Critical Rationalism's topics - tribe.net

Project Chanology, Anonymous hackers, and taking down Scientology

UncleFishbits — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:11:13 GMT

Taking down Scientology isn't just important... it's fun!!!!!

http://www.partyvan.info/index.php/Project_Chanology
the hackers have a lot of explanation above.....

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10609174
the economist article about the DOS attacks on Scientology, and the real world protest 10th Feb.

Guys... you could be part of bringing a religion down during your lifetime. You can help destroy a dangerous cult. Read up, think about it, and offer your services where you can.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Full Text of Economist Article:

Scientology
Fair game

Jan 31st 2008
From The Economist print edition
An online onslaught against Scientology

A VICIOUS cult run by cynical fraudsters, or a sincerely held religious belief persecuted by zealots? That is the long-standing row about Scientology, founded by the late science-fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard. In some countries, such as Germany, the group is watched by the security services. In others, such as America and Australia, it has won charitable status as a religion.

Until now the fight could mostly be seen as one-sided. Scientology's lawyers are vigorous litigants. The group argues that its internal materials (which claim, among other things, that expensive courses of treatment can help rid people of infestation by alien souls from an extinct civilisation) are commercially confidential and protected by copyright. They react sharply to any perceived libel.

As a result, public critics of what they derisively term “$cientology” risk expensive legal battles. For example, a new unauthorised biography of Tom Cruise by a British author, Andrew Morton, contains detailed and highly critical material about the film star's involvement in Scientology. It is a bestseller in America but has not been published in Britain. The publisher, St Martin's Press, has even asked internet booksellers not to ship it to foreign customers. Though Scientology representatives vehemently deny breaking any laws, critics have claimed that they experience intensive harassment and intimidation.

Now Scientology is under attack from a group of internet activists known only as Anonymous. Organised from a Wikipedia-style website (editable by anyone) and through anonymous internet chat rooms, “Project Chanology”, as the initiative is known, presents no easy target for Scientology's lawyers. It is promoting cyberwarfare techniques normally associated with extortionists, spies and terrorists. Called “distributed denial of service attacks”, these typically involve using networks of infected computers to bombard the target's websites and servers with bogus requests for data, causing them to crash. Even governments find this troublesome.

Anonymous is also hoping to galvanise public opinion with a mass “real-world” protest outside every Scientology office worldwide on February 10th. But its best weapon may be ridicule. The group got going in reaction to efforts to ban an internal Scientology video of Mr Cruise that leaked onto the internet. The star appears to discuss his beliefs with a degree of incoherence and exaggeration that might lead some to question Scientology's effects on its adherents' sanity. A Scientology spokesman says it has been selectively edited. Several internet sites have taken it down after threats of lawsuits. But it keeps popping up.

posted in Critical Rationalism - 0 replies

Wikipedia

phil — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 06:09:40 GMT

Excellent article on wikipedia here :

http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-dec29-05.html#wikipedia

[quote]The media literally can't hear that humility, which reflects accurately the fluid and uneven quality of Wikipedia. The media — amplifying our general cultural assumptions — have come to expect knowledge to be coupled with arrogance1 : If you claim to know X, then you've also been claiming that you're right and those who disagree are wrong. A leather-bound, published encyclopedia trades on this aura of utter rightness (as does a freebie e-newsletter, albeit it to a lesser degree).The media have a cognitive problem with a publisher of knowledge that modestly does not claim perfect reliability, does not back up that claim through a chain of credentialed individuals, and that does not believe the best way to assure the quality of knowledge is by disciplining individuals for their failures. Arrogance, individual heroism, accountability and discipline ... those have been the hallmarks of the institutions that propagate knowledge.[/quote]

I assume Popper would have loved wikipedia and the trouble it's causing for people who believe in authoritative channels.

