From extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Sun Mar 7 17:40:22 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AA01493; Sun, 7 Mar 93 17:40:20 PST Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: from churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA08970; Sun, 7 Mar 93 17:40:13 PST Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu (5.65/4.0) id ; Sun, 7 Mar 93 20:30:05 -0500 Message-Id: <9303080130.AA14823@churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu> To: ExI-Daily@gnu.ai.mit.edu Date: Sun, 7 Mar 93 20:27:56 -0500 X-Original-Message-Id: <9303080127.AA14814@churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu> X-Original-To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu From: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: Extropians Digest V93 #0109 X-Extropian-Date: Remailed on March 8, 373 P.N.O. [01:30:03 UTC] Reply-To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: OR Extropians Digest Mon, 8 Mar 93 Volume 93 : Issue 0109 Today's Topics: Abundance is a Myth, or, The Wealth of Ghettos [1 msgs] BET: Living for another 50 years [1 msgs] ECON/GAME: Justice and "competition" [1 msgs] MEDIA: Cryonics and Immortality in Popular Culture [1 msgs] META: Crypto-Lists [1 msgs] META: Policy on Reposting and Quoting of Messages [1 msgs] META: Re: White House Post [1 msgs] MIND: Mystics and Extropianism [1 msgs] OLDIE: Abundance is a Myth [1 msgs] PHIL/ECON/NANO/NIEVE: Post Scarcity Manifesto [1 msgs] PHIL: Inconsistency [1 msgs] PHIL: Is Slavery possible under Natural Rights? [1 msgs] PHIL: Reincarnationists Not Deathists [1 msgs] POLI: The Libertarian as Conservative [1 msgs] POLY/SEX: Child porn [3 msgs] SCI: (was unsubscribe) [1 msgs] Administrivia: This is the digested version of the Extropian mailing list. Please remember that this list is private; messages must not be forwarded without their author's permission. To send mail to the list/digest, address your posts to: extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu To send add/drop requests for this digest, address your post to: exi-daily-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu To make a formal complaint or an administrative request, address your posts to: extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu If your mail reader is operating correctly, replies to this message will be automatically addressed to the entire list [extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu] - please avoid long quotes! The Extropian mailing list is brought to you by the Extropy Institute, through hardware, generously provided, by the Free Software Foundation - neither is responsible for its content. Forward, Onward, Outward - Harry Shapiro (habs) List Administrator. Approximate Size: 53802 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1993 11:29:48 -0500 (EST) From: cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!esr@uunet.UU.NET (Eric S. Raymond) Subject: SCI: (was unsubscribe) > I have a simple answer to mysticism or supernaturalism in physics: the > bin. As for QM/Schrodinger's Cat - there are a number of > interpretations (and different categorisations possible): > - hidden variables (Bohm) > - many-worlds (Everett) > - sum-over-histories (Feynman) > - participatory model (Wheeler) > - Copenhagenism (Bohr plus others) > - complementarity (Bohr) OK, maybe you can tell me which formal model of the Schrodinger's Cat paradox (SCP) my analysis fits with. So we're told the cat is in a mixed state and the state vector doesn't collapse till the experimenter opens the door and "observes" the cat. The obvious next question is "what is an observation"? Standard expositions of SCP are curiously silent on this question --- they often seem to want to smuggle in the premise that a *human being* has to do the observing in order for the state vector to collapse. (Sheesh --- and *they* call *me* a mystic! Has CSICOP looked into this? :-)) But, according to the equations of QM, an "observation" is just an interaction with something outside the experimental system --- bounce a photon off the the cat's "mixed state" and it collapses. The real trigger for the state vector collapse would appear to be not the human experimenter, but the lightbulb on his ceiling! Thus, we have an escalating series of reductios. 1. Would another cat be a qualified observer? 2. Would the walls of the box be a qualified observer? (Don't forget backscatter from the cat's body heat!) 3. Would each atom in the cat's body be a qualified observer for each of its neighboring atoms? It seems to me that the answer to all these questions must be yes. Thus, no mixed state can ever obtain over the whole of a system of more than one particle (to the extent that "one particle" is meaningful). Farewell SCP, and with is untold tons of pop-science blather. -- Eric S. Raymond ------------------------------ Date: 07 Mar 1993 12:39:08 -0500 (EST) From: KMOSTA01@ULKYVX.LOUISVILLE.EDU Subject: META: Re: White House Post I do not oppose White House postings (repostings) as long as they relate to extropian themes and I can learn something from them. The one posted by Garrett had some of that, with about 80% of SOS (symbolism over substance), IMO. Krzys' ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Mar 93 14:53:53 EST From: sulko-m@acsu.buffalo.edu (Mark A. Sulkowski) Subject: PHIL/ECON/NANO/NIEVE: Post Scarcity Manifesto Hal Finney writes: >Today, much of the world is still floundering at the bottom level of >Maslow's pyramid. I expect the advent of nanotech to jack the whole >world up several levels. People will be more worried about self-worth >than filling their bellies. Probably true, but I don't see this as actually improving people's characters in any way. They may be