Much like there is a divide between objectivity and subjectivity, there is a divide between physical property rights and intellectual property rights. Specifically, the rules governing conservation of energy play out differently for the mind.
For example, you can copy ideas for negligible cost, while producing a new object always takes some finite energy.
Conversely, if you destroy or vandalize an idea, it's gone forever, while if an object is destroyed or vandalized, it can be replaced indefinitely, at some finite cost. The method of destroying an idea is to prove it wrong. Once done, it cannot be undone except in the special case of a flawed proof, and even then the effort involved is much higher than the initial acquisition.
For example, once someone is disabused of the notion that taxation is just, they can never regain that notion. The problem is that they may have liked that notion. It may have brought sense and peace to their lives. (Not likely, but there are many other examples.)
Because of these differences and others like them, IP requires entirely new definitions for theft and vandalism, and indeed for all forms of damages for which one might sue.
Theft of intellectual property basically does not make sense. If you steal my TV I have to buy another. If I've written a song, it makes no sense to say that if you didn't pay for it you 'stole' it. You have taken nothing from me. I may actually be unaware that you have done so.
But, you may ask, how do we incentivize artists to make art, in this case? I have two rebuttals. First, the point of my argument is not actually social engineering. It's just to be consistent. Second, artists don't appear to need incentives. There are thousands more desiring to be famous songwriters or movie directors than there are dollars to pay for them. Most of these financially unsuccessful artists release their work for free. If this were the only way to release, then the current lucrative artists would almost certainly still create and release their works.
Vandalism is different. What I discovered is; attempting to change someone's mind without their permission, through any kind of pressure, is intellectual vandalism. If you own things, you own your thoughts, and most people do not want their property randomly attacked. If you attack their thoughts without their permission you are in violation of Basic Ethics.
Presumably there are several other issues of property rights that have to be completely rejiggered to apply consistently to IP. Using the basic definitions of property rights and Basic Ethics, it should be straightforward to convert them on the spot.
Nevetheless, in life in generally but especially on a philosophy blog, it's very important to know that attacking someone's beliefs without their consent is absolutely, uncompromisingly, ethically wrong.
For instance, the Creation vs. Evolution debate? Vandalism, on both sides. Certainly, if you're an evolutionist and you meet a creationist, you should let them know you disagree, and if they initiate a debate, then you're good to go. However, the whole point of the televised Creation vs. Evolution debates is to force people to believe one over the other. A calm debate between logical actors is so far off the agenda it seems like it can't exist, when I'm watching one of those. Being actually curious about other people's beliefs? Completely inconceivable to those people.
Also, this completely applies to any kind of peer pressure. If someone has made their decision, unless they ask for your advice, it is a violation of Basic Ethics and thus logic itself, to contest that decision.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Anarcho-Capitalism and Evidence
I like to talk about how no government ever will let you 'legally sterilize' a city-sized plot of land, and then go to it with anarcho-capitalist principles...even though, if they're right, it can only confirm their position and refute anarcho-capitalism very strongly. (In reality, it would pop the 'we govern because we care, we only have your best interests at heart' myth. Frankly, that's pretty creepy. Your governor LOVES YOU...or so they claim. Eeeeew.)
But I realized there's no need to get the consent of a government, or an actual tract of land. (Though 'huge...tracts of land' are nice.)
You could do it in World of Warcraft. Or, you could make your own.
Instead of computationally preventing mob-on-mob violence (MMORPG, 'MOBile,' a moving element of the game world.) you completely allow all sorts of violence.
Since modern humans have all been public-schooled and are cognitively crippled by that torture, you would have to seed it with some basic common law. Set up a court where a player can go be a judge (in return for cash) with some basic crimes - murder, theft, battery, and so on, with some basic punishments laid out.
Have an auction house like WoW so there's a market. It will, naturally, be a free market.
Because I think it would be funny, don't explicitly lay out property rights. Also, allow competing scripts for auction houses to be submitted. (Obviously they have to be combed for viruses before seeing play.) This way, competition and mutualism will have the final say in every aspect of the game world that's not specifically modeling real-world physics.
Obviously the point of this is to try to simulate the incentives mandated by the real world as closely as possible, though perhaps accelerated so that it doesn't take more than a decade for anyone to learn to be profitable.
Players will have injury and permanent death, but perhaps should keep levels.
The only question is, do you try to make it simulate the world as closely as possible to forestall, ("But WoW has MAGIC! And you want me to believe you've created Libertopia inside it?") or instead just make it so an actual reasonable person can clearly see that it could work in real life?
Notably, I'm not anarcho-capitalist. If you asked me to define capitalism, you'd just get a dumb stare. I'm an anarcho-formalist.
But I realized there's no need to get the consent of a government, or an actual tract of land. (Though 'huge...tracts of land' are nice.)
You could do it in World of Warcraft. Or, you could make your own.
Instead of computationally preventing mob-on-mob violence (MMORPG, 'MOBile,' a moving element of the game world.) you completely allow all sorts of violence.
Since modern humans have all been public-schooled and are cognitively crippled by that torture, you would have to seed it with some basic common law. Set up a court where a player can go be a judge (in return for cash) with some basic crimes - murder, theft, battery, and so on, with some basic punishments laid out.
Have an auction house like WoW so there's a market. It will, naturally, be a free market.
Because I think it would be funny, don't explicitly lay out property rights. Also, allow competing scripts for auction houses to be submitted. (Obviously they have to be combed for viruses before seeing play.) This way, competition and mutualism will have the final say in every aspect of the game world that's not specifically modeling real-world physics.
Obviously the point of this is to try to simulate the incentives mandated by the real world as closely as possible, though perhaps accelerated so that it doesn't take more than a decade for anyone to learn to be profitable.
Players will have injury and permanent death, but perhaps should keep levels.
The only question is, do you try to make it simulate the world as closely as possible to forestall, ("But WoW has MAGIC! And you want me to believe you've created Libertopia inside it?") or instead just make it so an actual reasonable person can clearly see that it could work in real life?
Monday, May 12, 2008
Stefan Molyneux, His Crazy Libertarianism, Segue Into Philosophy and Action
Dude's not too heavy on the logic.
It's a shame, because he has some good ideas.
I've tried to change Stefan Molyneux's mind before. I wouldn't have, but first he claims to be a very 'healthy and honest' human being, went to therapy and everything, and second because he solicited it. If I think he's wrong, I'm supposed to let him know.
However, each time I've tried I get the impression that either I'm not making it through, that he just doesn't understand (in which case I'm just a better philosopher than he is) or that I'm getting the runaround - that his desire to be proven wrong is insincere at best.
So I decided to call him. Get him to call me and a bunch of other people, actually.
Basically, the result was, "Go proselytize, and maybe I'll talk to you then." (Right at the end, 63:00) In short, I got the runaround, exactly as I predicted. (I did get a few questions answered, and indeed I'm grateful, but as soon as he felt the noose tightening, lo and behold he's done talking to me.) While I knew he would cut me off if I asked enough questions in a row, I had hoped that a person who's such a self-described master philosopher would at least know to give me a semi-real reason. Such as, "I'm tired of answering your questions." "You haven't donated, I have better uses for my time." "I don't feel like it anymore." You know, just something honest. Or even, "Well, I can't be honest with you."
Basically, some RTR* from the supposed inventor of RTR. *(Near the bottom of the list, FDR #3)
(He did say, "I'm going to end up with one video image per second if I keep going." But when I said that I had more questions, why didn't he repeat that?)
As he would no doubt ask, "What does this remind you of in your childhood." It reminds me of my mother, "Go play outside, and let me do the dishes." It reminds me of my teachers. "Just do the work." Way to act like a public school teacher, Stef.
Also, if this is such an important objection, if it's really so much more important for me to proselytize rather than understand the theory, why didn't you point it out four days ago when I posted my analysis of tax rates?
(Also, the dude doesn't get math. Which, considering he said, "mathematics isn't real," is not surprising at all.)
In other words, his line "I'm perfectly happy to hear about expansions of UPB," is bunk. If he were, if he had any kind of intellectual curiosity at all, he would actually carry out his threat to listen to me. No, if he releases the recording, skip to the last quarter or so (sometime after 50:00 in the video). When you find that line, see if you can hear the fear in his voice. I could.
In fact, his whole community has a problem with listening to me. I saw it in action by testing their forum instant-message app. I put some random deep thoughts into the stream and saw...exactly nothing come back. No agreement. No refutation. No gentle correction. No heads-up that it's not important to them (it was). This despite randomly pulling crap, like my signature, that I really don't care about, and praising it to the skies. (When you wound a soul, it bleeds fear.)
No, Ockham suggests that Molyneux is high on being the top man. He delights in being the leader of his little community...not a member.
No, every time I try to figure out if Molyneux really is "happy to hear about corrections" he changes the subject. Finally, this time, he actually told me to shut up and go away. He actually told me, point blank, to ask questions relevant to other people.
Since he never has nor ever will take any of my suggestions, I guess this makes sense. Bit of a waste of time for me to make them, really. But, I have to know if I'm right or not. I have to know what someone who's gone to therapy is like, what someone who has a therapist as a wife is like. I have to know if even someone who knows all the theory of how to treat people will actually do so.
I have to know how important mental knowledge is for moral and compassionate behavior, so that I know how to advise anyone who may ask me. So I know how important it is to spread correct principles vs spreading correct special-case solutions.
You would think, for someone who understands how badly children are treated, that if someone came to him confused and asking for things, he would respond by being compassionate.
Instead, for a dude who's supposed to be so fond of the Socratic Method, I really have trouble getting a question in edgewise, let alone a statement. If I have to stop and think about things, he just continues on. The basic strategy seems to be eyes-glaze-over-waiting-for-him-to-shut-up. I was going to ask him if there's a better solution, because he sometimes stops repeating himself and says something new, but if my eyes have glazed over I'm liable to miss it. I can't though; haven't "proselytized" yet. Even if I was able to get more than a few words in, the proofs I use are obviously beyond him. "Me no understand." Indeed. (Consciousness isn't physical, bub. I would like give you not only one but three old college tries at proving me wrong, but since that's not what you want to talk about, it's not in the cards.)
If I met a philosopher who was smarter than me, who could understand my works, I would be ecstatic. I would have nothing but questions for them. I would want them to understand so that I wouldn't have to do all the work. So that they could help me find the truth.
Instead, with him I have the opposite because of his (apparent) rampant contradictions, in his podcasts, articles, and books. Certainly, he has a lot of good ideas in there. However, I have to do all the legwork, to see if they're logically consistent, myself. His ability to think in straight lines is strangely schizophrenic. It goes on and off like a loose connection.
It's exactly how he sounds - his arguments, especially when he's not reading written-down arguments, are suggestive but never coherent- so that makes sense.
It's infuriating. Since he clearly isn't using logic to find his ideas - if he were then I wouldn't have to correct him all the time - I want to know how he's doing it. If most people who just guess get like 2 or 3, he gets like 40. (Mencius Moldbug gets like 90, but he isn't guessing.) Is he just cognitively unfit? (Lacks logical sense.) Is he cancerous like the anti-logicians, meaning anything related to his basic misunderstanding gets eaten by anti-logic? Does he have a novel method of find the truth? If he kept telling me to "Go proselytize," I would never find out. I wonder if this is by design.
