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[Toady One]

I removed a lengthy derail involving another thread.  In general, please try to remain calm.

[Montague]

Eh, yeah, well, we did get quite a bit off track.

For anybody looking to understand Objectivism, http://aynrandlexicon.com/

This website is infinitely more revealing then any of the awful fiction books she wrote.

It really isn't all that crazy, some of it is, but it is a very black and white philosophy and I think that understanding objectivism can lend better insight on your own philosophical and moral ideas. At least try to really understand the mindset and logic behind her assertions and think of a real logical counter to them, not just a emotional, gut response.

Anyways, such as it is.

[Capntastic]

You've not made any real arguments in favor of anarchy, have ignored the obvious realities of such a thing in the real world and are discounting objections to it as 'ignorance'. Please, tell the folks living in Somalia that their lack of governance is a utopia.

Show me where I argued in favor of anarchy.

[Montague]

You've not made any real arguments in favor of anarchy, have ignored the obvious realities of such a thing in the real world and are discounting objections to it as 'ignorance'. Please, tell the folks living in Somalia that their lack of governance is a utopia.

Show me where I argued in favor of anarchy.

I'm glad I am mistaken. Anarchy is a terrible blueprint for public policy.

[Nadaka]

Weird how you interpret a propertyless society as being anarchy, intrinsically, when you did not use the word anarchy in the quote I responded to, and I did not use the word anarchy at all.  You're trying to portray me as a proponent of anarchy now, because of it?  Weird!!

Edit:  I did use the word anarchy, on second look:  I used it specifically to say that non-property isn't inherently anarchic.  So you're either misreading or wilfully misinterpreting.

IDK, I'm not really portraying you as anything, I'm playing devil's advocate for most of the crap I'm talking about and I assume everyone else is doing the same.

I am seriously debating the idea of the abolition of property, though. Do you not see how chaotic and dangerous a society with NO LAWS OR PROPERTY RIGHTS is? You maintain a farm and somebody callously paves it over or digs everything up, runs donuts over it on their 4-wheeler. Why not? Isn't it their right to do donuts on their 4x4 and set their poison gas collection wherever it is convent? Who is there to say otherwise and what legitimacy would they have? What's to stop the offended farmer from building a killdozer and killdozering the 4x4 driving poison gas collecting people's homes into rubble? Nobody? Maybe one or the other hired a PMC to do the killdozering for them?

I'm being kinda silly on purpose, because the idea of anarchy as utopia is a very silly idea.

Literal post-scarcity is impossible, yes, so far as we're aware. Functional post-scarcity isn't, though it's not infinitely expendable. That's basically when you reach the point that you have more accessible resources than you can consume. When supply out paces demand, there's not really scarcity in a functional sense. That's pretty doable, and in a number of areas the primary issue is preventing it in the present less engineering than politics.

Nah, man, it's still pretty much impossible. Post scarcity is about impossible. We are already past the peak of production with things like oil, uranium and copper. These things will only become more expensive, harder to obtain. How much farmland is required to keep all 7 billion people on the earth as fat and happy as people in the USA? How about 14 billion people? 27 billion people? Can you conjure up food or farmland like a benevolent wizard? Resources are a finite resource, and preciously finite at that, even water and air are in jeopardy with our current consumption. You think MORE consumption is a good idea? We are living beyond our means enough as it is, it is unsustainable. Technology cannot replace resources, technology is a thing that consumes resources.

Post scarcity is far from pretty much impossible.

Peak production of oil, uranium and copper are irrelevant. Oil can be synthesized with enough energy. We throw away >98% of uranium fuel unused. And copper has plenty of alternatives and can be used more efficiently because current only really flows along the surface of a cable.

Right now, the USA has enough farmland to feed 7 billion people as fat and happy as we are if we tried hard enough.

What is stopping us?
The #1 thing stopping us is the lack of water. As it is we are rapidly draining the Ogallala to feed the 1 to 2 billion people that America is feeding already (we are the worlds largest food exporter, though I forget the exact numbers).
Solving the water problem means desalinating sea water and pumping it far inland. The #1 thing stopping that is power. You could double the power output of America with a square of solar plants in the Nevada desert less than 100 miles on a side (this includes transportation of all goods and people, the fleet of sea freighters, airlines, trains, trucks and personal vehicles). That is enough power to solve the water problem. Build another square in the desert, and you can use that power to crack hydrogen from water or create synthetic gas while shutting down every coal, oil and uranium burning power plant in the country.

