From extropians-request@extropy.org Thu Dec 8 00:14:28 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 AAA18511 for ; Thu, 8 Dec 1994 00:14:26 -0800 Received: from news.panix.com by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA07498; Thu, 8 Dec 94 00:13:51 PST Received: (from exi@localhost) by news.panix.com (8.6.9/8.6.9) id AAA05298; Thu, 8 Dec 1994 00:01:41 -0500 Date: Thu, 8 Dec 1994 00:01:41 -0500 Message-Id: <199412080501.AAA05298@news.panix.com> To: Extropians@extropy.org From: Extropians@extropy.org Subject: Extropians Digest #94-12-296 - #94-12-305 X-Extropian-Date: December 8, 374 P.N.O. [00:00:54 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org X-Mailer: MailWeir 1.0 Status: RO Extropians Digest Thu, 8 Dec 94 Volume 94 : Issue 341 Today's Topics: [1 msgs] BASICS: Connectionism [1 msgs] BASICS: Environment and markets [1 msgs] FEMME: "Sleeping" for success [1 msgs] MEDIA: Radio show impressions (RESEND) [1 msgs] Privatization of National [1 msgs] SING: OK, now I get it [1 msgs] STATS: Potential dilution of Extropianism [1 msgs] VIRUS: Been there, read that [1 msgs] VIRUS: Good Times - rumor? [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: 25686 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Todd J Kaloudis Date: Wed, 07 Dec 1994 16:03:06 EST Subject: [#94-12-296] UNSUBSCRIBE please. this list is way to active to be involved in! thanks for the months of stimulating messages, but i'm afraid i will have to call it quits... sinc. tk ------------------------------ From: plaz@netcom.com (Plaz) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 1994 14:14:27 -0800 Subject: [#94-12-297] FEMME: "Sleeping" for success Dave, Craig and Vince have done a good job of replying to Max on this topic, but I just wanted add a few points: First, I absolutely respect Max for making his own analysis and making his own decision on what he would do if faced with this "delemma". Nor do I begrudge Simon! or Max the right to an opinion on the subject. What does bother me is the absolutist moral sense in which his argument was phrased. Referrences to cheating in sports and false relationships, etc are all taking the extremes of the issue and dealing with them as if it were the entire issue. This is a very absolutist, morallity based argument I would expect to encounter from the mainstream media, religious right or government agencies. As a relativist (sorry Reilly), I would examine each situation in context to determine if I should except the offer. Factors I would evaluate would be: What are the chances of negative repercussions if the facts became public? Does this person interest me sexually in someway? Conversely, am I repelled by this offer or person? How much do I stand to gain? Would this effect my autonomy? And various other things that would be unique to the situation. Can I be truthful in this situation (this mostly relates to reason one)? Direct replies to points made: At 9:44 AM 12/5/94 -0800, Max More wrote: >Pointing out that it's an economic transaction hardly suffices to make it >desirable. No, but it does mean that it should be allowed, and not restricted. >Personally, the thought of having sex or faking a relationship with >someone just to advance my career repels me. Well, I probably wouldn't fake a relationship, but not for moral reasons. My sense of aesthetics tells me I would not enjoy that situation at all. BTW - Faking relationships wasn't what anyone was talking about. >It's no different from bribing to get what you want. See Dave's excellent reply (#94-12-170). >If you then achieve your objective of wealth and success, >you'll know that some of it was not due to relevant talents and efforts but to >manipulation. If you wanted to win a marathon, or a chess game, would you >feel so good about winning if you had sex with your revival in exchange for >their dropping out? These all seem to be personal aesthetics to me. What happened to the great ammoralist? I share some of these view points. I never enjoyed sports much, but I was in the chess team in college. I would never bribe someone to win, but psyching them out was definately part of the game. >> Ferengi Law of Aquisition: >> Dignity and an empty sack is worth: an empty sack. > >I'll keep my dignity thank you, and fill my sack maybe a little more slowly >but with self-respect and satisfaction. I'll admit that I do place value on my dignity, but it's still on the bargaining table. ________________________________________________________________________________ Geoff Dale | Mail me -> mailto:plaz@netcom.com AnarchyPPL Anarch | Visit me -> http://io.com/user/plaz/ Plastic Beethoven | Hire me -> http://io.com/user/plaz/rez.html plaz@netcom.com |AnarchyPPL Charter -> http://io.com/user/plaz/AnarchyPPL.html ________________________________________________________________________________ "Men, they're such bitches sometimes." - Mistress Romana ------------------------------ From: plaz@netcom.com (Plaz) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 1994 14:19:19 -0800 Subject: [#94-12-298] MEDIA: Radio show impressions (RESEND) [Bloody message got mangled, here it is again:] Well, now that the contraversy has died down, I think I'll add my two cents: Vince Kerchner wrote: >szabo@netcom.com (Nick Szabo) sez: > >>Naturally, leather & head-freezing happen to be the flashiest, hippest, >>and most outrageous things that the media will want to cover. > >That may be true, but shouldn't we steer the conversation in the direction >we want it to go, rather than follow the whim of the media? I know this is >hard to do, so it may be a matter of practice and experience. Yikes! "Should" and "we" are two *very* dangerous words to use together. You seem to be thinking that the radio interview was all about extropianism, it wasn't. Mistress Romana was asked to do a radio interview, about herself. She brought Dave and I along because we are working together on her new project (which we didn't get around to talking about, but that's ok, it's a little early yet). Since Romana values the extropian movement highly, that was heavily featured, but no interview with She-who-must-be-obeyed (not to mention Dave or myself) would be complete without talking about leather, therefore it was also featured. I think this is quite proper. I don't think it would be possible to interview an extropian about extropianism alone, since extropianism is a philosophy that values individuality so highly. This is why I don't think "we" "should" be focusing on anything in particular. If you want extropianism to be represented in a particular manner, get your own radio spot. I strongly suspect that is the only way you'll see coverage that will be up to your standards. (Especially since some of your comments appear contradictory to me, and others seem to be exactly what we did.) Not that I mind constructive criticism, but jeeze Vince, a good ol' anarchist like yourself should know better than to use collectivist coordinating tactics with a stiff-necked anti-authoritarian like me. On Caller ID: >>Caller >>ID seemd to be an issue which was rudely carried over from the previous >>show Actually, Dave and I both really wanted to follow up on that. I won the coin flip. The cypherpunk and privacy activist in me just couldn't let such uninformed opinions go by. I actually had a few things to say about the Cantwell bill as well, but didn't want to stay focused on that stuff. >>Alas, these can't be covered in 5-30 second sound bites > >Isn't that all the more reason to be very specific and concise in the time >available? Actually, since we so obviously had much more to say, they want to have us back, perhaps more than once. Anarcho-Capitalism (free-market capitalism): >>As far as I can tell, anarcho-capitalist politics has always been >>part of the agenda. > >Oh really? I had thought that the primary relationship between >Extropianism and politics was that we were against all forms of government >and taxation as being restrictions on "Boundless Expansion", e.g. It seems >strange to me that we would advocate any particular type of political >system in the long run. I realize that this topic is a hot one on the >list, so this may just be a matter of semantics, since anarchy means >"without rules or restrictions". WRONG! Anarchy means "without rulers". Your definition is simply a common misconception. I'd have to check with Max, Tom and other early extropians, since I wasn't there in the beginning, but I'm pretty damn sure Anarcho-Capitalism has been inextricably linked to extropianism from the get-go. It certainly has since I've been here. You might note that anarcho-capitalism is not precisely a form of "government". It's simply a method for getting things done in the absence of said government. It has room for micro-economies of any type, including collectivist. You *have* read Machinery of Freedom, right? >>The sensational issues are probably necessary >>for media exposure. > >I guess this is the problem I have: nobody has successfully explained to me >why we need media exposure. We're not Scientology, after all ;-). If "we" (extropians) could sell our memes as successfully as scientology has sold theirs, I'd be a very happy man. You see, we (Team FQA) would like to sell the extropian meme-set for two reasons, both of them self-serving: 1 - Pure unadulterated profit motive. What? You thought we were going to devote a year of our lifes to this project just for kicks? Be sure when you criticize us you use the standard sociallistic liberal swear words for this, like capitalists, hucksters, commercialized (oh, you got that one already). 2 - "We" (extropians) benifit when more people adopt the memeset and begin defending their liberty and looking forward to advances in science instead of fearing it. On the subject of the Principles: Every time I've tried to introduce someone to the extropian movement with the principles, their eyes glaze over and they don't get it. For the book, we may use a version that doesn't have such stiff sounding names (for the principles) and flowery prose. (Don't get me wrong, they work great on well educated proto-extropians, but that isn't neccessarily our target audience). Which brings me to the next topic, the dilution of Extropianism due to commercialization, which I will handle in a separate post since it's broken off into it's own thread. ________________________________________________________________________________ Geoff Dale | Mail me -> mailto:plaz@netcom.com AnarchyPPL Anarch | Visit me -> http://io.com/user/plaz/ Plastic Beethoven | Hire me -> http://io.com/user/plaz/rez.html plaz@netcom.com |AnarchyPPL Charter -> http://io.com/user/plaz/AnarchyPPL.html ________________________________________________________________________________ "Men, they're such bitches sometimes." - Mistress Romana ------------------------------ From: hanson@hss.caltech.