Oh, I agree, it is an uncomfortable fit at best. I was merely reacting to the fact that Pelagianism is a much poorer fit. While I believe you are right that Heinlein would have rejected the sense of moral relativism/elimativism that seems to run through much of existentialist thought, I think he would have had great affection for the general existentialist point that freedom and responsibility are insolubly linked, as the GGP's quote seems to indicate.
Pelagianism is applicable only in the very narrow framing context of Christianity. The broader moral theory is 'Existentialism' (and specifically Sartrean Existentialism), which does not depend upon the presence or absence of God(s) or afterlives to assert what Heinlein was asserting with his quote. I imagine with Heinlein's fairly public views on Christianity, he would have felt more comfortable calling himself an Existentialist than a Pelagian. And either way, it is a barely reputable exercise to assign labels to a dead guy who cannot respond to his assignment, Pelagian, Existentialist, Christian, Pastafarian, or whatever.
I think GP's point was more that it would be politically expedient for there to be a disaster such that citizens would rally round the flag, as the effect is popularly known. His additional point was that he wouldn't put it past this government to place such an event in motion, cynically exploiting people by generating a disaster and then redirecting attention towards it. That a tactic was used by Fascists does not mean it can only be used by Fascists. The USS Maine was a similar sort of incident, as was the Gulf of Tonkin "attack".
Personally I am not so cynical as to believe the government would directly attack its own citizens ('soft' oppression works much better, with less fuss) and barring that I am not so confident that the government would be competent enough to carry off such an attack convincingly. But I could be wrong.
Last I checked, contempt of court was a crime, as was possessing (much less REPRODUCING) classified documents without proper clearance. But, as you say, since copies have reached far beyond the point of recovery, it would be extremely hard to argue they are in any sense still secret.
No, it isn't. Much of philosophy is every bit as rigorous as hard science (though, I will admit, some is not); they (we, actually) are just working with different axioms and different data sets. My personal work revolves around uniting the three perspectives (computation, physics, and metaphysics) through a zero-player game model, much like cellular automata systems. Folks like Wolfram, et. al. give us a bad name. Popper's three-worlds hypothesis or Whitehead's Process and Reality might give you a taste of rigorous metaphysics. And for you who believes that computational processes and computability are so solidly based, I suggest you start by reading some articles on the Philosophy of Mathematics, and some of the interesting semantic work being done in computability logics; things are not so solid as they seem.
He filed the lawsuit with one, since they took the first one away.
Here's to small favors and quick thinking. I have become increasingly worried that the state secrets doctrine would leave a gaping hole in our system of Judicial Constitutional Review, as so long as a domestic surveillance program is a state secret it would be awfully hard to get standing to see the inside of a courtroom on the issue.
And here's to hoping he doesn't mysteriously "commit suicide." From 1500 meters.
They may be crass and amoral, but they aren't stupid. The window for such an act passed as soon as the suit was publicly filed. Tinfoil hat or not, an assassination just wouldn't make sense at this point.
While I generally agree, let's be serious: Terry Gilliam will never in the conceivable future be lacking for camera lenses or budgets to staff and run them. It's kind of like saying "Don't pirate Minority Report, because Stephen Spielberg's future career depends on your purchases!"
I agree with you, but I don't see how that applies to my question... I was asking why it is difficult for a taxpaying citizen to raise questions of constitutional validity based on the notion that the justification of the government emanates from it acting on behalf of the people, and the means of the execution of its business emanate directly from the taxes being collected. A taxpayer's ability to challenge the constitutional legitimacy of a government program isn't mob rule in any sense I've ever heard of.
I'm curious, then, how this particular case lines up with the general legal notion of judicial review. It seems to me that if a citizen can't prove he/she was harmed by a government program because the existence and breadth of the program is a state secret (such that it is normally never possible to find out if you are in fact having your Civil Rights violated), the constitutionality of the program can never be challenged, which abrogates the general idea that all legislative and executive acts are subject to judicial review and scrutiny as to their constitutionality. Since courts in the US cannot take it upon themselves to rule as per constitutionality, and it seems that there is no way a case or controversy by a party with standing can be generated...
