Eiuol

And IP isn't about ideas *as such*. We've been over that.

It's relevant because the context here is specific kinds of inventions/IP as opposed to the invention/IP in general. If it's not relevant, then it is context-dropping.

Indeed, that's why I asked about personal anecdotes of yours, or personal experience, that is, how you figured out what you say works. By asking that, it's not even an argument. I'm just honestly curious about your experiences, to see how this all works out for you that helps you clarify the topic of romance.

It's hard to say - it depends on why he recommended that book. There are books I'd recommend, for instance, that have principles I'd disagree with, but that doesn't mean I believe all of it. For the most part, what you can get out of what you quoted is that it's okay to be wrong, which admitting is one way to get over destructive emotions. Presuming that is related to the problem you're seeing a psychologist, at least.

This is unjust, but it's not an argument about the nature of IP. US copyright law was notoriously abused by Edison for example. In one example, Tesla held the patent for radio, but likely through Edison's and Carnegie's manipulations, was able to get the patent given to the Italian radio pioneer, Marconi. Tesla lost the patent, was screwed out of a lot of money because the US courts arbitrarily favored Edison. I wouldn't call that the truth of IP, but what happens when law is abused to favor whoever is the highest bidder. You seem to keep arguing against a form of IP no one here agrees with, and anyone saying they support IP implicitly supports bad forms of law. It's like citing feudalism as an example of how property controls one's life and freedom. I can get to that cat exercise thing, but all I really have to say about it is that for one, it's wayyyyyy too generalized, making it impossible to define who is a violator. IP is not usually like that, nor should it be - I know of plenty of examples where the limits are clear and well-defined (to come in that big post - exciting, I know!) Relevant: http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_whoradio.html For the record, based on your quotes of Spooner, I think he starts out fine, but continues in the wrong way. He really does look to make a dichotomy out of material and immaterial.

If that happened, Floyd would be taken to court and probably lose - H was given the prosthetic legs without any agreement. And even then, IP is about the production of things like prosthetics, not about being able to use those prosthetics when one acquires the actual prosthetic. In fact, prosthetics I can assure you are patented frequently, so your hypothetical isn't a hypothetical at all - it actually happens. The only difference you presented is that H got his legs when he was asleep/unconscious, typically making a person not culpable for any legal consideration. You are assuming basically in your hypothetical that law is taken as an absolute and no one is ever taken to court. IP first has to do with property, but then we can discuss the legal concerns.

Well, that was a quote of Branden.

I do not see how this is true, as I don't see how IP could ever be *transferable*. Indeed, you may sell rights to IP in the sense a person has explicit permission to use it, but not that it can ever be transferred. Land works like that too, but it can be transferred since it is spatial (it's not exactly tangible, land is abstract still). The reason to have an expiration is because people plan around property or the status of the world right now - for practical reasons, "time of death + X years" is needed for people to be able to reasonably respond. And after that, it is just unowned. Not public, but there is no one to violate the rights of. Rights apply to people, not floating ideals which exist on their own. It appears to me that you think *all* property must have the characteristic of transferability, so you are reasoning from that about what would be the case if IP were valid.

I think it does. I wrote it, so I would know. But I'll drop that line of reasoning for now since it's not going anywhere. I see your point at the end of your post, and it's a very good one. Although, I think it's evidence that if IP is valid, then it should last at least as long as the creator's lifetime. So, Sergei quits his job in protest. Franz is happy,.until he hears about Joseph building Franz Brand pianos... (that's what I'll discuss next large post).

The irony!!!

I'm not familiar with Bohm-Bawerk, so do you have something to link to read about that?

