He was referring to this xkcd - http://m.xkcd.com/977/. The description, as stated in the article, was “You like Isaac Asimov, XML, and shoes with toes. You think the Segway got a bad rap. You own 3D goggles, which you use to view rotating models of better 3D goggles. You type in Dvorak.” I don't think that could be considered a vague personality test that can be applied to many people.
Ok, then Apple can have a larger impact in Foxconn's work policies than anyone else who is likely to be influenced by an article in the NY Times. I don't think the Chinese government especially cares about public opinion.
The actual authorities aren't self-designated, they're designated by our democratically elected government. Anonymous are the ones trying to act as "self-designated authorities".
But voters don't really have any power if all they can do is vote for representatives every two years. This is basically meaningless. They would have much more power if they could choose which police they used, which courts they went to, etc.
I'm not sure you've taken any time to think through the implications of what you've just suggested. You are advocating multiple competing authorities (both police and courts).
Who gets to decide which set of authorities gets used, the defendant or the prosecutor? If the prosecutor, courts that heavily favor the prosecutor with little regard for defendant's rights would gain dominance (why wouldn't a prosecutor choose one of them?). If the defender, the opposite problem would arise. How would you resolve either of those problems?
What happens when two sets of authorities disagree? What happens when officers from competing police departments try to arrest the same person? If an authority is corrupt (confiscates property, basically acts like the mob, etc.) how will they be enforced against? If these are free market forces, what happens when someone is unable to afford to enlist the help of an authority? Absolutely no rule of law for them?
I have to agree with you. It seems he's promoting anarcho-capitalist garbage.
In a world where everything is privatized, what purpose would there be for providing arbitration services, especially for those who can't afford them? There's no profit in that. The natural evolution of this is that if neither party has money, nothing happens. If aggressor has more money, (s)he walks free. If accuser has more money, aggressor is executed (there's no money in imprisoning someone).
This philosophy is built on pillars made of toothpicks and elmers glue, and completely disregards human nature. Our justice system has been finely tuned for centuries to account for an incredible amount of variations and circumstances. It's not perfect, but considering how completely ape-like humans can be, I'd say it's a step up.
I agree with AC on principle but I don't think society is ready for it. This idea to be able to govern yourself is something Thomas Jefferson felt was divine anarchy. This is an Illuminati-type (or an enlightened society) political model based on meritocracy.
Jefferson on Weishaupt:
"He is among those...who believe in the indefinite perfectibility of man. He thinks he may in time be rendered so perfect that he will be able to govern himself in every circumstance so as to injure none, to do all the good he can, to leave government no occasion to exercise their powers over him, & of course to render political government useless...
Wishaupt believes that to promote this perfection of the human character was the object of Jesus Christ. That his intention was simply to reinstate natural religion, & by diffusing the light of his morality, to teach us to govern ourselves. His precepts are the love of god & love of our neighbor.
And by teaching innocence of conduct, he expected to place men in their natural state of liberty & equality. He says, no one ever laid a surer foundation for liberty than our grand master, Jesus of Nazareth...
The means he proposes to effect this improvement of human nature are "to enlighten men, to correct their morals & inspire them with benevolence. Secure of our success, sais he, we abstain from violent commotions."
I'm ideally an anarchist, believe it or not. I tend to lean towards anarcho-communism, the idea being that in order for our species to survive, we have to be working together towards common goals. Not to say competition is unhealthy...innovation comes from competition. I do think there's also a LOT to be said for cooperation, though.
Obviously, once humans are evolved to higher level, we won't need a government telling us what to do. I think this is a LONG way off though. I think we have to reach the spiritual level collectively to be able to sustain this way of life BEFORE devising systems to enact it. Any system we come up with now will be tainted with our ape-like nature and will inevitably change down the road anyway.
There's a lot of interesting discussion around anarcho-* socioeconomic systems. I do believe anarcho-capitalism is a dangerous system. Maybe one day it will work, but I kind of think that once humans are evolved enough to effectively do away with government, capitalism will also be a little less potent of an idea. This is obviously all conjecture.
My ultimate hope is that humanity survives into a more evolved being. As we are now, we are driven by fear, emotions, and greed, and it takes a lot of personal work and self-observation to rise above this. This is work most people will never do. We have a long way to go =].
EDIT - after reading the link you sent, it seems Jefferson and I share some ideas. Thanks for posting this.
The Anarcho-Capitalist position has been thought through fairly well. You may disagree with it, but based on your questions it sounds like you haven't made much of an attempt to learn about it.
> I'm not sure you've taken any time to think through the implications of what you've just suggested.
Why would you assume that? I've put enormous thought into this and read much literature on it. See Murray Rothbard, Stefan Molyneux, Lew Rockwell, Doug Casey, etc., and my twitter feed @ryandickherber.