The difference between Toyota and the Federal Government is, though, that the Fed has police powers, including enforcement and punishment of laws that can deprive persons of life and liberty. And they do this in the name of the people at large. I am a member of 'the-people-at-large'. Since they are doing things in my name (among others), and I am subject to those rules, and I am also a dutiful taxpayer (my *buy-in* to be served by that Fed which acts in my name and others) does this not entitle me to slightly more standing than, say, a petty shareholder in a for-profit company? At least in theory?
...is the standing rulings that have collectively made it law that taxpayer participation (i.e. by paying taxes) in a program is insufficient standing for challenging that program. Is there a lawyer in the house that can explain why if I pay for something that doesn't give me the standing to complain about it? A rational explanation escapes me, but IANAL...
I mean, I can *kind of* see that if taxpayer participation was enough, then the courts would be come much busier with complaints about government spending and programs (perhaps paralyzingly so), but there must be a better way than just excluding the entire class as lacking standing.
I am not arguing that there was substantial disagreement between what Jesus said and what he was quoted as saying in the Bible. I am arguing rather two different points:
1.) Christians today have many ceremonies, beliefs, and practices that cannot be substantially derived from the Bible itself. Thus, Christianity today is much more than simply the "teachings of Jesus" and include exegetical, dogmatic, and apologetic doctrines and works aimed at clarifying what was previously unclear and readjusting the structure of Christianity to an ever-evolving surrounding world.
2.) The words of Jesus as written in the Bible are almost without doubt substantially incomplete. While what he said may very well be what is indicated in the text, it is very likely that is not all that he said. To believe otherwise places him as an absurdly laconic deity, as well as human being. Since he was given heavily to speaking in parables and concealing discursive meanings, it is likely that his hagiographers missed some important details. Has it never crossed your mind that maybe the people who heard him preach sometimes simply didn't get it? Many times Jesus himself remarks how amazed he is how thick his disciples can be sometimes.
Either way the fact remains that if one were to take the "axioms" of Christianity to be those teachings that survive to us to this day, one would be hard pressed to take many current Christian teachings and 'derive' them from those 'axioms'.
The criticism ultimately wasn't even addressed towards Christianity (it was merely a convenient example); it was addressed towards your patently absurd notion that Communism is merely stuff "that Marx wrote". There were socialist thinkers before Marx and there were socialist thinkers afterwards. While surely his presence in the field influenced everything that came after his impact, it is absurd that those additions be considered not part of the exploration of Scientific Socialism.
Where does Marx discuss luxuries? or is this your personal addition to the theory?
Yeah, you must be one of those people who believe that Christianity is simply the "stuff that Jesus said". Please. Communism is not restricted to Marx's writings; he laid the foundational theoretical work for the system he was describing; the evolution of the idea did not stop with his death.
But, beyond that, it doesn't take much assuming to fit a theory of luxury commodities into a Marxist framework. Since his major critique of Capitalism stemmed from the exploitation of the surplus value created by the appropriation of labor, and the major item that he wished to remove from an economic system was that exploitation, my thumbnail description of how luxury goods might work is perfectly apt. A good Marxist economist would probably factor in the fetishization of commodities in attempting to suss out the difference between a true luxury good and a practical but non-necessary good, but since I am neither a Marxist nor an economist, that isn't my job. I'll leave it to others.
Next time you want to make a smartass comment, be sure it isn't based on a caricature of an idea rather than the idea itself. Ideas, per se, do not belong to their creators, right from the moment where they publish it on a page or speak it from their mouths; to assume so is to place an arbitrary (and frankly ridiculous) restriction upon how to understand how an idea has evolved into its present form and the manner in which it is likely to continue to do so.
