STer

You might want to check out this thread, especially the video in the first post.

It's strange. I tried my link and it didn't work first. Then I searched around, found the article. Same link. Clicked the link another time, then it worked. It's the right link, but something weird goes on with it. Anyway, the title of the thread is the title of the story so you can just google that exactly and you'll find it.

Thanks for posting this LovePrevails. It is great to hear Stefan's thoughts about this topic directly. He says in the video that this topic is essential and we agree there. I think it requires a lot more discussion because views on this topic underlie so much of everything else in the discussions that go on at FDR. I would like to see a lot more talk about entities, instances, concepts, emergent properties and so on because, like Stefan, I see this as a defining issue. I don't disagree with a lot of Stefan's main points in this video. He mainly points out that often people take characteristics that only apply to individuals and try to ascribe them to groups. This can be used to manipulate people in many ways. I agree completely. It's understandable why this aspect of things is so important to him to speak about. Much of his suffering came from being born into a family and culture he does not agree with and being pressured to match their concepts even though these concepts did not fit him. This is something many of us can relate to. The problem is that he has ignored the other side of this. Traits that do belong to higher level systems should neither be ascribed to individuals nor should they be simply ignored. I don't deny the special aspects of the individual level. I simply also see the special aspects of the other levels. They all have properties that do not obtain on other levels. Stefan and many anarcho-capitalists focus almost exclusively on the traits at the individual level and refuse to pay respect to the traits on other levels or try to minimize their importance, preferring to act as if the individual level is primary and everything else is just an extension of that. There are a number of things that I think, at least from my understanding of what he said, are either incorrect or incomplete in the video that are telling. 1) He seems to be saying that since aliveness is a trait that inheres at the individual level, the other levels are not also important. But aliveness is not the only trait we care about. It's an important one and for that reason the individual level should never be ignored. But there are other characteristics that matter too and some of them inhere at other levels. 2) He seems to be saying that groups that often involve proximity are based only on proximity. But many concepts involve more than just proximity, referring to a certain type of relationship among the parts in addition to that proximity. 3) He focuses on physical attachment, while ignoring communication. Things can have no major direct physical attachment, yet still influence each other profoundly through various forms of communication. In fact, communication alone, without physical attachment, can go as far as to change our brains and brain chemistry and hormones. (this is how psychotherapy, which Stefan promotes greatly, works). 4) He focuses on an object's identity to the exclusion of focusing on its behavior. He says that if we take an instance out of a group it is part of, the thing itself still has the same identity. But what he fails to comment on is that while it may have the same identity, it can act very differently. Isn't that the reason he encourages DeFooing? Because even though you may have the same physical identity after leaving, getting out of the system has enormous effects on the person's behavior nonetheless. This is a sort of case where he seems to me to play both sides. On one hand, he advocates leaving an abusive family system because of the huge impact being away from that family system can have. And then on the other, he downplays the level of influence of the system by pointing out that even if you leave you still have the same basic identity, as if that is the only relevant characteristic. How can you both downplay the importance of higher-level systems and simultaneously advocate that it is crucial to leave unhealthy systems because of how damaging they are? I think a lot of everything I point out here is reflected in one place. Internal Family Systems Therapy is emphatic that different situations arise from different levels of human systems and must be dealt with at different levels. The author even goes so far as to say that therapists who can only deal with the individual level must seek further training. Yet Stefan took this and reduced it down to the MeCosystem. He took an all-levels system and reduced it down to the individual level, ignoring all the other levels. I think it is symbolic of how he and many anarcho-capitalists attempt to do the same when considering the world as a whole. Armitage, you keep advocating for more focus on sociology rather than just economics. But it seems to me the field more important than either one of these is ecology.

