Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 02:58:31 -0700 From: Dave Hayes <dave@jetcafe.org> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why did evolution fail? Message-ID: <200208290958.g7T9wa110717@hokkshideh2.jetcafe.org>
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Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> writes:
> Dave Hayes wrote:
>> > I disagree with your claims that adversity is a positive evolutionary
>> > pressure (anything which is not potentially fatal prior to reporduction
>> > is not an evolutionary pressure, positive or otherwise).
>>
>> So you are disagreeing with most academic evolutionary theory?
>
> Just yours. 8-).
You'll have to show me where academic theory says that adversity isn't
an evolutionary pressure. That flys in the face of academic theory,
let alone mine.
>> > I disagree with your thesis about mankinds "current evolutionary state"
>> > (which has so many assumptions in it that it's hard to know where to
>> > start picking it apart).
>>
>> It's not my thesis. There's the first assumption. It's not even a
>> paper. Look around you.
>
> Wrong meaning of the word "thesis", but of course, you knew that...
Look up "assumption". You have many of them. ;)
>> > I disagree with your preposterous claim that "corruption, inefficiency
>> > and politics will derail any -real- ``good''" that could arise from an
>> > emergent organization.
>>
>> You can't provide an example to refute this claim. Go on, try.
>
> Define what you would consider an acceptable proof.
Ok. First you must prove to me that the notion of "proof" exists and
is applicable to testing ideas... ;)
>> > Oh yeah: I also disagree that organizations and communities are always
>> > self-assembled, and can not be the result of a conscious design -- a
>> > thesis upon which a lot of your faith is apparently based.
>>
>> Just where did you get this from?
>
> Dave Hayes wrote: ..."no matter what organization or community
> forms"...
Yeah and...? I said:
> 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.
Where did you get "self-assembled" and "cannot be the result of a
conscious design"?
> [ ... the Unibomber ... ]
>> So this person was attempting demonstrate the lack of readiness
>> by attempting to change society using destruction? Doomed to failure
>> he was, not only would the demonstration be lost on most people
>> (including you), but naturally society would react, find him, and
>> "rehabilitate" him.
>>
>> How ironic.
>
> I understood his reasons. I disagree with his goals, and further,
> I condemn his methods.
I don't agree nor disagree with his goals or methods. I think his life
is a lesson for those who wish to see it. I am arrogant indeed,
( perhaps even more so than you ;) ) but I'm not so arrogant as
to think that I really have any say over whet that person should
or should not have done, fought for, or believed.
Now if I had ever met or talked to the man, I might have offered him
my opinion...but that never happened. ;)
> As an aside, I have no idea where people keep getting the idea
> that prisons are for the benefit of prisoners instead of the
> benefit of the societies which build them.
Unfortunately governments, in their quest to look all merciful and all
knowing, started calling such places "rehabilitation" centers. In
actuality, I perceive this naming to be more like "re-indoctrination"
centers, but they really function as "isolation" centers.
I could also call them "evolutionary" centers, but you'll violently
disagree again. =)
>> You consistently seem to put worldviews up on this altar for academic
>> sacrifice. If you can get past that need, perhaps you are ready to
>> see what I am saying. Until then, I very much doubt you can extract
>> your brain from the sea of assumptions it sails upon enough to even
>> consider parts of real truth. I'm afraid this must all seem so
>> antithetical to your worldview that it's all to be rejected outright
>> by you.
> Yes. Mostly because ideas can be tested, and refined as a
> result of having been tested.
It is an error to test something without the means of testing it or
even the means of understanding it. Mankind's academic arrogance is
that it can understand anything.
>> This is why I disagree that you understand. If you really understood,
>> you would have long since removed the argument from the academic arena
>> of thesis/proof/experiement, and attempted to interact with it in the
>> arena of what you have experienced yourself.
> The arena of the personal anecdote?
There is no other real arena that you'll work with in your lifetime.
>> Some concepts in truth cannot be expressed in the thesis framework,
>> and are yet nevertheless true.
