Timothy C. May writes:
Black Unicorn writes: Unfortunately, there are few other forums for this kind of discussion. The Extropians list used to have this kind of discussion, though it was mixed in with all kinds of other stuff--and I hear that list currently has 80 subscribers (Harry or Ray can tell us the facts), which is about 12% of what Cypherpunks has, so the discussion universe may be too small for comfort.
Actually, we still have 340+ subscribers, but only 80 or so paid subscribers. I have delayed switching on the auto-deletion of people who haven't paid up because Tanya is still receiving checks and hasn't fully updated the list software database yet. If I did turn it on now, a lot of people who have sent their money in might get accidently deleted 'cause their account hasn't been updated yet. I prefer smaller lists anyway. The people who have paid are obviously more intererested in Extropianism than the free riders. This means that a) most of the subscribers are now participants/interested and not lurkers b) higher signal-to-noise Cypherpunks has a mucher larger distribition, but what percentage contributes to discussions? (this is not an attaack on cpunks) However, if 50% of cpunks were coding, a lot more would get done. Incidently Tim, since you left, the list volume has dropped off a lot. About 1/3 to 1/4 of its previous volume (about 3-10 messages a day vs 30-50)
A few other groups and mailing lists exist, also, but the problem is that they're all "competing in the same memetic space." Most of the groups are low-volume, so the discussions rarely take off.
One of the reason the extropians list persists is that its memetric space has a high number of dimentions. Cryptography, politics, lifeextension, economics, math, space, physics, philosophy etc. If people are bored with math one week, they discuss philosophy the next.
So, Black Unicorn, where else will you find another group that has this mix of folks, this combination of crypto expertise and political acumen?
Dare I mention it? ;-) -Ray -- Ray Cromwell | Engineering is the implementation of science; -- -- rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu | politics is the implementation of faith. --