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Tyco

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Posts posted by Tyco

  1. In the Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand wrote (and rightly so) that "nothing is outside the province of reason". However, she defined reason as the following:

    "Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses."

    Leaving aside the fact that sensory perception (sense-based identification) is not excluded by this definition ("identified ... by man's senses"), and is not a rational process, does anyone see a problem here?

    Are you you referring to material not provided by the senses? ie. one's own ideas/thoughts

  2. You should take minimum effective action necessary to restore your life/property to normal conditions and punish your enemy but no more than that. Of course it may be difficult to establish what exactly those actions/punishments might be, but fairness should be the guiding principle. The reason for the punishment is to let the criminal experience the negative consequences of his actions - ie. retribution - it is not enough simply to restore the victim's life to normal.

  3. In response to the OP:

    The point is that you cannot RATIONALLY refuse to recognize the rights of others, whilst claiming rights for yourself. If you were being objective you'd need to accept that the rights you have also apply to every other individual. What is irrational is not moral.

    So it's not really a case of losing your rights, it's more a case of trying to enact a contradiction.

  4. Hmm. I often forget to ask people how thing's are going for them, it's because usually I'm not interested. That's not to say I'm not interested in their company, just that it's not my idea of an interesting conversation. Conversely I don't volunteer information about my own life/troubles, although if they ask I usually feel the need to at least make the topic interesting, whereas maybe they were just asking as a 'token gesture.' Maybe they think I'm self-centred? :dough:

  5. I never quite bought Rand's claims about the influence of Aristotle on history. Not to say I dismissed them, but rather found them hard to believe and furthermore not worth the study required to prove. Which is to say the Objectivist ethics held true for me regardless.

    I have a question at this point:

    You have mentioned that you have hundreds of examples to back up your argument. Obviously such a list can be convincing without being exhaustive. You do not have unlimited time to plot a curve for everything. So my question is, what qualities should I look for in finding more cases?

    If I looked at the term of team managers in soccer leagues, for instance, would you expect me to find the same trend?

  6. I was telling a colleague about this at lunch today. The way I put it, I said the stability of any structure is more vulnerable as entropy increases. So it makes sense that in ever more complex systems (due to population increase for instance), even if those structures are institutions like monarchy, they will be less stable so in that case not last as long.

    Is that anything like what you're saying?

  7. I just want to clarify that with the Hari Seldon statement I wasn't trying to make light of Math Guy's tremendous efforts, I was just struck by the similarity of Asimov's unexplained psychohistory concept and this historical maximum entropy idea. Don't want to derail the discussion either, although it'd be interesting to know of Math Guy has read the Asimov books in question.

    Looking forward to today's updates!

  8. I think your argument for 'character' addresses stealing specifically, and strongly, but my argument actually pertains to rights violations in general

    i didn't construct my argument to conclude "you will be arrested" or "you will be shunned by your fellow man"

    it concludes with 'you will be acting irrationally, thus contrary to your survival'

    i'm going by 'reason is your only absolute' and 'reason is your means of survival' and 'all evil stems from the refusal to think'

    if you take a prudent predator approach, you will be seeking to hold rights, whilst seeking to infringe the rights of others

    since the only rational grounds for rights is ranting everyone else the same rights, you will be suspending rationality

    thus, it is immoral - rationality is man's means of survival (qua man)

    it's not because there will be an effect on others (like you said, that's not guaranteed), or a response from others, it's primarily because you will be trying to hold a contradiction

    imagine you were one of those people like the protagonist of Memento who only has short term memory - the long term (internal) effect on character/integrity would be negated because you would have no knowledge of previous actions, but you could still act morally on a case-by-case basis by holding reason as your only absolute and recognizing that rights must not be violated

    (of course character, integrity, pride, productivity are all still good additional arguments for not stealing, i just don't think they are the primary motivation)

    One might argue that it is irrational to expect a theft that goes unnoticed to have any effect on the theif's own rights.

    It is hypocritical, certainly, to expect others to respect your rights when you don't respect the rights of others. But consistency isn't something that one pursues as an end in itself; one requires consistency in one's thoughts ONLY because reality has no contradictions. One's thinking is inconsistent if one tries to get away with acting as if two contradictory facts are true in reality. But what, exactly, is contradictory about me pursuing a "prudent predator" approach, whereby I steal and whatnot only under very special circumstances, where it will likely have no effect on how others treat me? Is there something contradictory between doing something and thinking that occasionally, other people won't notice it? That happens all the time. People get away with thefts all the time.

    The root contradiction does not, in fact, concern how others will react to your disregard for their property rights, because that depends on their awareness. The root contradiction lies in thinking that isolated acts of theft do not have a spillover effect on one's overall character. One's life is an integrated sum, and deviations can never be contained. That effect will always be present, whether others are watching or not. That is what makes a prudent predator approach not prudent at all.

    It's true that if all actors are acting rationally, one is best served with respecting property rights, but Objectivism must also give compelling reasons for behaving ethically before we get to a perfect Objectivist society. It has to give people reasons to be ethical even when they might well "get away with it" in the conventional sense; and its response is that they aren't truly getting away with it, when you take the long-term perspective on their lives.