No, in Communism there is access to luxuries, only they must be produced by the labor of the individual consuming them or appropriated by equal (i.e. no surplus value subtracted) labor from someone who can. Besides, it is narrow to assume that the economic definition of 'luxury' is equivalent to the practical definition of the same. Many here I'm sure can attest that access to sci-fi books and video games, while not strictly necessary for survival, are beneficial to their continued functioning as healthy individuals, and as such aren't really 'unnecessary'. There is such a thing as prioritized consumption.
Yeah, but we've known that theoretical tidbit for nearly thirty years; Conway's Game of Life, and its explorations, have yielded that spatial singularities with only three simple rules can be used to create logic gates and memory, and machines can be built using those elements that are Turing Complete. It's not that this isn't amazing (simple elements yield complex behaviors == awesome!!!111!!!1!), but rather that it's old news. Just taking that insight into a slightly new computational context isn't nearly as breathtaking. Stuff like this is exciting for me, because most of my recent work is based upon similar principles, but for most people it seems like just more of the same.
Good call. I forgot about the "Steve Jackson Games is the Enemy of the State" case (and am ashamed, as I used to play GURPs a bit and should know better). I prefaced my comment with the "I don't care so much" because I'm not a rabid EFF watcher and a pretty consistent meme around here has been "EFF never wins cases" and I was stupid enough never to check the facticity of that meme. I appreciate your correction.
This would be a real philosophical conundrum only if our memories, being formative of our personalities (and hence 'ourselves') were perfect inerrant reproductions of the events that generate them. They aren't (in fact, not even close), and so destroying a memory of an event, while possibly being dangerous to the integrity of the personality as such, isn't in any sense 'erasing an event in the past', but only a highly distorted and in the case of traumatic memories highly adrenaline-charged reproduction of the impression of the event by the individual. Regardless of whether or not we remember an event, it still happened in reality, and there are other lateral consequences to events such as these besides the memory impressions they create (I think Mr. Alphonse pointed out a few above). If our personalities are composed of a collection of these mostly fictitious reproductions, then substituting one for another is not as morally charged as one might think, especially if we are the ones to choose to do it.
All the Eternal Sunshine jokes aside, the movie really only makes an argument against abuse of this capability; the memory of an ex- boyfriend/girlfriend in most cases does not qualify as sufficiently debilitating to qualify as a memory that should be altered/removed.
Might as well get this out of the way before someone else posts this who gives a damn...but that is kind of a dubious distinction. After all, since when has the EFF ever actually won any cases?
I agree that at first this sort of capability will be used for exploration; what I'm chiefly concerned with is when it starts to be turned towards fun and profit (not necessarily in that order). After all, it is very rare that knowledge does not lead to the potential for utility, which if producible and packageable will undoubtedly generate a product demand. It is decently easy to maintain one's scruples in an earnest pursuit of knowledge and understanding; certainly less so in the pursuit of pleasure and money.
I don't know about you, but I'm not in the general practice of putting out fires by dousing them with gasoline. Rushing headlong into further destabilization in the hopes we might collectively trip and fall into a technological singularity seems to me like a very slip-shod way to approach the future.
I agree that for the first time probably in human history we are presented with a significant species existential risk factor. However, I think that rampant garage-and-basement biotechnology for profit is a step in the wrong direction, likely introducing more serious risks and further destabilizations, without much promise of lowering other risks or minimizing existing systemic instabilities. I think, as I stated in my original post, that computer science (and by extension, probably AI) provide the least risky course to pursue, because the tools they provide would enable a better predictive model for planned changes in other areas. I think it best to understand the nature of the systems we are messing with before we start monkeying around with the really fun stuff (like redesigning ourselves and our biosphere).
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I agree, it is an uncomfortable fit at best. I was merely reacting to the fact that Pelagianism is a much poorer fit. While I believe you are right that Heinlein would have rejected the sense of moral relativism/elimativism that seems to run through much of existentialist thought, I think he would have had great affection for the general existentialist point that freedom and responsibility are insolubly linked, as the GGP's quote seems to indicate.
