From extropians-request@extropy.org Fri Oct 29 17:24:07 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AA06299; Fri, 29 Oct 93 17:24:03 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: from news.panix.com by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA02109; Fri, 29 Oct 93 17:23:53 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by news.panix.com id AA10826 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for more@usc.edu); Fri, 29 Oct 1993 20:14:13 -0400 Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 20:14:13 -0400 Message-Id: <199310300014.AA10826@news.panix.com> To: Extropians@extropy.org From: Extropians@extropy.org Subject: Extropians Digest X-Extropian-Date: October 30, 373 P.N.O. [00:13:57 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: RO Extropians Digest Sat, 30 Oct 93 Volume 93 : Issue 302 Today's Topics: BOOK: _The Turing Option_ [1 msgs] Beating the Stock Market? [3 msgs] Bet 5000 [1 msgs] Change of Address [1 msgs] EXTROPIAN CORRECTNESS [3 msgs] FOOD, Veganism and politics [1 msgs] FOOD:Crosspollination at U of Wisconsin-was Beating the Stock Market[3 msgs] FOOD:Crosspollination at U of Wisconsin-was Beating the Stock Market [1 msgs] Hal's Fed Up [1 msgs] MACINTOSH: new release of MacPerl [1 msgs] MACINTOSH: new release of MacPerl [1 msgs] Measuring the Singularity (WAS: NEWS/UK: How computers...) [3 msgs] Meta: Using Commands [1 msgs] SSHH: _Extropy #3_ [1 msgs] Administrivia: No admin msg. Approximate Size: 51355 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 10:49:56 -0500 (CDT) From: derek@cs.wisc.edu (Derek Zahn) Subject: Measuring the Singularity (WAS: NEWS/UK: How computers...) Elias Israel: > I would tend to agree with this statement, but I wonder: how could one > quantify this assertion? Other than subjective statements about what a > "reasonable man" from 1000AD would be expected to comprehend, how can > we show concretely that the event horizon has been shrinking? If (as seems somewhat reasonable) new terms (or new meanings for old terms) are created as referents to new concepts or "events", that might be measurable. derek ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 15:42:48 +0000 (GMT) From: Charlie Stross Subject: Hal's Fed Up derek@cs.wisc.edu (Derek Zahn) writes: : >I propose that we try to have an IRC Extropians meeting. >I will arbitrarily pick Wednesday, Nov 3 at 9PM EST. I >realize that many list members do not have access to IRC >and that others might be unwilling to pay the connect >charges and that whatever time we pick will be unacceptable >to many people. Still, it's worth a try. I've personally >never even used IRC, which means that I have to learn >about it, but that's OK. I will coordinate. Thats a good idea; but I won't be attending. 9pm EST is 1am here in the UK, and I normally head for work at 7:30am. No thanks ... Seriously, something I've noticed is that email is a very forgiving medium for handling multiple time zones. I work in the UK offices of a multinational with a WAN that encompasses Toronto and Santa Cruz in the west, and Milan in the east. I've watched discussions circle the globe, following the terminator (it's most impressive when there's a flame war boiling up, and lots of people are participating :) IRC limits the time during which people can participate. It's not really practical for most people during working hours, so we're realistically talking about a six-hour time band; from about 6pm (early, some people work after 6pm) to 12pm (late, some people go to bed before midnight). But the Extropians list spans _at least_ an eight time zone radius. (Anyone east of GMT? West of PDT?) Then there's the issue of connection charges. To participate in IRC I'd have to log in from home. Here in this country, we pay for local phone calls. Slurping up a batch of mail is fast and cheap; watching fingers type at a terminal a continent away eats up money. >Practically, this means the following: >* I will post information as I acquire it. I hope > that such posts aren't too obnoxious to the > uninterested, but I will probably post something > every day. >* If you would like to participate, PLEASE send me > e-mail (derek@cs.wisc.edu). I am a courteous > correspondent, and will reply promptly. The > purpose of this correspondence will be to > assess interest and work out problems. If > you know nothinig about IRC or are unsure > how to use it or are concerned about a > learning curve, that's great -- I am committing > to do research and whatever else might be > required to insure that interested parties > can participate with a minimum of fuss. > MAIL ME. The sooner the better. If you are > knowledgeable about IRC, please let me know > and offer suggestions if you're so inclined. > All correspondence will of course be private. >* Through these efforts I am committing to, hopefully > we can get a critical mass of people. Don't > dismiss the primitive ASCII-stream nature of > IRC without giving it a try. At the very > least, it will be an interesting experiment > that will shed light on the possibilities of > primitive real-time conferencing for Extropians. Indeed it is a worthy experiment, and I don't want to sound obstructive -- at least it's an attempt to get something other than email to work. However I suspect that it is not an adequate solution to the problems the list is having; at least, not everyone can participate (and not for lack of software, either). >Thanks for your time. MAIL ME. Tell me what >resources you have access to, and what help you >need, if any. >derek -- Charlie -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charlie Stross is charless@scol.sco.com, charlie@antipope.demon.