Extropians Digest Mon, 21 Jun 93 Volume 93 : Issue 0345 Today's Topics: AIT VirtSem: Setting up the Virtual Seminar [1 msgs] Chaitin, Mathematica, and "Jurassic Park" [2 msgs] Chomsky, Liars, and Dangerous Memes [1 msgs] Dino Shooting [3 msgs] E-PRIME: Atlantic Monthly article [1 msgs] Hypothermia, Vinge LitCrit, etc. [3 msgs] Japanese macaques [2 msgs] PHYSIO: Hypothermia and the Diving Reflex [1 msgs] SOC/CHAT: _Velociraptor_ intelligence [1 msgs] Seagoing Primates and Undersea Domes [2 msgs] TECH/WAR: Wormhole Wars [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. 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Approximate Size: 57127 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 9:02:43 GMT From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu Subject: Hypothermia, Vinge LitCrit, etc. The reflex people were talking about a while back whereby people who are stuck in cold water is called "hypothermia." Someone asked, so that's the answer. I think. I'm still reeling from my whopping mistake about Beethoven's 9th. Why is everyone so hot on Vinge's "Fire Upon the Deep"? I mean, I'm glad I read it, and grateful to Anton for lending it to me, but it's got some big serious bugs! Are people merely overlooking these? The two I have in mind are the deus ex machina ending and the fact that Our Heroes, going off to save the world to a primitive planet, never tell Steel about the enemy fleet chasing them. I simply hate deus ex machina endings. They're too fatalistic. Don't know what else can be said about that. But it struck me as totally inexplicable why Our Heroes didn't try to elicit Steel's cooperation by informing him that his planet will be sterilized if he doesn't. I've mentioned these criticisms to some extropians, and they've shrugged them off. How are we going to get better extropian fiction if we are this easy? I now end this rant, and return you to your regularly scheduled flame-war. 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: Mon, 21 Jun 93 6:05:27 WET DST From: rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray) Subject: Hypothermia, Vinge LitCrit, etc. starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu writes: > > Why is everyone so hot on Vinge's "Fire Upon the Deep"? I mean, I'm glad I > read it, and grateful to Anton for lending it to me, but it's got some big > serious bugs! Are people merely overlooking these? > > The two I have in mind are the deus ex machina ending and the fact that Our > Heroes, going off to save the world to a primitive planet, never tell Steel > about the enemy fleet chasing them. Is this all you can come up with? When I see "big serious bugs", I picture plot holes big enough to drive a starship through. Deus ex machina endings are pretty standard in scifi where techno-gadgets-alway-come-to-the- rescue. Not telling Steel about the fleet is not what I'd call a major bug when you compare AFUtD with other novels. Deus ex Machina endings can work (for me) depending on how they are done. For instance, Jurassic Park's "T-Rex pops out of nowhere and saves the children" ending was too anti-climatic. AFUtD's ending wasn't nearly so bad. (except more time should have been spent on the Blight's demise. A few pages devoted to the Blight fleet wandering around in the Slow Zone, etc) AFUtD makes up for its fast ending with its great universe full of strange races, weird space zones, godlike intelligences, and strangely familiar galatic network. -- 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: Mon, 21 Jun 1993 20:31 EST From: X91007@pitvax.xx.rmit.edu.au Subject: PHYSIO: Hypothermia and the Diving Reflex Tim Starr says: >The reflex people were talking about a while back whereby people who are stuck >in cold water is called "hypothermia." Someone asked, so that's the answer. >I think. I'm still reeling from my whopping mistake about Beethoven's 9th. As I understand it this is only partially right. The term 'hypothermia' simply means that the body temperature of the body has dropped below normal. When this happens the brain attempts to protect the brain and vital organs by lowering/ceasing circulation in the extremities. It's an evolutionary form of triage: try and save the heart and brain and other vital organs, but perhaps lose a few fingers or a foot. Lowering the amount of energy required by the body overall also allows someone to survive longer. In addition as soon as they submerge themselves in the water the so called 'diving reflex' occurs whereby their metabolism automatically drops significantly. I have just had a thought: In Roy Walford's _Maximum Life Span_ he devotes a whole chapter to the possibilities of life extension if we could only lower our core body temperature. I won't try to summarise the whole chapter now, but the idea comes from experiments with cold-blooded animals whose maximum life span was greatly increased if there environment was cooled. According to Walford if we could lower our core body temperature down from 98.6 deg. F to 87.8 deg. F would expect to live another 200 years or so. I wonder if the lowering of the metabolism via the diving reflex would also led to an increase in life span. I guess the first question is: is it an overall lower core body temperature or a lower metabolism that increases the life span of cold-blooded animals? And given the latter is there someway of turning the diving reflex on without walking around with a bucket of water? Patrick Wilken ----------------- x91007@pitvax.xx.rmit.edu.au ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 8:05:48 CDT From: derek@cs.wisc.edu (Derek Zahn) Subject: Hypothermia, Vinge LitCrit, etc. Tim Starr