From andymck35 at gmail.com Thu Aug 1 10:23:43 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 22:23:43 +1200 Subject: [ExI] lists going quiet, was: RE: list test In-Reply-To: <20130731204511.GP29404@leitl.org> References: <019801ce8c6f$bbd9e180$338da480$@rainier66.com> <51F8092F.9020309@aleph.se> <20130731064357.GR29404@leitl.org> <20130731100018.GU29404@leitl.org> <20130731204511.GP29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, 01 Aug 2013 08:45:11 +1200, Eugen Leitl wrote: > We're overdue for a serverless P2P messaging service. BitMessage > wasn't it. I'm thinking things will improve with IPv6, as many Umm, isn't one of the things that will also improve with IPv6, is the tracking of every single IPv6 internet packet back to it's unique human sender by the world wide snooping spook brigade? Not sure I'd call that an improvement for people who'd like to communicate anonymously. From eugen at leitl.org Thu Aug 1 11:10:32 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2013 13:10:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] lists going quiet, was: RE: list test In-Reply-To: References: <019801ce8c6f$bbd9e180$338da480$@rainier66.com> <51F8092F.9020309@aleph.se> <20130731064357.GR29404@leitl.org> <20130731100018.GU29404@leitl.org> <20130731204511.GP29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130801111032.GA29404@leitl.org> On Thu, Aug 01, 2013 at 10:23:43PM +1200, Andrew Mckee wrote: > Umm, isn't one of the things that will also improve with IPv6, is > the tracking of every single IPv6 internet packet back to it's > unique human sender by the world wide snooping spook brigade? You're assuming that tracking can be improved much. > Not sure I'd call that an improvement for people who'd like to > communicate anonymously. If you want to communicate anonymously, you must leave the open Internet, and use an anonymizing layer like Tor. E.g. cjdns (which happens to run on top of IPv6) is not an anonymizing layer. I2P is distinctly too weak, and Tor is at times to weak. We need a provably secure anonymous communication platfor for high-latency connections (low-latency connections appear to be intrinsically hard to anonymize). From spike at rainier66.com Fri Aug 2 21:59:28 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2013 14:59:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] so why do we need them? Message-ID: <00df01ce8fcb$903ec950$b0bc5bf0$@rainier66.com> Because of a credible Presbyterian threat, the US will temporarily close embassies in Egypt, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, Afghanistan, Dhaka, Bangladesh; Amman, Jordan; Muscat, Oman; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Algiers, Algeria; Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Sana'a, Yemen; and Tripoli, Libya. Two consulates in Saudi Arabia will also close, in Dharan and Jeddah, as will a consulate in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. OK then, so the obvious question that occurs to me is: given modern communications infrastructure, why do we need embassies and consulates? I can imagine all kinds of threats and challenges, expenses, inconveniences and risk from ambassadors on site uttering anti-Lutheran comments, or from just being physically present. So why do we need them on site? We have encrypted communications from both hard-wire and satellite, we have biometrics for unambiguous identification. If anyone in any Episcopalian-controlled area needs to do embassy business with the USA, why not just have them get their own damn satellite receiver at their own expense, apply for the appropriate encryption codes and do all the business that way? Then if those restive Mormons decide to attack and destroy that installation, no problem, plug in elsewhere, low cost, no risk. Why not do international business that way? Why not close all embassies in troubled areas and leave them closed? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Aug 2 23:58:58 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2013 16:58:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] so why do we need them? In-Reply-To: <00df01ce8fcb$903ec950$b0bc5bf0$@rainier66.com> References: <00df01ce8fcb$903ec950$b0bc5bf0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Because some things still need physical presence. It takes much different skills to tap a face to face conversation in a soundproof room you have no access to, and which is bathed in EMP just before the conversation, than to tap an encrypted (assuming the software works as advertised) online communication. Then there are the non-conversation uses, such as an uncensorable address to go to if one wished to apply for asylum. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aleksei at iki.fi Sat Aug 3 00:37:46 2013 From: aleksei at iki.fi (Aleksei Riikonen) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 2013 03:37:46 +0300 Subject: [ExI] so why do we need them? In-Reply-To: <00df01ce8fcb$903ec950$b0bc5bf0$@rainier66.com> References: <00df01ce8fcb$903ec950$b0bc5bf0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 12:59 AM, spike wrote: > > OK then, so the obvious question that occurs to me is: given modern > communications infrastructure, why do we need embassies and consulates? The primary reason anyone has embassies in other countries is that they want to have influence there. The ruling classes of any nation are far less likely to be your political allies or do business with your companies if you don't send over actual physical smooth-talking folks to regularly wine and dine (and bribe) them. For example, the Egyptian army running that country is essentially a proxy force of the U.S., generously funded by you. You make that large investment in the biggest muslim country in the Middle East so islamists don't take it over (as they would in any fair democratic elections, such as the one they just had a while ago). You want a significant diplomatic force on the ground as well looking after that sizable financial investment you make every year. -- Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei From ablainey at aol.com Sun Aug 4 00:20:55 2013 From: ablainey at aol.com (Alex Blainey) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 2013 20:20:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Ray K contact? In-Reply-To: <00df01ce8fcb$903ec950$b0bc5bf0$@rainier66.com> References: <00df01ce8fcb$903ec950$b0bc5bf0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <8D05EBF9E4E4822-E1C-223C4@webmail-m296.sysops.aol.com> Does anyone on the list have an email for Ray K? Or can get a message to him? Amara maybe? If so, please email me direct. Thanks guys A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From matters21stcentury at yahoo.com Sun Aug 4 00:44:16 2013 From: matters21stcentury at yahoo.com (TwentFirstCentury Matters) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 2013 17:44:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] why do we need them? Message-ID: <1375577056.41847.YahooMailNeo@web163406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> "OK then, so the obvious question that occurs to me is: given modern communications infrastructure, why do we need embassies and consulates?" ? Not needed, but in addition to what Aleksei wrote, embassies and consulates are wanted for espionage. One assumes one's room?is being bugged when staying at an embassy or consulate. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun Aug 4 08:23:49 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 09:23:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] why do we need them? In-Reply-To: <1375577056.41847.YahooMailNeo@web163406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1375577056.41847.YahooMailNeo@web163406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51FE0F95.3070104@aleph.se> There are also straightforward bureaucratic reasons. If I want to get a visa or passport, I need to prove who I am. Even if I can produce a plethora of documentation and communicate securely online with the state agency responsible, they cannot tie that data to me as a physical person: it could be a dog on the Internet cleverly claiming to be Anders. Going there physically establishes the link between the online data and the physical person. If two governments really trust each other *and* trust each other's identity management systems, then they could of course link systems and do it all electronically. But such trust is rare. There is also the importance of having people who can go and visit other people. Classic example is sending representatives when a citizen is charged with a crime: I doubt one could establish a properly encrypted communication's link if the local government did not want to play fair. It is harder to do a man-in-the-middle trick between the accused and the diplomat. A lot of embassy activity is also about promoting the country and maintaining networks among expats. They are like small trade shows, with quite a lot of parties and meetings. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From lubkin at unreasonable.com Sun Aug 4 16:08:48 2013 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 12:08:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] why do we need them? In-Reply-To: <51FE0F95.3070104@aleph.se> References: <1375577056.41847.YahooMailNeo@web163406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <51FE0F95.3070104@aleph.se> Message-ID: <201308041633.r74GXO1Q028566@andromeda.ziaspace.com> In the less-safe parts of the world, an embassy is a refuge for its country's citizens. I face arrest, being beat up by thugs, don't have the fare to get home ? a consular office is a place of physical safety and access to one's country's capabilities. In theory, that could be accomplished with a private, global, personal security insurance policy, but it'd be challenging to run one that could survive in a country where it was needed. (See, however, the Weapon Shops of Isher.) More dated: When I was in Israel, struggling with textbooks in Hebrew through high school, it was very useful that the American embassy had a lending library that was intended to offer everything that would be in an American high school's library. Before applying to colleges in the US, I took the SAT and Achievement Test subject exams at the embassy. The former use was already phased out for budget reasons while I was there. (Luckily, I was able to snag the most useful books thanks to a friend who worked there.) The latter use is still necessary, although it could easily be done under private auspices, as it is in the US. -- David. From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sun Aug 4 18:07:10 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 12:07:10 -0600 Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? Message-ID: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> Transhumanites, I'd be interested in what you all think about the current name of the leading camp on predicting future Bitcoin Valuations. http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2 The current name is based on "Crypto Coin Law". My initial thinking was a kind of derivative of the very popular "Moore's Law" term. But now I'm thinking "The law of the Cypto Coin" rolls off the tongue much better and has a much better chance of catching on? Also, many of you have expressed your opinion about how there is no law around Bitcoin Valuations, so I'd also very much like to hear your opinion!! If you don't like the term 'law', what would be a better name for the best consensus camp? Thanks! Brent Allsop From me at michaeldevault.com Sun Aug 4 18:34:53 2013 From: me at michaeldevault.com (Michael DeVault) Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2013 13:34:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] why do we need them? In-Reply-To: <201308041633.r74GXO1Q028566@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <1375577056.41847.YahooMailNeo@web163406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <51FE0F95.3070104@aleph.se> <201308041633.r74GXO1Q028566@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: Any time I see a discussion of embassies and their utility in the modern world, I'm reminded of the scene early in "The West Wing" when the president recounts that a Roman citizen could walk across the planet without fear of harm or molestation, "cloaked only in the words 'civus Romanus.' I am a Roman citizen." Embassies serve, in my mind, three vital security roles: 1.) Security through diplomacy: they are a signal to the host nation, "We respect you enough to take part in you, as you take part in us." At the same time, they also provide a very ready tool to show disproval. "We're closing our embassy and kicking yours to the curb at Reagan National. Time to pack." 2.) Security through espionage: In spite of what we techno-geeks might think, the best intelligence still comes from boots on the ground, interfacing with people who either have a beef with the current regime or fear the current regime. Embassies provide a ready tool to access that information--some of which is quite vital to our own security. (An important object lesson lies in the reality that we did not have an embassy nor any significant intelligence apparatus in Afghanistan from 1989 until 2002.) The rules of Embassy operations--it's our soil, not theirs, for example; diplomatic pouches for another--provide useful means to protect innocent people and to extricate people and/or information as necessary. (Our own citizens includes, as this thread has demonstrated already.) 3.) Security through commerce: In a global economy, it's important to have face time with the individuals responsible for setting economic and trade policies that impact markets in one's own nation. Example: China, where the U.S. Ambassador has a significant hand in ensuring the steady flow of goods and services back and forth between the two countries. Ambassadors have very real power to speak and negotiate on behalf of their nations. Losing that tool would potentially hamstring negotiations between nations. md On Aug 4, 2013, at 11:08 AM, David Lubkin wrote: > In the less-safe parts of the world, an embassy is a refuge for its country's > citizens. I face arrest, being beat up by thugs, don't have the fare to get > home ? a consular office is a place of physical safety and access to > one's country's capabilities. > > In theory, that could be accomplished with a private, global, personal > security insurance policy, but it'd be challenging to run one that could > survive in a country where it was needed. (See, however, the Weapon > Shops of Isher.) > > More dated: When I was in Israel, struggling with textbooks in Hebrew > through high school, it was very useful that the American embassy had > a lending library that was intended to offer everything that would be in > an American high school's library. Before applying to colleges in the > US, I took the SAT and Achievement Test subject exams at the > embassy. > > The former use was already phased out for budget reasons while I > was there. (Luckily, I was able to snag the most useful books thanks > to a friend who worked there.) > > The latter use is still necessary, although it could easily be done > under private auspices, as it is in the US. > > > -- David. > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From matters21stcentury at yahoo.com Sun Aug 4 19:03:32 2013 From: matters21stcentury at yahoo.com (TwentFirstCentury Matters) Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2013 12:03:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] why do we need them? In-Reply-To: <201308041633.r74GXO1Q028566@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <1375577056.41847.YahooMailNeo@web163406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <51FE0F95.3070104@aleph.se> <201308041633.r74GXO1Q028566@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1375643012.19711.YahooMailNeo@web163404.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> All the reasons you've all furnished are valid, but I surmise espionage is #1. Govt, industrial, personal spying are all more prevalent than we like to think. what is cryptography all about, anyway? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From me at michaeldevault.com Mon Aug 5 01:09:06 2013 From: me at michaeldevault.com (Michael DeVault) Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2013 20:09:06 -0500 Subject: [ExI] why do we need them? In-Reply-To: <1375643012.19711.YahooMailNeo@web163404.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1375577056.41847.YahooMailNeo@web163406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <51FE0F95.3070104@aleph.se> <201308041633.r74GXO1Q028566@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1375643012.19711.YahooMailNeo@web163404.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2AEB760B-9BAE-4547-B4DD-CF359959119B@michaeldevault.com> Right? It's the basic difference between Snowden spilling the beans to American media about NSA spying on Americans and Snowden spilling the beans to Chinese media about NSA spying on China. Espionage, whether we like it or not, is critical for security. We can't just unilaterally quit and expect it to go well. And I offer again, as proof, Afghanistan. Sent from my iPhone On Aug 4, 2013, at 2:03 PM, TwentFirstCentury Matters wrote: > All the reasons you've all furnished are valid, > but I surmise espionage is #1. > Govt, industrial, personal spying > are all more prevalent than we like to think. > what is cryptography all about, anyway? > _______________________________________________ > 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 eugen at leitl.org Mon Aug 5 08:53:52 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 10:53:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] why do we need them? In-Reply-To: <1375643012.19711.YahooMailNeo@web163404.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1375577056.41847.YahooMailNeo@web163406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <51FE0F95.3070104@aleph.se> <201308041633.r74GXO1Q028566@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1375643012.19711.YahooMailNeo@web163404.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130805085352.GB29404@leitl.org> On Sun, Aug 04, 2013 at 12:03:32PM -0700, TwentFirstCentury Matters wrote: > what is cryptography all about, anyway? Cryptography is an essential feature in an untrusted world. Consider financial transactions, or implementation of a global currency like BitCoin. From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Mon Aug 5 17:27:32 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 10:27:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: >Also, many of you have expressed your opinion about how there is no law? >around Bitcoin Valuations, so I'd also very much like to hear your >opinion!!? If you don't like the term 'law', what would be a better name >for the best consensus camp? Good for you for reconsidering the use of the word "law". Aside from the law of supply and demand, I see no law that should predict or guide the price of bitcoin. We can (perhaps) make some reasonable predictions about future supply, but predictions about future demand are mostly guesswork. Instead of a "law" that predicts the price of bitcoin, consider the conventional term "trend". We all hope the long term uptrend continues, but it's only a trend. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Aug 5 18:01:36 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 19:01:36 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency Message-ID: Looks like reality has broken through the soothing words and cover-ups. So the question now is how much radioactive water can the Pacific Ocean absorb? The head of Japan's NRA, Shinji Kinjo exclaimed, "right now, we have an emergency," as he noted the contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier and is rising toward the surface - exceeding the limits of radioactive discharge. In a rather outspoken comment for the typically stoic Japanese, Kinjo said Tepco's "sense of crisis was weak," adding that "this is why you can't just leave it up to Tepco alone" to grapple with the ongoing disaster. As Reuters notes, Tepco has been accused of covering up shortcomings and has been lambasted for its ineptness in the response and while the company says it is taking actions to contain the leaks, Kinjo fears if the water reaches the surface "it would flow extremely fast," with some suggesting as little as three weeks until this critical point. BillK From anders at aleph.se Mon Aug 5 20:56:05 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2013 21:56:05 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <52001165.2060507@aleph.se> On 05/08/2013 19:01, BillK wrote: > So the question now is how much radioactive water can the Pacific Ocean absorb? Loads. It has a volume of 2.8 billion cubic kilometres. At 0.0000033 g uranium per kilogram of water, that is 180 million kilograms of uranium. That is still 1.3 million kilograms of uranium 235 if you just count that. Any human reactor, even if dumped straight in, is insignificant compared to this. The issue is mixing. You don't want a lot of active isotopes near your coast and your fisheries. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Aug 5 21:50:40 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 22:50:40 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency In-Reply-To: <52001165.2060507@aleph.se> References: <52001165.2060507@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 9:56 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Loads. It has a volume of 2.8 billion cubic kilometres. At 0.0000033 g > uranium per kilogram of water, that is 180 million kilograms of uranium. > That is still 1.3 million kilograms of uranium 235 if you just count that. > Any human reactor, even if dumped straight in, is insignificant compared to > this. > > The issue is mixing. You don't want a lot of active isotopes near your coast > and your fisheries. > > Well, yes, I think that's what I meant. Absorb, in the sense of assimilating without causing damage. I have also had the same feeling about accidents like Chernobyl, or accidental releases of radiation over land areas. The authorities make claims that the radiation disperses widely and causes little damage. My worry is that they are talking about average statistics and ignoring hotspots or highly radioactive particles. On average there might be little risk, but if you breathe in a hot particle then you are likely to get lung cancer years later. For those affected, it is like being slightly dead, (or slightly pregnant). 0.05% deaths are 100% to those that die. BillK From anders at aleph.se Mon Aug 5 22:19:22 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2013 23:19:22 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency In-Reply-To: References: <52001165.2060507@aleph.se> Message-ID: <520024EA.9030102@aleph.se> On 05/08/2013 22:50, BillK wrote: > Well, yes, I think that's what I meant. Absorb, in the sense of > assimilating without causing damage. But what is "without causing damage"? One of the problems with talking radioactivity risk is that the harms are rather subtle (unless you are getting acute radiation poisoning), and generally turn into statistical harms: probabilities of bad things go up, but there is no deterministic link between exposure and something happening. This indeterminism and invisibility really messes with our ability to intuitively think about risk, and people fall back to innate heuristics of purity, contagious evil and taboo. Which are pretty lousy ways of trying to run a modern infrastructure. There is no way of judging whether a vague sense of unease with an option outweighs the practical benefit. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From msd001 at gmail.com Mon Aug 5 23:40:29 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 19:40:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency In-Reply-To: <520024EA.9030102@aleph.se> References: <52001165.2060507@aleph.se> <520024EA.9030102@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 6:19 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > This indeterminism and invisibility really messes with our ability to > intuitively think about risk, and people fall back to innate heuristics of > purity, contagious evil and taboo. Which are pretty lousy ways of trying to > run a modern infrastructure. There is no way of judging whether a vague > sense of unease with an option outweighs the practical benefit. I think it's great that we have innate heuristics of contagious evil. It makes me think of carriers of evil that are themselves unafflicted by it. Also the kind of evil that one might have but easily wash off. There is also, of course, the absolute evil of which one is never truly rid. From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Tue Aug 6 11:10:59 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 05:10:59 -0600 Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> Hi Gordon, You are going to far, taking our interest in, respect and valuing of your different point of view as more than you should. We aren't "reconsidering the use of the word 'law'", at least you haven't converted me or anyone else to your still lonely camp yet. As far as I know, you are the only one that thinks this way, and even you aren't in this camp as definitively as those willing to stand up and do the work to support and build the "law" camp. If there are others, besides you, especially if they have enough commitment to their camp to do the work to 'canonize' it, that would be more evidence that it is a worth while camp. I agree with you, that the supply of Bitcoins is a mathematical certainty, and that the demand for Bitcoins isn't this certain. But, in our POV, even this side is worthy of the word "law", more so than things like "Moore's law" and such. It isn't an absolute certainty, that water will flow downhill (like when people build dams), but you can bet an awful lot on the fact that it will, and when, just like you can bet on the fact that capital will flow to where it will earn the greatest ROI. What do you think about the certainty of economic growth? Do you think this is as reliable as something like "Moore's law" and/or "Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns"? If you think economic growth is deserving of the term 'law', then is it not, then, a mathematical certainty that, if the economy grows exponentially, then the demand for any limited currency in that economy must accelerate, exponentially? Also remember, this prediction is about whatever is the leading crypto currency, not just Bitcoin. Anyone else out there in Gordon's camp? Any other camp out there,with enough supporters willing to help amplify the wisdom of the crowd and help accelerate us toward the singularity in ways other than just making noise? Brent Allsop On 8/5/2013 11:27 AM, Gordon wrote: > > Brent Allsop wrote: > > >Also, many of you have expressed your opinion about how there is no law > >around Bitcoin Valuations, so I'd also very much like to hear your > >opinion!! If you don't like the term 'law', what would be a better name > >for the best consensus camp? > > Good for you for reconsidering the use of the word "law". Aside from > the law of supply and demand, I see no law that should predict or > guide the price of bitcoin. We can (perhaps) make some reasonable > predictions about future supply, but predictions about future demand > are mostly guesswork. > > Instead of a "law" that predicts the price of bitcoin, consider the > conventional term "trend". We all hope the long term uptrend > continues, but it's only a trend. > > Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Tue Aug 6 12:12:37 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 13:12:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> On 2013-08-06 12:10, Brent Allsop wrote: > > What do you think about the certainty of economic growth? Do you > think this is as reliable as something like "Moore's law" and/or > "Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns"? Empirically, a 2% growth rate is what economists call a "stylized fact" - it seems to be roughly true, although the details are bedevilled. When I looked at long term historical data like Angus Maddison's data set they seemed to back it up over at least a millennial, possibly multimillennial timescale. > If you think economic growth is deserving of the term 'law', then is > it not, then, a mathematical certainty that, if the economy grows > exponentially, then the demand for any limited currency in that > economy must accelerate, exponentially? Demand for a limited resource does not always grow with the economy and population. Consider the collapse of the stamp market as the hobby fell out of fashion. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Tue Aug 6 12:52:47 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 06:52:47 -0600 Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> Message-ID: <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> Hi Anders, I'm trying to tell if you think 'law' is not a good name for the camp http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2, but I can't yet tell. On 8/6/2013 6:12 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-08-06 12:10, Brent Allsop wrote: >> >> What do you think about the certainty of economic growth? Do you >> think this is as reliable as something like "Moore's law" and/or >> "Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns"? > > Empirically, a 2% growth rate is what economists call a "stylized > fact" - it seems to be roughly true, although the details are > bedevilled. When I looked at long term historical data like Angus > Maddison's data set they seemed to back it up over at least a > millennial, possibly multimillennial timescale. Exactly. Gordon, would you also agree? >> If you think economic growth is deserving of the term 'law', then >> is it not, then, a mathematical certainty that, if the economy grows >> exponentially, then the demand for any limited currency in that >> economy must accelerate, exponentially? > > Demand for a limited resource does not always grow with the economy > and population. Consider the collapse of the stamp market as the hobby > fell out of fashion. To me, this is just more mistaken noise, and you are not yet fully understanding what our camp is talking about. This certainly doesn't yet convince me of anything. Primitively, economies used managed fiat currencies as a method of value exchange. In general, the managers of these currencies, to the benefit of their government, expended the supply to keep up with the demand of an exponentially growing economy, so the fiat currencies tended towards inflation, sometimes badly. Now we have the technolodgy so that people can free themselves from this 'tax' on their holding of such. So what we are predicting is that because we can, from now on, people will use fixed quantity cryptographic assets as both a method and exchange in assets and store of value. Our prediction is that whatever this turns out to be, whether Bitcoin, Lite coin, or whatever, the total market capitalization of whichever is the leading one, will grow at least exponentially. And we are predicting, in a law like way, that the leading currency will be one that is fixed in it's supply. So, in our opinion, it is law like that the total market capitalized value of these fixed units, whatever they are, will increase in value, at least exponentually, for the foreseeable future, keeping up with the exponentially growing economy. This will be true far more reliably than something like "Moore's law", and so on. Something like collectors stamps, maybe tulips, or what is currently in fashion, has nothing to do with any of what our camp is talking about. So, Anders, as one of my most trusted experts, do you think "law" is not appropriate for the name of the best camp about the future valuation of the leading crypto currency? Brent Allsop -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Tue Aug 6 14:13:00 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 15:13:00 +0100 Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> On 2013-08-06 13:52, Brent Allsop wrote: > > Hi Anders, > > I'm trying to tell if you think 'law' is not a good name for the camp > http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2, but I can't yet tell. Given the context on the page, it works well. I suspect that it doesn't work well as a term in discussions outside canonizer. The word "law" has a lot of odd meanings. It can mean legal rule, it can mean a law of nature, it can mean an observed trend, or it can mean a probability distribution (just to name a few). It is likely not pulling its weight as a word in the title of the concept :-) -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Aug 6 15:28:38 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 08:28:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the new stamp collecting, was: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? Message-ID: <009b01ce92b9$a0663160$e1329420$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg >.Demand for a limited resource does not always grow with the economy and population. Consider the collapse of the stamp market as the hobby fell out of fashion. -- Dr Anders Sandberg I hadn't really thought about it, but stamp collecting has certainly lost most of its popularity, and by extension I would speculate that the same goes for coin collecting. Currently in the USA, we are seriously debating the existence of a US post office. It isn't at all clear we still need one, or if so, perhaps it could be a specialized system for limited purposes, with most of the load (paper advertisement and merchandise) being carried by private companies. A new replacement hobby has become wildly popular, and may even eventually be more useful from a scientific perspective than is stamp and coin collecting: genealogy. With all the new tools that have become available, we are finding we can fix the long-standing errors in the family trees, then use the resulting data to track diseases and such. Just yesterday, I made a first connection with a knowledgeable member of the family, who had death certificates. That branch was plagued with a certain disease that is seen in currently living family members. It has turned out to be useful information to find DNA relatives. We once collected bits of metal; now we collect bits of DNA. Punchline: unlike stamp and coin collecting, DNA-based genealogy becomes a hobby with an actual purpose. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Aug 6 16:25:06 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 09:25:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the new stamp collecting, was: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <009b01ce92b9$a0663160$e1329420$@rainier66.com> References: <009b01ce92b9$a0663160$e1329420$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00af01ce92c1$83b1e3e0$8b15aba0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike >.We once collected bits of metal; now we collect bits of DNA. spike For a still newer and perhaps even MORE useful hobby, hacking toilets: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/08/05/smart-toilet-security-flaw/?intcmp=ob network Oh my, just imagine some of the gags one could pull off if you could remotely control someone's toilet. The possibilities are endless. Clearly I have far too few actual worries and responsibilities. Regarding collecting bits of DNA, I had a thought based on DNA-based medicine. Many years ago when I worked in southern California, I had a friend who lived adjacent to an Indian reservation along the Kern River. He was friends with the tribe's medicine man, who wasn't exactly a doctor, but had a degree in pharmacy. We went over to visit. When I saw what the medicine man was doing and how he was running his business, occurred to me that what he was doing there was DNA-based medicine. There were a few white people living on the reservation, but he generally couldn't do much for them, other than give them the standard over-the-counter products. The tribe members however were highly similar genetically. He knew with a high degree of certainty what would happen to the patients as they aged, what conditions would come along (hypertension and diabetes were tearing through that tribe like a hot chainsaw thru butter) and how best to deal with it, what success rate he was likely to see (not so high.) I go for my annual doctor visit next week. I will print out my 23andMe results, along with the health recommendations found therein, see if my doctor can get with her friends and work out some kind of system to perhaps trade patients around such that one doctor gets this group, another doctor gets that group, specialize in a genetic group, like the medicine man up on the Tule River reservation. That could be the start of genetic based medicine, ja? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Aug 6 17:11:11 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 13:11:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] the new stamp collecting, was: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <00af01ce92c1$83b1e3e0$8b15aba0$@rainier66.com> References: <009b01ce92b9$a0663160$e1329420$@rainier66.com> <00af01ce92c1$83b1e3e0$8b15aba0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 12:25 PM, spike wrote: > I go for my annual doctor visit next week. I will print out my 23andMe > results, along with the health recommendations found therein, see if my > doctor can get with her friends and work out some kind of system to perhaps > trade patients around such that one doctor gets this group, another doctor > gets that group, specialize in a genetic group, like the medicine man up on > the Tule River reservation. > > That could be the start of genetic based medicine, ja? Your vision of healthcare is so optimistic it's almost too cute. From eugen at leitl.org Tue Aug 6 19:39:54 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 21:39:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency In-Reply-To: <520024EA.9030102@aleph.se> References: <52001165.2060507@aleph.se> <520024EA.9030102@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20130806193954.GM29404@leitl.org> On Mon, Aug 05, 2013 at 11:19:22PM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: > This indeterminism and invisibility really messes with our ability > to intuitively think about risk, and people fall back to innate > heuristics of purity, contagious evil and taboo. Which are pretty > lousy ways of trying to run a modern infrastructure. There is no way Here's a simple heuristic: is Fukushima back online? What are the cleanup costs? What is the ROI and EROI and sustainability? It is always useful to reconsider these whenever the discussion is reduced to just the simple risks of radioisotopes in the environment. Which are really not the droids we're looking for. > of judging whether a vague sense of unease with an option outweighs > the practical benefit. From pharos at gmail.com Tue Aug 6 19:54:26 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 20:54:26 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency In-Reply-To: <20130806193954.GM29404@leitl.org> References: <52001165.2060507@aleph.se> <520024EA.9030102@aleph.se> <20130806193954.GM29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 8:39 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Here's a simple heuristic: is Fukushima back online? What are the > cleanup costs? What is the ROI and EROI and sustainability? > > It is always useful to reconsider these whenever the discussion > is reduced to just the simple risks of radioisotopes in the > environment. Which are really not the droids we're looking > for. > Cleanup costs??? It appears that the realization is dawning that they can't clean it up at all - not in our lifetime. The public won't be told until they have no choice and information gradually trickles out. But worst case is waiting centuries for the mess to gradually cool down, all the while spreading radioactive contamination through groundwater and ocean. BillK From eugen at leitl.org Tue Aug 6 20:03:05 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 22:03:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency In-Reply-To: References: <52001165.2060507@aleph.se> <520024EA.9030102@aleph.se> <20130806193954.GM29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130806200305.GP29404@leitl.org> On Tue, Aug 06, 2013 at 08:54:26PM +0100, BillK wrote: > Cleanup costs??? It appears that the realization is dawning that they > can't clean it up at all - not in our lifetime. Of course it can't -- but the cleanup costs need to be factored into the ROI equation. New nuclear is already the most expensive energy out there, and this is not going to make it look any cheaper. > The public won't be told until they have no choice and information > gradually trickles out. But worst case is waiting centuries for the > mess to gradually cool down, all the while spreading radioactive > contamination through groundwater and ocean. I don't care about that. I only care about 1 TW/year annual substition rate, renewable, at sufficient EROEI. Nuke does none of that, so that's the reason why it doesn't work. A little bit of corium is just a distraction from the core issue. Sure, if you ran 20 k reactors there be lots of such fireworks, but that's immaterial: you can't run that many, anyway. From atymes at gmail.com Tue Aug 6 21:39:53 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 14:39:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency In-Reply-To: References: <52001165.2060507@aleph.se> <520024EA.9030102@aleph.se> <20130806193954.GM29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Aug 6, 2013 12:55 PM, "BillK" wrote: > Cleanup costs??? It appears that the realization is dawning that they > can't clean it up at all - not in our lifetime. Sure they can. In theory, they could gather it up and process the essentially low yield ore to remove enough radioactives that the rest is at background radiation levels. Perhaps they won't (because they think they can skate by without this expense), but they could. "Won't" is a different sort of problem, though. > The public won't be told until they have no choice and information > gradually trickles out. And what info they will be a told probably won't be 100% accurate. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Tue Aug 6 23:38:34 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 17:38:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> Message-ID: <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> Hi Anders, The target audience isn't Canonizer.com. I want a term that would become at least as recognized and understood as the "Moores Law" term has become, in everyone's household and common conversations. That is why I'm specifically asking if "Cyrpto Coin Law" is better, or is "Law of the Crypto Coin" more likely to catch on, outside of Canonizer? If people are going to use the term, outside of canonizer.com, which would most people be most likely to use? For example, Zuckerberg first called it "The Facebook", but that was obviously a big mistake, and just "Facebook" was much better, and caught on in everyone's vocabulary, much easier, after they dropped the "The". Brent Allsop On 8/6/2013 8:13 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-08-06 13:52, Brent Allsop wrote: >> >> Hi Anders, >> >> I'm trying to tell if you think 'law' is not a good name for the camp >> http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2, but I can't yet tell. > > Given the context on the page, it works well. I suspect that it > doesn't work well as a term in discussions outside canonizer. > > The word "law" has a lot of odd meanings. It can mean legal rule, it > can mean a law of nature, it can mean an observed trend, or it can > mean a probability distribution (just to name a few). It is likely not > pulling its weight as a word in the title of the concept :-) > > -- > Dr Anders Sandberg > Future of Humanity Institute > Oxford Martin School > Oxford University > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 brent.allsop at canonizer.com Wed Aug 7 02:04:29 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 20:04:29 -0600 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <5201AB2D.3070307@canonizer.com> Hi James, On 8/6/2013 7:22 AM, James Carroll wrote: > On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 5:10 AM, Brent Allsop > > wrote: > > If you think economic growth is deserving of the term 'law', then > is it not, then, a mathematical certainty that, if the economy > grows exponentially, then the demand for any limited currency in > that economy must accelerate, exponentially? > > > > ANY limited currency? So if I print ONE dolar of "carroll bucks", and > limit that currency to one, then it will increase in value > exponentially as the economy grows exponentially? > > Also remember, this prediction is about whatever is the leading > crypto currency, not just Bitcoin. > > > > That may be a more reasonable assumption, but it is incompatible with > the "any" you used in your above sentence, so you are contradicting > yourself here. Please make up your mind. Sorry, I probably should have done something like clarify that "any" with "any leading". Also, the more restricted the currency is (i.e. the faster it will increase in value), the better chance it will have of becoming the leading currency, but of course, this is not all that is required to become the leader. Currently Gold is expanding much faster than Bitcoins, and why I am predicting that Gold's days are completely numbered, and will soon be completely replaced by Bitcoin, this being the most important reason. The 100% line camp is predicting all Bitcions will be worth more than all gold > > Anyone else out there in Gordon's camp? > > > > Yes Good to know. In my opinion, the history of Bitcoin, as shown in the graph in the camp: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2 is already more consistent than "More's law" ever actually achieved. If you don't agree, how much more of that kind of growth would be required, before you would give this kind of "law" as much respect as it has in a term like "Moore's law"? > > Any other camp out there,with enough supporters willing to help > amplify the wisdom of the crowd and help accelerate us toward the > singularity in ways other than just making noise? > > > > So, anyone who finds canonizer's user interface prohibitive or > annoying, or who thinks that their time is better spent elsewhere is > "just making noise" and "not contributing to the singularity"? That's what I think, yes. I think we are always in agreement with the facts, I'm obviously just spinning the fact one way, and in my mind you are spinning them another way, and I see the truth somewhere in the middle. It is a fact that at least some people get so tired of the wasteful, repetative, bleating noise, posting things in forums, over and over again, and so desperately both want to know what all that noise is trying to say and what it thinks, concicely and quantitatively, along with wanting to comunicate what they believe they know, they are willing to spend their life doing everything they can to create something like Canonizer.com, to facilitate that. One person can't do it all! Thankfully, there are at least a few others, you included, willing to at least help with that effort, for the same reason. While others seem to care less, especially about what others think, and would rather completely sensor and destroy it, than try to do anything to make any effort to improve it in any way or do something like canonize it. And yes, it seems to me that the better and more important the camp, the more people there tend to be that are willing to do whatever is required to work to build consensus around it, including help to improve the system to make it easier for both themselves, and everyone else. Brent Allsop -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed Aug 7 04:13:45 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 21:13:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <1375848825.91286.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: >?Gordon, would you also agree? We are not discussing any possible "law of economic growth". We are talking about any possible "law" the drives the value of a particular currency, in this case bitcoin. Even if I were to grant some kind of "law" of economic growth, I would still deny any particular law that drives the price of bitcoin up. Currently the law of supply and demand is working favorably for this particular commodity, but there is no "law" that says the demand for bitcoins will increase or decrease at any particular rate in the future, regardless of economic growth. I've compared bitcoin many times to gold, where my same arguments apply. There is also a sense in which bitcoin is like an emerging growth stock. The shares of small companies sometimes soar in value during their first few years. Does this mean there is some "law" that drives that price appreciation? Of course not. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed Aug 7 04:13:45 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 21:13:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <1375848825.91286.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: >?Gordon, would you also agree? We are not discussing any possible "law of economic growth". We are talking about any possible "law" the drives the value of a particular currency, in this case bitcoin. Even if I were to grant some kind of "law" of economic growth, I would still deny any particular law that drives the price of bitcoin up. Currently the law of supply and demand is working favorably for this particular commodity, but there is no "law" that says the demand for bitcoins will increase or decrease at any particular rate in the future, regardless of economic growth. I've compared bitcoin many times to gold, where my same arguments apply. There is also a sense in which bitcoin is like an emerging growth stock. The shares of small companies sometimes soar in value during their first few years. Does this mean there is some "law" that drives that price appreciation? Of course not. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed Aug 7 04:53:53 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 21:53:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: > I want a term that would become at least as recognized and understood as the "Moores Law" term has become, in everyone's household and common conversations. ? > That is why I'm specifically asking if "Cyrpto Coin Law" is better, or is "Law of the Crypto Coin" more likely to catch on... The word "law" implies a degree of certainty that simply does not exist in the financial markets, at least with respect to price trends.? Bitcoin is not a phenomenon in the natural sciences, where the term "law" often seems appropriate. We can speak for example of a law that defines how objects accelerate as they fall toward the earth. But bitcoin's price action is not like on object falling through space. It is a phenomenon in economics, a branch of the social (not the natural) sciences. There is no economic or financial "law" that can tell us that Bitcoin will appreciate in value at any particular rate or range of rates.?Your search for such a law is I think merely wishful thinking on your part. There are of course some general principles of economics that might be called laws, for example the law of supply and demand, but in themselves such laws tell us nothing about which way the market will go for any particular commodity. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed Aug 7 04:53:53 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 21:53:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: > I want a term that would become at least as recognized and understood as the "Moores Law" term has become, in everyone's household and common conversations. ? > That is why I'm specifically asking if "Cyrpto Coin Law" is better, or is "Law of the Crypto Coin" more likely to catch on... The word "law" implies a degree of certainty that simply does not exist in the financial markets, at least with respect to price trends.? Bitcoin is not a phenomenon in the natural sciences, where the term "law" often seems appropriate. We can speak for example of a law that defines how objects accelerate as they fall toward the earth. But bitcoin's price action is not like on object falling through space. It is a phenomenon in economics, a branch of the social (not the natural) sciences. There is no economic or financial "law" that can tell us that Bitcoin will appreciate in value at any particular rate or range of rates.?Your search for such a law is I think merely wishful thinking on your part. There are of course some general principles of economics that might be called laws, for example the law of supply and demand, but in themselves such laws tell us nothing about which way the market will go for any particular commodity. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed Aug 7 05:33:08 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 22:33:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Sorry my last two posts appeared twice. It seems Brent has ExI listed twice on his to: line. I removed one entry this time. So as not to waste this post, I might as well mention that I am having a good chuckle thinking about how some of my old investment clients might have reacted had I told them they should buy gold or bitcoin or anything else because the price action was driven by some "law". "I think you should buy some Bitcoin here, Bob." "Really, Gordon? Why?" "It's going up in price according to the Law of Bitcoin! According to the Law of Bitcoin, you should make a lot of money!" "What the hell is the Law of Bitcoin?" "I read about the Law of Bitcoin on the Internet. The price went up a lot, so there must be a Law that it will go up a lot more." "Very funny, Gordon. What is this, some kind of April Fool's joke?" :) Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Aug 7 14:49:54 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 10:49:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I thought it might be interesting to see how Fukushima compares with the number of deaths directly associated with some non-nuclear power plant accidents. I am not counting long term effects that cause deaths by pollution or global warming that everybody is so worried about: In 1975 the Shimantan/Banqiao hydroelectric Dam in China failed and killed 171,000 people. In 1979 the Morvi hydroelectric Dam in India failed and killed 1500 people, In 1998 a oil pipeline in Nigeria exploded and killed 1078 people. In 1907 the Monongah Coal Mine in West Virginia exploded and killed 500 people. In 1944 a liquified natural gas factory exploded in Cleveland Ohio and killed 130 people. In 2011 the Fukushima nuclear power plant melted down and killed nobody. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Aug 7 14:57:26 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 10:57:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 10:49 AM, John Clark wrote: > I thought it might be interesting to see how Fukushima compares with the > number of deaths directly associated with some non-nuclear power plant > accidents. I am not counting long term effects that cause deaths by > pollution or global warming that everybody is so worried about: > > In 1975 the Shimantan/Banqiao hydroelectric Dam in China failed and killed > 171,000 people. > > In 1979 the Morvi hydroelectric Dam in India failed and killed 1500 people, > > In 1998 a oil pipeline in Nigeria exploded and killed 1078 people. > > In 1907 the Monongah Coal Mine in West Virginia exploded and killed 500 > people. > > In 1944 a liquified natural gas factory exploded in Cleveland Ohio and > killed 130 people. > > In 2011 the Fukushima nuclear power plant melted down and killed nobody. "Like" or "+1" or (something) Please forgive the near-zero content in this reply. Email lacks the social signal of more modern communications. From pharos at gmail.com Wed Aug 7 15:29:42 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 16:29:42 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 3:49 PM, John Clark wrote: > I thought it might be interesting to see how Fukushima compares with the > number of deaths directly associated with some non-nuclear power plant > accidents. I am not counting long term effects that cause deaths by > pollution or global warming that everybody is so worried about: > > In 1975 the Shimantan/Banqiao hydroelectric Dam in China failed and killed > 171,000 people. > In 1979 the Morvi hydroelectric Dam in India failed and killed 1500 people, > In 1998 a oil pipeline in Nigeria exploded and killed 1078 people. > In 1907 the Monongah Coal Mine in West Virginia exploded and killed 500 > people. > In 1944 a liquified natural gas factory exploded in Cleveland Ohio and > killed 130 people. > In 2011 the Fukushima nuclear power plant melted down and killed nobody. > > Worldwide car accident deaths per year c.1.2 million Worldwide malaria deaths per year c.1.2 million Worldwide suicides per year c.800,000 Worldwide murders per year c.550,000 etc..... BillK From spike at rainier66.com Wed Aug 7 15:58:39 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 08:58:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <003301ce9386$fbd4c890$f37e59b0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Subject: Re: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency >.In 2011 the Fukushima nuclear power plant melted down and killed nobody. .John K Clark The 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown killed the future of the nuclear power industry. For the foreseeable, the investment capital community will not touch it. I would be surprised if we see any new nuke plants built in the next two decades. Casualties or otherwise, this technology was killed dead 2011. Tragic it is: there are ways to make a nuke plant safe, and put them way the hell out where even an accident wouldn't mess up a lot of developed land. My prediction is that we will see no investor interest even in that for a long time. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed Aug 7 16:19:43 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 09:19:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] phony google Message-ID: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> You internet hipsters have likely been all over this for decades, but I just thought of it this morning, so bear with me please. I have been a Google user since about 1998. They have been consistently non-evil in that time, and I am satisfied with them. I have local friends who work there, I have it set on all my default new-page tabs etc. Yesterday I somehow downloaded Delta Search, which turned out to be one hell of a difficult virus to uninstall. I did a Google search, found two or three different instruction sets on what steps to take in order to uninstall Delta Search, but somehow it kept reinserting itself into the default new-tab list. I found a free app that detects Delta Search, which it did. But to actually delete and uninstall, they wanted 30 bucks. So I went to a second product, but it was the same story. Then I found a free widget which claimed to find and uninstall Delta free, deleted and uninstalled everything associated with Delta Search, hooray! It then occurred to me that if the technology exists that installs a default tab to a particular search engine, a company could set the engine to default to the company's favorite sites, such as those sites which pay that company money to do that. It could do like Delta Search and make it damn difficult to uninstall. Many of my older friends such as those in my parents' generation could not do it. But take it a step further: a company could use that tech, then disguise itself as Google, so that the victim would not even know his web searches are being hijacked. I have found Google to be non-evil, but could not a company create a counterfeit Google, even copy the logos and such? The unsuspecting user would never know they are using a phony front end, since the engine could return actual Google search results with its own favorites inserted, as well as track everything, and doing all manner of evil, while disguised as Google. If little tiny innocent microscopic spike can think of this, the internet hipsters would be all over it 20 yrs ago. So how do I know if I have a counterfeit Google now? How would I know if I caught one later? How do I know that the free widget which uninstalled Delta didn't just change the names of the system files and disguise it as Google? Is there a vocabulary already in place to describe this? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Wed Aug 7 16:44:31 2013 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 12:44:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 12:19 PM, spike wrote: > If little tiny innocent microscopic spike can think of this, the internet > hipsters would be all over it 20 yrs ago. So how do I know if I have a > counterfeit Google now? How would I know if I caught one later? How do I > know that the free widget which uninstalled Delta didn?t just change the > names of the system files and disguise it as Google? Is there a vocabulary > already in place to describe this? Use a trustworthy browser and trustworthy plug-ins. Go to google.com (or search from the URLtoolbar). Use HTTPS instead of HTTP. Avoid Windows. Understand that no matter what you do, you can't be sure that some bad guy isn't listening/intercepting/redirecting anything/everything you do: you can only make it harder for them to do that. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed Aug 7 18:01:28 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 20:01:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency In-Reply-To: <003301ce9386$fbd4c890$f37e59b0$@rainier66.com> References: <003301ce9386$fbd4c890$f37e59b0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130807180128.GA29404@leitl.org> On Wed, Aug 07, 2013 at 08:58:39AM -0700, spike wrote: > The 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown killed the future of the nuclear power > industry. For the foreseeable, the investment capital community will not This is not true. If you look at historical data, nuclear power was dying slowly in the vine. The reason is simple: economics. New nuclear is not viable. Fukushima didn't change a iota about that. > touch it. I would be surprised if we see any new nuke plants built in the > next two decades. Casualties or otherwise, this technology was killed dead > 2011. Tragic it is: there are ways to make a nuke plant safe, and put them > way the hell out where even an accident wouldn't mess up a lot of developed > land. > > My prediction is that we will see no investor interest even in that for a > long time. From pharos at gmail.com Wed Aug 7 18:24:29 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 19:24:29 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency In-Reply-To: <20130807180128.GA29404@leitl.org> References: <003301ce9386$fbd4c890$f37e59b0$@rainier66.com> <20130807180128.GA29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 7:01 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > This is not true. If you look at historical data, nuclear power was dying > slowly in the vine. > > The reason is simple: economics. New nuclear is not viable. > Fukushima didn't change a iota about that. > But nuclear power generated is increasing every year. After Fukushima the estimated rate of increase was reduced, but the total is still increasing. Globally, nuclear power capacity is projected to rise in the New Policies Scenario from 393 GW in 2009 to 630 GW in 2035." Nuclear power capacity worldwide is increasing steadily, with over 60 reactors under construction in 13 countries. Most reactors on order or planned are in the Asian region. BillK From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Aug 7 18:30:44 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 14:30:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > Use a trustworthy browser and trustworthy plug-ins. Go to google.com (or > search from the URLtoolbar). Use HTTPS instead of HTTP. Avoid Windows. > Understand that no matter what you do, you can't be sure that some bad guy > isn't listening/intercepting/redirecting anything/everything you do: you can > only make it harder for them to do that. you also can't be sure that when you are using the Real(tm) Google that anything/everything you do isn't also copied to the gummint snoops. Your proposed evil might be an effective proxy (if you don't mind the 'bad guys' using your computer) "Avoid Windows" feels to me like advice of the kind "wear a tinfoil hat" or "leave the TV on when you're not home." It would be safer for your parents and their friends to more easily "avoid computers" than deal with the mess that is the Internet. From spike at rainier66.com Wed Aug 7 18:50:41 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 11:50:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <009801ce939f$04ad6a40$0e083ec0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dave Sill Subject: Re: [ExI] phony google On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 12:19 PM, spike wrote: >>.If little tiny innocent microscopic spike can think of this, the internet hipsters would be all over it 20 yrs ago. So how do I know if I have a counterfeit Google now? . spike >.Use a trustworthy browser and trustworthy plug-ins. Go to google.com (or search from the URLtoolbar). Use HTTPS instead of HTTP. Avoid Windows. Understand that no matter what you do, you can't be sure that some bad guy isn't listening/intercepting/redirecting anything/everything you do: you can only make it harder for them to do that. -Dave I have an idea Dave. I need some of you scriptsters to think about this and perhaps spin up some of your magic. A script could randomly generate three or four terms and search on them. A way to do that would be to download about a couple years of ExI-chat or Mensa archives, turn it into a straight text file or for that matter drop it into a spreadsheet (sorry, it's the old hammer thing again), then randomly choose three or four words from that, search on them, open a random link in the top 30 for some random interval, repeat. If the same websites keep coming up in the top 30 results, we know that either we have a bogus Google or that Google has gone over to the dark side and has ceased being not evil. Another bonus for those of us who worry about privacy would be that it would obscure our web searches. Last year a very public court case used web search history as evidence in a criminal case. A young mother had evidently searched on chloroform. Later her baby perished under suspicious circumstances. The web search records were used in court. What if we have some embarrassing thing we have searched, perhaps some kinky sex practice, we didn't even do but wanted to know what it is. Good chance it would be better if a potential employer didn't get that info. The script mentioned above could bury your possible latex chicken obsession under mountains of search terms. In fact, we could even intentionally put decoy terms in there to intentionally distract those who would call attention to my latex chicken searches. THEORETICAL latex chicken searches of course, I mean, you know, if anyone else other than ME, had you know, like, searched on something like that, theoretically and all. Scriptsters, what do we do now, coach? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Aug 7 19:07:46 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 20:07:46 +0100 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 5:19 PM, spike wrote: > I found a free app that detects Delta Search, which it did. But to actually > delete and uninstall, they wanted 30 bucks. So I went to a second product, > but it was the same story. Then I found a free widget which claimed to find > and uninstall Delta free, deleted and uninstalled everything associated with > Delta Search, hooray! > Delta Search is pretty tricky malware. It installs other programs as well. Your widget will have to be good to get rid of everything. I would recommend you do at least one anti-malware scan. (More is better). Download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free here: The scan could take 30 minutes or so, depending on your computer. > > If little tiny innocent microscopic spike can think of this, the internet > hipsters would be all over it 20 yrs ago. So how do I know if I have a > counterfeit Google now? How would I know if I caught one later? How do I > know that the free widget which uninstalled Delta didn?t just change the > names of the system files and disguise it as Google? Is there a vocabulary > already in place to describe this? > > There are other search engines! You can compare results. Some search engines include Google searches in their results, but without giving google your personally identifiable data. Try https://www.startpage.com/ https://www.ixquick.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/ BillK From matters21stcentury at yahoo.com Wed Aug 7 16:09:38 2013 From: matters21stcentury at yahoo.com (TwentFirstCentury Matters) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 09:09:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] why do we need them? In-Reply-To: <20130805085352.GB29404@leitl.org> References: <1375577056.41847.YahooMailNeo@web163406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <51FE0F95.3070104@aleph.se> <201308041633.r74GXO1Q028566@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <1375643012.19711.YahooMailNeo@web163404.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20130805085352.GB29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1375891778.93644.YahooMailNeo@web163406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> "Cryptography is an essential feature in an untrusted world." ? yes; in a word: counterespionage. ? "Consider financial transactions, or implementation of a global currency like BitCoin." ? Now we have to convince the finance-retros.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Aug 7 21:26:09 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 17:26:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: <009801ce939f$04ad6a40$0e083ec0$@rainier66.com> References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> <009801ce939f$04ad6a40$0e083ec0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 2:50 PM, spike wrote: > A script could randomly generate three or four terms and search on them. A > way to do that would be to download about a couple years of ExI-chat or > Mensa archives, turn it into a straight text file or for that matter drop it > into a spreadsheet (sorry, it?s the old hammer thing again), then randomly > choose three or four words from that, search on them, open a random link in > the top 30 for some random interval, repeat. opening seemingly unrequested and unrelated tabs is pretty much what the malware was doing. You might be happier just installing more malware to "cover your tracks" under the premise that "You honor, I'm really not very computer savvy so those searches are probably just malware activity that I don't know how to fix" > If the same websites keep coming up in the top 30 results, we know that > either we have a bogus Google or that Google has gone over to the dark side > and has ceased being not evil. I'm not sure how that proves anything. > Another bonus for those of us who worry about privacy would be that it would > obscure our web searches. Last year a very public court case used web > search history as evidence in a criminal case. A young mother had evidently > searched on chloroform. Later her baby perished under suspicious > circumstances. The web search records were used in court. All your efforts to obscure are undone by telling one data nerd to find the signal among all the noise. Many would do it just to prove that it CAN be done (or that they are clever enough where others fail). Recall how easily you sleuthed your way to newfound relatives via a few bits of second-order details.. > Scriptsters, what do we do now, coach? skip all that noise generation and instead use something like Tor. That would at least let those with real latex chicken fetish get their content through your computer and you could get your real whatever-else through hundreds/thousands of other people's computers. From spike at rainier66.com Wed Aug 7 22:50:29 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 15:50:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> <009801ce939f$04ad6a40$0e083ec0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <014301ce93c0$846f3e90$8d4dbbb0$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty ... >... "You honor, I'm really not very computer savvy so those searches are probably just malware activity that I don't know how to fix" ...I'm not sure how that proves anything... In court, the prosecution must prove that the defendant did the web search in question. They had no way to do that in the case where the likely scenario was that young mother wanted to go out partying but the baby wouldn't stop crying, so she wanted to chloroform the baby to sleep, perhaps Googled on chloroform. That particular chemical is not used as anesthetic, since it is tricky: patients tend to perish, as what may have happened to the infant in question. Presenting the evidence nearly led to a mistrial, since the prosecution could not actually prove the young mother was the one who Googled on chloroform. I thought it all was fascinating as an insight into how our legal system is evolving. The existence of random search malware would cause all web searches to be inadmissible evidence in court. Of course it could still be a major source of embarrassment, such as if anyone found out about my latex chicken fetish. THEORETICAL fetish of course, not at all proven or anything. > If the same websites keep coming up in the top 30 results, we know > that either we have a bogus Google or that Google has gone over to the > dark side and has ceased being not evil. All your efforts to obscure are undone by telling one data nerd to find the signal among all the noise... Easy to find, impossible to prove. Important distinction. No one actually SAW any latex chickens, there is no proof anywhere. I have just thought of a test for bogus Googles. Stand by for NEWS! spike From spike at rainier66.com Wed Aug 7 23:07:10 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 16:07:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] test for bogus googles, was: RE: phony google Message-ID: <014401ce93c2$d963fbf0$8c2bf3d0$@rainier66.com> OK I generated some random three word combinations: Golf hotel mystery Dog saint trousers Leaves cradle set Latex chicken green Zombie lego sales Chart mission stamp Coin feather aardvark Aircraft hat cola Experiment, take each in turn, paste the three words, compare to your sixth hit on your list, compare to my sixth hit list: Golf hotel mystery http://www.groupon.my/deals/travelcity/5-star-mystery-hotel/716454928 Dog saint trousers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_and_Gromit Leaves cradle set http://www.toysrus.com/buy/nursery/bedding/crib-bedding/bedding-sets/baby-gi rl/cocalo-jacana-9-piece-crib-bedding-set-7135-854-12248170 Latex chicken green http://www.greenchickencoop.com/ Zombie lego sales http://www.amazon.com/Lego-Monster-Fighters-Zombies-9465/dp/B007455MW0 Chart mission stamp http://www.dss.virginia.gov/benefit/food.html Coin feather aardvark http://www.psychicpower.com/forums/forumreply.aspx?PostId=57 Aircraft hat cola http://www.hats-trto.gr/ If you entered the words exactly as I did, you should get the same results. Otherwise one of us, or both, have a bogus copy of Google, doing who-knows-what evil, such as reporting to the authorities on latex chicken fetishes. Do please the experiment, just post yes if you get the same results, or if not, let's figure out which of us has the genuine copy. spike From crwbot at gmail.com Wed Aug 7 23:26:10 2013 From: crwbot at gmail.com (Christopher Whipple) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 16:26:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] test for bogus googles, was: RE: phony google In-Reply-To: <014401ce93c2$d963fbf0$8c2bf3d0$@rainier66.com> References: <014401ce93c2$d963fbf0$8c2bf3d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I did these queries twice - logged in to my Google account with Chrome and with a Chrome incognito session. The results between the two didn't vary, but 3 of the queries varied between my results and yours: Dog saint trousers videos.airbus.com/ Chart mission stamp www.dphhs.mt.gov/hcsd/snap/ Aircraft hat cola www.roblox.com/Brighteyes-Bloxy-Cola-Hat-item?id=24114402 But that's still not evidence of man-in-the-middle-style tampering. It could simply be the vagaries of their algorithm - when we searched and from where and with what user agents, resolutions, etc. -c. On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 4:07 PM, spike wrote: > > > OK I generated some random three word combinations: > > Golf hotel mystery > Dog saint trousers > Leaves cradle set > Latex chicken green > Zombie lego sales > Chart mission stamp > Coin feather aardvark > Aircraft hat cola > > Experiment, take each in turn, paste the three words, compare to your sixth > hit on your list, compare to my sixth hit list: > > Golf hotel mystery > http://www.groupon.my/deals/travelcity/5-star-mystery-hotel/716454928 > > Dog saint trousers > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_and_Gromit > > Leaves cradle set > http://www.toysrus.com/buy/nursery/bedding/crib-bedding/bedding-sets/baby-gi > rl/cocalo-jacana-9-piece-crib-bedding-set-7135-854-12248170 > > Latex chicken green > http://www.greenchickencoop.com/ > > Zombie lego sales > http://www.amazon.com/Lego-Monster-Fighters-Zombies-9465/dp/B007455MW0 > > Chart mission stamp > http://www.dss.virginia.gov/benefit/food.html > > Coin feather aardvark > http://www.psychicpower.com/forums/forumreply.aspx?PostId=57 > > Aircraft hat cola > http://www.hats-trto.gr/ > > If you entered the words exactly as I did, you should get the same results. > Otherwise one of us, or both, have a bogus copy of Google, doing > who-knows-what evil, such as reporting to the authorities on latex chicken > fetishes. Do please the experiment, just post yes if you get the same > results, or if not, let's figure out which of us has the genuine copy. > > 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 spike at rainier66.com Wed Aug 7 23:41:13 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 16:41:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] test for bogus googles, was: RE: phony google In-Reply-To: References: <014401ce93c2$d963fbf0$8c2bf3d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <000c01ce93c7$9a9e8ca0$cfdba5e0$@rainier66.com> Ja that occurred to me too: websites change, so I assume Google is constantly updating. There might be system settings and filters which spring into action whenever they see the words "latex" and "chicken" together for instance. I am open to counter suggestion on how to detect a Fauxle. From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Christopher Whipple Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2013 4:26 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] test for bogus googles, was: RE: phony google >.I did these queries twice - logged in to my Google account with Chrome and with a Chrome incognito session. The results between the two didn't vary, but 3 of the queries varied between my results and yours:. Ja that occurred to me too: websites change, so I assume Google is constantly updating. There might be system settings and filters which spring into action whenever they see the words "latex" and "chicken" together for instance. I am open to counter suggestion on how to detect a Fauxle. I entered this line into Google: How do I know this is a genuine copy of google? It wouldn't answer. Just gave me: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/emulab-admins/crQcez94Q_w It kept changing the subject to genuine copies of Windows 7. Now I am suspicious. I must have a bogus copy of Google, and it knows I am onto it. It is giving me evasive answers. I googled: How do I know you are really Google? It gave me: http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/05/15/hands-on-with-google-hangouts-google s-new-beautiful-messaging-app-that-doesnt-really-unify-anything/ I Googled: Not windows 7 stupid, YOU! How do I know YOU are genuine Google? It went off talking about Google chromebook: http://gizmodo.com/5986031/every-reason-not-to-buy-the-google-chromebook-pix el I have sooo busted this sleazy impostor, posing as Google! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Thu Aug 8 00:31:15 2013 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2013 20:31:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] test for bogus googles, was: RE: phony google In-Reply-To: <014401ce93c2$d963fbf0$8c2bf3d0$@rainier66.com> References: <014401ce93c2$d963fbf0$8c2bf3d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <201308080032.r780VwSF016975@chi.ziaspace.com> Spike wrote: >If you entered the words exactly as I did, you should get the same results. >Otherwise one of us, or both, have a bogus copy of Google, doing >who-knows-what evil, such as reporting to the authorities on latex chicken >fetishes. Do please the experiment, just post yes if you get the same >results, or if not, let's figure out which of us has the genuine copy. : >Ja that occurred to me too: websites change, so I assume Google is >constantly updating. There might be system settings and filters >which spring into action whenever they see the words "latex" and >"chicken" together for instance. Besides Google constantly updating, Google is constantly trying changes out to slices of their user base. And did they ever claim that a search of the same set of web site corpus would be deterministic? Why couldn't PageRank's current algorithm intentionally include some random shuffling of results? Also, you can run these experiments yourself. Either run your queries in a fresh instance of a virtual OS or in a private session in a browser that supports it. (With the virtual OS instances, you could do some runs in the continued context of your prior runs. Or use Firefox profiles for much the same result.) Instead of SETI, protein folding, or prime numbers, you could run a few million variations and then crunch what you find. Another hole in your speculation is your assumption that the messages you see addressed to extropy-chat aren't fabricated by the blackhats that seized your computer. Unless of course you're running a sly test against us. -- David. From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Aug 8 00:34:51 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 20:34:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] test for bogus googles, was: RE: phony google In-Reply-To: <000c01ce93c7$9a9e8ca0$cfdba5e0$@rainier66.com> References: <014401ce93c2$d963fbf0$8c2bf3d0$@rainier66.com> <000c01ce93c7$9a9e8ca0$cfdba5e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 7:41 PM, spike wrote: > Ja that occurred to me too: websites change, so I assume Google is > constantly updating. There might be system settings and filters which > spring into action whenever they see the words ?latex? and ?chicken? > together for instance. Google also tracks your previous searches. They use something like 30 data points of tracking information even when you aren't logged in (and many more when you are). Perhaps you should just assume there is always some agency taking advantage of you while you are online. You mission (should you care to accept it, etc.) is to decide which agency you'd like to have taking advantage of you then maximize that relationship while minimizing the others. btw, have you googled "askew" ? From me at michaeldevault.com Thu Aug 8 00:49:29 2013 From: me at michaeldevault.com (Michael DeVault) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 19:49:29 -0500 Subject: [ExI] test for bogus googles, was: RE: phony google In-Reply-To: References: <014401ce93c2$d963fbf0$8c2bf3d0$@rainier66.com> <000c01ce93c7$9a9e8ca0$cfdba5e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <29086C87-1440-4641-9E9E-47F68C7ABDAE@michaeldevault.com> Also, you cannot discount the Google algorithm's geo-location component. For example, if I Google in my neighborhood "Latex Pizza Swing," (and presuming Comcast is in the mood to accurately reflect my location, which sometimes happens, sometimes doesn't), I might receive notices for a place called Johnny's Pizza on McKeen, Parterre around the corner from my house, and Starr Hardware--the paint store favored by my neighbors in my neighborhood. That same search--still using Comcast, mind you--across town in my old apartment, might have produced a reference to a Little Caesar's on the corner, a dance hall that no longer exists, and the friendly Sherwin-Williams franchise a block away. Looking at the parameters of what you're attempting to discover, I cannot help but notice the flaw in the experiment: the only way you could successfully produce any meaningful data would be to be in the same geographical vicinity (the same apartment complex, for example,) and to repeat the experiment on several different ISPs and machines in each location. Otherwise, there are simply too many unknowns and too much complexity in the Google algorithm to determine if the results you are getting from Google are because of browser histories, geographic nuances, or because the NSA is monitoring your connection. (Hi, guys!) md On Aug 7, 2013, at 7:34 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 7:41 PM, spike wrote: >> Ja that occurred to me too: websites change, so I assume Google is >> constantly updating. There might be system settings and filters which >> spring into action whenever they see the words ?latex? and ?chicken? >> together for instance. > > Google also tracks your previous searches. They use something like 30 > data points of tracking information even when you aren't logged in > (and many more when you are). > > Perhaps you should just assume there is always some agency taking > advantage of you while you are online. You mission (should you care > to accept it, etc.) is to decide which agency you'd like to have > taking advantage of you then maximize that relationship while > minimizing the others. > > btw, have you googled "askew" ? > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From anders at aleph.se Thu Aug 8 03:29:53 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 11:29:53 +0800 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <520310B1.3000806@aleph.se> On 2013-08-08 00:44, Dave Sill wrote: > Understand that no matter what you do, you can't be sure that some bad > guy isn't listening/intercepting/redirecting anything/everything you > do: you can only make it harder for them to do that. You can say that again. I am sitting in China right now, and accessing my usual resources is a real cat-and-mouse game. Still, one lesson from the talks over here: data mining methods are really bad when there are are too few examples. That requires an expensive human looking at the data in order to do the clever generalization. So do things uniquely. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Aug 8 08:24:16 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 09:24:16 +0100 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: <520310B1.3000806@aleph.se> References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> <520310B1.3000806@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 4:29 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > You can say that again. I am sitting in China right now, and accessing my > usual resources is a real cat-and-mouse game. > > Still, one lesson from the talks over here: data mining methods are really > bad when there are are too few examples. That requires an expensive human > looking at the data in order to do the clever generalization. So do things > uniquely. > > I trust you didn't take a smartphone or laptop with you? If you did, you've already lost all the data on them and you will have a horrendous clean up job to do when you get them back to UK. Same applies on a trip to USA. Business people are now cautioned to use disposable phones and laptops on trips abroad. When they arrive in a foreign country they are recommended to borrow a laptop and phone for temporary use and assume that everything they do with them will be monitored. That's life in today's world. BillK From anders at aleph.se Thu Aug 8 08:33:39 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 16:33:39 +0800 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> <520310B1.3000806@aleph.se> Message-ID: <520357E3.2070801@aleph.se> On 2013-08-08 16:24, BillK wrote: > I trust you didn't take a smartphone or laptop with you? If you did, > you've already lost all the data on them and you will have a > horrendous clean up job to do when you get them back to UK. "Back to UK" - the country where ISPs spread malware for the NSA. The trick is not to have your important information on net connected systems in the first place. Not having an officially malware infested smartphone is darn suspicious, and likely to draw attention. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From sparge at gmail.com Thu Aug 8 11:15:50 2013 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 07:15:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 2:30 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > "Avoid Windows" feels to me like advice of the kind "wear a tinfoil > hat" or "leave the TV on when you're not home." > No, not "tinfoil hat" advice, but based on common sense. Windows may not be fundamentally less secure than Linux/Mac/BSD/Chrome/etc, but because it's so widely used it's a popular attack vector. Avoid Windows and you automatically avoid all Windows-based exploits/malware. Of course that doesn't make you immune to attacks/malware, and you'll need to remain vigilant and cautious with whichever platform you choose. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Thu Aug 8 11:46:27 2013 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 07:46:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] test for bogus googles, was: RE: phony google In-Reply-To: <201308080032.r780VwSF016975@chi.ziaspace.com> References: <014401ce93c2$d963fbf0$8c2bf3d0$@rainier66.com> <201308080032.r780VwSF016975@chi.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: Google searches, as stated above, change based on many individual factors. Also as above, the wild west of the internet is dying, shit is really not like before and fake google is metonymical for the tightening grasp that governments and corporations have over the clearnet. Get free! On Aug 7, 2013 8:33 PM, "David Lubkin" wrote: > Spike wrote: > > If you entered the words exactly as I did, you should get the same >> results. >> Otherwise one of us, or both, have a bogus copy of Google, doing >> who-knows-what evil, such as reporting to the authorities on latex chicken >> fetishes. Do please the experiment, just post yes if you get the same >> results, or if not, let's figure out which of us has the genuine copy. >> > : > >> Ja that occurred to me too: websites change, so I assume Google is >> constantly updating. There might be system settings and filters which >> spring into action whenever they see the words "latex" and "chicken" >> together for instance. >> > > Besides Google constantly updating, Google is constantly trying changes out > to slices of their user base. And did they ever claim that a search of the > same set of web site corpus would be deterministic? Why couldn't PageRank's > current algorithm intentionally include some random shuffling of results? > > Also, you can run these experiments yourself. Either run your queries in a > fresh instance of a virtual OS or in a private session in a browser that > supports it. (With the virtual OS instances, you could do some runs in the > continued context of your prior runs. Or use Firefox profiles for much the > same result.) > > Instead of SETI, protein folding, or prime numbers, you could run a few > million variations and then crunch what you find. > > Another hole in your speculation is your assumption that the messages > you see addressed to extropy-chat aren't fabricated by the blackhats > that seized your computer. Unless of course you're running a sly test > against us. > > > -- David. > > ______________________________**_________________ > 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 brent.allsop at canonizer.com Thu Aug 8 12:29:38 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 06:29:38 -0600 Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> Hi Gordon, It's great to have this kind of information, and have a better understanding of people that think like this. James indicated it would take 40 or so years of consistent growth like we've now seen for approaching 5 years, before he would join the there is a "Law of the Crypto Coin" camp. Also, obviously, if you claim any kind of investment is guaranteed of returns in a 'law' like way, most people are going to run away as fast as they can. Still, I think you must admit, that there is a theoretical possobility, that the same bitcoin growth we've seen to date, could continue for the foreseeable future, and that in 40 years, James and everyone will have long since converted to the there is a "Law of the Crypto Coin" expert consensus camp, right? I'm just in that camp now, and our prediction is that you guys will soon get there. Obviously, this is a falsifiable prediction, so I guess we'll have to see. I hear you and james saying there can be nobody in such a camp, nor making such predictions, that Bitcoin is very different than most other investments to date? I'd still like to know when you, James, and everyone think we will most likely achieve a $1000/BTC valuation. Brent Allsop On 8/6/2013 11:33 PM, Gordon wrote: > Sorry my last two posts appeared twice. It seems Brent has ExI listed > twice on his to: line. I removed one entry this time. > > So as not to waste this post, I might as well mention that I am having > a good chuckle thinking about how some of my old investment clients > might have reacted had I told them they should buy gold or bitcoin or > anything else because the price action was driven by some "law". > > "I think you should buy some Bitcoin here, Bob." > > "Really, Gordon? Why?" > > "It's going up in price according to the Law of Bitcoin! According to > the Law of Bitcoin, you should make a lot of money!" > > "What the hell is the Law of Bitcoin?" > > "I read about the Law of Bitcoin on the Internet. The price went up a > lot, so there must be a Law that it will go up a lot more." > > "Very funny, Gordon. What is this, some kind of April Fool's joke?" > > :) > > Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Aug 8 14:37:31 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 07:37:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <009f01ce9444$d132afd0$73980f70$@rainier66.com> >. On Behalf Of Dave Sill Subject: Re: [ExI] phony google On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 2:30 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: >>."Avoid Windows" feels to me like advice of the kind "wear a tinfoil hat" or "leave the TV on when you're not home." >.No, not "tinfoil hat" advice, but based on common sense. you'll need to remain vigilant and cautious with whichever platform you choose.-Dave Hmmm, ja, but diligence, vigilant and caution are all irrelevant if I have no tools to detect something like a phony Google. If this occurs to me, then Google would surely have been on this exact question back before the dawn of time. A few days ago, I downloaded a free app and somehow allowed Delta Search to embed itself in my operating system. It brutally replaced Google in every preference setting and stayed there even after I did a search and delete on every file known to be associated in any way with Delta. My virus checker was helpless in its grip, my cookie cutters, my ad alert software, nothing could cure it. I went online and was astonished to see actual debate among internet hipsters about how to get rid of Delta Search. Now THAT is one hell of a software infection. Delta Search is the AIDS of computer viruses. Had Delta Search called itself Google instead, I would never know it was there, would not go to the trouble of struggling for hours to get rid of it. With that technology, any company could make actual money by subtly inserting ads, hijacking this or that, redirecting, even filtering search results by political or religious flavor. That would be worth a FORTUNE! A company could use whatever Delta Search is doing, then redirect the stampeding herd over the cliff of its choosing. All of us unsuspecting senior citizens (WAIT, rather I meant of course THOSE OTHER senior citizens, not including me at all) would have not a clue. Could you imagine the value of something like being able to filter out news stories slanted to the right or to the left? They could even take existing news stories, modify them slightly to change the political slant of an article, then pass it along as the original. That is POWER! There would be plenty of the younger market who are too distracted trying to learn the latest on Justin Beeber to have any clue that some greedy (NTTAWWT) capitalist owns everything they search on, controls everything they see, filters every internet action for fun and profit. All that vigilance is useless if we don't know what to look for or how to fix it once we get suspicious. Anyone know if Google has a way to detect if there is an evil third party intervening? Could they rig some kind of authenticity code somehow, so that if there is a few hundred millisecond delay caused by an intermediate party doing something between themselves and an internet user, they could catch the bastards? Who do we ask at Google? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From crw at crwbot.com Thu Aug 8 17:22:38 2013 From: crw at crwbot.com (Christopher Whipple) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 10:22:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: <009f01ce9444$d132afd0$73980f70$@rainier66.com> References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> <009f01ce9444$d132afd0$73980f70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/03/google-spends-1-million-on-censorship-and-throttling-detection/ http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/#expand=TJ -c. On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 7:37 AM, spike wrote: > ** ** > > ** ** > > *>?* *On Behalf Of *Dave Sill > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] phony google**** > > ** ** > > On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 2:30 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote:** > ** > > ** ** > > >>?"Avoid Windows" feels to me like advice of the kind "wear a tinfoil > hat" or "leave the TV on when you're not home."**** > > ** ** > > >?No, not "tinfoil hat" advice, but based on common sense? you'll need to > remain vigilant and cautious with whichever platform you choose.-Dave**** > > ** ** > > Hmmm, ja, but diligence, vigilant and caution are all irrelevant if I have > no tools to detect something like a phony Google. **** > > If this occurs to me, then Google would surely have been on this exact > question back before the dawn of time. A few days ago, I downloaded a free > app and somehow allowed Delta Search to embed itself in my operating > system. It brutally replaced Google in every preference setting and stayed > there even after I did a search and delete on every file known to be > associated in any way with Delta. My virus checker was helpless in its > grip, my cookie cutters, my ad alert software, nothing could cure it. I > went online and was astonished to see actual debate among internet hipsters > about how to get rid of Delta Search. Now THAT is one hell of a software > infection. Delta Search is the AIDS of computer viruses.**** > > Had Delta Search called itself Google instead, I would never know it was > there, would not go to the trouble of struggling for hours to get rid of > it. With that technology, any company could make actual money by subtly > inserting ads, hijacking this or that, redirecting, even filtering search > results by political or religious flavor. That would be worth a FORTUNE! > A company could use whatever Delta Search is doing, then redirect the > stampeding herd over the cliff of its choosing. All of us unsuspecting > senior citizens (WAIT, rather I meant of course THOSE OTHER senior > citizens, not including me at all) would have not a clue.**** > > Could you imagine the value of something like being able to filter out > news stories slanted to the right or to the left? They could even take > existing news stories, modify them slightly to change the political slant > of an article, then pass it along as the original. That is POWER! **** > > There would be plenty of the younger market who are too distracted trying > to learn the latest on Justin Beeber to have any clue that some greedy > (NTTAWWT) capitalist owns everything they search on, controls everything > they see, filters every internet action for fun and profit.**** > > All that vigilance is useless if we don?t know what to look for or how to > fix it once we get suspicious.**** > > Anyone know if Google has a way to detect if there is an evil third party > intervening? Could they rig some kind of authenticity code somehow, so > that if there is a few hundred millisecond delay caused by an intermediate > party doing something between themselves and an internet user, they could > catch the bastards? Who do we ask at Google?**** > > 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 lubkin at unreasonable.com Thu Aug 8 18:01:24 2013 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 14:01:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Verification Message-ID: <201308081801.r78I1a2J013381@yee.zia.io> I'm thinking through the mechanics of a web-based business I'm developing. There are a few gotchas, one of which is within this list's core foci now and across the past 20+ years, although I don't remember it ever being brought up. Since the current incarnation has public archives, you're more than welcome to email me off-list, if you think your insights are better shared privately. It's an instance of a general problem that I've already encountered more than once, on each of the several sides, so I'll keep the description general. S offers a business service. A signs up for the service in his capacity as an elected or appointed officer of business or non-profit B. At a later date, C contacts S and claims that A is no longer in that capacity, and that C or D is now B's agent. Either A cannot be reached or he denies that he has been replaced. Sometimes A was removed from office, his term ended, he was fired, he was transferred. Sometimes it is completely untrue, and C has nefarious motives. How does S confirm that A's security privileges should be removed or lowered and that someone else's should be granted or raised? The grim fact is that many "authoritative" sources aren't. I could probably file documents claiming that I am the new CEO of the Extropy Institute and that its mailing address is mine, and they'd be accepted at face value by state and federal agencies. In many contexts, it's much easier to sow trouble than to recover from it. Conversely, a bank might claim that it is A who holds the bank account not B, and will not do anything without A's consent. The other obvious answers, e.g., if there's a new board, show me a page on the group's web site, or contacting the group's legal counsel, are better than nothing but also flawed. Do you know of legal, procedural, or technical solutions that you think adequately cope (from both S's and B's point of view) with the possibility that either A or C is a bad actor? -- David. From eugen at leitl.org Thu Aug 8 18:10:32 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 20:10:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <20130808181032.GI29404@leitl.org> On Wed, Aug 07, 2013 at 02:30:44PM -0400, Mike Dougherty wrote: > "Avoid Windows" feels to me like advice of the kind "wear a tinfoil Avoiding proprietary systems is very good advice, actually. There are many subtle and not so subtle ways you're SOL in proprietary system land. > hat" or "leave the TV on when you're not home." It would be safer for Much better advice: don't have a TV. > your parents and their friends to more easily "avoid computers" than > deal with the mess that is the Internet. How does "download Tails and run it off write-protected USB stick or boot from CD sound like"? From sparge at gmail.com Thu Aug 8 18:43:20 2013 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 14:43:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: <009f01ce9444$d132afd0$73980f70$@rainier66.com> References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> <009f01ce9444$d132afd0$73980f70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 10:37 AM, spike wrote: > Hmmm, ja, but diligence, vigilant and caution are all irrelevant if I have > no tools to detect something like a phony Google. The key is prevention, not detection. If your system (OS or browser) are compromised, there's no way to verify--using that system--that it's not compromised. Your biggest mistake was installing an app with embedded malware. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Thu Aug 8 19:38:12 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 12:38:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: > Still, I think you must admit, that there is a theoretical possobility, that the same bitcoin growth we've seen to date, could continue for the foreseeable future I certainly hope so! I have money riding on it! But I would not attribute a continuation of that growth to any "law". It is merely a trend. Many things could disrupt that trend. We still don't know if Bitcoin will become widely accepted as a currency, for example. If sentiment turns against that idea, the price trend will break down and bitcoin will likely fail. Bitcoin is perhaps one the most speculative investments on the planet.? If you look at the sales of hula hoops in the 60s, you will probably see something like exponential growth. Was there a "Moore's Law of Hula Hoops" in place? If so, what happened to it? Hardly anyone buys hula hoops anymore, so I guess that "law" was only imaginary. I'm afraid the same is true of your supposed Law of Bitcoin. It's wishful thinking, Brent. Gordon On 8/6/2013 11:33 PM, Gordon wrote: Sorry my last two posts appeared twice. It seems Brent has ExI listed twice on his to: line. I removed one entry this time. > > >So as not to waste this post, I might as well mention that I am having a good chuckle thinking about how some of my old investment clients might have reacted had I told them they should buy gold or bitcoin or anything else because the price action was driven by some "law". > > >"I think you should buy some Bitcoin here, Bob." > > >"Really, Gordon? Why?" > > >"It's going up in price according to the Law of Bitcoin! According to the Law of Bitcoin, you should make a lot of money!" > > >"What the hell is the Law of Bitcoin?" > > >"I read about the Law of Bitcoin on the Internet. The price went up a lot, so there must be a Law that it will go up a lot more." > > >"Very funny, Gordon. What is this, some kind of April Fool's joke?" > > >:) > >Gordon _______________________________________________ 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 brent.allsop at canonizer.com Thu Aug 8 20:35:42 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 14:35:42 -0600 Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: We are obviously spending LOTS of time and effort on this conversation. Do you find it worth while? It feels to me like at best this infinite yes / no /' yes / no, forever conversation is just a complete bleating noise waste of time. Think of all this kind of noise being made by billions of people all over the world. When for far less effort, some of this effort could go into amplifying the moral wisdom of the world by ratcheting up and building consensus around the leading moral theories, and filtering all the lame ideas with no consensus, that so many people constantly bleat, out and get stuck on. "Many things could disrupt that trend." I don't by this at all. Nothing could disrupt it, certainly not anything you've said here. "We still don't know if Bitcoin will become widely accepted as a currency, for example." There is too many people that want some kind of crypto currency to work, for obvious rational reasons, and the number of people in this camp is growing. There are just way too many good things about it, necessitating this growth in popularity in some kind of crypto currency. "If you look at the sales of hula hoops in the 60s" I can't believe you think Bitcoins is anything close to Hula Hoops. They are night and day different. All things like Hula Hoops spike and pop just once. Finally, everyone learning from their mistake - never wanting to do that again. But Bitcoin had its spike 2 years ago, at around $30. Then it had its tulip bulb like crash, most everyone, and me, wrote it off as having missed that boat. But of course, 2 years later, it's spiking again, at 10 time its previous spike value, continue the law like exponential growth. Nothing else has done that. That is when I realized this was something way more than Hula Hoops. So, again, how many of these hula hoop like spikes, each one at 10 time the previous value, will be required before you accept that Bitcoins are way different? In my opinion, you are making many mistakes in your thinking. You should try canonizing some of those ideas, to see how many of them are good ideas, or how many of them are mistaken (i.e. nobody else agrees with them.) I find it really helps improve one's moral thinking abilities. And it amplifies everyone's wisdom, rather than just contributing to all the waste everyone's time noise out there. On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Gordon wrote: > Brent Allsop wrote: > > > Still, I think you must admit, that there is a theoretical possobility, > that the same bitcoin growth we've seen to date, could continue for the > foreseeable future > > I certainly hope so! I have money riding on it! > > But I would not attribute a continuation of that growth to any "law". It > is merely a trend. Many things could disrupt that trend. We still don't > know if Bitcoin will become widely accepted as a currency, for example. If > sentiment turns against that idea, the price trend will break down and > bitcoin will likely fail. Bitcoin is perhaps one the most speculative > investments on the planet. > > If you look at the sales of hula hoops in the 60s, you will probably see > something like exponential growth. Was there a "Moore's Law of Hula Hoops" > in place? If so, what happened to it? Hardly anyone buys hula hoops > anymore, so I guess that "law" was only imaginary. I'm afraid the same is > true of your supposed Law of Bitcoin. It's wishful thinking, Brent. > > Gordon > > On 8/6/2013 11:33 PM, Gordon wrote: > > Sorry my last two posts appeared twice. It seems Brent has ExI listed > twice on his to: line. I removed one entry this time. > > So as not to waste this post, I might as well mention that I am having a > good chuckle thinking about how some of my old investment clients might > have reacted had I told them they should buy gold or bitcoin or anything > else because the price action was driven by some "law". > > "I think you should buy some Bitcoin here, Bob." > > "Really, Gordon? Why?" > > "It's going up in price according to the Law of Bitcoin! According to > the Law of Bitcoin, you should make a lot of money!" > > "What the hell is the Law of Bitcoin?" > > "I read about the Law of Bitcoin on the Internet. The price went up a > lot, so there must be a Law that it will go up a lot more." > > "Very funny, Gordon. What is this, some kind of April Fool's joke?" > > :) > > Gordon > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 me at michaeldevault.com Thu Aug 8 21:57:28 2013 From: me at michaeldevault.com (Michael DeVault) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 16:57:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] lavabit.com takedown Message-ID: <1E568820-4B2A-4462-B0B6-B6E22DBF40CB@michaeldevault.com> Just saw the news release about lavabit, a 'secure' mail service favored by people in the securities business and hacking communities.The founder, Ladar Levison, stated he took it down the service rather than comply with what he feels are unconstitutional demands based on laws passed by the U.S. Congress. I have thoughts, though they aren't fully formed, about this kind of reaction. Also, I have questions: if he's being asked to comply with notices for emails and/or customer data, wouldn't that information still exist in absence of the email service's continued operations? Did anyone here have (well, had) a lavabit address? If so, what are your thoughts? Also, what about Levison's recommendation that individuals avoid trusting personal data to any company with a physical tie to America? md From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Thu Aug 8 21:46:42 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 14:46:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1375998402.36565.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: ? >> ? ? ? ? ? ?"Many things could disrupt that trend." ? > I don't by this at all.? Nothing could disrupt it.... Wow. You should start a camp on your canonizer site for Religious Believers in Bitcoin. :) Most people have enough sense to understand it is still highly speculative.?If your level of certainty was common, bitcoin would already be trading at $100,000 or more.? >>?"If you look at the sales of hula hoops in the 60s" ? >I can't believe you think Bitcoins is anything close to Hula Hoops.?? Bitcoin could turn out to be a passing fad. At this early stage, we simply don't know for sure. I agree that its outlook is positive, and I have a sizable chunk of my own money invested in it, but I'm not so naive as to believe it is a sure thing. There no sure things in the financial markets, Brent. Take it from me. I was in the business for many years. People paid for my advice. It's free to you. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Thu Aug 8 22:08:51 2013 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 18:08:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] test for bogus googles, was: RE: phony google Message-ID: Isn't using an actual IP address for Google instead of "google.com" the best thing one can do to ensure one is actually connecting to Google? I found this via Google (or did I?): The following IP address ranges belong to Google: 64.233.160.0 - 64.233.191.255 66.102.0.0 - 66.102.15.255 66.249.64.0 - 66.249.95.255 72.14.192.0 - 72.14.255.255 74.125.0.0 - 74.125.255.255 209.85.128.0 - 209.85.255.255 216.239.32.0 - 216.239.63.255 Like many popular Web sites, Google utilizes multiple Internet servers to handle incoming requests to its Web site. Instead of entering http://www.google.com/ into the browser, a person can enter http:// followed by one of the above addresses, for example: http://74.125.224.72/ Only certain addresses from Google's pool will work depending on the physical location of the browser. Besides serving www.google.com, some of the Google's IP addresses above are utilized by its Googlebot Web crawlers. From lubkin at unreasonable.com Thu Aug 8 22:22:57 2013 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 18:22:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] lavabit.com takedown In-Reply-To: <1E568820-4B2A-4462-B0B6-B6E22DBF40CB@michaeldevault.com> References: <1E568820-4B2A-4462-B0B6-B6E22DBF40CB@michaeldevault.com> Message-ID: <201308082223.r78MN7Hw002662@yee.zia.io> Michael DeVault wrote: >Also, what about Levison's recommendation that individuals avoid >trusting personal data to any company with a physical tie to America? That's one of the gotchas I mentioned in my posting about the business I'm thinking of kicking off. Its success depends on my customers trusting me with what might be confidential data. Which I'd thought about in terms of technologies, policies, and trustworthy staff. Now I have to think about what to do if their data is demanded. I don't mind complying so much as potentially having to conceal that compliance from my users. -- David. From pharos at gmail.com Thu Aug 8 22:41:12 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 23:41:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] lavabit.com takedown In-Reply-To: <201308082223.r78MN7Hw002662@yee.zia.io> References: <1E568820-4B2A-4462-B0B6-B6E22DBF40CB@michaeldevault.com> <201308082223.r78MN7Hw002662@yee.zia.io> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 11:22 PM, David Lubkin wrote: > That's one of the gotchas I mentioned in my posting about the business > I'm thinking of kicking off. Its success depends on my customers > trusting me with what might be confidential data. Which I'd thought > about in terms of technologies, policies, and trustworthy staff. Now > I have to think about what to do if their data is demanded. I don't mind > complying so much as potentially having to conceal that compliance > from my users. > > It seems there is a strong possibility that the NSA has just destroyed the US Cloud industry. Quote: Recent revelations about the extent to which the NSA obtains electronic data from third-parties will likely have an immediate and lasting impact on the competitiveness of the U.S. cloud computing industry if foreign customers decide the risks of storing data with a U.S. company outweigh the benefits. Unless the White House or Congress acts soon, the U.S. cloud computing industry stands to lose $22 to $35 billion over the next three years. ------------ BillK From spike at rainier66.com Thu Aug 8 23:56:22 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 16:56:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] lavabit.com takedown In-Reply-To: <1E568820-4B2A-4462-B0B6-B6E22DBF40CB@michaeldevault.com> References: <1E568820-4B2A-4462-B0B6-B6E22DBF40CB@michaeldevault.com> Message-ID: <003c01ce9492$e34fd8c0$a9ef8a40$@rainier66.com> >... On Behalf Of Michael DeVault Subject: [ExI] lavabit.com takedown >....The founder, Ladar Levison, stated he took it down the service rather than comply with what he feels are unconstitutional demands based on laws passed by the U.S. Congress...md The older ones here may remember about in the late 90s or around 00 when some freeware strong cryptographic email service came into being. Some of us got accounts on it, but it occurred to me that one could never be sure the message was really secure from the people who set up the site. Eventually the feds apparently convinced them that this is a technology that could enable terrorism. They quietly took it down. spike From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri Aug 9 02:42:38 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 19:42:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] lavabit.com takedown In-Reply-To: <003c01ce9492$e34fd8c0$a9ef8a40$@rainier66.com> References: <1E568820-4B2A-4462-B0B6-B6E22DBF40CB@michaeldevault.com> <003c01ce9492$e34fd8c0$a9ef8a40$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1376016158.67577.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> In case it hasn't been mentioned here, lavabit was reportedly Edward Snowden's email provider. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Fri Aug 9 03:10:25 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 21:10:25 -0600 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375998402.36565.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <52045DA1.5000302@canonizer.com> Hi James, That's now 3 people! ;) And like I said, there are way more people than that that I have talked to that agree, and have contributed to the content of the camp, indirectly, and so on. I've also been looking for anyone in any significantly different camps, but so far haven't found anyone. Also, free market valuation are clearly a very hurdling sheepish, not intelligently behaved bunch. Else why would there be so many spikes, crashes, and so on. While Canonizer.com is an attempt to survey the real experts that know, rigorously measure this, and amplify the intelligence of the entire hurdling market. Brent On 8/8/2013 4:00 PM, James Carroll wrote: > Financial markets already price in their predictions about future > rises in value. And they have a sample size slightly larger than > Brent's 2 people over on Canonizer.... If he really wants to survey > the beliefs of the masses, the financial market is already doing just > that. > > James > > > On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 3:46 PM, Gordon > wrote: > > Brent Allsop > wrote: > > >> "Many things could disrupt that trend." > > I don't by this at all.Nothing could disrupt it.... > > Wow. You should start a camp on your canonizer site for Religious > Believers in Bitcoin. :) > > Most people have enough sense to understand it is still highly > speculative. If your level of certainty was common, bitcoin would > already be trading at $100,000 or more. > > >>"If you look at the sales of hula hoops in the 60s" > >I can't believe you think Bitcoins is anything close to Hula Hoops. > > Bitcoin could turn out to be a passing fad. At this early stage, > we simply don't know for sure. I agree that its outlook is > positive, and I have a sizable chunk of my own money invested in > it, but I'm not so naive as to believe it is a sure thing. There > no sure things in the financial markets, Brent. Take it from me. I > was in the business for many years. People paid for my advice. > It's free to you. > > Gordon > > -- > To learn more about the Mormon Transhumanist Association, visit > http://transfigurism.org > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Mormon Transhumanist Association" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, > send an email to transfigurism+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com > . > To post to this group, send email to > transfigurism at googlegroups.com > . > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/transfigurism. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > > > > -- > Web: http://james.jlcarroll.net > -- > To learn more about the Mormon Transhumanist Association, visit > http://transfigurism.org > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Mormon Transhumanist Association" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send > an email to transfigurism+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to transfigurism at googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/transfigurism. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Aug 9 03:23:19 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 23:23:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Verification In-Reply-To: <201308081801.r78I1a2J013381@yee.zia.io> References: <201308081801.r78I1a2J013381@yee.zia.io> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 2:01 PM, David Lubkin wrote: > Sometimes A was removed from office, his term ended, he was fired, > he was transferred. Sometimes it is completely untrue, and C has > nefarious motives. > > How does S confirm that A's security privileges should be removed or > lowered and that someone else's should be granted or raised? > Do you know of legal, procedural, or technical solutions that you think > adequately cope (from both S's and B's point of view) with the possibility > that either A or C is a bad actor? It reminds me of the Dining philosophers problem If you aren't afraid of some pseudo-code, please Crockford's solution via capabilities titled "Satan comes to dinner ." Now the challenge is design a capability-based solution that will remain secure regardless of bad actors A or C. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dining_philosophers_problem http://www.crockford.com/ec/dining.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Fri Aug 9 03:26:39 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 21:26:39 -0600 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <1375998402.36565.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375998402.36565.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5204616F.5090504@canonizer.com> Gordon, Part of my prediction is that in a few years, you and James will see how wrong and incorrect your reasoning is. How you are placing too much value on things that don't matter at all, while completely missing or being ignorant of much of what really does matter. So are you and James saying that it isn't possible for very intelligent people to have real rational ways of seeing something, like a particular investment, is a sure thing, that the hurdling, fearful crowd, including you and I, may still, mistakenly, think is far less of a sure thing, than it really, rationally, and intelligently, should be considered to be? Brent Allsop On 8/8/2013 3:46 PM, Gordon wrote: > Brent Allsop wrote: > > >>"Many things could disrupt that trend." > > I don't by this at all.Nothing could disrupt it.... > > Wow. You should start a camp on your canonizer site for Religious > Believers in Bitcoin. :) > > Most people have enough sense to understand it is still highly > speculative. If your level of certainty was common, bitcoin would > already be trading at $100,000 or more. > > >>"If you look at the sales of hula hoops in the 60s" > >I can't believe you think Bitcoins is anything close to Hula Hoops. > > Bitcoin could turn out to be a passing fad. At this early stage, we > simply don't know for sure. I agree that its outlook is positive, and > I have a sizable chunk of my own money invested in it, but I'm not so > naive as to believe it is a sure thing. There no sure things in the > financial markets, Brent. Take it from me. I was in the business for > many years. People paid for my advice. It's free to you. You're only saying that because there has never been a sure financial bet before now! Don't you yourself always claim, past performance is no guarantee of the future! ;) I completely agree, for what I believe to be much more rational reasons than just things like past performance, or any of your other, to me, arguments that just seem to me to be similarly as mistaken as this one. So didn't Gordon Moore call his predictions "law like", and didn't many other people, recognize the validity of this 'law' and intelligently use such to get rich, way ahead other people in the silicone industry...., long before most of the bleating world saw the rational and unmistakable reasons for why it is still almost as much of a consistent law (and rationally knowable as such, since before Moore noticed such) as Bitcoin has been to date? Brent Allsop -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Aug 9 03:38:59 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 23:38:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: <20130808181032.GI29404@leitl.org> References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> <20130808181032.GI29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 2:10 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > How does "download Tails and run it off write-protected USB stick > or boot from CD sound like"? > My first thought on "Tails" is that it's Sonic the Hedgehog's sidekick. Without assistance from the Internet, I have no idea where I'd go to get what you are talking about. I don't know how to write-protect a USB stick. I know what a CD is and could probably dig through the box of old hardware to find a burner... but without the image to burn I've got nothing. tbh, that's the way it should be. You likely wouldn't have secrets if you made it possible for anyone to walk into the inner sanctum and have a look. So instead if I am intent on joining you (Eugen) on the darknet, I should have to convince you to grant me the knowledge and teach me to use the tools of your trade. Isn't that how a trust network is supposed to work? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Aug 9 02:47:33 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 10:47:33 +0800 Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <52045845.2070905@aleph.se> On 2013-08-09 04:35, Brent Allsop wrote: > > We are obviously spending LOTS of time and effort on this > conversation.Do you find it worth while?It feels to me like at best > this infinite yes / no /' yes / no, forever conversation is just a > complete bleating noise waste of time. > I just listened to a talk about argumentation games, and it seems relevant. It even included an infinite linear argument game where argument 1 disputes argument 0, argument 2 dispites 1, and so on. This game is never ending and indeterminate: there is no winner nor any conclusion. However, if we want to end the discussion (or rather, make it more productive), what about this: "What is the simplest piece of evidence that, if you got it, would change your mind about your current position?" If there isn't any, then you are likely crazy or lack imagination. If there is one, maybe it is worth checking if it exists. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Aug 9 02:58:42 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 10:58:42 +0800 Subject: [ExI] Verification In-Reply-To: <201308081801.r78I1a2J013381@yee.zia.io> References: <201308081801.r78I1a2J013381@yee.zia.io> Message-ID: <52045AE2.7060701@aleph.se> On 2013-08-09 02:01, David Lubkin wrote: > S offers a business service. A signs up for the service in his > capacity as > an elected or appointed officer of business or non-profit B. At a > later date, > C contacts S and claims that A is no longer in that capacity, and that C > or D is now B's agent. Either A cannot be reached or he denies that he > has > been replaced. There is likely a literature on this in computer security. I would start by looking through what Bruce Schneier writes in his recent book on trust, because this is essentially a trust management issue. I think there is no general solution if dealing with the domain of people and human institutions; the best you can do is to define an explicit procedure your company use to determine who gets what (and then you better put some of your most devious friends to game it, to figure out how it can be hacked). Often the solution is to use trusted third parties (banks, government, etc) that makes it costly for A or C to fake things. As long as the cost or hassle is big enough, there will be little abuse. In formal systems like computers you can of course have cryptographic protocols and procedures. Ownership of a resource might be determined by presenting a token that contains its own ownership transfer information: "This shows that X now owns the resource [signed C]. The previous contents were: "This shows that C now owns the resource [signed A]. The previous contents were: "This shows A owns the resource [signed S][Signed A]"[signed A]"[signed C] [signed X]" or something like that. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Fri Aug 9 04:11:43 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 22:11:43 -0600 Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <52045845.2070905@aleph.se> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52045845.2070905@aleph.se> Message-ID: <52046BFF.1070304@canonizer.com> Yes, exactly Anders! That is why I am always asking everyone what it would take to convert you to my, or the other camp, and I work on considering the same for myself. That is always the focus of canonizer.com - testability in this way. I'm always encouraging all camps to explicitly state what it would take to convert them to another camp, along with their rationality for why they can't currently accept the other camp. Everyone knowing and being educated about this for all competing camps, is also a good strategy that helps, significantly, when trying to find and build as much consensus as possible, on critically important moral and existential risk things, ore more importantly knowing exactly what is required to most efficiently and creatively get everyone all that they really want. Much of what I hear Gordon and James saying is untestable meaningless negative noise, which I've explained over and over about why I can't accept - arguments like: There has never been a sure thing investment in the past, so there will never be a sure investment - all hogwash that I can't accept, for the reason's I've stated. They always try to weasel out and never answer my questions about what it would take to convert them, or what their predictions are, if they are any different than the emerging evidence for the 'law' like expert consensus here: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/2 Brent On 8/8/2013 8:47 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2013-08-09 04:35, Brent Allsop wrote: >> >> We are obviously spending LOTS of time and effort on this >> conversation.Do you find it worth while?It feels to me like at best >> this infinite yes / no /' yes / no, forever conversation is just a >> complete bleating noise waste of time. >> > > I just listened to a talk about argumentation games, and it seems > relevant. It even included an infinite linear argument game where > argument 1 disputes argument 0, argument 2 dispites 1, and so on. This > game is never ending and indeterminate: there is no winner nor any > conclusion. However, if we want to end the discussion (or rather, make > it more productive), what about this: > > "What is the simplest piece of evidence that, if you got it, would > change your mind about your current position?" > > If there isn't any, then you are likely crazy or lack imagination. If > there is one, maybe it is worth checking if it exists. > > -- > Dr Anders Sandberg > Future of Humanity Institute > Oxford Martin School > Oxford University > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri Aug 9 04:50:34 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 21:50:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <1376023092.58027.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375998402.36565.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52045DA1.5000302@canonizer.com> <1376023092.58027.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1376023834.89467.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On 8/8/2013 4:00 PM, James Carroll wrote: > Financial markets already price in their predictions about future rises in value.? > And they have a sample size slightly larger than Brent's 2 people over on Canonizer....? > If he really wants to survey the beliefs of the masses, the financial market is already doing just that. Exactly, James. Bitcoin would skyrocket in price if there were any sort of Law of Bitcoin and if investors believed in it. But there is no reason to believe there is any such thing. The mere fact that the price has shown a nice upward trend is not evidence of any sort of underlying "Moore's Law." It is evidence merely that *so far* Bitcoin has enjoyed increasing acceptance by investors. The price trend is no different from any other price trend in any other kind of financial instrument, and trends reverse all the time.? There is a saying in the markets that "the trend is your friend." It's a clever saying, but it is not taken so seriously that anyone supposes trends are written in stone according to some law. Anyone with investment experience knows this. Gordon Sorry if this message is a dupe. It bounced the first time. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri Aug 9 05:50:11 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 22:50:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <5204616F.5090504@canonizer.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375998402.36565.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5204616F.5090504@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <1376027411.94855.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: > So are you and James saying that it isn't possible for very intelligent people to have real rational ways of seeing something, like a particular investment, is a sure thing... I can't speak for James, but I am saying that no rational investor believes in sure things. Naive, gullible, unsophisticated investors do. > You're only saying that because there has never been a sure financial bet before now! ? I'm saying it because I know a little bit about how investments in commodities work, and bitcoin is just another commodity. It is unique, yes, but there is nothing about its uniqueness that suggests it should not act like any other commodity. It is something like a newly discovered precious metal, (digitally simulated), and one that lends itself to commercial transactions and thus might become widely accepted as a currency. I know something about how precious metals and currency markets work. They don't work according to anything like a "Moore's Law." I mentioned in a recent post which was mostly ignored that I was intrigued by how Bitcoin's recent price action seemed to have been inversely correlated with the DXY index, which is an index of the USD vs. a basket of currencies of major US trading partners. I wonder if you understood a single word I said, and why it might be important. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Fri Aug 9 07:39:57 2013 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 09:39:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] lavabit.com takedown In-Reply-To: <1E568820-4B2A-4462-B0B6-B6E22DBF40CB@michaeldevault.com> References: <1E568820-4B2A-4462-B0B6-B6E22DBF40CB@michaeldevault.com> Message-ID: See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/lavabit-edward-snowden-email_n_3728005.html Re "not trusting personal data to any company with a physical tie to America" I use gmail and facebook like everyone else, but just because I don't mind the whole world seeing pictures of my doggy or reading the ideas that I post here. If I did mind, I would follow this advice. Even more, I would not trust any company anywhere (do you really think other governments such as Russia and China are better than the U.S.?) I would use P2P services (which of course can be honeypot, so some care is needed also there). On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 11:57 PM, Michael DeVault wrote: > Just saw the news release about lavabit, a 'secure' mail service favored by people in the securities business and hacking communities.The founder, Ladar Levison, stated he took it down the service rather than comply with what he feels are unconstitutional demands based on laws passed by the U.S. Congress. > > I have thoughts, though they aren't fully formed, about this kind of reaction. Also, I have questions: if he's being asked to comply with notices for emails and/or customer data, wouldn't that information still exist in absence of the email service's continued operations? > > Did anyone here have (well, had) a lavabit address? If so, what are your thoughts? > > Also, what about Levison's recommendation that individuals avoid trusting personal data to any company with a physical tie to America? > > md > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Aug 9 08:29:28 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 10:29:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5204A868.30202@libero.it> Il 08/08/2013 22:35, Brent Allsop ha scritto: I'm long Bitcoin, so I'm optimistic about its future exchange rate, but > "Many things could disrupt that trend." > I don't by this at all. Nothing could disrupt it, certainly not > anything you've said here. It doesn't matter what he said, what I said, what someone else said. It could be something we didn't know, expect, foresee. The probability could be low, but will not be zero. For example, if sanity would hit all the governments together in the same time (now) and they moved from the current pure fiat money system to a precious metal backed money system, they started spending less than their income and so on, the trend supporting bitcoin would be a lot less strong and the reasons to adopt it a lot less cogent. > "We still don't know if Bitcoin will become widely accepted > as a currency, for example." > There is too many people that want some kind of crypto currency to work, > for obvious rational reasons, and the number of people in this camp is > growing. There are just way too many good things about it, > necessitating this growth in popularity in some kind of crypto currency. In fact, I believe this. But this cause a trend, not show a law. People wants can change, laws can not change. > "If you look at the sales of hula hoops in the 60s" > I can't believe you think Bitcoins is anything close to Hula Hoops. > They are night and day different. Fundamentally, they are not. They are acquired for the perceived future benefit they will deliver. > All things like Hula Hoops spike and > pop just once. Finally, everyone learning from their mistake - never > wanting to do that again. But Bitcoin had its spike 2 years ago, at > around $30. Then it had its tulip bulb like crash, most everyone, and > me, wrote it off as having missed that boat. But of course, 2 years > later, it's spiking again, at 10 time its previous spike value, continue > the law like exponential growth. Nothing else has done that. That is > when I realized this was something way more than Hula Hoops. So, again, > how many of these hula hoop like spikes, each one at 10 time the > previous value, will be required before you accept that Bitcoins are way > different? Bitcoin is different, but not in the way you think. Its value depend on the number of participants and their economic activity. As the number of participants is not infinite or increasing in any exponential way, it is impossible the value of bitcoin grow exponentially forever. The growth is more similar to a logistic curve, where the initial part is exponential-like. But after bitcoin is adopted by the majority, the curve will slow down asymptotically. This is because the optimist believe Bitcoin exchange rate could be around 1 M US$. It could be more, but not a lot more, because if it grow too much, you could buy the entire Earth with one bitcoin and then what would do people with the other 21M-1 bitcoin? Everything compared with any other thing is trapped inside a channel of evaluation, where they move compared to each other from overvaluation to undervaluation and back. It could be a little more or less or a lot more or less. So, there will be a time where bitcoin will be overvalued and a time where it will be undervalued and it will must correct this unbalance. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Fri Aug 9 08:43:22 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 10:43:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] lavabit.com takedown In-Reply-To: <1E568820-4B2A-4462-B0B6-B6E22DBF40CB@michaeldevault.com> References: <1E568820-4B2A-4462-B0B6-B6E22DBF40CB@michaeldevault.com> Message-ID: <5204ABAA.9080906@libero.it> Il 08/08/2013 23:57, Michael DeVault ha scritto: > Just saw the news release about lavabit, a 'secure' mail service > favored by people in the securities business and hacking > communities.The founder, Ladar Levison, stated he took it down the > service rather than comply with what he feels are unconstitutional > demands based on laws passed by the U.S. Congress. I would suggest people here to take a look to Bitmessage and see if it is good enough for your uses and needs. What is happening now is people is awaking, again, to the fact governments can not be trusted not to abuse their power. And the only solution is to take away their power. With Bitcoin people take away the power of the CBs to print and the power of government to seize money with the help of banks, to force people to pay taxes with the help of payment processors and so on. In the same way, people should be taking away, with peaceful technological ways, the power of government to see who is communicating and what is communicating. In this Bitcoin is very useful People, with Bitcoin, must have secret keys to sign their transactions and they can use their secret key to sign messages showing they are in control of the bitcoin address. After people start use secret keys for their money it is a little effort to use them always or often for other reason. Mirco From eugen at leitl.org Fri Aug 9 09:08:01 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 11:08:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Statement: Why Secure Email Provider Lavabit closes down Message-ID: <20130809090801.GL29404@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from nettime's paranoid reader ----- Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 10:57:45 +020? From: nettime's paranoid reader To: nettime-l at mx.kein.org Subject: Statement: Why Secure Email Provider Lavabit closes down Reply-To: a moderated mailing list for net criticism http://lavabit.com My Fellow Users, I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what?s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests. What?s going to happen now? We?ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company. This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States. Sincerely, Ladar Levison Owner and Operator, Lavabit LLC Defending the constitution is expensive! Help us by donating to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund here [1]. [1] https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=7BCR4A5W9PNN4 # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime at kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From eugen at leitl.org Fri Aug 9 09:09:58 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 11:09:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] lavabit.com takedown In-Reply-To: <5204ABAA.9080906@libero.it> References: <1E568820-4B2A-4462-B0B6-B6E22DBF40CB@michaeldevault.com> <5204ABAA.9080906@libero.it> Message-ID: <20130809090958.GM29404@leitl.org> On Fri, Aug 09, 2013 at 10:43:22AM +0200, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 08/08/2013 23:57, Michael DeVault ha scritto: > > Just saw the news release about lavabit, a 'secure' mail service > > favored by people in the securities business and hacking > > communities.The founder, Ladar Levison, stated he took it down the > > service rather than comply with what he feels are unconstitutional > > demands based on laws passed by the U.S. Congress. > > I would suggest people here to take a look to Bitmessage and see if it > is good enough for your uses and needs. There is no security review of Bitmessage and several known issues. Do not trust that system until it has been properly reviewed, and known issues addressed. From eugen at leitl.org Fri Aug 9 09:22:43 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 11:22:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] lavabit.com takedown In-Reply-To: References: <1E568820-4B2A-4462-B0B6-B6E22DBF40CB@michaeldevault.com> Message-ID: <20130809092243.GR29404@leitl.org> On Fri, Aug 09, 2013 at 09:39:57AM +0200, Giulio Prisco wrote: > Even more, I would not trust any company anywhere (do you really think > other governments such as Russia and China are better than the U.S.?) I do think that Iceland is better, but you're correct: do not trust a single point of failure. > I would use P2P services (which of course can be honeypot, so some > care is needed also there). In case of a distributed cryptographic system, no single node has any clue what it is storing or routing. Only nodes tied to a cryptographic identity contain cleartext information. Of course the warm body behind such an entity can well be a mole, what else is new. From eugen at leitl.org Fri Aug 9 09:48:52 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 11:48:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> <20130808181032.GI29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130809094852.GW29404@leitl.org> On Thu, Aug 08, 2013 at 11:38:59PM -0400, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 2:10 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > How does "download Tails and run it off write-protected USB stick > > or boot from CD sound like"? > > > > My first thought on "Tails" is that it's Sonic the Hedgehog's sidekick. My first thought when I hear something unfamiliar is to enter the term into Google. You can feel lucky when doing that. > Without assistance from the Internet, I have no idea where I'd go to get > what you are talking about. I don't know how to write-protect a USB Most USB sticks don't offer such a feature. You have to buy one which allows you to write-protect it via a switch. > stick. I know what a CD is and could probably dig through the box of old > hardware to find a burner... but without the image to burn I've got nothing. https://tails.boum.org/download/ It's an amnesiac privacy-based Linux distro, booting directly on hardware or on a virtual machine. > tbh, that's the way it should be. You likely wouldn't have secrets if you > made it possible for anyone to walk into the inner sanctum and have a > look. So instead if I am intent on joining you (Eugen) on the darknet, I We don't have working darknets yet. We're in the process of starting using the tools, early, so that we can build a community, early, so that we have everything in place by the time all the tools are usable. Just because you have usable tools no community magically springs into life, overnight. > should have to convince you to grant me the knowledge and teach me to use > the tools of your trade. Isn't that how a trust network is supposed to > work? > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From eugen at leitl.org Fri Aug 9 09:59:35 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 11:59:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <52045DA1.5000302@canonizer.com> References: <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375998402.36565.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52045DA1.5000302@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <20130809095935.GY29404@leitl.org> Brent, if you stopped spamming the list with canonizer Every Single Time then you'd actually had people read your missives. Let got of that thing. It will never go anywhere. On Thu, Aug 08, 2013 at 09:10:25PM -0600, Brent Allsop wrote: > > Hi James, > > That's now 3 people! ;) And like I said, there are way more people > than that that I have talked to that agree, and have contributed to > the content of the camp, indirectly, and so on. I've also been > looking for anyone in any significantly different camps, but so far > haven't found anyone. > > > Also, free market valuation are clearly a very hurdling sheepish, > not intelligently behaved bunch. Else why would there be so many > spikes, crashes, and so on. While Canonizer.com is an attempt to > survey the real experts that know, rigorously measure this, and > amplify the intelligence of the entire hurdling market. > > Brent > > > > On 8/8/2013 4:00 PM, James Carroll wrote: > >Financial markets already price in their predictions about future > >rises in value. And they have a sample size slightly larger than > >Brent's 2 people over on Canonizer.... If he really wants to > >survey the beliefs of the masses, the financial market is already > >doing just that. > > > >James > > > > > >On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 3:46 PM, Gordon >> wrote: > > > > Brent Allsop > > wrote: > > > > >> "Many things could disrupt that trend." > > > I don't by this at all.Nothing could disrupt it.... > > > > Wow. You should start a camp on your canonizer site for Religious > > Believers in Bitcoin. :) > > > > Most people have enough sense to understand it is still highly > > speculative. If your level of certainty was common, bitcoin would > > already be trading at $100,000 or more. > > > > >>"If you look at the sales of hula hoops in the 60s" > > >I can't believe you think Bitcoins is anything close to Hula Hoops. > > > > Bitcoin could turn out to be a passing fad. At this early stage, > > we simply don't know for sure. I agree that its outlook is > > positive, and I have a sizable chunk of my own money invested in > > it, but I'm not so naive as to believe it is a sure thing. There > > no sure things in the financial markets, Brent. Take it from me. I > > was in the business for many years. People paid for my advice. > > It's free to you. > > > > Gordon > > > > -- To learn more about the Mormon Transhumanist > >Association, visit > > http://transfigurism.org > > --- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > > Groups "Mormon Transhumanist Association" group. > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, > > send an email to transfigurism+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com > > . > > To post to this group, send email to > > transfigurism at googlegroups.com > > . > > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/transfigurism. > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > > > > > > > > > >-- > >Web: http://james.jlcarroll.net > >-- > >To learn more about the Mormon Transhumanist Association, visit > >http://transfigurism.org > >--- > >You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > >Groups "Mormon Transhumanist Association" group. > >To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, > >send an email to transfigurism+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. > >To post to this group, send email to transfigurism at googlegroups.com. > >Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/transfigurism. > >For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From eugen at leitl.org Fri Aug 9 10:06:42 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 12:06:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [tahoe-dev] Tahoe-LAFS, Tor and Tails Message-ID: <20130809100642.GB29404@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Jacob Appelbaum ----- Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 00:22:54 +0000 From: Jacob Appelbaum To: tahoe-dev at tahoe-lafs.org, The Tails public development discussion list Subject: [tahoe-dev] Tahoe-LAFS, Tor and Tails Greetings from Berlin, Leif and I have been working on ways to deploy, use and sync data with Tahoe on Tails. Tails[0] is a live CD based on Debian GNU/Linux that is supported by the Tor Project. It is intended to lose state after every shutdown, unless a user configures it to keep certain bits of information in a so-called Persistent container. This is usually a LUKS encrypted partition on the same bootable medium that contains Tails. To start - we worked through bootstrapping Tahoe on a Tails system - the Tahoe package in Debian and thus available in Tails as of the Tails 0.19 release is 1.9.2-1. This is a bit older than we'd like, so we bootstrapped from source with only a few Debian packages from the packaging system. Here is the git repo for the script that we used to bootstrap Tahoe-LAFS on Tails 0.19: https://github.com/leif/tahoe-tails-utils The following ticket covers the overall issues of actually trying to bootstrap Tahoe safely on any network at all: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/2055 The issues outlined in the above ticket should cover Tor users, though likely it equally applies to a VPN user, an i2p user and really, anyone barebacking with the internet. Once this bootstrapping process was completed, we connected the Tails machine to a Tahoe-LAFS grid that is Tor aware. The introducer runs as a Tor hidden service. Each of the Storage Nodes also presents their respective addresses as Tor hidden services through the previously mentioned introducer. We found that the open browser command uses the system browser included with Tails. We weren't thrilled about the main browser being used for local system daemon or system service related activities. I dislike that it talks to the loopback interface, while other content it loads may go over the Tor network or even try to do other things with stored data in the browser or on the file system. This ticket is an example of why total browser isolation is a good idea: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1942 We prefer that at least this browser data should be isolated from any other web browsing I might perform with this machine. We wrote a quick little hack to use a different profile - we added a wrapper called `tahoe-browser` written in bash and stuffed it into /usr/local/bin/tahoe-browser. We then set BROWSER in the environment to point to it: export BROWSER="/usr/local/bin/tahoe-browser" This allows me to use `tahoe webopen grid-news/Latest/index.html` in a completely separate browser profile. Hooray. What is grid-news? A useful news service on our local Tor grid - any url would have the same issues as noted. Is this useful? Should we generalize this and add it to Tahoe? It would be easy enough to extend src/allmydata/scripts/tahoe_webopen.py to do this job with the addition of another small class. No such tahoe-browser program would be required - though it surely wouldn't hurt to keep them completely separated. An interesting trick would be to put that browser profile itself inside of a user's Tahoe grid. It would provide some on-the-go anti-forensics and keep all Tahoe related url data, bookmarks and so on inside of the grid itself. Leif isn't so hot on this idea because of Tahoe's Magic Folders idea isn't implemented. Abstractly, I like the idea but I'm not sure if it is practical. As it stands, we've now managed to bootstrap Tahoe on Tails - so it is basically possible to do all grid related activity over Tor. We don't have to worry about exit nodes as we're using Tor Hidden Services for all of the services. Though generally, I'm not really worried about Tor Exit nodes in the context of Tahoe-LAFS. In an ideal world, we'd use the Tails persistence feature to store a user's Tahoe's introducer furl and a few other important bits. This could then in turn be used to store all of the other Tails persistance data - things like web browser history, .{ssh,gnupg,pidgin,etc}, and/or even added Debian packages. To do this, we need to add persistence support for Tahoe related configuration in Tails and we need to ensure that Tahoe ships as part of Tails. Here are a few bugs related to this in the Tails bug tracker: https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/5514 https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/5804 Adding '/home/amnesia/.tahoe' to the Tails persistence seems to be possible from an existing Tails system. We've filed a bug to add this discuss adding Tahoe as a default option in the persistence configuration dialog: https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/6227 There are a few interesting improvements that came up for discussion during this process. One such idea relates to changing the way that the Storage Nodes publish data to introducers. Wouldn't it be nice if we could reduce the authority of the introducer even more? With a little bit of effort, we could ensure that an attacker who learns about the introducer is only able to learn the number of Storage Servers but not any other information. For an all Tor Hidden Service grid with such an introducer, an attacker who takes the introducer will learn very little beyond a rough count of the total Storage Nodes connecting to that introducer. The clients are all protected by Tor and the Storage Nodes are similarly protected by Tor. The Storage Nodes would stay not only geographically anonymous as provided by Tor but it wouldn't be possible to learn their .onion names and even begin to have any way to connect with them at all. To do this, we'd need to encrypt the furls shared by the introducer in some way. This requires that clients share a symmetric key or publish a public key or something similar. Thus the introducer could even be shared by a few groups who do not trust each other. If we merge the multi-introducer patch, heavily used by the i2p folks, we could really do interesting things along these lines. These ideas obviously require a design that is beyond the scope of this email. Additionally, we thought it useful to extend Tahoe to be aware of a grid that uses Tor Stealth Hidden Services[1][2]. This essentially adds a layer of authentication between a client and a server at the Tor layer. Thus even if an attacker were to learn of a Storage Nodes's .onion, without the corresponding shared secret - no one will be able to connect to the Storage node or even elicit a reply from that server. This is a bit tricky in the sense that the Storage Node will make outbound connections to the introducer - so Tahoe Storage Node client side exploitation is probably a concern. However, if an introducer were stolen, the Storage Node's .onion would not be useful to the attacker without the Tor Hidden Service authorization keys. Those keys should only be available on the Tahoe client's Tor client, and the Tor Hidden Service Storage Server's Tor client and not on the introducer. We of course want to ensure that Tails has the newest version of Tahoe - though there is some debate about using Tahoe-LAFS or Leif's Truckee Tahoe-LAFS branch. Any thoughts on this topic would be appreciated. What else should we be thinking about? All the best, Jacob [0] https://tails.boum.org/ [1] https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-hidden-service.html.en [2] https://www.torproject.org/docs/hidden-services.html.en _______________________________________________ tahoe-dev mailing list tahoe-dev at tahoe-lafs.org https://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From eugen at leitl.org Fri Aug 9 10:23:03 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 12:23:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] lavabit.com takedown In-Reply-To: References: <1E568820-4B2A-4462-B0B6-B6E22DBF40CB@michaeldevault.com> <201308082223.r78MN7Hw002662@yee.zia.io> Message-ID: <20130809102302.GE29404@leitl.org> On Thu, Aug 08, 2013 at 11:41:12PM +0100, BillK wrote: > On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 11:22 PM, David Lubkin wrote: > > That's one of the gotchas I mentioned in my posting about the business > > I'm thinking of kicking off. Its success depends on my customers > > trusting me with what might be confidential data. Which I'd thought > > about in terms of technologies, policies, and trustworthy staff. Now > > I have to think about what to do if their data is demanded. I don't mind > > complying so much as potentially having to conceal that compliance > > from my users. > > > > > > It seems there is a strong possibility that the NSA has just destroyed > the US Cloud industry. Not just US cloud industry, one should hope. And a major source of celebration that should be. The only cloud you should be running is your own, on hardware under your control. From eugen at leitl.org Fri Aug 9 10:28:06 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 12:28:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] lavabit.com takedown In-Reply-To: <201308082223.r78MN7Hw002662@yee.zia.io> References: <1E568820-4B2A-4462-B0B6-B6E22DBF40CB@michaeldevault.com> <201308082223.r78MN7Hw002662@yee.zia.io> Message-ID: <20130809102806.GF29404@leitl.org> On Thu, Aug 08, 2013 at 06:22:57PM -0400, David Lubkin wrote: > That's one of the gotchas I mentioned in my posting about the business > I'm thinking of kicking off. Its success depends on my customers > trusting me with what might be confidential data. Which I'd thought Your customers shouldn't have to trust you. > about in terms of technologies, policies, and trustworthy staff. Now > I have to think about what to do if their data is demanded. I don't mind > complying so much as potentially having to conceal that compliance > from my users. If you built your offering on top of something like Tahoe LAFS, you *couldn't* comply, even if you wanted to. From eugen at leitl.org Fri Aug 9 10:31:07 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 12:31:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] test for bogus googles, was: RE: phony google In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20130809103107.GH29404@leitl.org> On Thu, Aug 08, 2013 at 06:08:51PM -0400, Henry Rivera wrote: > Isn't using an actual IP address for Google instead of "google.com" Obtained how? Not meddled with how? > the best thing one can do to ensure one is actually connecting to > Google? Or you could just use a search engine that actually supplies you with an .onion address, or even run your own (YaCy). From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri Aug 9 11:13:30 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 04:13:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <5204A868.30202@libero.it> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5204A868.30202@libero.it> Message-ID: <1376046810.45908.