This is not answering the question, wage is for labor. Sergei is not doing just labor, he is making property that would be his if it weren't for Franz really defining his way out of violating a fundamental Sergei's property rights. So, how is it just for Franz to lay any kind of contractual claim prior to any material values existing? An exchange requires a material value existing, no? I think intellectual property is the only basis from which to justify what a capitalist produces with laborers. Without IP over the specific Franz Brand pianos, Franz would be abusing his laborers by violating their rights which no contract could get around the same as self-enslavement. Is it really just to say "I'll give you $3 an hour to make these pianos that are worth $5000 dollars; take it or leave it"? The economic balance of that doesn't make sense, and laborers working like that really should demand more for their pianos. Franz, to me, would appear to be abusing some power of authority by means of a superior standing as a factory owner, rather than at least respecting property rights of his employees. It's not possible to talk about Joseph until at least establishing if IP is good for anything in the first place, and it's nature, before going onto legal cases which necessarily questions the justification. But I don't think we ever got at it's nature, hence my mentions of concepts, materialism, etc. "Meaning the physical, material idea: whatever neurons firing, pathways created, chemicals dumped, etc., that takes place in the human brain, and specifically his brain. That, and that alone, is the property owned." This is a good example of materialism. I literally am unable to make any point on this except no, this isn't even what an idea, concept or process is. An idea is not the same as its instantiation within the brain. So, in a way, I need clarification: is this quoted part what you believe an idea is? Or is it just trying to say that IP is self-refuting if IP takes ideas (only ideas with a corresponding embodiment) as property? Yes. The patent applies to the time the patent was legitimate. Similar to how you can't be convicted of a crime if you committed the act before it was a crime. Legal matters aren't reasonably retroactive.

"Absolutely right -- a person cannot contractually enslave himself. And yet a contract such as we're discussing between Sergei and Franz is a trade of property, and not such an example of enslavement. And on the nature of such contracts, Rand says:" So, how is it that it's just to say "any labor you do, your property in this factory is mine"? How could Franz possibly make Sergei contractually obligated to give him the piano before the piano exists? If IP is invalid and a person *only* owns what they make with their own hands fundamentally (a trade is only of consequence when you establish whose property is whose before a transaction), then Sergei is being abused. (This is just a point I want to get at socratically, I'm not just sniping quotes. I'll do a bigger post another time)

