I'm saying that it doesn't matter whether you think you have a right to it or not. Unless you can defend that right, or get others to defend it for you, your belief that you have a right to it is meaningless.
Whether or not something is defended in practice does not define its existence - that would be utilitarianism. The nature of man and the requirements of his existence define his rights as metaphysical fact. Check out Rand's essay Man's Rights, or you could also read the forerunners - Richard Price's Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty (1776) is quite clear, and there's also the writings of Thomas Paine, Jefferson, Locke. Or if you want to go back to the source, read Aristotle's Politics, On the Soul, and Metaphysics.
Only through laws do we establish a universally recognized right to property.
Laws can happen to acknowledge our rights, or incorrectly assert some while ignoring others, or give them some origin in the state or supernatural. Yes, any of these can happen. They do not change the rights of individuals, and they do not legitimate the violation of those rights.
We do that because it is beneficial to our society in that we can prevent others from taking what is ours by agreeing not to take what is theirs.
Yes, that is beneficial. But it is not a guarantee. There is no guarantee that everyone in society will agree to these terms, all day, everyday. The purpose of government is to acknowledge our rights and uphold and protect them. We are in agreement about this, but it seems you take the government's acknowledgment of our rights as defining them into existence.
Same reason we don't consider writings and discoveries to be property
Discoveries can't be patented because they are facts. The discoverer did not create them. If he wants to profit exclusively from a discovery, his only choice is to keep it secret. A book, on the other hand, is created by a person, and so should be copyrighted by that person. I have already explained this bit and the justification for the copyright term limits in an earlier post.
Of course it's rational (though perhaps not legal or ethical) to break a contract if one can profit by doing so.
Of course it is irrational, because it is contrary to your self-interest. Instant gratification and short-term profit does not equate with rational self-interest.
Failing to uphold a contract is in no way an initiation of force.
Obviously it is. It is equivalent to theft. In a normal transaction, you agree with an individual to trade X for Y. Whether X or Y is money, goods, or services, the trade occurs through voluntary consent from both parties. Breaking a contract involves taking someone's money, goods, or services, without their consent - theft.
You can tell that by the guns that the state's agents carry.
The actual initiator of force is the individual who breaks the contract and thus holds on to your money or goods, or benefits from your services, without your consent. If you try to take back the money or goods from them - which you rightly should be able to, since it is still yours - and they stop you, that is where the guns/force appears. That is the initiation of force.
You do not make a contract or agreement with the people in a corporation, so those people's individual rights are irrelevant.
That's a nice bald assertion. Care to back it up with any evidence or rationale, or were you hoping I would take it on faith? So long as the corporation exists, it is made up of people with the same rights as any other people. If I sign a contract with a mom & pop store saying that I will pay them back in installments, is it invalid because "the store is not a person". Obviously it's not a person, but that's not relevant. The people in the corporation contractually agreed to interact and trade with a common goal, and people who agree to trade with the corporation agree to the terms that were set out by the people in the corporation, or they discuss the terms with people in the corporation and decide to modify the terms. Why should people not be free to set the terms of such agreements as I have listed above? Why are terms nullified if they are agreed to by large groups? You have no rationale, just labels.
Furthermore, there is no natural right to set the terms of a contract.
Of course there is. If you have the right to your life, then you must be free to use your mind and the product of your mind in a rational way as you see fit. Breaking a contract for no reason other than threat or force is irrational and the initiation of force against the other individual.
Hmm? The people in them do. They have the same right as anyone to set the terms of their contracts and agreements. Your rights don't vanish just because you join a big company. If someone in a company is being forced to do something against his well, then obviously there is grounds for prosecution. Otherwise, stay out of their business.
Property has never been an absolute right. Property is what you can defend, nothing more.
So if I buy a huge chunk of land from someone, but can't stop people from taking over the outskirts of my land, and there is no government there to help defend my property, then I don't have a right that property?
So property rights, in your mind, are tested by one's ability to stave off invasion. So property rights can never be violated. If I have land, money, food, furniture stolen from me - tough luck I couldn't defend it so it was not mine to have. What I was able to protect - for that moment - is my property, but if the thugs come again and take more, well then tough luck again, that wasn't my property either because I couldn't defend it.
