Greebo
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Posts posted by Greebo
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I see...
Than what about cars and computers?
Computers were developed primarily by the military at first. IIRC ENIAC was initially developed for rapid ballistic trajectory calculations.
Cars? That's a good potential candidate
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How about roads? Are there any roads out there built not from taxpayer money?
Road building is a technology that's thousands of years old, developed initially in the Roman Empire. The basic technology hasn't changed much, just the materials used. As such, not sure any single road would qualify without some new unique characteristic that distinguished it from other roads in it's design and construction.
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However, putting the ideas of the creator aside, and looking at the outcome -- can we say it is a bad thing ? A good thing ?
The nature of a ponzi scheme is such that any "investment" into one is nothing more than a gamble. The gamble is a bet on whether or not you will be able to win before everyone else involved tries to win and the scheme collapses.
The very design of the scheme is inherently flawed - it is unsupportable in the long term - and the longer it runs before the inevitable collapse, the lower your chances of being able to win.
So now we have this "bank". It was built by people puting in money for two reasons:
- great interest
- the philosophical idea of helping others, by pooling money together.
I would suggest that those reasons are completely incorrect and baseless. Those who "invest" are trying to get rich, they're trying to help themselves, and they're ignoring the need to examine that in which they are investing in order to determine its worth.
What do you think about the moral implications of such a system ? Is this capitalism on socialism ?It is neither. It is fraud. It is promising great returns to everyone who joins, when the founders know that the inherent design CANNOT succeed in the long term. It's a mechansim designed to dupe the ignorant and make the founders rich. Now this particular one is different in that it outright promises that it can't promise you'll get rich - so arguably at least he's being honest about it, but even that kind of statement can be used as a tool to build up a false confidence in the integrity of the person pulling the con.
However, the inclinations of the creator of MMM are socialisticI very much doubt that.
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Ok, how about this: Property are those values that man earns, rightfully, through work and/or trade.
"Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values." - Rand
Now this raises the question : Is reputation a material value? Intellectual property is a material value, and yet the actual property isn't a book or a cd or a blueprint or other material thing, but the arrangement of concepts that the book, cd or blueprint represents. A reputation, likewise, has no material existence, but as Rand herself acknowledged (mentioned elsewhere above), is a necessary tool for making reasonable evaluations of others without requiring us to become subject experts in every subject on the planet.
If a reputation is used to determine whether one will work with some other (say, a contractor), then that reputation is OF material value to that contractor. What that contractor has earned is the right to have people form opinions about him based upon his actions, and while he has no right to direct the nature of their opinion, I contend that he HAS earned the facts about his actions that are used as the basis of those opinions. Those facts about what he did and what he is are HIS FACTS, and his alone - he caused them to exist just as surely as Hank Reardon caused Reardon Metal to exist - and when someone puts forth falsehoods as if they were facts, they corupt the basis that should be used in the forming of those opinions. They destroy his property - the facts about him - without any right to do so.
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Let me make some remarks on Greebo arguments:
1) Greebo hasn't properly responded to the observation that truth can also cause harm. By keeping focused on the harm produced, and not from the action prevented (if any), Greebo keeps locked in a circle.
I don't agree with this assessment. Harm was only one element of the argument I put forth - and I do believe I did make the distinction that the harm caused must be done so under false pretenses. Now I *do* agree that harm is not the *primary* consideration, but it is a consideration where defining force is involved. After all - a drunk can drive home and *actually* harm no-one, but expose others to the risk of harm. There is no physical force used against others in that instance, but the other people on the road are, nevertheless, harmed by the exposure to a risk that they did not consent to and which did not occur either naturally or as the result of their own actions.
The truth may harm someone, but in that case the harm is caused as a natural consequence of reality - no false pretense, no exposure that was not the result of a natural consequence. If one has done nothing to be ashamed of, the truth can only truly harm you if you attempt to evade its reality (See Dagny Taggert's reaction to the attempted blackmail of Lillian Reardon).
3) Damaging someone's reputation by telling a lie keeps being a very, very bad thing. But there are ways to deal with a bad guy, other than initiating force with retaliatory force is not applicable. Bad guys can be punished by ostracism and boycott.But as Craig24 pointed out, damaging someone's reputation by telling a lie is an attack on facts - a falsifying of reality that deliberately causes harm to another. Slander and libel are done out of malicious intent - with the deliberate intent to cause harm to someone. While coersion can be one application of force, it's not the only one - it's still wrong to initiate force against someone if the only desire IS to use force and to cause harm. How then can one argue that force to cause harm is not ok, but falsification of reality in order to cause harm IS?
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And the rabbit hole is back!
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The self-existent (not owing any part or aspect of its existence to anything else outside of it), omnipotent (having the power to do all things/ without any weakness), omniscient (knowing all things) , omnipresent (having no spatial limitations, but all of space and time being inside of Him), immutable (unchangeable in His essence, not ultimately affected by anything other than Himself) Being which created all other existents and upholds all other existents by His will and the word of His power.
