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I am looking into the future to predict how people will resolve the issues around aggression (I predict that the NAP will be used and am detailing how it will be done). I get your point about an unexpected attack being dangerous, and I expect people will, after discarding statism, grasp that some people do not consent to adhere to the NAP, and can't be treated in the same way as those who commit to adhere to the NAP. I don't want to immediately kill whoever refuses to make a non-aggression pact with me - however - there are consequences from not killing them - chiefly that they remain a threat to me (even if far away, could do missile attack from other side of world). So, allowing them as much freedom as I prefer to, my approach is: I, and those in a pact with me, we live inside our border, and we let in harmless people (as assessed by the professionals appointed as per the pact). We evict by force (as agreed in the pact) whoever becomes dangerous. We have spy cameras spying on evictees (cos missiles), and we intervene with force, to stop evictees attacking anyone, even other evictees. This means we hire guards to work in evictee-land. No prisons. There are pact territories, each with their own internal pact, and whatever shared agreements they prefer (to permit travel among NAP territories), and the rest of everywhere is evictee-land, in which the guards we hire, go break the weapons made by evictees, and chase them away from the borders of the safer territories. I see this having gradations, with some areas being areas where good people try to rehabilitate dangerous people on the basis of voluntary participation from each party. Different areas, different grades of personal security. Not like gated communities, cos here in South Africa, some of the rogues are inside those gates. Not like gated communities here, cos here, people drive out to go to work, and I want to only leave safe territory when I decide to take the risk of being a tourist (not daily to go to work). I am estimating that my design is the safest for people who prefer being safe, that many people, when there is a panacea for illness, will care more about being much more safe from lethal attack, and therefore, what those people of the future will do, will resemble what I describe.

Importantly, if someone asserts that he need not follow the NAP iro me and my property, because he did not agree to do so [no contract], I can equally assert that on the same basis, I need not follow the NAP iro him and his, so, off I send him to exile-land, using aggressive force.

Firstly, are you still on the forum and interested in discussing this? Secondly, where I am with you on this issue, is that I want a contract with people, a contract that says they agree to leave the neighbourhood where I stay, and allow me to spy on them, if they show by word or actions that they won't stick to non-aggressive behaviour. My practical need for survival requires that I get dangerous people away from me and have them spied on (This applies even if they are honest enough to admit they may harm me, and too honest to sign the contract). That is why I want to be harmless, so that other harmless people don't need me to be far away and under surveillance. I am with you on the threat posed by dangerous people. I estimate that the best way to deal with dangerous people is to exile them and spy on them and post guards to prevent them attacking anyone, even prevent them attacking other exiles.

I estimate that scarcity will just move to somewhere else. If it is not scarcity of physical objects converted into a form you prefer, then it is a scarcity of the attention of interesting people, or scarcity of nicely uncluttered spaces. Ethical sense, and honesty. Great. Body mods - I expect these will be easy enough to reverse or to modify again into something completely different. Very different from current tattoo technology. I also estimate that the reason for modifying is artistic expression aimed at being entertaining. K.Eric Drexler presentation on radical abundance Explanation by me: If a factory containing 200 1kg robotic arms can assemble a 1kg robotic arm, these will emerge from the factory at the speed of the arm working at slowest frequency [detail missing here]. If that arm pushes out one unit per second, the factory throughput is one kg per second, for a factory of 200kg of robotic arms plus say 200kg of support structure for the arms, that is 400kg converting 1kg at a rate of 1kg/s When the 200 arms are 1ng each, 400kg of factory will have a throughput of 1000kg/ns : throughput increases by a factor of around 1012, because the very short robotic arms are now moving that much faster, the way a mosquito flaps faster than a housefly, housefly faster than hummingbird, hummingbird faster than albatross. If we can convert raw materials into tiny robotic arms for tiny factories: that fast, we can very quickly have all the factories needed to convert whatever can be found into whatever we require to sustain our lives, and those factories will convert materials at that same crazy fast rate per kg of factory.

