From extropians-request@extropy.org Thu Sep 15 03:01:15 1994 Return-Path: extropians-request@extropy.org Received: from usc.edu (usc.edu [128.125.253.136]) by chaph.usc.edu (8.6.8.1/8.6.4) with SMTP id DAA10650 for ; Thu, 15 Sep 1994 03:01:13 -0700 Received: from news.panix.com by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA04419; Thu, 15 Sep 94 03:01:10 PDT Received: by news.panix.com id AA17912 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for more@usc.edu); Thu, 15 Sep 1994 06:00:59 -0400 Date: Thu, 15 Sep 1994 06:00:59 -0400 Message-Id: <199409151000.AA17912@news.panix.com> To: Extropians@extropy.org From: Extropians@extropy.org Subject: Extropians Digest #94-9-122 - #94-9-135 X-Extropian-Date: September 15, 374 P.N.O. [06:00:36 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org X-Mailer: MailWeir 1.0 Status: RO Extropians Digest Thu, 15 Sep 94 Volume 94 : Issue 257 Today's Topics: FAQ: two new questions to work on [2 msgs] Interns Sought (tele-commute), c++, tech writers & requirements[1 msgs] Memetics [2 msgs] Meta: List Fees [1 msgs] Minsky's Memetics [1 msgs] Unsolicited mail [1 msgs] URL: June '93 GQ "Meet the Extropians" [1 msgs] URL: Laissez-Faire Books Catalog [1 msgs] Administrivia: Note: I have increased the frequency of the digests to four times a day. The digests used to be processed at 5am and 5pm, but this was too infrequent for the current bandwidth. Now digests are sent every six hours: Midnight, 6am, 12pm, and 6pm. If you experience delays in getting digests, try setting your digest size smaller such as 20k. You can do this by addressing a message to extropians@extropy.org with the body of the message as ::digest size 20 -Ray Approximate Size: 25865 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: szabo@netcom.com (Nick Szabo) Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 03:25:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [#94-9-122] FAQ: two new questions to work on Mark Grant: > "Why do many extropians think NASA, at least in its current form, is a > bad idea ?" I'll take the opportunity to humbly plug my current _Extropy_ article, which contains a critique of the NASA/NSS paradigm I've been developing for over a decade as both a space activist and then as a professional at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). That stint, as a "reource allocator" for the Deep Space Network, taught me first-hand about central planning, in the process turning me into a confirmed Hayekian(*) and curing me of pro-NASA activism. I have since been actively working on alternatives to the central planning paradigm that has suffused nearly all space development scenarios to date, from NSA/Von Braun to O'Neill to most science fiction. >From an anarcho-capitalist viewpoint, NASA is despicable because it lives off stolen property. Quite independent of that argument (while not disagreeing with it), I argue that NASA is bad because it is working on a very narrow, obsolete view of what constitutes space development. In fact from a government neutral point of view, I favor the U.S. military's space development efforts to date over NASA's. The Shuttle and Station are failures along the same lines as the hot fusion program and, if it's ever seriously attempted, the "National Information Infrastructure" -- attempts to impose a naive, preconceived central plan on top of an techno-ecology that is far too sophisticated for any single person or group to understand or predict. The military and commerce, which are much more constrained to provide useful function than NASA, have developed a strategy of automation and decentralization that is much more indicative of the ways space will be successfully developed in the future. The NASA planners, and even more the pro-space lobbyists (which I avoided criticizing in my article, but will spare no venom towards here, partly because they are just so idiotically stupid and partly because I used to by one of 'em and need to atone for my sins :-), these central planner wannabes have practically none of the knowledge needed to execute a successful single space project, much less to plot out a grandoise, all encompassing "space program". As an antidote to the countless tomes of naive bullshit written about space, I recommend a couple real histories: _The Heanens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age_, by Walter McDougall, and _Deep Black_ by William Burrows. On the more technical side I recommend for spacecraft design _Space Mission Analysis and Design_, Werz & Larson eds. For those who want to plot out futuristic development scnenarios like I do in my _Extropy_ article, or prepare themselves early for the blossoming of space industry I suspect will occur 30-50 years from now, you can't go wrong by studying chemistry, chemistry, and yet more chemistry. (That's also not a bad idea for those aiming at nanotechnology or biotech). (*) Before I had ever heard of Hayek. In fact, I heard about Hayek after I went back to college and wrote a paper on Edmund Burke's "Reflections of the Revolutions in France", in which Burke argues that the French Revolution destroyed more valuable cultural instutions than it created. I argued that if Burke had been writing today he would have used modern metaphors, and recast my interpretation of his arguments in terms of ecology, evolution and information. The grader accused me of citing Hayek without the proper references. :-) Nick Szabo szabo@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: "Harry S. Hawk" Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 10:27:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [#94-9-123] Meta: List Fees Hi, After many months of delay we will shortly be removing any remaining folks from the list who haven't paid. THIS DOESN'T include anyone still accessing the list under a trial subscription. (30 day free trial + 15 day grace