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 09:03:39 -0700 From: onomoto@netcom.com (Young and Loud) Subject: Beating the Stock Market? Derek Zahn: > * The time window for big profits with automated systems of this kind > may be rather short. Nick's "low-hanging fruit" (the obvious > exploitable regularities) will be the first to go as more and > more traders consider advice from these programs. > Hmm... perhaps this is standard investment-trader stuff (hey, I'm a math geek! Anyone wanna give a reference so I can actually claim to know something?) but I'm wondering if anyone can make speculations upon what markets will look like *after* a trader starts making decisions which are inordinately "correct." -o ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 16:00:32 +0000 (GMT) From: Charlie Stross Subject: MACINTOSH: new release of MacPerl [[ I'm posting this with the thread MACINTOSH: because Mac's are of minority interest even to the minority who want to talk computers. If nobody is interested, I will desist from future postings on this thread. My goal in starting it is to share the results of much nosing around I've been doing, looking for cheap/free resources for this fascinating personal computer. Among other things I'm a freelance computer journalist: I normally charge UK pound 130 a page for this sort of thing ... ]] A usable version of Perl has finally appeared on the Macintosh. Perl is a UNIX-origin programming language; its name is an acronym for either Portable Extraction and Report Language or Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister (according to its creator, Larry Wall). Perl is a very high level language with low-level hooks -- you can write superbly powerful text processing programs in it using its built-in regular expression scanner, yet you can also write TCP/IP network clients or servers in it. It's interpreted but semi-compiled so that it runs _very_ fast for an interpreted language. Syntactically it's big, misshappen, and ugly as sin -- it resembles a high-speed collision between UNIX (yeah, ALL of UNIX :) and C. The point of Perl is that it's a free language. The author has donated it to the public domain, subject to the GNU General Public License. And the Mac port of Perl is also free. Previous versions of MacPerl were next to useless. There was an MPW version, which was apparently great -- IF you had the MPW shell. And there was a Finder version that sucked rocks big-time -- it made no concessions to the Mac interface. The new version of MacPerl (available for anonymous ftp from all good sites, but especially from ftp.demon.co.uk:/pub/mac ) is _much_ better. It features a simple integrated editor, interpreter, and compiler (that can create stand-alone executables). It includes basic commands for dialogues, messages, and file access. There is a particularly extensive suite of IPC tools, including support for UNIX and Internet domain sockets over MacTCP. Apart from a tendency to start dialling my modem whenever I started it (my MacTCP configuration uses PPP as a LAP, to dial into my IP provider), the networking side is very thorough. Indeed, you could write an email or news client in it without too much difficulty. (I may need to do just that, for reasons too long and peevesomely tedious to go into.) I don't want to oversell MacPerl. There are things it doesn't have. You don't get support; there's no pretty manual; and the text editor's a bit basic. But the important thing is, _it's_there_. At last, a workable version of this language, once described as the "UNIX Swiss Army chainsaw". I've only just begun exploring MacPerl (I downloaded it last night), but it's already apparent that the pearl in MacPerl's crown is applescript. Yes; you heard me. Apple's rather Pascal-ish, verbose, tedious scripting language has its uses: mostly because it's a general purpose model for scripting applications. Now it happens that MacPerl can send applescript commands to script-aware applications. So you can write batch automation commands on your Mac using a really, REALLY, powerful language that can also handle network comms and a heap of things like process control and string scanning and associative arrays, without paying anyone a penny. And, using Applescript, you can tie the Perl scripts into any other piece of Mac software you need -- for example, carry out regular expression