further up the pyramid, but this is no magical way of self-actualizing people. (I am not saying you claimed this, I just wanted to make this point.) I fear that people will become much weaker inside because of nanotech. Some people, like dedicated extropians, may still seek challenges for the pleasure of achieving goals. But I think that most people will become aimless and lazy, and will miss some essential happiness. It may turn out that nanotech will solve even this problem by adjusting human brains to their new social environment. Who knows? But I am under the impression that human beings did not evolve to live in "Heaven" where all material needs are met. =============================================================================== | |\ /| | "But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to | | \\ // | think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, | | \\// | but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal..." | | Mark \/enture | - Aristotle, _The Nicomachean Ethics_ | =============================================================================== ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1993 13:06:03 -0500 From: Alexander Chislenko Subject: POLY/SEX: Child porn If the government wants to prevent children from being exploited for child pornography, it can LEGALIZE all *currently existing* 'pieces', and make them as cheap and easily accessible as possible. For example, they can register everything created so far, and allow the sale of only registered pieces. With so much stuff [I imagine] currently there, there would hardly be enough demand for new child porn (expensive and illegal/risky) to keep the producers in business. Also, a couple of [rhetoric?] questions: - May children (say, 14-yo) take pictures of themselves, keep them until they turn 18 and then sell? I don't see any exploitation here - and this definitely will take some market share away from the cases where exploitation does take place. - If the U.S. government has never publicly objected the Thailand's laws allowing under-age porn and prostitution [or did it?], and recognizes the legality of Thailand's law, how can it persecute the individuals importing this *legally produced* material for *indirectly* supporting the production? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Alexander Chislenko | sasha@cs.umb.edu | Cambridge, MA | (617) 864-3382 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------ Date: 07 Mar 1993 13:21:06 -0500 (EST) From: KMOSTA01@ULKYVX.LOUISVILLE.EDU Subject: PHIL: Reincarnationists Not Deathists Carol asks if extropianism can include reincarnationists? Let me just comment that any belief in any form of after-life, or life beyond the one we have, implies decrease in value of this life, thus easier justification for deathism, and human sacrifice. This, IMHO, is the reason that such beliefs when combined with government force tend to result in genocidal terror. IMHO, marxism is yet another example of such a combination. Krzys' ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Mar 93 15:41:03 EST From: sulko-m@acsu.buffalo.edu (Mark A. Sulkowski) Subject: POLI: The Libertarian as Conservative Ronald Hale-Evans writes: >Gee, guys, there really weren't many knee-jerk responses to Jay's >Post-Scarcity Manifesto. I'm impressed. Tell you what, I'll give you >another chance with the essay below, part of a collection by Bob Black >available from Loompanics titled _The Abolition of Work_ that I'm >scanning in for eventual FTP. Don't feel bad, though; I'm posting >another essay of his called "Feminism as Fascism" to a lefty list. :-) Thank you for posting this. I've heard of it, but never read it. I do have a few things to say about the essay. I hope they are not interpreted as "knee-jerk" responses. >A libertarian is just a Republican who takes drugs. I'm a libertarian, and I don't take any drugs that Republicans won't. I really don't appreciate this comment from the author. Also, there is MUCH more to being a libertarian than opposing the WOD. Right off, I suspect that the author is more concerned with bashing libertarians than making intelligent statements. >If you like to control your own time, you distinguish employment >from enslavement only in degree and duration. An ideology >which outdoes all others (with the possible exception of >Marxism) in its exaltation of the work ethic can only be a >brake on anti-authoritarian orientations, even if it does >make the trains run on time. I have never understood the anti-work anarchists. As if people could somehow exist without some kind of productive work. (Since I never hear these anarchists talk about nanotech, I will assume that they leave this out of the equation.) Between trading my time and effort with _people_ or the _dirt_, I'd choose to trade with people. I'd hate being a farmer or hunter gatherer, and even THAT requires a work ethic of a sort. If it is a work ethic that is the author's distinguishing feature of what it is to be a conservative, then a conservative I am. >The only important >exception is a dwindling set of hunter-gatherer groups >unperturbed by governments, churches and schools who devote >some four hours a day to subsistence activities which so >closely resemble the leisure activities of the privileged >classes in industrial capitalist countries that you are >uncertain whether to describe what they do as work or play. See, there are those hunter-gatherer groups. YUCK! Give me capitalism any day of the week. The work is worth the benefits. >If one looks at the world without prejudice but with an eye >to maximizing freedom, the major coercive institution is not >the state, it's _work_. Gasp! How horrible! As if we could be free from work (without nanotech). > Libertarians