Relevance in which context? The context I'm talking about is the rigid focus on the individual that underlies many anarcho-capitalists' approaches. Anarcho-capitalists often try to extrapolate from individual to group behavior. For example, they will say that if individuals one-by-one live a certain way, then this means society will become a way that reflects that. But emergent properties mean that how society as a whole acts is not reducible to how each individual acts. It means some issues have to be dealt with at the group level, not the individual level (and some need to be dealt with below the individual level, such as at the cellular level.) Again, the important point is that the individual level is not the only one with unique properties and special characteristics and many problems either cannot be solved or can't be solved optimally at the individual level. Yet this is what most anarcho-capitalists seem to try to do. I understand this can be hard to accept. It seems like a truism that if each person acts a certain way, then society as a whole becomes that way. But that is simply not how systems work. The reason they are called "complex" systems is because they are not simply reducible to the lower level that way. Also what do you mean by "your" emergent behavior? I just heard Stefan the other day make a huge point to interrupt someone when they referred to "your philosophy" while speaking to him. He reminded them he doesn't have "his" philosophy. There is just philosophy and he was sharing philosophical ideas. I have to make the same point here. Emergent behavior is not "mine." It is a well established fact of nature. If you doubt it, let's go to the simplest examples. At one point, some people actually believed that the components of a substance had to share the properties of that substance. So, for instance, they thought that since water is wet, it must be made up of parts that are also wet. But this is false. Hydrogen and oxygen are not wet. But they come together in a certain way and a wet substance is created. Again, I'd like to establish if you are saying you deny emergent properties exist or not? If you deny they exist, we can talk about that. If you agree they exist, then we can move on to further discussion of the implications of that if you wish.

You still aren't accurately reflecting what emergent properties are. It's not surprising because they are very tricky to grasp. How is it that something can be more than the sum of its parts? And yet we know they are. Just stop and consider that for a second without any further judgment. You can have a group of things and together they are more than the sum of their parts. The group does things that cannot be explained even when you take into account each individual in it. Soak that in. And that isn't even a remotely controversial statement. That's something almost boringly well-established. You keep trying to reduce emergent properties to something more direct. But it isn't direct. There is simply no way to get the whole from looking at the sum of its parts. Where you went with it in the end of your post supports my point that this is not about the discussion itself, but the fact that anarcho-capitalists don't like the implications of emergent properties. So you veered off the topic of whether emergent properties exist - the fact that systems have properties that cannot be reduced to the sum of their parts - and started simply arguing against something you think might be an implication of that if it's true. The existence of emergent properties does not depend on whether you are comfortable with the implications of it. If you agree that emergent properties exist, we can then talk about what the implications might be. But first we need to decide if you're on the same page with their existence. If you don't agree that they exist and you think that systems' behavior can be reduced to the choices of the parts that make them up individually, then we simply disagree and I think you are disagreeing with the overwhelming facts of science.

This all comes down to the very nature of emergent properties. Again, emergent properties cannot be reduced to the sum of their parts. That is why studying each individual person and their choices in a market still can't tell you what that market will do. This is something that I think really upsets the anarcho-capitalist worldview if they base it on a form of rigid sanctity of the individual human. It is just not possible to predict market behavior based on the sum of individual choices. A market is more than just a bunch of individual choices, because the choices are in a constant stream of mutual feedback. There are many reasons why systems like markets are more than the sum of their parts. But just one of them, to show why the individual choices aren't enough to consider, is that individuals make different choices when in relation to others in a system like a market than they do elsewhere. The reason we call it a market is because not only does it consist of a bunch of individuals, but a bunch of individuals in a specific arrangement related to each other. That arrangement matters and changes the choices made and their consequences. If the very same group of people is arranged in a different way, we no longer call it a market. If they are arranged one way we may call it a family. If they are arranged another way, we call it a political party. These things very much matter because the choices do not come out the same in these different arrangements. In a courtroom, whether someone acted alone or as part of a group is very much relevant. The influence of others in the group is often considered a mitigating factor or an exacerbating factor. Also, there are specific crimes, like conspiracy, that distinguish acting as an individual from acting as part of a group and the cases are different depending on which it is. That is because the law does, in fact, recognize these differences between isolated individual vs. group action. Assigning properties to any system, whether an individual human or a group or anything else, that it does not have is problematic. But ignoring properties it does have is also problematic. I believe anarcho-capitalists far too often ignore the properties that systems other than individual humans do have. And I think they ignore them because it's very uncomfortable to admit the implications of that - that our conscious individual choices are not the full story of why we do what we do. An important example is the ability of social level predictions. People can predict very well many large-scale outcomes without even interviewing any individuals. I can predict with almost total certainty that Utah will vote Republican in the next presidential election. I didn't talk to anyone in Utah about their choices. I just know that the population of Utah, as a group, has a certain property which is a Republican-leaning bent. I'd be willing to bet you a huge amount of money on that prediction even without knowing a single person in Utah and how they make individual decisions.

