Government has no magic powers or authority not possessed by private individuals. Let he who asserts that government may do that which the individual may not assume the onus of proof and demonstrate his contention. FULL ARTICLE by Jarret B. Wollstein
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/11637/arguments-against-anarchy/
Arguments Against Anarchy
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Listen to him, Grossman knows deduction. This one was good:
The U.S. government is never an aggressor.
The U.S. government is fighting in Vietnam.
You have a moral obligation to help slaughter Vietnamese farmers.
mpolzkill,
” Listen to him, Grossman knows deduction. ”
Actually, he is right on the concept “deduction” but is erring on the concept “government”. That sort of explains it to me.
If you notice, staunch Objectivist that he is, he still hasn’t taken offence to my act of pointing out what I felt was an error in Ayn Rand’s article “The Nature of Government”. I therefore don’t think your approach of pouncing on people who don’t seem to agree with your world view and calling them vile names has any appeal to me. You are too busy branding and labelling to leave “space” for people to think. That’s why I think it is usually not worth my time to talk to you.
Carry on with your “monkey see and monkey do, the monkey does the same as you”.
mpolzkill mpolzkill
[Rand] is an…imitator of…primarily..[Nietzsche's] style and his elitism).
Congratulations for having asserted your subjectivity in saying this. You have, indeed, been Progressively educated. Perhaps, however, you might suggest why this may have any rational importance. There are, after all, many trivial similarities among many things.
Your opposition to elitism implies or suggests Marxism.
>Nietzsche was a philosopher and had a first rate mind.
Again, congratulations for expressing yourself. Why should you have to burden your subjectivity with evidence? That’s so…elitist. You must be looking forward to a carefree and authentic life in a culture in which knowledge is not superior to ignorance. Perhaps Nazism is a model for you to follow.
>Very strange how my “progressive” education failed to make me a “progressive”
You value emotion over reason.
>not wanting to murder foreigners
And, once again, you assert your subjectivity without evidence. You must have breezed thru those Progressive schools without the slightest mental effort. What an achievement!
>loathing Hitler and Rand.
But Hitler was another modernist/nihilist ,like you, who hated man’s mind as he often explicitly stated. Why, after all, risk failure in reasoning if one’s racially correct emotions provide an infallible guide to thought and action? On the other hand, from the Marxist perspective, both are condemned for elitism.
How many people did you Marxists murder in the Progressive 20th century?
Peter,
” But if you try it, between distant objects in space, you’ll sometimes get wrong results! (Hence gravitational lensing). That formula doesn’t work for entities that are far apart ”
That probably only means what Stephen Grossman said earlier, that mass influences light. The problem as I see it is that the influence large masses have on light (and other forms of electromagnetic radiation) distorts our perception and makes it (our perception) depart from reality. While trying to understand the universe, we therefore suffer from the problem that while science needs to start from our percepts, we are left only with percepts that are themselves a distorted version of reality. (Reminds me of the Indian concept of Maya. Frankly, I think I understand that concept better now, thanks to you
)
While I fully understand that problem, my point still remains that the issue is only about understanding the influence mass has on light and probably going beyond that too. Creating a model that proposes the existence of something we can never perceive or says that a nothing has attributes is not an answer because it is metaphysically and epistemologically unsound.
If at all I would use a model, I would use it as a means of removing the distortions induced at the large scale and at the really small scale too and use that as a better means of viewing reality. Seen in that light, a theory like GR can best be a device that rectifies our vision and helps us see reality as it actually is.
It however stands discredited in my eyes because it relies on treating concepts of consciousness as existents with attributes. This charge is something you (or Jay Lakner) are yet to refute.
Bala, you’re criticizing me for calling names? That’s funny. Branding? I ask you and Grossman questions, make little jokes; you both recite from your scriptures in your goofy cant; he gives bizarre, pychotic answers; you call all Arabs savages; call Einstein a witch doctor, stuff like that. I just like people to know how morally and intellectually bankrupt your cult and your cult leader are and that libertarians should have no affilitation with any of it. You two make great examples of my point. Look at your comrade, he’s totally gone off the rails, hehe.
Bala>error in Ayn Rand’s article “The Nature of Government”
I cant find your comment. What is it?
