From extropians-request@extropy.org Mon Sep 13 21:00:09 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AA25848; Mon, 13 Sep 93 21:00:05 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: from ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.ed (ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu) by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA01997; Mon, 13 Sep 93 20:59:51 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu id AA12841; Mon, 13 Sep 93 23:52:33 EDT Received: from news.panix.com by ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu via TCP with SMTP id AA12831; Mon, 13 Sep 93 23:51:45 EDT Received: by news.panix.com id AA23658 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for exi-maillist@ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu); Mon, 13 Sep 1993 23:51:24 -0400 Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 23:51:24 -0400 Message-Id: <199309140351.AA23658@news.panix.com> To: Extropians@extropy.org From: Extropians@extropy.org Subject: Extropians Digest X-Extropian-Date: September 14, 373 P.N.O. [03:50:40 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: RO Extropians Digest Tue, 14 Sep 93 Volume 93 : Issue 256 Today's Topics: [3 msgs] Arguing the basics... [1 msgs] Darwin-L mailing list... [1 msgs] Did I write that? (was: EPIS: Sensory evidence) [1 msgs] ECON: What's wrong with a service economy? [3 msgs] ECON: What`s wrong with a [2 msgs] EPIS: Sensory Evidence [1 msgs] EPIS: Sensory evidence [1 msgs] ETHICS: The Virtue of Exploitation [1 msgs] Extropian Exploits [2 msgs] HEX: Backing the Thorn (Sequel to "Romancing the Stone") [1 msgs] PHIL: Extropian epistemology? (& namedropping) [1 msgs] PHIL: Extropian epistemology? (& namedropping) [1 msgs] The Evidence of the Senses [2 msgs] The Evidence of the Senses [1 msgs] Administrivia: No admin msg. Approximate Size: 51501 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 18:30:49 -0400 From: tburns@gmuvax.gmu.edu (T. David Burns) Subject: The Discoveries of Concepts and Rights At 9:54 AM 9/13/93 -0500, Freeman Craig Presson wrote: >How would you go about disproving any hypothesis that involved the >_invention_ of money by some group of people and its subsequent spread >and evolution to and by other groups with similar needs? I have two approaches here: 1) There are similarities between these alternatives and the god vs. Darwin argument. One can not prove the non-existence of god in a satisfactory way, but we find Darwin's hypothesis more plausible and useful because it involves less hocus-pocus. The invention of money (from nothing) doesn't involve quite as much hocus-pocus, but I think there's a parallel. Use Occam's Razor. (Is that namedropping?) 2) What is it that is to be invented? Money is a broad concept and has changed a lot over time. I think the essence of it is that people have an expectation that it is commonly accepted. Money is a common medium of exchange. No one can invent this expectation, it's an emergent property of trade. I suppose you could imagine some genius inventing the idea of a common medium of exchange and convincing his neighbors to go along, but considering my experiences trying to convince my neighbors to do reasonable and even beneficial things, I doubt it. The minter of the first coin was not the inventor of money, since cattle and other goods were used as money before coins. The first entities to engage in trade or gift exchange certainly were not the inventors of money. Nor is the first person that produced something simply to exchange it the inventor. Nor is the first person who accepted something he didn't want because he suspected he knew someone else who'd trade something good for it the inventor. Even the first person to accept something in trade with no specific idea of who he would later trade it to, with only the notion that it would probably be easy to trade, could not be the inventor of money. Either money (expectation of common acceptance) already existed and he's the first user, or it doesn't exist yet (but will as expectations spread). It is plausible to me that as trade enabled populations to grow, people gained more experience with trade and began to 'know' (from experience) what commodities were easier to trade, and to accept these more readily. It is implausible to me that some genius or tyrant promoted or legislated this common acceptance. Perhaps, in a way, I'm begging the question. The way I define money emphasizes the characteristics that make it difficult to invent. But reflcection on what money is and does convinces me that no one invented it. Once the idea of money is widespread, tyrants are free to tweak it and innovators are free to improve it. But inflation does not mechanically follow the Fed's manipulation of the money supply and money itself did not spring full grown from the mind of some Neanderthal financier. Even in contemporary times money has not entirely lost its spontaneous aspect that comes from its roots in persons' expectations. tburns@gmuvax.gmu.edu (T. David Burns) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 18:30:39 -0400 From: tburns@gmuvax.gmu.edu (T. David Burns) Subject: PHIL: Extropian epistemology? (& namedropping) At 11:18 AM 9/13/93 -0700, Robin Hanson