Eiuol

Intellectual property is different because it is IMPOSSIBLE to pass on to another person. There cannot be an heir to intellectual property. It is mentioned in the C:UI essay too. I meant that the thing that is a value would not exist if the creator didn't make it. A thing that does not exist could not be a value. A thing that does exist may or may not be a value. If it is a value, it is made possible by the fact that someone created it by using his mind.

I've been writing some vignettes lately that I've been proud of. Some are abstract in nature, others are realistic. But they all have themes about living life. Please go take a look, especially if you like writing that focuses on living life. I'll post two of the stories here that are my favorite. If you enjoy, please let me know! They rest are currently on my blogspot web page: http://wlwords.blogspot.com/ Heart and Mind Heart says no. Mind says no. I don’t understand it. I guess it’s because Heart only felt frustration. He could never know anything. How could he possibly even desire what he never knew? Heart cannot know, he can only feel. He is always struggling to find happiness. He is eternally reaching in the dark. All he finds is more frustration. No matter where he reached, nothing could be grasped. Everything fell away. Heart could never hold onto what he found, even when he did find self-confidence. Anything he found was always falling back down into the darkness, Or maybe it’s because Mind could never feel what he found. Everything felt like nothing. Mind cannot feel, he can only know. He’d find happiness and self-confidence all the time, but what could he do with it? Stumbling across these things never helped him live, they were always just there. The world is illuminated for Mind, but every moment is exactly like the previous moment. He could hold onto happiness forever, but no matter what he did, the happiness did nothing. I don’t understand why Heart and Mind don’t get along. They fit each other so perfectly. Zombie I was walking across the street. Then I realized they were all zombies. It was always like this, I don’t know why I only just realized. Everyone around me has always been a zombie. Maybe I was always a zombie too. But now I’m no longer a zombie. It seems so clear! But no one else realizes! I just realized there’s something called life. It’s actually pretty good, I always thought it was bad. I mean, I wasn’t ever supposed to reach for what I wanted. It would only hurt me in the end they said, since we’d just die. Really the best anyone could do was make the end hurt less. If there’s no life, there is no pain. If there is no pain, then you are liberated of the prison that is feeling. I was told this when I was little, so I believed it. Then they injected me, so I wouldn’t age, wouldn’t feel, wouldn’t want, wouldn’t desire. Then there was nothing. I accidentally stepped in the sun, someone walked into me. I started to feel. I realized the sun renews life I didn’t want to be alive, it sounded scary. How could I fix it? I didn’t need to fix it though. This didn’t hurt at all. I felt. Life felt happy. It was good. Maybe I actually just turned into a monster that is a feeling human. A freak. Well, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m alive and that is that. So I’ll just dance in the street for a while. Or maybe I’ll just push some more people into the sun…

All the quote is suggesting is that the value comes from a person's mind because that's how the thing was even created. How *much* an individual values it is another story. Any kind of property can only be controlled by a person as long as they are alive. Rand does suggest rights to IP should be the person's lifetime + some number of years after their death, although I think that is unnecessary, since the IP owner's rights cannot be violated if he is dead. I certainly do agree and understand that IP is valid, but your question about reverse engineering is something I'd want to know too. The question isn't so much "can intellectual and physical property be reconciled?" but "how does one properly define and protect IP so right to life is not being violated?"

There is no "have to work". Of course the owner is responsible for the conditions, but the worker is responsible for choosing to work there. However, it is important to recognize that even during the Industrial Revolution there were regulations. I'm not sure about the US entirely, but in Britain workers were not allowed to negotiate (that is, it was illegal) for higher wages or form voluntary unions, something that would be allowed in a free market.

I'm not sure if any response is justified. If happiness is boredom to him, so be it. There are better things to do.

Why bother to add the qualifier "casual"? I think the term "casual" only brings further confusion to this discussion. Only the distinction between proper and improper really matters.

