good objective litmus test for libertarianism. Or fascism. Or Extropianism, for that matter. People have the capability of defining themselves and the right to do so as they see fit. Penis-measuring about who is more libertarian than whom is ultimately the same sort of logic that ends with fundamentalism in other religions. :) Brent -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From brentn at freeshell.org Tue May 5 16:45:14 2009 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 12:45:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <770438.64458.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <770438.64458.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <58C56143-2BCF-4B9D-A7D9-BE73848CB244@freeshell.org> On 5 May, 2009, at 9:53, Dan wrote: > (I've lived in neighborhoods full of able-bodied pre-retired people > who just collected check.) Can you give an example, with specifics? Not that I don't believe you, mind, but I'm curious what bound this neighborhood together. I quite honestly don't know anyone, that given a chance to work on their own projects regardless of income wouldn't jump at the chance. Not "just lay around", but volunteer with various groups, sing, play music, learn a new skill, etc. And primarily, these are people who are no more than lower middle class socioeconomically, not just the overeducated uppermiddle class brainiac types. B -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 5 17:03:19 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 12:03:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The What and the Why/was Re: libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <190053.56640.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <190053.56640.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090505115924.0242f7c8@satx.rr.com> At 09:12 AM 5/5/2009 -0700, Dan wrote: >But my point is you've already told us you would lay aside these >principles and under what circumstances -- particularly, that you'd >murder someone if enough money were involved. I wondered if anyone else had noticed that quite astounding and sickening claim. Of course it was only a grim joke. Well, I *hope* it was. Damien Broderick From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 5 17:09:41 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 10:09:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax Message-ID: <953258.34086.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/5/09, Brent Neal wrote: > On 5 May, 2009, at 9:53, Dan wrote: > >>? (I've lived in neighborhoods full of able-bodied >> pre-retired people who just collected check.) > > Can you give an example, with specifics? Not that I don't > believe you, mind, but I'm curious what bound this > neighborhood together. I quite honestly don't know anyone, > that given a chance to work on their own projects regardless > of income wouldn't jump at the chance. Not "just lay > around", but volunteer with various groups, sing, play > music, learn a new skill, etc. And primarily, these are > people who are no more than lower middle class > socioeconomically, not just the overeducated uppermiddle > class brainiac types. For almost all of my childhood, I lived in poor neighborhoods around the US. And by poor, I mean many if not most people were on some form of public assistance. Regards, Dan From sjatkins at mac.com Tue May 5 17:13:54 2009 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 10:13:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: References: <217012.32935.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A0073D2.4020702@mac.com> John K Clark wrote: > "Dan" > >> My statement was and remains that you're _not_ a libertarian [.] The >> ability to draw conclusions about some point of view does not mean one is >> an adherent of that point of view. Quite correct. That one can run a political/philosophical memeset to draw consistent conclusions does not mean that you chose to consistently act from that memeset. > > So according to you to be a supporter of an idea a belief in good results > derived from that idea is not sufficient to become a true adherent. No, many people act contrary to what they believe is good or leads to good results or drop such under a bit of pressure. > You think there must be something else, something more important than the > conclusions derived from a point of view. I can't imagine what that > something else could be except faith. Then you are suffering from a lack of imagination it would seem. > > I don't have faith in anything and think it's a vice not a virtue. If I > come > to the conclusion that one of my ideas is not as productive as a competing > idea I have absolutely no loyalty and will switch sides in one second flat. Productive? Within what standards of valuing? How to you measure "productive", "better" or "worse"? > If somebody has a better argument than I have I will drop my old point of > view and embrace the new one as my own. I'm a libertarian but even that > doesn't get a free pass, it has to earn its way. Well sure. Such memesets should not be free floating abstractions. - samantha From pjmanney at gmail.com Tue May 5 18:36:59 2009 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 11:36:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Bizarro Message-ID: <29666bf30905051136p276a3b4l7fa4abefb4d27f78@mail.gmail.com> Gotta love Dan Piraro: http://bizarrocomic.blogspot.com/2009/04/standing-tall.html PJ From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue May 5 20:06:20 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 16:06:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance References: <217012.32935.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0073D2.4020702@mac.com> Message-ID: Me: >> If I come to the conclusion that one of my ideas is not as productive as >> a competing idea I have absolutely no loyalty and will switch sides in >> one second flat. "samantha" > Productive? Within what standards of valuing? You seem to want a definition of "productive"; I'm a little surprise, I hadn't realized the word was exotic and assumed it was widely know. I fear there is little point in supplying a definition because it would be made of words and I'm sure you would demand another definition of at least one of those words. > How to you measure "productive" Superbly, if I do say so myself! > you are suffering from a lack of imagination it would seem. No, just lack of faith. John K Clark ----- Original Message ----- From: To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 1:13 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance > John K Clark wrote: >> "Dan" >> >>> My statement was and remains that you're _not_ a libertarian [.] The >>> ability to draw conclusions about some point of view does not mean one >>> is >>> an adherent of that point of view. > > Quite correct. That one can run a political/philosophical memeset to draw > consistent conclusions does not mean that you chose to consistently act > from that memeset. > >> >> So according to you to be a supporter of an idea a belief in good results >> derived from that idea is not sufficient to become a true adherent. > > No, many people act contrary to what they believe is good or leads to > good results or drop such under a bit of pressure. > > >> You think there must be something else, something more important than the >> conclusions derived from a point of view. I can't imagine what that >> something else could be except faith. > > Then you are suffering from a lack of imagination it would seem. > >> >> I don't have faith in anything and think it's a vice not a virtue. If I >> come >> to the conclusion that one of my ideas is not as productive as a >> competing >> idea I have absolutely no loyalty and will switch sides in one second >> flat. > > Productive? Within what standards of valuing? How to you measure > "productive", "better" or "worse"? > >> If somebody has a better argument than I have I will drop my old point of >> view and embrace the new one as my own. I'm a libertarian but even that >> doesn't get a free pass, it has to earn its way. > > Well sure. Such memesets should not be free floating abstractions. > > - samantha > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From fauxever at sprynet.com Tue May 5 20:00:33 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 13:00:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians References: <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com><7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE08D.6020801@rawbw.com> Message-ID: From: "Stathis Papaioannou" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 8:18 AM >> This article about Finland also touches on the subject (and doesn't >> pussyfoot around in saying there are tradeoffs): >> >> http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090501/cm_csm/ycorson > > I wouldn't say Finland is an economic slouch, either. More evidence > that socialist policies do not necessarily adversely affect technical > innovation and industrial efficiency: > > http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1026/p01s03-woeu.htm Agree. And then there's this: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/27/7330 Olga From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 5 21:45:44 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 21:45:44 +0000 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905031849p19cc7919ibc55bb171ba10370@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905032014j6c31550bpa53eeaec906c7c49@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905040654h3a69066bi8d1de74774f69256@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/5/09, John K Clark wrote: > Boy oh boy I hope you're right. > What you need is: Nation Ready To Be Lied To About Economy Again May 4, 2009 | Issue 45?19 Tired of hearing the grim truth about their economic future, Americans demanded that the bald-faced lies resume immediately, particularly whenever politicians feel the need to divulge another terrifying problem with Wall Street, the housing market, or any one of a hundred other ticking time bombs everyone was better off not knowing about. "I thought I wanted a new era of transparency and accountability, but honestly, I just can't handle it," Ohio resident Nathan Pletcher said. "All I ever hear about now is how my retirement has been pushed back 15 years and how I won't be able to afford my daughter's tuition when she grows up." "From now on, just tell me the bullshit I want to hear," Pletcher added. "Tell me my savings are okay, everybody has a job, and we're No. 1 again. Please, just lie to my face." "Please, treat me like a child. Treat me like a five-year-old," Sacramento resident David Cooke, 64, wrote in a letter to Congress. "I lost everything when the Dow tanked, and I'm too old to start working again, so why punish me further by explaining in detail the clever ways these investment firms ripped me off and how they're all going to get away with it?" Thus far, many policymakers in Washington have responded favorably to their constituents' requests, saying they respect and understand the public's need for dishonesty. "I think we can accommodate the American people on this," Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told reporters. ------------- BillK :) From max at maxmore.com Tue May 5 23:53:26 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 18:53:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Upcreation Message-ID: <200905052353.n45NrYE6000806@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Stimulating and extropic new blog post by Kevin Kelly: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/05/upcreation.php Max From hkhenson at rogers.com Tue May 5 23:27:09 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 16:27:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Silly In-Reply-To: <44433.38460.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <44433.38460.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1241566494_6905@s7.cableone.net> At 06:08 AM 5/5/2009, Dan wrote: >--- On Mon, 5/4/09, hkhenson wrote: > > > From: hkhenson > > Subject: Re: [ExI] Silly (was libertarians and inheritance) > > To: "ExI chat list" > > Date: Monday, May 4, 2009, 7:35 PM > > At 04:30 PM 5/4/2009, John K Clark > > wrote: > > >"hkhenson" > > > > > >> In a post nanotech world death should be > > rare indeed > > > > > >Yea but the clock is ticking. Will you or I make it in > > time? > > > > If you are *not* signed up for cryonics, why not? > >Will cryonics even work? And even if it does, it depends on >everything going right until you get revived. If, say, the laws are >changed to completely confiscated all your funds and wealth after >legal death -- so that other, "wiser" people (i.e., those in the >political or corporate elites) decide where your wealth goes -- then >you might be left to rot. Dan, the archives both here and Cryonet, are full of discussion on this topic. Or you can start here: http://www.alcor.org/AboutCryonics/index.html There was a time when a considerable majority of extropians were signed up for cryonics, most of them with Alcor. I doubt that is the case on this list, though I know some of you are. This thread was a discussion of inheritance, which is a none issue in a post nanotech world. As we who are signed up say, being frozen is the second worse thing that can happen to you. If you have a better idea for getting into the deep future for people who are beyond current medical options, then please state it. Keith From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 6 01:20:27 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 11:20:27 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion/was Re: Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <894943.79823.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <894943.79823.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/6 Dan : >> I would feel very bad accepting private charity, but I >> would feel >> quite comfortable accepting government welfare if I were >> eligible. > > This actually tells us why private charity would be better: it's inherently much more self-limiting. ?Those who really need it -- and, to be honest, I've relied on it in my life (and I've also helped others) -- will accept it, while those who don't (and this is subjective, of course) will be less likely to accept it. Would it be better if insurance companies only had to pay out if they felt kindly towards you, even though you have have a contract? >> Government welfare is like collecting the insurance if my >> house burns >> down: I pay the premiums and if I need it, that's part of >> the deal. >> The deal with government welfare is that if I work, I pay >> taxes. I'm >> forced to pay my taxes, but I'm also forced to pay >> professional >> indemnity insurance by my employer. > > The key point is: it's forced. ?The whole system is based on coercion and on perpetuating coercion: you were robbed, so you're entitled. ?Where does your entitlement come from? ?Well, from robbing others to keep the system going. ?From an Extropian perspective, is this the kind of thinking and system we want to perpetuate? I wasn't robbed, I paid for a service. True, I had to pay for the service if I wanted to work, but that's the case with thousands of commercial transactions. I have to pay for professional indemnity insurance; I have to pay for renovations to the building in which I own an apartment, or I can be sued and ultimately imprisoned; I have to pay for insurance in case the plane crashes as part of the price of the ticket whenever I fly, even if I'd rather pay less and take a risk. I can look for a different job, apartment or airline, but this might be inconvenient and costly, if not impossible. I have the same choice if I don't like the taxes in the state where I live: I could change the way I work or I could move, although that might be inconvenient, costly or impossible. >> If I don't want to pay either I >> don't have to work. > > That's sort of like saying, "If I don't want to pay the local crime syndicate, I can just avoid having a business in town." The crime syndicate is not chosen and supported by the citizens who live there. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 6 01:23:39 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 11:23:39 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <953258.34086.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <953258.34086.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/6 Dan : > For almost all of my childhood, I lived in poor neighborhoods around the US. ?And by poor, I mean many if not most people were on some form of public assistance. And it would have been better if they had been allowed to starve, denied education and health care etc.? -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 6 01:35:56 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 11:35:56 +1000 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE08D.6020801@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/6 Olga Bourlin : > Agree. And then there's this: > > http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/27/7330 "Not surprisingly, in a land where literacy and numeracy are considered virtues, teachers are revered. Teenagers ranked teaching at the top of their list of favorite professions in a recent survey. Far more graduates of upper schools in Finland apply for admission to teacher-training institutes than are accepted. The overwhelming majority of those who eventually enter the classroom as a teacher make it a lifelong career, even though they are paid no more than their counterparts in other European countries." Teenagers rank teaching as their favourite profession? What sort of topsy-turvy country is that?! -- Stathis Papaioannou From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 6 01:59:18 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 21:59:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Debt tsunami In-Reply-To: <3265ADB5-6698-4001-87DE-E0F395895CE2@freeshell.org> References: <7641ddc60905032043r7165ffdav254a34f6845bd1dd@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503231241.022c5c08@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905032120s4cf22e0bp33a8596aa0d15714@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503233009.022c09e0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905040013n31317284tdd579da684f783b@mail.gmail.com> <3265ADB5-6698-4001-87DE-E0F395895CE2@freeshell.org> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905051859q71b7a6d3mb18be3b11f02a05f@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 6:41 AM, Brent Neal wrote: > On 4 May, 2009, at 3:13, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > >> ### Or translated: A 21% increase (i.e. the "change") in budget >> deficit over politics as usual after only 100 days in power. And a >> projected deficit of 9.270 trillion (yes, trillion, not billion) by >> 2019. >> >> Nine trillion dollars is big money. Not exactly record-breaking as USG >> accounting trickery goes (the title here goes to unfunded SS >> liabilities, about 44 trillion dollars) but still impressive. > > > This may be exactly the right thing to do. In a deflationary cycle, you > -want- an inflationary fiscal policy to prevent a downward wage-price > spiral. No doubt, I'd be a lot more comfortable with this if we'd managed to > sock more money away in the Clinton-Bush years. You know, like good > businesses/people/gov'ts ought to do - save during the fat years to prepare > for the lean. But with Bush II dumping dollars into the desert like a > madman, alas, it was not to be. We'll have to hope that the investments > we're making now will pay off well enough to cover the bill later. ### Has anybody ever shown a deflationary wage-price spiral in real life? This is some sort of Keynesian bugaboo they cooked up from theory, never seen in practice, and said it'd be really bad. Pouring value tokens into an economy does not create value, and if value of some products goes down and therefore their price (ceteris paribus) goes down as well, artificially propping up prices of valueless items only ensures further misallocation of resources into provision of those items. What makes you think that if the government lead by one either faction was pumping money into the desert over 15 years or so (I am referring to the artificial stimulation of home building which took place frequently in the deserts of Nevada, or in the swamps of Florida) is now going to magically switch to supporting valuable spending? Keynesianism is so incredibly bizarre it's hard to argue against but somehow seemingly smart people like Krugman see to believe in it. Rafal From emlynoregan at gmail.com Wed May 6 02:01:53 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 11:31:53 +0930 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE08D.6020801@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905051901x51b04bb0jb4126988e57bbf96@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/6 Stathis Papaioannou : > 2009/5/6 Olga Bourlin : > >> Agree. And then there's this: >> >> http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/27/7330 > > "Not surprisingly, in a land where literacy and numeracy are > considered virtues, teachers are revered. Teenagers ranked teaching at > the top of their list of favorite professions in a recent survey. Far > more graduates of upper schools in Finland apply for admission to > teacher-training institutes than are accepted. The overwhelming > majority of those who eventually enter the classroom as a teacher make > it a lifelong career, even though they are paid no more than their > counterparts in other European countries." > > Teenagers rank teaching as their favourite profession? What sort of > topsy-turvy country is that?! Maybe related, from this article on top IT locations: http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/140574,top-10-it-locations.aspx "Okay, so the weather may be terrible and the food not much better, but Finland has still carved out a niche as one of the better places to be a geek. Sweden has beautiful women women, Norway has death metal bands and Finland has computer geeks. Scandinavia is divided up much like a high school cafeteria in that sense." -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 6 02:10:37 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 22:10:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] supply and demand Message-ID: <7641ddc60905051910y516412b0n1f423a87376dccb2@mail.gmail.com> I noticed that some posters, when writing about the "law of supply and demand", were referring to notions and issues that really have little to do with the law of supply and demand as discussed by economists, and then concluded that the law doesn't work in real life, because whatever they were writing about wasn't making sense. In the interest of avoiding discussions involving non-shared meanings of words, I suggest that anybody who wants to take on supply and demand would first read an introduction to the matter (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand). A grasp of the notion of a supply curve, elasticity, curve shift, is truly indispensable in any reasonable treatment of this subject. Rafal From moulton at moulton.com Wed May 6 02:33:25 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 19:33:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] supply and demand In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905051910y516412b0n1f423a87376dccb2@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60905051910y516412b0n1f423a87376dccb2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1241577205.6853.191.camel@hayek> The correct URL is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand Can I suggest that people avoid putting commas, periods, parentheses, brackets, etc next to URLs since this often leads to the punctuation getting included in the URL. Fred On Tue, 2009-05-05 at 22:10 -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > I noticed that some posters, when writing about the "law of supply and > demand", were referring to notions and issues that really have little > to do with the law of supply and demand as discussed by economists, > and then concluded that the law doesn't work in real life, because > whatever they were writing about wasn't making sense. In the interest > of avoiding discussions involving non-shared meanings of words, I > suggest that anybody who wants to take on supply and demand would > first read an introduction to the matter (e.g. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand). A grasp of the notion > of a supply curve, elasticity, curve shift, is truly indispensable in > any reasonable treatment of this subject. > > Rafal > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 6 03:04:29 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 22:04:29 -0500 Subject: [ExI] supply and demand In-Reply-To: <1241577205.6853.191.camel@hayek> References: <7641ddc60905051910y516412b0n1f423a87376dccb2@mail.gmail.com> <1241577205.6853.191.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090505220308.022f5ec0@satx.rr.com> At 07:33 PM 5/5/2009 -0700, Fred wrote: >Can I suggest that people avoid putting commas, periods, parentheses, >brackets, etc next to URLs since this often leads to the punctuation >getting included in the URL. In my experience, the best way is this: especially if the url is several lines long, and you can't be bothered changing it to a tinyurl. From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 6 03:08:00 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 23:08:00 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905031849p19cc7919ibc55bb171ba10370@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905032014j6c31550bpa53eeaec906c7c49@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905040654h3a69066bi8d1de74774f69256@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905052008x30fa3d0cpd56f8077b72e0dd0@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brent Neal wrote: > This represents about 30 seconds of Googling. Unless you think that the von > Mises Institute is too left wing for you, of course. :) > >> > http://mises.org/story/2948 ### Very nice article. How does it relate to the question of when the present recession would end? The author does not even once mention the specifics of today's problems, and devotes the article entirely to the question of whether recessions in general are deflationary or inflationary. ----------------- > > The question at hand is the one being talked about in the GI thread, though. > It is entirely feasible that these are the growing pains towards an economy > that where the wage-income link is weakened, something that the folks mired > in industrial age economics can't wrap their heads around. As we begin to > understand that ideas and memes ?will often be more valuable than stuff, > there will inevitably be some rough spots as we transition from an economy > based on atoms, arranged just so and moved from point A to point B , to an > economy based on bits, arranged just so and moved from point A to point B. > (Where they would then be "minted" into the right sort of atoms, perhaps. Or > perhaps not.) > ### How does that relate to the short-term economic forecast? Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 6 03:33:04 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 23:33:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <3208155.70281241503410315.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> References: <3208155.70281241503410315.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905052033t35c0e7e5gc6067c9a360dd97c@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 2:03 AM, scerir at tiscali.it wrote: > Rafal: > > He is pointing to the observations from the previous 6 recessions > - did you follow the link? > (http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2009/04/another_green_s.html ) > > # ?The best paper about all that (to my knowledge) is the following > http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/rogoff/files/Aftermath.pdf > ### Excellent article. I would point your attention to fig. 4. The distribution is dominated by a few crises with very long durations, although the median seems to be a bit more than a year. Now, are you going to base your bets on the mean or the median? Imagine we had a bet for, oh, let's say $1000, the issue being whether the recession (measured by per capita GDP) ends before the end of 2009 or not? How would you bet? Of course I don't know how long the recession will last. On this list I merely pointed to some reasonable analyses done by smart people, who expect a recovery soon. I do not have the skills to achieve a justifiably confident prediction myself. On the other hand, I am reasonably certain nobody here can make such justifiably confident prediction either. So far the article that Brent linked to didn't provide much relevant information, and scerir's link could actually be interpreted as a basis for optimism, since the predicted duration of decline in per capita GDP would suggest recovery is just about the corner. But, as I said, I don't know. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 6 03:59:11 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 23:59:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <49FFE21B.7080501@posthuman.com> References: <3208155.70281241503410315.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> <49FFE21B.7080501@posthuman.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905052059i6577afb0t58149a29cc86d030@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 2:52 AM, Brian Atkins wrote: > Rafal, see pg. 18 of the following paper. The current market rally, "green > shoots" etc. are likely just a small brief blip of moderation in the > downward slide you can see in this model's predictive charts for 2009. > > This model has an historical r^2 around .75 for explaining employment > changes 12 months into the future. And as you can see on the out of sample > prediction on pg. 18 the actual data so far is tracking below what the model > predicts. Even if this tightens up and improves a bit above the model's > average estimate then the recession is not over. ### Very cool stuff. If true, we should expect a massive worsening of the recession in about 4 months. This prediction is at odds with other models (based on manufacturing data, service indices, transportation indices) but it has to be taken quite seriously. Need to wait and see what happens. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 6 04:09:26 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 00:09:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion/was Re: Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: References: <894943.79823.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905052109j2eac0125hfb375d5b09c9cb5a@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:20 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I have the same > choice if I don't like the taxes in the state where I live: I could > change the way I work or I could move, although that might be > inconvenient, costly or impossible. ### Sure. But, is it good? I am sure you don't think that intentionally limiting choices available to people is generally a good idea. Taxation is a net reduction of choices: compared to a voluntary system, it is almost impossible to use taxation to achieve a net increase in the range of choices available to participants. Taxes almost always make the taxed worse off - yet you seem to attribute legitimacy to them, you seem to identify with their imposition, although you reject other limitations of your choices (e.g. imposed by "crime syndicates"). Both taxes and "protection" paid to crime bosses make you worse off - yet you support the former and reject the latter. Why? Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 6 04:16:10 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 00:16:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <58C56143-2BCF-4B9D-A7D9-BE73848CB244@freeshell.org> References: <770438.64458.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <58C56143-2BCF-4B9D-A7D9-BE73848CB244@freeshell.org> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905052116o71eb991fic88b829c96c18039@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Brent Neal wrote: I quite honestly > don't know anyone, that given a chance to work on their own projects > regardless of income wouldn't jump at the chance. Not "just lay around", but > volunteer with various groups, sing, play music, learn a new skill, etc. ### Yeah, sure, ppl like to play at "working". Say, build the biggest and baddest punkin' chunkin' cannon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuzMygEVOgM). Or whatever. This is the kind of stuff that gets done when people are not working for money. But what's in it for me? Or you? Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 6 04:19:58 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 00:19:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: References: <953258.34086.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905052119s62a3116am6fcbff27ce983c90@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:23 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/6 Dan : > >> For almost all of my childhood, I lived in poor neighborhoods around the US. ?And by poor, I mean many if not most people were on some form of public assistance. > > And it would have been better if they had been allowed to starve, > denied education and health care etc.? ### Yes. They would be a lesson to others. Work hard, don't do drugs, keep your nose clean, and you'll make it. Screw up, over and over and over again, and, well, screw you. Rafal PS. Keeping your nose clean is important. Otherwise pores get bigger and the nose-hair can scare little children. From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 6 04:27:02 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 00:27:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com> <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE08D.6020801@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905052127s3b02ec98vf291c835fe8f74bb@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > It isn't just economic growth that is important, it's quality of life. ### Only economic growth in the long term is important, since it is almost the only humanly modifiable determinant of average quality of life. Really. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 6 04:34:46 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 00:34:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE08D.6020801@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905052134v6d0c7959x9934b831cc32b5c8@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 11:18 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/6 Olga Bourlin : > >> Stathis, I am glad you are pointing out the "quality of life" aspect. >> >> This article about Finland also touches on the subject (and doesn't >> pussyfoot around in saying there are tradeoffs): >> >> http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090501/cm_csm/ycorson > > I wouldn't say Finland is an economic slouch, either. More evidence > that socialist policies do not necessarily adversely affect technical > innovation and industrial efficiency: > > http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1026/p01s03-woeu.htm > ### The US is only 6 points ahead of Finland on the EFI (http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking.aspx). US=capitalism, Finland=socialism? No. Just different flavors of socialism. Socialist policies always negatively affect economic growth. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 6 04:37:39 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 00:37:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] supply and demand In-Reply-To: <1241577205.6853.191.camel@hayek> References: <7641ddc60905051910y516412b0n1f423a87376dccb2@mail.gmail.com> <1241577205.6853.191.camel@hayek> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905052137h2284ca2ai14904a53cc70eefe@mail.gmail.com> Your client doesn't parse the link? Guess we should paste in a separate line to avoid problems. On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:33 PM, Fred C. Moulton wrote: > The correct URL is: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand > > Can I suggest that people avoid putting commas, periods, parentheses, > brackets, etc next to URLs since this often leads to the punctuation > getting included in the URL. > > Fred > > > On Tue, 2009-05-05 at 22:10 -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> I noticed that some posters, when writing about the "law of supply and >> demand", were referring to notions and issues that really have little >> to do with the law of supply and demand as discussed by economists, >> and then concluded that the law doesn't work in real life, because >> whatever they were writing about wasn't making sense. In the interest >> of avoiding discussions involving non-shared meanings of words, I >> suggest that anybody who wants to take on supply and demand would >> first read an introduction to the matter (e.g. >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand). A grasp of the notion >> of a supply curve, elasticity, curve shift, is truly indispensable in >> any reasonable treatment of this subject. >> >> Rafal >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Rafal Smigrodzki, MD-PhD Chief Clinical Officer, Gencia Corporation 706 B Forest St. Charlottesville, VA 22903 tel: (434) 295-4800 fax: (434) 295-4951 This electronic message transmission contains information from the biotechnology firm of Gencia Corporation which may be confidential or privileged. The information is intended to be for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information is prohibited. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please notify us by telephone (434-295-4800) or by electronic mail (fportell at genciabiotech.com) immediately. From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 6 05:09:02 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 01:09:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The What and the Why/was Re: libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <190053.56640.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <190053.56640.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905052209g792f94dck4f8ba1e47de6f852@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Dan wrote: > Not at all. A libertarian is someone who believes in and follows (as much as possible) libertarian principles -- with the defining principle being non-initiation of force. ### I tend to define a libertarian as somebody who does not recognize the legitimacy of any duties towards in-group members, except the duty of non-initiation of force. This is a bit tricky definition, and the terms "legitimacy", "force" and "duty" are traps for the unwary. If anybody is interested I could expound on the subject more but for now I have a different issue: When does it make sense to stop being libertarian? It's useful to point out additional complications in the term "libertarian". After many years of musing on the subject I came to the conclusion that the set of possible societies comprehensively following the above principle of duty not to initiate force would be most congenial for me, would most comprehensively satisfy my needs and the needs of almost all nice people, would be on average much better than the set of societies where violence is encouraged (like ours), and generally would be really cool and stuff. So in this way I am a political-theory libertarian. The only reason to stop being a theory-libertarian is if new data or new analysis showed that coercion can actually make me better off. On the other hand, there is a bit more practical meaning to libertarianism - the idea of being personally nice (i.e. non-aggressive) towards others. Of course, if you are a serious theory-libertarian, it would make sense to be a practical libertarian as well. Yet, sometimes there are situations where being nice is extremely damaging on the individual level - for example in a civil war (where not being with "us" means being with "them"). You know that a civil war is rather stupid but you can't do anything about it, so you play along. I do think that you can call yourself a libertarian even when you engage in un-libertarian activities, at least up to a point. I fully intend to live it up on my Social Security money if I were to retire before the singularity. I won't give this ill-gotten cash back to the poor young slobs being fleeced for my SS check. I will take taxed-away funds, if I can. Sure, it's nasty, and saying that "they (the previous generations) did it to me before, so now I want payback" is a poor excuse. But I'd do it. If the society collapsed and everybody was running in gangs fighting for the last scraps of food, I'd join a gang (if any gang was stupid enough to want a guy like me). But I would still believe that making a non-violent society is a much better idea, wherever possible. In conclusion, as long as you don't actively and strategically oppose the formation of a libertarian society, you could call yourself a libertarian, even as you feast on monies earned from a licensure-restricted occupation, or otherwise benefit from violent oppression of suckers, err, I mean, citizens. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moulton at moulton.com Wed May 6 07:45:20 2009 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Wed, 06 May 2009 00:45:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] supply and demand In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905052137h2284ca2ai14904a53cc70eefe@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60905051910y516412b0n1f423a87376dccb2@mail.gmail.com> <1241577205.6853.191.camel@hayek> <7641ddc60905052137h2284ca2ai14904a53cc70eefe@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1241595920.6853.210.camel@hayek> On Wed, 2009-05-06 at 00:37 -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > Your client doesn't parse the link? Guess we should paste in a > separate line to avoid problems. The problem is that the ")" It is the difference between http://moulton.com/test and http://moulton.com/test) Those are two different URLs. Fred > On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:33 PM, Fred C. Moulton wrote: > > The correct URL is: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand > > > > Can I suggest that people avoid putting commas, periods, parentheses, > > brackets, etc next to URLs since this often leads to the punctuation > > getting included in the URL. > > > > Fred > > > > > > On Tue, 2009-05-05 at 22:10 -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > >> I noticed that some posters, when writing about the "law of supply and > >> demand", were referring to notions and issues that really have little > >> to do with the law of supply and demand as discussed by economists, > >> and then concluded that the law doesn't work in real life, because > >> whatever they were writing about wasn't making sense. In the interest > >> of avoiding discussions involving non-shared meanings of words, I > >> suggest that anybody who wants to take on supply and demand would > >> first read an introduction to the matter (e.g. > >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand). A grasp of the notion > >> of a supply curve, elasticity, curve shift, is truly indispensable in > >> any reasonable treatment of this subject. > >> > >> Rafal > >> _______________________________________________ > >> extropy-chat mailing list > >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > > > > From brian at posthuman.com Wed May 6 08:21:39 2009 From: brian at posthuman.com (Brian Atkins) Date: Wed, 06 May 2009 03:21:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905052059i6577afb0t58149a29cc86d030@mail.gmail.com> References: <3208155.70281241503410315.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> <49FFE21B.7080501@posthuman.com> <7641ddc60905052059i6577afb0t58149a29cc86d030@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A014893.2070700@posthuman.com> Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > ### Very cool stuff. If true, we should expect a massive worsening of > the recession in about 4 months. This prediction is at odds with > other models (based on manufacturing data, service indices, > transportation indices) but it has to be taken quite seriously. > > Need to wait and see what happens. > The "model" you initially referred to in order to call an end to the recession is simply saying "look: new unemployment claims have recently leveled off and improved slightly, this must be the ultimate peak in them for this recession." Yet we really can't know for some time afterwards whether they really have ultimately peaked. If you look back at various recessions including the Great Depression you will see often there are one or more false peaks in this data, only later to be surpassed by even worse data months later. -- Brian Atkins Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.singinst.org/ From brentn at freeshell.org Wed May 6 10:15:31 2009 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 06:15:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905052008x30fa3d0cpd56f8077b72e0dd0@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905031849p19cc7919ibc55bb171ba10370@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905032014j6c31550bpa53eeaec906c7c49@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905040654h3a69066bi8d1de74774f69256@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905052008x30fa3d0cpd56f8077b72e0dd0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <466AEA7E-FA3B-4E7F-86D6-B1DF6921E9BB@freeshell.org> On 5 May, 2009, at 23:08, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brent Neal > wrote: > >> This represents about 30 seconds of Googling. Unless you think that >> the von >> Mises Institute is too left wing for you, of course. :) >> >>> >> http://mises.org/story/2948 > > ### Very nice article. How does it relate to the question of when the > present recession would end? It doesn't. It relates to your challenge about deflationary pressures during recessions. You asked for "proof." I spent 30 seconds Googling it. > >> >> The question at hand is the one being talked about in the GI >> thread, though. >> It is entirely feasible that these are the growing pains towards an >> economy >> that where the wage-income link is weakened, something that the >> folks mired >> in industrial age economics can't wrap their heads around. As we >> begin to >> understand that ideas and memes will often be more valuable than >> stuff, >> there will inevitably be some rough spots as we transition from an >> economy >> based on atoms, arranged just so and moved from point A to point >> B , to an >> economy based on bits, arranged just so and moved from point A to >> point B. >> (Where they would then be "minted" into the right sort of atoms, >> perhaps. Or >> perhaps not.) >> > ### How does that relate to the short-term economic forecast? > Because I think we're seeing what many folks (including Damien) have predicted - an economic disruption based on or exacerbated by the fact that people don't need more manufactured stuff than they already have and in fact are increasingly realizing that they will pay some marginal amount for LESS stuff. The short term economic forecast, as has been claimed before, is linked to a fall in aggregate demand. There are two routes that can be taken based on this - either try to prop up the manufacturing sector or to transition to a different type of economy. We're, alas, doing the former, which I intuit will make the short term outlook much poorer. But, to economists and pundits completely immersed in industrial age economics, it appears to be the only option, so they are making a rational choice, in some sense. I disagree with that route though - I think that breaking the wage- income link more, recognizing that networks of people have an economic potential that is synergistically larger than the aggregate economic potential of their individual units, and using something like a reverse income tax - I prefer to think of it as a dividend, since I think it is more accurate - to compensate them for that value created will ultimately be the better solution to the current problem. Its also, I think, a precondition for the Singularity, but that requires more explanation. B -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed May 6 12:57:40 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 05:57:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Silly Message-ID: <310444.43819.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/5/09, hkhenson wrote: > At 06:08 AM 5/5/2009, Dan wrote: >> Will cryonics even work?? And even if it does, it >> depends on everything going right until you get >> revived.? If, say, the laws are changed to completely >> confiscated all your funds and wealth after legal death -- >> so that other, "wiser" people (i.e., those in the political >> or corporate elites) decide where your wealth goes -- then >> you might be left to rot. > > Dan, the archives both here and Cryonet, are full of > discussion on this topic. [big snip] I wonder if you've read the posts on CryoNet by this dude: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/findmsgs.cgi?author=daniel%20ust Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed May 6 13:43:06 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 06:43:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The choice wasn't death/was Re: Friedman and negative income tax Message-ID: <297079.88779.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/5/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/6 Dan : > >> For almost all of my childhood, I lived in poor >> neighborhoods around the US. ?And by poor, I mean many if >> not most people were on some form of public assistance. > > And it would have been better if they had been allowed to > starve, denied education and health care etc.? I don't believe that was the alternative. The people I knew were, as I pointed out (at least as far I could tell or as they reported to me), able-bodied. It seemed to me they chose the dole over work -- not that they chose the dole over death. (Regarding the latter, I don't think I'd fault someone for choosing the dole over death.) Also, I'm not sure how they were denied education or health care. In the places I lived, education was mandatory, usually up to the age of 16 -- though I was specifically talking about able-bodied adults. Also, healthcare was provided through Medicaid and similar programs -- so it was free. I wasn't talking about that either. I wasn't talking about people who were working and choose to accept government education and healthcare. I was talking about people who were NOT working, who could work, and opted for the easy payment of a government check over finding and keeping a job. (I also knew people who were poor and worked in addition to people who did both -- collected the dole and worked "under the table" or "off the books.") My general point was merely what I saw when people had the alternative not to work. Many of them chose not to work. They didn't do so so that they could continue their education, pursue some artistic project, or something along those lines. Regards, Dan From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 6 13:44:32 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 07:44:32 -0600 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <4A014893.2070700@posthuman.com> References: <3208155.70281241503410315.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> <49FFE21B.7080501@posthuman.com> <7641ddc60905052059i6577afb0t58149a29cc86d030@mail.gmail.com> <4A014893.2070700@posthuman.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905060644o7daf1ef0r239f29a565c9386c@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 2:21 AM, Brian Atkins wrote: > Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > >> >> ### Very cool stuff. If true, we should expect a massive worsening of >> the recession in about 4 months. This prediction is at odds with >> other models (based on manufacturing data, service indices, >> transportation indices) but it has to be taken quite seriously. >> >> Need to wait and see what happens. >> >> > The "model" you initially referred to in order to call an end to the > recession is simply saying "look: new unemployment claims have recently > leveled off and improved slightly, this must be the ultimate peak in them > for this recession." ### Predictions based on e.g. the Baltic Dry Goods index are more than that. --------------------------------- > > > Yet we really can't know for some time afterwards whether they really have > ultimately peaked. If you look back at various recessions including the > Great Depression you will see often there are one or more false peaks in > this data, only later to be surpassed by even worse data months later. ### Sure. This is why I said we need to wait and see what happens, and I didn't offer you a bet. I am not confident that the recession will end before the end of the year - but I didn't fully buy the credit-spread model either. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 6 14:16:26 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 06 May 2009 09:16:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905060644o7daf1ef0r239f29a565c9386c@mail.gmail.co m> References: <3208155.70281241503410315.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> <49FFE21B.7080501@posthuman.com> <7641ddc60905052059i6577afb0t58149a29cc86d030@mail.gmail.com> <4A014893.2070700@posthuman.com> <7641ddc60905060644o7daf1ef0r239f29a565c9386c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090506091147.0281f2f8@satx.rr.com> At 07:44 AM 5/6/2009 -0600, Rafal wrote: >### Sure. This is why I said we need to wait and see what happens, >and I didn't offer you a bet. I am not confident that the recession >will end before the end of the year A modest enough position to take. Rather more so, I think, than the impression conveyed by your initial post: "According to many economic indicators, the recession is going to end in about 6 weeks (despite the best efforts of the idiots who run this country) and there was never a depression, not by a long shot." Damien Broderick From hkhenson at rogers.com Wed May 6 14:14:29 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Wed, 06 May 2009 07:14:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Silly In-Reply-To: <310444.43819.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <310444.43819.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1241619735_11365@s6.cableone.net> At 05:57 AM 5/6/2009, you wrote: >--- On Tue, 5/5/09, hkhenson wrote: > > At 06:08 AM 5/5/2009, Dan wrote: > >> Will cryonics even work? And even if it does, it > >> depends on everything going right until you get > >> revived. If, say, the laws are changed to completely > >> confiscated all your funds and wealth after legal death -- > >> so that other, "wiser" people (i.e., those in the political > >> or corporate elites) decide where your wealth goes -- then > >> you might be left to rot. > > > > Dan, the archives both here and Cryonet, are full of > > discussion on this topic. >[big snip] > >I wonder if you've read the posts on CryoNet by this dude: > >http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/findmsgs.cgi?author=daniel%20ust Perhaps. Those posts are ten years ago. At that particular time I had enough trouble I might not have been reading Cryonet. If you are signed up and have been following the cryonics saga that long, why the hypothetical gloom? Alcor and CI have both faced serious political problems and they are still in business. It's not like they have to stay in business that long. Way things are going I suspect most of those signed up today will not need to be frozen. Keith From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 6 14:38:24 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 08:38:24 -0600 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090506091147.0281f2f8@satx.rr.com> References: <3208155.70281241503410315.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> <49FFE21B.7080501@posthuman.com> <7641ddc60905052059i6577afb0t58149a29cc86d030@mail.gmail.com> <4A014893.2070700@posthuman.com> <7641ddc60905060644o7daf1ef0r239f29a565c9386c@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090506091147.0281f2f8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905060738t78c2b94q2b8adc7a0eb14081@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 8:16 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 07:44 AM 5/6/2009 -0600, Rafal wrote: > > ### Sure. This is why I said we need to wait and see what happens, and I >> didn't offer you a bet. I am not confident that the recession will end >> before the end of the year >> > > A modest enough position to take. Rather more so, I think, than the > impression conveyed by your initial post: > > "According to many economic indicators, the recession is going to > end in about 6 weeks (despite the best efforts of the idiots who run > this country) and there was never a depression, not by a long shot." > ### Is there a contradiction between the two paragraphs? Many indicators say the recession will end soon, others say it won't, I am not smart enough to tell which one is right. And as an aside the current crisis is not a depression. All fits together (unless you read too much confidence into the first paragraph). Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed May 6 14:38:38 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 07:38:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Finnish Miracle?/was Re: retrainability of plebeians Message-ID: <367405.61326.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 5/6/09, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > 2009/5/6 Olga Bourlin : > > > >> Stathis, I am glad you are pointing out the > "quality of life" aspect. > >> > >> This article about Finland also touches on the > subject (and doesn't > >> pussyfoot around in saying there are tradeoffs): > >> > >> http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090501/cm_csm/ycorson > > > > I wouldn't say Finland is an economic slouch, either. > More evidence > > that socialist policies do not necessarily adversely > affect technical > > innovation and industrial efficiency: > > > > http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1026/p01s03-woeu.htm > > > ### The US is only 6 points ahead of Finland on the EFI > (http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking.aspx). > US=capitalism, > Finland=socialism? > > No. Just different flavors of socialism. Well, it depends on how one defines socialism. I'd define it as government ownership of the means of production -- at least that's state socialism. And I'd call Finland a mixed economy -- just like the US. Both nations share the major features of fascism -- with the government controlling many aspects of the economy, but nominally allowing private ownership. > Socialist policies always > negatively affect economic growth. I agree that _interventionist_ policies always negatively affect economic growth (and culture*). I'm not sure I'd classify Finland as socialist, but it is heavily interventionist -- as are all nation states today; they only differ in degree and the particulars of interventions. Regarding the particulars, this matters a lot for understanding how interventions impact a society. I'm not as familiar with the Finnish case, so I'm not sure how Finland's particular interventions affect its people. Tracing some aspects of an economy to certain policies would require a lot more, in my view, than merely reading a few articles lauding Finland. At a minimum, it'd require a better grounding in economic theory -- real, valid theory, not the nonsensical modeling used by mainstream economics** -- and economic history. Else, as with evolutionary explanations, one just ends up reciting one's favorite "just so" story about an economy. Regards, Dan * At the very least, any intervention is coercing innocent people to do things they otherwise would not do. In this sense, this diminishes a culture -- all else being equal -- because coercion is a decivilizing force. That coercion might have some good outcomes -- e.g., taxing the working poor in the US to pay for public colleges does get some middle class kids a college education (and maybe some of them actually contribute rather than merely further parasitizing society as they find cushy make work jobs in the bureaucratic and corporate elites, where they're basically insulated from market forces) -- but this comes at someone else's expense and is an example of the broken window fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window In my view, Extropians and transhumanists should study that fallacy -- not with an eye toward using it as a rhetorical trick, but actually understanding it and removing such fallacies from their thinking. It's one meme (the actual fallacy) that desparately needs to be stopped. ** A recent diatribe -- "Should People Just Ignore Economists?" -- on this hobby horse of mine is at: http://www.mises.org/story/3436 From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 6 14:34:12 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 08:34:12 -0600 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <466AEA7E-FA3B-4E7F-86D6-B1DF6921E9BB@freeshell.org> References: <7641ddc60905031849p19cc7919ibc55bb171ba10370@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905032014j6c31550bpa53eeaec906c7c49@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905040654h3a69066bi8d1de74774f69256@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905052008x30fa3d0cpd56f8077b72e0dd0@mail.gmail.com> <466AEA7E-FA3B-4E7F-86D6-B1DF6921E9BB@freeshell.org> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905060734l601c9930k7124ccf3585be2d7@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 4:15 AM, Brent Neal wrote: > > On 5 May, 2009, at 23:08, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Brent Neal wrote: >> >> This represents about 30 seconds of Googling. Unless you think that the >>> von >>> Mises Institute is too left wing for you, of course. :) >>> >>> >>>> http://mises.org/story/2948 >>> >> >> ### Very nice article. How does it relate to the question of when the >> present recession would end? >> > > It doesn't. It relates to your challenge about deflationary pressures > during recessions. You asked for "proof." I spent 30 seconds Googling it. ### But the article insists that recessions are inflationary. --------------------------------------- > > Because I think we're seeing what many folks (including Damien) have > predicted - an economic disruption based on or exacerbated by the fact that > people don't need more manufactured stuff than they already have and in fact > are increasingly realizing that they will pay some marginal amount for LESS > stuff. The short term economic forecast, as has been claimed before, is linked to a > fall in aggregate demand. ### This is completely off, I mean, Keynesianism lifting its head from the grave. People always want to have more stuff, or more services, or more of both. Desire is never a limiting factor on economic activity. Only the ability to satisfy desires is a limitation. Here we have a crisis due in part to misallocation of resources (speculative homebuilding and homebuying) associated with misjudgement of the validity of risk-prediction and mitigation methods (S&P credit ratings, mortgage securitization, credit default swaps) and exacerbated by massive levels of consumer fraud. There was no primary problem with the manufacturing sector at all here - this is a construction, real estate and financial crisis through and through. -------------------------------- > There are two routes that can be taken based on this - either try to prop > up the manufacturing sector or to transition to a different type of economy. > We're, alas, doing the former, which I intuit will make the short term > outlook much poorer. But, to economists and pundits completely immersed in > industrial age economics, it appears to be the only option, so they are > making a rational choice, in some sense. ### I agree with you here - politicians selected economists who support the most idiotic way of dealing with the problems but increase the power of politicians, that's why the apologist economists are elevated as court economists, and reasonable economists are reduced to blogging. Yet you are making a correct conclusion (gov't economists are wrong) from incorrect premises (Keynesian economics mixed with some New Age postindustrial stuff). ------------------------------- > I disagree with that route though - I think that breaking the wage-income > link more, recognizing that networks of people have an economic potential > that is synergistically larger than the aggregate economic potential of > their individual units, and using something like a reverse income tax - I > prefer to think of it as a dividend, since I think it is more accurate - to > compensate them for that value created will ultimately be the better > solution to the current problem. ### Reverse income tax? :) Sounds like something fun to rip into, once you explain what you mean. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed May 6 14:45:55 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 07:45:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Cryo-optimism/was Re: Silly Message-ID: <495352.67822.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 5/6/09, hkhenson wrote: > At 05:57 AM 5/6/2009, you (Dan Ust) wrote: > > >--- On Tue, 5/5/09, hkhenson > wrote: > > > At 06:08 AM 5/5/2009, Dan wrote: > > >> Will cryonics even work?? And even if it > does, it > > >> depends on everything going right until you > get > > >> revived.? If, say, the laws are changed > to completely > > >> confiscated all your funds and wealth after > legal death -- > > >> so that other, "wiser" people (i.e., those in > the political > > >> or corporate elites) decide where your wealth > goes -- then > > >> you might be left to rot. > > > > > > Dan, the archives both here and Cryonet, are full > of > > > discussion on this topic. > >[big snip] > > > >I wonder if you've read the posts on CryoNet by this > dude: > > > >http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/findmsgs.cgi?author=daniel%20ust > > Perhaps.? Those posts are ten years ago.? At that > particular time I > had enough trouble I might not have been reading Cryonet. > > If you are signed up and have been following the cryonics > saga that > long, why the hypothetical gloom?? Alcor and CI have > both faced > serious political problems and they are still in business. > > It's not like they have to stay in business that > long.? Way things > are going I suspect most of those signed up today will not > need to be frozen. I'm not gloomy, but I am questioning your being overly optimistic. Death has not been conquered yet -- if it ever will be conquered. And cryonics has yet to be proved. So, it's a bit early to be touting cryonics or any similar thing as a proven solution to dying. That doesn't mean I'm against it; I was trying to inject some reasonableness into the discussion. Recall, earlier, you wrote: "In a post nanotech world death should be rare indeed." Well, we don't live in that world yet and many us might not -- even with cryonics -- make it to that world. So don't celebrate victories until the battle is won. (And believe you me, I hope it is won -- and won during all of our lifetimes.) Regards, Dan From MERCERC at ecu.edu Wed May 6 07:21:50 2009 From: MERCERC at ecu.edu (Mercer, Calvin) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 03:21:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Religion Conference In-Reply-To: <8B64F13AC76B24408CDE98820A058C8C11EECE21E4@ecumb2.intra.ecu.edu> References: <8B64F13AC76B24408CDE98820A058C8C11EECE21E4@ecumb2.intra.ecu.edu> Message-ID: <8B64F13AC76B24408CDE98820A058C8C11EEA0AFD2@ecumb2.intra.ecu.edu> Some weeks ago, this list saw a call for papers I issued for a ?Transhumanism and Religion? session at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in Montreal November 7-10. The call for papers generated interesting discussion on this list about what the religion scholars were up to. Our session steering committee has now completed its blind review of the proposals. For those interested in a follow up, here below find the session paper abstracts for the November meeting. ?calvin mercer [cid:image001.gif at 01C9CDA2.6A6F39C0] Saturday - 1:00 pm-3:30 pm Calvin Mercer, East Carolina University, Presiding Jeffrey Bishop, Vanderbilt University [cid:image002.gif at 01C9CDA2.6A6F39C0] Ontotheology and the Post-human God Proponents of transhumanist philosophy claim for themselves the twin philosophies of liberalism and humanism. After a brief genealogy of transhumanism, I shall show, using Heidegger?s critiques of onto-theology and technology, that transhumanism remains part of Western metaphysics. The two prongs of Western metaphysics are matter?ontology-and will?theology. Technology mediates between these two prongs in the chain of being. I shall show how transhumanism and the meta-narrative of the post-human future remains tied to onto-theology. I shall claim that the deployment of technology is no neutral process, with technology acting as neutral tool, with the world?matter?awaiting human management?will. Transhumanist technology deploys its metaphysics of efficient control. In doing so, it also deploys an ethics, a politics, and an economics, all of the same cloth as Western onto-theology. And in manipulating human material it hopes to create a post-human god in a post human future. Brian Green, Graduate Theological Union [cid:image002.gif at 01C9CDA2.6A6F39C0] Would Aristotle Be a Transhumanist? [cid:image001.gif at 01C9CDA2.6A6F39C0] Would Aristotle be a transhumanist? Certainly the desire to enhance natural human capacities and help humans become more virtuous would be commendable from an Aristotelian perspective. Aristotle specifically encourages humans to pursue superiority and even ?immortality.? But what would Aristotle think of the most radical transhumanist departures from human nature, such as mind uploading and disembodied existence? This paper will propose an Aristotelian response to two major strands of transhumanism?embodied and disembodied?and show how Aristotelianism can both critique transhumanism and assist our understanding of it. M. Dominic Eggert, Vanderbilt University [cid:image002.gif at 01C9CDA2.6A6F39C0] Omnilibertarianism: How Human Beings Can Become Virtual Gods Through Technology [cid:image001.gif at 01C9CDA2.6A6F39C0] Transhumanism is the attempt to achieve traditional religious aspirations by naturalistic (usually technological) means. 'Omnilibertarianism' is a species of transhumanism, specifically of libertarian transhumanism, which can be interpreted as a secular religion that advocates a kind of self-deification. This paper attempts to refute Nozick's arguments against the desirability of living in an 'experience machine' by calling into question our confidence in knowing how to distinguish between reality and a simulation. I argue that consistent libertarians should want to become 'Maximally Autonomous Rational Agents' (MARAs) or 'virtual gods' who have complete control over what they experience. In so doing, I endorse a conception of negative liberty that recognizes that natural laws can be just as oppressive as human ones. Stephen Garner, University of Auckland [cid:image002.gif at 01C9CDA2.6A6F39C0] Image-bearing Cyborgs?: Hybridity and Hope in the Landscapes of Transhumanism [cid:image001.gif at 01C9CDA2.6A6F39C0] The cyborg occupies a place where traditional categories, such as organic and inorganic, animal and plant, human and machine, and male and female, have shifted and blurred. The Judeo-Christian theological motif, where human beings are bearers of the image and likeness of God, is realized in hybridity, and as such, it is able to engage with the cyborg and its associated transhumanist landscape. This engagement is supplemented by other theological motifs of hybridity, and themes of social justice, embodiment and redemption, resourcing wise-living in contemporary technoculture. Robert Ross, Graduate Theological Union [cid:image002.gif at 01C9CDA2.6A6F39C0] Singularities: Crypto-Religious Models of Human Transformation through Technology [cid:image001.gif at 01C9CDA2.6A6F39C0] Singularities: Crypto-Religious Models of Human Transformation through Technology AI developer Ray Kurzweil articulates the vision of a world in which geometrically accelerating technological progress enables humans to transcend the limits of their biological substrate. The paper sketches Kurzweil?s major technical proposals, assessing their ethical implications, then identifies three crypto-religious conceptual models underlying his judgments about technological advances: (1) an anthropology which assumes an imperfect/incomplete human nature in its current state that needs to be perfected through technological intervention; (2) an eschatology, expressed through his concept of singularity, that invokes the notion of some limit of humanness that is surpassed, but, at the same time unreachable; (3) an idea of transcendence that sees meaning in the universe a consequence of human purposiveness. The paper concludes by considering how religious models provide structure to human thinking about their place in the universe in such a way to function as more real, more powerful than the data of actual experience. Business Meeting: Calvin Mercer, East Carolina University Calvin Mercer, Ph.D. Co-Director, Religious Studies Program East Carolina University Greenville, NC 27858 USA 252 328 4310 (off & vm) 252 328 6301 (fax) mercerc at ecu.edu www.ecu.edu/religionprogram -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.gif Type: image/gif Size: 62 bytes Desc: image002.gif URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.gif Type: image/gif Size: 61 bytes Desc: image001.gif URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 6 14:57:34 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 22:57:34 +0800 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905060738t78c2b94q2b8adc7a0eb14081@mail.gmail.com> References: <3208155.70281241503410315.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> <49FFE21B.7080501@posthuman.com> <7641ddc60905052059i6577afb0t58149a29cc86d030@mail.gmail.com> <4A014893.2070700@posthuman.com> <7641ddc60905060644o7daf1ef0r239f29a565c9386c@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090506091147.0281f2f8@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905060738t78c2b94q2b8adc7a0eb14081@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/6/09, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### Is there a contradiction between the two paragraphs? Many indicators say > the recession will end soon, others say it won't, I am not smart enough to > tell which one is right. And as an aside the current crisis is not a > depression. All fits together (unless you read too much confidence into the > first paragraph). > The reason for speculating about the future (apart from fun chat) is for a guide to behavior. If you think this is a quick recession which will end in a few weeks, then you should be buying 'cheap' stocks in anticipation of a glorious future. If you think this is a temporary upward blip in the downward progression of a huge long-term depression, then you should be selling stocks before the collapse. If the collapse occurs, then it is better to be in cash. After prices get near the bottom, you can allocate the cash to assets that you expect to hold value. (China appears to be buying all the gold it can get at present. But that's no recommendation. Look at all the junk bonds they bought). BillK From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 6 15:45:03 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 09:45:03 -0600 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: References: <3208155.70281241503410315.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> <49FFE21B.7080501@posthuman.com> <7641ddc60905052059i6577afb0t58149a29cc86d030@mail.gmail.com> <4A014893.2070700@posthuman.com> <7641ddc60905060644o7daf1ef0r239f29a565c9386c@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090506091147.0281f2f8@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905060738t78c2b94q2b8adc7a0eb14081@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905060845w34fbe23fx66bbb93324f1151d@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 8:57 AM, BillK pharos at gmail.com> wrote: The reason for speculating about the future (apart from fun chat) is for a guide to behavior. If you think this is a quick recession which will end in a few weeks, then you should be buying 'cheap' stocks in anticipation of a glorious future. If you think this is a temporary upward blip in the downward progression of a huge long-term depression, then you should be selling stocks before the collapse. If the collapse occurs, then it is better to be in cash. After prices get near the bottom, you can allocate the cash to assets that you expect to hold value. (China appears to be buying all the gold it can get at present. But that's no recommendation. Look at all the junk bonds they bought). ### You are right. Problem is, I have neither the cash to spend nor the stock to sell nor the confidence to decide. By the time I am done paying off the blood money to my hopefully soon to be ex wife, the recession will be definitely over. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 6 15:54:40 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 23:54:40 +0800 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905060845w34fbe23fx66bbb93324f1151d@mail.gmail.com> References: <3208155.70281241503410315.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> <49FFE21B.7080501@posthuman.com> <7641ddc60905052059i6577afb0t58149a29cc86d030@mail.gmail.com> <4A014893.2070700@posthuman.com> <7641ddc60905060644o7daf1ef0r239f29a565c9386c@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090506091147.0281f2f8@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905060738t78c2b94q2b8adc7a0eb14081@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905060845w34fbe23fx66bbb93324f1151d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/6/09, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### You are right. Problem is, I have neither the cash to spend nor the > stock to sell nor the confidence to decide. By the time I am done paying off > the blood money to my hopefully soon to be ex wife, the recession will be > definitely over. > Oh well. If an ex-wife is involved, then that's definitely depression time! BillK :) From scerir at libero.it Wed May 6 17:23:11 2009 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 19:23:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" References: <3208155.70281241503410315.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> <7641ddc60905052033t35c0e7e5gc6067c9a360dd97c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <001b01c9ce6f$5d81d010$b30a4797@archimede> Refal: Imagine we had a bet for, oh, let's say $1000, the issue being whether the recession (measured by per capita GDP) ends before the end of 2009 or not? How would you bet? # Wasn't this (so they were saying) the worst recession in the last 70 years? I would say that if this recession will be over in 6 months it wasn't so bad :-) But there are chances the recovery will be slow, and there are chances the inflation will be much higher in the future (this seems quite obvious to me, since governments have injected trillions of dollars into the systems), and there are chances the oil will be more expensive again, and there are chances our economies will be more dependent of China, etc. So, the stock market has bet - since March, 9 - for the recession to be over in few months, but I think the dynamics could be chaotic. From hkhenson at rogers.com Wed May 6 16:35:16 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Wed, 06 May 2009 09:35:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Proactionary was Cryo-optimism/was Re: Silly In-Reply-To: <495352.67822.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <495352.67822.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1241628182_10466@s8.cableone.net> At 07:45 AM 5/6/2009, Dan wrote: snip >I'm not gloomy, but I am questioning your being overly >optimistic. Death has not been conquered yet -- if it ever will be >conquered. And cryonics has yet to be proved. So, it's a bit early >to be touting cryonics or any similar thing as a proven solution to dying. It is the nature of cryonics that when it is proven to work, the knowledge will have no value, because surely it will be more difficult to revive the cryonics patients than keeping people from dying in the first place. We are, as Dr. Ralph Merkel points out, running an experiment where those who get frozen are the experimental group and those who die and are not preserved are the control group. It's not that we experimental subjects are particularly optimistic, it's just that at present we lack alternate courses of action. >That doesn't mean I'm against it; I was trying to inject some >reasonableness into the discussion. I was trying to point out that a discussion on inheritance isn't an extropian topic. >Recall, earlier, you wrote: "In a post nanotech world death should >be rare indeed." Well, we don't live in that world yet and many us >might not -- even with cryonics -- make it to that world. So don't >celebrate victories until the battle is won. (And believe you me, I >hope it is won -- and won during all of our lifetimes.) There are two main models of the world future, the limits to growth model and the singularity model. The latter is based on long range trends of increases in computer power and the assumption that AI will emerge when hardware is powerful enough to permit it and that human level computation rates are enough are enough (by example) to support an AI. This date centers in the mid 2040s. The limits to growth model predicts a population crash starting much sooner and based to a substantial extent on failing energy supplies. The diversion of food (corn, soybean oil) into bio fuels may bring the crash closer by a number of years. The proactionary principle says extropians should be concerned about this. Do you have any suggestions? Keith From mlatorra at gmail.com Wed May 6 17:36:02 2009 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 11:36:02 -0600 Subject: [ExI] New Scientist: Quack remedies spread by virtue of being useless Message-ID: <9ff585550905061036n51b48d6di6307d45b6a23b86d@mail.gmail.com> Quack remedies spread by virtue of being useless 01 May 2009 by Ewen Callaway Eating a vulture won't clear a bad case of syphilis nor will a drink made of rotting snakes treat leprosy, but these and other bogus medical treatments spread precisely because they don't work. That's the counterintuitive finding of a mathematical model of medical quackery. Ineffective treatments don't cure an illness, so sufferers demonstrate them to more people than those who recovery quickly after taking real medicines. ... *Read full article at*: http://tinyurl.com/dyluw6 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brentn at freeshell.org Wed May 6 17:53:01 2009 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 13:53:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905060734l601c9930k7124ccf3585be2d7@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60905031849p19cc7919ibc55bb171ba10370@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905032014j6c31550bpa53eeaec906c7c49@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905040654h3a69066bi8d1de74774f69256@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905052008x30fa3d0cpd56f8077b72e0dd0@mail.gmail.com> <466AEA7E-FA3B-4E7F-86D6-B1DF6921E9BB@freeshell.org> <7641ddc60905060734l601c9930k7124ccf3585be2d7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <0562A09B-6F0A-4046-BAE7-959D2FDC24AA@freeshell.org> On 6 May, 2009, at 10:34, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > > On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 4:15 AM, Brent Neal > wrote: > > On 5 May, 2009, at 23:08, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > > ### But the article insists that recessions are inflationary. Exactly! You claimed in your original post (which, incidentally, I interpreted the same way Damien did as being very confident. The article you quoted and the argument you used as reference essentially said "look at the past 6 downturns and you will conclude that this will be over quickly. My argument, which was essentially the same as this article's, is that the current downturn is deflationary, which makes it different from most of the last downturns and will mean vastly different market behaviors. > > --------------------------------------- > > Because I think we're seeing what many folks (including Damien) have > predicted - an economic disruption based on or exacerbated by the > fact that people don't need more manufactured stuff than they > already have and in fact are increasingly realizing that they will > pay some marginal amount for LESS stuff. The short term economic > forecast, as has been claimed before, is linked to a fall in > aggregate demand. > > ### This is completely off, I mean, Keynesianism lifting its head > from the grave. People always want to have more stuff, or more > services, or more of both. Desire is never a limiting factor on > economic activity. Only the ability to satisfy desires is a > limitation. Here we have a crisis due in part to misallocation of > resources (speculative homebuilding and homebuying) associated with > misjudgement of the validity of risk-prediction and mitigation > methods (S&P credit ratings, mortgage securitization, credit default > swaps) and exacerbated by massive levels of consumer fraud. There > was no primary problem with the manufacturing sector at all here - > this is a construction, real estate and financial crisis through and > through. I disagree. Your statement that people always want more stuff is not necessarily true. When it costs too much to get it, people make a rational decision to forgo that consumption. Unfortunately, our consumer-driven economy can't handle consumers making a rational decision to forgo consumption, because we have ASSUMED that people will always buy more stuff and when they don't, due to the effects of overleveraging or due to a lack of confidence in their future income streams, the system starts to break down. Which, in turn, leads to a wage-price downward spiral. As I wrote this, I started having flashbacks to macroeconomics class, way on back when. > > -------------------------------- > > There are two routes that can be taken based on this - either try to > prop up the manufacturing sector or to transition to a different > type of economy. We're, alas, doing the former, which I intuit will > make the short term outlook much poorer. But, to economists and > pundits completely immersed in industrial age economics, it appears > to be the only option, so they are making a rational choice, in some > sense. > > ### I agree with you here - politicians selected economists who > support the most idiotic way of dealing with the problems but > increase the power of politicians, that's why the apologist > economists are elevated as court economists, and reasonable > economists are reduced to blogging. Yet you are making a correct > conclusion (gov't economists are wrong) from incorrect premises > (Keynesian economics mixed with some New Age postindustrial stuff). There is nothing particularly right or wrong about Keynesian economics nor monetarism. They have both shown to be efficacious in understanding behaviors of markets in certain situations. I recognize your irrational ideological bias, but being a physicist, I tend to be a little more pragmatic about using theories when they suit and ignoring the insistence on a foolish consistency in their application. :) Remember, economics is fundamentally driven by two things - psychology and information. > ------------------------------- > > I disagree with that route though - I think that breaking the wage- > income link more, recognizing that networks of people have an > economic potential that is synergistically larger than the aggregate > economic potential of their individual units, and using something > like a reverse income tax - I prefer to think of it as a dividend, > since I think it is more accurate - to compensate them for that > value created will ultimately be the better solution to the current > problem. > > ### Reverse income tax? :) > > Sounds like something fun to rip into, once you explain what you mean. > > The reverse income tax is what some call Milton Friedman's guaranteed income scheme, which has been discussed in another thread. B -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From mlatorra at gmail.com Wed May 6 17:59:50 2009 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 11:59:50 -0600 Subject: [ExI] NEW SCIENTIST on Singularity & Immortality Message-ID: <9ff585550905061059x2c95454cra5a7081777ed180@mail.gmail.com> Ray Kurzweil: A singular view of the future 06 May 2009 by Liz Else Q: When will the Singularity arrive? A: By 2045, give or take. We are already a hybrid of biological and non-biological technology. A handful of people have electronic devices in their brain, for example. The latest generation allows medical software to be downloaded to a computer inside your brain. But if you consider that 25 years from now these technologies will be 100,000 times smaller and a billion times more powerful, you get some idea of what will be feasible. And even though most of us don't have computers in our bodies, they are already part of who we are. Q: What about people who don't want to be "trans-human" and merge with technology? A: How many people completely reject all medical and health technology, don't wear glasses or take any medicine? People say they don't want to change themselves, but then when they get a disease they will do whatever they can to overcome it. We're not going to get from here to the world of 2030 or 2040 in one grand leap; we're going to get there through thousands of little steps. Put these steps together and ultimately the world is a different place. . . . Read entire interview at: http://tinyurl.com/dh4ym6 Watch the NEW SCIENTIST video interviews with Anders Sandberg, Aubrey de Grey and Nick Bostrom at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfTqXL0d9Ls -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed May 6 18:19:10 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 11:19:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion Message-ID: <324783.79122.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/5/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/6 Dan : >> This actually tells us why private charity would be >> better: it's inherently much more self-limiting. ?Those who >> really need it -- and, to be honest, I've relied on it in my >> life (and I've also helped others) -- will accept it, while >> those who don't (and this is subjective, of course) will be >> less likely to accept it. > > Would it be better if insurance companies only had > to pay out if they felt kindly towards you, even > though you have have a contract? The analogy you're seem to be attempting has, for me, a flaw. If you're trying to say the government has a contract with you to support you (under certain circumstances), the problem is it uses force against third parties to support you. That'd make the contract invalid. Insurance companies as insurance companies would not be using force as such to fulfill their contracts. In fact, insurance companies who don't fulfill their contracts -- as in they really do owe you (in the liberetarian just sense) a payment and decide they're not feeling kind toward the payee -- would be initiating force, specifically, using indirect force to keep what justly belongs to someone else. Why you would attempt this analogy is strange. Do you believe that the libertarian view is buyers should pay sellers because they should be kind? (All of this is not to say charity isn't a virtue. Unlike justice (in the libertarian sense), however, coercion can't be used to correct a lack of charity.) >> The key point is: it's forced. ?The whole system is >> based on coercion and on perpetuating coercion: you were >> robbed, so you're entitled. ?Where does your entitlement >> come from? ?Well, from robbing others to keep the system >> going. ?From an Extropian perspective, is this the kind of >> thinking and system we want to perpetuate? > > I wasn't robbed, I paid for a service. I'm not so sure about that. Did you have the option not to pay and continue to do whatever activity was involved? > True, I had to pay for the > service if I wanted to work, but that's the case with > thousands of > commercial transactions. I have to pay for professional > indemnity > insurance; I have to pay for renovations to the building in > which I > own an apartment, or I can be sued and ultimately > imprisoned; I have > to pay for insurance in case the plane crashes as part of > the price of > the ticket whenever I fly, even if I'd rather pay less and > take a > risk. I can look for a different job, apartment or airline, > but this > might be inconvenient and costly, if not impossible. I have > the same > choice if I don't like the taxes in the state where I live: > I could > change the way I work or I could move, although that might > be > inconvenient, costly or impossible. I think you're confusing choices that have to be made in life regardless of state (or other) coercion and coerced choices imposed by the state. Of course, there's a lot of mixing here; we live in societies dominated by nation states that attempt to micro-manage many choices. Under such conditions, coercion enters almost every choice. But there's a difference between say, "If you want to do business with me, you must do X, Y, and Z" and "If you want to do business with me, even though it'd harm no one else (in a libertarian rights sense not in the idiotic, meaningless sense of anything anyone does affects everyone else) and both of us agree that the government requires you to do X, Y, and Z (because some bureaucrats or a session of the legislators decided that you must)." (Or if you please, let's say the local mob boss requires you to do X, Y, and Z. Thus, to avoid the shallow reply that I'm merely anti-statist or I'm ignoring non-state coercion.*) In the former case, you might still find someone else to do business with -- someone who doesn't require X, Y, and Z. Or you might not. Or you might find someone who will only work with you if you X and Y, but not require Z. And so on. But in the latter case -- where the government requires X, Y, and Z -- you don't even have the choice to seek out or persuade others. (Admittedly, you can petition the state to change the policy, but that's a huge barrier to leap for most people. Why make it hard to change here? Why bake in to the system some beaucrats' or legislators' whims and make it hard for the people on the ground -- the one's who have to wear the yoke -- to find better ways of doing things?) >>> If I don't want to pay either I >>> don't have to work. >> >> That's sort of like saying, "If I don't want to pay >> the local crime syndicate, I can just avoid having a >> business in town." > > The crime syndicate is not chosen and supported by the > citizens who live there. True, but democracy is to a large extent merely a propaganda method used to legitamize the elite and rule of the many by the few. You get to select your master. Well, actually you don't. The majority of voters get to select it. So, at least some of the voters lose. But let's follow the analogy a little further. Imagine the local crime syndicate decides to run elections. Let's say the alternative is no elections, but the syndicate keeps doing whatever it does -- e.g., breaking knees, stealing from local businesses, and the like. So, now life is so much better. You get to have your vote added into with thousands or millions of others and there might be a tiny chance your vote will make a difference. Of course, to be certain, the candidates offered are pre-selected so that no one too radical -- say, like no one who'd push for the crime syndicate to stop stealing or stop breaking knees. The point is that just because you have some voice in the overall coercive system -- be it a local crime syndicate or a national one (a nation state) -- does make it non-coercive. In fact, the only way to make it non-coercive would be for all subjected to its activities (citizens is a loaded term; it makes it seem like governments only rule over their citizens and not uncounted others) expressly consented to it. (In the same way, if someone asks three people for a dollar and two agree (a clear majority!:) to five him one, this doesn't entitle him to the holdout's dollar. Were he to take it from the holdout, he would be coercing that person. But if he gets all three to consent, then there's no coercion involved.) Regards, Dan * It should also be noted that organized crime (aside from government itself) thrives under government. Were it not for outlawing various so called vices in the US (e.g., illegal drugs, prositution, and gambling), I think most organized crime would disappear. Yeah, there'd still be some of it around, but it'd be a pale shadow of its former self. I don't expect that minimizing or abolishing the state will make the world perfect, just much better under most circumstances. From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Wed May 6 19:25:42 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 12:25:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Debt tsunami In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905051859q71b7a6d3mb18be3b11f02a05f@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60905032043r7165ffdav254a34f6845bd1dd@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503231241.022c5c08@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905032120s4cf22e0bp33a8596aa0d15714@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503233009.022c09e0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905040013n31317284tdd579da684f783b@mail.gmail.com> <3265ADB5-6698-4001-87DE-E0F395895CE2@freeshell.org> <7641ddc60905051859q71b7a6d3mb18be3b11f02a05f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20090506192542.GB23175@ofb.net> On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 09:59:18PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > >> ### Or translated: A 21% increase (i.e. the "change") in budget > >> deficit over politics as usual after only 100 days in power. And a > >> projected deficit of 9.270 trillion (yes, trillion, not billion) by > >> 2019. It does not say a projected annual deficit of $9 trillion. That's a "total deficit" over ten years, what's normally called debt. As for the horrible crisis, raising taxes to the effect of another 5% of GDP would give is surpluses. > ### Has anybody ever shown a deflationary wage-price spiral in real > life? This is some sort of Keynesian bugaboo they cooked up from Great Depression. Japan. Krugman's babysitting co-op http://www.slate.com/id/2202165/ -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Wed May 6 19:11:38 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 12:11:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion/was Re: Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <894943.79823.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <894943.79823.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20090506191138.GA23175@ofb.net> On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 08:12:54AM -0700, Dan wrote: > > Government welfare is like collecting the insurance if my house > > burns down: I pay the premiums and if I need it, that's part of the > > deal. The deal with government welfare is that if I work, I pay > > taxes. I'm forced to pay my taxes, but I'm also forced to pay > > professional indemnity insurance by my employer. > The key point is: it's forced. The whole system is based on coercion There's a thing called the Prisoner's Dilemma. It's sort of solvable by tit-for-tat. Then there's the multiperson prisoner's dilemma. Coercion, whether by government or very powerful social norms, seems the only way of solving it. Yes, choice is reduced, because free individual choice leads to us all following our individual self-interest to an outcome that makes us all worse off; only uniform and enforced commitment lets the cooperative option be stable. Thus taxes (and possibly draft) for defense, and law enforcement, and welfare, and social insurance, and insurer-of-last-resort, and pollution control functions. > and on perpetuating coercion: you were robbed, so you're entitled. > Where does your entitlement come from? Well, from robbing others to > keep the system going. From an Extropian perspective, is this the Or from a social contract: people finding a compact that guarantees a minimum more attractive than a compact that guarantees a lack of explicit coercion but otherwise provides no security. Or from the fact that the unequal distribution of property is pretty morally tainted if you look at the history, and ongoing redistributive taxes are less disruptive than a sweeping act of reform, which might well destabilize by the next generation anyway. > kind of thinking and system we want to perpetuate? I quote a friend of mine: === I sometimes make the argument that the world *is* a libertarian "paradise". There is, after all, no world government. You want to talk about "private" police forces and infrastructure companies? We call them "nations". There are many, and they offer a variety of "packages". Some do well and others do not. "What," I say to the spluttering Libertarian, "You want to talk about hegemony, bundling, required contracts, the importance of colocation, and natural monopoly? Those aren't very Libertarian points to make." I then argue that apparently nation-states are the equilibrium result of anarchy. Good news: Libertarianism "works"! (Well, insofar as our nation-states "work".) "You're absolutely right; people will, and have, self-organized to the degree they see necessary. Now what's your point, again?" === -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Wed May 6 19:33:58 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 12:33:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <790144.86965.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <790144.86965.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20090506193358.GC23175@ofb.net> On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 06:40:24AM -0700, Dan wrote: > Also, given the context of your statement, the difference between a > GI, negative income tax, and other such public wealth transfers and > all forms of private ones is that the former must violate property > rights -- someone is forced to pay. In both cases, yes, free-loaders But how are property rights distributed? If someone owns land, they can basically be the government, a veritable king, on that land. "Pay me rent! Obey my rules or I evict you!" Not a huge problem with many competitive small landowners -- though shared norms against blacks or gays can make life hard for those renters -- but if someone owned all the land, they'd be a 'legitimate' government. > Finally, as an aside, I think a problem is that having forced wealth > transfers will eventually have a cultural impact -- as some people If I have ot pay someone to rent land they own, where I do the work of constructing a house and all they contribute is legal access to the land, how is that not a forced wealth transfer? -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Wed May 6 19:35:21 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 12:35:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905052119s62a3116am6fcbff27ce983c90@mail.gmail.com> References: <953258.34086.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7641ddc60905052119s62a3116am6fcbff27ce983c90@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20090506193521.GD23175@ofb.net> On Wed, May 06, 2009 at 12:19:58AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:23 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > 2009/5/6 Dan : > > > >> For almost all of my childhood, I lived in poor neighborhoods around the US. ?And by poor, I mean many if not most people were on some form of public assistance. > > > > And it would have been better if they had been allowed to starve, > > denied education and health care etc.? > > ### Yes. They would be a lesson to others. Work hard, don't do drugs, > keep your nose clean, and you'll make it. Screw up, over and over and > over again, and, well, screw you. And let their children starve too! -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Wed May 6 19:56:22 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 12:56:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <33620.12.77.168.184.1241434187.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <200905031932.n43JW3lY001104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0905031956u2f70355dsfcda1a350a60787c@mail.gmail.com> <33620.12.77.168.184.1241434187.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <20090506195622.GE23175@ofb.net> On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 06:49:47AM -0400, MB wrote: > I've been very pleased with my health care. I've been able to choose > my doctors, I've been able to get appointments when I needed them, > service was speedy. And yes, there have been medical problems, > illness which was hard to diagnose, frustrating to treat. And how do you pay for that health care -- pocket, or insurance? Is the insurance through a large employer, or individual? If individual, did you have "pre-existing conditions"? The system works okay once you're in it, and assuming the companies can't find a way out of paying for you. Where the US falls down is getting people into the system. Except, wait! We have a crude form of socialized insurance: not Medicaid, ultimate, but emergency rooms -- they have to take you in! Of course, treating emergencies is expensive and relatively ineffective (compared to preventive care), and the unfunded mandate means ERs are closing. Great insurance or deep pockets won't help you in a trauma if the nearest ER is more than your untreated life expectancy away. The fundamental social choice is "if someone's found naked and bleeding, with no proof of insurance, do we treat them or let them die? If they have killer flu or resistant TB, do we let them run around or treat them?" As a society, we've chosen life. We just do so crappily; given the choice, universal health care is the most efficient way of fulfilling it. If you want to fend off universal health care, convince your fellow Americans that poor sick people -- including children -- should be left alone to die, helped only by private charity or crushing debt. -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Wed May 6 20:00:48 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 13:00:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <324783.79122.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <324783.79122.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20090506200048.GF23175@ofb.net> On Wed, May 06, 2009 at 11:19:10AM -0700, Dan wrote: > * It should also be noted that organized crime (aside from government > itself) thrives under government. Were it not for outlawing various > so called vices in the US (e.g., illegal drugs, prositution, and > gambling), I think most organized crime would disappear. Yeah, > there'd still be some of it around, but it'd be a pale shadow of its > former self. I don't expect that minimizing or abolishing the state > will make the world perfect, just much better under most > circumstances. Smuggling banned services (also desperate high-interest loans) is one avenue of organized crime, yes. But other big ones are construction contracts (I'm not sure why) and simple shakedowns: "give us money or we burn your business down". If there were no government, there'd be little check on that last -- one's own force, or that of private protection agencies, whose difference from organized crime gangs is undetectable to a lot of people. -xx- Damien X-) From natasha at natasha.cc Wed May 6 19:59:32 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Wed, 06 May 2009 15:59:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] NEW SCIENTIST on Singularity & Immortality In-Reply-To: <9ff585550905061059x2c95454cra5a7081777ed180@mail.gmail.com> References: <9ff585550905061059x2c95454cra5a7081777ed180@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20090506155932.63wn5hos9w0ogs0o@webmail.natasha.cc> Great article, Michael. Thanks for sending it. It could be any of us have been saying for the past 20 years (except for the SU). :-) It is amazing to me that the journalists act as if all this is new information, new knowledge. Not. Nonetheless, it is fabulous to keep it in the public eye! best wishes, Natasha Quoting Michael LaTorra : > Ray Kurzweil: A singular view of the future > 06 May 2009 by Liz Else > > Q: When will the Singularity arrive? > > A: By 2045, give or take. We are already a hybrid of biological and > non-biological technology. A handful of people have electronic devices in > their brain, for example. The latest generation allows medical software to > be downloaded to a computer inside your brain. But if you consider that 25 > years from now these technologies will be 100,000 times smaller and a > billion times more powerful, you get some idea of what will be feasible. And > even though most of us don't have computers in our bodies, they are already > part of who we are. > > Q: What about people who don't want to be "trans-human" and merge with > technology? > > A: How many people completely reject all medical and health technology, > don't wear glasses or take any medicine? People say they don't want to > change themselves, but then when they get a disease they will do whatever > they can to overcome it. We're not going to get from here to the world of > 2030 or 2040 in one grand leap; we're going to get there through thousands > of little steps. Put these steps together and ultimately the world is a > different place. > . . . > Read entire interview at: http://tinyurl.com/dh4ym6 > > Watch the NEW SCIENTIST video interviews with Anders Sandberg, Aubrey de > Grey and Nick Bostrom at: > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfTqXL0d9Ls > From mbb386 at main.nc.us Wed May 6 21:35:42 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 17:35:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <20090506195622.GE23175@ofb.net> References: <200905031932.n43JW3lY001104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <710b78fc0905031956u2f70355dsfcda1a350a60787c@mail.gmail.com> <33620.12.77.168.184.1241434187.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <20090506195622.GE23175@ofb.net> Message-ID: <35373.12.77.168.222.1241645742.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > And how do you pay for that health care -- pocket, or insurance? Is the > insurance through a large employer, or individual? If individual, did > you have "pre-existing conditions"? > I purchase my own insurance... Blue Cross. There is a deductable and there is copay. Individual insurance. Yes, I have had pre-existing condition and it was waived when I went to Blue Cross from Mutual of Omaha which withdrew from my state. > The system works okay once you're in it, and assuming the companies > can't find a way out of paying for you. Where the US falls down is > getting people into the system. I guess I've had about 4 different individual insurance policy providers. > > Except, wait! We have a crude form of socialized insurance: not > Medicaid, ultimate, but emergency rooms -- they have to take you in! Of > course, treating emergencies is expensive and relatively ineffective > (compared to preventive care), and the unfunded mandate means ERs are > closing. Great insurance or deep pockets won't help you in a trauma if > the nearest ER is more than your untreated life expectancy away. I've only been once to an ER and that was many many years ago (in the 1960s) when we had a big corporation carrying the insurance. > If you want to fend off universal health care, convince your fellow > Americans that poor sick people -- including children -- should be > left alone to die, helped only by private charity or crushing debt. > My friend who used the VA system ran into trouble with this. The VA said they wouldn't accept him unless he were brought by ambulance. Ambulance wouldn't take him unless the VA would accept him. Eventually the family lied and the ambulance took him and left him on the step of the VA ER and he was taken in, so I guess it was all bark and no bite. This was years ago and he is now dead so I cannot unscramble the whole story. Regards, MB From brentn at freeshell.org Wed May 6 22:26:46 2009 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 18:26:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905052116o71eb991fic88b829c96c18039@mail.gmail.com> References: <770438.64458.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <58C56143-2BCF-4B9D-A7D9-BE73848CB244@freeshell.org> <7641ddc60905052116o71eb991fic88b829c96c18039@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <50DCCEA7-7ECB-4783-BDD6-8E9B839A428E@freeshell.org> On 6 May, 2009, at 0:16, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### Yeah, sure, ppl like to play at "working". Say, build the biggest > and baddest punkin' chunkin' cannon > (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuzMygEVOgM). Or whatever. This is the > kind of stuff that gets done when people are not working for money. > > But what's in it for me? Or you? Apparently, straw man arguments like the one you just made. :) B -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu May 7 01:51:04 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 11:21:04 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Turkish Star Trek Message-ID: <710b78fc0905061851g3cd8c8c9hc6a008ea6ea0445@mail.gmail.com> Just to crank the intensity on list down a notch, check out the turkish rip-off of the original Star Trek. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7185067049150068960 It's a thing of beauty. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From frankmac at ripco.com Thu May 7 01:58:18 2009 From: frankmac at ripco.com (frankie) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 21:58:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] RECESSION ENDS IN 6 WEEKS Message-ID: <474B64E859E645ADB36C84CDEF99D73D@FRANKPC> The key to this recession is the destruction of debt, and the de valuing of the dollar. Neither has taken place and will not happen until years from now. The Stock market is in a bear rally that has lasted 40 days since the lows of March 6, where it closed at 666 strange number don't you think. Since we have gone 40 days since then, March 6, this is either a bull market or we are setting a record run for price and speed of a bear market rally. If we have turned the corner, the recession has ended and the world will be saved, if this is a bear market and the recession has not ended look for the market to test the lows of March 6 within the next few months,,, If the market turns south in the next ten days you will be in a recession until 2010 maybe 2011. In a casino the line spoken to the players " is place you bets, please", and since gas here in Chicago has gone up to 2.50 a gallon, I think the recession is still with us and will be until 2011. One last thought, I hope I am wrong because if you have a job you are in a recession, if you are without a job it is called a Depression at the dinner table , and right now a group of people are feeling the pain of this period. Speak quietly of them, as they have the ability to become a crowd, then a mob, then you are in a regime change is in order Frank -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 7 02:18:28 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 10:18:28 +0800 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion/was Re: Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905052109j2eac0125hfb375d5b09c9cb5a@mail.gmail.com> References: <894943.79823.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7641ddc60905052109j2eac0125hfb375d5b09c9cb5a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/6 Rafal Smigrodzki : > On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:20 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > ?I have the same >> choice if I don't like the taxes in the state where I live: I could >> change the way I work or I could move, although that might be >> inconvenient, costly or impossible. > > ### Sure. But, is it good? I am sure you don't think that > intentionally limiting choices available to people is generally a good > idea. Taxation is a net reduction of choices: compared to a voluntary > system, it is almost impossible to use taxation to achieve a net > increase in the range of choices available to participants. Taxes > almost always make the taxed worse off - yet you seem to attribute > legitimacy to them, you seem to identify with their imposition, > although you reject other limitations of your choices (e.g. imposed by > "crime syndicates"). Both taxes and "protection" paid to crime bosses > make you worse off - yet you support the former and reject the latter. > Why? The criminal syndicate does no good for anyone (other than themselves) and no-one wants them. Rather like a corrupt or totalitarian government. If people were all stupid and governments were all grasping and irresponsible they would just vote to have no taxes and everything funded by printing money. But they vote to be taxed. How do you propose changing this? It seems you're stuck with the same solution as the Eastern European communists, who thought they were creating the good society and had to protect it by prosecuting anyone who posed any threat to the system. I'm writing this from economic freedom-loving, personal freedom-hating Singapore. I can't think of anywhere in the world at the moment where both personal and economic freedom is held in equally high regard. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 7 02:30:41 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 10:30:41 +0800 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <324783.79122.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <324783.79122.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/7 Dan : >> Would it be better if insurance companies only had >> to pay out if they felt kindly towards you, even >> though you have have a contract? > > The analogy you're seem to be attempting has, for me, a flaw. ?If you're trying to say the government has a contract with you to support you (under certain circumstances), the problem is it uses force against third parties to support you. ?That'd make the contract invalid. ?Insurance companies as insurance companies would not be using force as such to fulfill their contracts. ?In fact, insurance companies who don't fulfill their contracts -- as in they really do owe you (in the liberetarian just sense) a payment and decide they're not feeling kind toward the payee -- would be initiating force, specifically, using indirect force to keep what justly belongs to someone else. The insurance companies collect payments from other customers in order to pay you. The other customers can't ask for their money back on the grounds that they were more careful than you. The other customers, like the other taxpayers, are the third party. > Why you would attempt this analogy is strange. ?Do you believe that the libertarian view is buyers should pay sellers because they should be kind? ?(All of this is not to say charity isn't a virtue. ?Unlike justice (in the libertarian sense), however, coercion can't be used to correct a lack of charity.) I'm actually attempting this analogy to try to show that taxation is legitimate even under the libertarian view of justice, i.e. taxation as social contract. >>> The key point is: it's forced. ?The whole system is >>> based on coercion and on perpetuating coercion: you were >>> robbed, so you're entitled. ?Where does your entitlement >>> come from? ?Well, from robbing others to keep the system >>> going. ?From an Extropian perspective, is this the kind of >>> thinking and system we want to perpetuate? >> >> I wasn't robbed, I paid for a service. > > I'm not so sure about that. ?Did you have the option not to pay and continue to do whatever activity was involved? No, but I don't have the option not to pay and keep doing whatever I was doing in the case of every commercial transaction. >> True, I had to pay for the >> service if I wanted to work, but that's the case with >> thousands of >> commercial transactions. I have to pay for professional >> indemnity >> insurance; I have to pay for renovations to the building in >> which I >> own an apartment, or I can be sued and ultimately >> imprisoned; I have >> to pay for insurance in case the plane crashes as part of >> the price of >> the ticket whenever I fly, even if I'd rather pay less and >> take a >> risk. I can look for a different job, apartment or airline, >> but this >> might be inconvenient and costly, if not impossible. I have >> the same >> choice if I don't like the taxes in the state where I live: >> I could >> change the way I work or I could move, although that might >> be >> inconvenient, costly or impossible. > > I think you're confusing choices that have to be made in life regardless of state (or other) coercion and coerced choices imposed by the state. ?Of course, there's a lot of mixing here; we live in societies dominated by nation states that attempt to micro-manage many choices. ?Under such conditions, coercion enters almost every choice. ?But there's a difference between say, "If you want to do business with me, you must do X, Y, and Z" and "If you want to do business with me, even though it'd harm no one else (in a libertarian rights sense not in the idiotic, meaningless sense of anything anyone does affects everyone else) and both of us agree that the government requires you to do X, Y, and Z (because some bureaucrats or a session of the legislators decided that you must)." ?(Or if you please, let's say the local mob boss requires you to do X, Y, and Z. ?Thus, to avoid the shallow reply that I'm merely anti-statist or I'm ignoring non-state coercion.*) > ?In the former case, you might still find someone else to do business with -- someone who doesn't require X, Y, and Z. ?Or you might not. ?Or you might find someone who will only work with you if you X and Y, but not require Z. ?And so on. > > But in the latter case -- where the government requires X, Y, and Z -- you don't even have the choice to seek out or persuade others. ?(Admittedly, you can petition the state to change the policy, but that's a huge barrier to leap for most people. ?Why make it hard to change here? ?Why bake in to the system some beaucrats' or legislators' whims and make it hard for the people on the ground -- the one's who have to wear the yoke -- to find better ways of doing things?) > >>>> If I don't want to pay either I >>>> don't have to work. >>> >>> That's sort of like saying, "If I don't want to pay >>> the local crime syndicate, I can just avoid having a >>> business in town." >> >> The crime syndicate is not chosen and supported by the >> citizens who live there. > > True, but democracy is to a large extent merely a propaganda method used to legitamize the elite and rule of the many by the few. ?You get to select your master. ?Well, actually you don't. ?The majority of voters get to select it. ?So, at least some of the voters lose. > > But let's follow the analogy a little further. ?Imagine the local crime syndicate decides to run elections. ?Let's say the alternative is no elections, but the syndicate keeps doing whatever it does -- e.g., breaking knees, stealing from local businesses, and the like. ?So, now life is so much better. ?You get to have your vote added into with thousands or millions of others and there might be a tiny chance your vote will make a difference. ?Of course, to be certain, the candidates offered are pre-selected so that no one too radical -- say, like no one who'd push for the crime syndicate to stop stealing or stop breaking knees. > > The point is that just because you have some voice in the overall coercive system -- be it a local crime syndicate or a national one (a nation state) -- does make it non-coercive. ?In fact, the only way to make it non-coercive would be for all subjected to its activities (citizens is a loaded term; it makes it seem like governments only rule over their citizens and not uncounted others) expressly consented to it. ?(In the same way, if someone asks three people for a dollar and two agree (a clear majority!:) to five him one, this doesn't entitle him to the holdout's dollar. ?Were he to take it from the holdout, he would be coercing that person. ?But if he gets all three to consent, then there's no coercion involved.) As it happens, I don't like much of what governments do; for example, I don't like anti-drug laws. So, if I were boss, things would be different. What can I do about this? -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 7 02:36:09 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 10:36:09 +0800 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905052119s62a3116am6fcbff27ce983c90@mail.gmail.com> References: <953258.34086.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7641ddc60905052119s62a3116am6fcbff27ce983c90@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/6 Rafal Smigrodzki : > On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:23 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> 2009/5/6 Dan : >> >>> For almost all of my childhood, I lived in poor neighborhoods around the US. ?And by poor, I mean many if not most people were on some form of public assistance. >> >> And it would have been better if they had been allowed to starve, >> denied education and health care etc.? > > ### Yes. They would be a lesson to others. Work hard, don't do drugs, > keep your nose clean, and you'll make it. Screw up, over and over and > over again, and, well, screw you. Well, here we reach an impasse. -- Stathis Papaioannou From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 7 03:43:26 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 06 May 2009 20:43:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <580930c20905050333r788ddd0ekbf35b1f8f993faef@mail.gmail.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> <580930c20905050333r788ddd0ekbf35b1f8f993faef@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A0258DE.4070407@rawbw.com> Stefano writes > ...one has to wonder whether in the long term > such prohibitions worked in average so well > for their partisans themselves... ... > > In fact, the argument requires are three distinct claims: > - "we know better (what is right/true/correct/better > to believe in any event"; > - "to let those with different opinions speak, and/or to > let other people form their own view on it would be too > dangerous"; > - "the danger can effectively be avoided by the attempt > of enforcing a prohibition". Thanks very much for the clear analysis. > Unless evidence to one's satisfaction can be offered on all three of > them, limitations to free speech do not seem such a good idea. It would be interesting to see those who disagree respond to your dissection. > Moreover, as I am preaching that all discussions should be kept as > much as possible on-topic, I should submit that the transhumanist > discourse is itself exposed to a few risks of formal and informal > censorship in a number of contexts, while it is very hard to see > where, when and why it would ever profit from free-speech limitations. Naturally. What completely amazes me is just how or why some of us (like you and me) have come to see this issue so completely differently from others of us. The fact that you were born and raised in Italy weakens one of my conjectures, namely that in the 60s and 70s I was subjected to a great deal of merely American indoctrination on this subject. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 7 04:00:06 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 06 May 2009 21:00:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A025CC6.807@rawbw.com> BillK wrote: > On 5/5/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > >> I also think that in the back of the minds of those >> who call for prohibitions on free speech lurks >> exactly the same kind of elitism. "You never know," >> I can almost hear them saying, "how such memes may >> spread when picked up by the ignorant masses, and >> what woeful effects will result". >> > > I would lump this under 'etiquette' or 'how to behave properly in company'. > > What sort of a society do you want to live in? Well, one of the first answers that comes to mind is, "one where one is permitted to say what he or she thinks". > Do you want to live in a society where people > behave like savages? Certainly not. By "savages", I'll mean those who have no respect for rule of law. But evidently what you really mean is > Swearing, farting, belching, peeing in public, > rudely commenting on women present,... All of which you wish to have outlawed? But even more importantly, these have nothing to do with *ideas*, or beliefs. The latter are what is important; what do you think of the "marketplace of ideas", anyway? Silly phrase? I'm truly wondering if you are entirely serious here, especially after your next lines > grabbing the best party food first, disparaging > other people, etc. etc. Can you be seriously proposing that it be illegal to disparage people? > Free speech is fine. But discuss your views only > with people who want to listen. Forcing your 'free > speech' on unwilling listeners is initiating > aggression towards them. No, mouthing off on subjects can never properly, nor ever should be confused with aggression. (I'm willing to concede, just to get it out of the way, that perhaps exceptions could be made for mass media variations, although even there I am very doubtful.) Honestly, there is something quite humorous about a modern society where someone says "X", and the response is quick inhalation by everyone, the police are called, and immediately cart off the offender. Why? "Oh, because he said X!". As Stefano was pointing out, in spirit, think of where cryonics or even futurism itself would be if the default in our societies were not freedom of speech (when it concerns ideas and beliefs). Think of where atheism might be! Didn't arresting people for their beliefs and for their statements go out with the coming of the enlightenment? I can say that nothing I've ever seen on this list surprises me as much as your attitude, and of those that you (bravely) speak for. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 7 07:30:50 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 00:30:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Death by Singularity In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905031858o410de272h22fc34901a2e63e6@mail.gmail.com> References: <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <7641ddc60905031059w52111760ne832050a66ce0de7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090503132401.025462e0@satx.rr.com> <7641ddc60905031858o410de272h22fc34901a2e63e6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A028E2A.3080509@rawbw.com> In a P.S. to a post in Re: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > Yes, I really think the singularity will kill us. Aren't you ppl > worried about this? Yes, I put the chance of simple extinction for me and everyone else at about 50/50. But I'm not too worried: the upsides could more than make up for it. Most huge risks do not have such a correspondingly big payoff in the (small or tiny) chance that they come out all right. But a singularity, or other immense tech breakthrough, does. Lee From pharos at gmail.com Thu May 7 08:09:11 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 08:09:11 +0000 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <4A025CC6.807@rawbw.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> <4A025CC6.807@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On 5/7/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > Honestly, there is something quite humorous about > a modern society where someone says "X", and the > response is quick inhalation by everyone, the > police are called, and immediately cart off the > offender. Why? "Oh, because he said X!". > > Didn't arresting people for their beliefs and for > their statements go out with the coming of the > enlightenment? I can say that nothing I've ever > seen on this list surprises me as much as your > attitude, and of those that you (bravely) speak > for. > The range of 'free speech' is very wide. Some just makes you obnoxious. A very small selection will get you arrested. The noisy neighbor problem is just his 'free speech', but it reduces your quality of life. I would certainly call that aggression. And in most jurisdictions you can take legal action to restrict his behavior. If you try to board a plane while making jokes about bombs and terrorists, you will be arrested. If you board a plane and look Arabic, look nervous and chat in a foreign language on a mobile phone, you might well be arrested after complaints from other passengers. If you demand your 'rights' while being questioned by police after a traffic stop, you are likely to be arrested for further investigation. What is theoretically your 'right' has to be restricted by the pressure of living with other people. In many cases, just walking out the room will be sufficient, when someone starts loudly proclaiming strange opinions. Leave them to the company of their own beliefs. But social behavior laws are made to attempt to raise the security and quality of life of society. If you want anarchy and the right to behave exactly as you please, then you have to find a society that agrees with you. If you remain in a society with different rules, then you will get into trouble for breaking the rules. That's life. BillK From mbb386 at main.nc.us Thu May 7 11:04:09 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 07:04:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: References: <953258.34086.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7641ddc60905052119s62a3116am6fcbff27ce983c90@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <35904.12.77.168.202.1241694249.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> >> ### Yes. They would be a lesson to others. Work hard, don't do drugs, >> keep your nose clean, and you'll make it. Screw up, over and over and >> over again, and, well, screw you. > > Well, here we reach an impasse. > > Ah. It's the *over and over and over again* that's the key to it, IMHO. I'm happy to help some one, teaching, leading, or just lending a hand. But not forever. That makes me some sort of slave thing. They've at least got to *try*, darn it. Regards, MB From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 7 13:24:24 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 06:24:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion Message-ID: <191607.26241.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 5/6/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/7 Dan : >> The analogy you're seem to be attempting has, for me, >> a flaw. ?If you're trying to say the government has a >> contract with you to support you (under certain >> circumstances), the problem is it uses force against third >> parties to support you. ?That'd make the contract invalid. >>?Insurance companies as insurance companies would not be >> using force as such to fulfill their contracts. ?In fact, >> insurance companies who don't fulfill their contracts -- as >> in they really do owe you (in the liberetarian just sense) a >> payment and decide they're not feeling kind toward the payee >> -- would be initiating force, specifically, using indirect >> force to keep what justly belongs to someone else. > > The insurance companies collect payments from other > customers in order > to pay you. The other customers can't ask for their money > back on the grounds that they were more careful than > you. The other customers, like the other taxpayers, > are the third party. But no one is forced to pay insurance companies (save for when governments mandate insurance). In other words, the other insurance clients are not non-consenting third parties. The taxpayers are. This is why insurance companies don't punish people when they don't buy a policy, but government do punish those who don't pay taxes. (Yeah, not all the time, but the general rule is there are penalties ranging from death to all lesser penalties for non-payment of taxes.) This is a chief problem with your analogy and it relates directly to the core principle of libertarianism -- so it's not some minor quibble. (I wonder, too, if someone has written on these types of justifications for the state: ones that ignore the issue of force and attempt to make an analogy with non-coerced interactions.) >> Why you would attempt this analogy is strange. ?Do >> you believe that the libertarian view is buyers should pay >> sellers because they should be kind? ?(All of this is not >> to say charity isn't a virtue. ?Unlike justice (in the >> libertarian sense), however, coercion can't be used to >> correct a lack of charity.) > > I'm actually attempting this analogy to try to show that > taxation is legitimate even under the libertarian view > of justice, i.e. taxation as social contract. There's a vast literature in libertarian thought that rejects social contract theory. The whole notion of a social contract -- at least as historically presented -- rests on a flawed analogy between the expressly consented to contracts and tacitly consented ones. In the former, the parties actually agree to terms; in the latter, it seems, the social contract theorist merely makes up terms and then manufactures consent needed for her or his pet theory. In fact, while express contracts -- not without problems, but easily understood -- often make it clear who agrees to do what*, tacit ones, like social contracts, make it possible to get anything at all. For instance, people have used tacit consent to argue that people who don't openly rebel against a murderous regime tacitly support that regime. In other words, that notion can justify anything, so it justifies nothing and makes a shambles of the notion of contract. (Ditto for Buchanan's notions on virtual unaminity. As someone once pointed out, wherever you read "virtual unanimity" one should, to make sense of the passage, replace it with "lack of unanimity.":) >>> I wasn't robbed, I paid for a service. >> >> I'm not so sure about that. ?Did you have the option >> not to pay and continue to do whatever activity was >> involved? > > No, but I don't have the option not to pay and keep > doing whatever I was doing in the case of every > commercial transaction. That's my point. Now, were you to be placed in a world where you had the option -- the choice to NOT pay and keep doing whatever it is -- and then chose to make the payment, then you could proclaim you paid for it. In the same way, when I take a trip by plane, I know I'm paying several taxes -- i.e., I'm being robbed -- many of which are hidden. I don't pretend that this is not robbery and know, were I not forced to pay them, I probably would use that money for something else. (And, no, it wouldn't be to act as a miser; I actually do donate to charities -- though that's beside the point. I'd rather decide, though, where my money goes -- rather than some political elite and its corporate sponsors deciding. And, yes, some of my decisions will be stupid in retrospect, but at least they'll be my decisions and I can learn from them. At best, all one can do if the political elites make a wrong call is whine about it (or leave the country; you know how easy that is for most people and how unlikely it is over, say, a tiny theft here and there).) [big snip of material you didn't comment on, but I'd like to know what you thought about it just the same] > As it happens, I don't like much of what governments do; > for example, > I don't like anti-drug laws. So, if I were boss, things > would be different. What can I do about this? My suggestions? First, don't give it your moral support. Second, find like-minded individuals to work with to overturn these things. Third, try to persuade un-like-minded individuals the error of their ways. Well, that's my two cents on changing the world. Regards, Dan * Agreement in itself does not, however, make a given contract valid. Aside from purely logical and physical constraints on contracts, contracting parties must be working within in context where they have a prior right to contract over whatever they're agreeing on. (And they can't contract over, in libertarian terms, what they don't have a right to. E.g., you and I can't contract over how to divide up Rafal's justly earned (assuming he has any) wealth.) From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 7 13:50:22 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 06:50:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Meme change not person death/was Re: Friedman and negative income tax Message-ID: <491328.4520.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 5/6/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:23 PM, Stathis Papaioannou > > wrote: >>> 2009/5/6 Dan : >>> >>>> For almost all of my childhood, I lived in >>>> poor neighborhoods around the US. ?And by poor, >>>> I mean many >>>> if not most people were on some form of public assistance. >>> >>> And it would have been better if they had been >>> allowed to starve, >>> denied education and health care etc.? >> >> ### Yes. They would be a lesson to others. Work hard, >> don't do drugs, >> keep your nose clean, and you'll make it. Screw up, >> over and over and >> over again, and, well, screw you. > > Well, here we reach an impasse. Let's put this in the fashionable meme-speak of some in this audience. :) I actually think no or very few people would really die. (It should be pointed out that the current system -- paying some able-bodied NON-retired people to NOT work -- does not result in zero deaths. So the choice is not between a welfare state world where everyone lives forever and gets a good education, decent medical care, but a few anal libertarians are unhappy and a libertarian world where hordes of people live in the worst poverty and the few happy rich people only have to worry about tripping over the corpes of the downtrodden.*) Rather, the lazy meme would start to die out. (I doubt it'd go extinct.) Individuals themselves would learn -- er, lose that meme. The fact that any cost is experienced -- cost in terms of the agent NOT in terms of money** -- will give an incentive to change the behavior and perhaps even the thought patterns. Again, too, I'd like to point out that the choice for people in the poor neighborhoods I lived in was NOT between being on the dole or dying, but between being on the dole or working. Many of them chose the former -- not because they believed, it seems to me, that had they all found jobs they would start to die out. Regards, Dan * I think some of the rhetoric used to critique the libertarian view here have the Nirvana fallacy meme: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy In political economy, this fallacy usually rears its ugly head when court intellectuals -- er, mainstream economists fault people acting in relatively free markets for not meeting some standard of economic efficiency, at which point, the court intellectuals -- er, mainstream economists recommend regulations to take care of the problem. (Note my rhetoric here: people acting in relatively free markets. Markets, as such, exist when people freely interact. They are not entities in their own right. Likewise, the alternative to free interaction interaction is forced interaction: where someone forced people to interact or not interact (think of prohibitions) in ways they would not otherwise do. Government or the state is merely one species of forced interaction, but it's one of the most important species of such because it has a big footprint and many supporters -- whereas non-government force interactions tend to have a small footprint (the mugger only robs a few people at most) and tend to have few supporters (muggers do not have legions of court intellectuals ready to justify mugging to the general public).) ** All costs are, in the end, psychic -- not meaning paranormal, but meaning that the agent experiencing a cost experiences as either a potential or actual worsening of her or his condition. (This doesn't mean people actually think explicitly about costs this way. Instead, someone might think, "If I do that, I might end up regreting it" or "I did that yesterday and today I wish I hadn't done that." This also works with looking at others: people often generalize back to themselves. For instance, I might, if I'm keen, observe that most people sitting at a roulette wheel are losing money and generalize back to me persuading myself to NOT sit at the roulette wheel. And people can be mistaken -- and experts can be too and often are with spectacular results mistaken. E.g., I might only look at the winners at the roulette wheel and mistakenly generalize that I can win.) From painlord2k at libero.it Thu May 7 15:36:53 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 17:36:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] banning groups and preserving free speech In-Reply-To: <4A025CC6.807@rawbw.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> <4A025CC6.807@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A030015.2040703@libero.it> Il 07/05/2009 6.00, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > BillK wrote: >> What sort of a society do you want to live in? > > Well, one of the first answers that comes to mind is, > "one where one is permitted to say what he or she thinks". This article could be interesting for the discussion: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/10830 Can We Ban Islam? - Legal Guidelines for the Criminalization of Islam in the United States It point out to the "Supreme Court in 1878 in the case of Reynolds vs the United States" where "The Court found that while Reynolds had the right to believe that polygamy was his duty, he did not have the right to practice it-- thus upholding Jefferson?s distinction between action and belief. " "Thus while we cannot charge someone with believing in Islam, we can stamp out many Islamic practices that are dangerous or abusive. The First Amendment does not protect religious practices that are illegal or made illegal, it protects only the beliefs themselves. " "And we can go much further at an organizational level, based on the Sedition Act of 1918 and the 1954 Communist Control Act , which give us some guidelines for cracking down on Islam." "The Internal Security Act of 1950, along with the 1954 Communist Control Act provides extensive legal grounds for criminalizing organizations dedicated to the overthrow of the United States, as well as membership in such organizations-- and even provides for the removal of citizenship from members of such organizations. " It is interesting from a legal prospective. Free speech is a fundamental right, but we must be able to differentiate free speech and actions. Mirco From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu May 7 15:48:24 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 17:48:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> <4A025CC6.807@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905070848r6ad6f8c4mfcc1596a2585663b@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 10:09 AM, BillK wrote: > If you try to board a plane while making jokes about bombs and > terrorists, you will be arrested. If you board a plane and look > Arabic, look nervous and chat in a foreign language on a mobile phone, > you might well be arrested after complaints from other passengers. Why, "being arrested" has different meanings. I am perhaps over-optimistic, but I am reluctant to believe that you might be tried, convicted and do jail time because you tried to board a plane while looking Arabic and speaking nervously on a mobile phone, or because you made jokes about bombs and terrorists Or at least I doubt that such a development would be a legally sound conclusion in the statutory system of the US of A. On the contrary, limitations of free speech exist in many countries which are of an entirely official and legal nature, and are exclusively based on the nature of what is being said. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu May 7 15:51:55 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 17:51:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] banning groups and preserving free speech In-Reply-To: <4A030015.2040703@libero.it> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> <4A025CC6.807@rawbw.com> <4A030015.2040703@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20905070851k3446c726n874d261a88bb838a@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 5:36 PM, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > It is interesting from a legal prospective. > > Free speech is a fundamental right, but we must be able to differentiate > free speech and actions. Yes, in general terms I agree. There *are* behaviours that are not "speech", and might be found indesiderable, while at the same time some limitations of the latter might be at the very least superfluous or excessive when the real goal is to prevent the former. -- Stefano Vaj From max at maxmore.com Thu May 7 16:01:11 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 11:01:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Blogging platforms Message-ID: <200905071601.n47G1SZs014609@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Since I'm planning to re-launch my blog, I'd like to also decide whether to stick with Blogger or move to a different platform. If you have any opinions about the relative merits of Blogger, Wordpress, Metacafe, etc., I'd like to hear them. I'm looking for a modest degree of customization, perhaps the ability to share the blog with one or two other people, and (very importantly) longevity in the platform -- I don't want to have to move everything a couple of years from now because the organization supporting the platform has gone away. Thanks, Max ------------------------------------- Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com ------------------------------------- From eschatoon at gmail.com Thu May 7 16:22:15 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 18:22:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Blogging platforms In-Reply-To: <200905071601.n47G1SZs014609@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905071601.n47G1SZs014609@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905070922x3ab6b721pb2e179b6272daaac@mail.gmail.com> If you do not have really special requirements, staying with Blogger is a safe bet. Google is not going down anytime soon. Also, it is evident that Google is implementing all the separate pieces of the ultimate social network, and they could announce their final integration any day now. At that point Blogger would be automatically integrated in the Google de-facto monopoly on the Internet. On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Max More wrote: > Since I'm planning to re-launch my blog, I'd like to also decide whether to > stick with Blogger or move to a different platform. If you have any opinions > about the relative merits of Blogger, Wordpress, Metacafe, etc., I'd like to > hear them. > > I'm looking for a modest degree of customization, perhaps the ability to > share the blog with one or two other people, and (very importantly) > longevity in the platform -- I don't want to have to move everything a > couple of years from now because the organization supporting the platform > has gone away. > > Thanks, > > Max > > > ------------------------------------- > Max More, Ph.D. > Strategic Philosopher > Extropy Institute Founder > www.maxmore.com > max at maxmore.com > ------------------------------------- > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From x at extropica.org Thu May 7 16:15:25 2009 From: x at extropica.org (x at extropica.org) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 09:15:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] banning groups and preserving free speech In-Reply-To: <580930c20905070851k3446c726n874d261a88bb838a@mail.gmail.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> <4A025CC6.807@rawbw.com> <4A030015.2040703@libero.it> <580930c20905070851k3446c726n874d261a88bb838a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 8:51 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 5:36 PM, painlord2k at libero.it > wrote: >> It is interesting from a legal prospective. >> >> Free speech is a fundamental right, but we must be able to differentiate >> free speech and actions. > > Yes, in general terms I agree. There *are* behaviours that are not > "speech", and might be found indesiderable, while at the same time > some limitations of the latter might be at the very least superfluous > or excessive when the real goal is to prevent the former. Speech and (other) actions are expressions of the actual nature of the agent. It is the effectively inferred values of the agent, and not their particular expression, upon which social structures are built, and from which our morals, ethics, customs, laws, etc. derive. - Jef From frankmac at ripco.com Thu May 7 17:11:04 2009 From: frankmac at ripco.com (frankie) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 13:11:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Recession which end in 6 weeks Message-ID: <0BC42A5673774A978FFE34D333EAE774@FRANKPC> For those taking bets, both of these guys are fading that things get worst in instead of ending,, humans against computer models here's a chance to see how things are going http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20603037&sid=aw8ry7hR04m4&refer=home -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 7 18:01:59 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 11:01:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Property rights and land/was Re: Friedman and negative income tax Message-ID: <221927.45546.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 5/6/09, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 06:40:24AM -0700, Dan wrote: >> Also, given the context of your statement, the >> difference between a >> GI, negative income tax, and other such public wealth >> transfers and >> all forms of private ones is that the former must >> violate property >> rights -- someone is forced to pay.? In both >> cases, yes, free-loaders > > But how are property rights distributed? The general libertarian view is that property rights arise from one of three ways: 1.? First appropriation (AKA homesteading) 2.? Exchange 3.? Gift Note: they are not "distributed" in the sense of a central body deciding who gets what.? The usual course would be from unowned something or other to justly appropriated property and then possibly to exchanging this property (trading it for other justly owned property) or gifting -- or abandoning it.? In the last case, abandonment, the something or other can be appropriated by someone else.? Of course, there are debates over what consistitutes just appropriation and abandonment. On the latter, there are extreme views, such as nothing is ever really abandoned to only property that is currently occupied or in use is actually owned.? I think the valid view is somewhere between these and dependent on cultural context and technology.? If some of our desires come to pass, such as people living really, really long times, for example, then abandonment might have to be reconfigured.? Just because you left a home on Ceres for a few centuries doesn't mean you've abandoned it.? At the same time, with better technology and an awareness of this issue, people might opt for explicitly abandoned items or realize that a seven hundred year old property claim is not going to be respected by most legal authorities. On the former -- just what is just appropriation -- most seem to settle on cultural (including technological) context. This allows for some fuzziness, but statism provides no real resolution -- merely kicks the problem to the government deciding the issue rather than providing a transparent set of rules for deciding it. > If someone owns land, they can basically be the > government, a veritable king, on that land.? > "Pay me rent!? > Obey my rules or I evict you!" Well, the difference is, again, how it was acquired.? If she justly acquired the land and there are no other claims to it -- such as usufruct or rights of passage claims -- then she may dispose of it as she sees fit.? Governments have never acquired land that way.? They proclaim they own what others already occupy, use, and otherwise would be called the rightful owners of said land.? (This even applies in the case of nomads.? One could easily justify them occupying a range of land on rights of passage if not real property ownership.? And it also applies to group ownership.)? Where they do buy land, they purchase it with funds that are not rightfully theirs -- paying, in effect, with stolen goods -- whether they buy it from a rightful owner or from another government (as in the case of, say, the purchase of Alaska by the US government from the Russian government). > Not a huge problem with many competitive small > landowners -- > though shared norms against blacks or gays can make life > hard for those > renters -- but if someone owned all the land, they'd be a > 'legitimate' government. Again, how did the "landowners" in your scenario come to own the land?? In my view, were libertarian rules in effect, most of the world would be unowned -- instead of claimed by governments and their corporate sponsors.? The parts there were owned would all be privately owned -- either by individuals or groups -- with usufruct and other rights limiting some of this.? (E.g., you might buy a several hectares near me, but I might have a right to peacefully cross your land within certain limits and regardless of your consent.? So, you might lack, say, a right to completely stop me from such passage, though you might not allow me to, say, run a tractor trailer across your garden.)? Yes, they would have the right to set rules, but as there would be a lot more property to homestead AND they would bear the costs of stupid rules.*? So, people who let their irrational prejudices get in the way, would also pay the price for that. >> Finally, as an aside, I think a problem is that having >> forced wealth >> transfers will eventually have a cultural impact -- as >> some people > > If I have ot pay someone to rent land they own, where I do > the work of > constructing a house and all they contribute is legal > access to the > land, how is that not a forced wealth transfer? It's not a forced transfer if the owner justly acquired the property. Yes, in practice, a lot of land (and other property) has not be justly acquired.** In those cases, it's quite likely that challenges to supposed owners will arise and where they go will depend on who can make the better case to the legal authorities. However, if one case were to go in favor of a current landowner, yes, that means she owns the land and you have to pay her or leave. (In such cases, too, improvements to said property might be deducted. Hoppe actually brought up such cases with regard to de-socializing nationalized property in the early 1990s: the original just owner has a right to the original property, but not the improvements made. I think this can get messy, BUT no more so that property rights issues under the current statist regimes.) Regards, Dan *???The current system means such costs are distributed to third parties, decoupling the cost of stupid decisions from their decision-makers, thereby preventing or slowing such decision-makers from learning and changing.? This is why there are episodes of stasis followed by reform: pressures for change must build until either the elite is behind it or the elite fears open rebellion.? This is a general problem with voice vs. exit systems. ** Were a libertarian society to evolve in the context of the current mess, no doubt, some of this property would be returned to its rightful owners. Where this is not possible, it's likely that the rest will either be put into a state of being unowned (ready to be justly appropriated) or divided up in a way that best addresses the problem (say, allowing current occupants to keep land when the original just owners can't be found). In my view, possession would probably argue in favor of current owners and the "burden of proof" would be on the challenger. This doesn't mean the status quo -- as in some cases, it's clear that it's easy to satisfy challenge. The case of public property requires no challenge, since it's all been stolen; the problem is merely how to return it to its rightful owners; certainly, governments or their members have no just right to public property. From spike66 at att.net Thu May 7 20:24:05 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 13:24:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> References: <7641ddc60904300111n166ed1d2ndf3c95e5ddcac35f@mail.gmail.com><710b78fc0904300430w705de777u34dc0221c7f2478c@mail.gmail.com><7641ddc60904300805r7afeca49u6d39450a107b668@mail.gmail.com><710b78fc0904301531i42de21cfv89ca0aeb1c0571f4@mail.gmail.com><7641ddc60904302028r47502237r4aec8c3b0e237d18@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090501130053.022b0c80@satx.rr.com><7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com><49FC6844.8040607@libero.it><8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Olga Bourlin .... > > From: "spike" > To: "'ExI chat list'" > > > > Now, imagine if someone had asked Obama the most obvious > question, the > > one that is *still there* waiting for some reporter > anywhere: where > > did you get your money? Let him reply "I choose to not > answer that." > > What else could he say? > > What are you implying? That Buffett gave Obama money? What?... Olga Olga, I coulda made that more clear. In Dreams of My Father, Obama described doing "blow" in high school "...when you could afford it..." Well, OK, when could you afford it? Why could you afford it? Hoooowwwww could you afford it. What were you doing for a living in those days Mr. Obama? I recall being in high school the same time he was, and the drugs of choice were beer and marijuana, because those were cheap, a high for a couple bucks, or free if you grew your own grass. But cocaine was crazy expensive: usually took at least fifty bucks or more to get stoned once, or so I am told. Those who did it were either stealing or dealing. Now, the thing I am really looking for is a sense on the part of our leaders, that whenever money is spent by the government, must be *taken* from someone who is working her ass off for that money. When I was that age in the late 70s, those formative years, I had a minimum wage job; $2.90 an hour back then was gross pay. Beekeeper, hot as all hell if one wore protective clothes under the bee suit to reduce stings, dangerous (I still have back problems that originated from hoisting my weight in bee hives), overall just damn hard dirty work for little pay, pretty much like what most of us here did at that age when we were forming attitudes about money. Well, if one works like that, one doesn't snort a week's takehome pay up one's nose for a few hours of whatever that stuff does. NO WAY! Not one of my fellow beekeepers did "blow" altho plenty of them drank beer and smoked reefers. But if someone had some mysterious source of money as a teen, they may not get it that when one snorts fifty bucks worth of powder, someone somewhere is supplying that money with honest hard work. Might have been his grandparents, who didn't know. It probably wasn't his mother, for she was a welfare queen, and if so, someone somewhere is working her ass off to supply that welfare for her to give to her son to waste that way. But good chance if a teen is doing cocaine, they are either stealing or dealing. Or both. In which case, they won't get the evil of spreading the wealth around. If one doesn't work for their money, they cannot understand. I keep getting this creepy feeling that our current US government just doesn't get that notion that when governments spend like they are doing, the taxpayers who work hard, who work their lives away every day, are paying the bills. Money doesn't magically appear: it is taken from taxpayers. We will continue to pay the bills way out into the future; the debt that is currently being run up could very well crush us before the singularity, or possibly even defeat the singularity, prevent it by keeping those who would discover its secrets busy working some mundane task in order to survive. spike From mark at cosmicpenguin.com Thu May 7 21:01:46 2009 From: mark at cosmicpenguin.com (Mark S Bilk) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 14:01:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Blogging platforms In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90905070922x3ab6b721pb2e179b6272daaac@mail.gmail.com> References: <200905071601.n47G1SZs014609@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1fa8c3b90905070922x3ab6b721pb2e179b6272daaac@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20090507210146.GB723@Isis> Youtube (run by Google) has begun removing entire channels (some with thousands of videos) objected to by the ADL and/or SPLC, i.e., 9/11-truth, anti-war, and anti-NWO material. Blogger is starting to censor entire blogs either on the same basis or on objections from fundamentalist "christians". The corporations running these sites have little respect for fairness, justice, or freedom of speech. The best thing to do is to get your own domain ($15/yr) and have it hosted by a web-hosting company ($10/month). You can run a free blogging program (in perl, python, or ruby) on the server and create a blog under your control that way. Retain the text, pictures, etc., for each entry on your own computer. Keep backups in secure locations. If the web-hosting company takes your website down, you can get it hosted elsewhere (currently Russia, Sweden, and the Netherlands are said to be free of censorship) and reload it with the files from your computer. On Thu, May 07, 2009 at 06:22:15PM +0200, Eschatoon Magic wrote: >If you do not have really special requirements, staying with Blogger >is a safe bet. Google is not going down anytime soon. Also, it is >evident that Google is implementing all the separate pieces of the >ultimate social network, and they could announce their final >integration any day now. At that point Blogger would be automatically >integrated in the Google de-facto monopoly on the Internet. > >On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Max More wrote: >> Since I'm planning to re-launch my blog, I'd like to also decide whether to >> stick with Blogger or move to a different platform. If you have any opinions >> about the relative merits of Blogger, Wordpress, Metacafe, etc., I'd like to >> hear them. >> >> I'm looking for a modest degree of customization, perhaps the ability to >> share the blog with one or two other people, and (very importantly) >> longevity in the platform -- I don't want to have to move everything a >> couple of years from now because the organization supporting the platform >> has gone away. >> >> Thanks, >> >> Max From spike66 at att.net Thu May 7 21:06:30 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 14:06:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <790144.86965.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <790144.86965.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7D5D786A45B14343A089A5BCA98D2A3F@spike> > Dan, aspiring free loader wrote: ... > I believe this partly accounts for the usual polical divide > between the species of fascists in America -- dubbed > "liberals" (a misnomer, since the term original meant > something very close to libertarian) and "conservatives." > ... The term conservative *is now becoming* something very close to libertarian. Isn't that interesting how the cycle goes? Dan, thanks for a good post, very thought provoking. We may get hung up on the liberal or conservative approach to things like drug legality, abortion legality, gun ownership restrictions, etc, when really all that stuff fades to meaningless in comparison to the really really big divide that is developing between US political right and left recently: how much government should be spending. Compared to the spending, none of that other stuff really matters. Rather, gun ownership does matter, for without that right, we will not have the rest of them. spike From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 7 21:46:22 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 14:46:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion Message-ID: <558450.34599.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 5/6/09, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 08:12:54AM -0700, Dan wrote: >> The key point is: it's forced.? The whole system >> is based on coercion > > There's a thing called the Prisoner's Dilemma.? It's > sort of solvable by > tit-for-tat.? Then there's the multiperson prisoner's > dilemma. I don't think so.? Prisoner's Dilemma's result from the inability of participants to signal each other and to depend on anything more than each participant trying to maximize some specific reward.? In the real world, people can signal each other and they have different notions of what constitutes a reward.? On the latter, for example, some of us want to live in a world with lower coercion and will forego at least some potential near term rewards from coercion for this -- and even suffer some specific punishments for it. It's also the case that one can't do interpersonal comparisons of value, so specific rewards can be measured between people.? This is why some will work harder or longer for what seems to be the same objective reward than others.? This goes for monetary rewards and all other rewards -- even ones some people might think are not rewards at all. > Coercion, whether by government or very powerful social > norms, seems the only way of solving it.? I would not put the two together: government and social norms.? The latter are really just norms some people -- sometimes a majority -- hold.? They are not necessarily coercive and, even if wrong, should be addressed non-coercively.? To use an analogy, if someone holds the wrong theory about how life came to be, you try to persuade him -- you don't seize his property or person or take his life.? (Recall my earlier mentioning about virtues in relation to libertarianism: justice is the only virtue that intersects with coercion.? If someone does something unjust -- as in and only as in violating rights -- then she has initiated force.? The negation of any other virtue is not the same.? E.g., if someone is unkind, one can't beat kindness into him.? So, in that case, one must seek a non-coercive remedy, such as ostracism.) > Yes, choice is reduced, > because free individual > choice leads to us all following our individual > self-interest to an > outcome that makes us all worse off; only uniform and > enforced > commitment lets the cooperative option be stable.? > Thus taxes (and > possibly draft) for defense, and law enforcement, and > welfare, and > social insurance, and insurer-of-last-resort, and pollution > control functions. Actually, it's questionable that everyone is better off.? Given the inability to do interpersonal comparisons of well-being and of value -- how can one tell, for instance, that one person is better off by some specific amount to judge this is worth harming another person by some other specific amount -- this is, at best, a guess.? In fact, the best way to tell if people are better off is to allow them to freely choose or not choose.? If they all decide to go along with it, then they all at least expect to be better off.? If they continue to go along with it -- that is, they are allowed to choose not to but keep choosing, then I believe it's safe to safe they think they're better off given the options they're aware of. And this is where coercion can be seen to fail.? At least one person is obviously made worse off: the person who is coerced.? We can know this because she or he is forced to do what she or he would otherwise would not have done. And in the long run, I think it's more Extropian to keep the ability to choose open rather than sacrificing it -- either allowing others to choose for us or pretending we're so wise as to choose for others -- for some supposed immediate gain and thereby establishing the notion that whoever has enough power should likewise always take away freedom whenever it seems expedient.? In fact, I'd rather establish the "powerful social norm" that coercion is almost always if not always bad and should be avoided -- both because this makes sense and the opposite empirically leads to the kind of mess and morass we live under now. >> and on perpetuating coercion: you were robbed, so >> you're entitled. >> Where does your entitlement come from?? Well, >> from robbing others to >> keep the system going.? From an Extropian >> perspective, is this the > > Or from a social contract: people finding a compact that > guarantees a > minimum more attractive than a compact that guarantees a > lack of > explicit coercion but otherwise provides no security. This is pure fantasy.? No such contract exists.? All do not consent to it; it's merely a fabrication used to justify whatever the person using it feels is right, but won't allow people to actually freely choose. > Or from the fact > that the unequal distribution of property is pretty morally > tainted if you look at the history, > and ongoing redistributive taxes > are less > disruptive than a sweeping act of reform, which might well > destabilize > by the next generation anyway. There is nothing wrong or un-Extropian _per se_ with inequality.? However, even without an unjustified egalitarian presumption, property rights have been trampled (sometimes in the name of equality) and this must be addressed. Regarding how reform should be attempted within the present system, I disagree that perpetuating or expanding the system is the correct approach.? I think as libertarian ideas slowly spread, we will slowly evolve away from the coercive system.? A more radical approach is not likely to succeed simply because most people don't understand libertarian principles -- even if they default to practicing them successfully in most of their lives (i.e., most people do not initiate force in most cases to get what they want and live their lives) -- and lack imagination to see how a non-command system will work.? (In a sense, just as people find it hard to grasp evolution -- how life can self-organize -- they are unable to understand how free people can self-organize via markets and other voluntary institutions.? They can't, for the most part, understand how order can arise without some central dictator or planning board telling everyone or everything what to do.) >> kind of thinking and system we want to perpetuate? > > I quote a friend of mine: > > === > I sometimes make the argument that the world *is* a > libertarian > "paradise". There is, after all, no world government. You > want to talk > about "private" police forces and infrastructure companies? > We call them > "nations". There are many, and they offer a variety of > "packages". Some > do well and others do not. > > "What," I say to the spluttering Libertarian, "You want to > talk about > hegemony, bundling, required contracts, the importance of > colocation, > and natural monopoly? Those aren't very Libertarian points > to make." > > I then argue that apparently nation-states are the > equilibrium result of > anarchy. Good news: Libertarianism "works"! (Well, insofar > as our > nation-states "work".) "You're absolutely right; people > will, and have, > self-organized to the degree they see necessary. Now what's > your point, > again?" > === Yes, I've heard the notion that nation states -- coercive entities -- are in anarchic equilibrium. My belief is the world is not and never will be in equilibrium.* There might be some stable states -- no pun intended. But nation states, while they might be anarchic between themselves to some degree, they don't play that way internally. Also, the argument that things are now as people want them has some merit -- in the sense that few are rioting over there being monocentric legal orders. (Monocentric legal order: fancy term for a legal order where a monopoly controls legal rulings. This is distinguished from the polycentric legal order or anarchy.) However, in the same way, one would not argue that current scientific theory is great and shouldn't be improved on because no one is up in arms about it and everything, on the surface, appears to be working smoothly. Finally, the spontaneous order between nation states is not libertarian at all. Nation states do not eschew initiating force -- either against their subjects or against foreigners. (Libertarianism, too, does not recognize nation states themselves as having rights, so there can be no analogy between say a person and a nation state in terms of the nation state having rights to life, liberty, and property. In that sense, the strict libertarian view is nation states have no right to exist period.) Yes, libertarianism followed consistently is anarchic, but anarchy per se is not necessarily libertarian. (In the same way, people who argue for some form of government don't usually believe any form of government is okay. They usually have an ideal or a range of governments in mind and find fault with other forms. The practical question to ask though is whether the particular form someone advocates is somewhat stable and feasible.**) Regards, Dan * Not news to most libertarians. Even a late comer to the table such as me has written on this. In regards to the false view that legal standards require a government to enforce, I wrote: "Current nation states agree on standards even when they maintain their sovereignty. Surely, we do get some nations who do not agree to such, just as we have dissenters inside nation states who do not agree with a given nation's government's standards... But this disagreement does not mean that no agreement is possible. The fact that nation states form alliances, sign and enforce on themselves treaties and agreements as well as form transnational institutions at least demonstrates that an overarching government is not necessary." This is from "Anarchism, Minarchism, and Freedom" at: http://uweb1.superlink.net/~neptune/Anarchism.html And another self-quote, if my vanity can be forgiven once more: "One can imagine a polycentric one that is probably many a minarchist?s view of anarchism: civil war or the international system of today. In the latter case, there is no international government, so the legal order is polycentric, but not the type most anarchists would applaud. (Waltz 1979) Note that this condition is not completely lawless as even between nation states spontaneous orders can arise ? as well as planned ones such as treaties, agreements, alliances, and international institutions." This is from "Free Market Anarchism: A Justification" at: http://uweb1.superlink.net/~neptune/AnarchismJustified.html I hope the links will still work, but my site is soon going down for good. Alas, soon I'll be a charity case again. :/ ** From my "Free Market Anarchism: A Justification": "I believe that one can be objective here by asking a few questions that won't prejudice the issue. For example: would a polycentric or a monocentric legal order work better at rights enforcement? (It could be that the answer to these questions is neither ? that both work equally well, as good or as bad.) Which type of order is more stable? Do different types of cultures fit better into one type of order or the other? How do such orders evolve over time? Are there historical examples of either worth considering? Can either be applied to today?s world? How do we get to either from current social arrangements? (It might be that there is no easy path to either or that one is much easier to accomplish than the other, so we should take the easier path.)" Some had already addressed these questions before I asked them, but usually only from the libertarian anarchist perspective. It'd be nice to see some minarchists and non-libertarians who are well-versed in anarchism address it. My experience is the minarchists and non-libertarians are not so well versed. Even highly educated ones tend to just make up some points and not study their opponents' literature. A good example of this is: http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-Public-Thinking-Political-Economy/dp/1845422406 The articles from the older edition -- from the 1970s -- show these intellectuals pontificating on anarchism without even thinking to read the works of Molinari, Rothbard, and the like. Thankfully, Stringham updated the book and the newer articles address this lacuna. From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 7 23:11:50 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 16:11:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> <4A025CC6.807@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A036AB6.6020807@rawbw.com> BillK wrote: > On 5/7/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > >> Honestly, there is something quite humorous about >> a modern society where someone says "X", and the >> response is quick inhalation by everyone, the >> police are called, and immediately cart off the >> offender. Why? "Oh, because he said X!". >> >> Didn't arresting people for their beliefs and for >> their statements go out with the coming of the >> enlightenment? > > The range of 'free speech' is very wide. > > Some just makes you obnoxious. A very small selection will get you arrested. > > The noisy neighbor problem is just his 'free speech', but it reduces > your quality of life. I would certainly call that aggression. And in > most jurisdictions you can take legal action to restrict his behavior. No offense, but it does seem that you systematically invoke examples where it's not the beliefs and the content of statements that are at issue. Here, for example, you conflate a noisy neighbor with, oh, say me expressing disdain for some religious movement (but doing so politely and quietly), or me wondering out loud whether or not a certain policy by should be enacted or not, or me wondering whether in fact some claimed historical incident in fact did occur. You see the difference? (Yes, I'm the first to say that neighbors ought not have the legal right to play very loud music, or behave in ways that annoy their neighbors---it's just that the expression of beliefs or ideas (suitably done) ought not be prohibited. Period.) > If you try to board a plane while making jokes > about bombs and terrorists, you will be arrested. As we slowly recover from the state of war mentality, this too should cease. If not before. But again---it's besides the point. An airline in principle should be able (in my opinion) to prohibit swearing, or the making of jokes about the company president's wife, or whatever. This is totally different from suppressing political dissent or making (at proper times that don't inconvenience anyone) unpopular historical or philosophical statements *illegal*. > What is theoretically your 'right' has to be > restricted by the pressure of living with other > people. In many cases, just walking out the room > will be sufficient, when someone starts loudly > proclaiming strange opinions. Leave them to the > company of their own beliefs. Yes, that's more like it! But to make such statements *illegal*? Are you really sure that that's what you want? > But social behavior laws are made to attempt to raise the security and > quality of life of society. If you want anarchy and the right to > behave exactly as you please, Again, behavior is one thing. The mere voicing of ideas another. Lee > then you have to find a society that > agrees with you. If you remain in a > society with different rules, then > you will get into trouble for breaking > the rules. That's life. From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 7 23:40:42 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 18:40:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <4A036AB6.6020807@rawbw.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> <4A025CC6.807@rawbw.com> <4A036AB6.6020807@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090507182150.02357bb8@satx.rr.com> At 04:11 PM 5/7/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: >Again, behavior is one thing. The mere voicing of >ideas another. The core problem in this dispute seems to be your (and some others') adherence to this claim. Despite the recommendations of Enlightenment philosophes to defend to the death the liberty of everyone to say whatever they please, this proposed dichotomy is just plain wrong. Voicing an idea *is* a behavior, and in some circumstances can be an incendiary and even fatal behavior. Whether one privileges free speech over those risks and consequences is another matter, but we have to start with the recognition of human reality. People are not dispassionate brains in bottles, even when they're doing science. To quote the blessed Lewis Thomas: "Scientists at work are rather like young animals engaged in savage play. When they are near an answer their hair stands on end, they sweat, they are awash in their own adrenalin." (Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell. Notes of a Biology Watcher, 1974) Dr. Thomas was an experimentalist as well as an administrator, not a theorist. How much more savage and awash in adrenalin, then, when humans overhear others "merely voicing ideas" concerning their genocide, for example? (Jesus Christ, was it really necessary for me to spend several minutes writing that?) Damien Broderick From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 8 02:50:08 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 10:50:08 +0800 Subject: [ExI] Meme change not person death/was Re: Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <491328.4520.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <491328.4520.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/7 Dan : > Let's put this in the fashionable meme-speak of some in this audience. ?:) ?I actually think no or very few people would really die. ?(It should be pointed out that the current system -- paying some able-bodied NON-retired people to NOT work -- does not result in zero deaths. ?So the choice is not between a welfare state world where everyone lives forever and gets a good education, decent medical care, but a few anal libertarians are unhappy and a libertarian world where hordes of people live in the worst poverty and the few happy rich people only have to worry about tripping over the corpes of the downtrodden.*) ?Rather, the lazy meme would start to die out. ?(I doubt it'd go extinct.) ?Individuals themselves would learn -- er, lose that meme. ?The fact that any cost is experienced -- cost in terms of the agent NOT in terms of money** -- will give an incentive to change the behavior and perhaps even the thought patterns. It doesn't actually work out that way. Most developing nations have poor social security and other government services, but it doesn't spur them to greater productivity. Instead, people do die, of easily preventable or treatable conditions, sometimes even of starvation. On the other hand, laziness and not wanting to work is not a problem in countries where there are extensive social security systems, or there would be a labour shortage. The only places where this does seem to be a problem is in wealthy, resource-rich countries which import labour, especially for the more menial tasks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 8 03:11:07 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 11:11:07 +0800 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> References: <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> Message-ID: 2009/5/8 spike : > But if someone had some mysterious source of money as a teen, they may not > get it that when one snorts fifty bucks worth of powder, someone somewhere > is supplying that money with honest hard work. ?Might have been his > grandparents, who didn't know. ?It probably wasn't his mother, for she was a > welfare queen, and if so, someone somewhere is working her ass off to supply > that welfare for her to give to her son to waste that way. ?But good chance > if a teen is doing cocaine, they are either stealing or dealing. ?Or both. > In which case, they won't get the evil of spreading the wealth around. ?If > one doesn't work for their money, they cannot understand. Exactly, and that's the problem with rich people. You work hard as a beekeper, they keep the profits, doing less work themselves per dollar "earned" than welfare recipients, and having much less need for it. -- Stathis Papaioannou From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 8 04:04:43 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 21:04:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60905052119s62a3116am6fcbff27ce983c90@mail.gmail.com> References: <953258.34086.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7641ddc60905052119s62a3116am6fcbff27ce983c90@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A03AF5B.9040707@rawbw.com> Rafal wrote: > Stathis wrote: > >> Dan wrote: >> >>> For almost all of my childhood, I lived in >>> poor neighborhoods around the US. And by poor, >>> I mean many if not most people were on some >>> form of public assistance. >> >> And it would have been better if they had been >> allowed to starve, denied education and health >> care etc.? > > ### Yes. They would be a lesson to others. Work hard, don't do drugs, > keep your nose clean, and you'll make it. Screw up, over and over and > over again, and, well, screw you. So often we wonder, "How did we get into this mess?", or "What is the cause of poverty?", or "why can't third world nations overcome their problems?", and so on. We too seldom inquire as to "how did anyone become wealthy in the first place?". "How did any society succeed to the point that we have something against which to compare so-called failed societies?" Stathis did write >> And it would have been better if they had been >> allowed to starve, denied education and health >> care etc.? Remember that this is what happened originally. This was the natural state. This is the default condition. We must focus on how any society rose above this default condition, and what makes it possible for any society to do so. The culture had to become "strong" enough so that a sufficient number of people chose to behave differently. This was accomplished, historically, in precisely the way that Rafal indicates, namely by those who failed to adhere to high standards becoming examples of what not to do. This is how probity evolved. When you loosen these conditions, things pretty quickly go back to the default state. And unfortunately, it seems the object of most of the world's governments to accomplish precisely this, along with a lot of shortsighted people seemingly unaware of the crucial role played by incentive. That the governments wish to do this falls out naturally from their desire to achieve more power (a government being a collection of abnormally ambitious human beings). That many people do not seem to understand or appreciate that lax conditions breed irresponsibility is the mystery to me. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 8 04:24:56 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 21:24:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090507182150.02357bb8@satx.rr.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> <4A025CC6.807@rawbw.com> <4A036AB6.6020807@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090507182150.02357bb8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A03B418.5050807@rawbw.com> Damien writes: > Lee wrote: > >> Again, behavior is one thing. The mere voicing of >> ideas another. > > The core problem in this dispute seems to be your (and some others') > adherence to this claim. Despite the recommendations of Enlightenment > philosophes to defend to the death the liberty of everyone to say > whatever they please, this proposed dichotomy is just plain wrong. I have asked for historical examples. Do you have any? Or could this just be theorizing? And recall that I am not asking for examples of speech that have nothing to do with ideas or beliefs. > Voicing an idea *is* a behavior, and in some circumstances can be an > incendiary and even fatal behavior. Catherine the Great needed to suppress anti-government ideas by Pugachev; any number of autocrats in pre-democratic nations needed to suppress ideas. Can you find any examples in democratic countries where the suppression of statements of belief was a good idea? Do you suppose that the Smith Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act or the Sedition Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts were positive moves? Can belief really be *effectively* suppressed by making certain pronouncements illegal? > Whether one privileges free speech over those risks and consequences is > another matter, but we have to start with the recognition of human > reality. So far as I know, your "risks and consequences" are merely hypothetical. I crave an example. Look, if there is some danger that some bad idea (e.g. "let's round up all the right-wingers and crucify them") really is going to get traction, how can you possibly think that making such an utterance illegal will help? It will only draw attention. For example, suppose that the American government suddenly made talk of the Moon Hoax illegal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Moon_Landing_hoax_accusations What would be the effect? > People are not dispassionate brains in bottles, even when > they're doing science... Of course they're not. But in Stefano's fine analysis your argument depends on three distinct claims: - "WE know better what is right/true/correct/better to believe in any event"; - "to let those with different opinions speak, and/or to let other people form their own view on it would be too dangerous"; - "the danger can effectively be avoided by the attempt of enforcing a prohibition". So this is why you wish the government to silence dissent on some subjects? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 8 04:32:25 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 21:32:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Silly In-Reply-To: <1241619735_11365@s6.cableone.net> References: <310444.43819.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <1241619735_11365@s6.cableone.net> Message-ID: <4A03B5D9.5020600@rawbw.com> At 06:08 AM 5/5/2009, Dan wrote: > Will cryonics even work? And even if it does, it > depends on everything going right until you get > revived. If, say, the laws are changed to completely > confiscated all your funds and wealth after legal death -- > so that other, "wiser" people (i.e., those in the political > or corporate elites) decide where your wealth goes -- then > you might be left to rot. Yes, all these terrible things could happen. But if you were faced with imminent death, just what choice is there? Does your logical argument boil down to "well, something could go wrong"? > I wonder if you've read the posts on CryoNet by this dude: > > http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/findmsgs.cgi?author=daniel%20ust That's a lot of posts, from a long time ago. What's your current take now? That chance are that cryonics is going to be made illegal sometime soon, and that those frozen must die? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 8 04:44:24 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 21:44:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The choice wasn't death/was Re: Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <297079.88779.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <297079.88779.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A03B8A8.3010505@rawbw.com> Dan wrote: >> And it would have been better if they had been allowed to >> starve, denied education and health care etc.? > > I don't believe that was the alternative. The people > I knew were, as I pointed out (at least as far I could > tell or as they reported to me), able-bodied. It > seemed to me they chose the dole over work -- not > that they chose the dole over death. (Regarding > the latter, I don't think I'd fault someone for > choosing the dole over death.) I myself came close to having that choice. At age 29, I was a retired chess bum/teacher with no marketable skills. At the same time, many busy, eager Social Security office workers were looking for people just like me to put on the dole. One of the greatest strokes of luck in my life is that they didn't find me in time. So I had to leave southern California, all my chess pals, all the distractions of life that I had accumulated in my misspent youth, and focus on making a living. Thank goodness. Heretofore the government has been destroying people's incentives and lives by a sort of "mass bombing" of funds, especially into lower income urban areas, in order to maximize the number of victims. What the government needs is "smart bombs", i.e., means of locating people such myself decades ago that can be targeted when they're on the brink of having to make sacrifices to become productive. Certain bureaucrats at the Social Security office (and many, many other departments) need more intelligent ways to seek out and find people on the border of personal responsibility, instead of wasting all that money (in so many cases) on people whose lives are already wrecked. Lee > Also, I'm not sure how they were denied education > or health care. In the places I lived, education > was mandatory, usually up to the age of 16 -- > though I was specifically talking about able-bodied > adults. Also, healthcare was provided through > Medicaid and similar programs -- so it was free. > I wasn't talking about that either. I wasn't > talking about people who were working and choose > to accept government education and healthcare. > I was talking about people who were NOT working, > who could work, and opted for the easy payment > of a government check over finding and keeping > a job. > My general point was merely what I saw when > people had the alternative not to work. > Many of them chose not to work. They didn't > do so so that they could continue their education, > pursue some artistic project, or something along > those lines. > > Regards, > > Dan From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 8 07:01:00 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 00:01:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <191607.26241.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <191607.26241.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/7 Dan : > But no one is forced to pay insurance companies (save for when governments mandate insurance). ?In other words, the other insurance clients are not non-consenting third parties. ?The taxpayers are. ?This is why insurance companies don't punish people when they don't buy a policy, but government do punish those who don't pay taxes. ?(Yeah, not all the time, but the general rule is there are penalties ranging from death to all lesser penalties for non-payment of taxes.) Sometimes we are forced to pay for insurance. I am forced to pay for insurance on an apartment I own. I also have to pay for renovations to the building if the owners vote for it, even though I don't like what they propose to do or I can't afford it. If I don't pay, I can be sued or ultimately imprisoned. The argument is, if I don't like the rules I can sell the apartment or try to change the rules through my vote in the owners' corporation. Is that still coercion? > There's a vast literature in libertarian thought that rejects social contract theory. ?The whole notion of a social contract -- at least as historically presented -- rests on a flawed analogy between the expressly consented to contracts and tacitly consented ones. ?In the former, the parties actually agree to terms; in the latter, it seems, the social contract theorist merely makes up terms and then manufactures consent needed for her or his pet theory. ?In fact, while express contracts -- not without problems, but easily understood -- often make it clear who agrees to do what*, tacit ones, like social contracts, make it possible to get anything at all. ?For instance, people have used tacit consent to argue that people who don't openly rebel against a murderous regime tacitly support that regime. ?In other words, that notion can justify anything, so it justifies nothing and makes a shambles of the notion of contract. ?(Ditto for Buchanan's notions on > ?virtual unaminity. ?As someone once pointed out, wherever you read "virtual unanimity" one should, to make sense of the passage, replace it with "lack of unanimity.":) Why is the social contract "tacit"? Would it make it any better if I signed a piece of paper when I entered a country as a visitor or migrant explicitly agreeing to abide by its laws, including the procedures for changing the laws? Admittedly, I don't have a choice which country I'm born in, but I don't see a way around that problem. >> No, but I don't have the option not to pay and keep >> doing whatever I was doing in the case of every >> commercial transaction. > > That's my point. ?Now, were you to be placed in a world where you had the option -- the choice to NOT pay and keep doing whatever it is -- and then chose to make the payment, then you could proclaim you paid for it. > > In the same way, when I take a trip by plane, I know I'm paying several taxes -- i.e., I'm being robbed -- many of which are hidden. ?I don't pretend that this is not robbery and know, were I not forced to pay them, I probably would use that money for something else. ?(And, no, it wouldn't be to act as a miser; I actually do donate to charities -- though that's beside the point. ?I'd rather decide, though, where my money goes -- rather than some political elite and its corporate sponsors deciding. ?And, yes, some of my decisions will be stupid in retrospect, but at least they'll be my decisions and I can learn from them. ?At best, all one can do if the political elites make a wrong call is whine about it (or leave the country; you know how easy that is for most people and how unlikely it is over, say, a tiny theft here and there).) > > [big snip of material you didn't comment on, but I'd like to know what you thought about it just the same] Sorry, I'm travelling at the moment and lost the original email. Perhaps you could resend it. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 8 07:10:53 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 00:10:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <558450.34599.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <558450.34599.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/7 : > I don't think so.? Prisoner's Dilemma's result from the inability of participants to signal each other and to depend on anything more than each participant trying to maximize some specific reward.? In the real world, people can signal each other and they have different notions of what constitutes a reward.? On the latter, for example, some of us want to live in a world with lower coercion and will forego at least some potential near term rewards from coercion for this -- and even suffer some specific punishments for it. The Prisoner's Dilemma is relevant to taxation. It is possible that there is some project, costing money, which would give everyone utility greater than the amount they paid. However, each person would be even better off if they didn't contribute, since the project is of a type which benefits the cheats as well as well as the contributors. But if everyone cheated, the project would not go ahead, and hence everyone would lose. So, when it comes to the vote, everyone would vote to be forced to contribute - since that would mean everyone else would also be forced to contribute (a better outcome still would be that everyone except me is forced to contribute, but that vote obviously isn't going to pass). This is what a tax is. -- Stathis Papaioannou From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 8 10:53:28 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 10:53:28 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <4A03AF5B.9040707@rawbw.com> References: <953258.34086.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7641ddc60905052119s62a3116am6fcbff27ce983c90@mail.gmail.com> <4A03AF5B.9040707@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On 5/8/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > We too seldom inquire as to "how did anyone > become wealthy in the first place?". "How > did any society succeed to the point that > we have something against which to compare > so-called failed societies?" > > Remember that this is what happened originally. > This was the natural state. This is the default > condition. We must focus on how any society rose > above this default condition, and what makes it > possible for any society to do so. > > The culture had to become "strong" enough so > that a sufficient number of people chose to > behave differently. This was accomplished, > historically, in precisely the way that Rafal > indicates, namely by those who failed to adhere > to high standards becoming examples of what > not to do. This is how probity evolved. > No, it didn't. In early societies, violence was the secret sauce, with slavery close behind. People got rich by using force to take it from weaker people / nations. Then using more force (legal system, armies, etc.) to keep control. The idea of democracy and working to better yourself is very recent. And mostly it is not allowed to interfere with the existing rich and powerful classes. (Some exceptions, of course). BillK From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 8 11:11:50 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 19:11:50 +0800 Subject: [ExI] The choice wasn't death/was Re: Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <4A03B8A8.3010505@rawbw.com> References: <297079.88779.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A03B8A8.3010505@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/8 Lee Corbin : > I myself came close to having that choice. At age > 29, I was a retired chess bum/teacher with no > marketable skills. At the same time, many busy, > eager Social Security office workers were looking > for people just like me to put on the dole. One > of the greatest strokes of luck in my life is that > they didn't find me in time. > > So I had to leave southern California, all my chess > pals, all the distractions of life that I had > accumulated in my misspent youth, and focus on > making a living. Thank goodness. Are you saying you would have been content with the dole had it been available? Then to be consistent you would have obtained a part-time job had the dole not been available, i.e. one requiring the minimum effort to obtain the same income as the dole. -- Stathis Papaioannou From emlynoregan at gmail.com Fri May 8 11:16:37 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 20:46:37 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Blogging platforms In-Reply-To: <200905071601.n47G1SZs014609@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905071601.n47G1SZs014609@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905080416n3960cf04t3c4964aeea2b9ac5@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/8 Max More : > Since I'm planning to re-launch my blog, I'd like to also decide whether to > stick with Blogger or move to a different platform. If you have any opinions > about the relative merits of Blogger, Wordpress, Metacafe, etc., I'd like to > hear them. > > I'm looking for a modest degree of customization, perhaps the ability to > share the blog with one or two other people, and (very importantly) > longevity in the platform -- I don't want to have to move everything a > couple of years from now because the organization supporting the platform > has gone away. > > Thanks, > > Max > > > ------------------------------------- > Max More, Ph.D. > Strategic Philosopher > Extropy Institute Founder > www.maxmore.com > max at maxmore.com > ------------------------------------- I'm a fan of Wordpress. It's nice software to use, you can get a hassle-free blog at http://wordpress.com. Importantly, it's open source, and thus there are import and export functions. So, if you ever want to move it to another wordpress host, or host it yourself, you can. That's an unusual ability in this software-as-a-service world. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 8 12:58:49 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 14:58:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Meme change not person death/was Re: Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: References: <491328.4520.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A042C89.90103@libero.it> Il 08/05/2009 4.50, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/5/7 Dan: > It doesn't actually work out that way. Most developing nations have > poor social security and other government services, but it doesn't > spur them to greater productivity. Most developing nations have not the same "resources" like the developed ones. And many, until yestersay, were leaded by socialist governments. They started developing with 10% yearly growth when they moved from socialism to a freer economy. For them, social security and other government services are luxuries they can not afford. > Instead, people do die, of easily > preventable or treatable conditions, sometimes even of starvation. Usually, people die of starvation only in war ravaged or government ravaged places. What welfare state do you want in Zimbabwe? Or in Libya? The welfare state there is conceived as a tool to keep the people quiet enough that the police can keep the unsatisfied down. > On the other hand, laziness and not wanting to work is not a problem > in countries where there are extensive social security systems, or > there would be a labour shortage. You mix causes and effects. Ad you see things in a small time frame. Developed countries can afford a limited social security and some government service free for all (or at politic prices) because they became developed before these politics were so extended and costly. Then you don't look at the right time frame and at the changing conditions. Until a few decades ago, the people in the developing nations (Europe, US, etc.) worked until they died. When retirement was introduced in Italy people retired at 60 and died at 65 (average). Now they retire at 65 (max - average is less than 60) and die at 80. This change the equation. Add that people before of this would work from 15 to 60 when now they work from 25 to 65 (young people is often jobless, like women). As the social services grew the economy started to slow down. Italy grew at 10% rates until 1960, then the Center-Left governments started to form and the rates went to 7-8%, then in the 1970 the rates went around 5% and to 3% in the 1980. In the 1990 they were 2%-0% and now they are negatives. In between the government moved from taking the 27% of the GDP of Italy in the 1970 to the 43% now (computed with a 20% of the economy in the black market, so the rates paid by the "honests" is over 50%). I have no numbers for the years before 1970, but I would suppose the burden of taxes was lower than 20%. An example of socialism is in Finland the fact that the car outside the social housing are bigger, more costly than the cars out of private housing. Why? because the people in social housing have more money available for cars as they spend less for housing. The same is true in Italy, where they sell more furs in Sicily than in Lombardy. In Italy, a large part of the political discourse, in the last twenty years, is about how much taxes are paid by the North regions that go to the South Regions for welfare. This helped the people there? Not much; but surely helped Mafia, Camorra and N'drangeta to expand their business. Welfare to the mobsters. Mirco From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 8 13:16:17 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 06:16:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Cryo-problems/was Re: Silly Message-ID: <645535.16801.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/8/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > At 06:08 AM 5/5/2009, Dan wrote: > >> Will cryonics even work?? And even if it does, >> it >> depends on everything going right until you get >> revived.? If, say, the laws are changed to >> completely >> confiscated all your funds and wealth after legal >> death -- >> so that other, "wiser" people (i.e., those in the >> political >> or corporate elites) decide where your wealth goes -- >> then you might be left to rot. > > Yes, all these terrible things could happen. > But if you were faced with imminent death, > just what choice is there? > > Does your logical argument boil down to "well, > something could go wrong"? I was only responding to Keith's seeming attitude of "Death's already been solved, there's nothing to worry about, so let's discuss other things." My point is not that cryonics is bunk or that it's better to be dead and not frozen, but merely that the problem hasn't been solved and I think anyone who pretends otherwise is making a big mistake. >> I wonder if you've read the posts on CryoNet by this >> dude: >> >> http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/findmsgs.cgi?author=daniel%20ust > > That's a lot of posts, from a long time ago. IIRC, CryoNet shut down soon after. > What's your current take now? That chance are > that cryonics is going to be made illegal > sometime soon, and that those frozen must > die? I don't know how, based on my recent statements or on my posts on Cryonet, you came up with that question. My current remains that, at best, cryonics is a gamble period -- and a big one at that. I hope none of us have to take that gamble in the sense that we all live to a better solution, but I don't think it's blatantly irrational to take that bet. (Of course, in the end, it depends on one's personal values. After all, cryonics is NOT cost-less.) Regards, Dan From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 8 13:31:10 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 15:31:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <7641ddc60905012219g42a8db94m74e14940be755bea@mail.gmail.com> <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> Message-ID: <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> Il 08/05/2009 5.11, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > Exactly, and that's the problem with rich people. You work hard as a > beekeper, they keep the profits, doing less work themselves per dollar > "earned" than welfare recipients, and having much less need for it. I don't understand how Obama, in his misspent youth, could be called "rich". I know, due to my job, a few people that are poor and on welfare. Usually their attitude is that we owe them what they want. The problem is never how much money someone have, but how much he worked to gain it or how much he was teach to respect things and value them. I remember an interview with Susanna Agnelli (you know, the people owning FIAT); she recall how stern her mother was when, as a child, she used cloths one time only (this is probably around the early 1950). All of the heirs of the house Agnelli, before becoming managers must enter the production like as common workers (in disguise) and work there for a few months. The same could be told about Berlusconi, Bill Gates and many others. The largest example are the Indians that was throw out of Uganda. They went from a poor group without nothing (they lost all there) to one of the most wealthy in one generation both in UK and in the US. Your fallacy about rich people doing less than poor workers. The rich people, if they don't use the government to give themselves wealth and power, risk their money, time, lives sometimes, to work for themselves. They have the responsibility of themselves and of the workers they manage. When they fail, usually they pay their debts and move on. They don't call for others to pay for them. I don't know if you understand the difference. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 8 13:53:40 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 15:53:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: References: <191607.26241.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A043964.7010108@libero.it> Il 08/05/2009 9.01, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/5/7 Dan: > >> But no one is forced to pay insurance companies (save for when >> governments mandate insurance). In other words, the other >> insurance clients are not non-consenting third parties. The >> taxpayers are. This is why insurance companies don't punish people >> when they don't buy a policy, but government do punish those who >> don't pay taxes. (Yeah, not all the time, but the general rule is >> there are penalties ranging from death to all lesser penalties for >> non-payment of taxes.) > > Sometimes we are forced to pay for insurance. I am forced to pay for > insurance on an apartment I own. I also have to pay for renovations > to the building if the owners vote for it, even though I don't like > what they propose to do or I can't afford it. If I don't pay, I can > be sued or ultimately imprisoned. The argument is, if I don't like > the rules I can sell the apartment or try to change the rules through > my vote in the owners' corporation. Is that still coercion? It is not, if it was in a contract given you before you bought the apartment. Bad contract I would say. The government imprisoning you is coercion. Laws forcing you to do renovations against your will are coercion. > Why is the social contract "tacit"? Would it make it any better if I > signed a piece of paper when I entered a country as a visitor or > migrant explicitly agreeing to abide by its laws, including the > procedures for changing the laws? Yes. Because the migrants could be sued and could not claim "ignorance", "their customs are different", "religious duties", etc. > Admittedly, I don't have a choice > which country I'm born in, but I don't see a way around that > problem. What is the problem? Until you don't write your name under the dotted line, you would not be a "citizen" but only a "guest" of your parents. You do wrong, they pay for you. When you accept the burden of citizenship you will receive the privileges of citizenship. There would be not a problem if people were differentiated in groups: 1) Citizens 2) Citizen's children 3) Citizen's guests (probably with subtypes) The difference is that the (2) would become (1) only if they want and not would be forced to become (1) when they become 18 years old. Some laws limiting the rights of (1) would not be applicable on (2) and (3). Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 8 14:38:05 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 16:38:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> Il 04/05/2009 0.22, Damien Broderick ha scritto: The problem with inheritance is the problem with gifts. If we ban inheritance we must ban gifts. Gifts are unearned, so they must be wrong as inheritances, I suppose. But welfare is, in essence, a gift. An gift paid by mostly unwilling people. Rich people have not a problem to pass the large part of their wealth to their heirs bypassing laws. The inheritance laws hit the poor or the middle class proportionally more or the unlucky rich that die prematurely. People, usually, don't work so hard only for themselves, but also for their offspring. You take away the inheritance and they will stop working so much and will start to consume more or work less, or will find a way to pass their wealth to their heirs anyway. Mirco From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 8 14:55:03 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 07:55:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] External costs Message-ID: <641043.57515.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 4/21/09, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 1:26 PM, Dan > wrote: > >> ** ?Positive externalities are not really a problem, >> since they violate no one's rights and the source of a >> positive externality can always decide to not provide it -- >> if it costs said source too much. > > ### Not sure about that. This is one of the strongest > arguments > against anarchocapitalism that I know. The free rider > problem in the > provision of defense against large-scale territorial > aggression is > difficult, unless you for example introduce rogues who > would allowed > to prey on defectors and thus persuade them to buy bundled > protection > contracts. Tricky. I do think it's doable, that's why I am > an > anarchocapitalist, but it's not easy. I disagree.? First, positive externalities are subjective.? For instance, you might live next to a bakery that gives off the aroma of fresh bread and other delectables for a good chunk of the day.? And this might be something you like -- and, therefore, experience as a positive benefit.? As you're not paying for it, it would be considered a positive externality.? The bakery cannot charge you for this benefit. Yet another person might experience this as a nuisance.? (Property rights might settle the issue in the fashion of who was there first.? For instance, imagine the bakery was in the neighborhood first and has been there for decades -- in which case, some might say the bakery "homesteaded" the right* to give off baking odors in the neighborhood and, if you don't like it, you'll have to negotiate with the bakery to get it to stop BUT you can't use coercion against it.? Imagine the opposite case: you're there first and the bakery's the new kid on the block.? In that case, some might say that you have the right to the pre-bakery condition and the bakery has to negotiate with you for the right to "pollute" the air with baking aromas -- or, at the extreme, must stop.? Note that, in either case, there is no failure of property rights or the market.? Also, it's likely that people who really detest baking smells won't move next to a bakery in the first place; bakeries, too, that want to avoid going to court will likely also want to avoid moving into neighborhoods where someone hates baking smells enough to take them to court.) Second, positive externalities extend out in all directions and do NOT necessarily impose a cost on the producer.? In the case of the bakery, that you enjoy baking smells really doesn't any additional cost to the bakery.? The bakery might still enjoy a handsome profit without even knowing that you open up your passive ventilation apparatus every morning so that baking odors will waft in for you to enjoy.? And if it really bothers the owner that much, she might find ways to deny the odors to you. This applies generally.? Me using the same language as you might yield a positive benefit to countless others reading this.? Yet this doesn't diminish the profit you and I get from being able to understand each other.? I don't fret thinking, "Keith, Lee, and Natasha might read and understand this without making a side payment to me, so I'm losing out in life."? (Note that this would also apply in security examples.? For instance, during the Napoleonic Wars, it could be said that Britain was a free rider during most of the conflict, allowing France's continental enemies to do most of the heavy lifting.? (This is generally the case for off-shore powers who can sit out continental conflicts or enter them late after the belligerents have worn each other down.? Another example is US entry into both World Wars.? The US didn't send troops over to defend Belgium in WW1 or France in WW2, but waited until Japan attacked and then Germany (idiotically, some would say, because its treaty with Japan did not obligate it to declare war against any nation Japan attacked, but only in defense) declared war on the US.)