So you have concocted a right that by definition cannot be violated. You have remedied a problem by defining it out of existence.
Try all of human history. Property has never been an absolute right.
Although that's not true, it would still be an argument from tradition. Until very recently, for example, slaves were never considered to have rights. They always did, though, the rights were just never acknowledged.
First, I notice you didn't address my example of the patent.
Actually, I did. I explained how long they should exist. Whether or not Congress chooses to acknowledge that is irrelevant.
If it's property, then why does it expire?
Because Congress wants it to. It shouldn't expire, provided that it is maintained through continued use, but it also shouldn't be made to last forever, as no property lasts forever passed down generation to generation without some sort of maintenance. A family fortune, for example, must be kept and/or invested in order to last and hold its value.
But property is not any sort of absolute right.
According to a historical document. Are you arguing from authority/tradition?
I was thinking about how to explain this more clearly, and what I would suggest is for you to answer the question, "why should physical property be protected?" and try to trace the reasons behind that. If I own a piece of land, and let put a lot of research and work into growing crops on that land, and even get financial loans pegged on my growing crops, why should any of that imply that the crops belong to me, and that the government should ensure that they remain with me?
it bears little resemblance to the traditional notion of property
As with any other property, it is the product of a person's mind, and he should rightly have the ability to control it. Taking into account that intellectual property rights cannot exist forever - as that would enforce the funding of endless generations with no additional effort on their own part (as opposed to traditional property, which an heir must maintain in some manner), the intellectual property should take into account the creator's life at the very least, however given that such creators usually require financing, it should tack on additional time in the event the creator dies prematurely, so as to not hinder the incentive to finance such endeavors.
Why do libraries exist?
Public, or private? In any case, the books must still be purchased, and cannot be copied. Publishers are not coerced (as far as I know) into selling to libraries.
The fact is that it's not property
Err, where did you show that? You simply stated that it's different from traditional conceptions of physical property. How do you conclude from that that it's not property? I have already shown how they are similar - both are the product of a person's effort and ideas.
Yes, but the point remains - you get an interference pattern, even though there was only ever one electron going through at a time.
You seem to have not followed the discussion. Read through the other comments. The Stanford Encyclopedia puts it pretty clearly here: "While each trajectory [ie, each particle] passes through but one of the slits, the wave passes through both; the interference profile that therefore develops in the wave generates a similar pattern in the trajectories guided by this wave." So whereas traditional quantum theory claims that the particle itself somehow passes through both slits, Bohmian mechanics states that the particle is riding a wave, and only ever passes through one or the other slits - depending on its initial conditions -, but once the particle and its wave hit the slit, the wave indeed passes through both slits and interferes with itself, and ultimately modifies the particle path accordingly. So the difference may seem trivial, but it is quite huge - one is possible, the other is not; one leads to contradictions, the other does not.
There is the issue of considering "intellectual property" to be property in a real sense.
It is not an issue except in the minds of those who concoct this false notion, built on a complete lack of understanding of what property *is* and why it must exist and be protected as such.
It's only protected because the government decided to do so.
It should be protected, and the proper role of government is to protect it.
Putting limitations on that protection is also within their purview.
If it is objectively determined to be property, then it should be protected. Whether or not the government decides to protect it, and whether or not they decide they have the power to add limitations, is a different matter, and doesn't affect whether or not it should actually be protected.
Hmm? The government has a proper role - upholding and protecting individual rights. Unfortunately these days they do more rights violating than protecting.
If I rob the liquor store is my subsequent arrest, prosecution, and incarceration to be considered a wrongful application of force in retaliation for the force I applied?
No. You initiated force. The proper role of government is to then go after the initiator, to act as the self-defense against further rights violations and to bring the individual to justice. When the government becomes the initiator of force, however, it completely inverts its proper role.
Consider, if I somehow get my hands on all of the information the state of Massachusetts wants published and I publish it myself, force will be applied against ME.
How did you get your hands on it? Did you not consider the source and the likelihood that it was stolen?
They're both rights violations. Morally, neither should ever occur. That one is more common than the other does not change that.
