From: <hal@finney.org>
> It's hard to believe that a nutty group like this could have so
> many members. Of course we don't have any proof that they are 55,000.
> Rael could have just made that number up. Maybe he's only got a couple
> hundred. That would make mores sense.
Yes, that would make more sense. Thanks for ameliorating my concern with how
susceptible humans are to irrational belief systems. Political organization
and the length of time in operation also play heavily on determining the
relative success of nutty (and occasionally, reasonable) groups. For example,
although completely nutty, Mormonism preceded Darwin by several decades, and
established a hierarchy of believers. Consequently, this tightly organized nut
group has a larger sphere of influence than evolutionary science (at least in
the US). Remember EMILY? Early Money Is Like Yeast, it rises. The same
principle works in the new economy (and in memetic migration): Give away
enough software early enough (no matter how mediocre), and it becomes the
standard, a la Windows.
Stay hungry,
--J. R.
Useless hypotheses, etc.:
consciousness, phlogiston, philosophy, vitalism, mind, free will, qualia,
analog computing, cultural relativism
Everything that can happen has already happened, not just once,
but an infinite number of times, and will continue to do so forever.
(Everything that can happen = more than anyone can imagine.)
"In a world without fences and walls,
who needs Gates and Windows?"
--Charles Kendall
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:39:41 MDT