Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2002 02:09:56 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Dave Hayes <dave@jetcafe.org> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why did evolution fail? Message-ID: <3D732AE4.47255E72@mindspring.com> References: <200209020617.g826HR149472@hokkshideh2.jetcafe.org>
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Dave Hayes wrote: > The existence of the numinous implies the existence of it's opposite. > That way lies the dark side. The trick is to become one with the > universe, then speak at the level of people's understanding. ( This > would be a herculean feat for you, oh master of the pleonastic. ;) ) What did the Buddist say to the hot dog vendor? 8-). [ ... rewind ... ] > >> If a gene exists in an organism but isn't expressed, isn't that > >> effectively the same as removing it? No. > > The answer is that only gene combinations which are actively fatal > > to the organism will be removed from the gene pool. If they are not > > active, then they are not removed. > > But still not expressed, which is what I was driving at. No. They may be expressed in individual offspring. > > Look up the phrase "fellow traveller". 8-). > > Do you mean: [ ... something which I did not mean ... ] http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/gt/ftp/main/m1/m1-11.pdf > The environment does not vote. It is not active in the process. > The mutated individual either adapts or does not adapt to its > environment. Your synthesis breaks down here. Posit a mutation which enables the breathing of Chlorine gas, but not an Oxygen/Nitrogen mix. The environment votes, most explosively. > >> Nonsense. Mental institutions with catatonics are a good counter > >> example. [ ... ] > The extrema is that you can kill someone, but we'll argue about what > happens afterwards. Precisely. > >> They have to find you first. In that, there is the balance of power. > > Read: The Transparent Society > > The difficulty I have in arguing with you is that a lot of my > knowledge comes from experience and observation. A lot of yours > seems to come from books. If I were extremely well read, I would > probably sound like you (heaven forbid), since this is the Nth > time that you've used others' written works to rebut a point. Experiential evidence is anecdotal. Observational evidence is real evidence, only if the observations are repeatable under controlled conditions. I admit that I read a lot, and that I don't really understand why you won't permit macro expansion, as if the other person had argued my case for me. ;^). > By now you must have realized that I don't consider something > authentic just because it's written in a book, or because some famous > or infamous or little known scientist says it is true while providing > a rationale and experimental data. Neither do I; if you feel that I've been appealing to authority, rather than appealing to logical arguments made by others which support my fundamental points, then I guess we're at an impasse, if you are going to insist that I personally argue all my own points from first principles, as a subjective measure of validity. > So. The question remains as to why you continue to put someone else's > words where your mouth is. I suspect the answer is because you are > deeply, almost religiously, mapped into the scientific reality. That's > neither good nor bad, just a statement of what I appear to see. If it > works for you, use it. I'm not trying to change this or anything about > you. Often times I map into this reality too, it is useful for solving > a number of problems. It's certainly useful for solving the problem which stands before this forum: we can, in fact, design a system which has the emergent properties we desire the system to have. And therefore we can design a system that, by it's very nature, will squelch speech which is not topical, e.g. that of "trolls". > What I don't understand is this. If you are going to provide examples > in critical thinking as a suggestion to me or others, why not apply > those examples to the tenets of science? I do. > The scientific method works for some bounded space of problems, but > you never see a scientist apply critical thinking to that method, > wondering whether or not it is appropriate to apply to what just > occurred. You never see a scientist question their own assumptions > far enough to get to the scientific method. On the contrary. It is the nature of science to question assumptions. I see scientists question their own assumptions all the time; all that is required to trigger this is a contradictory observation. Scientists never hold forth facts, only hypothesis. [ ... profoundly bad example ... ] > But example or no example, it is this level of critical thinking I > find absent in science and really most human knowledge. I think you are hanging with the wrong peeps. > > Incorrect. The skills are passed environmentally. > > I know you cannot prove this, so I'll move on. I also believe, if > you'll look, there's recent evidence to the contrary. I know not > where to look, I was speaking with some PhD somewhere about these > matters. I'm sure you'll find it. ;) You're talking about Wiley's work, I presume? > > So you are able to seperate the genetic (your nature) and environmental > > (programming) factors that make up your own psyche? > > Most of them, yes...though I hardly see how this is relevant and I > sure wouldn't phrase it that way. It's important in that it defies the incompleteness theorem; it's "The Truth The Machine Dares Not Utter". > > We would merely be debating the self-consistency of the > > model you are proposing. > > Intellectual masturbation, at best. You are already going to disagree > with