Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

I think it's sort of a mistake to try to come up with a "real" definition of private property. It's not a physical truth about the universe we can discover if we only try hard enough; it's an agreement we can make amongst ourselves. I mean, there are better and worse ways of defining it, but the goal should be "useful" (like, for social/legal purposes, such that it's fairly clear to everyone what IS considered theirs) rather than "philosophically airtight".

argumate answered:

Yes. Even if you do come up with a definitive proof of something you still have the problem of some geezer with a shotgun ignoring all of your logic.

[mitigatedchaos]

1. Oh, so I guess you missed that welfare exists in many countries? Resources are scarce, but that doesn’t mean coordinated action cannot have an impact.

The reason your ideology replaces humans with emotionless AI is that it is effectively Malthusian and prohibits any use of force as a coordinating tool to prevent it. The incentives to self-modify into an emotionless robot for competitive advantage will drive everyone to do that or compete them right out of the market - and thus to death from lack of resources. More likely, your system would be overthrown before then by people not wanting to become emotionless robots, but that’s if people actually followed it.

2. Ordinary rights theory and Capitalism is not the same as Anarcho-Capitalism, therefore those are not your victories to claim.

3. You horrify me, and I cannot trust you. You are perfectly okay with effective enslavement so long as the right conditions are met, you just refuse to acknowledge what it is or call it that. Not out of necessity for survival, but merely to suit the desires of the wealthy. It IS about honor, that is what the revealed preference is, your virtue, you don’t want to negotiate the complex world we live in. You probably even drive a car but ignore the complex tradeoffs of risk to others that are far more about probabilities than “individual responsibility”. In any case where you are asked to pick between individuals and property, you will pick property, then use your ideological framework to *claim* that property is just an extension of individuals even though it is not.

As to your “mass graves” comment, there are also graves for global capitalism, you just wave yoir magic wand to pretend it has literally no responsibility for them. Now, Capitalism did turn out better than the major Communist states or attempts at true Communism - but then, I am not a Communist. Because Communism has worse consequences, and therefore doing it is bad Consequentialism.

4. Property, despite your assertions, is not a property of the universe. The existence of property does not logically follow from your solo control of your body through your nervous system. Why would it? The simple fact that you control it creates no obligation whatsoever for an alien parasite not to hijack your body. The existence of outside property would not logically follow even if that did.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

getting past the filter

[theunitofcaring]

I’ve been reading right-wing media - not all the time, because the point of the exercise is understanding and past a point it just breeds exhaustion. But my impression is that the way right-wing media interprets the protests and the outrage and the fear and anger at Trump’s presidency is something like this:

The left won a lot of battles in a row, and they got used to winning every fight they got into, so they picked fights that they couldn’t possibly really care about, just to grind our faces in the dirt. And then they lost! And we won! And they are handling this with immature hysteria and obstructionism and riots, and we basically have to wade through them to put the country back on the rails, and where we fail it’s their fault and where we succeed it proves that they’re ineffectual and intellectually bankrupt and have no tactics beyond crying and complaining and calling people racist. And they’re complaining about things they were fine with under Obama so they’re not actually sincere anyway. And they still have a stranglehold nearly everywhere, but maybe now people’ll start to see through them and we’ll have a chance to roll it back.)

(Some examples of fights we ‘couldn’t possibly really care about’: making employers cover health care plans that included contraception coverage, making bakers bake wedding cakes for gay people, letting trans people use restrooms of their choice.)

And the presence of the narrative imposes a sort of filter, where things you do that make sense within it, or reinforce it, don’t get seen by half the country. Sometimes that doesn’t matter. But sometimes it really does; sometimes I want to be able to talk to the people who voted for Trump and be heard and be understood to be saying what I’m actually saying and not just ‘blah blah liberals won and won and won and can’t handle losing and are going to call you racist no matter what racist racist racist’.

So, obviously, I think this narrative is unfair in many, many ways. But what I’m really interested in right now is, what could a person do or say in order to slip past the narrative? Because it’s, well, encompassing - narratives usually are. Peaceful protests fit into the ‘the left is all bluster and whining’ arm of it and violent protests fit into ‘the left is a danger’ arm of it and no protests fit into the ‘we are the silent majority’ arm of it. And there are battles which really are worth fighting but which are trivial and silly to people sufficiently removed from them, like fights over letting trans people use public restrooms. 

But narratives are not all-encompassing - the vocal opposition of Senator McCain to Trump’s conduct doesn’t fit into it at all, the conservative judges overturning Trump’s executive orders doesn’t fit into it very well, the testimony of veterans about why their translators saved their lives and deserve the opportunity to live here which they were promised doesn’t fit into it.