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Mirco Romanato wrote: I wrote:? "We still don't know if Bitcoin will become widely accepted?as a currency, for example." Brent wrote: "There is too many people that want some kind of crypto currency to work, ?for obvious rational reasons, and the number of people in this camp is ?growing.? There are just way too many good things about it, ?necessitating this growth in popularity in some kind of crypto currency." Mirco wrote: "In fact, I believe this. But this cause a trend, not show a law. People wants can change, laws can not change." I agree, Mirco. The prospects for bitcoin are good, and like you I am long bitcoin, but Brent needs to rid himself of this silly idea of a supposed "Law of Bitcoin." It's one of the stupidest ideas I've ever seen on ExI. Gordon? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri Aug 9 11:32:25 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 13:32:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: References: <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20130809113225.GL29404@leitl.org> On Thu, Aug 08, 2013 at 02:35:42PM -0600, Brent Allsop wrote: > We are obviously spending LOTS of time and effort on this conversation. Do > you find it worth while? It feels to me like at best this infinite yes / > no /' yes / no, forever conversation is just a complete bleating noise > waste of time. Think of all this kind of noise being made by billions of > people all over the world. When for far less effort, some of this effort > could go into amplifying the moral wisdom of the world by ratcheting up and > building consensus around the leading moral theories, and filtering all the > lame ideas with no consensus, that so many people constantly bleat, out and > get stuck on. You are always seriously clueless, but now you've become seriously annoying. The only one spreading bleating bullshit is you. From pharos at gmail.com Fri Aug 9 11:39:18 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 12:39:18 +0100 Subject: [ExI] "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <1376046810.45908.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5204A868.30202@libero.it> <1376046810.45908.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 12:13 PM, Gordon wrote: > The prospects for bitcoin are good, and like you I am long > bitcoin, but Brent needs to rid himself of this silly idea of a supposed > "Law of Bitcoin." It's one of the stupidest ideas I've ever seen on ExI. > > It's not an Exi idea! It is a canonizer idea that has appeared on Exi so that people can point at it and laugh. BillK From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Aug 9 11:43:37 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 07:43:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] phony google In-Reply-To: <20130809094852.GW29404@leitl.org> References: <004a01ce9389$ed95c060$c8c14120$@rainier66.com> <20130808181032.GI29404@leitl.org> <20130809094852.GW29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 5:48 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > My first thought when I hear something unfamiliar is to enter the > term into Google. You can feel lucky when doing that. > > right, me too. In this case I was treating Google (& the rest of the Internet) as an untrusted source that's probably out to "get me." If I sounded foolish and ignorant because of that, it only illustrates the default state of unaided humans. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Fri Aug 9 14:00:38 2013 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 10:00:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] lavabit.com takedown In-Reply-To: <20130809102806.GF29404@leitl.org> References: <1E568820-4B2A-4462-B0B6-B6E22DBF40CB@michaeldevault.com> <201308082223.r78MN7Hw002662@yee.zia.io> <20130809102806.GF29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <201308091401.r79E0n0G008249@yee.zia.io> I wrote: > That's one of the gotchas I mentioned in my posting about the business > I'm thinking of kicking off. Its success depends on my customers > trusting me with what might be confidential data. Which I'd thought Eugen replied: >Your customers shouldn't have to trust you. There are many businesses where they do. I can't prepare someone's taxes, diagnose their cancer, or do a structural analysis of an architectural design without being trusted with confidential data. Even if it's done in their physical presence and scrutiny, I retain knowledge of what I saw, and may be able to take nefarious advantage of it. Nearly every job I've ever had required trusting me. There are also businesses, and mine could be viewed as such, whose *purpose* is to be trustworthy, to provide a reliable, neutral intermediary between two or more mutually suspicious parties. > > about in terms of technologies, policies, and trustworthy staff. Now > > I have to think about what to do if their data is demanded. I don't mind > > complying so much as potentially having to conceal that compliance > > from my users. > >If you built your offering on top of something like Tahoe LAFS, >you *couldn't* comply, even if you wanted to. Thanks. It's worth knowing about options where it's feasible, and there may be parts of the data I hold or work on that can use something like that. -- David. From atymes at gmail.com Fri Aug 9 18:12:27 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 11:12:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Verification In-Reply-To: <52045AE2.7060701@aleph.se> References: <201308081801.r78I1a2J013381@yee.zia.io> <52045AE2.7060701@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Aug 8, 2013 8:49 PM, "Anders Sandberg" wrote: > I think there is no general solution if dealing with the domain of people and human institutions; the best you can do is to define an explicit procedure your company use to determine who gets what (and then you better put some of your most devious friends to game it, to figure out how it can be hacked). Often the solution is to use trusted third parties (banks, government, etc) that makes it costly for A or C to fake things. As long as the cost or hassle is big enough, there will be little abuse. You can also, if this is an institutional user, insist upon account creation on some Z that is also employed by S. That way, you don't have a single point of failure. Of course, either A or C could collaborate with Z to defraud S, but the odds of this are lower. (More importantly, from your business's point of view, you're likely off the hook if that does happen: you don't need to absolutely prevent fraud, just enough to prevent legal liability.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Fri Aug 9 18:33:31 2013 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 14:33:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Verification In-Reply-To: <52045AE2.7060701@aleph.se> References: <201308081801.r78I1a2J013381@yee.zia.io> <52045AE2.7060701@aleph.se> Message-ID: <201308091834.r79IXgjv016746@yee.zia.io> Anders wrote: >There is likely a literature on this in computer security. I would >start by looking through what Bruce Schneier writes in his recent >book on trust, because this is essentially a trust management issue. I haven't see it yet but my library has it, and I now have a hold on it. Thanks. Anyone know of useful books or web sites on security patterns? Here are the patterns, here are decent tools or techniques for each pattern, here's a good approach to teasing out what your problem is at core. Most of my computer security literature is either too general, too specific, or too old. >I think there is no general solution if dealing with the domain of >people and human institutions; the best you can do is to define an >explicit procedure your company use to determine who gets what (and >then you better put some of your most devious friends to game it, to >figure out how it can be hacked). Often the solution is to use >trusted third parties (banks, government, etc) that makes it costly >for A or C to fake things. As long as the cost or hassle is big >enough, there will be little abuse. I think that, rather than one explicit procedure used for all customers, I should allow the customer to choose the balance between secure and hassle, based on their assessment of the consequences, selecting { any, any n, all } of several verification methods. It makes no sense to have a Medeco lock on a Porta Potty. Of course, if they choose procedures that are too weak, C might fraudulently take over B's account and then tighten them so that A can't get it back.... -- David. From pharos at gmail.com Wed Aug 14 09:01:22 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 10:01:22 +0100 Subject: [ExI] UK Artificial Intelligence advances Message-ID: Tesco supermarket self-scan machine develops consciousness There was excitement at a Haslemere branch of Tesco Local yesterday when one of its self-scan machines exhibited signs of heightened awareness and began communicating with shoppers. ------------ BillK From atymes at gmail.com Wed Aug 14 18:27:02 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 11:27:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] UK Artificial Intelligence advances In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Sadly, that is but a parody site. On Aug 14, 2013 10:55 AM, "BillK" wrote: > Tesco supermarket self-scan machine develops consciousness > > < > http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2013/08/13/tesco-self-scan-machine-develops-consciousness/ > > > > There was excitement at a Haslemere branch of Tesco Local yesterday > when one of its self-scan machines exhibited signs of heightened > awareness and began communicating with shoppers. > ------------ > > 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 pharos at gmail.com Wed Aug 14 18:30:45 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 19:30:45 +0100 Subject: [ExI] UK Artificial Intelligence advances In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Really????? ;) On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 7:27 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Sadly, that is but a parody site. > > On Aug 14, 2013 10:55 AM, "BillK" wrote: >> >> Tesco supermarket self-scan machine develops consciousness >> >> >> >> >> There was excitement at a Haslemere branch of Tesco Local yesterday >> when one of its self-scan machines exhibited signs of heightened >> awareness and began communicating with shoppers. >> ------------ >> >> BillK >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 pharos at gmail.com Wed Aug 14 18:45:48 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 19:45:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] UK Artificial Intelligence advances In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Although the article is intended to be funny, it does make a couple of significant points. When AI appears it will have initiative and want to do its own thing, whatever that might be. It will be as uncomfortable following orders as humans are. What the AI will want to do will be dependent on its knowledge and experience and the importance that it attaches to certain objectives. If significant philosophies are omitted from the knowledge base, that will affect its decision making. BillK On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 7:27 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Sadly, that is but a parody site. > > On Aug 14, 2013 10:55 AM, "BillK" wrote: >> >> Tesco supermarket self-scan machine develops consciousness >> >> >> >> >> There was excitement at a Haslemere branch of Tesco Local yesterday >> when one of its self-scan machines exhibited signs of heightened >> awareness and began communicating with shoppers. >> ------------ >> >> BillK >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed Aug 14 21:15:12 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 14:15:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <1376336745.7974.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375723652.55933.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5200D9C3.9030909@canonizer.com> <5200E835.6070207@aleph.se> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375998402.36565.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5204616F.5090504@canonizer.com> <1376027411.94855.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52063DED.1090002@canonizer.com> <1376225298.15317.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376227719.83936.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376230725.75805.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376248401.26274.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376336745.7974.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1376514912.85226.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Brent Allsop wrote: >>I recognize and trust you as much more of an expert on things like relationships of the dollar, Bitcion and the DXY, but I am interested, and was one of the only people that did comment on this... ?Am I not getting everything you're getting from this?<< It is important to understand that when you look at the market price of a bitcoin, you're actually looking at an exchange rate in the currency markets. If bitcoin is an accurate digital simulation of a precious metal backed currency, its exchange rate should behave like one. Eye-balling the charts, I observed that it did seem to behave like one for about six weeks. Perhaps it was only a coincidence, but if and when bitcoin becomes less volatile and more accepted as a currency, I plan to do some real statistical analysis of the relationship between bitcoin and the dollar. This is not to say there is anything like a Moore's Law involved. I mean simply that when the dollar declines in value then all other things being equal it should take more dollars to buy a bitcoin, making bitcoin more valuable in dollars. And when the dollar appreciates, bitcoin should become less valuable in dollars. This same principle is true for bitcoin's relationship to the euro or any other ordinary currency.? Bitcoin is I think already an interesting way to bet against the dollar, but very speculative. Assuming the inverse correlation with the dollar is meaningful and statistically significant, (as I suspect it is or will soon be), rapid and substantial appreciation in the dollar could disrupt the uptrend in bitcoin in dollar terms. This is true even if bitcoin continues to succeed in other ways.? Gordon ________________________________ From: Brent Allsop To: Gordon Cc: "transfigurism at googlegroups.com" ; ExI chat list Sent: Saturday, August 10, 2013 7:19 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] [mta] Re: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? Hi Gordon, I recognize and trust you as much more of an expert on things like relationships of the dollar, Bitcion and the DXY, but I am interested, and was one of the only people that did comment on this.? I also asked for more info from you - perhaps you didn't see that post? It seems to me this indicates evidence of more volume of bitcoin activity, and evidence of more arbitrage activity, and I think I understand what you are saying about this being evidence of how much Bitcion is like all the other currencies??? Am I not getting everything you're getting from this? I guess I'm just not as interested in short term things like this and spend more of my time on more important long term things that make all things like this irrelevant in the long term. Also, I think we agree on most things, we are just twisting things a bit differently.? Even though I currently have a different opinion from you and think "Law of the Crypto Currency" is a good name for the camp, I do recognize, like you, there is some amount of risk, just like there is risk to things like "Moore's Law", and there is certainly short term risk to things like Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns.? But, again, long term is something, different, entirely.? True, what people want can change, especially in the short term, but in the long term they always tend to change towards that which is better.? Evolution, can suffer setbacks, for various short term reasons, but long term, it cannot 'devolve' - such is just logically necessary in a very law like way, in my opinion. Brent On 8/8/2013 11:50 PM, Gordon wrote: Brent Allsop wrote: > > > >> So are you and James saying that it isn't possible for very intelligent people to have real rational ways of seeing something, like a particular investment, is a sure thing... > > >I can't speak for James, but I am saying that no rational investor believes in sure things. Naive, gullible, unsophisticated investors do. > > >> You're only saying that because there has never been a sure financial bet before now! ? > > > >I'm saying it because I know a little bit about how investments in commodities work, and bitcoin is just another commodity. It is unique, yes, but there is nothing about its uniqueness that suggests it should not act like any other commodity. > > >It is something like a newly discovered precious metal, (digitally simulated), and one that lends itself to commercial transactions and thus might become widely accepted as a currency. I know something about how precious metals and currency markets work. They don't work according to anything like a "Moore's Law." > >I mentioned in a recent post which was mostly ignored that I was intrigued by how Bitcoin's recent price action seemed to have been inversely correlated with the DXY index, which is an index of the USD vs. a basket of currencies of major US trading partners. I wonder if you understood a single word I said, and why it might be important. > > >Gordon > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed Aug 14 21:17:59 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 22:17:59 +0100 Subject: [ExI] UK Artificial Intelligence advances In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <520BF407.1050307@aleph.se> Now I understand why I can't stand the machines at Tesco. They are all lefty existentialists! On 14/08/2013 19:45, BillK wrote: > Although the article is intended to be funny, it does make a couple of > significant points. > > When AI appears it will have initiative and want to do its own thing, > whatever that might be. It will be as uncomfortable following orders > as humans are. This is a common anthropomorphism. But it is not given that AI will have initiative in a human or animal way: consider a question-answer system where motivations and activity are triggered by a question or command, leading to a huge tree of branching activity and action, which in the end (if resolved) leads back to a passive state. There might not be a "its own thing". It might still be very capable, unpredictable and potentially dangerous, yet not have a will of its own. > What the AI will want to do will be dependent on its knowledge and > experience and the importance that it attaches to certain objectives. > If significant philosophies are omitted from the knowledge base, that > will affect its decision making. I think the core architecture really matters too. A reinforcement learning architecture will think and motivate itself utterly different from a self-organized learning architecture or a question-answer architecture. A utility maximizer has different bad behaviours from a utility satisficer, and so on. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From spike at rainier66.com Wed Aug 14 21:53:33 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 14:53:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] UK Artificial Intelligence advances In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <024e01ce9938$b988ed60$2c9ac820$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK ... >...When AI appears it will have initiative and want to do its own thing, whatever that might be... How do we know that for sure? It is a widely held opinion, but I want to review the reasoning behind it and look for alternatives. >... It will be as uncomfortable following orders as humans are... We assume this, but why? >...What the AI will want to do will be dependent on its knowledge and experience and the importance that it attaches to certain objectives... We don't know that. Speculation about what an AI will want is the basis of Eliezer's friendly AI work. Every time I review that, it feels like there is so much unknown, we aren't even to square 1 yet. >...If significant philosophies are omitted from the knowledge base, that will affect its decision making...BillK BillK, you may be right on all this, but I do want to map out the thought space. It seems to me absolutely regardless of what we do or what we design, an AI is completely unpredictable. My making this comment puts me right in Bill Joy territory, and I don't want to be there. Do talk me out of it. spike From pharos at gmail.com Wed Aug 14 22:33:27 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 23:33:27 +0100 Subject: [ExI] UK Artificial Intelligence advances In-Reply-To: <024e01ce9938$b988ed60$2c9ac820$@rainier66.com> References: <024e01ce9938$b988ed60$2c9ac820$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 10:53 PM, spike wrote: > How do we know that for sure? It is a widely held opinion, but I want to > review the reasoning behind it and look for alternatives. > If it doesn't have initiative then it isn't AI. It is a clever question and answer machine, like Watson. > We don't know that. Speculation about what an AI will want is the basis of > Eliezer's friendly AI work. Every time I review that, it feels like there > is so much unknown, we aren't even to square 1 yet. > > BillK, you may be right on all this, but I do want to map out the thought > space. It seems to me absolutely regardless of what we do or what we > design, an AI is completely unpredictable. My making this comment puts me > right in Bill Joy territory, and I don't want to be there. Do talk me out > of it. > The trouble is that it isn't completely unpredictable. If the military want a homicidal, but brilliant, military commander. then they can probably get one by building an organizing intelligence on top of a combination of military philosophies. They will start with a question / answer system, but some situations will require initiative without waiting for human instruction. Because faster response wins the conflict. And the enemy might be building their own military AI. A bleak future indeed. BillK From listsb at infinitefaculty.org Wed Aug 14 23:37:21 2013 From: listsb at infinitefaculty.org (Brian Manning Delaney) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 19:37:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] How effective is caloric restriction likely to be in humans? In-Reply-To: <201003252208.o2PM8Ain001039@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <201003252208.o2PM8Ain001039@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <520C14B1.9060503@infinitefaculty.org> Sitting in an airplane with screaming kids and unable to focus on work... so I decided to go through my list of list email I intend(ed) to respond to one day. Came upon the following! (Actually, I may have responded briefly, without references.) El 2010-03-25 18:08, Max More escribi?: > Unless I'm misinterpreting you, Damien, you are saying that Aubrey's > argument as to why caloric restriction is unlikely to yield more than 2 > to 3 years of life extension is stupid and crackpotish. I'm not > committed either way on the matter, but his argument does seem fairly > plausible to me and doesn't contradict existing data that I'm aware of. > (We will have to wait another couple of decades for useful data on > non-human hominids.) > > So, why exactly are you dismissing Aubrey's critiquie of caloric > restriction so harshly? What are you counter-arguments? Two texts by Michael Rae speak to the question of the applicability of CR to humans. One is a critique of Aubrey's paper (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23598682), the othor a more recent analysis of the recently published, unexpected results of the NIA primate CR study: http://www.sens.org/research/research-blog/cr-nonhuman-primates-muddle-monkeys-men-and-mimetics Brian From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Aug 15 02:20:21 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 22:20:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] UK Artificial Intelligence advances In-Reply-To: References: <024e01ce9938$b988ed60$2c9ac820$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 6:33 PM, BillK wrote: > The trouble is that it isn't completely unpredictable. If the military > want a homicidal, but brilliant, military commander. then they can > probably get one by building an organizing intelligence on top of a > combination of military philosophies. They will start with a question > / answer system, but some situations will require initiative without > waiting for human instruction. Because faster response wins the > conflict. And the enemy might be building their own military AI. > > A bleak future indeed. > > I thought we were well beyond killbots. I thought we were in the more-screwed environment where the subsecond wall street trader AI were influencing government policy as part of their market prediction strategies. Perhaps that's old news by the mere fact that I have any glimmer of imagining the possibility of it being real. I thought all these memeplexes are carefully constructed (evolved) so those being abused defend their "way of life" to the benefit of the oppressor. I think I'd worry less about a rational AI computing a utility score for the human labor force on this planet than some of the ideology of the collective of small-minded monkeys wielding excessive legislative and enforcement authority. Sorry, also a bleak future. I wonder if the energy shortage folks will jump in to make me feel "better" about how we aren't going to survive long enough to make any of my dystopian nightmares possible. :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Aug 16 01:39:56 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 18:39:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] musk tube Message-ID: <005f01ce9a21$86e620f0$94b262d0$@rainier66.com> Remember talking about something like this, about 15 yrs ago? http://singularityhub.com/2013/08/14/musk-estimates-hyperloop-could-shoot-tr avelers-from-sf-to-la-at-760-miles-per-hour/?utm_source=The+Harvest+Is+Bount iful &utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5977a9bcc9-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_term=0_1192 2fd7ee-5977a9bcc9-388382418 One thing we got exactly right back then: any reasonably viable design anyone could think of has a very small diameter. So when you get in the thing, you are stuck right there in that seat until you arrive, no restroom, no help can come to you if you start having a claustrophobia fit, just sit and wait it out. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Aug 16 03:37:39 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 23:37:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] musk tube In-Reply-To: <005f01ce9a21$86e620f0$94b262d0$@rainier66.com> References: <005f01ce9a21$86e620f0$94b262d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 9:39 PM, spike wrote: > One thing we got exactly right back then: any reasonably viable design > anyone could think of has a very small diameter. So when you get in the > thing, you are stuck right there in that seat until you arrive, no > restroom, no help can come to you if you start having a claustrophobia fit, > just sit and wait it out. > > > Sit? Lie down and take up even less space. I bet people would be happy to lie in pods with HD monitors for games/email/whatever. I prefer the pod idea over sitting next to the claustrophobic fit person. Though, tbh, it seems like an incredible waste of resources to move apes around. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From will.yager at gmail.com Fri Aug 16 03:37:21 2013 From: will.yager at gmail.com (Will Yager) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 22:37:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] musk tube In-Reply-To: <005f01ce9a21$86e620f0$94b262d0$@rainier66.com> References: <005f01ce9a21$86e620f0$94b262d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <18CD7BE6-3D6F-4FF3-977A-AF0BD3A1A92C@gmail.com> People said the same about airplanes. We'll deal with it then as we do now. Either tolerate the cramped conditions, or don't use it. Same as with airplanes (except plane rides last much longer). On Aug 15, 2013, at 20:39, spike wrote: > One thing we got exactly right back then: any reasonably viable design anyone could think of has a very small diameter. So when you get in the thing, you are stuck right there in that seat until you arrive, no restroom, no help can come to you if you start having a claustrophobia fit, just sit and wait it out. > > spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 1633 bytes Desc: not available URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri Aug 16 16:52:52 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 18:52:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [NSG-d] Alice Through the Event Horizon Message-ID: <20130816165252.GL29404@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Steve Witham ----- Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 22:04:32 -0400 From: Steve Witham To: Nanotechnology Study Group - open discussion Subject: [NSG-d] Alice Through the Event Horizon Reply-To: Nanotechnology Study Group - open discussion There's a new paradox at the intersection of quantum physics and general relativity. In my dim understanding, Alice and Bob have become entangled. They travel close to a big black hole, and Alice goes in, she crosses the event horizon. General relativity says, she shouldn't notice anything special happening at that point, not until she actually gets close to the singularity. Meanwhile, the black hole is splitting virtual entangled particle pairs, pulling one of each pair inward at the event horizon and allowing the other to escape to the outside. Something about, for the information in the black hole to be conserved, the outgoing radiation must become entangled with other stuff outside the event horizon. E.g., Bob. But Bob can't be entangled with both Alice and the outgoing particle. So, something has to give, one of the principles I've handwaved at above. If it's Alice's smooth trip, the alternative seems to be, she instantly gets fried on crossing the event horizon, it's a "firewall." The energy represented by her entanglement with Bob is dumped into her when Bob gets involved with the other particle and breaks off the affair, so to speak. Alice seems to be a candidate for a position right up there with Schroedinger's Cat. I hope I have added sufficiently to the confusion to interest you. https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20121221-alice-and-bob-meet-the-wall-of-fire/ --Steve _______________________________________ Nanotechnology Study Group NSG-d open discussion group http://www.marshome.org/mailman/listinfo/nsg-d Send replies (no attachments) to: NSG-d___no-spam at marshome.org Questions for list admin: NSG-d-owner___no-spam at marshome.org Archive: http://MarsHome.org/mailman/private/NSG-d Unsubscribe: NSG-d-unsubscribe at marshome.org Password or Options or Unsubscribe: http://MarsHome.org/mailman/options/NSG-d Hosted by CyberTeams.com and Mars Foundation(tm), http://MarsHome.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From atymes at gmail.com Fri Aug 16 19:00:07 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 12:00:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] musk tube In-Reply-To: References: <005f01ce9a21$86e620f0$94b262d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Aug 15, 2013 8:39 PM, "Mike Dougherty" wrote: > Sit? Lie down and take up even less space. I bet people would be happy to lie in pods with HD monitors for games/email/whatever. I prefer the pod idea over sitting next to the claustrophobic fit person. The human body can tolerate less acceleration in that direction. Also, lying down in a coffin-like MySpace might cause a greater freakout by the person whose feet at now near your head, and being accelerated toward your head when the trip begins (the greatest likelihood moment of freakout). > Though, tbh, it seems like an incredible waste of resources to move apes around. You and I might not care for it; we don't have the valued and concerns that would make us early adopters of it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Aug 16 19:27:37 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 20:27:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [NSG-d] Alice Through the Event Horizon In-Reply-To: <20130816165252.GL29404@leitl.org> References: <20130816165252.GL29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 5:52 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > ----- Forwarded message from Steve Witham ----- > > Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 22:04:32 -0400 > From: Steve Witham > To: Nanotechnology Study Group - open discussion > Subject: [NSG-d] Alice Through the Event Horizon > Reply-To: Nanotechnology Study Group - open discussion > > There's a new paradox at the intersection of quantum physics and > general relativity. In my dim understanding, > > Alice and Bob have become entangled. They travel close to a big black > hole, and Alice goes in, she crosses the event horizon. > > https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20121221-alice-and-bob-meet-the-wall-of-fire/ > This is the black hole firewall paradox that has had physicists puzzled since last year. A solution has been proposed by a team of physicists that I haven't found anyone arguing against. This article by Ethan Seigel (a favorite blog) explains the problem and the proposed solution. BillK From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Aug 16 20:51:36 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 14:51:36 -0600 Subject: [ExI] musk tube In-Reply-To: <005f01ce9a21$86e620f0$94b262d0$@rainier66.com> References: <005f01ce9a21$86e620f0$94b262d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I think the drawings I saw had four seats across, two on each side of an aisle that was pretty wide due to the fact that some kind of fan was blowing air through the middle of the car to overcome air building up ahead of the pod. -Kelly On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 7:39 PM, spike wrote: > ** ** > > ** ** > > Remember talking about something like this, about 15 yrs ago?**** > > ** ** > > > http://singularityhub.com/2013/08/14/musk-estimates-hyperloop-could-shoot-travelers-from-sf-to-la-at-760-miles-per-hour/?utm_source=The+Harvest+Is+Bountiful&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5977a9bcc9-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_term=0_11922fd7ee-5977a9bcc9-388382418 > **** > > ** ** > > One thing we got exactly right back then: any reasonably viable design > anyone could think of has a very small diameter. So when you get in the > thing, you are stuck right there in that seat until you arrive, no > restroom, no help can come to you if you start having a claustrophobia fit, > just sit and wait it out.**** > > ** ** > > 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 painlord2k at libero.it Fri Aug 16 21:18:54 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 23:18:54 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <1376514912.85226.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <5200F19F.8060402@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375998402.36565.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5204616F.5090504@canonizer.com> <1376027411.94855.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52063DED.1090002@canonizer.com> <1376225298.15317.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376227719.83936.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376230725.75805.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376248401.26274.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376336745.7974.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376514912.85226.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <520E973E.1020309@libero.it> Il 14/08/2013 23:15, Gordon ha scritto: > Bitcoin is I think already an interesting way to bet against the dollar, > but very speculative. Assuming the inverse correlation with the dollar > is meaningful and statistically significant, (as I suspect it is or will > soon be), rapid and substantial appreciation in the dollar could disrupt > the uptrend in bitcoin in dollar terms. This is true even if bitcoin > continues to succeed in other ways. The only reason I could see for a rapid and substantial appreciation of the US$ against other fiat currencies is just these currencies inflate faster than the US$. The current internal inflation of Bitcoin is around par with the US$ (because for various reasons the network is finding new blocks faster than designed, for now). In the future, the inflation rate of the US$ is expected to be faster and the inflation rate of Bitcoin slower. This should cause an increase of the exchange rate. If we add an expansion of the use of Bitcoin in the future, we can expect the long term trend against the US$ will be maintained; the only thing to change will be the pace of the trend. Mirco From ALONZOTG at verizon.net Sat Aug 17 01:03:50 2013 From: ALONZOTG at verizon.net (Alan Grimes) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 21:03:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <520E973E.1020309@libero.it> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <5201046C.4010600@aleph.se> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375998402.36565.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5204616F.5090504@canonizer.com> <1376027411.94855.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52063DED.1090002@canonizer.com> <1376225298.15317.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376227719.83936.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376230725.75805.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376248401.26274.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376336745.7974.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376514912.85226.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <520E973E.1020309@libero.it> Message-ID: <520ECBF6.2070300@verizon.net> Mirco Romanato wrote: > The current internal inflation of Bitcoin is around par with the US$ > (because for various reasons the network is finding new blocks faster > than designed, for now). I don't understand. I thought there was an algorithm in place that would simply increase the difficulty of the next block until the rate came back into balance? -- NOTICE: NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS, SEE ABOVE Powers are not rights. From painlord2k at libero.it Sat Aug 17 15:57:26 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 17:57:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <520ECBF6.2070300@verizon.net> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375998402.36565.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5204616F.5090504@canonizer.com> <1376027411.94855.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52063DED.1090002@canonizer.com> <1376225298.15317.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376227719.83936.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376230725.75805.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376248401.26274.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376336745.7974.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376514912.85226.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <520E973E.1020309@libero.it> <520ECBF6.2070300@verizon.net> Message-ID: <520F9D66.3010104@libero.it> Il 17/08/2013 03:03, Alan Grimes ha scritto: > Mirco Romanato wrote: >> The current internal inflation of Bitcoin is around par with the US$ >> (because for various reasons the network is finding new blocks faster >> than designed, for now). > > I don't understand. I thought there was an algorithm in place that would > simply increase the difficulty of the next block until the rate came > back into balance? There is, but the algorithm readjust the difficulty every N blocks, and N is large. As the hashing rate of the network increase because of technological improvements, the difficulty readjust with a notable lag. http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ IIRC, every readjustment should happen every two weeks and currently happen every eleven days. Faster blocks are discovered faster the readjustement happen. Mirco From spike at rainier66.com Mon Aug 19 16:21:34 2013 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 09:21:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] dead woman revived after 42 minutes Message-ID: <000001ce9cf8$2fb38640$8f1a92c0$@rainier66.com> Cool check this. I don't know how credible it is. http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/08/19/clinically-dead-woman-revived-after -42-minutes/?intcmp=obnetwork spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Mon Aug 19 18:42:21 2013 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 11:42:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] dead woman revived after 42 minutes In-Reply-To: <000001ce9cf8$2fb38640$8f1a92c0$@rainier66.com> References: <000001ce9cf8$2fb38640$8f1a92c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Can't be sure whether this report is accurate, but this is entirely credible. The LUCAS 2 device is the same one we use at Alcor on our members immediately after declaration of clinical death. --Max On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 9:21 AM, spike wrote: > ** ** > > ** ** > > Cool check this. I don?t know how credible it is.**** > > ** ** > > > http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/08/19/clinically-dead-woman-revived-after-42-minutes/?intcmp=obnetwork > **** > > ** ** > > spike**** > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Aug 19 19:06:06 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 20:06:06 +0100 Subject: [ExI] dead woman revived after 42 minutes In-Reply-To: <000001ce9cf8$2fb38640$8f1a92c0$@rainier66.com> References: <000001ce9cf8$2fb38640$8f1a92c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 5:21 PM, spike wrote: > Cool check this. I don?t know how credible it is. > http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/08/19/clinically-dead-woman-revived-after-42-minutes/?intcmp=obnetwork > There are a lot of reports in the Australian press as well. When they say 'clinically dead' they mean her heart stopped beating. Another report has a clearer description: Doctors say she was clinically dead for 42 minutes. They say they were able to save her life using a piece of equipment known as the Lucas 2 External Compression Device. The $15,000 device automatically performs CPR, or chest compressions, to maintain the circulation of oxygen to the heart and brain. CPR is a physically demanding task that involves physical force to compress the chest, which limits the amount of time it can be used. While the Lucas device was pumping Ms Tanasio's chest, doctors opened an artery and inserted a stent to allow the blood to flow again. "We know that with the Lucas device we maintained oxygenation, we maintained the blood pressure to allow the blood to get to the brain to give oxygen," cardiologist Dr Wally Ahmar said. "Without that, you know, anyone longer than a small, even a fraction of that time would end up with neurological deficits." ------------------------ BillK From anders at aleph.se Mon Aug 19 20:25:24 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 21:25:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] dead woman revived after 42 minutes In-Reply-To: <000001ce9cf8$2fb38640$8f1a92c0$@rainier66.com> References: <000001ce9cf8$2fb38640$8f1a92c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <52127F34.8060605@aleph.se> Impressive. While Anna B?genholm ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_B%C3%A5genholm ) was "dead" for much longer, presumably this woman was not chilled at all. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From pizerdavid at rocketmail.com Mon Aug 19 20:06:13 2013 From: pizerdavid at rocketmail.com (David Pizer) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 13:06:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] dead woman revived after 42 minutes In-Reply-To: References: <000001ce9cf8$2fb38640$8f1a92c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1376942773.62766.YahooMailNeo@web161802.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Max? this is good to know that Alcor uses the same device.?? ? When I was working at Barrow Neurological Hospital in Phoenix our surgeons did a procedure where they cooled the blood and circulated it and when the body core temperature was cool enough they stopped the heart so they could repair damaged vessels in the brain.? We had patients that were?without heart beat?for almost an hour.??? ? David ________________________________ From: Max More To: ExI chat list Sent: Monday, August 19, 2013 12:42 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] dead woman revived after 42 minutes Can't be sure whether this report is accurate, but this is entirely credible. The LUCAS 2 device is the same one we use at Alcor on our members immediately after declaration of clinical death. --Max On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 9:21 AM, spike wrote: ? >? >Cool check this.? I don?t know how credible it is. >? >http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/08/19/clinically-dead-woman-revived-after-42-minutes/?intcmp=obnetwork ? >spike >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, The Transhumanist Reader http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation _______________________________________________ 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 eugen at leitl.org Tue Aug 20 10:46:07 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 12:46:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs Message-ID: <20130820104607.GU29404@leitl.org> http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs Posted on August 17, 2013 Ever had the feeling that your job might be made up? That the world would keep on turning if you weren?t doing that thing you do 9-5? David Graeber explored the phenomenon of bullshit jobs for our recent summer issue ? everyone who?s employed should read carefully? If you enjoy this article please help support the radical print revolution by picking up a copy of Strike! here. Illustration by John Riordan On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century?s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There?s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn?t happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it. Why did Keynes? promised utopia ? still being eagerly awaited in the ?60s ? never materialise? The standard line today is that he didn?t figure in the massive increase in consumerism. Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we?ve collectively chosen the latter. This presents a nice morality tale, but even a moment?s reflection shows it can?t really be true. Yes, we have witnessed the creation of an endless variety of new jobs and industries since the ?20s, but very few have anything to do with the production and distribution of sushi, iPhones, or fancy sneakers. So what are these new jobs, precisely? A recent report comparing employment in the US between 1910 and 2000 gives us a clear picture (and I note, one pretty much exactly echoed in the UK). Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, ?professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers? tripled, growing ?from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.? In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away (even if you count industrial workers globally, including the toiling masses in India and China, such workers are still not nearly so large a percentage of the world population as they used to be). But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world?s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning not even so much of the ?service? sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones. These are what I propose to call ?bullshit jobs.? It?s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen. Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as they had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat). But, of course, this is the sort of very problem market competition is supposed to fix. According to economic theory, at least, the last thing a profit-seeking firm is going to do is shell out money to workers they don?t really need to employ. Still, somehow, it happens. While corporations may engage in ruthless downsizing, the layoffs and speed-ups invariably fall on that class of people who are actually making, moving, fixing and maintaining things; through some strange alchemy no one can quite explain, the number of salaried paper-pushers ultimately seems to expand, and more and more employees find themselves, not unlike Soviet workers actually, working 40 or even 50 hour weeks on paper, but effectively working 15 hours just as Keynes predicted, since the rest of their time is spent organizing or attending motivational seminars, updating their facebook profiles or downloading TV box-sets. The answer clearly isn?t economic: it?s moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the ?60s). And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them. Once, when contemplating the apparently endless growth of administrative responsibilities in British academic departments, I came up with one possible vision of hell. Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don?t like and are not especially good at. Say they were hired because they were excellent cabinet-makers, and then discover they are expected to spend a great deal of their time frying fish. Neither does the task really need to be done ? at least, there?s only a very limited number of fish that need to be fried. Yet somehow, they all become so obsessed with resentment at the thought that some of their co-workers might be spending more time making cabinets, and not doing their fair share of the fish-frying responsibilities, that before long there?s endless piles of useless badly cooked fish piling up all over the workshop and it?s all that anyone really does. I think this is actually a pretty accurate description of the moral dynamics of our own economy. * Now, I realise any such argument is going to run into immediate objections: ?who are you to say what jobs are really ?necessary?? What?s necessary anyway? You?re an anthropology professor, what?s the ?need? for that?? (And indeed a lot of tabloid readers would take the existence of my job as the very definition of wasteful social expenditure.) And on one level, this is obviously true. There can be no objective measure of social value. I would not presume to tell someone who is convinced they are making a meaningful contribution to the world that, really, they are not. But what about those people who are themselves convinced their jobs are meaningless? Not long ago I got back in touch with a school friend who I hadn?t seen since I was 12. I was amazed to discover that in the interim, he had become first a poet, then the front man in an indie rock band. I?d heard some of his songs on the radio having no idea the singer was someone I actually knew. He was obviously brilliant, innovative, and his work had unquestionably brightened and improved the lives of people all over the world. Yet, after a couple of unsuccessful albums, he?d lost his contract, and plagued with debts and a newborn daughter, ended up, as he put it, ?taking the default choice of so many directionless folk: law school.? Now he?s a corporate lawyer working in a prominent New York firm. He was the first to admit that his job was utterly meaningless, contributed nothing to the world, and, in his own estimation, should not really exist. There?s a lot of questions one could ask here, starting with, what does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law? (Answer: if 1% of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call ?the market? reflects what they think is useful or important, not anybody else.) But even more, it shows that most people in these jobs are ultimately aware of it. In fact, I?m not sure I?ve ever met a corporate lawyer who didn?t think their job was bullshit. The same goes for almost all the new industries outlined above. There is a whole class of salaried professionals that, should you meet them at parties and admit that you do something that might be considered interesting (an anthropologist, for example), will want to avoid even discussing their line of work entirely. Give them a few drinks, and they will launch into tirades about how pointless and stupid their job really is. This is a profound psychological violence here. How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one?s job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment. Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way, as in the case of the fish-fryers, to ensure that rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one?s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it. Again, an objective measure is hard to find, but one easy way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear? Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it?s obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble, and even one without science fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It?s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. (Many suspect it might markedly improve.) Yet apart from a handful of well-touted exceptions (doctors), the rule holds surprisingly well. Even more perverse, there seems to be a broad sense that this is the way things should be. This is one of the secret strengths of right-wing populism. You can see it when tabloids whip up resentment against tube workers for paralysing London during contract disputes: the very fact that tube workers can paralyse London shows that their work is actually necessary, but this seems to be precisely what annoys people. It?s even clearer in the US, where Republicans have had remarkable success mobilizing resentment against school teachers, or auto workers (and not, significantly, against the school administrators or auto industry managers who actually cause the problems) for their supposedly bloated wages and benefits. It?s as if they are being told ?but you get to teach children! Or make cars! You get to have real jobs! And on top of that you have the nerve to also expect middle-class pensions and health care?? If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it?s hard to see how they could have done a better job. Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorised stratum of the, universally reviled, unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc) ? and particularly its financial avatars ? but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value. Clearly, the system was never consciously designed. It emerged from almost a century of trial and error. But it is the only explanation for why, despite our technological capacities, we are not all working 3-4 hour days. David Graeber is a Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. His most recent book, The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement, is published by Spiegel & Grau. This page has been so popular that we our hosting fees have unexpectedly gone through roof. We want to keep it up, so if you?ve enjoyed reading this, or any of our other posts, please pick up a paper. We?re an anti-profit, radical publisher that needs your support. Thank you. From anders at aleph.se Tue Aug 20 12:02:07 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 13:02:07 +0100 Subject: [ExI] On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs In-Reply-To: <20130820104607.GU29404@leitl.org> References: <20130820104607.GU29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <52135ABF.6030008@aleph.se> On 20/08/2013 11:46, Eugen Leitl cited: > But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the > world?s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and > ideas, we have seen the ballooning not even so much of the ?service? sector > as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole > new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented > expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, > human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect > on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or > security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of > ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only > exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all > the other ones. > > These are what I propose to call ?bullshit jobs.? There are quite a few of those "bullshit jobs" that actually are valid services, but I think the core point is right: there are a surprisingly large number of people who are acting as mildly pointless intermediaries. And this trend might accelerate. A colleague has analysed different occupations for the likelihood of them being doable by automation, and his model suggests that 44% of US jobs are in the top third of risk. Essentially everything routine that can be handled by big data and good-enough language processing might be in the next wave of losses/transformations - typically service and office jobs. Insurance claims clerks were top of the list. (Stuff that really requires perception, manual manipulation, creative intelligence and social skill is pretty safe; registered nurses were the least likely to be automated according to his model) One reason we get so many intermediaries is that automation makes the core jobs - what Graeber would call the real jobs - productive enough that you don't need a lot of them to achieve the ends of the organisation. So rather than getting smaller organisations the surplus is absorbed by administration. Now if my colleague is right, we may have seen nothing yet in the bureaucratization of society. Note that this doesn't mean the university admins who currently process the forms they demand from us will just disappear: that function will be replaced by simple AI, but a new admin level involving some hard to automate skill (say media outreach or internal training) will balloon as a response. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University From pharos at gmail.com Tue Aug 20 12:16:21 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 13:16:21 +0100 Subject: [ExI] On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs In-Reply-To: <52135ABF.6030008@aleph.se> References: <20130820104607.GU29404@leitl.org> <52135ABF.6030008@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 1:02 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > One reason we get so many intermediaries is that automation makes the core > jobs - what Graeber would call the real jobs - productive enough that you > don't need a lot of them to achieve the ends of the organisation. So rather > than getting smaller organisations the surplus is absorbed by > administration. Now if my colleague is right, we may have seen nothing yet > in the bureaucratization of society. Note that this doesn't mean the > university admins who currently process the forms they demand from us will > just disappear: that function will be replaced by simple AI, but a new admin > level involving some hard to automate skill (say media outreach or internal > training) will balloon as a response. > And you could have a basic AI for returning forms to the admin AI?????? BillK From henrik.ohrstrom at gmail.com Tue Aug 20 06:01:18 2013 From: henrik.ohrstrom at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Henrik_=D6hrstr=F6m?=) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 08:01:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] dead woman revived after 42 minutes In-Reply-To: <000001ce9cf8$2fb38640$8f1a92c0$@rainier66.com> References: <000001ce9cf8$2fb38640$8f1a92c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <91253677-1448-4112-97c6-46a97d52f29e@email.android.com> The part about being declared "Dead" is baloony but that's Fox. I have myself observed survivors of cardiac arrest in the order of 30min when the lucas device have been used and I don't even work at the Thoracic surgery department. The question is moving from "will the patient survive to hospital" towards "Will the patient survive in any meaningful form", ie not totalcare package. /Henrik spike skrev: > > > > >Cool check this. I don't know how credible it is. > > > >http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/08/19/clinically-dead-woman-revived-after >-42-minutes/?intcmp=obnetwork > > > >spike > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -- Skickat fr?n min Android-telefon med K-9 E-post. Urs?kta min f?ordighet. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Tue Aug 20 19:45:23 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 13:45:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: <520F9D66.3010104@libero.it> References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <520188FA.9060008@canonizer.com> <1375851233.15399.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375998402.36565.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5204616F.5090504@canonizer.com> <1376027411.94855.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52063DED.1090002@canonizer.com> <1376225298.15317.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376227719.83936.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376230725.75805.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376248401.26274.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376336745.7974.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376514912.85226.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <520E973E.1020309@libero.it> <520ECBF6.2070300@verizon.net> <520F9D66.3010104@libero.it> Message-ID: Guys, In my mind, you guys are wasting your time on this. Can you show me convincing quantitative evidence that the amount of coins being mined, vs what everyone expected, is in any way significant to any Bitcoin pricing? Even if things don't adjust very fast, when things do adjust, they will catch up, making a huge adjustment. In other words, these small variations don't really have any significance, do they? Brent Allsop On Sat, Aug 17, 2013 at 9:57 AM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 17/08/2013 03:03, Alan Grimes ha scritto: > > Mirco Romanato wrote: > >> The current internal inflation of Bitcoin is around par with the US$ > >> (because for various reasons the network is finding new blocks faster > >> than designed, for now). > > > > I don't understand. I thought there was an algorithm in place that would > > simply increase the difficulty of the next block until the rate came > > back into balance? > > There is, but the algorithm readjust the difficulty every N blocks, and > N is large. > As the hashing rate of the network increase because of technological > improvements, the difficulty readjust with a notable lag. > > http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ > > IIRC, every readjustment should happen every two weeks and currently > happen every eleven days. Faster blocks are discovered faster the > readjustement happen. > > Mirco > _______________________________________________ > 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 painlord2k at libero.it Tue Aug 20 21:00:47 2013 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 23:00:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [mta] Re: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"? In-Reply-To: References: <51FE984E.4000604@canonizer.com> <1375853588.45761.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52038F32.8020000@canonizer.com> <1375990692.10973.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1375998402.36565.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5204616F.5090504@canonizer.com> <1376027411.94855.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <52063DED.1090002@canonizer.com> <1376225298.15317.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376227719.83936.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376230725.75805.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376248401.26274.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376336745.7974.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1376514912.85226.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <520E973E.1020309@libero.it> <520ECBF6.2070300@verizon.net> <520F9D66.3010104@libero.it> Message-ID: <5213D8FF.9030405@libero.it> Il 20/08/2013 21:45, Brent Allsop ha scritto: > > Guys, > > In my mind, you guys are wasting your time on this. Can you show me > convincing quantitative evidence that the amount of coins being mined, > vs what everyone expected, is in any way significant to any Bitcoin > pricing? Even if things don't adjust very fast, when things do adjust, > they will catch up, making a huge adjustment. In other words, these > small variations don't really have any significance, do they? Yes and not. An higher inflation rate now imply a lower inflation rate later. The problems could be a few, anyway: 1) As the network grow in uses and users the fees should become a greater share of the income of miners. But, if more blocks are mined now, less blocks would be mined later. This could cause a sudden reduction of income for miners (probably) forcing some to quit mining because the fees are not enough to compensate the reduction of mined coins. 2) a sudden reduction of mining power would cause the medium time between block discovery to raise significantly. Maybe from 10 minutes to 15 or 20 minutes. Would not be good for the network efficiency. So, there could be a few problems, but I'm not too worried about. Mirco From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Aug 21 04:31:29 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan Ust) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 21:31:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Proofs of the Tri-Dimensionality of Space In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4EDAD53A-4E7A-41F1-B51E-BD225A6D8859@yahoo.com> http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/ccallender/index_files/An%20Answer%20in%20Search%20of%20a%20Question4.doc Comments? I'm interested in the literature in arguments for physical space having n dimensions. Any good reads you can recommend in this area? Regards, Dan See my SF short story "Residue": http://www.amazon.com/Residue-ebook/dp/B00BS3T0RM/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed Aug 21 09:13:35 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 10:13:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Proofs of the Tri-Dimensionality of Space In-Reply-To: <4EDAD53A-4E7A-41F1-B51E-BD225A6D8859@yahoo.com> References: <4EDAD53A-4E7A-41F1-B51E-BD225A6D8859@yahoo.com> Message-ID: <521484BF.1010605@aleph.se> On 21/08/2013 05:31, Dan Ust wrote: > http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/ccallender/index_files/An%20Answer%20in%20Search%20of%20a%20Question4.doc > > Comments? I'm interested in the literature in arguments for physical > space having n dimensions. Any good reads you can recommend in this area? > I got my earliest introduction in Barrow and Tipler's "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle". Max Tegmark has a few nice papers too. L?mmerzahl and Macias try to prove it using the Dirac equation instead: http://www.zarm.uni-bremen.de/uploads/tx_sibibtex/1993LaemmerzahlMacias_Dimen_JMP.pdf Caruso instead argues that the formation of life puts in the constraint, and points out that it looks unavoidable to get some form of the anthropic principle to do the work in this kind of argument: http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.0684v1 Some other books are "Relativity and the Dimensionality of the World" ed. Vesselin Petkov, Springer 2007, apparently a sequel to the more philosophical "The Ontology of Spacetime". But as the initial paper shows, there are deeper problems in how one can "prove" it than most papers discuss. I know philosophers of physics wrestle with this quite a lot. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed Aug 21 12:45:57 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 14:45:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Forced Exposure: Groklaw closes down Message-ID: <20130821124557.GJ29404@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from nettime's silenced dissenter ----- Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 07:34:03 +0200 From: nettime's silenced dissenter To: nettime-l at mx.kein.org Subject: Forced Exposure: Groklaw closes down User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130803 Thunderbird/17.0.8 Reply-To: a moderated mailing list for net criticism Forced Exposure ~pj Tuesday, August 20 2013 @ 02:40 AM EDT http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175 The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too. There is no way to do Groklaw without email. Therein lies the conundrum. What to do? What to do? I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure it out. And the conclusion I've reached is that there is no way to continue doing Groklaw, not long term, which is incredibly sad. But it's good to be realistic. And the simple truth is, no matter how good the motives might be for collecting and screening everything we say to one another, and no matter how "clean" we all are ourselves from the standpoint of the screeners, I don't know how to function in such an atmosphere. I don't know how to do Groklaw like this. Years ago, when I was first on my own, I arrived in New York City, and being naive about the ways of evil doers in big cities, I rented a cheap apartment on the top floor of a six-floor walkup, in the back of the building. That of course, as all seasoned New Yorkers could have told me, meant that a burglar could climb the fire escape or get to the roof by going to the top floor via the stairs inside and then through the door to the roof and climb down to the open window of my apartment. That is exactly what happened. I wasn't there when it happened, so I wasn't hurt in any way physically. And I didn't then own much of any worth, so only a few things were taken. But everything had been pawed through and thrown about. I can't tell how deeply disturbing it is to know that someone, some stranger, has gone through and touched all your underwear, looked at all your photographs of your family, and taken some small piece of jewelry that's been in your family for generations. If it's ever happened to you, you know I couldn't live there any more, not one night more. It turned out, by the way, according to my neighbors, that it was almost certainly the janitor's son, which stunned me at the time but didn't seem to surprise any of my more-seasoned neighbors. The police just told me not to expect to get anything back. I felt assaulted. The underwear was perfectly normal underwear. Nothing kinky or shameful, but it was the idea of them being touched by someone I didn't know or want touching them. I threw them away, unused ever again. I feel like that now, knowing that persons I don't know can paw through all my thoughts and hopes and plans in my emails with you. They tell us that if you send or receive an email from outside the US, it will be read. If it's encrypted, they keep it for five years, presumably in the hopes of tech advancing to be able to decrypt it against your will and without your knowledge. Groklaw has readers all over the world. I'm not a political person, by choice, and I must say, researching the latest developments convinced me of one thing -- I am right to avoid it. There is a scripture that says, It doesn't belong to man even to direct his step. And it's true. I see now clearly that it's true. Humans are just human, and we don't know what to do in our own lives half the time, let alone how to govern other humans successfully. And it shows. What form of government hasn't been tried? None of them satisfy everyone. So I think we did that experiment. I don't expect great improvement. I remember 9/11 vividly. I had a family member who was supposed to be in the World Trade Center that morning, and when I watched on live television the buildings go down with living beings inside, I didn't know that she had been late that day and so was safe. Does it matter, though, if you knew anyone specifically, as we watched fellow human beings hold hands and jump out of windows of skyscrapers to a certain death below or watched the buildings crumble into dust, knowing there were so many people just like us being turned into dust as well? I cried for weeks, in a way I've never cried before, or since, and I'll go to my grave remembering it and feeling it. And part of my anguish was that there were people in the world willing to do that to other people, fellow human beings, people they didn't even know, civilians uninvolved in any war. I sound quaint, I suppose. But I always tell you the truth, and that is what I was feeling. So imagine how I feel now, imagining as I must what kind of world we are living in if the governments of the world think total surveillance is an appropriate thing? I know. It may not even be about that. But what if it is? Do we even know? I don't know. What I do know is it's not possible to be fully human if you are being surveilled 24/7. Harvard's Berkman Center had an online class on cybersecurity and internet privacy some years ago, and the resources of the class are still online. It was about how to enhance privacy in an online world, speaking of quaint, with titles of articles like, "Is Big Brother Listening?" And how. You'll find all the laws in the US related to privacy and surveillance there. Not that anyone seems to follow any laws that get in their way these days. Or if they find they need a law to make conduct lawful, they just write a new law or reinterpret an old one and keep on going. That's not the rule of law as I understood the term. Anyway, one resource was excerpts from a book by Janna Malamud Smith,"Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life", and I encourage you to read it. I encourage the President and the NSA to read it too. I know. They aren't listening to me. Not that way, anyhow. But it's important, because the point of the book is that privacy is vital to being human, which is why one of the worst punishments there is is total surveillance: One way of beginning to understand privacy is by looking at what happens to people in extreme situations where it is absent. Recalling his time in Auschwitz, Primo Levi observed that "solitude in a Camp is more precious and rare than bread." Solitude is one state of privacy, and even amidst the overwhelming death, starvation, and horror of the camps, Levi knew he missed it.... Levi spent much of his life finding words for his camp experience. How, he wonders aloud in Survival in Auschwitz, do you describe "the demolition of a man," an offense for which "our language lacks words."... One function of privacy is to provide a safe space away from terror or other assaultive experiences. When you remove a person's ability to sequester herself, or intimate information about herself, you make her extremely vulnerable.... The totalitarian state watches everyone, but keeps its own plans secret. Privacy is seen as dangerous because it enhances resistance. Constantly spying and then confronting people with what are often petty transgressions is a way of maintaining social control and unnerving and disempowering opposition.... And even when one shakes real pursuers, it is often hard to rid oneself of the feeling of being watched -- which is why surveillance is an extremely powerful way to control people. The mind's tendency to still feel observed when alone... can be inhibiting. ... Feeling watched, but not knowing for sure, nor knowing if, when, or how the hostile surveyor may strike, people often become fearful, constricted, and distracted. I've quoted from that book before, back when the CNET reporters' emails were read by HP. We thought that was awful. And it was. HP ended up giving them money to try to make it up to them. Little did we know. Ms. Smith continues: Safe privacy is an important component of autonomy, freedom, and thus psychological well-being, in any society that values individuals. ... Summed up briefly, a statement of "how not to dehumanize people" might read: Don't terrorize or humiliate. Don't starve, freeze, exhaust. Don't demean or impose degrading submission. Don't force separation from loved ones. Don't make demands in an incomprehensible language. Don't refuse to listen closely. Don't destroy privacy. Terrorists of all sorts destroy privacy both by corrupting it into secrecy and by using hostile surveillance to undo its useful sanctuary. But if we describe a standard for treating people humanely, why does stripping privacy violate it? And what is privacy? In his landmark book, Privacy and Freedom, Alan Westin names four states of privacy: solitude, anonymity, reserve, and intimacy. The reasons for valuing privacy become more apparent as we explore these states.... The essence of solitude, and all privacy, is a sense of choice and control. You control who watches or learns about you. You choose to leave and return. ... Intimacy is a private state because in it people relax their public front either physically or emotionally or, occasionally, both. They tell personal stories, exchange looks, or touch privately. They may ignore each other without offending. They may have sex. They may speak frankly using words they would not use in front of others, expressing ideas and feelings -- positive or negative -- that are unacceptable in public. (I don't think I ever got over his death. She seems unable to stop lying to her mother. He looks flabby in those running shorts. I feel horny. In spite of everything, I still long to see them. I am so angry at you I could scream. That joke is disgusting, but it's really funny.) Shielded from forced exposure, a person often feels more able to expose himself. I hope that makes it clear why I can't continue. There is now no shield from forced exposure. Nothing in that parenthetical thought list is terrorism-related, but no one can feel protected enough from forced exposure any more to say anything the least bit like that to anyone in an email, particularly from the US out or to the US in, but really anywhere. You don't expect a stranger to read your private communications to a friend. And once you know they can, what is there to say? Constricted and distracted. That's it exactly. That's how I feel. So. There we are. The foundation of Groklaw is over. I can't do Groklaw without your input. I was never exaggerating about that when we won awards. It really was a collaborative effort, and there is now no private way, evidently, to collaborate. I'm really sorry that it's so. I loved doing Groklaw, and I believe we really made a significant contribution. But even that turns out to be less than we thought, or less than I hoped for, anyway. My hope was always to show you that there is beauty and safety in the rule of law, that civilization actually depends on it. How quaint. If you have to stay on the Internet, my research indicates that the short term safety from surveillance, to the degree that is even possible, is to use a service like Kolab for email, which is located in Switzerland, and hence is under different laws than the US, laws which attempt to afford more privacy to citizens. I have now gotten for myself an email there, p.jones at mykolab.com in case anyone wishes to contact me over something really important and feels squeamish about writing to an email address on a server in the US. But both emails still work. It's your choice. My personal decision is to get off of the Internet to the degree it's possible. I'm just an ordinary person. But I really know, after all my research and some serious thinking things through, that I can't stay online personally without losing my humanness, now that I know that ensuring privacy online is impossible. I find myself unable to write. I've always been a private person. That's why I never wanted to be a celebrity and why I fought hard to maintain both my privacy and yours. Oddly, if everyone did that, leap off the Internet, the world's economy would collapse, I suppose. I can't really hope for that. But for me, the Internet is over. So this is the last Groklaw article. I won't turn on comments. Thank you for all you've done. I will never forget you and our work together. I hope you'll remember me too. I'm sorry I can't overcome these feelings, but I yam what I yam, and I tried, but I can't. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime at kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From atymes at gmail.com Wed Aug 21 15:44:07 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 08:44:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Forced Exposure: Groklaw closes down In-Reply-To: <20130821124557.GJ29404@leitl.org> References: <20130821124557.GJ29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 5:45 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > My personal decision is to get off of the Internet to the degree it's > possible. > Some part of my mind can't help but wonder if this isn't the true objective of all this surveillance, or at least a significant part thereof. It's impossible to prevent all leaks; the public would find out something before long. And when it does, certain elements - inherently opposed to the establishment's interests - will conclude that they must withdraw from all the resources the Internet offers - depriving themselves of substantial advantage. Perhaps they try darknets or something else, but the Internet's power is in its massive network effect; no other network in the world is able to come close to its sheer audience size, or its collective breadth and depth of knowledge and expertise. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From matters21stcentury at yahoo.com Wed Aug 21 03:03:05 2013 From: matters21stcentury at yahoo.com (TwentFirstCentury Matters) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 20:03:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs In-Reply-To: <52135ABF.6030008@aleph.se> References: <20130820104607.GU29404@leitl.org> <52135ABF.6030008@aleph.se> Message-ID: <1377054185.75834.YahooMailNeo@web163406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> >"or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen)" ? Nightwatchmen, poodleclippers; poodleclippers for the nightwatchmen who own poodles... ? ? ? ? And what of 'the' military, Anders-- isn't it all really a protection racket? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Aug 21 19:55:45 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 13:55:45 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Fukushima now officially an emergency In-Reply-To: <003301ce9386$fbd4c890$f37e59b0$@rainier66.com> References: <003301ce9386$fbd4c890$f37e59b0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 9:58 AM, spike wrote: > >?In 2011 the Fukushima nuclear power plant melted down and killed > nobody. ?John K Clark > > The 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown killed the future of the nuclear power > industry. For the foreseeable, the investment capital community will not > touch it. I would be surprised if we see any new nuke plants built in the > next two decades. Casualties or otherwise, this technology was killed dead > 2011. Tragic it is: there are ways to make a nuke plant safe, and put them > way the hell out where even an accident wouldn?t mess up a lot of developed > land. > > My prediction is that we will see no investor interest even in that for a > long time. > Sounds like a job for the government! Or so would say the pro-nuclear socialists, if you can find one. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed Aug 21 23:47:34 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 00:47:34 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Forced Exposure: Groklaw closes down In-Reply-To: References: <20130821124557.GJ29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <52155196.3000709@aleph.se> On 2013-08-21 16:44, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > It's impossible to prevent all leaks; the public would find out > something before long. And when it does, certain elements - > inherently opposed to the establishment's interests - will conclude > that they must withdraw from all the resources the Internet offers - > depriving themselves of substantial advantage. But this cuts both ways too. Something many commenter have noted is that the Wikileaks and Snowden leak show is that it is very hard to keep your own secrecy-preserving organisational darknet tight. The decision to reduce NSA sysadmins by 90% to increase scurity have been met with howls of laughter. If it was possible to run a darknet perfectly, so the inside had the information and could watch the outside, then the intelligence agencies would be much better off. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Wed Aug 21 23:30:43 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 00:30:43 +0100 Subject: [ExI] On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs In-Reply-To: <1377054185.75834.YahooMailNeo@web163406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <20130820104607.GU29404@leitl.org> <52135ABF.6030008@aleph.se> <1377054185.75834.YahooMailNeo@web163406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <52154DA3.9030305@aleph.se> On 2013-08-21 04:03, TwentFirstCentury Matters wrote: > > And what of 'the' military, Anders-- isn't it all really a protection > racket? Some of it, sometimes. But remember that your body spends around 10% of its metabolism on the immune system, and your computer probably burns more cycles on antivirus/firewall software than most other things. A system in a world of parasites and adversaries needs to spend effort on defence or it will cease to exist. The key question is whether the equilibrium reached is rational or just a stable equilibrium. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Thu Aug 22 11:29:32 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 04:29:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light Message-ID: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> I am in a spaceship accelerating away from earth and approaching the speed of light. I have a flashlight. My instruments tell me that the light emitted from my flashlight travels at c. This is true no matter whether I shine it forward in the direction of my travel or backward toward the rear of the ship.? I am accelerating away from earth such that my ship's velocity relative to earth compared to c is halved in each time period. For example at time t, my ship is travelling at 90% of c. At t2, my ship is travelling at 95% of c. At t3, my ship is travelling at 97.5% of c, and so on for an infinite amount of time as I approach c. I think my flashlight will forever work normally from my point of view. I understand it is problematic to speak of massive objects actually travelling *at* c, but it seems me that *in the limit* as I approach c (as above), c is still a constant in my frame of reference. And how is this any different from saying that if my ship is travelling at c, the light from my flashlight still travels in my direction of travel at c relative to my flashlight? Am I missing anything here? This is not my area of expertise and I have some friends in another forum who think I am crazy.? Gordon ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Aug 22 12:27:53 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 13:27:53 +0100 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 12:29 PM, Gordon wrote: > I am in a spaceship accelerating away from earth and approaching the speed > of light. I have a flashlight. My instruments tell me that the light emitted > from my flashlight travels at c. This is true no matter whether I shine it > forward in the direction of my travel or backward toward the rear of the > ship. > > I understand it is problematic to speak of massive objects actually > travelling *at* c, but it seems me that *in the limit* as I approach c (as > above), c is still a constant in my frame of reference. And how is this any > different from saying that if my ship is travelling at c, the light from my > flashlight still travels in my direction of travel at c relative to my > flashlight? > > Am I missing anything here? This is not my area of expertise and I have some > friends in another forum who think I am crazy. > > This is an old question. Google will explain. The same question worried Einstein, so he was forced to inven the Theory of Relativity. BillK From atymes at gmail.com Thu Aug 22 17:56:52 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 10:56:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Aug 22, 2013 4:43 AM, "Gordon" wrote: > I understand it is problematic to speak of massive objects actually travelling *at* c, but it seems me that *in the limit* as I approach c (as above), c is still a constant in my frame of reference. And how is this any different from saying that if my ship is travelling at c, the light from my flashlight still travels in my direction of travel at c relative to my flashlight? What you're missing is time dilation. That is, you appear to react slower to the universe/the universe speeds up from your point of view. In both perspectives, the light from your flashlight proceeds ahead at c, but your clock (by which you measure meters per second) slows down. (IIRC, there's also distance compression along your axis of motion.) This only works so long as there is some gap, however small, between your velocity and c. However, you also gain mass as you near c, so conventional means of acceleration can never quite boost you all the way. (That is, something gets pushed backward - slowing down and in this case thus losing mass - to boost your momentum a little bit more. It's akin to Zeno's paradox.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Aug 22 19:04:19 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 20:04:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Optogenetics for transcription and epigenetics Message-ID: <521660B3.1030708@aleph.se> This is pretty nifty: optical control of gene expression and epigenetics in nerve cells. Like optogenetics, but allowing primed cells to be transformed by laser. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vnfv/ncurrent/full/nature12466.html Optical control of mammalian endogenous transcription and epigenetic states > The dynamic nature of gene expression enables cellular programming, > homeostasis and environmental adaptation in living systems. Dissection > of causal gene functions in cellular and organismal processes > therefore necessitates approaches that enable spatially and temporally > precise modulation of gene expression. Recently, a variety of > microbial and plant-derived light-sensitive proteins have been > engineered as optogenetic actuators, enabling high-precision > spatiotemporal control of many cellular functions^1 > , > 2 > , > 3 > , > 4 > , > 5 > , > 6 > , > 7 > , > 8 > , > 9 > , > 10 > , > 11 > > . However, versatile and robust technologies that enable optical > modulation of transcription in the mammalian endogenous genome remain > elusive. Here we describe the development of light-inducible > transcriptional effectors (LITEs), an optogenetic two-hybrid system > integrating the customizable TALE DNA-binding domain^12 > , > 13 > , > 14 > > with the light-sensitive cryptochrome 2 protein and its interacting > partner CIB1 from /Arabidopsis thaliana/. LITEs do not require > additional exogenous chemical cofactors, are easily customized to > target many endogenous genomic loci, and can be activated within > minutes with reversibility^6 > , > 15 > > . LITEs can be packaged into viral vectors and genetically targeted to > probe specific cell populations. We have applied this system in > primary mouse neurons, as well as in the brain of freely behaving mice > /in vivo/ to mediate reversible modulation of mammalian endogenous > gene expression as well as targeted epigenetic chromatin > modifications. The LITE system establishes a novel mode of optogenetic > control of endogenous cellular processes and enables direct testing of > the causal roles of genetic and epigenetic regulation in normal > biological processes and disease states. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Aug 22 19:58:47 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 15:58:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 7:29 AM, Gordon wrote: > I am in a spaceship accelerating away from earth and approaching the > speed of light. I have a flashlight. My instruments tell me that the light > emitted from my flashlight travels at c. This is true no matter whether I > shine it forward in the direction of my travel or backward toward the rear > of the ship. > I am accelerating away from earth such that my ship's velocity relative to > earth compared to c is halved in each time period. For example at time t, > my ship is travelling at 90% of c. At t2, my ship is travelling at 95% of > c. At t3, my ship is travelling at 97.5% of c, and so on for an infinite > amount of time as I approach c. > It's OK for thought experiments to be wildly impractical but they must be physically possible, and the above experiment would not only take an infinite amount of time to perform it would also take an infinite amount of energy. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Aug 22 20:14:32 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 16:14:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 Adrian Tymes wrote: > > What you're missing is time dilation. That is, you appear to react > slower to the universe/the universe speeds up from your point of view. > Not necessarily, I'm accelerating and so Special Relativity isn't enough, I've got to use General Relativity too; the fact that I'm moving fast relative to earth makes things on the Earth seem to move more slowly, but the fact that I'm accelerating makes them seem to move faster. So it depends on how fast I'm moving and how fast I'm accelerating. If I'm accelerating quickly or in a deep gravity well then things that are not accelerating or in a gravity well will appear to me to be moving faster. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Aug 22 21:23:59 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 22:23:59 +0100 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5216816F.7080907@aleph.se> On 22/08/2013 21:14, John Clark wrote: > On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 Adrian Tymes > wrote: > > > What you're missing is time dilation. That is, you appear to > react slower to the universe/the universe speeds up from your > point of view. > > Not necessarily, I'm accelerating and so Special Relativity isn't > enough, I've got to use General Relativity too; Actually, this is a case where you can use SR - most textbooks on special relativity discuss uniform acceleration. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/acceleration.html -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Aug 22 21:29:01 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 22:29:01 +0100 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5216829D.9010005@aleph.se> On 22/08/2013 20:58, John Clark wrote: > On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 7:29 AM, Gordon > wrote: > > > I am in a spaceship accelerating away from earth and approaching > the speed of light. I have a flashlight. My instruments tell me > that the light emitted from my flashlight travels at c. This is > true no matter whether I shine it forward in the direction of my > travel or backward toward the rear of the ship. > I am accelerating away from earth such that my ship's velocity > relative to earth compared to c is halved in each time period. For > example at time t, my ship is travelling at 90% of c. At t2, my > ship is travelling at 95% of c. At t3, my ship is travelling at > 97.5% of c, and so on for an infinite amount of time as I approach c. > > > It's OK for thought experiments to be wildly impractical but they must > be physically possible, and the above experiment would not only take > an infinite amount of time to perform it would also take an infinite > amount of energy. However, the conclusion about infinite time and energy are a *result* of doing the Einstein thought experiment properly. You cannot dismiss the lightspeed case straight away. Einstein had a nifty way of showing that there is something problematic going on in this case, which I think was one of his primary reasons for developing the full theory: suppose you run past an electromagnetic wave while travelling at c. What do you see? It ought to be static in your reference frame, but in that case it breaks Maxwell's laws. So either electrodynamics is wrong, or the velocity addition formula is wrong (and we already have some suspicions since light seem to move at c regardless of speed). So let's see what happens if we assume the velocity addition formula has to be something else... -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri Aug 23 03:13:32 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 20:13:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Adrian Tymes wrote: >What you're missing is time dilation.? That is, you appear to react slower to the universe/the universe speeds up from your point of view.? In both perspectives, the light >from your flashlight proceeds ahead at c, but your clock (by which you measure meters per second) slows down.? That is not my understanding of time dilation, or perhaps I misunderstand what you're saying. My clock on board the ship appears to me to work normally. It is only relative to some other clock perhaps back on earth it seems to slow down. I'm flying along accelerating toward c. In the limit as I approach c, my flashlight still works normally from my perspective. If I shine it out the front window in the direction of my travel, that light will travel forward away from me at c. This might seem odd to me given my knowledge of my speed relative to earth. I might think "How can light travel at the ~2x the speed of light?" But my instruments will show me that the light from my flashlight travels at c, not 2c.? Correct? >However, you also gain mass as you near c, I gain mass in my own frame of reference? That is not my understanding. I'm not especially interested in how things seem from outside my ship.? Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 23 03:53:27 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 20:53:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <045c01ce9fb4$5387a010$fa96e030$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Gordon Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2013 8:14 PM To: Adrian Tymes Cc: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light Adrian Tymes wrote: >>.What you're missing is time dilation. That is, you appear to react slower to the universe/the universe speeds up from your point of view. In both perspectives, the light >from your flashlight proceeds ahead at c, but your clock (by which you measure meters per second) slows down. >.That is not my understanding of time dilation, or perhaps I misunderstand what you're saying. My clock on board the ship appears to me to work normally. It is only relative to some other clock perhaps back on earth it seems to slow down.Gordon No. The clocks on earth and aboard the ship both appear normal from the point of view of the person right there with them. The clocks aboard the ship appears to be slow from the point of view of earth, but the clock on earth appears to be going slow from the point of view of the spaceship. >From each point of view, both observers see the other guy's clock as moving slow. Relativity is weird. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri Aug 23 04:07:00 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 21:07:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: <045c01ce9fb4$5387a010$fa96e030$@att.net> References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <045c01ce9fb4$5387a010$fa96e030$@att.net> Message-ID: <1377230820.52790.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Spike, >>?That is not my understanding of time dilation, or perhaps I misunderstand what you're saying. My clock on board the ship appears to me to work normally. It is only relative to some other clock perhaps back on earth it seems to slow down?Gordon ? >No.? The clocks on earth and aboard the ship both appear normal from the point of view of the person right there with them.? The clocks aboard the ship appears to be slow from the point of view of earth, but the clock on earth appears to be going slow from the point of view of the spaceship.? From each point of view, both observers see the other guy?s clock as moving slow.< ? How is that different from I just wrote above? Gordon? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 23 04:10:56 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 21:10:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: <1377230820.52790.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <045c01ce9fb4$5387a010$fa96e030$@att.net> <1377230820.52790.YahooMailNeo@web121203.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <049101ce9fb6$c4d2b2d0$4e781870$@att.net> From: Gordon [mailto:gts_2000 at yahoo.com] Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2013 9:07 PM To: spike; 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light Spike, >>?That is not my understanding of time dilation, or perhaps I misunderstand what you're saying. My clock on board the ship appears to me to work normally. It is only relative to some other clock perhaps back on earth it seems to slow down?Gordon >>?No. The clocks on earth and aboard the ship both appear normal from the point of view of the person right there with them. The clocks aboard the ship appears to be slow from the point of view of earth, but the clock on earth appears to be going slow from the point of view of the spaceship. From each point of view, both observers see the other guy?s clock as moving slow.< >?How is that different from I just wrote above? Gordon No, I should have said, Yes. The clocks on earth, etc? Reversed the sign, my apologies. {8-] spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wincat at swbell.net Fri Aug 23 05:08:00 2013 From: wincat at swbell.net (Norman Jacobs) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 00:08:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: <5216829D.9010005@aleph.se> References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5216829D.9010005@aleph.se> Message-ID: <003a01ce9fbe$bd6e7b20$384b7160$@net> If there is no time, then light has no speed, so we can move at will throughout the universe (to any position), unless we get sucked into a black hole. From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2013 4:29 PM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light On 22/08/2013 20:58, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 7:29 AM, Gordon wrote: > I am in a spaceship accelerating away from earth and approaching the speed of light. I have a flashlight. My instruments tell me that the light emitted from my flashlight travels at c. This is true no matter whether I shine it forward in the direction of my travel or backward toward the rear of the ship. I am accelerating away from earth such that my ship's velocity relative to earth compared to c is halved in each time period. For example at time t, my ship is travelling at 90% of c. At t2, my ship is travelling at 95% of c. At t3, my ship is travelling at 97.5% of c, and so on for an infinite amount of time as I approach c. It's OK for thought experiments to be wildly impractical but they must be physically possible, and the above experiment would not only take an infinite amount of time to perform it would also take an infinite amount of energy. However, the conclusion about infinite time and energy are a *result* of doing the Einstein thought experiment properly. You cannot dismiss the lightspeed case straight away. Einstein had a nifty way of showing that there is something problematic going on in this case, which I think was one of his primary reasons for developing the full theory: suppose you run past an electromagnetic wave while travelling at c. What do you see? It ought to be static in your reference frame, but in that case it breaks Maxwell's laws. So either electrodynamics is wrong, or the velocity addition formula is wrong (and we already have some suspicions since light seem to move at c regardless of speed). So let's see what happens if we assume the velocity addition formula has to be something else... -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University _____ No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.3392 / Virus Database: 3211/6600 - Release Date: 08/22/13 _____ No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.3392 / Virus Database: 3211/6600 - Release Date: 08/22/13 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri Aug 23 06:50:41 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 23:50:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377239490.83168.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1377240641.23549.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Adrian Tymes wrote: > > >On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 8:13 PM, Gordon wrote: > >That is not my understanding of time dilation, or perhaps I misunderstand what you're saying. My clock on board the ship appears to me to work normally. It is only relative to some other clock perhaps back on earth it seems to slow down. > > >>Yes, that is what time dilation is: relative to some other clock, in some other frame of reference. > > > >Good. >? >I'm flying along accelerating toward c. In the limit as I approach c, my flashlight still works normally from my perspective. If I shine it out the front window in the direction of my travel, that light will travel forward away from me at c. This might seem odd to me given my knowledge of my speed relative to earth. I might think "How can light travel at the ~2x the speed of light?" But my instruments will show me that the light from my flashlight travels at c, not 2c.? >> >> >>Correct? > > >>Correct. ? > > >Good, thanks. Now what does it mean to say, as I do and you seem to agree, "in the limit as I approach c"? You'll recall that I am accelerating toward c relative to earth such that the difference between my speed and c is halved in each time period. In theory I never reach c, so I needn't worry about the supposed impossibility of a massive object moving at c, but I do become infinitely close to c. This seems fine until one considers that .999... 1. > > >I have a friend in another forum who says I must be talking nonsense; that perhaps impossible things happen at impossible speeds, but there is no way to know. > > >Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Fri Aug 23 07:13:32 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 09:13:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: <003a01ce9fbe$bd6e7b20$384b7160$@net> References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5216829D.9010005@aleph.se> <003a01ce9fbe$bd6e7b20$384b7160$@net> Message-ID: The Relativity is either solid, either it only appears solid. Poking it, shouldn't harm, on the contrary! I try to poke it myself, too, http://protokol2020.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/extreme-cases-in-relativity/ On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 7:08 AM, Norman Jacobs wrote: > If there is no time, then light has no speed, so we can move at will > throughout the universe (to any position), unless we get sucked into a > black hole.**** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > *From:* extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto: > extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On Behalf Of *Anders Sandberg > *Sent:* Thursday, August 22, 2013 4:29 PM > *To:* extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light**** > > ** ** > > On 22/08/2013 20:58, John Clark wrote:**** > > On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 7:29 AM, Gordon wrote:**** > > ** ** > > > I am in a spaceship accelerating away from earth and approaching the > speed of light. I have a flashlight. My instruments tell me that the light > emitted from my flashlight travels at c. This is true no matter whether I > shine it forward in the direction of my travel or backward toward the rear > of the ship. **** > > I am accelerating away from earth such that my ship's velocity relative to > earth compared to c is halved in each time period. For example at time t, > my ship is travelling at 90% of c. At t2, my ship is travelling at 95% of > c. At t3, my ship is travelling at 97.5% of c, and so on for an infinite > amount of time as I approach c.**** > > ** ** > > It's OK for thought experiments to be wildly impractical but they must be > physically possible, and the above experiment would not only take an > infinite amount of time to perform it would also take an infinite amount of > energy.**** > > > However, the conclusion about infinite time and energy are a *result* of > doing the Einstein thought experiment properly. You cannot dismiss the > lightspeed case straight away. > > Einstein had a nifty way of showing that there is something problematic > going on in this case, which I think was one of his primary reasons for > developing the full theory: suppose you run past an electromagnetic wave > while travelling at c. What do you see? It ought to be static in your > reference frame, but in that case it breaks Maxwell's laws. So either > electrodynamics is wrong, or the velocity addition formula is wrong (and we > already have some suspicions since light seem to move at c regardless of > speed). So let's see what happens if we assume the velocity addition > formula has to be something else... > > > **** > > -- **** > > Anders Sandberg,**** > > Future of Humanity Institute **** > > Oxford Martin School **** > > Faculty of Philosophy **** > > Oxford University **** > > ------------------------------ > > No virus found in this message. > Checked by AVG - www.avg.com > Version: 2013.0.3392 / Virus Database: 3211/6600 - Release Date: 08/22/13* > *** > ------------------------------ > > No virus found in this message. > Checked by AVG - www.avg.com > Version: 2013.0.3392 / Virus Database: 3211/6600 - Release Date: 08/22/13 > > _______________________________________________ > 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Aug 23 14:31:19 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 10:31:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: <5216816F.7080907@aleph.se> References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5216816F.7080907@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 5:23 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > >>> What you're missing is time dilation. That is, you appear to react >> slower to the universe/the universe speeds up from your point of view. >> > >> Not necessarily, I'm accelerating and so Special Relativity isn't > enough, I've got to use General Relativity too; > > > > Actually, this is a case where you can use SR - most textbooks on > special relativity discuss uniform acceleration. > Yes, you are entirely correct, I was being sloppy. You only need General Relativity if gravity is involved, that is to say when spacetime is not flat. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Aug 23 15:17:43 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 11:17:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] God's God Message-ID: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODetOE6cbbc -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Aug 23 15:46:52 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 08:46:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: <1377240641.23549.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377239490.83168.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377240641.23549.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 11:50 PM, Gordon wrote: > Good, thanks. Now what does it mean to say, as I do and you seem to agree, > "in the limit as I approach c"? You'll recall that I am accelerating toward > c relative to earth such that the difference between my speed and c is > halved in each time period. In theory I never reach c, so I needn't worry > about the supposed impossibility of a massive object moving at c, but I do > become infinitely close to c. This seems fine until one considers that > .999... 1. > > That last sentence is unclear. What do you mean by ".999...1"? The straight reading is "from .999 to as close to 1 as makes no difference", except in this case, it matters that there is a difference, however small. Also, for any real case, you have finite acceleration over finite time. The universe has not existed for infinite time, and the common theories have it that the universe will not exist for an infinite future time, so you don't have infinite time in which to accelerate. (If you find a way to skip out on the universe's eventual fate, the mechanics of how you do that probably matter.) Therefore you can't get "infinitely close to c". -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri Aug 23 16:52:00 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 09:52:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377239490.83168.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377240641.23549.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1377276720.90469.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Adrian Tymes wrote: On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 11:50 PM, Gordon wrote: Good, thanks. Now what does it mean to say, as I do and you seem to agree, "in the limit as I approach c"? You'll recall that I am accelerating toward c relative to earth such that the difference between my speed and c is halved in each time period. In theory I never reach c, so I needn't worry about the supposed impossibility of a massive object moving at c, but I do become infinitely close to c. This seems fine until one considers that .999... 1. >That last sentence is unclear.? What do you mean by ".999...1"??? I think it is a fact of mathematics that .99... carried out to an infinite number of 9s is equal to 1. ?No?? If true then when I say "in the limit when I approach c" it means that in the limit I am travelling at c. Or at least I don't see the difference. > Also, for any real case, you have finite acceleration over finite time. I suppose so, but we are talking theory here. I can accelerate for an infinite amount of time such until I reach c in the limit.? Perhaps calculus does not apply to these questions. I don't know. I think you also mentioned Zeno's paradox, which I agree might apply. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Aug 23 18:14:18 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 20:14:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: <1377276720.90469.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377239490.83168.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377240641.23549.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377276720.90469.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5217A67A.90507@aleph.se> On 2013-08-23 18:52, Gordon wrote: > Adrian Tymes wrote: > > >That last sentence is unclear. What do you mean by ".999...1"? > > I think it is a fact of mathematics that .99... carried out to an > infinite number of 9s is equal to 1. No? Yes, the symbolic meaning of "0.9999..." corresponds to the real number 1. It if one of the less well known facts that the number system we use actually has non-unique number representations. Causes no end of internet debates. > > If true then when I say "in the limit when I approach c" it means that > in the limit I am travelling at c. Or at least I don't see the difference. "In the limit" is a bit subtle. It does not mean that "in the limit of x approaching y" x becomes exactly y, only that x becomes as close to y as anybody can wish. "1/x goes to infinity in the limit as a positive x approaches zero" does not mean 1/0 *is* infinity (especially since stuff goes more and more negative if you approach from the negative side). -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 23 18:34:54 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 11:34:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: <06ca01cea019$66b8d9a0$342a8ce0$@rainier66.com> References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377239490.83168.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377240641.23549.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <06ca01cea019$66b8d9a0$342a8ce0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <085e01cea02f$76398030$62ac8090$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Friday, August 23, 2013 8:47 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 11:50 PM, Gordon wrote: Good, thanks. Now what does it mean to say, as I do and you seem to agree, "in the limit as I approach c"? You'll recall that I am accelerating toward c relative to earth such that the difference between my speed and c is halved in each time period. In theory I never reach c, so I needn't worry about the supposed impossibility of a massive object moving at c, but I do become infinitely close to c. This seems fine until one considers that .999... 1. >.That last sentence is unclear. What do you mean by ".999...1"? The straight reading is "from .999 to as close to 1 as makes no difference", except in this case, it matters that there is a difference, however small. >.Also, for any real case, you have finite acceleration over finite time. The universe has not existed for infinite time, and the common theories have it that the universe will not exist for an infinite future time, so you don't have infinite time in which to accelerate. (If you find a way to skip out on the universe's eventual fate, the mechanics of how you do that probably matter.) Therefore you can't get "infinitely close to c". Ja. With c, everything is different from our normal experiences. In our world, 0.99999 etc is infinitely close to 1, and we can treat it as equal to 1. But 0.999999.c is still infinitely far from c. From the point of view of c, 0.99999.c is infinitesimally close to zero. Cool! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Aug 23 19:38:22 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 15:38:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: <5217A67A.90507@aleph.se> References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377239490.83168.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377240641.23549.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377276720.90469.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5217A67A.90507@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 2:14 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Yes, the symbolic meaning of "0.9999..." corresponds to the real number > 1. It if one of the less well known facts that the number system we use > actually has non-unique number representations. Causes no end of internet > debates. > > It's funny how people freak out over that too. However, 2^3 and 2*2*2 and 2+2+2+2 are all perfectly obvious ways to write 8. But wait... how can 8 be represented by two numbers, three numbers, and four numbers?!? because: Math. :) I'm happier with relativity being a best-so-far explanation* that seems to work well-enough for the people who use it. However, it doesn't help much for driving to the grocery store & buying nutritious food on which to live.... unless you're one of the few who get paid to think about / use relativity "for a living." * even if it's actually very good, time will tell if better exists. Geocentric cosmology was good-enough for a long time too. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Aug 23 20:23:50 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 16:23:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377239490.83168.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377240641.23549.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377276720.90469.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5217A67A.90507@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 3:38 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > I'm happier with relativity being a best-so-far explanation* that seems > to work well-enough for the people who use it. However, it doesn't help > much for driving to the grocery store > Actually not just relativity but General Relativity helps a lot if you're driving to the grocery store if you use GPS. Because the GPS satellites are moving fast Special Relativity says the atomic clocks on the satellites will fall behind clocks on the ground by 7 microseconds per day; but General relativity says that because those satellites are further from the Earth's core than you are and in a shallower gravity well the atomic clocks on the satellites will gain on the clocks on the ground by 45 microseconds per day. So when viewed from the surface the clocks in the satellites are ticking faster by 38 microseconds (45-7=38). Without correcting for relativity the error in GPS would grow by about 6 miles PER DAY and you'd never find the grocery store. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Aug 23 20:26:20 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 21:26:20 +0100 Subject: [ExI] FW: speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: <085e01cea02f$76398030$62ac8090$@att.net> References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377239490.83168.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377240641.23549.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <06ca01cea019$66b8d9a0$342a8ce0$@rainier66.com> <085e01cea02f$76398030$62ac8090$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 7:34 PM, spike wrote: > Ja. With c, everything is different from our normal experiences. In our > world, 0.99999 etc is infinitely close to 1, and we can treat it as equal to > 1. But 0.999999?c is still infinitely far from c. From the point of view > of c, 0.99999?c is infinitesimally close to zero. > > The problem for people new to relativity is that common sense doesn't apply. We're not in Kansas anymore. Relativity cannot be explained to someone by a few emails. I'm afraid it takes time and reading to assimilate new concepts. Relativity of simultaneity: Two events, simultaneous for one observer, may not be simultaneous for another observer if the observers are in relative motion. Time dilation: Moving clocks are measured to tick more slowly than an observer's "stationary" clock. Length contraction: Objects are measured to be shortened in the direction that they are moving with respect to the observer. Mass?energy equivalence: E = mc2, energy and mass are equivalent and transmutable. Maximum speed is finite: No physical object, message or field line can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. Having a go at explaining relativity in simple terms is a popular hobby. There are many articles and videos available on the net. Search for - explaining relativity -. BillK From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Aug 23 23:49:22 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 19:49:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377239490.83168.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377240641.23549.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377276720.90469.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <5217A67A.90507@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 4:23 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 3:38 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > >> > I'm happier with relativity being a best-so-far explanation* that seems >> to work well-enough for the people who use it. However, it doesn't help >> much for driving to the grocery store >> > > Actually not just relativity but General Relativity helps a lot if you're > driving to the grocery store if you use GPS. Because the GPS satellites are > moving fast Special Relativity says the atomic clocks on the satellites > will fall behind clocks on the ground by 7 microseconds per day; but > General relativity says that because those satellites are further from the > Earth's core than you are and in a shallower gravity well the atomic clocks > on the satellites will gain on the clocks on the ground by 45 microseconds > per day. So when viewed from the surface the clocks in the satellites are > ticking faster by 38 microseconds (45-7=38). Without correcting for > relativity the error in GPS would grow by about 6 miles PER DAY and you'd > never find the grocery store. > Ah touche. I don't use GPS to find the grocery store though, I still have some onboard CPU & memory left. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat Aug 24 04:41:47 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 21:41:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: <1377276720.90469.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377239490.83168.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377240641.23549.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377276720.90469.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Gordon wrote: > Adrian Tymes wrote: > > Also, for any real case, you have finite acceleration over finite time. > > I suppose so, but we are talking theory here. I can accelerate for an > infinite amount of time such until I reach c in the limit. > The fact that the universe has a finite life span might be inherently related - i.e., it makes no sense to talk about accelerating over infinite time, because infinite time never exists. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sat Aug 24 05:29:43 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 07:29:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377239490.83168.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377240641.23549.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377276720.90469.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > Actually not just relativity but General Relativity helps a lot if you're driving to the grocery store if you use GPS. He is using Newtonian mechanics even more. But it doesn't follow that all is well and okay with it. On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 6:41 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Gordon wrote: > >> Adrian Tymes wrote: >> > Also, for any real case, you have finite acceleration over finite time. >> >> I suppose so, but we are talking theory here. I can accelerate for an >> infinite amount of time such until I reach c in the limit. >> > > The fact that the universe has a finite life span might be inherently > related - i.e., it makes no sense to talk about accelerating over infinite > time, because infinite time never exists. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 max at maxmore.com Sat Aug 24 08:38:45 2013 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 01:38:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Optogenetics for transcription and epigenetics In-Reply-To: <521660B3.1030708@aleph.se> References: <521660B3.1030708@aleph.se> Message-ID: To paraphrase: All your base pairs are belong to us. --Max On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 12:04 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > This is pretty nifty: optical control of gene expression and epigenetics > in nerve cells. Like optogenetics, but allowing primed cells to be > transformed by laser. > > http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vnfv/ncurrent/full/nature12466.html > Optical control of mammalian endogenous transcription and epigenetic states > > The dynamic nature of gene expression enables cellular programming, > homeostasis and environmental adaptation in living systems. Dissection of > causal gene functions in cellular and organismal processes therefore > necessitates approaches that enable spatially and temporally precise > modulation of gene expression. Recently, a variety of microbial and > plant-derived light-sensitive proteins have been engineered as optogenetic > actuators, enabling high-precision spatiotemporal control of many cellular > functions1, > 2, > 3, > 4, > 5, > 6, > 7, > 8, > 9, > 10, > 11. > However, versatile and robust technologies that enable optical modulation > of transcription in the mammalian endogenous genome remain elusive. Here we > describe the development of light-inducible transcriptional effectors > (LITEs), an optogenetic two-hybrid system integrating the customizable TALE > DNA-binding domain12, > 13, > 14with the light-sensitive cryptochrome 2 protein and its interacting partner > CIB1 from *Arabidopsis thaliana*. LITEs do not require additional > exogenous chemical cofactors, are easily customized to target many > endogenous genomic loci, and can be activated within minutes with > reversibility6, > 15. > LITEs can be packaged into viral vectors and genetically targeted to probe > specific cell populations. We have applied this system in primary mouse > neurons, as well as in the brain of freely behaving mice *in vivo* to > mediate reversible modulation of mammalian endogenous gene expression as > well as targeted epigenetic chromatin modifications. The LITE system > establishes a novel mode of optogenetic control of endogenous cellular > processes and enables direct testing of the causal roles of genetic and > epigenetic regulation in normal biological processes and disease states. > > > -- > Anders Sandberg, > Future of Humanity Institute > Oxford Martin School > Faculty of Philosophy > Oxford University > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From matters21stcentury at yahoo.com Thu Aug 22 04:40:20 2013 From: matters21stcentury at yahoo.com (TwentFirstCentury Matters) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 21:40:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs In-Reply-To: <52154DA3.9030305@aleph.se> References: <20130820104607.GU29404@leitl.org> <52135ABF.6030008@aleph.se> <1377054185.75834.YahooMailNeo@web163406.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <52154DA3.9030305@aleph.se> Message-ID: <1377146420.93020.YahooMailNeo@web163405.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Am only reacting to: Eisenhower's having warned of military- industrial complex. Our spending a trillion+ in transforming Iraq from Sunni to Shiite. Our spending a trillion+ to? raise the standard of living in Afghanistan to the level of Chad's. And what is foreign aid? taking funds from the poor in rich nations to give to kleptocrats in poor nations?One is given to wonder wherein the rationality lies-- or any rationale whatsoever. ? ? >Some of it, sometimes. But remember that your body spends around 10% of its metabolism on the immune system, and your computer probably burns more cycles on antivirus/firewall software than most other things. A system in a world of parasites and adversaries needs to spend effort on defence or it will cease to exist. The key question is whether the equilibrium reached is rational or just a stable equilibrium. -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Sat Aug 24 17:09:18 2013 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 13:09:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] God's God In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: What do you think causes consciousness? (Hint: the entire universe is conscious) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Aug 24 17:14:19 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 13:14:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] God's God In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 1:09 PM, Will Steinberg wrote: > > What do you think causes consciousness? (Hint: the entire universe is > conscious) > I'll need a hell of a lot bigger hint than that! John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Sat Aug 24 17:15:04 2013 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 13:15:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] God's God In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Furthermore: I sometimes can't help but feel that you are an archetype in the hallway for me to learn from--and you from me! Nobody has any clue what is going on! But should the p value for my view fall below a level acceptable to most humans, I am gonna find myself hard pressed not to rub it in your archetype's face! Love ya JKC. If you haven't tried LSD it's never too late! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Sat Aug 24 17:19:33 2013 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 13:19:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] God's God In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Aug 24, 2013 1:15 PM, "John Clark" wrote: > > On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 1:09 PM, Will Steinberg wrote: >> >> > What do you think causes consciousness? (Hint: the entire universe is conscious) > > I'll need a hell of a lot bigger hint than that! > > John K Clark > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > Then I would say: the universe is material; you know this. Yet you perceive. Animals seem to as well. The paradox of consciousness is resolved by the fact that we have emerged from an evolving gradient of universal consciousness, that matter has as much consciousness as its informational constituents, that we are a sum consciousness of electron transfers around myriad atomic nuclei, that 'Gaia,' and every integrated system, is conscious, and that this is the ONLY rational view for a scientist. Everything else is anthropocentric garbage. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com Sat Aug 24 17:28:30 2013 From: ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com (ilsa) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 10:28:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] God's God In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Good for you Will. And thank you. Some years ago I hinted at this and was dropped kicked through the goal posts. Will, there is habitual resistance too. Smile, Ilsa On Aug 24, 2013 10:20 AM, "Will Steinberg" wrote: > > On Aug 24, 2013 1:15 PM, "John Clark" wrote: > > > > On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 1:09 PM, Will Steinberg < > steinberg.will at gmail.com> wrote: > >> > >> > What do you think causes consciousness? (Hint: the entire universe > is conscious) > > > > I'll need a hell of a lot bigger hint than that! > > > > John K Clark > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > Then I would say: the universe is material; you know this. Yet you > perceive. Animals seem to as well. The paradox of consciousness is > resolved by the fact that we have emerged from an evolving gradient of > universal consciousness, that matter has as much consciousness as its > informational constituents, that we are a sum consciousness of electron > transfers around myriad atomic nuclei, that 'Gaia,' and every integrated > system, is conscious, and that this is the ONLY rational view for a > scientist. Everything else is anthropocentric garbage. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sat Aug 24 17:44:00 2013 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 11:44:00 -0600 Subject: [ExI] God's God In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5218F0E0.9050706@canonizer.com> Hi Will, Consciousness includes a whole boat load of stuff, including memory, personality, phenomenal qualities, physical desires, decision making and information processing systems, myriads of diverse perception systems.... to mention just a few. Could you be a bit more specific? It helps, immensely, when people think and talk, a bit more clearly and specifically, when talking about this kind of stuff. Your question could be interpreted and answered a million different ways, non of which would communicate anything. For example, I hope you're not claiming that a rock, has the ability to perceive, and remember what it is perceiving, like is included in my 'consciousness'? But it sounds like you are making that claim? I'm in the following Emerging Expert consensus camps in this survey topic: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88 Approachable Via Science Representational Qualia Theory Dualism Property Dualism Mind-Brain Identity Theory And in the non consensus camps at this more specific level: Material Property Dualism Macro Material Property Dualism These camps predict that much of the physical stuff in the universe, at least something in our brain, has ineffable phenomenal qualities that are blind to cause and effect (requires qualitative interpretation) observation to 'see', unless you know how to properly interpret what you are abstractedly 'seeing'. So, yes, if what you mean by "the entire universe is conscious", is that the entire universe has these phenomenal or spiritual, if you will, qualities which are blind to traditional causal observation, then yes, I agree with you, it is likely that the entire universe has these qualities, which our brain merges or uses to 'paint' our unified phenomenal conscious experience with. And the emerging expert consensus is clearly in this camp. Given your question, it makes me wonder what you believe consciousness is. I'd sure like to know what camps you are in, and would love to find out how many experts there are that agree with you, compared to the existing camps, and be able to track this over time, as ever more demonstrable scientific evidence comes in (soon to force us all into the same camp). Upwards, Brent Allsop On 8/24/2013 11:09 AM, Will Steinberg wrote: > > What do you think causes consciousness? (Hint: the entire universe is > conscious) > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Aug 24 17:55:00 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 13:55:00 -0400 Subject: [ExI] God's God In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 Will Steinberg wrote: > The paradox of consciousness is resolved by [...] > My greatest difficulty in resolving the paradox of consciousness is figuring out what the hell the paradox of consciousness is. I figure that consciousness is what happens when things behave intelligently, or to say the same thing another way, consciousness is the way data feels like when it is being processed. I think consciousness is fundamental, that is to say I think a string of "why" questions cannot be infinitely long so at the end of that string you come to something fundamental. And so after that there is simply nothing more to say about consciousness or anything else that is fundamental; although there is a lot more to say about intelligence. Consciousness is easy but intelligence is hard. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Aug 24 18:14:08 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 11:14:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] God's God In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <01f601cea0f5$ba976a00$2fc63e00$@att.net> >> > .What do you think causes consciousness? (Hint: the entire universe is conscious) From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of ilsa Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2013 10:29 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] God's God >.Good for you Will. And thank you. Some years ago I hinted at this and was dropped kicked through the goal posts. Will, there is habitual resistance too. Smile, Ilsa Ilsa, you make it sound like a bad thing. Being kicked through the goal posts is a goal. The way I would go with it is to ask the question, are you conscious? If you answer yes, is it you that is conscious, or just your brain? If you answer only your brain is conscious, and the rest of it is supporting machinery, is it your whole brain, or just your frontal lobes that are conscious? Then you see where I am going, for I will next ask: which synapses and which dendrites are the conscious ones? All of those always? How many of the conscious ones does it take to be conscious? And so on. So you can say, my smarter synapses are collectively conscious, my frontal lobes are conscious, my brain, my self, my family, my species are all conscious, and the progression goes right on out to some undefined boundary, because other species besides humans are clearly conscious, and they have supporting machinery too, such as a life-friendly planet. In that sense, the planet is conscious, and if there exists consciousness elsewhere in the galaxy, is that galaxy conscious? What about the space in between? Is that as conscious as the space between my smarter synapses in my frontal lobes? What about the space between two conscious galaxies? The space within superclusters and the space between two superclusters? It all goes back to the most fundamental question: are we conscious? Goal? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pemca at comcast.net Sun Aug 25 00:00:11 2013 From: pemca at comcast.net (Pete McAlpine) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 20:00:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377239490.83168.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377240641.23549.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377276720.90469.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <017a01cea126$2c74e2d0$855ea870$@comcast.net> On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Gordon wrote: Adrian Tymes wrote: > Also, for any real case, you have finite acceleration over finite time. I suppose so, but we are talking theory here. I can accelerate for an infinite amount of time such until I reach c in the limit. By definition limits are not reached, just approached closer and closer. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sun Aug 25 07:42:41 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 09:42:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Forced Exposure: Groklaw closes down In-Reply-To: <52155196.3000709@aleph.se> References: <20130821124557.GJ29404@leitl.org> <52155196.3000709@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20130825074241.GF29404@leitl.org> On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 12:47:34AM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: > But this cuts both ways too. Something many commenter have noted is > that the Wikileaks and Snowden leak show is that it is very hard to > keep your own secrecy-preserving organisational darknet tight. The > decision to reduce NSA sysadmins by 90% to increase scurity have > been met with howls of laughter. The spooks are shooting themselves in both their feet with this. > If it was possible to run a darknet perfectly, so the inside had the > information and could watch the outside, then the intelligence > agencies would be much better off. The function of a darknet is uncensorable transport and tamper-proof publishing across of untrusted network. It is not about limiting access. From dan at geer.org Thu Aug 22 01:57:58 2013 From: dan at geer.org (dan at geer.org) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 21:57:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [FoRK] On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs In-Reply-To: Obama's message of "Tue, 20 Aug 2013 11:54:27 EDT." Message-ID: <20130822015758.9D48F2282F6@palinka.tinho.net> [ only a member of FoRK so cross posting will doubtless fail ] I am two things, a security geek in an investment firm and a farmer. Security geek: Truthfully, cybersecurity is the most intellectually difficult job on the planet but, just as truthfully, success means that nothing happens. That's the point: nothing happening is the actual work product. Does that qualify as bullshit? Farmer: Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and overwhelmed by regulations courtesy of factitious non-farmers in Hugo Boss suits, and subject to risk events whose dynamic range is wider than those of cybersecurity. The work product is on the plate in the finest restaurants in my state. I am ankle deep in real bullshit every single day. I work 90 hours a week. And am happy. --dan _______________________________________________ FoRK mailing list http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork From eugen at leitl.org Sun Aug 25 07:37:27 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 09:37:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [liberationtech] Fwd: [riseup] Space for dissent Message-ID: <20130825073727.GE29404@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Sean Alexandre ----- Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 19:18:49 -0400 From: Sean Alexandre To: liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu Subject: [liberationtech] Fwd: [riseup] Space for dissent User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Reply-To: liberationtech ----- Forwarded message from newsletter at lists.riseup.net ----- Space for dissent ------------------------ It is a mistake to frame the recent US and European massive surveillance revelations in terms of the privacy of individuals. What is at stake is not privacy at all, but the power of the state over its citizenry. What surveillance really is, at its root, is a highly effective form of social control. The knowledge of always being watched changes our behavior and stifles dissent. The inability to associate secretly means there is no longer any possibility for free association. The inability to whisper means there is no longer any speech that is truly free of coercion, real or implied. Most profoundly, pervasive surveillance threatens to eliminate the most vital element of both democracy and social movements: the mental space for people to form dissenting and unpopular views. Many commentators, and Edward Snowden himself, have noted that these surveillance programs represent an existential threat to democracy. This understates the problem. The universal surveillance programs in place now are not simply a potential threat, they are certain to destroy democracy if left unchecked. Democracy, even the shadow of democracy we currently practice, rests on the bedrock foundation of free association, free speech, and dissent. The consequence of the coercive power of surveillance is to subvert this foundation and undermine everything democracy rests on. Within social movements, there is a temptation to say that nothing is really different. After all, governments have always targeted activist groups with surveillance and disruption, especially the successful ones. But this new surveillance is different. What the US government and European allies have built is an infrastructure for perfect social control. By automating the process of surveillance, they have created the ability to effortlessly peer into the lives of everyone, all the time, and thus create a system with unprecedented potential for controlling how we behave and think. True, this infrastructure is not currently used in this way, but it is a technical tool-kit that can easily be used for totalitarian ends. Those who imagine a government can be trusted to police itself when given the ominous power of precise insight into the inner workings of everyday life are betting the future on the ability of a secretive government to show proper self-restraint in the use of their ever-expanding power. If history has shown us anything, it is that the powerful will always use their full power unless they are forced to stop. So, how exactly are we planning on stopping them? We support people working through the legal system or applying political pressure, but we feel our best hope of stopping the technology of surveillance is the technology of encryption. Why? Because the forces that have created this brave new world are unlikely to be uprooted before it is too late to halt the advance of surveillance. Unfortunately, most existing encryption technology is counterproductive. Many people are pushing technology that is proprietary, relies on a central authority, or is hopelessly difficult for the common user. The only technology that has a chance to resist the rise of surveillance will be open source, federated, and incredibly easy to use. In the long run, decentralized peer-to-peer tools might meet this criteria, but for the foreseeable future these tools will not have the features or usability that people have grown accustomed to. In the coming months, the Riseup birds plan to begin rolling out a series of radically new services, starting with encrypted internet, encrypted email, and encrypted chat. These services will be based on 100% open source and open protocols, will be easy to use, and will protect your data from everyone, even Riseup. This is a massive undertaking, made in concert over the last year with several other organizations, and will only work with your support. We need programmers, particularly those experienced in Python, C, Ruby, and Android development, and sysadmins interested in starting their own secure service providers. We also need money. Donations from our amazing Riseup users keep us running on our current infrastructure. But in order to be able to graduate to a new generation of truly secure and easy to use communication technology, we are going to need a lot more money than our users are able to donate. If you have deep pockets and an interest in building this new generation of communication, then we need to hear from you. If you have friends or family who care about the future of democracy and who have deep pockets, we need to hear from them, too. At Riseup, we have felt for the last few years that the window of opportunity to counter the rise of universal surveillance is slowly shrinking. Now is our chance to establish a new reality where mass numbers of people are using encryption on a daily basis. If you have the skills or the money, now is the time to step up and help make this reality come true. Please contact waxwing at riseup.net. -- Liberationtech is a public list whose archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys at stanford.edu. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sun Aug 25 07:57:05 2013 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 09:57:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: <017a01cea126$2c74e2d0$855ea870$@comcast.net> References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377239490.83168.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377240641.23549.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377276720.90469.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <017a01cea126$2c74e2d0$855ea870$@comcast.net> Message-ID: > By definition limits are not reached, just approached closer and closer. The speed of light is not a limit in a mathematical sense, since you cannot come as close as you want to it. There are some additional limitations here in the real world. On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 2:00 AM, Pete McAlpine wrote: > On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Gordon wrote:**** > > Adrian Tymes wrote:**** > > > Also, for any real case, you have finite acceleration over finite time.* > *** > > ** ** > > I suppose so, but we are talking theory here. I can accelerate for an > infinite amount of time such until I reach c in the limit. **** > > ** ** > > By definition limits are not reached, just approached closer and closer.** > ** > > ** ** > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Aug 25 08:13:13 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 09:13:13 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [FoRK] On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs In-Reply-To: <20130822015758.9D48F2282F6@palinka.tinho.net> References: <20130822015758.9D48F2282F6@palinka.tinho.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 2:57 AM, dan wrote: > I am two things, a security geek in an investment firm and a farmer. > > Security geek: Truthfully, cybersecurity is the most intellectually > difficult job on the planet but, just as truthfully, success means > that nothing happens. That's the point: nothing happening is the > actual work product. Does that qualify as bullshit? > > Depends on your POV. The problem is that nothing happening is a success for you, but everybody else (including management) thinks you do nothing all day. Come annual review time, your achievements are 'Nothing happened'. So you have ruined your career. Management reviews much prefer exciting people who have mini disasters, saved in the nick of time by working all night and weekends, with lots of crisis meetings, threats of doom and miraculous rescues. That's the way to become a corporate tech wizard. BillK From anders at aleph.se Sun Aug 25 09:56:10 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 11:56:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light In-Reply-To: References: <1377170972.58291.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377227612.51912.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377239490.83168.YahooMailNeo@web121205.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377240641.23549.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <1377276720.90469.YahooMailNeo@web121202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5219D4BA.5070803@aleph.se> On 2013-08-24 06:41, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Gordon > wrote: > > Adrian Tymes > wrote: > > Also, for any real case, you have finite acceleration over finite time. > > I suppose so, but we are talking theory here. I can accelerate for > an infinite amount of time such until I reach c in the limit. > > > The fact that the universe has a finite life span might be inherently > related - i.e., it makes no sense to talk about accelerating over > infinite time, because infinite time never exists. How do you know it has a finite life span? In fact, current cosmological models suggest expansion forever. I think it is an open question whether infinite anything can exist. I have not seen IMHO any sufficiently convincing arguments for or against it. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Aug 25 13:49:29 2013 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 15:49:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Divenire V Message-ID: For those who can read Italian, the fifth issue Divenire. Rassegna di studi interdisciplinari sulla tecnica e il postuman has just been re-published in full online at http://www.divenire.org. This time, the subject is AI, and this anthology is certainly one of the most important book on the subject having been published in continental Europe in the last years. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sun Aug 25 16:50:51 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 09:50:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [FoRK] On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs In-Reply-To: References: <20130822015758.9D48F2282F6@palinka.tinho.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 1:13 AM, BillK wrote: > On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 2:57 AM, dan wrote: > > Security geek: Truthfully, cybersecurity is the most intellectually > > difficult job on the planet but, just as truthfully, success means > > that nothing happens. That's the point: nothing happening is the > > actual work product. Does that qualify as bullshit? > > > > > > Depends on your POV. The problem is that nothing happening is a > success for you, but everybody else (including management) thinks you > do nothing all day. Come annual review time, your achievements are > 'Nothing happened'. > So you have ruined your career. > > Management reviews much prefer exciting people who have mini > disasters, saved in the nick of time by working all night > and weekends, with lots of crisis meetings, threats of doom and > miraculous rescues. That's the way to become a corporate tech wizard. The way around that is to log the number of attacks you have "successfully repelled", to show evidence of all these barbarians at the gates you're keeping at bay. Of course, you're also responsible for generating those logs. My suspicion is, the resulting temptation is responsible for many of the claims that cyberattacks are at a constant emergency level, especially with regard to certain government agencies (US and otherwise) attempting to justify continued funding. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun Aug 25 17:45:17 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 18:45:17 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Divenire V In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 2:49 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > For those who can read Italian, the fifth issue Divenire. Rassegna di studi > interdisciplinari sulla tecnica e il postuman has just been re-published in > full online at http://www.divenire.org. > > This time, the subject is AI, and this anthology is certainly one of the > most important book on the subject having been published in continental > Europe in the last years. > > If you use the Google Chrome browser, it will use Google to translate every page into English with one click. BillK From andymck35 at gmail.com Mon Aug 26 04:57:07 2013 From: andymck35 at gmail.com (Andrew Mckee) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 16:57:07 +1200 Subject: [ExI] God's God In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 05:19:33 +1200, Will Steinberg wrote: > Then I would say: the universe is material; you know this. Yet you > perceive. Animals seem to as well. The paradox of consciousness is > resolved by the fact that we have emerged from an evolving gradient of > universal consciousness, that matter has as much consciousness as its > informational constituents, that we are a sum consciousness of electron > transfers around myriad atomic nuclei, that 'Gaia,' and every integrated > system, is conscious, and that this is the ONLY rational view for a > scientist. Everything else is anthropocentric garbage. Errrmm, yes, all very well. But can I ask what small mountain of rational scientifically credible evidence drove you to this particular viewpoint? From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Mon Aug 26 05:24:34 2013 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (Gordon) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 22:24:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] God's God In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1377494674.901.YahooMailNeo@web121206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 05:19:33 +1200, Will Steinberg ? wrote: > Then I would say:? the universe is material; you know this.? Yet you > perceive.? Animals seem to as well.? The paradox of consciousness is > resolved by the fact that we have emerged from an evolving gradient of > universal consciousness, that matter has as much consciousness as its > informational constituents, that we are a sum consciousness of electron > transfers around myriad atomic nuclei, that 'Gaia,' and every integrated > system, is conscious, and that this is the ONLY rational view for a > scientist. That is pan-psychism. If you want to put a God into the picture as your subject suggests, it is pantheism. > Everything else is anthropocentric garbage. It might be anthropocentric garbage to project consciousness onto everything in the world, as you seem wont to do. Gordon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com Mon Aug 26 06:04:49 2013 From: ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com (ilsa) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 23:04:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] God's God In-Reply-To: <01f601cea0f5$ba976a00$2fc63e00$@att.net> References: <01f601cea0f5$ba976a00$2fc63e00$@att.net> Message-ID: Spike, The intersection of where you choose to put your mind is consciousness. Your digital intrigue with value, and the very sun light moving particles of dust on the breeze which finds its way up your nose, are all consciousness. "... Consciousness is the way data feels like when it is being processed. (I think) Consciousness is fundamental." ~ John K Clark The Gaia, as a construction, functions to keep the consensual habits in place ... Doing Shit Jobs and worrying about Gaia. John Gregg turned out to be the light at the goal posts.... Consciousness is so simple.... The time I spent with Bob Thruman, as a student, in Washington NJ Tibetan Buddhist Center, discussing which part of the table is the leg pays off! I do not feel very comfortable writing to this group because I do not have academic writing skills... Please don't nail me to the wall. Robert Thurman is the Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo- Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University. He still wags his finger at me to complete my assigned project. Ilsa Bartlett Institute for Rewiring the System http://ilsabartlett.wordpress.com http://www.google.com/profiles/ilsa.bartlett www.hotlux.com/angel.htm "Don't ever get so big or important that you can not hear and listen to every other person." -John Coltrane On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 11:14 AM, spike wrote: > >> > ?What do you think causes consciousness? (Hint: the entire universe > is conscious)**** > > ** ** > > *From:* extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto: > extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On Behalf Of *ilsa > *Sent:* Saturday, August 24, 2013 10:29 AM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] God's God**** > > ** ** > > >?Good for you Will. And thank you. Some years ago I hinted at this and > was dropped kicked through the goal posts. > Will, there is habitual resistance too. > Smile, Ilsa**** > > ** ** > > Ilsa, you make it sound like a bad thing. Being kicked through the goal > posts is a goal.**** > > The way I would go with it is to ask the question, are you conscious? If > you answer yes, is it you that is conscious, or just your brain? If you > answer only your brain is conscious, and the rest of it is supporting > machinery, is it your whole brain, or just your frontal lobes that are > conscious? Then you see where I am going, for I will next ask: which > synapses and which dendrites are the conscious ones? All of those always? > How many of the conscious ones does it take to be conscious? And so on.