First off, I don't believe _anyone_ should ever have a "court-appointed attorney." We don't believe people should get state-subsidized food, or shelter, or medical care, and so on....or at least most of us don't. So why the big exception for hiring attorneys?

Maybe for the simple reason that some people might not have the money to defend themselves ? -- | Patrick Oonk - http://patrick.mypage.org/ - patrick@pine.nl | | PGP Key ID 0xDA2E93FA - Internic PO59 - <clicketyclick> | | Pine Internet B.V. Consultancy, installatie en beheer | | Tel: +31-70-3111010 - Fax: +31-70-3111011 - http://www.pine.nl/ |

At 10:49 PDT on Wednesday, August 20, 1997, Tim May wrote: |>Maybe for the simple reason that some people might not have the money to |>defend themselves ? | |And what of those without the money to feed themselves? Etc. The difference is that the lack of means to feed oneself is usually self- selected. Political criminals, or people simply unaware that they're felons under an increasing number of laws, seldom have a choice whether they will be arrested and tried. Certainly the preferred solution is to junk most of the laws on the books. However until committing a felony is an explicit conscious act, we will need court-appointed attorneys for persecution victims. /pbp

At 12:00 PM -0700 8/20/97, Paul Pomes wrote:

At 10:49 PDT on Wednesday, August 20, 1997, Tim May wrote:

|>Maybe for the simple reason that some people might not have the money to |>defend themselves ? | |And what of those without the money to feed themselves? Etc.

The difference is that the lack of means to feed oneself is usually self- selected. Political criminals, or people simply unaware that they're felons under an increasing number of laws, seldom have a choice whether they will be arrested and tried.

Certainly the preferred solution is to junk most of the laws on the books. However until committing a felony is an explicit conscious act, we will need court-appointed attorneys for persecution victims.

I don't buy this. You are, of course, welcome to join Patrick Oonk in funding lawyers for those unable (or unwilling) to pay. Demanding that I pay for your charitable desires is, of course, theft. As to your stipulation that this is for "political" cases, I of course agree that there are too many laws. So? The fix is not to add fuel to the engine of the beast by subsidizing a large infrastructure of "public defenders" (really just taxpayer-funded "apprenticeships" for lawyers to eventually enter private practice). Why should those who managed to save money, for example, subsidize those who did not? Jim Bell, for example (but not to pick on him...but he's the current example), is almost as old as I am. And yet he made choices in his career which left him indigent, or unable to pay for a legal defense. So why should I and other taxpayers, including those working for $7 an hour at Taco Bell, subsidize his lawyer-in-training? Not that Bell's lawyer did any good.... --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

On Wed, Aug 20, 1997 at 08:51:09PM -0700, Tim May wrote:

At 1:16 PM -0700 8/20/97, Patrick Oonk wrote:

...

I am glad I live in the Netherlands, where there's at least of bit of social consciousness left.

As the repercussions of strong, unbreakable, untraceble crypto are felt, this "social consciousness" will return to what it must be, individual consciousness. Thus, you, Patrick Oonk, will be perfectly free to donate money to whatever causes interest you.

But the ability of a herd to take a vote, real or alleged, will not be sufficient to collect tribute from those who don't want to make the contribution freely.

Note another characteristic of cult thinking -- total separation of the illuminati from the "herd" -- the idea that the "chosen" are irrevocably different from those other unfortunate creatures that accidentally share the same physical form. It is also worth noting that frequently cult members are very intelligent, very capable people -- high intelligence is absolutely no defense against insanity.

As to the billion or so underpeople who are incapable of contributing that which others are willing to freely compensate them for, think of it as evolution in action.

Besides, in about 6.7 years, the world will have replaced them. People are like Doritos...the world will make more.

One wonders if there is a microscope powerful enough to resolve Tim May's heart. -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

Kent Crispin wrote:

On Wed, Aug 20, 1997 at 08:51:09PM -0700, Tim May wrote:

...

At 1:16 PM -0700 8/20/97, Patrick Oonk wrote:

But the ability of a herd to take a vote, real or alleged, will not be sufficient to collect tribute from those who don't want to make the contribution freely.