? Likewise, a neighbor who is always about his home, working on the yard and such, might deter burglars from making an attempts on his neighbors' homes.? In both cases, positive externalities, in the mainstream economist's view, are generated.) Third, from the work of Walter Block and others, it seems clear that the definition of "public good" -- the epitome of a positive externality -- is troublesome if not incoherent.? This is because any positive externality ultimately can be internalized by the producer stopping production, negotiating with the third party, or by changing production in such a way as to limit the positive externality.? (All of this depends on the producer here seeing the positive externality as a problem.? In case of the bakery above, the bakery owner might not care that you enjoy the aroma of fresh baked goods without paying for it.? She might not seek a way to prevent you from enjoying that benefit without paying.? That's her choice.) How might this practically be applied to security?? Well, let's assume a libertarian market anarchist society, Fair Libertaria, where each person decides her or his security arrangements -- even whether to have any at all.? (Imagine, for exmaple, America were to turn libertarian today with no substantial change in security issues.? (My guess would be that security issues would becoming less pressing in a libertarian society because people would be able to defend themselves and the overall costs of real crime -- as opposed to victimless crime -- would be much higher.? This is, of course, my guess.)? I used to live in Northern Vermont, where crime is extremely low.? In that area, I might decide I don't need to pay for any security.? I also lived in the NY metropolitan area at one time.? There I'd be much more likely to pay for security, simply because crime is much higher.) Further, imagine some people pay for, say, a militia to defend against an invasion.? (Let's say the payments are in the form of money, goods and services, or actually joining the ranks to, say, carry a rifle or crew forts on the frontier or coast.)? Others, on the other hand, decide not to help out with this militia.? (Some might decide not to simply because they truly believe it's a waste of time and effort.)? Let's say there's an invasion and the militia swings into action defeating it, though at high cost.? Now, as you seem to contend, all the people of Fair Libertaria benefit from this -- even the ones who didn't pay for the militia.? As it's a libertarian society, the militia supporters can't coerce the other residents of Fair Libertaria to pay up -- either before, during, or after the invasion.? And the usual view is that as this sort of "national defense" is a pure public good, no one would privately provide it -- of course, assuming no altruism or that no one values defense so highly that she doesn't mind free riders -- so it must be publicly provisioned.? (In a sense, coercing non-payers here is just the same as taxing them: it initiates force and the justification is, as usual with taxation, for some public good.) So what's to be done? Well, for the libertarian, coercion can't be used. (That would, anyhow, transform the libertarian society into a non-libertarian one. In this case, the militia supporters would, in effect, become a ruling elite.) So, either the libertarian society would, assuming militia supporters won't support a militia unless only supporters benefit, go defenseless or some other solution must be had. This maps onto my statement above: the producer can stop production, negotiate with the alleged free riders, or change production in such a way as to limit the positive externality. Let's take the latter two in turn. Negotiation can involve everything from moral suasion to boycotting non-payers to anything else not involving coercion. Social pressure can be brought to bear on non-payers. Of course, there might still be some who still don't pay, but one would wonder why they'd continue their unpopular action or stay in an area where social pressure against them is very high. Capturing or internalizing the positive externality would involve entrepreneurship. One could imagine, for example, the militia letting the invaders know that this or that home or neighborhood will be defended. An invader bent on plunder, thereby, might avoid those areas because of the high cost. But how would this work in the case of, say, a frontier defense, where everyone living behind the frontier seems to benefit. (This brings up the subjectivity, again, of externalities. Many, many years ago in _The Connection_, Ben Best writing as Diogenes of Panarchia raised this issue, defending the notion that free riders should be made to pay. I pointed out that one could take his argument to extremes by saying that the US should pay the PRC for its rivalry with the Soviet Union. After all, from about the 1960s, the PRC, to some extent, checked Soviet power. So, should Americans and Western Europeans pay the Chinese for this favor? I don't recall Ben's answer.) However, in my view, the toughness of this case should not be seen as a knockdown argument in favor of surrendering the libertarian principle in the name of national defense. It merely represents, to me, an opportunity for people via markets and other voluntary arrangements to work out how to deal with the problem. (I also think the problem magnified a bit. Were collective defense the best bet against attack and invasions, societies with governments would never be attacked or invaded. In fact, it's almost always the case that such societies are attacked and invaded -- and invaders usually fare better in such because they need only get some, most, or all in the victim government to collaborate. Even when such collabortors aren't to be had, that the victim society is used to being ruled and already has centralized authority, makes it extremely easy to take over. This is why the invasion of North America and Ireland took so long -- so long before the invaders completely took over and pacified the natives -- while the similar invasions of the Inca, Aztec, and Mogul empires were so quick and easy.) Regards, Dan *? Note that this logic applies generally.? The homesteader gets the right to do something -- she or he has justly appropriately the good.? This doesn't mean that the homesteader can't or won't ever negotiate -- just that she or he can't be forced to stop using the property.? (Note my use of force here.? This doesn't mean anyone who doesn't like, say, bakery smells can't seek non-coercive remedies.)? In the bakery case, it might be that the bakery owners prefers to have the good will of her neighbors, so she might actually put in special ducts or filters to reduce or eliminate bothersome odors -- even though, from the property rights perspective, she has every right to let her facility reek of them into the neighborhood. From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 8 15:56:53 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 17:56:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <58C56143-2BCF-4B9D-A7D9-BE73848CB244@freeshell.org> References: <770438.64458.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <58C56143-2BCF-4B9D-A7D9-BE73848CB244@freeshell.org> Message-ID: <4A045645.1010801@libero.it> Il 05/05/2009 18.45, Brent Neal ha scritto: > > On 5 May, 2009, at 9:53, Dan wrote: > >> (I've lived in neighborhoods full of able-bodied pre-retired people >> who just collected check.) > > Can you give an example, with specifics? Not that I don't believe you, > mind, but I'm curious what bound this neighborhood together. I quite > honestly don't know anyone, that given a chance to work on their own > projects regardless of income wouldn't jump at the chance. Not "just lay > around", but volunteer with various groups, sing, play music, learn a > new skill, etc. And primarily, these are people who are no more than > lower middle class socioeconomically, not just the overeducated > uppermiddle class brainiac types. I bet, there is no one volunteering for cleaning the sewers. Mirco From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 8 16:06:21 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 11:06:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> At 04:38 PM 5/8/2009 +0200, Mirco wrote: >People, usually, don't work so hard only for themselves, but also >for their offspring. You take away the inheritance and they will >stop working so much and will start to consume more or work less, or >will find a way to pass their wealth to their heirs anyway. Yes, yes, yes, all this is self-evident. It has nothing to do with the point I raised, which is that if giving tax-sourced money to the lazy poor is held to be wrong *in part because* it corrodes the moral character of the recipients (among other reasons why it's wicked and damaging), then giving money to the children of the rich might do just the same damage, and should be prevented *if only for their own sake*. Pragmatic questions of who or what could prevent this dreadful damage to heirs (the government? Robin Hood? religious obligations? customs of potlatch? etc) is beside the point. So are questions of whether the largesse was forcibly appropriated from taxpayers (or paid by us with our general consent, as we pay for police protection), or bequeathed by a plutocrat who earned it all by masterful inventing, investing or managing etc. The question is: does unearned income always *corrupt*? Or does it only corrupt those worthless lazy stupid-but-cunning millions sucking on welfare's tit? (Or does it corrupt everyone alike, except that the heirs of billionaires are few in number, as I think Rafal noted, so their ruin is negligible compared to the 51% who allegedly vote themselves bread and circus and drive every democracy into squalor?) This line of thought might lead to further questions: if nanotopia arrives, with all of us getting food, shelter, education, communication and transport for free, must we face a future of hopeless degradation because these benefits are *unearned*? Or is that okay, because in this case the goodies aren't being taken from your pocket and "spread around" to the welfare queens--and besides, you don't have a taxable job anyway because the AIs took it? Damien Broderick From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri May 8 16:23:11 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 12:23:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor. References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com><49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com><580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com><49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com><4A025CC6.807@rawbw.com><4A036AB6.6020807@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090507182150.02357bb8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <5CF2600105D14892B18CBF03172D4DCF@MyComputer> Lee wrote: >> behavior is one thing. The mere voicing of ideas another. Damien wrote: > The core problem in this dispute seems to be your (and some others') > adherence to this claim. The obvious objective way to distinguish between the two is to say that voicing an idea is anything that can be sent over a wire and behavior is everything else. I admit that someday this little test may be insufficient, be we'll worry about that after the singularity. Damien again: > Voicing an idea *is* a behavior If you're right and the two should be treated identically then we would not have a limitation of freedom of the press, we would have the complete extinction of it. And the justification of the censorship would be the same as it always has been, the same as it was during the inquisition; namely an unproven theory that if people receive certain information they will believe in things that you personally don't like. Of course in one way this entire matter is of academic interest only because with today's technology there is not a snowball's chance in hell of stopping ideas from going where they want to go; however the futile attempts to ban unapproved speech is not academic because it would have a very real corrosive effect on any civilization. John K Clark From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 8 16:42:47 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 11:42:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor. In-Reply-To: <5CF2600105D14892B18CBF03172D4DCF@MyComputer> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> <4A025CC6.807@rawbw.com> <4A036AB6.6020807@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090507182150.02357bb8@satx.rr.com> <5CF2600105D14892B18CBF03172D4DCF@MyComputer> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090508113857.07c39418@satx.rr.com> At 12:23 PM 5/8/2009 -0400, JKC wrote: >Lee wrote: > >>>behavior is one thing. The mere voicing of ideas another. > >Damien wrote: > >>The core problem in this dispute seems to be your (and some others') >>adherence to this claim. > >The obvious objective way to distinguish between the two is to say that >voicing an idea is anything that can be sent over a wire and behavior is >everything else. Ah, so the wartime radio and public speeches of Churchill and Hitler were voicings of ideas, and the globe-altering intentional consequences of those speeches was behavior--utterly different? Damien Broderick From jonkc at bellsouth.net Fri May 8 16:58:04 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 12:58:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] I am the very model of a singularitarian References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com><49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com><580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com><49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com><4A025CC6.807@rawbw.com><4A036AB6.6020807@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090507182150.02357bb8@satx.rr.com> <5CF2600105D14892B18CBF03172D4DCF@MyComputer> Message-ID: <3F898A53E75F4459BBC94AE20EF3BDD2@MyComputer> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hKG5l_TDU8 From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 8 16:59:17 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 16:59:17 +0000 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 5/8/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > Yes, yes, yes, all this is self-evident. It has nothing to do with the > point I raised, which is that if giving tax-sourced money to the lazy poor > is held to be wrong *in part because* it corrodes the moral character of the > recipients (among other reasons why it's wicked and damaging), then giving > money to the children of the rich might do just the same damage, and should > be prevented *if only for their own sake*. > Is it true that Damien drives round in a 250,000 USD Winnebago with a sticker on the back that says 'Spending our kids inheritance' ? > This line of thought might lead to further questions: if nanotopia arrives, > with all of us getting food, shelter, education, communication and transport > for free, must we face a future of hopeless degradation because these > benefits are *unearned*? Or is that okay, because in this case the goodies > aren't being taken from your pocket and "spread around" to the welfare > queens--and besides, you don't have a taxable job anyway because the AIs > took it? > So, nanotopia will make the whole human race stop working and live on welfare? The failing with this idea is that it makes Star Trek type assumptions. i.e. one thing will change, but all else remains much the same. How many Star Trek plots were resolved by a John Wayne style punchup? When nanotopia arrives, *everything* will change. Even humanity itself. If a human becomes a vortex of energy spiraling around a miniature black hole, it hardly seems relevant to talk about 'welfare queens'. BillK From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 8 17:07:19 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 19:07:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A0466C7.8040709@libero.it> Il 08/05/2009 18.06, Damien Broderick ha scritto: > At 04:38 PM 5/8/2009 +0200, Mirco wrote: > Yes, yes, yes, all this is self-evident. It has nothing to do with the > point I raised, which is that if giving tax-sourced money to the lazy > poor is held to be wrong *in part because* it corrodes the moral > character of the recipients (among other reasons why it's wicked and > damaging), then giving money to the children of the rich might do just > the same damage, and should be prevented *if only for their own sake*. The problem is two faced: Inheritances are freely given to heirs as the parent is free to squander his/her wealth before passing it. Or it is free to have not children. Entitlements are not freely given, because the money needed to fund them is extorted from the (unwilling) taxpayers. The right to inheritance is the right to inherit because others unrelated people have not the right to take the inheritance for themselves. The right to inherit is, mainly, a right to leave our wealth to someone after we die. The inheriting people have not the right to kill us to collect before or to force us to work more so they will be able to collect more. Entitlements funded with taxes give the entitled people an unjust claim that they can collect from taxed people when thy want collect what they want collect, as the taxed people have no right to complain. The collecting people receiving a damage is not a problem, as they are free to refuse the unjust help offered and so refusing to take the damage. The real problem is the damage imparted to the taxed people, that will find themselves forced to pay and will choose to work less or will choose to use welfare. > Pragmatic questions of who or what could prevent this dreadful damage to > heirs (the government? Robin Hood? religious obligations? customs of > potlatch? etc) is beside the point. Pragmatic answer is "their business, not mine". The parents that spoil their children are doing a disservice to themselves and their children. Spoiled children and their money will part ways early and will go to unspoiled children. > The question is: does unearned income always *corrupt*? Always is a big word. Often it is so. Sometimes it is not. Often depend on how it is given, how much and on what terms. > Or does it only > corrupt those worthless lazy stupid-but-cunning millions sucking on > welfare's tit? (Or does it corrupt everyone alike, except that the heirs > of billionaires are few in number, as I think Rafal noted, so their ruin > is negligible compared to the 51% who allegedly vote themselves bread > and circus and drive every democracy into squalor?) What the heirs receive is given with particular terms, where the sucking multitudes are given under different terms. > This line of thought might lead to further questions: if nanotopia > arrives, with all of us getting food, shelter, education, communication > and transport for free, must we face a future of hopeless degradation > because these benefits are *unearned*? Or is that okay, because in this > case the goodies aren't being taken from your pocket and "spread around" > to the welfare queens--and besides, you don't have a taxable job anyway > because the AIs took it? If they produce their stuff with the nanofactories, this is a job. So what they receive is not unearned. Easy earning, maybe. Unearned not. If they want someone else use the nanofactories to produce stuff for them, they could go to hell or have people producing stuff with them (Soylent Green anyone?) Mirco From fauxever at sprynet.com Fri May 8 17:07:29 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 10:07:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com><4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <04CEE3DFABDF46B8801CF4DDAFF1FCCF@patrick4ezsk6z> From: "BillK" To: "ExI chat list" > Is it true that Damien drives round in a 250,000 USD Winnebago > with a sticker on the back that says > 'Spending our kids inheritance' ? Nah, it says: "Spending our kid's inheritance." ;)) From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 8 17:28:43 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 12:28:43 -0500 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090508121622.079c4600@satx.rr.com> At 04:59 PM 5/8/2009 +0000, BillK wrote: >When nanotopia arrives, *everything* will change. Even humanity itself. >If a human becomes a vortex of energy spiraling around a miniature >black hole, it hardly seems relevant to talk about 'welfare queens'. That's one, apocalyptic picture; I suspect in the short term, with partly self-repping matter compilers of various kinds, we'd see futures more like Bruce Sterling's "Kiosk" or HOLY FIRE--incremental modifications of the current human condition. Sure, if there's a "hard takeoff" the future goes absurdly weird fairly fast, but, as Keith and Rafal keep saying, that looks more like doom for everyone except the Exes (to adopt Moravec's term). >Is it true that Damien drives round in a 250,000 USD Winnebago >with a sticker on the back that says >'Spending our kids inheritance' ? My own behavior is irrelevant; all I did was poke the end of a burnt stick into what I saw as a seeping hole in the libertarian claim that free loot is dreadfully bad for the character--well, unless you have a well-to-do daddy (especially if you're a libertarian trustafarian). Damien Broderick From sjatkins at mac.com Fri May 8 17:34:44 2009 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 10:34:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor. In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090508113857.07c39418@satx.rr.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> <4A025CC6.807@rawbw.com> <4A036AB6.6020807@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090507182150.02357bb8@satx.rr.com> <5CF2600105D14892B18CBF03172D4DCF@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508113857.07c39418@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A046D34.2050307@mac.com> Damien Broderick wrote: > At 12:23 PM 5/8/2009 -0400, JKC wrote: > >> Lee wrote: >> >>>> behavior is one thing. The mere voicing of ideas another. >> >> Damien wrote: >> >>> The core problem in this dispute seems to be your (and some others') >>> adherence to this claim. >> >> The obvious objective way to distinguish between the two is to say that >> voicing an idea is anything that can be sent over a wire and behavior is >> everything else. > > Ah, so the wartime radio and public speeches of Churchill and Hitler > were voicings of ideas, and the globe-altering intentional consequences > of those speeches was behavior--utterly different? What is the point of this quibble? Advocacy of ideas is behavior. But there is still a difference from advocacy and acting on what one advocates reasonably consistently. "Talking the talk" versus "walking the walk". If one is strongly in the business of creating and dispensing memes then the line blurs a little. But there is many a memeset dispenser in the world who does not live by what s/he preaches. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Fri May 8 17:38:14 2009 From: sjatkins at mac.com (samantha) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 10:38:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090508121622.079c4600@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508121622.079c4600@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A046E06.1040905@mac.com> Damien Broderick wrote: > At 04:59 PM 5/8/2009 +0000, BillK wrote: > >> When nanotopia arrives, *everything* will change. Even humanity itself. >> If a human becomes a vortex of energy spiraling around a miniature >> black hole, it hardly seems relevant to talk about 'welfare queens'. > > That's one, apocalyptic picture; I suspect in the short term, with > partly self-repping matter compilers of various kinds, we'd see futures > more like Bruce Sterling's "Kiosk" or HOLY FIRE--incremental > modifications of the current human condition. Sure, if there's a "hard > takeoff" the future goes absurdly weird fairly fast, but, as Keith and > Rafal keep saying, that looks more like doom for everyone except the > Exes (to adopt Moravec's term). > > >Is it true that Damien drives round in a 250,000 USD Winnebago > >with a sticker on the back that says > >'Spending our kids inheritance' ? I like the last will statement, "Being of sound mind I spent all my money while I was alive." > > My own behavior is irrelevant; all I did was poke the end of a burnt > stick into what I saw as a seeping hole in the libertarian claim that > free loot is dreadfully bad for the character--well, unless you have a > well-to-do daddy (especially if you're a libertarian trustafarian). This in not a particularly libertarian claim. - samantha From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 8 17:38:25 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 19:38:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] intolerant minds, a different flavor. In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090508113857.07c39418@satx.rr.com> References: <49F54A9B.6050709@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090427013627.022c94c0@satx.rr.com> <49F5D74B.3080400@rawbw.com> <580930c20905031235l4fa326b0u490e099117c4f90b@mail.gmail.com> <49FFE723.3060606@rawbw.com> <4A025CC6.807@rawbw.com> <4A036AB6.6020807@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090507182150.02357bb8@satx.rr.com> <5CF2600105D14892B18CBF03172D4DCF@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508113857.07c39418@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A046E11.2090507@libero.it> Il 08/05/2009 18.42, Damien Broderick ha scritto: > Ah, so the wartime radio and public speeches of Churchill and Hitler > were voicings of ideas, and the globe-altering intentional consequences > of those speeches was behavior--utterly different? Nazis were found guilty of doing evil things, not to say evil things. They were found guilty to organize and executing the "final solution" not to describing it or advocating it. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 8 18:15:13 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 20:15:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090508121622.079c4600@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508121622.079c4600@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A0476B1.2070601@libero.it> Il 08/05/2009 19.28, Damien Broderick ha scritto: > That's one, apocalyptic picture; There is more. If you red Rothbard, "Man, Economy and State", you could note a very interesting, but I suppose very underrated, statement. I suppose it is so underrated because it is a shared belief in economics. In a complex economy people must specialize is a limited set of jobs (no one is able to do all with the same skill level) to produce and sell the requested goods and services so they can be sold in exchange of money that can be used to buy other goods and services needed. Now, with nanotopia, people could become skilled in many task, maybe in all tasks all at the best level. You could produce anything and you would not need anyone do produce them. There is no more need to cooperate with others. So others lose their usefulness. They are not useful as slaves and they are not useful as thinkers. The only things useful are their resources. > My own behavior is irrelevant; all I did was poke the end of a burnt > stick into what I saw as a seeping hole in the libertarian claim that > free loot is dreadfully bad for the character--well, unless you have a > well-to-do daddy (especially if you're a libertarian trustafarian). Free lunches are damaging for the receiving end in the long runs (usually even in the short ones). But there is no need to ban gifts or inheritances as the receiving people can always refuse them. The problem is the damage received by people forced to pay for the entitlements of others. Mirco From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 8 17:58:29 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 10:58:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance Message-ID: <804022.2263.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/8/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 04:59 PM 5/8/2009 +0000, BillK > wrote: > > > When nanotopia arrives, *everything* will change. Even > humanity itself. > > If a human becomes a vortex of energy spiraling around > a miniature > > black hole, it hardly seems relevant to talk about > 'welfare queens'. > > That's one, apocalyptic picture; I suspect in the short > term, with partly self-repping matter compilers of various > kinds, we'd see futures more like Bruce Sterling's "Kiosk" > or HOLY FIRE--incremental modifications of the current human > condition. Sure, if there's a "hard takeoff" the future goes > absurdly weird fairly fast, but, as Keith and Rafal keep > saying, that looks more like doom for everyone except the > Exes (to adopt Moravec's term). Also, it's anyone's guess what happens afterward. I think the material and cultural conditions will radically change, but the laws of economics will still apply. (But most people seem to confuse those laws with the caricature of them in mainstream economics.) >> Is it true that Damien drives round in a 250,000 USD > Winnebago > >with a sticker on the back that says > >'Spending our kids inheritance' ? > > My own behavior is irrelevant; all I did was poke the end > of a burnt stick into what I saw as a seeping hole in the > libertarian claim that free loot is dreadfully bad for the > character--well, unless you have a well-to-do daddy > (especially if you're a libertarian trustafarian). This is NOT a libertarian claim. It's just a claim period. Also, the strict libertarian view is that it's only rights that matter in these concerns: does the rich parent have a right to spoil her or his offspring regardless of whether this turns them into shiftless layabouts? Sadly, yes. Does the state have a right to coerce money from anyone -- rich, poor, whatever -- to give to someone else, including people who might seem very deserving? No. Of course, there's the issue of just what constitutes desert. Strict libertarianism doesn't speak to this matter, and libertarians should be critical of allowing considerations of desert to trump justice (in the libertarian sense). Of course, since many people who claim to be libertarians are merely modern liberals or modern conservatives with some libertarian leanings (e.g., they might want to legalize porn, drugs, or selling bonds without a license, but they still have core anti-libertarian beliefs that come out in any crisis), matters of desert are often touted by them and, sadly, associated in the public mind with libertarianism. This is not a minor issue either. Rights can more easily be applied, detected, and defended. Yes, they're not perfect, but matters of desert allow too much partisanship and subjectivity to enter the picture. It's quite easy, e.g., to figure out that if X owns P, X can gift P to Y period. It's much harder to figure out if Y morally deserves P -- or even if X morally deserves P. (Still, neo-Aristoteleans, non-naive Objectivists, and neo-Kantians would recognize that even if moral desert were easily determined, this still doesn't mean moral desert would allow force to be used to make sure P went not to the rightful owner, but to a more deserving person.) I can see a good group of people agreeing on property rights -- even people disagreeing on their foundations. (Locke, Nozick, and Rothbard, e.g., basically agree on property rights, but Locke was a theist who ultimately grounded such rights in God while Nozick was a neo-Kantian who grounded his Lockeanism in tht sort of logic and Rothbard was a neo-Aristotelean.) But agreeing on desert, as a purely practical matter, would likely lead to a much worse outcome. I bet, too, desert, if used as a criterion for property would not only result in more initial bickering but even more "boundary" bickering leading to most people feeling less secure or in attempting to curry more favor with social elites -- as property might change hands based on someone losing or gaining desert. (Having the state interfere, too, only means that now the chances for error are centralized and any changes now become a political matter. Is politics really the arena where these issues should be settled? Has it worked well with much else?) Nozick tried to sum up his libertarian view of property at one point (in _Anarchy, State, and Utopia_; I'm recalling this from memory, so forgive my errors) in contrast to the popular "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his need" slogan. He cast it as "from each as he chooses, to each as he is chosen." Of course, that's very simplified, but I think it catches what should be _the_ libertarian stance on inheritance: someone chooses to gift something to someone else and no one else should coercively interfere in that -- even and especially they find thw choice made morally repugnant or just plain stupid. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 8 21:28:32 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 14:28:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion Message-ID: <538586.5960.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/8/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/7? : > >> I don't think so.? Prisoner's Dilemma's result from >> the inability of participants to signal each other and to >> depend on anything more than each participant trying to >> maximize some specific reward.? In the real world, people >> can signal each other and they have different notions of >> what constitutes a reward.? On the latter, for example, >> some of us want to live in a world with lower coercion and >> will forego at least some potential near term rewards from >> coercion for this -- and even suffer some specific >> punishments for it. > > The Prisoner's Dilemma is relevant to taxation. It is > possible that > there is some project, costing money, which would give > everyone > utility greater than the amount they paid. This would, if true, only allow the Prisoner's Dilemma to be applied to that case -- not to the general case of taxation.? And it still doesn't answer the problem of how to determine utility or value in such a way.? The Dilemma merely assumes such comparisons are possible and goes from there.? You snipped out my statements on this: "It's also the case that one can't do interpersonal comparisons of value, so specific rewards can be measured between people.? This is why some will work harder or longer for what seems to be the same objective reward than others.? This goes for monetary rewards and all other rewards -- even ones some people might think are not rewards at all." Without such an ability to compare, how can one tell beforehand how agents will act? Also, with the ability to signal, repeated interactions, and moral and other forces acting on agents, the Dilemma need not apply. Notably, in real world economic interactions, people do signal each other and adopt other strategies. > However, each > person would > be even better off if they didn't contribute, since the > project is of > a type which benefits the cheats as well as well as the > contributors. > But if everyone cheated, the project would not go ahead, > and hence > everyone would lose. So, when it comes to the vote, > everyone would > vote to be forced to contribute - since that would mean > everyone else > would also be forced to contribute (a better outcome still > would be > that everyone except me is forced to contribute, but that > vote > obviously isn't going to pass). This is what a tax is. The problem is: this is what advocates of taxation believe it is. In fact, one can't know if something is of benefit to all and the evidence that it's not is in that it must be forced on people. To wit, if people don't all agree to it, then they must not all believe they want it -- they must not believe that it makes their world better. (Not the rhetoric I'm using here: economics is not about personal monetary gain, but focuses on why people act. They act to improve things. This could be as when a miser acts to grow his pile of coins ever larger or when a saint self-abnegates to purify his soul. Both fall under the purview of economic analysis, and both are subject to the logic of action.) Yes, you might honestly believe it makes the world better, but they don't. (And why are or the group that taxes right while all others are wrong?) Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 8 21:51:20 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 14:51:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion Message-ID: <260856.55885.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/8/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/7 Dan : > >> But no one is forced to pay insurance companies (save >> for when governments mandate insurance). ?In other words, >> the other insurance clients are not non-consenting >> third parties. ?The taxpayers are. ?This is why insurance >> companies don't punish people when they don't buy a >> policy, but government do punish those who don't pay >> taxes. ?(Yeah, not all the time, but the general rule >> is there are penalties ranging from death to all lesser >> penalties for non-payment of taxes.) > > Sometimes we are forced to pay for insurance. I am forced > to pay for > insurance on an apartment I own. I also have to pay for > renovations to > the building if the owners vote for it, even though I don't > like what > they propose to do or I can't afford it. If I don't pay, I > can be sued > or ultimately imprisoned. The argument is, if I don't like > the rules I > can sell the apartment or try to change the rules through > my vote in > the owners' corporation. Is that still coercion? I don't know in all these cases, but it's not coercion if you expressly agreed and both parties had a right to whatever was contracted over.? In the case of, say, you buy into a coop or other housing arrangement with set rules, it's not coercion.? You always had the option not to join.? This is little different from, e.g., me saying that you can having dinner with me as long as you agree to chew with your mouth closed.? It's not coercion if I eject you from the table because you chew with your mouth open. Following this analogy further, imagine the government now passed a law decreeing you must chew with your mouth closed.? That would be coercion because it forbids you from, e.g., eating with people who don't mind that or from doing it alone.? (Leave aside how they'd enforce such a law; my guess is it'd be something used to make examples of certain people.? You know, they can't eject Joe Blowshisnose from the park where he has lunch everyday until they have this law in hand to make it all legal.) >> There's a vast literature in libertarian thought that >> rejects social contract theory. ?The whole notion of >> a social contract -- at least as historically >> presented -- rests on a flawed analogy between the >> expressly consented to contracts and tacitly consented >> ones. ?In the former, the parties actually agree to >> terms; in the latter, it seems, the social contract >> theorist merely makes up terms and then manufactures >> consent needed for her or his pet theory. ?In fact, >> while express contracts -- not without problems, but >> easily understood -- often make it clear who agrees to do >> what*, tacit ones, like social contracts, make it possible >> to get anything at all. ?For instance, people have used >> tacit consent to argue that people who don't openly rebel >> against a murderous regime tacitly support that regime. ?In >> other words, that notion can justify anything, so it >> justifies nothing and makes a shambles of the notion of >> contract. ?(Ditto for Buchanan's notions on >> ?virtual unaminity. ?As someone once pointed out, >> wherever you read "virtual unanimity" one should, to make >> sense of the passage, replace it with "lack of >> unanimity.":) > > Why is the social contract "tacit"? This is a key feature of social contract theory. The typical social contract theory is an attempt to justify some socio-political order via an analogy with a real contract -- as if all members of society agree to some (you guessed it!) social contract. Since real world societies of any appreciable size don't arise contractually -- viz., people don't get together, formulate a contract, and then actually expressly consent to it -- the problem is how to complete the analogy. This is where tacit consent comes in. With tacit consent, social contract theorists usually argue either that people would agree to a particular social arrangement if there were an explicit contract but this is impractical or that by taking certain actions that agree to it anyway. (The latter is actually much weaker when you think about it because you end up with arguments like the king should king because no one has bothered to overthrow him.) If tacit consent makes no sense -- either because it's groundless (what kind of consent is it that isn't express? how comes people often expressly go against what the social contract theorist believes they tacit consent to?) or because it's has no limits (with tacit consent one can justify just about anything -- as can be seen by the major social contract theorists: Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, and John Rawls; these guys all have very different views of the correct social order ranging from absolute monarchies to classical liberal constitutional republics to welfare states and beyond). > Would it make it any > better if I > signed a piece of paper when I entered a country as a > visitor or > migrant explicitly agreeing to abide by its laws, including > the > procedures for changing the laws? Only if the person or group making you consent had the right to do so. The government of a country simply does not have that right -- any more than I have the right to ask people who visit you to abide by my rules. As I have no right over you or your property, I have no right to compell your guests to follow my rules. > Admittedly, I don't have > a choice > which country I'm born in, but I don't see a way around > that problem. This brings up another problem with social contracts: even were an explicit contract signed, it wouldn't bind others or future generations. But in the case of your country of birth, the government there has no right to impose its rules on you period. It simply lacks ownership over that country or a right to compell. (Certainly, it claims ownership and has the ability to compell, but this is no different than me claiming ownership over the moon or a mugger being able to compell you to surrender your wallet.) >> [big snip of material you didn't comment on, but I'd >> like to know what you thought about it just the same] > > Sorry, I'm travelling at the moment and lost the original > email. > Perhaps you could resend it. I'll send it to you off-list.? Have a safe and fun journey. Regards, Dan From max at maxmore.com Sat May 9 02:36:18 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 21:36:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion Message-ID: <200905090236.n492aSe5010832@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Daniel: I agree with almost all of what you've written on this thread (and have enjoyed your clarity of expression). However, I'm puzzled by what seems to be your complete rejection of "tacit consent". Do you really deny that this can exist? The classic example is when you walk into a restaurant. You may (or may not) look at the prices, but you never explicitly say that you will pay them. But you certainly don't expect to be able to walk out without paying. The burden is on you -- quite reasonably -- to pay up, unless you have explicitly announced to the owner or manager in charge that you are ordering the food with no intention of paying. I agree that it's easy for statist-minded people to abuse the idea of implicit/tacit consent, but that's not sufficient reason to reject it entirely. Right? As I recall, even Murray Rothbard accepts this case of tacit consent. Max ------------------------------------- Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com ------------------------------------- From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 9 07:01:13 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 17:01:13 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Meme change not person death/was Re: Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <4A042C89.90103@libero.it> References: <491328.4520.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A042C89.90103@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/8 painlord2k at libero.it : > Most developing nations have not the same "resources" like the developed > ones. If you mean natural resources, on average developing nations don't have fewer than developed nations. But one advantage they have over developed nations (according to the theory that government services make people lazy) is a lack of any social security safety net. People have to work hard just so they and their family can survive, and they have to work extra hard if they want to pay for decent education, health care and so on. This is stuff everyone gets for free or almost free in most developed countries, even the US. > And many, until yestersay, were leaded ?by socialist governments. They > started developing with 10% yearly growth when they moved from socialism to > a freer economy. > For them, social security and other government services are luxuries they > can not afford. Right that they can't afford it, but wrong that most of them are socialist. For example, most of South and Central America for the past century has been governed by US-supported regimes that are even more assiduous in suppressing any sort of left wing activity (opposition parties, unions, free speech) than the US itself. There are some exceptions, like Cuba - and look at what the US did there. The problem, you see, is that whether through wisdom, stupidity or outside manipulation, left to their own devices the people might introduce socialist policies; and the only way to avoid this if you are the government and you are sure you know what is best is to actively suppress dissent. > As the social services grew the economy started to slow down. > Italy grew at 10% rates until 1960, then the Center-Left governments started > to form and the rates went to 7-8%, then in the 1970 the rates went around > 5% and to 3% in the 1980. In the 1990 they were 2%-0% and now they are > negatives. The usual pattern with economic growth in developing countries is rapid growth at the start then a slowing down as they reach the levels of the more developed countries. It seems that the plateau is more due to technological factors than economic ones. There are many examples of this other than Italy. For example, Singapore went from a poor country to a rich country in the space of a few decades, but then growth slowed down despite continuation of much the same economic policies (Lee Kwan Yew would not have allowed it any other way). So Singapore has been able to roughly match, but not surpass the standard of living found in other developed nations in Europe and North America. This is not to say that tax and welfare spending is without qualification a good thing. There is a certain optimal level of each. Too much, and no-one has an incentive to work; too little, and the average quality of life goes down, and ultimately you end up with ill-educated, dissatisfied masses resulting in a running down of the country's human capital. For all his socialist-hating ways, Lee Kwan Yew made it a priority that every Singaporean would have a good education and adequate housing, the latter through generous subsidies for first home buyers. > In between the government moved from taking the 27% of the GDP of Italy in > the 1970 to the 43% now (computed with a 20% of the economy in the black > market, so the rates paid by the "honests" is over 50%). I have no numbers > for the years before 1970, but I would suppose the burden of taxes was lower > than 20%. > > An example of socialism is in Finland the fact that the car outside the > social housing are bigger, more costly than the cars out of private housing. > Why? because the people in social housing have more money available for cars > as they spend less for housing. > > The same is true in Italy, where they sell more furs in Sicily than in > Lombardy. In Italy, a large part of the political discourse, in the last > twenty years, is about how much taxes are paid by the North regions that go > to the South Regions for welfare. This helped the people there? Not much; > but surely helped Mafia, Camorra and N'drangeta to expand their business. > Welfare to the mobsters. These are strange observations. You haven't explained why northern Italy is wealthier than Southern Italy and less prone to organised crime, or why Finland, more socialist than Italy has ever been, has done so well economically, especially in the last couple of decades. Also, within Italy, the leftists (including the communists) have held power consistently in Emilia-Romagna, one of the wealthier northern provinces. It's not as simple as your contention that any socialist measures inevitably lead to economic stagnation. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 9 07:18:42 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 17:18:42 +1000 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> References: <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/8 painlord2k at libero.it : > Il 08/05/2009 5.11, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > >> Exactly, and that's the problem with rich people. You work hard as a >> beekeper, they keep the profits, doing less work themselves per dollar >> "earned" than welfare recipients, and having much less need for it. > > I don't understand how Obama, in his misspent youth, could be called "rich". > I know, due to my job, a few people that are poor and on welfare. > Usually their attitude is that we owe them what they want. I was referring to spike working for low pay, not Obama. I don't understand how one could begrudge an unemployed person a subsistence level of income but think it's OK for other people, rich people, to "earn" more for doing less. The capitalist who makes profits in his sleep takes the money from the people who actually do the work just as surely as the unemployed person getting the dole does. There might be a practical argument for allowing the capitalist to make huge profits, since otherwise many useful enterprises would never get underway, but this does not amount to a *moral* argument. Perhaps it's because some rich people are secretly ashamed of how they acquired their wealth that they have to keep reassuring themselves that they "worked" for it and put down those they accuse of not working for it. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 9 07:43:58 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 17:43:58 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <4A043964.7010108@libero.it> References: <191607.26241.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A043964.7010108@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/8 painlord2k at libero.it : >> Sometimes we are forced to pay for insurance. I am forced to pay for >> insurance on an apartment I own. I also have to pay for renovations >> to the building if the owners vote for it, even though I don't like >> what they propose to do or I can't afford it. If I don't pay, I can >> be sued or ultimately imprisoned. The argument is, if I don't like >> the rules I can sell the apartment or try to change the rules through >> my vote in the owners' corporation. Is that still coercion? > > It is not, if it was in a contract given you before you bought the > apartment. Bad contract I would say. > The government imprisoning you is coercion. > Laws forcing you to do renovations against your will are coercion. I own one apartment in a building of about ten. If one owner were allowed to veto any renovations or repairs, then work that could benefit everyone might never get done. That's why the contract allows for a majority decision, and that's the contract I agreed to. It's also the contract I agree to (tacitly, perhaps) when I migrate to a country. However, I don't agree it when I am born in a country. The problem is, if you think this is unfair for the native but not the migrant, since the native did not agree to anything either tacitly or explicitly, it could lead to a situation where only migrants have to pay taxes and obey other laws. >> Why is the social contract "tacit"? Would it make it any better if I >> signed a piece of paper when I entered a country as a visitor or >> migrant explicitly agreeing to abide by its laws, including the >> procedures for changing the laws? > > Yes. Because the migrants could be sued and could not claim "ignorance", > "their customs are different", "religious duties", etc. > >> Admittedly, I don't have a choice >> which country I'm born in, but I don't see a way around that >> problem. > > What is the problem? > Until you don't write your name under the dotted line, you would not be a > "citizen" but only a "guest" of your parents. You do wrong, they pay for > you. When you accept the burden of citizenship you will receive the > privileges of citizenship. > > There would be not a problem if people were differentiated in groups: > 1) Citizens > 2) Citizen's children > 3) Citizen's guests (probably with subtypes) > > The difference is that the (2) would become (1) only if they want and not > would be forced to become (1) when they become 18 years old. > Some laws limiting the rights of (1) would not be applicable on (2) and (3). So if I decided at age 18 that I don't want to obey the unjust taxation laws, for example, I could be expelled (to where?), but for those who accept citizenship taxation is part of the contract they have entered into? -- Stathis Papaioannou From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 9 10:12:05 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 09 May 2009 12:12:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: References: <191607.26241.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A043964.7010108@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A0556F5.8080406@libero.it> Il 09/05/2009 9.43, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/5/8 painlord2k at libero.it: > I own one apartment in a building of about ten. If one owner were > allowed to veto any renovations or repairs, then work that could > benefit everyone might never get done. That's why the contract allows > for a majority decision, and that's the contract I agreed to. It's > also the contract I agree to (tacitly, perhaps) when I migrate to a > country. However, I don't agree it when I am born in a country. The > problem is, if you think this is unfair for the native but not the > migrant, since the native did not agree to anything either tacitly or > explicitly, it could lead to a situation where only migrants have to > pay taxes and obey other laws. The don't "have to" as they can leave. Obviously, there must be a way to limit the number of the unwanted people entering. I think the children of the owners of your building are not owners, so they could be kicked out if they don't behave. Mainly by their parents. >> There would be not a problem if people were differentiated in groups: >> 1) Citizens >> 2) Citizen's children >> 3) Citizen's guests (probably with subtypes) >> >> The difference is that the (2) would become (1) only if they want and not >> would be forced to become (1) when they become 18 years old. >> Some laws limiting the rights of (1) would not be applicable on (2) and (3). > > So if I decided at age 18 that I don't want to obey the unjust > taxation laws, for example, I could be expelled (to where?), but for > those who accept citizenship taxation is part of the contract they > have entered into? It could be. This depend on what contract they accept. I, for sure, would insist on that taxation must be agreed by the taxed before being collected. And the agreement must be confirmed after a period of time. No open-ended "suck my blood" invites to the vampires. Like in your building, they could collect money from you for some reasons, but they must document the reasons before and must document how they spent the money after. I'm sure they have claims only for renovations and reparations needed, I suppose they can not claim money for improvements not needed. E.G. they could claim money to substitute lamps with LEDs when the lamps worn out, not to substitute working lamps with LEDs. The fact they sign a written contract is important as they explicitly accept a limited set of duties and receive a limited set of claims. In your case, the contract say something, but you are bound from the laws written before and after you accepted the contract by someone else with or without your agreement. The main problem is that would be difficult to implement a single contract stating all and any duty and claim of any and all citizens. The main contract would state some basic rules and the penalties associated for breaking them. Something like "Don't kill", "Don't steal", etc. Then other contracts would rule other matters. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 9 10:17:47 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 09 May 2009 12:17:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A05584B.8030702@libero.it> Il 09/05/2009 9.18, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > I was referring to spike working for low pay, not Obama. I don't > understand how one could begrudge an unemployed person a subsistence > level of income but think it's OK for other people, rich people, to > "earn" more for doing less. The capitalist who makes profits in his > sleep takes the money from the people who actually do the work just as > surely as the unemployed person getting the dole does. The capitalist risk his/her capital and defer consumption of his/her capital because he/she invest the capital in some enterprise. When I invest money in a company I could sleep and gain or I could sleep and lose. The unemployed on the dole can only gain from the dole as he did not invest and risk nothing. > There might be > a practical argument for allowing the capitalist to make huge profits, > since otherwise many useful enterprises would never get underway, but > this does not amount to a *moral* argument. The moral argument is written upon. The capitalist risk his wealth and defer his consumption, so he have the right to earn whatever his enterprise let him earn, and keep it. Mirco From pharos at gmail.com Sat May 9 10:45:13 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 10:45:13 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <4A0556F5.8080406@libero.it> References: <191607.26241.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A043964.7010108@libero.it> <4A0556F5.8080406@libero.it> Message-ID: On 5/9/09, painlord2k wrote: > The fact they sign a written contract is important as they explicitly > accept a limited set of duties and receive a limited set of claims. > In your case, the contract say something, but you are bound from the laws > written before and after you accepted the contract by someone else with or > without your agreement. > > The main problem is that would be difficult to implement a single contract > stating all and any duty and claim of any and all citizens. > The main contract would state some basic rules and the penalties associated > for breaking them. Something like "Don't kill", "Don't steal", etc. Then > other contracts would rule other matters. > These libs do love their contracts, don't they? Everybody is expected to have a filing cabinet full of contracts relating to every person, company, club, council, government office, etc. that they deal with. And they all have to checked that they are still up-to-date and valid. And among these hundreds of contracts, they have to check carefully that no contract has terms that contradict the terms in any other contract. Then they have to worry about precedence. Which contract can override less important contracts? And perhaps, unknowingly, their contracts conflict with someone else's contracts? And all the contract conflicts for the population have to be fought out in court. And, of course, you have to be able to read and write to sign a contract. The US has about 99% literacy. But that 1% is still 3 million people. Many countries are below the 70% literacy level. What they need is a government organization to process and record all the contracts for all the population. Like the DMV, but much, much larger and more bureaucratic. BillK From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 9 12:11:44 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 22:11:44 +1000 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <4A05584B.8030702@libero.it> References: <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <4A05584B.8030702@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/9 painlord2k at libero.it : > The capitalist risk his/her capital and defer consumption of his/her capital > because he/she invest the capital in some enterprise. > When I invest money in a company I could sleep and gain or I could sleep and > lose. > > The unemployed on the dole can only gain from the dole as he did not invest > and risk nothing. Then the capitalist is lucky, or even smart, but not necessarily hard working. The argument was that the unemployed person is lazy and takes from those who work. >> There might be >> a practical argument for allowing the capitalist to make huge profits, >> since otherwise many useful enterprises would never get underway, but >> this does not amount to a *moral* argument. > > The moral argument is written upon. > The capitalist risk his wealth and defer his consumption, so he have the > right to earn whatever his enterprise let him earn, and keep it. So you say, but it's a made-up justification. It's like a law saying that if you lose some money and I find it, I get to keep it. But it wouldn't make it morally right just because that's the law, even if there is some practical justification for the law. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 9 12:20:54 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 22:20:54 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <4A0556F5.8080406@libero.it> References: <191607.26241.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A043964.7010108@libero.it> <4A0556F5.8080406@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/9 painlord2k at libero.it : > Like in your building, they could collect money from you for some reasons, > but they must document the reasons before and must document how they spent > the money after. I'm sure they have claims only for renovations and > reparations needed, I suppose they can not claim money for improvements not > needed. E.G. they could claim money to substitute lamps with LEDs when the > lamps worn out, not to substitute working lamps with LEDs. I'm pretty sure that if a 2/3 majority decided on any major renovation, the rest would be forced to go along with it. There might be limits, but the point for the present discussion is that the contract states I would have to go along with a majority decision. My only way out is to sell the apartment, which is pretty drastic, if not as drastic as leaving the country. > The fact they sign a written contract is important as they explicitly accept > a limited set of duties and receive a limited set of claims. > In your case, the contract say something, but you are bound from the laws > written before and after you accepted the contract by someone else with or > without your agreement. > > The main problem is that would be difficult to implement a single contract > stating all and any duty and claim of any and all citizens. > The main contract would state some basic rules and the penalties associated > for breaking them. Something like "Don't kill", "Don't steal", etc. Then > other contracts would rule other matters. The basic contract is that citizens are bound by anything whatsoever that the elected legislators decide on. Some countries have constitutions which limit the kinds of laws that can be changed, but then the constitution can be itself be changed by majority decision. -- Stathis Papaioannou From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sat May 9 14:28:50 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 10:28:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Three big space missions this week References: <200905090236.n492aSe5010832@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <09AFD377B5E947EB9EC2D98F52DCF82B@MyComputer> We're coming up to the biggest week in space exploration that we've had in a long time: On Monday the Shuttle will launch its long delayed Hubble repair mission; if successful Hubble will have new capabilities far beyond what it ever had before. On Thursday the same rocket in French Guiana will launce both the Herschel and Planck satellites to the L2 Lagrange point. The two satellites are quite different but equally important. Herschel will probe the largely unexplored far infrared part of the spectrum with the largest mirror ever put into space. Plank will study the cosmic microwave background radiation with far greater precision than ever achieved before including measuring for the first time its polarization. If we're lucky it might even find Gravitational Waves. John K Clark From spike66 at att.net Sat May 9 16:32:28 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 09:32:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Three big space missions this week In-Reply-To: <09AFD377B5E947EB9EC2D98F52DCF82B@MyComputer> References: <200905090236.n492aSe5010832@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <09AFD377B5E947EB9EC2D98F52DCF82B@MyComputer> Message-ID: <78D74252DB9D4FED821311C6BA6C88BE@spike> > ...On Behalf Of John K Clark > Subject: [ExI] Three big space missions this week > > We're coming up to the biggest week in space exploration that > we've had in a long time: > > On Monday the Shuttle will launch its long delayed Hubble > repair mission; if successful Hubble will have new > capabilities far beyond what it ever had before... Hubble Space Telescope, another Lockheeed product, still gazing after all these years. > On Thursday the same rocket in French Guiana will launce both > the Herschel and Planck satellites to the L2 Lagrange point... > John K Clark Life is gooooood. {8-] spike From spike66 at att.net Sat May 9 16:23:10 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 09:23:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> Message-ID: <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou > Subject: Re: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda,was: > retrainability of plebeians > ... > > > > I don't understand how Obama, in his misspent youth, could > be called "rich". > > I know, due to my job, a few people that are poor and on welfare. > > Usually their attitude is that we owe them what they want. > > I was referring to spike working for low pay, not Obama. I > don't understand how one could begrudge an unemployed person > a subsistence level of income but think it's OK for other > people, rich people, to "earn" more for doing less. The > capitalist who makes profits in his sleep takes the money > from the people who actually do the work just as surely as > the unemployed person getting the dole does... > -- > Stathis Papaioannou Stathis, the key to understanding the above statement is in the phrase "the money" as in "...takes THE money from the people..." A capitalist creates wealth by investment, so it makes more money. The beekeeper puts down his own money to invest in hives, the bees create honey, which is wealth, then the capitalist hires indolent youths (such as me) and others to work for pay which they otherwise would not have had. The capitalist doesn't take THE money, she creates wealth which would not otherwise exist, and partners with labor, so that they earn some of the created wealth. Everyone wins. Cool! My heartburn with Obama is that he never had that experience, he didn't do grinding labor for a pittance, didn't risk his own capital to start or run a business. His professional experience is in suing businesses for a ton of money. This would cause him to see business as prey, as opposed to partners with goverment in wealth creation. He is running the country like a teenager snorting cocaine. It sets off alarm bells in my head when he utters comments like "We all benefit when we spread THE wealth around." THE wealth? Define THE, sir. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat May 9 17:49:32 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 09 May 2009 12:49:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda In-Reply-To: <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> References: <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090509122413.0224ebe8@satx.rr.com> At 09:23 AM 5/9/2009 -0700, spike wrote: > >It sets off alarm bells in my head when he >utters comments like "We all benefit when we spread THE wealth around." THE >wealth? Define THE, sir. I always assumed this is an incredible beat-up (as Aussies say of journalistic hysteria where a statement is taken out of context and inflated absurdly). THE wealth is the wealth created by all the productive forces of the community. As everyone knows, in recent years an increasing proportion of this wealth has been funneled into the richest segments of (so-called) capitalist nations. Some of this upward drainage is due to unmitigated theft and scams on a colossal scale, pyramid schemes and other depredations. Some might be deserved, as brilliant and risky entrepreneurship increased wealth and convenience and lifespan etc for the entire community, and Atlas deserves his payment. Nevertheless, it can be argued that a disproportionate cut has been scooped up by the richest, and that this is not only morally dubious *but damages future wealth-making processes*--by, for example, as we are seeing, leading to a clusterfuck of such enormous dimension that 539,000 jobs disappeared last month in the US, and nearly 6 million in less than a year and a half. I'd have thought that good capitalists would *want* to see as many citizens as possible creating and sharing in the wealth of their community. If shunting more and more into the pockets of the wealthiest plutocrats actually *despoils* the productivity of the community, throwing millions out of work, it might be rather a good idea to find ways to have the communally-produced wealth spread around again. Hostile rhetoric about "welfare queens" can deafen us to this call to a return to real functioning capitalism. Yes, there are spongers and petty criminals, but it seems to me extremely unlikely that Obama was appealing to them in his invocation of traditional American values of fairness and community. Damien Broderick [a stranger in a strange land--so hey, maybe I've got the ethos wrong, and Americans always *have* wanted the very richest to own almost all the nation's wealth and to hell with the rest] From fauxever at sprynet.com Sat May 9 18:08:00 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 11:08:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda References: <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it><8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z><0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z><875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike><4A04341E.6030605@libero.it><9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090509122413.0224ebe8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <5F6C6D31553843DCB26EC5589562223E@patrick4ezsk6z> From: "Damien Broderick" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Saturday, May 09, 2009 10:49 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda > At 09:23 AM 5/9/2009 -0700, spike wrote: >> >>It sets off alarm bells in my head when he >>utters comments like "We all benefit when we spread THE wealth around." >>THE >>wealth? Define THE, sir. > > I always assumed this is an incredible beat-up (as Aussies say of > journalistic hysteria where a statement is taken out of context and > inflated absurdly). > > THE wealth is the wealth created by all the productive forces of the > community. As everyone knows, in recent years an increasing proportion of > this wealth has been funneled into the richest segments of (so-called) > capitalist nations. Some of this upward drainage is due to unmitigated > theft and scams on a colossal scale, pyramid schemes and other > depredations. Some might be deserved, as brilliant and risky > entrepreneurship increased wealth and convenience and lifespan etc for the > entire community, and Atlas deserves his payment. Nevertheless, it can be > argued that a disproportionate cut has been scooped up by the richest, and > that this is not only morally dubious *but damages future wealth-making > processes*--by, for example, as we are seeing, leading to a clusterfuck of > such enormous dimension that 539,000 jobs disappeared last month in the > US, and nearly 6 million in less than a year and a half. > > I'd have thought that good capitalists would *want* to see as many > citizens as possible creating and sharing in the wealth of their > community. If shunting more and more into the pockets of the wealthiest > plutocrats actually *despoils* the productivity of the community, throwing > millions out of work, it might be rather a good idea to find ways to have > the communally-produced wealth spread around again. Hostile rhetoric about > "welfare queens" can deafen us to this call to a return to real > functioning capitalism. Yes, there are spongers and petty criminals, but > it seems to me extremely unlikely that Obama was appealing to them in his > invocation of traditional American values of fairness and community. I've read some brilliant stuff on this discussion forum. But this one beats all. Thank you, Damien ... Olga From pharos at gmail.com Sat May 9 19:00:59 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 20:00:59 +0100 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090509122413.0224ebe8@satx.rr.com> References: <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090509122413.0224ebe8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 6:49 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > THE wealth is the wealth created by all the productive forces of the > community. As everyone knows, in recent years an increasing proportion of > this wealth has been funneled into the richest segments of (so-called) > capitalist nations. Some of this upward drainage is due to unmitigated theft > and scams on a colossal scale, pyramid schemes and other depredations. Some > might be deserved, as brilliant and risky entrepreneurship increased wealth > and convenience and lifespan etc for the entire community, and Atlas > deserves his payment. Nevertheless, it can be argued that a disproportionate > cut has been scooped up by the richest, and that this is not only morally > dubious *but damages future wealth-making processes*--by, for example, as we > are seeing, leading to a clusterfuck of such enormous dimension that 539,000 > jobs disappeared last month in the US, and nearly 6 million in less than a > year and a half. > > I'd have thought that good capitalists would *want* to see as many citizens > as possible creating and sharing in the wealth of their community. If > shunting more and more into the pockets of the wealthiest plutocrats > actually *despoils* the productivity of the community, throwing millions out > of work, it might be rather a good idea to find ways to have the > communally-produced wealth spread around again. Hostile rhetoric about > "welfare queens" can deafen us to this call to a return to real functioning > capitalism. Yes, there are spongers and petty criminals, but it seems to me > extremely unlikely that Obama was appealing to them in his invocation of > traditional American values of fairness and community. > > The depression hasn't got bad enough yet. The bankers have taken over the Fed and are running the country for the benefit of their banking friends and ex-colleagues. Mainly because they have huge wealth invested in these big banks, so protecting the banks is also protecting their own wealth. The big banks continue to use financial trickery to hide their bankruptcy and keep everything going on as normal. Big salaries, big bonuses, unlimited expenses, etc. The small banks are getting closed down or taken over by bigger banks. No protection for them. Unemployment will continue to grow at around 500,000 per month as business continues to shrink. How long can it continue? If the government keeps handing more and more fake money over to the big banks, they can keep the zombie banks staggering on for years while the economy collapses around them. Eventually the death and renewal force of capitalism will take effect. The broken companies must be torn down and new companies started up. But the longer it is postponed the worse the depression will become. BillK From spike66 at att.net Sat May 9 21:07:34 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 14:07:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] puzzler Message-ID: <45684D6DBDC9439AAF1E6021BCC41D91@spike> I am so in awe of myself. The Click and Clack radio show has a weekly puzzler, and this week's is terrific. I figured it out. I suspect even the monster brains on this forum will not get it. Here it is: "I was hired to build a cabin in the woods 20 miles from civilization, so I set off early one morning before sunrise. And because there was no electricity at the site I brought along my generator, radio, etc. I also packed an extension cord, my electric drill and the bits, and my socket and wrench set. When I was finished for the day, I tried to leave but my battery was dead. I had left my lights on all day. "I look behind the driver's seat and I find the following items: jumper cables, a roll of duct tape and a quart of Fillipo Berio Extra Virgin Olive Oil. By this time it's getting dark, the coyotes are howling and the buzzards are circling. "If only there was a way to get power from the generator which is making 110 volts AC and get that into my dead battery, which is 12 volts DC. The question is: how can I do it with only the items at my disposal?" I nailed it because of something I discovered during my misspent youth. The answer will be given on the Car Talk show tomorrow. I will post the answer later today. Any guesses? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 9 23:29:58 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 01:29:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: References: <191607.26241.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A043964.7010108@libero.it> <4A0556F5.8080406@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A0611F6.5090401@libero.it> Il 09/05/2009 12.45, BillK ha scritto: > On 5/9/09, painlord2k wrote: > These libs do love their contracts, don't they? When dealing with a government the contracts are subject to change without notice. And, as Darth Vader put it, "Pray I don't change them again!" > Everybody is expected to have a filing cabinet full of contracts > relating to every person, company, club, council, government office, > etc. that they deal with. And they all have to checked that they are > still up-to-date and valid. We are very lucky that computer and internet exist, today. They could manage all the contracts, look for interdependencies and incompatibility. I suppose many contracts could be and will be standardized as to make the life simpler for the sellers and the buyers. I think that the number and types of contracts and their interdependencies and incompatibilities will be much lesser than today mess of laws and codes created by lawmakers and bureaucrats that have the power to impose them to you. For comparison, I found this example of the current mess: www.i2i.org/articles/IP_9_2005_b.pdf > Colorado currently has some 30,000 laws filling more than 50 volumes > of the Colorado Revised Statutes, both criminal and regulatory. > Every session, the Colorado General Assembly passes hundreds of new > laws for government to enforce and citizens to both understand and > obey http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,113861,00.html > The federal tax code (search) today covers 17,000 pages and requires > over 700 different forms. The IRS estimates Americans spend 5.1 > billion hours annually merely preparing their taxes. The Tax > Foundation estimates that those wasted hours drain some $194 billion > annually from the U.S. economy. All of that comes before Joe Taxpayer > forks over his first dime. > The Federal Registry (search), which records all of the regulations > the federal government imposes on businesses (all of which carry the > force of law), now exceeds 75,000 pages. The Office of Management and > Budget estimates that merely complying with these regulations ? that > is, paying lawyers to keep educated on them, interpret them and > implement them ? costs U.S. business another $500 to $600 billion per > year. Do you really believe that people would be able and willing to do worse than this? In Italy, we had 100.000 laws in the books (2005), but this is good, because we had 200.000 laws in the books in the 1985. The Vatican, this year, stopped to adopt "automatically" all the laws enacted by Italy. "Italian laws are too many, changing and often contradictory to each other, let alone those standards that in fact run counter to Christian morality." > And among these hundreds of contracts, they have to check carefully > that no contract has terms that contradict the terms in any other > contract. Then they have to worry about precedence. Which contract > can override less important contracts? And perhaps, unknowingly, > their contracts conflict with someone else's contracts? And all the > contract conflicts for the population have to be fought out in > court. Are you sure to be in compliance with any and all laws of the US? federal and local? Did you read all of them and carefully checked them for any action you do during your day and night activities? > And, of course, you have to be able to read and write to sign a > contract. The US has about 99% literacy. But that 1% is still 3 > million people. Many countries are below the 70% literacy level. Well, "ignorance of the laws is not an excuse". So, people unable to read is not excuse if they don't know and understand all the laws the lawmakers write. > What they need is a government organization to process and record all > the contracts for all the population. Like the DMV, but much, much > larger and more bureaucratic. I would prefer a private service that record and maintain the various contracts. Governments would be always later, they would lose the papers and would mix the records. Mirco From mlatorra at gmail.com Sun May 10 00:34:46 2009 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 18:34:46 -0600 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090509122413.0224ebe8@satx.rr.com> References: <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090509122413.0224ebe8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <9ff585550905091734r2df0bdb2w99355a37fef4d300@mail.gmail.com> Right, Damien. Excessive concentration of wealth weakens the entire society. The situation is only made worse when we discover how much of that concentrated wealth was garnered through fraud. Regards, Mike LaTorra On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 09:23 AM 5/9/2009 -0700, spike wrote: > >> >> It sets off alarm bells in my head when he >> utters comments like "We all benefit when we spread THE wealth around." >> THE >> wealth? Define THE, sir. >> > > I always assumed this is an incredible beat-up (as Aussies say of > journalistic hysteria where a statement is taken out of context and inflated > absurdly). > > THE wealth is the wealth created by all the productive forces of the > community. As everyone knows, in recent years an increasing proportion of > this wealth has been funneled into the richest segments of (so-called) > capitalist nations. Some of this upward drainage is due to unmitigated theft > and scams on a colossal scale, pyramid schemes and other depredations. Some > might be deserved, as brilliant and risky entrepreneurship increased wealth > and convenience and lifespan etc for the entire community, and Atlas > deserves his payment. Nevertheless, it can be argued that a disproportionate > cut has been scooped up by the richest, and that this is not only morally > dubious *but damages future wealth-making processes*--by, for example, as we > are seeing, leading to a clusterfuck of such enormous dimension that 539,000 > jobs disappeared last month in the US, and nearly 6 million in less than a > year and a half. > > I'd have thought that good capitalists would *want* to see as many citizens > as possible creating and sharing in the wealth of their community. If > shunting more and more into the pockets of the wealthiest plutocrats > actually *despoils* the productivity of the community, throwing millions out > of work, it might be rather a good idea to find ways to have the > communally-produced wealth spread around again. Hostile rhetoric about > "welfare queens" can deafen us to this call to a return to real functioning > capitalism. Yes, there are spongers and petty criminals, but it seems to me > extremely unlikely that Obama was appealing to them in his invocation of > traditional American values of fairness and community. > > Damien Broderick > [a stranger in a strange land--so hey, maybe I've got the ethos wrong, and > Americans always *have* wanted the very richest to own almost all the > nation's wealth and to hell with the rest] > > _______________________________________________ > 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 dharris234 at mindspring.com Sun May 10 01:05:40 2009 From: dharris234 at mindspring.com (David C. Harris) Date: Sat, 09 May 2009 18:05:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] puzzler In-Reply-To: <45684D6DBDC9439AAF1E6021BCC41D91@spike> References: <45684D6DBDC9439AAF1E6021BCC41D91@spike> Message-ID: <4A062864.6020608@mindspring.com> You know how to challenge us! OK, some generators have a 12 volt DC output that could be carried to the battery directly. I have such a generator in my back yard storage, thanks to Enron's fraud that made me think that shortages of 110 juice would be a frequent occurrence in California. But assuming this generator was not so equipped, I'd take the generator's 110 AC thru the extension cord to the electric drill with a big drill and some little ones jammed into the square drive side of a socket so the drill's rotation would drive the nut that holds the pulley that is bolted to the CAR's generator or alternator. Loosen the generator or alternator drive belt so you're just turning the pulley that makes 12V for the car battery. Disconnect the battery positive, temporarily, from devices that might deplete the stream of entering 12V power. There is some remote chance that the carboxylic acid(s) in the olive oil would orient (because carboxylic acids have a positive end and a hydrophobic oily chain) in contact with the battery acid and act as some sort of diode, allowing more electrons to move in one direction than the other direction of the 110 alternating current. Different numbers of electrons makes a DC current in one direction. I'd do the drill method before Googling on the electrical properties of olive oil and acids. How'd I do? - David Harris, Palo Alto spike wrote: > .... I suspect even the monster brains on this forum will not get > it. Here it is: > > > "... brought along my generator, radio, etc. I also packed an > extension cord, my electric drill and the bits, and my socket and > wrench set. ... jumper cables, a roll of duct tape and a quart of > Fillipo Berio Extra Virgin Olive Oil.... > > "If only there was a way to get power from the generator which is > making 110 volts AC and get that into my dead battery, which is 12 > volts DC. The question is: how can I do it with only the items at my > disposal?" > > > > > I nailed it because of something I discovered during my misspent > youth. The answer will be given on the Car Talk show tomorrow. I > will post the answer later today. Any guesses? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Sun May 10 03:08:13 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 20:08:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Is this intolerant? Message-ID: <6316.29509.qm@web110405.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOewegX7H-Q __________________________________________________________________ Get a sneak peak at messages with a handy reading pane with All new Yahoo! Mail: http://ca.promos.yahoo.com/newmail/overview2/ From spike66 at att.net Sun May 10 05:08:54 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 22:08:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] puzzler In-Reply-To: <4A062864.6020608@mindspring.com> References: <45684D6DBDC9439AAF1E6021BCC41D91@spike> <4A062864.6020608@mindspring.com> Message-ID: Excellent! David after I saw your post I realized this might work, so there are two different ways to sleep that night in a warm bed instead of a cold truck. Your idea is one: remove the alternator belt and rig the drill to spin the alternator. Here's what I thought: Recall that hand drills are variable speed devices, using a potentiometer in the trigger. In my misspent youth, I found an old drill in the trash, plugged it in, didn't work, took it apart and noticed that it was a DC motor. It had a rectifier circuit going to the potentiometer in the trigger and that output going to brushes in the motor. So I reasoned I should be able to run the drill motor off of a car batter by taking out the rectifier and putting in 12 volts just upstream of the trigger potentiometer. Works great. So store this away: if you are away out in the hootnannies with no electric power but have the usual tools one carries in a take-along tool bag, and you need to drill a hole in something, remember you can splice in ahead of the trigger and run your hand drill off your car battery. So I reasoned that if a drill can run off of a battery, then a battery can run off of a drill. So I would remove the drill motor brushes, attach the jumper cables to the car battery, take about a 10 amp fuse from something non-critical, put it in series, then gradually pull the trigger until the fuse burns out, lock the trigger in place right there, then connect it back without the fuse and let the rectifier circuit in the drill charge the battery. With ten amps, the truck should start within an hour or two. spike _____ From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of David C. Harris Sent: Saturday, May 09, 2009 6:06 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] puzzler You know how to challenge us! OK, some generators have a 12 volt DC output that could be carried to the battery directly. I have such a generator in my back yard storage, thanks to Enron's fraud that made me think that shortages of 110 juice would be a frequent occurrence in California. But assuming this generator was not so equipped, I'd take the generator's 110 AC thru the extension cord to the electric drill with a big drill and some little ones jammed into the square drive side of a socket so the drill's rotation would drive the nut that holds the pulley that is bolted to the CAR's generator or alternator. Loosen the generator or alternator drive belt so you're just turning the pulley that makes 12V for the car battery. Disconnect the battery positive, temporarily, from devices that might deplete the stream of entering 12V power. There is some remote chance that the carboxylic acid(s) in the olive oil would orient (because carboxylic acids have a positive end and a hydrophobic oily chain) in contact with the battery acid and act as some sort of diode, allowing more electrons to move in one direction than the other direction of the 110 alternating current. Different numbers of electrons makes a DC current in one direction. I'd do the drill method before Googling on the electrical properties of olive oil and acids. How'd I do? - David Harris, Palo Alto spike wrote: .... I suspect even the monster brains on this forum will not get it. Here it is: "... brought along my generator, radio, etc. I also packed an extension cord, my electric drill and the bits, and my socket and wrench set. ... jumper cables, a roll of duct tape and a quart of Fillipo Berio Extra Virgin Olive Oil.... "If only there was a way to get power from the generator which is making 110 volts AC and get that into my dead battery, which is 12 volts DC. The question is: how can I do it with only the items at my disposal?" I nailed it because of something I discovered during my misspent youth. The answer will be given on the Car Talk show tomorrow. I will post the answer later today. Any guesses? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 10 15:12:09 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 01:12:09 +1000 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> References: <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> Message-ID: 2009/5/10 spike : >> I was referring to spike working for low pay, not Obama. I >> don't understand how one could begrudge an unemployed person >> a subsistence level of income but think it's OK for other >> people, rich people, to "earn" more for doing less. The >> capitalist who makes profits in his sleep takes the money >> from the people who actually do the work just as surely as >> the unemployed person getting the dole does... >> -- >> Stathis Papaioannou > > > Stathis, the key to understanding the above statement is in the phrase "the > money" as in "...takes THE money from the people..." ?A capitalist creates > wealth by investment, so it makes more money. ?The beekeeper puts down his > own money to invest in hives, the bees create honey, which is wealth, then > the capitalist hires indolent youths (such as me) and others to work for pay > which they otherwise would not have had. ?The capitalist doesn't take THE > money, she creates wealth which would not otherwise exist, and partners with > labor, so that they earn some of the created wealth. ?Everyone wins. ?Cool! If I pay you $1 to make a widget which I then sell for $100 I may have done something legal, even admirable in some peoples' eyes, but to my way of thinking I have exploited you. I have been paid at a huge rate for the work I have done, even though the enterprise may not have got off the ground at all without that small amount of work. It's just that the market and the legal system have allowed my work to be rated far more highly than your work. Pragmatically, you could argue that things should be left this way since the possibility of reward disproportionately high compared to effort motivates people to attempt projects they otherwise would not. In fact, you could summarise capitalist success as the achievement of making more and more money while doing less and less work. But this does not, in my view, make it morally right, although of course we may come to an impasse when it comes to defining moral principles. > My heartburn with Obama is that he never had that experience, he didn't do > grinding labor for a pittance, didn't risk his own capital to start or run a > business. Well, most supporters of capitalism would say that if a capitalist built a billion dollar company by doing *less* work and risking *less* money, that's even more impressive. That reward should be in proportion to effort sounds more like something Marx would have approved of! > His professional experience is in suing businesses for a ton of > money. ?This would cause him to see business as prey, as opposed to partners > with goverment in wealth creation. ?He is running the country like a > teenager snorting cocaine. ?It sets off alarm bells in my head when he > utters comments like "We all benefit when we spread THE wealth around." ?THE > wealth? ?Define THE, sir. I don't disagree that some lawyers earn too much but they're probably in the middle range of those who earn too much; not up there with bankers and celebrities. But I'm surprised that you would find fault with someone who, after all, only earned as much as the market would stand. Is there any businessman who would not do the same? Is there any businessman who would not sue a competitor if he thought he could benefit financially by doing so? You are showing, dare I say, the sort of scruples a socialist would show. And whatever else Obama is, he doesn't claim to be a socialist, not would anyone identifying as a socialist claim him as one of his own. -- Stathis Papaioannou From spike66 at att.net Sun May 10 16:18:16 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 09:18:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090509122413.0224ebe8@satx.rr.com> References: <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it><8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z><0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z><875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike><4A04341E.6030605@libero.it><9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090509122413.0224ebe8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7CA8E792AE3B46BE87977AE0F92C19B3@spike> > > At 09:23 AM 5/9/2009 -0700, spike wrote: > > > >It sets off alarm bells in my head when he utters comments > like "We all > >benefit when we spread THE wealth around." THE wealth? Define THE, > >sir. > ... > > THE wealth is the wealth created by all the productive forces > of the community... Damien Very well, let us accept that definition of THE wealth. When we elect a president, we have her take the oath of office, in which she vows to uphold the constitution. The constitution was carefully designed by a bunch of guys who just finished fighting a tyrannical government. It specifically limits what the government can do to us. Although we grudging accept taxation as a necessary evil, I see nothing in the constitution that allows the president to have any say in redistributing THE wealth, as defined above. spike From spike66 at att.net Sun May 10 16:33:00 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 09:33:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou .... > > > My heartburn with Obama is that he never had that experience, he > > didn't do grinding labor for a pittance, didn't risk his > own capital > > to start or run a business. > > > > His professional experience is in suing businesses for a > ton of money. ? > > This would cause him to see business as prey, as opposed to > partners > > with goverment in wealth creation. ?He is running the > country like a > > teenager snorting cocaine. ?It sets off alarm bells in my > head when he > > utters comments like "We all benefit when we spread THE wealth > > around." ?THE wealth? ?Define THE, sir. > > ...But I'm surprised that > you would find fault with someone who, after all, only earned > as much as the market would stand. Is there any businessman > who would not do the same?... Stathis Papaioannou Stathis, the reason I didn't vote for Obama (and McCain either) is that they didn't have the critical experience in their youth of working their asses off for low pay and associating with others doing the same. Both of those guys they missed a critical lesson in life, one that must be learned early and reinforced. I don't know what the heck McCain was doing back then, but Obama describes in his book snorting cocaine, which no one with a minimum wage job will do, because it costs a ton of money. Why doesn't the press ever ask where the money came from? Then later he was suing businesses. I see nothing in that formative background which would make him realize that money is hard earned stuff, it's the lifeblood of the working class. We don't want government taking it from those who work hard and using it to bail out huge businesses that are too big to fail, but are going to fail eventually anyway. The US constitution doesn't give the government the authority to do that. spike From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 10 16:47:35 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 18:47:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <4A05584B.8030702@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A070527.1040600@libero.it> Il 09/05/2009 14.11, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/5/9 painlord2k at libero.it: > >> The capitalist risk his/her capital and defer consumption of his/her capital >> because he/she invest the capital in some enterprise. >> When I invest money in a company I could sleep and gain or I could sleep and >> lose. >> >> The unemployed on the dole can only gain from the dole as he did not invest >> and risk nothing. > Then the capitalist is lucky, or even smart, but not necessarily hard > working. > The argument was that the unemployed person is lazy and takes > from those who work. I don't know if people on dole are "lazy" or not. I know that they could decide to refuse a job if they are sure the dole will not disappear. Often, this decision would be the best option available. I don't know what are "hard working" or "lazy" in this discussion. Are you arguing that only people sweating are hard working people? Are you arguing that only people doing physical jobs are working? The capitalist job is to use his capital (and the capital other entrust to him) to produce useful goods and services. Useful is determined when people pay for them freely. In this act, all capitalists are speculation on the future. They produce stuff or services that they hope to sell in the future for a profit. The job of the capitalist is to take the burden of the risk of the enterprise. Do you think this is something not needed? Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 10 17:17:52 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 19:17:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090509122413.0224ebe8@satx.rr.com> References: <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090509122413.0224ebe8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A070C40.3050802@libero.it> Il 09/05/2009 19.49, Damien Broderick ha scritto: > At 09:23 AM 5/9/2009 -0700, spike wrote: >> >> It sets off alarm bells in my head when he utters comments like "We >> all benefit when we spread THE wealth around." THE wealth? Define >> THE, sir. > > I always assumed this is an incredible beat-up (as Aussies say of > journalistic hysteria where a statement is taken out of context and > inflated absurdly). Your assumption are wrong. Why assuming? Read and look and hear. It is all online. http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1465/pub_detail.asp Obama said he want "redistribute the wealth of people like JOE WURZELBACHER (AKA Joe The Plumber). > I explained to him that I?m planning on purchasing this company ? > it?s not something I?m gonna purchase outright, it?s something I?m > going to have to make payments on for years ? but essentially I?m > going to buy this company, and the profits generated by that could > possibly put me in that tax bracket he?s talking about and that > bothers me. It?s not like I would be rich; I would still just be a > working plumber. I work hard for my money, and the fact that he > thinks I make a little too much that he just wants to redistribute it > to other people. Some of them might need it, but at the same time, > it?s not their discretion to do it ? it?s mine. > > PM: You?re a plumber, and you?re looking to buy your own plumbing > business? > > JW: Correct. Read the rest. This is the only wealth that was and will be redistributed by socialists like Obama. From the real hard workers to their cronies. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 10 17:28:33 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 19:28:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090509122413.0224ebe8@satx.rr.com> References: <49FC6844.8040607@libero.it> <8EC6ADBDF15D4FDABEE1C01D8E8E8F8B@patrick4ezsk6z> <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090509122413.0224ebe8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A070EC1.6070807@libero.it> Il 09/05/2009 19.49, Damien Broderick ha scritto: > THE wealth is the wealth created by all the productive forces of the > community. Please define "productive forces". I don't know "productive forces". I know only individual persons. I know only individual persons work and produce goods and services. And good and services can be classified as wealth only if people want them and is willing to pay for them. Mirco From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 11 05:07:15 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 22:07:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <558450.34599.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <558450.34599.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A07B283.50603@rawbw.com> Dan wrote (5/7/2009 2:46pm) > Regarding how reform should be attempted within the > present system, I disagree that perpetuating or > expanding the system is the correct approach. Yes indeed. And I commend you also for pointing out that we can only hope to move towards eventual positions that appeal to us, and ought not outright advocate those eventual positions. > I think as libertarian ideas slowly spread, we will > slowly evolve away from the coercive system. Why are you optimistic? What can you point to in the last thirty or forty years that gives ground for optimism? In fact, right here on this list, we see a great, increasing, and ongoing retrenchment away from libertarian ideas and ideals. (It's worse year by year.) > A more radical approach is not likely to > succeed simply because most people don't > understand libertarian principles That's some of it all right. But also not to be underestimated is the feeling that most people have that one way or the other, their own value systems must triumph, no matter what it takes (e.g. coercion of some kind or other). A classic example is the "progressive" view here in the United States concerning the Supreme Court. Before 1920 or 1930, the progressives were all in favor of weakening the court---but this was merely, it turned out, because the court did not tend at the time to favor their policies. Ever since, it's been the legislatures that progressives want to weaken, and the courts to be strengthened---again, merely because of the transient fact that current legislatures are opposed to their agenda. As is so often the case, there is no principle in operation here. Only expediency. So far as I can tell, expediency has been uniformly increasing in the U.S. at the expense of principle for about one hundred and fifty years. Lee > -- even if they default to practicing them successfully > in most of their lives (i.e., most people do not > initiate force in most cases to get what they want > and live their lives) -- and lack imagination to see > how a non-command system will work. From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 11 05:26:58 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 22:26:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: References: <953258.34086.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7641ddc60905052119s62a3116am6fcbff27ce983c90@mail.gmail.com> <4A03AF5B.9040707@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A07B722.3090308@rawbw.com> BillK wrote: > On 5/8/09, Lee Corbin wrote: . >> We too seldom inquire as to "how did anyone >> become wealthy in the first place?". "How >> did any society succeed to the point that >> we have something against which to compare >> so-called failed societies?" >> >> Remember that this is what happened originally. >> This was the natural state. This is the default >> condition. We must focus on how any society rose >> above this default condition, and what makes it >> possible for any society to do so. >> >> The culture had to become "strong" enough so >> that a sufficient number of people chose to >> behave differently. This was accomplished, >> historically, in precisely the way that Rafal >> indicates, namely by those who failed to adhere >> to high standards becoming examples of what >> not to do. This is how probity evolved. >> > > No, it didn't. > > In early societies, violence was the secret sauce, with slavery close behind. It sounds as though we are talking about different points in history. > People got rich by using force to take it from weaker people / > nations. Then using more force (legal system, armies, etc.) to keep > control. Yes, that's a good description of the formation of all the early states. Things began what I'll call the modern transition in the 1700s. > The idea of democracy and working to better > yourself is very recent. Well, the "democracy" or republican form of government, despite its classical roots, became of significant force really only in the 19th century. The period starting in the 1820s that lasted about a century is the period to focus on. That's when modern wealth started being produced at fantastic levels (though we seldom appreciate it properly). An extremely good book is Bernstein, "The Birth of Plenty". Clark "Farewell to Alms" even pinpoints the years right around 1820 as pivotal. > And mostly it is not allowed to interfere with > the existing rich and powerful classes. (Some > exceptions, of course). Well, I think that's quite right too :) but not really germane. (E.g. a certain part of the present financial imbroglio is due to financial elites in the western world.) When I wrote >> The culture had to become "strong" enough so >> that a sufficient number of people chose to >> behave differently.... [exemplified in a >> negative way] by those who failed to adhere >> to high standards becoming examples of what >> not to do. This is how probity evolved. I was speaking of this modern period. I think that there was Darwinian selection of successful cultural practices throughout the whole modern period. Folks are conditioned to an amazing extent by what their parents do/did, and what they see the people around them doing. To the degree that human effort makes any difference (the "left" says "not a lot", the right says "it's everything", e.g. Horatio Alger myths), it stands to reason that bad examples won't be emulated, and good ones will. How do you think that probity evolved? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 11 05:42:01 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 22:42:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The choice wasn't death/was Re: Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: References: <297079.88779.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A03B8A8.3010505@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A07BAA9.1010408@rawbw.com> Stathis wrote: > 2009/5/8 Lee Corbin : > >> eager Social Security office workers were looking >> for people just like me to put on the dole. One >> of the greatest strokes of luck in my life is that >> they didn't find me in time. >> >> So I had to leave southern California, all my chess >> pals, all the distractions of life that I had >> accumulated in my misspent youth, and focus on >> making a living. Thank goodness. > Are you saying you would have been content with the > dole had it been available? Sadly, I'm afraid that that's exactly the case, although "content" is surely too strong a word. How about "resigned"? One person I know who didn't want to work has managed to convince the State of California that he is insane. And, uh, by "didn't want to work", I mean that he was never forced to make really hard choices and undergo retraining (he's very bright), or start at some low wage and work his way up---the state was there to give him an easier way out. Another person I know is a sort of hypochondriac. He did leave California, and found a government- supported life in a nearby state. He's hardly happy---but he (like my other acquaintance) is now thoroughly addicted to the dole, and is completely convinced that his illnesses make impossible any improvement in his condition. (There's only a small chance that he's right.) I offer these examples, of course, not by way of proof, but by way of illustrating a process that stand to reason: In America, even, the state actively intercedes in many, many people's lives destroying incentive. Quite a number of third-generation welfare recipients, or so I am told, now know no other way of living---you have a lot of kids and let the government take care of you, and, although there is a lot of hassle, you adapt. > Then to be consistent you would have obtained > a part-time job had the dole not been available, > i.e. one requiring the minimum effort to obtain > the same income as the dole. Well, I did try that. The work was simply too nasty (in one case, so boring that I was not able to do the work as well as others). It was at this point that I could have become addicted to the dole, and eventually, if the U.S. government had followed some European ones, learned to live very cheaply, perhaps in other countries, on the little money provided by my government. Fortunately for me, I was too lazy to do a through job of investigating all that the state of California had to offer, and I didn't happen to know anyone at the time who had learned how to extract a daily living from them. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 11 06:01:08 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 23:01:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A07BF24.3060304@rawbw.com> Damien wrote > ...all this is self-evident. It has nothing to do with the > point I raised, which is that if giving tax-sourced money > to the lazy poor is held to be wrong *in part because* it > corrodes the moral character of the recipients (among other > reasons why it's wicked and damaging), glad you're coming around on that > then giving money to the children of the rich might do > just the same damage, I must completely agree. Who wouldn't? Only those ignorant, I assume, of the actual histories of what happened to most people who inherited vast wealth. The true libertarians don't have any mixed feelings here (not being consequentialists). They sees it simply as a violation of property rights, pure and simple. As somewhat of a consequentialist, I agree that you have raised a valid question. If I am trying to weigh the long-term consequences of each policy, I must investigate the tradeoff between A. the wasted talent, energy, and work of those who merely inherit wealth (in most cases) with B. the diminished incentive of those who earn big fortunes, who know that when they're gone it will all be "for nothing" (at least nothing that concerns them personally). Even if I had a clear idea how to weigh A against B, the current times are changing too quickly to allow much validity to such a judgment. So I (very weakly) guess that probably the use of the money should be left to the discretion of those who earned it (and were motivated to do so in part by the benefit they anticipated their beloved children would receive), and kept out of the hands of government bureaucrats, who tend to use any excess monies to destroy the foundations of wealth-creation. Lee From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 11 06:17:36 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 01:17:36 -0500 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <4A07BF24.3060304@rawbw.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> <4A07BF24.3060304@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090511011047.024bfe00@satx.rr.com> At 11:01 PM 5/10/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: >the use of the >money should be... kept out >of the hands of government bureaucrats, who >tend to use any excess monies to destroy the >foundations of wealth-creation. I know, I know. It's scandalous how much is just thrown away educating young humans, building roads and sewers, contributing to some portion of health care. This sort of flagrant waste just erodes everything we hold dear, we wealth creators. Damien Broderick [Yes, it's the *bloat* that's really at fault--a vice one never encounters in business... banking, say, or health insurance] From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 11 06:31:16 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 23:31:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <4A0466C7.8040709@libero.it> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> <4A0466C7.8040709@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A07C634.9010805@rawbw.com> Mirco wrote on 5/8/2009 10:07 AM > The right to inheritance is the right to inherit because other > unrelated people have not the right to take the inheritance for > themselves. The right to inherit is, mainly, a right to leave our wealth > to someone after we die. The inheriting people have not the right to > kill us to collect before or to force us to work more so they will be > able to collect more. Thanks for stating this much better than I could; we end up in the same place, mostly, but by different routes. (I also appreciate Dan's very readable essays on basic libertarianism.) You see this as a fundamental question of "rights", a language that for some reason has never made much sense to me, while I see it in terms of what will happen to a society that adopts confiscation as policy. > Entitlements funded with taxes give > the entitled people an unjust claim > that they can collect from taxed > people when thy want collect what they > want collect, as the taxed people have > no right to complain. Quite apart from the "justice", I come at it from the view of incentive. Here is the difference between true charity and entitlement: in the former, the receiver realizes the act as charity, and especially if he or she knows the giver, is motivated not to disappoint. Whereas the problems with "entitlements" hardly need stating. > The collecting people receiving > damage is not a problem, as they are > free to refuse the unjust help > offered and so refusing to take the > damage. Yes, but it's a very rare person who refuses such gifts. I myself, for example, would be completely against the U.S. government issuing checks to every adult citizen for $100,000, but you can be sure I'd cash mine. At least half of the real problem is that the gifts *are* accepted, and destroy motivation and incentive accordingly. I wish I knew why this doesn't seem obvious to many people. > The real problem is the damage > imparted to the taxed people, > that will find themselves forced > to pay and will choose to work > less or will choose to use welfare. Some are affected, but not all. Yes, the mechanism you refer to is real and operative. But in many cases, especially those who find their work rewarding, we can't really speculate on the effect, IMO. > [Damien writes] > >> Or [do entitlements] only corrupt those >> worthless lazy stupid-but-cunning millions Hey, let's not get personal! >> sucking on welfare's tit? (Or does it >> corrupt everyone alike, Mirco is probably right; it's too hazardous to generalize. Some people have (for whatever reason) a strong enough work ethic that it's not corrupting for them, for others it is. However, it's pretty easy to see that it often does corrupt, and not just in our own times. > [Damien wrote] > >> This line of thought might lead to further questions: if nanotopia >> arrives, with all of us getting food, shelter, education, communication >> and transport for free, must we face a future of hopeless degradation >> because these benefits are *unearned*? Or is that okay, because in this >> case the goodies aren't being taken from your pocket and "spread around" >> to the welfare queens--and besides, you don't have a taxable job anyway >> because the AIs took it? As someone wrote, this is a very difficult situation to analyze indeed. That person (sorry for the lacking ref, but it was BillK I think) wisely noted that nothing changes in isolation. I've felt for a decade and a half a lack of imagination on my own part about how the economic consequences would unfold. We see this in miniature all the time, however. Every time someone invents a new widgit, we have wealth creation. But there are myriad mysteries here. For example, when the European countries "damage" African economies by exporting artificially cheap food to them, how exactly is this different from an African genius inventing a machine that does the same thing? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 11 06:38:42 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 23:38:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090511011047.024bfe00@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> <4A07BF24.3060304@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090511011047.024bfe00@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A07C7F2.1020800@rawbw.com> Damien notes > At 11:01 PM 5/10/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: > >> the use of the >> money should be... kept out >> of the hands of government bureaucrats, who >> tend to use any excess monies to destroy the >> foundations of wealth-creation. > > I know, I know. It's scandalous how much is just thrown away educating > young humans, building roads and sewers, contributing to some portion of > health care. This sort of flagrant waste just erodes everything we hold > dear, we wealth creators. Oh, I'll grant that things could always be done *more wastefully* than at present. But one by one of your points, the libertarians do have answers. Realizing that the degree to which a society can become libertarian in the short run is severely circumscribed by ambient cultural norms, I think it's a waste of time to speculate too much about *some* of the things you note, however. E.g., basic infrastructure is one. But education? Ever thought about what our education system would look like in twenty-five years or so if completely privatized (with, vouchers, say, for the time being, utilized)? The innovations dreamed up, and the customization to particular kids would become extraordinary. We've sadly, at least most of us, have grown up on the default assumption that only government can provide certain things. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 11 06:53:49 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 23:53:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: References: <191607.26241.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A043964.7010108@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A07CB7D.90602@rawbw.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > So if I decided at age 18 that I don't want to obey the unjust > taxation laws, for example, I could be expelled (to where?), but for > those who accept citizenship taxation is part of the contract they > have entered into? As a practical matter, I think that I have to agree with you. Pure libertarians, in my view, constantly theorize about ideal individuals, as if such really existed. Our messy historical reality proves that we must hold libertarianism only as a direction toward which to move. What would have happened to any classical country of the 18th or 19th centuries that had a uniform change of consciousness, and whose residents all suddently became libertarians? This is not as far fetched as it sounds; something quite similar happened to the Polish nobility. The answer is that they're quickly gobbled up by outside gangs of one kind or another. Sad as it is to admit it, the U.S. government is merely the biggest and toughest gang on the North American continent. The vast federal armies made it perfectly clear in 1865 what happens to anybody that wants to go their own way. Look at a globe. See any areas where states haven't imposed, by force, their wills? Sadly, we have to work from within the present system, helping here and there to strengthen what is good, what is free, provided we remain within what is culturally possible. And even more sadly, respect for basic freedoms (and non-intrusion by governments, either fiscally or by men with badges and guns coming to make sure that you do what they think is right medically regarding your children), is culturally on the wane. Who could even have (on this list) imagined fifteen years ago that Voltaire's principle would be questioned? Who sixty or seventy years ago in America could have guessed that government would come to absorb about fifty percent of everyone's pay, and would soon be trying to impose communist health care? Lee From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 11 07:26:06 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 02:26:06 -0500 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <4A07C7F2.1020800@rawbw.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> <4A07BF24.3060304@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090511011047.024bfe00@satx.rr.com> <4A07C7F2.1020800@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090511020825.0234dcf8@satx.rr.com> At 11:38 PM 5/10/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: >Ever thought about what our >education system would look like in >twenty-five years or so if completely >privatized (with, vouchers, say, for >the time being, utilized)? The innovations >dreamed up, and the customization to >particular kids would become extraordinary. I don't have to imagine it, I was "schooled" in a series of working class Catholic schools, paid for entirely privately, in the days before the Australian electorate agreed to give Catholics back some if not all the tax quantum they'd paid for education. Bad majority of bigoted voters, yes. But the private "education" I got was appalling, full of repression, ignorance and a measure of violence, sexually weird (all boys' schools, e.g.), incompetent. It might be retorted, "Oh, but look, you turned out okay, you have a doctorate and a bunch of books to your name." Not because of those schools, trust me. I turned out so academically fucked up at 17 that it took me 5 years to not quite get a degree (I caught up eventually); when I entered university I had *almost no cultural capital* outside a lot of rote instantly forgotten principal-exports-of-Peru crap and Irish Catholic godswallop. That's what "completely privatized" can do for a kid. At the age of 12 I was being treated as if my IQ was 50 or 60 points lower than it really was. You can find awful tales of govt schools that are as dismal, I know. Barbara spent some time teaching allegedly ineducable kids and did so brilliantly with several of them that she was fired by the slackarse incumbents. It's a crap shoot, maybe. How marvelous to be raised in a $cientology school, say, or a madras. Right, so much more liberating than those statist govt schools. Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 11 07:30:17 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 02:30:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <4A07CB7D.90602@rawbw.com> References: <191607.26241.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A043964.7010108@libero.it> <4A07CB7D.90602@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090511022826.024689d8@satx.rr.com> At 11:53 PM 5/10/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: >Who sixty or seventy >years ago in America could have guessed that >government ... would soon >be trying to impose communist health care? Lee, careful; this is the kind of rash statement that gives communism a good name. Damien Broderick From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 11 07:51:38 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 00:51:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090511020825.0234dcf8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> <4A07BF24.3060304@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090511011047.024bfe00@satx.rr.com> <4A07C7F2.1020800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090511020825.0234dcf8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A07D90A.6010008@rawbw.com> Damien Broderick wrote: > At 11:38 PM 5/10/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: > >> Ever thought about what our >> education system would look like in >> twenty-five years or so if completely >> privatized (with, vouchers, say, for >> the time being, utilized)? The innovations >> dreamed up, and the customization to >> particular kids would become extraordinary. > > I don't have to imagine it, I was "schooled" in a series of working > class Catholic schools, paid for entirely privately, in the days before > the Australian electorate agreed to give Catholics back some if not all > the tax quantum they'd paid for education. Bad majority of bigoted > voters, yes. But the private "education" I got was appalling, I understand. But of course, so far as private schools went, the Catholics had a near monopoly. It was a part of being a good Catholic, I imagine, to even pay the extra of having your kids educated there. That bears little resemblance to what I'm talking about. To be sure, though, there are no guarantees. But a true market place, where some kid repeatedly doesn't do well or work out at some schools provides a "market opportunity" for entrepreneurs. > You can find awful tales of govt schools that are as dismal, I know. > Barbara spent some time teaching allegedly ineducable kids and did so > brilliantly with several of them that she was fired by the slackarse > incumbents. It's a crap shoot, maybe. Well, it would be just great for a few states in the U.S. to go entirely voucher. This couldn't be free of all government regulation, of course (not at first), but it would be a start. > How marvelous to be raised in a > $cientology school, say, or a madras. > Right, so much more liberating > than those statist govt schools. Not for your tastes nor mine. But there are a lot of good private schools. And there would be a hell of a lot more if people weren't simultaneously having to pay for the public ones. Lee From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 11 08:01:00 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 03:01:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090511022826.024689d8@satx.rr.com> References: <191607.26241.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A043964.7010108@libero.it> <4A07CB7D.90602@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090511022826.024689d8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090511030013.024941c0@satx.rr.com> At 02:30 AM 5/11/2009 -0500, I wrote: >>Who sixty or seventy >>years ago in America could have guessed that >>government ... would soon >>be trying to impose communist health care? > >Lee, careful; this is the kind of rash statement that gives >communism a good name. Consider Krugman's opinion: From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 11 08:18:31 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 08:18:31 +0000 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <4A07D90A.6010008@rawbw.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> <4A07BF24.3060304@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090511011047.024bfe00@satx.rr.com> <4A07C7F2.1020800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090511020825.0234dcf8@satx.rr.com> <4A07D90A.6010008@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On 5/11/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > I understand. But of course, so far as private > schools went, the Catholics had a near monopoly. > It was a part of being a good Catholic, I imagine, > to even pay the extra of having your kids educated > there. > > That bears little resemblance to what I'm talking > about. To be sure, though, there are no guarantees. > > But a true market place, where some kid repeatedly > doesn't do well or work out at some schools provides > a "market opportunity" for entrepreneurs. > > "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man" is the motto of the Jesuits. Jesuit schools are usually boarding schools to reduce the influence of parents and the outside world. From: Jesuit schools constitute one of the most effective forms for the apostolic activity of the Society of Jesus in the United States. Jesuits and their colleagues educate over 46,000 young men and women each year at 71 secondary or pre-secondary schools in 25 states ---------- The trouble with a 'market' in schools is that there is no standard to check them by. Every crazy group will have their own schools. Even 'good' schools will be sneaking in minor classes in creationism or bomb-making or the art of shoplifting, and so on. A 'market' has to have a minimum standard to attain and a supervisory administration to stop wrong behavior. Just like any market, from street markets to Wall Street (we can wish!). BillK From painlord2k at libero.it Mon May 11 15:07:46 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 17:07:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090511020825.0234dcf8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> <4A07BF24.3060304@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090511011047.024bfe00@satx.rr.com> <4A07C7F2.1020800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090511020825.0234dcf8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A083F42.1070206@libero.it> Il 11/05/2009 9.26, Damien Broderick ha scritto: > I don't have to imagine it, I was "schooled" in a series of working > class Catholic schools, paid for entirely privately, in the days before > the Australian electorate agreed to give Catholics back some if not all > the tax quantum they'd paid for education. I would blame the people that send you to the Catholic schools and paid for them, not the Catholic schools. What is left undisclosed is "how were the alternatives available at the time?" Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.325 / Virus Database: 270.12.24/2108 - Release Date: 05/11/09 05:52:00 From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 11 15:12:21 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 01:12:21 +1000 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> Message-ID: 2009/5/11 spike : > Stathis, the reason I didn't vote for Obama (and McCain either) is that they > didn't have the critical experience in their youth of working their asses > off for low pay and associating with others doing the same. ?Both of those > guys they missed a critical lesson in life, one that must be learned early > and reinforced. ?I don't know what the heck McCain was doing back then, but > Obama describes in his book snorting cocaine, which no one with a minimum > wage job will do, because it costs a ton of money. ?Why doesn't the press > ever ask where the money came from? ?Then later he was suing businesses. ?I > see nothing in that formative background which would make him realize that > money is hard earned stuff, it's the lifeblood of the working class. ?We > don't want government taking it from those who work hard and using it to > bail out huge businesses that are too big to fail, but are going to fail > eventually anyway. ?The US constitution doesn't give the government the > authority to do that. I know a lot of people with minimal funds who blow them on drugs; both habitually irresponsible people and people who work/study and generally behave responsibly except for their irregular binges. Usually they grow out of it when they are older and, ironically, have more money. However, the more interesting point you make is that Obama did not work hard for his money. I am surprised that as a supporter of capitalism you would hold this against him. As I said in a previous post, a definition of capitalist success could be making more and more money while doing less and less work. If you decide, after a moment's reflection, that XYZ shares are going to go up, and then make a huge profit on them, the fact that you didn't do much work or even risk much capital only makes the achievement more impressive. This is essentially what Warren Buffett did, except that he didn't always get it right and had to invest substantial sums. Had he made the same fortune even faster, doing less work and risking less money, he would have been hailed as an even greater genius. -- Stathis Papaioannou From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 11 15:05:21 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 08:05:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance Message-ID: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/11/09, BillK wrote: [big snip] > The trouble with a 'market' in schools is that there is no > standard to check them by. Actually, I think standards evolve. The difference between having political control of schools is that whatever standards arise are generally political and all too often one-size-fits-all. This results in the pattern of change we see in current educational systems: they tend to change episodically as one group captures control and enforces its view of the right way to education. And typically this ossifies until pressure builds for the next wave of reforms. > Every crazy group will have their own > schools. Even > 'good' schools will be sneaking in minor classes in > creationism or > bomb-making or the art of shoplifting, and so on. But this is so now with homeschooling and private schools, no? And, yes, we do see some crazy stuff being taught, though the surprising thing to me seems to be that most homeschooling and private schooling seems fairly tame and mainstream. And public schools often teach crazy things (think of the mainstream view of history) or fail to teach things that work (think phonics in the US) or are correct (think evolution in the US). > A 'market' has to have a minimum standard to attain and a > supervisory > administration to stop wrong behavior. Just like any > market, from > street markets to Wall Street (we can wish!). See above. Market standards evolve. In fact, all standards had to start this way. Look at, e.g., legal standards. In Common Law and commercial law, these evolved and later the state took them over freezing in standards from a particular time (though, to be sure, state law still evolves, but, again, in an episodic "statis followed by reform" rather than a continuous improvement way.). There's no reason this can't apply to schools today. And as for markets needing minimum standards, what is meant here? The problem is the state usually interferes with spotaneous ordering of markets, including Wall Street. In the latter, for instance, the state tends to protect well connected big players and does all sorts of things to prevent people via markets from cleaning house. For example, in the US, laws that prevent corporate takeovers and the like shield management from the consequences of its incompetence. The recent wave of subsidies to bigs banks and large corporations likewise prevent the market from taking down inefficience firms. The problem seems to me NOT that Wall Street needs some governmental authority to step in to prevent cheating, but that we need the government to stop bailing out or otherwise shielding Wall Street insiders from competition and from their mistakes.* I think Extropians should be for better markets, but the path to these is NOT by having some central planner decree standards, but by fostering an environment where good standards can evolve and change faster. (Again, if central planners were good at setting such standards, then why does central planning fail so often?) Regards, Dan * Also, there's the curious but usually unnoticed phenomenon of big firms calling for regulations. Why is this? It seems to me this is often to create regulatory hurdles that smaller competitors will find it harder to leap over. E.g., recently in the US Walmart voiced its support for raising the minimum wage. Does anyone honestly believe Walmart did so because it was feeling particularly altruistic (even if altruistic with federal power)? No, it seems to have been a good public relations move, but even more a great move to shake off competition from smaller firms who will find it much more difficult to pay their works more. In other words, Walmart is willing to harm itself -- absorbing higher wage money costs -- as along as this harm is much more serious to its competition. From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 11 15:33:57 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 01:33:57 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The choice wasn't death/was Re: Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: <4A07BAA9.1010408@rawbw.com> References: <297079.88779.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A03B8A8.3010505@rawbw.com> <4A07BAA9.1010408@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/11 Lee Corbin : >> Then to be consistent you would have obtained >> a part-time job had the dole not been available, >> i.e. one requiring the minimum effort to obtain >> the same income as the dole. > > Well, I did try that. The work was simply too > nasty (in one case, so boring that I was not > able to do the work as well as others). It was > at this point that I could have become addicted > to the dole, and eventually, if the U.S. > government had followed some European ones, > learned to live very cheaply, perhaps in other > countries, on the little money provided by > my government. > > Fortunately for me, I was too lazy to do a > through job of investigating all that the state > of California had to offer, and I didn't happen > to know anyone at the time who had learned how > to extract a daily living from them. It doesn't make sense that you say you would have taken the dole, yet ended up retraining and (I assume) working full time. What if there were no dole but you had, say, a couple of hundred thousand dollars from savings or inheritance, which you could have invested for a modest lifelong income, similar to the dole; in fact, even easier than the dole, since you would not have had to apply, continually justify to the government your need, explain to others that you were on the dole, etc. Would the money have been an equally great or greater personal disaster? Should we worry that savings can corrupt moral fibre and urge people to spend their income as soon as they are paid, to minimise the risk of laziness leading to the nation's ruin? -- Stathis Papaioannou From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 11 15:18:26 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 08:18:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion Message-ID: <492727.8754.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/8/09, Max More wrote: > Daniel: I agree with almost all of > what you've written on this thread (and have enjoyed your > clarity of expression). Thanks. > However, I'm puzzled by what seems > to be your complete rejection of "tacit consent". Do you > really deny that this can exist? The classic example is when > you walk into a restaurant. You may (or may not) look at the > prices, but you never explicitly say that you will pay them. > But you certainly don't expect to be able to walk out > without paying. The burden is on you -- quite reasonably -- > to pay up, unless you have explicitly announced to the owner > or manager in charge that you are ordering the food with no > intention of paying. Perhaps I'm a bit too strident in arguing against it, but I think there's a different between this form of consent as used by social contract theorist and the sort of "implied contract" form used in everyday life. To wit, the former is general and often at odds with what goes on in everyday life. E.g., in the restaurant example, there ARE restaurants where you must pay in advance; so there's no universal social contract for restaurants. Also, sticking with this example, there is an exit option (a way of getting out of or avoiding the interaction) -- unlike with the usual social contract theory of the state. I mean where someone might avoid the interaction all together. In fact, the usual social contract theory is used to justify why there is no exit or an exit that is extremely hard to use, such as leaving the country (the typical one paraded around by conservatives in the US) or taking over the state (as in voting your majority into power in a democracy or having a revolution). Finally, the form of implied contracts tend to evolve and grow out of practice. There's no pre-theoretical reason why pay-after-you-eat is the general rule (with many exceptions) is restaurants. It evolved that way and it's become a de facto standard -- but no central authority has to enforce it, some restaurants can adopt another rule, and the general rule might change to something else. This seems to me very different from the way social contract theories operate -- where people are general told they tacitly consent to things that are universal, in some sense unchanging, and also where alternatives are usually not allowed or only allowed under extreme conditions. > I agree that it's easy for statist-minded people to abuse > the idea of implicit/tacit consent, but that's not > sufficient reason to reject it entirely. Right? As I recall, > even Murray Rothbard accepts this case of tacit consent. IIRC, he I think does, but with the points I made above. IIRC, too, there's a libertarian presumption in his views on this: that the presumption of any implied contract is always in the direction of individual autonomy over state power. Some might question this presumption, but I actually think that objectively this presumption is sound given that state power is far more likely to be abused and cause problems than individual autonomy. (This is not to say that latter is problem free, but merely that the basket of problems seems, all else being the same, much smaller and easily to deal with.) Regards, Dan From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 11 16:02:25 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 02:02:25 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <4A07CB7D.90602@rawbw.com> References: <191607.26241.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A043964.7010108@libero.it> <4A07CB7D.90602@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/11 Lee Corbin : > Who could even have (on this list) imagined > fifteen years ago that Voltaire's principle > would be questioned? Who sixty or seventy > years ago in America could have guessed that > government would come to absorb about fifty > percent of everyone's pay, and would soon > be trying to impose communist health care? You keep going on about health care, but it is one of the things that clearly works better when there is government involvement. You speculate that if the mostly private health system in the US were completely deregulated, health care would become both cheaper and better. But there is no evidence for this, anywhere in the world. Your position reminds me of apologists for the Soviet Union arguing that it failed because it wasn't communist *enough*. -- Stathis Papaioannou From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 11 16:19:56 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 16:19:56 +0000 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 5/11/09, dan_ustwrote: > * Also, there's the curious but usually unnoticed phenomenon of big firms > calling for regulations. Why is this? It seems to me this is often to create > regulatory hurdles that smaller competitors will find it harder to leap over. > E.g., recently in the US Walmart voiced its support for raising the minimum wage. > Does anyone honestly believe Walmart did so because it was feeling > particularly altruistic (even if altruistic with federal power)? No, it seems to > have been a good public relations move, but even more a great move to > shake off competition from smaller firms who will find it much more difficult > to pay their works more. In other words, Walmart is willing to harm itself -- > absorbing higher wage money costs -- as along as this harm is much more > serious to its competition. > Just a point of correction here, as somebody, it might have been you, :) has quoted this before. This comment is back to front. I doubt very much that Walmart is worried about smaller competitors. As you should know, the usual effect of a Walmart store arriving in town is to close down all the small shopkeepers. Walmart supports increasing the minimum wage because many of its customers are minimum wage earners, so they would have a little more money to spend in Walmart. BillK From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 11 16:41:34 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 09:41:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance Message-ID: <994573.67701.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/11/09, BillK wrote: > On 5/11/09, dan_ustwrote: > > >? *? Also, there's the curious but usually > unnoticed phenomenon of big firms > > calling for regulations.? Why is this?? It > seems to me this is often to create > > regulatory hurdles that smaller competitors will find > it harder to leap over. > > E.g., recently in the US Walmart voiced its support > for raising the minimum wage. > > Does anyone honestly believe Walmart did so because it > was feeling > > particularly altruistic (even if altruistic with > federal power)?? No, it seems to > > have been a good public relations move, but even more > a great move to > > shake off competition from smaller firms who will find > it much more difficult > > to pay their works more.? In other words, Walmart > is willing to harm itself -- > > absorbing higher wage money costs -- as along as this > harm is much more > > serious to its competition. > > > > > Just a point of correction here, as somebody, it might have > been you, > :) has quoted this before. > > This comment is back to front. I doubt very much that > Walmart is > worried about smaller competitors. As you should know, the > usual > effect of a Walmart store arriving in town is to close down > all the > small shopkeepers. > > Walmart supports increasing the minimum wage because many > of its > customers are minimum wage earners, so they would have a > little more > money to spend in Walmart. That might be their public relations or the belief of Walmart supporters -- and who truly can peer into their hearts to know for sure -- but it seems clear to me that this is a case of a firm supporter a policy change that will hurt its competitors. This doesn't just apply in places where Walmart already has a presence or just to mom and pops. Also, it's merely a case of an established firm (or set of firms) pushing for regulations putatively for the public good but actually which strengthen the market position of that firm -- at both its competitors and the public's expense. Finally, even were Walmart to believe raising the minimum wage would make its customers wealthier -- hence, able to buy more at Walmart -- this would have to come at someone else's expense, particularly of those whose marginal productivity was below the minimum wage. Over time, those people or people who enter the market at that lower level (viz., those wose marginal productivity is, again, below the minimum wage) would be unemployed. (Of course, it's quite possible execs at Walmart really don't understand the basic economics here. After all, most people seem to believe raising the price floor set on labor actually makes everyone better off.* I doubt this is true of Walmart execs -- as I doubt when any business pushes for something for the public good. And I feel the same way about politicians. So, unlike faux libertarians, I don't have any pretenses about businesses being for the free market. They are usually the ones calling the loudest for regulations -- often eager to make sure such regulations are crafted in their favor.) Don't you believe this is a case where the subject line should be altered? Regards, Dan * Of course, it makes some people better off, but always at the expense of others. Were this not so, why not set the minimum wage at, say, $500 an hour? Surely, a few people have a marginal productivity higher than this, but for the rest of us (including yours truly), this would be a definitely bump up. (And if this sort of logic works, why don't high-end retailers -- think of thecorner.com -- push for a $500 an hour minimum wage? Because at that level, the fallacy is readily apparent.) From natasha at natasha.cc Mon May 11 16:31:26 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 11:31:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Education, Wealth and the future (was RE: libertarians and inheritance) In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090511011047.024bfe00@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com><4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com><4A07BF24.3060304@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090511011047.024bfe00@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <593890E78514480A94C6BA63E16D5CE7@DFC68LF1> Damien, thanks. Good laugh. Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More >the use of the >money should be... kept out >of the hands of government bureaucrats, who tend to use any excess >monies to destroy the foundations of wealth-creation. I know, I know. It's scandalous how much is just thrown away educating young humans, building roads and sewers, contributing to some portion of health care. This sort of flagrant waste just erodes everything we hold dear, we wealth creators. Damien Broderick [Yes, it's the *bloat* that's really at fault--a vice one never encounters in business... banking, say, or health insurance] _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 11 16:59:25 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 09:59:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion Message-ID: <617521.78544.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/11/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/11 Lee Corbin : >> Who could even have (on this list) imagined >> fifteen years ago that Voltaire's principle >> would be questioned? Who sixty or seventy >> years ago in America could have guessed that >> government would come to absorb about fifty >> percent of everyone's pay, and would soon >> be trying to impose communist health care? I disagree with Lee's rhetoric here. I don't think it's communist healthcare; but it's definitely not free market and healthcare in the US has not been predominantly free market for many decades now. > You keep going on about health care, but it is one of the > things that > clearly works better when there is government involvement. I disagree, but what's your evidence for this? From my readings, it seems to me that government involvement has made healthcare much more costly -- especially since 1960 in the US -- and slowed down the pace of innovation. Of course, the latter is based on counterfactuals partly -- what might've happened had healthcare reform been in the direction of a free market (as in, in the US, abolishing the FDA, getting rid of the AMA's monopoly powers, and removing government completely from provisioning and mandating healthcare). > You > speculate that if the mostly private health system in the > US were > completely deregulated, health care would become both > cheaper and better. I think this is evidence. In the US, the costs of healthcare, for the most part, have been only loosely linked to actual service, so there's a tendency for overpricing -- as actual customers are not cost-sensitive. For example, as was pointed out many years ago, in one area of the country (I think it was in Houston, Texas), a simple blood test of the same quality (I forget what for) ranged in price from, IIRC, $20 to $100. But people getting the blood test were almost always paying via their employer's mandated health insurance. I.e., if they got the cheaper test, they didn't save any money for themselves, but merely for the health insurers. That removes one incentive to compete on price. (It also led insurance companies to lobby for cost controls. The market reform would've been to remove mandated health insurance.*) > But there is no evidence for this, anywhere in the > world. Your > position reminds me of apologists for the Soviet Union > arguing that it > failed because it wasn't communist *enough*. What's meant by "communist" here? If it's the defining economic feature of the Soviet system -- central economic planning -- then those apologists are completely, unequivocally wrong. Central economic planning failed (and continues to fail; in the US, e.g., the central bank is central economic planning for the money system and the recent bust is merely its latest flop) as can be seen by how poorly it compared with the output and dynamism of even the highly regulated economies of the West.** (Also, another features of the Soviet system made it hard to spot this: the lack of an open society where the success or failure of the system could be openly considered and debated.) Regards, Dan * Speaking of which, as one of the uninsured for many years, had I thought I needed health insurance at the time and we were under a free market, I'd probably opt for a very high deductible, those lower my premium. I wouldn't want health insurance to pay for routine visits, but for catastrophic/unlikely events like me getting serious illness or suffering massive trauma. Think if car insurance covered oil changes and tire rotation. (In the US, car insurance is mandated anyhow, so it's already got a monopoly price baked in.) My guess is the cost of car insurance would rise by orders of magnitude and then people would call for nationalizing car insurance. ** Not to mention, Mises showed theoretically why this was so and predicted its failure early on. He even took Lenin's New Economic Policy as evidence for his view being correct -- and others have seen it as an open admission that central economic planning can't work. From natasha at natasha.cc Mon May 11 16:34:44 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 11:34:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] SUBJECT lines (RE: libertarians and inheritance) In-Reply-To: References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <0D7A6792683A442BB7915B0FABE24453@DFC68LF1> Please change the subject line to reflect the contents of the posts. Many thanks, Natasha Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 11:20 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance On 5/11/09, dan_ustwrote: > * Also, there's the curious but usually unnoticed phenomenon of big > firms calling for regulations. Why is this? It seems to me this is > often to create regulatory hurdles that smaller competitors will find it harder to leap over. > E.g., recently in the US Walmart voiced its support for raising the minimum wage. > Does anyone honestly believe Walmart did so because it was feeling > particularly altruistic (even if altruistic with federal power)? No, > it seems to have been a good public relations move, but even more a > great move to shake off competition from smaller firms who will find > it much more difficult to pay their works more. In other words, > Walmart is willing to harm itself -- absorbing higher wage money costs > -- as along as this harm is much more serious to its competition. > Just a point of correction here, as somebody, it might have been you, :) has quoted this before. This comment is back to front. I doubt very much that Walmart is worried about smaller competitors. As you should know, the usual effect of a Walmart store arriving in town is to close down all the small shopkeepers. Walmart supports increasing the minimum wage because many of its customers are minimum wage earners, so they would have a little more money to spend in Walmart. BillK _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 11 18:35:42 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 11:35:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Advocacy and libertarian optimism/was Re: The Circle of Coercion Message-ID: <852647.10086.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/11/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > Dan wrote (5/7/2009 2:46pm) >> Regarding how reform should be attempted within the >> present system, I disagree that perpetuating or >> expanding the system is the correct approach. > > Yes indeed. And I commend you also for pointing out > that we can only hope to move towards eventual positions > that appeal to us, and ought not outright advocate those > eventual positions. Actually, I do think one ought to "outright advocate eventual positions."? I think, for instance, that market anarchists should advocate market anarchism and all that goes with it.? I'm just a bit pessimistic about most people, especially most intellectuals, understanding this position.? (Think of how hard it is to get intellectuals to understand Darwinian evolution.? In fact, one of the strange things I've whined about before is that some intellectuals -- especially among so called liberals -- readily accept that the living world self-organizes via biological evolution; in other words, they have no problem accepting the notion of order without a conscious plan.? Yet they can't see this happening in markets -- which they seem to see as total chaos -- unless someone sets standards, makes overall policies, guides the overall direction of the economic.? Meanwhile another set of intellectual -- usually among conservatives -- seem to have some grasp that markets can work and even will adopt Hayekian language (e.g., spontaneous order), but are vehemently against this order without a planner logic applied to the "natural world.")? But keeping quiet about it would only likely maintain this ignorance. If you'd read the articles I wrote, the ones I quoted from, you'd see I've been basically advocating market anarchism.? To be sure, sometimes I do tailor my message to a different audience: people who will be completely turned off by the word "anarchism."? In this case, I often avoid the actual word in an effort to get them to think about the ideas -- the denotation as opposed to the particular connotation.? (I've also run into people who confuse "libertarian" with "liberal" -- and they use liberal to mean not classical liberal, but welfare statist.) And I'm not saying I'm immune to this sort of thing. Still, even advocating the radical position is only likely to result in a slow evolution away from centralized statism -- not a radical break. And, of course, statism has its advocates and they're quite busy and very well supported. (Market intellectuals -- borrowing a term from George H. Smith* -- tend to be outside such support, often having to work full time outside their field and only part time in their field.) >> I think as libertarian ideas slowly spread, we will >> slowly evolve away from the coercive system. > > Why are you optimistic? What can you point to in the > last thirty or forty years that gives ground for > optimism? There are more Austrian economists in and out of academia now.? There now seems to be a groundswell of support for legalizing marijuana in the US.? There's a general (and extremely healthy) distrust of government, especially because of the Bush regime. There's now a fairly large anti-war movement. (In my view, almost all pro-war libertarians are really not libertarians at all. This doesn't mean, of course, that all anti-war types are libertarians. But war is one of the ways state power rapidly increases -- and it obviously always involves massively trampling rights from killing innocents on down.) Also, you must have missed a later paragraph, which you left but did not comment on: >> -- even if they default to practicing them >> successfully >> in most of their lives (i.e., most people do not >> initiate force in most cases to get what they want >> and live their lives) -- and lack imagination to see >> how a non-command system will work. In other words, most people generally don't initiate use force in almost all their daily transactions. (Naturally, this doesn't apply to government workers, non-government criminals (I mean actual people who violate rights -- not people engaging in victimless crimes), or people who routinely ally or use government workers or non-government criminals, such as the various corporate elites.) So, it's merely a case of getting them to apply this good habit to ever wider circles of their lives or to everyone else in society. In fact, part of the natural process of civilizing seems to be including ever wider groups of people as autonomous (in the sense of people who can't be forced into servitude) and restricting the use of force ever more. > In fact, right here on this list, we see > a great, increasing, and ongoing retrenchment away > from libertarian ideas and ideals. (It's worse year > by year.) Yes, that's kind of sad, but my view is this is partly because most people are NOT libertarian, so as Extropian and transhumanist ideas become more mainstream, they won't be so much attached to the particular and more libertarian crowd from the late 1980s, early 1990s.? (And remember, too, some early transhumanists were definitely NOT libertarians, including some members here.)? Also, some of the so called libertarians, in my view, were not really libertarians. Yes, they advocated free markets part time, but I recall certain ones -- as still seems to be the case -- advocating initiation of force for various reasons (and usually not in extreme emergencies). >> A more radical approach is not likely to >> succeed simply because most people don't >> understand libertarian principles > > That's some of it all right. But also not to be > underestimated is the feeling that most people > have that one way or the other, their own value > systems must triumph, no matter what it takes > (e.g. coercion of some kind or other). This is a general problem as well as a specific one for politics. Of course, if your value system is truly libertarian -- i.e., it disvalues coercion -- then this is no problem. The problem is how to best spread the non-coercion meme. > A classic example is the "progressive" view here > in the United States concerning the Supreme Court. > Before 1920 or 1930, the progressives were all in > favor of weakening the court---but this was merely, > it turned out, because the court did not tend at > the time to favor their policies. Ever since, it's > been the legislatures that progressives want to > weaken, and the courts to be strengthened---again, > merely because of the transient fact that current > legislatures are opposed to their agenda. > > As is so often the case, there is no principle in > operation here. Only expediency. So far as I can tell, > expediency has been uniformly increasing in the U.S. > at the expense of principle for about one hundred > and fifty years. Well, that's a general problem too. People all over the political spectrum generally are against the sort of polycentric, nomocratic approach to social change and prefer the centralized, teleocratic approach. Few see the hubris of this approach: that once you centralize power and habituate rule-breaking, then those people and those ideologies geared toward centralization and expediency will win. This is why ever more of life in managerial democracies becomes state planned and ever more politicized. Regards, Dan * Not sure if he originated the term. It's just that I got the label from reading his work. For more on Smith, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Smith From painlord2k at libero.it Mon May 11 20:28:59 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 22:28:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] libertarians and inheritance In-Reply-To: <4A07C634.9010805@rawbw.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> <4A0466C7.8040709@libero.it> <4A07C634.9010805@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A088A8B.3050105@libero.it> Il 11/05/2009 8.31, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > We see this in miniature all the time, however. Every time someone > invents a new widgit, we have wealth creation. But there are myriad > mysteries here. For example, when the European countries "damage" > African economies by exporting artificially cheap food to them, how > exactly is this different from an African genius inventing a machine > that does the same thing? The main difference is that the artificially cheaper food exported is used to transfer wealth from european taxpayers to the subsided European farmers. In Africa the only people really gaining something are the politicians and the bureaucrats that monopolize the cheap imports. So, they drive out of the market the local farmers and keep the people unable to produce food for themselves. When a disruption of the commerce happen, the locals are unable to feed themselves. The marvel machine would be under the control of the persons using the produced food, so there would not be scarcity or the same level of dependency on others. At the end the difference is being able to feed themselves or needing to be feed by others. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.325 / Virus Database: 270.12.24/2108 - Release Date: 05/11/09 05:52:00 From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 11 20:54:17 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 13:54:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Consent by staying?/was Re: The Circle of Coercion Message-ID: <179766.44378.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Sat, 5/9/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/8 painlord2k at libero.it > : [big snip] > So if I decided at age 18 that I don't want to obey the > unjust > taxation laws, for example, I could be expelled (to > where?), but for > those who accept citizenship taxation is part of the > contract they have entered into? For me, there is one glaring problem with this view: the state has no right to expell people simply because they don't agree to the state's policies.* This is no different, to me, than any other criminal gang riding into town and then telling everyone, "If you don't agree with our rules, you're free to leave town." (Granted, such a gang might be marginally more tolerable than one offering the choice of "agree or die.") Just as with any criminal gang, the state has no right to demand obeisance -- in the particular case you mention, to demand payment of taxes. This would be entirely different if the state legitimately owned the country. But, in that case, the state would really not be a state, but an owner. (Note: in reality, all existing states have been nothing more than stationary bandits. Yes, they may differ in the ways they interact with their subject populations -- most allow some voice options, just as any other long lasting criminal gang will not rely on the constant exorcise of brute force -- but they remain trespassers.) Also, as a practical matter, emigrating is usually difficult -- involving uprooting yourself from your family and friends -- and there is, at present, almost no place to immigrate to that is not controlled by some government or other -- a government that will, of course, tax you. So I believe the consent by staying argument -- if that's what you're offering -- fails. Notably, it's quite similar to the argument that if people are not openly rebelling than they consent to the government ruling over them. (Note this argument -- that people who don't rebel consent to their government -- is used by pro-war statists in the US as a reason for bombing foreign civilians.) Regards, Dan "A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years." -- Lysander Spooner * Actual states usually allow people to emigrate, but often only with some penalty. For instance, the US government usually charges people on leaving, so that this is not really a way to escape taxation. From painlord2k at libero.it Mon May 11 21:10:00 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 23:10:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> Message-ID: <4A089428.1000105@libero.it> Il 11/05/2009 17.12, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > However, the more interesting point you make is that Obama did not > work hard for his money. I am surprised that as a supporter of > capitalism you would hold this against him. As I said in a previous > post, a definition of capitalist success could be making more and more > money while doing less and less work. This is not a possible definition of "Capitalist Success". This could be a definition of "Aristocratic Success" or "Political Success" or a definition of "Criminal Success". But I doubt that there is something like "making more money doing less work." In your example about Mr. Buffett, you imply that the work done by him could be done by any plumber or farmer with a minimum training. If it was so, there would be many Warren Buffett and Mr. Buffett would not be so special or rich. So, we can suppose that Mr. Buffett is doing something that not all people are able to do at his level of skill. And his earnings reflect how much he is able to produce for his investors. But to help you, I propose another way to classify "capitalist success": "doing the most requested works with the minimum efforts", with "most requested" defined by how much people is willing to pay for. Usually, to do a work with the minimum effort the capitalist use his capital. For example, Robinson Crosue on his island could have invested his leisure time to build a stick and a basket, so he could be able to gather more berries and keep them. Having a better berries production line would have enabled him to commerce with a hunter for game with greater profits for himself and the hunter. Now, Crosue had a competitor for the commerce of berries with the hunter but the competitor is not willing or able to invest his leisure time to build his basket and his stick and compete on the same level with Crusoe. Do this fact cause Crusoe to do "less work for more game"? I think not. He is doing more work with less efforts. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.325 / Virus Database: 270.12.24/2108 - Release Date: 05/11/09 05:52:00 From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon May 11 21:31:05 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 14:31:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Japanese robot in the classroom Message-ID: <2d6187670905111431n72c2dcb1y3231420bd7c520ce@mail.gmail.com> I wonder where they will be in ten or even twenty years? http://www.ciol.com/Global-News/News-Reports/Saya-the-robot-takes-over-Tokyo-classroom/11509119435/0/ I love the picture of the kids touching her! : ) John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon May 11 22:35:18 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 15:35:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou > ... > I know a lot of people with minimal funds who blow them on > drugs;... Ja, this I do not buy however, for if a poor young person is using the really high-end stuff like cocaine, she must be either stealing or dealing. No one will slave at a minimum wage job all week and then snort the whole paycheck up the nose on payday. They will buy cheaper drugs and get stoned every night, and still have money for actual food. I have no problem with recreational drug use. But high schoolers using cocaine is a sure indicator of foul play. I would not hire that high schooler, for her sense of the worth of money would be necessarily all messed up. > ... Usually they grow out of it when they are older and, > ironically, have more money... Sure but I would be forever suspicious of how they came into possession of that money. > ...However, the more interesting point you make is that Obama > did not work hard for his money... Actually he never claimed to have worked for it at all. I may have missed it for I didn't read the whole book, but he didn't actually claim to have had a job. The money for that cocaine cries out for an explanation. > I am surprised that as a > supporter of capitalism you would hold this against him... I wouldn't, had he some legal capitalist scheme that worked so well he had piles of money lying around. He doesn't tell us anything about that legal capitalist scheme. Why? > As I > said in a previous post, a definition of capitalist success > could be making more and more money while doing less and less > work...Stathis Papaioannou I am with you there. Stathis, how do you theorize the current reader of the free world came into possession of that cash, doing evidently NO work? Honestly Stathis, the man has some 'splainin to do, and the popular press is showing a deplorable lack of curiosity. spike From spike66 at att.net Mon May 11 23:06:21 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 16:06:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z><875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike><4A04341E.6030605@libero.it><9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of spike .... > > ...But high schoolers using cocaine is a sure > indicator of foul play. I would not hire that high schooler, > for her sense of the worth of money would be necessarily all > messed up. Not hire, and definitely not elect as a political reader. If she had in the formative years so much money she didn't even know what to do with it, and blew it, then as a political reader she again finds herself with piles of (my) money and might blow that too. She might blow it doing such things as pouring it into doomed car companies. That these US car companies are doomed is obvious to the casual observer. Stathis you are from Italy? I am from the US, so this is MY money that is being poured down a rat hole. Not poured, that's too passive. MY money is being blasted down a rat hole with a fire hose. spike From painlord2k at libero.it Mon May 11 23:23:57 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 01:23:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> Message-ID: <4A08B38D.4090808@libero.it> Il 12/05/2009 0.35, spike ha scritto: > I am with you there. Stathis, how do you theorize the current reader of the > free world came into possession of that cash, doing evidently NO work? > Honestly Stathis, the man has some 'splainin to do, and the popular press is > showing a deplorable lack of curiosity. It is a Gongoro (or a Gongora) "What is a Gongora?" "This is a guy that does not exist, but if there should not exist" "You have you seen anyone?" "No, but if we close our eyes to see not to see it!" (~ Carl Barks Donald Duck and the fetish) Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.325 / Virus Database: 270.12.24/2108 - Release Date: 05/11/09 05:52:00 From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 12 00:10:41 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 10:10:41 +1000 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> Message-ID: 2009/5/12 spike : >> ...On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou >> ... >> I know a lot of people with minimal funds who blow them on >> drugs;... > > Ja, this I do not buy however, for if a poor young person is using the > really high-end stuff like cocaine, she must be either stealing or dealing. > No one will slave at a minimum wage job all week and then snort the whole > paycheck up the nose on payday. ?They will buy cheaper drugs and get stoned > every night, and still have money for actual food. ?I have no problem with > recreational drug use. But high schoolers using cocaine is a sure indicator > of foul play. ?I would not hire that high schooler, for her sense of the > worth of money would be necessarily all messed up. But students spend money on things that are a lot more expensive than drugs, like overseas holidays. Do you mistrust all backpackers? >> ... Usually they grow out of it when they are older and, >> ironically, have more money... > > Sure but I would be forever suspicious of how they came into possession of > that money. Well, their employer pays them $1000 a week net and they have $1000 a week to spend or save as they choose. >> ...However, the more interesting point you make is that Obama >> did not work hard for his money... > > Actually he never claimed to have worked for it at all. ?I may have missed > it for I didn't read the whole book, but he didn't actually claim to have > had a job. ?The money for that cocaine cries out for an explanation. > >> I am surprised that as a >> supporter of capitalism you would hold this against him... > > I wouldn't, had he some legal capitalist scheme that worked so well he had > piles of money lying around. ?He doesn't tell us anything about that legal > capitalist scheme. ?Why? > >> As I >> said in a previous post, a definition of capitalist success >> could be making more and more money while doing less and less >> work...Stathis Papaioannou > > I am with you there. ?Stathis, how do you theorize the current reader of the > free world came into possession of that cash, doing evidently NO work? > Honestly Stathis, the man has some 'splainin to do, and the popular press is > showing a deplorable lack of curiosity. If a student gets by on less than a few hundred dollars a week, I don't think it's reasonable to assume he must be a thief unless proved otherwise. It would be different if he owned expensive sports cars, or something. -- Stathis Papaioannou From spike66 at att.net Tue May 12 01:29:21 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 18:29:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> Message-ID: <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> > > 2009/5/12 spike : > >> ...On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou > >> ... > >> I know a lot of people with minimal funds who blow them on > drugs;... > > > > Ja, this I do not buy however, for if a poor young person > is using the > > really high-end stuff like cocaine, she must be either > stealing or dealing. ... > > But students spend money on things that are a lot more > expensive than drugs, like overseas holidays... I do confess I am puzzled at how students today afford overseas holidays. I don't recall that being done when I was in high school, but that is the point: back in the late 70s, which is the timeframe 0bama was describing, the minimum wage was 2.90 an hour, and cocaine was about 100 bucks a gram, which represents a week's pay. > Do you mistrust all backpackers?... Not at all; I am one myself. But that doesn't cost much. Again, things are different now. One seldom sees hitchhikers. Did any of you guys used to do that? I did. Backpacking is an excellent value for one's limited funds, in enjoyment per dollar. Part of the reason I backpack is that I am a natural tightwad. ... > ...Well, their employer pays them $1000 a week net and they have > $1000 a week to spend or save as they choose... A thousand a week? We were discussing minimum wage earners. Those guys are good for about 300 a week, ja? I haven't the foggiest clue what cocaine is worth today. Anyone know? Normal inflation might not apply to that stuff, since it is supply driven. Hell maybe it is relatively a lot cheaper now. Of course the time in question is 1979. > > If a student gets by on less than a few hundred dollars a > week, I don't think it's reasonable to assume he must be a > thief unless proved otherwise. It would be different if he > owned expensive sports cars, or something... Stathis Papaioannou Ja, again we are making the specific case of cocaine, a special case of conspicuous consumption. Back in the depression (the original recipe, not this one) we heard urban legends of bankers smoking cigars wrapped in hundred dollar bills. I don't know if that really ever happened. If we saw a big Hollywood star today smoking 100 dollar bill wrapped cigars, we would think nothing of it, or saw a teenager smoking normal cigars, no law against that. But if an unemployed indolent teen is smoking 100s, we know something is up bigtime. Cocaine is (and was back then) the equivalent of smoking 100s. You do make a thought-provoking point. Plane tickets have gone waay down relative to minimum wage since thirty years ago, waaaaay down. I recall flying across the country for a bit over 800 bucks in 1979, from college. I recently bought a round-trip from SF to New York for 370. Minimum wage has more than tripled in that time. Stathis, do you have a theory on how the fearless reader managed to snort cocaine without a job? I do. spike From jrd1415 at gmail.com Tue May 12 02:11:18 2009 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 19:11:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> Message-ID: On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 3:35 PM, spike wrote: > ...if a poor young person is using the > really high-end stuff like cocaine, she must be either stealing or dealing. This "conclusion" -- if I dare to call it that -- is defamatory, presumptuous, and based on... what evidence? You are not a drug user yourself. Have near zero experience with any drug culture. Yet you are drawing conclusions and making assertions like you know something. Get yourself to a narcotics anonymous meeting and talk to some real coke users, then come back to the subject after gathering some facts and thinking about them. You are Republican in your inclinations, so your "stealing or dealing" options are suspect of being based more in your tribal distrust of Obama than in any assemblage of fact. It would be equally "fair and balanced" for me to observe that "stealing and dealing" is a fairly concise description of what Republicans do, or to observe that your employment at LockMart is fully funded by taxpayers dollars taken by force from taxpayers, redistributed to you for no commercially productive purpose -- for no purpose at all beyond buying your vote so those higher up thieves can authorize yet more theft and waste of yet more taxpayer dollars. Can you spell "accomplice". But because you are my friend I would never say that. Consequently, and sadly, I cannot claim to be free of the taint of corruption. Small note: stealing and dealing are challenging and risky endeavors requiring no small amount of thought, creativity, initiative, emotional discipline, and courage. Stripped of moral and legal prejudices, stealing or dealing are hard work indeed. But white boys born to privilege or good fortune, or both, rarely get a chance to see the world from this hard rock perspective of "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." > ?The money for that cocaine cries out for an explanation. To you, because you don't approve of him, but otherwise, nobody cares. He was a kid ferchristsake. This is pure Clinton-blow-job bullshit. Since then he's gone to college, to Harvard Law, was president there of the Law Review, worked as an attorney, as a Harvard Law Prof, as an Illinois state senator, and as a US Senator. And now he's PotUS, will likely be so for the next eight years, followed by another democrat, and then another. (OK, the dems will surely screw this up, clueless, spineless, and corrupt as they are, but for the next eight years Obama is gonna ream the Republicans real "horror show".) The worm has turned and you need to get over it. > ...how do you theorize the current reader of the > free world came into possession of that cash, doing evidently NO work? Hmmmm, let's see. You said "evidently", right? He actually did work, you just don't have the info. He had a prosperous friend. He had a prosperous white friend. He had a prosperous white girlfriend. He escorted (or "escorted")white Hawaiian tourist babes. (These are some of many non-prejudicial possible answers. See how many you can come up with.) Best, Jeff Davis Can we please get extropian now? Please? Put yourself on moderation, Spike. From fauxever at sprynet.com Tue May 12 02:13:12 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 19:13:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians References: <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike><4A04341E.6030605@libero.it><9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> Message-ID: <0D07D4A6336B4E87AA8E159C12ECA82A@patrick4ezsk6z> From: "spike" To: "'ExI chat list'" > > You do make a thought-provoking point. Plane tickets have gone waay down > relative to minimum wage since thirty years ago, waaaaay down. I recall > flying across the country for a bit over 800 bucks in 1979, from college. > I > recently bought a round-trip from SF to New York for 370. Minimum wage > has > more than tripled in that time. Be that as it may, I'm old enough to remember when flying was NOT uncomfortable (and they even fed you)! Now the airlines have taken to torturing people in those "coach" seats. I'm 5'6" and weigh around 125 pounds - I can't imagine how people over 200 pounds get in ... Olga From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 12 04:09:45 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 14:09:45 +1000 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <4A089428.1000105@libero.it> References: <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <4A089428.1000105@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/12 painlord2k at libero.it : > Il 11/05/2009 17.12, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > >> However, the more interesting point you make is that Obama did not >> work hard for his money. I am surprised that as a supporter of >> capitalism you would hold this against him. As I said in a previous >> post, a definition of capitalist success could be making more and more >> money while doing less and less work. > > This is not a possible definition of "Capitalist Success". > This could be a definition of "Aristocratic Success" or "Political Success" > or a definition of "Criminal Success". > But I doubt that there is something like "making more money doing less > work." If you make money at a higher hourly rate, then you are considered more successful. This means more money for less work. The hourly rate can be averaged out to include any study or training: there's not much point to it (from a capitalist perspective) if the time spent working but not earning money won't be at least repaid when when you do start earning. > In your example about Mr. Buffett, you imply that the work done by him could > be done by any plumber or farmer with a minimum training. If it was so, > there would be many Warren Buffett and Mr. Buffett would not be so special > or rich. No, I think he was just lucky, as most studies of investors show that they are no more likely to be successful in the future if they have been successful in the past. But even if in fact he was successful because he was smart or because he risked his capital, it doesn't change the fact that he made a lot of money doing a little work a *lot* less work than someone has to do to obtain the dole. > So, we can suppose that Mr. Buffett is doing something that not all people > are able to do at his level of skill. And his earnings reflect how much he > is able to produce for his investors. > > But to help you, I propose another way to classify "capitalist success": > "doing the most requested works with the minimum efforts", with "most > requested" defined by how much people is willing to pay for. > Usually, to do a work with the minimum effort the capitalist use his > capital. > > For example, Robinson Crosue on his island could have invested his leisure > time to build a stick and a basket, so he could be able to gather more > berries and keep them. Having a better berries production line would have > enabled him to commerce with a hunter for game with greater profits for > himself and the hunter. > Now, Crosue had a competitor for the commerce of berries with the hunter but > the competitor is not willing or able to invest his leisure time to build > his basket and his stick and compete on the same level with Crusoe. Do this > fact cause Crusoe to do "less work for more game"? > I think not. He is doing more work with less efforts. Very few wealthy people make their money purely through their own efforts. Your Robinson Crusoe story is an example of this, but the usual capitalist way is if Crusoe could get several competitors to gather food and give him a proportion of it while he sits back. For example, he could set up a shop trading one type of food for another and keeping a profit. Now, this takes *some* work, maybe even hard work, and perhaps it helps the other hunters as well as the shopkeeper, so that everyone is happier than if there had been no shop. But the fact remains, if the shopkeeper makes a profit much larger than that of the hunters, he is effectively sponging off their work. This was the Marxists' essential criticism of capitalism: they valued hard work, and they thought that workers should be able to profit in proportion to their labour. Government welfare payments etc. was not a feature of communism. In fact, I believe that in some Soviet Bloc countries it was actually illegal to be willfully unemployed. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 12 04:28:45 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 14:28:45 +1000 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> References: <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> Message-ID: 2009/5/12 spike : >> Do you mistrust all backpackers?... > > Not at all; I am one myself. ?But that doesn't cost much. ?Again, things are > different now. ?One seldom sees hitchhikers. ?Did any of you guys used to do > that? ?I did. ?Backpacking is an excellent value for one's limited funds, in > enjoyment per dollar. ?Part of the reason I backpack is that I am a natural > tightwad. I was thinking of the backpackers on overseas holidays, often students. This is moderately expensive: several thousand dollars, perhaps several months' pay at minimal wage rates. I confess that I could never afford this as a student but I know that many others worked and saved for a year or more in order to travel. >> ...Well, their employer pays them $1000 a week net and they have >> $1000 a week to spend or save as they choose... > > A thousand a week? ?We were discussing minimum wage earners. ?Those guys are > good for about 300 a week, ja? ?I haven't the foggiest clue what cocaine is > worth today. ?Anyone know? ?Normal inflation might not apply to that stuff, > since it is supply driven. ?Hell maybe it is relatively a lot cheaper now. > Of course the time in question is 1979. I was talking about those erstwhile drug-using students who now have reasonably well-paying jobs. You said you would wonder forever after where they got their money, once they had used cocaine as students. (To be fair, I don't know anyone who used cocaine as a student as it was and remains very expensive in Australia. But I understand that in the US it is much cheaper due to proximity to the source.) >> If a student gets by on less than a few hundred dollars a >> week, I don't think it's reasonable to assume he must be a >> thief unless proved otherwise. It would be different if he >> owned expensive sports cars, or something... Stathis Papaioannou > > Ja, again we are making the specific case of cocaine, a special case of > conspicuous consumption. ?Back in the depression (the original recipe, not > this one) we heard urban legends of bankers smoking cigars wrapped in > hundred dollar bills. ?I don't know if that really ever happened. ?If we saw > a big Hollywood star today smoking 100 dollar bill wrapped cigars, we would > think nothing of it, or saw a teenager smoking normal cigars, no law against > that. ?But if an unemployed indolent teen is smoking 100s, we know something > is up bigtime. ?Cocaine is (and was back then) the equivalent of smoking > 100s. > > You do make a thought-provoking point. ?Plane tickets have gone waay down > relative to minimum wage since thirty years ago, waaaaay down. ?I recall > flying across the country for a bit over 800 bucks in 1979, from college. ?I > recently bought a round-trip from SF to New York for 370. ?Minimum wage has > more than tripled in that time. > > Stathis, do you have a theory on how the fearless reader managed to snort > cocaine without a job? ?I do. My guess is that he saved up for a few weeks. But even if he did some dealing, well, if you don't think using the stuff is morally wrong then why would selling it be? Using and selling are both technically illegal. -- Stathis Papaioannou From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Tue May 12 05:00:21 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 22:00:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Will AI feel anything? Message-ID: <69784.93091.qm@web110401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> How does one measure feeling? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNb1EknEF9A Just curious Anna:) __________________________________________________________________ Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail. Click on Options in Mail and switch to New Mail today or register for free at http://mail.yahoo.ca From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 12 05:13:05 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 22:13:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <4A07B283.50603@rawbw.com> References: <558450.34599.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A07B283.50603@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <20090512051305.GA9691@ofb.net> On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 10:07:15PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote: > As is so often the case, there is no principle in > operation here. Only expediency. So far as I can tell, > expediency has been uniformly increasing in the U.S. > at the expense of principle for about one hundred > and fifty years. Increasing, as opposed to having always been present? What great stances of principle can you point to? The 3/5 compromise? The Senate? Andrew Jackson's violation of the Cherokees? -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 12 05:33:06 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 22:33:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <617521.78544.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <617521.78544.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20090512053306.GC9691@ofb.net> On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 09:59:25AM -0700, Dan wrote: > --- On Mon, 5/11/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > 2009/5/11 Lee Corbin : > >> would be questioned? Who sixty or seventy > >> years ago in America could have guessed that > >> government would come to absorb about fifty > >> percent of everyone's pay, and would soon Man, what? Tax rates right now are lower than they've been in generations. We're still in the Bush tax cuts for the upper class -- 35% on the tap bracket -- and Obama's cut them for the middle and lower class. The 30 year postwar economic boom had top taxes of 70%; Reagan in 1981 cut that bracket *down* to 50%. Yet now we have tha taxophobes talking as if 39% vs. 35% is "socialism". Lowest tax rates in decades and the GOP still talks only about tax cuts. > > You keep going on about health care, but it is one of the > > things that clearly works better when there is government > > involvement. > > I disagree, but what's your evidence for this? From my readings, it > seems to me that government involvement has made healthcare much more Well, there are lots of countries with socialized insurance (in one case, actual socialized medicine), and they all live longer at less cost than the US. Also, market health care manifestly fails to provide health care who don't have money. Or who don't have proof of payment, as might happen if someone got mugged and left unconscious. The US decided some time ago that people shouldn't die for lack of money, thus Medicaid and more fundamentally, the ER mandate to take people in. We already have socialized insurance of sorts, of an egregiously bad variety. (One that dumps the costs on hospitals, and doesn't provide for preventive care, and provides incentives not have ERs; top-notch insurance won't save you if you bleed out before you reach an emergency room.) > partly -- what might've happened had healthcare reform been in the > direction of a free market (as in, in the US, abolishing the FDA, > getting rid of the AMA's monopoly powers, and removing government > completely from provisioning and mandating healthcare). We had that back in the 19th and early 20th century. We moved away from it. Ever wonder why? > those apologists are completely, unequivocally wrong. Central > economic planning failed (and continues to fail; in the US, e.g., the > central bank is central economic planning for the money system and the > recent bust is merely its latest flop) as can be seen by how poorly it Bad call; there's good arguments that the latest flop is from deliberate lack of planning -- specifically, regulation. Ideological sabotage, not basic impossibility. We know how to regualte banking so that it is safe and boring and stable, but we've had a regime that disdained that in favor of "innovations" like CDOs and hedge funds. Voila. Conversely, we had unplanned banking in the 19th century; that generated major and frequent panics. > ** Not to mention, Mises showed theoretically why this was so and > predicted its failure early on. He even took Lenin's New Economic > Policy as evidence for his view being correct -- and others have seen > it as an open admission that central economic planning can't work. Which is why the US is defended by lowest-bidder mercenaries. -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 12 05:18:34 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 22:18:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <260856.55885.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <260856.55885.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20090512051834.GB9691@ofb.net> On Fri, May 08, 2009 at 02:51:20PM -0700, dan_ust at yahoo.com wrote: > This is a key feature of social contract theory. The typical social > contract theory is an attempt to justify some socio-political order > via an analogy with a real contract -- as if all members of society > agree to some (you guessed it!) social contract. Since real world > societies of any appreciable size don't arise contractually -- viz., > people don't get together, formulate a contract, and then actually > expressly consent to it -- the problem is how to complete the analogy. > This is where tacit consent comes in. > This brings up another problem with social contracts: even were an > explicit contract signed, it wouldn't bind others or future > generations. But in the case of your country of birth, the government But these problems are true of property rights as well. I didn't consent to be born into a world where I inherit no wealth and Paris Hilton inherits $100s of millions. Why should I respect her claim to more than a fair share of the Earth's resources? Or the claim of the Sultan of Brunei? And why, in turn, should someone without even access to clean water, respect my modest life, let alone that of the egregiously wealthy? -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 12 05:55:02 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 22:55:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Meme change not person death/was Re: Friedman and negative income tax In-Reply-To: References: <491328.4520.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A042C89.90103@libero.it> Message-ID: <20090512055502.GD9691@ofb.net> On Sat, May 09, 2009 at 05:01:13PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > Right that they can't afford it, but wrong that most of them are > socialist. For example, most of South and Central America for the past > century has been governed by US-supported regimes that are even more > assiduous in suppressing any sort of left wing activity (opposition As it happens, post-military South America seems to have largely embraced universal health care. Peru, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay... Thailand, a rather poor country, is working on it, and India has something. A $3000/capita country may not be doling out the latest in cancer treatments, but vaccines and antibiotics and pre-natal and basic surgeries are pretty affordable. India's also leading in some health care innovation... ...pointing at a big fallacy: universal health care and innovation aren't exclusive. Most countries with socialized insurance *also* have private doctors, hospitals, or insurance. Often just providing faster non-emergency service, or nicer hospital rooms, but there's plenty of legal room for research and innovation as well. > parties, unions, free speech) than the US itself. There are some > exceptions, like Cuba - and look at what the US did there. The And which, for all its poverty, seems to live long, unless the WHO is just trust the government statistics. > The usual pattern with economic growth in developing countries is > rapid growth at the start then a slowing down as they reach the levels > of the more developed countries. It seems that the plateau is more due Indeed. It's easier to copy developments than to create new ones. *shock* > provinces. It's not as simple as your contention that any socialist > measures inevitably lead to economic stagnation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita Behold the failure of social democracy! A Sweden that is $3000-$9000 wealthier than the United States! And Denmark, Netherlands, Finland... (Also Norway but they have oil.) PPP is a lot more favorable to the US but it's unclear how to interpret that, especially when a lot of services are free-via-governemtn and hence not purchased. Nominal GDP/capita suffers from exchange rate fluctuations but has the clarity of how much a country can import, and thus roughly how much in demand their labor or resources are. At the moment, the average Swede can outbid the average American for Japanese electronics or Kuwaiti oil. Certainly not an obvious failure. -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 12 06:01:18 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 23:01:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090511022826.024689d8@satx.rr.com> References: <191607.26241.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A043964.7010108@libero.it> <4A07CB7D.90602@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090511022826.024689d8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20090512060118.GE9691@ofb.net> On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 02:30:17AM -0500, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 11:53 PM 5/10/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: > >> Who sixty or seventy >> years ago in America could have guessed that >> government ... would soon >> be trying to impose communist health care? > > Lee, careful; this is the kind of rash statement that gives communism a > good name. Rush Limbaugh: "Obama is socialist!" Twenty year olds: "Socialism must be cool!" -xx- Damien X-) From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue May 12 06:06:54 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 02:06:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Education, Wealth and the future (was RE: libertarians and inheritance) References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com><4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com><4A07BF24.3060304@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090511011047.024bfe00@satx.rr.com> <593890E78514480A94C6BA63E16D5CE7@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <910C0F520721485BA11A66E56E18D6A6@MyComputer> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Natasha Vita-More" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 12:31 PM Subject: [ExI] Education,Wealth and the future (was RE: libertarians and inheritance) > Damien, thanks. Good laugh. > > > Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More > >>the use of the >>money should be... kept out >>of the hands of government bureaucrats, who tend to use any excess >>monies to destroy the foundations of wealth-creation. > > I know, I know. It's scandalous how much is just thrown away educating > young > humans, building roads and sewers, contributing to some portion of health > care. This sort of flagrant waste just erodes everything we hold dear, we > wealth creators. > > Damien Broderick > [Yes, it's the *bloat* that's really at fault--a vice one never encounters > in business... banking, say, or health insurance] > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 > From spike66 at att.net Tue May 12 06:04:14 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 23:04:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> Message-ID: Jeff Davis has scolded me roundly for hammering on this topic, so do let me bring this around to something relevant to Extropian principles, and remove personalities. Before you do, check out today's (11 May 09) Dilbert: http://www.dilbert.com/strips/ Brilliant, hilarious, and relevant here. >...On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou .... > > Stathis, do you have a theory... > > My guess is that he saved up for a few weeks... Indeed? > But even if he > did some dealing, well, if you don't think using the stuff is > morally wrong then why would selling it be? Using and selling > are both technically illegal. Stathis Papaioannou There is a critical difference, if the subject is a political leader. My own opinion is that all drugs should be legal. All of them! Really. And buyer beware. But dealing drugs implies tax evasion, which really is illegal as all get out. From the fed's point of view, it is worse than murder. (Recall that Al Capone was actually imprisoned for tax evasion, where he perished of natural causes.) If so, it would explain the hiring a string of tax evaders to help out in the whitehouse, and attempting to hire still more. Any government must recognize how this sort of thing mows down its own credibility. Jeff suggested the income source was prostitution. If so, I have no problem with that. I would have never thought of it, but it makes perfect sense. But again, it carries the implied tax evasion, with which I do have a big problem in political leaders. Regarding morality: I do not consider either doing drugs or even tax evasion as *morally* wrong. But it is certainly legally wrong, and I don't want those characteristics in political leaders. I want them to pay the taxes, then lower them for everyone, and cut government spending to match, drastically if necessary. Then let us deal with the consequences. Each generation should pay for its own wars. We must recognize that 2009 is a critical turning point in history, or rather it looks like it to me. This isn't politics as usual, for it appears to me we are somehow pretending that all this wild spending does not need to be paid for. But we will pay for it, repeatedly. We are acting as though we can move on past the usual economics of scarcity, the notions societies have always carried. Perhaps we can move past that *eventually* with some super advanced means of production, but in the mean time, we have corporations and capitalists that create wealth in the old fashioned way. If we discourage those corporations and capitalists, it isn't clear to me what kind of future we are entering. But it doesn't feel to me like the glorious techno-future we as extropian-minded people envisioned ten years ago. We may find ourselves crushed by the burden of the interest alone on the debts we are running up in this and the next few years. All businesses need to be bailed out or prevented from failing, rather just the opposite. Governments must not attempt to repeal the business cycle. The US has just tripled our national debt attempting to prevent a recession. But that recession is coming anyway, in fact it will likely be much worse, partly because of the billions in taxpayer dollars have been dumped into GM and Crysler, which will likely fail anyway. They must fail now: who would buy the cars, knowing the companies likely will not be around to service the warranty? We have just wasted all that taxpayer money, which takes away from individual freedom. Bailing out the car companies was madness. All our transhumanist dreams of enhancing our minds and bodies will cost money, and that money must be in the hands of individuals, who will experiment and show the rest of us the way. Governments will never pay for your brain enhancements while your neighbor is suffering from diabetes. I fear the current government spending spree is killing our future. spike From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue May 12 06:50:27 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 02:50:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Throwing money at education (was: libertarians and inheritance) References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com><4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com><4A07BF24.3060304@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090511011047.024bfe00@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <51E25222F3BA400ABC6D971498C7BBC6@MyComputer> "Damien Broderick" > I know, I know. It's scandalous how much is just thrown away educating > young humans You are absolutely correct! The dreadful Washington DC public schools spend $13,330 per student per year, think of a private school that charged that, which school do you think would be superior? I was reading a book about Hungarian scientists and the extraordinary fact that such a tiny country could produce so many great scientists, like Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, Le? Szil?rd, Dennis Gabor, Edward Teller, Paul Erdos and more. All these people went to high school in the early 20's and as was the custom in Hungary at the time the class size was HUGE by today's standards, 50 to 70 students per each not very well paid teacher. Apparently throwing money at education will not solve all problems. John K Clark From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue May 12 09:31:51 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 05:31:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Our cryonic world References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com><4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com><4A07BF24.3060304@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090511011047.024bfe00@satx.rr.com> <51E25222F3BA400ABC6D971498C7BBC6@MyComputer> Message-ID: <63192ADA5DA349468ABE74A75E27FDB8@MyComputer> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjTu8AbioiA From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 12 10:27:39 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 20:27:39 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Consent by staying?/was Re: The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <179766.44378.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <179766.44378.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/12 Dan : >> So if I decided at age 18 that I don't want to obey the >> unjust >> taxation laws, for example, I could be expelled (to >> where?), but for >> those who accept citizenship taxation is part of the >> contract they have entered into? > > For me, there is one glaring problem with this view: the state has no right to expell people simply because they don't agree to the state's policies.* ?This is no different, to me, than any other criminal gang riding into town and then telling everyone, "If you don't agree with our rules, you're free to leave town." ?(Granted, such a gang might be marginally more tolerable than one offering the choice of "agree or die.") ?Just as with any criminal gang, the state has no right to demand obeisance -- in the particular case you mention, to demand payment of taxes. > > This would be entirely different if the state legitimately owned the country. ?But, in that case, the state would really not be a state, but an owner. ?(Note: in reality, all existing states have been nothing more than stationary bandits. ?Yes, they may differ in the ways they interact with their subject populations -- most allow some voice options, just as any other long lasting criminal gang will not rely on the constant exorcise of brute force -- but they remain trespassers.) The state owns the common property and has control of rules, including rules about taxation. The rules are made by the people to whom they apply (in a roundabout way). This is much better than private companies owning the country, which is what would eventually happen if free enterprise capitalism were allowed to run unchecked. Now it might bring peace of mind to the libertarian if an immigrant could sign a contract when he entered a country, so that he knew what the rules were and agreed to them, but this can't really be done with the native population. This would then mean that a native could refuse to obey any rule whatsoever, even if everyone in the country agrees it is a good one, on the grounds that he never agreed to it. For example, a native could drive as fast as he likes with impunity, arguing that had he been asked to sign a contract in which a speed limit was specified, he would have declined. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 12 10:37:48 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 20:37:48 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Will AI feel anything? In-Reply-To: <69784.93091.qm@web110401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <69784.93091.qm@web110401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/12 Anna Taylor : > > How does one measure feeling? > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNb1EknEF9A > > Just curious > Anna:) The same question applies to other people or animals. I know I have feelings, and I assume everyone else like me also does, but how can I be sure? There is a large literature on "philosophical zombies", beings which behave as if they are conscious but in reality aren't. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 12 10:57:54 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 20:57:54 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <617521.78544.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <617521.78544.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/12 Dan : > I disagree, but what's your evidence for this? ?From my readings, it seems to me that government involvement has made healthcare much more costly -- especially since 1960 in the US -- and slowed down the pace of innovation. ?Of course, the latter is based on counterfactuals partly -- what might've happened had healthcare reform been in the direction of a free market (as in, in the US, abolishing the FDA, getting rid of the AMA's monopoly powers, and removing government completely from provisioning and mandating healthcare). Health care in the US costs about twice as much as it does in comparable countries and overall health outcomes in the US, by measures such as longevity and infant mortality rates (less prone to lifestyle factors), are at the lower end of the OECD range. Now it's true that the US has a mixed system, but it has a much higher weighting in private health care than most other countries. >> You >> speculate that if the mostly private health system in the >> US were >> completely deregulated, health care would become both >> cheaper and better. > > I think this is evidence. ?In the US, the costs of healthcare, for the most part, have been only loosely linked to actual service, so there's a tendency for overpricing -- as actual customers are not cost-sensitive. ?For example, as was pointed out many years ago, in one area of the country (I think it was in Houston, Texas), a simple blood test of the same quality (I forget what for) ranged in price from, IIRC, $20 to $100. ?But people getting the blood test were almost always paying via their employer's mandated health insurance. ?I.e., if they got the cheaper test, they didn't save any money for themselves, but merely for the health insurers. ?That removes one incentive to compete on price. ?(It also led insurance companies to lobby for cost controls. ?The market reform would've been to remove mandated health insurance.*) In the Australian system the government health insurer will pay the pathology lab a fixed amount for a particular test. The lab can then charge whatever it wants for the test, which might leave the patient out of pocket. In practice, most labs charge only the minimal amount, or they risk losing business. >> But there is no evidence for this, anywhere in the >> world. Your >> position reminds me of apologists for the Soviet Union >> arguing that it >> failed because it wasn't communist *enough*. > > What's meant by "communist" here? ?If it's the defining economic feature of the Soviet system -- central economic planning -- then those apologists are completely, unequivocally wrong. ?Central economic planning failed (and continues to fail; in the US, e.g., the central bank is central economic planning for the money system and the recent bust is merely its latest flop) as can be seen by how poorly it compared with the output and dynamism of even the highly regulated economies of the West.** ?(Also, another features of the Soviet system made it hard to spot this: the lack of an open society where the success or failure of the system could be openly considered and debated.) see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism "Within Marxist literature, state capitalism is usually defined in this sense: as a social system combining capitalism ? the wage system of producing and appropriating surplus value ? with ownership or control by a state apparatus. By that definition, a state capitalist country is one where the government controls the economy and essentially acts like a single giant corporation." -- Stathis Papaioannou From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Tue May 12 11:44:02 2009 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado (CI)) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 08:44:02 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Meme change not person death/was Re: Friedmanand negative income tax References: <491328.4520.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A042C89.90103@libero.it> <20090512055502.GD9691@ofb.net> Message-ID: <02b201c9d2f6$f46a8860$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> > As it happens, post-military South America seems to have largely > embraced universal health care. Peru, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay... Speaking of Brazil... our public health care system is a mockery. Just for starters: - Public hospitals are falling appart like all the entropy of the universe is concentrated on them - The supplies for these same hospitals is in constant lack (to say the least) - The doctors, nurses and other public health employees are on strike like every other day for one reason or another - The social security system is disorganised and prone to fraud It's a very dystopic system. From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 12 11:45:28 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 21:45:28 +1000 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> Message-ID: 2009/5/12 spike : > All businesses need to be bailed out or prevented from failing, rather just > the opposite. ?Governments must not attempt to repeal the business cycle. > The US has just tripled our national debt attempting to prevent a recession. > But that recession is coming anyway, in fact it will likely be much worse, > partly because of the billions in taxpayer dollars have been dumped into GM > and Crysler, which will likely fail anyway. ?They must fail now: who would > buy the cars, knowing the companies likely will not be around to service the > warranty? ?We have just wasted all that taxpayer money, which takes away > from individual freedom. ?Bailing out the car companies was madness. It didn't work in Japan over the last 20 years. They tried everything the present regimes in the US and Europe are trying: deficit spending, zero interest rates, bailing out banks, outright printing of money, and none of it really had much effect. Interestingly, not even the money printing had much effect on deflation and did not cause the yen to depreciate. And the Japanese had more savings, so they were in a better position to increase personal spending and at less risk of personal bankruptcy. Some say the government should have allowed the insolvent banks to go down, and that this would have produced a short, sharp recession rather than a prolonged deflationary stagnation, but there is no way to really know. I'm in Tokyo as I write this. An interesting thing I have noticed is that there seem to be more Japanese workers doing a job that apparently one person would do elsewhere. For example, it took two people to change my money in Japan, while in Singapore and Australia it took only one. I guess this is why the unemployment rate is very low here. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to have hurt efficiency: Japanese-made goods are still of the highest quality, and still competitively priced despite the strong yen. > All our transhumanist dreams of enhancing our minds and bodies will cost > money, and that money must be in the hands of individuals, who will > experiment and show the rest of us the way. ?Governments will never pay for > your brain enhancements while your neighbor is suffering from diabetes. ?I > fear the current government spending spree is killing our future. Governments will pay for *preventive* medicine, and anti-aging treatment is preventive medicine. Diabetes, atherosclerosis, cancer, Alzheimer's etc. etc. are all diseases of aging, and if they can all be prevented, you will stay younger for longer, work longer, pay taxes longer, and cost less to treat. Anti-aging treatment is not fundamentally different to what the normal health care system does anyway, and reframing it in this way would boost PR, IMHO. Some people freak out at the idea of making people live longer, stronger and smarter, but very few would argue that it is reasonable to deny their grandmother her hip replacement and anti-dementia drugs on the grounds that it constitutes unnatural enhancement. Similarly with brain enhancements: governments spend huge amounts on education because a smarter population is a more productive population, and historically only real loonies like Pol Pot have gone against this. Direct cognitive enhancement would only be an extension of this. Once people overcome their horror of it they would start to demand it, and those countries that didn't provide it for all their citizens would be left further and further behind. -- Stathis Papaioannou From mbb386 at main.nc.us Tue May 12 11:50:31 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 07:50:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Health care discussion In-Reply-To: <02b201c9d2f6$f46a8860$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> References: <491328.4520.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A042C89.90103@libero.it> <20090512055502.GD9691@ofb.net> <02b201c9d2f6$f46a8860$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> Message-ID: <41058.12.77.169.23.1242129031.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> >> As it happens, post-military South America seems to have largely >> embraced universal health care. Peru, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay... > > As to the US neighbor to the north, there is an article here about health care in Canada: http://www.calgaryherald.com/Health/Canadians+receive+poor+value+health+care+dollars/1584180/story.html Regards, MB From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 12 12:02:45 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 22:02:45 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Health care discussion In-Reply-To: <41058.12.77.169.23.1242129031.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <491328.4520.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A042C89.90103@libero.it> <20090512055502.GD9691@ofb.net> <02b201c9d2f6$f46a8860$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> <41058.12.77.169.23.1242129031.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: 2009/5/12 MB : >>> As it happens, post-military South America seems to have largely >>> embraced universal health care. ?Peru, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay... >> >> > > As to the US neighbor to the north, there is an article here about health care in > Canada: > > http://www.calgaryherald.com/Health/Canadians+receive+poor+value+health+care+dollars/1584180/story.html Thearticle mentions that the Canadian public health care system is amongst the most expensive in the world, but in absolute terms, the total amount spent on health care in the US (public plus private) is something like double anywhere else in the developed world. And despite waiting lists etc. the Canadians live longer than Americans do. This is not to say that there aren't problems with the Canadian or any health care system, or any other enterprise, public or private, for that matter. Observing where one country or company does it better than another is how improvements are made. -- Stathis Papaioannou From painlord2k at libero.it Tue May 12 13:56:44 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 15:56:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <4A089428.1000105@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A09801C.7020204@libero.it> Il 12/05/2009 6.09, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/5/12 painlord2k at libero.it: > If you make money at a higher hourly rate, then you are considered > more successful. This means more money for less work. really? If I gather 1 kg of berries at hour and sell them and you gather 2 kg of berries in half an hour, are you working less than me and gaining more money than me? > The hourly rate > can be averaged out to include any study or training: there's not much > point to it (from a capitalist perspective) if the time spent working > but not earning money won't be at least repaid when when you do start > earning. You are under the false assumption that all work is the same. Are you telling me that a surgeon work less than a nurse? It is like comparing orange and apples. Not all work is the same, as a surgeon is able to do a work the nurse is unable to do. There are less surgeon than nurses. To have a working surgeon you need to invest much more scarce resources than to have a working nurse. >> In your example about Mr. Buffett, you imply that the work done by him could >> be done by any plumber or farmer with a minimum training. If it was so, >> there would be many Warren Buffett and Mr. Buffett would not be so special >> or rich. > > No, I think he was just lucky, as most studies of investors show that > they are no more likely to be successful in the future if they have > been successful in the past. But even if in fact he was successful > because he was smart or because he risked his capital, it doesn't > change the fact that he made a lot of money doing a little work a > *lot* less work than someone has to do to obtain the dole. If he is only a lucky man, you can just wait and he will lose his money. Capitalism is not gambling, albeit someone could think so if believe that capitalism is only what happen in a trade exchange. > Very few wealthy people make their money purely through their own > efforts. Usually they do the most difficult and requested works; they use their wealth, organize and coordinate the jobs of others. > Your Robinson Crusoe story is an example of this, but the > usual capitalist way is if Crusoe could get several competitors to > gather food and give him a proportion of it while he sits back. For > example, he could set up a shop trading one type of food for another > and keeping a profit. This is called "economic coordination" or "economic specialization". This would be done only if it is more practical and efficient to do. The people hunting game and the people gathering berries could exchange the goods between themselves and cut out Mr.Robinson (as he is doing nothing useful for them, you suppose). But wait! Mr. Robinson (an ex-gathers of berries) invested his leisure time to build a storage room where the berries and the game could be stored for many days. Then he stored his hand-gathered berries there and started to exchange them for game. Now, all hunters and gathers know that Mr.Robinson have this place where they can go and exchange immediately berries for game. When a hunter want berries, he can immediately go to Mr. Robinson and obtain his berries in exchange of game. The same is true for the gatherers. Suppose, for simplicity, that the game/berries exchange rate is fixed between the two groups. Now, Mr. Robinson decide that he will keep 10% of the game and 10% of the berries he trade as payment for his services. You could say this is an unjust profit, I would argue that this is the price the gathers and the hunters can choose to pay to obtain, without delay, berries or game. It is 90% immediately or 100% with a delay (a day or a week, maybe). > Now, this takes *some* work, maybe even hard > work, and perhaps it helps the other hunters as well as the > shopkeeper, so that everyone is happier than if there had been no > shop. But the fact remains, if the shopkeeper makes a profit much > larger than that of the hunters, he is effectively sponging off their > work. If the shopkeeper is doing a too large profit, someone else could undercut him doing the same job at a lower price and profit nonetheless. Hunters and gathers could return to a direct exchange if they find the cost to use Mr.Robinson services too high. So, Mr.Robinson have to limits at the prices he can charge: 1) The people using the services must find them useful enough to be willing to pay for them 2) The profits he earn must not be so large to invite others to do compete with him; usually he will profit as much as possible, then competition will show up and he will need to lower his prices. 3) The foresighted profits must be higher than doing something else. > This was the Marxists' essential criticism of capitalism: they > valued hard work, and they thought that workers should be able to > profit in proportion to their labour. Are hard work and labour the same? If the capitalist is reaping too large profits, what prevent the workers to organize themselves, pool resources and become self-employed and keep the profits for themselves? The only answers are two: 1) They are unable or unwilling to do so 2) They are prevented to do so If you want all workers to share the profits of the enterprise, you must share even the costs and the losses and the risks. For example, the workers of a plant producing cars could be required to receive their wages only when the car are materially sold and the money collected. This could be days or weeks or months after the cars are produced and the work done. So, you would see their wages change continuously every months in a not easily predictable way. Or they could build cars and sell them to dealers that will resell them to customers, but this would imply the profits would be lower and the dealers could refrain from buy cars if their inventories are too high. If the factory work at a loss, there would not be any money to pay wages, obviously or the workers could be required to cover the losses. Do you like these arrangements? I find them extremely unworkable. Do you have any suggestion that don't imply the capitalist must suck lemons and risks, profits and losses are shared proportionally and equally? And we have not covered how much pay people with different jobs. > Government welfare payments etc. > was not a feature of communism. In fact, I believe that in some Soviet > Bloc countries it was actually illegal to be willfully unemployed. Yes, it was illegal to don't hold a recognized job. The state could force you to do any job it feel you were fit or deserve or was needed. Obviously this worked so well for wealth creation and productivity. Mainly in the Siberian Gulags. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.325 / Virus Database: 270.12.24/2108 - Release Date: 05/11/09 05:52:00 From painlord2k at libero.it Tue May 12 14:05:58 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 16:05:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z><875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike><4A04341E.6030605@libero.it><9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> Message-ID: <4A098246.3040107@libero.it> Il 12/05/2009 1.06, spike ha scritto: > Stathis you are from Italy? I am from the US, so this is MY money that is > being poured down a rat hole. Not poured, that's too passive. MY money is > being blasted down a rat hole with a fire hose. Stathis Papaioannou sound Greek, so I suppose he is Greek or from US, maybe from Cyprus. I'm Italian and I saw money blasted in such ways. What is last is only a large debt to be repaid by the people, higher taxes, lower economic development. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.325 / Virus Database: 270.12.24/2108 - Release Date: 05/11/09 05:52:00 From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 12 14:33:21 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 09:33:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Stathis In-Reply-To: <4A098246.3040107@libero.it> References: <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z> <875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike> <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <4A098246.3040107@libero.it> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090512092919.024d9170@satx.rr.com> >>Stathis you are from Italy? > >Stathis Papaioannou sound Greek, so I suppose he is Greek or from >US, maybe from Cyprus. I must say I'm mind-boggled by this question and wild speculations. Stathis has mentioned repeatedly that he's an Australian psychiatrist, working in Melbourne. Half the force of his postings on health systems derives from his experience as a practicing psychiatric professional in Australia. Damien Broderick From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 12 14:06:41 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 07:06:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Lost innocence is mostly a myth/was Re: The Circle of Coercion Message-ID: <113358.45347.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/12/09, Damien Sullivan wrote: > -0700, Lee Corbin wrote: >> As is so often the case, there is no principle in >> operation here. Only expediency. So far as I can >> tell, >> expediency has been uniformly increasing in the U.S. >> at the expense of principle for about one hundred >> and fifty years. > > Increasing, as opposed to having always been present?? > What great > stances of principle can you point to?? The 3/5 > compromise?? The Senate? > Andrew Jackson's violation of the Cherokees? I happen to agree with you here. It seems a certain mythical view of history underlies this discussion. It's sort of an anti-Whig view of history. The Whig view is that history is basically progressive -- moving from worse to better, an upward curve. There are some modifications, but this view of history is popular and still animates a lot of historical discussion. Whenever someone thinks "we know better now," she might be tapping into this view. (If anything, that our predecessors thought they knew better and that they corrected the mistakes of the past should give pause.) The anti-Whig view is a little different: the past was better and we've somehow lost something. Often this takes on tripartite form: 1) an idyllic or idealized past -- usually very long ago when giants walked, 2) the more recent past that corrupted this ideal, and 3) the present where we can decide to reclaim that idealized past or fall further into corruption -- typically with the choice being set in all or nothing terms: either we win or we'll be wiped out. In terms of the US and America in general, my readings of history have led me to believe there was no idealized past. Even the Founding and before were already corrupt and people and politics were much like today. This doesn't mean nothing was better or that nothing was lost, but it shouldn't make us think nothing has improved and nothing has been gained. I believe Extropians and transhumanists would do well to avoid simplistic views of history, especially to not pretend there's an easy, simple exit from real world problems. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 12 14:36:07 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 07:36:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Social Market Roots of Democratic Peace Message-ID: <824283.9191.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I thought this might be of interest as peaceful interaction would seem most conducive to Extropianism and transhumanist projects: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/18985/social_market_roots_of_democratic_peace.html "Democracy does not cause peace among nations. Rather, domestic conditions cause both democracy and peace. From 1961 to 2001, democratic nations engaged in numerous fatal conflicts with each other, including at least one war, yet not a single fatal militarized incident occurred between nations with contract-intensive economies-those where most people have the opportunity to participate in the market. In contract-intensive economies, individuals learn to respect the choices of others and value equal application of the law. They demand liberal democracy at home and perceive it in their interest to respect the rights of nations and international law abroad. The consequences involve more than just peace: the contract-intensive democracies are in natural alliance against any actor-state or nonstate-that seeks to challenge Westphalian law and order. Because China and Russia lack contractualist economies, the economic divide will define great power politics in the coming decade. To address the challenges posed by China and Russia, preserve the Westphalian order, and secure their citizens from terrorism, the contract-intensive powers should focus their efforts on supporting global economic opportunity, rather than on promoting democracy." Also, Mousseau gives a brief run down on Economic Norms Theory at: http://portal.ku.edu.tr/~mmousseau/Economic%20Norms%20Theory.htm I've long been suspicious of Democratic Peace Theory.* Mousseau's works seems to explain why that theory seems to have some empirical basis. Anyhow, if he's right, the take home is that those who want a more peaceful world -- even if simply to spend (or waste) the money that would've gone into security and war on national healthcare -- might do well to understand how contract-intensive economies can spread. Regards, Dan * There are two problems I've seen with the theory: a tendency to define democracy narrowly (so that when what critics might call democracies are fighting each other, one of them gets re-defined as a non-democracy) and a very small and biased data set (modern democracies were rare until the 20th century and then most of this history is either covered by the Cold War or the unipolar moment). From painlord2k at libero.it Tue May 12 14:52:36 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 16:52:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Health care discussion In-Reply-To: References: <491328.4520.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A042C89.90103@libero.it> <20090512055502.GD9691@ofb.net> <02b201c9d2f6$f46a8860$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> <41058.12.77.169.23.1242129031.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <4A098D34.6030703@libero.it> Il 12/05/2009 14.02, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > The article mentions that the Canadian public health care system is > amongst the most expensive in the world, but in absolute terms, the > total amount spent on health care in the US (public plus private) is > something like double anywhere else in the developed world. And > despite waiting lists etc. the Canadians live longer than Americans > do. The Canadians have not the same ethnic/social composition of the US, so they could live longer for genetic reasons. The Canadians are prohibited to pay for additional healthcare or they forfeited the public healthcare, so it is understandable they spend less on healthcare than the US; but there are so many clinics under the border in the US serving Canadians clients. Then, healthcare is only partially responsible of life length of people. Better food, sanitation, lower crime, etc. can have an effect. Hail Mary treatments are much more diffused in the US than in socialized healthcare systems. 50% of healthcare costs happen during the last one-two years of life. US healthcare is not so government-intervention-independent. It is heavily regulated. > This is not to say that there aren't problems with the Canadian or any > health care system, or any other enterprise, public or private, for > that matter. Observing where one country or company does it better > than another is how improvements are made. And competition is because they are done. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.325 / Virus Database: 270.12.24/2108 - Release Date: 05/11/09 05:52:00 From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 12 15:20:04 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 08:20:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Throwing money at education (was: libertarians and inheritance) In-Reply-To: <51E25222F3BA400ABC6D971498C7BBC6@MyComputer> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090511011047.024bfe00@satx.rr.com> <51E25222F3BA400ABC6D971498C7BBC6@MyComputer> Message-ID: <20090512152004.GA13864@ofb.net> On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 02:50:27AM -0400, John K Clark wrote: > "Damien Broderick" > >> I know, I know. It's scandalous how much is just thrown away educating >> young humans > > You are absolutely correct! The dreadful Washington DC public schools spend > $13,330 per student per year, think of a private school that charged that, > which school do you think would be superior? False comparison; the private school would refuse to take a lot of the public school students. Easy to get good results when you can cherry-pick. Not that there might not also be a lot of waste in poorly supervised public systems, but they have to take all the special-needs students (learning disabilities, behavior problems). Not to mention the cultural and background differences between the average DC family and the average family that can afford $13,000 a year. -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 12 15:29:28 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 08:29:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Meme change not person death/was Re: Friedmanand negative income tax In-Reply-To: <02b201c9d2f6$f46a8860$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> References: <20090512055502.GD9691@ofb.net> <02b201c9d2f6$f46a8860$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> Message-ID: <20090512152928.GB13864@ofb.net> On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 08:44:02AM -0300, Henrique Moraes Machado (CI) wrote: >> As it happens, post-military South America seems to have largely >> embraced universal health care. Peru, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay... > > Speaking of Brazil... our public health care system is a mockery. Just > for starters: Hmm, I'd heard otherwise from another Brazilian. The Web seems to say "underfunded", "HMOs dump high-cost patients on the public system", and "cool electronic records system the US can only dream of". -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 12 15:37:01 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 08:37:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Health care discussion In-Reply-To: <41058.12.77.169.23.1242129031.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <20090512055502.GD9691@ofb.net> <02b201c9d2f6$f46a8860$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> <41058.12.77.169.23.1242129031.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <20090512153701.GC13864@ofb.net> On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 07:50:31AM -0400, MB wrote: > >> As it happens, post-military South America seems to have largely > >> embraced universal health care. Peru, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay... > > As to the US neighbor to the north, there is an article here about health care in > Canada: > > http://www.calgaryherald.com/Health/Canadians+receive+poor+value+health+care+dollars/1584180/story.html Note that they're comparing Canada to *other countries with universal health care*. One problem I've seen cited is that Canadian hospitals get block grants; most other countries have money follow the patient. (I think Britain's NHS uses block grants too; they're not a role model, and live just a bit longer than Americans. OTOH they're pretty cheap.) Canada's also I think unique in barring docotrs from private practice of things that Canada's Medicare will pay for (or rather, most practice is private, but charging more is barred), vs. public-private competition elsewhere. -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 12 15:50:48 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 08:50:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Health care discussion In-Reply-To: <4A098D34.6030703@libero.it> References: <491328.4520.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A042C89.90103@libero.it> <20090512055502.GD9691@ofb.net> <02b201c9d2f6$f46a8860$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> <41058.12.77.169.23.1242129031.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <4A098D34.6030703@libero.it> Message-ID: <20090512155048.GD13864@ofb.net> On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 04:52:36PM +0200, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > The Canadians have not the same ethnic/social composition of the US, so > they could live longer for genetic reasons. Problem is, US whites, being most of the US population, don't live much longer than the US average. E.g. http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/indicators/78LifeExpectancy.cfm 77.8 US vs. 78.3 white US. > The Canadians are prohibited to pay for additional healthcare or they > forfeited the public healthcare, so it is understandable they spend less A feature unique to Canada, as is being next door to the US. Spending less than the US for longer life than American whites is not unique to Canada. > Then, healthcare is only partially responsible of life length of people. > Better food, sanitation, lower crime, etc. can have an effect. True, but that turns "the US health care system is broken" into "the American way of life is unhealthy and broken". An interesting maneuver, to say the least. The "richest country in the world" can't provide healthy food or *sanitation*? > 50% of healthcare costs happen during the last one-two years of life. Which, BTW, means that a lot of US health care ends up being paid for by the government, via Medicare. "Hip replacements are faster in the US than Canada!" "So US Medicare is better than Canada's Medicare?" -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 12 16:01:03 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 09:01:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Health care discussion In-Reply-To: <20090512155048.GD13864@ofb.net> References: <491328.4520.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A042C89.90103@libero.it> <20090512055502.GD9691@ofb.net> <02b201c9d2f6$f46a8860$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> <41058.12.77.169.23.1242129031.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <4A098D34.6030703@libero.it> <20090512155048.GD13864@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20090512160102.GA28666@ofb.net> > On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 04:52:36PM +0200, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > > Then, healthcare is only partially responsible of life length of people. > > Better food, sanitation, lower crime, etc. can have an effect. A couple of interesting factors are chronic stress and reports that lower socioeconomic people live less long even when given the same access to health care. Some of the latter might be diet, but there are intimations that being low status is sefl-deadly. And stress is looking like a big killer. So... it's possible even a bad universal system could save lives simply by being universal, especially in combination with a strong safety net. Simply the knowledge that health care was there, unlike "lose your job, lose your insurance", combined with knowledge that one would never be reduced to desperate straits, vs. "rat race" and humiliating welfare applications, might save lives, through lack of worry and through not feeling like one was on the bottom of society. -xx- Damien X-) From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue May 12 16:14:30 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 12:14:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Throwing money at education References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090511011047.024bfe00@satx.rr.com><51E25222F3BA400ABC6D971498C7BBC6@MyComputer> <20090512152004.GA13864@ofb.net> Message-ID: <84E8700CF9AE4C8DB7508F5FD5180012@MyComputer> "Damien Sullivan" > Easy to get good results when you can > cherry-pick. Yes, and that's what makes cherry picking such a wonderful idea, it's easy to do and the results are excellent! When someone graduates from high school (at $13,330 a year) and is still reading at a second grade level it is a legitimate question to ask what the hell has been going on for the last 10 years. I think some children should be left behind, let the bottom 10% get on with their careers as drug addicts and petty criminals; it's where they're going to end up anyway regardless of how much money we throw at education. > the cultural and background differences between the average DC family and > the average family that can afford $13,000 a year. Correct again and there is absolutely nothing the public schools can do about that and it's time to stop pretending that they can. John K Clark From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 12 15:54:35 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 08:54:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Basis of property rights/was Re: The Circle of Coercion Message-ID: <230326.54490.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/12/09, Damien Sullivan wrote: > -0700, dan_ust at yahoo.com > wrote: >> This is a key feature of social contract theory. >> The typical social >> contract theory is an attempt to justify some >> socio-political order >> via an analogy with a real contract -- as if all >> members of society >> agree to some (you guessed it!) social contract. >> Since real world >> societies of any appreciable size don't arise >> contractually -- viz., >> people don't get together, formulate a contract, and >> then actually >> expressly consent to it -- the problem is how to >> complete the analogy. >> This is where tacit consent comes in. > >> This brings up another problem with social contracts: >> even were an >> explicit contract signed, it wouldn't bind others or >> future >> generations. But in the case of your country of >> birth, the government > > But these problems are true of property rights as > well. I didn't > consent to be born into a world where I inherit no wealth > and Paris > Hilton inherits $100s of millions. Why should I > respect her claim to > more than a fair share of the Earth's resources? Or > the claim of the > Sultan of Brunei? And why, in turn, should someone > without even access > to clean water, respect my modest life, let alone that of > the > egregiously wealthy? But (most*) libertarian property rights theories are not based on consent. Rights don't arise by consent. In fact, consent only arises because there are prior rights. For example, you can consent to give me this for that only if you have a right to this and I have a right to that. This is true of any consent argument: it presumes the consenting parties have prior rights -- even if the term "rights" is not used. My point was aimed at social contract theory. In fact, for social contract theory, consent is central; without consent, the whole of it breaks down. No consent, no contract, right?** Then the problem becomes how does this consent come about -- because, obviously, no real world governments rules by explicit consent of the governed (and most social contract theorists from Hobbes to Rawls appear to recognize the impracticality of express consent for real world governments***). Regards, Dan * There's been some debate over Hume's views on conventionalism and rights. I haven't done enough research on Hume or Hume-inspired rights theories, but I believe his view is that property rights grow out of the social conditions. I don't know how he separates the social condition from human nature -- as I believe the social part of it would be partly determined by human nature, even if in a dialectical fashion. (Dialectical determination can have one side setting the initial conditions or having more sway, no?) If this is so, it seems to me that Hume's rights theory is merely a different gloss on the human nature basis of rights -- and not really a radical alternative to most libertarian rights theories. ** Notably, libertarian minarchists -- like Rand, if I understand her views correctly -- tend to base their view of government arising and its legitimacy not on consent per se, but on human nature. Rand argued that humans needed government. Of course, she did argue that government must rule by consent, but the ultimate basis for her is human nature -- not social contract. *** Not to mention, were such necessary, there'd probably be almost no government as such consent would be limited to small groups for a limited time. From scerir at tiscali.it Tue May 12 16:26:52 2009 From: scerir at tiscali.it (scerir at tiscali.it) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 18:26:52 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] oops! Message-ID: <20693232.1026881242145612964.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> take me back to the sixties? http://objflicks.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm Non farti scappare la Promozione di Primavera. Stampa le tue foto nei formati 13x17 e 13x19 a soli 0,11 euro !!!http://photo.tiscali.it From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Tue May 12 16:35:04 2009 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado (CI)) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 13:35:04 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Meme change not person death/was Re: Friedmanandnegative income tax References: <20090512055502.GD9691@ofb.net><02b201c9d2f6$f46a8860$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> <20090512152928.GB13864@ofb.net> Message-ID: <036101c9d31f$9b50f1f0$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> > On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 08:44:02AM -0300, Henrique Moraes Machado (CI) > wrote: >>> As it happens, post-military South America seems to have largely >>> embraced universal health care. Peru, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay... >> >> Speaking of Brazil... our public health care system is a mockery. Just >> for starters: Damien Sulivan> Hmm, I'd heard otherwise from another Brazilian. > > The Web seems to say "underfunded", "HMOs dump high-cost patients on the > public system", and "cool electronic records system the US can only > dream of". Oh yes. I forgot that part. The private health security firms really try to dump as much as they can on the public system. This only adds to the general chaos. And as for the electronic records, progress actually has been made. I admit it. From mbb386 at main.nc.us Tue May 12 16:59:41 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 12:59:41 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Health care discussion In-Reply-To: <20090512155048.GD13864@ofb.net> References: <491328.4520.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A042C89.90103@libero.it> <20090512055502.GD9691@ofb.net> <02b201c9d2f6$f46a8860$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> <41058.12.77.169.23.1242129031.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <4A098D34.6030703@libero.it> <20090512155048.GD13864@ofb.net> Message-ID: <41372.12.77.168.174.1242147581.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> >> Then, healthcare is only partially responsible of life length of people. >> Better food, sanitation, lower crime, etc. can have an effect. > > True, but that turns "the US health care system is broken" into "the > American way of life is unhealthy and broken". An interesting maneuver, > to say the least. The "richest country in the world" can't provide > healthy food or *sanitation*? "can't provide"? The food is there, sanitation is there. Soap and water are not *that* expensive. I see people buying junk food while I'm buying whole grain flour and fruit and vegs. That is *choice*. Healthy choices are more Extropian, no? Some folks eat way too much, others practice caloric restriction. But "provide"?? Do you mean *force*? Imagine how far foodstamps could go if wholegrain oatmeal were prepared instead of packaged high-sugar cereal? Or plain water for beverages or even green tea, rather than sugar juice-drinks (what *are* those, anyway??). Or fresh vegs rather than some pre-made high-fructose laced "dinner" in a box. It's not for lack of promotion, either. Food pyramids and such are plastered on packaging everywhere, and the vitamin, sodium, carb, protein, fats content must be listed. Regards, MB From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 12 17:51:03 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 10:51:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Health care discussion In-Reply-To: <41372.12.77.168.174.1242147581.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <4A042C89.90103@libero.it> <20090512055502.GD9691@ofb.net> <02b201c9d2f6$f46a8860$fd00a8c0@cpdhemm> <41058.12.77.169.23.1242129031.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <4A098D34.6030703@libero.it> <20090512155048.GD13864@ofb.net> <41372.12.77.168.174.1242147581.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <20090512175103.GA5053@ofb.net> On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 12:59:41PM -0400, MB wrote: > > >> Then, healthcare is only partially responsible of life length of people. > >> Better food, sanitation, lower crime, etc. can have an effect. > > True, but that turns "the US health care system is broken" into "the > > American way of life is unhealthy and broken". An interesting maneuver, > "can't provide"? The food is there, sanitation is there. Soap and > water are not *that* expensive. I see people buying junk food while Dan was the one citing better food and sanitation as possible factors in lower US life expectancy. > I'm buying whole grain flour and fruit and vegs. That is *choice*. Healthy food isn't easily available in a lot of bad neighborhoods, actually. -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 12 17:57:06 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 10:57:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Basis of property rights/was Re: The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <230326.54490.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <230326.54490.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20090512175658.GB5053@ofb.net> On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 08:54:35AM -0700, Dan wrote: > But (most*) libertarian property rights theories are not based on > consent. Rights don't arise by consent. In fact, consent only arises See, I'd disagree there. If someone claims some property, that claim is honored either by ability to defend the claim, or by the consent of everyone else. Whether there's a "right" is ultimately irrelevant; rights don't defend themselves. > because there are prior rights. For example, you can consent to give > me this for that only if you have a right to this and I have a right > to that. This is true of any consent argument: it presumes the > consenting parties have prior rights -- even if the term "rights" is > not used. THe original libertarians -- the 19th century left anarchists like Proudhon and Bakunin, and perhaps the non-libertarian Hobbes before them -- migh well say that initially everyone has a right to everything. Certainly everyone in the state of nature can walk wherever they please. To fence off some land as "my farm" is to seize land formerly available to all. -xx- Damien X-) From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue May 12 18:00:24 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 11:00:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Study: Bad boy doesn't always get the girl Message-ID: <2d6187670905121100h60023822xa99d22af089bf4c2@mail.gmail.com> I wonder how this applies to our modern society. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090511/ap_on_sc/us_sci_warring_losers -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Tue May 12 18:12:51 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 20:12:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <20090512051834.GB9691@ofb.net> References: <260856.55885.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20090512051834.GB9691@ofb.net> Message-ID: <4A09BC23.1040103@libero.it> Il 12/05/2009 7.18, Damien Sullivan ha scritto: > But these problems are true of property rights as well. I didn't > consent to be born into a world where I inherit no wealth and Paris > Hilton inherits $100s of millions. Sue your parents. They brought you in this world. > Why should I respect her claim to > more than a fair share of the Earth's resources? 1) Because she have more power than you, so if you don't respect her, she will not respect you 2) Because you value the possibility to collaborate with her in future 3) Because not respecting her properties would adversely effect your ability to collaborate with others. > Or the claim of the Sultan of Brunei? > And why, in turn, should someone without even access > to clean water, respect my modest life, let alone that of the > egregiously wealthy? The respect for others rise from their perceived value: 1) You respect them because they are dangerous to you if you attack them 2) You respect them because you value their collaboration with you now or in future 3) You respect them because you would be valued more and considered not dangerous from others. But, if you continue to believe differently, I suppose you have nothing against people that don't respect the claims of Saudis and Iranians about their oil (their share of oil is too high, we have the same right like them to the oil of the world). And, for sure, Norwegian have the right to invade Senegal to take their fair share of sunny sea and beaches. In exchange, the senegalese could take their fair share of frozen seas and beaches. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.325 / Virus Database: 270.12.24/2108 - Release Date: 05/11/09 05:52:00 From painlord2k at libero.it Tue May 12 18:17:46 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 20:17:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Consent by staying?/was Re: The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <179766.44378.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <179766.44378.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A09BD4A.5050900@libero.it> Il 11/05/2009 22.54, Dan ha scritto: > --- On Sat, 5/9/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> 2009/5/8 painlord2k at libero.it : > [big snip] >> So if I decided at age 18 that I don't want to obey the unjust >> taxation laws, for example, I could be expelled (to where?), but >> for those who accept citizenship taxation is part of the contract >> they have entered into? > For me, there is one glaring problem with this view: the state has no > right to expell people simply because they don't agree to the state's > policies.* This is no different, to me, than any other criminal gang > riding into town and then telling everyone, "If you don't agree with > our rules, you're free to leave town." (Granted, such a gang might > be marginally more tolerable than one offering the choice of "agree > or die.") Just as with any criminal gang, the state has no right to > demand obeisance -- in the particular case you mention, to demand > payment of taxes. Take out "the state". We are not talking about state. The example revolved around condominiums and shared private properties. We could take the example of Seasteading. Hundred persons pay to build the platform and take an equal share of the property. They decide unanimously to contribute a fixed sum per capita every year to pay for the platform reparations and renovations as a "fee to use" the platform. The shares give the owners a right to decide what to do with the platform, where the fee give the payers the right to use the platform for a fixed time. There could be payers that don't own the shares of the platform or sharers that don't pay the fee to use it as they live elsewhere. The heirs (new sharers) would be compelled to pay for the use of the platform as anyone else. If they don't pay, they could be forced out of the platform. It is true that they have not an agreement with the other 99 owners, but the 99 owners are not bound by any agreement with the heirs. The heirs can own 1% of the platform and live elsewhere or abide by the rules. They could sell their 1% to someone else interested in owning part of the platform. Or they could be forced to use and stay only in their 1% of the platform until they pay the fee. Or, in case of modular design of the platform, their module could be detached from the others. > So I believe the consent by staying argument -- if that's what you're > offering -- fails. But it is not what I advocate. My point is that people could decide what to do with their properties. People inherit the properties will inherit duties and claims. If they don't want the duties they have not claims. The fact that there is anywhere to go is not a good reason to not follow any rules. > Notably, it's quite similar to the argument that > if people are not openly rebelling than they consent to the > government ruling over them. Really democratic government are ruled by the consent of the people, so they share their government fate. If they are not really democratic, the people is captives or collaborators. In any way, what happen to them is imputable to their government, not to the other side. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.325 / Virus Database: 270.12.24/2108 - Release Date: 05/11/09 05:52:00 From painlord2k at libero.it Tue May 12 18:28:10 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 20:28:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Basis of property rights/was Re: The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <20090512175658.GB5053@ofb.net> References: <230326.54490.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20090512175658.GB5053@ofb.net> Message-ID: <4A09BFBA.1010104@libero.it> Il 12/05/2009 19.57, Damien Sullivan ha scritto: > Certainly everyone in the state of nature can walk wherever they please. > To fence off some land as "my farm" is to seize land formerly available > to all. In a "State of Nature" you can walk everywhere as you can be killed everywhere by anyone able and willing to do so. The first step out the "State of Nature" is a mutual contract, implicit or explicit, to not kill others. The second step is to mutually recognize their right to their property, like their territory and their stuff, as you want them to recognize the same right in you. A rule of thumb to check if something is a right is to see if it can be claimed and exercised by all in the same time. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.325 / Virus Database: 270.12.24/2108 - Release Date: 05/11/09 05:52:00 From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 12 18:41:48 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 11:41:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Basis of property rights/was Re: The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <4A09BFBA.1010104@libero.it> References: <230326.54490.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20090512175658.GB5053@ofb.net> <4A09BFBA.1010104@libero.it> Message-ID: <20090512184148.GA20420@ofb.net> On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 08:28:10PM +0200, painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > Il 12/05/2009 19.57, Damien Sullivan ha scritto: > >> Certainly everyone in the state of nature can walk wherever they please. >> To fence off some land as "my farm" is to seize land formerly available >> to all. > > In a "State of Nature" you can walk everywhere as you can be killed > everywhere by anyone able and willing to do so. > > The first step out the "State of Nature" is a mutual contract, implicit > or explicit, to not kill others. The second step is to mutually > recognize their right to their property, like their territory and their > stuff, as you want them to recognize the same right in you. Yes, exactly, that's my point! Except that what's fairly claimed as "their property" is also subject to negotiation. -xx- Damien X-) From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 12 19:41:48 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 12:41:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Basis of property rights Message-ID: <189045.17902.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/12/09, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 08:54:35AM > -0700, Dan wrote: > >> But (most*) libertarian property rights theories are >> not based on >> consent.? Rights don't arise by consent.? In >> fact, consent only arises > > See, I'd disagree there.? If someone claims some > property, that claim is > honored either by ability to defend the claim, or by the > consent of everyone else.? The claim, naturally, will be honored by such, but this doesn't mean the right arises merely from being honored. Look at it this way. Were you to claim X is your property, why would anyone agree with your claim? Merely for the hell of it? (And even in the case where you might defend it, surely many might still disagree -- just as you might not try to rectify a theft from an armed robber, but you wouldn't say the loot actually belongs to him.) This is why most minarchist* libertarians talk about government recognizing but not creating rights. Of course, one can argue that whatever the basis is it won't do the job, but your original criticism here was that property rights are based on consent. > Whether there's a "right" is > ultimately irrelevant; > rights don't defend themselves. Actually, it is relevant because it motivates people to act in certain ways. E.g., if someone believes you have a right to X, she is far less likely to try to take X from you without your consent and far more likely to help you keep X should someone else try to take X from you without your consent. (This includes pre-theoretic notions of right -- as when a person doesn't necessarily have an elaborate theory of rights, but merely presumes it's yours by possession.) >> because there are prior rights.? For example, you >> can consent to give >> me this for that only if you have a right to this and >> I have a right >> to that.? This is true of any consent argument: >> it presumes the >> consenting parties have prior rights -- even if the >> term "rights" is not used. > > THe original libertarians -- the 19th century left > anarchists like Proudhon and Bakunin, I'm using the term libertarian in the peculiarly modern Anglo-American fashion -- not to be confused with other usages. > and perhaps the non-libertarian > Hobbes before them > -- migh well say that initially everyone has a right to > everything. > Certainly everyone in the state of nature can walk wherever > they please. > To fence off some land as "my farm" is to seize land > formerly available > to all. Actually, from my reading Proudhon and Bakunin had a collectivist or common property view. IIRC, too, the former did believe in a sort of private property by use standard, but this was very limited. (Any Proudhon scholars handy to set me straight on this?) More importantly, I'm not sure either would've based their view of collective or common ownership on consent. (My guess would be that they don't, but I'd have to do more research. Why do I think they don't? Well, it might obviously lead to the situation where everyone consents to, say, a Lockean private property system -- the very system they were against.) Hobbes view was a bit different -- if I understand him correctly. For him rights in the state of nature equal, I believe, capabilities and every has rights equally. So, you might have the right to kill Hobbes, but he has the same right to kill you. This, of course, conflates rights and makes them useless for any sort of analysis -- as they lead to not specific conclusions and justify anything. Now, these differences are all nice and fine, but I wasn't talking about who might disagree with libertarian rights theory, but elaborating that libertarians rights theory is not essentially consensual. In other words, in that theory, rights don't arise by consent. Regards, Dan * Minarchists believe that a minimal government -- specifically one limited to protecting individual negative rights -- is possible and the best possible form of political arrangement. I believe there are two problems with this view. One is that any such government would have to avoid violating individual negative rights, so it couldn't tax or even outlaw rival rights protectors (i.e., protection agencies), so it could never maintain by law a territorial monopoly on this. The other is that I think any real government is bound to violate rights. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 12 20:37:30 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 13:37:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Government footprint and socialized medicine/was Re: The Circle of Coercion Message-ID: <186122.36496.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/12/09, Damien Sullivan wrote: > -0700, Dan wrote: >> --- On Mon, 5/11/09, Stathis Papaioannou >> wrote: >>> 2009/5/11 Lee Corbin : > >>>> would be questioned? Who sixty or seventy >>>> years ago in America could have guessed that >>>> government would come to absorb about fifty >>>> percent of everyone's pay, and would soon > > Man, what?? Tax rates right now are lower than they've > been in > generations.? We're still in the Bush tax cuts for the > upper class -- > 35% on the tap bracket -- and Obama's cut them for the > middle and lower > class.? The 30 year postwar economic boom had top > taxes of 70%; Reagan > in 1981 cut that bracket *down* to 50%.? Yet now we > have tha taxophobes > talking as if 39% vs. 35% is "socialism".? Lowest tax > rates in decades > and the GOP still talks only about tax cuts. I agree that income tax levels are lower and don't understand Lee's comments.? I also think that other taxes have risen and that inflation has a huge impact on this.? IIRC, too, the federal income tax was sold (it came into effect in 1913, IIRC) as an alternative to high tariffs and the [income] tax supposedly only really impacted the wealthy. There's also the problem of measuring the government's "footprint" in society.? I wouldn't speak of a certain percentage of taxation as socialism, though I'd say that, even during the era of the Reagan tax cuts, government's footprint grew.*? (And the GOP has proven itself, time and again, to be faithful to the creed of "spend spend spend.")? This is where I think spending might be a better proxy and it might be better to measure spending in absolute terms rather than relative terms -- in other words, in inflation adjusted money terms rather than as a percentage of GDP.? (On the latter, aside from GDP being mostly a meaningless measure, were it to double and, say, military spending doubled and inflation were zero, this would likely mean, even though the military spending remained the same percentage-wise, the military footprint grew -- say, maybe there were more tanks, bombs, and more places being invaded.**) >>> You keep going on about health care, but it is >>> one of the >>> things that clearly works better when there is >>> government involvement. >> >> I disagree, but what's your evidence for this?? >> From my readings, it >> seems to me that government involvement has made >> healthcare much more > > Well, there are lots of countries with socialized insurance > (in one > case, actual socialized medicine), and they all live longer > at less cost than the US. Are you certain this is evidence of "health care" that "clearly works better when there is government involvement"?? If so, then you have the US case, which is one where regulation is probably more rampant than anywhere else and this leads to higher costs and lower quality of service (despite the higher costs).? This regulation includes the FDA, which increases the overall costs of new therapies and even keeps some therapies off the market (even ones that are approved in other advanced countries); the AMA, which reduces competition in that market overall by limiting seats at medical schools and eliminating (or damn near eliminating) any competing forms of medicine; and myriad regulatory oversights that seem bent on strangling efficiency out of the system.? The surprising thing to me is actually that the US system isn't far worse. > Also, market health care manifestly fails to provide health > care who don't have money.? Not so.? There would, under a voluntary health care system be room for charity.? There seems to be some evidence that in the US this was the main way the poor got healthcare before the Medicaid program was created.? (I'll have to look up references, but I recall charts seeing inflation adjusted costs rising soonafter 1965. Coincidence?) > Or who don't have proof of payment, > as might happen > if someone got mugged and left unconscious.? The US > decided some time > ago that people shouldn't die for lack of money, thus > Medicaid and more > fundamentally, the ER mandate to take people in.? We > already have > socialized insurance of sorts, of an egregiously bad > variety.? (One that > dumps the costs on hospitals, and doesn't provide for > preventive care, > and provides incentives not have ERs; top-notch insurance > won't save you > if you bleed out before you reach an emergency room.) I disagree.? This was the rhetoric for the program -- not the reality.? And the actual result, if one looks at the data, was to drive up costs, making it ever harder for people to afford health care -- and feeding into the call for more regulation and more subsidization.? (Eventually, this lead, about ten years after Medicaid went into effect, to attempts to regulate pricing.? Why was this?? Why the uptick, above inflation, in price?)? This makes sense from an economics standpoint: anything that stimulates demand, all else being equal, will likely cause a rise in prices. >> partly -- what might've happened had healthcare reform >> been in the direction of a free market (as in, in the >> US, abolishing the FDA, getting rid of the AMA's >> monopoly powers, and removing government completely >> from provisioning and mandating healthcare). > > We had that back in the 19th and early 20th century.? > We moved away from it.? Ever wonder why? Actually, the AMA starting up in the mid-19th century and consolidated its control over the US markets by the end of that century.? The real motivation, as opposed to the offered rationale, for the AMA and the FDA seems to have been to keep out competitors. >> those apologists are completely, unequivocally >> wrong.? Central >> economic planning failed (and continues to fail; in >> the US, e.g., the >> central bank is central economic planning for the >> money system and the >> recent bust is merely its latest flop) as can be seen >> by how poorly it > > Bad call; there's good arguments that the latest flop is > from deliberate > lack of planning -- specifically, regulation. While there is some evidence that removal or changing of certain regulations (specific ones addressed in Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000) help cause the problem, this is not completely true.? This was an era of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the SEC clamping down on insider trading.? Anyone working for a publicly traded company of a decent size probably has noticed the legion of accountants that suddenly appeared to comply with the former and has had to sign documents regarding the latter.? There's always this myth with every economic crisis that up until the crisis happened government didn't exist, that we were all living under market anarchism, and had we only had the sense to put ever wise central bankers and bank regulators in charge, this wouldn't have happened. It also seems to be the case that the main cause of the current crisis was the inflation during the Bush years -- and that this was acerbated by heavy government involvement in the housing sector (especially via the government-sponsored Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, but also via the CRA and the "ownership society" claptrap) and the expectation by bug financial market players that bailouts were always an option.? (The last has been the underlying expectation at least since the early 1990s -- and even earlier given Greenspan's penchant for always helping big banks whenever a crisis was in the offing.? This created, I believe, a financial culture of high risk -- one that continues -- coupled with government subsidy -- the worst of both worlds, especially if regulations are loosened.) > Ideological sabotage, not basic impossibility. I disagree.? The view you offer below is basically that regulators can foresee crises and otuguess markets.? History and theory seem to show this is not possible -- and, if they could do so, then, I submit, full blown planning on the Soviet model should work abd perform at least as well as markets. > We know how to regualte banking > so that it is safe > and boring and stable, but we've had a regime that > disdained that in > favor of "innovations" like CDOs and hedge funds.? > Voila.? Conversely, > we had unplanned banking in the 19th century; that > generated major and frequent panics. This is another myth, IMO.? Major 19th century crises, like the 1819***, 1837, and 1873 panics in the US were due not to "unplanned banking" but inflationary policies fostered by the government and other government meddling in banking and money.? Also, even during the so called "free banking" period in the US (roughly from 1837 until 1860), there was state intervention in most so called "free banks," particularly with state government mandating portfolio requirements, limiting branch banking, and requiring banks to hold state debt. In essence, too, we have had a central planner in banking in the US since 1913: the Fed.? In recent decades, too, the Fed chair has planned as much as within his power the financial markets -- almost always failing to see crises and probably, if Austrian Business Cycle Theory is correct, causing many of them.? (This alone should be proof that having a central planner dictate interest rates, money supply, and the like doesn't work.****) >> **? Not to mention, Mises showed theoretically >> why this was so and >> predicted its failure early on.? He even took >> Lenin's New Economic >> Policy as evidence for his view being correct -- and >> others have seen >> it as an open admission that central economic planning >> can't work. > > Which is why the US is defended by lowest-bidder > mercenaries. The US is not defended: those contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan are by a predatory government (the US federal government) for occupation -- an offensive role, no? Also, do you agree that Lenin's NEP is evidence that Mises was right about central planning? Regards, Dan *? I mentioned this earlier, there are three basic ways modern governments are funded: taxation, borrowing, and inflation.? Taxation is typically the least popular because it's readily apparent who's being taxed -- and the taxed often can and will organize against it.? Borrowing and inflation tend to be preferred? because it's much harder to discern who will ultimately pay, making it much less likely the payers will organize and resist.? (Borrowing is like an indirect tax because, eventually, the loans will have to be repaid, so that will have to come from future taxes or future inflation.? Also, government borrowing -- since it tends to be very large and concentrated -- does compete with private borrowing, so it tends to drive up market interest rates and decrease the supply of loanable funds.? This is usually a more immediate effect than repayment of the loans.? Inflation is also like an indirect tax because holders of inflated money lose some value of that money.? However, there are time lags and path dependencies, so, again, it's very hard to tell who will ultimately pay the price -- save for generalizations like those only fixed incomes and net creditors will be harmed while those who receive the inflated money first (usually the government, the big banks, the large debtors) will benefit the most.) **? The argument offered by some neo-cons (who pretend to be libertarians) that double the economy means you need double the military is faulty for two reasons.? One, the military is unnecessary anyway, especially since its role is offensive and harms the economy.? Two, the one non-libertarians might give more weight to, there is no direct connect between the size of an economy and the percentage that must be spent on supposedly legitimate military needs.? If my worldly wealth were to double, I doubt I'd need to spend twice as much on my personal security. ***? See Rothbard's _The Panic of 1819_ for a detailed, if rather boring, examination of this crisis, its causes and aftermath. ****? Like with Soviet central planners, the Fed chair and the Fed board are not omnipotent and omniscient. Heck, recall just before the full extent of the crisis was evident and months before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were bailed out, Ben Bernanke said the two mortgage lenders were in "no danger of failing." :@ And yet he still has his job. We live in strange times... From mlatorra at gmail.com Tue May 12 22:13:28 2009 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 16:13:28 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses Message-ID: <9ff585550905121513l5c332f05yce47781214a4784e@mail.gmail.com> Vitamins Found to Curb Exercise Benefits By NICHOLAS WADE Published: May 11, 2009 If you exercise to improve your metabolism and prevent diabetes, you may want to avoid antioxidants like vitamins C and E. .... ?If you exercise to promote health, you shouldn?t take large amounts of antioxidants,? Dr. Ristow said. A second message of the study, he said, ?is that antioxidants in general cause certain effects that inhibit otherwise positive effects of exercise, dieting and other interventions.? The findings appear in this week?s issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ... *Read entire article at:* http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/health/research/12exer.html?em -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 13 04:05:29 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 21:05:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] diversity and private schools In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> <4A07BF24.3060304@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090511011047.024bfe00@satx.rr.com> <4A07C7F2.1020800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090511020825.0234dcf8@satx.rr.com> <4A07D90A.6010008@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A0A4709.2000605@rawbw.com> BillK wrote: > On 5/11/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > >> But a true market place, where some kid repeatedly >> doesn't do well or work out at some schools provides >> a "market opportunity" for entrepreneurs. > > "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man" is the > motto of the Jesuits. Jesuit schools are usually boarding schools to > reduce the influence of parents and the outside world. But it was never like that the Jesuits didn't have a lot of government support. You're speaking of episodes of history in which any kind of schooling for the masses not only was not wealth- creating, but would have been forbidden anyway (unless it happened to keep to the line of the government/religious majorities of the day). > Jesuit schools constitute one of the most effective forms for the > apostolic activity of the Society of Jesus in the United States. > Jesuits and their colleagues educate over 46,000 young men and women > each year at 71 secondary or pre-secondary schools in 25 states > > The trouble with a 'market' in schools is that there is no standard to > check them by. Every crazy group will have their own schools. Even > 'good' schools will be sneaking in minor classes in creationism or > bomb-making or the art of shoplifting, and so on. You operate under the assumption that we collectively know better than we do individually. But along with Madison, I say that the real virtue of your culture is not going to be manifest collectively if it cannot be manifest individually, or by smaller groups. You will rejoice that indeed, at present, the people you agree with for the most part have the government power. You'll switch sides expediently enough, I reckon, if the tables are turned. I.e., when folks like George Bush or the religious right are in power, then you're all against centralized collectively dictated school behavior - but when your guys are in the ascendancy, well, it's a different matter. Shall we not try to find a principle here? How about the one that got the west into riches: let a thousand flowers bloom (even if that phrasing was co-opted by a certain someone else). Clearly, if the people are going to be rotten enough to want for the most part to do things you don't like individually, then they'll be just as likely to do things you don't like collectively. It also seems to me that you focus overly much on very small groups, e.g., schools that would turn out professional criminals, or schools that would turn out terrorists. Do I sense a subconscious need for uniformity? > A 'market' has to have a minimum standard to attain and a supervisory > administration to stop wrong behavior. Just like any market, from > street markets to Wall Street (we can wish!). Yes, a rather totalitarian control is absolutely needed to stop all wrongdoing. Mao did manage to end prostitution, drug use, and other vices in all Chinese cities. But no one, least of all the Chinese, would today argue that it was worth it. The wrongdoing that needs attention from government is that which has effects far, far beyond their numbers. So we have laws to protect the weak or innocent from the strong or wicked. As with so many things, imagining all the things that could go wrong in some particular private school is relatively easy, while imagining the great good that would come about in the myriads by individualization is much more difficult. It can rarely be done well except by analogy: Aren't we grateful that supermarkets are free to innovate and explore new possibilities, and to cultivate those world-wide sources of least price? Imagine what they'd be like if government run (as they were in the USSR), and people were chanting "food delivery is too important to be left to the free market!". Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 13 04:13:50 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 21:13:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> Dan wrote: > For example, in the US, laws that prevent corporate takeovers > and the like shield management from the consequences of its > incompetence. The recent wave of subsidies to bigs banks and > large corporations likewise prevent the market from taking > down inefficience firms. The problem seems to me NOT that > Wall Street needs some governmental authority to step in to > prevent cheating, but that we need the government to stop > bailing out or otherwise shielding Wall Street insiders > from competition and from their mistakes. Yes, indeed. You may also be interested in the (not very libertarian, but rather informative) http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice "The Quiet Coup", by Simon Johnson. When we've created this awful mess by not following sound banking principles, who knows what is the best way to get off the pike that's disemboweling us? Maybe the government should buy up all the rot for the time being, sell what's good back to private enterprise, and add the balance to the trillions and trillions of national debt that doesn't seem to matter to anyone. (Now who were the people in the very first place who were from day one opposed to a balanced budget amendment?) Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 13 04:25:32 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 21:25:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Psychology of "Entitlements" In-Reply-To: References: <297079.88779.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A03B8A8.3010505@rawbw.com> <4A07BAA9.1010408@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A0A4BBC.1010306@rawbw.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > It doesn't make sense that you say you would have taken the dole, yet > ended up retraining and (I assume) working full time. What if there > were no dole but you had, say, a couple of hundred thousand dollars > from savings or inheritance, which you could have invested for a > modest lifelong income, similar to the dole; Of course I would have preferred that. People usually take the path of least resistance, integrated over their foreseeable future (taking into account time discounting). I didn't *want* to stop doing what I was doing. I felt forced to. I felt forced to move far away and take up another line of work entirely. Charities and especially government assistance all too often keep people from making choices that will in the long run benefit them. > in fact, even easier than > the dole, since you would not have had to apply, continually justify > to the government your need, explain to others that you were on the > dole, etc. You could make the same arguments against any kind of addiction. But when you're on the hook, making the long-term best choices for oneself is not so easy. > Would the money have been an equally great or greater > personal disaster? In my case, yes, and I think that it's true for most people. A productive living confers many, many psychological benefits, as the studies will tell you (as well as a host of ancient homilies). > Should we worry that savings can corrupt moral > fibre and urge people to spend their income as > soon as they are paid, Certainly not. But go ahead if you want. The "urging" that we do to people is seldom effective (that this is the case is what was never clear to the early collectivists, who really believed that constant exhortations to the masses to contribute to the social well-being would be effective). People end up feeling quite different about money they've earned as opposed to money they've stolen or have been given. The psychological profiles are distinct. In one case there is a kind of sense of justice, and in the other a sense of injustice, just to mention one facet. The people I know or knew who were getting something for nothing rather resented the entire system, and especially hated the rich (and for some reason, especially hated Bill Gates). The mechanisms in play here are obvious. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 13 04:35:55 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 21:35:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <617521.78544.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <617521.78544.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A0A4E2B.5060909@rawbw.com> Dan wrote: > --- On Mon, 5/11/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> 2009/5/11 Lee Corbin : >>> Who could even have (on this list) imagined >>> fifteen years ago that Voltaire's principle >>> would be questioned? Who sixty or seventy >>> years ago in America could have guessed that >>> government would come to absorb about fifty >>> percent of everyone's pay, and would soon >>> be trying to impose communist health care? > I disagree with Lee's rhetoric here. I don't > think it's communist healthcare; but it's > definitely not free market and healthcare > in the US has not been predominantly free > market for many decades now. Wow, that word sure touched a nerve here and there, even uncapitalized! One was supposed to read "collectivist". But really, just what is the difference? Would anyone who felt a twinge of annoyance explain just what is *not* communistic about socialized health-care? It's even a case of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". Isn't it? Well? (I understand that big C Communist enthusiasts are, ah, well, rather embarrassed here in the aftermath of certain historic fiascos, but I did *not* say Soviet health care. Would the annoyance have been any less if I'd said "socialist"? Or has big S Socialism also been discredited?) Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 13 04:59:42 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 21:59:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Advocacy and libertarian optimism In-Reply-To: <852647.10086.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <852647.10086.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A0A53BE.8050807@rawbw.com> Dan writes > Lee wrote: > >> Dan wrote (5/7/2009 2:46pm) >>> Regarding how reform should be attempted within the >>> present system, I disagree that perpetuating or >>> expanding the system is the correct approach. >> Yes indeed. And I commend you also for pointing out >> that we can only hope to move towards eventual positions >> that appeal to us, and ought not outright advocate those >> eventual positions. > > Actually, I do think one ought to "outright advocate > eventual positions."... > If you'd read the articles I wrote, the ones I quoted Oh, I did. Sorry about the above. I definitely read into one thing you'd written what I dreamily assumed had to be the case, namely that you agreed that it sounds completely unrealistic to people to talk of extreme libertarian solutions, when they can't even intuit problems with centralized education or health care. Even more important, just what really secure knowledge do we have about what is feasible in the long run? What do we know about future technical developments, possibly including the singularity and nanotechnology? These could move people with tremendous force in all sorts of conceptual directions. Pure libertarianism might seem as quaint as many 18th century ideas seem to us now. I won't argue strategy any longer with you; (I can see myself that some things are futile :). But *given* say a feudal culture circa 1000 AD that you found yourself a part of, you'd still be a classic libertarian? Me, at that point, I'd either be advocating more or less obedience to the local lord or to the king, whichever would get us into an era of free trade sooner. I see our current situation as analogous, except that unlike you or me being propelled back to 1000 AD, we are in ignorance about what social and technical developments are going to occur. The concept of free individuals having a maximum impact on what happens in their daily lives, and having to suffer a minimum from legal restraints, is entirely dependent on how evolved our culture is. We're very lucky, both historically and comparatively contemporaneously, to have as good a shot as we have to getting people to understand incremental changes. And yes, I did read you about "tailoring" your message to different audiences, and I understand. Lee From spike66 at att.net Wed May 13 05:48:58 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 22:48:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] rich dad poor dad In-Reply-To: References: <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> Message-ID: There is a local seminar from the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad that is being advertised on the radio. The lead-in advice to attract listeners seems like terrible advice. Perhaps some here have heard the ads. They say right up front that working and saving will never get you rich (therefore don't bother trying.) There are other notions in there that will likely prove ruinous to those who follow the advice, but consider the masses who hear the ads and do not attend the seminar. I can imagine the actual ads leading to financial ruin for millions. spike From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 13 10:54:17 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 18:54:17 +0800 Subject: [ExI] Stathis In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090512092919.024d9170@satx.rr.com> References: <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <4A098246.3040107@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090512092919.024d9170@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/12 Damien Broderick : > >>> Stathis you are from Italy? >> >> Stathis Papaioannou sound Greek, so I suppose he is Greek or from US, >> maybe from Cyprus. > > I must say I'm mind-boggled by this question and wild speculations. Stathis > has mentioned repeatedly that he's an Australian psychiatrist, working in > Melbourne. Half the force of his postings on health systems derives from his > experience as a practicing psychiatric professional in Australia. To be precise, I'm Australian-born, of Greek background, and I work as a medical officer in the Australian public psychiatry system. This should be borne in mind when reading bias in my posts. To be fair, at work I'm most often critical of the system, but I realise when talking to outsiders that I (and probably most people here) take the positive things about it for granted. I have also worked for brief periods in private general practice. -- Stathis Papaioannou From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed May 13 13:20:15 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 06:20:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Overall health and time preference/was Re: Health care discussion Message-ID: <284090.4559.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/12/09, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 12:59:41PM > -0400, MB wrote: >> >>>> Then, healthcare is only partially >>>> responsible of life length of people. >>>> Better food, sanitation, lower crime, etc. >>>> can have an effect. > >>> True, but that turns "the US health care system >>> is broken" into "the >>> American way of life is unhealthy and >>> broken".? An interesting maneuver, > >> "can't provide"?? The food is there, sanitation >> is there. Soap and >> water are not *that* expensive.? I see people >> buying junk food while > > Dan was the one citing better food and sanitation as > possible factors in lower US life expectancy. That wasn't me; that was Mirco. I don't believe I've offered any explanation of lower US life expectancy. I do think one would have to control for all sorts of factors to figure this one out. I'd be very surprised if it could be narrowed down to one factor -- unless it were some blanket one like "overall life style." >> I'm buying whole grain flour and fruit and vegs.? >> That is *choice*. > > Healthy food isn't easily available in a lot of bad > neighborhoods, actually. That's hilarious! I've lived in bad neighborhoods quite often. I've also lived without a car for long stretches. And I was into eating healthy and life extension during that time (and now). I used to walk or take a bus to places where I could buy the typically more expensive foods and things I thought would be healthier for me. I don't think the problem here is availability. However, I don't want to make light of this. Again, I'm not sure there's a simple explanation, though someone like Hoppe might offer that most poor people stay poor because they have a higher time preference -- i.e., are more present-centered. If his view has any application here, it might go like this. Poor people, sadly, tend to be more present-centered, so they just don't think in terms of a longer life; instead, they tend to favor immediate gratification over investing for a long-term reward. So, they won't walk or take the bus or train across town to get healthier food or evne think in terms of eating right at this moment for some potential pay-off -- in terms of lower risk of cancer, heart disease, chronic illness, etc. -- decades from now. Let's say Hoppe's right here. This would only be an observation. The take home for Extropians and transhumanists would not be to condemn people with higher time preferences*, but to see how to help people lower their time preference. Some of this can be done by removing certain government interferences in the economy, such as government interference in money, which tends almost always to create inflationary currencies. (How does this link to time preference? Inflation and the expectation of inflation, all else being the same, tends to encourage a more present-centered culture.) All this, of course, is predicated on time preference having this sort of overall impact on health.** Regards, Dan * This wouldn't include only the poor. After all, many middle and upper class people seem to have the same. They just start out with more, so, depending on how high their time preference is and how expensive their diversions are, they might take longer to whiddle down their wealth and health. And there's no iron law stating that time preference for anyone is locked in: a person's time preference isn't fix or locked in one direction, though I believe it's probably harder to go from a higher time preference to a lower one. ** It might be more complicated too. One can easily imagine people of ill health with a high time preference, such as a sickly wealthy man who is not so much interested in prolonging his life as in preserving and passing along his fortune or firm to his posterity or in having some other long-term -- long after he's dead -- impact on society, such as rich people who fund research foundations. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed May 13 13:42:45 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 15:42:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Advocacy and libertarian optimism/was Re: The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <852647.10086.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <852647.10086.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905130642p645c1597j272931e269b945ee@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 8:35 PM, wrote: > Actually, I do think one ought to "outright advocate eventual positions." So do I. In fact, lawyers can well be biased in favour of the adversarial system as a way to approximate the "truth" or what might be the most reasonable solution in given circumstances, but if, say, neoluddite plead for neoluddite positions and transhumanists plead for... a compromise between neoluddite and transhumanist positions, it quickly becomes a fractal exercise where the second stance become more and more elusive to identify for the "public". A "public" which may well include ourselves when we are in our "citizens'" capacity, and not in that of groups which (should) have for mission that of presenting the case for technology, posthuman change, etc., rather than that of mediating between neoluddite arguments, precautionary arguments, moderation arguments and... whom? what? -- Stefano Vaj From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed May 13 14:10:16 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 07:10:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Advocacy and libertarian optimism Message-ID: <694716.22883.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 5/13/09, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 8:35 PM, wrote: >> Actually, I do think one ought to "outright advocate >> eventual positions." > > So do I. In fact, lawyers can well be biased in favour of > the > adversarial system as a way to approximate the "truth" or > what might > be the most reasonable solution in given circumstances, but > if, say, > neoluddite plead for neoluddite positions and > transhumanists plead > for... a compromise between neoluddite and transhumanist > positions, it > quickly becomes a fractal exercise where the second stance > become more > and more elusive to identify for the "public". Some of this touches on the ideas in _The Wisdom of Crowds_ by James Surowiecki, a book I believe I mentioned in this venue back in 2005, but I forget if it was discussed. (I was also a bit surprised that Surowiecki seems unaware of Hayek -- or maybe I missed something; I listened to him speak on C-SPAN and listened to the audiobook version of _The Wisdom..._") I think we can also benefit from promoting a less winner take all approach. This is where a market would work better than a planned economy: in the market, different people can try different ideas and use their particular resources to these ends, while in a planned economy, some central authority has to decide who gets what and we all have to depend on persuading that authority the wisdom of the particular path or paths we're taking. I also don't think this is a minor issue. There are feedback loops. To operate in a market society best means having to become more aware and more focused. These habits and skills are lost the less opportunity they have to be exercised, IMO. So, one can't, I think, select one type of society over another on an issue by issue basis. A certain culture and mindset prevails in each one and these clash. This is why I think real world societies tend to oscillate between being more or less centrally controlled, but never seem to stabilize at some equilibrium between the two. > A "public" which may well include ourselves when we are in > our > "citizens'" capacity, Cynical definitions: the "public" is always anyone but you; "society" is always other people; and the "community" is always those people you agree with, while everyone else is working outside of and usually against the community. :/ More cynicism: when someone talks about the "public good," she's either talking about what she approves of and likes -- or she is daft enough to believe that some elite really knows what the public good is, how to pursue, and will actually pursue it. But I get what you mean. There is, as Greg Johnson once put it, a difference between arguing like a lawyer and listening like a judge. And while both are good arrows to have in one's quiver, the "listening like a judge" one seems the hardest to obtain or use. At least, that's how I feel about it. > and not in that of groups which > (should) have > for mission that of presenting the case for technology, > posthuman > change, etc., rather than that of mediating between > neoluddite > arguments, precautionary arguments, moderation arguments > and... whom? > what? Well, I think the two roles are not separable, but, at the same time, any successful exercise is rhetoric tries to find common ground. I have confidence that with enough effort and if the parties are willing to find truth rather than just promote a narrow agenda, there'll be progress. And further I believe that common ground will probably be tilted more toward techno-progress (and cultural progress and libertarianism) than toward stopping it or turning it back. Regards Dan "Why didn't evolution make a giraffe good at carpentry so it could build a ladder?" -- Karl Pilkington From painlord2k at libero.it Thu May 14 14:48:59 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 16:48:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Basis of property rights and religion In-Reply-To: <20090512184148.GA20420@ofb.net> References: <230326.54490.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20090512175658.GB5053@ofb.net> <4A09BFBA.1010104@libero.it> <20090512184148.GA20420@ofb.net> Message-ID: <4A0C2F5B.3000708@libero.it> Il 12/05/2009 20.41, Damien Sullivan ha scritto: > On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 08:28:10PM +0200, painlord2k at libero.it > wrote: >> The first step out the "State of Nature" is a mutual contract, >> implicit or explicit, to not kill others. The second step is to >> mutually recognize their right to their property, like their >> territory and their stuff, as you want them to recognize the same >> right in you. > Yes, exactly, that's my point! Except that what's fairly claimed as > "their property" is also subject to negotiation. What "property" is can be subject to "negotiations" but when "property" is defined it must apply to all that negotiated the agreement. It could be argued that "negotiation" is not always a talk or an exchange of writings, but could be also a refusing to [fully|partially] cooperate with others not agreeing with us. http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/tabid/68/id/10773/Default.aspx >> Even if it often pays to cooperate, however, our human ancestors >> would have needed to avoid being too cooperative. If my group is >> working to produce some resource?say, a communal shelter?that will >> benefit everyone equally, and I am doing a larger share of the >> work than anyone else, I will end up with lower net benefits than >> the other members of my group. This is the central social dilemma >> that bedevils most human cooperative groups. It came to the fore >> in the 1960s among social scientists as Mancur Olson?s ?logic of >> collective action?7 and as Garrett Hardin?s ?tragedy of the >> commons?,8 but this problem is as fundamental in evolutionary >> biology as it is in the social sciences. >> >> From an evolutionary perspective, if I am willing to contribute to >> the production of a shared resource, then I face an adaptive >> problem: how can I avoid being exploited by free riders who take >> the benefits I produce but don?t share in the costs of producing >> them? I could just ignore these free riders, put my head down and >> get to work. If I do that, though, the free riders will ultimately >> end up on top, since they?ll get as much benefit as I do, and for >> a lesser cost. Mathematical models of the evolution of cooperation >> consistently show that, when free riders can acquire higher net >> benefits than contributors, they will, over time, exploit >> contributors to extinction. Once that happens, of course, >> cooperation ceases to exist. Morality has decayed completely, and >> the selfish have inherited the world. >> >> My other option is to avoid getting involved with free riders to >> begin with, and it appears that natural selection has designed us >> to do just this. The main trick to adaptive cooperation is that my >> willingness to contribute must be contingent on how much my >> partners are willing to contribute. As long as my partners are >> contributing as much as I am, then I?m safe from exploitation?it?s >> when they start slacking off that I need to be concerned. >> Consequently, evolution has predisposed us to be hostile towards >> people who intentionally take group benefits without helping with >> the costs. Research by a number of social scientists (including >> myself9 ) suggests that punitive sentiment towards free riders is >> common cross-culturally, and that it results in efforts to negate >> the advantages that free riders would otherwise enjoy. So, "rights" evolve as a way to build rules enhancing trusts and cooperation that benefit all the participants on an equal foot. I suppose the problems with "socialists" is that they believe that wealthy people are, as such, exploiters and are not able to note that many proponents of "socialist policies" are really exploiters. Given our bias against exploiters, the exploiters themselves must find a way to justify with themselves and with all others their actions with "cooperative" reasons or with "fairness" reasons. The exploiters themselves need to be cooperative within their group to be successful. So they are subjected to a push to be cooperative within their inner circle-group and exploiters outside, but they must always keep up the fa?ade of cooperativeness or fairness. I suppose many of these individuals have inherited some mental traits that help them to be monists: they are able to believe two contrasting and opposing things true in the same time and use the thing that best fit them when it is expedient. The "rights" could evolve as a way to make sure exploiters are not able to hijack the punishing instincts of people against successful / wealthy cooperators. The "rights" limit how much individuals can be punished and how fast this could happen. Unfortunately, this was hijacked by exploiters as well, because they try to expand the scope of the "rights" including licenses and entitlements.(*) But the "rights" concept evolve from religion, that is a previous adaptation to keep under check the exploiters. Without some "religion" (in a very extensive sense) there is no way to force people in respecting them. The religion, and their rituals, help to tack down and identify the committed collaborators and the uncommitted exploiters on a greater degree than simply observation. They are not surely perfect, but they are a better way. Then, how religions are organized and what role models they have determine what "rights" people come to believe / respect / claim and how much they are able to cooperate. Mirco (*)For example: adulterous women that cuckold or cheat their husband in the past could be killed by their family with impunity or minor sanctions (today this is possible only in places dominated by a "tiny minority") with the introduction of "rights" in the western world, this practice fell in disuse and was shamed. with more progressive "rights" introduced in the most recent years, for example in the California, the "cuckolded" husband is forced to pay for the maintainment of the "cuckold" sons and daughters. Out of wedlock babies are no more shamed like in the past, but throwing money to the women having the babies is an hijack and a mockery of what the church did in the past when helping girls raped, forced in prostitution because they were poor or because they acted stupidly or trusting too much their lovers. Instead to solving or reducing the problem, the statists approach made it worse transferring the costs to innocent subjects. Obviously, in the long run this is unsustainable. In the long run there will be only cuckolds uninterested or unable to take care of their offspring and mothers unable or unwilling to take care of their offspring. Or there will not be cooperators willing to take care or someone else children and willing to retaliate against cheaters ans cuckolds. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.329 / Virus Database: 270.12.27/2112 - Release Date: 05/13/09 07:04:00 From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu May 14 20:37:45 2009 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 14:37:45 -0600 Subject: [ExI] "recession is going to end in about 6 weeks" In-Reply-To: <0562A09B-6F0A-4046-BAE7-959D2FDC24AA@freeshell.org> References: <7641ddc60905032014j6c31550bpa53eeaec906c7c49@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905040654h3a69066bi8d1de74774f69256@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60905052008x30fa3d0cpd56f8077b72e0dd0@mail.gmail.com> <466AEA7E-FA3B-4E7F-86D6-B1DF6921E9BB@freeshell.org> <7641ddc60905060734l601c9930k7124ccf3585be2d7@mail.gmail.com> <0562A09B-6F0A-4046-BAE7-959D2FDC24AA@freeshell.org> Message-ID: <7641ddc60905141337m5ac0a1efqf5438ebfc41b65fb@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 11:53 AM, Brent Neal wrote: > > I disagree. Your statement that people always want more stuff is not > necessarily true. When it costs too much to get it, people make a rational > decision to forgo that consumption. ### Yes, we always want stuff. The only limitation is the ability to produce what we want. The ability to produce is described by labor productivity, and labor productivity is the primary determinant of long-term real incomes. If labor and capital productivity do not change, and the cost of other inputs remains the same, the cost of consumer goods (expressed in real terms, e.g. hours of work) does not change. Are you telling me you expect a long-term change in consumer behavior in the absence of changes in productivity? On what basis? -------------------------------------- Which, in turn, leads to a wage-price downward spiral. ### Krugman-ism raising its ugly head! I'll need to link to some dissections of his babysitting association parable. -------------------------------- > There is nothing particularly right or wrong about Keynesian economics nor > monetarism. They have both shown to be efficacious in understanding > behaviors of markets in certain situations. I recognize your irrational > ideological bias, ### Wait, pointing to irrational assumptions of a system of thought is a sign of irrational bias? ---------------------------------- > Remember, economics is fundamentally driven by two things - psychology and > information. > ### Exactly, which is why making the wrong assumptions about psychology leads to wrong conclusions. --------------------------------- >> ### Reverse income tax? :) >> >> Sounds like something fun to rip into, once you explain what you mean. > The reverse income tax is what some call Milton Friedman's guaranteed income > scheme, which has been discussed in another thread. ### Yeah, discussed to ignominous death. Better not to stir this can of worms again. Rafal From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed May 13 17:25:20 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 19:25:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Advocacy and libertarian optimism In-Reply-To: <580930c20905130840j304bcbb9xabcd187f6b48309b@mail.gmail.com> References: <923406.85458.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <580930c20905130840j304bcbb9xabcd187f6b48309b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905131025l3bdd219cqd42786fc994ffa04@mail.gmail.com> Sent privately by mistake,,, ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Stefano Vaj Date: Wed, May 13, 2009 at 5:40 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Advocacy and libertarian optimism To: Dan On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Dan wrote: > Stefano Vaj wrote: >> A "public" which may well include ourselves when we are in >> our >> "citizens'" capacity, > > Cynical definitions: the "public" is always anyone but you; "society" is always other people; and the "community" is always those people you agree with, while everyone else is working outside of and usually against the community. ?:/ ?More cynicism: when someone talks about the "public good," she's either talking about what she approves of and likes -- or she is daft enough to believe that some elite really knows what the public good is, how to pursue, and will actually pursue it. > > But I get what you mean. ?There is, as Greg Johnson once put it, a difference between arguing like a lawyer and listening like a judge. ?And while both are good arrows to have in one's quiver, the "listening like a judge" one seems the hardest to obtain or use. ?At least, that's how I feel about it. My point is slightly different, and has to do with the fact that in order to listening (and deciding) like a judge, there must somebody before you arguing like a lawyer. Or rather, *as* a lawyer. Now, this role playing may even happening in what used to be called the inner forum, as when one single individuals makes a list of pros and cons, or of expected gains and risks, and debates a matter with oneself. But an association established in order to promote the diffusion of sports amongst the youth and their dedication to sport activities, e.g., is not in the business of analysing how it might be much better to spend one's energies in nobler activities or how sports might actually even endanger your health. *Not* that any of its members would really hope for everybody jogging to death and ignore everything else in their short remaining life. Simply, this is not its mission, as a lobbyist cannot be expected to do anything else than presenting as fairly and persuasively as possibly the angle of its employer, or a preacher that of his confession. The same apply IMHO to organised transhumanism. I am all, say, for avoiding stupid and excessive risks. But I find necessary that somebody be bold enough to ask the questions: "Shouldn't we run them?", "Do they really exist?", "What do we really risk?", "How likely is it to happen?", "Couldn't the alternative be worse?", etc. -- Stefano Vaj -- Stefano Vaj From jrd1415 at gmail.com Wed May 13 21:33:59 2009 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 14:33:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> Message-ID: On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 11:04 PM, spike wrote: >...dealing drugs implies tax evasion, which really is > illegal as all get out. ?... ?If so, it would explain the hiring a > string of tax evaders to help out in the whitehouse, and attempting to hire > still more. Spike, you're trying so hard to invent -- out of whole cloth,...out of no cloth...out of thin air -- some sort of misdeed here. You've got Obama dealing, and then you've got him tax evading. If you just had a time machine, with the same striking dearth of evidence, you could blame the Lindbergh baby kidnap/murder on him, claiming perhaps that he wanted the ransom money in order to feed his habit. This ain't Dilbert, it's "The Far Side". > Jeff suggested the income source was prostitution. Not exactly. JOKINGLY, I suggested that if you want to go all Republican la la on us you could make a silly game out of conjuring up an endless stream of alternative possibilities. It seems I should have started with alien abduction, since handsome, charming, Hawaiian party guy clearly wasn't la la enough. And, having thought a bit more about it, I think it high on the list of reality-based explanations of how a guy with limited financial resources could have experimented with coke in his teens. He was young, smart, handsome, with world-class people skills -- as demonstrated by his stunning political achievements. Such a personality is going to have a social life. Well duh. And being such a class act, will hang with others of similar "quality", who will no doubt have among them individuals of financial means. In short, the more prosperous of his crowd supplied the party treats. That's the ticket. I think Occam would agree So wean yourself from the obsession with dissing him, and start thinking about proposals for the new administration about how to transition LockMart from death machine welfare queen to extropic vanguard of new paradigm life-enhancing technologies. ... > We must recognize that 2009 is a critical turning point in history, or > rather it looks like it to me. I'm inclined to agree, but the media over-hypes everything these days, so I'm not sure. "The sky is falling, the sky is falling" is a time-tested strategy for getting eyeballs. But the sky doesn't fall, now does it? Hard to tell what the real situation is when one is carried along in an avalanche of bullshit. > This isn't politics as usual, for it appears > to me we are somehow pretending that all this wild spending does not need to > be paid for. A concern not raised when the shrub was spending trillions -- doubled the national debt from 5 to 10 trillion -- on destruction: destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan by bombs, destruction of the US by paying for the bombs. > But we will pay for it, repeatedly. ?We are acting as though > we can move on past the usual economics of scarcity, the notions societies > have always carried. ?Perhaps we can move past that *eventually* with some > super advanced means of production, but in the mean time, we have > corporations and capitalists that create wealth in the old fashioned way. Indeed, this is the goose that lays the golden eggs. Hoorah for that. But along with that comes the criminal minded who, in the older "old fashioned way" look for any opportunity to game the system subverting it into an unregulated and ***LEGAL*** Ponzi scheme slash casino. > If we discourage those corporations and capitalists, it isn't clear to me > what kind of future we are entering. How are we discouraging them? Taxing them to make them pay for the misdeeds of their criminal brethren? Oh, wait a minute, I forgot, we're not taxing them, we're bailing them out, and then taxing the working schmo, in perpetuity. Same old same old. And the corporations and the wealthy just go on parasitizing the working man. So I ask again, where's the discouraging? > But it doesn't feel to me like the > glorious techno-future we as extropian-minded people envisioned ten years > ago. ?We may find ourselves crushed by the burden of the interest alone on > the debts we are running up in this and the next few years. Crushed by debt or crushed by the collapse of the economic system, it's still crushed. But if you try to put out the fire that's burning down the goose house (cf. "golden egg"), then maybe just maybe you save the bird. My personal view: the goose is cooked, we're over the cliff headed for the sudden stop. Game over. > > All businesses need to be bailed out or prevented from failing, rather just > the opposite. ?Governments must not attempt to repeal the business cycle. > The US has just tripled our national debt attempting to prevent a recession. > But that recession is coming anyway, in fact it will likely be much worse, > partly because of the billions in taxpayer dollars have been dumped into GM > and Crysler, which will likely fail anyway. ?They must fail now: who would > buy the cars, knowing the companies likely will not be around to service the > warranty? Well buy Toyotas, etc just like we buy Sony tvs. Globalization means global labor arbitrage, which means we reach economic equilibrium when Chinese workers and American workers command similar salaries, ie American workers are screwed. That's the new paradigm, unless we get off the old paradigm and play to our strengths: "modernization"/technical innovation mediated by investments in R&D and higher education. At the moment we're dumping everything into the toilet of militarism. As Dr. Phil is fond of saying, "How's that working out for you?" > We have just wasted all that taxpayer money, which takes away > from individual freedom. ?Bailing out the car companies was madness. Destitution takes away from individual freedom. Saving the car companies is an exceedingly excellent idea, even if it requires govt subsidies. We need to protect and save jobs (ie livelihoods) during this down period or period of transition. And another personal note: I would personally prefer that rather than print money and pass the debt responsibility on to future generations of working schmos, that the rich be made to pay the whole damn bill. They came to the land of the golden goose and enjoyed the benefits, now, by any sense of justice, it's time for them to pony up and pay for the damages. If they don't like it, let them be free, free to go somewhere else. Where they gonna go, the Caymans? And if they decide to leave, fine, then let's have a nice hefty "departure tax" so they leave the necessary cash behind > All our transhumanist dreams of enhancing our minds and bodies will cost > money, and that money must be in the hands of individuals, who will > experiment and show the rest of us the way. ?Governments will never pay for > your brain enhancements while your neighbor is suffering from diabetes. ?I > fear the current government spending spree is killing our future. Our transhumanist dreams won't come from any one national group. The US is on a path to wither and die from an inability to adapt to changing times and from the debilitating recalcitrance of defects in its political and economic systems. But the world will not come to an end just because the American moment of glory does. YMMV. Best, Jeff Davis "We're a band of higher primates stuck on the surface of an atmosphere-hazed dirtball. I can associate with that. I certainly can't identify with which patch of the dirtball I currently happen to be on, and which monkey tribe happens to reside therein. Only by taking the big view we can make it a common dream, and then a reality. It's worth it." Eugen Leitl From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 14 01:41:48 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 11:41:48 +1000 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: <4A09801C.7020204@libero.it> References: <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <4A089428.1000105@libero.it> <4A09801C.7020204@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/12 painlord2k at libero.it : > You are under the false assumption that all work is the same. > Are you telling me that a surgeon work less than a nurse? > It is like comparing orange and apples. > Not all work is the same, as a surgeon is able to do a work the nurse is > unable to do. There are less surgeon than nurses. To have a working surgeon > you need to invest much more scarce resources than to have a working nurse. The extra time training for the surgeon is reflected in the higher pay. But there are limits: if a surgeon makes a hundred times as much as a nurse, that is unfair. The market may grant the surgeon this because there aren't a lot of surgeons. So ultimately, a person's work is valued according to supply and demand. Maybe there is no better way, but it does show that amount of work done, or productivity, is not the ultimate arbiter of a person's worth. It is possible to do very little work and get paid very handsomely for it, and figuring out how to achieve this leverage is the goal of every capitalist. >>> In your example about Mr. Buffett, you imply that the work done by him >>> could >>> be done by any plumber or farmer with a minimum training. If it was so, >>> there would be many Warren Buffett and Mr. Buffett would not be so >>> special >>> or rich. >> >> No, I think he was just lucky, as most studies of investors show that >> they are no more likely to be successful in the future if they have >> been successful in the past. But even if in fact he was successful >> because he was smart or because he risked his capital, it doesn't >> change the fact that he made a lot of money doing a little work a >> *lot* less work than someone has to do to obtain the dole. > > If he is only a lucky man, you can just wait and he will lose his money. > Capitalism is not gambling, albeit someone could think so if believe that > capitalism is only what happen in a trade exchange. The studies show that a professional investor's track record is no predictor of future success. If you take 1000 investors, and look at whether they did better or worse than the stock index, you will find that after 1 year 500 have done better, after 2 years 250 have done better, after 3 years 125 have done better, and so on. So after a few years there will be a small number who appear to have a long run of continuous success, but this is what you would expect from randomness anyway. The reason for this is that the market factors in every bit of information that affects share price, in proportion to its significance and credibility. In general, no-one can beat the market without special information not available to others. If you don't believe this then you should immediately borrow as much money as you can and follow the investment decisions of Buffett or other investors with a long string of successes. >> Very few wealthy people make their money purely through their own >> efforts. > > Usually they do the most difficult and requested works; they use their > wealth, organize and coordinate the jobs of others. > >> Your Robinson Crusoe story is an example of this, but the >> usual capitalist way is if Crusoe could get several competitors to >> gather food and give him a proportion of it while he sits back. For >> example, he could set up a shop trading one type of food for another >> and keeping a profit. > > This is called "economic coordination" or "economic specialization". > This would be done only if it is more practical and efficient to do. > The people hunting game and the people gathering berries could exchange the > goods between themselves and cut out Mr.Robinson (as he is doing nothing > useful for them, you suppose). > > But wait! > Mr. Robinson (an ex-gathers of berries) invested his leisure time to build a > storage room where the berries and the game could be stored for many days. > Then he stored his hand-gathered berries there and started to exchange them > for game. > Now, all hunters and gathers know that Mr.Robinson have this place where > they can go and exchange immediately berries for game. When a hunter want > berries, he can immediately go to Mr. Robinson and obtain his berries in > exchange of game. The same is true for the gatherers. > Suppose, for simplicity, that the game/berries exchange rate is fixed > between the two groups. > Now, Mr. Robinson decide that he will keep 10% of the game and 10% of the > berries he trade as payment for his services. > You could say this is an unjust profit, I would argue that this is the price > the gathers and the hunters can choose to pay to obtain, without delay, > berries or game. It is 90% immediately or 100% with a delay (a day or a > week, maybe). > > > >> Now, this takes *some* work, maybe even hard >> work, and perhaps it helps the other hunters as well as the >> shopkeeper, so that everyone is happier than if there had been no >> shop. But the fact remains, if the shopkeeper makes a profit much >> larger than that of the hunters, he is effectively sponging off their >> work. > > If the shopkeeper is doing a too large profit, someone else could undercut > him doing the same job at a lower price and profit nonetheless. > Hunters and gathers could return to a direct exchange if they find the cost > to use Mr.Robinson services too high. > So, Mr.Robinson have to limits at the prices he can charge: > 1) The people using the services must find them useful enough to be willing > to pay for them > 2) The profits he earn must not be so large to invite others to do compete > with him; usually he will profit as much as possible, then competition will > show up and he will need to lower his prices. > 3) The foresighted profits must be higher than doing something else. > >> This was the Marxists' essential criticism of capitalism: they >> valued hard work, and they thought that workers should be able to >> profit in proportion to their labour. > > Are hard work and labour the same? > If the capitalist is reaping too large profits, what prevent the workers to > organize themselves, pool resources and become self-employed and keep the > profits for themselves? > The only answers are two: > 1) They are unable or unwilling to do so > 2) They are prevented to do so > > If you want all workers to share the profits of the enterprise, you must > share even the costs and the losses and the risks. > For example, the workers of a plant producing cars could be required to > receive their wages only when the car are materially sold and the money > collected. This could be days or weeks or months after the cars are produced > and the work done. So, you would see their wages change continuously every > months in a not easily predictable way. > Or they could build cars and sell them to dealers that will resell them to > customers, but this would imply the profits would be lower and the dealers > could refrain from buy cars if their inventories are too high. > If the factory work at a loss, there would not be any money to pay wages, > obviously or the workers could be required to cover the losses. > > Do you like these arrangements? > I find them extremely unworkable. > > Do you have any suggestion that don't imply the capitalist must suck lemons > and risks, profits and losses are shared proportionally and ?equally? > > And we have not covered how much pay people with different jobs. I'm not saying the capitalist system is not useful for allocating resources. But it does happen that some people, whether through luck, intelligence, wealthy parents or whatever, are able to command a huge proportion of the world's resources relative to other people who seem to work just as hard. Capitalism is OK with the fact that a fashion model earns hundreds of times as much as a theoretical physicist, because that is what the market pays. "That is what the market pays" is the ultimate criterion of productivity and worth, and therefore the reason why someone drawing a subsistence welfare payment is morally in the wrong. I don't agree with this, but I suspect we have come up against basic ethical principles, and hence impasse. -- Stathis Papaioannou From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu May 14 04:47:00 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 14:17:00 +0930 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Intellectual_Property_=97_A_Libertarian_Cr?= =?windows-1252?q?itique?= Message-ID: <710b78fc0905132147t35d5424ckd123475b65ca8cb0@mail.gmail.com> Intellectual Property ? A Libertarian Critique tl;dr, but it looks interesting. http://c4ss.org/content/521 "In this study, Kevin Carson reviews libertarian perspectives on ?intellectual property?; the ethics of the practice itself and the harms resulting from it. He finds that IP is an artificial, rather than natural, property right; creating scarcity rather than managing it. In that capacity, it has acted as an unjust and irrational state subsidy to corporate capitalism ? distorting markets, doing violence to the concept of real property rights, forcibly transfering wealth to parasitic cartels and generally having a pernicious impact on the US domestic and global economies that is difficult to overstate. He concludes by debunking the myth of IP as supposedly necessary for incentive reasons." The full paper: http://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/intellectual-property-a-libertarian-critique.pdf -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 14 04:59:05 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 23:59:05 -0500 Subject: [ExI] seeking advice with a shipping problem Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090513234806.022b31e8@satx.rr.com> Dear Extropes: I'm selling my Australian house and about to move my personal library from Melbourne, Australia, to San Antonio, Texas. A relative has been kindly (and exhaustingly) packing up the roughly 5000 books into book boxes, plus personal papers, and a few other not terrifically large objects. My guess is that it might amount to half a 20' container or maybe less. I'm having trouble getting feedback from the shippers who advertise online. I fill in their forms, send them off, and hear nothing back. The only one who's been responsive to date is Grace Removals (an Aussie company with international connections), and even they are slow to reply and don't provide much information. Anyone have suggestions based on their own transnational shipping experience, even if it's not Australia or New Zealand=>USA? Do such firms typically bring a container to the house and pack away one's goodies on the spot? Is Customs, insurance and any other paperwork done by the moving company? (If I were in Oz now I'd probably do that myself, but alas I'm not.) Mostly I want all this damned clutter out of the house ASAP, so the place can be shown to potential purchasers without looking like a madman's midden. How long the process takes after that is less important; that is, I don't mind if my stuff is stored for a while awaiting shipping, if that's cheaper. Anything else I should be aware of? Thanks, folks. Damien Broderick From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Thu May 14 05:01:51 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 22:01:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] I am the very model of a singularitarian Message-ID: <975505.2023.qm@web110415.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> John Clark mentioned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hKG5l_TDU8 I'm not too sure of this one. The music is good, the graphics are nice and the guy is pretty funny. I still don't understand the significant differences between Singulatarians, Extropians or Transhumanisms to have an opinion but I really enjoyed Ted Talks and the most amazing thing was that of the speaker. Just my 2 cents:) Anna __________________________________________________________________ Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/gift/ From spike66 at att.net Wed May 13 00:32:23 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 17:32:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Stathis In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090512092919.024d9170@satx.rr.com> References: <0597642752DA493B91DBEBE2944D8E81@patrick4ezsk6z><875A369FC924447C99122C55853EEF13@spike><4A04341E.6030605@libero.it><9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike><4A098246.3040107@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090512092919.024d9170@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick > Subject: Re: [ExI] Stathis > > > >>Stathis you are from Italy? > > .... > Stathis has mentioned repeatedly that he's an Australian > psychiatrist, working in Melbourne... > > Damien Broderick Ja, I know he is there now, but for some reason I had the notion he was a transplant. Don't know what gave me that idea. Statis, have you always been from Australia? spike From brian at posthuman.com Fri May 15 05:16:52 2009 From: brian at posthuman.com (Brian Atkins) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 00:16:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] seeking advice with a shipping problem In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090513234806.022b31e8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090513234806.022b31e8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A0CFAC4.4090502@posthuman.com> No ideas on any of that, sorry. But I did read yesterday that container shipping is still near recent super low prices. Costs to ship a container from China to Europe apparently went as low as $150 recently, but have rebounded a bit to $300 from what I read. So make sure you push for a really good and reduced price when you are making a deal. -- Brian Atkins Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.singinst.org/ From spike66 at att.net Fri May 15 05:28:12 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 22:28:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] seeking advice with a shipping problem In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090513234806.022b31e8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090513234806.022b31e8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <518F9FBA92CD48E2934E466D087E7806@spike> > Damien Broderick > ... > Mostly I want all this damned clutter out of the house ASAP, > so the place can be shown to potential purchasers without > looking like a madman's midden... Damien Broderick Damien you are far too modest sir. Consider Steve McQueen's motorcycle collection. The bikes were worth a cool fortune simply because McQueen owned them; his name is on the title. Your home in Australia should be worth at least half again it's market value simply for your having owned it. Apologies I know nada about shipping. spike From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 15 06:29:47 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 16:29:47 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Stathis In-Reply-To: References: <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <4A098246.3040107@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090512092919.024d9170@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/13 spike : > Ja, I know he is there now, but for some reason I had the notion he was a > transplant. ?Don't know what gave me that idea. ?Statis, have you always > been from Australia? Yes, always. My parents were born in Greece. 28.5% of the population of Melbourne is foreign-born, compared to 20.4% for New York, 27.1% for London, 17.6% for Paris, and a whopping 45.7% for Toronto. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 15 06:38:33 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 16:38:33 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <4A0A4E2B.5060909@rawbw.com> References: <617521.78544.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A4E2B.5060909@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/13 Lee Corbin : > Would anyone who felt a twinge of annoyance explain > just what is *not* communistic about socialized > health-care? It's even a case of "from each according > to his ability, to each according to his need". > Isn't it? Well? I think it's an American thing to say that something is not socialist when it is. The word does not have such negative connotations in other countries. Communist, on the other hand, is usually used only to refer to Marxist-Leninists. -- Stathis Papaioannou From spike66 at att.net Fri May 15 06:32:24 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 23:32:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike><6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> Message-ID: ...On Behalf Of Jeff Davis >... > On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 11:04 PM, spike wrote: > > >... > > Spike, you're trying so hard to invent -- out of whole > cloth,...out of no cloth...out of thin air -- some sort of > misdeed here... Jeff you are right. I take back everything. I saw something that gave me great hope that all will be well, or at least all will be approximately neutral. Or perhaps all will be not as horrifying as I had feared. Earlier this evening in discussion with a friend offlist, he commented: > So relax. Get some perspective. Practice your critical thinking > skills... To which I replied: ...I will relax as soon as our government realizes this latest budget is sheer madness. Actually I think they will, soon. A few minutes after posting that comment, I read this and posted thus: >Well I'll be damn. I am a prophet! A seer I tells ya: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/14/obama-deficit-unsustainab_n_203726. html This is the actual quote, which causes me to think 0bama gets it: "We can't keep on just borrowing from China," Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. "We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children's future with more and more debt." Holders of U.S. debt will eventually "get tired" of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. "It will have a dampening effect on our economy." Well yes. I have been wondering for some time now, what in the hell is going to happen when interest rates start to go back up? Where are we going to get the money? Prostitution? ... > > > Jeff suggested the income source was prostitution. > > Not exactly. JOKINGLY... I was joking too Jeff. I was swinging on your vine there. > ...In short, the > more prosperous of his crowd supplied the party treats. The book makes it sound like he was buying. But it matters not, for no one cares, nor do I care, what anyone did as a teenager, just so long as he and the other two (Reid and Pelosi) stop spending that way NOW. I am more liberal that you, Jeff, more than anyone, for I think all drugs should be legal, all abortions are fine with me, all the liberal everything is fine, the military should be no larger than necessary, but the federal government should be out of most of what it is doing. Completely. In my view they would do little more than operate the military and maintain the interstate highway system. The fed could pay off the social security debt by selling its land (yes including the national parks, and shame on our generation for devouring those), stop collecting new social security, for everyone now recognizes it as a ponzi scheme. Then let the stategovernments compete against each other, with their differing tax schemes. Then every American can have it her own way, and the power lusters would go down to the state level. > > So wean yourself from the obsession with dissing him... OK I am done with that. >... and > start thinking about proposals for the new administration > about how to transition LockMart from death machine welfare > queen to extropic vanguard of new paradigm life-enhancing > technologies... Better military technologies do exactly that. Consider the advances in warfare in the 20th century. World War 1 saw men facing each other in trenches, firing at close range, poison gas, human wave attacks, etc. A more horrifying scenario could scarcely be imagined. The second world war was scarcely less deadly. It was still kill the other guy, war of attrition, carpet bombing and nuclear weapons, but by the time the proxy wars of the 50s and 60s came along they realized the ideal was not to slay the adversary but merely to wound him, for then the enemy needed to use his resources to carry off and care for the injured. As weapons become more accurate, the amount of necessary explosive is reduced. The newest warfare paradigms are a logical extrapolation: one carries the weapons aboard a drone, operated by guys in an air conditioned office in Nevada somewhere, and shoots not at the soldiers but rather at the trucks, armor and missiles. The logical extension of shooting to wound the enemy gives way to the new paradigm of not shooting the enemy soldiers at all, but rather to send them home perfectly healthy, for the super accurate tiny missiles are not particularly effective as anti-personnel weapons anyway. But they are great for punching a small clean hole all the way thru the engine of a truck, disabling it. And such a wonderful name too: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-chinalake20-2009apr20,0,7799907.story This approach eliminates a lot of problems. No war refugees to protect and feed, no prison camps to have your own soldiers photographing themselves misbehaving, none of your guys being taken prisoner and being asked their name, rank and serial number just before a tiny minority saws his goddam head off, no Private Ryans to rescue, no expensive planes being shot down, no wrecked buildings to pay for, reduced carbon dioxide emissions due to all that motorized armor that no longer runs, no stressed out soldiers going crazy and slaying their comrades, no reason for concern over the sexual orientation of the joystick jockey sitting in the next cubicle, no husbands or children missing their mothers who have gone off to war. Now, given that technology, do we still call them death machines? Jeff I would call them life machines. > ... > ...Hard to tell what the > real situation is when one is carried along in an avalanche > of bullshit... Very much agree. There was one story which sounds so outlandish I do not know yet if I believe it. In the second week of February, the president was reported to have whipped up some enormous emergency that was so urgent he persuaded congress to vote upon a stimulus bill of enormous and unprecedented scale, a document with over a thousand pages, and gave them no time to read the thing. So they passed it, in a partisan manner, but the president was not sitting outside the chambers ready to sign it immediately, but rather went on vacation for several days. I must believe Fox made this up, for it is far too absurd to believe. Any bill which is too big to read is too big to ratify. > > This isn't politics as usual, for it appears to me we are somehow > > pretending that all this wild spending does not need to be paid for. > > A concern not raised when the shrub was spending trillions -- > doubled the national debt from 5 to 10 trillion -- on > destruction: destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan by bombs, > destruction of the US by paying for the bombs... On the contrary, the concern was raised by me, and I proposed a solution at the time, which I will repeat. We pass an amendment to the constitution requiring a balanced budget. Each year's spending is limited by the previous year's tax income. The only exception is if the president declares the executive privelege provided by the war powers act, at which time she can exceed the previous year's income, BUT: if those war powers are enacted, the president has NO OTHER POWERS than running that war to its conclusion. There are no speeches, no committees, no nothing, most importantly no POWERS other than commander of the military. That president effectively becomes a lame duck military commander until peace is restored. This will discourage the power lusters and will encourage the president to live within her means or get the war over quickly. ... > > And another personal note: I would personally prefer that > rather than print money and pass the debt responsibility on > to future generations of working schmos, that the rich be > made to pay the whole damn bill... Jeff the problem with this approach is that there are two critically different definitions of the term rich. To you and me, rich means those who HAVE a ton of money. To the government, rich means those who currently MAKE a ton of money. What you already own is irrelevant to the government for that isn't taxable. Only what you make is what the government can tax. The rich already pay the whole damn bill, if you define rich the way the government does. spike From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 15 07:13:49 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 17:13:49 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Psychology of "Entitlements" In-Reply-To: <4A0A4BBC.1010306@rawbw.com> References: <297079.88779.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A03B8A8.3010505@rawbw.com> <4A07BAA9.1010408@rawbw.com> <4A0A4BBC.1010306@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/13 Lee Corbin : > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >> It doesn't make sense that you say you would have taken the dole, yet >> ended up retraining and (I assume) working full time. What if there >> were no dole but you had, say, a couple of hundred thousand dollars >> from savings or inheritance, which you could have invested for a >> modest lifelong income, similar to the dole; > > Of course I would have preferred that. People > usually take the path of least resistance, > integrated over their foreseeable future > (taking into account time discounting). > > I didn't *want* to stop doing what I was doing. > I felt forced to. I felt forced to move far > away and take up another line of work entirely. > Charities and especially government assistance > all too often keep people from making choices > that will in the long run benefit them. I'm still not sure I understand: are you saying that if you had modest savings you would not have found another job? Where I live it takes about 5 to 7 years savings for someone on the average wage in order to sustain themselves at the level of the dole for the rest of their life. So most people could retire before they're 30, if they would be satisfied with the dole. Is this a problem? Should we advise children against thrift, on the grounds that it promotes laziness and will lead to the country's ruin? > People end up feeling quite different about money they've > earned as opposed to money they've stolen or have been > given. The psychological profiles are distinct. In one > case there is a kind of sense of justice, and in the > other a sense of injustice, just to mention one facet. Some people feel guilty about being on welfare payments, but then they should also feel guilty about receiving insurance payments in excess of the premiums they have paid, even when they have legitimately fulfilled the criteria for the payout. > The people I know or knew who were getting something for > nothing rather resented the entire system, and especially > hated the rich (and for some reason, especially hated > Bill Gates). The mechanisms in play here are obvious. The people I know who hate the rich are those who work for a living. Those on welfare payments see the rich as justification that getting money in excess of the value of the work that you do is OK. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 15 07:23:50 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 17:23:50 +1000 Subject: [ExI] rich dad poor dad In-Reply-To: References: <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> Message-ID: 2009/5/13 spike : > > > There is a local seminar from the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad that is being > advertised on the radio. ?The lead-in advice to attract listeners seems like > terrible advice. ?Perhaps some here have heard the ads. ?They say right up > front that working and saving will never get you rich (therefore don't > bother trying.) ?There are other notions in there that will likely prove > ruinous to those who follow the advice, but consider the masses who hear the > ads and do not attend the seminar. ?I can imagine the actual ads leading to > financial ruin for millions. It's true that working and saving will never get you rich. The trick is to come up with a scheme that legally transfers other peoples' savings to you at a rate greatly in excess of the value of the work you put into it. Then, to make yourself feel better, you say that *by definition* the work you put into the scheme must be equal to the money you have managed to extract, since the value of work is whatever the market will bear. -- Stathis Papaioannou From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Fri May 15 07:34:36 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 00:34:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] rich dad poor dad In-Reply-To: References: <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> Message-ID: <2d6187670905150034n3ce21044o3faf89d37c6eee43@mail.gmail.com> My understanding of the Rich Dad Poor Dad franchise is that getting an education and good paying job & steadily saving up for retirement is seen as just not enough to make it to the "good life" at a relatively young age. And so the premise of the franchise creator is that you need to start up your own small business and grow it as you keep your day job, and then at a certain point you quit your job and focus on your company. Or is there more to the basic premise of Rich Dad Poor Dad? John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alito at organicrobot.com Fri May 15 09:51:01 2009 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 19:51:01 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Psychology of "Entitlements" In-Reply-To: References: <297079.88779.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A03B8A8.3010505@rawbw.com> <4A07BAA9.1010408@rawbw.com> <4A0A4BBC.1010306@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <1242381061.4202.19.camel@localhost> On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 17:13 +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > I'm still not sure I understand: are you saying that if you had modest > savings you would not have found another job? Where I live it takes > about 5 to 7 years savings for someone on the average wage in order to > sustain themselves at the level of the dole for the rest of their > life. So most people could retire before they're 30, if they would be > satisfied with the dole. Is this a problem? I don't think you've done your calculations correctly: Average full time salary in Aus is very close to 50k, which leaves 40k after tax if you don't owe HECS (37 otherwise). Dole is 15k with rent assistance, but before all the other benefits (concession card, telephone assistance, etc). If you assume you are happy to live on the same amount of money while working full time as you are on the dole (very hard, much more expensive to have to get out of the house every day and also to keep work-stress manageable without money), you can save 25k per year. 7 years gives you 175k, good for under 12 more years of dole equivalent. 7 on/12 off is not a terrible split, and I hope I can do that, but it's not 7 on/infinity off. (Disclaimer: I only got out of the dole because they started hassling me with the dole diary. That was work.) From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 15 10:08:49 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 10:08:49 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Psychology of "Entitlements" In-Reply-To: <1242381061.4202.19.camel@localhost> References: <297079.88779.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A03B8A8.3010505@rawbw.com> <4A07BAA9.1010408@rawbw.com> <4A0A4BBC.1010306@rawbw.com> <1242381061.4202.19.camel@localhost> Message-ID: On 5/15/09, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote: > I don't think you've done your calculations correctly: > Average full time salary in Aus is very close to 50k, which leaves 40k > after tax if you don't owe HECS (37 otherwise). Dole is 15k with rent > assistance, but before all the other benefits (concession card, > telephone assistance, etc). If you assume you are happy to live on the > same amount of money while working full time as you are on the dole > (very hard, much more expensive to have to get out of the house every > day and also to keep work-stress manageable without money), you can save > 25k per year. 7 years gives you 175k, good for under 12 more years of > dole equivalent. 7 on/12 off is not a terrible split, and I hope I can > do that, but it's not 7 on/infinity off. > You are forgetting the wondrous magic of compound interest. (Not unusual - the secret is known only to a few) ;) It starts slow, like all exponentials, but the end is wonderful! BillK From alito at organicrobot.com Fri May 15 10:47:11 2009 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 20:47:11 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Psychology of "Entitlements" In-Reply-To: References: <297079.88779.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A03B8A8.3010505@rawbw.com> <4A07BAA9.1010408@rawbw.com> <4A0A4BBC.1010306@rawbw.com> <1242381061.4202.19.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <1242384431.4202.28.camel@localhost> On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 10:08 +0000, BillK wrote: > On 5/15/09, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote: > > I don't think you've done your calculations correctly: > > Average full time salary in Aus is very close to 50k, which leaves 40k > > after tax if you don't owe HECS (37 otherwise). Dole is 15k with rent > > assistance, but before all the other benefits (concession card, > > telephone assistance, etc). If you assume you are happy to live on the > > same amount of money while working full time as you are on the dole > > (very hard, much more expensive to have to get out of the house every > > day and also to keep work-stress manageable without money), you can save > > 25k per year. 7 years gives you 175k, good for under 12 more years of > > dole equivalent. 7 on/12 off is not a terrible split, and I hope I can > > do that, but it's not 7 on/infinity off. > > > > > You are forgetting the wondrous magic of compound interest. > (Not unusual - the secret is known only to a few) ;) > > It starts slow, like all exponentials, but the end is wonderful! > An amount of interest equal to the inflation rate is assumed in the above calculations to keep the dollars constant. Most banks will give you only 1 or 2 percent above the inflation rate on secure investments. This translates to less than the avoided costs of having a full-time job that I mentioned above (but go on and add another 3.5k on the first year after quitting if you like, it doesn't change the equation by much). Also remember that you are living off your principal, ie your money doesn't grow ever-larger. From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 15 11:06:54 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 11:06:54 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Psychology of "Entitlements" In-Reply-To: <1242384431.4202.28.camel@localhost> References: <297079.88779.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A03B8A8.3010505@rawbw.com> <4A07BAA9.1010408@rawbw.com> <4A0A4BBC.1010306@rawbw.com> <1242381061.4202.19.camel@localhost> <1242384431.4202.28.camel@localhost> Message-ID: On 5/15/09, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote: > An amount of interest equal to the inflation rate is assumed in the > above calculations to keep the dollars constant. Most banks will give > you only 1 or 2 percent above the inflation rate on secure investments. > This translates to less than the avoided costs of having a full-time job > that I mentioned above (but go on and add another 3.5k on the first year > after quitting if you like, it doesn't change the equation by much). > Also remember that you are living off your principal, ie your money > doesn't grow ever-larger. > See? I said that most people don't appreciate the magic. :) You don't retire as soon as the interest received = dole payment. The exponential has hardly started by then. Wait until the interest received is more than you can reasonably spend. And don't think of it as just interest received. Capital appreciation is just as good. BillK From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 15 12:48:51 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 14:48:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] diversity and private schools In-Reply-To: <4A0A4709.2000605@rawbw.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090503171909.022dfee0@satx.rr.com> <4A0443CD.6080004@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090508104012.07981888@satx.rr.com> <4A07BF24.3060304@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090511011047.024bfe00@satx.rr.com> <4A07C7F2.1020800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090511020825.0234dcf8@satx.rr.com> <4A07D90A.6010008@rawbw.com> <4A0A4709.2000605@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A0D64B3.8030209@libero.it> Il 13/05/2009 6.05, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > BillK wrote: >> "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man" is the >> motto of the Jesuits. Jesuit schools are usually boarding schools to >> reduce the influence of parents and the outside world. Remember that you are discussing places and times where there was not mass transportation at cheap prices. So it was not easy to travel even for few miles every day. Or the school was in a major city or it was difficult to have it large enough to make economic sense. I suppose they were often located in some Jesuits convent, so this also ask for a place large enough to host a convent. > But it was never like that the Jesuits didn't > have a lot of government support. You're speaking > of episodes of history in which any kind of > schooling for the masses not only was not wealth- > creating, but would have been forbidden anyway > (unless it happened to keep to the line of the > government/religious majorities of the day). The Jesuits had a lot of government support (and hate) because they were good at what they did. Chinese asked Jesuits to cast cannons for them in the XVI century, because they didn't know how to do it. They were so good that some were in use until late XIX century. The problem is they are too much good at what they do. Then, I must disagree with the fact that mass schooling was not wealth creating. Mass schooling was wealth creating already in the Middle Age and it happened in the Middle Age. Rodney Star citing Spufford write that, from a statistic, in the 1338 in Florence near half of the school age population went to school. And the level of instruction of the people in Venice, Genoa and Milan was similar. The schooling was needed and requested by the local merchants and producers. The standardization of the schooling was so good that so many diaries, documents, business records are written with similar calligraphy (compare them with today attitude with lazy and near illegible calligraphy by physicians and others). Half of the population of a city is "mass schooling" for me. The problem was that 90% of the population lived outside the cities. But given the numbers in the main city, I believe that a large part of the people know how to read and write and compute at a basic level. They would probably learn it in an informal way. > You will rejoice that indeed, at present, the people > you agree with for the most part have the government > power. You'll switch sides expediently enough, I > reckon, if the tables are turned. No difference here. When they are the government all is good, all work well. Before and after it is only hell. > Shall we not try to find a principle here? > How > about the one that got the west into riches: > let a thousand flowers bloom (even if that phrasing > was co-opted by a certain someone else). He was interested in cutting them out after the blooming. We are interested in let them growing if they are not harmful to others. > Clearly, if the people are going to be rotten enough > to want for the most part to do things you don't > like individually, then they'll be just as likely > to do things you don't like collectively. Or, as Mises wrote: >> It is not mankind, the state, or the corporative unit that acts, >> but individual men and groups of men, and their valuations >> and their action are decisive, not those of abstract collectivities. >> Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 153 > It also seems to me that you focus overly much on > very small groups, e.g., schools that would turn > out professional criminals, or schools that would > turn out terrorists. Do I sense a subconscious > need for uniformity? >> A 'market' has to have a minimum standard to attain and a supervisory >> administration to stop wrong behaviour. Just like any market, from >> street markets to Wall Street (we can wish!). > Yes, a rather totalitarian control is absolutely > needed to stop all wrongdoing. Mao did manage to > end prostitution, drug use, and other vices in all > Chinese cities. But no one, least of all the > Chinese, would today argue that it was worth it. Did he really do it? ;-) > The wrongdoing that needs attention from government > is that which has effects far, far beyond their > numbers. So we have laws to protect the weak or > innocent from the strong or wicked. > As with so many things, imagining all the things > that could go wrong in some particular private > school is relatively easy, while imagining the > great good that would come about in the myriads > by individualization is much more difficult. It > can rarely be done well except by analogy: Well, a bigger sponsor of public schooling was Hitler, that was a socialist. We know how good he did and how successful he was in teaching. > Aren't we grateful that supermarkets are free to > innovate and explore new possibilities, and to > cultivate those world-wide sources of least price? > Imagine what they'd be like if government run (as > they were in the USSR), and people were chanting > "food delivery is too important to be left to the > free market!". Let look at the leftist politicians supporting of public schooling and where they send their children: 1) They send their children in public schools in wealthy neighbours where poor people can not send their children. 2) They send their children in private schools Anyone know a successful politician that send his/her children to a crime ridden / low standard school? Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.329 / Virus Database: 270.12.29/2114 - Release Date: 05/14/09 06:28:00 From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 15 13:26:29 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 15:26:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 6:13 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: >> For example, in the US, laws that prevent corporate takeovers >> and the like shield management from the consequences of its >> incompetence. > > Yes, indeed. You may also be interested in the (not very libertarian, > but rather informative) > http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice One big point that is largely ignored in transhumanist lists and that should know in principle a convergence of "libertarian/anarco-capitalist/social Darwinist" and of "socialist/communitarian", as well as of most transhumanists in general, I daresay, is that what we are living in is a neo-feodal society, where circulation of the ?lites is reduced to a minimum, and social mobility is largely a myth, the few examples of which have usually little to do with IQ, but rather with purely physical features (as in "marriage, show business and sport"). Yet, most of the time people are complaining about the fact that we would be living under the "law of the jungle" where the fittest would crash without pity the less lucky, or in a "socialist" society where competition and the action of the "invisibile hand" would be hindered by state regulation and/or by masses oppressing the geniuses. I submit that both scenarios are largely imaginary from a sociological point of view, and that our social system is instead largely aimed at protecting interests which are largely parasitic in their nature from a social point of view, and accordingly very wary of any kind of major techno-economical change. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 15 13:31:46 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 15:31:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Advocacy and libertarian optimism In-Reply-To: <4A0A53BE.8050807@rawbw.com> References: <852647.10086.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A53BE.8050807@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905150631s1b6bdfb2m745da86e7b5ffb3d@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 6:59 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > But *given* say a feudal culture circa 1000 AD > that you found yourself a part of, you'd still > be a classic libertarian? Me, at that point, > I'd either be advocating more or less obedience > to the local lord or to the king, whichever would > get us into an era of free trade sooner. Actually, when I say that I live in a neo-feodal society, above all in Europe and especially after the sixties, I may be unjustly disparaging feodalism, in the sense that when we use that term we inevitably refer to its "consolidated" and crystallised version. Instead, the establishment of feodalism itself was certainly a violent age, but also an age of great opportunities, of cultural changes and of great social mobility, actually probably greater than what we know today. -- Stefano Vaj From spike66 at att.net Fri May 15 13:23:17 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 06:23:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] seeking advice with a shipping problem In-Reply-To: <4A0CFAC4.4090502@posthuman.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090513234806.022b31e8@satx.rr.com> <4A0CFAC4.4090502@posthuman.com> Message-ID: > Brian Atkins ... > But I did read yesterday that container shipping is still > near recent super low prices... Brian Atkins Another idea is to hire an idler to saw the binding off of the books, then scan the pages into PDFs, then you email your library to Texas. I don't want to cut up my books either, but it carries the advantage that you can enlarge the text to any arbitrary size, or you can have the computer read them to you, and most importantly, you can text search the books. I buy far fewer paper books than I once did, but now it really bothers me that they have no search feature. spike From natasha at natasha.cc Fri May 15 14:31:13 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 09:31:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] seeking advice with a shipping problem In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090513234806.022b31e8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090513234806.022b31e8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <6DA9DF8585104CC69BD13ABD5E29A544@DFC68LF1> I use UPS and pay the few bucks for insurance for my goods. They are comparatively inexpensive and reliable. The phone number for international shipping is number is 1-800-782-7892. (They do ship from Australia to US) (I don't like to fill out on-line forms because I need to speak with a person, get his/her name and a reference number.) Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Damien Broderick Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 11:59 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: [ExI] seeking advice with a shipping problem Dear Extropes: I'm selling my Australian house and about to move my personal library from Melbourne, Australia, to San Antonio, Texas. A relative has been kindly (and exhaustingly) packing up the roughly 5000 books into book boxes, plus personal papers, and a few other not terrifically large objects. My guess is that it might amount to half a 20' container or maybe less. I'm having trouble getting feedback from the shippers who advertise online. I fill in their forms, send them off, and hear nothing back. The only one who's been responsive to date is Grace Removals (an Aussie company with international connections), and even they are slow to reply and don't provide much information. Anyone have suggestions based on their own transnational shipping experience, even if it's not Australia or New Zealand=>USA? Do such firms typically bring a container to the house and pack away one's goodies on the spot? Is Customs, insurance and any other paperwork done by the moving company? (If I were in Oz now I'd probably do that myself, but alas I'm not.) Mostly I want all this damned clutter out of the house ASAP, so the place can be shown to potential purchasers without looking like a madman's midden. How long the process takes after that is less important; that is, I don't mind if my stuff is stored for a while awaiting shipping, if that's cheaper. Anything else I should be aware of? Thanks, folks. Damien Broderick _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 15 15:01:13 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 01:01:13 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Psychology of "Entitlements" In-Reply-To: <1242381061.4202.19.camel@localhost> References: <297079.88779.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A03B8A8.3010505@rawbw.com> <4A07BAA9.1010408@rawbw.com> <4A0A4BBC.1010306@rawbw.com> <1242381061.4202.19.camel@localhost> Message-ID: 2009/5/15 Alejandro Dubrovsky : > On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 17:13 +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >> I'm still not sure I understand: are you saying that if you had modest >> savings you would not have found another job? Where I live it takes >> about 5 to 7 years savings for someone on the average wage in order to >> sustain themselves at the level of the dole for the rest of their >> life. So most people could retire before they're 30, if they would be >> satisfied with the dole. Is this a problem? > > I don't think you've done your calculations correctly: > Average full time salary in Aus is very close to 50k, which leaves 40k > after tax if you don't owe HECS (37 otherwise). ?Dole is 15k with rent > assistance, but before all the other benefits (concession card, > telephone assistance, etc). ?If you assume you are happy to live on the > same amount of money while working full time as you are on the dole > (very hard, much more expensive to have to get out of the house every > day and also to keep work-stress manageable without money), you can save > 25k per year. ?7 years gives you 175k, good for under 12 more years of > dole equivalent. ? 7 on/12 off is not a terrible split, and I hope I can > do that, but it's not 7 on/infinity off. The dole is $453.30 a fortnight, or $11,785.80 a year for a single person (the aged pension is somewhat higher than the dole): http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/payments/newstart_rates.htm The average wage in Australia is $63,154 per year: http://www.britzinoz.com/info/wages.htm After tax, that leaves $49,218 per year: http://www.ato.gov.au/scripts/taxcalc/calculate_tax.asp Subtract from this $11,785.80 and you are left with $37,432.20 per year in savings. Now, it depends on what investment return you can get on this money. If you invest it at 5% per annum then after 5 years you will have $206,839.10 and after 7 years $304,777.4. If you retire at 7 years and continue to get a 5% income return that's $15238.70 per annum, preserving your capital. I did not include rent assistant and non-cash benefits, nor the extra costs associated with work; on the other hand, I also did not include any tax deductions or the 9% superannuation contribution, which you can't access until you're 60 but which will allow you to draw down on some of your capital every year without running out of money by then. In any case, even in a worst case scenario everyone happy to subsist on the dole could retire in their 30's. > (Disclaimer: ?I only got out of the dole because they started hassling > me with the dole diary. ?That was work.) The idea of the dole in Australia is that if you can work you shouldn't receive it. But even if this weren't the case, I've never heard of a situation in a country where there is a labour shortage because the dole is too high or too easy to get. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 15 15:40:00 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 17:40:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Intellectual_Property_=97_A_Libertarian_Cr?= =?windows-1252?q?itique?= In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905132147t35d5424ckd123475b65ca8cb0@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0905132147t35d5424ckd123475b65ca8cb0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905150840w66e14e4dtbacbbf10578c4b7d@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 6:47 AM, Emlyn wrote: > Intellectual Property ? A Libertarian Critique > > tl;dr, but it looks interesting. > > http://c4ss.org/content/521 > "In this study, Kevin Carson reviews libertarian perspectives on > ?intellectual property?; the ethics of the practice itself and the > harms resulting from it. He finds that IP is an artificial, rather > than natural, property right. I am always amazed how much some libertarian thinkers owe to religious biases, such as a view of law based not on political choices of a given community based on its chosen goals, but rather what "nature" would dictate. Intellectual property is only a tool, no less and no more than land property or toothbrush property. In particular, it has been established in order to provide remuneration to R&D research investment which would be otherwise prevented by a typical "free ride" unraveling. Now, there are no doubts that today it may hinder here and there innovation more than stimulate it (as latifundium used to reduce agricultural output). But *this* is the issue that needs to be discussed. In particular, why transhumanists of all possibile people should care about what is "natural" and what is not? -- Stefano Vaj From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 15 15:42:59 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 15:42:59 +0000 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> Message-ID: On 5/15/09, spike wrote: > This is the actual quote, which causes me to think 0bama gets it: > > "We can't keep on just borrowing from China," Obama said at a town-hall > meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. "We have to pay > interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children's > future with more and more debt." > > Holders of U.S. debt will eventually "get tired" of buying it, causing > interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, > Obama said. "It will have a dampening effect on our economy." > > Hmmmm. This strikes me as rather an odd remark for Obama to make. After all, he has previously criticized the Republicans for deficit spending. It is not a sudden new discovery for him. And it is his huge deficit budget which is causing the future problems. Is he a hypocrite? Or, maybe, after his 100 days, he is realizing that he has been led by the nose by all the crooked financiers and he is starting a push back against them. Interesting. BillK From pjmanney at gmail.com Fri May 15 16:05:03 2009 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 09:05:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] seeking advice with a shipping problem In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090513234806.022b31e8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090513234806.022b31e8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <29666bf30905150905y56f0abeam9d103835321587e6@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 9:59 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > Anyone have suggestions based on their own transnational shipping > experience, even if it's not Australia or New Zealand=>USA? Yes. Keep in mind, this was almost 9 years ago, so my memory is hazy... We used Crown Relocations http://www.moveoverseas.co.uk/web/webcountry.nsf/uk-home.htm They seem to specialize in expat relocation and shipping. They were pretty great as movers went. Brought the shipping containers to the door. (We used 2 1/2 40 footers) We packed the small stuff in boxes, they packed everything else, loaded it, took it to the ship, etc. We arranged our own movers to pick up at Port of Los Angeles. Crown may have US partners to get yours to Texas. We had minimal breakage, considering we moved an entire 2 story villa full (Damien will know what I mean) of stuff with a family of four. Shipping took 6 - 8 weeks, if I remember correctly. Paperwork definitely had to be filled out and maintained by you, since they may not be picking up at US end and any customs charges are your responsibility. They were good with faxing appropriate forms where they needed to go, etc., but as always, I'd keep on top of them. I'd guess everything is emailable now. Make sure there are no customs charges moving stuff back to the US. I don't think there should be on used goods. I vaguely remember a one-time, customs fee-free move, but that might have been TO New Zealand and not TO the US. I think everyone on our shows used Crown and I don't remember anyone complaining about them (beyond the normal inconveniences when one moves). I have no idea how much they cost compared to other means, since we long ago threw away the paperwork (and I think the shows picked up some of the costs). PJ From natasha at natasha.cc Fri May 15 17:13:58 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 12:13:58 -0500 Subject: [ExI] seeking advice with a shipping problem In-Reply-To: <6DA9DF8585104CC69BD13ABD5E29A544@DFC68LF1> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090513234806.022b31e8@satx.rr.com> <6DA9DF8585104CC69BD13ABD5E29A544@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <19FE8EA198674154A716C231EA322CB5@DFC68LF1> Damien, you might want to go to this site: http://www.movingscam.com/ Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Natasha Vita-More Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 9:31 AM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] seeking advice with a shipping problem I use UPS and pay the few bucks for insurance for my goods. They are comparatively inexpensive and reliable. The phone number for international shipping is number is 1-800-782-7892. (They do ship from Australia to US) (I don't like to fill out on-line forms because I need to speak with a person, get his/her name and a reference number.) Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Damien Broderick Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 11:59 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: [ExI] seeking advice with a shipping problem Dear Extropes: I'm selling my Australian house and about to move my personal library from Melbourne, Australia, to San Antonio, Texas. A relative has been kindly (and exhaustingly) packing up the roughly 5000 books into book boxes, plus personal papers, and a few other not terrifically large objects. My guess is that it might amount to half a 20' container or maybe less. I'm having trouble getting feedback from the shippers who advertise online. I fill in their forms, send them off, and hear nothing back. The only one who's been responsive to date is Grace Removals (an Aussie company with international connections), and even they are slow to reply and don't provide much information. Anyone have suggestions based on their own transnational shipping experience, even if it's not Australia or New Zealand=>USA? Do such firms typically bring a container to the house and pack away one's goodies on the spot? Is Customs, insurance and any other paperwork done by the moving company? (If I were in Oz now I'd probably do that myself, but alas I'm not.) Mostly I want all this damned clutter out of the house ASAP, so the place can be shown to potential purchasers without looking like a madman's midden. How long the process takes after that is less important; that is, I don't mind if my stuff is stored for a while awaiting shipping, if that's cheaper. Anything else I should be aware of? Thanks, folks. Damien Broderick _______________________________________________ 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 From jef at jefallbright.net Fri May 15 14:04:34 2009 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 07:04:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] seeking advice with a shipping problem In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090513234806.022b31e8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090513234806.022b31e8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 9:59 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > Do such firms typically bring a container to the house and pack away one's goodies on the spot? Is Customs, insurance and any other paperwork done by the moving company? Last time I made an international move, from Japan back to the US, all the details and formalities were handled by the shipping company: Checklists of all items, value for customs, packing, shipping, storage, delivery and unpacking. All the paperwork for the particular export/customs requirements was prepared and handled by them, but it was necessary that I or my agent be present at the origin to verify descriptions of items being packed and sign the forms since what I was shipping and declaring was ultimately my responsibility. As for books, it has been a great pleasure (but initially a lot of work) to have my several hundred book library converted to digital form. - Jef From sean.zuzu at gmail.com Fri May 15 16:06:18 2009 From: sean.zuzu at gmail.com (zuzu) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 12:06:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Intellectual_Property_=E2=80=94_A_Libertarian_Cri?= =?utf-8?q?tique?= In-Reply-To: <580930c20905150840w66e14e4dtbacbbf10578c4b7d@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0905132147t35d5424ckd123475b65ca8cb0@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905150840w66e14e4dtbacbbf10578c4b7d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 11:40 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 6:47 AM, Emlyn wrote: >> Intellectual Property ? A Libertarian Critique >> >> tl;dr, but it looks interesting. >> >> http://c4ss.org/content/521 >> "In this study, Kevin Carson reviews libertarian perspectives on >> ?intellectual property?; the ethics of the practice itself and the >> harms resulting from it. He finds that IP is an artificial, rather >> than natural, property right. > > I am always amazed how much some libertarian thinkers owe to religious > biases, such as a view of law based not on political choices of a > given community based on its chosen goals, but rather what "nature" > would dictate. > > Intellectual property is only a tool, no less and no more than land > property or toothbrush property. In particular, it has been > established in order to provide remuneration to R&D research > investment which would be otherwise prevented by a typical "free ride" The "free-rider problem" isn't a problem at all. The problem is the need for _business models_ that remunerate the act of R&D itself, rather than relying on a state monopoly for exclusive use of that R&D after it's already been done. In other words, imagine people with cancer today paying $100 each for a lab to discover its cure, the lab agrees, and they do find the cure. Everyone currently with cancer who paid the $100 gets the cure, but the cure isn't limited to them. Anyone who subsequently gets cancer receives the cure "for free". Does this diminish the cure for those who paid the $100 to begin with in anyway? At the time (and time-preference is key), paying $100 was the only way to be cured of cancer, even if everyone else gets to "free ride" later on. As for the lab, they presumably profited from the initial $100-per-person payment for discovering a cure, and they are now free to discover other cures likewise in the future. They are not entitled to _rent-seeking_ on this cancer cure in perpetuity. Furthermore, referring to the monopoly privileges of copyright, patent, and trademark as "intellectual property" conflates it with real property law. (As has been said, there's no actual rivalry or excludability with ideas as there are with material goods.) > unraveling. Now, there are no doubts that today it may hinder here and > there innovation more than stimulate it (as latifundium used to reduce > agricultural output). But *this* is the issue that needs to be > discussed. > > In particular, why transhumanists of all possibile people should care > about what is "natural" and what is not? From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 15 19:02:42 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 14:02:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.co m> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> At 03:26 PM 5/15/2009 +0200, Stefano wrote: >what we are living in is a neo-feodal >society, where circulation of the ?lites is reduced to a minimum, and >social mobility is largely a myth, the few examples of which have >usually little to do with IQ, but rather with purely physical features >(as in "marriage, show business and sport"). When James James Andrew Andrew Rogers was a frequent poster on this list, he denied that fervently, offering data suggesting a quite remarkable degree of USian turnover in the upper reaches of the plutocracy. At least half the billionaires had parents who were poor or middle class, that sort of thing. I find it hard to believe, and even if it's true there might be some power law that gives those right at the very top of the curve incomparably more sway over the nation's/globe's running, and most of those might well be multi-generational elites. Data, anyone? Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 15 19:25:49 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 19:25:49 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 5/15/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > When James James Andrew Andrew Rogers was a frequent poster on this list, > he denied that fervently, offering data suggesting a quite remarkable degree > of USian turnover in the upper reaches of the plutocracy. At least half the > billionaires had parents who were poor or middle class, that sort of thing. > I find it hard to believe, and even if it's true there might be some power > law that gives those right at the very top of the curve incomparably more > sway over the nation's/globe's running, and most of those might well be > multi-generational elites. Data, anyone? > This is a reference to the Forbes rich list of 2007. They found 946 billionaires, of which 60% made their own fortunes. Two-thirds of the 2006 list got even richer in 2007. Some people see this as a growing demonstration of the growing gap between a few very rich people accumulating ever greater wealth and the great majority getting poorer. (Regardless of whether the rich inherited their wealth or gained it through business means). BillK From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Fri May 15 19:44:10 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 12:44:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20090515194410.GA8238@ofb.net> On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 07:25:49PM +0000, BillK wrote: > This is a reference to the Forbes rich list of 2007. > They found 946 billionaires, of which 60% made their own fortunes. 1) How many because of the dot-com or real-estate bubbles, or CEO compensation of dubious economic justification? 2) What exactly does "made their own fortune" mean? Bill Gates is a lot wealthier than his parents... but Wikipedia calls them upper middle class: prominent lawyer father, mother served on bank board of directors, her father was a bank president. The mothers at his school bought computer access for the students, in 1968. Social mobility often looks at quintiles; he probably started out in the top quintile. -xx- Damien X-) From jrd1415 at gmail.com Fri May 15 20:26:50 2009 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 13:26:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> Message-ID: On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 11:32 PM, spike wrote: ... > I was joking too Jeff. ?I was swinging on your vine there. That famous driest of dry wit. >?I am more > liberal that you, Jeff, more than anyone, for I think all drugs should be > legal, all abortions are fine with me, all the liberal everything is fine, > the military should be no larger than necessary, I take it all back. You the man! > but the federal government > should be out of most of what it is doing. ?Completely. That govt is best which governs least. Huzzah! > ?In my view they > would do little more than operate the military and maintain the interstate > highway system. snippage... >> start thinking about proposals for the new administration >> about how to transition LockMart from death machine welfare >> queen to extropic vanguard of new paradigm life-enhancing >> technologies... > > Better military technologies do exactly that. Blecch! You not the man. ... > The newest warfare paradigms are a logical extrapolation: one > carries the weapons aboard a drone, operated by guys in an air conditioned > office in Nevada somewhere, and shoots not at the soldiers but rather at the > trucks, armor and missiles. Dream on my brother. At the moment this seems like a good idea, since the current drone "phenomenon" is entirely ours, and is flying over nowheresville shooting at rebellious Muslim subhumans. What happens when these little planes are flying over ***your*** neighborhood? But, returning ever so briefly to the Af-Pak war,... The hunt for Bin Laden, having failed utterly, has been replaced by a boundless Global War on Terror with its equally boundless profit potential. The catastrophic prospect of peace, which loomed menacingly after the fall of the Soviet boogieman has been swept away, replaced by the militarist's fondest dream: perpetual global war, starting with a war against forty million Pashtuns ie, the Taliban and its parent tribe. The Taliban were never our enemy, the Pastun were never our enemy. So why are we fighting them? Revenge, frustration, political inertia, and the cancerous parasitism of opportunistic militarism (war for profit: political and monetary). Sheer madness which can only result in penury and blowback. > ?The logical extension of shooting to wound the > enemy gives way to the new paradigm of not shooting the enemy soldiers at > all, but rather to send them home perfectly healthy, for the super accurate > tiny missiles are not particularly effective as anti-personnel weapons > anyway. I thought of this first, many many years ago. Soldiers are innocents, it is their overlords who deserve to be blown up. I ***love*** the idea of a "military" theory aimed at neutralizing but keeping safe the soldier pawns of the adversary political class. But dream on if you think the current crop of US warmongers and warmakers are thinking this way. That little missile -- not big enough for a tank -- with your name on it, will still be aimed at the humans in the machine, and their death will be sought and celebrated. Imagining otherwise constitutes the deepest of deep denial. > But they are great for punching a small clean hole all the way thru > the engine of a truck, disabling it. ... > This approach Someday, upon its sincere adoption > eliminates a lot of problems. ?No war refugees to protect and > feed, no prison camps to have your own soldiers photographing themselves > misbehaving, none of your guys being taken prisoner and being asked their > name, rank and serial number just before a tiny minority saws his goddam > head off, no Private Ryans to rescue, no expensive planes being shot down, > no wrecked buildings to pay for, reduced carbon dioxide emissions due to all > that motorized armor that no longer runs, no stressed out soldiers going > crazy and slaying their comrades, no reason for concern over the sexual > orientation of the joystick jockey sitting in the next cubicle, no husbands > or children missing their mothers who have gone off to war. > > Now, given that technology, do we still call them death machines? ?Jeff I > would call them life machines. Your heart's in the right place, but your head's,... not. ;-) >?What you already own is irrelevant to the government for > that isn't taxable. > Only what you make is what the government can tax. Taxation, unlike say, gravity, is not subject to some immutable law, but rather man made and man modifiable: make it taxable. In fact eliminate all other taxes -- all, as in ALL -- and have one flat tax based on net worth, or, as another list member suggested, a financial transaction tax, you know, like a sales tax on everything, but particularly to include investment transactions: stocks, bonds, and the like. > The rich already pay the whole damn bill, if you define rich the way the > government does. And when they get through paying, they're still rich, not jobless and homeless. Go thee and sin no more. Hope good fortune smiles upon you and Shelli and the pod. Best, Jeff Davis "Everything you see I owe to spaghetti." Sophia Loren From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 15 20:25:11 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 13:25:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses Message-ID: <251804.24543.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/12/09, Michael LaTorra wrote: > Vitamins Found to > Curb Exercise Benefits > By NICHOLAS WADE > Published: May 11, 2009 > ? > If you exercise to improve your metabolism and prevent > diabetes, you may want to avoid antioxidants like vitamins C > and E. > ?? .... > ?If you exercise to promote health, you shouldn?t > take large amounts of antioxidants,? Dr. Ristow said. A > second message of the study, he said, ?is that > antioxidants in general cause certain effects that inhibit > otherwise positive effects of exercise, dieting and other > interventions.? The findings appear in this week?s issue > of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. > ?? ... > Read entire article at: > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/health/research/12exer.html?em I would like to read the specifics of research. >From the article, they mentioned "moderate doses." Since I'm not sure what exactly they mean, I think it's premature to just to the conclusion of "[o]nce again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses." Without knowing more details -- were the young men in good health? what were their ages? how often did they exercise? how long did the study last? what were the doses and how often? what types of C and E were used? -- this looks like more little more than another typical hit-and-run attack on supplements. I mean most people will trust the NY Times, but this story lacks the context where an informed person might judge whether the claims made are valid and whether to stop using these two micronutrients. Regards, Dan From spike66 at att.net Fri May 15 20:35:26 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 13:35:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] why darwin matters Message-ID: I am a big fan of Michael Shermer fan and practically pray to Charles Darwin. Here we go, now I can get a fix of both at the same time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFxxrcoaIII I can read a lot faster than he can talk. What I would like is a written transcript of this presentation. I couldn't find one, and an hour to listen to it is hard to spare. But this is good. Aaaah, life is good. Are we glad we lived long enough to enjoy YouTube, or what? You Tube is the perhaps best argument for caloric restriction. If a lifetime of mild hunger allows us to squeeze just a little more time out of these mortal vessels that are our carbon based bodies, what innovative technological wonders, what new scientific discoveries, what developmental goodies will show up unexpectedly in our last months of this mortal existence, which we would not have lived to see otherwise, which will delight us even in our dotage, because of their wicked coolness? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mlatorra at gmail.com Fri May 15 21:24:12 2009 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 15:24:12 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses In-Reply-To: <251804.24543.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <251804.24543.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <9ff585550905151424t7aaeaa52xd579be3cd26964be@mail.gmail.com> Hi Dan, Sorry to say this, but your response looks like just another baseless complaint against the overwhelming evidence that most supplements do not work, either in animal studies or in human studies. I say this as someone who took supplements for over 20 years. All I got was kidney stones. Please remember that the most powerful advocacy group for the use of supplements is comprised of those who sell them. Researchers who do not sell supplements or receive financial support from those that do -- in other words, people who stake their reputations on the quality of their research -- have conducted truly disinterested research and found little value to most supplements. This is what the science -- also known as "evidenced-based" investigation -- tells us. If you prefer "faith-based" belief systems, or simply accepting what industry shills tell you, then fine, believe whatever you like. But don't raise a bunch of niggling quibbles as if you had some greater knowledge on the topic than the scientists who researched it. If you want to read their report to verify their protocols and so forth, then by all means do so and report back to us. But this is not what you have done. You've snidely impugned their work in the very manner of the "faith-based" industry shills who earn their living selling the modern equivalent of snake oil. Did I put too fine a point on this? If so, then let me be really blunt: Put up or shut up. And have a wonderful day ;) Mike On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 2:25 PM, Dan wrote: > > --- On Tue, 5/12/09, Michael LaTorra wrote: > > Vitamins Found to > > Curb Exercise Benefits > > By NICHOLAS WADE > > Published: May 11, 2009 > > > > If you exercise to improve your metabolism and prevent > > diabetes, you may want to avoid antioxidants like vitamins C > > and E. > > .... > > ?If you exercise to promote health, you shouldn?t > > take large amounts of antioxidants,? Dr. Ristow said. A > > second message of the study, he said, ?is that > > antioxidants in general cause certain effects that inhibit > > otherwise positive effects of exercise, dieting and other > > interventions.? The findings appear in this week?s issue > > of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. > > ... > > Read entire article at: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/health/research/12exer.html?em > > I would like to read the specifics of research. > > From the article, they mentioned "moderate doses." Since I'm not sure what > exactly they mean, I think it's premature to just to the conclusion of > "[o]nce again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses." Without knowing > more details -- were the young men in good health? what were their ages? how > often did they exercise? how long did the study last? what were the doses > and how often? what types of C and E were used? -- this looks like more > little more than another typical hit-and-run attack on supplements. I mean > most people will trust the NY Times, but this story lacks the context where > an informed person might judge whether the claims made are valid and whether > to stop using these two micronutrients. > > 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 pharos at gmail.com Fri May 15 22:10:56 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 22:10:56 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses In-Reply-To: <9ff585550905151424t7aaeaa52xd579be3cd26964be@mail.gmail.com> References: <251804.24543.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <9ff585550905151424t7aaeaa52xd579be3cd26964be@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/15/09, Michael LaTorra wrote: > Please remember that the most powerful advocacy group for the use of > supplements is comprised of those who sell them. Researchers who do not sell > supplements or receive financial support from those that do -- in other > words, people who stake their reputations on the quality of their research > -- have conducted truly disinterested research and found little value to > most supplements. And, on the other hand, the pharmaceutical industry is behind much of the anti-vitamin/supplement messages we see and hear. Which group of shills do you believe more? I agree that evidence is accumulating that *large* doses of vitamins and supplements can be harmful. And I also agree that regularly eating a balanced diet, including fruit, vegetables, nuts and fish should mean that you have no need for supplements. But it is not that easy for everyone to have the perfect diet. For example, the selenium content is US wheat is too low. A low dose multi-vitamin tablet should correct any deficiencies without causing overdose problems. Fish oil capsules also help if you don't eat enough oily fish. Another problem is aging. Older bodies start failing to process food as well as they did when younger and some supplementation can correct deficiencies. As muscle mass starts to dwindle, this can be helped also. Again, you have to be careful not to overdose. So you are successfully arguing against overdosing on vitamins, but not against taking any supplementation at all. BillK From spike66 at att.net Fri May 15 22:12:32 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 15:12:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians In-Reply-To: References: <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Jeff Davis > Subject: Re: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda,was: > retrainability of plebeians > > On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 11:32 PM, spike wrote: > ... > > > I was joking too Jeff. ?I was swinging on your vine there. > > That famous driest of dry wit... Ja, I utterly reject wet wit. ... > > That govt is best which governs least. Huzzah! You and I agree totally on ideals, disagree widely only on tactics. > > ... > > > The newest warfare paradigms are a logical extrapolation: > one carries > > the weapons aboard a drone... > > Dream on my brother. At the moment this seems like a good > idea, since the current drone "phenomenon" is entirely ours, > and is flying over nowheresville shooting at rebellious > Muslim subhumans... Language please Jeff. We can't be accused of racism. They are rebellious life forms of no particular religion, creed or sect, fighting for no known or discernible reason. > What happens when these little planes are > flying over ***your*** neighborhood? Move elsewhere? > > But, returning ever so briefly to the Af-Pak war,... The hunt > for Bin Laden, having failed utterly, has been replaced by a > boundless Global > War on Terror... We have eliminated terror with a mere stroke of a pen. It is now boundless global war on human-caused disaster. > with its equally boundless profit potential. The > catastrophic prospect of peace, which loomed menacingly after > the fall of the Soviet boogieman has been swept away... Hey the commies are looking to rise again. > replaced by the militarist's fondest dream: perpetual global > war, starting with a war against forty million Pashtuns ie, > the Taliban and its parent tribe... Jeff! You have identified this unknown enemy! Report your findings immediately to the DoD, for they have so far discovered no reliable means of discerning the adversary. > The Taliban were never our enemy, the Pastun were never our > enemy. So why are we fighting them?... We are not fighting *them* but rather only a tiny minority of no particular religion, creed or sect hiding among them, which have the fondest hope and clearly stated goal of eliminating and destroying the western civilization and sabotaging it's miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers in no particular religion, creed or sect so that it is eliminated and no particular deity's no specific religion is made victorious over all other no particular religions. > ... > > I thought of this first, many many years ago. Soldiers are > innocents, it is their overlords who deserve to be blown up... Regardless of who deserves to be blown up, it is completely unnecessary. Let em be. Without the engines of war, they are harmless as kittens. Rather, this is an understatement. A peculiar habit of the tiny minority hiding among those of no particular religion is that they stress an "education" that has little as possible to do with science and technology. They encourage the females to eschew education all together (by throwing acid on their faces for instance), whereas the males are given an "education" that appears mostly filled with memorization of no particular holy book. Eventually they figure out that it is hopeless to fight the unbelievers in no particular religion without advanced technology, so they take up science, and if so, they inevitably become unbelievers themselves. Science is fundamendally incompatible with the beliefs of the dangerous tiny minority. Problem solved. http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/01/22/acid.attacks/index.html > ...That little missile -- not big enough for a tank -- > with your name on it, will still be aimed at the humans in > the machine, and their death will be sought and celebrated. > Imagining otherwise constitutes the deepest of deep denial... Recall that the death or injury of any members of the tiny minority are used as recruitment propaganda for the tiny minority and is unnecessary to the unbelievers. So take that away. Hit the tank after it stops and the tiny minority are taking a break outside. It is indeed possible to take out the best modern tank with a small missile Jeff, I can assure you. ... > > Your heart's in the right place, but your head's,... not. ;-) > > >?What you already own is irrelevant to the government for > that isn't > >taxable. > > Only what you make is what the government can tax. > > Taxation, unlike say, gravity, is not subject to some > immutable law, but rather man made and man modifiable: make > it taxable. In fact eliminate all other taxes -- all, as in > ALL -- and have one flat tax based on net worth, or, as > another list member suggested, a financial transaction tax, > you know, like a sales tax on everything, but particularly to > include investment transactions: stocks, bonds, and the like... It is I whose head is...not? Jeff you do realize of course that to do this sort of thing requires 2/3 of the senate to agree? That this very seldom happens is very close to some immutable law of nature. > > > The rich already pay the whole damn bill, if you define > rich the way the > > government does. > > And when they get through paying, they're still rich, not > jobless and homeless... By all means let us get 2/3 of the senate to agree to make those evil rich jobless and homeless. I will make a prediction here that I wish everyone here to note. Some time in the next three years, some government official, perhaps Tim Geither or Rahm Emanuel or one of the other tax... ahem, payers, will utter the term "wealth tax." If this term is merely spoken by any government official, simply uttered in casual conversation, even as a clue to a crossword puzzle or a possible play on the scabble board, the price of gold will suddenly jump, the price of a lot of stuff will suddenly increase, the value of real estate will suddenly drop, by a startling percentage. The right guard will do whatever it is that they do, the lock-and-load crowd will... I suppose lock and load, and it will be a shock to the system. A good crisis is created by two simple words. > > Go thee and sin no more. Awww, you're no fun. {8-] > > Hope good fortune smiles upon you and Shelli and the pod. > > Best, Jeff Davis Yes thanks. Quality of life has dramatically improved since I stepped off that runaway treadmill contraption that so bedeviled George Jetson (...Heeeelllllp Jaaaaane, stop this crazy thiiing! Heeellllp, Jaaaaannne!) spike From natasha at natasha.cc Fri May 15 22:26:07 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 18:26:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Szent-Gyorgyi's Definition of Life In-Reply-To: References: <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> Message-ID: <20090515182607.cwkzz5uskkkc4owo@webmail.natasha.cc> In looking at the various areas of biotechnological design/art and the subsets as suggested by Pier Luigi Capucci (with whom I share some common ground); I came across mention of Albert Szent-Gyorgyi. Szent-Gyorgyi is a Hungarian chemist who won the Nobel Price for medicine in 1937. He provided an interesting inorganic definition of life: "Life is nothing more than an electron in search of a place in which to stop". What I like about this definition, however sing-song, is that it suggests personal existence does not stop at biology. But how accurate is it? Thoughts? Natasha From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 15 22:44:02 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 17:44:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] lock-and-load In-Reply-To: References: <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090515173455.023e9360@satx.rr.com> At 03:12 PM 5/15/2009 -0700, the spikester wrote: >The right guard will >do whatever it is that they do, the lock-and-load crowd will... I suppose >lock and load As a don't-have-a-gun guy, I've always been puzzled by this phrase. Wikipedia doesn't help. Is it possible to first lock and then load something? Take a car, for example: standing outside the supermarket with all the doors and the back hatch locked, I'd find it quite difficult to load my goods. Do you lock some part of a gun to prevent its going off in your face while you load the ammo? Or do you load the bits that fly out the end and through the air and only then "lock" some part of the mechanism to stop you shooting your dick off? In which case, shouldn't the manly cry be "load and lock!"? Oh, wait--Wiktionary says: Must try one of those gadgets some day, I hear they're heaps of fun. Damien Broderick From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Fri May 15 23:10:34 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 16:10:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] lock-and-load In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090515173455.023e9360@satx.rr.com> References: <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515173455.023e9360@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670905151610i3b861724q7309907750eb441c@mail.gmail.com> > > Must try one of those gadgets some day, I hear they're heaps of fun. You must experience going out into a desert landfill area filled with abandoned cars/rusted out skeletons and then set up beer cans, glass bottles, etc., on the hood on one, so you can blast away! lol And you need to bring an assortment of rifles and pistols to have the most fun (and so everyone in the group brings their own private arsenals to mix and match). But be sure you know your rounds are going to go into the side of the landfill, and not into a stranger who wanders into your collective field of fire. Oh, and absolutely NO drinking! I heard a story about Don Laughlin hosting a party at his resort and guests were startled by the "BRAPPPP!" of a heavy machine gun. It turned out to be Don showing off his new toy... Rich or poor, Americans love their guns. John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mlatorra at gmail.com Fri May 15 23:30:05 2009 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 17:30:05 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses In-Reply-To: References: <251804.24543.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <9ff585550905151424t7aaeaa52xd579be3cd26964be@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <9ff585550905151630wd153679ie6230d40fd915f6f@mail.gmail.com> Hi Bill, I said that "most supplements do not work" and by that I meant the many large dose supplements that have been tried as purported preventatives or treatments aimed at reducing morbidity and mortality rates from heart disease and cancer principally (and secondarily from diabetes and other diseases), as well as those supplements purported to slow the degenerative effects of aging. A few -- a very few -- supplements have been shown work. As you mentioned, fish oil (and flax seed) containing Omega-3 has shown positive results for heart disease. However, the much-touted megadoses of vitamins C and E and Betacarotene have either shown no positive effects or, as in the case of Betacarotene, harmful effects. Please don't try to squeeze me into the box of simple opposition to all supplements. What I am arguing is that too many people are wasting too much money on supplements that have not been proven to have any value. I would think that people on this list, of all places, would put high value on the results of scientific studies, almost all of which have disconfirmed the supposed value for supplements . But the history of discussion of this topic has shown that most people who care enough to post about it do not really believe in the scientific method as much as they claim to. Am I being too harsh? I don't believe so. Consider this: How much money would you -- this means YOU, dear reader, whoever you are -- save each year if you only bought a simple one-per-day multivitamin and perhaps some Omega-3 capsules? If you are like I was from the 1970s through the 1990s, you would save on the order of $300 to $1,200 per year. What could you do with that kind of money? Think about that. Regards, Mike On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 4:10 PM, BillK wrote: > On 5/15/09, Michael LaTorra wrote: > > Please remember that the most powerful advocacy group for the use of > > supplements is comprised of those who sell them. Researchers who do not > sell > > supplements or receive financial support from those that do -- in other > > words, people who stake their reputations on the quality of their > research > > -- have conducted truly disinterested research and found little value to > > most supplements. > > > And, on the other hand, the pharmaceutical industry is behind much of > the anti-vitamin/supplement messages we see and hear. > Which group of shills do you believe more? > > I agree that evidence is accumulating that *large* doses of vitamins > and supplements can be harmful. > > And I also agree that regularly eating a balanced diet, including > fruit, vegetables, nuts and fish should mean that you have no need for > supplements. > > But it is not that easy for everyone to have the perfect diet. For > example, the selenium content is US wheat is too low. A low dose > multi-vitamin tablet should correct any deficiencies without causing > overdose problems. Fish oil capsules also help if you don't eat enough > oily fish. > > Another problem is aging. Older bodies start failing to process food > as well as they did when younger and some supplementation can correct > deficiencies. As muscle mass starts to dwindle, this can be helped > also. Again, you have to be careful not to overdose. > > So you are successfully arguing against overdosing on vitamins, but > not against taking any supplementation at all. > > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > 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 spike66 at att.net Fri May 15 23:23:04 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 16:23:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] lock-and-load In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090515173455.023e9360@satx.rr.com> References: <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515173455.023e9360@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick > Subject: [ExI] lock-and-load > > At 03:12 PM 5/15/2009 -0700, the spikester wrote: > > >The right guard will > >do whatever it is that they do, the lock-and-load crowd will... I > >suppose lock and load > > As a don't-have-a-gun guy, I've always been puzzled by this phrase... Ja me too. I asways assumed it meant something to do with the mechanism of the device, everything that isn't the stock (the wood part) or the barrel, as in the phrase which means the entire weapon: lock, stock and barrel. > ... > In which case, shouldn't the manly cry be "load and lock!"? One would think so. > ... > Must try one of those gadgets some day, I hear they're heaps of fun. > > Damien Broderick Oh my goodness yes. It is a sport which does not require any particular athleticism, yet promotes hand-eye coordination, etc. It isn't particularly expensive if you don't go for the exotic stuff, there are plenty of good indoor target ranges in metropolitan areas, and the skill even has real world applications. Consider the nutria, an imported beast which is a threat to the flora of Oregon and other areas. http://www.nutria.com/site.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coypu These entries do not express actual the size of these beasts, which is larger than a very well fed house cat. They have a bad habit of gnawing trees, similar to the way of the beaver, which eventually slays the trees and causes them to fall into the stream, causing the water to back up, which creates an opportunity for a nice den, again much like a beaver, which tends to flood one's newly built expensive pump house, dammit. Oregon farmers don't like having their trees gnawed, and so they take the expedient action of slaying the beasts, which usually requires a rifle and a steady aim, for these are non-native pests are wiley bastards. They will not enter a trap, they will not devour poisoned bait, and they are difficult to sneak upon. Or rather to upward and onward sneak. They must be slain from a good distance with a rifle. spike From fauxever at sprynet.com Fri May 15 23:36:46 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 16:36:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] lock-and-load References: <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515173455.023e9360@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: From: "Damien Broderick" To: "ExI chat list" > As a don't-have-a-gun guy, I've always been puzzled by this phrase. > Wikipedia doesn't help. Is it possible to first lock and then load > something? Take a car, for example: standing outside the supermarket with > all the doors and the back hatch locked, I'd find it quite difficult to > load my goods. Do you lock some part of a gun to prevent its going off in > your face while you load the ammo? Or do you load the bits that fly out > the end and through the air and only then "lock" some part of the > mechanism to stop you shooting your dick off? In which case, shouldn't the > manly cry be "load and lock!"? Damien, a gun-totin' friend of mine named Joel Jacobs (from Texas, yet, of all places) wrote this: "First we have to go back to the early days of firearms. The LOCK is a part of the mechanism that helps the firearm to go boom. There are flint locks, wheel locks, percussion locks, etc. The LOCK must be placed into a position where the firearm can be loaded and fired. Once firearms became "modern" the LOCK was the part that "morphed" into the action of the firearm, the "area" that contained the cartridge: breech, bolt, and such. It was necessary to LOCK the weapon into a SECURE position in order to be able to load it. LOCKING placed the weapon into a "safe" condition." All rightie ...? Olga From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 15 23:56:00 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 23:56:00 +0000 Subject: [ExI] lock-and-load In-Reply-To: References: <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515173455.023e9360@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 5/15/09, spike wrote: > These entries do not express actual the size of these beasts, which is > larger than a very well fed house cat. They have a bad habit of gnawing > trees, similar to the way of the beaver, which eventually slays the trees > and causes them to fall into the stream, causing the water to back up, which > creates an opportunity for a nice den, again much like a beaver, which tends > to flood one's newly built expensive pump house, dammit. > That reminds me of the TRUE story about how the state of Michigan threatened local beavers with a $10,000 per day fine for failing to remove their dam. The funny part is the letter that the landowner sent back to the council. BillK From natasha at natasha.cc Sat May 16 00:13:17 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 20:13:17 -0400 Subject: [ExI] lock-and-load In-Reply-To: References: <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515173455.023e9360@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20090515201317.dmmv7x3c9w4wc004@webmail.natasha.cc> Hahah! LOL! Thanks! Quoting BillK : > On 5/15/09, spike wrote: >> These entries do not express actual the size of these beasts, which is >> larger than a very well fed house cat. They have a bad habit of gnawing >> trees, similar to the way of the beaver, which eventually slays the trees >> and causes them to fall into the stream, causing the water to back >> up, which >> creates an opportunity for a nice den, again much like a beaver, >> which tends >> to flood one's newly built expensive pump house, dammit. >> > > > That reminds me of the TRUE story about how the state of Michigan > threatened local beavers with a $10,000 per day fine for failing to > remove their dam. > The funny part is the letter that the landowner sent back to the council. > > > > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 16 00:15:29 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 02:15:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 9:25 PM, BillK wrote: > This is a reference to the Forbes rich list of 2007. > They found 946 billionaires, of which 60% made their own fortunes. I am not really referring to "billionaires" as opposed to upper middle-class, but rather to the fact that upper middle class perpetuates itself, especially in Europe. In other terms, if you are rich below a certain threshold *and* stupid, you can usually find consultants protecting for you your wealth and doing the necessary in order to have your children have a very good chance to remain in the same class, partly through inheritance of family wealth, partly through education and above all connections. On the other hand, I suspect that dramatic upward social mobility has more frequently to do with "marrying up", becoming a show-biz star, or becoming a sport champion, and more rarely with your genius as an entrepreneur or an inventor. Of course, my first-hand experience is Europe, but my impression is that also in the US social Darwinism remains more of a myth than most of its partisans and opponents may think. -- Stefano Vaj From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sat May 16 00:24:01 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 17:24:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 02:15:29AM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Of course, my first-hand experience is Europe, but my impression is > that also in the US social Darwinism remains more of a myth than most > of its partisans and opponents may think. Some links: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/pressAndInformationOffice/newsAndEvents/archives/2005/LSE_SuttonTrust_report.htm http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/Hertz_MobilityAnalysis.pdf -xx- Damien X-) From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat May 16 02:23:40 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 21:23:40 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> At 05:24 PM 5/15/2009 -0700, Damien Sullivan url'd: >http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/Hertz_MobilityAnalysis.pdf This is a fabulously interesting and informative report! "While few would deny that it is *possible* to start poor and end rich, the evidence suggests that this feat is more difficult to accomplish in the United States than in other high-income nations." "Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who have about a 22 percent chance. Children born to the middle quintile of parental family income ($42,000 to $54,300) had about the same chance of ending up in a lower quintile than their parents (39.5 percent) as they did of moving to a higher quintile (36.5 percent). Their chances of attaining the top five percentiles of the income distribution were just 1.8 percent.... African American children who are born in the bottom quartile are nearly twice as likely to remain there as adults than are white children whose parents had identical incomes, and are four times less likely to attain the top quartile." etc etc Damien Broderick From pjmanney at gmail.com Sat May 16 03:59:55 2009 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 20:59:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> Message-ID: <29666bf30905152059k662f53ahe52e0102de49fd24@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 5:24 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/Hertz_MobilityAnalysis.pdf Did anyone notice an interesting correlation between figure 2 and the recently highly publicized poll of "World's Happiest Places"? http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/05/world-happiest-places-lifestyle-travel-world-happiest.html It's a bit apples and oranges and lord knows, I don't trust polls or pollsters, but there seems an inverse relationship that bears examination. For example: Denmark, with the most mobility, has the highest happiness. The countries with the least mobility (US, UK), had comparatively lower happiness in same grouping. And the middle was in... the middle. So much for the American Dream... Come, Watson, come! There's mythology a foot! :-) PJ From spike66 at att.net Sat May 16 04:30:58 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 21:30:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <29666bf30905152059k662f53ahe52e0102de49fd24@mail.gmail.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <29666bf30905152059k662f53ahe52e0102de49fd24@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3FA03012A5DC4BABAF6D635E52C18765@spike> > ..On Behalf Of PJ Manney .... > So much for the American Dream... Come, Watson, come! > There's mythology a foot! :-) > > PJ This I long suspected, for I saw the desperation in the eyes of all those pitful boat people and border crossers, struggling to escape from the US. No wait... From spike66 at att.net Sat May 16 06:21:22 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 23:21:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] criminals? pows? spies? Message-ID: This is most puzzling: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hyhhRFdRhxZQUP6yBx71wUU_W4 2QD986QD680 So were the detainees captured with the status of POWs, then urged to be considered criminal suspects with habeas corpus rights (since we had not declared war, but al qaeda had on us) but now with reinstated tribunals, they are being legally converted to... what? And if they are found guilty (of human caused disaster?) then what do we do? We can't keep them, we can't let them go, we can't shoot them, and any course of action in trying them sets the legal groundwork for politically motivated retribution as soon as the current crop of elected leaders are out of power, with precedents being set now by those same leaders. This is one hell of a note. The phrase "take no prisoners" once meant to slay everyone. Now it no longer means that, but rather a more advisable and much more literal course of action, for it is entirely unclear what in the hell to do with them if you do. Rejoice, for war is now obsolete. We can no longer fight, for we no longer have the unambiguous legal foundation to do so. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sat May 16 08:09:29 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 01:09:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] criminals? pows? spies? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20090516080929.GA18923@ofb.net> On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 11:21:22PM -0700, spike wrote: > This is one hell of a note. The phrase "take no prisoners" once meant > to slay everyone. Now it no longer means that, but rather a more > advisable and much more literal course of action, for it is entirely > unclear what in the hell to do with them if you do. Rejoice, for war > is now obsolete. We can no longer fight, for we no longer have the > unambiguous legal foundation to do so. Or, you know, you could be somewhat humane and competent with your prisoners, not torturing them or losing files, not snarfing up everyone turned in by their neighbor for cash, etc. Bush tainted the process. All hail. -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sat May 16 08:11:33 2009 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 01:11:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <3FA03012A5DC4BABAF6D635E52C18765@spike> References: <29666bf30905152059k662f53ahe52e0102de49fd24@mail.gmail.com> <3FA03012A5DC4BABAF6D635E52C18765@spike> Message-ID: <20090516081133.GB18923@ofb.net> On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 09:30:58PM -0700, spike wrote: > This I long suspected, for I saw the desperation in the eyes of all > those pitful boat people and border crossers, struggling to escape > from the US. Having less mobility than Nordic countries doesn't mean having less mobility than where boat people are coming from. And the bottom of the pyramid here still is doing fairly well by global standards. But, you know, people try to get into all those other countries as well. And a bunch of Americans are tempted, if only for the assurance of health care. -xx- Damien X-) From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 16 13:28:57 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 23:28:57 +1000 Subject: [ExI] criminals? pows? spies? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2009/5/16 spike : > This is most puzzling: > > http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hyhhRFdRhxZQUP6yBx71wUU_W42QD986QD680 > > So?were the detainees?captured?with the status of?POWs, then urged to be > considered criminal suspects?with habeas corpus rights (since we had not > declared war, but al qaeda had on us) but now with reinstated tribunals, > they are being legally converted to... what?? And if they are found guilty > (of human caused disaster?) then what do we do?? We can't keep them, we > can't let them go, we can't shoot them, and any course of action in trying > them sets the legal groundwork for?politically motivated?retribution as soon > as the current crop of?elected leaders are out of power, with precedents > being set now by?those same leaders. > > This is one hell of a note.? The phrase "take no prisoners" once meant to > slay everyone.? Now it?no longer?means that, but rather a more advisable and > much more literal course of action, for it is entirely unclear what in the > hell to do with them?if you do.? Rejoice, for war is now obsolete.? We can > no longer fight, for we no longer have the unambiguous legal foundation to > do so. They are either POW's covered by the Third Geneva Convention (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Geneva_Convention) or civilians (including "unlawful combatants) covered by the Fourth Geneva Convention (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Geneva_Convention). Bush and now, it seems, Obama have decided to detain them indefinitely in an ad hoc category outside the law. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 16 13:41:16 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 23:41:16 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/16 Damien Broderick : > "While few would deny that it is *possible* to start poor and end rich, the > evidence suggests that this feat is more difficult to accomplish in the > United States than in other high-income nations." > > "Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching > the top > 5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who have > about a 22 > percent chance. > ?Children born to the middle quintile of parental family income ($42,000 to > $54,300) > had about the same chance of ending up in a lower quintile than their > parents (39.5 > percent) as they did of moving to a higher quintile (36.5 percent). Their > chances of > attaining the top five percentiles of the income distribution were just 1.8 > percent.... > ?African American children who are born in the bottom quartile are nearly > twice as > likely to remain there as adults than are white children whose parents had > identical > incomes, and are four times less likely to attain the top quartile." The explanation leaps out at you: poor people are genetically lazy, and poor black people at least doubly so. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 16 15:23:11 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 17:23:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Intellectual_Property_=97_A_Libertarian_Cr?= =?windows-1252?q?itique?= In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0905132147t35d5424ckd123475b65ca8cb0@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905150840w66e14e4dtbacbbf10578c4b7d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905160823n1f2f2750sd5e9ddfe045d38a7@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 6:06 PM, zuzu wrote: > The "free-rider problem" isn't a problem at all. ?The problem is the > need for _business models_ that remunerate the act of R&D itself, > rather than relying on a state monopoly for exclusive use of that R&D > after it's already been done. I do no know what you mean with a "state monopoly" - in fact, patents correspond to temporary private monopolies against very low taxes paid to the states where the patent is extended - but yes, business models is the crucial issues. For instance, amongst different solutions experimented or envisaged one is to part way with market financing of R&D altogether, and keeping people motivated with "inventor prizes". Another is to have revenues collected on an independent basis (say, for copyright, a tax on broadband and support) and distribute it on the basis of some kinf of usage measurements. Another may be in some circumstances the possibile sale of related services, etc. Now, some of them may work in some circumstances, other may require a dramatic shift in our social and economic system, other are rather theoretical for the time being. But everything is well and fine as long as one keeps in mind that IP issues have nothing to do with "natural laws" and "fundamental fairness", but rather with workable business models for innovation. > Furthermore, referring to the monopoly privileges of copyright, > patent, and trademark as "intellectual property" conflates it with > real property law. ?(As has been said, there's no actual rivalry or > excludability with ideas as there are with material goods.) This is just a clich?. In fact, I do not believe in the least that "excludability" automatically justify a real property regime in all places, ages and circumstances. An issue on which I certainly part ways with anarco-capitalists is the idea that property would be a kind of sacred, self-evident, primordial right. In fact, I consider it just a tool which may be appropriate or not, and assume different forms, depending on the circumstances and the goals of a given society. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 16 16:09:03 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 18:09:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905160909s2e64f25bs4f9bde3b1615515b@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 4:23 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > This is a fabulously interesting and informative report! > > "While few would deny that it is *possible* to start poor and end rich, the > evidence suggests that this feat is more difficult to accomplish in the > United States than in other high-income nations." Yes, not exactly a world where Conan as a barbarian immigrant would have easily won a kingdom on the tip of his sword... ;-) -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 16 16:11:51 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 18:11:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <580930c20905160909s2e64f25bs4f9bde3b1615515b@mail.gmail.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905160909s2e64f25bs4f9bde3b1615515b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905160911o3c8ed87boc4ac0fbe4106530c@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 6:09 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Yes, not exactly a world where Conan as a barbarian immigrant would > have easily won a kingdom on the tip of his sword... ;-) However, the subject of the thread being what it is, it would be interesting to know something about "downward mobility". There again, on anedoctical evidence, I am under the impression that this is a relatively easy occurrence for lower-middle class and blue collars, but an rather exceptional event for the offspring of certain circles, as long as they "behave". -- Stefano Vaj From mail at harveynewstrom.com Sat May 16 16:22:29 2009 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 12:22:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] rich dad poor dad In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200905161222.29852.mail@harveynewstrom.com> ... beggar dad thief dad ... Isn't that where this is headed? On Wednesday 13 May 2009 1:48:58 am spike wrote: > There is a local seminar from the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad that is being > advertised on the radio. The lead-in advice to attract listeners seems > like terrible advice. Perhaps some here have heard the ads. They say > right up front that working and saving will never get you rich (therefore > don't bother trying.) There are other notions in there that will likely > prove ruinous to those who follow the advice, but consider the masses who > hear the ads and do not attend the seminar. I can imagine the actual ads > leading to financial ruin for millions. As with most scams, the premise is really true, while the conclusion is lacking. I think it is true that working at a regular job, for a regular wage, and trying to bank some fraction of that, will almost never lead to riches. So people can buy into this pep talk about getting out of the rat race (and into real estate in this case). But they don't really have a solution for how to get rich in real estate. They offer vague examples and claims that some people have gotten rich from it, and so can you. On Friday 15 May 2009 3:23:50 am Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > It's true that working and saving will never get you rich. The trick > is to come up with a scheme that legally transfers other peoples' > savings to you at a rate greatly in excess of the value of the work > you put into it. This is exactly why these types of professions turn into ponsi schemes. They only work in a market that expands forever and never runs out of new customers. As soon as the market is saturated, the scheme collapses. -- Harvey Newstrom From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat May 16 16:38:40 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 11:38:40 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> At 11:41 PM 5/16/2009 +1000, Stathis modestly proposed: >"While few would deny that it is *possible* to start poor and end >rich, the > evidence suggests that this feat is more difficult to >accomplish in the > United States than in other high-income >nations." > ...[snip] >The explanation leaps out at you: poor people are genetically lazy, >and poor black people at least doubly so. But especially those living in the USA, apparently. Damien Broderick From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 16 17:10:46 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 19:10:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A0EF396.8010802@libero.it> Il 15/05/2009 15.26, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > Yet, most of the time people are complaining about the fact that we > would be living under the "law of the jungle" where the fittest > would crash without pity the less lucky, or in a "socialist" society > where competition and the action of the "invisibile hand" would be > hindered by state regulation and/or by masses oppressing the > geniuses. > I submit that both scenarios are largely imaginary from a > sociological point of view, and that our social system is instead > largely aimed at protecting interests which are largely parasitic in > their nature from a social point of view, and accordingly very wary > of any kind of major techno-economical change. 1) Social mobility is good in so far the less productive and useful people move down and the more productive and useful move up. The opposite would be a bad thing if not an evil thing. 2) The market based approach, banning violence, prevent or at least reduce the possibility to obtain wealth and power without producing something useful for others. And reward the people producing thing and service useful to others as the others show by paying for the goods and the services. 3) The interests protected by our social system are the interests of who? We have groups of people that aim to further their self interests. These are specific groups of people and they use specific ways to protect their interests. One of this is direct violence, but it is rarely used today; the second is government mediated violence, by laws or by management of the public services. For example, mismanagement of public schooling and misguided policies help the ruling class to stay on top, as they are anyway able to pay for good schools and their children are more intelligent (on average). For example, affirmative actions help to keep many whites in charge or humanities as many blacks enrolled are not fitted and fail and the East Asian are mainly keep out. Now, it become much more easy to select the "right" people. http://www2.lse.ac.uk/ERD/pressAndInformationOffice/newsAndEvents/archives/2005/LSE_SuttonTrust_report.aspx > Comparing surveys of children born in the 1950s and the 1970s, the > researchers went on to examine the reason for Britain's low, and > declining, mobility. They found that it is in part due to the strong > and increasing relationship between family income and educational > attainment. > > For these children, additional opportunities to stay in education at > age 16 and age 18 disproportionately benefited those from better off > backgrounds. For a more recent cohort born in the early 1980s the gap > between those staying on in education at age 16 narrowed, but > inequality of access to higher education has widened further: while > the proportion of people from the poorest fifth of families obtaining > a degree has increased from 6 per cent to 9 per cent, the graduation > rates for the richest fifth have risen from 20 per cent to 47 per > cent. They dumbed down the degree to "help" the poor, so the degree value fallen near the value of the paper it is written upon. This helped 3% of the poorest and 27% of the richest. The degree, as a way to differentiate the groups become irrelevant. So the richest advance into higher education for status and to learn more. The richest have more resources to endure a longer period of education, anyway. So whatever job would need longer education will be precluded to the poorest, anyway. Or, in the other side, many people were induced to follow higher educations in humanities than would be able to profit. So, many higher education courses were dumbed down to help the people to complete them. So, many people wasted years in colleges, obtained a degree in pottery arts or lesbian studies and then went to take a job as waitress or taxi driver. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.329 / Virus Database: 270.12.32/2117 - Release Date: 05/15/09 17:55:00 From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat May 16 17:59:52 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 12:59:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090516124718.024dbb18@satx.rr.com> A little more on this: At 11:41 PM 5/16/2009 +1000, Stathis modestly proposed: >"While few would deny that it is *possible* to start poor and end >rich, the > evidence suggests that this feat is more difficult to >accomplish in the > United States than in other high-income >nations." > ...[snip] >The explanation leaps out at you: poor people are genetically lazy, >and poor black people at least doubly so. It might be expected that to the extent intelligence and behavioral dispositions are strongly inherited, the more mobility in principle a society supports the less mobility will be seen after a few generations. Regression to the mean would tend to equilibrate individual surges up and down, but after a time the lazy and incorrigibly stupid *really would* settle into the lowest percentiles, and the smart and industrious (as well as the smart and unscrupulous and the sociopathic, etc) would rise to the "meritocratic" top. So there might be a tragic inevitability, over time: the more mobility is possible, the less mobility takes place... And perhaps America is leading the way here. On the other hand, this sort of explanation is limited unless it corrects for memetic barriers to mobility such as endemic cultural racism, sexism, etc. (In any case, I think polygenic aspects of inheritance in the interesting characteristics might make this hard to detect except on a very large-scale analysis. And in the next half century, it will probably all be moot anyway, as science learns how to tweak those genes, epigenes, etc.) Damien Broderick From mail at harveynewstrom.com Sat May 16 15:56:10 2009 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 11:56:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The Circle of Coercion In-Reply-To: <4A0A4E2B.5060909@rawbw.com> References: <617521.78544.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A4E2B.5060909@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <200905161156.10830.mail@harveynewstrom.com> On Wednesday 13 May 2009 12:35:55 am Lee Corbin wrote: > Dan wrote: > > --- On Mon, 5/11/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >> 2009/5/11 Lee Corbin : > >>> trying to impose communist health care? > > > > I disagree with Lee's rhetoric here. I don't > > think it's communist healthcare; but it's > > definitely not free market and healthcare > > in the US has not been predominantly free > > market for many decades now. > > Wow, that word sure touched a nerve here and there, > even uncapitalized! One was supposed to read > "collectivist". But really, just what is the > difference? Communism has the state owning everything. I don't see the state taking ownership of all the doctors offices, hospitals, and insurance companies. Collectivism has the means of production centralized. I don't see all the doctors, hospitals and insurance companies merging into a single company or facility. Socialism has community ownership and means of production. I don't see the community taking away private practices and facilities. So it seems that the heavily-laden words trigger people to veer off into all different historical political positions that have little to do with the actual implementation details of healthcare. -- Harvey Newstrom From mail at harveynewstrom.com Sat May 16 15:35:23 2009 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 11:35:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] why darwin matters In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200905161135.23846.mail@harveynewstrom.com> On Friday 15 May 2009 4:35:26 pm spike wrote: > I am a big fan of Michael Shermer fan and practically pray to Charles > Darwin. I love Michael Shermer and skeptics of all varieties. But praying to Charles Darwin does not seem "practical" to me. The miracle of evolution will happen randomly whether you pray or not. (...whether you "prey" or not...?) > Aaaah, life is good. Are we glad we lived long enough to enjoy YouTube, or > what? You Tube is the perhaps best argument for caloric restriction. You mean because we don't want to look like those fat slobs we see on YouTube? Seriously, YouTube is fun. But does it add more hours of entertainment than it wastes with unentertaining videos? Maybe we should keep score on stuff like this to make sure we come out ahead. -- Harvey Newstrom From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat May 16 18:55:20 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 13:55:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090516124718.024dbb18@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090516124718.024dbb18@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090516135315.024c87b0@satx.rr.com> And yet again: At 12:59 PM 5/16/2009 -0500, I wrote: >So there might be a tragic inevitability, over time: the more >mobility is possible, the less mobility takes place... And perhaps >America is leading the way here. C'mon, Lee, I'd expected a quick reminder by now that this is, indeed, the BELL CURVE argument that caused mayhem, n'est pas? Damien Broderick From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 16 19:19:37 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 21:19:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> Il 16/05/2009 18.38, Damien Broderick ha scritto: > At 11:41 PM 5/16/2009 +1000, Stathis modestly proposed: > >> "While few would deny that it is *possible* to start poor and end >> rich, the > evidence suggests that this feat is more difficult to >> accomplish in the > United States than in other high-income >> nations." >>> ...[snip] > >> The explanation leaps out at you: poor people are genetically lazy, >> and poor black people at least doubly so. > > But especially those living in the USA, apparently. How many black have you in the US? 20% of the population? How is their mean IQ? Here a graphics of the distribution of IQ in whites and blacks. http://www.americancivilrightsreview.com/africanfailure.html It is so surprising that they obtain so different levels of success and wealth? What job is able to pay big sums and don't need an high IQ? Mike Tyson got one, but we know how his money was used. http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/04/26/9530.aspx > Racial Admixture Studies. Black children with lighter skin, for > example, average higher IQ scores. In South Africa, the IQ of the > mixed-race "Colored" population averages 85, intermediate to the > African 70 and White 100. This is not surprising, as the other country with lower mobility is the UK and it has also a large % of black people and M.E. people. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.329 / Virus Database: 270.12.32/2117 - Release Date: 05/15/09 17:55:00 From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 16 19:29:49 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 21:29:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <4A0EF396.8010802@libero.it> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <4A0EF396.8010802@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20905161229n2e1e3670t8e6638fa52d1cc8e@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/16 painlord2k at libero.it : > 1) Social mobility is good in so far the less productive and useful > people move down and the more productive and useful move up. The > opposite would be a bad thing if not an evil thing. Sure, even though of course "productive" and "useful" are relative concepts. But my point is in fact that both "libertarians" and "socialists" should agree that it is neither fair nor efficient that deserving people do *not* move up, and that entire classes may exist that are largely protected from social competition, at least in the short term. See for instance the French "aristocracy" before the Revolution... -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 16 20:23:17 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 22:23:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <580930c20905161229n2e1e3670t8e6638fa52d1cc8e@mail.gmail.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <4A0EF396.8010802@libero.it> <580930c20905161229n2e1e3670t8e6638fa52d1cc8e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A0F20B5.6060801@libero.it> Il 16/05/2009 21.29, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > 2009/5/16 painlord2k at libero.it: >> 1) Social mobility is good in so far the less productive and useful >> people move down and the more productive and useful move up. The >> opposite would be a bad thing if not an evil thing. > > Sure, even though of course "productive" and "useful" are relative > concepts. But my point is in fact that both "libertarians" and > "socialists" should agree that it is neither fair nor efficient that > deserving people do *not* move up, and that entire classes may exist > that are largely protected from social competition, at least in the > short term. See for instance the French "aristocracy" before the > Revolution... In fact, mathematical models show how groups with higher level of defectors/exploiters are weaker against external groups and in the long run are destroyed by these. The point of Aristocracies is that become insulated from what happen to the rest of the society/nation. They lead but they are not affected by their actions; not in the short term. Becoming insulated from their mismanagement imply growing mismanagement so the other groups will only gain from their elimination (exile, killing, stripping them from power and titles). Aristocracies have power because their ancestry, so their reason to hold power and control and wealth is past and not present. The reason to hold power, control and wealth must be always present. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.329 / Virus Database: 270.12.32/2117 - Release Date: 05/15/09 17:55:00 From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat May 16 20:25:10 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 15:25:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> At 09:19 PM 5/16/2009 +0200, Mirco url'd: >http://www.americancivilrightsreview.com/ Another sly, tacky site designed to lure the innocent and ignorant to, for example, http://www.americancivilrightsreview.com/jewwatch.htm ("Oh, no no no, this is not bigoted shit, this is *balanced even-handedness*") From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 16 21:07:08 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 23:07:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <4A0F20B5.6060801@libero.it> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <4A0EF396.8010802@libero.it> <580930c20905161229n2e1e3670t8e6638fa52d1cc8e@mail.gmail.com> <4A0F20B5.6060801@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20905161407s25e91097hf4fdb034e4a46e05@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/16 painlord2k at libero.it : > Aristocracies have power because their ancestry, so their reason to hold > power and control and wealth is past and not present. The reason to hold > power, control and wealth must be always present. In fact, it could be said that as soon as an "aristocracy" turns into an hereditary gentry, the regression towards the medium starts operating, and the society as a whole become less competitive as selection becomes less efficient or stops altogether. Even though in-breeding might be in principle considered as an empirical effort to protect some specific group traits which led to its success in the first place. The issue is whether all that is also applicable to many "capitalist" societies, the social Darwinism of which may end up being more imaginary than real. Georges Sorel, for instance, in spite of his being a sort of "marxist", saw the struggle of class as the struggle of new proletarian ?lites, selected by their harsh life, to replace and old and decadent bourgeois ruling class. To bring back things to transhumanism, it seems that most ruling classes whose powers depend on legal and economic inertia rather than by their ability to excel in whatever skills time and circumstances under strong selective pressures would require are hostile to any technological change, as it inevitably threatens such inertia. May it have anything to do with the widespread governmental wariness towards transhumanism-relevant technology? It would be interesting to compare political and philosophical stances in this respect with the average social (and generational!) mobility in each given society. Whenever the rich tend to remain rich irrespective of their other features, and elders surrend powers only upon their death, luddism should in principle be stronger amongst the powers-that-be. -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 16 22:57:07 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 00:57:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda In-Reply-To: References: <4A04341E.6030605@libero.it> <9E1A884AFC564B069233389E7007C37C@spike> <4A089428.1000105@libero.it> <4A09801C.7020204@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A0F44C3.9050706@libero.it> Il 14/05/2009 3.41, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/5/12 painlord2k at libero.it: > >> You are under the false assumption that all work is the same. >> Are you telling me that a surgeon work less than a nurse? >> It is like comparing orange and apples. >> Not all work is the same, as a surgeon is able to do a work the nurse is >> unable to do. There are less surgeon than nurses. To have a working surgeon >> you need to invest much more scarce resources than to have a working nurse. > > The extra time training for the surgeon is reflected in the higher > pay. But there are limits: if a surgeon makes a hundred times as much > as a nurse, that is unfair. The market may grant the surgeon this > because there aren't a lot of surgeons. So ultimately, a person's work > is valued according to supply and demand. Maybe there is no better > way, but it does show that amount of work done, or productivity, is > not the ultimate arbiter of a person's worth. It is possible to do > very little work and get paid very handsomely for it, and figuring out > how to achieve this leverage is the goal of every capitalist. Exactly. Unfortunately, with capitalism come competition. They work together like Siamese twins. So, if you find a job that pay handsomely for little work it is very probable that you will new competitors before than after. And the the law of offer and demand start working and start to prevent to the price from rise but not from fall. Higher the gain, larger is the number of competitor that will try to take your market share. This is the key feature of the capitalism; when an innovation is introduced, all are forced to take note of it. The capitalist will try to raise his income innovating, small or large. He will try to guess what are the needs of his future buyers So, if you find a high paying work that require small affords, responsibility and so on, enjoy it as much as you can, because capitalism will take care that it will not last much. If it don't happen, well you are unique and deserve your reward. > I'm not saying the capitalist system is not useful for allocating > resources. But it does happen that some people, whether through luck, > intelligence, wealthy parents or whatever, are able to command a huge > proportion of the world's resources relative to other people who seem > to work just as hard. I could agree that some people appear to not deserve what happen to them, good or bad it could be. But any type of solution implemented caused large, unintended, negative consequences in the long run. > Capitalism is OK with the fact that a fashion > model earns hundreds of times as much as a theoretical physicist, > because that is what the market pays. "That is what the market pays" > is the ultimate criterion of productivity and worth, and therefore the > reason why someone drawing a subsistence welfare payment is morally in > the wrong. I don't agree with this, but I suspect we have come up > against basic ethical principles, and hence impasse. The problem is not that the subsistence welfare payment is wrong, but the fact that it, in the long run (but not very long) will cause other large problems and will not solve the original problem. The only good welfare payment is the welfare payment that a person don't want take and take it only because he has not other choice. It would be self limiting, people would use it only if really needed and would stop ASAP. Affirmative Action politics last so long because they are epic failures. In Italy the "Cassa del Mezzogiorno" program, started after the WW2 to help the South to develop was an epic failure. It lasted 40 years and today we continue to pay for financing "the development of the South of Italy". These programs last because they help supporters of theprogram but don't help the people the program is intended (or presented) for. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.329 / Virus Database: 270.12.32/2117 - Release Date: 05/15/09 17:55:00 From spike66 at att.net Sat May 16 22:48:02 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 15:48:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] criminals? pows? spies? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou > >...We can no longer fight, for we no longer have the > > unambiguous legal foundation to do so. > > They are either POW's covered by the Third Geneva Convention > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Geneva_Convention) or > civilians (including "unlawful combatants) covered by the > Fourth Geneva Convention > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Geneva_Convention). > Bush and now, it seems, Obama have decided to detain them > indefinitely in an ad hoc category outside the law... Stathis Papaioannou Statis, ja that is what I must conclude as well. The US and to some extent the entire western civilization is trapped in the maddening moral ambiguity of war. spike From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun May 17 01:07:20 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 18:07:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> From: "Damien Broderick" To: "ExI chat list" > At 09:19 PM 5/16/2009 +0200, Mirco url'd: > >>http://www.americancivilrightsreview.com/ > > Another sly, tacky site designed to lure the innocent and ignorant to, for > example, > > http://www.americancivilrightsreview.com/jewwatch.htm > > ("Oh, no no no, this is not bigoted shit, this is *balanced > even-handedness*") I have to give credit where credit is due, and when I showed this to my husband, here's what he said (he tends to be morbidly funny): "Ironic that the section on Jewish atheism would include a link to American Atheists - enough to spin Madalyn in her grave, or at least spin her various parts." (said my hubby, Patrick Inniss) Having followed Madalyn's escapades for a bit (and I've known many people who worked for her), I can tell you she was a big "Jew hater." Although she tried to hide it as best as she could. But not well enough, because she simply couldn't resist writing some articles that were tinged with the subject of "Holocaust-denial" in her old magazine. I had that issue kicking around somewhere for years, although I may no longer have it (it was from the 1980s sometime). Olga > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 17 02:48:24 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 19:48:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A0F7AF8.7070602@rawbw.com> Mirco writes >> [Damien wrote sarcastically] >> >>> The explanation leaps out at you: poor people are genetically lazy, >>> and poor black people at least doubly so. A comparison of American northern culture with American southern culture casts a lot of doubt on what "laziness" means. (This is explored most convincingly in Thomas Sowell's "White Liberals and Black Rednecks", in which he traces many features of modern urban black so-called 'lazy' culture to redneck southern cultural features going back centuries.) Moreover almost all allegedly lazy people are in reality only highly uninterested in mundane activities such as boring and repetitive work. This is the classic difference between the Celts and the more modern cultural groups (such as the Ancient Romans and the Anglo Saxons) that pushed them out of western Europe. Time and again the Celtic ("southern") traits of high honor, bravery in battle, drunkenness, "laziness", extended kin groups, and on and on, while serving them well in individual battles, was not so good for group selection. (What would happen over and over again, whether it was against Caesar's legions or the English kings' armies, was that the Celtic cultural patterns provided too few "warriors" that were satisfied with "mere" logistical or provisioning duties. They all wanted to be in the front lines heroically dealing death and destruction to the enemy. They would lose ever war, just as the South lost against the North---and for exactly the same reasons.) > How many black have you in the US? > 20% of the population? It would be about 20% except for the great infusion of Hispanics which now outnumber blacks. Black people at present constitute about 14% of the population. In colonial times, the figure was 1:4 (black to white), and it decreased to merely 1:8 because of the huge white immigration from Europe in the 19th century. Ordinary black reproduction rates everywhere in the world (e.g. here, South Africa, or whereever) are the world's highest, and the black population in the U.S. would be converging on the colonial ratio were it not for immigration either in the 19th or thw 20th centuries. > How is their mean IQ? > Here a graphics of the distribution of IQ in whites and blacks. > http://www.americancivilrightsreview.com/africanfailure.html > It is so surprising that they obtain so different levels of success and > wealth? > What job is able to pay big sums and don't need an high IQ? > Mike Tyson got one, but we know how his money was used. It is highly unfortunate that there are not black people here on this list bringing up these facts, because in general it isn't in good taste for members of a "superior" group to trumpet findings like these. Consider in what bad taste it would be for an Ashkenazi very jewish Jew to parade the whole standard deviation difference between his people and whites. No, it is up to whites (e.g. you and me) to speak of the realities concerning differences between Asians and Whites, or Jews and gentiles. >> http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/04/26/9530.aspx >> Racial Admixture Studies. Black children with lighter skin, for >> example, average higher IQ scores. In South Africa, the IQ of the >> mixed-race "Colored" population averages 85, intermediate to the >> African 70 and White 100. It does need to be constantly stressed in these forums that statistical stereotypes, whether valid or not, pertain only, of course, to statistical averages, and have no implications whatsoever for individuals. Speaking of individuals, allow me to mention quite an interesting case. Where I am employed, one of my co-workers must necessarily deal with any number of engineers from the Dialogic corporation in regard to their speech recognition software. My friend *finally* found an entirely knowledgeable Dialogic engineer working out of Belgium who could solve our problems. This guy was incredible, but our problems were incredible too, and so it was arranged for him to be able to visit us about a year ago. From his voice, my friend (who is himself a rather dogmatic person from Romanian who will call a spade a spade upon the slightest provocation, and frankly is quite racist) was amazed that this Belgian engineer had to be black. (My coworker simply cannot say enough good things about B.D.) I'll not mention his name, but he dutifully arrived last June, and I got to talk to him at length. He was one of the most cooperative individuals I've ever interviewed. (My extensive notes, again omitting his name, are available to anyone who emails me privately.) He told rather marvelous stories about the small village in the Cameroons he grew up in. He didn't come from any elite; his parents were farmers, but evidently of superior intelligence since they both became school teachers (that's how they met, and he was the issue). His IQ almost surely is 130 or above. He combined that "sufficient intelligence" (Jensen) with a strong work ethic, an ability to concentrate steadily, and probably a capacity for learning fairly quickly. Such traits are what have made him the engineer he is, besides overall having a good disposition. Anyway, when young, he got a scholarship to universities in both France and in Belgium, and he chose Belgium for a reason I asked him about but which I don't recall. He then graduated with a degree in engineering, worked shortly in one or two places, and settled for the last five years or so with Dialogic. Now wait! The studies report that the sub-saharan IQs of black people is two standard deviations below that of white people (although the experts estimate that five to ten points of that deficit is probably due to a combination of various environmental effects including poor nutrition). But what are the odds that such an individual would come to my attention? Something seemed seriously wrong. So far as I know, it's mainly coincidence. Let's suppose that indeed 10 or more points can be attributed to environment in this case. Then we still have the unlikely case of someone picked apparently at random (who parents were certainly not a part of any kind of elite) who is three to four standard deviations above average for his group! Remarkable, but not impossible. There are people, I think, on this list who are also so relatively smart in comparison with their own ethnic group. Well, whatever the correct explanation of this particular case is, (and we do remember to merely use examples to illustrate---and never to make---theses), there is something quite tragic going on in countries like the Cameroons. I highly recommend the book "The Bottom Billion" by Paul Collier, who has done a massive amount of work over the past 30 years trying to get to the bottom of why in the present world, some countries are so much richer than others. Please see the Amazon reviews for his main documented accounts, such as the pervasive corruption, "natural resource curse", and so on afflicting so many countries. He mentions in particular the nations of Africa, who seem to have missed their best chance to escape all the "traps" in the 1980s. The fact that now east Asian countries are providing very cheap labor to the whole world through the ongoing globalizations, gives them a head start that Africa almost surely will not be able to close. But another salient fact: African countries are losing more and more of their talented people, who manage to escape and make it to the corruption-free west. And this process, of course, merely makes the situation in Africa itself all the more dire and more hopeless. Our friend from the Cameroons, who'll surely never emigrate back, illustrates this perfectly. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 17 03:15:04 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 20:15:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A0F8138.5090204@rawbw.com> Stefano (and Mirco) wrote on 5/15 6:26AM (5:48 AM) First Mirco wrote in the "diversity and private schools thread" I must [argue that schooling was] wealth creating. Mass schooling was wealth creating already in the Middle Age and it happened in the Middle Ages. Rodney Star citing Spufford write that, from a statistic, in the 1338 in Florence near half of the school age population went to school. And the level of instruction of the people in Venice, Genoa and Milan was similar. The schooling was needed and requested by the local merchants and producers. Thanks for the information. I concede the point. Stefano wrote (in this thread) > One big point that is largely ignored in transhumanist lists and that > should know in principle a convergence of > "libertarian/anarco-capitalist/social Darwinist" and of > "socialist/communitarian", I'm confused. Do you mean that the libertarian...social Darwinists have converged towards each other, and that the "socialist and communitarians" have converged towards each other? Well, I guess, surely not. So what you must be saying is that the libertarians and socialists are converging. Now I can only believe that when it concerns issues orthogonal to basic political philosophy. > as well as of most transhumanists in > general, I daresay, is that what we are living in is a neo-feudal > society, where circulation of the ?lites is reduced to a minimum, and > social mobility is largely a myth, That may be true where you live, but it's not true in the United States, especially the further westward one moves. In fact the whole migration from rust belt to sun belt shook traditional elites up yet again, continuing a trend in American history. The "rags to riches to rags in three generations" story is based largely in fact. At least here. > the few examples of which have > usually little to do with IQ, but rather with purely physical features > (as in "marriage, show business and sport"). > > Yet, most of the time people are complaining about the fact that we > would be living under the "law of the jungle" where the fittest would > crash without pity the less lucky, And I'd reply that provided total wealth is accumulating rapidly, and the societies are wealthy enough, the law of the jungle is relatively innocuous. I do say "relatively", because it's painful to say the least when the unemployment runs out---but it is NOT AT ALL like it was for people (almost everyone) hundreds of years ago. > or in a "socialist" society where > competition and the action of the "invisible hand" would be hindered > by state regulation and/or by masses oppressing the geniuses. > > I submit that both scenarios are largely imaginary from a sociological > point of view, and that our social system is instead largely aimed at > protecting interests which are largely parasitic in their nature from > a social point of view, and accordingly very wary of any kind of major > techno-economical change. Yes, as in that article whose URL I posted, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice entitled "The Quiet Coup", *some* financial elites have penetrated both government and high finance (some kind of corruption always occurs when government gets too much power). But rich people in general ought not be very severely taxed, because they're the source of private investment. Weaken private investment, and you weaken the economy accordingly, and everyone is worse off. From spike66 at att.net Sun May 17 02:51:43 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 19:51:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] birds again Message-ID: This is an example of one of those videos that makes you glad you lived to see it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8vjYTXgIJw Applications to ant observations: apparently the technology exists to do what I was hoping to do, which is magnify and slow the action so that we can really see what the heck it is that the ants are doing. Currently they are too fast and too small to know for sure. I don't know how much the camera equipment costs. This is a perfect example of a new technology that will enable a bunch of amateur scientists to make a original contributions to the field. Humans have been watching beasts since forever, but ants and smaller beasts are difficult to observe. New cameras might enable it. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 17 03:54:13 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 22:54:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <4A0F7AF8.7070602@rawbw.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <4A0F7AF8.7070602@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090516225338.023ad418@satx.rr.com> At 07:48 PM 5/16/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: >Mirco writes > > >> [Damien wrote sarcastically] > >> >>>>The explanation leaps out at you: poor people are genetically lazy, >>>>and poor black people at least doubly so. That was Stathis. From spike66 at att.net Sun May 17 03:56:19 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 20:56:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Olga Bourlin > ... > > Having followed Madalyn's escapades for a bit (and I've known > many people who worked for her), I can tell you she was a big > "Jew hater." ... Olga Awwww damn. This is a rare example of a piece of information I wish I didn't know. Please what causes in some otherwise perfectly reasonable person this Jew hatred? Answer without mentioning Zionism please, for it predates the state of Israel by a loooong time. spike From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 17 04:09:06 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 14:09:06 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090516225338.023ad418@satx.rr.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <4A0F7AF8.7070602@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516225338.023ad418@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/17 Damien Broderick : > At 07:48 PM 5/16/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: > >> Mirco writes >> >> >> [Damien wrote sarcastically] >> >> >>>>> >>>>> The explanation leaps out at you: poor people are genetically lazy, >>>>> and poor black people at least doubly so. > > That was Stathis. (but also writing sarcastically) -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 17 04:49:46 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 14:49:46 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> Message-ID: 2009/5/17 spike : > > >> ...On Behalf Of Olga Bourlin >> ... >> >> Having followed Madalyn's escapades for a bit (and I've known >> many people who worked for her), I can tell you she was a big >> "Jew hater." ?... Olga > > Awwww damn. ?This is a rare example of a piece of information I wish I > didn't know. But you're OK with her having been a communist and attempting to defect to the Soviet Union? -- Stathis Papaioannou From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun May 17 04:51:04 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 21:51:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com><0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> Message-ID: From: "spike" To: "'ExI chat list'" Cc: Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2009 8:56 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Protected Elites >> ...On Behalf Of Olga Bourlin >> >> Having followed Madalyn's escapades for a bit (and I've known >> many people who worked for her), I can tell you she was a big >> "Jew hater." ... Olga > > Awwww damn. This is a rare example of a piece of information I wish I > didn't know. > > Please what causes in some otherwise perfectly reasonable person this Jew > hatred? Answer without mentioning Zionism please, for it predates the > state > of Israel by a loooong time. There was nothing perfectly reasonable about Madalyn. A lot of Madalyn's cult members finally broke out of their trance and sang like canaries about all sorts of unflattering things concerning Madalyn and her family. But, unfortunately, to this day many old American Atheist members regard her as some kind of atheist saint. I spoke to so many of them who believed the myth perpetrated by Madalyn herself - of how she was the first woman atheist "on the map," and how she pushed the cause of atheism forward. I mentioned Vashti McCollum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vashti_McCollum And then there was the atheist Ayn Rand (whose books were bestsellers even before http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abington_School_District_v._Schempp). Interestingly, Madalyn took ALL the credit of being the instigator of halting public schools' participation in prayer, even though she was a johnny-come-lately to that Abington School District case - it was slated to go through even without her participation. Madalyn's death (and that of her son Jonathan and daughter/granddaughter Robin) rivals any horror story. I read this book (it was revealing and pretty good): http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0826416446 ... but mainly, I talked to a couple of people who knew Madalyn well (who worked with her for years), and the stuff I heard was not surprising to me because by then I had read her magazine for years, and noticed the ugly bigotry against anyone and everyone - humanists, for instance! - who were not of her cult. Oh, I once had dinner with Madalyn (in 1988) when she, Jon and Robin visited Seattle. I was already disillusioned with her, but was curious to meet her. There was a group of us - we met at a Chinese restaurant in our International District. After the dinner Madalyn stood up and gave a speech asking for money for her organization. A few months later, Madalyn - out of the blue and without any real explanation - simply decided to disband ALL of American Atheist's local groups. Olga From spike66 at att.net Sun May 17 05:36:27 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 22:36:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com><0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> Message-ID: <33DAD70136394BA7A2CAAD771DBC6717@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou > Subject: Re: [ExI] Protected Elites > > 2009/5/17 spike : > > > >> ...On Behalf Of Olga Bourlin > >> ...I can tell you she was a big "Jew hater." ? > >> ... Olga > > > > Awwww damn. ?This is a rare example of a piece of > information I wish I > > didn't know. > > But you're OK with her having been a communist and attempting > to defect to the Soviet Union? > -- > Stathis Papaioannou If she does both, sure I am fine with that. The Soviets can have all our commies if they want them, wouldn't hurt my feelings a bit. Stathis, I have no problem with communists, so long as everyone in that system is there *voluntarily.* If a group of people want to join a commune and do the whole Marxist thing, fine with me. What really creeps me about communism is the whole iron curtain, Berlin wall thing. If I lived in a country where they wouldn't let me leave, and the government wanted to take from me according to my ability, I sure as hell wouldn't invest much in my own ability. It would be a bad investment indeed. I don't understand the term attempting. Did she get there and they wouldn't let her in? Why? Or she tried to leave here and the US wouldn't let her out? Why? spike From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 17 06:13:43 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 23:13:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> Message-ID: <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> Spike writes > Please what causes in some otherwise perfectly reasonable person this Jew > hatred? Well, of course, as several have pointed out, Madalyn was hardly an "otherwise perfectly reasonable" person, which I may be slowly be being forced to believe is far more true of famous people period. Psychopaths are overrepresented in the corridors of power. Anywhere. As for anti-Jewishness (the anti-S word has been thrown around far too much and is etymologically wrong anyway), it seems on the part of the anti-Jews to be about 70% envy and 30% resentment of clannishness. The seventy percent comes from the evil kind of envy (that at least in America, doesn't seem to be found as often as, well, historically in Europe). This is not the kind of "envy" where one woman will say to another, "I just love your new coat; I'm so envious!". No, that is sheer admiration. The evil kind of envy is that which has always been associated with "the evil eye". Indeed, in the Mediterranean, as I understand it, or at least until recently, it's possible to see warnings of the "evil eye", especially in Turkey and the Balkans. This is when not only do you wish that you had something someone else had, but you resent the fact that they have it so much that you wish evil unto them. (Bill Gates is probably in America, or was, the figure most envied in this bad way. Certain movie stars are probably those most envied in the good way.) So Jews, often very successful financially, and sometimes conspicuously so, have for generations aroused both the good kind of envy and the bad. Again, America may very well have led the way in replacing the bad kind of envy with the good. Early on, Jewish people understood that discrimination in America (though often definitely present) tended to be milder than in other places, including Europe. "Bad" envy of Jewish precociousness in the arts and sciences contributes also to this (in America, I claim, 70% component). In their clannishness, Jews seem to be no different than other small groups. E.g. Mormons, Armenians, Irish, etc. You can be with a group of such people and as soon as they find out that you are not "one of them" you quickly sense an invisible curtain rising that excludes you. (Of course, not in every instance; no---by no means.) One difference between some ethnic groups can be seen in humor. The Irish, for example, cannot be accused of taking themselves too seriously. If you want a boatload of Irish jokes, you need (I imagine) only go to an Irish-run website. Repeating Jewish jokes, on the other hand, run you the risk of being accused of being anti-Jewish. (Not to belittle the Irish efforts at home rule, though, what the Jews went through in the 20th century might indeed preclude any humor.) In comparison, for Germany 1900-1940, I'd guess it was 90% envy and 10% resentment of clannishness, and the total envy was mostly the wicked kind. Lee From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun May 17 06:31:40 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 23:31:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670905162331v56afde42q3f0bfd842b682dcd@mail.gmail.com> Lee Corbin wrote: "Bad" envy of Jewish precociousness in the arts and sciences contributes also to this (in America, I claim, 70% component). >>> Lee, in your view what are the reasons for the great success of Jews in the arts and sciences? 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URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 17 08:06:49 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 01:06:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <2d6187670905162331v56afde42q3f0bfd842b682dcd@mail.gmail.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> <2d6187670905162331v56afde42q3f0bfd842b682dcd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A0FC599.3090608@rawbw.com> John Grigg wrote: > Lee Corbin wrote: > "Bad" envy of Jewish precociousness in the arts > and sciences contributes also to this (in America, > I claim, 70% component). > > Lee, in your view what are the reasons for the great success of Jews in > the arts and sciences? Finally, everyone acknowledges that it's both genes and culture, and in retrospect, it's not easy to see how and why so many people disputed that genes had something to do with it. More twentieth century behaviorism, sprinkled with a lot of leftist/communist wishful thinking about the (non-genetic) adaptability of humankind, no doubt. An extremely good looking new book (though I've just ordered it) is "The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution" by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, which should soon have some very informative reviews online, if it doesn't already. It devotes an entire chapter to the genetic component of the success of Ashkenazi Jews. There have also been threads on SL4 discussing this, and perhaps even here, though I don't recall them. Now, as I understand it, what happened with the (Western) Ashkenazi Jews falls under the concept of eugenics. Jews were driven out of most occupations and had to settle for being merchants, moneylenders, and other urban occupations, which slowly increased their fitness over 1500 years in these relatively intellectual areas. The irony is that their enemies were responsible for their eugenic advances! The other half of the explanation, of course, is cultural. Jews, partly because of the early urbanization, but partly because of the literary demands of their religion, evolved a culture in which book-learning was highly regarded. I know it used to be contended that in this atmosphere rabbis had more children than non-rabbis, and that this also helped the genetic selection for intelligence; not sure that this view is still generally held. Anyway, there you have it. A successful (natural or unnatural, however you view it) experiment in eugenics. Now if most ethnic groups could realize the advantages of breeding based on good genes... Lee From scerir at tiscali.it Sun May 17 09:33:01 2009 From: scerir at tiscali.it (scerir at tiscali.it) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 11:33:01 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] R: birds again Message-ID: <1473519.328441242552781754.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> is is an example of one of those videos that makes you glad you lived to see it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8vjYTXgIJw # For starlings, flocks, and related weird dynamics see http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=RnwBp0PcNrg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIzlcH2q6Vo http: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vhE8ScWe7w Many groups are studying (especially here in EUland) the relation between the coherent dynamics of the individual bird and of the large group of birds, see here: http://angel.elte.hu/starling/index.html http://angel.elte. hu/starling/Objectives.html http://angel.elte.hu/starling/italyINFM. html for softwares, simulations, more videos, etc., see here: http: //angel.elte.hu/starling/Demos.html http://angel.elte. hu/starling/Publications.html s. 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Passa a Tiscali Mobile http://abbonati.tiscali.it/promo/tiscalimobile/ From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 17 10:14:07 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 12:14:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A0FE36F.2070808@libero.it> Il 16/05/2009 22.25, Damien Broderick ha scritto: > At 09:19 PM 5/16/2009 +0200, Mirco url'd: > >> http://www.americancivilrightsreview.com/ > > Another sly, tacky site designed to lure the innocent and ignorant to, > for example, > > http://www.americancivilrightsreview.com/jewwatch.htm > > ("Oh, no no no, this is not bigoted shit, this is *balanced > even-handedness*") I was commenting of the graphics, not endorsing any other stuff in other pages or in the page. > This Graph is ? 1994, TheBell Curve, Simon and Schuster, Inc., p. 279 The graph is false? Wrong? If you prefer we could substitute the graph with this from Indiana University http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/bellcurve.shtml By the way, I'm friendly (someone would say rabid supporter) with Jews and Israel from my youth, so I have not a problem to believe that the rest of the site is full of bigoted shit I didn't read. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.329 / Virus Database: 270.12.32/2118 - Release Date: 05/16/09 17:05:00 From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 17 10:45:14 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 20:45:14 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <33DAD70136394BA7A2CAAD771DBC6717@spike> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <33DAD70136394BA7A2CAAD771DBC6717@spike> Message-ID: 2009/5/17 spike : > I don't understand the term attempting. ?Did she get there and they wouldn't > let her in? ?Why? ?Or she tried to leave here and the US wouldn't let her > out? ?Why? She went to the Soviet embassy in Paris with her children in 1960 and repeatedly asked to be allowed to emigrate to the Soviet Union. It's not clear why she was refused; perhaps they thought she was a spy? -- Stathis Papaioannou From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 17 11:52:01 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 13:52:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <2d6187670905162331v56afde42q3f0bfd842b682dcd@mail.gmail.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> <2d6187670905162331v56afde42q3f0bfd842b682dcd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905170452r5e15bfcbr9845861ec15b2411@mail.gmail.com> As in many cases, the exchange is interesting, but what all that would have to do with the list topic? 2009/5/17 John Grigg : > Lee Corbin wrote: > "Bad" envy of Jewish precociousness in the arts > and sciences contributes also to this (in America, > I claim, 70% component). >>>> > > Lee, in your view what?are the reasons for the great success of Jews in the > arts and sciences? > > John > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Stefano Vaj From emlynoregan at gmail.com Sun May 17 12:11:40 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 21:41:40 +0930 Subject: [ExI] why darwin matters In-Reply-To: <200905161135.23846.mail@harveynewstrom.com> References: <200905161135.23846.mail@harveynewstrom.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905170511p66f03b30q71f1c31fc5c8940a@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/17 Harvey Newstrom : > On Friday 15 May 2009 4:35:26 pm spike wrote: >> Aaaah, life is good. ?Are we glad we lived long enough to enjoy YouTube, or >> what? ?You Tube is the perhaps best argument for caloric restriction. > > You mean because we don't want to look like those fat slobs we see on YouTube? > > Seriously, YouTube is fun. ?But does it add more hours of entertainment than > it wastes with unentertaining videos? ?Maybe we should keep score on stuff like > this to make sure we come out ahead. I'm with Spike, youtube is amazing. Not because of the endless sea of crap, but because of the pearls that lie within. http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html It is common to criticize internet based social environments because of the high level of crap they contain, but that's wrong. Every such environment is a meritocratic contest over some domain, and the winners are truly extraordinary. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From eschatoon at gmail.com Sun May 17 12:33:27 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 14:33:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Transvision 2010 Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905170533t8afd4ddv20dcad0ff10d0e18@mail.gmail.com> Transvision 2010 will be a global transhumanist conference and community convention, organized by several transhumanist groups and organizations under the executive leadership of the Italian Transhumanist Association and with the collaboration of a Scientific Board. The event will take place in 2010 in Italy with many options for remote online access. While Transvision 2010 is not organized by or connected with Humanity+ (formerly WTA), the organizer of previous Transvision conferences, we wish to thank the Humanity+ Board for allowing the use of the name. The domain name transvision.cc has been reserved and will be active in a few weeks. In the meantime please contact the Italian Transhumanist Association. -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 17 12:49:31 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 14:49:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <4A0F7AF8.7070602@rawbw.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <4A0F7AF8.7070602@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A1007DB.2010404@libero.it> Il 17/05/2009 4.48, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > Moreover almost all allegedly lazy people are in reality only highly > uninterested in mundane activities such as boring and repetitive > work. This is the classic difference between the Celts and the more > modern cultural groups (such as the Ancient Romans and the Anglo > Saxons) that pushed them out of western Europe. Time and again the > Celtic ("southern") traits of high honour, bravery in battle, > drunkenness, "laziness", extended kin groups, and on and on, while > serving them well in individual battles, was not so good for group > selection. The studies about ADD and genetics concerning the members of the same tribe in Kenya, that lived in cities and in the countryside show these are adaptations to the habitat they evolved in. The comparison with Souther culture could be more correct than expected. Gauls won many battles and destroyed many legions initially, but were unable to win Rome. The Romans continued to form and send Armies, until they found the right leader and won and wiped out their enemies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Marius#Cimbri_and_Teutones Gaius Marius --> Ulysses S. Grant + Sherman > (What would happen over and over again, whether it was against > Caesar's legions or the English kings' armies, was that the Celtic > cultural patterns provided too few "warriors" that were satisfied > with "mere" logistical or provisioning duties. They all wanted to be > in the front lines heroically dealing death and destruction to the > enemy. They would lose ever war, just as the South lost against the > North---and for exactly the same reasons.) This usually is show in how often the winning battle is fought by a smaller but much more organized and disciplined army that route a larger but indisciplined and less organized army. > No, it is up to whites (e.g. you and me) to speak of the realities > concerning differences between Asians and Whites, or Jews and > gentiles. Could we speak about the nascent immigration of African blacks in China and the consequences? >>> http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/04/26/9530.aspx Racial >>> Admixture Studies. Black children with lighter skin, for example, >>> average higher IQ scores. In South Africa, the IQ of the >>> mixed-race "Colored" population averages 85, intermediate to the >>> African 70 and White 100. > It does need to be constantly stressed in these forums that > statistical stereotypes, whether valid or not, pertain only, of > course, to statistical averages, and have no implications whatsoever > for individuals. I suppose it is wise to do so, as too much people is bend to misinterpret what they read if fit their world view or is expedient. > He told rather marvellous stories about the small village in the > Cameroon he grew up in. He didn't come from any elite; his parents > were farmers, but evidently of superior intelligence since they both > became school teachers (that's how they met, and he was the issue). In Italy, there is a proverb that sound like this: "Farmer: big shoes, sharp brain." What mental traits are useful for successful farmers? I would suppose that are mainly the same that do a good workers and learner. > His IQ almost surely is 130 or above. He combined that "sufficient > intelligence" (Jensen) with a strong work ethic, an ability to > concentrate steadily, and probably a capacity for learning fairly > quickly. Such traits are what have made him the engineer he is, > besides overall having a good disposition. I agree that good disposition is a trait I find more frequently in migrants (Black, Asian and East Europeans) than nationals. > Now wait! The studies report that the sub-Saharan IQs of black people > is two standard deviations below that of white people (although the > experts estimate that five to ten points of that deficit is probably > due to a combination of various environmental effects including poor > nutrition). Agree that a part of the gap is environmental. > But what are the odds that such an individual would come to my > attention? Something seemed seriously wrong. What is seen and what it is not seen. We see what we can, we don't see what we can not see. > So far as I know, it's mainly coincidence. Let's suppose that indeed > 10 or more points can be attributed to environment in this case. Then > we still have the unlikely case of someone picked apparently at > random (who parents were certainly not a part of any kind of elite) > who is three to four standard deviations above average for his group! > Remarkable, but not impossible. There are people, I think, on this > list who are also so relatively smart in comparison with their own > ethnic group. I would contest that two teachers, in Cameroon, are not "elite". This could be said about their farmers families. They could not be rich or elite for our standard, for sure, but how better are they compared with the rest of the local population? Next, they do assortative mating, so, it is not strange they obtain an higher IQ offspring. Less strange if they have many children. Average fertility in Cameroon is around six. From the other side, what I really would like to know is how flat or spiked is the curve of distribution of IQ. If IQ depend on different mutations and adaptations of different genes, we could have very different distributions. > Well, whatever the correct explanation of this particular case is, > (and we do remember to merely use examples to illustrate---and never > to make---theses), there is something quite tragic going on in > countries like the Cameroon. Brain flight is one of these things. The higher wages and the better living condition in the western countries attract an important part of the gifted from these countries, depleting their human resources in a disproportionate way. http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/276540-poster594x420mm_eng.jpg > ?This poster (published in September 2007) hangs on the wall of > waiting rooms at the doctor. This way we let Dutch people know how > privileged they are when it comes to medical care, and thus how > appropriate it would be for them to help Doctors of the World help > the less privileged.? Italy 1:240 US: 1:390 Cameroon 1:5300 Tanzania 1:50.000 I just note the numbers of Italy and US: do you think this is a part of the reason healthcare cost more in the US than in Italy and physicians earn lot less in Italy than in the US? In England, talking with an high-up nurse at the St.Tomas and Guy Hospital, she told me that they rely in large part on immigrant nurses from North Europe, Philippines and other places. Many English nurses migrate to the US to work and many immigrants in the UK do so after the master the language and the trade. This is the globalization, and we can do nothing about this apart making it worse. > He mentions in particular the nations of Africa, who seem to have > missed their best chance to escape all the "traps" in the 1980s. The > fact that now east Asian countries are providing very cheap labour to > the whole world through the ongoing globalization, gives them a head > start that Africa almost surely will not be able to close. Could I note that we didn't give the same level of "help" to these countries as we did to Africa? > But another salient fact: African countries are losing more and more > of their talented people, who manage to escape and make it to the > corruption-free west. And this process, of course, merely makes the > situation in Africa itself all the more dire and more hopeless. Our > friend from the Cameroon, who'll surely never emigrate back, > illustrates this perfectly. It flashed in my mind now: The Affirmative Action laws are really different from the "natural resource curse"? Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.329 / Virus Database: 270.12.32/2118 - Release Date: 05/16/09 17:05:00 From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 17 13:07:18 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 15:07:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <4A1007DB.2010404@libero.it> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <4A0F7AF8.7070602@rawbw.com> <4A1007DB.2010404@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20905170607s612e773y51da04de680cb3f9@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/17 painlord2k at libero.it : > Could we speak about the nascent immigration of African blacks in China > and the consequences? Could we really? AFAIK, China has been sofar remarkably resilient to inward immigration. But for western Europe the real comparison should be made perhaps with Japan, where manpower is even more expensive and the pro-capite GNP is (still) much higher than in China... -- Stefano Vaj From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sun May 17 13:07:47 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 09:07:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > Repeating > Jewish jokes, on the other hand, run you the risk of > being accused of being anti-Jewish. Then a book such as "Asimov Laughs Last" is unusual? Or is it ok because Asimov was, himself, of Jewish background? > > In comparison, for Germany 1900-1940, I'd guess it > was 90% envy and 10% resentment of clannishness, > and the total envy was mostly the wicked kind. > This squares with my understanding, and stands as a strong warning to me against that type of evil envy. It will eat the goodness out of your own life if you let it run unchecked. Regards, MB From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 17 13:52:14 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 15:52:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <580930c20905161407s25e91097hf4fdb034e4a46e05@mail.gmail.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <4A0EF396.8010802@libero.it> <580930c20905161229n2e1e3670t8e6638fa52d1cc8e@mail.gmail.com> <4A0F20B5.6060801@libero.it> <580930c20905161407s25e91097hf4fdb034e4a46e05@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A10168E.5000405@libero.it> Il 16/05/2009 23.07, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > 2009/5/16 painlord2k at libero.it: > In fact, it could be said that as soon as an "aristocracy" turns into > an hereditary gentry, the regression towards the medium starts > operating, and the society as a whole become less competitive as > selection becomes less efficient or stops altogether. Even though > in-breeding might be in principle considered as an empirical effort to > protect some specific group traits which led to its success in the > first place. It probably work when there is an high fertility rate and the rate of inbreeding is not too high. The latest Hapsburg King of Spain had an inbreed ration of 0.27 (0.25 is the rate of inbreed of the offspring of sister/brother - lower is better). > The issue is whether all that is also applicable to many "capitalist" > societies, the social Darwinism of which may end up being more > imaginary than real. Many of the "capitalist" societies are only labelled so. > Georges Sorel, for instance, in spite of his being a sort of > "marxist", saw the struggle of class as the struggle of new > proletarian ?lites, selected by their harsh life, to replace and old > and decadent bourgeois ruling class. Interesting. Given the paper about the "Capitalism gene" in England, I would think that the new "proletarian ?lite" are the offsprings of the old bourgeois/aristocratic ?lite that are pushed down/out of their ?lite status for lack of inheritance, misfortune, etc. > To bring back things to transhumanism, it seems that most ruling > classes whose powers depend on legal and economic inertia rather than > by their ability to excel in whatever skills time and circumstances > under strong selective pressures would require are hostile to any > technological change, as it inevitably threatens such inertia. The difference is that the economic power can be acquired or lost where the legal power is difficult to acquire and lost. > May it have anything to do with the widespread governmental wariness > towards transhumanism-relevant technology? It would be interesting to > compare political and philosophical stances in this respect with the > average social (and generational!) mobility in each given society. > Whenever the rich tend to remain rich irrespective of their other > features, and elders surrender powers only upon their death, luddism > should in principle be stronger amongst the powers-that-be. The problem stem mainly by the fact that external competition is too low (or is perceived too low) for the ruling ?lite. So, their main interest is to prevent competition from inside and inside changes. What prevented China from developing a strong iron industry in the 1200 was the imperial bureaucracy that think better to prevent these bourgeois from becoming wealthy or powerful. Europe, fragmented and litigious, could not effort to suppress the free enterprises, because who that did so found itself without the resources needed to defend itself from the more market friendly neighbours. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.329 / Virus Database: 270.12.32/2118 - Release Date: 05/16/09 17:05:00 From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 17 14:28:57 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 16:28:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] lock-and-load In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090515173455.023e9360@satx.rr.com> References: <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515173455.023e9360@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A101F29.9020507@libero.it> Il 16/05/2009 0.44, Damien Broderick ha scritto: > At 03:12 PM 5/15/2009 -0700, the spikester wrote: > >> The right guard will >> do whatever it is that they do, the lock-and-load crowd will... I suppose >> lock and load > > In which case, shouldn't the manly cry be "load and lock!"? It, probably was both the ways at first;but the "lock and load" guys were able to reproduce more successfully as their rate of unwilling discharge is lower. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.329 / Virus Database: 270.12.32/2118 - Release Date: 05/16/09 17:05:00 From mail at harveynewstrom.com Sun May 17 14:48:32 2009 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 10:48:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <580930c20905170452r5e15bfcbr9845861ec15b2411@mail.gmail.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <2d6187670905162331v56afde42q3f0bfd842b682dcd@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905170452r5e15bfcbr9845861ec15b2411@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200905171048.33350.mail@harveynewstrom.com> On Sunday 17 May 2009 7:52:01 am Stefano Vaj wrote: > As in many cases, the exchange is interesting, but what all that would > have to do with the list topic? I wonder this myself every time this topic cycles around on this list. There is obviously some connection to transhumanism in some people's minds, based on the frequency of its appearance here. -- Harvey Newstrom From mail at harveynewstrom.com Sun May 17 14:48:58 2009 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 10:48:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <4A0FE36F.2070808@libero.it> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <4A0FE36F.2070808@libero.it> Message-ID: <200905171048.58929.mail@harveynewstrom.com> > This Graph is ? 1994, TheBell Curve, Simon and Schuster, Inc., p. 279 Let's avoid having another Bell Curve debate. This fraud has been completely investigated and discredited. There is no way that anybody connected to the Internet needs to ask how these have been discredited, or innocently ask for details here. Fifteen years of hindsight and expose are available in Google and Wikipedia if anybody really cares. -- Harvey Newstrom From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun May 17 15:27:13 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 08:27:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com><0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z><197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <3AD9C69A9D1A45C59CDE77919B79E8D7@patrick4ezsk6z> From: "MB" To: "ExI chat list" > Then a book such as "Asimov Laughs Last" is unusual? Or is it ok because > Asimov > was, himself, of Jewish background? Asimov, for years towards the end of his life, was president of the American Humanist Association. My "background" was Christian, as well (accident of birth, and all that), but I haven't been one myself for oh ... some ... close to 60 years? (I'm 62 now). Would you still connect me with Christians? Olga From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 17 16:01:18 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 18:01:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <200905171048.58929.mail@harveynewstrom.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <4A0FE36F.2070808@libero.it> <200905171048.58929.mail@harveynewstrom.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905170901p30ef9729q4ebccdcfcb9b016e@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 4:48 PM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > Let's avoid having another Bell Curve debate. ?This fraud has been completely > investigated and discredited. How in heaven can a bell curve be "discredited"? What about elliptical curves? Sinusoids? Are they still in fashion? -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 17 16:24:04 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 18:24:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] META: Off-topic discussions Message-ID: <580930c20905170924g275776aej58c74d0659c8676b@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 4:48 PM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > I wonder this myself every time this topic cycles around on this list. ?There > is obviously some connection to transhumanism in some people's minds, based on > the frequency of its appearance here. Basically, *everything* IMHO is potentially connected to transhumanism one way or another, but my point is that very often we discuss various subjects here, be it in interesting and pleasant ways, without connecting them to transhumanism or extropy at all... :-) Let us say that I like Beethoven music (as in fact I do, btw). Shouldn't I make an effort to clarify why I decided to raise a discussion thereupon *in this list*, if I choose to do so, or what its (alleged) relevance to the list topics might be? -- Stefano Vaj From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sun May 17 16:41:20 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 12:41:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <3AD9C69A9D1A45C59CDE77919B79E8D7@patrick4ezsk6z> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com><0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z><197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <3AD9C69A9D1A45C59CDE77919B79E8D7@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <32982.12.77.168.186.1242578480.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> When was the last time I went to a regular church service.... decades ago? Weddings and Funerals, yes; special events for important people in my life, yes. That said, my favorite music in the world is old hymn *tunes* - a childhood remnant: lying in my bed at night and listening to my older brother play the piano downstairs. All was right with my world. Comfort food for the mind/heart. But the theology? Yikes! I like to sing solfege to those tunes. ;) Olga, you are, by your own words, of "Christian background". Is it part of the ground in which you grew? It is, for me. Though tenuous, there is a connection. Regards, MB Olga writes: > > Asimov, for years towards the end of his life, was president of the American > Humanist Association. > > My "background" was Christian, as well (accident of birth, and all that), > but I haven't been one myself for oh ... some ... close to 60 years? (I'm 62 > now). Would you still connect me with Christians? > From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sun May 17 16:50:04 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 12:50:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Ant observation In-Reply-To: <1473519.328441242552781754.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> References: <1473519.328441242552781754.JavaMail.defaultUser@defaultHost> Message-ID: <32987.12.77.168.186.1242579004.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> I sent this to spike and he said to post it, maybe there were other ant watchers who'd find it interesting. Spike's posts about "his" ants have made me take more notice. :) > > I was weeding my garden, putting the weeds into a 5 gallon > bucket. At one point I saw an ant running up the inside wall > of the bucket. It came to the top, ran over, and started > down the outside of the bucket. This bucket has > reinforcement lips/rings a couple inches below the top. When > the ant came to the edge of the largest of those it paused - > extended its front legs (2? I think 4.) and *lept* off the > bucket - landing on the ground (slightly more than 1 foot > below and several inches from the bucket) and ran off. Needless to say, I did not have a video camera with me! Regards, MB From mail at harveynewstrom.com Sun May 17 16:44:22 2009 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (mail at harveynewstrom.com) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 12:44:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] META: Off-topic discussions In-Reply-To: <580930c20905170924g275776aej58c74d0659c8676b@mail.gmail.com> References: <580930c20905170924g275776aej58c74d0659c8676b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Stefano Vaj writes: > Basically, *everything* IMHO is potentially connected to transhumanism > one way or another Perhaps. But we can't discuss *everything* on this list. So there must be some criteria for what is on-topic and what is not. > but my point is that very often we discuss various > subjects here, be it in interesting and pleasant ways, without > connecting them to transhumanism or extropy at all... :-) Unfortunately, I think we all recognize that the race discussions rarely remain interesting and pleasant. > Let us say that I like Beethoven music (as in fact I do, btw). > Shouldn't I make an effort to clarify why I decided to raise a > discussion thereupon *in this list*, if I choose to do so, or what its > (alleged) relevance to the list topics might be? Yes. But as many times as the race topic has been raised, I am not sure its connection to transhumanism has been established. From msd001 at gmail.com Sun May 17 17:08:41 2009 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 13:08:41 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses In-Reply-To: <9ff585550905151630wd153679ie6230d40fd915f6f@mail.gmail.com> References: <251804.24543.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <9ff585550905151424t7aaeaa52xd579be3cd26964be@mail.gmail.com> <9ff585550905151630wd153679ie6230d40fd915f6f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62c14240905171008x24c5330ck7da7538684b1bd0@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/15 Michael LaTorra : > Please don't try to squeeze me into the box of simple opposition to all > supplements. What I am arguing is that too many people are wasting too much > money on supplements that have not been proven to have any value. > > But the history of discussion of this topic has shown that most people who > care enough to post about it do not really believe in the scientific method > as much as they claim to. > > Am I being too harsh??I don't believe so. > > Consider this: How much money would you -- this means YOU, dear reader, > whoever you are -- save each year if you only bought a simple one-per-day > multivitamin and perhaps some Omega-3 capsules? > > If you are like I was from the 1970s through the 1990s, you would save on > the order of $300 to $1,200 per year. > > What could you do with that kind of money? I try a supplement for a few days or weeks and notice if it had any impact. That's about as scientific as I can be. I am unsure what long-term effects there are for hyped supplements because I am skeptical about spending money for no perceptible value. That saved $1200 per year should go back into buying quality food. Fresh ingredients cost more than processed foodlike substances - but you get the nutrition that you pay for. High performance cars 'require' high-octane fuel; if you want a high performance machine you should expect to pay for high quality fuel. From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun May 17 17:38:33 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 10:38:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com><0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z><197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike><4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com><32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us><3AD9C69A9D1A45C59CDE77919B79E8D7@patrick4ezsk6z> <32982.12.77.168.186.1242578480.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: From: "MB" To: "ExI chat list" > Olga, you are, by your own words, of "Christian background". Is it part of > the > ground in which you grew? It is, for me. Though tenuous, there is a > connection. I was making a connection to the post made about Asimov's "Jewish background." Asimov was anti-religious ... does his "Jewish background" matter when describing him? He was a humanist. When do people stop being Jews or Christians (if they become atheists)? I'm a skeptical nontheist (not all atheists are skeptics - so I make that little distinction sometimes) - and I gave no one consent to baptize me when I was a few days old (believe me, I would have protested if only I could!). Does that make me have a "Christian background?" As soon as I could think (very early in my life, when I realized I didn't like to be limited to being a "Christian") I got the hell out (at the beginning, in my mind, although I was still dependent on my family so had to play along with the rituals at times ...). Olga From natasha at natasha.cc Sun May 17 18:25:04 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 13:25:04 -0500 Subject: [ExI] META: Off-topic discussions In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905170924g275776aej58c74d0659c8676b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <9EB7370269B84BFEA9B399C5E079AFA0@DFC68LF1> Sure, everything is connected in some way, but that doesn't mean that it is meaningful to list members. The subject line ought to clarify the underlying theme of posts' contents. An inappropriate subject line can welcome, push away, or rebuke potential posters. (The "anti-Jews" subject line was off-putting. Even if this is connected to transhumanism, the subject line should have shown it.) The list rules suggest that we use prefixes for subject headings: "Posts about the list, or its rules, should have the pre-fix "META:" We encourage the use of other prefixes indicating the content of a post. Examples include, PHIL:, MATH:, SCI:, CHAT:, ARTS:, etc. "Since the topic of discussion on the list can change constantly within a single thread, we ask that the subject lines change accordingly. If you feel that a thread is going off the original topic, that's perfectly fine, but please change the subject line to let all list readers know what the topic has become." Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of mail at harveynewstrom.com Sent: Sunday, May 17, 2009 11:44 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] META: Off-topic discussions Stefano Vaj writes: > Basically, *everything* IMHO is potentially connected to transhumanism > one way or another Perhaps. But we can't discuss *everything* on this list. So there must be some criteria for what is on-topic and what is not. > but my point is that very often we discuss various subjects here, be > it in interesting and pleasant ways, without connecting them to > transhumanism or extropy at all... :-) Unfortunately, I think we all recognize that the race discussions rarely remain interesting and pleasant. > Let us say that I like Beethoven music (as in fact I do, btw). > Shouldn't I make an effort to clarify why I decided to raise a > discussion thereupon *in this list*, if I choose to do so, or what its > (alleged) relevance to the list topics might be? Yes. But as many times as the race topic has been raised, I am not sure its connection to transhumanism has been established. _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sun May 17 18:25:33 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 14:25:33 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com><0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z><197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike><4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com><32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us><3AD9C69A9D1A45C59CDE77919B79E8D7@patrick4ezsk6z> <32982.12.77.168.186.1242578480.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <33011.12.77.168.219.1242584733.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Olga writes: > I was making a connection to the post made about Asimov's "Jewish > background." Asimov was anti-religious ... does his "Jewish background" > matter when describing him? He was a humanist. When do people stop being > Jews or Christians (if they become atheists)? Darned if I know. In their own minds they may stop but others still think of them as Jews or Christians. Do you think a Christian could have gotten away with writing Asimov's joke books, full as they are of Jewish jokes? I kinda doubt it. > > I'm a skeptical nontheist (not all atheists are skeptics - so I make that > little distinction sometimes) - and I gave no one consent to baptize me when > I was a few days old (believe me, I would have protested if only I could!). > Does that make me have a "Christian background?" I also was christened in early days and probably screamed my head off but the ritual went on nonetheless. ;) > As soon as I could think > (very early in my life, when I realized I didn't like to be limited to being > a "Christian") I got the hell out (at the beginning, in my mind, although I > was still dependent on my family so had to play along with the rituals at > times ...). My wider family had considerable agnostic leanings and matters of faith were seldom mentioned, although church attendance was required. Being an obedient child, I went. Probably would have been dragged there no matter what. ;) So IMHO we are both of Christian background - like it or not. In my teens I put my foot down and said ***NO MORE***. My mother was dismayed and said she'd find a church more to my liking. ??? She found a Russian Orthodox congregation - I couldn't understand a word they said - and I attended there a number of months, until I was gone from home. The music was lovely. :) Regards, MB From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 17 18:43:24 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 13:43:24 -0500 Subject: [ExI] lock-and-load In-Reply-To: <4A101F29.9020507@libero.it> References: <6C86109683854030BFCEAE9ADE53997A@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515173455.023e9360@satx.rr.com> <4A101F29.9020507@libero.it> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517134103.0222e088@satx.rr.com> At 04:28 PM 5/17/2009 +0200, Mirco ha scritto: >>In which case, shouldn't the manly cry be "load and lock!"? > >It, probably was both the ways at first;but the "lock and load" guys >were able to reproduce more successfully as their rate of unwilling >discharge is lower. A joke! Dog be praised, a whimsical joke from that serious fellow painlord! That's more like it! Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 17 18:51:47 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 13:51:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] against Many Worlds QT Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517135057.0238a828@satx.rr.com> http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.0624 One world versus many: the inadequacy of Everettian accounts of evolution, probability, and scientific confirmation Authors: Adrian Kent (Submitted on 5 May 2009) Abstract: There is a compelling intellectual case for exploring whether purely unitary quantum theory defines a sensible and scientifically adequate theory, as Everett originally proposed. Many different and incompatible attempts to define a coherent Everettian quantum theory have been made over the past fifty years. However, no known version of the theory (unadorned by extra ad hoc postulates) can account for the appearance of probabilities and explain why the theory it was meant to replace, Copenhagen quantum theory, appears to be confirmed, or more generally why our evolutionary history appears to be Born-rule typical. This article reviews some ingenious and interesting recent attempts in this direction by Wallace, Greaves, Myrvold and others, and explains why they don't work. An account of one-world randomness, which appears scientifically satisfactory, and has no many-worlds analogue, is proposed. A fundamental obstacle to confirming many-worlds theories is illustrated by considering some toy many-worlds models. These models show that branch weights can exist without having any role in either rational decision-making or theory confirmation, and also that the latter two roles are logically separate. Wallace's proposed decision theoretic axioms for rational agents in a multiverse and claimed derivation of the Born rule are examined. It is argued that Wallace's strategy of axiomatizing a mathematically precise decision theory within a fuzzy Everettian quasiclassical ontology is incoherent. Moreover, Wallace's axioms are not constitutive of rationality either in Everettian quantum theory or in theories in which branchings and branch weights are precisely defined. In both cases, there exist coherent rational strategies that violate some of the axioms. From spike66 at att.net Sun May 17 18:32:09 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 11:32:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] television 2.0, was: why darwin matters In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905170511p66f03b30q71f1c31fc5c8940a@mail.gmail.com> References: <200905161135.23846.mail@harveynewstrom.com> <710b78fc0905170511p66f03b30q71f1c31fc5c8940a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <9EDDE56BC6A742CB8E50BBA5AD8A56FC@spike> > 2009/5/17 Harvey Newstrom : > > On Friday 15 May 2009 4:35:26 pm spike wrote: > >> ...You Tube is the perhaps best argument > for caloric restriction. spike > > > > You mean because we don't want to look like those fat slobs > we see on YouTube? Rather because I want to live to see what is the 2050s version of the most wicked cool thing of that decade, just as YouTube might be considered this decade's wickedest. > > > > Seriously, YouTube is fun... Not only fun, but it points the way for television 2.0. Modern television programming, like YouTube, is cluttery and junky, thin gruel indeed, and is being funded by selling ad space. YouTube doesn't have ads, and it is searchable. This points to why it is that I view broadcast television so seldom I scarcely know how to turn the thing on. We have an enormous high definition television that is used for nothing more than playing toy train videos for the larva. What we need for television 2.0 is a feature where you can ask it to show you something specific according to your mood, then it goes off and finds it somewhere. We have all these channels, adding more and more of them until we effectively have none. Remember in the 80s when we (guys especially) used to sit the clicker (which doesn't actually click) and drive our wives nuts by stepping thru all the channels? How many of us do that now? Anyone? There are a couple hundred channels, too many to watch them all simultaneously as we did when we had a dozen. Most of them are on commercials, so effectively we have no channels, since we don't bother trying to find a specific program at a specific time. I want something like a google feature where I can just say "motorcycle race" or "original star trek" or "ants" and it goes off and finds something for me that matches the general description, as Google finds YouTube videos for us. I also want a scroll bar in case I get in a hurry and want to cut to the chase, and I will pay for it by the hour viewed, like the power meter on my house. But I flatly refuse to sit thru commercials, for time is money. TV 2.0 should be more like YouTube. > > ... > I'm with Spike, youtube is amazing. Not because of the > endless sea of crap, but because of the pearls that lie within...Emlyn Our clade (that would be all of you) helps us find those rare pearls in that vast sea. spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 17 19:04:51 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 21:04:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] META: Off-topic discussions In-Reply-To: <9EB7370269B84BFEA9B399C5E079AFA0@DFC68LF1> References: <580930c20905170924g275776aej58c74d0659c8676b@mail.gmail.com> <9EB7370269B84BFEA9B399C5E079AFA0@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <580930c20905171204q2d4690a8ja6f7fcd8f06af998@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 8:25 PM, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > Sure, everything is connected in some way, but that doesn't mean that it is > meaningful to list members. Indeed. But as the list owner, what do you think of my question? Namely, is this a list to discuss anything among transhumanists, or is this a list to discuss transhumanism - or rather, transhumanist implications of any given subject - amongst anybody? Needless to say, I fear that the first choice may lead to a tea-club evolution - or rather, involution... -- Stefano Vaj From spike66 at att.net Sun May 17 19:11:09 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 12:11:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] jewish humor, was the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com><0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z><197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> > ...On Behalf Of MB > Subject: Re: [ExI] the anti-Jews > > > Repeating > > Jewish jokes, on the other hand, run you the risk of being > accused of > > being anti-Jewish. > > Then a book such as "Asimov Laughs Last" is unusual? Or is > it ok because Asimov was, himself, of Jewish background? > Asimov's two humor works, "Asimov's Treasury of Humor" and "Asimov Laughs Again" are two of the funniest books I have ever read. They are full of excellent Jewish humor, but the interesting part is Asimov intersperses the jokes with insightful commentary attempting to analyze *why* the jokes are funny. Perhaps we just share a similar sense of humor. At a Foresight Institute schmooze, Chris Peterson managed to find a geek comedian who did a whole show of mostly ridiculing geeks, mixed with a little ridicule of hipsters. The crowd ate it up, and I nearly wet my diapers. If one has ever heard a gay comedian riff a string of gay jokes or some of Richard Pryor's earlier stuff, one must conclude that being [fill in the blank] is definitely a license to make fun of [fill in the blank]. I will give one example from page 20 of Asimov Laughs Again, a condensed version: A New Yorker is crossing a bridge and sees another man about to jump, asks why, the jumper says "It is so unfair. I designed this beautiful bridge you are standing on, but do the people point at me and say 'There goes Jacob, the famous bridgebuilder'? NO! And I helped draw up the blueprints of half the skyscrapers you see there, but do the people say 'There goes Jacob, the great architect'? NO! But I get caught with just ONE LITTLE COCK in my mouth, and they all point and say..." Made ya laugh, didn't it? Why? spike From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun May 17 18:58:40 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 11:58:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com><0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z><197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike><4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com><32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us><3AD9C69A9D1A45C59CDE77919B79E8D7@patrick4ezsk6z><32982.12.77.168.186.1242578480.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <33011.12.77.168.219.1242584733.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: From: "MB" To: "ExI chat list" > > In my teens I put my foot down and said ***NO MORE***. My mother was > dismayed and said she'd find a church more to my liking. ??? She found a > Russian Orthodox > congregation - I couldn't understand a word they said - and I attended > there a > number of months, until I was gone from home. The music was lovely. :) Ha! Coincidentally, the Russian Eastern Orthodox church was that of my upbringing. I attribute my love of opera (to the exclusion of just about ALL other music) to that. What else could I do besides stand there and listen to the music and look at the pageantry? BTW, the Russian Eastern Orthodox church was very, very anti-Semitic. There was reputedly a "White Russian" connection to the rise of Nazism. One of the reasons I left the Church (in my head) at a very early age can be attributed to the fact that I tended to get crushes on the smartest boys in class (and they were, very often, the Jewish boys). So, some of my reasons for leaving the Church were intellectual (but most of them were hormonal ...?) Olga Olga From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 17 19:32:27 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 14:32:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] jewish humor, was the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517142952.02483338@satx.rr.com> At 12:11 PM 5/17/2009 -0700, Spike wrote: >"...great architect'? NO! But I get caught with just ONE LITTLE COCK in my >mouth, and they all point and say..." > >Made ya laugh, didn't it? Why? No. The word "little" squicked me (and not from any spam-related anxieties). Damien Broderick From spike66 at att.net Sun May 17 19:35:28 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 12:35:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <32982.12.77.168.186.1242578480.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com><0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z><197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike><4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com><32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us><3AD9C69A9D1A45C59CDE77919B79E8D7@patrick4ezsk6z> <32982.12.77.168.186.1242578480.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <895321D6BDE84E399A2FC33146C99B55@spike> > ...On Behalf Of MB ... > That said, my favorite music in the world is old hymn *tunes* > - a childhood remnant: > lying in my bed at night and listening to my older brother > play the piano downstairs. All was right with my world. > Comfort food for the mind/heart. Oy, how well I can relate to that sentiment. > But the theology? Yikes! What MB, you don't like the notion of some innocent person being brutally murdered for your sins? I just can't understand why. > I like to sing solfege to those tunes. ;) Here's another little game. Take the tunes to those hymns (all of which I know by heart from my misspent childhood) and substitute the words from any randomly chosen rap song, which can be found as easily as googling on "rap lyrics." For instance put the following to the tune of Amazing Grace: ...If one more cop harrasses me I just might go psycho And when I get 'em, I'll hit 'em with the bum rush Only a lunatic would like to see his skull crushed Yo, if your smart you'll really let me go 'G' But keep me cooped up in this ghetto and catch the uzi... Then put the lyrics to Amazing Grace in the style of rap. Weird Al Yankovich has made a career of this kind of thing. spike From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sun May 17 19:49:42 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 15:49:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] jewish humor, was the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517142952.02483338@satx.rr.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090517142952.02483338@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <33089.12.77.168.219.1242589782.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > No. The word "little" squicked me (and not from any spam-related anxieties). > > Damien Broderick > > Gah, Damien! Compared to the bridge or the skyscraper, it's *little*.. :))) Regards, MB From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 17 19:59:31 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 12:59:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <4A0FE36F.2070808@libero.it> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <4A0FE36F.2070808@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A106CA3.2090105@rawbw.com> Mirco writes >> ("Oh, no no no, this is not bigoted shit, this is *balanced >> even-handedness*") > > I was commenting of the graphics, not endorsing any other stuff in other > pages or in the page. > >> This Graph is ? 1994, TheBell Curve, Simon and Schuster, Inc., p. 279 That statement alone, without argument, is supposed to automatically discredit the information. > The graph is false? Wrong? > > If you prefer we could substitute the graph with this from Indiana > University > > http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/bellcurve.shtml That old book, written in 1994, has been superseded so far as the most recent research goes, by many, many more explicit and equally (if not more so) blunt presentations of the facts and the best evolutionary theories, i.e., "Race" by Sarich and Miele (Sarich is a highly regarded Berkeley professor emeritus), "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen, and Rushton's unrelenting "Race, Evolution, and Behavior". Today, "The Bell Curve" is pretty mild stuff indeed. On the other side, to be fair, is Flynn's own fine book "What is Intelligence?", (Flynn is the discoverer of the famous Flynn effect). But even Flynn, who strongly "believes in IQ", doesn't contest the statistics, but rather hypothesizes certain possible milder interpretations. Given the intellectual climate (no publishing house dares touch books that go as far as Rushton's; he had to publish it himself, even though it's obviously of at least the same quality that many other technical books have), it's a small miracle that these books are being published at all. Even Jensen's magnum opus "The G Factor" (1998) has a story told in part by Arthur Jensen of Berkeley, the dean of psychometricians with 400 scientific papers published in refereed journals, struggled merely to find a publisher for his version of The g Factor, this heroically comprehensive summing up of his life's work. Finally, the small mail order imprint Praeger released Jensen's magnum opus ? to shameful neglect. Even today, the only sure source for this fascinating (if dauntingly rigorous) landmark in the science of human nature remains the publisher (203-226-3571). [Since then, it's become reliably available through Amazon.com.] http://www.isteve.com/jensen.htm (although about that last line, I must add that it's only periodically available from Amazon). Three criticisms of "The Bell Curve" given in the link you originally supplied are by Stephen Jay Gould (deceased), and Leon J. Kamin, coauthor of "Not In Our Genes", and old book that (today) laughably dismisses genetic effects on intelligence, and (the most respectable) Howard Gardner, who writes in part Why is this [book, The Bell Curve] so singularly off-putting? I would have thought it unnecessary to say, but if people as psychometrically smart as Messrs. Herrnstein and Murray did not "get it," it is safer to be explicit. High IQ doesn't make a person one whit better than anybody else. And if we are to have any chance of a civil and humane society, we had better avoid the smug self-satisfaction of an elite that reeks of arrogance and condescension. (p. 71) where he cannot bring himself to actually deny the facts, just, rather, to dismiss the appropriateness of discussing them openly, and the arrogance of anyone who would. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 17 20:07:47 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 13:07:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] META: Off-topic discussions In-Reply-To: <580930c20905170924g275776aej58c74d0659c8676b@mail.gmail.com> References: <580930c20905170924g275776aej58c74d0659c8676b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A106E93.5030902@rawbw.com> Stefano earlier wrote > As in many cases, the exchange is interesting, > but what all that would have to do with the list topic? and most recently > On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 4:48 PM, Harvey Newstrom > wrote: >> I wonder this myself every time this topic cycles around on this list. There >> is obviously some connection to transhumanism in some people's minds, based on >> the frequency of its appearance here. > > Basically, *everything* IMHO is potentially connected to transhumanism > one way or another, but my point is that very often we discuss various > subjects here, be it in interesting and pleasant ways, without > connecting them to transhumanism or extropy at all... :-) I think you are quite correct. For example, discussing the genetic differences between human groups relates both to group selection, memetic infestation, and so on, and indeed is of such broad evolutionary concern that the same issues will play a part in any post-human future. But to analyze, say, the causes of anti-Jewishness does strike me as clearly less relevant (though, as you say, it would not be too surprising if someone could make a valid connection). In any case, I made a throwaway remark, and then someone asked me for a full opinion, and I wandered into a defense of Jews, partly to make sure that our posts are not grossly misinterpreted. > Let us say that I like Beethoven music (as in fact I do, btw). > Shouldn't I make an effort to clarify why I decided to raise a > discussion thereupon *in this list*, if I choose to do so, or what its > (alleged) relevance to the list topics might be? That's probably a good rule, though people will find it very difficult to follow, given the informal nature of the exchanges here. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 17 20:13:55 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 13:13:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Propriety of Who Should Say What In-Reply-To: <33011.12.77.168.219.1242584733.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com><0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z><197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike><4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com><32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us><3AD9C69A9D1A45C59CDE77919B79E8D7@patrick4ezsk6z> <32982.12.77.168.186.1242578480.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <33011.12.77.168.219.1242584733.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <4A107003.1010605@rawbw.com> MB wrote: > Olga writes: > >> I was making a connection to the post made about Asimov's "Jewish >> background." Asimov was anti-religious ... does his "Jewish background" >> matter when describing him? He was a humanist. When do people stop being >> Jews or Christians (if they become atheists)? > > Darned if I know. In their own minds they may stop but others still think of them > as Jews or Christians. Do you think a Christian could have gotten away with writing > Asimov's joke books, full as they are of Jewish jokes? I kinda doubt it. And indeed, it's best if ethnic humor be committed primarily by those of that ethnic group, seeing as how unfortunately in so many places around the world people are retreating into grouping by race and ethnicity, and jokes can offend. (In the early 20th century, the most fashionable movement was *away* from ethnic identification, e.g., Rand and Asimov hardly ever mentioned it, and, with the spirit of the times, were quite dismissive about it.) Lee > In my teens I put my foot down and said ***NO MORE***. My mother was dismayed and > said she'd find a church more to my liking. ??? She found a Russian Orthodox > congregation - I couldn't understand a word they said - and I attended there a > number of months, until I was gone from home. The music was lovely. :) > > Regards, > MB From spike66 at att.net Sun May 17 20:02:25 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 13:02:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] jewish humor In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517142952.02483338@satx.rr.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com><0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z><197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike><4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com><32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us><66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090517142952.02483338@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick > Subject: Re: [ExI] jewish humor, was the anti-Jews > > At 12:11 PM 5/17/2009 -0700, Spike wrote: > > >"...great architect'? NO! But I get caught with just ONE > LITTLE COCK > >in my mouth, and they all point and say..." > > > >Made ya laugh, didn't it? Why? > > No. The word "little" squicked me (and not from any > spam-related anxieties). > > Damien Broderick Actually I thought that was part of the brilliance of the joke. It swings on our possibly having anticipated "one little mistake" and then blends the whole inadequacy anxiety that most of us men have to the point of absurdity, which must entertain women enormously and has created an entire industry. Interesting point however is that in Asimov's analysis he mentions that when he told the joke to an audience he didn't use the adjective, but that afterwards someone told him the joke is funnier with 'little' in there. In retrospect it may be suggestive of involving children, which I hadn't thought of before, and yes that would kill the joke. spike From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 17 20:37:24 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 22:37:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <33011.12.77.168.219.1242584733.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com><0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z><197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike><4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com><32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us><3AD9C69A9D1A45C59CDE77919B79E8D7@patrick4ezsk6z> <32982.12.77.168.186.1242578480.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <33011.12.77.168.219.1242584733.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <4A107584.2060404@libero.it> Il 17/05/2009 20.25, MB ha scritto: > Darned if I know. In their own minds they may stop but others still think of them > as Jews or Christians. Do you think a Christian could have gotten away with writing > Asimov's joke books, full as they are of Jewish jokes? I kinda doubt it. If he is a leftist he can get away and profit from it. Look at what a leftist paper (Il Manifesto) published about a Jews woman, a Center Right politician elected in the Italian Parliament: http://www.fiammanirenstein.com/articoli.asp?Categoria=6&Id=1927 This happened last year in march 2008 (before the elections). Do you imagine what the drawer (Vauro Senesi) is doing now? It is a guest star of a major talk-show about politics and draw picture like this. By the way, the talk-show is so partisan and leftist that it usually damage more the left than the right. Could I add that, because a ruling of a tribunal, the host of the show can not be deprived of his show at prime-time in the public TV. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.329 / Virus Database: 270.12.32/2118 - Release Date: 05/16/09 17:05:00 From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 17 20:44:51 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 22:44:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] META: Off-topic discussions In-Reply-To: <4A106E93.5030902@rawbw.com> References: <580930c20905170924g275776aej58c74d0659c8676b@mail.gmail.com> <4A106E93.5030902@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905171344n5828e412m7fbf5c2a092afe4f@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 10:07 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > In any case, I made a throwaway remark, and then > someone asked me for a full opinion, and I wandered > into a defense of Jews, partly to make sure that > our posts are not grossly misinterpreted. Yes, this is exactly the process by which I usually get engaged in discussing my views on impressionist paintings on the transhumanist lists... :-) But I think it is a matter of degrees, and sometimes we have here are very long threads when even the vaguest references to the list topics is lost for dozen of exchanges. This is why I took the liberty of invoking a little self-discipline. -- Stefano Vaj From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 17 20:54:02 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 13:54:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Human Gradients In-Reply-To: <4A1007DB.2010404@libero.it> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <4A0F7AF8.7070602@rawbw.com> <4A1007DB.2010404@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A10796A.2060604@rawbw.com> Mirco writes > [Lee wrote] >> But another salient fact: African countries are losing more and more >> of their talented people, who manage to escape and make it to the >> corruption-free west. And this process, of course, merely makes the >> situation in Africa itself all the more dire and more hopeless. Our >> friend from the Cameroon, who'll surely never emigrate back, >> illustrates this perfectly. > > It flashed in my mind now: > The Affirmative Action laws are really different from the "natural > resource curse"? A fascinating connection. The general case reminds one of cell biology, in which cells maintain a higher or lower concentration of ions or chemicals from their environment (the intercellular areas), in defiance of the natural urge of statistical ensembles to distribute uniformly. It takes free energy, at least, to maintain gradients. Something is drawing intelligent people out of Africa, just as the affirmative action policies you speak of must be raising the concentration in the poorest urban areas of people who cannot as ably contribute. (Or, as you wrote in much more concrete terms Brain flight is one of these things. The higher wages and the better living condition in the western countries attract an important part of the gifted from these countries, depleting their human resources in a disproportionate way.) We will probably continue to see *increased* human gradients everywhere: it won't just be academic types attracted to universities and fun loving types attracted to the shadier parts of town where pool halls and bars abound. We should expect to see ever greater differences by locale and by social group. This list itself is an example: we here are all here associating with each other because we share some very deep intellectual and philosophical traits. Whereas, especially before the web and before that, urbanization itself, one had to a very much greater extent socialize with people unlike oneself. This probably has very powerful implications not only for the coming century, but for algorithms in general that manage to live uploaded. But did you understand that by "natural resource curse" (I was referring explicitly to Paul Collier's great book "The Bottom Billion"), I meant things like "the Dutch Disease"? (I believe that another poster gave the wikipedia link to that very recently.) Anyway, it's a complex phenomenon that actually retards the economies of poorer nations. E.g., Venezuela, middle-Eastern countries, and a number of African countries evidently have *worse* economies because of "lucky" accidents of geology that bestow oil riches on them. This also brings to mind the taunts :-) (okay, nice challenges :) from people on this list to me wherein it's asked whether people would really be worse off if they'd been disinherited by relatives, or, (in the same way), worse off by not being subsidized by the state. But a major reason people migrate to cities is for the stimulation they provide. Like flies, we'll all be attracted to the people and places that fascinate us, and this tendency will become more and more pronounced over time, with very "interesting" consequences, no doubt. Lee From nanogirl at halcyon.com Sun May 17 20:56:33 2009 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 13:56:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] why darwin matters In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905170511p66f03b30q71f1c31fc5c8940a@mail.gmail.com> References: <200905161135.23846.mail@harveynewstrom.com> <710b78fc0905170511p66f03b30q71f1c31fc5c8940a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Also great educational value such as these: Carl Sagan: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=Carl+sagan&aq=f Albert Einstein: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=albert+einstein&aq=f Charles Darwin: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=charles+darwin&aq=f Nova: http://www.youtube.com/user/NOVAonline National Geographic: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=national+geographic&aq=0&oq=national+g Science Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/sciencechannel?blend=8&ob=4 Neanderthal: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=neanderthal&search=Search&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&spell=1 Origins of Life (quite a debate from both sides) http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=origins+of+life&aq=f Richard Dawkins: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=richard+dawkins&aq=f Richard Feynman: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=richard+feynman Nanotechnology: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nanotechnology I like that you can look this stuff up whenever you like and you don't have to wait for it on your TV schedule, it's on your schedule, you can also find things on YouTube that either are not on TV any longer or never were on TV. And I have my own channel. Not everyone has QuickTime or Windows Media Players installed and since YouTube uses Flash (for which you do not need to download a player) I can redirect people to watch my videos there. Here is my YouTube page: http://www.youtube.com/user/nanogirl I was thrilled when my Starry Night animation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4RA4P_ArPE was selected by YouTube to be featured on their front page, I got a lot of views and a lot of very interesting discussions in my YouTube email box. I've made contact with other animators and film makers via YouTube, so it has been beneficial to me on several levels. Like everything in life, there are many variables, it's all in how you use it. Warm regards, Gina "Nanogirl" Miller www.nanogirl.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Emlyn" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, May 17, 2009 5:11 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] why darwin matters > 2009/5/17 Harvey Newstrom : >> On Friday 15 May 2009 4:35:26 pm spike wrote: >>> Aaaah, life is good. Are we glad we lived long enough to enjoy YouTube, >>> or >>> what? You Tube is the perhaps best argument for caloric restriction. >> >> You mean because we don't want to look like those fat slobs we see on >> YouTube? >> >> Seriously, YouTube is fun. But does it add more hours of entertainment >> than >> it wastes with unentertaining videos? Maybe we should keep score on stuff >> like >> this to make sure we come out ahead. > > I'm with Spike, youtube is amazing. Not because of the endless sea of > crap, but because of the pearls that lie within. > > http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html > > It is common to criticize internet based social environments because > of the high level of crap they contain, but that's wrong. Every such > environment is a meritocratic contest over some domain, and the > winners are truly extraordinary. > > -- > Emlyn > > http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related > http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting > http://emlynoregan.com - main site > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From jef at jefallbright.net Sun May 17 19:56:21 2009 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 12:56:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] against Many Worlds QT In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517135057.0238a828@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517135057.0238a828@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.0624 > > > One world versus many: the inadequacy of Everettian accounts of evolution, > probability, and scientific confirmation Among the scientific virtues of this account, as I see it, are its explicitness about the provisional nature of our theories, and its undogmatic sidestepping of the problem of giving a fundamental meaning to probability. It recognizes the possibility that random-seeming data may turn out to have a simpler description. It recognizes too that, if we find consistent regularities that a probabilistic theory says are highly improbable, then we should and will feel impelled to produce a better theory. At the same time, it stays silent on the question of whether random-seeming physical data are genuinely randomly generated in some fundamental sense, and hence avoids the need to explain what such an assertion could really mean and how we could be persuaded of its truth. How refreshing to see emphasis on good science as increasing coherence over increasing context rather than the epistemologically untenable "uncovering of truth." - Jef -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun May 17 21:17:53 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 14:17:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Propriety of Who Should Say What References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com><0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z><197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike><4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com><32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us><3AD9C69A9D1A45C59CDE77919B79E8D7@patrick4ezsk6z> <32982.12.77.168.186.1242578480.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <33011.12.77.168.219.1242584733.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <4A107003.1010605@rawbw.com> Message-ID: From: "Lee Corbin" To: "ExI chat list" > (In the early 20th century, the most fashionable > movement was *away* from ethnic identification, e.g., Rand ... hardly ever > mentioned it, and, with the spirit of the times, were quite dismissive > about it.) Well, shucks ... besides being of the female gender, and atheist - now I have THREE things in common with Ayn Rand. ;) Olga From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 17 21:37:06 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 16:37:06 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Protected Elites In-Reply-To: <4A106CA3.2090105@rawbw.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <4A0FE36F.2070808@libero.it> <4A106CA3.2090105@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517162741.02214848@satx.rr.com> At 12:59 PM 5/17/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: >Mirco writes > >>>("Oh, no no no, this is not bigoted shit, this is *balanced >>>even-handedness*") >>I was commenting of the graphics, not endorsing >>any other stuff in other pages or in the page. >> >>>This Graph is ? 1994, TheBell Curve, Simon and Schuster, Inc., p. 279 > >That statement alone, without argument, is supposed >to automatically discredit the information. No, Lee. The statement >http://www.americancivilrightsreview.com/ Another sly, tacky site designed to lure the innocent and ignorant to, for example, http://www.americancivilrightsreview.com/jewwatch.htm is meant to provide a warning that anything on that site is liable to be loaded with vicious misrepresentations. Defensive cries of "Ad hominem!" carry little weight when some statement (perhaps by itself harmless) is quoted from, let's say (to take a more extreme example), The Aryan White Manhood League Of Christian Jew Watchers and Mud People Lynchers. Or do you consider that sort of due diligence too... irrationally discriminatory? Btw, I wasn't accusing Mirco of being antisemitic, although I'm happy to hear his declaration otherwise; I was referring to the site. Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 17 21:44:53 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 16:44:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] jewish humor In-Reply-To: References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090517142952.02483338@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517163846.022bf818@satx.rr.com> At 01:02 PM 5/17/2009 -0700, Spike wrote: >In retrospect it may be suggestive of involving children, which I hadn't >thought of before, and yes that would kill the joke. That was my, um, point about the, uh, gag. I'd intended to add a comment to the effect that such concerns were not so widely or often discussed when Asimov told that joke, before priests and teaching brothers all over the place were found to be doing it to their charges, but I figured this would be obvious. And you could go on to object that anyway the cocksucker *couldn't* have been speaking of fellating a child with a little cock because then he'd be in prison rather than on a bridge about to kill himself, but that's an afterthought--the immediate association of "little" with "child" was enough to stop me laughing at the joke, which is where we, er, came in. Damien Broderick From emlynoregan at gmail.com Sun May 17 23:00:19 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 08:30:19 +0930 Subject: [ExI] television 2.0, was: why darwin matters In-Reply-To: <9EDDE56BC6A742CB8E50BBA5AD8A56FC@spike> References: <200905161135.23846.mail@harveynewstrom.com> <710b78fc0905170511p66f03b30q71f1c31fc5c8940a@mail.gmail.com> <9EDDE56BC6A742CB8E50BBA5AD8A56FC@spike> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905171600w71bfdda7pa56452528eec1e40@mail.gmail.com> >> I'm with Spike, youtube is amazing. Not because of the >> endless sea of crap, but because of the pearls that lie within...Emlyn > > Our clade (that would be all of you) helps us find those rare pearls in that > vast sea. > > spike Absolutely! YouTube et al rely on us recommending and embedding and mailing links. A corollary: if you are watching YouTube by going there and thinking "hmm, what will I search for?", you are doing it wrong. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 17 23:08:07 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 23:08:07 +0000 Subject: [ExI] jewish humor, was the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> Message-ID: On 5/17/09, spike wrote: > Asimov's two humor works, "Asimov's Treasury of Humor" and "Asimov Laughs > Again" are two of the funniest books I have ever read. They are full of > excellent Jewish humor, but the interesting part is Asimov intersperses the > jokes with insightful commentary attempting to analyze *why* the jokes are > funny. Perhaps we just share a similar sense of humor. I thought Jewish humor defined American humor. According to Wikipedia about 80% of professional comedians are Jewish. Joan Rivers, Jackie Mason, and all the old vaudeville stars. Lee will probably appreciate the logic in this joke: Q: Is one permitted to ride in an airplane on the Sabbath? A: Yes, as long as your seat belt remains fastened. In this case, it is considered that you are not riding, you are wearing the plane. BillK From spike66 at att.net Sun May 17 23:01:18 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 16:01:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] analysing humor In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517163846.022bf818@satx.rr.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com><0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z><197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike><4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com><32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us><66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike><7.0.1.0.2.20090517142952.02483338@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090517163846.022bf818@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A562BDE7730497D84420F86928FD527@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick > > At 01:02 PM 5/17/2009 -0700, Spike wrote: > > >In retrospect it may be suggestive of involving children, which I > >hadn't thought of before, and yes that would kill the joke. > > That was my, um, point about the, uh, gag. ...such concerns were not so > widely or often discussed when Asimov told that joke, before > priests and teaching brothers all over the place were found > to be doing it to their charges... Damien Broderick Oh OK, do forgive please. Damien I had a scandalously G rated life, especially as a youth. You sometimes hear people joke about sneaking into the back of the library to get a thrill from National Geographic. I am here to testify, my brother, that such activity did occur, and I was later shocked to learn I wasn't the first or the only to discover those titillating photos. It was the early 70s, and society was changing its views and all that, but the place where I grew up in central Florida was untouched by these changes, at least as far as I knew. It was definitely GI Joe and scouts. I would never have imagined the priest thing. Hey it was before the internet, Edith Bunker was more worldly that I. Now today, all that free high quality porno, oh my, life is good. Take another, less controversial one: Guy goes into a bar where he has never been, someone says "438" everyone laughs, another says "763" everyone laughs harder, third guy says "527" gets a smile or two, very little laughter. The guy next to him shakes his head and says "527" everyone laughs. The new guy asks, "What is that about?" Old patron says, "Stranger, this crowd has been drinking together for so long, we have heard all of each others' jokes, to save time we decided to number them, then instead of having to repeat the whole joke, we just say the number." The new guy says, "Oh. OK so why didn't that guy get anything out of 527?" Old patron says "He can't do the the accents right." Why is that funny? Is it funny? I thought so when I first heard it. We discussed it a bunch of years ago, and the thread eventually evolved into Eliezer commenting that there is an infinite amount of fun. We can never run out of jokes. I wasn't sure of that then and I am not now. spike From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sun May 17 23:25:59 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 19:25:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] jewish humor, was the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <33089.12.77.168.219.1242589782.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090517142952.02483338@satx.rr.com> <33089.12.77.168.219.1242589782.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <33629.12.77.168.222.1242602759.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > >> No. The word "little" squicked me (and not from any spam-related anxieties). >> >> Damien Broderick >> >> > I never even *thought* about little kids! Sorry, Damien. I don't think Asimov thought of that either, it was long ago. Regards, MB ... child of the 1940s and '50s .... From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sun May 17 23:33:12 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 19:33:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] new word for old song, was the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <895321D6BDE84E399A2FC33146C99B55@spike> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com><0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z><197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike><4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com><32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us><3AD9C69A9D1A45C59CDE77919B79E8D7@patrick4ezsk6z> <32982.12.77.168.186.1242578480.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <895321D6BDE84E399A2FC33146C99B55@spike> Message-ID: <33632.12.77.168.222.1242603192.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > >> I like to sing solfege to those tunes. ;) > > Here's another little game. Take the tunes to those hymns (all of which I > know by heart from my misspent childhood) and substitute the words from any > randomly chosen rap song, which can be found as easily as googling on "rap > lyrics." I haven't found many rap lyrics that I like enough to want to sing, no matter what the tune. It's an interesting concept, though. There are many poems that would no doubt fit nicely with various hymn tunes. Regards, MB From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 17 23:36:06 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 01:36:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Human Gradients In-Reply-To: <4A10796A.2060604@rawbw.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <4A0F7AF8.7070602@rawbw.com> <4A1007DB.2010404@libero.it> <4A10796A.2060604@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A109F66.8080103@libero.it> Il 17/05/2009 22.54, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > Mirco writes >> It flashed in my mind now: >> The Affirmative Action laws are really different from the "natural >> resource curse"? > A fascinating connection. The general case reminds one > of cell biology, in which cells maintain a higher or > lower concentration of ions or chemicals from their > environment (the intercellular areas), in defiance > of the natural urge of statistical ensembles to > distribute uniformly. > It takes free energy, at least, to maintain gradients. > Something is drawing intelligent people out of Africa, > just as the affirmative action policies you speak of > must be raising the concentration in the poorest > urban areas of people who cannot as ably contribute. Hi-tech, urban, industrialized civilizations need a concentration of skilled and gifted people to be able to maintain themselves to the level they are and to raise the level. Any durable high-tech civilization will organize itself so it is able to retain the most skilled and gifted and attract them away from competitors. The city exist to let higher density of population and, given that more gifted and skilled do better works, the city prefer the most productive individuals and let them to multiply more than the others. > But did you understand that by "natural resource > curse" (I was referring explicitly to Paul > Collier's great book "The Bottom Billion"), I > meant things like "the Dutch Disease"? I know the problem with the "natural resource curse". I red about the Dutch Disease and de-industrialization, but never went in deep and made the link (until now). > (I believe > that another poster gave the wikipedia link to that > very recently.) Anyway, it's a complex phenomenon > that actually retards the economies of poorer > nations. E.g., Venezuela, middle-Eastern countries, > and a number of African countries evidently have > *worse* economies because of "lucky" accidents > of geology that bestow oil riches on them. Like the Spain that enjoined the gold of Aztec and Incas for a century and become economically irrelevant. > This also brings to mind the taunts :-) (okay, > nice challenges :) from people on this list to me > wherein it's asked whether people would really > be worse off if they'd been disinherited by > relatives, or, (in the same way), worse off > by not being subsidized by the state. Many people that won major lottery prizes don't had very happy life after. But the question is also if it is more damaging a single shot of heroin a single time in a life or half bottle of wine for a life. > But a major reason people migrate to cities is > for the stimulation they provide. Like flies, > we'll all be attracted to the people and places > that fascinate us, and this tendency will become > more and more pronounced over time, with very > "interesting" consequences, no doubt. Well, this year the majority of the human population went from countryside dwellers to city dwellers. This surely will have large effects, albeit not promptly visible or foreseeable, on the selective pressure on the human population worldwide. Many things we see, even religious and ethnic clashes, could be heavily influence by this factor. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 1 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.329 / Virus Database: 270.12.32/2118 - Release Date: 05/16/09 17:05:00 From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 17 23:40:29 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 18:40:29 -0500 Subject: [ExI] humor and wit In-Reply-To: <33629.12.77.168.222.1242602759.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com> <580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com> <580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com> <20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090517142952.02483338@satx.rr.com> <33089.12.77.168.219.1242589782.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <33629.12.77.168.222.1242602759.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517183310.0227c4a8@satx.rr.com> At 07:25 PM 5/17/2009 -0400, MB wrote: >I never even *thought* about little kids! Sorry, Damien. I don't think Asimov >thought of that either, it was long ago. I know, I know (and in fact I said so in a later post). But the proposition (as it were) Spike raised (so to speak) was: "Made ya laugh, didn't it? Why?" My testimony was, "No, and here's why." I thought it an interesting example of the *situatedness* of humor, of how context can modify one's reception of a message (to put it excruciatingly thuddingly). And wit is amazingly culture-specific. I sent Spike this offlist, and I think it offers an interesting glimpse into a witty haiku-like-thingee that can't easily be conveyed to any of us except maybe Jef: ====== ...Perry returned with seven ships and forced the shogun to sign the "Treaty of Peace and Amity", establishing formal diplomatic relations between Japan and the United States. Within five years, Japan had signed similar treaties with other western countries. The surprise and confusion these ships inspired are described in this famous humorous senryu (or kyo-ka): Taihei no Nemuri wo samasu Jokisen Tatta shihai de Yoru mo nemurezu This poem is a complex pun (in Japanese, kakekotoba or "pivot word"). Jokisen is the name of a costly brand of tea containing large amounts of caffeine, and shihai means "four cups", so a literal translation of the poem is: Awoken from sleep of a peaceful quiet world by Jokisen tea with only four cups of it no more sleep possible at night However, jokisen can also be translated as "steam-powered ships", and shihai can also be used to refer to four vessels. The poem has a deeper meaning, which is: The steamships break the peaceful slumber of the Pacific a mere four boats are enough to make us lose sleep at night. ============== Damien Broderick From emlynoregan at gmail.com Sun May 17 23:54:10 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 09:24:10 +0930 Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <895321D6BDE84E399A2FC33146C99B55@spike> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it> <7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <3AD9C69A9D1A45C59CDE77919B79E8D7@patrick4ezsk6z> <32982.12.77.168.186.1242578480.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <895321D6BDE84E399A2FC33146C99B55@spike> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905171654y28036c1ehb7acd7d618ffa2fa@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/18 spike : > ?> ...On Behalf Of MB > ... >> That said, my favorite music in the world is old hymn *tunes* >> - a childhood remnant: >> lying in my bed at night and listening to my older brother >> play the piano downstairs. All was right with my world. >> Comfort food for the mind/heart. > > Oy, how well I can relate to that sentiment. > >> But the theology? Yikes! > > What MB, you don't like the notion of some innocent person being brutally > murdered for your sins? ?I just can't understand why. > >> I like to sing solfege to those tunes. ;) I grew up in a weak agnostic family (fence sitters), and became a strong Atheist. Church music wasn't any part of my upbringing. As an adult, I've learnt to sing, and it's been weird for me to discover a love for, and become strongly involved in, church music. It's great stuff! It turns out that, if you get the very best musicians in the world to write your propaganda tunes for you, the resulting canon is really extraordinary. In the end, I can't throw this stuff away, just because of its religious message. I figure, if it was all about Zeus, or Woden, it wouldn't phase me (or likely any atheist) in the slightest. It's just music inspired by the old legends. When I'm in church in my professional capacity, I revel in the singing, I speak all the bolded phrases in the order of service (which does feel a bit weird, but it's politeness), and I don't take communion. Oddly enough, I think I like the hymns and so forth a lot more than the faithful flock, who've heard them a thousand times before. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From mbb386 at main.nc.us Mon May 18 00:38:55 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 20:38:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4A0A48FE.5030800@rawbw.com><580930c20905150626y3262b664oa213e5d0c5814dad@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090515135652.02510498@satx.rr.com><580930c20905151715v3f2fca2eu575d63511d00fa03@mail.gmail.com><20090516002401.GA12892@ofb.net><7.0.1.0.2.20090515212000.080c5b48@satx.rr.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090516113634.02248d20@satx.rr.com><4A0F11C9.8020908@libero.it><7.0.1.0.2.20090516152047.0225fe00@satx.rr.com><0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z><197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike><4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com><32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us><3AD9C69A9D1A45C59CDE77919B79E8D7@patrick4ezsk6z><32982.12.77.168.186.1242578480.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <33011.12.77.168.219.1242584733.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <33660.12.77.168.222.1242607135.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > What else could I do besides stand there and > listen to the music and look at the pageantry? > Heh. Yes. Pageantry. All those candles, floor to ceiling paintings of unknown holy men and women, saints whose names I did not know, the incense wafting everywhere, and the wonderful powerful singers singing in a strange and unknown tongue. Wow! The old women in black were a bit discouraging though, all huddled up. I didn't realize the Orthodox church supported the Nazis too. :( Regards, MB From pjmanney at gmail.com Mon May 18 00:41:28 2009 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 17:41:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] humor and wit In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517183310.0227c4a8@satx.rr.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090517142952.02483338@satx.rr.com> <33089.12.77.168.219.1242589782.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <33629.12.77.168.222.1242602759.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <7.0.1.0.2.20090517183310.0227c4a8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <29666bf30905171741w359650f6m98346f5382667ee8@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 4:40 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > And wit is amazingly culture-specific. Indeed. Comedy is subjective. Tragedy tends to be more objective. Please don't bother getting into a debate on "what is objective/subjective?" on this. Moving along... > think it offers an interesting glimpse into a witty haiku-like-thingee that > can't easily be conveyed to any of us except maybe Jef That's if the haiku is Japanese. >From David Bader's Haikus for Jews (bringing things full circle is always fulfilling...) http://www.gluckman.com/harry/Jewish%20Haiku.htm Is one Nobel Prize so much to ask from a child after all I've done? or this one: Beyond Valium, the peace of knowing one's child is an internist. and this: Five thousand years a wandering people--then we found the cabanas. Not surprisingly, I find them hilarious (and painfully true, which is why they're hilarious). The rest of you, most likely not. However, Bill K is also correct. The history of 20th C. American humor, especially in entertainment, has been mostly shaped by Jewish humor. (Read something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_humor if you are intent on knowing why.) Also, regarding Isaac Asimov: most American Jews in the 20th c. have very consciously denied their Jewishness had anything to do with their achievements and regardless of religiosity, downplay their cultural heritage. This is the norm in the community, due to assimilation, prejudice and secularization. But I wager Isaac would have laughed from the "Nobel" haiku along with the rest of us closet cases... :) Of course, how any of this is extropic is beyond me. PJ From mbb386 at main.nc.us Mon May 18 00:58:56 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 20:58:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] humor and wit In-Reply-To: <29666bf30905171741w359650f6m98346f5382667ee8@mail.gmail.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0FCC2C930AF04DDB92B8011C53476642@patrick4ezsk6z> <197210A6342C48BC810167DF76F64B97@spike> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090517142952.02483338@satx.rr.com> <33089.12.77.168.219.1242589782.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <33629.12.77.168.222.1242602759.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <7.0.1.0.2.20090517183310.0227c4a8@satx.rr.com> <29666bf30905171741w359650f6m98346f5382667ee8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <33675.12.77.168.222.1242608336.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> PJ writes: > Is one Nobel Prize > so much to ask from a child > after all I've done? > > or this one: > > Beyond Valium, > the peace of knowing one's child > is an internist. > > and this: > > Five thousand years a > wandering people--then we > found the cabanas. > > Not surprisingly, I find them hilarious (and painfully true, which is > why they're hilarious). The rest of you, most likely not. Oh I don't know. :))) The first time I saw these I howled with laughter, tears running. Truly PJ, many of them cross culture lines, many moms are like the "jewish mother". My favorite was: Lovely nose ring - excuse me while I put my head in the oven. Regards, MB From max at maxmore.com Mon May 18 00:39:51 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 19:39:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Transhumanist comix: blog post Message-ID: <200905180108.n4I18359025390@andromeda.ziaspace.com> You're a transhumanist, or you're fascinated by the possibilities of a future grander than the past. You're really smart. You may be uneasy about asking which comics/graphics novels are worth reading. It's for you that I present: "Everything you always wanted to know about transhumanist comics but were afraid to ask." See the list (with short notes) at: http://strategicphilosophy.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------------- Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com ------------------------------------- From mail at harveynewstrom.com Mon May 18 01:46:24 2009 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 21:46:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] jewish humor, was the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> Message-ID: <200905172146.25488.mail@harveynewstrom.com> On Sunday 17 May 2009 3:11:09 pm spike wrote: > A New Yorker is crossing a bridge and sees another man about to jump, asks > why, the jumper says "It is so unfair. ?I designed this beautiful bridge you > are standing on, but do the people point at me and say 'There goes Jacob, > the famous bridgebuilder'? ?NO! ?And I helped draw up the blueprints of half > the skyscrapers you see there, but do the people say 'There goes Jacob, the > great architect'? ?NO! ?But I get caught with just ONE LITTLE COCK in my > mouth, and they all point and say..." > > Made ya laugh, didn't it? Why? At the risk of being accused of being humor impaired, I have to say that I can't imagine laughing at a gay guy about to commit suicide because he had been outed. I can't see how this would be funny to anybody unless they had preconditioned to think gays are funny, gays are unusual, and gays should be ashamed of themselves. Without those prerequisites, this joke simply doesn't make any sense. Seriously, try making this joke about a heterosexual and see if it can in any way be made funny. If not, the alleged humor lies in laughing at gays rather than laughing at something inherent in the joke itself. -- Harvey Newstrom From fauxever at sprynet.com Mon May 18 01:47:05 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 18:47:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews References: <33660.12.77.168.222.1242607135.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <6127B52E4141402C888E54922B64FB26@patrick4ezsk6z> From: "MB" To: "ExI chat list" > Heh. Yes. Pageantry. All those candles, floor to ceiling paintings of > unknown > holy men and women, saints whose names I did not know, the incense wafting > everywhere, and the wonderful powerful singers singing in a strange and > unknown > tongue. Wow! It was a known language to me, but the messages never interested me. Blessings, praises, grovelings ... > The old women in black were a bit discouraging though, all huddled up. They creeped me out (especially when then knelt down and continually bonged their heads on the floor after crossing themselves, over and over again). > I didn't realize the Orthodox church supported the Nazis too. :( It's difficult to separate the church from the culture (and during the Bolshevik years, it was just as difficult to separate the Communist regime from the culture). I only recently started delving into this: http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521845122 The not cultured, Olga > Regards, > MB > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 18 02:13:40 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 19:13:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] against Many Worlds QT In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517135057.0238a828@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A10C454.9080506@rawbw.com> Jef writes > > One world versus many: the > > inadequacy of Everettian accounts of > > evolution, probability, and scientific > > confirmation > > > Among the scientific virtues of this account, as I see it, are its > > explicitness about the provisional nature of our > > theories, and its undogmatic sidestepping of the problem of giving a > > fundamental meaning to probability. It recognizes > > the possibility that random-seeming data may turn out to have a simpler > > description. It recognizes too that, if we find > > consistent regularities that a probabilistic theory says are highly > > improbable, then we should and will feel impelled > > to produce a better theory. At the same time, it stays silent on the > > question of whether random-seeming physical > > data are genuinely randomly generated in some fundamental sense, and > > hence avoids the need to explain what such > > an assertion could really mean and how we could be persuaded of its truth. Well, I don't have any problem with the authors "staying silent" on a difficult subject, but Jef raises his side's (I'd call anti-realist) take on the matter: > How refreshing to see emphasis on good science as increasing coherence > over increasing context rather than the epistemologically untenable > "uncovering of truth." For realists like me, attempting to uncover the truth, or perhaps just modeling our activities as a pursuit of a (completely) unattainable final goal, is definitely the best approach. Reinforcing the realist position, Sunny Auyang describes quantum field theory is what is regarded by some (including me) the easiest introduction to quantum field theory so far written, namely her "How Is Quantum Field Theory Possible?", though even at the pure philosophical/epistemological level, it's pretty heavy going. Chris Hibbert has a great blog entry about her book: http://pancrit.blogspot.com/2007/08/sunny-auyang-how-is-quantum-field.html and it captures a great many of the non-technical parts of the Auyang book. Lee From spike66 at att.net Mon May 18 02:07:40 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 19:07:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] humor In-Reply-To: <200905172146.25488.mail@harveynewstrom.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us><66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> <200905172146.25488.mail@harveynewstrom.com> Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Harvey Newstrom > Sent: Sunday, May 17, 2009 6:46 PM > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: Re: [ExI] jewish humor, was the anti-Jews > > On Sunday 17 May 2009 3:11:09 pm spike wrote: > > A New Yorker is crossing a bridge and sees another man > about to jump, > > asks why, the jumper says "It is so unfair. ?I designed > this beautiful > > bridge you are standing on, but do the people point at me and say > > 'There goes Jacob, the famous bridgebuilder'? ?NO! ?And I > helped draw > > up the blueprints of half the skyscrapers you see there, but do the > > people say 'There goes Jacob, the great architect'? ?NO! ?But I get > > caught with just ONE LITTLE COCK in my mouth, and they all > point and say..." > > > > Made ya laugh, didn't it? Why? > > At the risk of being accused of being humor impaired, I have > to say that I can't imagine laughing at a gay guy about to > commit suicide because he had been outed. > ... > -- > Harvey Newstrom Harvey, the joke actually ridicules society, shames society's values. He built bridges, designed buildings! But let him use an alternate orifice for sensual pleasure and now he's derided, all of his accomplishments forgotten. The gay jumper is the sympathetic character. It really is unfair. I picture myself in that situation; even tho I am not particularly competent with human emotions, I think I could talk the guy down. A common thread in Jewish humor, according to Asimov, is a sense of tragedy along with the comedy. spike From mbb386 at main.nc.us Mon May 18 02:26:17 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 22:26:17 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <6127B52E4141402C888E54922B64FB26@patrick4ezsk6z> References: <33660.12.77.168.222.1242607135.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <6127B52E4141402C888E54922B64FB26@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <34101.12.77.168.178.1242613577.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > >> The old women in black were a bit discouraging though, all huddled up. > > They creeped me out (especially when then knelt down and continually bonged > their heads on the floor after crossing themselves, over and over again). Ah yes, you were in "the mother church" - not the American copy. There were pews in the church I attended, and those old women huddled in them all bowed up. They didn't bong their heads on anything that I saw, but they darn near prostrated themselves to the priest. He did look impressive in his golden robes and all, but I was never tempted to fall down before him! ;) To me it was costume. > >> I didn't realize the Orthodox church supported the Nazis too. :( > > It's difficult to separate the church from the culture (and during the > Bolshevik years, it was just as difficult to separate the Communist regime > from the culture). I only recently started delving into this: > > http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521845122 Oooh. :( That will be depressing reading I think. I think our original emails in this thread were confusing culture with religion. As you say, it's often hard to separate them. Asimov was culturally a Jew and he said as much in the joke book spike and I referenced. Regards, MB From fauxever at sprynet.com Mon May 18 02:37:45 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 19:37:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews References: <33660.12.77.168.222.1242607135.squirrel@www.main.nc.us><6127B52E4141402C888E54922B64FB26@patrick4ezsk6z> <34101.12.77.168.178.1242613577.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <90916596D5C844E989D455F50523DC41@patrick4ezsk6z> From: "MB" To: "ExI chat list" >> They creeped me out (especially when then knelt down and continually >> bonged >> their heads on the floor after crossing themselves, over and over again). > > Ah yes, you were in "the mother church" - not the American copy. There > were pews in the church I attended, and those old women huddled in them > all bowed up. They didn't bong their heads on anything that I saw, but > they darn near prostrated themselves to the priest. He did look > impressive in his golden robes and all, but I was never tempted to fall > down before him! ;) To me it was costume. That was the trouble with the churches. It wasn't enough that you belonged ... you had to belong to the RIGHT ONE. Y'all parishioners of the American-copy churches ... hellbound!!! >>I only recently started delving into this: >> >> http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521845122 > > Oooh. :( That will be depressing reading I think. :(( yessir. From aware at awareresearch.com Mon May 18 03:12:53 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 20:12:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] against Many Worlds QT In-Reply-To: <4A10C454.9080506@rawbw.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517135057.0238a828@satx.rr.com> <4A10C454.9080506@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 7:13 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > For realists like me, attempting to uncover the truth, > or perhaps just modeling our activities as a pursuit > of a (completely) unattainable final goal, is definitely > the best approach. Lee, my purpose in raising this issue will be served when it's recognized that you simply can't "model" an "unattainable final goal." What is the behavior of this element? Precisely how does it constrain the behavior of the model as a whole? Your imagined "realism" is incoherent, epistemologically untenable as I said earlier, despite the righteousness with which it is defended against the perceived threats of vague mush-headedness, mysticism, relativism, postmodernism, etc., none of which are my position. Your position is not so much wrong as it is lacking in the sophistication necessary for effective reasoning about complex, evolving, *open* systems increasingly applicable to our world of increasing technological and social change. - Jef From max at maxmore.com Mon May 18 03:48:53 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 22:48:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] against Many Worlds QT Message-ID: <200905180349.n4I3n2nc007425@andromeda.ziaspace.com> I can't agree with you on this Jef. Realism can be highly sophisticated. For instance, see Images of Science: Essays on Realism and Empiricism , by Paul M. Churchland and Clifford A. Hooker http://www.amazon.com/Images-Science-Empiricism-Conceptual-Foundations/dp/0226106543/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242618421&sr=1-1 Max Jef said to Lee: >Your imagined "realism" is incoherent, epistemologically untenable >as I said earlier, despite the righteousness with which it is >defended against the perceived threats of vague mush-headedness, >mysticism, relativism, postmodernism, etc., none of which are my position. > >Your position is not so much wrong as it is lacking in the >sophistication necessary for effective reasoning about complex, >evolving, *open* systems increasingly applicable to our world of >increasing technological and social change. ------------------------------------- Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com ------------------------------------- From pjmanney at gmail.com Mon May 18 04:38:04 2009 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 21:38:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] humor and wit In-Reply-To: <33675.12.77.168.222.1242608336.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090517142952.02483338@satx.rr.com> <33089.12.77.168.219.1242589782.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <33629.12.77.168.222.1242602759.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <7.0.1.0.2.20090517183310.0227c4a8@satx.rr.com> <29666bf30905171741w359650f6m98346f5382667ee8@mail.gmail.com> <33675.12.77.168.222.1242608336.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <29666bf30905172138l1426b9fesf98ee5c8a7058f41@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 5:58 PM, MB wrote: > My favorite was: > > Lovely nose ring - > excuse me while I put my > head in the oven. Oh man, MB... ... I love that one! PJ From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 18 04:55:47 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 21:55:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] against Many Worlds QT In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517135057.0238a828@satx.rr.com> <4A10C454.9080506@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A10EA53.40704@rawbw.com> Max wrote > I can't agree with you on this Jef. > Realism can be highly sophisticated. Well, Jef could retort that it is merely *my* version of realism that isn't very highly sophisticated :) Aware wrote: > On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 7:13 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: >> For realists like me, attempting to uncover the truth, >> or perhaps just modeling our activities as a pursuit >> of a (completely) unattainable final goal, is definitely >> the best approach. > > Lee, my purpose in raising this issue will be served when it's > recognized that you simply can't "model" an "unattainable final goal." > What is the behavior of this element? Precisely how does it > constrain the behavior of the model as a whole? Here is what the driving analogies are: our models (or theories *about*) physical reality. Suppose that you and I are measuring a temperature or merely the length of a rod. It is EXTREMELY USEFUL, I contend, to maintain that our measurements are converging on something. Something real, i.e., though the measuring rod we know to be a host of dancing sub-elementary particles (again, we "know" as an approximation to something that somehow really does make up the measuring rod), the thing we're trying to measure is on average of our measurements closer and closer to something, and our rod is (can be measured to be) more and more exactly some multiple of the one they keep in Paris. > Your position is not so much wrong as it is lacking in the > sophistication necessary for effective reasoning about complex, > evolving, *open* systems increasingly applicable to our world of > increasing technological and social change. On the contrary, to me your position invites degeneration into vague concepts and doubtful epistemologies. For example, what I describe can be easily translated into any language in the world, and then translated back without much loss. I'd be far less confident that your notions would survive that test as well. Best regards, (not meaning to be "righteous", etc.) Lee From hkhenson at rogers.com Mon May 18 04:32:30 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 21:32:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Postal QM was against Many Worlds QT In-Reply-To: <200905180349.n4I3n2nc007425@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905180349.n4I3n2nc007425@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1242621626_7362@s5.cableone.net> I have never managed to get a QM wonk to explain how this thought experiments fails to reproduce the observations. Imagine an experiment where a person in a dark room shakes up a dice cup with a black marble and a white marble. Then they put one of them in a box and mail it off to a thousand miles. When the recipient opens the box, she *instantly* know the color of the marble in the other box. This can be extended to more colors, but the essence is that if the splitting process is random but correlated this way, there is no mystery to the observations. Keith From eschatoon at gmail.com Mon May 18 05:00:43 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 07:00:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the anti-Jews In-Reply-To: <200905171048.33350.mail@harveynewstrom.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <2d6187670905162331v56afde42q3f0bfd842b682dcd@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905170452r5e15bfcbr9845861ec15b2411@mail.gmail.com> <200905171048.33350.mail@harveynewstrom.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905172200s69c5bb28mf5158ff46b5293f0@mail.gmail.com> Unfortunately the only topics that seem to stimulate some interest on the list lately are those related to the superiority of a race or economic system wrt others. Sad. On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 4:48 PM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > On Sunday 17 May 2009 7:52:01 am Stefano Vaj wrote: >> As in many cases, the exchange is interesting, but what all that would >> have to do with the list topic? > > I wonder this myself every time this topic cycles around on this list. ?There > is obviously some connection to transhumanism in some people's minds, based on > the frequency of its appearance here. > > -- > Harvey Newstrom -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 18 05:37:36 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 22:37:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Postal QM was against Many Worlds QT In-Reply-To: <1242621626_7362@s5.cableone.net> References: <200905180349.n4I3n2nc007425@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1242621626_7362@s5.cableone.net> Message-ID: <4A10F420.1060104@rawbw.com> Keith writes > I have never managed to get a QM wonk to explain how this thought > experiments fails to reproduce the observations. > > Imagine an experiment where a person in a dark room shakes up a dice cup > with a black marble and a white marble. Then they put one of them in a > box and mail it off to a thousand miles. > > When the recipient opens the box, she *instantly* know the color of the > marble in the other box. > > This can be extended to more colors, but the essence is that if the > splitting process is random but correlated this way, there is no mystery > to the observations. Right, if it were only correlated in that way, then there wouldn't have been any mystery, and all the people like David Bohm who worked so desperately to come up with a classical explanation wouldn't have had to. "Bertlmann's socks" is the familiar statement of the point you've raised. The professor was said to always wear socks of two different colors, and so if you saw one of them, you instantly knew something about the color of the other. Here is part of J.S. Bell's book "Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics" (I hope that the Google book search link works). http://books.google.com/books?id=FGnnHxh2YtQC&pg=PA139&lpg=PA139&dq=Bertlmann%27s+socks&source=bl&ots=3rO8QOnrX3&sig=5rrvDx91phWQ-Ptk9XI4II1dwv8&hl=en&ei=xvEQSvGlOqbItAPg-8TzAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9#PPA150,M1 The article is a bit too technical in places, but the introduction is great. Basically, as I see it, both quantum theory and quantum experiment rule out two EPR particles actually being in definite states as they flee away from each other. (Unlike the socks, or those postal marbles.) "Bell's Inequality" turned out to be a formal proof that no ordinary realistic account is possible. (David Deutsch maintains, and it makes sense to me, that the MWI is a completely local, realistic theory.) Here is what happens in the MWI handling of EPR: http://www.leecorbin.com/EPR_MWI.html , my essay on why EPR is not a mystery under MWI. Lee From emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon May 18 06:54:11 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 16:24:11 +0930 Subject: [ExI] birds again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <710b78fc0905172354w2123b4b0y4512ddeeb9249564@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/17 spike : > This is an example of one of those videos that makes you glad you lived to > see it: > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8vjYTXgIJw > > Applications to ant observations:?apparently the technology exists to do > what I was hoping to do, which is?magnify and slow the action so that we can > really see what the heck it is that the ants are doing.? Currently they are > too fast and too small to know for sure.? I don't know how much the camera > equipment costs.? This is a perfect example of a new technology that will > enable a bunch of amateur scientists to make a original contributions to the > field.? Humans have been watching beasts since forever, but ants and smaller > beasts are difficult to observe.? New cameras might enable it. > > spike > I bet they would, that'd be very very cool. Maybe you could install one underground even, looking into the nest? Something else... I wonder if there's a way you could make ants fluoresce (paint them??), or otherwise be bright in a non-visible part of the spectrum? Then you could do nice long exposure stuff of where they go. Check out this one of a roomba: http://www.doobybrain.com/2009/05/08/long-exposure-shows-roomba-cleaning-path/ Only slightly related, check out this "time warp" from the same series as the hummingbird above, of a guy being punched in the face. We really are sacks of liquid! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FqpDmUO0y0&feature=channel -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon May 18 07:07:59 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 16:37:59 +0930 Subject: [ExI] birds again In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905172354w2123b4b0y4512ddeeb9249564@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0905172354w2123b4b0y4512ddeeb9249564@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905180007w722b5271k31895100882ffa31@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/18 Emlyn : > 2009/5/17 spike : >> This is an example of one of those videos that makes you glad you lived to >> see it: >> >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8vjYTXgIJw >> >> Applications to ant observations:?apparently the technology exists to do >> what I was hoping to do, which is?magnify and slow the action so that we can >> really see what the heck it is that the ants are doing.? Currently they are >> too fast and too small to know for sure.? I don't know how much the camera >> equipment costs.? This is a perfect example of a new technology that will >> enable a bunch of amateur scientists to make a original contributions to the >> field.? Humans have been watching beasts since forever, but ants and smaller >> beasts are difficult to observe.? New cameras might enable it. >> >> spike >> Oh, a quick bonus on the subject of online video. Do you people watch TED? If you don't, you've got to start! http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks A cool example: A talk about how bacteria not only communicate using chemical cues, but how they actually all use the same mechanism, which means that there looks to be some potential in intercepting and messing with the signals. Maybe we can get all Bletchley Park on them? http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Mon May 18 06:45:14 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 23:45:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] against Many Worlds QT Message-ID: <399454.76040.qm@web110412.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/18/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > From: Lee Corbin > On the contrary, to me your position invites degeneration into vague concepts and doubtful epistemologies. Do you know what the word degeneration means? The actual meaning of the word? Ihmo...I really like you're opinion most of the time because it causes reflection. I like to look at things from different perspectives at all times. > For example, what I describe can be easily translated into any language in the world, and then translated back without much loss. I'd be far less confident that your notions would survive that test as well. Lee, I have been reading you're writing for a while and I'm still not convinced, mind you, I understand and I only speak only 2 languages. Trying to be funny with a bit of sarcasm:) Anna __________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com. From eschatoon at gmail.com Mon May 18 09:56:31 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 11:56:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] against Many Worlds QT In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517135057.0238a828@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517135057.0238a828@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905180256v10ddf1fj5529f52470532a43@mail.gmail.com> Interesting. Experiment should decide, as soon we can design experiments to assess Everett's MWI vs.other interpretations of quantum physics. In the meantime, all interpretations of quantum physics consistent with experiment are, indeed, interpretations: different labels, conceptual models and intuitive visualizations for the same set of experimental results. Without having studied this paper in detail I would hazard that the references to things like "utilitarianism, or any other strategy, is the unique rational way of optimizing the welfare of one?s own, and other people?s, many future selves in a multiverse" seem a bit out of place. The universe does not know, or care, of rationality, morality and our welfare. It just does its own thing, and it is up to us to find useful and workable models for its behaviour. On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 8:51 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.0624 > > > One world versus many: the inadequacy of Everettian accounts of evolution, > probability, and scientific confirmation > > Authors: Adrian > Kent > (Submitted on 5 May 2009) > Abstract: There is a compelling intellectual case for exploring whether > purely unitary quantum theory defines a sensible and scientifically adequate > theory, as Everett originally proposed. Many different and incompatible > attempts to define a coherent Everettian quantum theory have been made over > the past fifty years. However, no known version of the theory (unadorned by > extra ad hoc postulates) can account for the appearance of probabilities and > explain why the theory it was meant to replace, Copenhagen quantum theory, > appears to be confirmed, or more generally why our evolutionary history > appears to be Born-rule typical. This article reviews some ingenious and > interesting recent attempts in this direction by Wallace, Greaves, Myrvold > and others, and explains why they don't work. An account of one-world > randomness, which appears scientifically satisfactory, and has no > many-worlds analogue, is proposed. A fundamental obstacle to confirming > many-worlds theories is illustrated by considering some toy many-worlds > models. These models show that branch weights can exist without having any > role in either rational decision-making or theory confirmation, and also > that the latter two roles are logically separate. Wallace's proposed > decision theoretic axioms for rational agents in a multiverse and claimed > derivation of the Born rule are examined. It is argued that Wallace's > strategy of axiomatizing a mathematically precise decision theory within a > fuzzy Everettian quasiclassical ontology is incoherent. Moreover, Wallace's > axioms are not constitutive of rationality either in Everettian quantum > theory or in theories in which branchings and branch weights are precisely > defined. In both cases, there exist coherent rational strategies that > violate some of the axioms. > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From mbb386 at main.nc.us Mon May 18 10:46:41 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 06:46:41 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] humor and wit In-Reply-To: <29666bf30905172138l1426b9fesf98ee5c8a7058f41@mail.gmail.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A0FAB17.1060302@rawbw.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090517142952.02483338@satx.rr.com> <33089.12.77.168.219.1242589782.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <33629.12.77.168.222.1242602759.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <7.0.1.0.2.20090517183310.0227c4a8@satx.rr.com> <29666bf30905171741w359650f6m98346f5382667ee8@mail.gmail.com> <33675.12.77.168.222.1242608336.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <29666bf30905172138l1426b9fesf98ee5c8a7058f41@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <34160.12.77.169.21.1242643601.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 5:58 PM, MB wrote: >> My favorite was: >> >> Lovely nose ring - >> excuse me while I put my >> head in the oven. > > Oh man, MB... ... I love that one! > I find it screamingly funny myself, though it reminds me of an uncomfortable visit with my brother - my son had pierced his ear and had a small earring on. Note that my son was in college by then. My brother, an old WW2 veteran, was not pleased when he eventually noticed this and went up to my son with (half formed) intentions of removing the earring. That did not happen, thank heaven, but there was some heated discussion of men wearing earrings and body piercing in general. The only generally approved piercings appeared to be women, for earrings, one pierce per ear! Some lovely girls have (IMHO) rather frightful piercings and tattoos - I wonder how that'll all work out at age 65 or so. Or for getting a job in a professional field. Did you see that email going around of tattoo/piercing pics, "Why can't I get a job?" AMAZING! 8C Regards, MB ... grateful that my daughter did not get a nose ring! .... From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 18 13:14:57 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 06:14:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] rich dad poor dad Message-ID: <274806.43691.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 5/13/09, spike wrote: > There is a local seminar from the author of Rich Dad Poor > Dad that is being > advertised on the radio.? The lead-in advice to > attract listeners seems like > terrible advice.? Perhaps some here have heard the > ads.? They say right up > front that working and saving will never get you rich > (therefore don't > bother trying.)? There are other notions in there that > will likely prove > ruinous to those who follow the advice, but consider the > masses who hear the > ads and do not attend the seminar.? I can imagine the > actual ads leading to > financial ruin for millions. Well, I've not read or listened to the book, but my feeling is that while just working hard and saving might not make you rich, they probably won't make or keep you poor -- though this depends on a lot of other factors. Still, in my view, the odds are against the guy who starts with little, has average talents, and decides not to work and save. This reminds me of Nassim Taleb's story of the tooth driller vs. the trash collector who wins the lottery. IIRC, his point was people will look at the latter and go for that career -- low income hoping for the lucky break -- forgetting that winning the lottery is fortuitous and almost totally out of your control. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 18 14:10:03 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 07:10:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses Message-ID: <909287.81156.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/15/09, Michael LaTorra wrote: > Hi Dan, > Sorry to say this, but your response looks like just > another?baseless complaint against the overwhelming > evidence that most supplements do not work, either in animal > studies or in human studies.? It does? How so? I started with: "I would like to read the specifics of research." How is this just "another baseless complaint"? Expressions of a desire to know more about the actual work -- as opposed to what's been reported in the newspaper -- is a "baseless complaint"? I'm not sure I follow you here. Isn't the habit of mind for those interested in being scientific one of being a bit skeptical, of seeking out evidence? Or does that not apply when one has an axe to grind? ? > I say this as someone who took supplements for over 20 > years. All I got was kidney stones. I don't know the specifics of your case -- what you took in what doses and what else was relevant here. So, such a statement just thrown out means little here. Probably thousands of people have mega-dosed on some supplements, too, and did not get kidney stones. Without knowing the specifics of each of these cases, this tells us nothing. Let me make an analogy. It's like you telling me you ate food and got a stomach ache tones and me pointing out lots of people eat food and don't get stomach aches. Well, what food did you eat? What food did they eat? Is there any evidence the specific food you ate gave you a stomach ache? ? > Please remember that the most powerful advocacy group > for the use of supplements is comprised of those who sell > them. I agree that people who sell anything want to make you think you need that thing. Who would disagree on this? However, it seems to me you're assuming that anyone who questions newspaper reports must be unfamiliar with this incentive -- surely, not the only incentive -- to bias research. > Researchers who do not sell supplements or receive > financial support from those that do -- in other words, > people who stake their reputations on the quality of their > research -- have conducted truly disinterested research and > found little value to most supplements. I don't know if that's so -- that "[r]esearchers who do not sell supplements or receive financial support from those that do... have conducted truly disinterested research and found little value to most supplements." I doubt you do either. I also don't know that "[r]esearchers who do not sell supplements or receive financial support from those that do" are completely unbiased and their research must not be scrutinized. In my view, all research should be scrutinized -- even if it is done by people acting from the noblest motives, completely untainted by avarice, and who steadfastedly passionate only about a dispassionate search for the truth. Hence my statement about wanting to "read the specifics of research." Apparently, though, this set off alarm bells. How dare I question the article! How dare I ask for more details! How do I not accept what's reported without question! By the way, regardless of how pure the researchers are, the NY Times, I believe, exists to sell newspapers. Articles are printed there based on, I believe, a pecuniary motive. Why not question that? (For the record, I don't know what the reporter's motives were or why the story ran. I'm actually more interested in the study it's reporting on.) > This is what the science -- also known as > "evidenced-based" investigation -- tells us. I'm asking for evidence -- for an '"evidence-based" investigation.' Apparently, for some, this only applies to research they don't agree with. > If > you prefer "faith-based" belief systems, or simply > accepting what industry shills tell you, then fine, believe > whatever you like. Please read what I wrote. I didn't ask anyone to blindly accept the view that all supplements work or that all studies in support of them are valid while ones against them are not. Nor did I claim only what "industry shills" says should be accepted. (And believe you me, I think a lot of the pro-supplement reporting is biased.) In case you missed it, here's the sum total of my previous post: "I would like to read the specifics of research. "From the article, they mentioned "moderate doses." Since I'm not sure what exactly they mean, I think it's premature to just to the conclusion of "[o]nce again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses." Without knowing more details -- were the young men in good health? what were their ages? how often did they exercise? how long did the study last? what were the doses and how often? what types of C and E were used? -- this looks like more little more than another typical hit-and-run attack on supplements. I mean most people will trust the NY Times, but this story lacks the context where an informed person might judge whether the claims made are valid and whether to stop using these two micronutrients." > But don't raise a bunch of niggling quibbles > as if you had some greater knowledge on the topic > than the scientists who researched it. I made and make no claims of greater knowledge. I did ask some fairly simple and concrete questions: "were the young men in good health? what were their ages? how often did they exercise? how long did the study last? what were the doses and how often? what types of C and E were used?" I submit, without knowing these, one can't say much about the study. As should be obvious from my post, this was not an attack on the researchers; I haven't read their work, so I don't know what they conclude, what their methods were, etc. All I know, at this point, is what the newspaper article states. I'm sure the actual study would answer some of these questions, but you cited the newspaper article -- not the study. I usually avoid citing articles written in the popular press on supplements, drugs, etc. because they tend to follow a pattern that runs from one day seriously reporting that this supplement cures everything to another reporting that it fails to cure anything to still another saying it's dangerous and should be avoided like the plague. > If you want to read their report to verify their > protocols and so forth, then by all means do so > and report back to us. But this is not what > you have done. Actually, I'll try to find it, but I find it strange that a person who supposedly advocates 'science -- also known as "evidenced-based" investigation' is not the one to do so first. I mean, from my perspective, I'd expect you'd have already read the study. Apparently, though, you haven't. In other words, you seem not to be following your advice. > You've snidely impugned their work in the > very manner of the "faith-based" industry shills > who earn their living selling the modern equivalent > of snake oil. I wasn't impugning the researchers per se, but the reporter for not giving enough details. Hence my line: "I mean most people will trust the NY Times, but this story lacks the context where an informed person might judge whether the claims made are valid and whether to stop using these two micronutrients." My view is that most people are not going to weigh all the research, attempt to sort which is biased much less which is valid and correct (note, again: unbiased does not mean valid or correct; sometimes even honest, well meaning, hard working, seasoned researchers get it wrong), and then adjust their regimen according. Instead, they're going to read the NY Times, the paper of record for the nation, and accept this as basically true. My fear is that it might not be true. If it isn't, then the article has the potential to lead many people down the wrong path. (This is, of course, aside from what the researchers said or what conclusions might actually be drawn from their work. It could be that the article misinterprets their research.) You also failed to show how the article itself actually talks about "moderate doses" -- not "large doses." You mention the latter in your subject line. Why? Do you know what doses were used? Were these "large"? How large? Why then do you not mention that the article talks about "moderate doses"? Don't tell me you don't know! After all, you've chastised me about not being "evidence-based." ? I'll ignore the rest of your insults. Regards, Dan From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 18 14:44:31 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 00:44:31 +1000 Subject: [ExI] against Many Worlds QT In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90905180256v10ddf1fj5529f52470532a43@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517135057.0238a828@satx.rr.com> <1fa8c3b90905180256v10ddf1fj5529f52470532a43@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/18 Eschatoon Magic : > Interesting. Experiment should decide, as soon we can design > experiments to assess Everett's MWI vs.other interpretations of > quantum physics. In the meantime, all interpretations of quantum > physics consistent with experiment are, indeed, interpretations: > different labels, conceptual models and intuitive visualizations for > the same set of experimental results. > > Without having studied this paper in detail I would hazard that the > references to things like "utilitarianism, or any other strategy, is > the unique rational way of optimizing the welfare of one?s own, and > other people?s, many future selves in a multiverse" seem a bit out of > place. The universe does not know, or care, of rationality, morality > and our welfare. It just does its own thing, and it is up to us to > find useful and workable models for its behaviour. The author seems to be arguing that many worlds should allow the possibility of using all sorts of strange utility functions not available to single world theories, and that this damages the case for using decision theory to derive the Born rule in MWI, since one such attempt to do so requires the (unjustified, it is claimed) adoption of mean utilitarianism. The author also seems to have a problem with how probabilities are deduced by observers in the MWI (or any multiverse model). He points out that any observer following a sequence of random events like coin tosses will conclude that the pattern he observes is indicative of a particular bias that might not be there: someone will definitely observe a sequence of 1000 heads, and that person will conclude the coin is heavily biased, even though it isn't. But I don't see how this is different to single world probability if you have a large number of non-communicating experimenters tossing coins: a small number might conclude that the coin is biased, but most will get approximately 50/50 heads/tails, just as in the MWI. The author discusses model multiverses which we could create with a branching computer program, and uses these to support his contention that probability doesn't work in the MWI. But *something* has to happen in these models, if they are physically possible. That is, the observers would come up with some sort of physical theory and account of probability. It doesn't do to throw up one's hands and say that probability becomes meaningless in these cases. -- Stathis Papaioannou From jef at jefallbright.net Mon May 18 11:10:18 2009 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 04:10:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] against Many Worlds QT In-Reply-To: <200905180349.n4I3n2nc007425@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905180349.n4I3n2nc007425@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 8:48 PM, Max More wrote: > I can't agree with you on this Jef. Realism can be highly sophisticated. For > instance, see > Images of Science: Essays on Realism and Empiricism , by Paul M. Churchland > and Clifford A. Hooker > http://www.amazon.com/Images-Science-Empiricism-Conceptual-Foundations/dp/0226106543/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242618421&sr=1-1 Max, my point was not that Realism can't be highly sophisticated, but that Lee's "imagined realism"--his view of realism--upon which he bases characteristic statements about the "simple truth" or the "fact of the matter" or as he says here "definitely the best", is unsophisticated and lacking in coherence. My point is not that there is no reality, but that the reality which can be expressed is not the true reality. And that we would do well to let go of early 20th century aspirations toward increasing certainty about the Truth of the workings of a clockwork universe, and embrace a pragmatic view of increasing instrumental truth (probability) within a context of ever-increasing uncertainty (possibility.) Evolution itself is evolving. The methods of scientific discovery and mathematical proof are evolving. The more we know, the more questions we can ask. And as necessarily embedded observers within a complexly evolving world, our effectiveness is enhanced by adopting the pragmatic systems and information-theoretic view, rather than the outdated view of Archimedes who said something like "Give me a long enough lever, and a place to stand, and I shall understand the Earth." Thanks for the book recommendation. I'll try to find time to look into it. - Jef ------------- > On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 7:13 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: >> For realists like me, attempting to uncover the truth, >> or perhaps just modeling our activities as a pursuit >> of a (completely) unattainable final goal, is definitely >> the best approach. > > Lee, my purpose in raising this issue will be served when it's > recognized that you simply can't "model" an "unattainable final goal." > What is the behavior of this element? Precisely how does it > constrain the behavior of the model as a whole? > Your imagined "realism" is incoherent, epistemologically untenable as I > said earlier, despite the righteousness with which it is defended against > the perceived threats of vague mush-headedness, mysticism, relativism, > postmodernism, etc., none of which are my position. > > Your position is not so much wrong as it is lacking in the sophistication > necessary for effective reasoning about complex, evolving, *open* systems > increasingly applicable to our world of increasing technological and social > change. From jef at jefallbright.net Mon May 18 11:52:40 2009 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 04:52:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] against Many Worlds QT In-Reply-To: <4A10EA53.40704@rawbw.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517135057.0238a828@satx.rr.com> <4A10C454.9080506@rawbw.com> <4A10EA53.40704@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 9:55 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Max wrote > >> I can't agree with you on this Jef. >> Realism can be highly sophisticated. > > Well, Jef could retort that it is merely *my* > version of realism that isn't very highly > sophisticated :) Correct. > Aware wrote: >> >> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 7:13 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: >>> >>> For realists like me, attempting to uncover the truth, >>> or perhaps just modeling our activities as a pursuit >>> of a (completely) unattainable final goal, is definitely >>> the best approach. >> >> Lee, my purpose in raising this issue will be served when it's >> recognized that you simply can't "model" an "unattainable final goal." >> What is the behavior of this element? ?Precisely how does it >> constrain the behavior of the model as a whole? > > Here is what the driving analogies are: our models > (or theories *about*) physical reality. Suppose that > you and I are measuring a temperature or merely the > length of a rod. It is EXTREMELY USEFUL, I contend, > to maintain that our measurements are converging on > something. > > Something real, i.e., though the measuring rod we > know to be a host of dancing sub-elementary particles > (again, we "know" as an approximation to something > that somehow really does make up the measuring rod), > the thing we're trying to measure is on average of > our measurements closer and closer to something, > and our rod is (can be measured to be) more and > more exactly some multiple of the one they keep > in Paris. Would you likewise assert that Ptolemy with his epicycles was actually more *accurate* than previous theories of celestial motion? Or mightn't you agree with me that his theory was more *coherent* within the broader context of observations of his time? In the same light, you might recognize that evolutionary "progress", of which scientific progress is an instance, does not move teleologically toward any particular goal, but rather, proceeds by way of exploring its adjacent possible, responding to (local) regularities (not Truths) with persistent structures reflecting the increasingly probable. >> Your position is not so much wrong as it is lacking in the >> sophistication necessary for effective reasoning about complex, >> evolving, *open* systems increasingly applicable to our world of >> increasing technological and social change. > > On the contrary, to me your position invites > degeneration into vague concepts and doubtful > epistemologies. For example, what I describe > can be easily translated into any language > in the world, and then translated back without > much loss. I'd be far less confident that your > notions would survive that test as well. I got that same response from my kids and my newer employees. "Why can't you just be simple and clear?" And in my very practical positions as a father and a technical manager, my instrumental effectiveness continued to increase even as I operated within a broadening scope of increasing uncertainty. But you are right, it gets harder and harder to convey the bigger picture. - Jef From natasha at natasha.cc Mon May 18 15:34:27 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 10:34:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] META: Off-topic discussions In-Reply-To: <580930c20905171204q2d4690a8ja6f7fcd8f06af998@mail.gmail.com> References: <580930c20905170924g275776aej58c74d0659c8676b@mail.gmail.com><9EB7370269B84BFEA9B399C5E079AFA0@DFC68LF1> <580930c20905171204q2d4690a8ja6f7fcd8f06af998@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Stefano wrote: >transhumanist implications of any given subject - amongst anybody? To discuss transhumanist ideas amongst those interested in such ideas. Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More From max at maxmore.com Mon May 18 15:37:46 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 10:37:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] META: Off-topic discussions Message-ID: <200905181538.n4IFc1GS029714@andromeda.ziaspace.com> I don't think it's possible to establish a bright line to distinguish between posts that are suitable for this list and those that are not. At the same time, it's clear that many posts are not well suited to this list. Rather than trying to establish lots of subtle rules, I suggest that each person thinking of making a comment or starting a thread ask the question: Does this post I want to make belong on the Extropy-Chat list more than anywhere else? Is it of particular interest and concern to transhumanists, given their shared interests? Max ------------------------------------- Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com ------------------------------------- From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 18 15:53:15 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 17:53:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] META: Off-topic discussions In-Reply-To: <200905181538.n4IFc1GS029714@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905181538.n4IFc1GS029714@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905180853t390cc9e7pbdc71d52bb2400f@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 5:37 PM, Max More wrote: > I don't think it's possible to establish a bright line to distinguish > between posts that are suitable for this list and those that are not. At the > same time, it's clear that many posts are not well suited to this list. > Rather than trying to establish lots of subtle rules, I suggest that each > person thinking of making a comment or starting a thread ask the question: > > Does this post I want to make belong on the Extropy-Chat list more than > anywhere else? Is it of particular interest and concern to transhumanists, > given their shared interests? This is exactly what I meant and sounds as a very sensible suggestion. -- Stefano Vaj From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 18 16:09:14 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 16:09:14 +0000 Subject: [ExI] META: Off-topic discussions In-Reply-To: <200905181538.n4IFc1GS029714@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905181538.n4IFc1GS029714@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 5/18/09, Max More wrote: > I don't think it's possible to establish a bright line to distinguish > between posts that are suitable for this list and those that are not. At the > same time, it's clear that many posts are not well suited to this list. > Rather than trying to establish lots of subtle rules, I suggest that each > person thinking of making a comment or starting a thread ask the question: > > Does this post I want to make belong on the Extropy-Chat list more than > anywhere else? Is it of particular interest and concern to transhumanists, > given their shared interests? > Agreed, that's a good question for technical threads. For example, Biblical exegesis or mating habits of the greater-crested sea slug, while interesting in small quantities, is probably not directly concerned with transhumanism. But what about all the 'bonding' stuff? And there is a grey area between 'bonding' and light-hearted discussion about non-transhumanist subjects. I agree that serious discussion about non-transhumanist subjects probably just upsets people with no gains for the Extropy-chat list. BillK From jef at jefallbright.net Mon May 18 17:17:11 2009 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 10:17:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Increasing coherence over increasing context? Or Truth? Message-ID: On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 9:55 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > > Here is what the driving analogies are: our models > (or theories *about*) physical reality. Suppose that > you and I are measuring a temperature or merely the > length of a rod. It is EXTREMELY USEFUL, I contend, > to maintain that our measurements are converging on > something. Lee, once upon a time I attempted to convey to you the distinction between precision and accuracy. During my more than three decades in the business of analytical instruments, I worked with countless customers who would naively ask about the accuracy (veracity, truth) of their instrument. Nearly always, I would have to explain that the instrument performs in terms of sensitivity, stability, and... most importantly, precision. And that is all that is needed, entirely useful, for any of their process control needs. If they actually needed accuracy, then it was obtainable by taking the measurement results and calibrating them relative to a reference standard traceable to NIST or some other institution. But here's the key point: If NIST were to arbitrarily modify their standard, and everybody recalibrated to it so they again had a common basis for comparison, everything would work just as well. Accuracy has NO MEANING independent of context. > Something real, i.e., though the measuring rod we > know to be a host of dancing sub-elementary particles > (again, we "know" as an approximation to something > that somehow really does make up the measuring rod), > the thing we're trying to measure is on average of > our measurements closer and closer to something, > and our rod is (can be measured to be) more and > more exactly some multiple of the one they keep > in Paris. What do you imagine is the pragmatic difference between your "closer and closer to Something" (implying increasing accuracy relative to a Something which you acknowledge is inherently ultimately unknowable) and my "increasing precision" within any particular measurement context? Which delivers the better results? [Don't ignore the non-negligible inefficiencies and errors introduced by any unnecessary process.] Lee, please don't forget that I spent over twenty years successfully managing highly technical teams within a highly competitive environment. I'm not speaking from the ivory towers of academia, nor from a background in the Humanities steeped in Postmodernist Deconstruction, nor from any vague, mush-headed mystical point of view. My larger point is not that epistemological reductionism is wrong, but that as a framework for decision-making it is incomplete, with serious ramifications for the rational application of increasing instrumentality within an increasingly uncertain world. - Jef From mlatorra at gmail.com Mon May 18 20:52:34 2009 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 14:52:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses In-Reply-To: <909287.81156.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <909287.81156.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <9ff585550905181352i605fb62eid155ae5c2cc7acb4@mail.gmail.com> Hi Dan, Why don't you do as you said and read the specifics of the research, then get back to me? Then we can discuss this. The rest of your message is angry bilge that I stopped reading long before you stopped spewing. Regards, Mike On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 8:10 AM, Dan wrote: > > --- On Fri, 5/15/09, Michael LaTorra wrote: > > Hi Dan, > > Sorry to say this, but your response looks like just > > another baseless complaint against the overwhelming > > evidence that most supplements do not work, either in animal > > studies or in human studies. > > It does? How so? I started with: > > "I would like to read the specifics of research." > > How is this just "another baseless complaint"? Expressions of a desire to > know more about the actual work -- as opposed to what's been reported in the > newspaper -- is a "baseless complaint"? I'm not sure I follow you here. > Isn't the habit of mind for those interested in being scientific one of > being a bit skeptical, of seeking out evidence? Or does that not apply when > one has an axe to grind? > > > I say this as someone who took supplements for over 20 > > years. All I got was kidney stones. > > I don't know the specifics of your case -- what you took in what doses and > what else was relevant here. So, such a statement just thrown out means > little here. Probably thousands of people have mega-dosed on some > supplements, too, and did not get kidney stones. Without knowing the > specifics of each of these cases, this tells us nothing. Let me make an > analogy. It's like you telling me you ate food and got a stomach ache tones > and me pointing out lots of people eat food and don't get stomach aches. > Well, what food did you eat? What food did they eat? Is there any > evidence the specific food you ate gave you a stomach ache? > > > Please remember that the most powerful advocacy group > > for the use of supplements is comprised of those who sell > > them. > > I agree that people who sell anything want to make you think you need that > thing. Who would disagree on this? However, it seems to me you're assuming > that anyone who questions newspaper reports must be unfamiliar with this > incentive -- surely, not the only incentive -- to bias research. > > > Researchers who do not sell supplements or receive > > financial support from those that do -- in other words, > > people who stake their reputations on the quality of their > > research -- have conducted truly disinterested research and > > found little value to most supplements. > > I don't know if that's so -- that "[r]esearchers who do not sell > supplements or receive financial support from those that do... have > conducted truly disinterested research and found little value to most > supplements." I doubt you do either. I also don't know that "[r]esearchers > who do not sell supplements or receive financial support from those that do" > are completely unbiased and their research must not be scrutinized. In my > view, all research should be scrutinized -- even if it is done by people > acting from the noblest motives, completely untainted by avarice, and who > steadfastedly passionate only about a dispassionate search for the truth. > Hence my statement about wanting to "read the specifics of research." > > Apparently, though, this set off alarm bells. How dare I question the > article! How dare I ask for more details! How do I not accept what's > reported without question! > > By the way, regardless of how pure the researchers are, the NY Times, I > believe, exists to sell newspapers. Articles are printed there based on, I > believe, a pecuniary motive. Why not question that? (For the record, I > don't know what the reporter's motives were or why the story ran. I'm > actually more interested in the study it's reporting on.) > > > This is what the science -- also known as > > "evidenced-based" investigation -- tells us. > > I'm asking for evidence -- for an '"evidence-based" investigation.' > Apparently, for some, this only applies to research they don't agree with. > > > If > > you prefer "faith-based" belief systems, or simply > > accepting what industry shills tell you, then fine, believe > > whatever you like. > > Please read what I wrote. I didn't ask anyone to blindly accept the view > that all supplements work or that all studies in support of them are valid > while ones against them are not. Nor did I claim only what "industry > shills" says should be accepted. (And believe you me, I think a lot of the > pro-supplement reporting is biased.) In case you missed it, here's the sum > total of my previous post: > > "I would like to read the specifics of research. > > "From the article, they mentioned "moderate doses." Since I'm not sure > what exactly they mean, I think it's premature to just to the conclusion of > "[o]nce again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses." Without knowing > more details -- were the young men in good health? what were their ages? how > often did they exercise? how long did the study last? what were the doses > and how often? what types of C and E were used? -- this looks like more > little more than another typical hit-and-run attack on supplements. I mean > most people will trust the NY Times, but this story lacks the context where > an informed person might judge whether the claims made are valid and whether > to stop using these two micronutrients." > > > But don't raise a bunch of niggling quibbles > > as if you had some greater knowledge on the topic > > than the scientists who researched it. > > I made and make no claims of greater knowledge. I did ask some fairly > simple and concrete questions: "were the young men in good health? what were > their ages? how often did they exercise? how long did the study last? what > were the doses and how often? what types of C and E were used?" I submit, > without knowing these, one can't say much about the study. > > > As should be obvious from my post, this was not an attack on the > researchers; I haven't read their work, so I don't know what they conclude, > what their methods were, etc. All I know, at this point, is what the > newspaper article states. I'm sure the actual study would answer some of > these questions, but you cited the newspaper article -- not the study. I > usually avoid citing articles written in the popular press on supplements, > drugs, etc. because they tend to follow a pattern that runs from one day > seriously reporting that this supplement cures everything to another > reporting that it fails to cure anything to still another saying it's > dangerous and should be avoided like the plague. > > > If you want to read their report to verify their > > protocols and so forth, then by all means do so > > and report back to us. But this is not what > > you have done. > > Actually, I'll try to find it, but I find it strange that a person who > supposedly advocates 'science -- also known as "evidenced-based" > investigation' is not the one to do so first. I mean, from my perspective, > I'd expect you'd have already read the study. Apparently, though, you > haven't. In other words, you seem not to be following your advice. > > > You've snidely impugned their work in the > > very manner of the "faith-based" industry shills > > who earn their living selling the modern equivalent > > of snake oil. > > I wasn't impugning the researchers per se, but the reporter for not giving > enough details. Hence my line: "I mean most people will trust the NY > Times, but this story lacks the context where an informed person might judge > whether the claims made are valid and whether to stop using these two > micronutrients." My view is that most people are not going to weigh all the > research, attempt to sort which is biased much less which is valid and > correct (note, again: unbiased does not mean valid or correct; sometimes > even honest, well meaning, hard working, seasoned researchers get it wrong), > and then adjust their regimen according. > > Instead, they're going to read the NY Times, the paper of record for the > nation, and accept this as basically true. My fear is that it might not be > true. If it isn't, then the article has the potential to lead many people > down the wrong path. (This is, of course, aside from what the researchers > said or what conclusions might actually be drawn from their work. It could > be that the article misinterprets their research.) > > You also failed to show how the article itself actually talks about > "moderate doses" -- not "large doses." You mention the latter in your > subject line. Why? Do you know what doses were used? Were these "large"? > How large? Why then do you not mention that the article talks about > "moderate doses"? Don't tell me you don't know! After all, you've > chastised me about not being "evidence-based." > > I'll ignore the rest of your insults. > > 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 stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 18 21:03:59 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 23:03:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses In-Reply-To: <909287.81156.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <909287.81156.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905181403n5c66581bydc6358f70a0e8e28@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 4:10 PM, Dan wrote: >Let me make an analogy. ?It's like you telling me you ate food and got a stomach ache tones and me pointing out lots of people eat food and don't get stomach aches. ?Well, what food did you eat? ?What food did they eat? ?Is there any evidence the specific food you ate gave you a stomach ache? Yes. In any event, as far as aggressive supplementation is concerned, I would mantain that as long as it is reasonably believed to be safe, and one suspects on anedoctical or personal empirical evidence that it may do something for him or her (including as a placebo: who cares?) it is certainly no worse than tea or mineral water, something which also cost dollars, and which nobody thinks of objecting to. Then, even if ten thousand double-blind tests were to tell me that ginseng or L-carnitine or melatonin do nothing I would be really hard pressed to believe it any more than similar tests telling me that heroin or coffee do nothing. -- Stefano Vaj From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon May 18 21:34:04 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 14:34:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses Message-ID: <677013.19278.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/18/09, Michael LaTorra wrote: > Hi Dan, > Why don't you do as you said and read the > specifics of the research, then get back to me? I hope to soon, but, again, I'm wondering why _you_ haven't read the specifics of the research. Does it bother you that you don't know the details here? I expect someone who touts an "evidenced-based" approach would actually practice it. A couple of questions I hope you won't ignore: 1. How did you conclude from the article -- not the study, which you admit you haven't read -- that this was regarding "large doses"? (The article mentioned "moderate doses.") 