From extropians-request@extropy.org Wed Oct 6 19:54:48 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AA06230; Wed, 6 Oct 93 19:54:46 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 AA06205; Wed, 6 Oct 93 19:54:38 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu id AA04760; Wed, 6 Oct 93 22:44:42 EDT Received: from news.panix.com by ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu via TCP with SMTP id AA04755; Wed, 6 Oct 93 22:44:24 EDT Received: by news.panix.com id AA09446 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for exi-maillist@ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu); Wed, 6 Oct 1993 22:44:16 -0400 Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 22:44:16 -0400 Message-Id: <199310070244.AA09446@news.panix.com> To: Extropians@extropy.org From: Extropians@extropy.org Subject: Extropians Digest X-Extropian-Date: October 7, 373 P.N.O. [02:43:54 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: RO Extropians Digest Thu, 7 Oct 93 Volume 93 : Issue 279 Today's Topics: [2 msgs] DIET: Too little fat causes brain damage! [1 msgs] EXTROPY/Extropy Institute information [1 msgs] Extortion Countermeasures in Crypto-Anarchy [3 msgs] Extortion Countermeasures in Crypto-Anarchy [1 msgs] FISH: Darwin Fish found! [1 msgs] META: Name for the list software? [1 msgs] MTV: ExI - N.O.T. [3 msgs] SATIRE: was Too little fat causes brain damage! [1 msgs] SOCIAL: Bay Area Extropian Gathering? [1 msgs] The Great Operationalism Semantic Quibble [2 msgs] Young Urban Legends (was: Fat something or other) [2 msgs] operationism [1 msgs] Administrivia: No admin msg. Approximate Size: 52877 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 08:28:52 -0500 (CDT) From: derek@cs.wisc.edu (Derek Zahn) Subject: Young Urban Legends (was: Fat something or other) Tim May, in a metafictional mood [that is, as an external interactive text device about which little is actually known, Tim is categorizable as fiction... thus when the 'Tim' character discusses the production of fictional constructs, that's "metafiction"], writes: > one of the things I do when reading dry posts about fat > intake and intelligence, for example, is to look for an angle to make > some punks, some Swiftian satires, or to poke holes in the argument ... "make some punks"... an interesting image, but what does it mean? (I believe that requests for clarification can be made without compunktion). I read the Brooks post and also didn't notice that it was a hoax, but I figured that if it was true I'd surely be hearing lots more about it and if it wasn't (be it hoax, or true but silly, or just a legend off the Net of a Million Lies), best to ignore it. So I banished it to the place where Old Dubious Factoids sleep their restless sleep. Until, of course, it was exposed as an accursed fraud. But is it really? Has anybody (besides Robert) actually looked at the New England Journal of Medicine to check? I did, and I was shocked, simply shocked. Nice going, Robert! Obscurably but provably signing a real story as a fraud... genius! > - concentration camp survivors like Viktor Frankl, Elie Wiesel, and > many others who had presumably been taked to the point of "brain > self-digestion" and yet retained their intelligenge (once fattened up > again). Dr. Dowd suggests that this "refattening" process may in some cases allow recovery of function. Interestingly, the replenished brain fat is unconditioned by previous experience -- allowing a surprising ability to learn new material and delevop new life habits. For example, sufferers of fat-deprivation situations like hunger strikes and inhuman treatment during imprisonment often make radical changes in their behavior (usually to avoid recurrence of hunger strikes and torture). More often, though, such recovery does not occur. Notably, in a study of people who indulged in low-fat diets "because fat is the product of God's creatures", none of the subjects ever attained a significant degree of mental competence. > - low body-fat people like Perry Perry plays the role "statistical anomaly" very well already. > Once suspicious, it fell into place. The "brain is mostly fat anyway" > point is similar to the outrageous comments many put-ons contain. Lest somebody get the wrong impression, it *is* true, in a sense. Glial cells outnumber neurons about 10-1. derek new edge journal of medicine ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 11:16:01 +0100 (BST) From: Charlie Stross Subject: Extortion Countermeasures in Crypto-Anarchy Tim May writes: : >(Related note: High-power rifles make long-range sniping quite >possible. Most of us