I find this definition to be inherently unworkable.
If all of space and time is inside of God, where is God, and how does he cause anything to occur, if he is outside of time?
I won't bother asking how you assert such a being exists - we've been down that rabbit hole before, and you have yet to acknowledge that your requirement for his existence is not only arbitrary but that it also arbitrarily ignores other possible solutions to the demand arbitrarily created.
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For the record, I am speaking of the "Christian Version" of God - the Classical Christian God (of Aquinas, Edwards, etc..).
Sorry, can you be more specific? Can you please summarize the definition of the Classical Christian God (of Aquinas, Edwards, etc..)
The rest are irrational.Proof required.
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That really doesn't make any difference. All these gods are supernatural beings, meaning they transcend reality and therefore cannot be defined in principle.
Perhaps. But until we have a definition of God, we cannot be certain of the context we're dealing with, can we? If we don't have a clearly defined context, then we're dealing with an arbitrary definition of God - whatever suits the moment - and there is no rational discussion that can be held on that foundation.
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Does the Law of Identity contradict the existence of God?
Please define God.
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Psychological problems or no, this "Joe" does not have any right to evade the consequences of falsifying reality, and you have no obligation to enable his doing so.
You can choose to spare his feelings if you wish, but what you've described rather puts me in mind of saying, "Well, this dog is biting me, but it's rabid, so I don't want to shoot it." Whether the dog is rabid or not has no bearing on the fact that the dog is biting your arm off.
That he has psychological issues isn't, in other words, relevant. He's causing you harm with his falsehoods, and whether he's under the belief that they're true cause he's crazy or if he's making them up deliberately to hurt you doesn't matter - you no obligation to "take it" in either case.
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Ideas and thoughts aren't property, but the obvious answer is that any thought or piece of knowledge belongs to the person who's mind it happens to reside in.
So, instances of this general opinion you mention, belong to the individuals who hold said instances. For instance, my opinion of you belongs to me. It certainly isn't your property.
Once again - a reputation is something someone strives to gain and to keep. That general consensus is earned. The value is the good opinion of other individuals, bought and paid for by the actions of the person to whom the reputation applies. That reputation is of no *value* to the person with the opinion, but it is of vital value to the person to whom it applies.
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Define the concept force please. You seem to be using it differently than me.
I think its more a concept of what constitutes *physical* force. You acknowledge that fraud is force because there is a physical component to it - ie - goods are acquired in an illicit manner. But that is not all that constitutes physicial force. The *threat* of force is force, for one - if I threaten to kill you, I'm initiating force without lifting a finger. The shouting of fire in a theater isn't wrong because people get hurt - someone might NOT get hurt at all, and yet the act is and should be criminal. Driving while drunk is wrong not beacause it kills people (people drive drunk with alarming frequency without hurting anyone including themselves), but because it imposes a risk of harm upon others that is not deserved, just as the shouting of fire does so.
Reputation is a general opinion of you, not an individual one. Who else could you say owns a reputation but the person to whom it applies.Reputation is other people's opinions of you, right? Do you really own someone's opinion of you? Are you saying that my opinion of you is your property?That is not true. The owner of intellectual property does not own the contents of people's minds, only the physical instances of his book, recording, musical composition, design feature or invention, etc.The owner of the IP owns the content of HIS mind. If you create a new idea or pattern of sounds never created before, and you never, ever share it with anyone else, then it solely is yours and yours alone. The person who receives that idea or pattern receives it in only one of two ways - honestly or illicitly - and would never have it if not for the creator who owns the IP. What the owner of the IP does when he shares that IP is grants the receiver the right to obtain a copy of that pattern - whether that copy is physically tangible as in a book, or intangible as in a remembered song. No, the owner of the IP can never force you to UN remember a song, but assuming you gained that memory rightfully, you have every right to keep it - just not redistribute it.
With a reputation, again, its something a person works to have and to keep. The reputation of a person *is a value* to that person. I do not know how you could possibly imagine otherwise.
The violation of intellectual property, just like fraud, is very much a physical act of force, where one holds on to and uses a physical object that does not belong to him.If nothing else, the very act of speaking or writing a falsehood is a physical action. So is shooting a gun, or swinging a fist. It isn't the shooting or the swinging that is the problem, it's the shooting or swinging *or speaking* at someone else that's the problem.
Your freedom of speech is limited just as all your other freedoms - at the end of your own being. If I can swing my arms wildly as long as I don't wrongly affect someone else, why shouldn't the same rule apply to speech - you can say whatever you like but you're limited at what wrongly affects someone else?
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You're right - fraud *is* force. Fraud is force even without physical action because it deprives the other party of something they rightfully possess, something that also need not be *physical* (such as intellectual property).
