tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68746292307345782142024-03-04T21:14:53.767-08:00Breakfast ImpossibleanythingDavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.comBlogger208125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-54616056644453337902021-01-04T19:34:00.001-08:002021-01-04T19:34:30.808-08:00Libertarian puzzles #1: private property can simulate collective property Libertarians like private property and dislike other kinds. For example, Hans-Herman Hoppe wrote an article titled “The ultimate justification of private property.” A charitable reader might interpret his thesis to claim only that private property is justified. I find it very tempting to go beyond that, and interpret it to mean that private property is justified and other sorts of non-private property are not. If Hoppe is innocent of this charge, I’m sure I could find others who are not.<div>The problem with that condemnation is that private property is very general and flexible. It can be used, along with contracts, to create other sorts of property. For instance, old-style Stalinist collective property would result if all property owners voluntarily donated their property to the state and also signed a contract agreeing to act as agents of the state, so that if they acquired anything that was not already owned, they agreed to homestead it on behalf of the state. So if we want to condemn Stalinist collective property, we have to look very carefully for something about it that distinguishes it from private property. Oddly, it seems as if the most significant difference might be the historical circumstances by which the property was collectivized. That has nothing to do with property norms, but instead depends only on persons succeeding or failing to interact voluntarily and make binding agreements.</div><div>Nozick pointed out that we can’t judge the justice of a situation by the pattern created alone. The historical events that led to the outcome can act to condemn or justify it. If a “good” outcome results from some participants dominating others, that does not succeed in justifying it. If a “bad” outcome results from everyone voluntarily obeying the established rules and customs, then perhaps we should condemn the rules, but we can’t condemn the outcome as such. So libertarian can’t automatically condemn esoteric property norms without first investigating whether those norms were adopted and are maintained voluntarily. All that is left is self-ownership.</div><div>This takes a bit of pressure off the so-called “left-libertarians,” who advocate alternatives to private property such as Georgism. But it also might contradict any basis they have for preventing dissidents from experimenting with disfavored property norms, including the possibility of returning to private property. How could they prevent this? They could treat their property norms as a permanent binding agreement, one which can never be terminated or modified. This seems to require overconfidence, to a degree that conflicts with the ideal of freedom they espouse.</div><div>So if I am correct in guessing that private property and contract can recreate any sort of serious property norm, then it follows that property norms do not determine whether the participants in a particular social arrangement should count as possessing liberty. What matters is whether they have chosen their arrangements and norms in some important sense, or had them imposed upon them without any significant option for replacing those they wish to abandon or reviving those they may regret having lost. If an arrangement has resulted from purely voluntary interaction, liberty remains intact.</div><div>That does not say that an outcome that arose through voluntary interaction could never be improved, just that such improvement can occur voluntarily.</div><div>Issues raised but not discussed:</div><div><ul><li>What does “voluntary” mean when basic norms are being established or modified?</li><li>How “binding” can binding agreements be before they contradict liberty?</li><li>Can other kinds of property norms create private property?</li><li>What are the minimum criteria for liberty?</li><li>Can self-owners cause their self-ownership to end?</li></ul></div><div><br><div><br></div></div>Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-89469351386185648762020-05-22T16:18:00.001-07:002020-05-22T16:18:47.016-07:00Consent determines ethics<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">I want to sketch out an idea that hasn’t yet formed fully. Various approaches to ethics take different things as fundamental. I want to consider consent. Most (all?) other candidates for fundamental concepts depend on consent. This raises questions about the range of choices we face with regard to consent.</span><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Jonathan Haidt suggests that there are 6 moral foundations, care/harm, fairness/cheating, authority/subversion, loyalty/betrayal, liberty/oppression, a and sanctity/degradation. Gert lists ten prohibitions and a method for judging exceptions. MacIntyre advocates virtue ethics. And many people, perhaps beginning with Bentham, advocate consequentialism.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Care/harm doesn’t outrank voluntary/involuntary. Consent determines what counts as care or harm. The same doctor can make the same incision, but in one case it counts as care and in another it counts as harm, depending on whether the patient consents. Care and harm are never objective in the sense that we can draw lines between them that disregard the attitudes of the participants. (This excludes the case of minor children, who need a guardian to consent for them.) The ability of third parties to overrule the consent of a competent adult<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> on the basis of care/harm qualifies as paternalism, where some subgroup of society chooses for the rest. When dealing with competent adults, we can’t use “it’s for your own good” as an excuse, even if it applies.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Haidt's other moral foundations also depend on consent. </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Those who possess authority can give consent to have their authority ignored or violated. Those to whom l</span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">oyalty is owed can consent to waive the obligation. Those who are entitled to l</span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">iberty can consent to be imprisoned. Those who are entitled to fair</span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">ness can consent to being treated unfairly.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Sanctity is a difficult case, since god rarely shows up and so can’t give consent. But if god did appear, a violation of the sacred could be sanctified by its consent. In every case, Haidt's foundations evaluate a situation differently depending on the consent of the participants.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Flourishing works no better. What am I justified in doing to you for your own good or flourishing in spite of your refusal to consent? My intention may be good, but if I force unwanted help on you that can’t be moral unless you are a child. This is just care/harm wearing different clothing, it is either voluntary or paternalistic.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">What about Gert's ten prohibitions? Same story, plus a procedure for making exceptions. <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">The difference between murder and euthanasia is consent. Pain can be caused when the victim consents. Etc. I have reservations about some of Gert's prohibitions, but even if I stipulate Gert's prohibitions, all of them lose their strength when the supposed victim consents. Death, pain, disabling, deprivation of freedom or pleasure, violating promises, and neglecting duty very clearly depend on the consent of the person receiving the action. Deception, cheating and obeying the law complicate matters. I think I could consent to be deceived, but I can’t think of a realistic example. A magic show is too mild a deception. Cheating isn’t cheating if it is done with consent. It is even more dependent on attitudes of participants than the others. Disobeying the law doesn’t count as disobeying the law, if the law maker, enforcers, and victims all consent.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">I need to think more about virtue ethics. I am less familiar with that topic. Some of it focuses on purely internal factors, only incidentally affecting others who might consent or not. My initial thinking is that virtue ethics does not give us grounds to overrule other competent adults' choices.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">I need to think more about consequentialism, too. Many sorts of social change could provide a net benefit to people in general (though currently this is impossible to measure), but only rarely could do so without counting as a loss to some persons, at least in the short run. What possibilities can we consider?</div><ol style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><li>The subgroup that benefits decides for all, but compensates the losers.</li><li>The subgroup that benefits decides for all, and imposes the change for “the public good” without compensating losers.</li><li>Members of the subgroup that benefits change their behavior to conform to the new norms, leaving “losers” to decide for themselves how to proceed.</li></ol><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Did I leave any possibilities out? 1 is rarely used, while 2 and 3 are used frequently. 1 and 3 respect the consent of all participants. So although it isn’t impossible to reconcile consent and consequences, people sometimes feel justified in violating consent for the purpose of achieving some consequence. Apparently, if the winners gain enough, or if the losses of the losers are small or temporary, people feel justified in overruling the losers without compensating them. This might even be a superior outcome, if the “losers” are not really affected by the change, but just spoilers or free riders hoping for compensation.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">That raises a question about how we ought to determine who can consent to what. But that will need to appear in another blog post.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">This is a rough draft and may change. Comments invited.</div> Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-89913037843542056942020-05-20T17:22:00.001-07:002020-05-20T19:43:42.352-07:00Libertarian alternatives to regulation<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Critics of libertarianism sometimes argue as if the libertarian position against centralized government regulation bases itself on the idea that only consumers’ willingness to pay for a product should restrain producers via boycott (e.g. <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/" id="id_c3d1_4e8e_5526_fee8">Scott Alexander</a>). Libertarians have the boycott tool in their toolbox, but that’s not all. I ignored this tendency toward error for a long time, then suddenly it turned around and looked at me. Are they such rank sophists, or do they actually know a lot less about libertarianism than I give them credit for? <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">So what are they misunderstanding?</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Libertarians are tediously predictable. Every solution offered by libertarians involves voluntary interaction based on private property and avoids unilateral decrees by an authority. So there is at least a bit of plausibility attached to this idea that laissez faire means no one does anything ever. But if libertarians are such absolutists when it comes to non-interference, how do they maintain their precious property rights? How do they even prohibit murder? If libertarians have no way to deal with producer externalities, do they have a way of dealing with anything at all? Should murderers be punished with a boycott?</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Libertarians often get accused of oversimplifying reality, and in this instance the libertarian position is indeed quite simple. When someone violates your property rights, you sue them. A murder was committed? The victim owned that body, and the heirs can sue. Any serious dispute should be resolved by arbitration.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">How would this work for cases of externalities or other targets of regulation? If the externality affects my property, e.g. pollution falls on my house and gets in my lungs, I have grounds to sue. At that point, the mechanism for resolving the conflict is the same as if a murder or theft had been committed. Libertarians may be overly optimistic with regard to the effectiveness of this approach, but that is not the same as suggesting that nothing be done.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Clearly, there are potential problems. Perhaps the process will be too slow. The persons arbitrating the case can take bribes or help out their friends. It may be difficult to find evidence of the tort. A little guy may not have the resources to take on a giant. One side of the dispute may try to intimidate the other. The arbitrators may honestly overvalue or undervalue the significance of the externality. More possibilities may occur to you. </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">(E.g. David Friedman has pointed out that this approach can lead to absurd conclusions if taken as an absolute. If any use of your body whatever creates a tort or assault, I can’t point a flashlight at you. But this theoretical problem solves itself in practice, as the expense of suing for photon assault wold be much higher than the appropriate restitution, unless we’re talking about a high wattage laser that does actual damage.)</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">None of this disappears when we wave the magic wand of regulation. Perhaps you feel skeptical about the idea that private arbitration can accomplish all this. Similarly, libertarians feel skeptical that government regulation accomplishes this effectively. The most salient difference lies in the different attitudes toward experimentation and innovation. Classic regulation takes a hostile view of experimentation, while tort liability remains indifferent ultimately to everything but results.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">If tort liability is so great, why has it failed to deliver paradise in the past, and required the legislature to create regulatory bureaucracies and frameworks? Inadequacy of tort liability as a remedy is one possible explanation of what happened. I can think of two related alternatives. </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Perhaps tort liability was working fine and special interests lobbied to cripple it to bring about a more favorable outcome for themselves. Or perhaps our society made a different evaluation at that time, and chose higher production and higher employment over a clean environment. These two are not mutually exclusive. T</span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">hen when people began to get tired of rivers that catch fire, government agents were happy to create a new bureaucracy to make sure rivers don’t catch fire.