From extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Thu Apr 22 18:47:02 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AB19561; Thu, 22 Apr 93 18:46:59 PDT 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 AA15886; Thu, 22 Apr 93 18:46:56 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 21:37:23 -0400 Message-Id: <9304230137.AA18189@churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu> To: ExI-Daily@gnu.ai.mit.edu Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 21:36:58 -0400 X-Original-Message-Id: <9304230136.AA18183@churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu> X-Original-To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu From: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: Extropians Digest V93 #0216 X-Extropian-Date: Remailed on April 23, 373 P.N.O. [01:37:22 UTC] Reply-To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: OR Extropians Digest Fri, 23 Apr 93 Volume 93 : Issue 0216 Today's Topics: BOOK INFO: Address of Falcon Press [1 msgs] Bye [1 msgs] EPIST: Why do formal systems work? [2 msgs] EPIST: Why do formal systems work? (also MDL, Stochastic Complexity) [1 msgs] Earth Day [3 msgs] Famines [2 msgs] HUMOR: Happy Earth Day! [1 msgs] IMMORTALITY: Not [4 msgs] Info on Mykotronx [1 msgs] META/HUMOR: [1 msgs] META: default reply [2 msgs] META: reply defaults [1 msgs] PPL/BOOK: Men Are Not Cost Effective [2 msgs] Radar Detectors [2 msgs] SEX and RELIGION! [1 msgs] Self-organizing social systems [1 msgs] WIRETAP: boycotts [1 msgs] Would Wiretap Chip Be Cost-Effective? [2 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: 50534 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 15:05:18 -0400 (EDT) From: Harry Shapiro Subject: Info on Mykotronx Please forward this message far and wide. - Harry I am looking for Info on Mykotronx the company that designed the WireTap chip for the NSA/NIST/FBI. They are said to be a contractor to NSA. Thus we can assume that most if not all of what they do is "hidden from view." I was shocked when I did a database search using the name Mykotronx and Mycotronx (both spellings have been used), in publications that report on these areas: trade, technical, business and financial markets. I also searched press wires and some newspapers. Prior to April 16/17 I have found NO References to this company. Clearly this company takes it security seriously; but such a lack of coverage seems strange. It leads me to wonder if they really existed much prior to April 16/17 - they could be a division of the NSA, for example. Of course the data bases I searched don't have everything in them and they could have been scrubbed... Can anyone find references to this company prior to April 16 1993? Can anyone provide alternative spellings for their name? Thanks, /harry -- Harry Shapiro habs@panix.com List Administrator of the Extropy Institute Mailing List Private Communication for the Extropian Community since 1991 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 12:20:55 -0800 From: lefty@apple.com (Lefty) Subject: Earth Day >>> No matter how you cut it, I find any celebration of Earth Day extremely >>> offensive -- it is intentionally celebrated on Lenin's birthday. >> >>I suspect this merely a coincidence. Does anyone know which group started >>the Earth Day celebration and how that particular day was actually chosen? >>(Incidentally, it's not Lenin's birthday, it's his birthday aniversary.) > >It is not a coincidence. I do not have the references here, but I do know >for certain that Lenin's birthday was picked intentionally. With all due respect, unless you can come up with some corroboration for the to-say-the-least remarkable assertion, I'm going to view it as a pack of nonsense. What _possible_ _motivation_ could anyone have for celebrating Earth Day on Lenin's birthday? -- Lefty (lefty@apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 15:58:36 -0400 (EDT) From: bhaworth@acpub.duke.edu (W. Blair Haworth Jr.) Subject: Radar Detectors Brian Holt Hawthorne writes: > Just be sure you correct it first. Massachusetts has no laws against > radar detectors. You must be thinking of our neighbors to the south > (Connecticut). Oops. When I lived there it seemed like _everything_ was illegal. Well, (at the risk of un-EC-ness) nothing's perfect... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 14:04:04 -0800 From: romana@apple.com Subject: PPL/BOOK: Men Are Not Cost Effective Phil, It is evident that all people are different; the idea that we're "all created equal" is comforting but bogus, an oversimplification of a laudable argument for natural rights. As we evolve, and become more technically competent, our tools for evaluating the environment that various markets exist in will also become more accurate. As freer markets evolve, marketing and sales will be based, more and more, on the use of actuarial information. I hope you understand that I do not consider myself a racist. I enjoy a remarkably racially diverse environment here in California. I am interested in the conflict between political comfort (PC) and objective reality. Sometimes facts are digusting, and sometimes they hurt. I apologize to the list for responding here, but, due to a technical problem, I cannot mail this to Phil directly. Sincerely, Romana Machado ------------------------------- Eve ate the apple because she wanted to be as wise as god. romana@apple.