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Rusty of Kuro5hin has a written a great Op-Ed piece about reality and belief. It deserves the widest possible dissemination - tell your friends, make them think about it.
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If only we moderated news items along with posts, this one would be modded to (Score:-1, Flamebait).
They aren't hosted on OSDN. Know before you speak.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
- Robin
An almost universal failing among those of all political stripes: thinking that "most people" agree with oneself. Hence groups like the "Moral Majority", who whether they were moral or not, were certainly not a majority.
I suspect slashdot has a greater percentage of self-described "libertarians" than the population at large, but "for the most part"? I doubt it. For the most part, we're mainstream liberals and conservatives, like the rest of the country, with all the diversity of opinion that this entails.
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The deal is, it's not just about _fear_ of power. In Federalist #10, Madison makes a compelling case that there can be no dominating, majority power that does not also step on smaller factions and cut off their air supply: the difference between this and the generic 'anarcho-capitalist' Objectivist viewpoint, is that Madison correctly sees this as a Bad Thing, because Madison is looking at the health of an entire society, not just isolated members of it.
The idea is as follows: yes, more powerful members of society can stomp on weaker ones, but where some would say 'good! give 'em hell!', Madison views this in historical perspective, drawing the conclusion that this unchecked, natural tendency inevitably leads towards feudalism, rebellion and upheaval. It's like cancer: having the meanest cells grow fastest has little to do with the true health of the organism, and could be a serious liability. In government, it sets up imbalances and tensions that eventually lead to warfare and revolution, and the thing is this is not theory- Europe had been trying out different sorts of government for centuries, since the Dark Ages, and giving the toughest factions their way NEVER WORKED. All it did was further feudalism and set up revolutions.
So, Madison made the compelling plea in Federalist #10 for support of the weak... something that flies in the face of a lot of 'modern' thinking, but it's made from a thoroughly practical view of history. If you see to it that a little faction, or a weak and unfit person, gets supported, they may possibly benefit society in some way. Or not- but they probably won't be throwing bombs or plotting revolution either. It's not so much a fixed intent to prop up the weak, either- it is more an acknowledgement that the strong will tend to stomp all over everyone else- and a mature and merciless judgement that this behavior is BAD for society, not good.
To Madison (and myself, obviously), if you are an 800 pound gorilla, you have to be extra damn careful where you sit- because you could squish somebody very easily. And if you won't be extra careful and take extra responsibility for your 800-poundness, then you are in the wrong: because society is not about you. Society is the interaction between you and others, and if you're just beating them up that does not count as interaction- that makes you a drain on society, because you're doing damage that you cannot correct.
There are one _hell_ of a lot of corporations out there being drains on society, right now- too damn many. And quite a few individuals at all economic levels doing the same. If it doesn't stop, society's gonna suffer more and more.
As Madison (or Franklin) might have said- what have you done lately for your fellow man? That is not a trick question... or a joke...
It's just that capitalism mustn't be allowed to take precedence over the needs of society. If that's a commie viewpoint then so be it. Otherwise, it's like saying that because growing is good, cancer is better because it's super-cell-growth! It should be held up as an example for all cells! *metastasize*
We socialist anarchists were here first! ;P :)
- "Indeed, are often legally prohibited form taking a moral stance." As it should be. I really question if a corporation -should- be taking moral stances / performing social responsibility. Doing such things falls out of the realm of its own competence, and they can cause more damage than if they just did nothing.
The above assumes that the already do nothing, but that's not true -- they donate to charitable causes & NGO's that *do* make it their #1 competence to help society.
This (very old) argument falls a little flat in that you're claiming that a corporation is some soul-less beast. It's not. A company is made up of people - it's an organization. Taking away legal rights from a group of people just because they band together is kind of a totalitarian perspective.
A corporation is just an organization with a singular purpose entrusted to it by society: combine capital, labor, and knowledge, and make it productive. People have been trying to wrest control of this purpose and make corporations serve more "moral or social" ends, but it never works, plainly because that's not what corporations are supposed to be doing.
If you want to promote your view of morals and/or social/political beliefs, start an NGO.
-Stu
But surely a corporation does speak with its own voice. Yes, an employee is the mechanism of communication, but I can hardly believe that public statements made by corporate representatives reflect anything but official (collectively determined) company perspective. Surely, someone who stands up and, in his/her company's name states opinions and views which are at odds with the company's perspective would be justifiably fired.
This is an extreme stereotype and only descriptive of a minority of corporations (i.e. those that are large and stupid.)
There are many employees that say things that disagree with their management's views. These people don't get fired, unless of course, they claimed that THEIR views were their company's. Then it's a different story.
www.cluetrain.org also has an interesting perspective on this. The marketplace will evolve to the point that corporations will have to start speaking with a more human voice, or they'll perish. Some companies are already doing this.
But my basic point remains: corporations are in a special position to accumulate power far beyond...
/s/corporations/organizations. "Two heads are better than one". It's not unique to corporations.
A person who both wields an abnormally large amount of power, and has no scruples or social conscience, is traditionally and rightfully despised in America. And yet a corporation is given special help to attain just this status.
Disagree. You're mixing the intent of the "corp == person" law, the reasoning & history behind it with your own observation that a minority of corporations abuse this position. This position is mainly about allowing the corporation to be sued distinctively from its employees, and to allow its existence to transcend the lives of its founders (which actually is very rare in practice). It has little to do with corporations taking moral stances / being socially responsible / having a concentration of power.
Society gives power over capital & human resources to corporations on purpose, because without a societal organism dedicated to making such resources productive, we'd be stuck in a world without economic progress.
Certainly there are other, more effective ways of limiting abuse of corporate power: campaign finance reform, for one.
-Stu
The article is much sub-Katzian navel-gazing of the lowest order.
Navel-gazing... I like the connotation given by that word combination. Describes some people I know perfectly.
Face it, streetlawyer, you're the pot calling the kettle black.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Feh...they're there; they just spam the submissions queue with "geek love" wanking.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
It's interesting, but you've just provided yet another example of the problem with reality.
Your reality states that the Erin Brockovich story is false.
Yet every reality I have encountered suggests it is true, that PG&E did release toxics into the water.
The difference is, that I don't read neo-conservative right-wing anti-environmental sites for my news.
I think this is the problem and the danger with the internet, you can allow yourself to only be subjected to news stories you agree with, rather than getting a nice balance of points for and against your own views.
Anyway...
To which fallacies do you refer? If you buy Nietzsche's Death of God, sure, but if you take a Cartesian guarantee then the logic is not circular. It seems a very naive view, yes, but it is not circular if you have God, or say, a Platonic realm, guaranteeing your observations.
My point is you have to have a prior commitment to sophisticated representationalism and empiricism to commit the fallacy here. Of course, this is a straw man because I'm not sure what your point actually was... so I thought I'd just do a little thought exercise for the day.
-l
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...of the transition between the Institutional Balance and the Interindividual Balance, morality (and even reality) can appear to be relative.
This is because they define themselves as institutions, and they are beginning to see the limitations of such a model. They scream out in their existential angst, "There is no reality because institutions can deceive me about reality!" And yet they cannot let go of their own sense of self long enough to build a new one.
But the reality which they see as socially constructed is, in fact, something more: It is socially emergent. Their own angst-ridden selves have emerged from a social environment and could not have existed in their advanced form without the social institutions from which they have emerged. That does not mean they are socially constructed.
Yet, if they believe they are socially constructed, any other idea (including that idea which their selves most need to find) threatens their very existence.
Once they realize it's possible for rights and principles and even minds to emerge from institutionally-defined reality without being constructed by the institutions, they will be freed into the Interindividual Balance and their need to rail against corporation will dissipate (without giving in to any corporate reality).
All of which does not obviate the need for community because community (as Kiro5hin seems to define it) is, in fact, the institution most conducive to emergence into the intimate state of self.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
Your response would have been interesting, except for the fact that you've based it on an utter falsehood, that there is an objective reality.
There is no objective reality, neither in physics nor in society:
(i) In physics, in the small we cannot even separate object from observer, and in the large it is impossible for us to get to know reality herself: all we can do is study her behaviour with probes (virtually all our daily interaction is electromagnetic, eg. physical or optical), create models of the idealized behaviour, and then think of that as "the reality". Well, of course it isn't, it's merely an idea that behaves like reality seems to. We have no means of discovering what reality really consists of, which is why science is interesting and open-ended.
(ii) In society, it goes even further than what the article described, in that not only is the corporate reality a fabricated one, but every human reality is. The Tibetan monk's reality is utterly different from that of the average westerner, and so is (as an example) mine, simply because I have made a point of not watching the telly and therefore not assimilating the bulk of media-manufactured reality. The one objective reality to which you allude simply does not exist.
One doesn't have to be a destructive nihilist to accept that objectivism is a figment of our imaginations --- that's just another type of fundamentalism, and all fundamentalisms tend to be destructive. But to reject the natural uncertainties of the world in favour of a comforting but mythical objective construct is to voyage into the self delusion of believing that everyone else inhabits your own mental universe.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Very true! However, no insightful op-ed by Rusty nor anything else will ever alter this state of affairs. Capatilism has already won the Darwinian war for the future. My point is that even a statement of beliefs as important as The GNU manifesto (something I believe in strongly, BTW) has done little more than stir academic interest in intellectual property rights. Something like the Communist Manifesto would never fly nowadays. The only way to get anything to change (outside the system at least) is to Fuck Shit Up. For the first time, computers allow FSU'ers to do so effectively, by identifying social trends and exploiting them, stealing from the capitalist's bag of tricks.
Didn't someone once say that writing about revolution was like dancing about sauerkraut or something?
:-) was a hack, *still* is a hack, but by sheer strength of 14-year olds d00dz who want a free copy of The Matrix, it may be the end of the movie industry.
It's not that I disagree with his points - it is indeed true that peer-to-peer communication allows us to bypass Chomskian media filters.
But this article is clearly preaching to the choir. Even if it is disseminated to a larger audience, the language is the kind that tends to attract English majors to the scene (just what we need, an army of Jonkatzes preaching the virtues of p-2-p to people who have been living it since the day they discovered that what ATS0=1 did.)
Linux and Napster has already proven that the era of manifestos is over. Actions (or shipping code, rather) speaks louder than any words ever could. Linux may be GPLed, but if that was enough, HURD would be the next big thing. Napster arrived with little fanfare, it was just software that filled a desire so strong, people were willing to ignore some of the crappier parts of the interface. DivX
Indeed, the era of the manifesto is over. "Smash the state" is even beginning to look a bit wordy. Here is our future: an army of silent coders - fighting battles won by the quality of their code, by the savvyness of their program logic, and their abject glee at throwing rocks at a hornet's nest and seeing what happens.
I was just wondering, seeing as how there's an Ayn Rand account on /., if there isn't an L. Ron Hubbard acount too? Lunacy deserves
company, after all. I would go and use the search form, but I can't
be bothered.
I think it's supposed to be:
"You can take a horticulture but you can't make her think."
(Dorothy Parker)
If K5 can't handle, and doesn't want, the traffic, then K5 shouldn't be a public server. K5 is available for everyone to view, and so shouldn't complain when everyone views it.
~Cederic hasn't heard Rusty complaining.
Would you agree that language is socially constructed? Or do you consider it absolute? If facts are absolute but language is shifty, what happens when you try to express facts in language?
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Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Check out _Proofs and Refutations_ by Imre Lakatos and see if you still feel the same way about mathematical communication.
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Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
As someone else posted so astutely, go read some Hume and get back to me.
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Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Sure am, thanks!
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Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
I have my doubts about capitalism and I *certainly* ain't libertarian. Please don't try to speak for "we at slashdot".
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Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
This article is nothing more than Hegel rehashed. This sort of thinking is the same thing that led to National Socialism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, and all the other despotic regimes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. rusty has fundamentally misunderstood Jefferson's words in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. If the rights of man exist purely as social construct, there is no reason at all to have any moral qualm with Nazism, the Gulag, the Laogai, or any other tyranny. Harry Wu is far better reading than this drivel.
Oh, well, if you say so, then I guess it must be.
It's so nice to see such insightful and well-phrased commentary on Slashdot modded up, just as it should be.
Assume reality is objective.
What are these objects of reality? Can they all be quantified and measured? How can there be proof that a single system or method will provide the best "approximate" perception of reality if we admit that it is an open system?
Is reality not objective unless it can be observed by everyone? Unless it has been documented by a scientist?
It goes back to the question: If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to see it...
The thing about reality is that it still has to be believed in. The problem with beliefs is that people have a hard time changing them.
When any belief or perception about reality changes in a person, it indicates that the previously held belief was based on some sort of flawed proof. In essence, this person never truly "knew" the thing to be true, but had supposed their perception coincided with the objective reality.
Some people call this belief in something truly unknown "delusion". Other people call it "faith". Whatever the case is, the tendency for the perception to differ from reality exists just as much in the scientific world as it does in the religious world.
When a man of science, or man of religion, can forget his arrogance and allow his beliefs to change, then he will see the true power of his faith. Then he will understand that it is the faith that helped him to see the possibilities.
Your assertion that objective reality can only be quantified by the scientific method is foolish. Religion does not quantify the same elements that science does. Where they overlap, there you may argue. It may be that religion quantifies something very real, but you wouldn't percieve that unless you had experienced religious faith firsthand. Otherwise, you are not qualified to make a statement about it.
Some day I'm going to sit down and write a persuasive anti-libertarian argument, but when I do I'm going to try and talk about things the way libertarians do.
If I were going to take a stab at it, I would cover the ground a little differently. The point would be that while an institution like "private property" is clearly very useful in many ways, the details of what that really means aren't engraved in stone anywhere. Libertarians like very simple statements of principle, perhaps something like "you're free to do what you like with your property, as long as you don't infringe on other's freedom", but the exact boundaries of where the infringement begins aren't exactly clear. (It would seem, for example, that you guys driving around in your cars really shouldn't be allowed to poison me with your exhaust, but for some reason libertarians really like "private" cars (despite the heavy government subsidies running all through the auto transit system).
And once you recognize that there isn't any obvious one correct way that "capitalism" has to be set-up, there are a lot of things that are open to question. You do not, for example have to be a communist to wonder if the limited liability corporation is really that great an idea (if it's so useful for corporations to have limits put on their liability to protect them from frivolous law suits, why not grant the same liability limits to individuals?).
Nor do you need to be a communist to wonder if "intellectual property" is exactly the same beast as physical property (you steal my bike, I can't ride anywhere, you steal a song I wrote, I can still sing it... but on the other hand I *might* lose income because of that "theft". I might quit writing songs. Should the legal system be set up to protect *my* interest in this case, or in yours? How original was the material in those songs I wrote, anyway? Maybe I used a standard chord progression, lifted a riff here and there... how do we decide who wrote what?)
I pretty much agree with you, but I don't think you're going far enough.
Why even let limited liability (in the form of corporations) exist at all? All I can see it's good for is that it lets greedy people act without accountability.
Capitalism didn't go wrong, it just needs a free market in order to work. That market doesn't really exist because government has eliminated a vital market force: consequences for one's actions.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Well, non-objectivism (i.e., there is no external reality independant of the observer) is one of the interpretations under which quantum mechanics can me made consistent. And that's pretty good, since, as I understand, there are only five basic approaches that are consistent with it. But that doesn't actually mean that you can do anything with it.
I suppose one could create a critique on it based on one I used to use about Existentialism. To whit:
A true existentialist couldn't walk across the room. Because in order to take a step, he would need to suppose that when he did so, there would be a floor to stand on.
It's self-consistent, but it isn't useful. This is not to claim that some more restricted form of it might not be useful, but nobody's bothered to do the work of developing it.
Now in the case of post-modernism all I can say is, I've never come across a convincing argument that this basic approach is a reasonable one to take. But this is, you may note, self-referrential. Such arguments may exist. Or you may be convinced by different arguments than I would be. etc.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This is probably your point, but to be clear (at least to me):
The sky is normally a mixture of colors. Some of the colors fall into the range normally called blue.
There exist conditions under which the predominant hue of the sky is a color which fall into the area of the spectrum normally called green.
The two preceeding statements seem to me to be facts which are both true. The second one describes phenomena which are present with much less frequency than the first one.
However, I apply the term "fact" to describe features of the world which are appearant to me. I don't know what others see, but only the fragmentary reports of same that I receive. And having tried to get users to describe the computer errors that they have encountered, I am quite skeptical of anything with greater variety or less predictability.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
One word: Freenet.
Looks like you got 0, offtopic. You'd better rethink your theory :-) :-) :-)
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
and I'll say it here too.
Where is this "Moebius-like reality" that America has created for itself?
Have any of you noticed a twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop, from which there is no escape?
How about whatever happened happening again?
In any case, Rusty should be forced to listen Orbital's "The Moebius" until he learns that te Moebius is NOT merely a reality distortion field!
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
If that's the case then, hell, we can just tranlocate to different locations in the universe and say to hell with NASA, right?
:)
Quantum theory says that if you wait long enough, yes, that will happen. Of course, quantum theory also says you'll have to wait several times the lifespan of the universe for that to become probably, but hey - you never said the timeframe.