> And it is only you who are looking at the cave mounth, instead
> of at the shadows cast on the back wall of the cave?
Not only me. Some others can too. Every so often I run into someone
who's glimpsed it.
> At this point, you are decribing your personal faith, not truth.
I haven't even started to describe my "faith", which is mostly
irrelevant to the truth.
> [ ... ]
>> > It remains that there are people who act as they do, not out of
>> > an intrinsic rightousness, but out of a fear of the penalty.
>> This is no better than slavery.
> We prefer the term "speed limit".
Those are just as insane. "Society" builds roads and vehicles that,
together, that make travelling 100mph safe. Then they put 65mph speed
limits on them and fine people for doing the obvious and logical thing
when no one else is on the road. This has the effect of "training"
people to remove their own natural judgement and go by force of letter
of the law. Then people bemoan the lack of good judgement in people
today. Hello?!?
This is the kind of thing that makes me distrust any notion of an
"authority" holding forth on what to say and what not to say. (You'll
notice I don't leave that point unsaid if I can help it.)
> [ ... ]
>> I recognize it, but normally I render such dishonorable intrusions
>> irrelevant. I don't kill people...this isn't because there is some
>> law with a penalty preventing me...it's because *I* choose not to
>> kill people. And note...you can't make me. Period. There's a lot
>> of other things I don't do on the same basis.
> The correct term for a person in this state is "amoralist".
Gee, a loaded term. What a shock that you would use it. =P
> It arises from the (often blurred these days) distinction between
> morals (imposed from without) and ethics (imposed from within).
This is not blurred in me I assure you.
> This works well if one's ethics happen to coincide with the
> morals of the society of which they are a member, and poorly
> otherwise.
You mean: it works well for -you- if -their- ethics coincide with
-your- morals. ;)
>> As if humans were modellable as a collection of automata with preset
>> behavior and reaction to external stimuli. Another reason I don't
>> believe you understand.
> Why is it that everyone believes that finite state automatons
> are the ultimate answer to modelling complex systems?
Good question. Tell that to the society that is trying to mold humans
into that image.
> The modelling I'm talking about is based on games theory, not on
> automata, and has its basis in mutual security games.
Why don't you explain this model?
> [ ... sociopath, definition of ... ]
>> > No, I define it in terms of violent disruption of the established
>> > social order.
>>
>> That explains our disagreement then. |)
>
> The alternative to "sociopath" is "terrorist"; I was giving the
> benefit of the doubt.
I've been talking about misfits, which I believe describes a troll
adequeately. You are not going to get me (or most anyone else) to buy
that a "troll" == "terrorist".
>> > The interesting thing is that you seem to believe that the noosphere
>> > is somehow just as limited and constrained as physical geography,
>> > for some reason, and that, as a result, it's important for your
>> > ideas to colonize someone else's established space, rather than
>> > creating your own.
>>
>> Ok, I'll bite. Why do you say that?
>
> Your inital posting on the subject was to this mailing list, rather
> than to your own mailing list, as were the troll postings which you
> were defending so zealously in the posting.
Zealous defense of trolls? Har. More evidence that you did not
understand my initial posting, nor do you understand my position.
Let me make it clear.
Trolls != bad. Trolls != good. Trolls exist as a result of a
community. Trolls cannot exist outside of a community. Conclusion:
Trolls are irrelevant and not worth any wastage of energy.
That's what I first said, paraphrased.
You may disagree with the conclusion, but I won't buy that it's any
logical or academic thought which has gone into that disagreement.
It's pure emotion, as human as it gets, that causes you to disagree
with that.
> Perhaps you should be questining your seeds, and not the
> earth you inter them in.
Oh I don't question the seeds, they work when planted in the correct
soil.
There is no doubt in my mind that the earth I am currently planting
them in is quite infertile and does not contain the correct
experiential nutrition to allow them to grow and bear fruit. I know I
am planting for the sheer joy of planting, and I even find myself
enjoying the ground's rejection of what it cannot possibly understand.
It's a USENET thing. If you haven't experienced USENET in the late 80s
early 90s, you can't possibly understand.
