I am quite familiar with the system as it is - it's not actually run close to either of our ideals:)
I'm ok with your warnings in the first paragraph, largely because there's no formal difference between our systems on that point - if people at large decide to off either of us, it doesn't really matter whether you would characterise it as "you are violating my rights" or I would as "you are deciding I am not worth keeping alive" - the philosophical framing we'd put on it wouldn't save either of us.
Society is an abstraction, but so are rights, and so are humans for that matter. So what? Calling something an abstraction doesn't make it any less real - the semantics of abstraction are still where the interesting bits are - even if we are just a bunch of cells, the abstraction of person remains useful. Likewise that of society. If you like vocal gymnastics, we could describe the interests of people in terms of their biological units, or we could describe the interest of society in terms of people.
People who insist on libertarian philosophy as a guide for how we view relations in society are what I meant, although I was unclear on that - sorry.
Fair point on that, although sometimes things are definitionally murky - for example, if you can imagine a large number of people consistently voting against libertarians in politics and thus sanctioning what you would call state coercion, is that diplomacy or sanction of force? (This question is probably more meaningful for you than me, as I'm not bothered by appropriately structured and intended force/coercion).
I knew when entering the discussion that we were unlikely to come to a conclusion, but I like a good argument and I was once a libertarian (not meaning to be condescending in saying that, as I've known socialists who have become libertarians as they've aged too - people's philosophies sometimes change over time in whatever direction). I'm willing to go on as long as you are so long as we're both interested and can remain polite.
Many of us don't see absolute liberty as an ideal. We're willing to comprimise as a society between various ideals because we know that insistence on maximising one won't serve the others well. Liberty isn't any more special than the other things. An emphasis on coercion is part of a tight focus on liberty - those of us who see comprimise as a good thing don't fret it so much when the benefits to the other values are clear and when the mix feels reasonable.
Naturally, what rights you choose to assert come from your value framework - people who concieve of these things differently would either say "no, you don't have that right" or "your conception of rights is a bit off, let me provide a different model". To me, property is a privilege, one which is indeed granted by society. You can call it a right, and doing so helps you concieve of your position (as I might for my own positions), but the difference between privilege and right is positional.
I don't accept libertarian decision-makers, or at least I don't privilege them - in politics we all try to get what we want by voting, by arguing, and possibly other means as the opportunity arises. We also work on our theories to try to appeal to listeners and figure out the details of what we (and others) want. This is part of that.
I'd rather... That doesn't answer anything.. What if you prefer more coercion and more "goodies" from the government (that's what you are really talking about when you say "society", right?) while I prefer less coercion and less goodies. How do you deal with the inconvenient people like me in achieving your preferred society? By coercion?
It's not substantially different in argumentitive form from your value statements, and I would answer similarly to you were we to reverse the phrasing - of course I would have the state use force to meet its ends. That's its job. Just as you would presumably have the libertarian state use force to prevent me from going out on my own to do these tasks - states defend the forms on which they're founded against people acting on different norms (one type of crime). There are all sorts of ideals people might chase, from Sharia compliance to the modern state, and you can generally expect that anyone who enforces a system that isn't the way society presently works will eventually find the use of force levelled against them.
Maybe they'd come even closer to my view and consider the things people buy with money as privileges that are granted by society in return for presumably serving society through work, with the understanding that excessive amounts of privilege will be scaled back should others have more pressing needs. I'm not bothered much by taxes (even as I make well above the national average) because I think that by and large the taxes I pay go to good purposes. I see them as a duty, and think it'd be selfish to press for more luxury for me in the form of lower taxes.
Wow, so from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, huh? That worked out really well wherever it was tried. That if you consider famine, dictatorship, mass murder, slavery, and denial of the human nature and crushing of the human spirit to be a good thing.
As a code of personal morality and philosophy, it works quite well. As an economic system, it stands up pretty well to the ugliness of various capitalist systems we've seen throughout history - whatever the economics, brutality is very likely, and building a virtuous society takes more than a concern about how finances work. There are specific reasons for where the failures of the various socialisms in practice (where it failed - social democracy as a movement has done quite well, but it might not entirely count) ocurred, and there are things that can be avoided. Some of this is philosophical, some of it is cultural, some of it is steering of a movement. A commitment to reasonable pluralism, discarding dialectical materialism, and liberal values goes a long way. Also, when we set the bar as high as capitalism as a system has and really eye that fairly, it's not that daunting a task.
Maybe absolute liberty without anarchy is a contradiction, but that presumes that you have a society absent of people that would impinge whatever notion of liberty you have (presumably a society that is culturally deeply anarchosocialist or anarchocapitalist).