search/replace on word processor files by telling the WP to export text in ASCII, working on it in Perl, and then telling the WP to re-import it. And now for the wild prognostication ... I am a beta tester for MacMosaic, the Macintosh port of NCSA Mosaic. Mosaic is the premiere World Wide Web client. I put in a feature request: applescript awareness. I'm told that this will be coming as a priority, as soon as release 1.0 of MacMosaic is complete (within the next month). Putting together a superbly powerful, network-capable development environment like MacPerl, with a scriptable World-Wide Web client, gives us a perfect tool for developing knowbots. Watch this space! -- Charlie -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charlie Stross is charless@scol.sco.com, charlie@antipope.demon.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 13:07:31 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: Meta: Using Commands Harry S. Hawk says: > Many of you are sending commands to Extropians-request@extropy.org Frankly, Harry, it would be a Good Think IMHO if such commands were processed -- better than sending them to the main list where syntax errors result in them being forwarded to everyone... .pm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 13:25:59 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: FOOD:Crosspollination at U of Wisconsin-was Beating the Stock Market Craig Presson says: > [1] Is it pronounced Veggan like veggie, or Vegan like starfolk? Vee-g'n is the usual method, which is close to the "starfolk" pronounciation. "We from vega don't eat high-fat foodsources." Perry ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 13:55:24 EDT From: Andy Wilson Subject: EXTROPIAN CORRECTNESS Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1993 20:46:14 -0500 From: "Phil G. Fraering" [...] And banning or severe regulation by the government is what Jeremy Rifkin, the individual under discussion, was discussing. Rifkin is absolutely wrong in thinking that beaurocracy is going to solve the problems he discusses. But some of the problems he addresses are real and need to be solved. Other problems that he sees are phantoms of his own creation. Ralph Nader is a better example of someone who publicized the issue of irresponsible corporations who manipulate figures in a calculus of acceptable deaths in their cynical product development methods. His most notable target was the Chevrolet Corvair, which was not much safer than driving a cardboard box. Not that I agree with Nader's politics. Now that people pay attention to auto safety, it is used as a selling point, for example Lee Iacocca's air bag commercials. Some auto manufacturers, for example Mercedes-Benz and Volvo, considered safety to be a desirable quality for their products long before the stodgy Detroit crowd copped that clue. Once the public is educated as to the risks involved in using a particular product, market forces will result in products that are as safe as the public wants them to be, not as some beaurocrat or executive wants them to be. The real problem cases occur when a product is used widely before its effects are known, for example: Thalidimide, Agent Orange, and one of the latest cases, AZT. Companies that make blunders like these do not belong in the marketplace, and should be sued out of business, and their executives should be unemployable and hounded to the ends of the Earth. Notice that I don't use the word "consumer", the consumerist ideology being to my mind as nullifying and degrading as that of marxism. Andy Phil ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 11:14:02 PDT From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: Beating the Stock Market? Young and Loud sez: > Hmm... perhaps this is standard investment-trader stuff (hey, I'm a > math geek! Anyone wanna give a reference so I can actually claim to know > something?) but I'm wondering if anyone can make speculations upon what > markets will look like *after* a trader starts making decisions which are > inordinately "correct." It is alleged that computerized traders can detect the presence of other computerized traders on the Net (whoops, I mean "in the Market"...soon there won't be a difference, I conjecture). Nearly 25 years ago I read a wonderful book, "The Money Game," by "Adam Smith." Adam Smith, known to be Paul Goodman, has for several years now has a PBS television show, and he's written several more books. Anyway, in "The Money Game," Smith describes a Columbia U. prof (from before Perry's time, one assumes) who has an early computer, a "Digital Datawhack 9000," or somesuch, which he regards as a fairly stupid but faithful dog. The Digital Datawhack runs automated trades and even announces when "another" computer has been detected. More recently, the whole arbitrage business has of course been computerized, and the speeds with which the markets react (in several areas, of course) makes the presence of computers obvious, so in some sense Herr Loud's question is already answered. As for disturbing patterns, in a kind of ersatz Heisenbergian sense, I am more skeptical that this is a major issue. Too many competing models, too much apparent noise in the system, too many heterogeneous agents. That is, if I start gaining a slight "edge" by, say, using the volume of Extropians postings multiplied by the Santa Cruz ocean temperature, and somehow make more money this way, I doubt this will affect other trading programs. (And now that I've given away my secret trading program algorithm, I'll have to find a new one....of course, you have no immediate way of knowing the Santa Cruz ocean temperature, so I suppose I'm safe for a while). --Klaus! von Futures Market -- .......................................................................... 