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You're missing the point.
Apparently.
As it is, Bush won unfairly. The fact that he would have won either way is irrelevant when considering whether or not things should be done fairly.
I guess I don't understand why the election was unfair.
My understanding is that the only votes that weren't "counted" in the election were votes that were incorrectly cast; they were semi-punched, not punched, or inaccurately filled out. Under Florida law, an incomplete vote is nothing. It doesn't count: dimpled, hanging, whatever, it's irrelevant. An inaccurate vote is considered a valid vote, because no matter how misleading the ballot, voters are ultimately responsible for whatever mistakes they make.
Now, what essentially happened is that both candidates saw that the tally could swing either way. Bush basically said, "Hey, count _only_ the votes that are legal under current law," and Gore basically said, "Hey, count _all_ the votes, legal or not."
In other words, Gore was trying to get the court system to say, "Yeah, OK, ignore the law" in order to give him another chance to win the election. They weren't challenging the validity of the law, they were simply saying, "Oh, the laws governing the votes? It doesn't apply to us."
Does that sound "fair" to you, trying to get a law exempted for you because it's inconvenient? It certainly doesn't to me.
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> perhaps it's a corporate cross-promotion thing, now kuro5hin and /. are stable mates
I keep a K5/box (rarely go there though), and I've noticed that there sure has been a lot of duplication of topics between the two sites over the past few weeks.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> I BELIEVED that nobody could write more boring article than Jon Katz.
Mebe he posts to K5 under a different name?
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> What is a 'meta-physicist'?
Someone who studies the physics of physicists?
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I might toss off as an aside that murder is pretty real to the person who gets killed. I think the point he's trying to make is that something that would be called "murder" in our society wouldn't be recognized as such in another culture. But that doesn't mean that murder isn't real. If one defines it simply enough, e.g. the killing of a person against that person's will, then clearly, murder is a reality. It is a thing that happens.
But about money: Money is a social fiction, yes, but it is a social fiction that is a stand-in for a real and objective thing: worth. When an artisan makes a chair, he has created a real, tangible object that is valuable to humans. Ditto when a farmer grows wheat, or apples. The chairmaker may trade a chair to the farmer for some wheat. When they do this they are exchanging worth that they have each created, to mutual benefit. This is capitalism. Now consider someone whose work is not primarily concerned with physical objects -- say, an accountant, or a sysadmin. How are these people to obtain wheat or chairs? Should the accountant manage the chairmaker's accounts? What if the farmer doesn't have a server? Now the sysadmin can't get wheat.
Enter money. It is a medium of exchange which allows people engaged in specialized endeavors to trade the worth that they have created to obtain the objects or services they want or need.
So it's true that if everyone collectively decides that the US dollar is worthless tomorrow, then it's worthless -- all those green slips of paper are worth nothing. But that's not going to happen for the very simple reason that people in this country are creating ideas and objects and performing actions that have worth, and people are always going to need to some of what they've made for something that they aren't capable of making.
In short, the actual medium of exchange -- printed bills, or gold, or whatever -- is something of a social fiction, but the things for which money stands in are not the constructions of some hive mind: they are very real, even if they are sometimes intangible.
-N
-Noodle
I've earned money that I can't spend, and the reason is that the government has decided to steal from me. When I voice this very clear and simple fact ("The government took my money by force. Taking money by force is stealing. The government stole from me.") people look at me as if I'm insane. If that's not a case of "a sufficient number of people believe that they own the property you previously considered 'yours,'", I don't know what is.
The opening about Communist revolutions is apt, as well. What was the New Deal if not a Socialist (okay, not quite Communist) Revolution?
-N
-Noodle
Rusty of Kuro5hin has written a great Op-Ed piece about reality and belief. It deserves the widest possible dissemination - so we'll Slashdot it. Bookmark the URL and try to read it tommorrow or sometime next week.
Too true. But I can't help trying.
And who made that mirror you look at? Do you really have no compassion? I'm not saying that these feelings should override your selfishness, but to discount them totally leaves you with conclusions like your sig. Haven't you ever had a good ROI for caring?
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+&x
What is a 'meta-physicist'? How is that different from the old-fashioned physics we know and love?
... by taking many of my old, bright, geeky friends and turning them into crashing bores.
Seriously, pomo has some useful attributes. It gives people a framework in which to question many kinds of assumptions, such as the entanglement of liberty and guns in the American viewpoint. So far so good.
But it does two really bad things to many of its adherents.
(1) Questioning the nature of reality corrupts their reasoning process like a badly written self modifying program. Specifically, it is one thing to accept the truth that much of what we take for reality is socially constructed and to question assumptions that you would otherwise take for granted. It is another thing when you take this to mean you can believe whatever you want if enough of the right people agree with you. It is a bad thing for the intellectual fashions of a small clique become the touchstone for an idea's value. The striking thing to me is how ironically parochial many of the more enthusiastic adherents of pomo become. The people who fall into this pitfall radiate the ecstatic and impenetrable certainty of the religious fanatic. Pomo seems to open a some minds and close others.
(2) Pomo adherents are often unnecessarily incoherent. The linguistic trappings of pomo are as ugly as sin. Pomo writing is turgid, dense with overwrought, pseudotechnical terminology that obscures the meaning and inflates simple ideas beyond recognition.
The example in the kuro5hin org is a perfect example of what is good and bad about pomo.
He raises a good but rather self evident point -- given corporate control of media and advertising, we should seek alternative sources of information, particularly we should talk to other people.
He then dresses this idea up so it is unrecognizable, and supports it with hypothetical examples citing unchecked and incorrect facts. And he misses the opportunity to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various ways of putting his program into action. For example, he doesn't mention you should seek out and learn from people who are not like you -- a communist should seek to understand the viewpoint of a capitalist rather than to caricature them, and vice versa. Missing the importance of this point is typical pomo. Diversity may be valued only in its superficial forms (color and ethnicity), but not in ways of thinking.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
From the Slashdot FAQ:
5 load balanced Web servers dedicated to pages
3 load balanced Web servers dedicated to images
1 SQL server
1 NFS Server
That's rather bigger than the 1 web/DB server that Kuro5hin has. Mind you, it's big server, but there are limits as to what one machine can serve. Keep in mind that Kuro5hin hasn't sold out to a big company, so they can't afford gobs of servers. Perhaps you should think about checking out the K5 store and donate some money for more servers?
--Maarken
There is only one reality: Physical reality. Without it, existence is futile. In physical reality, there are actions, causes, and reactions. Saying that reality is a social construction is completely meaningless, because, like author said, "I jump off a building and get killed", which is not a social construction.
Exploring "reality", or in this case various "reality" contexts, is completely worthless. "Social reality" is a meaningless term because there is no absolute frame of reference for interpreting socal interactions.
"The reality" of anything is always relative to the perceptions of the observer and the observer's predispositions to interpreting the causes, actions, and reactions perceived.
Philosophically, I can't actually tell to which epistemology the author subscribes, but I'll be more than happy to help him out with a free copy of Ayn Rand's "Objectivist Epistemology" to get him straightened out!
At anyrate, the definition of a fact, is a social contstruct. It is a fact that the sky is blue. there for the sky is blue.
Wrong. The description of the shade of color, if we can actually know what 'color' is, is part of a linguistic convention, so that we can communicate ideas and concepts with each other.
'Social construction' is a very undescriptive term. It implies that there is some absolute frame of reference upon which all people agree or commonly hallucinate. Who does this construction? This 'construction' is nothing more than 'consensus', where both of us, agreeing to speak English, also agree to describe the color of the sky with sunlight streaming through it 'blue'. And there are other languages that follow the same principle, consensus to denote the color of the sky as an equivalent term.
Um, so Ted is the largest *private* land owner, what corporations are included in the group of *private* land owners?
Well, that's a few minutes of my life I'll never get back. What a bunch of poorly thought-out, pseudo-philosophical anti-corporate propaganda.
There are plenty of pragmatic, logical reasons to criticize corporations and praise community without wrapping it in college-freshman interpretations of social constructivism.
Example: The premise Rusty starts with is "Human reality is socially constructed. That is, most of the "facts" that determine our daily lives are socially constructed facts."
Of course, that goes out the window when describing the evils SludgeCo wreaks in his theoretical example: "It takes little imagination to conclude that my death was a result of the toxic sludge that I've been using to fertilize my farm. The PHYSICAL FACTS of my death are now known. But the social reality of the event still has not been determined" [emphasis mine].
So, suddenly reality is based in "physical facts" not "socially constructed facts."
But the social constructivism comes back into play to justify anything that Rusty disagrees with: "The point of all [SludgeCo's] public relations work is to create a socially accepted 'reality'which does not make SludgeCo a murderer."
Hate to tell you, Rusty, but you can't have it both ways. Either BOTH interpretations of the death in your hypothetical scenario are social constructed or they aren't. You can't label one a social construct and claim the other is an a priori "physical" fact. If you're going to make social constructivism the basis of reality, then it applies to everything, not just Big Bad Corporations.
He's using (rather, MIS-using) social constructivism to label actions he disagrees with as nefarious and dangerous. The whole essay could have been summed up as "Rusty doesn't like spin."
Community is good. Corporations are problematic. The reasons those statements are true are far more complex and nuanced than this tinker-toy argument presented here. This is simply plain crappy critical thinking that wouldn't even get him a C- is a freshman composition class I know; I teach freshman composition.
Gotten some neat t-shirts from thankful sys admins that way, btw.
Best Slashdot Co
It's MLP.
Best Slashdot Co
tell your friends, make them think about it.
"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think"
When I have mod points I switch from 'highest first' to 'newest first'. That way I can mod posts like yours: troll, right after you post it.
Mandrake 7.2 and KDE 2 for me? for free?
1000 SlashDot sigs
I've never come across a convincing argument that this basic approach is a reasonable one to take
What makes something reasonable or not is an interesting question. You seem to be taking the viewpoint of that which successfully gets you through the day is reasonable. (I get this from your critique of existentialism that seems to suggest that you have at least that one litmus test for any philosophy).
So how does post-modernism help us through the day? It's essentially a defensive measure against the dangers of absolutism. If you believe science describes the real world perfectly, and if you believe that the scientific method is an infallible method that can be used to understand everything, then science isn't much different from any other religion for you - with all the inherent problems. If you understand the post-modern critiques of science, you begin to understand the ways in which subjectivism and context creep into the theories of science. The more you understand these possibilities, the less likely you'll be fooled when they occur, and the more likely you'll catch new information when it comes around in different guises.
Post-modernism is not the final point of philosophy, in any case. After understand it, you can choose to return to a modernistic philosophy (with eyes opened a bit wider), or to a pragmatic philosophy (such as described by Richard Rorty).
If you believe in logic, then I'd suggest you have to accept post-modernist teachings, because they depend on logic. Modernist teachings depend on logical fallacies, like circular reasoning.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
If you assume a God, or a Platonic realm, then you run into other problems, like dualism, which really do lead down a path that ends in nihilism and the impossibility of knowing anything outside yourself. Those strategies don't give real solutions to the problem (the problem being: how do we know anything?).
PostModernism isn't really doing much more than pointing out that, theoretically, it's impossible to be 100% sure, and, more importantly, it's points out a myriad of ways in which we have screwed up and continue to screw up in our thinking.
My point was that shutting the door on postmodernism simply because you don't like the message is not a rational attitude. Learning the message and then moving on with things has value. At some point, you learn that people sometimes lie. But you learn that and go on, and you choose when to believe and when to distrust, hopefully with a little more awareness than before.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
So, the simplest definition is that PostModernism is the collection of philosophical works that critique the modernist philosophies (of Kant, Descartes, Hegel, Locke, etc). It points out logical fallacies used to support the modern philosophies. Points out cultural biases that crept in as self-evident assumptions. Assumptions that are introduced to achieve a certain desired result, but which are often unnecessary, and complicate the picture.
To me, it's what comes after post-modernism that's really interesting. Modernist philosophies now seem so quaint, so obviously wrong-headed and naive. You read Locke and he writes point blank about various things that just have to be true because he can't imagine it any other way. It's like watching a 50's movie - there's no entertainment value, but it's a great lesson in history.
But after postmodernism, we get some really interesting responses - either a modernist attempt to answer the critiques of post-modernism (and by answer I mean they accept the validity of the critiques and try to construct a philosophy that doesn't make the same mistakes), or a pragmatic philosophy that wants to leave metaphysics behind altogether and concentrate on how best to get with living.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
You also say that our approximate knowledge of objective reality can be perfected via the scientific method, but, since you have discounted all of postmodernism, you fail to account for all the assumptions that go into science, and all aspects of it that make it susceptible to error and distortion.
To accept the validity of postmodernism does not mean you have to give up on everything - it's just another tool in your possession. It's like the saying, "don't believe everything you read". Doesn't mean everything you read is lies, but just, be careful.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
"It you don't cite, it's plagarism. If you cite, it's research."
This is completely true. But in the very next sentance he says,
This is way off base. The reality of money is founded in our belief that members of society must work or create some kind of value in order to survive. And upon creating that value, or working, you have earned the right to property ownership.
Money is a convenient and arbitrary way for people to exchange anything for work or creativity or something of value. On the one hand he says that the value of money is arbitrary, then in the next breath, he says that it only corresponds to property. This is the falacy that leads people to believe that there is a fixed amount of money in the world, and if some people have more, they must have taken it from those who have less.
The richest people in the world, of previous generations, would give most of their entire kingdoms to have the facilities that the common person has today: instant communication, quick and efficient travel to anywhere in the world. The common person today is richer than the royalty of 300 years ago. In other words, we have all become richer w/out some corresponding huge population of us becoming poorer.
Money is the catalyst that has allowed this tranformation to take place. Money says nothing about society's beliefs about the rights of property ownership. It says that society requires work, or creativity, or something of value in order for individuals w/in the society to survive. Which can then be passed on to future generations.
It works like this:
I am, of course, grossly oversimplifying. And for the most part I agree with this guy when he says that communication is necessasary in order to prevent the blind submission of our rights to corporate entities. But money isn't evil, even if it is just a social contract. And the social contract that money represents is not what this guy thinks it is.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
I believe that most people view corporations as evil because what may have started out as a dream to better one's self - start a business and bring in the bucks - eventually turns into pushing down others to further one's goals. Making it on one's own is good. Hurting others in order to do so is bad. That's where I think the distinction lies, to answer your last question.
--
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Deliberately hurting others in order to further your own goals is bad. Fair competition, where everyone has the opportunity to create success, is good.
I'm sure you can see the distinction.
--
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
--
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
What amazes me is how the "fact" accepted with blind faith by so many lefties (and increasingly righties, thanks to Pat Buchanan and Gore Vidal becoming busom buddies, revealing that there is not a dime's worth of difference between the twin thugs of politics, Left and Right) that corporations are able to effortlessly control public opinion is never contrasted with the identical efforts of ideological organizations and government.
Environmental Defense also has "grassroots" organizations organized from the top down. The government also holds press releases with scientists that are forced, on pain of losing grant money, to side with the Administration's position. They frequently abuse the objective reality you mention in favor of predetermined conclusions (cf. Erin Brockovich, where no chemicals were in fact found in the water supply, but because there were "releases" and a "possibility", lots of people lost their jobs to make a bunch of slimy lawyers rich).
Yet a blind faith that government and non-profit institutions are going to protect your (equally socially constructed) "right" to gather in communities suffuses the entire piece. If Environmental Defense doesn't like what you say, be sure you're going to feel the onslaught of a PR machine not inhibited by the sensitivity to not POing customers that corporations have. If the government doesn't like what you say, they won't waste time with PR. How much easier to jail or shoot you.
Yeah, the history of the world has shown that private property is socially constructed. It's also shown that people who live under those systems can't form independent communities and tend much more often to end up on the wrong side of a Chinese firing squad.
Wow, those who don't pay attention in logic class are doomed to make ASPs of themselves in public.
"You are an ignorant troll," whether preceded by "I believe" or not is an opinion, a statement of value or belief, not fact. It can be proven neither true nor untrue.
True statements making a claim about non-subjective reality are facts. Untrue statements are just claims.
Really? Why did PG&E's workers have a higher-than-average life expectancy and no "cluster" of cases, then? Why wasn't chromium-6 found in groundwater in all the areas of the "cluster"? I said there were "releases", but in several places there were in fact no groundwater contaminants found.
Gee when the New York Times is called "right wing", it's a lefty crowd.
why would we waste time reading left wing arguements for 'community' which we have already intellectually discounted years ago ?
Not just discounted, but intellectually discounted? That's a harsh burn, innit? :)
Wah!
The cake is a pie
You bastard! I clicked on that, expecting to get a perfectly innocent goatse.cx link, and instead end up seeing something horribly filth and obscene!
The cake is a pie
(The only method by which this approximation can be perfected is the scientific one, as compared to religious belief, which is basically guessing.)
Look at it this way: which scientist do you think has the more perfect model of how things work in the universe--the guy in the lab who, smart as he is, isn't quite sure whether to reject Einstein in favor of some new theory, and who hopes that computers will soon be powerful enough to help him complete his ideas on superstrings, or the scientist who's created worlds, populated them with all sorts of living things, knows out how to bring dead people back to life, etc? Which scientist do you think is closer to "basically guessing"?