Pleasure itself is always a good thing. The part that matters if the bad outweighs the bad. I know that sounds utilitarian, but I'm not suggesting that the fact that if the good outweighs the bad is the *reason* for doing something. It seems you're suggesting pleasure isn't a good thing. Almost to the extent that "it feels good, so therefore it's bad". If your pleasure necessarily results in the destruction of your mind (i.e. certain drugs), then that form of pleasure should be avoided if you value reason. I don't think he's suggesting that feeling good is *why* casual sex is good, but that pleasure is one of the good things about it. If you want to evaluate any "badness" about something, you should consider the good and the bad. Your other counterpoints were just stating a different way to achieve a similar end. All of the things you responded to are validly good things. You'd have to demonstrate some things about casual sex that are validly bad. I think the only times it is bad is when you explicitly use the person for their body while ignoring any values they represent to you. Also, you should be more explicit in what you mean by casual sex. All I'm suggesting is that getting to know a person a little bit more is not always going to change much. Maybe for one person a couple hours is enough. Maybe for another only a month is sufficient. I think a distinction between "casual" and "non-casual" is pretty arbitrary. What matters is *why* you're having sex with *that* person.

Has anyone even satisfactorily defined "casual sex"? To me, it means "sex with an individual you don't know that well". That could mean someone you only met at a party that day. If I define it that way, there is nothing about casual sex that makes it always bad. It does not have to mean treating people as objects. It could just be a matter of "I'm attracted to you", which absolutely is a reaction to your own values. But it would always mean you aren't worried about making sure you find "the one" first. It would almost be masochistic to say you should avoid sex until you find know more about the person. Sometimes a way of speaking and moving is enough to know if the person in question is of high value to you. Waiting a month won't change much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla the section on his Death explains how his inventions could be kept secret. To the extent that they *are* kept secret, I don't know. Tesla's ideas are great and all, but it's not like he actually made a whole lot of things. What happened with JP Morgan was unfortunate, but that didn't have to be the end.

The bigger question is, why did he choose golf? Also, what would playing leisurely golf mean? Does that mean building golf courses with his wealth? Is he going to design golf courses for his leisurely play? Either of those options would mean he is being productive. Sometimes people think being "productive" is just doing "work" for money, but it's actually just a matter of creating and using your mind.

Only reason and my life, because they provide the ability to value. If I lose my freedom, I'll aspire to have it. If I lose my sight, I'll aspire to live my life in a new way. Fortunately, if I lost the ability to reason, I wouldn't even know it. The fact that if you lose reason means you won't even be able to regret its loss only further emphasizes the importance of reason.

I know/agree. But it still needs money to function. So it needs to convince people to spend money. I may be using imprecise words but what I'm trying to get at is that there is never any incentive to use force if there are any long-term considerations. I'm not suggesting there would have to be a "battle" to see who "does" government better. Just that an inefficient one *will* run out of money. It might not run out of money because it initiated force, but because it did not spend money in the wisest way. Or because it had a horrible ideas for fundraising.

I simply don't understand how that is true. A proper government *does* need a certain "quality" of citizen, i.e. a rational citizen. How does one attract a rational citizen? Rational policies. So wouldn't it make sense that two countries would only compete to be the "most rational"? To me it's no different than saying "competition leads to force because the highest profit comes through force". But of course competition doesn't mean that; it wouldn't change for a government.

Then I think the genre of television wouldn't even matter. You can't make one sweeping judgment of all works within a genre. There's a difference between shows like "The Amazing Race", "Tool Academy", "I Love New York", or "Survivorman". But they're similar enough to be classified as "reality TV". You can only appraise an individual work, not a genre.

The "size" is probably population, in which case entire "cities" could be large. You would want to have treaties, thus creating a very loose, decentralized "government", based on agreements about rights. Also, there is nothing to suggest there could only be small "city states". New York City is certainly more wealthy than whole countries. But anything an individual city is lacking could be made up for in agreements/treaties with other cities. I'm not sure why you brought up Ayn Rand with regards to her supporting such an idea, because it has nothing to do with the discussion. What matters is if it can work and support a rational society.

