The credits for Dune list the director as Alan Smithee. Alan Smithee is a psuedoname that directors use when the studio fucks them over. David Lynch, who has done some great movies including Blue Velvet and Wild At Heart, never actually completed Dune. After he ran over budget, the studio took his work and did what they liked with it. Imagine if the studio had done the editting on The Godfather or Titanic..
That is incorrect. There is a version of Dune where Alan Smithee is credited as the director, but it is a 'director's cut' which he disapproved of (ironically) because it added in a lot of scenes which he hadn't put in the final film. The actual theatrical release was clearly credited with David Lynch as the director.
The first reason I stopped getting the newspaper had to do with that last bit. Paper. As little time as I have to slog through the whole thing, and as selective as I am in what interests me within, it seemed like a massive waste of resources to pile up these mounds of paper. With daily delivery, that's a lot of paper and it seems like a massive waste (don't even get me started about phone books). As with any format that changes or updates frequently, like phone books or newspapers, electronic format is less wasteful and easier to keep current.
Second, is the whole content matter. I don't care about sports, but that's a major part of the paper. I also don't care about gardens or home decorating, but they have sections in the sunday paper. It is a complete waste for me to buy this and for them to print it for me. Further, it is a pain to dig through the paper looking for the information I want, discarding the chaff I could care less about. Again, an electronic format lets me define my preferences and lets the provider track my reading habits to better tailor presentation to me, as an individual.
Honestly, I don't see any reason to go back to newspapers and I doubt they could come up with changes that would adequately address my concerns. I think that they'd be better off adapting to the times than trying to hold onto the current form of their industry.
Don't read Atlas Shrugged. The only thing wrong with Rand's logic is that her axioms are not axiomatic. (In other words, her assumptions are just that, assumptions)
Just to take the short route with this argument...
Rand's primary axiom: Existence exists. Or, in other words: All that exists, exists.
Seems pretty self-evident to me. Further, the only way to argue against it is to refer to either concrete evidence or logical argument. To refer to reality for concrete evidence is to accept the postulate as true, otherwise there would be no value in concrete evidence. From a logical standpoint, there really isn't any basis to argue, since it is very obviously a logical truth.
So, assertions aside, do you have any real argument to back up your claim?
How do you implement free will with material that cannot, by our best understanding, "choose" how to behave? It is important to note here that quantum laws do not allow choice. Randomness, yes, but not choice.
Again, the problem is cleared up merely by defining your terms. Simply, what does the 'free' in free will mean? Here's what Webster has to say:
2 a: not determined by anything beyond its own nature or being : choosing or capable of choosing for itself
So, basically, what it boils down to is that free will merely refers to the ability of an entity to make decisions not based on simple reaction to stimuli or due to external forces, but based on its own nature and consciousness. To choose is to select an option freely after consideration. Thus, a person being bound to act according to their nature is not 'not free', because free refers to a lack of external coercion.
Thus, we do not think a person has freedom to choose when someone has a gun to their head, but we rarely consider their own beliefs and values as denying them free will. In fact, their beliefs and values are what make their free will possible, they are the standard by which considerations of options are possible and a decision is made.
Learn to read first, and then post. "It turned out" that neither universe nor humans behave in deterministic Newtonian fashion.
Nonsense. 'It turned out' that things going at close to the speed of light don't behave in a Newtonian manner. 'It turned out' that things at an incredibly small scale or incredibly high energy level don't behave in a Newtonian manner. Since I know of no human being who is travelling close to the speed of light, infintesimally small, or possessing of incredible energy, none of these can be applied to human beings. On the macro scale, Newtonian physics still applies perfectly.
You are talking efficiency, I am talking justice. From a utilitarian point of view you are correct, just the same as it makes utilitarian sense to kill severely malformed children at birth. From a morality point of view, however, there is that big problem of choice.
You are basically asserting that any choice which is not random is not a choice. This is incorrect. If I have a choice to vacation in Florida or in Montana, I will put a lot of thought into both options, weigh the pros and cons, and come up with a decision based on that. If you 'rewound' reality to before I made the choice, I would make the same decision because I would still be the same person, and would thus approach it in the same way, with the same concerns, and collecting the same information. Does this mean I didn't make a choice? Of course not. I merely had a reason for choosing the way I did. I different person in the same situation would likely choose differently.
From a moral standpoint, deterministic psychology merely says that we must act according to who we are. I find this a much firmer ground to base an ethical system on than the proposition that our choices are essentially die rolls. If that is the case, and human behavior is actually inherently unpredictable (read: random), than how can we hold anyone responsible for anything?
"I'm sorry, your honor, but I only killed him because that's what the random quantum fluctuations in my neurons made me do. In the same circumstances, I could do something entirely different."
Well, maybe you don't run into problems, but I do. The basic problem with free will (or absence of it) is accountability. Essentially, if there is no free will, then humans cannot be held accountable for their behavior (with all the nasty concepts for the concepts of justice, effort, etc.)
That's the thing, though. Everybody tries to say that deterministic psychology destroys the concept of accountability, but in fact it validates it. Let me explain.
If we are bound to act according to our nature and our personal psychology, than what we do is a direct representation of who we are. Rather than being poor innocent beings 'at the whim' of our upbringing, beliefs, and psychology, these things instead are considered part of who we are. Thus, you can't make excuses. "Oh, I had a bad childhood," you might protest, but we can easily reply, "Ah, but that is a part of who you are and thus you are still responsible for the actions you took because of it." When you punish evil behavior, you are punishing evil people. Crime reflects a defect in character which will likely result in crime in the future, unless something is done to alter the criminal's nature. Justice is apparently. We are fully responsible for our actions/because/ we are bound to act according to who we are, not in spite of it.
On the flip side, let's look at the common Judeo-Christian concept of free will. According to this theory, we have complete freedom of choice in any given situation to choose any of the possible actions available to us. There is no requirement that we act according to our beliefs, past behavior, history, or upbringing. We are completely free to choose between good and evil. Well, by this theory, we really can't punish criminals. Why? Because they could just as easily choose good next time. They aren't evil, they just chose evil, and thus punishing them is unjust, it robs them of the chance to choose good in the future. Our actions cease to be an indicator of what sort of person we are because moral conscience is this magically seperate part of us that is unsullied by the rest of our psychology.
In the end, justice can only be served when a person's actions are predictive of his future actions. Otherwise, there is little use in locking up or punishing a criminal other than the satisfaction of petty vengeance.
"Your Honor, I killed this guy because that's what I am and what I do -- I cannot change this. I submit that there is no justice in punishing me: I cannot be changed".
