Mossoff on Intellectual Property Rights

[DonAthos]

8 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Suppose a caveman heard you talk about borrowing and how it deprives the sleeping man of something and he responds:

I have not deprived sleeping man of anything.  He was there the pole was here.  He did not have the pole.  I did not touch him.  He was not using the pole.  I did not force and take it from him.  The moment I picked up the pole I had the pole.  He lost the pole because by forgetting it, he let me have it.  I could pick it up, and I did, and once I pick up the pole it is mine.  I can wear and tear it now that pole is mine.  If pole was his he would have it. He says he intended to use it again, but he did not.  I got it first.  He can only wish he did what he intended, I have pole now.

I don’t know what you’re looking for, or asking, or if there is any argument you’re making. You’re saying: “what if a caveman disagreed with my argument for property rights and insisted that ‘might makes right’ or that ‘possession equals property right’ or that ‘there is no such thing as property’” or something? Well then, he disagrees, but my argument remains the same.

He says he has not deprived the sleeping caveman of anything, but I say that he has, and my discussion of not being able to use the fishing pole, wear and tear, etc., is meant to demonstrate the nature of that deprivation. That it is an assault on the caveman’s life follows, as my argument was again meant to demonstrate.

If the caveman is unable to follow my argument, I can’t say that I’m surprised… but I am somewhat heartened that he knows the word “deprivation.”

Please consider that my stance on property rights is identical to the stance that an Objectivist, orthodox with respect to IP, has after whatever term of patent has expired, so far as I am aware. If we set a patent at twenty years (for whatever reasons), then both you and I would regard it as kosher, I presume, for one caveman to “copy” the (innovated) fishing pole of another following that twenty year term. But our treatment of the fishing pole itself would be the very same; no one could yet “borrow” it when the caveman is sleeping, whether in year one or year one-hundred. With patent (or trademark, or copyright, or however you believe IP best expressed) expired, I don’t see that we would have any point of difference in how this fishing pole is to be treated, or how it relates to our cavemen, qua “property” or “rights.”

Therefore, I do not believe that IP somehow hides in this discussion of “borrowing” actual property, as – so far as I know – we treat that case in the exact same manner and for the very same reasons. But if you have a case to make that it does, please don’t wait on me to guess what you want me to say, but go ahead and make it.

[dream_weaver]

From CUI

A man is not forced to apply for a patent or copyright; he may give his idea away, if he so chooses; but if he wishes to exercise his property right, the government will protect it, as it protects all other rights.

If a man places objects out by the curb for trash the shinny-men come by to mine the contents. If things are left out in the yard, they may get stolen, but this differs in respect to the custom of placing objects by the curb for the garbage service. If something is stolen from the yard, the owner, if he so chooses to exercise his property right, can file a claim upon which a proper government will act upon to protect it, as it should do to protect all objectively identified rights.

Fraud, blackmail, embezzlement, hold to this as well. If the individual right on these fronts are violated, the initiation of force on the victim, like IP, are not like seeing someone pick a pocket, or execute a holdup, or breaking into a house. Understanding how these are an initiation of force such as in fraud means to grasp how an individual would have acted had he factual information to go upon. So again, if he so chooses to exercise his property right, a claim must be filed upon which a proper government will act upon to protect it.

 

5 hours ago, DonAthos said:

I still do not understand why we have switched threads in the middle of a single discussion)

My browser indicated 15 pages last time I read a post in there. To me, it reads like a disorganized book. I’m more interested in identifying and clarifying this in my mind.

Peikoff, in his Objective Communications course, addresses the point of identifying the key philosophic point, the point, which will often resolve the tangential issues that arise that turn into “wild goose chases”. His description was something along the lines of

Interlocutor brings up a point. You start to explain. Interlocutor brings up two more points in objection. You stop, and try to address the points so that you can get back to the first point, but before you finish, the interlocutor adds several more objections to the pile.

In another lecture, he describes the process of reduction where it sometimes has to be worked from both ends. You take the abstract principle, and break it down as far as you can. If you get stuck, you then identify the trail of induction to build up from.