(I'm hoping to get 100 or better, and indeed if my logical consistency is really as high as I think it is, I'm totally succeeding. I can explain all of MM and yet also point out his mistakes. Yes, this is a falsifiable theory - I'll even help you falsify it. Since I want to be that good, I need to constantly make sure I haven't confused my current destination with my actual goal.)
Moreover, Stef's philosophy, which even he isn't particularly good at, (as one would expect of new ideas) is supposed to make one happy. Indeed, Stef appears to me to be pretty happy. This is doubly infuriating. If I tried to get by with that many contradictions, I'd be crushed. If I let myself get that loose around the intellectual middle, waking up every day would be torture. Is it just me? Of course it is! Stef's quite happy! Stef's forum is quite happy! In fact, lots of people are pretty happy! But if I tried to slack off even a tenth that much, I'd be slaughtered instantly by my conscience.
In short, if I tried to use Stef's philosophy, I'd be wracked hourly with guilt, doubt, self-recriminations, and the nagging feeling that there is something better.
And indeed, that's why I want to score 100. I have to score 100. I have no real choice. Just be thankful that you are not me.
No, my offense is to have the gall, the gall, to think I might be an equal. That I may actually have something to contribute to the conversation beyond what Stef himself has thought of.
No, that simply cannot be allowed. And heaven forbid that you criticize him personally. No, Stef's gone through therapy. His wife's a therapist, even. He's perfect. Unless you suggest he is, then he's not. You're just abusive. You need to go to therapy, too. All that desperate pain you feel when you listen to a therapist? Just a fluke of nature. Never because they're causing you harm. Unless you ask him, then of course he's happy to listen to potential philosophy-relevant character flaws, but for now you should "Go proselytize."
Still, this conclusion is not ironclad. There's lots of ways to falsify it, and indeed I would be ecstatic if I could do so. (Notably, I could also have misunderstood, and a misunderstanding of this magnitude is, shall we say, 'serious,' and very much the problem of the thinker so misunderstood. If so, fix it!) So, on the off chance some random FDR person actually reads this, I want to ask Stef the following:
"Okay, I agree with you. Yes, the principles are more important than the instances. (We're going to ignore the fact that I don't see how UPB is anything but an argument from effect.) I am trying to learn how to proselytize. If I can't convince you to listen to a little expansion of your theory, how am I supposed to convince people, completely illogical people, to throw away values they've held their entire life?"
I was unable to ask this question. Since I have to "Go proselytize" for a while, I am in fact not allowed to ask this, right now, at all.
I have this blog. I'm trying to bring people to it. (Not with this post.) I already am trying to proselytize. In fact, I have to hold myself back! I have found that I'm terrible at spreading my beliefs, yet every time someone says something I disagree with, even if they're named Stef, I feel ethically compelled to at least try to correct them. (Though admittedly, as Stef presumed I went overboard on the holding-back phase of development.)
No, you cannot tell me to "Go proselytize" as a way to prevent me from doing so. I am proselytizing, Stef. To you.
This is how Stef always treats me. Yes, always. He honestly couldn't care less about the ideas of others unless they directly support his own. This is flabbergasting for someone who claims to be a philosopher, who wants to help people.
Yeah that 'heroin' you were talking about? It's not helping people. It's superiority. It's the high of authority, and I don't want any part of it. I want to ask people what they want help with, and then do so in a logically consistent manner. I want them to decide what they need help with, because if I'm logically consistent, I can't help but lead them to the truth. If I listen to them carefully, I can't help but know what they're really asking for help with - the real, personal problems that truly trouble them.
No, I don't understand how anyone could be anything less than pleased with someone who asks all sorts of questions about their theories and in fact comes to agreement with you most of the time. I totally agree with UPB. I simply don't understand it completely. Why is he intentionally blocking my understanding?
Here's something else I want to ask Stef:
"If I don't properly understand UPB, how am I supposed to proselytize properly? Why are you asking me to get behind something I cannot yet logically get behind?"
Again, I don't mind if Stef was just bored of talking, if he was starting to feel put upon, if he just wanted his podcast not to be a million years long, (it would help if he could stop repeating crap I already know) if he just said, "Come back for the Sunday call-in show," if he truly suspected I was just being difficult, or any of a dozen other reasons...provided he tells me that's the reason. If honesty is the first virtue, why can't I get any out of Stef?
Why, Stef, does it feel like it's all about you? Why is your board a total echo-chamber? Why are you so fond of your own voice? Why have I almost never seen your beliefs evolve? Why do you apparently resent my questions and misunderstandings so much, since I've demonstrated that you can resolve them? Why is it your ideas I must spread? Why can't I make them into my ideas? Why do you never attribute your ideas to others?
It's very mysterious.
Unless, of course, Stef is exactly what he appears to be; a messianic wannabe. He probably just finally did what I've been complaining about since elementary school. Since he wants to be a messiah, he actually figured out what it would take, (some useful, but anti-social truths, along with some cultesque follower-manipulation)* and then put them into action. Since it worked, he now spends his time expanding and defending his turf.
*(You don't get a following that size with just actual truth. If you did, based on my successful prediction rate, I wouldn't be able to go anywhere without tripping over followers. Am I right? Well, is this post going to generate only universal disparagement on his board? Yes, a recursive test of my predictive ability. Also, is the sky blue?)
Why is it that everyone on your forum was abused? And not just like, a little. Sure, no one is parented well. I knew that already. There's also Alice Miller who predates Stef by a solid margin. Did he steal her ideas, intentionally or not? He's stolen mine before. I don't mind, but it sets a bad precedent - taking my ideas without acknowledging, at least to me, that you've done so. (Latest offense; used a concept of mine in his hideous Free Will youtube videos. Dude couldn't understand determinism if we tied him down, taped his eyelids open, and paraded all of history's most polite, logical, and eloquent determinists in front of him until he collapsed from exhaustion. We've practically done so already.)
Again, "why is it that there's no one on your board who A: agrees with you yet B: wasn't abused? Are you telling me that there's like a one in six billion chance of being raised well, meaning that we have no one from class B to compare to? I've seen less abused people on your board before, so that's patently false. I even met one in person. These people don't stick around on your board."
This also makes sense. I used to be a messianic wannabe. (My mother actually thought I was Jesus Christ reborn. Not all the time, I was sometimes demoted because she was crazy, but some of the time.) I know exactly what it feels like. I know exactly what it looks like. I know exactly what kind of people are susceptible to it, because I used to be horrified by how they listened to me. Honestly I have to say that damn that guy knows how to pull it off. Of course maybe this is just projection. But, much as he likes to say, "If I run a cult, it seems to be the worst cult in the history of cults," if I'm a messianic wannabe, I'm doing a shit poor job of it.
Also, Stef agrees with me. "It feels like messianic craziness and I don't want it!" (Feed 3, Podcast 628, The Die is Cast.) Also, "Trust your feelings." Well, Stef, trust your feelings. You're a messianic crazy. Also, you've met god. Yours is a big blue eye-thing that hates freedom and music. I suggest you get a new one. I guess I can see why you don't want to trust your feelings completely. That plus the therapy thing. If you listened to your feelings as completely as you advise, you would never have been able to go.
No, my stated goal is to make more people with my skills. Ideally, I would make people with superior skills so that I wouldn't have to work so hard. I want to be able to justify being intellectually lazy to myself. (Also one of the reasons I will happily present evidence and let you draw your own conclusion. I know that it helps antidote any remaining messianic urges. Also, once you know the evidence I'm using, you can see if my logic is faulty. Directly, and on your own. While I'm massively right, I do make mistakes, I just wish more people could spot them.)
But I can't. While I won't, as Stef did, say there is no one else, I'm sure having a devil of a time finding them. Seriously, if you know where one is, please please point them out to me.
The sad, sad, tragic thing is that Stef is better than the vast majority. He at least puts his ideas down in a somewhat logical way. I can understand what he's trying to say, and he doesn't start equivocating as soon as I prove him wrong. Which is part of why it's important; if I can't get him to agree with me, why the fuck am I trying to get average Joe to agree with me?
Sadly these very virtues are why he has to give me the runaround. Deprived of obfuscation, deliberate mind-fucking, changing the subject, and declarations of 'irrelevant,' (remember, he does score 40 or so) he has to use other tools. He can't engage me in conversation for too long. He can't ever let himself understand my ideas, just as he can't let himself understand determinism. He sure as shit can't ever expand my ideas.
So I guess, compared to the rest of the population, I understand where he's coming from. Compared to the people that surround him, he does rule the roost.
So what have I learned from this? Many things, of which I'll list a few.
First, there may be an alternate way of finding truth. True, I have at least five already, but more is always welcome. (Logic, hunches, inspiration, 'feeling it out' - I've learned what contradictions and truth feel like, so basically I've taught my emotions to reason, and reading - what I like to call the theft of ideas. I've stolen quite a few of Molyneux's. All of these have to produce beliefs that do not contradict any of my existing beliefs. Notably, sometimes existing beliefs are displaced.) Especially one that can score 40 all on its own.
Second, that the task of convincing someone of the truth is probably much, much, more momentous than I thought it was.
Third, I found out that even if you know the truth, putting into action is almost totally unrelated. (I have since confirmed this on my own with reddit comments. I am susceptible as well, though at least now I know it's a problem, so I know I need to solve it.) Knowing the principles may be a completely fruitless approach to engendering honesty, compassion, and morality.
Fourth, that I really have to make sure that you, dear reader, can see when I change my mind, so that you know I'm not static like Molyneux is.
Fifth, I found that I was wrong about therapy. I thought it was worthwhile. However, their methods are simply too traumatic to lead to anything but more insanity.
Sixth, I have a quick acid test. Am I being like Molyneux? If so, I should probably stop, especially if I can't justify doing so from first principles.
Seventh, while I've learned that my friends aren't all that good at logical consistency either, what does it matter? They beat the crap out of everyone else on every other measure that does matter. While logical consistency is as necessary to me as air itself, apparently all my friends can get along fine without going overboard on it.
Eighth, I've learned how important it is to make sure people can just be honest with you, whatever that means for them.
Finally, I absolutely, totally, completely, and passionately hate Stefan Molyneux. From his first email to this last straw, he has been nothing but derisive to me. This article or a quotation thereof will the absolute, final chance Molyneux has.
Since I'm going on about showing evidence...my first email was a response to a Lew Rockwell article where he asked about if he's wrong. I gave a long a detailed explanation of my beliefs. They were, admittedly, somewhat false. His only response? "Ha ha. Go check out my site." It's wonderful that you find my attempts at reason funny. Good job dismissing the deep thought of a "clearly very intelligent person." Your words, not mine. (You went on to praise my specific techniques. Thanks! I stole them from some generally twisted bastard, that's why they're 'slippery.' Effective though, as you found out.)
