5 ms·

The Wizards book came along 20+ years after everything happened, so all Markoff could do was interview a few people. I said it was ONE of the motivations; not

The Wizards book came along 20+ years after everything happened, so all Markoff could do was interview a few people. I said it was ONE of the motivations; not the only one. And Bob Taylor was only one of the people involved; there were lots of others. Why a bureaucracy decides to support something is pretty much impenetrable and lost to history.

throw0101a 2y ago
> The Wizards book came along 20+ years after everything happened, so all Markoff could do was interview a few people. Are there any interviews or documentation from ARPA or the early days of ARPAnet that do say it was about nuclear war survival? Licklider, Taylor, Roberts, Davies in the UK: no one else thinking about things in that way from all the reports and interviews I've seen. The only one that perhaps seems to have had an interest in it seems to have been Baran, and he came in later when the ball was already rolling. > I said it was ONE of the motivations; not the only one. Okay. Where are the documents and/or interviews of those involved in the decision-making and/or implementation process stating it was one of the motivations?
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  I don't know why you're arguing. Obviously we're talking about a period where documentation is sparse or non-existent, and most of the players are dead. Why is this important to you?
  - allturtles 2y ago
    You're making a historical claim and he's disputing it. Is your counterargument is that it was a long time ago so we can just make up whatever we want?
    - AlbertCory 2y ago
      No,the "counter argument" as you put it, is that if you only "know" things that come with a link, you have no value over an LLM
      - throw0101b 2y ago
        > No,the "counter argument" as you put it, is that if you only "know" things that come with a link, you have no value over an LLM As opposed to knowing things without evidence and trying to convince people of a position without providing evidence? Is that how history is supposed to be done, without evidence? As least with a link you can gauge the quality of the reference and its sources.
  - throw0101b 2y ago
    > Obviously we're talking about a period where documentation is sparse or non-existent, and most of the players are dead. Why is this important to you? Because if you are going to make a claim it'd be useful if you had a citation for it. Because we're as close to the events that occurred as is possible, and it's only going to get 'worse' as time passes, so we should try to get right now. You say that "all Markoff could do was interview a few people". The phrase "few people" is doing a lot of heavy lifting: two of those "few" were Herzfeld (who ran ARPA at the time) and Taylor (who was in charge of getting ARPAnet going). If they didn't know why ARPA why created ARPAnet then who else would? If there were/are supporting documents, interview, etc, which show that surviving a nuclear attack was a motivation, they should be shared. I don't necessarily care what the motivations were, but I'd rather not folks repeating hand-wavy claims that don't seem to have any supporting documentation for. That was what the linked to web page is about in the first: trying to trace and dispel an apparent myth.
    - AlbertCory 2y ago
      Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I have no obligation to do a lot of research for you which, I'm sure, would make no impression on you anyway.
      - throw0101b 2y ago
        > I have no obligation to do a lot of research for you which, I'm sure, would make no impression on you anyway. "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." — Genghis Khan (or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor )
        AlbertCory 2y ago
        OK. I'll just dismiss your claims, too, and we're done.
        throw0101b 2y ago

throw0101a 2y ago

> The Wizards book came along 20+ years after everything happened, so all Markoff could do was interview a few people. Are there any interviews or documentation from ARPA or the early days of ARPAnet that do say it was about nuclear war survival? Licklider, Taylor, Roberts, Davies in the UK: no one else thinking about things in that way from all the reports and interviews I've seen. The only one that perhaps seems to have had an interest in it seems to have been Baran, and he came in later when the ball was already rolling. > I said it was ONE of the motivations; not the only one. Okay. Where are the documents and/or interviews of those involved in the decision-making and/or implementation process stating it was one of the motivations?

AlbertCory 2y ago
I don't know why you're arguing. Obviously we're talking about a period where documentation is sparse or non-existent, and most of the players are dead. Why is this important to you?
- allturtles 2y ago
  You're making a historical claim and he's disputing it. Is your counterargument is that it was a long time ago so we can just make up whatever we want?
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    No,the "counter argument" as you put it, is that if you only "know" things that come with a link, you have no value over an LLM
    - throw0101b 2y ago
      > No,the "counter argument" as you put it, is that if you only "know" things that come with a link, you have no value over an LLM As opposed to knowing things without evidence and trying to convince people of a position without providing evidence? Is that how history is supposed to be done, without evidence? As least with a link you can gauge the quality of the reference and its sources.
- throw0101b 2y ago
  > Obviously we're talking about a period where documentation is sparse or non-existent, and most of the players are dead. Why is this important to you? Because if you are going to make a claim it'd be useful if you had a citation for it. Because we're as close to the events that occurred as is possible, and it's only going to get 'worse' as time passes, so we should try to get right now. You say that "all Markoff could do was interview a few people". The phrase "few people" is doing a lot of heavy lifting: two of those "few" were Herzfeld (who ran ARPA at the time) and Taylor (who was in charge of getting ARPAnet going). If they didn't know why ARPA why created ARPAnet then who else would? If there were/are supporting documents, interview, etc, which show that surviving a nuclear attack was a motivation, they should be shared. I don't necessarily care what the motivations were, but I'd rather not folks repeating hand-wavy claims that don't seem to have any supporting documentation for. That was what the linked to web page is about in the first: trying to trace and dispel an apparent myth.
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I have no obligation to do a lot of research for you which, I'm sure, would make no impression on you anyway.
    - throw0101b 2y ago
      > I have no obligation to do a lot of research for you which, I'm sure, would make no impression on you anyway. "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." — Genghis Khan (or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor )
      - AlbertCory 2y ago
        OK. I'll just dismiss your claims, too, and we're done.
        throw0101b 2y ago