me, no matter what model I propose. I give up before I've even > started. Incorrect. If you can demonstrate that your system is self-consistent, then it can be measured against how well it models empirical data, and whether or not it's predictive. Something can be a useful model without being "The Truth". The issue is one of accuracy and correctness. If, on the other hand, the model is not self-consistant, or it fails to be predictive on any scale, and there is another model which better fits all the observable data, then it should be discarded. > > Goedel. > > His proof was the last mathematical proof I ever read. You really > don't need to read another once you've read that one. ;) There is a fine balance to be struck here. Many people believe anything someone in authority shovels into their head, and accept it as if they had arrived at the same conclusions independently. At some point, if they are lucky, they are faced with indisputable empirical evidence that something they were told, and had thus internalized, is not true, and begin to question everything they are told. It is very easy to quit learning entirely, at that point, or to have your rate of learning slow to a crawl. The lucky few grow beyond that stage, and establish a resonableness test for information, and their speed of learning picks back up, though never to the point it was before their filters first cut in. Much like filtering a mailing list, rather than having the information arrive pre-filtered, the crap reduces your overall bandwidth. > > As long as it has the effect of stifiling communition *by trolls*, > > that's all that matters, in the limit, since that is the problem > > we are trying to address. > > You can't orthogonalize this. You can't just apply a transform and have > the troll component vanish, you still affect the other communication. Why can't it be orthogonalized? You are effectively arguing against the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture... which has been proven. All I have to do is pick the correct modular goal-space, where all pro-society goals are located on one side of a boundary manifold, and all anti-society goals are located on the other side of the same boundary manifold. > > You claim this, yet, if you anhilate your enemy, rather than > > merely decimating them, they do not rise again. > > No, their traits appear in another and another and... > > If you can understand this, it's your opposition to the traits that > generates enough energy to pull in those who have them. I understand your claim, but I don't agree with its accuracy. Your argument seems to say that racists exist because racism is reproached by society. And thus, by opposition, engenders racism. I would argue that this is false. I would argue that racism exists because it is possible to distinguish race in the first place. Dark does not exist because light exists, it exists because organs which are capable of percieving the distinction exist. > > Don't be coy. I've read your web site, and I'm well aware of > > your failure to establish what you call a "Usenet Site of > > Virtue". > > I'm not being coy, I've demonstrated many times since. The problem in > that particular case was my failure to observe the dichotomy in place > between troll and netcop. One pulls in the other, no matter what you > do. When I could see that they were just two sides of the same coin, > well that's when I gave up on USENET. You ignored the third alternative: establish your own instance of usenet, rather than attempting to peer with the one where the "netcops" existed. It was your attempts at peering which resulted in conflict, not your running of a server, by and of itself. If your argument is that by running a server by and of itself, you will attract "your own trolls", in the form of "netcops", who, by virtue of their minority membership, are the trolls, then your argument against tolerance of trolls is itself invalidated: if the argument had validity, then you should have merely tolerated their presence, and lived with it. > I won't say it's easy to do, but my successes (which will remain > anonymous lest they get polluted by my failures) have neither troll > nor netcop in them, and they do just fine. No trolls. No netcops. (And > no WAY am I telling where they are, lest they get polluted.) So basically, you are assuring your security through obscurity, rather than through explicit means, while decrying others suggestions of similar implicit means. > > It's not a science yet, but once I feel confident, and of course if > it's appropriate, I may make a public attempt on FreeNet, where > netcops can't do any damage. It is my theory that the trolls, without > netcops to drag them in, will go elsewhere over time. It's my theory that if a troll is being paid to disrupt a forum, that payment need not come in the form of the reactions of a so-called "netcop". > > One you run, instead of expecting someone else to run it for you. > > Straw man. I can't start up a counterpart freebsd list and you know > it. Why not? What's preventing you from doing so? > > Responding... as in the response of blocking future posts? Or > > do you mean engaging in discourse with the troll? > > Discourse, of course. ;) This can not work. Trolls are uninterested in discourse. If they were there for the discourse, then we would not label them trolls. [ ... "chilling effects" of moderation vs. "chilling effect" of trolls ... ] > Either way we lose, so why not make it the most open way and don't > block anyone? As long as the forum serves it purpose to the society, then there is no "chilling effect" which results from blocking trolls. The forum exists to serve the society. The inability of trolls to self-select mebership in a society