From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Feb 18 2003 - 18:46:10 MST
Brett Paatsch wrote:
> Eliezer Yudkowski wrote:
>
>>This isn't helping anyone. In case everyone has forgotten,
>>the war ends here. You know the war I'm talking about?
>
> Actually, I am *really* not sure that I do.
>
> It could be "the war" contained in this excellent post:
[snip]
That's the one - evolution's war.
>>The one that's been going on for a very, very long time?
>
> So not just 'Iraq' but thermodynamics?
Halting thermodynamics is beyond the range of what I can imagine well
enough to judge. My dispute is with the Darwinian era of complex
organization, which is a consequence of thermodynamics but not the only
consequence of thermodynamics. But that aside...
>>And it's something we can affect... unlike certain other
>>events that will *not* be determined here.
>
> So stopping entropy in the universe we can affect "here"
> but current events in the political world we should just take
> on faith as beyond our capacity to affect despite the much
> lauded leveraging power of Google and that the ExI list
> brings together a variety of people with skills, contacts and
> experience and almost certainly some shared values from all
> around the world?
Realistically speaking? Yes.
>>I call for a three-month ban on the Iraq topic. I've seen
>>the Extropians list do so much better than this.
>
> I don't think it is either wise or even particularly clear to ban
> discussion on anything that people think you *might* think
> to be about the "Iraq topic".
>
> It seems to me that you are proposing banning the topic likely
> to be of *greatest* interest and *most* extropic consequence over
> exactly that period when it will be of *most* relevance and of
> most natural concern to many on the list..
>
> Let us be very very clear here. You are not proposing engaging
> further yourself to lift the level of debate, you are not proposing
> to just read around a topic that you have posted on yourself in
> the past, you are not making some point about more efficient
> ways to communicate you are *actually* proposing closing
> down for three months what other people want to say *before*
> the particular circumstances and ramifications they wish to
> discuss have even arisen.
That is correct. Why? Because I see this discussion destroying
friendships, which might otherwise have proved effective in the pursuit of
effective causes, and for nothing.
> To yield to the temptation to practice this sort of censorship
> looks to me like kicking an extropic own-goal. I vote against.
>
> But if you really want to go down the route of censorship and
> I *do* note the support for it (and thankfully *some* opposition)
> then at least do it properly. Set a time for tallying the votes and
> I will abid by the will of the majority.
If I recall correctly the list is a benevolent dictatorship of ExI, though
member-influenced, of course.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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