I'd rather people either balance whatever structured and predictable coercion they're likely to get from the state against whatever they think they're going to get from society, or more ideally decide that some amount of coercion that's mostly predictable and generally for good reasons is an inevitable part of getting other things they value more than absence of coercion.
Maybe they'd come even closer to my view and consider the things people buy with money as privileges that are granted by society in return for presumably serving society through work, with the understanding that excessive amounts of privilege will be scaled back should others have more pressing needs. I'm not bothered much by taxes (even as I make well above the national average) because I think that by and large the taxes I pay go to good purposes. I see them as a duty, and think it'd be selfish to press for more luxury for me in the form of lower taxes.
It's not only utilitarians who consider such weighings - various principled philosophies do as well. Any concept of duty that's not wholly negative requires it. It sounds like your perspective is somewhere in the Libertarian-Objectivist spectrum - mine is somewhere in the Academic-Socialist spectrum - I suspect we're not going to see eye-to-eye on what you'd call coercion. To me, autonomy is one thing that's important for human happiness and well-being but it's something I'd sacrifice in certain structured ways for other goods. To you, I suspect a structured autonomy based on property, rights, and a certain conception of nonviolence and initiation is foundational and defines your idea of the public good.
Naturally, different foundations of a worldview lead us to rather different conclusions. I suppose we could have the usual back-and-forth, but having had a number of arguments with libertarianism, I've heard it all before and it pretty much inevitably slides down into those foundations which arn't really attackable using tools of philosophy. This is really more about the basic ways we see the world than it is the high-level conclusions about contracts:)
The point of quips are that they state a position succinctly and with charm, not that they rely on the authority of the person who said them. I could tell you who he is, but it doesn't really matter.
Fair, although contract law has recognised certain topics where contracts are not free for good reason - situations of some sorts are considered generally either coercive or one-sided enough that the public good is ill-served by the absence of some (or significant regulation). Landlord-tenant law is one example, although English common law has accumulated a long list of other circumstances and remedies to specific abuses, many of which we've kept in the US.
The "freedom to encumber" works is like the "freedom to punch someone"... They are both 'freedoms' that only exist at the expense of others.
-- Gregory Maxwell, discussion on licensing
Beauty is neither entirely cultural/individual nor entirely species-biological - there are some things that almost amount to objective ugliness, that draw immediate reactions on a preconscious, not-usually-culturally-overridden-or-overridable level. This is beyond "I don't like her eyebrows" or "he's a bit tubby", beyond "I like asian gals" or the like. Deep face asymmetry, strong deviations from the general shape of the species (goiters, etc), body distortions caused by some illness.
They're not objectively ugly in the sense that the universe finds them ugly, but they're ugly in a transcultural way, ugly in a way that our entire species judges them by default. A circus's freak show could travel across the whole world and they'd get mostly the same reaction regardless of culture.
I'm not sure if I'm really responding to you, but I'm not sure you're really responding to me either:)
From an Ev Psych perspective, ugliness is a possible marker of some kind of degeneracy, and our negative reactions to the ugly are likely a gene-regulatory mechanism (conformity's hand - that thing in side of us that makes us think "FREAK" when we see people who can't walk correctly, who are missing limbs or deformed, etc - the whole attraction of "freak shows" in circuses was to engage this, although in modern times we aim for a more compassionate society and try not to engage or mention this anymore).
Judges, police, the boss considering promoting someone, they're all human, and unless they use some objective metrics as their primary means for choice, attractiveness will accidentally factor in.
You should suit every aspect of your personality, your hobbies, and your personal life so as to make a good impression on your boss - bosses love that you're willing to go to great lengths to be fake in order to please them. You should also be completely neurotic about pleasing them - ask them every five minutes if they're happy.
Above all, don't be natural. There are too many sane, well-adjusted, natural people in the world, and in order to compete, you need an edge (thus, neurotic and fake is your ticket to stardom).
You owe the Usenet Oracle a tweed jacket and a pair of expensive shoes.
I like this idea. Ideally we'd also have it be noninheritable, last 20 years, revert to public domain 5 years after death, and have royalties paid to the patent office (or general us government) during those 5 years.
I dislike that patents exist at all, but this might be a reasonable comprimise.
Show me a scientific field that *wouldn't* be improved by having professional statisticians. Having done neuroimaging studies, I've often been unsure whether we truly were using the best research methods and statistics available. I did, of course, believe that we were doing the studies well, but improvement is certainly possible - this is true in many fields.
