nimble
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Posts posted by nimble
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I think the idea behind all of this is to keep your brain from aging with genetics, and to reconstruct anything that might go wrong with your body with nano-technology. I'm not a genius in this area, but it may even be able to reconstruct brain tissue in a manner that includes whatever data has been imprinted on it. But this is all speculation, but not pure speculation, it has a very real potential to do all that it says it will be able to.
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Well, supposedly we are about 60-100 years away from tripling our life span through genetics, which would buy us enough time to get to the nano technology which is supposedly about 100-120 years away from being able to do that type of stuff.
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First, there are genetic therapies that are developing to counteract aging. Second, there is nanotechnology, which hopefully stands to be able to reproduce you atom by atom in the exact form that you are now, which if done right would essentially resurrect you from the dead. You would have the same DNA, the same memories, and experiences, and you would be EXACTLY who you are right now, using the exact same matter you are composed of now. If that doesn't result in immortality in the right sense, then you must think that there is some non-physical factor I am leaving out, like a spirit.
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Well, I dont think literal immortality is possible (for a start, under what circumstances could we say about a living thing that it couldnt ever die). But even assuming you mean very long life, its not clear from the individual's perspective that researching life extension techniques will be productive - what if he fails to find any? Lets assume there are 1000 people in the world currently researching longvetiy. Now, if I also start researching it, there will be 1001. Is my contribution really going to make _that_ much difference? Am I going to increase the probability of preventing aging by a high enough amount that it justifies dedicating many years of my life to something that doesnt interest me? Why not just do something I enjoy and hope one of the other 1000 people finds something?
I think literal immortality is possible although not probable. THere is nothing genetically that makes us die at a specific time.
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I think its largely a division of labour thing; there are many people already doing research which could increase longetivity. Also quality of life is equally or more important than length of life to some people - why live till 500 without really enjoying yourself, when you could live till 60 and have a great time?
Because if you die at 60, then you miss out on an infinite period of time that occurs after your death, where you may have had some chance to have joy, whereas when you die there will never be any joy again FOREVER!
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What exactly is the Objectivist stance on any sort of after-life/astral plane/consciousness-without body...etc? I assume Objectivism holds that none of those exist, if this is true then why is it not the most important issue of Objectivism to promote technologies that could possibly be the end of death, such as anti-aging medicines in genetics, or nanotechnology...etc?
You would think that if Objectivism holds that only values are possible in life, that the primary focus of every Objectivist would to be to prolong life as much as possible. But I notice often Objectivists aren't interested in this subject, they usually get too caught up in political philosophy or something like that.
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Hume says that induction isn't sound, which is true. When inducing things you can always be mistaken, but when you find out the correct belief you alter your ways.
Hume went on to say that all knowledge is inductive, and I would agree, except for axioms which have no deductive or inductive reasoning behind them.
But where I disagree is that he claims that you can know nothing because all knowledge is inductive and induction always has the possibility to be wrong. This in essense is claiming that you need to know that you know, in order to possess knowledge. If this is true, then you would need to know that you know that you know, in order to possess knowledge and so on, ad infinitum. That means that in order to hold any one belief you would need to have an infinite amount of beliefs about that belief, and that is just silly. What he describes as knowledge is not what any person would consider as knowledge.
Do you think that you need to have an infinite amount of beliefs in order to hold one peice of knowledge?
And axioms are self-evident truths (cannot be proved), thus neither induction or deduction are needed in order to claim an axiom. You only need some sort of inductive verification (not proof), to beleive that the axiom is a good one.
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One last question Mperkel. If selfishness in practice is so "obviously wrong" why would you never be able to win the argument that selfish motives underly moral action?
Note: At this point, I'm not even saying you are right or wrong, I am simply asking you why you would dismiss and discredit something so "obviously wrong" and not be able to even attempt to find some evidence to support your claim, and thus make an argument.
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On the surface when I read her work it looks to me like she's dealing with some strange personal issue in her life that isn't relevant to a lot of the real world. It's much like my views an marriage. Things
What does someones motive have to do with the actual content of their argument? Second, how do you know Ayn Rand's motives?
