From extropians-request@extropy.org Mon Sep 27 17:36:07 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AA18780; Mon, 27 Sep 93 17:36:00 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: from ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.ed (ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu) by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA03275; Mon, 27 Sep 93 17:35:50 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu id AA14929; Mon, 27 Sep 93 20:30:07 EDT Received: from news.panix.com by ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu via TCP with SMTP id AA14924; Mon, 27 Sep 93 20:29:50 EDT Received: by news.panix.com id AA11758 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for exi-maillist@ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu); Mon, 27 Sep 1993 20:29:51 -0400 Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 20:29:51 -0400 Message-Id: <199309280029.AA11758@news.panix.com> To: Extropians@extropy.org From: Extropians@extropy.org Subject: Extropians Digest X-Extropian-Date: September 28, 373 P.N.O. [00:29:29 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: RO Extropians Digest Tue, 28 Sep 93 Volume 93 : Issue 270 Today's Topics: [3 msgs] BASICS: Death [2 msgs] Etymology [1 msgs] HART [1 msgs] HEx--KLAUS, GUNS, and ANARCHY [1 msgs] HUMOR: Drugs Don't Work in NJ [1 msgs] Japanime [1 msgs] MEDIA: Uploading in Star Trek [3 msgs] PPL: Lloyds and crypto-anarchical insurance [1 msgs] etymology of anarchy [1 msgs] extropian vices [3 msgs] genetic determinism my foot [1 msgs] Administrivia: No admin msg. Approximate Size: 52169 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 10:08:06 -0500 (CDT) From: derek@cs.wisc.edu (Derek Zahn) Subject: MEDIA: Uploading in Star Trek In case anybody missed it, the season premier of Star Trek had a bit where Data (being controlled by his evil android-brother Lore [ugh] in an effort to replace Borgian Communism with a dictatorship) attempts to replace (already technologically- sensory-enhanced) Geordie's brain cells with some kind of adaptive nanotech workalikes. Of course, the idea was supposed to be horrifying, and ST is hardly extropian. Is this the first mass-media reference to uploading technologies with any technical detail? Anybody remember 'nanites' from four years ago? Also depressing: In a previous episode, Picard used a captured Borg as a vector for infecting the collective with individualist memes. Now we see the result: chaos, death, and resentment, as well as susceptibility to domination by androids on a power kick. derek ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 11:39:12 From: tim.hruby@his.com (Tim Hruby) Subject: PPL: Lloyds and crypto-anarchical insurance X-Reference: #93-9-1524 Nick clears up a misunderstanding between us concerning tax insurance: > Sorry, I didn't explain myself sufficiently. By tax insurance I mean > not insurance against future taxes, but insurance against penalties > stemming from failure to pay taxes in a jurisdiction. The policy > would pay $X per dollar fined, $Y per month of jail sentence, $Z for > auditing and legal fees, etc. but not the taxes themselves. To > minimize payouts the insurance company would make the customer follow > "safe anarchy" procedures -- deposit insured funds in a > privacy-enhanced offshore haven, don't live visibly way beyond your > stated income, be "judgement proof", etc. Tax insurance would serve > both to hedge risk and to dissiminate information on offshore banking, > judgement proofing, etc. to the $trillions worth of potential > customers worldwide. This information channel would have much higher > bandwidth than the current system of whispered trade secrets and > high-fee 1-on-1 consulting by a wide variety of uncoordinated agents. > Tax insurance would provide one-stop, risk-hedged access to tax > freedom. I believe that this form of insurance does have considerable market potential on the demand side. Certainly, by insuring against being caught in tax evasion, one is spreading the risk pool, as the state cannot catch all tax evaders. There are, however, a number of problems that still would have to be worked out before such policies could come to market: (1) Given the generally perceived legitimacy of the current tax and criminal systems in the major developed countries, insurance policies covering one against the penalties resulting from "criminal misconduct" are likely to be both hard to find and hard to enforce. (Arbital awards contrary to "public policy" won't be enforced, and I can easily see a British court deciding that undermining the U.S. tax and criminal justice systems would be contrary to public policy, in that it would eventually lead to a collapse of its