Rather than assuming idiocy, censorship or ill intent; why not give them the benefit of the doubt?
Maybe they felt that offering anybody the chance to sign up as a speaker with "a session title, your name, a link to your bio or website, and perhaps a picture of you" was enough. You have complete freedom to publish whatever you like at your own website. Using a conference organization website (rather than linking to your homepage) to discuss the particulars of your work would strike me as rather "spammy" (especially given that it isn't normal at other unconference wikis); the best way to deal with spammers is usually just to delete, ignore, move on, and not waste time with them. While my impressions are that AGI is not (yet) taken particularly seriously in the established AI community, I have been pleasantly surprised with how well it has actually been received so far. I certainly see no censorship - sure, there's some scepticism about whether this might not just be history repeating itself, but I think there's also a lot of optimism, open-mindedness and hope from those in the established AI community who look in. The best way to be taken seriously is to play by the established rules of the game (whether the rules are implicit or explicit), and win. -Ben (but presumably not the "Ben" of the original message's addressees) From: Steve Richfield [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, 5 November 2008 6:18 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [agi] OT: More thoughts Technological Censorship 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
