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Still offtopic...
Genetic algorithms and selection are indeed effective is selecting the
"best" entities according to their success. That's fine. But what is success
? What is the direction of progress ? Can you tell what is the objective of
biological evolution ? I guess not. What about economical evolution ? Is
there any economical evolution, to begin with ? Are we forced to play this
game ?
When you are using selection and competition in a capitalist environment,
success is simply measured in terms of the wealth an entity can gather from
its environment. Sharing with other entities ? Yep, only if it will bring
you more wealth in the future. Look at the state of the world right now,
it's just a consequence of playing this game.
My point is that you can only safely play the game of selection and
competition is you have correctly defined your target. The winners of the
capitalist game will likely not be humanity, but the game itself. A shift in
objective is required if what matters is humanity, not money.
Regards,
Nicolas "young lefty :)" Lehuen
>-----Message d'origine-----
>De : Matthew Gertner [mailto:matthew.gertner@schemantix.com]
>Envoy? : mercredi 27 mars 2002 12:33
>? : 'Bullard, Claude L (Len)'; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
>Objet : [xml-dev] Capitalism and XML (was RELAX NG Marketing)
>
>
>Len,
>
>What I find misguided is the idea that we are all in one big
>team working
>towards a common goal. I think that the last century or so,
>especially, has
>shown that progress is a lot faster when you have a lot of
>smaller teams
>competing with each other. This is the main distinction
>between communism
>and capitalism. Granted, capitalism is a dirty, ugly thing
>that implies that
>human beings are selfish entities that aim first and foremost
>to maximize
>their own success. If you want to call us capitalists warlords
>and thieves,
>you won't be the first one. Personally I think that this is a
>consequence of
>"human nature", which is a consequence of genetics, and that
>capitalism is
>the effect and not the cause. The failure of anything like communism to
>succeed on more than a minimal scale is pretty good evidence
>that this is
>the case, besides all the anecdotal evidence that you can
>experience in your
>everyday life.
>
>I'm all for idealism, but not if it hinders overall progress.
>In terms of
>macroeconomics, the starving masses won't be helped by
>altruism alone, and
>if we want to improve the lot of all, we need to accept that
>this will come
>only will global economic growth. Tying this back to XML,
>competition will
>lead to big winners and big losers, often in ways that seem blatantly
>unfair. But the result will be better markup for all.
>
>(BTW: I was going to preface my subject line with "OFFTOPIC,
>but I guess
>this is spot on topic for XML Dev, right? ;-)
>
>Matt
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Bullard, Claude L (Len) [mailto:clbullar@ingr.com]
>> Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 4:49 PM
>> To: 'Matthew Gertner'; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
>> Subject: RE: [xml-dev] RELAX NG Marketing (was RE: [xml-dev]
>> Do Names Matt er?)
>>
>>
>> No. All it did was reveal the character of those that did it.
>>
>> You want loyalty from a team? Teach them to never give
>> up and never leave anyone behind. Only warlords and
>> thieves do business as you suggest.
>>
>> len
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Matthew Gertner [mailto:matthew.gertner@schemantix.com]
>>
>> <flame>
>> Don't buy it. The "savaging" of ISO and SGML was what
>> resulted in XML in the
>> first place, and though stakeholders in SGML might not like
>> it, the reality
>> is that this represents huge progress.
>>
>> Matt
>>
>
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