Many discussions I’ve listened to in the past were done by Mark Scott on the radio, who fielded callers who called in on both sides of the issues. I remember he would get into Austrian Economics, discussing the Federal Reserve, fleshing out the objectivity of money. When he laid it all out, it made sense, albeit I can’t walk someone, especially someone adamantly opposed thru the same process.

Most of my discussion here is trying to tie things back into what I do know about Objectivism, such as if you want to understand reason, understand concepts. If you want to study reason, study concepts. This comes down to the Objective Communications course in identifying the philosophic concepts from the rest of the field, and isolate the to work forward from.

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

3 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Suppose a caveman heard you talk about borrowing and how it deprives the sleeping man of something and he responds:

I have not deprived sleeping man of anything.  He was there the pole was here.  He did not have the pole.  I did not touch him.  He was not using the pole.  I did not force and take it from him.  The moment I picked up the pole I had the pole.  He lost the pole because by forgetting it, he let me have it.  I could pick it up, and I did, and once I pick up the pole it is mine.  I can wear and tear it now that pole is mine.  If pole was his he would have it. He says he intended to use it again, but he did not.  I got it first.  He can only wish he did what he intended, I have pole now.

 

… At which point you kill him, take the fishing pole and win.

Potkia assi kasvoissa!

 

8 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

Understanding how these are an initiation of force such as in fraud means to grasp how an individual would have acted had he factual information to go upon.

 

OK; I’ll bite.

 

What is an “initiation of force” and how can we distinguish it from, say, eating a cheese sandwich?

[dream_weaver]

3 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

What is an “initiation of force” and how can we distinguish it from, say, eating a cheese sandwich?

You might start by trying to imagine that you are the cheese sandwich?

“I want you to save the economy of the country!”
“I don’t know how to save it.”
“I want you to find a way!”
“I don’t know how to find it.”
“I want you to think!”
“How will your gun make me do that, Mr. Thompson?”

13 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Suppose someone perhaps knowing the problem but wanting the solution or perhaps even someone who didn’t clue into the problem in the first place, finds out about your invention, your solution, and decides to “cash in” on your efforts.  They start making products embodying your invention, without your consent.  Because perhaps they could not have solved the problem, and more specifically they DIDNT actually solve the problem, or expend all the effort involved, they ARE literally profiting from the fruits of your labor.

Discovery of a new specie of bird adds to the list of known species. Discovery of the chemical element Hydrogen is the process of consciousness performing the action of identification, of a new, previously unknown identification.

As Rand properly acknowledges, such a discovery “cannot be the exclusive property of the discoverer because (a) he did not create it, and (b) if he cares to make his discovery public, claiming it to be true, he cannot demand that men continue to pursue or practice falsehoods except by his permission.” (Patents and Copyrights)

Point (a) falls easily into the metaphysical—if distinguishing between the metaphysical and the man-made.

In the Patents and Copyrights article, Miss Rand selects three aspects that fall into the category of Intellectual Property. In the case of the discovery of a metaphysical fact, she points out this cannot be the exclusive property of the discoverer. On the bizarre end, imagine someone laying claim to the whole of existence as their exclusive property. To make property exclusive, takes more than just mere discovery.

Point (b) if he cares to make his discovery public, claiming it to be true . . .

This ties into Rand’s point that “[a]n idea as such cannot be protected until it has been given a material form. An invention has to be embodied in a physical model before it can be patented; a story has to be written or printed.” As Peikoff writes in OPAR, a venerable rule of logic is “the rule that the onus of proof is on him who asserts the positive”. A machine is the frozen form of intelligence. It embodies the proof in the form of a physical model that the invention is true.

13 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Inventions must be new, useful, and unobvious.  What does this mean?

What is objectively an invention, under current law, is not easily understood. This gives rise to borderline cases (yes, a reference to borderline cases in concept formation) that are further used in attacks on the validity of patent law (or in the validity of concepts.) One does not resolve the issue of what a reasoning creature is by comparing the most “intelligent” primate to the least intelligent collegiate (yet another Peikoff lecture reference). One first needs to have a clear identification of what a reasoning creature is, and then to analyze the offered extremes in order to discover what category the two specified examples fall within.

I think there are more parallels in the latter portion of point (b) “he cannot demand that men continue to pursue or practice falsehoods except by his permission” but I’m not ready to go into them just yet. I need to see where this settles first.

