Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2002 04:41:02 -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: <200209021141.g82Bf7157514@hokkshideh2.jetcafe.org>
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Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> writes: > Dave Hayes wrote: >> > 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. If they are present. >> > 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 Great. More words that are not yours. >> 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. It's not the environment that votes, it's the creature that dies. The environment is fairly static in this case. >> >> 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. It's the only thing I really consider valid, unless thinking in a scientific context. > Observational evidence is real evidence, only if the observations > are repeatable under controlled conditions. Real conditions are seldom controlled, so the usefulness of this assertion is limited. Observations, when correctly filtered for one's own assumptions, provide real data. > 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. ;^). Because it's not coming from you? Because I don't trust the other person's arguments to be valid? ;) Hmm. Let me try it on you, but with something from my domain: http://www.lyricscafe.com/m/mayer_john/johnmayer3.htm It's a bit modern, but it fits your criteria of macro expansion. >> 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, I consider logical arguments, in the inappropriate contexts, an authority rather than a vehicle of truth. Some of what we are arguing about transcends logic. I can do logical arguments, but rarely in these contexts we are talking about. > if you are going to insist that I personally argue all my own > points from first principles, as a subjective measure of validity. That's just the point. Even if you did, it wouldn't help. >> 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: THAT is where we disagree. ;) > 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". I highly doubt you can do this without squelching information which would be useful but at the border of the order you are attempting to impose. >> 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. Really? ;) >> 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. Observational evidence contradicts this assertion. Really, I've rarely seen this, and that fact is why I escaped academia years ago. (They tried to hold me in but...) > [ ... profoundly bad example ... ] Why? >> 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. I can't help it. If you knew me, you'd understand why. I'd explain, but words don't do justice. ;) >> > 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? Might be. It's been awhile since I've had the time to pursue my genetics and GA studies. "Real world" ya know. ;) I do need to catch up on my "emergent behavior from genetic algorithm" studies. Someday. >> > 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". Hmm. It's -hard- to get to that place. I don't care how smart you are or how enlightened you think you are, the truth can hurt real bad sometimes. The pain comes from assumptions which are literally backwards from what "objective reality" is. Thus, it's my belief that some smart cookie (Godel?) stumbled upon a way to rationalize (prove) things so that you wouldn't have to experience that pain. We really aren't computers, though they are made in our conception of our image. >> > 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. In Your Humble Worldview. > Something can be a useful model without being "The Truth". The > issue is one of accuracy and correctness. To test that which has been tested is ignorance. To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse. From my .fortunes file. > 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. Sometimes, a model that doesn't "academically work" can still "practically work". >> > 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. Yes, I've observed this. > 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. Unfortunately, to grow to see the Truth, this has to happen. You have to see the mechanism of assumption at work before you can begin to write your own internal debugger to check for bad ones. ;) >> > 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. The who? Good grief. Is this an authority? ;) > 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. I can't agree with that at all. The world of humans doesn't always obey any strict mathematical definition, and as such is not a candidate for scientific manners of investigation. >> > 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. Ok. What do you really really hate? Has it gone away? ;) > Your argument seems to say that racists exist because racism > is reproached by society. Interesting interpretation, but the focus of my argument deals only with individuals. Yes, several individuals of like charge COULD get together and by fascination attract individuals of opposite charge. In my opinion, the mechanism is best understood invidually. > I would argue that this is false. I would argue that racism > exists because it is possible to distinguish race in the first > place. If you are going to generalize, do it one step further. "Any differentiating quality between humans will be used by those or other humans as an inference of superiority." > Dark does not exist because light exists, it exists because > organs which are capable of percieving the distinction exist. Even as the organs exist, you till need both stimula available to distinguish anything. Thus Dark exists because Light does. >> > 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. I did that. Free.* was taken over by Tim Skirvin... > It was your attempts at peering which resulted in conflict, not > your running of a server, by and of itself. Actually this is incorrect. The real conflict was my ability to finance a news server while attempting to start a business. I often try to do too much, it's because I lead a dual life... ;) > 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. The argument is actually that whichever comes first, the opposite will follow. What you suggest was already being done by me for many years on USENET. I even hung out where all the people I couldn't tolerate were...news.admin.