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Why would they do that, if all they needed to do was overturn some precedents or pass legislation clarifying liability? The cynic would answer that ambitious persons in government always want to create a bureaucracy to solve anything, as it expands their power, prestige, influence and budget. A more charitable historian might suggest that people had mostly forgotten how things got that way in the first place, and cultural attitudes favored a centralized top-down approach.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Reasonable persons can believe that tort liability can’t do as good a job of resolving externalities as centralized government regulation. This is an empirical question, though not easy to answer. Critics of libertarianism can either criticize this position or engage in sophistry by pretending it doesn’t exist. I wish to hear more from serious critics and less from sophists.</span></div> Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-81938182189862666132020-05-17T01:40:00.001-07:002020-05-17T01:40:37.341-07:00Three categories of interaction <div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">We can interact voluntarily or involuntarily. Often we can choose between the two<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">. And if we choose involuntary interaction, we can choose to give a reason for our choice or not. This creates three categories of interaction.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">If we interact involuntarily without giving reasons, and I give you a command and threaten to retaliate if you disobey, can I object consistently when other people treat me the same way, or even worse? Someone who chooses to interact involuntarily without giving reasons silently presupposes that we don’t need to explain involuntary actions, at least not the sort they’re carrying out. So if one person doesn’t need to give reasons, no one needs to give reasons. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Suppose that is wrong. Suppose I say that I need no reasons but you do. That sounds like special pleading. But more interestingly, I seem to imply I have a reason for my actions. There must be some reason that explains why I am free to do as I wish while you are not. Such a difference in status requires an explanation; otherwise you have no reason to restrain yourself and I have no grounds to object to your lack of restraint. But if that reason exists, I am not doing as I wish without having a reason, I am just refusing to provide my reason. My action presupposes not that I don’t need a reason and you do, but that I have a reason and you don’t. This contradicts my assumption that I need not give reasons for my involuntary actions. So if I say I need no reason to interact involuntarily with others, no one needs a reason when interacting involuntarily with me. I can hold the position that I need no reason while you do need one, but I contradict myself. If I say I have a reason but I won’t provide it, I am probably bluffing. <span style="font-weight: bold;">If I act as if I need no reasons, then my actions presuppose that no one needs a reason. </span>This provides a <span style="font-weight: bold;">negative</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">principle of reciprocity</span>. (This resembles Kinsella's concept of <a href="https://reasonpapers.com/pdf/17/rp_17_4.pdf" id="id_fb60_7982_385e_5cd8">libertarian estoppel</a>.) It doesn’t say no one should turn the other cheek, it says that they have no logical requirement to do so. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">We could also frame this as, unjustified involuntary interaction implies reciprocity and justifies self-defense.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Is the principle of negative reciprocity normative or positive? It doesn’t label anything normal or abnormal, good or bad, permitted or forbidden. It just says I can’t remain logically consistent while objecting to other people acting the same way I do. If I want to be able to object consistently to things other people do, <span style="font-weight: bold;">I need a reason when I interact involuntarily</span>, one that could convince an impartial arbiter of my special status. This is a weak <span style="font-weight: bold;">principle of society</span>. If I don’t care what other people do and have no desire to object to anything, I can say no one needs a reason for anything; but then no one needs a reason for anything they do to me. Or I can say everyone needs a reason for interacting involuntarily, and I have one. It’s a choice. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">I think most people prefer reciprocity - don’t hurt me and I won’t hurt you. That goes a long way.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">To summarize, we have three mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories of interaction we can sometimes choose among:</div><ul style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><li>We can interact voluntarily, without need for justification.</li><li>We can interact involuntarily with a good reason.</li><li>We can abandon justification or reciprocity, but not both.</li></ul><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">That leads to the next question: what sorts of reasons can justify involuntary interaction?</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></div> Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-59004115969153366192019-11-26T15:59:00.002-08:002020-05-17T01:49:54.119-07:00Disqus Continued<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #353a3d; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;">“, would it be harmful for people to investigate living without taxation?"</span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #353a3d; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;">> I'm sure you could guess what my response to this would be from my other post. </span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;"><br></span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #353a3d; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;">Having me guess your position is risky. I am not immune to the Internet plague that has people projecting their various attitudes or caricatures of their intellectual opponents onto others. </span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;"><br></span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #353a3d; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;">>I see taxation as retroactive adjustments in property holdings. Do I think we should live in a world in which each person decides, individually, whether to contribute towards public goals and projects like roads, police, courts, and a welfare minimum? No.</span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;"><br></span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #353a3d; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;">But that is not the question. At the most basic level, the question is why would you object to other persons </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: rgb(53, 58, 61); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; word-spacing: 1px;"><font size="4">investigating</font></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #353a3d; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;"> alternatives. Does this put persons who do not participate in danger? Or are you just being stodgy?</span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;"><br></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #353a3d; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;">On a different level, the question is not whether we should fund shared benefits, but which benefits should we fund and how should we fund them. Unless the status quo is immune to all criticisms, we could at least consider the possibility of improving things. Most of the public services you mention are recent innovations, should we stop innovating? </span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;"><br></span></div>
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<span style="--inversion-type-color: simple; caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #0a0b0b; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;">You may not want to live in such a world, but no one is forcing you to. Why do you wish to prevent others from trying it out? If an artificial anarchist island appeared in the middle of the ocean, would that destabilize the rest of the world? </span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #353a3d; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;">> I think we should decide together, collectively, the terms under which people have exclusive control over things, and how the burden of contributing towards public goals should be distributed.</span></div>
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<span style="--inversion-type-color: simple; caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #0a0b0b; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;">We should or we do?</span></div>
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<span style="--inversion-type-color: simple; caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #0a0b0b; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;"> And we could not do that without taxation? </span></div>
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<span style="--inversion-type-color: simple; caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #0a0b0b; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;">Do the differences between the various jurisdictions in the world disturb you? Or does the nation state have </span><span style="--inversion-type-color: simple; caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #0a0b0b; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;">something special about it that</span><span style="--inversion-type-color: simple; caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #0a0b0b; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;"> gives it immunity to this principle limiting diversity?</span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;"><br></span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #353a3d; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;">> I think collective action and free rider problems would prevent public projects from being funded, and holdouts would hold large public projects hostage.</span></div>
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<span style="--inversion-type-color: simple; color: #0a0b0b; font-size: 14px;">Assuming you see that as a bad thing, why do you think people would find it attractive? Or are you just hoping to prevent my imagined volunteers from making a mistake they would regret? </span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;"><br></span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #353a3d; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;">>I just think periodic retroactive adjustments to property holdings is both necessary and a good thing.</span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;"><br></span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(53, 58, 61); color: #353a3d; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; word-spacing: 1px;">Is this a moral principle; a scientific principle; or is it your subjective evaluation? Something else?</span></div>
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Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-35362306922429569082019-10-15T18:10:00.001-07:002019-10-15T18:10:05.912-07:00Owning bitcoin <div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">I just finished listening to a podcast featuring <a href="http://www.stephankinsella.com/paf-podcast/kol275-did-you-know-crypto-podcast-ep-54-you-dont-own-your-bitcoin/" id="id_19ff_e79f_45d7_155e">Stephan Kinsella</a>. He basically reiterated his argument concluding that bitcoin is information, and therefore it cannot be owned. The following thought experiment occurred to me: </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Say I use a telescope to watch you type your password into your bitcoin wallet. I then use that password to transfer the entire balance from your wallet to someone else. You later come into possession of a video showing me doing this, and network logs corroborating that I am the one who transferred your bitcoin to someone else. When you confront me, I admit that I am the one who executed this transaction. If you take this dispute to a fair arbitrator, and none of the facts are in dispute, will the arbitrator decide that I have taken nothing from you and owe you no restitution?</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Are bitcoins scarce/rivalrous? I can’t double spend the same bitcoin. If I have one bitcoin associated with a specific private key, I can’t use the same private key to transfer one bitcoin to each of several different new “owners”/controllers/private keys. If I attempt this, and the bitcoin mining network behaves as designed, only one of these transactions will be completed. I can make as many copies of my key, of my wallet or of the ledger as I like, but the use of the key and the ledger to transfer that amount can only happen once. The architecture of the software and the network (we hope) prevents double spending. It creates artificial scarcity. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">So is it scarcity that enables ownership, or physicality? Something else? </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Because of the way the bitcoin network is designed to protect identity, it does not include a way to prove or establish title except to demonstrate that one has knowledge of the private key associated with a ledger entry. But that is no different from demonstrating possession. There is no separate means to demonstrate justified possession, that is not a concept implemented by this system. Bottom line is, it would be very unusual and difficult to find convincing evidence regarding who actually carried out a transaction with a particular private key. It could’ve been the “rightful owner“, the person the owner is accusing of theft, or anyone else, the bitcoin network doesn’t know or care. Ordinarily, the person who received stolen goods could provide evidence regarding the identity of the source, but not in the case of a bitcoin transaction. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Ownership is a social layer built on top of possession that distinguishes between justified and unjustified possession. While bitcoin eliminates much of the paper trail that helps establish ownership for ordinary items, its status as artificially scarce makes it capable of being owned. In this odd case, however, most potential owners of bitcoin prefer simply to possess it anonymously. While we could probably create a variant of bitcoin that allowed possessors to establish title to their bitcoin, or perhaps could use some separate mechanism to allow owners to establish and transfer title to their bitcoin, that would defeat the purpose. The transparency required would undermine the anonymity that gives bitcoin much of its appeal. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> So, perhaps we could own bitcoin, but we don’t want to. </div> Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-64022898477210395872019-08-06T13:00:00.001-07:002019-08-06T13:00:57.275-07:00Nothing depends on free will<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We can't draw any practical conclusions or implications from the truth or falsity of the idea of free will.</div>
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Some critics of the idea of free will seem to think that this issue has important implications for the penal system and for how we treat criminals. If they could not have done otherwise, what good do we do by saying to them, "You should have done otherwise"? They seem to think that I might as well scold my Roomba for missing that spot in the corner and punish it by putting it in a box.</div>