Slander and Libel - the deliberate acts of lying about a party - deprives that party of of a reputation that they have earned, substituting for it a reputation that is damaged - a reputation that will be used by others to evaluate their own dealings with that person. (It has already been shown why this use of reputation is a necessity)
So yes, reputation is property, and if your reputation is damaged wrongfully, by fraud, you are deprived of the reputation to which you should be entitled, just as much as if I defraud you in a financial manner and withheld from you money which you should otherwise rightfully possess.
While it is true that you can also cause the reputation harm by telling the truth, if the reputation suffers from the truth, that is because the reputation itself is not deserved, and so you can have no rightful claim to it.
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I'm using the objective definition, not the subjective "whatever's illegal" one.
The first lie results in actual physical force, that actually hurts people. People get shoved to the ground and trampled. In the second case, there is no force involved whatsoever (unless the lie does result in the use of force, in which case, like I said above, the lying party should be liable for it in civil court, much like he would be now).
No, the lying party is at fault in both cases. However, in the first case, he is at fault for people losing life or limb (their rights are clearly violated, and violently so).
In the second case he is at fault for something that is immoral, but not a rights violation (the supposed right to a reputation is not a right to life, liberty or property, therefor it is not a right). You have every right to blame someone for harming your reputation by lying about you. But you don't get to use force against them, because they haven't used force against you.
Are you forgetting that Ayn Rand defined fraud as a form of force?
A unilateral breach of contract involves an indirect use of physical force: it consists, in essence, of one man receiving the material values, goods or services of another, then refusing to pay for them and thus keeping them by force (by mere physical possession), not by right—i.e., keeping them without the consent of their owner. Fraud involves a similarly indirect use of force: it consists of obtaining material values without their owner’s consent, under false pretenses or false promises.Now, I would posit that a reputation is something of material value, one which even rational men are compelled to rely upon at times:
How would Washington bureaucrats—or Congressmen, for that matter—know which scientist to encourage, particularly in so controversial a field as social science? The safest method is to choose men who have achieved some sort of reputation. Whether their reputation is deserved or not, whether their achievements are valid or not, whether they rose by merit, pull, publicity or accident, are questions which the awarders do not and cannot consider. When personal judgment is inoperative (or forbidden), men’s first concern is not how to choose, but how to justify their choice. This will necessarily prompt committee members, bureaucrats and politicians to gravitate toward “prestigious names.” The result is to help establish those already established—i.e., to entrench the status quo.
The worst part of it is the fact that this method of selection is not confined to the cowardly or the corrupt, that the honest official is obliged to use it. The method is forced on him by the terms of the situation. To pass an informed, independent judgment on the value of every applicant or project in every field of science, an official would have to be a universal scholar. If he consults “experts” in the field, the dilemma remains: either he has to be a scholar who knows which experts to consult—or he has to surrender his judgment to men trained by the very professors he is supposed to judge. The awarding of grants to famous “leaders,” therefore, appears to him as the only fair policy—on the premise that “somebody made them famous, somebody knows, even if I don’t.”
And based on the above, I would think Ms. Rand would agree.
So, when a reputation is damaged by the deliberate actions of another (reporter or not), material harm IS done, in the same way that fraud causes material harm via indirect force.
If reputation has no value, and damage to one's reputation is not really damage, then one is compelled by rational necessity to validate every aspect of every person they encounter, including the veracity of the assertion that the fireman in the burning (for real burnin this time) theater who is ostensibly there to save your life really means it. Naturally, this is absurd - you accept the good faith intent of the fireman because he's at the scene of a fire, he's dressed as a fireman, and most importantly, because firemen are universally known (or reputed) to be dedicated to preserving life and property.
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I should add something important: If I spread a lie about you with the purpose of convincing people to kill you (or the cops to arrest you, etc.), and they do, that is a form of libel that is a crime. I caused force to be used against you.
The kind of libel that should not be a crime is when I spread a lie about you, other people choose to believe it, but neither party uses force against you. We all just shun you, or call you bad names, based on that lie. That is not a crime, it is well withing all our rights to action to do this to you. It's immoral, but not a crime. Both civil and criminal courts should stay out of it.
Odd definition of crime, since libel *is* a crime, currently.
So we agree on the definition of force wrt shouting fire and those other instances.
Explain to me how if I lie and shout fire and cause people to react a certain way that harms you cause you got trampled, it's force, but if I lie about you and cause people to react a certain way that harms you (your reputation), it's not force?
Your argument is that the people reacting to me shouting fire choose to believe me, so I'm at fault, but if I lie about you and harm you, the people who choose to believe me chose to believe me so I'm not at fault...
By your reasoning, if I shout fire, people are obligated to look for the fire and prove it exists before reacting.