I don't expect you to take my word for it that there is a God, and that he's a better scientist than any of our fellow mortals, but that's the way I see it. Each of us has to choose who to believe when they tell us they've got things figured out. I may not be able to apply the scientific method to the experiments I do to decide who to believe (since the results are influenced by God's choices--not just immutable physical laws), but I've got my evidence, and I think my choice to believe in God has as good a basis as anyone's choice to believe someone else.
Personally, I don't see any conflict between faith and science--I'm just willing to believe what the better scientist tells me if he tells me I did my experiment wrong, and hope that I'll be able to find out where my mistake was.
Convert RSS to HTML - integrate webfeeds into your website
This post will be moderated down.
TheGeek
TheGeek
http://www.geekrights.org
Kill the monkey
doesn't mean they aren't real. How about this instead:
1. Rights are not a primitive moral reality, but are rooted in considerations about conditions required to pursue the human good, including the conditions required to pursue the truth about that good.
2. Property rights are rooted in the universal ordination of material goods to the common good, and are therefore not absolute.
3. Property rights are nonetheless real, and it's nonsense to say they're "socially constructed," whatever that might mean.
In any case, the line of reasoning I've outlined is in the mainstream of the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, and is to be preferred to sophomoric attempts to create a moral theory out of thin air.
Argh. I hate the op-ed format! Doesn't anyone read books anymore?
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
Kuro5hin is an OSDN partner. (I believe nearly totally funded by OSDN) OSDN is owned by VA Linux. Andover is owned by VA Linux. They are essentially owned by the same parent company. Even though kuro5hin isn't really owned by VA Linux, it is probably could be financially controlled if VA Linux so wished.
I am not here for socio-political drivel. I can get a dose of that all over the net and from most commentators and all too many university departments. Enough of it invades this geek space through the rantings of Katz without more of the sophmoric BS lathered on. I am a geek largely to escape such air-headed nonsence. I live where reality is NOT
"socially constructed".
While Rusty presents some reasonable ideas, the artlce as a whole is fairly mistaken. The Declaration of Independence intentionally *left out* property ownership as a self-evident right. It is heavily based on John Locke's Second Treatise on Government, where Locke claims that property ownership is one of the more fundamental rights. Much of Western Liberal thought has been based on (or in reaction to) Locke's notion of Natural Rights. And according to Locke and those who are in similar vein, Natural Rights are what is precisely NOT socially constructed.
Another upsetting point of view that Rusty takes is that the framing of the constitution is fundamentally skewed towards corporations. This is a fundamental falsehood. The United States was based on a basic fear or power. Our whole society was set up to be incredibly inefficient, and with plenty of opportunity for power to be checked. It is only through vast misreadings of the founding documents of the US do you arrive at the notion that Greed Is Good, and that corporations are first-class citizens. Yes, society is organized around a concept of self-interest, but that is not fundamentally capitalistic. If you read much of Jefferson's writings, you quickly find that he is hugely in support of small communities of Yeoman farmers, each independent and active in politics. Which is exactly what Rusty is arguing for.
Rusty is also fairly mistaken on notions of Communism. One, there has never been a real, Marx-like Communist country. Communism requires the (supposedly inevitable) downfall of capitalism first. It needs all the infrastructure that capitalism provides. And like it or not, pretty much all of the ideals of communism (at a very fundamental level) are mirrored in the original social contract that Locke proposes. It is just that Marx is naive about the power of self-interest. Other similar community-oriented political theories are further flawed, like Rousseau's notion of a community. The most important notion that a political theory can have is healthy fear of power, no matter what form it comes in. Only Locke and thinkers like him (like Jefferson and Madison) amply realize this.
So I say that any problems that exist in America's current social contract already have solutions. They lie in the original documents of our country. Some have just chosen to ignore them. To correct this situation, we have to model ourselves more closely towards this original framework, and demonstrate how we are in the true vein of American ideals.
If what I've heard is true, and "everyone has left slashdot for K5", then how can K5 still get slashdotted?
Free feel to ask JMS (creator of Babylon 5) all about that. The reason he pulled the plug on the Crusade series was because the distributor (TNT) kept trying to impose their will on what JMS (and, to the same degree) the fans wanted.
Also, talk to a lot of the glam/hair rock bands about the early 80s (before glam/hair was big), especially in terms of how their distributors wanted their music to be played. It's the same story: distributors trying to enforce their will on the artists.
Please, if "your really believe that the artist are" "in best position to decide which option will result in the best possible gratification?" then you are pretty fucking stupid and/or naive.
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
Move definitions to an aribtary place in your head, and work backwards.
Maybe read some david hume.
At anyrate, the definition of a fact, is a social contstruct. It is a fact that the sky is blue.
there for the sky is blue.
It is a fact that the sky is green. is the sky green?
applying the label of "fact" to something is merely stating that most people's perceptions agree.
Blah
-Tilde
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
Depends on your conception of language.
Yes, spoken language is murkey as hell.
When you phrase something, and release it,
it's meaning no longer belongs to you,
but exists in the reciever. Very rarely
does the reciever concieve perfectly your
intention.
However, Mathematics while still dependent
on the knowledge of the reciever, is
absolute if the reciever id knowledgeable
enough to understand the math.
maybe we should all speak in geometric
circles. Shrug.
-Tilde
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
never met a libertarian who wasn't bollocks to the eyeballs.
Says abit more about your bollocks make up than it does about libertarians wouldn't you think?
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
I find it invigorating, heartening, and just down right beautiful, to read such a vehement impeachment of an article it's author, and the sight it was posted to that has...
Absolutely no reasons posted with it!!!
So it's a lot of bull shit hrm.... well, why?
-V
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
Wrong view of Fact.
It's a fact that george bush is a liar and a cheat.
That is a different sentece than
George Bush is a liar and a cheat.
The usage of the term fact, makes the statement seem more true.
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
Sure they are.
What else is a fact, but a bundeled up parcel of knowledge with an accepted meaning, usually in a causal relationship.
That thing, and it's properties, is precisely what Hume wrote about.
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
What is the word "fact", but a social construct with perceptive meaning.
The "fact" of the matter is, most people either are not able to tell the difference, or recognize that there IS a difference, between a fact in the untouchable objective world, and a fact created by concensus.
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
Actually i hadn't, i'm not a math nerd, and wasn't aware that nerdyness depended upon a knowledge of mathematics.
Regardless, math is much less murkey than spoken language.
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
(If it is your opinion that discussing the very nature of discourse is over-intellectualization, you would be well advised to skip this message.)
Do not disregard constructivism so quickly.
Objective models strictly about reality can be used as an approximation of reality itself. However, once you, for example, enter the individual into some kind of context or, I pose, set up expression with any implication of making judgement, you have trespassed into subjective assumptions in the creation of your objective model.
The idea behind constructivism is that in order for individuals to agree on a certain judgement, they must begin with a common frame of reference.
A Republican and a Democrat may disagree in actual argument, but usually that is due to some severance in their underlying assumptions. The problem is that enlightened discourse rarely occurs between the parties as the underlying assumptions are rarely discussed behind those big white pillars.
"Computer types" tend to have an affinity for constructivism as it is logical, allows for absolute judgement within a context, makes no assumptions, and acts like an object-oriented programming language.
An object-oriented programming language? Sure! There's a whole library of assumptions you can "implement interfaces" from. Inherit the ones you need, ditch the ones you don't in order to expand your prospective audience. I imagine that's how AI will operate some day.
To digress, that interface inheritance thing is a good point. Many of my ideas are grounded in civil libertarianism, while a close friend at X liberal arts school next door buys wholeheartedly into the society-organism social engineering setup. We can still have innumerable insightful and -resolving- discussions on all kinds of things by dropping the inessentials. Even in unresolved conversations, we use constructivist notions to see where the separation lies and consequently respect our differences.
It may seem to some that I have simply reiterated here the very definition of an argument here. I simply think people don't realize how far reaching the impacts of these simple notions are when properly applied.
A.J. Roxton, Lord Captain of the Queen's Royal Armies
i've heard that wal-mart employs as many people as live in north dakota. while ND may not be the most populous state in the union, this is a vivid illustration of how dependant we are on the socially-constructed incorporations (embodiments) of capitalism. the food thing is kinda missing the point while hinting at the larger problems inherently associated with socialism. x probly wanted to point out an interpretation of the op-ed piece so thoughtfully copied-and-pasted from the overburdened k5 site.
should...be....working......now.........
This is false. Money buys protection against punishment for nonpayment of taxes and taxes are not "collectively" collected -- they are collected by sadistic police-power:
Federal Reserve + IRS = The Protection Racket Coup of 1913
by Jim Bowery
Jim Bowery, January 13, 2001 -- The author grants the right to copy, without modification.
INTRODUCTION
Federal Reserve money buys protection from punishment. You are punished if you don't pay taxes. This has become the Federal Reserve's primary monetary authority. The moral hazard of basing monetary authority on punishment has now been realized in the systemic and out-of-control gang rapes of prisoners in the US. All other unlawful acts by US governments are now overshadowed by the murderous, sexually sadistic character of governmental authority that has developed in US penal systems. Federal Reserve money is now protection racket money, or, if you prefer "punishment protection money". Calling it "fiat money", "debt money" or even "legal tender" obscures its true character. The transition to this form of money began in 1913, when the 16th Amendment dramatically expanded the potential need for legal tender in the form of taxes while, in that same year, the Federal Reserve Act started the process of removing from legal tender any backing value other than the protection it affords against punishment. That the redefinition of "legal tender" was unconstitutional(1) has become only a minor dimension of the massive decay in legitimacy and moral leadership during the 20th century triggered by these acts of 1913. These acts were largely in the interest of continental European banking concerns doing business under the name of J. P. Morgan. As vital interests of the United States were sacrificed on their behalf, those foreign interests are reasonably called "enemies of the United States", the acts of U.S. citizens on their behalf "treasons", and all such citizens "traitors".
THE MORAL HAZARD OF GOVERNMENT AND MONEY
Legitimate governments provide assurance that we are secure in our lives and properties by protecting our legal rights in exchange for taxes and other duties. The most legitimate governments will even back up their commitment by providing some sort of compensation if our legal rights are breached, much the same as insurance companies do when they pay out on an insurance policy. But there is a fine line between protection rackets and insurance companies. Indeed, gangsters frequently call their protection rackets "insurance" and the payments they extort from their victims "insurance premiums". That fine line between protector and protection racket is crossed when "moral hazard" tempts the "protector" beyond the limits of his character.
In conventional insurance terminology, "moral hazard" is the temptation to artificially increase hazards. A classic case of moral hazard is an otherwise unprofitable business buying lots of fire insurance and then hiring an arsonist to burn down the place of business.
Insurers, too, can profit by increasing hazards if it is the uninsured who suffer the exposure to risk. A classic example of an insurer's moral hazard is the temptation to parasitize a productive business by threatening it with destruction unless the owners pay regular "insurance premiums".
And that brings us to the morality of governance.
The most profound moral hazard for governance is the penal system combined with taxation.
The framers of the US Constitution included prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th Amendment. They also made it difficult to parasitize productive States. This they did by requiring that taxation on a State's citizenry be proportional to the State's population under Article. 1. Section. 2. Clause 3. and Article. 1. Section. 9. Clause 4. Making taxes proportional to State population helps control the moral hazard of governance at the Federal level by making it difficult for the Federal government to transfer wealth to States that are politically active from States that are economically productive. Also, States are more capable of defending themselves from the Federal government than are individuals. Unfortunately, the requirement for taxation proportional to State population ("with apportionment" and "with regard to the census") was removed by the 16th Amendment, thereby promoting political porkbarrel at the Federal level and punishing productivity. In the same year the Federal Reserve Act gave license to gradually reduce legal tender's reliance on gold and silver as backing value, leaving the protection legal tender afforded against government punishment it's primary backing value. (Shortly thereafter, the 17th Amendment also removed from the States the power to elect Senators, further eroding the States' ability to protect their citizens from the federal government.)
These acts of treason have produced profound moral hazard at the Federal level, and set the stage for the relentless and radical decay of moral leadership during the 20th century.
WARRIOR INSURANCE
The proper role of government is protection against force and fraud. Therefore, to keep it honest, government's source of revenue should be insurance premiums against loss due to force and fraud. Said premiums could be payable in notes issued by the insurer/protector, but the insurer/protector should merely cancel the insurance policy and cease protecting those who do not pay. An insurer/protector should not generate the market for their own notes by threatening to punish those who do not pay -- as that is a protection racket, even if the insurer/protector honorably indemnifies those who do pay in the event of a covered loss. Such insurance premiums and corresponding insurance coverage would, necessarily, stipulate other conditions under which the insurance/protection continued to be provided at the agreed upon rates. This amounts to taxation on asset value, adjusted for various conditions that may affect risk -- with the added guarantee of indemnification in the event that asset value is lost due to force or fraud.
Such a system actually eliminates governance, as we know it. I call it "warrior insurance".
Under warrior insurance, reinsurance networks take the place of existing international treaties and alliances. Intelligent warrior reinsurance networks will check loss of asset value resulting from gang, or "protection racket" formation well in advance of any need for warfare. Warrior insurance premiums eliminate taxation. Competition between warrior insurance companies creates checks and balances supporting liberty. Formation of mass armies on ideological/political grounds is suppressed by exposing the underlying quid-pro-quo of reciprocal altruism that actually exists between people and their sovereignties -- over-extended kin identification, the basis of political and religious warfare as well as one-world ideology, is rendered less viable. Warrior insurance companies are much like the original sovereignties that defended newly formed civilizations -- they are, in fact, quite traditional. Empires subsumed the original sovereignties because trade, communication and literacy were so centralized. In the information age, this is decreasingly the case. What is increasingly necessary is a strong, distributed militia living lives bonded to their communities and lands from generation to generation, who value honor above their own lives. Unlike systems of taxation, warrior insurers will compensate those who are bonded for conscription in time of war, or deputized in times of civil emergency. Those so bonded would naturally demand a vote, or representation, in declarations of war or civil emergency.
Under warrior insurance, the citizens' militias traditionally enjoy tax relief, since they are in effect, protecting themselves. In Scotland, rather than forming a Yeoman class from the "kindly tenants", "feu fees" were imposed to pay for foreign war debts during the Protestant Reformation, thereby dispossessing ancient families of their lands to make way for revenue generating land use such as wool-producing sheep. Kindly tenants were kindred or clan members who had traditionally been given relief from economic rent/taxation in exchange for sworn allegiance to their clans' militias under the command of their chiefs. But the clan chiefs were corrupted by the royalty which had become more interested foreign adventures than they were in allowing the clans to support and protect themselves and their families on their own lands. The royal war debts began consuming the livelihoods of the folk. Many were forced to flee for their lives. This was the primary origin of the Scotch-Irish pioneers who attempted to create a society in "the New World", free from such betrayals of clan loyalty. The earliest pioneers suffered a 25% mortality rate in the first year of migration in their desperation to create that "New World". This was not merely the moral equivalent of war -- it was death on a massive scale in a struggle with nature herself (war with natives was not the primary cause of these deaths), on the one hand, and tyranny on the other. As usual mostly men went to the frontier to risk everything for their new lands, but many women and children also suffered similar fates. As a consequence, the founders of the United States, folk memory still fresh, thought the avoidance of foreign wars to be common sense. This gave rise to the Monroe Doctrine and the avoidance of foreign wars.
Compare and contrast such a system to the internationally adventurous protection racket posing as a government we have today.
THE MURDEROUS, SEXUALLY SADISTIC BASIS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE
The US Federal Government, by basing its monetary authority on punishment protection with the treasons of 1913, has degenerated into an irredeemably murderous and sexually sadistic regime operating without lawful authority.
When Pennsylvania Quakers established the original penitentiaries, they were places where a man was to spend time alone in a room with a bible to contemplate the error of his ways. Now they are the source of most acts of rape in our society as well as a primary dissemination point of the deadly Human Immunodeficiency Virus that causes AIDS(2).
This is so much the case that a standard book on preparing for prison life "You Are Going to Prison" by Jim Hogshire, answers the question "Will I get butt-fucked?" quite simply and in the affirmative. Government itself routinely uses the EXPLICIT threat of gang rape in 'crime prevention' programs aimed at youth, such as that depicted in the public television broadcast of "Scared Straight"(3) where youth offenders are warned about their fate as sex slaves if they go to prison. Awareness is so widespread that Hollywood movies routinely make light of the pervasive nature of prisoner rape. Until recently, federal officials have avoided, like the AIDS epidemic they help spread, any indication that they are conscious of the fact that their authority relies, in large measure, upon cruel and unusual punishment. But even that taboo may be crumbling(4).
Any reasonable man must ask and demand an answer to this question:
"How has the Quaker conception of the penitentiary been so perverted that the threat of HIV-infected gang rape of prisoners is now a primary component of the government's authority?"