> Who gets to decide which set of authorities gets used, the defendant or the prosecutor?
The person who is the victim of the crime will obviously go to the court of their choice. The defender, meanwhile, may choose a different court. The courts will have to decide on an arbitrator. Since they only have finite resources and their reputations are on the line, all parties have an interest in working this out, and so it will happen.
> What happens when two sets of authorities disagree?
There are no "authorities", but if two people disagree they will seek arbitration.
> What happens when officers from competing police departments try to arrest the same person?
Only one will get there first, so only one will be able to arrest the person.
> If an authority is corrupt (confiscates property, basically acts like the mob, etc.) how will they be enforced against?
Again, there are no "authorities". If some police or courts become aggressors, then obviously people have a right to defend themselves and will employ resources including other police and courts to do this. The existing police already are corrupt in many cases, but because they have a monopoly, people are just screwed. A free market would solve this problem.
> If these are free market forces, what happens when someone is unable to afford to enlist the help of an authority? Absolutely no rule of law for them?
Most people have some community resources they can access in time of need. If they have nothing at all, then they are screwed. But it's the same way under a monopoly of force.
all parties have an interest in working this out, and so it will happen.
The volume of litigation that goes to trial is evidence to the contrary. Courts almost always encourage litigants to try mediation or arbitration, but many litiganta refuse to settle.
I know how police forces work because we contract to some of them.
The amount of funding required to investigate a crime is huge; where does that come from?
With multiple, competing, courts/police this becomes an expensive problem. It is infeasible to expect the suspect or victim to ultimately pay - for example any reasonable digital forensics investigation will cost the better part of £30,000 from seizure to court. And that is a lower bound.
Setting up a lab is non-trivial and costs millions - so either lab work has to be centralised or the funds would have to be found to pay for new ones. The former option isn't really an option, because you could end up in the problematic situation of two courts relying on the same lab for results in the same case (and calling the same people in as their expert witnesses...). This compromises the experts.
> Most people have some community resources they can access in time of need. If they have nothing at all, then they are screwed. But it's the same way under a monopoly of force.
I'm afraid this is impractical. Even reporting a simple robbery can be expensive for the police force (sending out an officer, sending our a scenes of crimes guy, doing at least the basic legwork to try and find the culprit).
In addition, one of the key roles of the police is as a deterrent. Who is going to drive down your road a couple of times if you notice a suspicious looking person hanging around?
Whilst I do "get" your theory and think that in a perfect world it would be interesting to explore. In practice it strikes me as more likely to satisfy the political ethos of anarcho-capitalism than actually help the public.
The problem here is that even though you are correct, these are things the vast majority of people never want to hear (note your unreasonable downvoting).
What we need is a system that allows individuals to opt out of being governed, without needing the permission or approval of the tyrannous majority. I advise you take a look at crypto-anarchism. Not perfect by any stretch, but it's something..
Does this really have to be generalized to "implications?" It's not like this happens all the time, and nobody's saying "ALL RIGHT GUYS, IT'S EITHER US OR THE CRIMINALS NOW."
I'm not sure what dividing by population is trying to prove. Using very fuzzy numbers, there's almost 100m (or about 30%) people not eligible to vote in those population numbers.
I'm not sure why you are focussing on the percentage of people of the population. This may or may not be a problem depending on your point of view (an elitist might even think we should limit it some more) but by far a greater problem is surely that people only had two flavors they could realistically choose from. And the two flavors weren't all that different.
This is something that can relatively easily be changed. Europe has democracies with over 20 different political parties, as many as 15 getting elected representatives. Lots of inefficiencies with that many parties, of course, but at least more people get to choose something they agree with. Of course the only people who could change it would have to give up lots of power. Not going to happen. See Britain.
The inevitable end-game with a capitalist approach is that profit motives take precedence, and those of us who have a problem with that believe some things shouldn't and cannot be motivated by profit.
The analogue to this hypothetical situation is the US health system, both in terms of the political/economic ideal and the controversy.
Yeah, but we don't want "elimination", we want justice. And we have set up a procedure for delivering justice which cannot be dismissed as "bureaucracy". The laws and procedures for enforcing them have been developed taking into consideration tons of matters and responding to tons of real world feedback on how to be improved.
They are not perfect, far for it, but for the scope and extend that they cover, they are way better than what any vigilante jerk's version of "elimination" or "payback" is.
For example what stops me of adding your name in the exposed list of names, and ruining your life? I don't even have to do it with malice, maybe I'm just a nut that I am convinced that you too are a pedophile and see the addition of your name as justified.
But all those have recourse. They can sue the state and get restitution. So, yes, mistakes happen, but there is procedure to seek corrective action. There is a difference.
