Extropians Digest Wed, 23 Jun 93 Volume 93 : Issue 0350 Today's Topics: A: meme to kill (FWD) [1 msgs] A:FRIV:format meme [7 msgs] B-: SF: Linguistics [1 msgs] B: "Extropian X" [1 msgs] B:FRIV:format meme authors [1 msgs] B:SF:linguistics [3 msgs] C:SOC/CHAT: Appearances and Multiple Worlds [1 msgs] EVOLUTION/DIET What proto-hominids ate [1 msgs] EVOLUTION/DIET: What proto-hominids ate [2 msgs] Extropian fiction [1 msgs] SOC/CHAT: Appearances [1 msgs] SOC/CHAT: Appearances and Multiple Worlds [4 msgs] SOC: All Critical Mass Theories Bogus? [1 msgs] Self-replication is easy [2 msgs] Administrivia: This is the digested version of the Extropian mailing list. Please remember that this list is private; messages must not be forwarded without their author's permission. To send mail to the list/digest, address your posts to: extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu To send add/drop requests for this digest, address your post to: exi-daily-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu To make a formal complaint or an administrative request, address your posts to: extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu If your mail reader is operating correctly, replies to this message will be automatically addressed to the entire list [extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu] - please avoid long quotes! The Extropian mailing list is brought to you by the Extropy Institute, through hardware, generously provided, by the Free Software Foundation - neither is responsible for its content. Forward, Onward, Outward - Harry Shapiro (habs) List Administrator. Approximate Size: 51173 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 07:07:08 -0600 (MDT) From: Stanton McCandlish Subject: A:FRIV:format meme Quoth Ray, verily I saith unto thee: > > D. Anton Sherwood writes: > > > > What similar catch-phrases, or rather catch-structures, have appeared in > > last twenty years? The most recent blatantly successful one is the postfix > > "Not", which I first encountered in the source of the above! I wonder > > Postfix not, sucks, not. But not postfix nots are not 90s not-speak. This "not" business was quickly traced to a Steve Martin SNL routine from the 70's, and linguists with nothing better to do traced it back to surfer slang in the '40s or '50s. People just sort of forgot about it for a while. > Has there ever been any kind of science fiction based on linguistics? > (Evil politically correct empire uses memetic language bombs to subvert > rival civilization?) I know that Vinge has written a short story that has > weird phonetics as a background device. Anything else? Well at the opposite end of the fantastical fiction spectrum, Tolkien stands out pretty glaringly. The Horse Clans series (middle ground I guess, being science-fantasy) plays at this, having the characters' names all spelled "phonetically" : Maree, Jonuthun, etc. Supposed to indicate how it'd be if civilization was toasted, and eveyone was illiterate, etc blah. Personally I think that one fails dismally. The misspellings are just really annoying, not interesting in any way. I honestly can't think of any heavily-linguistics-based sci-fi right off hand besides some cheezy shortstories, but both R. A. Wilson and Wm. Gibson make pretty heavy use of it here and there. And of course there was the "We the People" ST:TOS episode, plus lots of sci-fi that centers on a specific culture that has a lot of language in it if not linguistics per se. -- Stanton McCandlish * Space Migration * Networking * ChaOrder * NO GOV'T. * anton@hydra.unm.edu * Intelligence Increase * Nano * Crypto * NO RELIGION * FidoNet: 1:301/2 * Life Extension * Ethics * VR * Now! * NO MORE LIES! * Noise in the Void BBS * +1-505-246-8515 (24hr, 1200-14400, v32bis, N-8-1) * ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 06:56:10 -0600 (MDT) From: Stanton McCandlish Subject: EVOLUTION/DIET: What proto-hominids ate Quoth Michael Clive Price, verily I say unto thee: > > > the sagittal crest, found in gorillas and (I think) some A. robustus > > but not in chimps and humans. It's characteristic of primates with > > *really powerful* jaws;> the crest anchors jaw muscles at the top of > > the skull. > > Hmm... I am the only human with a sagittal crest? No kidding. > Shame you can't see me. :-) No at all. It's quite common. I was going to comment on that before, but...As for people like you, those "against" say you are throwbacks, and have a lot of neanderthal genes, and those "for" say "Hey, just means we're stronger and better adapted to ominvore habits!" Seriously though, a non-trivial percentage of modern humans have slight saggital crests. I am unsure if it tends to correspond with larger brow