2. How were you able to tell -- again, from the article -- exactly what was meant by the dosage levels? (Aside from "moderate doses," the article mentions no specific dosage. There was no remark like "500 mg of vitamin C daily for twelve weeks" -- or, if there was, I completely missed it.:) Later! Dan From max at maxmore.com Mon May 18 22:26:04 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 17:26:04 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses Message-ID: <200905182226.n4IMQF7i013788@andromeda.ziaspace.com> As a third party reading this exchange, I have to say that all the anger is coming from you, Mike, and not from Dan. You are being unreasonable and rude. Dan has been restrained and reasonable. You're the one using terms like "angry bilge" and "spew". Nor have you responded to Dan's perfectly sensible questions. Max Michael LaTorra wrote: >Hi Dan, >Why don't you do as you said and read the specifics of the research, >then get back to me? > >Then we can discuss this. > >The rest of your message is angry bilge that I stopped reading long >before you stopped spewing. > >Regards, >Mike From mail at harveynewstrom.com Sun May 17 14:53:49 2009 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 10:53:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] why darwin matters In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905170511p66f03b30q71f1c31fc5c8940a@mail.gmail.com> References: <200905161135.23846.mail@harveynewstrom.com> <710b78fc0905170511p66f03b30q71f1c31fc5c8940a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200905171053.50067.mail@harveynewstrom.com> On Sunday 17 May 2009 8:11:40 am Emlyn wrote: > I'm with Spike, youtube is amazing. Not because of the endless sea of > crap, but because of the pearls that lie within. I agree. The Internet does contain pearls. It is a mistake to criticise the Internet as a whole. But we can seek better tools to filter out the crap and locate the rare pearls. -- Harvey Newstrom From mlatorra at gmail.com Tue May 19 01:56:53 2009 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 19:56:53 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses In-Reply-To: <677013.19278.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <677013.19278.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <9ff585550905181856v7ff95d46m782ad4952ab4ca21@mail.gmail.com> Hi Dan, Your questions numbered, with my answers below: *Q1. How did you conclude from the article -- not the study, which you admit you haven't read -- that this was regarding "large doses"? (The article mentioned "moderate doses.")* A1. This is not the first or even the second LARGE study to reach the same conclusion regarding use of supplements, so I deem it reasonable to conclude that the vast majority of popular supplements do no good. Furthermore, some of them may do harm (see links below). If I were desperately trying to find some flaw in this and the other similar studies, then I might expend some of my extremely limited and therefore precious time in an attempt to debunk the study. But I've got better things to do. *Q2. How were you able to tell -- again, from the article -- exactly what was meant by the dosage levels? (Aside from "moderate doses," the article mentions no specific dosage. There was no remark like "500 mg of vitamin C daily for twelve weeks" -- or, if there was, I completely missed it.:)* A2. Oh puh-leeze! After you count how many angels are dancing on the head of your pin, write home with the answer. I wouldn't waste my time, for precisely the reason given in my first answer. If you'd like to do a little, very easy research -- which doesn't even require you to locate and read the original research in question -- please click on the following links and see what has already been learned from other studies: *Americans love supplements, but there is no evidence the pills make most of us any healthier* http://www.skepdic.com/vitacon.html *Vitamin C and Vitamin E supplements, or placebo, given to over 14,000 physicians showed no effect on the development of heart disease.* http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=10452 ** *High doses of vitamin E may increase risk of death* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3998847.stm *Vitamins 'may raise death risk from cancer'* http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/oct/01/medicineandhealth.lifeandhealth1 *Vitamin A and increased risk of bone fracture* http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4167675.stm *Antioxidants selenium, vitamins C, E don?t lower incidence of prostate cancer in two large trials* http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39225/title/Antioxidants_fail_to_prevent_prostate_cancer *Large 8-year study finds no benefit from Vitamin C or E supplements in fighting cardiovascular disease* http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-11-09-supplements-study_N.htm *Large 7-year study finds no benefit from calcium or vitamin D supplements for fighting breast cancer* http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2008/11/11/calcium-vitamin-d-wont-prevent-breast-cancer.html *Taking high doses of vitamin E supplements can increase the risk of lung cancer* http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7271189.stm ...I could go on, as the links above do not exhaust the confirmatory research to support my claim. But I am exhausted at beating this dead horse. I have to get back to writing a very important feasibility report for something that might really do some good for a lot of people. Best wishes for a long and healthy life, Dan! Mike On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Dan wrote: > > --- On Mon, 5/18/09, Michael LaTorra wrote: > > Hi Dan, > > Why don't you do as you said and read the > > specifics of the research, then get back to me? > > I hope to soon, but, again, I'm wondering why _you_ haven't read the > specifics of the research. Does it bother you that you don't know the > details here? I expect someone who touts an "evidenced-based" approach > would actually practice it. > > A couple of questions I hope you won't ignore: > > 1. How did you conclude from the article -- not the study, which you admit > you haven't read -- that this was regarding "large doses"? (The article > mentioned "moderate doses.") > > 2. How were you able to tell -- again, from the article -- exactly what > was meant by the dosage levels? (Aside from "moderate doses," the article > mentions no specific dosage. There was no remark like "500 mg of vitamin C > daily for twelve weeks" -- or, if there was, I completely missed it.:) > > Later! > > 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 mlatorra at gmail.com Tue May 19 02:02:49 2009 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 20:02:49 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses In-Reply-To: <200905182226.n4IMQF7i013788@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905182226.n4IMQF7i013788@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <9ff585550905181902q5141a38dr9fc6b425fe2da1e9@mail.gmail.com> Hi Max, Yes, I have been angry and rude. I apologize. And, as you will see, I have just responded to Dan's questions in detail. My anger stems from having to deal with the same questions over and over, like the hard-pressed biologists who are compelled to deal with the same tired Creationist arguments against "Darwinism" year after year. The evidence about supplements is out there. The studies are numerous, clear and unambiguous. So, having apologized, and having adduced plenty of evidence in support of my position, I am resigning from this thread and going back to work. If Dan or anyone else views this as a victory for their side, so be it. I've said all I'm going to say on this topic in this forum for a long, long time (but never say never ;). Regards, Mike On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Max More wrote: > As a third party reading this exchange, I have to say that all the anger is > coming from you, Mike, and not from Dan. You are being unreasonable and > rude. Dan has been restrained and reasonable. You're the one using terms > like "angry bilge" and "spew". Nor have you responded to Dan's perfectly > sensible questions. > > Max > > Michael LaTorra wrote: > >> Hi Dan, >> Why don't you do as you said and read the specifics of the research, then >> get back to me? >> >> Then we can discuss this. >> >> The rest of your message is angry bilge that I stopped reading long before >> you stopped spewing. >> >> Regards, >> Mike >> > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 msd001 at gmail.com Tue May 19 03:07:22 2009 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 23:07:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses In-Reply-To: <9ff585550905181902q5141a38dr9fc6b425fe2da1e9@mail.gmail.com> References: <200905182226.n4IMQF7i013788@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <9ff585550905181902q5141a38dr9fc6b425fe2da1e9@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62c14240905182007j1492899at6950ee3ff1a25dae@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/18 Michael LaTorra : > If Dan or anyone else views this as a victory for their side, so be it. I've > said all I'm going to say on this topic in this forum for a long, long time > (but never say never ;). I don't understand why anyone would approach contribution to a public list / forum as a "victory for their side" - aren't we here to get along and further like-minded ideas? Maybe I really am that naive... From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Tue May 19 02:23:55 2009 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 22:23:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Speeding up audio In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert> On Friday, May 15, 2009 4:35 PM, spike wrote: > I can read a lot faster than he can talk. I can listen faster than he can talk. That is why I listen to podcasts and audio at increased speed. My iPod can play 1.25 speed natively, but it takes pre-processing to get it any faster. Quicktime can adjust the speed without any pre-processing. After doing this for over a year, 1.25x speed is not fast enough for me now. I can listen with Quicktime on my PC or Mac at 1.5, 1.75, and sometimes up to 2x speed for some slow speakers on light topics. Does anybody else do this as well? Anybody know a pocket player that can go faster than 1.25 speed natively, without pre-processing? -- Harvey Newstrom From p0stfuturist at yahoo.com Tue May 19 02:25:44 2009 From: p0stfuturist at yahoo.com (p0stfuturist at yahoo.com) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 19:25:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] neutron star crusts Message-ID: <995410.82136.qm@web59909.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> The crust of neutron stars could be 10 billion times stronger than steel, based on an innovative model of elements compressed as tightly as they would be on the surface of a neutron star. In 2004, astronomers spotted a spectacular gamma-ray explosion bursting off a neutron star in the Sagittarius constellation, 50,000 light years from Earth. The star, SGR 1806-20, is a magnetar, a type of neutron star that has a powerful magnetic field.? NASA and European satellites and astronomers around the world detected the flare, which for a tenth of a second was brighter than anything ever seen beyond our solar system. It was the biggest such flare ever spotted and one of only four that have been seen so far. "We think that these giant flares are coming from really, really big star quakes," said Indiana University physicist Charles Horowitz. Only a super-strong crust could have exploded so forcefully, he explained. To find out how strong the crusts of neutron stars really are, Horowitz and a colleague created a computer simulation of a star's surface. Though the interior of the star is a kind of fluid mass of mostly neutrons, the crust is composed of broken-up atoms, the nuclei of unknown elements. To simulate this, Horowitz used the computer program to squeeze together virtual selenium atoms, pressing them into tiny cubes. He determined that the crust is billions of times stronger than even the hardiest metal alloys here on Earth. "You can't produce anything like these conditions on Earth, which is why we did not know the strength before," he said. His results were published May 8 in the journal Physical Review Letters. Not just any old relics, neutron stars are the leftover cores of huge stars that exploded in supernovae. In a massive star's death throes, it can blast most of its outer material into space. When the fireworks are over, the core collapses in on itself under the weight of its own gravity. Like an ice skater pulling in her arms, the star spins faster as it shrinks, Horowitz explained. The stars are usually tiny, about 15 miles in diameter. But within that small ball, there is the mass of about one and a half suns. A black hole is the only thing denser. Neutron stars are so dense that if you could dip a teaspoon into one of them and scoop out some of its neutrons the spoon would weigh 100 million tons. If you were to hold that empty teaspoon just one yard above the star's surface and drop it, it would strike the surface at 4.3 million mph. Though their surfaces are generally smooth, mountains made of super-dense star stuff rise from the crust. The mountains' height depends on how strong the crust is. Horowitz takes creative license in calling them mountains, he said, because they are only a few inches high. When they are too high they sag under the stars' gravity and sink back into the ground. The highest mountain a crust could support would only be about 4 inches in altitude, Horowitz estimated. Even so, the gravity of neutron stars is immense. It radiates into space in weird ways around the star, warping space-time and slowing the star's spin. ???? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue May 19 04:03:53 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 13:33:53 +0930 Subject: [ExI] why darwin matters In-Reply-To: <200905171053.50067.mail@harveynewstrom.com> References: <200905161135.23846.mail@harveynewstrom.com> <710b78fc0905170511p66f03b30q71f1c31fc5c8940a@mail.gmail.com> <200905171053.50067.mail@harveynewstrom.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905182103i12b420d2h184833ec8e2a4480@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/18 Harvey Newstrom : > On Sunday 17 May 2009 8:11:40 am Emlyn wrote: >> I'm with Spike, youtube is amazing. Not because of the endless sea of >> crap, but because of the pearls that lie within. > > I agree. ?The Internet does contain pearls. ?It is a mistake to criticise the > Internet as a whole. ?But we can seek better tools to filter out the crap and > locate the rare pearls. > > -- > Harvey Newstrom That filtering and/or searching, is the main game, to be sure. Not everyone quite understands that the internet is a good thing, of course: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/16/1825244&from=rss "Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, said, 'I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet, period.' Why? Because people 'feel entitled' to have what they want when they want it, and if they can't get it for free, 'they'll steal it.' It's become customary to expect a somewhat limited perspective on things from old-world entertainment companies, but his inability to acknowledge that the Internet has changed everything makes me think he's a very confused man. Is this when we all give up hope that companies like Sony Pictures can adapt? Will we look back on this as one of the defining moments when the industrialized entertainment industry lost touch for good?" Probably not. Probably over time, we'll forget the man, the comment, and the industry itself. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From spike66 at att.net Tue May 19 04:07:15 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 21:07:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] reading vs hearing In-Reply-To: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert> References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert> Message-ID: <7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Harvey Newstrom > Subject: [ExI] Speeding up audio > > On Friday, May 15, 2009 4:35 PM, spike wrote: > > I can read a lot faster than he can talk. > > I can listen faster than he can talk. That is why I listen > to podcasts and audio at increased speed... Harvey Newstrom This brings up an important question I have been pondering. During the last couple years, I intentionally avoided the noise copy of everything in the news. Now I take all my news by reading only. In some cases I read hard copy (newspapers and magazines), the great majority of the time internet soft copy, but no TV, no radio, no podcast, no noise copy of any kind. I did this with the pre-election debates: read the transcripts the next day. My reasoning is that I am a fast reader, and have excellent reading comprehension and retention. Sound channel, not so much. My attention wanders when using that slow medium. With reading, I control the speed. With noise, the speaker does. Experiment: take a big diverse group, divide it equally, give all the same info, but one subgroup gets only soft or hard copy, the other gets only noise copy. Do they come away with the same message? If different, how? Why? Now, let the original group divide itself as it wishes, to get either text or sound, not both. Now do the two groups get the same message? Your answers may explain a lot. spike From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 19 04:42:19 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 21:42:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] humor reactions In-Reply-To: <200905172146.25488.mail@harveynewstrom.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike> <200905172146.25488.mail@harveynewstrom.com> Message-ID: <4A1238AB.50508@rawbw.com> Harvey writes > On Sunday 17 May 2009 3:11:09 pm spike wrote: >> A New Yorker is crossing a bridge and sees another man about to jump, asks >> why, the jumper says "It is so unfair. I designed this beautiful bridge you >> are standing on, but do the people point at me and say 'There goes Jacob, >> the famous bridgebuilder'? NO! And I helped draw up the blueprints of half >> the skyscrapers you see there, but do the people say 'There goes Jacob, the >> great architect'? NO! But I get caught with just ONE LITTLE COCK in my >> mouth, and they all point and say..." >> >> Made ya laugh, didn't it? Why? > > At the risk of being accused of being humor impaired, I have to say that I > can't imagine laughing at a gay guy about to commit suicide because he had > been outed. I may be as "humor impaired" as Harvey, but for different reasons. Like MB, I didn't connect the "little" in the joke to children (can't honestly say for sure I connected it to the *big* things like skyscrapers and bridges). But I can hardly believe all of your reports. To me, what is funny about the joke is the exasperation of the poor guy who is at his wit's ends. He feels underappreciated for having got his hand caught in the cookie jar (to him, and incredibly mild offense) when he has done all these great things. Now I speculate that the humor jolt happens in people---and is based upon this impression of his exasperation---many milliseconds before it can dawn on anyone that "little" specifies children. (Or, I guess some people's brains are ready to go to some conclusions a lot faster than mine.) As for him being gay, I admit that a bit of the humor was associated with the traditional embarrassment of many people (now being corrected) having to do with their non-normal sexual orientation. > I can't see how this would be funny to anybody unless they had preconditioned > to think gays are funny, gays are unusual, and gays should be ashamed of > themselves. Without those prerequisites, this joke simply doesn't make any > sense. That's probably true. But that's the way it is. And I would claim that unless one is gay *and* has undergone a lot of reverse conditioning, the joke would be funny anyway. (That is, I can fully credit in the brains of gay people that the neural connections linking up their ostracism or denigration are going to be fired easily, and would easily have time to fire in the split second it takes to get the joke, thus ruining it for them.) > Seriously, try making this joke about a heterosexual and see if it can in any > way be made funny. If not, the alleged humor lies in laughing at gays rather > than laughing at something inherent in the joke itself. Probably true again, although I think that anything that could generate such a sense of exasperation on the part of the victim (of the situation), coupled with an attitude on his part of complete innocence for what is regarded as a no-no by society, would also arouse humor in the same way. Lee P.S. I don't know whether or not to hope anyone found the two words I used above, coupled and arouse, to be funny here or not! From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 19 04:49:53 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 21:49:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "Off topic discussions" In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90905172200s69c5bb28mf5158ff46b5293f0@mail.gmail.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <2d6187670905162331v56afde42q3f0bfd842b682dcd@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905170452r5e15bfcbr9845861ec15b2411@mail.gmail.com> <200905171048.33350.mail@harveynewstrom.com> <1fa8c3b90905172200s69c5bb28mf5158ff46b5293f0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A123A71.7050808@rawbw.com> Giulio writes > Unfortunately the only topics that seem to stimulate some interest on > the list lately are those related to the superiority of a race or > economic system wrt others. Sad. Well, you have to admit that you exaggerate a bit. We have, for example, at the present moment an epistemology discussion, a general humor discussion, a discussion of vitamins, and several others. The economic system superiority of some system and the group superiority of a class of people are hot topics, mostly because they've been in the closet so long. It makes most people very uncomfortable to discuss them, quite apart from whether or not they're appropriate to the list. Your very email, where you write "sad", I think attests to this. Although "catharsis mechanisms" in general are suspect, it's probably good that societies air out certain topics, rather than continue to suppress their discussion. This was just as true in the 19th and 20th (and, egads, 21st) centuries about the possible truth of religion as other "sensitive" things are now. It one of the graces of the open society that we should all be grateful for. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 19 04:57:55 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 21:57:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] against Many Worlds QT In-Reply-To: <399454.76040.qm@web110412.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <399454.76040.qm@web110412.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A123C53.9070309@rawbw.com> Anna writes >> On the contrary, to me your position invites degeneration into vague concepts and doubtful epistemologies. > > Do you know what the word degeneration means? The actual meaning of the word? Well, you scared me for a moment. I wondered if I had gone too far in making analogical use of a concept. But "define: degeneration" googles to: # the process of declining from a higher to a lower level of effective power or vitality or essential quality # degeneracy: the state of being degenerate in mental or moral qualities # passing from a more complex to a simpler biological form where the first clearly applies. The second meaning is what maybe you found faintly amusing or out of place. > I really like you're opinion most of the > time because it causes reflection. I'm glad that in your case, all it causes is reflection and not indigestion :) People of course cannot help themselves most of the time from saying things that they themselves find interesting or provocative (or interesting *and* provocative), except for machiavellians who always speak for purposes of personal advancement quite insincerely (none of whom appear to be on this list so far as I can tell). > I like to look at things from different perspectives at all times. It is good to hang out with people who don't always simply reflect one's opinions back at one. >> For example, what I describe can be easily >> translated into any language in the world, >> and then translated back without much loss. > > Lee, I have been reading your writing for a > while and I'm still not convinced, mind you, > I understand and I only speak only 2 languages. :) > Trying to be funny with a bit of sarcasm:) Yes, got it. Thanks. Lee From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue May 19 05:04:09 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 14:34:09 +0930 Subject: [ExI] reading vs hearing In-Reply-To: <7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert> <7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905182204t667291cdtdb8bfe0c6131ff8b@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/19 spike : > > >> ...On Behalf Of Harvey Newstrom >> Subject: [ExI] Speeding up audio >> >> On Friday, May 15, 2009 4:35 PM, spike wrote: >> > I can read a lot faster than he can talk. >> >> I can listen faster than he can talk. ?That is why I listen >> to podcasts and audio at increased speed... Harvey Newstrom I was doing some music with an excellent tenor a couple of years ago, who happened to be blind. He asked me to help him with his machine, but when I tried, there was A) no mouse, and B) while there was a monitor, he didn't use it of course, rather using some software that would speak the contents of the screen to him. It had a speed control, and he had it cranked up so fast that it was no longer recognisable (to me) as human speech. This is the fastest demonstration of the software I can find online, but I'm pretty sure his was running faster than this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yWgoPW0nxM&feature=related -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 19 05:23:37 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 22:23:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] against Many Worlds QT In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517135057.0238a828@satx.rr.com> <4A10C454.9080506@rawbw.com> <4A10EA53.40704@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A124259.5050808@rawbw.com> Jef writes >>> Lee, my purpose in raising this issue will be served when it's >>> recognized that you simply can't "model" an "unattainable final goal." >>> What is the behavior of this element? Precisely how does it >>> constrain the behavior of the model as a whole? >> >> Here is what the driving analogies are: our models >> (or theories *about*) physical reality. Suppose that >> you and I are measuring a temperature or merely the >> length of a rod. It is EXTREMELY USEFUL, I contend, >> to maintain that our measurements are converging on >> something. >> >> Something real, i.e., though the measuring rod we >> know to be a host of dancing sub-elementary particles >> (again, we "know" as an approximation to something >> that somehow really does make up the measuring rod), >> the thing we're trying to measure is on average of >> our measurements closer and closer to something, >> and our rod is (can be measured to be) more and >> more exactly some multiple of the one they keep >> in Paris. > > Would you likewise assert that Ptolemy with his epicycles was actually > more *accurate* than previous theories of celestial motion? His were (of course) more precise than earlier theories in being able to provide better predictions, but they were if anything less correct in that they fleshed out a completely mistaken conjecture about the solar system. Here I am going out on a limb to say that it is *correct* (no mince words) to say that "the planets revolve around the sun". (Eternal Truth #2: every statement must be further modified. Hence "around the sun" must be modified to be "about the common center of gravity", "planets" must be modified to include a great many other bodies in the vicinity, "around" must be understood to not be in defiance of general motion due to galactic rotation and speed of the galaxy itself, and so on, literally forever.) But still, it is absolutely important to be able to embrace the realization "planets circle the sun"---and to embrace it as correct, without any beating around the bush. > Or mightn't you agree with me that > his theory was more *coherent* within > the broader context of observations > of his time? No offense, but to me that's an unnecessarily obscure way of describing him and his theories. He was way off track about how the solar system basically works, even though his approximations for the sake of predictions were praiseworthy. So, to answer your question: no. > In the same light, you might recognize that evolutionary "progress", > of which scientific progress is an instance, does not move > teleologically toward any particular goal, but rather, proceeds by way > of exploring its adjacent possible, responding to (local) regularities > (not Truths) with persistent structures reflecting the increasingly > probable. Actually, I agreed more with what you wrote to Max. I believe that (society parameters allowing) our scientific progress does move closer to pinning down reality (though I hasten to add as always that this is a never ending process). To me, a term such as "the increasingly probable" hides more than it makes clear. Something is probable? Probably what? Probably so? True? Oh. The introduction of concepts such as "the adjacent possible", while they do shed light on matters IMO, are built on a superstructure of simpler concepts. Among these are the conscious and unconscious postulates of basic realism. >>> Your position is not so much wrong as it is lacking in the >>> sophistication necessary for effective reasoning about complex, >>> evolving, *open* systems increasingly applicable to our world of >>> increasing technological and social change. >> On the contrary, to me your position invites >> degeneration into vague concepts and doubtful >> epistemologies. For example, what I describe >> can be easily translated into any language >> in the world, and then translated back without >> much loss. I'd be far less confident that your >> notions would survive that test as well. > > I got that same response from my kids and my newer employees. "Why > can't you just be simple and clear?" And in my very practical > positions as a father and a technical manager, my instrumental > effectiveness continued to increase even as I operated within a > broadening scope of increasing uncertainty. But you are right, it > gets harder and harder to convey the bigger picture. As I say, I find many of your descriptions and the concepts you use to be useful, but they come rather late in one's epistemology, resting upon more basic things. Your kids and employees, of course, often really are looking for "yes" and "no" (I'm hardly telling you anything, of course), black or white, or particular shade of purple-gray, (as a mauve) when you try to convey a more nuanced outlook. Well, most of us in daily life use the concepts of basic realism. And so do you, of course. If the cop pulls you over, you'll either argue that you were *not* speeding or admit that you were, or some mixture of the two. You won't dare employ any talk of his increasingly adaptive response to evolving traffic flows and his own perceptions on the one hand vis a vis yours, with nothing like the actual "real" (sic) velocity being admissible . :) Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 19 05:42:11 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 22:42:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] against Many Worlds QT In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517135057.0238a828@satx.rr.com> <1fa8c3b90905180256v10ddf1fj5529f52470532a43@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A1246B3.3020602@rawbw.com> Stathis writes > The author seems to be arguing that many worlds should allow the > possibility of using all sorts of strange utility functions not > available to single world theories, and that this damages the case for > using decision theory to derive the Born rule in MWI, since one such > attempt to do so requires the (unjustified, it is claimed) adoption of > mean utilitarianism. Thanks for the summary (on top of Giulio's, of course). I don't have time to read the paper, so I appreciate it. AS for that last sentence, we should go for kind utilitarianism instead, of course. > The author also seems to have a problem with how > probabilities are deduced by observers in the MWI (or any multiverse > model). He points out that any observer following a sequence of random > events like coin tosses will conclude that the pattern he observes is > indicative of a particular bias that might not be there: someone will > definitely observe a sequence of 1000 heads, and that person will > conclude the coin is heavily biased, even though it isn't. More seriously, I agree with the author, at least narrowly, but I guess I don't see what he is complaining about here. Whether or not you believe in a single strand universe, or MWI, an unlikely string will give rise to peculiar and probably inappropriate conjectures. > But I don't see how this is different to > single world probability if you have a > large number of non-communicating experimenters > tossing coins: a small number might conclude > that the coin is biased, but most will get > approximately 50/50 heads/tails, just as in the MWI. Oh. Right. You took the words right out of my mouth. > The author discusses model multiverses which we could create with a > branching computer program, and uses these to support his contention > that probability doesn't work in the MWI. But *something* has to > happen in these models, if they are physically possible. That is, the > observers would come up with some sort of physical theory and account > of probability. It doesn't do to throw up one's hands and say that > probability becomes meaningless in these cases. Well, not having looked into it with near as much patience and effort as you, FWIW I concur. The major looming problem in my own ontology here is that Bayesian statistics doesn't seem to jibe with MWI no matter how many times I've reread how Jaynes and others try to explain it. In MWI, there is a definite fraction of outcomes to any situation: there really is (in MWI) a group of identical universes (a phrase David Deutsch uses over and over in "The Fabric of Reality" and which I abbreviated as GIU long before knowing our friend GIULIO). Then if a photon has a 50% amplitude to go straight or to go up, it results in an objective 50/50 split. (More likely, of course, in a 49.37118561917009... split.) Thus probability on MWI seems to me to be completely objective---which flies in the face of the received Bayesian wisdom, which also on other grounds seems correct. As for whether accepting MWI makes any difference in life, I think that it does. But not much. One interesting result is that a human being tends to obtain a more mature outlook on practical realities sooner under MWI. For example, a teenager who commits a very dangerous act (that his mother happens to see) will respond to her tongue-lashing: "well, Ma, look, nothing happened!" She understands that that isn't all there is to it. But in the multiverse, "you can't beat the odds" [1]. The young man is forced to acknowledge that the dangerous activity resulted in a possibly very great diminution of his measure throughout the many worlds, and to realize that what he did was unwise after all---just as his mother said. Lee [1] The exact phrase "In MWI, you can't beat the odds" I owe to Robin Hanson, who was visiting me twenty some years ago and who captured in this inimitable motto the notion that I was trying to explain . From spike66 at att.net Tue May 19 05:18:25 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 22:18:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] humor reactions In-Reply-To: <4A1238AB.50508@rawbw.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <32785.12.77.168.210.1242565667.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <66418DB99E2647D2A3245756474E143E@spike><200905172146.25488.mail@harveynewstrom.com> <4A1238AB.50508@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <574107D518F04899B0D58CA38A7A6934@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Lee Corbin > Subject: [ExI] humor reactions > > Harvey writes > > > On Sunday 17 May 2009 3:11:09 pm spike wrote: > >> A New Yorker is crossing a bridge and sees another man > about to jump, > >> asks why, the jumper says "It is so unfair. I designed this > >> beautiful bridge you are standing on, but do the people > point at me > >> and say 'There goes Jacob, the famous bridgebuilder'? NO!... > > > > At the risk of being accused of being humor impaired, I have to say > > that I can't imagine laughing at a gay guy about to commit suicide > > because he had been outed. > > I may be as "humor impaired" as Harvey, but for different > reasons. Like MB, I didn't connect the "little" in the joke > to children (can't honestly say for sure I connected it to the > *big* things like skyscrapers and bridges). > > But I can hardly believe all of your reports...Lee These comments have been enormously insight-producing for me. One could soften it considerably for instance, if it starts out with the alternative: The bartenders says "Why the long face, mensch?" Bar patron says "Oy vey, ees so unfair..." And drop the adjective "little" which was offensive to Damien, and more like the way Asimov told it. Then you could add in a number of references to religion, to make the bar patron a pious sort, which might add some additional fist to the punchline. Those modifications remove most of the tragic aspect (suicide reference) and reinforces in the reader the focus on the fact that it is a Jewish joke, more than having to do with sexuality, with that sense of tragedy I mentioned in an earlier post. I completely missed the aspects Damien and Harvey mentioned, and went to the notion (the one that started me down this path) that the Jewish guy has all these accomplishments but this extremely minor thing (the blowjob, or Jewishness, or the subtle equating of the two) which causes people to focus on that one insignificant aspect instead of the buildings and bridges. The Jewish people have the tragic (repeated) distruction of the temple, the pogroms, the struggles over the ages. For those of us who are of European descent, we have nothing analogous to that sense of tragedy. Regarding the transhumanist angle, I am one who feels it most worthwhile to study humor, for if uploading, what then shall we do? Well, we tell each other funny stories I suppose, or tragic stories or dramatic stories, or personal histories. The latter three categories work so much better if wrapped in humor or if the contain humor. spike From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 19 08:50:21 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 08:50:21 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses In-Reply-To: <62c14240905182007j1492899at6950ee3ff1a25dae@mail.gmail.com> References: <200905182226.n4IMQF7i013788@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <9ff585550905181902q5141a38dr9fc6b425fe2da1e9@mail.gmail.com> <62c14240905182007j1492899at6950ee3ff1a25dae@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/19/09, Mike Dougherty wrote: > I don't understand why anyone would approach contribution to a public > list / forum as a "victory for their side" - aren't we here to get > along and further like-minded ideas? Maybe I really am that naive... > As I quoted on another list..................... Warning! Satire Alert! Quote: Getting the Last Word in a debate is crucial, as it is the only proof of your argumentative success. Getting the last word means that you win the debate. It also shows your moral superiority, and willingness to stand your ground. This should convince your opponent that you are correct, and will certainly impress your fellow list members. It is particularly important to get the last word where you are in some doubts as to the merits of your case. The last word will serve as a clinching argument that will make up for any deficiencies in your logic. Achieving the last word *now* also brings the advantage that you may subsequently point to your success in this debate as the clinching argument in future debates. However, if you did not win the last discussion, we still recommend claiming incessantly that you did. --------------- BillK From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue May 19 08:55:09 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 01:55:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses In-Reply-To: References: <200905182226.n4IMQF7i013788@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <9ff585550905181902q5141a38dr9fc6b425fe2da1e9@mail.gmail.com> <62c14240905182007j1492899at6950ee3ff1a25dae@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670905190155y7725cbddgacba55ebfbdf715f@mail.gmail.com> Bill, we need you as a moderator on this list. You will gently shame us toward being better people! John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue May 19 09:00:05 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 02:00:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Christian sexuality website Message-ID: <2d6187670905190200r5f58906etab7dba75b7e9c246@mail.gmail.com> This odd website teaches a very epicurean approach to Christian sexuality. I'm just not sure as to whether it is a parody or not... http://www.sexinchrist.com/pornography.html John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 19 09:01:12 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 09:01:12 +0000 Subject: [ExI] reading vs hearing In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905182204t667291cdtdb8bfe0c6131ff8b@mail.gmail.com> References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert> <7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> <710b78fc0905182204t667291cdtdb8bfe0c6131ff8b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/19/09, Emlyn wrote: > This is the fastest demonstration of the software I can find online, > but I'm pretty sure his was running faster than this. > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yWgoPW0nxM&feature=related > > I do the same with music. The Ring cycle really flashes past now. :) BillK From mbb386 at main.nc.us Tue May 19 11:05:59 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 07:05:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Speeding up audio In-Reply-To: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert> References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert> Message-ID: <34862.12.77.169.68.1242731159.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > On Friday, May 15, 2009 4:35 PM, spike wrote: >> I can read a lot faster than he can talk. Harvey says: > I can listen faster than he can talk. That is why I listen to podcasts and > audio at increased speed. My iPod can play 1.25 speed natively, but it > takes pre-processing to get it any faster. Quicktime can adjust the speed > without any pre-processing. After doing this for over a year, 1.25x speed > is not fast enough for me now. I can listen with Quicktime on my PC or Mac > at 1.5, 1.75, and sometimes up to 2x speed for some slow speakers on light > topics. > Gah! ENVY. Serious envy. I cannot listen to a podcast and get much of anything. Even when I was in highschool I could not understand the lyrics to the popular songs, had to go to the music store and look at the sheet music. Mostly it sounded like sorta rhyming nonsense sylables. For me, if there's not text, it's not going to happen. No, I'm not deaf (yet, though I'm working on it in my old age) but I have great difficulty distinguishing many sounds one from another. All my life. :( Regards, MB From kanzure at gmail.com Tue May 19 11:13:58 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 06:13:58 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [GRG] Knome Announces $24,500 Genome Sequencing In-Reply-To: <588945.14718.qm@web37901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <588945.14718.qm@web37901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70905190413l4c9e30afx16b8fb4720ca4228@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: James Clement Date: Tue, May 19, 2009 at 1:14 AM Subject: [GRG] Knome Announces $24,500 Genome Sequencing To: grg at lists.ucla.edu For $1 Per Gene, Knome Launches $24,500 Genome Sequencing Service By Kevin Davies May 18, 2009 | Personal genomics outfit Knome, which until now has specialized in offering a whole-genome sequencing service to wealthy consumers for $99,500 and up, has launched the first $1/gene comprehensive gene sequencing service. The exome sequencing service, called KnomeSELECT, will cost?$24,500 for individuals, with a $10,000 discount for couples ($19,500 per person for couples and families). With an estimated 23,000 genes in the human genome, the service represents a landmark in personal genomics by reducing the retail cost of gene sequencing and analysis to less than $1 per gene. Ari Kiirikki, Knome?s VP sales and business development, told Bio-IT World: ?We?ve done this for several individuals already to test it out. We?ve fulfilled orders already.? The KnomeSELECT service will reveal all variants found in the coding regions of the genome ? the exome -- not merely the 500,000-1 million common SNPs that are currently screened by consumer genomics companies including 23andMe, deCODEme, Navigenics and Pathway Genomics. Kiirikki says the stimulus for KnomeSELECT came from three major directions. ?A lot of the interest has been from families. Even at the $100,000 pricepoint, to include several members of a family becomes incredibly expensive,? he says. ?Couples were coming to us, and trios, and some cases of twins where one twin had a specific disease running through their family... It was driven by that desire from families.? A second factor was the growing interest from medical researchers. ?We had researchers approach us earlier this year from several places asking us to provide our retail product as a service, and our answer was, why not?? says Kiirikki. ?We?ve partnered with several medical centers that are using us as a service.? Kiirikki stresses it is a true partnership. ?We do have some proprietary knowledge we?ve accumulated [over the past 18 months]. We have this variant file ? most of our customer base is healthy individuals.? Knowledge of those variants can prove informative to researchers screening for disease-causing mutations. A third factor of course is the rapidly falling price of technology. The exome enrichment is being performed, like the sequencing itself, at the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) Shenzen in China. ?We?ve been very satisfied with BGI,? says Kiirikki. ?They just bought 12 more [Illumina GA] machines to keep up with the work ? not just the work we?re sending them.? Kiirikki added: ?It?s a huge investment to buy one of these machines that most likely is going to become obsolete in another 12-18 months? so it makes sense to use it as a service.? To a certain extent, Knome is acting as the middleman, but it provides detailed bioinformatic analysis of the sequence data supplied by BGI. ?If it was a large project -- exomes of 100 people -- it would make more sense for [clients] to go to BGI directly,? Kiirikki admits. ?But for small groups, twins, families, it?s much more cost effective to use our platform. We put those research samples in with our regular retail customers. We?re able to bundle those and get a better price than researchers could themselves.? Within Reach In a statement, Jorge Conde, CEO of Knome, said: ?What just several years ago was available only to the extremely wealthy is now within the reach of a broader range of individuals seeking to understand more about the health and well-being of themselves and their loved ones.? ?At this price point, we can now sequence entire families,? said George Church, co-founder of Knome. Church believes the advent of affordable whole-genome sequencing will further understanding of medical genetics, disease gene identification, and shared ancestry. Family sequencing ?enables the detection of new mutations that may not have been inherited but rather have arisen spontaneously in an individual.? Further, family-based genomics could benefit young couples by identifying potential disease genes that might be carried by healthy individuals but that could be passed down to future generations.? Kiirikki says private clients will receive a fairly similar interpretation for the new exome service as for the whole genome analysis. ?They?re getting 90% of the same interpretation and analysis from doing KnomeSELECT versus KnomeCOMPLETE,? he says, while acknowledging that copy number analysis, for example, would be more comprehensive for the entire sequence. Last month, Knome concluded its first eBay auction, receiving a single bid for a complete genome sequence at $68,000. The sole bidder is a male from Europe, and the proceeds will towards the X PRIZE Foundation. Kiirikki did not offer any projections or expectations for the popularity of the new exome service, but he is cautiously optimistic. ?We got five orders in a week when we reduced the cost from $350,000 to $99,500,? he says. Thus far, Knome has attracted more than 20 customers. ?Look how far we?ve come, it?s amazing,? says Kiirikki. ?If we can move the boulder a little and make some progress, it would be great.? He noted that it is federal grant writing season, and Knome is seeing more requests for partnerships.? It?s valuable to have these wealthy people getting sequenced, but doing this has us all really excited.? Says Kiirikki: ?I promise you, as soon as we can reduce the price, we?ll reduce it again! We?re not holding it back.? _______________________________________________ GRG mailing list GRG at lists.ucla.edu http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/grg -- - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 19 12:26:13 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 14:26:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Speeding up audio In-Reply-To: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert> References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert> Message-ID: <580930c20905190526g481e0632x46f1ee7378a24617@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 4:23 AM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > Does anybody else do this as well? ?Anybody know a pocket player that can go > faster than 1.25 speed natively, without pre-processing? Why, I like Playstation 3s as DVD or BD players because they allow you to watch movies at 1.5 speed with non-distorted audio, something which I do not get in my experience with either standalone players or PCs... -- Stefano Vaj From kanzure at gmail.com Tue May 19 12:29:49 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 07:29:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [wta-talk] Fwd: [GRG] Knome Announces $24, 500 Genome Sequencing In-Reply-To: References: <588945.14718.qm@web37901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <55ad6af70905190413l4c9e30afx16b8fb4720ca4228@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70905190529r4b5045aemdfa28fb0227a2398@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Panu Horsmalahti Date: Tue, May 19, 2009 at 7:21 AM Subject: Re: [wta-talk] Fwd: [GRG] Knome Announces $24, 500 Genome Sequencing To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List You can also get your genome sequenced for free, if you accept that the genome is published fully online with even photographs of you (but your name is not published). http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/18/144222&art_pos=8 _______________________________________________ wta-talk mailing list wta-talk at transhumanism.org http://www.transhumanism.org/mailman/listinfo/wta-talk -- - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 19 13:43:51 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 23:43:51 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Speeding up audio In-Reply-To: <580930c20905190526g481e0632x46f1ee7378a24617@mail.gmail.com> References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert> <580930c20905190526g481e0632x46f1ee7378a24617@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/19 Stefano Vaj : > On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 4:23 AM, Harvey Newstrom > wrote: >> Does anybody else do this as well? ?Anybody know a pocket player that can go >> faster than 1.25 speed natively, without pre-processing? > > Why, I like Playstation 3s as DVD or BD players because they allow you > to watch movies at 1.5 speed with non-distorted audio, something which > I do not get in my experience with either standalone players or PCs... But fro me it's quite difficult and unpleasant even for a short while. Have you ever watched a whole movie sped up this way? -- Stathis Papaioannou From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 19 14:43:27 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 16:43:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Speeding up audio In-Reply-To: References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert> <580930c20905190526g481e0632x46f1ee7378a24617@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905190743o2fed170bu2ae69da987f3f193@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 3:43 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > But fro me it's quite difficult and unpleasant even for a short while. > Have you ever watched a whole movie sped up this way? Yes. Even though admittedly they were mostly films that I wanted to know about more than slowly savour... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From natasha at natasha.cc Tue May 19 14:54:53 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 09:54:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses In-Reply-To: <62c14240905182007j1492899at6950ee3ff1a25dae@mail.gmail.com> References: <200905182226.n4IMQF7i013788@andromeda.ziaspace.com><9ff585550905181902q5141a38dr9fc6b425fe2da1e9@mail.gmail.com> <62c14240905182007j1492899at6950ee3ff1a25dae@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <8382E38C08C04DC78F74C4D5BB6FCFB7@DFC68LF1> I don't agree. Mike is an easy-going person and whose company is always insightful. I think that the issue is that, as Mike said, he has discussed this over and over and has not the interest in repeating himself. I find that I get into this headset too from time to time on other topics. As for vitamins, I support the understanding that vitamins are not only beneficial, but essential to well-being, especially when someone has a physiological weaknesses. Large doses? That depends on the dosage. Montel Williams has MS and he takes large doses, but his doses are strictly prescribed for his particular illness. Other folks, like to dump a bowl of vitamins into their system, which can be very dangerous and can cause liver damage, etc. Some people have sensitive digestive systems and cannot tolerate the breakdown of solid vitamins, but work better with capsules or liquid supplements. There are many variables. Natasha Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 10:07 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses 2009/5/18 Michael LaTorra : > If Dan or anyone else views this as a victory for their side, so be > it. I've said all I'm going to say on this topic in this forum for a > long, long time (but never say never ;). I don't understand why anyone would approach contribution to a public list / forum as a "victory for their side" - aren't we here to get along and further like-minded ideas? Maybe I really am that naive... _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From natasha at natasha.cc Tue May 19 15:02:15 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 10:02:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "Off topic discussions" In-Reply-To: <4A123A71.7050808@rawbw.com> References: <365406.92257.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <2d6187670905162331v56afde42q3f0bfd842b682dcd@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905170452r5e15bfcbr9845861ec15b2411@mail.gmail.com> <200905171048.33350.mail@harveynewstrom.com><1fa8c3b90905172200s69c5bb28mf5158ff46b5293f0@mail.gmail.com> <4A123A71.7050808@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <8105ABAA26A84092A973549767AAFAB2@DFC68LF1> Lee, you may be correct; nontheless, Giulio's observation embraces a wider sociological perception. Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Lee Corbin Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 11:50 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] "Off topic discussions" Giulio writes > Unfortunately the only topics that seem to stimulate some interest on > the list lately are those related to the superiority of a race or > economic system wrt others. Sad. Well, you have to admit that you exaggerate a bit. We have, for example, at the present moment an epistemology discussion, a general humor discussion, a discussion of vitamins, and several others. The economic system superiority of some system and the group superiority of a class of people are hot topics, mostly because they've been in the closet so long. It makes most people very uncomfortable to discuss them, quite apart from whether or not they're appropriate to the list. Your very email, where you write "sad", I think attests to this. Although "catharsis mechanisms" in general are suspect, it's probably good that societies air out certain topics, rather than continue to suppress their discussion. This was just as true in the 19th and 20th (and, egads, 21st) centuries about the possible truth of religion as other "sensitive" things are now. It one of the graces of the open society that we should all be grateful for. Lee _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From natasha at natasha.cc Tue May 19 15:07:32 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 10:07:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses In-Reply-To: References: <200905182226.n4IMQF7i013788@andromeda.ziaspace.com><9ff585550905181902q5141a38dr9fc6b425fe2da1e9@mail.gmail.com><62c14240905182007j1492899at6950ee3ff1a25dae@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Very funny! Love it! haha Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 3:50 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses Quote: Getting the Last Word in a debate is crucial, as it is the only proof of your argumentative success. Getting the last word means that you win the debate. It also shows your moral superiority, and willingness to stand your ground. This should convince your opponent that you are correct, and will certainly impress your fellow list members. It is particularly important to get the last word where you are in some doubts as to the merits of your case. The last word will serve as a clinching argument that will make up for any deficiencies in your logic. Achieving the last word *now* also brings the advantage that you may subsequently point to your success in this debate as the clinching argument in future debates. However, if you did not win the last discussion, we still recommend claiming incessantly that you did. --------------- BillK _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 19 15:04:47 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 08:04:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses Message-ID: <482813.72441.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/18/09, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 4:10 PM, Dan > wrote: >> Let me make an analogy. ?It's like you telling me you >> ate food and got a stomach ache tones and me pointing out >> lots of people eat food and don't get stomach aches. ?Well, >> what food did you eat? ?What food did they eat? ?Is there >> any evidence the specific food you ate gave you a stomach >> ache? > > Yes. I was only using this analogy in regard to Michael LaTorra's claim about kidney stones.? Specifically, he tells us:? "I [LaTorra] say this as someone who took supplements for over 20 years. All I [LaTorra] got was kidney stones." I didn't mean for it [the analogy] to be applied beyond that. > In any event, as far as aggressive supplementation is > concerned, I > would mantain that as long as it is reasonably believed to > be safe, > and one suspects on anedoctical or personal empirical > evidence that it > may do something for him or her (including as a placebo: > who cares?) > it is certainly no worse than tea or mineral water, > something which > also cost dollars, and which nobody thinks of objecting > to. I think it depends on your goals and how you assess the risks and the data.? I think there's some evidence that high doses of some supplements or supplement combinations are beneficial.? There's also some mixed results on some supplements.? And Michael is right to be worried about industry shills and bad research -- after all, if someone wants to sell you something, there's a definite incentive to downplay risks and focus only on potential benefits -- but the point of my analogy was only to respond to his claim about kidney stones.? We (and maybe he) don't (doesn't) really know why he got kidney stones and, more importantly, what this tells any one of us what we should do about supplementation -- other than a general view of being skeptical and researching before popping pills. > Then, even if ten thousand double-blind tests were to tell > me that > ginseng or L-carnitine or melatonin do nothing I would be > really hard > pressed to believe it any more than similar tests telling > me that heroin or coffee do nothing. Well, to be sure, if there were "ten thousand double-blind tests," that'd be a lot to go on -- and I'd be surprised if such studies didn't give some answers to many of the questions reasonable, unbiased folks have on taking supplements. Of course, a lot would depend on how the studies were done --what doses were used (it's possible really low doses show no results because there's too little of the substance to do much; it's also possible that dose-response varies -- as in there's a beneficial dose range and above or below that there is no benefit or even there is harm), what forms of the supplement were taken (for instance, vitamin E is actually 8 compounds and one shouldn't be surprised if a study done with one of these does NOT match results for another), the specifics of the study group (results from a study of healthy teenage Swedish boys might not apply to sedentary postmenapausal Chilean women), the length of the study, etc. -- assuming, of course, the studies were well designed and there was no cooking data. Sadly, a lot of studies of supplements fail to be good studies -- often because they're short duration, the substances under study is a variant that might not apply to others (as in the vitamin E case: many studies are of alpha-tocopherol -- and not of other forms of E alone or together), take a specific population (as seems the case in the article LaTorra cites* where the study supposedly focused on "young men"), or don't have a good control group (such as when there's a five year study of nurses taking a certain supplement**). Regards, Dan * http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/health/research/12exer.html?em ** I don't recall the specific study, but the point is that while such a study might be suggestive, it's much harder if not impossible to isolate a cause and effect relationship. For example, did the nurses also get a lot more exercise and perhaps eat healthier? Without a better study design, we can't tell. It might even be that the supplement in question did harm, but the nurses did other things that overcame this. If other people then start taking the supplement, they might not get the same effect and might even be harmed. From max at maxmore.com Tue May 19 15:40:24 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 10:40:24 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Christian sexuality website Message-ID: <200905191540.n4JFegRk006404@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Thanks, John. This site has expanded my religious worldview... Especially pages such as: Fisting and God's Will http://www.sexinchrist.com/fist.html Jesus H! Max From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 19 16:40:30 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 09:40:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses Message-ID: <509663.57667.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/18/09, Michael LaTorra wrote: > Hi Dan, > Your questions numbered, with my answers below: > ? > Q1. ?How did you conclude from the article -- not > the study, which you admit you haven't read -- that this > was regarding "large doses"? ?(The article > mentioned "moderate doses.") > > > A1. This is not the first or even?the second LARGE > study to reach the same conclusion regarding use of > supplements, so I deem it reasonable to conclude that?the > vast majority of popular supplements do no good. This misses the question.? I was asking about your conclusion on dosage -- specifically, that your subject line is "Some vitamins don't help in large doses."? The newspaper report mentions "moderate doses" (and, notably, does NOT mention the study group size).? I wanted to know how you concluded the study was about "large doses" when all that's mentioned in the report are "moderate doses." Looking at the original study abstract*, this seems like a pretty small scale study -- 39 "healthy young men" -- of fairly short duration -- "Before and after a 4 week intervention of physical exercise." This is not in my view -- and probably not in most people's view -- a "LARGE study." (If you consider it "LARGE," then I submit almost all studies on anything must be, for you, large. And this would lead me to ask what do you consider a small study? One involving two or three people over the span of a few minutes?:) > Furthermore, some of them may do harm (see links below). If > I were desperately trying to find some flaw in this and the > other similar studies, then I might expend some of my > extremely limited and therefore precious time in an attempt > to debunk the study. But I've got better things to > do. I'm not looking to debunk, but to understand -- here, to understand how you moved from reading the same report I read to the conclusion you made. > Q2. ?How were you able to tell -- again, from the > article -- exactly what was meant by the dosage levels? > ?(Aside from "moderate doses," the article > mentions no specific dosage. ?There was no remark like > "500 mg of vitamin C daily for twelve weeks" -- > or, if there was, I completely missed it.:) > > > A2. Oh puh-leeze! After you count how many angels are > dancing on the head of your pin, write home with the answer. That's a strange way to answer me.? When the article mentioned "moderate doses" the immediate question that popped into my mind was: What does that mean?? This is not some obscure bit of arcana, but something anyone with a modern scientific mindset would want to know: how much resulted in what effect?? Without knowing this, it's near impossible to decide what conclusion to make.? (Of course, the actual study abstract states they used "a combination of vitamin C (1000 mg/day) and vitamin E (400 IU/day)."? These are quantities should probably be considered above "moderate" if one uses the US RDA as a standard.) > I wouldn't waste my time, for precisely the reason given > in my first answer. If you'd like to do a little, very > easy research -- which doesn't even require you to > locate and read the original research in question -- please > click on the following links and see what has already been > learned?from other studies: Actually, it took me a few seconds to find the original research.? (I simply googled on "Michael Ristow" and "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" -- both terms which appeared in the newspaper report you cited.) Why you didn't make this effort first remains beyond my understanding. It can't be lack of time -- as you obviously went through some effort googling the links below. (To be sure, I imagine this was around ten seconds of effort, but if you could spend ten seconds on that, why not ten seconds searching for the PNAS study?) > Americans love supplements, but there is no > evidence the pills make most of us any > healthier > http://www.skepdic.com/vitacon.html > ? > Vitamin C and Vitamin E supplements, or > placebo, given to over 14,000 physicians showed no effect on > the development of heart disease. > http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=10452 > > ? > High doses of vitamin E may increase risk of > death > http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3998847.stm > ? > Vitamins 'may raise death risk from > cancer' > http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/oct/01/medicineandhealth.lifeandhealth1 > ? > Vitamin A and increased risk of bone > fracture > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4167675.stm > ? > Antioxidants selenium, vitamins C, E don?t > lower incidence of prostate cancer in two large > trials > http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39225/title/Antioxidants_fail_to_prevent_prostate_cancer > > ? > Large 8-year study finds no benefit from > Vitamin C or E supplements in fighting cardiovascular > disease > http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-11-09-supplements-study_N.htm > ? > Large 7-year study finds > no benefit from calcium or vitamin D supplements for > fighting breast cancer > http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2008/11/11/calcium-vitamin-d-wont-prevent-breast-cancer.html > > ? > Taking high doses of vitamin E supplements can > increase the risk of lung cancer > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7271189.stm > ? > ...I could go on, as the links above do not exhaust > the confirmatory research to support my claim. But I am > exhausted at beating this dead horse. I have to get back to > writing a very important feasibility report for something > that might really do some good for a lot of people. The above links are not to the actual research studies, but popular level articles reporting this research. I've read a lot of media reports like this before. (I've also read media reports touting certain supplements. No doubt, someone could google of list of reports championing these very same supplements. What would this prove?) And I'm surprised that googling a few popular level articles exhausts you and that this one time where you've actually presented something other than the NY Times article (on this thread) is "beating" a "dead horse." Later! Dan * http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/05/11/0903485106.abstract I have yet to digest much less critique the full study. Like you, I've got other things to do at this time. But I won't make any grandiose claims. :/ From estropico at gmail.com Tue May 19 18:25:21 2009 From: estropico at gmail.com (estropico) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 19:25:21 +0100 Subject: [ExI] ExtroBritannia: Mike Darwin on: Whatever Happened to the Future of Medicine Message-ID: <4eaaa0d90905191125m4d6b5ba3tbf8cfe18e09f265d@mail.gmail.com> Mike Darwin on: Whatever Happened to the Future of Medicine Why the much anticipated medical breakthroughs of the early 21st century are failing to materialize Saturday 30th May 2009, 2pm-4pm. Room 403 (fourth floor), Birkbeck College, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7HX. There's no charge to attend, and everyone is welcome. Speaker Mike Darwin has 30 years experience in cutting edge medical research. Co-founder of the Institute for Advanced Biological Studies, 1977. President of Alcor Life Extension 1983-1988, Research Director 1988-1992. Described by Wikipedia as "Second only to Robert Ettinger as one of the most influential figures in the controversial field of cryonics" Description of talk The last half of the 20th Century was a time of explosive growth in growth in high technology medicine. Effective chemotherapy for many microbial diseases, the advent of sophisticated vaccination, the development and application of the corticosteroids, and the development of extracorporeal and cardiovascular prosthetic medicine (cardiopulmonary bypass, hemodialysis, synthetic arterial vascular grafts and cardiac valves) are but a few examples of what can only be described as stunning progress in medicine derived in large measure from translation research. The closing decades of the last century brought confident predictions from both academic and clinical researchers (scientists and physicians alike) that the opening decade of this century would see, if not definitive cure or control, then certainly the first truly effective therapeutic drugs for cancer, ischemia-reperfusion injury (i.e. heart attack, stroke and cardiac arrest), multisystem organ failure and dysfunction (MSOF/D), immunomodulation (control of rejection and much improved management of autoimmune diseases), oxygen therapeutics and more radically, the perfection of long term organ preservation, widespread use of the total artificial heart (TAH) and the clinical application of the first drugs to slow or moderate biological aging. However, none of these anticipated gains has materialized, and countless drug trials in humans based on highly successful animal models of MSOF/D, stroke, heart attack, cancer, and immunomodulation have failed. Indeed it may be reasonably argued that the pace of therapeutic advance has slowed. By contrast, the growth of technology and capability in some areas of diagnostic medicine, primarily imaging, has maintained its exponential rate of growth and, while much slower than growth in other areas of technological endeavor, such as communications and consumer electronics, progress has been impressive. Why has translational research at the cutting edge of medicine (and in particular in critical care medicine) stalled, or often resulted in clinical trials that had to be halted due to increased morbidity and mortality in the treated patients? The answers to these questions are complex and multifactorial, and deserve careful review. Renewed success in the application of translational research in humans will require a return to the understanding and acceptance of the inescapable fact that perfection of complex biomedical technologies cannot be modeled solely in the animal or computer research laboratory. The corollary of this understanding must be the acceptance of the unpleasant reality that perfection of novel, let alone revolutionary medical technologies, will require a huge cost in human suffering and sacrifice. The aborted journey of the TAH to widespread clinical application due to the unwillingness on the part of the public, and the now extant bioethical infrastructure in medicine, to accept the years of suffering accompanied by modest, incremental advances towards perfection of this technology, is a good example of what might rightly be described as a societal ?failure of nerve? in the face of great benefit at great cost. It may be rightly said, to quote the political revolutionary Delores Ibarruri, that we must once again come to understand that, ?It is better to die on our feet than to live on our knees!? Pre-meeting and post-meeting activities Why not join some of the UKTA regulars for a drink and/or lunch any time after 12.30pm, in The Marlborough Arms, 36 Torrington Place, London WC1E 7HJ. To find us, look out for a table where there's a copy of James Halperin's book "The First Immortal" displayed. (This book is a well-researched and thought-provoking novel about cryonics.) Discussion is likely to continue after the event, in a nearby pub, for those who are able to stay. Room 403 is on the fourth floor (via the main lift) in the main Birkbeck College building, in Torrington Square (which is a pedestrian-only square). Torrington Square is about 10 minutes walk from either Russell Square or Goodge St tube stations. --- The ExtroBritannia events are organised by the UK Transhumanist Association http://www.transhumanist.org.uk/ Our mailing list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/extrobritannia/ From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 19 16:44:12 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 09:44:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Introducing Ida? Message-ID: <833792.91701.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> http://revealingthelink.com/ There was a big to do about this among my associates, but the actual finding looks rather ho hum. Regards, Dan From nanogirl at halcyon.com Tue May 19 20:35:11 2009 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 13:35:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses In-Reply-To: <8382E38C08C04DC78F74C4D5BB6FCFB7@DFC68LF1> References: <200905182226.n4IMQF7i013788@andromeda.ziaspace.com><9ff585550905181902q5141a38dr9fc6b425fe2da1e9@mail.gmail.com><62c14240905182007j1492899at6950ee3ff1a25dae@mail.gmail.com> <8382E38C08C04DC78F74C4D5BB6FCFB7@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: Unfortunately last year I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (same as Montel Williams) and in fact there is a suspected link between Vitamin D deficiency and multiple sclerosis. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=0&oq=vitamin+d+deficiency+and+multip&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS324US324&q=vitamin+d+deficiency+and+multiple+sclerosis I now take more D, among other vitamins as well as my weekly Avonex injections (not a vitamin - not a cure either as there is none, but a treatment). As Natasha points out higher doses of certain vitamins are recommended for MS patients, but can make some people sick. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS324US324&q=vitamins+and+multiple+sclerosis I know that the recommended 1,200 of C can be a problem for the stomach. I have been trying to get my C through an orange drink instead. Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Health blog: http://ginamiller.blogspot.com/ Web http://www.nanogirl.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Natasha Vita-More" To: "'ExI chat list'" Cc: Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 7:54 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses > > I don't agree. Mike is an easy-going person and whose company is always > insightful. I think that the issue is that, as Mike said, he has > discussed > this over and over and has not the interest in repeating himself. > > I find that I get into this headset too from time to time on other topics. > > As for vitamins, I support the understanding that vitamins are not only > beneficial, but essential to well-being, especially when someone has a > physiological weaknesses. Large doses? That depends on the dosage. > Montel > Williams has MS and he takes large doses, but his doses are strictly > prescribed for his particular illness. Other folks, like to dump a bowl > of > vitamins into their system, which can be very dangerous and can cause > liver > damage, etc. Some people have sensitive digestive systems and cannot > tolerate the breakdown of solid vitamins, but work better with capsules or > liquid supplements. > > There are many variables. > > Natasha > > Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike > Dougherty > Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 10:07 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Once again: Some vitamins don't help in large doses > > 2009/5/18 Michael LaTorra : >> If Dan or anyone else views this as a victory for their side, so be >> it. I've said all I'm going to say on this topic in this forum for a >> long, long time (but never say never ;). > > I don't understand why anyone would approach contribution to a public list > / > forum as a "victory for their side" - aren't we here to get along and > further like-minded ideas? Maybe I really am that naive... > _______________________________________________ > 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 From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue May 19 20:39:52 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 16:39:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] against Many Worlds QT References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090517135057.0238a828@satx.rr.com> <4A10C454.9080506@rawbw.com> <4A10EA53.40704@rawbw.com> <4A124259.5050808@rawbw.com> Message-ID: In the USA tonight Nova has a show on PBS about Hugh Everett and his many worlds theory. John K Clark From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 19 21:21:26 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 21:21:26 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Gmail now translates emails Message-ID: If you get a message in a different language, there's a new link that'll show up in the top of the message that lets you translate it to whatever language you have Gmail set to. You can also set it up to do the translation to any language of your choice. This could be very useful to speed up translation if you receive emails from foreign parts. To set it up in gmail, go to Settings, Labs, and enable the option. BillK From hkhenson at rogers.com Tue May 19 22:37:38 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (hkhenson) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 15:37:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellite draft analysis Message-ID: <1242773138_17510@s6.cableone.net> As some of you know, I have been working on power satellites as a way to solve the energy and carbon dioxide problems for more than a year. This last weekend I gained access to some hundreds of man-years of related work. With that, some relatively simple physics, and a spread sheet, I now have a rough analysis of the finances good enough for a draft business plan. The analysis makes the case for solving both problems by undercutting the cost of energy from oil, coal and nuclear. In addition, it makes money on a scale large enough to put a dent in the US national debt. This on an investment of only two GM bailouts. The background information isn't public and in any case not many can understand the physics and finantial analysis If you do understand at this level, will actually study and comment on it and agree not to make the background information public let me know and I will send you the package. Keith From emlynoregan at gmail.com Wed May 20 01:02:47 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 10:32:47 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Science News Cycle Message-ID: <710b78fc0905191802n463ccd47p3363991e7ccf40d5@mail.gmail.com> The Science News Cycle http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174 too true! -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From mbb386 at main.nc.us Wed May 20 01:19:43 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 21:19:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Science News Cycle In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905191802n463ccd47p3363991e7ccf40d5@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0905191802n463ccd47p3363991e7ccf40d5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <35493.12.77.169.70.1242782383.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > The Science News Cycle > http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174 > > Thanks for posting this, it's a hoot. :))) I think I'll dig through the archives too.... a new time waster! Regards, MB From rtomek at ceti.pl Wed May 20 01:50:12 2009 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 03:50:12 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] Speeding up audio In-Reply-To: References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert> <580930c20905190526g481e0632x46f1ee7378a24617@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 19 May 2009, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 4:23 AM, Harvey Newstrom > wrote: > > Does anybody else do this as well? Yes. Documentaries are so condensed when watched at 1.5 speed. But usually I am content with 1.2x, just in case so I don't miss anything important. It was interesting to watch my brain getting acustomed to higher sounds, so finally I did not see much difference when I switched 1<->1.2<->1.3... > > ?Anybody know a pocket player that can go > > faster than 1.25 speed natively, without pre-processing? > > Why, I like Playstation 3s as DVD or BD players because they allow you > to watch movies at 1.5 speed with non-distorted audio, something which > I do not get in my experience with either standalone players or PCs... On Linux, I use mplayer for watching "faaast videos" (nice shortcuts for speeding up and slowing down). I believe, the only thing that stops me from going higher than 3x is my cpu speed (and, maybe, my brain will not be able to catch up, I still have to test this). Regards Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Wed May 20 01:07:57 2009 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 21:07:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Speeding up audio In-Reply-To: References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert> <580930c20905190526g481e0632x46f1ee7378a24617@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <93B483BFD6514EB3B577E7A74DD1C323@Catbert> "MB" wrote, > Gah! ENVY. Serious envy. I cannot listen to a podcast and get much of > anything. > Even when I was in highschool I could not understand the lyrics to the > popular > songs, had to go to the music store and look at the sheet music. Mostly it > sounded > like sorta rhyming nonsense sylables. I have this same problem with music. It is harder to distinguish the words from the music. With words only, I do better. But I also have been working vehicle-free in DC, using public transportation. This has given me about an hour a day total to listen to podcasts. At first I missed items and had to rewind the play. After a while I learned to pay attention and not let my mind wander. I also built up my speed over time. It wasn't as easy as reading at first. "Stathis Papaioannou" wrote, > But fro me it's quite difficult and unpleasant even for a short while. > Have you ever watched a whole movie sped up this way? I have watched a whole movie this way, but it was a monster movie with less amount and complexity in the speaking. I have also watched subtitled films this way, where I could read the text faster than the speech. -- Harvey Newstrom From dharris234 at mindspring.com Wed May 20 02:52:49 2009 From: dharris234 at mindspring.com (David C. Harris) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 19:52:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Introducing Ida? In-Reply-To: <833792.91701.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <833792.91701.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A137081.8030703@mindspring.com> The quality and completeness of the remains, and the 43.8 million years earlier than "Lucy", make this a very significant "formerly missing link". Were we descended from "monkeys"? Yep, just look at Ida! Dan wrote: > http://revealingthelink.com/ > > There was a big to do about this among my associates, but the actual finding looks rather ho hum. > > Regards, > > Dan > > From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed May 20 10:18:51 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 12:18:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Human Experimenting Message-ID: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> I think that the following remarks may have something to do with the subject recently raised on experiments performed with their consent on inmates facing execution (or perhaps even just long jail sentences), obviously with same trade-off as to their sentences. <> As unpleasant as the subject may be, the inmates issue is of course part of the much broader subject of experiments on human subjects, which I submit is excessively restricted in contemporary times, up to a level the justification of which, be it from a utilitarian, a promethean or most other ethical POVs, is not entirely clear. In particular, relatively high-risk experimenting calls in question a number of other scenarios, such as: - self-experimentation by the researcher; - terminally sick patients; - embryos, fetuses and anencefalic newborns; - "volunteers" by way of contractual acceptance of the risk involved. Stefano Vaj From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed May 20 13:34:21 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 06:34:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Power satellite draft analysis Message-ID: <885450.4506.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/19/09, hkhenson wrote: > As some of you know, I have been > working on power satellites as a way to solve the energy and > carbon dioxide problems for more than a year. > > This last weekend I gained access to some hundreds of > man-years of related work.? With that, some relatively > simple physics, and a spread sheet, I now have a rough > analysis of the finances good enough for a draft business > plan. > > The analysis makes the case for solving both problems by > undercutting the cost of energy from oil, coal and > nuclear.? In addition, it makes money on a scale large > enough to put a dent in the US national debt.? This on > an investment of only two GM bailouts. > > The background information isn't public and in any case not > many can understand the physics and finantial analysis One thing to do -- not meant as an insult and not being snarky -- is spell check! If you want people to invest millions or billions, make sure all these seemingly unimportant problems are minimized. Er, "finantial" should be "financial." > If you do understand at this level, will actually study and > comment on it and agree not to make the background > information public let me know and I will send you the > package. How big is "the package"? (No pun intended.:) Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed May 20 18:52:32 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 11:52:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] against Many Worlds QT Message-ID: <698319.54719.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/19/09, John K Clark wrote: > In the USA tonight Nova has a show on > PBS about Hugh Everett and his many worlds theory. Was it any good? I've always liked their documentaries. Regards, Dan From rtomek at ceti.pl Wed May 20 20:06:39 2009 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 22:06:39 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] Human Experimenting In-Reply-To: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 20 May 2009, Stefano Vaj wrote: > I think that the following remarks may have something to do with the > subject recently raised on experiments performed with their consent on > inmates facing execution (or perhaps even just long jail sentences), > obviously with same trade-off as to their sentences. Uhm, I doubt my English a little. Do I read you well, do you propose to include human experimentation into "new standards"? For the good of humanity, of course. > The closing decades of the last century brought confident predictions > from both academic and clinical researchers (scientists and physicians > alike) that the opening decade of this century would see, if not > definitive cure or control, then certainly the first truly effective > therapeutic drugs for cancer, ischemia-reperfusion injury (i.e. heart [... lots of diseases deleted ...] Well, they were making their predictions based on what? Was there any realism in it? If yes, what has happened - has sudden lack of human test subjects prevented further advance? If so, than maybe I should mention it, that last time such sudden cut in human experimentations happened was in 1945, with the end of last World War (guess who has been experimenting and where the resullts were transferred). After that, I've heard there were some "cases" of HE in US, Russia and maybe on much more limited scale few other countries. And I am not very happy with how they were conducted, behind the people's back and always for their good and wellness. I simply don't buy such shit. Maybe, just maybe, trying to eliminate causes of all those diseases, heart failures etc would be as beneficial for humanity, without risk of being partner or beneficiary of mass murder? Not to mention big and possibly growing number of people, who don't dream of artificial heart but rather of something such prosaic as mosquito net. Or one meal a day, access to potable water, decent school for their kids or safe shelter. In no particular order. Myself, I am for computational models rather than living subjects. This means a lot of time and work before anything can be really used. Maybe even 50 years. But at least I cannot imagine ethical problems here. And no, it is not because I have lost my nerves, or balls, or something. I have it all, where it belongs. [...] > In particular, relatively high-risk experimenting calls in question a > number of other scenarios, such as: > - self-experimentation by the researcher; Yes, this is acceptable for me. Provided their free will can be somehow guaranteed. > - terminally sick patients; If they really want to - but most people would like to take risks only if there is hope of gaining something valuable, like health or at least life extension. Or so I guess. It may be difficult to tell someone something like "we want to take your morphine back and test one substance on you, but one way or another no chance to get out alive". > - embryos, fetuses and anencefalic newborns; Anencephalics may be "ok" (note the quotes), but I am cautious about the rest. > - "volunteers" by way of contractual acceptance of the risk involved. Oh, how nice. What a big opportunity for misdemeanor... Maybe I should start calculating, place myself high enough in this new food chain... There are already "volunteers" giving their organs or being treated as food, all of it more or (rather) less voluntarily. Actually this experimentation idea seems like the next logical step, right? Ok, there are also people allowing transplantations of their organs after death and I can agree with this approach. After brain death, body can be kept alive for some time. I can possibly accept it, if consenting party gives their body to scientifical research in such case. As a practical cynic, I guess as soon as humans give other humans right to possibly kill them for humanity's good, humanity will be redefined to small circle of criminals, with attitude like "better you die first and I benefit". The rest will be treated like animals, which perhaps is deserved ("well, you want to be our animal? you will get it"). If somebody plans entering the "small circle", be prepared for mean life expectancy of about 10 years. There may be hidden "criminal talents", waiting for a chance to take your seat. So any gains from such compulsory (or semi compulsory) experimentations will be nullified, and humanity will either disapear or fall back to the past. I am talking about long term, short term will probably show "stunning progress" or something like this. It will be either real or propaganda make-up or mixed. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed May 20 20:27:19 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 22:27:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Human Experimenting In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 10:06 PM, Tomasz Rola wrote: > Uhm, I doubt my English a little. Do I read you well, do you propose to > include human experimentation into "new standards"? For the good of > humanity, of course. How would I propose something which is already in place, and is a requirement, e.g., for any new drug to enter mass production? The issue is exactly the related standards. >> The closing decades of the last century brought confident predictions >> from both academic and clinical researchers (scientists and physicians >> alike) that the opening decade of this century would see, if not >> definitive cure or control, then certainly the first truly effective >> therapeutic drugs for cancer, ischemia-reperfusion injury (i.e. heart > [... lots of diseases deleted ...] > > Well, they were making their predictions based on what? I am simply quoting a previous message here. Ask the original poster. >> In particular, relatively high-risk experimenting calls in question a >> number of other scenarios, such as: >> - self-experimentation by the researcher; > Yes, this is acceptable for me. Provided their free will can be somehow > guaranteed. Due note taken. >> - terminally sick patients; > If they really want to - but most ?people would like to take risks only > if there is hope of gaining something valuable, like health or at least > life extension. Or so I guess. It may be difficult to tell someone > something like "we want to take your morphine back and test one substance > on you, but one way or another no chance to get out alive". No, the real issue is: you are going to die no matter what, *but* you are not allowed to test such therapy because *we* did not authorise it yet. >> - embryos, fetuses and anencefalic newborns; > Anencephalics may be "ok" (note the quotes), but I am cautious about the > rest. How an anencefalic newborn would be any "better" than, say, a 64-cell embryo? :-) >> - "volunteers" by way of contractual acceptance of the risk involved. > Oh, how nice. What a big opportunity for misdemeanor... Maybe I should > start calculating, place myself high enough in this new food chain... > There are already "volunteers" giving their organs or being treated as > food, all of it more or (rather) less voluntarily. Actually this > experimentation idea seems like the next logical step, right? Ok, there > are also people allowing transplantations of their organs after death and > I can agree with this approach. After brain death, body can be kept > alive for some time. I can possibly accept it, if consenting party gives > their body to scientifical research in such case. Admittedly, this is a sensitive issue. A libertarian would probably have no many qualms in recognising the validity of such a contract. It remains however debatable whether such agreements should be allowed, as they would be most probably entered into under duress, let alone enforced. > As a practical cynic, I guess as soon as humans give other humans right to > possibly kill them for humanity's good, humanity will be redefined to > small circle of criminals, with attitude like "better you die first and I > benefit". The rest will be treated like animals, which perhaps is > deserved ("well, you want to be our animal? you will get it"). I am not a utilitarian myself. I note however that such ethical stance is quite popular amongst transhumanist, especially "progressive" transhumanists, so I wonder how they would justify an opposition to that from their own POV. -- Stefano Vaj From natasha at natasha.cc Wed May 20 20:30:58 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 16:30:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism Message-ID: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> "The Medusa Complex: A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism" by Ted Hiebert, tosses posthumanism into the stew of postmodernism, and far from a transhumanist logic. On the other hand, the mythological figures are well-suited for this piece. One paragraph stands out, however: "... "This is where the posthuman is born - in the embodied reflection of poststructural uncertainty looking for the first time at itself. Posthumanism is the postmodern mirror, one that looks into the mirror without recognition, for the boundaries of identity and body have dissolved into the uncertainty of perception, and the self no longer appears, even to itself, without the waverings of its own impossibility. Once the self turns its deconstructive gaze on itself, all other meaning needs to be recontextualized. The gaze is displaced, disoriented, disassociated, and it is not the world that is uncertain but more problematically the very site from which perception and cognition pretended to be born." http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:0UeuLq1C1SYJ:www.tedhiebert.net/site/downloads/writings/medusa.pdf+Ted+Hiebert+AND+The+Medusa+Complex&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us Well - this paragraph does not reflect my own view, but I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on it? Natasha From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed May 20 20:40:00 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 22:40:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <580930c20905201340q76044a53sde8962984035c245@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 10:30 PM, wrote: > Well - this paragraph does not reflect my own view, but I was wondering if > anyone has any thoughts on it? I do consider myself as the "missing link" between transhumanist posthumanism and postmodernist posthumanism, but this IMHO is far from both. If anything, "postmodern" posthumanism shows that no cultural narrative makes sense and may be really understood in depth unless it is related and reconnected to a given (individual, and by extension collective) specific identity, which has to be made self-aware. This is also the sense of the Heideggerian Abbau, or "deconstruction"- -- Stefano Vaj From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 20 20:58:04 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 15:58:04 -0500 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: <580930c20905201340q76044a53sde8962984035c245@mail.gmail.co m> References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> <580930c20905201340q76044a53sde8962984035c245@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090520155314.024a2bf8@satx.rr.com> At 10:40 PM 5/20/2009 +0200, Stefano wrote: >This is also the sense of the Heideggerian Abbau, or "deconstruction" Or arguably "Destruktion" since deconstruction is more properly the Derridean method. I think we have to assume litcritsprache has independently coined the term "posthumanism" as another step beyond Althusserian "antihumanism," so it has no obvious relevance to the transhuman/ posthuman spectrum discussed in discourses such as this list. Damien Broderick From natasha at natasha.cc Wed May 20 21:13:35 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 17:13:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090520155314.024a2bf8@satx.rr.com> References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> <580930c20905201340q76044a53sde8962984035c245@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090520155314.024a2bf8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20090520171335.mw7n5fd50ooscs0o@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting Damien Broderick : > At 10:40 PM 5/20/2009 +0200, Stefano wrote: > >> This is also the sense of the Heideggerian Abbau, or "deconstruction" > > Or arguably "Destruktion" since deconstruction is more properly the > Derridean method. > > I think we have to assume litcritsprache has independently coined the > term "posthumanism" as another step beyond Althusserian "antihumanism," > so it has no obvious relevance to the transhuman/ posthuman spectrum > discussed in discourses such as this list. I'm not convinced that Althusseerian antihumanism is anti-humanistic because structuralism places identity at the center, whereby all else is a matter of building blocks of perception in decoding culture. Seems very humanistic for its relevance to human, and transhumanist for its ability to build structures based on behaviors - (now including nonbiological behaviors). Am I wrong, or am I wrong? Natasha From natasha at natasha.cc Wed May 20 21:17:21 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 17:17:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: <580930c20905201340q76044a53sde8962984035c245@mail.gmail.com> References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> <580930c20905201340q76044a53sde8962984035c245@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20090520171721.jkungtsug4wokk0g@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting Stefano Vaj : > On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 10:30 PM, wrote: >> Well - this paragraph does not reflect my own view, but I was wondering if >> anyone has any thoughts on it? > > I do consider myself as the "missing link" between transhumanist > posthumanism and postmodernist posthumanism, but this IMHO is far from > both. > > If anything, "postmodern" posthumanism shows that no cultural > narrative makes sense I would rewrite your statement by saying that "'postmodern' posthumanism shows that no ['postmodern'] cultural narrative [by 'postmodern'ist writers] makes sense.' Natasha From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed May 20 21:27:27 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 23:27:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090520155314.024a2bf8@satx.rr.com> References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> <580930c20905201340q76044a53sde8962984035c245@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090520155314.024a2bf8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905201427t3777bbbm3661fcd81d224d9f@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 10:58 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > I think we have to assume litcritsprache has independently coined the term > "posthumanism" as another step beyond Althusserian "antihumanism," so it has > no obvious relevance to the transhuman/ posthuman spectrum discussed in > discourses such as this list. Mmhhh. It is undeniable that "posthumanists" in this context refers more to post-humanism than to posthuman-ism. Yet some obvious convergences do exist, and should perhaps be explored much more in depth than it is usually the case, especially amongst English-mother tongue transhumanists who may be deterred to do so by the attitude of people like Dale Carrico. See, for instance: - Viroid Life: Perspectives on Nietzsche and the Transhuman Condition by Ansell Pearson - Posthumanism (Readers in Cultural Criticism) by Neil Badmington - Pour en finir avec le nihilisme. Heidegger et la question de la technique, by Guillaume Faye - Postmodern Fables by Jean-Francois Lyotard and Georges Van Den Abbeele -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed May 20 21:30:54 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 23:30:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: <20090520171721.jkungtsug4wokk0g@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> <580930c20905201340q76044a53sde8962984035c245@mail.gmail.com> <20090520171721.jkungtsug4wokk0g@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <580930c20905201430n3c26cf0ch88752a140eebc623@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 11:17 PM, wrote: > I would rewrite your statement by saying that "'postmodern' posthumanism > shows that no ['postmodern'] cultural narrative [by 'postmodern'ist writers] > makes sense.' Why, this is a little harsh, even though I have as much fun as the next guy by reading my Sokal's Fashionable Nonsense... :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Wed May 20 22:03:28 2009 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 00:03:28 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] Human Experimenting In-Reply-To: <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 20 May 2009, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 10:06 PM, Tomasz Rola wrote: > > Uhm, I doubt my English a little. Do I read you well, do you propose to > > include human experimentation into "new standards"? For the good of > > humanity, of course. > > How would I propose something which is already in place, and is a > requirement, e.g., for any new drug to enter mass production? The > issue is exactly the related standards. Ok, but to be quite frank I call this "lab testing" or "clinical testing". And I understand this is ok, standardised, acceptable and in some way beneficial. Even if some people have doubts and I can agree with few or share them. "Experimentation" on the other hand, is associated in my mind with bastards & psychos + helpless people tied to operation table, dark basements, subjectising of free human beings etc. Actually, the subjectising part is the worst for me. Oh, there are also some big words, flushed at masses of idiots lest they revolt (but since they are idiots, revolt is not really dangerous, it's just a trouble). > >> The closing decades of the last century brought confident predictions > >> from both academic and clinical researchers (scientists and physicians > >> alike) that the opening decade of this century would see, if not > >> definitive cure or control, then certainly the first truly effective > >> therapeutic drugs for cancer, ischemia-reperfusion injury (i.e. heart > > [... lots of diseases deleted ...] > > > > Well, they were making their predictions based on what? > > I am simply quoting a previous message here. Ask the original poster. Sorry, I did not see this other poster in your message, even though I realised you had been probably quoting somebody. I stay corrected, then. Still, I would like to understand. Predictions are made based on something, in worst case on wishful thinking alone. They have been said to not come true - so what happened, other than maybe a small reality check? > >> In particular, relatively high-risk experimenting calls in question a > >> number of other scenarios, such as: > >> - self-experimentation by the researcher; > > Yes, this is acceptable for me. Provided their free will can be somehow > > guaranteed. > > Due note taken. Ok. > >> - terminally sick patients; > > If they really want to - but most ?people would like to take risks only > > if there is hope of gaining something valuable, like health or at least > > life extension. Or so I guess. It may be difficult to tell someone > > something like "we want to take your morphine back and test one substance > > on you, but one way or another no chance to get out alive". > > No, the real issue is: you are going to die no matter what, *but* you > are not allowed to test such therapy because *we* did not authorise it > yet. So I am for giving those people a chance to fight for their lives. > >> - embryos, fetuses and anencefalic newborns; > > Anencephalics may be "ok" (note the quotes), but I am cautious about the > > rest. > > How an anencefalic newborn would be any "better" than, say, a 64-cell > embryo? :-) I don't really know and the answer to this question is not easy. Perhaps this is why I don't want to make a mistake. I think that no matter why people decide one way or another with regard to this issue, they are in the dark. Maybe the criteria for me is that a 64-cell embryo (with no other properties stated, like some deadly congenital illness) could have a chance to live in other circumstances, while with (practically) no brain the chance is zero. Well, there is some anecdotal evidence of nobrainers doing all right in politics and (show)business, but other than that, zero. > > are also people allowing transplantations of their organs after death and > > I can agree with this approach. After brain death, body can be kept > > alive for some time. I can possibly accept it, if consenting party gives > > their body to scientifical research in such case. > > Admittedly, this is a sensitive issue. A libertarian would probably > have no many qualms in recognising the validity of such a contract. It > remains however debatable whether such agreements should be allowed, > as they would be most probably entered into under duress, let alone > enforced. Well, so maybe there should be some judge involved, too? Not that it will eliminate all badness, but maybe make it a little harder. > > As a practical cynic, I guess as soon as humans give other humans right to > > possibly kill them for humanity's good, humanity will be redefined to > > small circle of criminals, with attitude like "better you die first and I > > benefit". The rest will be treated like animals, which perhaps is > > deserved ("well, you want to be our animal? you will get it"). > > I am not a utilitarian myself. I note however that such ethical stance > is quite popular amongst transhumanist, especially "progressive" > transhumanists, so I wonder how they would justify an opposition to > that from their own POV. Words, words, better them than us, whatever... Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From natasha at natasha.cc Wed May 20 23:16:38 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 19:16:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: <580930c20905201430n3c26cf0ch88752a140eebc623@mail.gmail.com> References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> <580930c20905201340q76044a53sde8962984035c245@mail.gmail.com> <20090520171721.jkungtsug4wokk0g@webmail.natasha.cc> <580930c20905201430n3c26cf0ch88752a140eebc623@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20090520191638.o4eh2q2rmsw4kcww@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting Stefano Vaj : > On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 11:17 PM, wrote: > >> I would rewrite your statement by saying that "'postmodern' posthumanism >> shows that no ['postmodern'] cultural narrative [by 'postmodern'ist writers] >> makes sense.' > > > Why, this is a little harsh, even though I have as much fun as the next guy > by reading my Sokal's Fashionable > Nonsense... > :-) I'll take Sokal anyday. Got to LOVE him! From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Wed May 20 23:00:15 2009 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 19:00:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Christian sexuality website In-Reply-To: <2d6187670905190200r5f58906etab7dba75b7e9c246@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670905190200r5f58906etab7dba75b7e9c246@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <87E17C99B1E74CCEB758EBF490FAB2B6@Catbert> John Grigg wrote, > This odd website teaches a very epicurean approach to Christian sexuality. > I'm just not sure as to whether it is a parody or not... > > http://www.sexinchrist.com/pornography.html Really? People really cannot tell that this is a parody? People really think this might be real? -- Harvey Newstrom From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu May 21 01:28:34 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 10:58:34 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Cars and Ants Message-ID: <710b78fc0905201828gbc5291dt3ae77ec196f5297e@mail.gmail.com> I was thinking about the self piloting car problem while walking to work yesterday. I often think about it, because the whole concept of manually piloting a car really irritates me; it's a job for a machine, and yet here we are, over a century beyond the invention of the horseless carriage, still providing the control system for these contraptions. Anyway, I see a lot of promise in GPS systems and accurate maps and all the cool gear we have for planning a route and navigating from point A to point B. The unsolved problem seems to be how the car's control system can manage from moment to moment, at the millisecond level, staying on the road and behaving sensibly. I had two ideas about this. The first one was that if we just had a simple to sense directionality to road surfaces, like grooves or embedded wires or lots of painted stripes, you could know which way the road runs, and know if you were skewed to that direction. You could even modulate the pattern (colours? wiggles? extra or missing lines?) to provide other information - left turn coming up, stop coming up, lane ending merge right, etc. But I like my second idea better, which relates to ants. I'm thinking of a pheromone trail. Could we get cars to leave a weak chemical trail as they drive around? If most of the cars did this, you'd end up with a nice aggregate trail in every lane of every road, strongest in the average path, with a nice falling gradient as you move away from the center. So it should be quite useful to follow it. Note this doesn't tell you where how to navigate and intersection, for instance, although it might map out all the alternative routes. But, there's some chance that, along with some visual systems and collision detection systems and yada yada, it would help solve the moment to moment steering problem. About how you'd drop such a trail; could you add something to gasoline that would come out the exhaust and leave a deposit on the road that would degrade over time? In fact, is there something in there already? Maybe these trails are already there?? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From aware at awareresearch.com Wed May 20 20:49:49 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 13:49:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 1:30 PM, wrote: > "This is where the posthuman is born - in the embodied reflection of > poststructural uncertainty looking for the first time at itself. > Posthumanism is the postmodern mirror, one that looks into the mirror > without recognition, for the boundaries of identity and body have dissolved > into the uncertainty of perception, and the self no longer appears, even to > itself, without the waverings of its own impossibility. Once the self turns > its deconstructive gaze on itself, all other meaning needs to be > recontextualized. The gaze is displaced, disoriented, disassociated, and it > is not the world that is uncertain but more problematically the very site > from which perception and cognition pretended to be born." > > http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:0UeuLq1C1SYJ:www.tedhiebert.net/site/downloads/writings/medusa.pdf+Ted+Hiebert+AND+The+Medusa+Complex&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us > > Well - this paragraph does not reflect my own view, but I was wondering if > anyone has any thoughts on it? I read the first eight pages and got the impression that it was pretty poor postmodernist poetry of paradox in the style of Sokal. It stands as an example of it own point, if of nothing else. - Jef From msd001 at gmail.com Thu May 21 02:18:33 2009 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 22:18:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Cars and Ants In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905201828gbc5291dt3ae77ec196f5297e@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0905201828gbc5291dt3ae77ec196f5297e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62c14240905201918y6b8c3098t6fa9b439a9d98579@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 9:28 PM, Emlyn wrote: > But I like my second idea better, which relates to ants. I'm thinking > of a pheromone trail. Could we get cars to leave a weak chemical trail > as they drive around? If most of the cars did this, you'd end up with > a nice aggregate trail in every lane of every road, strongest in the > average path, with a nice falling gradient as you move away from the > center. So it should be quite useful to follow it. Have you considered using gps enhanced with cell-tower triangulation? That would cover most of the already developed infrastructure in metro areas. If we still aren't sure about the accuracy of road maps, we could allow the cars to train on the roads while under human control. This would free us from the daily commute once we've driven to work once or twice. If the cars on the road were 802.11n+ ad-hoc network routers, we would be able to query conditions ahead as far as there is traffic density to carry the network. This would also allow each node in the network (car) to alert position information to nearest neighbors to not only increase collision avoidance but also inform intention for the sake of changing lanes or entering/exiting the roadway. (ex: I need to exit right soon, but I'm in the leftmost lane. With intention broadcast, neighboring cars can momentarily open a path) The open relay of car-to-car data is very similar to your ant analogy, but uses RF rather than chemical signals. Considering the seemingly ever-present stream of cars at nearly every bend in the roads that I drive, I wouldn't need greater persistence than real-time (or point-in-time) traffic data. Once the cars are equipped with sufficient technology, then we can discuss enhancing hundreds of thousands of miles of roads. An "old car" is 10+ years old. The average age of highway is usually several times that of the cars on it. An entire generation of cars will be replaced before a typical road is refurbished. I too have thought about this a great deal. :) From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu May 21 02:47:49 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 12:17:49 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Cars and Ants In-Reply-To: <62c14240905201918y6b8c3098t6fa9b439a9d98579@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0905201828gbc5291dt3ae77ec196f5297e@mail.gmail.com> <62c14240905201918y6b8c3098t6fa9b439a9d98579@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905201947w45af41cfj67dcf563500f58b4@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/21 Mike Dougherty : > On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 9:28 PM, Emlyn wrote: >> But I like my second idea better, which relates to ants. I'm thinking >> of a pheromone trail. Could we get cars to leave a weak chemical trail >> as they drive around? If most of the cars did this, you'd end up with >> a nice aggregate trail in every lane of every road, strongest in the >> average path, with a nice falling gradient as you move away from the >> center. So it should be quite useful to follow it. > > Have you considered using gps enhanced with cell-tower triangulation? I have! I think we'd use that extensively, of course. Can we get the millisecond and perhaps millimeter precision that we need, though, with that? Also, what do you do when there are dropouts? I think any system totally reliant on remote infrastructure is going to have these bad failure modes that render the thing unusable. However, I think it's so close to usable, that you don't need much to fill in the gaps. The pheromone idea is one idea for filling in the gaps. > That would cover most of the already developed infrastructure in metro > areas. ?If we still aren't sure about the accuracy of road maps, we > could allow the cars to train on the roads while under human control. > This would free us from the daily commute once we've driven to work > once or twice. Yep, training modes are a great idea I think. If the early systems only work for routes you frequently travel, where the car has trained, that'd be fine. Most of us do our most boring and repetitive travelling daily, that's the biggest bang for the buck. > If the cars on the road were 802.11n+ ad-hoc network > routers, we would be able to query conditions ahead as far as there is > traffic density to carry the network. ?This would also allow each node > in the network (car) to alert position information to nearest > neighbors to not only increase collision avoidance but also inform > intention for the sake of changing lanes or entering/exiting the > roadway. ?(ex: I need to exit right soon, but I'm in the leftmost > lane. ?With intention broadcast, neighboring cars can momentarily open > a path) Also you could potentially swap route training info, and you could probably send coordinate info around too; if you can pinpoint the location of another car in relation to yourself, and it can tell you where it thinks it is, then there's something to check your own idea about where you are against. Networks of cars are a great idea. This is a very bottom-up approach, which is not a way we are used to thinking about the roads I think. With respect to things like signalling intentions to change lanes, you'll get all kinds of incentives to cheat; there's no contract between you and other cars for them to behave in the way you want them to. A reputation system would probably help. Something like what's embedded in bittorrent. Maintain measures of reputation, and decide to cooperate based on that. Iterated tit-for-tat. > ?The open relay of car-to-car data is very similar to your ant > analogy, but uses RF rather than chemical signals. ?Considering the > seemingly ever-present stream of cars at nearly every bend in the > roads that I drive, I wouldn't need greater persistence than real-time > (or point-in-time) traffic data. ?Once the cars are equipped with > sufficient technology, then we can discuss enhancing hundreds of > thousands of miles of roads. ?An "old car" is 10+ years old. ?The > average age of highway is usually several times that of the cars on > it. ?An entire generation of cars will be replaced before a typical > road is refurbished. That's what I liked about the pheromone idea, it doesn't require road refurbishment. It mightn't even require new cars! Dunno how it holds up in rain. > > I too have thought about this a great deal. ?:) Awesome! -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From jef at jefallbright.net Wed May 20 18:17:23 2009 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 11:17:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Increasing coherence over increasing context? Or Truth? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 10:23 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Jef writes >>>> Lee, my purpose in raising this issue will be served when it's >>>> recognized that you simply can't "model" an "unattainable final goal." >>>> What is the behavior of this element? Precisely how does it >>>> constrain the behavior of the model as a whole? > (Eternal Truth #2: every statement must be > further modified. > Hence "around the sun" must be modified to > be "about the common center of gravity", > "planets" must be modified to include a > great many other bodies in the vicinity, > "around" must be understood to not be in > defiance of general motion due to galactic > rotation and speed of the galaxy itself, > and so on, literally forever.) This "framing problem", similar to the "grounding problem", should be commonplace to any eight year old philosopher. Pragmatically, it's not an issue, just as nature doesn't have to compute the infinite sequences of digits in pi each and every time a soap bubble is formed [cf. Bucky Fuller.] > But still, it is absolutely important to > be able to embrace the realization "planets > circle the sun"---and to embrace it as > correct, without any beating around the > bush. My point is that it's /not/ "absolutely" important (from who's perspective, able to judge relative importance as if outside the system?), but like nature building soap bubbles, it happens however it does, and we as embedded observers construct theories of "reality" tending toward increasing coherence, adapting to increasing context of observations. Some people reading this will think "okay, but it's splitting hairs, debating angels on the head of a pin, of no practical consequence", so this seems a good place for an assurance that the increased sophistication I'm aiming for is of extremely practical importance and in any case we'll get there (or not) with a great deal of unnecessary suffering (or not) assuming that our evolutionary branch continues. >> Or mightn't you agree with me that >> his theory was more *coherent* within >> the broader context of observations >> of his time? > > No offense, but to me that's an unnecessarily > obscure way of describing him and his theories. > He was way off track about how the solar system > basically works, even though his approximations > for the sake of predictions were praiseworthy. > So, to answer your question: no. So you say "his approximations for the sake of prediction were praiseworthy" but to you that does't mean his new theory, compared to the popular prior, wasn't more coherent within the broader context? Can you explain to me what "coherent" means to you? >> In the same light, you might recognize that evolutionary "progress", >> of which scientific progress is an instance, does not move >> teleologically toward any particular goal, but rather, proceeds by way >> of exploring its adjacent possible, responding to (local) regularities >> (not Truths) with persistent structures reflecting the increasingly >> probable. > > Actually, I agreed more with what you wrote to > Max. > > I believe that (society parameters allowing) > our scientific progress does move closer to > pinning down reality (though I hasten to add > as always that this is a never ending process). The point is not whether scientific progress does or doesn't tend to move toward an improving model of reality. I think we can both agree that it makes sense to assume it does. The point is that from any particular point of view in this evolving system, i.e., at any *particular* location we may presently inhabit on the path of evolutionary contingincies, there is no way to know whether we are moving closer or farther from Truth (what actually works in the bigger picture, were we to know it), nor how long we may have been moving so. To do so would require a context greater than that available to us. >From ***Ptolomey's point of view***, was he moving closer to absolute Truth? With sufficient sophistication, he'd have known that he had no way to tell, nor did it matter, but he could indeed demonstrate that his new improved model of celestial mechanics was more coherent within the greater context of observations available to him at that time, with the pragmatic benefits that entailed. That same principle applies here and now. > To me, a term such as "the increasingly probable" > hides more than it makes clear. Something is > probable? Probably what? Probably so? True? Oh. Probable in the sense of more likely to be observed, to exert an influence, to be detected, to make a difference in the structure of its surroundings. Evidence of a likelihood function, not a statement of Truth. > As I say, I find many of your descriptions and the > concepts you use to be useful, but they come rather > late in one's epistemology, resting upon more > basic things. Your kids and employees, of course, > often really are looking for "yes" and "no" (I'm > hardly telling you anything, of course), black or > white, or particular shade of purple-gray, (as a > mauve) when you try to convey a more nuanced > outlook. Well, most of us in daily life use the > concepts of basic realism. > > And so do you, of course. If the cop pulls you > over, you'll either argue that you were *not* > speeding or admit that you were, or some mixture > of the two. You won't dare employ any talk of > his increasingly adaptive response to evolving > traffic flows and his own perceptions on the > one hand vis a vis yours, with nothing like the > actual "real" (sic) velocity being admissible . :) Yes, Lee, what works is entirely dependent on context. But if I wanted to get people thinking about systems of social decision-making seen as increasingly ethical, then yes, I would be using phrasing and concepts similar to those I share with my friends online. And to the extent we are dealing with the regularities of daily life, then we do well to exploit the fast and frugal heuristics of our evolutionary heritage. But the local effectiveness of heuristics comes at the expense of reduced context. Thus we have the effectiveness of belief in authority, the cohesiveness of the in-group and its codes (religion, cults)... and belief in an absolute Truth. [Was the Truth describing the nature and existence of Rush Limbaugh present in the early phases of our Universe? Is that conceivable from an information-theoretic point of view? I know, it's hard to conceive even now...] But to the extent that we are trying to make effective predictions about an increasingly uncertain future, then there is a moral imperative to strive for increasing coherence, within increasing context--applicable to knowledge of our present but evolving values, and to our present but evolving instrumental (scientific) methods for their promotion. It's the best we can do. That's why it matters. That's why I keep pressing the point. From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu May 21 05:54:43 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 15:24:43 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Christian sexuality website In-Reply-To: <87E17C99B1E74CCEB758EBF490FAB2B6@Catbert> References: <2d6187670905190200r5f58906etab7dba75b7e9c246@mail.gmail.com> <87E17C99B1E74CCEB758EBF490FAB2B6@Catbert> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905202254g18dfc439n1db09608bc934436@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/21 Harvey Newstrom : > John Grigg wrote, >> >> This odd website teaches a very epicurean approach to Christian sexuality. >> I'm just not sure as to whether it is a parody or not... >> >> http://www.sexinchrist.com/pornography.html > > Really? ?People really cannot tell that this is a parody? ?People really > think this might be real? > > -- > Harvey Newstrom I can't tell that/if it's a parody. It's likely not written by the pope, but it has an oddly genuine feel to it. Did anyone find anything suggesting who writes it, what group it is associated with, anything like that? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 21 06:03:15 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 23:03:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Increasing coherence over increasing context? Or Truth? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A14EEA3.3050200@rawbw.com> Jef writes > On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 9:55 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: >> Here is what the driving analogies are: our models >> (or theories *about*) physical reality. Suppose that >> you and I are measuring a temperature or merely the >> length of a rod. It is EXTREMELY USEFUL, I contend, >> to maintain that our measurements are converging on >> something. > > Lee, once upon a time I attempted to convey to you the distinction > between precision and accuracy. > > I do have to study that, thanks, because I so often mix up the three concepts /reliability/, /accuracy/, and /precision/ that one of my best friends is positively annoyed. However, fortunately for me, I don't think that I used one of those terms in our exchange. I also have to remind myself that you are not exactly an anti-realist: >>> My point is not that there is no reality, >>> but that the reality which can be expressed >>> is not the true reality. [Taken from an earlier post of yours.] Since you seem to acknowledge that there's a "true reality" though ineffable, I can't disagree there. I suppose I could ask you to keep that concept in mind below. >>> And that we would do well to let go of >>> early 20th century aspirations toward >>> increasing certainty about the Truth >>> of the workings of a clockwork universe, "Increasing certainty", to be sure, would be an inappropriate goal. We're can never be certain; all knowledge is conjectural, as we say in PCR. >>> and embrace a pragmatic view of increasing >>> instrumental truth (probability) within a >>> context of ever-increasing uncertainty >>> (possibility.) I strongly suspect that this doesn't really harbor any ideas I disagree with. Very possibly (though I'm sure you won't agree) these are words and concepts that for all practical purposes amount to the same kind of realism we all normally embrace. Once again, I refer everyone to Chris Hibbert's great review of Sunny Auyang's book: http://pancrit.blogspot.com/2007/08/sunny-auyang-how-is-quantum-field.html Chris covers very well, using Dr. Auyang quotes, the kind of realism that appeals to many modern scientists as well as appealed to Kant. > During my more than three decades in the business of analytical > instruments, I worked with countless customers who would naively ask > about the accuracy (veracity, truth) of their instrument. Nearly > always, I would have to explain that the instrument performs in terms > of sensitivity, stability, and... most importantly, precision. And > that is all that is needed, entirely useful, for any of their process > control needs. Hmm, you were there, but how did you know that they were not inquiring merely to the reliability of the instrument in matching, say, an international standard. Perhaps you can give me a hand, here: I paid $400 for a high precision thermometer because I got too interested in the "exact" temperatures of my various living rooms. It claims to be accurate (oh, hell, or precise, I don't remember) to one-tenth of a degree Fahrenheit. Now when I turn it on, and look skeptically at it as it fluctuates a bit, and I compare it to my cheaper thermometers, I testify that I have this in mind: I want to know the average temperature that the world's greatest scientists would report if they'd spent billions of dollars instrumenting the various rooms of my house. Since I do understand the kinetic theory of gases and I know that my instrument (and theirs) must vacillate a great deal, I think I do understand (you may disagree) the nonexistence of an infinitely precise temperature (given by some real number r). I think that you object to the concept of there being a real temperature at a given point at a given time. Yet it is *so* useful to be able to say (for example after a lot of very good measurements have been taken) "it is completely false that the temperature has been below 60 degrees Fahrenheit at any time during the last five minutes here". Which implies that we ought to embrace some statement like "it is completely true (given that all knowledge is conjectural) that the temperature under the conditions just referred to was at all times between 66 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit". > If they actually needed accuracy, then it was obtainable by taking the > measurement results and calibrating them relative to a reference > standard traceable to NIST or some other institution. Right. Okay. > But here's the key point: If NIST were to arbitrarily modify their > standard, and everybody recalibrated to it so they again had a common > basis for comparison, everything would work just as well. Accuracy > has NO MEANING independent of context. The first sentence I grant, of course. It's the second that troubles me. What does it mean? That there is a NIST standard somewhere (for this example)? Is that the sort of context you mean? I worry that the meaning/word ratio of your last sentence is pretty low. >> Something real, i.e., though the measuring rod we >> know to be a host of dancing sub-elementary particles >> (again, we "know" as an approximation to something >> that somehow really does make up the measuring rod), >> the thing we're trying to measure is on average of >> our measurements closer and closer to something, >> and our rod is (can be measured to be) more and >> more exactly some multiple of the one they keep >> in Paris. > > What do you imagine is the pragmatic difference between your "closer > and closer to Something" (implying increasing accuracy relative to a > Something which you acknowledge is inherently ultimately unknowable) > and my "increasing precision" within any particular measurement > context? Which delivers the better results? [Don't ignore the > non-negligible inefficiencies and errors introduced by any unnecessary > process.] "Pragmatic difference"? Well, I don't really see any. Both seem to deliver the same results, except that mine avoids the perhaps tricky word "context" in this context :) and on the whole my realistic descriptions are simpler and more intuitive than are your rather (pardon me) overly elaborate ones. > Lee, please don't forget that I spent over twenty years successfully > managing highly technical teams within a highly competitive > environment. Arguing from authority never gets anywhere with me, pal :) > I'm not speaking from the ivory towers of academia, nor > from a background in the Humanities steeped in Postmodernist > Deconstruction, nor from any vague, mush-headed mystical point of > view. That's good. But I don't think that I could have made much of a case that you were (so speaking). > My larger point is not that epistemological reductionism is wrong, but > that as a framework for decision-making it is incomplete, with serious > ramifications for the rational application of increasing > instrumentality within an increasingly uncertain world. Take the temperature example again. Yes, I can admit that many people have a rather naive view of what temperature is (never having even heard any phrase like "mean kinetic energy" in their lives), but does it really lead to bad planning, bad investment, or wrong-headed approaches in practical life? Lee > My larger point is not that epistemological reductionism is wrong, but > that as a framework for decision-making it is incomplete... From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 21 06:25:40 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 23:25:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] reading vs hearing In-Reply-To: <7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert> <7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> Message-ID: <4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com> spike wrote: > This brings up an important question I have been pondering. During the last > couple years, I intentionally avoided the noise copy of everything in the > news. Now I take all my news by reading only. In some cases I read hard > copy (newspapers and magazines), the great majority of the time internet > soft copy, but no TV, no radio, no podcast, no noise copy of any kind. I > did this with the pre-election debates: read the transcripts the next day. > My reasoning is that I am a fast reader, and have excellent reading > comprehension and retention. Sound channel, not so much. My attention > wanders when using that slow medium. With reading, I control the speed. > With noise, the speaker does. I listen to a fair number of books on tape or DVD and often have to hit rewind because something went by too fast. Yes, sometimes my mind wandered, as you say, but those are the uninteresting cases. What is happening in the cases of interest is that what is said sparks a train of thought which, had I been reading instead, would have been handled easily---noticing where I was in the page, I would just pause reading. Often those "trains of thoughts", tangencies, are the most productive thing I get out of either reading or listening to or talking to people. (We understand ourselves best: I've had a huge number of my best insights while telling somebody about something!) How can people listening at a thousand or two words a minute have time to reflect on it? Clearly we need to distinguish more carefully just what we are trying to do when we listen, watch, or read. Perhaps it's a function of the *kind* of information we're after. Sometimes when fixing dinner, say, and I'm listening to a history book, I've come away with the impression that certain things made a deeper impression on me than if I had been reading. Maybe the tone of voice of the speaker is the cause, if, for example, he was describing some appalling incident from long ago. Overall, naturally, I think that everyone will agree that reading has almost all the advantages, which accentuates the tragedy of blindness. > Experiment: take a big diverse group, divide it equally, give all the same > info, but one subgroup gets only soft or hard copy, the other gets only > noise copy. Do they come away with the same message? If different, how? > Why? Wouldn't it be great to run your own university lavishly, and be able to assign the psychology department to pursuing various of your brainstorms? Okay, a conjecture: those merely listening will devote more emotional processing time to what is heard (or images seen, for that matter), than those reading. Of course, that's pretty easy to say: I refer people to one of P.J. Manney's posts a year or two back in which she described the great chapter entitled "Typographic America" in the book "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman. The thesis is that by watching at listening, educated Americans now are in effect a lot dumber and less rational than were educated Americans a century ago when print was king, although Postman reserves most of his scorn for images (TV) as opposed to audio (radio). Lee > Now, let the original group divide itself as it wishes, to get either text > or sound, not both. Now do the two groups get the same message? Your > answers may explain a lot. > > spike From eschatoon at gmail.com Thu May 21 06:45:46 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 08:45:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dancing the transhuman r-evolution Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> I think the interesting article by Athena Andreadis on ?If I Can?t Dance, I Don?t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution!? identifies the core disagreement between transhumanists and non-transhumanist technoprogressives. This is not about living 20 or 50 years longer. Dancing the transhuman r-evolution - links in the post http://transumanar.com/index.php/site/dancing_the_transhuman_r-evolution/ On the IEET and Sentient Development blogs there is an interesting article by Athena Andreadis on ?If I Can?t Dance, I Don?t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution!?. Athena says: ?Both [transhumanism and cyberpunk] are deeply anhedonic, hostile to physicality and the pleasures of the body, from enjoying wine to playing in an orchestra. I wondered why it had taken me so long to figure this out. After all, many transhumanists use the repulsive (and misleading) term ?meat cage? to describe the human body, which they deem a stumbling block, an obstacle in the way of the mind? However, we demean the body at our peril. It?s not the passive container of our mind; it is its major shaper and inseparable partner.? and continues with arguments which, though framed constructively and with reapect, are basically similar to those of Dale Carrico. My comment on the Sentient Development blog, which includes my comment on the IEET blog: The article is very good because it goes straight to the core issue: Athena understands well that transhumanism is not about living 20 or 50 years longer, or about tech gadgets - transhumanism is about leaving biology behind. Mind uploading is not a msrginal element of transhumanism, but the essence of transhumanism. Some people like the idea, some don?t. Athena doesn?t, and I do. Many people in this comment thread have the same objection that I raise in the IEET port below. Why are you assuming that change is _in principle_ bad? I think it can also be good. Of all comments, I especially agree with Mark Walker?s, measured and reasonable as usual. Heresiarch: ?you can?t simulate reality to a higher degree than it already exists, and you can?t possibly make it more relevant.?. I disagree, and I think Shakespeare, Mozart and Picasso proved my point- ?? Original: Athena, I think you are kind of assuming your conclusions: you start assuming that transhumanism is grey, and conclude that it is grey. I think it is not grey, but an explosion of beautiful colors. I am one of those who see the body as a meat cage and, if the option were already available, I would cheerfully choose to upload to silicon or cyberspace. But then I would want MORE color, sound, scent and sex, not less. Why can?t a ?disembodied mind playing World of Warcraft in a VR datastream? feel much MORE empathy, friendship, and love (or hate) for others that we do today? Why can?t they enjoy art, love flowers and be compassionate and supportive of other sentient beings? Why can?t they laugh at a good joke or cry at a sad story? Why can?t they enjoy a virtual beer with good friends in a simulated pub? These are indeed assumptions, in my opinion questionable. I don?t see any reason why a disembodied mind cannot _in principle_ have a inner and social life much richer than ours. Of course everything depends on the actual implementation of these yet to be developed options, but there is no reason to assume the worst. Let experiment decide: someday we will be able to _ask_ disembodied minds how they actually feel. Also: Athena: ?In this case, dualism means assuming that the brain and the mind can be separated?. Oh, but they can. It depends on definitions of course. I tend to define the mind as ?the mind is what the brain does?, which leaves open the possibility of finding building something else that does it equally well, or better. Like, in most practical cases email is better than paper mail. -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From fauxever at sprynet.com Thu May 21 06:54:18 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 23:54:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] reading vs hearing References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert><7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> <4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z> From: "Lee Corbin" To: "ExI chat list" > Okay, a conjecture: those merely listening > will devote more emotional processing time > to what is heard (or images seen, for that > matter), than those reading. Of course, > that's pretty easy to say: I refer people > to one of P.J. Manney's posts a year or two > back in which she described the great chapter > entitled "Typographic America" in the book > "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman. > > The thesis is that by watching at listening, > educated Americans now are in effect a lot > dumber and less rational than were educated > Americans a century ago when print was king, > although Postman reserves most of his scorn > for images (TV) as opposed to audio (radio). Oh, balderdash! It was "educated" Americans in the PAST who were not as smart and a lot less rational than they are now. A century ago women still could not vote. Was this smart and rational? A century ago gays were in the closet, and being homosexual was considered abnormal by psychologists and psychiatrists. Was this smart and rational? Many public school classrooms allowed teachers to conduct prayers with their students. Was this smart and rational? A century ago discrimination of all kinds (in jobs, schools and housing against Jews, other ethnic groups, and even going so far as de jure discrimination and segregation against American citizens who were "black") was not just common, but the order of the day. Was this smart and rational? And television? A bad influence on these smart and rational people in the past? Fiddlesticks. The link below is an essay by my husband - just a few thoughts: http://home.sprynet.com/~inniss/coldwar.htm Olga From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 21 07:51:14 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 00:51:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative In-Reply-To: <780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z> References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert><7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> <4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com> <780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com> Olga Bourlin wrote: > From: "Lee Corbin" > To: "ExI chat list" > >> Okay, a conjecture: those merely listening >> will devote more emotional processing time >> to what is heard (or images seen, for that >> matter), than those reading. Of course, >> that's pretty easy to say: I refer people >> to one of P.J. Manney's posts a year or two >> back in which she described the great chapter >> entitled "Typographic America" in the book >> "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman. >> >> The thesis is that by watching [and] listening, >> educated Americans now are in effect a lot >> dumber and less rational than were educated >> Americans a century ago when print was king, >> although Postman reserves most of his scorn >> for images (TV) as opposed to audio (radio). > > Oh, balderdash! > > It was "educated" Americans in the PAST who were not as smart and a lot > less rational than they are now. > > A century ago women still could not vote. Was this smart and rational? The things you're bringing up have everything to do with cultural development, and nothing whatever to do with modes of thinking, e.g. rationality. > A century ago gays were in the closet, and being homosexual was > considered abnormal by psychologists and psychiatrists. Was this smart > and rational? Doesn't apply! What many followers of Mohammad did in the 7th century was very smart and rational, even though they held some very bizarre beliefs and even thought that the Prophet had ridden to heaven on a horse. But these very people could then turn around, and without any lapse in beliefs that we would laugh at, execute advances in science and art that were (and are) breathtaking, and cannot be accomplished by people who have not attained a great capacity for systematic, rational thought. Newton wrote more on theology than on science, and his opinions and calculations concerning the age of man (he disagreed vehemetly with Bishop Ussher's calculation) probably strike you as irrational. But you are quite wrong. I think you confuse content with method. Slavery seemed perfectly natural to Aristotle and Cicero. You consider this a rational lapse on their parts? Lee > Many public school classrooms allowed teachers to conduct prayers with > their students. Was this smart and rational? > > A century ago discrimination of all kinds (in jobs, schools and housing > against Jews, other ethnic groups, and even going so far as de jure > discrimination and segregation against American citizens who were > "black") was not just common, but the order of the day. Was this smart > and rational? > > And television? A bad influence on these smart and rational people in > the past? Fiddlesticks. > > The link below is an essay by my husband - just a few thoughts: > > http://home.sprynet.com/~inniss/coldwar.htm > > Olga From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 21 08:45:13 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 01:45:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Increasing coherence over increasing context? Or Truth? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A151499.3070500@rawbw.com> Jef Allbright wrote: > On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 10:23 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > >> But still, it is absolutely important to >> be able to embrace the realization "planets >> circle the sun"---and to embrace it as >> correct, without any beating around the >> bush. > > My point is that it's /not/ "absolutely" important (from who's > perspective, able to judge relative importance as if outside the > system?), I say that it's important to embrace that understanding if you want to design spacecraft or vote on appropriations for them, just to say the first example that's come to mind. > but like nature building soap bubbles, it happens however it > does, and we as embedded observers construct theories of "reality" > tending toward increasing coherence, adapting to increasing context of > observations. > > Some people reading this will think "okay, but it's splitting hairs, > debating angels on the head of a pin, of no practical consequence", so > this seems a good place for an assurance that the increased > sophistication I'm aiming for is of extremely practical importance I guess that's what you may have to focus on in the future. I.e., exactly how the increased sophistication makes any difference. You may be speaking of memes, you may be speaking of verbal habits. Whatever it is, you may need to detail lots of examples where the more sophisticated verbiage really would have made a difference (outside of religion, say). > and in any case we'll get there (or not) with a great deal of unnecessary > suffering (or not) assuming that our evolutionary branch continues. > > >>> Or mightn't you agree with me that >>> his theory was more *coherent* within >>> the broader context of observations >>> of his time? >> >> No offense, but to me that's an unnecessarily >> obscure way of describing him and his theories. >> He was way off track about how the solar system >> basically works, even though his approximations >> for the sake of predictions were praiseworthy. >> So, to answer your question: no. > > So you say "his approximations for the sake of prediction were > praiseworthy" but to you that doesn't mean his new theory, compared to > the popular prior, wasn't more coherent within the broader context? > Can you explain to me what "coherent" means to you? Okay, without looking it up, to me it means "holding together" or "clear" and in this context even "consistent". Now was Ptolemy's theory more of these than were his predecessors'? Perhaps I was a bit harsh to say a flat "no", but some flavor of "no" seems appropriate. His theory was different from theirs in that there were more epicycles. I'm not sure that adds anything to "clear", "holding together", or "consistent", but now I feel like I'm the one splitting hairs. I'll retract my "no", and instead about your >>> Or mightn't you agree with me that >>> his theory was more *coherent* within >>> the broader context of observations >>> of his time? say that that's an odd way of describing what happened, as you no doubt have discovered from others besides me. It baffles me what could be the practical consequences of preferring your description to the relatively simple "Ptolemy pushed a wrong theory to increasing usefulness by ad hoc reasoning, but so useful to navigators et. al. that it wasn't supplanted for a long time." Let's see what the web has to say. Here is the wikipedia entry on Ptolemy: Ptolemy was an astronomer, mathematician and geographer. He codified the Greek geocentric view of the universe, and rationalized the apparent motions of the planets as they were known in his time. Ptolemy synthesized and extended Hipparchus's system of epicycles and eccentric circles to explain his geocentric theory of the solar system. Ptolemy's system involved at least 80 epicycles to explain the motions of the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets known in his time. The circle was considered as the ideal orbit even if Hipparchus proposed an eccentric motion. It was only Kepler who finally showed that the planet orbits are elliptic and not spherical [sic]. Heh, I really like their word "rationalized" :) Yes, exactly. But of course, I vastly admire their summary sentence "Kepler finally showed... [a fact]", though the word "finally" leads me back to Eternal Truth #2. Still, I don't doubt that the Earth circles the sun rather than vice-versa---and neither do you. > The point is not whether scientific progress does or doesn't tend to > move toward an improving model of reality. I think we can both agree > that it makes sense to assume it does. Thank God for small miracles. I hope that I haven't for the most part been arguing against a straw dog. But next, I suppose, we'll argue about what "model" means :) > The point is that from any particular point of view in this evolving > system, i.e., at any *particular* location we may presently inhabit on > the path of evolutionary contingincies, there is no way to know > whether we are moving closer or farther from Truth (what actually > works in the bigger picture, were we to know it), nor how long we may > have been moving so. To do so would require a context greater than > that available to us. Right. > From ***Ptolomey's point of view***, was he moving closer to absolute > Truth? With sufficient sophistication, he'd have known that he had no > way to tell, nor did it matter, but he could indeed demonstrate that > his new improved model of celestial mechanics was more coherent within > the greater context of observations available to him at that time, > with the pragmatic benefits that entailed. That same principle applies > here and now. Er, he could show that he could make better predictions seems to me to put the matter more simply and economically, with no loss. >> To me, a term such as "the increasingly probable" >> hides more than it makes clear. Something is >> probable? Probably what? Probably so? True? Oh. > > Probable in the sense of more likely to be observed, to exert an > influence, to be detected, to make a difference in the structure of > its surroundings. Evidence of a likelihood function, not a statement > of Truth. I wonder how much of this viewpoint you are pushing you have actually internalized. Do you remember yourself understanding "it is increasingly probable that my observations of that man crossing the street will be consistent with my future observations of him getting to the other side, within the broader context of me sitting here in this situation", or do you remember yourself understanding something more like "he's crossing the street"? I don't know how many people appreciate your circumlocutions, but you'll have to keep trying till they do, I reckon. Oh, you address this here: > And to the extent we are dealing with the regularities of daily life, > then we do well to exploit the fast and frugal heuristics of our > evolutionary heritage. Yes. > But the local effectiveness of heuristics comes > at the expense of reduced context. That sentence completely floors me. But it's very good that it came up. Are you perhaps trying to make your sentences less assailable by arranging for them to apply to as broadly as possible? I.e., to contexts as broad as possible? > Thus we have the effectiveness of > belief in authority, the cohesiveness > of the in-group and its codes > (religion, cults)... and belief > in an absolute Truth. If I'm following you, then you trace these unfortunate developments to people failing to verbally recognize and include in their statements broader contexts. But you did say earlier that we had built up evolutionarily a lot of useful shortcuts. Apparently, I can't say it any better than you just did: > And to the extent we are dealing > with the regularities of daily life, > then we do well to exploit the fast > and frugal heuristics of our > evolutionary heritage. > [Was the Truth describing the nature and existence of Rush Limbaugh > present in the early phases of our Universe? Is that conceivable from > an information-theoretic point of view? I know, it's hard to conceive > even now...] An intriguing question!? Did the dust swirls of ten billion years ago contain in their essence a certain predestined gasbag? Actually, there is a clear answer of Yes from the MWI perspective. He had to happen. So did we all. In short there was an amplitude for a Rush and for an anti-Rush, the universe split, and all possibilities emerged with some measure or other. I'd just, of course, stay away from capitalized Truth because of the way it's been so mishandled by religions (and probably by certain non-religious philosophers too). > But to the extent that we are trying to make effective predictions > about an increasingly uncertain future, then there is a moral > imperative to strive for increasing coherence, within increasing > context--applicable to knowledge of our present but evolving values, > and to our present but evolving instrumental (scientific) methods for > their promotion. > > It's the best we can do. That's why it matters. That's why I keep > pressing the point. Well, good luck with that. You can't be happy with my translation: "The future's always been uncertain to the wise, but we ought to strive for more knowledge, even moral "knowledge" in the sense of more prosperity granting us the luxury of being nicer, with more scientific knowledge greatly helping too." Lee From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu May 21 09:33:06 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 11:33:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] reading vs hearing In-Reply-To: <4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com> References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert> <7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> <4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905210233o1ec4386at7e1c55d5877403b0@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 8:25 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > spike wrote: > I listen to a fair number of books on tape > or DVD and often have to hit rewind because > something went by too fast. Yes, sometimes > my mind wandered, as you say, but those > are the uninteresting cases. Personally, the only thing I have to say in favour of "noisy" words is that you can drive and/or do other things engaging your eyes while listening at them. In any other scenario, "visual" and reading is vastly superior in terms both of speed and of understanding, memorising, etc., at least as far as I am concerned. When I was younger, I kept trying listening *and* reading at the same time, but it looks like we are not really wired for this kind of multitasking... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 21 11:29:43 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 21:29:43 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Christian sexuality website In-Reply-To: <87E17C99B1E74CCEB758EBF490FAB2B6@Catbert> References: <2d6187670905190200r5f58906etab7dba75b7e9c246@mail.gmail.com> <87E17C99B1E74CCEB758EBF490FAB2B6@Catbert> Message-ID: 2009/5/21 Harvey Newstrom : > John Grigg wrote, >> >> This odd website teaches a very epicurean approach to Christian sexuality. >> I'm just not sure as to whether it is a parody or not... >> >> http://www.sexinchrist.com/pornography.html > > Really? ?People really cannot tell that this is a parody? ?People really > think this might be real? Google "sexinchrist parody". It seems there is a lot of speculation that it is a parody, but no-one is sure. -- Stathis Papaioannou From kanzure at gmail.com Thu May 21 11:56:36 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 06:56:36 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Brainport In-Reply-To: <3d57814d0905202226v87c07a8wc259924d32f3857b@mail.gmail.com> References: <3d57814d0905201818m1bb682d9xee0b97a29e6c37fd@mail.gmail.com> <55ad6af70905201838tc36f192gdfe119ac66f56d1@mail.gmail.com> <3d57814d0905202226v87c07a8wc259924d32f3857b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70905210456r6b15b21aue5359633c66886a6@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Trent Waddington Date: Thu, May 21, 2009 at 12:26 AM Subject: Re: Brainport To: Bryan Bishop On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 11:38 AM, Bryan Bishop wrote: > Tell me if you find anything new :-). http://web.gc.cuny.edu/cogsci/private/bach-y-rita-tongue.pdf Most detailed paper I've found. ?And that's pretty sad. The electrode array consisted of a 7x7 arrangement of 0.89-mm diameter, flat-topped, stainless-steel elec- trode pins, each surrounded by a 2.36-mm diameter air-gap insulator. ?A flat stainless-steel plate, coplanar with the electrode pins, served as the return current path. ?The electrodes were arranged on a square grid with 2.54-mm interelectrode spacing. ?A 16-channel electrotactile waveform generator (VideoTact-4, Unitech Research Inc., Madison, WI) and accompanying scripting software were used to specify and control the stiumulus waveform, patten, and trial events. ?Active or 'on' electrodes (according to the particular pattern) delivered bursts of positive, function- ally monophasic, cpacitively coupled (zero net DC) current pulses to the tongue. ?The current was identical fror all electrodes on the array. ?Inactive or 'off' electrodes were effectively open circuits. ?Each active electrode received bursts of three 25-us pulses, where the pulse onsets were separated by 5 ms and the burst onsets by 20 ms. ?Electrode activation was staggered by 102 us, so that each electrode in the array could be pulsed once before the next pulse in each burst. ?Subjects could freely adjust the stiumulation current during the experiment. -- The software mentioned: ? http://www.4thtdev.com/videotac.html Ya, that's worrying. Trent -- - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From aware at awareresearch.com Thu May 21 12:00:31 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 05:00:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Increasing coherence over increasing context? Or Truth? In-Reply-To: <4A14EEA3.3050200@rawbw.com> References: <4A14EEA3.3050200@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 11:03 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Jef writes > I do have to study that, thanks, because I so > often mix up the three concepts /reliability/, > /accuracy/, and /precision/ that one of my > best friends is positively annoyed. However, > fortunately for me, I don't think that I used > one of those terms in our exchange. So do you then ask yourself why, in the bigger picture, the greater context, might Jef bring this up? > I also have to remind myself that you are not > exactly an anti-realist So do you look closer to understand the difference in our views, or do you mentally step back to take in the bigger picture, the greater context of the discussion? >>>> and embrace a pragmatic view of increasing >>>> instrumental truth (probability) within a >>>> context of ever-increasing uncertainty >>>> (possibility.) > > I strongly suspect that this doesn't really > harbor any ideas I disagree with. Might you consider that the key to the puzzle is not "harbored" within any sentence, but is instead represented by the shape of the envelope defined by the many pieces of this discussion? >> During my more than three decades in the business of analytical >> instruments, I worked with countless customers who would naively ask >> about the accuracy (veracity, truth) of their instrument. ?Nearly >> always, I would have to explain that the instrument performs in terms >> of sensitivity, stability, and... most importantly, precision. ?And >> that is all that is needed, entirely useful, for any of their process >> control needs. > > Hmm, you were there, but how did you know that > they were not inquiring merely to the reliability > of the instrument in matching, say, an international > standard. Rather than looking *in* to the scenario I presented and asking how I could have been sure, might you not ask yourself why I present this scenario, in what way might it be coherent with the overall message? > Perhaps you can give me a hand, here: > > I paid $400 for a high precision thermometer because > I got too interested in the "exact" temperatures of > my various living rooms. It claims to be accurate > (oh, hell, or precise, I don't remember) to one-tenth > of a degree Fahrenheit. Now when I turn it on, and > look skeptically at it as it fluctuates a bit, and > I compare it to my cheaper thermometers, I testify > that I have this in mind: I want to know the average > temperature that the world's greatest scientists > would report if they'd spent billions of dollars > instrumenting the various rooms of my house. Since > I do understand the kinetic theory of gases and > I know that my instrument (and theirs) must vacillate > a great deal, I think I do understand (you may > disagree) the nonexistence of an infinitely > precise temperature (given by some real number r). First let's recognize the absurdity of your implication that any measurement could be "infinitely" precise. Next, are you conflating the actual state of the air molecules in the room with *knowledge* of their state? I think we went over this in a thread on the inherent subjectivity of entropy initiated on 2008-02-28. As I said then, I'm glad Eliezer took the time to write it up, for example here: , since it goes far beyond my own customary 5-paragraph rule of diminishing returns in a relatively unstructured online discussion such as this. I will observe here, again, that you seem to be searching for Truth by looking closer and closer, rather than finding truth in the regularities observable in the bigger picture. >> If they actually needed accuracy, then it was obtainable by taking the >> measurement results and calibrating them relative to a reference >> standard traceable to NIST or some other institution. > > Right. Okay. > >> But here's the key point: ?If NIST were to arbitrarily modify their >> standard, and everybody recalibrated to it so they again had a common >> basis for comparison, everything would work just as well. ?Accuracy >> has NO MEANING independent of context. > > The first sentence I grant, of course. It's the > second that troubles me. What does it mean? That > there is a NIST standard somewhere (for this > example)? Is that the sort of context you mean? > I worry that the meaning/word ratio of your > last sentence is pretty low. The meaning was not "harbored" in that last sentence (((in the context of that paragraph) in the context of this post) in the context of this discussion.) That final sentence was intended only to reinforce and "lock in" the point built up prior to it. Your apparent insensitivity to context continues to puzzle and amaze. >> Lee, please don't forget that I spent over twenty years successfully >> managing highly technical teams within a highly competitive >> environment. > > Arguing from authority never gets anywhere with > me, pal ?:) > >> I'm not speaking from the ivory towers of academia, nor >> from a background in the Humanities steeped in Postmodernist >> Deconstruction, nor from any vague, mush-headed mystical point of >> view. > > That's good. But I don't think that I could have > made much of a case that you were (so speaking). Again, you broke a paragraph that was meant to convey a single, coherent unit of meaning. Instead of dealing with it as a whole, you invalidated the first part, validated the second, and missed the meaning. > Take the temperature example again. Yes, I > can admit that many people have a rather > naive view of what temperature is (never > having even heard any phrase like "mean > kinetic energy" in their lives), but does > it really lead to bad planning, bad investment, > or wrong-headed approaches in practical life? Yes. it's analogous to how our national security apparatus has traditionally operated more like a surgical team than as an immune system, and how we see politics more as zero-sum conflict over scarcity than positive-sum cooperation for increasing abundance. And how most of us still see moral issues in terms of what is Right (the inherited context), or in terms of maximizing expected utility (the presently perceived context), but rarely in terms of promoting an increasing context of increasingly coherent [hierarchical, fine-grained] evolving values into an ever-broadening future. - Jef. From fauxever at sprynet.com Thu May 21 14:01:07 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 07:01:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert><7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> <4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com><780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z> <4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z> From: "Lee Corbin" To: "ExI chat list" > Slavery seemed perfectly natural to Aristotle > and Cicero. You consider this a rational lapse > on their parts? Yes. (And I would guess that many of the slaves probably didn't think slavery was "perfectly natural.") Thomas Jefferson also considered slavery to be natural (at least, he certainly used free labor to his advantage to get "ahead"), But Thomas Paine, a contemporary of Jefferson's, did not. I consider Thomas Paine smarter and more rational. If cultural development, as you impute, is what's responsible for people seemingly being more smart and rational, then cultural development lifts up the whole lot of people who get exposed to it, making the "sheeple" smarter and more rational. Olga From mbb386 at main.nc.us Thu May 21 15:27:54 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 11:27:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative In-Reply-To: <9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z> References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert><7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> <4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com><780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z> <4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com> <9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <36213.12.77.169.39.1242919674.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Lee writes: >> Slavery seemed perfectly natural to Aristotle >> and Cicero. You consider this a rational lapse >> on their parts? Olga replies: > > Yes. (And I would guess that many of the slaves probably didn't think > slavery was "perfectly natural.") > My opinion is that the slaves probably thought it was normal and natural though undesired personally. Captives taken in war who were then made slaves may well have been slave owners themselves previously. That's the way the world worked then. Kinda like thinking the sun was the center of the universe. We must be careful about judging what amounts to another world by present day Western standards. Regards, MB From fauxever at sprynet.com Thu May 21 15:45:15 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 08:45:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert><7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike><4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com><780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z><4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com><9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z> <36213.12.77.169.39.1242919674.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: From: "MB" To: "ExI chat list" > We must be careful about judging what amounts to another world by present > day Western standards. Certainly, and I am aware that I AM judging by present day Western standards (furthermore, I realize that even today there are "another worlds" out there on our planet). We were discussing the influence of television (the Internet, etc.) on humans. And I say - television, back when it was the cool new medium - did much to foster cultural development, both among the "educated," as well as the "not-so-educated." Olga From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 21 16:57:26 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 09:57:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative Message-ID: <137679.2448.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 5/21/09, Olga Bourlin wrote: >> We must be careful about judging what amounts to >> another world by present day Western standards. > > Certainly, and I am aware that I AM judging by present day > Western standards (furthermore, I realize that even today > there are "another worlds" out there on our planet). And those Western standards have changed over time. For instance, slavery was commonplace in the West for a long time, but slowly eroded, as an institution and accepted practice, eventually becoming anathema in the West and now most of the world. > We were discussing the influence of television (the > Internet, etc.) on humans. > > And I say - television, back when it was the cool new > medium - did much to foster cultural development, both among > the "educated," as well as the "not-so-educated." I'm not so sure there's a simple answer here. Yes, TV probably did have an impact on reducing racism -- by showing Blacks being oppressed by the police. However, this took place in a culture where such oppression, though tolerated, was both on the wane and only seems to have been accepted when it was kept off the air. In this case, perhaps the lesson is that putting these images on TV helped to reinforce the conventional morality -- which, in America, was one where people being beaten for merely peaceably marching in the streets was wrong. But think of how the mainstream media today portrays a lot of anti-government protests -- demostrators are often portrayed as lawless and the police as agents of peace. Think also how the totalitarian movements of the last century used media to mobilize mass support. Regards, Dan From natasha at natasha.cc Thu May 21 17:34:58 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 12:34:58 -0500 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <347B3C4E5CF14D03A8C29D38BBF3C660@DFC68LF1> What I found interesting is the use of "mirror" and "reflection" and that posthumans cannot see themselves because they have no sense of identity and connectiveness to human. Not my view. His biggest mistake, I think is claiming it an "impossibility". Damien makes a good point that it does fit in transhumanist discourse, but not with the above views because the transhumanist perspective identifies with identity as a primarily value. Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Aware Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 3:50 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 1:30 PM, wrote: > "This is where the posthuman is born - in the embodied reflection of > poststructural uncertainty looking for the first time at itself. > Posthumanism is the postmodern mirror, one that looks into the mirror > without recognition, for the boundaries of identity and body have > dissolved into the uncertainty of perception, and the self no longer > appears, even to itself, without the waverings of its own > impossibility. Once the self turns its deconstructive gaze on itself, > all other meaning needs to be recontextualized. The gaze is displaced, > disoriented, disassociated, and it is not the world that is uncertain > but more problematically the very site from which perception and cognition pretended to be born." > > http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:0UeuLq1C1SYJ:www.tedhiebert.net/s > ite/downloads/writings/medusa.pdf+Ted+Hiebert+AND+The+Medusa+Complex&c > d=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us > > Well - this paragraph does not reflect my own view, but I was > wondering if anyone has any thoughts on it? I read the first eight pages and got the impression that it was pretty poor postmodernist poetry of paradox in the style of Sokal. It stands as an example of it own point, if of nothing else. - Jef _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From natasha at natasha.cc Thu May 21 17:35:35 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 12:35:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Christian sexuality website In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905202254g18dfc439n1db09608bc934436@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670905190200r5f58906etab7dba75b7e9c246@mail.gmail.com><87E17C99B1E74CCEB758EBF490FAB2B6@Catbert> <710b78fc0905202254g18dfc439n1db09608bc934436@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: I wish there were pictures. Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Emlyn Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 12:55 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Christian sexuality website 2009/5/21 Harvey Newstrom : > John Grigg wrote, >> >> This odd website teaches a very epicurean approach to Christian sexuality. >> I'm just not sure as to whether it is a parody or not... >> >> http://www.sexinchrist.com/pornography.html > > Really? ?People really cannot tell that this is a parody? ?People > really think this might be real? > > -- > Harvey Newstrom I can't tell that/if it's a parody. It's likely not written by the pope, but it has an oddly genuine feel to it. Did anyone find anything suggesting who writes it, what group it is associated with, anything like that? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From natasha at natasha.cc Thu May 21 17:37:28 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 12:37:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Dancing the transhuman r-evolution In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: The supposition that Andreadis makes, "Both [transhumanism and cyberpunk] are deeply anhedonic, hostile to physicality and the pleasures of the body, from enjoying wine to playing in an orchestra." is an outlandish statement, without a question or a doubt inaccurate. First, transhumanism has, from the get-go, been proactive and declarative about developing, maintaining, and helping others be healthy and physically fit. From the get-go, transhumanism was almost too body-brain centric. Long healthy life has been a motto. Physical fitness and mental acuity has been a motto. I have the evidence to prove this. When I read statements like Andreadis' here, I am so befuddled, that I wonder what happened to transhumanism! Understandably there has been much written about whole brain emulation, noosphere ideals, etc. which is vital to transhumanism, but the human biology has exceedingly important and essential for transhuman and transhumanists. Without it we could not now evolve. I have not read the whole article, G. Just your post on it. But if you provide a url to here paper online and if it is open to commentary, I will respond with evidence to prove the stack of literature on transhumanist appreciation for the human body. Natasha Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Eschatoon Magic Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 1:46 AM To: cosmic-engineers at googlegroups.com; ExI chat list; World Transhumanist Association Discussion List; transumanisti; transfigurism at googlegroups.com; extrobritannia at yahoogroups.com Subject: [ExI] Dancing the transhuman r-evolution I think the interesting article by Athena Andreadis on "If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want to Be Part of Your Revolution!" identifies the core disagreement between transhumanists and non-transhumanist technoprogressives. This is not about living 20 or 50 years longer. Dancing the transhuman r-evolution - links in the post http://transumanar.com/index.php/site/dancing_the_transhuman_r-evolution/ On the IEET and Sentient Development blogs there is an interesting article by Athena Andreadis on "If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want to Be Part of Your Revolution!". Athena says: "Both [transhumanism and cyberpunk] are deeply anhedonic, hostile to physicality and the pleasures of the body, from enjoying wine to playing in an orchestra. I wondered why it had taken me so long to figure this out. After all, many transhumanists use the repulsive (and misleading) term "meat cage" to describe the human body, which they deem a stumbling block, an obstacle in the way of the mind. However, we demean the body at our peril. It's not the passive container of our mind; it is its major shaper and inseparable partner." and continues with arguments which, though framed constructively and with reapect, are basically similar to those of Dale Carrico. My comment on the Sentient Development blog, which includes my comment on the IEET blog: The article is very good because it goes straight to the core issue: Athena understands well that transhumanism is not about living 20 or 50 years longer, or about tech gadgets - transhumanism is about leaving biology behind. Mind uploading is not a msrginal element of transhumanism, but the essence of transhumanism. Some people like the idea, some don't. Athena doesn't, and I do. Many people in this comment thread have the same objection that I raise in the IEET port below. Why are you assuming that change is _in principle_ bad? I think it can also be good. Of all comments, I especially agree with Mark Walker's, measured and reasonable as usual. Heresiarch: "you can't simulate reality to a higher degree than it already exists, and you can't possibly make it more relevant.". I disagree, and I think Shakespeare, Mozart and Picasso proved my point- -- Original: Athena, I think you are kind of assuming your conclusions: you start assuming that transhumanism is grey, and conclude that it is grey. I think it is not grey, but an explosion of beautiful colors. I am one of those who see the body as a meat cage and, if the option were already available, I would cheerfully choose to upload to silicon or cyberspace. But then I would want MORE color, sound, scent and sex, not less. Why can't a "disembodied mind playing World of Warcraft in a VR datastream" feel much MORE empathy, friendship, and love (or hate) for others that we do today? Why can't they enjoy art, love flowers and be compassionate and supportive of other sentient beings? Why can't they laugh at a good joke or cry at a sad story? Why can't they enjoy a virtual beer with good friends in a simulated pub? These are indeed assumptions, in my opinion questionable. I don't see any reason why a disembodied mind cannot _in principle_ have a inner and social life much richer than ours. Of course everything depends on the actual implementation of these yet to be developed options, but there is no reason to assume the worst. Let experiment decide: someday we will be able to _ask_ disembodied minds how they actually feel. Also: Athena: "In this case, dualism means assuming that the brain and the mind can be separated". Oh, but they can. It depends on definitions of course. I tend to define the mind as "the mind is what the brain does", which leaves open the possibility of finding building something else that does it equally well, or better. Like, in most practical cases email is better than paper mail. -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 21 17:51:19 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 10:51:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative In-Reply-To: <9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z> References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert><7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> <4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com><780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z> <4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com> <9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <4A159497.2090801@rawbw.com> Olga writes > From: "Lee Corbin" > >> Slavery seemed perfectly natural to Aristotle >> and Cicero. You consider this a rational lapse >> on their parts? > > Yes. (And I would guess that many of the slaves probably didn't think > slavery was "perfectly natural.") Au contraire. Prior to the last five or six hundred years, there were only a few people who had much sympathy at all for slaves, (I mean beyond the natural human empathy we all have for some of those not as well off), and vanishly few who looked at it as immoral. Instead, people tended to look at slavery the way we look at poverty, only the most radical of us believing that for the 20th century, for example, it was a truly evil and malignant "institution". > Thomas Jefferson also considered slavery to be natural (at least, he > certainly used free labor to his advantage to get "ahead"), But Thomas > Paine, a contemporary of Jefferson's, did not. I consider Thomas Paine > smarter and more rational. You use "smarter" (as well as "rational") very idiosyncratically. Thomas Paine was in no way smarter than TJ. Paine was attuned better to changing cultural developments, which themselves reflected, I maintain, increased prosperity. > If cultural development, as you impute, is what's responsible for people > seemingly being more smart and rational, then cultural development lifts > up the whole lot of people who get exposed to it, making the "sheeple" > smarter and more rational. What do you mean by smarter? Could (a) IQ tests (b) Gardner's array of indicators [1] (c) ability to focus (d) ability to learn quickly, and (e) capacity for achievement in terms of determination have anything to do with what you think of as "smarter"? Or do you mean "agrees with progressive people like Olga B."? Because Jefferson, Cicero, and Aristotle were very, very smart as registered by (a) through (e). Likewise, what do you mean by "rational"? Do you mean (A) strongly affected in terms of behavior by prolonged non-emotional ratiocination, (B) engaging in careful planning and having good foresight, (C) usually careful to avoid logical errors and pitfalls in thinking or reasoning, (D) consistent and purposeful, and able to exercise increasingly expert control toward increasing coherence, adapting to increasing context of observations? I would submit that on (A) through (D), you'd also find Aristotle, Cicero, Newton, Hypatia, Thomas Aquinas, and even Malcomb X ranking pretty high, even those dudes and her believed many things we find bizarre, strange, and at first glance seemingly crazy today. Lee [1] Linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, musical intelligence, bodily- kinesthetic intelligence, spatial intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and intrapersonal intelligence From mbb386 at main.nc.us Thu May 21 17:51:58 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 13:51:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative In-Reply-To: References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert><7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike><4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com><780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z><4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com><9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z> <36213.12.77.169.39.1242919674.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <36259.12.77.168.209.1242928318.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Olga writes: > Certainly, and I am aware that I AM judging by present day Western standards > (furthermore, I realize that even today there are "another worlds" out there > on our planet). That's so, and it's difficult to comprehend how this can be, having grown up in America. You have much wider experience - I've not seen the other worlds. Regards, MB From fauxever at sprynet.com Thu May 21 18:13:32 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 11:13:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert><7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> <4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com><780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z> <4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com><9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z> <4A159497.2090801@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <0F4C5E483BA748BF8B93B7AF6F43E0F7@patrick4ezsk6z> From: "Lee Corbin" To: "ExI chat list" >> Thomas Jefferson also considered slavery to be natural (at least, he >> certainly used free labor to his advantage to get "ahead"), But Thomas >> Paine, a contemporary of Jefferson's, did not. I consider Thomas Paine >> smarter and more rational. > > You use "smarter" (as well as "rational") very > idiosyncratically. Thomas Paine was in no way > smarter than TJ. Paine was attuned better to > changing cultural developments, which themselves > reflected, I maintain, increased prosperity. Yes, I do. And so do you. Olga From aware at awareresearch.com Thu May 21 18:19:24 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 11:19:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Increasing coherence over increasing context? Or Truth? In-Reply-To: <4A151499.3070500@rawbw.com> References: <4A151499.3070500@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 1:45 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: [Jef wrote:] >> Can you explain to me what "coherent" means to you? > > Okay, without looking it up, to me it means > "holding together" or "clear" and in this > context even "consistent". Hmmm. So part of the problem here seems to be that you're conflating cohesive, cogent, and consistent with coherent. >From Websters: 1a. Logically or aesthetically ordered or integrated. My view is a bit more encompassing (imagine that!) since I tend to conceptualize all of this in terms of systems theory. Consider any abstract system. The integrity of the system (related to its capacity to persist within a competitive, even simply entropic environment) is a function of the interdependence of its components. To the extent that the components "work together", exploiting synergies promoting the "purpose" of the system (allowing it to do more [of whatever it does] at less cost) and by extension, to the extent that it exploits a hierarchical structure of synergies in the functional relationships between its components, then the system will tend to persist. This principle applies to pre-biological structures as well as genes, memes, trends in fashion and ethics and economics..., and scientific knowledge. It's an ecological view of systems, with the system's capacity to persist, its "ascendency" to use a term coined by Robert Ulanowicz, a measure of the mutual information, or coherence, of its trophic flows. More directly relevant to the discussion at hand is the understanding that incoherence has a cost, imposing a competitive disadvantage. >>> To me, a term such as "the increasingly probable" >>> hides more than it makes clear. Something is >>> probable? ?Probably what? ?Probably so? ?True? ?Oh. >> >> Probable in the sense of more likely to be observed, to exert an >> influence, to be detected, to make a difference in the structure of >> its surroundings. ?Evidence of a likelihood function, not a statement >> of Truth. > > I wonder how much of this viewpoint you are > pushing you have actually internalized. > Do you remember yourself understanding "it > is increasingly probable that my observations > of that man crossing the street will be > consistent with my future observations of > him getting to the other side, within the > broader context of me sitting here in this > situation", or do you remember yourself > understanding something more like "he's > crossing the street"? I see "a person crossing the street" I see classes of street crossings by classes of persons by means of classes of methods within classes of contexts. I see myself observing and considering all of the above. To me it seems entirely natural to observe "reality" from different points and levels of view. And all my life I've had difficulty fully appreciating and accepting that other people don't. > I don't know how many people appreciate > your circumlocutions, but you'll have to > keep trying till they do, I reckon. > > Oh, you address this here: It has always struck me as strange, almost disingenuous, that you appear to parse and reply so sequentially. I always read a post entirely, and usually more than once, to try to ascertain the gestalt, before choosing effective targets for my reply. Might it be that "gestalt" is another concept highlighting the difference in our worldviews? [> Oh, you address this here:] >> And to the extent we are dealing with the regularities of daily life, >> then we do well to exploit the fast and frugal heuristics of our >> evolutionary heritage. > > Yes. > >> But the local effectiveness of heuristics comes >> at the expense of reduced context. > > That sentence completely floors me. Don't you agree that the effectiveness of heuristics comes with a cost? If so, how would you describe that cost other than in terms of pre-narrowed possibility space, reduced context of consideration, in complete accord with the No Free Lunch theorem? > But it's very > good that it came up. Are you perhaps trying to > make your sentences less assailable by arranging > for them to apply to as broadly as possible? I.e., > to contexts as broad as possible? Not less assailable, but when I'm trying to help you see the forest I'd prefer you didn't stumble over the odd tree on the ground. Likewise, when coding software, I find that the correctness of my implementations corresponds to the purity of my abstractions. Almost always when I find myself thrashing, making little progress with an implementation, when I eventually succeed I find that the result is something much simpler and more elegant, with complexity hidden by a more coherent hierarchical structuring of detail. "The purpose of abstracting is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise." - Edsger W. Dijkstra, _The Humble Programmer_ >> Thus we have the effectiveness of >> belief in authority, the cohesiveness >> of the in-group and its codes >> (religion, cults)... and belief >> in an absolute Truth. > > If I'm following you, then you trace these > unfortunate developments to people failing > to verbally recognize and include in their > statements broader contexts. Not verbal. Not statements. Pragmatic. Actions. I was trying to convey examples of systems-level behaviors which are natural and expected results of heuristics, evolutionarily acquired due to their pragmatic value, but which you might recognize as most effective mainly within the relatively limited context of their environment of evolutionary adaptation. > But you did say earlier that we had built > up evolutionarily a lot of useful shortcuts. > Apparently, I can't say it any better than > you just did: > >> And to the extent we are dealing >> with the regularities of daily life, >> then we do well to exploit the fast >> and frugal heuristics of our >> evolutionary heritage. >> >> But to the extent that we are trying to make effective predictions >> about an increasingly uncertain future, then there is a moral >> imperative to strive for increasing coherence, within increasing >> context--applicable to knowledge of our present but evolving values, >> and to our present but evolving instrumental (scientific) methods for >> their promotion. >> >> It's the best we can do. ?That's why it matters. ?That's why I keep >> pressing the point. From fauxever at sprynet.com Thu May 21 18:19:33 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 11:19:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert><7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike><4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com><780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z><4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com><9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z><36213.12.77.169.39.1242919674.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <36259.12.77.168.209.1242928318.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: From: "MB" To: "ExI chat list" > Olga writes: >> Certainly, and I am aware that I AM judging by present day Western >> standards >> (furthermore, I realize that even today there are "another worlds" out >> there >> on our planet). > > That's so, and it's difficult to comprehend how this can be, having grown > up in > America. You have much wider experience - I've not seen the other worlds. We lucky ones who have the Internet available ... can travel far and wide. Surely it's not the same as going to / living in other countries, but it's not a bad facsimile if one searches and compares and contrasts (with an ever-present skeptical mind). Olga From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 21 18:31:30 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 11:31:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative Message-ID: <969944.24631.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 5/21/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > Olga writes > > > From: "Lee Corbin" > > > >> Slavery seemed perfectly natural to Aristotle > >> and Cicero. You consider this a rational lapse > >> on their parts? > > > > Yes.? (And I would guess that many of the slaves > probably didn't think slavery was "perfectly natural.") > > Au contraire. Prior to the last five or six > hundred years, there were only a few people > who had much sympathy at all for slaves, (I > mean beyond the natural human empathy we all > have for some of those not as well off), and > vanishly few who looked at it as immoral. > Instead, people tended to look at slavery the > way we look at poverty, only the most radical > of us believing that for the 20th century, > for example, it was a truly evil and > malignant "institution". I disagree somewhat. While for much of written history, the anti-slavery view that now dominates the world, was a minority view, it's an exaggeration to say "vanishly[sic] few who looked at it as immoral." In Ancient Rome, e.g., there were public outcries against enslavement so that eventually debt slavery was limited. (Granted, this was not an attack on keeping current slaves enslaved, but just on enslaving free men -- and this is all based on reading and interpeting the history.) But later on, and still well before the modern period, Saint Patrick, if Thomas Cahill is to be believed, was virulently antislavery and condemned slavery. (However, Cahill is wrong on one point: Patrick was not the first person we know of to take a complete stance against slavery. That honor, at this point and as far as I know, goes to Alkidamas, a 4th Century BCE Greek thinker.) You might think he was only one man, but I think this did go into shaping early Christian Ireland as a non-slave society. IIRC, slavery only came in again with invasions. Regards, Dan From fauxever at sprynet.com Thu May 21 19:13:37 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 12:13:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert><7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike><4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com><780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z><4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com><9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z><36213.12.77.169.39.1242919674.squirrel@www.main.nc.us><36259.12.77.168.209.1242928318.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: From: "Olga Bourlin" To: "ExI chat list" > From: "MB" > To: "ExI chat list" >> That's so, and it's difficult to comprehend how this can be, having grown >> up in America. You have much wider experience - I've not seen the other >> worlds. > > We lucky ones who have the Internet available ... can travel far and wide. > Surely it's not the same as going to / living in other countries, but it's > not a bad facsimile if one searches and compares and contrasts (with an > ever-present skeptical mind). I meant to write, as well ... how can we not know about "other worlds" when we've recently seen news reports about the Taliban, Darfur, Indonesia ... (not to mention some cultural aspects of Oklahoma and Alabama;)? Olga From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 21 19:52:41 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 12:52:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism Message-ID: <912236.16115.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 5/20/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 10:40 PM 5/20/2009 +0200, Stefano wrote: >> This is also the sense of the Heideggerian Abbau, or >> "deconstruction" > > Or arguably "Destruktion" since deconstruction is more > properly the Derridean method. > > I think we have to assume litcritsprache has independently > coined the term "posthumanism" as another step beyond > Althusserian "antihumanism," so it has no obvious relevance > to the transhuman/ posthuman spectrum discussed in > discourses such as this list. Several years ago, John J. Funk was debating something like this with a literary theorist (or perhaps it was a student of postmodern criticism). Some of the problems seemed to be cleared up once Funk explained that he was talking about posthuman-ism -- NOT post-humanism. :) I think the "post" -- like "meta" and "neo" -- prefix gets bandied around a lot and there's an assumption that it's meaningful. (In this vein, I recall, many years ago talking with "post-libetarians." The only two things that seemed similar about the various people using this label was they believed they were libertarians at one time and they used the label. Other than that, they were all over the place ideologically -- though, to be sure, none had turned into, say, rabid fascists or totalitarians.) Regards, Dan From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 21 22:03:40 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 15:03:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Human Experimenting In-Reply-To: <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> Stefano writes > Admittedly, this is a sensitive issue. A libertarian would probably > have no many qualms in recognising the validity of such a contract. It > remains however debatable whether such agreements should be allowed, > as they would be most probably entered into under duress, let alone > enforced. A sensitive and difficult issue. Are many libertarians today ready to allow someone to knowingly and with full consent sign himself into slavery? My opinion: we're not ready for that yet; but someday, yes. In other words, IMO no libertarian group, no matter how select and on how small an island, should go ahead with something like that, at least for a generation or two. > [Tomasz wrote] > >> As a practical cynic, I guess as soon as humans give other humans right to >> possibly kill them for humanity's good, humanity will be redefined to >> small circle of criminals, with attitude like "better you die first and I >> benefit". The rest will be treated like animals, which perhaps is >> deserved ("well, you want to be our animal? you will get it"). > > I am not a utilitarian myself. I note however that such ethical stance > is quite popular amongst transhumanist, especially "progressive" > transhumanists, so I wonder how they would justify an opposition to > that from their own POV. The rational case is easy to make: if someone wants to volunteer (say for money given to relatives or some other inducement), it is indeed very hard to see why other uninvolved people, but people who have guns and badges, should intercede. Of course, the slippery slope argument (which sometimes seems to make good sense, though not always) *could* result in a "cheapening of life" and similar such concerns. Also things like this can open wider the door of corruption and violations of the spirit if not the intent of the laws. I wish that someone would argue against volunteering because of specific ill consequences to society. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 21 22:11:37 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 15:11:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> Giulio wrote (in Dancing the transhuman r-evolution) > I am one of those who see the body as a meat cage and, if the option > were already available, I would cheerfully choose to upload to silicon > or cyberspace. But then I would want MORE color, sound, scent and sex, > not less. At the risk of introducing an identity thread, I have a simple question. Suppose that two equally technically reliable alternatives exist: non-destruct upload (where the body's mind is just copied into VR) and destructive upload (where the body is disintegrated as the upload is performed). Questions of "backup" aside---i.e. assuming total safety is ensured in all cases---would "you" also leave behind a meat copy, or (equivalently) would "you" applaud the happiness of the self uploaded (and continue to be about as content with life as you are)? Lee From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 21 22:20:46 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 17:20:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative In-Reply-To: <4A159497.2090801@rawbw.com> References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert> <7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> <4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com> <780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z> <4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com> <9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z> <4A159497.2090801@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090521171400.0252fd60@satx.rr.com> At 10:51 AM 5/21/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: >>>Slavery seemed perfectly natural to Aristotle >>>and Cicero. You consider this a rational lapse >>>on their parts? [Olga:] >>Yes. (And I would guess that many of the slaves probably didn't >>think slavery was "perfectly natural.") > >Au contraire. Prior to the last five or six >hundred years, there were only a few people >who had much sympathy at all for slaves By "only a few people" I assume you're referring to the first one-word sentence you cite from Olga, but not to any of the following parenthetical sentence--which is also about people, many of whom probably did have sympathy for their fellow slaves, and at least some of whom might have wondered as the whips fell and their families were torn apart whether this were truly the "perfectly natural" order of the world. The Hebrews didn't seem all that fond of this natural order, if the Bible is to be trusted on such matters. Damien Broderick From natasha at natasha.cc Thu May 21 22:29:38 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 18:29:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] TRAVEL: May 2009 Hotel Horror Stories Message-ID: <20090521182938.h9nexs8a8scg00ss@webmail.natasha.cc> This made me laugh. For others who travel as frequently as I do, you will really identify with some of the issues in the attached article from my trip advisor. My own experiences (just a few): 1. Went back home to NY with my mother and we stayed a the brand new hotel suggested by a friend of mine at House Beautiful magazine. But the hotel was not finished, we slept in those old metal army bunk beds and we shared a bathroom down the hall with about 15 other women! 2. Went to San Francisco with my mother to see a painting exhibition at the SFMOMA. We booked ourselves in a lovely Victorian hotel with great views, just two blocks from the museum. But we didn't have a view. We didn't even have a window. 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URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 21 22:31:52 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 15:31:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Increasing coherence over increasing context? Or Truth? In-Reply-To: References: <4A14EEA3.3050200@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A15D658.8050506@rawbw.com> Jef writes >> I paid $400 for a high precision thermometer because >> I got too interested in the "exact" temperatures of >> my various living rooms. It claims... one-tenth >> of a degree Fahrenheit. Now when I turn it on, and >> look skeptically at it as it fluctuates a bit, and >> I compare it to my cheaper thermometers, I testify >> that I have this in mind: I want to know the average >> temperature that the world's greatest scientists >> would report if they'd spent billions of dollars >> instrumenting the various rooms of my house. Since >> I do understand the kinetic theory of gases and >> I know that my instrument (and theirs) must vacillate >> a great deal, I think I do understand (you may >> disagree) the nonexistence of an infinitely >> precise temperature (given by some real number r). > > First let's recognize the absurdity of your implication that any > measurement could be "infinitely" precise. But what I wrote was "...I do understand the non- existence of an infinitely precise temperature." > Next, are you conflating the actual state of the air molecules in the > room with *knowledge* of their state? No. Clearly the real state of the air molecules can only interact with sensors via certain laws of physics (at any instant---whatever that means under QM), and so as Kant might mutter, we cannot know the thing in itself. Visually, since at least age 18, I've pictured knowledge as residing (almost always) in the heads of entities, while what they know *about* lies outside. > I will observe here, again, that you seem to be searching for Truth by > looking closer and closer, rather than finding truth in the > regularities observable in the bigger picture. That could be a key difference, good point. So very often I do want to look closer and closer into things, and often don't find the context informative. (Of course, there are plenty of examples where this is obviously a very dumb thing to do.) Sometimes we really do look to the 3rd or 4th significant difference in a measurement, where the context is understood (say a science laboratory). I snipped your interesting remarks about my *analyzing* paragraphs by focusing on key sentences within them. I, for one, perhaps expecting the same, try to be pretty careful with each sentence; but sure, it's pretty dangerous to take sentences one-by-one. When I do that, I think I'm trying to focus in on what seem to be signatures of conceptual errors or conceptual disagreements. I'll try to stop with your posts. >> Take the temperature example again. Yes, I >> can admit that many people have a rather >> naive view of what temperature is (never >> having even heard any phrase like "mean >> kinetic energy" in their lives), but does >> it really lead to bad planning, bad investment, >> or wrong-headed approaches in practical life? > > Yes. it's analogous to how our national security apparatus has > traditionally operated more like a surgical team than as an immune > system, and how we see politics more as zero-sum conflict over > scarcity than positive-sum cooperation for increasing abundance. And > how most of us still see moral issues in terms of what is Right (the > inherited context), or in terms of maximizing expected utility (the > presently perceived context), but rarely in terms of promoting an > increasing context of increasingly coherent [hierarchical, > fine-grained] evolving values into an ever-broadening future. Those errors are familiarly categorized also by those of us who either have acquired some wisdom (e.g. about economics). Sorry, I've tried, but I still draw a blank when trying to do more than superficially place such errors/bad habits into the great scheme of things, including "the ever-broadening future". Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 21 22:44:51 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 15:44:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative In-Reply-To: <969944.24631.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <969944.24631.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A15D963.3080508@rawbw.com> Dan wrote: > While for much of written history, the anti-slavery > view that now dominates the world, was a minority > view, it's an exaggeration to say "vanishingly > few who looked at it as immoral." In Ancient Rome, > e.g., there were public outcries against enslavement > so that eventually debt slavery was limited. (Granted, > this was not an attack on keeping current slaves enslaved, > but just on enslaving free men -- and this is all based > on reading and interpeting the history.) Do you know on what basis these outcries were made? Similar to the outcries we would make? I ask because there were and are very good economic arguments against slavery, and it's thought by many that slavery gravely weakened the Roman Empire (perhaps the most direct way being that slavery replaced the citizen-farmer- soldiers that had been instrumental in defending Rome in earlier times). > But later on, > and still well before the modern period, Saint Patrick, > if Thomas Cahill is to be believed, was virulently > antislavery and condemned slavery. (However, Cahill > is wrong on one point: Patrick was not the first person > we know of to take a complete stance against slavery. > That honor, at this point and as far as I know, goes to > Alkidamas, a 4th Century BCE Greek thinker.) You might > think he was only one man, but I think this did go into > shaping early Christian So far as I know, Alcidamas thought the way some other Greeks did: enslaving barbarians was fine, but other Greeks should not be slaves. Lee From jims at eos.arc.nasa.gov Thu May 21 22:49:52 2009 From: jims at eos.arc.nasa.gov (Jim Stevenson) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 15:49:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] plain text was potentially "immortal" jellyfish species Message-ID: <200905212249.n4LMnqpL004866@eos.arc.nasa.gov> Hi. What are all those strange characters starting with =? They seem to clutter up posts with mime attached html. They are generated by Winblow$ and its email programs, and unix can not decode them. I would much appreciate a copy of this post without the strange chars starting with =? -- To iliminate those strange = chars, Please answer in plain text, not mime attached html. Thanks much again as always. Jim Please forgive if you really want to attach html and are using its features. Do you know that you are posting in mime attached duplicate html? Can you please explain why the mime attached html? If so, may I please ask which mail program is creating these html attachments, under which OS, and why? I am absolutely certain that it is not my mail program, or anything on my end, though your mail program may hide them from you. This is why others may not have pointed out the mime attached html problem. Your mime attached html post, which I have appended, is exactly what I received. Are you using html to display anything other than plain text? Unless you really are using the html features, the defaults should be set to both post and answer in plain text, or uuencode, if plain text is not an option. your answer mode should also be set to answer in plain text, or answer in uuencode, not to answer in kind. I am most concerned about viruses in unintended attachments. If you must quote me, please put your comments first. I have already listened to mine. I read email with speech, So it is not possible to scroll past the html and quotes without listening to them again, and the mime code after the header is not speech friendly. to quickly get to the new information. The mime attached html is far from speech friendly! -- Thanks much again as always. >From extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org Sun Feb 1 00:10:46 2009 Return-Path: Received: from pagent2.arc.nasa.gov (pagent2.arc.nasa.gov [128.102.31.162]) by eos.arc.nasa.gov (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id n118AjPt031781 for ; Sun, 1 Feb 2009 00:10:45 -0800 Received: from andromeda.ziaspace.com (andromeda.ziaspace.com [192.80.49.10]) by pagent2.arc.nasa.gov (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id n118Ahtb028017 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=FAIL) for ; Sun, 1 Feb 2009 00:10:43 -0800 Received: from andromeda.ziaspace.com. (IDENT:mailman at localhost [IPv6:::1]) by andromeda.ziaspace.com (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id n118ARDP019298; Sun, 1 Feb 2009 08:10:31 GMT Received: from mail-qy0-f14.google.com (mail-qy0-f14.google.com [209.85.221.14]) by andromeda.ziaspace.com (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id n118AOBp004256 for ; Sun, 1 Feb 2009 08:10:25 GMT Received: by qyk7 with SMTP id 7so1555575qyk.20 for ; Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:10:19 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:date:message-id:subject :from:to:content-type; bh=wGY/92ANbBsLD5kvhgL5Xyy5S67ERMyy4amHzlTYMdM=; b=aNsvSH0krNa8kpsP6sn2i4cqk7zMljzKeGvP+Mj/u6kd5El3zNoQeBFEhuYTiO5ywm hFyhOHeFXNkX2h3gfhOwERyex5lTqa4j/stfNvPc+5rn3g6HtkBIir/pbU5BJG8n1EnJ OXpwWpbVv0WpLJYc0xGpWqWhpiT1a66VeMnUg= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type; b=HsDaTXDn+HqDzmxhMDINYT/rrN1hoHl/7vUeFH1jFwvcRJF6mE27hbiL113fnutGe4 XjK3qq7BO33UWkWPeaQHVu6zn+UcAjMu3W+pJ2nL0UWiFsnhApR/KwHz3V2ENhnPPZfp EyjNP0b+GhPkBrY+DddJsGsinKD1tJ/7qxKvw= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.214.243.9 with SMTP id q9mr4605313qah.61.1233475819020; Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:10:19 -0800 (PST) Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 01:10:19 -0700 Message-ID: <2d6187670902010010w63845ef7w5c799dd70765619c at mail.gmail.com> From: John Grigg To: ExI chat list , World Transhumanist Association Discussion List , orions_arm at yahoogroups.com, SciFi_Discussion at yahoogroups.com, transhuman_space at yahoogroups.com X-Greylist: Sender is SPF-compliant, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.0.1 (andromeda.ziaspace.com [IPv6:::1]); Sun, 01 Feb 2009 08:10:32 +0000 (UTC) X-Greylist: Sender is SPF-compliant, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.0.1 (andromeda.ziaspace.com [192.80.49.10]); Sun, 01 Feb 2009 08:10:25 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ExI] potentially "immortal" jellyfish species X-BeenThere: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.11 Precedence: list Reply-To: ExI chat list List-Id: ExI chat list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1748314745==" Sender: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org Errors-To: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org X-Proofpoint-Virus-Version: vendor=fsecure engine=1.12.7400:2.4.4,1.2.40,4.0.166 definitions=2009-01-31_01:2009-01-29,2009-01-31,2009-01-31 signatures=0 X-Proofpoint-Spam-Details: rule=notspam policy=default score=0 spamscore=0 ipscore=0 phishscore=0 bulkscore=0 adultscore=0 classifier=spam adjust=0 reason=mlx engine=5.0.0-0811170000 definitions=main-0901310272 X-Proofpoint-Bar: Status: RO --===============1748314745== Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=0015175cd6a00823320461d6f839 --0015175cd6a00823320461d6f839 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This small jellyfish is extremely talented... "...when starvation, physical damage, or other crises arise, "instead of sure death, *[Turritopsis]* transforms all of its existing cells into a younger state," said study author Maria Pia Miglietta, a researcher at Pennsylvania State University..., The jellyfish's cells are often completely transformed in the process. Muscle cells can become nerve cells or even sperm or eggs." http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/01/090130-immortal-jellyfish-swarm.html John : ) --0015175cd6a00823320461d6f839 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This small jellyfish is extremely talented...

