Re: Homeland Deception (was RE: signal to noise proposal)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Gil wrote: Faustine writes: best is write code, write code. The main thing is to DO something, whatever your skills and talents are. Spare everyone the hot air and just do it. What *you* say is hot air; what *I* say is policy analysis. But who's listening? It's all hot air until you start seeing results. I'm rather fond of the billions of taxpayer-dollars saved metric myself; others might be lives saved, strategic assets protected etc. Once again: what matters to you and what are you doing about it? I'll be the first to admit there are few things more intrinsically worthless and boring than policy analysis done for its own sake in a vacuum. It's just a tool to be put to USE, like any other. Tools can be shoddy or well-crafted, simple or complex--but at the end of the day, can you say you really got the job done with it or not. Despite anything certain people around here have said to the contrary, precision and accuracy in analysis matter: I'm sure they wouldn't have any confusion about whether it's better to arm themselves with a bag full of rocks or a FN Herstal 5.7mm Weapons System. Think about it. You have all these fucking idiots on Capitol Hill stumbling around making policy by the equivalent of whacking each other over the head with stones. Crude tools that--despite being messy, ugly and inefficient--get the job done, more or less. I say it's time for libertarians to step up to the plate and start training with the analytic equivalent of precision weaponry. ~Faustine. *** He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. - --Thomas Paine -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGPsdk version 1.7.1 (C) 1997-1999 Network Associates, Inc. and its affiliated companies. (Diffie-Helman/DSS-only version) iQA/AwUBPKN+//g5Tuca7bfvEQIesACg7Hyysg/3KyAVw3+thCM/da1KS+4AoKIs kip/pU0+G5qlCzYTGTi90xTC =cdAv -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: FW: Homeland Deception (was RE: signal to noise proposal)
At 05:14 PM 3/27/02 -0800, Meyer Wolfsheim wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Additionally, Aimee is an Outlook user, and mattd is a Eudora user. The forgery referenced below was sent from Eudora. And strings in exe's can't be edited? I know of folks who've edited the PGP header line to flip off the spooks..
Re: Homeland Deception (was RE: signal to noise proposal)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Gil wrote: Faustine writes: best is write code, write code. The main thing is to DO something, whatever your skills and talents are. Spare everyone the hot air and just do it. What *you* say is hot air; what *I* say is policy analysis. But who's listening? It's all hot air until you start seeing results. I'm rather fond of the billions of taxpayer-dollars saved metric myself; others might be lives saved, strategic assets protected etc. Once again: what matters to you and what are you doing about it? I'll be the first to admit there are few things more intrinsically worthless and boring than policy analysis done for its own sake in a vacuum. It's just a tool to be put to USE, like any other. Tools can be shoddy or well-crafted, simple or complex--but at the end of the day, can you say you really got the job done with it or not. Despite anything certain people around here have said to the contrary, precision and accuracy in analysis matter: I'm sure they wouldn't have any confusion about whether it's better to arm themselves with a bag full of rocks or a FN Herstal 5.7mm Weapons System. Think about it. You have all these fucking idiots on Capitol Hill stumbling around making policy by the equivalent of whacking each other over the head with stones. Crude tools that--despite being messy, ugly and inefficient--get the job done, more or less. I say it's time for libertarians to step up to the plate and start training with the analytic equivalent of precision weaponry. ~~Faustine. *** He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. - --Thomas Paine -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGPsdk version 1.7.1 (C) 1997-1999 Network Associates, Inc. and its affiliated companies. (Diffie-Helman/DSS-only version) iQA/AwUBPKN+//g5Tuca7bfvEQIesACg7Hyysg/3KyAVw3+thCM/da1KS+4AoKIs kip/pU0+G5qlCzYTGTi90xTC =cdAv -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Homeland Deception (was RE: signal to noise proposal)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Morlock wrote: And whatever deceptive advantages might possibly come from the *public perception* of rampant incompetence and donutchompery, the drawbacks are Optimism may somatize one against dread of reality, but it will surely impair accuracy of predictions. Sure. But for the life of me I can't see where you ever got the idea I'm an optimist just because I don't think it's time to retreat to a bunker watch the whole world go up in flames. As bad as it may very well be now, you seem to be forgetting it could be a WHOLE lot worse. The more people who care about liberties give up and do nothing, the uglier it's going to get. Should the emphasis be on developing technology instead of fretting over laws? Actually, I agree. Like I said in a previous post, the only way you can counter math is with better math. If what you do best is write code, write code. The main thing is to DO something, whatever your skills and talents are. Spare everyone the hot air and just do it. Take a good look in the mirror and ask yourself: what are you doing that matters to anyone besides yourself? If all you're doing is going to a meaningless job for the paycheck, coming home, watching TV, puttering around and grousing on the Net, you're part of the problem--as useless and irrelevant as the faceless horde of sheep you despise. On that account, my conscience is clear. Maybe when I'm old and tired I'll give up and join you in the bunker. But unlike some of you, I'm not fooling myself that there'll be some magical Galt's Gulch safe-haven to get away to. I'm a libertarian realist. I believe in doing what I can in this world rather than ignoring history and human nature and pining away for an imaginary one. Unless you have some historical examples of well-concealed government competence ? In the main? Not particularly. But I could go on all week with case studies of incompetence, waste, and abuse which could have been avoided if only a decisionmaker-- interested only in staying elected-- had been persuaded to follow sound advice instead of bad. Say what you will, but I think chipping away at the state by facilitating privatization is a bigger achievement than than throwing rocks at pigs in a parade. I'd rather be able to know I did my part to save the taxpayer literally billions of dollars than know I cost the police department a couple of bandaids and a couple of man-hours to write up my criminal record. To each his own. ~Faustine. *** One of the chief sources of cultural paranoia is the ever-widening rift between the beliefs of people and their actual behavior, and the tacit assumption among these same people that this practice---this contradiction between idealism and practice---is a normal state of affairs. Lionel Rubinoff, The pornography of power -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGPsdk version 1.7.1 (C) 1997-1999 Network Associates, Inc. and its affiliated companies. (Diffie-Helman/DSS-only version) iQA/AwUBPKIT+fg5Tuca7bfvEQI3ngCfV6rJkX9F2XkhSOg83idmDwqH/AcAoI+l G7PVUTU9moLmgcJvA5Hye2lA =x/sW -END PGP SIGNATURE-
