One less than one.

"It is crucial to recognise that legal regulation of drugs will not eliminate
problematic drug use or dependence. Prohibition cannot produce a drug free world; regulatory models cannot produce a harm free world." -TRANSFORM DRUG POLICY FOUNADTION (UK)

“From my experience of being responsible for drugs policy... I came to the conclusion that legalisation and regulation of all drugs was the only way to reduce the harmful effects of this unstoppable activity.” -Minister responsible for UK Drug Policy 1999–2001 quote from: The Guardian, 19 September 2002

So, for the life of me, I cannot understand why drug prohibition continues. It is a loosing endevour that wastes resources and manpower. It unnecessarily imprisons individuals who might otherwise be contributive members of society, it removes police from serious police work (like preventing violent crimes) and wastes tax-payer dollars. Not only that, if we regulated and taxed drugs--as we do currently with alcohol and tobacco (which, combined, kill ~1300 people a day)--we could make quite a bit of money, that the govt would not need to collect from private individuals. It would be collected by those that purchase these drugs--like alcohol or tobacco.

No politician that I have heard speak has ever explained why drug prohibition continues--some of the harder drugs it is easier to "be tough on crime" with (e.g. meth or crack-cocaine) but no politician has ever said in a reasonable fashion why pot, LSD or even cocaine, should be illegal.

The "harm to our children and society" argument, falls apart miserably. Tobacco and alcohol are legal; these cause clear and unquestioned harms. Alcohol abuse is common (go examine any college campus) and alcohol-dependent individuals are not hard to find either (go visit an AA meeting). So it cannot be due to the harm--since if we compare pot and alcohol on a harm measurement, pot is less harmful, by leaps and bounds. So what is it?
Why does prohibition continue? Is it merely because the common people, the demos, the rabble if you will, lack the energy and will to force the democractically elected officials to repeal such idiotic laws?

Or are the demos so foolish as to not understand the arguments for regulation against prohibition?
Is it something else?

Ok, I need a thesis.
( Some attempts.Collapse )

In 1950 Alan Turing wrote a paper entitled "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," in which he proposed that in the future, people would be less concerned with whether or not machines had minds, as such, and more concerned with whether or not they could productively imitate humans. The paper is perhaps most remembered for introducing Turing's imitation game... the foundation of what we now call the Turing Test.

( Read more...Collapse )

"women and children first!"
or so they saying goes, right? On the Titanic, women with children had a 70% better chance of survival than men in such an environment.

Anybody wanna tell me why we established a system like that?
I'm not saying its wrong, but why?

P1) All Animals do not have free will.

They act in specific manners because of environmental forces and biology interacting as they do in the specific case of each specific animal. No animal is free from their biology, nor the cirucmstances which they may be in. For they enter the world without choice; they are given body and placement in the world, and then the path that is infront of them becomes walked by them. But no wolf chooses to be a wolf and act like wolves act. No cow chooses to be a cow and respond to events as cows respond. No bee, no ant, no giraffe, no animal. All are bound to fate and certain responses.

Some cats will act in way X, some in way Y, but that doesn't mean they choose X or Y. They are produced by the world they were given from birth.

Since birth is no choice, and birth determines how we behave--since each moment is a direct result of the last, and if the first isn't free, taking the chain backwards, nothing is free. No animal behaves in a way that is any other than the way determined by the mixture of the particular creatures biological composition and all the experiences that particular creature has had up until that moment.

Thoughts are inseperable from behavior. Thus freedom of thought, as in, me currently thinking about a lovely lady, and now thinking about my dog, is a behavior, but not a choice; we cannot "change our mind", and call it a choice; the choice to change our mind is not a choice, it too is a result of the past moment inclining us towards the current action; behavior is determined by past events leading up to the current moment of reality/action. No action, no bit of behavior escapes this.

P2) Humans are animals.
C1) Humans do not have free will.
P3) "I'd much rather be happy than right any day." (Adams)
P4) Believing I have free will would make me happier than believe I did not have free will?
C2) _______________

I'm not sure I agree with Adams. I'm not sure I disagree.

