From extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Thu Apr 22 02:49:58 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AA10113; Thu, 22 Apr 93 02:49:48 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: from churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu (geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu) by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA23035; Thu, 22 Apr 93 02:49:44 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu (5.65/4.0) id ; Thu, 22 Apr 93 05:41:28 -0400 Message-Id: <9304220941.AA05094@churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu> To: ExI-Daily@gnu.ai.mit.edu Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 05:41:10 -0400 X-Original-Message-Id: <9304220941.AA05088@churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu> X-Original-To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu From: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: Extropians Digest V93 #0214 X-Extropian-Date: Remailed on April 22, 373 P.N.O. [09:41:27 UTC] Reply-To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: OR Extropians Digest Thu, 22 Apr 93 Volume 93 : Issue 0214 Today's Topics: Contract engineering & paying the rent [1 msgs] Duplicate messages--Sorry! [1 msgs] IMMORTALITY: Not [4 msgs] Korzybski's "E-Prime", also NLP [1 msgs] META: !Fido [1 msgs] META: reply defaults [1 msgs] Paper MoF, Underclass Crime, AT&T [1 msgs] Radar Detectors [1 msgs] Radar detectors [1 msgs] Schelling point bias [1 msgs] Should we become "suits"? [3 msgs] TECH: Report - Entropic Cost of Computation [1 msgs] The Family Key [1 msgs] Waco coverup? Was there REALLY a mass suicide? [1 msgs] alt.extropians: proposed FAQ outline [4 msgs] the struggle [1 msgs] 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: 50658 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 21 Apr 93 16:58:19 PDT From: Bruce.Baugh@p23.f40.n105.z1.fidonet.org (Bruce Baugh) Subject: Contract engineering & paying the rent U > From: Bruce.Baugh@p23.f40.n105.z1.fidonet.org (Bruce Baugh) U > U > You can also try what I did: simply hang out your shingle. U > U > And don't forget "networking": Talking to everyone you know, and U > everyone they know. That's a lot of people, and since they know you, U > they trust you considerably more than the average ad-reader. Yes, indeed! I got my start (and still do a big chunk of my freelance work) for people who got to know me through other connections--network exchanges, mostly. And a lot of people are quite willing to recommend one friend to another; I do the same for my friends when the opportunity arises. -- uucp: uunet!m2xenix!puddle!40.23!Bruce.Baugh Internet: Bruce.Baugh@p23.f40.n105.z1.fidonet.org ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 93 17:01:59 PDT From: Bruce.Baugh@p23.f40.n105.z1.fidonet.org (Bruce Baugh) Subject: META: !Fido U > From: pmetzger@lehman.com ("Perry E. Metzger") U > Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1993 06:03:22 -0400 U > U > I suspect that within a couple of years virtually everyone everwhere U > will be in range of a decent public access system. That sounds pretty reasonable to me, particularly given the proliferation of gateways between networks (which let me take part in this discussion through my FidoNet feed, at no cost except a donation to a local voluntary fund to cover the incidental expenses). In fact, I strongly suspect that--in North America, at least-- resources are much better than knowledge about them. -- uucp: uunet!m2xenix!puddle!40.23!Bruce.Baugh Internet: Bruce.Baugh@p23.f40.n105.z1.fidonet.org ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 93 17:05:52 PDT From: Bruce.Baugh@p23.f40.n105.z1.fidonet.org (Bruce Baugh) Subject: Korzybski's "E-Prime", also NLP U > From: cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!esr@uunet.UU.NET (Eric S. Raymond) U > Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1993 09:42:34 -0400 (EDT) U > U > training your brain to *use* the consequences of Wittgenstein/Moore as U > a normal, constant part of your mental life. By doing this, it gives U > you excellent bullshit filters, Hmm. I've been heard to argue that an important part of any system of wisdom is a highly refined sense of futility--the clues that let one know _immediately_ that some argument or claim is not worth spending any further time on. This has both intellectual and emotional rewards, since it reduces stress and frees effort to deal with the problems that really _do_ require further attention. One of my regrets about using a FidoNet<=>Usenet gateway is that I lack access to anything as flexible as the standard newsreader kill file, so I have to do most of that manually. Maybe I'll get ticked enough to write one myself... -- uucp: uunet!m2xenix!puddle!40.23!Bruce.Baugh Internet: Bruce.Baugh@p23.f40.n105.z1.fidonet.org ------------------------------ Date: 21 Apr 1993 21:13:12 -0400 (EDT) From: Mark Sulkowski Subject: Waco coverup? Was there REALLY a mass suicide? Did anyone catch Larry King Live on the 20th? He had two lawyers on -- one represented David Koresh and the other another Davidian. Both lawyers claimed that THERE WAS NO MASS SUICIDE. The Davidians did NOT torch their own compound. They did not shoot their own children. One of the nine Davidians who escaped explained that the fire was an accident caused by the tanks and most Davidians died because they were trapped. If all this is true...then there is a coverup! The government is unwilling to take responsibility for its actions. Typical! Mark ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1993 20:10:59 -0800 From: twb3@midway.uchicago.edu (Tom Morrow) Subject: IMMORTALITY: Not >I was thinking about personal immortality, and it's pretty clear that >damn few of us will be around in 1000 years. Yes, we may come up with >some new form of abundance, but like dropping a bacterium into an >empty ocean, it doesn't take long for exponential growth to fill the >ocean. >Dale Worley I suppose that is why bacteria have filled the oceans, pushed out all other forms of life, and displaced the water so that it has risen up and covered the land. T.O. Morrow -- twb3@midway.uchicago.edu Vice President: ExI -- The Extropy Institute Law & Politics Editor: EXTROPY -- Journal of Transhumanist Thought ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 93 19:29:10 +0100 From: Eric Watt Forste Subject: alt.extropians: proposed FAQ outline X-Reposting-Policy: redistribute freely JM> There are a few areas that, while attractive to many extropians, are JM> potentially going to be misunderstood by new prospects, eg, "anarchy", JM> "anything-goes unbreakable cryptography", "immortality", "weapons JM> stockpiling", etc., so wherever possible I've tried to tone it down JM> and avoid sensitive wording. I don't know if hiding the most exciting Extropian memes in the name of missionary Extropianism is necessarily a good idea. People who are actively turned off by anarchy, maximally-effective cryptography, immortality, weapons stockpiling, and so forth would probably not contribute to the s/n ratio of the newsgroup and probably ought not to be encouraged to partcipate, as the possibility is high that their flames may dissuade and drive away potential "converts" who are *already* close to our position. The best way to discourage these sorts of people from posting on the newsgroup is to put anarchy, maximum crypto, gun collecting, and brain freezing in their faces from the start. The sort of converts one obtains by watering down one's position are usually not the sort of converts one would like to have, in the long run. There are plenty of real genuine extropians out there who don't know we exist and have never heard of anything called "extropy". Those of us who wish to work on this newsgroup at all ought to aim for that sort of person. Moderately technophilic minarchists are a merely secondary concern. After all, it is our great fortune that we are not the LP. We do not need to be popular to attain our goals. If you want to think of yourself as a recruiter, remember that we are not recruiting for numbers, primarily, but for skills. Personally, I'd like to see more people on the list who are actively creating the technologies that will make the act of governing impossible, soon. I'm not one of them, so I feel the lack. Eric Watt Forste arkuat@joes.garage.com 1800 Market St #243 San Francisco CA 94102 "Expectation foils perception." -- Pamela C. Dean just say no to the wiretap chip ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 93 18:03:51 -0700 From: karn@qualcomm.com (Phil Karn) Subject: The Family Key At 08:29 AM 4/21/93, Harry Shapiro wrote: >Thus, the NSA will be able to maintain an active traffic pattern >analysis of ALL communications sent via the Clipper chiped devices. > >I think in many ways that traffic watching can and does often reveal >more information about someone than at time listening in to what >is actually being said. I think this is an extremely important point. The US precedents regarding traffic analysis (e.g., telephone "pen registers") are very anti-privacy. I would not be at all surprised to see decisions saying that law enforcement could use the Chipper ID anyway they liked, without a warrant. Phil ------------------------------ Date: 21 Apr 1993 23:16:00 -0500 (EST) From: KMOSTA01@ULKYVX.LOUISVILLE.EDU Subject: Should we become "suits"? "Suits" are there so that you look reasonable, not respectable. Make an appearance of a reasonable person, i.e., someone who will examine the evidence. >From this point of view it is very easy to tell if a suit you can met is a person you can talk to -- check if this is an image of respectability or reasonableness. If the first one, forget it. Krzys' ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 11:04:33 WST