JeffS

But aren't both derived from the same principle: man's life qua man? Either it is right, just, and necessary for Man's life qua man, to follow certain procedures when an individual is alleged to have committed a crime, or it is not. If it is right, just, and necessary, then it is right, just and necessary for all men - regardless of what collective(s) he belongs to. Let's take your cops-mirandizing-Hirohito example: why couldn't they? Well, because Hirohito had an army protecting him; those cops couldn't just walk through the door. If they could have, if Hirohito's soldiers simply would have let them walk right by - is that how Hirohito should've been handled? Or should he simply have been shot on sight? If the principle is "no man should initiate force against any other," then what objective justification is there for Soldier A to fire first upon Soldier B? Soldier A's country may be at war with Soldier B's, but even supposing Country B started it doesn't seem to justify Soldier A opening fire on Soldier B at first sight. To assume it does sounds an awful lot like a collectivist argument: Country B started it, Soldier B is a member of that collective, therefore it's not an initiation of force. The problem with this argument is clear: countries don't start anything - individuals do. The men who dropped bombs on Pearl Harbor initiated force, the men guarding Hirohito's palace may not have. (A "War on Terrorism," to me, is fraught with even more problems since the collective nature of the combatants is exceptionally vague and transient.) Cops walking into Hirohito's palace to mirandize him can reasonably expect some resistance, so it would probably be wise to bring some backup; perhaps a lot of guys with very big guns. If anyone shoots at them, they can certainly return fire, but does anything justify the Allied troops opening fire from the get-go? Based on what, and how does that direct the soldier's actions? Should he assume everyone is guilty of initiating force against him and open fire on whomever he sees? Again, this seems like a collectivist argument to me, somewhat akin to racism: you're making an assumption about individuals based upon their affiliation with a particular group, or their presence in a particular context. I think this issue really boils down to: How should wars be objectively fought? Around 700 individuals, flying about 300 aircraft, initiated force against American citizens - they bombed Pearl Harbor. Certainly the US government can retaliate against them. What form should that retaliation take? Should it attempt to arrest them, does Man's life qua man require he be given an opportunity to defend himself against possibly false accusations? Or, should they simply be shot on sight? What of those who ordered the attack? Can the US government retaliate against them? Is directing others to initiate force equivalent to initiating force? What of those who neither ordered the attack, nor participated in it - can the US government retaliate against them? Based on what principle? Should we have immediately, given the capability, destroyed the entire country of Japan in retaliation for the actions of, at most, 1000 individuals? Don't get me wrong, I want both you and Jake to be right. The issue seems a lot more complicated than presented, though.

If everyone has the same rights, then how can the rules of due process be different for soldiers than for police? If those rules are based upon the same principles of reason and justice, and reason and justice are immutable, shouldn't the rules be the same?

Baby steps, people. Baby steps. I would think the best way to move forward would be to have people at least thinking in terms of how capitalism benefits them. It's a very minor step from there to thinking, "Well, hey! Things which benefit my long-term life and happiness are good!" Stossel rocks. Given that Fox kills everyone in the ratings, while ABC and the rest of the network hacks put on their knee-pads for Obama, having a bigger audience can't be a bad thing.

That's an interesting position to take, softwareNerd. I wonder, do you think most people are altruistic in their actions, or only in their desires? By that I mean I find most people to be hedonistically selfish in their actions - thus the negative connotation of "selfish" prevalent in society, yet openly advocating an altruistic philosophy - they want to be perceived as "good" by the majority who hold the likes of Mother Theresa up as the pinnacle of the good. Perhaps I'm simply hanging out with the wrong class of people?

Actually, if any individual ever comes close to developing a cure for cancer, or a remarkable new technological development that could save thousands of lives, we shouldn't risk his or her safety. We should lock them up in a secure room and make sure they're never put in harm's way. I wonder when it will be too much.

I'm with David on this: it's a horrible test. One of the "no wrong answer" questions was: "Evolutionary theory may be false in some of its details, but it's basically right." I answered "false," since evolutionary theory is not false in any of its "details" - whatever the test constructor believes that means. Later, I was given the choice of picking between claiming the scientists are wrong, or my beliefs are in contradiction. I stopped taking the test after that.