Thoughts? Behaviors? Responses? ;)

"You can't fight city hall." "Death and taxes." "Don't talk about politics or religion." This is all the equivalent of enemy propaganda, rolling across the picket line. "Lay down, GI! Lay down, GI!". We saw it all through the 20th Century. And now on the 21st Century, it's time to stand up and realize, that we should NOT allow ourselves to be crammed into this rat maze. We should not SUBMIT to dehumanization. I don't know about you, but I'm concerned with what's happening in this world. I'm concerned with the structure. I'm concerned with the systems of control. Those that control my life, and those that seek to control it EVEN MORE! I want FREEDOM! That's what I want, and that's what YOU should want! It's up to each and every one of us to turn loose of just some of the greed, the hatred, the envy, and yes, the insecurities, because that is the central mode of control, make us feel pathetic, small, so we'll willingly give up our sovereignty, our liberty, our destiny. We have GOT to realize we're being conditioned on a mass scale. Start challenging this corporate slave state! The 21st Century's gonna be a new century! Not the century of slavery, not the century of lies and issues of no significance, of classism and statism, and all the rest of the modes of control... it's gonna be the age of humankind, standing up for something PURE and something RIGHT! What a bunch of garbage, liberal, Democratic, conservative, Republican, it's all there to control you, two sides of the same coin! Two management teams, bidding for control of the CEO job of Slavery Incorporated! The TRUTH is out there in front of you, but they lay out this buffet of LIES! I'm SICK of it, and I'M NOT GONNA TAKE A BITE OUT OF IT! DO YA GOT ME? Resistance is NOT futile, we're gonna win this thing, humankind is too good, WE'RE NOT A BUNCH OF UNDERACHIEVERS, WE'RE GONNA STAND UP, AND WE'RE GONNA BE HUMAN BEINGS! WE'RE GONNA GET FIRED UP ABOUT THE REAL THINGS, THE THINGS THAT MATTER - CREATIVITY, AND THE *DYNAMIC* *HUMAN* *SPIRIT* THAT REFUSES TO *SUBMIT*! WELL THAT'S IT, that's all I've got to say. It's in your court now.

-Alex Jones in Waking Life

George Carlin said the same thing:

http://the-eleven.livejournal.com/…
(I don't know the fellow well, but followed some breadcrumbs, and the Carlin video is well done)

Why doesn't anyone notice these things?

I can't really be alone in this....but they sure want me to feel that way.
Anyone with me?

Note: I'd appreciate stylistic feedback as well as the philosophical sort. I'm thinking of working this into something else, possibly eventually a scholarly paper. My goal is for it to be accessible to the novice, but not uninformative to the adept.

Well, I suppose I ought to start with a distinction between morality and ethics, since what I really mean to share is 'the right way to be unethical.' Morals are things that intuitively seem right or good (although they may be expressed in a negative way -- like, "Don't hurt children," or "don't have sex with chickens.") Ethical systems are systems that build on these principles logically, demonstrating things that are consistent or inconsistent with any set of morals. Every ethical system has at least one moral value as a premise*.

Morals, like aesthetic judgments -- judgments of beauty and harmony -- are values. Values are essentially arbitrary (in that there's nothing that logically compels us to have any given one or set over any other given one or set), but practically tend to be decided by notable factors, like environment, natural character, and 'human nature.' Incidentally, if you find a moral value that can be broken down into other moral values that you believe are all true -- for instance, if you believe in not hurting children because children are innocent and innocents should not be hurt -- then you've actually found a primitive ethical argument. If you want to find your "real" moral values, you'd have to break down every opinion you have about the world into these smaller parts until you get to something that either can't be broken down, or any way you try to break it down leads to at least one statement that you don't believe (like you could break down "innocents should not be hurt" into "all innocents are people" and "people should not be hurt", but you might not believe that all people should never be hurt. Or you might believe that animals qualify as innocents too, in which case the first premise wouldn't be true).

Usually it's not worth it to follow that down too far. It leads into circular thinking and confusion unless you're willing to spend a great deal of time on it, and there's not a whole lot of benefit to working through all that -- usually identifying some broad themes like "respect other sentient entities' autonomy" is sufficient for dealing with the real world and creating a coherent ethical system.

With that behind us, I'll move into why it's right to reject the premises sometimes used to build ethical arguments. I have a particular one in mind, here, but the broad advice I'm giving can be appropriate for a number of others.

As I said, morals are values -- logically arbitrary (once you find the core items, anyway). And while they're often shared, they aren't always. Some peoples' morals would be very alien to you (or me, although it might be different people between the two of us). For instance, I attach no moral importance to identifying the Will of the Supreme Being, even whether or not one exists. Yet entire ethical systems have been founded on this principle alone!

