From extropians-request@extropy.org Mon Feb 28 15:30:48 1994 Return-Path: extropians-request@extropy.org Received: from usc.edu (usc.edu [128.125.253.136]) by chaph.usc.edu (8.6.4/8.6.4) with SMTP id PAA20025 for ; Mon, 28 Feb 1994 15:29:55 -0800 Received: from news.panix.com by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA09034; Mon, 28 Feb 94 15:24:52 PST Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by news.panix.com id AA21376 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for more@usc.edu); Mon, 28 Feb 1994 18:01:15 -0500 Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 18:01:15 -0500 Message-Id: <199402282301.AA21376@news.panix.com> To: Extropians@extropy.org From: Extropians@extropy.org Subject: Extropians Digest #94-2-307 - #94-2-324 X-Extropian-Date: February 28, 374 P.N.O. [18:00:52 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: RO Extropians Digest Mon, 28 Feb 94 Volume 94 : Issue 58 Today's Topics: Animal Rights [1 msgs] ANTHRO: Multiple origins of modern homo-sapiens [1 msgs] Babylon-5 note [1 msgs] ENVIROBIZ: Costs of a green business... [6 msgs] ENVIROBIZ: Recycling cost [2 msgs] Natural Rights [1 msgs] Niven [1 msgs] Niven [1 msgs] PCR [2 msgs] PCR: Recycled Greek Skepticism? [1 msgs] truth and truth [1 msgs] Administrivia: Note: I have increased the frequency of the digests to four times a day. The digests used to be processed at 5am and 5pm, but this was too infrequent for the current bandwidth. Now digests are sent every six hours: Midnight, 6am, 12pm, and 6pm. If you experience delays in getting digests, try setting your digest size smaller such as 20k. You can do this by addressing a message to extropians@extropy.org with the body of the message as ::digest size 20 -Ray Approximate Size: 56199 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bo Date: Sun, 27 Feb 1994 00:30:08 -0700 (MST) Subject: [#94-2-307] ENVIROBIZ: Costs of a green business... Kennita >>.... Oliver >... moi .... > > It doesn't help that the word "to" in the English language has ambiguous > > meaning and function. I think that arkuat may have meant, not "To whom > > does this seem irresponsible?", as it seems to have been interpreted by > > oliver, but the question that I myself might have posed in arkuat's place, > > "Who is harmed by this 'irresponsibility'?". > > The question of who exactly is harmed, if anybody or anything, is > difficult to say. Can we say that anybody benefits? > > -Oliver Who is harmed? I'd say the future. The people in it...us. When I was a kid and rode all over the country with my parents, we blithely threw our A&W Root Beer cups out the window. Everybody did. No big deal til ten, fifteen years later when it took the First Lady Bird to clean up the totally "trashed" out road systems... "Who'd a thunk it....it was only a couple of cups!" The power of numbers.... (My current philosophy....if it ain't organic, it ain't out the window!);-) Indiscriminant use of water now will only make water more expensive. Unless someone actually invents Ice-9, there's an awful lot of "water" around...and I don't forsee any real shortage. But you _can_ die of thirst in the ocean.... And if we keep using up all the available "potable" water...and fouling up any aquifers we were unable to drain... Water, water everywhere...and all the boards did shrink. Water, water everywhere...and not a drop to drink! The Rhyme of The Ancient Mariner Bo ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bo the Bohemian....disregarding conventional standards and behavior. *****************************[ "Narrow-mindedness is a rampant disease.....help stamp it out!!!" ****************%%%%Bo@bohemia.metronet.org%%%%********************** ------------------------------ From: rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray) Date: Sun, 27 Feb 94 4:12:04 WET Subject: [#94-2-308] ENVIROBIZ: Costs of a green business... Bo writes: > Indiscriminant use of water now will only make water more expensive. > Unless someone actually invents Ice-9, there's an awful lot of "water" > around...and I don't forsee any real shortage. But you _can_ die of thirst > in the ocean.... Which opens up opportunities to get rich. Invent a portable purifier and desalinization* device and the world will be at your doorstep. People have already cashed in on the poor quality of tap water by selling water purfiers. These might have been seen as a useless luxury 80 years ago but now they are quite common. People don't even trust the government's standards for purity. -Ray (*) I know these devices already exist and use solar evaporation but they need to be more compact and process more water faster. -- Ray Cromwell | Engineering is the implementation of science; -- -- rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu | politics is the implementation of faith. -- ------------------------------ From: sjw@liberty.demon.co.uk (Stephen J. Whitrow) Date: Sun, 27 Feb 94 11:19:31 GMT Subject: [#94-2-309] Animal Rights Tim Goodwin responds: >In message <18096@liberty.demon.co.uk> "Stephen J. Whitrow" writes: >> I've never claimed that animals can't have voluntarily awarded rights >> that humans create for them, just that the animals' rights do not >> exist until awarded. I'm rather suspicious of this "we" creating rights, >> though. That seems to imply the possibility of a statist monopoly >> deciding what the rights are, then coercing others into observance. E.g. >> driving a car over a toad, five years' imprisonment. >> >> The view easily discredited is that animals have some 'natural' right to >> be free of all interference from us, as in "racehorse breeding is unjust", >> for instance. There is no evidence for such rights. > >I'm a bit confused now. So animal rights can't exist unless we invent them, >yet 'natural' rights exist anyway.....? Seems like you've talked yourself >into a bit of a hole. Sorry, but I think you've mixed me with someone else. I never said that 'natural' rights exist, that was the claim of the other 'side', and I wanted to see if they could prove it. The position of some people is that 'natural' rights (for rational beings) exist, but beasts cannot have rights. This isn't "being in a hole", I just don't think it's a necessary belief. By the way, I've previously referred to "semi-rights" or "voluntarily- awarded rights", for those that we may choose to grant animals because we have respect for them or prefer to be nice to them. A better term is that of "pseudo-rights", which was used by Tim May. It's easy to award pseudo- rights, such as the right for a local family of foxes to receive some food each day, but just as easy to rescind the right, when they start to make too much mess in the garden, for instance. Steve Whitrow sjw@liberty.demon.co.uk ------------------------------ From: price@price.demon.co.uk (Michael Clive Price) Date: Sun, 27 Feb 94 11:25:05 GMT Subject: [#94-2-310] PCR: Recycled Greek Skepticism? Reilly Jones: > Big Bang cosmologies have thrown out causality and evidence. > They are at best banal poetry and at worst religious mysticism. Since the evidence, like eg the cosmic microwave background temperature of 4K and the observed ratios of light isotopes, supports the Big Bang (or some close inflationary relative) then it must be your ideas on causality that are defective. Ditch them. Mike Price price@price.demon.co.uk ------------------------------ From: mpeel@ccs.carleton.ca (Michelle Peel) Date: Sun, 27 Feb 94 18:28:17 EST Subject: [#94-2-311] ENVIROBIZ: Costs of a green business... Bo writes: > > > You know...I always found it fascinating that Toilet paper is such a > modern invention. I'm not sure when...but even counting Sears Catalogues, > can't be more than a few hundred years. > People been using who knows WHAT for "bumwad" for a LONG time! > Cotton cloth sounds good! ....warm? ;-) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Bo the Bohemian....disregarding conventional standards and behavior. > *****************************[ > "Narrow-mindedness is a rampant disease.....help stamp it out!!!" > ****************%%%%Bo@bohemia.metronet.org%%%%********************** Well, in India, it is still prevalent to use the left hand with water to clean oneself. Not good etiquette to shake hands with the left hand! Michelle. ------------------------------ From: LEVY%BESSIE@venus.cis.yale.edu Date: Sun, 27 Feb 1994 21:57:51 -0500 (EST) Subject: [#94-2-312] ANTHRO: Multiple origins of modern homo-sapiens Regarding the possibility that homo sapiens arose _after_ the migration of groups of some pre-human species from Africa (as opposed to before, which was previously assumed the be the case), Mike Price writes > Big deal (Sorry I can't quote more of Mike's message, which I accidentally deleted along with the rest of the digest it appeared in). Actually, this discovery *is* a big deal for many people, myself included, because the assumption of a single locus of modern human genesis is the basis of several well-established antropological theories. For example, it has been assumed by linguists that all human languages are related to one another (i.e., came from the same original prehistoric ancestor language), since (1) Homo sapiens (the language-using species) evolved in one place only. (2) Any sub-group of homo sapiens with language would have wiped out any competing group (including non-homo-sapiens) that didn't have language. If (1) is untrue, it now becomes possible that human language arose in more than one place, after the dispersal of the pre-homo-sapiens group from Africa to Europe and Asia. In other words, any theory of modern language resting on a single-locus-of-origin assumption (i.e., all theories that are taken seriously) must be re-examined. Note that you can't argue against this possibility by claiming that the pre-sapiens species had its own language, which the sub-groups took with them out of Africa: If, as Chomsky claims, the structure of language is based on the structure of the h.s. brain, the development of that brain independently in different groups means that the potential for *homo- sapiens*-type languages arose in more than one place. Therefore, modern languages may have arisen from more than one source. -- Simon! ------------------------------ From: Eric Watt Forste Date: Sun, 27 Feb 1994 19:08:14 -0800 (PST) Subject: [#94-2-313] ENVIROBIZ: Costs of a green business... On Sat, 26 Feb 1994, Kennita Watson wrote: >It doesn't help that the word "to" in the English language has ambiguous >meaning and function. I think that arkuat may have meant, not "To whom >does this seem irresponsible?", as it seems to have been interpreted by >oliver, but the question that I myself might have posed in arkuat's place, >"Who is harmed by this 'irresponsibility'?". That's exactly right. Sorry I phrased my question so ambiguously. *** On Sat, 26 Feb 1994, Oliver Seiler wrote: >In any case, the reason I avoid wasting water (and just about anything >else) is that I don't see the point of wasting something just because I >can. Note also that in practice I'm not anal-retentive about it (just >look at the dripping faucet in my bathtub...) I completely agree with you that wasting water is unesthetic, no question. I even agree that it's unthrifty, though I feel very strongly that when thinking about thrift we really need to keep the value of our time and trouble in mind. There's no point in wasting ten dollars worth of time to secure a savings that amounts to one dollar! So anyway, I'm glad to hear that you're not a priss about faucet drip. Sorry my knee jerked when you used the word "irresponsible". It's a code word often used by people who want me to do things I consider wasteful, in the name of not wasting stuff. Bo, for instance... *** On Sun, 27 Feb 1994, Bo wrote: > Who is harmed? I'd say the future. The people in it...us. > When I was a kid and rode all over the country with my parents, we > blithely threw our A&W Root Beer cups out the window. Everybody did. No > big deal til ten, fifteen years later when it took the First Lady Bird to > clean up the totally "trashed" out road systems... Littering is trespass. We were discussing throwing stuff away and *paying* the owners of the land where it gets dumped. Not parallel. Just because I think unprofitable, subsidized, coerced or socially-pressured recycling is pointless and wasteful (of effort), doesn't mean that I favor littering, and I'm a little bit offended that you seem to suggest so. And consider that my "who is harmed" question was actually "who is harmed by us using exactly as much water as we wish, as long as we pay for it?". Your analogy with littering might have been appropriate if I was advocating stealing water, or wasting subsidized water. I was advocating no such thing. > (My current philosophy....if it ain't organic, it ain't out the window!);-) My current philosophy: keep a trash bag in the car. Why throw anything out the window? Throwing "organic" stuff out the window is unhygienic. > Indiscriminant use of water now will only make water more expensive. Exactly! And that's the only conservation mechanism we need. What's wrong with the price of water going up if people want to use more of it? *** On Sat, 26 Feb 1994, Bo wrote: >I like to look at my $5 as being a subsidy...to enable a non-profitable >business to attempt to make itself profitable. Why on earth would you want to make a nonprofitable business "profitable" with a subsidy? That's exactly the sort of thing that leads to the economic disasters you see in socialist countries. >As far as scarcity of landfills...there used to be three around here...now >there's one. That barge a few years back coulda used one...:-) That's not a scarcity problem, it's a political problem. There's plenty of land for landfills, and plenty of it owned by people who would love to see it used for landfill, and what's stopping the new landfills from being developed is the coercive power of the state, wielded by addlepated NIMBYs who for the most part live more than ten miles away from the proposed landfills they want to prohibit. This problem is traceable to simple ignorance, not to scarcity. Even in heavily urbanized areas like the East Coast metropolitan corridor, that should just translate to people paying more for transportation to carry their garbage further away. And if that process makes their garbage bills high enough, at some point recycling most garbage might become profitable: pay the recycler ten bucks rather than paying the landfill trucker twenty bucks. And when recycling is profitable without subsidy, I have no problem with it at all. >But overall, it's not scarcity of the metaphor, it's the forsight to >see the real problem and the consequences of the actions that is often >lacking. Buffalo Bill had no calculator to add up how many buffalo could >be killed by a thousand men killing a hundred animals each...every week! Again, this problem isn't really parallel to what we're discussing. Do you think that if you added up the consequences of recycling on a calculator the balance would come up positive? I'm contending that it comes up negative, that paying more money for recycled products, wasting more labor making recycled products instead of more efficiently making things from unused raw materials, etc etc, is *wasteful* of human effort, and that in general the *amount* of human effort that gets wasted this way is far more valuable to us than