TheRobin

So you're theory is that whether or not people are cooporative or not depends whether the environment allows for it (to put it simply)? Okay, lt's take that for a spin then. So obviously when you say that you're afraid that anarchy will result in another form of statism, you must assume that at some point anarchy has an abundance of recources else the cooporation wold have never taken place. So at that point in time (let's leave out some unexpected natural disaster that eliminates a lot of recources for the moment) the only way for people to be more aggressive/dominant again (and get through with it) wold be if recources would be scarce. Outside of natural causes this cold only happen if certain people would somehow make it so. For people to indulge in that activity they'd need an incentive to do so, something which promises them a return of their time-investment. So would good people want to do that. Obivously not, nothing can be gained from destroying recources and since they are the cooporative ones they have an emotional incentive to not do destroy the future peoples wealth as well. So would bad evil people do it? The same thought applies except minus the emotional incentive. If we assume that evil people are even more interested in their own benefit, then they will have even less incentive to create an environment where there are more evil people, since that would mean less good ones to exploit and more competition on their side. Aside from the utter waste of time destroying recources for everyone, from which they don't get immediate benefits. So neither good nor evil people have an incentive or motivation to create an environment which would lead to another favouring of dominance over cooporation. Evil people because they're selfish and don't want more evil people to compete with them for the exploitation of the good and good people because they're also selfish and don't want to have their peaceful living ruined. The only option that leaves us with is natural disaster of some sort, that can't be avoided or escaped and totally resets civilization back to, well, wherever. This doesn't prove though that it's not possible to have peaceful anarchy that isn't sustainable. It also doesn't prove that there's a constant struggle of the two forces of dominance vs. cooporation. It just means asteroids are kind of the asshole bullies of the universe who take away your hard earned lunch money if you don't defend yourself with a ray gun

You can't have it both ways. If UPB can create a population that stays completely virtuous, any government can work because no one will exploit any mismatches, even if allowed for in the system. The type of government (or lack thereof) would be irrelevant if everyone can be made virtuous "somehow". If half the people are corrupt, Stefan's theory suggests that they would feel psychologically compelled to organize and create a state using violent methods. They would also be aggressive, because that's how they're emotionally wired. This would require the other half to defend themselves somehow. The only enforcement mechanism for NAP is social ostracism and peer pressure. This won't work on the corrupt half who'll find like-minded allies to conspire with and won't care anyway. Let's look at the other claim and pretend for some reason there isn't a state to manipulate (which I doubt when half the people corrupt), corrupt people will exploit other inequalities and attempt to manipulate and con others using UPB arguments on those less competent. I'm not sure I understand what you mean with "can't have it both ways", either people use force against each other or they don't. If they dont' then whatever forms can't be called government since that term implies an initiation of force. And if they do use force, then you can't call them virtuous anymore. So the idea of "virtuous government" doesn't really add up. About the incentive thing, well, realitstically, the 50% mark was probably pretty erm nonsensical, but for the sake of argument I still think it holds. Since IF there are (financial) insetives in play, then whoever is corrupt will have less wealth than who isn't (on average), so even IF they'd try to take over, whoever defends will be able to afford the bigger army in that scenario. Also if they form a state full of corrupt people, what you're basically saying is that all the evil people spend their time fighting other evil people, so it's still not an issue for the non-corrupt. Generally corruption is always less effective than honesty so it will generate less wealth thus leaving whoever is indulging in corrupt activities at a disadvantage, so even corrupt people wouldn't want to trade with only other corrupt people (precisle because they're exploitive), so the moment someone is known to be corrupt other people of all kinds will shy away (or charge more) to trade with him/her, so this mechanism will garantuee that no new monopolies on oppression can be formed.

It's 2am here and I'm afarid I might have woken up my neighbours with my loud uncontrolled laughter when I read this. Pure gold, thanks (I think I finally found some quote to put in my signature )

it's not people "getting better" it just means, that if people can no longer justify their actions to everyone else, they stop doing it because of social pressure.So far statism hasn't reached that stage where, if you say "I'm a statist" people look at you as if you just whipped slave to death and ostrazice you (however that's correctly spelled lol).