From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) Subject: META: reply defaults > I did not bother posting this to the whole extropians list (as it is > a nitpick on a nitpick). > Cheers > Dave Cake Except, of course, I did, because I stupidly used default reply. I know that this doesn't work properly on extropians, but it does on most of the other mailing lists I am involved with, so force of habit often causes me to make this error. How about changing the mailing list software so that there is a reply to poster and a reply to group option? (corresponding to the r and g keys in elm, for example). Most other mailing lists use this format, and I sure that software to do it would be easily available. As it currently exists, both reply to poster and reply to group actually reply to group, so there is no way to reply to the poster short of typing their email adress in, if you happen to know it. Is there any reason why we have the list set up this way? Or is just an accidental corrollary of our choice of list server? Dave Cake ------------------------------ Date: 21 Apr 1993 23:17:11 -0500 (EST) From: KMOSTA01@ULKYVX.LOUISVILLE.EDU Subject: IMMORTALITY: Not Death is a nuisance. Dale has no idea what he is talking about. Krzys' ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 93 22:48:45 CDT From: ddfr@midway.uchicago.edu Subject: Schelling point bias >Has anyone from Chicago answered this yet? I grew up in Chicago, at >the U of C actually, and I know where *I'd* be! Speaking as an ex-physicist, the abstract statue commemorating the first self-sustaining chain reaction ("under the stands"--where I used to skate as a child) seems like an attractive possibility. Of course, since Chicago is a cartesian city (unlike certain other cities which I am too polite to mention to inhabitants of L.A., S.F., and Boston), (0,0) is another possibility. David Friedman University of Chicago Law School ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 93 20:52:04 -0700 From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: Duplicate messages--Sorry! Multiple copies of my "Suits?" posting went out earlier today. I apologize profusely, as this was caused by my mailer software (and me), not by anything in the list software. Basically, my mailer program (Eudora, for the Mac) would choke part way through uploading a message...sometime numbers in the message, as in "Mondo xxxx" cause it to think data is about to be sent and it chokes. (Why it does it on some files and not others is a mystery to me. I'm investigating it further.) I fiddled with the files and tried again...I didn't think any of the files had actually gotten through until I sent a modified file through that just had "Mondo" instead of "Mondo xxxx" in it. (When the file transfer choked with an "SMTP Error," it left the file marked as unsent.) Anyway, very sorry! Deep apologies. -Tim ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1993 23:04:40 -0800 From: twb3@midway.uchicago.edu (Tom Morrow) Subject: Radar detectors Anybody have clean info about the merits and use of radar detectors? I mean, of course, the sort that one buys to avoid getting speeding tickets. Most of us probably already know the basics: that cops use the X, K, and Ka bands, that a good detector needs to sweep a wide range of wavelengths in order to detect radar guns that jump frequency with ease, and that cops in places where detectors are illegal (such as VA) sometimes use devices to detect radar detectors. I'm not too worried about lasar guns yet (though I do plan to take measures to make my car more stealthy). Note that, interestingly, there are no laws yet regarding the legality of jamming lasar guns. OK, I'll confess that this is only marginally an Extropian topic. But generous readers will note the parallels with cryptography, and will share my fascination with electronic road warfare--as well as with SPEED! Anyhow, you can send replies to my private address if they seem to go too far off of E-topics. T.O. Morrow -- twb3@midway.uchicago.edu Vice President: ExI -- The Extropy Institute Law & Politics Editor: EXTROPY -- Journal of Transhumanist Thought ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 13:42:10 CST From: a0peuker@teaching.cs.adelaide.edu.au (Andreas Peukert) Subject: unsubscribe Please unsubscribe me from this list. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1993 23:16:23 -0500 (EDT) From: rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: IMMORTALITY: Not drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU writes: > > I was thinking about personal immortality, and it's pretty clear that > damn few of us will be around in 1000 years. Yes, we may come up with > some new form of abundance, but like dropping a bacterium into an > empty ocean, it doesn't take long for exponential growth to fill the > ocean. Our genes or memes or whatever silicon version thereof we > become in the next centuries will have the nasty tendency to replicate > themselves, and will fill up the living space available sooner or > later. As somebody mentioned, even the lowest rate of exponential > growth of information will eventually fill a solid ball of organized > matter expanding at the speed of light... > > So, what does that imply? Basically, that a position of complete (I thought Malthusianism was dead. How many times does this wrong-headed conclusion have to be debunked before it is no longer parroted?) 