There are two flaws in this. First, determinism does not at all imply that people (or anything, for that matter) cannot change. That's a straw man. In fact, determinism is all about change. Determinism is a theory about why things change and how things change.
Second, there is the implication that it is unjust to punish a person for who they are. I suggest that this is a flawed assumption. Justice is merely conformity to the truth. Did he really commit the crime? In your example, he most assuredly did. Moreoever, he committed the crime because of a criminal aspect of his psychology. I fail to see how punishing a criminal because he is a criminal and, thus, commits a crime is at all unjust.
With this one. It's very well established that the Great Apes are self-aware and capable of handling human-invented sign language for communication.
Self-aware, perhaps, but the language aspect has been highly overstated. Much of what I have read on the subject by actual language authorities state that much of what is reported as 'sign language' is merely demonstrative body language and that the apes have shown no ability to use grammer or to grasp all but the lowest level concepts (those which can be related directly to concrete perceptions).
"A universe that has only matter cannot have consciousness and cannot have will," he concludes.
This sounds suspiciously like the primary preconception he had going in, which makes me wary of any of the arguments he presents to support it. Particularly given that he was driven to this quest for knowledge by a tragedy.
One of my problems with inquiries of this sort is that those who undertake them also fail to define their terms. I would be interested to know if the author ever bothered to define what he means by 'free will'. People bandy the term about, as if the meaning is well-known and apparent, but it isn't, and the closer you examine most conceptions of it, the more they fall apart as meaningless or absurd.
Further, the appeal to quantum physics as a means to attempt to bypass causality in human consciousness is hardly a new approach and suffers from numerous flaws that are rarely addressed, the least of which are that it operates at such a small scale as to not have any visible randomizing effect on systems on a macro-level, and that the variableness they introduce is utterly random, so that even if it did have a factor in human consciousness, the sort of 'freedom' it would introduce would be closer to die-rolling than what most people consider free will (in what vague terms they do understand it).
As an interesting aside, were this to be upheld and reverse engineering effectively eliminated, wouldn't it be possible to bring a suit against any company which didn't release drivers and support for operating systems other than Windows on the grounds of collusion to maintain a monopoly? While I am personally against most anti-trust legislation, it does strike me as a means to turn the situation around.
IANAL but I believe what he's trying to say is that while reverse-engineering copyrighted material is legal, it's not the same thing as reverse-engineering a measure to prevent access to copyrighted material. He's not against reverse-engineering per se. He's just comparing this particular instance of reverse-engineering to the act of reverse engineering a key to a lock. This is a decent analogy, but it only proves the point of the defense. If I own a lock and I want an extra copy of the key, I can have one made legally. Similarly, if I lose my only key, I can legally hire a locksmith to make a new one or just jimmy the lock. By the judge's interpretation, I should not be allowed to copy the key and if I lose it, I should have to buy a whole new lock, because I don't have the right to circumvent the lock even though I own it and whatever it is protecting.
As of 1988 (the most recent figures I could find in five minutes of web browsing), the top 10% of income earners were responsible for 57.2% of the total tax revenue. The top 1% were responsible for 27.5%. Don't talk to me about 'fairness'.
Figures are from the Joint Economic Committee's annual report for 1992. A related article from the Cato Institute points out that this percentage/rose/ dramatically with Reagan's tax cuts, from 48% and 17.6% respectively. So much for that other myth that tax cuts benefit the rich more than the poor.
Science Fiction as Predictive Tool
on
Planet Gattaca
·
· Score: 1
It is pretty funny to read anyone claim the outstanding power of science fiction to accurately predict the moral and social issues around technology. It makes me think of the depiction of science and technology on Star Trek, where much of what is shown is hopelessly outdated a decade later. Or all of the alarmist stories and movies that have come out with each no technological breakthrough in the last hundred and fifty years that have failed to live up to their doomsday cries.
Also, I am insulted by the insinuation in this, and all similar alarmist propaganda, that and sort of progress should be feared as heralding great evil. Katz doesn't show any specific example of misuse, he just cries wolf about things that might happen, or applications which could exist, citing ridiculously alarmist movies as his only proof of danger.
Gattaca, just like the previous slew of alarmist pictures in the 'cyberpunk' vein, evidence a lack of any sort of thorough thought on the topic being criticized, as well as a real lack of understanding of the technology. As I pointed out in my response to his previous article in this thread, there are very few universally desireable traits and most of them have to do with health. Given this, it is fairly ludicrous to imagine that improving health is going to result in discrimination against the sick. If our society was predisposed to oppressing people with illnesses or disabilities, why doesn't it do so now, on an institutional level? Katz seems to suggest that the development of genetic research is somehow going to rob us of our moral sensibilities, causing us to lose all progress we've made towards protecting individual rights.
This is precisely why this is alarmist, because of its narrow vision and skillful exaggeration. Katz ignores the social truths of our society while stressing extreme possibilities based on pure speculation. This is the same sort of doomsaying which ruined the nuclear power industry in this country and which currently advises our national policy on medicine, condemning thousands of people each year to death for lack of treatments not yet approved by massively inefficient government agencies.
And since Katz also raises the spectre of Victor Frankenstein, let us not remember the lesson of that story. It was not that science is evil, that technology is destined to get out of control or that progress is an affront to God and should be squelched. No, it was a story about individual responsibility. There was nothing evil about his creation. In fact, in many ways it was far superior to God's creation. However, it was his lack of responsibility for it that drove it to do evil things.
And, just to be obnoxious, since the religious angle gets brought up, too, it should be noted that Frankenstein wasn't an indictment of science, it was an allegory for man's alienation from his own God, who seemed to have abandoned his own creation.
There are a couple major flaws in Mr. Katz's thinking on this issue, and they are flaws which are woven into practically every discussion of this topic.
First and foremost is the implication that you can genetically select things like intelligence and success. Reality check, people. There are a lot of very intelligence people who never utilize their potential and many folks without the benefit of raw natural intelligence who learn through effort and willpower. Genes aren't everything. We are as much molded by our environment as we are by our genetic code. Circumstance and opportunity make for success more than raw potential. If you are a shitty parent, then no amount of genetic tinkering is going to ensure you a happy, successful child instead of a miserable, neurotic one.