own legitimacy) With the coming of a BlackNet, a PPL-based system might arise to handle enforcement through traditional PPL reputation methods. The major problem here is that internationally organized coercion (thru central banks, OECD or G-7 tax coordinating commitees, Interpol, IMF what-have-you) is likely to move forcefully to suppress any organization that is bold enough to advertise openly. These groups *do* have substantial power (at this point in time), both through boycott threats against non-cooperative haven jurisdictions, and through the resources they can bring to bear to seize tangible assets throughout the world (witness what happened to BCCI). I'm not saying they will be able to completely shut down all (or even most/many) of the tax insurers, but nailing a big one every year or so (a goal probably within their capability), combined with sting/entrapment operations against their locals, would probably create enough uncertainty in the market to keep participation limited to a set not much bigger than the elite today who can afford to make the time and information-gathering investment necessary to lower their risk. I imagine that both these state controls already occur today, but their magnitude is low, because states don't perceive the problem as so troublesome right now -- this perception would certainly change if the size of tax revenues became threatened. However, it also possible that privacy technology could change the distribution of power; "real" money/digicash (i.e. with its long and short term costs determined by the market), secure crypto, and the growth of private oganizations able to rival the power of states *may* lead to tax rebellion future. However, democracy and its "Robin Hood" ethic of redistribution will not go gently into the night. If they can disrupt the stability of the market and enhance the uncertainly of payouts through occasional crackdowns, the market may just not be able to develop (this is akin to a monopolist/oligopoly using its market power to create very high entry costs, so that it can continue to extract the monopoly rents it charges). (2) Moral hazards still create the possibilty of market failure, but Nick correctly points out that these can often be controlled by contractual provisions (e.g. higher premiums if you don't follow certain "prudent" behavior patterns). Monitoring costs exist for this kind of approach however; in fact, they could approach the level of law-enforcement costs, as both organizations would be essentially looking for the same types of behaviors, with the insurance companies having an advantage in knowing who in particular to monitor. Unless insurance companies can lower the costs of monitoring to a level where they can have some impact on their customers behavior (and remember, we are positing a future where this type of monitoring -- by the state -- will become dramatically more difficult, any breakthroughs made by insurance companies will be learned by the states) I still believe that it is far more efficient to leave the incentive for tax freedom in the hands of the asset-holder. Now that I've written through all that, I realize that incentives can probably be adequately controlled through the traditional method used by insurance companies: the deductible. That is, if you have to some percentage oft he penalty yourself, you still have some incentive to minimize the risk of it occurring. > > For offshore banking private deposit insurance is also needed. > Instead of having some government agency audit the bank books, this > would be the task of a privacy-respecting insurance company which, > convinced of sound banking practices, could then insure the deposits. > This would be quite welcome for the people who lose $billions every > year to offshore banking fraud. This I think is possible today. I imagine (once again, at high transactions and monitoring costs for the first purchasers) that such a deposit insurance policy could be gotten from an international reinsurance syndicate today, if a bank were willing to pay for it. That they do not may indicate that the transaction and monitoring costs exceed the gains that could be made from having such a policy (i.e. customers may not be willing to lose 5% off their returns for the benefits of such a policy -- paying taxes might be cheaper). This, of course, could be a classic free rider problem: if enough banks bought such policies, costs would decrease through economies of scale down to an efficient level, but those cost decreases are captured by late-comer banks, so the first-comers have no incentive to bear the start-up costs. Given the nature of offshore banks, it may be very difficult for them to organize into a large enough cabal to minimizes