Thanks Jonathan, and Georgi, Gary and Steve,

good discussion going (pardon my spiking the punch). Back to Victor Usack's comment on the 12th and my response, 'yes, FQXi is Lee Smolin's fishing expedition'. It's an affiliate of Perimeter Institute which was Lee's ticket into Canada. (He's a naturalized Canadian but the modern American brand, and carries Uncle Sam on his back) So FQXi is a...

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Thanks Jonathan, and Georgi, Gary and Steve,

good discussion going (pardon my spiking the punch). Back to Victor Usack's comment on the 12th and my response, 'yes, FQXi is Lee Smolin's fishing expedition'. It's an affiliate of Perimeter Institute which was Lee's ticket into Canada. (He's a naturalized Canadian but the modern American brand, and carries Uncle Sam on his back) So FQXi is a portal to Perimeter that is like the flame which attracts moths, and there are a lot of them hitting the security screen under which PI gleams to the naked eye.

Regardless of your socio-political stripe, all must be aware that how you operate on the internet can effect the integrity of privacy not only of your own files but those of others whom have come here, and can't get out without an 'unsubscribe' option. {"It's a Twap !!}So you have to follow the linkages yourself if something you know you should have in cache is missing and leaves you short-changed.

And another thing. I have watched as U.S./Canada relations have changed over 60 years, and the socio-political attitudes evolve. Many repressed, suppressed and oppressed social identities are once again bursting open on the political stage. Yet with a new millennial awareness. The Hillary vs. Donny era is over culturally, both are dinosaurs. The overt hostilities between genders does needs be addressed, and the multi-culturalism championed by Star Trek. What has been of great impact on how I view modern North American cultural goes back to my earliest childhood and a brief visit each summer to Grandpa's cabin in the Great White North. It wasn't advertised to Americans, even trusted ones, but until the jet age it was said that every other Canadian was born within the sound of a train whistle. Canada was still a frontier society, and with that was a gender sterotype with a sexual morality which was engendered until the repatriation of The Constitution in 1982, with a societal expectation of personal responsibility under which the age of consent in Ontario province was 14 years of age. The social progressive era in the U.S. in the 60's especially was starkly different as a result, largely due to the emergence of illegal drug usage which had underlaid both societies much more than most people ever knew. So you can easily see that in Canada in that era teenage sex was not unlawful so there wasn't the corruptive coercion that burgeoned in the U.S. with the advent of drug usage by underage adventurors. The social expectation in Canada was progressing towards a real realization of gender equality, while in the States, that progress became stigmatized as loose morality by association. My personal dilemma was that in that reactionary era when I was trying to position myself for a move to Canada where I could then apply to immigrate from within, I had become a local unwilling 'cause celebre' of draft evasion and a scapegoat for chickenhawks as an easy target. And a sisxteen year old girl with a rebellious streak snuck up on me and tripped me up for a blind date and covered her tracks too well. I took the not at all casual step of doing the socially appropriate and legally responsible thing of taking the precaution to advise her mother and her that I was already in the process of embarking to go to school in another country where I always wanted to live. But rather than dignifying the situation then bowing out gracefully, followed a summer of demands for attention and diversions from the true order of evidence that she had prior knowledge of my intent. To this day she has refused to give acknowledgemnt in any clear way that recognizes my material witness that she had identified as a neighbor girl whom had been the intermediary. and without that I cannot qualify her as a reasonably responsible material witness in matters of Canadian law. And in that turbulent era many of us in a small farming community got dragged down into the coercive corruption where real organized criminal enterprises existed then and continue to proliferate. I have had to endure humiliating personal and social emasculation and desperately restrain my furious anger from confronting directly any among the crowd she went through me to join, lest it forever taint inquiries of me and deny each or any of themselves the constitutional right of unqualified benefit of doubt in their own pursuits. While meanwhile in Canada, I and mine have lost out on half a century of a trillion dollar economic expansion in a region of unparalelled natural beauty. I do not tolerate prick teasing and ball scratching at all. Boys have the right to say no, too. And I'm known to fight large men whom mistake that in me. Broken bones hurt, but no worse than not fighting back. The rule of law that law itself must obey, prevails here. I will accept no gender bias from anyone! Get friggin' real. Learn the conventions of terminology and you might find your biggest discovery is that you haven't discovered anything new., jrc

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Jochen,

Hmm, if the answer to the contest’s question would be a matter of statistics, we could eventually figure it out with more certainty by asking huge populations of scientists and philosophers. I am therefore nonetheless not convinced of a voting process. What does my voting add, even if I upvote someone with, say 10 votes of 2, unless there is a transparent discussion for all voters...

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Jochen,

Hmm, if the answer to the contest’s question would be a matter of statistics, we could eventually figure it out with more certainty by asking huge populations of scientists and philosophers. I am therefore nonetheless not convinced of a voting process. What does my voting add, even if I upvote someone with, say 10 votes of 2, unless there is a transparent discussion for all voters for why one has voted the way one did. For me, these scores do not add anything substantial to answer certain scientific or philosophical questions. They are, just like in elections, motivated even by some irrationality to be conform with an already established statistical pattern.

Philip,

“There has been a lot less low voting this year. The median score is significantly higher than the last few contests. I don't know what caused the change but it is an improvement.“

Yes, because someone / some people have given initial ratings right after puplication that were centered around a value of 5 points. But you are right, not many people took the action to immediately downvote them. In fact, they are quite stable until publication I think. I haven’t yet examined if that has contributed to their frequency of exchanging some arguments.

Nonetheless, my opinion is that the contest is disturbed by the voting system. If there would be less entries, but of better quality and furthermore no voting process but the fact that all entries are subject to the expert panel’s final evaluation, then every contestant would eventually make more sensible comments. Eventually not that quantitatively extensive as for example Eugene Klingman does, but nonetheless the chance of being finally evaluated would prevent all the negative dynamics of the voting process and this seems for me to be reason enough to abandon it. I deduce this from many entrants that do almost not participate in discussions or even replies on their own comments pages. One can speculate about their motivations for having submitted an essay at all.

I for myself take the term ‘contest’ as literally in the sense that I would like to see different ideas being selected more or less reasonable on the basis of more or less reasonable arguments. Your personal motivation for being a contestant is perfectly o.k. and I think if FQXi should ever consider to eliminate the voting process, it could make its decision dependend on a voting for or against such an elimination. Since it has all the email-adresses of all the contestants since 2008, this would be easy to execute.

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