From extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Mon Apr 26 20:48:09 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AA18455; Mon, 26 Apr 93 20:47:36 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: from albert.gnu.ai.mit.edu by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA03876; Mon, 26 Apr 93 20:46:22 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by albert.gnu.ai.mit.edu (5.65/4.0) id ; Mon, 26 Apr 93 23:37:53 -0400 Message-Id: <9304270337.AA22108@albert.gnu.ai.mit.edu> To: ExI-Daily@gnu.ai.mit.edu Date: Mon, 26 Apr 93 23:37:24 -0400 X-Original-Message-Id: <9304270337.AA22089@albert.gnu.ai.mit.edu> X-Original-To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu From: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: Extropians Digest V93 #0220 X-Extropian-Date: Remailed on April 27, 373 P.N.O. [03:37:52 UTC] Reply-To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: OR Extropians Digest Tue, 27 Apr 93 Volume 93 : Issue 0220 Today's Topics: Earth Day [2 msgs] G. Harry Stine [1 msgs] MEETING: UK Cryptoprivacy Association [1 msgs] Meta: List [1 msgs] Meta: Metzger vs. Singh [1 msgs] Meta:Rule vs. Being On Mr. Singh's List [9 msgs] PPL/BOOK: Men Are Not Cost Effective [1 msgs] PPL: Is Equality Cost Effective? [1 msgs] Polanyi on Michelson-Morley [1 msgs] Speed of Light Limitation [3 msgs] TECH: Report - Entropic Cost of Computation [2 msgs] etymology [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: 51475 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 23:40:22 BST From: "Russell E. Whitaker" Subject: MEETING: UK Cryptoprivacy Association -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Meeting of the UK Cryptoprivacy Association - ------------------------------------------- Saturday, 8 May 1993, 1500 To be held at the offices of: FOREST 4th floor 2 Grosvenor Gardens London SW1W 0DH This is located at the corner of Hobart Place, a couple of blocks west of Victoria Station, and almost directly across from the dark green cabbie shelter. If you have trouble finding the place, please call the office on 071-823-6550. Or, call me (Russell Whitaker) on my pager, 081-812-2661, and leave an informative message with the telephone number where you can be reached; I will return the call almost immediately. Discussion will range from the usual general topics, such as the use of secure public key cryptosystems to protect message data, to specific topics, such as recent moves by the U.S. government to restrict choice in data privacy (reference recent discussion on Usenet groups, e.g. sci.crypt and alt.security.pgp). All are invited. Particularly welcome are members of the newly-formed UK CommUnity group ... the local EFF-in-spirit-if-not-in-name folks. Those who plan to attend should email me and let me know. Please. All attendees are requested to bring diskettes - preferably MS-DOS - with their PGP 2.+ public keys. As is usual at these gatherings, several of us will bring our laptops, and will sign public keys, subject to the usual caveats (reference the documentation for PGP 2.2, specifically files PGPDOC1.DOC and PGPDOC2.DOC). If you do not already have a copy of PGP 2.2 (MS-DOS), and would like to have a copy of this public domain program, please bring a formatted, medium or high density 3.5 inch floppy PC diskette; you will be provided a copy of the program. Of course, you might prefer to ftp a version of the program from one of the various archive sites. I suggest trying Demon Internet Systems, which carries the full range of PGP (Phil Zimmerman's "Pretty Good Privacy") implementations: directory /pub/pgp at gate.demon.co.uk. Meetings are of indeterminate time. Those who are interested are invited to join the rest of us at a pseudorandomly determined pub afterwards. Please note: - ------------ In the past few months, interested people have emailed me, requesting FAQs and special information mailings. I regret that, except in very unusual cases (e.g. working press), I cannot, in a timely manner, respond to these requests. I will, however - and for the first time - do a writeup of this meeting, which I will post in various places. What I *am* willing to supply is general information on our activities for the maintainers of existing FAQs, such as that for alt.privacy. FAQ maintainers can contact me at whitaker@eternity.demon.co.uk Russell Earl Whitaker whitaker@eternity.demon.co.uk Communications Editor AMiX: RWhitaker EXTROPY: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought Board member, Extropy Institute (ExI) ================ PGP 2.2 public key available ======================= -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.2 iQCVAgUBK9bG/ITj7/vxxWtPAQG0/AQAmPQKQl7KNB43DyniRyuDu5tixStXd2F7 k5CiWNwN/u9ExZfptPgajwY91dsafX0H53RV5+lT8OSnvIx35QMmgBmPQOJCGnGj ZUJ2eGiSvfuLtAmgMQtSLtJh5x/VXmUIl8SJHzrffIz3SjnKcENTzrQnGc7UdIQ6 x85InstiJzU= =Y9GS -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Apr 93 20:41:33 GMT From: Michael Clive Price Subject: Speed of Light Limitation Hal humbly says: > I know this topic [speed of light barrier] isn't that relevant to > extropianism, but it can still be fun. As if fun isn't justification enough :-) But, more soberly, exploring the limitations of the universe is extremely extropian and (more importantly) relevant to our futures. How can we break barriers until we understand them? I ignore the pugnacious folks who are quick to decree a topic X as not extropian. They suffer from a lack of imagination. Mike Price price@price.demon.co.uk AS member (21/3/93) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 93 09:40:21 BST From: jrk@information-systems.east-anglia.ac.uk (Richard Kennaway) Subject: TECH: Report - Entropic Cost of Computation Mike Price writes: >> I understood that in theory reversible computers need consume no >> energy at all, or at least arbitrarily little. > >They consume no energy in performing computations. Energy is expended >in the creation of blank memory for scribbling the results of >computations on. Then the limit you are deriving is proportional to the space, not the time of the computation. A potentially exponential improvement. -- ____ 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: Sun, 25 Apr 93 07:35:29 GMT From: Michael Clive Price Subject: Speed of Light Limitation Mark Read Pickens asks: > > Can someone tell me the origin of the idea that the speed of light is > the limit to motion in the universe? [...] Why was this assumption > made Ray Cromwell has replied: > The idea follows from the assumption that the laws of physics > are the same for all inertial observers -- those moving at constant > velocities with respect to each other. This idea dates back to > Galileo, >From a slightly different perspective, with a bit more history: Galileo introduced the notion of equivalence for observers on sailing ships moving at different speeds (Galilean Relativity). Mechanics was the only hard science available to Galileo, so his example was couched in terms of falling objects, fluid levels etc, but he probably thought that it would be generally applicable to include future developments. Newton formulated made 3 principal contributions to physics: optics, gravity and mechanics. Mechanics was already frame-invariant, due to Galileo. Newton made gravity frame-invariant by the simple expedient of action-at-at-distance, which assumes gravitational effects are felt instantly. On optics, Newton did consider that different colours might travel at different speeds, but since Newton espoused the particle view of light, no problem with (Galilean) relativity. If Newton had been asked, he probably would have said it obvious that a fast observer could overtake a light particle. Thus Newtonian physics was compatible with relativity. Enter James Clerk Maxwell. He knocked the electro-magnetic discoveries of Faraday into mathematical form. The amazing thing is that he was able to predict the speed of light (now assumed to be a wave on the luminiferous ether) by measuring mundane stuff (as Ray said) like the permittivity and permeability of free space. Also he predicted the occurrence of other frequencies, like radio lengths etc, all of which would have the same speed. By the equivalence principle the speed of light should be the same for observers in relative, unaccelerated motion. Maxwell was aware of this and assumed his equations would need modifying to remove this feature. Whether he thought in terms of an stationary ether that objects slid, though, I'm not sure. Certainly the prevailing attitude soon became that the ether wind would cause some perturbation to Maxwell's equations. Michelson-Morley tried to detect the ether wind's change of speed as the Earth circled the sun and failed. But this negative-result experiment received very little attention and Einstein probably was not aware of it until he became famous. In his early years he denied having heard of Michelson-Morley until *after* he'd formulated special relativity. Late in life he claimed he had, but it's a reasonable assumption that Einstein's earlier recollections were sounder than his later ones. Einstein theory of special relativity was generated purely by reconciling the requirement for (Galilean) relativity with the Maxwell equations. Rather than change the equations, which are masterly in their compactness (after Oliver Heavyside had slimmed them down) Eistein's genius was to alter the relationship of observers in relative motion to space and time. Hence as Ray says: > but Einstein generalized it to all the laws of physics. The point I'm trying to make is that Einstein was motivated to return physics to the pre-Maxwellian, post-Newtonian days when the principle of equivalence held sway. Maxwell's equations temporarily breached this, but special relativity mended the situation again. Einstein was not motivated by direct observation of the constancy of the speed of light. This is not required as an *additional* assumption to the principle of equivalence. The constancy of the speed of light is a consequence of the principle of equivalence applied to Maxwell's electromagnetism. Relativity was the normal state of affairs in physics. For a about 40 years Maxwell's equations violated this principle, then Einstein restored the status quo. The speed of light limit comes from the geometry of space and time, which why scientists are so convinced that no material construction can cross the light barrier. Mark: > and what kind of research substantiates it? Every experiment that verifies Maxwell verifies Einstein. Mike Price price@price.demon.co.uk AS member (21/3/93) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Apr 93 07:56:58 GMT From: Michael Clive Price Subject: Speed of Light Limitation > "Mass" doesn't really increase [with speed]. You can formulate things > such that inertial mass increases, but gravitational mass doesn't > change. Gravitational mass increases as well. An object that whizzes by will exert a greater gravitational pull than when it's stationary. The energy of motion gravitates, just like the rest mass. The equivalence between inertial and gravitating mass remains constant. > Eli ebrandt@jarthur.claremont.edu Mike Price price@price.demon.co.uk AS member (21/3/93) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 04:57:59 -0500 (EDT) From: rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: TECH: Report - Entropic Cost of Computation Richard Kennaway writes: > > Mike Price writes: > >> I understood that in theory reversible computers need consume no > >> energy at all, or at least arbitrarily little. > > > >They consume no energy in performing computations. Energy is expended > >in the creation of blank memory for scribbling the results of > >computations on. > > Then the limit you are deriving is proportional to the space, not the time > of the computation. A potentially exponential improvement. But there is a trade-off in achieving ``no energy'' usage, which is running your computations slowly. I don't care about zero energy usage if it takes millions of years to do some computation. So the task is to find an acceptable trade off. Speed for energy. > -- ____ > 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. > > -- Ray Cromwell | Engineering is the implementation of science; -- -- EE/Math Student | politics is the implementation of faith. -- -- rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu | - Zetetic Commentaries -- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Apr 93 21:15:31 GMT From: Michael Clive Price Subject: PPL/BOOK: Men Are Not Cost Effective Phil Fraering says: > [..] the idea that we are "all created equal" > is IMHO a neccesary assumption to make about other people's > _native_ intelligence [..] Would you assume that two racially distinct populations have the same average height or skin colour or length of colon or ..? You'd be nuts if you did. Even in the absence of information statistics says you'd expect variation between the two distinct populations. > I think this topic is _highly_ relevant to extropians, because > there is a strong tendancy to try to defend the flaws in the > quite un-extropian status quo as being from some other factor. Also a strong tendency for anarchos to say that all these group inequalities in performance will disappear in some libertarian utopia. Either way, very relevant to extropians, I agree. > Please wake up; we don't need to come up with excuses for the > government's poor educational system that border on racism. I'm not trying to defend schools, just that you can't heap all the sorrows of the world onto them either and pretend they'll go away with the passing of the Evil State. > (And let's face facts: this poor educational system is probably > behind both this society's crime problem _and_ the disproportionate > crime rate amoung african-americans, who are disproportionately > trapped in the worst parts of said school system). Let's face facts then. Go read: Racial Variation in Man: Proceeding of a symposium held at the Royal Geographical Society (1977), editor FJ Ebling ISBN 0632001178 In case the PC brigade have burnt the book, try: Harvard Education Review 39 1-123, 209-243 (1969) AR Jensen The evidence unambiguously says average intelligence levels in the three main divisions of humanity is mongoloid => caucasoid => negroid, in descending order. Nearly a caucasoid-sigma between each. > Phil Fraering Mike Price price@price.demon.co.uk AS member (21/3/93) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 09:23:01 -0500 From: extr@jido.b30.ingr.com (Craig Presson) Subject: etymology In <9304232356.AA26858@churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu>, D Anton Sherwood writes: |> I mentioned the Latin words |> > . . . LIBER : LIBRI / LIBERI, of which the first means |> > `books' and the second means `free men'. |> |> to which Freeman Craig Presson reacted-- |> > This one's great. "Book" and "Free man" cognate. Gotta love it. |> |> Not cognate -- that word means a common genesis (co-gn-). If you'll look OK, at least homonymic. Still makes my ears happy :-) [digression deleted] ?? I wasn't saying anything about English, I was only speaking English. I should have said "the words for" ... "cognate". I would have to dig around in my Latin books to know whether I should say "cognate" or "homonymic". Or "semi-homonymic", since the plural differs. |> Evidently a freeman in Latium was a member of the (conquering?) tribe. A freeman in all times and places is one who can defend his freedom. But it often was used for something like "citizen" but without the civics-class baggage of that term. ^ / ------/---- extropy@jido.b30.ingr.com (Freeman Craig Presson) / / ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 11:33:00 -0400 (EDT) From: Harry Shapiro Subject: Meta: Metzger vs. Singh Mr. Metzger has charged Mr. Singh with violating list rules by posting about vogi's. I will be out of electronic reach for a few days. Judgement will be considered when I return. Also the ExI legal council has threatened legal action against Mr. Singh as indicated in Mr. Morrow's posts of a few days ago. It is possible that the board may wish move to remove Mr. Singh from the list. If this happens that action would superceed any action I might take. /Harry -- Harry Shapiro habs@panix.com List Administrator of the Extropy Institute Mailing List Private Communication for the Extropian Community since 1991 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 11:25:31 -0400 (EDT) From: Harry Shapiro Subject: Meta: List I will be out of touch, electronically speaking for the next several days. My father's mother apppearing to be dying... The list will be in semi-auto pilot mode. Let perry or ray (rjc) know if you need an urgent disconnect. /harry -- Harry Shapiro habs@panix.com List Administrator of the Extropy Institute Mailing List Private Communication for the Extropian Community since 1991 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 13:20:28 -0400 (EDT) From: Carol Moore Subject: Meta:Rule vs. Being On Mr. Singh's List Is there a rule against *current* list members joining Mr. Singh's list to check it out? Or would that be just considered unkosher? Could Mr. Morrow re-post his message? I think I missed it. Thanks! ;-) cmoore@cap.gwu.edu (personal messages, please write PERSONAL in subject line. Thanks.) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 12:50:31 -0600 From: twb3@midway.uchicago.edu (Tom Morrow) Subject: Meta:Rule vs. Being On Mr. Singh's List >Could Mr. Morrow re-post his message [about Singh setting up alt.extropians]? >cmoore@cap.gwu.edu I no longer have a copy, but can tell you that it basically said I was investigating whether or not Singh had ExI's permission to set up the newsgroup. I have discovered that Singh did not have ExI's permission to use the trademarked term, "Extropians." Contrary to what some have said, ExI has not yet threatened to sue Mr. Singh for violation of its trademark. I am currently negotiating with Singh, and am encouraging him to cancel alt.extropians until we can work out a proper agreement. For Singh and everyone else, let me make it clear: Only ExI's board of directors can grant permission to use its trademarked terms, such as "EXTROPY," "ExI," "EXPONENT," "The Journal of Transhumanist Thought," "Extropians," etc. ExI will take all moral and legal measures that it deems adequate and necessary to protect these trademarks from infringement. T.O. Morrow -- twb3@midway.uchicago.edu Vice President: ExI -- The Extropy Institute Law & Politics Editor: EXTROPY -- Journal of Transhumanist Thought ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 11:31:33 -0800 From: lefty@apple.com (Lefty) Subject: Earth Day >I have seen plenty of celebration of anti-Capitalist ideas on Earth Day. This is neither here nor there. I've seen "plenty of celebration of anti-Capitalist ideas" on Shrove Tuesday and St Swithin's Day. >I suggest you do the research yourself, and you will find out that >Earth Day was meant to be on Lenin's birthday. The cursory amount of research I was able to do over the weekend in no way supports your highly questionable claim. I feel, however, that I must point out that _you_ made the claim. _You_ get to support it. If you fail to do so, you are not one whit better than Mr. Singh and his self-levitating yogis. I'm parenthetically astounded that I should have to explain this to someone who claims to be on the faculty of a university. >If you want to celebrate the birthday of a genocidal maniac, you are free to >do >so, but it needs to be stated that this is exactly what you are doing. I'd be thrilled to see you provide some support for this extravagant claim. Until you do, I hope you won't take it the wrong way if I consider you to be a complete and utter loon. I intend for this to be my last post on this particular subject. If Krzys' can provide some credible backing for his claim, I will apologize to him. -- Lefty (lefty@apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 20:01:18 +0100 (BST) From: Malcolm S A Hutty Subject: Meta:Rule vs. Being On Mr. Singh's List On Mon, 26 Apr 1993, Tom Morrow wrote: > For Singh and everyone else, let me make it clear: Only ExI's board of > directors can grant permission to use its trademarked terms, such as > "EXTROPY," "ExI," "EXPONENT," "The Journal of Transhumanist Thought," > "Extropians," etc. ExI will take all moral and legal measures that it > deems adequate and necessary to protect these trademarks from infringement. > While ExI have a right to protect their property, is it not the case that Extropianism is a theory competing in the free market of ideas? Wouldn't it be able to compete more effectively if it is distributed more widely? Malcolm Hutty me95004@black.ox.ac.uk ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 12:08:26 -0800 From: romana@apple.com Subject: PPL: Is Equality Cost Effective? >Hi Romana... Okay, Phil, I'll bite: >(who writes:) >>It is evident that all people are different; the idea that we're >>"all created equal" is conforting but bogus, an oversimplification of >>a laudable argument for natural rights. > >Maybe so, but the current state of affairs hardly constitutes a >level playing field, so the idea that we are "all created equal" >is IMHO a neccesary assumption to make about other people's >_native_ intelligence and morals especially given the wide >variation in opportunity and educational quality apparent in >today's United States. I agree that the current situation is unjust. But what are "native intelligence and morals", Phil? Do you suppose that _in reality_ everyone's native intelligence (please define this) is _the same_? And aren't "morals" a result of learning from social interaction? You may have a recipe for institutional justice here, but you'll run into a lot of trouble if you conduct everyday business dealings using it! (As for me, I'm playing tit-for-tat; all agents are assumed respectable until they defect against me, or one of my proxies.) >I think this topic is _highly_ relevant to extropians, because >there is a strong tendancy to try to defend the flaws in the >quite un-extropian status quo as being from some other factor. >Please wake up; we don't need to come up with excuses for the >government's poor educational system that border on racism. I agree that our government's educational system is quite flawed. >(And let's face facts: this poor educational system is probably >behind both this society's crime problem _and_ the disproportionate >crime rate amoung african-americans, who are disproportionately >trapped in the worst parts of said school system). Excuse me? "The school system is behind society's crime problem?" Does this theory (don't _even_ try to call it a fact!) remove the responsibility of the _individuals_ that commit crime, and cause it to pass to the school system? However, I do agree that our goverment causes crime. Much crime is caused by discriminatory laws that unjustly oppress the "immoral underclass"; much crime would just disappear with a few modifications to our laws, such as the decriminalization of recreational chemicals and prostitution. Romana Machado --- As usual, I was just sitting at a stoplight when one of those horny jerks honked at me. I just don't get why they think it's such a compliment to be gawked at. I shoved my finger up each nostril slowly, deeply, and earnestly. Mmmm. I snuck a glance at my offender. Eureka! I was being shunned. I smiled all the way home. romana@apple.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 14:28:51 -0600 From: twb3@midway.uchicago.edu (Tom Morrow) Subject: Meta:Rule vs. Being On Mr. Singh's List >On Mon, 26 Apr 1993, Tom Morrow wrote: > >> For Singh and everyone else, let me make it clear: Only ExI's board of >> directors can grant permission to use its trademarked terms, such as >> "EXTROPY," "ExI," "EXPONENT," "The Journal of Transhumanist Thought," >> "Extropians," etc. ExI will take all moral and legal measures that it >> deems adequate and necessary to protect these trademarks from infringement. >> > >While ExI have a right to protect their property, is it not the case that >Extropianism is a theory competing in the free market of ideas? Wouldn't >it be able to compete more effectively if it is distributed more widely? > >Malcolm Hutty ExI claims only trademark rights, not the right to control what others say or think about Extropianism. With that in mind, you are quite right. In fact, ExI lays the groundwork for others to discuss Extropianism by protecting its trademarks. If anyone can sponsor a list called "Extropians" (or a magazine called "EXTROPY," etc.) and and use it to promulgate ideas unrelated or opposed to Extropianism, then it will become much more difficult to discuss Extropianism intelligently. We can't be sure what the term means anymore. Again, to clarify, I emphasize that trademark rights are quite limited. They cannot be used to stifle discussion or criticism of the goods or services to which they correspond. Anyone can therefore set up a list that discusses Extropianism; they just can't identify it with one of ExI's trademarks. T.O. Morrow -- twb3@midway.uchicago.edu Vice President: ExI -- The Extropy Institute Law & Politics Editor: EXTROPY -- Journal of Transhumanist Thought ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 15:31:59 -0500 From: extr@jido.b30.ingr.com (Craig Presson) Subject: Meta:Rule vs. Being On Mr. Singh's List alt.extropians has appeared at my site but is still empty. ^ / ------/---- extropy@jido.b30.ingr.com (Freeman Craig Presson) / / ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 93 15:02:01 MDT From: hammar@cs.unm.edu Subject: G. Harry Stine "Perry E. Metzger" wrote: >Mark Read Pickens says: >> About thirty years ago a team led by G. Harry Stine performed a series of >> experiments designed to determine the speed of (presumably massless) gravity >> waves. The conclusion was that gravity is "at least thirty thousand times >> faster than light." > >Huh? To my knowledge, no gravity waves have yet been detected. I've >also never heard of Mr. Stine, or is it Dr. Stine, and I suspect that >I would have. G. Harry Stine is a long-time engineer and author of science fact and fiction (much of it very libertarian oriented). I don't remember the pseudonym he writes fiction under, but he's written nonfition under his own name, including _The Fourth Industrial Revolution_, (the best book I've seen yet on industry in space, the index alone is a better argument than a lot of official L-5 propoganda), _War in Space_ (exactly what it sounds like, using reasonable technology forcasts), and a watered down book on space industry intended for easy reading (good propoganda, but no index and he avoids the hard science as much as possible due to the intended audience. Good gift for a bright 6th grader, or average high school graduate). He also champions a lot of fringe science, in part because he thinks it's good to stir people up. In the late 50's or early 60's he wrote a piece on how Einstein was wrong about the speed of light for Analog (then Astounding SF) and got a year+ long letters war going. He openly admitted he was presenting a biased view of the evidence. His real purpose, he explained, was to show how much of science consists of filtering out data that disagrees with your theory. He predicted (maybe even correctly) that the theory that supercedes Relativity will explain some of the data he highlighted. (Other parts of it were just experemental errors.) He is most famous in the fringe science area for what he wrote on the "Dean Drive" in the 50's. A (probable crackpot) inventor named Dean had invented and patented a device to "convert angular momentum into linear momentum", in other words, a reactionless spacedrive. The corporation Stine worked for at the time assigned his boss (Dr. Davis, a physisist) to investigate. (This was being taken seriously by several companies. One major corporation sent a team with the authority to pay a million + royalties on the spot if they were convinced it would work.) The results were inconclusive because, with typical crackpot paranoia, Mr. Dean wouldn't let them have uncontroled access to the machine for testing until _after_ they bought the patent. Obviously, they didn't pay, nor did any other company. In the (possibly rigged, and definitely not rigourous) demonstration Mr. Dean arranged in his lab, the machine did weigh less when running than when off. Mr. Dean died shortly after, (mysteriously of course) and noone since has been able to make a Dean Drive work from the patent. This last isn't surprising, because even if genuine (big if), the machinery Stine saw did not match the patent description. Thats a stupid thing to do, since patents only cover what is written, but typical for a paranoid who thinks he's invented something wonderful. I think Stine's SF pseudonym is Turtledove, but I am not sure. (I am sure there is an author called Turtledove, but he may not be Stine.) I remember a story I'm sure was by Stine under his pseudonym which had a bunch of alliances competeing to exploit space in the next century, where none of the alliances corresponded to conventional political descriptions. For example, the USSR and USA were shooting at each others ships occasionally, but were one alliance. The good guys in the story were a semianarchist country run by a collection of people who went armed all the time and looked down on someone who didn't carry a weapon. My memory is a bit fuzzy about whether the characters in the story were one corporation in their alliance or many. Neil Hammar hammar@unmvax.cs.unm.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 93 16:22:23 MDT From: Ed_Lane@Novell.COM (Ed Lane) Subject: Meta:Rule vs. Being On Mr. Singh's List > From extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Mon Apr 26 14:35:05 1993 > To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu Freeman Craig Presson writes: > > alt.extropians has appeared at my site but is still empty. I just looked (we are a "well-connected" site), and there are now 19 postings in alt.extropians. About 13 appear to be about "flying yogis". -Ed ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 18:51:40 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: Meta:Rule vs. Being On Mr. Singh's List X-Reposting-Policy: redistribute only with permission Ed Lane says: > Freeman Craig Presson writes: > > alt.extropians has appeared at my site but is still empty. > > I just looked (we are a "well-connected" site), and there are now 19 > postings in alt.extropians. > > About 13 appear to be about "flying yogis". I would simply ignore the group, and not post to it. Let Mr. Singh have his fun. That he believes in things that are demonstrably not true is punishment enough for him. Perry ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 93 16:09:48 -0700 From: davisd@pierce.ee.washington.edu Subject: Meta:Rule vs. Being On Mr. Singh's List >On Mon, 26 Apr 1993, Tom Morrow wrote: > >> For Singh and everyone else, let me make it clear: Only ExI's board of >> directors can grant permission to use its trademarked terms, such as >> "EXTROPY," "ExI," "EXPONENT," "The Journal of Transhumanist Thought," >> "Extropians," etc. ExI will take all moral and legal measures that it >> deems adequate and necessary to protect these trademarks from infringement. >> Tom again: Again, to clarify, I emphasize that trademark rights are quite limited. They cannot be used to stifle discussion or criticism of the goods or services to which they correspond. Anyone can therefore set up a list that discusses Extropianism; they just can't identify it with one of ExI's trademarks. Does this I can talk about extropianism, but I just can't use the word? Or is the only problem using a name for the list with "extropians" in it? Could you clarify just what your trademark rights are? Buy Buy -- Dan Davis ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 18:32:55 -0600 From: twb3@midway.uchicago.edu (Tom Morrow) Subject: Meta:Rule vs. Being On Mr. Singh's List Please, folks, let's not turn this list into a tutorial on trademarks! I'll field this question, but I hope that in the future people will do some independent research and use their common sense before taking their questions to the list. After I described ExI's trademark rights, Dan Davis asked: >Does this I can talk about extropianism, but I just can't use the word? Or >is the only problem using a name for the list with "extropians" in it? Exxon has a trademark in its name, but clearly we can use the company's name in discussing its corporate strategy. Likewise with ExI and Extropianism: you are allowed "fair use" of ExI's trademarks, such as in discussions of the organization and the philosophy that it expounds. But you cannot use ExI's trademarks in a manner that is likely to cause confusion as to the source or origin of a good or service. That is why naming another list "Extropians" infringes on ExI's trademark, whereas writing an editorial called "Why the Extropians List has Irked Bill Clinton" does not. Again: Infringement results when someone uses another's trademark in a manner that is likely to confuse consumers, leading them to misidentify the source or orgin of a good or service. Setting up an unauthorized list called "alt.extropians" clearly has this result. Saying "I like the Extropians list," does not. I hope this helps, and now return you to the regularly scheduled discussion taking place on the *real* Extropians list. T.O. Morrow -- twb3@midway.uchicago.edu Vice President: ExI -- The Extropy Institute Law & Politics Editor: EXTROPY -- Journal of Transhumanist Thought ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 93 22:48:03 -0400 From: tburns@gmuvax.gmu.edu (Dave Burns) Subject: Polanyi on Michelson-Morley "The Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887 , which Einstein mentions in support of his theory and which the textbooks have since falsely enshrined as the crucial evidence which compelled him to formulate it, actually did not give the result required by relartivity! It admittedly substantiated its authors' claim that the relative motion of the earth and the 'ether' did not exceed a quarter of the earth's orbital velocity. But the actually observed effect was not negligible; or has, at any rate, not been proved negligible up to this day. The presence of a positive effect in the observations of Michelson and Morley was pointed out first by W. M. Hicks in 1902 and was later evaluated by D. C. Miller as corresponding to and 'ether-drift' of eight to nine kilometres per second." >From "Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy," by Michael Polanyi, page 12. Any typos are mine. ------------------------------------- Dave Burns tburns@gmuvax.gmu.edu 10310 Main St. #116 Fairfax, VA 22030 (703)993-1142 Wiretap Chip:IMPOSSIBLE (was Breakfast) Public key by