[New_Buddha]

13 hours ago, DonAthos said:

I’m not certain that what is “obvious” to one man is necessarily obvious to another. If it is new, I am likely to call it “innovative,” whether or not we also find it obvious (whatever that means),

 

4 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

What is objectively an invention, under current law, is not easily understood. This gives rise to borderline cases (yes, a reference to borderline cases in concept formation) that are further used in attacks on the validity of patent law (or in the validity of concepts.)

From the AR Lexicon:  Logical Positivism

Logical Positivism declares that “reality,” “identity,” “existence,” “mind” are meaningless terms, that man can be certain of nothing but the sensory perceptions of the immediate moment .  . . it declares that the meaning of the proposition: “Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo” is your walk to the library where you read it in a book.

Add “innovative” and “obvious” to Rand’s list above.

Are “innovative” and “obvious” also a meaningless terms?  The anti-IP argument is that because “innovation” and “obvious” are not always perceptually “apples and oranges” they can only ever be Subjective, and not Objective.  Men, in politics and law, are incapable of reaching an Objective (i.e. non concrete-bound/non perceptual-bound) definition of “innovative” or “obvious”.

Conceptual level thought is non-objective, per the anti-IP position.  Thus: Logical Positivism and Verificationism.

[DonAthos]

6 hours ago, New Buddha said:

From the AR Lexicon:  Logical Positivism

Logical Positivism declares that “reality,” “identity,” “existence,” “mind” are meaningless terms, that man can be certain of nothing but the sensory perceptions of the immediate moment .  . . it declares that the meaning of the proposition: “Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo” is your walk to the library where you read it in a book.

Add “innovative” and “obvious” to Rand’s list above.

Are “innovative” and “obvious” also a meaningless terms?  The anti-IP argument is that because “innovation” and “obvious” are not always perceptually “apples and oranges” they can only ever be Subjective, and not Objective.  Men, in politics and law, are incapable of reaching an Objective (i.e. non concrete-bound/non perceptual-bound) definition of “innovative” or “obvious”.

Conceptual level thought is non-objective, per the anti-IP position.  Thus: Logical Positivism and Verificationism.

Nope!

The post you’re “responding” to – the quote you’ve pulled from it – are my quibble that I am not certain that the concept of “innovation” (apart from whatever application we might derive from this concept for IP law) has any requirement that something must be judged “non-obvious” in order to be “innovative.” For instance, Dictionary.com has “innovate” as “to introduce something new; make changes in anything established.” That seems more in-line with my own thoughts re: “innovative,” yet it makes no mention of “obviousness.”

I am, of course, not saying that “reality,” “identity,” “existence,” “mind” (nor “innovative,” nor even “obvious”) are meaningless terms, nor that man can be certain of nothing but the sensory perceptions of the immediate moment. I am not saying that “conceptual level thought is non-objective,” and so forth. It is almost a truism at this point that whatever you believe me to be saying (insofar as you actually “believe” any of the things you write) is not at all what I’m saying; one would nearly be able to learn my thoughts on this subject by listening to you try to describe them, and then taking the opposite as true.

But yes, I have found that what seems “obvious” to one man may not be so to another. For instance, you make many errors over many posts which strike me as “obvious” – errors I would not expect of any thinking, rational, honest man – but I note that you continue to struggle with them. You continue to misunderstand “the anti-IP position” so much that it is obvious that you do not know what you’re talking about. Obviously, you don’t understand any part of this debate, including the Objectivist “pro-IP position.” Obviously you do not care to understand these things.

Well, these things are obvious to me, at least.

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

17 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

You might start by trying to imagine that you are the cheese sandwich?

 

That’s not an answer.

 

You indicated in that post that you were trying to identify exactly where our disconnect lies. Your comments about the non-perceptual nature of certain initiations of force (such as fraud or embezzlement) seem to imply that you think that might be what this comes down to. I see a certain plausibility to that line of reasoning; maybe this is about the way we conceive of “force”. I’d like to find out.

 

What is an initiation of force?

