Cypherpunks Goals: Bad debate drives out good debate

(I sent this out on Saturday, apparently just after the Great Outage began.
I never saw it, so I presume few if any of the rest of you did either.
While we're only 200-strong now, down from our 700+ peak recently, I
suppose the most diligent and interested readers have by now managed to get
back on the list. The alternately clued readers will have to miss this
one.)


Cypherdenizens,

I guess it's a fact of cyberspace that well-reasoned, well-written
posts don't get the followup responses that clueless, inflammatory, or
otherwise controversial posts do. This has been driven home to me
recently as I sort many thousands of posts and many hundreds of
threads accumulated these last 19 months (and I deleted some of the
true crap long ago, so my sample is skewed toward the good stuff!).

I look at recent examples, like the analysis by Greg Broiles of what
"Cyperpunks write code" means, and I see no follow-ups. I look at the
thoughtful words of Harry Bartholomew, including a book review, of
what can go wrong in software and what this means for crypto protocol
tools, and I see no follow-up commnents. I look at Ray Cromwell's
detailed presentation of his WEB-based remailer, and I see only
comments by a few of us (me, Hal Finney, as I recall). Plenty of similar
examples.

What is going on?

Without getting into particulars, clueless posts generate flurries of
denunciations, "your mother codes in Fortran" insults, and alien abduction
responses. A nobody name Nabalandian drools all over the list,
mailbombs us, and generates several dozen responses. (Including from
me, so I'm not blameless.) The Detweiler Perversion nearly brought the
list to its knees for over two months recently. (And lesser flame
wars, involving Thomas Tso, Xenon, and now Nabalandian, have similarly
distracted us.)

Cypher version of Gresham's Law: bad posts drive out good posts.

(The same is being seen in talk.politics.crypto, with the neverending
Sternlight vs. Everybody Else dominating the traffic by a factor of
20-to-1. Detweiler recently reappeared (as tmp@netcom.com) and is back
to debating _himself_ and answering his own delusional posts.)

Some fine work is being done, both by those who are posting here and
by those who are apparently holding their counsel for the time being.
But the crumb bum posts are definitely winning out.

To be sure, posts by the stronger posters--who I won't name now--can
still generate significant debate, but not nearly as well as the
inflammatory posts can. (Part of this is predictable: the stronger
posts are often technically deeper, meaning that more of the reading
population feels unable to add signicantly.)

I hope there's something we can do about it.

I may start reposting, at not too frequent intervals, interesting
articles from the past.  "Golden Oldies," I called them on the
Extropians list. Newcomers to the list often publically speculate that
the old-timers are not "interested" in debating what drew them, the
newcomers, to the list in the first place....things like Clipper, PGP,
the loss of privacy, etc. What they may not realize is that many of us
have spent literally many hundreds of hours writing articles for this
list. That we have no wish to repeat the widely-accepted reasons for
why Clipper is bad, or why RSA has not been broken, or why income
taxes are about to become obsolete, is not surprising.

While I'm not predicting the imminent death of the Cypherpunks list,
it seems clear we have to stop the slide into inconsequential chatter
and paranoid speculation.

Cypherpunks write code. Or at least they work on ways to *make things
happen*. They don't fall into the trap both the Marxists and the
Libertarians have fallen into, of idly discussing theory and hoping
that somehow the glorious future will arrive. Cyperpunks understand
that the genie of strong crypto is out of the bottle and that a
relatively small number of people working on new tools and
capabilities can produce a phase shift of immense proportions in the
world.

There's work to be done, and I know of no other groups even one tenth
as prepared as we are to do this work.

Let us get on with it.

--Tim May

--
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."


..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

<In mail Timothy C. May said:>
> 
> Some fine work is being done, both by those who are posting here and
> by those who are apparently holding their counsel for the time being.
> But the crumb bum posts are definitely winning out.
> 
> To be sure, posts by the stronger posters--who I won't name now--can
> still generate significant debate, but not nearly as well as the
> inflammatory posts can. (Part of this is predictable: the stronger
> posts are often technically deeper, meaning that more of the reading
> population feels unable to add signicantly.)

Tim, 
  You are right about the excess fluff on the list, of course.  I also
  think a very good explanation is what you and another poster have
  mentioned about the "masses" being or feeling unable to contribute
  to such a technical matter.  Everyone can respond to a jerk though.

  There are three points I'd like to make:

  1. The technical posters should strive to talk to the masses and not
	 each other.  It's the same old catch 22 of "The professor has a PhD
	 and knows his stuff, but he can't talk to students on their level."
	 Why not set up a tutorial posting where someone who intimately 
	 understands crypt tries to explain some of the basics to those of
	 us who are along for the ride instead of studying for the Grand
	 Master of the Universe Degree in Cryptography and Math.  Perhaps
	 your "golden oldie" idea is a step in the right direction.

	 Of course, this assumes the techies are mostly interested in helping
	 newbies become techies.  If their intention is to send info back and
	 forth among themselves please tell us so we can look elsewhere for
	 instructional help.

  2. Many people on the list are time-challenged :)  A short post from
	 J.Random Jerk is much easier to read than a 5 page eloquent speach
	 from you which, although it contains very good information, is 
	 difficult to "hang with".  Some of the more knowlegable people here
	 have a tendency to ramble and make their postings flowery and they
	 lose us normal folks that want to read "just the good stuff".

  3. We are human and it is human, or at least societally inborn, to
	 argue back when insulted.  We all have to continually remind ourselves
	 to ignore the jerks and not jump back.  If everyone ignores them they
	 will go away.  (as an aside:  Nalbandian isn't some punk kid!  He's
	 an older person in his mid 50's.  It's a shame to see someone who has
	 that many years of experience to act that way, but they do sometimes
	 and we just have to learn to ignore them all.  << Yes, Tim, I know
	 I am among the worst flamers here sometimes, but I'm trying >> )

  Please don't take this as an insult.  It is only meant as MY OPINION of
  what's "wrong" with the list and what could be improved.


  Take care
	 Jim
-- 
 Tantalus Inc.          Jim Sewell      Amateur Radio: KD4CKQ
 P.O. Box 2310          Programmer           Internet: jims@mpgn.com
 Key West, FL 33045     C-Unix-PC          Compu$erve: 71061,1027
 (305)293-8100                            PGP via email on request. 
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Good post. Here's a reply. =)


Tim said:
> 
> What is going on?
> 

	You have a good summary of what's going on. Personally I've
found it useful to create a filter for my cypherpunks mail to send
posts from people whom I respect more into a seperate folder such that
the signal-to-noise ratio in that folder is higher. When I have more
time I read the folder with the lower signal-to-noise ratio, but I
often do not have those resources.
	I don't really have to deal with bad posts because I don't see
most of them unless I have some extra time on my hands... Others
interested in rational discussion and debate and actual-doing-things
might find this a useful technique.