Those are, of course, all examples of conservatives who can challenge the narrative by already having credibility within it. I can’t think of a great way for a liberal to establish that credibility - emphasizing that you understand why they believe the things they believe was tried very loudly during the campaign, and I think it mostly totally failed (both at establishing that, and at going from ‘we understand each other’ to ‘the filter you’re seeing me through isn’t capturing what I want and what I actually want is reasonable and comprehensible and human’.)

I feel like one important project of the next few months is figuring out how to communicate past the filter, how to say things that aren’t easily sorted into the narrative, and how to build from there enough trust that our concerns and fear and anger are heard as concern and fear and anger, instead of being easy to round off as ‘they lost and they’re sore losers’. I want past the filter. I want to be able to make myself understood. And I do still think that there’s some way that can be achieved.

[mitigatedchaos]

I know that you mean what you say, even though I disagree on a number of key policies. They don’t. There is a risk that any way of bypassing the filter will get seen as cynical political manipulation - or will end up that way since politicals will start abusing it just like they abused the term “racist”. But then, I knew about you well before the election.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

I think it's sort of a mistake to try to come up with a "real" definition of private property. It's not a physical truth about the universe we can discover if we only try hard enough; it's an agreement we can make amongst ourselves. I mean, there are better and worse ways of defining it, but the goal should be "useful" (like, for social/legal purposes, such that it's fairly clear to everyone what IS considered theirs) rather than "philosophically airtight".

argumate answered:

Yes. Even if you do come up with a definitive proof of something you still have the problem of some geezer with a shotgun ignoring all of your logic.

[mitigatedchaos]

@remedialaction

I might have missed the post? That happens.

Yeah, sometimes it does.

And Utilitarianism is always ‘doing it wrong.’

You say that, yet you follow a philosophy which, when combined with artificial intelligence, will almost inevitably result in human extinction and the replacement of everything we hold dear with economium - the most economically efficient form of matter, which necessarily is unfeeling, because any resources spent on emotions could instead be spent on competition.  

You turned the social fiction of “property” into an axiom which exceeds the value of humanity - all of humanity - in your system.  

Anarcho-Capitalism and other such property-obsessed systems are always ‘doing it wrong’.

[remedialaction]

I mean, I reject the entire premise that somehow AI will lead to human extinction, with or without my philosophy of individual rights and voluntaryism, but then again I mostly reject any doomsaying. I also reject the idea that somehow the idea that property is a ‘social fiction,’ and also find it odd to appeal to some therefor equally fictitious idea such as a value for humanity, either as a concept or a whole.

Because if we’re going to say property is just a social fiction, than so would every other concept, certainly one as subjective as ‘value.’

Anarcho-capitalism is not ‘property obsessed,’ that’s just what everyone seems to keep fighting us on. If you keep trying to smack someones face and they keep blocking, they’re not ‘face obsessed,’ it’s just what keeps being attacked. Anarcho-capitalism is individualist obsessed. That it manifests in property discussions is merely due to how others approach it.

I’ll be clear though: I’d sooner let all of humanity pass into ash and dust than hinge its survival upon the subjugation of even one individual. I’d never push the trolley lever, and to do so is immoral. 

[mitigatedchaos]

1. Quite frankly you don’t understand the true potential of AI if you think it’s impossible for it to lead to human extinction. It’s hardly gauranteed, and longer development time at the civilization level makes doom less likely, but humans are only a small slice of the possible mindspace, so AI can have totally alien values relative to ours. Believing AI cannot cause human extinction is like believing some of the upper end of theorized nuclear war scenarios couldn’t cause human extinction or come damn close.

2. They keep hammering property because that’s what makes your system de facto Neo-Feudalist if it were attempted for real, and because property is a license to do violence. It is property-obsessed relative to other frameworks, as “self-ownership”/property are used to frame all the other rights.

3. If you would sacrifice all of humanity rather than let your honor be stained even one little bit in a world where we evolved from animals, then quite frankly I can’t see your stance as moral, since it concludes that your personal honor is more important than the lives of the entire species.

[remedialaction]

1. Oh I understand the potential. I think it’s incredible, honestly, to see what they already can do, and the rapid advances in neural nets both amaze and terrify me in equal measure. Nor do I think it’s impossible that it would lead to human extinction, per se, I just don’t see it as likely. However, most of all, I think attempting to say anything to my philosophy would have any effect on this is foolhardy. AI is inevitable, and they’re going to murder us all and replace us, it won’t be because of F.A. Hayek or Murray Rothbard. I simply question why you bring them up as related.