Note another characteristic of cult thinking -- total separation of the illuminati from the "herd" -- the idea that the "chosen" are irrevocably different from those other unfortunate creatures that accidentally share the same physical form.

the idea is that the "competent" (not "chosen") are irrevocably different from those other "incompetent and parasitical" (and not "unfortunate") creatures that accidentally share the same physical form. best, vipul -- Vipul Ved Prakash | - Electronic Security & Crypto vipul@pobox.com | - Web Objects 91 11 2233328 | - PERL Development 198 Madhuban IP Extension | - Linux & Open Systems Delhi, INDIA 110 092 | - Networked Virtual Spaces

On Fri, Aug 22, 1997 at 12:40:29AM +0000, Vipul Ved Prakash wrote:

Kent Crispin wrote:

...

On Wed, Aug 20, 1997 at 08:51:09PM -0700, Tim May wrote:

...

At 1:16 PM -0700 8/20/97, Patrick Oonk wrote:

But the ability of a herd to take a vote, real or alleged, will not be sufficient to collect tribute from those who don't want to make the contribution freely.

...

Note another characteristic of cult thinking -- total separation of the illuminati from the "herd" -- the idea that the "chosen" are irrevocably different from those other unfortunate creatures that accidentally share the same physical form.

the idea is that the "competent" (not "chosen") are irrevocably different from those other "incompetent and parasitical" (and not "unfortunate") creatures that accidentally share the same physical form.

And how is it that one knows that one is "competent"? -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

At 10:43 AM 8/23/97 +0100, Adam Back wrote:

The problem is what can you do about it? Well I guess you could negatively structure the welfare hand out system to discourage them. You could scrap the welfare system. They already offer free birth control advice to teenagers and hand out condoms free without questions etc. Free abortions?

One thing that has been tried here, but was quickly shot down by the welfare lobby was making Norplant (a two ? year hormonal birth control device that gets implanted subcutaneously) implants a requirement for receiving welfare checks. --Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. DES is dead! Please join in breaking RC5-56. http://rc5.distributed.net/

Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com> writes:

At 2:43 AM -0700 8/23/97, Adam Back wrote:

...

The real problem is that the pervasive bleeding heart socialist/communist welfare system mentality will ensure that you'll never manage it.

"The children" is a war cry which will ensure the continuance of state funded negative evolutionary pressures.

Don't always assume that these are negative evolutionary pressures. One of the hallmarks of Homo's evolutionary survival has been the ability to live in many niches. Welfare is one niche, and no one should be surprised when organisms decide to live in an available niche.

Welfare does indeed seem to be a thriving niche.

The question is, what happens when that niche goes away?

We get to see how well the welfare recipient adapts. Guess we get some real life evolutionary pressures :-) However, I think that western countries are rich enough that there's not really much danger of anyone starving to death. Most of the welfare recipients could find sufficient employment to feed themselves if they had no other choice.

For example, I have one friend who raised her two children (spaced 12 years apart) on welfare. They are now grown and she has a job as a Unix sysadmin. She obviously has the ability to move from niche to niche. (And doesn't subscribe to the Protestant work ethic.)

Yeah, I'm not trying to be insensitive. I know how to work systems just as well as any other. Clearly plenty of intelligent people can make a decision to work the welfare system to their financial advantage. My claim was that the average welfare recipient is less intelligent than the average non-welfare recipient. There will be plenty of counter examples, lazy people, people who have more interesting things to do than work, and are happy enough with the adequate lifestyle welfare brings. It does seem unfair however for those who could easily obtain work to live from the indirectly stolen assetts of those who are working for a living. Adam -- Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> writes:

...

"The children" is a war cry which will ensure the continuance of state funded negative evolutionary pressures.

In general, I would say that you are describing a remarkably simplistic view of evolution. Off the top, two things I think you are missing:

- first, you make the common mistake of assuming that evolution has a purpose somehow aligned with your moral view of things

No. Evolution is blind. Evolution is just a word to describe the fact that genes which result in an increased likelihood of death prior to breeding tend to not to be passed on. I was arguing that I think current evolutionary pressures tend to work against the criteria for increasing intelligence. This claim is complicated by the fact that intelligence is hard to measure. Lets say we choose IQ tests for the sake of argument. Then I'm not even sure how secure the claim that ability to pass IQ test has a large hereditary correlation, So I don't know whether children of parents who both had IQ measured at > 200 necessarily have children with higher IQ than where one parent was > 200 and the other < 200. There are also difficulties in isolating inherited factors from environmental factors. Modern medicine tends I think to work against the criteria of producing healthy specimens. (People who would have died as children due to hereditary defects, living on to have children thanks to medicine. Also people who can't breed, having medical assistance to have children. Caesarian sections for females with too narrow hips to easily give birth. Lots of other examples). Similarly difficult to influence medical evolutionary pressures -- what're you going to do? Give our breeding permits based on government decided criteria? Adam -- Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

