Thinking About the Crypto Unthinkable
Faustine
a3495 at cotse.com
Tue Aug 28 12:24:54 PDT 2001
Tim wrote:
>Well, good luck. I disagree. I can't see someone coming out of a Ph.D.
>program in "super analysis" being magically endowed with the skills to
>influence policy.
There's nothing magical about it: I never said any amount of formal
education is "guaranteed" to do a thing for you--it is very much where you
are, who you know, and what you can get them to tell you. But even in the
richest of environments, if you're not making the effort to acquire
fundamental analytic skills, you might as well concede that you
don't "speak the language" and would be better off taking the "capitol hill
ho" route instead. Which is odious--and overrated, I might add.
>An obvious point that perhaps needs to be emphasized: all of those
>scientist-policy wonks we have discussed were first and foremost
>brilliant scientists.
Absolutely. But they all shared a certain mindset which made them far more
than that, the whole point of bringing them up in the first place. Is that
something anyone can teach you? Probably not. Does it depend on having an
extremely high IQ and a lot of innate raw potential? You bet. But once you
make the decision that there's something to be gained by demanding a lot
from yourself, you need to find the right kind of program to facilitate
getting you where you need to be to best further your ideas. And as far as
I can tell, for me, the "super analyst" approach is the way to go. If you
have any other suggestions I'd be glad to hear them.
There's no lack of smart cypherpunk-friendly lawyers, but brilliant pro-
freedom policy analysts are in short supply. If more people here at least
considered this an option, I think it would be a good thing.
~Faustine.
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