Re: What are Appropriate Topics?

[snyderra@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu (Bob Snyder)]

At 2:58 AM 8/5/94, Timothy C. May wrote:
>First off, my sincere apologies to Bob Snyder for quoting and
>responding to his e-mail to me, without realizing he had not cc:ed it
>to the list as well. I'm so used to replying to the author and then
>having to manually cc: the Cyherpunks list that it was not until I got
>the message quoted below that I realized his comments were private. I
>will try to be more careful.
>
>Partly it was his civil tone that misled me--it read like a post to
>the list, and not a personal note. In any case, my apologies to Bob.

No problem.  I'll try to remember to flame you next time.  :-)

>At least in my messages, I was not arguing merely statism vs.
>libertarianism, or some such stale abstraction, but the specific issue
>of taxation in the face of strong crypto and privacy, and the
>oxymoronic nature of "volunteer governments." (I also think there are
>issues related to privately-produced law which folks on this list
>ought to know about, as it is the likely form of crypto anarchic law,
>such as it is. The connections with crypto are quite strong, as it is
>untraceable communication and commerce which makes these discretionary
>communities possible.)

OK.  Perhaps I misread your article.  I appear to have erased it from my
Cypherpunks mailbox, or I'd reread it.  I was reacting primarily to your
initial comments on why you felt it should be on the list.

I don't object to (and am happy to see) discussions of "applied"
cryptography on the list, such as tax laws in the presence of cryptography.
I would only object to the discussion of government in the abscence of
either a (preferably) cryptological reference, or a privacy one.

>As for pure crypto being discussed on the list, there's a fair amount
>of that. I've posted my share of explanations of zero knowledge proof
>systems, dining cryptographers protocols, complexity theory, etc. I'm
>not saying this to defend myself, per se, but to note that these
>topics produced almost no discussion, almost no interest. Make of this
>what you will.

Yes, and I appreciate you doing so.  I try to work though such postings,
and often check with _Applied Cryptography_ for more background.  But I
usually don't have any response for it.  "Oh, no, that's completely wrong"?
:-)

Such postings are often a stretch for me, with my limited math background,
and this isn't an appropriate place to ask the kind of math questions that
would bring me up to speed.

>And a dozen other juicy topics. If people want to debate these and
>similar issues, we should *encourage* them to, not announce that the
>topics are deviating from some imagined idea of the charter.

I agree.  I should apologize then, for misunderstanding your posting.  My
only concern was that the thread was going to start out without any
cryptological reference, and who knows where it could veer from there. :-)
The topics you listed (and I deleted in this response) appear to me to be
perfectly legitimate topics.

>It's generally best, I think, to lead by example. Instead of
>pronouncing a topic to be off-limits or not consistent with the
>charter, why not find a way to make what you *are* interested in also
>interesting to others? That's how we'll move forward into new areas.

I don't disagree with this.  But this takes a skill set I'm still working
to acquire; enough knowledge of cryptological concepts to start a
discussion.

And I don't mean to sound like I'm trying to set the Cypherpunks' agenda.
I know what I would like to see here, and I phrase my responses as such.  I
hope I'm not one of the "complainers and the enforcers of dogma" Eric
Hughes mentioned in his post.

Bob

--
Bob Snyder N2KGO                               MIME, PGP, RIPEM mail accepted
snyderra@post.drexel.edu                      PGP & RIPEM keys on key servers
         When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.