As far as I know we're not discussing killing anyone here nor are we discussing retaliation.
Applying force in retaliation for force applied to us.
Requiring auto manufacturers to stop ripping people off is hardly violence.
And what happens if they do not comply? They will have their property forcibly taken from them and/or they will spend some time locked up in a cell. "Force isn't Violence", eh? Sounds Orwellian...
It may even be good for business (consider it advice from a major stockholder).
The ends don't justify the means. No amount of good intentions excuses the violation of individual rights.
I didn't vote to send troops and hundreds of billions to Iraq either. I didn't vote to give billions to the financial industry. Unfortunately that's what happened anyway. Welcome to democracy.
Indeed, so you've just shown how the majority can still vote for the violation of rights. So much for the notion that democracy is always a Good Thing(TM).
And the money was spent in order to protect American jobs, for the good of our economy -- with the expectation that there would be a return on the money invested, in terms of job opportunities and economic stability.
Again, so long as the money was extorted in any way, regardless of the alleged good intentions, it should not have occurred. If you want to freely donate your money to the car manufacturers to help protect American jobs, feel free to do so, but don't demand everyone else do the same to further your personal goal.
The Bohm model elevates position to a special status (and momentum) since it is well defined and, IMO, therefore makes "particles" a core part of the theory. But Everett shows that the particles are completely unnecessary in the Bohm model and we still get the same results.
They are necessary to make any sense of the measurements. The alternatives are contradictions - entities that are both waves and particles at the same time, existing in many locations, communicating instantaneously over long distances, dependent on the existence of an observer, all possible outcomes considered real and intertwined, etc. In order to have any hope of integrating quantum theory with the macroscopic world, we have to have some common conceptual ground. Right now, there isn't any. This is tantamount to saying, "relativistic theory has no possible correction for quantum motion, so therefore waves don't exist at large sizes - you get the same result so it doesn't matter!" Of course it matters.
How is giving them a free ride better for your freedom than actually getting something (however small) in return?
False dichotomy. As I've already stated, we should have never helped them. The fact that we've been forced to help them doesn't mean we now get to forcibly take from them. Rights violations should not occur, period.
You remind me of the continual fights in the Middle East, where one side blames the other for murders, then uses that as justification for murders, which the other side uses as justification for murders. Murder is murder. There is no place in objective law for violence in the name of vengeance.
You're dropping the context of the word "investment". In any other situation where I force you at gunpoint to accept something now in exchange for something later, it is not a free trade, and not an investment. They owe us nothing. The transaction should have never occurred.
You seem to be confused about what constitutes "taking money". You may want to trace the path of the money, and observe where it was taken and what it was done with it. You'll realize the force occurred with the government - taking the money, and giving it to a private entity.
I didn't want to bail them out, I don't want their cars, and I don't want my freedoms disgraced further with the ridiculous notion that they now owe us something.
What does "that's simply because the electrons follow wave trajectories" mean?
Well, in classical motion, trajectories are straight lines. Add in gravity, and the lines become curves. At the quantum level, though, that doesn't apply (or rather, isn't dominant), but neither does the notion that particles *become* waves. Instead, they follow wave trajectories, rather than straight lines. Check out this article in arXiv: Understanding Bohmian mechanics: A dialogue, good for newcomers asking these sorts of questions. This site has some good illustrations of the trajectories, which were copied from an illustration on the site I first linked you to. Here's a paper from Physics Letters A will a better illustration of the trajectories (page 209).
That's precisely what "collapsing the wave function" means mathematically. We don't have a handle on what it means physically.
That arXiv article covers exactly that. Check it out.
I cannot speak to the polarizing label experiments. I'd be interested in Prof. Norsen's take on it. I'll send him a question and see if he answers. He's been quick with responses before, so I'm hopeful.
Slashdot Mirror
This can easily be resolved by acknowledging that there is no right to privacy.
I just don't think they would tolerate becoming prisoners in the their own nation.
People who preach unquestioning submission would *never* tolerate becoming prisoners. Riiight...
Granted, there's probably more evidence to tie this guy to the burglary
Yeah... like the fact that he asked a friend if they'd want to help rob the house.....