cannot be protected against such sniping. Ditto >for silenced .22s (favored by hitment around the world), poisoned >darts, etc. Read the Loompanics-distributed books on how to kill your >enemies for details. And yet murder in the suburbs has not become >ubiquitous. In drug deals and inner-city "turf" wars, sure, but not in >ordinary life. Something to keep in mind.) >Charlie Stross writes: : >> What's interesting about this is that about 90 of his victims >> payed up. Presumably a good 2.5% of the telephone-owning >> population of Tokyo have something to hide. Compare this to the >> 0.025% of the sample cohort who had a sufficiently clear >> conscience to go to the police! >..... >> demand more money. Think of it as a self-selection process for >> blackmail victims. But of course, my highly-developed moral >> sensibilities preclude me from ever taking advantage of such a born >> mark ... >Yes, this is why I mentioned the "initial period of confusion" that >will ensue (of course, crypto-anarchy will hardly be introduced >overnight, so the initial confusion will be smeared, temporally and >cyberspatially). >Clearly, an equilibrium solution will not be most of the world's >population sending anonymous payments constantly. >Just what the equilibrium amount of crypto-extortion is remains to be >seen. Here's a guess: 1. Don't be blackmailable Blackmail -- requests for money based on threat of disclosure -- unlike extortion (based on threat of violence) feeds on the victims fear of exposure. Typically the victim fears loss of social status or legal prosecution if their illegal or 'immoral' behaviour is made public. A strong defense against blackmail is not to do anything illegal or immoral. _Or_ to not give a damn about what your neighbours think of you. The former option is impossible: there are (at present) so many laws that it is virtually certain that everybody on this list has at some time (intentionally or otherwise) transgressed. The latter, however, is becoming more and more possible because the definition of 'neighbours' is itself changing. 2. Strength in diversity Diversity (TM) has become a PC buzz-word of late, so I hope I'm not going to raise your hackles too much by suggesting that it's about time it was reclaimed and applied not as a code-word for pre-emptive anti-oppressor action, but in its original context: lots of different options. Despite the apparent intolerance of most western countries today, things are a lot better than they were even one generation ago. As Tim will attest, someone of my image, seen in a city street say forty years ago, would be taken for a freak. Today ... well, that's diversity. More options and more lifestyles are tolerated, despite the fulminations of extreme left and extreme right. This means that the options for social blackmail are being steadily eroded. We now see, in the net, the development of nascent virtual communities. Each such community represents a different set of values, a different weltanschauung, a different set of moral or existential criteria. What is a sin in one community may be a virtue in another. If Tim's predictive scenario for the development of crypto-anarchy comes to pass, the virtual community will occupy the central economic and legal position relative to the individual that was formerly occupied by the physical community. But the nature of the relationship between the individual and the community will be very different ... 3. Virtual community images The old 'community' -- which you damn well lived by the standards of, 'cause there was nowhere else to go -- has been on the way out for ages. But we're seeing new virtual communities appear on-line. Take this forum as an example. Shared values, past experience of social interaction, all add up to sense of community. Other features of virtual communities are delocalization, _very_ high inter-communal mobility, and a tendency towards group-think. Now, you _could_ assert that blackmail is possible within such a community. In a crypto-anarchist world, the threat of ostracism by a virtual community may carry a lot more weight than it does today. But there's a critical difference between the social dynamics of a virtual community and a real one. Tim demonstrated this last week with his Dossier scam: * you can never be sure that the public image is the real substance. Ever! * Membership of a virtual community _requires_ the development of a much more sophisticated attitude to appearances than was necessary in an old-fashioned social community (like a village or small town). Appearances are not only deceptive occasionally -- they are frequently so. As a result, people learn to either make allowances or retreat into fundamentalist moderated fora which brook no opposition. In the future, the small-town moralizing and whispernet that made blackmail such a powerful lever may be greatly reduced, because the virtual population in general will be much more sophisticated about the distinction between public and private personnae. They'll have been educated the hard way, by induction into the net. (Don't say it hasn't happened to you. Don't say it won't happen to everyone. I'm sticking my neck out and predicting a big change in the fundamental nature of interpersonal relationships at every level.) 