complains, about _A Fire Upon the Deep_: > ... it's got some big serious bugs! Are people merely overlooking these? > > The two I have in mind are the deus ex machina ending and the fact that Our > Heroes, going off to save the world to a primitive planet, never tell Steel > about the enemy fleet chasing them. I don't think these are bugs. A deus ex machina is something introduced suddenly and unexpectedly to provide a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty. I think it was pretty clear all along that if the godshatter could get some quality time with the countermeasure, he'd be able to activate it and it'd take care of the Blight. No surprise there; the tension revolved around the effort to get there. On your second point, it seems quite plausible to leave Steel ignorant about the pursuing fleet. * He'd probably be skeptical and think it a bluff * If more details are given about why the fleet is pursuing, Steel may well meddle with the countermeasure, something they don't want. * It would give him ideas about negotiating with the other group derek "Unless you cooperate, there's this huge fleet of ships that're coming to destroy your planet. Yeah, that's it. A huge fleet of NASTY ships." ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 9:32:02 CDT From: derek@cs.wisc.edu (Derek Zahn) Subject: Chaitin, Mathematica, and "Jurassic Park" Tim May: > 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). Count me interested (but you probably guessed that already). How are we to keep in touch if not via the list? I don't think that some technical points about the generation and meaning of complexity would distract too much from more extropian topics like why dogs like to dive and rather tacky hooting and howling over retouched pics of female list members (note that both of the posted photos we've had [Harry and Romana] have been enhanced -- virtual-self-transformation, visualization aids for optimal personae, virtual presence, etc -- very extropian!). But given a list of addresses, we can make a mail alias easily enough. Some initial points: * As Bennett's idea of Logical Depth stands, I don't see how to apply it to evolution or life. While it's true that the production of DNA by evolution on earth is a time-consuming "computation", that doesn't imply it's logically deep (suggestive, though). Different "programs" could conceivably produce equivalent structures with less effort -- programs not available to chemical processes on the earth's wild surface. * What is the relationship between evolution and complexity? Evolutionary processes seem to generate greater and greater complexity. Despite my best efforts, I have been unable to find any technical work linking the two. Intuitively, it's sort of obvious -- if a complex form is able to exploit an environmental niche more effectively than a simple one, evolutionary processes will favor the complex organism. But how often is this the case? What are the conditions required for this kind of escalation of complexity to be possible? * Biologically, complexity evolves with the development of a food chain, with more complex organisms typically toward the top. Is this necessary for the evolution of complexity? If so, it would seem to say that artificial evolution should take ecological considerations into account. Is it true for other evolutionary scenarios -- memes, markets, etc? Can business advantages be gained by figuring out these relationships? * What would happen if artificial evolution were given an explicit bias toward complexity? Natural evolution is constrained by the (wonderful, true) mechanisms of genetics and the physical structures they give rise to. We're not so constrained. * How do we express questions about the complexity of self-replication? Does the appropriate link between system theory and complexity theory exist? If not, what would be its overall form? (speculation encouraged!) derek ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 08:28:28 PDT From: "Mark W. McFadden" Subject: Seagoing Primates and Undersea Domes On Sat, 19 Jun 1993 00:42:07 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > >Eric S. Raymond says: Got a reference for the Japanese macaques? > >No, but they are bloody famous -- these are the same guys that learned >to wash their rice grains to get rid of the sand. Any article on the >macaques is likely to mention the habit of the northern ones of >spending lots of the winter in hot springs. > >Perry Second that. Was channelsurfing and stopped at Discover when I spied a beautiful piece on the macaques. Great closeups of the monkeys sitting in steaming water while snowflakes fall about them. Couldn't decide which was the more incongruous image; monkeys in a hot tub, or monkeys with snow in their fur. ______________________________________________________________________ | Mark W. McFadden | Been there.....done that. mwm@wwtc.timeplex.com | | ___________________________________|__________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 08:33:45 PDT From: "Mark W. McFadden" Subject: Seagoing Primates and Undersea Domes On Sat, 19 Jun 93 00:01:50 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: > >Perhaps it is cooling to them, perhaps the splashing is fun or stimulating. >But then that's really the main reason humans play in the water, too. > >-Tim Also a good way to get rid of fleas. And that might be one reason humans started playing in water. ______________________________________________________________________ | Mark W. McFadden | Been there.....done that. mwm@wwtc.timeplex.com | | ___________________________________|__________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1993 