SamuelS

I'm thinking it's closer to this one: being the primary cause of something and so able to be blamed or credited for it.

https://mises.org/library/how-we-come-own-ourselves An AI system indistinguishable from a person, which fits the above criteria, would own itself and be a moral agent. Regarding the "teaching" of an AI system, I think that as with children it would be wise to teach them principals and methodology rather than conclusions...especially if they're smarter than you, which they probably are.

Profit need not be realized immediately nor monetarily, in your example Block's profit in the transaction still exists though it has taken the form of hope for future good will. If a person so inclined were to give a hobo a dollar, they might profit in self satisfaction.

That reminds me of what Schiff was saying (FDR3059) about the mistake the R's make with regard to minimum wage -- they make it about business and play into the hand of the D's, when really it's about banning the sale of labor below a limit and labor is all most folks have to sell. Sounds like you did a good job illustrating who really wins/loses with regulation, thanks for following up

At around 20min (paused at 20:31, still there) Stef talks about income by race and the previous graph (income by ferg/mo/us) is still there. Is this an oversight? I did a bit of a "double-take" there, if you know what I mean...w Stef looking to the right as if the data he's speaking of is right there...

I'm curious how you "got roped into" this debate...I would think a politician and a union leader would both have a great deal of public speaking and debate experience...I smell a setup.

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1647CADF96760B37

I thought it came from the hot/crazy matrix. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7uTAGRb9sJc

Not for long...what Joel said above is very similar to the argument I'll toss out before disengaging -- point out the performative contradiction then when they rebut you something like "Well, I'm glad you agree with (opposite of what they said)" to which they'll inevitably reply "That's not what I said" and you can just claim it is what you heard, after all the senses are invalid and there's no objective reality so good luck proving otherwise beyond an "assumption"...in other words, fight fire w fire and see how they like it.

My reaction to the Cartesianist argument is the same as to determinism -- what difference does it make? From the POV of the experiencer its all the same...but, we generally act as though we have free will and that we perceive an objective reality outside our minds...sure, it could all be some elaborate hoax, but that doesn't change the experience. If a Cartesian jumps off a skyscraper I'll believe they believe it, until then they're just trolls.

Having not read the book, there were plenty of places in the movies where I had a sense that it'd be a lot clearer what's going on if I had read the book beforehand. That said, I found the movies to be quite powerful and I enjoyed having to "read between the lines" so to speak.

I don't want to argue or try to understand your theory, but I've got some thoughts to throw out there, hopefully you find some value in them. Have you ever seen the experiment where a $20 bill is auctioned off? My understanding is that it (nearly?) always goes for >$20...can your theory explain this? Another thing that I think is missing, or a problem that is introduced when you claim objective value, is the basis of economic study in the first place -- trade. If a (potential) buyer and seller place/hold/determine an object to have the same value, why would they ever trade?

Oh, he definitely made the just leave argument. I think MMX is wise to remember that the most important thing here is that there's a possibility of our interactions improving his parenting of his daughter. If we can focus on that, and not chase him off in the process, wouldn't that be far better than arguing about the roads? I don't think I can interact w this fella without being triggered and I really don't care to test or work on that, it looks like a few others in this thread might want to think about that...because others already seem eager and able to help.

...

1. Correct, there is no such thing as passive action, its a contradiction. YOUR contradiction. To refrain from a set of actions is not the same as not acting at all. No (proposed moral rule regarding a) positive action can be UPB. It fails the coma test. Would you accept a moral system that would judge an unconscious person as acting immorally in that moment? 2. Murder is, by definition, unwanted by the victim. It is not murder if the (otherwise) victim wants it. By definition murder cannot be universally preferable, it must be "unpreferred" by the person being murdered. If the person getting killed prefers it that's suicide or euthanasia or something but not murder. 3. You're still confused about the purpose of UPB. UPB is used to evaluate proposed moral rules, not actions, not actions at all. That aside, all of the actions that are not murder are not necessarily moral and I think we agree here. I think it's helpful to look at it like a checklist -- not murdering, check, not assaulting, check, not stealing, check, not raping, check -- and if you've got everything checked off, your action may be moral. The set is "not moral", and murder is a part of that set, if anything in the " not moral" set is true, then "not moral == true"..of course, this assessment of actions is not at all what UPB is about. 4. I'm done feeding the troll

no, no positive action can be UPB, it fails the coma test.

See what you did there? Morality > utility because morality == utility.