the amount of aluminum or farmed woodpulp trees or whatever that gets "conserved". If recycling were not wasteful it would be profitable. Nonprofitable recycling is wasteful and should not be practiced. It should certainly not be coerced or subsidized. ------------------------------ From: grigsby@agames.com (JUMP IN THE FIRE) Date: Sun, 27 Feb 1994 22:00:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [#94-2-314] ENVIROBIZ: Recycling cost Eric Watt Forster said: > Again, this problem isn't really parallel to what we're discussing. Do > you think that if you added up the consequences of recycling on a > calculator the balance would come up positive? Yes, in many cases: often government subsidies for waste cause it to come up negative. For instance, the government pays for logging roads on private land, and allows logging on government land for cheap. > I'm contending that it > comes up negative, that paying more money for recycled products, wasting > more labor making recycled products instead of more efficiently making > things from unused raw materials, etc etc, is *wasteful* of human effort, > and that in general the *amount* of human effort that gets wasted this > way is far more valuable to us than the amount of aluminum or farmed > woodpulp trees or whatever that gets "conserved". The tough question here is: since the government has pushed the balance in one direction, do we accept the consequences of a doctored market and lose irretrievably parts of the ecosphere, or do we try to compensate and accept slightly higher cost for some of our necessities? I have made my choice, and am worried that many here seem to be willing to accept the consequences of government interference more readily than an attempt by others to compensate for it. > If recycling were not wasteful it would be profitable. Nonprofitable > recycling is wasteful and should not be practiced. It should certainly > not be coerced or subsidized. Well, the world isn't ideal, and I choose to make things happen despite this. If I waited for perfect anarchy before I did anything I'd be just another mindless supporter of the status quo. Instead of talking about how terrible it is that I don't have total freedom I choose to do what I can. The main problem with relying on the market to solve everything is that transactions such as "let us dump stuff on your land and we'll pay you" have long-term consequences that either aren't immediately apparent or are lost through ignorance -- such as contamination of the local water supply. Often the consequences of new technology are not apparent for years after its introduction and use. For example, it took years before anyone noticed that DDT killed many species of animals by causing their eggs to have thin shells which broke, not to mention other congenital defects which only manifest themselves when the animals fail to reproduce new generations and we notice that hey, this stream don't have nothin' but big sickly algae blooms in it! This is why I suggest we should be "informed consumers" and maintain a healthy skepticism towards new technologies. Often the true cost of something is not apparent until well after its use, so my willingness to jump on a techno-bandwagon is proportional to its necessity/convenience ratio modulo its similarity to other known successes or mistakes. In summary: Boundless expansion in the wrong direction can get you in trouble, and forestall further expansion in that direction and others. // g ------------------------------ From: rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray) Date: Mon, 28 Feb 94 2:14:34 WET Subject: [#94-2-315] ENVIROBIZ: Recycling cost JUMP IN THE FIRE writes: > The main problem with relying on the market to solve everything is that > transactions such as "let us dump stuff on your land and we'll pay you" > have long-term consequences that either aren't immediately apparent or > are lost through ignorance -- such as contamination of the local water > supply. Often the consequences of new technology are not apparent for > years after its introduction and use. For example, it took years before > anyone noticed that DDT killed many species of animals by causing their eggs > to have thin shells which broke, not to mention other congenital defects > which only manifest themselves when the animals fail to reproduce new > generations and we notice that hey, this stream don't have nothin' but > big sickly algae blooms in it! So how should we fix it? The "solution" in the area of new drugs was the FDA and we all know how well that works. New drugs delayed by years or decades because they need to be "studied" to death to make sure there are no possible long-term problems. NASA is similarly paralyzed because they'd rather do endless paper studies on a vehicle instead of actually building it, flying it, and crashing it. The best way to test a new product is to market it and let the market "study" it. Some people may be hurt, others may benefit, but that's life. We learn most from our failures. If we are not permitted to fail, we will never progress. If there's a problem, the product can be revised or killed later. We