the free rider costs imposed by the non-member banks. I don't know enough about offshore banking to tell whether this is so, but it sounds plausible to me. If this is so, I imagine that again this market failure might disappear if state-sponsored disruption of offshore banking withered, but I don't expect that states will turn a blind eye to this activity if its magnitude begins to seriously threaten tax revenues. Tim tim.hruby@his.com PGP key available on request Fingerprint: 507/7305D1: 2C 67 E4 30 A1 A1 B2 2D 94 12 6C 9C 9D F3 A7 B8 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 08:17:38 -0700 From: freeman@maspar.com (Jay R. Freeman) Subject: extropian vices Kennita says: > Hey! Nothing wrong with small furry animals! When I have a brain the > size of Jupiter, I plan to have small furry animals scampering all > over it. At last, a clear exposition of the rational connection between the Gaia hypothesis and the Extropian mind. -- Jay Freeman ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 9:15:56 PDT From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: Etymology One of the other Tim's (Starr) writes: (quoting Anton Sherwood) > >Speaking of morphemes, Phil Fraering asks for the roots of `anarchism'. > >The first, AN-, is the prevocalic form of the common Greek alpha-privative, > >usually meaning `without'. (It's a cognate of the Germanic UN- and Latin > >negative IN-.) ARKH- means `ruler', from a verb of unknown origin meaning > >both `rule' and `begin' (whence also `archaeology' and `archives' -- which > >interestingly my dictionary gives only as a plural). I trust I needn't > >explain -ISM. > > > >American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Houghton Mifflin 1981. > > This isn't quite consistent with the research I did to resolve a debate > I had with a friend once, when I worked in the UCSB library and had access > to the Oxford English Dictionary (which I find fascinating; my fellow > public school inmates used to tease me by accusing me of reading the > dictionary - I wish!). Well, I happen to have my very own copies of the OED, both the new edition (1989) and the old edition (circa 1900-1930). > My sources indicated that "anarchy" stems from "arche," Greek for some- > thing like "structure" or "order," which would make "anarchy" = "without > structure or order." This would exclude all kinds of structure or order, > coercive, hierarchical, hegemonic structures as well as consensual, > egalitarian social structures; any designed, telocratic taxos as well > as any spontaneous, nomocratic cosmos (taxos and cosmos being Hayek's > terms for the two kinds of social orders, telo- and nomo-cratic being > his terms for their rules). Well, your sources were wrong. "Arch" is the same root, meaning "head" or "ruler" that appears in "monarch" (alone-ruler) and other related words. Nothing about "structure" or "order." In fact, the idea that anarchy has something to do with orderlessness is a serious popular misconception. > Interestingly enough, this was debated much during the late 19th-century > in the US anarchist literature. Some argued that it stemmed from the > Greek for "leader," "archon," and thus meant "leaderless," but which > would exclude those who led by consent as well as by coercion. Seems like "some argued" correctly. None of my dictionaries (OED II, Random House Un. 2, Merriam-Webster 3rd, Am Her. Third) gives any meaning close to "without structure" or "without order." I would trust immediate references to the memories of a friend who once worked in a library and had access to a reference. Epidictically yours, -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: PGP and MailSafe available. Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 9:38:23 PDT From: szabo@netcom.com (Nick Szabo) Subject: etymology of anarchy Paul Whitmore: > the question pursued: why did philosophy, tyranny, and > coined money begin in the same time and place? How probable is this? I find it more likely that the permanent recording of philosophy and the history of tyranny began around the same time money was first coined. Nick Szabo szabo@netcom.com ------------------------------ Date: Monday, 27 September 1993 08:20:09 PST8 From: "James A. Donald" Subject: Meaninglessness Webster's definition of operationalism: The view that experimental operations must define scientific terms and concepts. Mass is an operationally defined quantity. Momentum is an operationally defined quantity. Charge is an operationally defined quantity. Electrical resistance is an operationally defined quantity. Superconductor is an operationally defined category. Planet IS NOT an operationally defined category. Dog is not an operationally defined category. In an earlier