FW: Homeland Deception (was RE: signal to noise proposal)
This was a spoof. A few other suspects in my inbox under names here. ~Aimee -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Aimee Farr Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 10:33 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Homeland Deception (was RE: signal to noise proposal) Faustine If I was not a lady I would say you are full of shit On 26 Mar 2002 at 23:07, Faustine wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Faustine: Aimee wrote: Well, I doan' kno' nuttin' 'bout no agents. That fact has been established. Careful parsing is the spice of life... :P So sayeth the academic-researcher-grad student pretext... :P IT S A CONSPIRACY -some poor idiot, right now But, you know, after pondering on that a bit...What if the lie was supposedly really secret stuff? You know, ME LUCKY CHARMS! I know the little boys and girls are after me lucky charms. If 3 or more agents happen to run in the door with me lucky charms, Sounds about right. Yep, they would be lucky and charming. Ha! Look, even if you like the idea of PSYOPS in Afghanistan (for instance), you have to admit what s surfaced in the media has been embarrassingly crude and ham-handed. I suppose the best you could hope for is that it s really all part of a play the idiot and look ineffectual strategy while diverting attention from the real business at hand. Risky, at any rate-- since as any good poker player knows, the merest twitch of the eyelid risks being interpreted as weakness, causing your opponent to raise the stakes. Not good. Failing any evidence to the contrary, it s likely just wishful thinking though. I m really not in the all feds are incompetent donutchompers camp, but more and more it s looking suspiciously like the donutchompers have the upper hand. And whatever deceptive advantages might possibly come from the *public perception* of rampant incompetence and donutchompery, the drawbacks are deadly. Strength is good. I think Ashcroft and co. are making a HUGE mistake playing up the Christian goody goody schtick it plays straight into the Arab fundamentalist interpretation of the US; and the realists won t believe it (and wouldn t give a crap anyway. And never did.) Even more worriesome, though, is that some of them actually seem to believe it. America ought to deserve better than to be run by a bunch of simps. Emphasis on ought. By the way, did you catch the video of Ashcroft singing some cheezy maudlin patriotic gospel song at a theological seminary? At a fake press conference podium, yet. Surreal. Absolutely nauseating, made my blood boil. Didn t know whether to laugh or throw up... John Ashcroft SINGS! Let the Eagle Soar http://www.ifilm.com/ifilm/product/film_credits/0,3875,2424640,00.html AAAAAAaaaAAAGH! Ahem. Where were we. As someone once said, I d rather side with someone who burns the flag and wraps themselves in the Constitution than someone who burns the Constitution and wraps themselves in the flag. What shows that the snowers know they've slowly been snowed? Bet it keeps a lot of people awake at night, that one. Tricky, but fascinating. If anyone knows of any good links to counter-deception detection, drop me a line. Not sure how on topic it is, but something everyone here would do well to read about. Either that, or just default to not trusting anyone, ever. Works for me. Empathy skills in personal matters. You mean like gaydar for bullshitters? On a grand scale: 1. counterdeception teams - multidisciplinary, non-cultured, outsiders -- creatives, narratives, hoaxers, jokesters, emplotters, etc. Yeah but where? In the TLAs themselves? Consultants? Here s my card, I m with Flimflam Inc, an In-Q-Tel startup... Where s the oversight? Getting a room full of natural-born bullshitters together sounds dangerous no matter who s footing the bill. And put a con in a room full of squares call it personal bias if you want to, but I know where I d put my money as to who d come out ahead. Hm, unless you consider the case of Hanssen, the genuinely square con. Just goes to show you the limits of pigeonholing and profiling. 2. devil's advocacy in the event stream Yep. Complacently blocking out opinions you disagree with is always a bad idea. 3. competitive analysis 4. MUST HAVE: highest-level precision black channels -- requiring nothing short of a resurrection. Close surveillance. Sneaky submarines are not good enough. Catch 22 re. the Deutch prohibition on working with scummy types. I think it points to the need to re-evaluate exactly what it is we re trying to accomplish. 5. Cultural change -- a bit of British eccentricity; decision-maker sensitization Reminds me of the classic story about the time Herman Kahn was asked about Dr. Strangelove: Dr. Strangelove would not have lasted three weeks at the Pentagon... he was too
Re: FW: Homeland Deception (was RE: signal to noise proposal)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- The lne list trims away some of the headers, so tracing this forgery back to the source authoritatively is difficult, but one immediately thinks of Deep Cover Agent mattd when reading this, as he seems incapable of using the space bar in a consistent fashion. Additionally, Aimee is an Outlook user, and mattd is a Eudora user. The forgery referenced below was sent from Eudora. (Not to mention the fact that this post, just like all of mattd's other posts, contains nothing of value or interest whatsoever, and cannot be considered signal even by the most generous of definitions.) Eric, can lne be configured to pass the entire original headers as well, so that we may fine-tune our kill-files more precisely? - -MW- On Wed, 27 Mar 2002, Aimee Farr wrote: This was a spoof. A few other suspects in my inbox under names here. ~Aimee -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Aimee Farr Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 10:33 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Homeland Deception (was RE: signal to noise proposal) Faustine If I was not a lady I would say you are full of shit snip -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: No comment. iQEVAwUBPKJuhCsFU3q6vVI9AQEdhAf7BT6EHRBC+SgsamFjGf26DpxAhp/Ayg0N X+pIemCXdlP/y0riZz/trOzpn4WOC2l2ukhdaRv7D3q1WjevkiDqgxc2nUOAMN9v +eUm7AG0NMByCGYbbXWD/avA8LJx/WcEyZWE4dXWNyd3Txj/IrGD+I8v7NcmQdbA VxaVrvMnSx0S7zvm4SCGA2bhrI5Z0+bCPPZMPJOLGG5fIDgrV/kbyxZmfzh8L+AP E+NjuRpGD1YX3lIcsHPEmAeWelefSoegBIdyNqb4afXrKtmXHCRUVq22F4a/luzq xnFN8v48sDa3Zic4H2P1NS5XkXeL4AfruP4Ve1Y8X526elTFewtdVg== =c46Q -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: signal to noise proposal
