From: Michael Butler (mmb@best.com)
Date: Tue Dec 02 1997 - 17:11:45 MST
On Wed, 3 Dec 1997, Michael Lorrey wrote:
<snip>
>pathetic
<snip>
That pretty much sums up how we're talking past each other.
> Ok, how about Specialized lists??? Just so you don't have to admit your
> feelings of being holier than thou.
Pot and kettle, friend.
> I joined the list after it went public as well, but was a member of the
> transhuman list long before that, and was waiting for a while for
> extropians to open up.
And I predicated my joining on it being closed, and was disturbed when I
discovered it wasn't.
> You don't see network television as elitist media? EXCUSE ME??? REALITY
> CHECK>>>>
I said "no more than". As a mathematics-competent person, you shuold be
able to re-read what I said and see that I might have meant (and did
intend) an inequality, less-than-or-equal. It is you who turned that into
an equals sign.
> > I don't see this as isolationist. Nor any more elitist than a gas station.
> > TANSTAAFL. My attention is worth something, AND SO IS YOURS. Get it? :)
>
> What is the current market rate. No, not your personal rate, the MARKET
> RATE.
Beside the point, since Max has stated he does not want to make money per
se from the list.
Seeing the utter lack of successful pay subscription services on
> the net, the value of your attention, on a statistical basis, is
> effectively nil.
Perhaps, but I don't use my attention statistically, nor in the Joe&Marge
Sixpack pursuits of watching the Simpsons or X-files or Home Improvement
or football.
> > Allow me to render a free translation: We should be perfect people, and
> > then any system would work.
>
> ad hominem et al....
I don't see an ad hominem here.
> > >THose
> > >who are too stubbornly newbie for it to have any effect on usually dig
> > >themselves deep enough for some real fun once they get into rude enough
> > >territory.
> >
> > I don't want to play that game so much any more.
>
> As the star of Starship Stroopers says: A Citizen is a person who makes
> the survival of the human race a matter of their personal
> responsibility.
Indeed. And this list could help more if it were higher signal. QED.
> > Au contraire. The tragedy of the commons is being enacted out all around us.
>
> Your motives speak for themselves. You are a) Trying to figure out a way
> to limit the level of participation in the list in a manner that
> hopefully increases the average intelligence of the list content. b) You
> propose to do this by charging people for posting priviledges, which is
> tantamount to a tariff on the free exchange of ideas. Your error is that
> you wrongly assume that there aren't people who don't mind spending
> money for the right to be complete idiots.
I didn't assume that. You assume I assume that: that the pricetag will
suffice. It won't. But it *will* prevent an inordinate number of bad
examples from giving newbies bad lessons. I'll filter too, if I have to. I
want to try the experiment. You are convinced it won't work.
We don't have a lot more to say to each other on this topic, I think.
> free. If Max wants to make money on the list, I suggest he use his free
> market rights and start using advertising as an income source.
But he doesn't, so that's that. :) :)
Cordially,
MMB
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