Truth Machines and open networks

John K Clark (johnkc@well.com)
Fri, 20 Mar 1998 10:32:22 -0800 (PST)


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On Thu, 19 Mar 1998 Yak Wax <yakwax@yahoo.com> Wrote:

>Actually, open systems make it near impossible to do anything that
>is damaging.

That coulFrom owner-extropians@maxwell.kumo.com Sat Mar 21 08:10:29 1998
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Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 10:10:23 -0500 (EST)
From: "Roderick A. Carder-Russell" <rodc@shore.net>
To: extropians@extropy.com
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Subject: Re: PSYCH: Book Recommendation: Pinker's "How the Mind Works"
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On Sat, 21 Mar 1998, GBurch1 wrote:

> This large book is well worth the investment of time.

I have to disagree on this point. My personal perception of
Pinker's "How the Mind Works" was that it contained very little writing of
interest and Pinker too infrequently degraded the conversation into a
discussion of his own personal politics. The amount of actual factual
information and even useful speculation and theory contained within could
have fit into a text 1/8th the size of "How the Mind Works", and in order
to sift this text out of the book you have to sit through endless
pages of useless writing all the while searching for the small bits of
gold. This is unfortunate, as his book "The Language Instinct" was very
good. I am disappointed that he could not have maintained his quality
with this recent work.

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Roderick A. Carder-Russell
http://www.shore.net/~rodc/home.html
rodc@shore.net
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