I am anticipating that people will become really interested in not dying, when they don't have to die within 200 years of birth (anyway), and this will lead to an interest in ethics, and the implementation of correct ethics to reduce each person's odds of being murdered. Ethical people won't stop others from getting the stuff which they need - to not die. Yeah, what my company knows about our customers, is not in the cloud for some other company to access and decrypt. Yes, I guess "good at something" is an attractant, and there is a wide variety of avenues for developing some skill which some potential mate will find attractive. Oh, that just inspired me to think that having a mate who understands how to reduce the odds of dying young, and how to make life more entertaining along the way, would probably be highly valued. Yes, the waste of the moronic. I worry that open spaces where one can look around without seeing ugly stuff designed by people of poor taste, may be in short supply. Already I see litter which is a sign of poor taste in physical environment.

With nanotechnology also allowing people to be healthy until death by accident or murder, I expect people to start paying attention to how ethics can reduce their odds of being murdered, and will discard statism, understanding that statismis an ethical malpractice. I just skimmed the wikipedia page for the book. I'll read the book when I get a chance. I imagine a world where most people conform to a basic universal ethic, but split up according to preferences in regard to rules which are not part of that basic universal ethic. It is my preference, for example, that powered transport should be under-surface, with people limiting themselves to walking / cycling / swimming / rowing / sailing on-surface. Yes, I estimate that it is more fun to have the attention of an intelligent mate, than the attention of a less intelligent mate. The attention of other people is something that does not become more plentiful when useful physical things become more plentiful. What about skill at designing the surroundings to look attractive, balancing that with functionality and safety - intelligence focused in that way may be very highly prized in both sexes, hmm?

Nanotechnology will make manufactured goods plentiful, so that even the poorest man can provide food, shelter and clothing for a family. This does not mean there will be no scarcity, just that scarcity of manufactured goods is not an issue. How then will good women select the best fathers for their children?

I shared the spanking infographic on my facebook account.

Radical abundance

Alive in a can of worms beats dead next to a tin of cake (in my system of personal preferences, widely shared). I get a peaceful worldview precisely from wanting to stay alive after standard expiration date, and I see hope that people who have lived 100 years or more, and can live much longer, may be more inclined to be peaceful, may be more inclined to opt in to a non-aggression pact for personal benefit, even if operating purely for personal benefit, without feelings for other people. Current technology is working on growing organs, but I(not I alone**) predict that nanotechnology will repair organs while they are still in [our] bodies, plus also allow us to morph [without surgery] our entire bodies, doing art with the size and shape, not just with colours on the outside, not having to permanently live with whatever shape/outer decoration we choose. Harvesting organs from people is likely to become outdated technology relatively soon. I want to bring some of the already-predicted features of the future into the philosophical discussion, because I think it will be helpful to be aware of the definitions needed in the future, e.g. the definition of person, for the purpose of discussion of ethics. Also, accurate predictions of technology direction can help us focus. If selling kidneys is a temporary phenomenon, this may inform our priorities in regard to advising people which evils to take aim against, in which order.

My videos on My Channel I would welcome a response, Bugzy.

... pragmatists consider thought an instrument or tool for prediction, ... I did not look that up until now, but in one of my videos on my channel, I point out that the mind evolved for prediction, and that prediction is the capability of the mind. "My probability of death will be higher if someone attempts to murder me", is a prediction. "My probability of death will be higher if 100 people steal my stuff on 100 consecutive days" is a prediction. "My probability of death will be lower if, in exchange for my not aggressing against them, others don't aggress against me" is a prediction. So, I get the NAP by predictions, which can be considered to be a pragmatic approach, by the explanation in the link above. UPB can be viewed as predictive - if the prediction that : "for some time to come, most people will prefer to stay alive" is incorrect, the whole thing falls down. Minds predict. Do it with best effort.

Yes, irrational "in groups". I think there is a rational "in group", and that is the group of all who commit to following at least the minimum ethic of no aggression, and who follow through on that commitment. Those who will not commit to that, or whose behaviour indicates a false claim of commitment, are the rational "out group", and we should be protecting ourselves from all of those - also hopefully converting as many as possible of those to the "in group", to swing the balance of power.

Required for it to make sense that I agree to do no evil to other people, in exchange for their agreement to do no evil to me. Why do I want people to do no evil to me? So that I can survive. What is evil? Whatever optional choices of others could kill me in a single blow (murder), or in combined blows (assaults and thefts). Survival is a preference, it just widely shared, and I can argue that those without that preference can be disregarded for the purpose of defining evil. Yes, the consideration that people prefer being alive.