Now you do the same thing in the Atacama, the Sahara, the Gobi, the Outback, etc. and you have suddenly uplifted and empowered the entire human race. We would have more power, and food and water than we would know what to do with it all. That is the start of post scarcity. And it really won't even take that much copper if we use it efficiently and use plentiful alternatives for viable use cases. It is known that uplifting a populations standard of living reduces the rate of population growth. Without immigration, nearly every western nation has nearly even or negative population growth. Even without the effects of post scarcity uplift, the human population is likely to plateau under 12 billion.

All that it takes is being smart, efficient and investing in the right areas.

[GoombaGeek]

And better solar panels than we have now - we'd be kicking ourselves once we invent a more efficient panel and have to tear down the countless square miles of obsolete ones.

I'm confident we'll work out some kind of great solar panel, though. Eventually.

[Nadaka]

And better solar panels than we have now - we'd be kicking ourselves once we invent a more efficient panel and have to tear down the countless square miles of obsolete ones.

I'm confident we'll work out some kind of great solar panel, though. Eventually.

We have one. It is called a concentrating reflector constructed of cheap silicon supported by aluminum or steel. I call them mirrors.

[Eagleon]

Nah, man, it's still pretty much impossible. Post scarcity is about impossible. We are already past the peak of production with things like oil, uranium and copper. These things will only become more expensive, harder to obtain. How much farmland is required to keep all 7 billion people on the earth as fat and happy as people in the USA? How about 14 billion people? 27 billion people? Can you conjure up food or farmland like a benevolent wizard? Resources are a finite resource, and preciously finite at that, even water and air are in jeopardy with our current consumption. You think MORE consumption is a good idea? We are living beyond our means enough as it is, it is unsustainable. Technology cannot replace resources, technology is a thing that consumes resources.

Hopefully this wasn't part of the derail Toady moderated, but I'd point out that there's an absurd amount of the resources we need in space, and automated mining and production could take care of bringing it here with minimal overall effort, considering what it would mean for us. Not that we wouldn't expand to consume it all, given the chance, but that's where dystopian population control and monitoring come into play =P We can only go through so much copper, tantalum, etc, etc, etc before it becomes trivial to recycle it from the outdated junk we've thrown in our landfills, and there's more than enough of that out there to give everyone a supercomputer with their own simulated matrix, if we really wanted to. Water and air can be recycled, even without distribution costs if we have the energy grid for that, and solar power from orbital stations could provide all the power we could ever need, in theory. Throw in some meat-vats, which are already almost certainly practical and even desireable, and you have enough resources to go around until the sun explodes.

So yes, practical post-scarcity is possible, assuming we're willing to limit our own expansion with the increased resource flow. I think with the obvious benefits this would bring to their own lives, people might even start to agree with things like reproduction lotteries, for better or worse.

Fake-edit: ninja'ed, kind of, but eh.
Real edit: there's also this, which is too awesome -not- to build, even without climate change.

[Montague]

All that it takes is being smart, efficient and investing in the right areas.

Well, I read everything you said and I gather you are relying on a miracle for a sustainable future. A sort of endless energy source that can desalinate the oceans and forge endless consumer goods.

What I fear is that this will never happen. Fusion has always been '20 years in the future' ever since the 1970's. Just wish that 20 years would show up sooner.

My fear is that such a thing will never happen. Every fusion energy attempt generated about as much energy as it took to sustain it. It might be a dead-end in physical terms.

So what then? What is humanity without it's energy and income, economy and environmental control?

[Montague]

Nah, man, it's still pretty much impossible. Post scarcity is about impossible. We are already past the peak of production with things like oil, uranium and copper. These things will only become more expensive, harder to obtain. How much farmland is required to keep all 7 billion people on the earth as fat and happy as people in the USA? How about 14 billion people? 27 billion people? Can you conjure up food or farmland like a benevolent wizard? Resources are a finite resource, and preciously finite at that, even water and air are in jeopardy with our current consumption. You think MORE consumption is a good idea? We are living beyond our means enough as it is, it is unsustainable. Technology cannot replace resources, technology is a thing that consumes resources.