Agreed. But at the same time, if the family does something as a group, you can't just look at each individual for answers (or, frankly, even if only one member does something while enmeshed within the family system). You have to look at how the relationships between the people leads to things that none of them alone would do. (This is why therapists recognize that some problems are best dealt with in group or family therapy rather than individual therapy and vice-versa, which is actually a huge point emphasize deeply in IFS). So the point is that with complex systems made up of multiple levels, each with emergent properties, you have to look at the influences going both up and down the levels together to really understand the functioning of the system. It's certainly true that a high level system, like a market, can be ascribed false properties. But that isn't because it doesn't have properties irreducible to its parts. Some people just incorrectly name what those properties are. Markets do act in ways as a whole that none of the individuals in them would act if acting in isolation. That's why whole market behavior is almost impossible to predict even if you knew all the individuals in that market. Markets do have emergent properties. Again, you're right that sometimes, to understand, you have to look at the individuals. Heck, sometimes to understand you have to go even deeper and look at one region of someone's brain or their hormones - as some scientists do. But other times, it's the opposite and to understand why individuals are doing what they do, you have to go up to the higher level and look at the relationships and influences going on throughout the system. Anarcho-capitalists tend to have a bias for looking at individuals to explain larger systems, but not understanding that you sometimes have to look at the larger system to explain the individual behavior just as much. And they also tend to ignore that sometimes you have to go to an even smaller level than the individual to understand. It's all levels, all interacting. And the tough part is deciding in a given situation which levels are most relevant. And sometimes it's more than one. There are a number of things I disagree with here that go to the heart of what complex systems and emergent properties teach us. 1) Trees are also separate from each other in space the way you're thinking of it. Yet when they are close enough, they can grow roots that share soil and interface in many ways, etc. The outputs they make can influence the whole area so they are all connecting in certain ways. Humans share the air, the land, our inputs and outputs affect each other constantly. There is an interconnected dynamic going on in the space between us at all times, even if it isn't obvious to the eye. 2) People do, in fact, remove some body parts. There are transplants and so on. Does the organ in one body function the same as in another body? Or is it changed based on which person it is in at the time? 3) People who are part of a system and then separate do not necessarily function the same as they would have had they not been part of that system. They are very much influenced by the system the developed in and the systems they become part of. Of course, that's exactly why we worry so much about abuse in the family - because that individual is not separate from the system and cannot just easily go his own way as if the larger system had no influence. It takes tremendous work to undo the influence of that previous system and hardly anyone ever is able to do that without some helpful influence from another healthier system. (IFS refers to these as constraining and sustaining systems, respectively) I could probably write a lot more. But all I'm trying to show is the deep interconnections between these multiple levels, which I think contrasts with how anarcho-capitalists try to fetishize the individual human being level and disregard the emergent properties higher levels have and the fact that there are countless levels both higher and lower than the individual human level that have influence. There are things we can learn and predict at each level that we can't from any other level. The individual human level is not unique that way. The individual human level does have some special, unique properties. But so do many other levels.

