aeonicentity

From wikipidia "In the philosophy of consciousness, sentience can refer to the ability of any entity to have subjective perceptual experiences, or as some philosophers refer to them, "qualia".[1] This is distinct from other aspects of the mind and consciousness, such as creativity,intelligence, sapience, self-awareness, and intentionality (the ability to have thoughts that mean something or are "about" something). Sentience is a minimalistic way of defining consciousness, which is otherwise commonly used to collectively describe sentience plus other characteristics of the mind." Even mentaly retarted humans posess capacity to reason or express complex thought (greater than that of an animal). This being said, Intelegence isn't what I"m talking about, the ability to posess non-instinctual empathy, the ability to supress instinct in favor of reason, these are prequisites. And simply because some people aren't utilizing their sentience doesn't mean they aren't capable of it, and therefore covered under the NAP Fundamentally what matters is the potential for sentience, which is why children (who may not be sentient at the moment, its hard to tell since they can't talk at birth) are protected by the NAP. We HAVE to draw this distinction, becuse otherwise any number of behaviors which we don't consider unethical (and reasonably so) become problematic. After all, we can't make non-agression pacts with dogs. Nor can a Dog 'work' for you because he can't voulenterally accept the job. Even if he did, you couldn't morally enforce a contract with the thing because its too dumb to understand what it agreed to in the first place. Because of this you couldn't own pets of any variety, since pet ownernship would be the moral equivallent of slavery. If you think the NAP extends to animals, you have to go ALL THE WAY. Food would just be the beginning of this madness. Perhaps consiousness is a better defining line of the NAP, and I"m willing to agree that perhaps the line I draw is the wrong one (perhaps simply being human is the best line to draw, although blob creatures from the planet Zork might disagree), but a line must be drawn to divide humans from animals, because otherwise, the NAP simply becomes a system in which you can't do anything, because everything has rights.

By hitting, I mean in the kind of brotherly way men might punch a friend's arm for being a dick, or wrestle with their brother just because. Sentience is defined as the ability to have subjective perceptual experiences. This eliminates the ability to define "feeling pain" as a classification of sentience, since many animals/plants feel 'pain'. The ability to process one's emotions into a higher more abstract concept than "Fire hot, stay away" is the definition of sentience. For examle, using the issue of fire, an animal without sentience wouldn't get any further than "Fire hot, stay away". A being with sentience would process this as "Fire is hot, however, one must accept a degree of danger to enable one to aquire the advantages of hot fire. If one controls fire, it isn't bad, but uncontrolled fire is." This is a great mark of sentience. Sentience implies self-awareness. They not only can internalize the pain, but process that into a greater understanding of self. Interesting tests exist showing self-awareness in dolphins, but most other animals lack this trait. the NAP doesn't have to be reciprocal, but it does have to be with sentient beings. Trying to aply the NAP to things which aren't beings, or aren't sentient doesn't work. We don't apply the NAP to machines, because they're not beings. They're also not sentient (yet). Machines are in many regards more complex than animals. They can percieve harm to themselves (car airbags, coolant leaks, external damage, etc) they some times even respond to these probelms. But we dont' refrain from dismantling a machine or use it's labor because it's not a being, and its not sentient. This also applies to animals and plants. they respond to external threats, they percieve harm, but they aren't sentient (yet) because they cannot process this pain into a higher psychological archetecture. This idea that feeling pain somehow equates to sentience is pervasive throughout psychological literature because its much easier to detect than the complex ability to reason. I think this is an example of lazy scientists, and retarded new-age philosophers that hole up in their ivory towers.

