From: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 15:43:53 -0800 (PST)
To: Martin Minow <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: [Declan McCullagh: "A List Goes Down In Flames," from Netly]
Message-ID: <199702142343.PAA17540@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 10:31 AM -0800 2/14/97, Martin Minow wrote:

>What bothers me more than anything else about the "solutions" I've
>seen proposed to the death of Cypherpunks is that they rely on
>technology -- and reject human judgement -- to solve what is, in
>reality, a social problem.  (One can certainly make the same argument
>about the V-chip, browser porn filters, and similar hacks.)

Au contraire, Martin! Many of my posts have _explicitly_ pointed to the
human filtering services offered by Eric Blossom, Ray Arachelian, and
perhaps others. Arranging to have others edit or filter the information
flow is a fine and dandy thing, and it's a very "anarchist" thing to do.

The "anarchy" of the restaurant business, the book business, and so many
other markets and sectors, where end-users are forced to look for filtering
mechanisms (such as restaurant reviews, advice of their friends,
advertisements, etc.) works pretty well.

And, I believe, the Cypherpunks list was doing pretty well before the
Moderation thing happened. The noise from the 'bots was no worse than the
noise of 2-3 years ago from Detweiler. The claims that "the list has become
unusable" were bogus, in my opinion.

(Hence the claims that "you Cyherpunks only complain" are also bogus. I for
one was not complaining and demanding that John and Sandy "do something" to
"fix" the list. I accepted the nonsense spouted about me and John and
others as just part of the chaos expected in any forum. I just filtered and
deleted such nonsense.)

It is true that some signal producers have either moved on to other
things--in many cases to crypto-related companies directly or indirectly
spawned by the Cypherpunks list and contacts!--or are not writing as many
basic essays as they once did. Such is to be expected. People get tired of
writing explanatory articles, and handling newbies.

The key to improving signal is to increase the amount of signal, not to
just suppress noise so as to make the S/N ratio look better. I can easily
hit the "delete" key to remove noise, but I can't hit the "create" key to
increase signal.

--Tim May



Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside"
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."