Senor Barborito wrote:

Actually, Grendel pretty much summed up our difference of opinion here, I believe: to whom should the act be useful? The self or the species? I would argue that if the species is pushed forward, the 'enlightened' people, whether those who excel in intelligence or those who excel in defrauding others aside, will benefit from no longer having to deal with any lesser person.

Your problem is the following: you believe that which is beneficial to the self is inherently detrimental to the “species”. I would argue that there is no such contradiction in your instinct and reason guided self interest and how the world operates. If it is truly beneficial to the self, there is absolutely no reason why it is not beneficial to the species. One could bring up the issue of theft, and how that is an example of an action which is materially beneficial to the actor and not to the species, but I believe such an example is irrelevant since one has to assume a reasonable degree of honesty in “long term” self interest, as otherwise certain checks (like the people you’ve robbed getting pissed off and killing you) begin to add up, at a certain point completely undoing any prior gains.

I don't even need to expand on Grendel's 'defined by whom' here other than to ask you if you've seen pictures of (or personally witnessed) what .50 caliber rounds and land mines both do to humans - weapons which the Geneva Conventions hold illegal to use upon other humans but the United States does not. Land mines are insanely useful tools in warfare but what they do to humans ought to be criminal.

"Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature."

Unfortunately this section is going to be rather long, I'm afraid. This is precisely the problem I have with the capitalist system - that it conforms to the laws of nature. As I said earlier in the debate - have we not grown up as a species yet? Are we not sentient?

Nature presents us with two options to avoid cessation of the human genotype - the first of which is to assimilate matter into our own form multiple times over, or rather to 'acquire resource', as I prefer to phrase it (I use the term 'resource' frequently to denote resource in a universal sense independent of what form it takes, be it money, food, or metal for a car). The alternative option is to avoid cessation of the individual entirely, which is both anti-natural yet perhaps far more attractive to the dedicated mind-body dualist. Mind-body dualism, you might be happy to hear, is a flagging philosophy these days and with good reason if one keeps even remotely up to date on the Reader's Digest version of neuroscience (which is the charitable version of how up to date I am). More and more we are discovering that the mind is the matter, and further and further those who wish to maintain belief in a mystic 'self' entity existing independently of the body have had to retreat¹. Good riddance to the lot, I say, for mysticism was ever the antithesis of rationalism and the more quickly it is stamped out the sooner we can all make wise decisions on how best to proceed forward with humanity. Personal sentiments aside however, I would urge the many now trumpeting the death of dualism to refer back to the Descartes and reread. While they slap their foreheads I'll explain: Descartes speaks of a mind which exists as a separate entity regardless of the explanation for the entity, and therein lies the crux of the problem. It does not matter that the mind exists as the brain, as the computer program, or the math algorithm - the mind is still that blackbox cogitating entity floating within black input-free void meeting conditions set forth by Descartes regardless of what form it takes. In fact this was precisely Descartes' point - and dualism in this sense is a higher, greater truth than any until we no longer think. I think, I am, and I have interacted / am interacting with some fashion of not-self are not threatened by our recent discoveries any more than any anti-mystic believed them threatened beforehand. A Turing machine is a Turing machine regardless of how it is arrived at, and for dualism to be decried by the very people who were supposed to understand precisely what was meant by it in the first place shows how far modern philosophers have fallen.

In any case, it can safely be said that dualism is, irrefutably, the state of the human condition - and that the only concern for any true dualist is the cessation of cognition, the breaking of the words "I am." Thus the path not chosen by Nature for survival must be the choice for any sentient being. We, the end product, have arrived and because of the preceding logically must opt for the more difficult but ultimately 'purer' means for preventing assimilation of self-resource, regardless of how we implement such. The reason I say that we must, not 'I must' is because if the human race does not, the portion that does not must by its very nature must attempt to find a way to assimilate that which has made the choice for preservation of self and selves.

This is precisely my justification for my fear of death, by the way, and second only after my fear of death is my fear that any other sentient being might die - which is why I stated altruism is my second greatest concern.

That it is an accurate reflection of nature is precisely my argument against it - we are not animals. We are sentient minds capable of cognition and as such we have a duty primarily to ourselves and secondarily to all other selves to preserve our sentience to whatever degree possible by any means possible (see above section on imperatives of dualism).