On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, Faustine wrote: Bah. I say it depends entirely on what the lie is, who's being lied to, and how confident and artistic the confidence artists are. If they were good enough (and their targets comfortable enough), all three could be lying their asses off about anything and nobody would ever be the wiser. Likewise, with three or more targets playing it the other direction. There is a time factor involved. Inconsistencies must accumulate. And I'm not sure the problem applies to somebody who WANTS to be lied to as you posit by implication with your extension. There is an implicit 'critical' factor in the original problem as posed, we assume no cooperation between -all- the players, there is at least one 'honest' one. The game where there is one honest player is -not- the same game as no honest players. Changing the rules in the middle of the game will -almost always- allow one to manipulate the discussion to a desired goal. But then again there goes that -critical- factor in such a co-operative environment. Thank goodness this isn't one of those ;) -- There is less in this than meets the eye. Tellulah Bankhead [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
Re: signal to noise proposal
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Jim wrote: On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, Faustine wrote: Bah. I say it depends entirely on what the lie is, who's being lied to, and how confident and artistic the confidence artists are. If they were good enough (and their targets comfortable enough), all three could be lying their asses off about anything and nobody would ever be the wiser. Likewise, with three or more targets playing it the other direction. There is a time factor involved. Inconsistencies must accumulate. Maybe, but whether they're picked up on is the only thing that counts. We see what we want to see: if something moves the target from a state of unfocused suspicion to a tightly focused suspicion, they're going to be seeing inconsistencies and drawing inferences where there are none. Which is what makes being hypervigilant so dangerously counterproductive: if you're all wound up and madder than hell about the idea of being fed a line of disinformation, all anyone who wants to damage you and your informant has to do is insinuate you're being taken for a ride: you find the proof yourself and take it out on the innocent person. Classic Iago. Credo in un dio crudel che m'ha creato simile a se. heh. (who says a Wagnerian can't like Verdi? Magificent aria.) And I'm not sure the problem applies to somebody who WANTS to be lied to as you posit by implication with your extension. The most obvious example here is a little kid whose parents feed them a line of crap about Santa Claus. The kid wants to believe, and I never heard of parents who tipped them off by not getting their story straight! Even after they realize they're seeing different-shaped Santa Clauses in the shopping malls etc, they still manage to convince themselves it's real. Why? Beacuse their parents told them so, they saw the NORAD BS on CNN, they like the presents, they take comfort in the the idea of a benevolent father-figure sailing through the sky... He sees you when you're sleeping He knows when you're awake He knows if you've been bad or good So be good for goodness sake! Though this looks like the perfect set-up for a frothing rant on the evils of religion, the state, and how we delude ourselves in the name of security, I'll pass and leave you to draw your own conclusions. ;) There is an implicit 'critical' factor in the original problem as posed, we assume no cooperation between-all- the players, there is at least one 'honest' one. Honest? You mean someone acting in good faith without the expectation of being conned? Think of other games where someone is acting in good faith WITH the expectiation of being conned, or acting in BAD faith without the expectation of being conned. Honest, bah. Right now I'm thinking of the second half of that Iago aria. The game where there is one honest player is -not- the same game as no honest players. Who's the honest player in a game of Chicken? Cooperate Not Cooperate Cooperate2,21,3 Not Cooperate3,10,0 Just a thought... ~Faustine. *** He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. - --Thomas Paine -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGPsdk version 1.7.1 (C) 1997-1999 Network Associates, Inc. and its affiliated companies. (Diffie-Helman/DSS-only version) iQA/AwUBPKDfAfg5Tuca7bfvEQL+kQCg0yHDglcIIJmKSpWSBTx4oar6sp8An2O7 xt4ncaF0wX3fzyfZBqhpsT/T =tTGs -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Homeland Deception (was RE: signal to noise proposal)
Faustine: Aimee wrote: To wit, no two people can safely tell the same lie to the same person. Bah. I say it depends entirely on what the lie is, who's being lied to, and how confident and artistic the confidence artists are. You're probably right. Choate: Actually they can, only one (or both, if we allow 3 or more agents, only one is required to 'know' the lie) of the people must believe it is the truth. If they were good enough (and their targets comfortable enough), all three could be lying their asses off about anything and nobody would ever be the wiser. Likewise, with three or more targets playing it the other direction. Well, I doan' kno' nuttin' 'bout no agents. That fact has been established. Careful parsing is the spice of life... :P So sayeth the academic-researcher-grad student pretext... :P But, you know, after pondering on that a bit...What if the lie was supposedly really secret stuff? You know, ME LUCKY CHARMS! I know the little boys and girls are after me lucky charms. If 3 or more agents happen to run in the door with me lucky charms, Sounds about right. Yep, they would be lucky and charming. that might smell really fishy to some people since leprechauns are hard to catch. Somewhere over the rainbow. Furthermore, if you ask them about these lucky charms in isolation, they better know the lucky charms like the back of their hand, or further investigation is likely to review not-so-lucky inconsistencies. The knowing