He also said that the night before the burglary, Parker asked him if he wanted to help break into the victim's home but he refused.
I'm saying that it doesn't matter whether you think you have a right to it or not. Unless you can defend that right, or get others to defend it for you, your belief that you have a right to it is meaningless.
Whether or not something is defended in practice does not define its existence - that would be utilitarianism. The nature of man and the requirements of his existence define his rights as metaphysical fact. Check out Rand's essay Man's Rights, or you could also read the forerunners - Richard Price's Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty (1776) is quite clear, and there's also the writings of Thomas Paine, Jefferson, Locke. Or if you want to go back to the source, read Aristotle's Politics, On the Soul, and Metaphysics.
Only through laws do we establish a universally recognized right to property.
Laws can happen to acknowledge our rights, or incorrectly assert some while ignoring others, or give them some origin in the state or supernatural. Yes, any of these can happen. They do not change the rights of individuals, and they do not legitimate the violation of those rights.
We do that because it is beneficial to our society in that we can prevent others from taking what is ours by agreeing not to take what is theirs.
Yes, that is beneficial. But it is not a guarantee. There is no guarantee that everyone in society will agree to these terms, all day, everyday. The purpose of government is to acknowledge our rights and uphold and protect them. We are in agreement about this, but it seems you take the government's acknowledgment of our rights as defining them into existence.
Same reason we don't consider writings and discoveries to be property
Discoveries can't be patented because they are facts. The discoverer did not create them. If he wants to profit exclusively from a discovery, his only choice is to keep it secret. A book, on the other hand, is created by a person, and so should be copyrighted by that person. I have already explained this bit and the justification for the copyright term limits in an earlier post.
Of course it's rational (though perhaps not legal or ethical) to break a contract if one can profit by doing so.
Of course it is irrational, because it is contrary to your self-interest. Instant gratification and short-term profit does not equate with rational self-interest.
Failing to uphold a contract is in no way an initiation of force.
Obviously it is. It is equivalent to theft. In a normal transaction, you agree with an individual to trade X for Y. Whether X or Y is money, goods, or services, the trade occurs through voluntary consent from both parties. Breaking a contract involves taking someone's money, goods, or services, without their consent - theft.
You can tell that by the guns that the state's agents carry.
The actual initiator of force is the individual who breaks the contract and thus holds on to your money or goods, or benefits from your services, without your consent. If you try to take back the money or goods from them - which you rightly should be able to, since it is still yours - and they stop you, that is where the guns/force appears. That is the initiation of force.
You do not make a contract or agreement with the people in a corporation, so those people's individual rights are irrelevant.
That's a nice bald assertion. Care to back it up with any evidence or rationale, or were you hoping I would take it on faith? So long as the corporation exists, it is made up of people with the same rights as any other people. If I sign a contract with a mom & pop store saying that I will pay them back in installments, is it invalid because "the store is not a person". Obviously it's not a person, but that's not relevant. The people in the corporation contractually agreed to interact and trade with a common goal, and people who agree to trade with the corporation agree to the terms that were set out by the people in the corporation, or they discuss the terms with people in the corporation and decide to modify the terms. Why should people not be free to set the terms of such agreements as I have listed above? Why are terms nullified if they are agreed to by large groups? You have no rationale, just labels.
Furthermore, there is no natural right to set the terms of a contract.
Of course there is. If you have the right to your life, then you must be free to use your mind and the product of your mind in a rational way as you see fit. Breaking a contract for no reason other than threat or force is irrational and the initiation of force against the other individual.
Corporations have no rights.
Hmm? The people in them do. They have the same right as anyone to set the terms of their contracts and agreements. Your rights don't vanish just because you join a big company. If someone in a company is being forced to do something against his well, then obviously there is grounds for prosecution. Otherwise, stay out of their business.
Property has never been an absolute right. Property is what you can defend, nothing more.
So if I buy a huge chunk of land from someone, but can't stop people from taking over the outskirts of my land, and there is no government there to help defend my property, then I don't have a right that property?