What do the rest of you think?

posted in Critical Rationalism - 0 replies

Hello from Controversy.com

Sat, 29 May 2004 00:06:06 GMT

Hello Crticial Rationalism. Pardon my intrusion. I have set up another Tribe.net place -- called Controversy.com -- where users can debate events and issues in the current news and media. This is not meant to be a replacement or threat to anything other Tribes are doing -- including yours here at Crticial Rationalism. It's just a "hello" about a new place you might also want to visit. At this moment, the URL to get to us is http://controversydotcom.tribe.net, but within the next few days the top-lvel URL http://www.Controversy.com will redirect to this tribe as well. Come visit! -- Controversy.com Editor

posted in Critical Rationalism - 0 replies

Network Epistemology

phil — Fri, 24 Oct 2003 16:01:41 GMT

Actually it occurs to me that this might be a place to discuss the intersection of epistemology and social networks.

Here are a couple of thoughts.

Popper's Open Society aims to maximize debate and criticism. And there is a supposition that this will grow knowledge most effectively.

Now we're discovering that knowledge management is in some sense about the management of social relations, putting people in touch with each other. And we're starting to perceive how network topologies affect this.

So, I have a pair of conflicting intuitions. You *might* think that building the open society requires maximizing discussion. And this may require fine-tuning the topology of the networks.

Or you might think that this is tantamount to looking for a "logic of discovery", and you shouldn't accept any constraints on network structure based on some attempt to prejudge the knowledge conjecturing process.

Which intuition sounds right?

posted in Critical Rationalism - 3 replies

Vicarious Selectors and Management

Ron — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 04:44:02 GMT

A re-occurring idea in the writing of Donald Campbell, one of the founding fathers, along with Karl Popper, of evolutionary epistemology, is the idea "vicarious selector." Vicarious selectors substitute for overt spatial exploration and locomotor trial and error. For example, instead of walking to a particular area to find out if it is dangerous, I LOOK at the area, perhaps with the help of binoculors. Another example would be a ship, instead of moving around an area to find other ships, bombs, etc, sending out substitute locomotions in the form of sonar beams.
Vicarious selectors are used in competitive enterprises for advantage.
Let me give two examples. I work as a clerk a law firm. Concerning one legal case that the firm was involved in, I was sent to the courthouse to look at files--all open to the public--of similiar cases. I was given a fair degree of latitude to research these public documents which I though was interesting. From these documents interesting things can be found, for example what kind of motions are filed, what arguments have been used before. These documents were, in Popper's phrase "exosomatic" artifacts, the containers of World Three. The firm, from these public documents, learned from the trial and error experiences of others before us.
Another example of a vicarious selector is the world wide web. It is another example of an exosomatic artifact, perhaps closest to the pure form of World Three. It goes without saying that an immense and diverse amount of information can be obtained and used from the world wide web.
So one theme of this post is that it is advatageous to a competitive enterprise to use vicarious selectors, especially those which happen to be exosomatic artifacts, the repositories of World Three.

posted in Critical Rationalism - 0 replies

welcome

phil — Fri, 24 Oct 2003 15:14:31 GMT

Welcome to Critical Rationalism tribe.

I guess some people have come here from Critical Cafe. It wasn't my intention to try to steal people away from there. If you found this via Tribe, you may also be interested to join that email based discussion : http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~tkpw/cafe/critical-cafe-info.html

I'm hoping this tribe complements CC in some form. (Though undoubtedly there'll be some fierce argument here too :-)

phil

posted in Critical Rationalism - 2 replies

Justificationism and more

Joseph — Wed, 22 Oct 2003 14:21:27 GMT

Phil,

I've enjoyed and agree with your very clear postings on this subject to the CR group.

A few months back I was quite active in CR for a short time. After a time, I concluded that the discussions were not worth the time because Peter and David Dunstan kept the attention of the group on very basic issues on which there was broad lack of agreement with the Popperians. The group as a whole never seemed to get beyond LSD and CR to Popper's later work in Objective Knowledge, The Self and Its Brain, Unended Quest, and The Postscript volumes. I was looking for exchanges with Popperians on the material in these later works, and particularly discussions of where the three world ontology stands in the light of recent work on the brain and neurophysiology. When those were not forthcoming I decided to become a 'lurker'.

My own field is Knowledge Management and you can get a view of my range of interests by going to www.dkms.com.

Joe

posted in Critical Rationalism - 1 reply