ridges or larger, bonier frames overall. Probably, but I won't bet on it w/o hitting the books again. If the "throwback" idea actually has any merit, that's what I'd expect, along with bigger-than-avg. musculature, a tendency to the hirsute side, etc. Is there a geneticist in the house? Almost (but not nearly quite) makes you wonder if the SubGenii and their silly book are right about the Yetinsyni afterall... Draw your own conclusions. I sure will. <--inside joke w/fnerd ;) -- Stanton McCandlish * Space Migration * Networking * ChaOrder * NO GOV'T. * anton@hydra.unm.edu * Intelligence Increase * Nano * Crypto * NO RELIGION * FidoNet: 1:301/2 * Life Extension * Ethics * VR * Now! * NO MORE LIES! * Noise in the Void BBS * +1-505-246-8515 (24hr, 1200-14400, v32bis, N-8-1) * ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 8:35:40 CDT From: derek@cs.wisc.edu (Derek Zahn) Subject: A:FRIV:format meme Ray: > Has there ever been any kind of science fiction based on linguistics? I remember a novel called "Babel 17", by I think either Blish or Van Vogt, whose plot revolved greatly around (invented) languages. derek mig mog moonix peeeee ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 8:37:50 CDT From: lists@alan.b30.ingr.com (lists (Alan Barksdale)) Subject: A:FRIV:format meme [...] > > Has there ever been any kind of science fiction based on linguistics? > > (Evil politically correct empire uses memetic language bombs to subvert > > rival civilization?) I know that Vinge has written a short story that has [...] An SF novel titled _Babel-19_ or _Babel-17_, which won an award or two, from the 60's or early 70's had a similar plot. There is also, of course, _Snow_ _Crash_. Btw, H. Beam Piper's short story "Naudsonce" (sp?) collected in _Federation_ is about a linguist trying to figure out an alien language. ______________________________________________________________________________ | Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, | | even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. | | Alan Barksdale -- uunet!ingr.com!b30!alan!alan -- alan@alan.b30.ingr.com | | -- ingr.com!b30!alan!alan@uunet.UU.NET -- afbarksd@infonode.ingr.com -- | ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 08:46:18 -0500 From: extr@jido.b30.ingr.com (Craig Presson) Subject: A:FRIV:format meme In <9306230750.AA15078@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu>, Ray writes: |> D. Anton Sherwood writes: |> > |> > > > I think the field has been referred to as "bogus". |> > > A noun, Ray, we need a noun! |> > |> > Tee hee. How many of us can cite the origin of this sentence-pattern? It will |> > be interesting to see if anyone's still using it twenty years from now. I saw "A verb, Senator, we need a verb!" from a press conference in a Doonesbury strip. I've forgotten which Senator was droning on without saying anything that day. Is this the earliest instance? -- cP ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 05:13:29 -0700 (PDT) From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) Subject: Self-replication is easy Derek Zahn > I assume you mean "factory" in some real physical sense. Engineers are really interested in what the factory makes. For example, I think Extropians see Drexler assemblers as means towards greatly increased wealth, cheap and effective cell repair machines, etc. rather than as ends in themselves. Ignoring the product, we might define "factory" by artificially constraining the design of the machines to "factory-like" designs. But any detailed definition of what constitutes a "factory" is an artificial design constraint that may prune the best solutions. Even then, complexity is a function of that definition _and_ the fact of self-replication, not just a function of self-replication. On the other hand, if we define "factory" solely in terms of abstract self-replication, it can be reduced to trivia: a self-replicating furnace can be "built" by lighting a match in a dry forest. Therefore, the study of of self-replication in abstract settings, eg Hofstadter's strings, may not shed any useful light on the design of a factory that is supposed to produce useful things as well as copies of itself. From a practical standpoint, having thought extensively about how to design self-replicating factories starting with real-world machines like CNC mills, 3D printers, robots, etc. there is a major tradeoff between manufacturability of the machine and what the machine can in turn manufacture. To get something self-replicating on a macro scale, if it can be done at all, would require major sacrifice in the efficiency and capability of those machines to produce useful products. Complexity is also a function of the starting building