On Fri, 1 Dec 2000 22:14:16 -0800
hal@finney.org wrote:
> Perhaps so. However I have been debating David Brin on these matters in
> email and in public since 1994. All I have accomplished (if anything)
> is to help him craft his message more seductively. His goals don't seem
> to have changed.
On the other hand, _my_ positions have changed, from (troubled) natural-law
libertarianism in 1992 to something more like market-friendly liberal
democracy today. Brin's been one influence. (Soros's _Open Society_ was
another, very recently. And Jane Jacobs. And... never mind.)
I don't agree with his attacks on cryptography or his tossing of all secrecy
(although I've come up with half-baked versions of machine intelligence
civilization which truly can't afford even the privacy of thoughts. But we're
not machine intelligence yet, and imperfect enforcement of our bad law is one
of our check and balances) and he's hardly an ideal arguer. His violent
withdrawal from John Clark's "What about secret ballots?" was unimpressive; I
thought it a fair challenge to the Transparent Society idea. And he was too
quick to mock libertarians in "Confessions..." if he wanted to actually get a
word in with them; and while self-righteousness addiction is an interesting
idea, using it in direct argument ain't great.
But America/the West being a nicer place to live than anything else yet
realized, yeah. Accountability important, yeah. Thuggery being the modal
[sic] human society, yeah. Adaptive structures, rather than ideologically
deduced ones, hell yeah. And when I read "Confessions..." as posted to the
list, and the responses, I thought he came out rather ahead. But then I've
just been reading Soros's mockery of equilibrium theory as applied to
financial markets.
-xx- Damien X-)
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