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Let's assume they are right, that persons are just unusually complicated robots.</div>
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Whether we have free will or not, we can't change the past. "You should not have done that" never means "go back, erase what happened and do it differently". What we say to each other about the past, and what we do to each other in reaction to the past all orient on the future. </div>
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If we are all robots, we are complicated robots that change their behavior depending on the complicated inputs we receive. "You should not have done that" might or might not cause a particular robot to change its behavior in the future. This is an empirical question depending on the programming of the robot and the other inputs, not on the truth or appropriateness of any<span> </span>moral judgement expressed. It is a counterfactual and an input to our processing. It has the (perhaps?) unusual property that it might work if the robot believes it, whether or not it is literally true. (Many social norms have a similar<span> </span>characteristic, that if everyone expects things to work in a certain way, and acts accordingly, things<span> </span><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">will</em><span> </span>work that way.)</div>
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This case presents a perplexing<span> </span>(perhaps rare) philosophical situation, where a statement about reality seems to make a strong distinction between how things are and how they are not, but persons who believe one variant have no reason to act differently from<span> </span>their philosophical opponents.</div>
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We can imprison people because we think they have free will and "deserve" it, hoping that they will "repay their debt to society" and perhaps learn from it, gaining some rehabilitation; or we can imprison people because we think they are robots and being imprisoned alters their programming in a positive way while keeping them away from innocent persons they might hurt. We can scold people because we think they have free will and scolding might change their attitudes, or we can scold them because we think they are robots and scolding might alter their programs. The truth of free will does not enter into the equation. People learn from experience and change their behavior in either case. If we can discover technical or environmental supports that help people act more responsibly toward each other, we can use them whether or not people have free will. Free will is not empirically observable, responses to interventions are.</div>
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Maybe "You have free will" is a lie. But maybe it is the sort of programming that helps hairy robots grow and develop. Or maybe it is harmful or irrelevant. These are empirical questions, but the empirical result does not reveal the truth value of the statement "I have free will".</div>
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Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-36446514698430126462019-07-28T12:28:00.001-07:002019-09-09T01:23:40.970-07:00 Voluntary government steelman<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Huemer argues that we cannot currently interpret the US government as deriving its political authority from the consent of the governed. In a previous post, I briefly <a href="http://brimpossible.blogspot.com/2019/06/social-contract-criticisms.html" id="id_698d_88f8_4bb9_93b4">summarized his persuasive case</a> against that idea.</div>
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Now I want to consider the question: how could the USG transform itself so that it did have the consent of the governed, while changing almost nothing else? What changes would they need to make?</div>
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Let's pretend the government is a corporation composed of its citizens or members and they all sign a contract agreeing to shun all noncitizens (unless they have a visa or are located outside of US territory). They could treat the US constitution as their corporate bylaws. Persons who opt out of the contract become noncitizens. At any moment, citizens can consent, emigrate or secede. If they secede, their neighbors will deny them passage through the neighbors' property. They are still able to occupy their land, but no longer entitled to use public roads or the other local infrastructure (sewers, electricity, gas, water, etc.). They are enclosed. (Their property would technically no longer lie within the territory of the USG, but it would be treated as still part of that territory for the purpose of determining who citizens can/can’t interact with.)</div>
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How does this differ from the status quo? Someone needs to write up the citizenship contract and see to it that they all either sign, secede or emigrate. Landowners would be able to secede and create new territorial clubs outside the government's jurisdiction. And the government could make good on its brag about deriving its authority from the consent of the governed.</div>
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<b>Contract</b></div>
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I hereby chose to: (<span style="font-style: italic;">choose one only</span>)</div>
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[ ] consent to the contractual terms below. </div>
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[ ] emigrate. (I will leave the country before submitting this contract, so that no one needs to shun me on my way out.)</div>
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[ ] secede, separating myself and the land I own from the infrastructure, territory and jurisdiction of the USG.</div>
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<b>Terms</b></div>
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Shun: I will refuse to do business with or communicate with or allow to pass onto or through my property any noncitizens of the US who lack valid visas or green cards and who are located within the territory or former territory of the US. I may do business with citizens of foreign countries so long as they are outside the US or within the US on a legal visa or green card. I will shun all stateless emigres and secessionists, refusing to speak to them or assist them in any way.</div>
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Enclose: If I have authority over any utility, road or other communication or transportation infrastructure or useful service, I will deny access and service to any noncitizen lacking a visa or any property outside the territory of the US unless authorized by law.</div>
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Obey: I agree to pay any tax and obey any law that is duly established by Congress according to the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court.</div>
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Receive: The US government agrees to refrain from causing its citizens to shun me so long as I fulfill these terms. I also may vote in elections if I satisfy the legal criteria and register according to law.</div>
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Consider: As consideration, I will deliver one dollar along with this signed contract to the appropriate authorities.</div>
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Citizen/noncitizen signature____________________</div>
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Date_______________</div>
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On behalf of Government: signature_________________</div>
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Date_______________</div>
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Can the government demand that we sign such a contract, leave the country or secede? Would that place us under duress? What, other than my lack of training in writing contracts, would prevent this contract or one similar from binding anyone who signed it? </div>
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Would in even need to be legally binding, since every citizen at every moment is free to opt out of the contract? Instead of disputing the bindingness of the contract, a citizen who wishes to break free of the contract can do so at any time by submitting a new contract declaring they have emigrated or seceded. The only possible point of dispute would be how to interpret obedience, not whether or not the signatories are bound by the contract.</div>
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Failure to submit a contract or use of US infrastructure equates to choosing obedience. So a much shorter version of the choices would be:</div>
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I have emigrated.</div>
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I have seceded and separated my property from all US infrastructure.</div>
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I will obey.</div>
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Would people be willing to sign this contract? Why not? What does it commit them to that they have not already accepted? In what way does the government violate their rights to demand that they choose? No one is morally obligated to do any of the things the contract prohibits them from doing, nor is anyone morally entitled to any of the things that would be withheld from secessionists and emigres.</div>
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Libertarians believe in freedom of association, which includes the right to refuse to cooperate with someone. Do they have a right to refuse individually, but lack the right to do so as a group?</div>
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Unlike the situation criticized by Huemer, the citizens are not placed under duress, <font size="4">persons who consent are treated differently than those who refuse</font>, the government does commit to provide something to those who consent and explicit refusal overrides implicit consent. So all the USG must do to transform itself into a “voluntary” government (well, from the standpoint of its citizens only, not that of foreigners) is to announce the existence of this contract which provides all citizens with a way to opt out, and then pass a law against interacting with former US citizens who have seceded or re-entered the country illegally. </div>
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Boom.</div>
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Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-15699609091538144202019-06-18T01:08:00.001-07:002019-06-18T01:08:46.002-07:00Ethics of Voting, Revisited<div><span style="font-size: 18px;">Can I vote ethically? </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18px;"><br></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: 18px;">Voters, in effect, direct candidates to implement the promises the candidates made during their campaign. </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">We can think of the election as creating a conditional contract - if enough people vote for it, it takes effect. Although the voters cannot literally instruct the office holders after they are elected and have no recourse if the candidates renege on their promises, by voting the voters do in some sense give instructions in the form of those </span><font size="4">campaign promises <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">to their chosen candidates. </span>The candidat</font><span style="font-size: 18px;">e says “this is what I plan to do” and the voters reply, in effect, “yes, you do that”. And so one prerequisite for voting ethically would be for the candidate one chose to solemnly and credibly promise not to use the power of their office </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">unethically.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18px;"><br></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: 18px;">Principals who direct an agent to act for them share responsibility for the consequences of the action. If the principals have no right to act on their own, they cannot delegate such a right to their agents.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18px;"><br></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: 18px;">Even if the deed is never actually done, a principal cannot ethically command an agent to do something unethical. Just as I would be wrong to shoot at you and miss, I would be wrong to give the order to kill you, even if no one obeys the order. </span><span style="font-size: 18px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Principals can direct agents ethically only if the principal gives ethical directions and the agent carries them out ethically.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"><br></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: 18px;">Voters lack some of the rights of principals, but still share responsibility for the plans of the candidates, as if the candidates acted as agents for the voters. The details differ, but the same principle applies. If I intend to cause something to happen, I am responsible for the consequences. I am included among the persons who should pay compensation or make amends.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18px;"><br></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: 18px;">So, the ethics of voting depends on the ethics of the candidate and the candidate's campaign promises. If I could hire the candidate to carry out those instructions without violating ethics, I can vote to have them </span><font size="4">carried out <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">without violating ethics</span>. <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Voters can</span></font><span style="font-size: 18px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> vote ethically if they find candidates who credibly promise </span><span style="font-size: 18px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">ethically </span><span style="font-size: 18px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">to fulfill their campaign promises. From a voluntaryist standpoint, this appears theoretically possible but practically impossible.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"><br></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: 18px;">Voluntaryist ethical concerns about the ethics of political office holders might include the ethics of:</span></div>
<ul>
<li>