blocks. Starting with soil, air, water, etc. is much harder than starting with proteins, sugars, etc. Fanuc's robot plant has a large degree of self-assembly, starting with parts that have already been mined, processed, milled, etc. Creating process closure by integrating further steps back to simple building blocks may lead to combinatorial explosion. Adding a lathe is not at all easy: that lathe's materials must be mined by the mine, milled by the mill, assembled by the robot, etc. Hopefully we can redesign the lathe to use processes already in the self-rep factory, but probably not entirely. (For example, who makes the drill bits). Design for manufacturability, somewhat important in the automation of real-world processes, here becomes extremely important to apply to the machine tools themselves. In short, Complexity = f(self-rep, building-block-complexity, output). Abstract models that just deal with Complexity = f(self-rep) can be optimized into trivia, as with the self-replicating furnace. > > N.B. My use of "complexity" can be interpreted in terms of > > the layman's definition, or in terms of algorithmic compressibility, > > But this is why I think some careful thinking is required here. > Which of the above two do you want? You can't have both. A random > string is not intuitively complex, but is incompressible. To a cryptanalyist, a random string can be awfully complex. :-) I'd say compressibility (which sometimes really means "expandability") is much closer to the layman's definition than "space" and time complexity, but you're right we should be careful. (As well with the word "random"). Nick Szabo szabo@techbook.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 10:09:10 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: EVOLUTION/DIET: What proto-hominids ate X-Reposting-Policy: redistribute only with permission Eric S. Raymond says: > There's been considerable discussion of what hominids and early humans ate on > the list recently. Herewith a few facts and their standard interpretations. > > Early proto-hominids (Ramapithecus, Dryopithecus) certainly resembled monkeys > anatomically and probably resembled them behaviorally as well. Thus, they > were probably opportunistic omnivores (like, say, chimpanzees), with a diet > that included plants, insects, eggs, snakes, lizards, carrion, and occasional > small game. I must emphasize that this is much like saying the inhabitants of New York include honest people, murderers, rapists, child molesters, and polititians. Indeed, Chimps will eat all those things -- but the bulk of their diet is plants, just as the bulk of New Yorkers are honest. > Homo Erectus probably evolved from A. Gracilis. Erectus used tools and fire > and ate meat. Quite likely he had a diet typical of human hunter-gatherers; > monkey food, plus the occasional game kill. I would like to emphasize here too that until the 19th and 20th centuries most people on earth were near vegetarians (although there was considerable amounts of dairy and egg consumption in places). Until recent developments in cattle raising, most of the world's people couldn't afford meat every day -- it was an occassional treat. Now, of course, its considered daily food in much of the world, but this was not the case until fairly recently. To this day, poorer places in the world subist largely on plant foods -- certainly this is the case with many hunter-gatherer peoples. > Adaptations for hunting behavior were probably strongly selected for during > the Ice Ages. There were no vegans (before central heating) in sub-arctic > climates, because the combination of year-round low temperatures and > vegetarianism kills relatively quickly. I will agree that in places with little food other than animals (like the arctic) people will tend to eat meat, but your implication seems to somehow be that vegetarianism is bad for you in cold climates in and of itself -- which isn't true. > Today, human dietary patterns range from pure vegan (Jains) through omnivore > to carnivore (Inuit). The most common pattern in pre-industrial societies > is centered on a staple starch (rice, rye, wheat, maize) and uses meat and > vegetables as relishes. Hunter-gatherer cultures eat more meat, > agriculturalists less. Contrary to what current nutritional fashion predicts , > hunter-gatherers average considerably healthier than agriculturalists for it. Oh? Old Inuit, especially the women are virtually crippled by osteoporosis if they follow their traditional lifestyle. They also have high rates of strokes and heart disease -- although not so high as their diet would suggest. Somali and ethiopian farmers, when not being starved out by civil wars, tend to lead long and healthy