must not proceed with such caution that we never get anything done. The claim that "we don't know the long term consequence of X" can be used to forstall any progress in any area. The world is a dangerous and chaotic place, but out of chaos emerges order. Out of deadly drugs emerges the great vaccine. Out of dangerous environmental products emerges the great green. If we are not permitted to damage the environment, we will never learn how to not damage it. (e.g. if it weren't for our damaging industry producing rockets and satellites, we'd never be able to observe the ozone depletion or global climate) It has been said that with every technology comes great risks and great benefit. I'm an optimist and I believe the benefits are always worth the risk. -Ray -- Ray Cromwell | Engineering is the implementation of science; -- -- rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu | politics is the implementation of faith. -- ------------------------------ From: timstarr@netcom.com (Tim Starr) Date: Sun, 27 Feb 1994 23:16:11 -0800 Subject: [#94-2-316] PCR Eric Watt Forste kindly answered my request for the definition of justificationism: >Justificationism is the idea that the only way you can decide whether an >idea is any good or not is by justifying it with another idea. This leads >to your dreaded "infinite regress" just as surely as PCR does. It most certainly does. > How do you justify your axioms? I'm not at all sure that I do, nor would I defend justificationism as you've defined it, so questioning me about how I'd do so is moot. >>The exhibition of >>the truth of an axiom is that it's a means to the end of any argument. Thus, >>any and all attempts to achieve the end of denying the axiom entail it as a >>means to that end. > >This is a really neat trick that you've claimed you're able to do many >times; can you actually *state* an axiom that I cannot criticize without >presuming its truth? One that you can also deduce meaningful conclusions >from? I can see statements of one kind or the other, but I have yet to >see one that fulfills both of these criteria. I've given examples over and over again, only to get evasive replies: implicit acceptance doesn't apply to those who don't explicate, or they're meaningless by some arbitrary, self-refuting standard of meaning, etc. Rather than repeat this process, please inform me what you would accept as evidence that none can attempt to deny some proposition without presupposing it, and what you would accept as evidence of the meaningfulness of conclusions to be derived from it. >>>What's your standard of truth? >> >> Reality. > >How do you access it infallibly? I never said I did. Mike Price: >...there is an important difference between being >open to criticism about one's beliefs (PCR) and only accepting beliefs >if they can *possibily* be criticised (Popper). Under PCR I can believe >in something which isn't open to possible criticism. Not so under >Popper. According to Brian MacGee's popular book on Popper, his views would permit acceptance of beliefs that can't possibly be criticized, but not as science. Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! Assistant Editor: Freedom Network News, the newsletter of ISIL, The International Society for Individual Liberty, 1800 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 864-0952; FAX: (415) 864-7506; 71034.2711@compuserve.com Think Universally, Act Selfishly - timstarr@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: dasher@netcom.com (Anton Sherwood) Date: Sun, 27 Feb 1994 23:16:16 -0800 Subject: [#94-2-317] truth and truth Arkuat saith: > To know the whole truth would require more bits than a > human-sized brain can hold. It probably requires more > bits than a Jupiter-sized brain can hold. There are at least two kinds of "whole truth" -- complete knowledge of the laws of physics, and complete knowledge of the universe. The latter is obviously beyond reach (to a finite mind within the universe, anyway, barring hell's own compression method), as is complete knowledge of *part* of the universe, since the forces affecting any part include g-waves from distant galaxies (or are they lost in the quantum noise?). Whether the former is beyond our capacity, we may never know. ;) Freeman Dyson remarked, "If it should turn out that the whole of physical reality can be described by a finite set of equations, I would be disappointed. I would feel that the Creator had been uncharacteristically lacking in imagination." (IIAD 53) Complete knowledge of ethics is somewhere between. Metaphysics and/or epistemology -- I'm unclear on the distinction -- may be off the scale. *Certainty* of the laws of physics would require an exhaustive survey of the universe, but that does not imply knowing much about the universe at any one time. Analogy: To test the hypothesis that each of the FRNs in my pocket has a serial number printed identically in two places, I looked at each, compared the two serial numbers thereon, remembered success and dismissed the number itself from my mind. I now know none of the numbers themselves, yet the hypothesis is confirmed; I am certain of it. In