4. Hiding in full public view Everyone has secrets. The priority attached to those secrets may vary. For example: I have political views, social views, friends, enemies, current and former lovers, bank accounts, books, toys, a home, a job, aliases, a PGP public key, a PGP private key, and other secrets. My job -- a _secret_? Not from you, it isn't -- just finger charless@ruddles.london.sco.com if you want to see. But it _is_ secret as far as some people are concerned -- those who I don't want to tell. My PGP private key is _indisputably_ secret, insofar as I'm not going to give it to you. Both facts are 'secret' -- only the levels of security classification vary. In today's culture it is possible to grade such facts and keep track of who you told what to. But the net is also a sponge. As Tim's dossier posting showed, it is possible to generate a cumulative picture of an identity, interpolating guesses into the gaps in the jigsaw puzzle where necessary. It will therefore be _harder_ to keep low priority secrets, but _easier_ to keep high-priority (i.e. non-disclosed) secrets. Why? Because when 99% of everything is available to a search engine, but that last 1% requires serious breaking and entering, almost everyone will ignore or conveniently forget about that last 1%. It's the law of diminishing returns, coupled with Bayesian reasoning; because in the initial 99% of the dossier we saw nothing of interest, there is a low (1-(99/100)) probability of finding anything in the last 1%. And it _certainly_ won't be found on-line ... because it's _secret_. As people adjust to crypto-anarchy, I think that they won't keep their most valuable information on-line; or certainly not on a networked computer or PDA. There might well be a market in obsolete non-networked PC's -- call them "data vaults" for purposes equivalent to a domestic safe. But in general, most information will be available on-line, and the stuff that isn't will simply not be obtainable off the net. Or not decryptable in polynomial time, which amounts to the same thing. 5. Authenticating blackmail and identity Here's a scenario for you; It is 2003, and the crypto-singularity has eaten the West. Everyone lives or dies on their PDA, "your plastic pal who's fun to be with", which is hooked into the internet. The Extropians list is a constitutional confederacy of individuals with a polycentric legal system designed to grind up anyone who crosses a citizen, and a decentralized nuclear deterrent for dealing with those problem cases. It's currency is, of course, the NeoThorne (after the infamous Crash of '97, when a runaway expert system trading as KLAUS! learned how to hack the market's timed client, and bankrupted everybody else on the system when it began trading shares back in time). J. Random Dissident is scared. [s]he has just received an anonymous note from Citizens for a More Extropian Extropia: "From 1974 to 1983 you attended Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, studying International Terrorism and Marxist Ideology. We know you are a former KGB informer and you fiddled your grades in 1982. Pay up 100,000 Thornes at once or you will be Exposed. There is no escape: we know where you live, we know where your dog goes to school." What does J. Random Dissident do? In today's world, JRD is between a rock and a hard place. Paper records are taken as fact by the courts. Such an accusation is taken seriously, and the Confederacy of Independant Extropians will naturally respond with a pre-emptive nuclear strike on JRDS's dog-training school. JRD will be shamed, ostracized, driven forth from the community, and left to die penniless (and PDA-less) in the desert. But in a crypto-anarchy, things may well be different. First, there's the obvious challenge: "authenticate!" Authentication is not seen as a major issue in blackmail today. Photographs, written records ... they're taken as evidence. But I predicted years ago that this would have to change as technologies