> [ ... ]
>> > It's a good example of behaviour which is intolerably sociopathic,
>> > in the larger context.
>>
>> But it's not real. There simply aren't any cannibals who settle here
>> and live very long.
>
> Quit attaching conditions like "and live very long". It implies
> social action,
I don't always consider self-defense to be a social action.
> and your argument is predicated on the idea that individuals should
> be tolerated without social action as recourse for social
> misbehaviour (e.g. blocking postings from trolls, etc.).
I think they should. I'm a fool if I think that is going to happen,
because this is humanity we are talking about. But I think that
would be the ideal.
> Either your argument is univerwsally valid, or it's not.
There's that excluded middle you are excluding again. ;)
> [ ... ]
>> It's extreme to the absurd, which suits your
>> purposes, but I don't buy absurdum argumenta easily. Consider this
>> one: someone invents a perfect mind control drug and then becomes a
>> medical doctor who prescribes these to his patients. Eventually
>> the entire society is enslaved. Therefore we should not have doctors,
>> since they could very well do that.
> It's a cost/benefit and risk analysis, which comes out very much
> in favor of having doctors.
I dunno, those flu shots they keep giving have mutated...
> Getting back to the trolls, however, you have yet to articulate a
> downside to them not being there.
I've articulated it a lot, you have just decided not to see it.
>> > That's false. You apparently believe that to understand it is to
>> > agree with it.
>>
>> Not at all. You can disagree. I merely contend that you don't
>> understand what I am mostly pointing at enough TO disagree with it
>> meaningfully. You can still disagree, it's your right as a human being...
>> at least untill your troll-control advocacy bears it's fruit. ;)
>
> I'm not advocating it at this point; I haven't been driven to
> it (yet).
There's hope!
> If it happens, you will know by the first example of my advocacy of
> such an idea would be a draft RFC, and a set of patches for
> sendmail, most of the mail clients in -ports, and plugins for
> Outlook, Eudora, and perhaps Netscape.
> I recognize that this would provide some rather serious capability
> for oppression, which could be abused in the future at some point
> in time
Not "could". "Will".
> But make no mistake: it's quite possible to "change the laws of
> physics" for email transport for the net to squelch trolls, SPAM,
> ...and politically "undesiarble" speech (an unfortunate side effect
> whose cost would have to be excceded by my perception of the cost of
> trolls).
I can't imagine anything ever exceeding that cost, sorry.
> [ ... ]
>> > Personally immune? Or socio-situationally immune ("it can't happen
>> > because it not being able to happen is an emergent property of the
>> > system")?
>>
>> Personally immune. The buck stops at you.
>
> So socio-situanal immunity is not permissable?
Not if it dishonors another, IMEO.
>> > Isn't it kind of hypocritical to elevate immunity, on the one hand,
>> > and bemoan a systems immune response, on the other?
>>
>> You are assuming a systems immune response where none is indicated.
>
> Blocking trolls -- or SPAM -- as a result of the content of the
> postings isn't a social immune response?
SPAM should be a separate discussion, as I argue SPAM is a result of
the culture's obsession with attention-marketing as the only means of
increasing sales. SPAM is kind of a resonant response of this
obsession, and can never really be immunized as long as the culture is
so greedy. Any response to SPAM is one of those guilty type knee jerk
responses...kind of like when mom catches you with a cookie and you
say "My brother did it, he needs to be spanked".
I don't see blocking trolls as a social immune response. I see it as
an attempt to squelch "bad ideas and thoughts" by a community, kind of
like book burning or those fools who painted underwear on Goku on the
DragonBall DVDs.
>> > Tell that to the people who invented mailbox quotas.
>>
>> 4k still doesn't make an appreciable dent in them.
>
> IYHO.
There's some people that get 1MB of spam a day on services I run.
I'm gonna bitch about 4K? Hardly.
>> > I notice you failed to address bandwidth cost related issues.