 

14 hours ago, New Buddha said:

 

From the AR Lexicon:  Logical Positivism

Logical Positivism declares that “reality,” “identity,” “existence,” “mind” are meaningless terms, that man can be certain of nothing but the sensory perceptions of the immediate moment .  . . it declares that the meaning of the proposition: “Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo” is your walk to the library where you read it in a book.

Add “innovative” and “obvious” to Rand’s list above.

Are “innovative” and “obvious” also a meaningless terms?  The anti-IP argument is that because “innovation” and “obvious” are not always perceptually “apples and oranges” they can only ever be Subjective, and not Objective.  Men, in politics and law, are incapable of reaching an Objective (i.e. non concrete-bound/non perceptual-bound) definition of “innovative” or “obvious”.

Conceptual level thought is non-objective, per the anti-IP position.  Thus: Logical Positivism and Verificationism.

 

Yes; that would describe part of my own reasoning against IP. I think the terms themselves are inherently subjective.

Not all terms (which would be logical positivism) but “innovative” and “obvious”, certainly.

 

However, if you know some objective criteria by which to distinguish these from each other (to the same standards of objectivity that we require for the prosecution of murder or theft) then I’m all ears.

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

6 hours ago, DonAthos said:

But yes, I have found that what seems “obvious” to one man may not be so to another. For instance, you make many errors over many posts which strike me as “obvious” – errors I would not expect of any thinking, rational, honest man – but I note that you continue to struggle with them.

Actually, I found his dissection rather innovative.  B)

[Eiuol]

“Obvious” or “Innovative” tend to be imprecise. Self-evident works for obvious (in the way existence is), surprising works for innovative. I like to talk about invention in this way: New (by what standard?), valuable (to whom?), and surprising (in what sense?). Those 3 questions are how to establish objective criteria to invention, the sort of thing DW seems to be thinking about.

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

Just now, Eiuol said:

New (by what standard?), valuable (to whom?), and surprising (in what sense?). Those 3 questions are how to establish objective criteria to invention, the sort of thing DW seems to be thinking about.

OK. New, valuable and surprising.

 

When MS DOS first came out, was it new?

In one sense, yes (there hadn’t been any “MS DOS” before). In another, every single computer is “new” when it first comes off the assembly line. In another sense, no; there had been computers before (going all the way back to Alan Turing’s machine).

[Eiuol]

Harrison, yes, those are exactly the answers to consider, and the ones to start with if we want to evaluate invention. I’m mostly observing here, but what is the right answer? Forget IP for a moment - think of something like listening to Dark Side of the Moon. Was Pink Floyd doing something new within music, or something directly based on prior musicians or prior ideas? A third option is to say neither, it’s subjective. Or a fourth is to say no one is able to be wholly new anyway (DW, perhaps you’ll find AS quotes addressing the fourth one?).

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

The different senses in which MS DOS was and wasn’t “new” when it came out depend on how you conceptualize it (computers-in-general, instance of a computer, type of computer, etc).

 

1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

Forget IP for a moment - think of something like listening to Dark Side of the Moon. Was Pink Floyd doing something new within music, or something directly based on prior musicians or prior ideas?

Both. He took some very old ideas about music (things like rythms, harmonies, keys, etc) and found a new way to combine them. 

 

That’s the overarching pattern, right? 

The act of physical production is the act of taking the given elements of nature and rearranging them into something useful. Analogously, doesn’t the act of invention consist of rearranging old ideas in more useful ways?

 

I know that was what I used to do, when I wanted to think of a story to write; I’d immerse myself in stories for days on end (movies, TV, books, anything) and ask myself what I liked about them and what I didn’t; how I would’ve changed them, if I were the author, and how they compared/contrasted with every other story in my head. By the time I was done, all of the different ideas I’d been absorbing would end up rearranged in some completely unrecognizable way.

 

Right now I’m chewing on how I’m going to make a checkers-playing AI.

When I reached the appropriate point for it, I didn’t cry “aha!” and pluck its design out of thin air (as cool as that would’ve been); I researched expert systems until I had a rough idea of what they entailed, and then I tried to build my own (once again, rearranging old ideas into something that’s useful to me).