The answer is simple yet profound. It lies in the distinction between the two bases of money:
Reward VS Punishment protection
Everyone is familiar with the concept of reward money -- money issued with a promise from the issuer to reward the bearer usually with some commodity, such as gold or silver, upon presentation to the issuer.
The concept of money backed by punishment protection sounds unfamiliar to all but a very few scattered individuals. It is unfamiliar even to Nobel Prize winning economists, let alone the vast pool of PhDs from whence they are chosen.
Yet punishment protection money is as simple and obvious as it is pervasive:
Money issued with a promise from the issuer to protect the bearer from punishment upon presentation to the issuer.
Forget the Clothes --The Emperor is a Murdering Rapist Run Amok
Many critics of President Clinton accused him of being a murdering rapist. But President Clinton was simply the by-product of an epic perversion that has overtaken the lawful government of the United States. It would be understatement to call this perversion a criminal gang. Criminal gangs only occasionally commit rape and murder against their own community. They don't pretend to be a lawful authorities in public. They don't issue their own currency as protection racket money and then demand it as "legal tender". They may rationalize their criminal conduct, but they don't convince themselves that what they are doing is lawful. They admit to themselves that they are gangsters. At least they are that honest. But, perhaps this is simply because gangsters are afraid to compete with the most massive criminal organization in history, whose roots extend back at least to 1913 when the Income Tax and Federal Reserve were created.
The Federal Reserve was created in the same year as the Income Tax for one simple reason:
The US Federal Government was shifting from Reward to Punishment Protection as the basis for its monetary authority.
Federal Reserve Notes are promises to reduce the bearer's risk of punishment for tax code violation, upon presentation to its collection agency, the IRS, in the form of Income Tax.
Note here that it is impossible to reduce the risk of punishment for violation of the income tax code to a level commensurate to the threat of prisoner gang-rape(5). This has become the foundation of the IRS/Fed's all-pervasive aura of fear(6) upon which their punishment protection money is based. The Income tax code is so complex that not even the IRS with all its private contractors from law and accounting firms, can reliably and reproducibly interpret it. This makes it possible only to _reduce_ the risk of punishment -- no matter how much wealth you turn over to the IRS.
In this manner the federal government creates demand for the Federal Reserve's otherwise worthless paper(7). Under the evil monetary basis of punishment protection, the government's monetary authority is limited only by the degree to which it can create pervasive terror of its prison system in the hearts of nonviolent potential tax code "offenders" -- and that means you.
With punishment protection as the basis of its monetary authority, and therefore its ability to buy votes, it was only a matter of time before the US Federal Government, as though an animal trained by operant conditioning, would find ways of increasing the severity and cruelty of its punishments.
But like rat in a maze, the US Federal Government had a problem to solve:
How to impose cruel and unusual punishment without arousing the wrath of a people whose ancestors had risked a 1 in 4 chance of dying in the first year of migration to the New World in order to escape just such evils?
The solution, reached without conscious intent (conspiracy) of individuals was a form of punishment so cruel and unusual -- SO TABOO -- that no decent human being would even want to think about it, let alone use freedom of speech and the press to talk about it:
Gradually cultivate prisoner rape as the basis of government authority.
By replacing pillory, open corporeal punishments and work restitution, so common before the 20th century, with an environment in which Mafiosi and other gangster types are protected from prisoner rape while the American pioneer cultures, less prone to prison gang formation, are systemically gang-raped, an ethnic bias was created against the very peoples who founded the country to escape government predation. The actual bias is apparent as at least 3 out of 4 prisoner rapes involve blacks victimizing men of Protestant heritage while Mediterranean Mafiosi are somehow immune.
The ruthlessly pragmatic and sadistically sociopathic genius of this is that its very intensity, both as physical trauma and moral outrage, rendered it invisible.
Such is the mentality of the child molester who relies on the traumatic nature of his crime to cover his tracks -- seemingly unable to control his subconscious urges. Such was the mentality of those men who, in 1913, gave us the Federal Reserve and the Income Tax.
CONCLUSION
As with a molested child whose shame and guilt compound his trauma, so the American people have come to accept as, as fated, a life lived with this filthy family secret(8). The US Federal Government, now basing its authority on cruel and unusual punishment, cannot be considered legitimate by any reasonable man . The fundamental role that the application of force against citizens plays in defining legitimacy demands such a radical conclusion.
Warrior insurance will be a crucial tool in the triumph of honor over the political will that has so corrupted the rule of law. But honorable warriors need something to protect. Pioneers risk their lives creating new lands. Women then risk their lives giving birth to new folk. Finally, warriors risk their lives protecting their lands and their folk.
The burden of leadership falls, as it did after the feu fees that so motivated the Scotch-Irish, on pioneers.
The dilemma, facing those of us who value the heritage of those early Americans who risked so much to escape sadistic authority in the old world, is not whether we are willing to risk our lives for freedom from such tyranny, but whether we can pioneer a 'New World' where our love of freedom can bear fruit in the face of death.
References
(1) This is a consequence of the unlawful declaration that Federal Reserve Notes are "legal tender". "Legal tender" is called such because courts are required to accept it as money for legal purposes (by far, the largest legal purpose of money is payment of taxes). The US Constitution, under Article 1, Section 10 requires the States to use only gold and silver as payment for legally recognized debts. Article 1, section 8 does not give Congress power to make legal tender. Therefore, the declaration that Federal Reserve Notes are "legal tender for all debts public and private" is unlawful. The best counter arguments to this generally ignore the fact that the paper currency issued by the original central banks were presumed to not be backed by legal tender's value as protection against punishment, let alone cruel and unusual punishment.
(2) See http://www.spr.org/docs/stats.html
t m
(3) The "Scared Straight" program from the 1970s is still going strong as evidenced by this April 5, 1997 article from the Lubbock Avalance- Journal: http://www.lubbockonline.com/news/040697/prison.h
An excerpt:
"DALLAS (AP) - A grand jury has refused to indict prison inmates in connection
with a ''scared straight'' prison visit during which several boys claimed to have been molested."
(4) Assistant U.S. attorney Gordon Zubrod from Harrisburg, PA made the following public statement to 3 suspects who fled to Canada (this statement was captured for the public record during a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interview):
"You're going to be the boyfriend of a very bad man if you wait out your extradition."
(5) Look at the classic paper on the value of human life by Nobel prize winning economist George Stigler of the University of Chicago School of Business. He measured the effect of danger on wage rates in different professions. Prison is more of a danger in some lines of activity than others. We should be able to apply similar analytic techniques to the relationship between taxation and the prison system.
(6) "Prison Rape: Every Man's Greatest Fear", August 1995, Penthouse.
(7) Although the thesis of this paper does not necessarily predict it, an increase in the rate of prisoner suicide negatively correlating with the rate of inflation would be supportive.
(8) A final anecdote on silence: When the author of this white paper was called in for an audit by the IRS in 1994, he sought a tax attorney to represent him. During an interview with a prospective attorney the author told the attorney he thought the audit might have been politically motivated. When asked for details, the author related that the author had published articles on the Internet advocating a judical review of the legitimacy of the ratification of the 16th Amendment about one month prior to the notice of audit. The attorney then told the author that he could not represent the author. According to this tax attorney, he had attended a seminar given by the IRS in which the distinct impression was given that "tax protesters" were not to be defended and that any attorney who defended a "tax protester" would be subjected to a lifetime of audits. This was later confirmed during an interaction with a prominent southern California tax attorney when it became known that the IRS auditor had verbally admitted to his consulting accountant that the author was being audited because of his advocacy of a judicial review of the 16th Amendment's ratification.
In a related situation currently ongoing in China, a spokesperson for the Falun Gong Practitioners in North America has stated that: "lawyers in China have already been told not to defend these innocent civilians unless they agree with the government propaganda." The U.S. House and Senate unanimously passed resolutions on 1999-NOV-18 and 19 which criticized the Chinese government for its crackdown of the Falun Gong.
Seastead this.
Gee and I though that I broke k5 when I pushed the 'Submit' button. Well, might as well feed the trolls while I'm here...
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, 1977
The world is what you will it.
:P
"Riiiiiiight."
Um no you've been watching too much anime.
Fantasy is the wine of the intellectual, great fun but please fantasize responsibly.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I really enjoyed that article. It doesn't offer any answers and makes a lot of obvious statements, but there is some insight there as well.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Talk about missing the point.
Sigs are awesome huh?
You might try reading in context. It's a difficult skill, I know, but if you can work a little harder, get up to the 3rd grade reading level, then you might be able to pull it off.
Sigs are awesome huh?
I've seen several comments like yours that critisize the article but don't seem to supply any kind of counter. Wonder why.
Sigs are awesome huh?
How in the hell is this insightful? There is no qualifying of any of the statements.
Ok the article is a lot of hot air, how and why?
Sigs are awesome huh?
To me this is nonsense. "The world" did not "construct" the fact that the earth revolves around the sun -- it did so before Copernicus or anyone else surmised. Perhaps you mean that it took the world two thousand years to construct a theory that explains various astronomical observations, and which concludes that the earth revolves around the sun.
But on your own view it could be said that both are facts. After all, you define a "fact" as "a statement of something being actual. And it is actual that you believe that I am an ignorant troll, correct? So how is that latter statement not also a fact?
Another point, to show that the way you (and the author of that ridiculous article) describe "facts" is not the way they are described in ordinary English.
I am imagining a courtroom scene in any number of lawyer shows:
Defense Attorney: "Isn't it a fact that you weren't wearing your glasses, so you can't possibly have recognized my client?"
Witness: "No, I was wearing my glasses, so I could see fine."
Defense Attorney: "You didn't answer my question. I asked if it was a fact that you weren't wearing your glasses, not whether it was a true or untrue fact. Please confine yourself to answering my questions."
Witness: "Oh, okay, then in that case it is a fact that I was not wearing my glasses."
If a writer displays unwillingness to think through the meanings of, and issues surrounding, the terms he is using, that suggests to me that the rest of the argument will be sloppy. In fact I did skim the remainder of the article and this expectation was confirmed, as it usually is.
What happens when we try to express facts in language depends on whether the facts are explainable in words using those plain meanings. For example, if I say "My cat is sitting on that chair," everyone knows what all of those words mean, and very few English speakers will fail to understand what I mean by it. If I say "It's wrong to torture people for fun," that may be a little less clear (what counts as "torture"?) but still pretty clear. For the few people who don't understand, or who disagree about the common meaning of "torture", or who thought I was using "torture" as hyperbole, one or two sentences of clarification will get the real meaning across. And so forth. The real trap is when philosophers attempt to undermine common meanings using unclear terminology. I recommend the late Australian philosoper David Stove on these points.
When I said scientists did not "construct" the fact that H (heliocentrism), I did not mean that they didn't make a claim about the way things are. What I meant was that H would be a fact even if there were no scientists to observe the relevant phenomena.
I couldn't get past the first paragraph. "Facts" are socially constructed? "Facts" may not be true? I thought facts were by definition true -- if a proposition is false it can't be a fact. "Rights" may not be true? How can a right be true or false? The first paragraph makes it transparently obvious that the writer has no idea what a right is, or even what the relevant disagreements are regarding what rights are, nor any idea what a fact is (or even the what the relevant disagreements are concerning how we know things). It's the classic example of a geek thinking that because he can write code that makes him an expert on philosophy (or economics or anything else).
It is odd that he embraces the Declaration of Independence's "pursuit of happiness" line but then seems dismissive of private property. In fact Jefferson changed this line from pursuit of property to pursuit of happiness because he thought that it was clear that the pursuit of property was simply an obvious instance of the pursuit of happiness.
It is certainly possible to criticize many of the current regimins of property -- in the U.S., for example, there is too little truly private property, with even large corporations relying on the state-sponsored expropriation of property -- but Rusty's article is not a very well thought out look at the issues relating to property rights.
If your cooking sucks then it should be the vampire, not you.
This post has a total lack of rationality. It is really sad, that this post was moderated up to the level of informative, when the only information given is that the poster is obveously some socialist that want's to take us back to a world of tribal life. For example:
"That is, I have to get food, and in order to get food from those who "own" it, I have to give them money."
This statement says, that one shouldn't have to buy food produced by a corporation, food they didn't labor over, only because it is wrong for corporations to charge for such a SERVICE. So ask "yourself", what would you be doing right now if corporations didn't provide such a service? You surely wouldn't be at your computer writing such irrational thoughts. In fact, you would have to be constantly tending to your crop or herd in order to survive now wouldn't you?
As I have other things to do than argue with an individual that doesn't practice rational thinking. I would like to cognitivly thank those evil corporations with providing me such a high standard of living and ask "myself" -Why doesn't anyone remember the Soviet Union's attempt at an industrial civilization run by the communities?
Placed into the context of the whole post, that is exactly its meaning. Since im missing the point so much, would you be so kind to let me know what that statement is supposed to mean? Because if im correct most of the "food" one would have to buy, would be purchased from a corporation, unless one were to buy from a farmers market or the likes. Correct?
Slashdot just influenced our perception of reality to what is good for Slashdot: By stressing the importance of that article, it tried to make us read and belief what is said there. "Coincidently", this is also good for Slashdot - the article calls communities the only hope, and Slashdot "happens" to provide the base for one.
So, how should these communites communicate, without companies?
I never make up my bollocks any longer, not since the accident with the acetone.
illegitimii non ingravare
I am sure whatever *economy* happens to be currently fashionable will allow for me to contract for the provision the goods and services I require. In fact, I make a point of refusing a large proportion of that which modern *society* regards as its perquisites. Neither fact requires or even suggests *capitalism,* whatever that may be. Get your terms in order and get back to me.
And while I beg terminal accuracy of my interlocutor, allow me to clarify *anti-capitalist* as signifying nothing in relation to a popular notion of the pursuit of one's personal interest, rather an opposition to a malformed, dix-neuvième siecle reaction to Marx's critique of political economy as fashioned in his Grundrisse and Kapital. Kapitalismus only has meaning within this frame of reference; it may be even more closely localized to a group of Austrian philosophers and their truck with Hegel.
illegitimii non ingravare
I made no mention of the *suck* of my interlocutor. The bollocks of libertarianism consists in its elaboration as a defense of one's innate right to pornography, cannibis and contempt of the weak. I was referring to my experience of libertarianism as a faddish, unsupported mish-mash of adolescent selfishness, an half-baked fetishisation of lucre and a quite startling reverence,verging on obsession, for individuals who happen to have made a pile of it. Money, for the libertarian, is not a tool, nor a normative social construct, nor even a metric for determination of value, but an exhilaratingly explicit token of power. Consequently, the state's raison d'etre, in the common libertarian construction, is to prevent said power from expropriating the libertarian's pornography, narcotics, sack of loot, etc.
*My* anarchy is the minimization of hierarchical authority, particularly that predicated upon conventional ideas of truth, justice and beauty. It makes no reference to your property, however you regard it, except as it may constitute an expression of power.
Anarchist: best government is no government. Correct.
government: organization with a monopoly on using force to enforce its decisions over a defined geographical area. Correct. The state defined as the monopoly of the coercive apparatus, you've been doing your reading.
capitalist: believes in private property, may not believe in the current American model of private property. Profoundly erroneous.
For additional filer of terms, refer to another reply of mine in this thread.
illegitimii non ingravare
I am sure I have never been privileged to live under a regime characterized as *capitalist* in any terms other than those of popular usage. Capitalism,whatever you may believe it to be, doesn't exists in the US, my nation of origin, except as a sort of National Lampoon parody of a National Enquirer article about Marxism.
illegitimii non ingravare
atheist, anarchist, anti-capitalist.
never met a libertarian who wasn't bollocks to the eyeballs.
mark it a flame, please.
illegitimii non ingravare
No shit. I was wondering why K5 wasn't responding. This story was *good*, however, at least for discussion. That's why I rated it +1FP.
/.'ers.
But this sucks! Now I can't see my article get burned into bit-hell.
Damned
-- Count Spatula: The Culinary Vampire "...because my cooking sucks."
Post shitloads of MLP articles on K5, then come here and keep reloading ./ over and over. Maybe we can bork each other, and annoy everyone in the process.
Bookmark it and read it tomorrow, people. It's not going away anytime soon, I grok.
-- Count Spatula: The Culinary Vampire "...because my cooking sucks."
Perhaps it should read something like 'Abusing the english language since 1974', especially after the spate of responses I've gotten to my k5 postings.
-- Count Spatula: The Culinary Vampire "...because my cooking sucks."
Arrgh, but I can't read it cause it's /.ed..
And I can't post mine either.. Grrrr.
And now the printer has started making burning smells.
You bastards!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I had a point when I started typing. Not sure where it went.
Yeah, it's funny, and yeah, it applies (strikingly) to a lot of the morons with whom I've had the displeasure of working, but at least be mindful of the possibility that it is in fact a sacred practice (depending on who you ask) when you crack jokes about it.
phatman
Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.
Of course you can't get on the stupid site
--
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Michael really ought to take a philosophy course, or even a political science course, and listen to what people who spend more than 30 seconds thinking about their belief system can come up with.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
That's hard to tell; posters are, by their nature, self-selected. I can say that whenever things like taxation come up, I regularly see postings from redistributionists and people who appear to actually think taxation is ethical--so it's not at all clear that things are as you say.