If you can't win the argument, why would you start it, and defend the losing side?OK - just for grins so we don't get distracted I will concede that I'll never win the argument that selfish motives can be construed for everything, although I don't admit that is an accurate picture of reality.But - selflessness is a good thing and it is in fact why the human race evolved above the animals. Our very survival depends on selflessness.In reality the human race is more like a hive of bees that nomadic individuals. We are totally interdependent in an amazing and complex society. If you look around you right now you can't help but to notice that everything you see what built by other people. In fact each object involves thousands of other people without whom there would be none of all this.
No one said that you cannot help someone else, that selfishness means utter independence in the Robinson Crusoe sense.
This is where you stopped speaking and instead just started in a non-sensical, circular rant that didn't make much sense. So you say it is selfish to be selfless? If being selfish is the equivalent of being selfless, then they must be one and the same in your mind, which begs the question, why would you hate selfishness if it is the same as selflessness? Maybe you just don't like human action in general.So selflessness at least has some selfish advantages. I think that perhaps being selfless is the most selfish thing you can do because it builds the society that you live an and count on for your very survival.So if you praise selfishness and you distain selflessness, but being selfless is a selfish act, then you are contradicting yourself?
I hope you objectivists can take some criticism without taking it personally. As a Realist practicing Realism I'm committed to giving and accepting scrutiny.I am not offended by you. But your ignorance to what goes on in the real world is somewhat outrageous when coming from a so-called "realist." I blame religous and public propaganda. Also you should know that when you attack someone's beliefs, you are attacking their person.
The way I see it - Objectivism is an endorsement of reality. Real reality the way it really is. But beyond that all I see is opinion. I see nothing special about capitalism. It has some advantages and drawbacks. It has never been done without a heavy mix of Socialism, nor could it work without it.I like how you make assumptions based on nothing, and offer no argument what so ever. Socialism is not equivalent to any ideal of selflessness or selfishness, and the ideas you said you believed in, actually require you to be a capitalist. You are right people share knowledge, and thus we acheive things collectively that none of us could have done individually. That is why Capitalism is necessary. When people are free to exchange ideas we can acheive goals collectively. When some central planning unit coordinates production, then we lose out on all the knowledge that the people who aren't part of that government could have added to increase the productiveness of the economy. Read some econ text like Hayek, Mises, Adam Smith, heck even Keynes believed that capitalism was the only way for progress to be made. The only economist that isn't in some way a capitalist that I can think of is Marx, and he wasn't much of an economist, he was more of a social philosopher.
Edit to correct the word there to their.
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As long as you recognise that the government has no obligation to offer the plaintiff a good rate. Contract fees are a form of insurance payment, and just as you can't expect an insurance company to cover an uninsured accident simply by paying the premium when you have an accident, you should expect the plaintiff to pay the full and actual cost of enforcement, up front. Of course the actual figure will not be known until after the fact so the plaintiff needs to put cost and then some in escrow. Here's a ballpark figure for any litigation -- $10 million. That might be a bit high, probably too high in many cases, but if there's a chance that the actual costs will go that high, then the government should demand up-front money of that order of magnitude. Because you definitely should not allow the situation where the costs go higher than the escrow or the plaintiff's worth ('cuz then I will have to pick up the slack, and I'm just not gonna pay for any free riders).
I kind of came late into this discussion, but you think that each person who ever intends to have a contract enforced by the government ought to pay upfront fees of millions of dollars? I don't think a high percentage of people would be participating in your legal system. I can't think of a single transaction that I have encountered in MY life, where I stand to lose more than 10000 dollars.
If I didn't quite understand your point, or took it out of a larger context, because I have not read the thread in its entirety, then by all means correct me. And I will apologize in advance.
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I'm sorry, I guess I did not catch that you agreed with me in some aspect of this debate. Plus it's been a while since I posted on this topic.
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Hey, wait, I don't think you answered any of my questions. I think I got the shaft on that reply.
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In practice, yeah. But morally, no. If you're saying that you should own what you grab, then its misleading to talk about rights in the first place.
But again, how do you prevent me from taking ownership of the moon, or the Pacific Ocean? Imagine I got 1000 people together and we all individually declare ownership of half a mile of ocean each, forming a 500 mile long vertical line between Britain and America. Then we declare that no ships are be allowed to sail across our ocean. Surely this shouldnt be allowed?
