Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 03:30:13 -0700 From: Dave Hayes <dave@jetcafe.org> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: Lawrence Sica <lomifeh@earthlink.net>, Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>, Ceri Davies <setantae@submonkey.net>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why did evolution fail? Message-ID: <200208281030.g7SAUJ101187@hokkshideh2.jetcafe.org>
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Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> writes:
> Dave Hayes wrote:
>> Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> writes:
>> > It's the consensus that a consensus defines correctness. 8-).
>>
>> Unfortunately, adherence to this consensus prevents you from
>> seeing anything else that might be there.
>
> IYHO. 8-).
Actually no. It's observable to yourself if you are willing to do the
work or open the eyes a bit. I can't do this for you because...well
that would be a consensus blinding you. ;)
>> For example, it was one time known by consensus that the correct
>> viewpoint was that the world was flat...
>
> And it was, for all intents and purposes. As a working hypothesis,
> it's as good an approximation as, say, Newtonian mechanics.
Yet it wasn't exact, and the example holds as to how consensus can
blind you to the exact truth.
>> > I disagree. There are no counter-pressures, unless you make
>> > it evolutionarily disadvantageous to be a troll, by removing
>> > trolls from the gene pool before they have an opportunity to
>> > breed.
>>
>> The stagnation that would occur in that instance will leave us
>> genetically weak as a race and unable to adapt.
>
> Again, IYHO.
It's not provable, no.
Also, my opinions are seldom humble, being a creature of ego.
>> >> > Rosseau's Theory of the Social Contract permits the state
>> >> > to take such actions as it deems necessary for the common
>> >> > good.
>> >>
>> >> Just why is this Theory more correct than others?
>> >
>> > It's axiomatic in any society that accepts it.
>>
>> That doesn't make it globally correct, or even useful.
>
> It's useful in that it's predictive. That's makes it one up on
> uncontrolled anarchy.
Anarchy is always perceived as uncontrolled. This stems from a
commonly held fear-based view of that state, usually reinforced by
people wanting to make sure you are supportive of whatever government
is in place.
You see, people that talk about revolutions, people who hate this or
that government...they are all misguided. I believe "The Who" said it
best: "Meet the new boss, he's the same as the old boss". Mankind's
evolutionary state is such that no matter what organization or
community forms, corruption, inefficiency and politics will derail any
-real- "good" that said organization can do.
This is not a bad or good thing, it simply indicates the current level
of human evolution. Humans are not ready for the next level at the
moment. This is because it's terribly frightening to most humans to a)
be personally responsible for their own actions, b) honor others
regardless of what they choose to do, c) maintain a state of constant
present-time awareness, d) follow their own internal codes of conduct,
e) find their passion, and f) dance their passion into existance.
Doing any one of these things is difficult even for people we call
"aware" or "cool" or "respectable". Doing all of them can put the
person at odds with "consensus" and evoke a palpable state of fear.
This is why these things are not done commonly. It takes someone
really in tune with themselves.
True Anarchy can only be achieved when enough people who take the
above steps live and work together in the same area. At this point,
there is no need for government, police, lawyers, courts, contracts,
trolls, or even charters for mailing lists. People naturally do the
thing that is appropriate, it never even occurs to anyone to "hurt"
someone else in any way, it never occurs to anyone to be "hurt" by
anything other than someone else's physical actions, and everyone
is able to get along with others as naturally as eating or sleeping.
No one's ready for this, yet. Painting it as evil or fearful just
marks you as someone who isn't there yet or has no reference points to
it. (That's not a bad thing, either.) The lack of reference points may
stimulate you to pick this idea apart. I'll point out now that every
argument you lob against this concept stems directly out of your
fear...don't ask why, I can't explain it logically.
>> >> You look at this as a forced action. I look at this as the test for
>> >> the next evolutionary level of community. If the community can
>> >> withstand even the toughest troll and yet refrain from implementing
>> >> such draconian and fascist measures, that community is on a higher
>> >> evolutionary level than it's counterparts.
>> >
>> > And if not, we'll throw them up against the wall and remove
>> > the genes that permit such dissent to arise in the first
>> > place.
>>
>> I didn't say that. You did. The real solution is for individuals
>> to make trolls irrelavent. Until we can do that as a group, we
>> aren't there yet.
>
> Make them irrelevent by removing them from the gene pool? By
> removing their mail accounts? By denying them DNS services? By
> blocking packets from them at our routers and firewalls? I
> didn't expect you to advocate the Spanish Inquisition... but
> then I guess no one expects that. ;^).
I'm sorry, I guess you forgot that you have the absolute power to
control your online input. You can make a troll irrelevant in a number
of ways:
- deleting the message
- refusing to read the message past a certain point
- reading the message and forcing yourself not to react
- reading the message, laughing, and moving to the next message (my fav)
- reading the message, getting up, going out the door,
enjoying the weather, and forgetting about it
- scanning subject lines in your email box and deciding from that
what to read
- Assigning each message a boolean value called "is_troll".