part can be rendered irrelevant by context, indeed it is sometimes imperative that everybody KNOW so as to provide...uhm.secondary alternative consistency. But what about when the unlucky charmers find they're actually the victims of a deceivers-deceiving-the-deceivers-deceiving-the-deceivers kind of thing. Recursive is just writing backwards. What shows that the snowers know they've slowly been snowed? Bet it keeps a lot of people awake at night, that one. Tricky, but fascinating. If anyone knows of any good links to counter-deception detection, drop me a line. Not sure how on topic it is, but something everyone here would do well to read about. Either that, or just default to not trusting anyone, ever. Works for me. Empathy skills in personal matters. On a grand scale: 1. counterdeception teams - multidisciplinary, non-cultured, outsiders -- creatives, narratives, hoaxers, jokesters, emplotters, etc. 2. devil's advocacy in the event stream 3. competitive analysis 4. MUST HAVE: highest-level precision black channels -- requiring nothing short of a resurrection. Close surveillance. Sneaky submarines are not good enough. 5. Cultural change -- a bit of British eccentricity; decision-maker sensitization 6. Monitoring of foreign open source media and organizational theme variations (quantitative content and textual analysis; inferential scanning) 7. Monitoring of internal organizational dissenters, noncomformists and the intuitives (instead of quashing them, solicit them) Sounds down your alley of interests, interested in your thoughts. Due to the changing nature of the world, the U.S. could easily find itself hoodwinked, isolated, paralyzed and worse. It used to be Uproar in the East, strike in the West. Today, it's Fool the Sky. (transparent or false-flag cover plan) Our goal-states, perceptions, decision-points, etc. are there for all to see. Most deceptions play upon expectations. Our surveillance capabilities and superior military seem to point to a BARBAROSSA scenario -- a grand deception. Concealed within our strength is our weakness. And, lucky charm lies can take many forms, including physical, which might be subject to verification, additional investigation and other stuff I don't want to happen to me lucky charms, because I might want the enemy to believe they are TRULY lucky, charmed, and mine. I'm sure it depends, but perhaps that wisdom came from just such a situation. Oh really? *blink blink* like what? The Allies are landing at Normandy! ...It's just a trick. What does German intelligence say? ...Just what the British told them. The comment was from a review of FORTITUDE (deception plan) by one of the British designers. We could learn a lot from them --- save hundreds of thousands of lives by using these concepts defensively, domestically, and in new contexts. With each day that passes, we loose more of the window, and waste our resources on low-return countermeasures which do nothing but present 'barriers of certainty' to our adversaries, albeit a thin veil of comfort to our population. (I frequently point out that the Germans practically held hands along railways, and we still blew them all to heck in WW II.) In some places, we are taking actions that play into deception designs. Maybe we should change that, along with a few street signs. Our adversaries know deception is a great strategic advantage, and they don't want the American public to accept it. Churchill
Re: Homeland Deception (was RE: signal to noise proposal)
On Tue, 26 Mar 2002, Aimee Farr wrote: Recursive is just writing backwards. No it doesn't, it means 'write again'; as in over and over. -- There is less in this than meets the eye. Tellulah Bankhead [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
Re: signal to noise proposal
On Tue, 26 Mar 2002, Faustine wrote: Maybe, but whether they're picked up on is the only thing that counts. Actually not, if the various agents involved act as if the lie is the truth then at some point their actions will come into conflict. In fact this sort of behaviour can lead to the failure of various sorts of inter-personal commerce (not the money kind, definition #2) without the individual agents necessarily ever understanding why. Simply because nobody can stand up and say That's a lie doesn't render a lie harmless. -- There is less in this than meets the eye. Tellulah Bankhead [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
Re: signal to noise proposal
On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, Aimee Farr wrote: You know, ME LUCKY CHARMS! I know the little boys and girls are after me lucky charms. Silly rabbit, Tricks are for kids! -- There is less in this than meets the eye. Tellulah Bankhead [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
RE: Homeland Deception (was RE: signal to noise proposal)
And I thought you were from Texas. ;) Hold it up to a mirror. (Well... it does make a point.) ~Aimee Recursive is just writing backwards. No it doesn't, it means 'write again'; as in over and over. -- There is less in this than meets the eye. Tellulah Bankhead [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
RE: signal to noise proposal
Faustine wrote: But what about when the unlucky charmers find they're actually the victims of a deceivers-deceiving-the-deceivers-deceiving-the-deceivers kind of thing. What shows that the snowers know they've slowly been snowed? Bet it keeps a lot of people awake at night, that one. Tricky, but fascinating. If anyone knows of any good links to counter-deception detection, drop me a line. Not sure how on topic it is, but something everyone here would do well to read about. Either that, or just default to not trusting anyone, ever. Works for me. I sent a silly CYPHERPUNKS IQ TEST to the list and received a ton of private replies. Very few selected one of the available answers. They constructed alternative answersbut also alternative contexts, observables and event streams, mostly in narrative. I didn't solicit them to tell me what wasn't there, or to summon what didn't exist. One psychological experiment presented a fault-tree to a group of mechanics. It listed possible reasons that a car wouldn't start. Say reasons 1-10, *out of 50 available.* After seeing the information presented like that, the mechanics were hard pressed to come up with more than a handful of additional alternatives -- when asked. I'm not suggesting that my woman amongst the ferns is the equivalent of that, but it could be suggestive. Some of these guys can call the jinn. ~Aimee
Re: Homeland Deception (was RE: signal to noise proposal)
On Tue, 26 Mar 2002, Aimee Farr wrote: And I thought you were from Texas. ;) Hold it up to a mirror. It's the same size it was before, only reversed. -- There is less in this than meets the eye. Tellulah Bankhead [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
