concluding remarks

d.brin (brin@cts.com)
Mon, 16 Dec 1996 16:25:17 -0800


Michael Butler wrote:

>What are your criteria for recipients of the manuscript? Do I have to
>be a "mane", or just a clear thinker?

If there are small groups of trustworthy extropians who live near each
other and can hand-around a paper ms, promising to get feedback to me
quickly, I might send a copy to one or two such groups. Do you live near
some others who you can vouch for and who have knowledge about the topic?

Re comments by Mr McCluskey:

> brin@cts.com (d.brin) writes:
>>Actually, Swiss cantons have a high degree of accountability, and the
>>federal govt is weak. You have a good point about tolerance-synergy. But
>>note that once again, you leave accountability out of the mix. It is as if
>>the concept wriggles out of every freedom-privacy discussion. Tolerance
>
> I treat accountability and privacy as separate issues because I see no
>evidence they are connected.\\

Then we are talking past each other. The 500 white guys who routinely vote
each other onto all the Boards of all the big American Corporations, along
with 90$Million bonuses, would certainly like your point of view. Any
effort on our parts to hold them accountable for conspiring together would
be seen by them as invasion of their privacy. And ANY means you come up
with, from laws to PGP, that helps YOU keep a secret will be 10 times as
effective in their hands. The same holds doubly for other power centers,
especially criminal organizations, 3rd world kleptocracies and the techno
elite.

> I maintain that detecting conspiracies has not been a usefull means
>of holding people accountable for harm they do. Holding people accountable
>for harmfull policies is important, watching how they decided on those
>policies is usually a waste of time.

An utterly bizarre notion. Forgive me for assuming that you have read
virtually no history, nor traced the evolution of oppressive tyrannies in
ages past. When freedom thrived, it was always in the face of conspiracies
that were thwarted by exposure. Every time freedom collapsed, it was
because of conspiracies that succeeded.