I stand corrected. I must say, that's kind of neat...though I don't imagine much classified material ends up in convenient ditches!
Pelagianism is applicable only in the very narrow framing context of Christianity. The broader moral theory is 'Existentialism' (and specifically Sartrean Existentialism), which does not depend upon the presence or absence of God(s) or afterlives to assert what Heinlein was asserting with his quote. I imagine with Heinlein's fairly public views on Christianity, he would have felt more comfortable calling himself an Existentialist than a Pelagian. And either way, it is a barely reputable exercise to assign labels to a dead guy who cannot respond to his assignment, Pelagian, Existentialist, Christian, Pastafarian, or whatever.
No, 'forage' was last week. This week is 'supplementary environmental appropriation'.
"We got a new directive on that one today. Search and destroy...search and destroy...the new phrase is "sweep and clear". Got it fellas?"
I think GP's point was more that it would be politically expedient for there to be a disaster such that citizens would rally round the flag, as the effect is popularly known. His additional point was that he wouldn't put it past this government to place such an event in motion, cynically exploiting people by generating a disaster and then redirecting attention towards it. That a tactic was used by Fascists does not mean it can only be used by Fascists. The USS Maine was a similar sort of incident, as was the Gulf of Tonkin "attack".
Personally I am not so cynical as to believe the government would directly attack its own citizens ('soft' oppression works much better, with less fuss) and barring that I am not so confident that the government would be competent enough to carry off such an attack convincingly. But I could be wrong.
Last I checked, contempt of court was a crime, as was possessing (much less REPRODUCING) classified documents without proper clearance. But, as you say, since copies have reached far beyond the point of recovery, it would be extremely hard to argue they are in any sense still secret.
Man, that is so 20th Century! These days, we burn down other people's buildings and blame the terrorists.
No, it isn't. Much of philosophy is every bit as rigorous as hard science (though, I will admit, some is not); they (we, actually) are just working with different axioms and different data sets. My personal work revolves around uniting the three perspectives (computation, physics, and metaphysics) through a zero-player game model, much like cellular automata systems. Folks like Wolfram, et. al. give us a bad name. Popper's three-worlds hypothesis or Whitehead's Process and Reality might give you a taste of rigorous metaphysics. And for you who believes that computational processes and computability are so solidly based, I suggest you start by reading some articles on the Philosophy of Mathematics, and some of the interesting semantic work being done in computability logics; things are not so solid as they seem.
Of course he did, wouldn't you?
I certainly would!
He filed the lawsuit with one, since they took the first one away.
Here's to small favors and quick thinking. I have become increasingly worried that the state secrets doctrine would leave a gaping hole in our system of Judicial Constitutional Review, as so long as a domestic surveillance program is a state secret it would be awfully hard to get standing to see the inside of a courtroom on the issue.
And here's to hoping he doesn't mysteriously "commit suicide." From 1500 meters.
They may be crass and amoral, but they aren't stupid. The window for such an act passed as soon as the suit was publicly filed. Tinfoil hat or not, an assassination just wouldn't make sense at this point.
While I generally agree, let's be serious: Terry Gilliam will never in the conceivable future be lacking for camera lenses or budgets to staff and run them. It's kind of like saying "Don't pirate Minority Report, because Stephen Spielberg's future career depends on your purchases!"
Here's to hoping he broke the law and made copies...
I agree with you, but I don't see how that applies to my question... I was asking why it is difficult for a taxpaying citizen to raise questions of constitutional validity based on the notion that the justification of the government emanates from it acting on behalf of the people, and the means of the execution of its business emanate directly from the taxes being collected. A taxpayer's ability to challenge the constitutional legitimacy of a government program isn't mob rule in any sense I've ever heard of.
Thanks for the cites.