*. >> 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. You said that society doesn't want this solution. I came to that long time ago, after years of being told that on USENET. I reasoned that if society didn't want it, then I could create little private places with impunity to your argument. It kind of feels like certain old nursery rhymes. Now that I know how to bake a cake and have, in fact, baked a few...everyone wants a slice. Pity no one helped. ;) You should also recognize that if I were to apply scientific method, I needed to have a control case as well as an applicative and placebo case. It was actually during this phase that I recognized the scientific method does -not- work for this kind of thing, there are no actual measurable results because you can't correct for the type of people and you can't bring in the exact same people to different experiments without invalidating your results. >> 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". Unlike so many of the "rational people", I'm not one to dismiss consipiracy theories just because they are conspiracy theories (lest conspiracies actually become enabled by such behavior). I'm curious as to what grounds you have for this theory. >> > 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? Common sense. ;) >> > 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. Not all trolls are uninterested. There are many classic Usenet trolls that posted for the response it would get. Archimedies, your buddy. ;) The famous "rec.pets.cats/rec.model.airplanes" cat bomb crosspost (hilarious but doomed to flames from the cat lovers). Serder Argic. The list goes on, but those last three examples are examples of trolls who lived for responses. Perhaps support for your "paid troll" theory can be had by noting that paid trolls don't really care about the response as long as they can shut down the list. (I'm trying to think like you here, correct me if I am wrong but I think this is your theory.) > [ ... "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. It depends how you block them. The current situation is fine. If you were to moderate a list, that would start chilling real posts. >> What about those questions which cannot be dealt with rationally? > > What questions which cannot be dealt with rationally? "Is there a God?" "Why are we here?" "What is the one difference between a sacred being and an evil being?" Those are some examples. Have fun. ;) >> > 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". Classic moderation is where a small subset of "society" gets all the messages destined for a forum. They then determine whether to post those or not. >> > 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, Heh, good. I'm not trying to do that. ;) >> > 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. Baiting the trolls, are we? >> > 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. Nice dodge. ;) >> > 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? Not if I have the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders at gunpoint. ;) >> > 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? Not at gunpoint, but I do have over 35 active FreeBSD systems to care for...I think there's an imperative there don't you? >> > 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. Maybe this response is "Hey, friend..."? (Ok, so that's -my- utopia, not yours.) >> > 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. Of course you do. That way you can get me to argue about it. ;) > The noosphere is not bounded to a finite competitive resource > domain, as you keep implying with your "move to an island" > analogy. I'll grant you finitely uncountable, but really the limit is in how long you have to peruse it. >> >> 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. But not faith enough in yourself to reveal them and risk assumptive damage? ;) > 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. Sure. It's been done to me thousands of times. > 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"). People have done this to me too. > It suits me to not put myself in either of these positions. The difference between you and I is, I can operate independent of my axioms. Sometimes without thought even. If I'm lucky, complete mental shutdown. >> > 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... As the limit of time approaches infinity, you can't. ;) >> 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. Yes, and for very good reason. Personally, I don't want someone else determining what I will and will not see. I'm sure you can agree that the most honorable thing to do is allow people to create their own filters? > [ ... 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. Question all you like. Hell, everyone else does. I claim that if you question this, you are unknowingly dishonoring lots of people. Why is the internet only for the academic or the rich? What's wrong with some guy from inner LA talking to someone at Harvard? Not a damn thing. For the noosphere to represent the entire thought space of mankind, everyone has to have their ability to contribute. > Me questioning your conclusions is not equal to me dismissing them. I'm not so sure about that. The feeling is off. ;) >> > 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. Nonsense. Email sent to a list is a subset of all email sent, for any unit of time you want to greater than the time it takes to send one email message to the list. >> > 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.: Your offerings violate your own assertion about computational expenses. >> > 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". In the sense I meant "responding" yes it does equal. You didn't have to respond to me. You chose to. So take responsibility for initiating this entire diatribe. You could have just ignored me... >> >> 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. Where does it say this explicitly? ;) >> > 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. For this argument, Evil is defined as "that which you think you must oppose". That's not a good overall definition, but it will do for the purposes of this diatribe. >> > 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. So if someone is chopping the hedges on your side of the fence, and you blow him away with a 12-gauge shotgun, it's ok because it was effective? >> But if you were king... > I'll cross that bridge when I come to it... When? *shiver* ------ Dave Hayes - Consultant - Altadena CA, USA - dave@jetcafe.org >>> The opinions expressed above are entirely my own <<< If you go flying back through time and you see somebody else flying forward into the future, it's probably best to avoid eye contact. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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