The reason for this is historical. The US, unlike Europe, never had feudalism. Most of Europe went through a stage where the barons owned essentially all the land. When Europe went from feudalism to monarchy to democracy (a process related to progress in weaponry that made knights and castles ineffective), along with democracy came land reform. The US (except for Hawaii) has never had land reform in that sense.
The other reason the US has such strong property law is the US law derived mostly from Blackstone, whose book was published widely in the US. Blackstone was a minor figure in European law, but somehow his book happened to be the most available lawbook in early American history.
Enough for now. This is a complex subject, but the above should convince people that there's more than one way to view property rights.
I BELIEVED that nobody could write more boring article than Jon Katz.
The REALITY is that he got some very ardent competition.
--
Je t'aime Stéphanie
that's one way to keep Slashdot at number one!
That being said, I don't read K5 because if I think Slashdot's editors are too liberal for my tastes, K5's article submitters are pushing the ChiCom party line. I've only once seen a large group of whiners... kindergarten graduation.
Here's another one.
-Elendale
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
It's amazing how fast dumb points of view are excluded in a moderation system.
And who, may I ask, decides what is "dumb"? It was originally considered "dumb" for the US to rebel against England, since they'd have no chance. But that "dumb" idea got through.
This is exactly the kind of close-mindedness that censors Slashdot posts that don't exactly conform to their way of thinking.
This post will probably get modded down, but I want you to read it first.
--Cheesethegreat
We're in the dark ages of philosophy... With any luck, in the next 20 years people will wake up and realize that the waste generated by the english and social studies departments of the local university is baseless and the center for intelligent though will return to it's rightful place in reality, logic, and mathematics.
Damnit, you Slashdoting bastards just had to put up this article today, just as I was about to get into a really interesting article on another section of the site. Now K5's responding about as slow as a 'Virgin for Jesus' on prom night, all so that you underappreciative bastards can have a look and not get it!
Fucking Bastards!
--
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
When a site gets slashdotted, what kind of bandwidth and/or # of page requests are we talking about?
...that is Blue's house. The road to the south belongs to Sienna, the walls to the north and west are Burgundy's, and the airport on the east is Black's. The Blues don't get out much.
Pink lives wherever he wants, except in Darkland. Vert is suffocating under the bridge.
--
mrBlond
CowboyNeal for president!
"Hit any user to continue."
Oh yeah, Black is white, up is down, slavery is freedom. That's right George Orwell already wrote about this.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
I agree with his assertion that having an active community is crucial for a productive society considering our social conditions.
Eventhough I agree with his general thesis, I strongly disagree with many of his assertions. He seems to make the point that capitalism in inherently bad, and individual liberties are not all they cracked up to be.
To make the argument that capitalism is bad, therefor community is good seems misguided. They are both good.
- Once communities scale beyond a certain size, bandwidth becomes too expensive. This problem isn't likely to go away anytime soon because collaborative media will have to use videos and images (maybe even 3D data) in the future to emotionally compete with corporate media. In other words, while bandwidth will become cheaper, more of it will be necessary. The cost problem can be at least partially solved through voluntary payments, subscription etc., but the more obvious solution is to directly spread distribution costs over the users by using decentralized networks.
- Centralized discussion forums are very vulnerable to censorship and other forms of corporate control. The Scientology incident is only one example of this. K5 has not yet experirenced it, and it makes sense for Rusty to ignore this problem (or even to justify the censorship, as he has done, like many others, in the Scientology case), but that won't make it go away.
- Let me point out that I am not just anticopyright because I want "free stuff". Copyright is an effective instrument of censorship, especially if it can be transferred from the original creators. But even they may desire the removal of their works from the public when pressured many years later (I could give you examples of this). One of the key problems of free, collaborative media will also be the creation of visual content. In doing this, it is often inevitable to violate someone's copyright. The erosion of fair use and strict persecution of copyright violators will have the same effects on collaborative writing that software patents have on open source software development. A decentralized network can give better protection to its users and avoid the forced removal of content with the help of copyright, either for economic or ideological reasons.
For these, and other reasons (I just realized that I'm repeating myself), it is essential that the media with which we plan to liberate ourselves are free from centralized control. Slashdot and Kuro5hin must, eventually, die and be replaced by better solutions. Of course we can learn a lot from the past (Usenet and the Internet architecture itself, for example), but we will also have to invent a lot of new cool stuff.--
--
The whole "Slashdot sucks" attitude (which contributes to the trolling problem) can probably be partially traced back to this. The cold, reasonless rejection of stories removes the humanity from the site and creates a tension between the editors and the readers. You may think that I am exaggerating. If you submit stories to /. regularly, you probably agree.
But you're wrong in suggesting that this story is a troll. In fact it's one of the more positive examples of a Slashdot story. While most stories just link to ZDNet, Yahoo, CNN, Wired etc., this one links directly to a non-corporate competitor, to a non-mainstream analysis which is actually fairly interesting. Michael should be applauded for posting this. By discouraging this story, what you promote is basically nothing but a digest from approved mainstream media. Anything that is not backed up by an authority is dangerous because it might get flamed by the masses (or even be factually incorrect).
If Slashdot develops further in that direction, I will stop reading it. There are tools to create automatic linklists to the latest stories on other sites, I don't need Slashdot for that. Slashdot should be a site that mainly links to the stuff that is interesting and which you only read about everywhere else after it has been slashdotted.
The flames by a significant part of Slashdot users could be avoided if Slashdot editors would more actively participate in the discussion. Their usual passivity and lack of commentary (or apology in the case of an obvious mistake) only increases the tension between editors and readers.
All that being said, it is unlikely that Slashdot will change anytime soon. When was the last major change to the way Slashdot works? That's the problem -- the site has reached a state of stagnation. Changes are not implemented for fear of the technical and social problems they might cause.
Therefore it's time to move on to more developed communities and let this one die. Some of its contributions have been great, but now it has to be replaced by more open, useful and friendly solutions. That's the way of evolution.
--
The facts are that corporations can manipulate the perception of reality of many people, and thereby, eventually, in some ways, reality itself. Those who don't believe this should read Toxic Sludge is Good For You and, as an intro into what you may expect, The PR Plot to Overheat the Earth. Toxic Sludge should be required reading in high school. It points out the many ways in which corporations are actively spreading disinformation and distorting our perception of reality, to maximize their profits -- often with deadly results. It easily refutes the most basic flaw in libertarian ideology, that free and informed decisions are possible in a centralized, corporate media world.
Rusty makes a valid point; namely, that the only way to fix this problem is by allowing people, instead of corporations interested only in maximizing profit (and speaking through corporate media), to inform other people -- building "communities" (a word which I merely put in quotes because of its [ab]use by others).
What is less interesting (but probably important to Rusty himself, who seems to only recently have discovered these facts) is the discussion of reality and what makes it. Unfortunately, this is the intro to the article, so many may stop reading there. Also unfortunately, the meatier parts are not backed up with sources. The truth about reality vs. perception is pretty easy to sum up:
Things get really messy once you start questioning the idea that there is actually an objective reality to begin with. Don't do that. If you assume that there is no objective reality, the first assumption you make is subject to this theory. That means it's both wrong and right at the same time. That means it's worthless. Constructivism and postmodernism are, therefore, bullshit. Rusty's arguments go a bit in the postmodern direction (or at least sound like it), but not too much.
All in all, I would have preferred more interesting real-life examples of mass manipulation and a neurophysiological explanation of the mechanisms of manipulation, but if I want to read that, I probably have to write it myself. Those of you who want to talk about the actual solutions to the discussed problems should subscribe to p2pj, a mailing list about peer-to-peer journalism (or "collaborative media", if you prefer that) which I have created.
--
Also, although it demonstrates 'community spirit' do you think slashdot can survive for very much longer if it directs its readers to its major competitor ?
Or is Kuro5hin about to be bought out by Andover so they can have a microsoft-style monopoly on whining rich white geek sites ?
---
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
A core flaw with this article, and others, is that it fails to notice that corporations are just groups of people working together, not evil dieties. Failing to recognize this, the author (and likeminded folk) blindly and gleefully act to revoke the rights of others - made easier by questioning and redefining "rights" and "facts".
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Also because the article pushes communism, which has been thoroughly debunked elsewhere.
It's like trying to give someone a degree in political science while casually chatting on a streetcorner.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Ted Turner is still an individual - it's just that he has so many other _individuals_ voluntarily working for him, assisting his goals, that most people just see a big blur abstractly labeled Turner Broadcasting Corp.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
You know the comments people always make about /. having a prejudice against The Register? Well, that goes double for K5 and Slashdot, and the ironic thing is it's usually the people who complain about Slashdot doing it. Of course, half the stories being links from Slashdot can't mean that Slashdot has some decent content. Of course not. Slashdot baa-aaa-aaad, Kuro5hin gooo-ooo-ood. Baaaaa!
Seeing 2 sites turn into mirrors of each other can be quite disconcerting.
--
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
...try this article
The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.
If I understood the agreement correctly, all OSDN is doing is serving up ads on k5. For example, the agreement that rusty et. al. has with OSDN allows k5 to forbid certain ads, etc. Rusty, Inoshiro and a few others are being paid for ad views but that is the extent of the OSDN influence (not accounting for the sporadic article from Roblimo).
This is another view of the world.
Thusly, there's always readers who argue in editorial posts wether or not an article qualifies for such a classification because of the length of the writeup.
This is another view of the world.
Hey man. ^_^ Have a great trip, with or without pre-travel diary entry!
well.... k5 has a big readership, /. has a huge readership, combine those, k5 cant handle it...would i jump out and blame the valinux servers they run on? probably not, I'd blame the 10Mbit bandwidth they probably have more than the box itself.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
[9:28am] jjirsa (~) # traceroute kuro5hin.org
traceroute to kuro5hin.org (209.208.150.45), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 Banshee.AC.HMC.Edu (134.173.63.200) 2.959 ms 1.634 ms 2.098 ms
2 Inferno.Claremont.Edu (134.173.254.1) 10.082 ms 3.563 ms 9.562 ms
3 63.145.161.77 (63.145.161.77) 15.339 ms 14.075 ms 19.857 ms
4 svl-core-03.inet.qwest.net (205.171.14.65) 12.510 ms 16.175 ms 23.549 ms
5 bur-core-02.inet.qwest.net (205.171.5.217) 25.098 ms 22.106 ms 49.744 ms
6 bur-core-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.13.1) 26.068 ms 20.760 ms 20.661 ms
7 lax-core-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.8.41) 21.258 ms 20.196 ms 20.573 ms
8 lax-brdr-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.19.38) 19.932 ms 22.907 ms 22.069 ms
9 a8-0-0.cr01.lsan01.multa.net (216.179.227.5) 28.899 ms 21.148 ms 21.941 ms
10 a3-0-0.cr01.snjs01.multa.net (216.179.158.12) 37.975 ms 29.866 ms 34.787 ms
11 mae-west-atm.globix.net (198.32.200.22) 28.573 ms 26.652 ms 30.689 ms
12 pos2-2-core2.sjc1.globix.net (209.10.12.49) 43.268 ms 25.033 ms 24.848 ms
13 105.atm0-0-core1.nyc1.globix.net (209.10.11.5) 103.149 ms 96.710 ms 97.757 ms
14 pos4-0-0-aggr2.nyc1.globix.net (209.10.1.6) 107.506 ms 99.957 ms 98.836 ms
15 v3-edge2.nyc1.globix.net (209.10.1.90) 97.274 ms 119.086 ms 111.456 ms
16 www.kuro5hin.org (209.208.150.45) 100.196 ms 104.410 ms 98.455 ms
I guess it is the server.... oh well. valinux is trading at $2/share for a reason.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
You're pretty good at trying to make people think what you'd like them to think, aren't you Michael?
You censoring bastard.
He-Man
Master of your universe
Well, I got about halfway down the page, there are about 400 posts, and so far there is not One post referring to what Rusty actually said. Um, this one included.
/. and K5... People are more responsible about what they post on K5. They seem more reluctant to crap in their own sandbox there. I think the biggest diff is that you can't post AC, and that limits the S/N ratio. Here it seems more about the ability to shout, coherence may or may not matter to a given poster.
The difference between
But, of course, slashdot is still the place to be, isn't it? Or at least the place to be from.
I would have posted something About Rusty's piece - I didn't like it, I think the logical constructs were kind of sloppy - but I don't think it will matter now. No one will hear it...
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
Metaphysics is the area of philosophy that tries to answer questions about "supernatural" ideas: gods, life after death, souls and other similar things. I minored in philosophy in college, but have never heard someone refer to themselves as a "meta-physicist." Most philosophers just call themselves philosophers. It is quite possible the poster in question has never studied metaphysics.
;>
As for the k5 article, it sounds to me like someone was feeling a little guilty about using napster.
wishus
---
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
How interesting that so many have chosen to lash out at their COMMUNITY (/.) with dissenting opinions. Rather than merely dismissing the article as crap, perhaps we should read it and see it for it's merits rather than blast it for its inaccuracies and viewpoint.
just a thought.
Busco a alguien que me quiera como yo la quiera.
For example, I know that someone submitted this link from the MIT Tech Review about the REbuilding of the Library of Alexandria (which was one of the biggest and most impressive geek communites of all time). (project link here)The lessons learned from that Library are very very relevant today in our attempts to build a future civilization.
This obviously goes over the heads of the editors, and gets rejected.
But this stuff, isn't even summarized here, or quoted, just everyone go look at it. And feedback suggests that it is basically a high class troll.
This is no way to build a community.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
-- look, cheese ahoy!
This is a fascinating aspect of contemporary philosophy of science and I am amazed that slashdoters, who seem to care so much about science, are completely ignorant of its very existence.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
You may want to suggest that the difference is between 'simple' statements of sensation such as 'the sky is blue now' and scientific theory 'the sky is blue because of the way air refracts light'. This isn't much help because, first, if we accept this limitation on facts, nothing of importance would count as fact. In particular, no piece of scientific truth would be factual. This saves the bathtub by throwing away the baby. Second, our scientific evidence is arrived at by using instruments that expands our senses. Every doubt that can be raised against the result of scientific experimentation can be raised against the simple senses as well. In fact, we often trust science more than our senses. So this distinction between 'facts' and 'theory' leads inexorably to the, in my humble opinion absurd, position, that the only true facts are statement about our senses, such as 'When I feel my head is tilted up, in a place that seems to be open, I tend to have a strong sensation of blue in my eyes'. Again, with these kind of "facts", we don't need hypotheses, and that is why I suggest it makes more sense to treat the statement like 'the earth turns around the sun' in the common-sensish way, as a fact.
If you still do not agree that this is the common sense idea of facts, look at trials. The role of the jury is to do 'fact finding'. what facts are found? The prosecution and the defense present competing theories, one of which is found by the jury to be a fact, the other is discarded. Again, the difference between facts and theories is gradual, contextual, and bridgeable in principle.
PS. There is nothing relativistic about this position. But that is another story.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
H is the case in the world regardless of our awareness. "H" is the former meta-statement. and 'H' is the statement that states H. We know that "H" because we have a theory Th that makes a statement 'H' and subtantiate it in a conclusive way.
Hence, Th implies 'H',
('H' by definition implies H.)
And the implication Th -> 'H' implies "H".
Now, you seem to agree that the coming into existence of Th is a process into which a variety of social events, processes and facts provide crucial input. Without that input we might have today held another theory Tj that implies 'J' and we would have believed "J". And we would have argued "J" ( namely that 'j' is true independent of our awareness) as vehemently as we argue now "H".
Of course we would have been wrong, because J is false and H is true, but our ignorance would only be available to someone outside human history, God perhaps. When I say facts are socially constructed, I mean that "H" ( our awareness that H is true independently of our awareness) is the product of a specific human history. The fact that I call socially constructed is not the content of the fact ( H ), but the statement 'H' that claims this fact, as well as our understanding of its facticity ("H"). I don't mean that H is socially constructed, but that is simply because H has no practical relevance to a theory of knowledge. Speaking about H outside of Th, 'H' and "H" is a pure theological exercise.
Social construction is a fancy academic way to say that something (Th, "H" and 'H'), are the product of a specific human history. Social constructivism claims that the claim that certain truths are eternal and independent of our awareness is, in fact, itself not independent of human history. It says nothing about these truths in themselves.
PS. this is oversimplified, but to quote, 'Hic Slashdot, hic salta!'
PS2. The one political implication of social constructivism is not that western science is bunk (altough it is painted as that by conservatives), but that western science is a fragile miracle that came to being under very specific historical circumstances. And therefore, the believe that science is immune to deterioration is dangerous. It is an open dabate how resilent to social change Western science really is. But the political point of constructivism, IMHO, is to make us realize that it is theoretically possible that western science becomes something else, and not necessarily better.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
I'm using one definition and you are using another. The definiton I am using doesn't allow for playing with words, your's does.
No, mine doesn't, I define facts as statements that claim that a state of affairs obtains in reality independent of our awareness, and whose claim is accepted by relevant authorities. I claim such statements are the product of human history, and in that sense they are "constructed" ( in exactly the same sense that it is said that the Empire State Building is constructed ).