>>
>> Mostly because I think that is cheaper. Each post of the mailing list
>> incurs the same cost. High membership and high volume means the troll
>> is taking a very low percentage of the total cost. High membership and
>> low volume lists are usually moderated, so are irrelevant. Low
>> membership lists don't get the fan-out to be expensive on a per
>> message basis.
>
> I'm not talking about amortized cost, I'm talking individual cost.
> You can't dismiss it that easily; in Japan, it costs per packet to
> send packets (as one example).
I can inversely. Consider the case in which normal mail (non-troll,
non-spam, on-topic) is sent at a high rate. Should people be told they
can't post on-topic messages cause it costs a percentage of the list
extra money?
>> >> Unsubscribe to the mailing list? ;)
>> > And let the troll achive his goal uncontested?
>>
>> Is that his goal? How would you know? Some trolls like to be heard.
>> Others like to engender flamewars. Some are simply trying to get an
>> unpopular message out.
>
> Maybe I don't care about the goal, I care about the effect.
> How about you come up with a way to de-fang the effect, and
> then I can agree with you about trolls being socially
> permissable?
What "fang"? People let trolls affect them, so they are able to. When
people (even good ones) leave due to trolls, I reckon they aren't so
good after all since a troll can get them to leave. Trolls don't bug
me any. So there's no "fang" for me at all to remove.
> [ ... ]
>> > Only to have the troll follow, because, with everyone unsubscribed
>> > to freebsd-hackers and subscribed to freebsd-hacker instead, there
>> > is no one to piss on?
>> > That moves the problem, but it hardly solves it, does it?
>>
>> You can't moderate a troll without moderation, and moderation tends to
>> stifle creative discussion. (Personally, I can't wait until Freenet has
>> the equivalent of USENET.)
>
> Trolls also tend to stifle creative discussion.
I've never seen this happen, and if I am in the discussion...I've
never let this happen on my end.
You can't seem to see information content in Trolls. I see a wealth.
> How can one be "bad" and the other "good"?
Naming?
> [ ... ]
>> > What if it's "the psyche of the community" itself which you value?
>>
>> Then you are doomed, even without trolls. Psyches change all the
>> time. You've often heard someone bemoan change, this will be no
>> different.
>
> If I'm doomed, then let me come to that cliff naturally, instead
> of having some jerk push me.
Now there's something you've said that I can truly respect.
Have you tried moving out of the way of the jerk at the last minute,
so he falls and you don't? =)
>> > No, I like freedom, both from oppression of the free exchange of
>> > ideas by a central authority, and oppression of the free echange
>> > of ideas by individual bullies.
>>
>> Censoring a troll is oppressing that troll's idea, whether from a
>> central authority or by a consensual group of bullies.
>
> If the troll is a bully, I will accord his rights the same merit
> which he gives to others, which is "none". It is not "bullying"
> to act in self defense.
It -is- bullying to suppress the expression of unpopular ideas.
>> > Defeating the neghborhood bully doesn't of necessity breed another
>> > neighborhood bully, particularly if word gets around that bullies
>> > have "accidents" in that particular neighborhood.
>>
>> Without that lesson of learning to defeat the bully, you might never
>> understand what it is to overcome social adversity.
>
> If social adversity is so good, why overcome it at all, and
> just wallow in it for all eternity?
We have been, if you haven't noticed.
> I have to agree with William Tecumpsah Sherman on this one.
Who?
>> >> >> Accomodation and toleration are a bit different, don't you think?
>> >> > No. If you tolerate a behaviour, you implicitly condone that
>> >> > behaviour.
>> >>
>> >> Oh please. Not this tired old argument. Again, you are violating your
>> >> "excluded middle" paradoxia. It's possible to neither condone nor
>> >> decry a behavior, don't you think?
>> >
>> > Condone: to pardon or overlook voluntarily; especially : to treat
>> > as if trivial, harmless, or of no importance
>>
>> Ok, wrong word. s/condone/support/go;
>
> I used "condone". You aren't going to get me to use a diametrically
> opposed word to "decry" in this context, so you might as well give
> up. 8-).