who with a straight >face call for the abolition of the state nonetheless look on >anti-work attitudes with horror. More like amusement. It is, as Murray Rothbard said, a revolt against nature, despite the author's protestations. My advise to anarchists who don't want bosses is to go live with the !Kung bushmen and see what that lifestyle is really like. Even a free lunch can have strings attached. =============================================================================== | |\ /| | "But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to | | \\ // | think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, | | \\// | but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal..." | | Mark \/enture | - Aristotle, _The Nicomachean Ethics_ | =============================================================================== ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Mar 93 13:09:16 -0800 From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: META: Policy on Reposting and Quoting of Messages So as not to violate the list rules about prefixing all messages that deal with the list rules with "META:", I am taking my comments attached to the other posting I'm sending out and also putting them here. This seemed better than chaining more prefixes on to the other message. I encourage anyone out there to dig up their older essays and post them to the list. Posting your own stuff can't possibly violate list rules, right? And maybe we can someday convince the "List Management" that the various rules about quoting old e-mail are archaic. For those who don't want their e-mail quoted or used, let them put a warning or disclaimer in the message, perhaps in the .sig block. The default position could then be free quotation, even over long periods of time. Or, if this is still unacceptable, let those who allow free quoting of their messages say this in their .sig blocks, or elsewhere. Maybe a list of those who allow quoting and those who don't. We've talked about this a couple of times, most recently around Xmas, but the policy never seems to change. BTW, so as not to violate list rules, I will separately post this part with the "META:" prefix--followup discussions should be to that thread. Opinions? -Tim May -- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: MailSafe and PGP available. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Mar 93 15:22:12 CST From: twb3@midway.uchicago.edu (Tom Morrow) Subject: POLY/SEX: Child porn Alexander Chislenko asks some interesting questions about CP. I'll tackle them by applying the theory of regulation I outlined in an earlier post (to wit, that CP regulators aim solely at preventing children from being abused in the production of CP). > If the government wants to prevent children from being exploited >for child pornography, it can LEGALIZE all *currently existing* 'pieces', >and make them as cheap and easily accessible as possible. A clever (if politically impossible) solution. But there are three problems: 1) it would appear to legitimize past exploitation of children; 2) even with registration of approved works, there is a risk of production--and thus exploitation--continuing under the guise of counterfeited registration marks; 3) even if the current pool of CP is vast, consumers will continue to demand new works by the latest "stars", in the latest styles, and using the latest media technologies. > - May children (say, 14-yo) take pictures of themselves, keep them until >they turn 18 and then sell? >I don't see any exploitation here - and this definitely will take some >market share away from the cases where exploitation does take place. Clever hypo! But I assume that a CP regulator would argue that this means of producing CP creates too many evidenciary problems to pass scrutiny. Since CP regulators aim at stopping child abuse by curbing CP consumption and distribution, they will not be able to easily discover how the CP in question was produced. The solution: a blanket ban. A generous CP regulator will allow an affirmative defense to consumers and distributors of CP who can show the CP at issue to be free of the taint of abuse. >- If the U.S. government has never publicly objected the Thailand's laws >allowing under-age porn and prostitution [or did it?], and recognizes the >legality of Thailand's law, how can it persecute the individuals importing >this *legally produced* material for *indirectly* supporting the production? CP regulators may argue, again, that there are evidenciary problems: how do we know that a particular bit of CP was produced in the US or Thailand? Again, if feeling generous, a CP regulator might allow US citizens busted for CP consumption or distribution a good faith defense that the offending material was made in Thailand. More likely: the CP regulator will say that all production of CP is wrong, but that diplomatic concerns forbid the US from directly hindering Thai practices. Busting US consumers is that next-best alternative. Mind you, I'm just offering counterarguments that I suppose CP regulators would use if they aimed merely at stopping child abuse. Since all these counterarguments arise out of administrative concerns, a CP regulator *could* in theory OK all of Alexander's clever scenarios. But, practically speaking, I assume that CP regulators carry a bias against all CP. Their preferred solutions will thus tend towards outright bans that have, at most, narrow loopholes for those who can disprove the presumption of child abuse. T.O. Morrow -- twb3@midway.uchicago.edu Law & Politics Editor: EXTROPY -- Journal of Transhumanist Thought Associate Executive Director: ExI -- The Extropy Institute ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Mar 93 13:08:54 -0800 From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: OLDIE: Abundance is a Myth Here's the first posting I ever made to the Extropians list, last July. The recent debate about "Post Scarcity" makes this a good time to repost it. Why repost an old message at all? * Why rewrite what I've already written? * Lots of turnover on the list. (Any estimates of the mixing time? 6 months?) * Hal Finney recently referred to this first posting of mine, citing my discussion of how Hollywood is _already_ an example of "abundance" (in the sense that the goods produced are purely software, and hence much like a post-Assembler Breakthrough revolution will presumably be for material goods). So I was reminded to post this old message. * It may be interesting and amusing to see some old posts. I've long been bemoaning the lack of history on this list--the inaccessibility of older messages (which may have better recent essays than recent rehashes, given that people get tired of rewording their old arguments and hence tend to resort to shorthand summaries of standard positions). Since we are not allowed to dredge up the old posts of _others_, we can dredge up our own old posts. Hence my prefix "OLDIES:" (I encourage anyone out there to dig up their older essays and post them to the list. Posting your own stuff can't possibly violate list rules, right? And maybe we can someday convince the "List Management" that the various rules about quoting old e-mail are archaic. For those who don't want their e-mail quoted or used, let them put a warning or disclaimer in the message, perhaps in the .sig block. The default position could then be free quotation, even over long periods of time. Or, if this is still unacceptable, let those who allow free quoting of their messages say this in their .sig blocks, or elsewhere. Maybe a list of those who allow quoting and those who don't. We've talked about this a couple of times, most recently around Xmas, but the policy never seems to change. BTW, so as not to violate list rules, I will separately post this part with the "META:" prefix--followup discussions should be to that thread.) By the way, I waited about 3 weeks after initially subscribing to the list before posting this. This allowed me to absorb some of the flavor of the discussions and see which topics were generating interest and which had already been discussed too much. And while my tone was somewhat challenging, I hope it was not too offensive. I had the additional "leavening" influence of already knowing several of the Bay Area Extropians (Tribble, Henson, etc.), so I tried to be careful not to blatantly insult their beliefs (I save that for parties!). I hope someone enjoys this. There are a few points I'd change slightly, a few others I'd expand considerably upon. But my basic view remains unchanged: while nanotech and other technologies will indeed bring huge changes, these will not be seen as "abundance" in the sense many assume. In fact, I see a widening gap between "haves" and "have nots" (and don't impute any loaded political meaning to these terms, which are meant only as shorthand descriptions), as the value of intelligence, education, investment capital, and dedication becomes ever more important. (To think everyone will be more-or-less equivalently wealthy presupposes some redistributive scheme--very unlikely, especially with the new technologies developed by the few rather than the many.) -Tim To: extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu Date: Tue, 28 Jul 92 22:11:11 PDT From: tcmay@netcom.netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: Abundance is a Myth, or, The Wealth of Ghettos "Abundance is a Myth" or, "The Wealth of Ghettos" (A comment from Tim May. A controversial title, I'll grant you. But I've been itching to make these points for a while now. This is my first posting to your list, which I began reading a couple of weeks ago after switching my Internet access from "Portal" to the vastly superior "NETCOM." I expect to follow the group closely. I'm sympathetic to Extropian ideals, but am somewhat skeptical of the more exuberant speculations about nanotechnology, uploading, cultures of abundance, etc. I'm an advocate of "crypto anarchy" (see my .sig block) and thus fully support the anarchocapitalist remarks of Perry, Dean, Harry, and others. Some of you I already know, via the Bay Area/Xanadu/AMIX/Hackers/etc. connections. The rest of you I expect will be blanks for me for a while---one of the drawbacks of our age of instant, worldwide, but text-only posts.) Several recent threads, especially "How queer a world can we imagine?," have posited a world of unlimited material abundance. I gather this is a recurring theme in the Extropian universe. Dean Tribble has noted that there will still be issues of who gets what, based on convenience, access, etc., and that market systems will of course be needed to allocate resources. I suspect it's worse than this: abundance of some goods will simply shift what is desirable to other areas, making them scarce. Scarce goods will always exist, I suspect. Consider that by nearly any standards of 1850, or even 1900, the residents of the worst U.S. slums and housing projects are incredibly "rich." They have excellent shelter, all the food they can reasonably eat, and enough disposable income to buy televisions, stereos, and even computers. But are they really wealthy? Are they happy? Are they self-actualizing human beings? Or are they the "Droogs" of "A Clockwork Orange," filling their idle time with riots and other merriment? Even worse, are they the "Eloi" of "The Time Machine," eating and drinking without a care--or a thought--in the world? They are not at all wealthy by our standards, because our standards have gone up. An obvious point, and one which in no