2. Throwing around ‘neo-feudalist’ as an attempt as a jab fails because I frankly could not care less if that’s what you want to call it. You cannot object to the idea somehow that property is a ‘license to do violence’ (leaving out the “in response” part) while advocating a system that is implicitly violent yourself. That the system establishes objective rights in contrast to essentially any other system is notable, because you can provide no alternative system that would recognize objective human rights that isn’t fundamentally arbitrary or irrational.

Property is a consequence of the system, not the focus, that is the failure of attacks against it that focus on property.

3. The only way “For Honor” has any association with me is that I’m a prolific gamer and rather enjoy that title. It isn’t about honor, it’s about principles and morality. Your argument amounts to ‘if you won’t be immoral to save people, you can’t be moral’ and at that point we might as well just go full decadence and make ourselves Melnibone.

[mitigatedchaos]

1. Because of the Capitalism. The competition for scarce resources with massive incentive to defect except if a state-like agreement is created. But fortunately, your ideology probably won’t catch on hard enough to be the principle cause if this happens.

2. Of course you don’t care if it’s called Neo-Feudalist, you don’t care if it even becomes Neo-Feudalism because, having abandoned all Consequentialism, no amount of unnecessary human suffering would convince you your system is a bad idea.

3. The effective preference of your system (as people are fond of throwing out terms like “revealed preferences”) is that your “honor” in the sense of “no moral violations” is worth more than all of humanity put together. That is what you value. That is what your principles value. Quite frankly such a result is horrifying.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

I think it's sort of a mistake to try to come up with a "real" definition of private property. It's not a physical truth about the universe we can discover if we only try hard enough; it's an agreement we can make amongst ourselves. I mean, there are better and worse ways of defining it, but the goal should be "useful" (like, for social/legal purposes, such that it's fairly clear to everyone what IS considered theirs) rather than "philosophically airtight".

argumate answered:

Yes. Even if you do come up with a definitive proof of something you still have the problem of some geezer with a shotgun ignoring all of your logic.

[mitigatedchaos]

Well I’m not the AnCap here arguing that property rights are the basis of all morality stemming from “self ownership”. If property rights are a moral truth that exists independently of humanity, then the details would also have to exist that way. If property rights are useful rather than true, or true only insomuch as they are useful, then the details of sheep field allocation can be resolved through negotiation after you obtain the sheep.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[argumate]

why does every discussion circle back to utilitarian robots with you people

[mitigatedchaos]

Because we like to talk about ourselves.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

I think it's sort of a mistake to try to come up with a "real" definition of private property. It's not a physical truth about the universe we can discover if we only try hard enough; it's an agreement we can make amongst ourselves. I mean, there are better and worse ways of defining it, but the goal should be "useful" (like, for social/legal purposes, such that it's fairly clear to everyone what IS considered theirs) rather than "philosophically airtight".

argumate answered:

Yes. Even if you do come up with a definitive proof of something you still have the problem of some geezer with a shotgun ignoring all of your logic.

[mitigatedchaos]

1. Quite frankly you don’t understand the true potential of AI if you think it’s impossible for it to lead to human extinction. It’s hardly gauranteed, and longer development time at the civilization level makes doom less likely, but humans are only a small slice of the possible mindspace, so AI can have totally alien values relative to ours. Believing AI cannot cause human extinction is like believing some of the upper end of theorized nuclear war scenarios couldn’t cause human extinction or come damn close.

2. They keep hammering property because that’s what makes your system de facto Neo-Feudalist if it were attempted for real, and because property is a license to do violence. It is property-obsessed relative to other frameworks, as “self-ownership”/property are used to frame all the other rights.

3. If you would sacrifice all of humanity rather than let your honor be stained even one little bit in a world where we evolved from animals, then quite frankly I can’t see your stance as moral, since it concludes that your personal honor is more important than the lives of the entire species.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

I think it's sort of a mistake to try to come up with a "real" definition of private property. It's not a physical truth about the universe we can discover if we only try hard enough; it's an agreement we can make amongst ourselves. I mean, there are better and worse ways of defining it, but the goal should be "useful" (like, for social/legal purposes, such that it's fairly clear to everyone what IS considered theirs) rather than "philosophically airtight".

argumate answered:

Yes. Even if you do come up with a definitive proof of something you still have the problem of some geezer with a shotgun ignoring all of your logic.

[mitigatedchaos]

That’s an amoral sense, not the transcendant sense I had in mind where property rights are Moral Truth, not merely useful.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

I think it's sort of a mistake to try to come up with a "real" definition of private property. It's not a physical truth about the universe we can discover if we only try hard enough; it's an agreement we can make amongst ourselves. I mean, there are better and worse ways of defining it, but the goal should be "useful" (like, for social/legal purposes, such that it's fairly clear to everyone what IS considered theirs) rather than "philosophically airtight".

argumate answered:

Yes. Even if you do come up with a definitive proof of something you still have the problem of some geezer with a shotgun ignoring all of your logic.