Typically speaking there tends to be a certain age bracket and psychological profile that fits women who enter into prostitution. While some of this tends to be a result of its illegality, even places where its legal, this tends to hold true: 1) Participants in prostitution tend to be people in their sexual prime 2) Prostitutes tend to have no ethical qualms about sexual relationships, and tend to have a relatively calloused view of the importance of sex when compared to non-prostitutes. (that it isn't as meaningful or important.) For people to demean the value of sex, usually means that either life experiences have taught them it isn't valuable, or that they weren't instilled with specific values relating to sex as a child. I won't argue wether this is good or bad, however I will point out that this is often related to lack of good male role models. In my own personal experience with a woman invovled in porn (a kind of mass prostitution) and prostitution she did what she did because of scaring from previous sexual relationships. This early relationship trouble lead to her being highly sexually active (moreso than an average teen) and she more or less considers sex so common place that she would bang anything that asked. Its not a very far step from that kind of attitude to prostitution. If you're good at it, why not make money? While it is not universal to the profession, many women who are prostitutes consider it their most salable skill. This attitude also might be true of many women who marry.After all, marriage is simply the only trade of sex for value in our society which we allow, and this we do only because its stable and good for children.

I think fundamentally men and women both desire reproduction, and of course, the fact that we can't do it ourselves drives us nuts! Women want sex and babies without having to give up independence. Men want sex and babies without having to give up resources. This is a fundamental problem until you find someone who wants to have sex and babies with him in exchange for her independence, and a man who wants to have sex and babies with her in exchange for his resources. (this relationship can be reversed, but fundamentally this IS the relationship). Relationships which do not require the other partner to give up something are unhealthy. I'm sure every parent would like to be more independent, or have more money, but these relationships are usually one-sided and unhealthy. I think the problem here is the problem with all gender-relations. people get lost in the woods, trying to explain a specific problem with a specific partner, or fail to "double-double unthink". Its important to recognize that we invented gender roles for a reason: because they help us to establish well deliminated terms of relationships. When people try to imagine what life would be like without these gender roles, they usually just say "it would be good" without little explaination as to why it would be good. The reality is that we invented the idea that a man gives up x and a woman gives up y because the sacrifice is necessary to create a healthy relationship. Who sacrifices what is irrelevent. It seems to me though that they're especially tying why a man feels he has control over a woman's child to some kind of 'lie' or psychological issue men have. This is not the case at all. A child is just as much a man's as it is a woman's. while the woman carries the child for 9 months, and ideally raises it for the first 5-18 years, a man's responsibility is arguable more intensive: providing support for that child from infancy to his own grave is not cheep, nor is it easy. He puts work and effort into that child, and while a woman might think it's not as valuable as her contribution, that would be a lie. To remove men's rights from the choices surrounding a fetus is entirely immoral (unless that man made that child in an imorral way, i.e. rape). To be entirely honest, if someone came and stole my savings and said "well you didn't buy a house with it yet, so its O.K. that I did this!" we'd find that person a thief. But its perfectly O.K. for a woman to take a man's investment in his posterity and future and slaughter it without his consent because it hasn't quite come to fruition.

the NAP merely applies to the scope of things which are Sentient because anything else would be an unsustainable abstraction. Pain isn't a good measure, because Pain is subjective. some people find some things painful, and some things not. I hit my bro friends once in a while, i'm not violating the NAP. Some people find honesty painful (physically!) does that mean I should be dishonoest to avoid breaking the NAP? NO! Pain is NOT the measure of the aplication of the NAP. Only Sentience is a good line to draw. Your animals aren't sentient. There might be a few who are arguably so: Dolphins, possibly . I don't promote eating these animals because of that very reason. I mean, you can walk up to wild cow, and spear the damn thing with a stone spear and kill it. They're that dumb. chickens will WATCH while you murder their buddies, and keep on living like it never happened tomorrow. Pigs will eat eachother's tails untill they bleed, which is why we clip and crimp them.Some fish are so dumb, they'll snuggle your ankles. They have no rational actors. They lack sentience of any concience. They WILL eat your flesh if they're so inclined. You can feed them their entire lives and they'll still consume you as a final meal. They cannot sympathize with you (No matter how much you pretend they do when you're lonely) and they do not create concious societies of reason and thought. When they do, THEN we can talk about the NAP appling to them.