Can you give some examples of malevolent art? Certainly people who value rationality would tend to make a certain kind of art, but even those who have an irrational premise cannot avoid demonstrating what their ideas mean. You can see value in art that effectively conveys some element of reality, even if it is only an abstract element. What matters is *why* you like the piece of work. A malevolent premise does not mean "immoral art". Celebration of man isn't the only thing good art is allowed to be. It could also be severe judgment of evil. Or a demonstration of the importance of self-esteem. Or showing how altruism destroys individuality. To enjoy something like The Matrix does not mean you accept some Kantian view of reality.

You wouldn't really need a super-entity. No one can oversees treaties, but there is something called trust. If there is a government you can't trust, then it wouldn't matter if you had some means to oversee the treaty. A criminal will be a criminal regardless of an action being legal. "Competition" between governments doesn't have to mean war. In a very limited sense, the US and Canada are competing governments. There is no war between the US. Of course a war *could* be started, but why *would* a war be started? If the world were more free, Canada and the US would want to attract people to their respective jurisdictions WITHOUT using force of any sort. Isn't that competition? And in fact the least violent country would probably attract the most people anyway. So there is no incentive for war either. Unless of course we're speaking of criminals, in which case it should be acknowledged that it wouldn't matter to the criminal what is legal or not, what is rational or not.

"A series of dynasties clearly is a derivative concept which requires both the idea of "ruler" and the idea of "dynasty" to make sense." How many dynasties in 2009 really have any power? Until we can define a certain "amount" of power a dynasty had (and certainly in some cases we can say a dynasty lost power even before it was officially overthrown), it is little more than family lineage, which certainly would follow some mathematical patterns, as you've shown.

I'm not really sure what point he's trying to make (in the bottom most quote), it's not exactly wrong. "Rightist" and "Leftist" are quite misleading anyway, Statist is usually the best term to use. At the core of either Fascism or Marxism is altruism. I know you asked for an in-depth response, but I'm not sure if it can really be any more in-depth than that.

Of course, just the same if I developed an method without any help from the patenter. It seems that I'd have the right to what I discovered by my own ability as well, and since I'm not using the same instance of property as the patenter. The idea as it stands for both of us wouldn't be identical unless I used his information and his schematics. But assuming the two of us (as in the patenter and me) are rational people, the actual means of doing it is exactly the same (as in their reasons for using the method are different, but the actions involved are identical). I could never own all gold in a particular mountain, but I could own a particular vein of gold. I think my issue is more about "How specific should we go?" in defining how much claim people have to something. By using a vein of gold, I can claim ownership to that vein of gold, but I would not be using the *entire* vein of gold at once, so my labor isn't quite mixed into everything the first time I begin mining. I'm not claiming ownership on something so broad that it becomes ridiculous.

I was a little vague in my wording. I meant more along the lines "If I had figured out an already-patented method of seed planting on my own, could the patenter prosecute me for using the method without his consent?" It does not seem like it would be proper for the patenter to do anything to me, since all I've done is use my own mind in the same way the patenter did. I just couldn't claim that I came up with the idea, of course.

Say a person hundreds of miles away develops an extremely similar idea, as with what happened with the telephone. Would it be a violation of IP to produce an object that does the same thing that the patenter has already created, although probably made slightly differently? My confusion/question revolves more around the (proper) application of IP rights. If someone does patent a method of sticking seeds in the ground, what if I discovered the same method as well? Could I be stopped from using that same method even if I learned it from someone else? What specifically would it *mean* to have a patent? How can one decide when an idea is new, yet similar, and not a violation of any existing patent? Rand's essay on IP is all I've read about the Objectivist stance on IP.

It doesn't sound like much more than fancy astrology or numerology, at least the places where you discuss numbers. In particular, placing special significance on certain numbers for no particular reason other than "it fits together!". All people make decisions based on what they know (even if what they know is simply that sacrificing 1 person every year leads to appeasement of the gods). So anything that occurs in history will be based entirely upon what people do or think. Any corresponding numbers would at best be coincidental.

My question is essentially at what point can you say someone is violating IP rights? For example would it be proper to say a person can patent steel? Or would it only make sense to patent a particular steel with a particular name? If I were to analyze a particular product of steel and reverse engineer it, would it be proper to have any IP law prevent me from producing the chemically identical steel, provided I give it a new name?

Me too.