period). If you haven't paid but want to talk to tanya@alcor.org. If you think you have paid, but get deleted please talk to me first. Thanks, /hawk -- Harry S. Hawk habs@extropy.org Electronic Communications Officer, Extropy Institute Inc. The Extropians Mailing List, Since 1991 ------------------------------ From: levy@cs.utk.edu Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 11:59:29 -0400 Subject: [#94-9-124] Minsky's Memetics Re memetics, Marvin Minsky writes: >Consequently, the very nature of evolution has changed. In the Darwinism >scheme, we can evolve only at the level of genes; however, with memes, a >system of ideas can evolve by itself, without any change in the brain's >biology. Still, memetic evolution will share many of the same phenomena >with genetic evolution--with similar evolutionary fitness struggles, >dependencies and specializations for particular niches, and (with suitably >memes for mutual "intolerantce") some speciation-like phenomena. That >might happen when a philosophy, religion, or 'life style' evolves a new and >convincing argument about why its competitors should be shunned. We would do well to remember that mankind, as an evolutionary experiment, has barely left the starting gate when compared to, say, sharks and cockroaches. Given the lack of evidence of intelligent life at any other point in history, or anywhere else in the universe, it strikes me as very bold to say that "the very nature of evolution has changed". Let's wait a few hundred million years and see what's around then. The genius of Darwin's basic insight remains unchallenged, in my view. -- Simon levy@cs.utk.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------ "And then there's me -- the acme of evolution!" -Calvin, to Hobbes ------------------------------ From: ahg@lgs.win.net (Andre Gauthier) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994 21:49:13 Subject: [#94-9-125] Interns Sought (tele-commute), c++, tech writers & requirements This request has got to be the epitomy of neo-fraudulous wheeling and dealing on the part of a business entreprise. Recruiting "interns" to develop a product which will then presumably be sold for a profit seems a dubious proposition. I trust that no "c" programmer worth his salt will give in to such blatant abuse. ------------------------------ From: William Linden Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 20:00:51 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [#94-9-126] Unsolicited mail A number of people posting on the "occult" groups seem to have gotten the stuff from the Church of Euthanasia as well (and one who thinks two wrongs make a right called for "robotized mailbombing of his site" as a response, sigh....) It looks like he picked addresses at random from what he considered "weird" newsgroups. Will Linden ------------------------------ From: hanson@hss.caltech.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 18:03:01 -0700 Subject: [#94-9-127] Memetics Marvin Minsky writes: >Consequently, the very nature of evolution has changed. In the Darwinism >scheme, we can evolve only at the level of genes; however, with memes, a >system of ideas can evolve by itself, without any change in the brain's >biology. James Baker writes: >I think of the separation between genetic evolution and memetic evolution >as arbitrary. I think it helps to view the gene/meme relation as a principal/agent relation. Genes want to control memes, and can try to do so by coding for brain structures that will favor certain types of ideas and values over others. The problem is that there are far too many possible memes and far too few DNA positions for genes to pick exactly which memes they like. And the value of memes to genes can vary on timescales much too fast for genetic evolution to adjust. This is quite analogous to the way you want your lawyer, say, to do their work for you exactly in your interest, but you can in fact only monitor a small fraction of their behavior. In both cases substantial costs of monitoring result in "agency costs", where the agent can get away with doing things not exactly in the principal's interest. Thinking about the gene/meme relation in this way helps one see the limits of memetic evolution. Just like your lawyer can't get away with just any behavior, and incentive contracts can align their interests with yours to a surprising degree, memes can't evolve just any old way, and genes might be able to control them to surprising degrees, even though they are limited to giving crude broad directions. For example, urges to procreate are likely under the firm control of genes, and should remain regardless of how memetic evolution goes, as long as genes continue evolving as they have. But opinions on how long to wear your hair are likely to be under pretty weak genetic control. Of course once we have uploads and/or substantial conscious/techno control of our genes the whole gene/meme relation will change dramatically. This is an issue that deserves some careful thought. >We now can design systems based on new kinds of "unnatural >selection" that can exploit explicit plans and goals, and can also exploit >the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Huh? I guess I'll have to read the article. Robin Hanson ------------------------------ From: whitaker@extropia.corp.sgi.com (Russell Whitaker) Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 18:23:37 -0700 Subject: [#94-9-128] URL: June '93 GQ "Meet the Extropians" The new *Wired* (2.10, Oct. 94) has a good article on the extropian movement, by Ed Regis... called, of course, "Meet the Extropians". *Wired* will place this online with the rest of the articles in that issue within a couple of months, as is their normal policy now. Interestingly (I wish Ed had seen this), we were covered in a somewhat different manner in the UK edition of *GQ*, issue of June 