It doesn’t work. I got it to calculate all the various possibilities that could result from any given move and rank them in order of their value, but apparently there are a lot of different ways you could play a game of checkers (enough for my program to get labeled as “unresponsive” and killed, while sorting them all out). So I’ve been researching minimax and markov models (again, drawing on other people’s insights in order to solve my own problem).

 

So I don’t think any idea is completely new or completely old; all of them have elements of both.

 

PS:

On Pink Floyd using “ideas like rythm and harmony” to compose new music:

 

Have you ever wondered what makes Asian music sound asian?

They don’t organize it into octaves. They use some other system of steps and half-steps (and, I believe, third-steps?) which results in a completely different set of sounds to work with.

 

So, yes, Pink Floyd used other people’s ideas about rythm and melody in order to write his music; so did Pritam when they wrote Dil Bole Haddippa.

[dream_weaver]

5 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

That’s not an answer.

I’m sorry, Harrison. The response was more of a tongue in cheek reply to “initiation of force” relative to “eating a cheese sandwich.”

1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

Or a fourth is to say no one is able to be wholly new anyway (DW, perhaps you’ll find AS quotes addressing the fourth one?).

Reminiscent of the biblical verse “There’s nothing new under the sun.”  I can’t think of anything specific in AS regarding it, but it strikes me as a way of downplaying the role of the mind, as Rearden’s mother does in this snippet:

“But Henry thinks that just because he’s made a new kind of tin, why, it’s got to be more precious than diamonds to everybody, just because it’s he that’s made it.”

I think this has the tendency to minimize ideas in and of themselves as not being worth fighting for and/or protecting.

[dream_weaver]

Nature, in order to be commanded, must be obeyed.—Francis Bacon

As elucidated upon earlier here and here, a discovery (of something which already exists) is not grounds for invention.

What makes an invention so special?

They stood at the window, watching silently, intently. She did not speak, until another load of green-blue metal came moving across the sky. Then the first words she said were not about rail, track or an order completed on time. She said, as if greeting a new phenomenon of nature:
“Rearden Metal …”

To the charge “Nothing is wholly new”, a claim may be levied that “How do we know that Rearden Metal doesn’t already exist somewhere in the universe already?”—the answer to which is what is the evidence? The onus of proof falls on the assertion that Rearden Metal (might) already exist(s) in the universe.

—the days when the young scientists of the small staff he had chosen to assist him waited for instructions like soldiers ready for a hopeless battle, having exhausted their ingenuity, still willing, but silent, with the unspoken sentence hanging in the air: “Mr. Rearden, it can’t be done—”

Nature, in order to be commanded, must be obeyed.—Francis Bacon
“By our understanding of nature, Mr. Rearden,” the young scientists/soldiers said, “there is no way to command nature to obey an outcome that will result in Rearden Metal.” (Highly paraphrased.)

Nature, to be commanded. This amounts to: Nature—do something different than what can be discovered as already existing.

[Eiuol]

17 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Both. He took some very old ideas about music (things like rythms, harmonies, keys, etc) and found a new way to combine them. 

 

That’s the overarching pattern, right?

Sure, but it isn’t just rearrangement, or else we would need to say all possible creations are all possible right now, it just takes the right set of monkeys to stumble upon a mix. As long as you have the old ideas, you’re all set.

The fact is, when talking about new things, we are talking about things that are not possible for anyone else except the creator, because other people completely lack some concepts or ideas to combine in the first place. Concepts need to be formed, which is more like going beyond rearrangement by nature of making integrations. What I am getting at is that your pattern is incomplete, because you have not explained the new part. Rearrangement is similar to rearranging the furniture in your room. It’s new in the concrete sense, but there is nothing even unexpected about it. While it would take design skill to set up a functional and appealing interior design, it is not as though anyone has come up with a new methodology for interior design. You did not come up with a new idea per se, you still have what you started with.

To be sure, existing ideas help you to form new concepts. After all, I do not think Pink Floyd would have come up with the song like Money in the context of 17th century society and music. The 70s had the right sort of social and musical context for some of the ideas that were integrated. Those parts were rearranged, but how was it that the album wasn’t just another iteration of classic rock? Perhaps it really was rather uncreative, but these are the questions to ask. I would say some new ideas are added in that no one before added in, resulting in a completely new sound, beyond and past old ideas.