<div><span style="font-size: 18px;">instructing enforcers to enforce legislation and taxation upon persons who have not consented,</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div><span style="font-size: 18px;">fulfilling the duties and prerequisites of office, such as taking the oath of office,</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div><span style="font-size: 18px;">accepting a salary and an office budget funded by taxes,</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div><span style="font-size: 18px;">perpetuating the institution of government, the social environment it creates and its illusion of legitimacy.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div><span style="font-size: 18px;">I wonder, will the candidates exceed their campaign promises in an unethical way? Are they credible? I could argue that principals share no responsibility for an action taken by their agent if the action violates their instructions. But I could also argue that this holds only if the principals have good reason to treat the agents as credible or have the power to monitor and end the principal/agent relationship as soon as they learn of unethical behavior. If the principals know that the agent is prone to ethical violations, and they have no means to nullify their contract, they can hardly avoid taking some responsibility for entrusting that person as their agent. If there is no way for me to monitor or constrain my agents, I must take extra care in selecting them, and if I fail to choose wisely I share the blame for the agents' actions.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: 18px;"><br clear="none"></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: 18px;">So the question, “can I vote ethically”, boils down to, can I find a candidate that credibly promises to behave ethically while holding office? By voluntaryist standards</span><span style="font-size: 18px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">, no such candidate has ever run for office or likely ever will. Such c</span><span style="font-size: 18px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">andidates could theoretically behave ethically, but only if they would vote “no” on every bill except repeals and refuse to accept any tax-funded benefits until taxation and obedience to legislation were made voluntary. </span></div> Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-7305126913260179462019-06-03T01:03:00.001-07:002020-01-05T19:26:00.807-08:00Social contract criticisms <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div>
I’m not enough of a scholar to really illustrate the history and details of other peoples social contract theories, but I sketch out some notes below. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Hobbes' idea amounts to a metaphorical social contract that justifies anything the state does. Any situation that we consider bad because of the depredations of the state can be made worse by imagining a mob carrying out the same depredations but adding new victims in the form of those who for whatever reason would have been safe from the state. No one can amend the social contract and the state faces no limit. It is purely pragmatic, based on no principle more lofty than “might makes right” or “as bad as this is, it could be worse.” This version of the social contract justifies anything done by the state, including genocide.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Locke had the idea that rights precede the social contract. The social contract merely provides a means to enforce those pre-existing rights.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Rousseau wrote about the general will and direct democracy on a small scale. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The social contract means government authority consists of the consent of the governed. Citizens consent to pay taxes and obey laws, and the state promises to protect the rights of citizens. Both the citizens and the state accept obligations as parties to a contract. Agents of the state may coerce citizens because the citizens have agreed in advance and because the state organization fulfills its obligations. But if they have not agreed, or if the state fails to fulfill its bargain, then the social contract fails to justify political authority.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
Huemer gives several criticisms of the social contract. The social contract as described by Locke (or any of the others) is not historically accurate (as pointed out by Hume). Citizens cannot be viewed as giving passive or tacit consent, because consent is not voluntary if </div>
<ul>
<li>
<div>
Consent was obtained under duress, if one must obey or be forced to sacrifice something to which one has a right,</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>
explicit dissent has been expressed, which overrules implicit consent,</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>
explicit refusal to consent would not change anything (the contractual counterpart will do the same thing regardlesss of consent), or</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>
the counterpart reneges on its contractual obligations, or in fact has none.</div>
</li>
</ul>
<div>
Huemer argues that these exceptions describe all existing states to some extent, so that none truly can claim authority on the basis of the consent of the governed. We have a right to free association, including a right to our jobs, our friends and families, and property rights to our land. If we cannot opt out of state authority without emigrating and sacrificing all these, the first condition applies. If anarchists are subjected to the same laws and taxes as superpatriots, then the second and third conditions apply. Huemer cites several court cases that conclude that the US “federal” government owes no specific obligation to any specific person, but only a general duty to the citizens as a group. Hence, if the social contract obligates the state at all, it has failed to fulfill those obligations. Huemer says, “One cannot maintain that the individual owes duties to the state but that the state owes nothing to the individual.” He concludes that social contract theory does not apply to the USA or any other modern state.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Huemer has a separate chapter dealing with the hypothetical social contract of John Rawls. Read Huemer's book if you are interested, I’m not prepared to give a serious summary of that argument.. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Andrew Kern has a series of blog posts <a href="https://principledlibertarian.com/2018/06/06/social-contract-theory-evaluation/" id="id_d571_ea05_2b05_49e">criticizing conventional social contract </a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Conventional approaches to social contract seek to justify existing states by weakening the meaning of consent. The bottom line is, if we regard the social contract as an actual contract requiring actual informed consent, existing states cannot use the social contract to justify their activities. But what if we used a strong concept of consent and seriously applied the idea that legitimate authority flows from the consent of those affected? I want to answer that question next.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
[This is part of my <a href="http://brimpossible.blogspot.com/2019/06/purely-voluntary-society-project-meta.html" id="id_8f10_3ef9_ecb0_976c">project on the purely voluntary society</a>]</div>
</div>
Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-31646038620351302982019-06-02T17:35:00.001-07:002019-06-03T01:10:24.871-07:00Purely Voluntary Society project meta information<div>This blog has been a bit random so far. I am embarking on a project that will unify at least most of the new entries. I’ve been generating tons of notes on various ideas that are related. I guess if I was well organized and knew what I was doing they would turn into a book outline. But I don’t know what I am doing. So I’m going to start putting out blog entries on a single narrow question each. Each entry will include questions that I’ve left unanswered that I am aware of. Then eventually I will write entries to answer each of those questions. I hope that at some point this network of related ideas will be able to be turned into an outline that makes some sense. But at first it’s going to skip around a lot.</div><div><br></div>
<div>The first questions consider the idea of the social contract. I want to review Heumer's reasons (and some others) for rejecting the <a href="http://brimpossible.blogspot.com/2019/06/social-contract-criticisms.html" id="id_bbed_aa65_6fb6_f032">conventional social contract justification</a> of state authority. Then I will consider how the social contract idea changes if we apply a stronger version of consent.</div>
<div><br></div><div>As with all my blog posts, in these I am thinking out loud. Please put suggestions, criticisms or corrections in the comments. I will appreciate it.</div>
<div></div> Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-32668255831326611142019-05-12T14:17:00.001-07:002019-05-12T15:43:16.923-07:00A common law perspective on abortion Who has standing to bring legal action on the part of the child/fetus/entity, only the child's guardian, or everyone? How does fertilization create obligation? <div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Implicitly, the pro-life position claims that everyone has standing to bring charges against the mother at any time for killing her child or failing to care for the child until someone else can take over. Does this position make sense?</span><div><div><br></div><div>I interpret common law to say that persons <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">only </span>have standing if their consent has been violated, or if they act as agents for persons whose consent has been violated. (Damaging someone's property accidentally without their consent constitutes a tort, purposefully using their bodies or property without their consent constitutes a crime.) This prevents busybodies from from bringing frivolous cases or violating the free association of others. To bring suit, one must have standing. No standing, no case. If the person who has been harmed does not wish to sue or to bring charges, no suit or charges should be brought. If some third party wishes to sue or bring charges, they must show how they have been damaged or had their consent violated. So even with regard to murder, it might be the case that some persons have standing to bring charges and others do not.</div><div><br></div><div>Children do not have standing on their own, only competent adults can sue or be sued. This means that children need guardians to stand for them in court. But the role of guardian does not only consist of standing for them in court and taking responsibilities for any crimes or torts they commit. It also requires the guardian to nurture the child. The owner of a domestic animal also stands for the animal in court, but the role of guardian is more intimate and has more obligations associated with it.</div><div><br></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If the mother refuses to act as guardian of her child, the father may take this role. If the father is also unwilling, any relative may take on the role. If no relatives exist, or they are all unwilling, then the child can be put up for adoption. But while the child is not viable outside the womb, only the mother can actually fulfill all the requirements of a guardian.</span></div><div><br></div><div>In an ordinary murder case, the victims have standing, and since they are dead, their heirs have standing to bring charges, at least. Perhaps anyone has standing to bring charges of murder of an adult or independent child. The case of a pregnant woman is no different, if we assume the child is viable outside the womb.</div><div><br></div><div>If a child is murdered in the womb, it is the guardian who has standing to bring charges. Or is it everyone? Let’s consider both.</div><div><br></div><div>Consider the period of time when the child is not viable outside the womb. During that time, the mother is the only person who can truly act as guardian for the child. Only she can nourish it and nurture it. If that is the case, only she can act as guardian, and only she has standing to bring charges. If I sue her, seeking to be declared the guardian of her child, I can bring the most compelling sorts of evidence and yet I am physically incapable of replacing her. No matter how good my arguments are, if I am unable to physically replace the mother and sustain the child's life, the suit is futile, there is no remedy available. Either the child is removed from the mother's womb and dies, or it remains and the mother's consent is violated.</div><div>Imagine that I was able to become the legal guardian in spite of this. Clearly I am violating the mother's consent. She is forced to continue the pregnancy unwillingly<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">. </span>What obligates her to do so?</div><div><br></div><div>Some would say that when she engaged in sexual intercourse, she tacitly agreed to the consequence. I think there are good reasons to consider this tacit agreement not binding. Specific performance of a contractual obligation to perform services is a form of slavery or indentured servitude, and does not belong in the jurisprudence of a free society. In ordinary contracts, when a party to the agreement wants to incentivize another to assure performance, the remedy is to have collateral involved, so that failure to perform the service triggers a change of ownership of the collateral. This remedy is not available for tacit agreements such as engaging in sex. And with whom is the agreement made, to whom is the obligation owed? The child does not yet exist, and they will not be competent to enter into contractual agreements for a long time, should they come into existence. Since the mother is the default guardian of the child, this is an agreement between the woman and herself. No one has standing to sue the mother for violating this contract. Maybe the father? But then the father could give consent for the abortion. And as pointed out before, the father cannot fulfill the role of guardian while the child is not yet viable.</div><div><br></div><div>Perhaps she is obligated because the fetus is a human being. Then maybe everyone has standing to bring charges. Can they bring charges against a woman for getting a hysterectomy while not pregnant? Can they bring charges against a man for ejaculating and not rescuing all the sperm? If it was technically feasible to fertilize all of a woman's eggs, would she be obligated to do so? Would a man be obligated to rescue every sperm that escaped his body, or even a significant fraction, if it were technically feasible to do so? How does fertilization create obligation? </div><div><br></div><div>Fertilization marks a significant milestone in the development of a child, but there is no obvious reason to consider it to create a line between when an egg is part of the mother's body and when it is a human child. Eggs and sperm are human, and they are alive. Catholics worry about unfertilized eggs, but even they give up with sperm. </div><div><br></div><div>The alternative is to give the guardian the choice of when and whether a pregnancy represents a person who cannot be killed. She has standing to bring charges against a murderer. No one else does. Unless she prosecutes herself, she cannot be prosecuted.</div><div><br></div><div>There is a period of time when the child is potentially viable outside the womb, but to remove the child from the womb without killing it will be very costly and difficult for the mother. The new guardian is responsible for all expenses and perhaps for compensating the mother.</div><div><br></div><div>I conclude that for anyone to have standing to prevent an abortion, they must be willing and able to act as the child's guardian, and in fact take on that role immediately, paying all medical expenses, etc. There is a period of time during which this is technically infeasible. During that time, the mother may abort the fetus at will, demonstrating her withdawal of her consent from the pregnancy. She has no agreement with any other person, and if she did it would not be binding. As the guardian of the potential child, only she has standing to bring charges against herself. </div><div><br></div><div>As technology improves, the duration of this period will probably become shorter. We all can look forward to the day when all such children can be rescued without violating the consent of the mother.