1993... in *another* major article titled, "Meet the Extropians", by David Gale. The earlier article was mostly built up around interviews with me (at a cafe in London), and telephone interviews with Max and Hans Moravec, among others. Conde Nast UK tells me that the issue sold around 100,000. Not bad exposure. After some searching to find my own ASCII copy to place on the Web, and not finding it (after having migrated from workstation to workstation, hauling DAT tapes around, etc.) - mea culpa to those I bugged! - I finally found a copy on the Anders Transhuman Page in Sweden (thanks Geoff), which was an unformatted version I had distributed on the Extropians list last summer. I have taken a copy of it, cleaned it up, and HTML'ized it, adding a large number of interesting links. Please have a look at it and tell me what you think. What I would particularly like are pointers to URLs for certain phrase/words embedded in the document, including but not limited to: Fujitsu smart drugs [I am working on this one, in a big way...] nutrition exercise posthumanism Hans Moravec Mind Children Carnagie Mellon University mobile robot laboratory David Ross nanomachines Star 21: Strategic Technologies for the Army of the Twenty-First Century exoskeleton bionic devices Wadsworth Center Stelarc artificial intelligence Robert Heinlein welfare state doom-mongering ecologists Marxist demagogues free market anarcho-capitalist Free Oceana Tom W Bell Sociosphere You can check out the Web page at this URL: http://www.c2.org/~whitaker/article.GQ.June93.html -- Russell Earl Whitaker whitaker@extropia.corp.sgi.com I.S. Assistance Center 415-390-3826 Silicon Graphics, Inc. Mountain View, CA. ================================================================ 1.] If you are behind SGI's firewall, here's my WWW home page: http://extropia.corp.sgi.com:8001/people/whitaker.html 2.] Outside the SGI firewall, try these: http://www.c2.org/~whitaker/whitaker.html http://www.mps.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/hpp?whitaker.html 3.] UNDER CONSTRUCTION: *Extropy* magazine archives: http://www.c2.org/~whitaker/extropy-home.html ------------------------------ From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) Date: Wed, 14 Sep 94 21:45:54 -0400 Subject: [#94-9-129] Memetics >X-Message-Reference: #94-9-108 > >Marvin Minsky writes: >>Consequently, the very nature of evolution has changed. In the Darwinism >>scheme, we can evolve only at the level of genes; however, with memes, a >>system of ideas can evolve by itself, without any change in the brain's >>biology. >Robin Hanson writes [deletes] >For example, urges to procreate are likely under the firm control of >genes, and should remain regardless of how memetic evolution goes, as >long as genes continue evolving as they have. But opinions on how >long to wear your hair are likely to be under pretty weak genetic control. >Marvin Minsky writes: >>We now can design systems based on new kinds of "unnatural >>selection" that can exploit explicit plans and goals, and can also exploit >>the inheritance of acquired characteristics. >Robin Hanson writes >Huh? I guess I'll have to read the article. No you don't, because it won't help. They made me compress the article so much that I had to put this whole meme into that one sentence. It simply means that once the meme-systems get advanced enough, like ours, then some of us can decide that we'd rather have immortality than lots of children. Now, snip out those silly genes that inflict upon us thuse urges to procreate. Maybe alter them for better hair-growing. Time to start thinking, now: Down With Genes! ------------------------------ From: KENHOLDER@delphi.com Date: Thu, 15 Sep 1994 00:29:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [#94-9-134] FAQ: two new questions to work on On Tue, 13 Sep 1994 minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) wrote: > Therefore it is essential that we establish remote >permanent colonies away from this planet. I see no plausible alternative to >this--except for the strategy of downloading our cultures, ideas, and, yes, >our individual minds out into the void, in the quaint hope that someone >will receive and decode them. Like, for example, in Fred Hoyle's "A for >Andromeda" or Piers Anthony's "Macroscope", etc. Ah yes, and don't forget Donald Moffitt's _The Genesis Quest_ & _Second Genesis_ (New York: Ballantine Del Rey Books, 1986, 2 volumes) for a real gosh-wow think-big Doc Smith-ish tale of a human culture in another GALAXY that a race of intelligent plants built from data received from a faint radio signal -- excellent story, and gobs of imagination. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Ken L. Holder | The world is not governed by facts or logic. | |-----------------------| It is governed by BS (belief systems). | | kenholder@delphi.com | -- Robert Anton Wilson, COSMIC TRIGGER 2 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------ From: whitaker@extropia.corp.sgi.com (Russell Whitaker) Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 22:09:34 -0700 Subject: [#94-9-135] URL: Laissez-Faire Books Catalog Extropians, fellow travellers, and other book lovers: Here's the URL (the pointer to the WWW web page) for the excellent Laissez-Faire Books catalog: http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/lf/Laissez-Faire.html It's really pretty good. -- Russell Earl Whitaker whitaker@extropia.corp.sgi.com I.S. Assistance Center 415-390-3826 Silicon Graphics, Inc. Mountain View, CA. ================================================================ 1.] If you are behind SGI's firewall, here's my WWW home page: http://extropia.corp.sgi.com:8001/people/whitaker.html 2.] Outside the SGI firewall, try this: http://www.c2.org/~whitaker/whitaker.html ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V94 #257 *********************************