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 17:02:29 EDT From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU Subject: PPL/BOOK: Men Are Not Cost Effective From: gdale@apple.com (Geoff Dale) Dale sez: >Actually, statistically, the excess risk of beginning drivers is >correlated not with their inexperience, but with age... Old >inexperienced drivers are no riskier than old experienced drivers. I have no idea whether the statistics back you up on this claim. I'm not sure of the significance of this, but I know some insurance companies are switching from age to how long you've been driving. They may be responding to pressure to avoid "age-ist" discrimination. Well, in Massachusetts, the *entire* auto insurance rate structure is set by law (yuck!), so the factors the rate structure takes into account are determined by politics, not actuaries... Dale Dale Worley Dept. of Math., MIT drw@math.mit.edu -- After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought, and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon to be created." "This is true," He replied. "He will need laws," said the Demon slyly. "What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the right to make his laws?" "Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to make his own." It was so granted. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 17:15:19 EDT From: dstalder@gmuvax2.gmu.edu (Darren/Torin/Who ever...) Subject: META: default reply May I add my voice to the request of setting the original sender as the To: address and extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu to be a cc: address? I would find it most useful. Right now, there is no way to reply to the originator of the message without cut and paste. Think free, -- Defeat the Torin/Darren Stalder/Wolf __ Wiretap Chip Internet: dstalder@gmuvax2.gmu.edu \/ PGP2.x key available. Proposal! Bitnet: dstalder@gmuvax Finger me. Write me for Sprintnet: 1-703-845-1000 details. Snail: 10310 Main St., Suite 110/Fairfax, VA/22030/USA DISCLAIMER: A society where such disclaimers are needed is saddening. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 17:10:24 EDT From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU Subject: HUMOR: Happy Earth Day! From: eisrael@suneast.east.sun.com (Elias Israel - SunSelect Engineering) I awoke this morning to learn that today is Earth Day, which is a pity, really, because it means that I haven't had time to make my Earth Day T-shirt. I want a T-shirt that has an image on the front of the Earth in the grip of a mailed fist. Underneath, it would say "Earth Day, 1993". On the back, it would say, "Ours by right of conquest to do with what we will!" I love getting in touch with nature, don't all of you? Delicious! Reminds me of another great graphic: A fist driving a dagger through the planet. It was on the cover of a paperback titled "Terracide". Dale Dale Worley Dept. of Math., MIT drw@math.mit.edu -- Seen in a technical journal: You'll always offend someone when you deal with a large group of people. There's always someone that can't stand Bambi. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 17:26:30 EDT From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU Subject: SEX and RELIGION! From: Scott C DeLancey 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). Grrrrg. I was reading a story in the popular or semi-popular press about some researcher who had studied conservative Christians of some sort (I don't know the exact brand differences between fundamentalists, charismatics, evangelicals, etc.) and discovered that a surprisingly large number of them had performed illicit sexual acts after their were "born again". The fraction was large, like 60% or 70%, and larger than the fraction of them who had illicit sex *before* they were born again. Also, I have an anecdotal report from Texas of a man who went to a conservative church, and found it very useful for having affairs with wives whose husbands were out of town. Dale Dale Worley Dept. of Math., MIT drw@math.mit.edu -- Mind you, not as bad as the night Archie Pettigrew ate some sheep's testicles for a bet... God, that bloody sheep kicked him... -- Ripping Yarns ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 16:26:04 CDT From: derek@cs.wisc.edu (Derek Zahn) Subject: EPIST: Why do formal systems work? Nick Szabo writes: > In fact, I would be *awfully* surprised if somebody hasn't > formalized Occam's Razor in terms of information theory > or computational complexity. Anybody know of such work? Information theory: Check out Rissanen's work on the Minimum Description Length principle -- it has a small following in the machine learning community. The following reference is seminal, and includes a rather nice review: @article{rissanen, AUTHOR = "J. Rissanen", TITLE = "Modeling by Shortest Data Description", YEAR = 1978, JOURNAL = "Automatica", VOLUME = "14", PAGES = "465--471", } I don't care for it much because language choice is also of critical importance. derek your friendly librarian ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 17:32:58 EDT From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU Subject: IMMORTALITY: Not From: hkhenson@cup.portal.com >[...] 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 . . . . Yes, but I see no way to get around it. >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. What I mean is, that the high probability of death suggests that one's own experiences of the consequences of one's actions are possibly one of the short-lived aspects of those actions. More to the point, what sort of society would you like to leave behind when you die? 