This way of thinking is so key to anarcho-capitalism. And yet I still don't understand why people who use it don't quickly see the flaw in it, as displayed below: "Trees do not exist. It is just a collection of cells" "People do not exist. It is just a collection of cells" "Cells do not exist. It is just a collection of organelles and membranes, etc." "Cells, organelles and membranes do not exist. It is just a collection of atoms." And so on. The point being that it is really meaningless to debate whether emergent levels of things "exist" or don't "exist." To do so is to imply that only the absolute fundamental level of matter is relevant. This failure to accept the nature of emergent properties and holons is, I believe, one of the most enormous flaws in the thinking of many anarcho-capitalists. I think an ecologist would say that there is a big difference between a forest and a random collection of trees. It all has to do with emergent properties. A bunch of isolated trees act one way. But when they relate in such a way as to be called a forest, the forest takes on properties of its own that are irreducible to the individual trees. Just as a family acts differently than any of the members would act separately were they not part of the family. The relationships, which cause us to give the group a name, actually change the nature of how things function.

That's pretty judgmental from the person arguing with his inner critic on YouTube! Just playing, I enjoyed it. The answer is precisely none. It's just called imagination and humor.

Yeah, maybe instead you'll need to create your own, separate forum where every user on the forum is a different one of your parts. Your Self can be the moderator.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ATHEIST_MEGACHURCH

Next you'll be setting up different accounts on the forum so the different parts can post from their perspective in each thread Actually that would be kind of interesting.

This was really interesting and entertaining. I love the layers of meta where you're discussing the implications of posting the video itself. Perhaps you can turn this into a one-man show - or rather a multi-one-man show - and go on the road. Nice way to introduce audiences to IFS

Alright. So with that, if anyone is interested in the actual topic of the thread, feel free to return to it.

Nathan, I'm convinced you're projecting a lot of your own issues and emotions onto this thread. This forum has moderators. If you believe anything is going on in this thread that is problematic or against the rules, you can contact a moderator and they will take whatever action is needed. As far as I know you aren't a moderator - and even if you were, you wouldn't be acting as one in this way - yet you are trying to moderate the thread for some reason and dictate what should be said and who should participate. And on top of all of that, you are then acting as if I am having some issues that need your help. I assure you I am doing fine and am not in need of your help. If I feel I am at any time, I'll let you know. If you are actually in need of some help or someone to talk to, I hope that instead of acting out by inserting yourself as a de-facto thread moderator, you'll instead simply express your feelings and needs and ask for that help.

Do you find your level of concern over this at all odd? If you don't like the thread or my viewpoints, you are free not to participate. You've even exercised your right to tell people you think they should not engage, in fact multiple times. At this point, if people agree with you and don't want to participate in the thread, they can choose not to. Nobody is being forced to participate. But what you're doing now seems to go beyond that. It's as if you're patrolling the thread trying to disrupt participation repeatedly. I think that you've expressed your opinion on the thread and my viewpoints and at this point should respect people to make their own decisions about participating or not. This is, after all, a forum focused on individual liberty.

I don't believe what you just said bears much relevance to what I actually said, which differs significantly from what you just portrayed it as. But, thank you for your opinion.

If you think "self-defense" is not a concept, I don't think there's much more to discuss. Hopefully you realize the "non-aggression principle" is also a concept. And when concepts you care about lead to physical consequences, you say they are now no longer just concepts. When other concepts lead to physical consequences, you still call them "not real." Anyway thanks for the discussion. I think I see where we both stand and there isn't much more to say on it. Not sure why your reaction sounds so grim, talking about "making it worse" and so on. It's a forum discussion. I am confident we'll all come out of this intact. I'm not sure if you, even now, could state what my argument actually was. The amount of straw-manning in this thread has been quite significant. If you can state what my argument was correctly, I'm happy to talk with you about that argument. What I won't do is try to debate responses to arguments other than the ones I made. So please post your understanding of what I even argued in this thread. If you can accurately put forth what my argument was, we can talk about it. If not, I won't get into the discussion until we're clear on what the argument I made actually was. The bare minimum for having a discussion about my argument is accurately understanding what my argument was (which by the way, is something I determine, not you. You don't get to tell me what my argument is. I am the one who gets to say what my argument is). So first just post your understanding of what my argument was. And there isn't any point continuing beyond that until we agree on what it was so try to keep it concise and just state my argument if you can for now.