My life.

A psychologist friend of mine just decided to move to NZ. She runs a private practice here, but her billings have been going down fairly dramatically. She believes it's due to the economy. She simply gushed about how great it was going to be in NZ: "I get 2 weeks paid for continuing training! I get 6 weeks paid time off for vacation! I'll be getting paid about twice what I'm making now!" I just sat there and listened, wondering whether she ever stopped to consider that her family's doctor(s) will also be unavailable for 8 weeks every year, that the quality of medicine will be years behind what is available here, that she'll be waiting in line just like every other postal customer, that her taxes will skyrocket. *sigh* Then again, given the animosity and derision currently being heaped upon doctors in this country, I can't really say she's leaving anything behind.

I think I understand: you're trying to subsume all these seemingly disconnected "laws" under one all-encompassing law? That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I don't know about all of the laws you listed, but the data is what it is, right? If the data doesn't fit a bell-curve, but does fit a power law curve, then that's what it is. My point was somewhat two-fold: 1) a ratio will necessarily decline when the numerator stays the same, or changes little, as the denominator grows. That may not fit for monarchies, but for many of the examples you listed it seems a forgone conclusion that the denominator grows faster than the numerator. For example, you mentioned AIDS and H1N1. The denominator has an upper limit - approximately 6 billion - but grows rapidly as we change the parameters of the sample set. We can expect a high proportion of individuals in a close community to contract H1N1, but as we move further away from that close community, as we expand the sample set, fewer and fewer individuals will contract H1N1. The denominator grows rapidly, but the numerator changes very little. Eventually, we get to the largest possble sample set - the entire planet - and the numerator has changed very little. Many reasons can be supplied to explain why fewer and fewer individuals contract the disease, but that a power curve describes the data seems mathematically intuitive. And 2) you have alluded to implications for free-will, and I'm afraid I don't see that - yet. The free-will of the individual forum members is the cause of whether they post or not (for example). Much in the same way that the free-will and behavior of individuals world-wide, as well as their resistance to any particular disease determines whether that disease will infect them. They are not deterministically following some power law curve. A power law curve may describe how forum posters to forum members develops, but it doesn't determine the behavior of those individual posters, or each marginal poster. I, for one, appreciate how you're laying out your argument. You clearly understand your argument and where resistance is typically found. So, rather than reading through reams of argument, I can get right to those issues without the entire argument clouding the discussion. Perhaps I need to wait until you've further developed your argument for determinism?

Isn't this fairly intuitive, though? For example, there may be a great many people willing to take the time to sign up for a forum membership, but only a few willing to post (in any given population). Those who are willing to post would reasonably be early adopters, therefore the per capita ratio of posters to members is very high. As the late adopters, those not terribly interested in posting, start joining the ratio of posters to members goes down. I just picked this one example from the several you provided, but I can see the same type of process at work in most of them: the general population is increasing, but the specific actors driving the events under study don't change - the equation gets bottom heavy. Of course, I could be missing something completely fundamental here. Very interesting thread, Math Guy. Thanks for posting.

What Jennifer said. Plus, I just shot over the heads of the civilians in case my "compatriots" would turn on me for not firing my weapon. (Little did I know...) I even let a few bullets stray into the terrorists. Yea, it's just a game, but I couldn't bring myself to shoot the civilians. The SWAT and military force that come after the airport terminal are a different story. You've got to shoot them or they'll kill you. A main theme in the campaign mode is betrayal, so there's not a real clear distinction between the "good guys" and the "bad guys" (though terrorists gunning down civilians are definitely "bad guys").