01:36 EST From: X91007@pitvax.xx.rmit.edu.au Subject: Chaitin, Mathematica, and "Jurassic Park" Derek says: > * Biologically, complexity evolves with the development of a food > chain, with more complex organisms typically toward the top. Is > this necessary for the evolution of complexity? If so, it would > seem to say that artificial evolution should take ecological > considerations into account. Is it true for other evolutionary > scenarios -- memes, markets, etc? Can business advantages be > gained by figuring out these relationships? > > * What would happen if artificial evolution were given an explicit > bias toward complexity? Natural evolution is constrained by the > (wonderful, true) mechanisms of genetics and the physical structures > they give rise to. We're not so constrained. I too am very interested in these topics, though probably well behind you two in terms of reading. If it isn't too stupid a question could you please explain to me how to define complexity? I assume that it is some measure of how 'well' a process can manipulate information, but how do you measure that? Patrick Wilken ---------------------- x91007@pitvax.xx.rmit.edu.au ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 08:46:42 PDT From: "Mark W. McFadden" Subject: Dino Shooting Well hell, the subject is already here, I'll keep it going for awhile. Instead of the .50 caliber etc etc, how efficient would a smaller (say 9mm) Glaser Safety Slug be? Would a , ohhh Uzi(?) firing those have the stopping power of the larger calibers? It's bound to be easier on the wrist. I think I'd want the option of a big clip and high rate of fire when dealing with multiple 'raptors. Is there a serious discussion of this subject going on somewhere else? ______________________________________________________________________ | Mark W. McFadden | Been there.....done that. mwm@wwtc.timeplex.com | | ___________________________________|__________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1993 12:06:19 -0400 (EDT) From: bhaworth@acpub.duke.edu (W. Blair Haworth Jr.) Subject: Dino Shooting Mak McFadden writes: > Well hell, the subject is already here, I'll keep it going for awhile. > Instead of the .50 caliber etc etc, how efficient would a smaller (say > 9mm) Glaser Safety Slug be? Would a , ohhh Uzi(?) firing those have the > stopping power of the larger calibers? It's bound to be easier on the wrist. >From most aspects, other than, say, the underbelly - which you probably wouldn't want to be in a position to shoot at anyway - I'd say dino-hide would be likely to cause premature breakup of the Glaser, especially at oblique angles (caveat: I haven't seen the latest specs on Glasers or dinos), leaving a fleshwounded, alerted, annoyed saurian. If you insist on 9mm Parabellum, hardball is the way to go. Actually, the 12 ga. extended-magazine riot guns shown in the flick wouldn't be too bad (if close ranges don't bother you for the purposes of this excercise) loaded with one of the hotter rifled slugs, esp. the discarding-sabot kind. --Blair Haworth bhaworth@acpub.duke.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 9:38:54 PDT From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: Dino Shooting I've managed to stay out of the "dino shooting" discussion, but... > Well hell, the subject is already here, I'll keep it going for awhile. > Instead of the .50 caliber etc etc, how efficient would a smaller (say > 9mm) Glaser Safety Slug be? Would a , ohhh Uzi(?) firing those have the > stopping power of the larger calibers? It's bound to be easier on the wrist. > I think I'd want the option of a big clip and high rate of fire when > dealing with multiple 'raptors. > Is there a serious discussion of this subject going on somewhere else? > ______________________________________________________________________ > | > Mark W. McFadden | Been there.....done that. A Glaser Safety Slug is precisely the *opposite* of what you'd want to use--it is a "safety" slug because it is frangible (it falls apart) and dumps its kinetic energy shortly after penetration. That is, it will not penetrate through bodies, walls, etc. As with big game, penetration is needed. In "Jurassic Park," the wicked-looking shotguns were the now-banned (for most private citizens) Franchi "SPAS-12" shotguns, semi-automatic or pump. Loaded with slugs (solids, rather than shot), it may have been marginally effective against smaller dinos. Better would be big game rifles. Or any number of rocket-launched grenade options. It was clear to me that Spielberg was unfamiliar with the Rambo-Terminator-Alien genre and its armaments. -Tim -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 11:12:00 -0700 From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: AIT VirtSem: Setting up the Virtual Seminar Welcome to the "Virtual Seminar" on "Algorithmic Information Theory." It may run for a few weeks, or less, or it may run all summer. Time will tell. It may transform itself into a virtual seminar on some related subject, such as the software for self-replicating systems, or the Human Genome Project, or reversible computation. About half a dozen people have responded to my call so far, so we have enough for the beginnings of a real seminar, especially if participants read at least _some_ of the materials. (If they don't read the material, we'll be forever bogged down at the basic level of defining terms and answering naive questions. And since we can't draw pictures, or backtrack easily, communication of the basics is a real problem. The only solution I see is to make sure we all are speaking the same language, and that is best achieved by