On Thu, Oct 31, 2019 at 02:58:45AM +0000, jim bell wrote:
I've probably said, maybe many times before, that ultimately it is utterly irrelevant whether a person claims to "like" the AP concept. It simply doesn't matter if YOU, or anyone else, "likes" or "dislikes" the idea of AP. I could, hypothetically (and counter-factually), claim I "hate" it, and what would that do? That wouldn't fool anyone. AP became inevitable the day I published it, BECAUSE I published it.
The idea got out because _I_ had the courage to publish it, UNDER MY OWN NAME, courage that many on Cypherpunks apparently never had. I could have concealed it, "lost" it. Eventually it might have been discovered again, perhaps a few years later. But I, ever the impatient one, considered for weeks whether exposing the idea early might allow the government to permanently prevent it. Having decided that wouldn't happen, THEN I published it. So it could never be erased from reality. Forever. And yes, I give much thanks to John Young of Cryptome, who has kept a copy on public display for 20+ years.
From the beginning, I claimed that AP, once successfully implemented, would complete eliminate the need for, and even the possibility of, militaries, war, and nuclear weapons. Has anybody else thought of another idea to accomplish that? Has my
I believe anarchism aka "direct democracy" (as I understand that term), is a way to achieve a peaceful transition from the current failed system, yes. : 1. Everyone votes on, literally, everything. Today this is technologically trivial. 2. Notwithstanding any and every vote of the collective/ mob, the individual human's right to conscientiously and peacefully object, is sacrosanct and may not be abrogated. The question is whether the "carrot" of such a peacful transition, is possible in the face of the existing powers that be, without the "stick" of AP.
claim ever been successfully challenged? Or even SERIOUSLY challenged? Not here, to my knowledge, Does ANY of you have an argument why an AP-type system won't, or can't, eliminate all nuclear weapons? 24 years after I wrote it, does the average protesting IDIOT have any idea that somebody has actually described the solution to the problem he claims to desire? A solution he hasn't been told about, not because it wouldn't work, but instead because it WOULD work.
Does anybody, NOW, 24 years later, believe that my AP concept was, is, or should be, "off-topic" on the Cypherpunks list? Has a more-important idea for the future of mankind ever been discussed on Cypherpunks? Step right up and claim it! What is the ultimate purpose of Cypherpunks but to try to eliminate the problems that government surely causes?
The Federal Government began to spy on me within weeks, and probably not more than a few days, after I had published Part 1 of my AP essay on Digitaliberty. Want to hear more? See my 2003 lawsuit, http://cryptome.org/jdb/jdb-v-usa-oct2004.pdf at least Claims 45-49. The Government committed dozens of felonies in order to further harass me and illegally keep me locked up. http://cryptome.org/jdb/jdb-v-usa-oct2004.pdf See Claims 504 onward.
I think that time has been far more kind to my rhetorical position than other people's. Prior to the existence of TOR and Bitcoin, some people might have doubted that pieces necessary to implement AP were likely to become available. (I'm not saying that TOR or Bitcoin is suitable; merely that their existence points the way to the eventual existence of AP as a functioning goal, using other tools more suitable to the task.) Now, does anybody on Cypherpunks claim that the technical background of AP could never be implemented? The best they can do is to claim that governments won't ALLOW AP to be implemented, because they know they will be the first targets.
Remember what I said at the beginning of Part 2 of my AP essay:
"Part 2
"At the Village Pizza shop, as they were sitting down to consume a pepperoni, Dorothy asked Jim, 'So what other inventions are you working on?" Jim replied, 'I've got a new idea, but it's really evolutionary. Literally REVOLUTIONARY.' 'Okay, Jim, which government are you planning to overthrow?,' she asked, playing along.
'All of them,' answered Jim." "
This conversation actually occurred, although somewhere along the way the correct "revolutionary" somehow got changed to "evolutionary". No, I said "revolutionary" TWICE, and I genuinely meant it. I was in Roslyn, Washington, the small town that the TV show 'Northern Exposure' was filmed. Look at the beginning credits, and you will see it: "Village Pizza".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKDzDA-jgRs at 1:32
I was there, sitting next to "Dorothy H.". For at least 5 years I visited there in one day in early July to meet with other Northern Exposure fans, "Dorothy H." was one, and without intending to, she gave me one of the most fantastic and appropriate straight-lines in the history of conversation. Oddly, as I said, "All of them", the pizza came...And Dorothy never learned what my "revolutionary" idea was! But probably days later, I wrote of the incident in Part 2 of the AP essay.
And no, the combination of Ethereum and Augur is not, YET, AP. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17611585 "Its not Jim Bell's Assassination Politics but we're getting there." (And no, I didn't write that, and I don't know who did.) But the difference is merely the choice of those implementing Augur, not a fundamental limitation of the technology.
The people who claim to be on the Cypherpunks, ostensibly to help, need to start considering reality. Jim Bell
The truth is, most folks would proclaim to prefer a peaceful transition, where they are their families lives remain safe throughout the coming transition. The truth also is, that TPTB ('member the Fed), have demonstrated a few millenia of unwillingness to shift towards giving up their power over the majority. And in the face of these truths, another truth is that at some tipping point, without a pathway of peace, most folks in angst, distress and an abject loss to any solution, do tip over into accepting literal chaos. We are at an incredible historical junction, a literal tipping point - although it plays out over some years, historically it's very quick. Which way will we collectively turn?