Second is the notion that there is one set of desired traits that all people want for their children, leading to uniformity if we all got what we want. With the exception of good health (see below), this is woefully unrealistic. Sociological studies on 'objective beauty' aside, the fact of the matter is that standards vary from person to person. Let's look at temperment, for example. Kiersey gives us four basic temperments (with 16 more detailed types), none of which are particularly better than any other. Intelligence, in itself, is a very misleading and hopelessly generic term. People don't tend to be good at everything, they tend to be good at a particular type of thing, depending on their temperment. Or physical traits. Does everyone prefer blondes? Not really. Physical types? Most of the people I know find what is considered the standard of beauty today disgusting. None of them would damn their children by genegineering them to look like a model.
Third there is the idea that something is gained by the 'diversity of disability'. This I find the most reprehensible. Katz tries to suggest that the world is a better place because people suffer. The last place I heard this line of bullshit was church. I didn't buy it from a priest, and I sure as hell am not going to buy it from a doomsaying technophobe. Because, in essence, that is all that this article is. Kneejerk fear of the changes of technology. We saw, as somebody already pointed out, the same thing with antibiotics, anesthetics, industrialization, mechanization, and every other advancement in human technology. Not that these things did not cause problems. Nor was their integration into our life perfectly smooth, in many cases. However, I don't believe there is anyone who wishes to argue that we were better off in the disease-ridden, famine-prone Middle Ages.
Lastly, we have the economic whining about how it is unfair to give an advantage to richer people (or nations), suggesting that we in the West should instead choose to live at the level of the least common denominator, out of some twisted socialist feeling of racial loyalty. Sorry, Katz, but I find your bigotry against the well-off to be as offensive as bigotry against the poor. Besides, as I pointed out before, there is no way to genegineer success, regardless of how much money you have. Rich or poor, your kids will still be fucked up if you raise them wrong. Also, it is the patronage of the rich which allows innovative technology to reach the level of use that it becomes cheap and accessible. Capital drives the economy. Without it, there would be few new drugs, medical techniques, agricultural advances, or new manufacturing processes, all of which make life better for more than the much-maligned elite.
Just to sum up, this article is based on a number of faulty assumptions and questionable leaps of logic, and is indicative of the sort of half-baked thinking which generally accompanies doomsaying of any sort. Environmentalists are particularly well known for this sort of claptrap. What would have been more useful than a reiteration of all the alarmist garbage that's already seen print on this issue would have been an article debunking the non-issues in favor of bringing attention to the actual reality of what genetic mapping means.
Let's see, I met my fiance on a MUSH about four years ago. We've been together for three and a half of those years, engaged for two, and she just moved up to where I am four weeks ago. We are blissfully happy.
Also, my mother met someone on a Yahoo chat room a couple years back and flew down to Florida to be with her after a few weeks of online chatting and phone calls. They've been together ever since and are happily committed.
Sure, there are complications to online romance, but there are complications to all romance. You just need to be honest and persistant.:)
Odd, the article I read re-iterated several times that the author was a great admirer of the people who work at Microsoft, from engineers to officers.
snipping the actual relevant portion
This is a good rebuttal. Not sure how valid it is, not really grasping the economics involved, but it attends to the facts.
I suspect that Bill Parish at some point in the past shorted Microsoft stock (or didn't buy it, buying instead something else) and is now very very bitter about it...
And here you do it again.
Your argument is not strengthened by 'bookending' it with these baseless suppositions that the author has a personal agenda for his statements. In fact, it is greatly weakened by such tactics. This is referred to 'addressing the argument to the man' and is one of a number of common logical fallacies used in arguments that attempt to discredit the person whom you disagree with or credit yourself with higher authority. By trying to suggest that the author is motivated by something other than the truth, you attempt to lend more credence to your own, supposedly objective, determinations and cast doubt on his claims.
To people like myself, who recognize such tactics, it has the opposite effect. Without a clear knowledge of the subject matter, I am less likely to believe your claims, due to your attempt to manipulate me into believing your are more honest than your opponent.
So, basically, what this amounts to is that depressed, 'different', or gifted students should be put into counselling programs as potentially violent psychopaths? This does seem to support what Katz is saying rather than refute it.
Also, it glosses over the fact that most schools are underbudgeted and unresponsive to the needs of the students. Targetting of 'problems students' like this is just as likely to lead to ostracizing and further humiliation than to any 'help', even if such is needed. As any student can tell you, promises of anonymity are fairly hollow from an institution who feels it has the authority to search your private possessions against your will, control how you use your free time (through homework and detentions), and dictate your appearance.
The real danger with this policy is that same as the danger of all 'pro-active' policies, in that they inevitably end up punishing someone for a crime that they/might/ commit rather than for one they have. This is an inversion of the legal principles of this country which, granted, have never traditionally been applied to citizens below the age of 18 anyway. Still, I'm a stickler for principle.:)
Ah, it is so easy to paste a label like 'Liberal' or 'Conservative' on someone and then just dismiss them out of hand, isn't it? A marvelous short cut to thinking.
Rather than wave your prejudices around, why don't you actually try addressing the points made by the article? Offering a critical rebuttal to someone's arguments is much harder than spouting bigotry.
Am I the only person who is not overwhelmed at any of William Gibson's work? I found 'The Difference Engine' in particular to be aimless, shallow, and uninteresting. I spent the entire book waiting to reach 'the point' and it never got there. It is all style and no substance, like everything else of his I have read. Nor am I impressed with his attempts to use technological themes, which I think betray a real lack of understanding of current technology, human psychology, and social forces (as well as common sense and logic).
> If the public is going to decide what's right > and what's wrong, they need to know all the > facts from an unbiased source. This is > impossible in America, because media is a big > business.
The first part is partially incorrect. The same effect can be had by getting information from a number of sources with different biases. Given the difficulty of objectivity in anything but physical or logical disciplines, this is the only option.
The second part is simply incorrect. There is nothing about media as big business that makes it impossible to be informed. Just the wild exaggeration denoted in the use of the word 'impossible' is telling. While media may often be less than objective, different media sources serve different agendas. Mother Jones and Time-Warner are not going to give the same take on a news story. However, both are available to anyone who searches them out.
Which brings us to the real problem: public apathy. It isn't that it is impossible to be informed, it is that most people don't bother. They either don't have an interest in politics or prefer to take the easy route and ride on their personal prejudices rather than examine a view from all sides.
Intellectual laziness and a lack of critical thinking skills are what makes a person uninformed, not the 'Big Bad Media'.
> The public no longer has anywhere near the > expertise necessary to know what's in their > best interest. Even basic economic principles > like flat-taxes have to be digested by > commentators and explained to the masses to tell > them what the effects are.