I never give up. X) And you are still violating your own excluded
middle basis.
>> >> Additionally, what kind of egotistical concept is it where you
>> >> have to render forth on each behavior you see?
>> > On each behaviour you see that you find antisocial, you mean.
>>
>> If I were to spend my time holding forth on each behaviour I see that
>> I considered "antisocial" or bad, I'd be holding forth the rest of
>> my life 24/7.
>
> And the change from the current status quo would be... ?
...a lot let me tell you. Instead of one message to one small mailing
list per 3-4 hours, I'd be constantly posting mail and news messages
every waking moment. ;)
>> > It's human.
>>
>> It takes every kind of people.
>
> No, it doesn't.
Yes it does. Robert Palmer can't be wrong and sound so good.
Besides, genetic diversity helps search the solution space for the
answer, whatever it may be.
>> Some creative trolls find ways to get past blocks. One more dance for
>> people to do in their copious spare time.
> If a troll can break a 1024 bit key, then we have larger issues
> we need to worry about. 8-).
There are those who assert this is currently possible. It's likely
to be done if your key was pseudo-random. ;)
> [ ... ]
>> > I disagree with your efficiency claim. It is more efficient for
>> > the trolls to not exist.
>>
>> I'd agree with that, but I disagree that trolls are going away any
>> time soon.
>
> Why do you believe that they will have any more choice in the
> matter than the people England sent to Australia in the 19th
> century?
Because I don't consider them criminals.
> [ ... ]
>> Science is a religion. Like most religions, you see what you want to
>> see; usually this is not truth.
>
> Science is a process, not a religion.
Nonsense. It has tenets, commandments, and even a preferred way of
thinking to hand out to it's constituents.
> [ ... ]
>> > My theory of what? Of why the trolls are suddenly raising their
>> > pointy heads?
>>
>> Yes.
>
> They are being paid.
Damn, my black helicopter is still in the shop. I'll just use Bill's.
;)
>> > Of my model for some Open Source projects?
>>
>> Good god, hasn't everyone in the world already held forth on this one?
>
> Not in any predictive sense, no. Mostly, it's just been hand
> waving.
That tends to happen with the presence of the pungent by-products of
digestion....
>> > You are talking in subtexts, refusing to address real points, or
>> > permit them divisibility from a cloud of issues, so I have responded
>> > in kind.
>>
>> There are no real points, and you can't usefully orthogonalize the
>> world into finite integer divisions to be analyzed separately. The
>> subject and the object are one.
>
> You failed statistics and modern physics, didn't you? 8-).
Actually those were subjects I did well in, which is why I don't trust
the former to say anything about the latter. In fact I don't trust the
former at all, but that's another discussion.
> There *are* real points;
Shall we talk about what is and is not real? ;)
> even if you can't identify them, you can identify their effects.
You -think- you can identify their effects, presuming you have the
referent points to correctly identify the effects that are actually
occuring.
> And the idea that "observer effect" has any validity above a quantum
> level is a popular misconception.
Suit yourself.
> [ ... ]
>> > Alternately, you can post your thesis on a web site somewhere,
>> > and post the URL, rather than continually alluding to it, but
>> > never saying it.
>>
>> That would not serve the best and highest good. So I won't.
>
> Rather than finding like-minded people and acting in concert,
> you would prefer to rage against the wind?
Not only would I prefer it, it's my way. I am my Don Quixote, Lord of
La Mancha.... ;)
> [ ... on racially motivated discord ... ]
>> > Stay out of the middle, and let one wipe out the other, if it can?
>>
>> Basically.
>
> That's appalling.
I'm glad you approve. I have no choice, but I bet you can't determine
why.
> [ ... ]
>> > So CBS is on a Jihad against you, personally, because they deny
>> > you air time to vent your views?
>>
>> Actually, it's FOX that's on the jihad. CBS wants to sign me to
>> a three-year contract. ;)
>
> The point is still valid, even if you choose to talk around it:
> why is there a "right" to the forum of mailing lists, but not to
> access to national media networks?