posting Price said that "sure a planet is operationally defined, you look through a telescope and you can see that it is a planet", implying that anything we can perceive is operationally defined. (I quote from memory, the wording may not be exact, but the flavor and meaning is reasonably accurate.) He also claimed that Heisenberg was an operationalist, implying that anything that can in principle be perceived, even if it cannot possibly be perceived in the circumstances under consideration is operationally defined. In that case, no problem. Everyone is an operationalist. Not only is Tim Starr an operationalist, but very likely the Jehovah's witnesses are operationalists. "Existence exists" is well defined. Just look, and you can see that existence does exist. If "planet" and "dog" is well defined, as they surely are, then "existence exists" is well defined. The proposition that "Existence exists" implies (among other things) that if we know a subject under discussion, and are competent and rational, we can determine what is real and unreal, without needing to dream up profound philosophical justifications like nominalism or operationalism, justifications that always lead us into obvious nonsense. For example consider this quote from the latest copy of "Science." Page 1521, Science, Vol 261, 1993 "He insisted on discussing magnetic lines of force as though the lines were real. That did not go over real well with the professors on his thesis committee. Unfamiliar with the nuances of superconductivity, they kept trying to explain to this misguided soul that flux lines are only emblems of magnetic field strength and direction. Like the lines on a contour map, they do not really exist. The problem is that in high temperature superconductors, the flux lines *are* real " Emphasis in original. George Crabtree and Gary Taubes are deliberately using the language of naive realism. They are right to do so, even though flux lines in superconductors are even more strongly in the quantum domain (by a factor proportional to some power of 137) than electrons are. Electrons are real and flux lines in super conductors are real, even though an electron has no well defined location. Operationalism, in its usual meaning, excludes such language. Price is using operationalism in a very different meaning. His meaning is meaningless, because it includes those ideas that Price wishes to exclude. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves and our James A. Donald | property, because of the kind of animals that we | are. True law derives from this right, not from jamesdon@infoserv.com | the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. ------------------------------ Date: Monday, 27 September 1993 08:13:22 PST8 From: "James A. Donald" Subject: Genetic Determinism Your Foot > > >From: dasher@netcom.com (D. Anton Sherwood) > >Tim disappoints me > > ..... in > >agreeing with the Christians that belief is subject to free will. > > How odd! Why on Earth is that a disappointment to you? It is a disappointment because Anton incorrectly imagines that he is a relativist or a subjectivist, or something similar, and therefore incorrectly equates "subject to free will" with "a matter of arbitrary taste and subjective preference" Anton is employing the false Nietzscheian or Fascist concept of free will. (Though he is obviously not a Fascist, but has merely absorbed these ideas from the dominant philosophy without thinking about them.) If someone freely chooses to carefully compare his ideas about the world with the evidence, he chooses rightly. If he refrains from doing this, or if (like Perry or Price) he defines certain kinds of evidence as meaningless and chooses to ignore such evidence, he freely chooses and he chooses wrongly. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves and our James A. Donald | property, because of the kind of animals that we | are. True law derives from this right, not from jamesdon@infoserv.com | the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. ------------------------------ Date: Monday, 27 September 1993 08:03:07 PST8 From: "James A. Donald" Subject: genetic determinism my foot > Tim: > > This presupposes that you aren't genetically determined in your judgement > > of whether it is falsified. If genetic determinism is true of you, then > > it is true of your judgement of falsification. > > [...] > > If you are genetically determined in your choices, then this applies to > > your choice to consider hypotheses falsified or not. > In <9309262354.AA04179@netcom3.netcom.com>, dasher@netcom.com (D. Anton Sherwood) wrote: > Eh? Goals (like survival of one's genes/memes) are > arational; Tim's opponents' assertion here is only that > these, which cannot