What you're really arguing is a definition of terms. This is a common mis-direction. Your conversation should be redirected by defining "society" as the statist construct that we live in. Humans live all the time , and create societies freely, except magically when taxation gets involved, god forbid you make your own NATION! You can make your own church, rotary club, or even school, but you certainly can't make a state! or a nation! While you may or may not be able to live without civilization, you certainly CAN live without the current state of affairs!

well that too dark, but I tend to give people with crazy ideas the benefit of the doubt, since I can dismiss their evil ideas as simply crazy.

While i'm not sure about your first or last questions, your second question has an easy answer: No. I don't think anyone in a libertarian or anarcho capitalist mindset could reasonably say there would never be any war. I think what you could say is that those wars would be more reasonable, fought over resources, generally be less bloodthirsty, and rarely if never fought for the personal gain of some polititcian. Self reliance does not neccissarally preclude the use of violence as a means of protection or aquisition (for needs of survival). For example, you may be a peaceful person, minding your own buisness, and someone breaks into your home. They're armed, you kill them. This scales up (After all, a war is just a big squabble between a lot of individuals). To parahprase machiavelli: Bakers and Princes quarrell for the same reasons.To paraphrase Sun Tzu: Conflict is an inevitable part of life. So always be concerened when someone comes up to you and says "My system of running the world will be totally peaceful, and there won't be any war/violence any more!" because either they haven't thought it all the way through, or they're off on cloud 9. I don't think even Steph makes claims of a world without any form of conflict, but rather a more peaceful world, preferably where conflict takes place in the market system rather than with the gun and cannon.

oh, i'm sorry, I did read your post, but I must have gotten something else out of if than you intended.

I think fundamentally it comes down to the fact that children are by nature dependent on things you do for them. For example, you have rules in the house like "Sit at the table for dinner" because you're the one who's taking the responsibility to feed the child, and damnit, you're not chasing after them to do it. However, once a child grows up enough to determine these things for themselves (Whatever phase that is depends on the child), they may choose to eat dinner outside, or at the TV, or what have you. Hopefully they'll choose to sit at the table because they like you, and enjoy your company, and value the family values you instill on them. governments on the other hand rule over functional adults (mostly) and make their rules. The argument could be made that there are people who are incapable of doing things for themselves and therefore we need government, but then we get back to the core argument, which is "do you think people are capable enough to govern themselves."the critical difference between statists and libertarians of all stripes is that by and large statists answer that question "No" and libertarians answer that question "Yes".

I think you'd just have to purchase it the way you purchase waste disposal services. here, we pay $X for a garbage can, and $Y for a recycling can that catches all. While many places in the US and around the world a different system is used, where the customer is required to separate the recycling, and if they fail the company fines them. However, As much as recycling is nice and wonderful, there's no way to force people to participate in those programs. People have to choose to participate. The reality is that many government regulations are actually the cause of plastic wrapper trash. Many items are mandated by law to be packed certain ways (for example food items).

While he certainly has the right to friends, he doesn't have an inherent right to his family internet or computer. I don't know everything about his situation, but if his mother is reasonably concerned he's misusing the family internet. If his mother reasonably believes that the internet is hurting his development as a human, I suppose it does fall to her to be responsible for her child's upbringing. While a bunch of people on the internet socializing might disagree that the internet could stunt social growth, The Mother's feelings here cannot be ruled out here. If her son buys his own internet connection (entirely possible, thank you mobile data plans!) then she certainly couldn't deny him that morally since he owns his own internet. That being said, it would be highly insensitive for this mother to deny her son the only social outlet he does have without helping him get others, or resolve the problems preventing him from real world relationships.

While the Bonobo monkey experiment sounds fascinating, I would like to read it for myself first. I'm curious because this may be an example of genetic pre-disposition to peaceful behavior, or it might be proof that socialization can create a non-violent (or more accurately a pacifist) society. I hope you understand my scientific curiosity. Can you provide links? As for your counter example with children, two things: 1) can we prove that this reaction is in absence of socialization? 2) If the reaction is indeed in absence of socialization, could it also not be possible that the child reacts to this stimulus in that way because the child is merely concerned that the action taken didn't achieve the intended result? An imperfect example might be a normal argument with some one escalating to a violent encounter resulting in injury often will end the argument, and may invoke a sympathetic response from the aggressor. IE: "I'm sorry baby, I didn't mean to hurt you!".