    But this would imply that if you know that the owner isn't there and no one is watching, you shouldn't care which way you go. My point is that making ethics dependent on other people's reactions to your behavior is an unstable base, unable to provide solid principles. You should go the first way because respect for property rights is an important character trait that will serve you well in most situations of your life, and you can't go the second route without undermining it.

  9. thanks for making this post, it's very interesting, exciting even

    i only have a basic knowledge of the field of statistics, but i'll let you know what i think, for what it's worth

    the social entropy idea, and the resulting dynasty trend, they make sense to me

    if the complexity of the system increases, ie. if the number of actors increases, if the human population increases, then

    - the dominance of any particular people/dynasty/institution will be lessened through increased competition

    no?

    especially if the dominance arose through monopolization/hogging of resources which other people want

  10. " If they demand the violation of the rights of others, they negate and forfeit their own." - Rand, racism essay

    although, you could argue that here Rand was referring to a political entity (civil rights related campaigns) and not an individual

    but anyway, the way *I* see it, the argument flows like this

    man needs rights to survive qua man

    rights must be mutually respected amongst humans

    it is irrational to want to keep your own rights whilst violating another's

    therefore someone who steals is living irrationally

    so stealing is contrary to your survival (as a rational being, ie. 'qua man')

    maybe the forfeiting sentence isn't the best way to phrase it but essentially

    - rights require mutual respect amongst rights-holders, if we are operating rationally

    say on my way home i can take two equidistant routes, one which is an open road, or another which is a path through private property

    production of value is not an issue here

    the reason i should not take the second route is because i want to preserve my own property rights, not my own self-respect/esteem

    It doesn't have to be the thief's explicit objective in order to be morally binding on him. The thrust of the Objectivist ethics is that so long as any of the thief's stated objectives includes survival, continuing to exist on this planet, he must either accept the standard of man's life qua man to further his life, or accept a contradiction (attempting to continue living while engaging in actions that undercut his ability to continue to live, long-term). Now, the vast majority of people do indeed accept contradictions in their moral code, but the point is that there is only one objective moral code which is fully and completely compatible with a course of life (without contradictions), and that code does not include theft. The Objectivist ethics is not deontological, in that it is only the initial choice to live which makes it binding, but it is not subjective either, in that it is compatible with any given end whatsoever, and it applies to anyone who wants to live. The theif's particular objectives don't matter and are most likely self-contradictory.

    How exactly do you "forfeit your own" rights when you commit an act of theft? I understand that in a free society, based on property rights, when someone commits an act of theft, they forfeit some of their rights, allowing the government moral sanction to lock them up for a bit... but outside of that context, what exactly do you mean when you make this claim? Is it that any act violating others' rights makes your own rights more likely to be violated? This claim is highly dependent on the social context, which is exactly what an objective morality is not supposed to be. Is your claim merely that I lose the moral high ground when claiming my rights, and I become a hypocrite? You must then indicate why I should care about that.

    You're still gaining a value from theft (fun, in this case), and you're still internally undermining your own respect for production and property rights (production and product), and it is precisely this respect that you need to be able to live the best life possible. It is not important (primarily) because one day the guy might see you, and come vandalize your lawn, it is important because it undermines your own character, which is of primary, selfish importance.

  11. Too add to discussion:

    surveys show that various subtleties tend to affect the evaluation of someone's beauty

    for instance, facial symmetry

    now that is something totally independent from healthiness

    (p.s. i don't recommend looking up what all these subtleties are... you'll most likely just notice flaws in yourself you never noticed before!)

  12. These answers don't really convince me. It may be impossible to use theft as a long-term means of survival but who said that was the thief's objective? That claim is pertinent to why a country develops property rights through law in the first place, but not in this individual scenario.

    Like I said a few posts ago, the reason you shouldn't steal is because you'll be forfeiting your own rights, and you need rights, not dollars, to survive.

    I could, for instance, draw a steady salary from my job, which I use to buy all my food and other necessities and luxuries, and then on the way home each day I could pinch an apple from someone's garden. I don't even need to eat the apple, I could just throw it away for fun. This does not undermine the income that supports my life, it is merely isolated theft or vandalism. And it is still immoral, and serious - because in violating someone else's rights, I forfeit my own.

    This is a beautiful response.

    I thank you for that.

    Let me quote the paragraph of Andrew Bernstein's "Objectivism in One Lesson" that made me raise this question:

    Talking about why the initiation of force by a gunman is bad, he says (bold is mine):

    "... Left free, a man will choose to hold onto his money (or his home ior his land or other valuables)-- but under compulsion he surrenders it to a gunman. The victim realizes that if he is unable to retain the wealth he earns, then he cannot survive --reality will, in time, terminate his life; but if he does not hand over the wealth he's earned to the brute, his life will be terminated now....The victim is thereby placed in a hopeless position [...] Even if the initation of force does not entail the threat of imminent death --even if, for example, it involves merely the theft of a few dollars -- it undermines a man's ability to employ his resources in support of his life. If he has no recourse against such theft, then he has no means of preventing his financial life blood to be drained. How then is he to exercise his right to life? The conclusion is that the initiation of force always undercuts an individual's ability to employ his mind in support of his own existence. An absolute requirement of a civilized society is that it bans such actions violating men's moral right to seek survival as a rational being" (page 101)

    Reading the context, I thought that when Bernstein says that "initiation of force always undercuts an individual's abilty to employ his mind in support of his own existence", the individual here means the victim. The victim is deprived of his freedom to use those dollars in support of its existence.