Re: Homeland Deception (was RE: signal to noise proposal)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Faustine: Aimee wrote: Well, I doan' kno' nuttin' 'bout no agents. That fact has been established. Careful parsing is the spice of life... :P So sayeth the academic-researcher-grad student pretext... :P ITS A CONSPIRACY -some poor idiot, right now But, you know, after pondering on that a bit...What if the lie was supposedly really secret stuff? You know, ME LUCKY CHARMS! I know the little boys and girls are after me lucky charms. If 3 or more agents happen to run in the door with me lucky charms, Sounds about right. Yep, they would be lucky and charming. Ha! Look, even if you like the idea of PSYOPS in Afghanistan (for instance), you have to admit whats surfaced in the media has been embarrassingly crude and ham-handed. I suppose the best you could hope for is that its really all part of a play the idiot and look ineffectual strategy while diverting attention from the real business at hand. Risky, at any rate-- since as any good poker player knows, the merest twitch of the eyelid risks being interpreted as weakness, causing your opponent to raise the stakes. Not good. Failing any evidence to the contrary, its likely just wishful thinking though. Im really not in the all feds are incompetent donutchompers camp, but more and more its looking suspiciously like the donutchompers have the upper hand. And whatever deceptive advantages might possibly come from the *public perception* of rampant incompetence and donutchompery, the drawbacks are deadly. Strength is good. I think Ashcroft and co. are making a HUGE mistake playing up the Christian goody goody schtick it plays straight into the Arab fundamentalist interpretation of the US; and the realists wont believe it (and wouldnt give a crap anyway. And never did.) Even more worriesome, though, is that some of them actually seem to believe it. America ought to deserve better than to be run by a bunch of simps. Emphasis on ought. By the way, did you catch the video of Ashcroft singing some cheezy maudlin patriotic gospel song at a theological seminary? At a fake press conference podium, yet. Surreal. Absolutely nauseating, made my blood boil. Didnt know whether to laugh or throw up... John Ashcroft SINGS! Let the Eagle Soar http://www.ifilm.com/ifilm/product/film_credits/0,3875,2424640,00.html AAAAAAaaaAAAGH! Ahem. Where were we. As someone once said, Id rather side with someone who burns the flag and wraps themselves in the Constitution than someone who burns the Constitution and wraps themselves in the flag. What shows that the snowers know they've slowly been snowed? Bet it keeps a lot of people awake at night, that one. Tricky, but fascinating. If anyone knows of any good links to counter-deception detection, drop me a line. Not sure how on topic it is, but something everyone here would do well to read about. Either that, or just default to not trusting anyone, ever. Works for me. Empathy skills in personal matters. You mean like gaydar for bullshitters? On a grand scale: 1. counterdeception teams - multidisciplinary, non-cultured, outsiders -- creatives, narratives, hoaxers, jokesters, emplotters, etc. Yeah but where? In the TLAs themselves? Consultants? Heres my card, Im with Flimflam Inc, an In-Q-Tel startup... Wheres the oversight? Getting a room full of natural-born bullshitters together sounds dangerous no matter whos footing the bill. And put a con in a room full of squares call it personal bias if you want to, but I know where Id put my money as to whod come out ahead. Hm, unless you consider the case of Hanssen, the genuinely square con. Just goes to show you the limits of pigeonholing and profiling. 2. devil's advocacy in the event stream Yep. Complacently blocking out opinions you disagree with is always a bad idea. 3. competitive analysis 4. MUST HAVE: highest-level precision black channels -- requiring nothing short of a resurrection. Close surveillance. Sneaky submarines are not good enough. Catch 22 re. the Deutch prohibition on working with scummy types. I think it points to the need to re-evaluate exactly what it is were trying to accomplish. 5. Cultural change -- a bit of British eccentricity; decision-maker sensitization Reminds me of the classic story about the time Herman Kahn was asked about Dr. Strangelove: Dr. Strangelove would not have lasted three weeks at the Pentagon... he was too creative. 6. Monitoring of foreign open source media and organizational theme variations (quantitative content and textual analysis; inferential scanning) Absolutely; open source analysis is for everyone. 7. Monitoring of internal organizational dissenters, noncomformists and the intuitives (instead of quashing them, solicit them) Hey, Im game. Be sure to file all this under the expectation of being conned category though. the niceties of good faith or bad faith I do believe Ill leave to the discretion of
Re: signal to noise proposal
On Sun, 24 Mar 2002, Aimee Farr wrote: To wit, no two people can safely tell the same lie to the same person. Actually they can, only one (or both, if we allow 3 or more agents, only one is required to 'know' the lie) of the people must believe it is the truth. -- There is less in this than meets the eye. Tellulah Bankhead [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
RE: signal to noise proposal
To wit, no two people can safely tell the same lie to the same person. Choate: Actually they can, only one (or both, if we allow 3 or more agents, only one is required to 'know' the lie) of the people must believe it is the truth. Well, I doan' kno' nuttin' 'bout no agents. That fact has been established. But, you know, after pondering on that a bit...What if the lie was supposedly really secret stuff? You know, ME LUCKY CHARMS! I know the little boys and girls are after me lucky charms. If 3 or more agents happen to run in the door with me lucky charms, that might smell really fishy to some people since leprechauns are hard to catch. Furthermore, if you ask them about these lucky charms in isolation, they better know the lucky charms like the back of their hand, or further investigation is likely to review not-so-lucky inconsistencies. The knowing part can be rendered irrelevant by context, indeed it is sometimes imperative that everybody KNOW so as to provide...uhm.secondary and alternative consistency. And, lucky charm lies can take many forms, including physical, which might be subject to verification, additional investigation and other stuff I don't want to happen to me lucky charms, because I might want the enemy to believe they are TRULY lucky, charmed, and mine. I'm sure it depends, but perhaps that wisdom came from just such a situation.