lives if they make it out of infancy alive. (Yes, I will be presenting sources for this eventually.) Perry ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 10:15:51 -0400 From: "W. Scott Meeks" Subject: B:SF:linguistics >To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu >From: derek@cs.wisc.edu (Derek Zahn) >Ray: > >> Has there ever been any kind of science fiction based on linguistics? > >I remember a novel called "Babel 17", by I think either Blish or >Van Vogt, whose plot revolved greatly around (invented) languages. I believe it was by Delaney. I'll try to check this evening. Scott ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 10:11:56 -0400 (EDT) From: bhaworth@acpub.duke.edu (W. Blair Haworth Jr.) Subject: A:FRIV:format meme _Also sprach_ Stanton McCandlish: > > Quoth Ray, verily I saith unto thee: > > > > D. Anton Sherwood writes: > > > > > > What similar catch-phrases, or rather catch-structures, have appeared in > > > last twenty years? The most recent blatantly successful one is the postfix > > > "Not", which I first encountered in the source of the above! I wonder > > > > Postfix not, sucks, not. But not postfix nots are not 90s not-speak. > > This "not" business was quickly traced to a Steve Martin SNL routine from > the 70's, and linguists with nothing better to do traced it back to surfer > slang in the '40s or '50s. People just sort of forgot about it for a while. Add a cycle or two, there: In his immortal shaggy-dog story "Pigs is Pigs" (inspiration for "The Trouble With Tribbles", BTW), from 1900 or thereabouts, Ellis Parker Butler has his protagonist, an Irish expressman, use the expression in perfectly contemporary fashion. I assume therefore that the postfix was recognized as an Irish-American verbal tic - whether it actually was or not, of course, in those days of genteel honkeyism. Finley Peter Dunne was producing at about the same time; can any Mr. Dooley buffs out there dredge up a corroboration? --Blair Haworth bhaworth@acpub.duke.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 10:32:52 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: SOC/CHAT: Appearances X-Reposting-Policy: redistribute only with permission Lefty says: > >Lefty says: > >> Just out of curiousity, Perry. > >> > >> As a resident of New York, how dangerous do you feel Central Park is? > > > >Fairly, but it has a low crime rate because few people are willing to > >go through it at night alone. It isn't dangerous compared to several > >other spots I can mention. I'll walk through it at night in a > >reasonable group. > > Heh. > > According to the New York City Police Department, Central Park is the > safest, bar none, _safest_ precinct in the entire city. No, it has the LOWEST CRIME RATE. As I noted, few go in at night, so the crime rate is fairly low. There are a number of such paradoxes in New York -- take, for example the extremely low burglary rate in Hells Kitchen, largely because there is nothing of value to steal in most buildings and they are all tenement walk ups -- its a hard job to haul an old TV down three flights of stairs. > Just to provide an anecdotal data point, I have personally walked through > Central Park well after midnight, alone, on a number of occasions. In the > words of a Kurt Vonnegut character who embarked on a similar adventure, > "There was nobody there. Just me, and fear, and nobody." Things have changed in recent years. It now has a large homeless population, and there is some drug dealing at the north end of the park. > Just to provide a second anecdotal data point, I have a friend who was > mugged by someone wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase. And there was a famous string of robberies by a guy in a tuxedo. So what? Perry ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 9:54:31 CDT From: derek@cs.wisc.edu (Derek Zahn) Subject: B:SF:linguistics Scott: > >I remember a novel called "Babel 17", by I think either Blish or > >Van Vogt, whose plot revolved greatly around (invented) languages. > > I believe it was by Delaney. I'll try to check this evening. Yeah, that's right! Babel-17, by Sam Delaney. Mid-60's. Good read. derek ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 9:51:13 CDT From: derek@cs.wisc.edu (Derek Zahn) Subject: Self-replication is easy Nick Szabo: > Ignoring the product, we might define "factory" by artificially > constraining the design of the machines to "factory-like" designs. > But any detailed definition of what constitutes a "factory" is an > artificial design constraint that may prune the best solutions. > Even then, complexity is a function of that definition _and_ the > fact of self-replication, not just a function of self-replication. Oh, certainly. In fact, for a real discussion of self-replication I'd like to think exclusively about physical structures. To make it concrete (oops, now I have to start being more careful about what metaphors I use...), let's say that we're interested in a self-reproducing factory that takes as input "inexpensive" industrial raw materials and produces as output (besides copies of itself), various pieces of a modular ocean platform. The idea is that we'll want a LARGE ocean platform, so having a self-reproducing factory would help ramp up the production. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this subject. I just went and got Boothroyd's _Assembly Automation and Product Design_ (1992) from the library -- pretty fun! Lots of diagrams for various parts feeders, sections like "7.18: Effects of Obstructed Access and Restricted Vision on Insertion of Threaded Fasteners of Various Designs"... I can throw out some notions... Judging a factory design is a combination of four main factors (with other minor ones): Replication cost ($$$ of raw materials to produce a new factory), Production cost ($$$ of raw materials to produce the product), Time efficiency, and Reliability (MTBF). Other issues like factory size and safety etc figure in too. It's a complicated fitness function! The focus on $$$ is important. If we need sophisticated control, as seems likely, we're going to need computers to do it (I presume that including human beings as pieces of the self-rep factory is unacceptable). Where do the chips come from? One answer is to include chip fabrication in the factory design -- and if a reasonably simple fabrication device for low volumes of relatively simple devices is feasible that may be the way to go -- but it might be less expensive to just buy the chips. Paying for feedstock requires that there be an income-generating product of some kind. I wonder about making heavy use of plastics rather than metals, the idea being to use metal only where necessary and in easily-producible shapes. If more complex shapes can be made from plastic, we can use heat for many tasks, which might be simpler than building high-strength drill bits for working with metal. Similarly, nontradional robotics -- say based on plastic hoses and air pressure -- might be simpler to replicate than the precision metal parts. Motors are kind of complicated... I wonder if a more centralized source of motive force (hydraulics, e.g.) would be easier to manage than lots of electric motors. Fun stuff to think about. Still, I can't say how I'd start to go about designing a whole factory, much less produce an optimal design. I suppose the best way is to come up with a formalism for the various operations and physical characteristics of parts... seems really hard, though. derek ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 11:05:31 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: B:SF:linguistics X-Reposting-Policy: redistribute only with permission Derek Zahn says: > > Yeah, that's right! Babel-17, by Sam Delaney. Mid-60's. Good read. Nit. His nickname is Chip, not Sam. .pm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 11:01:45 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: A:FRIV:format meme X-Reposting-Policy: redistribute only with permission Derek Zahn says: > > Has there ever been any kind of science fiction based on linguistics? > > I remember a novel called "Babel 17", by I think either Blish or > Van Vogt, whose plot revolved greatly around (invented) languages. It was Chip Delaney's. I didn't like it too much. Perry ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 10:59 EDT From: kqb@whscad1.att.com Subject: A: meme to kill (FWD) Brian Wowk suggested that I forward to the Extropians his reply to my commentary on Ray Cromwell's posting to the Extropians list. Food for thought. Kevin Q. Brown INTERNET kqb@whscad1.att.com or kevin_q_brown@att.com ----- Message Forwarded From CryoNet ----- > From att!ccu.UManitoba.CA!wowk Wed Jun 23 00:52:18 CDT 1993 > Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 00:52:18 CDT > From: Brian Wowk > Subject: CRYONICS PA Law Kevin Brown: > I have appended below, with permission, a recent posting to the > Extropians list by Ray Cromwell concerning a proposed Pennsylvania > law that would be dangerous to cryonicists.... > PA Official to Alcor: "Gee, I'm sooooo sorry, but, after that car > accident, his bracelet was so badly damaged we could hardly read it, > and to ensure freshness of his organs, we had to harvest them immediately. > Not until now did we have a chance to call you. You can, of course, > have the leavings..." >>> Ray Cromwell: > This is a law being considered in PA. It states that unless you > specify