That's very true. We used to have rules against arguing the "basics". Basic questions like "should we have government?", "are guns bad?", "and "does capitalism work?" were all considered "basic", and people were encouraged to debate such questions elsewhere. It was recognized that such discussions would go round and round with nobody conceding on either side. Instead, the list was limited to new ideas or new concepts. Arguing the validity of age-old issues was not on-topic.
-- Harvey Newstrom <mailto://newstrom@newstaffinc.com> <http://newstaffinc.com> Author, Consultant, Engineer, Legal Hacker, Researcher, Scientist. ----- Original Message ----- From: <mark@unicorn.com> To: <extropians@extropy.com> Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 1999 2:28 pm Subject: META: On-Topic/Off-Topic (was Re: SAVING FLAGS, BURNING RIGHTS by James Bovard)
> This list used to be a place for people who agreed with the Extropian
> Principles and had read at least a large fraction of the reading list to
> talk about stuff that interested them; since those two requirements pretty
> much ensured an individualist, pro-freedom viewpoint, these kind of
> political discussions didn't really come up. It's only with the 'outreach'
> attempts of the last couple of years that it's been flooded by people who
> don't fit into that category, and become just another transhuman list.