Starblade Enkai

America has gradually become more and more ethical over the years, but in its day there is always contention over some of the policies enacted. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08...13fa_fact_mayer http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08...?printable=true While I accept the argument the statement that in general it's the enemy that's responsible for this, we can't take that principle to the extreme of using nuclear weapons against any country that we feel might be a threat to us. There has to be a sense of proportionality, and that falls under the concept of justice. Is there any justice in these so called "black sites"? When justice isn't held as the ideal function of government, even if self defense is held, there is a possibility of unjust actions in the name of self defense. You can usually have both, but sometime you can't. I would say that as long as the torture methods aren't SO bad that any rational person would consider death a more desirable alternative that there isn't really torture so much as harsh interrogation. Furthermore, as long as there are checks and balances to ensure that cool heads prevail, any mistakes made in determining who is in fact an enemy combatant and who is not are justifiable as collateral damage. This way not only is it unlikely that we harshly interrogate an innocent, but we don't do any irreversible damage to said innocent. There ARE boundaries on what a government can do, even if that government is in dire emergency situations. The idea of emergency situations should not apply exactly the same to individuals and governments because they are different entities. What's your take on this?

I voted religion because, let's face it, religion will always lead to some form of socialism, whereas socialism can be rooted out if the only thing to be dealt with was socialism itself. I'd rather own my mind and not own 50% of what I make than own all of what I make but only own 50% of my mind.

Could it be that truly random or otherwise indeterminite events are also statistically bound to follow this law? If so, that says a lot about our assumption about randomness as it pertains to its existence/identity. The link is as follows: http://www.physorg.com/news98015219.html Quite interesting... but why would it work?

... publicly (which is to say forcibly) viewable... Now HERE is the CRUX of the argument. Thank you. You automatically make the assumption that you have a positive right to go to the public. I'm sorry, but there is only a negative right, IE no right for people to use force to prevent you from going on the public. Just because you've demonstrated a public nuisance does NOT give you the right to proscribe said nuisance. For example, if somebody had a bad smelling scent on them and any rational person would try to avoid it once they knew of it; you could say that it is a nuisance. Where is the line drawn between when a public nuisance is simply inconvenient and when it is actually a violation of rights? There IS a line, not just a gray area. Visible pornography, drunk driving, public possession of a gun without state verification of ones responsibility... these are all things which would go away naturally if there were no public spaces except for what government NEEDS to own in order to operate, which means that roads and sidewalks and all other things not government owned would be open to private ownership. Even worries about violation of intellectual property could conceivably be relieved if we simply assured that everything, even individual quanta of information in space-time, could be protected by property rights. However, the typical Objectivist response to this is that this is Libertarianistic wishful thinking. However, I argue that the principle of action counts more than cause and effect pertaining to said action. In the end, principle wins, no matter how long it takes. There will always be an end because there are no infinities in the actual, only a concept of infinity as the lack of a limit, and that is a potential.

There is no such thing as implicitly agreeing to something. You either agree to it consciously or you do not. If there is no general violation of rights in using it on unliscenced drivers, then there is no specific instance of violation of rights simply because the creator doesn't want you to use software a certain way.

A person is a whole unit sum of mind and body. A person's mind may be beautiful but that person's body may not be, and vice versa. In either case, only the mind or body is beautiful but not the other. However, for a person to be beautiful, both mind and body must be beautiful. We should make judgements of that person's mind and body, not as seperate entities, but as necessary conjugates. I think that is something upon which we can all agree.

Not Sudan in particular. However, he did write an article about economic freedom being a prerequisite for social freedom.

I hope Thomas Sowell was correct. Is there still political freedom? Even if there is no constitutional process by which to select new laws, politicians can be persuaded by large donations of money. Furthermore, if everybody is allowed to own guns, and copies of pro-freedom books, I suspect that political freedom will soon follow economic freedom, and thus fuel social freedom.

Okay, can you name the defining characteristic of these groups and then explain why each and every item you listed belongs in there? Sex matters, obviously, but having sex on the sidewalk does not interfere with anybody else. They can always choose to avert their eyes and put on headphones so that they neither have to see nor hear something which is obviously disguesting. Now if those two were in your way, that would be different, since they are blocking you from getting to your destination, but that's a right-of-way issue, not a sex issue.