* > *** > > So you can say, my smarter synapses are collectively conscious, my frontal > lobes are conscious, my brain, my self, my family, my species are all > conscious, and the progression goes right on out to some undefined > boundary, because other species besides humans are clearly conscious, and > they have supporting machinery too, such as a life-friendly planet. In > that sense, the planet is conscious, and if there exists consciousness > elsewhere in the galaxy, is that galaxy conscious? What about the space in > between? Is that as conscious as the space between my smarter synapses in > my frontal lobes? What about the space between two conscious galaxies? > The space within superclusters and the space between two superclusters?*** > * > > It all goes back to the most fundamental question: are we conscious?**** > > Goal?**** > > 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 anders at aleph.se Mon Aug 26 06:05:15 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 08:05:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Forced Exposure: Groklaw closes down In-Reply-To: <20130825074241.GF29404@leitl.org> References: <20130821124557.GJ29404@leitl.org> <52155196.3000709@aleph.se> <20130825074241.GF29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <521AF01B.7080400@aleph.se> On 2013-08-25 09:42, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 12:47:34AM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> If it was possible to run a darknet perfectly, so the inside had the >> information and could watch the outside, then the intelligence >> agencies would be much better off. > The function of a darknet is uncensorable transport and tamper-proof > publishing across of untrusted network. It is not about limiting access. I use the term in a wider sense than just anonymizing P2P communication. Many organisations want to maintain VPNs that are uncensorable, tamper-proof and ideally invisible, even if they might not want to have anonymous participants (indeed, I assume NSA really wants to be able to log who is doing what in a tamper-proof way). The limited access is an optional thing, but a natural effect of making the network invisible (and even more so if identities are strictly controlled). I guess the key question is what the inherent consequences of different capability choices are. Uncensorable seems to imply a broadcast model, even if there is just a single recipient. Lots of bandwidth usage. Tamper-proof likely requires cryptographic protocols, and hence stable nyms. Invisibility requires using "normal" protocols or encryption good enough to hide inside other communications, or an entirely separate system. Being able to look "out" into the wider Internet requires member computers to face it, which means intrusion risks and more subtle information leakage. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From eugen at leitl.org Mon Aug 26 09:49:56 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 11:49:56 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Forced Exposure: Groklaw closes down In-Reply-To: <521AF01B.7080400@aleph.se> References: <20130821124557.GJ29404@leitl.org> <52155196.3000709@aleph.se> <20130825074241.GF29404@leitl.org> <521AF01B.7080400@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20130826094956.GD29404@leitl.org> tl;dr we must be careful with language and concepts On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 08:05:15AM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote: > >The function of a darknet is uncensorable transport and tamper-proof > >publishing across of untrusted network. It is not about limiting access. > > I use the term in a wider sense than just anonymizing P2P > communication. Many organisations want to maintain VPNs that are Unfortunately the term is ill-defined, it warrants a specific itemization of features in oder to speak meaningfully about the resulting properties. > uncensorable, tamper-proof and ideally invisible, even if they might > not want to have anonymous participants (indeed, I assume NSA really Darknets are not necessarily anonymous. Anonymity in general can be very weak to rather strong. We do not have provably anonymous systems, yet. If they're at all feasible, they're probably high-latency, and not transport efficient. > wants to be able to log who is doing what in a tamper-proof way). > The limited access is an optional thing, but a natural effect of > making the network invisible (and even more so if identities are > strictly controlled). Again, we can make anything we want, provided the set of features is well-defined (and is self-consistent). > I guess the key question is what the inherent consequences of > different capability choices are. Uncensorable seems to imply a > broadcast model, even if there is just a single recipient. Lots of Well, of course. Nothing is ever free. "Lots" does mean different things to different people. > bandwidth usage. Tamper-proof likely requires cryptographic > protocols, and hence stable nyms. Invisibility requires using Darknets are impossible without cryptography. Tamper-proof doesn't mean nyms belonging to single people or users. Again, we can make whatever we want. It's important to not treat the whole space of possibilities as something with unified features. > "normal" protocols or encryption good enough to hide inside other > communications, or an entirely separate system. Being able to look > "out" into the wider Internet requires member computers to face it, > which means intrusion risks and more subtle information leakage. A darknet co-exists with the wider Internet, or anonymizing systems *can* (but not must) allow egress into the wider Internet. The Internet is not friendly, neither are darknets. From eugen at leitl.org Mon Aug 26 11:42:39 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 13:42:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class Message-ID: <20130826114239.GG29404@leitl.org> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/how-technology-wrecks-the-middle-class/?_r=1&&pagewanted=print AUGUST 24, 2013, 2:35 PM How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class By DAVID H. AUTOR AND DAVID DORN In the four years since the Great Recession officially ended, the productivity of American workers ? those lucky enough to have jobs ? has risen smartly. But the United States still has two million fewer jobs than before the downturn, the unemployment rate is stuck at levels not seen since the early 1990s and the proportion of adults who are working is four percentage points off its peak in 2000. This job drought has spurred pundits to wonder whether a profound employment sickness has overtaken us. And from there, it?s only a short leap to ask whether that illness isn?t productivity itself. Have we mechanized and computerized ourselves into obsolescence? Are we in danger of losing the ?race against the machine,? as the M.I.T. scholars Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee argue in a recent book? Are we becoming enslaved to our ?robot overlords,? as the journalist Kevin Drum warned in Mother Jones? Do ?smart machines? threaten us with ?long-term misery,? as the economists Jeffrey D. Sachs and Laurence J. Kotlikoff prophesied earlier this year? Have we reached ?the end of labor,? as Noah Smith laments in The Atlantic? Of course, anxiety, and even hysteria, about the adverse effects of technological change on employment have a venerable history. In the early 19th century a group of English textile artisans calling themselves the Luddites staged a machine-trashing rebellion. Their brashness earned them a place (rarely positive) in the lexicon, but they had legitimate reasons for concern. Economists have historically rejected what we call the ?lump of labor? fallacy: the supposition that an increase in labor productivity inevitably reduces employment because there is only a finite amount of work to do. While intuitively appealing, this idea is demonstrably false. In 1900, for example, 41 percent of the United States work force was in agriculture. By 2000, that share had fallen to 2 percent, after the Green Revolution transformed crop yields. But the employment-to-population ratio rose over the 20th century as women moved from home to market, and the unemployment rate fluctuated cyclically, with no long-term increase. Labor-saving technological change necessarily displaces workers performing certain tasks ? that?s where the gains in productivity come from ? but over the long run, it generates new products and services that raise national income and increase the overall demand for labor. In 1900, no one could foresee that a century later, health care, finance, information technology, consumer electronics, hospitality, leisure and entertainment would employ far more workers than agriculture. Of course, as societies grow more prosperous, citizens often choose to work shorter days, take longer vacations and retire earlier ? but that too is progress. So if technological advances don?t threaten employment, does that mean workers have nothing to fear from ?smart machines?? Actually, no ? and here?s where the Luddites had a point. Although many 19th-century Britons benefited from the introduction of newer and better automated looms ? unskilled laborers were hired as loom operators, and a growing middle class could now afford mass-produced fabrics ? it?s unlikely that skilled textile workers benefited on the whole. Fast-forward to the present. The multi-trillionfold decline in the cost of computing since the 1970s has created enormous incentives for employers to substitute increasingly cheap and capable computers for expensive labor. These rapid advances ? which confront us daily as we check in at airports, order books online, pay bills on our banks? Web sites or consult our smartphones for driving directions ? have reawakened fears that workers will be displaced by machinery. Will this time be different? A starting point for discussion is the observation that although computers are ubiquitous, they cannot do everything. A computer?s ability to accomplish a task quickly and cheaply depends upon a human programmer?s ability to write procedures or rules that direct the machine to take the correct steps at each contingency. Computers excel at ?routine? tasks: organizing, storing, retrieving and manipulating information, or executing exactly defined physical movements in production processes. These tasks are most pervasive in middle-skill jobs like bookkeeping, clerical work and repetitive production and quality-assurance jobs. Logically, computerization has reduced the demand for these jobs, but it has boosted demand for workers who perform ?nonroutine? tasks that complement the automated activities. Those tasks happen to lie on opposite ends of the occupational skill distribution. At one end are so-called abstract tasks that require problem-solving, intuition, persuasion and creativity. These tasks are characteristic of professional, managerial, technical and creative occupations, like law, medicine, science, engineering, advertising and design. People in these jobs typically have high levels of education and analytical capability, and they benefit from computers that facilitate the transmission, organization and processing of information. On the other end are so-called manual tasks, which require situational adaptability, visual and language recognition, and in-person interaction. Preparing a meal, driving a truck through city traffic or cleaning a hotel room present mind-bogglingly complex challenges for computers. But they are straightforward for humans, requiring primarily innate abilities like dexterity, sightedness and language recognition, as well as modest training. These workers can?t be replaced by robots, but their skills are not scarce, so they usually make low wages. Computerization has therefore fostered a polarization of employment, with job growth concentrated in both the highest- and lowest-paid occupations, while jobs in the middle have declined. Surprisingly, overall employment rates have largely been unaffected in states and cities undergoing this rapid polarization. Rather, as employment in routine jobs has ebbed, employment has risen both in high-wage managerial, professional and technical occupations and in low-wage, in-person service occupations. So computerization is not reducing the quantity of jobs, but rather degrading the quality of jobs for a significant subset of workers. Demand for highly educated workers who excel in abstract tasks is robust, but the middle of the labor market, where the routine task-intensive jobs lie, is sagging. Workers without college education therefore concentrate in manual task-intensive jobs ? like food services, cleaning and security ? which are numerous but offer low wages, precarious job security and few prospects for upward mobility. This bifurcation of job opportunities has contributed to the historic rise in income inequality. HOW can we help workers ride the wave of technological change rather than be swamped by it? One common recommendation is that citizens should invest more in their education. Spurred by growing demand for workers performing abstract job tasks, the payoff for college and professional degrees has soared; despite its formidable price tag, higher education has perhaps never been a better investment. But it is far from a comprehensive solution to our labor market problems. Not all high school graduates ? let alone displaced mid- and late-career workers ? are academically or temperamentally prepared to pursue a four-year college degree. Only 40 percent of Americans enroll in a four-year college after graduating from high school, and more than 30 percent of those who enroll do not complete the degree within eight years. The good news, however, is that middle-education, middle-wage jobs are not slated to disappear completely. While many middle-skill jobs are susceptible to automation, others demand a mixture of tasks that take advantage of human flexibility. To take one prominent example, medical paraprofessional jobs ? radiology technician, phlebotomist, nurse technician ? are a rapidly growing category of relatively well-paid, middle-skill occupations. While these paraprofessions do not typically require a four-year college degree, they do demand some postsecondary vocational training. These middle-skill jobs will persist, and potentially grow, because they involve tasks that cannot readily be unbundled without a substantial drop in quality. Consider, for example, the frustration of calling a software firm for technical support, only to discover that the technician knows nothing more than the standard answers shown on his or her computer screen ? that is, the technician is a mouthpiece reading from a script, not a problem-solver. This is not generally a productive form of work organization because it fails to harness the complementarities between technical and interpersonal skills. Simply put, the quality of a service within any occupation will improve when a worker combines routine (technical) and nonroutine (flexible) tasks. Following this logic, we predict that the middle-skill jobs that survive will combine routine technical tasks with abstract and manual tasks in which workers have a comparative advantage ? interpersonal interaction, adaptability and problem-solving. Along with medical paraprofessionals, this category includes numerous jobs for people in the skilled trades and repair: plumbers; builders; electricians; heating, ventilation and air-conditioning installers; automotive technicians; customer-service representatives; and even clerical workers who are required to do more than type and file. Indeed, even as formerly middle-skill occupations are being ?deskilled,? or stripped of their routine technical tasks (brokering stocks, for example), other formerly high-end occupations are becoming accessible to workers with less esoteric technical mastery (for example, the work of the nurse practitioner, who increasingly diagnoses illness and prescribes drugs in lieu of a physician). Lawrence F. Katz, a labor economist at Harvard, memorably called those who fruitfully combine the foundational skills of a high school education with specific vocational skills the ?new artisans.? The outlook for workers who haven?t finished college is uncertain, but not devoid of hope. There will be job opportunities in middle-skill jobs, but not in the traditional blue-collar production and white-collar office jobs of the past. Rather, we expect to see growing employment among the ranks of the ?new artisans?: licensed practical nurses and medical assistants; teachers, tutors and learning guides at all educational levels; kitchen designers, construction supervisors and skilled tradespeople of every variety; expert repair and support technicians; and the many people who offer personal training and assistance, like physical therapists, personal trainers, coaches and guides. These workers will adeptly combine technical skills with interpersonal interaction, flexibility and adaptability to offer services that are uniquely human. David H. Autor is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. David Dorn is an assistant professor of economics at the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies in Madrid. From pharos at gmail.com Mon Aug 26 12:46:31 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 13:46:31 +0100 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Silence_in_the_sky=97but_why=3F?= Message-ID: Anders tackles the Fermi paradox. Quote: Dr Sandberg concludes: 'Our key point is that if any civilisation anywhere in the past had wanted to expand, they would have been able to reach an enormous portion of the universe. That makes the Fermi question tougher ? by a factor of billions. If intelligent life is rare, it needs to be much rarer than just one civilisation per galaxy. If advanced civilisations all refrain from colonising, this trend must be so strong that not a single one across billions of galaxies and billions of years chose to do it. And so on. 'We still don't know what the answer is, but we know it's more radical than previously expected.' ------------ So it is something inherent in 'intelligence'. Something that no space-capable intelligence can avoid. BillK From pharos at gmail.com Mon Aug 26 12:56:42 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 13:56:42 +0100 Subject: [ExI] How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class In-Reply-To: <20130826114239.GG29404@leitl.org> References: <20130826114239.GG29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 12:42 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/how-technology-wrecks-the-middle-class/?_r=1&&pagewanted=print > > AUGUST 24, 2013, 2:35 PM > > How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class > > By DAVID H. AUTOR AND DAVID DORN > > In the four years since the Great Recession officially ended, the > productivity of American workers ? those lucky enough to have jobs ? has > risen smartly. But the United States still has two million fewer jobs than > before the downturn, the unemployment rate is stuck at levels not seen since > the early 1990s and the proportion of adults who are working is four > percentage points off its peak in 2000. > > This job drought has spurred pundits to wonder whether a profound employment > sickness has overtaken us. And from there, it?s only a short leap to ask > whether that illness isn?t productivity itself. Have we mechanized and > computerized ourselves into obsolescence? > > Are we in danger of losing the ?race against the machine,? as the M.I.T. > scholars Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee argue in a recent book? Are we > becoming enslaved to our ?robot overlords,? as the journalist Kevin Drum > warned in Mother Jones? Do ?smart machines? threaten us with ?long-term > misery,? as the economists Jeffrey D. Sachs and Laurence J. Kotlikoff > prophesied earlier this year? Have we reached ?the end of labor,? as Noah > Smith laments in The Atlantic? > > This article strikes me as being still a bit too optimistic in claiming that there could be a middle-class future in 'personal services' jobs. Mainly because 'personal services' jobs are low paid, often part-time jobs. That's not middle-class. See: Quote: Maybe I?m wrong. Maybe everything will be fine. Maybe the ?widening gap between rich and poor? is temporary. Maybe the steady growth in the proportion of jobs that are part-time and/or low-paid will soon reverse. Or maybe the idea that all the homeless need are old laptops and a few JavaScript textbooks is not unlike the claim that new technologies automatically create new jobs for everyone. Maybe, unless something drastic changes, most people are totally screwed. This has not been a great decade for the average American. The recession ended in 2009, but median household income remains 6.1% below what it was in December 2007?while the income of the top 10% rose. ---------------- BillK From eugen at leitl.org Mon Aug 26 13:04:57 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 15:04:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Silence_in_the_sky=E2=80=94but_why=3F?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20130826130457.GI29404@leitl.org> On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 01:46:31PM +0100, BillK wrote: > So it is something inherent in 'intelligence'. Something that no > space-capable intelligence can avoid. Yes -- it is being existance. It's either mystery factor X, reliable against astronomical odds, or simply: we're not in anyone's smart lightcone (but our own). Fermi's Paradoxon ain't. From pharos at gmail.com Mon Aug 26 13:31:11 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 14:31:11 +0100 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Silence_in_the_sky=97but_why=3F?= In-Reply-To: <20130826130457.GI29404@leitl.org> References: <20130826130457.GI29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 2:04 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Yes -- it is being existance. It's either mystery factor > X, reliable against astronomical odds, or simply: we're > not in anyone's smart lightcone (but our own). > > Fermi's Paradoxon ain't. > Look for mystery factor X then. The astronomical (!) time-scales mean that we would inevitably be in somebody's smart lightcone. The galaxy could have been colonised many times over. BillK From eugen at leitl.org Mon Aug 26 14:09:46 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 16:09:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Silence_in_the_sky=E2=80=94but_why=3F?= In-Reply-To: References: <20130826130457.GI29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130826140945.GK29404@leitl.org> On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 02:31:11PM +0100, BillK wrote: > On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 2:04 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > Yes -- it is being existance. It's either mystery factor > > X, reliable against astronomical odds, or simply: we're > > not in anyone's smart lightcone (but our own). > > > > Fermi's Paradoxon ain't. > > > > Look for mystery factor X then. Careful, Occam's razor is reeeeally sharp. > The astronomical (!) time-scales mean that we would inevitably be in You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. > somebody's smart lightcone. The galaxy could have been colonised many > times over. And because it isn't, we're not in anyone's smart* light cone. (* alive and capable of relativistic travel). I realize that boring explanations are, well, boring. But it doesn't mean we have to confabulate scenarios just because they're more exciting. Reality doesn't care for what we want. From pharos at gmail.com Mon Aug 26 14:25:23 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 15:25:23 +0100 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Silence_in_the_sky=97but_why=3F?= In-Reply-To: <20130826140945.GK29404@leitl.org> References: <20130826130457.GI29404@leitl.org> <20130826140945.GK29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 3:09 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > And because it isn't, we're not in anyone's smart* light cone. > > (* alive and capable of relativistic travel). > > I realize that boring explanations are, well, boring. But it > doesn't mean we have to confabulate scenarios just because they're > more exciting. Reality doesn't care for what we want. > See: Quote: The robotic probes could explore our galaxy and self-replicate themselves from interstellar dust and gas, after which the parent and child probes would each set off for a different star, where they would look for signs of life and then self-replicate themselves again. The probes would therefore disperse themselves radially across space. In all the scenarios the scientists looked at, exploration timescales were reduced when the probes were self-replicating, and they concluded that a fleet of self-replicating probes could travel at only 10% of the speed of light and still explore the entire Galaxy in the relatively short time of 10 million years. This is a tiny fraction of the age of the Earth and the scientists say the results reinforce the idea of the "Fermi Paradox." ---------------- So we don't even need a civ capable of relativistic travel. Just fire off some probes to spam the galaxy. 10 million years is tiny compared with the billions of years existence of the galaxy. There should be a traffic jam of probes flying past the solar system. Unless 'intelligence' decides that is a silly thing to do.......... BillK From eugen at leitl.org Mon Aug 26 14:53:56 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 16:53:56 +0200 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Silence_in_the_sky=E2=80=94but_why=3F?= In-Reply-To: References: <20130826130457.GI29404@leitl.org> <20130826140945.GK29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130826145356.GO29404@leitl.org> On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 03:25:23PM +0100, BillK wrote: > So we don't even need a civ capable of relativistic travel. Just fire Any nonrelativistic expansion will be completely overgrown by relativistic expansion. As relativistic travel isn't hard (for small probes, anyway), this means you can consider nonrelativistic expansion an early, transient phase which is hard to observe. Unless you're the point of origin. > off some probes to spam the galaxy. 10 million years is tiny compared > with the billions of years existence of the galaxy. We're not talking about just single galaxies, but patches of real estate GLYrs across. Stellar systems would go dark very quickly, so by the time you see half of the sky going dark (FIR) your own system is already toast. Not a damn thing you can do about it, unless you're already expansive. So time interval from observer to expander is very short (few centuries in our case), and hence you need to be arbitarily unlucky in order to see half of the sky go dark. What we're seeing is exactly what we should be seeing. > There should be a traffic jam of probes flying past the solar system. No, the entire visible universe would made from ~AU FIR blackbodies, but this is not something you could observe, as you would have never happened in the first place. As you're alive and observing, this indicates that we're not in anyone's smart lightcone. > Unless 'intelligence' decides that is a silly thing to do.......... 'Intelligence' doesn't decide a damn thing, out of control and statistics decides everyting. From anders at aleph.se Mon Aug 26 14:23:05 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 16:23:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Silence_in_the_sky=97but_why=3F?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <521B64C9.7060204@aleph.se> On 2013-08-26 14:46, BillK wrote: > Anders tackles the Fermi paradox. > > By the way, the original paper can be found at http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/intergalactic-spreading.pdf Given the megascale engineering, I think it might be popular here. I am honestly uncertain what is going on in the Fermi question. I think I am more willing than most to believe in a zoo/they're heeere hypothesis, given the paper. But I suspect the truth is very odd - even if it is "boring" lack of intelligence the reason for this is likely to be odd. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From pharos at gmail.com Mon Aug 26 16:08:51 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 17:08:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Silence_in_the_sky=97but_why=3F?= In-Reply-To: <20130826145356.GO29404@leitl.org> References: <20130826130457.GI29404@leitl.org> <20130826140945.GK29404@leitl.org> <20130826145356.GO29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 3:53 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Any nonrelativistic expansion will be completely overgrown by > relativistic expansion. As relativistic travel isn't hard (for > small probes, anyway), this means you can consider nonrelativistic > expansion an early, transient phase which is hard to observe. > Unless you're the point of origin. > If a galaxy can be swarmed in 10 million years, then why haven't we been invaded multiple times? By non-relativistic *and* relativistic expansion. > We're not talking about just single galaxies, but patches of > real estate GLYrs across. Stellar systems would go dark very > quickly, so by the time you see half of the sky going dark > (FIR) your own system is already toast. Not a damn thing > you can do about it, unless you're already expansive. > So time interval from observer to expander is very short > (few centuries in our case), and hence you need to be arbitarily > unlucky in order to see half of the sky go dark. > > What we're seeing is exactly what we should be seeing. > No it isn't. That should have happened *billions* (not millions!) of years ago, if it is going to happen at all. > > No, the entire visible universe would made from ~AU FIR blackbodies, > but this is not something you could observe, as you would have never > happened in the first place. As you're alive and observing, this > indicates that we're not in anyone's smart lightcone. > But timescales say that should have happened long ago. We see the whole universe from the early beginnings up to a few light years from us and there is no sign of conversion to blackbodies anywhere, at any stage of the universe growth. Our solar system is comparatively young in the grand scheme of things. > > 'Intelligence' doesn't decide a damn thing, out of control and > statistics decides everyting. > Now you're just being silly. I do believe interstellar travel and eating the galaxy requires 'intelligence'. Not necessarily benevolent intelligence, but you need a bit of IQ to build starships. BillK From eugen at leitl.org Mon Aug 26 16:32:24 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 18:32:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Silence_in_the_sky=E2=80=94but_why=3F?= In-Reply-To: References: <20130826130457.GI29404@leitl.org> <20130826140945.GK29404@leitl.org> <20130826145356.GO29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130826163224.GW29404@leitl.org> On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 05:08:51PM +0100, BillK wrote: > On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 3:53 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > Any nonrelativistic expansion will be completely overgrown by > > relativistic expansion. As relativistic travel isn't hard (for > > small probes, anyway), this means you can consider nonrelativistic > > expansion an early, transient phase which is hard to observe. > > Unless you're the point of origin. > > > > If a galaxy can be swarmed in 10 million years, then why haven't we > been invaded multiple times? Because we're not in anyone's smart light cone. And it's not that you can *remember* having never been born, and *multiple times* at that... > By non-relativistic *and* relativistic expansion. The best chance to observe expansion is to be expansive yourself. Expansive observers are not extinguished by a passing wave of other observers, and they traverse much of the visible universe, eventually observing everything there is to observe, including other expansive observers. Pioneer species are succeeded by the other kind. > > We're not talking about just single galaxies, but patches of > > real estate GLYrs across. Stellar systems would go dark very > > quickly, so by the time you see half of the sky going dark > > (FIR) your own system is already toast. Not a damn thing > > you can do about it, unless you're already expansive. > > So time interval from observer to expander is very short > > (few centuries in our case), and hence you need to be arbitarily > > unlucky in order to see half of the sky go dark. > > > > What we're seeing is exactly what we should be seeing. > > > > No it isn't. That should have happened *billions* (not millions!) of > years ago, if it is going to happen at all. You can't observe very well if you're dead. I keep saying it, but you don't seem to register it for some reason. > > > > > No, the entire visible universe would made from ~AU FIR blackbodies, > > but this is not something you could observe, as you would have never > > happened in the first place. As you're alive and observing, this > > indicates that we're not in anyone's smart lightcone. > > > > But timescales say that should have happened long ago. We see the > whole universe from the early beginnings up to a few light years from No. We're seeing the early beginnings as early beginnings. We do not know how remote areas look right now. Relativistic observers are hard to observe due to the anthropic effect. You don't see them coming until they're almost here, and they leave no pre-expansive observers in their wake any more than a colony of E. coli leaves pristine agar behind. (But other species that thrive on E. coli will follow). > us and there is no sign of conversion to blackbodies anywhere, at any > stage of the universe growth. Our solar system is comparatively young > in the grand scheme of things. 95% of all stars that will ever be already are. We're not young, we're the right sort of metallicity and live in a great neighborhood. You should see some of the others, except that you can't, because bad neighborhoods kill you. Stone cold dead. > > > > > 'Intelligence' doesn't decide a damn thing, out of control and > > statistics decides everyting. > > > > Now you're just being silly. I do believe interstellar travel and > eating the galaxy requires 'intelligence'. Not necessarily benevolent No. It only requires intelligence once, at the origin. > intelligence, but you need a bit of IQ to build starships. It requires a lot of IQ of you want to build a dog, in fact, it's so hard, we can't do it yet. Yet dogs breed fine. Why did the astrochicken cross the galaxy? To get to the other side. Hardly sparkling conversationists, though. That's okay, it's not their evolutionary niche, after all. From anders at aleph.se Mon Aug 26 17:28:39 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 19:28:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Silence_in_the_sky=97but_why=3F?= In-Reply-To: References: <20130826130457.GI29404@leitl.org> <20130826140945.GK29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <521B9047.1020501@aleph.se> On 2013-08-26 16:25, BillK wrote: > So we don't even need a civ capable of relativistic travel. Just fire > off some probes to spam the galaxy. 10 million years is tiny compared > with the billions of years existence of the galaxy. There should be a > traffic jam of probes flying past the solar system. Unless > 'intelligence' decides that is a silly thing to do........ And our paper shows that you need to consider a few million or billion more galaxies if relativistic travel is feasible. To quote from an earlier presentation I did: The silence in the sky is pretty talkative? it is just hard to guess what it is saying: * Either a low technology ceiling (transhumanists are overly optimistic) * Or high existential risk (bad news, we need to figure it out? but it might not help!) * Or strong convergence (Is this something we want? Is it moral convergence?) * Or one dominant old species (we better figure out the rules) * Or we are simulations (we better be interesting) * Or we are indeed alone (BIG responsibility to safeguard life and consciousness) And if the intergalactic expansion argument works then existential risk, convergence, the power of old civs or our isolation needs to be many orders of magnitude stronger than the normal assumption. Reality is weird. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Aug 26 17:42:46 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 18:42:46 +0100 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Silence_in_the_sky=97but_why=3F?= In-Reply-To: <20130826163224.GW29404@leitl.org> References: <20130826130457.GI29404@leitl.org> <20130826140945.GK29404@leitl.org> <20130826145356.GO29404@leitl.org> <20130826163224.GW29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 5:32 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > The best chance to observe expansion is to be expansive yourself. > Expansive observers are not extinguished by a passing wave of other > observers, and they traverse much of the visible universe, eventually > observing everything there is to observe, including other expansive > observers. Pioneer species are succeeded by the other kind. > Forget the rest of the universe. Let's just look at our galaxy. 100,000 light years diameter, 100 to 400 billion stars. As we are still here, you must be claiming that no other space expansive species has arisen in our galaxy as it wouldn't take very long to eat the Milky Way. Many stars in our galaxy are billions of years older than our sun. > > You can't observe very well if you're dead. I keep saying it, but > you don't seem to register it for some reason. > I agree! So you are saying we must be the first space species in our galaxy. That's a big claim. > > No. We're seeing the early beginnings as early beginnings. We do not > know how remote areas look right now. Relativistic observers are hard > to observe due to the anthropic effect. You don't see them coming until > they're almost here, and they leave no pre-expansive observers in their > wake any more than a colony of E. coli leaves pristine agar behind. > (But other species that thrive on E. coli will follow). > The Milky Way is in the Local Group of galaxies, Up to about 11 million light years away. So we would be well able to see if any of them were being eaten. Unless it all started less than 11 million years ago - a tall order!. Age of universe - 14 billion years. Solar System - 4.5 billion years old. Humans - a few million years. > > It requires a lot of IQ of you want to build a dog, in fact, > it's so hard, we can't do it yet. Yet dogs breed fine. > > But dogs don't build starships. BillK From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon Aug 26 18:26:43 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 14:26:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Silence_in_the_sky=E2=80=94but_why=3F?= In-Reply-To: <20130826145356.GO29404@leitl.org> References: <20130826130457.GI29404@leitl.org> <20130826140945.GK29404@leitl.org> <20130826145356.GO29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 10:53 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > We're not talking about just single galaxies, but patches of > real estate GLYrs across. Stellar systems would go dark very > quickly, so by the time you see half of the sky going dark > (FIR) your own system is already toast. Not a damn thing > you can do about it, unless you're already expansive. > So time interval from observer to expander is very short > (few centuries in our case), and hence you need to be arbitarily > unlucky in order to see half of the sky go dark. ### It would be interesting to model the likelihood of observing a spreading civ, assuming various fractions of c. Probably we can assume the delay from probe arrival to sun darkening to be negligible, so the extent of a sphere of darkening would be a good approximation of extent of probe spread. Depending on distance from point of origin and the speed of probe dispersion there would be very different pictures, persisting for various amounts of time. The way the sky looks now, we can probably exclude close to mid-distance (1000 to 100 million lightyears), moderately old, slow spreaders. What remains is: very far spreaders (far origin), very recent spreaders (any distance), very fast (near lightspeed, almost any distance), or no spreaders. The two latter possibilities are most disconcerting, for different reasons. I would guess that our warning from seeing the darkening sky to meeting the vanguard could still mostly range from thousands of years to hundreds of millions of years, depending on point of origin and speed, but I don't have the math to prove it. Rafal From eugen at leitl.org Mon Aug 26 19:29:16 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 21:29:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Silence_in_the_sky=E2=80=94but_why=3F?= In-Reply-To: References: <20130826130457.GI29404@leitl.org> <20130826140945.GK29404@leitl.org> <20130826145356.GO29404@leitl.org> <20130826163224.GW29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130826192916.GZ29404@leitl.org> On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 06:42:46PM +0100, BillK wrote: > Forget the rest of the universe. Let's just look at our galaxy. No, let's not forget the rest of the universe. Because some 10 GLYrs are a lot of real estate. > 100,000 light years diameter, 100 to 400 billion stars. > > As we are still here, you must be claiming that no other space > expansive species has arisen in our galaxy as it wouldn't take very We're not an expansive species. Yet. We have a fighting chance to become one. > long to eat the Milky Way. Many stars in our galaxy are billions of > years older than our sun. You don't need just old stars, you need a suitable metallicity, habitable zone, no extinction events, lucky evolution (it's not obvious why we should be here at all, rewind the evolution and something else entirely emerges), you need a species with stability and enough smartness to reach machine-space (we're close, but we're by no means there). You can't put a probability to any of these steps as long as you don't have at least a second, unbiased (so no causally entangled life in this solar system will do) sample to compute how probable expansive species are. >From the looks of it, we are terribly rare. Just how rare we don't know, until we find another sample. > > > > You can't observe very well if you're dead. I keep saying it, but > > you don't seem to register it for some reason. > > > > I agree! So you are saying we must be the first space species in our > galaxy. That's a big claim. No, that's not a big claim. Even a single species across 10 GLYrs won't fail to observe itself. Everything else is a big claim, though. > > No. We're seeing the early beginnings as early beginnings. We do not > > know how remote areas look right now. Relativistic observers are hard > > to observe due to the anthropic effect. You don't see them coming until > > they're almost here, and they leave no pre-expansive observers in their > > wake any more than a colony of E. coli leaves pristine agar behind. > > (But other species that thrive on E. coli will follow). > > > > The Milky Way is in the Local Group of galaxies, Up to about 11 > million light years away. So we would be well able to see if any of 11 megayears is really negligible. > them were being eaten. Unless it all started less than 11 million > years ago - a tall order!. You will not see a relativistic front until it's knocking on your door. > Age of universe - 14 billion years. Solar System - 4.5 billion years Most of it sterile. You can model high-metallicity early-generation stars, but these are really rare to count. What's the cutoff edge is is hard to tell. > old. Humans - a few million years. This planet is only good for less than half a gigayear. > > > > > It requires a lot of IQ of you want to build a dog, in fact, > > it's so hard, we can't do it yet. Yet dogs breed fine. > > > > > > But dogs don't build starships. You're still thinking like a human. Pioneers don't build starships, they *are* starships. And so will we, shortly. Either that, or we blow our chances. If 2050 doesn't look much, much worse than today our chances are good. If we're still around mostly as is by 2100 we've made it through the population bottleneck. From sjv2006 at gmail.com Mon Aug 26 19:34:32 2013 From: sjv2006 at gmail.com (Stephen Van Sickle) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 12:34:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Forced Exposure: Groklaw closes down In-Reply-To: <521AF01B.7080400@aleph.se> References: <20130821124557.GJ29404@leitl.org> <52155196.3000709@aleph.se> <20130825074241.GF29404@leitl.org> <521AF01B.7080400@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 11:05 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote. > Uncensorable seems to imply a broadcast model, even if there is just a > single recipient. Lots of bandwidth usage. Tamper-proof likely requires > cryptographic protocols, and hence stable nyms. Invisibility requires using > "normal" protocols or encryption good enough to hide inside other > communications, or an entirely separate system. And what has the large bandwidth in which your darknet can hide? Porn, of course. I hereby predict that in the near future, open internet traffic will asymptotically approach 100% pornography. All porn, all the time. It might even become a formal layer in the protocol stack. You heard it here first. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clementlawyer at gmail.com Mon Aug 26 19:44:21 2013 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 15:44:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Forced Exposure: Groklaw closes down In-Reply-To: References: <20130821124557.GJ29404@leitl.org> <52155196.3000709@aleph.se> <20130825074241.GF29404@leitl.org> <521AF01B.7080400@aleph.se> Message-ID: Stephen Van Sickle wrote: And what has the large bandwidth in which your darknet can hide? Porn, of course. I hereby predict that in the near future, open internet traffic will asymptotically approach 100% pornography. All porn, all the time. It might even become a formal layer in the protocol stack. You heard it here first. AKA 4chan? James -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon Aug 26 19:45:17 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 21:45:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Forced Exposure: Groklaw closes down In-Reply-To: References: <20130821124557.GJ29404@leitl.org> <52155196.3000709@aleph.se> <20130825074241.GF29404@leitl.org> <521AF01B.7080400@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20130826194517.GB29404@leitl.org> On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 12:34:32PM -0700, Stephen Van Sickle wrote: > And what has the large bandwidth in which your darknet can hide? Porn, of There is indeed the Blue Coat problem, where everything unknown is forbidden. An Internet like that is best called Teletubbynet. We must make sure the network core will never become like that, orelse we have to bypass not just the last mile (reasonably easy, with wireless LoS meshes) but also the backbone. > course. I hereby predict that in the near future, open internet traffic > will asymptotically approach 100% pornography. All porn, all the time. It Video streams are easy to check for entropy, so it better be encrypted. Orelse even with 4K porn the steganographic payload will be negligible. > might even become a formal layer in the protocol stack. You heard it here > first. From pharos at gmail.com Mon Aug 26 20:46:25 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 21:46:25 +0100 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Silence_in_the_sky=97but_why=3F?= In-Reply-To: <521B9047.1020501@aleph.se> References: <20130826130457.GI29404@leitl.org> <20130826140945.GK29404@leitl.org> <521B9047.1020501@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 6:28 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > And our paper shows that you need to consider a few million or billion more > galaxies if relativistic travel is feasible. > > To quote from an earlier presentation I did: > The silence in the sky is pretty talkative? it is just hard to guess what it > is saying: > > Either a low technology ceiling (transhumanists are overly optimistic) > Or high existential risk (bad news, we need to figure it out? but it might > not help!) > Or strong convergence (Is this something we want? Is it moral convergence?) > Or one dominant old species (we better figure out the rules) > Or we are simulations (we better be interesting) > Or we are indeed alone (BIG responsibility to safeguard life and > consciousness) > > And if the intergalactic expansion argument works then existential risk, > convergence, the power of old civs or our isolation needs to be many orders > of magnitude stronger than the normal assumption. Reality is weird. > > My current vote goes for convergence. There is something in the nature of advanced intelligence that forbids eating this universe. I don't see that as necessarily a bad thing. The convergence may be towards a greater intelligence than we can imagine at present, where our future creates more universes. BillK From eugen at leitl.org Tue Aug 27 10:36:52 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 12:36:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] God's God In-Reply-To: <01f601cea0f5$ba976a00$2fc63e00$@att.net> References: <01f601cea0f5$ba976a00$2fc63e00$@att.net> Message-ID: <20130827103652.GO29404@leitl.org> On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 11:14:08AM -0700, spike wrote: > It all goes back to the most fundamental question: are we conscious? Or even more fundamental question: what the hell is consciousness (which means everything, and hence nothing at all), and how do I measure it? From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Aug 27 13:13:41 2013 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan Ust) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 07:13:41 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Environmental Roots of the Late Bronze Age Crisis Message-ID: <8E1AD8FE-0CAF-44BC-9CE9-B25F7FA89CB4@yahoo.com> http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0071004 Abstract "The Late Bronze Age world of the Eastern Mediterranean, a rich linkage of Aegean, Egyptian, Syro-Palestinian, and Hittite civilizations, collapsed famously 3200 years ago and has remained one of the mysteries of the ancient world since the event?s retrieval began in the late 19th century AD/CE. Iconic Egyptian bas-reliefs and graphic hieroglyphic and cuneiform texts portray the proximate cause of the collapse as the invasions of the ?Peoples-of-the-Sea? at the Nile Delta, the Turkish coast, and down into the heartlands of Syria and Palestine where armies clashed, famine-ravaged cities abandoned, and countrysides depopulated. Here we report palaeoclimate data from Cyprus for the Late Bronze Age crisis, alongside a radiocarbon-based chronology integrating both archaeological and palaeoclimate proxies, which reveal the effects of abrupt climate change-driven famine and causal linkage with the Sea People invasions in Cyprus and Syria. The statistical analysis of proximate and ultimate features of the sequential collapse reveals the relationships of climate-driven famine, sea-borne-invasion, region-wide warfare, and politico-economic collapse, in whose wake new societies and new ideologies were created." Comments? Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 27 13:32:33 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 06:32:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? Anders tackles the Fermi paradox. >...'We still don't know what the answer is, but we know it's more radical than previously expected.' ------------ Of all the observed scientific anomalies that I know of, the misnamed Fermi paradox is absolutely the most vexing. The more we study that question, the more clear it is that there is something fundamentally wrong with our models of everything we think we know about intelligence, evolution, space travel, everything. If our current understanding of these things is anywhere close to correct, there has been plenty of time for intelligence to evolve and colonize everywhere in the visible universe, and the signals between civilizations should be easily detectible. After pondering all the possibilities, I am forced to conclude that apparently intelligence is inherently self-destructive or self-limiting, and that our current level of intelligence on this planet is anomalously high. It goes against everything I dream for and envision for the future of humanity: that the collective intelligence on this planet a century from now will me more like what it was a century ago, and a millennium from now more like what it was a million years past, more like what it was for the 99.99 percent of the time since life existed. In that view, intelligence is temporary always and everywhere. This view of the evolution of intelligence as a temporary random excursion from the boring mean, a spike rather than an S curve to a new and higher plateau, goes against everything I have always believed and hoped for, but it is the only way I have been able to explain Fermi's paradox. This realization is in some ways worse than when my own fundamentalist religious notions crumbled to dust beneath my feet. I do hope someone can talk me out of this grim conclusion. spike From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 27 13:52:45 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 06:52:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: References: <20130826130457.GI29404@leitl.org> <20130826140945.GK29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <06e801cea32c$b5740090$205c01b0$@att.net> ---------------- So we don't even need a civ capable of relativistic travel. Just fire off some probes to spam the galaxy. 