I seem to have -trol- err triggered a rather interesting discussion.
It seems that there is no real *distributed* reputation based currency,
just the Hirsch index, PageRank and a zillion different websites with
their own walled garden reputation systems. Of course one must not forget
Nanotube's own OTC. I have a feeling this is important and should be
considered at some point in the future.


On the topic of your mail Julia, the scenarios are quite interesting.
Although with the assumption of absolute knowledge, these scenarios are
very difficult to rectify, once one accepts that their knowledge is by
definition incomplete and much of it is incorrect, their intractability
becomes less threatening.

In the Fritzl example, killing the children might have been possible, and
perhaps it would have lead to a better result, but according to wikipedia,
one of those very children proved Josef's undoing. Without her, the pain
may have continued indefinitely and the world might never have learned
the meaning of Austrian Paternalism. The key point is that since
information is always scarce, decisions made on a rational basis will often
be less utilitarian (which in this case means less "good") than decisions
based at least partially on intuition.

And one must not forget the Tao of Doing Nothing. Pushing a fat man onto
the tracks would be mighty embarrassing if it should turn out that the
trolley is not on the same track, or that the people tied down are manikins
in a film shoot.

My personal feeling is that there is no way to judge aggression objectively,
it is based on intent, or even below intent, the emotions which give rise
to an action. One who acts out of love and joy may do the exact same things
as one who acts out of fear, but (in my opinion and I'm prepared to be hear
evidence to the contrary) the morality of those actions is different.


``Be careful of absolutes. They may blow up in your face.''

Good quote.


On 08/25/2014 05:58 PM, Julia Tourianski wrote:
> sigh
>
> ...all I said was "you can't compare the objective reality of gravity to
> human interaction and questions like right and wrong. "
>
> Then I said there's flaws in Stef's work, AFTER Justus *assumed* I was
> making an assertion that I was not making. "If by that you mean that ethics
> are subjective, then I disagree in the strongest possible terms." Then the
> soft name calling began, by Justus. This is quite clear.
>
> In terms of me proving things I was assumed to claim, this has been covered
> by many people. I don't need to regurgitate what should be
> common knowledge. If you subscribe to such principles, you should know
> their counter arguments, not demand them because of a flippant comment on a
> mailing list.
>
> on UPB
> http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=75
>
> I can link dozens. But won't because life.
>
> *Regarding non-agression. *If you know any of my work, I'm a publicly avid
> promoter of the concept. But I also will admit it's not perfect
> or objectively sensical. I do not deal in absolutes. The following is to
> illustrate the grey matter.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case
>
> 1. If she knows her children are only born to be perpetually abused, would
> killing them not have been the purest form of preventative non-agression?
> No? Because they did not aggress against her first. But being a bystander
> in Fritzl aggressing against them, is she not participating in that
> aggression? What is the only moral thing to do? To kill Fritzl? But she
> can't, so what's the next moral thing to do? To kill the children?
> Death is surely better than years of torture? Universally preferable even?
> How can you say without experience...and it would be a subjective
> experience anyhow. Maybe torture is better than death. How can we know, if
> we don't know death.
> Following the non-aggression principle, in this case, may cause much
> greater suffering than not. What is the moral thing to do? What do YOUR***
> objective ethics say?
>
> 2.Woman and man at a bar. They may or may not be flirting...each may
> interpret their interaction differently. Man grabs woman's ass. Woman
> punches man in face.
>
> Has there been a violation of the non-aggression principle? What if the
> woman liked it or wanted it, but felt embarrassed of her urges due to the
> public setting and retaliated in a way she felt redeemable. Or maybe she
> was abused as a child and the act deeply hurt her. We can't know. So
> who aggressed against who? Should the man have asked to grab her ass
> first...well, that would contradict the entire concept of the mutual thrill
> of ass grabbing.
>
> 3.What about indirect aggression, such as that of a well intentioned Queen?
> Can we interpret her economic incompetence as a direct violence on the
> child that starved due to the fact? Is her be-heading morally
> justified...or universally preferable? Let's assert yes. Then what about
> gun manufacturers and their indirect violence? Is the distinction in
> voluntarism? No one elected the Queen, therefore her mere existence is
> violence? But who chose to live in a world with weapons? And is not a Queen
> just a human weapon? So the lack of choice in the existence of a Queen, and
> the existence of a gun is one of the same. How do we reconcile this?
> Perhaps with duality; you can use a gun to liberate yourself from the
> Queen, via suicide, or murder.
>
> But a gun is a tool, wielded by humans for their own purpose, therefore it
> is not inherently violent. The Queen too is a tool for assertion of
> dominance over the serf classes, so is she too not inherently violent? Who
> do we behead? What weapons do we ban? Maybe it's the entire human network
> of power that is aggressing against us? Then we can justify killing most
> people. Or throw away indirect aggression altogether, and do not judge
> Obama, or Bush, or Lenin, or Hitler, for anything they've indirectly done.
>
> Maybe we need to exercise thought instead of just quoting information. I am
> too guilty of this. Be careful of absolutes. They may blow up in your face.
> I suggest trying to a navigate these ideas, instead of preaching for their
> dis-proofs.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> For the secrets and lies, my PGP key:
> https://libbitcoin.dyne.org/julia_tourianski.pgp.asc
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 1:03 PM, Brian Hoffman <brian@???> wrote:
>
>> If he let you just throw that grenade blowing up his statement stand then
>> it wouldn't be a good debate and you just lost credibility by going on the
>> offensive after he asked you to justify your rationale. You guys both seem
>> to have gotten overly sensitive here but I'll agree with Justus. If you've
>> got some point to make, why defer it unless it consists of name calling and
>> soft reasoning.
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On Aug 25, 2014, at 7:34 AM, Julia Tourianski <juliatourianski@???>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Sorry Justus, I didn't intend to hit an emotional nerve with you. I'm
>> going to wrap this up before it becomes too entertaining for the "undo crew"
>>
>> Besides, sometimes you have to allow a person to be right, because that's
>> all they'll ever be.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> For the secrets and lies, my PGP key:
>> https://libbitcoin.dyne.org/julia_tourianski.pgp.asc
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 4:12 AM, Justus Ranvier <justusranvier@???>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 08/25/2014 01:32 AM, Julia Tourianski wrote:
>>>> "Prove it"
>>>>
>>>> Reminds me of a kid yelling on a playground when another kid disagrees
>>> with him
>>>>
>>>> Haha
>>>
>>> I'm sorry you've gotten as as far as you have in life without anyone
>>> ever telling you this before, and there's no way to sugar coat this, but
>>> what you are doing here in the conversation is proving that you are
>>> mentally stuck in that playground.
>>>
>>> It really is obligatory on the part of the person making positive claims
>>> to prove them. Nobody gets to just make shit up, insult anyone who
>>> properly asks for a rational justification and call what they are doing
>>> thinking.
>>>
>>>> Feel free to pm me but I doubt either one of us will prove anything -
>>> lucky for me, I don't deal in absolutist ideals
>>>
>>> Because of the major contraction in this sentence, I can translate that
>>> into, "I won't listen to proofs, because I am unwilling or unable to
>>> think."
>>>
>>> The reason I'm telling you this is because clearly nobody ever has
>>> before. You should know that rational thinking is an option you can
>>> pursue, but you won't be able to do that until you realize that you're
>>> not already.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem
>>>
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
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>
>
>
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