ruveyn1
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Posts posted by ruveyn1
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Entities are entities at any scale.
But physical laws are scale dependent. At the atomic and subatomic level entities do not behave according to classical laws.
ruveyn1
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Given a choice between Justice and Mercy, choose Justice every time.
ruveyn1
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First you use the term invasion to describe illegal immigration. This is a misuse of the term since an invasion would imply that at least a significant number of these illegals are coming here to steal or plunder. Now, you are backing down to the possibility that a tiny number among those millions may want to harm the U.S. Well, it is not that difficult to come to the U.S. legally on a short-visit visa: it is what the 911 hijackers did. Also, legalizing people who can show they've lived in the U.S for a few years and have been working here illegally has nothing to do with terrorism.
The correct approach to terrorists sneaking across the border is to ensure that we make it easy and legal for people who want to come to work here to do so. The only people who will need to sneak across the border in that situation would be people who think they would be rejected by the screening: mostly those who have committed crimes in the U.S. and have been deported. Also, any tiny number of terrorists who think they might be screened out if they try to come here legally. In a scenario like that, patrolling and controlling the border will be far safer, because people will no longer make the completely justified assumption that people sneaking in are most likely just trying to find a better job. Legalization is the route to safety.
The point I am making is the government has to control who comes over our borders. It is part of their function of national defense.
As to the other "illegals" what assurance do we have they are not carrying some kind of dreadful contagious disease, like Ebola.
To guard the health of the national all incoming persons should come through a controlled portal so their health can be checked.
In the Old Days when zillions of immigrants came into New York by way of Ellis Island, they were checked for symptoms of leprosy, tuberculosis and small pox. If there was any doubt they were quarantined for 6 weeks on Ellis Island. If they showed frank symptoms of a communicable disease they were sent back on the next returning boat.
ruveyn1
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A quick point: Objectivism starts with "existence exists and you know it". What does libertarianism start with? Liberty? Who's liberty? To do what? I think I can see the problem already. The phenomenon of the pro life vs pro choice libertarians would appear to illustrate the problem. I will elaborate further at a later time.
We can say this object or that object exists. We can ever say this sort of object or that sort of object exists.
But is existence an object? Is existence a sort of object?
Is existence a -thing-. Is existence a -property- or predicate?
ruveyn1
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So to keep invited immigrants from voluntarily coming across property where they are invited by private owners,
Suppose those -invited- guests are invited by the members of a Jihadi sleeper cell?
We live in a warring world and military security has a certain degree of priority in certain circumstances.
Anyway, think about it.
ruveyn1
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Only if you assume the government owns the entire country and everyone's property in it. Otherwise, if I want to invite foreigners to my property, it is forced exclusion against my and the foreigner's inviolate rights if you try to stop it.
Since the government is responsible for deterring or repelling invasions I would not object to them taking over management (if not ownership) of a strip of land around all the borders and littoral extents (i.e. the coast guard and navy get to which a 10 mile strip of water off our shores). Normal private owners are not in the military business and we have government which among other things operate our armies and navies.
Anything on the interior, of course, should be privately owned by individuals or voluntary associations of individuals except for certain facilities which are required for the government to carry out its rightful functions -- police, army and courthouses.
ruveyn1
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Objectivst (the set) is a proper subset of libertarian (the set) Please not the lower case "l" to distinguish it from Libertarian which is a political party. There are libertarian socialists, i.e. minarchists who believe that the means of production should be collectively owned by both the managers and workers of of firm They have take the State out of the ownership loop. I sincerely doubt there are any Objectivists who assent to even this private mode of collective ownership.
he real divergence of opinion occurs that this point: Point --- can politics of a society be cleanly separated from the manner of property ownership in the society or the matter of how business is conducted (regulated/not regulated taxed/not taxed etc.). Again I doubt whether an Objectivist sees any bright line separation between politics and the economy.