This seens pretty sensible. Given how many people are hurt by these things, this seems like a reasonable standard for future industry practice, and the fines hammer home the idea to the companies that "oops, sorry!" isn't the level of seriousness these things should be given. I imagine most of the time these breaches are against the privacy promises the companies make anyhow.
The only downside is that the fine is kind of daunting for people who would like to enter a relevant market, although.. perhaps it's analogous to car manufacturers being liable for poor design of their products - when they fail, it can be a big deal.
In my research in neuroscience, I've found that with some funders, they actually do want our raw data (anonymised) for public access. This may be a lot of work (particularly when an fMRI study is a bit over a gig per subject) to upload for reasonable studies, but we are happy to provide - there's more than one way to analyse the information, and it makes reproducibility even easier.
As far as I can tell, this use falls outside the consent form signed when the samples were collected.
I hold: 1) We should have little specific sympathy for the tribesmen's origin myths being challenged 2) We should take that violation of consent seriously - it's not about property, it's about the integrity of human subjects research and the validity of the promises we make when we deal with people 3) The data, being already collected, should not be destroyed out of any property-like concerns 4) The data is nontheless a black eye on an academic unit that has breached its promises. Their IRB should be furious. In order to regain the trust of those they have betrayed, it is likely a very good idea to bury the data unless real (and retroactive) consent can be acquired. Whatever people were responsible should be dealt with using normal IRB-like practices. 5) If there is not yet strong IRB-type protection for this kind of research, it needs to be established post-haste. IRBs are not (only) meant to deal with legal threats - they protect the reputation of research. It is entirely appropriate for them to decide that legally permissible things are not worth the bad PR (and they have done so many times).
Umm, yes you did. You win the title of "Troll" for this discussion and lose (with no demerit to your position, just the personal shame of misbehaviour).
Slashdot Mirror
I am quite familiar with the system as it is - it's not actually run close to either of our ideals :)
I'm ok with your warnings in the first paragraph, largely because there's no formal difference between our systems on that point - if people at large decide to off either of us, it doesn't really matter whether you would characterise it as "you are violating my rights" or I would as "you are deciding I am not worth keeping alive" - the philosophical framing we'd put on it wouldn't save either of us.
Society is an abstraction, but so are rights, and so are humans for that matter. So what? Calling something an abstraction doesn't make it any less real - the semantics of abstraction are still where the interesting bits are - even if we are just a bunch of cells, the abstraction of person remains useful. Likewise that of society. If you like vocal gymnastics, we could describe the interests of people in terms of their biological units, or we could describe the interest of society in terms of people.
People who insist on libertarian philosophy as a guide for how we view relations in society are what I meant, although I was unclear on that - sorry.
Fair point on that, although sometimes things are definitionally murky - for example, if you can imagine a large number of people consistently voting against libertarians in politics and thus sanctioning what you would call state coercion, is that diplomacy or sanction of force? (This question is probably more meaningful for you than me, as I'm not bothered by appropriately structured and intended force/coercion).
I knew when entering the discussion that we were unlikely to come to a conclusion, but I like a good argument and I was once a libertarian (not meaning to be condescending in saying that, as I've known socialists who have become libertarians as they've aged too - people's philosophies sometimes change over time in whatever direction). I'm willing to go on as long as you are so long as we're both interested and can remain polite.
Cheers.
Many of us don't see absolute liberty as an ideal. We're willing to comprimise as a society between various ideals because we know that insistence on maximising one won't serve the others well. Liberty isn't any more special than the other things. An emphasis on coercion is part of a tight focus on liberty - those of us who see comprimise as a good thing don't fret it so much when the benefits to the other values are clear and when the mix feels reasonable.
Naturally, what rights you choose to assert come from your value framework - people who concieve of these things differently would either say "no, you don't have that right" or "your conception of rights is a bit off, let me provide a different model". To me, property is a privilege, one which is indeed granted by society. You can call it a right, and doing so helps you concieve of your position (as I might for my own positions), but the difference between privilege and right is positional.
I don't accept libertarian decision-makers, or at least I don't privilege them - in politics we all try to get what we want by voting, by arguing, and possibly other means as the opportunity arises. We also work on our theories to try to appeal to listeners and figure out the details of what we (and others) want. This is part of that.
I'd rather ... .. What if you prefer more coercion and more "goodies" from the government (that's what you are really talking about when you say "society", right?) while I prefer less coercion and less goodies. How do you deal with the inconvenient people like me in achieving your preferred society? By coercion?