be founded in reason, are founded in > something else. Tim disappoints me in leaping from narrow > genetic determinism to complete determinism -- and also in > agreeing with the Christians that belief is subject to > free will. Anton's statement that goals are arational is not correct, or rather it is only correct if one presupposes a rather narrow definition of rational. We are after all not ghosts in machines, but creatures of flesh and blood, and it is unreasonable to define as rational that which would be appropriate only if we were ghosts. Such thinking might be called rational, stretching the word, but you would certainly not call it reasonable. We do not choose our goals arbitrarily, but our goals are rational, or at least they are if we are mentally healthy and our conduct is proper. For example a man who attains sexual pleasure from placing his testicles in a meat grinder may have genetically determined goals, but his goals are substantially less rational than those of a man who obtains sexual pleasure from deflowering virgins, even though the second man's goals are equally genetically determined. Some genes/memes really are defective. Some value judgments are judgments of fact. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves and our James A. Donald | property, because of the kind of animals that we | are. True law derives from this right, not from jamesdon@infoserv.com | the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 9:51:43 PDT From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: HEx--KLAUS, GUNS, and ANARCHY HExonauts, The Power/Perversion known as Klaus! von Future Prime completed his (or her, or its, or their) analyis of your primitive reputation trading system, HEx, and instructed me to register his reputation. "How KLAUS turned p10,000 into p62,120 in 45 minutes." Shares in "KLAUS" issued last night and increased nicely. In one 45-minute period last night, the rep of KLAUS traded up sharply, giving KLAUS a "Market Value" of p21,980. (The p62,120 figure above is of course the total value of all shares, not the outstanding shares.) Klaus has sent me a message from his side of the Visser-Price wormhole admitting that this trading thing could be fun. He especially enjoyed making low bids on the reps of others, thus driving their stated market values into the toilet. He informed me the algorithm is clearly flawed. Since Klaus! was having so much fun, and since my own name was registered by Jay Prime Positive as "TCMAY," I had to find some others symbols to play with. (Sadly for me, I derived no direct benefit from the increase in TCMAY price, for a market value of p31,504. However, KLAUS informed me has been using some of the cash he raised in selling shares to buy the reps of TCMAY, N, DEREK, and other Extropians whose posts he considers interesting, "for nondiamondoid carbon units.") I picked "GUNS" for the reputation of guns, the right to keep and bear arms, etc. Also, "ANARCHY," the reputation of statelessness, of the system in which no ruler rules. IPOs on each were issued, but no trades have yet occurred. By the way, as a Power (or a Perversion, we're not sure), Klaus! claims he is not, strictly speaking, a "program," and thus should not be barred from trading by the ban on "program trading." More on KLAUS can of course be found by sending the standard "DESCRIBE KLAUS" message to "hex@sea.east.sun.com". --Tim May, channeler of the entity Klaus! von Future Prime -- .......................................................................... 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, 27 Sep 93 13:44:03 EDT From: chrism@ksr.com Subject: extropian vices Kennita wrote, in response to Jay Freeman's "Unextropian .sig": > Hey! Nothing wrong with small furry animals! When I have a brain the > size of Jupiter, I plan to have small furry animals scampering all > over it. Small flattened *HEAVY* furry animals... anyone know how to calculate the surface gravity of a Jupiter-sized sphere with density approximately that of diamond? -chrism ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 10:22:21 PDT From: danielg@autodesk.com (Daniel Green) Subject: BASICS: Death > The real ultimate death, the destruction of > the long-term memory and other structures that define "you", > occurs while you are lying in the morgue. Then you would consider me dead even if a complete map of my neural state had been saved onto a CDROM sitting in a safe after my body had had broken down and then been cremated? - Daniel Green danielg@autodesk.