1) Immortality does not seriously affect population. Basically, a near zero death rate just changes the constant in the exponential equation but doesn't worsen the situation anymore than it is now. Furthermore, immortals are much more likely to be conservative (especially when it comes to having children) 2) Increasing information does not require increasing volume unless entropy is maximized. e.g. consider a box full of ice heated into a box full of steam. Same volume, more information. Or better yet, a box full of raw materials vs a box with a computer in it. 3) Information does not have to be stored indefinately. It can be compressed (lossy if neccessary) or erased to recover energy. Obviously, humans don't die just because their brains forget some of the detail in their memories over time. Even asteroid brains will want to clear house once in a while. 4) Hans Moravec has conservatively estimated that 10^51 cities can be built in the universe (each with 1 million human equilvalent population). This is 10^47 earth populations. Assuming that the earth population doubles every 50 years, it will take 7800 years before the earth population reaches this size (not factoring in travel time, or city construction). After all of this is said and done, population growth is not exponential anyway, so moot point. 5) This ignores virtual worlds which can compactify space and expand subjective time. If I were running 10^9 times faster than you, I'd live a billion years in one of your years. On the other hand, I could actually slow my objective time down and spread it would over billion of your years. That is, I could freeze myself and emerge 1 million years later when the universe is in a different state. 6) The amount of space/energy is not conserved according to the free-lunch hypothesis. In summary, I find your estimate of 1000 years a pathetic estimate and somewhat related to the environmental doom-and-gloom hypothesis. On what basis did you derive this number anyway? Or did you just pull it out of a hat? There is no scientific basis for accepting your figure of 1000 years. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 93 22:26:04 -0700 From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: Should we become "suits"? Perry Metzger has written a clear summary of his position, which differs from mine. I won't restate my points, as both our positions are clear. (As disputes go, it's quite minor...if a good enough alternative to the name "Cypherpunks" were to be invented, one that still captured our "no-compromises" position, I would certainly listen with interest. But if something ain't provably broke....) I will answer a couple of Perry's specific points: >The problem is this: the name "Cypherpunks" makes us sound like people >who break into computers for fun or other such stuff. I was on the >phone with John Markoff of the New York Times a couple of days ago, >and I was unhappy that no one had yet changed the name of the group >because I frankly felt that I could not encourage him to subscribe -- >the results would be unpredictable. I encouraged him to read more >sci.crypt instead, which he has already been doing. I talked to Markoff at the Hackers Conference in October...he is already aware of Cypherpunks. He placed a call to me last week, before the Clippershit hit the fan, but I was out. His message to me in e-mail was that he wanted to check up on what the Cypherpunks were doing....so clearly he knows all about it. As it turned out, he talked to others. I can only assume Eric Hughes, who talked to him on Friday, filled him in on Cypherpunks doings...though by Friday the focus had of course shifted dramatically. I think Perry is overly worried about the reaction to our name. Neither Markoff, nor Levy, nor Kelly, nor Dibbell, nor Mandl has seemed disturbed by the name. And like I said, the name is interesting and acts as a kind of "Schelling point" (a natural gathering place) for the subculture of crypto rebels and privacy advocates. >I've been associated with radical political causes for a while. I've >found that in general, the radicals are their own worst enemy. People >are NOT happy about being lectured to by strange-acting people. I can only hope Perry is not referring to *me*! Perry comments on my mention of radical groups in the 60s: >None of whom accomplished any of their goals. You REALLY want to >emulate them? I've been an