From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Mon Jun 01 1998 - 18:21:10 MDT
planetp@aci.net (Paul Hughes) writes:
>Polymath list is a perfect case in point. The level of discussion is intelligent
>but also completely inbred. I don't see much memetic evolution taking place there -
>only the same ideas hashed over again, with an occasional new hypothesis to stir
>things up.
The polymath has had much more influence on my ideas in the past 6 months
than the extropians list had over the past 2 years.
For example, I used to be pretty sure that nanotech and AI would cause
a big, long-lasting increase in interest rates; I now think that the
increase will be moderate and temporary.
Unfortunately, most of the changes in my ideas are due to one person
(Robin Hanson), so it is somewhat accurate to call the list inbred. I
don't see an easy way to get more people of Robin's calibur on the list,
and I suspect that opening the list would mainly cause the list to be
more dominated by familiar ideas. The extropians list has become ordinary
enough that I've virtually given up looking for important new ideas on it.
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter McCluskey | Critmail (http://crit.org/critmail.html): http://www.rahul.net/pcm | Accept nothing less to archive your mailing list
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:49:09 MST