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: Fri, 29 Oct 93 14:14:00 EDT From: Andy Wilson Subject: EXTROPIAN CORRECTNESS Date: Thursday, 28 October 1993 23:55:18 PST8 From: "James A. Donald" > On Sun, 24 Oct 93 edgar@spectrx.saigon.com (Edgar W. Swank) > wrote: > > [...] > > >The cold war is over; we won! > In <9310281939.AA05883@custard.think.com>, ajw@Think.COM (Andy Wilson) wrote: > Great! What did we win? Our ideas defeated their ideas. The truth about freedom has been proven. The only communists remaining are in American universities. The only socialists remaining are in congress and western parliaments. A grave threat to the lives and liberty of everyone has been destroyed. That is what we won. This a bunch of crapola and I'm tired of hearing it. When the government is trying to ram the clipper chip down our throats, how can you say that "the truth about freedom has been proven"? To whom? Someone once said "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance." Eternal is still operative here, homes. The only place there were very many real communists has been in American universities and other Western countries where people are allowed to believe whatever nonsense political theory they want. The crumbs who ran the Soviet Union are now all of a sudden "Democrats", and are still the crooks they always were. This has nothing to do with your imagined bogeyman of a philosophy. How can a seriously flawed but nevertheless scientific model of economics be the source of all evil? What was evil about the Soviet Union was the abuse of power. The particular hollow ideology they justified it with is of no consequence. The abuse of power will exist for as long as people submit themselves to armed bandits regardless of whatever form of sweet-talking it takes to get them to do it, be it for "the good of the workers" or "national security". The nuclear weapons are still pointed at us. There are plenty of right and left wing ideologies flying around in the former Soviet Union that are ripe for the picking by new Stalins and Hilters. Andy --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 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: Fri, 29 Oct 93 14:24:44 EDT From: Brian.Hawthorne@east.sun.com (Brian Hawthorne - SunSelect Strategic Marketing) Subject: FOOD:Crosspollination at U of Wisconsin-was Beating the Stock Market > If anyone has a source of unusual foods please let me know. I seem to recall > someone once mentioning lion meat, but I was a Lurker at the time and therefore > unable to inquire further. There's a place on Kirkland St. in Cambridge, MA that has had everything from lion to hippo to python meats (different things at different times). Julia Child shops there when she is too drunk to make it to the Star Market in Porter Square, or has lost her dark sunglasses. The name escapes me at the moment, but it almost in Somerville. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 11:31:48 PDT From: szabo@netcom.com (Nick Szabo) Subject: Beating the Stock Market? Some good references I've been using in my work: Ross Miller, _Computer-Aided Financial Analysis_ CAPM, Black-Scholes, decision trees for modelling derivatives & synthetic assets, etc. Examples in LISP. Jack Schwager, _The New Market Wizards_ Informal interviews with top traders Andrew Harvey, _Forecasting, structural time series models, and the Kalman filter_ All those buzzwords: autoregression, autocorrelation, heteroscedacity, etc. John Koza, _Genetic Programming_ Thomas Cover & Joy Thomas, _Elements of Information Theory_. Best book I've seen on the subject, includes a good chapter introducing Kolmogorov complexity (AIT). John Ritchie, _The Fundamentals of Fundamental Analysis_ Basics of analyzing a financial statement, etc. (I'm on the lookout for more mathematically sophisticated treatments of fundamental analysis, recommendations welcome). A good statistics book also comes in handy. Also, there's no substitute for reading the Wall Street Journal, to get an idea why people think stocks have moved, etc. Nick Szabo szabo@netcom.