"...when starvation, physical damage, or other crises arise, "instead of sure death, [Turritopsis] transforms all of its existing cells into a younger state," said study author Maria Pia Miglietta, a researcher at Pennsylvania State University..., The jellyfish's cells are often completely transformed in the process. Muscle cells can become nerve cells or even sperm or eggs."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/01/090130-immortal-jellyfish-swarm.html

John  : )


--0015175cd6a00823320461d6f839-- --===============1748314745== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat --===============1748314745==-- From jef at jefallbright.net Thu May 21 18:34:12 2009 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 11:34:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: <347B3C4E5CF14D03A8C29D38BBF3C660@DFC68LF1> References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> <347B3C4E5CF14D03A8C29D38BBF3C660@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 10:34 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > What I found interesting is the use of "mirror" and "reflection" and that > posthumans cannot see themselves because they have no sense of identity and > connectiveness to human. ?Not my view. > > His biggest mistake, I think is claiming it an "impossibility". > > Damien makes a good point that it does fit in transhumanist discourse, but > not with the above views because the transhumanist perspective identifies > with identity as a primarily value. My take is that it's typically postmodern "hall of mirrors" internal reflection, supporting an infinite regress of narcissistic navel-gazing. Alternatively, I'm too philistine. Or both. As for identity as a primary value of transhumanism, this is where I go my separate way, seeing extropianism as *more* encompassing, increasing agency promoting present but evolving values as primary, and identity as emergent. - Jef From natasha at natasha.cc Thu May 21 23:14:41 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 19:14:41 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting Lee Corbin : > Giulio wrote (in Dancing the transhuman r-evolution) > >> I am one of those who see the body as a meat cage and, if the option >> were already available, I would cheerfully choose to upload to silicon >> or cyberspace. But then I would want MORE color, sound, scent and sex, >> not less. Well, sure. But it is not. So why not enjoy what you have now and enjoy your visions for the future. > At the risk of introducing an identity thread, > I have a simple question. Suppose that two > equally technically reliable alternatives > exist: non-destruct upload (where the body's > mind is just copied into VR) and destructive > upload (where the body is disintegrated as > the upload is performed). Questions of "backup" > aside---i.e. assuming total safety is ensured > in all cases---would "you" also leave behind > a meat copy, or (equivalently) would "you" > applaud the happiness of the self uploaded > (and continue to be about as content with > life as you are)? I'd keep a copy of the body (and have several upload copies as well.) I like the idea of having saved fasions of the past. Never know when I might want to pull it out, dust it off, and try it on for a spell. No, let's not go into a thead on which is the real you. Please. Natasha From eschatoon at gmail.com Fri May 22 04:31:08 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 06:31:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905212131y586c6e55hd847aca680a576b1@mail.gmail.com> Natasha is making a lot of sense. The uploading option is not available yet, so we can only enjoy what we have now and at the same time enjoy our visions for the future. This makes even more sense to me since I am not wildly optimist on the actual development timescale of uploading technology, and don't really hope to se it achieved in my lifetime. But I use to react to those who insist that the uploading option is impossible in principle. because this position (especially when it is not supported by actual arguments) looks like mysticism to me. And I also react to those who insist that transhumanist ideas are "dry", because this position shows that they have not understood much. G. On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 1:14 AM, wrote: > Quoting Lee Corbin : > >> Giulio wrote (in Dancing the transhuman r-evolution) >> >>> I am one of those who see the body as a meat cage and, if the option >>> were already available, I would cheerfully choose to upload to silicon >>> or cyberspace. But then I would want MORE color, sound, scent and sex, >>> not less. > > Well, sure. ?But it is not. ?So why not enjoy what you have now and enjoy > your visions for the future. > >> At the risk of introducing an identity thread, >> I have a simple question. Suppose that two >> equally technically reliable alternatives >> exist: non-destruct upload (where the body's >> mind is just copied into VR) and destructive >> upload (where the body is disintegrated as >> the upload is performed). Questions of "backup" >> aside---i.e. assuming total safety is ensured >> in all cases---would "you" also leave behind >> a meat copy, or (equivalently) would "you" >> applaud the happiness of the self uploaded >> (and continue to be about as content with >> life as you are)? > > I'd keep a copy of the body (and have several upload copies as well.) I like > the idea of having saved fasions of the past. ?Never know when I might want > to pull it out, dust it off, and try it on for a spell. > > No, let's not go into a thead on which is the real you. ?Please. > > Natasha > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From emlynoregan at gmail.com Fri May 22 05:41:19 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 15:11:19 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Surrogates Message-ID: <710b78fc0905212241ve478d5cl6e70261c246b1e9b@mail.gmail.com> Seen this trailer? Awesome. http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=57630556 -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 22 11:22:07 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 21:22:07 +1000 Subject: [ExI] More on US Health Care Costs Message-ID: This article is from Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aykIuUrgXbWc May 21 (Bloomberg) -- The cost of health care in the U.S., the highest in the world, jumped 47 percent from 2000 to 2006, a study said. That didn?t buy Americans the longest lifespan. Americans paid $6,719 a person for doctors, medicines and hospital visits in 2006, up from $4,570 in 2000, according to a report released today by the World Health Organization in Geneva. The yearly spending is more than nine times the global average. With a life expectancy of 78 for a person born in 2007, the U.S. trails at least 27 other countries among 193 in the report. The cost of health care is at the center of a debate over overhauling the U.S. insurance system. The U.S. pays too much for individual care and doesn?t cover enough people, said President Barack Obama on the campaign trail and more recently to an audience in Rio Ranch, New Mexico, on May 14. He said he wants to extend coverage to 46 million who don?t have insurance. The U.S. has ?the least efficient health care system in the world,? said Kevin Schulman, director of the health management program at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. ?These costs keep growing despite the recession, and health care is going to shoot up as a percentage of our GDP even more. It?s just spooky.? -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 22 11:28:26 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 21:28:26 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Human Experimenting In-Reply-To: <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/22 Lee Corbin : > A sensitive and difficult issue. Are many libertarians > today ready to allow someone to knowingly and with full > consent sign himself into slavery? My opinion: we're > not ready for that yet; but someday, yes. In other > words, IMO no libertarian group, no matter how select > and on how small an island, should go ahead with something > like that, at least for a generation or two. As a general principle, are libertarians opposed to a group making decisions binding on its members? Selling oneself is a good example of this. A person desperate for money might freely ("freely"?) enter into a contract with another party allowing that he will be tortured for the rest of his life. Should such contracts be banned as morally wrong, or not? -- Stathis Papaioannou From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 22 11:35:23 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 11:35:23 +0000 Subject: [ExI] More on US Health Care Costs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 5/22/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > The U.S. has ?the least efficient health care system in the world,? > said Kevin Schulman, director of the health management program at Duke > University in Durham, North Carolina. ?These costs keep growing > despite the recession, and health care is going to shoot up as a > percentage of our GDP even more. It?s just spooky.? > Market systems of trading have two opposing forces. 1) competition forces prices down to minimum producer survival levels. 2) monopolies or niche markets force prices up to the maximum that the market will bear. The US health market has concentrated on 2). So long as there are sufficient rich people or companies able to pay the top prices, then prices will keep increasing. BillK From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 22 11:37:25 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 21:37:25 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative In-Reply-To: References: <4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com> <780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z> <4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com> <9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z> <36213.12.77.169.39.1242919674.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <36259.12.77.168.209.1242928318.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: 2009/5/22 Olga Bourlin : > I meant to write, as well ... how can we not know about "other worlds" when > we've recently seen news reports about the Taliban, Darfur, Indonesia ... Why did you include Indonesia in that trio? -- Stathis Papaioannou From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 22 12:01:24 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 14:01:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Last Exorcism. Philosophies of earthly immortality Message-ID: <4A169414.50106@libero.it> For the people able to read italian "L' ultimo esorcismo. Filosofie dell'immortalit? terrena" is a book of Andrea Vaccaro http://www.campedel.it/schlibro/218446.HTM http://www.ibs.it/code/9788810140475/ > With advanced studies in genetic decoding, with the computerization > of biology that penetrates the most intimate cellular dynamics, with > nanomedical devices that promise repair at the atomic level in the > human, the expectation that all causes of disease, and therefore > death, will be overtaken has impose itself. Immortality on earth > seems to become as inevitable, and not in the condition of old age > more and more decrepit, but in an eternal, vital and energetic youth. > To bear the news are the winners of Nobel laureates, heads of the > most renowned research institutes, teachers of the most prestigious > universities, scientists, computer scientists: the human being is > "naturally" immortal. The new sciences propose for us a radical > extension of life following a radical manipulation of man. > Philosophers speak then of 'post-humanity', 'homo cyborg', > 'techno-humanism'. The volume is to follow the theories, subjects and > protagonists of this new epochal passage that touches the design > itself and, consequently, also has repercussions on the theological > or, more simply, our vision of religion. Interestingly, there is a interview with the author published by Avvenire, the newspaper of CEI (the council of the Italian catholic bishops) and it appear H+ friendly. http://newrassegna.camera.it/chiosco_new/pagweb/immagineFrame.asp?comeFrom=search¤tArticle=M2KKB Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.36/2128 - Release Date: 05/22/09 06:03:00 From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 22 12:26:54 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 14:26:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Last Exorcism. Philosophies of earthly immortality In-Reply-To: <4A169414.50106@libero.it> References: <4A169414.50106@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20905220526l2d68ff5di599d648436f38f56@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/22 painlord2k at libero.it : > Interestingly, there is a interview with the author published by Avvenire, > the newspaper of CEI (the council of the Italian catholic bishops) and it > appear H+ friendly. > http://newrassegna.camera.it/chiosco_new/pagweb/immagineFrame.asp?comeFrom=search¤tArticle=M2KKB Yes, and indeed surprising. The same newspaper was amongst those which made the most to give (bad) publicity in Italy to transhumanism. The interview above is instead amazingly balanced... -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 22 13:31:56 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 15:31:56 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Last Exorcism. Philosophies of earthly immortality In-Reply-To: <580930c20905220526l2d68ff5di599d648436f38f56@mail.gmail.com> References: <4A169414.50106@libero.it> <580930c20905220526l2d68ff5di599d648436f38f56@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A16A94C.9090903@libero.it> Il 22/05/2009 14.26, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > 2009/5/22 painlord2k at libero.it: >> Interestingly, there is a interview with the author published by Avvenire, >> the newspaper of CEI (the council of the Italian catholic bishops) and it >> appear H+ friendly. >> http://newrassegna.camera.it/chiosco_new/pagweb/immagineFrame.asp?comeFrom=search¤tArticle=M2KKB > > Yes, and indeed surprising. The same newspaper was amongst those which > made the most to give (bad) publicity in Italy to transhumanism. The > interview above is instead amazingly balanced... Catholicism and Christianity are not monoliths. They have a rich internal life and they host a large number of different opinions. This is because the Catholic Church is so slow to change, it is a feature, not a bug. The goals of trashumanism and of extropy are not at odds with Christianity and some other religions (apart the unnominable one). There could be a discussion and a disagreement about the ways to obtain the goals, not a disagreement with the goals themselves. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.36/2128 - Release Date: 05/22/09 06:03:00 From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 22 13:44:47 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 15:44:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Last Exorcism. Philosophies of earthly immortality In-Reply-To: <4A16A94C.9090903@libero.it> References: <4A169414.50106@libero.it> <580930c20905220526l2d68ff5di599d648436f38f56@mail.gmail.com> <4A16A94C.9090903@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20905220644v54dc71d0u761ec1580157d728@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/22 painlord2k at libero.it : > The goals of trashumanism and of extropy are not at odds with Christianity > and some other religions (apart the unnominable one). > There could be a discussion and a disagreement about the ways to obtain the > goals, not a disagreement with the goals themselves. This, I am afraid, is the matter of a neverending debate amongst us, with me at the opposite end of the H+ opinions' spectrum... But, whatever the case may be, as far as the article at hand is concerned, let us thank the godS and not look a gift horse in the mouth... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From fauxever at sprynet.com Fri May 22 13:47:24 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 06:47:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative References: <4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com> <780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z><4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com> <9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z><36213.12.77.169.39.1242919674.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <36259.12.77.168.209.1242928318.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <7522EEB1E1E8473AA57CC484E9ADD887@patrick4ezsk6z> From: "Stathis Papaioannou" To: "ExI chat list" > 2009/5/22 Olga Bourlin : > >> I meant to write, as well ... how can we not know about "other worlds" >> when >> we've recently seen news reports about the Taliban, Darfur, Indonesia ... > > Why did you include Indonesia in that trio? I could have listed many other countries, as well. I recently saw a documentary about child prostitution in Indonesia, so it popped into my head. Olga From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 22 13:31:42 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 06:31:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] More on US Health Care Costs Message-ID: <368617.38894.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/22/09, BillK wrote: >> The U.S. has ?the least efficient health care >> system in the world,? >> said Kevin Schulman, director of the health >> management program at Duke >> University in Durham, North Carolina. ?These >> costs keep growing >> despite the recession, and health care is going >> to shoot up as a >> percentage of our GDP even more. It?s just >> spooky.? > > Market systems of trading have two opposing forces. > 1) competition forces prices down to minimum producer > survival levels. > 2) monopolies or niche markets force prices up to the > maximum that the > market will bear. > > The US health market has concentrated on 2). > So long as there are sufficient rich people or companies > able to pay > the top prices, then prices will keep increasing. Aside from the monopolies, though, the whole system is highly regulated and the government pumps money into it. These two other factors drive up prices. And the solution should be: remove the monopolies, the regulations, and the subsidies.* Instead, it looks like the solution the elites want is: increase monopolization, increase regulation, and increase the subsidies. Regards, Dan * Others have recommended similar changes in the past and were ignored. E.g., Hoppe did in 1993 at: http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=279 From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 22 14:04:03 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 16:04:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative In-Reply-To: References: <4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com> <780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z> <4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com> <9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z> <36213.12.77.169.39.1242919674.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <36259.12.77.168.209.1242928318.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <4A16B0D3.3070906@libero.it> Il 22/05/2009 13.37, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/5/22 Olga Bourlin: > >> I meant to write, as well ... how can we not know about "other worlds" when >> we've recently seen news reports about the Taliban, Darfur, Indonesia ... > > Why did you include Indonesia in that trio? I remember a few young Christian girls heads chopped down as they went to school by the adherents of a not particular religion. The Bali bombing, that didn't come out from the blue. The laws that prevent people from renouncing the not particular religion and adopting another religion and the subservience of the state tribunals to the tribunal of the not particular religion for matter of religion. Also child prostitution, but this is common in all the world. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.36/2128 - Release Date: 05/22/09 06:03:00 From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 22 14:43:38 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 07:43:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Human Experimenting In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A16BA1A.3060100@rawbw.com> Stathis writes > 2009/5/22 Lee Corbin : > >> Are many libertarians >> today ready to allow someone to knowingly and with full >> consent sign himself into slavery? My opinion: we're >> not ready for that yet; but someday, yes. In other >> words, IMO no libertarian group, no matter how select >> and on how small an island, should go ahead with something >> like that, at least for a generation or two. I should explain what underlies my caution here. My general claim is that societies become "ready" for certain society-wide behaviors just when they've reached a certain level. E.g., preaching democracy in Hammerabi's time would have been foolish. Even in an ideal case, a libertarian society might need a generation or two at least to evolve their own mores and understandings to the point that slavery (of the kind described above) could be appropriate. > As a general principle, are libertarians opposed to a group making > decisions binding on its members? Certainly not. The whole point of libertarian, or more precisely, individualist orientation of society is to get as far away from "group think" as possible. Evolutionarily, there are *some* exceptions; it's probably going to turn out that group defense is the only possible ESS vis-a-vis other groups. > Selling oneself is a good example of > this. A person desperate for money might > freely ("freely"?) enter into a contract > with another party allowing that he will > be tortured for the rest of his life. I can only imagine this coming to pass if the individual has taken a calculated gamble over something and lost. But maybe this is a lack of imagination on my part. > Should such contracts be banned as morally > wrong, or not? They ought to be banned for the foreseeable future (though, since you asked me, I ought to add "foreseeable by me"). But even this might fall under the suggestion I have above: Okay, so the small group of the world's most dedicated and advanced individuals/libertarians plants a colony on Mars, where they expect soon to have a few other remote groups as company. They set up some rules. (1) if the group is attacked, they'll do collectively whatever is necessary to repel the invasion, including conscription (lev?e en masse) (2) no one may bargain himself into perpetual torture (3) no one may submit to slavery,... (etc., for how ever many rules seem appropriate). (They would easily allow human experimenting ---the subject line of this thread---so long as the above provisos are in place first.) But then over time, they *may* be able to societally evolve, I'm saying, so that all these limitations can be repealed. (The old libertarian classic "David's Sling" illustrated how even group defense via conscription may become unnecessary.) Lee From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 22 15:04:42 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 15:04:42 +0000 Subject: [ExI] More on US Health Care Costs In-Reply-To: <368617.38894.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <368617.38894.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 5/22/09, Dan wrote: > Aside from the monopolies, though, the whole system is highly regulated > and the government pumps money into it. These two other factors drive > up prices. And the solution should be: remove the monopolies, the > regulations, and the subsidies.* Instead, it looks like the solution the > elites want is: increase monopolization, increase regulation, and increase > the subsidies. > My suggestion of two types of opposing market forces was referring to 'ideal' systems that can never exist for long in the real world. Humans *always* try to game the system for their own benefit. The present US health system has been 'gamed' for years for the benefit of big pharma and health insurance companies and the medical profession. It is now beginning to collapse under the pressure from the uninsured. Similarly reverting to a regulation free system would be gamed in different ways. Just ask the billionaire Wall Street financiers. BillK From p0stfuturist at yahoo.com Fri May 22 04:56:27 2009 From: p0stfuturist at yahoo.com (Post Futurist) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 21:56:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Left Behind Message-ID: <543310.26188.qm@web59908.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> why would you want sex then? sex is animalistic. not to mix metaphors, but apples are apples; oranges are oranges ;- / >> I would cheerfully choose to upload to silicon >> or cyberspace. But then I would want MORE color, sound, scent and sex, >> not less. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From artisan at halenet.com.au Tue May 19 20:29:22 2009 From: artisan at halenet.com.au (Allen) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 06:29:22 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Against many words Message-ID: I am new on this forum. Re language - I have been trying to get an idea into peoples minds which is proving to be well nigh impossible. That is, we need to alter our language. The first instance is with expressions from thousands of years ago which state that the earth does the moving and the sun is static. Such as "the sun is rising" when actually the earth is rolling. "The sun is going behind the clouds" when in fact the clouds are moving and covering the sun. What of 'the sun is setting'? what words can we use there. We need to change the words but this part is very difficult. You use say, instead of 'sunrise', 'dawn' and that is OK. I challenge you to a two day experiment and not use any expressions other than the truth that the earth is the active one and let me know how you manage accurate language. my grouse is that how can children grow up with a good working mental model of the solar system in which we live if the language is constantly interfering with coherent thought. After this, I have another one! Carol -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 22 15:25:53 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 01:25:53 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The Last Exorcism. Philosophies of earthly immortality In-Reply-To: <4A16A94C.9090903@libero.it> References: <4A169414.50106@libero.it> <580930c20905220526l2d68ff5di599d648436f38f56@mail.gmail.com> <4A16A94C.9090903@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/22 painlord2k at libero.it : > Catholicism and Christianity are not monoliths. > They have a rich internal life and they host a large number of different > opinions. > This is because the Catholic Church is so slow to change, it is a feature, > not a bug. > The goals of trashumanism and of extropy are not at odds with Christianity > and some other religions (apart the unnominable one). > There could be a discussion and a disagreement about the ways to obtain the > goals, not a disagreement with the goals themselves. Religion may not be 100% bad, but it's still 100% wrong. -- Stathis Papaioannou From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 22 15:33:11 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 17:33:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative In-Reply-To: <4A159497.2090801@rawbw.com> References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert><7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> <4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com><780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z> <4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com> <9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z> <4A159497.2090801@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A16C5B7.7040607@libero.it> Il 21/05/2009 19.51, Lee Corbin ha scritto: >>> Slavery seemed perfectly natural to Aristotle >>> and Cicero. You consider this a rational lapse >>> on their parts? >> Yes. (And I would guess that many of the slaves probably didn't think >> slavery was "perfectly natural.") > Au contraire. Prior to the last five or six > hundred years, there were only a few people > who had much sympathy at all for slaves, (I > mean beyond the natural human empathy we all > have for some of those not as well off), and > vanishly few who looked at it as immoral. > Instead, people tended to look at slavery the > way we look at poverty, only the most radical > of us believing that for the 20th century, > for example, it was a truly evil and > malignant "institution". I would contest that "few people". Slavery was near completely eradicated by the customs of Europe around the XI century. It lasted only around the bleeding borders with another civilization that find nothing unnatural with slavery. It returned in the Americas, away from the social control of the Catholic Church. In other places, it exist until today. Mauritania abolished it a couple of years ago, and probably many 100k's people are slaves today, there. It is not strange that many recent cases of slavery in US have as defendant people of not European background that come and bring with them a slave maid or two. The slave maids, usually, think of themselves "lucky" to be with a wealth man, family that feed them and only ask for 12-15 hour work every day. It is only when they start to understand the world around them (often after the police intervene) that they change their mind and understand how wrong was their condition. There is a "built in" acceptance of their status, as they think it is the natural order of things. When their status is raised and their "owners" status is lowered, they start changing their attitude. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.36/2128 - Release Date: 05/22/09 06:03:00 From mlatorra at gmail.com Fri May 22 15:35:37 2009 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 09:35:37 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Immortality 2.0 Message-ID: <9ff585550905220835g170f452wd139913192c3a6e4@mail.gmail.com> "Immortality 2.0: a silicon valley insider looks at California's Transhumanist movement" By Gelles, David http://tinyurl.com/9g4ea3 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jef at jefallbright.net Fri May 22 15:45:01 2009 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 08:45:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Increasing coherence over increasing context? Or Truth? In-Reply-To: <4A15D658.8050506@rawbw.com> References: <4A14EEA3.3050200@rawbw.com> <4A15D658.8050506@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 3:31 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Visually, since at least age 18, I've pictured > knowledge as residing (almost always) in the > heads of entities, while what they know *about* > lies outside. That's a bit jarring to me in its mid-twentieth century classical simplicity. My experience with machine learning and adaptive systems informs me that it's not "knowledge" per se, but an /encoding/ that is meaningless without the particular decoder (person), within an applicable environment. Not to embark on another thread about our differences, but it may shed some light on the (fundamental, information-theoretic) difficulty of conveying, not facts or information, but context. >> I will observe here, again, that you seem to be searching for Truth by >> looking closer and closer, rather than finding truth in the >> regularities observable in the bigger picture. > > That could be a key difference, good point. Some of my most technical engineers were blind to very real but very contextual factors. I used to tell them "Fix the customer, and then fix the instrument if necessary." Some got it. Others would argue endlessly that it *must* be the other way around. > So very often I do want to look closer and closer > into things, and often don't find the context > informative. (Of course, there are plenty of > examples where this is obviously a very dumb > thing to do.) Sometimes we really do look to > the 3rd or 4th significant difference in a > measurement, where the context is > understood (say a science laboratory). Yes, and true also of solving mathematical problems, and sadly, most schoolwork assignments. Also I wonder and worry a bit about the cognitive developmental influence of typical video games, where the "rules of reality" are deduced within the closed context of the games, strongly reinforcing deep background assumptions about the nature of reality, and the relationship of the observer to the observed. Does this apply in part, for example, to the belief that there can be a singleton AI assuring correct and safe passage for humanity? >> Yes. ?it's analogous to how our national security apparatus has >> traditionally operated more like a surgical team than as an immune >> system, and how we see politics more as zero-sum conflict over >> scarcity than positive-sum cooperation for increasing abundance. And >> how most of us still see moral issues in terms of what is Right (the >> inherited context), or in terms of maximizing expected utility (the >> presently perceived context), but rarely in terms of promoting an >> increasing context of increasingly coherent [hierarchical, >> fine-grained] evolving values into an ever-broadening future. Or how the operation of a voltage-follower transistor circuit doesn't make sense without also considering the load. ;-) > Those errors are familiarly categorized also by > those of us who either have acquired some wisdom > (e.g. about economics). Sorry, I've tried, but I > still draw a blank when trying to do more than > superficially place such errors/bad habits into > the great scheme of things, including "the > ever-broadening future". Lee, thanks for the exchange. It's ironic that the project of mapping the evolutionary tree of our hierarchical, fine-grained values, the phylogeny according to which we express our preferences, is analogous to the project now recognized as mainstream science, but when it comes to understanding our values (rather than our instrumentality) we're still in the alchemical stage. Understandable of course, give the "ineffability of qualia" and the "singularity of self" which, like phlogiston and ?lan vital, seem quite coherent within the context of their time. - Jef From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 22 15:45:53 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 17:45:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Human Experimenting In-Reply-To: <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A16C8B1.6050405@libero.it> Il 22/05/2009 0.03, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > Stefano writes > >> Admittedly, this is a sensitive issue. A libertarian would probably >> have no many qualms in recognising the validity of such a contract. It >> remains however debatable whether such agreements should be allowed, >> as they would be most probably entered into under duress, let alone >> enforced. > A sensitive and difficult issue. Are many libertarians > today ready to allow someone to knowingly and with full > consent sign himself into slavery? My opinion: we're > not ready for that yet; but someday, yes. In other > words, IMO no libertarian group, no matter how select > and on how small an island, should go ahead with something > like that, at least for a generation or two. The contract is void, because the matter of the contract is not under the control of the signer. The signer would need to put himself in a position where he have no more free will (say he lobotomise himself). But until he retain he free will, he will not be able to sign away his freedom. It is like signing a contract and agreeing to "be good". People can not sell the future. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.36/2128 - Release Date: 05/22/09 06:03:00 From rtomek at ceti.pl Fri May 22 15:49:32 2009 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 17:49:32 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] Human Experimenting In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 22 May 2009, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/22 Lee Corbin : > > > A sensitive and difficult issue. Are many libertarians > > today ready to allow someone to knowingly and with full > > consent sign himself into slavery? My opinion: we're > > not ready for that yet; but someday, yes. In other > > words, IMO no libertarian group, no matter how select > > and on how small an island, should go ahead with something > > like that, at least for a generation or two. > > As a general principle, are libertarians opposed to a group making > decisions binding on its members? Selling oneself is a good example of > this. A person desperate for money might freely ("freely"?) enter into > a contract with another party allowing that he will be tortured for > the rest of his life. Should such contracts be banned as morally > wrong, or not? Since I don't consider myself a libertarian (words, words... some tell something, some tell nothing), I may not be fully qualified to answer those questions (as they were directed to libertarians). But on the other hand, I have grabbed keyboard and I am in command now :-). Personally, I am wary about granting humanity too much freedom. As I see it, we are trying to override our animal instincts with various forms of conditioning - and results are mixed. If Aliens had books, maybe we could have been mentioned in one or two of them, but not necessarily because of our progress. Those who think we are successful, think again. We (modern humans) are here for about, say, 200000 years. And we have written records for at most 10000 years, AFAIK. And most of this success have been really made during last 100 years (well, maybe 200, not really important). IMHO, we have been very, very (really) lucky. I can easily imagine how we are falling off the edge (in most cases, by mixture of our own stupidity or indolence, and Universe's so called "cruelty" which should be regarded more like a universal law). Much harder to see how we are staying on it. Morality is just another form of conditioning. In better world, it would be not a problem if I decided to become someone's slave (either for free or for money). Actually, I can hardly imagine me doing so, but let's imagine I did. Morality would not exist in such world, no need for this. In our world - big problem. This may not be solved even after tens of generations. There are certainly some limits to conditioning, we have just not hit them yet (I hope so). BTW, our ability to do correction to our conditioning on our own is strikingly similar to modifying genetic code and "taking evolution in our own hands". Something I should explore one day, if time permits. But it seems obvious, that this self-correction should be done with extreme cautiosness. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 22 15:49:42 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 17:49:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Last Exorcism. Philosophies of earthly immortality In-Reply-To: References: <4A169414.50106@libero.it> <580930c20905220526l2d68ff5di599d648436f38f56@mail.gmail.com> <4A16A94C.9090903@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A16C996.5010906@libero.it> Il 22/05/2009 17.25, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/5/22 painlord2k at libero.it: > >> Catholicism and Christianity are not monoliths. >> They have a rich internal life and they host a large number of different >> opinions. >> This is because the Catholic Church is so slow to change, it is a feature, >> not a bug. >> The goals of trashumanism and of extropy are not at odds with Christianity >> and some other religions (apart the unnominable one). >> There could be a discussion and a disagreement about the ways to obtain the >> goals, not a disagreement with the goals themselves. > > Religion may not be 100% bad, but it's still 100% wrong. Are you telling me that "Don't murder" and "Don't steal" you neighbours are wrong? Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.36/2128 - Release Date: 05/22/09 06:03:00 From eschatoon at gmail.com Fri May 22 15:55:13 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 17:55:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <543310.26188.qm@web59908.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <543310.26188.qm@web59908.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905220855s2c0c4a43jc6b210e94db6a762@mail.gmail.com> Come on Post Futurist! I am sure even as a upload in a jupiter brain I would still enjoy some VR sex with a supermodel, perhaps with my mind temporarily tuned down back to human1.0 level. 2009/5/22 Post Futurist : > why would you want sex then? sex is animalistic. > not to mix metaphors, but apples are apples; oranges are oranges ;- / > >>> I would cheerfully choose to upload to silicon >>> or cyberspace. But then I wo -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 22 15:58:55 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 01:58:55 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The Rationality of Belief is Relative In-Reply-To: <4A16B0D3.3070906@libero.it> References: <4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com> <9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z> <36213.12.77.169.39.1242919674.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <36259.12.77.168.209.1242928318.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <4A16B0D3.3070906@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/23 painlord2k at libero.it : > Il 22/05/2009 13.37, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: >> >> 2009/5/22 Olga Bourlin: >> >>> I meant to write, as well ... how can we not know about "other worlds" >>> when >>> we've recently seen news reports about the Taliban, Darfur, Indonesia ... >> >> Why did you include Indonesia in that trio? > > I remember a few young Christian girls heads chopped down as they went to > school by the adherents of a not particular religion. > The Bali bombing, that didn't come out from the blue. > The laws that prevent people from renouncing the not particular religion and > adopting another religion and the subservience of the state tribunals to the > tribunal of the not particular religion for matter of religion. > > Also child prostitution, but this is common in all the world. I would have also mentioned communist-hating, American-loving, neighbour-invading Suharto, the most corrupt leader in the history of the world (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3567745.stm). There has been great progress in liberalisation since he was deposed, although unfortunately this has also coincided with the rise of a radical Islamic minority. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 22 16:04:31 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 02:04:31 +1000 Subject: [ExI] More on US Health Care Costs In-Reply-To: <368617.38894.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <368617.38894.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/22 Dan : > Aside from the monopolies, though, the whole system is highly regulated and the government pumps money into it. ?These two other factors drive up prices. ?And the solution should be: remove the monopolies, the regulations, and the subsidies.* ?Instead, it looks like the solution the elites want is: increase monopolization, increase regulation, and increase the subsidies. But just about every other health system in the world has greater government control and funding than that in the US. Shouldn't that make them even less efficient? Or are you arguing that the efficiency vs. government control curve has a minimum and then slopes upward again as government control increases? -- Stathis Papaioannou From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 22 16:04:58 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 09:04:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] More on US Health Care Costs Message-ID: <512024.33587.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/22/09, BillK wrote: > On 5/22/09, Dan wrote: >> Aside from the monopolies, though, the whole system is >> highly regulated >> and the government pumps money into it.? These >> two other factors drive >> up prices.? And the solution should be: remove >> the monopolies, the >> regulations, and the subsidies.*? Instead, it >> looks like the solution the >> elites want is: increase monopolization, increase >> regulation, and increase the subsidies. > > My suggestion of two types of opposing market forces was > referring to > 'ideal' systems that can never exist for long in the real > world. And my comment was meant to disagree with your analysis. I think the main driver of price increase in this area is state intervention -- not "rich people or companies able to pay the top prices." Even rich people and rich companies can and will often enough economize. Rich people can afford bigger, more expensive TVs, but we generally see a progression in the TV market of sets coming down in price, especially when inflation-adjusted but even nomimally. Also, the monopolies are not creations of the market; they're attempts to abrogate the market via state granted privilege. A key monopoly in this area is the AMA, but a host of other interventions lower competition, including almost all regulations which tend to at the very least create a cost barrier to entry into the medical markets. (Think of, e.g., how the FDA drug approval process increases the costs of new drug development, lowering the number of entrants into that market and, thereby, reducing the overall supply of competing drugs. And if supply is lowered, all else being equal, one expects price to not fall -- and usually to rise.) > Humans *always* try to game the system for their own > benefit. I agree, but this applies in spades to a regulated system where the costs tend to be distributed while the rewards of gaming are highly concentrated. > The > present US health system has been 'gamed' for years for the > benefit of > big pharma and health insurance companies and the medical > profession. I don't disagree, but the nature of that gaming relies on what? A free market in healthcare? No, but a highly regulated one where competitors are kept out by cost barriers, licensing requirements, and host of other regulations. Without these, all else being equal, there'd be more competition and prices would likely be a lot lower. > It is now beginning to collapse under the pressure from the > uninsured. I'm not so sure that's where the pressure for change is coming from. In fact, my guess is, based on other historical examples, that the pressure for change -- and all the hyped proposals are for change in the direction of ever more state intervention NOT less -- is coming from the big players in this market. Yes, it's a nice fantasy and helpful myth to believe the uninsured are organizing for reforms, but that's merely how elites use agit-prop to get their policies justified. > Similarly reverting to a regulation free system would be > gamed in > different ways. Just ask the billionaire Wall Street > financiers. Where was this "regulation free system" with regard to Wall Street? How is the US financial system -- one that is heavily regulated from the Federal Reserve System, the SEC, etc. on the federal level to a host of state and local laws -- "regulation free system" in your view? (And was it ever so?) What of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the Community Reinvestment Act, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and the myriad other interventions in the financial markets? I might agree that there are times of more or less regulation -- often just times where one or more regulations is less enforced but the whole system of regulations remains in place -- but none in US history where it was regulation free. (Maybe the closest to the time was during the so called "free banking" period -- roughly 1837 to 1860 -- but even then the banks were still regulated at the state and local level.) Now don't take this to mean that an actual free market would never be gamed or that people wouldn't try. I think they would, though I think the opportunities and feedback loops would, on the whole, make it harder to game and easier to spot or limit gaming. Increasing the number of state interventions, on the other hand, will increase the opportunities for gaming and make them far less self-limiting. (The latter is partly because the nature of such intervention is to redistribute costs and benefits and to decouple these -- thus making people who pursue the benefits care even less about the costs -- and partly because such interventions lead to further interventions -- usually because as one group benefits, other groups start to organize to either resist the costs or to obtain their own benefits. Think of how one person or group successfully gaming the system, in a fashion, is an object lesson for other people or groups to do much the same. This is the kind of moral erosion that increasing intervention leads to: more people become pre-occupied with pursuing wealth transfers (gaming, parasitism) over actual wealth production: taking becomes more prevalent, while making is always shifted to the less powerful.) Regards, Dan "Among the constant facts and tendencies that are to be found in all political organisms, one is so obvious that it is apparent to the most casual eye. In all societies -- from societies that are very meagerly developed and have barely attained the dawnings of civilization, down to the most advanced and powerful societies -- two classes of people appear -- a class that rules and a class that is ruled. The first class, always the less numerous, peforms all political functions, monopolizes power and enjoys the advantages that power brings, whereas the second class, the more numerous, is directed and controlled by the first, in a manner that is more or less legal, now more or less arbitrary and violent." ?- Gaetano Mosca _The Ruling Class_ From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 22 16:10:03 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 02:10:03 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Human Experimenting In-Reply-To: <4A16C8B1.6050405@libero.it> References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> <4A16C8B1.6050405@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/23 painlord2k at libero.it : > The contract is void, because the matter of the contract is not under the > control of the signer. > The signer would need to put himself in a position where he have no more > free will (say he lobotomise himself). But until he retain he free will, he > will not be able to sign away his freedom. > > It is like signing a contract and agreeing to "be good". > People can not sell the future. That would invalidate most contracts. The idea of a contract is that you agree to something at the time and then can't break the contract (unless that was explicitly part of the agreement) even though you change your mind. -- Stathis Papaioannou From natasha at natasha.cc Fri May 22 16:11:10 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 11:11:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc><347B3C4E5CF14D03A8C29D38BBF3C660@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <631FFE53AC13496FA4A2254770E96AC2@DFC68LF1> Jef wrote: >As for identity as a primary value of transhumanism, this is where I go my separate way, >seeing extropianism as *more* encompassing, increasing agency promoting present but >evolving values as primary, and identity as emergent. Hi Jef, Why do you see "*more* encompassing, increasing agency as separating" out from other values? Do you think that identity opposes connectivity? Are you are looking at this issue from "individualism" as self at center of the universe and identity as perspectives stemming from the individual as a solo agent? I thought I referred to as indentity as relating to the fluid, "distributed" posthuman. Best, Natasha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 22 16:15:18 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 18:15:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Last Exorcism. Philosophies of earthly immortality In-Reply-To: <4A16C996.5010906@libero.it> References: <4A169414.50106@libero.it> <580930c20905220526l2d68ff5di599d648436f38f56@mail.gmail.com> <4A16A94C.9090903@libero.it> <4A16C996.5010906@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20905220915k532a4a85sa0bd502ab0546baa@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/22 painlord2k at libero.it : > Are you telling me that "Don't murder" and "Don't steal" you neighbours are > wrong? Besides the fact that such precepts are somewhat of a tautological or empty nature (your translation is correct: not "Don't kill", but "Don't murder", which means "Do not kill when it is legally or ethically wrong to do so"), I assume that "100% wrong" here refers not to prescriptive, but to prescriptive statements. Even with the latter, I would have more than a few objections. But it remains that the mere fact of being against what most of us may consider as the truth is not ethically irrelevant... -- Stefano Vaj From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 22 16:15:39 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 02:15:39 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The Last Exorcism. Philosophies of earthly immortality In-Reply-To: <4A16C996.5010906@libero.it> References: <4A169414.50106@libero.it> <580930c20905220526l2d68ff5di599d648436f38f56@mail.gmail.com> <4A16A94C.9090903@libero.it> <4A16C996.5010906@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/23 painlord2k at libero.it : >> Religion may not be 100% bad, but it's still 100% wrong. > > Are you telling me that "Don't murder" and "Don't steal" you neighbours are > wrong? It's like children being told they have to behave well so that Santa Claus will bring them a present. It's right to behave well and the Santa Claus belief may be helpful in producing this state of affairs, but this has no bearing on the question of the existence of Santa Claus. -- Stathis Papaioannou From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 22 16:16:31 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 18:16:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] More on US Health Care Costs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A16CFDF.1010701@libero.it> Il 22/05/2009 13.22, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > The U.S. has ?the least efficient health care system in the world,? Efficent systems let much more people to die, as would be very inefficient to take care of them. > said Kevin Schulman, director of the health management program at Duke > University in Durham, North Carolina. ?These costs keep growing > despite the recession, and health care is going to shoot up as a > percentage of our GDP even more. It?s just spooky.? Costs growing despite recessions are the hallmark of lack of a feedback loops in the managements. Whom that spend money have not reasons to spend less of it and probably reasons to spend more of it. The taxpayers have no way to control the cost/benefits of higher/lower spending on his health and healthcare. He pay but he don't spend. The politicians and the doctors spend. As in Italy there is a national health system old decades, I can assure you that "costs keep growing" is a feature of the system, not a bug. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.36/2128 - Release Date: 05/22/09 06:03:00 From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 22 16:21:51 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 09:21:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The "most corrupt leader in the history of the world"/was Re: The Rationality of Belief is Relative Message-ID: <847985.57896.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/22/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/23 painlord2k at libero.it > : > > Il 22/05/2009 13.37, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > >> > >> 2009/5/22 Olga Bourlin: > >> > >>> I meant to write, as well ... how can we not > know about "other worlds" > >>> when > >>> we've recently seen news reports about the > Taliban, Darfur, Indonesia ... > >> > >> Why did you include Indonesia in that trio? > > > > I remember a few young Christian girls heads chopped > down as they went to > > school by the adherents of a not particular religion. > > The Bali bombing, that didn't come out from the blue. > > The laws that prevent people from renouncing the not > particular religion and > > adopting another religion and the subservience of the > state tribunals to the > > tribunal of the not particular religion for matter of > religion. > > > > Also child prostitution, but this is common in all the > world. > > I would have also mentioned communist-hating, > American-loving, > neighbour-invading Suharto, the most corrupt leader in the > history of > the world (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3567745.stm). Suharto was very bad, but I wonder if he could really take the title for the "most corrupt leader in the history of the world." If we stick to the last few thousand years, surely there are quite a few other contenders -- even a few alive now, such as Robert G. Mugabe. The BBC story seems to be basing corruption on dollar amounts. I'm not sure what other factors could be used, but I wouldn't limit it to dollar amounts. (This is accepting, too, the BBC analysis and data as correct as reported. Not impugning the BBC, but just wondering how accurate all this is even accepting money amounts as _the_ measure of corruption.) > There has > been great progress in liberalisation since he was deposed, > although > unfortunately this has also coincided with the rise of a > radical Islamic minority. Yes, to my knowledge, on the liberalization front. This also makes Indonesia somewhat of an oddball compared to other cases -- places where the corrupt leader is desposed by a new seemingly more corrupt leader. I think, in Indonesia's case, this partly had to do more with the Asian Crisis and the failure of Suharto to keep the corruption machine well oiled than anything else. Once the money stopped coming in, his support dried up. (Yeah, there was an opposition, but there was always an opposition; it seems to me the loss of support, not the strength of the opposition, was the deciding factor in his downfall.) Regards, Dan "Organization implies the tendency to oligarchy. In every organization, whether it be a political party, a professional union, or any other association of the kind, the aristocratic tendency manifests this very clearly. The mechanism of the organization, while conferring a solidity of structure, induces serious changes in the organized mass, completely inverting the respective position of the leaders and the led...With the advance of organization, democracy tends to decline. Democratic evolution has a parabolic course. At the present time, at any rate as far as party life is concerned, democracy is in the descending phase. It may be enunciated as a general rule that the increase in the power of the leaders is directly proportional with the extension of the organization." -- Robert Michels From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 22 16:25:26 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 18:25:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Human Experimenting In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> <4A16C8B1.6050405@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20905220925u90e392eo39894bc1266bc1a7@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 6:10 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > That would invalidate most contracts. The idea of a contract is that > you agree to something at the time and then can't break the contract > (unless that was explicitly part of the agreement) even though you > change your mind. I am perplexed. Not being a "libertarian", I see nothing special in the fact that some contracts are valid and enforceable, some are valid but not enforceable, some are void, some are even forbidden. And, to get back to the topic of this thread, I simply do not approve of excessive restrictions to contracts pertaining to human experimenting from an ideological POV, especially in view of their adverse effects on transhumanism-relevant R&D. But if one considers the ability to engage oneself contractually as a primordial right, and not as a commitment by a given legal system to recognise some legal consequences out of certain statements in a certain form under certain circumstances, I am not sure that there is a fully satisfactory answer as to why it would not be possible to sell oneself into slavery. In fact, all contractual provisions that do not immediately transfer title to something are in the nature of a promise to keep a given behaviour in the future - or to refrain therefrom. I "promise to be good" is not legally binding simply because the object of the promise is not specific enough, not because it concerns the future... -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 22 16:27:54 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 18:27:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The "most corrupt leader in the history of the world"/was Re: The Rationality of Belief is Relative In-Reply-To: <847985.57896.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <847985.57896.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905220927i6f83813bk3afbc0fadd5a1d06@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 6:21 PM, Dan wrote: > Suharto was very bad, but I wonder if he could really take the title for the "most corrupt leader in the history of the world." ?If we stick to the last few thousand years, surely there are quite a few other contenders -- even a few alive now, such as Robert G. Mugabe. No offence intended for fellow transhumanists of Mugabist observance who might be following this not-too-pertinent exchange... :-D -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 22 16:30:05 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 18:30:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <543310.26188.qm@web59908.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <543310.26188.qm@web59908.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905220930m51344d62kc5b952615f90ffc9@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/22 Post Futurist : > why would you want sex then? sex is animalistic. Sure, and its purpose is biological reproduction. In fact, one wonders why people waste all that time and efforts to copulate when the probability of a pregnancy is close to zero... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 22 16:40:16 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 16:40:16 +0000 Subject: [ExI] More on US Health Care Costs In-Reply-To: <512024.33587.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <512024.33587.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 5/22/09, Dan wrote: > Where was this "regulation free system" with regard to Wall Street? > How is the US financial system -- one that is heavily regulated from the > Federal Reserve System, the SEC, etc. on the federal level to a host of > state and local laws -- "regulation free system" in your view? > (And was it ever so?) What of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the > Community Reinvestment Act, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and the myriad > other interventions in the financial markets? I might agree that there are > times of more or less regulation -- often just times where one or more > regulations is less enforced but the whole system of regulations remains > in place -- but none in US history where it was regulation free. > (Maybe the closest to the time was during the so called "free banking" > period -- roughly 1837 to 1860 -- but even then the banks were still > regulated at the state and local level.) > If you don't accept that lack of regulation was one of the main causes of the financial crisis, then I think you need to do more investigation. (Note: not lack of regulations. Lack of implementation of most of the regulations). See the Wall Street Journal, February 17, 2009, (as one example of many): Quote: The Greenspan Doctrine ? a view that modern, technologically advanced financial markets are best left to police themselves ? has an increasingly vocal detractor. His name is Alan Greenspan. As Fed chairman, Mr. Greenspan was a frequent opponent of market regulation. Sophisticated markets, he argued, had become increasingly adept at carving up risk themselves and dispersing it widely to investors and financial institutions best suited to manage it. The retired chairman has had to revise his views. In comments at a New York Economic Club dinner late Tuesday, the retired Fed chairman steered clear of much self-reflection on his role in the credit boom. But he did take a new swipe at the market?s self-correcting tendencies and bowed his head to a new period of increased regulation. ?All of the sophisticated mathematics and computer wizardry essentially rested on one central premise: that enlightened self interest of owners and managers of financial institutions would lead them to maintain a sufficient buffer against insolvency by actively monitoring and managing their firms? capital and risk positions,? the Fed chairman said. The premise failed in the summer of 2007, he said, leaving him ?deeply dismayed.? --------------- BillK From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 22 16:41:21 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 18:41:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Last Exorcism. Philosophies of earthly immortality In-Reply-To: References: <4A169414.50106@libero.it> <580930c20905220526l2d68ff5di599d648436f38f56@mail.gmail.com> <4A16A94C.9090903@libero.it> <4A16C996.5010906@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A16D5B1.3030805@libero.it> Il 22/05/2009 18.15, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/5/23 painlord2k at libero.it: >>> Religion may not be 100% bad, but it's still 100% wrong. >> Are you telling me that "Don't murder" and "Don't steal" you neighbours are >> wrong? > It's like children being told they have to behave well so that Santa > Claus will bring them a present. It's right to behave well and the > Santa Claus belief may be helpful in producing this state of affairs, > but this has no bearing on the question of the existence of Santa > Claus. The problem is that, without the believing, the utility of the belief is null. This is like the problem with trust: you can not obtain the trust of people if they believe you only want their trust. They will trust you when they will believe your actions are motivated by anything else apart the gaining of trust. So, anything mandated to build or support trust is often only able to destroy trust in the long run. Look Obama and Chrysler senior creditors. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.36/2128 - Release Date: 05/22/09 06:03:00 From jef at jefallbright.net Fri May 22 16:47:49 2009 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 09:47:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> Message-ID: > Giulio wrote: > I am one of those who see the body as a meat cage and, if the option > were already available, I would cheerfully choose to upload to silicon > or cyberspace. But then I would want MORE color, sound, scent and sex, > not less. Giulio, nearly everyone in these futurist forums (and nearly everyone else too) shares this desire for more in the way of the sensual pleasures you list. But I think it's worth pointing out, that more coherently, there is no distinct or essential "you", separate from the meat, and the very sensual desires you express are *defined* by the nature of the "meat" within the current cultural context. To me, this highlights the difference between the basic transhumanist and (the more encompassing) extropian view. Self-identified Transhumanists appear intent on preserving and protecting an essential identity, to be augmented and amplified, enhanced and extended, transcending virtually all constraints in order that the Self might explore and enjoy the nearly boundless possibilities of existence. Sounds great. Too bad it's incoherent. Science and technology proceed, not by overcoming constraints, but by increasingly understanding and working within them. For humans to "overcome" being constrained to the earth and experience flight, we must work within an increasing number of constraints. "Fine", you say, "but at the end of the day we get to enjoy the freedom of flight." Yes, but that "enjoyment" is always only accompanied by an even greater entropic cost, often overlooked. When you imagine the freedom of flight, you naturally and expectedly don't consider the considerable expense of infrastructure, engineering, support, resource depletion, effect on the environment, and other externalities and unintended consequences. Extrapolate this to technological progress in general and you find that your imagined freedom NECESSARILY comes with even slightly higher RESPONSIBILITY. It's not bad. I'm all for technological progress and the growth it entails. It's just that I see naive techno-optimism as interference with us actually getting there. I could go on about the more encompassing extropian view (as I see it) and also the argument against an essential identity, but I've probably lost or irritated too many already. [And I have work to do.] In short: The sentiment you express of escaping the meat is easy to understand--too easy, in the manner of science fiction stories and the pandering promises of religions. You might respond that these natural and enthusiastic yearnings for escape may drive practical striving toward a better tomorrow, but if so, where's the evidence within the transhumanist community, and don't it even more effectively take attention away from the challenges and hard work of the here and now? - Jef From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 22 16:55:55 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 09:55:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] More on US Health Care Costs Message-ID: <1590.16951.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/22/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/22 Dan : >> Aside from the monopolies, though, the whole system is >> highly regulated and the government pumps money into it. >>?These two other factors drive up prices. ?And the >> solution should be: remove the monopolies, the regulations, >> and the subsidies.* ?Instead, it looks like the solution >> the elites want is: increase monopolization, increase >> regulation, and increase the subsidies. > > But just about every other health system in the world has > greater government control and funding than that in the US. > Shouldn't that > make them even less efficient? Or are you arguing that the > efficiency > vs. government control curve has a minimum and then slopes > upward > again as government control increases? There are in economics no constants of proportionality. Thus, one can't say exactly what the level of price increase or other measures would be under a given regulation or intervention. At best, one might look at history and try to adjust for other factors to try to get a rough estimate, but this will be limited to the short run. That said, though, the US government spends more per capita on healthcare than Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. So the US government's level of funding is at least higher than these countries -- and they are usually touted by supporters of increasing the US government's footprint in healthcare. Regards, Dan From painlord2k at libero.it Fri May 22 17:37:26 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 19:37:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Human Experimenting In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> <4A16C8B1.6050405@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A16E2D6.9060109@libero.it> Il 22/05/2009 18.10, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/5/23 painlord2k at libero.it: >> The contract is void, because the matter of the contract is not under the >> control of the signer. >> The signer would need to put himself in a position where he have no more >> free will (say he lobotomise himself). But until he retain he free will, he >> will not be able to sign away his freedom. >> It is like signing a contract and agreeing to "be good". >> People can not sell the future. > That would invalidate most contracts. The idea of a contract is that > you agree to something at the time and then can't break the contract > (unless that was explicitly part of the agreement) even though you > change your mind. If I buy a car and agree to pay it tomorrow, the car become really mine tomorrow, after I pay for it. If I can not pay, the car will return to the previous owner. I could also be responsible for the incurred damages or costs incurred for the repossession. If and when I have the means to pay, I will be forced to pay. But I can not be forced to work to pay back the damages and the costs. I can only be forced to pay with what I have at hand or by seizing my possessions. Usually, the debtors will choose the redress they prefer (money seizure or goods repossessed). If you can be forced to work for pay past debts, you are a slave. In the past (Rome for example), slavery existed not on racial basis but on other basis. People sold themselves or where sold as slaves as a way to pay for their debts and the debts of their family. The act of selling themselves to others and the act of being unable to full fill their own obligations to others individuals of the society can be considered a way people loses their privileges under the social contract. This would, IMHO, be consistent with the fact that the other large class of people that become slaves was the prisoners of war (by default out of the social contract of the society they are at war against). Other sources of slaves for the Romans were abandoned children (individuals out of the social contract) and slaves bough from abroad (the same). In other culture I'm aware, the slaves are people out of the social contract of the slave owner. Being slaves and being inside the social contract is not possible, as what you do is what your master want and he is responsible for your actions. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.36/2128 - Release Date: 05/22/09 06:03:00 From aware at awareresearch.com Fri May 22 17:50:02 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 10:50:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: <631FFE53AC13496FA4A2254770E96AC2@DFC68LF1> References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> <347B3C4E5CF14D03A8C29D38BBF3C660@DFC68LF1> <631FFE53AC13496FA4A2254770E96AC2@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: 2009/5/22 Natasha Vita-More : > Jef wrote: > >> As for identity as a primary value of transhumanism, >> this is where I go my separate way, >> seeing extropianism as *more* encompassing, >> increasing agency promoting present but evolving values >> as primary, and identity as emergent. > > Hi Jef, > > Why do you see "*more* encompassing, increasing agency as separating" out > from other values? Natasha, your question is not entirely clear to me. It would be so much easier to have some of these conversations in person. But I'll try to guess your meaning and explain. You said: >> What I found interesting is the use of "mirror" and "reflection" and that >> posthumans cannot see themselves because they have no sense of identity and >> connectiveness to human. Not my view. and >> Damien makes a good point that it does fit in transhumanist discourse, but >> not with the above views because the transhumanist perspective identifies >> with identity as a primarily value. So, it seems that you referred to identity in two different ways. I agree with your usage in the first paragraph. I think that this postmodernist essay on the posthuman was incorrect in it's assertion of no connection between the identity of the human and the posthuman. (I also recognize and agree with the distinction pointed out by others here between posthuman-ism and post-humanism. My disagreement with the essayist, and my agreement with what I take is your position is based on the what I see as a necessarily evolutionary process of branching leading from the human to the posthuman. While any individual branch is contingent and unpredictable, sub-branches must be coherent with what came before. I disagree with your assertion (as I perceive and understand it) of identity as a **primary** value. I think this is an unfortunate, unnecessary, and ultimately limiting artifact, natural and expected of evolved organisms acting on behalf of what they perceive (with their limited cognition) as their own self interest. I think Zen awakening overcomes this limitation. I think increasing awareness of one's cultural embeddedness helps overcome this limitation. I think game theorists dealing with the ostensible "paradox" of the iterated Prisoners' Dilemma and other examples of superrationality will eventually get it. I think that by the time most of us are effectively plugged into the net for our livelihood, sense of meaning and sense of self, we'll all get it. So, as I said earlier, I don't see identity as primary, but as emergent. It's a necessary result of agency, which I see as increasing extropically as increasing instrumental effectiveness promotes an increasing context of values. > Do you think that identity opposes connectivity? I'm not sure what you mean here. I think identity, by definition, involves perceived separation, but of course our very existence and effectiveness is dependent on our connections. > Are you are looking at > this issue from "individualism" as self at center of the universe and > identity as perspectives stemming from the individual as a solo agent? I think I /almost/ understand what you're getting at here. It seems to point again in the direction of identity as something, similar to ego, defined in terms of its perceived centrality within its world. This may be closer to my view, in that it seems to be less essential, and more the necessary result of having a (single) point of view. I came across a pretty good paper a few months ago which expresses my view on this: > I thought I referred to as indentity as relating to the fluid, "distributed" > posthuman. Now you've lost me. I can't tell what kind of "relating" you mean. I see personal identity comprised of two aspects: (1) the unchanging, but fictional, **entity** as the unique referent of our thoughts about "Natasha", or "Nancy", or even "she" who was not yet born, but conceived as a person in her parents minds, and (2) the customary diachronic agency, but even multiple and/or partially overlapping agencies, actors recognized (regardless of functional/physical similarity) as serving the interests of the **entity** described in (1). - Jef From eschatoon at gmail.com Fri May 22 18:03:15 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 20:03:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905221103w667f6986y4d022aec8c18f4a1@mail.gmail.com> Please do! On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 6:47 PM, Jef Allbright wrote: >> Giulio wrote: > I could go on about the more encompassing extropian view (as I see it) > and also the argument against an essential identity, but I've probably > lost or irritated too many already. ?[And I have work to do.] Indeed, I think that these natural and enthusiastic yearnings for escape may drive practical striving toward a better tomorrow. And no, I don't think they take attention away from the challenges and hard work of the here and now. I have seen enough people dying of cancer, confined to a life support system, destroyed by age, or just profoundly unhappy to conclude that life, as it is, sucks. If not for these natural and enthusiastic yearnings for escape, I would not consider life as worth living, let alone find the interest and drive to strive toward a better tomorrow. > In short: > The sentiment you express of escaping the meat is easy to > understand--too easy, in the manner of science fiction stories and the > pandering promises of religions. ?You might respond that these natural > and enthusiastic yearnings for escape may drive practical striving > toward a better tomorrow, but if so, where's the evidence within the > transhumanist community, and don't it even more effectively take > attention away from the challenges and hard work of the here and now? > > - Jef From jef at jefallbright.net Fri May 22 18:14:42 2009 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 11:14:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90905221103w667f6986y4d022aec8c18f4a1@mail.gmail.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <1fa8c3b90905221103w667f6986y4d022aec8c18f4a1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Eschatoon Magic wrote: > On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 6:47 PM, Jef Allbright wrote: >>> Giulio wrote: >> I could go on about the more encompassing extropian view (as I see it) >> and also the argument against an essential identity, but I've probably >> lost or irritated too many already. ?[And I have work to do.] > Please do! Well, circumstances permitting. I'm just returned from a several month self-imposed exile from email discussion and already I'm spending too much time. > If not for > these natural and enthusiastic yearnings for escape, I would not > consider life as worth living, let alone find the interest and drive > to strive toward a better tomorrow. Well, maybe it's just my Buddhism barking, but I seem to see a practical night/day difference between escape and engagement. Come to think of it though, many wannabe Buddhists don't see the difference. - Jef From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 22 18:21:02 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 11:21:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Greenspan: rhetoric vs. reality/was Re: More on US Health Care Costs Message-ID: <303197.38742.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/22/09, BillK wrote: > On 5/22/09, Dan? wrote: > >> Where was this "regulation free system" with regard to >> Wall Street? >> How is the US financial system -- one that is heavily >> regulated from the >> Federal Reserve System, the SEC, etc. on the federal >> level to a host of >> state and local laws -- "regulation free system" in >> your view? >> (And was it ever so?)? What of the Sarbanes-Oxley >> Act of 2002, the >> Community Reinvestment Act, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, >> and the myriad >> other interventions in the financial markets?? I >> might agree that there are >> times of more or less regulation -- often just times >> where one or more >> regulations is less enforced but the whole system of >> regulations remains >> in place -- but none in US history where it was >> regulation free. >> (Maybe the closest to the time was during the so >> called "free banking" >> period -- roughly 1837 to 1860 -- but even then the >> banks were still >> regulated at the state and local level.) > > If you don't accept that lack of regulation was one of the > main causes > of the financial crisis, then I think you need to do more > investigation. > (Note: not lack of regulations. Lack of implementation of > most of the regulations). On the parenthetic comment, which regulations are ever fully implemented? Certainly in the case of many of things I've mentioned -- Sarbanes-Oxley, and the CRA -- these were implemented. If you're going to blame them on not being implemented well enough, that's debatable, though I fear that's just a way court intellectuals will justify the failures of regulation -- "We didn't do enough." "Our hands were tied." etc. > See the Wall Street Journal, February 17, 2009, (as one > example of many): > > > Quote: > The Greenspan Doctrine ? a view that modern, > technologically advanced > financial markets are best left to police themselves ? > has an > increasingly vocal detractor. His name is Alan Greenspan. This was mostly Greenspan's rhetoric.* The reality is that market players expected and knew that Greenspan would act whenever they needed more liquidity, bailouts, and the like. So, even to the degree he rhetorically championed de-regulation, he was ever there to provide support -- short-circuiting healthy negative feedback loops. (Providing liquidity and bailouts (in many cases, Greenspan lent support to such rather than actually provided them) means big players who make mistakes don't have to pay for them -- much less learn from them. This should be the lesson of the Greenspan years, right from his first crisis in 1987.) Also, there's a point to be made about markets. They are self-regulating, BUT NOT because the big players -- like, e.g., the big banks -- "police themselves" but because all participants have an exit option is most of their relationships. This means, e.g., if one bank, no matter how big, is messing with its clients or investors, they can choose to bank somewhere else or not to bank at all. (Also, there's the related feature that markets allow other entrants to participate -- as when, e.g., people on a free market might turn to gold and away from paper money. This is currently mostly illegal due to legal tender laws -- which are, by the way, strictly enforced as those involved with the Liberty Dollar have found out.) > As Fed chairman, Mr. Greenspan was a frequent opponent of > market > regulation. Sophisticated markets, he argued, had become > increasingly > adept at carving up risk themselves and dispersing it > widely to > investors and financial institutions best suited to manage > it. Yet, despite this rhetoric, at no time did Greenspan give up his power to control rates. Nor did his abhor or counsel against FMOC operations. > The retired chairman has had to revise his views. In > comments at a New > York Economic Club dinner late Tuesday, the retired Fed > chairman > steered clear of much self-reflection on his role in the > credit boom. > But he did take a new swipe at the market?s > self-correcting tendencies > and bowed his head to a new period of increased > regulation. > > ?All of the sophisticated mathematics and computer > wizardry > essentially rested on one central premise: that enlightened > self > interest of owners and managers of financial institutions > would lead > them to maintain a sufficient buffer against insolvency by > actively > monitoring and managing their firms? capital and risk > positions,? the > Fed chairman said. The premise failed in the summer of > 2007, he said, > leaving him ?deeply dismayed.? The problem for this view -- aside from it likely being Greenspan covering his tracks** -- why would "owners and managers of [major] financial institutions would lead them to maintain a sufficient buffer against insolvency by actively monitoring and managing their firms? capital and risk positions"? After all, they knew of the "Greenspan put" -- that Greenspan, time and again, would come to the rescue of just about any firm "too big to fail." In effect, this is merely the same problem that happened to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: when someone covers someone else's risks, this leads to more risks being taken -- NOT to people better managing risk. Why would anyone but a fool expect otherwise? Think of how anyone would gamble in Vegas if someone gave you endless credit. Would this likely lead to less, more, or the same number of risky bets being placed? (This, of course, applies to both private and public covering of risk. The difference, though, with private covering is that the effects are usually localized and highly self-limiting. E.g., if you suddenly decided to fund my spree in Vegas, eventually you'd run out of money -- unless I got very lucky. It's also more likely that, as it's your money, you'd place limits on what I could do, how much I could spend, and the like. Chances are, you'd notice quickly if I were a compulsive gambler. If not, again, you'd go broke and my money would then be cut off -- ending my career as a gambler. This isn't the same when the Fed and the federal government subsidize risk. The costs are bourne by other parties, so it's not self-limiting. Also, the Fed and the federal government are systemic big players. They tend to set the tone for the whole financial sector -- of the nation if not the planet. While you might make the mistake of backing me, this is unlikely to bring down the whole gaming sector. With the Fed and federal government, this is exactly what's happened time and again.) Regards, Dan * See, e.g., this 2005 piece on the Greenspan mess: http://mises.org/story/1985 ** I bet he's aware of the Austro-libertarian critique of his policies and his time at the helm of the Fed. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 22 18:39:32 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 20:39:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905221139h38e024e6m2dfc506bab114d39@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 6:47 PM, Jef Allbright wrote: > Giulio, nearly everyone in these futurist forums (and nearly everyone > else too) shares this desire for more in the way of the sensual > pleasures you list. ?But I think it's worth pointing out, that more > coherently, there is no distinct or essential "you", separate from the > meat, and the very sensual desires you express are *defined* by the > nature of the "meat" within the current cultural context. Not so sure. Even today, there are, e.g., sex-related pleasure (seduction, e.g., or some forms of cybersex) where the "meat" is not really involved. -- Stefano Vaj From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 22 18:48:09 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 18:48:09 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Greenspan: rhetoric vs. reality/was Re: More on US Health Care Costs In-Reply-To: <303197.38742.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <303197.38742.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 5/22/09, dan_ust wrote: Thanks for describing in detail the wild excesses that lack of regulatory enforcement led to in the financial industry. BillK From aware at awareresearch.com Fri May 22 18:48:33 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 11:48:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <580930c20905221139h38e024e6m2dfc506bab114d39@mail.gmail.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <580930c20905221139h38e024e6m2dfc506bab114d39@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 11:39 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 6:47 PM, Jef Allbright wrote: >> Giulio, nearly everyone in these futurist forums (and nearly everyone >> else too) shares this desire for more in the way of the sensual >> pleasures you list. ?But I think it's worth pointing out, that more >> coherently, there is no distinct or essential "you", separate from the >> meat, and the very sensual desires you express are *defined* by the >> nature of the "meat" within the current cultural context. > > Not so sure. Even today, there are, e.g., sex-related pleasure > (seduction, e.g., or some forms of cybersex) where the "meat" is not > really involved. Was referring to drives, encoded via evolutionary processes in the "meat" organism (including its brain and nervous system), regardless of the interface or interaction. I have no problem, conceptually, morally or otherwise, with "upgrading" the embodiment (not just the substrate) , but I would argue that this will also "upgrade" the "self" and all that entails. - Jef From natasha at natasha.cc Fri May 22 19:03:17 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 15:03:17 -0400 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> <347B3C4E5CF14D03A8C29D38BBF3C660@DFC68LF1> <631FFE53AC13496FA4A2254770E96AC2@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <20090522150317.ozlx1od0dcg88ww0@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting Aware : Are you "Jef" or "Jef"? > 2009/5/22 Natasha Vita-More : >> Jef wrote: >> >>> As for identity as a primary value of transhumanism, >>> this is where I go my separate way, >>> seeing extropianism as *more* encompassing, >>> increasing agency promoting present but evolving values >>> as primary, and identity as emergent. >> >> Hi Jef, >> >> Why do you see "*more* encompassing, increasing agency as separating" out >> from other values? > > Natasha, your question is not entirely clear to me. It would be so > much easier to have some of these conversations in person. But I'll > try to guess your meaning and explain. Not a problem. You say you go a separate way because you see extropy as *more* encompassing. Yes, of course. My claim that indentity is human and the fact that we are human (with identity) is a primary value to the preferred futures of transhumanism because the "transitional stages", according to transhuamnism, accumulate (and do include human) in what is suggested to be a transformation of posthuman/upload, etc.) > You said: > >>> What I found interesting is the use of "mirror" and "reflection" and that >>> posthumans cannot see themselves because they have no sense of identity and >>> connectiveness to human. Not my view. > > and > >>> Damien makes a good point that it does fit in transhumanist discourse, but >>> not with the above views because the transhumanist perspective identifies >>> with identity as a primarily value. > > So, it seems that you referred to identity in two different ways. I > agree with your usage in the first paragraph. I think that this > postmodernist essay on the posthuman was incorrect in it's assertion > of no connection between the identity of the human and the posthuman. Yes, precisely. > (I also recognize and agree with the distinction pointed out by others > here between posthuman-ism and post-humanism. Yes, I agree as well with this. > My disagreement with > the essayist, and my agreement with what I take is your position is > based on the what I see as a necessarily evolutionary process of > branching leading from the human to the posthuman. While any > individual branch is contingent and unpredictable, sub-branches must > be coherent with what came before. Yes, understood. Please identify them and then let's take this discussion forward in framing it from that issue: What are the sub-branches that do not link human to posthuman. (Please correct me if I have phrased this incorrectly or misunderstood what you suggest.) > I disagree with your assertion (as I perceive and understand it) of > identity as a **primary** value. I explained this above. And that has to do what what we have now as humans. > I think this is an unfortunate, > unnecessary, and ultimately limiting artifact, natural and expected of > evolved organisms acting on behalf of what they perceive (with their > limited cognition) as their own self interest. I agree with you in part. Not completely because this statement sounds too much of a dislike of being a meat-body. While most transhumansit have this feeling, and certainly I am a strong proponent of replacing our bio-wet-meat bodies and my entire body (no pun intended) [my practice-based and theoretical work supports this notion and has for 20+ years. I say above "not completely" because I am here now and I love being alive and even though I suffer from illness, I would rather do my best to overcome illness than be a dead or suspended. > I think Zen awakening > overcomes this limitation. I think increasing awareness of one's > cultural embeddedness helps overcome this limitation. I agree with an awakening from limitations, but again, I am not going to turn my nose up at my biology because it is what I have now. That is my Zen. > I think game > theorists dealing with the ostensible "paradox" of the iterated > Prisoners' Dilemma and other examples of superrationality will > eventually get it. I think that by the time most of us are > effectively plugged into the net for our livelihood, sense of meaning > and sense of self, we'll all get it. Okay, but this is going a little off in another direction. > So, as I said earlier, I don't see identity as primary, but as > emergent. It's a necessary result of agency, which I see as > increasing extropically as increasing instrumental effectiveness > promotes an increasing context of values. Okay. Now, let me ask you: Could its "emergence" be primary value? >> Do you think that identity opposes connectivity? > > I'm not sure what you mean here. I think identity, by definition, > involves perceived separation, but of course our very existence and > effectiveness is dependent on our connections. You seemed to have made it an either or scenario and I questioned that. >> Are you are looking at >> this issue from "individualism" as self at center of the universe and >> identity as perspectives stemming from the individual as a solo agent? > > I think I /almost/ understand what you're getting at here. It seems > to point again in the direction of identity as something, similar to > ego, defined in terms of its perceived centrality within its world. > This may be closer to my view, in that it seems to be less essential, > and more the necessary result of having a (single) point of view. > > I came across a pretty good paper a few months ago which expresses my > view on this: > > > > >> I thought I referred to as indentity as relating to the fluid, "distributed" >> posthuman. > > Now you've lost me. I can't tell what kind of "relating" you mean. Earlier post. My view on transformed/emergent identity is distributed. > I see personal identity comprised of two aspects: (1) the unchanging, > but fictional, **entity** as the unique referent of our thoughts about > "Natasha", or "Nanc[ie]", or even "she" who was not yet born, but > conceived as a person in her parents minds, and (2) the customary > diachronic agency, but even multiple and/or partially overlapping > agencies, actors recognized (regardless of functional/physical > similarity) as serving the interests of the **entity** described in > (1). This is how I see it, and I quote: "DIACHRONIC IDENTITY" (Max More, PhD Dissertation section) "The conception of the self being developed here Armstrong has called a relational view (or what has been called a perdurance view), as opposed to an identity view (or endurance view).*2 We can look at a person who persists over time and divide up their life into any number of non-overlapping temporal stages or phases. An identity view, in Armstrong's sense, would hold that these phases are identical with one another in some numerical sense. The identity view treats temporal parts differently from spatial parts of a thing: Spatial parts are clearly different parts of a particular, P; they are obviously not identical with one another. (The asymmetry between the identity view's treatment of spatial and temporal parts provides grounds for an objection to that view, according to Armstrong.) The relational view, by contrast, treats spatial and temporal parts symmetrically. On the relational view, non-overlapping phases of some perduring particular, P, are not identical in any sense. These phases are simply different parts of the same thing. That thing is constituted by those temporal parts and their relations to each other and to other particulars. The account of personal identity or continuity presented here is relational in this sense. The self-the diachronic, continuant self-consists of its temporal stages or phases and the relations between them. The particular relation, in this case, is what Parfit calls the R-relation: Psychological connectedness and continuity. At this point it would be sensible to explicitly stipulate how I shall be using the term "self", before confusion arises. Some people use the term to refer to the temporal phases or person-stages of the continuant person. Others use it to refer to the diachronic particular constituted by its phases and their relations. It is especially important to define my usage since I am building on Parfit's theory of psychological reductionism, and so might be assumed to be following his usage. Parfit sometimes presents his discussion of personal identity or survival in terms of successive selves.3 Looked at this way, the continuant person is made up of, or can be regarded as, a series of successive selves. Any two temporally contiguous selves are highly psychologically connected, whereas widely temporally separated selves may be only very weakly connected. However, I will not adopt this usage. I will use "self" to refer to the continuant, perduring, diachronic individual. Its constituent temporal parts I will refer to as person-stages, person-phases, or phases of the self. Perduring, continuant, diachronic person = SELF Transient, temporal part of person = PERSON/SELF-STAGE or PHASE My reason for preferring this usage will become more obvious as this chapter proceeds. Essentially, I believe that the contrary usage-using "self" to refer to the temporal phases-reflects and encourages too heavy a weighting of the significance of these phases, and devalues the importance of the continuant self. This difference in emphasis between my transformationist interpretation of psychological reductionism and Parfit's version will show up in the sections on the importance of projects and values to the continuity of the person. Apart from the unwanted emphasis on the short term resulting from equating self with person-phase, such an equation can easily give the misleading impression that there really are relatively distinct selves. We may talk of the infant self, the child self, the adolescent self, and the adult self, and think of the continuant self as the temporal concatenation of these distinct and successive selves. Nevertheless, this obscures the fact that we rarely find anything resembling a clear line or sudden transition from one such 'self' to another. Those four terms are merely loose references to person-phases; the borders they draw can be arbitrarily moved around with some latitude. For instance, we may draw the line marking the change from the adolescent self to the adult self at 13 years (as do Jews and some other cultures), or at 16, or 18, or 21, or the age (whatever it turns out to be) when some specified qualities have been developed. Instead of talking in terms of successive selves, I shall stick with the more basic language of degrees or extent of psychological connectedness. If I need to refer to earlier or later instances of a person, I will also use the terms self-stage or self-phase (or person-phase). In other words, I will replace a series of successive selves with a spectrum of connectedness. Connectedness can be measured in two ways giving different answers though, in common with everyone else, I will use the first way. The two ways differ in what to use as the standard of connectedness degree. The first and obvious way is to ask how much of the earlier phase (A) survives or continues on in the later phase (B). (Rather than earlier and later phases, A and B could be original and duplicate selves.) Take the case (illustrated in Figure 3 below) where half of A's characteristics are shared by B. B, in addition, has a great many characteristics not shared by A. According to the first way of measuring connectedness, A and B are 50% connected (or A is 50% connected to B). Another way to say this is that 50% of A is subsumed in B. The second way measures connectedness in terms of B. We would then describe Figure 3 as a case where connectedness was very low (say 1%) because A has only 1% of B's characteristics. When A and B represent earlier and later selves (as they will throughout this chapter), only the first way of measuring seems useful. However, If A and B are taken to be an original self and a copy, the second way will be useful, especially when B thinks about the situation. Henceforth, I shall be assuming connectedness is measured the first way, in terms of the earlier self. Determining the degree of connectedness will not suffice to tell us all that we need to know about our earlier and later phases if we (earlier phase) are to make sensible decisions about allocating present vs. future costs and benefits. The same degree of connectedness may attach to situations that are not equally desirable. Knowing only that self-phases A and B are 50% connected (for example) leaves out much information about our relation to the later phase. The statement that A and B are 50% psychologically connected could represent any one of three possible propositions (each of which are represented in the diagrams): (1) B has 50% of A's characteristics, but no characteristics that A doesn't have, i.e. B is a subset of A. (Figure 1) (2) B has 50% of A's characteristics, and 50% of B's characteristics are not shared by A. (Figure 2) (3) B has 50% of A's characteristics, and only a small fraction of B's characteristics are shared by A. (Figure 3) We can use set diagrams to clarify the ways in which two individuals may be psychologically connected. A and B may stand for the earlier and later person-stages of a continuant individual (and this is the interpretation I will be using). However, A and B could also represent two individuals, each of whom is a survivor of the original. B could be a copy of A-a copy of more or less fidelity, or who has psychologically diverged over time from A. In Figure 1 the earlier self-phase, A, possesses all the characteristics of the later phase, B, but B has only 50% of the characteristics of A. In this case, the later self-phase is a degenerate continuer of A. B has learned nothing new, acquired no new memories, formed no new intentions or dispositions, and values only what A valued, yet has lost half of what made A who he was. In Figure 2, the later self-phase retains 50% of A's characteristics, but also has about as many new characteristics. In Figure 3, the later self-phase retains 50% of A's characteristics, but these are now an insignificant fraction of B's total psychological features. This situation might be realized if A is an infant and B an adult self, or if A is any person of today and B a person who, due to advances in gerontology, has lived for many centuries (or their subjective equivalent4). B has added many new experiences and memories, and acquired additional dispositions, abilities, and values. Each of these three represents a case of 50% connectedness. Nevertheless practically all of us would prefer our future to turn out more like the situation in Figure 2 than in Figure 1, and most of us would prefer Figure 3 to Figure 2. Many accounts of psychological reductionism suggest or imply that it makes most sense to allocate our concern for our future self-phases proportionally to the degree of connectedness. The three cases just described show this to be implausible. The same degree of connectedness may be arrived at in differing ways, and we will prefer some of these to others. The relationship between the metaphysical degree of connectedness and the normative degree of reasonable concern for later stages is thus not a straightforward one. In the later chapter on "A Transformationist Account of Continuity" I will propose several reasons for concerning ourselves with our future phases more than proportionally to the degree of connectedness. Having clarified what I mean by connectedness, I will now set out several versions of Psychological Reductionism and explore how they differ in regard to the causal conditions they assume. Without an account of the causal conditions necessary, we will not know when to say that a psychological connection has endured at all." best, Natasha From jef at jefallbright.net Fri May 22 19:23:17 2009 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 12:23:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: <20090522150317.ozlx1od0dcg88ww0@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> <347B3C4E5CF14D03A8C29D38BBF3C660@DFC68LF1> <631FFE53AC13496FA4A2254770E96AC2@DFC68LF1> <20090522150317.ozlx1od0dcg88ww0@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 12:03 PM, wrote: > Quoting Aware : > > Are you "Jef" or "Jef"? Yes to both, but I seem to be suffering from some confusion over personal identity. ;-) Actually, you're seeing the placeholder account I established in order to monitor the list while not being present and therefore tempted to post. I've responded several times now without remembering to change accounts. As for your other comments, I'll get back to you in the next day or so. They merit serious consideration but I've already exceeded my budget for today. - Jef From asyluman at gmail.com Fri May 22 19:04:24 2009 From: asyluman at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 15:04:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <580930c20905221139h38e024e6m2dfc506bab114d39@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Seems like a huge conflict in this sorta transhumanist talk concerns pragmatism and progress versus romanticism. The problem is that everyone who is smart enough to think about this stuff also tends to be cultured enough to love things like forests and books and history. We are so unwilling to let go of these humanist instincts--because the movement focuses on transcending humanity and thus produces a whole conflicty-dialectical-esque deal. When viewed in a wider, panprogressivist style, we can think about letting go of humanity as a step along a gradient, much like leaving for college or a similar shift. The notion of transhumanism is as subjective as they get simply because it puts so much emphasis On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Aware wrote: > On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 11:39 AM, Stefano Vaj > wrote: > > On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 6:47 PM, Jef Allbright > wrote: > >> Giulio, nearly everyone in these futurist forums (and nearly everyone > >> else too) shares this desire for more in the way of the sensual > >> pleasures you list. But I think it's worth pointing out, that more > >> coherently, there is no distinct or essential "you", separate from the > >> meat, and the very sensual desires you express are *defined* by the > >> nature of the "meat" within the current cultural context. > > > > Not so sure. Even today, there are, e.g., sex-related pleasure > > (seduction, e.g., or some forms of cybersex) where the "meat" is not > > really involved. > > Was referring to drives, encoded via evolutionary processes in the > "meat" organism (including its brain and nervous system), regardless > of the interface or interaction. > > I have no problem, conceptually, morally or otherwise, with > "upgrading" the embodiment (not just the substrate) , but I would > argue that this will also "upgrade" the "self" and all that entails. > > - Jef > _______________________________________________ > 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 asyluman at gmail.com Fri May 22 19:07:03 2009 From: asyluman at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 15:07:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <580930c20905221139h38e024e6m2dfc506bab114d39@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: I am terrible at email. "...puts so much emphasis" on this grand shift in consciousness. We needn't take a stance for each step on the rung--transatomism, transprokaryotism, and other silly slippery slopisms. A purely extropian viewpoint of the force of complexity and progress puts the situation in a better light. On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Will Steinberg wrote: > Seems like a huge conflict in this sorta transhumanist talk concerns > pragmatism and progress versus romanticism. The problem is that everyone > who is smart enough to think about this stuff also tends to be cultured > enough to love things like forests and books and history. We are so > unwilling to let go of these humanist instincts--because the movement > focuses on transcending humanity and thus produces a whole > conflicty-dialectical-esque deal. > > When viewed in a wider, panprogressivist style, we can think about letting > go of humanity as a step along a gradient, much like leaving for college or > a similar shift. The notion of transhumanism is as subjective as they get > simply because it puts so much emphasis > > On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Aware wrote: > >> On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 11:39 AM, Stefano Vaj >> wrote: >> > On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 6:47 PM, Jef Allbright >> wrote: >> >> Giulio, nearly everyone in these futurist forums (and nearly everyone >> >> else too) shares this desire for more in the way of the sensual >> >> pleasures you list. But I think it's worth pointing out, that more >> >> coherently, there is no distinct or essential "you", separate from the >> >> meat, and the very sensual desires you express are *defined* by the >> >> nature of the "meat" within the current cultural context. >> > >> > Not so sure. Even today, there are, e.g., sex-related pleasure >> > (seduction, e.g., or some forms of cybersex) where the "meat" is not >> > really involved. >> >> Was referring to drives, encoded via evolutionary processes in the >> "meat" organism (including its brain and nervous system), regardless >> of the interface or interaction. >> >> I have no problem, conceptually, morally or otherwise, with >> "upgrading" the embodiment (not just the substrate) , but I would >> argue that this will also "upgrade" the "self" and all that entails. >> >> - Jef >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 22 19:21:01 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 12:21:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Greenspan: rhetoric vs. reality Message-ID: <345764.61376.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/22/09, BillK wrote: > On 5/22/09, dan_ust wrote: > > > Thanks for describing in detail the wild excesses that lack > of > regulatory enforcement led to in the financial industry. Huh? Again, I wrote: "How is the US financial system -- one that is heavily regulated from the Federal Reserve System, the SEC, etc. on the federal level to a host of state and local laws -- "regulation free system" in your view? (And was it ever so?) What of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the Community Reinvestment Act, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and the myriad other interventions in the financial markets? I might agree that there are times of more or less regulation -- often just times where one or more regulations is less enforced but the whole system of regulations remains in place -- but none in US history where it was regulation free. (Maybe the closest to the time was during the so called "free banking" period -- roughly 1837 to 1860 -- but even then the banks were still regulated at the state and local level.)" Do you disagree with this merely because of comments from Greenspan? Was there no Federal Reserve System during Greenspan's tenure? Were the Sarbanes-Oxley regulations not enforced from 2002 onward? (During that time, I worked with several large companies that had literally roomfulls of people to deal with the regulations. Do you believe this had no impact?) Did the SEC do nothing at all from 1987 until Greenspan stepped down? What of all those people fined or sent to jail for violating SEC regs? How about the CRA? Did it, by your reckoning, have no impact? What of, too, the myriad other regulations that have been in plan for decades? Were they suddenly not enforced at all during the Greenspan years? Or was there a huge dip in enforcement? Was this, too, by your lights the main cause of the current crisis? The huge increase in the money supply and historically extremely low interest rates had little or no impact? (Greenspan had a leading role to play in both those things -- being the chief person who set Fed policy on both -- though his successor is doing even more to grow the money supply, which will likely have "interesting" results in coming years.) Furthermore, and going back to the earlier thread, how does this compare with the healthcare industry in the US? Is that, by your reckoning, completely unregulated? If so, would you care to start practicing medicine and making and distributing pharmaceutical drugs without a license? Regards, Dan From max at maxmore.com Fri May 22 19:46:08 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 14:46:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind Message-ID: <200905222013.n4MKCxED001268@andromeda.ziaspace.com> This discussion suggests (to me anyway) a slogan for a T-shirt: Transhumanists want to beat the meat. Max >Not so sure. Even today, there are, e.g., sex-related pleasure >(seduction, e.g., or some forms of cybersex) where the "meat" is not >really involved. ------------------------------------- Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com ------------------------------------- From jef at jefallbright.net Fri May 22 20:48:22 2009 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 13:48:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <200905222013.n4MKCxED001268@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905222013.n4MKCxED001268@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Max More wrote: > This discussion suggests (to me anyway) a slogan for a T-shirt: > > Transhumanists want to beat the meat. Thanks Max for my second-best chuckle of the day! And there related: The first was a post by Robin Hanson to LessWrong, raising the question among the experts (nerds) there of why masturbation is so frequent when its evolutionary signaling power is impaired by its not being public. - Jef From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 22 21:37:46 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 14:37:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Human Experimenting In-Reply-To: <4A16C8B1.6050405@libero.it> References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> <4A16C8B1.6050405@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A171B2A.8090108@rawbw.com> Mirco writes > Il 22/05/2009 0.03, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > >> Are many libertarians >> today ready to allow someone to knowingly and with full >> consent sign himself into slavery? My opinion: we're >> not ready for that yet; but someday, yes. In other >> words, IMO no libertarian group, no matter how select >> and on how small an island, should go ahead with something >> like that, at least for a generation or two. > > The contract is void, because the matter > of the contract is not under > the control of the signer. An interesting idea. > The signer would need to put himself > in a position where he [has] no more > free will (say he lobotomizes himself). > But [so long as he retains his] free will, > he will not be able to sign away his freedom. It sounds to me like your problem with this is the *scope* of the signing, i.e., the range of conduct of the subject (the signer). For small ranges, e.g., "I will promise to return the goods Tuesday", a contract is okay for you, but "I will do everything you say for N years" is not. Have I understood correctly? Lee > It is like signing a contract and agreeing to "be good". > People can not sell the future. > > Mirco From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 22 21:45:32 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 14:45:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A171CFC.2000302@rawbw.com> Jef wrote >> Giulio wrote: > >> I am one of those who see the body as a meat cage and, if the option >> were already available, I would cheerfully choose to upload to silicon >> or cyberspace. But then I would want MORE color, sound, scent and sex, >> not less. > > Giulio, nearly everyone in these futurist forums (and nearly everyone > else too) shares this desire for more in the way of the sensual > pleasures you list. But I think it's worth pointing out, that more > coherently, there is no distinct or essential "you", separate from the > meat, and the very sensual desires you express are *defined* by the > nature of the "meat" within the current cultural context. I'm surprised that this didn't provoke any disagreement. At least to me it meant that uploading is such a radical transformation that the "you" has completely changed, which in some minds would be unacceptable. But anyway, regardless, the key point of the matter for me is that in principle, I may have been uploaded already. That is, an extraordinarily good uploading technique could have been applied to me while I slept, and here am I, today, uploaded just fine, even though no one has told me. This scenario retains for me "my current cultural context", allowing me exactly the same capabilities I had yesterday, even though now there is no meat. Lee > Self-identified Transhumanists appear intent on preserving and > protecting an essential identity, to be augmented and amplified, > enhanced and extended, transcending virtually all constraints in order > that the Self might explore and enjoy the nearly boundless > possibilities of existence. > > Sounds great. Too bad it's incoherent... From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 22 21:58:28 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 14:58:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Gradual Extinction of Slavery In-Reply-To: <4A16C5B7.7040607@libero.it> References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert><7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> <4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com><780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z> <4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com> <9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z> <4A159497.2090801@rawbw.com> <4A16C5B7.7040607@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A172004.4060206@rawbw.com> Mirco wrote (in The Rationality of Belief is Relative 8:33AM) painlord2k at libero.it wrote: >> Prior to the last five or six >> hundred years, there were only a few people >> who had much sympathy at all for slaves, (I >> mean beyond the natural human empathy we all >> have for some of those not as well off), and >> vanishingly few who looked at it as immoral... > > I would contest that "few people". > Slavery was near completely eradicated > by the customs of Europe around > the XI century. It lasted only around > the bleeding borders with another > civilization that finds nothing > unnatural with slavery. Do you know why, about a millenium ago, slavery in Europe gradually ceased? (I do believe, from a book I'm reading "The Discovery of Mankind", that contrary to the stereotype, the Catholic Church's behavior really was strongly affected (sometimes) by its highly theoretical doctrines, even if this meant less power. Perhaps this is why?) (Evidently slavery was also slated for extinction in the U.S., probably by the end of the 19th century, but there only for purely economic reasons.) Or were the reasons not connected to the Church? Lee > It returned in the Americas, away from the social control of the > Catholic Church. > > In other places, it exist until today. Mauritania abolished it a couple > of years ago, and probably many 100k's people are slaves today, there. > It is not strange that many recent cases of slavery in US have as > defendant people of not European background that come and bring with > them a slave maid or two. The slave maids, usually, think of themselves > "lucky" to be with a wealth man, family that feed them and only ask for > 12-15 hour work every day. It is only when they start to understand the > world around them (often after the police intervene) that they change > their mind and understand how wrong was their condition. There is a > "built in" acceptance of their status, as they think it is the natural > order of things. When their status is raised and their "owners" status > is lowered, they start changing their attitude. > > Mirco > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > No virus found in this outgoing message. > Checked by AVG - www.avg.com > Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.36/2128 - Release Date: 05/22/09 06:03:00 > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 22 22:06:11 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 15:06:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Greenspan: rhetoric vs. reality In-Reply-To: References: <303197.38742.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A1721D3.4000006@rawbw.com> BillK wrote: > On 5/22/09, dan_ust wrote: > > > Thanks for describing in detail the wild excesses that lack of > regulatory enforcement led to in the financial industry. Well, I think that what Dan wrote supports the more general contention that when government first begins creating artificial incentives in the economy, and introduces other distortions, yes, the government must patch up the unintended consequences (often moral hazards) with patchwork regulation, which then often requires further regulation, and so on. So it's no surprise that deregulation of some of these patches are very dangerous. Lee From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Fri May 22 23:05:17 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 16:05:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90905212131y586c6e55hd847aca680a576b1@mail.gmail.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <1fa8c3b90905212131y586c6e55hd847aca680a576b1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670905221605w3527d042h15894b5b68ee5975@mail.gmail.com> G. wrote: This makes even more sense to me since I am not wildly optimist on the actual development timescale of uploading technology, and don't really hope to se it achieved in my lifetime. >> Wait, I thought the singularity was happening by 2045, at least according to Ray Kurzweil (but wait, wasn't his initial prediction for the year 2025??). But I realize his most recent date for the event puts it roughly 35 years into the future, and so for anyone over 40 it is a very iffy date. Does the Cryonomicon offer the answers? hee http://alcor.org/ http://www.cryonics.org/ G. wrote: But I use to react to those who insist that the uploading option is impossible in principle. because this position (especially when it is not supported by actual arguments) looks like mysticism to me. >> Uploading impossible? I doubt that. But I view it as a hopefully perfect copy of me and not actually *me*. *IT"S NOW TIME FOR A VERY LENGTHY DISCUSSION ON THE NATURE OF IDENTITY- ALREADY DONE MANY TIMES BEFORE ON THIS LIST, EVERYONE TO YOUR KEYBOARDS!!!* ; ) G. wrote: And I also react to those who insist that transhumanist ideas are "dry", because this position shows that they have not understood much. >> Transhumanist ideas are dry? LOL I would say they are practically dripping wet with imagination and mind-boggling concepts! These critics have obviously not done very much reading or spoken to Max More, Anders Sandberg, Nick Bostrom, Aubrey de Grey, Natasha Vita-More, or Robert Bradbury. Post Futurist wrote: why would you want sex then? sex is animalistic. not to mix metaphors, but apples are apples; oranges are oranges ;- / >> If you think of sex as only animalistic than you don't have a well-rounded view of the full range of human sexuality and lovemaking. I envision posthumans (even the most advanced) as not discarding this important part of human existence, but instead transforming it and taking it to new levels. G. wrote: Indeed, I think that these natural and enthusiastic yearnings for escape may drive practical striving toward a better tomorrow. And no, I don't think they take attention away from the challenges and hard work of the here and now. I have seen enough people dying of cancer, confined to a life support system, destroyed by age, or just profoundly unhappy to conclude that life, as it is, sucks. If not for these natural and enthusiastic yearnings for escape, I would not consider life as worth living, let alone find the interest and drive to strive toward a better tomorrow. >> I totally agree. I am so glad humanity appears to be fairly close to the point where we can finally escape the endless cycles of disease, aging decrepitude, poverty, early death and the many other things that have plagued us since the beginning. A problem I have with most fantasy epics is that they are universes stuck in an endless cycle of evil and/or crumbling monarchies, civil wars, threatening non-human races, and scary prophecies. I sometimes feel like humanity is on volume 20 of one of those nearly never-ending fantasy series. lol I love the quote by Henry David Thoreau, "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." Giulio, I'm so glad you're on this list and that you have a streak of Thoreau in you. John Grigg : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aware at awareresearch.com Fri May 22 23:28:05 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 16:28:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <4A171CFC.2000302@rawbw.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <4A171CFC.2000302@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 2:45 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Jef wrote > >>> Giulio wrote: >> >>> I am one of those who see the body as a meat cage and, if the option >>> were already available, I would cheerfully choose to upload to silicon >>> or cyberspace. But then I would want MORE color, sound, scent and sex, >>> not less. >> >> Giulio, nearly everyone in these futurist forums (and nearly everyone >> else too) shares this desire for more in the way of the sensual >> pleasures you list. ?But I think it's worth pointing out, that more >> coherently, there is no distinct or essential "you", separate from the >> meat, and the very sensual desires you express are *defined* by the >> nature of the "meat" within the current cultural context. > > I'm surprised that this didn't provoke any disagreement. > At least to me it meant that uploading is such a radical > transformation that the "you" has completely changed, > which in some minds would be unacceptable. Lee, apropos our discussion the last couple of days about ignoring context: Do you really think, after our discussions over more than ten years, often touching on this very same subject, that somehow I would now hold the simple position you ascribe to me here? You claim to be conversant with Bayes', but it seems that often you infer directly from what you see as the evidence, with little or no consideration, it seems, for the likelihood function supported by (all) the evidence, or updating from your prior. It should be clear by now I'm not a substrate chauvinist. But the point was not simple transference to another substrate, but significantly *more* in the way of sensual experience and enjoyment. My point was that to the extent you change the way the world is experienced (not simply the world that you experience) you change yourself. And there's nothing necessarily bad about that, but let's not be naive about our visions of possible futures, and especially about what it takes to get there. - Jef Hi John (Grigg). No personal identity debates, pleeeease. From spike66 at att.net Sat May 23 00:24:01 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 17:24:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] More on US Health Care Costs In-Reply-To: <1590.16951.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1590.16951.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <36D9DCD73598480F88B514091E8BEFA6@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Dan ... > > That said, though, the US government spends more per capita > on healthcare than Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, > Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. So the US government's > level of funding is at least higher than these countries -- > and they are usually touted by supporters of increasing the > US government's footprint in healthcare. > > Regards, > > Dan Does this discussion take into account medical research costs? spike From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 23 02:43:08 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 12:43:08 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Human Experimenting In-Reply-To: <4A16E2D6.9060109@libero.it> References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> <4A16C8B1.6050405@libero.it> <4A16E2D6.9060109@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/23 painlord2k at libero.it : > If I buy a car and agree to pay it tomorrow, the car become really mine > tomorrow, after I pay for it. If I can not pay, the car will return to the > previous owner. I could also be responsible for the incurred damages or > costs incurred for the repossession. If and when I have the means to pay, I > will be forced to pay. But I can not be forced to work to pay back the > damages and the costs. I can only be forced to pay with what I have at hand > or by seizing my possessions. Usually, the debtors will choose the redress > they prefer (money seizure or goods repossessed). > > If you can be forced to work for pay past debts, you are a slave. It depends on the details of the contract. It could be that if you don't pay for the car you can be sued for the full amount of the car, or just a proportion. When people are sued and they can't pay, they can declare bankruptcy. But bankruptcy is a legal addition to the system that, indirectly, prevents slavery or indentured labour. It is not an automatic part of contract law. > In the past (Rome for example), slavery existed not on racial basis but on > other basis. > People sold themselves or where sold as slaves as a way to pay for their > debts and the debts of their family. > The act of selling themselves to others and the act of being unable to full > fill their own obligations to others individuals of the society can be > considered a way people loses their privileges under the social contract. > This would, IMHO, be consistent with the fact that the other large class of > people that become slaves was the prisoners of war (by default out of the > social contract of the society they are at war against). Other sources of > slaves for the Romans were abandoned children (individuals out of the social > contract) and slaves bough from abroad (the same). In other culture I'm > aware, the slaves are people out of the social contract of the slave owner. > Being slaves and being inside the social contract is not possible, as what > you do is what your master want and he is responsible for your actions. So where is the contractual problem with people voluntarily selling themselves into slavery? That they might later change their mind doesn't seem to be a valid objection, since they knew what they were getting into when they agreed to the contract. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 23 03:03:14 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 13:03:14 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The Last Exorcism. Philosophies of earthly immortality In-Reply-To: <4A16D5B1.3030805@libero.it> References: <4A169414.50106@libero.it> <580930c20905220526l2d68ff5di599d648436f38f56@mail.gmail.com> <4A16A94C.9090903@libero.it> <4A16C996.5010906@libero.it> <4A16D5B1.3030805@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/23 painlord2k at libero.it : >> It's like children being told they have to behave well so that Santa >> Claus will bring them a present. It's right to behave well and the >> Santa Claus belief may be helpful in producing this state of affairs, >> but this has no bearing on the question of the existence of Santa >> Claus. > > The problem is that, without the believing, the utility of the belief is > null. Yes, but the belief can still have utility and be false, as per my Santa Claus example. > This is like the problem with trust: > you can not obtain the trust of people if they believe you only want their > trust. They will trust you when they will believe your actions are motivated > by anything else apart the gaining of trust. > > So, anything mandated to build or support trust is often only able to > destroy trust in the long run. Look Obama and Chrysler senior creditors. If I trust someone, then I believe that they believe what they are telling me. But whether there is a correlation between their belief and reality is a different question. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 23 03:32:09 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 13:32:09 +1000 Subject: [ExI] More on US Health Care Costs In-Reply-To: <1590.16951.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1590.16951.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/23 Dan : > That said, though, the US government spends more per capita on healthcare than Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. ?So the US government's level of funding is at least higher than these countries -- and they are usually touted by supporters of increasing the US government's footprint in healthcare. That's the point: they spend more and have less to show for it, so they are inefficient. This could be, for example, because ER's are not supposed to refuse anyone treatment, so more patients who are uninsured or underinsured go to ER's. By the time they get to the ER they are more unwell than they would be if they saw a doctor earlier, or else they aren't that unwell but the ER does a battery of tests because that's what happens routinely to everyone who comes to an ER anyway, "just in case". General practitioners on the other hand know the patient, are more likely to intervene early, will provide preventive treatment (eg. antihypertensives, screening tests, vaccinations), and will recognise when there isn't really that much physically wrong and the patient just needs reassurance or is actually stressed about some personal problem. GP's are more cost-effective than ER's, but due to ideological factors the US public health system won't pay for everyone to have a GP. -- Stathis Papaioannou From spike66 at att.net Sat May 23 03:38:55 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 20:38:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Last Exorcism. Philosophies of earthly immortality In-Reply-To: References: <4A169414.50106@libero.it><580930c20905220526l2d68ff5di599d648436f38f56@mail.gmail.com> <4A16A94C.9090903@libero.it> <4A16C996.5010906@libero.it> <4A16D5B1.3030805@libero.it> Message-ID: <71E9283A1EE548E197232AB6DB0F189D@spike> > > >> It's like children being told they have to behave well so > that Santa Claus will bring them a present... In my day, they just told us kids that we had to behave well, otherwise Santa Claus would come and beat us beyond recognition. That saved parents a great deal of money on presents. spike From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 23 12:43:27 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 14:43:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Last Exorcism. Philosophies of earthly immortality In-Reply-To: <71E9283A1EE548E197232AB6DB0F189D@spike> References: <4A169414.50106@libero.it><580930c20905220526l2d68ff5di599d648436f38f56@mail.gmail.com> <4A16A94C.9090903@libero.it> <4A16C996.5010906@libero.it> <4A16D5B1.3030805@libero.it> <71E9283A1EE548E197232AB6DB0F189D@spike> Message-ID: <4A17EF6F.9010004@libero.it> Il 23/05/2009 5.38, spike ha scritto: > >>>> It's like children being told they have to behave well so >> that Santa Claus will bring them a present... > > > In my day, they just told us kids that we had to behave well, otherwise > Santa Claus would come and beat us beyond recognition. That saved parents a > great deal of money on presents. In my childhood children were told that if they behave well we would receive candies, otherwise there would be only carbons. Then the oil shock come and education went down the drain. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.37/2130 - Release Date: 05/23/09 07:00:00 From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 23 18:40:56 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 11:40:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> Natasha wrote: > [Lee wrote] > >> At the risk of introducing an identity thread, >> I have a simple question. Suppose that two >> equally technically reliable alternatives >> exist: non-destruct upload (where the body's >> mind is just copied into VR) and destructive >> upload (where the body is disintegrated as >> the upload is performed). Questions of "backup" >> aside---i.e. assuming total safety is ensured >> in all cases---would "you" also leave behind >> a meat copy, or (equivalently) would "you" >> applaud the happiness of the self uploaded >> (and continue to be about as content with >> life as you are)? > > I'd keep a copy of the body (and have several upload copies as well.) I > like the idea of having saved fasnions of the past. Never know when I > might want to pull it out, dust it off, and try it on for a spell. So you'd just mothball the meat original? FWIW, I'd (or rather, *we* would) keep the biological old version running, so long as we (it as me) continued to find its life worth living. It would be vastly relieved to know that it had really made it, cheated death, and was getting a lot of great run time. But no need for it to be turned off. > No, let's not go into a thread on which is the real you. Please. Right :) we'll nip any such in the bud. But I do note that y'all would run more than one upload :-) Lee From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat May 23 19:08:05 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 14:08:05 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> Most of the people posting here seem to have no notion how depraved it is to speak of human bodies as "meat". I wish you'd all get over this nerdish affectation. Meat is dead, hacked-up flesh. My body isn't meat, it's me, and yours isn't meat either. It's a living person. The jeering philistinism of calling our bodies "meat" reminds me of insensitive oafs who disdain van Vogh's paintings as "daubing" or Shakespeare as a "scribbler". Yes, sometimes it's hard not to distance yourself from your frail flesh when some of your organs start to break down, or viruses make you sick, or when a consumerist culture flings endless hyperstimuli images of toned, buff, beautiful humans at you, making you (for values of "you" that I'm sure include at least some people in these discussions) squirm with self-disgust inside your overweight unfit short-sighted geekish pizza-and-Coke-fed body. I think we'd be better off trying to maximize our sense of self-reliant embodiment rather than indulging in abjection and denial. None of this diatribe implies that *only* mammalian, conscious embodiment deserves respect. But if we wish to see respect for minds instantiated on different kinds of substrates, when they finally arrive, we'd do well to start by getting rid of the cheap sneers at "meat". Now the peanut gallery can start yipping about "political correctness." Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat May 23 20:11:36 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 15:11:36 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Eternity: Our Next Billion Years, by Michael Hanlon Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090523150604.0224b1b0@satx.rr.com> I haven't seen this book yet. It sounds like a version of my YEAR MILLION anthology,*** and that's good--we need more books taking the very long view. Damien Broderick ***I suppose any sequel I compile will now have to be titled YEAR TRILLION or YEAR ZILLION rather than YEAR BILLION. :) From pharos at gmail.com Sat May 23 20:41:08 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 20:41:08 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Eternity: Our Next Billion Years, by Michael Hanlon In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090523150604.0224b1b0@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090523150604.0224b1b0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 5/23/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > I haven't seen this book yet. It sounds like a version of my YEAR MILLION > anthology,*** and that's good--we need more books taking the very long view. > > > > ***I suppose any sequel I compile will now have to be titled YEAR > or YEAR ZILLION rather than YEAR BILLION. :) > Well, Obama and the Fed have now used billions and trillions so much that people no longer appreciate just how big these numbers are. I'm sure I read somewhere that a poll found that people thought a billion was just a big million and a trillion a bit more than that. The Econ4u folks are dedicated to education Americans about all matters financial. To dramatize the importance of their mission, they put a poll into the field asking people how many millions are in a trillion. The results: Q: How many times larger is a trillion than a million? Would you say? One Thousand Times- 18% Ten Thousand Times- 12% One Hundred Thousand Times- 21% One Million Times- 21% Ten Million Times- 17% Don?t Know- 12% The correct answer is a million millions are in a trillion. But 79 percent of Americans got that wrong. And almost everyone got it wrong downward. As one of the comments says 'The answers look a lot like random guessing'. BillK From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 23 21:00:28 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 14:00:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com> Damien writes about his diatribe > Now the peanut gallery can start > yipping about "political correctness." As chairman of the peanut gallery, I object to this demeaning of our mission. Modesty should have prevented you, in the first place :) from presuming that you had the clout to set up political correctness! > Most of the people posting here seem > to have no notion how depraved it > is to speak of human bodies as "meat". I plead guilty. Indeed, we should aspire to good taste whenever such an alternative is pointed out to us. > I wish you'd all get over this nerdish > affectation. This causes me to wonder exactly how much of our common memeset here might fall under that description. > Meat is dead, hacked-up flesh. My body > isn't meat, it's me, and yours > isn't meat either. It's a living person. > The jeering philistinism of calling our > bodies "meat" reminds me of insensitive > oafs who disdain van Vogh's paintings > as "daubing"... I admit to being quite surprised by your vehemence; but point well taken---though use of the term did start out as a joke. Lee > or Shakespeare as a "scribbler". > > Yes, sometimes it's hard not to distance yourself from your frail flesh > when some of your organs start to break down, or viruses make you sick, > or when a consumerist culture flings endless hyperstimuli images of > toned, buff, beautiful humans at you, making you (for values of "you" > that I'm sure include at least some people in these discussions) squirm > with self-disgust inside your overweight unfit short-sighted geekish > pizza-and-Coke-fed body. I think we'd be better off trying to maximize > our sense of self-reliant embodiment rather than indulging in abjection > and denial. > > None of this diatribe implies that *only* mammalian, conscious > embodiment deserves respect. But if we wish to see respect for minds > instantiated on different kinds of substrates, when they finally arrive, > we'd do well to start by getting rid of the cheap sneers at "meat". > > Now the peanut gallery can start yipping about "political correctness." > > Damien Broderick > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat May 23 21:17:01 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 16:17:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> <4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com> At 02:00 PM 5/23/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: >>Most of the people posting here seem > > to have no notion how depraved it >>is to speak of human bodies as "meat". > >I plead guilty. Indeed, we should aspire >to good taste whenever such an alternative >is pointed out to us. My vehemence derives from my perception that this *isn't* just a matter of "good taste" or politeness, but a derangement of values far deeper and more corrosive. It's the same dehumanizing process that ends up vilifying Jews as "vermin." And it's no accident that my objection is also often raised by many of the intelligent critics of transhumanism; they can sometimes see, from the outside, the pathologies that can creep into our discourse and analysis. As several people have commented to me offlist, "meat" is a common way for $cientologists to refer to human bodies. That's no accident either. In general it's the horrid body-hatred of Xianity recast in a reductionist scientistic framework. And obviously Max and Natasha and some others here don't fit this category of body-loathing. It's not a design feature of transhumanism, it's a malign bug that deserves to be squashed. Damien Broderick From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat May 23 21:32:00 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 14:32:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670905231432r48824086hc28dbbc2b91f3bfc@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 12:08 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > Most of the people posting here seem to have no notion how depraved it is > to speak of human bodies as "meat". > > I wish you'd all get over this nerdish affectation. > > Meat is dead, hacked-up flesh. My body isn't meat, it's me, and yours isn't > meat either. It's a living person. The jeering philistinism of calling our > bodies "meat" reminds me of insensitive oafs who disdain van Vogh's > paintings as "daubing" or Shakespeare as a "scribbler". > Thank you, Damien. I remember a conversation I had in the Immortality Institute chatroom where a 19 year-old guy told me he couldn't wait to escape his meatsicle body! Only 19 and in good health... Yes, we need some of that Enlightenment era love and admiration of the human body. My own view of transhumanism is about developing technology to perfect the power and beauty of the flesh and form we have now. A century hence people will have beauty and vitality that Renaissance era sculptors and painters could only dream about. > > Yes, sometimes it's hard not to distance yourself from your frail flesh > when some of your organs start to break down, or viruses make you sick, or > when a consumerist culture flings endless hyperstimuli images of toned, > buff, beautiful humans at you, making you (for values of "you" that I'm sure > include at least some people in these discussions) squirm with self-disgust > inside your overweight unfit short-sighted geekish pizza-and-Coke-fed body. > I think we'd be better off trying to maximize our sense of self-reliant > embodiment rather than indulging in abjection and denial. > My mother's number one reason for disliking my hobby of collecting comic books was that the superhero bodies were too perfect looking and that they would create a sense of dissatisfaction in me for my own form. I will say that our discontent with our bodies (ideal or not, some of the folks here are actually pretty healthy and not bad looking, lol) does in a way help to empower us to push for a transhumanist world. Or at least post about it! lol As for needing to respect our own flesh to develop the proper mindset in dealing with intelligences based on other substrates, I tend to think A.I. civil rights will be an uphill battle, at least until for all practical purposes our mind children are running things. Damien, perhaps in your twilight years you will become the saintly philosopher/theologian crusader for A.I. civil liberties. And the artificial minds will remember you fondly millennia from now (and create virtual/biological Damien sims in your honor). John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat May 23 22:08:21 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 15:08:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Book: Chronicle of the Future: In thousands years, in millions years, in billions years, in eternity? Message-ID: <2d6187670905231508q597e6398r9f5ffcced40a84ad@mail.gmail.com> Damien, it looks like there is an on-going "chronology race" when it comes to futurist book timelines/timeframes... ; ) John ** *Taken from the Amazon.com website:* ** *Product Description *Written in a Socratic style of questions and answers, Chronicle of the Future by M. Taube is a fiercely original text that blurs the boundaries of popular science. Over six hundred pages are filled with images, tables, graphs and sharp-witted banter between three distinct voices that the author calls The Time Traveler, Eve, and The Chronicler. Best described as a trialogue, this narrative is a robust and uncanny search for meaning and truth throughout time and otherness. In twelve chapters, the characters with the help of two-dozen famous writers and thinkers discuss the universe, its makeup, habits and mores to its very essence of meaning, especially in far future. They dissect what it means to exist as binary entities?part of all of the universe and individual?from elementary forces and particles to the human mind. Filled with candor, it is a hopeful treatise that discusses the very far future of the Earth, the biosphere, and all of mankind. *About the Author* M. Taube received his PhD in physical chemistry from the Polish Academy of Science. The head of chair of Radiochemistry at the University of Warsaw, he later became the laboratory head at the Swiss Federal Institute of Energy in W?renlingen, and lecturer at the University of Z?rich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Z?rich on ?Evolution of matter and energy on the cosmic and terrestrial scale.? He is the author of over 100 scientific publications (mostly experimental) and twenty scientific and popular-scientific books in Polish, Russian, German and English. He and his wife have two sons and four grandchildren and live in the village near Z?rich, Switzerland. http://www.amazon.com/Chronicle-Future-thousands-millions-billions/dp/1439211310/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243115985&sr=8-2 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Sat May 23 21:18:16 2009 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 17:18:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: References: <200905222013.n4MKCxED001268@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <24CA4A6AF2274DC3B61E8E1A8FAB1634@Catbert> "Jef Allbright" wrote, > The first was a post by Robin Hanson to LessWrong, raising the > question among the experts (nerds) there of why masturbation is so > frequent when its evolutionary signaling power is impaired by its not > being public. Ack! I always cringe when people ask anthropomorphic questions about evolution. Evolution is not a conscious process that tries to increase reproduction rates and the survival of genes. Evolution is a random mutation process with no goals. It is merely a statistical side-effect that random mutations increasing reproductive rates tend to out-complete less reproductive mutations. Therefore, it is a mistake to ask why evolution did something or didn't do something. These things happen randomly. The real question we should ask is if a particular mutation increases or decreases reproduction rates. Rephrasing the question to a non-anthropomorphic form usual clarifies the situation. In this case, we shouldn't ask why masturbation evolved to feel good. It simply was a random mutation that caused genitals to feel pleasure when stimulated. From that starting point, it is obvious why this mutation would lead to both increased reproduction and increased masturbation, since both feel good. A related question, that Robin may have been implying, is why didn't evolution produce genitals that feel pleasure during reproductive sex but do not feel pleasure during nonreproductive sex. This would have required a much more complex mutation to detect and distinguish between fertile and not fertile stimulation of the genitals. Statistically speaking, the simpler mutation that leads to both reproduction and masturbation would likely have evolved first. Since most animals will not choose masturbation over a chance sexual encounter, the later mutation would probably not have increased reproductive rates anyway. It would have required more complexity for no added reproductive rate. -- Harvey Newstrom From pharos at gmail.com Sat May 23 22:50:33 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 22:50:33 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <24CA4A6AF2274DC3B61E8E1A8FAB1634@Catbert> References: <200905222013.n4MKCxED001268@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <24CA4A6AF2274DC3B61E8E1A8FAB1634@Catbert> Message-ID: On 5/23/09, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > Evolution is not a conscious process that tries to increase reproduction > rates and the survival of genes. Evolution is a random mutation process > with no goals. It is merely a statistical side-effect that random mutations > increasing reproductive rates tend to out-complete less reproductive > mutations. Therefore, it is a mistake to ask why evolution did something or > didn't do something. These things happen randomly. The real question we > should ask is if a particular mutation increases or decreases reproduction > rates. Rephrasing the question to a non-anthropomorphic form usual > clarifies the situation. > > In this case, we shouldn't ask why masturbation evolved to feel good. It > simply was a random mutation that caused genitals to feel pleasure when > stimulated. From that starting point, it is obvious why this mutation would > lead to both increased reproduction and increased masturbation, since both > feel good. > > A related question, that Robin may have been implying, is why didn't > evolution produce genitals that feel pleasure during reproductive sex but do > not feel pleasure during nonreproductive sex. This would have required a > much more complex mutation to detect and distinguish between fertile and not > fertile stimulation of the genitals. Statistically speaking, the simpler > mutation that leads to both reproduction and masturbation would likely have > evolved first. Since most animals will not choose masturbation over a > chance sexual encounter, the later mutation would probably not have > increased reproductive rates anyway. It would have required more complexity > for no added reproductive rate. > Yes, we always have to remember that evolution is random kludge built on random kludge built on random kludge. What was a good adaption for a sea-slug is not such a good idea when used as part of the structure of a human. I also find fascinating the idea of 'spandrels'. Quote: This argument is used by Gould and Lewontin to explain some aspects of evolution which they do not feel can be accounted for by natural selection. Epiphenomenal spandrels are seen as those which exist but are of no real interest, such as the redness of blood, the V-shaped space between a pair of fingers or the fact that there are a prime-number of digits on each limb. Such spandrels have no direct relevance to any behaviour or function and give no clues as to whether the structures that they are associated with were shaped through natural selection. --------- BillK From pharos at gmail.com Sat May 23 23:02:46 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 23:02:46 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Google has incorporated Wolfram Alpha search results Message-ID: When you do a Google search, Google now automatically feeds the same query into Wolfram Alpha as well and includes their results if any useful answer is found. This generally only applies to maths type queries. For example, if you search on x^2+sin(x) the Wolfram results are the third in the list. So this means that you never have to do a specific Wolfram search. They probably won't like that much! ;) BillK From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 23 23:41:14 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 16:41:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> <4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A18899A.1010900@rawbw.com> Damien writes >> Indeed, we should aspire to good taste whenever >> such an alternative is pointed out to us. > > My vehemence derives from my perception that this *isn't* just a matter > of "good taste" or politeness, but a derangement of values far deeper > and more corrosive. I think you are blowing this all out of proportion. > It's the same dehumanizing process that ends up > vilifying Jews as "vermin." People *already* had to have hated Jews before coming up with that. It's post-indicative; I cannot believe that calling cops "pigs" really causes other listeners to hate or despise cops any more than such (biased) listeners already did. > And it's no accident that my objection is also often raised by many of > the intelligent critics of transhumanism; they can sometimes see, from > the outside, the pathologies that can creep into our discourse and > analysis. The burden would be on you to describe exactly what pathologies you are talking about. From Giulio's recent blameless introduction of the term "I am one of those who see the body as a meat cage and, if the option were already available, I would cheerfully choose to upload to silicon or cyberspace." a whole lot of us equally innocently used it: Jef, Max, Natasha, me, and Stefano. Maybe you *didn't* hear the original humorous story about aliens who come to Earth, can't perceive us at all, until a skillful officer finally determines that life does exist here, only in a most peculiar manner. "They're meat," he says to his startled superior. "What?", "Yes, meat!", and part of the humor derived from the complete originality of the use for many of us who thought it funny. > As several people have commented to me offlist, "meat" is a common way > for $cientologists to refer to human bodies. That's probably just inappropriate guilt by association, though you try to explain > That's no accident either. In general it's the > horrid body-hatred of Xianity recast in a > reductionist scientistic framework. Not having been Catholic, you have to understand that I (and perhaps many others) have a diminished capacity to fully appreciate the BLOOD, the BODY, the GUILT, the SUFFERING... the whole nine yards. > And obviously Max and Natasha and some > others here don't fit this category of > body-loathing. Me either. Nor, I am sure (reading their posts) do Giulio, Jef, or Stefano. I'm pretty sure all six of us don't in general promulgate the relevant views that provoke your ire here (but please correct me if I'm wrong). > It's not a design feature of transhumanism, > it's a malign bug that deserves to be squashed. You are fighting a losing battle. The word is out there now as a shorthand for "biological", and I explicitly remember in an earlier post today choosing whether to go for "biological" or, in keeping with the word being tossed around, "meat". And the latter won out for me only because its one syllable instead of four, and far easier to type. I see now why you thought your campaign might be seen as political correctness. But could be a bit of prudery there too, I think. Far more important than picking up on that single word would be for you to inveigh against the "reductionist scientistic framework" or the "pathologies that can creep into our discourse and analysis" pointed out by "intelligent critics of transhumanism". I'm unenlightened about those things, and would like to hear more. (Though, I reiterate, use of the no longer serves any good use on this list, and ought now to be considered bad taste (that's the prude in me)---but *nothing* more, unless you can make a much stronger case than you have.) Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 23 23:49:47 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 16:49:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Eternity: Our Next Billion Years, by Michael Hanlon In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090523150604.0224b1b0@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20090523150604.0224b1b0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4A188B9B.8010908@rawbw.com> Damien Broderick wrote: > I haven't seen this book yet. It sounds like a version of my YEAR > MILLION anthology,*** and that's good--we need more books taking the > very long view. > > > > Damien Broderick > > ***I suppose any sequel I compile will now have to be titled YEAR > TRILLION or YEAR ZILLION rather than YEAR BILLION. :) Well, you have good company. Brian Aldiss, as you know, felt compelled to rename his original history of SF called "Billion Year Spree", written in the early 70s, to "Trillion Year Spree" in the 80s. Lee From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 24 01:43:47 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 11:43:47 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <24CA4A6AF2274DC3B61E8E1A8FAB1634@Catbert> References: <200905222013.n4MKCxED001268@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <24CA4A6AF2274DC3B61E8E1A8FAB1634@Catbert> Message-ID: 2009/5/24 Harvey Newstrom : > "Jef Allbright" wrote, >> >> The first was a post by Robin Hanson to LessWrong, raising the >> question among the experts (nerds) there of why masturbation is so >> frequent when its evolutionary signaling power is impaired by its not >> being public. > > > Ack! ?I always cringe when people ask anthropomorphic questions about > evolution. > > Evolution is not a conscious process that tries to increase reproduction > rates and the survival of genes. ?Evolution is a random mutation process > with no goals. ?It is merely a statistical side-effect that random mutations > increasing reproductive rates tend to out-complete less reproductive > mutations. ?Therefore, it is a mistake to ask why evolution did something or > didn't do something. ?These things happen randomly. ?The real question we > should ask is if a particular mutation increases or decreases reproduction > rates. ?Rephrasing the question to a non-anthropomorphic form usual > clarifies the situation. > > In this case, we shouldn't ask why masturbation evolved to feel good. ?It > simply was a random mutation that caused genitals to feel pleasure when > stimulated. ?From that starting point, it is obvious why this mutation would > lead to both increased reproduction and increased masturbation, since both > feel good. > > A related question, that Robin may have been implying, is why didn't > evolution produce genitals that feel pleasure during reproductive sex but do > not feel pleasure during nonreproductive sex. ?This would have required a > much more complex mutation to detect and distinguish between fertile and not > fertile stimulation of the genitals. ?Statistically speaking, the simpler > mutation that leads to both reproduction and masturbation would likely have > evolved first. ?Since most animals will not choose masturbation over a > chance sexual encounter, the later mutation would probably not have > increased reproductive rates anyway. ?It would have required more complexity > for no added reproductive rate. And this is also why there isn't necessarily an explanation for everything in terms of evolutionary psychology. -- Stathis Papaioannou From alito at organicrobot.com Sun May 24 02:45:37 2009 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 12:45:37 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Google has incorporated Wolfram Alpha search results In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1243133137.10329.30.camel@localhost> On Sat, 2009-05-23 at 23:02 +0000, BillK wrote: > When you do a Google search, Google now automatically feeds the same > query into Wolfram Alpha as well and includes their results if any > useful answer is found. > This generally only applies to maths type queries. > > For example, if you search on x^2+sin(x) > the Wolfram results are the third in the list. > > So this means that you never have to do a specific Wolfram search. > They probably won't like that much! ;) > I'm pretty sure they don't just feed the query you just put in to Wolfram. That would never work in real time, especially because Google is probably about 20 times faster than Wolfram at responding. They are likely only giving you back the queries that were popular that had something useful on Wolfram, or it might even be Wolfram feeding this to the Google crawler through the robot.txt file. eg try: x^2 +sin(x)+1284*cos(x) You won't get anything back about Wolfram in Google (I assume. I tried something similar just before, but I don't want to pollute the cache with the exact query). So you never have to go to Wolfram as long as you keep putting queries from an example list. Wolfram are most likely perfectly ok with this behaviour. They could relatively easily block Google's IPs if they didn't like the attention. (Try creating a search engine that just returns Google's results without coming to an arrangement with Google, and see how long it keeps working). Finally, Google claim to have their own project (Google squared) to do something similar. From max at maxmore.com Sun May 24 03:26:57 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 22:26:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "meat" Message-ID: <200905240327.n4O3R6BU009522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From p0stfuturist at yahoo.com Sun May 24 00:56:45 2009 From: p0stfuturist at yahoo.com (Post Futurist) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 17:56:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Christian sexuality website Message-ID: <334388.13483.qm@web59913.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> it might not be a parody, it might very well be an out-there DIY mindset, so prevalent that the self-parody is obvious enough to make the site in question redundantly parodistic-- no point. Here's an excellent analogy: 'speaking in tongues'. Someone speaking in tongues knows it is gibberish but they take it semi-seriously. >> I'm just not sure as to whether it is a parody or not... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Sun May 24 03:33:22 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 22:33:22 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Eternity: Our Next Billion Years, by Michael Hanlon Message-ID: <200905240333.n4O3XUgk027565@andromeda.ziaspace.com> >The correct answer is a million millions are in a trillion. But 79 >percent of Americans got that wrong. And almost everyone got it wrong downward. BillK, you are being insufficiently culturally sensitive to us Brits and ex-Brits. :-) A British billion is a million million U.S., and a British trillion is a U.S. quintillion. I remember coming across this a number of times before, though I don't actually remember ever using the UK versions even before I left the Old Country in 1987. But I'm not just imagining it. See, for instance: http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxbill00.html Max ------------------------------------- Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com ------------------------------------- From spike66 at att.net Sun May 24 05:44:20 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 22:44:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com><4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com><20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc><4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com><4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick ... > >... > > As several people have commented to me offlist, "meat" is a > common way for $cientologists to refer to human bodies. ... > And obviously Max and Natasha and some others here don't fit > this category of body-loathing. It's not a design feature of > transhumanism, it's a malign bug that deserves to be squashed. > > Damien Broderick I suppose I shall be compelled to stop referring to my son as the larva, and his classmates as larvae. He has a rather remarkable vocabulary for not quite three. We have a game in which I ask who am I? At which he replies "The domineering dad." And who are you? "The Lilliputian lad." He likes that game. spike From eschatoon at gmail.com Sun May 24 06:31:36 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 08:31:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905232331m177962e3vf47ce3b9a7748a78@mail.gmail.com> I will stop referring to your body as meat. But I will continue referring to mine as meat. In the sense that I do not consider it as an important part of what makes me me. And in the sense that, yes, I consider it as a cage from which to escape. As I have said often, I don't think the escape option will be actually available to me, in what is left of this lifetime. But I hope it will be available to future generations, perhaps even the generation of our kids, and intend to do my best to contribute. When the escape option will be available, everyone will have to make their own choice. If I am still here at that time, I will respect those who prefer not to escape, and I expect the same respect in return. On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 9:08 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > Meat is dead, hacked-up flesh. My body isn't meat, it's me, and yours isn't > meat either. It's a living person. > Now the peanut gallery can start yipping about "political correctness." > > Damien Broderick -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From eschatoon at gmail.com Sun May 24 07:21:23 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 09:21:23 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90905232331m177962e3vf47ce3b9a7748a78@mail.gmail.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> <1fa8c3b90905232331m177962e3vf47ce3b9a7748a78@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905240021t302743e2wa42911444b77a9c7@mail.gmail.com> Actually, even if I do not consider my body as an important part of what makes me me, I don't despise it at all. I have enjoyed it a lot in the past and, within the limits you mention (" some of your organs start to break down, or viruses make you sick..."), continue to enjoy it. So why do I refer to the body as "meat"? Transhumanists have always had a wide range of attitudes toward the body, from those who love it and wish to continue enjoying it with some little improvements here and there, to those who loathe it and wish to escape it. I guess the majority enjoy their bodies, but know that someday they will not enjoy it so much, or not at all. Until a few years ago, there was a peaceful co-existence between the two extreme fringes, which I usually indicate as moderate and radical transhumanists. But recently some of the moderates, in what I interpret as a sell-out for personal career interests (for example in academia one should be a bit fashionably radical but not too much), use to attack the radicals, at times in insulting ways. I and others don't believe in offering the other cheek, and fight back. I don't always refer to the body as "meat", but I do and will continue to do so when debating with this group. You are certainly familiar in this pattern, found in most cultural and political movements: when one internal group begins to attack another, the other group fights back and soon there is a runaway split process. My suggestion is, as usual, live-and-let-live -- one group should respect and support the more moderate sensibilities of the other, and one group should respect and support the more radical and visionary sensibilities of the other. G. On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 8:31 AM, Eschatoon Magic wrote: > I will stop referring to your body as meat. But I will continue > referring to mine as meat. In the sense that I do not consider it as > an important part of what makes me me. And in the sense that, yes, I > consider it as a cage from which to escape. As I have said often, I > don't think the escape option will be actually available to me, in > what is left of this lifetime. But I hope it will be available to > future generations, perhaps even the generation of our kids, and > intend to do my best to contribute. > > When the escape option will be available, everyone will have to make > their own choice. If I am still here at that time, I will respect > those who prefer not to escape, and I expect the same respect in > return. > > On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 9:08 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > >> Meat is dead, hacked-up flesh. My body isn't meat, it's me, and yours isn't >> meat either. It's a living person. >> Now the peanut gallery can start yipping about "political correctness." >> >> Damien Broderick > -- > Eschatoon Magic > http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon > aka Giulio Prisco > http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun May 24 08:31:23 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 01:31:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Christian sexuality website In-Reply-To: <334388.13483.qm@web59913.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <334388.13483.qm@web59913.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670905240131t4e88bd43r5cc48ce579f01ed@mail.gmail.com> Natasha Vita-More wrote: > I wish there were pictures. LOL!! But of course following their own strict guidelines for Christian pornography... John ; ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eschatoon at gmail.com Sun May 24 10:00:08 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 12:00:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Christian sexuality website In-Reply-To: <200905191540.n4JFegRk006404@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905191540.n4JFegRk006404@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905240300h6f10ec9o190a4ddcaed22eaa@mail.gmail.com> How about this? Masturbation: God's Great Gift to Us http://www.sexinchrist.com/masturbation.html A Proposal for a Christian Pornography http://www.sexinchrist.com/pornography.html and many others. The site is a parody, but a good one. I would recommend it to all Xians. G. On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 5:40 PM, Max More wrote: > Thanks, John. This site has expanded my religious worldview... Especially > pages such as: > > Fisting and God's Will > http://www.sexinchrist.com/fist.html > > Jesus H! > > Max > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 24 10:01:06 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 10:01:06 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Google has incorporated Wolfram Alpha search results In-Reply-To: <1243133137.10329.30.camel@localhost> References: <1243133137.10329.30.camel@localhost> Message-ID: On 5/24/09, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote: > I'm pretty sure they don't just feed the query you just put in to > Wolfram. That would never work in real time, especially because Google > is probably about 20 times faster than Wolfram at responding. They are > likely only giving you back the queries that were popular that had > something useful on Wolfram, or it might even be Wolfram feeding this to > the Google crawler through the robot.txt file. > > eg try: > x^2 +sin(x)+1284*cos(x) > > You won't get anything back about Wolfram in Google (I assume. I tried > something similar just before, but I don't want to pollute the cache > with the exact query). After more playing, you are correct. Google isn't doing a Wolfram search. But Google must be finding that Wolfram result from somewhere. Even other similar simple equations do not produce any Wolfram results. Maybe that particular equation is a special Wolfram example. It is in the Google cache from 21st May, but it does link to a real Wolfram page. Also, thinking more about it, Wolfram is very picky about the way you ask a question, so it is unlikely that the same search phrase would suit both Google and Wolfram. So we still have to use both search engines as appropriate. :) BillK From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 24 10:31:50 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 10:31:50 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Eternity: Our Next Billion Years, by Michael Hanlon In-Reply-To: <200905240333.n4O3XUgk027565@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905240333.n4O3XUgk027565@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 5/24/09, Max More wrote: > BillK, you are being insufficiently culturally sensitive to us Brits and > ex-Brits. :-) A British billion is a million million U.S., and a British > trillion is a U.S. quintillion. I remember coming across this a number of > times before, though I don't actually remember ever using the UK versions > even before I left the Old Country in 1987. But I'm not just imagining it. You are historically correct, but it's a one world crisis these days. It would cause the Brit newspapers no end of confusion if they had to quote Obama spending a trillion here and 2 trillion there, then go into translation mode and explain about the differences between a UK trillion and a US trillion. They have just given up and use the US trillion meaning. :) See Wikipedia: UK usage "Billion" has meant 10^9 in most sectors of official published writing for many years now. The UK government, BBC, and most other broadcast or published mass media, have used the short scale exclusively in all contexts since the mid 1970s. ----------- BillK From alito at organicrobot.com Sun May 24 10:30:16 2009 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 20:30:16 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Google has incorporated Wolfram Alpha search results In-Reply-To: References: <1243133137.10329.30.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <1243161016.20816.21.camel@localhost> On Sun, 2009-05-24 at 10:01 +0000, BillK wrote: > On 5/24/09, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote: > > I'm pretty sure they don't just feed the query you just put in to > > Wolfram. That would never work in real time, especially because Google > > is probably about 20 times faster than Wolfram at responding. They are > > likely only giving you back the queries that were popular that had > > something useful on Wolfram, or it might even be Wolfram feeding this to > > the Google crawler through the robot.txt file. > > > > eg try: > > x^2 +sin(x)+1284*cos(x) > > > > You won't get anything back about Wolfram in Google (I assume. I tried > > something similar just before, but I don't want to pollute the cache > > with the exact query). > > > After more playing, you are correct. Google isn't doing a Wolfram > search. But Google must be finding that Wolfram result from somewhere. > Even other similar simple equations do not produce any Wolfram > results. Maybe that particular equation is a special Wolfram example. > It is in the Google cache from 21st May, but it does link to a real > Wolfram page. > Google did do a Wolfram search at some point, just not at the time when you searched for the term in Google. It searched it before and has the results cached. A search in Wolfram is no different than a visit to a page. Google does this for lots of sites. It's hard to tell what triggered Google to perform that specific search in Wolfram. Most likely, it was just a link on a page (ie on some page someone wrote 'check this out, wolfram can do graphs for x^2 + sin(x) ' ) crawler followed, and the results got cached. But it also could be wolfram's robot.txt file telling google to look for that, or it could be Google picking up on this as a popular search and telling its crawler to look at wolfram's because it looks like the kind of thing that wolfram would know about. This last option would have taken a decision by someone in the company (not on those specific searches, but on the idea of some bunch of queries being related to wolfram), but the other two would happen naturally irrespective of the target being wolfram, imdb or whatever. From spike66 at att.net Sun May 24 13:39:59 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 06:39:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Christian sexuality website In-Reply-To: <334388.13483.qm@web59913.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <334388.13483.qm@web59913.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <6FD0DAF0914449D4BECF9C7AD3338722@spike> ...On Behalf Of Post Futurist Subject: Re: [ExI] Christian sexuality website >it might not be a parody, it might very well be an out-there DIY mindset, so prevalent that the self-parody is obvious enough to make the site in question redundantly parodistic-- no point. ... >> I'm just not sure as to whether it is a parody or not... I can assure you the Christian sexuality site is parody, and very well done at that, since it isn't immediately clear. There was another religion parody that made the rounds here a couple years ago that was even better. I was fooled by it until I read it carefully, spent about an hour studying it, before I realized it was a gag. It was about two Baptist churches that were battling each other. The brilliance was that they had all the theological terminology correct, even using it correctly, to make an overall point that was absurd. It was clear whoever wrote it had some formal training in the field. spike From spike66 at att.net Sun May 24 13:33:49 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 06:33:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <200905240327.n4O3R6BU009522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905240327.n4O3R6BU009522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1F95EDA2E3AE47CA97B5800A1B6ABA11@spike> ________________________________ From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Max More Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2009 8:27 PM To: Extropy-Chat Subject: Re: [ExI] "meat" I, too, am startled at Damien's vehement comment. Still, in response to Lee's comment, if a replacement is needed that might be less offensive, how about "flesh". Max Hmmm, "flesh" sounds a bit...biblical. How about protoplasm? Carbon tissue? spike From p0stfuturist at yahoo.com Sun May 24 13:56:33 2009 From: p0stfuturist at yahoo.com (Post Futurist) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 06:56:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Christian sexuality website Message-ID: <699047.23766.qm@web59907.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> alright; but still,?a prevalent out-there?meme does exist which is why?a certain segment?would fall for the site. I can assure you the Christian sexuality site is parody, and very well done at that, since it isn't immediately clear.? There was another religion parody that made the rounds here a couple years ago that was even better.? I was fooled by it until I read it carefully, spent about an hour studying it, before I realized it was a gag.? It was about two Baptist churches that were battling each other.? The brilliance was that they had all the theological terminology correct, even using it correctly, to make an overall point that was absurd.? It was clear whoever wrote it had some formal training in the field. 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 p0stfuturist at yahoo.com Sun May 24 13:31:25 2009 From: p0stfuturist at yahoo.com (Post Futurist) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 06:31:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Christian sexuality website Message-ID: <193619.90008.qm@web59908.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> here's a?largely unknown?double standard on the web... ?chasing off cp but allowing nudist, mostly Ukranian,?sites that are merely disguised cp with adults thrown in to make it look good;?very few are?paying?10 bucks?for HD DVDs in full color to see the adults. Real chicanery when you think about it-- not that you'd want to. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sun May 24 16:58:42 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 12:58:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat" References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com><4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com><20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc><4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <364AA599DEF34C9FBCF4D8152F4B0516@MyComputer> "Damien Broderick" > My body isn't meat, it's me Your body is a noun and so is "meat", you aren't. > I'm sure include at least some people in these discussions) > squirm with self-disgust inside your overweight unfit > short-sighted geekish pizza-and-Coke-fed body. Few things are more illuminating than a diagnose of personality disorder and a prediction of physical ugliness made by a Freud wannabe of someone they have never met in the flesh; that is to say someone who has never observed the meat in question. > It's the same dehumanizing process that ends > up vilifying Jews as "vermin." That remark is not only idiotic it is also far more offensive than anything said on the other side of this grand meat debate that you just invented. John K Clark From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sun May 24 17:16:57 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 13:16:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat" References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> <4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <9C25D931A5524E39A8848BEE218A6F22@MyComputer> "Lee Corbin" > we should aspire to good taste whenever > such an alternative is pointed out to us. I agree, and the reason is that meat tastes so damn good! John K Clark From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Sun May 24 16:41:04 2009 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 12:41:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: References: <200905222013.n4MKCxED001268@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <24CA4A6AF2274DC3B61E8E1A8FAB1634@Catbert> Message-ID: <8728ACF98DD44C6D91BD17511F6C165C@Catbert> "Stathis Papaioannou" wrote, > And this is also why there isn't necessarily an explanation for > everything in terms of evolutionary psychology. Exactly. -- Harvey Newstrom From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 24 17:51:46 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 12:51:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> <4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090524125112.024c1bf8@satx.rr.com> At 10:44 PM 5/23/2009 -0700, spike wrote: >I suppose I shall be compelled to stop referring to my son as the larva, and >his classmates as larvae. No, because that's funny and whimsical. Damien Broderick From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Sun May 24 17:06:32 2009 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 13:06:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <200905240327.n4O3R6BU009522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905240327.n4O3R6BU009522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: Max More wrote, > I, too, am startled at Damien's vehement comment. Still, in response to > Lee's comment, if a replacement is needed that might be less offensive, > how about "flesh". Terry Bisson's "They're Made Out of Meat": - Listen - Watch - Read - Reference -- Harvey Newstrom From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 24 18:07:42 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 13:07:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <1F95EDA2E3AE47CA97B5800A1B6ABA11@spike> References: <200905240327.n4O3R6BU009522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1F95EDA2E3AE47CA97B5800A1B6ABA11@spike> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090524125427.024b5350@satx.rr.com> At 06:33 AM 5/24/2009 -0700, Spike wrote: > I, too, am startled at Damien's vehement comment. Still, in response >to Lee's comment, if a replacement is needed that might be less offensive, >how about "flesh". > > Max > >Hmmm, "flesh" sounds a bit...biblical. How about protoplasm? Carbon >tissue? What's wrong with any of the words people have always used, such as "body"? Or, if one must contrive something new to connote a distinction that does not yet exist between kinds of persons, "vivo" versus "silico" or the like? The point is that "meat" (in this context) implies disgust, revulsion, contempt, belittlement. Spike's "larva" is droll (because we know he doesn't mean it, because he loves his son Isaac), but don't you suppose people would find it rather... creepy... if someone referred to a child or spouse as "the meat"? "I have to leave work early today to pick up the meat from school." Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 24 18:24:42 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 13:24:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: References: <200905240327.n4O3R6BU009522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090524131744.024b9538@satx.rr.com> At 01:06 PM 5/24/2009 -0400, Harvey wrote: >Terry Bisson's "They're Made Out of Meat" The story reinforces my point. It's a parody of contemporary provincialism, the "computers can't possible be conscious" brigade. That is, the machines (or whatever they are) in the story are expressing their own narrow, contemptuous incredulity by using the word "meat." (Incidentally, the whole joke is a sleight of hand, because such inorganic beings wouldn't *use* the word "meat," at least not in that way.) I had an entertaining meal with Terry Bisson once. We both ate meat. Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 24 18:32:31 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 13:32:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <364AA599DEF34C9FBCF4D8152F4B0516@MyComputer> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> <364AA599DEF34C9FBCF4D8152F4B0516@MyComputer> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090524133009.024af018@satx.rr.com> At 12:58 PM 5/24/2009 -0400, John K Clark wrote: >Few things are more illuminating than a diagnose of personality disorder and >a prediction of physical ugliness made by a Freud wannabe The more relevant names to drop there would be Lacan or Kristeva. Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Kristeva From max at maxmore.com Sun May 24 18:55:05 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 13:55:05 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "meat" Message-ID: <200905241855.n4OItEZo019767@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Damien wrote: > >Hmmm, "flesh" sounds a bit...biblical. How about protoplasm? Carbon > >tissue? > >What's wrong with any of the words people have always used, such as >"body"? "Body" isn't parallel, since it refers to a complete fleshy entity, unlike "meat" or "flesh" which refer to the substance without necessarily referring to a whole being. Also, it seems to be fine to refer to a "robot body", so "body" doesn't have the required specificity. ... >but >don't you suppose people would find it rather... creepy... if someone >referred to a child or spouse as "the meat"? "I have to leave work >early today to pick up the meat from school." Surely it would be appropriate to say: "I have to leave for work early today to pick up the mini-meat from school." Max From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 24 19:23:18 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 14:23:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90905232331m177962e3vf47ce3b9a7748a78@mail.gmail.co m> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> <1fa8c3b90905232331m177962e3vf47ce3b9a7748a78@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090524141004.023d4a70@satx.rr.com> At 08:31 AM 5/24/2009 +0200, Eschatoon wrote: >I will stop referring to your body as meat. But I will continue >referring to mine as meat. In the sense that I do not consider it as >an important part of what makes me me. And in the sense that, yes, I >consider it as a cage from which to escape. A reminder that this thread started as an offshoot of something Eschatoon posted: < On the IEET and Sentient Development blogs there is an interesting article by Athena Andreadis on ?If I Can?t Dance, I Don?t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution!?. Athena says: ?Both [transhumanism and cyberpunk] are deeply anhedonic, hostile to physicality and the pleasures of the body, from enjoying wine to playing in an orchestra. I wondered why it had taken me so long to figure this out. After all, many transhumanists use the repulsive (and misleading) term ?meat cage? to describe the human body, which they deem a stumbling block, an obstacle in the way of the mind However, we demean the body at our peril. It?s not the passive container of our mind; it is its major shaper and inseparable partner.? > I disagree with this as a general assessment of >H-ists, but I agree with Athena Andreadis that there's a tendency or current of hostility or disgust (if only in the rhetoric of terms such as "meat") toward the body qua body. And it's unlikely that such rhetoric arrives from nowhere. For example, calling babies "rug rats" can be fond or amused, and often is, but it's hard to deny that it also connotes irritation at the demands kids place on adults, the inconvenience of dealing with mess and demands, etc. If using a repulsive term like "meat" (dead, butchered flesh) isn't absolutely necessary, why insist on using it when it's obvious that this will sour any discussion with people who don't feel that way about bodies? (This is just a re-run of the way humanists, including extropes, had to reclaim the worth and pleasure of the body from all the grim-lipped bitter ecclesiastics who preached "mortification of the flesh" and denied children the right to dance or sing except for the "glory of God.") Damien Broderick From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 24 19:24:16 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 12:24:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] divisions within the H+ movement In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90905240021t302743e2wa42911444b77a9c7@mail.gmail.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> <1fa8c3b90905232331m177962e3vf47ce3b9a7748a78@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90905240021t302743e2wa42911444b77a9c7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A199EE0.8000300@rawbw.com> Giulio writes > Actually, even if I do not consider my body as an important part of > what makes me me, I don't despise it at all. I have enjoyed it a lot > in the past and, within the limits you mention (" some of your organs > start to break down, or viruses make you sick..."), continue to enjoy > it. Same here. An incredible marvel of evolutionarily derived engineering, I think it's just great. Only I naturally can't help but to yearn for something even better, especially when this "cage" as you referred to it, doesn't work as well as it once did. > So why do I refer to the body as "meat"? > > Transhumanists have always had a wide range of attitudes toward the > body, from those who love it and wish to continue enjoying it with > some little improvements here and there, to those who loathe it and > wish to escape it. I guess the majority enjoy their bodies, but know > that someday they will not enjoy it so much, or not at all. > > Until a few years ago, there was a peaceful co-existence between the > two extreme fringes, which I usually indicate as moderate and radical > transhumanists. But recently some of the moderates, in what I > interpret as a sell-out for personal career interests (for example in > academia one should be a bit fashionably radical but not too much), > use to attack the radicals, at times in insulting ways. What are their main criticisms? Does it relate at all to what Damien seemed to be worried about, "the reductionist scientistic framework" or the "pathologies that can creep into our discourse and analysis" pointed out by "intelligent critics of transhumanism"? Lee > I and others don't believe in offering the > other cheek, and fight back. I don't > always refer to the body as "meat", but > I do and will continue to do > so when debating with this group. > > You are certainly familiar in this pattern, found in most cultural and > political movements: when one internal group begins to attack another, > the other group fights back and soon there is a runaway split process. > > My suggestion is, as usual, live-and-let-live -- one group should > respect and support the more moderate sensibilities of the other, and > one group should respect and support the more radical and visionary > sensibilities of the other. > > G. From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 24 19:27:22 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 14:27:22 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <200905241855.n4OItEZo019767@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905241855.n4OItEZo019767@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090524142514.024ab038@satx.rr.com> At 01:55 PM 5/24/2009 -0500, Max wrote: >Surely it would be appropriate to say: "I have to leave for work >early today to pick up the mini-meat from school." If you say so. Try not to say it in the hearing of any teachers or parental units. Damien Broderick From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sun May 24 19:52:28 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 15:52:28 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: References: <200905240327.n4O3R6BU009522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <34497.12.77.168.233.1243194748.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > Terry Bisson's "They're Made Out of Meat": > - Listen > - Watch > - Read > > - Reference > Thank you, Harvey! That's the story I read years ago. "Meat" doesn't sound outrageous to me. :) Regards, MB From max at maxmore.com Sun May 24 20:15:12 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 15:15:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "meat" Message-ID: <200905242015.n4OKFK9O025261@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > >Surely it would be appropriate to say: "I have to leave for work > >early today to pick up the mini-meat from school." > >If you say so. Try not to say it in the hearing of any teachers or >parental units. That was a Mike Myers-inspired joke that I think you missed. Although your first response to the use of "meat" seemed rather vehement, I do agree with you that it's sensible to avoid using the term. It is literally incorrect (unlike "flesh"), and it does imply an intrinsic dislike or disgust for the flesh. I neither (intrinsically) love nor despise my flesh body. I see as a bit like a computer operating system -- when it's working well, I marvel at it. When it's making my life miserable, I'm much less fond of it and look forward to a debugged version. Max ------------------------------------- Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com ------------------------------------- From benboc at lineone.net Sun May 24 20:34:06 2009 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 21:34:06 +0100 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A19AF3E.3040608@lineone.net> Damien pontificated: >Most of the people posting here seem to have no notion how depraved >it is to speak of human bodies as "meat". > >I wish you'd all get over this nerdish affectation. > >Meat is dead, hacked-up flesh. My body isn't meat, it's me, and yours >isn't meat either. It's a living person. Well, we don't mean dead, hacked-up or cooked meat when we say we are made of meat. We mean raw, living meat. It's not depraved or nerdish at all, and it's useful shorthand for 'biological material'. As for being disgusted with our overweight unfit short-sighted geekish pizza-and-coke-fed bodies, I admit to being short-sighted, but none of those other things apply to me (not even 'geek', sadly) and, let's face it, it's easy to do something about being overweight, unfit and fuelled by pizza-and-coke, if you actually want to. I got out of that mode of being a while ago (well worth it, too), but I still think I'm made of meat. This is not a derogatory term, just a descriptive one. I do appreciate many things about being meat, but also hate many things, like breaking an arm and taking EIGHTEEN FREAKING MONTHS to get it fully back to normal, which is just unacceptable, imo, and the usual assortment of digestive and respiratory indignities that we all have to submit to from time to time. No, I disagree totally with the idea that saying we are "made of meat" is depraved. I'm happy to inhabit a meat-body at this time in history, and look forward to the next stage: hacked (as opposed to hacked-up) meat, as a prelude to virtual meat, then on to no meat at all, eventually. Lee wrote: >(Though, I reiterate, use of the no >longer serves any good use on this list, and >ought now to be considered bad taste (that's >the prude in me)---but *nothing* more, unless >you can make a much stronger case than you have.) No!! Meat tastes good, not bad. I remain unrepentant. Meat, meat meat meat meat. Ben Zaiboc (made of meat, circa 2009) From benboc at lineone.net Sun May 24 20:45:02 2009 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 21:45:02 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Google has incorporated Wolfram Alpha search results In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A19B1CE.6060101@lineone.net> Alejandro Dubrovsky declared: >(Try creating a search engine that just returns Google's results without >coming to an arrangement with Google, and see how long it keeps >working). Er, you mean like Scroogle? (Waits for Scroogle to stop working) Although I have to say that since discovering CustomizeGoogle (http://www.customizegoogle.com/ I recommend it, especially if you're the type of person that regards Adblock Plus as indispensible), I use Scroogle less these days. Ben Zaiboc From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 24 21:29:19 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 16:29:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <4A19AF3E.3040608@lineone.net> References: <4A19AF3E.3040608@lineone.net> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090524161835.02281bc8@satx.rr.com> At 09:34 PM 5/24/2009 +0100, Ben Zaiboc wrote: >As for being disgusted with our overweight unfit short-sighted >geekish pizza-and-coke-fed bodies, I admit to being short-sighted, >but none of those other things apply to me (not even 'geek', sadly) >and, let's face it, it's easy to do something about being >overweight, unfit and fuelled by pizza-and-coke, if you actually want to. By using that sort of unpleasant hackles-raising description, I was gesturing at the equally dismissive conventional parody of "obese sci fi game-head nerds who live in their parents' basement, never see the sun, dread sex, eat junk food all nite," etc etc--which, sadly, does have its grain of truth, despite being the stuff of journalistic ridicule. But wait--"dread sex"? Aren't extropes and other transhumanists noted for their robust, free-wheeling sexy ways? Maybe not always. Recall Post Futurist from 3 days back: Uh oh. Damien Broderick From spike66 at att.net Sun May 24 22:40:28 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 15:40:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090524125112.024c1bf8@satx.rr.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com><4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com><20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc><4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com><4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090524125112.024c1bf8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick > Subject: Re: [ExI] "meat" > > At 10:44 PM 5/23/2009 -0700, spike wrote: > > >I suppose I shall be compelled to stop referring to my son as the > >larva, and his classmates as larvae. > > No, because that's funny and whimsical. > > Damien Broderick Cool, I do whimsical. {8-] > >"Oy vey, ees so unfair. ?I designed that beautiful > > bridge out there, but do the people point at me and say > > 'There goes Jacob, the famous bridgebuilder'? ?NO! ?And I helped > > draw up the blueprints of half those skyscrapers, but do the > > people say 'There goes Jacob, the great architect'? ?NO!... > I defy you to make that joke about a heterosexual... Harvey It took me a week but I finally figured out how to meet Harvey's humor challenge. The punchline becomes: "...Now the people all point and say 'There goes Monica Jacob, the...'" {8^O spike From spike66 at att.net Sun May 24 22:42:22 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 15:42:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <200905241855.n4OItEZo019767@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905241855.n4OItEZo019767@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <516E3FEC5432412EA51852280BA50BD5@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Max More > ... > > Surely it would be appropriate to say: "I have to leave for > work early today to pick up the mini-meat from school." > > Max Welcome back Max. We missed the hell outta you pal. {8^D Between you and Damien, this is one of the most humor rich places anywhere on the web. spike From spike66 at att.net Sun May 24 23:00:43 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 16:00:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <200905242015.n4OKFK9O025261@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905242015.n4OKFK9O025261@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: > > >Surely it would be appropriate to say: "I have to leave for work > > >early today to pick up the mini-meat from school." > > > >If you say so. Try not to say it in the hearing of any teachers or > >parental units. > > ... > > Although your first response to the use of "meat" seemed > rather vehement, I do agree with you that it's sensible to > avoid using the term... Max Since we started using it to differentiate the physical presence with the online world, we could go all chemical and refer to second life as the electrons, and the other as the protons. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 24 23:42:10 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 18:42:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: References: <200905242015.n4OKFK9O025261@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090524184101.0227cc60@satx.rr.com> At 04:00 PM 5/24/2009 -0700, Spike wrote: >Since we started using it to differentiate the physical presence with the >online world, we could go all chemical and refer to second life as the >electrons, and the other as the protons. Or hard-ons and leapt-ons. From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Mon May 25 03:34:31 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 20:34:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] "meat" Message-ID: <978618.58561.qm@web110410.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> I'm not too sure if meat could or would describe my body or mind. Meat to me means a slab of flesh, nothing more, I find it contains a lot of useless stuff..lol.. >From a physical point of view I find it a shame that people think their bodies as a mere means to carry their brain but I don't have yet the experience to understand how the decay of a body whether the means of chosen choices or disease can lead to this result. Imo, the body gives multiple pleasures:) Whether it be through dance, sports or arts, it gives my mind a way of release. I think those that gain out of life try to concentrate on the bettering of the mind and understanding the body as at this present moment, one can't live without the other. Anna:) --- On Sun, 5/24/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > From: Damien Broderick > Subject: Re: [ExI] "meat" > To: "ExI chat list" > Received: Sunday, May 24, 2009, 7:42 PM > At 04:00 PM 5/24/2009 -0700, Spike > wrote: > > >Since we started using it to differentiate the physical > presence with the > >online world, we could go all chemical and refer to > second life as the > >electrons, and the other as the protons. > > Or hard-ons and leapt-ons. > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > __________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com. From emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon May 25 04:33:52 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 14:03:52 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Beating the "meat" (was Re: "meat") Message-ID: <710b78fc0905242133g6b20f584u467af5ed58317ee@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/24 Damien Broderick : > Most of the people posting here seem to have no notion how depraved it is to > speak of human bodies as "meat". > > I wish you'd all get over this nerdish affectation. I think I'm aware of the negative connotations of calling our physical form "meat". I have to admit a soft (meaty?) spot for it though. I know it turns off "outsiders", but equally it's a signal to those who "get" the transhuman meme. I think that at the core of the impulse to techno-utopianism, transhumanism, technophilia, is an immense frustration with the particular form our embodiment takes. While in many ways it's marvellous (self repairing, self regulating, complex beyond our current understanding), it's also an inappropriate form for a general intelligence. It's not readily upgradeable, you can't easily do repairs, it has no administration interface. It's not modular, it's not compatible with anything, it's not extendable. There's no manual. You can't get out of it, you can't get a new embodiment. You can't point your higher reasoning skills at it and find ways to improve your condition, beyond the minimal and banal (exercise and eat right). And of course it eventually breaks down and stops. In fact, excepting recent workers in medical and biological fields, our only interaction with it is as meat. You can't do anything with it except for be it, eat it or bury it. If the human body had been created by a conscious actor, rather than evolution, we would rightly deem it a great cruelty. So the term "meat" is at once self effacing, and an expression of frustration and anger at the mismatch between the mind and bodies that we are. (Actually, I always liked "meat sack" from Men in Black ("don't bet on it, meat sack"), and "Ugly bags of mostly water!" from ST:TNG.) I know the term upsets some people, and that it leaves us open to accusations of being deniers of the flesh from the other culture (which we ignore, so far entirely without consequence). The secret though, is that this term isn't used for the derision of others, for the belittlement of people who feel differently about it. I think use of "meat" is always self directed, signalling to others who feel similarly, communicating frustration, no little anger, and functioning as a call to action. I think it's an important term and shouldn't be cast aside. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From kanzure at gmail.com Mon May 25 04:50:35 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 23:50:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Beating the "meat" (was Re: "meat") In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905242133g6b20f584u467af5ed58317ee@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0905242133g6b20f584u467af5ed58317ee@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70905242150h434c1249vdb2851f56334e969@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 11:33 PM, Emlyn wrote: > 2009/5/24 Damien Broderick : >> Most of the people posting here seem to have no notion how depraved it is to >> speak of human bodies as "meat". >> >> I wish you'd all get over this nerdish affectation. > > I know it turns off "outsiders", but equally it's a signal to those > who "get" the transhuman meme. I think that at the core of the impulse > to techno-utopianism, transhumanism, technophilia, is an immense > frustration with the particular form our embodiment takes. While in > many ways it's marvellous (self repairing, self regulating, complex > beyond our current understanding), it's also an inappropriate form for > a general intelligence. It's not readily upgradeable, you can't easily > do repairs, it has no administration interface. It's not modular, it's > not compatible with anything, it's not extendable. There's no manual. > You can't get out of it, you can't get a new embodiment. You can't > point your higher reasoning skills at it and find ways to improve your > condition, beyond the minimal and banal (exercise and eat right). And > of course it eventually breaks down and stops. What? If you truly believe that only "exercise and eat right" are the actions that you can take, then why are you interested in transhumanism at all? There are far more things that you can be doing than "exercise and eat right". The whole point of transhumanism is that you *can* point your higher reasoning skills at the problem to solve it. I'm so completely confused, Emlyn. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon May 25 05:04:27 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 14:34:27 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Beating the "meat" (was Re: "meat") In-Reply-To: <55ad6af70905242150h434c1249vdb2851f56334e969@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0905242133g6b20f584u467af5ed58317ee@mail.gmail.com> <55ad6af70905242150h434c1249vdb2851f56334e969@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905242204r79f3e82g5f16f3776b49b619@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/25 Bryan Bishop : > On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 11:33 PM, Emlyn wrote: >> 2009/5/24 Damien Broderick : >>> Most of the people posting here seem to have no notion how depraved it is to >>> speak of human bodies as "meat". >>> >>> I wish you'd all get over this nerdish affectation. >> >> I know it turns off "outsiders", but equally it's a signal to those >> who "get" the transhuman meme. I think that at the core of the impulse >> to techno-utopianism, transhumanism, technophilia, is an immense >> frustration with the particular form our embodiment takes. While in >> many ways it's marvellous (self repairing, self regulating, complex >> beyond our current understanding), it's also an inappropriate form for >> a general intelligence. It's not readily upgradeable, you can't easily >> do repairs, it has no administration interface. It's not modular, it's >> not compatible with anything, it's not extendable. There's no manual. >> You can't get out of it, you can't get a new embodiment. You can't >> point your higher reasoning skills at it and find ways to improve your >> condition, beyond the minimal and banal (exercise and eat right). And >> of course it eventually breaks down and stops. > > What? If you truly believe that only "exercise and eat right" are the > actions that you can take, then why are you interested in > transhumanism at all? There are far more things that you can be doing > than "exercise and eat right". The whole point of transhumanism is > that you *can* point your higher reasoning skills at the problem to > solve it. I'm so completely confused, Emlyn. > > - Bryan > http://heybryan.org/ > 1 512 203 0507 You're taking me too literally. In fact there are all kinds of things we can do, and there is the prospect of having ever more control over our biology, of course. But that's new to the recent past. For most of our history as intelligent creatures, it's been as I state above. To the extent that we have more options now, it is because people have worked really, really hard to figure out how this mostly intractable mechanism works. Let me put it this way: if you had to design an embodied intelligent being from scratch, would you design something like a human? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From max at maxmore.com Mon May 25 05:05:27 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 00:05:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Beating the "meat" (was Re: "meat") Message-ID: <200905250505.n4P55bxG005620@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Emlyn wrote: >I know it turns off "outsiders", but equally it's a signal to those >who "get" the transhuman meme. I think that at the core of the >impulse to techno-utopianism, transhumanism, technophilia, is an >immense frustration with the particular form our embodiment takes. >While in many ways it's marvellous (self repairing, self regulating, >complex beyond our current understanding), it's also an >inappropriate form for a general intelligence. It's not readily >upgradeable, you can't easily do repairs, it has no administration >interface. It's not modular, it's not compatible with anything, it's >not extendable. 'ere, mate, *your* meat may not be extendable, but mine bloody well is. Max From emlynoregan at gmail.com Mon May 25 05:13:59 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 14:43:59 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Beating the "meat" (was Re: "meat") In-Reply-To: <200905250505.n4P55bxG005620@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905250505.n4P55bxG005620@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905242213r72babc6dned284cfd80cded4d@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/25 Max More : > Emlyn wrote: > >> I know it turns off "outsiders", but equally it's a signal to those who >> "get" the transhuman meme. I think that at the core of the impulse to >> techno-utopianism, transhumanism, technophilia, is an immense frustration >> with the particular form our embodiment takes. While in many ways it's >> marvellous (self repairing, self regulating, complex beyond our current >> understanding), it's also an inappropriate form for a general intelligence. >> It's not readily upgradeable, you can't easily do repairs, it has no >> administration interface. It's not modular, it's not compatible with >> anything, it's not extendable. > > 'ere, mate, *your* meat may not be extendable, but mine bloody well is. > > Max > lmfao! -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From kanzure at gmail.com Mon May 25 05:27:58 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 00:27:58 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Myostatin-inhibitor patron Message-ID: <55ad6af70905242227r2be0d97nf499ebdb934b9d8f@mail.gmail.com> Hey all, I apologize for not keeping the extropians up on what I've been up to. One of the projects that I have been working on involves myostatin inhibitors. Myostatin is a negative regulator of muscle mass in the human body. Through the inhibition of myostatin, mice, bovine, and even some mutant humans (through natural recombinant effects) experience increased muscle mass. In myostatin knock-out mice, problems show up in tendon health. However, with a proper inhibitor dosage regiment, the mice shouldn't experience these effects. As a project, the equipment required isn't outside the range of a well-equipped somewhat broke college student. Say, perhaps, one who would be willing to work on this sort of project if there was a patron interested in the results of such a project. Normally, you would go through grant bodies for science and engineering, but you might also be interested more in keeping in tune with the transhumanism community. I was wondering if anyone might know somebody would be interested in helping fund this project. I do not have a full expense schedule at the moment (and one could be constructed, although it would be more speculative than filled with certainties), but if anybody has ever had pet mice, you have the right idea in general in terms of expenses. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From kat at mindspillage.org Mon May 25 06:19:05 2009 From: kat at mindspillage.org (Kat Walsh) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 02:19:05 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <34497.12.77.168.233.1243194748.