reading the same material.) Instead of using a private mailing list, which would be cumbersome for participants to maintain (or for me to set up), I will take the suggestion of Harry Shapiro and Derek Zahn and instead use the main list software. This way, lurkers can freely lurk, newcomers can drop in and drop out, and the pressure can be put on Ray C. (:-}) to complete the new software that will allow folks to bypass threads with the prefix "AIT VirtSem." Also, my expectation is that once we have run the course on this thread, for the time being at least, new VirtSems can be instantiated on other topics. (Sorry for the neologism "VirtSem," but I wanted something a little more descriptive than "AIT 101," which was my other choice.) The idea is that of a college-level seminar, run virtually. As with real seminars, folks will be at various levels of expertise and commitment, but will be expected to do some reading, some thinking, and make some contributions. While lurkers and shy folks are welcome, the idea of a seminar is to make some progress, explore some new ideas, and to generally go beyond the model of a professor expounding a set of laid-down theories to fairly passive students. All are welcome to drop in, but your naive questions may go unanswered, or answered with a "RTFM!" (Read the F'ing Material!), as with real seminars. Intelligent questions are always welcome. And the response of others in the seminar will mainly determine how things go, as we will also be an "anarchic" virtual seminar--no leader, no formal structure, and obviously no grades or other controlling factors. Still, I expect most participants will have little interest in answering dumb questions from casual--or even hostile--folks, any more than real seminar participants are interested in answering questions of folks who poke their heads in on a seminar and ask stupid questions. Potshots and sniping from those who haven't read any of the important papers is best met with no response. As we get rolling, I will post a list of basic sources and will also scan and OCR some articles on this subject. Pacing: An important issue for virtual seminars. Real seminars often only meet on about a _weekly_ schedule, allowing enough time to read articles and form some new thoughts before the next seminar. Electronic interactions are often on a *much faster* time schedule, with the "thread du jour" often appearing, rising, reaching a climax, and then declining in a couple of days, sometimes even in a single day! This doesn't allow people to even track down the reading material, let alone to read and absorb it. Thus, I hope we can *slow down the pace* enough so that critical reading can be done. One way to do this is for participants to propose topics for later discussion, e.g., "In a week or so, I'd like to discuss the implications of logical depth for genetic programming." Proposed readings could even be suggested. (We lack the concept of a "meeting time," which tends to bound discussions and to establish deadlines for reading, so we'll have to find alternate ways of dealing with this potentially nebulous time sense.) Conventionally, mailing lists, such as this one, or such as the "Genetic Programming" list (which I'm also on), tend *not* to have the feel of a seminar. People don't stay focussed, don't read the same materials, etc. One of the few exceptions is when a dozen or so folks are all reading the same book, e.g., Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep," or seeing the same movie, e.g., "Jurassic Park," and so can discuss fine points in a seminar-like way. Most of the rest of the time, the set of common knowledge items is just too sparse, so the list resembles more of a "Show and Tell" session. I am hopeful we can pioneer a new mode of interaction. I look forward to hearing from potential participants. -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: Mon, 21 Jun 93 11:36:05 -0700 From: freeman@MasPar.COM (Jay R. Freeman) Subject: Japanese macaques I think the well-known video sequence on Japanese macaques is from the David Attenborough (spelled however) _Life_on_Earth_ TV series. If memory serves, the behavior is also described in Attenborough's book _Life_on_ _Earth_, which is fairly common used in paperback (and makes a fascinating read). -- Jay Freeman ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 11:32:10 -0700 From: freeman@MasPar.COM (Jay R. Freeman) Subject: SOC/CHAT: _Velociraptor_ intelligence Mild SPOILER WARNING for the movie, _Jurassic_Park_. =============== Tim May and I recently exchanged private EMail on possible _Velociraptor_ intelligence; Tim suggested I post some things here. Little known about _Velociraptor_ intelligence, but ... (1) There is one paleontological find that is a bunch of _Velociraptor_ (or maybe the closely related species _Deinonychus_) grouped around a likely prey animal. Such groupings are clearly unlikely, this one is interpreted as evidence that they were pack hunters, done in by a flash flood or something. In mammals, pack hunting is often associated with quite complicated social behavior and some sort of cognition -- think of lions or wolves. (2) They were bipedal with reasonable overlap of fields of view of the two eyes. (3) They clearly had reasonable grasping ability of the front claws; some authorities believe the fossilized front claws known are correctly reconstructed with an opposable thumb, albeit an odd one -- the outermost of the three digits [sic] on each front limb. Points (2) and (3) are often considered useful starting points for the evolution of real intelligence -- primates exhibit them all the way back to lemurs or even to