Has it ever been otherwise? Even the most celebrated multidisciplinarians in history have not been able to master every field. Nor should they need to. It is enough that the public know what's its interests are. They don't need to know themselves how to implement them. It is no different than owning a microwave. Odds are, most folks who do don't know how they work. They can still, however, make informed decisions on whether or not to buy them. When more detailed information is needed, they can go to specialists. This is how human society has functioned since cities rose. It isn't anything new.
> Not to fault free markets in general, but when > you have a society built on money, as ours > is, it's inevitable that those with more money > will control everything.
Money basically is a representation of human life. As an indicator of value, it is an abstract of how much of our energy, our labor, something is worth to us. Thus, it represents the basis of all human existence.
The only difference between free markets and other economic systems is that the flow of money is most efficiently distributed to represent the value of goods to individuals. In a free market system, a person gets rich because people highly value the goods or service he provides.
The contrast is to systems of coercion where the flow of capital is determined by the will of a smaller portion of the population (governments, rulers, guilds, etc). Both sorts of systems are based on money, as any economic system is.
> We allow a free market to develop giant > corporations with tons of resources and very > strong vested interest. Isn't it inevitable that > they attempt to exercise their considerable > power to protect those vested interests? > Certainly.
Often, when business tries to dabble in politics, it is because politics is presenting some sort of threat. Political dabbling in markets is anathema to capitalism, thus your logic is very questionable.
Further, while it may be inevitable that they try to further themselves through dabbling in politics (which happens as well), it is not inevitable that they have avenues to do so. In fact, again, if there are means to have business influence government, this is against capitalist notions of economic-political interaction, and again your attempts to blame it on capitalism fall short.
It always baffles me to see people try to blame an economic system whose defining characteristic is seperation of economics and politics for interaction between economics and politics.
> Fundamentally American culture is selfish and > egocentric. Few individuals are motivated > by notions of higher societal good, as is quite > common in other nations (like our close > neighbor Canada). It's inevitable that in such a > situation corruption develops. Until such a > fundamental aspect of Americana changes, we'll > always be fucked.
There's a lot wrong with this statement. First off, the first statement is a gross generalization verging on bigotry, as well as being incredibly inaccurate. Individualism is a basis of American culture and encourages enlightened self-interest, not juvenile egotism. Some of the most rugged individualists in American history have also been some of the most compassionate humanitarians and it is an insult to their memory to make such inaccurate statements.
Second, it again baffles me that America is considered selfish and unconcerned with higher societal good and at the same time be criticized for its 'policing of the world', where American soldiers go to risk their lives around the world in efforts to suppress tyranny and injustice. Also, I might add, America contributes more financial aid to other nations than any other country in the world (including Canada).
I fear, unfortunately, that our general lack of willingness to sacrifice our rights and freedom for the illusion of security that government sponsered humanitarian programs offer is seen as being 'heartless'. All I can offer to this is that it was American aid that kept Russian Communists from starving to death after the revolution. So much for 'heartless capitalism'.
The knee-jerk reflex is there for a reason, whether it is the literal one with the human knee, or the natural human response to 'scary' technology. As long as the latter is done from an informed perspective, it serves a purpose: To start a debate, to get people thinking! It may not allways show the right problems, but it might lead to someone finding real problems.
You'd have a valid point... if somehow the 50s radiation scare had anything to do with research into the effects of radiation... which it didn't. What it did accomplish was to cause a massive backlash against nuclear power and irradiating food products that worked for the detriment of society as a whole. Contributing to food poisoning and three more decades of poisoning the environment through the use of fossil fuels doesn't strike me as particularly productive.
To offer a fine example that actually has to do with genetic engineering, the massive bout of paranoia that this movie plays on is currently helping to shut down research which might cure genetic defects and engineer children without congenital conditions. Again, I fail to see the productivity of irrational fear towards new things.
GATTACA is reactionary knee-jerk response to new technology. I don't find it any more compelling than all the films in the 50s about radiation turning people into monsters or the stories at the end of the last century about robots taking over the world.
> interesting concept though... an attempt to draw > a parallel between teenage activists rallying > support for disposable culture, and defense of > the time honored tradition of peer review in the > medical research world. > > well... actually i dont see the parallel... > maybe i should put on my glasses.
Both concern the freedom of information and the use of the Internet to circumvent the normal means to restrict the flow of it. While you may not have a high opinion of the information in question, the theme is apparent.
Personally, as I get older I grow more and more tired of the snobbery which people use as some sort of lame ego defense and which involves denigrating any aesthetic product which doesn't appeal to their subjective tastes. This is one of the reasons I have always liked Paglia. Though I don't always agree with what she calls beautiful, she is not afraid to see the worthwhile and valuable in a thing regardless of its medium. Just because something is part of popular culture doesn't mean it is worthless and those people who enjoy it or find it important ignorant and misguided. Honestly, there is absolutely no difference between this snobbery and more unacceptable forms of discrimination, like racism and sexism.
> What exactly are the bases of intellectual > property? It is not clear to me why having > thought of an idea should give a person some > sort of ownership over that idea.
Put simply, it is an extension of our right to our own life and the products thereof. This is why we can sell our own labor, because it represents a portion of our life and, thus, belongs to us. It is the most basic economic principle, on which all property rights, intellectual or otherwise, are founded. (Ethically, anyway. As you note, there are lots of pragmatic arguments, too.)
If I spend a weeks farming a piece of land, the crop I produce should belong to me. Why is it any different to claim that if I spend the same time doing research resulting in an invention, I should own that invention? The nature of the fruits of my labor are different, but not the principle.
The key to what should be allowed to be patented is simply that it must be a product that never existed before. The Law of Gravity doesn't count. It was there before you found it. However, specific inventions or representations do. I can't own the Law of Gravity, but I can build a machine based on it and patent that. Or I can write a song about it and copyright it.
I do agree that this is getting wildly abused, particularly in the software industry, these days. However, this is neither an argument for or against intellectual property, any more than the fact that theft having been around for the whole of human existence is a strike against physical property.
There are some interesting issues concerning intellectual property. Unfortunately, the writer of the essay in question chose instead to knock down straw men and ignore most of the actual arguments for IP.
There is a world of difference between actually talking to your kids and just monitoring them like some sort of police state. Rummaging through their belongings isn't going to help your relationship with your child. It will isolate them further, making them paranoid, resentful, and even more secretive. The only way to really 'keep tabs' on your kids is to talk to treat them as equals. You show them respect, trust them until they've earned otherwise, and allow them the same dignities you afford youself.
Slashdot Mirror
The credits for Dune list the director as Alan Smithee. Alan Smithee is a psuedoname that directors use when the studio fucks them over. David Lynch, who has done some great movies including Blue Velvet and Wild At Heart, never actually completed Dune. After he ran over budget, the studio took his work and did what they liked with it. Imagine if the studio had done the editting on The Godfather or Titanic..