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <200905240327.n4O3R6BU009522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <34497.12.77.168.233.1243194748.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <8e253f560905242319k17c71626n551e16e1239f5213@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 3:52 PM, MB wrote: > >> Terry Bisson's "They're Made Out of Meat": >> - Listen >> - Watch >> - Read >> >> - Reference >> > > Thank you, Harvey! ?That's the story I read years ago. "Meat" doesn't sound > outrageous to me. ?:) It doesn't sound outrageous to me either. I enjoy physical experiences and having a capable body, even as I would love to have vastly improved capabilities and to try choosing whether to be embodied at all. But this limited embodiment isn't the whole of what's important about what/who I am, and because of that I can think and talk seriously about major changes to it. It's the physical part of something that is loving and thinking and dreaming and singing, but it's the loving and thinking and dreaming and singing that's important to me and not the specifics of how it's done. If meat does it, that's fantastic, and if not-meat does it, that's fantastic too; I don't think of it as more or less valuable coming from meat or not-meat. Bisson's inorganic aliens are supposed to be horrible because they do in fact care what the intelligence came from, not what it is capable of! But I know it's meat and still think it worthwhile. In addition to the lighthearted usages, I think of the use as a bit deliberately unsettling, too. It's both acceptable and shocking because almost everyone finds the idea of using a human being as food repulsive -- and so we have to mean something else by it. Using the term seems to me an indication of not treating the physical too reverently: not considering the body itself sacred, and so believing there's nothing morally wrong with cutting it open or changing it around, or adding spices to taste... (I've also liked "meatspace" to mean "not on the internet" -- but almost anything is better than the demeaning and inaccurate "in real life"!) If consensus is not to use the word this way, then I'm not so attached (or so frequent a poster...) that it would affect me much, but I don't see it as necessary. -Kat who enjoys meaty discussions but is generally too chicken to post -- Your donations keep Wikipedia online: http://donate.wikimedia.org/en Wikimedia, Press: kat at wikimedia.org * Personal: kat at mindspillage.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage * (G)AIM:Mindspillage mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net * email for phone From eschatoon at gmail.com Mon May 25 06:34:11 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 08:34:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <200905242015.n4OKFK9O025261@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905242015.n4OKFK9O025261@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905242334h41c61bb4tdab586558b7902ad@mail.gmail.com> What Max said. However, I will continue to say "meat" in debates with anti-transhumanists, or oh-so-PC ex-transhumanists who try to appease critics and score personal points by attacking radical transhumanist ideas. Friends, offering the other cheek does NOT work: Sun-Tzu knew that, and so did all those who made history. In a war, and this will be a war, one must play to win. G. On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Max More wrote: > >> >Surely it would be appropriate to say: "I have to leave for work >> >early today to pick up the mini-meat from school." >> >> If you say so. Try not to say it in the hearing of any teachers or >> parental units. > > That was a Mike Myers-inspired joke that I think you missed. > > Although your first response to the use of "meat" seemed rather vehement, I > do agree with you that it's sensible to avoid using the term. It is > literally incorrect (unlike "flesh"), and it does imply an intrinsic dislike > or disgust for the flesh. I neither (intrinsically) love nor despise my > flesh body. I see as a bit like a computer operating system -- when it's > working well, I marvel at it. When it's making my life miserable, I'm much > less fond of it and look forward to a debugged version. > > Max -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 25 07:44:36 2009 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 00:44:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90905212131y586c6e55hd847aca680a576b1@mail.gmail.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <1fa8c3b90905212131y586c6e55hd847aca680a576b1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On May 21, 2009, at 9:31 PM, Eschatoon Magic wrote: > Natasha is making a lot of sense. The uploading option is not > available yet, so we can only enjoy what we have now and at the same > time enjoy our visions for the future. Their enjoyment requires working on them as quickly and as best we are able, right? > > > This makes even more sense to me since I am not wildly optimist on the > actual development timescale of uploading technology, and don't really > hope to se it achieved in my lifetime. > I think the interesting question is how determined we are to see these technologies realized is say the new few decades at most. But hope? I "hope" it is available next week. :) I realistically hope it is available in 2 - 3 decades. > But I use to react to those who insist that the uploading option is > impossible in principle. because this position (especially when it is > not supported by actual arguments) looks like mysticism to me. And I > also react to those who insist that transhumanist ideas are "dry", > because this position shows that they have not understood much. Yep. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 25 07:53:15 2009 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 00:53:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Last Exorcism. Philosophies of earthly immortality In-Reply-To: References: <4A169414.50106@libero.it> <580930c20905220526l2d68ff5di599d648436f38f56@mail.gmail.com> <4A16A94C.9090903@libero.it> Message-ID: On May 22, 2009, at 8:25 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/22 painlord2k at libero.it : > >> Catholicism and Christianity are not monoliths. >> They have a rich internal life and they host a large number of >> different >> opinions. >> This is because the Catholic Church is so slow to change, it is a >> feature, >> not a bug. >> The goals of trashumanism and of extropy are not at odds with >> Christianity >> and some other religions (apart the unnominable one). >> There could be a discussion and a disagreement about the ways to >> obtain the >> goals, not a disagreement with the goals themselves. > > Religion may not be 100% bad, but it's still 100% wrong. > Not so. It is such an accretion of aspirations, practices, community building and so on that it is impossible to take such a statement seriously. There are many "babies" in that very nasty looking bath water. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 25 08:01:50 2009 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 01:01:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] More on US Health Care Costs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4BC79EE5-5B86-4D63-8913-17825D0325FA@mac.com> It is not just a matter of "efficiency". Under "efficiency" as the population ages and the governments eventually run health care it is logical to expect major rationing of care from simple economic reality. This can have a very large negative impact on all of us, especially boomers. I have yet to see an "efficient" government program. What really needs to be the take home message is that only a moon shot level of committment to anti-aging medicine can save an aging developed world population from utterly blowing out budgets and condemning billions to needless suffering and death even at the point in history where many of the old "inevitable" sufferings of aging are beginning to be addressable. We are not getting much longer life spans largely because almost zero energy is put into preventative medicine or getting the non-food if not outright poison off the grocery shelves. It not a matter of how many people are covered or how efficient the system is or is not. Some of those "inefficiencies" fuel medical research that simply is not done anywhere else in the world as well. The biggest true inefficiencies come when there is no feedback toward efficiency. If I know my care will always be paid for where is the incentive for me to push for better prices and more efficient care? Where is the incentive to take better care of one's self if medical care is simply a given that "the system" somehow magically makes happen? Where are the drivers to efficiency in that? - samantha On May 22, 2009, at 4:22 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > This article is from Bloomberg: > > http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aykIuUrgXbWc > > May 21 (Bloomberg) -- The cost of health care in the U.S., the highest > in the world, jumped 47 percent from 2000 to 2006, a study said. That > didn?t buy Americans the longest lifespan. > > Americans paid $6,719 a person for doctors, medicines and hospital > visits in 2006, up from $4,570 in 2000, according to a report released > today by the World Health Organization in Geneva. The yearly spending > is more than nine times the global average. With a life expectancy of > 78 for a person born in 2007, the U.S. trails at least 27 other > countries among 193 in the report. > > The cost of health care is at the center of a debate over overhauling > the U.S. insurance system. The U.S. pays too much for individual care > and doesn?t cover enough people, said President Barack Obama on the > campaign trail and more recently to an audience in Rio Ranch, New > Mexico, on May 14. He said he wants to extend coverage to 46 million > who don?t have insurance. > > The U.S. has ?the least efficient health care system in the world,? > said Kevin Schulman, director of the health management program at Duke > University in Durham, North Carolina. ?These costs keep growing > despite the recession, and health care is going to shoot up as a > percentage of our GDP even more. It?s just spooky.? > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 25 08:11:29 2009 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 01:11:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> <4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com> On May 23, 2009, at 2:17 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 02:00 PM 5/23/2009 -0700, Lee wrote: > >>> Most of the people posting here seem >> > to have no notion how depraved it >>> is to speak of human bodies as "meat". >> >> I plead guilty. Indeed, we should aspire >> to good taste whenever such an alternative >> is pointed out to us. > > My vehemence derives from my perception that this *isn't* just a > matter of "good taste" or politeness, but a derangement of values > far deeper and more corrosive. It's the same dehumanizing process > that ends up vilifying Jews as "vermin." Over the top rhetorical shouting. > > > And it's no accident that my objection is also often raised by many > of the intelligent critics of transhumanism; they can sometimes see, > from the outside, the pathologies that can creep into our discourse > and analysis. > > As several people have commented to me offlist, "meat" is a common > way for $cientologists to refer to human bodies. That's no accident > either. In general it's the horrid body-hatred of Xianity recast in > a reductionist scientistic framework. > Guilt by association now? > And obviously Max and Natasha and some others here don't fit this > category of body-loathing. It's not a design feature of > transhumanism, it's a malign bug that deserves to be squashed. > I loath being trapped in an embodiment of very limited duration that is deteriorating with agonizing rapidity. That doesn't at all mean I hate bodies or embodiment per se. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 25 08:15:00 2009 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 01:15:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <2d6187670905231432r48824086hc28dbbc2b91f3bfc@mail.gmail.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> <2d6187670905231432r48824086hc28dbbc2b91f3bfc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2C3DF8F0-BC9F-4EAF-A13C-FE59E9E9B6D8@mac.com> On May 23, 2009, at 2:32 PM, John Grigg wrote: > On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 12:08 PM, Damien Broderick > wrote: > Most of the people posting here seem to have no notion how depraved > it is to speak of human bodies as "meat". > > I wish you'd all get over this nerdish affectation. > > Meat is dead, hacked-up flesh. My body isn't meat, it's me, and > yours isn't meat either. It's a living person. The jeering > philistinism of calling our bodies "meat" reminds me of insensitive > oafs who disdain van Vogh's paintings as "daubing" or Shakespeare as > a "scribbler". > > Thank you, Damien. I remember a conversation I had in the > Immortality Institute chatroom where a 19 year-old guy told me he > couldn't wait to escape his meatsicle body! Only 19 and in good > health... Yes, we need some of that Enlightenment era love and > admiration of the human body. > > My own view of transhumanism is about developing technology to > perfect the power and beauty of the flesh and form we have now. A > century hence people will have beauty and vitality that Renaissance > era sculptors and painters could only dream about. Not very interesting to me personally. Oh, I would put on various human bodies as the mood struck me but I would consider it failure to be limited to only one or even to only classical human form, no matter how healthy and beautiful. - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 25 08:16:59 2009 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 01:16:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Eternity: Our Next Billion Years, by Michael Hanlon In-Reply-To: <200905240333.n4O3XUgk027565@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905240333.n4O3XUgk027565@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <505361B2-8D80-4431-90CE-BF887068D8A1@mac.com> On May 23, 2009, at 8:33 PM, Max More wrote: > >> The correct answer is a million millions are in a trillion. But 79 >> percent of Americans got that wrong. And almost everyone got it >> wrong downward. > > BillK, you are being insufficiently culturally sensitive to us Brits > and ex-Brits. :-) A British billion is a million million U.S., and a > British trillion is a U.S. quintillion. So what is a thousand million then? What a primitive species that can't even agree on terms for numbers! - samantha From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 25 08:45:20 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 10:45:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <1fa8c3b90905212131y586c6e55hd847aca680a576b1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905250145s1fba3e76h522f969f08f9cb01@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 9:44 AM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > I think the interesting question is how determined we are to see these > technologies realized is say the new few decades at most. Indeed. I am used to refer to other POVs as preaching a singularity bound to happen, sooner or later, in a galaxy or another. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 25 08:49:06 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 10:49:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Last Exorcism. Philosophies of earthly immortality In-Reply-To: References: <4A169414.50106@libero.it> <580930c20905220526l2d68ff5di599d648436f38f56@mail.gmail.com> <4A16A94C.9090903@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20905250149r2f266086g10f0399e45342b65@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 9:53 AM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > On May 22, 2009, at 8:25 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> Religion may not be 100% bad, but it's still 100% wrong. > > Not so. ?It is such an accretion of aspirations, practices, community > building and so on that it is impossible to take such a statement seriously. > ?There are many "babies" in that very nasty looking bath water. Indeed, not all religions are equal. But those requiring "faith" in face of empirical data suggesting otherwise, as well-intentioned as they may be (and I have to differ on that), remain nevertheless intrinsically pernicious from my point of view. Much more so that secular views that suggests solutions which end up being "bad", but are at least subject to revision. -- Stefano Vaj From eschatoon at gmail.com Mon May 25 08:52:08 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 10:52:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <580930c20905250145s1fba3e76h522f969f08f9cb01@mail.gmail.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <1fa8c3b90905212131y586c6e55hd847aca680a576b1@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905250145s1fba3e76h522f969f08f9cb01@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905250152v1fe51147s657de7dd409a2dd6@mail.gmail.com> Which is also valid: if we are too dumb and lazy to make a singularity happen, someone else in the big universe will. Having said this, I very much prefer it is us. On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 10:45 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 9:44 AM, Samantha Atkins wrote: >> I think the interesting question is how determined we are to see these >> technologies realized is say the new few decades at most. > > Indeed. I am used to refer to other POVs as preaching a singularity > bound to happen, sooner or later, in a galaxy or another. > > -- > Stefano Vaj > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 25 08:53:50 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 10:53:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Eternity: Our Next Billion Years, by Michael Hanlon In-Reply-To: References: <200905240333.n4O3XUgk027565@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905250153v5539ef61x2aa0264062605700@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 12:31 PM, BillK wrote: > See Wikipedia: > > UK usage > ? ?"Billion" has meant 10^9 in most sectors of official published > writing for many years now. The UK government, BBC, and most other > broadcast or published mass media, have used the short scale > exclusively in all contexts since the mid 1970s. It may be of interest that AFAIK in *all* neolatin languages, 10^9 is a milliard, and a billion is one thousand milliard. Thus, the old British usage is not so isolated, after all... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 25 09:10:12 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 11:10:12 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Left Behind In-Reply-To: <1fa8c3b90905250152v1fe51147s657de7dd409a2dd6@mail.gmail.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <1fa8c3b90905212131y586c6e55hd847aca680a576b1@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905250145s1fba3e76h522f969f08f9cb01@mail.gmail.com> <1fa8c3b90905250152v1fe51147s657de7dd409a2dd6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905250210w2e031cd2u6e43cf0491c95ac0@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Eschatoon Magic wrote: > Which is also valid: if we are too dumb and lazy to make a singularity > happen, someone else in the big universe will. Having said this, I > very much prefer it is us. Yes. In fact, this remains a very plausible scenario in cosmic terms. Simply, the importance for us of the "who, when and where" is emphasised by the fact that *this* is where we might end up making a difference. -- Stefano Vaj From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 25 09:22:48 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 09:22:48 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Myostatin-inhibitor patron In-Reply-To: <55ad6af70905242227r2be0d97nf499ebdb934b9d8f@mail.gmail.com> References: <55ad6af70905242227r2be0d97nf499ebdb934b9d8f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/25/09, Bryan Bishop wrote: > I apologize for not keeping the extropians up on what I've been up to. > One of the projects that I have been working on involves myostatin > inhibitors. Myostatin is a negative regulator of muscle mass in the > human body. Through the inhibition of myostatin, mice, bovine, and > even some mutant humans (through natural recombinant effects) > experience increased muscle mass. In myostatin knock-out mice, > problems show up in tendon health. However, with a proper inhibitor > dosage regiment, the mice shouldn't experience these effects. > I was wondering if anyone might know somebody would be interested in > helping fund this project. I do not have a full expense schedule at > the moment (and one could be constructed, although it would be more > speculative than filled with certainties), but if anybody has ever had > pet mice, you have the right idea in general in terms of expenses. > Of course, there are a bunch of laws controlling animal testing. If you just buy some mice and start injecting them, you are probably breaking these laws. Animal testing of treatments intended for human use are especially rigorous. It is not just trying to find something that works. Testing has to try to check for toxicity, side-effects, cancer causing, etc. and usually takes many years and much expense before being authorized for human use. And even after all that, there is no guarantee that because it works in mice it will also work in humans. Some new drugs had to withdrawn after human tests killed or damaged people. Chimpanzees infected with HIV don't get sick, for example. And the opposite also applies. Some drugs that damage mice are perfectly safe in humans. There are many problems associated with animal testing. (And it's not just about saving the cuddly bunnies!). BillK From alito at organicrobot.com Mon May 25 10:00:00 2009 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 20:00:00 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Google has incorporated Wolfram Alpha search results In-Reply-To: <4A19B1CE.6060101@lineone.net> References: <4A19B1CE.6060101@lineone.net> Message-ID: <1243245600.16891.6.camel@localhost> On Sun, 2009-05-24 at 21:45 +0100, ben wrote: > Alejandro Dubrovsky declared: > > >(Try creating a search engine that just returns Google's results without > >coming to an arrangement with Google, and see how long it keeps > >working). > > > Er, you mean like Scroogle? > > (Waits for Scroogle to stop working) > That should not exist. I demand its non-existance. Unless, of course, Google is letting one through as a) a source of search terms that people consider privacy-sensitive b) a way to avoid bad publicity if they were to stop it c) a service to the more-privately-conscious part of the community (and that makes up for a quarter million searches a day!? That's serious ad-money) For better evidence: Try creating a search engine that just retuns Google's results AND makes money without coming to an arrangement with Google ... From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 25 13:23:46 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 23:23:46 +1000 Subject: [ExI] More on US Health Care Costs In-Reply-To: <4BC79EE5-5B86-4D63-8913-17825D0325FA@mac.com> References: <4BC79EE5-5B86-4D63-8913-17825D0325FA@mac.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/25 Samantha Atkins : > It is not just a matter of "efficiency". ?Under "efficiency" as the > population ages and the governments eventually run health care it is logical > to expect major rationing of care from simple economic reality. ?This can > have a very large negative impact on all of us, especially boomers. ? ? I > have yet to see an "efficient" government program. You need to take any given government program and run it against the private enterprise equivalent. That isn't always possible, and in many cases there is no private enterprise equivalent. Public health is just one example. Public health means not only that it is publicly funded, but that it considers the health of the population as a whole rather than individuals, and is a medical specialty in itself. For example, mass vaccination programs are a relatively cheap and cost-effective public health program. Anti-smoking education/propaganda is another example of this. > What really needs to > be the take home message is that only a moon shot level of committment to > anti-aging medicine can save an aging developed world population from > utterly blowing out budgets and condemning billions to needless suffering > and death even at the point in history where many of the old "inevitable" > sufferings of aging are beginning to be addressable. At some point, health spending will be rationed since it could otherwise consume the entire GDP; for example, if the number of intensive care beds were greatly increased in order to extend the life of all very old and sick people by a few days. > We are not getting much longer life spans largely because almost zero energy > is put into preventative medicine or getting the non-food if not outright > poison off the grocery shelves. ? ?It not a matter of how many people are > covered or how efficient the system is or is not. True, far more good could be done far more cheaply if health spending emphasised preventive treatment: diet, exercise, smoking, control of blood pressure and cholesterol, etc. > The biggest true inefficiencies come when there is no feedback toward > efficiency. ?If I know my care will always be paid for where is the > incentive for me to push for better prices and more efficient care? ? Where > is the incentive to take better care of one's self if medical care is simply > a given that "the system" somehow magically makes happen? ? Where are the > drivers to efficiency in that? Miraculously, it seems that in countries where the government provides almost free health care, this health care is cheaper in absolute terms than it is in the US. As a worker in the Australian public health system, I am in the middle of a constant struggle by hospital management to, on the one hand, contain costs and, on the other hand, improve patient care outcome measures. If the hospital goes over budget or fails to meet targets, the managers are liable to be sacked. If I travel to the US I have to pay around 50% more for travel insurance covering me for illness and injury compared to what I would have to pay for, say, a comparable European country. This applies only to medical costs: hotels, meals etc. will generally be the same price or a bit cheaper in the US. Also, the US population tends to suffer more from lifestyle related health negatives, such as obesity, compared to those other countries where everyone gets almost free health care, which is the usual apology given for the lower life expectancy in the US, and goes against your argument about incentives to stay well. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 25 13:28:54 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 23:28:54 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The Last Exorcism. Philosophies of earthly immortality In-Reply-To: References: <4A169414.50106@libero.it> <580930c20905220526l2d68ff5di599d648436f38f56@mail.gmail.com> <4A16A94C.9090903@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/25 Samantha Atkins : >> Religion may not be 100% bad, but it's still 100% wrong. >> > > Not so. ?It is such an accretion of aspirations, practices, community > building and so on that it is impossible to take such a statement seriously. > ?There are many "babies" in that very nasty looking bath water. My point is that it is possible for religion to have positive effects, perhaps even mainly positive effects, but still be completely false. If I can prove that the general level of happiness will increase if everyone believes tomorrow will be a fine day, that has absolutely no bearing on the weather. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 25 13:30:55 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 23:30:55 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Eternity: Our Next Billion Years, by Michael Hanlon In-Reply-To: <505361B2-8D80-4431-90CE-BF887068D8A1@mac.com> References: <200905240333.n4O3XUgk027565@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <505361B2-8D80-4431-90CE-BF887068D8A1@mac.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/25 Samantha Atkins : > > On May 23, 2009, at 8:33 PM, Max More wrote: > >> >>> The correct answer is a million millions are in a trillion. But 79 >>> percent of Americans got that wrong. And almost everyone got it wrong >>> downward. >> >> BillK, you are being insufficiently culturally sensitive to us Brits and >> ex-Brits. :-) A British billion is a million million U.S., and a British >> trillion is a U.S. quintillion. > > So what is a thousand million then? ?What a primitive species that can't > even agree on terms for numbers! In the original British usage, a thousand million is simply a thousand million. -- Stathis Papaioannou From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon May 25 13:33:12 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 09:33:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat". References: <200905240327.n4O3R6BU009522@andromeda.ziaspace.com><1F95EDA2E3AE47CA97B5800A1B6ABA11@spike> <7.0.1.0.2.20090524125427.024b5350@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <6EE46AB2178B4D278E9F61075B9B25F9@MyComputer> "Damien Broderick" > What's wrong with any of the words people > have always used, such as "body"? I'll tell you exactly what's wrong, people grossly misuse the word "body" just as you did when you said "My body isn't meat, it's me". True, the word "meat" can seem like a slap in the face to some, but sometimes when a person become hysterical and stupid a shock to the system is required. John K Clark From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon May 25 13:55:46 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 09:55:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat". References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com><4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com><20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc><4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com><1fa8c3b90905232331m177962e3vf47ce3b9a7748a78@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090524141004.023d4a70@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: "Damien Broderick" > I disagree with this as a general assessment > of >H-ists, but I agree with Athena Andreadis > that there's a tendency or current of hostility > or disgust (if only in the rhetoric of terms such > as "meat") toward the body qua body. Damien that just isn't bright. What the hell did you expect from a list of this sort? If everyone around here thought existing biology was just peachy then there would be no need or desire to put that ">" symbol in front of the "H" symbol. And Damien I'd like you to perform a little experiment; take a stroll down the halls of the terminal cancer ward of you local hospital and then come back and tell me again that any dissatisfaction with the way the human body is built and operates is a sign of a diseased mind. > this [a certain word] will sour any discussion > with people who don't feel that way about bodies So be it, if they can't get over that superstition they're dead meat anyway. John K Clark From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon May 25 14:10:48 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 10:10:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat" References: <200905240327.n4O3R6BU009522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090524131744.024b9538@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <5F46CFC79D1749C2AE11AC0A8F85E12B@MyComputer> "Damien Broderick" > The story [Terry Bisson's Meat] reinforces my point. > It's a parody of contemporary provincialism, the > "computers can't possible be conscious" brigade. I read it as a parody of the High Holy Meat Worshipers too, it may not be great literature but for some reason it's just about the only parody of a particularly target rich subject. Damn I wish I were a better writer. > the whole joke is a sleight of hand, because such > inorganic beings wouldn't *use* the word "meat," George Orwell's Animal Farm is sleight of hand because in reality animals can't talk. John K Clark From spike66 at att.net Mon May 25 14:27:21 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 07:27:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <8e253f560905242319k17c71626n551e16e1239f5213@mail.gmail.com> References: <200905240327.n4O3R6BU009522@andromeda.ziaspace.com><34497.12.77.168.233.1243194748.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <8e253f560905242319k17c71626n551e16e1239f5213@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <70C4C8C913E8499D9D16CB2513EFB97F@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Kat Walsh > ... > > It doesn't sound outrageous to me either. I enjoy physical > experiences and having a capable body, even as I would love > to have vastly improved capabilities and to try choosing > whether to be embodied at all... > > (I've also liked "meatspace" to mean "not on the internet" -- > but almost anything is better than the demeaning and > inaccurate "in real > life"!) > > If consensus is not to use the word this way, then I'm not so > attached (or so frequent a poster...) that it would affect me > much, but I don't see it as necessary. > > -Kat > who enjoys meaty discussions but is generally too chicken to post Welcome to the neighborhood Kat. Your meat post is very good. Don't be chicken, just post smart stuff. The yahoos won't jump you. Or actually maybe some of them will, but just toss em in your bit bucket and go forth cheerfully. {8-] spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 25 14:42:30 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 09:42:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <5F46CFC79D1749C2AE11AC0A8F85E12B@MyComputer> References: <200905240327.n4O3R6BU009522@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090524131744.024b9538@satx.rr.com> <5F46CFC79D1749C2AE11AC0A8F85E12B@MyComputer> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090525093727.02303480@satx.rr.com> At 10:10 AM 5/25/2009 -0400, John K Clark wrote: >>the whole joke is a sleight of hand, because such >>inorganic beings wouldn't *use* the word "meat," > >George Orwell's Animal Farm is sleight of hand because in reality >animals can't talk. This is *almost* a very astute comeback, except that the capacity of animals to speak isn't the central point of Animal Farm, and the book isn't titled Animals Can Talk. Damien Broderick From spike66 at att.net Mon May 25 15:07:13 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 08:07:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Eternity: Our Next Billion Years, by Michael Hanlon In-Reply-To: References: <200905240333.n4O3XUgk027565@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <505361B2-8D80-4431-90CE-BF887068D8A1@mac.com> Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Stathis Papaioannou ... > > > > So what is a thousand million then? ?What a primitive species that > > can't even agree on terms for numbers! > > In the original British usage, a thousand million is simply a > thousand million... Stathis Papaioannou Ja. We like to poke fun at the silly British way, but in fact they have the right idea. We should have very different sounding words for the factors of a thousand. We USians are seeing with tragic results what happens when a nation has a very large portion of its population that knows not nor apparently cares nothing about the difference between a million, a billion and a trillion. I would countersuggest we express the current insane government spending in terms not of dollars but rather in a working prole's salary. We then have not *illions but rather days, months, years, centuries, millenia, etc. spike From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon May 25 15:47:21 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 11:47:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat". References: <200905240327.n4O3R6BU009522@andromeda.ziaspace.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090524131744.024b9538@satx.rr.com><5F46CFC79D1749C2AE11AC0A8F85E12B@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20090525093727.02303480@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4C2B8C27E0CF4FA68FC83C3C627E8BAB@MyComputer> Me: >>George Orwell's Animal Farm is sleight of hand >> because in reality animals can't talk. Damien: > This is *almost* a very astute comeback, except that > the capacity of animals to speak isn't the central point > of Animal Farm, and the book isn't titled Animals Can Talk. And the central point of Bisson's story isn't computers can use the word "meat". John K Clark From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 25 15:56:53 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 10:56:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Eternity: Our Next Billion Years, by Michael Hanlon In-Reply-To: References: <200905240333.n4O3XUgk027565@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <505361B2-8D80-4431-90CE-BF887068D8A1@mac.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090525104937.022775c0@satx.rr.com> At 08:07 AM 5/25/2009 -0700, Spike wrote: > >I would countersuggest we express the current insane government spending in >terms not of dollars but rather in a working prole's salary. We then have >not *illions but rather days, months, years, centuries, millennia, etc. Barbara, with a degree in mathematics and an MBA, commented on the original trillions post: "It's still very hard for me to truly understand the concept of a trillion dollars. How many [large two story inner city San Antonio] houses would a trillion dollars buy? Lessee ... 6,660,000 (rounding up). Can that be right? A large city's worth of houses. All the houses in Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas put together." And where did that 666 come from, I hear you ask? Diabological... Damien Broderick From spike66 at att.net Mon May 25 16:06:17 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 09:06:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <5F46CFC79D1749C2AE11AC0A8F85E12B@MyComputer> References: <200905240327.n4O3R6BU009522@andromeda.ziaspace.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090524131744.024b9538@satx.rr.com> <5F46CFC79D1749C2AE11AC0A8F85E12B@MyComputer> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of John K Clark ... > > > the whole joke is a sleight of hand, because such inorganic beings > > wouldn't *use* the word "meat," > > George Orwell's Animal Farm is sleight of hand because in > reality animals can't talk. > > John K Clark Oh? Are we not animals now? Actually non-human animals can and do communicate via sound. Examples are not hard to find. Granted they do not express the memetic richness ascribed to them in Orwell's masterpiece. spike From aware at awareresearch.com Mon May 25 16:34:13 2009 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 09:34:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: <20090522150317.ozlx1od0dcg88ww0@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> <347B3C4E5CF14D03A8C29D38BBF3C660@DFC68LF1> <631FFE53AC13496FA4A2254770E96AC2@DFC68LF1> <20090522150317.ozlx1od0dcg88ww0@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: Back from weekend travel. Ready to see what sense might be made of this side trip threateningly close to the borders of the dreaded identity debates. On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 12:03 PM, wrote: >>> Jef wrote: >>> >>>> As for identity as a primary value of transhumanism, >>>> this is where I go my separate way, >>>> seeing extropianism as *more* encompassing, >>>> increasing agency promoting present but evolving values >>>> as primary, and identity as emergent. >>> >>> Hi Jef, >>> >>> Why do you see "*more* encompassing, increasing agency as separating" out >>> from other values? >> >> Natasha, your question is not entirely clear to me. ?It would be so >> much easier to have some of these conversations in person. But I'll >> try to guess your meaning and explain. > > Not a problem. ?You say you go a separate way because you see extropy as > *more* encompassing. ?Yes, of course. ?My claim that indentity is human and > the fact that we are human (with identity) is a primary value to the > preferred futures of transhumanism because the "transitional stages", > according to transhuamnism, accumulate (and do include human) in what is > suggested to be a transformation of posthuman/upload, etc.) As I reread this, it seems it would fit better for me if you were to say that identity is a *cardinal* rather than *primary* value of transhumanism. It's another example of the inside-outness I so frequently feel in these forums. For me, seeing almost everything in terms of systems, "primary" doesn't so much mean "of the highest importance" as it means prior in terms of some functional sequence, so your usage leads me to think "from identity, something else flows" and to me this would be incorrect since identity is always only perceived, emergent from the observer's recognition of relations. Likewise, I distinguish between *values* as intrinsic to the nature of the system, and *preferences* as the expression of those values, evident from the system's behavior. This highlights the epistemological inside-outness running rampant through these discussions as statements about "values" are made in the colloquial sense which is blind to the implied recursive role of the observer who (if one thought more deeply about it) must be holding, interpreting, and expressing those "values." Gets all tied up in knots, but people blithely continue, confident that they "know" what they "mean." A further example is the common usage of "goal" to refer to imagined outcomes which aren't defined, or even definable, due to lack of context. Goals are always only special cases of values-promotion, meaningful to the extent that they are precisely defined. But inside-out, we have talking of "escaping the meat cage" What would that be like, precisely? How can one define that as a precise target, a goal, toward which one could navigate, given that we are necessarily and utterly lacking in the techno-sociological context within which that state would would be defined and expressed? Let me repeat: How can such an imagined "goal" provide ANY VALUE in terms of its navigation? Zip, nada, zilch. On the other hand, we can speak with increasing coherence about promoting our values of increasing interaction, mobility, durability, sensory modalities, and enjoyment of sensual experience, all in terms of the here and now, focusing not on any particular (unimaginable) goal, but on the process of discovering a better future by creating it. And in this light it becomes a very real engineering problem, which, by the way, many people are already attacking on many fronts. Inside-out. Of course I understand what people mean when they refer to such imagined "goals" as "escaping the meat cage" or creating an ultimate "Friendly" AI, just as I understand and appreciate the absolutely sincere and true sentiment of a child saying that when he grows up he wants to be a "fireman" or "Superman" as the child currently (but not very coherently) envisions it within his present contextual understanding of "reality." > >> You said: >> >>>> What I found interesting is the use of "mirror" and "reflection" and >>>> that >>>> posthumans cannot see themselves because they have no sense of identity >>>> and >>>> connectiveness to human. ?Not my view. >> >> and >> >>>> Damien makes a good point that it does fit in transhumanist discourse, >>>> but >>>> not with the above views because the transhumanist perspective >>>> identifies >>>> with identity as a primarily value. >> >> So, it seems that you referred to identity in two different ways. ?I >> agree with your usage in the first paragraph. ?I think that this >> postmodernist essay on the posthuman was incorrect in it's assertion >> of no connection between the identity of the human and the posthuman. > > Yes, precisely. > >> (I also recognize and agree with the distinction pointed out by others >> here between posthuman-ism and post-humanism. > > Yes, I agree as well with this. > >> My disagreement with >> the essayist, and my agreement with what I take is your position is >> based on the what I see as a necessarily evolutionary process of >> branching leading from the human to the posthuman. ? While any >> individual branch is contingent and unpredictable, sub-branches must >> be coherent [and consistent] with what came before. > > Yes, understood. ?Please identify them and then let's take this discussion > forward in framing it from that issue: ?What are the sub-branches that do > not link human to posthuman. ?(Please correct me if I have phrased this > incorrectly or misunderstood what you suggest.) I think you may have misunderstood, or rather, I failed to convey my intended meaning. I was speaking, again in abstract systems-theoretic terms, of the necessity that any post-human future must have evolved by way of branching from the here and now. While the particular branching is unpredictable due to underspecification and combinatorial explosion of a multitude of contingencies upon contingencies, still, any future state must be consistent--and connected--with what came before. The house of mirrors I saw described in that postmodernist prose seemed, like all postmodernist thought (as I understand it), to deny the fundamental connectedness and meaningness of these evolutionary connections. >> I disagree with your assertion (as I perceive and understand it) of >> identity as a **primary** value. > > I explained this above. ?And that has to do what what we have now as humans. > >> I think this is an unfortunate, >> unnecessary, and ultimately limiting artifact, natural and expected of >> evolved organisms acting on behalf of what they perceive (with their >> limited cognition) as their own self interest. > > I agree with you in part. ?Not completely because this statement sounds too > much of a dislike of being a meat-body. ?While most transhumansit have this > feeling, and certainly I am a strong proponent of replacing our bio-wet-meat > bodies and my entire body (no pun intended) [my practice-based and > theoretical work supports this notion and has for 20+ years. ?I say above > "not completely" because I am here now and I love being alive and even > though I suffer from illness, I would rather do my best to overcome illness > than be a dead or suspended. You've misconstrued the dryness of my analytical style as indicating a dislike of the wet and squishy. I don't particularly like or dislike the present instantiation but we've had some good times and, significantly, it's all we have to work with at present. >> I think Zen awakening >> overcomes this limitation. I think increasing awareness of one's >> cultural embeddedness helps overcome this limitation. > > I agree with an awakening from limitations, but again, I am not going to > turn my nose up at my biology because it is what I have now. ?That is my > Zen. > >> I think game >> theorists dealing with the ostensible "paradox" of the iterated >> Prisoners' Dilemma and other examples of superrationality will >> eventually get it. ?I think that by the time most of us are >> effectively plugged into the net for our livelihood, sense of meaning >> and sense of self, we'll all get it. > > Okay, but this is going a little off in another direction. Well, it was just another example of personal identification dependent on interactive context, but okay. >> So, as I said earlier, I don't see identity as primary, but as >> emergent. ?It's a necessary result of agency, which I see as >> increasing extropically as increasing instrumental effectiveness >> promotes an increasing context of values. > > Okay. ?Now, let me ask you: Could its "emergence" be primary value? I don't understand what you're asking here. Are you speaking of a teleological "purpose" to evolutionary processes, "the universe discovering itself" a la Tielhard? Sorry, that's all the time I have for now. I hope this much is somewhat helpful (informative, entertaining...?) - Jef From natasha at natasha.cc Mon May 25 17:08:06 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 12:08:06 -0500 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc><347B3C4E5CF14D03A8C29D38BBF3C660@DFC68LF1><631FFE53AC13496FA4A2254770E96AC2@DFC68LF1><20090522150317.ozlx1od0dcg88ww0@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: Latour has an interesting essay on actor-network theory which you might enjoy: "On recalling ANT". (In Actor Network Theyr and After, (1999) Law, J. and Hassard, J., Oxford: Blackwell Pub.) Natasha From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Mon May 25 16:08:37 2009 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 12:08:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com><4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com><20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc><4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com><4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com> <3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com> Message-ID: "Samantha Atkins" wrote, > On May 23, 2009, at 2:17 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: >> My vehemence derives from my perception that this *isn't* just a matter >> of "good taste" or politeness, but a derangement of values far deeper >> and more corrosive. It's the same dehumanizing process that ends up >> vilifying Jews as "vermin." > > Over the top rhetorical shouting. I'm not sure it is. I think Damien's central point is correct. The term "meat" is a belittling term, relegating the human body to a worthless hunk of meat. This may sound find to those who want to upload and discard this worthless meat. But those who fear uploading and wish to remain in their bodies are terrified when transhumanists refer to their bodies as "meat". To them, it is the same as if we referred to them as "spare parts", "pre-amputated flesh", or "chaff" to be thrown away. This term actually implies a starting point of belittlement and an ending point of physical destruction. -- Harvey Newstrom From jef at jefallbright.net Mon May 25 17:30:17 2009 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 10:30:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> <347B3C4E5CF14D03A8C29D38BBF3C660@DFC68LF1> <631FFE53AC13496FA4A2254770E96AC2@DFC68LF1> <20090522150317.ozlx1od0dcg88ww0@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 10:08 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > (In Actor Network Theyr and After, (1999) Law, > J. and Hassard, J., Oxford: Blackwell Pub. Thanks Natasha. This is an aspect I hadn't previously encountered and which might help bridge the gap in my understanding between systems thinking and "post-structuralism." - Jef From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 25 17:35:48 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 12:35:48 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> <4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com> <3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090525122326.0226fff8@satx.rr.com> At 12:08 PM 5/25/2009 -0400, Harvey wrote: >those who fear uploading and wish to remain in their bodies are >terrified when transhumanists refer to their bodies as "meat". To >them, it is the same as if we referred to them as "spare parts", >"pre-amputated flesh", or "chaff" to be thrown away. This term >actually implies a starting point of belittlement and an ending >point of physical destruction. Indeed. But not only to those who are "terrified." Ayn Rand, for example, made it clear repeatedly that she despised those who attempt to distance or detach the mind or "soul" from the sensuous body. (This is not an appeal to authority, just to consistency from the many ExI posters who usually approve Rand's approach to life.) But, as Harvey notes, why stop at "meat"? How about "putrid slime" or "shit"? You think this is wild, gratuitous rhetoric? That kind of rhetoric has been around for a long time and, pace Lee, not only in Catholicism. Here's a Talmudic text: "Akabaya Ben Mahalalel says, 'Whence thou art come?' From a putrid drop." Pirke Abot, the Wisdom of the Fathers. Damien Broderick From natasha at natasha.cc Mon May 25 17:37:31 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 12:37:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc><347B3C4E5CF14D03A8C29D38BBF3C660@DFC68LF1><631FFE53AC13496FA4A2254770E96AC2@DFC68LF1><20090522150317.ozlx1od0dcg88ww0@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <7238AB0E4C1C4F55AF142F58E20B4331@DFC68LF1> I'm enjoying it. [theory] Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Jef Allbright Sent: Monday, May 25, 2009 12:30 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 10:08 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > (In Actor Network The[ory] and After, (1999) Law, J. and Hassard, J., > Oxford: Blackwell Pub. Thanks Natasha. This is an aspect I hadn't previously encountered and which might help bridge the gap in my understanding between systems thinking and "post-structuralism." - Jef _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From jef at jefallbright.net Mon May 25 17:46:16 2009 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 10:46:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism In-Reply-To: <7238AB0E4C1C4F55AF142F58E20B4331@DFC68LF1> References: <20090520163058.tqht1x3phwok8k4o@webmail.natasha.cc> <347B3C4E5CF14D03A8C29D38BBF3C660@DFC68LF1> <631FFE53AC13496FA4A2254770E96AC2@DFC68LF1> <20090522150317.ozlx1od0dcg88ww0@webmail.natasha.cc> <7238AB0E4C1C4F55AF142F58E20B4331@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > ?I'm enjoying it. ?[theory] I'd be more likely to enjoy it [theory] if there were a book _Critical Theory For Engineers_. Lacking that, I have to read it slowly while suspending my countless objections and general repugnance until gradually the appropriate context emerges. Not pleasant, as for example it is reading an elegantly worded scientific or technical paper. ;-) - Jef From spike66 at att.net Mon May 25 17:48:00 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 10:48:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] our next billion dollars In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090525104937.022775c0@satx.rr.com> References: <200905240333.n4O3XUgk027565@andromeda.ziaspace.com><505361B2-8D80-4431-90CE-BF887068D8A1@mac.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090525104937.022775c0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <18C935A4DD04424BA06CC9AA598C8007@spike> > Damien Broderick > Subject: Re: [ExI] Eternity: Our Next Billion Years, by Michael Hanlon > > At 08:07 AM 5/25/2009 -0700, Spike wrote: > > > >I would countersuggest we express the current insane government > >spending in terms not of dollars but rather in a working prole's > >salary. We then have not *illions but rather days, months, > years, centuries, millennia, etc. > > Barbara, with a degree in mathematics and an MBA, commented > on the original trillions post: > > > "It's still very hard for me to truly understand the concept of a > trillion dollars... Damien Broderick OK so let me run with this idea. We know that there exists an appalling portion of the proletariat who are convinced that a billion is two million and a trillion is three million. It would seem other nations with smaller fundamental units of currency would have already had to deal with this. We don't express interstellar distances in miles or even gigameters, these units being too small for such enormous scales, but rather in light-years. So let us consider the average salary of an ordinary prole, say Joe the Plumber, say fifty thousand bucks a year. But a Joe-year (and even a Joe-career) are units still too small to avoid the *illion trap, so let us consider, instead of a year, the period of time between now and the time that the Christ twins, Jesus and Hoerkheimer, walked the seas, doing the things that indolent teenage saviors do. (What would that be? Walking on puddles? Healing healthy hypochondriacs? Blowing blow? Delivering the Sermon on the Pitchers' Mound? Taking a few loaves and fishes and feeding the five? The world may never know.) OK, fifty thousand dollars times two thousand years, that makes a Joe-Jesus equal to about one hundred miilllllion dollars (cue the Dr. Evil gesture.) Before I go on, do let me invite the usual punsters to come up with a name for the Joe-Jesus unit, this 10^8 dollar sum. The christalmighty? The plumberbuttslammer? The saviorass? spike From mlatorra at gmail.com Mon May 25 18:29:40 2009 From: mlatorra at gmail.com (Michael LaTorra) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 12:29:40 -0600 Subject: [ExI] our next billion dollars In-Reply-To: <18C935A4DD04424BA06CC9AA598C8007@spike> References: <200905240333.n4O3XUgk027565@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <505361B2-8D80-4431-90CE-BF887068D8A1@mac.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090525104937.022775c0@satx.rr.com> <18C935A4DD04424BA06CC9AA598C8007@spike> Message-ID: <9ff585550905251129k23d7193fid94b83abb1ca1f36@mail.gmail.com> Another way to conceptualize these very big numbers is to use clock-time in seconds. I just plunked my calculator and came up with the following: 1 year = 31,557,600 seconds 1 billion seconds = 31.688 years (rounded) 1 trillion seconds = 31,688 years (rounded) On that basis, the average American can expect to live for a couple of billion seconds plus an additional 300 million seconds or so. But no human being has yet lived for one trillion seconds. Now there's a nice transhumanist goal: I want to live one trillion seconds! ....Or more ;) Regards, Mike LaTorra On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 11:48 AM, spike wrote: > > > Damien Broderick > > Subject: Re: [ExI] Eternity: Our Next Billion Years, by Michael Hanlon > > > > At 08:07 AM 5/25/2009 -0700, Spike wrote: > > > > > >I would countersuggest we express the current insane government > > >spending in terms not of dollars but rather in a working prole's > > >salary. We then have not *illions but rather days, months, > > years, centuries, millennia, etc. > > > > Barbara, with a degree in mathematics and an MBA, commented > > on the original trillions post: > > > > > > "It's still very hard for me to truly understand the concept of a > > trillion dollars... Damien Broderick > > > OK so let me run with this idea. We know that there exists an appalling > portion of the proletariat who are convinced that a billion is two million > and a trillion is three million. It would seem other nations with smaller > fundamental units of currency would have already had to deal with this. > > We don't express interstellar distances in miles or even gigameters, these > units being too small for such enormous scales, but rather in light-years. > So let us consider the average salary of an ordinary prole, say Joe the > Plumber, say fifty thousand bucks a year. But a Joe-year (and even a > Joe-career) are units still too small to avoid the *illion trap, so let us > consider, instead of a year, the period of time between now and the time > that the Christ twins, Jesus and Hoerkheimer, walked the seas, doing the > things that indolent teenage saviors do. (What would that be? Walking on > puddles? Healing healthy hypochondriacs? Blowing blow? Delivering the > Sermon on the Pitchers' Mound? Taking a few loaves and fishes and feeding > the five? The world may never know.) > > OK, fifty thousand dollars times two thousand years, that makes a Joe-Jesus > equal to about one hundred miilllllion dollars (cue the Dr. Evil gesture.) > Before I go on, do let me invite the usual punsters to come up with a name > for the Joe-Jesus unit, this 10^8 dollar sum. The christalmighty? The > plumberbuttslammer? The saviorass? > > 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 pharos at gmail.com Mon May 25 18:39:43 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 18:39:43 +0000 Subject: [ExI] our next billion dollars In-Reply-To: <9ff585550905251129k23d7193fid94b83abb1ca1f36@mail.gmail.com> References: <200905240333.n4O3XUgk027565@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <505361B2-8D80-4431-90CE-BF887068D8A1@mac.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090525104937.022775c0@satx.rr.com> <18C935A4DD04424BA06CC9AA598C8007@spike> <9ff585550905251129k23d7193fid94b83abb1ca1f36@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/25/09, Michael LaTorra wrote: > On that basis, the average American can expect to live for a couple of > billion seconds plus an additional 300 million seconds or so. > > But no human being has yet lived for one trillion seconds. > > Now there's a nice transhumanist goal: > I want to live one trillion seconds! > ....Or more ;) > I'd love to live one trillion seconds! But.......... who's going to pay my pension? ;) BillK From eschatoon at gmail.com Mon May 25 18:52:47 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 20:52:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> <4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com> <3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905251152q34f3704bj359fbbfc3b86d3ef@mail.gmail.com> My native language does not really make a difference between "flesh" and "meat", which is which is usually clear from the context or we add qualifiers. I know the difference in English, but I don't feel it. As I said I wish to "upload and discard this worthless meat". But of course I am all for using friendly and non-threatening language provided the meaning is still clear. So I will try to use "meat" much less, except with those who engage in anti-transhumanist hysteria. For them, I quite agree with John: "True, the word "meat" can seem like a slap in the face to some, but sometimes when a person become hysterical and stupid a shock to the system is required." On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 6:08 PM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > "Samantha Atkins" wrote, >> >> On May 23, 2009, at 2:17 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: >>> >>> My vehemence derives from my perception that this *isn't* just a ?matter >>> of "good taste" or politeness, but a derangement of values ?far deeper and >>> more corrosive. It's the same dehumanizing process ?that ends up vilifying >>> Jews as "vermin." >> >> Over the top rhetorical shouting. > > I'm not sure it is. ?I think Damien's central point is correct. ?The term > "meat" is a belittling term, relegating the human body to a worthless hunk > of meat. ?This may sound find to those who want to upload and discard this > worthless meat. ?But those who fear uploading and wish to remain in their > bodies are terrified when transhumanists refer to their bodies as "meat". To > them, it is the same as if we referred to them as "spare parts", > "pre-amputated flesh", or "chaff" to be thrown away. ?This term actually > implies a starting point of belittlement and an ending point of physical > destruction. > > -- > Harvey Newstrom > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 25 18:52:51 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 18:52:51 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009 Message-ID: The stories Fox News doesn't tell you. But none of these stories mention the Protocols of the Elders of Zion! Can they be serious? BillK From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon May 25 19:15:47 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 15:15:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat". References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com><4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com><20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc><4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com><4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com><3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com> Message-ID: <24937A87DE3A4A45A7ED6D9ADD5B7BEC@MyComputer> ""Harvey Newstrom" > The term "meat" is a belittling term Yes, it was meant to be belittling and is apparently exceeding its design specifications spectacularly. It seems to have hit a nerve. > relegating the human body to a worthless hunk of meat. The world is awash in rapturous articles singing the wonders of the human body and I'm fucking sick of it. A rare post pointing out that it's a shit factory that is virtually certain to crash in less than 10 decades and is entirely lacking in a reset or reboot button. > those who fear uploading and wish to remain > in their bodies are terrified when transhumanists > refer to their bodies as "meat". As I said before those who can't get over this irrational feeling are not just meat they are dead meat. Is it good public relations to speak like this? I don't know, I don't know much about PR. I do know that I receive no pleasure in winning an argument if I have to misrepresent my views to do so. Damien Broderick Wrote: > It's the same dehumanizing process that ends up vilifying Jews as > "vermin." Samantha Atkins Wrote: > Over the top rhetorical shouting Harvey again: >I'm not sure it is. I'd write more but I'm just swamped; I've got to order a few hundred of tons of lime for the shallow graves, gold fillings to extract from teeth, human skin to turn into lampshades, and that new gas chamber still isn't working quite right. John K Clark From artisan at halenet.com.au Mon May 25 20:07:46 2009 From: artisan at halenet.com.au (Allen) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 06:07:46 +1000 Subject: [ExI] More on Health Costs Message-ID: <2A49D1DDE41D4415BBEE1785B61714CF@CarolynAnnPC> Health Industry means jobs for people. Recession means not enough jobs. The wealth of the country depends on its import/export ratio. Therefor I, in the process of costing the Australian government some dollars at present, don't feel one bit guilty. I have always worked at one thing or another, building up my adoptive country and am now helping to privide work in radiology etc! Carol -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Mon May 25 21:36:53 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 16:36:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Dear Mother Nature (was Re: "meat" Message-ID: <200905252137.n4PLb2a8008988@andromeda.ziaspace.com> The recent discussion on Extropy-Chat about the use of the term "meat" for the human body reminded me of a piece I wrote about ten years ago [see blog link below] and read at the EXTRO 4: Biotech Futures conference in Berkeley, California). I'm thinking of including it in the book I'm working on (or possibly another book to follow right after that, focused on transhumanism). If you have any feedback on what you think works and what doesn't work as well as it might, I'd like to hear from you. http://strategicphilosophy.blogspot.com/ Thanks, Max ------------------------------------- Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com ------------------------------------- From jrd1415 at gmail.com Mon May 25 21:43:28 2009 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 14:43:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090525122326.0226fff8@satx.rr.com> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> <4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com> <3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090525122326.0226fff8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: I approve of the use of the term meat. The objections raised seem to me mountain/molehill. Where's the beef? ;-) I like "meat" for its in-your-face repudiation of mysticism, vitalism, and all the other forms of spiritually-conjured and group-think sustained goo goo ga ga religious fantasy irrationalism. The meme pool is currently so dominated by this destructive nonsense, that the adoption and vigorous promulgation of the "meat" usage is much to be desired counterpoint on the path to liberating humanity from the memetic toxicity of legacy mysticism. Mix and squeeze some star dirt and you get some animate slime. Let that percolate and you get meat. Let that take its course and you get meat-mediated consciousness, persona, and finally self-awareness. Dirt, slime, meat, persona, homo erectile. No god, no soul, no magic, no heaven, no hell, no escape. Get over it. You can't beat the meat. Actually, I should have written: "...no escape, except through science." Meat has its diversities, its virtues, and its limitations. Who'll deny there's room for improvement.? Enhance me. Best, Jeff Davis "Science works, religion doesn't." Berni Chong From jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon May 25 22:13:57 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 18:13:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat". References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com><4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com><20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc><4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com><4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com><3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090525122326.0226fff8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <9D0BEED94E1C42DB8BD51CB22A8493A5@MyComputer> "Jeff Davis" > The objections raised seem to me mountain/molehill. > Where's the beef? I like that, I like that a lot, I like it so much I intend to steal it. John K Clark From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 25 23:53:24 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 18:53:24 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "meat". In-Reply-To: <9D0BEED94E1C42DB8BD51CB22A8493A5@MyComputer> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> <4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com> <3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090525122326.0226fff8@satx.rr.com> <9D0BEED94E1C42DB8BD51CB22A8493A5@MyComputer> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090525184303.02392208@satx.rr.com> At 06:13 PM 5/25/2009 -0400, John K Clark wrote: >"Jeff Davis" > >>The objections raised seem to me mountain/molehill. >> Where's the beef? > >I like that, I like that a lot, I like it so much I intend to steal it. Yeah, yeah, ha ha. But to make the point more convincingly, shouldn't such opinions be signed: The Beef or Meat Head or The Pork Sword or, as John put it so fragrantly, Shit Factory? I've said everything I intend to on this topic. Until we meat again... Damien Broderick From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue May 26 01:44:55 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 11:14:55 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Google has incorporated Wolfram Alpha search results In-Reply-To: <1243245600.16891.6.camel@localhost> References: <4A19B1CE.6060101@lineone.net> <1243245600.16891.6.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905251844h5799b41eh1b1d7ebb08e6f402@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/25 Alejandro Dubrovsky : > On Sun, 2009-05-24 at 21:45 +0100, ben wrote: >> Alejandro Dubrovsky ?declared: >> >> ?>(Try creating a search engine that just returns Google's results without >> ?>coming to an arrangement with Google, and see how long it keeps >> ?>working). >> >> >> Er, you mean like Scroogle? >> >> (Waits for Scroogle to stop working) >> > That should not exist. ?I demand its non-existance. ?Unless, of course, > Google is letting one through as > a) a source of search terms that people consider privacy-sensitive > b) a way to avoid bad publicity if they were to stop it > c) a service to the more-privately-conscious part of the community > > (and that makes up for a quarter million searches a day!? ?That's > serious ad-money) > > For better evidence: > Try creating a search engine that just retuns Google's results AND makes > money without coming to an arrangement with Google ... > Here's another one. http://blackle.com/ I don't know if it makes any money. There are probably more. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Tue May 26 01:49:41 2009 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 21:49:41 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat". In-Reply-To: <24937A87DE3A4A45A7ED6D9ADD5B7BEC@MyComputer> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com><4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com><20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc><4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com><4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com><3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com> <24937A87DE3A4A45A7ED6D9ADD5B7BEC@MyComputer> Message-ID: <7B082BF3557B49958859DCCEF9EF6834@Catbert> "John K Clark" wrote, > As I said before those who can't get over this irrational feeling are not > just meat they are dead meat. Is it good public relations to speak like > this? I don't know, I don't know much about PR. I do know that I receive > no > pleasure in winning an argument if I have to misrepresent my views to do > so. Making people angry such that they refuse to debate further is not the same thing as winning an argument. And belittling your opponent is not the same thing as representing your own views. -- Harvey Newstrom From hkhenson at rogers.com Tue May 26 03:00:43 2009 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 20:00:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] our next billion dollars Message-ID: On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:37 PM, spike wrote: > OK so let me run with this idea. ?We know that there exists an appalling > portion of the proletariat who are convinced . . . snip 30 billion dollars is the size of the GM bailout. The numbers I get from a pro forma for a power satellite variation is one and a half GM bailouts worth of capital investment. Keith From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue May 26 03:04:14 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 12:34:14 +0930 Subject: [ExI] New number system (was Re: our next billion dollars) Message-ID: <710b78fc0905252004h27def00iea3224c0a7163830@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/26 BillK : > On 5/25/09, Michael LaTorra wrote: >> On that basis, the average American can expect to live for a couple of >> billion seconds plus an additional 300 million seconds or so. >> >> But no human being has yet lived for one trillion seconds. >> >> Now there's a nice transhumanist goal: >> I want to live one trillion seconds! >> ....Or more ;) > > I'd love to live one trillion seconds! > > But.......... who's going to pay my pension? ? ;) > > BillK Counting in seconds like that reminds me of a question a colleague asked the other day: Why do we see kilowatt hours used in electronics so much, when surely it's perverse compared to joules (or a kilojoules, megajoules, what have you) I think the answer is that we in the metric speaking world still have perverse non-metric time. Kilowatt seconds could be better spoken of in terms of joules, but kilowatt hours? The factor of 3600 gums up the works. So maybe we'd be better off with metric time? Move to seconds, decaseconds, centaseconds, kiloseconds, etc. If we revise the length of a second down, we could make it so 1 day = 100 kiloseconds. Thinking about that in more detail, I think no. It'd be great to divide time into orders of magnitude based on the same base as all the other things we measure, but I think the base is wrong. Base 10 is entirely arbitrary. It's supposed to come from the number of fingers we have, I think, and is of course enshrined in the hindu-arabic number system. But that's not a good reason to be using it. Think of the stress we go through with anything remotely computer related, which all wants to work in base 2? Now there's a great reason for binary, it's not arbitrary at all. It's impractical to use on a daily basis for people of course, but that's why computer people standardised on hexadecimal. Hexadecimal is the thing! Think of all the perversions decimal has caused. eg: Kilobyte, Kibibyte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte Binary Coded Decimal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary-coded_decimal Floating point can't really represent decimal numbers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point#Accuracy_problems It's rubbish. For the technically minded, have a think today about all the places things would simplify dramatically if only we had a number system whose base was a power of 2. So I'm gunning for standard use of Hexadecimal to replace Decimal. Along with that, we need a new Hexadecimal Metric System, including Hexadecimal Metric Time. But it's 0x0B O'Clock, lunch time. gtg. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue May 26 03:17:29 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 23:17:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat". References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com><4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com><20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc><4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com><4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com><3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com><24937A87DE3A4A45A7ED6D9ADD5B7BEC@MyComputer> <7B082BF3557B49958859DCCEF9EF6834@Catbert> Message-ID: <116FFE91DF334CB6868F43B5EE248AD8@MyComputer> "Harvey Newstrom" > Making people angry such that they refuse to debate further [.] Nobody refuses to debate because they're angry, they refuse to debate further because they're scared. Damien Broderick thespike at satx.rr.com > I've said everything I intend to on this topic. As I was saying.... John K Clark From eschatoon at gmail.com Tue May 26 03:34:37 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 05:34:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "meat" In-Reply-To: References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> <4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com> <3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090525122326.0226fff8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905252034y41a75074o37e8b1b7013f727f@mail.gmail.com> That's why I use "meat" when talking to those who engage in anti-transhumanist hysteria. The current breed of anti-transhumanist hysteria is often informed by vitalism: the belief that current flesh&blood humans are animated by some mystical end ethereal "elan vital" that science will never be able to understand and engineering will never be able to improve. Referring to current flesh&blood humans as meat is a way to reject this crap. On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 11:43 PM, Jeff Davis wrote: > I like "meat" for its in-your-face repudiation of mysticism, vitalism, > and all the other forms of spiritually-conjured and group-think > sustained goo goo ga ga religious fantasy irrationalism. -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From spike66 at att.net Tue May 26 03:44:01 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 20:44:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] our next billion dollars In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <27AB95BCDB474795831CDB1BB306DEA9@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Keith Henson > Subject: Re: [ExI] our next billion dollars > > On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:37 PM, spike wrote: > > > OK so let me run with this idea. ?We know that there exists an > > appalling portion of the proletariat who are convinced . . . > > snip > > 30 billion dollars is the size of the GM bailout. > > The numbers I get from a pro forma for a power satellite > variation is one and a half GM bailouts worth of capital investment. > > Keith Ah my optimistic good friend Keith, we cannot use the GM as an unit of money, for the appalling truth is we are not yet finished paying for that. The JoJeez unit sorta automatically scales for inflation. The cost of your proposed power satellite is now 1.5 GMb (a number which is dropping steadily as GM demands more and more funds for its bankruptcy) or about 450 JJ. spike From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue May 26 04:04:13 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 13:34:13 +0930 Subject: [ExI] "meat". In-Reply-To: <116FFE91DF334CB6868F43B5EE248AD8@MyComputer> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com> <4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com> <4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com> <3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com> <24937A87DE3A4A45A7ED6D9ADD5B7BEC@MyComputer> <7B082BF3557B49958859DCCEF9EF6834@Catbert> <116FFE91DF334CB6868F43B5EE248AD8@MyComputer> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905252104i76ccdfddqd43d0b54069371b0@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/26 John K Clark : > "Harvey Newstrom" > >> Making people angry such that they refuse to debate further [.] > > Nobody refuses to debate because they're angry, they refuse to debate > further because they're scared. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_characters_in_Dilbert#Loud_Howard -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue May 26 05:42:58 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 01:42:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Power Satellites (was:our next billion dollars) References: Message-ID: <797EE981D97D4F0A9EAB33D0B19D6D90@MyComputer> "Keith Henson" > 30 billion dollars is the size of the GM bailout. > The numbers I get from a pro forma for a power > satellite variation is one and a half GM bailouts > worth of capital investment. The Fucking International Fucking Space Fucking Station cost about 100 billion and you think you can build and launch an enormous power satellite into geosynchronous orbit for less than half that. I very much doubt there is a banker on the planet who would take your numbers seriously, not even those who were dumb enough to think investing in sub prime mortgages was a great idea. And no I haven't actually read how you came up with that dollar value nor do I intend to because with our present knowledge I cannot conceive of any way it could have the slightest value. Jotting down some equations on the back of an envelope to prove something is physically possible is one thing, figuring out what it will cost is quite another. The truth is nobody knows how much it would end up costing, we couldn't hope to come within an order of magnitude of the true figure, or two, probably three, perhaps more; all we can say is that the bill would be HUGE. John K Clark From alito at organicrobot.com Tue May 26 09:51:04 2009 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 19:51:04 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Google has incorporated Wolfram Alpha search results In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905251844h5799b41eh1b1d7ebb08e6f402@mail.gmail.com> References: <4A19B1CE.6060101@lineone.net> <1243245600.16891.6.camel@localhost> <710b78fc0905251844h5799b41eh1b1d7ebb08e6f402@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1243331464.20179.2.camel@localhost> On Tue, 2009-05-26 at 11:14 +0930, Emlyn wrote: > 2009/5/25 Alejandro Dubrovsky : > > On Sun, 2009-05-24 at 21:45 +0100, ben wrote: > >> Alejandro Dubrovsky declared: > >> > >> >(Try creating a search engine that just returns Google's results without > >> >coming to an arrangement with Google, and see how long it keeps > >> >working). > >> > >> > >> Er, you mean like Scroogle? > >> > >> (Waits for Scroogle to stop working) > >> > > That should not exist. I demand its non-existance. Unless, of course, > > Google is letting one through as > > a) a source of search terms that people consider privacy-sensitive > > b) a way to avoid bad publicity if they were to stop it > > c) a service to the more-privately-conscious part of the community > > > > (and that makes up for a quarter million searches a day!? That's > > serious ad-money) > > > > For better evidence: > > Try creating a search engine that just retuns Google's results AND makes > > money without coming to an arrangement with Google ... > > > > Here's another one. > > http://blackle.com/ > > I don't know if it makes any money. > Nah, that one's just a custom google search box, same as any google box in a site. It shows you google ads, etc. ie, it's just another frontend for google. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 26 10:11:41 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 12:11:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Google has incorporated Wolfram Alpha search results In-Reply-To: <1243331464.20179.2.camel@localhost> References: <4A19B1CE.6060101@lineone.net> <1243245600.16891.6.camel@localhost> <710b78fc0905251844h5799b41eh1b1d7ebb08e6f402@mail.gmail.com> <1243331464.20179.2.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <580930c20905260311h4e27f1acvf241b66ca564a7fc@mail.gmail.com> Am I the only one, amongst Wolfram's fans, who remains perplexed regarding what Alpha is really about and somewhat disappointed from the little which it currently offers? -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 26 11:18:08 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 13:18:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dear Mother Nature (was Re: "meat" In-Reply-To: <200905252137.n4PLb2a8008988@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905252137.n4PLb2a8008988@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905260418w47322f97l36ed008def3fd5d0@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 11:36 PM, Max More wrote: > The recent discussion on Extropy-Chat about the use of the term "meat" for > the human body reminded me of a piece I wrote about ten years ago [see blog > link below] and read at the EXTRO 4: Biotech Futures conference in Berkeley, > California). Yes, this remain a kind of a "classic" amongst Italian transhumanists... BTW, would you have something at hand on the precautionary/proactionary principles, even at a very rough stage for my "personal" use? Would you be prepared to contribute a brief essay on the subject for Divenire, the quarterly academic review of the Associazione Italiana Transumanisti in a couple of months? -- Stefano Vaj From aiguy at comcast.net Tue May 26 11:57:29 2009 From: aiguy at comcast.net (Gary Miller) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 07:57:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Google has incorporated Wolfram Alpha search results In-Reply-To: <580930c20905260311h4e27f1acvf241b66ca564a7fc@mail.gmail.com> References: <4A19B1CE.6060101@lineone.net> <1243245600.16891.6.camel@localhost><710b78fc0905251844h5799b41eh1b1d7ebb08e6f402@mail.gmail.com><1243331464.20179.2.camel@localhost> <580930c20905260311h4e27f1acvf241b66ca564a7fc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Stefano Vaj asked... > Am I the only one, amongst Wolfram's fans, who remains perplexed > regarding what Alpha is really about and somewhat disappointed from > the little which it currently offers? > No, I am like you a bit underwhelmed by the breadth of their knowledge base and their seeming incapacity to draw from existing knowledge sources for anything other than calculations. I would be very curious to know how many knowledge engineers they have devoted full time to expanding their knowledge base and at what rate their range of available queries will double and continue to double. These two data points will be critical to their success. Wikipedia did not become indispensible until it's knowledge base reached a critical mass. From max at maxmore.com Tue May 26 14:07:34 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 09:07:34 -0500 Subject: [ExI] How to survive a robot uprising Message-ID: <200905261407.n4QE7hVW002514@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Thank you, Daniel H. Wilson. ;-) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30891866/ Max From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 26 13:54:01 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 06:54:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Greenspan: rhetoric vs. reality Message-ID: <634575.68878.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/22/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > BillK wrote: >> Thanks for describing in detail the wild excesses that >> lack of regulatory enforcement led to in the financial >> industry. > > Well, I think that what Dan wrote supports the > more general contention that when government > first begins creating artificial incentives > in the economy, and introduces other distortions, > yes, the government must patch up the unintended > consequences (often moral hazards) with patchwork > regulation, which then often requires further > regulation, and so on. So it's no surprise that > deregulation of some of these patches are very > dangerous. Yes, though I hardly think the biggest problem this time around was deregulating a piece of the financial industry -- while leave the rest of the regulatory framework and government incentives (subsidies) in place. Rather, new regulations WERE enacted (e.g., Sarbannes-Oxley, which was not a tiny little bit of regulation, and the CRA) many new subsidies were also put into place (e.g., the airline bailouts) plus the Greenspan put and the tendency to bail out big players was still there (and continues now under Bernanke and Obama; in fact, it's expanded wildly with the auto bailouts). Also, the problem with regulations are myriad, but they all come down to the faith that the government can foresee the financial future -- including predicting how some might do entrepreneurship around regulations. These are, of course, unintended consequences* of regulation -- and unavoidable to boot. Now if government were able to foresee the future -- or at least do so as well as or better than markets -- then comprehensive economic planning of the fascist or state socialist kind would work and work well. Empirically, we don't see this. (And, to be sure, the current American model is along fascist lines: high economic regulation in the "national interest"** with nominal ownership of assets.) Regards, Dan * Unless it's the case that legislators and regulators are acting in concert with some entrepreneurs -- which, I think does happen. Examples include regulatory capture -- i.e., where the regulatred industry or its big players "capture" the regulatory agency. This happens in many government agencies where the standard career path is work for the government for a number of years, retire, and then go into business as a private consultant for the industry you formerly regulated. Naturally, this creates a conflict of interest -- even assuming regulation could work. Even then, there'd still be unintended consequences, as regulators and entrepreneurs of regulation (viz., entrepreneurs able to use regulations to their advantage -- which means, against everyone else's advantage) can't totally foresee all the consequences and there are perverse incentives, including the incentives for victims to organize (e.g., think of how there's a whole tax "avoision" industry in many countries). ** Which is a meaningless bit of rhetoric. There is no objective or scientific way to determine a nation's interest. All such determinations are always someone's or some group's pretending -- wittingly or not -- that her or its subjective preferences should trump everyone else's. And certainly it can be argued that the ruling elite is a parasite on a nation so it'd be the least likely to correctly determine such an interest. (Certainly, one might nod to a thinker like Gaetano Mosca -- that maybe we're stuck with ruling elites and the best that could be done is to limit them as much as possible, but this doesn't change the fact that such ruling elites are highly unlikely to know much less pursue any nation's interest. See also Roderick Long's "Can We Escape the Ruling Class?" at: http://libertariannation.org/a/f21l2.html ) From eschatoon at gmail.com Tue May 26 14:24:46 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 16:24:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dear Mother Nature (was Re: "meat" In-Reply-To: <200905252137.n4PLb2a8008988@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905252137.n4PLb2a8008988@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905260724w7e6c74f9j7bd7b469f2aa86c7@mail.gmail.com> Definitely - that article has always been one of my favorites. The quote "we will not limit our physical, intellectual, or emotional capacities by remaining purely biological organisms" is very relevant to the current "meat" discussion. On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 11:36 PM, Max More wrote: > The recent discussion on Extropy-Chat about the use of the term "meat" for > the human body reminded me of a piece I wrote about ten years ago [see blog > link below] and read at the EXTRO 4: Biotech Futures conference in Berkeley, > California). > > I'm thinking of including it in the book I'm working on (or possibly another > book to follow right after that, focused on transhumanism). If you have any > feedback on what you think works and what doesn't work as well as it might, > I'd like to hear from you. > http://strategicphilosophy.blogspot.com/ > > Thanks, > > Max > > > ------------------------------------- > Max More, Ph.D. > Strategic Philosopher > Extropy Institute Founder > www.maxmore.com > max at maxmore.com > ------------------------------------- > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 26 14:50:47 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 07:50:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] How to survive a robot uprising Message-ID: <150663.88342.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/26/09, Max More wrote: > Thank you, Daniel H. Wilson. ;-) > > http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30891866/ I listened to the audiobook version of the book a few years ago. It's okay, but makes a lot of assumptions about how robots will evolve. Throughout the book, I kept imagining an evil genius (or an AI) reading (or listening) to the same book and coming up with countermeasures. In fact, the book might have been better titled _How to Survive a Robot Uprising -- But Only If Robots Exactly Fit All the Limitations the Author Assumes_. Regards, Dan From kanzure at gmail.com Tue May 26 15:34:08 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 10:34:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [tt] A thermodynamic limit on brain size In-Reply-To: <20090526125502.GV10925@leitl.org> References: <20090526125502.GV10925@leitl.org> Message-ID: <55ad6af70905260834n2134c12bla97d61ac4c69d63a@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Eugen Leitl Date: Tue, May 26, 2009 at 7:55 AM Subject: [tt] A thermodynamic limit on brain size To: tt at postbiota.org, info at postbiota.org ----- Forwarded message from Technology Review Feed - arXiv blog ----- From: Technology Review Feed - arXiv blog Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 12:43:30 +0000 To: eugen at leitl.org Subject: the physics arXiv blog [1]the physics arXiv blog ? ? _________________________________________________________________ ? [2]A thermodynamic limit on brain size ? Posted: 25 May 2009 09:10 PM PDT ? If our brains have to be cooled like computer chips, is there a limit ? on how big they can be? ? In recent years, chip makers have conlcuded that the race to produce ? ever faster circuits is a fool's game. As the clock speed increases, ? the amount of energy lost as heat becomes too large to dissipate ? efficiently and in any case, the waste is unjustifiable. ? That raises some interesting questions about the human brain, says Jan ? Karbowski at the Sloan-Swartz Center for Theoretical Neurobiology at ? the California Institute of Technology. Karbowski points out that the ? problem of heat transfer could be a serious factor shaping brain ? evolution and so has embarked on a program to determine the ? relationship between brain temperature, its size, cerebral power ? generated and neural activity. ? The question on Karbowski's mind is whether there is any thermodynamic ? limit on brain size. And if so, does 5 kg, which Karbowski says is the ? mass of the largest mammalian brain, approach that limit? ? Karbowski points out that brain cooling is not a classic problem of ? surface-area to volume. Instead, brain cooling is more closely ? comparable to that in a combustion heat engine where a liquid coolant ? removes heat. ? "In the brain, the role of the coolant is played by the cerebral ? blood, but only in the deep region because there blood has a slightly ? lower temperature than the brain tissue," says Karbowski. ? But in the regions closer to the surface, it is the oter way round: ? brain tissue is colder than the cerebral blood which warms the brain. ? This implies that the thermodynamics of heat balance does not restrict ? the brain size. And this in turn suggests that brains could be heavier ? than 5 kg, says Karbowski. ? (And of course they do get bigger than this. The sperm whale's brain ? can be 9 kilograms). ? That leaves plenty of growing room for humans which have brains of ? only 1.5 kilograms on average. ? Ref: http://[3]arxiv.org/abs/0905.3690: Thermodynamic Constraints on ? Neural Dimensions, Firing Rates, Brain Temperature and Size ? [4][ISMAP:di] ? [5][ISMAP:di] ? [6][arXivblog?d=yIl2AUoC8zA] [7][arXivblog?d=dnMXMwOfBR0] ? [8][arXivblog?i=VADWI_KfOyA:fTIRwvwnk-w:gIN9vFwOqvQ] ? [9][arXivblog?d=7Q72WNTAKBA] ? [10][arXivblog?i=VADWI_KfOyA:fTIRwvwnk-w:V_sGLiPBpWU] ? [11][arXivblog?d=l6gmwiTKsz0] [12][arXivblog?d=qj6IDK7rITs] ? You are subscribed to email updates from [13]Technology Review Feed - ? arXiv blog ? To stop receiving these emails, you may [14]unsubscribe now. Email ? delivery powered by Google ? Inbox too full? [15](feed) [16]Subscribe to the feed version of ? Technology Review Feed - arXiv blog in a feed reader. ? If you prefer to unsubscribe via postal mail, write to: Technology ? Review Feed - arXiv blog, c/o Google, 20 W Kinzie, Chicago IL USA ? 60610 References ? Visible links ? 1. http://www.technologyreview.com/ ? 2. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/arXivblog/~3/VADWI_KfOyA/click.phdo ? 3. http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.3690 ? 4. https://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ENPO1qYc7LF9wPl1Vt4Fw_cTyC0/0/da ? 5. https://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ENPO1qYc7LF9wPl1Vt4Fw_cTyC0/1/da ? 6. http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/arXivblog?a=VADWI_KfOyA:fTIRwvwnk-w:yIl2AUoC8zA ? 7. http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/arXivblog?a=VADWI_KfOyA:fTIRwvwnk-w:dnMXMwOfBR0 ? 8. http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/arXivblog?a=VADWI_KfOyA:fTIRwvwnk-w:gIN9vFwOqvQ ? 9. http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/arXivblog?a=VADWI_KfOyA:fTIRwvwnk-w:7Q72WNTAKBA ?10. http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/arXivblog?a=VADWI_KfOyA:fTIRwvwnk-w:V_sGLiPBpWU ?11. http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/arXivblog?a=VADWI_KfOyA:fTIRwvwnk-w:l6gmwiTKsz0 ?12. http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/arXivblog?a=VADWI_KfOyA:fTIRwvwnk-w:qj6IDK7rITs ?13. http://www.technologyreview.com/ ?14. http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailunsubscribe?k=118r9-S4Z0vJg-AkQPASPmDmlGQ ?15. http://feeds2.feedburner.com/arXivblog ?16. http://feeds2.feedburner.com/arXivblog ? Hidden links: ?17. http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=fda44d2bb93560b3c0ea35c9ff0510ff&p=1 ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A ?7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE _______________________________________________ tt mailing list tt at postbiota.org http://postbiota.org/mailman/listinfo/tt -- - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From kanzure at gmail.com Tue May 26 16:02:03 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 11:02:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [Comp-neuro] NEURON Bibliography update In-Reply-To: <4A1C02EA.9050803@sbcglobal.net> References: <4A1C02EA.9050803@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <55ad6af70905260902p479c9863pa55f2e03bc36f271@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Ted Carnevale Date: Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:55 AM Subject: [Comp-neuro] NEURON Bibliography update To: Computational Neuroscience group As of May 22, 2009, the total number of scientific publications that report work done with NEURON has grown to 845. ?The complete list is visible at http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/bib/usednrn.html Please tell us if you know of a paper that should be included. --Ted _______________________________________________ Comp-neuro mailing list Comp-neuro at neuroinf.org http://www.neuroinf.org/mailman/listinfo/comp-neuro From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 26 16:42:14 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 09:42:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] More on Health Costs Message-ID: <280111.59388.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/25/09, Allen wrote: > Health Industry means jobs for people. Um, no. It could mean more, the same, or less. And these jobs could be paying more, the same, or less. There's no constant formula here and I'm uncertain what you mean exactly. My guess is you're talking about more public funding of healthcare meaning more jobs overall -- as if the same or less public funding of healthcare must be the same or less jobs overall. There seems to be no reason to believe there's a relationship here. My guess is more public spending on healthcare might mean more healthcare jobs, but less jobs in other sectors of the economy. Will this effect equalize? Probably not, but it'd be strange if it were merely a matter of directing more public spending to one sector would absolutely create more and have no offsetting countereffect elsewhere. > Recession means not enough > jobs. Actually, I think one effect of a recession -- basically, the process by which the economy tries to recoordinate after an unsustainable boom -- is unemployment as people shift from unsustainable jobs -- e.g., in the US, from finance, real estate, home construction, and related industries that were obviously not sustainable to ones that are (a priori, no way to tell exactly what these are). But the more important aspect of the recession is cleaning up malinvestments from the [unsustainable] boom. these are different from employment because the capital structure is far harder to shift around. E.g., workers in the finance, construction, etc. industries can eventually find employment elsewhere -- even if at reduced wages or after a period of retraining and the like. A lot of capital will have merely been wasted -- as in, say, the example of a machine that makes a certain type of brick that is no longer saleable. The machine might become as good as scrap and the user might have gotten it on a loan. Such capital goods might have to be merely written off -- unlike workers who will eventually find other jobs. (Of course, this depends on other factors, including government interference in the economy. When the government provides unemployment benefits and wage supports (including a mandated minimum wage or support of coercive unionism), these tend to prolong unemployment by, respectively, providing an incentive not to return to work* and not allowing wages to lower to the market level.) Also, any interference in reallocating capital or in the cleansing process will prolong the recession and might lead to a secondary unsustainable boom. This is being done now -- as is the case with most recessions -- by bailouts, lowering the prime lending rate, continued but increasing inflation [of the money supply], and more regulation and control of investment (e.g., the prohibition on short-selling last year**). > ? The wealth of the country depends on its > import/export ratio. I disagree. I'm unsure of an unambiguous way to measure wealth, but exports have to be sold and imports to be bought. Eventually, any trade has two sides, both of whom expect to benefit (or they would not trade). It's ridiculous to believe one can export one's way to prosperity or import one's way to poverty alone. Usually, something more pernicious is involved, such as inflating (or relatively inflating) money supplies or public debt. In the former case, what looks like prosperity -- more exports sell as the exporting country's money supply inflates*** more than the importing country's -- is actually a chimera because exporting entrepreneurs expect to make profits, but they don't factor in or factor in enough inflation and actually end up losing -- meaning the export end of being a subsidy to the importer AND eat up wealth in the importing country. In the latter case -- public debt -- the debt will eventually have to be repaid usually at interest meaning, all else being equal****, higher taxes or inflation in the future which will both lower the > ?Therefor I, in the process of costing the > Australian government some > dollars at present, don't feel one bit guilty. I have > always worked at one thing > or another, building up my adoptive country?and am now > helping to privide > work in radiology etc! This sounds like an example of the broken window fallacy. Yes, your use of healthcare there does send more funds into that sector, but you're forgetting the cost side of the equation. Here's the Wikipedia run down on the fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window Were this really beneficial, we should all try to use up as much healthcare as possible right now. But it's not. This doesn't come cost-free and use of people and resources for healthcare comes at the expense of not using them elsewhere. For Extropians, think of how much of this waste means less people and less resources for technological advances. Regards, Dan * I personally know people who use unemployment as a way to take a break from work -- who are actually eager for a lay off. ** In this example, prohibitions against short-selling make it much harder for asset prices to re-adjust. This is similar to other forms of price control and it tends to protect big players and established market players -- and, notably, such big players and the established insiders lobby for prohibiting short-selling to protect their market position at everyone else's expense. *** Or there's an expectation it'll inflate a lot more -- as when inflation ramps up, sooner or later, market actors come to expect it to ramp up even more. **** It's a fool's belief that things will be so much better that it's good to borrow now and spend in hopes of winning the lottery tomorrow and not having to worry about long range bad outcomes. From p0stfuturist at yahoo.com Tue May 26 17:04:07 2009 From: p0stfuturist at yahoo.com (Post Futurist) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 10:04:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] amusing headline Message-ID: <985763.36179.qm@web59907.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> 'Contraband Prison Cellphones Stir Controversy' and the all-time best headline? ?'Headless Body In Topless Bar' -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 26 18:44:02 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 11:44:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] ANT and Hayek/was Re: LIT: The Medusa Complex - A Theory of Stoned Posthumanism Message-ID: <586054.96173.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/25/09, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > Latour has an interesting essay on actor-network theory > which you might > enjoy: "On recalling ANT".? (In Actor Network Theyr > and After, (1999) Law, > J. and Hassard, J., Oxford: Blackwell Pub.) Do ANT proponents and critics attempt to incorporate or at least acknowledge the work of Hayek on spontaneous orders? Not saying Hayek's the last word on the subject, but is seems like some of this is re-inventing the Hayekian wheel. (To be sure, Hayek was influenced by his predecessors, including Adam Smith and David Hume. So, he's neither the last word or the first word on the topic.) Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 26 18:54:12 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 11:54:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Myostatin-inhibitor patron Message-ID: <459928.67015.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/25/09, Bryan Bishop wrote: > Hey all, > > I apologize for not keeping the extropians up on what I've > been up to. > One of the projects that I have been working on involves > myostatin > inhibitors. Myostatin is a negative regulator of muscle > mass in the > human body. Through the inhibition of myostatin, mice, > bovine, and > even some mutant humans (through natural recombinant > effects) > experience increased muscle mass. In myostatin knock-out > mice, > problems show up in tendon health. However, with a proper > inhibitor > dosage regiment, the mice shouldn't experience these > effects. > > As a project, the equipment required isn't outside the > range of a > well-equipped somewhat broke college student. Say, perhaps, > one who > would be willing to work on this sort of project if there > was a patron > interested in the results of such a project. Normally, you > would go > through grant bodies for science and engineering, but you > might also > be interested more in keeping in tune with the > transhumanism > community. > > I was wondering if anyone might know somebody would be > interested in > helping fund this project. I do not have a full expense > schedule at > the moment (and one could be constructed, although it would > be more > speculative than filled with certainties), but if anybody > has ever had > pet mice, you have the right idea in general in terms of > expenses. Just curious: What's your current estimate for this project? (I think it'd require more than just care and feeding of several pet mice -- a control group and a study group at least. Wouldn't there also be lab fees and the cost of the inhibitors?) Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 26 19:00:13 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 12:00:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Myostatin-inhibitor patron Message-ID: <267189.48263.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 5/25/09, BillK wrote: > Of course, there are a bunch of laws controlling animal > testing. > If you just buy some mice and start injecting them, you are > probably > breaking these laws. > > > Animal testing of treatments intended for human use are > especially > rigorous. It is not just trying to find something that > works. Testing > has to try to check for toxicity, side-effects, cancer > causing, etc. > and usually takes many years and much expense before being > authorized > for human use. > > And even after all that, there is no guarantee that because > it works > in mice it will also work in humans. Some new drugs had to > withdrawn > after human tests killed or damaged people. Chimpanzees > infected with > HIV don't get sick, for example. > And the opposite also applies. Some drugs that damage mice > are > perfectly safe in humans. > > There are many problems associated with animal testing. > (And it's not just about saving the cuddly bunnies!). Or cuddly mice! :@ However, for me ethical concerns would not be unimportant. That said, I agree that testing in non-human animals doesn't always provide useful knowledge for human animals.* I'm not sure if that follows with myostatin though. How different are mice and humans in this area? I imagine, if this is unknown, Bryan's research might shed some light and tell you whether the mouse model here would be a good match for humans. Regards, Dan * In the end, [almost?] everything is like everything else -- and, at the same time, [almost?] everything is different from everything else. From kanzure at gmail.com Tue May 26 19:51:51 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 14:51:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Myostatin-inhibitor patron In-Reply-To: <459928.67015.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <459928.67015.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70905261251n2e7743bdpe5588cb0a38ca972@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 1:54 PM, Dan wrote: > Just curious: ?What's your current estimate for this project? ?(I think it'd require more than just care and feeding of several pet mice -- a control group and a study group at least. ?Wouldn't there also be lab fees and the cost of the inhibitors?) Sorry, no current estimate. I like to cut corners when it comes to buying and building lab equipment, so estimations are hard to do. Yesterday, I was talking with a fellow who told me that this project would cost millions of dollars (I couldn't stop laughing). In the case of academic labs, you have to hire graduate students, maybe some undergrads, a post-doc or doctorate student, write lots of grants, have your accountant etc., etc., lab fees, material fees, etc. I can imagine the costs adding up very quickly in that sort of environment. So, in the design of an animal-testing experiment (which I think comes much later), there definitely would be a control group and a study group, but not only that but multiple batches. I'll need to go review my statistics to figure out where exactly I should draw the line as to how many batches or how many different critters I should be raising to get a reasonable idea, but basically I really would like to find a correlation without sidestepping the statistics. Making the inhibitors is partly the secret weapon of the whole-ordeal. In typical drug development pipelines, you might have ridiculously large batch processing facilities in factories for large-scale pharmacological synthesis. In my case, I'm not interested in that. There are a few different vectors worth exploring. One is a phenomena known as rhizosecretion, where transgenic proteins literally "weep" out from the roots of, say, Taraxacum officinale (dandelions) or into the latex (the white-y substance you see when you peel open leaves). Gardening is a very wide-spread past-time- growing these dandelions is not a problem :-). The transfection of the dandelions with the right DNA potentially involves the agrobacterium technique (among others). Agrobacterium is a bacteria that causes crown gall in trees. You might have seen trees that look like they "have cancer"- that's the effect of agrobacterium. In the soil, at the roots, agrobacterium is able to inject circular DNA into the plant cells. This DNA is what causes the "cancerous growth" that you see on the side of trees that look like they need radiation therapy :-). You can harvest agrobacterium out in the woods, isolate it through some ridiculously lengthy and tedious procedure, and transfect the agrobacterium with new DNA through a freeze-thaw process instead of the typical calcium chloride transfection protocols, or using .22-calibre DNA/gene guns, or electroporators, sonoporators, etc. etc. Then you cultivate the agrobacterium with the dandelion seeds, breed them for a few generations, and select for the individuals that have the correct DNA. This is made easier when you can code for flower color, or something- GFP is one way to do it, it's a green fluorescent protein. Anyway, I'd have to either buy or build the equipment for the freeze-thraw transfection process, the dandelion garden, the agrobacterium incubator, agrobacterium isolation tools, and of course (perhaps one of the most costly items of this all) the DNA for the myostatin inhibitor. Straight-up synthesizing it and ordering it over the web is costly. Manually pipetting the chemicals to synthesize the DNA will not work. It will take forever that way :-). Another option is to order a shorter sequence of DNA from the internet (primers) and use these with human DNA to extract the protein of interest. It turns out that the inhibitor is in the human genome. Ultimately you can think of it as just using a plant to turn on the gene for us instead of our own bodies. To be blunt, I am not a fan of lab fees. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 26 20:00:45 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 20:00:45 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Myostatin-inhibitor patron In-Reply-To: <55ad6af70905261251n2e7743bdpe5588cb0a38ca972@mail.gmail.com> References: <459928.67015.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <55ad6af70905261251n2e7743bdpe5588cb0a38ca972@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/26/09, Bryan Bishop wrote: > Sorry, no current estimate. I like to cut corners when it comes to > buying and building lab equipment, so estimations are hard to do. > Yesterday, I was talking with a fellow who told me that this project > would cost millions of dollars (I couldn't stop laughing). In the case > of academic labs, you have to hire graduate students, maybe some > undergrads, a post-doc or doctorate student, write lots of grants, > have your accountant etc., etc., lab fees, material fees, etc. I can > imagine the costs adding up very quickly in that sort of environment. > > So, in the design of an animal-testing experiment (which I think comes > much later), there definitely would be a control group and a study > group, but not only that but multiple batches. I'll need to go review > my statistics to figure out where exactly I should draw the line as to > how many batches or how many different critters I should be raising to > get a reasonable idea, but basically I really would like to find a > correlation without sidestepping the statistics. > To be blunt: If you don't have all the legally required animal testing licenses, premises inspections, animal care permits, etc. then what you are doing is torturing animals for a hobby. Tell your story to a lawyer first. BillK From painlord2k at libero.it Tue May 26 20:13:42 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 22:13:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Human Experimenting In-Reply-To: <4A171B2A.8090108@rawbw.com> References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> <4A16C8B1.6050405@libero.it> <4A171B2A.8090108@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A1C4D76.8040006@libero.it> Il 22/05/2009 23.37, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > Mirco writes >> The signer would need to put himself in a position where he [has] >> no more free will (say he lobotomizes himself). But [so long as he >> retains his] free will, he will not be able to sign away his >> freedom. > It sounds to me like your problem with this is the *scope* of the > signing, i.e., the range of conduct of the subject (the signer). For > small ranges, e.g., "I will promise to return the goods Tuesday", a > contract is okay for you, but "I will do everything you say for N > years" is not. > Have I understood correctly? I think not. The problems are many and many facet. When someone sell himself in slavery, what is selling? Is he selling his fealty and his labour? Is he selling his body? Is he selling an object or a service? My opinion is that he is selling his body, an object. Not a service. This because the slave owner have the right to kill, maim and order the slave to do anything he like. The slave is an object, like a car or a cow. The slave owner own the body of the slave and can do with it whatever is able and willing to do. Say the A agree with B to sell himself in slavery to B. B, in exchange will pay C a sum of money. B pay C and A give up the property of his body to B. Now, B is the owner of A's body, so it is responsible for whatever A body do. B could force A to do whatever B like or B could do to A whatever B like. A is a slave, so he must be treated like an object not a person. A has no more rights or duties versus B or others individuals of the society. He is no more bound to any obligation versus other people, in the same way a car or a cow have no obligations versus humans. The contracts A accepted when free end when A become a slave, because only free people can have contracts. But a slave is not people and is not free. Your example is interesting, because it is the "slavery as a service" problem: > For small ranges, e.g., "I will promise to return the goods Tuesday", > a contract is okay for you, but "I will do everything you say for N > years" is not The problem arises when both broke the contract. When A break the contract B have the right to be paid back for the damage received, but this right is not unlimited. If I don't pay a car, the seller have surely the right to repossess the car, take from my bank account a payment for the damages, he could take from me my cloths; he could seize anything I produce until I have paid back the debts. He can not force me to clean the sewers until I pay back my debts. In the cases of "I will do everything you say for N years" the thing is the same. When I broke the contract, he could collect back the money paid, he could take back other money for the damage suffered. But he can not force me to work. The slave owner, in this case, don't own the slave body, so he has not the right to do whatever he like to the body or with the body of the slave. This problem is similar to the case a prostitute and her client have when the client pay the prostitute before the service and then the prostitute refuse to perform the service she agreed upon. He could have the right to repossess the money, he has not the right to force the prostitute to perform. The main point is that the client can not claim any damage if the prostitute don't perform, as the slave owner can not claim any damage if the slave don't perform. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.40/2135 - Release Date: 05/26/09 08:53:00 From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 26 20:14:35 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 13:14:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Myostatin-inhibitor patron Message-ID: <665223.58030.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/26/09, BillK wrote: > > Sorry, no current estimate. I like to cut corners when > it comes to > >? buying and building lab equipment, so > estimations are hard to do. > >? Yesterday, I was talking with a fellow who told > me that this project > >? would cost millions of dollars (I couldn't stop > laughing). In the case > >? of academic labs, you have to hire graduate > students, maybe some > >? undergrads, a post-doc or doctorate student, > write lots of grants, > >? have your accountant etc., etc., lab fees, > material fees, etc. I can > >? imagine the costs adding up very quickly in that > sort of environment. > > > >? So, in the design of an animal-testing > experiment (which I think comes > >? much later), there definitely would be a control > group and a study > >? group, but not only that but multiple batches. > I'll need to go review > >? my statistics to figure out where exactly I > should draw the line as to > >? how many batches or how many different critters > I should be raising to > >? get a reasonable idea, but basically I really > would like to find a > >? correlation without sidestepping the > statistics. > > To be blunt: > > If you don't have all the legally required animal testing > licenses, > premises inspections, animal care permits, etc. then what > you are > doing is torturing animals for a hobby. > > Tell your story to a lawyer first. I agree that Bryan should be careful here regarding the law. But I disagree that there is any sort of clear distinction between legally approved testing and testing per se. Licenses and inspectors do not magically make something not torturing animals. All licenses and approvals mean is that the authorities have approved -- nothing more, nothing less. Regards, Dan From kanzure at gmail.com Tue May 26 20:15:29 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 15:15:29 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Myostatin-inhibitor patron In-Reply-To: References: <459928.67015.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <55ad6af70905261251n2e7743bdpe5588cb0a38ca972@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70905261315l4dd44acfq5d7b4df8342b3c8f@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 3:00 PM, BillK wrote: > If you don't have all the legally required animal testing licenses, > premises inspections, animal care permits, etc. then what you are > doing is torturing animals for a hobby. Bill, I tried to gracefully ignore your previous message. I think you're way too USA-centric. What country do you live in? Have you lived in all countries on all continents? Have you lived on all islands in the international seas? The point of this project having a patron is so that these arrangements can be made .. there is little point to going through the entire scenario before-hand without any reasonable expectation of interest from someone willing to help see it through. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 26 20:43:30 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 20:43:30 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Myostatin-inhibitor patron In-Reply-To: <55ad6af70905261315l4dd44acfq5d7b4df8342b3c8f@mail.gmail.com> References: <459928.67015.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <55ad6af70905261251n2e7743bdpe5588cb0a38ca972@mail.gmail.com> <55ad6af70905261315l4dd44acfq5d7b4df8342b3c8f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/26/09, Bryan Bishop wrote: > On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 3:00 PM, BillK wrote: > > If you don't have all the legally required animal testing licenses, > > premises inspections, animal care permits, etc. then what you are > > doing is torturing animals for a hobby. > > > Bill, I tried to gracefully ignore your previous message. I think > you're way too USA-centric. What country do you live in? Have you > lived in all countries on all continents? Have you lived on all > islands in the international seas? The point of this project having a > patron is so that these arrangements can be made .. there is little > point to going through the entire scenario before-hand without any > reasonable expectation of interest from someone willing to help see it > through. > Oh sorry. I was pointing out that such animal testing as a hobby is illegal in the USA and UK and probably most first world countries. I didn't realize you wanted to bypass all the animal testing regulations by going to a third world country. And to get somebody else to see it through and be the fall guy for any legal kickbacks. But what value do you think such research will have? 'Here, take these pills. A friend of mine fed them to some rabbits in Indonesia and they seemed to be stronger than usual'. Really??? BillK From kanzure at gmail.com Tue May 26 21:06:50 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 16:06:50 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Myostatin-inhibitor patron In-Reply-To: References: <459928.67015.qm@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <55ad6af70905261251n2e7743bdpe5588cb0a38ca972@mail.gmail.com> <55ad6af70905261315l4dd44acfq5d7b4df8342b3c8f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70905261406h7cca2c23gf48f68b40d9f1a29@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 3:43 PM, BillK wrote: > On 5/26/09, Bryan Bishop wrote: >> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 3:00 PM, BillK wrote: >> ?> If you don't have all the legally required animal testing licenses, >> ?> premises inspections, animal care permits, etc. then what you are >> ?> doing is torturing animals for a hobby. > > But what value do you think such research will have? > 'Here, take these pills. A friend of mine fed them to some rabbits in > Indonesia and they seemed to be stronger than usual'. ?Really??? That's a reasonable question. What value will all this research have? Since, clearly, it will not be eligible to become a commercial interest without a lot of lawyering that I do not want to bother considering. So, no commercial value. Not much academic value either because honestly nobody in their right mind would cite the research if it for some reason became published in an academic journal. But becoming published in a journal isn't the goal anyway, so somebody citing it or somehow using it in a formal academic manner isn't likely either, or is certainly not intended. Note, however, that repeatability is of course an important aspect of any project that I carry out. In particular, the instruction and project management system that I have been working on (the one that mimics debian's apt system but for hardware, protocols, etc.) will be tested out as to whether or not it can sufficiently represent and express (instructions to) the experiment in an efficient, repeatable manner. The point is not academic. It is not commercial. It's .. maybe, extropic? What would the result be if, say, after a handful of milligrams of rhizosecretion or latex extract (after centrifuging) are extracted and electrophoresed, and it's confirmed by SDS-PAGE or HLPC or an equivalent process that the myostatin inhibitors are actually being made? One method of confirmation includes myocyte tissue cultures. Another includes mice and adding it as a supplement to the diet (note that I am not considering gut interactions at the moment because they are extraneous to the conversation). Another method of testing might be a binding assay, but one step at a time please. Confirmation of the success of the experiment- depending on what a patron is interested in seeing through- might mean whether or not the myostatin inhibitors are produced by the plants, or whether or not the mice inflate into raging hulks and take over the world. Whether or not you're interested in this sort of success is up to you. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 26 20:57:18 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 13:57:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Myostatin-inhibitor patron Message-ID: <123080.72453.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 5/26/09, BillK wrote: > On 5/26/09, Bryan Bishop wrote: > > On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 3:00 PM, BillK wrote: > >? > If you don't have all the legally required > animal testing licenses, > >? > premises inspections, animal care permits, > etc. then what you are > >? > doing is torturing animals for a hobby. > > > > > > Bill, I tried to gracefully ignore your previous > message. I think > >? you're way too USA-centric. What country do you > live in? Have you > >? lived in all countries on all continents? Have > you lived on all > >? islands in the international seas? The point of > this project having a > >? patron is so that these arrangements can be made > .. there is little > >? point to going through the entire scenario > before-hand without any > >? reasonable expectation of interest from someone > willing to help see it > >? through. > > > > Oh sorry. I was pointing out that such animal testing as a > hobby is > illegal in the USA and UK and probably most first world > countries. > > I didn't realize you wanted to bypass all the animal > testing > regulations by going to a third world country. And to get > somebody > else to see it through and be the fall guy for any legal > kickbacks. > > But what value do you think such research will have? > 'Here, take these pills. A friend of mine fed them to some > rabbits in > Indonesia and they seemed to be stronger than usual'.? > Really??? What about the following scenario. The initial work is done someplace else -- someplace with different likely easier to work within regulations. If these tests show promise, the work is then continued in a place that _you_ currently approve of. (Of course, this still has risks, but nothing is risk free -- as I'm sure you'd agree.) Regards, Dan From benboc at lineone.net Tue May 26 22:12:52 2009 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 23:12:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Dear Mother Nature (was Re: "meat") In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A1C6964.3070302@lineone.net> Max More wrote: >The recent discussion on Extropy-Chat about the use of the term >"meat" for the human body reminded me of a piece I wrote about ten >years ago [see blog link below] and read at the EXTRO 4: Biotech >Futures conference in Berkeley, California). > >I'm thinking of including it in the book I'm working on (or possibly >another book to follow right after that, focused on transhumanism). >If you have any feedback on what you think works and what doesn't >work as well as it might, I'd like to hear from you. >http://strategicphilosophy.blogspot.com/ Max, that was exceptionally good. For me, it all works, and the term "ultrahuman" might even be better than "posthuman", because it can't be misinterpreted in the same way ("the humans are dead"). Ben Zaiboc (waits for someone to say "noooo! I don't want to be *even more human*!!" From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Tue May 26 23:25:35 2009 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 19:25:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat". In-Reply-To: <116FFE91DF334CB6868F43B5EE248AD8@MyComputer> References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com><4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com><20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc><4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com><4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com><3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com><24937A87DE3A4A45A7ED6D9ADD5B7BEC@MyComputer><7B082BF3557B49958859DCCEF9EF6834@Catbert> <116FFE91DF334CB6868F43B5EE248AD8@MyComputer> Message-ID: <1E5BFC40219E4E44AFA085AAE35B700A@Catbert> "John K Clark" wrote, > Nobody refuses to debate because they're angry, they refuse to debate > further because they're scared. You rather belittle people instead of talking calmly. And then you claim that they are the scared ones? I don't think this behavior projects the appearance you think it does. -- Harvey Newstrom From benboc at lineone.net Tue May 26 23:15:20 2009 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 00:15:20 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [POSSIBLE SPAM] Meat Hacks In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A1C7808.10002@lineone.net> Spike has given me an idea. As a result of having my arm fractured a while ago, I dreamed up a 'meat-hack' that i'd love to see: > one of the 'meat-hacks' i'd > like to make is to create a 'pop-joint', that has a kind of > pop-out connection for the tendon, set to pop just before the > breaking strain of the attached bone, with a thin coiled line > that keeps the tendon attached to it's insertion, like an > astronaut's safety line. When an accident happens that > stretches the joint past its normal range of movement, the > joint would 'pop' out, as though the tendon had snapped, your > arm (e.g.) would become unusable for the few seconds it took > for some mechanism to wind the thin line back in, pulling the > tendon with it, and back in to the pop-joint, thus > re-attaching the tendon to it's insertion point. This is just one of what i'm sure could be many such hacks to the current human body. Spike asked me to consider posting it to the list, and I thought it's likely that other people have come up with things they'd like to see. So: Any other ideas? I'm thinking in terms of reasonably simple modifications that don't involve any speculative technology (terahertz vision, chimp muscles, bird lungs, etc. - nice ideas, but we don't know how to do them yet), but well defined, achievable mods that are a step beyond what we do now (titanium hip joints, etc.), that are still grounded in proven technology. Something like the pop-joint is simple mechanics, and may be achievable given a bit of tissue engineering. A 3-d printer, some growth factors, an extra muscle or so, a tiny ratchet (a new thing for the human body, but quite possible), suitable sensors. I'm not saying this would be easy, but it's something that's not much beyond the current state of the art with medical tech. Apart from Iain M Banks' idea of a recirculating ejaculatory system, can anyone come up with any other ideas on the same general level? I think it would be good to create a list of such hacks to share amongst ourselves. Who knows, some of them might be doable fairly soon. Sub-dermal organic circuitry tattoos is my second hack. They wouldn't have to be connected to the nervous system to be useful, or even powered by the body. A clock/calculator/simple PDA that was permanently available on the inside of your arm would be very useful, i reckon, even if you had to wear a wristband with a mercury cell in it, or something similar. Ben Zaiboc From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue May 26 23:50:12 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 09:20:12 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [POSSIBLE SPAM] Meat Hacks In-Reply-To: <4A1C7808.10002@lineone.net> References: <4A1C7808.10002@lineone.net> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905261650m29b877e1x94d1b86670e7d32b@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/27 ben : > This is just one of what i'm sure could be many such hacks to the current > human body. Spike asked me to consider posting it to the list, and I > thought it's likely that other people have come up with things they'd like > to see. So: Any other ideas? I'm thinking in terms of reasonably simple > modifications that don't involve any speculative technology (terahertz > vision, chimp muscles, bird lungs, etc. - nice ideas, but we don't know how > to do them yet), but well defined, achievable mods that are a step beyond > what we do now (titanium hip joints, etc.), that are still grounded in > proven technology. I'd love a way to breathe in that bypassed my throat. Do you think it would be possible to put a one-way valve into the chest or back (air goes in but not out), with a controllable powered pump, that would allow you to inflate your lungs independent of anything above the trachea, inclusive? It'd be spectacular for singing and playing wind instruments. Might also rock for scuba, etc? You'd need some fine grained control of the pump speed. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mbb386 at main.nc.us Wed May 27 00:05:33 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 20:05:33 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [POSSIBLE SPAM] Meat Hacks In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905261650m29b877e1x94d1b86670e7d32b@mail.gmail.com> References: <4A1C7808.10002@lineone.net> <710b78fc0905261650m29b877e1x94d1b86670e7d32b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <36014.12.77.169.10.1243382733.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > > I'd love a way to breathe in that bypassed my throat. Do you think it would > be possible to put a one-way valve into the chest or back (air goes in but > not out), with a controllable powered pump, that would allow you to inflate > your lungs independent of anything above the trachea, inclusive? > A snake is able to breathe while swallowing large prey... it can move its windpipe away from the prey item throat obstruction. Regards, MB From jonkc at bellsouth.net Wed May 27 04:33:44 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 00:33:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Meat Hacks References: <4A1C7808.10002@lineone.net><710b78fc0905261650m29b877e1x94d1b86670e7d32b@mail.gmail.com> <36014.12.77.169.10.1243382733.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <51802ACBDB144F0BA365725CA401EF58@MyComputer> You should never design a system so that a small point failure can crash the entire thing; if your heart stops you're dead meat. So give each blood corpuscle its own mobility with a rotary engine connected up to something like a flagellum just like bacteria do. Then you wouldn't need a heart. John K Clark From jonkc at bellsouth.net Wed May 27 04:57:25 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 00:57:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat". References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com><4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com><20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc><4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com><4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com><3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com><24937A87DE3A4A45A7ED6D9ADD5B7BEC@MyComputer><7B082BF3557B49958859DCCEF9EF6834@Catbert><116FFE91DF334CB6868F43B5EE248AD8@MyComputer> <1E5BFC40219E4E44AFA085AAE35B700A@Catbert> Message-ID: ME: >> Nobody refuses to debate because they're >> angry, they refuse to debate further because >> they're scared. Harvey Newstrom: > You rather belittle people instead of talking > calmly. And then you claim that they are the > scared ones? Yes, that is exactly precisely what I'm claiming. You probably know of a brilliant retort to this that would really make me look foolish, but you won't post it because you're angry with me. John K Clark From emlynoregan at gmail.com Wed May 27 05:06:29 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 14:36:29 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Meat Hacks In-Reply-To: <51802ACBDB144F0BA365725CA401EF58@MyComputer> References: <4A1C7808.10002@lineone.net> <710b78fc0905261650m29b877e1x94d1b86670e7d32b@mail.gmail.com> <36014.12.77.169.10.1243382733.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <51802ACBDB144F0BA365725CA401EF58@MyComputer> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905262206q8f7efdbr363aeff89ddd17fb@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/27 John K Clark > You should never design a system so that a small point failure can crash > the > entire thing; if your heart stops you're dead meat. So give each blood > corpuscle its own mobility with a rotary engine connected up to something > like a flagellum just like bacteria do. Then you wouldn't need a heart. > > John K Clark > Wouldn't they swim in random directions? But the idea is very cool. Wait, doesn't blood also do some work with temperature stabilization, which would require flow? You might be able to attach a redundant heart, I don't know, in your leg? Could you replace the plasma with some kind of oxygenated gel like we see in The Abyss? Idk if that stuff is actually real :-) -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed May 27 16:52:59 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 09:52:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Meat Hacks Message-ID: <789904.88393.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 5/27/09, Emlyn wrote: >> You should never design a system so that a small point >> failure can crash the >> entire thing; if your heart stops you're dead meat. So >> give each blood corpuscle its own mobility with a rotary engine >> connected up to something like a flagellum just like >> bacteria do. Then you wouldn't need a heart. > > Wouldn't they swim in random directions? But the idea > is very cool. Wait, doesn't blood also do some work with > temperature stabilization, which would require flow? > > You might be able to attach a redundant heart, I don't > know, in your leg? Why just one? Why not a distributed pumping system so that there's no master pump to fail? > Could you replace the plasma with some kind of oxygenated > gel like we see in The Abyss? Idk if that stuff is actually > real :-) I've often thought about why the whole system has to rapidly decay once there's a small but critical failure. A few minutes without blood flow and it's all over. Think of an old style personal computer. The CPU fails for some reason. The HDD, etc. are still operable and one merely has to replace the CPU. The HDD, etc. don't start to rot once the CPU fails. Regards, Dan From natasha at natasha.cc Wed May 27 20:05:23 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 16:05:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] If genealogical knowledge, then ... Message-ID: <20090527160523.4d7vyzkoxwgs0sww@webmail.natasha.cc> How would you fill in the blank? If genealogical knowledge is the key tool in a search for aesthetics of existence, then __________ knowledge is the key tool in a search for aesthetics of enhanced existence. programming forecasting transhumanist ascent NBIC+ social networking ANT ... From benboc at lineone.net Wed May 27 21:51:44 2009 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 22:51:44 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Meat Hacks In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A1DB5F0.9010301@lineone.net> "John K Clark" wrote: >You should never design a system so that a small point failure can crash the >entire thing; if your heart stops you're dead meat. So give each blood >corpuscle its own mobility with a rotary engine connected up to something >like a flagellum just like bacteria do. Then you wouldn't need a heart. If you're familiar with a british tv show called "Dr. Who", you'll know that he's supposed to have two hearts. I thought that this idea could be extended, to the degree that you could have several small 'hearts' distributed all over the body. You'd need to keep the large blood vessels associated with the existing heart, I think, but the smaller pumps would act as an auxiliary system for augmented performance and as an emergency back-up. I'm thinking of something like an implanted muscular sleeve around a piece of artery/arteriole between two valves. The hardest part might be a control system designed to kick in when needed (under voluntary control, maybe), that has the necessary co-ordination between the different pumps - you wouldn't want them fighting each other! No intrinsic pacemaker cells, just an external signal to squeeze and relax. Hm, come to think of it, maybe that problem is the reason we don't see critters with more than one heart. That's an interesting problem for a systems engineer: - robust co-ordination between multiple pumps over a wide range of conditions, including different sized pumps, different flow speeds, and pump failures. Hehe, poor old Dr Who would actually be worse off with his two hearts, not better. Never thought of that before. I quite liked the idea of indepenently mobile blood cells, but can think of too many problems with the idea for it to be very practical. For one thing, the pulsing of the blood is quite likely necessary to the health of the blood vessels (and maybe the blood cells too), and may be involved in various regulatory mechanisms. The problem of ensuring they all swim in the right direction has already been mentioned, but there's also the high turnover of the cells themselves, especially erythrocytes. The rotary engines would have to be gene-engineered in, rather than made externally and injected, and that takes the idea beyond my short-term hacks concept, especially as the gene engineering would have to be done many times over for all the different types of cell (and what about the cell-fragments, like platelets and so-on?). Finally, the blood plasma has to actually move, not just the cells etc. A lot of stuff gets carried around in solution, including a significant amount of CO2. I'm not so sure about the breathing-valve/pump idea. Your diaphragm does most of the work in breathing, and monkeying with that could have some very unpleasant effects (terminal hiccoughs?). I wouldn't want to have a pump fighting with my diaphragm. Having separate in/out air ports might be interesting, but you'd have to take into account the sinuses, nasal cavities, eustachian tubes and of course the voicebox. If you were going to finish the job that evolution's started, and completely separate the oesophagus and pharynx, you'd need two mouths, one for eating and spitting, and one for speaking and breathing heavily. Might as well make that one replace the nose. Not going to win many beauty contests, that's for sure. Ben Zaiboc From wingcat at pacbell.net Wed May 27 22:20:38 2009 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 15:20:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Singularity card game Message-ID: <13585.220.qm@web81604.mail.mud.yahoo.com> A friend of mine has been making some serious inquiries about possibly doing a Singularity-themed card game, as an educational tool to help people (primarily high school students, or equivalent educational level) get a better grasp of this concept and how, in general, technology is progressing and could progress. (Target audiences include science and social teachers, as an aid to help them explain today's world, as well as anyone who's getting tired of re-explaining the Singularity and wants to be able to demonstrate why, for example, "just say no to technology" does not work.) Pursuant to this, it has been wondered whether the Extropy Institute and/or any related groups might like to market this game, assuming we find a publisher. The game will be under development until a publisher is found. That most definitely includes marketing about the game (what exactly we say the game is, potential sales venues, et al). With that disclaimer, anyone potentially interested in helping to promote this, please get in contact with me offlist. From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Wed May 27 22:12:11 2009 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 18:12:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat". In-Reply-To: References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com><4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com><20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc><4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com><4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com><3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com><24937A87DE3A4A45A7ED6D9ADD5B7BEC@MyComputer><7B082BF3557B49958859DCCEF9EF6834@Catbert><116FFE91DF334CB6868F43B5EE248AD8@MyComputer><1E5BFC40219E4E44AFA085AAE35B700A@Catbert> Message-ID: <6D8938E3698B48CB8ED35BC565EC318C@Catbert> "John K Clark" wrote, > Yes, that is exactly precisely what I'm claiming. You probably know of a > brilliant retort to this that would really make me look foolish, but you > won't post it because you're angry with me. No, you have proven that your method works. You win. -- Harvey Newstrom From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu May 28 00:00:38 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 17:00:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Singularity card game In-Reply-To: <13585.220.qm@web81604.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <13585.220.qm@web81604.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670905271700t249f140an6024228cc5b94c19@mail.gmail.com> Please look into Steve Jackson Games. The company founder, Steve Jackson, is a cryonicist. http://www.sjgames.com/ John : ) Good luck! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 28 03:07:15 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 20:07:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] More on Health Costs In-Reply-To: <280111.59388.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <280111.59388.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A1DFFE3.4060407@rawbw.com> I'd like to quote all of Dan's excellent post, but instead I should just go back myself and read the whole thing once more. And probably a certain number of other people here should too. Dan wrote: >> Health Industry means jobs for people. > > ...My guess is you're talking about more public > funding of healthcare meaning more jobs overall > -- as if the same or less public funding of > healthcare must be the same or less jobs overall. > There seems to be no reason to believe there's a > relationship here. > > My guess is more public spending on healthcare > might mean more healthcare jobs, but less jobs > in other sectors of the economy. What matters is not the number of jobs, but how much wealth is produced by jobs. Paying people to do nothing or to just fool around destroys wealth. But you summed up this whole train of thought in referencing the "Parable of the broken window": The parable describes a shopkeeper whose window is broken by a little boy. Everyone sympathizes with the man whose window was broken, but pretty soon they start to suggest that the broken window makes work for the glazier, who will then buy bread, benefiting the baker, who will then buy shoes, benefiting the cobbler, etc. Finally, the onlookers conclude that the little boy was not guilty of vandalism; instead he was a public benefactor, creating economic benefits for everyone in town. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window The key phrase is "the broken window makes work...". It sure does, but no wealth at all is created in the process. It's very similar to the way that people believe you can spend your way out of a recession. Sometimes I think that the Keynesians suppose that if we just had the right kind of magic pill that everyone could take, ---which would simply restore complete full confidence in everyone that everything is fine---all the problems associated with a recession would disappear. > Actually, I think one effect of a recession -- basically, the > process by which the economy tries to recoordinate after an > unsustainable boom -- is unemployment as people shift from > unsustainable jobs -- e.g., in the US, from finance, real estate, > home construction, and related industries that were obviously not > sustainable to ones that are (a priori, no way to tell exactly what > these are). But the more important aspect of the recession is > cleaning up malinvestments from the (unsustainable) boom. Artificially low interest rates will always create malinvestment, as should be obvious to everyone. That it isn't obvious to everyone causes my paranoid circuits to fire, and wonder just how much in the grip of financial elites are all of our habits and prejudices, and even our whole economy. It's those who are nearest the new, hot money who prosper, (the big players and insiders of your footnote), and it's everyone else whose money depreciates in value. Lee > Also, any interference in reallocating capital or in the cleansing > process will prolong the recession and might lead to a secondary > unsustainable boom. This is being done now -- as is the case with > most recessions -- by bailouts, lowering the prime lending rate, > continued but increasing inflation [of the money supply], and more > regulation and control of investment (e.g., the prohibition on > short-selling last year**). > > Regards, > > Dan > > * I personally know people who use unemployment as a way to take a break from work -- who are actually eager for a lay off. > > ** In this example, prohibitions against short-selling make it much harder for asset prices to re-adjust. This is similar to other forms of price control and it tends to protect big players and established market players -- and, notably, such big players and the established insiders lobby for prohibiting short-selling to protect their market position at everyone else's expense. From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 28 03:41:57 2009 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 20:41:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What is Meant by "Slavery"? In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> <4A16C8B1.6050405@libero.it> <4A16E2D6.9060109@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A1E0805.4080409@rawbw.com> On 5/22, Stathis wrote in the thread "Human Experimenting" > 2009/5/23 painlord2k at libero.it : > >> If I buy a car and agree to pay it tomorrow, the car become really mine >> tomorrow, after I pay for it. If I can not pay, the car will return to the >> previous owner. I could also be responsible for the incurred damages or >> costs incurred for the repossession. If and when I have the means to pay, I >> will be forced to pay. But I can not be forced to work to pay back the >> damages and the costs. I can only be forced to pay with what I have at hand >> or by seizing my possessions. Usually, the debtors will choose the redress >> they prefer (money seizure or goods repossessed). >> >> If you can be forced to work for pay past debts, you are a slave. > > It depends on the details of the contract. It could be that if you > don't pay for the car you can be sued for the full amount of the car, > or just a proportion. When people are sued and they can't pay, they > can declare bankruptcy. But bankruptcy is a legal addition to the > system that, indirectly, prevents slavery or indentured labour. It is > not an automatic part of contract law. I suppose that you are right, although I would have found it hard to disagree with Mirco's summary statement above. It's as though you've found a technicality to invalidate his claim :) Then later, in the same thread, Mirco wrote (5/26) > Il 22/05/2009 23.37, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > >>> The signer would need to put himself in a position where he [has] >>> no more free will (say he lobotomizes himself). But [so long as he >>> retains his] free will, he will not be able to sign away his >>> freedom. > >> It sounds to me like your problem with this is the *scope* of the >> signing, i.e., the range of conduct of the subject (the signer). For >> small ranges, e.g., "I will promise to return the goods Tuesday", a >> contract is okay for you, but "I will do everything you say for N >> years" is not. > >> Have I understood correctly? > > I think not. > The problems are many and many faceted. > > When someone sell himself in slavery, what is selling? > Is he selling his fealty and his labour? Is he selling his body? > Is he selling an object or a service? On the most usual reading, I think he's selling his services. Often there are laws that limit what the slave owner can do, and this was true of most of the instances in history. > My opinion is that he is selling his body, an object. Not a service. > This because the slave owner have the right to kill, maim and order the > slave to do anything he like. The slave is an object, like a car or a > cow. The slave owner own the body of the slave and can do with it > whatever is able and willing to do. This was true in some cases, but by no means all. Take modern Brazil, for an interesting current example. "In July 2007, the Brazilian government freed 1,100 laborers who were found working in horrendous conditions on a sugarcane [for ethanol production] plantation... A story by the Associated Press said that the workers were forced to work 13-hour days and that they had no choice but to pay "exorbitant prices for food and medicine..." "According to Land Pastoal, a group affiliated with Brazil's Roman Catholic Church,, about 25,000 workers in brazil are living in slavery-like conditions, most of them in the Amazon... The 2007 raid was not the first. In 2005, 1,000 workers were found living in debt slavery on a sugarcane plantation in Mato Grosso." Yes, this extends what is meant by "slavery" a bit, but I think it's typical of the way that governments usually limit what can be done to people under forced conditions. (Incidentally, it's amazing to me that the outright slavery currently practiced in Africa, and near- outright slavery in this example, elicit few objections from most people. We perhaps take it for granted that other cultures (than the developed West) are by necessity less culpable.) > Say the A agree with B to sell himself in slavery to B. B, in exchange > will pay C a sum of money. B pay C and A give up the property of his > body to B. > Now, B is the owner of A's body, so it is responsible for whatever A > body do. B could force A to do whatever B like or B could do to A > whatever B like. A is a slave, so he must be treated like an object not > a person. A has no more rights or duties versus B or others individuals > of the society. Well, you are just talking about extreme examples of slavery. > Your example is interesting, because it is the "slavery as a service" > problem: >> For small ranges, e.g., "I will promise to return the goods Tuesday", >> a contract is okay for you, but "I will do everything you say for N >> years" is not > > The problem arises when both brake the contract. > When A breaks the contract B has the right to be paid back for the > damage received, but this right is not unlimited. If I don't pay a car, > the seller have surely the right to repossess the car, take from my bank > account a payment for the damages, he could take from me my cloths; he > could seize anything I produce until I have paid back the debts. He can > not force me to clean the sewers until I pay back my debts. Yes. > In the cases of "I will do everything you say for N years" the thing is > the same. When I broke the contract, he could collect back the money > paid, he could take back other money for the damage suffered. But he can > not force me to work. The slave owner, in this case, don't own the slave > body, so he has not the right to do whatever he like to the body or with > the body of the slave. > > This problem is similar to the case a prostitute and her client have > when the client pay the prostitute before the service and then the > prostitute refuse to perform the service she agreed upon. He could have > the right to repossess the money, he has not the right to force the > prostitute to perform. The main point is that the client can not claim > any damage if the prostitute don't perform, as the slave owner can not > claim any damage if the slave don't perform. Right. Lee From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 28 03:58:41 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 13:58:41 +1000 Subject: [ExI] More on Health Costs In-Reply-To: <4A1DFFE3.4060407@rawbw.com> References: <280111.59388.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A1DFFE3.4060407@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/28 Lee Corbin : > It's very similar to the way that people believe you > can spend your way out of a recession. Sometimes I > think that the Keynesians suppose that if we just had > the right kind of magic pill that everyone could take, > ---which would simply restore complete full confidence > in everyone that everything is fine---all the problems > associated with a recession would disappear. It probably would: people would work, spend, invest, even write off debt in confidence that the future would be brighter. And if they had the right mindset, they wouldn't allow another bubble to form either. If population, natural resources and new technology are kept constant, psychology is the one thing left that contributes to the economic cycle. -- Stathis Papaioannou From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu May 28 04:37:04 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 14:07:04 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Wired: The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online Message-ID: <710b78fc0905272137y7df1eb05uec24bda0eeaa2008@mail.gmail.com> The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online by Kevin Kelly http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism?currentPage=all --- Bill Gates once derided open source advocates with the worst epithet a capitalist can muster. These folks, he said, were a "new modern-day sort of communists," a malevolent force bent on destroying the monopolistic incentive that helps support the American dream. Gates was wrong: Open source zealots are more likely to be libertarians than commie pinkos. Yet there is some truth to his allegation. The frantic global rush to connect everyone to everyone, all the time, is quietly giving rise to a revised version of socialism. Communal aspects of digital culture run deep and wide. Wikipedia is just one remarkable example of an emerging collectivism?and not just Wikipedia but wikiness at large. Ward Cunningham, who invented the first collaborative Web page in 1994, tracks nearly 150 wiki engines today, each powering myriad sites. Wetpaint, launched just three years ago, hosts more than 1 million communal efforts. Widespread adoption of the share-friendly Creative Commons alternative copyright license and the rise of ubiquitous file-sharing are two more steps in this shift. Mushrooming collaborative sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, the Hype Machine, and Twine have added weight to this great upheaval. Nearly every day another startup proudly heralds a new way to harness community action. These developments suggest a steady move toward a sort of socialism uniquely tuned for a networked world. We're not talking about your grandfather's socialism. In fact, there is a long list of past movements this new socialism is not. It is not class warfare. It is not anti-American; indeed, digital socialism may be the newest American innovation. While old-school socialism was an arm of the state, digital socialism is socialism without the state. This new brand of socialism currently operates in the realm of culture and economics, rather than government?for now. The type of communism with which Gates hoped to tar the creators of Linux was born in an era of enforced borders, centralized communications, and top-heavy industrial processes. Those constraints gave rise to a type of collective ownership that replaced the brilliant chaos of a free market with scientific five-year plans devised by an all-powerful politburo. This political operating system failed, to put it mildly. However, unlike those older strains of red-flag socialism, the new socialism runs over a borderless Internet, through a tightly integrated global economy. It is designed to heighten individual autonomy and thwart centralization. It is decentralization extreme. Instead of gathering on collective farms, we gather in collective worlds. Instead of state factories, we have desktop factories connected to virtual co-ops. Instead of sharing drill bits, picks, and shovels, we share apps, scripts, and APIs. Instead of faceless politburos, we have faceless meritocracies, where the only thing that matters is getting things done. Instead of national production, we have peer production. Instead of government rations and subsidies, we have a bounty of free goods. I recognize that the word socialism is bound to make many readers twitch. It carries tremendous cultural baggage, as do the related terms communal, communitarian, and collective. I use socialism because technically it is the best word to indicate a range of technologies that rely for their power on social interactions. Broadly, collective action is what Web sites and Net-connected apps generate when they harness input from the global audience. Of course, there's rhetorical danger in lumping so many types of organization under such an inflammatory heading. But there are no unsoiled terms available, so we might as well redeem this one. When masses of people who own the means of production work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labor without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge, it's not unreasonable to call that socialism. In the late '90s, activist, provocateur, and aging hippy John Barlow began calling this drift, somewhat tongue in cheek, "dot-communism." He defined it as a "workforce composed entirely of free agents," a decentralized gift or barter economy where there is no property and where technological architecture defines the political space. He was right on the virtual money. But there is one way in which socialism is the wrong word for what is happening: It is not an ideology. It demands no rigid creed. Rather, it is a spectrum of attitudes, techniques, and tools that promote collaboration, sharing, aggregation, coordination, ad hocracy, and a host of other newly enabled types of social cooperation. It is a design frontier and a particularly fertile space for innovation. In his 2008 book, Here Comes Everybody, media theorist Clay Shirky suggests a useful hierarchy for sorting through these new social arrangements. Groups of people start off simply sharing and then progress to cooperation, collaboration, and finally collectivism. At each step, the amount of coordination increases. A survey of the online landscape reveals ample evidence of this phenomenon. I. SHARING The online masses have an incredible willingness to share. The number of personal photos posted on Facebook and MySpace is astronomical, but it's a safe bet that the overwhelming majority of photos taken with a digital camera are shared in some fashion. Then there are status updates, map locations, half-thoughts posted online. Add to this the 6 billion videos served by YouTube each month in the US alone and the millions of fan-created stories deposited on fanfic sites. The list of sharing organizations is almost endless: Yelp for reviews, Loopt for locations, Delicious for bookmarks. Sharing is the mildest form of socialism, but it serves as the foundation for higher levels of communal engagement. II. COOPERATION When individuals work together toward a large-scale goal, it produces results that emerge at the group level. Not only have amateurs shared more than 3 billion photos on Flickr, but they have tagged them with categories, labels, and keywords. Others in the community cull the pictures into sets. The popularity of Creative Commons licensing means that communally, if not outright communistically, your picture is my picture. Anyone can use a photo, just as a communard might use the community wheelbarrow. I don't have to shoot yet another photo of the Eiffel Tower, since the community can provide a better one than I can take myself. Thousands of aggregator sites employ the same social dynamic for threefold benefit. First, the technology aids users directly, letting them tag, bookmark, rank, and archive for their own use. Second, other users benefit from an individual's tags, bookmarks, and so on. And this, in turn, often creates additional value that can come only from the group as a whole. For instance, tagged snapshots of the same scene from different angles can be assembled into a stunning 3-D rendering of the location. (Check out Microsoft's Photosynth.) In a curious way, this proposition exceeds the socialist promise of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" because it betters what you contribute and delivers more than you need. Community aggregators can unleash astonishing power. Sites like Digg and Reddit, which let users vote on the Web links they display most prominently, can steer public conversation as much as newspapers or TV networks. (Full disclosure: Reddit is owned by Wired's parent company, Cond? Nast.) Serious contributors to these sites put in far more energy than they could ever get in return, but they keep contributing in part because of the cultural power these instruments wield. A contributor's influence extends way beyond a lone vote, and the community's collective influence can be far out of proportion to the number of contributors. That is the whole point of social institutions?the sum outperforms the parts. Traditional socialism aimed to ramp up this dynamic via the state. Now, decoupled from government and hooked into the global digital matrix, this elusive force operates at a larger scale than ever before. III. COLLABORATION Organized collaboration can produce results beyond the achievements of ad hoc cooperation. Just look at any of hundreds of open source software projects, such as the Apache Web server. In these endeavors, finely tuned communal tools generate high-quality products from the coordinated work of thousands or tens of thousands of members. In contrast to casual cooperation, collaboration on large, complex projects tends to bring the participants only indirect benefits, since each member of the group interacts with only a small part of the end product. An enthusiast may spend months writing code for a subroutine when the program's full utility is several years away. In fact, the work-reward ratio is so out of kilter from a free-market perspective?the workers do immense amounts of high-market-value work without being paid?that these collaborative efforts make no sense within capitalism. Adding to the economic dissonance, we've become accustomed to enjoying the products of these collaborations free of charge. Instead of money, the peer producers who create the stuff gain credit, status, reputation, enjoyment, satisfaction, and experience. Not only is the product free, it can be copied freely and used as the basis for new products. Alternative schemes for managing intellectual property, including Creative Commons and the GNU licenses, were invented to ensure these "frees." Of course, there's nothing particularly socialistic about collaboration per se. But the tools of online collaboration support a communal style of production that shuns capitalistic investors and keeps ownership in the hands of the workers, and to some extent those of the consuming masses. IV. COLLECTIVISM While cooperation can write an encyclopedia, no one is held responsible if the community fails to reach consensus, and lack of agreement doesn't endanger the enterprise as a whole. The aim of a collective, however, is to engineer a system where self-directed peers take responsibility for critical processes and where difficult decisions, such as sorting out priorities, are decided by all participants. Throughout history, hundreds of small-scale collectivist groups have tried this operating system. The results have not been encouraging, even setting aside Jim Jones and the Manson family. Indeed, a close examination of the governing kernel of, say, Wikipedia, Linux, or OpenOffice shows that these efforts are further from the collectivist ideal than appears from the outside. While millions of writers contribute to Wikipedia, a smaller number of editors (around 1,500) are responsible for the majority of the editing. Ditto for collectives that write code. A vast army of contributions is managed by a much smaller group of coordinators. As Mitch Kapor, founding chair of the Mozilla open source code factory, observed, "Inside every working anarchy, there's an old-boy network." This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Some types of collectives benefit from hierarchy while others are hurt by it. Platforms like the Internet and Facebook, or democracy?which are intended to serve as a substrate for producing goods and delivering services?benefit from being as nonhierarchical as possible, minimizing barriers to entry and distributing rights and responsibilities equally. When powerful actors appear, the entire fabric suffers. On the other hand, organizations built to create products often need strong leaders and hierarchies arranged around time scales: One level focuses on hourly needs, another on the next five years. In the past, constructing an organization that exploited hierarchy yet maximized collectivism was nearly impossible. Now digital networking provides the necessary infrastructure. The Net empowers product-focused organizations to function collectively while keeping the hierarchy from fully taking over. The organization behind MySQL, an open source database, is not romantically nonhierarchical, but it is far more collectivist than Oracle. Likewise, Wikipedia is not a bastion of equality, but it is vastly more collectivist than the Encyclop?dia Britannica. The elite core we find at the heart of online collectives is actually a sign that stateless socialism can work on a grand scale. Most people in the West, including myself, were indoctrinated with the notion that extending the power of individuals necessarily diminishes the power of the state, and vice versa. In practice, though, most polities socialize some resources and individualize others. Most free-market economies have socialized education, and even extremely socialized societies allow some private property. Rather than viewing technological socialism as one side of a zero-sum trade-off between free-market individualism and centralized authority, it can be seen as a cultural OS that elevates both the individual and the group at once. The largely unarticulated but intuitively understood goal of communitarian technology is this: to maximize both individual autonomy and the power of people working together. Thus, digital socialism can be viewed as a third way that renders irrelevant the old debates. The notion of a third way is echoed by Yochai Benkler, author of The Wealth of Networks, who has probably thought more than anyone else about the politics of networks. "I see the emergence of social production and peer production as an alternative to both state-based and market-based closed, proprietary systems," he says, noting that these activities "can enhance creativity, productivity, and freedom." The new OS is neither the classic communism of centralized planning without private property nor the undiluted chaos of a free market. Instead, it is an emerging design space in which decentralized public coordination can solve problems and create things that neither pure communism nor pure capitalism can. Hybrid systems that blend market and nonmarket mechanisms are not new. For decades, researchers have studied the decentralized, socialized production methods of northern Italian and Basque industrial co-ops, in which employees are owners, selecting management and limiting profit distribution, independent of state control. But only since the arrival of low-cost, instantaneous, ubiquitous collaboration has it been possible to migrate the core of those ideas into diverse new realms, like writing enterprise software or reference books. The dream is to scale up this third way beyond local experiments. How large? Ohloh, a company that tracks the open source industry, lists roughly 250,000 people working on an amazing 275,000 projects. That's almost the size of General Motors' workforce. That is an awful lot of people working for free, even if they're not full-time. Imagine if all the employees of GM weren't paid yet continued to produce automobiles! So far, the biggest efforts are open source projects, and the largest of them, such as Apache, manage several hundred contributors?about the size of a village. One study estimates that 60,000 man-years of work have poured into last year's release of Fedora Linux 9, so we have proof that self-assembly and the dynamics of sharing can govern a project on the scale of a decentralized town or village. Of course, the total census of participants in online collective work is far greater. YouTube claims some 350 million monthly visitors. Nearly 10 million registered users have contributed to Wikipedia, 160,000 of whom are designated active. More than 35 million folks have posted and tagged more than 3 billion photos and videos on Flickr. Yahoo hosts 7.8 million groups focused on every possible subject. Google has 3.9 million. These numbers still fall short of a nation. They may not even cross the threshold of mainstream (although if YouTube isn't mainstream, what is?). But clearly the population that lives with socialized media is significant. The number of people who make things for free, share things for free, use things for free, belong to collective software farms, work on projects that require communal decisions, or experience the benefits of decentralized socialism has reached millions and counting. Revolutions have grown out of much smaller numbers. On the face of it, one might expect a lot of political posturing from folks who are constructing an alternative to capitalism and corporatism. But the coders, hackers, and programmers who design sharing tools don't think of themselves as revolutionaries. No new political party is being organized in conference rooms?at least, not in the US. (In Sweden, the Pirate Party formed on a platform of file-sharing. It won a paltry 0.63 percent of votes in the 2006 national election.) Indeed, the leaders of the new socialism are extremely pragmatic. A survey of 2,784 open source developers explored their motivations. The most common was "to learn and develop new skills." That's practical. One academic put it this way (paraphrasing): The major reason for working on free stuff is to improve my own damn software. Basically, overt politics is not practical enough. But the rest of us may not be politically immune to the rising tide of sharing, cooperation, collaboration, and collectivism. For the first time in years, the s-word is being uttered by TV pundits and in national newsmagazines as a force in US politics. Obviously, the trend toward nationalizing hunks of industry, instituting national health care, and jump-starting job creation with tax money isn't wholly due to techno-socialism. But the last election demonstrated the power of a decentralized, webified base with digital collaboration at its core. The more we benefit from such collaboration, the more open we become to socialist institutions in government. The coercive, soul-smashing system of North Korea is dead; the future is a hybrid that takes cues from both Wikipedia and the moderate socialism of Sweden. How close to a noncapitalistic, open source, peer-production society can this movement take us? Every time that question has been asked, the answer has been: closer than we thought. Consider craigslist. Just classified ads, right? But the site amplified the handy community swap board to reach a regional audience, enhanced it with pictures and real-time updates, and suddenly became a national treasure. Operating without state funding or control, connecting citizens directly to citizens, this mostly free marketplace achieves social good at an efficiency that would stagger any government or traditional corporation. Sure, it undermines the business model of newspapers, but at the same time it makes an indisputable case that the sharing model is a viable alternative to both profit-seeking corporations and tax-supported civic institutions. Who would have believed that poor farmers could secure $100 loans from perfect strangers on the other side of the planet?and pay them back? That is what Kiva does with peer-to-peer lending. Every public health care expert declared confidently that sharing was fine for photos, but no one would share their medical records. But PatientsLikeMe, where patients pool results of treatments to better their own care, prove that collective action can trump both doctors and privacy scares. The increasingly common habit of sharing what you're thinking (Twitter), what you're reading (StumbleUpon), your finances (Wesabe), your everything (the Web) is becoming a foundation of our culture. Doing it while collaboratively building encyclopedias, news agencies, video archives, and software in groups that span continents, with people you don't know and whose class is irrelevant?that makes political socialism seem like the logical next step. A similar thing happened with free markets over the past century. Every day, someone asked: What can't markets do? We took a long list of problems that seemed to require rational planning or paternal government and instead applied marketplace logic. In most cases, the market solution worked significantly better. Much of the prosperity in recent decades was gained by unleashing market forces on social problems. Now we're trying the same trick with collaborative social technology, applying digital socialism to a growing list of wishes?and occasionally to problems that the free market couldn't solve?to see if it works. So far, the results have been startling. At nearly every turn, the power of sharing, cooperation, collaboration, openness, free pricing, and transparency has proven to be more practical than we capitalists thought possible. Each time we try it, we find that the power of the new socialism is bigger than we imagined. We underestimate the power of our tools to reshape our minds. Did we really believe we could collaboratively build and inhabit virtual worlds all day, every day, and not have it affect our perspective? The force of online socialism is growing. Its dynamic is spreading beyond electrons?perhaps into elections. -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From spike66 at att.net Thu May 28 05:26:29 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 22:26:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Wired: The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society IsComing Online In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905272137y7df1eb05uec24bda0eeaa2008@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0905272137y7df1eb05uec24bda0eeaa2008@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <21D6CC24CFC94D1D917CEEB512CECA4A@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Emlyn > ... > > In the late '90s, activist, provocateur, and aging hippy John > Barlow began calling this drift, somewhat tongue in cheek, > "dot-communism." > He defined it as a "workforce composed entirely of free > agents," a decentralized gift or barter economy where there > is no property and where technological architecture defines > the political space... Emlyn Thanks Emlyn, this is an extremely good article, very thought provoking, affirming and dynamic optimism producing. This online dot communism is one in which we are all voluntarily contributing the fruits of our brains' labors, and everything is in the ideal form of communism: where participation is completely voluntary. It's too bad the matter world hasn't anything equivalent. A commune isn't equivalent, for outside raiders may come in and remove the fruits of the collective labor. Cuba isn't equivalent, because the participants are not free to leave. spike From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu May 28 07:21:14 2009 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 16:51:14 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Wired: The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society IsComing Online In-Reply-To: <21D6CC24CFC94D1D917CEEB512CECA4A@spike> References: <710b78fc0905272137y7df1eb05uec24bda0eeaa2008@mail.gmail.com> <21D6CC24CFC94D1D917CEEB512CECA4A@spike> Message-ID: <710b78fc0905280021l46979b33iae5ce5aaeccbe034@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/28 spike : > > >> ...On Behalf Of Emlyn >> ... >> >> In the late '90s, activist, provocateur, and aging hippy John >> Barlow began calling this drift, somewhat tongue in cheek, >> "dot-communism." >> He defined it as a "workforce composed entirely of free >> agents," a decentralized gift or barter economy where there >> is no property and where technological architecture defines >> the political space... Emlyn > > > Thanks Emlyn, this is an extremely good article, very thought provoking, > affirming and dynamic optimism producing. ?This online dot communism is one > in which we are all voluntarily contributing the fruits of our brains' > labors, and everything is in the ideal form of communism: where > participation is completely voluntary. ?It's too bad the matter world hasn't > anything equivalent. ?A commune isn't equivalent, for outside raiders may > come in and remove the fruits of the collective labor. ?Cuba isn't > equivalent, because the participants are not free to leave. > > spike Something interesting to me about this is that there is a possible dystopia where we have cheaper and cheaper production requiring less and less from individuals, but rather than making us all richer, it makes a few extraordinarily wealthy and leaves the rest worse off. Nano-santa can be that way if it can be kept closed and proprietary. Yet we see a model of how we can avoid that in the info world. Or maybe, we see that we wont have to avoid that, that it'll just turn out ok, like information trending toward free is turning out ok. I guess what I think we are seeing is how we can and do spontaneously reorganise when the rules of the game change significantly; ie: when some things become practically free. (Information is of course not free in a dollars sense; all this stuff we do online costs money and can be given an Ax + B cost equation, but it's close enough. We don't have to get to free, just close enough to reach out and touch it.) I don't think we can use the world of information as a direct analogy for the world of matter though. Information is this interesting special case, that as more and more enters the free realm, there is more to draw on to make even more things free, and the "collective" gets smarter about how it will do better what it is already doing (because we are in the information domain), so it further optimises, grows, gets smarter, rinse wash repeat. You know, on re-reading that, it feels very similar to self-improving AI takeoff. I think we're becoming the borg. For anyone who ever wondered why the borg would ever head off down the road they did, apparently it's because it is really very cool and fun. But meandering back to Spike's comment, maybe this stuff is possible in the physical world? After all, in the digital world nothing is actually free. None of the free copies in the digital world are free, they are only very cheap, cheap enough that we all agree to treat them as free. In fact, we all tend to bear the costs of our own copying, more or less (which is what; net access and cost of media like hard drives? etc). If we could bring the cost of bricks and mortar stuff to where instances, or copies, were that cheap, we just might see similar behaviours. I feel like we don't talk about this changing social organization enough on list. As Spike notes, this is the stuff of dynamic optimism, surely! It looks to me like the leading slope of the singularity, one based on intelligence augmentation and borginization. The progression must be roughly, this communal improvement loop continues and accelerates, at some point we begin as individuals to augment for closer connection to the group (always on, less latency, higher bandwidth information processing abilities, entirely new social communication channels), this all continues in a giant feedback loop until what? -- Emlyn http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting http://emlynoregan.com - main site From pharos at gmail.com Thu May 28 08:13:31 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 08:13:31 +0000 Subject: [ExI] More on Health Costs In-Reply-To: <4A1DFFE3.4060407@rawbw.com> References: <280111.59388.qm@web30101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A1DFFE3.4060407@rawbw.com> Message-ID: On 5/28/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > What matters is not the number of jobs, but how > much wealth is produced by jobs. Paying people > to do nothing or to just fool around destroys > wealth. > > Artificially low interest rates will always create malinvestment, > as should be obvious to everyone. That it isn't obvious to > everyone causes my paranoid circuits to fire, and wonder just > how much in the grip of financial elites are all of our habits > and prejudices, and even our whole economy. > > It's those who are nearest the new, hot money who prosper, > (the big players and insiders of your footnote), and it's > everyone else whose money depreciates in value. > Actually, I'm getting the feeling that this class of economic reasoning is rapidly becoming very old-fashioned. In first world countries, to a greater and greater extent, we don't really *produce* anything. Production is China's job. In the West, we all have 'make-work' jobs. Call it intelligence work if you like. Really, it's just playing with computers. All the 'investments' in the West don't *produce* anything. They are just schemes to move money around (and transfer wealth to the financial wizards). So getting all moralistic about 'production jobs' is now looking a bit silly. BillK From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 28 13:24:55 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 23:24:55 +1000 Subject: [ExI] What is Meant by "Slavery"? In-Reply-To: <4A1E0805.4080409@rawbw.com> References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> <4A16C8B1.6050405@libero.it> <4A16E2D6.9060109@libero.it> <4A1E0805.4080409@rawbw.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/28 Lee Corbin : > ? "In July 2007, the Brazilian government freed 1,100 laborers > ? who were found working in horrendous conditions on a sugarcane > ? [for ethanol production] plantation... A story by the Associated > ? Press said that the workers were forced to work 13-hour days > ? and that they had no choice but to pay "exorbitant prices for > ? food and medicine..." > > ? "According to Land Pastoal, a group affiliated with Brazil's > ? Roman Catholic Church,, about 25,000 workers in brazil are > ? living in slavery-like conditions, most of them in the Amazon... > ? The 2007 raid was not the first. In 2005, 1,000 workers were > ? found living in debt slavery on a sugarcane plantation in > ? Mato Grosso." Is this a problem in a pure free market, assuming the workers voluntarily agreed to the contract? It seems that the libertarians on the list think it is a problem but I still don't see the libertarian justification for this position. Mirco's point seems to be that debt slavery is forbidden because people can declare bankruptcy but this seems to be a government restriction on the operation of the free market, a tax on those prudent enough not to go bankrupt. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 28 13:47:15 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 23:47:15 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Wired: The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society IsComing Online In-Reply-To: <21D6CC24CFC94D1D917CEEB512CECA4A@spike> References: <710b78fc0905272137y7df1eb05uec24bda0eeaa2008@mail.gmail.com> <21D6CC24CFC94D1D917CEEB512CECA4A@spike> Message-ID: 2009/5/28 spike : > Thanks Emlyn, this is an extremely good article, very thought provoking, > affirming and dynamic optimism producing. ?This online dot communism is one > in which we are all voluntarily contributing the fruits of our brains' > labors, and everything is in the ideal form of communism: where > participation is completely voluntary. ?It's too bad the matter world hasn't > anything equivalent. ?A commune isn't equivalent, for outside raiders may > come in and remove the fruits of the collective labor. ?Cuba isn't > equivalent, because the participants are not free to leave. There's no reason intrinsic to communism why the participants have to be forced. The practical reason is that after a while, the citizens are unhappy with the system, and would tend to change it if allowed. But those charged with minding the system have a vision of its goodness and ultimate perfection, and therefore feel they have to protect it from the evil and the foolish. The same happens with right wing regimes who see citizens' inclination to change the system to make it more socialist as evil or foolish, and therefore have to be suppressed or eliminated. I guess one difference online is that no-one is in a position of real power over anyone else. -- Stathis Papaioannou From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 28 14:21:41 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 07:21:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] More on Health Costs Message-ID: <41666.19575.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 5/27/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > I'd like to quote all of Dan's > excellent post, but > instead I should just go back myself and read the > whole thing once more. And probably a certain number > of other people here should too. Thanks, Lee. All of this should be common economics knowledge -- not some arcane subject that only a few experts understand and care about. (And economics should be important because it is the science of action; we all act and any objective economics should reveal important and relevant features of action.) > Dan wrote: > > >> Health Industry means jobs for people. > > > > ...My guess is you're talking about more public > > funding of healthcare meaning more jobs overall > > -- as if the same or less public funding of > > healthcare must be the same or less jobs overall. > > There seems to be no reason to believe there's a > > relationship here. > > > > My guess is more public spending on healthcare > > might mean more healthcare jobs, but less jobs > > in other sectors of the economy. > > What matters is not the number of jobs, but how > much wealth is produced by jobs. Paying people > to do nothing or to just fool around destroys > wealth. Yes. The problem is, modern societies, the focus tends to be on job creation rather than wealth creation. Why this is might have to do with mainstream economics, with politics, with the Protestant Work Ethic, or something else. (I can offer speculations on all of these. Mainstream economics tends to focus on employment, especially since Keynes. Its theories of the business cycle see it in terms of employment and unemployment. It lacks a good theory of capital, so capital -- which Austrians rightfully (IMHO) see as central to explaining the cycle -- is treated too simply when it's treated at all. Democratic politics tends to focus on vote-getting and vote-keeping. If capital can be consumed -- lowering long run wealth potential -- to create jobs -- think of using up the seed grain to make more jobs for planters, bakers, and bread salespeople -- this can lead to a boom with immediate vote gains and future office-seekers are left to deal with the problems of the bust. The Work Ethic already tends to take a dim view of the capitalist as a non-worker and treats work as an end in itself -- as morally uplifting rather than work as a means to an end, the end being wealth or a betterment of conditions. Etc.) > But you summed up this whole train of > thought in referencing the "Parable of the broken > window": > > The parable describes a shopkeeper whose > window > is broken by a little boy. Everyone > sympathizes > with the man whose window was broken, but > pretty > soon they start to suggest that the > broken window > makes work for the glazier, who will then > buy > bread, benefiting the baker, who will > then buy > shoes, benefiting the cobbler, etc. > Finally, the > onlookers conclude that the little boy > was not > guilty of vandalism; instead he was a > public > benefactor, creating economic benefits > for everyone in town. > >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window > > The key phrase is "the broken window makes work...". > It sure does, but no wealth at all is created in the > process. Yes, this is one of the most important take aways from economic thinking. I think Extropians and people in general should learn NOT to create broken windows in hopes of making things better. (Broken windows, of course, happen regardless, but the point is NOT to make more of them.) > It's very similar to the way that people believe you > can spend your way out of a recession. Sometimes I > think that the Keynesians suppose that if we just had > the right kind of magic pill that everyone could take, > ---which would simply restore complete full confidence > in everyone that everything is fine---all the problems > associated with a recession would disappear. A reductio ad absurdum of the Keynesian view is if spending to wealth worked, why wait for a recession? Why not always keep immediately consuming our total incomes -- never saving at all? (Saving is really postponed consumption, but it's from such postponed consumption that all economic progress aside from pure luck arises.) This might seem a side issue for Extropians, but to arrive at ever greater technological progress -- Singularity or no -- someone has to postpone consumption. And the more postponement -- the more savings -- all else being equal, the lower the cost of making long-term investments and the higher the productivity -- as the same amount of labor can be combined with ever more and more complex capital structures to yield more. (Of course, the limit of how much can be saved is the need to consume to survive, but the higher the productivity of labor-capital combinations, the easier it is to survive, all else being equal, and even survive with class.) >> Actually, I think one effect of a recession -- >> basically, the >> process by which the economy tries to recoordinate >> after an >> unsustainable boom -- is unemployment as people shift >> from >> unsustainable jobs -- e.g., in the US, from finance, >> real estate, >> home construction, and related industries that were >> obviously not >> sustainable to ones that are (a priori, no way to tell >> exactly what >> these are).? But the more important aspect of the >> recession is >> cleaning up malinvestments from the (unsustainable) >> boom. > > Artificially low interest rates will always create > malinvestment, > as should be obvious to everyone. That it isn't obvious to > everyone causes my paranoid circuits to fire, and wonder > just > how much in the grip of financial elites are all of our > habits > and prejudices, and even our whole economy. Well, to be sure, that business cycles are caused by inflation is not obvious. Empirically, it's hard to trace the process as it usually takes years from the inflation -- from, e.g., artificially lowering interest rates or otherwise creating new money -- until a boom runs its course. The immediate or near term pay off from an unsustainable boom -- e.g., asset prices rise, new jobs are created, incumbents get re-elected so it looks like the policy is the right one -- also is tempting. This is no different than the temptation to party today and let tomorrow take care of itself. > It's those who are nearest the new, hot money who prosper, > (the big players and insiders of your footnote), and it's > everyone else whose money depreciates in value. Yes, this is the feature of the money system under statism -- whether with a central bank (as in the US today) or via other interferences (e.g., legal tender laws and other interventions in money and banking*): big players, including the state (which is often the biggest of big players in any economy), tend to reap benefits and the cost are distributed to those who benefit the least and are the least organized. This was exactly the process that played out up until 2008. This resulted in real shifts in wealth too -- as the inflated money first buys up real goods that only in the later stages of the inflation go up in price. (Were the effects of inflation instantaneous, there would be no big benefits to anyone and no calls to inflate.) Regards, Dan * See "An Evolutionary Theory of the State Monopoly Over Money" by David Glazer in _Money and the Nation State_ edited by Kevin Dowd and Richard H. Timberlake, Jr. (You'd think the EP crowd would jump on an article with that kind of title.:) I'm not sure how historically accurate Glazer's view is, but the basic idea is that states have a tendency to interfere in and gain monopolies over money to deny financial resources being used to overthrow their rule. (This need not be seen as a conscious policy. States that arose that were didn't try to control money might find themselves, on average, losing to those that did -- as a short run inflation could pay to keep a regime in power until a crisis or war was over. This does seem to have some historical data to back it. The pattern of inflations prior to the widespread use of paper monies and even well after and until the 20th century was usually inflationary boom during war followed by a recession after. (The problem for earlier states was raising money for war via taxes often resulted in a revolt of the taxed classes. Even after states developed the means to efficiently tax populations, taxes remained unpopular as the taxed could easily link a given policy with a tax increase. If taxes rise to pay for a war, all else being the same, a given war is that much less popular -- and the demand to end the war or limit it in other ways is much stronger.) The usual way inflations were carried out before the widespread use of paper monies was by "inflating" coins -- e.g., clipping and "sweating" coins to make more coins from the same total amount of money metals, debasing coins by alloying them with cheaper metals, and the like -- and forcing people to use the lower value new coins at par with the older full value ones.) From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 28 14:29:20 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 09:29:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Wired: The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society IsComing Online In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0905280021l46979b33iae5ce5aaeccbe034@mail.gmail.co m> References: <710b78fc0905272137y7df1eb05uec24bda0eeaa2008@mail.gmail.com> <21D6CC24CFC94D1D917CEEB512CECA4A@spike> <710b78fc0905280021l46979b33iae5ce5aaeccbe034@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090528091420.080ac7f0@satx.rr.com> At 04:51 PM 5/28/2009 +0930, Emlyn wrote: >It looks to me like the leading slope of the singularity, one >based on intelligence augmentation and borginization. The progression >must be roughly, this communal improvement loop continues and >accelerates, at some point we begin as individuals to augment for >closer connection to the group (always on, less latency, higher >bandwidth information processing abilities, entirely new social >communication channels), this all continues in a giant feedback loop >until what? This is pretty much how Vernor Vinge described the run-up to his singularity (and vanishment of humans from Earth) in his 1986 novel MAROONED IN REAL TIME: (From the chapter "Science Fiction and the Singularity" in my TRANSREALIST FICTION, 2000) Damien Broderick From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 28 14:51:48 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 07:51:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Wired: The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online Message-ID: <549407.11487.qm@web30104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 5/28/09, Emlyn wrote: > The New Socialism: Global > Collectivist Society Is Coming Online > by Kevin Kelly > http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism?currentPage=all > Jesse Walker has some perceptive comments on this here: http://www.reason.com/blog/show/133728.html Regards, Dan From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 28 14:56:25 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 00:56:25 +1000 Subject: [ExI] More on Health Costs In-Reply-To: <41666.19575.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <41666.19575.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/29 Dan : > A reductio ad absurdum of the Keynesian view is if spending to wealth worked, why wait for a recession? ?Why not always keep immediately consuming our total incomes -- never saving at all? ?(Saving is really postponed consumption, but it's from such postponed consumption that all economic progress aside from pure luck arises.) If everyone saved and no-one consumed, save for the necessities of life, why would anyone invest in anything other than the necessities of life? Interestingly, the savings ratio correlates negatively with economic growth in OECD countries: http://www.forium.co.uk/Savings-Accounts/Saving-Account-News/Savings-ratios-over-the-decades.html But this doesn't mean that maximal consumption is necessarily good. The world would have been better off if China consumed more and the US saved more. -- Stathis Papaioannou From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 28 15:39:45 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 08:39:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Psychology of markets explanations/was Re: More on Health Costs Message-ID: <247781.15063.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 5/27/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/28 Lee Corbin : >> It's very similar to the way that people believe you >> can spend your way out of a recession. Sometimes I >> think that the Keynesians suppose that if we just had >> the right kind of magic pill that everyone could >> take, >> ---which would simply restore complete full >> confidence >> in everyone that everything is fine---all the >> problems >> associated with a recession would disappear. > > It probably would: people would work, spend, invest, even > write off > debt in confidence that the future would be brighter. No it wouldn't.? They would continue to "work, spend, invest" in a manner that continues to destroy capital and wealth.? Eventually, this process would have to end -- as it likely would when a few discover that the given direction of all this activity is wrong and it's profitable to bet against it.? (This is what happened last year.? Housing prices -- surprise! surprise! -- wouldn't keep rising to infinity.)? This is, in a way, no different from a ponzi scheme and your belief that such a scheme could continue indefinitely is groundless.? Not only that, such schemes, even if they could be continued, do not create wealth: they consume it and their profitability (to the few who actually benefit) is proportional to how much and how fast they consume it. > , even write off debt Writing off debt would mean someone or some group takes a loss -- likely a large one.? Why not loan me your income and then write off the debt, go out and work some more, keeping always a confident attitude, and then make me a loan again, which you'll again write off?? Would that really be conducive to wealth-creation? > And if they had the right mindset, they wouldn't allow > another bubble to form either. > If population, natural resources and new technology are > kept constant, > psychology is the one thing left that contributes to the > economic > cycle. Psychological explanations of recession go back a long way -- and always rise up again, despite being refuted. This is like the view of gambler who's down to his last stack thinking that if he only just thinks positive, he'll win. His false optimism will likely get him deeper losses. Regards, Dan From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 28 16:09:16 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 09:09:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Valid economic reasoning should never go out of style/was Re: More on Health Costs Message-ID: <463732.37355.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 5/28/09, BillK wrote: > On 5/28/09, Lee Corbin wrote: > >>? What matters is not the number of jobs, but how >>? much wealth is produced by jobs. Paying people >>? to do nothing or to just fool around destroys >>? wealth. >> >> Artificially low interest rates will always >> create malinvestment, >> as should be obvious to everyone. That it isn't >> obvious to >> everyone causes my paranoid circuits to fire, >> and wonder just >>?how much in the grip of financial elites are all >> of our habits >>?and prejudices, and even our whole economy. >> >> It's those who are nearest the new, hot money >> who prosper, >> (the big players and insiders of your footnote), >> and it's >> everyone else whose money depreciates in value. > > Actually, I'm getting the feeling that this class of > economic > reasoning is rapidly becoming very old-fashioned. We should be looking for valid economic reasoning -- not reasoning that is either old fashioned or new fangled. Historically, the urge to sluff off valid economic reasoning is very strong. The "new economy" talk of the railroad era -- yes, they had it back then too! -- led investors, policy-makers, and the general public to believe that bad policies -- policies that failed previously and that were theoretically unsound (even given the state of theory in the 19th century) -- would somehow work out. And the boom-bust cycle resulted. > In first world countries, to a greater and greater extent, > we don't > really *produce* anything. Production is China's job. In > the West, we > all have 'make-work' jobs. Call it intelligence work if you > like. > Really, it's just playing with computers. This is actually a rather old fashioned view of wealth and of production. The valid economic way to look at wealth and production is NOT to concretely look at farms and factories and assume that only specific physical goods are wealth. Instead, wealth is what people value (if no one wanted oil, e.g., it wouldn't be considered part of wealth or useful to obtaining wealth); production is the process of transforming something into something more desirable (and this can be anything at all from the construction worker laying slabs to produce a building to the singer singing a song to produce music people want to hear). That is a very wide and all inclusive view of wealth and of production. It's not limited to who has the most farms or the bigger factories. > All the 'investments' in the West don't *produce* anything. > They are > just schemes to move money around (and transfer wealth to > the > financial wizards). See above. Again, this is a very concrete, physical view of wealth. Actually, in a truly free market, people in finance would create wealth -- just like farmers or factory workers. They would do so to the extent that they made better investments than would be had otherwise -- most likely by forecasting correctly which investments would have higher yields, thereby directing capital to where it's most urgently demanded. (Sadly, this isn't the case all the time because of inflation and regulations on investments and finance.) > So getting all moralistic about 'production jobs' is now > looking a bit silly. I don't think this has to do with being moralistic. One can completely take values out of the theory: malinvestments are malinvestments not because Lee or I don't like them, but because they lead to a production structure that doesn't sustain in the long run -- one that eventually must be corrected -- not because people are all moralistic but because eventually projects invested in fail and fail much more frequently than can be accounted for by simple, unsystematic entrepreneurial error.* That's an objective truth -- not dependent on our values or morality or misdiagnoses. Regards, Dan * Entrepreneurship is, in a sense, forecasting future supplies, demands, prices. It can and does fail. However, it usually does not systematically fail on free markets because, all else being equal, the better entrepreneurs tend to succeed and the worse ones are weeded out (NOT meaning they drop dead, but merely that they are no longer given investor money to play with and there own stack of cash gets smaller too). Systematic errors usually arise because of -- you guessed it! -- a system-wide cause. Austrian Business Cycle Theory locates this system-wide cause in monetary inflation. (Specifically, inflation messes up the price system so that the wrong signals are sent throughout the system in terms of what goods and services are most urgently demanded. Relative prices are altered in such a way that wherever the inflation goes first, price increases follow. Think of how the dot-com boom led to millions being paid for web site names and shifted workers and capital toward more web jobs that were later shown to not produce anything of value -- or a lot less than expected when the expected billions in sales for cheesegraters.com didn't materialize.) After all, in an advanced money economy, money tends to be around one half of all trades, so any inflating of the money supply has an impact -- a real and not just monetary one -- well beyond the banking sector. (Does this mean there are no other system-wide causes at work? No, though business cycles can be traced to a primary inflationary cause while other system-wide cause tend to shape the specifics of the given cycle. In other words, there are path dependencies -- or initial conditions (inflation) and boundary conditions (e.g., specific regulations that might shift malinvestments along one path as opposed to another).) From jonkc at bellsouth.net Thu May 28 16:27:16 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 12:27:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] "meat". References: <1fa8c3b90905202345j3ddb48d9r30bf7069d94227a2@mail.gmail.com><4A15D199.8040607@rawbw.com><20090521191441.2tycu6ydog4cgkko@webmail.natasha.cc><4A184338.6080800@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523134958.02314718@satx.rr.com><4A1863EC.2050601@rawbw.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090523160633.0235cd60@satx.rr.com><3FA51235-13E4-440D-BFB4-A5BEFAC8980F@mac.com><24937A87DE3A4A45A7ED6D9ADD5B7BEC@MyComputer><7B082BF3557B49958859DCCEF9EF6834@Catbert><116FFE91DF334CB6868F43B5EE248AD8@MyComputer><1E5BFC40219E4E44AFA085AAE35B700A@Catbert> <6D8938E3698B48CB8ED35BC565EC318C@Catbert> Message-ID: <34F10F4AEEF7464B8DF489BF5EC4C40A@MyComputer> "Harvey Newstrom" > You win. I know. John K Clark From kanzure at gmail.com Thu May 28 16:34:43 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 11:34:43 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [Wearables] Fw: International Symposium on Wearable Computing (ISWC'09): Last Call for Late Breaking Results, Design Contest and Video Papers (June 3rd 2009) In-Reply-To: <444291.98312.qm@web112601.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <444291.98312.qm@web112601.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70905280934h55a8b89esde653a6e856129ed@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Thad Starner Date: Thu, May 28, 2009 at 11:15 AM Subject: [Wearables] Fw: International Symposium on Wearable Computing (ISWC'09): Last Call for Late Breaking Results, Design Contest and Video Papers (June 3rd 2009) To: wearables at cc.gatech.edu > > ? LAST CALL FOR LATE BREAKING RESULTS, VIDEOS AND > DESIGN CONTEST! > > ? Sorry ?for > cross-posting, ? please ? forward ? to ? interested > ? colleagues. Thanks. > > --------------------------------------------------------------- > > ? LBR, Video Paper and Design Contest submission > deadline is: > > ? ? ? ? ? ? Wednesday June 3, > 2009 (23:59:59 PST) > ? Acceptance notification: > ? ? ? ? Wednesday June 17, 2009 > ? Camera ready final submission: > ? ? ? ?Tuesday July 7, 2009 > ? Conference date: Friday September 4 to Monday > September 7, 2009 > > > ? Submit LBR via ?PCS (https://precisionconference.com/~iswc) and > ? Videos, Design contest via (http://www.iswc.net/submission.php) > > > =============================================================== > > ? *ISWC'09 CALL FOR LATE BREAKING RESULTS* > ? *DESIGN CONTEST, VIDEO PAPERS AND DEMOS* > > ? ISWC'09, the thirteenth annual IEEE International > Symposium ?on > ? Wearable Computers, is the premier forum for > wearable computing > ? and ?issues ?related ?to > on-body and worn mobile technologies. > ? ISWC'09 ?will ?bring ?together > researchers, ?product ?vendors, > ? fashion ?designers, ?textile > manufacturers, users, and related > ? professionals to share information ?and > advances ?in ?wearable > ? computing. ?ISWC'09 ?explicitly > aims ?to ?broaden its scope to > ? include cell phones and cell phone > applications ?as ?they ?have > ? become the most successful wearable computer to > date. > > ? ISWC'09 ?invites ?to submit original work > in one or more of the > ? following formats: full papers, notes, > posters, ?late ?breaking > ? results, ?demonstrations, ?videos, > tutorials and workshops. As > ? already successfully performed in the past, > this ?year's ?ISWC > ? also ? invites ?for > a ?contest ?of ?wearable ?system > designs, > ? encouraging academic ?and > industrial ?design, ?media ?and ?art > ? authorities to submit conceptual work in a creative, > inspiring, > ? innovative and future oriented style. > > ? For ?first time, ISWC'09 will publish adjunct > proceedings which > ? will ?include ?the ?late > breaking ? results, ? video ? papers, > ? demonstrations, design papers of selected > workshops. > > > > ? *SUBMISSIONS* > > ? *Late Breaking Results* > ? This ?submission ?format aims at > presenting very topical issues > ? and late breaking application oriented results in > all areas ?of > ? wearable ?computing. ?Just > like ?regular papers, late breaking > ? results should ?present ?directing > research, ?but ?in ?a ?very > ? focused ?and ?compact ?format. > Late ?breaking ?results are not > ? understood as short papers condensed into less page > space, ?but > ? are ?intended ?to ?present > pointed ?results at a high level of > ? technicality. ?LBR ?submissions > can ?gain ?from ?an ?"extended > ? submission deadline" (June 3, 2009), and should be > formatted in > ? Springer LNCS single column format, ?not > exceeding ?8 ?pages). > ? They will undergo a scientific reviewing process > managed by the > ? LBR ?program ?committee ?under > the ?steering of the LBR chair. > ? Accepted LBRs will be presented at the conference, > and will ?be > ? published ?in ?the "Advances in Wearable > Computing" book of the > ? OCG > (adjunct ? proceedings), ? accompanying ? the ? conference > ? proceedings. > > ? *Video Papers* > ? Submissions ?(deadline June 3, 2009) > are ?invited ?to ?present > ? novel wearable computing systems, ?devices or > just designs, ?or > ? demonstrate ?innovative styles of > interaction or usability ?of > ? those systems ?- ?in a lively > format: ?as a video. ?Video clips > ? should ?be no longer than ?8 minutes and > be accompanied by a ?4 > ? page ?(or approx. ?2000 words) > written ?summary. ?Video ?paper > ? submissions should be formatted in ?Springer > LNCS single column > ? format, and not exceeding 4 pages). ?Accepted > video papers will > ? be ?published in the ?"Advances in > Wearable Computing" book ?of > ? the > OCG, ? accompanying ? the > conference ? proceedings. ? The > ? author(s) ? of ?a > video ?are ?expected ?to ?present > a ? brief > ? introduction ?at the conference, while all full > videos will ?be > ? presented ?during the ISWC'09 ?night show > - a special event ?in > ? the ?frame ?of the ?30th > anniversary ?of ?the ?Ars ?Electronica > ? Festival. ?Video ?papers ?will > be ?published ?in ?the ?ISWC'09 > ? adjunct ?proceedings, all video clips will be > presented in ?the > ? ISWC'09 Video DVD. > > ? *Reviewing Process for Papers, Notes, Posters, LBRs > and Videos* > ? ISWC'09 ?will ?adopt ?a > double-blind ?process for full papers, > ? notes and posters - as well as for late > breaking ?results ?and > ? video papers. Authors' names and their affiliations > must not be > ? revealed ?or mentioned anywhere in the > submission. Please refer > ? to ?the ?paper ?submission > link ?at ?the > conference ? website > ? (www.iswc.net). ?Questions ?about the > papers, notes and posters > ? should be directed to progchair at iswc.net, > about ?late ?breaking > ? results ?submissions ?to ?lbrchair at iswc.net, > and ?about ?video > ? papers to videochair at iswc.net. > > ? *Demos* > > Demonstrations ? provide ? an ? opportunity > to ?show ?research > ? prototypes and works-in-progress to colleagues for > comment in a > ? relaxed atmosphere. Both independent > demonstrations ?and ?those > > accompanying ? accepted ? papers ? and ? posters > are ?welcome. > ? Demonstrations will not be published ?in > the ?main ?conference > ? proceedings, ?but ?will be included in the > adjunct proceedings. > ? Accommodations (power, ?space, > etc...) ?will ?be ?limited, ?so > ? participants ?should ?plan ?to be > mobile and self-supported. To > ? apply to perform a demonstration, please submit (i) > a ?one-page > ? summary ?that describes what you plan to > demonstrate, including > ? a 200 word abstract (ii) a photo or diagram to > be ?included ?in > ? the ?demonstration handout alongside the > abstract (minimum size > ? 