"Every scientific fact started its life at some point as a hypothesis."
Are you saying that a fact didn't exist until it was hypothesised? then how did anything get done before the creation of the scientific method?
See my definition above. I make no claim about the way the world behaved before the scientific revolution. The way the world behaves is the domain of physicists, and I accept whatever they tell me. I only make claim about the process by which certain physicists came to make certain claims and others came to accept them.
Oh crap, this is one o the reasons that people yell about conciet of the Western thoughts and ideals, because people are careless in thier thoughts and language and say things like this.
People yell because they are afraid of new ideas and because they don't bother paying attention. People yell at social constructivism; people yelled at the copernican theory; so what? Thank God, they stopped burning people with ideas they dislike. ( OK, I got worked out, actually the reason why people yell is always social. It is part of the strength of the theory of social constructivism that it usually gives better explanation why people yell at each other ( or burn each other) over ideas).
1.That Facts are absolutes, they are always true, if at some point they aren't true, then they either weren't facts in the first place or something is wrong. ...
3.Hypothesis may never be proven, but empirical results can provide the basis for confidence in a hypothesis.
In your definition, science is a web of theories, none of which can claim the truth status of a fact, with a lot of trivial facts at the border. The vast majority of 'evidence' is not factual by this definition either, because evidence is almost always the product of measurement. And measurement is done by measuring instrument whose functioning is explained by yet another theory, and so on. I can speak within this definition ( altough I think it is unnecessarily cumbersome). I would say then that theories and the confidence accorded to them is socially constructed, and be silent about facts because they are not interesting enough to warrant discussion.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
It appears that your "relevent authority" is history. Your definiton states a "reality independent of our awareness", then you claim it as the result of history. History might be a place to find facts, based on a temporal measure ...
No, the relavant authority for physical theory is peer reviewed journals of physics. Could you please,pluuese, read, think, post in that order?
Let me repeat myself. Facts, in my definition are a subclass of propositions/statements, not a subclass of physically observable phenomena. In addition to being statements, (subclass) facts are distinguished from other non-facts statements in that
- they refer to observable phenomena
- they make a truth claim
- their truth claim has been blessed with the assent of the relevant authorities.
"The earth turns around the sun" is a fact. I.e. it is a statement, refering to the observable phenomena of the earth turning around the sun, that makes a truth claim about the phenomena, and this truth claim is accepted by scientific authorities.In addition, facts differ from theories: theories also make truth claims about phenomena, but they are recognized only as potentially true by the relavant authorities. The difference is a matter of degree only.
I don't claim that reality independent of our awareness is the product of our history, but that the facts, as defined above, i.e. the statements that we make about what is independent of our awareness, are the product of history. I have nothing to say about planetary motion, either today or 1000 years ago, because I am not a physicist. I only discuss the statement that are made about planetary motions. These statements would not have existed, i.e. would not have been said or accepted, but for a particular history.
Science IS a web of theories. Science IS based on facts. A theory is an attempt to explain a set of observations, those facts available. A hypothesis is a specific application of that theory. Based on theory A, this phenomena should occur and result in X. An experiment is an attempt to answer the question of whether a hypothesis is correct. The experimental evidence are the Facts. They attempt to draw a very hard line and answer yes or no. Therefore a theory is not a fact in and of itself, but a description premised on facts.
Your discription of science is common-sensical. Unfortunately it squares badly with attempts to observe how science works in practice. It assumes that the evidence observed is of a different order than the theories supported by the evidence. This is not the case. Evidence is provided by measuring instruments and measuring instruments are only trustworthy because of the acceptability of the theories that explain them. Thus, almost all scientific evidence is not factual by your definition, because it depends on the validity of theories that, as you said, cannot be proven ( though this evidence is factual according to my definition.) Consider a theory, the big bang. Now consider a piece of evidence, the speed and direction of galaxies. that piece of evidence depends ot our theory of light, relativity theory, chemisty, our theory of the composition of stars, atomic theory, optical geometry, etc. Analyze each theory and you will find theories all the way down.
Nor are crucial experiments logically crucial. Crucial experiments leave scientists with a choice between adopting a new theory and patching the old one with a minor ad-hoc hypothesis that explains away the anamoly. The second choice is the one made almost always. The first choice is the rare scientific thunderstorm.
The problem with the categorical distinction between observable facts and unobservable theories is that, under close scrutiny, it leaves us knowing nothing scientifically, because no statement made by scientists can survive the requirement of not being dependent on some theoretical assumption. It is conceptually possible to go this way. But it is unhelpful. We want science to make definite statements about reality. When it succeeds we want to treat the result as we treat every other simple fact. I believe, for example, that water can be decomposed in two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen with the same level of certainty that I believe CNN is owned by AOL Time Warner. Calling the second a fact and the first a theory serves no purpose. We live our life based on the assumption that they are both factual. I.E. our actions are informed by the belief that both statements will be true even if we were not aware of them. Why have a linguistic practice that fail to express this constant? So I think both are facts, both depend on huge theoretical constructs in order to mean anything at all, not to mention to be true. Both are true. And both facts ( statements, not phenomena ) came to be through in a complex social process. ( In the CNN case, the refered reality is as social as the statement, but that is not the point here. )
-- look, cheese ahoy!
Nor did I ever say that history was a scientific authority. I said "such statements are the product of human history."
OK that's your definition of facts. Mine is facts ARE a subclass observable phenomena, for common use they are the observed subclass, The unobserved are still facts by definition, the observable portion has not been completed. Propositions and statements are just that, propositions and statements, they might describe a fact or refer to a fact, but are not "facts".
Good, as long as you remember that when social constructivists talk amout facts, they mean some variation of what I call facts. You can argue with that definition, after you parsed the reason they prefer it. You can argue with the conclusion. You can argue with the evidence ( after you parse it). But calling it crap because it makes no sense when parsed with the wrong dictionary is not the kind of intellectual endeavor that a rational person should encourage.
In the defintion I am using a fact may not make a claim of truth, they must be true. A "claim" of truth is not truth, and allows for the possibility that the fact is false and therefore not a fact.
And this is one reason why this definition is not helpful for the analysis of science. Facts[you], unlike facts[mine], do not let themselves to meta-analysis, because they are not accessible. If they were accesible, science would be true in an absolute godlike manner. I am only interested in the truth claims scientist makes, and that is why, when these claims are accepted, I call them facts.
Again with the dependency on some form of Human acceptance, relying on some form of perception. Since your definition allows for the posibility of falsehood in your "facts" it now becomes needed. Mine still doesn't.
My definition indeed allows two kinds of falshood. The first is existential. We may have the highest confidence in the fact "smoking contributes to lung cancer", yet we may be wrong. Since our "wrongness" is not available to anyone who isn't God. And since our wrong belief is yet fully rational, this kind of falshood is possible but minimally interesting. It simply expresses the limits of human knowledge. The other kind of falsehood appears when a fact is demoted as a result of new evidence, re-interpretation, etc.. We used to have a fact, "Salt contributes to high blood pressure". That fact has been recently demoted. It is now only a theory. The process of demotion and promotion, i.e. changes in the degree of confidence accorded to scientific statements, is one of the main fields of empirical studies for social constructivists.
The other problem you mentioned if I understand is that I define facts in a way that depends on human acceptance. Indeed, that is the point. It is an empirical observation that truth claims are generated and become accepted in a complex social and institutional process. The point in defining facts in that way is to make sense of this empirical observation and to accomodate it within a coherent understanding of the way science functions.
"In addition, facts differ from theories: theories also make truth claims about phenomena, but they are recognized only as potentially true by the relavant authorities."
You are now agreeing with me on theories? What happened to the asertion that nothing can operate under this condition, where it only introduces uncertainty? This is what I've said, a theory isn't a fact because it can be false or wrong. The empirical evidence, the facts, do not make it a fact.
I did not challenge the existence of uncertain theories in science. However, in my definition of facts, when scientists stop arguing about a theory, when it stops being explained in scientific journals and starts appearing in high school textbooks, it becomes a fact. people accept it as a matter of fact, live their lives as if it were a fact, and that is reason enough for calling it a fact. I maintain that the only uncertainty that exists at that stage is what I called above "existential". Calling it a theory suggests that this existetial level of uncertainly is somehow worth our attention when in fact it doesn't. You will notice that the only people who fight tooth and nail to have evolution described as a theory are people who do not accept it. As I said earlier I believe the distinction between empirical evidence and supposedly non-empirical theories is soft. Yesturday's theories are built into new technology that provides evidence ("facts") for tommorow's theories. But the facts are only as factual as the theory behind the technology. I don't accept that purely factual scientific evidence exists.
Ok, so replace "fact" with statement and we'll all be happy. I can discuss the "statement" but not the "fact". A fact implies a certainty which is more then a "claim" can justify. The certainty that is implied with "fact", I call confidence. The "truth" of the "claim", I'll call honesty.
While we at least we traveled the contour of some of our beef, we don't agree, and I am not going to use your definition of facts in expressing my thoughts, because this definition is not useful for the kind of analysis I am interesting in. I will use your definitions to interpret what you mean, and if more people did the same there would have been less headers coontaining the word 'crap' on slashdot. ( Utopia, (sigh) )
The results of experimentaion are facts, the intepretations of them are not. When someone comes up with the theory of everything and proves it, then I'll conceed.
Depend on what you mean by "the results of experimentation". If you mean, "the needle appears above the digit 2" that is a fact in your definition, but it isn't a very interesting one. If you mean "The current was 2mA" I disagree. That statement depends on a whole electromagnetic theory, a theory about how ampermeters work, and a whole set of assumption about how much of optical inacurracy in looking at a dial can be ignored ( assumptions that are based on some theoretical understandings of both optical geometry and electromagnetic theory). Because of all these assumptions "The current was 2mA", is not a fact by your definition, it is a theory. It (the statement) is a fact by my definition, because all these assumptions are blessed as facts according to my definition.
Of course. And they are supported by confidence in each of them, not in the certainty that they are facts. My lack of certainty doesn't stop my having confidence in the same thing. That confidence allows me to draw conclusions and postulate new theories based on my confidence in the others.
The problem with your approach is that you see a difference between, "the highest degree of confidence possible" and "certainty". This distinction has no practical meaning, and I am a positivist on this. If there is no practical difference, then I see no difference, and reserving the word "certainty" to a level of confidence that is impossible is a waste of a fine and otherwise useful word. Whenever practical (as opposed to existential) doubt is considered irrational, I prefer to say we are certain.
I do not subscribe to the fallacy that any of them are fact. The fallacy is a form of intelectual shorthand, which while usefull for the most part and effective in walking down the street, can a) lead to errors and b) be dishonest.
I can't see how a choice of words can be fallacious. A choice of words can be misleading, but only an argument can be fallacious. In addition, it is common theoretical practice that words are defined in some particularity that might be misleading if one fails to notice that the word is used in a technical context ( not to mention that this context is reasoned on the basis of non-technical practice). I don't think people who talk about "the social construction of facts" have to apologize because other people don't take the trouble to identify the vocabulary. I also don't see how we can avoid intellectual shorthand. Using shorthand is practically essential in intellectual discussions. Of course it can lead to errors and dishonesty, that is reason to be careful, not to avoid it. If I were to substitute my definition of facts everywhere I say "fact", I would be incomprehensible even to myself. The charge of dishonesty is a heavy charge. And it is too lightly used in the context of the so-called "science wars". We are all human beings, we all have hidden agendas, we all have careers, mortgage bills, axes to grind, psychological wounds, etc. So in one sense or the other we are all "dishonest". Yet, the astrological superstitions and personal arrogance of Newton did not prevent him from laying the foundations of modern science. It is in the best interest of intellectual honesty that the charge of "dishonesty" should a rarely used in intellectual arguments, not because we are all saints, but precisely because we are not. As long as a theory is argued, there should be a presumption of honesty, with the implication that the only honest reply is an argument based on careful reading.
"The problem with the categorical distinction between observable facts and unobservable theories is that, under close scrutiny, it leaves us knowing nothing scientifically, because no requirement of not being dependent on some theoretical assumption. It is conceptually possible to go this way"
It is perfectly possible to be known scientifically. It puts everything on the same plane. It provides a common premise for everything described. It doesn't allow for mistaken certainty when there is no reason for it. It is when the subjective feeling of certainty is removed and not relabeled as confidence that the premise is not understood and uncertainty results.
I am sorry, but I just don't follow you here, can you rephrase that?
-- look, cheese ahoy!
I object to your assumption that I am both rich and white.
Yours etc, Pootimus Q. Higglebottom III
I wouldn't have thought this to be the best story from kuro5hin to post on here either. In fact I think I gave it a -1 because it was too ranty and didn't make much sense as a whole article. Oh well, such is life.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
In any case I plan to take pictures, also when I go to the mummy museum to see lots of dead people (sick, but fascinating.)
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Thanks! I will be in Jalisco and Guanajuato so if there's anything interesting I'll post it on k5 later on. I'll have access to computers when I am in Guadalajara at least, but I doubt I will use them much other than to pop an email to my mom. We'll see.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
But the situtation is a quantitative one, not qualitative. It is not life over capital vs. capital over life, but rather the relative value placed on each.
What would happen if we valued life as an absolute, over any amount of wealth or profit motive? Sounds great at first, until you consider that we would have no cars (they cause tens of thousands of deaths every year). How many of us would be noble enough to agree to live the rest of our lives in utter poverty to save the life of a single stranger?
The question is where we strike the balance. Might our society be tilted too much towards capital and too far from life? Perhaps. But it's a question of what level we strike the balance at, and not an either/or question as Rusty suggests.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
What surprises me is that K5 can't handle the traffic. Isn't it supposed to be a major opinion site?
sulli
RTFJ.
If there's one hard lesson I've learned, it's that you can't force people to think.
Okay, so this is a bit of a side issue -- but my point is very important, especially to a forum like Slashdot, where there an article such as this urges readers to influence the world at large by saying "make them think".
The "Age of Communication" bombards people with causes and issues; the noise is driving people insane, so they tune out. Even if you can raise your cause above the cacophany, the average person doesn't want to think about "big issues". In the U.S., at least, time is precious and few people have any room for recreational thinking. They much prefer to react as needed, answering "yes" or "no" according to dogma.
The average person does not want to think about "questions of great import." Understand that, and you'll realize why few people look down the road to the consequences of today's actions.
Community is damned dimportant, and Slashdot does well to bring up such articles -- but realize that no one is going to make anyone consider the issue, because the vast majority of folk just don't want to think.
Certainly there is much in the world that people should think about -- but to instigate real change, you need to find a route that doesn't involve "making" people think.
--
Scott Robert Ladd
Master of Complexity
Destroyer of Order and Chaos
All about me
I would love to mod this up.
I can't believe that this crap got modded up as insightful!?! it's blatant plagiarism of the orioginal article.. pffft
It deserves the widest possible dissemination
/.?
Isn't that why Rusty posted it to
--Dave
Way to go Rusty, being neither a capitalist or communist this little posting of yours agrees with my beliefs anyways.
The FUN part to me is that now the communist block has fallen, the capitalist is the only one left, and will cause its own doom.
You see, with the communist block active as an opponent the capitalist block was provoked to increase in strength, so it did.
Now the communist block is no longer officially active provoking the capitalist block to improve their defences and take distance.
Instead now we'll see members of the capitalist block realize on our/their own where they are and that they have gotten too far out, and they will seek back towards the middle where the communist block was trying to pull them.
Funny aye.. without all the political bull pulling everyone with extreme beliefs, society adapts on its own.
So where will all this lead us.. to a Scandinavian cocktail?
Almost every week I tell my friends and loved ones "There's an article on Slashdot that points to this great page, but you can't see it, because it's Slashdotted". They don't care anymore.
By rusty
Mon Apr 9th, 2001 at 06:46:50 AM EST
Human reality is socially constructed. That is, most of the "facts" that determine our daily lives are socially constructed facts, which are true as long as enough people believe them to be true. The right to own property, the right to not be murdered, indeed the right to continue to live at all; all of these are socially constructed rights, which are true only as long as enough of us believe in them.
American society has created for itself a Mobius-like reality by privileging capital, or property rights, above all else. This has granted corporations the power to purchase the reality that best suits them, and corporations in turn recreate the reality that privileges money. Communities -- places, real or virtual, where people speak directly to each other, without corporate mediation -- are the only hope we have to reassert control over our own reality, and place it back in the hands of people, instead of the fictional entities we call corporations.
The United States Declaration of Independence reads, in part, as follows:
While Jefferson ultimately attributes the source of humanity's "inalienable rights" to the "Creator," he recognizes that the only way for humanity to maintain these rights is by self-governance. That is, whether you are granted rights by God or not is essentially irrelevant, since the actual exercise of those rights is a social phenomenon."Human rights" are fundamentally a social construct. Your individual right to continue to live is maintained only as long as there is not a more powerful individual or group who wishes to cause your death. Humans have no natural predators -- that is, no species other than humanity itself supports its existence by killing humans.