That is incorrect. There is a version of Dune where Alan Smithee is credited as the director, but it is a 'director's cut' which he disapproved of (ironically) because it added in a lot of scenes which he hadn't put in the final film. The actual theatrical release was clearly credited with David Lynch as the director.
The first reason I stopped getting the newspaper had to do with that last bit. Paper. As little time as I have to slog through the whole thing, and as selective as I am in what interests me within, it seemed like a massive waste of resources to pile up these mounds of paper. With daily delivery, that's a lot of paper and it seems like a massive waste (don't even get me started about phone books). As with any format that changes or updates frequently, like phone books or newspapers, electronic format is less wasteful and easier to keep current.
Second, is the whole content matter. I don't care about sports, but that's a major part of the paper. I also don't care about gardens or home decorating, but they have sections in the sunday paper. It is a complete waste for me to buy this and for them to print it for me. Further, it is a pain to dig through the paper looking for the information I want, discarding the chaff I could care less about. Again, an electronic format lets me define my preferences and lets the provider track my reading habits to better tailor presentation to me, as an individual.
Honestly, I don't see any reason to go back to newspapers and I doubt they could come up with changes that would adequately address my concerns. I think that they'd be better off adapting to the times than trying to hold onto the current form of their industry.
Eric Christian Berg
Don't read Atlas Shrugged. The only thing wrong with Rand's logic is that her axioms are not axiomatic. (In other words, her assumptions are just that, assumptions)
Just to take the short route with this argument...
Rand's primary axiom: Existence exists.
Or, in other words: All that exists, exists.
Seems pretty self-evident to me. Further, the only way to argue against it is to refer to either concrete evidence or logical argument. To refer to reality for concrete evidence is to accept the postulate as true, otherwise there would be no value in concrete evidence. From a logical standpoint, there really isn't any basis to argue, since it is very obviously a logical truth.
So, assertions aside, do you have any real argument to back up your claim?
Eric Christian Berg
How do you implement free will with material that cannot, by our best understanding, "choose" how to behave? It is important to note here that quantum laws do not allow choice. Randomness, yes, but not choice.
Again, the problem is cleared up merely by defining your terms. Simply, what does the 'free' in free will mean? Here's what Webster has to say:
2 a: not determined by anything beyond its own nature or being : choosing or capable of choosing for itself
So, basically, what it boils down to is that free will merely refers to the ability of an entity to make decisions not based on simple reaction to stimuli or due to external forces, but based on its own nature and consciousness. To choose is to select an option freely after consideration. Thus, a person being bound to act according to their nature is not 'not free', because free refers to a lack of external coercion.
Thus, we do not think a person has freedom to choose when someone has a gun to their head, but we rarely consider their own beliefs and values as denying them free will. In fact, their beliefs and values are what make their free will possible, they are the standard by which considerations of options are possible and a decision is made.
Eric Christian Berg
Learn to read first, and then post. "It turned out" that neither universe nor humans behave in deterministic Newtonian fashion.
Nonsense. 'It turned out' that things going at close to the speed of light don't behave in a Newtonian manner. 'It turned out' that things at an incredibly small scale or incredibly high energy level don't behave in a Newtonian manner. Since I know of no human being who is travelling close to the speed of light, infintesimally small, or possessing of incredible energy, none of these can be applied to human beings. On the macro scale, Newtonian physics still applies perfectly.
You are talking efficiency, I am talking justice. From a utilitarian point of view you are
correct, just the same as it makes utilitarian sense to kill severely malformed children at
birth. From a morality point of view, however, there is that big problem of choice.
You are basically asserting that any choice which is not random is not a choice. This is incorrect. If I have a choice to vacation in Florida or in Montana, I will put a lot of thought into both options, weigh the pros and cons, and come up with a decision based on that. If you 'rewound' reality to before I made the choice, I would make the same decision because I would still be the same person, and would thus approach it in the same way, with the same concerns, and collecting the same information. Does this mean I didn't make a choice? Of course not. I merely had a reason for choosing the way I did. I different person in the same situation would likely choose differently.
From a moral standpoint, deterministic psychology merely says that we must act according to who we are. I find this a much firmer ground to base an ethical system on than the proposition that our choices are essentially die rolls. If that is the case, and human behavior is actually inherently unpredictable (read: random), than how can we hold anyone responsible for anything?
"I'm sorry, your honor, but I only killed him because that's what the random quantum fluctuations in my neurons made me do. In the same circumstances, I could do something entirely different."
Now that's a pretty good defense.
Eric Christian Berg
Well, maybe you don't run into problems, but I do. The basic problem with free will (or absence of it) is accountability. Essentially, if there is no free will, then humans cannot be held accountable for their behavior (with all the nasty concepts for the concepts of justice, effort, etc.)
/because/ we are bound to act according to who we are, not in spite of it.
That's the thing, though. Everybody tries to say that deterministic psychology destroys the concept of accountability, but in fact it validates it. Let me explain.
If we are bound to act according to our nature and our personal psychology, than what we do is a direct representation of who we are. Rather than being poor innocent beings 'at the whim' of our upbringing, beliefs, and psychology, these things instead are considered part of who we are. Thus, you can't make excuses. "Oh, I had a bad childhood," you might protest, but we can easily reply, "Ah, but that is a part of who you are and thus you are still responsible for the actions you took because of it." When you punish evil behavior, you are punishing evil people. Crime reflects a defect in character which will likely result in crime in the future, unless something is done to alter the criminal's nature. Justice is apparently. We are fully responsible for our actions
On the flip side, let's look at the common Judeo-Christian concept of free will. According to this theory, we have complete freedom of choice in any given situation to choose any of the possible actions available to us. There is no requirement that we act according to our beliefs, past behavior, history, or upbringing. We are completely free to choose between good and evil.
Well, by this theory, we really can't punish criminals. Why? Because they could just as easily choose good next time. They aren't evil, they just chose evil, and thus punishing them is unjust, it robs them of the chance to choose good in the future. Our actions cease to be an indicator of what sort of person we are because moral conscience is this magically seperate part of us that is unsullied by the rest of our psychology.
In the end, justice can only be served when a person's actions are predictive of his future actions. Otherwise, there is little use in locking up or punishing a criminal other than the satisfaction of petty vengeance.
"Your Honor, I killed this guy because that's what I am and what I do -- I cannot change this. I submit that there is no justice in punishing me: I cannot be changed".