wrote: >You'll have to ask the official high priests of the true Extropian >principles. But I'd advise against one. I didn't mean an official one, I meant a de facto/concensus one. I seem to hear a lot of comments about testability, I just wondered if there was a convergence. >And I agree with Perry and >Jamie that such namedropping hinders more than it helps conversations >on this subject. I don't know about the general case, but in my post which started this nonsense the 'namedropping' seemed like a convenient shorthand for pointing to some ideas. Persons familiar with the ideas would recognize the shorthand, persons unfamiliar would not have an answer to my question. The alternative is to try to summarize the ideas, which would have taken more time and effort without more result. My post seems to have turned into a prime example of how not to communicate over internet - almost zero response to my inquiry, several k worth of critique of my style. >For what it's worth, I'd call myself a "computationally-constrained >Bayesian"; You sure you want to drop Bayes's name? tburns@gmuvax.gmu.edu (T. David Burns) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 18:49:54 -0400 (EDT) From: Mark Sulkowski Subject: Extropian Exploits From: michael.morgan@ehbbs.com (Michael Morgan) >Humans do not exist apart from one another. When you push me I push >some else who pushes a fourth who pushes you. > >Are there ethics in anarchocapitalism? I've read this question several times over and I am not sure what is meant by it. Are you asking: does anarchocapitalism produce ethical behavior? Or: will an anarchocapitalistic legal system apply ethics to legal problems? Or: will anarchocapitalists see a need to think in ethical terms? Or: something else? All I can say is that, according to Bruce Benson's analysis, we may expect an anarchocapitalistic legal system to tend to create rules that facilitate interaction (to mutual benefit) and discourage violence. That seems pretty ethical to me. David Friedman proposed an economic argument for why anarchocapitalism would tend to be libertarian. I suppose if you consider libertarianism ethical then maybe the system will be too. Of course if you buy the amoralism that has been running through the list lately, then there is no ethical difference between anarchocapitalism and totalitarianism because there are no ethical standards one can consistantly apply to the comparison. Gas chamber anyone? (Sorry guys and gals. I couldn't resist a small jab.) * . ====\\. ~ //==== || \\ ~ . *// || || \\ * // || || \\.~// || || \\// || || Mark \/enture || ==================== ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 93 16:00:00 PDT From: thamilto@pcocd2.intel.com (Tony Hamilton - FES ERG~) Subject: ECON: What's wrong with a service economy? > >So, in summary Dave, I see your comments as being correct, with respect to > >the job market, but I fail to see the significance when we're talking about > >GNP, export/imports, trade deficits, and the like. US problems in these areas, > >I still maintain, are directly affected by a lack of US manufacturing. > > GNP: Money made through selling services is still money. > > Export/Imports, trade deficits: Many of America's service businesses have > a very healthy balance of trade. American movies and television programs, > for example, make orders of magnitude more money abroad than foreign films > make here. Ditto software (used any Italian word processing programs > recently?); ditto telecommunications (I recall a few years ago when the > President of Greece couldn't call out of the country because his government > was in arrears to AT&T). In education, note the hordes of American > students flocking abroad to get their Ph.D.'s in India and China -- NOT. I > suspect that the balance of trade for financial services and medical > procedures is slanted toward the U.S., as well, but others in those > industries would know better than I. > > Someone recently posted a column by Mr. Pursuit of Excellence himself, > Lawrence J. Peters (am I getting his name right?) on precisely this topic. > Trade is trade; it doesn't matter whether you're selling aircraft engines > or appendectomies, all that matters is which way the arrow with the dollar > sign on it is pointing. > dV/dt Dave, I hear what you are saying, but am wondering how it applies to the US as a whole, since we _know_ for a fact that the arrow with the dollar sign is pointing _away_. When you are talking about any given entity, whether an individual or a country, only the bottom line matters, not what this or that portion is doing. You don't have to convince me of the ability of certain companies, and even a few industries, in America, to compete with the rest of the world. I _work_ for such a company, one which many would argue to the the _best_ such example here in the US (if you go by all the quoted figures on sales, exports, so forth and so on). But, even if you are setting aside the "bigger" picture for a moment, why do you pick out just a few small industries, which pale in comparison to the deficits in such industries as automobiles, consumer electronics, and so forth? And, of course, what of the largest _service_ industry of all, the government? That company _gives_ away exported services, cannot manage its infrastructure, and has been losing money for all of _my_ life (I'm fairly sure, anyway). What's worse is that the govt., if looked at as a company, is forcing everyone that lives on the same block of land to go long on its stock which is known to be losing value every day (ie. taxes). I have no argument with the points you make, Dave (except - note that most of the US entertainment industry is foreign-owned)_. I am just wondering why you are making these specific points in the context of this discussion, which deals with the "health" of the entire economy, in this case that of the US. I like to point out all the good points just as much as the next guy, but there _is_ a problem. If not the _lack_ of manufacturing (note: not the lack of manufacturing jobs) that is to blame (although this is certainly not a root cause), then what? I'd be all for a steady move towards service industry exports. But, the fact is, we didn't see a slow transition. We've seen a hard drop in goods exports (I didn't what to call it but "goods", since I'd like to include agriculture and so forth - didn't know if anyone would accept that as "manufacturing"), and an incredible increase in service industries. Rather than saying there weren't enough extra service exports generated in time, I'd prefer to say that we dropped manufacturing exports too quickly. Tony Hamilton thamilto@pcocd2.intel.com HAM on HEx ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 93 19:06:03 EDT From: Andy Wilson Subject: HEX: Backing the Thorn (Sequel to "Romancing the Stone") How would Socrates have done in a reputation market? Andy ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 93 16:03:54 PDT From: thamilto@pcocd2.intel.com (Tony Hamilton - FES ERG~) Subject: ECON: What's wrong with a service economy? Nick: > Tony Hamilton: > >What is happening in > >the United States, however, is not _just_ a shift from manufacturing jobs > >to service, but an actual _loss_ of manufacturing, period. > > I'd divide this into three categories: > > (1) job transfer lower-wage areas (eg U.S. to Mexico) > (2) job transfer from manufacturing to service via automation > (3) job loss due to lowered worker skill levels, increasing > regulation, etc. But as I said before; why the focus on _jobs_? What about actual output, whether service or manufacturing? You can't pay workers unless you have money, and you can't get money unless you export more than you import - assuming a society that is not completely self-sufficient. Tony Hamilton thamilto@pcocd2.intel.com HAM on HEx ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 19:14:36 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: The Evidence of the Senses Mark Sulkowski says: > Objectivism does not say that buses you do not see do not exist. > Just that: "sensory evidence is valid." I will agree for now that there > may be situations in which it is not. But can we at least agree that in > most ordinary circumstances we can treat sensory evidence as valid? Thats reasonable. What isn't reasonable is Rand's contemptuous denegration of a real philosophical problem because she didn't like the implications. Its fine to say "I accept that I don't really have a way to know what reality is but will assume that my senses are reasonably accurate", but saying "I don't like the fact that my senses might have nothing to do with an objective reality, so I'm going to yell a lot and pretend there is no problem", which is Rand's attitude. > Science can't be trusted at all if we can't trust our senses at least SOME > of the time. Right? Its not clear that science CAN be trusted. If you were a brain in a vat you could be fed all sorts of incorrect data. HOWEVER, I will readily agree that you can't live your life on the premise that you are a brain in a vat -- its reasonable to just live as though your sensory data was reasonably true. What I'm arguing against is the Randian notion of "what I don't like isn't true", which is also the way she argued for her aesthetical choice being objective, as another example. Perry ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 18:15:59 -0500 From: pgf@srl01.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering) Subject: Arguing the basics... Look, guys, I tried to come up with a nice way of saying this, but failed. Sorry. My last word (actually second to last word on the subject; my last will be ::exclude author Michael Morgan) would be to say that if you think we're anywhere close to resource exhaustion, even with the projected pop- ulation of the third world at the current US standard of living, you're _wrong_ in ways that are already covered (I believe) in the reading list for this group and fall under the heading "the basics." While I will occasionally argue "the basics" and believe they deserve scrutiny, it gets tiresome when someone comes in spewing out the same basic chicken- little rant I can get from the Utne Reader and refuses to listen to anything anyone else has to say. +-----------------------+Here, all too soon the day! |"Standard Disclaymore" |Wish the moon to fall and alter our tomorrow. |pgf@srl03.cacs.usl.edu |I should know, heaven has her way; +-----------------------+Each one given memories to own. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 18:20:53 -0500 From: pgf@srl01.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering) Subject: Darwin-L mailing list... Just found this on sci.skeptic. Subject: DARWIN-L History and theory of the historical sciences DARWIN-L on listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu -- Historical Sciences Darwin-L@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu is a network discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences. Darwin-L has been established to promote communication among practitioners in a range of fields all of which are concerned with reconstructing the past from evidence in the present. Darwin-L is not restricted to the work of Charles Darwin, but rather covers the entire range of historical sciences, including: evolutionary biology, archeology, historical linguistics, cosmology, textual transmission, paleontology, historical anthropology, historical geology, systematics, and historical geography. Darwin-L welcomes discussion of any of these fields with special reference to history, theory, and interdisciplinary comparison. Appropriate topics might include the development of historical linguistics in the 18th and 19th centuries; stratigraphic approaches to historical reconstruction in geology and other fields; the genealogical trees produced by systematic biologists, historical linguists, and students of textual transmission; the comparative movements of the 19th century (comparative philology, comparative anatomy, comparative ethnography); and the historical clocks used in radiometric dating, molecular systematics, and historical linguistics. Darwin-L also welcomes queries, notices, course outlines, and bibliographies. To subscribe to DARWIN-L, send the following command to listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu in the BODY of e-mail: SUBSCRIBE LISTNAME yourfirstname yourlastname For example: SUBSCRIBE DARWIN-L John Smith Owners: Robert J. O'Hara Lynn H. Nelson Darwin-L is supported by the Center for Critical Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and by the Department of History and the Academic Computing Center, University of Kansas. --------------------- end of enclosed document ------------------ forwarded by Jim Kutz (aa387@cleveland.freenet.edu) -- "When the freedom they wished for most was the freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free, and never was free again." - Edith Hamilton +-----------------------+Here, all too soon the day! |"Standard Disclaymore" |Wish the moon to fall and alter our tomorrow. |pgf@srl03.cacs.usl.edu |I should know, heaven has her way; +-----------------------+Each one given memories to own. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 16:23:34 -0700 From: dkrieger@Synopsys.COM (Dave Krieger) Subject: Extropian Exploits >From: Mark Sulkowski >Subject: Extropian Exploits >X-Extropian-Date: Remailed on September 13, 373 P.N.O. [22:49:06 UTC] >X-Message-Number: #93-9-522 > Of course if you buy the amoralism that has been running through >the list lately, then there is no ethical difference between anarchocapitalism >and totalitarianism because there are no ethical standards one can >consistantly apply to the comparison. Gas chamber anyone? > (Sorry guys and gals. I couldn't resist a small jab.) Ha ha. Neither could Icepick Willie. Maybe if "ethical" smokescreens were more difficult to sell to the feeble-minded masses, history would be less replete with gas chambers. The real monsters of history have always considered themselves to be ethical superheroes, cleansing the world of the "impure" and the "degenerate". If the Bible-thumpers take power (which seems, thank my lack of God, less and less likely nowadays), and they start queuing up "degenerates" like myself for the gas chambers again, I'm sure telling them how unethical they're being, and how much more ethical my libertarianism is than their Christianity, will be much more effective than, say, a well-cared-for automatic rifle. dV/dt ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 16:26:17 -0700 From: dkrieger@Synopsys.COM (Dave Krieger) Subject: EPIS: Sensory evidence I have changed the subject line of this thread, since the one on the original post (which I never saw) referred to some book or other, evidently. >From: Mark Sulkowski >Subject: The Evidence of the Senses >X-Extropian-Date: Remailed on September 13, 373 P.N.O. [21:33:14 UTC] >X-Message-Number: #93-9-512 > > Objectivism does not say that buses you do not see do not exist. >Just that: "sensory evidence is valid." I will agree for now that there >may be situations in which it is not. Sorry, Mark, but "buses you do not see do not exist" follows directly from "sensory evidence is valid". The implicit "always" in the "is of identity" is why E-Prime et al were invented. >But can we at least agree that in >most ordinary circumstances we can treat sensory evidence as valid? Having translated your original assertion into E-prime, it now makes sense. However, you lapse back into "is"-English in your next sentence: >Science can't be trusted at all if we can't trust our senses at least SOME >of the time. Right? With only your senses to guide you, how do you decide when they can be trusted