At 2:43 AM -0700 8/23/97, Adam Back wrote:

There are a few evolutionary pressures, but they are insignificant compared to all the negative pressures.

Positive examples?

- motorbike riding - aggresive drivers - manic depressives - mountain climbers - hard drug takers - drug pushers - DEA agents

I have no idea if the traits associated with these activities are to be considered good or bad, bright or not bright, heritable or not heritable, etc. Does the slightly greater tendency of mountain climbers to die earlier than philosophers mean anything? I doubt it. ...

Have lots of children .. to counteract the welfare cases tendencies. Mormon polygamy? Harem?

(Again not following own advice, only two children ... so far).

Main point: The human genome is now "weighed down" with more than 7 billion persons, a large fraction of them still capable of reproducing. Bluntly put, it ain't going _anywhere_, at least not very fast. Changes in the characteristics of a species, loosely speaking, "evolution," happen faster in small populations. The tribe of hominids forced out of trees by loss of forestation in the Rift Zone, for example, will undergo rapid changes over a few hundred generations. Billions of humans in the modern era, with essentially everyone reaching reproductive age, will not. The human genome is like a supertanker being hit by tennis balls: it just won't move. Minor point: Adam's children will most likely tend toward the mean. Smart people tend to mate with other smart people, more or less. Dumb people tend to mate with other dumb people, more or less. Lots of reasons for this, but look around and confirm it. So, this will lead to an ever-broader Bell curve of intelligence, right? Nope. For whatever complicated reasons, the curve has essentially reached its "normal broadness," to invent a phrase. Or so I think is the case. Certainly there are ample statistics to show this. Other minor point, possibly major: The ROI on the human genome for Adam to have more children, so as to counteract the stupid breeding more stupid people, is virtually nil. If Adam likes children, or wants them around him for whatever reason, fine. But any notion that 2 or 3 or even 5 children will affect the genome is wishful thinking. Look at the math. (And not even the infamous "But what if _all_ smart and educated people thought this way?" applies. First, what Adam or Tim or Blanc does about having children will not affect the decisions of others. Magical Thinking 101 again. Second, the aforementioned tendency to the mean, for complicated biochemical/genetic reasons. Third, even if Adam's children inherited a persistent "gene for intelligence" which passed on undiminished with time (or at least in proportion to other such genes from other reproductive partners in the future), think of how many generations until Adam's magic gene is in just 0.001% of the population. Hint: a lot.) Have children if you personally want them, but don't think your having or not having children has anything to do with saving the species.

The problem is that from a purely scientific evolutionary point of view, the human race is surely regressing, the masses of negative evolutionary pressures are certainly pushing this way.

I doubt this in the strongest possible way. Australia was populated by the common criminals of England, the louts and scoundrels and thieves and murderers. (Perhaps some "political prisoners," but mostly common criminals.) And yet within a generation or two, Australia was thriving, and today nobody would argue that the descendants of convicts are dumb or backward. We aren't changing the genome. --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

Tim May <tcmay@got.net> writes:

Main point: The human genome is now "weighed down" with more than 7 billion persons, a large fraction of them still capable of reproducing. Bluntly put, it ain't going _anywhere_, at least not very fast. Changes in the characteristics of a species, loosely speaking, "evolution," happen faster in small populations.

I can see sufficiently small populations evolving quickly because in a small population -- say 10 monkeys -- the monkey which got run over by a truck because it was deaf, splat, end of deaf monkey gene, if it's the only one. But over large numbers say 700,000 or whatever, I can't see that it makes much difference whether it's 700,000 or 7 billion. I would've thought at that point it's more to do with the proportion of the population with the genetic feature in question and the magnititude of evolutionary pressure exerted by that feature. Clearly environment affects this, and a large population is more likely to be geographically dispersed, and hence less prone to sudden adverse environmental changes.

