Ben, et al, I am getting my thoughts more together on technological censorship, an(other) example of which I recently encountered at Convergence08. Since we have already had some discussions about this here in the past, I thought that my recent encounter at Convergence08 would be remote enough for everyone to speak objectively, as it doesn't directly concern anyone here (except maybe Ben in a very slight way).
As I understand it, Ben is going to be presenting there on November 16, and I suspect that he will see himself on my side of this particular situation, whereas he has been on pretty much the opposite side of nearly this same issue in the past on this forum. The Act: I was planning on presenting some complex material and they have a conference Wiki, so I just opened up a new page on the Wiki and pasted an article in for others to comment on before the conference. Not only did the management there vehemently disapprove of my actions, which violated no stated rule, but they then immediately proceeded to delete my article and suspend my Wiki privileges. They have refused to reinstate my Wiki privileges, and they have also refused to give any reason whatsoever for refusing to reinstate them, even after my explaining that any error on my part was entirely unknowing and unintentional and would not be repeated. They have also refused to give any explanation for refusing allow the posting of articles. On the surface this would seem to be absolutely no censorship at all, because everyone gets the same forum to present in, and I would have the same hour as everyone else to make my case. However, this puts those presenting material that is leveraged on well known existing material, as well as those who are unprepared, at an advantage over those presenting entirely new material. This would tend to support status quo positions rather than radical advances (like Ben's?). Without any opportunity to have others come up to speed on radically new material, I doubt that I could be really heard by a general audience in just one hour. Of course there was absolutely no conscious understanding of these subtle effects by the idiots who demanded that articles not be posted. After all, everything that they know about could easily be presented in just one hour. Of course this only demonstrates their ignorance, which of course is the source of the emergent property of censorship. Ben, I will certainly enjoy watching you present how machine consciousness works, to a general audience, all in just one hour. Like most censorship, it is completely unknowing on the part of the people doing the censoring. Any thoughts? Steve Richfield ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