this way certainty of physical law is available in principle to a finite mind. Anton Sherwood *\\* +1 415 267 0685 *\\* DASher@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray) Date: Mon, 28 Feb 94 2:15:56 WET Subject: [#94-2-318] Babylon-5 note This week's episode features the transcendance of a character. Vinge style. -- Ray Cromwell | Engineering is the implementation of science; -- -- rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu | politics is the implementation of faith. -- ------------------------------ From: timstarr@netcom.com (Tim Starr) Date: Sun, 27 Feb 1994 23:55:01 -0800 Subject: [#94-2-319] Natural Rights >From: sjw@liberty.demon.co.uk (Stephen J. Whitrow) > >If any "rights" existed in the Cambrian period, which rights existed? I don't know what the Cambrian period is, sorry. That was among the many curricular casualties of State schooling by the time I served my 12-year sentence being put through the sorting machine. Assuming it was a period of homo sapiens hunter-gatherer existence, I'd say that all possible negative rights and liberties (to freedom of action without interference from other people) existed and awaited our discovery and enforcement - those that weren't already, that is. >>You're missing my point: I reject the artificial-natural dichotomy. > >A good suggestion. We'll leave the Aristotelian bivalent logic, and bring >in a third category, spontaneous orders. Allowing some overlap, we can >have some s.o.'s as obviously natural (e.g. biological evolution), and >some as "man-made" (e.g. money, posthuman evolution). I prefer the terminology of the Austrian school of economics, that s.o.'s are the results of human action but not human design. > Rights are on the >"man-made" side of spontaneous orders rather than the "natural" side: I'd classify the discovery and enforcement of rights as a spontaneous order, but not their existence. Also, in reply to Ray's comment about a proof of the existence of natural rights being their presence in the absence of man, this is contrary to my understanding of natural rights, which is not that there are metaphysical things external to people called "rights," but that rights are aspects of human nature - specifically, the conditions of freedom of action we need in order to survive and flourish. >In a previous message it was pointed out that the utility of rights seems >like a discovery, and I agree. I also support the mathematical >Platonists' view that pre-existing truths are discovered rather than >theories designed. Two and two didn't suddenly start to make four when >humans evolved; I suspect that this truth existed when the universe was >still in its inflationary phase. I'd also weigh in on the side of the view that math theories are discovered rather than built. >>Ever seen a beaver dam? Is it artificial or natural? My answer is: >>both. It's the sort of artifice beavers naturally make. But since I >>don't think rights are made, this doesn't matter. > >I'd distinguish between a genuine "natural" beaver dam, and a poor >simulation that had been built by man. I've got a borderline case to confuse you with: my grandparents built a foot bridge over a stream on our family's forest land in Upstate NY. Then the beavers my grandfather had introduced to the land built a dam using the bridge as foundation. Artificial or natural? (It made a nice, deep pond for the beavers, but, unfortunately, seems to be too murky for the brook trout we hoped to catch there.) > With the natural - s.o. - >artificial model it seems quite reasonable to have some blurring between >adjacent categories, but blurring between natural and artificial would >make it rather useless. True. Maybe I don't reject the distinction as strongly as I thought I did. >Universally recognised enforcement could constitute evidence for the pre- >existence of rights. I'm afraid I don't see why this would be so, because I distinguish between the existence and enforcement of rights more strongly than you seem to. >If the answer to the question "specify all natural rights" was so obvious >that only an imbecile would get it wrong, I'd say this was reasonable >evidence that "natural" rights had an objective existence. It's the same as the answer to the question: specify all numbers. Both are infinite, and thus impossible to comprehensively specify. This is the problem that Amendment IX to the US Constitution was written to address, establishing a general presumption of liberty. Federalist opponents of a Bill of Rights had argued that enumeration of any rights would lead to the disparagement of others, and that it was impossible to list all natural rights - such as the right to take one's hat off in the morning, the right to put it on, etc. >>> There is no natural law of the universe which determines >>>whether we should have the right to free healthcare, the right to a job, >>>or the right not to inhale other people's cigarette smoke. >> >>Sure there is. > >I refer you to the answer I gave some moments ago. >[That's my "John Major in Parliament" impersonation.] Hey, I've watched the question period on CSPAN! I know it's supposed to be: "I refer my right honorable friend to the answer I gave some moments ago." (The question period is one of the features of parliamentary democracy I prefer to the US system.) >>I maintain >>that abstractions aren't found, not made, which means that they have >>to precede their discovery. > >("Are found", surely.) By what period of time do they precede their >discovery? Yes, the negative contraction was my typo. I meant that they are found. They precede their discovery as long as people do, since they are features of human society - just as physical laws precede their discovery as long as the physical world does, since they are features of the physical world. Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! Assistant Editor: Freedom Network News, the newsletter of ISIL, The International Society for Individual Liberty, 1800 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 864-0952; FAX: (415) 864-7506; 71034.2711@compuserve.com Think Universally, Act Selfishly - timstarr@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: Eric Watt Forste Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 00:12:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: [#94-2-320] PCR On Sun, 27 Feb 1994, Tim Starr wrote: > Rather than repeat this process, please inform me what you would accept as > evidence that none can attempt to deny some proposition without presupposing > it, and what you would accept as evidence of the meaningfulness of conclusions > to be derived from it. I can see the first part being used to defend some of the foundations of logic. Perhaps you can use the "can't dispute this without presupposing it" argument to establish enough of logic to give you a sufficiently robust set theory to give you most of mathematics, which is certainly meaningful, so perhaps I overstated my case. Perhaps this example I've given of something that I feel is presupposed by an attempt to dispute it may be helpful to you. As for the second part, I can't see how one can derive a system of natural rights from mathematics, and I can't see any axioms that can be defended by asserting the denial presupposes leading to anything that says more than mathematics does about the world. Mathematics can *possibly* be derived from the sort of axioms you're talking about, but mathematics is just a small part of our knowledge about the world, and I can't see how anything that is not commonly conceded to be part of mathematics can be deduced from the sort of axioms you're talking about. I know I'm not being precise, but it's difficult for me to come up with suggestions about how you can convince me of something that I find so implausible. And finally, yes, I have read most of HUMAN ACTION, and I do groove on Von Mises' praxeological methods. I'm still trying to figure how he gets away with that in economics (which is certainly not mathematics), and until I understand that, I'm probably not going to understand how to apply praxeological techniques to wider domains such as ethics. ------------------------------ From: dasher@netcom.com (Anton Sherwood) Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 02:12:41 -0800 Subject: [#94-2-321] Niven > Ever read Niven's "Shadows of Anarchy"? "Cloak of Anarchy" ------------------------------ From: vaald@westminster.ac.uk Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 12:21:53 GMT Subject: [#94-2-322] ENVIROBIZ: Costs of a green business... > People been using who knows WHAT for "bumwad" for a LONG time! I used to know a milkman who wound up the people he worked with something rotten. For a week once he had the toilet-hygiene guy looking for a `new` type of toilet paper he had `read about` :)... Same as conventional paper, except it had a hole in the middle to put a finger through... And you could `stack` it in storage easier. And when you finished using it, you could wipe your finger as you pulled the paper off... not too bad an idea, if you can forget social constraints regarding excrement and hands... Needless to say, it was a fruitless search... UWP ------------------------------ From: Duncan Frissell Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 09:23:07 -0500 Subject: [#94-2-323] Niven D >> Ever read Niven's "Shadows of Anarchy"? D > D >"Cloak of Anarchy" D > D > A story which demonstrates the bad things that happen when an all powerful state outlaws the formation of any kind of a society at all within a given area. DCF --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165 ------------------------------ From: Bo Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 08:43:38 -0700 (MST) Subject: [#94-2-324] ENVIROBIZ: Costs of a green business... E. W. Forste (aka arkuat) writes.... > Sorry my knee jerked when you used the word "irresponsible". It's a code > word often used by people who want me to do things I consider wasteful, in > the name of not wasting stuff. Bo, for instance... Sounds like a personal problem..... > > *** > > On Sun, 27 Feb 1994, Bo wrote: > > > Who is harmed? I'd say the future. The people in it...us. > > When I was a kid and rode all over the country with my parents, we > > blithely threw our A&W Root Beer cups out