On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 4:39 PM Russell Standish <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 04, 2025 at 02:30:41AM -0800, PGC wrote: > > On Wednesday, January 1, 2025 at 2:48:25 AM UTC+1 Quentin Anciaux wrote: > > > > What pains me the most, is that this mailing list had I think the > most > > influential and best thinkers of this century and we're left with > that... > > this list had (and still has for those not in the mind bending dead > state) > > hal finney, wei dai, jurgen Schmidhuber, Russell Standish, Saibal > Mitra, > > Jason Resch, Terren Suydam, Telmo Menezez, Brent Meeker, Bruno > Marchal and > > all of the nice non troll and truth seeking humans in this reality > that I > > forgot, happy new year, happy new day to be alive to you all and > happy > > discovering of this mind bending reality. I really love you all, > even the > > ones who triggers that bad feelings in me. > > > > > > Look, I am all for freedom and anti-censorship as the next guy but I > think > > times have shifted from late 90s and early 2000s. This list is a target > because > > some nuanced discussion takes place, people are jealous and want to be > > associated with that; abusing the list's original purpose of exchange on > broad > > everything/ensemble type theories. The lack of moderation is why people > leave > > because: why should anybody bother? You can't block one offender's > posts, as > > they have mushroomed into too many spammers posting too much. Reading a > good > > post is becoming like an annoying search mission. > > > > One solution is to create a curated mirror of the archive—preserving > those two > > decades of thoughtful exchanges in a read-only format on a stable, > publicly > > accessible platform—while simultaneously placing tighter controls on new > posts. > > By instituting a simple vetting process for membership (I DON'T want to > be > > admin or part of admin team, but what's happening here has reached a > tipping > > point; even if I am not part of the list's future, there needs to be > some admin > > work performed by more people) and routing all messages through a light > > moderation layer, administrator(s) can ensure that genuine contributions > do not > > get overwhelmed by off-topic spam. Additional filters can help shield the > > discussion from the bs. > > > > This measured shift toward a moderated forum maintains access to the > original > > trove of insights while keeping future debates civil, ensuring that > valuable > > material remains easy to find and that new voices can join the > conversation in > > a constructive atmosphere. There's a difference between naive posts and > people > > willing to refine their positions with willingness to learn and abusive > > ideologues, trolls etc. Russell, Brent, Quentin etc. please consider > beefing up > > admin and moderation, as we can't see the forest for the trees anymore. > Another > > idea would be to move off grid and have parts be not publicly > accessible. I > > don't post original thoughts anymore as trolls are stealing here to grow > their > > audiences without crediting sources. > > > > Additionally, the list can defend itself by writing to troll audiences, > their > > platforms, or their publication outlets and linking to the evidence, > > like https://groups.google.com/g/everything-list/c/RV_fof0nvKQ > > > > I don't care what measures should be taken, nor am I ambitious in > advocating > > anything. But imho the first step would be starting a general vetting > procedure > > for who gets posting rights and not; both for old and new members alike, > and > > let a team of old hands/moderators, who know the spirit of this list the > way > > you describe it should perform it. Happy New Year to thos around here > that > > matter. > > > > This has been proposed before - by my friend Duraid Madina, where he > forked the list into a moderated one. It did not fare well. Nobody > moved to the new list, it was as dead as a doornail. He is now working > on other things in his life > > So sadly, we have to deal with trolls by ignoring them. It wouldn't be > so bad if people kept things on-topic, but even then it seems we can't > help ourselves. Every 4 years, this list gets dominated by discussion > of the US election, as does every other internet discuss fora. For us > non Americans, who have absolutely no influence on the outcome, it > does get a tad tedious. > > Creating a curated repository of on-topic posts and debates is > certainly an interesting idea. It is a lot of work, though. I kind of > did that with my 2006 book "Theory of Nothing", although be a > synthesis, I may have failed in representing some of the opposing > ideas that I couldn't understand, in spite of trying my best. My main > concern was that Google Groups didn't archive the earliest posts, and > I don't think Wei Dai's original archive still exist, unless the > Wayback machine captured it. > There's an archive of posts from 1998-2009 at https://riceissa.github.io/everything-list-1998-2009/ -- do you know if it's missing some of the older ones? If you sort by date, it does seem to have the oldest (introductory) posts. I wonder about creating a spinoff that's a forum rather than a list (like a UBB forum or a reddit forum, the latter would be easy to create), to make it easier to follow the discussion on a given thread. I don't think it'd need heavy moderation but just something to make it clear to new people that the focus is on "theories of everything" in the specific sense of Schmidhuber or Tegmark that posit that that all mathematical structures of some type (whether just computational structures or a broader class) "exist", and our world (or our individual observer-moment) just happens to be one of them. There needs to be some way of discouraging people who see the term "theory of everything" and interpret it more broadly as a place to share any kind of all encompassing metaphysical or religious view of how reality works. Jesse -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAPCWU3%2BYHfOo7fV3sQ_LWNpDv4AQrq1LUArhUNDnn0wQRc0CvQ%40mail.gmail.com.