Personally I think Marx was a great fool. My argument is that society as a whole must be pushed forward and I have a very firm ontological basis for this belief. I apologize if you thought the phrasing 'witchdoctor' was ad hominem aimed at you - rather, it was aimed at all who imbibe of the liquor of mysticism. I'm trying to keep any and all of my arguments above the level of personal attack because I believe that this is a very important - indeed, the most important argument because of the above section on Descartes.

Were it not for my stated beliefs arrived at from a year studying various major religions and philosophies at the age of eighteen I can see myself having become quite like you, actually. Although I'd argue in favor of national roads, as a predefined standard needs to be addressed at the national level so as to not confuse travelers. The government, by the way, doesn't do armies nearly as well as it could outside of the limited scope of the special forces (to everyone else chiming in: I refuse to be sidelined on this point), and I'm not sure that an appropriate entity for overseeing education in any capacity exists at all save very dedicated personal tutors. You've clarified quite nicely, though, thank you.

Again, Marx "predicted" this a century ago, Rousseau three centuries ago, Lenin just this last century. They have all been wrong about the collapse of capitalism. There is much that is wrong with our country, but the bulk of it rises not from some mythical "right wing" of corporate monopolies but from the very leftists that seek to "fix" things.

As to the collapse of capitalism - we're not in a truly capitalist democracy so much as a protectionist oligarchy that has rewritten the laws to strip out the free market to a significant degree. Capitalism already has collapsed, in my opinion. Regarding what the left does wrong in their attempts to fix things, I'd like you to expand on how you believe this to be so, if you would. Frankly, I share your doubts about my fellow leftists though probably for different reasons - I agree with most of their milder goals (and criticisms of our current administration) but I have very little faith in their reasons for their endpoints at all, and believe this would lead to ultimately flawed implementations of their desires if any came about.

I apologize, but someone who has simply inherited millions of dollars does not need little colored laser lights that slowly shift through the spectrum via a clever series of lenses running throughout their pool, and I simply cannot be convinced otherwise. This harms society as a whole and spits in the face of those living without enough to eat not five miles distant. It does nothing to push us forward as a species and exists merely as an insult to those spending their nights in cardboard boxes. As horrifying as the cessation of any conscious mind is to me, I can't help but admit I find it less so when someone so unbelievably wasteful and cruel who adds nothing to this world departs.

I believe I explain this further down with my investment-as-petitions system. It certainly works well to the millions of dollars point, and movements to that point should have garnered enough attention to shift much higher by spending a few tens of thousands on advertisement to further assist in attracting attention.

As far as whether the existence of Microsoft is justified as a whole, one only has to look at how far the most recent versions of modern open source desktops have come to realize that the answer is largely (but not entirely) no. SDL, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, Lycoris Linux's easier-than-XP setup and installation system all adequately demonstrate this and outside of Lycoris (where I'm not sure) were almost entirely created through altruism. The security and performance triumphs made by the BSDs would be even further enhanced if the good ideas Microsoft has had were part of the public domain rather than bottled up.

Again, I do not advocate mediocrity, but rather that we confine the ranges of success and failure for all who actually work between 'livable' and 'extremely comfortable.' Any other will find individuals far too able to subvert their government, and thus the will of the populace. The question I have is whether or not you actually believe in democracy?

I have successfully explained the fundamentals of mind-body dualism to cashiers at convenience stores, random people bus stops in the inner city ghetto, countless co-workers and God knows how many relatives not all of whom are particularly intelligent. Almost anybody can understand the concept, and from it arises the principle that sentience is sacred and must be preserved. In order for sentience to be preserved people must all have enough to live - those who participate in forwarding the species (working) deserve to have their sentience preserved along with the rest, and those who work especially hard ought to have their desires met and through greater opportunity to invest their voices heard more frequently.

But not to the extent we see the MPAA or RIAA currently outright authoring legislation in our state and federal governments, respectively.