occassional visitor to #9 Bleeker Street, >where Dana Beal, last of the Yippies, holds court. He doesn't wash >regularly, and he wonders occassionaly why no one takes his drug >legalization crusade seriously. Hint: they are connected. I wasn't holding them up as moral beacons, just noting that various "niches" exist, in kind of a good cop/bad cop sort of way. Journalists like some "color" and will seek out those who'll provide it. Readers, too, seek some excitement. The "Crypto Rebels" title of Steven Levy's piece bespeaks volumes. (Frankly, I really like the name "Crypto Rebels"...I should note that some of the names we debated last fall were of this flavor, including "Crypto Liberation Front," "The Crypto Underground," and "Crypto Radicals." Even a whimsical "Cryptoids." I guess it's clear that the West Coast camp is somewhat more radical than Perry might like.) >We can't afford to lose this fight. This is a matter of life and >death. Playing out fantasy games about being 1960s radicals is fine >and well -- when you don't care about the outcome. We can't afford to >lose, so we can't afford to emulate losing strategies. Well, I think referring to our activities as "playing out fantasy games" is somewhat intemperate and misleading. Sounds like rhetorical excess to me. And implying that I, or the others in our group, don't care about the outcome is also misleading and, I think, unfair. I won't list our achievements as a group or as individuals, but I'll remind Perry that I was the one who correctly picked up on Denning's tone in her Computer Security Conference paper and posted the original alert to sci.crypt, the "A Trial Balloon to Ban Encryption?" posting. Last time I counted, there were more than a thousand replies--some good, some crap, some repetitive--to this thread. In my opinion, this helped prepare the readers of sci.crypt, comp.org.eff, Cypherpunks, and Extropians in the current situation. I'm hoping you were merely carried away by the exuberance of your rhetoric and do not really believe these charges. >..... But you are fooling yourself if you >think people listen to Hippies over Suits. I didn't argue this. I was arguing that Gilmore, Hughes, and others, are perfectly acceptable messengers to the journalists I know. If "suits" are available and are as articulate, fine. I don't see any around here, though! Sidenote: I hold to one other fairly debatable view: I don't think reaching Middle America, Mom and Pop, our neighbors, the Silent Majority, etc., is really all that important. The battle, such as it is happening, is taking place amongst a fairly small elite. Others believe that Joe Average needs to be sold on the virtues of crypto and privacy. Maybe so, but that's not a battle I see Cypherpunks fighting and winning. If this is really your point, that the Crypto Rebels/Cypherpunks approach will not be convincing to the folks in Peoria, then I basically *agree* with you. To reach them, you'll need Madison Avenue ad campaigns, Perot-style populism, and legions of smooth talkers hitting the talk shows and airwaves. Not something Cypherpunks have any intentions of doing, so far as I've heard. As I said in my first message, perhaps a large lobbying group is needed. The NRA is a useful model, but recall how long it had to get rolling before the assault on the Second Amendment started in earnest. In this battle, there are few lobbying groups, few sources of NRA-style publicity and funding, and the government has *already* struck. Remember, this is not a proposal, it's a done deal...our only hope now is to demolish it with withering criticism, with sabotage of trust in it, and with the rapid deployment of strong crypto alternatives. (I don't want to belabor the parallels with the NRA, for various reasons. Suffice it to say that with gun-owners, Americans had long owned and used guns and the right was included as the Second Amendment. The NRA thus had a running head start and had lots of sources of funding. The crypto situation is much newer, much more abstract, and only has a tiny handful of active users. Ironically, most of them are balking at paying *anything* to RSA Data Security to use convincingly strong crypto, so I don't see many folks shelling out even $25 a year for a subscription to "American Cryptographer" or whatever. However, I wish anyone who forms such a group the best luck. I'll certainly support them.) Back to Perry's points: >The fact is this: over and over again, every scientific study thats >been done (by lots of people), every anecdotal comparison I can make >in things like why one LP candidate did well and another did poorly or >why one local group soared while another failed, each one of them >point to the same conclusion: that conclusion is, sadly, that you are >completely wrong Tim, and that people judge by appearances, and that >even the most down and out people in our society will take the word of >a person who looks