My position is this: If a firm which consists of owners and managers and workers decides to make every one an owner (of some percent of the value of the assets of the firm) and give workers a voice in the management of the firm, I so nothing really objectionable provided it is done voluntarily. I am not sure I would be comfortable sharing a firm I founded with the workers but I surely would like to hear what they have to say, after all the workers whom I employ are (if we are successful) helping to make me rich. I cannot be so obtuse that I would not acknowledge the fact.
ruveyn1
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Illegal immigration is trespass. Going onto someone else's property without permission is not only illegal it is immoral. Property should be inviolate against theft, damage or trespass.
ruveyn1
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We have to refine what we mean by caring about what others think. Suppose you saw something really odd happening and you could not identify or comprehend what it was. If someone was near you and saw whateveritwas also, you might ask what do you see? In that case you do care what the other person thought. Also if you ask someone else to help check you work (you are requesting correctness check) then you obviously care what the other person thought.
Whenever we request corroboration we care what the other person thought.
ruveyn1
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At the moment "dark energy" is just a placeholder for something we do not understand. You have have to call it something so "dark energy" is the current name of the I don't know what that seems to be causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate.
ruveyn1
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Unfortunately, it hasn't been proven that telomere shortening is the cause (or even so much as a contributing factor) of aging.
I say unfortunately because, if your description were accurate, then we would be that much closer to slowing down the aging process. The enzyme telomerase (which is active in reproductive cells - sperm and eggs - and in cancer cells, and is what causes them to be "immortal") has in fact been used to keep other cells dividing beyond their normal lifespan, in lab experiments.
So, if what you're saying were fact, we'd be the opposite of doomed.
http://learn.genetic...aits/telomeres/
Do you know any human people who are over 200 years old? If not, do you wonder why?
ruveyn1
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Your savings sitting in your bank account aren't actually there you realise? So you are entangled in the "credit/debt system" whether you want to be or not. I guess you could advocate making fractional reserve banking illegal, but this would be an initiation of force against banks, and so would require more cognitive dissonance from you.
Those deadbeat children, elderly people, and disabled people!
What an insult to America. What happened in Greece cannot happen in America for several reasons. One is that the US's debt's are denominated in a currency that it controls ie the US dollar. Whereas Greece's debt's are denominated in a currency it does not control ie the Euro. The economic implications to this are vast and I think you should read about them before making ridiculous comparisons!
The currency in the Weimar Republic was denominated by a currency the government controlled. It did not help. The currency of the Weimar Republic became radically debased by runaway printing presses. The collapse of the currency was one of the things that lead to the political coup that the Nazis inflicted on Germany.
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
ruveyn1
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I know what you are saying but I don't think it is accurate. Using your terminology it would be more accurate to say: We are biologically programmed to live.
The telomeres degrade with each duplication. After 50 duplications or so the daughter cell of the 51 st generation (or so) dies. Unless it is cancerous in which case the entire organism will die of the cancel. Any activity which is a physical consequence of the underlying substance or object can be said to be "programmed". The laws of physics and chemistry are the ultimate "program" of the cosmos.
Bottom line. We are all doomed. But that is a good thing in the large. That assures there will always be room for New Stuff as long as the Sun shines, which is not forever. The Sun is programmed to die. It will die in about 5 billion years or so. But humans will not be around to enjoy the show.
ruveyn1
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The main point is that in a -private- domain there is no "first amendment". The owner of the domain can decide how much exercise of free speech (or press) can be exercised on -his- turf. Freedom of Speech is a limitation on government power, no a right that can be exercised on someone else's property.
ruveyn1
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Why the discussion about mind/brain dicothomy? In a philosophic sense it doesn't matter , unless you are trying to show that consciousness does not exist. If you agree that consciousness exists , than the scientific explanation of the phenomenon is tangential to consciousness as such. If it could be shown that the mind actually resides or emerges from the liver, how would that change or affect what consciousness is?
Yes. You can get a liver transplant. You can't get a brain transplant.
ruveyn1
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New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism
It looks like far more heat is released into space than predicted or thought.
