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Dormin111

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Everything posted by Dormin111

  1. There was a thread a few years ago where Don Athos raised some good points against IP which I never saw adequately addressed. I can't find the thread so I'll repeat what I can remember. First, at the heart of IP is the concept of possessing an "idea" as a form of property. How can this be so? An idea is not a physical asset (practically speaking) and can be "reproduced," "possessed," or even modified infinetely. To get around these oddities, IP theoritst have to create these strange provisions to IP as a form of property which don't apply to any other forms of property. Why is IP the only property which arbitrarily expires after a certain period of time? How does someone differentiate between stolen IP and a good produced from a similar idea? Second, IP advocates claim that using someone's else's idea without his permission is theft because the intellectual labor of the property production was only performed by the originator of the idea. This is problematic in two aspects. First, it is not always true. Multiple individuals can come up with the same idea without ever making contact with one another, yet IP law arbitrarily grants protection to the first cliaminat of the patent or copyright, thereby punishing any later creators. And second, even if an idea is stolen, it would be false to say no intellectual rigour goes into the production of a product based off of that idea. The theif producer would still need to concive of how to build the product off another's template. I agree it would be fraud for the theif to claim the idea as his own, but to build a knock off and admit its nature is not theft or dishonesty.
  2. The scenario: Jones approaches Smith's house shooting a gun with the intent to murder Smith. Smith responds by returning fire with his own gun in a clear act of self-defense. Jones is frightened and flees. Smith is succesful in his self-defense, but afterwards notices that some of his shots hit his neighbor's house. The neighbor is unharmed but requires money to repair the damage. Who, if anyone should be legally required to reimburse the neighbor? Possible Choices: - Jones: fired the gun which caused the damage, willingly took the risk of causing collateral damage - Smith: provoked the incident which led to the collateral damage, was the aggressor - Neighbor: collateral damage is an expected component of self-defense and he got unlucky - The state: no individual is objectively at fault but reimbursement of collateral damage falls under law enforcement duties Furthermore, can this same dynamic apply to war vis a vis moral defender countires, moral aggressor countries, civilian collateral damage, and total warfare.
  3. I agree with B. As long as a government follows objective law, it does not need the explicit consent of its citizens.
  4. I agree with Diane Hseish's position that the rights of such an individual would pass to the parents or assigned ward. The ward should legally be able to do whatever he wants to with the body, even to the sick extremes of eating it.
  5. Yes. Who else belongs in this category beside the retarded, brain damaged or those in a coma?
  6. The quotes you are referring to lack context and necessary explanation. Retarded individuals are humans but lack the intellectual capacity of "ordinary" humans. Man's rights naturally derive from his nature, especially his nature as a rational being who survives. Given that retarded individuals lack full reasoning capactities, their rights are curbed or even non-existent in some cases.
  7. What amazes me about those who attack fractional reserve banking is how similar they sound to progressive liberals. All of their arguments boil down into two categories: - The customer is too stupid / the banker is too slimy for the FRB to work - It's bad for "society" even though it doesn't harm anyone's rights directly
  8. The title says it all. http://news.yahoo.com/hugo-chavez-fiery-venezuelan-leader-dies-58-220210262.html CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Hugo Chavez, the fiery populist who declared a socialist revolution in Venezuela, crusaded against U.S. influence and championed a leftist revival across Latin America, died Tuesday at age 58 after a nearly two-year bout with cancer. Vice President Nicolas Maduro, surrounded by other government officials, announced the death in a national television broadcast. He said Chavez died at 4:25 p.m. local time. During more than 14 years in office, Chavez routinely challenged the status quo at home and internationally. He polarized Venezuelans with his confrontational and domineering style, yet was also a masterful communicator and strategist who tapped into Venezuelan nationalism to win broad support, particularly among the poor. Chavez repeatedly proved himself a political survivor. As an army paratroop commander, he led a failed coup in 1992, then was pardoned and elected president in 1998. He survived a coup against his own presidency in 2002 and won re-election two more times. The burly president electrified crowds with his booming voice, often wearing the bright red of his United Socialist Party of Venezuela or the fatigues and red beret of his army days. Before his struggle with cancer, he appeared on television almost daily, talking for hours at a time and often breaking into song of philosophical discourse. Chavez used his country's vast oil wealth to launch social programs that include state-run food markets, new public housing, free health clinics and education programs. Poverty declined during Chavez's presidency amid a historic boom in oil earnings, but critics