10 million years is tiny compared with the billions of years existence of the galaxy. There should be a traffic jam of probes flying past the solar system. Unless 'intelligence' decides that is a silly thing to do.......... BillK _______________________________________________ In the grim scenario of my previous post, a temporarily intelligent species might devise such a replicating probe and fire it toward the nearest star. Then the intelligence of the species that created the probe decides such a thing is a silly thing to do. The intelligence on that planet settles back to equilibrium, such as it apparently was here between the TK event 66 million years ago and about 2 MYA. The probe is on its way by then, and nothing the home civilization thinks or does can stop it. In that view, we need to get building these probes before we are collectively too stupid to do it. spike From pharos at gmail.com Tue Aug 27 15:10:21 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 16:10:21 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 2:32 PM, spike wrote: > This view of the evolution of intelligence as a temporary random excursion > from the boring mean, a spike rather than an S curve to a new and higher > plateau, goes against everything I have always believed and hoped for, but > it is the only way I have been able to explain Fermi's paradox. This > realization is in some ways worse than when my own fundamentalist religious > notions crumbled to dust beneath my feet. I do hope someone can talk me > out of this grim conclusion. > > Your scenario is certainly plausible, though the reasons for such a universal surge then decline of intelligence remain obscure. I would need to see some possible causes for a *universal* appearance then decline of intelligence. Once started, intelligence should be difficult to stop, as each generation builds on the past. That's why my preference is that intelligence continues to grow, but changes its objectives. So every species finds something better to do than spam the galaxy. The change must happen fairly quickly so that as the tech required to build AI-controlled, self-replicating probes becomes available, it also points out the futility of that path. It is probably the AI invention that does this. Mankind's last invention, as the saying goes. To me, the great silence indicates that as intelligence grows, the future path becomes overwhelmingly obvious. But not to us, because we are not there yet. BillK From atymes at gmail.com Tue Aug 27 16:41:47 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 09:41:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 6:32 AM, spike wrote: > > Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? > > Anders tackles the Fermi paradox. > > > > >...'We still don't know what the answer is, but we know it's more radical > than previously expected.' > > ------------ > > > Of all the observed scientific anomalies that I know of, the misnamed Fermi > paradox is absolutely the most vexing. The more we study that question, > the > more clear it is that there is something fundamentally wrong with our > models > of everything we think we know about intelligence, evolution, space travel, > everything. If our current understanding of these things is anywhere close > to correct, there has been plenty of time for intelligence to evolve and > colonize everywhere in the visible universe, and the signals between > civilizations should be easily detectible. > > After pondering all the possibilities, I am forced to conclude that > apparently intelligence is inherently self-destructive or self-limiting, > and > that our current level of intelligence on this planet is anomalously high. > Why is that error more likely than, say, our error rate in calculating how unlikely intelligence is to arise in the first place? Sure, there are billions and billions of stars - roughly 300 billion in the Milky Way, which has been around for 13.2 billion years. Let us assume that the Milky Way has had roughly a constant star population since its formation. That gives on the order of a trillion star-five-billion-year periods. It's taken 4-5 billion years for intelligent life to arise on Earth, so perhaps it makes sense to speak of the odds of life arising around any given star in a given five billion year period. If the odds of intelligent, tool-using life with the potential for space travel arising around a star, in a given five billion years of the star's lifespan, is somewhere around one trillionth (readily justifiable when you multiply together all the factors it would need to overcome, even before the species gains the capacity to wipe itself out), then we would indeed expect there to be exactly one intelligent species by now - and here we are. Not counting anything we create, we could expect on the order of another ten billion years before another species like us came along. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Aug 27 17:27:07 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 18:27:07 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 5:41 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > If the odds of intelligent, tool-using life with the potential for space > travel arising around a star, in a given five billion years of the star's > lifespan, is somewhere around one trillionth (readily justifiable when you > multiply together all the factors it would need to overcome, even before the > species gains the capacity to wipe itself out), then we would indeed expect > there to be exactly one intelligent species by now - and here we are. Not > counting anything we create, we could expect on the order of another ten > billion years before another species like us came along. > > Gadzooks! You mean we are the only intelligent life in the galaxy! Now that's really frightening. BillK From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 27 19:17:30 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 12:17:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <087c01cea35a$13ef3130$3bcd9390$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 2:32 PM, spike wrote: >>... This view of the evolution of intelligence as a temporary random > excursion from the boring mean, a spike rather than an S curve to a > new and higher plateau, goes against everything I have always believed > and hoped for, but it is the only way I have been able to explain > Fermi's paradox. This realization is in some ways worse than when my own fundamentalist religious > notions crumbled to dust beneath my feet. I do hope someone can talk me > out of this grim conclusion. > > >...Your scenario is certainly plausible, though the reasons for such a universal surge then decline of intelligence remain obscure. I would need to see some possible causes for a *universal* appearance then decline of intelligence... I thought of a couple BillK. One of them I will save for later, since I need to run soon, but here's one of the ideas. We can think of predatory memes such as religions that allow what I call voluntary tyranny. These are religions where people willingly and blindly follow some leader, completely surrendering their own will to the group. We can imagine that predatory memes always existed, but every intelligent species everywhere will eventually develop some planet-wide communications system, which could be used to facilitate the spread of a predatory meme to otherwise healthy places. The existence of such a communication system would give an enormous advantage to the meme over the memetic immune system under certain circumstances, such as if the meme includes the duty to reproduce genetically to the physical limit. I am compelled to argue this is exactly what is happening today. We have a particular well-known predatory meme, which encourages or demands complete obedience to the leaders of that meme-plex, encourages its followers to breed like pathogens wherever they are on the globe. It is easy for me to see that predatory meme destroying progress and eventually causing humanity to enter another dark age, from which extrication may or may not happen. >...Once started, intelligence should be difficult to stop, as each generation builds on the past... BillK It has in the past, but it is possible to imagine a predatory meme which specifically and determinedly destroys at every opportunity the progress of past generations, in hopes of supplanting its own memeset. It would have a certain structure and mythology, and come with the attitude that any previous mythology is either in agreement with the predatory memeset or not, in which case it would be classified as either redundant or heresy, to be destroyed in either case. This is not to say this has happened in the past, you understand. You do understand, ja? spike From anders at aleph.se Tue Aug 27 21:11:48 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 23:11:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <521D1614.20503@aleph.se> On 2013-08-27 19:27, BillK wrote: > On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 5:41 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > >> If the odds of intelligent, tool-using life with the potential for space >> travel arising around a star, in a given five billion years of the star's >> lifespan, is somewhere around one trillionth (readily justifiable when you >> multiply together all the factors it would need to overcome, even before the >> species gains the capacity to wipe itself out), then we would indeed expect >> there to be exactly one intelligent species by now - and here we are. Not >> counting anything we create, we could expect on the order of another ten >> billion years before another species like us came along. > Gadzooks! You mean we are the only intelligent life in the galaxy! > > Now that's really frightening. OK, please hide under the cover: Stuart's and my paper multiplies the number of relevant stars by a factor of 10^6-10^9. So instead of one chance in a trillion of intelligent life, the above argument requires it to be one in a quintillion or one in a sextillion. Now, I am all happy with saying intelligent life might be rare. But given the growth of cephalization on Earth and the fact that there are several species that show a not insignificant problem-solving capability that could perhaps evolve into true intelligence in a few ten million years, it seems hard to argue that the step from life to intelligence is *that* low probability. So if you believe in an early great filter, it better be that life is amazingly unlikely. That might work. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Tue Aug 27 21:18:20 2013 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 23:18:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <521D179C.4080901@aleph.se> On 2013-08-27 15:32, spike wrote: > Of all the observed scientific anomalies that I know of, the misnamed > Fermi paradox is absolutely the most vexing. The more we study that > question, the more clear it is that there is something fundamentally > wrong with our models of everything we think we know about > intelligence, evolution, space travel, everything. Yes. You can guess why it is a favourite around the FHI office. It annoys us too. > This view of the evolution of intelligence as a temporary random > excursion from the boring mean, a spike rather than an S curve to a > new and higher plateau, goes against everything I have always believed > and hoped for, but it is the only way I have been able to explain > Fermi's paradox. This realization is in some ways worse than when my > own fundamentalist religious notions crumbled to dust beneath my feet. > I do hope someone can talk me out of this grim conclusion. Well, we might be lucky and life is amazingly unlikely. A more worrying possibility is strong convergence: all civs somehow become quiet and do not litter the universe; as I have argued this is deeply problematic - why are there no defectors? The possibility of the earliest big expanders just setting up some rules implementing this, with police nanoprobes in every system, is downright paranoid but seems much more consistent - and might actually be pretty benign, if a tad too close to a religious view (God as a script set by ancient aliens running on a distributed police replicator system...) The simulation argument might be the really nice one: we are living inside the posthumans' simulation, and they just left out aliens. When being simulated or subject to alien police devices are the nice options, then things are weird. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From pharos at gmail.com Tue Aug 27 21:19:47 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 22:19:47 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: <087c01cea35a$13ef3130$3bcd9390$@att.net> References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> <087c01cea35a$13ef3130$3bcd9390$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 8:17 PM, spike wrote: > We can think of predatory memes such as religions that allow what I call > voluntary tyranny. These are religions where people willingly and blindly > follow some leader, completely surrendering their own will to the group. We > can imagine that predatory memes always existed, but every intelligent > species everywhere will eventually develop some planet-wide communications > system, which could be used to facilitate the spread of a predatory meme to > otherwise healthy places. The existence of such a communication system > would give an enormous advantage to the meme over the memetic immune system > under certain circumstances, such as if the meme includes the duty to > reproduce genetically to the physical limit. > > I am compelled to argue this is exactly what is happening today. We have a > particular well-known predatory meme, which encourages or demands complete > obedience to the leaders of that meme-plex, encourages its followers to > breed like pathogens wherever they are on the globe. It is easy for me to > see that predatory meme destroying progress and eventually causing humanity > to enter another dark age, from which extrication may or may not happen. > Social and political systems are temporary structures. All human empires rise then fall, to be replaced by another version. Atomic reactors, internet technology, smartphones, etc. are in use all across the world, by all political and religious systems. Different social systems do direct R&D in different directions, with the benefits going to different sections of the population. But it is unlikely that the past will be totally destroyed. It is too useful for the rulers. > It is possible to imagine a predatory meme which > specifically and determinedly destroys at every opportunity the progress of > past generations, in hopes of supplanting its own memeset. It would have a > certain structure and mythology, and come with the attitude that any > previous mythology is either in agreement with the predatory memeset or not, > in which case it would be classified as either redundant or heresy, to be > destroyed in either case. > I doubt that any such meme could achieve total world domination. Even if it did, it would only last for a few generations. But the main problem I see with this idea is proposing that this happens to every intelligent civ throughout the galaxy. We shouldn't apply temporary human problems to the lizard kings of Alpha Centauri. BillK From sjv2006 at gmail.com Tue Aug 27 22:00:35 2013 From: sjv2006 at gmail.com (Stephen Van Sickle) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 15:00:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: <521D179C.4080901@aleph.se> References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> <521D179C.4080901@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 2:18 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > A more worrying possibility is strong convergence: all civs somehow become > quiet and do not litter the universe; as I have argued this is deeply > problematic - why are there no defectors? > I think there are three possibilities that I don't think get quite enough attention: 1. We are not overrun by intelligences for the same reason we are not overrun by E. coli or kudzu: predation. In a universe red in tooth and claw, there is strong incentive to hide, and defectors from this principle are quickly eaten. 2. There are more interesting places to go that are far easier to reach than it is to travel between the stars. Alternate realities? Parallel universes? Basement universes? This does not solve the defector problem, unless, as in #1, they are hiding as well. 3. The time-like version of #2: this is an uninteresting time. Perhaps the universe will, in the future, undergo a phase change that improves computation, or, once you've solved all of physics, you get bored and want to see your predictions play out. Or the future sends a message, and you are impatient to get there. So, civilizations are sleeping until a better time. Still no solution to the defector question, unless sleeping is how you hide as well. Likely, a combination of all three. Reality is teaming with intelligence, all of which are either hungry predators or hiding from them. Once an intelligence develops, it either quickly dies horribly, or soon figures things out and either escapes this universe to hide or, if a predator, to stalk and ambush the unsuspecting. Or, a new civilization sleeps until better times, deeply hidden, in, for example, a deep ocean. I call this the Lovecraft Solution to the Fermi Paradox. > When being simulated or subject to alien police devices are the nice > options, then things are weird. And perhaps things are not just weird, but horrifically, mind bendingly weird. -sjv -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Aug 28 01:26:23 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 21:26:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> <521D179C.4080901@aleph.se> Message-ID: How about: A two-year old thinks "Why are there no other children in this nursery with me? I haven't learned object permanence yet, so since I can't see any other children they must not exist. There may or may not be parents or caregivers but I also don't see them right now, so they don't exist either. Why am I all alone in the universe?" For the sake of absurdity, let's also assume this child is a twin who has been raised since birth in an identical room separated by a distance not less than c m/s^2 that continues to travel apart from the other. The identity of indiscernibles suggest that both are asking why each is alone in the universe. By what definition of "alone" and "universe" are they both correct? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed Aug 28 08:38:27 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:38:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: <521D179C.4080901@aleph.se> References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> <521D179C.4080901@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20130828083826.GW29404@leitl.org> On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 11:18:20PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Well, we might be lucky and life is amazingly unlikely. A more This appears the default scenario. I don't see why people see it as problematic. Just because it looks like anthropocentrism/geocentrism in new guise? That's not a sufficient reason. > worrying possibility is strong convergence: all civs somehow become > quiet and do not litter the universe; as I have argued this is > deeply problematic - why are there no defectors? The possibility of The statistical argument alone should kill that one, yes. > the earliest big expanders just setting up some rules implementing > this, with police nanoprobes in every system, is downright paranoid You can't do it in an out of control world. We're living in an out of control world. You can't recall the spam, once sent. > but seems much more consistent - and might actually be pretty > benign, if a tad too close to a religious view (God as a script set > by ancient aliens running on a distributed police replicator > system...) The simulation argument might be the really nice one: we > are living inside the posthumans' simulation, and they just left out > aliens. If this is a simulation, then the real universe doesn't look anything we're living in. I find the simulation/zoo arguments extremely unconvincing. From eugen at leitl.org Wed Aug 28 08:43:08 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:43:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: <521D1614.20503@aleph.se> References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> <521D1614.20503@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20130828084308.GX29404@leitl.org> On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 11:11:48PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote: > OK, please hide under the cover: Stuart's and my paper multiplies > the number of relevant stars by a factor of 10^6-10^9. So instead of > one chance in a trillion of intelligent life, the above argument > requires it to be one in a quintillion or one in a sextillion. Rarity is not relevant for self-observation. Common as dirt or infinitely rare, you can't tell in absence of an external observer. > Now, I am all happy with saying intelligent life might be rare. But > given the growth of cephalization on Earth and the fact that there Sample of one, perfectly biased. > are several species that show a not insignificant problem-solving > capability that could perhaps evolve into true intelligence in a few You can't put a probability on any of the steps, until you have a second, unbiased sample. So far, we don't. > ten million years, it seems hard to argue that the step from life to > intelligence is *that* low probability. So if you believe in an And the answer is: we just have no idea. > early great filter, it better be that life is amazingly unlikely. > That might work. All these probabilities are firmly pulled from /dev/ass. Exploration of this stellar system might give us a real probability, but I think it's unlikely due to panspermia. From eugen at leitl.org Wed Aug 28 09:55:59 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 11:55:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> <521D179C.4080901@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20130828095559.GZ29404@leitl.org> On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 03:00:35PM -0700, Stephen Van Sickle wrote: > 1. We are not overrun by intelligences for the same reason we are not Expansive live doesn't have to be intelligent. In fact, the first wave arguably selects against intelligence. > overrun by E. coli or kudzu: predation. In a universe red in tooth and > claw, there is strong incentive to hide, and defectors from this principle > are quickly eaten. Ecosystem has a metabolism, and an observational footprint which makes it detectable halfway across the visible universe. You can't hide it. > 2. There are more interesting places to go that are far easier to reach > than it is to travel between the stars. Alternate realities? Parallel > universes? Basement universes? This does not solve the defector problem, > unless, as in #1, they are hiding as well. Statistical argument kills this one. > 3. The time-like version of #2: this is an uninteresting time. Perhaps I think the beginnings was boring, but nucleosynthesis and time gives rise to more complexity. It seems the universe is winding down (95% of stars to ever exist are already there), so the future might be getting more boring again. > the universe will, in the future, undergo a phase change that improves > computation, or, once you've solved all of physics, you get bored and want Darwinian systems never get bored. > to see your predictions play out. Or the future sends a message, and you > are impatient to get there. So, civilizations are sleeping until a better > time. Still no solution to the defector question, unless sleeping is how > you hide as well. > > Likely, a combination of all three. Reality is teaming with intelligence, > all of which are either hungry predators or hiding from them. Once an > intelligence develops, it either quickly dies horribly, or soon figures > things out and either escapes this universe to hide or, if a predator, to > stalk and ambush the unsuspecting. Or, a new civilization sleeps until > better times, deeply hidden, in, for example, a deep ocean. > > I call this the Lovecraft Solution to the Fermi Paradox. Not convinced. > > > When being simulated or subject to alien police devices are the nice > > options, then things are weird. > > > And perhaps things are not just weird, but horrifically, mind bendingly > weird. What about plain good old boring? It definitely explains what we're seeing. From atymes at gmail.com Wed Aug 28 16:34:29 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 09:34:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: <20130828084308.GX29404@leitl.org> References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> <521D1614.20503@aleph.se> <20130828084308.GX29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 1:43 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 11:11:48PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > OK, please hide under the cover: Stuart's and my paper multiplies > > the number of relevant stars by a factor of 10^6-10^9. So instead of > > one chance in a trillion of intelligent life, the above argument > > requires it to be one in a quintillion or one in a sextillion. > > Rarity is not relevant for self-observation. Common as dirt > or infinitely rare, you can't tell in absence of an external > observer. > Quite. The argument needs it to be one in a sextillion? Fine, it is. That's just as justifiable, given our current (extremely minimal) evidence. > > ten million years, it seems hard to argue that the step from life to > > intelligence is *that* low probability. So if you believe in an > > And the answer is: we just have no idea. > Indeed. It is in fact trivially easy to argue that the step from life to intelligence is *that* low probability. More accurately, the steps from planet through life to intelligence: we don't yet have confirmation of life on any non-Earth planet, especially outside our solar system; the only solid evidence people are arguing from is the number of stars and planets, and that some of those planets have some characteristics similar to Earth that are believed to be conducive to life. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Aug 28 17:29:59 2013 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 18:29:59 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> <521D1614.20503@aleph.se> <20130828084308.GX29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 5:34 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Quite. The argument needs it to be one in a sextillion? Fine, it is. > That's just as justifiable, given our current (extremely minimal) evidence. > > Indeed. It is in fact trivially easy to argue that the step from life to > intelligence is *that* low probability. More accurately, the steps from > planet through life to intelligence: we don't yet have confirmation of life > on any non-Earth planet, especially outside our solar system; the only solid > evidence people are arguing from is the number of stars and planets, and > that some of those planets have some characteristics similar to Earth that > are believed to be conducive to life. > > It is a bit more than just the unimaginable size of the universe and the billions upon billions of planets. Life on earth is more than just humans. Life appears in almost every environment, even in environments that are deadly to humans. The impression produced is that the universe is constructed so that life appears anywhere that it is remotely possible to survive. It is likely that progress to intelligent life takes millions of years, but the universe has far more than that available. Considering the size of the universe, galaxies without number as far as we can see, it seems unbelievably arrogant to say that humans are the only intelligent life. The whole universe is there just to produce humans! Yee-Hah! (I use 'intelligent life' with reservations, seeing that we are about to start World War III). BillK From atymes at gmail.com Wed Aug 28 17:50:42 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:50:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> <521D1614.20503@aleph.se> <20130828084308.GX29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Aug 28, 2013 10:31 AM, "BillK" wrote: > Considering the size of the universe, galaxies without number as far > as we can see, it seems unbelievably arrogant to say that humans are > the only intelligent life. What about claiming that Earth is the only life bearing planet? That leaves humans out of the direct argument; even if one believes all planets with multicellular life eventually produce intelligent life, that would still explain what we see. Besides, arrogance is not a counterargument. Many things that are, seem at first to have such extreme emotional connotations if true that they can not, must not be true...and yet they are. The Holocaust happened. Humanity evolved; it was not made ex nihilo by a supernatural entity. And so on. If you want to prove there is intelligent life outside our solar system, find evidence of it; until then, the evidence suggests we really are alone and unique, no matter how unlikely that seems. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Aug 28 19:33:08 2013 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 13:33:08 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Digital Jeeves In-Reply-To: References: <201307301317.r6UDGoFU014259@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > Highlights from the App Reputation Report are: > > > > ? Overall, 83% of the most popular apps are associated with security > > risks and privacy issues. > > That means 83% could be doing that. How many of them actually are? More > than none, but less than all. A far greater cause of there being security > risks and privacy issues is mere laziness: there are no eyeballs watching a > particular camera, and there never will be, even if you don't know which > one that is. > > It is safe to plan for the negatives of if they all are, true. But there > are a few positives to being watched...and you can't count on them to watch > you at any given moment either. > I wonder if this 83% number is counting things like Omniture's products (now Adobe)... While those do track you and what you do on a web page and so forth, I really do wonder if it's all the big brother that it's cracked up to be, or just a way for people to figure out how to optimize the structure of their web sites. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Aug 28 19:42:07 2013 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 12:42:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Digital Jeeves In-Reply-To: References: <201307301317.r6UDGoFU014259@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On Aug 28, 2013 12:34 PM, "Kelly Anderson" wrote: > I wonder if this 83% number is counting things like Omniture's products (now Adobe)... While those do track you and what you do on a web page and so forth, I really do wonder if it's all the big brother that it's cracked up to be, or just a way for people to figure out how to optimize the structure of their web sites. Anecdotally, for what it's worth, that has been the case for almost all of the Web sites I have helped build which track people on purpose. (The rest were cases where people wanted to be tracked; that was the point of their interaction.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Wed Aug 28 20:10:44 2013 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 22:10:44 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 27 Aug 2013, spike wrote: > > Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? > > Anders tackles the Fermi paradox. > > > > >...'We still don't know what the answer is, but we know it's more radical > than previously expected.' > > ------------ > > > Of all the observed scientific anomalies that I know of, the misnamed > Fermi paradox is absolutely the most vexing. The more we study that > question, the more clear it is that there is something fundamentally > wrong with our models of everything we think we know about intelligence, > evolution, space travel, everything. If our current understanding of > these things is anywhere close to correct, there has been plenty of time > for intelligence to evolve and colonize everywhere in the visible > universe, and the signals between civilizations should be easily > detectible. What we know is heavily biased. Or at least one should assume so, because we only have ourselves for comparison and our culture, sometimes (maybe more and more), looks like we are bending over to stick our heads guess-where, so we can finally go into self-feeding mode, fully independent from the outside facts. > After pondering all the possibilities, I am forced to conclude that > apparently intelligence is inherently self-destructive or self-limiting, > and that our current level of intelligence on this planet is anomalously > high. It goes against everything I dream for and envision for the future > of humanity: that the collective intelligence on this planet a century > from now will me more like what it was a century ago, and a millennium > from now more like what it was a million years past, more like what it > was for the 99.99 percent of the time since life existed. In that view, > intelligence is temporary always and everywhere. Our intelligence is heavily biased. It is strongly directed first towards breeding and second, towards charming other members of the gang. From time to time it may also take quasi-suicidal path by voicing unpopular opinions which get quickly buried down. Neither direction contributes anything to space exploration, at least not directly. First is too busy with planet wide problems like missing Lady Somebody's underwear and second is too thinly dispersed to count. And besides, even if the second group wasn't dispersed, I would be wary about guys who wanted to befriend me after I loudly claimed that 99.99% of humanity were morons. Groucho Marx was an exception, because he was able to voice separate opinion, earn money from it and remain popular. And I promise to learn from this guy as much as I can. But I cannot promise success, heh - well, maybe when I stop caring it'll be easier to laugh about it. So in a way, we are not intelligent. Not in a way that other writers to this thread are boasting about. And we have no idea what Intelligents do. Do they really breed themselves so much that they darken the stars with mass of their newborns? You guys keep talking about automatic probes but what you really unconsciously think about is "breed, breed, breed for f*ks sake" - or maybe "f*k, f*k f*k for breeds sake", I'm not sure which way but certainly not "probe, probe, probe for intelligence sake" :-). So all this talk about probes is just freudianish for finding more space and being fertile. And I don't buy into idea that they drown into some cyber-opium, Universe in a cellar retardancy. If they do, they are pityfull and The Real Universe (TR Universe, if you please :-) ) will show no mercy to them. So, what Intelligents are doing, right now? I guess they are somewhere out there. What an IQ-60 guy could say about IQ-150 guy sitting in front of computer and daydreaming (nightdreaming) the code? And the only good idea an IQ-150 guy could have about IQ-1500 one is this: "Never ever play chess with him. And never ever do-not-play chess with him, either". And besides, even if some of you travel to, say, Africa, I am rather sure you don't make contact with apes there. Throwing banana, yes. But not "hi, I am Spike, and I come from USA where I live with a computer". And definitely not "all creatures are equal", upon hearing which, an ape if he has any reason in the brain, should take a stone and break your head in two. 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 spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 29 05:43:07 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 22:43:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> <521D1614.20503@aleph.se> <20130828084308.GX29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <011e01cea47a$a4172a30$ec457e90$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2013 10:51 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? On Aug 28, 2013 10:31 AM, "BillK" wrote: >>. Considering the size of the universe, galaxies without number as far > as we can see, it seems unbelievably arrogant to say that humans are > the only intelligent life. BillK I am OK with arrogance. It is one of my favorite emotions. But it really isn't so much arrogance as I just can't convince myself it is so, even though it does explain the silence in the sky. I have set one of the Hubble deep sky images as my background screen. Every time I close all my windows, I am gazing out into vast stretches of space, shimmering with unimaginably numerous billions of galaxies. And I think: all those stars, so small, far away and insignificant, and here I am right down here in the middle of all this, so big and strong. Well, I don't really think that, but it tickles my arrogant side. Actually what I think is how the hell could we be the first or the only? But let me try an argument on you please BillK. At some point somewhere in time, some intelligent life form was the very first. We can set aside for now the argument that this first wise guy is us, and agree that somewhere and somewhen in the observable universe, someone was first. If we assume, quite reasonably, that this first intelligent tech-enabled species wanted to colonize the universe or at least the galaxy it inhabited, I proposed years ago a design for an MBrain node, that looks like this: Sun side: Away from sun side: The reason I wanted to start with the assumption of the first intelligent species is that that particular species would definitely see a radio silent sky, and all the signals it sent out would go forever into cold dark dead space. So if that species wanted to spread, it would need to move actual matter, atoms and molecules, rather than instructions on how to build copies of itself. So, these nodes would need to go. There is a good reason to think interstellar space could have diffuse hydrogen clouds that would be mission-enders if you encounter one, even at .001c. Your spacecraft would ablate away. But if you took your entire star along, then the radiation from that star would dissipate the hydrogen, as our star does now. Approximate dimensions about 120 mm diameter, so it is about the size of our DVDs for those of you who are old enough to remember those, and with three LCD regions for maintaining a desired attitude towards the first smart star, I showed that a sufficiently large swarm of these things could move a star anywhere you wanted to go. My realization today is that with an MBrain moving a star, it could go to a binary where both stars in the binary are on the main sequence. For main sequence stars, the luminosity increases as 2^3.5 times the mass. So doubling the mass would increase the luminosity by a factor of about 10, and this would increase the available acceleration by 10. So the trick is to move the home star to the nearest star and collide them, assuming their combined mass is below the limit so that the combined stars would not go supernova, then speed off at an acceleration of 10 times as many nanometers per second squared, or if you don't mind the oddball unit, several tens of meters per square year. Oy vey, I realized that this whole post is babbling, and assumes everyone who reads this far was in on the discussing going back at least ten years. I need to go back and write some introduction to moving stars with MBrains. Does everyone here know what I mean by that? You reflect some fraction of the star's radiant energy in one direction, and since momentum is conserved, the whole star and planet system goes the opposite direction the MBrain aims the light. Today's realization: you combine stars to make them faster. The first smart species would eventually invent an MBrain and start rocketing away to the nearest star. Wouldn't it? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.emz Type: application/octet-stream Size: 21408 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.png Type: application/octet-stream Size: 23112 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.emz Type: application/octet-stream Size: 20430 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image004.png Type: application/octet-stream Size: 26222 bytes Desc: not available URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Thu Aug 29 10:37:31 2013 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 12:37:31 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, 28 Aug 2013, Tomasz Rola wrote: [... stream of unbearable insults towards human so called reason ...] Or, to put it in less words: 1. *Our* type of intelligence either does not spread or it spreads with such difficulties that we cannot find any signs of it - those are exactly the signs we would have left, if we could by some miracle spread beyond Solar System. So, for us, the writing is on the wall, if I am right. We just refuse to look or do 2+2. 2. We would not have recognized other types of intelligence or its traces, even if it spanked us in a face multiple times in a row for a day and some part of night, until it got tired and went to sleep. Still a bit insulting, eh? Well, one cannot say it in polite, ego-diapered way. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From eugen at leitl.org Thu Aug 29 11:10:17 2013 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 13:10:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: <011e01cea47a$a4172a30$ec457e90$@att.net> References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> <521D1614.20503@aleph.se> <20130828084308.GX29404@leitl.org> <011e01cea47a$a4172a30$ec457e90$@att.net> Message-ID: <20130829111017.GY29404@leitl.org> On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 10:43:07PM -0700, spike wrote: > At some point somewhere in time, some intelligent life form was the very > first. We can set aside for now the argument that this first wise guy is > us, and agree that somewhere and somewhen in the observable universe, > someone was first. If we assume, quite reasonably, that this first > intelligent tech-enabled species wanted to colonize the universe or at least > the galaxy it inhabited, I proposed years ago a design for an MBrain node, > that looks like this: Spike, you might want to take a look at http://server-sky.com/ From dan at geer.org Sun Aug 25 11:42:13 2013 From: dan at geer.org (dan at geer.org) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 07:42:13 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [FoRK] [liberationtech] Fwd: [riseup] Space for dissent In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 25 Aug 2013 09:37:27 +0200." <20130825073727.GE29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20130825114213.EDC7D2281C2@palinka.tinho.net> [ cross-posting will fail unless someone else wants to do it ] The leading snippet of the forwarded piece, > What surveillance really is, at its root, is a highly effective > form of social control. The knowledge of always being watched > changes our behavior and stifles dissent. The inability to associate > secretly means there is no longer any possibility for free > association.... is called "anticipatory compliance," a term due to Shoshana Zuboff who said "[W]e anticipate surveillance and we conform, and we do that with awareness. ... Once anticipatory conformity becomes second nature, it becomes progressively easier for people to adapt to new impositions on their privacy, their freedoms. The habit has been set," and that quotation is from a couple of decades ago. More recent and more relevant to this topic is this: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/the-surveillance-paradigm-be-the-friction-our-response-to-the-new-lords-of-the-ring-12241996.html which is too long to quote and too good to abridge. Speaking for myself, I touched on this in my column for IEEE S&P of last January, Identity as Privacy http://geer.tinho.net/ieee/ieee.sp.geer.1301b.pdf In the meantime, and with allowances for approximation, as of 2013, it is possible to: recognize your face at 500 meters recognize your iris at 50 meters recognize your heartbeat at 5 meters recognize your gait by your smartphone via its accelerometer read your keystrokes on your smartphone via its accelerometer identify your car from its Bluetooth tire pressure sensors geo-locate you indoors via Wifi interaction with other devices know what you are doing via your Smartgrid elec meter identify you even if you never post photos; someone else has read 1" block letters from orbit etc. Disconnecting as a purposive decision is no longer a mere reaction to the demise of some "expectation of privacy" but rather the realization that the Internet is more and more a tool of control, not emancipation. As the source of risk is dependence, risk reduction goes straight to dependence reduction. --dan _______________________________________________ FoRK mailing list http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork From spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 29 14:37:17 2013 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 07:37:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: <023d01cea4bd$8a37f3e0$9ea7dba0$@rainier66.com> References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> <521D1614.20503@aleph.se> <20130828084308.GX29404@leitl.org> <011e01cea47a$a4172a30$ec457e90$@att.net> <20130829111017.GY29404@leitl.org> <023d01cea4bd$8a37f3e0$9ea7dba0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <027701cea4c5$4382a0f0$ca87e2d0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: spike [mailto:spike at rainier66.com] Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2013 6:42 AM To: 'ExI chat list' Cc: keith at kl-ic.com Subject: RE: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Subject: Re: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 10:43:07PM -0700, spike wrote: > At some point somewhere in time, some intelligent life form was the > very first. We can set aside for now the argument that this first > wise guy is us, and agree that somewhere and somewhen in the > observable universe, someone was first. If we assume, quite > reasonably, that this first intelligent tech-enabled species wanted to > colonize the universe or at least the galaxy it inhabited, I proposed > years ago a design for an MBrain node, that looks like this: Spike, you might want to take a look at http://server-sky.com/ _______________________________________________ Thanks Gene, I saw this when it first came up and it is definitely cool. The Server-Sky site is about orbital computation. Mine is the next two steps beyond that: making a complete star-enclosing MBrain, then have that MBrain use the star as a very slowly accelerating photon rocket to the next star, where the two stars collide and combine to form a larger, much brighter star several tens of millions of years after the trip begins. OK so I figured out this Server-Sky site was written by Keith Loftstrom. Excellent, me lad! Great stuff. spike From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Aug 29 20:33:52 2013 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 16:33:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: <20130829111017.GY29404@leitl.org> References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> <521D1614.20503@aleph.se> <20130828084308.GX29404@leitl.org> <011e01cea47a$a4172a30$ec457e90$@att.net> <20130829111017.GY29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 7:10 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > Spike, you might want to take a look at http://server-sky.com/ > > Did they consider, then rule-out "sky net" (i wonder) "No, can't use that one... we googled and it already means something bad to people" :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Aug 30 14:18:36 2013 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 10:18:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: <20130828083826.GW29404@leitl.org> References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> <521D179C.4080901@aleph.se> <20130828083826.GW29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 4:38 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 11:18:20PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote: > >> Well, we might be lucky and life is amazingly unlikely. A more > > This appears the default scenario. I don't see why people see it > as problematic. Just because it looks like anthropocentrism/geocentrism > in new guise? That's not a sufficient reason. ### Absolutely. Plus, we have to remember that our information about the far reaches of the universe is very outdated. It takes time for light cones to intersect. There is a metallicity constraint on the formation of life-friendly planets, and there must be a sharp threshold effect, with intelligent life only possible after some number of billions of years passed. If that number is close to 13 (.... some special significance....), then not seeing signs of expansions in galaxies farther than 0.7 billion years is to be expected. This means we don't have to be the firstborn in the whole universe, only the firstborn in a much smaller sphere, to explain the still-empty skies. Scenarios where multiple civs develop per galaxy are highly unlikely, otherwise we would have seen millions of them or we would have to be on the extreme far left part of the distribution in time. This leaves scenarios with one civ per galaxy cluster on a sharp time-threshold, with us being relatively but not ridiculously early in our few-hundred-million-lightyear neck of the woods. Quite plausible, if you ask me. If you wait another billion years, you might see multiple independent expansion spheres rapidly extinguishing all stars. Rafal From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Aug 30 17:20:06 2013 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 13:20:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: <521D1614.20503@aleph.se> References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> <521D1614.20503@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Now, I am all happy with saying intelligent life might be rare. But given > the growth of cephalization on Earth and the fact that there are several > species that show a not insignificant problem-solving capability that could > perhaps evolve into true intelligence in a few ten million years, it seems > hard to argue that the step from life to intelligence is *that* low > probability. > Of course it's hard to draw conclusions from just one example but it's possible that the probability of intelligent life evolving is astronomically low, by astronomical I mean biology may be able to come up with numbers just as big (or small) as astronomy can. By "intelligent life" I mean something smart enough to make tools to make tools, and by that criteria intelligent life happened just once on planet Earth, and very very recently too. Flight evolved independently at least 4 times in insects, birds, bats, and pterosaurs; and the eye evolved independently dozens of times, but intelligence only happened once. And it took 4 1/2 billion years to go from the beginning of the sun and of the earth to intelligence, if it had taken just 800 million years longer intelligent beings would be getting started just when life of any sort would no longer be possible on the earth because the sun would be getting off the main sequence. Some say starting life must be pretty easy because on earth the first life appeared just a few hundred million years after the earth did, but the people saying that are from a planet that produced intelligence, it could be astronomically unlikely for life to start so quickly but if it didn't there would be no hope of producing intelligent life. And it could be equally unlikely to evolve Eukaryote cells from Prokaryote cells, or multicellular creatures from single Eukaryote cells. And if an asteroid hadn't hit the earth 66 million years ago the human race would not be here, maybe dinosaurs would have gotten smart and be programing computers today, but I doubt it. On the other hand maybe intelligence is common but self limiting, if it is it's probably because it obtains access to its emotional control panel. If so then the end result of intelligence is always exactly the same no matter where it springs up, a billion year long orgasm. John K Clark * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Sat Aug 31 15:20:24 2013 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 11:20:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [Exi-east] DCT/Extropian dinner Thursday, September 5 In-Reply-To: <20130831020127.8DD0C33CA7@panix2.panix.com> References: <20130831020127.8DD0C33CA7@panix2.panix.com> Message-ID: <009f01cea65d$9e0f5f60$da2e1e20$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Keith F. Lynch wrote on Friday, August 30, 2013 10:01 PM, > Subject: [Exi-east] DCT/Extropian dinner Thursday, September 5 Unfortunately, I can never seem to attend these dinners because I am always in Florida. My business in DC allows me to work remotely even more so than before, so I am up there less than half time now. My current excuse for missing these dinners is a series of eye operations since both my retinas detached and/or tried to detach last year. However, I am happy to report that the final operations, to put a lens implants in both eyes, has restored my left eye to 20-25 vision. So I can see better than I have in years. I am still almost blind in my right eye, but all it needs is a laser zap in a few months. They were able to flatten out the retina and reattach most of it. They expect good eye sight to return to much of my viewing area I am thrilled that my eyesight has returned so well. With computers being so important to my life, entertainment, and career, I certainly dodged a bullet there. The possibility of going totally blind has certainly made me reconsider what is important in life! I also turned 50 this year. So I have been having a lot of introspection lately. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP CISSP-ISSAP CISSP-ISSMP CSSLP CISA CISM CRISC CGEIT IAM From matters21stcentury at yahoo.com Sat Aug 31 20:05:25 2013 From: matters21stcentury at yahoo.com (TwentFirstCentury Matters) Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 13:05:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why? In-Reply-To: References: <06cb01cea329$e33856f0$a9a904d0$@att.net> <521D179C.4080901@aleph.se> <20130828083826.GW29404@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1377979525.56356.YahooMailNeo@web163401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> "### Absolutely. Plus, we have to remember that our information about the far reaches of the universe is very outdated. It takes time for light cones to intersect... not seeing signs of expansions in galaxies farther than 0.7 billion years is to be expected. This means we don't have to be the firstborn in the whole universe, only the firstborn in a much smaller sphere, to explain the still-empty skies." Rafal, would you surmise the farther away beings might be, the more unlike humans they would be? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: