From extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Sat Jun 19 15:25:04 1993 Return-Path: To: ExI-Daily@gnu.ai.mit.edu Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 18:13:00 -0400 From: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: Extropians Digest V93 #0343 X-Extropian-Date: Remailed on June 19, 373 P.N.O. [22:13:20 UTC] Reply-To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu Extropians Digest Sat, 19 Jun 93 Volume 93 : Issue 0343 Today's Topics: [1 msgs] BIOL: Bits into long term memory [1 msgs] Chaitin, Mathematica, and "Jurassic Park" [2 msgs] Cognitive linguistics (was: Re: Lakoff, etc.) [1 msgs] Dino Shooting, Berkeley Tours, etc. [1 msgs] EVOL: Aquatic Apes [1 msgs] Forward: Clipper & Cable [1 msgs] Lakoff, Chomsky, and Stupid Politics [4 msgs] META: flamage [1 msgs] Pol: Federal Budget [1 msgs] SOC/CHAT: The Truth [3 msgs] Seagoing Primates and Undersea Domes [2 msgs] Subscriptions [1 msgs] Tabloid Extropy #1 [1 msgs] Traversable Wormholes: Some Implications [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: 50497 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 9:11:07 GMT From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu Subject: Dino Shooting, Berkeley Tours, etc. According to Vince Miller (ISIL's prez), an elephant gun loaded with slugs (I think. He calls them "solids." I think they must be synonyms, but know very little about firearms, so please correct me if I'm wrong about this) will pierce tanks, so I bet they'd take care of most dinos. Also note that even if you don't know their anatomy enough to shoot to kill, you can cripple them by taking out their legs. This is fairly easy for bipeds, but takes a minimum of two accurate shots for quadrapeds. Glad to see Sameer's joining us in the Squatter's Paradise of Berkeley! I hereby offer my services as native tour guide for one day to all the recent extropian newcomers to the SF Bay Area - and if anyone else wants to tag along, too, then fine! I'll be happy to show the sights. Something in a perspiring bum? We have plenty! The Cypherpunks shooting trip sounds good; I've been tying to convene for some target practice with some friends for quite a while. Of course, my .22 pump rifle is still in Nevada in the car that threw a piston rod through the oil pan and is getting a new engine... if we foray before I retrieve it, I'll have to borry someone's. As I'm continually impressed with the scope of my fellow extropians knowledge, I'll throw a new question out for you. An Infomercial tonight on KOFY TV-20 touted a weight-loss diet whereby you eat at least 2000 calories per day in order to trigger your metabolism's fat-burning mechanism - the all you can eat diet plan. Any truth to this? I presume it matters WHAT you eat, and the idea that your body goes into fat storage mode when "starving" sounds plausible, but how 'bout it? Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! Assistant Editor: Freedom Network News, the newsletter of ISIL, The International Society for Individual Liberty, 1800 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 864-0952; FAX: (415) 864-7506; 71034.2711@compuserve.com Think Universally, Act Selfishly - starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1993 18:16 EST From: X91007@pitvax.xx.rmit.edu.au Subject: EVOL: Aquatic Apes I have been following this thread with interest and thought I would wade in and offer a few points of my own. I read a book championing this theory about eight years ago. Unfortunately I lent it to a friend who later became a Pentecostalist and there went the friendship and the book :^( The book was: Morgan, Elaine. The aquatic ape : a theory of human evolution London : Souvenir, 1982 The main argument of the aquatic ape theory is that at some point in human evolution our ancestors were semi-aquatic. This lead to a number of physiological changes that are still present in Homo sapiens sapiens, and are unique amongst the primates, but shared with other semi-aquatic/aquatic mammals. As best as I can remember these are: a. Our relative hairlessness. b. The lines of the small hairs on the back follow the lines of least resistance for swimming in water. c. A layer of subcutaneous fat. d. The diving reflex. e. The shape of our nose. f. The ability of new-born infants to swim g. The thick layer of fat in new-born infants. h. The upright stance of humans. i. The fact we make love face-to-face - like sea-otters and dolphins ;^) j. It is even argued that our language ability is related was greatly aided by control we gained over our breathing - very important if you are going to dive under water. k. Our relative love of water. Clearly some of these are more compelling than others. I would nominate the diving reflex and new-born infants ability to 'swim' as particularly compelling if they are indeed *unique* amongst primates. The diving reflex starts as soon as our head is immersed in water; I have heard that it is possible to create it by putting ones head under the bath. As I understand it once it starts our metabolic rate drops sharply; for instance our pulse rate dropping to perhaps half of its normal rate. Clearly this offers a great advantage for diving, automatically conserving energy as soon as we put our heads under water. The second interesting point is that as new-born infants we seem completely at home in water. I have seen the most amazing footage of babies 'swimming' shortly after birth. Interestingly new-born infants automatically close there mouths if immersed in water, so they won't drown; this reflex is lost a few weeks after birth if infant is not placed under water within this time. Related to this is the relative fatness of human infants compared to other primates - this layer of fat makes infants very buoyant. On the other hand a new born chimpanzee would sink in water. When and why did we go semi-aquatic? The theory proposed that one possibility was the inundation of North Africa by the sea approximately 3 million years ago (remember this is from memory - please correct me if the dates are wrong) which lead to a group of hominoids being isolated in what were originally mountains but then rapidly islands. Over time to take advantage of a rich food source along the coasts of these islands hominids gradually started entering the water to gather fish and crustaceans. The theory also argues that our upright stance was caused not by our ancestors needing to see over the grasses in the savannah, but rather as an adaptation to keep our heads above water. It is proposed that this semi-aquatic period lasted approximately 500 000 years. As I understand it the argument by Perry that the theory would predict a forward facing head is wrong. The sort of adaptations he is referring to are seen in whales, dolphins and other mammals that have become fully aquatic. The theory only says that we were semi-aquatic, our ancestors being more like hippos, than whales, if you like. A final confirmation to this theory will have to await the a complete fossil record; it may be bigger than a coffee table but there are certainly lots of gaps. It is enticing, though certainly not of any scientific worth to note that many of the fossil finds of this period and later are on the banks of rivers and around lakes. I would be particularly interested if anyone knows for sure whether the diving reflex is unique to humans among the primates. If it is I would find it compelling circumstantial evidence. In doing a quick net search library databases came up with the following reference which certainly sounds interesting: The aquatic ape : fact or fiction? : the first scientific evaluation of a controversial theory of human evolution / edited by Machteld Roede [et al.]. London : Souvenir Press, 1991 BTW: You may think you are far from the East Coast, but I'm going to have to swim ;^) if I am going to make any of these luncheons. Any hungry Extropians in Melbourne, Australia? Patrick Wilken -------------------------------- x91007@pitvax.xx.rmit.edu.au ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 13:32:23 +0100 From: Rich Walker Subject: Lakoff, Chomsky, and Stupid Politics On the recent Lakoff thread: You've got me interested. I read some Chomsky a while back, being interested at some point in interfacing natural-language to a robotics system. By the time I had got to some of his later stuff, I was getting the same feeling I did about Schank (I think it was the introduction of the One Transformation: Move alpha To Beta Performing Gamma, which seemed a bit pointless). So, How nice is Lakoff's work for applying to practical problems? How much & what of it would I need to read to get a decent grounding, and where would I start? (I'm in no particular hurry; feel free to suggest a fair quantity...) Thanks! Rich! ------------------------------ Date: 19 Jun 93 14:41:50 MEZ-1 From: MANFRED PIRCK Subject: Just heard about you via WIRED! Could you send me some further information on your activities? I (a molecular biologist) have made my own thoughts about the future of gene technology and would be interested to actively communicate with other people like yours. Looking forward to hear from you! Manfred Pirck Insitute for microbiology and genetics Plant genetics department Vienna Biocentre Austria ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 13:48:28 +0100 From: Rich Walker Subject: Lakoff, Chomsky, and Stupid Politics Damn! Finally managed to send private e-mail to the list... Sorry, all... Rich! (echo yes \'echo Check Return Addresses Before Posting\' \| sh >> .login !) ------------------------------ Date: 19 Jun 93 09:24:12 EDT From: RAFI <100137.365@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Subscriptions Hi, Can you tell how to subscribe your journal in France ? Thank you. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1993 09:16:31 -0400 (EDT) From: esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) Subject: Lakoff, Chomsky, and Stupid Politics > How nice is Lakoff's work for applying to practical problems? I think some of his insights in W,F&DT could be translated quite directly into groundbreaking schema/frame designs for knowledge representation. > How much & > what of it would I need to read to get a decent grounding, and where would > I start? W,F&DT is the only book of his I've read. -- Eric S. Raymond ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 8:56:35 CDT From: derek@cs.wisc.edu (Derek Zahn) Subject: Lakoff, Chomsky, and Stupid Politics Rich! asks: > How nice is Lakoff's work for applying to practical problems? How much & > what of it would I need to read to get a decent grounding, and where would > I start? IMO, if you're doing robotics, probably you don't have to read any. I'll summarize: (linguistic) categories have complex, graded structures that are not readily represented symbolically. Use fuzzy logic and neural nets and think carefully about why they do better when they do better. If you've got time, read _Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things_. It's a great read (but does tend to whine a bit). derek Egghead diet mountain dew commercial: studied that ... read it ... testing out of it tomorrow ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1993 09:44:29 -0400 (EDT) From: Harry Shapiro Subject: Forward: Clipper & Cable The following text is presented for personal educational use only. It is not to be copied or otherwise used in a manner which violates rights of its copyright holders. This letter serves only as private communication to readers of the Extropian Mailing List. _________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1993 The Washington Post The Washington Post June 8, 1993, Tuesday, Final Edition SECTION: FIRST SECTION; PAGE A12 LENGTH: 562 words HEADLINE: U.S. Data Decoding Plan Delayed; Business and Legal Objections Reviewed SERIES: Occasional BYLINE: John Schwartz, Washington Post Staff Writer BODY: The federal initiative to establish a new standard for scrambling electronic communications will be slowed until its ramifications can be more fully studied, the official in charge of implementing the program said yesterday. The government's proposed " Clipper Chip" plan, announced on April 16, would create a new national standard for data encryption that would make possible decoding and wiretaps by law enforcement and national security agencies. The plan has met with criticism from high-technology industries that argue the new requirements would be expensive and hurt the competitiveness of their products. Civil liberties advocates see it as a threat to privacy. Raymond Kammer, acting director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) -- which developed the Clipper proposal with the National Security Agency and is charged with implementing it within the government -- delivered the news to a Washington conference attended largely by critics of Clipper plan. In an interview afterward, Kammer said that the entire Clipper plan was still being discussed, and if the review revealed unresolvable problems, "maybe we won't continue in the direction we started out." Criticism was sharp at the cryptography and privacy conference sponsored by the Washington office of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, a public interest group concerned with high-tech issues. One panelist compared Kammer's appearance at the conference to "having a target painted on your chest." Kammer said: "We're not going to close off the process while there's still productive conversation. And it's obvious from the meeting today that there's still plenty of productive conversation." Pressure has been building on NIST since the White House announcement in April. Critics of the plan have flooded the administration with lengthy lists of questions about the new plan, voicing concerns that the proposals might make American products more expensive, less secure and less competitive overseas while not hindering criminals. Last Friday, NIST's advisory panel on privacy issues concluded two days of heated hearings concerning the Clipper proposal with a resolution expressing "serious concerns" sparked by the administration's proposal. "Things are going too fast," said Willis Ware, chairman of the Computer System Security and Privacy Advisory Board, a body created under the Computer Security Act of 1987. The NIST panel reported that the government had not convincingly explained the nature of law enforcement problems that would be solved by the Clipper plan, and cited damage the proposal was likely to do to the American software industry. Later that day, White House officials overseeing the Clipper plan met with representatives of industry and civil liberties groups, including the high-tech policy group Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as the American Civil Liberties Union. Administration officials said that the Clipper review would be extended into the fall and that the government would not move beyond its initial plans to buy about 10,000 Clipper-equipped telephones until the review was completed. John Podesta, assistant to the president, said the meeting was part of a continuing dialogue with the private sector. "It's time to start to get to answers instead of the endless quest for questions," Podesta said. TYPE: NATIONAL NEWS SUBJECT: TELECOMMUNICATIONS; WIRETAPPING; COMPUTERS; CIVIL RIGHTS; PRIVACY; COMPUTER COMMUNICATIONS; NATIONAL SECURITY ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY; COMPUTER SECURITY AGENCY NAMED-PERSONS: RAYMOND KAMMER; WILLIS WARE ENHANCEMENT: CRITICISM Copyright 1993 The New York Times Company The New York Times June 15, 1993, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section D; Page 22; Column 5; Financial Desk LENGTH: 251 words HEADLINE: THE MEDIA BUSINESS; Time Warner Cellular Plan BYLINE: By Bloomberg Business News BODY: Time Warner Telecommunications, a division of Time Warner Inc., said yesterday that it would build and test a wireless personal communications system which uses Qualcomm Inc.'s digital cellular technology. The announcement is the first time Qualcomm's code division multiple access technology will be used in a cable network. Time Warner Cable said it would install and test the technology in its "full service network" in Orlando, Fla., early next year. The network will offer 4,000 customers services including video-on- demand, interactive shopping and personal communications. After the announcement, shares of Qualcomm rose 9 percent, or $4.50, to a record $55.25 in Nasdaq trading. Shares of Time Warner closed unchanged on the New York Stock Exchange at $37.875. Qualcomm's digital wireless technology uses a radio channel to carry multiple-coded conversations. It provides 10 to 20 times the capacity of analog cellular systems. As the telecommunications industry switches to digital systems, the Qualcomm technology is competing with so-called time division multiple access technology. That technology divides a radio channel into time slots, and assigns conversations to each slot. It increases capacity by a factor of three. Dennis Patrick, president and chief executive of Time Warner Telecommunications, said that Time Warner had not made a decision as to what technology would be used permanently but that it was encouraged by what it had seen of the Qualcomm technology. SUBJECT: TELEPHONES AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS; TESTS AND TESTING ORGANIZATION: TIME WARNER CORP; QUALCOMM INC Copyright 1993 The New York Times Company The New York Times June 14, 1993, Monday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section D; Page 6; Column 4; Financial Desk LENGTH: 1046 words HEADLINE: THE MEDIA BUSINESS; High Hurdles Await Interactive TV BYLINE: By JOHN MARKOFF, Special to The New York Times DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO, June 13 BODY: There may be a few potholes on the road to the information superhighway. But the 16,000 people who gathered here last week for the annual National Cable Television Association show ignored them as they eagerly kept their sights on interactive television and on the alliances that are being forged to develop its technology. Digital television promises to transform the way Americans shop, bank, learn and communicate. Cable industry executives say it will turn couch potatoes into interactive television "users." But veteran computer industry executives caution that the cable industry still has a way to go in computer network technology. Significant hurdles remain in reliability, security and service. Technological Mishaps And technological mishaps may become commonplace as operators of cable systems try to integrate software and hardware components from different manufacturers. It would be possible, computer industry executives noted, for poorly written programs to malfunction and cause interactive television to crash, much as such programs crash personal computers today. "At least in television today, the CNN channel won't crash the ESPN channel," said Rob Glaser, an executive at the Microsoft Corporation. Moreover, despite ambitious plans to test advanced interactive television systems in affluent markets like Orlando, Fla., and Castro Valley, Calif., next year, there is no guarantee that these tests will succeed. Weak demand in these markets would throw cold water on the industry's belief that American consumers hunger for interactive television and for systems with up to 500 channels. Computer executives point to the disappointing response of a decade ago that greeted ambitious videotex and other electronic information services, which had been hailed as the coming of the interactive television revolution. Those systems were expensive and awkward, and they led to a decade of retreat by newspaper publishers who are only now tentatively experimenting with interactive services again. Cable Seeks the Driver's Seat The cable industry is more ambitious, encouraged by the Clinton Administration's push for a national data highway. The cable industry has been quick to portray itself as the best way to build the information highway to homes and businesses. The $21 billion cable industry asserts that it is better positioned than the $150 billion telephone industry because it has already strung higher- capacity lines into many American homes. Moreover, faced with re- regulation by Congress, cable industry executives have said they are planning multibillion-dollar investments to upgrade their systems to offer high-speed interactive networks. But the cable industry is only beginning to grapple with computer security requirements. Little Patience for Bugs Many users of Macintosh and Windows-based personal computers are today resigned to frequent computer crashes because of software incompatibilities and bugs. Many industry executives say similar standards will not be tolerated by television viewers who have little or no computer experience and have no desire to become computer literate. "Just wait until John Q. Public tries to click his remote control to 'launch' 'Laverne and Shirley' and he gets an error message saying, 'insufficient memory,' " said Denise Caruso, publisher of Digital Media, a San Francisco newsletter. "I don't hear the industry talking about these problems." Compatibility issues have increasingly plagued the computer industry since it has agreed to standards that allow competing software packages to work on different personal computer models. In recent weeks, cable industry operators have discussed establishing similar standards to encourage the development of interactive television software. Tele-Communications Inc. and Time Warner Inc. are now in talks with the Microsoft Corporation to create a new company to develop the operating system to control a new generation of interactive TV. Vulnerable to Viruses The problem of computer viruses, which can be particularly infectious in computer networks, is also unsolved. Digital cable systems are potentially vulnerable to software viruses that could proliferate throughout entire communities. "Just wait until the cable industry confronts its first computer virus," said Mark Cantor, a San Francisco-based software developer who is designing for interactive television. Al Dunn, a Hewlett-Packard engineer who demonstrated a computerized cable system at the industry show, said: "This is a challenge for the cable industry. We still have these problems with network and electronic-mail security at my company." The cable industry has already had well-known breaches of security, like the 'Captain Midnight' interruption of an H.B.O. transmission in 1986 by a satellite dish salesman disgruntled when H.B.O. started scrambling its signal. And the industry already has fraud problems with its current technology: cable piracy, the stealing of service for pay-per-view movies, is rampant. Same Operating Systems Computer makers are proposing that cable service operators deploy dozens of powerful microprocessor-based computers that can transmit hundreds of simultaneous signals to cable viewers. But the computer manufacturers are proposing using the same operating systems that are now used in commercial computer networks. Computer security specialists say that these systems are still vulnerable. "The problems haven't been licked, and the cable industry is going to get killed by them," said Peter G. Neumann, a computer scientist and network security consultant at S.R.I. International, a research firm in Menlo Park, Calif. "Who is going to be the pioneer that realizes that there is a future in building secure, reliable operating systems?" One obvious solution is the use of data coding technology that will make it almost impossible for eavesdroppers to steal information by tapping into the cable networks. But the Government has been stalling on approving coding standards because of resistance by the National Security Agency and law-enforcement agencies, which are concerned about losing their ability to collect foreign intelligence and wiretap suspected criminals. GRAPHIC: Drawing SUBJECT: TELEVISION; CABLE TELEVISION ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL CABLE TELEVISION ASSN NAME: MARKHOFF, JOHN ORG: NATIONAL CABLE TELEVISION ASSOCIATION; -- Harry Shapiro habs@panix.com List Administrator of the Extropy Institute Mailing List Private Communication for the Extropian Community since 1991 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 08:17:19 -0700 From: Romana Machado Subject: SOC/CHAT: The Truth Controversy, and not truth, is likely to be had from Nancy Schorr, who recently saw fit to stand outside of my home and shout insults at it. I recommend that those who want the "real scoop" ask longtime list members like Lefty or Robin Hanson. Of course that image was faked, you horny little twits! That was one of the proofs of my headshot grafted as Perry described. But it wasn't *far* from the truth. Geez, inquiring minds spoil everything. (Which of you is going to bring a measuring tape and scale to the next Extropians Lunch?) P.S. I'm writing this on my cellular laptop, as I am flying to New York; Carol Moore and I are going to kidnap Perry. (Should I include a disclaimer for the seriously humor-impaired?) Feh. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1993 09:49:35 -0700 From: Harry Alan Benjamin Shapiro Subject: Pol: Federal Budget The United States Budget for 1993 is publicly available on SunSITE.UNC.EDU (Internet address: 152.2.22.81). 1. FTP Access: People who would like to use anonymous FTP to retrieve the entire 1 MB of the Budget file will find it by: ftp SunSITE.UNC.EDU login: anonymous password: cd pub/academic/political-science get US-Budget-1993 2. WAIS Access: People who are directly on the Internet and who have WAIS clients may search the US-Budget-1993.src. 3. Gopher Access: People who are directly on the Internet and who have gopher clients may point their gopher to SunSITE.UNC.EDU 70. From there they may search and browse the Budget. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 16:24:58 GMT From: price@price.demon.co.uk (Michael Clive Price) Subject: Traversable Wormholes: Some Implications My thanks to Robin Hanson for the feedback. >>To protect against relativistic dust impact damage some of the >>extra energy and mass could be used for the construction of a heat >>shield. > > Actually just free ions as in cosmic rays will be much more numerous, > and very damaging, and high velocity. Won't the charged ions be handled by the magnetic scoops? > Dust, well, if one grain hits you that's the end. Depends on whether it shatters like a dum-dum or punches a hole clean through the probe. At ultra-relativistic speeds I'd expect most objects to punch a hole straight through (they're so time-dilated and mass inflated they don't have time to explode). Survival of the probe depends on on-board redundancy coupled with regenerative powers. > Robin Hanson Mike Price price@price.demon.co.uk AS member (21/3/93) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1993 11:19:28 -0700 (PDT) From: Scott C DeLancey Subject: Cognitive linguistics (was: Re: Lakoff, etc.) Since this has already gone public I'll answer here. On Sat, 19 Jun 1993, Rich Walker wrote: > How nice is Lakoff's work for applying to practical problems? The short answer is, forget it. I expect that successful work in strong AI (pie-in-the-sky though that may be) will have to work from ideas along the lines of Lakoff's. But as far as dealing with currently plausibly engineerable problems, I don't see where he has much of immediate value to offer. Lakoff is hot for connectionist modelling these days, and thinks that that is very congruent with his work--which may give you an idea of how close he is to any practical applications. Possibly more useful, along similar lines, is the work of Ronald Langacker--try his _Foundations of Cognitive Grammar_ (in 2 volumes), and see if you find it more useful than Chomsky. Scott DeLancey delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1993 14:33:15 -0400 (EDT) From: esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) Subject: SOC/CHAT: The Truth > Of course that image was faked, you horny little twits! > That was one of the proofs of my headshot grafted as Perry described. Sure. I think most of us who *didn't* ask figured that out instantly... -- Eric S. Raymond ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1993 14:33:50 -0400 (EDT) From: esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) Subject: SOC/CHAT: The Truth > But it wasn't *far* from the truth. Good. You have a nice smile. -- Eric S. Raymond ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 12:16:00 -0700 From: dasher@netcom.com (D. Anton Sherwood) Subject: META: flamage I would suggest sentencing P. and E. to mutual message-blocking (i.e. of each other only). *\\* Anton "And that's a spontaneous order, Private!" ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 19:58:09 GMT From: sjw@liberty.demon.co.uk (Stephen J. Whitrow) Subject: Seagoing Primates and Undersea Domes Eric S. Raymond replies to Perry: >> Certainly many other primates spend a lot more of their lives in the >> water -- there are, for instance, the macaques that spend most of the >> daylight hours in the wintertime in the hot springs of northern Japan. >> I could give other examples. > Please do. I don't believe there are *many* other primates that have such > adaptations, or I'd know of it. Got a reference for the Japanese macaques? Lyall Watson's book *Lifetide* mentions the Japanese macaques. He describes how the idea of washing sweet potatoes in the sea suddenly caught on amongst all the troop members, and at colonies on other islands and the mainland, in support of his belief in the "Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon". (Learning that they could separate sand from wheat by throwing both into the sea and grabbing the floating wheat after the sand sank apparently came 18 months later.) There's quite a few references that might provide the info needed -- seems to be quite old stuff but I'll list them in case anyone can do a search or something: IMANISHI, "Social behaviour in Japanese monkeys" *Psychologia 1*: (47-54) 1957 KAWAI, M. "On the newly acquired behaviours of the natural troop of Japanese monkeys on Koshma Island" *Primates 4*: (113-115) 1963 KAWAI, M. "Newly acquired precultural behaviour of the natural troop of Japanese monkeys on Koshma Island" *Primates 6*: (1-30) 1965 KAWAMURA, S. "The process of sub-cultural propagation among Japanese monkeys" In *SOUTHWICK (497)* TSUMORI, A. "Newly acquired behaviour and social interaction of Japanese monkeys" In *ALTMANN (5)* If the monkeys didn't swim between islands, and islands and mainland, this would seem to support the more mystical interpretations of the 'food washing meme propagation' phenomenon! Steve Whitrow sjw@liberty.demon.co.uk for now, leaving sea habitation to species better equipped for it ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 13:19:13 -0700 From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: Chaitin, Mathematica, and "Jurassic Park" This note is to let the list know about some interesting developments in the ongoing saga of Gregory Chaitin and my communications with him. Key Points: 1. I've been in e-mail communication with Chaitin. 2. Chaitin has rewritten his "Omega" code (a million-character equation that proves randomness exists in mathematics...please, no flames about how randomness is a mystical or anti-Ayn Rand concept!) in "Mathematica" and has made this code available in the "Mathsource" archive at Wolfram Research. (Anonymous ftp to "MathSource.wri.com" and look in pub/Communications/Books for the files Chaitin.sit.hqx, Chaitin.tar.Z, Chaitin.zip, and Chaitin.README, depending on your platform. For those Mathematica-deprived Extropians, at least the README file may be of interest, although it is very brief. C code is also included, though I haven't played with it.) 3. I downloaded the files, and began to experiment with them. I'll keep you informed. 4. I had some questions, and some thanks, so I sent Chaitin a note. I also mentioned the debate on "Extropians" and how I'd started a firestorm of sorts by mentioning the Casti, Davies, Pagels, and (of course) Chaitin treatments---though I skipped the details of the "math cannot be random" arguments. I also cited my beliefs that algorithmic complexity theory, with the "logical depth" ideas of Charles Bennett, provides important clues about the complexity of life, especially the arguments about the complexity of genomes in general and self-reproducing machines in particular. (Derek Zahn, Nick Szabo, and I have had some discussions along these lines.). 5. Greg Chaitin responded immediately to these points and said he would send me his latest preprints. (I hesitate to mention this, because I certainly don't want Chaitin to be barraged with requests....his generosity may have some limits. Please, unless you are fairly serious about exploring this area, don't ask him for his preprint package. But if you are, go for it!) He also agreed that the Rucker treatment (which I'd forgotten about until Amara Graps mentioned it in her own summary of Chaitin's work) is one of the best. He also cited Ruehl's "Chance and Chaos," which I dug up last night...it has a chapter on Kolmogorov-Chaiin complexity, but is fairly brief. 6. Today's mail brought me 3 large "Priority Mail" envelopes, containing these collections of papers: - "Exhibiting Randomness in Arithmetic using Mathematica and C," June 11, 1993 (hot off the press, this goes with the code just posted on MathSource). - "Information, Randomness, and Incompleteness: Papers on Algorithmic Information Theory," Second Edition, April 27, 1993. (This is amazing! 550 pages. *All* of the content of the 1990 book, updated! Thankfully I had not yet bought the $50 book....and Chaitin's and IBM's generosity suggests to me they don't really expect many _individuals_ to buy the book, that the pricing makes it intended mainly for university libraries. Just my theory.) - "Information-Theoretic Incompleteness," 1992. Also the complete text, in Xeroxed and perfect-bound form (like all the others), of his 1992 collection of essays. Amazing. - "Algorithmic Information Theory," Second Edition, June 15, 1993. Now this is the "bible" I had bought a couple of years ago, now being revised for a forthcoming Second Edition. What luck. - "Recent Reprints," April 28, 1993. A collection of recent papers and magazine articles, some in Spanish. 7. I am taken aback by such generosity and promptness! What more can I say? 8. So, freshly inspired by seeing "Jurassic Park" yesterday (inspired by the genetic code issues...just what is the measure of algorithmic complexity for genomes of such enormous lengths, and perhaps even more enormous logical depths?), and having been thinking about the Chaitin issues for several weeks recently, I am ready for a journey into these largely unexplored areas. Life, complexity, reversibility, evolution, genetic algorithms, logical depth, and all that. If any of you are interested in these areas, let's stay in touch, perhaps through a small private mailing system (so as not to use up List bandwidth on highly technical areas and so as not to constantly provoke sniping from the sidelines). -Tim May -- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: by arrangement Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 17:07:14 -0400 From: pavel@PARK.BU.EDU (Paul Cisek) Subject: BIOL: Bits into long term memory James A. Donald writes: >People have been trying to develop alternative approaches for >over 20 years, with no success. I suspect that by "people" you mean computer scientists, am I right? This is my point exactly. Computer scientists tend to be pretty ignorant of the breadth of approaches to brain study that have been going on for over 100 years. To make matters worse, they are not aware of this ignorance. >"Naive" reductionism is the correct approach. Not for all systems. Would you argue that the proper level of analysis of a society is to break it down into molecules? I doubt it. The same goes for the study of the brain. I agree with you that the only time we can claim to have an understanding of something is when we can construct something with equivalent properties. However, although neurons may be the fundamental unit of behavior (wishful thinking on my part), I claim that the proper level of study is the mathematical analysis of the dynamics of large biologically-based neural network models. I hate to defend my point with a "go read this, learn this" statement, but in this case it's really necessary. I don't think that computer scientists are qualified to speculate on the mind, just as somebody who is largely ignorant of modern physics is qualified to speculate on the nature of matter. Well, I shouldn't be so harsh - all I mean is that I do not value theories that are based upon what I consider to be an incomplete understanding of the available data and the available techniques of analysis. -Paul ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1993 14:30:06 -0700 From: nobody@pmantis.berkeley.edu Subject: Tabloid Extropy #1 This week's Extropian Gossip brought to you by The Bandit! 1. Perry "Dog Master" Metzger fined $50 for public display of beastiality! Yes folks, it's true. Those dogs were doing more than just diving! 2. Woman arrested for running "DEEP DOMINATRIX DUNGEON OF DOOM", a young male male slave trading market. Romana "obey me" Machado, as she was being arrested, laughed insanely and said "Your effort is futile. In the end, you will all bend before my will." 3. Eric "Fire Dancer" Raymond gets burned! Mr. Raymond was flown to an emergency burn center after he and other pagans attempted to dance across a bed of hot coals. His one comment to reporters on the scene was "Did ya know my IQ is over 180?" The Bandit! ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1993 17:14:18 -0400 (EDT) From: esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) Subject: Seagoing Primates and Undersea Domes > If the monkeys didn't swim between islands, and islands and mainland, this > would seem to support the more mystical interpretations of the 'food washing > meme propagation' phenomenon! Sigh. I believe the so-called "hundredth-monkey" phenomenon has been exposed as a hoax --- I read somewhere that the guy who started it all has admitted that he wrote his at-the-time-alleged-to-be-nonfiction about it as an eco-fable to help save the planet. -- Eric S. Raymond ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1993 17:15:58 -0400 (EDT) From: esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) Subject: Chaitin, Mathematica, and "Jurassic Park" > If any of you are interested in these areas, let's stay in touch, perhaps > through a small private mailing system (so as not to use up List bandwidth > on highly technical areas and so as not to constantly provoke sniping from > the sidelines). I'm interested. -- Eric S. Raymond ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 Issue #0343 ****************************************