So property rights, in your mind, are tested by one's ability to stave off invasion. So property rights can never be violated. If I have land, money, food, furniture stolen from me - tough luck I couldn't defend it so it was not mine to have. What I was able to protect - for that moment - is my property, but if the thugs come again and take more, well then tough luck again, that wasn't my property either because I couldn't defend it.
So you have concocted a right that by definition cannot be violated. You have remedied a problem by defining it out of existence.
Try all of human history. Property has never been an absolute right.
Although that's not true, it would still be an argument from tradition. Until very recently, for example, slaves were never considered to have rights. They always did, though, the rights were just never acknowledged.
First, I notice you didn't address my example of the patent.
Actually, I did. I explained how long they should exist. Whether or not Congress chooses to acknowledge that is irrelevant.
If it's property, then why does it expire?
Because Congress wants it to. It shouldn't expire, provided that it is maintained through continued use, but it also shouldn't be made to last forever, as no property lasts forever passed down generation to generation without some sort of maintenance. A family fortune, for example, must be kept and/or invested in order to last and hold its value.
But property is not any sort of absolute right.
According to a historical document. Are you arguing from authority/tradition?
I was thinking about how to explain this more clearly, and what I would suggest is for you to answer the question, "why should physical property be protected?" and try to trace the reasons behind that. If I own a piece of land, and let put a lot of research and work into growing crops on that land, and even get financial loans pegged on my growing crops, why should any of that imply that the crops belong to me, and that the government should ensure that they remain with me?
it bears little resemblance to the traditional notion of property
As with any other property, it is the product of a person's mind, and he should rightly have the ability to control it. Taking into account that intellectual property rights cannot exist forever - as that would enforce the funding of endless generations with no additional effort on their own part (as opposed to traditional property, which an heir must maintain in some manner), the intellectual property should take into account the creator's life at the very least, however given that such creators usually require financing, it should tack on additional time in the event the creator dies prematurely, so as to not hinder the incentive to finance such endeavors.
Why do libraries exist?
Public, or private? In any case, the books must still be purchased, and cannot be copied. Publishers are not coerced (as far as I know) into selling to libraries.
The fact is that it's not property
Err, where did you show that? You simply stated that it's different from traditional conceptions of physical property. How do you conclude from that that it's not property? I have already shown how they are similar - both are the product of a person's effort and ideas.
Yes, but the point remains - you get an interference pattern, even though there was only ever one electron going through at a time.
You seem to have not followed the discussion. Read through the other comments. The Stanford Encyclopedia puts it pretty clearly here: "While each trajectory [ie, each particle] passes through but one of the slits, the wave passes through both; the interference profile that therefore develops in the wave generates a similar pattern in the trajectories guided by this wave." So whereas traditional quantum theory claims that the particle itself somehow passes through both slits, Bohmian mechanics states that the particle is riding a wave, and only ever passes through one or the other slits - depending on its initial conditions -, but once the particle and its wave hit the slit, the wave indeed passes through both slits and interferes with itself, and ultimately modifies the particle path accordingly. So the difference may seem trivial, but it is quite huge - one is possible, the other is not; one leads to contradictions, the other does not.
There is the issue of considering "intellectual property" to be property in a real sense.
It is not an issue except in the minds of those who concoct this false notion, built on a complete lack of understanding of what property *is* and why it must exist and be protected as such.
It's only protected because the government decided to do so.
It should be protected, and the proper role of government is to protect it.
Putting limitations on that protection is also within their purview.
If it is objectively determined to be property, then it should be protected. Whether or not the government decides to protect it, and whether or not they decide they have the power to add limitations, is a different matter, and doesn't affect whether or not it should actually be protected.
Sounds like anarchy to me.
Hmm? The government has a proper role - upholding and protecting individual rights. Unfortunately these days they do more rights violating than protecting.
If I rob the liquor store is my subsequent arrest, prosecution, and incarceration to be considered a wrongful application of force in retaliation for the force I applied?
No. You initiated force. The proper role of government is to then go after the initiator, to act as the self-defense against further rights violations and to bring the individual to justice. When the government becomes the initiator of force, however, it completely inverts its proper role.