    I thought that theft was considered evil because it is harming the victim, and then wondered in which realistic sense a very wealthy victim could have his quest for survival undercut from the loss of one dollar.

    Please let me know how you interpret Bernstein's paragraph. I can paste here the whole section if needed.

  13. found evidence of one interesting piece of legislation:

    "This ecological disaster (little or no rehabilitation has been done since mining started 80 years ago) has been conveniently hidden from the public eye because this section of coast is a restricted area. Access control to it is strictly enforced by law. In South Africa, the possession of rough diamonds is illegal and could cost you years of jail time."

    but not quite sure what to make of it

  14. the De Beers cartel continues to puzzle me

    does anyone have thoughts on these two points:

    - even if they owned and controlled the supply and retail of diamond jewels, they still don't have a monopoly because the actual market, jewels, is much bigger than just diamonds

    - there's no way you can consider De Beers a monopoly as every consumer has the opportunity to resell their diamonds (ie. it's not like oil which gets used up, or transport which is a service)

  15. I found this article

    http://thedailybell.com/575/Edward-Epstein...ond-Racket.html

    first part is an interview with the author of a diamond-trade exposé, who concludes that De Beers was not a monopoly but a cartel, and that advertising is the main reason for the continuing illusion of diamond value/scarcity

    the editor of the webpage, however, disagrees on this point and says De Beers WAS a monopoly if it could exert this monopoly-like power on the price of goods. he goes on to argue the cartel MUST have been backed by government actions, but only because that's what Austrian economics dictates. he offers no actual evidence, taking us back to square one...

  16. I read in a book by Rothbard that the DeBeers diamond monopoly and/or cartel which allegedly lasted 100 years was only possible because they were not operating in a free market. He stated that in South Africa ('in particular') diamond mines were owned by the government and leased to miners/producers. Even if you found a diamond mine on your property, it would swiftly be nationalized. De Beers, he said, were conveniently the only party the government would deal with.

    Now, that makes total sense, the problem is I cannot find any evidence that this nationalization claim is true. Anyone know?

  17. quite simply:

    Courts, military, and police are the only 3 services that require force.

    Lately I have been having trouble defending one of Ayn Rand's positions.

    For the longest time I have taken for granted that the only "service" the federal government should provide is the protection of individual rights. That is, courts, police, and military. This is Rand's stance, and it always seemed so obvious to me that I never even thought to question it. But in arguing with leftists (I dread using the world liberal as the mainstream media does, since most "liberals" are anything but) against universal health care, it was pointed out to me that it is arbitrary for the govt to provide these 3 services (courts, police, military) and not more or less. And after thinking about it a little bit, I cannot figure out a reason why this is not true.

    In any of Rand's works does she talk about why exactly it is proper for the govt to provide these 3 services and not less? I know that I would never want the govt to do more than this, but is it possible that in an ideal society there would be no government at all? I feel like Rand must have thought this through and written about it somewhere, but I cannot find anything on it. There must be a specific rational justification for it, even though it seems so obvious.

    I also have read some works by Murray Rothbard of the Austrian school of economics (whose opinion I greatly respect), and he advocates going a step further than Rand to anarchy. This is only adding to my confusion.

    Anarchy does not seem like a good social system to me at all. I assume that I am simply missing a piece of Rand's argument, and that once I find it everything will click. If anyone can shed some light on this it would be greatly appreciated.

  18. I find this quite distressing (the Hickman thing).

    Not so much that she found something to admire in a loathsome killer (I can understand how that might be interesting from an artistic perspective, or how in the 1920s details of news stories didn't travel so fast. Plus her later writings contradict those sentiments), but its the way Rand attacked the public that bugs me. Her criticisms of the 'fat, little' (little seems to be the no.1 Objectivist insult) jurors and the suggestion that the hostile Joe Public had probably done 'worse' seem utterly ridiculous.

    Maybe I'm being too harsh, I mean the main characters in her novels, due to their society, often lead spiritually tortured early lives where they don't know what to think of their fellow men, until they have their revelations. Maybe they were more autobiographical than I thought. Hmm.

    Unless there is a huge amount of misquoting going on.

  19. It's not bad, the worst is "Giving up her royalties to preserve her vision is something that no genuine capitalist, and few popular novelists, would have done." And that's not really even a condemnation, either. It's about Ayn Rand anyway, not Objectivism specifically.

    It seems to me that situation is analogous to Roark forfeiting his fee in order to correct the dissatisfying west wing of the Sanborn house.

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