otherwise, you are presumed to be an organ donor at death. > I see this as coming into conflict with cryonics -- with the state > eventually declaring ownership of your organs at death and carving up > your body.... Now wait a minute! Before we all go flying off the handle about a law we do not understand, let's make sure we all know how organ donation works. Victims of sudden death or terminal illnesses *are not* organ donation candidates. Transplant surgeons need organs with no ischemic time. In other words, nobody who suffers cardiac arrest before legal death is an organ donation candidate. You must be declared legally dead >>> with your heart still beating <<< before you can donate organs. In practice this means that the only people who donate organs are people on respirators who are declared brain dead. Consider a typical scenario: Joe Blow riding his motocycle without a helmet crashes and ends up on life support with severe head injuries. 48 hours later an extensive battery of tests determines that cerebral perfusion is zero, and brain stem activity is zero. Although Joe's heart and lungs continue to operate because of the respirator, his brain is literally mush. Joe is declared brain dead (i.e. legally dead). At another hospital, Joe Smith is dying from liver failure. The tissue types of the two Joe's match. Joe Blow's liver (now useless to him) could save Joe Smith's life. Unfortunately Joe Blow never bothered to sign his organ donor card. Doctors explain the situation to Joe Blow's family, and ask for permission to take his liver. The distraught, confused family (who still haven't come to terms with Joe's passing) refuse, and Joe Smith *dies* for lack of a liver. This scenario repeats itself over and over again everyday in hospitals all over North America. I, for one, am sick of it. Unless someone explicity states that they want to take their organs with them into the ground and rot, I don't think people should continue dying because families in the midst of grief and confusion lose the ability to make good decisions. Needless to say, I (a cryonicist) have a lot of sympathy for the proposed PA law. This law will not affect cryonicists one bit. Remember you have to be brain dead on a respirator for laws like this to come into effect. Cryonicists should never end up brain dead on a respirator because their Durable Power of Attorney for Heath Care and Medical Surrogate paperwork should specifically prohibit respirator support when there is no brain activity (in absence of drugs). Finally, and quite frankly, if despite these measures you ever are so unfortunate as to end up brain dead on respirator, cryonics will not do you one bit of good. --- Brian Wowk P.S. Kevin, please post this to the Extropians list. Thanks. ----- ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 08:49:37 PDT From: "Mark W. McFadden" Subject: SOC/CHAT: Appearances and Multiple Worlds Don't forget Fritz Lieber's Change War stories, and the novel "The Big Time". ______________________________________________________________________ | Mark W. McFadden | Been there.....done that. mwm@wwtc.timeplex.com | | ___________________________________|__________________________________ I wasted time and company money writing this. I hope your list software doesn't discard it. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 09:17:47 -0800 From: lefty@apple.com (Lefty) Subject: A:FRIV:format meme Ray wonders: > Has there ever been any kind of science fiction based on linguistics? Robert Sheckley (I believe) wrote a short story dealing with humans' inability to invade a planet where the native language evolves so quickly that, having learned it this morning, you will no longer be able to understand it this afternoon. Samuel Delany has several books that touch upon lingusitic themes, tangentially or centrally. The most linguistically-oriented book of his is "Babel-17". Some might consider Stephenson's "Snow Crash" to be linguistically-oriented. -- Lefty (lefty@apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 12:12:20 -0400 (EDT) From: schirado@lab.cc.wmich.edu (Schirado) Subject: B: "Extropian X" Mark Desilets writes: "Given that Extropia has a certain set of principles...it *is* possible to identify [music, literature, etc] which exemplifies one of these principles." NOT TO SLAM YOU, but I agree with Tim May on this one. This smacks particularly strongly of Objectivism's claim that there can be such a thing as "bad art" and "good art". I consider myself to be an Objectivist (even with a big O!), but this is the one thing that I absolutely cannot agree with Rand, or any other Objectivists I've heard, on. All art is inherently subjective. It is a subjective interpretation of