which does not want them damages nothing. > What about those questions which cannot be dealt with rationally? What questions which cannot be dealt with rationally? > > The problem with this is it ignores the fact that topical > > postings, however unpopular, will be protected by the mutual > > security network. > > That's not what actually happens in moderation. A subset of ideas that > are 'out of the box' enough to be topically suspect (even though of > interest to the community) will be refused entry to the list. Thus, > the list is denied the fresh input of new data, even if absurd. It depends on what you mean by "moderation". > > It defines a specific type of mutual security game. The kind > > which is played by Open Source Software projects on mailing > > lists, news groups, or other communications mediums. > > I don't agree that, in this case, "mutual altruism" has any > differences from "altruism" in this case...for altrusim to be > authentic it must not be required or have strings attached. If you > are saying "mutual altruism" has strings attached, then I disagree > that this is "altruism". Go ahead and disagree. You won't get the games theorists to change their name for the game, any more than I will be able to get people to quit referring to "IRC" as "cyberspace", merely because toturing someone to death there doesn't cause them to die in the physical world. 8-). > > The only moderation which has been suggested recently is the > > moderation of the FreeBSD-security list. > > Yes. Hopefully that issue will subside. It will only happen if the trolling subsides first. > > I don't believe *anyone* has suggested moderation of -hackers or > > -chat as a means of preventing the troll postings to those venues. > > You did. Go read what you wrote. You are practically chomping at > the bit to do this, which means you might be a netcop. If you are > a netcop, trolls will follow you around no matter what you do. Don't > believe me, just watch. Moderation implies a moderator. The system I suggested would work, yet be ultimately undesirable, would not require an individual moderator who would have to be proactive on a post-by-post basis. At worst, it would be a reactive system, which would not require such eternal vigilence to operate as designed. > > Nonsense. I only have a responsibility to the societies of > > which I am a member. > > What? Where's your social conscience? ;=P How can you not be > responsible to another human being, who is a member of the most > basic society...that of all human beings? "Human being" is a definition that encompasse both genetics and programming. If someone lacks the proper programming, then by definition, they are merely homo sapiens, not human beings. > > To put it another way, you have the right to speak, but you do > > not have the right to an audience, or the right to the forum in > > which a particular audience exists. > > This is such a straw man. Did you really read my site? Speaking, > without an audience, is not speaking in the sense that the "right to > speak" implies. I will concede that the audience has a right to > ignore you... If I am a newspaper reporter, do I have the right to ignore you? > > Participation in society is voluntary. > > I disagree. Like you said, societies are in the same competing space > which is getting smaller (by occupation) everyday. You really don't > have a choice. Someone forced you to subscribe to the FreeBSD mailing lists, at gunpoint? > > Maybe my idea of perfection would be that it would be enough for > > it to exist in the first place. 8-). > > Perhaps, but I'm sure this would change after the first troll comes. ;) Part of its perfection is that there would be an immune response that made the troll go away. > >> > If there were 10 and them and 1 of me, then I'd be the troll, and > >> > they'd be the society being trolled. > >> > >> And would your principles apply then? ;) > > > > Yes. > > So you'd leave? Yes. There would be emergent consequences, but I would. > > If you want to self-assemble a community around a different issue, > > or if you want to self-assemble a community around the same issue > > or a different license, then feel free to do so. > > This straw man again? I fail to see how this is a straw-man. NetBSD did this successfully, relative to the 386BSD community. OpenBSD did the same thing, also successfully, relative to the NetBSD community. FreeBSD did the same thing, successfully, relative to the 386BSD community. The noosphere is not bounded to a finite competitive resource domain, as you keep implying with your "move to an island" analogy. There can be a near-infinite number of mailing list servers. > >> Only 8? Amazing. What are they? > > > > None of anyone else's damn business. 8-). > > Well then. You must not have so much faith in them, if security by > obscurity is your method. ;) I have faith in them. It would be easy to be dismissive of someone's arguments, if you knew the axioms from which they arose, since you could merely dismiss the axioms, and thereby, anything arising from them. Similarly, it would be fairly easy to model someone, once you knew their axiomatic basis and, through such modelling, be able to manipulate the outcome of interactions with them ("game the system"). It suits me to not put myself in either of these positions. > > I prefer to think of it as having a multitude of streams, each > > containing a certain classification of data, and filtering by > > means of selecting which streams to monitor. It's significantly > > more efficient, since it means that I don't have to interpose an > > additional latency barrier. > > You cannot classify the streams so efficiently as to demand that > one or three postings in a month be removed from