I thought the internet was destined to give those rights, so that the
national media networks could stop reinforcing consensual reality in
the way -they- wanted, enabling the people to reinforce their own.
> In the limit, all we are talking about is closed vs. open media,
> for this particular argument. If you admit the permissability
> of closed media, then I don't see the problem with the method of
> closure.
I would have no problem with this as long as we get some OPEN media,
somewhere...without the voice of every damn social apologist crying
"censor the morons".
> [ ... ]
>> > Hardly. The point out the fallacy of arguing from the specific
>> > to the general, which is their intended function.
>>
>> Isn't that what you are doing, taking a specific example and
>> attempting to generalize from it?
>
> No. You're arguing a general principle, and I'm applying it to
> specific examples to determine whether the general principle is
> sound. I am arguing from the general to the specific, which is
> a logically valid thing to do.
For every general principle, it is possible to construct a specific
example which doesn't work with that principle (even this one).
I'd say your logical validity is in question.
>> >> There are no misfits in a utpoian anarchy, by definition.
>> > Nor in a fascist police state...
>>
>> Misfits will pop up from time to time in a fascist police state,
>> but they will soon be hung. In a utopian anarchy, misfits cannot
>> even exist.
>
> Because they will be killed when they try to eat the wrong person?
They won't try to eat the wrong person. That would be dishonorable.
They will try to eat the RIGHT person... ;)
>> > A troll who trolls from heart-felt convictions will either leave
>> > or achieve accomodation within the group. The other has no
>> > interest in achieving accommodation, or even permtting any form
>> > of coexistance. He is a sociopath.
>>
>> I don't agree. I think he's just mad and not gonna take it anymore.
>
> Mad at *what*? Take *what*?
Mad at being excluded or not heard, and he's not gonna take not being
heard anymore.
> Antisocial behaviour without a list of demands is nothing more than
> terrorism. Without identity, there is no way to determine whose
> grievances he wants addressed. Without specific grievances, there's
> no means for the society being attacked to provide a palliative, in
> the form of a reddress of particular grievances.
Oh come on. You know this is a straw man. No list is going to "redress
grievances" for a troll.
> I think that I have to believe the troll is rational, and as such,
> the desire is not for a reddres of grievances, but for the effects
> on the society.
So, Mr. Academia, how do you propose to test this theory? Are you
going to offer the troll(s) amnesty? ;)
> [ ... ]
>> > Criminal art is a subset of criminal activity, not an equivalence
>> > set.
>>
>> I never said they were equivalence.
>
> No, you just defended an instance as art, on the premise that
> other instances could be art: "it is a fish; all trout are fish;
> it's probably a trout".
I did no such thing. I was refuting your statement that "criminal acts
cannot be art". I said they can be, and provided an example. What more
is needed?
> [ ... ]
>> > Yes. That's what I was making fun of: you see it as a big
>> > computation of something, but you don't know what, yet you
>> > still see value in the act of computation... the means justify
>> > the ends.
>>
>> Well make fun of it as you like. That's my viewpoint. Have fun
>> doing your superior dance.
>
> It's not a question of being supercillious, it's a question of
> asking "and ... ?" and you not having an answer that would make
> us accept everything that came before.
Us? Who's us? Is this the royal "we" I am seeing? "Oh Sir Lambert,
your lance is showing...". Not supercilious my gluteus maximus.
> [ ... ]
>> > The fallacy there is that the people who "take their ball and go
>> > home", and the people who follow them, will always be the most
>> > volatile segment of any society.
>>
>> There's nothing you can do about them without granting them the
>> implicit power to moderate, so why worry about it?
>
> How do you enforce a "Do Not Enter" sign?
You don't. You explain why. You let the person looking at the sign
choose.
> [ ... ]
>> Or you, in failing to see new data.
> What new data?
See?
------
Dave Hayes - Consultant - Altadena CA, USA - dave@jetcafe.org
>>> The opinions expressed above are entirely my own <<<
He who has self-conceit in his head -
Do not imagine that he will ever hear the truth.
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