This puts us in the unusual position of being able to determine a large proportion of "reality" as we experience it. Obviously, if I jump off a tall building, I will likely be killed on impact with the ground, no matter how many people believe I won't be. Reality, and existence, for me, is over. But what this event means to the people who didn't actually jump off the building with me has yet to be constructed. What the majority of others think about this event will determine the socially constructed reality of the event. That is, "what actually happened" is determined by common agreement.
If enough people believe I was pushed off that building, the individual they believe pushed me will go to jail. Buried in that sentence are a whole host of other socially constructed "truths", among which are that pushing someone off a building is murder, that murder is wrong, and that society may physically and behaviorally confine those who commit murder. None of these things are fundamentally "true" to any greater extent than that they are made true by enough people believing in them.
Take a different example. I die of pancreatic cancer. As with the first example, it makes no difference to me whatsoever what caused this event, since I am dead. But again, the larger meaning of this event, the "what actually happened" has yet to be determined, and in this case, it may become a lot more complex. You see, before I died of pancreatic cancer, I was a small farmer in Colorado. To save costs, I accepted cakes of processed sewage sludge from New York City, which I used to fertilize my tree farm. This was legal, because American society, acting through the EPA, has determined that "sludge farming" is an acceptable way to dispose of combined human and industrial wastes, despite the fact that these sludge cakes contain extremely high concentrations of heavy metals, petroleum byproducts, and carcinogenic chemicals.
An autopsy determines that my pancreatic cancer was the result of high concentrations of nickel and lead in my body. The concentrations of nickel and lead in the soil of my farm are hundreds of times the base levels in other soil in the area. It takes little imagination to conclude that my death was a result of the toxic sludge that I've been using to fertilize my farm.
The physical facts of my death are now known. But the social reality of the event still has not been determined. Seeing a potential disaster in the works, SludgeCo, who were my source of toxic farm sludge, will inevitably swing the PR machine into action. Company spokes-people will insist that I chose, of my own free will, to use their safe, inexpensive fertilizer. They will point to other possible explanations of my cancer, and produce "independent" company-paid scientists to cast doubt on the link between heavy metals and cancer. "Grassroots" organizations of farmers, funded by the company, will protest that limiting the flow of cheap SludgeCo fertilizer will harm their ability to compete in the market, and damage the competitiveness of Colorado's agriculture industry.
The point of all this public relations work is to create a socially accepted "reality" which does not make SludgeCo a murderer. This process is the bedrock on which American society creates its reality. Laws are made by representatives. Representatives act based upon what they believe are the opinions of their constituents. Constituents base their beliefs on information provided to them by media, such as television, radio, and newspapers. And at every level of this process, the public relations industry intervenes to create the "reality" that best suits their client.
American society is essentially capitalist. Capital is another one of those social fictions which has effaced its own socially-constructed nature to the point that most people accept it as "real," in and of itself, and beyond their ability to control. Like murder, though, money has no reality beyond that which we collectively grant it. In American capitalism, money is exchangeable for property, and vice versa. The reality of money is founded in our belief that the ownership of property is a fundamental right. Communist revolutions all over the world have proven that individual ownership of property is not a fact of nature, but is a socially constructed reality that holds true only as long as a sufficient number of people believe in it. If a sufficient number of people believe that they own the property you previously considered "yours," then that becomes true.
The base belief in individual ownership of property means that in order to continue to live, each of us must obtain money to purchase the basic things that enable that. That is, I have to get food, and in order to get food away from those who "own" it, I have to give them money. So life, in a capitalist society, is subordinate to property. My life, and yours, is sustained only at the pleasure of a social fiction. Because of our assent to this form of reality, those who hold the most property may dictate the views of the largest number of people, which in turn recreates and reinforces the reality which enables those property-holders to continue to hold property.
There's the rub. The individuals who control the largest amount of property are without exception corporations. Corporations, in the American legal reality, act in a limited sense as individuals. But unlike you or I, whose opinions are not mandated by law (but instead are codified into law), corporations are individuals who must value certain things in order to exist. Public companies must "maximize shareholder value" over all other things, or risk being destroyed by lawsuits. Like humans are biological organisms that must obtain food, water, and air to survive, corporations are social organisms that must obtain money to survive. Corporations live in a completely social reality -- a meta-world which we constructed for them to inhabit. But by making our belief in the right for humans to live subordinate to our belief in the right for humans to own property, we have made our ability to control the existence of corporations weaker than their ability to control us.
Belief in capitalism makes it a fact. Similarly, belief in the right of people to live would also make that a fact. American society privileges the former above the latter. Neither is more "real" than the other, indeed both are completely created and supported by the belief of people. But it will always be in capital's best interest to privilege property rights over any other socially constructed right, and if possible, to elevate that right to the status of "Natural Law" in order to maintain it as firmly as possible. The only way this can be reversed, the only way that people can reassert their control over the reality in which we exist, is by people speaking directly to each other, without capital mediating their voices.
Right now, the "voice of the people" is assumed to be the news media. American media is corporate -- that is, all major organs of media are corporations, without exception. Corporations, as seen above, will always privilege capital over all else, since it is the only way they can continue to exist. Therefore, media is in fact not the voice of the people at all, but the voice of corporate reality. Corporate media speaks to you, not for you, and cannot be trusted to reflect the views of humans. Instead, it is the organ with which corporations will continue to recreate the reality that allows them to exist at our expense.
This, finally, is why community matters. The only potential way out of this mousetrap we've created for ourselves is to actually speak directly to each other. Town meetings, open hearings, internet communities, places where people may actually speak as human individuals to other human individuals; these are the only places that we may examine what we have decided will be our reality, and the only places we may possibly decide to change that reality.
To take one example which is already happening: Peer-to-peer file sharing. The essence of P2P is the fact that large numbers of individuals have decided that their reality does not recognize the so-called "right" for corporations to own the files on their computer. Swapping MP3s, in their view, is not "stealing" because those who share their files don't consider themselves to be gaining or losing property. That is, they are challenging the assumption that music is an object that can be owned, by an artist, a record company, or indeed anyone. The socially constructed nature of this phenomenon is very evident in this case, as the record companies struggle to define file sharing as "piracy," while file-sharers counter that it is "fair use." Both of these terms are social constructs -- one defines the act as "wrong," the other as "acceptable." The battle is over whose reality will ultimately be stronger and become true.
What's striking about this struggle is that it is one of the few open battles directly waged by people against corporations. Few voices in corporate media have come out in defense of file-sharing, while the unfiltered voices of individuals have loudly and repeatedly, if not often eloquently, defended it. This is possibly the first time the internet has served as a means for individuals to attempt to change a basic social reality which was previously held to be unquestionably true.
What other "truths" do we hold to be self-evident? Which of them do we privilege over the lives of other humans, over even our own lives? Which of your opinions determines the reality in which you live, and from where did you derive that opinion? Are we, as a species, satisfied with the reality we've constructed for ourselves? It is only by asking and truthfully answering these questions, like Jefferson did, that we can begin to reassert control over the basic facts of our existence. Community matters because communities are people, and people create reality. What world do you want to create?
Check out Daniel Quinn's Beyond Civilization. He gets to the root of the whole hierachical problem that we all casually call 'civilization'. Basically, he deconstructs the idea that everyone implicitly believes, that being that civilization is mankind's greatest invention and it cannot be surpassed. Really, quite a good read.
-- Shamus
All the world's a stage...
It's amazing how fast dumb points of view are excluded in a moderation system.
If this keeps up, eventually dumb perspectives will have no voice, and only intelligent and interesting perspectives will get a fair hearing. This can only mean one thing: better ideas.
Lets tear this meritocracy down before it gets out of hand!
:)
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Be careful about putting too much faith in science for, even though it does well in describing much of the reality as we see it, answers the question how and not the question why. Religious belief attempts to answer the why question.
The enemy is us!
"The truth is more important than the facts" -- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959).
The fact is, that we are all created equal, but the truth is, that as soon as we are born, we are not. Right ?
K5 has a hard enough time as it is. I knew something was up when I couldn't access it right after submitting my first story.
I guess K5 *can* get Slasdotted.
"Making it on one's own is good. Hurting others in order to do so is bad. "
Well, sometimes making on your own means hurting somebody else.
Consider this: If my company makes superior product that takes over large part of market somebody will get hurt, namely some other company and their employees.
Was that unethical for our company to even introduce this product?
As long as this is all within established rules, which we all agreed to , I see no problem with that.
Do your really believe that the artist are not in best position to decide which option will result in the best possible gratification?
But k5 is more (and less) than Slashdot's snot-nosed kid brother.
The "reality" of the situation is this: tiresome hacks will always claim that they have a leadership role or some kind celebrity within a given online community. Katz seems to have made a go of it- convincing the outside media that ./ readers are interested in what he has to spew- er, say. It shouldn't be surprising that other tiresome hacks are lining up in the on-deck circle.
Besides, I should know - I'm a tiresome hack as well.
Good luck with banner ads, fellas. You'll need it.
Touchy, touchy.
Here's some advice: never give a link pimp an even break
<rant>
Until a poster actually reads past the first paragraph of a posted article I cannot see how anyone could suggest that he/she is Insightful, Informative, or Interesting.
Until the poster makes the effort to actually inform themselves before forming an opinion, they are merely posting Trolls or Flamebait.
</rant>
I couldn't get past the first paragraph.
[snip]
The first paragraph makes it transparently obvious that the writer has no idea what a right is, or even what the relevant disagreements are regarding what rights are, nor any idea what a fact is...
Here's a tip BBB - the first paragraph of any article is an introduction that gives a brief overview of a writer's position. They spend the rest of the article explaing/supporting their position. Next time, keep reading. Then post.
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We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
You people only see the trees. Quit nitpicking the author's grasp on sociology and try to see the big picture for once. This guy is absolutely right. Sure it's a little obvious and maybe mental masturbation, but it needs to be said every once in awhile. We are spoonfed our reality.
If you live the U.S. (as I do), try spending a few weeks in another country and watch the news. You'll see exactly how much pro-US-spin our news really is. You will also begin to understand why some countries don't particularly like us.
Large conglomerates DO OWN the media. Look at the argument hemp-growers make. There is nothing inherently wrong with hemp. You can't get high from it. It is a natural wonder-fiber. Yet we hardly use it at all. Why? Because a large company (I think it was Dow Chemical) made paper from wood pulp. Paper can be made from hemp too, and at less cost. Dow also owned many newspapers. Suddenly all the newspapers were filled with stories about hemp-growers and getting high. We now know that you can't get high from hemp, but the stigma still stands.
This story should serve as a rallying cry. MAKE YOUR REALITY!
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
Or is it just more of that top-flight OSDN web hosting?
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
To think that I would have to come to slashdot to read Kuro5hin content!! I feel dirty somehow... It's like going to a frat-house to talk to the smart girls! Feh! Bastards!
Pass the beer funnel! Light a fart! Oogle the smart chicks! *BELCH!*
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
As it stands, K5 is unavailable to it's regular readers, in all it's articles, because Rusty said something semi-intelligent and everyone wants to come and see for themselves.
Slashdot, please consider mirroring content in cases where you know you will cripple the original site.
Thank you.
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
2- Greed is only viable in closed community's
3- Nations are closed community's
4- Free trade is greed for now
From the lone tribe to the global village, the journey is not over
(Open borders)
Think about it,
/. crew do for their money? If this was automated what would happen?
what do the
A corporation is just a group of people - some employees, some shareholders. No corporation ever "says" anything - it's always people hired by the corporation to say things other people in the corporation have decided need saying.
Which of those people would you deprive of their freedom of speech, in order to prevent a corporation from having the right to freedom of speech? The same goes for pretty much all other corporate "rights".
Then there's the corporate limitation of liability. This doesn't protect the officers of a corporation from responsibility for criminal actions - it only protects the owners (shareholders) of the corporation from criminal or financially foolish actions on the part of their officers and other representatives, since they are not in a position to monitor the day-to-day activities of those people.
Now you might say that the world would be better off if the owners were forced to monitor the activities of the company - but that'd pretty much kill off corporations. All we have to base the value of that on is history - and in ages when there were no corporations, there wasn't much between "dirt poor" and "filthy rich".
Ummm, there is a really intriguing analysis and response to the reality/belief essay several messages later, with the subject line of "Subjectivity is Objectivity for some Objects."
information is immaterial
I feel that the artical is very thought provoking. Just because most of "us" here at slashdot are capitalist and libertarian, doesn't mean that: 1) You should shelter yourselves from other oppinions and 2) That all who disagree with Ayn Ryand and her, IMHO, poorly written, and poorly thoughtout philosophy, are wrong. Communist Russia fell because the heads of state refused to let go of power, not because of some contradictory connection between effort (or work if you'd like) and property. The ownership of property on its face stands in direct contradiction to this idea. Once it is agreed upon that there is a finite amount of "stuff" to be owned (Physics 101 tells you that matter isn't made or destroyed) and thus ownership of property is a Zero-Sum idea. One must loose for another to win. When you make money in the market, for example, someone else lost that amount. Thus, when one ownes property, there is that much less for others to obtain. Regardless of how hard you or I try, there is no way, no matter how hard we work or how much effort we put into it, to gain property without meeting the arbitrary whims of the property owner. Thus, property is the ultimate form of theft. Once the propery is owned, by a monopoly for example, the rest of the people must do as the owner wishes for things as mundane as substance existance! In closing, the article is well written and deserves, at the very least, a second thought. Pete
A question I have regarding this style of thought is, at what point do you feel you interacted with the system? My father ingested carcinogens through his tobacco products (disclaimer: I'm not above the occasional maduro myself). His aversion to withdrawal was greater than his sense with respect to this habit. Sure, tobacco has deep pockets, and the lawyers get wood at the thought of class action lawsuits, but would there be supply without demand? The author would surely counter that facts are kept from consumers. Look: everything you do today will kill you. Your best bet is to become Amish, you're that worried.
All man's efforts are for his mouth, yet his appetite is never satisfied. ECCL 6:7 (NIV)
There have been no upgrades to the human spirit in many thousand years.
The author seems displeased with the choice of money for God in the secular world. Communism is a quasi-religion, ironically enough. Marx is its Prophet, Lenin its first Pope, Stalin its (hopefully last) Inquisitor. (Note the proper use of 'its' in the previous sentence). As to why the verdict of history fell against it, here is a decent, if dry, read.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
"I think we've pinpointed where the denial of service attack is coming from."
"Where?"
"Guess."
"Figures. I knew I shouldn't have made that bet with Rob over the election..."
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
How can we be Capitalist AND Libertarian, this should be Capitalist OR Libertarian; they are actually different scales and are self contradictory concepts!
A Libertarian is by definition metrocratic (control by ability), this essentially the antithesis of a Capitalist, which is essentially plutocratic (control by the wealth).
http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=p lu tocratic%20
http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=m er itocracy
Looks like he accidentally submitted a high school philosophy paper instead of something actually meaningful.
community
and a corportion is defined as...
corporation
Let's put it this way,
A corporation is a subset of a community.
This is place were relativistic thinking tries to insert itself into science. The condtions here don't confirm or deny the existence of facts, but rather the limit of knowedge, that the information that these statements are based on may appear as true, but can be based on incomplete and therefore inaccuate premises. It might be a fact, but we aren't sure about it.
I'm not playing with words, I'm being literal. I'm using one definition and you are using another. The definiton I am using doesn't allow for playing with words, your's does.
"The social construction of facts is precisely the process through which hypoteses/theories turn into facts."
For the defintion you are using, not the one I am.
"Every scientific fact started its life at some point as a hypothesis."
Are you saying that a fact didn't exist until it was hypothesised? then how did anything get done before the creation of the scientific method? Oh crap, this is one o the reasons that people yell about conciet of the Western thoughts and ideals, because people are careless in thier thoughts and language and say things like this.
We take .... We think it .... By this we means ....
Logical fallacy of appeal to the masses.
So there is a hard line somewhere?
I'd say that evidence provides a strong basis for confidence in the threory.
You may want to suggest that the difference...
No, I'll make my own suggestion.
- That Facts are absolutes, they are always true, if at some point they aren't true, then they either weren't facts in the first place or something is wrong.
- That clarity counts, especially in scientific inquiry.
- Hypothesis may never be proven, but empirical results can provide the basis for confidence in a hypothesis. Therefore the baby, bathwater and
bathtub can all be saved. Newtonian Physics isn't "wrong" but it didn't explain all the phenomena it should. Einsteinian Physics did a better job, but still phenomena was found that it couldn't explain. Enter Quantum Physics, fills in more
of the blanks. Are any of them 'facts', no they are theories on which hypothesis are based and tested and the results of those tests are emprical evidence. The empirical evidence can be a "Fact", but the Theory and Hypothesis are not.
- Our sense can be fooled and just wrong. Extending them is no guarentee of accuracy.
- ur Knowledge and understanding is limited, even if it's not b capacity.
"Again, with these kind of "facts", we don't need hypotheses, and that is why I suggest it makes more sense to treat the statement like 'the earth turns around the sun' in the common-sensish way, as a fact. "In the "common-sensish" (ie the majority of people believed it) way the statement "the sun resolves around the earth" is a fact. And we therfore have two "facts" in direct opposition. which is an absurdity. I'll stick with the theory that the earth revolves around the sun, which has more empirical evidence (Facts) to support it and enjoy the ride.