I keep pointing out (and few listen to me) that we have lots of climate models and little or no climate science. The climate models proposed by the would be gurus of climate are numbers fitted to presuppositions rather than numbers fitted to facts.
The fellow who invented the "hockey stick" obliterated the medieval warming period (that was before the industrial revolution, btw).
ruveyn1
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And how you propose to do that? Since roads are public property which means they belong to everybody and to nobody in particular and therefore in fact controlled by government, the only way to make money is to get a government tender. That how you perceive an American capitalist? A sort of James Taggart? The real capitalist has to be a rightful owner of the property he uses to make profit. In the case when he has to get a government permission to do so, or uses government property created by tax money, he becomes an accomplice in robbery.
One can make an honest profit using rented facilities.
Of course this raises the question: how good and reliable a Land Lord is the government?
ruveyn
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Is there a difference between government and dispensers of justice? If individuals are in the right to 'dispense' justice , as long as they follow correct procedures, then there is no need for government?
Quid custodiet ad ipsos custodii? Who shall guard, the Guardians of justice? And what keeps a righteous group of citizens from becoming a vigilante gang?
That problem is as old as the notion of government and justice. 8000 years later and there is still no sure fire answer.
ruveyn1
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Ok. If the brain (the physical) is also the mind, then the brain/mind is a purely physical "thing". Since all thought, which is the start if all action, i.e. volition and/or free will, is simply the result of an electro-chemical reaction in the brain, one has to ask what the prime instigator of that thought is. N'est ce pas?
Answer: Ion transporting through a semi-permeable membrane.
And yes the brain is our mind in the sense that the process we call mind (or better yet, minding) is the emergent effect of physical causes.
ruveyn1
How do I get rid of this damned bolding?
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I read about this before. It's pretty awesome.
However not one word on access time to recall what is stored. Let me put a hypothetical to you. Suppose you had a storage entity which could hold an infinite amount of data. The catch is, the more you store in it, the longer it takes to get anything out. The question is: is this infinite information storage entity worth the powder to blow it to smithereens?
ruveyn1
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That really is a classic article, and its worth reading so that every time you hear someone comparing an economy to a household/business you know their analysis is likely to be poor.
Aristotle made that very point in his -Politics-. The word has been out for over 2300 years.
ruveyn1
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Hmmm... reproduction or life... seems to me you can't have one without the other. Every individual is a reproduction of their parents, so even the act of choosing life as ones highest value is preceded and dependent on another valuing reproduction. Being both someones child and someones parent I'm biased on this issue, but I think choosing life acknowledges reproduction as an equal value.
Even if an individual human chooses not to have offspring the very cells of his body will keep on replicating until the telomeres on the chromosomes are used up at which point a normal cell ceases to reproduce. BTW our body cells are good for about fifty replications. The only cells that reproduce themselves after that point are cancerous which will kill the entire organism in good time.
We are biologically programmed to die, eventually
ruveyn1
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The basic principle is that voting should be part of a negative feedback loop controlling government action. A positive feedback or open loop should be prevented. That means people receiving goodies from the treasury of the commonwealth should not be able to vote themselves more of the same.
It has been pointed out by many, that democracy is inherently unstable. As soon as a politician learns to buy votes by dispensing benefits from the common treasury he and his like will just keep on doing more of the same.
We are already (here in the U.S.) living through that. There is a good chance the system will come crashing down around our ears.
ruveyn1
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All early civilizations had religion. Greece was the first to separate "mythos" and "numos", or myth from nature.
The disjunction would be "mythos" and "logos". Nature in Greek is "phusis" from which we get our words physics and physical.
ruveyn1
Was the strike, a purge?
in Ayn Rand Book Club
Posted
Yes and No. The United States is the longest existing republic under the same constitution. Same, in the sense that the basic structure of function of what government is or is not to do is still in effect (sort of) although much of the constitution is now ignored or perversely interpreted by our Lords and Masters. The provenance of the basic principles go back to John Locke circa 350 years.
ruveyn1