Just to add in, a topic which Don briefly spoke of earlier , while learning language is in part replicating sets of patterns, it is also a creative act. A child needs to construct a method of thought in order to organize those patterns. Indeed, the child is not creating a language; they are creating a structure of thought which no adult has explained to them. From that, they become effective communicators. The interesting thing is, language is dynamic, it changes between generations.

Harrison, if you do figure out the checkers design, you would have done something like a child learning language. You would have taken the evidence of the world around you, validated ideas of other people, then developed a new structure of thought; that new structure is not a rearrangement.

[dream_weaver]

What is an invention? A google search on “invention vs. innovation” provides:

In its purest sense, “ invention “ can be defined as the creation of a product or introduction of a process for the first time. “ Innovation ,” on the other hand, occurs if someone improves on or makes a significant contribution to an existing product, process or service.

The Wright brothers built a plane. Thomas Edison built the electric light. Henry Ford implemented the assembly line, while Eli Whitney introduced interchangeable parts. The idiom “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door” is attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

This is ambiguous in the sense that: what is the difference between someone improving on (for the first time) and introducing something (for the first time). Be it a computer program for Chinese Checkers, or perhaps years spent studying music theory to write classical musical scores to serve as back-round accompaniment to the latest Hollywood theatrical release?

[DonAthos]

9 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Harrison, if you do figure out the checkers design, you would have done something like a child learning language. You would have taken the evidence of the world around you, validated ideas of other people, then developed a new structure of thought; that new structure is not a rearrangement.

But isn’t the process of “taking the evidence of the world around you” and using it to develop “a new structure of thought” a rearrangement?

There seems to be some sort of weird divide suggested here, where such “rearrangement” is found to be different than, or apart from (and inferior to) “creation.” But I believe that creation is rearrangement. Or as Ayn Rand put it:

Quote

The power to rearrange the combinations of natural elements is the only creative power man possesses. It is an enormous and glorious power—and it is the only meaning of the concept “creative.” “Creation” does not (and metaphysically cannot) mean the power to bring something into existence out of nothing. “Creation” means the power to bring into existence an arrangement (or combination or integration) of natural elements that had not existed before. (This is true of any human product, scientific or esthetic: man’s imagination is nothing more than the ability to rearrange the things he has observed in reality.)

Eiuol, when you speak admiringly of the active role a child takes in learning language, I wholeheartedly agree. (As I do when Rand describes this process – man’s creative power – as “enormous and glorious.”) Regardless of what adults may or may not do to try to spark thought in the child – regardless of the examples provided (though as adults we strive to provide helpful examples to the best of our ability) – the child must take action, internal and self-motivated action, which cannot be forced, to achieve, to learn, to think.

Every success in this fashion is thus wholly earned.

And this is “rearrangement.” And this is “replication.” And this is “copying.” And this is “creation.” When my daughter says some “new” word, it is not new to the world, but it is new to her.

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

19 hours ago, Eiuol said:

The fact is, when talking about new things, we are talking about things that are not possible for anyone else except the creator, because other people completely lack some concepts or ideas to combine in the first place.

Why?

History is full of examples of multiple people independently coming up with the same innovations, which would suggest the exact opposite to me.

 

Which isn’t to say that any innovation itself is worthless, or somehow no better than its constituent ideas; on the contrary, it’s only because of such rearrangements (from Alan Turing to Bill Gates to the Great and Powerful Google) that we’re able to have this conversation, at all.

Nor do I think it conflicts with the idea that an innovator deserves to be rewarded for their efforts (which I agree with, by the way, just not in the form of patents and copyrights).

 

20 hours ago, Eiuol said:

What I am getting at is that your pattern is incomplete, because you have not explained the new part. Rearrangement is similar to rearranging the furniture in your room. It’s new in the concrete sense, but there is nothing even unexpected about it.

That’s fair.

 

Suppose I built a warp drive, tomorrow. Would everybody here agree that it would qualify as a bona fide brand-new invention?