My approach to ethics goes like this: I prefer to stay alive. I am not alone in that preference. If I and people who share that preference, made a pact to do-no-murder, that pact would have to expand into a do-no-evil pact (because 100 people randomly [or in co-ordination] taking my stuff or assaulting me could have me just as dead as one person murdering me). Whether or not anyone ever signs such a pact, all that which the pact must include as evils, can be said to be evil. The above implies that evil and ethical standards come into existence because of [your and my] capacity to trade [my] abstention from evil for [your] abstention from evil. This seems okay to me, because I can't do that trade with an animal or a vegetable, but I can do it with you. It also seems good to me that even if one of us is a psychopath, we can still do the ethics trade to mutual benefit. Property then comes from my need to have sustenance on which to survive, which is why, for the pact to be rationally of benefit to me, it must cast theft as an evil, and the definitions of theft and property have to be what they need to be for that rational benefit (my survival) to emerge from the do-no-evil pact.

K. Eric Drexler adapted Malthus's population concerns for a population expanding off-planet: Exponential growth can outstrip quadratic** growth, so, yes, we can populate planets faster than we can get to new planets, let's hope we will not be that dumb. However, this is true even with short lifespans, and long lifespans do not necessarily change the exponential growth picture much, but I hope that some wisdom about reproduction rates may come with a population containing more people who have had more time for reflection. ** limited by speed of light, off-planet expansion is limited to quadratic expansion, proportional to c3, where c is speed of light. Population growth is less restricted than that. It's already too crowded for my liking, especially so because close to 7 billion people are making no effort to find me the panacea. If a large proportion were making that effort, I'd be more happy to have the whole lot as fellow travellers. Accidents and murder will still thin some population, and I want to avoid those for as long as possible, but that is a statistics thing, and given time, those odds tend towards 1:1. I want to try it, cos I don't want to be transferred into a machine. Call me sentimental, I can't reason that my self is the components of my self, I just want to not destroy my living tissue in one hit (slowly over time by taking showers, no problem).

I get a definition of evil, from the concept of a pact, in which all pact members would agree to do-no-evil to each other. If there were adequate food on the island, then each person would be better off committing to the pact to do-no-evil (and following through on his commitment). That won't happen if food is so scarce that people have to be on the menu, because no-one who follows through on his commitment to do-no-evil, can survive. The theory of a pact still defines what must be evil, even in the case that the pact is never going to happen. Since evil gets it's definition from my preference to stay alive, I am going to prefer staying alive over avoiding evil. No logical error in that.

I think the idea of proving guilt arises because of statism. Whether or not Oscar Pistorius is guilty, some of us may be willing to have him in our neighbourhood, some of us may not. Without statism I expect there will be borders and rules for entry, and these rules will sort people without the expense of coming to a conclusion in a case like this, in a quite unnecessary one-size-fits-all manner. Who actually wants him temporarily out of their neighbourhood? Temporarily locking him up meets no-one's need for security. Temporarily removing dodgy types from us, and later re-releasing them amongst us, keeps us scared enough to want a heavy-handed police force. On the other hand, [temporarily] removing someone who is no threat to me, just wastes my resources. Why do we need to be told from on high who is and who is not guilty? Are not the accessible facts enough for us to estimate who can safely be permitted to enter our suburb? I need to estimate if a person is dangerous or not dangerous, mere conclusions about his past guilt or innocence are inadequate, and, where these conclusions are dubious, they are really not much use.

Mmm. Humorous. Why I like to predict the what-ifs about space aliens and intelligent machines, is that I want to know if I should hold hope, or give up hope. These are two different paths for my future, with different planning time-frames. Hope comes from the estimate that minimum ethical standards will be computed by any being with a desire to stay alive, and will probably be followed.

It's about relating better with the child on twice-weekly late-afternoon visits. A (black, [state-attorney equivalent]) ex-gf has a child by a (white) man (not me), and I am staying in the child's life in the interests of the child. It is summer here in South Africa and we swim most times now, may sometimes cycle, will cycle in winter. She has learning problems, I'm not sure if they are IQ-related or what. Goes to a private school with therapists to assist with these learning problems. I am seeing the not-really-trying to follow my suggestions, as an indication I could relate better with her. I have played with her for some years now, first while I was living with her mother, and for some years since then. My son and my daughter are each married and live in New Zealand - They are happy even though I was nasty to their mother (and she to me), too often. I'm not inclined to keep in contact with them, nor they with me. My family (including my son and daughter) are christian, left as I realised there is no god, as I quit going to church, as the open-marriage idea my wife and I tried, collapsed.