(Today, May 12, you asked in chat 'why would anyone find me insulting' or something of that nature. The above is why.)
That hurt, Stef. That was the first, and apparently the last, time you were ever able to do so. And then I went to your site. Guess what I found? I found that you said if I was hurt by things you say, it's because I was abused. And that, if I told you how you were insulting, that would be simply more abuse. If I'd been stupid enough to do bring it up, you would have told me it was my own fault for being insulted.
What a mind-fuck. What fucking bullshit.
Stef, you've given me a lot of your time, which I appreciate knowing how much derision you have for me. You answer all of my forum posts, (though your first was also a laugh - at a joke at my expense) even when I'm being 'very catty,' which makes me believe you think I have hope, relative to your philosophy. But now, I've stolen all your good ideas. I've absorbed and tested the results of the philosophy, which I can clearly see on your forum.
All that is left is hate. Unlike you, I can deal with learning from people I hate. Truth is truth, regardless of the mouth that utters it. Nevertheless, it does not make sense to keep visiting people I hate who are of no use to me. I don't talk to my sister anymore either, now that I've got my own place, and have taken the relevant furniture that I inherited out of her house. I would even refrain from letting you know this post exists, but you haven't come up with anything new for at least a year. Further, if you continue to put out books for free, I can continue to skim them for accidental truths. I find reading full-length, clear but wrong thoughts is challenging and keeps me on my toes. The podcasts are just too inefficient.
So this is the last, absolute last chance at repentance. This is not just because I'm going to get banned for posting this. Instead, because you've given me no reason to believe that my first suspicions were anything but right. If you don't do it now, I'm not going to ask again.
I'm DeFooing you.
But fear not, if you ban me I will read the responses to this article. If your forum starts insulting me, I'm sorry - 'analyzing,' knowing that I cannot respond, much like they have done to others, it will reflect very badly on you.
Also, just like my first email, this post has some mistakes. There are things I will happily admit are abusive - if you can spot them. If you can refute them even slightly. They're a test of your intellectual ability. If I had sincerely made those mistakes - and it's not like I planned to include them, my subconscious handles that - you would be doing me a great service by pointing out my error. Unfortunately, I already know how it will turn out. It will turn out exactly like it turned out in my first email.
You may respond, "But if you want compassion and repentance, why are your words so harsh?" But, why a thinker of your caliber (remember, about 40) would expect me to treat you better than you've treated me is beyond my comprehension.
So help me god, if one philosopher can't talk to another in brutal honesty, then there's just no point to the entire endeavor. And so help me god but I believe everything put down in this post. (Yes that phrasing is just to annoy you - it shouldn't. What do you care what I think? I'm just some asshole on the intertubes, relative to you.)
Apparently, I am that mythical sociopath that can indefinitely hide their true beliefs, because I would hope to god that if you'd noticed before, you'd have gone "proselytizing" at me to try and change them.
For non-FDR people: Could you kindly see if anything in this post doesn't fit with another part of the post? I've read it over several times and I think it all works out, but it's mine so I can't ever be quite sure that I'm not just remaking the same mistake.
It's a shame, because he has some good ideas.
I've tried to change Stefan Molyneux's mind before. I wouldn't have, but first he claims to be a very 'healthy and honest' human being, went to therapy and everything, and second because he solicited it. If I think he's wrong, I'm supposed to let him know.
However, each time I've tried I get the impression that either I'm not making it through, that he just doesn't understand (in which case I'm just a better philosopher than he is) or that I'm getting the runaround - that his desire to be proven wrong is insincere at best.
So I decided to call him. Get him to call me and a bunch of other people, actually.
Basically, the result was, "Go proselytize, and maybe I'll talk to you then." (Right at the end, 63:00) In short, I got the runaround, exactly as I predicted. (I did get a few questions answered, and indeed I'm grateful, but as soon as he felt the noose tightening, lo and behold he's done talking to me.) While I knew he would cut me off if I asked enough questions in a row, I had hoped that a person who's such a self-described master philosopher would at least know to give me a semi-real reason. Such as, "I'm tired of answering your questions." "You haven't donated, I have better uses for my time." "I don't feel like it anymore." You know, just something honest. Or even, "Well, I can't be honest with you."
Basically, some RTR* from the supposed inventor of RTR. *(Near the bottom of the list, FDR #3)
(He did say, "I'm going to end up with one video image per second if I keep going." But when I said that I had more questions, why didn't he repeat that?)
As he would no doubt ask, "What does this remind you of in your childhood." It reminds me of my mother, "Go play outside, and let me do the dishes." It reminds me of my teachers. "Just do the work." Way to act like a public school teacher, Stef.
Also, if this is such an important objection, if it's really so much more important for me to proselytize rather than understand the theory, why didn't you point it out four days ago when I posted my analysis of tax rates?
(Also, the dude doesn't get math. Which, considering he said, "mathematics isn't real," is not surprising at all.)
In other words, his line "I'm perfectly happy to hear about expansions of UPB," is bunk. If he were, if he had any kind of intellectual curiosity at all, he would actually carry out his threat to listen to me. No, if he releases the recording, skip to the last quarter or so (sometime after 50:00 in the video). When you find that line, see if you can hear the fear in his voice. I could.
In fact, his whole community has a problem with listening to me. I saw it in action by testing their forum instant-message app. I put some random deep thoughts into the stream and saw...exactly nothing come back. No agreement. No refutation. No gentle correction. No heads-up that it's not important to them (it was). This despite randomly pulling crap, like my signature, that I really don't care about, and praising it to the skies. (When you wound a soul, it bleeds fear.)
No, Ockham suggests that Molyneux is high on being the top man. He delights in being the leader of his little community...not a member.
No, every time I try to figure out if Molyneux really is "happy to hear about corrections" he changes the subject. Finally, this time, he actually told me to shut up and go away. He actually told me, point blank, to ask questions relevant to other people.
Since he never has nor ever will take any of my suggestions, I guess this makes sense. Bit of a waste of time for me to make them, really. But, I have to know if I'm right or not. I have to know what someone who's gone to therapy is like, what someone who has a therapist as a wife is like. I have to know if even someone who knows all the theory of how to treat people will actually do so.
I have to know how important mental knowledge is for moral and compassionate behavior, so that I know how to advise anyone who may ask me. So I know how important it is to spread correct principles vs spreading correct special-case solutions.
You would think, for someone who understands how badly children are treated, that if someone came to him confused and asking for things, he would respond by being compassionate.
Instead, for a dude who's supposed to be so fond of the Socratic Method, I really have trouble getting a question in edgewise, let alone a statement. If I have to stop and think about things, he just continues on. The basic strategy seems to be eyes-glaze-over-waiting-for-him-to-shut-up. I was going to ask him if there's a better solution, because he sometimes stops repeating himself and says something new, but if my eyes have glazed over I'm liable to miss it. I can't though; haven't "proselytized" yet. Even if I was able to get more than a few words in, the proofs I use are obviously beyond him. "Me no understand." Indeed. (Consciousness isn't physical, bub. I would like give you not only one but three old college tries at proving me wrong, but since that's not what you want to talk about, it's not in the cards.)
If I met a philosopher who was smarter than me, who could understand my works, I would be ecstatic. I would have nothing but questions for them. I would want them to understand so that I wouldn't have to do all the work. So that they could help me find the truth.
Instead, with him I have the opposite because of his (apparent) rampant contradictions, in his podcasts, articles, and books. Certainly, he has a lot of good ideas in there. However, I have to do all the legwork, to see if they're logically consistent, myself. His ability to think in straight lines is strangely schizophrenic. It goes on and off like a loose connection.
It's exactly how he sounds - his arguments, especially when he's not reading written-down arguments, are suggestive but never coherent- so that makes sense.
It's infuriating. Since he clearly isn't using logic to find his ideas - if he were then I wouldn't have to correct him all the time - I want to know how he's doing it. If most people who just guess get like 2 or 3, he gets like 40. (Mencius Moldbug gets like 90, but he isn't guessing.) Is he just cognitively unfit? (Lacks logical sense.) Is he cancerous like the anti-logicians, meaning anything related to his basic misunderstanding gets eaten by anti-logic? Does he have a novel method of find the truth? If he kept telling me to "Go proselytize," I would never find out. I wonder if this is by design.
(I'm hoping to get 100 or better, and indeed if my logical consistency is really as high as I think it is, I'm totally succeeding. I can explain all of MM and yet also point out his mistakes. Yes, this is a falsifiable theory - I'll even help you falsify it. Since I want to be that good, I need to constantly make sure I haven't confused my current destination with my actual goal.)
Moreover, Stef's philosophy, which even he isn't particularly good at, (as one would expect of new ideas) is supposed to make one happy. Indeed, Stef appears to me to be pretty happy. This is doubly infuriating. If I tried to get by with that many contradictions, I'd be crushed. If I let myself get that loose around the intellectual middle, waking up every day would be torture. Is it just me? Of course it is! Stef's quite happy! Stef's forum is quite happy! In fact, lots of people are pretty happy! But if I tried to slack off even a tenth that much, I'd be slaughtered instantly by my conscience.
In short, if I tried to use Stef's philosophy, I'd be wracked hourly with guilt, doubt, self-recriminations, and the nagging feeling that there is something better.
And indeed, that's why I want to score 100. I have to score 100. I have no real choice. Just be thankful that you are not me.
No, my offense is to have the gall, the gall, to think I might be an equal. That I may actually have something to contribute to the conversation beyond what Stef himself has thought of.
No, that simply cannot be allowed. And heaven forbid that you criticize him personally. No, Stef's gone through therapy. His wife's a therapist, even. He's perfect. Unless you suggest he is, then he's not. You're just abusive. You need to go to therapy, too. All that desperate pain you feel when you listen to a therapist? Just a fluke of nature. Never because they're causing you harm. Unless you ask him, then of course he's happy to listen to potential philosophy-relevant character flaws, but for now you should "Go proselytize."
Still, this conclusion is not ironclad. There's lots of ways to falsify it, and indeed I would be ecstatic if I could do so. (Notably, I could also have misunderstood, and a misunderstanding of this magnitude is, shall we say, 'serious,' and very much the problem of the thinker so misunderstood. If so, fix it!) So, on the off chance some random FDR person actually reads this, I want to ask Stef the following:
"Okay, I agree with you. Yes, the principles are more important than the instances. (We're going to ignore the fact that I don't see how UPB is anything but an argument from effect.) I am trying to learn how to proselytize. If I can't convince you to listen to a little expansion of your theory, how am I supposed to convince people, completely illogical people, to throw away values they've held their entire life?"
I was unable to ask this question. Since I have to "Go proselytize" for a while, I am in fact not allowed to ask this, right now, at all.
I have this blog. I'm trying to bring people to it. (Not with this post.) I already am trying to proselytize. In fact, I have to hold myself back! I have found that I'm terrible at spreading my beliefs, yet every time someone says something I disagree with, even if they're named Stef, I feel ethically compelled to at least try to correct them. (Though admittedly, as Stef presumed I went overboard on the holding-back phase of development.)