A genetic algorithm will then be used to attempt to evolve filter
criteria for your mail.
- reading the message, noticing the reaction in you, tracing the
reaction internally, meditating on the reaction,
finding what it is in you that causes you to react,
altering what causes you to react.
These are just off the top of my head. I can come up with others if
you like? ;)
>> > In the limit, though, no one in the majority minds a fasciest
>> > state. So deleting the minority is topologically equivalent to
>> > tolerating them,
>>
>> I don't accept that. Deleting them means there are no more tests to
>> tolerance, which means tolerance becomes weak. If another problem were
>> to surface which required strong tolerance, the problem would not be
>> solv-ed.
>
> So, for example, if you don't constantly pound on your skull with
> a brick, in six months time, the first loose brick you see will,
> without a doubt, be fatal to you from six yards away?
This example is such a straw man. There's a real difference between a
brick and a troll. If you doubt me, try both and see which hurts
more.
> What you are describing is an overly simplistic version of a
> mutual security game.
IYHO. ;)
>> > If you like anarchy, you can always go hang out where anarchy
>> > is welcome, instead of where it is not...
>>
>> This was true before you asserted it, and remains true after your
>> attempt to make it a straw man. ;)
>
> The "instead" is the important part.
Actually, the important part is our disagreement as to where to hang
out.
>> >> Trolls are a necessary consequence to a community of individuals which
>> >> provide evolutionary pressure that benefits everyone in the long
>> >> run. They are not glorified, they should not also be villified. They
>> >> simply exist. Why waste energy seeing them any other way?
>> >
>> > Why punch the guy with the ghetto blaster on the public subway
>> > in the face, and smash the ghetto blaster to bits?
>>
>> Because you haven't learned tolerance?
>
> Because it's not societys job to accomodate the every whim of
> the sociopathic individual?
Accomodation and toleration are a bit different, don't you think?
This is a matter of scope. On a subway, you are pretty much stuck
there (you can change trains of course) physically. On a mailing list,
you have this wonderful button on your monitor that makes anything
anyone says irrelevant...it's called the "off" switch. You don't have
to be on a mailing list. You don't have to read each and every message
on said list.
> There may not be choices we prefer over others. I prefer to choose
> not to tolerate sociopaths.
If they are killing many people daily, I can see this. Killing a
mailing list troll is a bit extreme, don't you think?
>> > The recent spate of trolls on the FreeBSD mailing lists also
>> > belies your theory: if your theory were correct, they would
>> > have been there all along, and not be a relatively recent
>> > phenomenon. How do you explain that away?
>>
>> Just because they don't post doesn't mean they aren't there.
> Er, interesting theory... ever heard of Occam's Razor?
I don't shave, I have a beard. ;)
>> Perhaps they were biding their time?
> I guess we will all die of Ebola next Thursday at 17:05 Zulu,
> since we are all infected, the virus has merely been "biding
> its time". Sneaky bastard, that Ebola... 8-) 8-O.
You are an interesting person, I must say. Your examples are only
weakly parallel to the actual issues, yet you are convinced of them
with the force of a thousand zealots. I see my mirror in you, sir,
and I am grateful for the chance to observe this. =)
>> >> > There's a cost for everything, isn't there? The trick is to
>> >> > choose actions which result in outcomes with the highest total
>> >> > sum, even if that leaves you with a lower individual sum in the
>> >> > short term.
>> >>
>> >> In short, "he who dies with the most toys wins"? That I don't buy.
>> >
>> > That's an incorrect paraphrasing of my statement. The highest
>> > total sum is the *net* sum for all members of the society.
>> > An individual is expected to conform to social norms.
>>
>> That is the entire problem with our planet to date. This is not the
>> original purpose of the individual, nor does this game of maximizing
>> sum have any meaning outside of the society it is in.
>
> Well, I think I speak for everyone
-That- is the number one cause of trolling.
> when I say that you're always free to find another planet,
> where you declare what (IYHO) you believe the purpose of the
> individual to be, and then deport anyone who doesn't agree with
> you....
Man, do you miss the point.
>> Society expects individuals to conform to a standard that may or may
>> not be appropriate for any particular individual to conform to. This
>> tries to limit the genetic search space of the planet. It's
>> counterproductive to the global algorithm. It also backfires
>> constantly.
> Socially approapriate? Appropriate in what context? You are
> starting to sound like Archimedes Plutonium...
Who?
>> >> The real "better", if it exists, exists for everyone.
>> > The avowed racist and the cannibal?
>> Them too.
> No, not them too. The benefits of society do not accrue to those
> who would destroy it.
Perhaps the cannibal learns to eat prisoners, and the racist goes
to live among his kind.