the stream. Are you claiming "it cannot be done", or "Terry, personally, is not capable of the feat", or "Dave Hayes is not capable of the feat, therefore no one else is". Be careful how you answer... > Let's debunk another straw man. You simply -have- to filter email in > today's internet. There's no choice. Even if you have every message on > topic and no spam, you could be connected to 1000s of people. In > otherwords, there are many more people than you, so you must filter in > order that you are not constantly reading mail. We are not arguing the advisability of filtering, per se. We are merely arguing *where* the filtering should be enacted. My argument is that the filtering should be enacted where the costs are least, and your argument is that the filtering should be enacted where the costs are greatest. > So since the filters must be there anyway, why not encourage people to > use them to filter out that which they do not like (trolls)? I have no problem with filtering trolls. I recommend it. At the list server input, before the costs have been multiplied by the number of subscribers. > Each one of them has the same pattern. It's the pattern the netcop > has, if you look at it closely. They also communicate a wealth of > data, if you understand how to look at what they are saying. I do not value the "data" which you are referring to here. If you value it, then you are free to receive it by subscribing to additional mailing lists. [ ... Dave Hayes "manifest destiny of the Internet ... ] > >> No, that's a use that I observe is necessary. > > > > That's the use which you *posit* is necessary. Quintessential > > necessity has yet to be established indisputably. > > I said "observe" and I meant observe. Your dismissal of my assertion > doesn't change my observation, only what you think of it. Provide sufficient data that your observations can be repeated under controlled conditions, to independely gather data which is representative of the data you claim to have observed, make ou own data and collection techniques publically available for scholarly study, or be prepared for people to question the conclusions you draw based on that data. Me questioning your conclusions is not equal to me dismissing them. > > And the reason I argue for preconditionas on particular channels > > is the computational expense inherent in implementing your method. > > Which pales to the computational expense to send and receive all email. Wrong. Email sent to a list has a multiplicative effect. > > It's not a strawman. Do it. The only thing preventing you from > > running a mailing list server or usenet server of your own is you. > > It's a strawman. It's meaningless to the point of "moderating the > freebsd lists", which already exist and communicate valuable > information. Laying aside the argument that I have not been advocating moderating, now you are merely arguing your own convenience. It would be easy to set up a system where there were tiered offerings, e.g.: freebsd-hackers@davehayes.org is a mailing list freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org is a mailing list the mailing list freebsd-hackers@davehayes.org subscribes to the mailing list freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org all traffic to freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org is reflected to the list freebsd-hackers@davehayes.org all traffic to freebsd-hackers@davehayes.ord is sent *only* to the list membership, and not reflected to freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org The Sender: addresses are rewritten by the davehayes.org mailing list software, such that responses to messages received are sent only to the mailing list freebsd-hackers@davehayes.org, if the mail originates from the freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org list. People who wanted the trolling and side commentary could subscribe to freebsd-hackers@davehayes.org, and make their non-topical posts to that list. If they had a topical comment to make, then they could send it to freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, instead. > > It didn't force me to post. I chose to post, in response. > > It is that choice to which I referred to above. "Responding" != "lobbing the first volley". > >> What established social norm? > > > > "No Trolls Allowed > > I never saw that as an established social norm on the freebsd lists. > Really, it looked like the matter had rarely been talked about. It's implicit. Trolls are by definition, off-topic. > > (or birds)". > > Egad, what's wrong with birds now? Charles Schultz reference. > > It's not going to happen. Your ideal is (apparently) not > > emergent. > > They said we would never fly too. ;) Prove me wrong by starting your own list, and making its value proposition compelling enough that I willing subscribe to it. > > Not applicable, unless there is a shared reference frame. > > "Evil" is that frame. Hello? How does someone so booksmart become so > obtuse?...er never mind. ;) Nonsense. I do not consider Rushdi to be evil, merely because Khomeni declared him to be evil. I do *not* share that reference frame, because I do not accept one of the consequences of the acceptance of that frame. > > The results validate or invalidate the effectiveness of the > > means. That's a very different statement. > > Not really. If the results validate the effectiveness, the means > are justified. That is how you think, no? No. What justified is self defense, either by an individual or a society. Some defenses are merely more effective than others. > But if you were king... I'll cross that bridge when I come to it... -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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