Other people -- I think many people -- may have moralities of commerce. What is right, to them, is whatever they can get away with. This doesn't necessarily make them bad people; there may be some limits to that (like that inconveniencing someone is OK, but destroying their life isn't). Even if there aren't, practical considerations tend to limit the sorts of actions they may take. Even a dedicated and heartless conman would probably prefer to fleece rich folks than poor families; and of course, there is the general standard of legality to fall back on in the last resort. Very few people are truly without morals other than, "I should avoid punishment." (My general view of people is that most will do nice things for other people if it doesn't inconvenience them much or break customs, with custom trumping convenience. Custom is, then, another common moral ground, or at least something very much like one.)

Tying this back in: When we create an ethical system, it's imperative to remember that we live in the real world. Any ethical system that depends on a lot of people or all people following its tenets, then, we can reject out of hand. For instance (and some of you might recognize this example), if an ethical system proposes that we ought to only act on principles of behavior that we can universally will to others, then we can reject it out of hand because we know we cannot will universally to others.

Some might counter-argue that even if what other people is doing is wrong, we can still hold ourselves to the standard of doing what's right. But how can we decide that what other people are doing is wrong? If we say that it's because it violates our (universalist) ethical system, we're begging the question... and ultimately, what that means is that they do not share (logically arbitrary!) moral values with us. (I highlight again that it is logically arbitrary to remind everyone that one cannot logically compel another to share a moral value, even if it seems like a pretty good idea practically. The practical considerations are dealt with next.)

Taking a practical look, then, we might compare it to the case of an impeding traffic accident. Now, the laws of traffic are designed to be universally obeyed. If everyone goes at the speed limit, yields turns to the right (or left), etc, and no outside factors (like a bounding deer) interfere, there should never be any accidents. But say a car ahead goes out of control, and there are cars close behind yours, on a multi-lane highway. The best things to do practically in this situation are to drive off of the road, or accelerate greatly to pass the car ahead. Both violate the rules of traffic, and both are dangerous activities. But strict obedience to the rules of traffic on the grounds of, "if everyone did it, we wouldn't ever have these situations" will merely compound the impending accident. This is not a logical problem with such a system per se (as the previous paragraph was), but a natural critique of attempting to adhere to one. Plenty of legitimate extensions of this analogy can be thought of offhand; what if someone is merely ignorant of traffic customs (analogous to a moral idea that simply never occurs to them), and does not yield to the right as they ought?

Some may see this (as similar arguments have often been seen) as a call to reject ethical arguments or moral principles altogether, and live in anarchy. Perhaps if I were supremely optimistic about the human condition, I might support such a call; but I am not, and so this is not. It is just exactly a grounds for rejecting any ethical argument which relies on either universal adherence or even just universal disposition (that is, that one should regard or treat all others equally or expect to be treated the same by all others), and a critique of any argument which demands even broad adherence or disposition.

Lastly, a call to the philosophical and political to be suspicious of your moral values. Remember to evaluate the effects of your ethical positions, and compare them to others. If others' decisions, even ones you disagree with, produce effects more in line with what you consider to be good (or the good), consider why you might have adopted your values over theirs. Too, remember that some moral values are almost purely customary, bearing little relationship to other values we might hold more important. One common example of an intuitive judgment is asking people whether or not sexual intercourse with a dead chicken, the kind you might buy at a supermarket, is wrong. Even if you think it is, it may not be particularly relevant to what you think is more ultimately good if other people do it. You don't have to be friends with them, but that might be the only sanction it's reasonable to take. In other words, remember (again!) that your values are logically arbitrary, and the ones that are most foundational to your chosen ethical system are the ones that you should probably have the most interest in protecting or promoting.

* : An interesting note here. An ethical system is essentially a logical argument. That means that if it's valid, it should remain logically valid no matter what morals are supplied to it (the structure, which is the part that determines validity, doesn't change in the slightest if you substitute "don't have sex with chickens" for all instances of "don't harm children"). But in order for it to parse contextually and generally not be ridiculous, it will really only work if similar sorts of moral values are substituted for one another. This illustrates two points -- first, that logical validity is not the arbiter of meaning, and second, that our ethical systems are arbitrary.