>> > That's like the PETA representative, who, when forced to
>> > address the issue of tigers eating other animals, said "Can't
>> > we just teach them to eat grass?".
>>
>> This flys in the face of:
>>
>> > An individual is expected to conform to social norms.
>>
>> Some individuals aren't here to do what society wants them to. I feel
>> it's dishonorable to expect them to conform.
>
> What about locking them up, and having no expectations of
> them, other than that they not escape, and that they will
> eventually die of natural causes?
Everytime I point to this, you presume that the individual in question
is some sort of extreme mass murderer. Where we fail to communicate is
that I am pointing to the misfit, not the murderer. While both are
nonconformists, there is a difference in degree and manner of their
non-conformity.
The tiger is the tiger. Do not expect the tiger to act like the
rabbit. Yet, each animal has his place in the ecosystem.
> Are you arguing that it is *never* right to segregate people
> from the larger society?
Not really. I'm arguing against this knee-jerk "hang em till they rot"
attitude that I think I see in you applied to people who's only crime
is thinking different than the pack. You keep using murderers in your
examples and I keep using artists.
It's not working.
>> >> Still, Microsoft (damn them) has the highest market share...even tho
>> >> they leave much to be desired as a computer software company...people
>> >> -still- buy their products when better free ones exist. We computer
>> >> experts don't understand this, but it illustrates quite nicely that
>> >> there are more dimensions of optima to "better" than we can quantify.
>> >
>> > Normatively better free ones *do not* exist. Techincally
>> > better, yes; normatively better, no.
>>
>> In effect you are saying if everyone uses FooOS, there's nothing
>> normatively better. Is that really useful?
>
> Yes, in terms of reduction in duplication of effort. There are
> at least 80 million people in the U.S. (my numbers are old; this
> is likely more today) who interact with Microsoft Windows in one
> way or another on a daily basis. The training costs for a single
> application run to US$2,500 per seat. That's $200 billion dollars
> of training, alone, totally ignoring data.
> Whatever wanted to displace it would have to have a normative value
> in excess of $200 billion *above* the equal base value of the OS
> itself.
I thought M$ claim to fame was "easy to use applications that
didn't need training". I don't know if I buy this one.
>> > On a similar note, we have ~1.6 million people in prison, and
>> > another 4.4 million on probation in this country (~2.5% of the
>> > total population). I have no problem with them being forcibly
>> > removed from society for their failure to obey norms of human
>> > behaviour, either.
>>
>> I do. Those are our survival as a race should a real mega-disaster
>> happen. Without them, we don't survive (unless a mega-disaster
>> never happens).
>
> You must see some redeeming traits in the Jeffrey Dahlmer's of
> the world that I don't.
I see genetics, genetic algorithms, and I can kind of percieve the
grandeur of the unanswered genetic question we are solving.
I recognize that "that one asshole" has to be there or we don't
search the space of all solutions completely. I also recognize
we can't know the question, so we shouldn't assume that someone
doesn't have that answer...whoever or whatever that someone is.
Before you go there (which you apparently will), I'm not condoning
murder or rape or any of that. I merely recognize that it is
impossible for me to control other people, and that real control
begins with yourself, which has a better chance of success than
anything else. I don't kill, steal, rape, etc, and that's good enough
for me.
Most of my examples of "sociopaths" were constructed with artists and
misfits in mind. There are those I know who think so different from
you that you would most assuredly panic upon the first attempt to
communicate. One could even say the people in this fora are "misfits"
of a sort since they certainly don't fit the actual norm of society.
You are using murderers because you hate trolls. I consider that
intellectually dishonest, but I give you some slack on that since
I recognize that you are human and have these kinds of emotions.
Also, maybe I should be picking stronger examples of sociopaths,
and maybe the fact that I don't is just as dishonest.
Perhaps I just wish you'd try to see what I'm saying, instead
of swinging that sword so much. ;)
>> > People who can only contribute destruction should be removed
>> > from the gene pool.
>>
>> Nonsense. Creation and destruction are a dance. Both need to exist
>> for either to exist. How would you destroy an old building or find
>> out that a piece of software has security holes without those kind
>> of people?
>
> That's a joke, right?
Nope. That's how the universe works.
> You're not seriously advocating that script kiddies serve a social
> good which is not already served by the people who originally
> discovered the problems, or that those who discover the problems,
> but exploit rather than disclosing them are somehow beneficial to
> society?
There you go with that extrema again. Pick your examples carefully and
you'll always win, right?
Think about it. Without script kiddies and exploiters, how would the
systems get stronger?
------
Dave Hayes - Consultant - Altadena CA, USA - dave@jetcafe.org
>>> The opinions expressed above are entirely my own <<<
"What's so special about the Net? People -still- don't
listen..."
-The Unknown Drummer
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