the "tree shrew" _Tupaia_. (Strictly, these critters are all modern, but since they all exhibit these features it is likely that their common ancestor had them.) Point (1) is possible evidence for a certain level of intelligence. So, how much intelligence? Nobody knows, of course, but if you pick up on the pack-hunter theme and conclude "wolf-like" or "lion-like" you would have a creature that could do most everything shown of _Velociraptor_ in _Jurassic_Park_, possibly excepting the systematic sweep of the kitchen in search of a light meal. Items in point: Wolves in captivity are notorious for exploring all portions of the barriers that confine them, looking for weak spots. Wild wolves are very good at sneaking up on people unobserved. (One of L. David Mech's students reports using radio gear to track a radio-collared wolf as it moved through woods in response to human howls and drew to within five or ten meters of where one of the radio-receiver teams was. At that point, although the team knew exactly where the wolf was -- concealed in shrubbery at the edge of the circle of light surrounding their gear (it was night), none of them could see it! Presently it went away.) (This wolf was not perceived as a threat; the team knew it well and liked it, although it was neither tame nor even habituated to humans.) There are plenty of anecdotal reports of domestic dogs and cats learning to open doors with knobs and handles. Joy Adamson reported in the book, _Born_Free_, that all three of the lion cubs of the litter from which only the celebrated Elsa was finally retained, rapidly learned to open all manner of doors via knobs and latches, and made serious pests of themselves thereby. Some wolves have been extremely clever at detecting and avoiding even carefully laid ambushes and traps. Barry Lopez, in _The_Custer_Wolf_, has chronicled this behavior in one such (real) creature. (This book combines a made-up natural history of the likely early life of this wolf with a documentary of efforts to hunt it down and kill it -- it was a notorious and very successful cattle-killer in the northern Great Plains states in the early part of this century.) The Adamsons reported several instances in which Elsa exhibited surprising initiative at initiating unprecedented complex interactive behavior with humans. Once she helped them pack the carcass of some sort of antelope into the back of a Land Rover. This incident was detailed in the book, _Born_Free_, but I am not sure whether it made it into the movie; it would have been difficult to recreate. I suspect that those of you with cats and dogs have seen responses to unexpected sounds and motions not unlike those of the _Velociraptors_ in the kitchen. And it is most intriguing to speculate on what that possible opposable thumb might have been used for. We don't need to imagine lost civilizations of dinosaurs, either. Maybe they built nests or beds, and gathered and carried appropriate material in their hands. Maybe the hands were aids for pouncing on small critters, or tearing apart large ones. Maybe they were useful in grooming. (Some reconstructions of _Velociraptor_ have it feathered, or perhaps most likely covered with something that is technically feathers, but has more the character of a penguin pelt than of what most of us think of as "typical" feathers. (The one penguin pelt I have handled had rather the look and feel of cheap plastic imitation fur, being composed of very narrow feathers, each little more than the central quill.)) Maybe the lifestyle was sufficiently nomadic that the young needed to grab hold and ride along on the parents' backs. Or maybe they were tool-users. (Again, no dinosaur cities in mind -- think of the way that sea otters and some birds use stones to crack shellfish.) Thus I find it plausible that the real _Velociraptor_ might have behaved much like a wolf or a lion, and I found the reconstruction used in _Jurassic_Park_ entirely reasonable in that regard. What would be more intriguing -- and would in my opinion form the basis for a most interesting sequel -- would be if the creatures had intelligence at the level of gorilla or chimpanzee. At that point it becomes reasonable to think about talking with them, as we have with Koko or with Washoe (though presumably not via American Sign Language, not with only a three-fingered hand). (Note in this context that Francine Patterson, in the book _The_Education_of_Koko_, reports that although Koko lacks vocal apparatus to speak human languages, nevertheless she understands spoken English approximately as well as she understands American Sign Language.) I suspect that there would be an adequate supply of ethologists willing to go face-to-face with _Velociraptors_ in the wild, or to work with them in the lab, if there were any prospect that detailed study would lead to such intimacy. -- Jay Freeman (the *other* Jay) (the *other* Freeman) PS: Hunting _Velociraptor_ with high-powered rifles is more extropian than I thought, for if one attacks you, and you shoot at it but not quite quickly enough, and if you are lucky enough to survive the encounter, then we have a clear instance of "Claws! *BANG*!! Ensuture-time ..." ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1993 14:27 EST From: LEVY%BESSIE@Venus.