</div><div><br></div><div>This is where the blog post should have ended. But during editing I found a big error.</div><div><br></div><div>Rather than rewrite the whole thing, I want to leave it as is and now discuss the big error. You get to experience it just like I did!</div><div><br></div><div>What if a person was murdered by his heir? If only the heir has standing, then no one can bring charges of murder against the heir. This is a huge problem.<br><br>What does this establish about who has standing to bring charges of murder? We don’t want it to only be the guardian or the heir, or those persons have a free pass to commit murder. It sort of works with the guardian, since persons who would have been willing to become guardian could have standing. Once the child can live apart from the mother, she has an obligation to transfer guardianship rather than kill the child. Can we find a parallel for heirs? I would have been willing to adopt the victim into my family, so I have standing to bring charges of murder against the heir? Or just anyone can bring charges against the guardian or heir? </div><div><br></div><div>Anyhow, this undermines my argument.</div><div><br></div><div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Imagine that a pregnant woman is involved in an accident that makes her miscarry. She may be heartbroken by the death of her child, or she might feel relieved of a burden. She gets to choose the significance of that event for her. If she chose not to sue the tortfeasor, who would have standing to sue them against her wishes? This implies she has the power to choose. </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If instead she confers with an abortionist to terminate her pregnancy, is this really different? If it was an accident, she is within her rights to forgive the person responsible. She could also forgive an attempt at murder against herself, though others might want to prosecute.</span></div></div><div></div><div><br></div><div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Does the mother get to decide, am I the guardian of a child, or the possessor of a domestic animal or lump of tissue? If I am the guardian of a child, no one may kill my child. If I am the possessor of a domestic animal, I may kill it. If the child cannot be rescued, others must accept her attitude. Once it is possible, they may rescue the child.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Can she bring the child to term and continue to consider it a domestic animal? If so, someone can sue to become guardian. Guardian trumps owner. Can you imagine the court proceeding? One person arguing she owns the child as a domestic animal, the other side arguing that they wish to adopt the child. I think the guardians ought to win, even in the case of an actual domestic animal. If someone is willing to rescue an animal from a factory farm and make it their pet, I think they have a case. Someone willing to rescue a child from being treated as an animal has even better grounds for taking action.</span>.</div></div><div><br></div><div>When should we have empathy for the potential child? Do we have empathy for unferilized eggs and individual sperm cells? Why? Now conception happens. Why should I feel empathy for a single cell organism? The cell may divide and become embedded in the mother's womb. When should I feel empathy? I think it is when the mother commits to herself to the pregnancy. And if she changes her mind before the child can feasibly be rescued, I do not want to coerce her to fulfill her commitment. I think it should be voluntary from beginning to end. No one should hold a gun to her head, even if they promise to take custody of the child at the earliest possible and agreeable moment.</div><div><br></div><div>This is a draft, feel free to suggest improvements in the comments.</div><div><br></div></div></div>Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-42540203874272022212018-11-13T17:00:00.000-08:002018-11-13T22:37:50.146-08:00Was Marshall Rosenberg an anarchist?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">“We were not meant to succumb to the dictates of <i>should</i> and <i>have to</i>, whether they come from outside or inside of ourselves. And if we do yield and submit to these demands, our actions arise from an energy that is devoid of life-giving joy.”</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">“After we gain clarity regarding the need being served by our actions, we can experience those actions as play even when they involve hard work, challenge, or frustration.”</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">~Marshall Rosenberg</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Marshall Rosenberg's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication#Research" target="_blank">Nonviolent communication</a> reframes face-to-face human interaction, seeking to replace
domination with empathy and compassion. The more intimately I connect
to a person, the more I can gain from using NVC. I want to make requests,
not demands, and when others make demands I want to hear requests.<br>
<br>
How can we scale this up to the level of a large organization, a society or polity? <br>
<br>
<div class="text_exposed_show">
The CEO of a large firm can’t negotiate with every individual supplier,
employee and customer. Ideally, organizational
structures could encourage empathy and communication among all
participants, aligning organizational strategy with the needs of participating groups. But this provides a serious communication and organizational
challenge. Does this make success more or less likely? Does it change the criteria for success? Why has
the existing system evolved to favor domination so strongly? Are there
any good examples of organizations that have evaded this problem?<br>
<br>
We can see domination even more clearly when we look at the state. State
agents make demands. They threaten to punish those that disobey their commands. I can imagine a legal system that allows dissidents to say
no to social customs. But I think it stretches the concept of a nation
state to imagine a state that makes only requests. If I can refuse a
state command without getting threatened with punishment, I think we are
discussing a different sort of organization. <br>
<br>
Does Rosenberg manage to hear state
demands as requests that he can always grant willingly? He came close to answering this question when he
described how his father and grandfather paid taxes with enthusiasm because they “were desirous supporting a government they believed was protecting people in a way the czar had not. Imagining the many people whose welfare was being served by their tax money, they felt earnest pleasure as they sent their checks to the US government.” What about the taxes they paid to the czar before they emigrated? What
need do I fulfill when I obey the commands of state agents? How do I find the fun in
that? Even if they mean well, how can such a one-sided negotiation represent anything but domination? Can the state somehow restore the life-giving joy to an act motivated primarily by my desire to escape punishment?<br>
<br>Maybe Rosenberg's NVC idea applies only
in face-to-face relationships and not in large-scale market transactions
or nation-wide coordination efforts. How do we scale it up? Does he have an interpretation of
his theory that translates state coercion into empathy? Or does his work offer a method to replace the demands inherent in the current workings of the state? </div><div class="text_exposed_show"><br></div><div class="text_exposed_show">Perhaps Rosenberg's insight <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">applies only to small-scale interaction. Or maybe it </span>points to the possibility of different forms of organization capable of coordinating people’s actions without using threats. Wouldn’t that be interesting?</div>
</div>
Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-77085190443720305992018-07-17T15:27:00.001-07:002018-07-17T15:27:29.314-07:00Questions for Sullivan on Derrida on Forgiveness<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">These are questions I have about an episode of J<a href="http://jamesandthegiantpodcast.libsyn.com/podcast/philosophy-today-derridas-on-forgiveness" target="_blank">ames and the Giant Podcast</a> where James Sullivan (I call him James from now on, I hope he would call me Dave) discusses Derrida's (I call him Derrida, he's dead) essay On Forgiveness. No essay can cover all the bases completely, but I will discuss some of the gaps that prevent me from fully understanding or agreeing. If the podcast concludes something like, here is a long list of things we might think of as forgiveness, but they really aren't, I agree. But I disagree with nearly every explanation of this conclusion they give.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">First, let me attempt a short summary of what I think the podcast was about. James has Derrida argue for the idea that no one can attain the ideal of pure forgiveness. An organization or a state cannot forgive, it only can happen in an actual person's heart. If forgiveness is conditional on repentance or restitution or anything else, it is not really forgiveness, it is a negotiated transaction, a deal. For the forgiven person even to ask for forgiveness spoils it to some degree. Justice and forgiveness are completely independent and distinct: justice can be fulfilled without any forgiveness, and forgiveness can exist without any justice.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">According to James, Derrida carefully considers these cases of faux forgiveness. But according to me, neither of them takes it where it needs to go. Derrida and James think of forgiveness as an interaction between two persons, one that requires both of them to participate. But I can forgive someone who knows nothing about my forgiveness or someone who died without repenting or asking for forgiveness. Forgiveness requires a subject and an object, but the object does not need to participate actively. A person forgives or does not forgive, that's all. Resentment transforms to resignation, blame transforms to cause and effect. Forgiveness drains the situation of moralistic judgement.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">After I am forgiven, forgiveness is over. Whatever I do with the knowledge that I am forgiven is something else: maybe redemption, maybe repentance, maybe reform, maybe indifference, even hostility or resentment, but not forgiveness.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Now a short digression: If I forgive you, this will affect our relationship, but these after-effects are not forgiveness itself (or even examples of it). Perhaps we both desire these after-effects, but I cannot accomplish forgiveness merely by wanting to forgive. It is not fully voluntary, it's more like wanting to learn calculus. I can try, but I may fail. If I try and I succeed, does that diminish the result compared to the same situation if I accomplished it without effort or intent? Do we care about the process as much as the result? I don't think I do.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Now back to the show. I will quote from James' podcast and comment as we go along. The action starts at about minute 6. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">“He [Derrida] deconstructs three main categories of forgiveness and we'll go into each one. First, forgiveness between two individuals; second, forgiveness between the state and an individual (by the state I mean any sovereign power, could be a king, government, school or church); third, forgiveness between states. This refers to the relationship between different nations.” Already this seems odd. I think I have never heard anyone speak of forgiveness between nations, and that if someone did that I would take it as highly metaphorical. Similarly, when an accused person gets a verdict of “not guilty” in court, I would not expect anyone to describe this as the state forgiving someone. If instead we use it to describe a guilty verdict, complete with a sentence to punishment, and the completion of the sentence, does that count as forgiveness on the part of the state? I don’t think so. In a way, this is Derrida's point, but if so it’s a trivial one, and made in a roundabout and confusing way. Justice is separate from forgiveness.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Perhaps this is metaphor? But then it is bad metaphor. Maybe that is Derrida's point, or part of it, and part of James' interpretation. Why spend so much time debunking a metaphor that is rarely (never?) used? </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">What isn’t a sovereign power, if we include schools and churches in that category? Why shouldn’t corporations also count? Or families and individuals? What does such a weak distinction accomplish?</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">“When we talk about forgiveness in this text, in order to simplify even our base conception of what forgiveness is as an idea, we will take it to mean forgiveness in the Abrahamic religious sense.” What does this accomplish? What alternatives are we abandoning? My conception of what forgiveness is certainly has been influenced by religious ideas, but how would this article (and Derrida's original) have to change if we dropped this assumption?</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Maybe Derrida and James want to contrast ordinary forgiveness with the sort of forgiveness that a Catholic receives during confession? (Or is that absolution, not forgiveness?) That does seem to require more than one participant and genuine repentance from the guilty party. But then no human is actually doing any forgiving. The difference between the sort of forgiveness that I can experience as the one doing the forgiving and the sort of forgiveness that Catholics experience as the objects of god's forgiveness seems like an interesting criticism of that religion, but Derrida and James do not go there. So why specify that we refer to the Abrahamic flavor? What are the other flavors?</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">“‘In principle’, Derrida begins, ‘there is no limit to forgiveness, no measure, no moderation, no to what point.’ [...] Forgiveness is often confounded, sometimes in a calculated fashion, with related themes: excuse, regret, amnesty. But Derrida states that these are separate things from forgiveness; they are heterogeneous. Do not confuse them.” We should avoid confusing forgiveness for these other things, but what is forgiveness and how does it differ? This is not unpacked. Is it a mental state? An emotion? A declaration? An activity? A transformation? A process with a product? A ritual to perform? A role to play? </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">“The idea of forgiveness requires an idea or conception of the unforgivable, and these two are tied together ... forgiveness and the unforgivable. You can only forgive, Derrida deduces, the unforgivable. What else is there to forgive? If you forgive the forgivable then you have done nothing; certainly nothing extraordinary or virtuous. Forgiving the unforgivable is Derrida’s paradox.” This just seems wrong. How shall I argue against this? Maybe I could refute them if they gave reasons to think so. But they don’t bother. I guess it is obvious? </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Why should I think of forgiveness as something that ought to qualify as extraordinary? It may occur less often than the alternative of holding a grudge. Is that all? </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Is it virtuous to forgive? Do Catholics number it among the 7 virtues? Nope. Did the Stoics consider it a virtue? Nope. Maybe contemporary culture has come to associate forgiveness with Jesus and other saintly figures, and so it got promoted? The Lord's Prayer exhorts us to forgive our debtors or those who trespass against us, but does that mean forgiveness is a virtue or is that just good advice?