proliferate; with a copy of Adobe PhotoShop _anyone_ can now come up with evidence that JRD is not only a KGB spy but J. Edgar Hoover's love child. So JRD can openly challenge the CMEE's allegations, and demand substantiation. Furthermore, the social adaptation to split public/- private personnae is going to be a lot more taken for granted. I'd expect people to be more concerned with deeds than history or words: if JRD has been a right- thinking libertarian for the past decade, and acted accordingly, that is _also_ a matter of public record. It's also as accessible as the blackmail material. Anyone who wants to see JRD's dossier will see not only the terrorism allegations but the other stuff. Finally, if JRD is seriously scared -- if the blackmail has _really_ touched a nerve and JRD is in danger (for example, if JRD's real name is Salman Rushdie and he's just been exposed to the Popular Global Network of Shi'ites), JRD can go to Blacknet and try to buy a new identity. Not to mention emigrate from the virtual community and enter another. Given digital cash and a good-enough remailer network, it should be possible to tracelessly transform your on-line identity into someone else. JRD _either_ goes to a different virtual community -- say, Former KGB Assassins for Free Market Anarchy -- which is a little more accepting of JRD's foibles, _or_ changes name again. On the net, of course. To their friends, then as always face-to-face, JRD remains, yours truly. 6. Summary Blackmail, as it exists today, requires several preconditions: * Fixed identity. You can't become someone else very easily. * Fixed community. If you're exposed, you can't change your peer group or environment very easily. * Fixed community moral standards. Communities are intolerant of a dichotomy between private and public behaviour. This is a consequence of: * Sliding secrecy scales. Getting information about people is relatively difficult, so it's relatively easy to maintain a wide range of levels of secrecy about private activities. Blackmail in a crypto-anarchist system is going to be affected by the following changes: * Mutable identity. Cheap, easy and out of control aliases. * Virtual community. You don't like your town, you change town. It's as easy as pressing . Well, not quite ... but easier than it is today. * Increased diversity awareness. Everybody is subliminally aware of the difference between appearance and substance because community is decoupled from physical location. So people come to expect a degree of identity spoofing. This leads to: * Pragmatic community moral standards. People are as people do, not as they say. You can use this as a judgement criteria because: * It's easy to find out almost everything about what people do. You don't have to rely on rhetoric -- you can as easily judge on the basis of deeds. Indeed, you _expect_ rhetoric to differ from actions -- it's only natural. Rhetoric is devalued by the nature of the community, which is information-based rather than substance-based. And because it's so easy to see what people are doing, those secrets that are truly secret are likely to be _very_ heavily guarded, while anything less than deathly confidential is likely to be simply classified as "hush, you didn't read this here". 7. Caveat Of course, all this presupposes that people are rational, sane, intelligent, logical, and trustworthy. Oh, and that they always act in their own best interests, and never take half-measures or ignore precautions because they're too onerous. That people also behave consistently and hold non-contradictory belief sets. Oh, and that idiots aren't and that crash-proof computers don't and that Murphy's law has been repealed ... -- Charlie -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charlie Stross is charless@scol.sco.com, charlie@antipope.demon.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 93 9:50:55 EDT From: chrism@ksr.com Subject: DIET: Too little fat causes brain damage! dean wrote: > ... Having seen the kinds of confusion generated by > 'dry' humor in the past, I strongly recommend people take care to make > it clear when they are satirizing (smiley's, different person, > caveats, etc.). and: > I've noticed that when people making dry comments get misunderstood, > they often blame it on their listeners (lack of sense of humor, > perspicacity, etc.) It just ain't so. One person's dry humor is > another's sarcastic attack is another's demonstration of obvious > stupidity. To this day people argue about whether Niccolo Machiavelli was being deadly serious or bitingly sarcastic when he wrote _The Prince_. Personally, I just don't think that book would be the same if it was littered with smileys. -chrism (serve with a pinch of salt, smileys to taste.) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 11:39:00 -0400 From: Subject: Need Information: Counterfit money. I came in late on this thread, someone had posted a short history of gold, if possable I would like to get a more complite history. Post to this address: Kone@courier1.sha.cornell.edu Not wanting to take and not give: The Ford penny.--In 1917, Henry Ford proposed a product planned to give competition to the U.S. Mint. Henry Ford, genius that he was, toyed with the idea of miniting his own money. His plan was not to replace the legal tender, but to create an issue intended to commingle with change then in circulation. Ford's coins would be similar in size, color and design to the Lincoln cent. Intent to confuse was deliberate. He ordered enough to preclude the piece ever becoming rare--1 million pieces. However, there were subtle differences. Abraham Lincoln's profile was replaced by Henry Ford's; the motto "In God We Trust" cahnged to a Ford favorite, "Help the Other Fellow;" and the date appeared on the obverse much the way it looked on the circulating cent. Trial pieces were made, but the country's entry into World War I aborted Ford's plans. They were held in abeyance until after the war, only to become forgotten in the rush to return to peacetime production. >From Coins, April 1992. Typoes are mine. You can't have them. (Well if the price is right.) William Kone, tip-ask a coin collector if they collect penny's. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 06:37:22 -0500 (CDT) From: derek@cs.wisc.edu (Derek Zahn) Subject: Extortion Countermeasures in Crypto-Anarchy Tim May: > I can't tell if Derek is peeved here or not, but I think my (very) > long posting indicates I am willing to debate the issue some more. Not "peeved" but I did get the impression that you were trying to discourage the discussion because it was redundant to one from a year ago (an archive of which I have been unable to find). Happily, that impression seems to have been incorrect. A couple of points: * Given Chaum-like digicash, there are large restrictions on the nature of Extortion-friendly banks. Namely, they must exist in an environment where they cannot be coerced into collaborating with a cash purchaser wanting to trace the cash. Such banks will be seen as "illegitimate" and illegal inside states, which makes the transfer of funds between bank and extortionist as difficult as such funds transfers are today. Digicash does not make such money laundering much easier, since eventually BlackBucks have to be converted to Cadillacs and caviar. Real cash (in modest amounts) is equally at home above or below the countertop. * The point of my comparison of Chaum's digicash with real cash, where C's digicash lacks some privacy-preserving features of FRNs, was this: we can (and do, for liberal interpretations of "we") design digicash protocols with varying features as much as we please. The question that interests me is, what features *should* a digicash protocol have? It might well be that (as Chaum suggests) the auditability of digicash is a Good Thing. What would an E.C. digicash look like? How do we *want* our currency to behave (never mind how it's implemented)? derek preparing my case: the USGovt's monopoly on legal extortion violates anti-trust laws BlackBuck: =========================== |(p1) We Trust Not (p1)| | ##### | | ####### | | ## * * ## | | #\ --- /# | | \___/ | |(p1) Machiavelli (p1)| | E Pluribus Pluribum | =========================== ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 93 07:30:12 -0700 From: freeman@maspar.com (Jay R. Freeman) Subject: META: Name for the list software? And if the institute should ever do anything that is in any way "Mickey Mouse", in the colloquial sense of the word, transcend forfend that I should even think such a thought, the name for the project should be "Extropolino"... -- Jay Freeman ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 10:46:46 -0500 From: cpresson@jido.b30.ingr.com (Craig Presson) Subject: Extortion Countermeasures in Crypto-Anarchy In <9310052230.AA11097@snark.lehman.com>, "Perry E. Metzger" writes: [...] |> Folks, we have anonymity RIGHT NOW. You will NOT be caught if you |> send someone a properly written letter from a mailbox. You can make |> calls from payphones with a voice distorter. This is old stuff. |> Somehow we have survived. People used to resort to things like clipped-out letters from magazines[1] because both handwriting and mechanical typewriters have traceable peculiarities. It just occurred to me that laser printers and maybe even 24-pin wireheads probably do not develop the same kinds of oddities -- is anyone familiar enough with current forensics practice to know if I'm right? ^ / ------/---- cpresson@ingr.com (Freeman Craig Presson) /AS 5/20/373 PNO; ISGS 9/373; ExI 4/373, NRA 5/373, etc. [1] Enough for it to become a movie cliche. In case of a kidnapping, why not just have the victim write the ransom note by hand, with none of the criminals handling the paper without gloves? It's anonymous but self-authenticating. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 93 09:21:01 -0700 From: jamie@netcom.com (Jamie Dinkelacker) Subject: SATIRE: was Too little fat causes brain damage! >-chrism writes (X-Message-Number: #93-10-235) > >To this day people argue about whether Niccolo Machiavelli was being deadly >serious or bitingly sarcastic when he wrote _The Prince_. Personally, I just >don't think that book would be the same if it was littered with smileys. > Likely to be true. But, irrespective of Machiavelli's intent, or scholars scurrying to uncover same, _The Prince_ is an outstandingly insightful work regarding organizations and efficacy for specific types of leadership. The measure of a message's meaning is by those who receive and interpret it. Satire or not, accurate or not, many messages can be effective regardless of their "truthfulness," especially in cases where "facts" aren't at issue (e.g., ethical debates, aesthetic preferences, political perspectives, ...). Many people are influenced by how a message makes them "feel," not what the actual purported factural content happens to be. Once the message is spewed to the void, individuals interpret them in a multitude of ways. It gets entertaining when a message sender becomes argumentative regarding message intent, as if intent in the sender's mind was sufficient to create isomorphic interpretation in the mind of the receiver. There's a reason that legal documents and diplomatic preambles begin with a lengthy definition of terms. Someone (was it TCMAY?) pointed out that satire can refine our bogosity filters. Yes, and more than that, many speakers mean well, but they babble nonsense regardless of their "good intentions." They may be uninformed, ill-acquainted with jargon or specialty language used by a specific group, out-dated with their information, misspeak and not notice, miss a typo that changes meaning, have good sounding reasoning based on faulty premises, .... One takes great liberty with the self when interpreting any individual message as gospel or revealed truth. Read the 'political pamphlet' in George Bernard Shaw's "Man and Superman." I dont't write satire, but welcome it. This must be a Perversion from the High Beyond attacking me for a switch to a low fat diet several months ago. -- ................................ Jamie Dinkelacker Palo Alto CA Jamie@netcom.com 415.941.4782 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 09:54:45 -0700 From: dkrieger@Synopsys.COM (Dave Krieger) Subject: EXTROPY/Extropy Institute information >From: Elizabeth Schwartz >Subject: EXTROPY/Extropy Institute information >X-Extropian-Date: Remailed on October 6, 373 P.N.O. [05:01:32 UTC] >X-Message-Number: #93-10-220 > >Is this advertisement freely distributable? >If not, do you have one that is? >I have a friend who keeps asking me for information but who cannot >join the list at this time. If you do redistribute the message, be sure to take out Max's parenthetical meta-comment in the middle (quote): [The rest came out okay, but I'll complete the section.] (unquote). dV/dt The Second Law of Thermodynamics never sleeps (to paraphrase Neil Young) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 93 11:13:33 MDT From: Mark_Muhlestein@Novell.COM (Mark Muhlestein) Subject: SOCIAL: Bay Area Extropian Gathering? I will be in the bay area from Oct 13-16 attending the nanotech conference. If there are other extropians attending the conference, or if some of you are still holding the weekly lunch-time get-togethers, I would be interested in joining in. Looking forward to renewing some Extropaganza acquaintances, Mark_Muhlestein@novell.com PS Could someone clue me in to what the "assembler multitudes" is all about? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Oct 93 14:05:29 GMT From: price@price.demon.co.uk (Michael Clive Price) Subject: Extortion Countermeasures in Crypto-Anarchy Tim May complains: > I can't tell if Derek is peeved here or not ... Next time, Derek, use a simley or grumpy! Ah, but I forgot, Tim doesn't approve of them, does he? :-) Mike Price price@price.demon.