way undermines the Extropian goals. It's just that "material abundance" is a loaded term. And not a very useful one when discussing how different, or how much better, the future will be. What Will Abundance Mean? Some months back our local nanotech discussion group, Ted Kaehler's "Assembler Multitude" in Palo Alto, talked about just this issue. What will "wealth" mean when "matter replicators" (our shorthand term for general assemblers making physical goods) become available? (I'm sure this topic has come up many times in your Extropian group, too, so I apologize if I'm repeating points you've made.) We concluded that intellectual and artistic things will dominate. Hardly surprising. What was interesting, though, is that communities like this already exist. The software community is already like this...copying of software is obviously just as easy as with any "matter replicator." The financial services industry--as with any other information industry--is a similar example. Most high-tech communities are "cultures of abundance" by the standards of their neighbors (or of visitors from the past). Hollywood is an even more interesting example (if only because it's not computer-related). The entire community operates on intangibles: ideas, scripts, marketing hype, services of actors, temporary ensembles to produce films, etc. Most of what they deal with is easily replicable...that it isn't replicated is testimony to the power of reputations and the legal system (no flames, please, about copyright abuses, patentability, etc.). What does this have to do with my topic of "abundance being a myth"? If you've ever been to Hollywood, or have seen any of the many B-movies about its seediness, then you know that this kind of "abundance" still can result in poverty and a growing split between the rich and the poor. (Before you hit your "n" key or begin an angry rebuttal, keep reading. I know that "growing gap between the rich and the poor" is often a political codeword for "capitalism is flawed." I mean nothing of the kind, and if someone has a better term for what I think is a very real situation, I'm open to suggestions.) I foresee a widening gap between the rich and the poor. I don't have any political axe to grind here. I'm just stating a fact. We're already seeing this. The "New York Times" of Sunday, 7-26-92, cited some statistics in a series on the welfare crisis ("Solutions on Welfare: They All Cost Money," p. 1): -real wages for men with 12 years or less of schooling dropping steadily over the last 20 years -even faster drops for men with less than this -women's wages stayed constant, or rose (typically they were in lower-paying, service-oriented jobs, etc.) Now I don't want to belabor labor statistics, especially not from such a libertarian source as the NYT, but the statistics from a wide variety of sources bear me out. I'm sure you've all seen it first-hand. With dramatic advances in technology (and I'll save my critical remarks about "the Singularity" for another post, one on "The Techno-Rapture"), this gap is likely to widen further. If there is evidence to the contrary, beyond wishful thinking, let's hear it. My late friend Phil Salin, founder of AMIX, attempted to counter my "widening gap" point by saying that future material abundance would allow the wealthy to hire more personal servants (!!!) and that this would help to "redistribute the wealth" (in the positive, nonstatist sense I think we can all agree on). I doubted it then and I doubt it now. (Personally, I wouldn't want a servant rooting around in my house, getting in my way, inhibiting me, etc.) Most of my friends are on the leading edge of technology---and are pulling further away from the masses every day! I retired from Intel 6 years ago (at age 34, in case you're wondering if I'm an imminent candidate for suspension), and yet I'm spending more time than ever learning, studying, writing, and thinking. Most people in America stopped most of their learning somewhere around the 9th grade--perhaps this is too snide, even if true--and are bewildered by the changes in the economy (the transition to a world economy) and in technology. Nanotech, virtual reality, and all the other favorite things of the Extropians will only widen the gap. Yes, some goods will be much more "abundant" than now, but it will be the ersatz abundance of the dole, of the housing projects, and of multigenerational dependence on government. There will be an ever-increasing premium placed on intelligence and creativity. Think of Hollywood. Despite our jokes about hackneyed plots, only the top few percent of writers find a market for their works; the rest hang out and call themselves writers. You all know how this same point applies to software writing and chip designing: the designers of something that will be replicated and used millions of times command an incredible premium. A sobering thought even for those of us who are confident we're several sigmas out...in 50 years the premium salaries may only go to the "5 sigmas"! As before, I'm not implying some kind of polical point. I'm just trying to debunk some of the enthusiasm for a utopian culture of abundance. Personally, I'm looking forward to it. My parting comment is that Extropians and other like-minded people should worry more about what the "democratic majority" will think of them and their goals. All the talk about the utopian world of nanotechnological abundance is missing the point. In fact, with the confiscatory tax policies and populist mouthings of both Clinton and Bush, I don't see a favorable investment climate for new and risky ventures. My main worry about nanotech--which I'll bore you with another time--is that there is no indentifiable "road to nanotechnology." That is, there are few identifiable "intermediate products" that companies can live on between "here" and the "assembler breakthrough" (or whatever is the currently fashionable term for the Drexlerian vision of assemblers making other assemblers). This "desert" is in contrast with microelectronics, aviation, computers, etc., all of which had a plethora of companies, rapid advances, and profits at nearly every stage. There was little need to recruit believers--people were too busy building things. Nanotech, of the assembler sort, as opposed to the hand-waving about biotech and chemistry being nanotech, is probably a lot more like controlled thermonuclear fusion, i.e., the physics is apparently correct, but there is almost nothing (no products, no resting places, no "colonizable regions") between "here" and "there"---I wish I could include some pictures!