Hopefully this wasn't part of the derail Toady moderated, but I'd point out that there's an absurd amount of the resources we need in space, and automated mining and production could take care of bringing it here with minimal overall effort, considering what it would mean for us. Not that we wouldn't expand to consume it all, given the chance, but that's where dystopian population control and monitoring come into play =P We can only go through so much copper, tantalum, etc, etc, etc before it becomes trivial to recycle it from the outdated junk we've thrown in our landfills, and there's more than enough of that out there to give everyone a supercomputer with their own simulated matrix, if we really wanted to. Water and air can be recycled, even without distribution costs if we have the energy grid for that, and solar power from orbital stations could provide all the power we could ever need, in theory. Throw in some meat-vats, which are already almost certainly practical and even desireable, and you have enough resources to go around until the sun explodes.

So yes, practical post-scarcity is possible, assuming we're willing to limit our own expansion with the increased resource flow. I think with the obvious benefits this would bring to their own lives, people might even start to agree with things like reproduction lotteries, for better or worse.

Fake-edit: ninja'ed, kind of, but eh.
Real edit: there's also this, which is too awesome -not- to build, even without climate change.

Sorry to doublepost, and the stuff Toady erased was not related to this discussion. The problem with obtaining resources from space is that it is basically impossible. No amount of economic incentive is worth the terrible expense and danger of blasting off and mining asteroids for iron ores or whatever else. Look at the the modern commodity market. You could probably buy a full ton of copper right now and it not even hurt your bottom line. You could buy more rare-earth elements online then you could extract from a thousand years of mining in the asteroid belt. Commodities have terribly thin profit margins. Blasting off into space is amazingly expensive, way, way beyond the ability of companies to go out and mine asteroids for steel at 0.68$ a ton.

It won't happen. It cannot possibly happen.

[Nadaka]

I do plan on using nuclear fusion as this magical energy source to desalinate the oceans and forge endless consumer goods.

It is really convenient we happen to have one floating naked and blazing in the sky on most days.

Seriously, I have done the math. You can replace 100% of all energy consumed by America (or simply double energy production if you don't shut down the other power plants) with one patch of solar thermal plants in the desert with an area of under 10,000 square miles (a 100 mile square). This requires no revolutionary technologies or materials. It takes glass, steel, boilers, turbines, generators and heat reservoir's. No breakthroughs necessary.  Losses in transmission from current high voltage lines over a couple thousand miles are below 10%, we don't even really need superconducting power lines to distribute the power.

[GreatJustice]

Because I'm all about making claims in good faith, here's some proof that an individual human is highly fallible, irrational, and prone to making ridiculously absurd mistakes in judgment:

Effects of Mood on the ability to Make Decisions

"This paper begins to answer the call to broaden current theories of individual decision-making by including in them the effects of human mood. Grounding our arguments in psychological literature on the effects of mood on information processing, motivation, and decision heuristics, we develop hypotheses about how mood can significantly affect individuals' use of structured decision protocols. In support of our hypotheses, results from an experimental study of complex decision-making suggest that, in situations where a structured decision protocol is the usual method of decision-making, individuals in moderately negative moods are significantly more likely than those in moderately positive moods to: (1) carefully execute all the steps of a structured decision protocol, (2) execute the steps of a structured decision protocol in the correct order, and (3) rely on the outcome of the structured decision protocol as the primary basis for the decision. We discuss these findings in terms of their implications for both organizational decision models and psychological models of mood and decision-making. In general, our findings help establish mood as an important variable in models of organizational decision-making and help shed light on often conflicting findings about the benefits of positive vs. negative mood for individual decision-making."