and when they can't? ("Johnny, are you lying to me?" "No, Ma.") Let me try to say what you meant to say: "Scientific hypotheses needs to be tested against sensory data." In other words, you need reason to provide a check for sense data, and sense data to provide a check for reason. This is where Aristotle went wrong; he sat on a rock thinking, trying to derive physics from first principles, and decided (inter alios) that large objects fall faster than small ones, and that thrown objects keep moving after being let go because the air pushes them. You have to test your theories against experiment. Ayn Rand tested her hypothesis "Cigarette smoking is harmless" by smoking for decades; unfortunately, she didn't get around to revising her hypothesis on the basis of the results of her experiment. (To round out your intellectual toolkit, you also need, in addition to inductive reasoning and experiment: deductive logic, to test whether your hypothesis is internally consistent; and imagination, to generate new hypotheses to test.) > (I do agree that Objectivist epistemology needs an overhall. But >at least read a book such as _Evidence of the Senses_ before trashing it.) Trash it? I never even heard of it! I was replying to Elias, who seemed to be mistaking this dispute with "Is there a 'real' reality?" (on which he and I seem to agree). dV/dt ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 18:32:01 -0500 From: pgf@srl01.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering) Subject: ECON: What's wrong with a service economy? Nick writes: \I'd divide this into three categories: /(1) job transfer lower-wage areas (eg U.S. to Mexico) \(2) job transfer from manufacturing to service via automation /(3) job loss due to lowered worker skill levels, increasing \regulation, etc. \(1) is good, because it turns illiterate Mexican workers into /blue collar workers with a much better standard of living and \education level -- more chance to move up in the world and /make a bigger difference. It also forces U.S. workers to \retrain and move up into new industries -- medicine, new /financial services, etc. and, providing jobs for those who \can't or won't move up, more wokers for necessary services /currently in short supply (data entry, secretarial, personal \services, etc.) (1) I don't really understand. People (or are they people?) talk about how the average Mexican is going to outcompete us because he works for five dollars a day et cetera... Or does he? I mean, if he's eating well on one dollar a day, spending twenty-five cents a day on fairly OK (but not great) socialist health insurance, paying the rent on the house on the third dollar, and paying for the goodies for his family on the fourth and fifth... A lot of the lower-wage stuff is real, but also a lot of it seems artificial to me. Which in a way is good; we should be penalized if our currency is unnaturally overvalued. Perry, I need some help understanding all this, and you're in the financial markets. I *know* that it's impossible to make a living on five bucks a day here. That I could start making way (although not very comfortably) in Mexico on this wage should indicate that one or another standard we're using to measure things is _wrong_. \(2) Is good for the second reason given in (1), namely it /forces people to open up new economic niches, eg the \next major medical care and financial services. For /example, cryonics and offshore banking could potentially \employ millions. For medicine especially, there is /no satiation point, there is always demand for better \service. /(3) is very bad indeed -- it means overall degradation of \the economy, ie the quality of life in that economy. Basically, what I've been trying to say is, we can _not_ predict (2), and that while many people seem to be accepting (3) as inevitable, with the coming reforms everyone's talking about here, I think it's even reversible. +-----------------------+Here, all too soon the day! |"Standard Disclaymore" |Wish the moon to fall and alter our tomorrow. |pgf@srl03.cacs.usl.edu |I should know, heaven has her way; +-----------------------+Each one given memories to own. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 19:37:02 -0400 (EDT) From: Mark Sulkowski Subject: The Evidence of the Senses From: "Perry E. Metzger" >Mark Sulkowski says: >> Objectivism does not say that buses you do not see do not exist. >> Just that: "sensory evidence is valid." I will agree for now that there >> may be situations in which it is not. But can we at least agree that in >> most ordinary circumstances we can treat sensory evidence as valid? > >Thats reasonable. What isn't reasonable is Rand's contemptuous >denegration of a real philosophical problem because she didn't like >the implications. Its fine to say "I accept that I don't really have a >way to know what reality is but will assume that my senses are >reasonably accurate", but saying "I don't like the fact that my senses >might have nothing to do with an objective reality, so I'm going to >yell a lot and pretend there is no problem", which is Rand's attitude. Have any of you seen the advertisments for the large tape set on Ayn Rand that LIBERTY magazine has been selling? I bought it and there is an interesting story about Ayn Rand that relates to the issue at hand. A friend of Ayn Rand related the story of a time when Ayn Rand was ill and suffered some delusions during that period. This was pointed out to her, but she flatly refused to believe that it was possible that she saw things which didn't really exist. At least, she never admitted that it was possible. (I highly recommend the tape series. It is quite critical of Ayn Rand and the cult that developed around her, but is at the same time quite fair about it.) * . ====\\. ~ //==== || \\ ~ . *// || || \\ * // || || \\.