From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Date: Sat, 4 Nov 1995 16:02:30 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List)
Subject: Re: Many Topics are Appropriate for Discussion Here
In-Reply-To: <199511040030.TAA28181@opine.cs.umass.edu>
Message-ID: <199511040057.TAA00783@jekyll.piermont.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Futplex writes:
> Perry writes:
> > I don't care about quantity. Steve Bellovin is worth 500 subscribers
> > -- maybe 1000. I'd rather hear his or Phil's off the cuff remarks on a
> > lot of this stuff than most of what passes for careful thought from
> > the average person here.
> 
> I have some not-so-hypothetical questions: 
> 
> Suppose I have serious and plausibly realistic aspirations to become an 
> authority in some subtopic of cryptography, network security, etc. (sometime 
> well into the next millenium). Am I more likely to learn and hone my skills
> by actively participating (sticking my neck out) or merely lurking
> indefinitely ?  Regardless of the answer to the previous question, should
> the list suffer me my missteps and naivete ?
> 
> I do not consider these questions rhetorical, and the answers are very
> important to me on a personal level.

I don't see any problem with a naive person participating. I do see
something wrong with people posting stuff that has nothing whatsoever
to do with the topic of cryptography etc. A discussion of social
security privatization might be interesting, but irrelevant, to name
one example.

Perry