Credibility judgments of narratives: Language, plausibility, and absorption

"Two experiments were conducted in order to find out whether textual features of narratives differentially affect credibility judgments made by judges having different levels of absorption (a disposition associated with rich visual imagination). Participants in both experiments were exposed to a textual narrative and requested to judge whether the narrator actually experienced the event he described in his story. In Experiment 1, the narrative varied in terms of language (literal, figurative) and plausibility (ordinary, anomalous). In Experiment 2, the narrative varied in terms of language only. The participants’ perceptions of the plausibility of the story described and the extent to which they were absorbed in reading were measured. The data from both experiments together suggest that the groups applied entirely different criteria in credibility judgments. For high-absorption individuals, their credibility judgment depends on the degree to which the text can be assimilated into their own vivid imagination, whereas for low-absorption individuals it depends mainly on plausibility. That is, high-absorption individuals applied an experiential mental set while judging the credibility of the narrator, whereas low-absorption individuals applied an instrumental mental set. Possible cognitive mechanisms and implications for credibility judgments are discussed."

Word type effects in false recall: Concrete, abstract, and emotion word critical lures

"Previous research has demonstrated that definable qualities of verbal stimuli have implications for memory. For example, the distinction between concrete and abstract words has led to the finding that concrete words have an advantage in memory tasks (i.e., the concreteness effect). However, other word types, such as words that label specific human emotions, may also affect memory processes. This study examined the effects of word type on the production of false memories by using a list-learning false memory paradigm. Participants heard lists of words that were highly associated to nonpresented concrete, abstract, or emotion words (i.e., the critical lures) and then engaged in list recall. Emotion word critical lures were falsely recalled at a significantly higher rate (with the effect carried by the positively valenced critical lures) than concrete and abstract critical lures. These findings suggest that the word type variable has implications for our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie recall and false recall."

So, it's plain to see that humans can easily fall prey to misjudgments based on things like mood, word choice, learning style, and past experience.  It is not reasonable to assume that, given infinite personal freedoms, people would naturally work in a way that benefits society as a whole, in the longterm, much less the short.

From this, how can you claim that denying empirical evidence, denying history, denying empathy, denying current situations makes one versed in "Objective" thought?  How can you know anything "Objectively" if you place yourself so far from evidence, and the truth?  How can you claim to make rational decisions if you're going out of your way to ignore known effects that stem from known causes?

How is Objectivism/Libertarianism, as a policy, able to prove itself capable of doing anything, outside of, again:  "I want this to happen, so I will say that it will happen.  If it does not happen, it wasn't free enough."?

I put this to you, honestly.

Prelude: Thanks for not calling anyone stupid, making broad statements, backing up your points, etc.

Now, its important to differentiate Rothbardian libertarianism from Objectivism. Objectivism assumes humans are rational more or less. Rothbardian libertarianism, however, stems from the axiom that human action is purposeful, an altogether different issue.

For example, even the most irrational actor does so with purpose. The insane axe murderer, for example, might do so because the floating demon in his brain tells him to kill people. Humans act for reasons, and this crucially differentiates us from, say, animals. Whether we are rational or not, or whether we always make the best decisions, isn't important to this idea.

R

ight now, the USA has enough farmland to feed 7 billion people as fat and happy as we are if we tried hard enough.

What is stopping us?
The #1 thing stopping us is the lack of water. As it is we are rapidly draining the Ogallala to feed the 1 to 2 billion people that America is feeding already (we are the worlds largest food exporter, though I forget the exact numbers).
Solving the water problem means desalinating sea water and pumping it far inland. The #1 thing stopping that is power. You could double the power output of America with a square of solar plants in the Nevada desert less than 100 miles on a side (this includes transportation of all goods and people, the fleet of sea freighters, airlines, trains, trucks and personal vehicles). That is enough power to solve the water problem. Build another square in the desert, and you can use that power to crack hydrogen from water or create synthetic gas while shutting down every coal, oil and uranium burning power plant in the country.

Now you do the same thing in the Atacama, the Sahara, the Gobi, the Outback, etc. and you have suddenly uplifted and empowered the entire human race. We would have more power, and food and water than we would know what to do with it all. That is the start of post scarcity. And it really won't even take that much copper if we use it efficiently and use plentiful alternatives for viable use cases. It is known that uplifting a populations standard of living reduces the rate of population growth. Without immigration, nearly every western nation has nearly even or negative population growth. Even without the effects of post scarcity uplift, the human population is likely to plateau under 12 billion.