640 x 480 pixels), ?and ?(iii) > to ?demonstrations at iswc.net > by > ? Monday, July 13, 2009. ? Only the > abstract will be included ?in > ? the "Advances in Wearable Computing" book (adjunct > proceedings), > ? the rest of the summary will be used to judge > the ?quality ?of > ? the submission. > > ? *Design Contest* > ? Participating at the ISWC design contest is a great > opportunity > ? to ?showcase ?your ?product > or ?prototype ?to ?the ?leaders in > ? wearable computing. The design contest will > take ?place ?during > ? the ?conference banquet dinner on Sunday, > September 6, 2009 and > ? can be used to demonstrate your "smart > gadgets" ?(plan ?to ?be > ? mobile ?and ?self-supported). > Contributions are encouraged from > ? all areas of wearable computing, from technologies > to textiles, > ? from potential employers to product vendors. Please > submit your > ? proposals ? (a ?one-page > summary ?describing ?your ?prototype, > > including ? a ? 200 > word > abstract ? and ? photos/videos) ? to > ? designcontest at iswc.net > at the latest by Wednesday June 3, 2009. > ? Direct > questions ? related ? to ? the ? Design ? Contest ? to > ? designcontest at iswc.net. > > ? *Tutorials and Workshops* > ? Workshop proposals should be submitted in PDF format > via E-mail > ? to ?workshops at iswc.net > by February 1, 2009. The workshops will > ? provide ?a ?forum ?to > discuss ?topical ?aspects > of ? wearable > ? computing ?in ?focus groups. State of the > art tutorials will be > ? presented ?by > experienced, ? distinguished ? presenters. ? The > ? workshops ?and tutorials will take place on > Friday, September 4 > ? 2009 (a day before the main ?conference). > (workshops at iswc.net, > ? tutorials at iswc.net) > > ? *Doctoral Colloquium* > ? The ?purpose ?of ?the > colloquium ?is to offer PhD students and > ? candidates, interested ?in ?the > wearable/mixed ?and ?augmented > ? reality ?fields, ?an > opportunity ?to ?present ?their ideas and > ? research plans in an international, agile and > renowned audience > ? of junior and senior researchers and developers in > the wearable > ? computing field. Thesis position papers (5 pages > including ?all > ? figures ?and ?bibliography) > are ?solicited ?relating a problem > ? statement, methodological approach, > potential ?for ?innovation > > and ? expected ? contribution > to ?the ?international ?wearable > ? computing literature. Accepted submissions > will ?be ?presented > ? during ?the ?colloquium ?and > will ?be ?included in the ISWC'09 > ? adjunct proceedings. The doctoral colloquium will > take place on > ? Friday, September 4, 2009 (a day before the > main ?conference). > ? Authors will also be expected to present a poster of > their work > ? during ?demonstration ?session > at ?ISWC ?(September ?6, 2009). > ? Further information can be obtained from the > conference website > ? www.iswc.net or from doctoralcolloquium at iswc.net. > > > > > ? *PUBLISHING* > > ? The ISWC'09 Proceedings will ?be > published ?by ?IEEE ?Computer > ? Society Press as print proceedings, and on-line via > IEEE XPlore > > Digital ? Library ? (approval > pending). ?The ?ISWC'09 ?Adjunct > ? Proceedings will be published by ?the > OCG, ?an ?ISBN ?carrying > ? publisher, in the book "Advances in Wearable > Computing". > > > > ? *CONFERENCE COMMITTEE* > > ? Conference Co-Chairs > ? Alois Ferscha (University of Linz, Austria), > ? Gerfried Stocker (Ars Electronica Center Linz, > Austria) > > ? Program Committee Co-Chairs > ? Paul Lukowicz (University of Passau, Germany) > ? Kent Lyons (Intel Research, USA) > > ? Late Breaking Results Co-Chairs > ? Lucy Dunne, University of Minnesota, USA > ? Daniel Roggen, ETH Zurich, Switzerland > > ? Video Co-Chairs > ? Antonio Kr?ger, DFKI Saarbr?cken, Germany > ? Horst H?rtner, AEC Linz, Austria > > ? Design Contest Co-Chairs > ? Christa Sommerer, University of Art and Design Linz, > Austria > ? Sabine Seymour, Moondial, Austria > > ? Finance Chair > ? Gabriele Kotsis (University of Linz, Austria) > > ? Publicity Chair > ? Andreas Riener (University of Linz, Austria) > ? email: publicitychair at iswc.net > > ? *TECHNICAL PROGRAM COMITTEE* > > ? Oliver Amft (ETH Zurich, SUI) > ? Michael Beigl (TU Braunschweig, GER) > ? Leah Buechley (MIT, USA) > ? Lucy Dunne (Un. of Minnesota, USA) > ? Steve Feiner (Columbia University, USA) > ? Jennifer Healey (Intel, USA) > ? Holger Kenn (Microsoft EMIC Aachen, GER) > ? Cornel Klein (Siemens CT SE 2 Munich, GER) > ? Tom Martin (Virginia Tech, USA) > ? Kenji Mase (Nagoya University, JPN) > ? Joe Paradiso (MIT, USA) > ? Cliff Randell (University of Bristol, GBR) > ? Daniel Roggen (ETH Zurich, SUI) > ? Joachim Schaper (SAP Walldorf, GER) > ? Bernt Schiele (TU Darmstadt, GER) > ? Dan Siewiorek (Carnegie Mellon University, USA) > ? Asim Smailagic (Carnegie Mellon University, USA) > ? Mark Smith (KTH, SWE) > ? Thad Starner (Georgia Tech, USA) > ? Bruce Thomas (University of South Australia, AUS) > ? Kristof Van Laerhoven (TU Darmstadt, GER) > ? Roy Want (University of Trier, GER) > ? Jamie Ward (Lancaster University, GBR) > > > > ? *SUBMISSION DEADLINES* > > ? Video Papers > ? ? ? ? ?June ?3, 2009 > ? Late Breaking Results > ? June ?3, 2009 > ? Design Contest > ? ? ? ?June ?3, 2009 > ? Demos > ? ? ? ? ? ? ? July 13, > 2009 > > > ? ISWC'09 will be held from September 4-7, 2009 in > Linz (Austria) > ? Tutorial/Workshops September 4, Doctoral Colloquium > September 4 > ? Main Conference September 5-7, 2009 > > > ? All ?details or for subscription to the ISWC > 2009 Alert Ticker: > ? www.iswc.net or info at iswc.net > > ? Best regards, > ? A. Ferscha and G. Stocker, ISWC'09 General > Co-Chairs > _______________________________________________ Wearables mailing list Wearables at mailman.cc.gatech.edu https://mailman.cc.gatech.edu/mailman/listinfo/wearables -- - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu May 28 16:36:02 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 09:36:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Savings and wealth/was Re: More on Health Costs Message-ID: <55051.46861.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 5/28/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/29 Dan : > >> A reductio ad absurdum of the Keynesian view is >> if spending to wealth worked, why wait for a >> recession? ?Why not always keep immediately >> consuming our total incomes -- never saving at >> all? ?(Saving is really postponed consumption, >> but it's from such postponed consumption that >> all economic progress aside from pure luck arises.) > > If everyone saved and no-one consumed, save for the > necessities of > life, why would anyone invest in anything other than the > necessities of life? Well, people usually save for future consumption -- not merely to work ever harder, but live at a subsistence level. So, e.g., someone might save for a down payment on a house, for her children's college, for a new car next year, a cruise, start a business, invest in the market, retirement, or even vaguely for the proverbial rainy day. The role of entrepreneurs is to attempt to forecast what people will want to buy in the future, so, in a free economy and within the limits of entrepreneurial error, they should be more or less successful at this -- and not result in the bugbear of Keynesians, original and New, where people mindless hoard savings for no reason at all. > Interestingly, the savings ratio correlates > negatively with > economic growth in OECD countries: > > http://www.forium.co.uk/Savings-Accounts/Saving-Account-News/Savings-ratios-over-the-decades.html I think it's a bit more complicated than that. In fact, it looks to me like some of these people are acting rationally: saving more when there's a recession to not make serious errors. For instance, right now in the US prices on homes and other durables are fairly low. Should you go out and buy a house? Well, maybe, if you can afford to buy one now and wait, but what if you don't have a whole lot of money to begin with and feel you might be out of work soon? In that case, you might just save as much as possible -- rather than spend even if prices are pretty low now for these items. > But this doesn't mean that maximal consumption is > necessarily good. It's not really a matter of good or bad, but what kind of future you want. If you maximally consume, expect, on average, to not improve and to be at the mercy of whatever problems arise. Some people prefer this and that's their decision. Others prefer to save a lot perhaps to retire as early as possible or to leave a bigger share to their family or to donate or whatever. Most are probably somewhere between the two extremes; the only problem for the economy is not someone or some group dictating a level of savings and spending for all, but coordinating these preferences. Free markets would do this much better than the alternative; in fact, the lesson of recent decades should be that a command economy in this area leads to business cycles and generally doesn't work. > The world would have been better off if China consumed more > and the US saved more. It depends on what's meant. If we want all around more wealth and higher productivity, it'd probably be best if all saved more -- the Chinese, the Americans, and everyone else. I don't mean saved every last cent above the minimum needed to keep alive, but just more than in recent decades. (Believe you me, my personal preference is to save some, but spend some too: I like to have a good meal, vacation in nice places, wear nice clothes, and have various entertainments. I don't judge people as evil because they have similar or difference preferences than me.) Regards, Dan From natasha at natasha.cc Thu May 28 19:02:25 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 15:02:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [Wearables] Fw: International Symposium on Wearable Computing (ISWC'09): Last Call for Late Breaking Results, Design Contest and Video Papers (June 3rd 2009) In-Reply-To: <55ad6af70905280934h55a8b89esde653a6e856129ed@mail.gmail.com> References: <444291.98312.qm@web112601.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <55ad6af70905280934h55a8b89esde653a6e856129ed@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20090528150225.pyr9jocbccgk8ksc@webmail.natasha.cc> This is a field that not too many of us here are involved with, but I do have friends who are leading designers and I hope they will be presenting. One is Laura Beloff who is amazing. Here is her work: http://www.saunalahti.fi/~off/off/ http://www.turbulence.org/blog/archives/001957.html http://matchmaking.no/wp/2008/?p=272 Quoting Bryan Bishop : > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Thad Starner > Date: Thu, May 28, 2009 at 11:15 AM > Subject: [Wearables] Fw: International Symposium on Wearable Computing > (ISWC'09): Last Call for Late Breaking Results, Design Contest and > Video Papers (June 3rd 2009) > To: wearables at cc.gatech.edu > > > > >> >> ? LAST CALL FOR LATE BREAKING RESULTS, VIDEOS AND >> DESIGN CONTEST! >> >> ? Sorry ?for >> cross-posting, ? please ? forward ? to ? interested >> ? colleagues. Thanks. >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------- >> >> ? LBR, Video Paper and Design Contest submission >> deadline is: >> >> ? ? ? ? ? ? Wednesday June 3, >> 2009 (23:59:59 PST) >> ? Acceptance notification: >> ? ? ? ? Wednesday June 17, 2009 >> ? Camera ready final submission: >> ? ? ? ?Tuesday July 7, 2009 >> ? Conference date: Friday September 4 to Monday >> September 7, 2009 >> >> >> ? Submit LBR via ?PCS (https://precisionconference.com/~iswc) and >> ? Videos, Design contest via (http://www.iswc.net/submission.php) >> >> >> =============================================================== >> >> ? *ISWC'09 CALL FOR LATE BREAKING RESULTS* >> ? *DESIGN CONTEST, VIDEO PAPERS AND DEMOS* >> >> ? ISWC'09, the thirteenth annual IEEE International >> Symposium ?on >> ? Wearable Computers, is the premier forum for >> wearable computing >> ? and ?issues ?related ?to >> on-body and worn mobile technologies. >> ? ISWC'09 ?will ?bring ?together >> researchers, ?product ?vendors, >> ? fashion ?designers, ?textile >> manufacturers, users, and related >> ? professionals to share information ?and >> advances ?in ?wearable >> ? computing. ?ISWC'09 ?explicitly >> aims ?to ?broaden its scope to >> ? include cell phones and cell phone >> applications ?as ?they ?have >> ? become the most successful wearable computer to >> date. >> >> ? ISWC'09 ?invites ?to submit original work >> in one or more of the >> ? following formats: full papers, notes, >> posters, ?late ?breaking >> ? results, ?demonstrations, ?videos, >> tutorials and workshops. As >> ? already successfully performed in the past, >> this ?year's ?ISWC >> ? also ? invites ?for >> a ?contest ?of ?wearable ?system >> designs, >> ? encouraging academic ?and >> industrial ?design, ?media ?and ?art >> ? authorities to submit conceptual work in a creative, >> inspiring, >> ? innovative and future oriented style. >> >> ? For ?first time, ISWC'09 will publish adjunct >> proceedings which >> ? will ?include ?the ?late >> breaking ? results, ? video ? papers, >> ? demonstrations, design papers of selected >> workshops. >> >> >> >> ? *SUBMISSIONS* >> >> ? *Late Breaking Results* >> ? This ?submission ?format aims at >> presenting very topical issues >> ? and late breaking application oriented results in >> all areas ?of >> ? wearable ?computing. ?Just >> like ?regular papers, late breaking >> ? results should ?present ?directing >> research, ?but ?in ?a ?very >> ? focused ?and ?compact ?format. >> Late ?breaking ?results are not >> ? understood as short papers condensed into less page >> space, ?but >> ? are ?intended ?to ?present >> pointed ?results at a high level of >> ? technicality. ?LBR ?submissions >> can ?gain ?from ?an ?"extended >> ? submission deadline" (June 3, 2009), and should be >> formatted in >> ? Springer LNCS single column format, ?not >> exceeding ?8 ?pages). >> ? They will undergo a scientific reviewing process >> managed by the >> ? LBR ?program ?committee ?under >> the ?steering of the LBR chair. >> ? Accepted LBRs will be presented at the conference, >> and will ?be >> ? published ?in ?the "Advances in Wearable >> Computing" book of the >> ? OCG >> (adjunct ? proceedings), ? accompanying ? the ? conference >> ? proceedings. >> >> ? *Video Papers* >> ? Submissions ?(deadline June 3, 2009) >> are ?invited ?to ?present >> ? novel wearable computing systems, ?devices or >> just designs, ?or >> ? demonstrate ?innovative styles of >> interaction or usability ?of >> ? those systems ?- ?in a lively >> format: ?as a video. ?Video clips >> ? should ?be no longer than ?8 minutes and >> be accompanied by a ?4 >> ? page ?(or approx. ?2000 words) >> written ?summary. ?Video ?paper >> ? submissions should be formatted in ?Springer >> LNCS single column >> ? format, and not exceeding 4 pages). ?Accepted >> video papers will >> ? be ?published in the ?"Advances in >> Wearable Computing" book ?of >> ? the >> OCG, ? accompanying ? the >> conference ? proceedings. ? The >> ? author(s) ? of ?a >> video ?are ?expected ?to ?present >> a ? brief >> ? introduction ?at the conference, while all full >> videos will ?be >> ? presented ?during the ISWC'09 ?night show >> - a special event ?in >> ? the ?frame ?of the ?30th >> anniversary ?of ?the ?Ars ?Electronica >> ? Festival. ?Video ?papers ?will >> be ?published ?in ?the ?ISWC'09 >> ? adjunct ?proceedings, all video clips will be >> presented in ?the >> ? ISWC'09 Video DVD. >> >> ? *Reviewing Process for Papers, Notes, Posters, LBRs >> and Videos* >> ? ISWC'09 ?will ?adopt ?a >> double-blind ?process for full papers, >> ? notes and posters - as well as for late >> breaking ?results ?and >> ? video papers. Authors' names and their affiliations >> must not be >> ? revealed ?or mentioned anywhere in the >> submission. Please refer >> ? to ?the ?paper ?submission >> link ?at ?the >> conference ? website >> ? (www.iswc.net). ?Questions ?about the >> papers, notes and posters >> ? should be directed to progchair at iswc.net, >> about ?late ?breaking >> ? results ?submissions ?to ?lbrchair at iswc.net, >> and ?about ?video >> ? papers to videochair at iswc.net. >> >> ? *Demos* >> >> Demonstrations ? provide ? an ? opportunity >> to ?show ?research >> ? prototypes and works-in-progress to colleagues for >> comment in a >> ? relaxed atmosphere. Both independent >> demonstrations ?and ?those >> >> accompanying ? accepted ? papers ? and ? posters >> are ?welcome. >> ? Demonstrations will not be published ?in >> the ?main ?conference >> ? proceedings, ?but ?will be included in the >> adjunct proceedings. >> ? Accommodations (power, ?space, >> etc...) ?will ?be ?limited, ?so >> ? participants ?should ?plan ?to be >> mobile and self-supported. To >> ? apply to perform a demonstration, please submit (i) >> a ?one-page >> ? summary ?that describes what you plan to >> demonstrate, including >> ? a 200 word abstract (ii) a photo or diagram to >> be ?included ?in >> ? the ?demonstration handout alongside the >> abstract (minimum size >> ? 640 x 480 pixels), ?and ?(iii) >> to ?demonstrations at iswc.net >> by >> ? Monday, July 13, 2009. ? Only the >> abstract will be included ?in >> ? the "Advances in Wearable Computing" book (adjunct >> proceedings), >> ? the rest of the summary will be used to judge >> the ?quality ?of >> ? the submission. >> >> ? *Design Contest* >> ? Participating at the ISWC design contest is a great >> opportunity >> ? to ?showcase ?your ?product >> or ?prototype ?to ?the ?leaders in >> ? wearable computing. The design contest will >> take ?place ?during >> ? the ?conference banquet dinner on Sunday, >> September 6, 2009 and >> ? can be used to demonstrate your "smart >> gadgets" ?(plan ?to ?be >> ? mobile ?and ?self-supported). >> Contributions are encouraged from >> ? all areas of wearable computing, from technologies >> to textiles, >> ? from potential employers to product vendors. Please >> submit your >> ? proposals ? (a ?one-page >> summary ?describing ?your ?prototype, >> >> including ? a ? 200 >> word >> abstract ? and ? photos/videos) ? to >> ? designcontest at iswc.net >> at the latest by Wednesday June 3, 2009. >> ? Direct >> questions ? related ? to ? the ? Design ? Contest ? to >> ? designcontest at iswc.net. >> >> ? *Tutorials and Workshops* >> ? Workshop proposals should be submitted in PDF format >> via E-mail >> ? to ?workshops at iswc.net >> by February 1, 2009. The workshops will >> ? provide ?a ?forum ?to >> discuss ?topical ?aspects >> of ? wearable >> ? computing ?in ?focus groups. State of the >> art tutorials will be >> ? presented ?by >> experienced, ? distinguished ? presenters. ? The >> ? workshops ?and tutorials will take place on >> Friday, September 4 >> ? 2009 (a day before the main ?conference). >> (workshops at iswc.net, >> ? tutorials at iswc.net) >> >> ? *Doctoral Colloquium* >> ? The ?purpose ?of ?the >> colloquium ?is to offer PhD students and >> ? candidates, interested ?in ?the >> wearable/mixed ?and ?augmented >> ? reality ?fields, ?an >> opportunity ?to ?present ?their ideas and >> ? research plans in an international, agile and >> renowned audience >> ? of junior and senior researchers and developers in >> the wearable >> ? computing field. Thesis position papers (5 pages >> including ?all >> ? figures ?and ?bibliography) >> are ?solicited ?relating a problem >> ? statement, methodological approach, >> potential ?for ?innovation >> >> and ? expected ? contribution >> to ?the ?international ?wearable >> ? computing literature. Accepted submissions >> will ?be ?presented >> ? during ?the ?colloquium ?and >> will ?be ?included in the ISWC'09 >> ? adjunct proceedings. The doctoral colloquium will >> take place on >> ? Friday, September 4, 2009 (a day before the >> main ?conference). >> ? Authors will also be expected to present a poster of >> their work >> ? during ?demonstration ?session >> at ?ISWC ?(September ?6, 2009). >> ? Further information can be obtained from the >> conference website >> ? www.iswc.net or from doctoralcolloquium at iswc.net. >> >> >> >> >> ? *PUBLISHING* >> >> ? The ISWC'09 Proceedings will ?be >> published ?by ?IEEE ?Computer >> ? Society Press as print proceedings, and on-line via >> IEEE XPlore >> >> Digital ? Library ? (approval >> pending). ?The ?ISWC'09 ?Adjunct >> ? Proceedings will be published by ?the >> OCG, ?an ?ISBN ?carrying >> ? publisher, in the book "Advances in Wearable >> Computing". >> >> >> >> ? *CONFERENCE COMMITTEE* >> >> ? Conference Co-Chairs >> ? Alois Ferscha (University of Linz, Austria), >> ? Gerfried Stocker (Ars Electronica Center Linz, >> Austria) >> >> ? Program Committee Co-Chairs >> ? Paul Lukowicz (University of Passau, Germany) >> ? Kent Lyons (Intel Research, USA) >> >> ? Late Breaking Results Co-Chairs >> ? Lucy Dunne, University of Minnesota, USA >> ? Daniel Roggen, ETH Zurich, Switzerland >> >> ? Video Co-Chairs >> ? Antonio Kr?ger, DFKI Saarbr?cken, Germany >> ? Horst H?rtner, AEC Linz, Austria >> >> ? Design Contest Co-Chairs >> ? Christa Sommerer, University of Art and Design Linz, >> Austria >> ? Sabine Seymour, Moondial, Austria >> >> ? Finance Chair >> ? Gabriele Kotsis (University of Linz, Austria) >> >> ? Publicity Chair >> ? Andreas Riener (University of Linz, Austria) >> ? email: publicitychair at iswc.net >> >> ? *TECHNICAL PROGRAM COMITTEE* >> >> ? Oliver Amft (ETH Zurich, SUI) >> ? Michael Beigl (TU Braunschweig, GER) >> ? Leah Buechley (MIT, USA) >> ? Lucy Dunne (Un. of Minnesota, USA) >> ? Steve Feiner (Columbia University, USA) >> ? Jennifer Healey (Intel, USA) >> ? Holger Kenn (Microsoft EMIC Aachen, GER) >> ? Cornel Klein (Siemens CT SE 2 Munich, GER) >> ? Tom Martin (Virginia Tech, USA) >> ? Kenji Mase (Nagoya University, JPN) >> ? Joe Paradiso (MIT, USA) >> ? Cliff Randell (University of Bristol, GBR) >> ? Daniel Roggen (ETH Zurich, SUI) >> ? Joachim Schaper (SAP Walldorf, GER) >> ? Bernt Schiele (TU Darmstadt, GER) >> ? Dan Siewiorek (Carnegie Mellon University, USA) >> ? Asim Smailagic (Carnegie Mellon University, USA) >> ? Mark Smith (KTH, SWE) >> ? Thad Starner (Georgia Tech, USA) >> ? Bruce Thomas (University of South Australia, AUS) >> ? Kristof Van Laerhoven (TU Darmstadt, GER) >> ? Roy Want (University of Trier, GER) >> ? Jamie Ward (Lancaster University, GBR) >> >> >> >> ? *SUBMISSION DEADLINES* >> >> ? Video Papers >> ? ? ? ? ?June ?3, 2009 >> ? Late Breaking Results >> ? June ?3, 2009 >> ? Design Contest >> ? ? ? ?June ?3, 2009 >> ? Demos >> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? July 13, >> 2009 >> >> >> ? ISWC'09 will be held from September 4-7, 2009 in >> Linz (Austria) >> ? Tutorial/Workshops September 4, Doctoral Colloquium >> September 4 >> ? Main Conference September 5-7, 2009 >> >> >> ? All ?details or for subscription to the ISWC >> 2009 Alert Ticker: >> ? www.iswc.net or info at iswc.net >> >> ? Best regards, >> ? A. Ferscha and G. Stocker, ISWC'09 General >> Co-Chairs >> > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wearables mailing list > Wearables at mailman.cc.gatech.edu > https://mailman.cc.gatech.edu/mailman/listinfo/wearables > > > > -- > - Bryan > http://heybryan.org/ > 1 512 203 0507 > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike66 at att.net Fri May 29 01:28:46 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 18:28:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] cool video showing a bird both using and making tools Message-ID: I remember this being such a big deal a long time ago when they showed that chimps made tools. Now birds do it, but since then there have been *plenty* of examples of tool making and tool use in birds. http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/05/27/eco.smartbirds/index.html#cnnSTCV ideo -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri May 29 01:00:55 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 18:00:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] calvin cartoon Message-ID: <88300E47A9D14BEF82FF5C0A24C8658D@spike> This is perfect! Calvin's explanation of his Lemonade Stand's business perspective has resonance with the American Auto industry's position in the economy. Remember that this cartoon was drawn over 15 years ago! [] _____ _____ Cooking Dinner For Two? Sign Up & Get Immediate Member-Only Savings. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ATT00007.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 488417 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri May 29 01:50:07 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 18:50:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] bernoulli numbers Message-ID: <02CD4C460B0D42578E6140916A3DB663@spike> The point of this story gets lost in the political trivia. Never do they actually answer the important question, did this kid find the formula for generating Bernoulli numbers? Any articles on the topic do not actually give the formula he discovered, so I have no way of verifying. Oy vey. http://www.thelocal.se/19710/20090528/ spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nanogirl at halcyon.com Fri May 29 02:17:25 2009 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 19:17:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] =?iso-8859-1?q?=22Language_gene=22_alters_mouse_squeaks?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Mice car?ry?ing a "hu?man?ized" ver?sion of a gene be?lieved to in?flu?ence speech and lan?guage may not ac?tu?ally talk, but none?the?less have a lot to say about our ev?o?lu?tion?ary past, a new study suggests. http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090528-foxp2.htm Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 29 02:39:07 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 21:39:07 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "Language gene" alters mouse squeaks Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090528213803.02338ea8@satx.rr.com> At 07:17 PM 5/28/2009 -0700, Gina sent: >Mice car-ry-ing a "hu-man-ized" ver-sion of a gene be-lieved to >in-flu-ence speech and lan-guage may not ac-tu-ally talk Hmm, when I hit Reply, I see a lot of soft hyphens revealed in the citation above, make it look a bit like the way a mouse might talk. But of course mice can talk. I reported on such a case in my (and Rory Barnes') novel THE HUNGER OF TIME: Damien Broderick From spike66 at att.net Fri May 29 03:42:35 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 20:42:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "Language gene" alters mouse squeaks In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Behalf Of Gina Miller Subject: [ExI] "Language gene" alters mouse squeaks >Mice car-ry-ing a "hu-man-ized" ver-sion of a gene be-lieved to in-flu-ence speech and lan-guage may not ac-tu-ally talk, but none-the-less have a lot to say about our ev-o-lu-tion-ary past, a new study suggests. http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090528-foxp2.htm >Gina "Nanogirl" Miller How many among us (older than about 45) were able to read the above sentence without envisioning that last scene in the original version of The Fly? ...heeeeellllp meeeee...heeeelllllp meeeee... Honestly now, did not that scene completely freak your ass outwardly? Did mine. {8^D spike From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Fri May 29 07:29:23 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 00:29:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] "meat". Message-ID: <109713.54838.qm@web110409.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> You are pompous. Anna:) --- On Thu, 5/28/09, John K Clark wrote: > From: John K Clark > Subject: Re: [ExI] "meat". > To: "ExI chat list" > Received: Thursday, May 28, 2009, 12:27 PM > "Harvey Newstrom" > > >? You win. > > I know. > > John K Clark > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > __________________________________________________________________ Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new Internet Explorer? 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/ From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 29 12:54:53 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 22:54:53 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Psychology of markets explanations/was Re: More on Health Costs In-Reply-To: <247781.15063.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <247781.15063.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/29 : >> And if they had the right mindset, they wouldn't allow >> another bubble to form either. >> If population, natural resources and new technology are >> kept constant, >> psychology is the one thing left that contributes to the >> economic >> cycle. > > Psychological explanations of recession go back a long way -- and always rise up again, despite being refuted. ?This is like the view of gambler who's down to his last stack thinking that if he only just thinks positive, he'll win. ?His false optimism will likely get him deeper losses. I wasn't referring to anything so crude as "think positive". In the most basic terms, economics reduces to physical resources and human psychology. Capital, interest rates, the price of commodities etc. are not physical objects, but ideas that influence behaviour. Consider it as a physics problem: you want to get from situation A, which is a recession, to situation B, which is a boom. If it's physically possible with the resources available, then the problem is how to get all the parts in A moving in such a way as to bring about B. Getting the parts moving in the right way means controlling the behaviour of the humans who move the other parts, and behaviour is determined by psychology. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 29 13:22:17 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 23:22:17 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Savings and wealth/was Re: More on Health Costs In-Reply-To: <55051.46861.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <55051.46861.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/29 Dan : > > --- On Thu, 5/28/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> 2009/5/29 Dan : >> >>> A reductio ad absurdum of the Keynesian view is >>> if spending to wealth worked, why wait for a >>> recession? ?Why not always keep immediately >>> consuming our total incomes -- never saving at >>> all? ?(Saving is really postponed consumption, >>> but it's from such postponed consumption that >>> all economic progress aside from pure luck arises.) >> >> If everyone saved and no-one consumed, save for the >> necessities of >> life, why would anyone invest in anything other than the >> necessities of life? > > Well, people usually save for future consumption -- not merely to work ever harder, but live at a subsistence level. ?So, e.g., someone might save for a down payment on a house, for her children's college, for a new car next year, a cruise, start a business, invest in the market, retirement, or even vaguely for the proverbial rainy day. ?The role of entrepreneurs is to attempt to forecast what people will want to buy in the future, so, in a free economy and within the limits of entrepreneurial error, they should be more or less successful at this -- and not result in the bugbear of Keynesians, original and New, where people mindless hoard savings for no reason at all. If people will never buy anything in the future because they intend to die with the greatest possible amount saved, the entrepreneur will have nothing to do. All saving and no spending is bad for the economy. >> Interestingly, the savings ratio correlates >> negatively with >> economic growth in OECD countries: >> >> http://www.forium.co.uk/Savings-Accounts/Saving-Account-News/Savings-ratios-over-the-decades.html > > I think it's a bit more complicated than that. ?In fact, it looks to me like some of these people are acting rationally: saving more when there's a recession to not make serious errors. ?For instance, right now in the US prices on homes and other durables are fairly low. ?Should you go out and buy a house? ?Well, maybe, if you can afford to buy one now and wait, but what if you don't have a whole lot of money to begin with and feel you might be out of work soon? ?In that case, you might just save as much as possible -- rather than spend even if prices are pretty low now for these items. Not only is the saving rate higher in recessions, the savings rate is also higher in countries with consistently slower economic growth. This table shows it better: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4456/is_2002_Dec/ai_98032790/ Maybe its an effect rather than a cause, but wouldn't you expect the high savings rate to then give the economy a boost? For example, Italy seems to have a consistently very high savings ratio over decades, but Italy has not overtaken all the other countries in Europe in economic growth in this period. >> The world would have been better off if China consumed more >> and the US saved more. > > It depends on what's meant. ?If we want all around more wealth and higher productivity, it'd probably be best if all saved more -- the Chinese, the Americans, and everyone else. ?I don't mean saved every last cent above the minimum needed to keep alive, but just more than in recent decades. ?(Believe you me, my personal preference is to save some, but spend some too: I like to have a good meal, vacation in nice places, wear nice clothes, and have various entertainments. ?I don't judge people as evil because they have similar or difference preferences than me.) You don't seem to acknowledge that if everyone saved everything they could, overall productivity would be dramatically lower as there would be no market for goods and services. -- Stathis Papaioannou From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 29 14:48:28 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 14:48:28 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Valid economic reasoning should never go out of style/was Re: More on Health Costs In-Reply-To: <463732.37355.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <463732.37355.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 5/28/09, Dan wrote: > > We should be looking for valid economic reasoning -- not reasoning that > is either old fashioned or new fangled. Historically, the urge to sluff off valid > economic reasoning is very strong. The "new economy" talk of the railroad > era -- yes, they had it back then too! -- led investors, policy-makers, and the > general public to believe that bad policies -- policies that failed previously > and that were theoretically unsound (even given the state of theory in the > 19th century) -- would somehow work out. And the boom-bust cycle resulted. > No. The boom-bust cycle in inherent in laissez-faire capitalism. (I know you and some libertarian economic theorists deny this). But that's the way it works in the real world. One of your entrepreneurs starts selling a new widget which becomes popular. Everybody else and their dog join in, adding features to the widgets. Some widgets become very rare and expensive. People start speculating on widget futures. People start investing in widgets for their pension scheme. Then it all collapses when everybody decides they don't want any more widgets. It's just the herd mentality. > > This is actually a rather old fashioned view of wealth and of production. > The valid economic way to look at wealth and production is NOT to concretely > look at farms and factories and assume that only specific physical goods are > wealth. Instead, wealth is what people value (if no one wanted oil, e.g., it > wouldn't be considered part of wealth or useful to obtaining wealth); > production is the process of transforming something into something more > desirable (and this can be anything at all from the construction worker laying > slabs to produce a building to the singer singing a song to produce music > people want to hear). That is a very wide and all inclusive view of wealth > and of production. It's not limited to who has the most farms or the bigger > factories. > Wealth is power. That's why people want millions of dollars. The millionaires get the best girls and have a yacht and a private jet. > > I don't think this has to do with being moralistic. One can completely take > values out of the theory: malinvestments are malinvestments not because > Lee or I don't like them, but because they lead to a production structure that > doesn't sustain in the long run -- one that eventually must be corrected -- not > because people are all moralistic but because eventually projects invested > in fail and fail much more frequently than can be accounted for by simple, > unsystematic entrepreneurial error.* That's an objective truth -- not > dependent on our values or morality or misdiagnoses. > Boom-bust entrepreneurs *always* fail. The whole point is to enable a boom in widgets and suck money from the population (while it is fashionable for everybody to have a widget). Then, cash in the huge salaries, sell the company for millions, and watch the bust from your island mansion. It has very little to do with creating 'value'. December 22, 2008. Quote: It's time to drive the final nail into the coffin of laissez-faire capitalism by treating it like the discredited ideology it inarguably is. If not, the Dr. Frankensteins of the right will surely try to revive the monster and send it marauding through our economy once again. We've only just begun to bury the financially dead, and the free market fundamentalists are already looking to deflect the blame. ------------ December 20, 2008. Quote: There are plenty of culprits, like lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they could not afford and Wall Street chieftains who loaded up on mortgage-backed securities without regard to the risk. But the story of how we got here is partly one of Mr. Bush?s own making, according to a review of his tenure that included interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials. >From his earliest days in office, Mr. Bush paired his belief that Americans do best when they own their own home with his conviction that markets do best when let alone. He pushed hard to expand homeownership, especially among minorities, an initiative that dovetailed with his ambition to expand the Republican tent ? and with the business interests of some of his biggest donors. But his housing policies and hands-off approach to regulation encouraged lax lending standards. ---------- BillK From kanzure at gmail.com Fri May 29 15:54:54 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 10:54:54 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: CrossFit picks up the WSJ article In-Reply-To: <9f9908d6-69b5-44b2-9df0-e17df6b457ac@r34g2000vbi.googlegroups.com> References: <7730d1c90905232008n1d013d8fl91aaeb95ca315a98@mail.gmail.com> <3c9e88c1-0511-437c-8469-2b67bfe9941d@c36g2000yqn.googlegroups.com> <6303adb7-440c-42c3-a632-abedceed290b@x5g2000yqk.googlegroups.com> <7730d1c90905282130k1535e7b6l6f1f8457d019c7e0@mail.gmail.com> <9f9908d6-69b5-44b2-9df0-e17df6b457ac@r34g2000vbi.googlegroups.com> Message-ID: <55ad6af70905290854o289df31ar9c614742a7473bcc@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: JonathanCline Date: Fri, May 29, 2009 at 10:50 AM Subject: Re: CrossFit picks up the WSJ article To: DIYbio Calorie restriction is still in doubt for humans and at least one recent paper has refuted its beneficial effect. ?Though there are people trying it and studying it. ?As for diabetes, a recent BBC article summarizes at least one recent study claiming it is induced by virus(es) - this is still in stages of verification, though interesting. ?The idea that "people need lots of protein" has been shot full of many holes as well ("cavemen" obviously did not eat animals of today's size or genetic selection, and did not have vegetables of today's size or genetic selection, and perhaps ate in monthly gorge/starve cycles). ?Drinking green tea or mint tea is reportedly a simple mechanism (and an ancient tradition) for healthy teeth, to add to the previous comment about cavities -- tea lessens bad bacteria; though sure, no one should be eating such large quantities of sugar as is common in modern diets. ?And the SENS perspective is to scoff at resveratrol until better proven. ?My point in listing all the trivia is to add some perspective, hoping for a better answer, since the data continually argues against all sides and sorting the fluff from well-researched fact is difficult. On May 29, 2:22?am, Scott Kerr wrote: > Interesting, 100% of Cavemen in the 60+ age bracket were dead. Exactly! ?Hindu cow-milk-drinking vegetarians lived to ~90 years(?) (documented around 500 BC? ?Not cavemen of course). ?Both Zone and Atkins diets often involve eating some type of powerbar as way of consuming 3+ meals per day, and cavemen surely didn't have access to powerbars. ? Neither cavemen nor vegetarian hinduists ingested pesticides, growth hormones, industrial contaminants, etc. in their food -- if ingesting these has any effect on us today (biased profiteers claim there is no effect). ?Many of the arguments don't hold up well. On May 28, 11:29 pm, "Daniel C." wrote: > ?But yes, I agree - I will > admit that I have drunk the kool-aid on the Zone diet without doing a > lot of research into how factual the science behind it is. ?I am > entirely guilty of the "Well this works for everyone else, I guess I > should do it" line of thinking in this case. What I find most interesting is that diet is a sort of religion: as you mention, following it rather blindly rather than studying it first. ?Generally, discussing diet is bound to start a big argument. "The China Study" was on the best seller lists for 2-3 years (claiming that eating any form of animal protein will drastically increase the odds of cancer and processed grains are bad as well). ?The "Zone diet" is also a bestseller. ?When I say "diet" I am not referring to something which causes weight loss (weight loss can be caused in many ways at the expense of health). ? When I say "diet" I am referring to "what people eat to be healthy". ? I presume that proper diet will automatically biofeedback to attaining normal weight for healthy individuals. ? So why is diet more of a religion than a science? ?One answer could be massive bias towards particular diet from socioeconomic sources, and even highly trained microbiologists are subject to this bias to the extent that the data is misinterpreted, misrepresented, or ignored -- it would be great to get better data- comparisons. ?"What to ingest, what not to ingest" is a fairly basic question after all. Since the Zone/paleo diet (preferred by crossfitters who are at the forefront of physical health and a very progressive group in general) is a sharp contrast to a vegan diet, it seems there could be a simple conclusion, such as: ?several body types exist and these process food differently with different effects; or, it doesn't matter what anyone eats as long as it's not gorging, so might as well deep fry some liver. ?Crossfitters scorn the Atkins diet as unbalanced. ?What do smart crossfit athletes think of "The Thrive Diet", which is vegan and written by a well-studied athlete for other athletes? ?There is a vegan-Zone diet, though participants usually claim that it's difficult to eat without soy -- which is a non-paleo ingredient. Since the central dogma of biology implies that genes are expressed in the presence of a biological context, wouldn't diet be the simplest mechanism of biasing gene expression and biofeedback? ## Jonathan Cline ## jcline at ieee.org ## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223 ######################## --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DIYbio" group. To post to this group, send email to diybio at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to diybio+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/diybio?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- -- - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From natasha at natasha.cc Fri May 29 17:08:58 2009 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 12:08:58 -0500 Subject: [ExI] cool video showing a bird both using and making tools In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <72593507DFF3476192E80D36CE770239@DFC68LF1> Nice. Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More _____ From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 8:29 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: [ExI] cool video showing a bird both using and making tools I remember this being such a big deal a long time ago when they showed that chimps made tools. Now birds do it, but since then there have been *plenty* of examples of tool making and tool use in birds. http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/05/27/eco.smartbirds/index.html#cnnSTCV ideo -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 731 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 29 18:08:57 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 11:08:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] bernoulli numbers Message-ID: <754707.2732.qm@web30108.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 5/28/09, spike wrote: > The point of this > story gets lost in the political trivia.? Never do > they actually answer the > important question, did this kid find the formula for > generating Bernoulli > numbers?? Any articles on the topic do not actually > give the formula he > discovered, so I have no way of verifying.? Oy > vey. > ? > http://www.thelocal.se/19710/20090528/ Is that the formula on the white board behind him? Hard for me to read... Also, the story seems to say he's not made a new discovered but reinvented the wheel. Regards, Dan From spike66 at att.net Fri May 29 19:21:21 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 12:21:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle Message-ID: Here is an interesting commentary that misses the point, as do most articles on the subject. http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/05/29/jetpack/index.html Somehow we need to inject into these common articles the meme that there is a really good reason why we do not have the stuff envisioned by mid 20th century futurists: we found a better way. Many, if not most of the future visions had to do with radical improvements in transportation: self guided cars, super high speed freeways, jet packs, flying cars, etc. But we found it better to stay home and send information zipping about safely and cheaply at the speed of light. I would not trade the internet for a flying car or a personal jet packs, not for a dozen of them. The future didn't fizzle, the future has sizzle. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 29 19:58:10 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 12:58:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Psychology of markets explanations Message-ID: <791670.45120.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/29/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >>> And if they had the right mindset, they wouldn't >>> allow >>> another bubble to form either. >>> If population, natural resources and new >>> technology are >>> kept constant, >>> psychology is the one thing left that contributes >>> to the economic cycle. >> >> Psychological explanations of recession go >> back a long way -- and always rise up again, >> despite being refuted.? This is like the view >> of gambler who's down to his last stack thinking >> that if he only just thinks positive, he'll >> win.? His false optimism will likely get him deeper >> losses. > > I wasn't referring to anything so crude as "think > positive". In the > most basic terms, economics reduces to physical resources > and human psychology. First, how does this relate to the specific example: how psychology "contributes to the economic cycle." And how it would help to change "psychology" (or, more likely, how people think and feel) would ameliorate the current crisis or economic cycles in general. Second, I believe economic laws superseded psychology in a certain way: as long as you have agents that act -- i.e., that have purposive behavior -- economic laws apply. Granted, and no Austrian would argue against this, psychology might explain why these agents have the particular purposes they do -- e.g., why status symbols become important or why people feel more pain from losses than they appear to feel pleasure from gains.* But none of this would controvene economic laws. E.g., the Law of Supply and Demand would still apply, regardless of why people prefer a particular good or service. (It might better to see economic or praxeological laws as akin to mathematics. This is not to say they don't apply to the real world, but rather that they apply regardless of the particular material we're dealing with.) > Capital, interest rates, the price of commodities etc. are > not physical objects, but ideas that influence behaviour. Not exactly on "capital" -- because it depends on what you mean by that term. Generally, it's used to mean goods used to make other goods. In that sense, capital is actual stuff -- like a machine that stamps out a piece of metal used to make a car. This is how it's used in Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT). And this is not a minor detail. The take home from ABCT is that an unsustainable booms are unsustainable because they arrange real capital in ways that don't actually support what consumers want. In the current crisis, all those houses and condos being built are real. All the stuff used to make them -- construction equipment, wood, labor -- is real. All these things, when they are committed to a given capital structure are hard to shift to other structures and this shifting is not costless. Capital goods themselves tend to be the hardest things to shift and workers tend to be among the easiest factors to shift. (Of course, there's some variability. Capital goods are not homogeneous, but they are not all completely specific either. Ludwig Lachmann pointed this out in his _Capital and Its Structure_ where he talks about capital having multiple specificity. This means that most capital goods have more than one use -- though the uses have different costs and benefits. E.g., you can use a spanner as a hammer, but that's not the best use and a spanner is usually a pretty inefficient hammer.) This leads to a boom creating lots of capital structure that is useless in the long run and must be adjusted. Think of the current crisis where all that construction equipment will likely be re-absorbed, but it will earn less money, and it will be used a lot less efficiently. Some of it will just have to be scrapped completely. Now, you might refer back to psychology and just say "if people only wanted to pay for those homes, all would be fine." But that's the point. They never really wanted them -- or they never really expected them. It's not so much that people one day changed their mind, but that the actual boom didn't reflect actual market demand for new housing but only the distortions caused by inflation. Absent the inflation, in other words, all those unwanted homes never would've been built. > Consider it > as a physics problem: you want to get from situation A, > which is a > recession, to situation B, which is a boom. If it's > physically > possible with the resources available, then the problem is > how to get > all the parts in A moving in such a way as to bring about > B. Getting > the parts moving in the right way means controlling the > behaviour of > the humans who move the other parts, and behaviour is > determined by > psychology. I think Mises's analogy of a builder would be helpful. The problem is prices, interest rates, and other financial data should, within limits, coordinate with or anticipate other data, such as expected demands and actual supplies. The analogy is, IIRC, of a builder needing certain amount of materials to build some homes. He checks his "inventory" using the price system. Unfortunately, the price system is inflated so that it appears there are more materials -- more wood, more bricks, more workers -- available. So he starts to build, say, 100 homes of a certain kind. The actual supply would really only support 80 homes of that kind. (Remember, in a real world economy, there's no way to stand outside and "know" what the real data are save via the price system -- which is not perfect, but is the best available means of doing such calculations.) After the homes are half completed, he notices that he indeed doesn't have enough materials to complete all of them. In fact, he won't even be able to complete 80 of them. At best, if he stops work on 40 of them and reconfigures the labor and materials, he might get 60 completed. In this example, the A is the recession -- half completion on 100 homes without enough factors to complete all of them -- and one can't get to B -- full completion of 100 homes. The boom was merely the belief that one could get to B. That particular B is off limits and B' -- 80 completed homes -- was possible at the start, but at A (the recession) is no longer possible and any attempt to get to B or B' will only result in further losses -- as there simply are no resources to get to them. In fact, at this point C -- 60 homes completed -- is the best possible solution and prolonging construction past this point under the assumption more than that can be completed will only result in something worse than C -- maybe the worst case being a bunch a incomplete homes and no buyers as winter sets in. The complimentary real factors -- woods, bricks, nails, laborers, fuel, etc. -- simply don't exist in the right quantities to get to B or B'. The corrective here, too, is NOT to keep shooting for B (or even for B'), but to allow the re-adjustment to take place as quickly as possible -- i.e., to stop the inflation so that the builder (and everyone else, presumably) finds out as quickly as possible what homes to complete and what to write off, what to shift over and what to stop working on, etc. (Of course, a real world economy is much more complex than this -- and usually has much more potential and it can often take a lot longer to notice a particular project is really unworkable. This complexity, though, should actually make one rail even more strongly against inflation -- if one desires to avoid unsustainable booms. Why? Because the task of figuring out just which projects are unworkable is that much harder when the price system is thrown out of whack.) Regards, Dan *? Though such explanations often seem faddish and tend to misunderstand economics.? E.g., on the latter, are there really any good ways to measure this and even if there seem to be the researchers might not be isolating losses in the same way. Think of the usual example of choosing to 100% odds of getting $10,000 over, say, 80% odds of getting $20,000 -- where the net gain would seem to favor the latter option as it, on average, will yield $16,000. For instance, people might be more risk averse than psychologists expect them to be not because people are irrationally weighting losses more than gains, but because they value certainty over uncertaintly. Economics is as economics really silent on this. If a person prefers lower risk as something in itself or not, economic laws still apply and still explain how she or he will act and economize -- but it wouldn't explain why she or he will have those specific preferences. From dan_ust at yahoo.com Fri May 29 20:17:29 2009 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (dan_ust at yahoo.com) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 13:17:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Savings and wealth Message-ID: <640393.31048.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/29/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 2009/5/29 Dan : > > > > --- On Thu, 5/28/09, Stathis Papaioannou > wrote: > >> 2009/5/29 Dan : > >> > >>> A reductio ad absurdum of the Keynesian view > is > >>> if spending to wealth worked, why wait for a > >>> recession? ?Why not always keep immediately > >>> consuming our total incomes -- never saving > at > >>> all? ?(Saving is really postponed > consumption, > >>> but it's from such postponed consumption that > >>> all economic progress aside from pure luck > arises.) > >> > >> If everyone saved and no-one consumed, save for > the > >> necessities of > >> life, why would anyone invest in anything other > than the > >> necessities of life? > > > > Well, people usually save for future consumption -- > not merely to work ever harder, but live at a subsistence > level. ?So, e.g., someone might save for a down payment on > a house, for her children's college, for a new car next > year, a cruise, start a business, invest in the market, > retirement, or even vaguely for the proverbial rainy day. > ?The role of entrepreneurs is to attempt to forecast what > people will want to buy in the future, so, in a free economy > and within the limits of entrepreneurial error, they should > be more or less successful at this -- and not result in the > bugbear of Keynesians, original and New, where people > mindless hoard savings for no reason at all. > > If people will never buy anything in the future because > they intend to > die with the greatest possible amount saved, the > entrepreneur will > have nothing to do. All saving and no spending is bad for > the economy. Yes, but, again, are we talking about real people? Who does this and how many of them are there? Keynesians would have us believe most or enough people act this way, but it seems far more likely that people save with various consumptive ends in mind -- e.g., saving for retirement, saving for a cruise, saving to buy a home, saving up for a wedding. Sometimes the ends might be more vague -- as in the case of someone who decides to save because he fears losing his job. You're creating an extreme situation here to justify what? Also, "bad for economy" means what? That's a subjective construct. The rate of savings reflects personal personal preferences. With people interacting through a free market, such preferences would be coordinated with everything else -- not perfectly but much better than the alternatives. The only way bad could be measured here is how well such coordination takes place -- given different preferences to save. If everyone suddenly decided that they wanted to consume all their income (and savings), that wouldn't be bad for the economy. It would just be. It'd be unlikely under most conditions. Likewise, if people decided, suicidally, to stop all consumption, that wouldn't be, from the standpoint of economics, bad, but just their preference. It would be rather short-lived -- as everyone would die off in short order -- but economics is silent over whether this is a good or bad thing. (And, yes, economics as a science is really silent over whether we should prefer free markets or interventions or complete command economics or even autarky. It merely tells us what happens under these conditions or those policies and can explain things like why unsustainable booms happen. Yes, economic theory doesn't rail against unsustainable booms -- any more than thermodynamics theory rails against wasting energy.) > Not only is the saving rate higher in recessions, the > savings rate is > also higher in countries with consistently slower economic > growth. > This table shows it better: > > http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4456/is_2002_Dec/ai_98032790/ > > Maybe its an effect rather than a cause, but wouldn't you > expect the > high savings rate to then give the economy a boost? For > example, Italy > seems to have a consistently very high savings ratio over > decades, but > Italy has not overtaken all the other countries in Europe > in economic growth in this period. I'll take a look at this later, probably next week. (Gearing up for the weekend.:) [snip] > You don't seem to acknowledge that if everyone saved > everything they > could, overall productivity would be dramatically lower as > there would be no market for goods and services. You fail to acknowledge, again, that they would likely be saving for something -- not merely as an end in itself, but some future consumption. That's basically what I meant. Another example might be helpful here. Imagine someone who's now saving as much as possible to go back to school. He cuts down his expenditures to the point where he's not eating out, he's just paying the rent and doing the minimum to keep his life going as is but at a lower level. His goal is to get an advanced degree and then get a better job -- so he'll be able to spend more money in the future. The short term goal is to save, the mid-term to get a better job, the long-term to have a sustainably higher level of consumption. Doesn't that make a lot more sense than the view that people will save just to save, never consuming? Regards, Dan From sparge at gmail.com Fri May 29 20:22:57 2009 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 16:22:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2009/5/29 spike : > > Somehow we need to inject into these common articles the meme that there is > a really good reason why we do not have the stuff envisioned by mid 20th > century futurists: we found a better way.? Many, if not most of the future > visions had to do with radical improvements in transportation: self guided > cars, super high speed freeways, jet packs, flying cars, etc.? But we found > it better to stay home and send information zipping about safely and cheaply > at the speed of light. Yeah...except that the interweb hasn't caused the bottom to drop out of the transportation market. Cars aren't gathering rust, roads aren't being neglected or torn up to make parks, traffic is getting worse--not better, air travel is busier than ever. Net shopping has reduced the need for some transportation but has increased the burden on shipping companies. Self-guided cars haven't happened because there hasn't been sufficient public demand for them. Jet packs aren't available because they're inherently inefficient, unsafe, unscalable, and would be prohibitively expensive--same for flying cars. > I would not trade the internet for a flying car or a personal?jet packs, not > for a dozen of them. I agree. If the futurists of the 50's had predicted the net, they'd have been ridiculed. But given the automobile and the plane, it was easy to extrapolate, naively, that flying cars would be doable. > The future didn't fizzle, the future has sizzle. There have definitely been some fizzles, but overall I agree. -Dave From spike66 at att.net Fri May 29 22:08:10 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 15:08:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Savings and wealth/was Re: More on Health Costs In-Reply-To: References: <55051.46861.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <552205B4381A4851BE96809C88EF0A22@spike> > ...and not result in the bugbear of > Keynesians, original and New, where people mindless hoard > savings for no reason at all. That comment puzzled me first time I read it, now it was quoted again, and I still don't get it. There is *always* a reason to mindlessly hoard money, always a hundred *very good* reasons. This should be perfectly obvious to all wage slaves, for as soon as one hoards a sufficiently large pile of cash, one is freeeee of that life of wage slavery. If one wants to continue doing the old 9 to 5, and I personally know plenty who choose to do exactly that, then one is free to do it. Or not. That's why I hoard money now: I am chasing the dream of freedom. Why is that a bugbear to Keynesians? spike From spike66 at att.net Fri May 29 22:27:02 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 15:27:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Valid economic reasoning should never go out of style/wasRe: More on Health Costs In-Reply-To: References: <463732.37355.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <9ED62BA2AF1842ABBA22198115E69961@spike> > ...On Behalf Of BillK > ... > > > > No. The boom-bust cycle in inherent in laissez-faire capitalism. > (I know you and some libertarian economic theorists deny this). > But that's the way it works in the real world... BillK BillK, we don't deny that notion at all, but rather agree fully. We would argue instead that the natural business cycle is actually a good thing, and shouldn't be suppressed at enormous cost, with permanent damage as we are seeing now. We are wasting billions trying to prevent a recession, which the economy and our culture really needs. We will discover that we cannot avoid it indefinitely anyways. We can sure make it a hell of a lot longer and a lot worse tho. spike From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 29 22:51:40 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 22:51:40 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Savings and wealth/was Re: More on Health Costs In-Reply-To: <552205B4381A4851BE96809C88EF0A22@spike> References: <55051.46861.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <552205B4381A4851BE96809C88EF0A22@spike> Message-ID: On 5/29/09, spike wrote: > That comment puzzled me first time I read it, now it was quoted again, and I > still don't get it. There is *always* a reason to mindlessly hoard money, > always a hundred *very good* reasons. This should be perfectly obvious to > all wage slaves, for as soon as one hoards a sufficiently large pile of > cash, one is freeeee of that life of wage slavery. If one wants to continue > doing the old 9 to 5, and I personally know plenty who choose to do exactly > that, then one is free to do it. Or not. That's why I hoard money now: I > am chasing the dream of freedom. > > Why is that a bugbear to Keynesians? > I would say it is more a problem for the 'borrow and spend' consumer society that the US became for the last 20-odd years. It is the complete opposite POV that has now taken hold in the new 'thrift' mood of the people. That's one reason why I don't expect any dramatic economic recovery for some years to come. If the government keeps pumping money into the economy they will get the worst of both worlds, stagflation. A stagnant economy AND inflation. Spike, I commend your ambition to save towards economic freedom. The problem you face is that for any wage slave to reach that objective usually requires either (preferably both) a very high salary and / or *extreme* saving techniques. BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 29 23:08:15 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 18:08:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Wikipedia Blocks Church of Scientology From Editing Pages Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090529180715.02479578@satx.rr.com> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,523238,00.html Friday, May 29, 2009 [] In an unprecedented move, Wikipedia has banned edits from an entire religion ? the Church of Scientology. [etc] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 14a659a.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 2237 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri May 29 22:57:03 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 15:57:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: CrossFit picks up the WSJ article In-Reply-To: <55ad6af70905290854o289df31ar9c614742a7473bcc@mail.gmail.com> References: <7730d1c90905232008n1d013d8fl91aaeb95ca315a98@mail.gmail.com><3c9e88c1-0511-437c-8469-2b67bfe9941d@c36g2000yqn.googlegroups.com><6303adb7-440c-42c3-a632-abedceed290b@x5g2000yqk.googlegroups.com><7730d1c90905282130k1535e7b6l6f1f8457d019c7e0@mail.gmail.com><9f9908d6-69b5-44b2-9df0-e17df6b457ac@r34g2000vbi.googlegroups.com> <55ad6af70905290854o289df31ar9c614742a7473bcc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <6B39458906F14F6194869CBBBE7ACABA@spike> > ...On Behalf Of Bryan Bishop .... > > Calorie restriction is still in doubt for humans and at least > one recent paper has refuted its beneficial effect. ?Though > there are people trying it and studying it... > - Bryan Bryan, this is one of those questions for which it is crazy difficult to get useful data. There are studies which take the age, height, and weight of the corpses that come into the mortuary, this being data that is unambiguous and easy to get. These studies probably misled the medical community and certainly the news media, for they did not (and cannot) filter those who perished of cancers or other wasting diseases. These cancer patients perished early, which skews the averages. It mixes in a number of early diers whose BMI was very low *at the end of life* but were likely much higher earlier. The mortuary does not know the weight history of the deceased. It's too bad we have no easy way to get at that information. Can anyone think of a way? Driver's license data? Medical histories? At Extro4, Roy Walford told me that there is exactly zero doubt in the geriatrics community that CR is beneficial for health. It would be interesting to go to a geriatrics community chat group and ask there if is anyone seriously challenging CR in the geriatrics field today. spike From kanzure at gmail.com Fri May 29 23:14:36 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 16:14:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: CrossFit picks up the WSJ article In-Reply-To: <6B39458906F14F6194869CBBBE7ACABA@spike> References: <7730d1c90905232008n1d013d8fl91aaeb95ca315a98@mail.gmail.com> <3c9e88c1-0511-437c-8469-2b67bfe9941d@c36g2000yqn.googlegroups.com> <6303adb7-440c-42c3-a632-abedceed290b@x5g2000yqk.googlegroups.com> <7730d1c90905282130k1535e7b6l6f1f8457d019c7e0@mail.gmail.com> <9f9908d6-69b5-44b2-9df0-e17df6b457ac@r34g2000vbi.googlegroups.com> <55ad6af70905290854o289df31ar9c614742a7473bcc@mail.gmail.com> <6B39458906F14F6194869CBBBE7ACABA@spike> Message-ID: <55ad6af70905291614h10325ef0q580f6f9b79b8ead8@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 3:57 PM, spike wrote: >> ...On Behalf Of Bryan Bishop > .... >> >> Calorie restriction is still in doubt for humans and at least >> one recent paper has refuted its beneficial effect. ?Though >> there are people trying it and studying it... >> - Bryan > > Bryan, this is one of those questions for which it is crazy difficult to get I didn't write that, by the way. It was a forwarded message from the diybio list, where they usually don't bother talking about CR. Anyway, on to bigger and better things-- - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat May 30 01:02:35 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 18:02:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] cool video showing a bird both using and making tools In-Reply-To: <72593507DFF3476192E80D36CE770239@DFC68LF1> References: <72593507DFF3476192E80D36CE770239@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <2d6187670905291802t2545827ew49e62e4c98a8248b@mail.gmail.com> >I remember this being such a big deal a long time ago when they showed that chimps made tools. Now >birds do it, but since then there have been *plenty* of examples of tool making and tool use in birds. I worry that the birds will beat us to The Singularity. They may feel it's payback for what happened to the dinosaurs. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 30 02:50:31 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 12:50:31 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Psychology of markets explanations In-Reply-To: <791670.45120.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <791670.45120.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/30 : >> I wasn't referring to anything so crude as "think >> positive". In the >> most basic terms, economics reduces to physical resources >> and human psychology. > > First, how does this relate to the specific example: how psychology "contributes to the economic cycle." ?And how it would help to change "psychology" (or, more likely, how people think and feel) would ameliorate the current crisis or economic cycles in general. Psychology gives rise to the economic cycle, since the economic cycle is due to human behaviour. Changing psychology would change human behaviour and therefore would change the economy. For example, if everyone believed the world would end in a year that would make a drastic economic difference, even though nothing materially has changed. But this is not to say that altering human psychology to change the economy is feasible or desirable. > Second, I believe economic laws superseded psychology in a certain way: as long as you have agents that act -- i.e., that have purposive behavior -- economic laws apply. ?Granted, and no Austrian would argue against this, psychology might explain why these agents have the particular purposes they do -- e.g., why status symbols become important or why people feel more pain from losses than they appear to feel pleasure from gains.* ?But none of this would controvene economic laws. ?E.g., the Law of Supply and Demand would still apply, regardless of why people prefer a particular good or service. ?(It might better to see economic or praxeological laws as akin to mathematics. ?This is not to say they don't apply to the real world, but rather that they apply regardless of the particular material we're dealing with.) The law of supply and demand is an emergent phenomenon supervening on social psychology. The supply-demand curve would be affected if people prefer to buy more of a product if it is more expensive, for example. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 30 03:10:26 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 13:10:26 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Savings and wealth In-Reply-To: <640393.31048.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <640393.31048.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/30 : >> If people will never buy anything in the future because >> they intend to >> die with the greatest possible amount saved, the >> entrepreneur will >> have nothing to do. All saving and no spending is bad for >> the economy. > > Yes, but, again, are we talking about real people? ?Who does this and how many of them are there? ?Keynesians would have us believe most or enough people act this way, but it seems far more likely that people save with various consumptive ends in mind -- e.g., saving for retirement, saving for a cruise, saving to buy a home, saving up for a wedding. ?Sometimes the ends might be more vague -- as in the case of someone who decides to save because he fears losing his job. If they save only to spend it at a later date, then that will show up in the statistics as a large drop in savings. If I eat out every day or save up to eat at a really expensive restaurant once a week it amounts to the same thing. > You're creating an extreme situation here to justify what? It's an extreme example but there is a continuum between saving everything and saving nothing. You have been claiming that saving is good, but at some point on the path to becoming an extreme miser saving must turn bad. > Also, "bad for economy" means what? ?That's a subjective construct. ?The rate of savings reflects personal personal preferences. ?With people interacting through a free market, such preferences would be coordinated with everything else -- not perfectly but much better than the alternatives. ?The only way bad could be measured here is how well such coordination takes place -- given different preferences to save. ?If everyone suddenly decided that they wanted to consume all their income (and savings), that wouldn't be bad for the economy. ?It would just be. ?It'd be unlikely under most conditions. > > Likewise, if people decided, suicidally, to stop all consumption, that wouldn't be, from the standpoint of economics, bad, but just their preference. ?It would be rather short-lived -- as everyone would die off in short order -- but economics is silent over whether this is a good or bad thing. If everyone decided to reduce consumption to a subsistence level because they wanted to save as much as possible, that would be bad for everyone, since the economy would go into depression and most of the savers would end up unemployed and therefore unable to save. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 30 03:17:23 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 13:17:23 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Savings and wealth/was Re: More on Health Costs In-Reply-To: References: <55051.46861.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <552205B4381A4851BE96809C88EF0A22@spike> Message-ID: 2009/5/30 BillK : > Spike, I commend your ambition to save towards economic freedom. The > problem you face is that for any wage slave to reach that objective > usually requires either (preferably both) a very high salary and / or > *extreme* saving techniques. Unless you're content with an income at the level of the dole. -- Stathis Papaioannou From spike66 at att.net Sat May 30 03:12:12 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 20:12:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] long breezy story for a friday evening, was RE: Savings and wealth/was Re: More on Health Costs In-Reply-To: References: <55051.46861.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><552205B4381A4851BE96809C88EF0A22@spike> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of BillK > ...Savings and wealth/was Re: More on Health Costs > > On 5/29/09, spike wrote: > > ...That's why I hoard money now: I > am chasing the dream of freedom. > ...It is the complete opposite POV that has now taken > hold in the new 'thrift' mood of the people... Cool, I am hip again. Or hip for the first time. > ...If the government keeps pumping money > into the economy they will get the worst of both worlds, > stagflation. A stagnant economy AND inflation... Don't worry, that comes to an end real soon now. They will run out of other people's money. > > Spike, I commend your ambition to save towards economic > freedom. The problem you face is that for any wage slave to > reach that objective usually requires either (preferably > both) a very high salary and / or > *extreme* saving techniques. > > BillK Thanks BillK. I have very modest tastes. Actually I am a deplorable tight ass, but hey, we are told that this behavior is at least partly genetic, therefore I cannot be criticized for it, otherwise it is racist. I can't tell your age from your posts, BillK, but I vaguely perceive you as one of the younger guys. So do let old Uncle Spike tell you a good geezer story for a mellow Friday evening, and if you don't like geezer stories, do hit erase forthwith. When my folks moved to Titusville Florida in my infancy, the whole area was in boom times, for in the 60s there was the Mercury program, then the Gemini program, then the Apollo program, but in about 1971 suddenly there were no more follow-on programs and the layoff notices fell like the leaves of autumn. That area saw then all the stuff the entire nation is seeing now: real estate bubble from people rushing in to be part of the next big thing, (space, the final frontier, etc) people taking crazy investment risks mostly on real estate, followed by a horrifying bust with some people trying to hang on until better times, others leaving for other jobs, some losing everything, leaving their homes to the bank, plenty of bankruptcies, etc. The Titusville economy didn't even start to recover until about 1980 when the space shuttle work started coming in. I was a junior in High School in 1877 and the south was struggling to recover from the Civil War. Kidding, it was 1977, Carter was president, stagflation bigtime, the south was still fighting the Civil War, and we were trying to raise money for the junior senior prom. We made a goal of raising a thousand bucks with the usual combination of money-raising schemes, but for the several years previous, the junior classes had managed to raise less and less because of the hard times, and the only activity that generated much profit was the carwash, for the girls would get out there in string bikinis and entertain the drivers, who cheerfully sat ogling and drooling at the wheel as their Detroits were being scrubbed. It was borderline prostituion, separated from a strip club by less cotton than one might find in an aspirin bottle, but plenty of the girls that age were already harlots, so it worked fine. If we made the goal to raise a thousand bucks, we would hire the local band, and if we took in less we were going to hire a DJ to spin discs for 200. A guy named Greg Collinsworth suggested a novel money making scheme. There was a static display at the cross town high school, an engineering model of a Saturn rocket on its side. It is still there to this day. Zoom all the way in, see just to the east of that patch of trees in this map, that white object is a Saturn 1B on it's side with the nose pointing south by south east. Collinsworth suggested we get up inside that rocket with irons and solder suckers and try to recover some of the gold alloy solder that was used in those days for space applications. Sounded like a longshot, but they needed small skinny guys to get up in there, which is how I got involved, along with Collinsworth and about a dozen other guys. I was well suited for that, being as the whole string bikini thing just didn't look good on me. Cut to the chase, they used thru-hole technology and solder coated wire wrap interface back then, so there was a looot of gold alloy solder. There were also a number of materials that are now known carcinogens in there, but we were teenagers then, indistructible. Anyway, much to our surprise, when we had the gold separated out of the alloy, we raised a bit over five thousand bucks! Add that to several hundred the young harlots raised with the car wash and we had over 6 grand, so we had a class meeting. The budding capitalists wanted to hire a big famous band called SOMF City (being thus named as an acronym for Sit On My Face), formed by the former drummer for the Village People who had broken away because they were gay and he wasn't, so they didn't get along, but Mr. SOMF wanted six grand for the evening. The junior class had a huge debate, for several of us argued that it was a damn shame, an outrage, a deplorable waste to blow that kind of money on one evening of noise, regardless of how good it was, and I wouldn't want to spend that much money even if would buy Elvis Presley, who didn't perish until late that summer. We counterproposed using the money to give the school a gift of some kind, a fountain, or a dedicated bleacher at the ball field, or my notion was to endow a scholarship (yaaaaaay!) for something like...the best math student! (boooooo!) And so it came to a vote, but I saw politics in action, for instead of having two votes, first SOMF or no SOMF, they had about twenty choices: DJ for 200, SOMF City for six grand, then a long list of other choices, any idea anyone thought of, so the scholarship crowd was divided about fifteen ways by how they would decide the winner (best mathematician, fastest track star, worthiest student, neediest student, funniest student, squarest, hippest, fattest, skinniest, stonedest student, etc). Cut to the chase, SOMFers won, taking less than 20 percent of the vote! Bitterness, disillusionment and apathy ensued for 80% of the class. We wasted aaalllll thaaaat daaaamn moooooney on the only heterosexual member of the Village People. We spent six thoooooousand dollars, for a band named Sit On My Face. Oh my, are not we proud of ourselves. }8-[ Fast forward to last fall. We were having our class 30 year reunion. Greg Collinsworth, who came up with the gold solder idea to start with, was not there, for he ended up with liver cancer, and perished a few years ago. We will never know if it had anything to do with the exposure during the solder recovery effort, but he probably spent more time up in there than anyone. His older brother is apparently doing quite well however, for I occasionally see him on the TV screen on my airline flights, Chris Collinsworth, who is now a sportscaster or something I think. The topic of SOMF City came up at the reunion; the class is still deeply divided over that to this day. I still would take DJs for 200 please Alex. Or hell, have the students bring their own rock and roll records and play those, for free. And use that gold solder money to endow a generous scholarship. To the best mathematician. {8^D spike From spike66 at att.net Sat May 30 04:35:48 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 21:35:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] autism/vaccination link Message-ID: Some here may have attended Dr. Kaufman's pitch at Stanford a couple years ago. http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000114# This article points out something I have been thinking for some time now, and I am seeing it more and more, or perhaps perceiving that which was always there. We see science matters that are clouded by politics and other considerations, to the point where the actual science becomes irrelevant. A good example was that article I posted yesterday on Bernoulli numbers, where the mainstream press went on and on about the formula being found by a teenage Swedish immigrant from Iraq, paragraph after paragraph in one news story after another, but none of them would actually just write out the damn formula! None! So how can we evaluate? I don't care who he was or where he was from, just the formula please. It really isn't all about "See there, immigration to Sweden is good." Politics dominated what should have been a purely scientific article. Other examples, the obvious one, evolution vs "intelligent" design. Anthropogenic global warming. Now this autism/vaccination link. It looks to me like science is being robbed of its credibility by factors beyond our control. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sat May 30 11:21:47 2009 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 07:21:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Savings and wealth In-Reply-To: References: <640393.31048.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <34953.12.77.169.66.1243682507.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Stathis and Dan - What do y'all mean by "saving"? Do you mean buying a Treasury bond or putting it in a savings account, or are you meaning putting it in a hole in the garden? If you're buying a bond or a CD or using a savings account, doesn't (much of) the money go out and get used in loans to people? Just because someone is saving their money doesn't mean it's gone out of circulation, unless they're putting it under the mattress for safekeeping... *Somebody* is using it. Without somebody saving, where's an entrepreneur to get venture capital? Regards, MB From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 30 12:06:47 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 22:06:47 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Savings and wealth In-Reply-To: <34953.12.77.169.66.1243682507.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <640393.31048.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <34953.12.77.169.66.1243682507.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: 2009/5/30 MB : > Stathis and Dan - > > What do y'all mean by "saving"? ?Do you mean buying a Treasury bond or putting it in > a savings account, or are you meaning putting it in a hole in the garden? > > If you're buying a bond or a CD or using a savings account, doesn't (much of) the > money go out and get used in loans to people? > > Just because someone is saving their money doesn't mean it's gone out of > circulation, unless they're putting it under the mattress for safekeeping... > *Somebody* is using it. > > Without somebody saving, where's an entrepreneur to get venture capital? Saving is the difference between income and spending on consumption. Usually it goes into interest-bearing deposits, which can then be lent out for investment or consumption. If everyone saves then investment can increase, but this would create problems if there are no consumers to take up the newly created productive capacity. The Chinese are savers and invest a lot of those savings in manufacturing, but they are in trouble when their largest markets stop buying. That is why the Chinese Government is trying to stimulate domestic consumption. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 30 12:54:39 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 14:54:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/29 spike : > Somehow we need to inject into these common articles the meme that there is > a really good reason why we do not have the stuff envisioned by mid 20th > century futurists: we found a better way. This is the optimistic version. Add to that stuff which was "conceptually" wrong. But I would not underestimate what has not been achieved because of a decline in fundamental search funding, increasing short-sightedness by both businesses and goverments, the involution of western academia and of the relative social status of scientific and technical jobs, the dying away of the cultural incandescence of the era 1870-1970... Where we are stronger than expected is with simulation, emulation, simulacra. Fine and dandy with me, but the doubt remains that rather than preparing, supporting and anticipating a takeover of the real world, such "progress" ends up having a compensatory nature for the delays and failures of the latter... We planned to put men on Mars in 1982, 30 years later we have trouble even in resuscitating Apollo-era technology, but special effects of gigantic spaceships traveling across universes keep improving, thank you. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 30 13:04:00 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 15:04:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: CrossFit picks up the WSJ article In-Reply-To: <55ad6af70905290854o289df31ar9c614742a7473bcc@mail.gmail.com> References: <7730d1c90905232008n1d013d8fl91aaeb95ca315a98@mail.gmail.com> <3c9e88c1-0511-437c-8469-2b67bfe9941d@c36g2000yqn.googlegroups.com> <6303adb7-440c-42c3-a632-abedceed290b@x5g2000yqk.googlegroups.com> <7730d1c90905282130k1535e7b6l6f1f8457d019c7e0@mail.gmail.com> <9f9908d6-69b5-44b2-9df0-e17df6b457ac@r34g2000vbi.googlegroups.com> <55ad6af70905290854o289df31ar9c614742a7473bcc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905300604i237a06e8g9715142bf3f24d88@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 5:54 PM, Bryan Bishop wrote: > Crossfitters scorn the Atkins diet as unbalanced. Blasphemy, blasphemy! Of course diet is a religion, and even though I am a Atkinsonite true believer, I suppose that as it is the case for other religions one picks the one which best conforms with one's pre-existing inclinations... :-) "Plenty of fish, meat, eggs, some leaf vegetables and cheese, high-vitamin fruit once in a while" forever! -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 30 14:54:52 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 16:54:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Psychology of markets explanations In-Reply-To: References: <791670.45120.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A2148BC.4030509@libero.it> Il 30/05/2009 4.50, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > The law of supply and demand is an emergent phenomenon supervening on > social psychology. The supply-demand curve would be affected if people > prefer to buy more of a product if it is more expensive, for example. Where do you see this happen? I never saw this happen in 40 years of my life. When will be have phycology of physics explanations? For example, if people believed that air planes don't work, there would not be air planes flying, so the laws of aerodynamics could be told to not work, because air planes can not fly if people don't believe they will fly. The supply-demand curve work perfectly with rational agents. Irrational agents will be weeded out of the market as unfit (they will pay more than needed and ask less than needed) Any explanation that say the supply-demand curve is due only to psychological causes require that ALL agents must be always irrational (a market of fools). A single rational agent would gain more than all the others and would control the market given enough time. Agents that are partially rational would have a success proportional to their rationality. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.46/2143 - Release Date: 05/30/09 05:53:00 From spike66 at att.net Sat May 30 14:49:48 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 07:49:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Savings and wealth In-Reply-To: References: <640393.31048.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <34953.12.77.169.66.1243682507.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou >...The Chinese are savers and > invest a lot of those savings in manufacturing, but they are > in trouble when their largest markets stop buying. That is > why the Chinese Government is trying to stimulate domestic > consumption... Stathis Papaioannou Ja! This is what gives me a great deal of hope for the west. China and India have a couple billion people between them who live well below western standards. Given television, specifically ours, Dallas reruns and such, they will soon become wildly materialistic, throw out any remaining commies from their government, and do all the stuff we did for the past thirty years. Then instead of utter ruin, the west can crank up our factories again, to sell them a bunch of stuff, make a ton of money, throw out any remaining commies in our government. We have gotten a snooty attitude that there is something wrong with factory work, an attitude that factories are something the Chinese do. We may wake up and decide that factory work is a terrific job, far superior to the alternatives. Bringing India and China up to western standards will have a lot of consequences, such as making Keith's power sat notions suddenly look very attractive. If that gets done, I wouldn't be surprised if China does it. spike From rtomek at ceti.pl Sat May 30 17:05:08 2009 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 19:05:08 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] bernoulli numbers In-Reply-To: <02CD4C460B0D42578E6140916A3DB663@spike> References: <02CD4C460B0D42578E6140916A3DB663@spike> Message-ID: On Thu, 28 May 2009, spike wrote: > The point of this story gets lost in the political trivia. Never do they > actually answer the important question, did this kid find the formula for > generating Bernoulli numbers? Any articles on the topic do not actually > give the formula he discovered, so I have no way of verifying. Oy vey. > > http://www.thelocal.se/19710/20090528/ > > spike > Without "a formula", this looks more like a PR stuff. I have found a lot of interesting things following the wikipedia page. http://cims.nyu.edu/~harvey/bernmm/ http://blog.wolfram.com/2008/04/29/today-we-broke-the-bernoulli-record-from-the-analytical-engine-to-mathematica/ They may not be as briliant as what the guy did, they may take five days to compute but at least they compute. Regards Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From max at maxmore.com Sat May 30 16:49:43 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 11:49:43 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Restructuring executive compensation Message-ID: <200905301716.n4UHGVxX022606@andromeda.ziaspace.com> While I think there is value in the high-level discussions of what caused the financial mess and ensuing economic contraction, not enough attention on this list has been given to the specifics. While I agree with those who point the finger at government policies (including those of the Fed and Freddie Mac, Fanny Mae, etc), I also agree that the market economy does experience swings. These are not necessarily bad, but smoothing them out a bit is probably good -- making economic coordination easier and reducing the costs of misallocated resources. One factor that no doubt contributed to the problems is the way executive compensation has been incentivizing executives to take on excessive risk in pursuit of short-term gains. That is *not* inherent in the market system; it's a result of the specific compensation schemes used. Four authors have recently published a working paper suggesting a better compensation scheme. My review is here: "Dynamic Incentive Accounts" http://www.manyworlds.com/exploreCO.aspx?coid=CO5290911481773 Max ------------------------------------- Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com ------------------------------------- From pharos at gmail.com Sat May 30 18:08:44 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 18:08:44 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Restructuring executive compensation In-Reply-To: <200905301716.n4UHGVxX022606@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905301716.n4UHGVxX022606@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 5/30/09, Max More wrote: > One factor that no doubt contributed to the problems is the way executive > compensation has been incentivizing executives to take on excessive risk in > pursuit of short-term gains. That is *not* inherent in the market system; > it's a result of the specific compensation schemes used. Four authors have > recently published a working paper suggesting a better compensation scheme. > My review is here: > "Dynamic Incentive Accounts" > http://www.manyworlds.com/exploreCO.aspx?coid=CO5290911481773 > Compensation schemes are fine until people get involved. If a board wants to hire a specialist from a competitor and he says he doesn't like their compensation package, what do you think will happen? How do you stop directors voting for each others' salary rises? If a board wants to hire a top CEO, then he gets to specify whatever he wants as a compensation package. People are the problem, not the rules. Rules are made to be broken. (And, boy, did they break them!). BillK From max at maxmore.com Sat May 30 18:26:56 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 13:26:56 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Restructuring executive compensation Message-ID: <200905301827.n4UIR9lX022773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> BillK wrote: >Compensation schemes are fine until people get involved. >If a board wants to hire a specialist from a competitor and he says >he doesn't like their compensation package, what do you think will happen? > >How do you stop directors voting for each others' salary rises? > >If a board wants to hire a top CEO, then he gets to specify whatever >he wants as a compensation package. > >People are the problem, not the rules. Rules are made to be broken. >(And, boy, did they break them!). You seem to be taking an excessively pessimistic view. Are you saying that we can NEVER implement better rules, processes, and procedures because people will ALWAYS subvert them? Yes, people will attempt to subvert inconvenient rules if they have incentives to do so, but that doesn't mean they will always succeed. That will depend in part on transparency and on the incentives of other stakeholders and the pressures they apply. Boards cannot necessarily abandon a compensation process just because a desired CEO wants something different. If the shareholders will throw them out or raise a big stink, they will have reason to stick to declared policy. Shareholder-inspired reforms DO happen. One example of a shift that has had a fair bit of success if the trend for big companies to refuse to issue quarterly earnings forecasts. Anyway, since we can't change the nature of the people (at least at present), we must focus on crafting better rules and procedures. We can also work on redesigning economic institutions (including corporations) in a fundamentally new way... but that's a post (and a blog) for another time. Max ------------------------------------- Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com ------------------------------------- From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 30 18:36:14 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 20:36:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What is Meant by "Slavery"? In-Reply-To: <4A1E0805.4080409@rawbw.com> References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> <4A16C8B1.6050405@libero.it> <4A16E2D6.9060109@libero.it> <4A1E0805.4080409@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A217C9E.4070203@libero.it> Il 28/05/2009 5.41, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > > When someone sell himself in slavery, what is selling? > > Is he selling his fealty and his labour? Is he selling his body? > > Is he selling an object or a service? > On the most usual reading, I think he's selling his services. > Often there are laws that limit what the slave owner can do, > and this was true of most of the instances in history. Usually, these were religious limits or socially useful limits (like the limits of what an owner can do with his dogs - things dangerous for the community are usually forbidden). > > My opinion is that he is selling his body, an object. Not a service. > > This because the slave owner have the right to kill, maim and order the > > slave to do anything he like. The slave is an object, like a car or a > > cow. The slave owner own the body of the slave and can do with it > > whatever is able and willing to do. > > This was true in some cases, but by no means all. > Take modern Brazil, for an interesting current > example. > Yes, this extends what is meant by "slavery" a bit, I would say a "large bit". In many ways, these labourers could be considered in a "slave-like" situation, but they were not legally slaves. They could not be legally forced to work, they could be legally sold and bought. > but I think it's typical of the way that governments > usually limit what can be done to people under forced > conditions. Apart when is the government that force them (like in Gulag and Lao-gai, for example). > (Incidentally, it's amazing to me that the outright > slavery currently practiced in Africa, and near- > outright slavery in this example, elicit few objections > from most people. We perhaps take it for granted that > other cultures (than the developed West) are by > necessity less culpable.) To go and protest or do something really useful for these people is dangerous and there is not much to gain. Then, many of the professional protesters are covert racists. For example, the "extreme-right", "racist", "xenophobe" Lega Nord of Italy have a number of groups of people that, in their spare time or when retiring, go to Africa and help people there to build shops and teach them how to work with wood and in other crafts. Real Italian artisans, not students. But this is very rarely recognized by the press. > Well, you are just talking about extreme examples of slavery. It is slavery or it is not. There are other definition to other conditions, like "force labour", "serfdom", etc. To call "slavery" something that is not is cheapening the word. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.46/2143 - Release Date: 05/30/09 05:53:00 From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 30 18:37:20 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 20:37:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] More on Health Costs In-Reply-To: References: <41666.19575.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A217CE0.1010006@libero.it> Il 28/05/2009 16.56, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/5/29 Dan: > >> A reductio ad absurdum of the Keynesian view is if spending to wealth worked, why wait for a recession? Why not always keep immediately consuming our total incomes -- never saving at all? (Saving is really postponed consumption, but it's from such postponed consumption that all economic progress aside from pure luck arises.) > > If everyone saved and no-one consumed, save for the necessities of > life, why would anyone invest in anything other than the necessities > of life? Interestingly, the savings ratio correlates negatively with > economic growth in OECD countries: This is the reverse; worse the economic growth, greater the need to save. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.46/2143 - Release Date: 05/30/09 05:53:00 From sparge at gmail.com Sat May 30 18:43:34 2009 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 14:43:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 8:54 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > We planned to put men on Mars in 1982, 30 years later we have trouble > even in resuscitating Apollo-era technology, but special effects of > gigantic spaceships traveling across universes keep improving, thank > you. We stopped planning for a manned Mars mission when we realized we could accomplish a lot more for the same cost with unmanned missions. They're not as sexy as manned missions, but they're a lot smarter. -Dave From pharos at gmail.com Sat May 30 19:11:03 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 19:11:03 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Restructuring executive compensation In-Reply-To: <200905301827.n4UIR9lX022773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905301827.n4UIR9lX022773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 5/30/09, Max More wrote: > You seem to be taking an excessively pessimistic view. Are you saying that > we can NEVER implement better rules, processes, and procedures because > people will ALWAYS subvert them? Yes, people will attempt to subvert > inconvenient rules if they have incentives to do so, but that doesn't mean > they will always succeed. That will depend in part on transparency and on > the incentives of other stakeholders and the pressures they apply. > > Boards cannot necessarily abandon a compensation process just because a > desired CEO wants something different. If the shareholders will throw them > out or raise a big stink, they will have reason to stick to declared policy. > Shareholder-inspired reforms DO happen. One example of a shift that has had > a fair bit of success if the trend for big companies to refuse to issue > quarterly earnings forecasts. > Remember, these 'rules' are aimed at millionaires. They are supposed to control some of the most powerful people in America. They are where they are because of their powerful, driven personalities. People that stand in their way get crushed. Sure, sometimes they go too far (Enron, etc.) but until the train hits the buffers, they get what they want. Shareholder reforms never happen while things are running fine. Or, even when they run mediocre. Viz. GM for the last thirty years. > Anyway, since we can't change the nature of the people (at least at > present), we must focus on crafting better rules and procedures. We can also > work on redesigning economic institutions (including corporations) in a > fundamentally new way... but that's a post (and a blog) for another time. > Better rules are meaningless. There appears to have been much fraudulent behavior in the present crisis, but the rule of law seems to have been set aside for the duration of the emergency. Bad behavior, terrible decisions that have bankrupted companies, have all been rewarded by massive bailouts and continued high salaries and bonuses. And all the current efforts seem to be aimed at getting back to the same old ways of behaving as soon as possible. Unless there is a root and branch clearout I don't hold out much hope for a better future for a long time to come. BillK From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 30 19:20:10 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 21:20:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Gradual Extinction of Slavery In-Reply-To: <4A172004.4060206@rawbw.com> References: <4322A3C6D97A49A4B5B3064D7803D69A@Catbert><7C443D8AE3E643C8BD842BD66B5DB16E@spike> <4A14F3E4.6040800@rawbw.com><780B5701156E4310AA04C3CFA884C44A@patrick4ezsk6z> <4A1507F2.8090708@rawbw.com> <9E7346654351498ABD3329EBA3BED05B@patrick4ezsk6z> <4A159497.2090801@rawbw.com> <4A16C5B7.7040607@libero.it> <4A172004.4060206@rawbw.com> Message-ID: <4A2186EA.9080209@libero.it> Il 22/05/2009 23.58, Lee Corbin ha scritto: > Mirco wrote (in The Rationality of Belief is Relative 8:33AM) > painlord2k at libero.it wrote: > Do you know why, about a millennium ago, slavery in Europe gradually > ceased? (I do believe, from a book I'm reading "The Discovery of > Mankind", that contrary to the stereotype, the Catholic Church's > behaviour really was strongly affected (sometimes) by its highly > theoretical doctrines, even if this meant less power. Perhaps this > is why?) Slavery started to decline with the Roman Empire, as there were not enough successful military expedition to replenish the slave pool. The slaves were not reproducing enough, so the Empire needed a continue influx of new slaves from abroad. Anyone know what was the reproduction rate of slaves in the South? The black slaves were able to reproduce themselves or there was the need to bring more slaves from Africa to replenish the losses? The slavery continued with the German kingdoms and, maybe, the slaves conditions was worse than in the imperial times. The slavery was practically abolished at the end of the X century (before 1000 AC) because the Church first extended the sacraments to the slaves (slaves could become Christians) and prohibited to Christians to reduce other Christians (and Jews) in slavery. Saint Paul, also teach the slaves to serve their masters but admonished the masters to not threat the slaves and that God treat all in the same way. So, Christian masters where put in a situation where they could not threat slaves with punishment or death with impunity. Not in front of God. As slaves were given sacraments and recognized to have a soul, they were recognized as men. And, as men, other men have not the right to keep them as slaves or enslave them (some saint argued that all men deserve to be slaves because of the Sin, so all masters are unjust masters and they risk much more to go to Hell than slaves). Then the priests urged the masters to free their slaves as a way to obtain salvations. So, many masters in their last wills freed the slaves and many heirs tried to forge the wills to prevent this. Also, many free men married slave woman (something that was against the laws). The most famous of these was Clodoveo II, king of Franks, that married the slave Batilde (she become saint after). Under the regency of Batilde, the commerce of Christian slaves was prohibited (this happen in the VII century, 650-660 AC) and she sought to free slave children. > (Evidently slavery was also slated for extinction in the U.S., > probably by the end of the 19th century, but there only for purely > economic reasons.) Machines make slaves redundant. Slaves in agricultural settings are managed differently from slaves in cities. > Or were the reasons not connected to the Church? Slavery continued and continue in Africa and M.E., so Church and religion are surely linked to the slave disappearance in the West. Then the West, mainly England, settled to disrupt and destroy the slave trade around the world. I'm sure this helped England to affirm his economic power against others. England, with its Industrial revolution, was better off without competitors that based their competitiveness upon cheap slave labour. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.46/2143 - Release Date: 05/30/09 05:53:00 From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 30 19:46:26 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 21:46:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905301246u2c107d8do20394a64a909ee@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 8:43 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > We stopped planning for a manned Mars mission when we realized we > could accomplish a lot more for the same cost with unmanned missions. > They're not as sexy as manned missions, but they're a lot smarter. > This is a nice rationalisation, but one which ramains at odd with the stated plans of the main space agencies of the world. And... accomplish what? In terms of engineering prowess, e.g., nobody would deny that unmanned missions executed sofar are *way* less ambitious than anything imagined during the Gemini-Apollo age, irrespective of the presence of a crew or not... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Sat May 30 19:52:17 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 14:52:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Stress Testing Government Regulations Message-ID: <200905301952.n4UJqPGL026953@andromeda.ziaspace.com> I just posted a new blog: "Stress Testing Government Regulations". Here: http://strategicphilosophy.blogspot.com/ In this post, I only hint at how we might go about better stress testing regulations and proposed policies. Given the ever-increasing complexity of our economy and society, I think this would be a great topic for discussion here. Max ------------------------------------- Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com ------------------------------------- From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 30 20:15:23 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 22:15:23 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What is Meant by "Slavery"? In-Reply-To: <4A217C9E.4070203@libero.it> References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com> <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> <4A16C8B1.6050405@libero.it> <4A16E2D6.9060109@libero.it> <4A1E0805.4080409@rawbw.com> <4A217C9E.4070203@libero.it> Message-ID: <580930c20905301315m2e7cd2b9l844e782d6ef884be@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/30 painlord2k at libero.it > To call "slavery" something that is not is cheapening the word. > I think we both like rigour in language and have a distaste for the undue emphatic and wildly metaphoric extension of historical concepts for purely rhetorical purposes. Thus, I second your remark. But it must be added that other social phenomena usually (and wrongly) assimilated to slavery are not necessarily better for those concerned. For instance, the medieval "serfdom" replaced servitude to a man or a family to that to an estate, which per se is a dubious improvement and may lead to an even lower social mobility. Moreover, the slave owner has a vested interest in the survival and productivity, if not the welfare, of the slaves he owns, something which does not necessarily remains the case when they are replaced by fungible "proletarians". Yet, it remains the case that societies widely based on slavery are poor performers in pseudo-darwinian terms, something which I suspect played a more important role than ideology in their near-extinction. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brian at posthuman.com Sat May 30 20:28:40 2009 From: brian at posthuman.com (Brian Atkins) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 15:28:40 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Restructuring executive compensation In-Reply-To: <200905301827.n4UIR9lX022773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905301827.n4UIR9lX022773@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <4A2196F8.6080307@posthuman.com> Max, Bill is right that it's proven beyond any doubts at this point in history that rules just will not stand in the way of the economic cycle. I mean we're living through the aftermath of exactly the kind of rule perverting stuff Bill is talking about. Here's a good example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-Steagall_Act#Repeal_of_the_Act So, let's get this straight. In order for Citi and the other banks to get the rope to hang themselves with, all of these people had to willingly go along with getting this law changed: bank CEOs, bank Boards, shareholders, Congress, US President. And they all went along with it happily. And honestly for myself, back in 1999 this wasn't a blip on my radar either. Laws dating back to the 1930s?? What possible use could that have in the New Economy. In the aftermath now, sure we will make a bunch of new rules to shore things back up, and for a while it will be improved, but the cycle will continue turning. As long as it is driven by human minds then eventually it will almost certainly repeat. And by the way, attempting to smooth it out typically just ends up making things worse down the road. See Hyman Minsky, "stability leads to instability": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_Minsky#Financial_theory If the government/Fed had let things deflate properly during the last recession instead of smoothing that out then we never would have had this huge housing and debt bubble. Or at least it wouldn't have been so big and damaging. Your best bet as long as we are in a human-driven economy is to expect the historic cycle to repeat, and learn to profit from it. -- Brian Atkins Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.singinst.org/ From fauxever at sprynet.com Sat May 30 20:36:33 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 13:36:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Ayn Rand and Evolution (was What is Meant by "Slavery"?) References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com><580930c20905201327w42f7374as26bddda568079e5d@mail.gmail.com><4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> <4A16C8B1.6050405@libero.it><4A16E2D6.9060109@libero.it><4A1E0805.4080409@rawbw.com> <4A217C9E.4070203@libero.it> <580930c20905301315m2e7cd2b9l844e782d6ef884be@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1D8E9A8DBA5C4F8FBA6AB2328995D407@patrick4ezsk6z> My hubby Patrick brought this to my attention recently - I had no idea about this aspect of Ayn Rand's views. Patrick belongs to an Internet forum discussion group (talk origins or some such), and he forwarded one discussion to me where a person wrote "I can tell you what made Rand uncomfortable about the theory of evolution. If man descends from a lower animal, of whatever sort, then /the mind of man is no longer exceptional." I am still looking around exploring this subject ... hmmm: "She goes on the same entry to describe those incapable of rational life as "sub-human" who need to be "enslaved" and "controlled." (p. 467.)" http://solohq.org/Articles/Parille/Ayn_Rand_and_Evolution.shtml Olga ----- Original Message ----- From: Stefano Vaj To: ExI chat list Sent: Saturday, May 30, 2009 1:15 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] What is Meant by "Slavery"? 2009/5/30 painlord2k at libero.it To call "slavery" something that is not is cheapening the word. I think we both like rigour in language and have a distaste for the undue emphatic and wildly metaphoric extension of historical concepts for purely rhetorical purposes. Thus, I second your remark. But it must be added that other social phenomena usually (and wrongly) assimilated to slavery are not necessarily better for those concerned. For instance, the medieval "serfdom" replaced servitude to a man or a family to that to an estate, which per se is a dubious improvement and may lead to an even lower social mobility. Moreover, the slave owner has a vested interest in the survival and productivity, if not the welfare, of the slaves he owns, something which does not necessarily remains the case when they are replaced by fungible "proletarians". Yet, it remains the case that societies widely based on slavery are poor performers in pseudo-darwinian terms, something which I suspect played a more important role than ideology in their near-extinction. -- Stefano Vaj ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ 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 stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 30 21:06:32 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 23:06:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Ayn Rand and Evolution (was What is Meant by "Slavery"?) In-Reply-To: <1D8E9A8DBA5C4F8FBA6AB2328995D407@patrick4ezsk6z> References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> <4A16C8B1.6050405@libero.it> <4A16E2D6.9060109@libero.it> <4A1E0805.4080409@rawbw.com> <4A217C9E.4070203@libero.it> <580930c20905301315m2e7cd2b9l844e782d6ef884be@mail.gmail.com> <1D8E9A8DBA5C4F8FBA6AB2328995D407@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <580930c20905301406l50bb930bubbc8fae27e7a07e3@mail.gmail.com> 2009/5/30 Olga Bourlin > My hubby Patrick brought this to my attention recently - I had no idea > about this aspect of Ayn Rand's views. Patrick belongs to an Internet forum > discussion group (talk origins or some such), and he forwarded one > discussion to me where a person wrote "I can tell you what made Rand > uncomfortable about the theory of evolution. If man descends from a lower > animal, of whatever sort, then /the mind of man is no longer exceptional." > Not that the thought would keep me awake at night, but basically, as the link mentions, AFAIK she never pondered much the subject nor was too concerned about it. And being "uneasy with the theory of evolution" (as a subject? at the current stage of that time? as per one's scarce knowledge of the matter?) does not really make per se anybody an adversary of "transformism". And the conclusion of the person quoted above seems entirely unwarranted. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat May 30 21:07:20 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 14:07:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <165180D70CFF4D888E815C20660EA3DB@spike> > On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 8:54 AM, Stefano Vaj > wrote: > > We planned to put men on Mars in 1982, 30 years later we > have trouble > > even in resuscitating Apollo-era technology, but special effects of > > gigantic spaceships traveling across universes keep > improving, thank > > you. > > We stopped planning for a manned Mars mission when we > realized we could accomplish a lot more for the same cost > with unmanned missions. > They're not as sexy as manned missions, but they're a lot smarter. > > -Dave Ja, and they produce a lot more useful spinoff technologies. I have been suggesting this at a Mars study group for years: build an extensive human habitat using robots on the surface, partially autonomous but mostly guided by a single human in Mars synchronous orbit. The human operators are changed out every couple years. After twenty years years, you have sufficient infrastructure to support about thirty to fifty people, but we need not send that many, for it requires only two human landers, both nubile females with lots of frozen embryos. They and their offspring are there to stay. That's the right way to do a Mars colony. Takes a long time, but it is still the right way. spike From fauxever at sprynet.com Sat May 30 21:21:25 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 14:21:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Ayn Rand and Evolution (was What is Meant by "Slavery"?) References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com><4A15CFBC.9030402@rawbw.com> <4A16C8B1.6050405@libero.it><4A16E2D6.9060109@libero.it><4A1E0805.4080409@rawbw.com> <4A217C9E.4070203@libero.it><580930c20905301315m2e7cd2b9l844e782d6ef884be@mail.gmail.com><1D8E9A8DBA5C4F8FBA6AB2328995D407@patrick4ezsk6z> <580930c20905301406l50bb930bubbc8fae27e7a07e3@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <02DF41A11F354E32BA32E2B43BCF26F9@patrick4ezsk6z> From: Stefano Vaj To: ExI chat list Sent: Saturday, May 30, 2009 2:06 PM 2009/5/30 Olga Bourlin fauxever at sprynet.com > Not that the thought would keep me awake at night, but basically, as the > link mentions, AFAIK she never pondered much the subject nor was too > concerned about it. And being "uneasy with the theory of evolution" (as a > subject? at the current stage of that time? as per one's scarce knowledge > of the matter?) does not really make per se anybody an adversary of > "transformism". > And the conclusion of the person quoted above seems entirely unwarranted. Well, there is a lot more to this (I did not bring in the thread that my husband forwarded to me from his discussion group - it was very juicy!). I am merely starting to explore this aspect as far as Rand goes. As to societal issues - when they pop up for me, I find contradictions very interesting. And when there's talk of "freedom" and Ayn Rand's philosophy - it is like machine guns have gone off in my head. Pop!pop!pop!pop!pop! :( I must be sick. Olga From benboc at lineone.net Sat May 30 22:12:28 2009 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 23:12:28 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Wired: The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A21AF4C.5060001@lineone.net> Stathis wrote: >I guess one difference online is that no-one is in a position of real >power over anyone else. Hm. In an 'ideal internet' that would be true. But in the real world we have the great firewall of china, rampant censorship in places like iran, and the future threat of a balkanisation of the whole internet if we're not very careful. I think this is an under-appreciated threat, because we all realise that the usual kinds of attempt to restrict people's access to information are doomed - but what about when the powers-that-be finally realise this too? What's to stop china, russia, indonesia, and the muslim world from setting up their own domain name systems and isolating their internal public communications networks from the rest of the world? (wouldn't have to be physical, just impose an incompatible protocol). Any traditional power structure will be very afraid of this internet socialism, once it becomes aware of it. We've already seen how media cartels react to file-sharing. What will governments do when they start sensing their power over the people slipping away? With any luck, the acceleration of technological progress will be perpetually ahead of any govenments ability to realise its implications and successfully stifle it, but there's no guarantee. Ben Zaiboc (waiting for someone to invent an infinitely scaleable network protocol that inherently resists any kind of top-down control, needs no domain name servers and is ready for installation on godzillions of smart-dust nanomachines that will unstoppably saturate the entire globe. _Then_ Stathis' claim will really be true.) From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 30 23:07:20 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 01:07:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: <165180D70CFF4D888E815C20660EA3DB@spike> References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> <165180D70CFF4D888E815C20660EA3DB@spike> Message-ID: <580930c20905301607v448d0b74y7ccd33fb5a839086@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 11:07 PM, spike wrote: > That's the right way to do a Mars colony. Yes. No. Maybe. The future never happens the way one expects it. In the fifties we ended up not with enormous airships floating around, but with airplanes. Fine with me. The crucial issue is that the "future" sometimes does not happen at all. Or at least, not now, not here. And I am not so much contented, e.g., by singularities possibly happening in one age or another in a galaxy far, far away. Now, in spite of Kurweil-style optimism, most fundamentals at the origin of dramatic technological progress are IMHO not in such great shape these days, let alone in western societies, for a large number of economic, societal, political, but above all cultural, reasons. So that I see as the historical mission of explicit and implicit transhumanists the fact of doing what it can be done to reverse or at least fight such trend. Not waiting estatically for the "rapture", not discussing forever how best to "steer" developments which are just too easily taken for granted, not discussing to fairest way to distribute dividends that have not matured, not indulging in the overhyping of contemporary techno-scientific achievements which never fail to be presented as a "revolution" opening "endless possibilities" as trivial or tentative as they may be. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 30 23:13:08 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 01:13:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Ayn Rand and Evolution (was What is Meant by "Slavery"?) In-Reply-To: <02DF41A11F354E32BA32E2B43BCF26F9@patrick4ezsk6z> References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com> <4A16E2D6.9060109@libero.it> <4A1E0805.4080409@rawbw.com> <4A217C9E.4070203@libero.it> <580930c20905301315m2e7cd2b9l844e782d6ef884be@mail.gmail.com> <1D8E9A8DBA5C4F8FBA6AB2328995D407@patrick4ezsk6z> <580930c20905301406l50bb930bubbc8fae27e7a07e3@mail.gmail.com> <02DF41A11F354E32BA32E2B43BCF26F9@patrick4ezsk6z> Message-ID: <580930c20905301613n5f9b5337hb74b8d009ea32d0@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 11:21 PM, Olga Bourlin wrote: > Well, there is a lot more to this (I did not bring in the thread that my > husband forwarded to me from his discussion group - it was very juicy!). I > am merely starting to explore this aspect as far as Rand goes. > > If I must venture on a personal opinion, I do not see any necessary contradiction between objectivist ideas and evolution. Additionally, Ayn Rand was passionate and multidisciplinary enough to put up relentless and emphatic battles against anything she believed to have a real relevance in respect of her worldview. But not being an objectivist myself, and being far from a scholar of Rand's thought, I am probably not really qualified to say a final word on the subject. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 30 23:15:49 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 01:15:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Wired: The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online In-Reply-To: <4A21AF4C.5060001@lineone.net> References: <4A21AF4C.5060001@lineone.net> Message-ID: <580930c20905301615k23a07979te86ad963471060b0@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 12:12 AM, ben wrote: > > But in the real world we have the great firewall of china, rampant > censorship in places like iran Really? I am just back from a business trip in Iran, and I cannot say that I remarked any practical difference from the kind of Internet I access from Italy. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat May 30 23:45:00 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 23:45:00 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Wired: The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online In-Reply-To: <580930c20905301615k23a07979te86ad963471060b0@mail.gmail.com> References: <4A21AF4C.5060001@lineone.net> <580930c20905301615k23a07979te86ad963471060b0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/30/09, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Really? I am just back from a business trip in Iran, and I cannot say that I > remarked any practical difference from the kind of Internet I access from > Italy. > Then you probably don't often access the sites that the Iran government don't want their population to access. e.g. anti-Islamic, immoral, anti-social (e.g.women's rights). BillK From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Sat May 30 23:52:46 2009 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 19:52:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <93B276767F724096BDF6E33000F77C57@Catbert> From: "Dave Sill" wrote, > We stopped planning for a manned Mars mission when we realized we > could accomplish a lot more for the same cost with unmanned missions. > They're not as sexy as manned missions, but they're a lot smarter. Actually, it was the reverse. The manned missions were cancelled due to budget cuts. The cheaper unmanned missions were developed later based on limited funds. -- Harvey Newstrom From sparge at gmail.com Sun May 31 01:06:15 2009 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 21:06:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: <580930c20905301246u2c107d8do20394a64a909ee@mail.gmail.com> References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905301246u2c107d8do20394a64a909ee@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/30 Stefano Vaj : > On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 8:43 PM, Dave Sill wrote: >> >> We stopped planning for a manned Mars mission when we realized we >> could accomplish a lot more for the same cost with unmanned missions. >> They're not as sexy as manned missions, but they're a lot smarter. > > This is a nice rationalisation, but one which ramains at odd with the stated > plans of the main space agencies of the world. Firstly, I'm not associated with NASA's space program and I have no need or desire to rationalize anything in that respect. That's just my understanding of the facts. Secondly, I don't know the stated plans of the main space agencies of the world, but I'm pretty sure NASA is the only one currently exploring Mars--and I think unmanned exploration that actually happens is way more useful than manned missions that are always 5 years away. > And... accomplish what? Um, exploring Mars? > In terms of engineering prowess, e.g., nobody would > deny that unmanned missions executed sofar are *way* less ambitious than > anything imagined during the Gemini-Apollo age, irrespective of the presence > of a crew or not... So you see space missions as a kind of international dick size contest? NASA may have a small dick, but at they're getting laid. -Dave From sparge at gmail.com Sun May 31 01:09:21 2009 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 21:09:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: <93B276767F724096BDF6E33000F77C57@Catbert> References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> <93B276767F724096BDF6E33000F77C57@Catbert> Message-ID: On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 7:52 PM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > From: "Dave Sill" wrote, >> >> We stopped planning for a manned Mars mission when we realized we >> could accomplish a lot more for the same cost with unmanned missions. >> They're not as sexy as manned missions, but they're a lot smarter. > > Actually, it was the reverse. ?The manned missions were cancelled due to > budget cuts. ?The cheaper unmanned missions were developed later based on > limited funds. OK, but the point remains that unmanned missions are more cost effective than manned missions. -Dave From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 31 01:31:48 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 11:31:48 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Psychology of markets explanations In-Reply-To: <4A2148BC.4030509@libero.it> References: <791670.45120.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A2148BC.4030509@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/31 painlord2k at libero.it : > Il 30/05/2009 4.50, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > >> The law of supply and demand is an emergent phenomenon supervening on >> social psychology. The supply-demand curve would be affected if people >> prefer to buy more of a product if it is more expensive, for example. > > Where do you see this happen? > I never saw this happen in 40 years of my life. It might happen with certain exclusive luxury items. It also happens sometimes with financial market, which is what leads to bubbles. The price of a security goes up, and demand for it also goes up because speculators believe its rise is an indication that it will continue rising. But that is not the point: the point is that it is peoples' actual psychology, whatever it might be, that causes them to behave in a particular way, leading to the observed economic laws. If you had an elaborate computer model of the economy and you could change any variable, changing psychology would change the outcome. > When will be have phycology of physics explanations? > For example, if people believed that air planes don't work, there would not > be air planes flying, so the laws of aerodynamics could be told to not work, > because air planes can not fly if people don't believe they will fly. The world would be very different if there were no planes flying due to peoples' beliefs. In order for planes to fly not only do the laws of physics have to make it possible, the planes must also be built. > The supply-demand curve work perfectly with rational agents. > Irrational agents will be weeded out of the market as unfit (they will pay > more than needed and ask less than needed) > Any explanation that say the supply-demand curve is due only to > psychological causes require that ALL agents must be always irrational (a > market of fools). > A single rational agent would gain more than all the others and would > control the market given enough time. Agents that are partially rational > would have a success proportional to their rationality. Being a "rational agent" implies a certain psychological state. If many participants in the market were "irrational" then it would change the market, perhaps to their detriment and everyone elses, as we see in boom and bust cycles. And even if everyone conforms to a definition of "rational" you still have to explain the actual demand for a product, the level to which the demand will be sensitive to price changes, what the beliefs about future prices are and how this will affect demand, and so on. Psychological states and physical resources are the basic interacting elements out of which the economy emerges. I don't think there is anything radical in this statement. -- Stathis Papaioannou From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Sun May 31 00:47:16 2009 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 20:47:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: CrossFit picks up the WSJ article In-Reply-To: <55ad6af70905290854o289df31ar9c614742a7473bcc@mail.gmail.com> References: <7730d1c90905232008n1d013d8fl91aaeb95ca315a98@mail.gmail.com><3c9e88c1-0511-437c-8469-2b67bfe9941d@c36g2000yqn.googlegroups.com><6303adb7-440c-42c3-a632-abedceed290b@x5g2000yqk.googlegroups.com><7730d1c90905282130k1535e7b6l6f1f8457d019c7e0@mail.gmail.com><9f9908d6-69b5-44b2-9df0-e17df6b457ac@r34g2000vbi.googlegroups.com> <55ad6af70905290854o289df31ar9c614742a7473bcc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3BD2DDBF38754D7A9651F8AEC1A23F64@Catbert> On May 29, 2:22 am, Scott Kerr wrote: > it seems there could be a simple > conclusion, such as: several body types exist and these process food > differently with different effects; or, it doesn't matter what anyone > eats as long as it's not gorging Believe it or not, most data shows little variation between humans. I know people stress different body types and genetic differences. But most of these have a statistically "significant" effect of a few percent. Basic diet and exercise account for most body changes, and far out-weight these other so-called differences. My theory on why so many different diets work, is that any diet is better than random eating. Most people eat whatever they feel like, and don't realize how much junk and how many total calories they eat. Switching to any diet (high fat, high carb, high protein, low fat, low carb, or low protein) will greatly reduce your food choices. Besides having less choice and probably eating less because of it, the dieter will also start paying attention to what they are eating, and probably make better choices. So virtually any diet that is planned is better than any random unplanned diet. My other theory on diets is that most of them are bunk. The list I gave before (high fat, high carb, high protein, low fat, low carb, or low protein) are all bogus. There are good carbs and bad carbs. There are good fats and bad fats. There are probably good proteins and bad proteins. (Or if not pure proteins, proteins often come mixed with other good and bad macronutrients). One has to distinguish between the good and bad to increase the good and decrease the bad. It makes no sense to increase or decrease total amounts, if one doesn't distinguish whether one is adjusting the good or the bad. This is the major flaw with most diet theories, and is a major flaw with many experiments as well. It also makes no sense to focus on one macronutrient while ignoring the others. One has to increase good fats, increase good carbs, increase good proteins, while decreasing bad fats, decreasing bad carbs, and decreasing bad proteins. This is basic biochemistry for human nutrition. And it is the same for all humans. -- Harvey Newstrom From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun May 31 01:29:40 2009 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 18:29:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Ayn Rand and Evolution (was What is Meant by "Slavery"?) References: <580930c20905200318v303bf644h2fc08b7718e5d769@mail.gmail.com><4A16E2D6.9060109@libero.it><4A1E0805.4080409@rawbw.com> <4A217C9E.4070203@libero.it><580930c20905301315m2e7cd2b9l844e782d6ef884be@mail.gmail.com><1D8E9A8DBA5C4F8FBA6AB2328995D407@patrick4ezsk6z><580930c20905301406l50bb930bubbc8fae27e7a07e3@mail.gmail.com><02DF41A11F354E32BA32E2B43BCF26F9@patrick4ezsk6z> <580930c20905301613n5f9b5337hb74b8d009ea32d0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: From: Stefano Vaj To: ExI chat list Sent: Saturday, May 30, 2009 4:13 PM > If I must venture on a personal opinion, I do not see any necessary > contradiction between objectivist ideas and evolution. Additionally, Ayn > Rand was passionate and multidisciplinary enough to put up relentless and > emphatic battles against anything she believed to have a real relevance in > respect of her worldview. > But not being an objectivist myself, and being far from a scholar of > Rand's thought, I am probably not really qualified to say a final word on > the subject. I have to plead ignorance, as well - I am no scholar of Rand's work. However, where I see an interesting (potential) contradiction is in the claim that objectivism (or Objectivism) is rational. I know Ayn Rand claimed to be - and promoted - rationalism. Maybe I'm wrong, but wouldn't there be a contradiction if a religious person professed allegiance to the objectivist viewpoint? Why? Because religion is not rational. >From a discussion my husband was having on that other forum: > Nathaniel Branden, in /The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn >Rand/, said of her that she had difficulty accepting any scientific >theory that came after Sir Isaac Newton. He then gave this specific >example: > >> remember being astonished to hear her say one day, /"After all, the >> theory of evolution is only a hypothesis."/ I asked her, /"You mean >> you seriously doubt that more complex life forms-including >> humans-evolved from less complex life forms?"/ She shrugged and >> responded,/ "I'm really not prepared to say,"/ or words to that >> effect. I do not mean to imply that she wanted to substitute for the >> theory of evolution the religious belief that we are all God's >> creation; but there was definitely something about the concept of >> evolution that made her uncomfortable. Unlike religion, there's no controversy about evolution being rational, is there? Wouldn't evolution fit into the view of rationality? So why would Rand be either reticent or inaudible about her views on evolution? If, indeed, the subject made her uncomfortable ... why would it have done so? Olga From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Sun May 31 01:12:22 2009 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 21:12:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> <93B276767F724096BDF6E33000F77C57@Catbert> Message-ID: <497D0836433A40D999A04B637323B1ED@Catbert> "Dave Sill" wrote, > OK, but the point remains that unmanned missions are more cost > effective than manned missions. I defintely agree with that. I can't justify the magnitude increase in cost for manned missions just because it would be more fun. I would love to get to that point, but it's just too expensive right now. -- Harvey Newstrom From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 31 02:53:43 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 12:53:43 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Savings and wealth In-Reply-To: References: <640393.31048.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <34953.12.77.169.66.1243682507.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: 2009/5/31 spike : > > >> ...On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou >>...The Chinese are savers and >> invest a lot of those savings in manufacturing, but they are >> in trouble when their largest markets stop buying. That is >> why the Chinese Government is trying to stimulate domestic >> consumption... Stathis Papaioannou > > > Ja! ?This is what gives me a great deal of hope for the west. ?China and > India have a couple billion people between them who live well below western > standards. ?Given television, specifically ours, Dallas reruns and such, > they will soon become wildly materialistic, throw out any remaining commies > from their government, and do all the stuff we did for the past thirty > years. Where do you get the relationship between a desire to be wealthier and voting against socialist policies? If poor people were content to remain poor, they wouldn't care how unfairly their country's resources were distributed. > Then instead of utter ruin, the west can crank up our factories > again, to sell them a bunch of stuff, make a ton of money, throw out any > remaining commies in our government. ?We have gotten a snooty attitude that > there is something wrong with factory work, an attitude that factories are > something the Chinese do. ?We may wake up and decide that factory work is a > terrific job, far superior to the alternatives. ?Bringing India and China up > to western standards will have a lot of consequences, such as making Keith's > power sat notions suddenly look very attractive. ?If that gets done, I > wouldn't be surprised if China does it. The commies have always been extremely proud of actual physical work that produces stuff. That's where the hammer and sickle comes from. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 31 03:24:00 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 13:24:00 +1000 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/31 Dave Sill : > On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 8:54 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> We planned to put men on Mars in 1982, 30 years later we have trouble >> even in resuscitating Apollo-era technology, but special effects of >> gigantic spaceships traveling across universes keep improving, thank >> you. > > We stopped planning for a manned Mars mission when we realized we > could accomplish a lot more for the same cost with unmanned missions. > They're not as sexy as manned missions, but they're a lot smarter. It depends on what you want to accomplish. If the goal is to put people on Mars, then unmanned missions, unless part of the preparation, are by definition a failure. -- Stathis Papaioannou From max at maxmore.com Sun May 31 04:26:11 2009 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 23:26:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Restructuring executive compensation Message-ID: <200905310426.n4V4QJMQ005484@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Brian Atkins wrote: >Max, Bill is right that it's proven beyond any doubts at this point >in history >that rules just will not stand in the way of the economic cycle. I mean we're >living through the aftermath of exactly the kind of rule perverting >stuff Bill >is talking about. Is it really so proven? I must have missed that proof. However, I suspect you are using "rules" to refer solely to centralized government intervention. I am not limiting the term that way, as should be obvious from the blog post of mine I previously mentioned. Even if what you say were true, taken literally it would prove very little. We will only be at "this point in history" for a moment. Then we move on to the next moment. As we move from one moment to the next, we learn. At least, we have the opportunity to learn, though obviously we often fail to do so. We're still only beginning to understand complex systems. Why be so pessimistic that we will never be able to tweak them on any level for the better? Let me get this straight. Are you say that no changes to rules (private or public) will make any difference at all? Are you really agreeing with BillK that "Better rules are meaningless." (BTW, that comment baffles me given what seems to be his favorable view of government intervention.) I didn't say that the economic cycle could be entirely prevented, only that it might be somewhat alleviated and some of its causes and effects moderated. The view you seem to be taking is that *nothing* can be done, even on a microeconomic level, to possibly ameliorate the business boom-bust cycle. You are saying that no institutional changes in incentives can make any difference. No technology-mediated improvements in transparency and communication can make a difference. No Internet-enabled stakeholder pressures can ever make a difference. That a remarkably ambitious claim. It implies omniscience. On your defeatist view, we should quit wasting our time trying to change aging and death and other traditional, long-lived, and deeply embedded aspects of the human condition. Surely, on the same principle you implicitly propose, we cannot do anything "at this point in history" to alter the biological cycle. Yet I don't believe you accept that, given what I know of your views. Your same view seems also to imply that property rights cannot make a difference to human behavior and to economic outcomes. We might as well abandon them. Yet I don't think you would accept this implication. Your view seems to have similar implications regarding the U.S. Constitution. Did this have no good long-lasting effect? (Yes, of course, Supreme Court judges together with politicians, primarily, have worked around the Constitution, most obviously with moves such as the Interstate Commerce Clause. But it took decades for them to do this damage, and it *still* isn't complete. The Constitution was *not* a total waste of time.) Your whole perspective leaves no room for the recognition that human behavior is influenced by conditions and opportunities. Ultimately, I take it that you are assuming that nothing can be done to improve the basic functioning of the economy until we can make basic changes to human nature. This seems to be a classic example of an error to which Singularitarians are prone. "Let's not try to improve things. Leave it for the superintelligence AI." >In the aftermath now, sure we will make a bunch of new rules to shore things >back up, and for a while it will be improved, but the cycle will continue >turning. As long as it is driven by human minds then eventually it >will almost >certainly repeat. > >And by the way, attempting to smooth it out typically just ends up >making things >worse down the road. > >If the government/Fed had let things deflate properly during the >last recession >instead of smoothing that out then we never would have had this huge >housing and >debt bubble. Or at least it wouldn't have been so big and damaging. Yes, I agree with what you say here. That's not the kind of "smoothing out" that I'm talking about. From the context, it should be obvious that I don't mean heavy-handed government intervention that acts in a way that prevents the circuit breaker from blowing. On the contrary, many of the most important ways of moderating the swings consist of removing and preventing government interventions of the kinds I just listed here: http://strategicphilosophy.blogspot.com/ More relevant are means of helping us learn more quickly, thereby reducing the magnitude of the problems resulting from failure. Designing institutions and learning processes to learn from "fast failure" through many modest experiments (as well as developing better means of anticipation) seems to be a promising approach. This is really just a practical implementation of pancritical rationalism, and was nicely described in some detail by Stefan H. Thomke in his book "Experimentation Matters". Max ------------------------------------- Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher Extropy Institute Founder www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com ------------------------------------- From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun May 31 04:52:25 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 21:52:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Iran's plan for their gay population Message-ID: <2d6187670905302152q2362ca88ncf1e6a6b27d81818@mail.gmail.com> What Iran is doing to their gay population almost seems the stuff of a science fiction novel about a really twisted dystopia... "Iranian-born herself, the New York-based filmmaker learned that in Iran, homosexuality is a crime punishable by death. But the government has provided a way out for the nation?s gays and lesbians: a sex-change operation. Fully paid for by the state, the procedure would allow these people to conform to Iran?s theocratic standards of sexuality." ?Her point was that there are rules and rules are there to help you. If you start cross-dressing before your operation, you bring the problems with the police upon yourself. Islamic Iran and the Christian Right have so much in common ?it?s just surprising that they?re not better friends.? But I will point out that the Christian Right would be horrified to deal with homosexuality by advocating a sex change procedure. They would see that as defying God's will. I find it grimly fascinating that Iran's clerics consider such an option viable. http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2008/08/26/f-homosexuality-iran-sex-change.html John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun May 31 04:53:44 2009 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 21:53:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Savings and wealth (spike) Message-ID: On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 4:07 PM, spike wrote: snip >Bringing India and China up > to western standards will have a lot of consequences, such as making Keith's > power sat notions suddenly look very attractive. ?If that gets done, I > wouldn't be surprised if China does it. I am at the ISDC. Today gave the talk on reducing the cost of a power sat project to the point it's only about twice what China spent on 3 Gorges Dam. The technical experts here have not found anything amiss in the details so far. The general consensus is that regulation and fear of looking bad makes power sats something that the US cannot do. For example, a US effort could not afford to let a single worker (of the thousand or so needed at GEO) be killed. If the Chinese had 6,000 die in space every year it would be less than what they admit are killed in coal mines. There is also the military aspect of a 4 GW propulsion laser. The output is equal to a ton of TNT/second. Political pressure would prevent the US from building one even with safeguards to prevent if from being used as a weapon. But if India or China decided to solve their energy problems this way, they could do it. The military guys here hold the same dark view of the situation. Keith From spike66 at att.net Sun May 31 05:38:23 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 22:38:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Iran's plan for their gay population In-Reply-To: <2d6187670905302152q2362ca88ncf1e6a6b27d81818@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670905302152q2362ca88ncf1e6a6b27d81818@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Behalf Of John Grigg >..."Iranian-born herself, the New York-based filmmaker learned that in Iran, homosexuality is a crime punishable by death... She was shocked, SHOCKED! to learn of this obscure law. >...But the government has provided a way out for the nation's gays and lesbians: a sex-change operation... This will open a can of worms they will wish they hadn't opened. Can the medics really take a lesbian and surgically create a man? I ha' me doots. >...Fully paid for by the state, the procedure would allow these people to conform to Iran's theocratic standards of sexuality." Wouldn't it be far cheaper to just buy them a one way ticket to the US? >..."Her point was that there are rules and rules are there to help you... This noose is here to helllllp you. >...If you start cross-dressing before your operation, you bring the problems with the police upon yourself... The can of worms cracks open here. There are a series of operations that take some time. I am no expert on this, but we have experts on this forum. At what point do the patients begin to dress as the other gender? What does Iran do with those born ambiguously gendered? >...Iran and the Christian Right have so much in common -it's just surprising that they're not better friends." Iran and the American Left have so much in opposition, it surprises me that they are not more bitter enemies. It really is so puzzling. Seems to me those guys have it backwards. >...But I will point out that the Christian Right would be horrified to deal with homosexuality by advocating a sex change procedure. They would see that as defying God's will... I would like to ask both groups what is god's will for the Klinefelter syndrome patients. Does the theocracy just pretend such people do not exist? How are they to dress? >I find it grimly fascinating that Iran's clerics consider such an option viable. http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2008/08/26/f-homosexuality-iran-sex-change .html John From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun May 31 06:25:33 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 23:25:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired Message-ID: <2d6187670905302325tf6c5762k98350a7655c84cf8@mail.gmail.com> A very poignant story about how the homeless will struggle to maintain their connection to the internet... http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB124363359881267523-lMyQjAxMDI5NDMzMDYzMzAzWj.html John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Sun May 31 06:32:14 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 23:32:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired Message-ID: <511739.22910.qm@web110413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> --- On Sun, 5/31/09, John Grigg wrote: > A very?poignant story about how the homeless will struggle to maintain their connection to the internet... Funny...but I assume the homeless don't care about their connection to the internet, they have other things to worry about:) Anna ? > http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB124363359881267523-lMyQjAxMDI5NDMzMDYzMzAzWj.html > ? > John > > -----Inline Attachment Follows----- > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > __________________________________________________________________ Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/gift/ From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun May 31 07:35:11 2009 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 00:35:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired In-Reply-To: <511739.22910.qm@web110413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <511739.22910.qm@web110413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670905310035w68b93470o2e62e87ced9eabb@mail.gmail.com> Anna Taylor wrote: Funny...but I assume the homeless don't care about their connection to the internet, they have other things to worry about:) >>> Well..., I think the need for being informed, connected with other human beings and feeling recognized as worthy of respect (even if only on the net) is right up there with needing food, clothing & bedding and some sort of shelter for the night. Anna, you have a lot to learn about people. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 31 07:42:18 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 02:42:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired In-Reply-To: <2d6187670905310035w68b93470o2e62e87ced9eabb@mail.gmail.com > References: <511739.22910.qm@web110413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <2d6187670905310035w68b93470o2e62e87ced9eabb@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090531024142.02344be8@satx.rr.com> At 12:35 AM 5/31/2009 -0700, John Grigg wrote: > the need for being informed, connected with other human beings and > feeling recognized as worthy of respect (even if only on the net) > is right up there with needing food, clothing & bedding and some > sort of shelter for the night. > >Anna, you have a lot to learn about people. Well said. From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 31 07:59:09 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 07:59:09 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Restructuring executive compensation In-Reply-To: <200905310426.n4V4QJMQ005484@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200905310426.n4V4QJMQ005484@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 5/31/09, Max More wrote: > Is it really so proven? I must have missed that proof. However, I suspect > you are using "rules" to refer solely to centralized government > intervention. I am not limiting the term that way, as should be obvious from > the blog post of mine I previously mentioned. > > Even if what you say were true, taken literally it would prove very little. > We will only be at "this point in history" for a moment. Then we move on to > the next moment. As we move from one moment to the next, we learn. At least, > we have the opportunity to learn, though obviously we often fail to do so. > We're still only beginning to understand complex systems. Why be so > pessimistic that we will never be able to tweak them on any level for the > better? > > Let me get this straight. Are you say that no changes to rules (private or > public) will make any difference at all? Are you really agreeing with BillK > that "Better rules are meaningless." (BTW, that comment baffles me given > what seems to be his favorable view of government intervention.) I didn't > say that the economic cycle could be entirely prevented, only that it might > be somewhat alleviated and some of its causes and effects moderated. > The heart of the problem is 'too big to fail'. This means that the rule of law no longer applies if an organization gets big enough and powerful enough. The staff and directors cannot be charged with fraud. They cannot be sacked. The organization must be given billions of government money to ensure bankrupt organizations continue trading. Accounts can be falsified with no comeback. 'Problem' liabilities are allowed to be 'off-balance-sheet' or just given fictitious valuations. Huge salaries and bonuses continue as usual. Really, just do whatever you like. Until this failure is corrected, 'rules' and even laws just get pushed aside. BillK From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 31 11:51:54 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 21:51:54 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Iran's plan for their gay population In-Reply-To: <2d6187670905302152q2362ca88ncf1e6a6b27d81818@mail.gmail.com> References: <2d6187670905302152q2362ca88ncf1e6a6b27d81818@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/5/31 John Grigg : > What Iran is doing to their gay population almost seems the stuff of a > science fiction novel about a really twisted dystopia... > > "Iranian-born herself, the New York-based filmmaker learned that in Iran, > homosexuality is a crime punishable by death. But the government has > provided a way out for the nation?s gays and lesbians: a sex-change > operation. Fully paid for by the state, the procedure would allow these > people to conform to Iran?s theocratic standards of sexuality." > > ?Her point was that there are rules and rules are there to help you. If you > start cross-dressing before your operation, you bring the problems with the > police upon yourself. Islamic Iran and the Christian Right have so much in > common ?it?s just surprising that they?re not better friends.? An Iranian doctor I know told me about sex change operations in Iran when I made an assumption about how the patient we were discussing, a transsexual, would not have been tolerated in her country. In Iran, she explained, patients could have the operation if they were diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder, using the same DSM-IV criteria as are used in Western countries. It was acknowledged even by the religious authorities that these people couldn't help being born with a mismatch between their brain's gender and their chromosomes' gender, which is what GID is, and which is a much more enlightened view than the majority of fundamentalist Christians. So if these people really want a sex change operation, after jumping through a number of hoops, they can get one; and whether they have an operation or not, the law protects them from persecution, even though there is still a huge amount of social stigma. On the other hand, homosexuality remains against the law, in some cases punishable by death. But just as in many Western countries where homosexuality was until a few years ago a capital offence or punishable by long prison terms, the law isn't really enforced if people keep their sexual relationships private. So the Iranians are on a par with the most enlightened Western states when it comes to transsexuals, but a few decades behind when it comes to homosexuals. -- Stathis Papaioannou From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 31 12:25:52 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 14:25:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Savings and wealth In-Reply-To: References: <640393.31048.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <34953.12.77.169.66.1243682507.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <4A227750.5040102@libero.it> Il 31/05/2009 4.53, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > Where do you get the relationship between a desire to be wealthier and > voting against socialist policies? If poor people were content to > remain poor, they wouldn't care how unfairly their country's resources > were distributed. This is true only if economy is a zero sum game. It is not. But you think so, so it is understandable that you don't understand because wealth creation is more important than redistribution and that redistribution will happen naturally if you give time and freedom to the people. > The commies have always been extremely proud of actual physical work > that produces stuff. That's where the hammer and sickle comes from. They were so proud of their physical works that their technology sucked then and suck now. Capitalists (well sane people) are more interested in the end results not in the inputs. Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.46/2145 - Release Date: 05/31/09 05:53:00 From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 31 13:21:09 2009 From: painlord2k at libero.it (painlord2k at libero.it) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 15:21:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Psychology of markets explanations In-Reply-To: References: <791670.45120.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A2148BC.4030509@libero.it> Message-ID: <4A228445.7040404@libero.it> Il 31/05/2009 3.31, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > 2009/5/31 painlord2k at libero.it: >> Il 30/05/2009 4.50, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: >> >>> The law of supply and demand is an emergent phenomenon supervening on >>> social psychology. The supply-demand curve would be affected if people >>> prefer to buy more of a product if it is more expensive, for example. >> Where do you see this happen? >> I never saw this happen in 40 years of my life. > > It might happen with certain exclusive luxury items. False, because the "exclusive luxury items" are not bought for their usefulness, but only for the status they confer. They are symbols. The buyer buy the item for the status it confer (or he think it confer). The law of supply and demand is the same as usual even in this case. > It also happens > sometimes with financial market, which is what leads to bubbles. The buyers buy because they hope to sell higher. They don't buy at an higher price on purpose. In fact, to maximize their gains they will try to buy at the lower price available at the moment. The fact that sometimes they are wrong in their foresight don't invalidate the law of supply-demand. > But that is not the point: the point is that it is peoples' > actual psychology, whatever it might be, that causes them to behave in > a particular way, leading to the observed economic laws. If you had an > elaborate computer model of the economy and you could change any > variable, changing psychology would change the outcome. Changing the atmosphere in an artillery simulator will change the trajectory, but will not change the law of gravity. Changing the rate of revolution of the Earth will change the trajectory, too. But will not cause the law of gravity or the attrition of the air to change. I would recommend the first chapter of "Man, Economy ans State with Power and Market", where the law of supply and demand is explained. It is easy and it is logic, it don't need any explanation of the psychology of the agents. The motives of the agents buying and selling are theirs and don't change the law. If the supply grow (all other equal) the price will not raise; if the demand grow (all other equal) the price will not fall. It is all here. This is true for anything, anywhere, any time. If it appear not true, it is because you are interpreting the data incorrectly. It is like you look at the planets and see them moving around the sky in strange patters, with loops for some. A man understood that positioning the Sun at the centre of the system all the orbits become circular and similar. Another come and showed how the orbits could be calculated and others added why the bodies moved in this way and another come up to a way to prove that the Earth have a revolution every 24 hours. But you could continue to believe that the Earth is at the centre and is still. Is it what your eyes show to you? Why do you must doubt your eyes? > The world would be very different if there were no planes flying due > to peoples' beliefs. In order for planes to fly not only do the laws > of physics have to make it possible, the planes must also be built. So, if people don't believe in the plane physics, is the physics show wrong? > Being a "rational agent" implies a certain psychological state. It implies that there are lower limits to the prices you will sell and higher limits to the prices you will buy. Limits dictates by your order of values. > If > many participants in the market were "irrational" then it would change > the market, perhaps to their detriment and everyone else, as we see > in boom and bust cycles. An irrational agent in a market could buy at prices too high or not buy at prices low enough; or he could be buying too much or not enough. This would imply he is incurring in losses. These losses must be added to the losses due to his rational errors (due to his inability to speculate always correctly about the future). > And even if everyone conforms to a definition > of "rational" you still have to explain the actual demand for a > product, the level to which the demand will be sensitive to price > changes, what the beliefs about future prices are and how this will > affect demand, and so on. Psychological states and physical resources > are the basic interacting elements out of which the economy emerges. I > don't think there is anything radical in this statement. The psychology or the conditions at hand could change the scheduling of the wills of the agents involved, sure. Psychology could help explain the behaviour of the agents, but do not invalidate the law of supply-demand. Different psychologies or conditions could change the shape of the curve as they change the demand and the supply. But the law is always the same. "If the supply grow (all other equal) the price will not raise; if the demand grow (all other equal) the price will not fall." Mirco -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database: 270.12.46/2145 - Release Date: 05/31/09 05:53:00 From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 31 13:33:23 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 23:33:23 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Savings and wealth In-Reply-To: <4A227750.5040102@libero.it> References: <640393.31048.qm@web30102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <34953.12.77.169.66.1243682507.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <4A227750.5040102@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/31 painlord2k at libero.it : > Il 31/05/2009 4.53, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto: > >> Where do you get the relationship between a desire to be wealthier and >> voting against socialist policies? If poor people were content to >> remain poor, they wouldn't care how unfairly their country's resources >> were distributed. > > This is true only if economy is a zero sum game. > It is not. > But you think so, so it is understandable that you don't understand because > wealth creation is more important than redistribution and that > redistribution will happen naturally if you give time and freedom to the > people. I was talking about peoples' motivations in choosing the form of government. Spike implied that if they have a desire to be wealthy, they would not choose socialism. But then for what other reason would they choose socialism? (I understand that you believe they are misguided in choosing socialism, since they believe it will make them better off but actually it will make them worse off, but that is a different question). >> The commies have always been extremely proud of actual physical work >> that produces stuff. That's where the hammer and sickle comes from. > > They were so proud of their physical works that their technology sucked then > and suck now. > Capitalists (well sane people) are more interested in the end results not in > the inputs. Again, I was responding to spike's post about pride in physical work. It is true that the Soviet Union fell behind technologically and economically and this must be put down to a failure of their economic system. However, this was not the case at every point: they went through a period of rapid economic growth and modernisation in the 1920's and 1930's, matched the Germans militarily in WWII, and gave the Americans a fright with their space program after the war, even though the Soviet Union had been devastated and did not have the benefits of the Marshall Plan that the Western Europeans had. In fact, it was the Soviet space program that spurred the Americans to increase spending on science education and research, with ultimately great rewards. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 31 14:05:47 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 00:05:47 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Psychology of markets explanations In-Reply-To: <4A228445.7040404@libero.it> References: <791670.45120.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A2148BC.4030509@libero.it> <4A228445.7040404@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/31 painlord2k at libero.it : >> It also happens >> sometimes with financial market, which is what leads to bubbles. > > The buyers buy because they hope to sell higher. They don't buy at an higher > price on purpose. In fact, to maximize their gains they will try to buy at > the lower price available at the moment. The fact that sometimes they are > wrong in their foresight don't invalidate the law of supply-demand. The buyer hopes to sell higher, but a certain type of trader sees an increasing price as an indication of upward momentum which will make him more profits, and a decreasing price as the opposite. Demand goes up as the price goes up, pushing the price up even further. This is the basis of "technical analysis". Ultimately, prices come to reflect fundamental value, but the consequences when this process runs away can be devastating for the economy, as we have seen. >> But that is not the point: the point is that it is peoples' >> actual psychology, whatever it might be, that causes them to behave in >> a particular way, leading to the observed economic laws. If you had an >> elaborate computer model of the economy and you could change any >> variable, changing psychology would change the outcome. > > Changing the atmosphere in an artillery simulator will change the > trajectory, but will not change the law of gravity. Changing the rate of > revolution of the Earth will change the trajectory, too. But will not cause > the law of gravity or the attrition of the air to change. > > I would recommend the first chapter of "Man, Economy ans State with Power > and Market", where the law of supply and demand is explained. It is easy and > it is logic, it don't need any explanation of the psychology of the agents. > The motives of the agents buying and selling are theirs and don't change the > law. > If the supply grow (all other equal) the price will not raise; if the demand > grow (all other equal) the price will not fall. It is all here. > This is true for anything, anywhere, any time. If it appear not true, it is > because you are interpreting the data incorrectly. The supply won't grow unless people are attracted to sell more, the demand won't grow unless people want to buy more, and the supply/demand relationship won't be what it is unless people try to maximise the sell price and minimise the buy price. The economic law arises from the relationship between available resources and the expected behaviour of the market participants. > It is like you look at the planets and see them moving around the sky in > strange patters, with loops for some. A man understood that positioning the > Sun at the centre of the system all the orbits become circular and similar. > Another come and showed how the orbits could be calculated and others added > why the bodies moved in this way and another come up to a way to prove that > the Earth have a revolution every 24 hours. > > But you could continue to believe that the Earth is at the centre and is > still. Is it what your eyes show to you? Why do you must doubt your eyes? However the Earth moves, it must be as a result of the various physical forces. Whatever the economy does, it must be as the result of human behaviour within a particular environment. What's controversial about that? >> The world would be very different if there were no planes flying due >> to peoples' beliefs. In order for planes to fly not only do the laws >> of physics have to make it possible, the planes must also be built. > > So, if people don't believe in the plane physics, is the physics show wrong? No, but the planes won't fly. There were no planes flying 200 years ago, even though the laws of physics were the same. >> Being a "rational agent" implies a certain psychological state. > > It implies that there are lower limits to the prices you will sell and > higher limits to the prices you will buy. Limits dictates by your order of > values. Which implies a certain psychological state. If the psychological state were different, the limits would be different. >> If >> many participants in the market were "irrational" then it would change >> the market, perhaps to their detriment and everyone else, as we see >> in boom and bust cycles. > > An irrational agent in a market could buy at prices too high or not buy at > prices low enough; or he could be buying too much or not enough. This would > imply he is incurring in losses. These losses must be added to the losses > due to his rational errors (due to his inability to speculate always > correctly about the future). Yes, but this is consistent with the point that the market would not play out the same *regardless* of any change in the participants' behaviour. -- Stathis Papaioannou From sparge at gmail.com Sun May 31 14:17:51 2009 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 10:17:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > It depends on what you want to accomplish. If the goal is to put > people on Mars, then unmanned missions, unless part of the > preparation, are by definition a failure. But what's the point of putting people on Mars? Exploration? Colonization? The glory of being there first? Unmanned exploration is a much better value. We're nowhere near ready to colonize. Going there just to be the first is silly. -Dave From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 31 14:51:54 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 00:51:54 +1000 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/6/1 Dave Sill : > On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Stathis Papaioannou > wrote: >> >> It depends on what you want to accomplish. If the goal is to put >> people on Mars, then unmanned missions, unless part of the >> preparation, are by definition a failure. > > But what's the point of putting people on Mars? Exploration? > Colonization? The glory of being there first? > > Unmanned exploration is a much better value. We're nowhere near ready > to colonize. Going there just to be the first is silly. What's the point of any space exploration, when the money could be spent doing good works here on Earth? -- Stathis Papaioannou From rlitzkow at gmail.com Sun May 31 07:50:28 2009 From: rlitzkow at gmail.com (Richard Litzkow) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 17:50:28 +1000 Subject: [ExI] On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired In-Reply-To: <2d6187670905310035w68b93470o2e62e87ced9eabb@mail.gmail.com> References: <511739.22910.qm@web110413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <2d6187670905310035w68b93470o2e62e87ced9eabb@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <66e2c7af0905310050r514e063fo45e634076fd29ee4@mail.gmail.com> [quote] Well..., I think the need for being informed, connected with other human beings and feeling recognized as worthy of respect (even if only on the net) is right up there with needing food, clothing & bedding and some sort of shelter for the night. Anna, you have a lot to learn about people. John [/quote] Sure, I hear 'Internet Access' is right next to food, clothing and bedding on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Richard -- "For what purpose humanity is there should not even concern us: why you are there, that you should ask yourself: and if you have no ready answer, then set yourself goals, high and noble goals, and perish in pursuit of them! I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible..." Nietzsche -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun May 31 15:11:52 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 08:11:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Iran's plan for their gay population In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670905302152q2362ca88ncf1e6a6b27d81818@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > ...On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou > ... > > ... enforced if people keep their sexual relationships > private. So the Iranians are on a par with the most > enlightened Western states when it comes to transsexuals, but > a few decades behind when it comes to homosexuals...Stathis Papaioannou I see. Where do we fit those religious police in that model? How do the transsexuals dress so that they don't end up in trouble with the faith force? >>"Her point was that there are rules and rules are there to help you. If you start cross-dressing before your operation, you bring the problems with the police upon yourself. I haven't heard of anything like the Heavenly Heat or Genetalia Gumshoes in the west since the Spanish Inquisition. It has been a couple hundred years since Napoleon brought that to an end. spike From jonkc at bellsouth.net Sun May 31 15:27:32 2009 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (John K Clark) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 11:27:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Manned Spaceflight (Was: future fizzle) References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <45AE375B4CB647AB80DD8191D3619C0A@MyComputer> "Stathis Papaioannou" > If the goal is to put people on Mars, then unmanned missions, > unless part > of the preparation, are by definition a failure. If the final goal is to put somebody on Mars just so we can put somebody on Mars and is not just part of a greater goal then it will lead nowhere. There are only 4 general reasons to put people into space: 1) Military reasons 2) Commercial reasons 3) Scientific reasons 4) Entertainment reasons Nowadays the first 3 can be accomplished much much cheaper and quicker with unmanned vehicles, and the fourth reason is quite ephemeral. The first time humans went into low earth orbit the world was enthralled, but we've been doing it for nearly half a century now and it has turned into a colossal bore. The first moon landing was a big hit, everybody loved it, but the second time it felt like a repeat and viewers wrote the networks complaining that the extended news coverage was interfering with their soap operas. Interest picked up again for the third Apollo moon flight, but only because it was a failure. I predict that the second successful Mars landing would be greeted with a collective yawn and so would not meet any of the 4 reasons listed above. So why do it? John K Clark From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Sun May 31 15:05:02 2009 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 08:05:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired Message-ID: <389097.85154.qm@web110407.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> --- On Sun, 5/31/09, Damien Broderick wrote: > Grigg wrote: > >? the need for being informed, connected with > other human beings and feeling recognized as worthy of > respect (even if only on the net) is right up there with > needing food, clothing & bedding and some sort of > shelter for the night. Well in my experience, when I was younger and we didn't have electricity (seems hard to believe in this day and age) because my mother was working three jobs to support 3 girls, the Internet/or computer didn't compare to needing food, clothing, bedding and/or shelter. I understand maybe for some it has become a need but I still consider it a luxury. I didn't mean to offend you John. > > > > Anna, you have a lot to learn about people. > > Well said. Considering I don't know either of you personally and the only persona you may have of me is one off the Internet, I won't take that comment to heart as I am person that it always striving to learn from others. Anna:) __________________________________________________________________ Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/gift/ From sockpuppet99 at hotmail.com Sun May 31 14:37:45 2009 From: sockpuppet99 at hotmail.com (Sockpuppet99@hotmail.com) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 08:37:45 -0600 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Not only that but we have not even solved the physiological problem of long flights in zero gravity; anyone making it to mars would be an atrophied invalid with our present technology. Tom D On May 31, 2009, at 8:17 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Stathis Papaioannou > wrote: >> >> It depends on what you want to accomplish. If the goal is to put >> people on Mars, then unmanned missions, unless part of the >> preparation, are by definition a failure. > > But what's the point of putting people on Mars? Exploration? > Colonization? The glory of being there first? > > Unmanned exploration is a much better value. We're nowhere near ready > to colonize. Going there just to be the first is silly. > > -Dave > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 31 17:16:50 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 19:16:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Wired: The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online In-Reply-To: References: <4A21AF4C.5060001@lineone.net> <580930c20905301615k23a07979te86ad963471060b0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905311016k65d404d4u50fade423fc59a51@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 1:45 AM, BillK wrote: > Then you probably don't often access the sites that the Iran > government don't want their population to access. e.g. anti-Islamic, > immoral, anti-social. > Yes, I am probably more curious about sites that the European regimes don't want their population to access... :-) And there are a few, since otherwise initiatives such as Freenet would have been out of business since long. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sun May 31 17:31:48 2009 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 11:31:48 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Wired: The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online In-Reply-To: <4A21AF4C.5060001@lineone.net> References: <4A21AF4C.5060001@lineone.net> Message-ID: <4A22BF04.7030108@comcast.net> I think all hierarchical institutions or leaders are about to become insignificant and to be completely ignored by everyone. There is a great example in the recent terminator movie. The hierarchical 'leader' of the rebellion gives a command to attack the robot command. But all the underlings comunicate back that they will not do so till John Connor gives his OK, effectively neutering his command. It's all about communication. In the past, where communication from masses has been so difficult and expensive, hierarchical leaders have always been able to do more of of such through their hierarchical structures. The internet has already taken us half way where we need to be, the only remaining problem is still there is no way for the masses to efficiently and easily comunicate in concice and quantitative ways. Sure, everyone has several blogs these days, but nobody without a hierarchical staff can even get close to any quantitative and concise idea of what everyone is saying. But as soon as you can easily, efficiently, and in an unbiased way know concisely and quantitatively what everyone is saying, suddenly the world is a very different place and the above T3 type activities will neuter any leader attempting to deviate in any way from what the masses want. Reputation is another critical component of all this. Right now, spam and scam is killing everyone because everyone and all the advertisements online are anonymous. But once we have the ability for large mases of people to communicate concisely and quantitatively, everything will have a permanent reputation. Credit agencies get close to this kind of communication today. Before anyone loans any money, they communicate with all other people that have had financial transactions with this person, and based on that, do or don't loan them money. I believe some system is about to develop that will give this kind of reputation system to everyone and everything. Anyone that attempts to stop such will be completely unable, since you can't stop people from telling everyone else what they think about their experience with something. We'll easily have e-mail and advertizement filters that will simply not let anything in our inbox without it having a certain level of reputation associated with it. In other words, we'll simply ignore all the spam and scam. With such a communication ability, where large groups of people can communicate concisely and quantitatively, you don't really need governments or even police for most things. Everyone will simply choose to not do business with scum bags (as they define them) of any kind (let alone allow them to remain in any position of power). In such a world reputation will be everything, worth more than money. Without a good one, life will be hell, with a good one, life will be heavenly and money will be easy. Of course, we're working to make such a tool with canonizer.com. Whether this succeeds or not, someone somewhere is eventually going to come up with some kind of system that enables large groups of people to communicate concisely and quantitatively. And with that, the world will be a very different place with no spam, scam, or evil dictators that we don't all simply easily ignore. Brent Allsop ben wrote: > > Stathis wrote: > >I guess one difference online is that no-one is in a position of real > >power over anyone else. > > Hm. In an 'ideal internet' that would be true. But in the real world > we have the great firewall of china, rampant censorship in places like > iran, and the future threat of a balkanisation of the whole internet > if we're not very careful. I think this is an under-appreciated > threat, because we all realise that the usual kinds of attempt to > restrict people's access to information are doomed - but what about > when the powers-that-be finally realise this too? What's to stop > china, russia, indonesia, and the muslim world from setting up their > own domain name systems and isolating their internal public > communications networks from the rest of the world? (wouldn't have to > be physical, just impose an incompatible protocol). > > Any traditional power structure will be very afraid of this internet > socialism, once it becomes aware of it. We've already seen how media > cartels react to file-sharing. What will governments do when they > start sensing their power over the people slipping away? > > With any luck, the acceleration of technological progress will be > perpetually ahead of any govenments ability to realise its > implications and successfully stifle it, but there's no guarantee. > > Ben Zaiboc (waiting for someone to invent an infinitely scaleable > network protocol that inherently resists any kind of top-down control, > needs no domain name servers and is ready for installation on > godzillions of smart-dust nanomachines that will unstoppably saturate > the entire globe. _Then_ Stathis' claim will really be true.) > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 31 17:47:31 2009 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 12:47:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired In-Reply-To: <66e2c7af0905310050r514e063fo45e634076fd29ee4@mail.gmail.co m> References: <511739.22910.qm@web110413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <2d6187670905310035w68b93470o2e62e87ced9eabb@mail.gmail.com> <66e2c7af0905310050r514e063fo45e634076fd29ee4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090531124558.02625fb8@satx.rr.com> At 05:50 PM 5/31/2009 +1000, RL wrote: >Sure, I hear 'Internet Access' is right next to food, clothing and >bedding on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Did you actually bother to read the WSJ article JG url'd? Maslow would have had no trouble understanding this: Damien Broderick From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 31 18:14:47 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 20:14:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Iran's plan for their gay population In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670905302152q2362ca88ncf1e6a6b27d81818@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905311114g5bec2744t114cf272897f7d99@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 1:51 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > An Iranian doctor I know told me about sex change operations in Iran > when I made an assumption about how the patient we were discussing, a > transsexual, would not have been tolerated in her country. In Iran, > she explained, patients could have the operation if they were > diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder, using the same DSM-IV > criteria as are used in Western countries. In my experience, there is an incredible confusion about Iran legal and cultural norms, many people assuming that radical Islam there implies a kind of Saudi-style context. Now, homosexuality is forbidden (even though I do not have any information as to the reality of its prosecution: see the laws about adultery or oral sex or witchcraft that a few US states may still not have abrogated). It is true that the dealt penalty is relatively frequent, even though a very moderate rate of crimes exist in comparison with many western countries. It is true that you cannot book a hotel room with somebody of the opposite sex you are not married with. OTOH, how many people know that you can enter into temporary marriage agreements, ranging from one day to 99 years? Of course, when you enter into a marriage of the former duration, you can expect the officer celebrating it to rotate his eyes, since he knows only too well your immediate purpose. Divorce is of course applicable even to marriages of an indefinite duration - even though it may take "up to a year" (compare that to 3 to 5 in Italy) in legal formalities; and it carries no social stigma for either spouse. Abortion? "Ah, no, abortion is not free, according to Iranian law it must be administered by a licensed physician" (answer offered with a straight, albeit slightly embarassed, face by an Iranian lawyer; compare that with the requirement to go through a public hospital and some necessary, humiliating bureaucratic steps in Italy). Stem cells? Where's the problem? An embryo does not even have a soul, according to a dominant islamic doctrine, until the third or fourth month of pregnancy. Biotechnology? Genetic engineering? Where does the Qu'ran says anything against that? Evolution: the Bible is actually a part of the islamic holy scriptures, and muslims tend to be literalists. But they also have the doctrine of the "corruption of the voice of god" and of the "newer truth superseding older claims", so that the entire Genesis is largely discredited, the Qu'ran itself being much more friendly to evolutionary biology. In fact, the few muslim creationists in existence are not Iranian at all, but... Turks! Alcohol? No prohibitionism in place. You are free to get drunk in the privacy of your home. Simply, you cannot drink in public places (same as in the US), or in places which are open to the public, such as restaurants and bars, on the line of the current trend about tobacco in the West; and in any event, it is not socially acceptable to get to a party in an obviously inebriated state. Women? Why, burkas being unknown there, they have nevertheless to keep at least a few hair covered in public, as in other countries at least part of the breasts is required to be, nothing which can prevent them showing off the creations of their hair stylists, make-up artists, etc. Many of them are college students, medicine doctors, managers, journalists, or candidates in the upcoming presidential elections (politics being a big deal there, and a passion for a large part of a population which vote starting at 16 in very high percentage), more than in Japan or in Korea, for that matter. And they are often around by themselves, including at night, owing also to the relatively high security of live Tehran in comparison with other cities of 12 million people. Having said that, would I live in Iran? Certainly not. But for that matter I would live even less in many countries which are the darlings of the western governments... -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 31 18:20:40 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 20:20:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905301246u2c107d8do20394a64a909ee@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905311120l20d45fe9s97d5d6b34087fce0@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 3:06 AM, Dave Sill wrote: >> This is a nice rationalisation, but one which ramains at odd with the stated >> plans of the main space agencies of the world. > > Firstly, I'm not associated with NASA's space program and I have no > need or desire to rationalize anything in that respect. That's just my > understanding of the facts. Secondly, I don't know the stated plans of > the main space agencies of the world, but I'm pretty sure NASA is the > only one currently exploring Mars--and I think unmanned exploration > that actually happens is way more useful than manned missions that are > always 5 years away. What I am saying here is that as a quickly googleing easily shows, both NASA and other space agencies *all* declare manned Mars expeditions being amongst their goals. You are welcome to disagree with them, but this is not really relevant to my contention. >> And... accomplish what? > > Um, exploring Mars? To what purpose? > So you see space missions as a kind of international dick size > contest? This would be wishful thinking from my side. They are now just an embattled afterthought, other much less interesting challenges having taken their place in terms of international dick size contest. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 31 18:23:04 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 20:23:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Manned Spaceflight (Was: future fizzle) In-Reply-To: <45AE375B4CB647AB80DD8191D3619C0A@MyComputer> References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> <45AE375B4CB647AB80DD8191D3619C0A@MyComputer> Message-ID: <580930c20905311123l771abe19rec2e89c66cb5f710@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 5:27 PM, John K Clark wrote: > If the final goal is to put somebody on Mars just so we can put somebody on > Mars and is not just part of a greater goal then it will lead nowhere. There > are only 4 general reasons to put people into space: Why, I appreciate that you would not have even ever put somebody on the Everest, for that matter... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From eschatoon at gmail.com Sun May 31 18:24:24 2009 From: eschatoon at gmail.com (Eschatoon Magic) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 20:24:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Big G-Wave coming? Message-ID: <1fa8c3b90905311124v5a8b0769v40db9a37682ad494@mail.gmail.com> http://transumanar.com/index.php/site/big_g-wave_coming/ I am one of the many who went to watch the presentation of Google Wave on Youtube immediately after reading the TechCrunch article. Google Wave could be a Big paradigm shift, and change the way we use the Web. Email, chat, discussion groups, wiki, IRC, blogs, microblogs, social network and groupware all in one. Of course I have signed up as a user and developer, but so has everybody and I don?t hold my breath to receive an invitation soon. Wave may be a Facebook killer and a new Twitter much more integrated with the rest of the Web. Email and IM are obsolete, we will spend our online life in front of a Wave screen. Instead of sending email, IM and tweets, writing blogs and logging on Facebook, we will plug in dynamic and interconnected Waves. It is impossible to explain Wave in a few words, I recommend to watch the 80 min video. Of the many features of Wave, those I found most interesting are its support for fast and easy co-surfing and collaborative editing of documents, real killer apps. The presentation demonstrates how you can show things to a remote friends on Google Maps?by the way Wave was develoepd by the same team which developed Google Maps. Wave is a multi-level thing, an application run by Google, an open source platform (other operators can develop plugins for Wave or run their own Wave instance) and a protocol (interconnection and interoperability of Waves). The blog GOOGLE, AND THE FIRST STEP TO TRANSHUMANISM says ?... this gives a little sneak preview of how we, in the coming decades, will evolve transhuman. At one point, artificial intelligence now used to choose which ads to display on your homepage, will be applied to the bigger picture and that is the point where we actually will create something bigger than ourselves. Where the cloud comes more powerful than the crowd. Because, if you didn?t realize this yet? Google. Is. Skynet.?. As a transhumanist, I really look forward to trying Wave. Transhumanism , a sparse and global social movement, required the Web as an essential enabler to bloom, and I wonder how we will use this new powerful communication platform. By enabling us to do things much faster the Web, the new Web 2.0 (is Wave the first example of Web 3.0?) and the mobile Web wake emergent properties of our collective consciousness. We could send snailmail letters hundreds of years ago, but we could not build a new global social movement in a matter of days. Wave may permit doing things even much faster and achieve a critical mass to enable new emergent waves in our developing noosphere. -- Eschatoon Magic http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon aka Giulio Prisco http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco From aiguy at comcast.net Sun May 31 18:55:15 2009 From: aiguy at comcast.net (Gary Miller) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 14:55:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired In-Reply-To: <66e2c7af0905310050r514e063fo45e634076fd29ee4@mail.gmail.com> References: <511739.22910.qm@web110413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com><2d6187670905310035w68b93470o2e62e87ced9eabb@mail.gmail.com> <66e2c7af0905310050r514e063fo45e634076fd29ee4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <85E9C34CED59438DBB40393FC45DD602@ZandraQuad> [quote] Well..., I think the need for being informed, connected with other human beings and feeling recognized as worthy of respect (even if only on the net) is right up there with needing food, clothing & bedding and some sort of shelter for the night. Anna, you have a lot to learn about people. John [/quote] [quote] Sure, I hear 'Internet Access' is right next to food, clothing and bedding on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Richard [quote] Without knowing exactly how widespread this phenomena is, it is strongly reminiscent of Gibson's Chiba City. But my more cynical side tell me that Sex is on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and with the limited opportunities for legitimate relationships the homeless face and the excess of free time the internet is a great source of free porn and an opportunity to contact altruistic or naive souls who may seeking a soulmate or a opportunity to help the downtrodden. In fact the other great source for free internet available to the homeless includes the Public Library System which in the case of Dallas Texas finds that ... According to an analysis conducted by the Dallas Morning News, about 7.5 percent of the web pages accessed at Dallas libraries are pornographic. The Dallas Public Library system, however, feels strongly about keeping it's web pages unfiltered due to the large number of medical and artistic pages (many of them constitutionally protected) that are often blocked with pornography filters. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/011508dnmetlibraryporn.27bb24d.html http://filteringfacts.org/2009/03/ Depending on whether you believe that porn is either a healthy outlet or an enticement, such free access could be affecting the rate of violent sexual crime among the homeless population. Based upon anecdotal media accounts I can remember and Googling (homeless sex crimes) 1,030,000 hits, it either appears that there is a much higher percentage of sexual offenders among the homeless population or a much higher percentage of the homeless population resorting to sexual assaults to satisfy their hierarchy of needs. I'm not saying that providing the homeless with free internet lessen or worsens the problem but I smell an interesting research study there. Gary From sparge at gmail.com Sun May 31 19:44:56 2009 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 15:44:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: <580930c20905311120l20d45fe9s97d5d6b34087fce0@mail.gmail.com> References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905301246u2c107d8do20394a64a909ee@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905311120l20d45fe9s97d5d6b34087fce0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > > What I am saying here is that as a quickly googleing easily shows, > both NASA and other space agencies *all* declare manned Mars > expeditions being amongst their goals. Goal? Yes. Currently planned? I don't think so. A quick google and visit to nasa.gov reveals little about plans for a manned Mars mission. Sure, it's a long term goal, but I think such a mission would be premature until we've got a permanent Lunar colony and we've done most of what can be done remotely with robotic missions. >>> And... accomplish what? >> >> Um, exploring Mars? > > To what purpose? To what purpose is a manned mission? -Dave From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 31 20:12:19 2009 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 22:12:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905301246u2c107d8do20394a64a909ee@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20905311120l20d45fe9s97d5d6b34087fce0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20905311312h6585094fy4ed5a73654e0837d@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 9:44 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > Goal? Yes. Currently planned? I don't think so. A quick google and > visit to nasa.gov reveals little about plans for a manned Mars > mission. Plan as in "what are your plans for the future?". I am the first to maintain that they haven't the foggiest idea of the details of an actual mission. But the point we were discussing, if I am not mistaken, is that that agency itself considers manned missions as a primary and worthy goal. Now, my point is not to bring forward the rather tedious and ultimately secondary debate manned vs unmanned space exploration. My point is that it is *not* a matter of "strategy", it is a matter of decadence. >>>> And... accomplish what? >>> >>> Um, exploring Mars? >> >> To what purpose? > > To what purpose is a manned mission? Ask this question to NASA. If they do not have an answer, this may help explain, together with bureaucratisation, budget costs, PR and security obsession, why they are thirty years late *and* still considering it a primary, albeit comfortably far, target which has not been replaced for any equivalently, or more, ambitious goals. -- Stefano Vaj From beth.ferree at gmail.com Sun May 31 18:32:47 2009 From: beth.ferree at gmail.com (Beth Ferree) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 13:32:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090531124558.02625fb8@satx.rr.com> References: <511739.22910.qm@web110413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <2d6187670905310035w68b93470o2e62e87ced9eabb@mail.gmail.com> <66e2c7af0905310050r514e063fo45e634076fd29ee4@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20090531124558.02625fb8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <5fb90e670905311132u6b9afac0j7164bb4f93be5fc7@mail.gmail.com> Hi, I joined this group not long ago so this is my first post. This happens to be a subject with which I am intimately familiar. Last year I was homeless on the streets of San Francisco. I knew many who had a computer, or computer access, despite having no housing. Several (including me) even worked online. However, housing is so expensive there it was often moved down below Internet access in priority. Mainly because the programs that are available to help have long waiting lists and funding was scarce. With the new changes Schwartenegger wants to make to the budget it will become more so soon. When you think about it, it comes down to the basic human need to be loved. No one knows who you are online so they don't judge you based on your income or situation. You can log onto a chat site and find others who support you. Often, as you form online friendships you will find somebody who is a kindred spirit. Several have even found some financial support beause they were able to develop a relationship based on personality. W. C. Fields - "I am free of all prejudices. I hate every one equally." On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 12:47 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 05:50 PM 5/31/2009 +1000, RL wrote: > > Sure, I hear 'Internet Access' is right next to food, clothing and bedding >> on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. >> > > Did you actually bother to read the WSJ article JG url'd? Maslow would have > had no trouble understanding this: > > backpack to store his gear, a padlock for his footlocker at the shelter and > a $25 annual premium Flickr account to display the digital photos he takes. > > One recent morning, Mr. Livingston sat in a cafe that sometimes lets > customers tap its wireless connection, and shows off his personal home page, > featuring links for Chinese-language lessons. > > Mr. Livingston says his computer helps him feel more connected and human. > "It's frightening to be homeless," he says. "When I'm on here, I'm equal to > everybody else."> > > Damien Broderick > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sun May 31 21:08:36 2009 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 22:08:36 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Psychology of markets explanations In-Reply-To: <4A228445.7040404@libero.it> References: <791670.45120.qm@web30106.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4A2148BC.4030509@libero.it> <4A228445.7040404@libero.it> Message-ID: 2009/5/31 painlord2k wrote > The psychology or the conditions at hand could change the scheduling of the > wills of the agents involved, sure. Psychology could help explain the > behaviour of the agents, but do not invalidate the law of supply-demand. > Different psychologies or conditions could change the shape of the curve as > they change the demand and the supply. But the law is always the same. > > "If the supply grow (all other equal) the price will not raise; if the > demand grow (all other equal) the price will not fall." > But in the real world 'all other is *never* equal'. So the theoretical perfect law is of little practical use. BillK From spike66 at att.net Sun May 31 21:10:43 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 14:10:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] future fizzle In-Reply-To: References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > Subject: Re: [ExI] future fizzle > > > Not only that but we have not even solved the physiological > problem of long flights in zero gravity; anyone making it to > mars would be an atrophied invalid with our present technology. > > Tom D > .... Tom, these problems are mostly solved by using verrrry tiny humans, preferrably a paraplegic. Much of the physiological problem has to do with the body dumping calcium from the femurs at the onset of weightlessness, second is atrophy of those big leg muscles, and the corresponding health problems. Both of these are solved if we start with a paraplegic, preferrably a really small one. spike From spike66 at att.net Sun May 31 21:28:14 2009 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 14:28:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired In-Reply-To: <5fb90e670905311132u6b9afac0j7164bb4f93be5fc7@mail.gmail.com> References: <511739.22910.qm@web110413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com><2d6187670905310035w68b93470o2e62e87ced9eabb@mail.gmail.com><66e2c7af0905310050r514e063fo45e634076fd29ee4@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20090531124558.02625fb8@satx.rr.com> <5fb90e670905311132u6b9afac0j7164bb4f93be5fc7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <529D0776FCA24A62BCA3047E3830D1E7@spike> On Behalf Of Beth Ferree Subject: Re: [ExI] On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired >Hi, I joined this group not long ago so this is my first post... Hi Beth, welcome. >This happens to be a subject with which I am intimately familiar... Cool, good, the best kind of post is this. >Last year I was homeless on the streets of San Francisco ....programs that are available to help have long waiting lists and funding was scarce. With the new changes Schwartenegger wants to make to the budget it will become more so soon... Beth Ja agree it will soon, except for a minor rewording. Ahhhnold doesn't *want* to make these changes, he is *forced* to make the changes, because the state government is out of money. It really is. And there is no good way to get more. Even those Americans who do not live in Taxifornia should be watching closely, for as goes Sacramento goes Washington DC soon. spike From kanzure at gmail.com Sun May 31 21:53:02 2009 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 16:53:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] System design for managing too many friends Message-ID: <55ad6af70905311453s4abb5769gc160abe27eaf9db5@mail.gmail.com> Hey all, I am glad to have so many friends. And it's nice to have a reasonable percentage of them check up on me when I don't say hello in a while. Because of the way that my brain works, or because I am forgetful or possibly not that good of a guy, I am not able to clearly remember what I have told some people versus what I have told some other people. The way that most people solve this is by using a blog and just blasting everyone who follows it with the same information, and an RSS feed might work for me, but I have another idea in mind. In particular, I have been working on constructing a giant hash table (or it might become a giant matrix/array) where each person I know and try to keep up with is listed in the first column. The remaining columns are used for particular events that I at least tell one person about. Then by looking at the distribution of what I tell each person, or when I tell them or whatever, I could then extrapolate who I should commonly send the same updates to. http://heybryan.org/mailing_lists.html That's actually what I was thinking of doing for some bayesian filtering system (much like spam filters) for the email that I send out to mailing lists. Since I am on so many mailing lists, it's hard to figure out what I should send to which mailing lists. For instance, the amateur genetic engineering emails that I send out to diybio should sometimes belong on some of the transhumanism mailing lists, but not all the time because the perspective is slightly off and I'm writing from a different point of view, or the project updates simply aren't going to be as interesting, blah blah blah. So, the idea I had a few months ago was that I would write a spam filter that would instead of classify my outgoing mail as junk, would simply classify the responses to each of the emails I send, based off of the MIME headers and whether or not anyone responds to them, their positive/negative responses (cross-referenced to WordNet or just using a simple rating scheme). Then, over time, I would (ideally) develop a good idea of what type of messages should be sent to which mailing lists, using some sort of fuzzy probabilistic logic. I haven't written out this software yet though, mostly because I'm not convinced of the utility. Although I do hate keeping everyone in the dark as to what I've been up to. Back to the people-update matrix/table database dealy. I was also thinking of doing some sort of monthly cron job schedule where I would type down into a list form what I remember last talking about with that person, and then an automated email could be sent out on some periodic basis to get back in touch with everyone I know. This would work out reasonably well, since I'm supposed to be sending out these emails anyway. Should be a simple script. Time well tell if it will pay off. Ok. Hope someone got something interesting out of this. I'd be interested in getting advice on how to scale communication for someone like me who has too much going on to remember at any one given moment. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 31 23:19:45 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 09:19:45 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Manned Spaceflight (Was: future fizzle) In-Reply-To: <45AE375B4CB647AB80DD8191D3619C0A@MyComputer> References: <580930c20905300554m49e586a6t787431e9fe4c4824@mail.gmail.com> <45AE375B4CB647AB80DD8191D3619C0A@MyComputer> Message-ID: 2009/6/1 John K Clark : > "Stathis Papaioannou" > >> If the goal is to put people on Mars, then unmanned missions, >> unless part > of the preparation, are by definition a failure. > > If the final goal is to put somebody on Mars just so we can put somebody on > Mars and is not just part of a greater goal then it will lead nowhere. There > are only 4 general reasons to put people into space: > > 1) Military reasons > 2) Commercial reasons > 3) Scientific reasons > 4) Entertainment reasons > > Nowadays the first 3 can be accomplished much much cheaper and quicker with > unmanned vehicles, and the fourth reason is quite ephemeral. The first time > humans went into low earth orbit the world was enthralled, but we've been > doing it for nearly half a century now and it has turned into a colossal > bore. The first moon landing was a big hit, everybody loved it, but the > second time it felt like a repeat and viewers wrote the networks complaining > that the extended news coverage was interfering with their soap operas. > Interest picked up again for the third Apollo moon flight, but only because > it was a failure. I predict that the second successful Mars landing would be > greeted with a collective yawn and so would not meet any of the 4 reasons > listed above. So why do it? Most of science, commerce and even military spending is ultimately for entertainment purposes, since everything above subsistence is entertainment. -- Stathis Papaioannou From p0stfuturist at yahoo.com Sun May 31 23:00:59 2009 From: p0stfuturist at yahoo.com (p0stfuturist at yahoo.com) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 16:00:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Iran's plan for their gay population Message-ID: <865737.91888.qm@web59903.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> ?Next, Iranian clerics?will generously offer lodgings to gays with?bars on the windows for ventilation-- plus three meals of bread and water a day... ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 31 23:35:05 2009 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 09:35:05 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Iran's plan for their gay population In-Reply-To: References: <2d6187670905302152q2362ca88ncf1e6a6b27d81818@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/6/1 spike : > I haven't heard of anything like the Heavenly Heat or Genetalia Gumshoes in > the west since the Spanish Inquisition. ?It has been a couple hundred years > since Napoleon brought that to an end. http://www.lectlaw.com/files/sex14.htm (The situation has only changed since a 2003 US Supreme Court decision, long after Napoleon.) "Sodomy remains illegal in Maryland, Virginia and 22 other states, and while critics of sodomy laws say they are used largely to discriminate against gay men and lesbians, most of those laws also apply to heterosexuals. James Moseley thought sodomy laws applied only to homosexuals. Charged with sexually assaulting his estranged wife, the Georgia carpenter testified at his trial that she willingly had oral sex with him. The jury acquitted Moseley of rape, but found him guilty of consensual sodomy. He was sentenced to five years in prison and served 18 months before being freed in August 1989. "I had no idea that I was incriminating myself," said Moseley, now 38. Although sodomy prosecutions are rare, they do occur, against both homosexuals and heterosexuals. In North Caroline, a heterosexual man was sentenced to 10 years in prison and served two for having oral sex with a woman in 1988. A Maryland man was sentenced to 18 months' probation for heterosexual sodomy in 1986. And in 1988, a female Marine corporal was imprisoned for six months at Quantico Marine Corps Base for having oral sex with a woman." -- Stathis Papaioannou