said he failed to use the windfall of hundreds of billions of dollars to develop the country's economy. Inflation soared and the homicide rate rose to among the highest in the world. Chavez underwent surgery in Cuba in June 2011 to remove what he said was a baseball-size tumor from his pelvic region, and the cancer returned repeatedly over the next 18 months despite more surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments. He kept secret key details of hisillness, including the type of cancer and the precise location of the tumors. "El Comandante," as he was known, stayed in touch with the Venezuelan people during his treatment via Twitter and phone calls broadcast on television, but even those messages dropped off as his health deteriorated. Two months after his last re-election in October, Chavez returned to Cuba again for cancer surgery, blowing a kiss to his country as he boarded the plane. He was never seen again in public. After a 10-week absence marked by opposition protests over the lack of information about the president's health and growing unease among the president's "Chavista" supporters, the government released photographs of Chavez on Feb. 15 and three days later announced that the president had returned to Venezuela to be treated at a military hospital in Caracas. Throughout his presidency, Chavez said he hoped to fulfill Bolivar's unrealized dream of uniting South America. He was also inspired by Cuban leader Fidel Castro and took on the aging revolutionary's role as Washington's chief antagonist in the Western Hemisphere after Castro relinquished the presidency to his brother Raul in 2006. Supporters saw Chavez as the latest in a colorful line of revolutionary legends, from Castro to Argentine-born Ernesto "Che"Guevara. Chavez nurtured that cult of personality, and even as he stayed out of sight for long stretches fighting cancer, his out-sized image appeared on buildings and billboard throughout Venezuela. The airwaves boomed with his baritone mantra: "I am a nation." Supporters carried posters and wore masks of his eyes, chanting, "I am Chavez." Chavez saw himself as a revolutionary and savior of the poor. "A revolution has arrived here," he declared in a 2009 speech. "No one can stop this revolution." Chavez's social programs won him enduring support: Poverty rates declined from 50 percent at the beginning of his term in 1999 to 32 percent in the second half of 2011. But he also charmed his audience with sheer charisma and a flair for drama that played well for the cameras. He ordered the sword of South American independence leader Simon Bolivar removed from Argentina's Central Bank to unsheathe at key moments. On television, he would lambast his opponents as "oligarchs," announce expropriations of companies and lecture Venezuelans about the glories of socialism. His performances included renditions of folk songs and impromptu odes to Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong and 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Chavez carried his in-your-face style to the world stage as well. In a 2006 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, he called President George W. Bush the devil, saying the podium reeked of sulfur after Bush's address. Critics saw Chavez as a typical Latin American caudillo, a strongmanwho ruled through force of personality and showed disdain for democratic rules. Chavez concentrated power in his hands with allies who dominated the congress and justices who controlled the Supreme Court. He insisted all the while that Venezuela remained a vibrant democracy and denied trying to restrict free speech. But some opponents faced criminal charges and were driven into exile. While Chavez trumpeted plans for communes and an egalitarian society, his soaring rhetoric regularly conflicted with reality. Despite government seizures of companies and farmland, the balance between Venezuela's public and private sectors changed little during his presidency. And even as the poor saw their incomes rise, those gains were blunted while the country's currency weakened amid economic controls. Nonetheless, Chavez maintained a core of supporters who stayed loyal to their "comandante" until the end. "Chavez masterfully exploits the disenchantment of people who feel excluded ... and he feeds on controversy whenever he can," Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka wrote in their book "Hugo Chavez: The Definitive Biography of Venezuela's Controversial President." Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias was born on July 28, 1954, in the rural town of Sabaneta in Venezuela's western plains. He was the son of schoolteacher parents and the second of six brothers. Chavez was a fine baseball player and hoped he might one day pitch in the U.S. major leagues. When he joined the military at age 17, he aimed to keep honing his baseball skills in the capital. But the young soldier immersed himself in the history of Bolivar and other Venezuelan heroes who had overthrown Spanish rule, and his political ideas began to take shape. Chavez burst into public view in 1992 as a paratroop commander leading a military rebellion that brought tanks to the presidential palace. When the coup collapsed, Chavez was allowed to make a televised statement in which he declared that his movement had failed "for now." The speech, and those two defiant words, launched his career, searing his image into the memory of Venezuelans. He and other coup prisoners were released in 1994, and President Rafael Caldera dropped the charges against them. Chavez then organized a new political party and ran for president four years later, vowing to shatter Venezuela's traditional two-part system. At age 44, he became