More appaling stuff I’ve found from this violent and disturbed woman with the violent and disturbed followers here. Ayn Rand on slavery:
“[Vietnam War draft dodgers are] bums [who] deserve to be sent permanently to Russia or South Vietnam at the public’s expense”
And a related quote, that sheds new light on the nature of her and Bala’s hatred of Arabs:
“Now, I don’t care to discuss the alleged complaints American Indians have against this country. I believe, with good reason, the most unsympathetic Hollywood portrayal of Indians and what they did to the white man. They had no right to a country merely because they were born here and then acted like savages. The white man did not conquer this country. And you’re a racist if you object, because it means you believe that certain men are entitled to something because of their race. You believe that if someone is born in a magnificent country and doesn’t know what to do with it, he still has a property right to it. He does not. Since the Indians did not have the concept of property or property rights–they didn’t have a settled society, they had predominantly nomadic tribal ‘cultures’–they didn’t have rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights that they had not conceived of and were not using. It’s wrong to attack a country that respects (or even tries to respect) individual rights. If you do, you’re an aggressor and are morally wrong.”
Stephen Grossman,
This is the one I was referring to. I assumed you had read this. Since it appears you may not have, here’s the reference.
http://blog.mises.org/archives/011637.asp#c668709
Thanks.
mplozkill,
Man!!!! Are you dumb!!!!!!!!!
” you call all Arabs savages ”
I said those who treat women like cattle, kill and command others of their faith to kill non-believers and cut off the hands of petty thieves are savages. That’s because ONLY savages act in the ways I have identified. If Arabs engage in these acts and hence fit into the definition of savages, how is that my error?
” call Einstein a witch doctor ”
Once again. I said that treating concepts of consciousness as though they are real existents is black magic voodoo or whatever else you want to call it and not science. I also said “space” and “time” are concepts of consciousness and do not exist in reality. Based on that, if you infer that I am implying that Einstein was a witch-doctor, how is that my fault?
You are truly a brain-dead monkey.
Uh huh, I’m sure I’m the only one that finds the following to be outrageously racialist in nature.
First though, oh humorless one, “Witch Doctor” was a joke based on your weeks of Einstein/black magic inanities.
“treat women like cattle
What do you say of your comrade, who says that innocent women and children in “enemy” countries MUST be slaughtered, I was just wondering? Haven’t heard you really distance yourself from that.
In your racist tirades above, you sure make it hard to see where you aren’t condeming them all (as you used to do more openly, like your leader)
“Rand was right to characterise them [Arabs] as savages.”
Then you gave some examples of Arab atrocities. When I said something to the effect: “Oh, you’re saying only some Arabs; well all groups commit atrocities”, you followed that with more crude caricatures:
“No one can claim unflinching allegiance to a code that calls for the deliberate subjugation of women, the killing of non-believers and the chopping off of the hands of petty thieves and still expect not to be called a savage. Let Arabs give up on THAT and then I’ll be the first one to retract the label of savages.”
I don’t care what you do and I don’t think racialism is a thought-crime or anything. I just want people to know what they get when they embrace Rand and Randians.
“If you have any doubts, how I wish you had been in Leopold Cafe/The Taj Mahal Hotel /CST/The Oberoi in Mumbai on Nov 26, 2008 or in the German Bakery in Pune just 2 days ago. You would have got a good taste of their savagery (and maybe I would have been saved from the interaction with you).”
That part cracked me up too. It was just like how Rand in her longest juvenile fantasy/pulp novel placed all the types of people she hated in a train and then had a mountain collapse on it and blown up, to boot. There is even some evidence that she created sub-literary voodoo dolls of one of her real life enemies to put in the train! Good stuff, Bala.
oops,
“she created a sub-literary voodoo doll of one of her real life enemies”
http://forum.isi.org/files/bertonneau.pdf
This dissection is quite good.
That probably only means what Stephen Grossman said earlier, that mass influences light.
But you can, for example, send something to measure the length along the path and find that the path length really isn’t what you thought it should be. E.g., the clock-on-a-satellite thing — the GPS system has to account for it.
That probably only means what Stephen Grossman said earlier, that mass influences light.
But you can, for example, send something to measure the length along the path and find that the path length really isn’t what you thought it should be. E.g., the clock-on-a-satellite thing — the GPS system has to account for it.
Peter,
” But you can, for example, send something to measure the length along the path and find that the path length really isn’t what you thought it should be. ”
Firstly, what you thought it should be was based on what you had perceived until then. If, for instance, it was based on what you saw, it probably means that you that you “saw” a distorted version. That percept integrated with the rest of your concepts leads you to a deduction as to where the object should be. Unfortunately for you, a percept that is not representative of what reality is is bound to lead you to a deduction that departs from reality.
