this is very nicely done.

Someone once suggested (not sure if s/he wants credit for the idea; will change this if s/he does) that an infinite life-span would not be very useful. Why? Because the way our knowledge is structured would become so out-dated that it would both be much easier to start over (teach a blank mind from scratch) and also too difficult to be worthwhile to fix current, old people. Now, in the future there will be all sorts of great technologies to help fix people with bad ideas, and a whole profession of people very good at helping with this sort of thing, so what was meant was not that it'd just be a bit too expensive, but rather that it would be a virtually impossible or actually impossible task. So difficult that in millions of years of progress it would still seem impossible.

How could this be? Sure, I may have some hangups (I hate eggs and math textbooks, for example), but I'm sure a hundred years with no pressures, lots of friends, and various nice futurey things could cure me. And if it couldn't, the next thousand years might. As it is, I already like math in certain forms, and have come to like some foods I used to hate. So there's nothing remotely impossible here.

OK let's try something else. What if I grew up thinking the world was flat? Would that be a problem? Well, certainly for many people this was a misconception they never really dealt with during their natural life-spans. But some people did solve it. And I don't see why the rest couldn't get over it eventually. They could circle around the world, then go into space and look at it, so they could see for themselves that "scientists" weren't just playing a prank. And they could learn more physics than we know today, and see how well it works.

Now some people might be tempted to, by now, say the idea of infinite life-spans being useless is nuts (if they didn't decide that much earlier). But this would be immoral. For we've still shown absolutely no understanding of what was meant! Now, we could assume nothing remotely sensible was meant. But that's just no way to discuss philosophy. We should either say we don't know and aren't interested, or look to understand the subject.

Thus far we've looked at hangups and misconceptions that can be expressed in English. But only the simplest hangups and misconceptions can be. Anything that we can put into English, our entire society already has some understanding of.

But try to imagine. We are very young, and we begin to encounter various problems. We try to conjecture the answers. But randomly conjecturing answers with no constraints on what we think of is unlikely to solve many problems. It'd be like if the answer was 8 and we rolled a die with an infinite number of sides, trying to find that answer. So what we do is make conjectures about what sort of answers we are looking for. For example in the dice analogy we might conjecture that useful answers are mostly under 1,000,000,000. And now for many sorts of problems (the ones where our conjecture is about right) we will find the answers much more easily.

Next up, we might notice that for certain classes of problems, more specific constraints are useful. Problems about wood are mostly between 1-3 million. Problems about sand 7-10 million. Now we might solve most problems more accurately and faster (as long as our constraints are good). Of course some constraints will turn out wrong, but we can change them. At least at first. But what if we have a system 200 layers deep. Is it about earth? ok < 1,000,000,000,000 Is it about sand? no, ok not btwn 7-10 mil. Is it about water? yes, ok look between 44-999 mil. is the water cold? yes, ok, look at odd numbers only. etc etc

Of course real constraints are much more complex, because answers do not lie on a number-line. Anyhow, imagine our first 10 layers have not changed since we were 5. The next 80 have not changed since we were 20. Now go forward in time thousands of years. Our problem situation is very, very different than it was when we were growing up. And instead of 200 layers, we have 2 million. But, our situation is very, very different now than it was as we grew up. And half our layers are dead wrong, including the 3rd and 9th ones. Is it really feasible to fix this? Without becoming a new person?

And it gets worse. At the thousand year mark, when we moved to a new planet, our system of constraints started to fail a bit. So we added some new modifications to fix things on top of the whole system. These increased our problem solving abilities and kept us functional. And going through just a couple more layers was so negligibly inefficient as not to be a problem. But they were only ad hoc modifications, so after some time started to function poorly. So we added more. And more. And after living a million years, it's quite possible we've been making things progressively worse for most of that time. Sure we've been learning new things the whole time, but to fix the actual heart of our problems, we would have to change some of our most basic ideas that have become more and more distant from our latest modifications.

Now, I'm currently unconvinced this analysis actually implies the conclusions we were looking for (that an infinite life-span would not be valuable). But it's not an unreasonable conjecture either, and certainly not nuts, even though prima facie it does sound a bit nuts. And extensive further argument would be required to reject it.

Oh, just for fun, count how many life extentionists have ever gone through this analysis. I don't think you'll need your toes.

What does 'good' mean? I do know, (and so does the questioner!), but I won't try to answer. One person suggested it means beneficial. Even if this is accurate, it's rather useless. Because what does beneficial mean?

Have you ever noticed that a dictionary defines each word in terms of other words? There are not foundational words with God-given meanings that all new words are defined in terms of (at least indirectly). Rather, if you tried to find out what a word meant by looking up each word in it's definition, and looked up each word in each of those definitions, you would only have a longer and longer list of words to look up, and never finish. And not only that, you'd find yourself looking up the same words over and over. You'd have an impossible task involving looking up an infinite number of words.

So three points. Trying to say "good" or any other idea is meaningless or less meaningful because it can't be defined (without an infinite regress) is specious because this applies to all words equally. And even the approach of focusing on definitions of words is simply a bad idea, because you won't get anywhere. But knowledge *is* possible, so an approach that doesn't get anywhere can't be right. And also, no sorts of foundations are needed to have perfectly valid, useful, true, non-arbitrary knowledge.