The tribe of hominids forced out of trees by loss of forestation in the Rift Zone, for example, will undergo rapid changes over a few hundred generations.

So if 10% of the hominids by chance have an genetic characteristic which increases their chances of `hacking it' long enough to propogate their genes with no trees to 90% as compared to 20% for those without this characteristic, clearly that gene set is going to propogate pretty damn fast. You could get some pretty fast propogation even in a population of 7 billion. If there were an AIDs like virus with a airborne common cold propogation vector, and a year incubation period, and 1% of the population had some quirky genes which just happened to make them immune to it, well that 1% gene would propogate very quickly.

Billions of humans in the modern era, with essentially everyone reaching reproductive age, will not. The human genome is like a supertanker being hit by tennis balls: it just won't move.

There are currently practically no physical genetic advantages which radically affect ability to breed (apart from extreme ones which mean near certain death). So yes, it's stagnant from that point of view. There are however significant pressures exerted by different cultures, which have different genetics. Some cultures shun the idea of birth control, and tend to have 2 or 3 times more children than average educated westerners. If that statistic holds for a few generations there will be a lot more people around from these cultures. There are I think enough genetic differences between european genes and arabs, asians as an example that I think it would be reasonable to argue that this is having an effect on the human gene pool. It is our collective shared memes which are suffering large scale negative evolutionary pressures. Be socially responsible, global warming, food shortages, have few children. Lots of other reasons people don't have so many children ... gets in the way of career, long term chore, commitment etc. Reasons for welfare recipients to breed more welfare recipients.

Dumb people tend to mate with other dumb people, more or less. Lots of reasons for this, but look around and confirm it. So, this will lead to an ever-broader Bell curve of intelligence, right? Nope. For whatever complicated reasons, the curve has essentially reached its "normal broadness," to invent a phrase. Or so I think is the case. Certainly there are ample statistics to show this.

That's a pretty interesting result. Intelligence is an awfully hard thing to measure. IQ tests and SAT scores only show you what they test, ability to score at IQ test and SATs.

If Adam likes children, or wants them around him for whatever reason, fine. But any notion that 2 or 3 or even 5 children will affect the genome is wishful thinking. Look at the math.

A change in cultural values, societal norms, and welfare structures over a sustained period could start to have some effects. (Cultural norms change -- one of my grandfathers, an englishman, was one of 20 children -- this used to be much more common. 17 of them made it to adult life).

(And not even the infamous "But what if _all_ smart and educated people thought this way?" applies. First, what Adam or Tim or Blanc does about having children will not affect the decisions of others. Magical Thinking 101 again.

Memes propogate in meme-space also. The meme of global warming, potential food shortages

...

The problem is that from a purely scientific evolutionary point of view, the human race is surely regressing, the masses of negative evolutionary pressures are certainly pushing this way.

I doubt this in the strongest possible way.

Australia was populated by the common criminals of England, the louts and scoundrels and thieves and murderers. (Perhaps some "political prisoners," but mostly common criminals.) And yet within a generation or two, Australia was thriving, and today nobody would argue that the descendants of convicts are dumb or backward.

Likely due be a number of effects, perhaps demonstrates that intelligence and being exported from England don't necessarily negatively correlate. Also perhaps intelligence isn't that strongly based on genetics. There probably weren't any significant average genetic differences between the freshly exported "scoundrels" by 18th century standards as compared to the average genetic make up of english population. Also I did hear that Hitlers super-race of children bred for selected traits didn't work out that well. Perhaps the environment they were bought up in didn't help. Are there any studies which demonstrate any difference in intelligence between races even, asians, africans, chinese, europeans, red-indians etc? There seems to be an observable difference in business acumen between races .. of course this could easily be explained by their society and customs. Adam -- Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> writes:

On Fri, Aug 22, 1997 at 12:40:29AM +0000, Vipul Ved Prakash wrote:

...

the idea is that the "competent" (not "chosen") are irrevocably different from those other "incompetent and parasitical" (and not "unfortunate") creatures that accidentally share the same physical form.

And how is it that one knows that one is "competent"?

One doesn't. But if one is not competent, one is likely to find out the hard way. There's precious little evolutionary pressures around at the moment, the race could use some more. Adam -- Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`