From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 1996 14:49:06 +0800
To: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Subject: Re: AP [was: Re: Kiddie porn on the Internet] [NOISE]
Message-ID: <199609270426.VAA18253@mail.pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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At 11:00 PM 9/25/96 -0700, Dale Thorn wrote:
>jim bell wrote:
>> That's about it.  I long ago noticed the similarity between AP and the
>> fictional Gort.
>> Problem is, Gort would have to be programmed. How would you write such 
>> a program?  Governments would want their hand in it.  They'd insist on
>> "government exceptions" to rules, like:   "All violence is forbiddden!
>> (except for violence by duly authorized government employees!)"
>> Not very practical.
>
>Indeed it may not be practical to try such a program on current 
>computers.  I've had thoughts for some time about an analogy where each 
>person in a civilization represents a cell in a single brain, and so on, 
>so perhaps AP is merely a portion of the program for this "brain".  As 
>to what happens when you try to concentrate a disproportionate amount of 
>the programming task into a few hands, that appears to be the situation 
>we have now.

Exactly correct.  The current system is intended to present the illusion 
that it is the product of the voters, where it is really defined by the 
political establishment.

Bill Stewart pointed out (correctly) that what I'm proposing is "mechanism 
without a built-in policy."  While this may appear to be a bit reckless, the 
reason I'm confident it will work is that the status quo has a 
_throughly_corrupt_ policy, a policy which is actively hostile to the 
interests and rights of the average citizen.  Replacing that system with one 
that is merely neutral is a great improvement, particularly if there is no 
way for that policy to be hijacked by a tiny minority of the public.

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com