So no "concept" is worth killing people over...but "self-defense," which is a concept, is reasonable to kill someone for? Thanks for your kind words. I have no problem with honest disagreement. But sometimes I feel like some of the people in this thread are responding as if we disagree when we're not even talking about the same topic.

Oh well the feeling is mutual. Please ignore Nathan's attempts to derail the conversation.

Thank you for a very reasoned and intelligent response. I'm not a biologist so I fully admit I may be misusing the specific technical term "subspecies." I've read people using that term in reference to this topic. But the term is also sometimes used by laymen in a less than technical way so the line gets blurred. And it's important to note that I wasn't saying that some of those without empathy/conscience are definitely a separate subspecies. I was only saying that the difference is serious enough that some have considered that. So: 1) Perhaps subspecies isn't the right term, but there is a fundamental division, based on their different brain structure/function and life strategy that deserves a different name 2) Even if ultimately the distinction doesn't meet the threshhold for a division of that sort, my point is that it's close enough to merit consideration. The important message is that, in practice, people like this are very different than other people in more than surface ways. And that needs to be accounted for if you want to have a healthy society and protect yourself and those you care about. And it means that when people talk about one single "human nature," as discussed in this thread, I question the wisdom of that. If there are at least two almost contradicting life strategies being played out by different people based on significant differences in brain structure/function, it's possible their "nature" is not the same. So maybe we have to admit there are at least two different fundamental human natures. Yes we are talking about taxonomy here. To me, taxonomy is a scientific topic. All sciences use classification schemes and the people best equipped to devise them are those trained in those fields because they understand which traits merit being defined as fundamental. It's not completely objective, in that it requires definition, but some definitions make far more meaningful sense than others. To a layman, something on the surface may appear worthy of being fundamental to taxonomy because they don't understand how the system as a whole works. But a biologist will realize that that is actually just a distraction or even an expression of some deeper difference (like something specific in the genes). So the point is that whether through actual biological categorizing or just by being aware, understanding that psychopaths have a fundamentally different value system and life strategy stops people from making foolish assessments of situations. This understanding is crucial to accurately diagnosing what is going on in the world, in our communities and in our families. And it sheds light on how questionable the notion of a single "human nature" might be. It shows us that when we are dealing with other people, if we are going to think in terms of "human nature" at all, we sometimes have to ask about someone with whom we are interacting "Which human nature does this person have? The one I have? Or a different one?" P.S. Think Free - With a little research I turned up this term "ecotype". Perhaps this is closer to what I'm talking about. The page says that "some scientists consider them "taxonomically equivalent to subspecies". This is true in the sense that ecotypes can be sometimes classified as subspecies and the opposite." But it seems to be more about groups within a species that are adapted to different environmental conditions. This is really what I'm getting at. Psychopaths and those with related disorders live right alongside everyone else. But they are adapted to different conditions and have very different life strategies than the rest. And these groups may well have co-evolved as they both reinforce and conflict with each other in different ways.

Oh man, can you imagine trying to edit a Zizek book. It would be ruled cruel and unusual punishment. Well since you start your post by saying you won't be responding anymore, I see no point in taking the time to carefully go through this and respond to it. Suffice it to say, I feel the same, that you don't understand the topic of the discussion. I think we're having two separate discussions that just overlap a little and are talking right past each other. If you decide you want to continue, then I'll read all this and respond. But otherwise I am not going to put in the time to go through it all.