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: Chomsky, Liars, and Dangerous Memes Scott DeLancey writes: > And then there's Chomsky. The cases are not parallel in a couple of > respects, most importantly that, IMO (nothing remotely humble here) Chomsky > *is* bogus in his own field. His linguistic and his political writing show > the same intellectual dishonesty and thuggery, working deductively > from undemonstrable premises, sneaking in weak assumptions and then > treating them as proven, and ignoring, distorting, or airily dismissing > opposing arguments or awkward evidence. His prominence in linguistics > is an unhappy commentary on the field, but no reason to consider his > political idiocies anomalous. Although I sympathize with this viewpoint, I will reiterate my comment from an earlier post that anyone who thinks it is easy to dismiss Chomsky's ideas should read R. Botha's _Challenging Chomsky: The Generative Garden Game_. This highly entertaining book is filled with examples of scholars who had a seemingly airtight, "common sense" counter-argument to something that Chomsky had said in linguistics and who were shot down so hard by Chomsky that their careers suffered as a result. As for Chomsky's tactics, "intellectual thuggery" is not too far off the mark. Two favorite approaches are (1) making endless newspaper and journal citations -- seemingly off the top of his head -- in order (I suppose) to make his opponents look uninformed, and (2) ignoring a valid criticism and then silently incorporating it into his own work, without acknowledging the contribution of the critic. So, although (or rather *because*) I have strong objections to Chomsky's work, I would appreciate hearing from Scott (or anyone else) who can offer a counter-argument to some specific thing that Chomsky has said about language. After many years as a student of linguistics, I've concluded that the generative grammar enterprise is basically a religion; the response to a questioning of its premises is "How could it be any other way?" (c.f., "If God didn't create the universe, then WHERE DID IT COME FROM?"), and it all follows from there. -- Simon! D. Levy Editor, _Exponent: The Extropy Institute Newsletter_ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 12:22:35 PDT From: Robin Hanson Subject: TECH/WAR: Wormhole Wars I wrote: > Regions with too many unknown wormholes in it might be dead zones, > the sort of place no one could plausibly defend because attack > could literally come from anywhere in great force. Mike Price writes: >I think this could be the case with most of the universe, as well, >after a while. ... High security, corporate and military, >establishments may move into basement universes, where they are safer. >Only a known number of holes to watch and monitor. Hmm.. Most of the universe littered with tiny hidden wormholes. and largely unoccupied because it can't be defended. When it is occupied for a moment, it is soon destroyed without bystanders knowning who did it. All activity of consequence in "side" universes. Sounds suspiciously like the universe we see :-). Chilling thought. Of course very spatially concentrated civilizations would have the same advantages as side universes, the ability to police their border. Activity would have to be very concentrated as well of course - probably look something like a quasar ;-). Robin ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 12:23:08 PDT From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: Japanese macaques > I think the well-known video sequence on Japanese macaques is from the > David Attenborough (spelled however) _Life_on_Earth_ TV series. If memory > serves, the behavior is also described in Attenborough's book _Life_on_ > _Earth_, which is fairly common used in paperback (and makes a fascinating > read). > -- Jay Freeman Yep, that rings a bell! Note that David Attenborough is the brother of actor/director Richard Attenborough, who played Hammond, the owner of Jurassic Park. Does this mean velociraptors wash their food? Or lounge in hot pools? -Tim P.S. For those who didn't get Jay's spectacular pun in his velociraptor intelligence post, the sequence "Claws...BANG!...ensuture time" has some similarities to a certain nom de satire of mine. -- .......................................................................... 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: PGP and MailSafe available. Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1993 15:15 EDT From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: E-PRIME: Atlantic Monthly article I downloaded this article from CompuServe yesterday. NOTE: This message is intended as private communication for members of the Extropians mailing list. Further dissemination could be construed as violation of copyright. Ron Hale-Evans ********************************************************************* Citation: The Atlantic, Feb 1992 v269 n2 p18(3) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: "To be" in their bonnets: a matter of semantics. Authors: Murphy, Cullen --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subjects: General semantics_Analysis English language_Verb Reference #: A11849571 =========================================================================== Abstract: General semantics is the study of the ways in which language influences and distorts perception. E-Prime is a writing system that eliminates all forms of the verb 'to be' and is advocated by some semanticists. =========================================================================== Full Text COPYRIGHT The Atlantic Monthly Co. 1992 A FEW DAYS ago I opened up a recent issue (Volume 48, Number 2) of Et cetera, the quarterly journal of the International Society for General Semantics, and within a few minutes of doing so got a bit of a surprise. The surprise came from an article by Emory Menefee, a former president of the ISGS, which bluntly calls into question attempts by many society members to promote something called E-Prime, a form of