---that can return a profit and thus pay for further expansion. (I apologize if these brief comments don't convey my metaphor of the "desert" clearly enough.) Briefly, my chief concern with the development of nanotech is economic. Like I said, I'll argue this in future postings to the group. More bad news. I predict most existing cryonic suspension facilities will be shut down over the next several decades. Only by hiding assets (crypto trusts, financial shell games, stable law firms in non-U.S. countries) and even hiding the needed research and cryonic storage (the democratic majority will call this "black markets," "bootleg medicine," "organleggers," and "money laundering') can facilities be preserved. The "mortally challenged" will be thawed out and given good Christian or Jewish burials. There is hope, but I think Extropians ought to give more thought to the nuts and bolts of getting to the brave new world we all seek and less to fanciful speculation about uploading and making millions of copies of one's self. I eagerly await some replies. Let me know if you want to hear more of these views or any of my proposals for using digital money and anonymous systems to create a new world. Remember, democracy is not all it's cracked up to be. .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | RSA MailSafe Public Key: by arrangement ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Mar 93 16:35:34 EST From: sulko-m@acsu.buffalo.edu (Mark A. Sulkowski) Subject: MIND: Mystics and Extropianism Eric Raymond writes: > I'm a mystic. But the "mysticism" I use is is all applied psychology and > brain programming. I personally would not call you a mystic. It's a matter of definitions, I suppose. I think that the Extropian Principles occasionally makes a reference to mystics, but I don't believe that such references were intended to refer to someone like yourself. > As I've said before, a good extropian takes his transformational technologies > where he finds them. The vulgar, knee-jerk scientism implied by remarks like > the above is itself a set of blinders. I'll agree with that. =============================================================================== | |\ /| | "But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to | | \\ // | think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, | | \\// | but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal..." | | Mark \/enture | - Aristotle, _The Nicomachean Ethics_ | =============================================================================== ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Mar 93 15:30:00 MST From: sneal@muskwa.ucs.ualberta.ca (Steve Neal) Subject: MEDIA: Cryonics and Immortality in Popular Culture Ex-Date: 72 hours since the Fall of Perry Metzger I am working on a short paper dealing with portrayals of immortality and cryonics in "popular visual media", i.e. television and movies. As an afficianado of what SubGenii refer to as "badfilm", I've probably been exposed to the bulk of such portrayals, but if you can point me at instances of same not covered in the attached list, I'd be much obliged. -- Steve Appendix One TV --- _Star_Trek_ _Genesis_II_ _Buck_Rogers_ _Blake's_Seven_ _American_Bandstand_ _Twilight_Zone_ _Outer_Limits_ Movies ------ "Reanimator" and "Bride of Reanimator" "Sleeper" Far too many monster films to enumerate "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" "2001: A Space Odyssey" "Alien", "Aliens", "Alien III" Something-or-other with Mel Gibson "Nightmare On Elm Street", v1.0 - v6.0 "Cocoon" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Entropian Principles (CCITT 21244.01) 1. Sustainable Growth 2. Stewardship of the Masses and Other-Knowledged 3. Lowered Expectations 4. Harmony with Nature ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Mar 93 14:39:35 PST From: Robin Hanson Subject: BET: Living for another 50 years Nick Szabo suggests: >If we could start a large-scale >ideas futures market on the odds of future breakthroughs -- this would >require they be well-defined, which may be difficult -- the life >insurers might become major participants in that market. Alternatively >we might trade abstract "life expectency futures", which would open >up the now-secret insurance data. For the near-term, we can start with >the life insurance tables, if we can get anything more detailed than >the ideal-weight charts, and add in our own assumptions. Tim May expands: >This could also be a fairly well-defined instance of Robin Hanson's idea >futures ("i die futures"?), as we will be able to directly examine the >mortality rates. As one example, suppose the "accepted" odds of a >80-year-old are 77% to make it to his 81st birthday. If you think life >expectancy is increasing, you might bet that, in fact, 79% of 80 year-olds >will make it to 81. In other words, bets can be resolved in a year or so >(depends on accuracy of census data, hospital