All that it takes is being smart, efficient and investing in the right areas.

You keep saying "we", as if all the resources of the developed world could feasibly be directed towards gigantic farmland and energy production projects on the turn of a dime without any negative consequences whatsoever.

This also does not change the fact that the resources involved are still scarce, whereas human needs and desires are not. Can you really say that every person on the planet would have everything they wanted without work required without reservations?

[Mutagen]

As far as what I said about a non-objective reality, I was referring to what you posted before about there being many objective truths (as distinguished from objective facts. Such is a contradiction in terms. Truth cannot be objective (nor can it exist) if the facts that it subsumes are in contradiction with each other.

Not really.  If someone asked you for directions to the nearest park, there might be more than one routes, all of which lead there.  Some of them may be shorter, or some of them might take you past the ice cream store, etc, all having pros and cons.  There can be multiple truths or answers to a situation, given the facts.  You seem to be getting stuck on the idea of "objective truth" meaning "only one right answer", which is incorrect.

It's why Kant's Categorical Imperative is dumb.  Yeah it's wrong to lie, but sometimes lying is acceptable in the face of the situation.  To say that you should never lie, ever, in any situation, because 'lying is wrong', ignores that the 'facts' of the situation might objectively point to lying being an agreeable action to take, given the likely outcomes.

Everyday speech is necessarily imprecise at times. One could say instead, "Of the several routes to your destination from our current location, here is one that I know of...", but doing so would be quite cumbersome for the relatively simple point to communicate. That says nothing about the nature of truth as such, it simply says something about the way we use language.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with regards to the routes having different characteristics; perhaps you could elaborate on that?

[Eagleon]

Sorry to doublepost, and the stuff Toady erased was not related to this discussion. The problem with obtaining resources from space is that it is basically impossible. No amount of economic incentive is worth the terrible expense and danger of blasting off and mining asteroids for iron ores or whatever else. Look at the the modern commodity market. You could probably buy a full ton of copper right now and it not even hurt your bottom line. You could buy more rare-earth elements online then you could extract from a thousand years of mining in the asteroid belt. Commodities have terribly thin profit margins. Blasting off into space is amazingly expensive, way, way beyond the ability of companies to go out and mine asteroids for steel at 0.68$ a ton.

It won't happen. It cannot possibly happen.

You don't take into account manufacturing the return-packages and additional automated mining equipment on-site. Ion thrusters are very, very simple when it comes down to it. Laser-CVD using, say, a flywheel and a solar-panel to power it, and some fancy low-powered magnetic ferrying, could make purified silicon or whatever else you like for solar panels, optics, or even electronics. Ditching all the expensive vacuum equipment means it's much more efficient, with little to no mechanical parts to replace. Bulk mining might be accomplished more traditionally to speed the return, at first. Given the right templates as seeds (very thin wafers of whatever will react to the material you're depositing), you could grow the parts you need for another mining installation on platters grown from appropriate materials. The initial investment needed for something like this is substantial (the design work and research would actually probably outweigh the launch costs by the time everything is finished), but once you get it started it's not such a bad deal.

[Frumple]

This also does not change the fact that the resources involved are still scarce, whereas human needs and desires are not. Can you really say that every person on the planet would have everything they wanted without work required without reservations?

This is a pretty blatant misrepresentation of what was being discussed. That's not what was proposed or sought. What was proposed was that basic necessities -- food, shelter, etc. -- are possible to be turned post-scarce with today's technology. This is true. If we had the political backing for it, we've got the engineering problems related to that mostly solved, now (and time will, in all likelihood, only increase our prowess in that area), and the resources necessary to do so. If we as a species (or even just some of the larger powers) wanted to, and could manage to get around to getting the logistic aspect of it rolling.

As for human needs not being scarce... that's untrue. By the numbers, mankind's population is going to cap off at a certain level and then begin to reduce if technological progress continues as is, and it's a fairly trivial (if somewhat time consuming, I'd imagine) exercise from that point to identify precisely where our needs as a species will settle. At which point there's a limit on them, and, conceptually, they become scarce. Desires may be a different story, but they're not nearly as important, in all honesty, and scarcity-based systems are actually pretty good at handling those, as is.