Those that succeed may not automatically seek only to gain more resource for resource's sake, but inevitably they are joined or succeeded by those who do, and therein lies the problem. There are few who excel at capitalism who have not become outlandishly jaded to the needs of their fellow men and far more importantly their species as a whole.

My assumption is that intellectuals, when confronted with the truth that there is no choice but that between resource accumulation and self-preservation, will understand the futility of the former and the wisdom of the latter choice and make wiser decisions regarding how best to go about it. Though intellectuals fall short often enough, it is far better in my opinion to trust the future of the species as a whole to those who understand what is at stake than to those who only see in every situation the opportunity for more gain for self at the expense of the species.

This is why the entirety of the open source movement does not exist, this site is not administrated, the forum code you are using has not been written, and none of the articles on the front page that you read exist, either. In fact, neither weblogs, peer to peer systems, the DNS system or email exist either (the latter two rely almost entirely on open source code). In fact much of the Internet does not exist, America does not give out it's meager foreign aid, and neither of us are writing these responses in an effort to make the other the wiser.

. . . moving on . . .

Interestingly, while there are certainly those that sincerely desire to better their species' lot, the vast majority of those ambitious enough to rise to a position of power that still use the "greater good" as a justification are always doing so because if they told people their real motives no one would follow them.

My real motive is because I don't want to die myself, and I don't want to see anybody else die, either. Anyone who rejects mysticism, per my explanation above, must adopt this set of goals.

moderated.food.non-poisonous, in my proposed society, would obviously have far more subscribers in the end than alt.sex. I'm fairly certain I'm not seeing what you're implying, however - but it's clear that neither of us can go on this long without our writing suffering as you've admitted and I'll admit.

I will read that before my next response to you, but right now I'm trying to get this one out as quickly as possible (also, I have to go shopping rather soon).

At any rate, think of what would happen in blogs if the most successful ones were ordered to limit their traffic, or produce less content, or give their content to other blogs that were less interesting. If it wouldn't work there, why elsewhere? Simply because it is not monetary in nature directly does not make it any less of a market- or selfishness-based situation.

This is a complete strawman not to mention you're conflating 'resource' with information - contributing members to the blogosphere will not die because of lack of attention, and those who excel always do so because of how well the blog contributes to the blogosphere (species). Furthermore, the human species as a whole does not become impoverished by rapaciousness on the part of those leading the blogosphere.

A fool and his money would be soon parted if not for his accountant and advisers making good investment decisions for him, sadly. Personally, I do believe the human condition will go somewhere - that eventually biotechnology, nanotechnology, or God help us the brainbox of Kurzweil's and mine separate but similar conceptualization will sooner rather than later put a welcomed end it. Furthermore, I believe the faster we get there (post-cessation civilization) as a species - and the less spent on capitalist infighting the better for us all.

A PhD means spit. But actual intelligence - and while we're at it I don't consider myself a terribly intelligent person, otherwise I'd have a full and inarguable plan for this society and not just a very rough outline - does mean a very great deal.

Again, I don't regard myself as wise or terribly intelligent. Smart enough to understand Descartes and to understand him very, very well, yes. Smart enough to draw conclusions from this understanding that are both terribly obvious and yet profound, yes. But I recognize that there are an incomprehensible number of people to whom I am intellectually a small child in my understandings of these things and who could run much further with these ideas than I can. Which is why I try to talk about it when the topic comes up. Also, I think I did a fairly good idea of demonstrating that altruism is not false - many of the people working on Linux or BSD don't consider it terribly fun, they do it because they see code as speech and they want code to be free in the sense that speech is.

Most philosophers consider Ayn Rand's ideas to be pop-philosophy at best, the kind of stuff embraced by Intro to Philosophy students who refuse to delve further because they believe they've learned all they need to. Unfortunately, I'm not going to disagree with these philosophers in the least, and in fact I'll go a step further - if you removed the concept of God from Christianity but retained all its other logical faults, you'd have Objectivism in a nutshell. The most crucial problem is the complete lack of ontology: we are told to succeed but we are not told why we should. Objectivism rejects religion and mysticism, and with that I most strongly agree. But it does not then go on to provide a purpose - if cessation means no self to look back on accomplishments after death, than isn't success a colossal waste of effort? Shouldn't we either lie down and die, masturbate ourselves to death with the Epicurean Hedonists, or accept our fate and the absurdity of our lives and do whatever we wished with the existentialists?