The only way to not investigate innocent people would be to know in advance who's guilty. And if you knew who was guilty in advance why even have courts? It'd be for show. Anyhow, that's be asking for more than we are capable of as a civilization. It's understood innocent people will be accused and acquitted thru the system; if the state is proven wrong and you suffered from the process, there is recourse. You sue the state.
How do you sue vigilantes who are by definition, outside the system?
No, I mean like everybody who ever got slandered by anyone in everyday life with no consideration, due process or authority at all. Because that's how this vigilante thing works.
It's not just being accused (or considered suspect) of something that's problematic, it's HOW and by WHOM this happens.
A police investigation can look into the wrong person too, sometimes can even convict (and even execute!) the wrong person, but there are tons of checks and balances in action there. And "the people" have chosen to have the police and judicial system do that work, not Anonymous.
But the content that you link to will still have ads. Good luck, but I don't see why I would pay $15 a month for this when I could go to any of the many tech aggregation sites click on their top 20 links and read the first paragraph to see if I want to read more.
When you've got some kind of duty [in the legal sense] towards the person sending the mail. For example a doctor quoting a patient's email would be problematic. Just to be clear, I don't know the law in this area and I'm not saying what he did was illegal (I have no idea), I'm just saying that I can certainly see why NYU wouldn't want to step up to defend him on this issue if something came up.
I'm not sure how you can consider doctor/patient and professor/cheating student the same type of relationship. Hell, this was a 100-level class; it's surprising it even had a professor.
But the problem with your argument is that, at least according to the article, the kids don't have a problem with the book. It's just one parent who doesn't like it and is preventing it from being assigned.
> it seems a Native American student who was required to read the book took issue with the its depiction of native people. The girl's mom, Sarah Sense-Wilson, agreed...
The child misunderstood the terminology being used and the parent likely didn't read the book to comprehend the difference. However, on face value we have no way of understanding the full situation. Is this a school with a high-percentage of native students where the terminology, time and time again will be misunderstood?
Just because this is the first student to complain and the first parent to be a decent enough (if misguided) parent to actually follow through with their child's complaint, doesn't mean this isn't the first child to be turned off in this school from the terminology.
Change 'Savage' to Nigger and you'll offend black students in other areas, perhaps Chink and you'll offend Asian students. It just happens that this book has bad terminology for the students that were reading it that is preventing at least this student from getting to the meaning behind the words.
Furthermore, this could all have been avoided by competent teachers. Perhaps introducing the book before requiring students to read it would have avoided this. We're dealing with 80 year old books with 80 year old social mores and terms. You're going to get problems sooner or later somewhere or other. It's inevitable, get over it assign a different book with the same message.
Yes, but that would require people to actually want to pay taxes for the things they want. It would be like paying for competent non-tazer psycho cops.
Americans pay more for their crappy schools and incompetent teachers than every other rich country in the world pays for their good schools and competent teachers.
Yes, but that's just because the government butt-fucks unions. I've never seen any country that actively worships its unions as badly as America. If automobile unions didn't have such huge wages and crazy pensions and benefits, the auto-sector wouldn't have collapsed from being ridiculously uncompetitive. The only reason the school sector hasn't collapsed is because it's not selling anything to go broke off of.
It's notable that the US is one of the few countries where private schools have a huge lead on public schools. I remember when I was in highschool in the UK that it actually came out that (on average) private school students graduated a grade-average lower than public school students. It's good if you're in a slum area, but if you're in a slum area you don't have the money to pay for private school to begin with.
What do you mean Wikipedia? I think that's one thing that really has changed the world for the better. It's completely free, surprisingly accurate (especially if you get away from controversial topics), and completely created by volunteers. It's a fantastic resource and more useful than a lot of startups.
Perhaps he assumed that we'd implicitly agree that fart apps are a bane and Wikipedia is a boon. However, without explicitly making his position plain, it could be a trap!
I think your problem is in thinking that the list is intended to be a litmus test for opinions. For instance you said "much less accuse others who might reasonably differ on any of these points." which indicates that you want to be able to point to one of these items and tell someone they're wrong.
This list is just a starting point for you to question your own opinions. Of course it's subjective, I don't think introspection is ever intended to be objective. As a starting point for introspection the list is fine; as something you could ever apply to someone else you're right it's completely worthless.
Also, what paradoxes were there? In your first post you complained that the list was subjective (which it is) but now you're saying that it contains paradoxes without ever saying what those paradoxes are.
The author has stated as his main purpose the acquisition of truthful opinions, and avoiding delusion with groupthink and such. "Objectivity" is, I believe, the generally accepted name for such a pursuit; and introspection with such an object is a perfectly valid activity. Hence the main paradox of the article, which is that the author doesn't seem to have engaged in any form of such introspection before writing down these unstructured, and pretty much useless, musings.
