From: Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 04:16:02 +0800
To: cypherpunks@ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Subject: e$: Snakes of Medusa on Wall Street? (fwd)
Message-ID: <199711182014.OAA23881@einstein.ssz.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Forwarded message:

> Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 12:07:49 -0500
> From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
> Subject: e$: Snakes of Medusa on Wall Street?

> In the study of American theological history, the period when Mormonism was
> invented is called the Great Awakening.

Um, I believe that went from the late 1500's to the early 1700's at best.
Ol' Joe Smith lived in the early and late 1800's nearly a hundred years
after the traditional Great Awakening. Is your claim that there was a 
second Great Awakending or are you saying the traditional (if you will)
dating is incorrect?

> that Vlad Dracul, the Impaler, was Transylvanian

Actualy, to be accurate his name was Vlad Teppish. He was eventualy killed by
his lord for carrying on excesses such as killing a woman because she let her
husband walk around with a tattered coat. Dracul and Dracula are derived
from dragon and imply a connection with the devil (which also derives its
own existance from this lexical tree).

> Of opinion, influence, and reputation, opinion is the most atomic. An opinion
> can be safely defined as a judgement, right or wrong, based on some accepted,
> or maybe just perceived, set of facts.

Doesn't the use of 'perceived' imply some a priori assumptions about the 
base structure of reality and in fact imply a more atomistic issue, that
of conceptual viability? How does an opinion become atomistic if in order
to express it we must invoke other equaly critical (or atomistic)
expressions? Further, without testing a 'perceived' fact is nothing but an
opinion.

> word about whether Socrates said the words himself. Opinion can be completely
> dissociated from identity. An anonymous post on a mailing list can have an
> opinion, and people can agree or disagree with that opinion as they see fit.

That doesn't change the fact that the opinion, anonymous or not, originated
from a single source. While I can accept that testable facts can be isolated
from source biases it escapes me how an opinion can be so isolated. At its
lowest level it is nothing more than a description of an individuals
beliefs about reality and their place in it and clearly has impact on the
sorts of ideas that are expressible in them.

Perhaps opinion & fact are unwittingly being confused. Opinions tell the
observer about the holder of the opinion, not the subject the opinion is
direct toward.

> can't *prove* our opinions are right. The definition of modern human thinking,
> is, however, that at the core of it all, someone, somewhere, is using science
> - -- which is all about verifiable and replicable physical results -- to
> validate, and occasionally create, the set of opinions most of us would now
> call knowlege. So, science or no, our thinking is still functionally,
> heuristics, but it works. Oh, well. Life is hard. :-).

Science is about how to ask questions, it is NOT concerned with the results
directly. Science is a non-intuitive mechanism whereby we can regulate how
we think about the world around us. What to do with the results is engineering.
Science itself is heuristic.

> I think the nice thing about science in the geodesic age, by the way, is that
> the technology of microcomputers and networks makes it easier for more people
> to be closer to scientific truth.

There is no 'scientific truth', THE main axiom of science is that everything
is open to review and change in responce to the observation and description
of the item under studies interactions with the environment around it.

> So, what's influence? On a personal basis, influence occurs when someone else
> agrees with your opinions.

Only if they changed their opinions *because* of the expression of your
opinions. Otherwise we are left with independant discovery. Influence is
the ability of one theory to cause the holder of another theory to add
data or tests that could potentialy alter the outcome of that original
theory. The results may or may not support either of the original theories
or could even cause a 3rd theory to be born.

> The more people agree with your opinions, the more
> influence you have.

The more people agree with your opinions AND are willing to act on them is
a measure of influence. Also, the fact that others may in fact be motivated
to act because they *disagree* with you also is clearly a possibility you
don't address. Never confuse popularity with influence.

> Back to our stack of planes, by no means does the "line" of someone's identity
> have to be a straight one

This runs counter to your assumption regarding the number of line-plane
intersections. If the line is not geometricaly 'straight' it can in fact have
zero, one, or more intersections. This causes a problem with this part of the
conclusion, you are using the axiom as proof of the assertion (the axiom).


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