Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 17:52:08 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Dave Hayes <dave@jetcafe.org> 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: <3D6C1EB8.FE2FB55B@mindspring.com> References: <200208272311.g7RNBk196449@hokkshideh2.jetcafe.org>
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Dave Hayes wrote: > Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> writes: > > Dave Hayes wrote: > >> >> The only zen you need is the zen you think about. > >> > A strange sentiment, > >> Sentiments are only strange in reference to a standard of normalcy. > >> To which standard do you refer? > > The Zen. > > If this were truly your standard, you wouldn't be referring to > "strange" and "normal" as opposites that mattered. You're the one who dragged "normal" into the discussion; all I said was that the sentiment was strange. > > Dave Hayes wrote: > > | Mind is the faculty, phenomena are the data; both are like > > | scratches in a mirror. When there are no scratches or dust, > > | the clarity of the mirror shows. When mind and phenomena are > > | both forgotten, then your nature is real. > > -- Ch'an Master Yangqui(992-1049) > > Ah. I wondered who originally said this, and I am still left to > wonder as there is no way to verify the attribution. What with him being dead, and all... 8-) 8-). > >> I apologize to your ego for not doing a complete search on what I had > >> to say, lest my ego be embarassed that someone else said it before I > >> did. =) > >> > >> Did you want to continue assuming that knowledge must be attributed > >> to a source, or did you want to examine the knowledge itself? > > > > On the contrary, > > How is this contrary to what I said? Contrary would be something like: > "You don't understand why attribution to a source is imporant" or "Of > course the source is important" or something similar. Not: It's contrary to your implied premise that I was assuming in the first place. Your statement was similar to "aliens meet with President Bush", with the intent that I accept the existance of aliens by claiming that "they were not meeting with President Bush, they were attending Disney Land", never questioning the implied premise that aliens exist in the first place. 8-). > > your lack of recognition of the source of the quote in your own > > signature informs me of where you obtained it, as well as your > > actual level of familiarity with your subject. > > ...a comment which highlights your academic familiarity but betrays > your lack of real understanding of the subject. =) > > Academically speaking, I will surrender the crown of "who's right" to > you. > > Any other understnding needs no surrender of anything but one's own > assumptions. Zen, as a philosophy, decries ego. Claiming someone else's work, even if done by omission, is an exhibition of ego. A good reason for the 4 clause BSD license. 8-). [ ... ] > > to the issue > > of trolls as "anti-contributors", rather than allowing for the > > possibility of an excluded middle category... wherein trolls > > are neither "contributors" or "anti-contributors", but are > > instead some third thing. > > Trolls would not exist without the ability to troll. Trolling, by > definition, is attempting to anti-contribute by distraction. They > cannot be some third thing by definition. Thus, excluded middle > paradoxia has no basis for applicability in this argument. Actually, there is a third option. Perhaps they are just assholes. And a fourth: perhaps they are deranged. We need not glorify them by assuming that they are as rational as ourselves, and thus are acting in the service of some goal. As for definitions, yours is wrong; the correct definition can be found at: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/troll.html > >> There is nothing you can really do about this. > > > > Sure there is. You can always close the valve at the source. > > You haven't removed the freedom, you've just removed the source. > > First, unless you remove each and every other human on the planet, > there will exist some human who has the freedom to speak things you do > not want to hear. Second, even if you remove all of them, their > freedom is unchanging, and you'll now be bored silly the rest of your > life. Or hopelessly productive, without the luddites in the way, if they are the type which even notices luddites in the first place. > Finally, you can remove the source but the ideas spoken by the > source will persist in your head unless you can master the easier > technique to get rid of them...ignore them. Since you have to master > this anyway, why kill another? Some parts of human psychology are hard-wired. You point about the ideas is valid, but so is the fact that most people can remove from their consciousness an idea by destroying the source; if you destroy what you fear or do not understand, it is no longer something begging to be understood, nor something to fear. By destroying the source, you destroy the idea, in effigy. > > Texas, to take one example, has a long and glorious history > > of dealing with anti-social behaviour that way. The state may > > terminate the speaker, thus terminating his speech. > > It's interesting that murder is seen as a viable and good alternative > to simply ignoring the speech. Murder is in most cases much more > energy spent than simply tuning a cretin out using the brain you've > been given. This is exactly why I consider this planet an insane > asylum. ;) Rosseau's Theory of the Social Contract permits the state to take such actions as it deems necessary for the common good. The moral equivalent on the Internet is technological. It is possible to provide end-to-end non-repudiation in email protocols, and certification of senders, such that the right to send may be revoked. This damages the self-healing of routes to destinations, but that philosophy was based on the idea that all communication attempts were in fact desirable (in the same way that disabling mail relaying damages self-healing). It also presents a danger to social critics, who legitimately oppose a societies norms, either as a member of a minortiy, or as individuals. Such draconian measures are often the inevitable result of exceeding the tolerance threshold of even a nominally tolernat society. Thus trolls serve the most oppresive minority of society by triggering measures which can be justified to the majority, but once in place, abused to oppress *any* dissent. Trolls are therefore straw-men, serving to strengthen that which they claim to oppose, to the detriment of all. They serve no useful social function, not even the putative function of "the telling of an inside joke", which their dictionary definition implies is their purpose. > Perhaps you said it, but do you really buy it? There *is* a difference between suffering a fool, and suffering him _gladly_. 8-). > >> > It seems to me that trolls are people who believe in zero-sum > >> > games being the norm, to the point that they believe that for > >> > their advocated position to win, all other positions must lose. > >> > >> Can you not see that this is true of most of the community as well? > > > > "Majority makes right". > > We weren't talking about right and wrong were we? I merely asserted > that what is true for trolls is also true for the community. No. You can not tar a positive-sum community with a brush which applies only to zero-sum ideologues. > > It is the function of any socity to be normative. If you dislike > > this idea, do not elect yourself a member of a society whose norms > > you hold against. Admittedly, this is rather difficult, with each > > society trying to grab as much territory as possible. > > Evolutionary pressure is necessary to overcome genetic defects such as > "worldview", "righteousness", and "opinion". If I buy out of the game, > I also lose the benefit of the lesson. There's a cost for everything, isn't there? The trick is to choose actions which result in outcomes with the highest total sum, even if that leaves you with a lower individual sum in the short term. In reality, the idea that you can always go from any equilibrium point to another, traversing the distance in evolutionary steps, is just so much bullshit. It's a philosophy of change management which requires an impossible level of control over individual contributions. It's not sustainable in a corporate culture, let alone one in which the participants are not being paid for their participation. Inevitably, the We Fear Change(tm) faction will lose. If someone feels that strongly about the direction of an Open Source project, then barring some legal issue that precludes it, they should fork the project, and go off in their chosen direction. If people are willing to follow, then they will follow, and if not, then they will have to accept the fact that they are a minority, and live with it. It's the people who are so attached to ego that they can't live with that result, that become the trolls. Of course, that's assuming that your premise is correct, and that the trolls are drawn from the ranks of the society against which they are throwing their temper tantrum. The excluded middle you are neglecting there is exogenous trolls: trolls from other projects that are failing relative to the project they attack. Those trolls attack all *but* the project they favor, since they have nothing else of value to offer their favored projects but their presumed ability to interfere with the otherwise normal function of the competing projects. Generally, though, these trolls are impotent, and can't effectively achieve their goal. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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