From: George A. Gleason <gg@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 92 02:40:14 PST
To: tcmay@netcom.com
Subject: Re:  "Young Men's Crypto Association," (YMCA)
Message-ID: <199211211039.AA08783@well.sf.ca.us>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Tim, you raise a good point about those who'll wreck for the fun of it, and
more so in reaction to any perceived ethical mainstream position.  

Re crypto-anarchy, at heart I'm in favor; in practice I'm in favor; and I
see no contradiction in promoting an internalised sense of ethics in these
areas.  The underlying deep problem is we live in a society which is
addicted to the emotions that go along with violent acts.  Ultimately that
problem needs to be addressed, and it's beyond the scope of this group to do
that, except as each of us can do things in other contexst of our civic
lives.  

The difficulty of promoting an ethic of conscience is real; but so is the
difficulty of arriving at a solution to a technical problem; and difficulty
by itself does not stop anyone.  It is erroneous to think that technical
problems are easier to solve than social ones; any of us can name ten or
more areas in which technical problems have proven incredibly complex.  In
most of these examples, the complex problems arise when dealing with
networked systems or systems involving relationships among many elements
which can vary in ways that can't be controlled.  You can see a
straightforward parallel to social problems here: the more variable
elements, the more complexity of solution.  But let's not let that stop us.

-gg