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 1994 13:52:13 -0800 Subject: [#94-12-299] SING: OK, now I get it Vince Kerchner writes: >> I don't expect anything that will look like an instantaneous change >>from the viewpoint of the first uploads (other than disorientation -:), >>or which will cause civilization to completely vanish to outside observers. > >I agree, and suggest the name "gradularity" rather than "singularity". It seems the name "horizon" captures what most people mean, a time beyond which its hard to project from now. "Singularity" shoould be used by those who do project a certain special moment in time or maximal change. Robin Hanson ------------------------------ From: plaz@netcom.com (Plaz) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 1994 14:14:34 -0800 Subject: [#94-12-300] STATS: Potential dilution of Extropianism At 12:20 PM 12/6/94 -0500, levy@cs.utk.edu wrote: >Vince (vincek@intergalact.com) writes: > >> >Statistically it must be true that "as something grows more popular, it >> >gravitates more toward the mean". >> >> I guess I don't see the necessity of that *at all*. If something >> gravitates, that means it changes. If something becomes popular, more and >> more people adopt it. I don't see the logical connection between the two. I agree with Vince. Simon!, you seem to be making the mistake of thinking the mainstream of society is a static point. Powerful movements shift the mean toward them! This is what I expect the extropian movement to do. Not that I expect the mainstream to move all the way over here. Nor do I expect extropianism to remain as close to the main stream as it is now. As the median approuches us, I expect the movement to push even farther out, finding new ways to improve. (So, in other words, I expect the *opposite* of what you predict.) It may have to do so under a different monicker, due to the publics tendancy to freeze labels when it gets its hands on them. Many positions that were once concidered hard-core are now fairly well accepted today. If you live on the fringes of society and refuse to move you will find yourself in the thick of things soon enough. Gays and Lesbians are now only openly attacked by the fringes of society, the religious right, etc. RuPaul, a tranvestite, is now a popular top-forty performer. Check out how mellow the original punk bands sound compared to the popular rock-music heard these days. Leather has become more and more mainstream. Bondage themes have been showing up in mainstream advertising these days. >Extropianism is literally a radical philosophy, because it seeks to get >at the _root_ of what's wrong with the way most people think and behave. >History shows that radical philosophies inevitably get watered down as >they become more popular. For example, compare the radical communitarianism >and poverty of the early Christians (as mandated by Jesus in the Gospels) >with what the Catholic Church rapidly became. > >Max's counterexample of fundamentalist Islam certainly made me re-evaluate >this position, but, of course, the vast bulk of Moslems are not radicals >(and justifiably resent the media's portrayal of Mid-Eastern political >thugs as "Islamic terrorists".) Nor are the vast majority of Jews >Orthodox. > >I will reiterate my comment to Geoff Dale on this topic, that I think that >extropianism still can grow by orders of magnitude before it suffers >the inevitable consequences of mass popularization. I doubt that it's inevitable. In fact, I find that accepting the "inevitability" to be against the principles and not supported by rational analysis. Statistics rarely predicts "inevitability", it usually predicts tendancies. It is, however, good to see that even a nay-sayer agrees that the extropian movement is no immediate danger. On the related topic of "commercializing" extropianism: What's wrong with commercializing? (As long as the philosphy and etc. is represented correctly.) Isn't that the point of the Institute and the magazine? (Well, perhaps not, with it's current Tax-Free status and pricing structure, but I thought that was it's goal.) It is certainly very extropian to take a good idea and run with it, making profit for yourself in the process. ________________________________________________________________________________ Geoff Dale | Mail me -> mailto:plaz@netcom.com AnarchyPPL Anarch | Visit me -> http://io.com/user/plaz/ Plastic Beethoven | Hire me -> http://io.com/user/plaz/rez.html plaz@netcom.com |AnarchyPPL Charter -> http://io.com/user/plaz/AnarchyPPL.html ________________________________________________________________________________ "Men, they're such bitches sometimes." - Mistress Romana ------------------------------ From: nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu Date: Wed, 7 Dec 94 22:50:17 GMT Subject: [#94-12-301] Privatization of National Phil Goetz wrote: > >Also note that when preservation is by private individuals, each person >can at any time decide to "develop" whatever resource he's got. For a >redwood forest to grow undisturbed for 500 years, you would need every >individual who ever owned that forest to decide every year for 500 years >that it was more advantageous to keep it uncut. Just one swing in the >market in 500 years that makes cutting profitable is all it takes to >undercut hundreds of years of conservation. > You run into the same problem with government ownership of unique resources, though. Someone in the government can decide that personal advantage or national interest requires cutting down an old-growth forest. Since governments tend to own larger territories than individuals, I believe that they have a greater chance of making mistakes on a larger scale. I don't believe that people usually have huge amounts of control over "their" government. At the moment, I think that once people have the ability to destroy forests fairly easily (whether by cutting them down or by war), the only way to preserve forests is by convincing almost everyone that forests are too valuable to destroy. Nancy Lebovitz ------------------------------ From: nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu Date: Wed, 7 Dec 94 23:01:02 GMT Subject: [#94-12-302] VIRUS: Been there, read that levy@cs.utk.edu wrote: >fcp@nuance.com (Craig Presson) wrote: > I think we've lost an attribution here: >>>By way of continuing this thread.Does anyone believe it possible to insert >>>mind-viruses into subjects without them being aware of the process? It depends on what you mean by "aware". I think that most people don't notice it when they're being trained in the basic premises of their culture, such as how far personal space extends--and that kind of thing *is* a mind virus--people try to train others into "proper" behavior. >>Pretty far-fetched. But years ago, before either of us had heard the term >>"meme", Steve Robsky (then at DG with me) buttonholed me with one of his >>wild-hair ideas: "What if there was an idea that worked like a virus, that >>once you had this idea, you couldn't shake it, it would just keep running >>through your head like some old pop song? Worse yet, it might be contagious. >>And what if the idea of a mental virus worked like that?" > >Read "The Zahir", a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, that addresses this >topic. You can find the story in _Labyrinths_, a collection of his >short stories. There's also "Rum Titty Titty Tum Ta Tee" by Fritz Leiber. Nancy Lebovitz ------------------------------ From: nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu Date: Wed, 7 Dec 94 23:18:08 GMT Subject: [#94-12-303] BASICS: Connectionism I'd like a more formal definition of connectionism before I started discussing it, though I'm probably in favor. My favorite non-fiction tends to pull together information from diverse disciplines like Hofstadter's _Goedel, Escher, Bach_ or Gross's _Shylock_. On the other hand, it may be necessary to have some people working in tightly defined disciplines just so that they can focus enough to pin down the facts for the rest of us to make connections between. Nancy Lebovitz ------------------------------ From: mcpherso@lumina.ucsd.edu (John McPherson) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 94 17:10:07 -0800 Subject: [#94-12-304] VIRUS: Good Times - rumor? Gregory Sullivan (sullivan@blaze.cs.jhu.edu) wrote: your message itself is yet another virus. Now there is a war in meme space with participants: 1) "Good Times" virus (which probably does not exist) 2) The warning about the "Good Times virus 3) The warning about the warning about the "Good Times" virus May the best virus win. gfs Of course, now some clever Extropian hack will actually create a "Good Times" virus, just to enter and win the competition, and it may do something like this: a graphics sprite looking remarkably like Romana will appear for a brief time on the screen every now and then, and it will be carrying a little sign saying "Click me if you can!" After a couple of days of trying to track down the little sprite, which zigs and zags and occassionally jumps through wormholes on your screen, you finally catch it and click ... and find it's a hypermedia link leading to "Good Times in Extropia" ;-) :-) John McyPherson ------------------------------ From: tburns@mason1.gmu.edu (T. David Burns) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 1994 15:06:58 -1000 Subject: [#94-12-305] BASICS: Environment and markets At 8:30 AM 12/7/94, Jay Reynolds Freeman wrote: >Do would-be libertarians or anarchocapitalists have any >mechanism consistent with their philosophy to extract economic benefit >efficiently from resources whose privatization is for some reason >impractical, or to assign damages caused by substances of obvious human >origin, whose means of dispersal renders tracing their specific origin >effectively impossible? I tried to raise this issue but no one bit. Seems like the drill is, privatize everything, but if you can't privatize it, use a charity, and if that doesn't work, well, it's probably not any worse than the mess we have now. Which means, there's plenty of space for entrepreneurial improvements. Dave tburns@mason1.gmu.edu ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V94 #341 *********************************