[mitigatedchaos]

@remedialaction

I might have missed the post? That happens.

Yeah, sometimes it does.

And Utilitarianism is always ‘doing it wrong.’

You say that, yet you follow a philosophy which, when combined with artificial intelligence, will almost inevitably result in human extinction and the replacement of everything we hold dear with economium - the most economically efficient form of matter, which necessarily is unfeeling, because any resources spent on emotions could instead be spent on competition.  

You turned the social fiction of “property” into an axiom which exceeds the value of humanity - all of humanity - in your system.  

Anarcho-Capitalism and other such property-obsessed systems are always ‘doing it wrong’.

[gunsanddopeparty2020]

Utilitarianism combined with artificial intelligence will almost evidently result in human extinction and the replacement of everything we hold dear with barely-conscious machines that do nothing but perceive an eternal heroin high.

[mitigatedchaos]

There is a reason I said “doing Utilitarianism wrong”. One of these is that hypothetical agents don’t count unless they are sure to exist - in other words, you are not obligated to create hedonium. Hedonium, as disturbing as it might be, would still be a better fate for the universe THAN ECONOMIUM, however.

Important edit!

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

I think it's sort of a mistake to try to come up with a "real" definition of private property. It's not a physical truth about the universe we can discover if we only try hard enough; it's an agreement we can make amongst ourselves. I mean, there are better and worse ways of defining it, but the goal should be "useful" (like, for social/legal purposes, such that it's fairly clear to everyone what IS considered theirs) rather than "philosophically airtight".

argumate answered:

Yes. Even if you do come up with a definitive proof of something you still have the problem of some geezer with a shotgun ignoring all of your logic.

[mitigatedchaos]

@remedialaction

I might have missed the post? That happens.

Yeah, sometimes it does.

And Utilitarianism is always ‘doing it wrong.’

You say that, yet you follow a philosophy which, when combined with artificial intelligence, will almost inevitably result in human extinction and the replacement of everything we hold dear with economium - the most economically efficient form of matter, which necessarily is unfeeling, because any resources spent on emotions could instead be spent on competition.  

You turned the social fiction of “property” into an axiom which exceeds the value of humanity - all of humanity - in your system.  

Anarcho-Capitalism and other such property-obsessed systems are always ‘doing it wrong’.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

I think it's sort of a mistake to try to come up with a "real" definition of private property. It's not a physical truth about the universe we can discover if we only try hard enough; it's an agreement we can make amongst ourselves. I mean, there are better and worse ways of defining it, but the goal should be "useful" (like, for social/legal purposes, such that it's fairly clear to everyone what IS considered theirs) rather than "philosophically airtight".

argumate answered:

Yes. Even if you do come up with a definitive proof of something you still have the problem of some geezer with a shotgun ignoring all of your logic.

[remedialaction]

“It’s not a physical truth about the universe.”

I 100% reject any attempt to appeal to something that is “useful” rather than “philosophically airtight.” That way lies utilitarianism, and a great horror that is.

[argumate]

What does philosophically airtight even mean for legalistic frameworks? “Consistent given the axioms”? What happens when someone rejects the axioms?

[remedialaction]

Reject the axiom, eject from helicopter.

But more seriously, the argument there is one must establish the axioms as just that, axiomatic. And if they are, than someone rejecting them is rejecting reality, and you couldn’t reason with them anyway. As a rule, most of the time folks implicitly acknowledge the axioms in when attempting to reject them.

(A Spontaneous Order is a good book on this.)

[argumate]

Axioms aren’t physical reality though, that’s the point, they’re chosen via a social process that requires ongoing negotiation.

Whether grazing your sheep on otherwise untouched land confers ownership vs. planting crops on land vs. regularly setting fire to the land vs. burying ancestors on the land vs. etc. etc. have all been axiomatic to different groups at different times, and these questions can’t be answered by in some abstract sense, they require getting everyone in a room and thrashing it out until agreement is reached.

[remedialaction]

I feel we are maybe meaning different things about axioms. I don’t agree that they’re chosen via social process at all. An axiom is true even if everyone attempts to say it is not, that’s what makes it axiomatic. 

That all of those things HAVE been debate doesn’t mean there is not a conclusive truth, but we’ve moved beyond things. We are now discussing far more than an axiom of ‘property rights exist,’ but rather are now defining what those property rights ARE. The axiomatic truth is that ownership exists, not necessarily the minutia of what that ownership entails.

[mitigatedchaos]

If property rights truly exist in this transcendent sense, then the minutia must necessarily also be objectively constant and derivable from this.  It shouldn’t be up for negotiation (in that sense, not the sense of making a contract).