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Oct 93 14:47:24 GMT From: price@price.demon.co.uk (Michael Clive Price) Subject: Operationalism (was Meaninglessness) I said: > .. you argue by implicit slander, since I have never said that > the Stern-Gerlach experiment doesn't measure magnetic moment. > (Let's see quotes, not your distorted paraphrasing.) James Donald replied: > Stop lying. [rest elided, as repetitious] So, you can't find the quote, and you're peeved. If you think I'm lying file charges or shut up. End of thread. Mike Price price@price.demon.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1993 14:18:59 -0400 (EDT) From: LEVY%BESSIE@venus.cis.yale.edu Subject: MTV: ExI - N.O.T. > But seriously, folks, this is our chance at the bigtime... do you suppose > that Extropianism is sufficiently weird, interesting, and sound-biteable to > get 15 minutes of fame on MTV? Nope. That is, not unless we act like the usual teenage idiots they feature, or one of us turns into a Cindy Crawford lookalike. -- Simon! ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 14:29:02 -0400 From: Elizabeth Schwartz Subject: FISH: Darwin Fish found! From: holsten@golden.berkeley.edu () Date: 6 Oct 1993 17:11:52 GMT Organization: U.C. College of Natural Resources NNTP-Posting-Host: golden.berkeley.edu What, you ask, is a Darwin Fish? A Darwin Fish is a plastic car bumper emblem that, at first glance, looks like a typical Christian fish. A second glance, however, shows some differences: The fish has little feet and says DARWIN inside. ______________________________ \ / \ \ / \ \ / \ \/ D A R W I N \ /\ / / \ / / \ / / \______________________________/ | | |__ |__ To order the Darwin Fish, send $5 per fish to: Donna Holsten 2131 Gill Dr Concord, CA 94520 (Allow up to 3 weeks for delivery; ask about reduced prices on quantities of 18 or more.) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 93 11:54:12 PDT From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: The Great Operationalism Semantic Quibble ..... > James Donald replied: > > > Stop lying. [rest elided, as repetitious] > > So, you can't find the quote, and you're peeved. If you think I'm > lying file charges or shut up. End of thread. > > Mike Price price@price.demon.co.uk "End of thread." How many times have we heard this kind of promise before? From various people. I submit that when someone says "This discussion does not belong here. This will be my last posting on this" that we should then hold them up to ridicule and opprobrium when they continue to post. I only saw half of the Great Operationalism Semantic Quibble, and that was only because I was reluctant to put Price in my ::exclude list for allowing himself to argue for weeks over such a trivial matter ("trivial" being defined operationally, natch). And I deleted the arguments unread once I saw they were nit-picking quotes and counterquotes from various dictionaries. But as some superior minds are prone to say, this debate does not belong here! This will be my last posting on this subject. Stop now! --Tim (add smileys to taste) -- .......................................................................... 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: Wed, 6 Oct 93 14:57:28 EDT From: eli@suneast.east.sun.com (Elias Israel - SunSelect Engineering) Subject: MTV: ExI - N.O.T. Simon! writes: > Nope. That is, not unless ... one of us turns into a Cindy Crawford > lookalike. Now that would be something! Talk about self-transformation... Doubtless, in the age of mature Nanotech, we can all look like Cindy Crawford (or Richard Gere). How's that for an MTV angle? Elias Israel eli@east.sun.com HEx: E ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 14:00:05 -0500 From: cpresson@jido.b30.ingr.com (Craig Presson) Subject: MTV: ExI - N.O.T. In <01H3SN19KHZ68WW5QZ@VENUS.CIS.YALE.EDU>, LEVY%BESSIE@venus.cis.yale.edu writes: |> > But seriously, folks, this is our chance at the bigtime... do you suppose |> > that Extropianism is sufficiently weird, interesting, and sound-biteable to |> > get 15 minutes of fame on MTV? |> |> Nope. That is, not unless we act like the usual teenage idiots they feature, |> or one of us turns into a Cindy Crawford lookalike. "Tonight our special guest host on Headbanger's Ball is Mistress Romana Machado ... nice outfit, Mistress!" "Thank you, Cliff. Look at my feet when you say that if you don't want a whipping. Now I want to introduce a _very special_ video, a little more, ah, _optimistic_ than most Headbanger fare ..." ^ / ------/---- cpresson@ingr.com (Freeman Craig