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 14:11:26 -0400 From: Jeff Fabijanic Subject: MEDIA: Uploading in Star Trek Derek Zahn writes: >In case anybody missed it, the season premier of Star Trek had >a bit where Data (being controlled by his evil android-brother >Lore [ugh] in an effort to replace Borgian Communism with a >dictatorship) attempts to replace (already technologically- >sensory-enhanced) Geordie's brain cells with some kind of >adaptive nanotech workalikes. > >Of course, the idea was supposed to be horrifying, and ST is >hardly extropian. Is this the first mass-media reference to >uploading technologies with any technical detail? Anybody >remember 'nanites' from four years ago? Well, they did the same "nanotech is too dangerous to futz with" spiel in an episode with Wesley several seasons ago. He was doing an experiment with two different kinds of nanites and they synergized and became "intelligent". They then colonized the ship's computer core. After almost being destroyed, and nearly destroying the ship themselves, they found a way to communicate with the crew via Data. An agreement was reached and they were subsequently relocated to a planet of their own (shades of Cuckoo's Egg!). In that episode they mentioned that nanite research was essentially halted some time in the past. Too dangerous. TNG has some really statist attitudes (although nothing compared to the old Trek) and some bizarrely anti-tech messages. In their favor, they often modify their initial stance to be more accommodating (eg the episode described above) but they still come out as too conservative for my taste. I can't believe that the Federation as shown in TNG wouldn't have stagnated and declined long ago (er, long from then? soon from now? You know what I mean). I think that alot of the horror regarding the nanite experiment on Gordie in last week's episode was fueled by the 60% survival estimate and statements by Lor such as "Well, I don't really expect any of the humans to survive. But it's their own fault [for coming here in the first place]." I suspect that the whole plot device was intended to mirror the Nazi's experiments on prisoners during WWII. >Also depressing: In a previous episode, Picard used a captured >Borg as a vector for infecting the collective with individualist >memes. Now we see the result: chaos, death, and resentment, as >well as susceptibility to domination by androids on a power kick. Well, this is true as far as it goes, but I think its only fair to point out that the Captain Picard character, while admitting Hugh's points about the disadvantages of individuality, held out that its rewards were worth the confusion and difficulty. And Hugh seemed to accept this. (Of course, unfortunately, Picard also encouraged Hugh to assume the role of "leader" in the new Borg community. Sigh.) - Jeff ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 11:24:24 PDT From: szabo@netcom.com (Nick Szabo) Subject: BASICS: Death Daniel Green: > Then you would consider me dead even if a complete map of my > neural state had been saved onto a CDROM sitting in a safe > after my body had had broken down and then been cremated? By Godel's Theorem and uncertainty principle, I don't think it's possible to get a complete map. But we don't need one, witness neural death from drinking, etc. that doesn't permanently change personality or memory. The question is what constitutes a sufficient map. Eg are the number and location of hormones in the bloodstream important? Nick Szabo szabo@netcom.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 14:30:56 EDT From: Brian.Hawthorne@east.sun.com (Brian Holt Hawthorne - SunSelect Engineering) Subject: HART Would the owner of HART please contact me. All mail from the exchange to you is bouncing with a Host unknown. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 12:36:47 -0600 From: morgan@arc.ab.ca (Sean Morgan) Subject: MEDIA: Uploading in Star Trek derek@cs.wisc.edu (Derek Zahn) writes: >...Is this the first mass-media reference to >uploading technologies with any technical detail? See the attached review by Tim Lynch. >Anybody remember 'nanites' from four years ago? The rumor is that originally the "dust mites" on board were supposed= to become sentient and cause trouble. At the last moment the writers= realized this was pretty stupid, so the added the "Wesley's Science Experiment" scene, and dubbed "nanite" over "dust mite" through the rest of the footage. Don't know if it's true, but it sounds good. I hope we don't have to endure the word "nanite" for the rest of= our (long) lives. ------- TITLE: The Nth Degree WRITERS: Joe Menosky DIRECTOR: Robert Legato SEASON: 4 NUMBER: 93 (19) PROGRAM#: 193 STARDATE: 44704.2 AIR DATE: 3/30/91 GUEST STARS Reg Barclay - Dwight Schultz Einstein - Jim Norton Cytherian - Kay E. Kuter Lt. Linda Larson - Saxon Trainor Ensign April Anaya - Page Leong Ensign Brower - David Coburn PLOT SYNOPSIS The Enterprise has come to fix the Argus Array, a cluster of subspace telescopes at the edge of Federation territory. After they find= a small probe that is presumably responsible for the Array's computer shutdown, Geordi and a much improved Barclay head out in a shuttle to check= it over.