That doesn't answer anything
It's not substantially different in argumentitive form from your value statements, and I would answer similarly to you were we to reverse the phrasing - of course I would have the state use force to meet its ends. That's its job. Just as you would presumably have the libertarian state use force to prevent me from going out on my own to do these tasks - states defend the forms on which they're founded against people acting on different norms (one type of crime). There are all sorts of ideals people might chase, from Sharia compliance to the modern state, and you can generally expect that anyone who enforces a system that isn't the way society presently works will eventually find the use of force levelled against them.
Maybe they'd come even closer to my view and consider the things people buy with money as privileges that are granted by society in return for presumably serving society through work, with the understanding that excessive amounts of privilege will be scaled back should others have more pressing needs. I'm not bothered much by taxes (even as I make well above the national average) because I think that by and large the taxes I pay go to good purposes. I see them as a duty, and think it'd be selfish to press for more luxury for me in the form of lower taxes.
Wow, so from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, huh? That worked out really well wherever it was tried. That if you consider famine, dictatorship, mass murder, slavery, and denial of the human nature and crushing of the human spirit to be a good thing.
As a code of personal morality and philosophy, it works quite well. As an economic system, it stands up pretty well to the ugliness of various capitalist systems we've seen throughout history - whatever the economics, brutality is very likely, and building a virtuous society takes more than a concern about how finances work. There are specific reasons for where the failures of the various socialisms in practice (where it failed - social democracy as a movement has done quite well, but it might not entirely count) ocurred, and there are things that can be avoided. Some of this is philosophical, some of it is cultural, some of it is steering of a movement. A commitment to reasonable pluralism, discarding dialectical materialism, and liberal values goes a long way. Also, when we set the bar as high as capitalism as a system has and really eye that fairly, it's not that daunting a task.
Maybe absolute liberty without anarchy is a contradiction, but that presumes that you have a society absent of people that would impinge whatever notion of liberty you have (presumably a society that is culturally deeply anarchosocialist or anarchocapitalist).
I'd rather people either balance whatever structured and predictable coercion they're likely to get from the state against whatever they think they're going to get from society, or more ideally decide that some amount of coercion that's mostly predictable and generally for good reasons is an inevitable part of getting other things they value more than absence of coercion.
Maybe they'd come even closer to my view and consider the things people buy with money as privileges that are granted by society in return for presumably serving society through work, with the understanding that excessive amounts of privilege will be scaled back should others have more pressing needs. I'm not bothered much by taxes (even as I make well above the national average) because I think that by and large the taxes I pay go to good purposes. I see them as a duty, and think it'd be selfish to press for more luxury for me in the form of lower taxes.
It's not only utilitarians who consider such weighings - various principled philosophies do as well. Any concept of duty that's not wholly negative requires it. It sounds like your perspective is somewhere in the Libertarian-Objectivist spectrum - mine is somewhere in the Academic-Socialist spectrum - I suspect we're not going to see eye-to-eye on what you'd call coercion. To me, autonomy is one thing that's important for human happiness and well-being but it's something I'd sacrifice in certain structured ways for other goods. To you, I suspect a structured autonomy based on property, rights, and a certain conception of nonviolence and initiation is foundational and defines your idea of the public good.
Naturally, different foundations of a worldview lead us to rather different conclusions. I suppose we could have the usual back-and-forth, but having had a number of arguments with libertarianism, I've heard it all before and it pretty much inevitably slides down into those foundations which arn't really attackable using tools of philosophy. This is really more about the basic ways we see the world than it is the high-level conclusions about contracts :)
Best wishes.
Many of us support the use of force to serve the public good, and feel that the public good is in fact the whole point of government and society.
I see where you're coming from though - there's a number of ways to think about the goals/purposes of these things.
The point of quips are that they state a position succinctly and with charm, not that they rely on the authority of the person who said them. I could tell you who he is, but it doesn't really matter.
Used to be that the Plaid Tongued Devils provided a new song for every release - this is the first song I've seen by someone else.
Fair, although contract law has recognised certain topics where contracts are not free for good reason - situations of some sorts are considered generally either coercive or one-sided enough that the public good is ill-served by the absence of some (or significant regulation). Landlord-tenant law is one example, although English common law has accumulated a long list of other circumstances and remedies to specific abuses, many of which we've kept in the US.
The "freedom to encumber" works is like the "freedom to punch someone" ... They are both 'freedoms' that only exist at the expense of others.