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 13:45:48 -0500 From: "Patrick M. Fitzgerald" Subject: MACINTOSH: new release of MacPerl In message #93-10-926 Charlie Stross writes: > > The point of Perl is that it's a free language. Also it is available on many platforms (Unix, DOS, NT, Amiga, etc.) so you can easily port your scripts. > I don't want to oversell MacPerl. There are things it doesn't have. > You don't get support; In my experience, the comp.lang.perl newsgroup offers good support. Larry Wall frequents the list. > there's no pretty manual; There are two Perl books published by O'Reilly ("Programming Perl", or "the camel book", is the Perl bible). -Fitz What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against? - Larry Wall ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Mar 95 21:13:16 GMT From: Robin Subject: Change of Address Please change the address that extropian postings are sent to me at. The address they are currently sent to is: robin@ganesh.demon.co.uk Please change this to: extropy@ganesh.demon.co.uk Thanks! -Robin -- Email: robin@ganesh.demon.co.uk +---------------------------------------------------------+ ! "Strive not for wisdom nor seek to lose your illusions" ! +---------------------------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 11:43:39 PDT From: brt!robert@uu.psi.com (Robert Blumen) Subject: FOOD, Veganism and politics Many extropians are interested in life extension, personal development, optimal performance, and the like. I am interested in whether this interest extends to optimizing one's diet. To summarize, my diet is somewhat along the lines of macrobiotic/vegan, with small amounts of fish and meat. I eat organically grown, generally unprocessed or minimally processed foods, and lots of fresh vegetables. Compared to what most people in my profession (software engineering ) subsist on, this is pretty radical. The aveage SWE's diet consists of coffee, microwavable freezer meals, pizza, KFC, and take-out food, with lots of processed "junk" food for snacks. I have noticed some parallels between my situation as a person having radical libertarian political views and having a radical diet. Most people don't understand how I eat, or why, and it seems very strange to them. Also, my surroundings are not particularly conducive to the kind of diet I eat, as most of the food that is readily available has lots of meat, dairy, fat, additives, etc. Maybe there is not a strong parallel, but in both cases, I feel "different" from the norm, and that I have to make my own way through the world very consciously, not just taking what's there and doing what is in front of me. I am curious whether other extropians practice radical diets, and if so, - how do you deal with time required for food preparation - do you find it difficult to integrate with the rest of the world, given that most restaurants don't serve the food you eat - is it hard to get the food you want where you live Does anyone else see any parallels between being a food radical and an intellectual radical in other areas? Robert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Robert Blumen | Berkeley Research and Trading robert@brt.com | Berkeley, CA ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 15:40:40 EDT From: eli@suneast.east.sun.com (Elias Israel - SunSelect Engineering) Subject: Measuring the Singularity (WAS: NEWS/UK: How computers...) Derek Zahn writes: > If (as seems somewhat reasonable) new terms (or new meanings for > old terms) are created as referents to new concepts or "events", > that might be measurable. OK, but how could you measure this? The time to produce new dictionaries probably won't work because increasing technology may have both diminishing and enhancing effects on the time required to produced each edition. Do the popular dictionary publishers keep histories of the number of terms added, deleted, or modified? Elias Israel eli@east.sun.com HEx: E ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 13:23:15 PDT From: martino@gomez.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Martin R. Olah) Subject: FOOD:Crosspollination at U of Wisconsin-was Beating the Stock Market Brian Hawthorne: >There's a place on Kirkland St. in Cambridge, MA that has had everything >from lion to hippo to python meats (different things at different Thanks for the lead, Brian. Harry, I never saw mention of your lion source. If anyone thinks of the name of a store, restaurant, etc., and the city it's in, I would be grateful. You can send it to me privately if you want to prevent the use of "exclude thread". I'm also interested in unusual recipies, cook books, food festivals, you get the picture. Thanks, O Martin Onward,Inward,Hopefully Not Up-Chuck-Ward ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 20:12:14 GMT From: price@price.demon.co.uk (Michael Clive Price) Subject: Bet 5000 I was intending to wait for Tim's "Nazi smear" charge to go through adjudication before resuming posting to extropians. But since I have no idea when adjudication will be delivered (it has been nearly 2 weeks since I first asked the Adjudicator to consider my case) and Donald is champing at the bit (or is that foaming at the mouth) I'll indulge