John, Thank you for the detailed reply. I recognize much of what I asked would probably be more appropriately asked in other threads, so I'll look for those. If quick answers are available, I would appreciate answers to some questions which I think are at least tangentially related to this topic. I guess I'm wondering where we break the chain. The kings and queens of Europe take money from the citizens of their respective countries. They then pay for explorers to travel to NA and set up colonies - people put shovel to dirt in service of those kings and queens. (I understand this doesn't account for all the colonies, but certainly some tracts of land were handled in this way.) Don't those kings and queens then own that land? If they do, when those colonies rise up and kick those kings and queens out are they not stealing that property? And given they did it in the name of a collective (first the Articles of Confederation, then the US), does the land they stole now belong to the collective? And given that some of that land was actually purchased from foreign governments using money taken from US citizens and purchased by that government, or ceded through war waged on behalf of that collective, doesn't that land belong to the collective? (I think the most evident examples of what I'm writing about are The Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican-American War.) I understand this is not how such territorial expansion of a government's authority would objectively occur, but it is how it happened. So we're left with a situation where the US government quite literally did own vast tracts of property. How do we break that connection? Was it broken when the land was sold to the first individual? Or does the government maintain a lien, of sorts, against the land it sold allowing it to charge a fee? (The you-pay-to-live-in-this-society argument.)

Yes, that's basically an HOA. Simply put, you pay a fee (monthly, quarterly, or yearly) for common expenses (upkeep of common open spaces, etc.). Two things confuse me about this general topic: (please assume every question is asked as a request for an answer from an objective perspective) 1) Resources of others were used. For example in the case of the American colonies, British solidies, paid for by British taxpayers, were used to protect the colonies. A proper government service, and perhaps not the best example, but what delimits a proper government's sphere of control and responsibility? How would the discovery of North America have been handled objectively? 2) What constitutes ownership, objectively speaking? Can I still own land if I don't know what "owning" something means? Can I still own land if I understand what it means to own land, but choose not to do anything with the land other than enjoy the scenery? A British citizen sails to NA. Stakes out a plot of land and begins farming. He gets attacked by the indigenous population who have used the land for their own farming and hunting. The British citizen has a right to protection from the British government, does he not? If he does, does the sphere of the British government's control and responsibility extend throughout the Universe? What does it mean to be a citizen of a country? How does one get that distinction? What entitled the British citizen to claim ownership of that land? I understand the proper functions of government, but I think my confusion could be solved with a proper understanding of ownership. I've read the argument that ownership entails some transformation of the property - i.e. working the land. If that's the case, then I think an argument could be made that the British government worked at least some of the land in this country - it, as well as the governments of France and Spain, financed the exploration of the continent. Why does that not constitute ownership? I too would like to read more about this.

How would home owners' association dues figure into this? Certainly, a contractual agreement is made in buying a house under a home association whereby the collective decides upon fees to be paid into a kitty for the collective wants. Under that contract, a homeowner is objectively required to pay, and the contract may stipulate a right for the collective to call upon the services of the government to uphold the contract (throw you into a locked room). One can choose to buy in that neighborhood, or not. So, the question then becomes: Does one implicitly agree to any such contract when they choose to live in any particular country? Can the government be likened to the home owners' association; enforcing the contract created by the collective?

How then would objective law handle the scenario I described? Has no crime been committed, apart from the private property breach? What if the couple were having sex on the road outside the school? Assuming they've paid the road owner to use the road, they're not trespassing. I think what's being argued there is only the individual can control what they think about any situation. Certainly that's a function of our nature as rational beings. Isn't that objective?

This last tangent brought to mind flashers - people exposing their genitalia to others. Since there's no force involved, should this not be a crime? My gut reaction is, "No. Especially if she's hot." But, joke aside, the most extreme example I can think of would be someone having sex on a pre-school playground during recess. Given children don't have total control over their mental processes and the effects of those processes, how would objective law handle this situation. Certainly, on private property, the preschool owner has the right to have the lovers arrested and charged with trespassing, but, in the words of Mr. Krabs, "The deed is done." Have the children not been assaulted?

Very cool. What prompted this?

Not in the way Young is looking at it. If he thinks Rush asked to be taken out of the lottery because Rush really wants to live, but is willing to give up what he really wants so some nameless, random other can live, then there's no way that's virtuous. That never crossed my mind. I'll have to re-watch episode one to see if I can pick that up. However, based on what I remember, and his character's development so far, I would say, "No." I like the show, so far. It's a bit like Lost.

I didn't take Dr. Rush's decision to be altruistic at all. If anything, it was entirely rationally self-interested. He wanted to die on that ship. The discovery of the ship was, in his words, "The greatest discovery since the stargate itself." In his estimation, he had reached the pinnacle of his productive powers and wanted to see the end. He's perhaps the smartest guy on the ship. If those on the shuttle have any hope of surviving where ever they were going, having him along would've gone a long way toward helping them survive. He denied them that chance and chose to do what he wanted to do for him.