the external world or internal feelings, done by a unique individual. All viewers/readers/listeners will respond to it in a completely different fashion -- no two people will respond to it the same way. One man's mead is another man's poison; what flips my dress up may leave you cold. I had some rather nasty e-mail arguments with people who claimed that by examining my tastes in music, literature, etc., they could determine whether or not I was an Objectivist.. the proper reply to which, of course, is, "Screw you and the horse you rode in on." My philosophical beliefs are based on logic and rational, critical examination. My musical and literary preferences are sometimes based on these things as well, but the vast majority of the time, they are based on the simple fact that I enjoyed listening to/reading the thing in question. And I don't need to justify my personal likes or dislikes to anyone, for any reason, as long as they don't interfere with the rights of others. -- ims@thunder-island.kalamazoo.mi.us [O|o]bjectivist, Evil Capitalist(tm;-), s..O).... You hit the smurf! --More-- male, lesbian, polyamorous, @.../.".. You destroy the smurf! --More-- reader, atheist, Discordian, $$*...].. You feel cynical! free and natural sovereign individual moderator of the Frog Farm: e-mail for details or for PGP 2.2 public key ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 9:22:01 MST From: winthrop@amex-trs.com (Scott Carroll) Subject: SOC/CHAT: Appearances and Multiple Worlds > As I recall, Larry Niven (maybe?) had one that followed different version > of an event (an attempted suicide?) through several time-streams. If it > _was_ Niven, it's an old story. > The book was "All the myriad ways", a collection of short stories. I believe the story had the same name as the title of the book. -Scott ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 09:56:38 -0700 (PDT) From: Scott C DeLancey Subject: Extropian fiction I agree with Tim and others that the idea of "extropian music" is probably undefinable and empty. Somebody mentioned Megadeath in this connection as non-extropian, but surely that's in reference to lyrics? But surely there is both extropian and explicitly non-extropian fiction. (As well as lots that isn't really one or the other, of course). Consider, for example, Robert Heinlein and Phil Dick (to pick two authors that I think highly of). Surely Heinlein's fiction is extropian, and surely Dick's isn't. Or for another pair (though I only like one of these), compare RAWilson and Vonnegut (who I would characterize as downright *anti*-extropian). Scott DeLancey delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 09:35:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Scott C DeLancey Subject: B-: SF: Linguistics > Has there ever been any kind of science fiction based on linguistics? > (Evil politically correct empire uses memetic language bombs to subvert > rival civilization?) I know that Vinge has written a short story that has > weird phonetics as a background device. Anything else? Lots & lots. Someone in sci.lang (I think) has compiled an extensive list. Offhand: Jack Vance, _The Languages of Pao_, based on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. (Not particularly recommended). Suzette ??? Elgin, a retired linguist, has one or more novels based in part on linguistic work on "women's speech" (I haven't read them, can't say more). My personal favorite obscure entry in the category (and one of the worst SF novels I never finished reading (a category which also includes _Babel 17_) is M.A.R. Barker, _The Man of Gold_, a fantasy-world piece in which a young aspiring historical linguist saves (his) civilization by decoding a dead language. This is my favorite because Barker was once a linguist, and for his Ph.D. at Berkeley did a grammar and dictionary of Klamath, an Indian language of Oregon, which IMO is one of the best bodies of single-handed primary linguistic research around. I'd been using his stuff in my work for a while, and wondering what he'd been up to since he dropped out of the field, when I stumbled on this novel on a used- paperback shelf. Apparently he was the designer of a fantasy RPG in the 70's called (or about?) Tekumel, and the novel is a contribution to that mythos. (All you gamers, anybody ever heard of this?) And while I'm on the subject of retired Berkeley Ph.D. American Indian language specialists, let's not forget Marc Okrand, Star Trek linguistic consultant and designer of the Klingon language. Scott DeLancey delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 11:07:46 MDT From: Mark_Muhlestein@Novell.COM (Mark Muhlestein) Subject: C:SOC/CHAT: Appearances and Multiple Worlds Mike Price asks: > What's the name of the Moravec story about tripping over the cord etc? I believe you are referring to "The Doomsday Machine" or somesuch, by John Gribbin. Mark_Muhlestein@novell.