No, you cannot tell me to "Go proselytize" as a way to prevent me from doing so. I am proselytizing, Stef. To you.
This is how Stef always treats me. Yes, always. He honestly couldn't care less about the ideas of others unless they directly support his own. This is flabbergasting for someone who claims to be a philosopher, who wants to help people.
Yeah that 'heroin' you were talking about? It's not helping people. It's superiority. It's the high of authority, and I don't want any part of it. I want to ask people what they want help with, and then do so in a logically consistent manner. I want them to decide what they need help with, because if I'm logically consistent, I can't help but lead them to the truth. If I listen to them carefully, I can't help but know what they're really asking for help with - the real, personal problems that truly trouble them.
No, I don't understand how anyone could be anything less than pleased with someone who asks all sorts of questions about their theories and in fact comes to agreement with you most of the time. I totally agree with UPB. I simply don't understand it completely. Why is he intentionally blocking my understanding?
Here's something else I want to ask Stef:
"If I don't properly understand UPB, how am I supposed to proselytize properly? Why are you asking me to get behind something I cannot yet logically get behind?"
Again, I don't mind if Stef was just bored of talking, if he was starting to feel put upon, if he just wanted his podcast not to be a million years long, (it would help if he could stop repeating crap I already know) if he just said, "Come back for the Sunday call-in show," if he truly suspected I was just being difficult, or any of a dozen other reasons...provided he tells me that's the reason. If honesty is the first virtue, why can't I get any out of Stef?
Why, Stef, does it feel like it's all about you? Why is your board a total echo-chamber? Why are you so fond of your own voice? Why have I almost never seen your beliefs evolve? Why do you apparently resent my questions and misunderstandings so much, since I've demonstrated that you can resolve them? Why is it your ideas I must spread? Why can't I make them into my ideas? Why do you never attribute your ideas to others?
It's very mysterious.
Unless, of course, Stef is exactly what he appears to be; a messianic wannabe. He probably just finally did what I've been complaining about since elementary school. Since he wants to be a messiah, he actually figured out what it would take, (some useful, but anti-social truths, along with some cultesque follower-manipulation)* and then put them into action. Since it worked, he now spends his time expanding and defending his turf.
*(You don't get a following that size with just actual truth. If you did, based on my successful prediction rate, I wouldn't be able to go anywhere without tripping over followers. Am I right? Well, is this post going to generate only universal disparagement on his board? Yes, a recursive test of my predictive ability. Also, is the sky blue?)
Why is it that everyone on your forum was abused? And not just like, a little. Sure, no one is parented well. I knew that already. There's also Alice Miller who predates Stef by a solid margin. Did he steal her ideas, intentionally or not? He's stolen mine before. I don't mind, but it sets a bad precedent - taking my ideas without acknowledging, at least to me, that you've done so. (Latest offense; used a concept of mine in his hideous Free Will youtube videos. Dude couldn't understand determinism if we tied him down, taped his eyelids open, and paraded all of history's most polite, logical, and eloquent determinists in front of him until he collapsed from exhaustion. We've practically done so already.)
Again, "why is it that there's no one on your board who A: agrees with you yet B: wasn't abused? Are you telling me that there's like a one in six billion chance of being raised well, meaning that we have no one from class B to compare to? I've seen less abused people on your board before, so that's patently false. I even met one in person. These people don't stick around on your board."
This also makes sense. I used to be a messianic wannabe. (My mother actually thought I was Jesus Christ reborn. Not all the time, I was sometimes demoted because she was crazy, but some of the time.) I know exactly what it feels like. I know exactly what it looks like. I know exactly what kind of people are susceptible to it, because I used to be horrified by how they listened to me. Honestly I have to say that damn that guy knows how to pull it off. Of course maybe this is just projection. But, much as he likes to say, "If I run a cult, it seems to be the worst cult in the history of cults," if I'm a messianic wannabe, I'm doing a shit poor job of it.
Also, Stef agrees with me. "It feels like messianic craziness and I don't want it!" (Feed 3, Podcast 628, The Die is Cast.) Also, "Trust your feelings." Well, Stef, trust your feelings. You're a messianic crazy. Also, you've met god. Yours is a big blue eye-thing that hates freedom and music. I suggest you get a new one. I guess I can see why you don't want to trust your feelings completely. That plus the therapy thing. If you listened to your feelings as completely as you advise, you would never have been able to go.
No, my stated goal is to make more people with my skills. Ideally, I would make people with superior skills so that I wouldn't have to work so hard. I want to be able to justify being intellectually lazy to myself. (Also one of the reasons I will happily present evidence and let you draw your own conclusion. I know that it helps antidote any remaining messianic urges. Also, once you know the evidence I'm using, you can see if my logic is faulty. Directly, and on your own. While I'm massively right, I do make mistakes, I just wish more people could spot them.)
But I can't. While I won't, as Stef did, say there is no one else, I'm sure having a devil of a time finding them. Seriously, if you know where one is, please please point them out to me.
The sad, sad, tragic thing is that Stef is better than the vast majority. He at least puts his ideas down in a somewhat logical way. I can understand what he's trying to say, and he doesn't start equivocating as soon as I prove him wrong. Which is part of why it's important; if I can't get him to agree with me, why the fuck am I trying to get average Joe to agree with me?
Sadly these very virtues are why he has to give me the runaround. Deprived of obfuscation, deliberate mind-fucking, changing the subject, and declarations of 'irrelevant,' (remember, he does score 40 or so) he has to use other tools. He can't engage me in conversation for too long. He can't ever let himself understand my ideas, just as he can't let himself understand determinism. He sure as shit can't ever expand my ideas.
So I guess, compared to the rest of the population, I understand where he's coming from. Compared to the people that surround him, he does rule the roost.
So what have I learned from this? Many things, of which I'll list a few.
First, there may be an alternate way of finding truth. True, I have at least five already, but more is always welcome. (Logic, hunches, inspiration, 'feeling it out' - I've learned what contradictions and truth feel like, so basically I've taught my emotions to reason, and reading - what I like to call the theft of ideas. I've stolen quite a few of Molyneux's. All of these have to produce beliefs that do not contradict any of my existing beliefs. Notably, sometimes existing beliefs are displaced.) Especially one that can score 40 all on its own.
Second, that the task of convincing someone of the truth is probably much, much, more momentous than I thought it was.
Third, I found out that even if you know the truth, putting into action is almost totally unrelated. (I have since confirmed this on my own with reddit comments. I am susceptible as well, though at least now I know it's a problem, so I know I need to solve it.) Knowing the principles may be a completely fruitless approach to engendering honesty, compassion, and morality.
Fourth, that I really have to make sure that you, dear reader, can see when I change my mind, so that you know I'm not static like Molyneux is.
Fifth, I found that I was wrong about therapy. I thought it was worthwhile. However, their methods are simply too traumatic to lead to anything but more insanity.
Sixth, I have a quick acid test. Am I being like Molyneux? If so, I should probably stop, especially if I can't justify doing so from first principles.
Seventh, while I've learned that my friends aren't all that good at logical consistency either, what does it matter? They beat the crap out of everyone else on every other measure that does matter. While logical consistency is as necessary to me as air itself, apparently all my friends can get along fine without going overboard on it.
Eighth, I've learned how important it is to make sure people can just be honest with you, whatever that means for them.
Finally, I absolutely, totally, completely, and passionately hate Stefan Molyneux. From his first email to this last straw, he has been nothing but derisive to me. This article or a quotation thereof will the absolute, final chance Molyneux has.
Since I'm going on about showing evidence...my first email was a response to a Lew Rockwell article where he asked about if he's wrong. I gave a long a detailed explanation of my beliefs. They were, admittedly, somewhat false. His only response? "Ha ha. Go check out my site." It's wonderful that you find my attempts at reason funny. Good job dismissing the deep thought of a "clearly very intelligent person." Your words, not mine. (You went on to praise my specific techniques. Thanks! I stole them from some generally twisted bastard, that's why they're 'slippery.' Effective though, as you found out.)
(Today, May 12, you asked in chat 'why would anyone find me insulting' or something of that nature. The above is why.)
That hurt, Stef. That was the first, and apparently the last, time you were ever able to do so. And then I went to your site. Guess what I found? I found that you said if I was hurt by things you say, it's because I was abused. And that, if I told you how you were insulting, that would be simply more abuse. If I'd been stupid enough to do bring it up, you would have told me it was my own fault for being insulted.
What a mind-fuck. What fucking bullshit.
Stef, you've given me a lot of your time, which I appreciate knowing how much derision you have for me. You answer all of my forum posts, (though your first was also a laugh - at a joke at my expense) even when I'm being 'very catty,' which makes me believe you think I have hope, relative to your philosophy. But now, I've stolen all your good ideas. I've absorbed and tested the results of the philosophy, which I can clearly see on your forum.
All that is left is hate. Unlike you, I can deal with learning from people I hate. Truth is truth, regardless of the mouth that utters it. Nevertheless, it does not make sense to keep visiting people I hate who are of no use to me. I don't talk to my sister anymore either, now that I've got my own place, and have taken the relevant furniture that I inherited out of her house. I would even refrain from letting you know this post exists, but you haven't come up with anything new for at least a year. Further, if you continue to put out books for free, I can continue to skim them for accidental truths. I find reading full-length, clear but wrong thoughts is challenging and keeps me on my toes. The podcasts are just too inefficient.
So this is the last, absolute last chance at repentance. This is not just because I'm going to get banned for posting this. Instead, because you've given me no reason to believe that my first suspicions were anything but right. If you don't do it now, I'm not going to ask again.
I'm DeFooing you.
But fear not, if you ban me I will read the responses to this article. If your forum starts insulting me, I'm sorry - 'analyzing,' knowing that I cannot respond, much like they have done to others, it will reflect very badly on you.
Also, just like my first email, this post has some mistakes. There are things I will happily admit are abusive - if you can spot them. If you can refute them even slightly. They're a test of your intellectual ability. If I had sincerely made those mistakes - and it's not like I planned to include them, my subconscious handles that - you would be doing me a great service by pointing out my error. Unfortunately, I already know how it will turn out. It will turn out exactly like it turned out in my first email.
You may respond, "But if you want compassion and repentance, why are your words so harsh?" But, why a thinker of your caliber (remember, about 40) would expect me to treat you better than you've treated me is beyond my comprehension.
So help me god, if one philosopher can't talk to another in brutal honesty, then there's just no point to the entire endeavor. And so help me god but I believe everything put down in this post. (Yes that phrasing is just to annoy you - it shouldn't. What do you care what I think? I'm just some asshole on the intertubes, relative to you.)
Apparently, I am that mythical sociopath that can indefinitely hide their true beliefs, because I would hope to god that if you'd noticed before, you'd have gone "proselytizing" at me to try and change them.
For non-FDR people: Could you kindly see if anything in this post doesn't fit with another part of the post? I've read it over several times and I think it all works out, but it's mine so I can't ever be quite sure that I'm not just remaking the same mistake.
Basic Ethics
There are actually only two rules to follow.
Treat people's property according to their values.