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. Perhaps, but chaotic trajectories don't traverse all of phase space. There can be long-term consequences of one's actions, even in the face of chaos. PS, if you don't like the idea of dying, you can always sign up to be frozen--like me. Yeah, you can be frozen, but will you be thawed? What happens when we run out of places to put all the frozen people? That's a joke, of course, but at the very least, your information content has to be put somewhere, and over the LONG term, we're likely to run out of room for EVERYBODY. Dale Dale Worley Dept. of Math., MIT drw@math.mit.edu -- Remind me ... to write an article on the compulsive reading of news. -- RAH in "Stranger in a Strange Land" ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 17:30:21 -0400 (EDT) From: Harry Shapiro Subject: Would Wiretap Chip Be Cost-Effective? Hi, Read your paper and found it to be quite good. Keep up the good work. You referenced the Invisible Weapon, I was wondering if you have read it or are just going from my ref. of it. /Harry -- Harry Shapiro habs@panix.com List Administrator of the Extropy Institute Mailing List Private Communication for the Extropian Community since 1991 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 16:30:35 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: META: reply defaults X-Reposting-Policy: redistribute only with permission David Cake says: > 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 oth er > 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? We've been through this before. I rigged it as I did to eliminate as much as possible the chance of mail loops and bounce messages getting back to users. Its succeeded in doing that. In fact, a large fraction of mailing lists do it my way. It works nicely. You just have to keep it in mind, thats all. We have a very large list -- imagine what would happen if you got copies of all the bounce mail? Harry practically has to dig throught the bounces with a shovel. Do you want to have to do the same every time you post? Perry ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 17:39:42 EDT From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU Subject: IMMORTALITY: Not X-Name: Tom Morrow >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. C'mon, Tom. In the case of bacteria, etc., the limiting factor is available carbon, not physical space. According to the current guesses, er, theories, before life evolved the oceans had a dissolved carbon content somewhat like weak chicken soup. It's all been eaten now (and a whole bunch subsequently buried as coal and carbonate rock), thus reducing all life to the state of continuously scrabbling to obtain a supply of fixed carbon... Dale Dale Worley Dept. of Math., MIT drw@math.mit.edu -- I'm not an idiot, but I play one on Usenet. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 15:41:13 MDT From: Stanton McCandlish Subject: Radar Detectors > >...laser speed guns, and those are pretty damned hard to defeat from... > > Wanna bet? > > Idea futures strike again! Do tell! -- Testes saxi solidi! ********************** Podex opacus gravedinosus est! Stanton McCandlish, SysOp: Noise in the Void Data Center BBS IndraNet: 369:1/1 FidoNet: 1:301/2 Internet: anton@hydra.unm.edu Snail: 8020 Central SE #405, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87108 USA Data phone: +1-505-246-8515 (24hr, 1200-14400 v32bis, N-8-1) Vox phone: +1-505-247-3402 (bps rate varies, depends on if you woke me up...:) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 18:08:33 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: META: default reply X-Reposting-Policy: redistribute only with permission Darren/Torin/Who ever... says: > May I add my voice to the request of setting the original sender as the To: > address and extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu to be a cc: address? As I've said, it would mean you get a flood of bounce messages every time you post. I refuse, flat out, to alter my software to do that. I'm not going to innundate myself with error messages on nearly every posting so as to avoid a small amount of effort in properly addressing replies. If Harry decides this is a priority, he can get someone else to alter my software -- but it will likely mean all the same people will be complaining "can't you do something about all the error mail"... Perry ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 18:00:40 EDT From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU Subject: IMMORTALITY: Not From: rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu (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) Well, OK, but suppose some gene or meme gets loose that induces its bearers to have more than the replacement number of children? (After all, spending 20 years raising a kid isn't too much of a burden, if you've got 2000 years of life.) As far as I can tell, no species of organisims (or other replicators) has existed whose long-term population size wasn't bumping up against the carrying capacity of the environment. Now, I do agree that we may well be able to avoid Malthusian problems, but it will involve some *interesting* mechanisms for keeping reproduction rates low, unless we somehow manage to circumvent biology completely. 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. True, but assuming some bound on temperature, that only gets you some fixed factor of improvement. 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. Yes, but a "human" contains some minimum amount of information to maintain its individual existance. 