~// || || \\// || || Mark \/enture || ==================== ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 16:38:39 -0700 From: dkrieger@Synopsys.COM (Dave Krieger) Subject: Did I write that? (was: EPIS: Sensory evidence) >From: dkrieger@synopsys.com (Dave Krieger) >Subject: EPIS: Sensory evidence >X-Extropian-Date: Remailed on September 13, 373 P.N.O. [23:28:23 UTC] >X-Message-Number: #93-9-530 >This is where Aristotle went >wrong; he sat on a rock thinking, trying to derive physics from first >principles, and decided (inter alios) that large objects fall faster than ^^^^^ ^^^^^ >small ones, and that thrown objects keep moving after being let go because >the air pushes them. Agck! I meant "inter alia" ("among other things"). dV/dt ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 16:48:47 -0800 From: lefty@apple.com (Lefty) Subject: The Evidence of the Senses Mark Sulkowski writes: > > A friend of Ayn Rand related the story of a time when Ayn Rand >was ill and suffered some delusions during that period. This was pointed >out to her, but she flatly refused to believe that it was possible that >she saw things which didn't really exist. At least, she never admitted >that it was possible. I came across this same story in Barbara Branden's "The Passion of Ayn Rand". -- Lefty (lefty@apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 19:56:39 -0400 (EDT) From: Mark Sulkowski Subject: EPIS: Sensory Evidence From: dkrieger@synopsys.com (Dave Krieger) >>From: Mark Sulkowski >>Subject: The Evidence of the Senses >>X-Extropian-Date: Remailed on September 13, 373 P.N.O. [21:33:14 UTC] >>X-Message-Number: #93-9-512 >> >> Objectivism does not say that buses you do not see do not exist. >>Just that: "sensory evidence is valid." I will agree for now that there >>may be situations in which it is not. > >Sorry, Mark, but "buses you do not see do not exist" follows directly from >"sensory evidence is valid". The implicit "always" in the "is of identity" >is why E-Prime et al were invented. Huh? We can play semantical games all day and all night. I'd prefer to understand the meaning Ayn Rand had in mind for the statement rather than inventing our own. Let's avoid straw man arguments. Ayn Rand believed in the "primacy of existence". That is, the universe is what it is regardless of what we want it to be or understand it to be. This is a sort of realism. The universe is real. It exists on its own merits. "Sensory evidence is valid" means something more like "we can trust our senses". Our senses relate information gathered from our surroundings. Our brains use this information to understand them. As I said in another post, I don't think it is appropriate to say that we can ALWAYS trust our senses. But I must admit that I never did finish David Kelley's _The Evidence of the Senses_, so I must have missed all sorts of arguments in favor of Rand's view. Perhaps Tim Starr would be kind enough to post a few. I'd love to see them. * . ====\\. ~ //==== || \\ ~ . *// || || \\ * // || || \\.~// || || \\// || || Mark \/enture || ==================== ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 20:28:38 -0400 From: Duncan Frissell Subject: DATA: Credit Cards T >For me, even though I am a privacy fellow traveller (my crypto T >interests T >are more in new structures, not privacy per se), the conveniences of T >this card outweigh the dangers implicit in having all my transactions T >funnelled through one brokerage house. Your mileage may vary. T > T >-Tim May Of course if you got a debit VISA account with a bank in a haven jurisdiction you would have all the above advantages + privacy. Duncan Frissell Coming soon to an FTP site near you - The Health Security Act Resistance FAQ Ver 0.98. --- WinQwk 2.0b#0 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 20:28:39 -0400 From: Duncan Frissell Subject: ECON: What`s wrong with a D >The other perceived problem with service economies is that naive D >observers (like Bob Dole) don't think anything is _happening_ in such D >economies. Dole whines, "What are we going to do, take in each other's D >laundry?" We had the same arguments during the transition from agriculture to manufacturing. "Food is the only true wealth." "Manufactured goods are just trinkets for the aristocracy." "Land = wealth." As you noted even manufactured goods are mostly services (design, tooling, administration, finance, management, transportation, distribution, advertising, and sales). Services movies, medicine, privacy consulting , advertising, sales, massage, etc are real. If you think advertising is a fringe industry check the price and availability of goods and services in economies *with* advertising and those *without* advertising. Duncan Frissell Want to be as rich as Bill Gates? Here is his total stock in trade: 0 1 --- WinQwk 2.0b#0 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 20:28:39 -0400 From: Duncan Frissell Subject: ECON: What`s wrong with a T.>are doing the work (or nanofactories, or whatever). What is happening T.>in T.>the United States, however, is not _just_ a shift from manufacturing T.>jobs T.>to service, but an actual _loss_ of manufacturing, period. Not true. In the '20s we had 20% of world manufacturing output. After the rest of the world's factories were blown up, we were up to 50% in 1950. We had fallen to 25% by 1960 and down to 20% today. Not a massive decline. No decline at all of course just a *relative* decline. In the last few years in fact, manufacturing productivity has risen faster than Germany's. German and Japanese industrial workers are only 80% as productive as US workers. (Our service workers are *twice* as productive as Japanese service workers.) T.>the job market, but I fail to see the significance when we're talking T.>about T.>GNP, export/imports, trade deficits, and the like. US problems in T.>these areas, Our GNP share is the same as it's been for a while. We may or may not have a trade deficit. Since service imports and exports are not well reported and since much of the services export earnings stay overseas to minimize taxes, we don't know the true picture. The exports we do know about have exploded since 1986 (tripling in the case of steel for example). Meanwhile the workforce increased by 50% since 1970 and 19 million jobs have been created since 1980 while Germany and Japan have added almost no new jobs. T.>Tony Hamilton T.>thamilto@pcocd2.intel.com T.>HAM on HEx T.> I notice how the Japanese computer manufacturers wiped out the American industry in 1982 when they introduced that fabulous standard whose name escapes me. Does anyone remember? Duncan Frissell "You can't fight in here. This is the *War* Room." -- Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. --- WinQwk 2.0b#0 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 93 17:30:45 -0700 From: davisd@pierce.ee.washington.edu Subject: PHIL: Extropian epistemology? (& namedropping) > From: tburns@gmuvax.gmu.edu (T. David Burns) > Subject: PHIL: Extropian epistemology? (& namedropping) > > At 11:18 AM 9/13/93 -0700, Robin Hanson wrote: > >And I agree with Perry and > >Jamie that such namedropping hinders more than it helps conversations > >on this subject. > > I don't know about the general case, but in my post which started this > nonsense the 'namedropping' seemed like a convenient shorthand for pointing > to some ideas. Persons familiar with the ideas would recognize the > shorthand, persons unfamiliar would not have an answer to my question. When one drops names in order to better communicate a general sense of one's own ideas, that can indeed be useful. When one does a proof by refence, however, that is often not so useful. Statements such as "Mr. Blah clearly refuted your theory" are not useful unless the speaker is willing to supply the argument himself. How is one to reply to such a statement? No specific argumentative point is being made. What often happens in such situations is that the argument turns from the subject at hand to a literary argument over what Mr. Blah said. The worst type of name dropping occurs when someone's views are characterized by an opponent. "Thats just Flubberianism." This is usually followed by proof by reference "and NokNok clearly refuted Flubber." I believe that in fact this was the context in which Perry first denounced name dropping. Note how this argumentative tactic attempts to elude the necessity of actually making a point. The opponent's views are characterized in a package deal, where the package referred to by Flubberianism is probably not agreed upon by the speakers. The result is a literary argument entirely beside the point, in which next to no communication is occurring because the meaning of Flubberianism and NokNokism is not shared between the main opponents or any bystanders. When two people disagree, their is a contradiction in their thinking. If they wish to resolve that contradiction, it usually works much better to argue from specific agreed upon points than from package deals whose meanings aren't agreed upon and which are supersets (at best) of the points held by the debaters. Buy Buy -- Dan Davis ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 19:43:29 -0500 From: pgf@srl01.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering) Subject: ECON: What`s wrong with a Yes, I remember the name of the standard. TRON. Suprised? pgf ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Sep 93 17:01:40 PDT From: amix!chip@grand-central.UUCP (Chip Morningstar -- "Software Without Moving Parts") Subject: ETHICS: The Virtue of Exploitation Dave Krieger writes: >self-interest}. And so "exploitation", like "selfishness", takes its place >among the Extropian virtues. (When I get to seven, I'm going to publish.) I confess that I am now overcome by curiosity to know what your list of Extropian Vices would consist of :-) :-) ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 #256 *********************************