I never said that you get what you grab is moral, and hopefully I didn't imply that that's how I feel.
I agree that property rights arise through working the land for the most part. But I do not agree that you have to work the land in order to own it. I think the property lines that we drawn on maps are somewhat arbitrary but necessary in order to work property rights into a legal system. So what I am saying is that there is more to property rights than working the land. I don't know exactly what that is yet.
Genuinely though I think markets work all this out. Let's say I claim a bit more land than I work. Lets say I claim 3000 square feet of land, and I build a house on 2500 of it. I still think I own the rest even though I have not worked it. If I make a claim that is too big, someone will either contest it, or they will offer me some compensation to just give it to them without contest. And then the land will be used more efficiently.
And to your last point about claiming large territories of water and such...you cannot morally keep me from getting to my property, so that scheme doesn't quite work. Also, again I think the market will handle things. If you guys form some sort of moon or ocean cartel, it is always in the individual's interest to betray the cartel and sell off a portion, or something like that. Cartels don't last in free markets, because market incentives always push toward efficiency and competition.
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I did some historical research, and during the 1830-50s when banking in the US was relatively free. The banks with higher fractional reserves would not accept notes from banks with lower reserve fractions at the same price as theirs. This lead to an inequality of bank notes, which lead to exchange rates from bank to bank even though they each were on the gold standard. This proves my point that in a free market, participants in a fractional reserve bank would lose some of the value of their gold if they were to deal with banks that had higher reserves or full reserves. I said earlier that the market would not value the note of a fractional reserve bank as highly as one that came from a full reserve bank.
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Who did you buy it from and how did they get the right to own it in the first place? Does the first person to find the forest beautiful and say 'its mine' have a legitimate claim? What if I find the moon beautiful - can I have it?
This is the kind of situation the 'value added' thing is meant to cover.
Bill Gates owns a lake and about 2 square miles of forest. I am sure he has probably never even set foot on any of it, and has probably added nothing to the land. He probably hasn't fished or hunted it; he probably hasn't cut down trees for wood. I bet it just sits there, but should he not own it?
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Who did you buy it from and how did they get the right to own it in the first place? Does the first person to find the forest beautiful and say 'its mine' have a legitimate claim? What if I find the moon beautiful - can I have it?
This is the kind of situation the 'value added' thing is meant to cover.
Well, truthfully my view is probably a lot different than most people on here. I believe that a lot of what property rights are is your ability to enforce them. Let's see you keep me from having the moon too. HAHA.
But anyway, let's say I purchased it from the government. And let's say I plan to build a small home in the corner of the forest and live there, but never again add value to the property, because I am a retired wealthy man who won this property at auction, and just wants to relax for the rest of his life. I think it would be rediculous to say that you can only own land that you add value too. There are parts of my yard I have probably never even walked on, should I not own those spaces in my yard? Maybe someone could plant a vegetable plant there and make some use of it, that I am not.
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I noticed that Felipe had a somewhat unusual view of property rights in another thread. I was curious to find out if it is the official Objectivist stance that you may only retain the title to property IF you fulfill the requirements of (1) using the property morally (to further one's life) and (2) adding value to the land? This seems a bit wrong to me, because it would mean that Christian's couldn't build churches because they wouldn't be building it to "further their life" and there are a variety of other people would use land in immoral ways, even though they don't violate the rights of others. Also this view of property rights seems problematic because if I purchase a chunk of land that has a beautiful forest on it, because I just want to be able to view the forest any time I please, then I see no problem with not adding value to the land when I OWN it.
And I'll wait for replies before I rant more.
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More fundamentally, the basic fallacy of anarchy is that it does not grasp the In the political realm, absent the constitutional protection of rights, what you get is dictatorship. And that is precisely where anarchy ends up.
First, I'd like to say, I apologize earlier for getting a little testy over this subject. And that is why I don't want to discuss this anymore after I answer Fred.
A constitution gaurantees nothing. It is a peice of paper and nothing more. Unlike other contracts, there is no one to enforce this one. The people with the guns are the ones you have to hope enforce it on themselves. Historically, this has never happened. This to me, is sufficient reason to doubt a constitution's power.