I'm curious, then, how this particular case lines up with the general legal notion of judicial review. It seems to me that if a citizen can't prove he/she was harmed by a government program because the existence and breadth of the program is a state secret (such that it is normally never possible to find out if you are in fact having your Civil Rights violated), the constitutionality of the program can never be challenged, which abrogates the general idea that all legislative and executive acts are subject to judicial review and scrutiny as to their constitutionality. Since courts in the US cannot take it upon themselves to rule as per constitutionality, and it seems that there is no way a case or controversy by a party with standing can be generated...
Is there any way 'round?
The difference between Toyota and the Federal Government is, though, that the Fed has police powers, including enforcement and punishment of laws that can deprive persons of life and liberty. And they do this in the name of the people at large. I am a member of 'the-people-at-large'. Since they are doing things in my name (among others), and I am subject to those rules, and I am also a dutiful taxpayer (my *buy-in* to be served by that Fed which acts in my name and others) does this not entitle me to slightly more standing than, say, a petty shareholder in a for-profit company? At least in theory?
...is the standing rulings that have collectively made it law that taxpayer participation (i.e. by paying taxes) in a program is insufficient standing for challenging that program. Is there a lawyer in the house that can explain why if I pay for something that doesn't give me the standing to complain about it? A rational explanation escapes me, but IANAL...
I mean, I can *kind of* see that if taxpayer participation was enough, then the courts would be come much busier with complaints about government spending and programs (perhaps paralyzingly so), but there must be a better way than just excluding the entire class as lacking standing.
I am not arguing that there was substantial disagreement between what Jesus said and what he was quoted as saying in the Bible. I am arguing rather two different points:
1.) Christians today have many ceremonies, beliefs, and practices that cannot be substantially derived from the Bible itself. Thus, Christianity today is much more than simply the "teachings of Jesus" and include exegetical, dogmatic, and apologetic doctrines and works aimed at clarifying what was previously unclear and readjusting the structure of Christianity to an ever-evolving surrounding world.
2.) The words of Jesus as written in the Bible are almost without doubt substantially incomplete. While what he said may very well be what is indicated in the text, it is very likely that is not all that he said. To believe otherwise places him as an absurdly laconic deity, as well as human being. Since he was given heavily to speaking in parables and concealing discursive meanings, it is likely that his hagiographers missed some important details. Has it never crossed your mind that maybe the people who heard him preach sometimes simply didn't get it? Many times Jesus himself remarks how amazed he is how thick his disciples can be sometimes.
Either way the fact remains that if one were to take the "axioms" of Christianity to be those teachings that survive to us to this day, one would be hard pressed to take many current Christian teachings and 'derive' them from those 'axioms'.
The criticism ultimately wasn't even addressed towards Christianity (it was merely a convenient example); it was addressed towards your patently absurd notion that Communism is merely stuff "that Marx wrote". There were socialist thinkers before Marx and there were socialist thinkers afterwards. While surely his presence in the field influenced everything that came after his impact, it is absurd that those additions be considered not part of the exploration of Scientific Socialism.
You honestly believe that all (or even MANY) of current Christian practices can be traced back to a saying (canonical or otherwise) of Jesus? LOL!
Where does Marx discuss luxuries? or is this your personal addition to the theory?
Yeah, you must be one of those people who believe that Christianity is simply the "stuff that Jesus said". Please. Communism is not restricted to Marx's writings; he laid the foundational theoretical work for the system he was describing; the evolution of the idea did not stop with his death.
But, beyond that, it doesn't take much assuming to fit a theory of luxury commodities into a Marxist framework. Since his major critique of Capitalism stemmed from the exploitation of the surplus value created by the appropriation of labor, and the major item that he wished to remove from an economic system was that exploitation, my thumbnail description of how luxury goods might work is perfectly apt. A good Marxist economist would probably factor in the fetishization of commodities in attempting to suss out the difference between a true luxury good and a practical but non-necessary good, but since I am neither a Marxist nor an economist, that isn't my job. I'll leave it to others.