English that has for years ranked extremely high among the interests of the general-semantics community. Adovcates of E-Prime, for reasons that I'll come to, favor the elimination in English of every form of the verb "to be"--be, been, is, am, are, was, were, 'm, 's, 're, and all the rest. They not only promote E-Prime as a theoretical proposition but also try in daily life to erase to be and its inflections from everything they write. The most committed advocates use E-Prime even when they talk. Given all this, to see the E-Prime endeavor criticized in an official organ--to see that endeavor, indeed, termed "quixotic"--naturally raised an eyebrow. When I queried the International Society for General Semantics about the matter, the executive director, Paul Dennithorne Johnston, assured me that the society never did, and does not now, regard E-Prime as tantamount to some sort of "party line." Well, fine. But it has strong support among the nomenklatura, and I do not expect them to hold their peace. GENERAL SEMANTICS originated in the work of a Polish engineer, Count Alfred Korzybski, who first spelled out his ideas about language and other symbolic structures in 1933 in his book Science and Sanity. Korzybski had come to the United States in 1915 and eventually became a citizen. In 1938 he established the Institute of General Semantics in Chicago. The institute moved to Lime Rock, Connecticut, late in 1946. (The field has two journals. In 1943 a student of Korzybski's, the noted semanticist and one-term U.S. senator S. I. Hayakawa, founded Et cetera, which currently has about 2,500 subscribers. Korzybski's associate M. Kendig founded the General Semantics Bulletin in 1950.) Explanations of general semantics can become pretty elaborate pretty fast, but the basic idea sounds simple enough. Most of us think of language as something that reflects reality or at least allows us to express our perceptions of reality. Without denying this, general semanticists believe that the very structure of language can influence or distort our perceptions, and they contend that a failure to observe the many ways in which language can do this results in an inability to apprehend the meaning not only of other people's words but of one's own as well. This, of course, causes problems, the size of which can range from the most minor misunderstanding to complete metaphysical disarray, and the problems, naturally, spill over into the realm of behavior. Krozybski himself took a grave view of the actual and potential consequences of "semantic damage." Semanticists observe, tellingly, that the carnage of the First World War powerfully catalyzed Korzybski's thinking. General semantics over the years has taken up a diverse array of subjects touching on language--for example, double-speak, logic, newspaper headlines, nonverbal communication, objectivity, cultural relativism, euphemism, metaphor--but through it all the verb to be has remained a core of concern. That many people in the field, including Korzybski, would zero in on this verb strikes one, in retrospect, as entirely predictable; after all, philosophers had called attention to its problematic character at least as early as the seventeenth century, and their uneasiness had not let up by the twentieth. "The little word is has its tragedies," George Santayana wrote in 1923, in a passage that general semanticists quote frequently and fondly. It names and identifies different things with the greatest innocence; and yet no two are ever identical, and if therein lies the charm of wedding them and calling them one, therein too lies the danger. Whenever I use the word is, except in sheer tautology, I deeply misuse it; and when I discover my error, the world seems to fall asunder. . . . Santayana's complaint had to do with locutions like "Mary is a woman" and "Mary is cold," in which the verb is implies the tight coupling of equivalent things, whereas in fact in the first instance it joins nouns that have different levels of abstraction and in the second it joins a noun to an adjective that neither completely nor permanently qualifies it. Transgressions like these may seem trivial, but in fact they pose fundamental problems of logic, and they greatly bother critical thinkers. To these sins of the verb to be semanticists have added many others. For example, the verb makes possible the widespread use of the passive voice, conditioning us to accept detours around crucial issues of causality ("Mistakes were made"). It makes possible the raising of unanswerable, because hopelessly formulated, questions ("What is truth?"). It makes possible, too, the construction of a variety of phrases ("As is well known. . .") that casually sweep reasoning under a rug. One also finds the verb to be pressed into service on behalf of stereotypical labeing ("Scotsmen are stingy") and overbroad existential generalization ("I'm just no good"). These issues aside, semanticists say, the verb to be, broadly speaking, imputes an Aristotelian neatness, rigidity, and permanence to the world around us and to the relationships among all the things in it--conditions that rarely have any basis in a dynamic reality. Although Korzybski and others fashioned an indictment of to be relatively early in the history of general semantics, the idea of actually getting rid of the verb altogether dates back only to the late 1940s, when it occurred to D. David Bourland, Jr., at that time a Korzybski fellow at Lime Rock. Bourland first used his writing system, which he eventually called E-Prime (E'), in an article, "Introduction to a Structural Calculus: A Postulational Statement of Alfred Korzybski's