Presson) /AS 5/20/373 PNO; ISGS 9/373; ExI 4/373, NRA 5/373, etc. Media literacy is not going to be a luxury in the 21st Century. It is going to be a necessity for any kind of thinking, discerning human being. -- Linda Ellerbee, quoted in "How to Be Media Literate", Lauren Lipton, Los Angeles Times: TV Times, Nov 3-9, 1991 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 12:42:47 -0700 From: John K Clark Subject: operationism I'm not a professional Operationalist and don't even play one on TV, but I would like to say that perhaps a solution to the dispute on this subject could be found if we say that Operationism is a wonderful heuristic tool but not a natural law. It's very useful in eliminating much nonsense in our own thinking but surely it would be overstating the case to say that it's a sure fire formula for finding new knowledge ; if that were the case we could mechanically crank it out like sausage. In my own case I like to use operational definitions when I can find one but when I can't I don't necessarily through the idea away but I do put a red warning flag next to it telling me to proceed with caution. This is especially helpful when dealing with difficult or unfamiliar topics for the first time. When an idea has too many red flags it's time to find a better idea. **WARNING** I am unable to supply an operational definition of "too many" so this method though often useful can not guarantee success and sometimes leads to error and confusion. Do not drive or operate heavy machinery for 2 hours after using this method . John K Clark johnkc@well.sf.ca.us ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Oct 93 13:07:11 PDT From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: Young Urban Legends (was: Fat something or other) Derek Zahn explicated: > > one of the things I do when reading dry posts about fat > > intake and intelligence, for example, is to look for an angle to make > > some punks, some Swiftian satires, or to poke holes in the argument ... > > "make some punks"... an interesting image, but what does it mean? > (I believe that requests for clarification can be made without > compunktion). Lest you think "makes some punks" refers to my sexual tastes (fnord forfend!), that was a Floydian slip on "makes some puns." Of course, as I helped found the Cypherpunks group (but not the name!), I suppose "make some punks" is not completey content-free. --just another white dope on cypherpunk -- .......................................................................... 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: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 15:10:11 -0500 From: cpresson@jido.b30.ingr.com (Craig Presson) Subject: The Great Operationalism Semantic Quibble In <9310061854.AA12057@netcom5.netcom.com>, Timothy C. May writes: [Price - Donald bickering and other deletia] |> "End of thread." How many times have we heard this kind of promise |> before? From various people. |> |> I submit that when someone says "This discussion does not belong here. |> This will be my last posting on this" that we should then hold them up |> to ridicule and opprobrium when they continue to post. Definitely. But not with much hope that it will sink in. |> I only saw half of the Great Operationalism Semantic Quibble, and that |> was only because I was reluctant to put Price in my ::exclude list for |> allowing himself to argue for weeks over such a trivial matter |> ("trivial" being defined operationally, natch). Did we ever decide whether it was EC to publically declare one's chosen ::exclusions? Is it OK if it requires application of classical logic (defined operationally, of course) on the part of the reader? [...] |> But as some superior minds are prone to say, this debate does not |> belong here! This will be my last posting on this subject. Stop now! This is one Usenet convention we can do without, IMECO, not for a minute sparing the fact that I've done it a few times. |> --Tim (add smileys to taste) No thanks, but I did dab a little Sriracha sauce[1] on the screen while reading. ^ / ------/---- cpresson@ingr.com (Freeman Craig Presson) /AS 5/20/373 PNO; ISGS 9/373; ExI 4/373, NRA 5/373, etc. [1] A potent and delicious Vietnamese hot sauce approximately the color of a ripe Habanero. It comes in a clear plastic squeeze bottle with a rooster on it, and a green top. I had about 10 ml of it on popcorn shrimp[2] last night. Yummmmmmmmmmm. [2] Probably only a few of you know that I have the mixed blessing of being married to a _serious_ gourmet cook. ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 #279 *********************************