The question of 'why?', which I might point out was the entire founding reason for philosophy in the first place, is entirely circumvented. It is for this reason Objectivism is held in contempt by second year philosophy students and everyone more knowledgeable alike.

I think I've done a decent job of explaining my own 'why?' and the resulting behavior - namely everybody shutting up and working together to get us into a post-cessation civilization as rapidly as possible. When I asked you for your ontology, this is what I was looking for.

Yes, it does, and this is why I despise it. We are nature's first (as far as we know) sentient beings, and it is time to abandon naturalism and move on. The end product has arrived, turns out that we're it, so let's perform our task instead of bickering about it.

The lower classes in America "work harder" than other countries? That is not only facially untrue, but hardly the reason for American wealth. I am honestly curious as to what sort of garbage they must be teaching in intro economics if this is what you derived from it.

Compared to most first world (European) nations, yes, they do. Compared to second and third-world nations, I have no idea and could quite probably be wrong, and I apologize for not qualifying my statement.

Neither does the system I propose preclude selfishness. It simply puts an end to unbridled, harmful levels of selfishness - regardless of whether you wish to draw the line at $60,000, $80,000, or $100,000 - I don't really care. One million US dollars is clearly far more than any single family needs to earn per year to be 'comfortable,' however.

I agree. A rewards-based system must be maintained which is specifically why I do not advocate traditional socialism.

Which brings us back to my comment as to your apparent longings for a New Soviet Man or Ubermensch. You claim total ideological separation from them, but your rhetoric is identical to the one that tried to create them. The consequences of implementation would be similar as well, as they are all in violation of basic precepts of nature. Like self interest...

They maintain self-interest without letting it destroy both the interests of other selves and warp the system as a whole simultaneously. We no longer live within a republic founded on a capitalist system. The will of the populace is not taken into account with many of the new laws fabricated and real competition in many industries has become all but impossible.

Let me get this straight: You want total democracy, by and for the people, with "positions of decision maker for all", but only so long as they make the decisions that conform to your own enlightened tastes? Seems rather hypocritical to me.

I would like people to understand my reasons for having anything like 'enlightened tastes' to begin with. Once they understand why it is so terribly important for the species to move forward, everything else follows naturally and the minutia be damned.

Both of these involved selfish individuals bent on the death of rational thought (especially the latter) designing the society. They had to fail.

What? Are you really going to make me dig up all my Russian history books and point how incredibly wrong you are about the conception of the Soviet Man? Oh, and I think the Ubermensch confusion is my fault; I meant it not in some vaguely mystical Nietzchean way but rather in the far more constrained Nazi vision. I apologize for my lack of clarity, but I am used to arguing about this with people far more familiar with the latter than with the former.

I think the solution for demagoguery is for children to be taught in public education from the very start to distrust their own government first and foremost, their education system secondly, and thirdly everyone who claims to know what to do about problem X. This should be a central idea to everything children are taught - that they must decide from themselves based on what they observe, but not always trust that, either. More than anything else I believe that the largest problem with society is how children are taught to trust adults and each other from the start, and how this continues to one extent or another throughout their lives. The only public education system I would ever approve of would be one that functioned as such.

Nothing could be more untrue. Civilization is a more refined form of natural selection and evolution, just as the free market is. It reduces extreme penalties and rewards success more effectively by aggregating accomplishments, but at no point can it negate the basics of natural law.

Again refer to my section on natural law and my beliefs concerning it.

Well, I'm glad to see at least that was rejected. I think one visit to Cuba would be enough to demonstrate such an economic system in action...it's not pretty.

If the US sanctions weren't in place against Cuba I think it might be the one functional example of socialism in existence. Certainly, if you want to hear someone tell you something witty and BS-free, Castro is a good listen even if he is wrong a fair amount of the time.

Neither of these are here nor there, however - such a system is inherently flawed due to lack of ability to gather capital and start new businesses with it. The ability for people to do so in my proposed system and the method by which it far, far more favors the hard-working and intelligent deciding who gets capital and who does not are both superior to anything within a credit system.