records, etc.). ... >* provide a test case for idea futures (with fairly straightforward >resolution via the mortality results for the year) ... >* also test anonymous bets and their effect on the process >Nick is right that insurers may even participate in the bet. With >anonyomous bets allowed, those with access to up-to-date info may place >"bets" to exploit their perceived side information. This will tend to >increase the accuracy of the estimates and provide liquidity. Well of course I'm all for it. A nice example of claims of wide interest to industry (in this case the life insurance industry), relevant to science (well not to fundamentals really), and leveraging extropian beliefs about the future. And it could help my proposed health care proposal, which I posted recently ("Buy Health, Not Health Care"), and which I just worked on some more today it turns out. Of course interesting would be bets on the life span of people *given* various life choices, such as vitamin intake, diet, exercize, type of job, etc. Then the markets could give ordinary folk information about how to live their life. Issues: * Just what mortality data *is* published now, and how corruptable is it? * How small could a group of people whose lives are bet on be before moral hazard becomes an issue. Any group that regularly gathers for a convention is a bit risky :-). Regulators would probably err far on the conservative side here. * You have to get the CFTC to approve such futures, so you need biggies to lobby them for you. * The life insurance industry might lobby against it, if they thought the publicity would hurt them (they are *very* image conscious). * isn't someone now basically offering futures on the lives of AIDS patients, by letting those patients sell the rights to their payment when they die, getting some negative publicity in the process? Heard it on NPR. Robin Hanson ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1993 15:34:49 -0800 From: D Anton Sherwood Subject: PHIL: Is Slavery possible under Natural Rights? It seems to me that Tibor Machan's analysis (quoted by Mark Venture on Friday, in digest 103) ignores time. Suppose Alice creates a machine and gives it to Bob; Bob gives it to Cathy; Bob dies (or otherwise ceases to be a moral agent); Cathy gives the machine to me. (For "gives" read "sells" if you prefer; it makes no difference.) We all agree that transfer of ownership of the machine is irrevocable, right? Do I own the machine? I claim to own it, by virtue of the actions of Alice, Bob and Cathy. But Bob, whose agreement at some point in time is necessary to my claim, no longer exists. How does Machan's argument liberate Mary without destroying my right to Alice's machine? Anton Sherwood dasher@well.sf.ca.us +1 415 267 0685 1800 Market St #207, San Francisco 94102 USA "Don't forget, your mind only *simulates* logic." -- Glen C. Perkins ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1993 15:34:07 -0800 From: D Anton Sherwood Subject: ECON/GAME: Justice and "competition" Dale: > . . . any ownership system is zero-sum, in the sense > that whatever I own, you don't. The non-zero-sum part comes in when > one realizes that the possibility of ownership gives one an incentive > to create ownable things, which is "globally good" in any number of > senses. Not only that: If you own something, you will maintain and improve it, and I can hire access to it; while if it were unowned, I might not be able to get the benefit of it at any price. The institution of ownership is clearly positive-sum in this aspect. > On the other hand, there are non-zero-sum games where open competition > is really bad -- consider the class of "tragedy of the commons > problems". Competition is not generally in the narrow benefit of those competing, but the rhetoric of capitalism exaggerates the amount of competition that goes on. I occupy this comfortable room by virtue of *cooperation* with the owner of the building. I am paid for *cooperation* with my employer. The market is really a mind-boggling web of such mutual-benefit transactions. Competition is mostly indirect. If housing were a commons I'd have to battle for a room. We see a more direct competition wherever something is rationed by the state. > But all of this seems suspect from an anarcho-capitalist point of view > -- it justifies competition in the name of some sort of global good, > rather than asserting that competition is good by definition. Property, not competition. > Do you really want the legitimacy [of] capitalism to depend on your > ability to *prove* that it gives utilitarian results? I'm not sure what you mean by that. The utilitarian argument is useful because it lays a burden of proof on the other side: if X is not good for most people, why do you support it? I think Objectivists support capitalism because it has a high probability of being good for them, which is a modified utilitarianism. Anton Sherwood dasher@well.sf.ca.us +1 415 267 0685 1800 Market St #207, San Francisco 94102 USA "Don't forget, your mind only *simulates* logic." -- Glen C. Perkins ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1993 15:36:10 -0800 From: D Anton Sherwood Subject: META: Crypto-Lists Dan Davis says: > If people can join just by sending a message to the list admin., > there seems little point to encryption. I agree. > . . . Encryption of the list matter won't mean much, unless > people keep their key files off of their machines. Otherwise, > the sys admins just have to look through your account > for the key file to decode the mail messages. > I suppose it would be fairly workable to always upload your > key file, or download your mail messages to a private machine. > Sounds like a pain in the butt, though. Well, that's what I do, since my employer