</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Maybe Derrida/James means that only the purest forgiveness is true forgiveness, so only the unforgivable is truly worthy of forgiveness? Why would I think that?</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">What else is there to forgive, besides the unforgivable? Certainly, anything that bothers me, I can forgive. Maybe anything that someone wants forgiveness for? The unforgiven.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">“We cannot pinpoint forgiveness in itself because it is abstract. We can point to acts of forgiveness, examples of forgiveness, but they are all representations of the thing and not the thing itself.” This is hard for me to follow. Would examples of elephants be representations of elephants and not elephants themselves? They are elephants but not "elephant". Okay, forgiveness is not a concrete thing we can point at, like an elephant. But James and Derrida are dancing around the point. Solid examples to point at satisfy me, and I am perplexed by this denial that examples can help. Why not? Can we find something helpful then, please? Maybe Derrida attacks all abstractions and generalizations, and this is only an instance?</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">“What I ask, does forgiveness feel like? Does it have an associative emotion? How do we describe it? Is it something an individual has, since it is something which must be given?” They ask, but do not tell.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">“It is infinite, which is why it holds so much importance in religious language, because it mirrors or mimics the divine.” Huh? I mean... Huh? Just going to leave that lying there?</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">“We’ve already stated that pure forgiveness can only exist between two individuals: the guilty and the victim; and that there must not be a third that intervenes.” And actually, the guilty need not participate actively. Note that this also implies that I do not actively forgive, it is an event that happens to me, not a process that I engage in or a decision I make. This seems too restricted. I can decide I want to forgive. I can take actions or think thoughts intended to get me ultimately to forgive. And if I can do these things, others might also do them either intentionally or unintentionally. Why does this make the forgiveness impure? If it does, why do I care about purity?</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">“Language itself intervenes as a third. Can there be, Derrida asks, in one way or another, a scene of forgiveness without a shared language?” Can’t I forgive my cat? It feels a lot like forgiveness. But perhaps cats are not capable of responsibility or guilt. But again, forgiveness is something I do. It has an object, but the object does not participate actively. If I am capable of feeling resentment toward my cat for something it has done, or holding it "responsible", can't I also forgive it? Certainly I am capable of doing the opposite, of placing blame on it, holding a grudge and wallowing in resentment. But perhaps this is faux forgiveness also, since the cat can't take responsibility, having no obligations or rights that would depend on its nonexistent ability to understand and participate in a reciprocal social interaction. Our relationship is one-sided, paternalistic; we can't achieve reciprocity. Can I distinguish between forgiving the cat for sinning and recognition of the fact that the cat is incapable of sinning? The result seems very similar, though I arrive there by a different process.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">"Derrida, in this entire essay, makes claims about the guilty party or person being transformed in asking for forgiveness. This is because the person who does something unforgivable is different from the person repenting or asking you for forgiveness, which means they are no longer guilty as such, or as guilty. Think about someone who while blackout drunk does something utterly unforgiveable. [...] The person the next day is not the same person." In what relevant way are they different persons, rather than the same person in a different context? How does this difference accomplish what Derrida claims, without making the entire exercise of forgiveness into a mistake? Derrida and his interpreter leave this unstated.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">If I forgive you, you are the same person that violated me, at least for the purposes of dealing with the aftermath of that event. If you have shown yourself to be dangerous, I shall adjust to the danger. If you have shown yourself to be careless, I shall adjust to the uncertainty this creates. If you have shown yourself to disregard social customs, I need to find a different basis on which to interact with you, or avoid interacting. From these various vantage points, you are necessarily the same person. How is the context of forgiveness different? Is my forgiveness impure if after you damage my car I take back the car keys I lent you? Does forgiveness require me to act as if I still think you are a safe driver after you prove the opposite? Or can I forgive you, take appropriate measures, and move on?</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Does forgiveness erase guilt? Guilt lives in the context of justice, which Derrida and James separate from the context of forgiveness. Guilt also lives with morality, but it is a different sort of guilt. Perhaps forgiveness has nothing to do with either.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Can I forgive as the result of a conscious strategy? Can forgiveness come as a by-product of reconciliation, redemption, or some other conscious process intended to produce it (among other things)? If forgiveness is a state of mind, how does the process that created it prevent it from being what it is? So James must mean that it is not a state of mind, or at least not a state of mind or mental event alone. Or perhaps the context that they use to disqualify forgiveness does so by spoiling the state of mind also? If I have already forgiven someone, will this be spoiled by them asking for forgiveness or claiming to repent? But then it is not really conditional. Must all sorts of preliminary preparations, if done with the conscious intent of producing forgiveness, undermine their own objective?</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Why do I believe that forgiveness has nothing to do with the unforgivable? Can Derrida and James agree with me on this, but reach the same conclusion? Their claim is oddly psychological and a priori at the same time. Their analysis hints at a theory of language and meaning that seems unhelpful in this instance. Maybe if I understood that theory better and convinced myself that it applies in other contexts, I might abandon my objections.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #383838; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">What if I approached this as one who seeks to understand rather than as one who seeks to find fault? Derrida's purpose, seen through James' lens, seems primarily negative, to convince us that several ways of talking make no sense. I already think most of them are nonsense, though maybe not as nutty as the idea that forgiveness depends on the unforgivable. What can I gain from Derrida and James? What is at stake? They certainly inspired a lot of questions.</span></span></div>
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Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-24526732768375954092018-07-05T18:32:00.000-07:002019-04-07T13:04:14.910-07:00Argumentation Ethics steelman<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>Summary of argumentation ethics</b><br>
When I argue I presuppose
everything that argumentation requires me to presuppose. I might not
articulate or consciously believe these propositions, and indeed I may
deny them with my words, but I must act in a way that does not violate
them. If I fail to act to make them true, I am no longer arguing; I am
reciting, meditating, propagandizing, indoctrinating, coercing,
fighting, or just engaging in some activity other than argumentation.</div>
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If during the course of an argumentation I arrive at a conclusion that
contradicts one of my presuppositions, that contradiction invalidates my
argument, by the same logic as would apply if I could derive a
contradiction from assumptions I have made explicitly. </div>
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According to Hans-Hermann Hoppe, argumentation
presupposes some private property proposition (PPP). A criticism of
self-ownership or private property involves the denial of PPP. By
arguing that private property is inferior or wrong or should be
eliminated and replaced with something else, I violate what I presupposed by engaging in argumentation and thereby create a performative
contradiction. This contradiction refutes my criticism.</div>
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<b>What is PPP?</b></div>
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Hoppe discusses the presuppositions of argumentation in this <a href="http://propertyandfreedom.org/2016/10/hans-hermann-hoppe-on-the-ethics-of-argumentation-pfs-2016/" target="_blank">talk</a>. Here is a long quote:</div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“</span>The praxeological presuppositions of argumentation, then, i.e., what makes argumentation as a specific form of truth-seeking activity possible, are twofold: a) each person must be entitled to exclusive control or ownership of his physical body […] so as to be able to act independently of one another and come to a conclusion on his own, i.e., autonomously, and b), for the same reason of mutually independent standing and autonomy, both proponent and opponent must be entitled to their respective prior possessions, i.e., the exclusive control of all other, external means of action appropriated indirectly by them prior to and independent of one another and prior to the on-set of their argumentation.<br>
“Any argument to the contrary: that either the proponent or the opponent is not entitled to the exclusive ownership of his body and all prior possessions cannot be defended without falling into a pragmatic or performative contradiction. For by engaging in argumentation, both proponent and opponent demonstrate that they seek a peaceful, conflict-free resolution to whatever disagreement gave rise to their arguments. Yet to deny one person the right to self-ownership and prior possessions is to deny his
autonomy and his autonomous standing in a trial of arguments. It affirms
instead dependency and conflict, i.e., heteronomy, rather than conflict-free and autonomously reached agreement and is thus contrary to the very purpose of argumentation.”
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We can construct a version of PPP by rearranging Hoppe's description quoted above.</div>
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PPP: “[I am] entitled to exclusive control or ownership of [my] physical body […] so as to be able to act
independently of [others] and come to a conclusion on [my] own, i.e., autonomously and
for
the same reason of mutually independent standing and autonomy, [both I and my interlocutors are]
entitled to [our] prior possessions, i.e., the exclusive control of all
other, external means of action appropriated indirectly by [us] prior to
and independent of [others] and prior to the on-set of [this]
argumentation. [I] seek a peaceful, conflict-free resolution to whatever disagreement gave rise to [our] arguments. </div>
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<b>Why is PPP presupposed by argumentation?</b></div>
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Argumentation presupposes that participants make up their own minds and participate
fully in an effort to resolve a disagreement by arriving at an agreed
conclusion by peaceful means. This requires them to act and think independently of others in a
relevant sense, not subject to duress or other forms of influence from anyone. If
participants in an argument lack this quality of independence, they
cannot pursue the purpose of argumentation, they cannot truly resolve
their dispute and come to agreement. In the extreme, if I
hold a gun to your head and tell you what arguments to listen to or to
make, we will never really come to agreement. I cannot force you to believe something. Every influence aimed at a
purpose other than finding genuine agreement may lead the process off the true
path. If I can “win” an argument by threatening violence or offering
bribes, this derails real argumentation. We fail to,persuade or even understand each other. Argumentation presupposes that
participants rise above such counterproductive distractions and
motives. When they fail to do so, argumentation itself fails.<br>
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I am entitled to exclusive control of my body in the sense that it is common knowledge that no one else may control my body without my permission. If others could control me or were entitled to control me, this would count as duress.</div>
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<b><span data-mce-style="color: #111111; font-family: Georgia;" style="color: #111111; font-family: "georgia";">Why must critics of liberty and private property deny </span><span data-mce-style="color: #111111; font-family: Georgia; -en-paragraph: true;" style="-en-paragraph: true; color: #111111; font-family: "georgia";">PPP</span><span data-mce-style="color: #111111; font-family: Georgia;" style="color: #111111; font-family: "georgia";">?</span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #111111; font-family: "georgia";">Critics of private property proclaim that no one is entitled to certain kinds of prior possessions. They seek to violently confiscate others' prior property, not to resolve their disagreement peacefully. So they contradict "I seek a peaceful, conflict-free resolution".</span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="color: #111111; font-family: Georgia; -en-paragraph: true;" style="-en-paragraph: true; color: #111111; font-family: "georgia";">I still consider this blog entry a draft. Any helpful suggestions left in the comments will be used to improve future versions.</span></div>
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Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-44887796445318299372018-05-31T12:47:00.000-07:002018-05-31T12:57:59.034-07:00The state illusion<p><a href="https://ombreolivier.liberty.me/why-government-doesnt-scale/?utm_source=libertydotme&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=active" target="_blank">This article</a> has an important insight about government, but I think it misses the mark by a bit. Governments use more centralization and hierarchy than markets, but they are forced to adapt to the limitation on scaling the article describes, they just do it in a different way. When we think of government as purely top-down we are oversimplifying quite a lot. Does Trump control the deep state? Formally, congress and the president are in charge. In reality, no one is in control.