-- Gregory Maxwell, discussion on licensing
Beauty is neither entirely cultural/individual nor entirely species-biological - there are some things that almost amount to objective ugliness, that draw immediate reactions on a preconscious, not-usually-culturally-overridden-or-overridable level. This is beyond "I don't like her eyebrows" or "he's a bit tubby", beyond "I like asian gals" or the like. Deep face asymmetry, strong deviations from the general shape of the species (goiters, etc), body distortions caused by some illness.
They're not objectively ugly in the sense that the universe finds them ugly, but they're ugly in a transcultural way, ugly in a way that our entire species judges them by default. A circus's freak show could travel across the whole world and they'd get mostly the same reaction regardless of culture.
I'm not sure if I'm really responding to you, but I'm not sure you're really responding to me either :)
This kind of thing is hottttt. (sorry)
From an Ev Psych perspective, ugliness is a possible marker of some kind of degeneracy, and our negative reactions to the ugly are likely a gene-regulatory mechanism (conformity's hand - that thing in side of us that makes us think "FREAK" when we see people who can't walk correctly, who are missing limbs or deformed, etc - the whole attraction of "freak shows" in circuses was to engage this, although in modern times we aim for a more compassionate society and try not to engage or mention this anymore).
Judges, police, the boss considering promoting someone, they're all human, and unless they use some objective metrics as their primary means for choice, attractiveness will accidentally factor in.
Not exactly cash - interest-free loans. They're not being handed out indiscriminately either.
Whether they should be doing that is one on which we might have a healthy debate, but mischaracterising it as you do isn't cool.
I think they confused "booty" with "boot sectarrrrrrrr"
How could we doubt someone with sunglasses that are so cool?
You should suit every aspect of your personality, your hobbies, and your personal life so as to make a good impression on your boss - bosses love that you're willing to go to great lengths to be fake in order to please them. You should also be completely neurotic about pleasing them - ask them every five minutes if they're happy.
Above all, don't be natural. There are too many sane, well-adjusted, natural people in the world, and in order to compete, you need an edge (thus, neurotic and fake is your ticket to stardom).
You owe the Usenet Oracle a tweed jacket and a pair of expensive shoes.
I like this idea. Ideally we'd also have it be noninheritable, last 20 years, revert to public domain 5 years after death, and have royalties paid to the patent office (or general us government) during those 5 years.
I dislike that patents exist at all, but this might be a reasonable comprimise.
Show me a scientific field that *wouldn't* be improved by having professional statisticians. Having done neuroimaging studies, I've often been unsure whether we truly were using the best research methods and statistics available. I did, of course, believe that we were doing the studies well, but improvement is certainly possible - this is true in many fields.
Libertarians should stay the fuck away from shit they don't understand!
Which I guess in practice means they should stay the fuck away from pretty much everything.
This seens pretty sensible. Given how many people are hurt by these things, this seems like a reasonable standard for future industry practice, and the fines hammer home the idea to the companies that "oops, sorry!" isn't the level of seriousness these things should be given. I imagine most of the time these breaches are against the privacy promises the companies make anyhow.
The only downside is that the fine is kind of daunting for people who would like to enter a relevant market, although .. perhaps it's analogous to car manufacturers being liable for poor design of their products - when they fail, it can be a big deal.
In my research in neuroscience, I've found that with some funders, they actually do want our raw data (anonymised) for public access. This may be a lot of work (particularly when an fMRI study is a bit over a gig per subject) to upload for reasonable studies, but we are happy to provide - there's more than one way to analyse the information, and it makes reproducibility even easier.
As far as I can tell, this use falls outside the consent form signed when the samples were collected.
I hold:
1) We should have little specific sympathy for the tribesmen's origin myths being challenged
2) We should take that violation of consent seriously - it's not about property, it's about the integrity of human subjects research and the validity of the promises we make when we deal with people
3) The data, being already collected, should not be destroyed out of any property-like concerns
4) The data is nontheless a black eye on an academic unit that has breached its promises. Their IRB should be furious. In order to regain the trust of those they have betrayed, it is likely a very good idea to bury the data unless real (and retroactive) consent can be acquired. Whatever people were responsible should be dealt with using normal IRB-like practices.
5) If there is not yet strong IRB-type protection for this kind of research, it needs to be established post-haste. IRBs are not (only) meant to deal with legal threats - they protect the reputation of research. It is entirely appropriate for them to decide that legally permissible things are not worth the bad PR (and they have done so many times).
Re Godwin,
Umm, yes you did. You win the title of "Troll" for this discussion and lose (with no demerit to your position, just the personal shame of misbehaviour).
I used to be heavily involved with Wikipedia - it hardly reaches the standard of peer review.