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. IRONY WARNING: 7800 years, that's a long time. Almost as long as it has been since we invented agriculture, and maybe 1/10 of the lifetime of the species. BTW, doubling in 50 years is an annual growth rate of about 1.4%, unless I dropped a bit. In many areas, 3% annual growth has been sustained for considerable times, and I once worked out that 5% is attainable. So a doubling time of 50 years is pretty slow for what humans can do. 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. Sounds good, but I'll believe it when I see it. 6) The amount of space/energy is not conserved according to the free-lunch hypothesis. What the hell is that? 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. Considering point 4 above, would you prefer 10,000 years? Would it really make any difference? Yes, I picked 1000 years out of a hat. But it's based on a guess of what sorts of longevity technology we are likely to come up with in the next 100 years, and guessing about how long it will take reproduction (by whatever mechanism) to fill any new "living space" technology creates for us. With the rather long doubling time mentioned in (4) above, 1000 years will multiply the population one-million-fold, which will rather press the technology, given that the human species is already sucking up 40% or so of the primary photosynthesis on the planet. Personally, I suspect that the future will be more pleasant than the past, but that the "population problem" will be kept in control in the future just the same way it is now in the richer countries -- the people "at the bottom" will get sheared off in one or more essentially darwinian ways. Young black males are killing each other in the ghettos; young white yuppies are too busy to reproduce; both are evolutionary failures. But the struggle to conquor the gene pool will go on, and personal immortality seems certain to be a casualty. (Evolutionary quiz: Why do organisms that reproduce asexually split a mature organism into parts, but organisms that reproduce sexually always rebuild a new organism from a single cell?) Dale Dale Worley Dept. of Math., MIT drw@math.mit.edu -- They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist----- -- General John Sedgewick, Union Army, last words, 1864 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 18:31:55 EDT From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU Subject: Self-organizing social systems Self-organization is very interesting, because when you notice that some certain sort of system self-organizes a certain sort of structure, you can analyze what forces construct the structure. Standing at this moment in history, it's sort of intriguing to note that social/political systems seem to have a strong self-organization into a form that's called "democratic capitalism": Free markets: A largely capitalist economy, which large additions of government regulation Free elections: States have conquored essentially the entire habitable earth, and they seem to naturally evolve toward "democracy" Free food: State-sponsored welfare systems Exactly *why* this mix is winning the memetic competition, I don't see, but in the last 10 years, most human populations have been moving toward democratic capitalism. Dale Dale Worley Dept. of Math., MIT drw@math.mit.edu -- Approximately 11% of the viewers of the Super Bowl live in the U.S. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 18:33:12 EDT From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU Subject: Bye Unfortunately, I can't continue to spare the time to read (and reply to! :-) Extropians. It's been interesting, and I've learned a lot (though not necessarily what you would have me learn), but there is a point of diminishing returns... Dale Dale Worley Dept. of Math., MIT drw@math.mit.edu -- This is the last nail in your coffin. We are the victors. You will come to us on your knees. -- Lech Walesa, now President of Poland, upon being taken to prison in 1981 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 15:42:13 PDT From: Robin Hanson Subject: Would Wiretap Chip Be Cost-Effective? Harry Shapiro writes: >You referenced the Invisible Weapon, I was wondering if you have >read it or are just going from my ref. of it. I was going from your ref. Otherwise I would have given an author and year of publication. Do you have those available? Robin ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 18:26:18 EDT From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU Subject: Famines This isn't really extropian, but since it bears on some comments made previously, and corrects what might be widespread misunderstandings of how the food markets work, it's probably reasonable to post: The May 1993 issue of Scientific American has an article on "The Economics of Life and Death", which is reasonably good as an analysis, though a bit statist in its attitudes. Among other things, it discusses famines, and notes that famines usually occur not because there is a sudden shortage of food (i.e., one Bangladesh famine happened in a year when the amount of food available was *higher* than average), but rather due to a sudden lack of income on the part of some segment of the population. (Often the segment is farmers or farm laborers, and the reason is crop failure.) Not surprisingly, if the income of a group of people becomes less than that necessary to feed themselves, they start starving. Nowever, one perverse consequence of this is that in a famine area, the price of food often *drops*, because