him... Gee, I never knew I was so popular. Donald says: > The probability of Price putting up 5000 pounds also goes > down. On the contrary, I am quite prepared to post my 5000 pound bond. Let's sort out the details. BTW there is no need for Donald to post his design to sci.physics (at least not yet), since I'm quite up to the job of poking holes in crackpot theories on my own. BUT the investment of effort and time to do this is not worth it since Donald is clearly untrustworthy. (As evidence I cite Donald's unsubstantiated accusation of lying when he realised he didn't understand magnetic moment. Or Donald's crazy accusation of solipism at Anton for using the term "concept space". This convinces me that independent bondholders and judges are necessary.) Before I seriously examine Donald's proposal I require us to have _both_ posted our 5000 bond to agreed third parties (I suggest Exi officials - no point fattening lawyers.) Then we must sort out how Donald's claim is to be judged. I know that what Donald's proposed is impossible from simple QM (I have more faith in Deutsch than Donald) - the judges must therefore understand basic QM. That is all. There's no need (I suspect) to run simulations etc. I doubt whether I'll need more than a week to conclusively disprove Donald's design - once I examine it. As I said I have no intention of wasting such effort until Donald proves his good faith (I will do likewise) by posting his ante and the funds have cleared. Here's what I suggest: I will deposit funds with Russell Whitaker (russell@eternity.demon.co.uk) - the London resident Exi Director. I suggest Russell because I know and trust him and can get my funds to him quickly. Donald must pick an Exi Director that he's happy with. (As I wrote this paragraph I checked with Russell. He is happy to act as bondholder for both of us - which would simplify matters - unless Donald has any objections. Russell will announce when our funds have cleared.) The Dollar/Pound rate is about 1.5 at mo - so about 7500 dollars. If Donald agrees to this then I'll clarify the terms of the bet (ie see what we can mutually agree on) and decide how to verify the areas of disagreement. Once we have agreement to the structure of the wager I'll start examining Donald's quantum computer design. I'll post my first- pass _understanding_ of Donald's design within a day of his public acceptance of the wager and we'll agree on the verification procedure, with timescales. Then we both deposit our ante. Once funds have cleared I'll post my detailed _refutation_ of Donald's design to the agreed judges (yet to be selected). Volunteers for judges anyone? It won't quite require advanced understanding of QM (at least that is my claim). Since Donald doesn't understand even basic stuff like spin it will be elementary to refute his design. If I'm wrong, I lose.). Your move Donald. Mike Price price@price.demon.co.uk PS, I wonder if there is any way of using Robin Hanson's idea futures to settle this claim? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 17:00:24 -0400 (EDT) From: LEVY%54447@VENUS.CIS.YALE.EDU Subject: SSHH: _Extropy #3_ Sameer writes: >> Actually, though, what is the deep, dark, sinister secret behind >> Extropy # 3? Can I see what's going on if I post my public key and >> someone can send me something encrypted? >> >> PHil >> > I too am very curious, and will be greatly appreciative of > anyone who in some way imparts to me the information about this issue. To quote my favorite MTV characters: "Uh... huh huh huh... mmm... uh HUH... mmm... huh huh huh." -- Simon! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 16:08:36 -0500 From: pgf@srl05.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering) Subject: FOOD:Crosspollination at U of Wisconsin-was Beating the Stock Market >I have done all of the above except lion and ram's balls >...and a few varieties of brains. Brains, brains! Yum! More brains!~ Seriously, I've only been paying half attention to this thread, but I'd like to point out that wrt eating insects, really, you're not missing anything. They all taste vaguely like redfish. Phil ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 17:16:36 EDT From: Brian.Hawthorne@east.sun.com (Brian Hawthorne - SunSelect Strategic Marketing) Subject: Measuring the Singularity (WAS: NEWS/UK: How computers...) > > OK, but how could you measure this? The time to produce new dictionaries > probably won't work because increasing technology may have both diminishing > and enhancing effects on the time required to produced each edition. Alright, then how about this for a first-order measurement: the average number of years between editions of dictionaries. Get publishing dates for as many dictionaries as possible, including updates, and for various periods, calcualte the mean number of years between editions for all dictionaries published in that time. > Do the popular dictionary publishers keep histories of the number of > terms added, deleted, or modified? They do now. They didn't then. Rowan