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

We know that Warp Drives are theoretically possible because of Einstein’s theory of Relativity. The same theory which dictates the impossibility of travelling faster than the speed of light also allows for travel at any arbitrary speed, if you can do so by bending spacetime around yourself. Since gravity is that very curvature of space and time, a warp drive would essentially be a very sophisticated kind of gravity drive. So the question becomes: how do you manipulate gravity, itself?

Several years ago a team of researchers confirmed the existence of the Higgs Boson, which is basically the graviton (the force-carrier for gavity in the same way that photons convey electromagnetism). So the question becomes: how do you manipulate the Higgs Boson?

The answer to that question will probably require a lot of trial and error (analogous to the thousands of materials Edison experimented with in order to discover that passing an electrical current through Tungsten caused it to glow). However, suppose I stumbled across something tomorrow (let’s call it “Material X”) which, when electrocuted, generated a gravitational field. At that point I could start to devise a certain configuration of material-X-based components which would function as a warp drive.

 

The thing to notice is that, whether we call it a " rearrangement" or not, my ability to invent a warp drive would be a direct consequence of my knowledge of Einstein’s theory of Relativity, the Higgs Boson and Material X (just as Einstein’s ability to invent the light bulb ultimately came down to his knowledge of electricity and Tungsten). If I would deserve to be rewarded for my accomplishment then what about Einstein and the researchers who confirmed the existence of the Higgs Boson?

 

I know that Rand made it clear that nobody can own scientific knowledge, but Rand also made it clear that all knowledge is interrelated and interdependent. How can we claim that the inventor of the warp drive would own it, in its entirety, when we know that such an invention must necessarily stand on Einstein’s shoulders?

 

[Eiuol]

Rearrangement (defined as new and valuable) is different than creation (defined as new, surprising, and valuable). That surprising part is the main difference I am claiming. As I explained in my analogy to interior design, rearranging the furniture on its own does not provide a sense of surprising, because the possibilities have not changed.

I am simplifying here, but consider the ways you can arrange four pieces of furniture in a line. There are 4 elements. These elements can be arranged in 4! (which means 4 * 3 *2 * 1) ways. Picking one from the 24 possibilities would be the result of rearrangement. There would be no sense of surprise here, because you’ve not introduced any new elements, nor has there been a different way to arrange those pieces of furniture. In other words, with rearrangement, there are a preset number of possibilities. When I talk about creation, I talk about expanding those possibilities. Can we expand those four elements into five? This would increase the possibilities, and add surprises. But then we’d ask where the fifth element came from.

That Rand quote is extremely relevant. However, I think the point is that no one creates in the sense like god created the universe. It’s not as though we go beyond reality itself, or use some absolutely unconstrained free will that lacks identity. Concretely speaking, yes, all we can do is rearrange the elements before us. But notice how Rand throws in integration as well. This suggests Rand has an incomplete theory of creation. Throughout her epistemology, she speaks of concept formation, which in a mental realm isn’t just a rearrangement, it’s actually expanding existing possibilities. This happens by introducing a new structure to thinking - the neurons are rearranged perhaps, but the mental content has something added. Additionally, there are limits to imagination, which given Rand’s views perception, only amounts to beginning with reality. Altogether, despite the emphasis on rearrangement, Rand is not addressing the cognitive aspects of creation, and it is too bad she did not develop a theory connecting concept formation and creation.

When it comes to language, learning a language requires expanding the already existing cognitive equipment. I don’t mean brain growth, or neuron growth, or anything that happens regardless of choice. A child needs to do more than rearrange a set of observed words. In fact, they need to create the cognitive structure in which to manipulate and arrange observed words and word orders. The observed words are rearranged, but grammar rules are created by the child. The fascinating thing is that children will at first say “ate” the right way, but then when they try to create the rules, they say “eated”. And then later they figure out that “eat” is irregular and construct a new grammar rule to account for it. The grammar rules aren’t replicated, if you ever tried to just teach a child grammar rules for their first language, you would not succeed in boosting their learning speed. Forget the scientific details, the philosophical point is that replication is not enough.

Harrison, I should have said things “that are not possible prior to forming a particular conceptual structure”. See my furniture arrangement example.

Einstein in the literal sense rearranged some concepts, but creating the theory of relativity took considerable imagination (a fifth piece of furniture!) and a new way for physics to arrange concepts in the first place.