Any notable flaws in this argument: http://theferrett.livejournal.com/884512.html ? I want to hear your judgement of this little pseudophilosophical livejournal post. Mine? Well, suffice it to say I think this guy needs to check his premises. PS: If you discover which post (or posts, should this guy respond) is (are) mine... do NOT refer to me as Starblade Enkai or anything like that. Please. My real name is Matthew Finnigan and given the point I make it is ESSENTIAL that you refer to me the way any normal human would.

Wait, did Dagny intentionally break into the valley?

That a person could be required to notify ANYONE, absolutely ANYONE who MAY, not who will ultimately because people do have free will, but MAY be subjected to the objectionable is not logically distinct from banning the objectionable. It is de-facto a violation of civil liberties. Even if the requirements only be that from a distance a person going toward the area be notified, the idea that one has to notify others is rediculous. That it would make somebody a part of the sex act is an invalid concept, since it violates locality. Locality in the context of intellectual property rights means that there is some interaction between the information you create and the person using the intellectual property. If sufficient information about the given piece of intellectual property is given to recreate the essential qualities of the intellectual property, and someone does so, they are in violation of intellectual property. As for slander or libel, that's trickier, since it assumes that one is entitled to what WOULD be given to them in situations devoid of fraud. But assuming this is true, then the time of the trade that would have taken place that locality is preserved. Furthermore, there is another act of fraud that occurs to the person who is told the mistruth, and that occurs locally as well. That is effectively analogous to killing one's significant other and denying someone the income that the other person would have made, and then the criminal being subject to civil suits. If I hurt someone who was about to do trade with you, and in such a manner that they can no longer do it, the rights violation occurs to both the direct subject and the inderect subject. All of these explanations infer local abuse. Now you could go on and say that ones rights were violated when one witnesses it, but there is another thing you should know: no coercion has occured. That certain perceptions are evil without being deceitful nor destructive of ones ability to perceive assumes you have a right not to perceive what is actually happening in reality. That is absurd. In fact, that is the crux of the argument against burdens on those wishing to perform non-damaging acts. That someone third-party to the act of sex is being harmed can only exist if there is a right for them not to be causally affeted by anything that is objectionable. That is, their objection to it is more harmful than the methods to remove what is objectionable. That is patently false. Oh, and one more thing. What if you are entering someone's private property? What if you assumed you were invited? What if you WERE invited, according to law? What if they could not remove you from the premises without violating your rights? Could sex be illegal then, even if the sex did not involve anybody who actually owned the property?

I think you are confused about human rights, those of you who would ban sidewalk pornography and actual public sex acts. All our rights derive from the necessity to not only survive, but to be able to pursue our dreams. Life, liberty, property... if you can't explain how having sex in front of somebody somehow deprives them of: 1. Life, 2. Liberty, 3. Property, or 4. Pursuit of our dreams, then you haven't established a legal basis for government intervention. Ultimately, 1, 2, 3, and 4 are our ultimate rights, and there can exist no rights other than these. To establish a right of sexual integrity is to make up an imaginary right. To make up an imaginary right is to murder the concept of rights. Rights are grounded on our OBJECTIVE needs. I'm not saying that sexuality isn't objective, but to say that seeing and hearing sex going on is somehow including you in the act of sex is implying coercion-at-a-distance, something that's just as impossible as action-at-a-distance. Locality is a logical necessity to define when a right is actually being violated. The presence of sex is not a form of coercion, becuase to assume it is would be to allow a nonlocal form of rights violation. I hope I've made my point.

I know that in mathematics it becomes a necessity to conjure up units such as i, j, k, and the like in addition to the unit 1. However, I don't see how nonreal numbers can pertain to something physical. I have heard that Pisaturo and Marcus have attempted to explain nonreal numbers, but I can't quite find their arguments. Now I know such numbers are USEFUL. I just don't know how to derive these from first principles.

