From: Sarah Marr (sarah.marr@dial.pipex.com)
Date: Wed Aug 14 1996 - 11:27:27 MDT
At 20:15 12/08/96 -0700, you wrote:
>At 10:38 AM 8/12/96 +0100, Sarah Marr wrote:
>>At 17:14 11/08/96 -0700, Max More wrote:
>>
>>>I'd say governments are the result of a kind of SO, but they are not
>>>examples *of* SO. Spontaneously ordering processes can produce results that
>>>themselves are inimical to spontaneous order.
>>>
>>>Actually, if spontaneous order is to have any meaning, we have to restrict
>>>the processes that we characterize that way.
>>
>>Max, aren't you therefore defining 'spontaneous order' on the basis of the
>>Extropian desirability of both the order and the process of achieving that
>>order? I, like you, am not sure that the process leading to central
>>government is one of spontaneous order, but if it _were_, how could we then
>>say that the result was not spontaneous order, merely because we didn't
>>agree with the nature of that order, or the way it was reached? The phrase
>>'spontaneous order' doesn't lend itself to such value judgements.
>
>Sarah: You raise a good point. However -- no, I am not defining S.O. on the
>basis of its desirability from an extropic point of view.
Then how can you say: 'Spontaneously ordering processes can produce results that
themselves are inimical to spontaneous order.' Surely a spontaneously
ordering process will result in a spontaneous order, otherwise it wouldn't
be a spontaneously ordering process. Can you give me an example where this
isn't the case, with no intervening process which is not spontaneously ordering?
And given an S.O. process creates an S.O., how does this inimicality arise,
if not through consideration of the desirability of the outcome of the process?
>[discussion of Extropian views on SO...]
...with which I entirely agree, except to say that I don't think it's
possible to say that all spontaneous orders fit the Extropian ideal, so
should we be using the phrase Spontaneous Order to reflect such a blanket
'good thing'? (And yes, I realize it makes a nice acronym!)
Sarah
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Sarah Kathryn Marr
sarah.marr@dial.pipex.com http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/sarah.marr/
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