If you still do not agree that this is the common sense idea of facts..."
haven't you ever heard that common sense isn't so common?
"The role of the jury is to do 'fact finding'. what facts are found?"
No, it is not the role of the jury to find facts. A nice ideal though. A jury decides guilt or innocence, and not even based on the evidence (Jury Nullification).
It appears that your "relevent authority" is history. Your definiton states a "reality independent of our awareness", then you claim it as the result of history. History might be a place to find facts, based on a temporal measure (ie, The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4th, 1776), but not a method to determining facts like "the earth resolves around the sun".
a fact under your defintion, should not require any human perception to exist, and only acceptance from a relevent authority to recognize it and use it. The value of Pi would be the same no matter if any one ever calculates it out fully. The same for the speed of light in a vacum, it's never been measured to it's end, but yet Einstein was able to use it, e=mc2 (I'm not putting a superscript in html.)
You are arguing how the world works, according to you, physics is a "Social Construct" drawn from history. Physics as a Social concept might be, the results of experiments are not. Social Constructivism, might influence the ideas and the questions asked, but it has no effect on the results of the expermints conduted in persuit of answeringthose questions. Heisnberg has something to say about that, but I've never heard him descibed as a social construtionist.
people are people. To paraphrase a Tom Lee Jones line, "A person is smart, people are dumb and panicky."
Science IS a web of theories. Science IS based on facts .
A theory is an attempt to explain a set of observations, those facts available. A hypothesis is a specific application of that theory. Based on theory A, this phenomena should occur and result in X. An experiment is an attempt to answer the question of whether a hypothesis is correct. The experimental evidence are the Facts. They attempt to draw a very hard line and answer yes or no. Therefore a theory is not a fact in and of itself, but a description premised on facts.
To properly describe it.
"The sun revolves around the Earth" is a theory just as much as "the earth revolves around the sun is". Galileo collected observed phenomena that the first theory did not explain and postulated the second.
The people of that time commited the same offense you are and said that the first was a fact and the second wasn't, and thereby justified their actions towards him. Their facts were drawn on form the church rather then your more "enlightened" view. But both hold the same error in assuming the respective theory is a fact, not a description based on facts and that those facts are limited rather then exhaustive in their sample of conditions they represent.
OK that's your definition of facts. Mine is facts ARE a subclass observable phenomena, for common use they are the observed subclass, The unobserved are still facts by definition, the observable portion has not been completed. Propositions and statements are just that, propositions and statements, they might describe a fact or refer to a fact, but are not "facts".
In the defintion I am using a fact may not make a claim of truth, they must be true. A "claim" of truth is not truth, and allows for the possibility that the fact is false and therefore not a fact.
Again with the dependency on some form of Human acceptance, relying on some form of perception. Since your definition allows for the posibility of falsehood in your "facts" it now becomes needed. Mine still doesn't.
"The earth turns around the sun" IS a statement. It DOES refer to an observable phenomena. There is an IMPLIED claim of it being HONEST. It IS commonly accepted to be correct.
"In addition, facts differ from theories: theories also make truth claims about phenomena, but they are recognized only as potentially true by the relavant authorities."
You are now agreeing with me on theories? What happened to the asertion that nothing can operate under this condition, where it only introduces uncertainty? This is what I've said, a theory isn't a fact because it can be false or wrong. The empirical evidence, the facts, do not make it a fact.
"The difference is a matter of degree only."
A degree is more then enough. The difference between being alive and dead is only a heartbeat.
I don't claim that reality independent of our awareness is the product of our history, but that the facts, as ...
Ok, so replace "fact" with statement and we'll all be happy. I can discuss the "statement" but not the "fact". A fact implies a certainty which is more then a "claim" can justify. The certainty that is implied with "fact", I call confidence. The "truth" of the "claim", I'll call honesty.
The Rosetta Stone of a discourse, cool.
"It assumes that the evidence observed is of a different order than the theories supported by the evidence."
ARGH!! I though we just agreed on this. It IS a different order, by that "degree" you mentioned, the "potentialy true" as opposed being "True".
"Evidence is provided by measuring instruments and measuring instruments are only trustworthy because of the acceptability of the theories that explain them"
Yes.
"Thus, almost all scientific evidence is not factual by your definition, because it depends on the validity of theories that, as you said, cannot be proven( though this evidence is factual according to my definition.)"
The results of experimentaion are facts, the intepretations of them are not. When someone comes up with the theory of everything and proves it, then I'll conceed.
"Consider a theory, the big bang. Now consider a piece of evidence, the speed and direction of galaxies. that piece of evidence depends ot our theory of light, relativity theory, chemisty, our theory of the composition of stars, atomic theory, optical geometry, etc. Analyze each theory and you will find theories all the way down. "
Of course. And they are supported by confidence in each of them, not in the certainty that they are facts. My lack of certainty doesn't stop my having confidence in the same thing. That confidence allows me to draw conclusions and postulate new theories based on my confidence in the others. I do not subscribe to the fallacy that any of them are fact. The fallacy is a form of intelectual shorthand, which while usefull for the most part and effective in walking down the street, can a) lead to errors and b) be dishonest.
"Nor are crucial experiments logically crucial. Crucial experiments leave scientists with a choice between adopting a new theory and patching the old one with a minor ad-hoc hypothesis that explains away the anamoly. The second choice is the one made almost always. The first choice is the rare scientific thunderstorm."
my point exactly, that's why theories aren't facts.
"The problem with the categorical distinction between observable facts and unobservable theories is that, under close scrutiny, it leaves us knowing nothing scientifically, because no requirement of not being dependent on some theoretical assumption. It is conceptually possible to go this way"
It is perfectly possible to be known scientifically. It puts everything on the same plane. It provides a common premise for everything described. It doesn't allow for mistaken certainty when there is no reason for it. It is when the subjective feeling of certainty is removed and not relabeled as confidence that the premise is not understood and uncertainty results.
And now, we've definetly gotten out of away form the physics and philosophy and into the realm of psychology and sociology.
"We want science to make definite statements about reality. When it succeeds we want to treat the result as we treat every other simple fact."
We want the confidence that we regularly walk around with. Fine, I'm not taking that away. I'm not allowing the a higher standard to be lowered to the level of "normal experience". A part of Science deals with the unknown, with the unobservable, i.e you can't Physically see something. There must be confidence in it beyond the limited scope of our physical experience. When the first nuclear bomb were detonated, Scientists and others, didn't know what the effect would be. Some thought we might destroy the world. Others had the confidence had the confidence in the theories. Even if there was no "evidence" or "facts" to support them. They knew the method that they used supported the conclusions they drew. And had as much confidence as a someone else in saying "the earth revolve around the Sun".
BTW, you gonna be able to make it back to k5 while in Mexico, or do we have to wait until you get back?
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Oddly enough, the same friend I visited that year lives in Georgia now, and has been trying to get me to go visit. Still debating about taking her up on the offer...
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have fun in mexico!
-perdida
Goat sex free since 2001
I don't think K5 has been slashdotted since the crapflooder rebellion of last year.
Michael, why the heck are you using Rusty's socialist rantings, with which I most heartily concur, to make money for VALinux? You have the biggest case of cognitive dissonance that I have ever seen.
-perdida
Goat sex free since 2001
No kidding. And there will be the inevitable "K5 is dying" posts because of the new Slashbots which will have to be assimilated... Well in any case, they're welcome to become Kuronodes.
They aren't contradictory, at WORST they are orthogonal. I would accept a comment that capitalist and libertarian are orthogonal (The Israeli Kibbutz, as an example of free-will leading to a (/n internally) non-capitalist society). But they are certainly not contradictory.
Capitalism calls for an organization of property be free trade
Libertarianism calls for an organization of law by a minimally active governance.
I would wager that the number of self-declared libertarians who do not believe that capitalism is the appropriate way to distribute wealth and property are rare (say, less than 1%)
I think this article sheds light on the current BS todays media industry is going through: The reason big media coroporations were built before was to achive the massive physical distribution of the artist's work (cds, tapes etx). The artists inturn needed the corportations because of their size and ability to distribute their music. Come the Internet -> Coroporations feel threatened, because the internet solves the distribution problem. The artists who produce the music, and are paid by the corporations, are worried that if their work is pirated, they won't get any money out if ---> since the corporations don't make any money if the songs are pirated. What the artists need to realize is that corporations aren't the only way to recive gratification for their work.
Strange, it almost sounds like he's saying that in order to live, people need food. Works that way in the animal kingdom too, kid. Life is ALWAYS subordinate to 'property' as you define it.
Because of our assent to this form of reality, those who hold the most property may dictate the views of the largest number of people, which in turn recreates and reinforces the reality which enables those property-holders to continue to hold property.
You know, the most ironic part of this whole piece is how closely it resembles an ANTI-communist opinion. Read 1984 (yes, I know, it's not strictly about communism) and think about the chocolate rations. Better yet, read 1984 again and ignore this directionless fluff.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
But surely a corporation does speak with its own voice. Yes, an employee is the mechanism of communication, but I can hardly believe that public statements made by corporate representatives reflect anything but official (collectively determined) company perspective. Surely, someone who stands up and, in his/her company's name states opinions and views which are at odds with the company's perspective would be justifiably fired.
Now, it seems obvious that individuals do not lose any of their rights simply by working for, or being the mouthpiece of, a corporation. And perhaps often, a given individual's personal views may coincide with that of the corp. but they still are two different things, and it is usually clear when someone is speaking "for the company" and when someone is speaking for themselves. Besides, when a corporation invokes "free speech" nowadays, they invariably mean either "freedom to advertise whatever they want" or "freedom to buy off politicians with huge political donations".
As far as responsibility and liability are concernced, the corporate structure provides a far greater shield than you insinuate. Obviously, if an individual breaks the law, the individual should be held accountable. But, in a corporation, it is pretty rare that single individuals end up being the cause of illegal activities. The effect of the corporation is to diffuse blame to many, many people, so prosecution becomes nearly impossible. Then, there's many instances where corps can do things without consequence that a human being would be locked up or otherwise sanctioned for.
But my basic point remains: corporations are in a special position to accumulate power far beyond what the vast majority of real people can hope for (Ted Turners and Bill Gateses are the exceptions that prove the rule).
They can do this in large part because they have special legal priveledges granted them simply by virtue of being a corporation. I should know, I started my own corporation precisely to take advantage of those special favors.
A person who both wields an abnormally large amount of power, and has no scruples or social conscience, is traditionally and rightfully despised in America. And yet a corporation is given special help to attain just this status.
I am not anti-corporation. I simply believe that the public has a ligitimate right and interest in regulating corporations to a far greater extent than is currently done, and/or removing corporation's status is "persons" under the law. They are given special priveledges, and they should be restrained because of the special advantages they have.
Remember, this "corps are people" thing is relatively recent in the history of corporations in general (the concept having been invented in America in the late 1800s). It's also interesting that the legal rationale for allowing this sorry state of affairs is based on the 18th (I think, but could have the # wrong) amendment, which was _intended_ to ensure that freed slaves were considered full citizens under the Constitution -- corporations didn't enter into it. Yet another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences.
I'm actually a big supporter of capitalism. It isn't anywhere near perfect, nor will it lead to utpoia, but of the things we've seen so far in history, it seems to be the most useful framework.
But, here's the problem in America, and this article fell right into this trap: In America, we artificially (through law) have declared corporations to be "persons". I.e., AT&T is just as much a citizen as you or me.
This is a greivous error. People are complex entiries who have a myriad goals and are (generally) responsible for their actions.
Corporations are machines of capitalist production. They have no conscience, no responsibility, and no goals other than accumulation of capital. Not that that's a bad thing -- but it makes them fundamentally different than people. Corporations are incapable of morality. Indeed, are often legally prohibited form taking a moral stance.
It seems fair and right that we should consider corporations as something other than people. In exchange for the special priveledges we give to corps, we should strip them of rights reserved for the people -- that is, free speech, etc. I cringe every time I hear a sorp representative say that such-and-such would violate the corps basic right "x". They should have NONE. The fact that they are artificially "people" is clearly destroying the system we have here, and turning it into our new, modern, American version of fascism.
Contrast this to a sole proprietorship, where the person running the show and the company are one and the same. Those type of companies _are_ people, and have all the usual rights people have.
Debord's handle on the same issues Rusty raises is depressingly thorough; I agree with the earlier posting to the effect that forming hip little communities, as Rusty suggests, won't save you. Well worth a read if you're interested in where these ideas come from.
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I agree somewhat with the article. Many of the truths that we believe in today are the results of "spin doctoring" and revisionism. My main bone of contention is that it is not just corporations that manufacture reality. When people of a similar ilk join together they become more than the sum of their parts.
Take for example the NRA. This is an organisation that believes that you have a right to bear arms. They believe that this right is as unalienable as the right to freedom from oppression, the right to life. They have PR'ed and spin doctored their way around high school massacres, postal workers and insane gunwielding rednecks. They have influence because they have money. They have money to influence politicians, advertise their opinions and promote their cause. Most people either do not care or do not want guns. They, however, do not wield the money and influence to get their point across. Thus we have the siuation where the gun lobby is a very powerful one, based on the fact that their opposition is not as well funded or as well organised.
My second example is the medical community. I refer specifically to the AIDS/HIV debate. Now I must make it clear that I am in no way offering support to either side of the debate. There is still debate about whether HIV does in fact cause AIDS. It is still not proven, even though you will rarely hear this. There are still sizeable number of scientists working on this dilemma, but they are often ostracized and criticized. The medical establishment has decreed that there shall be no more debate over the cause of AIDS. I do not know who is right, but I object to the fact that they use strongarm tactics to quash debate.
The file sharing bullshit I can do without, but I thought that I would share my thoughts on this.
You call me a pedant? I prefer the term "correct"
Having some mathematical training, I learned that the definition of "fact" is not, in fact (!), dependent on whether I believe it. Or whether anyone else believes it, for that matter.
He says things like, "The individuals who control the largest amount of property are without exception corporations", and then expects us to believe anything else he says. The largest private landowner in the U.S. is an individual named Ted Turner, not a corporation. I think that might constitute an exception.
The whole rant is based on the jaded belief that corporations are big bad things and people are small good things. The little family business down the street might well be a corporation. Are they bad? That big developer who destroyed your whole neighborhood might well just be an individual. Is he good?
There are shades of gray. There are good people with money and bad people without money. Deal with it!
Why is it that the American dream is to start a business and make money, but when you do it you've "sold out" and become an "evil corporation"?
The editorial would have been insightful if it had drawn a distinction between physical property (objects), real property (land) and "intellectual property" (data), and how the last is the fuzziest and most socially constructed. Even the "propertyless" Native Americans recognize property rights in tools and clothes, not to mention dwellings. If they had no concept of ownership of land save by the tribe, it's because they had no regime or technology which required it. We have a firm system of rights in real property (land and buildings) because capitalist societies depend on loans, bonds and other forms of ownership to get buildings built, advance money for farm machinery or to plant the next crop, etc. Society ignores these things at their peril (witness the utter collapse of agriculture in the old USSR).
rusty is right that our concept of intellectual property is bending. This is because it was never firm in the first place, and the whole idea of copyright is both socially constructed from the word go ("fair use", anyone?) and utterly dependent on technology (it did not exist before the printing press and now it is eroding on some fronts under the influence of the Internet). What do we call posts which are so one-sided that they lend themselves to - nay, beg for - heated instead of thoughtful responses? Okay, maybe it's flamebait instead of a troll, but my point stands.
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Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
This article does not deserver dissemination. It is a lot of hot air. It's, in the plainest terms, a lot of bullshit. Perhaps Michael likes pseuds, but I really don't.
/. are stable mates - but can't anyone, someone, stop for long enough to say 'What the hell is this?'. The article is much sub-Katzian navel-gazing of the lowest order.
I really have no idea why we are being promoted this - perhaps it's a corporate cross-promotion thing, now kuro5hin and
Enough!
So, a lot of stuff here that can be picked apart, but to hit the highlights. In order to go along with this you have to ignore the fact that corporations are directed by humans and think of them as inhuman entities bent on their own ends. This might work when the robots take over, but it doesn't work with the megacorps. You also have to accept the fact that all corporations work together and that if Corp A makes poison babyfood, CNN and whoever else will cover it up. This assumes journalists have been subverted by their corps and aren't humans either.
:P
The blade of the jaunt is P2P, and that copying something someone doesn't want you to and only gave to you under the condition that you don't (again, another human and not an evil entity) is okay. In other words it's okay to lie that you won't copy something (it's implicit in buying music.) This is particularly funny after the author perscribes townhall meetings to get to the truth since (according to the author) journo corps will lie to you.
Sure the megacorps might do some nasty stuff, but don't overestimate human decencany and think of corps as non-humans. It's still a human doing the nastieness. And the journos might be lieing and blathering, but they're not doing it from some conspiracy or corp kickback (generally) but simply from inability to do their job well. And just because the corps lie to you doesn't make it okay for you to lie to them.