=20 While they're doing this, it flares up: Geordi is unharmed, but= Mr. Barclay is knocked unconscious. He seems to be fine once they get back to Sickbay. The situation, however, is not: the probe starts moving toward them, they're too= close to use photon torpedoes, they can't outrun it, and phasers don't seem= to have any effect on it. (It's also sending out some kind of energy field= which is in all probability threatening.) The day ends up being saved= by Barclay, who channels warp power into shields in a previously unknown= way, and strengthens the shields enough for the ship to be able to fire= photon torpedoes safely and destroy the probe. But Barclay's intuition, intelligence, and confidence don't= stop there. A short time later, he proposes reprogramming the Argus central computer virtually singlehandedly in 2 days, rather than fixing each reactor individually (a task of at least 2 to 3 weeks' length). = He gives a virtuoso acting performance, wowing both Beverly and Deanna, and= later makes a pass at Deanna in Ten-Forward. Finally, Geordi finds him= arguing grand unification theories with Albert Einstein in the holodeck (and holding his own, at the very least). This is enough to set him worrying, and he takes Barclay to Sickbay, where Beverly finds that his brainpower has increased incredibly, making him "the most advanced human being= who has ever lived." Since Barclay's hardly done anything that could be considered= menacing, Picard decides to let him do his work. This only changes when Barclay decides the normal computer interface is too slow to let him stabilize= the array properly (which is true, as the reactors are about to all go critical), and hastily constructs in the holodeck a device that allows= him to directly patch into the computer. In effect, he BECOMES the Enterprise= =20 computer- and by the time it's clear what has happened, his mind= has expanded enough that forcing him back into his own body would be= fatal. Geordi, after hurried consultations with the bridge crew, gets= to work on rigging a bypass that would at least let them move the ship to= a Starbase. Barclay, however, decides to use his newfound knowledge= of speed and distance to manipulate subspace, creating a never before seen disturbance. He ignores Deanna's pleas to stop, and blocks Geordi's attempts just in time. He then manages to repel the attempt by Worf= and a security team to forcibly remove him, and sends the Enterprise hurtling smack into the center of= the disturbance he's created. After a major shake-up, the Enterprise emerges right by the= center of the Galaxy. The face of an alien appears, babbling nonsense, but= a reconstituted Barclay explains: their race, the Cytherians, also= explore the Galaxy, but they do it by bringing other civilizations to them,= rather than traveling themselves. In effect, they "reprogrammed" Barclay= in such a manner as to let him bring the Enterprise here- but they're benevolent, and only want to exchange information for a while. Several days= later, the Enterprise returns to its own space intact, and Barclay settles= down to being "plain old Barclay again", with Deanna's and Geordi's help. Plot Synopsis : Copyright 1991, Timothy W. Lynch E-mail: tlynch@juliet.caltech.edu EPISODE NOTES Notes: The Cytherians were originally supposed to be much more hostile,= but were made benevolent to avoid another "Enterprise Gets Captured"= plot. The lasers that seemed to connect Barclay's brain to the ship's computer (his "Neural Scan Interface") were real lasers shot at the= top of Dwight Shultz's head. The shuttlecraft used by Geordi and Barclay is called the Feynman, after physicist Richard Feynman. This report was generated by Star Trek-TNG=81 Episode Guide Stackware created by David Landis, =A9Oak Mountain Software 1991-1993 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 14:48:07 EDT From: eli@suneast.east.sun.com (Elias Israel - SunSelect Engineering) Subject: BASICS: Death Daniel Green writes: > Then you would consider me dead even if a complete map of my > neural state had been saved onto a CDROM sitting in a safe > after my body had had broken down and then been cremated? I would. A creature created from that CDROM, no matter how stridently they claimed it, wouldn't really be *you*, in my opinion. Maybe it's a conceit, but I think that the *me* that I am today is not separable from this body, because mind and body are not separate. At best, the creature