There are two flaws in this. First, determinism does not at all imply that people (or anything, for that matter) cannot change. That's a straw man. In fact, determinism is all about change. Determinism is a theory about why things change and how things change.
Second, there is the implication that it is unjust to punish a person for who they are. I suggest that this is a flawed assumption. Justice is merely conformity to the truth. Did he really commit the crime? In your example, he most assuredly did. Moreoever, he committed the crime because of a criminal aspect of his psychology. I fail to see how punishing a criminal because he is a criminal and, thus, commits a crime is at all unjust.
Eric Christian Berg
With this one. It's very well established that the Great Apes are self-aware and capable of handling human-invented sign language for communication.
Self-aware, perhaps, but the language aspect has been highly overstated. Much of what I have read on the subject by actual language authorities state that much of what is reported as 'sign language' is merely demonstrative body language and that the apes have shown no ability to use grammer or to grasp all but the lowest level concepts (those which can be related directly to concrete perceptions).
"A universe that has only matter cannot have
consciousness and cannot have will," he concludes.
This sounds suspiciously like the primary preconception he had going in, which makes me wary of any of the arguments he presents to support it. Particularly given that he was driven to this quest for knowledge by a tragedy.
One of my problems with inquiries of this sort is that those who undertake them also fail to define their terms. I would be interested to know if the author ever bothered to define what he means by 'free will'. People bandy the term about, as if the meaning is well-known and apparent, but it isn't, and the closer you examine most conceptions of it, the more they fall apart as meaningless or absurd.
Further, the appeal to quantum physics as a means to attempt to bypass causality in human consciousness is hardly a new approach and suffers from numerous flaws that are rarely addressed, the least of which are that it operates at such a small scale as to not have any visible randomizing effect on systems on a macro-level, and that the variableness they introduce is utterly random, so that even if it did have a factor in human consciousness, the sort of 'freedom' it would introduce would be closer to die-rolling than what most people consider free will (in what vague terms they do understand it).
Eric Christian Berg
As an interesting aside, were this to be upheld and reverse engineering effectively eliminated, wouldn't it be possible to bring a suit against any company which didn't release drivers and support for operating systems other than Windows on the grounds of collusion to maintain a monopoly? While I am personally against most anti-trust legislation, it does strike me as a means to turn the situation around.
IANAL but I believe what he's trying to say is that while reverse-engineering copyrighted material is legal, it's not the same thing as reverse-engineering a measure to prevent access to copyrighted material. He's not against reverse-engineering per se. He's just comparing this particular instance of reverse-engineering to the act of reverse engineering a key to a lock. This is a decent analogy, but it only proves the point of the defense. If I own a lock and I want an extra copy of the key, I can have one made legally. Similarly, if I lose my only key, I can legally hire a locksmith to make a new one or just jimmy the lock. By the judge's interpretation, I should not be allowed to copy the key and if I lose it, I should have to buy a whole new lock, because I don't have the right to circumvent the lock even though I own it and whatever it is protecting.
As of 1988 (the most recent figures I could find in five minutes of web browsing), the top 10% of income earners were responsible for 57.2% of the total tax revenue. The top 1% were responsible for 27.5%. Don't talk to me about 'fairness'.
/rose/ dramatically with Reagan's tax cuts, from 48% and 17.6% respectively. So much for that other myth that tax cuts benefit the rich more than the poor.
Figures are from the Joint Economic Committee's annual report for 1992. A related article from the Cato Institute points out that this percentage
It is pretty funny to read anyone claim the outstanding power of science fiction to accurately predict the moral and social issues around technology. It makes me think of the depiction of science and technology on Star Trek, where much of what is shown is hopelessly outdated a decade later. Or all of the alarmist stories and movies that have come out with each no technological breakthrough in the last hundred and fifty years that have failed to live up to their doomsday cries.
Also, I am insulted by the insinuation in this, and all similar alarmist propaganda, that and sort of progress should be feared as heralding great evil. Katz doesn't show any specific example of misuse, he just cries wolf about things that might happen, or applications which could exist, citing ridiculously alarmist movies as his only proof of danger.
Gattaca, just like the previous slew of alarmist pictures in the 'cyberpunk' vein, evidence a lack of any sort of thorough thought on the topic being criticized, as well as a real lack of understanding of the technology. As I pointed out in my response to his previous article in this thread, there are very few universally desireable traits and most of them have to do with health. Given this, it is fairly ludicrous to imagine that improving health is going to result in discrimination against the sick. If our society was predisposed to oppressing people with illnesses or disabilities, why doesn't it do so now, on an institutional level? Katz seems to suggest that the development of genetic research is somehow going to rob us of our moral sensibilities, causing us to lose all progress we've made towards protecting individual rights.
This is precisely why this is alarmist, because of its narrow vision and skillful exaggeration. Katz ignores the social truths of our society while stressing extreme possibilities based on pure speculation. This is the same sort of doomsaying which ruined the nuclear power industry in this country and which currently advises our national policy on medicine, condemning thousands of people each year to death for lack of treatments not yet approved by massively inefficient government agencies.
And since Katz also raises the spectre of Victor Frankenstein, let us not remember the lesson of that story. It was not that science is evil, that technology is destined to get out of control or that progress is an affront to God and should be squelched. No, it was a story about individual responsibility. There was nothing evil about his creation. In fact, in many ways it was far superior to God's creation. However, it was his lack of responsibility for it that drove it to do evil things.
And, just to be obnoxious, since the religious angle gets brought up, too, it should be noted that Frankenstein wasn't an indictment of science, it was an allegory for man's alienation from his own God, who seemed to have abandoned his own creation.
Eric Berg
There are a couple major flaws in Mr. Katz's thinking on this issue, and they are flaws which are woven into practically every discussion of this topic.
First and foremost is the implication that you can genetically select things like intelligence and success. Reality check, people. There are a lot of very intelligence people who never utilize their potential and many folks without the benefit of raw natural intelligence who learn through effort and willpower. Genes aren't everything. We are as much molded by our environment as we are by our genetic code. Circumstance and opportunity make for success more than raw potential. If you are a shitty parent, then no amount of genetic tinkering is going to ensure you a happy, successful child instead of a miserable, neurotic one.
Second is the notion that there is one set of desired traits that all people want for their children, leading to uniformity if we all got what we want. With the exception of good health (see below), this is woefully unrealistic. Sociological studies on 'objective beauty' aside, the fact of the matter is that standards vary from person to person. Let's look at temperment, for example. Kiersey gives us four basic temperments (with 16 more detailed types), none of which are particularly better than any other. Intelligence, in itself, is a very misleading and hopelessly generic term. People don't tend to be good at everything, they tend to be good at a particular type of thing, depending on their temperment. Or physical traits. Does everyone prefer blondes? Not really. Physical types? Most of the people I know find what is considered the standard of beauty today disgusting. None of them would damn their children by genegineering them to look like a model.