I don't agree here. You can think of a circle, you can think of a square, you can even think of the idea of putting those two together, but you literally can't think of a square circle. (if you say you can, then please draw it while you imagine it and post the pic, cause I sure can't) You can't think of a contradiction, but you can say what a contradiction is and describe it using non-contradictory concepts. But you can't think of X existing and not-existing at the (exact) same time. For instance you can't think of the word elephant and not think of the word elephant at the same time. Or you can't imagine lifting your arm and not-lifting your arm at the same time. At least I can't, hence why I'm using the concept of "existence" in that sense without having to worry about gods existing or square circles existing, because they still don't exist even as thoughts. small edit (hopefully in time): If you'd argue that you can imagine a contradiction, then that would be proof it is in fact not a contradiction, since for it to be contradictory you'd need it to be imagined and not-imagined at the same time. so saying you imagine it, means that by definition whatever you imagine isn't currently contradicting itself.

Well first of all anarchy doesn't have an institution which artificially creates this mismatch of incentives, so even if half the people are corrupt there's no instiution that they could take advantage of. (Also since no one can openly state they advocate evil, all incentives of institutions that provide services must be tailored toward rewarding good and punishing evil, so you will inevidable have a society which is full of strong incentives to stay good, even if you're corrupt) The other thing, where you're saying that one can have an active moral code that includes NAP AND have a government doesn't work logically, since government is always violating the NAP. That would be like saying, we can have a society full of peopl who don't initiate force, and then use that as an argument to say that, sicne people don't use force, we can use that as the basis to make the us of force finally work in a way that is benefitial to all. Maybe I miss the logical link here, but currently this makes no sense to me in the way you formulated it (or the way I understand it). Meaning, that whenever people have accepted that a behvaiour which previously was called "good" "normal" "healthy" "moral" has stopped being called that and justified by most people, no one could ever go back on a large scale and convince people of the opposite. Examples would be: Infanticide, slavery, beating of women, dictatorships, monarchies (divine right of kings), rule of aristocracy or church, forcibly marry people without their consent, forbiding divorce despite abuse, spousal abuse, giving women the right to vote. Basically, when people see that government is immoral and evil (or basically,when they see that having a badge doesn't give anyone the right to kill you) then how on earth would anyone ever conceivable convince people back on a large scale?

there are so many implicit assumptions on those few sentences, could you make them all explicit and provide reasons for them being true? Cause it makes them hard to debate when they're all hidden and I honestly don't feel like doing much digging

I don't know the details of the empirisit philosophy, so you're asking the wrong guy here I accept that contradictions don't exist (contradictions being claiming that X=non-X)and I try to derive anything else from that. Now IF an emprisist would come and ask me to show him "evidence" for the validity of non-contradiction I first would have to ask back what he means with "evidence" then before trying to provide it. Or simply point out that by using non-contradictory symbols to communicate (and rejecting meaningless ones) he already accpets that anyway (or if he doesn't there would not be a way to communicate that, so a debate without mutual accpetance of noncontradiction is never going to take place anyway)

@Arius: maybe you should tell me then what the difference is between "meaningless" and "illogical". The way I use the term "illogical" I take it to mean "self-contradictory" which is imo the same as meanigless (describing something as being X and non-X is imo meaningless), so I don't see the relevant difference that you're trying to make here. These are two different statements. So please either correct the first or direct your critique of my cirique towards your first statement to the correct place. Most obivuos difference being that the idea behind lying is that the person in question does NOT know its a lie, which is why you can expect him to believe it This is also incorrect. The fact of CORRECTING someone is implying that truth is the goal, therefore making statements based on reason and evidence UPB in regards to the context of an argument/debate. You can't have preferences without a goal and your goal was stated as "being expected to be believed" and clearly if your a skilled lier that goal than just as well be achieved by false statemtns than true ones, therefore making it incrorect to claim truth being preferable IF you simply want to be believed. I think most of our argument we're currently having can be tracked back to how we differ in that point.

The point is that preference only makes sense when there is a goal given. now within a debate the goal is given (truth) so lying is non-preferable. Outside the debate no such goal exist therefore no universal preference can be applied there regarding telling truth or not.

OK, so I'm guessing if an Empiricist were to ask you for evidence of the existence of the Non-Aggression Principle, you would NOT try to present any evidence of the Principle to his fleshly eye---instead, you would present evidence of the Principle to his mind's eye, that is, you would describe the Principle to him, which would include giving reasons and explanations for its existence right? And this is because reasons and explanations cannot be seen with the physical eye, only the mind's eye, correct? Actually, this is not correct. It's not even close to correct. Its meanigless and nonsensical. You arbitrarily invent concepts to "explain" something for which there is already an explanation without these ideas. Furthermore, even IF you would want to use the concepts as an explanation, this doesn't mean there any more real than if I inveted flying invisible mini-angels to explain gravity.