If you don't know their values, assume they are the same as yours.
Property is simply the product of one's self control. You control yourself, so you are your property. If you pick up a rock in a free state, it becomes your rock; you control it as well as yourself. If you had no expectation of controlling that rock, you wouldn't bother to pick it up.
Because you own yourself and I own myself, we own the products of ourselves. You expect to control your products, and conversely I expect to control mine.
This law is refined from this, plus Stefan Molyneux's Universally Preferable Behavior, along with the Golden Rule. In fact, people already follow this ethical standard, but do so imperfectly, lacking a definition.
Because we assume other people share our values, we can, seemingly paradoxically, precisely determine other people's values.
For instance, if someone tries to murder me, I know for a fact that they do not value human life, so I can murder them back without violating their values. Thus, this formulation of ethics fully justifies self-defense, while simultaneously forbidding the things we expect to be crimes.
The actual law would go like this; "The defendant attempted to murder the citizen Alrenous, without first ascertaining Alrenous' values on life. Since this act attempted to contravene Alrenous' values, we charge that the defendant does not value other people's values, and therefore it is not a violation of the defendant's apparent values to order (reparation, prison time, death, or whatever.)"
This formulation of ethics is the only one I know that inherently justifies legal sanctions. It's simply the fact that you have values and I should follow them, and therefore since I have values you should follow them.
Also, it's a bit strange to object. The question is; do you want me to treat you according to your values? Yes, or no? The only coherent answer is yes. It would appear that everyone agrees with this principle, by definition.
The only question is whether it fully delineates the concepts defined by 'ethics' or not.
Treat people's property according to their values.
If you don't know their values, assume they are the same as yours.
Property is simply the product of one's self control. You control yourself, so you are your property. If you pick up a rock in a free state, it becomes your rock; you control it as well as yourself. If you had no expectation of controlling that rock, you wouldn't bother to pick it up.
Because you own yourself and I own myself, we own the products of ourselves. You expect to control your products, and conversely I expect to control mine.
This law is refined from this, plus Stefan Molyneux's Universally Preferable Behavior, along with the Golden Rule. In fact, people already follow this ethical standard, but do so imperfectly, lacking a definition.
Because we assume other people share our values, we can, seemingly paradoxically, precisely determine other people's values.
For instance, if someone tries to murder me, I know for a fact that they do not value human life, so I can murder them back without violating their values. Thus, this formulation of ethics fully justifies self-defense, while simultaneously forbidding the things we expect to be crimes.
The actual law would go like this; "The defendant attempted to murder the citizen Alrenous, without first ascertaining Alrenous' values on life. Since this act attempted to contravene Alrenous' values, we charge that the defendant does not value other people's values, and therefore it is not a violation of the defendant's apparent values to order (reparation, prison time, death, or whatever.)"
This formulation of ethics is the only one I know that inherently justifies legal sanctions. It's simply the fact that you have values and I should follow them, and therefore since I have values you should follow them.
Also, it's a bit strange to object. The question is; do you want me to treat you according to your values? Yes, or no? The only coherent answer is yes. It would appear that everyone agrees with this principle, by definition.
The only question is whether it fully delineates the concepts defined by 'ethics' or not.
A Quick Definition of Property
(Now with a long definition as well.)
I'm having trouble stating it clearly, so instead I'm going to repeatedly state it, and ask you to sort it out internally.
You have property because when you do things, you expect it to work.
When you build a house to live in, you expect to be able to live in that house. If you couldn't reasonably expect that - if you didn't own the house - then you wouldn't have built it in the first place.
All agents with finite resources will have property. Anything that needs to expend energy to get some benefit in return will have property in exactly the same way humans have property. When energy is intentionally expended, it will only be expended if the expected benefit is equal or greater.
Property, the concept, is a result of the expectation of ownership. Property, the actual instances, are also a result of expectations of ownership. No agents will act without it. Agents that don't act will literally die.
As a result, all organisms capable of expectation will have property.
As a result, trying to bypass, eliminate, or alter a human's instinct for property, (A child says, "NO! It's MINE!") is to attempt to bypass, eliminate, or alter this immutable fact. It cannot, does not, and will never work.
Contrarily, systems of laws or other tools that advance, generalize, and expand the human instinct for property will always meet with success, to the exact extent that they are consistent.
Right, I've sorted it out now. I'm leaving the above so you can see how I think.
You control yourself. This is a fact of you being yourself; if you didn't control yourself you would be this weird inverse-possessed spirit-spectator thing, at the whim and mercy of cold unconscious physics.
Since you control yourself, you expect the results of your actions to also be under your control. This is ownership. If you expected that an action would result only in things you don't control, you wouldn't do it. If you expected that your attempted control would be thwarted, you wouldn't try.
Property is simply the act of respecting this fact. I expect to control my actions, therefore I can only reasonably expect that you control your actions, unless I have some ironclad proof that you aren't the same kind of being that I am.
We call this fact 'ownership.'
Property-rights debates only make sense in the context of things, and yet if the anti-property debater were to win, and apply their theory logically, then there would be no things over which to debate.
Equivalently, we can say that if you try to take ownership of someone else's property, you do great violence to logic. First, you would only steal in such a way if you thought it would work; stealing inherently requires property rights; second, if there weren't property rights, there would be nothing for you to steal.
Another way to look at it is to see that property is really just an extended self. You are yourself, plus your things. Especially once we realize that you own your thoughts as well, this completely makes sense.
I'm having trouble stating it clearly, so instead I'm going to repeatedly state it, and ask you to sort it out internally.
You have property because when you do things, you expect it to work.
When you build a house to live in, you expect to be able to live in that house. If you couldn't reasonably expect that - if you didn't own the house - then you wouldn't have built it in the first place.
All agents with finite resources will have property. Anything that needs to expend energy to get some benefit in return will have property in exactly the same way humans have property. When energy is intentionally expended, it will only be expended if the expected benefit is equal or greater.
Property, the concept, is a result of the expectation of ownership. Property, the actual instances, are also a result of expectations of ownership. No agents will act without it. Agents that don't act will literally die.
As a result, all organisms capable of expectation will have property.
As a result, trying to bypass, eliminate, or alter a human's instinct for property, (A child says, "NO! It's MINE!") is to attempt to bypass, eliminate, or alter this immutable fact. It cannot, does not, and will never work.
Contrarily, systems of laws or other tools that advance, generalize, and expand the human instinct for property will always meet with success, to the exact extent that they are consistent.
Right, I've sorted it out now. I'm leaving the above so you can see how I think.
You control yourself. This is a fact of you being yourself; if you didn't control yourself you would be this weird inverse-possessed spirit-spectator thing, at the whim and mercy of cold unconscious physics.
Since you control yourself, you expect the results of your actions to also be under your control. This is ownership. If you expected that an action would result only in things you don't control, you wouldn't do it. If you expected that your attempted control would be thwarted, you wouldn't try.
Property is simply the act of respecting this fact. I expect to control my actions, therefore I can only reasonably expect that you control your actions, unless I have some ironclad proof that you aren't the same kind of being that I am.
We call this fact 'ownership.'
Property-rights debates only make sense in the context of things, and yet if the anti-property debater were to win, and apply their theory logically, then there would be no things over which to debate.
Equivalently, we can say that if you try to take ownership of someone else's property, you do great violence to logic. First, you would only steal in such a way if you thought it would work; stealing inherently requires property rights; second, if there weren't property rights, there would be nothing for you to steal.
Another way to look at it is to see that property is really just an extended self. You are yourself, plus your things. Especially once we realize that you own your thoughts as well, this completely makes sense.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Our Society is Too Big
Our knowledge bases are losing cohesion.
For instance, this + this = knowledge.
In the one, the author examines the cognitive limits of human brains, bringing up how planning is still basically in beta testing. The author examines these to try to explain why people forget or fail to carry out their plans. In the second, we find data suggesting that willpower isn't just some metaphor, but an actual physical thing that can be depleted.
If these two people, (plus their teams?) had ever gotten together, they'd both be much richer. Yet, not only are they observably independent, there exists no mechanism to bring them together. There are no 'meta-scientists,' devoted to synthesizing the related findings of disparate fields, and there is certainly no one channeling the thoughts of these related thinkers to each other.
Even if someone were to implement a society of meta-scientists, dedicated to essentially being a proactive human-implemented Google, eventually the learning limits of the thinkers would be reached, and it would be physically impossible to socially empower them further.
In tribal humans, once they reach the Dunbar Number, it has been calculated that 42% of their time would be spent just socializing. We can see this as the maximum amount of time to be able to socialize and still do something useful. Analogously, once a modern human reaches some time-percentage of being taught, it is useless to attempt to teach them more.
Further, this feeds into the idea that social structures have carrying capacity, measured in complexity and size, similar to ecological carrying capacities. The simplest explanation for the fall of Rome was simply that they tried to get too big. The sub-reason for this was that their particular structure required growth, otherwise they might have realized that it was time to stop growing.
This idea is the inverse of the related idea that greater social technology is needed to create an agrarian society over a hunter-gatherer society.
If this idea holds merit, we can clearly see that American society is groaning under its own weight. Democratic government always expands, for the simple reason that contractive ideologies do not win followers. (See Mencius Moldbug.) The market has been expanding as well, so the demotic expansion has so far been supported, but eventually the market must reach our social carrying capacity. Once it does, demotic expansion will almost instantly catch up and overtake the supporting market, squeezing it out of existence, and our society will collapse.
As with the examples above, cracks are already appearing in our social structures, indicating a loss of cohesion as a result of expansionary pressure. I will not say more; doomsayers, both mainstream and internet crank, are already abundant enough. It's fruitless to add more, as the task of sifting true doomsaying from false is basically overwhelming.
For instance, this + this = knowledge.
In the one, the author examines the cognitive limits of human brains, bringing up how planning is still basically in beta testing. The author examines these to try to explain why people forget or fail to carry out their plans. In the second, we find data suggesting that willpower isn't just some metaphor, but an actual physical thing that can be depleted.
If these two people, (plus their teams?) had ever gotten together, they'd both be much richer. Yet, not only are they observably independent, there exists no mechanism to bring them together. There are no 'meta-scientists,' devoted to synthesizing the related findings of disparate fields, and there is certainly no one channeling the thoughts of these related thinkers to each other.
Even if someone were to implement a society of meta-scientists, dedicated to essentially being a proactive human-implemented Google, eventually the learning limits of the thinkers would be reached, and it would be physically impossible to socially empower them further.
In tribal humans, once they reach the Dunbar Number, it has been calculated that 42% of their time would be spent just socializing. We can see this as the maximum amount of time to be able to socialize and still do something useful. Analogously, once a modern human reaches some time-percentage of being taught, it is useless to attempt to teach them more.
Further, this feeds into the idea that social structures have carrying capacity, measured in complexity and size, similar to ecological carrying capacities. The simplest explanation for the fall of Rome was simply that they tried to get too big. The sub-reason for this was that their particular structure required growth, otherwise they might have realized that it was time to stop growing.
This idea is the inverse of the related idea that greater social technology is needed to create an agrarian society over a hunter-gatherer society.