respectable over a person who doesn't. Yes, you've made this point clear a couple of times. Speaking about the existing groups I mentioned, Perry writes: >No one can log in to their groups -- we provide an essential service. >I WANT the New York Times reporter reading this group, but I don't >want him to think we are crackers or nuts. Well, while the list is open to all subscribers, it has never been intended, so far as I know, as a *resource service* for reporters! Perhaps it *should* be, but that's a much different sort of list than we now have. (For the Extropians who are reading this, it would be like making the Extropians list a resource for those trying to learn about the basics of libertarianism or whatnot, rather than a list for those "already clued in.") Several reporters have, at times, subscribed to the list, for brief periods of time. They were mostly "lurkers." A couple of times I got e-mail, as I suspect others did, asking me to clarify some point or send more information. This I did whenever possible. And with an open list, nothing can be done to censor or stop postings that make us seem "crackers or nuts," to use Perry's terms. That's just the way it is. The list is for crypto rebels and people fed up with crypto laws and regulations, not as an educational arena for outsiders. And not for sanitized discussions. People on the list want to talk about digital money, data havens, anonymous mail services, ways to subvert governments, and so on. They don't want to just have some unified front that is palatable to reporters. (If I'm wrong in this judgement, I hope others will give their views as well.) Your ideas may make sense, Perry, for *some* group. EFF and CPSR operate roughly in this way, with a paid staff of "reasonable" lawyers and spokespersons (the newsgroups, like comp.org.eff.talk, are another thing altogether...as wild and crazy as our list can be). But Cypherpunks does not seem to fit the bill. We're an anarchy, with no formal rules, no formal political agenda, and just a bunch of spontaneously ordered crypto rebels. (Personally, I hope EFF takes a leading role in the fight. They have recently been sidetracked into stuff about ISDN and away from core issues like privacy in the electronic frontier. They have the resources, lawyers, speakers, etc.) As always, I appreciated Perry's comments. Some are reasonable, some I disagree with strongly. Two hundred other Cypherpunks will probably have their own views. Enough for now. -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, smashing of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: MailSafe and PGP available. Waco Massacre + Big Brother Wiretap Chip = A Nazi Regime ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 93 22:43:28 PDT From: hkhenson@cup.portal.com Subject: IMMORTALITY: Not Dale Worley writes: >I was thinking about personal immortality, and it's pretty clear that >damn few of us will be around in 1000 years. Yes, we may come up with >some new form of abundance, but like dropping a bacterium into an >empty ocean, it doesn't take long for exponential growth to fill the >ocean. Our genes or memes or whatever silicon version thereof we >become in the next centuries will have the nasty tendency to replicate >themselves, and will fill up the living space available sooner or >later. As somebody mentioned, even the lowest rate of exponential >growth of information will eventually fill a solid ball of organized >matter expanding at the speed of light... I see this as rather pessimistic . . . . >So, what does that imply? Basically, that a position of complete >egotism is untenable. I will eventually die, and I'd better give some >thought to what I'd like to leave behind. But I completely miss the connection between the first paragraph and the second. There is fairly strong evidence that cooperation can emerge and evolve and there are conditions where it is more successful than being a lone wolf, but a thoughtful person, even if they are into complete egotism, can see this and act accordingly. The two parts of the last sentence are even harder to grok. It seems to me that a person is going to be *more* thoughtful about the effects of their actions if they think it is possible that they may be there to suffer (or enjoy) the results. Not that it makes a heck of lot of difference, chaos (sensitivity) and non-linear interactions makes it virtually impossible to predict the effects of present day actions very far into the future. Keith Henson PS, if you don't like the idea of dying, you can always sign up to be frozen--like me. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1993 22:31:48 -0700 (PDT) From: Scott C DeLancey Subject: Paper MoF, Underclass Crime, AT&T On Wed, 21 Apr 1993 drw@bourbaki.mit.edu wrote: > There are indications that adherance to various conservative Christian > sects is *positively* correlated with various sorts illicit sexual > activity. Wow. Like what? (What indications, I mean, though I'm sure I'd read juicy stuff about what sorts of activity too). Scott DeLancey ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1993 22:47:46 -0700 From: D Anton Sherwood Subject: the struggle > Modern life has become a science fiction novel. Unfortunately, the > novel is "Alongside Night." A while ago, someone said Schulman was about to get Net access; has he? *\\* Anton Ubi scriptum? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1993 23:28:06 -0700 From: Mark Read Pickens Subject: Radar Detectors > Anybody have clean info about the merits and use of radar detectors? I > mean, of course, the sort that one buys to avoid getting speeding tickets. > T.O. Morrow A friend once told me he knew someone who was using a device on his car which caused police radar to register a speed about 90 mph faster than the actual speed--far past the point any court would consider plausible. This was in 1966, when the technology may have been easier to fool. Does anyone know if this is (or ever was) possible and could it be done within a reasonable budget? Mark Read Pickens autarch@well.sf.ca.us ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 93 23:52:25 -0700 From: mcpherso@lumina.ucsd.edu (John McPherson) Subject: alt.extropians: proposed FAQ outline I have seen messages from 15 people so far regarding the "alt.extropians" newsgroup and/or my proposed FAQ outline. Responses toward the newsgroup have been mostly negative, with the majority consensus being that it should be boycotted. Two communicators requested that I not post the FAQ, although another one thought that if anything should be posted, it should be the Principles, a FAQ, and subscription info. The negative majority opinion, however, is not as large as might be thought. Four communicators expressed a desire for a more public forum, perhaps alt.extropians, two made suggestions for the FAQ and seemed to assume implicitly that I would post it, and one said that it might actually do some good (implying that I should post it). So here's what I propose to do ... If the newsgroup dies, fine. If sincere inquiries are posted to it, I propose to _email_ them my FAQ outline, which will redirect them to ExI, the reading list, and to the other newsgroups I mentioned. In the email message I will state that a.e was created accidently. If despite all contrary efforts the newsgroup actually gets off the ground and has say 10 non-joke posts per week, I'll post my FAQ outline on a semi-regular basis to induce a productive direction for the discussions. I figure that in the later case, it becomes worth trying to associate actual extropian topics with the name "alt.extropians". Comments? John McPherson "Things are only impossible until they're not." Captain Jean-Luc Picard ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Just say NO to Clinton's telephone-wiretap electronic chip proposal! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ hardcore signature virus: "As a juror in a Trial by Jury, you have the right, power and duty to acquit the defendant if you judge the law itself to be unjust." ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 9:50:40 WST From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) Subject: Should we become "suits"? A simple compromise is to separate the lobbying side of things from the discussion of cypherpunks. In America, the LPF has found that it has a reputation as a 'radical' organisation (probably because its public face is RMS, who is fairly radically left wing), and this has made big problems in some court cases. The Australian organisation, the LPFA, started out as a group called the Association for Literal Software Protection, and we still use that name for our lobbying. The name ALSP is very establishment sounding - see, we believe in software protection, just not by overly general patents or look and feel lawsuits, we're good citizens. And while we have our 'smash all copyright laws' advocates, thats not our public face. Similarly, cypherpunks probably has its share of people who believe that crypto privacy for drug barons and money launderers is a particularly good use for crypto privacy. But that is not going to be its public face. Its public face is going to talk about priests in confessional, lawyer/client, medical confidentiality. So why should its public face be called cypherpunks? In fact, why not form a lobby group for Crypto privacy, and encourage doctors, lawyers, and priests to join. I don't think reporters should be reading cypherpunks. They are unlikely to understand it, and what they don't understand they may completly misrepresent. If they decide to read it themselves, by hearing about it on the net, thats different, they might understand it then. But what reporters don't understand, they grossly misrepresent (take, for example, mainstream media versions of role-playing games). Form