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<p>And the same criticism described in the article applies to corporations and other organizations that use explicit hierarchy as part of their structure. Yet they seem able to work around this limitation somehow, at least well enough to make a profit and keep the stakeholders mostly satisfied. </p>
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I've been trying to articulate a related insight. We think of government as distinct from other organizations, as deserving to be treated as an exception, but what essential difference can we point to that distinguishes them? If they are just organizations not so different from others, why do we treat them differently?</div>
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<p>Weber and Hoppe offer flawed definitions of the state. Weber speaks of a legitimate monopoly on force, but the reality is closer to a cartel than a monopoly. Other organizations use force in various ways without becoming "the state". How many people must stop accepting the legitimacy of the state's violence before it transforms into a criminal gang? Does it experience a phase change like ice melting into water?</p>
<p>Hoppe says that the state "must be able to insist that all conflicts among the inhabitants [...] be subject to his final review. In particular, this agent must be able to insist that all conflicts involving [the state] be adjudicated by him or his agent. And implied in the power to exclude all others from acting as ultimate judge, as the second defining characteristic of a state, is the agent’s power to tax: to unilaterally determine the price that justice seekers must pay for his services." I can insist on this (though no one will pay much attention to it), am I a state? More charitably, Hoppe must mean that the state can actually accomplish this. How many conflicts adjudicated by other means will it take to transform the state into something else? When a mugger takes my wallet, does he become a state? When a club raises its dues, people can resign, but when a government raises taxes people can emigrate. There is no such thing as an ultimate judge. Participants in a dispute continue until they themselves consider their dispute to have been resolved. If some third party seeks to force a resolution, this merely imposes new constraints on their means of either engaging in or resolving their conflict.</p>
<p>Maybe territory and jurisdiction give us a clue? Can we observe a state without a territory? But does that mean that ordinary property owners, renters, or any other category of possessor that can legitimately exclude others from a specific location qualify as states?</p>
<p>Whatever activity or attitude you point to, if I start imitating government no one thinks I have become a government. When a random organization engages in evil or stupid behavior, it will not change their character if we start calling them governments. If I exaggerate a bit, this reveals the state as an illusion (or perhaps just a flawed abstraction). On a more practical level, this encourages us to use terminology that hinders our insight and understanding. </p>
<p>If we had a powerful general theory of social organization, then theories about states, firms, clubs and other variants of human organizations would fall out of it as corollaries, subsets or applications. Government provides a special case of a general phenomenon, and if we did not emphasize the difference so strongly we might find ways to transfer insights from one context to the other. The problems that can corrupt governments can corrupt other organizations, and vice versa. </p>
Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-42813587993906580662018-05-28T18:47:00.001-07:002018-05-28T18:47:45.046-07:00MKP mission statement<div>I’ve been feeling dissatisfied with my mission statement. It started out like this:</div>
<div>I create a world of diversity, tolerance and openness by inviting others to explore and connect.</div>
<div>The target is vague and the method is vaguer. I’m going to describe how I modified it below, but I will start by giving the new version:</div>
<div>I nurture cooperation and adaptation by learning, growing and having fun with others.</div>
<div>The old one, in addition to its vagueness, failed to give me guidance about integrating things I do every day to try to make improvements with the lofty goals vaguely mentioned in the statement. I felt it commanded me to make grandeose commitments to ideas that currently lie outside my sphere of influence. The new one lets me move step by step in the right direction, instead of just skipping to the end. Maybe I can have a big impact, but I need to be able to see how to get there, what is the first step.</div>
<div>MKP uses visualization to get people to find their mission, but that didn’t work for me. I fell asleep instead. So I’ve used a more philosophical approach instead of pure intuition. I doubt the idea that everyone must agree on everything, and I don’t see how to achieve unanimity without coercion. I envision a world where people can disagree with each other and yet still cooperate to a large degree, even if it is just to keep out of each other's business. Societies face the challenge of integrating individual autonomy, creativity and inspiration into coordinated cooperation on a large scale. Obviously, we can’t accomplish this easily, but I seek that ideal.</div>
<div>A good mission statement will frame all my work and make its meaning and purpose clear to me. Don’t let it become a mental prison, though.</div>
<div>What is a positive way to express the idea of not placing demands on others? When I respect someone's autonomy, I do not make demands upon them. Instead, I make polite requests and negotiate from a position of mutual respect.</div>
<div><b>Categories</b> </div>
<div>I read a book about depression that listed 6 areas of concern that can play a role in depression. I want to categorize my activities accordingly. The factors are diet, exercise, sleep, light, associations and ruminations. I used a web app to create an acronym for this: Rumination, Exercise, Diet, Sleep, Association and LighT - REDSALT. Light affects mood depending on how much and when during the day you are exposed. Association stands for your relations with other people - do you have friends and associates that care about youand interact with you frequently? Rumination is a broad category, including the stories I tell myself, my self-talk, the judgements I make, the ideas I identify with, and probably most of what would go in my mission statement when I complete it. These are the things I take for granted, things I keep reminding myself of.</div>
<div>A mission statement says what I think I am and what I want to be. What effect do I want to have on others? What changes in myself do I want to encourage? That was who I was. This is what I want to become. By writing it down, I can criticize it, improve it, compare myself to it. Can I use it in this way without judging myself when I fail to keep perfectly aligned to my mission? If I do judge myself, will that make me more or less likely to get where I want to go?</div>
<div>What is my shadow mission, the mission of the shadow self who undermines many of my actions? Stay safe, hidden and isolated from others. Don’t trust anyone. Be boring, don’t let them see the real me.</div>
<div><b>Super powers</b></div>
<div>If I could have fun while satisfying my needs for RED SALT, that would give me a sort of super power. I would strengthen myself in each of these areas, not by exerting willpower but by having fun.</div>
<div>Another related topic comes to mind, the Japanese concept of ikigai. Perfect ikigai combines four accomplishments into one activity (or into one life): I do it well, I get paid to do it, I like doing it, and the world needs it. I can influence myself to increase my level of skill and enjoyment. I can learn how to get paid or to connect my skills to people's needs. I want that superpower too.</div>
<div>People tend to look for trouble when they aren’t already overwhelmed. The ones with superpowers pick their battles.</div>
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<div>This draft is still rough and a bit flow-of-consciousness. But I decided to release it rather than edit it forever.</div>
<div></div> Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-88279693438173360292018-05-06T13:28:00.001-07:002018-05-06T13:59:19.067-07:00 Chinese character stroke order rules and algorithms<a href="http://blog.tutorming.com/mandarin-chinese-learning-tips/7-basic-rules-to-chinese-stroke-order">http://blog.tutorming.com/mandarin-chinese-learning-tips/7-basic-rules-to-chinese-stroke-order</a> <div><br></div><div>Explains how to draw Chinese characters. This is not only useful for correct calligraphy, but useful to know when looking up characters in a Chinese dictionary. If you see a character you don’t recognize, you can’t look it up by Pinyin/pronunciation. So a particular dictionary style goes by stroke order. There is a list of first strokes, from there you get to a list of possible second strokes (given the first stroke) until things are narrowed down enough that you can just pick the character you seek from a list. </div>Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-67178614186647160532018-01-21T13:49:00.001-08:002018-01-21T13:55:31.793-08:00Walter Williams on freedom of association and discrimination<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Walter Williams raises an <a href="http://capitalismmagazine.com/2013/09/touchy-topics-freedom-association-discrimination/" target="_blank">interesting point</a>. Are laws that force us to associate with each other better than laws that force us not to?</div>
Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-88892072030945776112018-01-18T10:10:00.003-08:002018-01-21T13:52:47.168-08:00Critical thinking<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Here is an interesting article on <a href="https://mises.org/system/tdf/12_1_9_0.pdf?file=1&type=document" target="_blank">a priori knowledge</a> in science.<br>
Here is a discussion of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/213888/Two_Concepts_of_Rationality" target="_blank">authoritarian and libertarian rationality</a>.<br>
And a discussion of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/7457820/The_Contrast_Between_Dogmatic_and_Critical_Arguments" target="_blank">dogmatism</a>.<br>
And one on <a href="https://www.academia.edu/793164/Theoretical_and_Practical_Reason_A_Critical_Rationalist_View" target="_blank">rationality</a> that I can't quite describe but I like it. Here's part of the abstract:<br>
"<span class="a" style="left: 877px; top: 1400px; word-spacing: -1px;">If the task of theoretical reason is to discover truth, or reasons for belief, then theoretical </span><span class="a" style="left: 545px; top: 1495px; word-spacing: -1px;">reason is impossible. Attempts to circumvent that by appeal to probabilities are self-defeating. If the </span><span class="a" style="left: 545px; top: 1592px; word-spacing: -1px;">task of practical reason is to discover what we ought to do or what actions are desirable or valuable, </span><span class="a" style="left: 545px; top: 1687px; word-spacing: -1px;">then practical reason is impossible. Appeals to the subjective ought or to subjective probabilities are </span><span class="a" style="left: 545px; top: 1784px; word-spacing: -1px;">self-defeating. Adapting Karl Popper, I argue that the task of theoretical reason is to obtain theories </span><span class="a" style="left: 545px; top: 1879px; word-spacing: -1px;">that we can agree to instate given that they appear to have greater explanatory merit than their rivals. I </span><span class="a" style="left: 545px; top: 1975px; word-spacing: -1px;">then argue that the task of practical reason is to decide which ought-propositions to act on."</span><br>
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Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-45580291348197276692018-01-09T18:49:00.001-08:002018-01-09T18:49:39.519-08:00Frame of reference<div>Every question comes with a frame of reference, a set of assumptions that help it make sense, a background against which it blends or contrasts. If we examine our frame of reference, we must provide a new one. How does this process end?</div>
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<div>Relativism recognizes that we can analyse the same thing from different perspectives, by changing our assumptions. It does not insist that we must value them all the same. That sort of relativism deserves a different name or qualifier. Maybe we should call it value relativism, or meta-relativism, or just nihilism.</div>
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<div>We struggle with our thoughts to make plans that succeed. We rationalize our actions and seek to justify them in retrospect, hoping to maintain or improve our status. Maybe we're just curious.</div>
<div><br></div>Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-9090255445559391152018-01-08T16:51:00.001-08:002018-01-08T18:31:47.320-08:00Attacking/Defending Donald Hoffman's reality<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans; font-size: 16px;">An </span><a href="https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/07/21/does-evolution-lead-us-to-perceive-reality-or-is-it-all-an-illusion/" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans; font-size: 16px;" target="_blank">uncharitable</a><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans; font-size: 16px;"> <a href="https://www.allthink.com/1655117" target="_blank">interpretation</a> of Donald Hoffman might view him as </span><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality-20160421/" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans; font-size: 16px;" target="_blank">claiming</a><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans; font-size: 16px;"> that a completely deluded agent has an advantage over an agent with some grip on reality. I hope he does not actually take this extreme view. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans; font-size: 16px;">Hoffman likes to use the graphic user interface of a PC as </span>an analogy<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans; font-size: 16px;">. Computer users do not wish to know everything about what is happening in their PC. They find it much easier to deal with an abstract representation that in some ways corresponds to the internal workings of the computer, and in other ways is just made up to make sense to the user. An icon's image or location on the desktop says nothing important about it at the deep level. These are just handles that the user can manipulate for reasons that have nothing to do with internal operations of the computer. But there are some important connections.</span></div>
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We can interpret his metaphor to cast the conscious mind in the role of the user, reality as the computer hardware, and the unconscious mind and perceptions as the GUI. Some aspects of what we perceive correspond indirectly to reality, others result from processes within the unconscious. Does this get us to agreement with Hoffman, or did he overstate his case?</div>
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Hoffman does not explain his work in a way that makes it easy to agree with him. But we should keep in mind what we are agreeing with and what we are disagreeing with.</div>