If this idea holds merit, we can clearly see that American society is groaning under its own weight. Democratic government always expands, for the simple reason that contractive ideologies do not win followers. (See Mencius Moldbug.) The market has been expanding as well, so the demotic expansion has so far been supported, but eventually the market must reach our social carrying capacity. Once it does, demotic expansion will almost instantly catch up and overtake the supporting market, squeezing it out of existence, and our society will collapse.
As with the examples above, cracks are already appearing in our social structures, indicating a loss of cohesion as a result of expansionary pressure. I will not say more; doomsayers, both mainstream and internet crank, are already abundant enough. It's fruitless to add more, as the task of sifting true doomsaying from false is basically overwhelming.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Steve Pavina; How to Be a Man; an Analysis
I've written this post for two reasons, first that Steve Pavlina is good at provoking thought, if not spectacular at being right, and second because to truly understand a philosophy you need to understand the philosopher. You need to know my blind spots, for instance, be aware of my inexperiences, understand my idiosyncrasies in the use of language, and so on.
There's also a small chance that you can learn more about yourself by reading this, or learn more about how to introspect accurately.
The problem with this is that I appear to have MPD, except that the relevant personalities co-exist in time.
Specifically there me who's in mostly in control, and there's a second me.
This second personality appears to have only one goal in life; for it not to hurt. This seems like perfectly respectable goal to me, except this personality seems to be in charge of what hurts and what doesn't, which is clearly a corrupt situation. If it really wanted life not to hurt, while it doesn't appear that it has full control, it could at least tweak the settings so that it's much easier. For instance, it could not put me in double binds.
For example, the dishes. I walk into my kitchen, and there are dirty dishes everywhere. I don't like this, and so I decide that I'm going to do the dishes. I find that I really don't want to do the dishes. So I change my mind. Then I get punished for changing my mind, and reminded that I don't like my messy kitchen.
This is a minor example, but they're everywhere.
Instead, it appears that this personality exists mostly to punish me. It includes my conscience, though that's not its totality. My conscience is not perturbed when I torrent, lie, take advantage of people, manipulate people, am cruelly sarcastic, or display contempt. Instead, it gets upset when I drink. It gets upset when I try to jaywalk. Clearly this personality hates me. (Admittedly it also gets upset when I intentionally inflict pain, or go back on my word.)
Notably, my main personality has its own preferences. I think that my kitchen should be neat, irrespective of whether I enjoy a neat kitchen or not. Also notably, I don't always have this reaction to the thought of dish doing, just sometimes.
The reason this is relevant is that this second personality is an obstacle to my integrity. I cannot act with integrity and appease it at the same time. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't in charge of my emotions.
I run into dilemmas, again double binds though at least I control one branch of the bind, such as; "I completely disagree with what this person is doing. It's an indication of deep philosophical sickness and I cannot abide letting this person spew their poison at my fellow humans."
and
"This person's actions and choices are theirs, and they do not want to change. While I can explain how they are wrong, or counterproductive, this would put a lot of stress on this person, with only an epsilon chance of success, where epsilon is the chance that this person is unlike any other person I've ever talked to, plus the chance I say something magically more brilliant than I've ever said.
"Further, since the whole problem is the transmission of falsity rather than its existence, I have an audience. This audience is, more than likely, also going to be disturbed by my attempted defense on their behalf.
"In short, this course of action will lead to you hurting a lot of people, to no purpose. You don't like hurting people, and I'm not going to let you."
The only way I can, to quote, "express his true self" is to do both. I want and need to help/defend the vulnerable. I want and need to not hurt people. In practice, this is impossible. Indeed, what happens if I am actively attacked? If someone says something specifically to me that is contradictory, poisonous, diseased?
I don't particularly need to defend myself; my logic-fu is very strong. Their words are annoying but not ultimately effective. Nevertheless, I cannot abide such attacks. It strikes me as excessively craven, and to not punish it is anathema. Not for my own sake, but in the hope that they may learn something.
Understand that these two impulses come from very different sources. They share my brain but not neurons. I could, technically, decide to abide such attacks, that they are not anathema to me. This is under my power. (For instance if I were assured that epsilon was zero, I would just laugh at people when they attacked me, to let them know I find their attacks humorous instead of effective.) I cannot decide that I am justified in intentionally inflicting pain for no gain, just to "express my true self."
What I can do is suppress this whole personality. It controls my emotions, so my emotions go with it, but its under my power to do so. It gets sulky, as anyone would, but it allows me to go ahead with acting with integrity to my values.
But when I'm suppressing such a large part of myself, can I really be said to be expressing myself? Am I following my heart?
I actually don't know the answers to these questions. While I can predict the actions of this postulated second me, I do not understand it. I don't know what it is or why it's there.
While I suspect that this problem and most of its properties are unique to me, it does have one shared property; you do not control your emotions either. It is likely that when following your heart, you will discover that your values and emotions collide at some point.
When this happens, what do you do? Steve doesn't say, and I certainly don't know.
(I'm basically done my argument with Steve here. Now I'm simply mentioning stuff because it's related.)
One of my particular problems is that after I suppressed this personality, I found that I had to use two words to describe my feelings, and this is one of the reasons I think it's a separate consciousness, not simply some mechanism. I have emotions, but also instincts. I can't perceive my actual instincts of course, they just happen, but I have a number of feelings that feel like instinctual reactions or knowledge. I call them instincts because they are uncannily accurate. You could also call them intuition but they're entirely sensual in nature, not logical.
These feelings are not affected by whether I'm suppressing this second me or not. They inform me with the aforementioned uncanny accuracy on every possible situation, blithely indifferent to second me. Also important, it's not like I stop having emotions. I still get angry and sad and so on, it simply becomes impossible for me to tell the difference.
So, while most of my feelings are dependent on second me, not all of them are. Similarly, the problem of my values clashing with my emotions would not be a problem if my values didn't carry some emotional weight of their own, independent of second me.
The problem is that while my instincts are very useful, they are not rich. I used to have a particular emotion for a wide variety of situations. Waking up felt different each day, while staying up had a small constellation, separate to going to bed on time. Sunsets would have a particular flavour, as would most rooms and any two geographical places that were out of eyeshot. All this is clearly part of me, and yet it disappears when I take the necessary steps to act with 'integrity.' I am, that is first me, is not comfortable thinking that I know enough to intentionally redesign myself like this, quite apart from the fact that, by comparison, the world is pretty monotonous without it. Precisely, I don't lack such a feeling now, but rather everywhere and every time feels the same.
The other problem is that this emotional rebellion is new. I certainly wasn't born with it. I somehow developed it through my experiences, most likely with public education primarily, though my mother certainly played a role.
Something I'll mention because I'm on the topic anyway...
I also have a third me which appears to be the governing consciousness of my physical body. It tells me what I should eat, when I should sleep, what to do when I'm hurt, and if I ask it to adjust some hormone levels, it will gladly oblige. It also has control of whether I feel physical pain or not, in addition to a wart on my right index finger on the left side of the nail level with the quick. It activates this wart when I decide my hands are ugly and makes it go away when I change my mind. (I found this out by accident and then tested it a second time.)
In other words, it talks to me and I can talk to it, if I want. I can ask it to do a large number of things that you'd have trouble believing. It's in charge of the placebo effect, for instance.
This is one of the reasons I think it is also conscious, and that everyone has one. The placebo effect works through your belief and concept system. If you are told you're getting the saline solution, you don't get a placebo effect even if every other factor that leads to it is kept alive. In other words the placebo effect understands the concept of placebo. It's not Pavlovian, but rather understands the world around it, at least to some degree.
I can see the attack here of saying, "but that just means it hijacks your consciousness," but which would only make sense if you were actually conscious of the placebo effect. It's similar to the fact that if you were to feel another person's emotions directly, they wouldn't fundamentally be someone else's emotions anymore, they would be your emotions.
To finish off, I'm going to look at a relevant example of the type of clash I've described. Steve is soliciting submissions for 'How to Be a Woman.' He also said in the article, "A man is the first to initiate a conversation, the first to ask for what’s needed, and the first to say “I love you.”" The relevant detail being that the man steps up and puts himself out there.
So, taking that advice, I should take a risk. I should say, "Well Steve, you're soliciting responses, but I have a response you may not like. I think it will be useful, that perhaps you'll think more deeply about what you say, and may on the off chance actually be able to answer my objection. However, it's not about womanhood at all. And here it is."
I think that piece of advice is, in a general way, good advice. However...
"Steve isn't going to read your article, link to it, or be changed by it. (If you don't believe me I'll gladly submit this article as a test of my theory.) If he reads much of it at all, he will most likely be stressed and discomfited by it, again with only an epsilon chance of having any kind of useful interaction result. You don't like hurting people and I'm not going to let you."
In this case, I'm annoyed that even if I did decide that I wanted to submit it, (the first point actually seems valid to me) I would hate doing so, and in general this stress on my part would only be increased by any answer he'd offer. Despite my values, that I really it's his responsibility to deal with random submissions like this, especially when he's actually soliciting them, and that every opportunity to improve the world, no matter how unlikely, should be taken, I would despise the act of doing so, unless and until he somehow assured me that I had not caused any harm. (Not going to happen.)
While my problems are more widespread that I suspect most people experience, it's almost inevitable that values and emotions will clash. This problem is almost never discussed; the distinction between values and affections never put into words. Nevertheless, especially when offering advice such as Steve Pavlina's, advice which in general is common, this essential and difficult problem is a necessary part of the full analysis. Avoiding is like teaching someone to drive but neglecting to tell them that cars break down.
I'm only 24. I'm not surprised that I cannot answer this question. However, for Steve to avoid it so completely is an act of negligence. Did it not occur to him? Is he truly so unaware? While I can't say for certain, people in his position are generally not unaware, for otherwise a simple heads-up would be sufficient to solve the problem. No, he is either willfully ignoring this problem, or his identity actively depends on its nonexistence.
For a layman to have such a dependence on ignorance or untruth is basically expected. For a professional thinker such as Steve, especially since he's going on about integrity, is unforgivable.
There's also a small chance that you can learn more about yourself by reading this, or learn more about how to introspect accurately.
The problem with this is that I appear to have MPD, except that the relevant personalities co-exist in time.
Specifically there me who's in mostly in control, and there's a second me.
This second personality appears to have only one goal in life; for it not to hurt. This seems like perfectly respectable goal to me, except this personality seems to be in charge of what hurts and what doesn't, which is clearly a corrupt situation. If it really wanted life not to hurt, while it doesn't appear that it has full control, it could at least tweak the settings so that it's much easier. For instance, it could not put me in double binds.
For example, the dishes. I walk into my kitchen, and there are dirty dishes everywhere. I don't like this, and so I decide that I'm going to do the dishes. I find that I really don't want to do the dishes. So I change my mind. Then I get punished for changing my mind, and reminded that I don't like my messy kitchen.
This is a minor example, but they're everywhere.