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1993 16:34:51 -0400 (EDT) From: esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) Subject: SOC/CHAT: Appearances and Multiple Worlds > What do you propose happens to your consciousness when your > body is six feet under? I mean this is interesting, but how > do you explain your physical death in this world as viewed > by your survivors? Ahhh. You've failed to grasp the full mindfucking subtlety of Lefty's proposal. You see everybody around you die because you aren't in the universes where they survive. They see you die because you aren't in the universes where they survive. I salute you, sir! You are a true Discordian! -- Amphigoricus the Turgid, K.S.C. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 18:17:34 +0100 From: Rich Walker Subject: B:FRIV:format meme authors An author who plays with language a lot is Jack Vance. Best example is Languages of Pao, which NEL (or whoever owns it now) reprinted (?) a couple of years ago. Basic notion: a world with 3 (4? long time since reading) cultures, each with a different language designed to produce different cultural patterns. Precise details elude me, but one was designed for tales of derring-do, sagas, and boasts, and produced a wonderful set of Norse warrior-types, and one was designed for querying and testing, or some such, and was the language of the scientist/engineer caste. Well worth reading... Rich! ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 11:25:24 EST From: mike@highlite.gotham.COM (Mike Wiik) Subject: SOC: All Critical Mass Theories Bogus? > The "hundredth monkey" idea involves transmission of the memes > through some imperceptible Sheldrakean "morphogenetic field" (or something > --I'm not up to speed on morphogenetics, or whatever the whole field is > called)--so that a "critical mass" can affect others without direct or > indirect contact. This is nonsense. I can agree with this, yet wonder if there might be some value in such critical mass theories. I'm not sure if we can ever model all forms of direct or indirect contact: a certain glance or smirk exchanged with my S.O. might contain (or trigger?) all sorts of information transfer yet be difficult or impossible to be modeled by an outside observer. So, would any critical mass theories be useful in terms of gaining information about unmodelled information transfers? > Scott DeLancey delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu > Department of Linguistics > University of Oregon > Eugene, OR 97403, USA -Mike | o==== . : ... : : . |Mail Me Neat Stuff->POB 3703 Arlington VA 22203 --@-- . o o o ... O -O- o o : | mike@highlite.gotham.com | ... : : |----------------------------------------------- mEssAGE fRoM sPAcE ARt stUdiOs |Man:TheMissingLinkBetweenApes&HigherIntelligence ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 10:54:36 EST From: mike@highlite.gotham.COM (Mike Wiik) Subject: SOC/CHAT: Appearances and Multiple Worlds > You forget RAWilson's _Schroedinger's Cat_ trilogy? Which remains, sadly, out of print. Unless you count the single volume edition, which has somewhere around 50% of the original text. > Scott DeLancey delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu > Department of Linguistics > University of Oregon > Eugene, OR 97403, USA | o==== . : ... : : . |Mail Me Neat Stuff->POB 3703 Arlington VA 22203 --@-- . o o o ... O -O- o o : | mike@highlite.gotham.com | ... : : |----------------------------------------------- mEssAGE fRoM sPAcE ARt stUdiOs |Man:TheMissingLinkBetweenApes&HigherIntelligence ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 11:21:31 -0700 From: Brian D Williams Subject: EVOLUTION/DIET What proto-hominids ate Somebody said; > Much enjoyed the part about throwing giving rise to much of our >intelligence. Interesting concept. Eric S Raymond replied; Yes, isn't it? I recommend William Calvin's _The_Ascent_Of_Mind_ for more on this. Kubrick may have gotten it right by accident in 2001 --- not the black-monolith bit, but the visual association between throwing and intelligence. It was actually Arthur C Clarke in the book version of 2001, that was drawing the analogy between rock throwing and intelligence. The monolith actually displayed a series of patterns not unlike a target, and was exerting some sort of influence (unspecified) on the apes in the colony. It was basically trying to increase their intelligence. Brian Williams ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 Issue #0350 ****************************************