Magnus

Pi day is only two days away, dude. It's pretty sciency.

Yeah, everyone else's statements were totally sincere, but you were just testing us. We're like lab rats, here for your experimentation. But you're above it all, watching us from heights we can't even imagine. I mean, it's pretentious and deceitful to "test" people with arguments you later pretend not to believe. But that doesn't matter, because we didn't pass your test, right? When it was our turn, we werent' "catching more flies with honey than vinegar." It was just intolerance full steam ahead, right? After all, you had a chance to make a sincere, legitimate, meaningful argument, about something, anything, and you chose to "test" people instead of discussing things that matter to you. I can see why we disappoint you. So intolerant, we are.

e As in, e = φ • 0 + e Ergo God. Checkmate, atheists!

How can a state legitimately form in the first place, such that it can, as a corporate entity, own land, much less own land that it did not acquire through the ordinary chain of title?

Police: "We need armored vehicles to deal with homegrown terrorists." People: "How do you identify these homegrown terrorists?" Police: "They're the people who don't want us to have armored vehicles."

Hypereducated and on welfare I think this headline is trying to show some sort of incongruity -- as though being educated should insulate you, all by itself, from poverty. This basic premise and assumption behind the article (and this woman's entire way of life) is absurd. She made a baby with an irresponsible man. Now everyone else in society is supposed to pay for that? Because she went to school to study poetry, the entire world owes her a more comfortable living? Where do people learn this sort of thinking? Are highly educated people not taught basic reproductive biology anymore? Cause and effect? I've given up expecting "educated" to have SOME MINIMAL sense of economics or business. (I've even met some economics professors who have no idea whatsoever about how the world of business works.) But I'm fairly sure that anyone with a master's degree would know where babies come from.

It's amazing to look back at what life was like for young people back then. It wasn't all that long ago, but without cell phones, the Internet, or campus police, it looks like a different world. Saturday detention was a real thing. I went to a semi-large suburban public school through 8th grade, but by the time The Breakfast Club came out, I was in 9th grade and had transferred to a small private school, where the culture was completely different. So, I didn't get the Big School experience after that, but I was close to it. I don't know if it's the same for young people nowadays, but the artificial, forced environment of government schooling caused everyone to fall into the kind of neat categories that you see in this movie -- jocks, preps, geeks, etc. There were a few others, like the heads, the Heathers, the kickers (cowboys), the Iron Maideners. It wasn't so much a personality as an identity, a uniform. The strange part, from the perspective of my 45 year-old self, is that back then, no one had any idea that there was an outside world, that any of this was abnormal. It was the way things were for our parents, but with slightly different technology. The advent of the Sony Walkman seemed revolutionary at the time. Our media and social contacts, outside the tiny bubble of school and some limited amount of television, were virtually non-existent. Another movie that encapsulates the experience of post-war American schooling is Teachers. It's more of a blue-collar environment. Rust Belt America, I guess, less suburban. A lot more violent.

I'm not sure the seven samurai are an example of a DRO, but the bandits are a perfect example of a state. They just need to (a) wear nicer clothes, (b) be a little more systematic about how they steal from the farmers, and © develop a solid body of propaganda about how their pillaging campaign is for the farmers' own good. Presto! Instant statism.

I'm very sorry for the abuse and neglect you experienced. I didn't grow up around chronic poverty, but I did experience first-hand the kind of domestic chaos that many of the poor and working poor experience. It's hard on the children, since adults often find it easy to foist the hardships onto them. In my career, I work with the poor (and indigent) almost daily, and I see the raw deal they get from government. But I still do not understand what you mean by "structural violence." I see persistent corruption and abuse by the police. And I see the trap of unemployment and family dissolution and ruined neighborhoods caused by welfare. But the cause of all that isn't some nebulous "structure." It's just government. And, to the extent the poor (and homeless) are prevented from "access to resources," that's just property rights. Is there some other component of "structural violence," beyond (a) the State or (b) property rights? Because I believe there is no solution to all of these social problems that's better than abolishing the former and preserving the latter. Also, I was wondering what you meant by "sustainable, equally real system that separates the wheat from the chaff." What specifically do you mean, in practical terms?

It's very interesting that there'd be such a marked difference in the shapes of the male and female bell curves on OkCupid's attractiveness rating. I think it can give us some illuminating insights into the psychological aspects of mate selection. I generally operate from the assumption that women are more sexually selective than men. Or, put another way, men are less sexually discriminating than women. This is a feature of our reproductive realities, in which women take a far greater risk in mating with a suboptimal male (one that's less desirable than she is capable of attracting), as compared to a male's minimal risk of mating with a sub-optimal female. The female invests a year of her life in pregnancy, and invests many more years in childcare after pregnancy. The idea of committing to a father who is less desirable than the female could have chosen is sufficient reason for her to be very careful in her selection process. I don't think it would be a stretch to deduce from this that a woman's dating strategy would be to consider all men to be unacceptable as mating partners, until proven otherwise. For men, the default strategy would likely be the reverse – that all women are at least potentially acceptable as mating partners. That would account for a female selection bell curve that's skewed negative.

None of what you've said here takes a position on anything. You've again summarized PJ's ideas (fantasies, really), said that you don't agree with some (mostly-unspecified) parts of it all, and said nothing about what you want, advocate for, or assert an ethical proposition (or principles for deriving ethical propositions). Would you drop the Devil's Advocate bit (which you're not really doing anyway)? What ethical principles are you operating with when you evaluate various ideas about a better or worse future?

Don't forget about the benevolent father ... er, supercomputer that will dispense bounteous abundance and justice to all, and never require anything but our obedience. But don't ask to see the algorithm for it because there isn't one.

This mode of discussion seems to be a pattern for you -- so far, you have either claimed that you are merely summarizing or repeating Peter Joseph's arguments, or you are quibbling with people in this thread who disagree with him. So far, I have not seen you advance any arguments of your own, or take a position on Peter Joseph's arguments, and defend it. (And, by the way, Peter Joseph's interpretation of the state of technology is not especially interesting or useful. I happen to know a little bit about artificial intelligence, and so far he hasn't ever said anything specific at all, much less anything new. He is making economic observations, and ethical arguments, so that is where I will focus my attention.) So, I will ask you to get off the rhetorical fence, and take a position on either his economic assertions, or his ethical assertions. What part, if any, of Peter Joseph's economic analysis, or ethical propositions, do you find to be meritorious, and why?

It's a fantasy that's wholly disconnected from reality. (I'm referring to both the Venus Project and to the Matrix movies.)

I don't concede anything because I don't understand what you're asking me to concede. That it's somehow ethically wrong that people experience the natural consequences of their actions? That's a form of violence? Is my hypothetical monsoon violent? My hypothetical selfish fish? I'm really very confused by your assertions, particularly as to how acknowledging cause and effect makes one a eugenicist.