Third there is the idea that something is gained by the 'diversity of disability'. This I find the most reprehensible. Katz tries to suggest that the world is a better place because people suffer. The last place I heard this line of bullshit was church. I didn't buy it from a priest, and I sure as hell am not going to buy it from a doomsaying technophobe. Because, in essence, that is all that this article is. Kneejerk fear of the changes of technology. We saw, as somebody already pointed out, the same thing with antibiotics, anesthetics, industrialization, mechanization, and every other advancement in human technology. Not that these things did not cause problems. Nor was their integration into our life perfectly smooth, in many cases. However, I don't believe there is anyone who wishes to argue that we were better off in the disease-ridden, famine-prone Middle Ages.
Lastly, we have the economic whining about how it is unfair to give an advantage to richer people (or nations), suggesting that we in the West should instead choose to live at the level of the least common denominator, out of some twisted socialist feeling of racial loyalty. Sorry, Katz, but I find your bigotry against the well-off to be as offensive as bigotry against the poor. Besides, as I pointed out before, there is no way to genegineer success, regardless of how much money you have. Rich or poor, your kids will still be fucked up if you raise them wrong. Also, it is the patronage of the rich which allows innovative technology to reach the level of use that it becomes cheap and accessible. Capital drives the economy. Without it, there would be few new drugs, medical techniques, agricultural advances, or new manufacturing processes, all of which make life better for more than the much-maligned elite.
Just to sum up, this article is based on a number of faulty assumptions and questionable leaps of logic, and is indicative of the sort of half-baked thinking which generally accompanies doomsaying of any sort. Environmentalists are particularly well known for this sort of claptrap. What would have been more useful than a reiteration of all the alarmist garbage that's already seen print on this issue would have been an article debunking the non-issues in favor of bringing attention to the actual reality of what genetic mapping means.
Let's see, I met my fiance on a MUSH about four years ago. We've been together for three and a half of those years, engaged for two, and she just moved up to where I am four weeks ago. We are blissfully happy.
:)
Also, my mother met someone on a Yahoo chat room a couple years back and flew down to Florida to be with her after a few weeks of online chatting and phone calls. They've been together ever since and are happily committed.
Sure, there are complications to online romance, but there are complications to all romance. You just need to be honest and persistant.
Eric
This guy seems to really hate Microsoft...
Odd, the article I read re-iterated several times that the author was a great admirer of the people who work at Microsoft, from engineers to officers.
snipping the actual relevant portion
This is a good rebuttal. Not sure how valid it is, not really grasping the economics involved, but it attends to the facts.
I suspect that Bill Parish at some point in the past shorted Microsoft stock (or didn't buy it,
buying instead something else) and is now very very bitter about it...
And here you do it again.
Your argument is not strengthened by 'bookending' it with these baseless suppositions that the author has a personal agenda for his statements. In fact, it is greatly weakened by such tactics. This is referred to 'addressing the argument to the man' and is one of a number of common logical fallacies used in arguments that attempt to discredit the person whom you disagree with or credit yourself with higher authority. By trying to suggest that the author is motivated by something other than the truth, you attempt to lend more credence to your own, supposedly objective, determinations and cast doubt on his claims.
To people like myself, who recognize such tactics, it has the opposite effect. Without a clear knowledge of the subject matter, I am less likely to believe your claims, due to your attempt to manipulate me into believing your are more honest than your opponent.
In the future, I would avoid such attempts.
Eric Christian Berg
So, basically, what this amounts to is that depressed, 'different', or gifted students should be put into counselling programs as potentially violent psychopaths? This does seem to support what Katz is saying rather than refute it.
/might/ commit rather than for one they have. This is an inversion of the legal principles of this country which, granted, have never traditionally been applied to citizens below the age of 18 anyway. Still, I'm a stickler for principle. :)
Also, it glosses over the fact that most schools are underbudgeted and unresponsive to the needs of the students. Targetting of 'problems students' like this is just as likely to lead to ostracizing and further humiliation than to any 'help', even if such is needed. As any student can tell you, promises of anonymity are fairly hollow from an institution who feels it has the authority to search your private possessions against your will, control how you use your free time (through homework and detentions), and dictate your appearance.
The real danger with this policy is that same as the danger of all 'pro-active' policies, in that they inevitably end up punishing someone for a crime that they
Ah, it is so easy to paste a label like 'Liberal' or 'Conservative' on someone and then just dismiss them out of hand, isn't it? A marvelous short cut to thinking.
Rather than wave your prejudices around, why don't you actually try addressing the points made by the article? Offering a critical rebuttal to someone's arguments is much harder than spouting bigotry.
Somehow a find it highly unlikely that he's making money off of writing these articles. Nice straw man.
Am I the only person who is not overwhelmed at any of William Gibson's work? I found 'The Difference Engine' in particular to be aimless, shallow, and uninteresting. I spent the entire book waiting to reach 'the point' and it never got there. It is all style and no substance, like everything else of his I have read. Nor am I impressed with his attempts to use technological themes, which I think betray a real lack of understanding of current technology, human psychology, and social forces (as well as common sense and logic).
Where to begin?
> If the public is going to decide what's right
> and what's wrong, they need to know all the
> facts from an unbiased source. This is
> impossible in America, because media is a big
> business.
The first part is partially incorrect. The same effect can be had by getting information from a number of sources with different biases. Given the difficulty of objectivity in anything but physical or logical disciplines, this is the only option.
The second part is simply incorrect. There is nothing about media as big business that makes it impossible to be informed. Just the wild exaggeration denoted in the use of the word 'impossible' is telling. While media may often be less than objective, different media sources serve different agendas. Mother Jones and Time-Warner are not going to give the same take on a news story. However, both are available to anyone who searches them out.
Which brings us to the real problem: public apathy. It isn't that it is impossible to be informed, it is that most people don't bother. They either don't have an interest in politics or prefer to take the easy route and ride on their personal prejudices rather than examine a view from all sides.
Intellectual laziness and a lack of critical thinking skills are what makes a person uninformed, not the 'Big Bad Media'.
> The public no longer has anywhere near the
> expertise necessary to know what's in their
> best interest. Even basic economic principles
> like flat-taxes have to be digested by
> commentators and explained to the masses to tell > them what the effects are.