Thanks for sharing it and for that feedback, Josh

one who does not comply with the terms of voluntarily entered into contracts. the example was "current system", aka family court. I don't think abortion violates NAP (unless it's extremely late-term abortion), but that's a whole other can of worms...in short, I think there's a "grey" point at which a fetus becomes capable of sustaining life outside the womb (artificially, or otherwise), and at that point it becomes a "person" in regard to NAP/UPB/morality, while the point isn't concrete I do think it's an objective delineation and prior to that point one could argue that the mother is it's hostage if non-abortion were enforced....that aside, this is where the intergroup sexual ostracism would come into play -- if you think it's immoral to abort, don't have sexual relations with people that haven't signed contracts agreeing not to abort.

Great info from the doc above...I did EMDR therapy in the early '90s and thought it sounded "too good to be true" and rather kooky/gimmicky but after a few sessions I found it had helped me more than months of talk therapy had done. I was under the impression that it wasn't something that should be done without the aid of a therapist, but the above seems to suggest otherwise, am I understanding that correctly? Another perhaps interesting note, I'd done this as an adolescent after being traumatized by one parent and taken to therapy by the other (more abusive) parent, thus I didn't fully trust the therapist to hold my thoughts in confidence as they related to the one paying them, but the way we were doing EMDR I didn't have to share what it was I was processing and was able to deal w things that I kept to myself, if that makes any sense. I'm sure that's not an ideal way to handle things but for me I found great benefit in it and was able to circumvent the trust issues I had regarding confidentiality.

hitbox, could you describe the physical sensations and emotional states you're referring to as panic attacks? I don't know how to use the term properly but I may experience something similar. That braveheart scene really got to me too...the worst experience I've had in recent memory was watching the first few episodes of Breaking Bad, I was really empathizing with the main characters and they were making such horrendously bad decisions I started to feel quite ill, like I was about to vomit my heart out, my blood pressure spiked into stroke territory and my heart rate was around 140, it took an hour of focusing on my breathing to calm down...I don't know of that's a panic attack, but it was awful, and ssomething I've got to avoid if I don't want to have a stroke.

I don't see how one can make an objective judgment about the value one subjectively gets out of existing...a "normal" person may be less happy than the downs person, or vice versa, I wouldn't force either one to continue existing but that's far from stopping them in the first place.

sorry again for the delay in responding, I've been rather busy and scatterbrained the last few weeks, also fairly ambivalent about this entire topic after some rather unproductive conversations in other arenas. Maybe, but I don't think so. I, myself, would want a DRO that enforced ostracism on "deadbeat" parents. I would want to see the costs of peoples choices borne by those who made the choices rather than socialized. I certainly have no problem ostracizing deadbeats in my day to day life, it'd be a whole lot more effective if others would do the same.Regarding courts in a stateless society, I'd encourage you to listen to podcasts 1-3 where a system of private dispute resolution is outlined and defended. I wouldn't be advocating anarchy, at all, if I didn't think there were a way to peacefully and civilly resolve disputes. I understand that, and while I sympathize with the position I cannot support it, in a pregnancy dispute insurance scenario those people would be wise to carry huge policies. Again, this is just putting the costs onto the people making the decisions, rather than socializing them. this is a great question, but far outside the scope of both my knowledge of the topic and my desire to "flesh it out"...that said, let's look at a simple example:today a man "accidentally" impregnates a woman, he doesn't want children, she refuses abortion, he's ordered to pay $100/week in child support. that's $5200/year, and $93,600 over 18 years. so long as insurance is less than $5200/year, it may be a wise investment for him.what I can say about profitability is that if such a system were put into place, it would be profitable or it wouldn't be on the market. perhaps rabid religious folks would have their own agencies that would exert market forces making abortion prohibitively expensive, perhaps not, but they'd be welcome to "put their money where their mouth is" in attempt to persuade others toward the outcomes they're after. Aha, the fatal flaw in my logic! Great example. I think the simplest way to get around this particular problem would be to not have Irene involved in choosing the adoptive parents, perhaps that would be part of the compensation agreement between her and Manny's insurer -- by accepting compensation she could be obligated to a "blind" adoption.Not to go off on too complex a tangent, but this made me think of a way to improve one aspect of adoption which I think would be relatively simple to do with today's technology. One of the problems with adoption is lacking knowledge about the (ongoing) medical histories of biological parents...with public/private key encryption it would be possible for the child's records to be regularly updated with the medical history of their biological parents while maintaining anonymity.

"Fuck it, I'll light my dick on fire, I'll run off a cliff, I'll grab four eagles and try to fly, if that's what get's the ladies' juices flowing, that's what I gotta do.""There's gonna be romance, and ponies."

thanks for the link, I started reading it the other day and got distracted...I still don't know that scam is the right word for it, but it's a mess for sure...I think my respect for Jeff is going to be eroding a lot over this.