Protection Agencies wouldn't make the rules, they would enforce the rules, much like the police. Court systems would most likely make the laws, and most would probably agree on the laws so that they would save money by not having to have lots of legal battles. When the courts are uniform, enforcing the laws becomes less costly, so that you wouldn't have to fight a 10 million dollar war over a disagreement on abortion.Furthermore, our rights are not something to "compete over", as if it were optional which ones some "protection agency" wishes to protect to the exclusion of others, or as if you could arbitrarily decide which rights you wanted to protect in contrast to your neighbor.Consider this example. Suppose you believed you had the right to abortion but your neighbor opposed it. You decide to have an abortion. Does your neighbor have the right to stop you? Does his "protection agency" come to arrest you, while your "protection agency" comes to defend you? What do they do, shoot it out?Wars are costly, my guess is that they wouldn't shoot it out. Chances are those people in conflict don't pay the protection agency enough to wage war against another, and when service for the agency is not compulsory, workers would probably refuse to risk their life over something like abortion. But like I said, agencies don't make laws, they enforce them. They would probably go make sure the dispute doesn't get out of control and subpoena them to appear before some court, which is probably uniform.
I realize that none of this is proof of what will happen, but you cannot say what would happen in any system, simply because humans have free will. Even with a good constitution and moral politicians, all the citizens could just go on a killing rampage. But we assume most people are reasonable and thus dont. And using that assumption that people are reasonable, I make speculations as to how things would pan out.
I hope I didn't offend anyone, and this is my last post here on the subject of anarchy, unless moderators don't care that I speak of it. But I am pretty sure it is against the forum rules. I just felt that Fred deserved an answer.
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How would a truly laissez-faire system prevent corporate collusion?
A truly laissez-faire system wouldn't need to, and wouldn't want to.
Couldn't businessmen agree to scrap health and safety and pensions etc? Is corporate collusion acceptable?In any cartel, there is always incentives for those involved in the cartel to make agreements outside the cartel. So market forces would actually provide incentives for those in the cartel to "outcompete" their buddies in the cartel and provide health care or whatever it is that you are worried about.
This works much the same as labor unions. Anyone in the labor union if it goes on stirke or whatnot has market incentives to search for work outside of the labor union, because they can get jobs that they would have never had, staying with the union. And possibly keep more pay without paying labor union dues.
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Anarchy is the complete absence of a political authority. If a government (or group of governments) existed by the will of the people, then it wouldn't be an anarchy.
At any rate, even now any government that exists only does so by the will of the people, whether they actively support it, or whether they refuse to oppose it.
First, I when I say government I do not mean a coercive type that enforces its laws on those who have not already consented. I guess I should have just said collectives, which offer similar services that governments provide.
Second, refusing to oppose is not the same as consent. If I rob a man in front of your face at gun point and you don't stop me, it doesn't mean you morally consent to robbery, would it? That has to be the lamest Hobbesian justification of government I have ever heard.
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In an Objectivist society, things would not be illegal simply because they are irrational. The only things that would be illegal are those things which initiate force against other persons.
Where in the world did you EVER get the idea that laws would be created by Objectivists because of an irrational act? That's nothing Ayn Rand every alluded to.
I asked the question to show the person I replied to that what they were suggesting wasn't what Rand advocated.
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This is not a question anyone familiar with Rand should ask. That a social system is based on moral principles does not mean that the only actions individuals can engage in are moral actions. It means, instead, that the only actions proscribed by the government are those that make it impossible for others to act morally, i.e., coercive actions.
This is exactly the law system anarchy would have, that no one may initiate the use of force, but do whatever else they pleased. And I did not intend to mean that Rand supports laws that dictate her morality, I asked that question only to let you realize that Rand's system and anarchy would have the exact same legal structure except government would not have a monopoly on the use of force. Governments could exist in anarchy, but only as collectives that all individually agree to the terms of the government. Then as long as all parties agree they could set up school systems roads etc.
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So, Long's argument is that, since no one can reach into another man's brain and make him stop being irrational, government is a failure?
The purpose of arbitration of disputes is to determine where the FORCE OF THE LAW falls concerning the dispute and what action the GOVERNMENT will take regarding the dispute. It does not "abolish" the dispute, if by dispute you mean people being pissed off at each other.
In arbitration the government serves one purpose: to protect citizens from the initiation of physical force, just as in all of its other functions. It does not prevent people from being idiots, or exert mind control, as Mr. Long seems to think.