Next time you want to make a smartass comment, be sure it isn't based on a caricature of an idea rather than the idea itself. Ideas, per se, do not belong to their creators, right from the moment where they publish it on a page or speak it from their mouths; to assume so is to place an arbitrary (and frankly ridiculous) restriction upon how to understand how an idea has evolved into its present form and the manner in which it is likely to continue to do so.
No, in Communism there is access to luxuries, only they must be produced by the labor of the individual consuming them or appropriated by equal (i.e. no surplus value subtracted) labor from someone who can. Besides, it is narrow to assume that the economic definition of 'luxury' is equivalent to the practical definition of the same. Many here I'm sure can attest that access to sci-fi books and video games, while not strictly necessary for survival, are beneficial to their continued functioning as healthy individuals, and as such aren't really 'unnecessary'. There is such a thing as prioritized consumption.
Yeah, but we've known that theoretical tidbit for nearly thirty years; Conway's Game of Life, and its explorations, have yielded that spatial singularities with only three simple rules can be used to create logic gates and memory, and machines can be built using those elements that are Turing Complete. It's not that this isn't amazing (simple elements yield complex behaviors == awesome!!!111!!!1!), but rather that it's old news. Just taking that insight into a slightly new computational context isn't nearly as breathtaking. Stuff like this is exciting for me, because most of my recent work is based upon similar principles, but for most people it seems like just more of the same.
Good call. I forgot about the "Steve Jackson Games is the Enemy of the State" case (and am ashamed, as I used to play GURPs a bit and should know better). I prefaced my comment with the "I don't care so much" because I'm not a rabid EFF watcher and a pretty consistent meme around here has been "EFF never wins cases" and I was stupid enough never to check the facticity of that meme. I appreciate your correction.
This would be a real philosophical conundrum only if our memories, being formative of our personalities (and hence 'ourselves') were perfect inerrant reproductions of the events that generate them. They aren't (in fact, not even close), and so destroying a memory of an event, while possibly being dangerous to the integrity of the personality as such, isn't in any sense 'erasing an event in the past', but only a highly distorted and in the case of traumatic memories highly adrenaline-charged reproduction of the impression of the event by the individual. Regardless of whether or not we remember an event, it still happened in reality, and there are other lateral consequences to events such as these besides the memory impressions they create (I think Mr. Alphonse pointed out a few above). If our personalities are composed of a collection of these mostly fictitious reproductions, then substituting one for another is not as morally charged as one might think, especially if we are the ones to choose to do it.
All the Eternal Sunshine jokes aside, the movie really only makes an argument against abuse of this capability; the memory of an ex- boyfriend/girlfriend in most cases does not qualify as sufficiently debilitating to qualify as a memory that should be altered/removed.
Might as well get this out of the way before someone else posts this who gives a damn...but that is kind of a dubious distinction. After all, since when has the EFF ever actually won any cases?
I agree that at first this sort of capability will be used for exploration; what I'm chiefly concerned with is when it starts to be turned towards fun and profit (not necessarily in that order). After all, it is very rare that knowledge does not lead to the potential for utility, which if producible and packageable will undoubtedly generate a product demand. It is decently easy to maintain one's scruples in an earnest pursuit of knowledge and understanding; certainly less so in the pursuit of pleasure and money.
I don't know about you, but I'm not in the general practice of putting out fires by dousing them with gasoline. Rushing headlong into further destabilization in the hopes we might collectively trip and fall into a technological singularity seems to me like a very slip-shod way to approach the future.
I agree that for the first time probably in human history we are presented with a significant species existential risk factor. However, I think that rampant garage-and-basement biotechnology for profit is a step in the wrong direction, likely introducing more serious risks and further destabilizations, without much promise of lowering other risks or minimizing existing systemic instabilities. I think, as I stated in my original post, that computer science (and by extension, probably AI) provide the least risky course to pursue, because the tools they provide would enable a better predictive model for planned changes in other areas. I think it best to understand the nature of the systems we are messing with before we start monkeying around with the really fun stuff (like redesigning ourselves and our biosphere).