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Hey all! So I've been having discussions about issues such as government and taxation. I often hear a claim that governments cannot steal and taxation is not a theft. However, when I apply the exactly same reasoning to a different scenario, for example a person or a different organisation doing exactly the same as the government (enforcing taxation through the initiation of use of force) suddenly the reasoning reverses and such a thing becomes theft in the eyes of the person I am debating. I attempt to reason through rules of non contradiction (something cannot be and not be at the same time) but I usually get the following responses: "government is different" - Therefore theft only applies to individuals or private organisations. "the extraction of money is voluntary" - You don't have to work if you don't want to. You actually want the government to spend the money on roads, education etc. "money are extracted at source and if you do not receive the money in the first place, then they cannot be taken away from you, therefore not theft" - (This is the case in the UK where you don't do your own taxes but rather the employer pays them from your salary before you get a chance to sniff them). So if you don't get the money in the first place it isn't theft. "There is no right and wrong" or "There is no truth, it depends" - Therefore taxation is morally good and not theft, whereas extraction of property without consent by something or someone else than a government is theft. Is there a way of combating such claims or have I entered a realm of sophistry from which there is no return? What is the best way to argue from here and point out the contradiction?

My assertion is that comedy and quantum mechanics have a common basis. I was listening to Stefan's thoughts on comedy or humour (the Canadian spelling), as well as those on sophistry and first principles (great descriptions). There is always a hidden element to our actions and feelings, and Stefan works to discover it - always relying on first principles. My question to anyone who might be even slightly interested is whether or not my assertion at the top works through first principles, and is not just sophistry? My steps in this argument are: 1. I need to show that there is a definable relationship between mathematical symbols and those of language. My answer is that the relationship is the difference between what is "fungible" and "non-fungible". Example: money is fungible since it is used for anything. Equally, numbers and mathematical symbols, in general, are "fungible" or "universal" for what they refer to. On the contrary, linguistic symbols are "not fungible". For example the noun "dog" refers only to dog, and is not a universal symbol for anything else (other animals, etc). Thus, mathematical "strings of information" are based on a system of fungible symbols and linguistic "strings" are based on non-fungible symbols. This is why we can tell stories with linguistic symbols but not so with mathematical symbols. 2. Quantum structure can be extremely complex depending on the number of elements in the given structure. However, the simplest form of such structure is one in which there are only two elements. Example, each photon (of light) has two forms - "particle" and "wave", and they are paradoxical in their forms. No one has ever been able to define the relationship between them, even though they refer to the same phenomenon. This is the issue of wave/particle duality. We should be able to say that we are looking at the same thing but from a different angle or perspective when one changes to the other. However, no physicist has every been able to do this. There is no way to define the smooth mathematical transformation between these two perspectives. The best even Einstein could do was use the phrase "spooky action at a distance" - not exactly a mathematical description. 3. Humour (comedy), also has as its basis two parts that are paradoxically composed but refer to the same thing. For example - Question: what did the Zen Master say to the hot dog vendor? Answer: "make me one with everything". There are two meanings that have no relationship to each other yet refer to the same thing - the single request by the Zen Master. We laugh as a pleasant (but nervous) form of response to the relationship we cannot interpret rationally. Both of the above examples (one of quantum structure and the other of humour) have two parts that are incongruous or paradoxical (the juxtaposition of the incongruous). The quantum structure is based on a system of fungible symbols and the humour is based on a system that is not fungible. My conclusion is that these two examples share a common basis of internal structure, and the difference between them, in their common structure, is the flipping of relationship for the property of "fungiblity" (from fungible to non-fungible). Looking at this in a very large philosophical perspective (it might be sophistry, but I think not), this small example hints that our entire universe, physical and in experience is one entity which we view from individual paradoxical perspectives. This is what creates the great diversity of life, but it is all linked as one, no matter how unrelated the parts appear on the surface to our observation.