Consider, if I somehow get my hands on all of the information the state of Massachusetts wants published and I publish it myself, force will be applied against ME.
How did you get your hands on it? Did you not consider the source and the likelihood that it was stolen?
That's a mighty BIG leap.
They're both rights violations. Morally, neither should ever occur. That one is more common than the other does not change that.
As far as I know we're not discussing killing anyone here nor are we discussing retaliation.
Applying force in retaliation for force applied to us.
Requiring auto manufacturers to stop ripping people off is hardly violence.
And what happens if they do not comply? They will have their property forcibly taken from them and/or they will spend some time locked up in a cell. "Force isn't Violence", eh? Sounds Orwellian...
It may even be good for business (consider it advice from a major stockholder).
The ends don't justify the means. No amount of good intentions excuses the violation of individual rights.
I didn't vote to send troops and hundreds of billions to Iraq either. I didn't vote to give billions to the financial industry. Unfortunately that's what happened anyway. Welcome to democracy.
Indeed, so you've just shown how the majority can still vote for the violation of rights. So much for the notion that democracy is always a Good Thing(TM).
And the money was spent in order to protect American jobs, for the good of our economy -- with the expectation that there would be a return on the money invested, in terms of job opportunities and economic stability.
Again, so long as the money was extorted in any way, regardless of the alleged good intentions, it should not have occurred. If you want to freely donate your money to the car manufacturers to help protect American jobs, feel free to do so, but don't demand everyone else do the same to further your personal goal.
That doesn't change where the force was applied.
The Bohm model elevates position to a special status (and momentum) since it is well defined and, IMO, therefore makes "particles" a core part of the theory. But Everett shows that the particles are completely unnecessary in the Bohm model and we still get the same results.
They are necessary to make any sense of the measurements. The alternatives are contradictions - entities that are both waves and particles at the same time, existing in many locations, communicating instantaneously over long distances, dependent on the existence of an observer, all possible outcomes considered real and intertwined, etc. In order to have any hope of integrating quantum theory with the macroscopic world, we have to have some common conceptual ground. Right now, there isn't any. This is tantamount to saying, "relativistic theory has no possible correction for quantum motion, so therefore waves don't exist at large sizes - you get the same result so it doesn't matter!" Of course it matters.
How is giving them a free ride better for your freedom than actually getting something (however small) in return?
False dichotomy. As I've already stated, we should have never helped them. The fact that we've been forced to help them doesn't mean we now get to forcibly take from them. Rights violations should not occur, period.
You remind me of the continual fights in the Middle East, where one side blames the other for murders, then uses that as justification for murders, which the other side uses as justification for murders. Murder is murder. There is no place in objective law for violence in the name of vengeance.
You're dropping the context of the word "investment". In any other situation where I force you at gunpoint to accept something now in exchange for something later, it is not a free trade, and not an investment. They owe us nothing. The transaction should have never occurred.
Don't like it? Don't take our tax money
You seem to be confused about what constitutes "taking money". You may want to trace the path of the money, and observe where it was taken and what it was done with it. You'll realize the force occurred with the government - taking the money, and giving it to a private entity.
I didn't want to bail them out, I don't want their cars, and I don't want my freedoms disgraced further with the ridiculous notion that they now owe us something.
- An American Taxpayer
What does "that's simply because the electrons follow wave trajectories" mean?
Well, in classical motion, trajectories are straight lines. Add in gravity, and the lines become curves. At the quantum level, though, that doesn't apply (or rather, isn't dominant), but neither does the notion that particles *become* waves. Instead, they follow wave trajectories, rather than straight lines. Check out this article in arXiv: Understanding Bohmian mechanics: A dialogue, good for newcomers asking these sorts of questions. This site has some good illustrations of the trajectories, which were copied from an illustration on the site I first linked you to. Here's a paper from Physics Letters A will a better illustration of the trajectories (page 209).
That's precisely what "collapsing the wave function" means mathematically. We don't have a handle on what it means physically.
That arXiv article covers exactly that. Check it out.
I cannot speak to the polarizing label experiments. I'd be interested in Prof. Norsen's take on it. I'll send him a question and see if he answers. He's been quick with responses before, so I'm hopeful.