I meant to re-read Rand's IP essay, but I'll have to do that for next time. I think that's due to a fundamental disagreement, in the sense that a if a "hard" materialist said Rand contradicted herself with regard to the nature of concepts, that would be true, but only supposing the premises of the hard materialist. In this context, I don't think you are a hard materialist, although your arguments lean towards that kind of materialism where the only real things are tangible things (i.e. there are no such thing as volition, it's just an illusion). While it seems like I'm merely making analogies here, I think the epistemological basis is where disagreement is occuring. Indeed, property involves material values, but that just refers to the real-ness of creations as differentiated from totally abstract values like reason or honesty. Absolutely! My point though was to bring in contexts where development of the concept "intellectual property" makes sense and comes as a sub-concept of property. In 750, there was nothing like mass production, reproducibility, factories, division of labor large scale, machines, and so on. Intellectual property had no meaning, nor any way to violate IP. There weren't even printing presses! In the 1750s, there were printing presses, but hardly anything that requires a broad legal or philosophical basis to even writingg - you basically had to go out and buy what you want to read, with little way for anyone beside the creator to attain the book. IP is at best, in that time period, a very borderline and rare circumstmance. In the industrial revolution, in the 1830s and so on, mass production and machinery became realistic. If you have standardized machinery, then you could realistically copy what another person created. Now, this is difficult to do anyway, although some looms had punch cards like early computers where a pattern can be produced from a set of specific hole punches. Also, labor was a real force of production, so it becomes necessary to distinguish how property and wages arise from the intellectual labor required. Where does creation come from? What is fundamental? Before then, laborers creating goods at large scale was mostly implausible and laborers probably owned anything they created with their hands as was their right (if I knew about how guilds worked, that'd help). All I am doing by mentioning dates is establishing in history why I think the concept of IP comes up. Similar to how Rand said she needed to understand the industrial revolution before coming up with her ideas on capitalism. I was expecting this line. It sounds like you are implicitly suggesting that contracts have supremacy over rights, where a rights violation is impossible if there is a voluntary agreement. However, going by what Objectivism suggests about rights at least, a contract that has rights violations with it is null and void. A person cannot contractually enslave themselves. An employer cannot contractually justify beating their employees. You could say Sergei's pianos are part of a trade with Franz for a wage, but it starts to sound like extortion if there is no such thing as IP (indeed, you may say IP is actually extortion if it is invalid). If Sergei has a right to the products of his labor of his hands in a fundamental manner, how is it that a contract suddenly makes it okay? Extortion is a rights violation, and I doubt contract supercedes it. I brought the Sergei story up for this very reason about contracts. Or at least, I was directing straight into the topic of rights. Contracts are important, but I'd say rights take supremecy to the extent that contracts in a capitalist system are derivative of a property right. I couldn't say "well, Sergei agreed, so that's that" since a contract only makes sense once you establish ownership of various goods or what it is that people may reasonably demand. Certainly contracts were around before rights, but I do not think medieval contracts would really all be justified with the current concept of rights. Getting back to my main point, as Sergei, I'd say: "You are abusing me by means of a contract. The government permits this, which is atrocious. My rights are what matter here. How can I agree to say you own these pianos when, if I own what I build, I am the one who should determine who gets the piano after it is built? I could pay you for using your machines, but these pianos are mine to decide to sell to you or Wolfgang." I'm genuinely confused by you. In what way does the requirement of an idea being embodied imply in any way that intellectual property is merely idea property? If we're talking about ideas themselves, nothing else, well, embodiment would be irrelevant. It is just wrong to say "IP is a claim that people may own ideas", given that all anyone has argued is that *some* ideas may be owned (emboded ones), while your statement here means *all* ideas. So, I do not understand this part. I wanted to move onto a Franz example for 2013, but that's more complex, so it will have to wait. There are some preliminary points to make, though. Very important to discuss further! There is nothing about an mp3 besides encoded information. You won't find an mp3 cartridge, you only download information, a pattern of bits. An mp3 is not tangible property, but it's intellectual property to the degree the only thing that can be owned is encoded information. It's important to specify how the most IP of all IP - computer software, data, encoded information - is better understood as tangible IP. I do not know a great deal about hardware limitations. At the very least I know that anything on a computer is encoded information. So if you want to build up your case further, it's important to address the nature of property in a digital world. We have better inductive material than Rand ever did for supporting or even denying IP

This book will be out in a few days. I just finished reading a pre-print version that Gotthelf let me read, and it is quite informative. The audience it is written for seems to be people familiar with perceptual psychology, cognitive development, philosophy in terms of perception, or Objectivist epistemology. So, it's not an easy read because of how abstract the topic is. Even still, the chapters on perceptual awareness were the most interesting to me, and there are good essays which fairly argue against the Objectivist-position/influenced essays (they pose questions that I thought about as well). Bottom line, the book is worth a read.

Kevin, to me, you appear to have a major cognitive bias - someone is having a hard time *because* of your advice, and you don't seem to notice. Do you have success stories from people? Has it worked for you? Give some personal experience and I might be able to get a worthwhile. So far, all I see is a prescription from a phony doctor. You talk about your advice and solution, but not how it actually works out, and if it doesn't work out, you can just say "you didn't follow my advice exactly, so you didn't succeed".

Okay, there are two main ways to think of axioms. In an epistemological sense, there is the concept of each axiom, and these concepts are formed like any other. Rand describes them as ultimate abstractions, where there is no wider to go. Existence is the concept of basically... everything. To arrive at these concepts requires a volitional process of measurement omission, so to the degree that under Rand's theory one must have information from the world to be able to start abstracting, the axioms cannot be innate, nor any other concept. Another way to think of them is implicit. One doesn't need knowledge of existence to have a capacity to act within the world. Now, it's arguable to how primitive an organism is before implicit acknowledgement of existence is impossible, but my point is knowledge on the conceptual is not required. Anything a perceptual system does depends upon processing and even only operating when there is something to grasp of existence. At least a primitive nervous system might be needed for that, but there is plenty of evidence that sufficiently complex organisms (bees, for example) depends upon thinking/processing existence. What I'm getting at is that a hardwired capacity of the axioms makes sense - without that, I have no idea how one could start to form concepts. Capacity is not the same as knowledge. All people have an innate capacity to learn language, but that doesn't mean anyone is born knowing a language. There are many theories about *how* that is, though. Some propose innate concepts, some don't.