Secondly, when you “send” something, you are in a position to measure position when what you sent comes back to you. However, you do not really understand what the thing you sent has gone through in the path up and down. So, what you have is a piece of data which while accurate, may not be combined with the laws you know to help you deduce the distance. Even if it does, the factors that your “law” has failed to incorporate are bound to make your result incorrect.
So, what we have is probably an initial (probably incorrect) estimate that seems to at variance with a later (also probably equally incorrect) estimate. The only difference is that the second one uses more mathematical gobbledygook. I have no reason to believe either one.
At the end of the day, none of this really shows that “space” exists and/or has attributes.
” the clock-on-a-satellite thing — the GPS system has to account for it ”
You’ve got to know what’s influencing the clock and how. So, this example still does not support your claim that “space” has attributes.
Hi everyone,
Sometimes it feels like I’m in the 1500′s and trying to explain to someone that the Sun is in the centre and everything else revolves around it.
No matter how I demonstrate the logical consistency and predictive powers of the Sun-centred model, the other person says that it doesn’t make it true. The other person continues to make their claim that the Earth is stationary at the centre (because it’s ‘self-evident’), and that the nature of all the other entities causes them to act the way they do. Planets move halfway across the night sky, stop, and then move back and they tell me this is perfectly fine because that is the nature of those planets. They tell me that my model might be a useful tool for prediction, but to treat it as ‘true’ is the same as believing in ‘voodoo’ and ‘black magic’.
Bala, do you know what it means when I say that time is not absolute? Have a look at this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wteiuxyqtoM
You can extend this thought experiment further and consider a train travelling in the opposite direction. The passenger on the second train observes the opposite of the passenger on the first train.
Two events, X and Y, occur.
Observer A claims X happens before Y.
Observer B claims they happened at the same time.
Observer C claims Y happened before X.
A, B and C are all correct.
This is one of the many conclusions of special relativity.
‘Space’ is a very similar case.
Observer A measures the distance between two points to be 1km.
Observer B measures the distance to be 2km.
Observer C measures the distance to be 3km.
A, B and C are all correct.
Experiments have confirmed (that is, yet to refute), these phenomena.
The above problems can all be simply solved by treating space and time as two aspects of the same thing, ‘spacetime’. Two events in space and time can be treated as one event in spacetime.
Treating space and time separately is impossible if you are trying to discover what’s truly going on. Who’s point of view do you use? If I’m travelling away from you at a million metres per second, you tell me that the distance between you are the Sun is X. But from my point of view, you and the Sun are travelling away from me at a million metres per second and the distance between you and the sun is Y. Who is right? Both of us are right. If we instead work with ‘spacetime’ we have a point of view which is always true.
General relativity takes into account acceleration as well. All acceleration is merely a localised distortion in the geometry of spacetime. We deal with in this manner because no observer can ever claim that he is right and everyone else is wrong.
If an object is not accelerating relative to another object, then the space between them conforms to Euclidean geometry, ie things travel in straight lines, the ratio of the diameter of a circle is Pi, the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees, etc.
If an object is accelerating relative to another object, then the space between them conforms to a different geometry, ie things no longer travel in straight lines, the ratio of the diameter of a circle is no longer Pi, the angles of a triangle no longer add up to 180 degrees, etc.
To believe that the fundamental forces are aspects of the nature of entities that allow them to interact with other entities through ‘nothing’ sounds like mysticism to me. You might as well believe in telepathy, telekinesis and magic.
If it truly is ‘nothing’ that separates the entities in the universe then ‘action through nothing’ is an absurdity.
How can the Earth be attracted to the Sun if they are completely separated by ‘nothing’?
Can you give me an explanation for how two separate entities can ‘attract’ each other given that they are completely separated by absolutely nothing?
Carrier particles can work for forces like electromagnetism because charge can be positive or negative. The same system cannot work for gravity because mass can only ever be positive.
General Relativity is the best we have so far.
One of the things I find most appealing is that this mystic ‘interaction through nothing’ is no longer required. We interact through the medium of spacetime, just as soundwaves interact through the medium of air. The properties of spacetime determines the nature of our interactions just as the properties of air determines the nature of soundwaves. The view of ‘action through nothing’ is replaced by ‘different space geometry’ just like the view of ‘Earth at the centre’ is replaced by ‘Sun at the centre’.