Upon the side of wisdom, as human beings interested in good and bad things in their connection with human conduct, thinkers are concerned to mitigate the instability of life, to introduce moderation, temper and economy, and when worst comes to worst to suggest consolations and and compensations. They are concerned with rendering more stable good things, and more unstable bad things; they are interested in how changes may be turned to account in the consequences to which they contribute. The facts of the ungoing, unfinished and ambiguously potential world give point and poignancy to the search for absolutes and finalities. Then when philosophers have hit in reflection upon a thing which is stably good in quality and hence worthy of persistent and continued choice, they hesitate, and withdraw from the effort and struggle that choice demands:-- namely, from the effort to give it some such stability in observed existence as it possesses in quality when thought of. Thus it becomes a refuge, an asylum for contemplation, or a theme for dialectical elaboration, instead of an ideal to inspire and guide conduct.

-- John Dewey, Experience and Nature.

I am taking a class on Contemporary Analytic Philosophy.

We began with Frege, moved to Russell and now are on Wittgenstein.

Now, we are not reading the Tractus Logico-Philosophicus, we are reading Philosophical Investigations. We briefly discussed the Tractus even though we are not reading it for class. I was dumbfounded to read just the first two items on his list. I said two stumped me. The prof proclaimed he was still trying to figure out 1. Perhaps I went too far, without understanding the basis, hence my confusion.

Upon looking at it, 1 makes sense to me, and 1.1 stumps me.

1 The world is everything that is the case
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things

1 makes sense: The world is everything that is the case. Something that is the case, is true. It's real. It's actual. Something that is the not the case is a negation, a non-being. It is the case that....XYZ etc etc. till we get to everything that is the case. The totalility of things that are the case, is the world (well, metaphorically, it's the universe, more broadly)

1.1 does not make sense: things are what is the case. facts are true statements about things. it is the things that are, facts are contingent upon things, no?

Thoughts?

Right, so, this might not be much of a change of pace, but it could be fun. We'll call this one "Explode This Dictatorship,"

Let's take a page from 1984 and have two classes of populus; the citizens, who can vote and hold office, and the non-citizen residents, who can't. This is something of a technocracy; both classes have all of their needs met as a consequence of residence. We're going to temporarily ignore the problem of the start-up capital, and assume that robotic factories exist such that mass produced goods of at least Wal Mart quality are available to everyone; food, clothing, books, tvs, computers. Healthcare and utilities are subsidized.

The catch is that while stuff is free, freedom isn't. There is not only free healthcare, but compulsory healthcare. Owning a motor vehicle, engaging in risky behavior (controlled substances, skydiving, etc), having a child, or even something as simple as refusing a vaccine requires earning the right to do so. Everyone might have free living space sufficient to the psychological and physiological needs of most, but that free space is a gift -- you don't get to pick where or how big it is.

That is the basis of economy in this system. Since stuff is provided, the external impetus to actually /do/ something comes from the desire to earn privileges. Some privileges can be earned by anyone who can afford them -- accessible to those who perform relatively menial tasks that can't efficiently be delegated to automation, but that don't require citizenship.

And then there are those that do. Citizens can do nearly anything to themselves if they can earn it; consent is still the basis for interpersonal interaction. There are two more fundamental differences, however... first, a citizen is more educated than a non-citizen. The option of citizenship comes after a diploma or equivalent progress in self- or societal- improvement, such as completing a trade apprenticeship or achieving officer status. Citizens do not have to be dedicated scholars, but they have to have had their worldview tested and rebuilt through education at least somewhat.

The second major difference is the sole right and the essential responsibility of every citizen -- voting. This quasi-communist pipe dream is a direct democracy, handled via information technology that is as transparent and secure as is possible. The goal is not to eliminate all corruption, which is impossible... it's to make it awkward, to occur in predictable channels, and ideally, to make it ultimately unrewarding.

A citizen who stops voting is no longer a citizen, though they can re-apply after a certain period of time.

This system is, in some ways, horrible. And yet, the base principles behind it are to allow every person within it to live to the greatest degree of fulfillment they choose; the final subsidized right of each resident is the right to leave. Office-holding citizens will meet with them, help them decide whether they really want to go, pick the other place in the world that best meets their desires, and send them there with basic possessions and some capital.

---

So! The greatest issue I see with this society would be its viability within a global economy. With current technology, I have to assume that nuclear and hydroelectric power are major players, so there might also be some environmental issues. However, would you say that this society is untenable for other reasons? Or even that it's flat-out unethical?

What would you do, if you could dictate a government or society (and then bow out, if you so chose)? (enders_shadow, you don't have to answer that.)