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting spending weeks on end looking at them. /emoticons/emotion-2.gif That would get a bit dry! My broader point though was that a lot has been said and thought about these issues. Just because we might not agree with scholars' ultimate conclusions doesn't mean we can't get a lot out of their work. I personally would like to see Stef map out the economics/philosophy landscape in detail (rather than largely dismissing it), and then show where his work fits in: how it relates to and differs from other theories. Right now I think he keeps his work so separate from the rest of philosophy, that someone who has just discovered philosophy through his stuff doesn't have a good point of reference for approaching the rest of the field, or debating with others. I'm not sure I agree here. I listened to quite some podcasts, where he brings up different schools of philosophy (like in the podcasts on metaphysics and epistemology) and explains his critique of them. Same with economics (though to a lesser extend, which is fine by me, since I didn't know much about economics anyway and now that I get some basic principles, I rather enjoy analysing other schools on my own ) But I sure remember having heard a lot of podcasts about other models of though and the critiques of them

Here again we arrive at that same problem. If false is sometimes preferable to true, then why are you disagreeing with me? If my argument is wrong (false), this is one of those times when false is better. If my argument is right (true), this is one of those times when true is better. If this isn't one of those times when the preferability of truth works in my favor, then the preferability of truth always works in my favor. Because this is one of those times when both false and true are better than each other, you should believe everything I say no matter what... See how all that just fell apart? The performance of correcting an argument or making an empirical statement that someone else ought to believe ("Bob is at his house") pre-supposes a universal preference for truth. True and false are such low-level concepts that it is pretty much impossible to argue against true or for false. In fact, I'm pretty sure that "for" means "is true" and "against" means "is false". My point is, even if you make a false statement, you still want the other person to believe it is true. In the act of making the false statement, you're betting on the other person preferring truth. That is, you are demonstrating a non-preference for truth, while counting on someone else having a preference for truth. It doesn't universalize. The universal is either everyone has a preference for truth or everyone has a preference for false. If everyone, somehow, has a preference for false, then no one should believe anything anyone else says (and lying successfully is impossible). If everyone has a preference for true, then people accept correction from each other when a false statement is made. As demonstrated, I reject the "sometimes" condition because argumentation breaks-down during its application. You're confusing things. Your statement was "If you are going to make a statement, which you expect anyone else to believe, it ought not be false" Which is not true, since you can expect people to believe false statements just as well. IF I'm correcting you I show a universal preferrence for truth, that's true. But that only means, that if I lie to someone I'm not really concerned of correcting him or having a debate with him. So every situation that isn't an argument/correction, that standard isn't applicable. (or you need to establish another implicitly true standard, which so far you haven't as far as I can tell.) Also, I don't see how you can say that my contradiction simply has "no truth value", because it self-contradicts (so it basically shouldn't matter), but when you come up with a similar scenario then it suddenly matters and goes a proof that your scenario is the right one. I think you make the basic mistake of having a UPB for a certain context and then apply it to every other context (even if it doesn't make sense there), that's like saying "Using mathematical symbols is UPB when doing math, so we should talk in mathematical symbols" (yeah, that's a bit of an extreme example, but just to show the principle at work) Like "if you debate your show a universal preference for truth, therefore you should prefer truth in every other instance as well". I don't see how that would follow

The only proposed society which IS based on moral principles is AnCap, so you really can't say the same about "any society" imo. To answer another thing, the reason why states can't stay small is the mismatch of incentives to make it larger. One guy can make millions by stealing one cent from everyone through a new regulation/tax, so he has an incentive to work, say 1000 hours till he gets it, but all the people who would lose the cent, don't really have an icnentive to work 1000 hours in protest just to not lose that one cent. That's the reason why governments never stay small. Also I don't remember a point in history where a moral revolution has ever reversed itself (which seems to be an argument here), could you point to one?

yes, an actual, completely non-tangible immaterial existence as a thought inside my head. Or you could probably call it an attribute of my brain. like "green" has an actual existence as an attribute of colour within certain materials.

