From: Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 00:18:12 +0800
To: cypherpunks@ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Subject: Re: rant on the morality of confidentiality (fwd)
Message-ID: <199801111642.KAA18314@einstein.ssz.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text



Forwarded message:

> Subject: Re: rant on the morality of confidentiality (fwd)
> From: dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM)
> Date: Sun, 11 Jan 98 09:51:22 EST

> You don't seem to realize that the likelyhood of someone independently
> rediscovering a "lost" math result is much less than the likelyhood of
> two people independently creating substantially similar works of art.

Malarky, the history of science (and of human civilizations) is replete with
example after example of idividuals discovering the same basic theme and its
proof. Just the three examples we have been using (Newton, Gauss, Fermat)
are filled with comments about contemporaries discovering the same result.
Review Darwin for a moment, he chose to share the fame for evolutionary
theory with Wallace because he had reached the same conclusion. Had either
Darwin or Wallace not chose to publish the result would still have been
found and shared.

> For example, all of T.S.Elliot's poetry is substantially similar to
> Walt Whitman's poetry. They are, for most intents and purposes, mutually
> interchangeable. (Emily "lick my bud" Dickinson is almost interchangeable.)

Only in the context that they are both poets who write poetry.


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