Zimo, you make good points on the issue of affordability and deployment. Two points: 1) The entire nuclear warfare program of the US costs less than a trillion dollars. Assuming that the money that is currently going to government goes to the free market economy, it would be entirely plausable that coalitions of voulenteerists, or even a small group of extremely wealthy people could afford to build or maintain atleast a small quantity of these weapons 2) These weapons already exist. Without some kind of pre-anarchy solution, or post anarchy destruction agreement these weapons could be simply maintained at much lower costs than building new ones. My concern with these weapons isn't that they would be used, but rather that the threat of them being used could be utilized to simply end any anarchistic society before it began, or to consolidate new governments around these threats. It is a deterrent to a stateless future, because it could possibly be the end of a stateless future, possibly before it even begins. I think the biggest concern isn't actually widespread distribution of these weapons (this actually might be the next most ideal stage after non-existence) but rather single consolidation.

well governments certainly aren't the organizations to turn to when solving this problem. In the last 100 years governments have failed an average of at least 1 time per year to prevent these weapons from being used. This problem may in fact be unsolvable, but I'm interested in hearing theories, methods, and ideas the community has.

But this then comes back around to the initial difficulty with the problem. While a rational actor in a stateless society of course would not own nuclear weapons because their only practical use is for offense against distant targets, this doesn't rule out the following problems: 1) Not all actors are rational actors. 2) Nuclear weapons DO exist, meaning that their destruction either must precede a shift to a stateless society, or that a continual program of destruction of nuclear weapons continues. 3) problem 2 could violate the non-aggression principal, unless preemptively striking against nuclear weapons with force could be justified as reasonable self-defense against self-annihilation, even if those weapons are ostensibly being held for defensive reasons. 4) Practical reasons exist for the development and ownership of nuclear weapons (asteroid deflection for example). lastly, to Wesley, while I commend you for your integrity, there are indeed situations where nuking someone might be personally beneficial to you or your DRO. Look at the benefits that came to the united states and Russia from the global arena simply by possessing these weapons. Its kind of like being the big muscle man on the block: no one fucks with you because they know you could break them in half, even though you may not want to. even in a society where the INITIATION of force is immoral, the specter of force will still remain a major reason why people will cooperate with you (this being the primary reasoning behind a DRO).

I've been enjoying this podcast, and the general principals outlined in Stephan's thoughts, however I have practical reservations about the idea of anarchism. One of them is the question of what would happen with nuclear weapons in an anarchistic society? While it would be wonderful to see a world without these weapons, that's entirely impossible. And while i know the argument "you need a government to manage nuclear weapons" isn't true, the practical question remains of what do we do with these weapons? While in a stateless society it would be very difficult to build or deploy a large number of thermo-nuclear devices, a small team of scientists, or technicians who don't like the enclave next door, or a mad man (not all mad men are products of their states, i'm sure) gets control of an existing device, this weapon could be utilized as leverage against the perpetuation of a stateless society. In this way, nuclear weapons pose a major threat to a stateless society in that they could end statelessness because some person it holding a nuke, and threatens everyone else to join his government, or die.

Darksky, my point being that the idea of trans-humanism or that we can control our next evolutionary step and become "Homo Superior" breaks the fundamental rules of actual scientific evolution, namely that it is change over time directed by natural selection towards that which has an imperative reproductive advantage.

