On Friday 02 May 2003 03:17 pm, Declan McCullagh wrote:
There is also an unspoken assumption that folks who hope to be interesting list posters will share a common vocabulary and literature. Books that seem to influence cpunks include Applied Crypto, Heinlein's earlier stuff, Vinge, Ender's Game, Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (a little recent, but still), Road to Serfdom, David Friedman, some of Murray Rothbard and von Mises' work. Lately I've been rereading some of the original public choice theory work out of George Mason (and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy," a great read).
All good choices. Add "Ender's Shadow" for an interesting twist on the original story. Terry Pratchett's stuff for a lighter satirical look, although he tends to be cynical about all sides of the debate rather than just one side. And, of course, the classics as well - Gibbon, for example.
I'd guess that except in die-hard lefty cases, it's somewhat difficult to read those kind of volumes and still remain enthusiastic about tax rates that exceed, say, 50 percent and the accompanying regulatory structure. Perhaps more to the point, this list has always been about (at least I discovered it in late 1994) the social and political impacts of crypto and related technologies, and those are probably not incredibly friendly to a hyper-regulatory state.
So, yes, the "Klansmen, feminists, nazis, Libertarians of any sort, Democrats, Greens, Republicans" are welcome. But may we ask in turn that they appreciate the vocabulary and literature?
Interesting question. Are they permitted to ask that we appreciate their vocabulary and literature? In reality, I suspect most people here have already read "their" literature, and rejected it as not logical or otherwise flawed. I did. And that makes it harder to respect the majority of them, because it's not really about their disagreement but simply that they're *wrong*. The challenge is to prove this and convince them, not to drive them away with the metaphorical equivalent of sticks. -- Matt Beland matt@rearviewmirror.org http://www.rearviewmirror.org