the country's youngest president in four decades of democracy with 56 percent of the vote. Chavez was re-elected in 2000 in an election called under a new constitution drafted by his allies. His increasingly confrontational style and close ties to Cuba, however, disenchanted many of the middle-class supporters who had voted for him. The next several years saw bold but failed attempts by opponents to dislodge him from power. In 2002, he survived a short-lived coup, which began after a large anti-Chavez street protest ended in deadly shootings. Dissident military officers detained the president and announced he had resigned. But within two days, he returned to power with the help of military loyalists while his supporters rallied in the streets. Chavez emerged a stronger president. He defeated a subsequent opposition-led strike that paralyzed the country's oil industry, and he fired thousands of state oil company employees. The coup also turned Chavez more decidedly against the U.S. government, which had swiftly recognized the provisional leader who had briefly replaced him. He created political and trade alliances that excluded the U.S., and he cozied up to Iran and Syria in large part, it seemed, due to their shared antagonism toward the U.S. government. Despite the souring relationship, Chavez sold the bulk of Venezuela's oil to the United States. He easily won re-election in 2006, and then said it was his destiny to lead Venezuela until 2021 or even 2031. "I'm still a subversive," Chavez said in a 2007 interview with The Associated Press. "I think the entire world has to be subverted." Playing such a larger-than-life public figure ultimately left little time for a personal life. His second marriage, to journalist Marisabel Rodriguez, deteriorated in the early years of his presidency, and they divorced in 2004. In addition to their one daughter, Rosines, Chavez had three children from his first marriage, which ended before Chavez ran for office. Chavez acknowledged after he was diagnosed with cancer that he had been recklessly neglecting his health. He had taken to staying up late and drinking as many as 40 cups of coffee a day. He regularly summoned his Cabinet ministers to the presidential palace late at night. He often said he believed Venezuela was on its way down a long road toward socialism, and that there was no turning back. After winning re-election in 2012, he vowed to deepen his push to transform Venezuela. His political movement, however, was mostly a one-man show. Only three days before his final surgery, Chavez named Maduro as his chosen successor. Now, it will be up to Venezuelans to determine whether the Chavismo movement can survive, and how it will evolve, without the leader who inspired it.
  9. You are context dropping on the Churchill comparison. The claim that killing civilians in an enemy country is just only applies in emergencies, such as when the other country poses an existential threat. Neither the US government, nor the employees of the WTC posed a legitimate threat to Islamic extremists.
  10. I won't claim to understand the science behind any of it, but it seems logical that with enough precision, one could continue cutting or smashing something into smaller pieces.
  11. Is there actually a point at which something can't be broken down? What would be the scientific basis for such a point?
  12. According to Ayn Rand, infinity does not metaphysically exist, rather it is only an epistemological measurement construct. One place where we use infinity epistemologically is the space between two points. If I look at a number line, there are technically infinite points between the number "1" and the number "2" because I could theretically always add more digits onto a demimal point between them. For instance, 1.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000009 is a single point between the two points, and by adding more digits, I can infinetely find more points. My question is: how does this apply metaphically? If I draw a line on a pierce of paper with a pencil, it make look like a single, solid line, but I know that it is not. Instead the line is made up of specs of graphite which are in turn mae up of molecules which are made of atoms, which are made of quarks, which are made of something, etc. Aren't there infinite points between the two lines? Can you break any metaphysical entity down infinitely?
  13. It was once considered inconcievable that Europe could be brought under a single soverign entity, but the EU seems to be making such progress every day.
  14. Does anybody watch ABC's Shark Tank? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_Tank I've become addicted to it. Every episode is a great demonstration of entrepreneuriship and market mechanisms at work.Watching the investment strategies of business titans never dissapoints.
  15. It all goes back to what you can prove and how you prove it. You start out with the arbitrary assertion that God exists (as opposed to a Flying Spagetti Monster, or some other diety) and then you make inferences from there. I start with what I can directly sense and go from there. Why do you base your beleifs around what there is no evidence for (beyond sheer, raw feeling) instead of what there is evidence for?
  16. How do you get to the conclusion that God exists without sensory evidence? All valid concepts are derived from sensory evidence and logical inference. Where else could they come from? Faith? Revalation?
  17. Stolen Concept Fallacy. Where did you get the concept of God or belief from? You only know of these concepts by using your senses in the world. That is unless you claim your knowlege of these concepts came a priori, in which case the burden of proof is on you.