Re: signal to noise proposal
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] - ... the mailing list simply records # of posts written by each poster. call this P - mailing list records # of times someone wrote a post that was replied to. ... call this R - pseudoreputation is a measure of the above two parameters. one can experiment with different metrics/weightings as a combination. e.g. x*P + y*R etc Aha, a simple formula for personal signal-to-noise. This could be extended to include other factors, such as quoting style (where Q is pecentage of mail quoted without reply). Many Fidonet groups used to contain frequent statistics on best and worst posters/quoters/etc. An automated reputation system based upon postings and replies is all to open to abuse though. Especially in a group such as this, where people post under several different addresses. Reputation-bumping through conversations with self (enlightenment turned practical?) would be too easy without further measures that hindered the simplicity of mailing lists. - mailing list outputs current reputation alongside peoples posts. I.e. if my reputation value is currently [x], there's a reputation-value: x field output in outgoing msgs. this is available for filtering by end users. Fine for those of us whose mail clients don't support customized headers, or can't telnet to port 25. - mailing list might also support a filter such that people can toss out msgs from sources with too low a reputation by their specification. Or with too high - must be some kind of niche market for people that want to read crap, look at the kind of forwards I get every day ;) - I propose that those with low reputations are not bounced from the list, only given quotas. say the lower the reputation goes, the fewer msgs per day they are allowed to post. Ick - as soon as you start to limit people's postings then you're probably in for trouble. While it may be of benefit to the list as a whole to prevent a person from repeatedly posting nonsensicals, the reputational scalability infers that people who would otherwise be able to comment as many times as they liked on any thread that they liked would suddenly find themselves having to choose which messages to reply to, and lo, the whole idea in this case of both the list and moderation of that list, that of encouraging conversation, is endangered. perhaps some kind of cut off point *might* work, with some experimenting as to its boundary, but I am much more in favour of client-specific filtering of message reading rather than writing. A supplementary web-based interface would be almost essential under a filtered system, I think. The ability to refer to messages you would otherwise never have read is important. the tweaking would have a lot to do with the weighting of the reputation, etcetera. it could also be tweaked differently according to the type of group, too - discussion and announce lists could be within the same barn, just viewed under different parameters. none of this requires moderation or a lot of extra activity, which I think is absolutely crucial in any workable system. nobody wants it to be any work at all. And how many people, in _general_ (Yahoogroups, MSN communities et al, as opposed to on CP), would probably not bother with moderation at all, but be content to simply hit delete for any irrelevant messages? In fact, how many would actually *reply* to the trolls? ;) .g
Re: signal to noise proposal
On Sat, Mar 23, 2002 at 06:45:20PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - posts to the list are like currency. lurkers Not a useful analogy. For some people, the more they post, the lower their reputation falls. - mailing list records # of times someone wrote a post that was replied to. posts that get replies are generally an indicator of interest, useful Or people flaming them for being idiots, or trolls, or posting off-topic messages, or forwarding links to Slashdot items... - everyone is subject to the same rules. there are Except the person running the list. There may be the germ of an idea here, but I'm hardly convinced an automated mechanism such as you describe will work. Perhaps an easier way to do it is to have everyone post their kill.rc files publicly for everyone else's delectation. :) -Declan
Re: signal to noise proposal
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Declan wrote: There may be the germ of an idea here, but I'm hardly convinced an automated mechanism such as you describe will work. Even if it did, getting people focused on improving their popularity ratings rather than contributing ideas is hardly going to improve content. The only thing it would accomplish is promoting conformity of thought: disagree with the group and be punished. It's far too easy to manipulate, anyway: have you considered the possibility of some vindictive loser with nothing better to do or a group of feds orchestrating reputational attacks against key posters? (spoofing, vote-rigging, etc.) As long as nyms unconnected to real names have votes, the system will always be wide open to this kind of thing and the numbers will be meaningless from the beginning. It'll turn into just another way for the offended to disrupt the group: think of all the people who used to post but left, angry and humiliated. They'll be back. Anyone who reads this list on a regular basis has a perfectly good picture in his or her mind of basically what they can expect from any given poster. How is a number going to express anything you haven't already figured out for yourself? Who I like to read most around here is entirely independent of my personal opinion of them, whether I agree with their posts or how nasty I get when I argue with them. I like to think I'd be able to get past the third grade playground mentality and give them a 10 or whatever when they deserve it: sadly I know as sure as I'm sitting here these very same people would do their damndest to obliterate me from the board forever. What a terrible waste of time and talent. This rating system is only going to make people more petty and vicious than they already are. As tempting as getting mickey-mouse revenge on your enemies may be, shouldn't we do what we can to just cut the bullshit squabbling and have an honest exchange of ideas with each other? I don't think the subjects of the list deserve anything less. Perhaps an easier way to do it is to have everyone post their kill.rc files publicly for everyone else's delectation. :) Seriously, a great idea. Quick, dirty, and to the point, everybody vents and moves on. Something else which might be worthwile is for each poster to go to the inet - -one or MARC archives and do a little statistical analysis of his or her own posts. What are you really accomplishing here? Are you an asset or a liability, a help or a hindrance? Are you bickering or contributing? Mee-tooing or saying something original? Are you fixated on anybody? boring the shit out of people? What can you honestly say you bring to the forum? A little more self-examination wouldn't hurt any of us. ~Faustine. *** He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. - --Thomas Paine -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGPsdk version 1.7.1 (C) 1997-1999 Network Associates, Inc. and its affiliated companies. (Diffie-Helman/DSS-only version) iQA/AwUBPJ40r/g5Tuca7bfvEQIcGACfTCpO+OR8/RXTmMrJ1/eTYDZLrGIAoJuk SzYifCjwdfA709i730GuYVDD =WNvE -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: signal to noise proposal