If your definition of "real" excludes concepts, then the next question is "So what?" The fact is that things that are, by your definition, "not real" still have huge influence in the world on every one of us. So to me it seems an irrelevant debate whether you want to use the word "real" to describe them or not. What matters isn't whether they are "real" by your definition, but whether they have effects that we care about. When you post a podcast in the thread, would you mind stating specifically what its relevance is to the thread (ie: what exact message or lesson in that particular podcast relates to what is being discussed?)

My view, which I've made sort of the core idea of my writings on this subject, is that we have a volatile mixture of two things: 1) Technology keeps progressing, which allows more extreme helpful and harmful gadgets and tools. 2) Society is filled with a certain percentage of people of limited conscience/empathy (due to various conditions) and another certain percentage of people who are "hijackable" by those people. Two main views seem to have emerged: 1) Dangerous people are around with access to increasingly dangerous technology. We need a government with enough strength to stop them because nobody else could. 2) Dangerous people are around with access to increasingly dangerous technology. We must never have a government so that these people cannot get enough strength by becoming part of it because then they would be unstoppable. As I've phrased it many times, is government the protector against dangerous people or the concentration of dangerous people? Clearly on FDR people lean toward the latter. But I think it's really not that simple. I think you can find cases on both sides. There are endless examples of abusive governments where terrible people get access to so much power and cause horrific outcomes. But there are also certainly examples where governments have saved many lives by stopping rogue non-state actors hell-bent on doing terrible destruction for a variety of motives. This is a real stumper. On one hand, you definitely need to keep these dangerous people out of any entity with so much power as the government. On the other, with the level of technology available, it doesn't take many of these people to become powerful enough that only a very strong entity with a similar level of power can stop them. What I think is that the focus is too much on government vs. non-government and too little on "How do we identify which people are dangerous?" The technology in that field - for example, the increasing ability to notice differences in brain scans of areas associated with empathy and conscience - is fascinating. But even that technology is scary if in the wrong hands. So it's quite a complex dilemma we're in here with the issue of the combination of increasingly powerful technology and government as protector vs. danger. Zizek is a really interesting guy. Every time I listen to him speak, I learn some entertaining quote or story or idea. But if you think PJ is good at "word salad," Zizek is like the double extra large word salad. Or maybe I'm just not smart enough to figure out what he's saying half the time. But I think it's more the word salad.

Yes but many of the other greatest tragedies in mankind have been allowed by technological "progress," as well, which has led to horrible weaponry and so on. How can lobbyists pay off the government to keep making money if there is no government to pay off? Are you saying there are groups of rich people using private armies to implement their policies? If so, that would be great evidence to put forth to show not all the problems are state-caused or driven by corrupt people wielding the state. Please post examples of that if you have them. I believe that when PJ and Zeitgeisters say "structural violence" they are not talking about violence committed by entities that have a structure. I think they are talking about "violence" that emerges out of the structure of society itself. I mean even the human body has a structure so you could say a person punching another person is "structural violence" if it meant what you are putting forth. But I'm pretty sure they mean what I said in my second sentence instead. I would like to hear your response, though, to his point. Time and again, it seems you are putting forth problems with things like money, but all the problems you list come from the state-related forms of it. Of course, the money has nothing backing it up and so it is paper and all the things you said. But that's because the government decoupled the money from having any backing. I feel like the folks at FDR and the Zeitgeisters actually agree on so much more than they realize. But what keeps seeming to get in the way is that the Zeitgeisters point out all the problems and the FDR people then point to how every single one of those problems involves state interference. Your response can't just be "oh trust me, it would still happen without a government." You have to give examples of how it happens without a government. Personally, I'm not saying you're wrong and it couldn't happen without a government. I'm reserving judgment. But Zeitgeisters really need to give a lot of examples of how these things are corrupt even separate from government influence.