Well that's my clumsy way of saying what Stef calls self-defeating arguments. If the action of making the argument contradicts the content of the argument. If the truth is, that I don't want to tell the truth, then the act of telling the truth contradicts the content of what I say, and if I say it, then it can't be true, since saying the truth is opposing it being true, so there is going to be a contradiction regardless. Imagine this. I don't want to tell the truth and say "This sentence is showing my preference of not telling the truth to you" can the sentence stand logically? But then lying can also be preferable, since I expect people to believe me if I'm lying to them as well (and as long as they don't realize I'm lying they will believe it probably or at least not with less probability than if I told them the truth). The only contradiction that can arise, is if I want to truthfully tell them that I am lying to them(like in the sentence above).

I'm not sure you got my point. If I'm in a sitaution where I can't have a non-self-contradictory option of my action being in accordance with reality, why should I chose one over the other? Or why is telling truth better than acting truth?Also since UPB is always only valid within a certain context, what is the context in which you claim that making true statements is always preferable?

well, I usually use it as a term denoting the attribute of the category which encompasses all other categories.But I like to differentiate between "thought in my head" and "actual tangible object in the world" So in regards to the NAP I'd answer "It exists as an idea in my head but not as something tangible in the world"

as all epistemological debates, it depends on how you define "exist".

but the reason all the NAP-violating behaviours are UPB violations are because part of their definition is that they are against the preferences of others.The problem I have is that if you say it is preferable that statements are true (i.e. in accordance with reality) and my reality at the moment is that I really don't want to let the other person know the truth, then making a true statement is self-contradctory, since prefering to make a true claim is against my preference of not making the claim, either my action of making the claim is not true to my reality or my claim about reality is not true, but there will be a falsehood there regardless.So I don't see why I should logically choose one falsehood over the other.Or to put it in a dialogue way: "I really don't want to tell you the truth that I don't want to tell you the truth." Making this claim is self-contradictory so it can't be UPB to make this claim.

I think the basic thing to remember is that its an arbitrary distinction. It doesn't describe a distinct object (like a cup or a tree) but simply an arbitrary part of a land. That would be like drawing a line on my table and calling one side Bob and the other Doug. Sure it's a valid descirption, but it doesn't create any new actually existing entities.

I think I see what you mean. But I still would argue that you can't make a claim that truth is universally preferable (meaning always and in every situation), since there doubtlessly are situations in which you don't prefer to tell the truth, claiming its universally preferable doesn't work. (Taking the murderer asking for directions for instance there telling/not telling the truth is diametrically opposed, so how could that be universal?) (btw, I might have accidently misclicked on the "report abuse" button when I wanted to "quick reply", IN CASE AN ADMIN READS THIS: MY BAD, SORRY, NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG )

Arius: you run into some problems with that argument. 1) using the word "false", that doesn't differntiate between an honest mistke/error and deceit. so you're saying to make an error is immoral. Since there's no way to measure the internal state, whether a statement is honest or deceitful can never be determined, so it doesn't fall under UPB, because it is not objective measurable behaviour.2) if you're saying people should tell true statements (il.e. telling truth is UPB). leaving aside the "true"-part (for the reason posted above), what you're implying is, people are obliged to respond to questions from others, people should always respond to others etc. creating an unchosen positive obligation.3) there's more than one way to be truthful: if I ask you for your password on your bankaccoutn you can a) give it to me b) tell me "No, I don't want to give that to you" c) respond with "I find it rather rude you asked me that" etc. which means you'd need another principle of which of these are now to be universally preferred.I mean I completely agree that lying is NOT UPB, but telling the truth is not UPB either. But neither is breaking NAP, so it's not immoral or unethical or "bad" to lie whenver you want to.

I agree Annabelle, I pretty much enjoyed looking up those terms and things (my first crash with Keynesianism), though I have to say (and maybe I'm just being arrogant here) that after 5 Minutes I lost most of my interest in it, as it seemed clear that a lot fo key-terms used were being vague or non-sensical, so following the links for weeks wasn't for me.

Well, no unchosen positive obligations: you don't owe anyone to tell them the truth as you see it.I personally also differentiate being honest, to telling other people honestly what I think and feel. There were often times, when I honestly didn't WANT to tell other people the truth, because I didn't like them or wasn't comfortable, or I didn't have the time/interest, didn't enjoy it etc. so in a situation where I have to chose between being honest towards my feelings/preferences and not telling other people honestly about it, I'd always chose being honest towards myself. Else it would just be bullying myself for th sake of other people, which is surely not preferrable and doesn't make one happy anyway.Arius: I also don't quite see how lying fits into UPB, as UPB only measures behaviour but not intentions. And the action of "speaking words" can not be made into a universal commandment