If you want to define anarchy in a way that means anything else other than abscence of government, at least have the rationality not to equivocate that definition of anarchy with the one that means "a situation in which there is effectively no government". This is the problem with using a term with two different definitions. If you intend to use a word with multiple meanings, either it must be clear which definition you are using (assuming the definitions are essentially different) or else you run into the problem of equivocation. For example, real and imaginary in terms of cognition means something else than real and imaginary in mathematics. Something else ENTIRELY. However, causality has a different meaning when you ask Hume than it does when you ask Ayn Rand. The defining characteristics are similar enough to be confused, but the details are different enough so that you cannot use the two interchangably. This is when equivocation occurs. It does not make sense to be for anarchy and against governmental regulations that suppress it given the standard "no government" definition of anarchy, but in other cases governmental intrusion would not only be unnecessary, but evil, given that you're using a definition of anarchy that subsumes your ideal of ettequitte, IE anarchy being the lack of rules of conduct which would prohibit noncoercive activities. That is the problem of using the term anarchy the way you do.

Yet you have a right to keep others from using reality through property? Why not make it so that information can be kept as property? Now obviously if you tell people your name you can't then AFTERWORD tell them not to use that information. However, if I am off on the hills having sex with a member of the opposite sex, on my own property because I own the hills, and someone uses a device to see what we're doing from off the property, why can't we reguard that as a violation of rights? The way I see it, information is property. We have only the right to know nature. Nature is the only way rights derive. They do not derive from humanity except through humanity's nature. Therefore, information that exists only as a consequence of our own doing is rightfully theirs. Of course, there would be easements and restrictions. If I do something on your property, it is your right to know. If I do something in public, and you find out about it through someone else, it is your right to know. Perhaps I should clarify my position. You have a right to privacy zones. Privacy zones exist soley within your property, but not to its surface. Does that make more sense? Furthermore, you may ask another person to opt to maintain the integrity of information dissemination restriction within their own field of privacy, and you may make this a condition of the release of the information soley to them. BTW, information as a universal cannot be owned. Only information as an existential. Something that is universal such as a law of nature cannot be restricted to one person, except in the case that you have a document and you wish that nobody else use it except for those you specify. To use something is to be within the causal field not simply of its potential dissemination, but its actual dissemination. What I have done here is to say three things: One, information is free if it is public. Two, information is owned if it is private. Three, information applies only to actual instances of something that represents it and that which is caused by those instances that is traceable back to the source. This will unify intellectual property with causality and unify our assumtions of privacy with an actual principle. I hope this clarifies things.

I was wondering... is it wrong to spy? I think that if you believe someone may be a threat to you in the future, spying on them is the best way to be able to determine their intent, and thus you may either obtain proof that they are out to get you, or you may fail to obtain proof that they are out to get you. National security definately works like this. However, aside from that, you don't have any right at all to spy on someone. Acquiring information from someone should only be done by their consent. We need privacy in order to protect ourselves. If someone spies on us, they could learn a weakness. Therefore, I think that intellectual property theft must be determined to exist when one engages in an act to spy. On the other hand, when you do give someone consent to information that is in your posession (not the universal of the information, but the concrete. Information exists as a concrete, since to own a universal would be absurd) that right becomes a shared right. When you set the terms and conditions, you establish a contract either explicitly or implicitly. You may do whatever you want with information that is either yours alone or shared between a group with you in it provided that you did not consent to conditions on the information beforehand. In this sense, if I tell you you must keep something a secret, you are violating my rights by telling that secret. Likewise, if you spy on me in order to obtain information, you are also violating my right. The right to privacy is the ultimate expression of property as it pertains to the intellectual. So why don't we replace patents, copyrights, and trademarks (or service marks) and other forms of intellectual property with the right to withhold information and contain its release should its release violate a condition you set with someone in order that they may partake of it? Wouldn't that be the most logical, and 'free market' way of dealing with IP?

Is it possible for something that does not exist to play a part in the way things in existence interact? Furthermore, is it possible for something to have an identity without an existence, or vice versa? I came upon an argument that time does not exist. I couldn't identify a single argument for it, and either I didn't understand their argument, or more likely, they had multiple arguments. If time didn't exist, then doesn't that mean that I only exist in one moment? Furthermore, if time doesn't exist, then neither can space, because time and space are interdependent. Maybe I'm using the word 'exist' wrong, which is why I have come to ask: What does it mean for something to exist? To me, something exists even if it is only a property of something tangible, or a system of things that are tangible. To me, since existence and identity are interchangeable, to say something doesn't exist is to say it doesn't have an identity. It is absurd to say that time doesn't have an identity, or that it only has an identity in relation to the mind, so therefore it is absurd to say that it does not exist, or that it only has an existence in relation to the mind. However, because defining our terms is so important, I want to center this argument on the definition of existence. Does a definition of something exist? Let me repeat myself: What does existence mean? Ayn Rand must have clarified this somewhere in her essay about universals. I was wondering if anybody can help me. I know I'm on to something.