Instead, it appears that this personality exists mostly to punish me. It includes my conscience, though that's not its totality. My conscience is not perturbed when I torrent, lie, take advantage of people, manipulate people, am cruelly sarcastic, or display contempt. Instead, it gets upset when I drink. It gets upset when I try to jaywalk. Clearly this personality hates me. (Admittedly it also gets upset when I intentionally inflict pain, or go back on my word.)
Notably, my main personality has its own preferences. I think that my kitchen should be neat, irrespective of whether I enjoy a neat kitchen or not. Also notably, I don't always have this reaction to the thought of dish doing, just sometimes.
The reason this is relevant is that this second personality is an obstacle to my integrity. I cannot act with integrity and appease it at the same time. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't in charge of my emotions.
I run into dilemmas, again double binds though at least I control one branch of the bind, such as; "I completely disagree with what this person is doing. It's an indication of deep philosophical sickness and I cannot abide letting this person spew their poison at my fellow humans."
and
"This person's actions and choices are theirs, and they do not want to change. While I can explain how they are wrong, or counterproductive, this would put a lot of stress on this person, with only an epsilon chance of success, where epsilon is the chance that this person is unlike any other person I've ever talked to, plus the chance I say something magically more brilliant than I've ever said.
"Further, since the whole problem is the transmission of falsity rather than its existence, I have an audience. This audience is, more than likely, also going to be disturbed by my attempted defense on their behalf.
"In short, this course of action will lead to you hurting a lot of people, to no purpose. You don't like hurting people, and I'm not going to let you."
The only way I can, to quote, "express his true self" is to do both. I want and need to help/defend the vulnerable. I want and need to not hurt people. In practice, this is impossible. Indeed, what happens if I am actively attacked? If someone says something specifically to me that is contradictory, poisonous, diseased?
I don't particularly need to defend myself; my logic-fu is very strong. Their words are annoying but not ultimately effective. Nevertheless, I cannot abide such attacks. It strikes me as excessively craven, and to not punish it is anathema. Not for my own sake, but in the hope that they may learn something.
Understand that these two impulses come from very different sources. They share my brain but not neurons. I could, technically, decide to abide such attacks, that they are not anathema to me. This is under my power. (For instance if I were assured that epsilon was zero, I would just laugh at people when they attacked me, to let them know I find their attacks humorous instead of effective.) I cannot decide that I am justified in intentionally inflicting pain for no gain, just to "express my true self."
What I can do is suppress this whole personality. It controls my emotions, so my emotions go with it, but its under my power to do so. It gets sulky, as anyone would, but it allows me to go ahead with acting with integrity to my values.
But when I'm suppressing such a large part of myself, can I really be said to be expressing myself? Am I following my heart?
I actually don't know the answers to these questions. While I can predict the actions of this postulated second me, I do not understand it. I don't know what it is or why it's there.
While I suspect that this problem and most of its properties are unique to me, it does have one shared property; you do not control your emotions either. It is likely that when following your heart, you will discover that your values and emotions collide at some point.
When this happens, what do you do? Steve doesn't say, and I certainly don't know.
(I'm basically done my argument with Steve here. Now I'm simply mentioning stuff because it's related.)
One of my particular problems is that after I suppressed this personality, I found that I had to use two words to describe my feelings, and this is one of the reasons I think it's a separate consciousness, not simply some mechanism. I have emotions, but also instincts. I can't perceive my actual instincts of course, they just happen, but I have a number of feelings that feel like instinctual reactions or knowledge. I call them instincts because they are uncannily accurate. You could also call them intuition but they're entirely sensual in nature, not logical.
These feelings are not affected by whether I'm suppressing this second me or not. They inform me with the aforementioned uncanny accuracy on every possible situation, blithely indifferent to second me. Also important, it's not like I stop having emotions. I still get angry and sad and so on, it simply becomes impossible for me to tell the difference.
So, while most of my feelings are dependent on second me, not all of them are. Similarly, the problem of my values clashing with my emotions would not be a problem if my values didn't carry some emotional weight of their own, independent of second me.
The problem is that while my instincts are very useful, they are not rich. I used to have a particular emotion for a wide variety of situations. Waking up felt different each day, while staying up had a small constellation, separate to going to bed on time. Sunsets would have a particular flavour, as would most rooms and any two geographical places that were out of eyeshot. All this is clearly part of me, and yet it disappears when I take the necessary steps to act with 'integrity.' I am, that is first me, is not comfortable thinking that I know enough to intentionally redesign myself like this, quite apart from the fact that, by comparison, the world is pretty monotonous without it. Precisely, I don't lack such a feeling now, but rather everywhere and every time feels the same.
The other problem is that this emotional rebellion is new. I certainly wasn't born with it. I somehow developed it through my experiences, most likely with public education primarily, though my mother certainly played a role.
Something I'll mention because I'm on the topic anyway...
I also have a third me which appears to be the governing consciousness of my physical body. It tells me what I should eat, when I should sleep, what to do when I'm hurt, and if I ask it to adjust some hormone levels, it will gladly oblige. It also has control of whether I feel physical pain or not, in addition to a wart on my right index finger on the left side of the nail level with the quick. It activates this wart when I decide my hands are ugly and makes it go away when I change my mind. (I found this out by accident and then tested it a second time.)
In other words, it talks to me and I can talk to it, if I want. I can ask it to do a large number of things that you'd have trouble believing. It's in charge of the placebo effect, for instance.
This is one of the reasons I think it is also conscious, and that everyone has one. The placebo effect works through your belief and concept system. If you are told you're getting the saline solution, you don't get a placebo effect even if every other factor that leads to it is kept alive. In other words the placebo effect understands the concept of placebo. It's not Pavlovian, but rather understands the world around it, at least to some degree.
I can see the attack here of saying, "but that just means it hijacks your consciousness," but which would only make sense if you were actually conscious of the placebo effect. It's similar to the fact that if you were to feel another person's emotions directly, they wouldn't fundamentally be someone else's emotions anymore, they would be your emotions.
To finish off, I'm going to look at a relevant example of the type of clash I've described. Steve is soliciting submissions for 'How to Be a Woman.' He also said in the article, "A man is the first to initiate a conversation, the first to ask for what’s needed, and the first to say “I love you.”" The relevant detail being that the man steps up and puts himself out there.
So, taking that advice, I should take a risk. I should say, "Well Steve, you're soliciting responses, but I have a response you may not like. I think it will be useful, that perhaps you'll think more deeply about what you say, and may on the off chance actually be able to answer my objection. However, it's not about womanhood at all. And here it is."
I think that piece of advice is, in a general way, good advice. However...
"Steve isn't going to read your article, link to it, or be changed by it. (If you don't believe me I'll gladly submit this article as a test of my theory.) If he reads much of it at all, he will most likely be stressed and discomfited by it, again with only an epsilon chance of having any kind of useful interaction result. You don't like hurting people and I'm not going to let you."
In this case, I'm annoyed that even if I did decide that I wanted to submit it, (the first point actually seems valid to me) I would hate doing so, and in general this stress on my part would only be increased by any answer he'd offer. Despite my values, that I really it's his responsibility to deal with random submissions like this, especially when he's actually soliciting them, and that every opportunity to improve the world, no matter how unlikely, should be taken, I would despise the act of doing so, unless and until he somehow assured me that I had not caused any harm. (Not going to happen.)
While my problems are more widespread that I suspect most people experience, it's almost inevitable that values and emotions will clash. This problem is almost never discussed; the distinction between values and affections never put into words. Nevertheless, especially when offering advice such as Steve Pavlina's, advice which in general is common, this essential and difficult problem is a necessary part of the full analysis. Avoiding is like teaching someone to drive but neglecting to tell them that cars break down.
I'm only 24. I'm not surprised that I cannot answer this question. However, for Steve to avoid it so completely is an act of negligence. Did it not occur to him? Is he truly so unaware? While I can't say for certain, people in his position are generally not unaware, for otherwise a simple heads-up would be sufficient to solve the problem. No, he is either willfully ignoring this problem, or his identity actively depends on its nonexistence.
For a layman to have such a dependence on ignorance or untruth is basically expected. For a professional thinker such as Steve, especially since he's going on about integrity, is unforgivable.
Friday, May 9, 2008
What is Time?
The short answer is that we don't know.
Basically we notice that the relationship between processes is constant. We can check this easily for cyclic processes - one cycle always corresponds to a fixed amount of another cycle. Then we can check less cyclic processes against the more cyclic processes and notice that they, too, have a fixed correspondence.
Further, when we measure cyclic processes in triads, the fixed ratios do commute. Two cycles such as clocks, A and B measured together A-B will agree with a third clock C, measured separately A-C and B-C. Because this commutation will work with any arbitrary triad, we can tell that this correspondence we call time is shared among all objects. It appears to be a trait external to the objects themselves.
The problem is, to define this properly requires the use of the concept of time. What is a process in the absence of time? What is a cycle in the absence of time?
No, with the current limits of language, defining time is basically impossible. Yet we still know what it is. (No, you don't really think in words.)
The problem is that when you observe time, observing is a process. The shared relations we see are also shared with our observation of the sharing.
To help illustrate what time is, I'm going to break it and see what happens. So what would it mean if this relationship were not constant?
If the relationship were not constant, it has two options. It could be random or cyclic, which would average out over time, or the differences could accumulate.
First, notice that it's very hard to even imagine this properly. What exactly would time be varying over? It can't oscillate with respect to itself. If time were to slow to half for the entire universe, we wouldn't notice a thing, because our perceptions would also be slowed by half, and indeed no interaction anywhere would be affected relative to another.
Instead time would have to vary locally, over a region of space. We could watch clocks running slower there. In the noise or cycle system, it would speed up later. In the accumulate system, it would continue to get slower.
However, in the first circumstance, the differences would even out. Over the time we were measuring the clocks against, each fall behind would be matched by a sprint ahead. In the second, our interactions with the clock would decrease in frequency, by definition. As a result, if the slowing was large enough to be detectable, then the clock would quickly stop interacting at an appreciable rate, and disappear from view.*
*(This is exactly what happens to an object falling into a black hole.)
If it were going faster, that would mean we were going slower, and we would cease to exist.
So, the first thing I see about time is that it's very robust. If it weren't shared consistently across the universe, the variation would cancel itself out.
Still, this idea raises further questions. The question is, as it usually is in physics, how would it know? How would the processes know the difference between this particular patch of space compared to another? Also, how would the variation know how it was supposed to vary? Space is not absolute, which could resolve the problem, so it would have to be a result of the spatial relationship between our clock and the watched clock, a result of the clock's internal state, or a somehow through a variation in the underlying vacuum.
We learn from General Relativity that all three of these apply. Accelerating things makes them go slower. Greater velocity makes things go slower. And since gravity-induced spatial curves accelerate things, a condition of the underlying vacuum makes things go slower.
With a black hole, the acceleration becomes so great that time essentially stops for the infalling object. Mathematically speaking nothing ever actually reaches the event horizon, as it takes an infinite amount of time to get there, because every step closer makes time go slower. Which means that it (nearly) stops emitting photons and becomes black, or indeed emitting any force particles at all.
