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Date:      Wed, 28 Aug 2002 21:56:46 -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:  <200208290456.g7T4up108342@hokkshideh2.jetcafe.org>

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Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> writes:
> Dave Hayes wrote:
>> > This is patently false.  You can commit to comply with consensus,
>> > while still dissenting.
>> 
>> If you are dissenting or complying, you are still acknowledging that
>> consensus still exists and has meaning. If you do neither, consensus
>> stops having meaning, and then you are open to different perceptions.
> As long as a group of people can get together and kill you and/or
> otherwise deny you access to nominally public resources, consensus
> has meaning.

They have to find me first. 

>> That's not effective either. Those who think congress really runs
>> America are enjoying a most delicious delusion.
> My black helicopter is in the shop.

Oh? Which of the corporate rulers' insignia does it have? 

> [ ... ]
>> I don't -want- it[anarchy]. It's there to be, if possible. Anything I want
>> is in the way of what I truly need. But that's another 10 message
>> interchange.
> Hardly.  In any case, anarchy is the emergent property of the system
> you describe, so in wanting the system, you want anarchy.

I don't want the system either.

>> >> 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.
>> >
>> > So work on human evolution, instead of pissing in people's
>> > campfires because they aren't building fusion powered heaters
>> > fast enough for you.
>> 
>> Who's pissing in people's campfires now? Did you even read what I said
>> with intent to understand, or are you just looking for a good time in
>> argument?
>
> I *understand*, I *disagree*.

I disagree that you understand. ;)

> 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? 

> 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. 

> 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. 

> 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? 

>> >> 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.
>> > Says you and Ted Kaczynski.
>> Who?
> The Unibomber.  A Luddite, who believes that humans were not, by
> nature, prepared for the rate of technological advance that is
> already upon them, 

I agree, they're not. But then again, humans aren't really ready for
anything past fire either...this hasn't stopped them yet. 

> and believed that he could sabotoge that advance
> through mail bombs delivered to people he considered to be key
> intellectuals contributing to the change.

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. 

> Whether or not his thesis (or yours) was/is correct is irrelevent
> to the fact that it's about 150 years too late to put that genie
> back into the bottle in any case, even if we were stupid enough to
> want to.

First off, not everyone is an academic worshipper. I certainly don't
consider my views or observations "a thesis" as if it were to stand up
under the attack of several boring, asleep, unaware, and droll Ph.Ds
who wouldn't know how to see truth if it bit them in the rear. 

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. 

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.

Some concepts in truth cannot be expressed in the thesis framework,
and are yet nevertheless true. 

> [ ... allowing people to follow their internal codes of conduct, to the
>       potential detriment of the larger society, is probematic ... ]
>> For you, maybe. I find, once I remove the consensual pressure to
>> conform, that it's rather impossible to violate your own internal
>> codes. Remember that you can't say anything about another's
>> violations, just your own.
> 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. 

> If you are such an advocate of unbounded evolution, surely you must
> recognize the rule of law as an evolutionary pressure imposed by
> a socitey on its members.  

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 intent of socially imposed penalties for transgressions is to
> close the feedback circuit, so that the society can achieve
> homeostasis.  

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. 

> Complexity without order is chaos, which has none of the interesting
> emergent properties.

Hmm, according to a lot of those links you posted, it's the boundary
between order and chaos that is interesting and has emergent
properties. ;)

> [ ... non-conformance for the sake of disruption, rather than the
>       sake of non-conformance itself ... ]
>> If you define sociopath as "one who refuses to conform to consensual
>> standards just because they are consensual standards", I'd agree,
> No, I define it in terms of violent disruption of the established
> social order.  

That explains our disagreement then. |)

> 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? 

> I guess it sucks to be the pied piper of Hamlin, if you build a
> shiny new city, and no rats appear for lack of an inadequate public
> sanitation system.

It always sucks to have your purpose in life ridiculed or made
irrelevant by people who claim to have your best interests in mind.

>> > You forgot about people who eat people.
>> 
>> I always forget them, they aren't real to me. I've never seen one.
>> Even if I had seen one, I wouldn't focus on that one extrema as
>> my shining example of why sociopathy is wrong and you must conform.
>
> 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. 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. 

>> > You seem to believe that I disagree with your psotion because I
>> > don't understand it,
>> 
>> If you understood it, you wouldn't be saying what you have been
>> saying, nor presenting the examples you have been presenting.
>
> 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. ;)

All you've done is pointed to certain assumptions or assertions I've
made, and disagreed with those. You aren't seeing the big picture, and
I don't believe you can.

> Pick your examples; I will still disagree with the foundations.