You must have not even read his reply. Rule of law would exist under anarchy. And, I like this forum, so I will not continue this discussion about anarchy here, because I genuinely think I could get booted. If you want to talk about it, my AIM is onelungedwonder.
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In the absence of a government that has a monopoly on the use of force and acts as society's final arbiter, how will disputes be resolved?(5) Robert Bidinotto: No Final Arbiter of Disputes
One common objection – this is one you find, for example, in Robert Bidinotto, who’s a Randian who’s written a number of articles against anarchy (he and I have had sort of a running debate online about this) – his principal objection to anarchy is that under anarchy, there’s no final arbiter in disputes. Under government, some final arbiter at some point comes along and resolves the dispute one way or the other. Well, under anarchy, since there’s no one agency that has the right to settle things once and for all, there’s no final arbiter, and so disputes, in some sense, never end, they never get resolved, they always remain open-ended.
So what’s the answer to that? Well, I think that there’s an ambiguity to the concept here of a final arbiter. By "final arbiter," you could mean the final arbiter in what I call the Platonic sense. That is to say, someone or something or some institution that somehow absolutely guarantees that the dispute is resolved forever; that absolutely guarantees the resolution. Or, instead, by "final arbiter" you could simply mean some person or process or institution or something-or-other that more or less reliably guarantees most of the time that these problems get resolved.
Now, it is true, that in the Platonic sense of an absolute guarantee of a final arbiter – in that sense, anarchy does not provide one. But neither does any other system. Take a minarchist constitutional republic of the sort that Bidinotto favors. Is there a final arbiter under that system, in the sense of something that absolutely guarantees ending the process of dispute forever? Well, I sue you, or I’ve been sued, or I am accused of something, whatever – I’m in some kind of court case. I lose. I appeal it. I appeal it to the Supreme Court. They go against me. I lobby the Congress to change the laws to favor me. They don’t do it. So then I try to get a movement for a Constitutional Amendment going. That fails, so I try and get people together to vote in new people in Congress who will vote for it. In some sense it can go on forever. The dispute isn’t over.
But, as a matter of fact, most of the time most legal disputes eventually end. Someone finds it too costly to continue fighting. Likewise, under anarchy – of course there’s no guarantee that the conflict won’t go on forever. There are very few guarantees of that iron-clad sort. But that’s no reason not to expect it to work.
This is the argument provided by Long. I have to say that I agree with his stance. Disputes can go on forever no matter what system you are in. So long as the disputers are willing to make the effort to keep the dispute going.
What is God's omnipotence?
in Metaphysics and Epistemology
Posted · Edited by nimble
I am not defending omnipotence or god, but I feel that peope always misrepresent what would be if there were a god. Logically, it would have to exist outside of the physical universe, thus being allowed to create it. It would have to be able to interact with the physical universe (Just like you can build a table and then move it, or sit on it, etc....god could build a universe then do things to it). Because he could do things to the physical universe that normal people can't do, some people might think that he is omnipotent. However, I don't think anyone can claim that, he probably just has characteristics and abilities that are merely amplified from what we would consider normal. Thus he could do lots of things, but he would also have the power to abstain.
I don't think god would be omni-anything, but even with him being benevolent, it wouldn't mean that he would act on stopping evil. If god has free will, the omnis would really mess him up, so I don't think god can be omni-anything. I could see someone getting mugged, even if I had the power to stop it, I might opt not to. And I dont think I would consider myself any less benevolent. I think that if there is a god and he does judge us, he would want to abstain from as much as he could, thus making his judment more fair in the end. If he righted every wrong (which I dont even think any type of god could do) then the judgment part at the end would be quite dumb and moot. He would also be eternal, since time is a property of the physical universe and god wouldnt be in the physical universe. Uh...I can't think of anything else at the moment, but I'll get back to this.
***PLEASE NOTE*** I am not into any religion at the moment, all of my ideas are strictly mine and not of any religious sect. They aren't definitive and are just ideas I've batted around in my head, while pondering stuff. I believe that since god exists outside of our universe, we would never really know whether there is one or not. Plus god is either a being that either necessarily exists or is logically impossible, so you cannot really prove anything without making it somewhat of a circular argument.
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