Non-Aristotelian Linguistic System," that appeared without fanfare in the General Semantics Bulletin in 1952. (He derived the term "E-Prime" from the equation E'=E-e, where E represents standard English and e represents the inflected forms of to be.) Bourland would later recall that writing this article left him with "an intermittent, but severe, headache which lasted for about a week." Strange as it may seem, a piece of text in polished E-Prime does not necessarily alert readers to the E-Prime aspect of its character, and Bourland continued to use E-Prime, unnoticed by the outside world, in his work. Indeed, he deliberately took no steps to call wide attention to how he wrote, lest, as he also recalled, "I become regarded as some kind of nut." Eventually, though, a few close friends prevailed upon Bourland to go public, which in a manner of speaking he did, in 1965, with another article in the General Semantics Bulletin, this one titled "A Linguistic Note: Writing in E-Prime." Since then E-Prime in its written form has acquired several dozen practitioners within the general-semantics community. As for its oral form, those familiar with E-Prime point to an independent research scientist in Oregon named E. W. Kellogg III as perhaps America's most accomplished E-Prime speaker (the competition consists of three or four other people, including David Bourland), and I decided to give Kellogg a call. I expected to hear someone speaking in a slow and considered manner, as if picking his way uncertainly through a linguistic swamp, but he talked briskly and with what sounded like supreme self-confidence. Yes, he said, he halted a lot when he first started speaking E-Prime, in 1978, and a lot of sentences ended abruptly in the middle when he could see himself running into an is. At times he lapsed into a kind of pidgin E-Prime. The transition, in short, took some work. "I had to cope with all that backlog of 'is-pattern' English," he explained. "And I had to do it in real time." But Kellogg got the hang of it stylistically after a year or so, and he now strives in his speech (as he and others also do in writing) to effect further refinements. These include ridding his vocabulary of instances of absolutism (for example, such words as always and ever, which imply immutability) and of many nouns made out of verbs (in particular those with a -tion ending, such as visualization and procrastination, which freeze ongoing processes into static events). Kellogg also hopes to reduce his reliance on have, which quite often can substitute for is, and on other crutches like appear and seem. "I aim at a more phenomenological ideal," he said. "I try to move toward a language that communicates the territory of my experience to myself and others as clearly and accurately as possible." As we spoke, Kellogg's voice at times gathered a certain momentum, clipped and commanding, comfortable in its fluency. As a salesman for E-Prime, he excelled. Now back to Emory Menefee, who in his Et cetera article makes several arguments against E-Prime and in favor of what he calls E-Choice (a term that, as he good-naturedly acknowledges, "arose from the strained similarity between the term E-Prime and a USDA meat grade"). For one thing, Menefee notes, most general semanticists consider certain uses of to be unobjectionable--for example, as an auxiliary verb, or to convey the fact of existence, or to create metaphors. Why throw these uses out? (E-Prime advocates, in reply, make an argument for total abstinence similar to the ones heard with respect to smoking or drinking.) Moreover, Menefee goes on, most of the problems caused by the misue of to be can occur in E-Prime as well, especially if a speaker hasn't internalized all the underlying logic involved; the bloody-minded human cortex can easily work its way around a little obstacle like the proscription of a few words. And in any event, Menefee observes, in the real world E-Prime can never hope to achieve a status other than its present one--as the plaything of a handful of enthusiasts. Menefee concedes, in the end, only that E-Prime may perhaps serve usefully as a "pedagogic tool to force extreme attention on the verb 'to be.'" ANYONE WISHING to explore the E-Prime issue further can turn to Et cetera itself and to a new collection of essays, titled To Be or Not, published by the ISGS, in San Francisco. I myself, having seen the intensity that general semanticists can bring to their work, have no intention of stepping cavalierly into the maw of this debate. Volume 48, Number 3, of Et cetera will, I expect, feature bloody reprisals. And yet, having used E-Prime for eight paragraphs now, I would venture to pray that the parties involved could find common ground on one point. Whether E-Prime deserves to become more or no more than a pedagogic tool, surely we can all hope that it might become at least a pedagogic tool. Almost all of us tend to overuse to be. E-Prime shows how we overuse it. It forces one relentlessly to confront sloppiness, laziness, fuzziness, blandness, imprecision, simplistic generalization, and a half dozen other all too frequent characteristics of casual prose. As a self-administered exercise, this single restraint on style, with all the discomfort that may ensue, offers more real insight in an afternoon than can be gained from a year's worth of spoken precepts. And the cost? In my case, a mere headache, severe but intermittent. I have reason to believe it will last about a week. =========================================================================== ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 Issue #0345 ****************************************