From: rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray)
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 94 01:36:42 PDT
To: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Subject: Re: Does the List Have a Political Ideology?
In-Reply-To: <199404180118.SAA11504@mail.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <9404180836.AA29915@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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.     --