HEx: R ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 14:10:13 PDT From: brt!robert@uu.psi.com (Robert Blumen) Subject: EXTROPIAN CORRECTNESS Andy Wilson sez: > Ralph Nader is a better example of someone who publicized the issue > of irresponsible corporations who manipulate figures in a calculus > of acceptable deaths in their cynical product development methods. > His most notable target was the Chevrolet Corvair, which was not > much safer than driving a cardboard box. Not that I agree with > Nader's politics. > > Now that people pay attention to auto safety, it is used as a > selling point, for example Lee Iacocca's air bag commercials. > Some auto manufacturers, for example Mercedes-Benz and Volvo, > considered safety to be a desirable quality for their products > long before the stodgy Detroit crowd copped that clue. > Thomas Sowell recently made the point that the "calculus of accpetable deaths" actually does result in mor lives being saved. He was critiquing the oft-heard "If even one life is saved, then it was worth the money" whatever the amount of money. His point was twofold: 1. given finite resources, they can be used in many different ways to enhance/save lives - safer buildings, safer roads, less pollution, more medical care, etc. etc. and 2. wealth-destrying government policies of regulation (to allegedly save lives) can decrease the amount of wealth available to solve those problems. He gave the example of what happens when a moderate earthquake hits a poor country like India, versus when a fairly large earthquake hits a welthy country like California. Thousands die in India, a few die in California. Another tangent on this topic is an article I recently read on rec.food.veg by Ted Altair. His main point was that humans consistently tend to mis-estimate risk by underestimating larger risks, overestimating remote risks, and being more averse to risks that seem imposed by externalities such as second-hand smoking, than those that arise through chosen activities, such as driving. Peoples' behavior with respect to risk can be in some sense irrational, in that people will expend more resources to minimize a an already low risk, while doing nothing to avoid a high risk. Concerning cars, some questions are: - how much risk reduction is the market willing to pay for - do automobile consumers have a good idea of the amount of risk reduction they are buying, and at what price? Robert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Robert Blumen | Berkeley Research and Trading robert@brt.com | Berkeley, CA ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 17:47:49 -0400 (EDT) From: LEVY%54447@VENUS.CIS.YALE.EDU Subject: BOOK: _The Turing Option_ I just finished reading _The Turing Option_, by Harrison & Minsky, and thought I'd share my impressions with the List. If anyone is interested in reviewing this book for _Exponent_, please let me know privately. The book concerns a young computer genius who builds the first real AI and is nearly fatally wounded in a robbery attempt in which the AI is stolen. The rest of the story describes how his mind is restored with the help of a microchip brain implant of his own invention, and how he tries to figure out who the robbers were. DOWN SIDE: The writing is choppy in spots and could have used some editing. Anyone who has read S. Brand's book _The Media Lab_ will recognize a lot of the technology in _The Turing Option_ as projects currently under Minsky's supervision at MIT, and the novel often reads like a promotional advertisement. The authors are sometimes disappointingly conservative in describing technological advancement; the story takes place 30 years from now, but people are still living pretty much as they do today. After the intial excitement, the story starts to drag toward the middle -- it could have been about 50 pages shorter without losing impact. UP SIDE: Harrison and Minksy display a completely positive, pro-technology, anti-government stance. There is no compromise, and the scathing indictment of Statism at the end of the book could have come right from the pages of _Liberty_. The authors refuse to tie things up comfortably with a Hollywod ending; in fact, the ending is so hard-edged and powerful that I got pretty choked up reading it, despite my earlier cynicism about the book. One of the most sympathetic characters is an MI ("Machine Intelligence"; it considers the term "Artificial Intelligence" derogatory) who is given some of the best dialogue. The hero is reminiscent of John Galt, but, unlike Galt, who seems to have sprung full-blown from the head of Zeus (or Rand), he earns his uncompromising attitude the hard way. In short, _The Turing Option_ is good Extropian reading. Anyone who hasn't read _The Media Lab_ should find the technological ideas in Minsky and Papert's book quite novel. The authors' pro-tech, anti-government attitude rescues the book from its shortcomings. -- Simon! D. Levy ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 #302 *********************************