ahem, yes I am aware any simple system is easily circumvented defeated, but that doesnt imply that it will be. Ive noticed many objections to any new proposal often take the form, but that would be different than what we have now!!! wow, amazing, no kidding!!! I can come up with all kinds of objections to my own proposal, basically identical to what everyone else wrote. ok, fine, status quo stays the same :p lets just gripe,bitch,moan to the list for another few years. wheee I thought things might be different after a half decade of cyberspace lightning, but so nice that some things just dont change. yes, its cypherpunk stalemate as usual. I fully agree with TCM. who writes about it every few weeks for the last ten years. hahahaha cypherpunk == grandiose ideas, no execution. 99% inspiration, 1% perspiration hahahaha q. whats the difference between a group of cpunks a group of arbitrary people chosen at random??? a. the arbitrary people OCCASIONALLY AGREE WITH EACH OTHER!! they also OCCASIONALLY WORK TOGETHER!!! hahahahha just for my own amusement I may write a quick perl script to do some of the basic statistics I suggested over a few weeks post them. if anyone knows of .tar.gz cpunk archives somewhere, I could do it that much faster. some may object think this will only add to the noise, but hey, as I always say, if you cant beat em, join em :p
Re: signal to noise proposal
On Sunday, March 24, 2002, at 12:30 PM, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Sat, Mar 23, 2002 at 06:45:20PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - posts to the list are like currency. lurkers Not a useful analogy. For some people, the more they post, the lower their reputation falls. A lot of the current/recent reputation schemes make a fundamental mistake: they attempt to assign a scalar value to the [emphasis] reputation of an actor. Even the schemes which attempt to assign a vector rating, e.g, Declan' s rating of Detweiler is..., Tim's rating of Detweiler is..., make a fatal mistake. There are no reputations attachable to actors in this way. What there are are _beliefs_ about certain actors held by others. I have seen 8 years' worth of posts from Detweiler, with some mult-year gaps, and I have seen some fraction of comments made by other people, some of whom I respect (believe to some extent) and some of whom I don't believe (ignore, criticize, believe the opposite of usually). Based on all of these inputs, but very heavily weighted by my own past (Bayesian) experience, I tend not to take Detweiler's posts very seriously, even when he attempts to behave and attempts to put forth content rather than gibberish. (Readers will recognize that this goes beyond even a tensor, the generalization of a vector, and involves stories (possible worlds semantics, a la Kripke). Belief is partly Beyesian (or Dempster-Shafer-centric), partly a semantic net of many factors. Evolution has given us very good tools for assessing danger, deciding who's worth listening to and who's not, and how to plan for certain futures. Most of the mechanistic models for reputation are overly simplistic.) To paraphrase, I made not be able to define bullshit, but I know a bullshitter when I see one. I encourage Detweiler to reify his ideas into code. Shouldn't take more than a short while programming in Python or Squeak to generate a filtering method he can apply to _his_ instance of the list. Though from what I just read a few minutes ago, with him excoriating the list for not rushing to begin implementing his latest ideas, it looks like DejaNews all over again. I give him 3 weeks of pounding headaches before he begins referring to An Metet as a tentacle of me, Koder bin Hackin', as a tentacle of Declan, etc. --Tim May
Re: signal to noise proposal
[Warning to humor/lexicaly impaired: Use of third person 'you' below] On Sun, 24 Mar 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ahem, yes I am aware any simple system is easily circumvented defeated, but that doesnt imply that it will be. So are most hard systems also :) ok, fine, status quo stays the same :p The real answer is -participation- coupled with the right (and a system to back it up) to say No, thank you. But, I don't believe I want to play. And have it respected. If one of the existing nodes isn't providing a particular services, and you really truly believe there is a market for that service; why are you still sitting on your butt? It is not expensive, nor does it take large amounts of ones time. Start a node and impliment whatever sort of reputation/content filtering floats your boat. Nothing stops you from filtering the traffic to YOUR node any way you see fit. The system is intended to PROMOTE that exact behaviour. Why do you want somebody else to make the decision for you? As has been explained many times before; NONE of these mechanisms are in and of themselves outside the charter of the CDR. The only stipulation is that the outbound traffic from each node is NOT modified or filtered in any way by OTHER nodes, and gets passed to all nodes via the backbone. I may have no intention of putting my reading material under your thumb, but I'm willing to invest a feed to see how it comes out... I love experiments, they trump 'theory' every time! What is problematic with the proposals from the CACL contingent is that they desire to require ALL nodes to operate under one set of rules. Their justification is that their feelings are hurt, and those of us who don't respond appropriately are being mean. The 'friction' is it isn't their marbles so they got nothing to take home... Now ask yourself this, if they don't believe enough in their philosophy to operate by it on a mailing list, what does that portend for 'real life'? lets just gripe,bitch,moan to the list for another few years. wheee I thought things might be different after a half decade of cyberspace lightning, but so nice that some things just dont change. People are people, people are strange; technology has nothing to do with that. Another example of why CACL theory fails. Technology neither creates or solves problems, they satisfy (or not) human desire. There will always be friction between human desires... -- There is less in this than meets the eye. Tellulah Bankhead [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