C demands sacrifices in the present material lives of its followers and those who surround them with the reward of life after death, offering no proof of that paradise's existence. S demands sacrifices in the present material lives of its followers and those who share societies with them in the promise of a vague utopian future that would somehow go against all the record of human history as well as all our observations of nature; "heaven", by any other name.

The 'socialism' I propose admits there are no rewards for sacrifice until the species has reached that point,

…while Objectivism insists everyone achieve without even bothering to provide them with a reason why. Moreover, Rand suggests that a few, special, 'chosen' ones - namely those who believe her just as Christians believe Christ - are enlightened much like Christians are 'saved', and that the unenlightened looters will never achieve, or in the Christian version the sinners will burn in Hell.

Rand does not provide us a reason to succeed at all, merely suggesting that we must because . . . we must. Even Christ did better here.

Furthermore Rand should have at the very least included Christ's recursive reinforcement schema for anti-Christian (or in this case Objectivism) immunity, but failed to do so.

The socialism I propose does not guarantee a perfect society, and is not even about having a perfect society in the first place - it's about getting people to stop bickering for ten seconds (or decades) and cooperate on pushing the species forward far enough that cessation is no longer in existence. Where society goes from there really no longer matters as there will always be tomorrow for things to get better once this point has been reached.

C demands devotion to a messianic figure that tells you what is right and wrong, and whose ultimate qualifications for the task must be taken on faith. S demands the same, except intellectuals fill the roles of the messiah, and their qualifications are also wholly based on faith since they have never once demonstrated a single experimental test of their philosophy that would pass any scientific standards for success. I could go on, but do you begin to see the parallels?

Nevermind that the Internet seems to be an interesting test on its own, Objectivism proposes that each man attempt to be the messianic figure regardless of whether he has any qualifications, purpose for doing so, or real concept of what he should be messianic about. It is a confused mess of a philosophy that quite literally boils down to Christianity minus God. Beyond that, I'm not proposing intellectuals play messiah but rather I'm asking who the devil else is fit to guide the ship? Since intellectuals will be the ones working on the cessation problem in the first place, shouldn't they be the navigator by default? If nobody else knows the way to safe harbor, it would make seem to make sense.

The reason I bring this up is because I believe that all epistemologies ultimately require some leap of faith at their core. A hardcore Christian requires faith rather than any tangible facts to believe in God and Creation. An atheist like myself ultimately takes the Big Bang/Little Bang on faith, since there is no proof, and accepts the broad conclusions theories about atomic structure present us with despite never having seen evidence of it with my own eyes or fully understanding the big thoughts about quantum theory and such at their core. A socialist accepts on faith that his centralized planning will lead to a utopian future, despite having no evidence in nature or history to support such a conclusion.

I believe I have presented you with something different. You think, you are, and not-you exists in some fashion (see Descartes' Meditations chapters 1-3). Maintaining this in yourself is all that matters, and everything outside of these irrefutable-for-your-duration facts is suspect. It requires a leap of faith to accept that the world our senses present us with is the real one, that it is indeed absolute and not a hoax - that other people do indeed exist. However, if this world is the absolute true, then those three facts are indeed threatened not just in you but in other similar sentient minds. Your first responsibility is to your own self - do not die. Your second responsibility is to those sentiences around you - do not let them die. Both of these require the exact same amount of effort, in the end - the development of a technology that sustains the mind beyond the normal human lifespan and eventually one within the initially extended lifespan that sustains the mind on into infinity.

My only motive is this - getting the human species to move forward to the point where this is a reality, and if it cannot be achieved within the duration period of my mind than the second responsibility insists I push it as far forward as I possibly can. For the human species to move forward it needs to work together as efficiently as possible towards this goal, and if this were to happen we would reach the goal well within the duration period of my mind and yours. The only reason I suggest a 'socialist utopian' design at all is because it doesn't involve people bickering over whether to spend one billion dollars on chocolate truffles for their Great Aunt Susie's wedding or not.

I didn't have sufficient time to edit this or even give it a thorough once-over. I apologize for any glaring errors. We're now up to 16 single-spaced pages in a standard 12-point font, btw.