is not on-line. How many of us are reading this on job-related machines, and how many have complete control of their machines? Anton Sherwood dasher@well.sf.ca.us +1 415 267 0685 1800 Market St #207, San Francisco 94102 USA "Don't forget, your mind only *simulates* logic." -- Glen C. Perkins ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1993 15:36:33 -0800 From: D Anton Sherwood Subject: PHIL: Inconsistency Mike Wiik asks: > Isn't there a quote "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"? Yes, but it is canonically preceded by the words "A foolish". Anton Sherwood dasher@well.sf.ca.us +1 415 267 0685 1800 Market St #207, San Francisco 94102 USA "Don't forget, your mind only *simulates* logic." -- Glen C. Perkins ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Mar 93 14:39:51 -0800 From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: POLY/SEX: Child porn The child porn (CP) laws have a lot in common with proposed laws being pushed by feminist legal scholar Catherine MacKinnon, by lesbian anti-porn activist Andrea Dworkin (famous for her "All heterosexual sex is rape" view), and by their odd bedfellows, Jerry Falwell and the Christian Right. Namely, that conventional porn (can't use "CP," so I'll just stick with "porn") is "degrading" and "exploitative" of women--as a class. Pornography is being attacked on the basis that it exploits women _as a class_! Maybe this is why women are putatively earn "69%" of what men earn, I suppose? (Ironically, some homosexual activists have come to realize that anti-porn legislation will backfire on them and be used to restrict their own access to erotica and the like. Some of them are forthright advocates of free speech and libertarian "live and let live" attitudes. Others are less noble--they want legal restrictions on "heterosexual porn," that is, "images made by and for the pleasure of men to degrade women," while keeping their own gay or lesbian porn.) I'm no lawyer, but this whole approach seems very dangerous (to civil liberties) and to the sanity of the legal system itself: - things can be crimes against a class, a category, of people. If this strange view is upheld, then advocating capitalism could be held to be degrading to or exploitative of oppressed workers. Arguing against affirmative action is taken to be an assault against some class of people. In other words, free speech gets targeted. (Needless to say, in many job situations, speaking out against affirmative action or against so-called gay rights (beyond normal constitutional rights, that is) could ipso facto be grounds for discrimination suits and other such nonsense. So much for free speech. We live in a very strange system.) - this builds into the law the strange, post-Marxist, ideas of "classism." Advertisements for diet programs are assaults on fat people, calling someone "overweight" (instead of the now fashionable "fat"--at least here in Santa Cruz) is an insult, giving math tests to prospective employees is discriminating against the "abstraction challenged," and so on. Making porn illegal on the grounds that it oppresses or "objectifies" some class is a further step toward this insane end point. - without a victim, only the State can bring charges (this shows up in the charges in the CP case--the "victims," if they even exist, are in Denmark or wherever, and none exist in the U.S.). "Victimless crimes" with a vengeance! (I'm not defending CP. In fact, using 5-year olds in a sex movie may be a crime even to me. Several on this list have basically said it's OK to ban smoking in a home because it's harmful to unconsenting children, so recruiting them for a sex movie seems at least as harmful, to put it mildly. For the record, I'm opposed to any laws restricting the television-watching, smoking, nudity-practicing, meat-eating, etc. habits of parents on the grounds of potential harm to children--allowing such statist intrusions into the home would be the most totalitarian turn of events one could imagine. Frankly, I was stunned at the time to see members of this list condoning and advocating such invasions of parenting privacy. But that's another topic.) - with laws against conventional porn, the assumption becomes that someone can be "exploited" even if they are of consenting age and have willingly consented to pose for photos or whatever. - as others have noted, within a few years the market for computer-generated porn will explode and make many issues of consent moot. What will then be the basis of the laws against porn? (To control demand, as Tom Morrow has noted.) - there are actresses in porn who look very young. While of legal age, they may be dressed to look like, for example, high school cheerleaders (a popular sexual fantasy, of course). This is not currently illegal. Will it become so? - and there are underage actresses who look much older. The Traci Lords case of a few years back is illustrative. She lied about her age (she was 15 or 16) and starting making X-rated movies. Nobody could've suspected she was technically a "child." To merely _own_ one of these Traci Lords videos is now a crime, as I understand it. On the other hand, defending child porn is likely to be a losing proposition, in terms of recruiting new members to this list or to the libertarian view. My father, for example, still thinks that libertarianism is mostly concerned with "private roads," this because of some debates I had with him about this over 20 years ago! Imagine what will happen if libertarianism comes to be seen as a view that says child porn is OK. A thorny issue. -Tim -- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: MailSafe and PGP available. ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 Issue #0109 ****************************************