Because, deep down, I stand for everything you hate. ;)

> [ ... humans are machines which can malfunction, and certain malfunctions
>       are not tolerable in *any* society  ... ]
>> My "position", as you call it, takes this into account. You have to be
>> immune (somehow) to the high sigma endpoints of the bell curve or you
>> need to evolve more.
>
> 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. 

> 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.

>> > None of these work to avoid costing me storage space or time to
>> > download, or per packet charges to download, etc..
>> 
>> Well. Let's see just how much your averagea 4K message will cost you
>> to store.  I'll even give you a SCSI disk (more expensive). Current
>> prices of 36GB scsi disks are $220-$250. We'll use $250 to give you
>> even more leeway. This is just under 7 $/GB. A 4K message works out
>> to costing you .00267 of a cent. Even if this person sent out 100
>> messages, that's .267 of a cent.
>> 
>> I recognize some people are penny pinchers but...come on! ;)
>
> Tell that to the people who invented mailbox quotas. 

4k still doesn't make an appreciable dent in them. 

> 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.

> [ ... ]
>> 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.

> Go somewhere else?

Hey, you were the one asking for a solution to let you not download
or store the message in the first place. ;)

> 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.)

>> Sorry. You are acting like one troll is a huge cost. It isn't. Let me
>> assure you in my vast experience with trolls and message group
>> communities, even 100 messages from 10 trolls only hurts the psyche of
>> the community. Storage and transport costs are too cheap to care about
>> what one person can do short of scripting floods.
> 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. 

>> >> Actually, the important part is our disagreement as to where to hang
>> >> out.
>> > ???
>> 
>> I hang out in many places, generally preferring the anarchistic to the
>> overly fascist. You seemed to assert you only like fascist places.
>
> 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. 

Did you say you liked freedom? 

The true test of liking freedom is had when you encounter someone who
has the freedom to be sociopathic against you...and you still like
that freedom.

> 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. 

>> >> 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;

>> 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. 

> It's human.

It takes every kind of people. 

> [ ... ]
>> Yes, some lists will rigorously block trolls and others will not. That
>> doesn't mean the trolls don't exist or will not emerge.
> It means they will have to go elsewhere to find their voice; and
> since the desire is for them to go elsewhere, the reason that
> happens is pretty irrelevent.

Some creative trolls find ways to get past blocks. One more dance for
people to do in their copious spare time. 

>> -I- think that troll access should not be blocked. -You- can do
>> whatever you want, but I would recommend that you learn to filter
>> trolls out at your brain since it's demonstrably the most efficient
>> way to do so.
> 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. 

>> I never agreed with Occam's Razor. Sometimes it's not accurate.
> Science works.

Science is a religion. Like most religions, you see what you want to
see; usually this is not truth. 

>> > Of course, I have a theory on why they have arrived, and what
>> > their actual goals are (they are not the goals or purpose you
>> > state for trolls, in general, because they are not the emergent
>> > environmental trolls you claim are the only possible trolls),
>> 
>> Man, are you good at reading things into what I said that aren't
>> there or what? Do I have to forumlate a set of theorems so you can
>> dispute each one separately?
>
> Depends; do you want to have your ideas taken seriously, 

Damn, thanks for reminding me. No I don't want them taken seriously.
This planet is one big comedic stage, I keep trying to rememeber that.

>> > and I could even give them pointers, since they probably have
>> > not bothered to mathematically model the project that they are
>> > attempting to disrupt (they are probably incapable of doing the
>> > necessary math, actually).
>> 
>> Ok, so what is your theory?
>
> My theory of what?  Of why the trolls are suddenly raising their
> pointy heads?

Yes.

> Of my model for some Open Source projects?  

Good god, hasn't everyone in the world already held forth on this one?

>> > It's an intentional tit-for-tat.
>> 
>> Of course, oh superior one. Tell me what else I should know? =)
>
> 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. 

> [ ... ]
>> I also think it will take more than email to communicate the principia
>> of that thesis. I might have to try back in 20 years.
>
> 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. 

>> > What about your putative "troll" of "the wrong race" who chooses
>> > as his means moving in next door to the racist who is actually
>> > in the process of attempting to "live among his own kind"?
>> 
>> Why is it society's job to prevent each from learning their own
>> lesson? Let them fight each other and learn, eh? Neither is trying
>> to destroy "society" per se, they are just trying to destroy each
>> other's race.
>
> Stay out of the middle, and let one wipe out the other, if it can?

Basically. 

> [ ... ]
>> What about him? Eventually, someone he tries to eat will kill him.
> And that's an acceptable outcome?

I don't believe I have the authority to accept any outcomes other 
than the ones I am involved in. 