the window. Everybody did. No > > big deal til ten, fifteen years later when it took the First Lady Bird to > > clean up the totally "trashed" out road systems... > > Littering is trespass. We were discussing throwing stuff away and *paying* > the owners of the land where it gets dumped. Not parallel. Just because I > think unprofitable, subsidized, coerced or socially-pressured recycling is > pointless and wasteful (of effort), doesn't mean that I favor littering, > and I'm a little bit offended that you seem to suggest so. > Actually we were discussing attitudes...and how they change. For the entire first half of the 20th century, no one worried about throwing trash out of the automobile. No one could forsee the magnitude to which this practice rose...until it was almost of overwhelming proportions. > And consider that my "who is harmed" question was actually "who is harmed > by us using exactly as much water as we wish, as long as we pay for it?". > Your analogy with littering might have been appropriate if I was > advocating stealing water, or wasting subsidized water. I was advocating > no such thing. It's OK to waste water as long as it's not subsidized? Kind of a King Louis attitude, isn't it? (Apres moi, le deluge...) Ironical, too! > > > (My current philosophy....if it ain't organic, it ain't out the window!);-) > > My current philosophy: keep a trash bag in the car. Why throw anything > out the window? Throwing "organic" stuff out the window is unhygienic. > Unhygenic? Perhaps if we lived in a sterile environment. I like to look at it as feeding the scavengers....they're not as "cute" as some critters, but hey...they gotta eat, too! ;-) > > Indiscriminant use of water now will only make water more expensive. > > Exactly! And that's the only conservation mechanism we need. What's wrong > with the price of water going up if people want to use more of it? Right...and pretty soon only the wealthy will be able to take a bath. Ok if you have lots of money to "throw down the drain...", but what about the poor working schmuck who has a hard enough time feeding the family... ~~~~~~~ Oh, yeah...."Let them drink rain..." ;-) > >But overall, it's not scarcity of the metaphor, it's the forsight to > >see the real problem and the consequences of the actions that is often > >lacking. Buffalo Bill had no calculator to add up how many buffalo could > >be killed by a thousand men killing a hundred animals each...every week! > > Again, this problem isn't really parallel to what we're discussing. Do Not really parallel...? I thought it was a bit relevant to the discussion on attitudes...but some people have a difficult time understanding parallel and tangential ideas. Linear thought, I guess...plugs up a lot of people...);-) > you think that if you added up the consequences of recycling on a > calculator the balance would come up positive? I'm contending that it > comes up negative, that paying more money for recycled products, wasting > more labor making recycled products instead of more efficiently making > things from unused raw materials, etc etc, is *wasteful* of human effort, > and that in general the *amount* of human effort that gets wasted this > way is far more valuable to us than the amount of aluminum or farmed > woodpulp trees or whatever that gets "conserved". Some people have a tough time seeing the forest for all the bloody trees.... It's not conserving the aluminum per se...it's reducing the amount of can trash, reducing the amount of electricity needed for raw aluminum manufacture, reducing the amount of bauxite strip mining, reducing the amount of pollution released during power generation and manufacture of virgin aluminum. If you insist on looking at the problem from the point of view that "Hey, I'm only using the water I bought...." or "Hey, why waste time and MONEY when we can do it cheaper and faster..." then I'd say you were part of the problem and not the solution. Take the blinders off and really see what is going on...Learn something from history! "Those that fail to take a lesson from history are doomed to repeat it." > > If recycling were not wasteful it would be profitable. Nonprofitable > recycling is wasteful and should not be practiced. It should certainly > not be coerced or subsidized. "Nonprofitable recycling is wasteful and should not be practiced." I fully agree! But where we differ is that you say stop the recycling... I say stop the nonprofitability.... Besides, if I choose to subsidize the businesses that I think are important, and hang the profitability....isn't that like you paying whatever you have to for as much water as you want? I have faith in human ingenuity...give people a chance, and a solution will be found. Sometimes that chance takes a while.... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bo the Bohemian....disregarding conventional standards and behavior. *****************************[ "Narrow-mindedness is a rampant disease.....help stamp it out!!!" ****************%%%%Bo@bohemia.metronet.org%%%%********************** ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V94 #58 ********************************