Sorry, ignore that last question. I'm going to go over the last 10 pages as it seems my question is answered there. Mea Culpa.

This is really interesting. I came across this problem in one of my kid's math. I was going to ask his teacher, but there's a lot of smart people here so maybe they can answer it for me. Here's the problem: Turn 5.999999.... into a fraction. The only method of solving this I know of is to call your fraction "x" to formulate this equation: x=5.999... . Multiply each side by 10 so you get 10x=59.999... . Subtract x from the left side and 5.999... from the right to eliminate the repeating digits. You get 10x-x = 59.999... - 5.999... . This resolves to 9x=54. Divide both sides by 9 to arrive at x=6. So, when you put x back into the original equation you get 6=5.999..., which is clearly incorrect. Can anyone explain this to me?

I think the OP is saying the child is not covered automatically under the health insurance that covers the parents. I don't know that this is the case. Assuming the speaker at the forum gave all pertinent information, and that the parents did have insurance covering the actual birth, but not the child once it was born, and he was denied insurance to cover the 27 surgeries, then I wonder what's going on. Honestly, after two healthy births, I don't know that my children were covered under our insurance automatically. I have to imagine they were, or that that's an option available when purchasing insurance. If I recall correctly, putting their actual names on the policy was sort of an afterthought - merely a formality. Don't know if it would've been different if there were problems. Both pregnancies cost something like $200 from conception to several post delivery exams. Does anyone else know the particulars?

I'm pretty sure civilization behaved at least as rationally at its birth as it does now. In fact, I would venture the guess that rational behavior has existed as long as homo sapiens sapiens has existed. Yes, there's been mysticism from the get-go, but when viewed on the whole - how do men interact with each other within society - rational behavior has existed from the start. There's still mysticism today - either the overt mysticism of the deists, or the obfuscated mysticism of those who replace "god" with "society." Yet when men must interact with other men, on a day-to-day basis, they find they can not escape reality, nor the fact that they are dealing with other homo sapiens sapiens, and must act accordingly if they wish to get what they need and want.

I'm not blaming anyone for anything. Living life under threat of punishment for breaking the law is not the same as being a resistance fighter in Nazi Germany. The drug dealer is not working toward his own rational self-interests. If he believes selling drugs should not be illegal, then the rational thing to do is to get them legalized. The irrational thing to do is to start selling illegal drugs and hoping you don't get caught. Assuming the resistance fighter is fighting against the conditions which make it impossible, or even difficult, for him to live as a human being, then he's entirely moral in doing so. The drug dealer is under no such conditions - there are other things he can do, at least in this country, besides sell drugs. I have to assume you meant, "I don't see how it would be any different if they were legal." If drugs were legal then the rational man doesn't have the threat of punishment to evade. He would have to base his decisions upon whether whom he's selling to is using the drug to destroy his life. I have no idea how you would get that from what I wrote. Could you explain it, please? No one has discussed anything about any rights. We're discussing the morality of illegal drugs.

We're getting far afield of the OP, so I'll drop this here. Thanks for the discussion, RationalBiker. I would argue all sellers of illegal drugs are immoral. They've chosen a career where they are constantly trying to avoid capture. They're living life under threat. Certainly that isn't a rational way to live. Were illegal drugs simply drugs - i.e. not illegal - then the seller's morality would depend upon his knowledge of how that drug is used by his buyers. I would argue illegal drug users' morality depends upon whether the drug objectively serves his life. The drug serves the life of the chemo patient, therefore he is moral; the casual drug user's life is not served by the drug, therefore he is immoral; the drug destroys the life of the addict, therefore he is immoral. Then, it seems a casual user could argue, "I'm not as immoral as an addict." Is that really a valid distinction? I mean, something is either immoral or it is not, correct? I don't think a drug user starts taking drugs with the purpose of destroying their lives, any more than a smoker starts smoking in order to destroy their lives. The effect of both is the same - life destruction. Is the distinction that drugs destroy a Man's reason, his proper means of survival, in a way that cigarettes do not?