Jay Lakner,
Firstly, thanks for being patient and trying to explain inspite of who you think I am behaving like. I do understand I could be sounding like that. However, I am still unable to remove certain fundamental apprehensions.
” Bala, do you know what it means when I say that time is not absolute? Have a look at this video: ”
Nice video. I didn’t listen to the sound, but I had sort of figured out the same thing even before I saw it. Frankly, I recently explained the concept “time” to someone I knew in a rather similar manner.
” Experiments have confirmed (that is, yet to refute), these phenomena. ”
I wouldn’t be surprised given even what little I have understood of the concepts “time” and “length”, especially of how we come to form the concepts of and measure them. I agree that it is indeed possible for different observers in different circumstances to come up with very different measurements of length and time.
However, I still think “time” and “length” are concepts that we form in our mind and which help us make sense of the reality we perceive. I also think that the reason you are right in saying this
” The above problems can all be simply solved by treating space and time as two aspects of the same thing ”
is that the root of our concepts of “time” and “position” lie in our sensory faculty which receives impulses and processes them into percepts. The only source of visual input being light, I think our concepts of “time” and “position” (and by extension of “length”, “area”, “volume”, “space”, etc.) are influenced by the properties of light and the process by which we form these concepts.
Just to make myself clearer, this is what I explained to the person I said I know. Imagine a dark night. In the middle of the darkness is a source of light that does not burn continuously but keeps sending out pulses of light at a specific periodicity. If you had no other source of sensory input, you observe the behaviour of the source of light, that there are two states – glowing and not glowing – and that the glowing state seems to occur again and again. You become aware of the concept of an interval in which there is darkness and another in which there is light.
It is this awareness that would lead you to form the concept “time”. It is a product of your consciousness and is a concept that represents the periodicity with which the light seems to be appearing (or disappearing as the case may be).
Now imagine two such lights at 2 different ends of a rod flickering similarly. The awareness you gain of the relative positions of the 2 lights given that you are simultaneously aware of both of them gives you the concept of length. Thus, while “length” is an attribute, the length we perceive is a product of our consciousness of the entity of which we are being aware.
Clearly, your measurements of the interval between two consecutive flashes or the positions and hence the relative positions of the two flashes are conditioned by what you are doing and what the sources of light are doing. Hence, I am not surprised that as you put it, space and time are two aspects of the same thing. However, that still leaves them as products of our consciousness of reality rather than of reality itself. So, a model that makes them aspects of reality still appears very suspect.
I seem more convinced of this idea when I consider the observation that a person kept in solitary confinement in a dark dungeon with no interaction with the outside world gets disoriented and loses his sense of time. My hypothesis is that it is the lack of repeated sensory input that causes the disorientation.
“I still think ‘time’ and ‘length’ are concepts that we form in our mind…”
I’ve got to get Bala to come with me to the bars and soften up young women for me before I take a crack at ‘em.
“observation that a person kept in solitary confinement in a dark dungeon with no interaction with the outside world gets disoriented and loses his sense of time. My hypothesis is that it is the lack of repeated sensory input that causes the disorientation.”
Please tell the world of the findings on your incredible “merry-go-round experiments”, Bala.
“…lead you to form the concept “time”…”the length we perceive is a product of our consciousness”
If Bala is alone in the forest, and his mind snaps, does it make a sound?
I love this Bala guy. I can’t imagine anyone else who wouldn’t have asked for Jay’s email by now to get schooled in private.
I’ve got to get Bala to come with me to the bars and soften up young women for me before I take a crack at ‘em.
C|N>K
Bala>distorts our perception
Rocks, atoms, water and perceptions are facts of reality. They are not true or false, valid or invalid, accurate or distorted, all qualities of reasoning ,not perception. To perceive is to perceive reality. There is nothing else to perceive. If one is not perceiving reality, then one is not perceiving.
Reasoning is of our perceptions of reality, the base of knowledge. Rejecting perception as absolute is rejecting reason. Nothing can judge perception. Perception judges reason.
“[Man's]….senses cannot deceive him, . . . physical objects [ie, the senses] cannot act without causes, . . . his organs of perception are physical and have no volition, no power to invent or to distort . . . the evidence they give him is an absolute, but his mind must learn to understand it, his mind must discover the nature, the causes, the full [*****]context[*****] of his sensory material, his mind must identify the things that he perceives.”
For the New Intellectual Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 156
Bala,
Maybe you’ll understand better if in all my posts you replace “observer” with “video camera”.
For situations involving distance, assume the camera has a built in mechanism for measuring distance.
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