Reguardless of whether it was right or wrong, it shouldn't be criminalized. Since when did abuse/neglect mean having sex in front of children?

I don't see why having intellectual property, which applies to mean that anyone who wants to invent indepentantly can't be left alone, is a violation of rights, but having the right to a secret, something which protects your privacy and any manifestation of information you create yourself, and to have that secret enforced unless you willingly give it away without acquiring proper consent from them to respect it qua secret, IE to have a secret of any sort which is not another person's right to know, and to have the courts enforce secrecy if someone 'steals' the information, is bad. If you own something then anything it causes is yours too. Right and responsibility. Information is embodied in a source of information, otherwise it is too abstract to own. Why is it that if, say, you were having an argument with someone and they agreed and signed a contract not to release that argument, and it got out, you can't make an injunction against the public transfer of the argument, but yet if someone millions of miles away makes a new kind of rock then you are automatically stuck with not being able to do research on your own even though you didn't acquire it from them and just want to be left alone. To have the right... to be left alone. That is the esscence of rights, isn't it?

You have a point. Intimacy is part of what makes sex good. However, there is a big difference between immoral and illegal. Why should it be against the law to have sex in public or to put pornography on a billboard or anything like that? It's not coercing anyone.

Thanks. I felt rather embarassed at having accidentally posted in debate. Which is why I brought this issue up... kinda like, covering my mistakes. Which I know I shouldn't really do.

I found a John David Galt when I was googling "Equal Footing". Originally my intent was to create a theory that dealt with identity and existence and how neither one preceeded the other in the way that they both preceed consciousness. Then I found this page on the internet. In the article it mentions a variant of a game, whereas in the variant that is played, everybody start of equally and can gain however many 'points' they want. Though I've only made a cursory examination of the page, I think that Ayn Rand at least subconsciously knew about this, and somehow ended up using that name in her book Atlas Shrugged. I could be wrong, but I think there is merit to the idea. Oh, yes, and I realize I accidentally posted this in the debate forum, so how about I start a debate, something a bit more worthy of being debated than this topic? Do you think Ayn Rand used words or names that already existed and that had symbolic meaning, even if only to her, and that she did so intentionally? Or do you think she just made up words on the spot that were completely original?

I know I'm being lazy, but could you please provide a link?

I'd like to bring into this argument the fact that emotional damage can only really be measured by judging how much less they are capable of doing things such as being productive, honest, et cetera, and not simply how much they dislike it. Happiness affecting issues can only be judged by showing that the person is emotionally maladjusted enough that they exhibit symptoms of mental illness. I think even in the case where there's nothing ON PRINCIPLE wrong with doing something to your child, if it AFFECTS them negatively then they are responsible for REVERSING said effect. If having sex in front of your child damages the child, then rather than punish the adults by making them go to prison or taking the child away, simply require them to put the child through therapy. And remember, that's an IF. It's up to psychologists to determine IF you've done damage to the child. Necessarily, said psychologists should exhibit objectivity, preferrably a la Ayn Rand. Another thing is that sex isn't inherently evil. Nor is it inherently good. Sex as equals is not harmful at all, no matter what the age. Sex with one as a kind of authority figure over the other is harmful. So if a 17 year old and a 15 year old do it in some form or another but there is no issue of authority, it should at most be penalized by community service, and at least nothing at all since neither of them are 18. Or perhaps some kind of service to the more vulnerable child by the less vulnerable child, with relative age only being a factor and not the totality of the equation. Unless of course one tried to use some kind of authority. Then the child that tried to use authority is being coercive. ((I had to edit that last part in because I knew raising the issue of authority without using it would be confusing.)) At any rate, I think most or all of you are failing to classify things by their essentials. I can't give a good example of this except to say that topic drift has occurred in such a manner that the issues involved with this are widening rather than narrowing as any good argument should do. Is it that hard to trace an issue back to its essentials? XP