Well, why should you believe in evolution? Because it helps explain reality better.

But what if you didn't understand evolution at all? Then it wouldn't help you explain reality better. This is how most Christians avoid believing in it (of the ones who don't). Their understanding is so poor that it does not seem any better an explanation than God.

They reveal this when they say things that equate evolution with man being created by chance, or when they say atheists think time, in large enough quantities, can do anything. Or when they say that lions and tigers can't make fertile offspring (ie that species exist) and think that proves their point. Or when you point out that two *slightly different* lions can have fertile offspring, and they think that has nothing to do with evolution.

Notice how under this explanation, creationists are not wicked or even horribly flawed, just a bit ignorant. And ignorant of something that won't really help them much in their lives anyway.

curi: I *told* you that you have to spend more than 20 minutes making a political platform!
Elliot: oh shut up
curi: You completely messed up immigration.
Elliot: Not because of the time spent though.
curi: oops *hides in corner*
Elliot: besides i can fix it now:

An anarchist approach to immigration has the following problems besides welfare issues:

- Enemy soldiers can claim to be immigrants.
- Some immigrant populations might aid invading enemy soldiers, by giving them shelter or food or whatever.
- Some immigrant populations would distort political debate in the country be giving a voice to bad ideas. For example, do we want to waste time debating what Allah says about invading Iraq?
- If immigrants can vote, unassimilated ones may mechanically vote for whatever candidate offers them more stuff.
- There are a lot of public government services besides welfare. Like roads and parks.
- Our prisons are a better place to live than many countries.

What's the answer? Unlimited immigration for rich white people :-) Immigration for more problematic groups can be increased slowly and carefully.

Also a solution to the prison problem is the death penalty. And don't tell me the death penalty is expensive. It's not if you use a rope (or gun). Also, eventually for-profit prisons could accommodate many people.

PS The title is stolen from inspired by Misha

How To Manipulate Internet Chess Ratings (works for lots of kinds of ratings where you can choose who to play):

When you're having a bad day, play your friend. Lose a ton of rating points. Now your friend is overrated. Have him refuse to play anyone. Next, play normally until you have some good days and your rating gets back to normal. Your friend is still overrated though. Play him and split up the extra points.

BTW if you want to play chess online for free, go to FICS. I mostly play on USCL.

oh also perry's title was "you do not own your own genetalia". of course you do. it's that property rights are not absolute (if they were, for example, there couldn't even be a discussion about downloading music, the case would be closed already. "you can put music you own up for download because you own it" would be the end. it's absurd to try to solve complex moral issues this way.). but Perry apparently can't even imagine the idea of non-absolute property rights, so concludes an absurdity instead.

link

it's a samizdata piece by Perry. genital piercings got banned in Georgia.

now, if i heard that, i'd think it was an annoying hangup as there's nothing morally wrong with genital piercings.

but that's not how Perry reacts. he is mad that something he sees as a freedom *can* be banned. he thinks that you own your genetalia, therefore all laws about them are invalid. this view is significantly *worse* than the original mistake. the original mistake of thinking genital piercings are bad is just one mistaken judgment. Perry's view is a recipie to get an unlimited number of issues wrong.

in comments, someone whines that the authors of the law consider themselves fiscal conservatives. either he thinks fiscal conservatives must oppose all new laws that would cost money (absurd), or he thinks they must oppose all frivilous laws. but the authors of the law don't consider it frivilous (duh). they probably *are* fiscal conservatives.

also in comments apparently the law was aimed at genital mutilation and nailed piercing too b/c the authors didn't know consentual piercing even existed. so this is even less bad than it originally seemed.

but how does Perry take the news?

so Perry thinks everything consentual should be legal. period. wife burning? spanking? ok in a perfect society (with better notions of what consent is and better mechanisms to prevent systematic coercion) they should be legal. in a bad enough society you couldn't set up institutions that care about consent anyways. but they should not be legal, unconditionally, in all imaginable societies. and more to the point, in the real world, there are lots of examples of illegal consentual things that should be illegal.

for example the story of british ppl going to india and banning wife burning. the natives say "but it's our custom" and the brits say "we have a custom too. when someone burns his wife we hang him". (this story could be a myth, dunno, but it doesn't matter). banning wife burning was important and good in that situation.

banning spanking in the US is arguably a good idea. even if it's not, it probably will be in the nearish future. (doing it would change the situation for many abused children in positive ways) saying there can be no debate b/c of Libertarian Principles would be rather lame. pretending the laws against assault and battery can protect children today would umm ... well it doesn't.

-------

besides this, what is and isn't consent is non-obvious. can i download music? well in one analysis, this is consentual b/c the only ppl in the equation are me and the person i'm getting it from, and we both consent. in another, the creator of the music has to consent too, and doesn't, so it's not. (who has to consent must always be decided b/c it can't be the whole universe, it has to be the *relevant* people. who's relevant?). thus Perry's analysis (consentual stuff should always be legal) wouldn't even tell us what should be legal. pretending his statement supports one meaning of consent over another (his in particular) would be invalid.