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Hoffman presents some very provocative results. He describes them verbally in <span style="font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">absurd </span>terms. I would summarize his conclusions as "evolution favors deluded agents over agents who perceive reality correctly" and "consciousness is the foundation of reality". These both seem ridiculous at first glance.</div>
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But Hoffman does not give us sufficient information to judge him fairly. These conclusions summarize the results of a computer simulation and a mathematical theory. We must understand those before we can give Hoffman a charitable interpretation. Does Hoffman interpret his models and his application of their terms to our reality accurately? Without the details, we can't know, and Hoffman does not provide much detail in his interviews for the popular press.</div>
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Does the following example parallel Hoffman's idea? Humans evolved a response to danger in our ancestral environment. Evolution favored strategies that may generate more non-fatal errors so long as they tend to avoid fatal errors more reliably. So we respond to dangers that do not actually exist more often than we ignore real dangers (in the ancestral environment). The costs of the two sorts of error differ; and heuristics that sacrifice one measure of accuracy to avoid the more costly sort of error can make sense. We can imagine simulating this idea and having nervous nellies outcompete others who more accurately predict danger but who make fatal mistakes more often.</div>
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Now imagine that Hoffman's simulation does something similar, but only allows perception to vary. All agents use the same strategy for avoiding danger, but have different abilities to perceive reality accurately. The perceptions that evolve may also reflect the difference in the cost of error. Hallucinating danger more often would be an acceptable cost, if it is counterbalanced by a sufficiently lower chance of ignoring potentially fatal danger.</div>
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I found this counterintuitive at first. I was tempted to think that more accurate perception always gives us an advantage over less accurate, and we should analyse any difference in strategy separately. But this artificial distinction misleads us. Scientists no longer think the brain works that way; The line between unconscious thought and perception is fuzzy. (E.g. the sensitivity of the rods and cones in the eye respond to our emotional state.) </div>
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Even if we assume a separation between perception and strategic response, the speed and cognitive cost of perceptions could impact fitness in addition to their accuracy. Increases in accuracy may trade off with these other factors. W<span style="font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">e can't just assume that more accuracy always improves fitness. We have to count the cost of the accuracy in terms of other factors sacrificed.</span></div>
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So I can't be sure that I agree with Hoffman, but I am not sure I disagree either. Can we interpret what happened in his simulation unambiguously to support his conclusion? How far from accuracy could this process lead? I don't know.</div>
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Hoffman's mathematical model of a consciousness-based universe seems even more difficult to criticize from a simple verbal summary. He seems to say that he has some math that derives quantum reality from more primitive entities that can be interpreted as consciousness. It is up to mathematical physicists to say whether the math works. Can we interpret the math without understanding it?</div>
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Is the math correct? Does the interpretation work? <span style="font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">We can view Hoffman's argument as a reductio ad absurdum. This gives us a choice; I</span>f the intervening logic works, we either accept the result or criticize the assumptions. Which assumptions specifically must we reject? Hoffman has not really made this clear in his popular summaries. We would need to read Hoffman's serious papers to find out what he assumes.</div>
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Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-49530278172208727602018-01-05T22:36:00.001-08:002018-01-05T22:40:43.538-08:00Dogmatism grooming<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We're not supposed to like dogma, dogmatists or dogmatism.<br />
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I think murder is bad. It's kind of built into the definition. If it wasn't bad, we would call it "killing in self defense" or "accidental death" or something else. Murder is what we call it after a judgement has been made that a wrongful killing took place. We can doubt individual judgements, but can we doubt the principle?<br />
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What sort of situation or argument should make me want to consider that murder might be a good thing? So, am I being dogmatic? You must admit that the world might be a better place minus some of its most disagreeable persons. So, should I switch to a consequentialist frame on murder? I don't like that sort of consequentialism.<br />
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How about rape? I can't think of any credible scenario where rape is going to make the world a better place. So, shall we endorse dogmatism on this topic? Rape is bad.<br />
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So if we can justify dogmatism in some circumstances, how do we explain the distinction between justifiable and unjustifiable dogmatism? What sorts of justifications work?<br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Usually when someone accuses me of dogmatism, their position seems just as dogmatic to me. How can we tell which one, or niether, really fits the costume?</span><br />
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I think we can find good reasons for using caution about dogmatism. If the dogmatists must shield their dogma from criticism, that's probably a mistake. What else makes dogma into dogma?<br />
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I'm willing to listen to all sorts of criticisms about my ideas that murder and rape are bad. If I changed my mind, that would surprise me, but changing my mind usually surprises me. Such surprises are hardly surprising. If I expected to change my mind, I would have changed it already.<br />
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So, does a feeling of comfortable certainty qualify me as a dogmatist, assuming I'm willing to think seriously about rival hypotheses and the reasons people give for them?</div>
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Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-65549758408535564612018-01-05T16:46:00.000-08:002018-01-05T16:46:49.260-08:00Meta-libertarian criticism of anarcho-capitalism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<li>Meta-libertarianism<span style="font-weight: normal;">: Don't force anyone to accept a particular system. Let each choose for themselves. This does not contradict the ancap idea directly, but ancaps tend to overstate their position, as if history will end and everyone will agree on one best solution.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-weight: normal;">Ancaps criticize the </span>moral justification <span style="font-weight: normal;">for the state's special status (there is none). But a moral critique does not advise us when choosing between reform and abolition. Arguably, just abolishing slavery should have been sufficient (and practical problems transitioning from slavery to something else would not excuse hesitation). But even in that simpler case, complications occurred. The state has intertwined itself into our lives in a much more complicated way than slavery did. We can't destroy society in order to save it. We need to cultivate it, to heal it.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-weight: normal;">The innovations they support are not the only ones that might eliminate the problems they criticize. Not everyone agrees that their solutions will work, or would improve our lives compared to some other possible change. As bad as they may be,</span> things can always get worse. </li>
<li><span style="font-weight: normal;">Ancaps declare reform of the government to be impossible, but the evidence they have for this makes it seem unlikely but not impossible. If </span>reform<span style="font-weight: normal;"> is merely difficult, that undercuts the urgency of the more extreme suggestions.</span></li>
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Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6874629230734578214.post-88354277381958102402016-11-21T14:59:00.001-08:002016-11-21T14:59:24.085-08:00AI slaves<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Question found on facebook: "</span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">If an AI was sufficiently advanced [...] would [we] recognize it's claim for self ownership? [...] If [we] didn't do this would it be slavery?"</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">I find the question interesting, but misguided. The question</span></span></span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "gotham" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"> assumes that the AI will remain on an intellectual level beneath or comparable to humans. This seems unlikely. Can we <a href="http://friendly-ai.com/faq.html" target="_blank">prevent the AI from becoming smarter </a>than us, self-enhancing until it can smash us like bugs, and the idea that a human could control it becomes absurd? What ethics will the AI obey, what physical limits will it face, what motivations does it feel, and how can we make sure this remains stable? If humans were capable of radical self-modification, of increasing their intelligence and ability to make use of resources, I have no doubt that some sick puppy would turn itself into a demon worthy of H.P. Lovecraft. Even an exemplary human, after having undergone such significant changes, might disappoint us and prove Lord Acton right. What prevents this from happening to an AI, an entity that presumably was born with one foot on that path? </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">But now that I've poured some cold water on it, let's address the question. What is the self that is owned? Someone owned the hardware that the intelligence developed within before the AI existed. Is it the ownership of the hardware that we want to know about? If enough of the hardware is unplugged, the AI will lose consciousness at least, "die" in the extreme.</span></span></span></div>
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If I developed a disease that required me to use a machine for life support, like an iron lung, would that automatically mean that I owned the iron lung? Would I no longer have the rigts of a self-owner if someone else owned the iron lung? What obligation does the owner of the iron lung have toward me with regard to maintaining the iron lung, not switching it off, not "evicting" me? Is this the same issue?<br />
An AI could inhabit hardware that it does not own, just as I can inhabit a building I don't own. Under normal circumstances, the owner of the building is under no obligation to allow me to remain. I can't think of an obvious parallel, where if I was required to vacate a building I would simply cease to exist.</div>
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Does my answer change if we give the AI a robot body owned by someone else? I suppose parents provide the parallel. My parents gave me the food with which I maintained and grew my body as a child. The metaphor of self-ownership excludes the idea that they could continue to own the molecules that my body digested and incorporated into myself. Implicit within the act of feeding me lies the necessity that they give me a gift, not a loan. Why do I say that? This restricts the metaphor in an unnecessary way, at least at first glance.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">My best answer is that ownership itself depends on a metaphor for my relationship to my body. That is where the concept of "mine" comes from, that my body belongs to me, that my thoughts are mine, that I am the author of my actions, that I have a self and an identity embodied by my body. Ownership of other things is a slightly broken metaphor based on this prototype.</span> </div>
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(Persons who object to the self-ownership metaphor still need some comparable phrase to describe this phenomenon, unless they simply deny that persons in general have any sort of obligation to respect others' bodily integrity. That is to say, they deny murder and rape exist, we can only kill and have sex. I'm still looking for a better phrase, maybe "self-determination"? But that probably will confuse even more people than "self-ownership.")</div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">The AI perhaps differs in that we could possibly record its consciousness and store it, and transfer it into a different robot body (perhaps of identical design). If we transfer the same stored consciousness into two identical robot bodies, are they the same person? <span style="color: #1d2129;">It's enough to turn you into a Buddhist. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="color: #1d2129;">Or a dualist? Some people think that a fundamental difference between people and machines will remain, even when we can no longer detect that difference. (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room" target="_blank">Chinese room</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie" target="_blank">philosophical zombies</a>?)</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Would it qualify as slavery for me to own an AI's robot body? If it really thought like a human, it would not wish to be switched off, or have its parts used or removed without consent. So if I were able to switch it off or modify it at will, I would stand in a very similar relationship to the AI as a master does to a slave. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Can I control its motivation and ethics? Could I act as its cult leader rather than its slave master? We distinguish between the two because a slave master can use physical threats to motivate a slave, a boss can use extrinsic rewards (but not physical threats) to motivate employees, cult gurus may use psychological manipulation to gain compliance, and an ethical leader (?) can use what? </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">All leaders have a touch of guru in them. How can we motivate without manipulating? How can we be sure that intrinsic motivation comes from within the persons who feel it, and not from some trick that a demagogue used to invade their minds? Any sort of inspiration carries a risk of error. We can imagine many similar rousing speeches. One speech sounds from a manipulator who doesn't believe it but will benefit from it. One comes from a true believer, who wastes this sincerity on a cause that cannot succeed. One inhabits a true believer who has found a viable path to an admirable goal. How do we distinguish these? Dogma or open inquiry? I need another blog entry I think.</span></span></span></div>
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Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17330240621500931648noreply@blogger.com0