finger, with disclaimer ------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 23:02:08 -0500 (EDT) From: rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: Earth Day Lefty writes: > > >I have seen plenty of celebration of anti-Capitalist ideas on Earth Day. > > This is neither here nor there. I've seen "plenty of celebration of > anti-Capitalist ideas" on Shrove Tuesday and St Swithin's Day. The environmentalism movement is very leftist/communist at its core. The intellectual elite of the movement have been advocating the abolishment of property rights and individualism for a long time. It starts out as a crack down on cars and the suburban lifestyle -- environmentalists want everyone to use public transit and live in compact-urban cities. But it goes much further than that, for you see, humans use ``too much'' energy in their view, so our consumption of resources must be drastically reduced. When their idealogy is actually applied, you wind up in a society where the use of property, and the exercise of individual rights (like reproduction and movement) are incredibly controlled. If this isn't communist, I don't know what is. Many environmentalists go even further. They suggest that farming should not be specialized -- we all should do it. Their model is the chinese commune where each household grows their own food. Furthermore, the ``good'' of the ecosystem should be placed above the needs of human race. They see the world as overpopulated and feel that we should have negative population growth. Say goodbye to cryonics and life extension. Finally, they are generally anti-technology luddites who feel technology is part of the problem not the solution. In other words, we should not try to make the world better by allowing people to consume more and pollute less, rather, we should just consume less. (social engineering solutions rather than technical ones) Now, you may ask, where is my proof, where are my references? It is unlikely that a study has been done on the typical environmentalist viewpoint, but I offer as evidence sci.environment, misc.activism.progressive, and Captain Planet. Several list members debate in sci.environment frequently, so I can be backed up on this. And if requested, I will forward posts from sci.environment with evidencce of the anti-capitalist anti-individual attitude. (remember 'Humans as Cancer' ?) Earth Day may not openly celebrate anti-capitalism, but you can sure that the memes have anti-capitalist components that will continue to grow. Earth Day certainly is a very collectivist activity. (BTW, a guy on the local news here sang the "Earth Day Anthem" which had a line like "...to the day when no one has more than another") > >If you want to celebrate the birthday of a genocidal maniac, you are free to > >do > >so, but it needs to be stated that this is exactly what you are doing. > > I'd be thrilled to see you provide some support for this extravagant claim. The birthday paradox assures us that with reasonable probability, any day will coincide with a historical genocidal maniac. However, I would like to investigate further the reasoning for the specific date they chose. Why not the first day of spring, or during equinox, etc. > Until you do, I hope you won't take it the wrong way if I consider you to > be a complete and utter loon. > > I intend for this to be my last post on this particular subject. If Krzys' > can provide some credible backing for his claim, I will apologize to him. I think your message is starting to become a little flamish in tone. Let me guess, you're an environmentalist right? > -- > Lefty (lefty@apple.com) > C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:. p.s. Let me distinguish the difference between an environmentalist and an environmental engineer/scientist. Environmentalists are generally politically motivated and driven by fear and ignorance. This can easily be tested by just bringing up the concept of nuclear power. I was unfortunate enough to catch the latest anti-nuke flame in sci.energy where eco-idiots where claiming that nuclear power plants could explode "just like an atomic bomb." Anyone with even a miniscule knowledge of fission power knows this is simply impossible in a normal power plant design. (otherwise, atom bombs would be a piece of cake to build, but they aren't as simple as just achieving a chain reaction) One eco-loonie commented "it doesn't matter that my statements are factually incorrect [about nuke planets exploding like bombs], my opinion of nuke power is still valid" (paraphrased) The environmental movement also has a sneaky propaganda scare-tactic of showing nuclear test explosion footage interleaved with images of cooling towers on nuke plants. Presumably, this scares people into associating nuclear energy with nuclear weapon proliferation. Every so often, images of industrial assembly lines are mixed in too. ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 Issue #0220 ****************************************