From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Wed Mar 03 1999 - 20:19:22 MST
> If I cannot suggest that specific responsibility be delegated to
> specific people without causing internecine warfare, then the
> internecine warfareers are out of luck, 'cause I'm still gonna do it.
Much as I appreciate the approbation, I have to weigh in strongly in
favor of continued anarchy. And not just for the same old pro-free-
speech arguments, or diversity of thought, or dangers of central
control, although those are good arguments. I think the greatest
danger in setting up kook-control systems is the memetic equivalent
of antibiotic overuse: by reducing our exposure to kookiness, we
may endanger our future ability to deal with it, and may encourage
more robust forms of kookiness to evolve. Far better for future
generations that we arm them to recognize and deal with it rather
than protecting them from it and leaving them defenseless.
Unlike Natasha, I'm not at all against calling names and making
judgments; that is good and valuable information too, and we should
not shirk from distributing it just because it is sometimes socially
unacceptable--even divisive and incendiary--to do so. The fact that
such information causes violent reaction is itself a memetic disease
that more exposure may help us combat. Call a kook a kook, and call
a genius a genius (I, for example, would nominate Ian Goddard and
Robin Hanson to my kook and genius lists, respectively, but it's
important to note that I do not killfile or otherwise ignore Ian--
he does come up with an occasional gem of idea, and he helps me
exercise my ability to describe kookiness and understand it. Nor
do I canonize Robin; indeed I disagree with him more often than not.
I do not want to lose the experience of either of them.)
Volume-based, rather than poster- or content-based, controls might
be safer, even though they risk limiting "good" info. I have in the
past suggested an electronic version of Robin Hanson's equitalk; that
does have the advantage of judgment being totally decentralized,
allowing popular posters extra soapbox time, while not totally
silencing the chronically unpopular. It is that last feature I see
as most important. We have to have occasional exposure to the
memetic germs lest our antiseptic ideascape breed a race of memetic
bubble-boys.
I think I've strained the analogy enough for now, but let me put it
another way: judgment and selection are good; limitation is not.
If annoyance is the price we pay for liveliness, sobeit.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:03:11 MST