Thanks, Accutron. I learned how to mostly stay on the bicycle, by repeatedly falling off for various reasons, occasionally, over many years. Being a child, I was lighter than now, and luckily did not break bones. This child has had some years on the smaller bicycle, and can cycle just fine, it is just my preference that she mount and dismount the adult MTB with seat dropped to lowest, so we can go cycling together, off the grass and onto the roads of the suburb. Locked knees allow better transmission of power from thigh muscles, for freestyle and backstroke. http://swim.isport.com/swimming-guides/how-to-swim-freestyle The problem though, is one of my not relating well with the child, and I can't help her to achieve skills better and more quickly until I can figure out how to relate better with her, for her to grasp my intent in giving her advice on skills that I already have.

What about ethics from my personal principle that I don't wan to die, and have a preference against being among people who may kill me either by murder or by aggressions which may add up to my death. Let me assume you don't contest my assumption that many other people will share my preference for life. Is it not rational for me to desire a pact with all people (who might otherwise harm me), in which we trade abstention from aggression, for abstention from aggression? Would there be any rational reason for me to freely agree to not aggress against someone who reserves the right to aggress against me? For example, is it rational for me to agree that some class of other pact member may aggress against me (directly kill me, or lock me up with killers)? Is it not more rational for me to say: well if you don't agree to refrain from all types of aggression against me - then I don't agree to refrain from any type of aggression against you? Does not the absolute minimum standard of behaviour derive from the principle of the irrationality of agreeing to not kill people whilst those people (now safe from me), refuse to agree to not pinch my stuff when I am not looking? I am not saying that there must be a formal pact for this principle to be true, I am saying that in the exercise of drawing up a pact which each member could sign, the question of members with aggression privileges, and the question of what has to fall into the net of aggressive acts, are each less fuzzy [not to say all fuzziness disappears, just to say that it is clear enough for the best reduction of my odds of death from aggression(s)]. Working from the principle of not dying, also helps resolve the lifeboat scenarios: We are working from the principle of [me/you] not dying, so not dying comes first, and ethics comes in behind that, after that in a sequence of priority, because I can't enjoy the benefit of sticking to the pact of ethics, after my death.

I'll allow that that is possible. I sincerely doubt that the alternate case of an intelligent alien species arriving near us without at least our primitive understanding of ethics, without having discarded statism (or skipped trying it). I estimate that all the future fiction I can think of is wrong in it's prediction/assumption of galactic statism.

"A sufficiently advanced alien species could look at us like we look at chickens." The capacity to trade [my] ethical behaviour for [the] ethical behaviour [of others], is a capacity that makes a distinction between some species and other species. Alien species will have this watershed also, as will artificial intelligences. This watershed runs through all organisms and machines.

I play dad to the 9yo daughter of an ex-girlfriend. The 9yo has a bicycle which was mine, she is struggling to get on/off because she did not learn correct technique with the smaller bicycle I gave her some years ago. I do what she asks and hold it for her repeatedly, so she can enjoy cycling on the grass. I just feel impatient, because I am pretty sure I was able to get on/off bicycles with correct technique soon after I got my first bicycle at age 9. I know I learned from peers, and the peer competition aspect made learning faster for me, with cycling and with swimming. With each of these, though, I find this 9yo girl seems resistant to learning from me. For me as a child, it was fun to equal or better the skills of my friends. I am looking for tips on how to make it fun for this child to improve her skill at swimming and at mounting/dismounting the bicycle, and in general, how to make the necessary but boring parts of skill aquisition, attractive. I don't think she experiences competitive desire in the same way I did. The other example is that, after 3 summers swimming together, she still does not lock her knees for the styles which require that. I can't remember if, as a child, I locked my knees in response to much nagging from my mother, or if I really wanted to have good skill, and caught on without much nagging. I do know that I don't want to be a nag, and I am sure nagging/friendly reminders will fail within this context of these issues.