the number of people actually buying food goes down. And since the price of food is low in a famine area, market forces cause food to be *exported* to prosperous areas. (This was seen during the Irish Potato Famine, and in several more recent famines.) The article also noted that major famines don't occur under democratic governments with free presses, because it is politically inexpedient to have a lot of people starving. For instance, the famines in India ended after independence, but China has had recent famines, even though its overall economic development has progressed much further. (You may wish to take exception to that last paragraph, but don't flame me, I'm only quoting the article. Scientific American has a *vigorous* letters column you can write to.) Dale Dale Worley Dept. of Math., MIT drw@math.mit.edu -- Sorry, guys -- breaking into computers and writing a stupid virus doesn't make you a hacker. It's not that easy. -- Robert Stevenson, Computerworld ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 15:47:54 PDT From: Eli Brandt Subject: IMMORTALITY: Not > From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU > 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. What does exponential growth have to do with immortality? Birth rates are typically enough higher than death rates that reduction of the latter to zero would make little difference. BTW, I don't use "immortality" to mean that "with probability one I will not die at any future point"; we don't have the knowledge to claim anything like that. I claim only that lifespans may be unbounded. > 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... As someone who argued for this point fairly extensively, oh, a year or so ago, I'll repeat now what I said then: the "impending" matter shortage (I figured about ten thousand years, but FTL would up this a bit by giving us access to other galaxies) is not a problem that we can effectively worry about. We have no conception, none at all, of what we will be capable of doing a thousand years from now, much less ten thousand. Based on history, our capabilities will go up even faster than our population. What this will mean I cannot imagine, but I wouldn't bet against great reductions in matter requirements, uploading into immaterial forms, even wholesale creation and mining of universes. Furthermore, you can get an awful lot done in ten thousand years if you continue to increase the rate at which you live. This whole concern seems something like worrying about running out of oil. Known reserves keep increasing faster than they are used, and by the time any hard limit becomes relevant, we won't care. > Dale Eli ebrandt@jarthur.claremont.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 16:01:32 PDT From: Eli Brandt Subject: Famines > From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU > Nowever, one perverse consequence of this is that in a famine area, > the price of food often *drops*, because the number of people actually > buying food goes down. And since the price of food is low in a famine > area, market forces cause food to be *exported* to prosperous areas. SciAm is claiming that the demand for food shifts *left* when people are starving? Why then do governments typically clamp food prices during famines? I believe Bauer noted that on those occasions (I think he cited 19th-century India) where "gouging" is not restricted, the death toll tends to be drastically reduced, as food is diverted on a massive scale to those who need it. > Dale Eli ebrandt@jarthur.claremont.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 16:49:06 MDT From: hammar@cs.unm.edu Subject: META/HUMOR: From extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Thu Apr 22 16:31:14 1993 Received: from churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu by mimbres.cs.unm.edu (5.65/033093) with SMTP id ; Thu, 22 Apr 93 16:30:54 -0600 Received: by churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu (5.65/4.0) id ; Thu, 22 Apr 93 17:30:51 -0400 Message-Id: <9304222130.AA15926@churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu> To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu From: Harry Shapiro X-Original-Message-Id: <199304222130.AA18552@sun.Panix.Com> Subject: Would Wiretap Chip Be Cost-Effective? X-Original-To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 17:30:21 -0400 (EDT) X-Extropian-Date: Remailed on April 22, 373 P.N.O. [21:30:50 UTC] Reply-To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: R Hi, Read your paper and found it to be quite good. Keep up the good work. You referenced the Invisible Weapon, I was wondering if you have read it or are just going from my ref. of it. /Harry -- Harry Shapiro habs@panix.com List Administrator of the Extropy Institute Mailing List Private Communication for the Extropian Community since 1991 Even the list administrator can't get around the reply to group/ reply to individual confusion. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 19:03:56 -0400 (EDT) From: cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!esr@uunet.UU.NET (Eric S. Raymond) Subject: EPIST: Why do formal systems work? > In fact, I would be *awfully* surprised if somebody hasn't > formalized Occam's Razor in terms of information theory > or computational complexity. Anybody know of such work? Yes. While reading through the MIT Press catalog one fine morning, I came across a blurb for a book which, among other things, purports to formalize and in some sense "prove" Occam's Razor using something called "Kolmgorov-Chaitin information complexity". Unfortunately, I do not remember the book title. -- Eric S. Raymond ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 16:29:25 -0700 From: davisd@pierce.ee.washington.edu Subject: EPIST: Why do formal systems work? (also MDL, Stochastic Complexity) From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) Dan Davis: > Whatever system provides the best predictive power is the one to use, > regardless of the number of entities involved. This disregards computational speed, which is critically important, in terms of human learning curves as well as machine computation. I agree, I was sloppy. Of course, in the end you want to use the system which best achieves your ends. Considering the end of knowledge acquisition as predictive power, I said use the best predictive model, but knowledge acquisition is not an end in itself, and so other considerations enter into selection of a model, like ease of use, speed,... Scientists must trade off predictive power vs. the ability to understanding, communicate and use theory. The rule of thumb Occam's Razor catches this nicely. For example, epicycles had quite good predictive power, but they were too cumbersome to work with, and were replaced by the simpler Copernican model and Kepler's laws. Not knowing the details of epicycle theory, I can't comment much on your example. My point with respect to Ockham is simply that often fewer entities are used at the price of more complex entities. Sometimes the trade off is not worth it. Two standards might be used: entropy (in information theory) and computational complexity. Neither is arbitary. Derek Zahn writes: Check out Rissanen's work on the Minimum Description Length principle -- it has a small following in the machine learning community. I don't care for it much because language choice is also of critical importance. I agree. Rissanen clearly noted the limitation himself, if I remember correctly. He and Barron? were both working in the area of minimum description length, and Barron had pretenses of finding a universal criteria for a "best" model, while Rissanen pointed out that Barron's criteria was critically determined by model language. A model's complexity can be quite different depending upon the meaning of your coding units. The quest for some universal prior by which to judge complexity is fruitless. Of course, I believe the search is still going on, none the less. By the way, a similar battle is raging in neural network/connectionist circles, with David Wolpert debunking numerous claims of discovery of a universal prior, most noticably, and amusingly, in the work of Mackay. (By the way, I think Mackay and Barron have decent methods, they just make some claims which don't hold water.) Buy Buy -- Dan Davis ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 16:30:21 -0700 (PDT) From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) Subject: WIRETAP: boycotts Agreed, not much economic pressure would come from directly boycotting Clipper phones, or for that matter from people boycotting AT&T for ideological reasons. Rather, it would come from AT&T getting a reputation as putting the U.S. government's needs before the needs of their customers; and not caring very much about the privacy of their customers' phone calls. What international business, law firm, etc. wants to trust their communications to a company that puts NSA wiretap chips in their phones and touts them as "secure"? A good outcome here is for this fiasco to get wide publicity, and for Sprint, MCI, etc. to subtly use doubts about AT&T's concern for privacy in their ad campaigns. A recent cypherpunks post refferred to a conversation with an AT&T marketing type, who kept insisting that AT&T is very concerned about customer privacy, it's a high priority, etc. AT&T knows they need a good reputation for privacy. Keep up the pressure! Nick Szabo szabo@techbook.com ------------------------------ Date: 22 Apr 1993 19:35:20 -0500 (EST) From: KMOSTA01@ULKYVX.LOUISVILLE.EDU Subject: Earth Day Lefty says: "What _possible_ _motivation_ could anyone have for celebrating Earth Day on Lenin's birthday?" This question is nonsense. The motivation is clear -- to promote Lenin and his ideas under new banners. That was exactly the motivation, and it is still. Krzys' ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 17:10:37 -0800 From: lefty@apple.com (Lefty) Subject: Earth Day >Lefty says: >"What _possible_ _motivation_ could anyone have for celebrating Earth Day on >Lenin's birthday?" > >This question is nonsense. The motivation is clear -- to promote Lenin >and his ideas under new banners. That was exactly the motivation, and >it is still. Heh. Your response is nonsense. I've been aware of Earth Day since the very first one. I have never seen _any_ "promotion" of either Lenin or his ideas at any Earth Day celebration I have ever been aware of. Has anyone on this list _ever_ seen any "promotion" of Lenin or Leninism as part of any celebration of Earth Day? Krzys', do you, by any chance, wear a tin foil hat when you go outside? -- Lefty (lefty@apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Apr 93 20:14 EDT From: kwaldman@tanstaafl.extropy1.sai.com (Karl M Waldman) Subject: BOOK INFO: Address of Falcon Press Does anybody know if Falcon Press, publisher of Robert A. Wilson's books is still in business? Do you have an address/ phone #? Thanks Karl kwaldman@tanstaafl.extropy1.sai.com ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 Issue #0216 ****************************************