a lobby group, separate from cypherpunks, with a nice, reponsible sounding name, and keep its public image squeaky clean. Then lobby like mad. Dave Cake ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 09:11:00 BST From: jrk@information-systems.east-anglia.ac.uk (Richard Kennaway) Subject: alt.extropians: proposed FAQ outline John McPherson writes: >In the email message I >will state that a.e was created accidently. Whoa! What makes you think it was an accident? According to his message here, Pandit Singh created it deliberately. -- ____ Richard Kennaway \ _/__ School of Information Systems Internet: jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk \X / University of East Anglia uucp: ...mcsun!ukc!uea-sys!jrk \/ Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 93 21:35:26 GMT From: Michael Clive Price Subject: alt.extropians: proposed FAQ outline Some suggestions for the lastest FAQ: Sources of extropy: > 1. Physical Systems > A. Ilya Prigogine's work (eg, theory of dissipative structures) Replace Ilya Prigogine with a description of what it that you specifically admire. Some of IP's stuff (eg microirreversibility, entropy and QM) is non-mainstream and, IMO, false, whereas other stuff about the self-organising properties of far-from-equilibrium systems seems very innovative. Its the latter subject I assume you mean as extropian. > B. Chaos Theory, Dynamical Systems, Fractals, etc. C. Cosmic inflation (especially Andrei Linde's work). > John (PR man?) McPherson (speaking only for himself) Mike Price price@price.demon.co.uk AS member (21/3/93)> ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 05:48:18 GMT From: Michael Clive Price Subject: TECH: Report - Entropic Cost of Computation Derek Zahn: > 1) You start with the Gibbs (Shannon) definition > of entropy for a macrostate, S = -k sum p ln p. I understand > the derivation of this, except for the introduction of > boltzmann's constant. Obviously, any constant would do; > what I can't understand is the introduction of the units > involved (J/degK). After deriving a formula that expresses > the randomness of a macrostate, it seems fishy to just tack > on whatever units are convenient. I'm not sure what you mean by "deriving" here. The formula for S is a definition, so we have complete freedom to choose anything we want. Suppose, however, we had defined S = - A sum p ln p , where A was undefined (including units). We still get Ni/Nj = exp [-(Ei-Ej)/B] where B is another undefined constant (but with units of J). Calculating dE/dS gives (for large Ni): dE/dS = B/A. Just as we can *define* temperature as T = B/k so we can choose A = k so that B/A = T, to keep it simple. The units are choosen purely for our convenience. If you're still unhappy with this then define H = -sum p ln p and replace S in all the equations with kH. Nothing physically has altered. Instead of dE = T dS - P dV + u dN we have dE = kT dH - P dV + u dN etc etc > 2) In your derivation, you reduce that definition to the Boltzmann > entropy definition S = k ln W, where W is the number of microstates > in the macrostate. [...] However, it assumes that the probabilities > of all the quantum states are equal, which doesn't seem justified. Start with S = -k sum p ln p and vary with respect to p: dS = -k sum (1 + ln p) dp = -k sum ln p dp (by sum dp = 0, from sum p = 1) At equilibrium S is maximised (proof from the Shannon definition) and so dS = 0. Hence ln p = constant. Hence p = 1/W and dS = -k W * 1/W sum dp = 0 S = k ln W (at equilibrium) To generalise we should say: S <= k ln W since we know that non-equilibrium states will have lower entropy. Also the dE = TdS - PdV + udN only applies in equilibrium. > More generally, the Boltzmann definition > only applies to systems in equilibrium; an operating nanocomputer > is never in equilibrium. A reversible nanocomputer (or any reversible mechanism) *is* in equilibrium. Calculations of the energy requirements of reversible mechanisms are therefore valid from the above equations, using the equality. For irreversible processes we know they are only the lower bound (ie we use the inequality). Hence dE = kT ln2 for the reversible erasure of a bit. dE > kT ln2 for the irreversible erasure of a bit. > derek Mike Price price@price.demon.co.uk AS member (21/3/93) PS my thanks to Derek for a reference: Thomas Schneider: Theory of Molecular Machines II Journal of Theoretical Biology (1991) 148, p125-137 which develops the parallels with Shannon's channel capacity formula and nanotechnology/biology. He, too, says that reversible machines can operate slowly and relates this to their channel capacity. I find this depressing it looks like a universal limitation on the speed of reversible mechanisms and makes them useless for practical purposes (or at least so it seems to me). ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 Issue #0214 ****************************************