  18. That's a non-sequitor. Who is to say it is God who punishes the immoral (or built the system which punishes them)?
  19. What would have to happen for God to be disproven to you?
  20. I recently got into a debate with someone over the existence of God. Growing up in an atheist household and a generally non-religious community, I never had much of an opportunity to develop an argument against the existence of God, so it took me some time to formulate my thoughts. I will write here the focal point of the debate, and my thoughts on the subject. I hope I can get some pointers. Part 1 My opponent – “God exists.You think he logically does not? You are making a positive assertion, therefore you must prove it logically.” Me – Reason is the means by which man navigates the world around him. The construct of reason originates with empirical evidence gathered by our senses. Man uses his senses to see the world around him and construct patterns based on what he sees. Through such observation, we have formulated logic through the law of identity (or non-contradiction), and its corollary, the law of causality. When one makes a logical assertion, he must necessarily rely on positive evidence. There is no other way to make an assertion. If I am standing in the middle of an open field and someone asks me if there is a wall in front of me, I can only logically respond by pointing out that there is a lack of positive evidence of the wall. I can use my eyes and reach out my hand to deduce that there is no wall in front of me. The only reason I would be wrong is if I were under some sort of extremely heavy mind altering substances. The religious argument fundamentally rejects this very basic notion of logic. It instead posits, “something is held to be true, or at least possible, until it has been proven false.” But the entire concept of “proving something false” is technically invalid. The term is often used colloquially, but you cannot actually use empirical evidence to prove something is false. After all, how can anything really be “shown” to be false? (Someone could use conceptual logic to prove something false with a syllogism, but any concrete application would necessarily require empirical evidence which is validated through positive assertion). Going back to the wall example: despite the fact that I sense no wall, a person could suggest that maybe the wall is there, but it is beyond my capacity to sense it. Even if I possessed the most advanced cognition tools on earth, I could never actually demonstrate that the wall does not exist. Nor can I disprove that the wall is beyond my cognition. The justification for the wall’s existence doesn’t even have to be supernatural; perhaps the wall was built by super advanced alien technology which I cannot perceive. But this is all irrelevant. Logic does not work this way. If one were to consistently apply this method of logic, no decisions could ever be made and all action would be chaos. After all, can you disprove the notion that there is an invisible bomb strapped to your chest right now? Can you disprove that I am God just messing around with your head. Well, no, no one can technically disprove these things. Part 2 My opponent – “But even if what you say is true, you cannot be certain. It is not impossible that the wall is there and was built by aliens. Even if you use the best evidence available, you are only guessing and hoping your senses are accurate.” Me - The concept of “certainty” is entirely epistemological. When I say, “I am certain that George Washington was the first president of the United States,” I am not saying that I am a God-like being who knows everything about everything with infinite omniscience and therefore I must be correct. Rather, I am saying that given the full context of my knowledge, there is reason to believe George Washington was the first president. Essentially you are getting at the concept of “agnosticism.” If what you say is true, then not only should we be agnostic about God, but we should be agnostic about literally every potential assertion in all of conceivable existence. This is because you are using metaphysics as a standard of truth, rather than epistemology. Part 3 My Opponent – So what? You could still be wrong about George Washington. Maybe history was misrecorded? Me – Maybe history was misrecorded. I have no way of proving that it wasn’t. All I can use is the best evidence available to me. Why would I base my judgment on unproven hypotheticals rather than empirical assertions?
  21. If anything, happiness should be positively correlated with making an ecological footprint.
  22. An awesome post in the comments: "Again, inviting a "diversity" of opinions about the influence or importance of Atlas Shrugged is like inviting the Three Stooges to participate in a panel discussion of quantum mechanics. This idea has invited the usual suspects: trolls, cynics, the disappointed, the smear-masters, people who've not read the novel and just repeat what their professors or favorite critics have said about it, people who attempted to read it but were too lazy or predisposed to abandon something that challenged their PC premises, people who are simply mentally lazy, people whose reading tastes are too "sophisticated" to bother, the pseudo-intellectuals, the pseudo-literarti, and people who read the New York Times and Washington Post, and believe everything they read in those papers."
  23. Minarchists hold that a state is necesary for the maintenance of objective law in society. Public Choice theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice_theory) posits that the nature of rational actors working within a state will automatically make the state a broken institution unless the government were somehow run by angels. Some economists, like David Friedman, even take this as far as to say that a proper understanding of public choice should lead one to embrace anarchy. Some examples of public choice principles: - Rational ignorance. Voters know nothing about politics or who they are voting for because it is not worth it to invest the time to find this information given how insignficant their vote is. - Dispersed costs, concentrated befits. Politics deals in spreading cosats for the sake of concentrated benefits. This creates broken incentives. Most Americans don't support farm subsidies, but are only chagred a few dollars per year for them in the form of taxes. Meanwhile, big agri companies spend millions of dollars per year to get these subsidies. What incentive do voters have to resist? - Bundled Packaging. When selecting a candiate, voters must select bundled packages of policies as opposed to the standard market practice of slecting individual goods. This leads to many distoritions. I have not heard the topic discuessed too much around here, so I am hoping to hear some opinions on public choice theory from fellow Objectivists.
  24. If your son is a fan of video games, you could try introducing him to (or if he has alredy played it, then just talking to him about) the PC game, Bioshock. The game takes place in a dystopian quasi-Objectivist city and displays many Objectivist values in a very compelling manner.
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