I see your concern and your argument, but disagree that we cannot scientifically discern human nature. One can make a reasonable inference between related ape animal kingdoms and human behavior. And in all Ape cultures we see a culture where social order is frequently enforced through violent behavior. We also see that as we construct increasingly free societies, violence trends downward. Therefore, we can conclude that it is training which restrains us from our deeper instincts, rather than training which is the cause of violence (the current system reinforces violent behavior, not creates it). Let us also consider the elephant, which in the absence of older male 'enforcers' suffers from rambuncious young males who will litterally trample vulnerable females in the herd. Lastly let us consider children: A child is born with absolutely no moral ethic. A child is entirely selfish. The world absolutely revolves around it and its needs, and it will cry until its needs are met. As they grow they do tend to achieve a greater understanding of the world around them, but even a 2 year old can't understand or empathize with other children naturally. They usually have to be coached through. Children naturally hit. My niece will hit people with her bunny to get attention. Now her parents don't hit each other to get attention. She doesn't see that on TV (they strictly regulate her viewing). She simply hits because she lacks the moral scope to understand that her behavior is bad because it is selfish. That being said, very few people are VERY violent. I doubt my niece will go on to be a mass murderer because she hits people with bunnies. In these three examples I conclude that human nature does exist, and that it is inherently violent. What we must do is train people to NOT be their naturally violent selves.

I don't think it boils down simply. Spending is good. Without it an economy of savers would never produce anything, and we'd all be sitting on resources like Smaug, and we'd all sit around and do nothing. While spending stimulates an economy, the false idea is that spending money you don't already have will stimulate the economy even more! Debt is actually an economic slow down. What you're doing is tieing up a small portion of your capital in a long-term agreement. The only time this makes sense is when you'll come out on the other end with an asset which will continue to make money after the debt has passed (I.E. a house, machinery, or a necessary vehicle). So when politicians say we need to 'stimulate the economy' they don't understand that debt isn't stimulating (unless you get off on being subservient to Chinese people, double entandre intended.) We have a large percentage of our GDP tied up in debt and debt related expenditures all on the false premise that this will some how make our economy 'better'. Of course, in the short term the economy looks better if you measure by GDP, because GDP considers government spending to be part of its estimate. It doesn't adjust for the fact that the government is spending money that doesn't actually exist, but rather money which it thinks will exist in the future. Since there is no actual gurantee that this money WILL exist in the future, the constant lending and borrowing that runs our economy will eventually falter, as the reality that we're not actually spending that money wisely sinks in.

MarkIX: I don't consider the hope that people become better through training and education false. But the assumption of TZM is that violence isn't inherent in the people, but in the society. This is not true. If we were fundamentally non-violent people, we wouldn't have founded violent societies. The problem with people isn't that we're non-violent people living in a violent society, its that we're inherently violent people living in a society which reflects that side of our nature. This isn't to say we can't be non-violent beings (as you put it we can be 'weaned' off violence), but putting on blinders, and assuming that people would fundamentally do good if there was some kind of mystical equality is a false premise. Any sense of moral or ethic you have is trained into you by yourself, parents, and life experiences. That is my fundamental problem with the TZM perspective. it wholly ignores human nature, and presumes (falsely) that if society changed, humans would all be inherently good. I'm not sure what you mean by your second paragraph. Perhaps you can clarify for me.

Structural violence is a term which means that the current cultural establishment promotes violence by forcing competition. This draws two eronious assumptions: a) Cultultural establishment causes violent nature in humans. b) Competition causes violent nature in humans. Both of these are couched in trans-humanism: the erronious idea that despite 40 thousand years of evolution, if we evolve just a little. bit. more. we will some how be able to magically divorce ourselves from our evolutionary past. Cultural establishment does not promote violent behavior in humans. Our own biology does a good enough job for us already. The concept of eliminating 'structural violence' is as silly as the idea that by wishing really really hard, we can make the sun rain salmon steaks. What they're basically saying is that "if only we could change 40,000 years of human behavior in the blink of an eye, we could all hold hands and sing campfire songs and no one would die ever again!" As to the second erroneous assumption: Competition does NOT cause violent nature in humans. My boss is very competitive, but not violent. Any entrepreneur knows you need to be competitive, but not violent or else you'll go to court. While competition can play a role in violence, often violence occurs because of the opposite of competition. When one man has power over another, THAT is when the most violence happens. People buck horns all the time without violence, but oppression never happens without it. And oppression is definitely NOT competitive.