>> Of course you can define a situation that supports your position,
>> just like I can define one to support mine. The key debating point
>> is, my position is self directed, yours is others directed. Which is
>> more efficient? I assert self directed self improvement, rather than
>> other's directed jihadic purging, takes the least energy and is more
>> productive in the long run.
> 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. ;)

> [ ... ]
>> Ad absurdum arguments are seductive, but they don't produce workable
>> realities...only absurd ones.
> 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? 

> [ ... ]
>> 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.

>> What is your definition of a "troll that is not a minor misfit"?
> One who trolls because he is paid to troll, rather than from
> a sense of heart-felt convictions, whatever the coin in which
> he is paid.

In that sense all trolls are paid...some receive
gratification...others receive hatred...

> 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. 

> [ ... ]
>> > On the flip side, you keep portraying sender blocking as if it
>> > were some form of capital punishment, inviting extreme comparisons.
>> 
>> It is to me. It's lost information. I learn just as much from the
>> detractors as I do from the supporters. Block the detractors and
>> that's a lot of information lost.
> It's not lost; it is merely forced to see alternate venue.  You
> are free to go to the other venue and learn from the detractors
> there.

IF I can find the other venue. 

>> >> It's not working.
>> > That's because trolling is not "art", any more than any other
>> > criminal activity is "art".
>> 
>> Bah. Did you see the latest troll (message ID
>> 20020828155003.37CC33960@sitemail.everyone.net) towards you?
>> 
>> A masterpiece, I tell you! Brilliantly executed to make you seem like
>> the good guy. And trolling about trolls, man that is exquisite. I'm
>> surprised a man of your apparent culture level cannot appreciate this
>> art form. ;)
> Hardly.  It's like appreciating Thomas Harris' Jamie Gumb's
> sewing skills, or a sausage factory: very hard to appreciate
> the art, once you know the raw materials.

I can tell you aren't an artist. 

>> Criminal activity can be art. Ever see some of the graffiti artists
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> in central LA? My god these people are talented with a spray paint
>> can. Some of the stuff is so eye catching, it's hard to drive through
>> the area without risking an accident. I can send you some photos if
>> you don't frequent these kinds of areas.
>> 
>> Just because the results and/or actions are illegal doesn't mean they
>> aren't artistic.
>
> Criminal art is a subset of criminal activity, not an equivalence
> set.

I never said they were equivalence.


>> > "42".
>> 
>> Yes, Douglas Adams almost had it right. Still, the real trick is to
>> find the question.
> 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. 

> [ ... ]
>> > I don't think it's possible for individuals to assert any
>> > important amount of control over more than a few people,
>> > either.  But it's demonstrably true that society can, and
>> > does, exert such control.  Where you seem to differ from me
>> > is that I think it *should*.
>> 
>> Society doesn't do a very good job of it, and that is part of the
>> reason I think it shouldn't. The other part is that I think
>> it's dishonorable to control others, I don't care who you are.
>
> Name one person who has been assessed the death penalty who has
> subsequently repeated their crime.  8-).

Only if I can name several people who have continually repeated their
crimes and haven't been caught yet. (Damn, I can't use Enron as an
example anymore.) X)

> [ ... design problem ... ]
>> Good luck. This is extremely difficult to do without stifling
>> communication from those you want to hear from (who aren't trolls).
> I see this as a result of having trolls: an consequence of their
> actions is general oppression.

We will have to agree to disagree on this point.

>> > I understand that you're claiming trolls are not sociopaths, they
>> > are merely people with the email equivalent of Tourette's Syndrome.
>> > Understand me, when I say I won't hire these people to work the
>> > mailing lists, any more than I'd hire myself as a spotter.
>> 
>> I dunno, I think a troll would be a perfect moderator. Trolls truly
>> understand the impact of specific communications, more than most
>> people anyway. And you'd have one less troll. |)
>
> This is the Theo de Raddt argument. 

Who? (Sorry Theo...had to be done.)

> 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? 

> [ ... ]
>> In picking a specific case such that you can fail to see the general
>> paradigm, who's really losing here?
> You, in failing to communicate your view of the general paradigm
> effectively?

Or you, in failing to see new data. 

> [ ... ]
>> Which creates script kiddies and exploiters and contributes to the
>> wonderous dance of opposites.  ;)
> Script kiddies and exploiters create themselves.

Dig it. It's natural.
------
Dave Hayes - Consultant - Altadena CA, USA - dave@jetcafe.org 
>>> The opinions expressed above are entirely my own <<<

You should know by yourself what is holy and what is
ordinary, what is wrong and what is right -- don't be
concerned with others' judgements.  How many people have
ever managed to find out every subtlety? People arbitrarily
follow material senses, running like idiots.





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