Like make things more "official". Okay, five weeks may be too soon sometimes, what should he wait for in this circumstance? If the sexes were changed, I'd say the same thing. The only reason he's not ready is because of the (bad) advice you give. He would have felt comfortable and ready most likely if it weren't for your advice. He says as much: "Prior to discovering your website, I would have jumped at the chance, since she’s quite physically attractive and has many positive qualities."

When *should* one make a move, then? You basically said 5 weeks is too soon, without any alternative.

If you would rather be with someone else, you are right. But being with someone else also does not always mean there is one you would rather be with. There isn't an inherent hierarchy in human relationships.

I don't know if you're saying that all multi-person relationships end up with someone feeling inferior to another, or if you're saying this happens sometimes. Yes, jealousy happens sometimes, but it stems from bad premises; no person is a threat to your value. Affairs usually imply secrecy, and nonconsent, though. But the context here has full knowledge and consent, so that doesn't apply.

Right... that is what she is saying. She is saying that ideas such are not something to be owned. Ideas mixed with a material form can be. That's the same as saying an idea must be embodied before it can be owned, and an embodied idea may be owned. How does that equal ownership of ideas as such? By as such, I mean ideas as an introspective piece of knowledge. An idea to be owned needs to be utilizable and realizable in the real world. *This* I don't believe to be contradictory to other things Rand said. She wrote about property as a right to action: "it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object." Now, for something to become property, she writes: "Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort, should be private property—by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort." IP is part of the category property, it just pertains to particular *useful* information. That's all I have to add about what Rand said. I want to offer more of my defense of IP (also, please take a look at my link)

I only mean to say that considering what Rand means by idea, and how she explicitly talks about giving an idea material form, it is a strawman to suggest Rand is saying that ideas as such can be owned. We'd have to drop the context of everything else Rand wrote to somehow interpret that she said ideas as such. You didn't really present anything other than what reminds me of an argument for materialism via reductio ad absurdum. There is a mind. There is a body. Therefore, minds and bodies are entities that can exist separately. But this is absurd, since to point out a mind is to ignore the electric impulses in the brain. It is absurd to believe in a mind, as minds would be mystical and causeless. Only bodies are material, minds are immaterial. We can reject the mind because minds as such do not exist.

To the degree it is self-harm, yes. I am going off the premise we agree on morality being contextual. A "stupid act" is immoral if the person is aware that the act is stupid. Generally, adultery is immoral if taken as the usual meaning of non-consent or complete unawareness of outside relationships. If Rand did her multi-person romantic relationship in a bad way, then sure, that's immoral, but it's just odd to call it adultery, but part of the word adultery is confusing because some people view multi-person romantic relationships as generally immoral, so adultery tends to go with negative connotation.

"We are talking about the ideas themselves as property." Ideas in themselves cannot be property. I do not know why you insist on talking about if ideas *as such* is the topic, because not even Rand believed ideas as such apart from a thinker could possibly exist. She believed in an integrated body and mind, so there is no reason to suppose Rand is saying that ideas as such can be owned, especially when she says an idea must be given a material form. All the talk about ideas as such is irrelevant - it is a strawman. I've been saying all along that *information* can be owned, not ideas as such. Rand didn't write a lot on IP, so if she was not clear enough, fine. My objective is to see if IP is valid at all, not if Rand wrote two sentences that you think are not written well enough. IP as a concept referring to ideas as such is invalid, but that doesn't mean the concept of IP is invalid. It just means we'll have to see if there is a valid conception. The concept objectivity often refers to apart-from-the-self thinking, but with better thinking about objectivity, your understanding of the referents change. Like objectivity, we don't need to throw out IP. Watch this 2minute clip for some background related to what I'll write about next. The whole thing is on a totally different topic, but this part of the video is exactly about IP.