From the perspective of the infalling object, the universe would end basically instantly.
Crucially, all these variations on the speed of time are very precisely laid out. Just as time in general must be consistent, whatever variations are allowed must also be consistent. The transformation from one perspective to another is consistent the way any arbitrary three clocks in one frame are consistent.
Despite not knowing what time is, and being basically unable to define it, we seem to know quite about about the behavior and properties of time.
So this is what we can say about time quatitatively. To really understand time we need to be able to describe it qualitatively. There is one more thing we can say quantitatively, though.
Time is the independent variable.
To explain, let me define physics. Twice.
A physics is a set of consistent rules for interaction. It is the definition of the relationship between objects.
Physics is a list of things that particles cannot do.
In our particular physics, these rules are defined mathematically. This inevitably means that every behavior can be described as a function.
Not, crucially, regular formulae, such as that for a circle. X^2 + Y^2 = 4 (Radius 2, on the origin.)
The equations describing motion and interactions must be a function, it must have an independent variable which is mapped to one unique set of dependent variables. Y = X + 4
To see this, imagine that it were false. Let's take the circle and make it X^2 + T^2 = 4
There's two problems; we can't properly decide which variable to make independent, as we are thwarted by symmetry; and the related problem that once chosen, the independent variable doesn't have a unique set of dependent variables.
So I'm going to pretend that T is the independent variable. X = sqrt[+/-(4 - T^2) ] (The +/- is there because otherwise the square root function spits out imaginary numbers which don't make sense based on the original equation.)
The plot of this, pretending that X is the result of a measurement of T, is still a circle. Which means that the dependent coordinate set, X, will have two solutions at most points in time. In other words, a pebble thrown in space, subject to this equation, would be in two places at once.* For instance, at T=0 X=2 and X=-2. Later, T=2, the pebbles would hit each other and go back to being in one place, X=0.
*(Not like quantum two-places-at-once, which is really like half in my right hand and half in my left hand, adding up to a total of one place. Actually in two places at once.)
Naturally, this is absurd. Even if it weren't obviously absurd, when the pebble was at two places, if one pebble were struck the other pebble would have to respond, instantly, because it still wouldn't be able to violate the circle-equation. Admittedly, this would be really handy for intergalactic communication. It would be really bad for conservation of energy and for having the laws of physics be the same everywhere.
For there to be a mathematical physics there needs to be an independent variable, which will be unique, which will be time or equivalent.
Even if we were a pair of creator gods sitting down for tea, and I set my teacup down and created a universe with four space dimensions to prove a point, one of those dimensions would have to immediately collapse into an independent dimension so that the other three could be described relative to it, or in other words so that they could be meaningful.
Time flows forward on its own, because that's what it's for, at a steady rate because it can't do otherwise. Each point in time corresponds to a particular state of the universe and no other state.
Also, time's independent nature affirms again that we can't travel through it. The process of traveling through time would have to affect the time dimension, requiring some kind of independent sub-time variable to be a function of.
The slowing of time is a bit puzzling at this point, but it makes sense in light of the fact that time and space are co-dependent. Neither is meaningful without the other, so it's unsurprising that distorting space distorts time. In particular, objects in distorted space need more time to perform their processes.
There's also the issue of differing inertial reference frames. I don't want to go into the examples but all of these are consistent as well. While the universe looks different, the different appearances never actually contradict each other.
Because there's so much we can say about time, it seems inevitable that we will eventually be able to list all of time's properties. At this point, we will know what it is. Although, it may still be impossible to define. It may be one of the irreducible concepts of the universe, simply a fact of nature that can't be defined in terms of anything but itself.
Update:
As we can see from the diagram, no independent dimensions leads to craziness. (Elliptic craziness, apparently.) More than one independent dimension leads to hyperbolic craziness.
Even if a multidimensional physics formed, it would immediately collapse into X+1-dimensional.
I'm not sure why it gets unstable with too many dimensions.
"Too Simple" could easily be a mistake, because evolution has a much better imagination than a small group of humans. It could easily be true as well. Certainly there are problems like the fact that digestive tracts would divide 2-D organisms into two pieces, but this doesn't seem to me to be a fatal objection.
Basically we notice that the relationship between processes is constant. We can check this easily for cyclic processes - one cycle always corresponds to a fixed amount of another cycle. Then we can check less cyclic processes against the more cyclic processes and notice that they, too, have a fixed correspondence.
Further, when we measure cyclic processes in triads, the fixed ratios do commute. Two cycles such as clocks, A and B measured together A-B will agree with a third clock C, measured separately A-C and B-C. Because this commutation will work with any arbitrary triad, we can tell that this correspondence we call time is shared among all objects. It appears to be a trait external to the objects themselves.
The problem is, to define this properly requires the use of the concept of time. What is a process in the absence of time? What is a cycle in the absence of time?
No, with the current limits of language, defining time is basically impossible. Yet we still know what it is. (No, you don't really think in words.)
The problem is that when you observe time, observing is a process. The shared relations we see are also shared with our observation of the sharing.
To help illustrate what time is, I'm going to break it and see what happens. So what would it mean if this relationship were not constant?
If the relationship were not constant, it has two options. It could be random or cyclic, which would average out over time, or the differences could accumulate.
First, notice that it's very hard to even imagine this properly. What exactly would time be varying over? It can't oscillate with respect to itself. If time were to slow to half for the entire universe, we wouldn't notice a thing, because our perceptions would also be slowed by half, and indeed no interaction anywhere would be affected relative to another.
Instead time would have to vary locally, over a region of space. We could watch clocks running slower there. In the noise or cycle system, it would speed up later. In the accumulate system, it would continue to get slower.
However, in the first circumstance, the differences would even out. Over the time we were measuring the clocks against, each fall behind would be matched by a sprint ahead. In the second, our interactions with the clock would decrease in frequency, by definition. As a result, if the slowing was large enough to be detectable, then the clock would quickly stop interacting at an appreciable rate, and disappear from view.*
*(This is exactly what happens to an object falling into a black hole.)
If it were going faster, that would mean we were going slower, and we would cease to exist.
So, the first thing I see about time is that it's very robust. If it weren't shared consistently across the universe, the variation would cancel itself out.
Still, this idea raises further questions. The question is, as it usually is in physics, how would it know? How would the processes know the difference between this particular patch of space compared to another? Also, how would the variation know how it was supposed to vary? Space is not absolute, which could resolve the problem, so it would have to be a result of the spatial relationship between our clock and the watched clock, a result of the clock's internal state, or a somehow through a variation in the underlying vacuum.
We learn from General Relativity that all three of these apply. Accelerating things makes them go slower. Greater velocity makes things go slower. And since gravity-induced spatial curves accelerate things, a condition of the underlying vacuum makes things go slower.
With a black hole, the acceleration becomes so great that time essentially stops for the infalling object. Mathematically speaking nothing ever actually reaches the event horizon, as it takes an infinite amount of time to get there, because every step closer makes time go slower. Which means that it (nearly) stops emitting photons and becomes black, or indeed emitting any force particles at all.
From the perspective of the infalling object, the universe would end basically instantly.
Crucially, all these variations on the speed of time are very precisely laid out. Just as time in general must be consistent, whatever variations are allowed must also be consistent. The transformation from one perspective to another is consistent the way any arbitrary three clocks in one frame are consistent.
Despite not knowing what time is, and being basically unable to define it, we seem to know quite about about the behavior and properties of time.
So this is what we can say about time quatitatively. To really understand time we need to be able to describe it qualitatively. There is one more thing we can say quantitatively, though.
Time is the independent variable.
To explain, let me define physics. Twice.
A physics is a set of consistent rules for interaction. It is the definition of the relationship between objects.
Physics is a list of things that particles cannot do.
In our particular physics, these rules are defined mathematically. This inevitably means that every behavior can be described as a function.
Not, crucially, regular formulae, such as that for a circle. X^2 + Y^2 = 4 (Radius 2, on the origin.)
The equations describing motion and interactions must be a function, it must have an independent variable which is mapped to one unique set of dependent variables. Y = X + 4
To see this, imagine that it were false. Let's take the circle and make it X^2 + T^2 = 4
There's two problems; we can't properly decide which variable to make independent, as we are thwarted by symmetry; and the related problem that once chosen, the independent variable doesn't have a unique set of dependent variables.
So I'm going to pretend that T is the independent variable. X = sqrt[+/-(4 - T^2) ] (The +/- is there because otherwise the square root function spits out imaginary numbers which don't make sense based on the original equation.)
The plot of this, pretending that X is the result of a measurement of T, is still a circle. Which means that the dependent coordinate set, X, will have two solutions at most points in time. In other words, a pebble thrown in space, subject to this equation, would be in two places at once.* For instance, at T=0 X=2 and X=-2. Later, T=2, the pebbles would hit each other and go back to being in one place, X=0.
*(Not like quantum two-places-at-once, which is really like half in my right hand and half in my left hand, adding up to a total of one place. Actually in two places at once.)
Naturally, this is absurd. Even if it weren't obviously absurd, when the pebble was at two places, if one pebble were struck the other pebble would have to respond, instantly, because it still wouldn't be able to violate the circle-equation. Admittedly, this would be really handy for intergalactic communication. It would be really bad for conservation of energy and for having the laws of physics be the same everywhere.
For there to be a mathematical physics there needs to be an independent variable, which will be unique, which will be time or equivalent.
Even if we were a pair of creator gods sitting down for tea, and I set my teacup down and created a universe with four space dimensions to prove a point, one of those dimensions would have to immediately collapse into an independent dimension so that the other three could be described relative to it, or in other words so that they could be meaningful.
Time flows forward on its own, because that's what it's for, at a steady rate because it can't do otherwise. Each point in time corresponds to a particular state of the universe and no other state.
Also, time's independent nature affirms again that we can't travel through it. The process of traveling through time would have to affect the time dimension, requiring some kind of independent sub-time variable to be a function of.
The slowing of time is a bit puzzling at this point, but it makes sense in light of the fact that time and space are co-dependent. Neither is meaningful without the other, so it's unsurprising that distorting space distorts time. In particular, objects in distorted space need more time to perform their processes.
There's also the issue of differing inertial reference frames. I don't want to go into the examples but all of these are consistent as well. While the universe looks different, the different appearances never actually contradict each other.
Because there's so much we can say about time, it seems inevitable that we will eventually be able to list all of time's properties. At this point, we will know what it is. Although, it may still be impossible to define. It may be one of the irreducible concepts of the universe, simply a fact of nature that can't be defined in terms of anything but itself.
Update:
As we can see from the diagram, no independent dimensions leads to craziness. (Elliptic craziness, apparently.) More than one independent dimension leads to hyperbolic craziness.
Even if a multidimensional physics formed, it would immediately collapse into X+1-dimensional.
I'm not sure why it gets unstable with too many dimensions.
"Too Simple" could easily be a mistake, because evolution has a much better imagination than a small group of humans. It could easily be true as well. Certainly there are problems like the fact that digestive tracts would divide 2-D organisms into two pieces, but this doesn't seem to me to be a fatal objection.
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