Also for your reference:
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I define individual freedom as everything, except things that rely on force to prevent another person from acting freely. So the use of physical force is the only boundary, by my definition.
How would you define a circumstance where I freely introduce pollutants into the air, and they drift into your yard and poison you? How would you define a circumstance where I omit details about a transaction, falsly claiming that I don't know, and we engage in the trade, and you find that I knew all along that the product I just sold you was faulty?
If I should "Fire" in a crowded theater, and people panic and flee and 3 people die in the stampede, and its clear that I knew that there was no fire, per your definition, I have not used force and therefore I'm not liable for those deaths.
One can cause harm to another person in two ways: with the use of physical force, and without it. I am for outlawing the former, and allowing the latter.My questions are these:
1. What is your definition of individual freedom?
2. What is your position on allowing someone to cause harm to another without the use of physical force? Irrespective of your answer, please elaborate on why.
I look at it more like this:
If I do something, or don't do something, and the effect upon you is identical to what would happen if I didn't exist, then I haven't acted upon you.
But if I do something, or don't do something, and the effect upon you ends up being different to what would happen if I didn't exist, then I have acted upon you.
Example - A shop keeper denies service to a gay couple. The gay couple claims their rights have been violated - but the result on the gay couple is just the same as if the shop and keeper didn't exist. No shop/keeper, no service to gay couple - no infringement on anyone. But if the law says the shop keeper MUST do business with the gay couple, then the shop keeper is effected in that he must engage in trade he doesn't wish to, trade which wouldn't happen if the gay couple doesn't exist. Result: Infringement upon the shop keeper's rights.
When someone deliberatly spreads untruths about you, and damage to your reputation results, that damage wouldn't occur if you hadn't been lied about.
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The government should be limited to the protection of individual right. This is wrong because someone telling a lie is not a restriction on your freedom to act.
When lies on the part of one party actually cause harm to a second parties reputation, that results in material harm to the second party. It's one thing to falsify reality for your own personal delusions, but to deliberately falsify reality in a way to discredit or besmirch another party crosses the boundary of individual freedoms.
As stated earlier, it's quite difficult to prove, but if it can be shown that the lie was deliberate and malicious in intent, then the person doing the lying is responsible for the damage, and should be held accountable.
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Objectivists are not required to like homosexuality or homosexuals. As individuals, we have every right to our personal preferences. Attacking someone for not liking homosexuality (calling them homophobic) is anti-Objectivist - you're basically attempting to bully/guilt someone into endorsing a gender preference.
Personally, I am heterosexual but have no personal objection to homosexuality, its just not my thing.
What Objectivists are required to do with regard to homosexuality is determine whether the sexual preferences of others infringe in any way upon Man's rights.
That argument was settled by Rand herself. Despite her personal possibly homophobic loathing of homosexuality, she stated catagorically that it isn't really anyone's business but the person involved. (I'm not sure her exact words but that's the gist)
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Some specific citations listed here:
http://baselinescenario.com/2012/01/18/the-end-of-the-blog/
To answer freestyle:
A - Not in any way not already protected
B - Yes, in that due process can be bypassed and punishment applied simply by sending a letter
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Being able to effectively shut down a website on the mere accusation of piracy is inflicting punishment before judgement - a most basic violation of due process.
The bill doesn't add any more real protections to IP (which SHOULD be protected, of course), it only adds measures to punish the innocent and ignorant.
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Somebody else correct me if I'm wrong as admittedly, I'm speaking off the top of my head and haven't checked recently, but I'm pretty sure somewhere in reliable sources on Oism there is something stated to the effect that yes, being a "full time parent" can be moral if one approaches it as their career seriously while their children are young and require a lot of supervision.
Atlas Shrugged, in the Gulch, Dagny meets a woman who's primary focus is on raising her children to think.
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I agree that most of the religion threads are started not by O'ists but by religious believers who want to try to prove us wrong - which is kind of laughable to us because the O'ist position on religion is that since it can never be proven right OR wrong by any credible mechanism of proof, it is a conceptual null value, and as such is to be dismissed from any rational thought process.
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We are here because of evolution.. and because of speciation, natural selection, etc, we cannot interbreed with other species.
True, but that's not the same as "being made". Also, once the genome is cracked, who's to say that we won't be able to engineer all kinds of cross-breed species...
I think that it depends on how much you value your family and their opinions. You certainly don't have an obligation to do anything, but if they make reasonable arguments against your relationship, it should be taken seriously.I agree - but then that's an entirely different argument than the one you made previously, which implied some kind of obligation to obtain family approval simply cause they'd be upset at your choice.
Ponzi Scheme -- a good thing?
in Economics
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Well, he claims to have 25,000,000+ people involved, for starters.
I'd like to see some substantial proof of this - but I suspect he has neither proof nor anywhere that many people signed up, which itself is automatically a scam - misrepresenting his success.