From: Michael Lorrey (retroman@tpk.net)
Date: Tue Mar 25 1997 - 12:54:06 MST
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>
> > When we're discussing the nature of political possibility, I think the
> > population economists would think of is not the dozens or hundreds of
> > highly educated or popular people, but the millions and billions of
> > people who have had their little inputs into society. When, for
> > example, you advocate anarchist solutions, you are saying that all
> > societies, for all of human history, have been making the same mistake
> > of having government. That's a very strong claim. Can you pit your
> > logic and experience against the thought and experience of billions of
> > people?
>
> Yes, I can. Reality is not a matter of consensus. It exists the way it
> does regardless of what 5 billion people think. If one man has a clearer
> vision of some facet of it, and he can demonstrate it, the masses have
> no choice but to abandon their mistaken consensus, or it is they who are
> irrational. The existence of governments is a powerful consensus, and
> it is hard to fight, because it is hard to do controlled empirical
> research on the hearts of the multitude. But it is not impossible to
> observe and draw some reasonable conclusions, and to attack some bad
> ideas and revisionist history.
>
> > And once you have, can you convince those people that you're not nuts to
> > begin with?
>
> That's not easy sometimes, because the definition of "nuts" is usually
> by consensus rather than objective criteria. But it is necessary to try.
My sentiments exactly. SOrry for the waste of bandwidth, but I couldn't
help responding to this. Using the definition shrinks have that insanity
is a view of reality that differs from the majority, todays insanity is
tomorrows conventional wisdom, just as if one were to beleive in
evolution in the 1800's one was considered to be nuts, or at least a
tool of the devil, or both, yet today it is creationists that look like
the nut cases (depending on how "nuts" you yourself are).
I tend to ignore people when they say that such and so is a crazy idea,
or that person is crazy. It tends to make me want to check it out more,
because of my own experience, those that according to mundanes seem to
be nuts tend to be rather prescient in the end.
--
TANSTAAFL!!!
Michael Lorrey
------------------------------------------------------------
mailto:retroman@tpk.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive
Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com
Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/
Mikey's Animatronic Factory
My Own Nuclear Espionage Agency (MONEA)
MIKEYMAS(tm): The New Internet Holiday
Transhumans of New Hampshire (>HNH)
------------------------------------------------------------
#!/usr/local/bin/perl-0777---export-a-crypto-system-sig-RC4-3-lines-PERL
@k=unpack('C*',pack('H*',shift));for(@t=@s=0..255){$y=($k[$_%@k]+$s[$x=$_
]+$y)%256;&S}$x=$y=0;for(unpack('C*',<>)){$x++;$y=($s[$x%=256]+$y)%256;
&S;print pack(C,$_^=$s[($s[$x]+$s[$y])%256])}sub S{@s[$x,$y]=@s[$y,$x]}
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