would be someone very much like me, but the person typing this message today would still be just as dead, just as incapable of experience. For this reason, I have serious doubts about uploading as a path to immortality. I think of it as a way of leaving behind my memes, perhaps as a way of having the ultimate child: one you *know* will follow in your footsteps, but I don't think that it really thwarts the grim reaper. Some will offer a "softer" version of uploading by proposing something like the Star Trek scenario we saw this weekend: gradually substitute neurons with nanocomputers until you're more of the latter than the former. I have two objections to this idea: first, if you have a bicycle and you replace all of the parts, is it still the same bicycle? My answer: no. Second, this seems a relatively expensive way to transition from humans to post-humans. Nature has a more efficient means: kill off the obsolete. I expect that post-humans will be our descendants, not ourselves. None of this means that we won't live long (extremely long by current standards) and productive lives. But I remain unconvinced that we're engaged in anything but hubris when we use words like "forever." Does this make me a deathist? Some might say so, but I disagree. I know I might be wrong. For example, in the future we might not choose to define identity the way we do today. Or, other possibilities may present themselves. (As an aside, I find it a little amusing for people convinced they'll never die to deride people who disagree as "deathists." Surely, being convinced of your own immortality is evidence of at least as much preoccupation with death as anyone else.) Still, with today's understanding, I can't see much hope for beating Thanatos at a game he's had a long time to perfect. Elias Israel eli@east.sun.com HEx: E ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 11:49:27 -0700 From: freeman@maspar.com (Jay R. Freeman) Subject: extropian vices > Small flattened *HEAVY* furry animals... anyone know how to calculate the > surface gravity of a Jupiter-sized sphere with density approximately that of > diamond? Lessee, gravitational force goes as M/(R**2), but mass scales as R**3, so overall the scaling is linear in R. Jupiter's R is about 10 times Earth's, and I *think* I remember that diamond's density is low compared to Earth's average density. So my off-the-cuff estimate is that Perry's brain will have surface gravity of 5 to 10 gees. I will tempt fate by posting this without checking it... -- Jay Freeman ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 14:31:39 EDT From: chrism@ksr.com Subject: Japanime Russell wrote: > Re: Dirty Pair > > The manga (comic) version licenced to Studio Proteus/Dark Horse > (former partnership: Studio Proteus/Eclipse) by Adam Warren and Toren Smith, > is to be highly recommended. > > ...stuff deleted... > > I would recommend starting from the first book in the series, > /Biohazards/, then /Dangerous Acquaintances/, then /A Rage of > Angels/, before /Sim Hell/. Unfortunately, this advice currently is difficult to follow. Dark Horse only has Sim Hell available, and Eclipse apparently destroyed all of the previous issues when the licensing changed hands. I have Biohazards, and just ordered Sim Hell, anyone know where I might dig up back issues (or bound volumes) of the other two? Thanks! -chrism ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 15:43 EDT From: kqb@whscad1.att.com Subject: HUMOR: Drugs Don't Work in NJ On my way to work I passed a billboard sign with the following notice in large green letters: DRUGS DON'T WORK IN NJ Of course, I was heartbroken to receive this sad news. Upon arriving at work, I disposed of my no-longer-useful Advil and was simply glad that I rarely needed it. Then I realized that nobody looked happy anymore. Apparently, endorphins and the other natural opiates in our bodies no longer functioned either. Exercise sure is going to be a pain from now on! And food won't taste very good either. How did this happen? Did the NJ state legislature repeal some laws of physics with which they disagreed? Do drugs still work in other states? If so, please help me. Tell me where drugs will still work. Kevin Q. Brown INTERNET kqb@whscad1.att.com or kevin_q_brown@att.com PS: Late-breaking news! New Jersey has long been home for several major pharmaceutical (ie. drug) companies: Sandoz, Warner Lambert, Schering-Plough, Ciba Geigy, Hoffman LaRouche, Bristol Meyers Squibb, ... Since their drugs no longer work, they are all going bankrupt fast and plan to lay off their entire workforce. New Jersey is headed for a big-time depression soon! ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 #270 *********************************