Has it ever been otherwise? Even the most celebrated multidisciplinarians in history have not been able to master every field. Nor should they need to. It is enough that the public know what's its interests are. They don't need to know themselves how to implement them. It is no different than owning a microwave. Odds are, most folks who do don't know how they work. They can still, however, make informed decisions on whether or not to buy them. When more detailed information is needed, they can go to specialists. This is how human society has functioned since cities rose. It isn't anything new.
> Not to fault free markets in general, but when
> you have a society built on money, as ours
> is, it's inevitable that those with more money
> will control everything.
Money basically is a representation of human life. As an indicator of value, it is an abstract of how much of our energy, our labor, something is worth to us. Thus, it represents the basis of all human existence.
The only difference between free markets and other economic systems is that the flow of money is most efficiently distributed to represent the value of goods to individuals. In a free market system, a person gets rich because people highly value the goods or service he provides.
The contrast is to systems of coercion where the flow of capital is determined by the will of a smaller portion of the population (governments, rulers, guilds, etc). Both sorts of systems are based on money, as any economic system is.
> We allow a free market to develop giant
> corporations with tons of resources and very
> strong vested interest. Isn't it inevitable that > they attempt to exercise their considerable
> power to protect those vested interests?
> Certainly.
Often, when business tries to dabble in politics, it is because politics is presenting some sort of threat. Political dabbling in markets is anathema to capitalism, thus your logic is very questionable.
Further, while it may be inevitable that they try to further themselves through dabbling in politics (which happens as well), it is not inevitable that they have avenues to do so. In fact, again, if there are means to have business influence government, this is against capitalist notions of economic-political interaction, and again your attempts to blame it on capitalism fall short.
It always baffles me to see people try to blame an economic system whose defining characteristic is seperation of economics and politics for interaction between economics and politics.
> Fundamentally American culture is selfish and
> egocentric. Few individuals are motivated
> by notions of higher societal good, as is quite > common in other nations (like our close
> neighbor Canada). It's inevitable that in such a > situation corruption develops. Until such a
> fundamental aspect of Americana changes, we'll
> always be fucked.
There's a lot wrong with this statement. First off, the first statement is a gross generalization verging on bigotry, as well as being incredibly inaccurate. Individualism is a basis of American culture and encourages enlightened self-interest, not juvenile egotism. Some of the most rugged individualists in American history have also been some of the most compassionate humanitarians and it is an insult to their memory to make such inaccurate statements.
Second, it again baffles me that America is considered selfish and unconcerned with higher societal good and at the same time be criticized for its 'policing of the world', where American soldiers go to risk their lives around the world in efforts to suppress tyranny and injustice. Also, I might add, America contributes more financial aid to other nations than any other country in the world (including Canada).
I fear, unfortunately, that our general lack of willingness to sacrifice our rights and freedom for the illusion of security that government sponsered humanitarian programs offer is seen as being 'heartless'. All I can offer to this is that it was American aid that kept Russian Communists from starving to death after the revolution. So much for 'heartless capitalism'.
The knee-jerk reflex is there for a reason, whether it is the literal one with the human
knee, or the natural human response to 'scary' technology. As long as the latter is done from an informed perspective, it serves a purpose: To start a debate, to get people thinking! It may not allways show the right problems, but it might lead to someone finding real problems.
You'd have a valid point... if somehow the 50s radiation scare had anything to do with research into the effects of radiation... which it didn't. What it did accomplish was to cause a massive backlash against nuclear power and irradiating food products that worked for the detriment of society as a whole. Contributing to food poisoning and three more decades of poisoning the environment through the use of fossil fuels doesn't strike me as particularly productive.
To offer a fine example that actually has to do with genetic engineering, the massive bout of paranoia that this movie plays on is currently helping to shut down research which might cure genetic defects and engineer children without congenital conditions. Again, I fail to see the productivity of irrational fear towards new things.
GATTACA is reactionary knee-jerk response to new technology. I don't find it any more compelling than all the films in the 50s about radiation turning people into monsters or the stories at the end of the last century about robots taking over the world.
> interesting concept though... an attempt to draw > a parallel between teenage activists rallying
> support for disposable culture, and defense of
> the time honored tradition of peer review in the > medical research world.
>
> well... actually i dont see the parallel...
> maybe i should put on my glasses.
Both concern the freedom of information and the use of the Internet to circumvent the normal means to restrict the flow of it. While you may not have a high opinion of the information in question, the theme is apparent.
Personally, as I get older I grow more and more tired of the snobbery which people use as some sort of lame ego defense and which involves denigrating any aesthetic product which doesn't appeal to their subjective tastes. This is one of the reasons I have always liked Paglia. Though I don't always agree with what she calls beautiful, she is not afraid to see the worthwhile and valuable in a thing regardless of its medium. Just because something is part of popular culture doesn't mean it is worthless and those people who enjoy it or find it important ignorant and misguided. Honestly, there is absolutely no difference between this snobbery and more unacceptable forms of discrimination, like racism and sexism.
Eric Berg
> What exactly are the bases of intellectual
> property? It is not clear to me why having
> thought of an idea should give a person some
> sort of ownership over that idea.
Put simply, it is an extension of our right to our own life and the products thereof. This is why we can sell our own labor, because it represents a portion of our life and, thus, belongs to us. It is the most basic economic principle, on which all property rights, intellectual or otherwise, are founded. (Ethically, anyway. As you note, there are lots of pragmatic arguments, too.)
If I spend a weeks farming a piece of land, the crop I produce should belong to me. Why is it any different to claim that if I spend the same time doing research resulting in an invention, I should own that invention? The nature of the fruits of my labor are different, but not the principle.
The key to what should be allowed to be patented is simply that it must be a product that never existed before. The Law of Gravity doesn't count. It was there before you found it. However, specific inventions or representations do. I can't own the Law of Gravity, but I can build a machine based on it and patent that. Or I can write a song about it and copyright it.
I do agree that this is getting wildly abused, particularly in the software industry, these days. However, this is neither an argument for or against intellectual property, any more than the fact that theft having been around for the whole of human existence is a strike against physical property.
There are some interesting issues concerning intellectual property. Unfortunately, the writer of the essay in question chose instead to knock down straw men and ignore most of the actual arguments for IP.
Eric Berg
There is a world of difference between actually talking to your kids and just monitoring them like some sort of police state. Rummaging through their belongings isn't going to help your relationship with your child. It will isolate them further, making them paranoid, resentful, and even more secretive. The only way to really 'keep tabs' on your kids is to talk to treat them as equals. You show them respect, trust them until they've earned otherwise, and allow them the same dignities you afford youself.