signal to noise proposal
hi all. Ive been fascinated with the problem of signal to noise for as long as Ive been dinking around in internet-cyberspace (now over a decade). oldtimers may recall that Ive had many various proposals over the past on the list. it does seem that cypherpunks has succumbed to significant entropy lately, surely partly related to the official anarchist policies... in the spirit of the great cpunk accomplishments such as remailers, encryption code etc, I would like to talk to any gifted programmers that would like to work on a very innovative prototype mailing list system that might solve the signal-to-noise problem. this would be an outstanding grad student project if you ask me. experiments in collaborative filtering. the basic idea is related to something I call a self regulating network. its never really been shown but the internet comes close. basically everyone on the network has some say (vote) as to how it is governed. this has some related ideas. http://www8.pair.com/mnajtiv/spam.html I have some ideas that wouldnt be too complicated to code, basically tweaks to a majordomo system to allow some extra out-of-bandwidth info that gets passed around, something like a reputation system. yes, I could code it myself, but I have other projects, I want to contribute design time. Id like to run it extreme programming style, getting something up as fast as possible making tweaks modifications while it runs. if it clicks I think it could have major implications. for example there are now tens of thousands of yahoo groups, its a multimillion dollar company. now imagine approaching yahoo selling them proven, tested technology for egalitarian managing of mailing lists to maximize signal to noise that doesnt require a moderator to babysit the mailing list. on the other hand maybe there are no longer any serious coders on this list a pity/shame if that were the case. (this is not to imply that coders would immediately agree to work on this haha) anyway just out of curiousity I'll post this. plz email me if you're interested.
Re: CDR: signal to noise proposal
Already in (limited but growing) existance... http://open-forge.org On Sat, 23 Mar 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: hi all. Ive been fascinated with the problem of signal to noise for as long as Ive been dinking around in internet-cyberspace (now over a decade). oldtimers may recall that Ive had many various proposals over the past on the list. it does seem that cypherpunks has succumbed to significant entropy lately, surely partly related to the official anarchist policies... in the spirit of the great cpunk accomplishments such as remailers, encryption code etc, I would like to talk to any gifted programmers that would like to work on a very innovative prototype mailing list system that might solve the signal-to-noise problem. this would be an outstanding grad student project if you ask me. experiments in collaborative filtering. the basic idea is related to something I call a self regulating network. its never really been shown but the internet comes close. basically everyone on the network has some say (vote) as to how it is governed. this has some related ideas. http://www8.pair.com/mnajtiv/spam.html I have some ideas that wouldnt be too complicated to code, basically tweaks to a majordomo system to allow some extra out-of-bandwidth info that gets passed around, something like a reputation system. yes, I could code it myself, but I have other projects, I want to contribute design time. Id like to run it extreme programming style, getting something up as fast as possible making tweaks modifications while it runs. if it clicks I think it could have major implications. for example there are now tens of thousands of yahoo groups, its a multimillion dollar company. now imagine approaching yahoo selling them proven, tested technology for egalitarian managing of mailing lists to maximize signal to noise that doesnt require a moderator to babysit the mailing list. on the other hand maybe there are no longer any serious coders on this list a pity/shame if that were the case. (this is not to imply that coders would immediately agree to work on this haha) anyway just out of curiousity I'll post this. plz email me if you're interested. -- There is less in this than meets the eye. Tellulah Bankhead [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
Re: signal to noise proposal
Apart from my recent comments about NoCeM's and on onspool NoCeM reader, another perhaps simpler idea would be to do it all with simple CGI stuff and a web archive. I'm sure this has been discussed before in the past, but I don't recall anyone actually trying it out: subscribers would choose how long their messages should be held until being delivered; and which moderators they want to accept negative votes for. Then moderators would read cypherpunks on the web page and select tick-boxes of messages they thought were junk. I suspect the weak point would be how many people would read via web, and bother to vote on articles and so how many moderators you would expect. Without someone keeping track of useful moderator-configuration ratings (I'll have whatever set of moderators person X uses -- to avoid having to keep up to date with currently active moderators.) it might be a little inconvenient. Selecting all moderators obviously wouldn't work -- we've got enough loons that there would be people trying to moderate all messages. Are there people who already read cpunks regularly via the web? (Reading email and mailing-lists via the web always seemed clunky to me, even on broadband, but there are apparently vast numbers of people who use only web-email by preference, and to this group presumably a web archive is preferable to subscribing to a list and reading it's contents via their web-email account page.) Adam On Sat, Mar 23, 2002 at 02:24:21PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] the basic idea is related to something I call a self regulating network. its never really been shown but the internet comes close. basically everyone on the network has some say (vote) as to how it is governed. this has some related ideas. http://www8.pair.com/mnajtiv/spam.html I have some ideas that wouldnt be too complicated to code, basically tweaks to a majordomo system to allow some extra out-of-bandwidth info that gets passed around, something like a reputation system. yes, I could code it myself, but I have other projects, I want to contribute design time.
