Sex, Death and Complexity
Why do we die?
One reason is entropy. Our bodies accumulate damage over time. The damage is not just to physical structures, but also to the genetic information stored in our cells. Over time, we gradually lose ourselves. Youth is beautiful because it better reflects the ideal form of the body. As we get older, our bodies and cells degrade away from their ideal forms. Even though our bodies and cells have many mechanisms to resist entropy and maintain their forms, entropy slowly increases. Eventually, this leads to death.
The other reason is evolution. Most of the damage to our cells is purely destructive and simply makes them less functional. Occasionally, however, a cell is damaged in a way that makes it reproduce freely within the body. You could say that it reverts back to being a single-celled organism. Instead of carrying out its function within the body, it reproduces freely, generating many descendants by mitosis. These cells act like selfish reproducers at the cell level. They compete with the other cells of the body for resources. They are free riders within the body. Unless they are killed by the body’s defenses or by medical intervention, they will eventually destroy the body.
Cancer can be understood as evolution within the body. Cancer is a mutation, and that mutation is selected for, while the body is alive. The cancer cells are more “successful” than other cells, because they are selfish reproducers. They out-compete other cells for the resources of the body.
So, if you live long enough, the coherence of your body will break down because of evolution within your body. Selfish reproducers will replace the cells that work for the good of the body as a whole. The multicellular contract will dissolve into anarchy.
This raises the question of how multicellular organisms maintain their coherence at all. Why do the cells of your body work for the good of the body as a whole?
The reason is that when the body dies, all the cells of the body die. None leave behind descendants. They cannot pass on their genes, in the long run, except by the sexual reproduction of the body as a whole. Sex is a reproductive bottleneck. It gives the cells of the body a coherent purpose.
The body as a whole reproduces by creating haploid sex cells (eggs or sperm), which can then combine with a sex cell from another body to form a zygote: a single cell from which a new body can grow. The cells of the new body are all descended from the zygote by mitosis. The body grows by cell division and differentiation. Each cell in the body inherits its genes and its purpose from the zygote.
That’s why the cells of the body act “altruistically” for the good of the body, rather than as selfish individuals. They are descended from a zygote, and that zygote is descended from the sex cells of two bodies that managed to reproduce sexually. The information in their DNA has passed through the bottleneck of sexual reproduction many times, so it has been selected to have that effect. The form of every cell has been selected by evolution to reproduce sexually, by helping the body to create a new zygote.
However, if the body lives long enough, there is enough time for the cells of the body to evolve into selfish individuals. As a reproductive strategy, selfishness beats altruism. Within the lifetime of the body, mutations can occur that make cells act as selfish individuals that reproduce at the expense of the body.
The coherence of the body depends on its cells retaining the information and the purpose that they inherited from the zygote. Over time, that information and purpose is degraded by entropy and changed by evolution. Without death, the body would eventually dissolve into a battleground of competing cells — a tragedy of the commons.
I think that’s why almost all multicellular life forms reproduce sexually rather than asexually. There are other reasons (sexual reproduction allows beneficial mutations to come together in the same organism), but maybe the most important reason is that sex forces the cells of the body to work together. If only the sex cells can reproduce, and they need a mate to reproduce, then there is no way for the cells of the body to cheat on the multicellular contract and win in the long run.
Sex, death and complexity are all linked.
Have you thought about adding a RSS feed button?
ReplyDeleteI added the button to the bar on the right side. Let me know if it works.
DeleteI couldn't comment directly to October 2017 "The Case Against Anarchism" essay, mentioned here - the circle thing kept spinning, on multiple browsers/computers.
ReplyDeleteSo, Re: The Case Against Anarchism,
You didn't properly define anarchism or statism. Anarchism (according to ancaps, the only rational anarchists) isn't the absence of hierarchy or rules. Statism isn't simply rules and organization and legal monopoly over an area - ancaps surely believe in rules and organization and legal jurisdictional monopolies (eg. on their private property) - the KEY difference is that ancap societies allow their members to opt out, to form their own communities. The only reason why Statism is a problem is because they don't offer such options - such options (eg. Liberland) are brutally crushed, thus exposing the so-called "social contract" as a lie, illegitimate. The only relevant coercion in Statism is this inability to opt out of the contract/community. Following the laws in any particular area, if they're CONSENTED to, shouldn't be called coercion. In other words, the key difference between ancaps and statists is that ancaps value consent and voluntary interaction more than statists.
By the way, if you're a Statist, you must also be against bitcoin, which will make taxation and other regulations and prohibitions impossible soon, right?
I defined the terms just fine. Your definition doesn't make any difference to the arguments, anyway. There's no point in me making a serious reply, because I'd just be repeating what's in the article.
DeleteYou should move to Liberland and put your principles into action. If anarchism is feasible, how could it be crushed by statists?
As for bitcoin, I'm not against it -- I don't care about it. And no, of course it won't make taxation impossible.
(The comment system here still doesn't work properly with my browser. I can't view the comments here, so this probably won't be threaded properly.)
ReplyDelete> You should move to Liberland and put your principles into action. If > anarchism is feasible, how could it be crushed by statists?
You avoided my point - do YOU personally support the people of Liberland, and anyone else who wants to opt out of the so-called "social contract", to do so?
> As for bitcoin, I'm not against it -- I don't care about it. And no, > of course it won't make taxation impossible.
Tax evasion is one of the main uses for bitcoin. As well as being a money that governments can't arbitrarily print to bribe their populations with. As more and more people start hiding their savings in (anonymized) bitcoin, will you then start to care about it?
I guess you didn't read the article very carefully. Anarchism doesn't work. It really doesn't matter whether I support Liberland. It's like asking if I support living forever. I support having a government, taxes, an army, police, etc., because I want to live in civilization. Without those things, there wouldn't be an anarchist utopia. There would just be tribal warfare until a new large-scale power structure was established.
DeleteAs for bitcoin, I think you underestimate the ability of the state to collect taxes.
> It really doesn't matter whether I support Liberland. It's like asking if I support living forever.
ReplyDeleteWhat is so impossible about letting people live on uninhabitted land. Why wouldn't you let them? Ie. why wouldn't you personally vote in favor of this?
See, this is where your logical contradictions occur. You want to pretend to care about consent, you pretend to want to be a good person, you want to pretend that you're living in an overall noble and civilized society, that you aren't able to say the brutality and cruelty behind your ideology - that you would force innocent people to do things against their will, that you wouldn't let them leave.
DeleteWhat are you blabbering about? I never claimed to be a good person. I think your morality is just a delusion. I want a society that works, that's all.
DeleteAnyway, I'll explain why it doesn't make sense to let people live on uninhabited land outside the rule of law. Uninhabited land can be a public good: it can provide clean water, wildlife, a place to hike, etc. Also, if you allow people to do whatever they want on that land, they could turn it into a garbage dump, or put a factory there that pollutes the air and water for miles around, harming others.
See, there's something called "the tragedy of the commons". It's like the free rider problem. They're both problems of cooperation. They can be solved by the rule of law.
You're being dishonest again - there's no way you'd tell your kids that you're a bad (or even amoral) person. There's no way you'd tell your wife this either, that there's no such thing as good or bad. That murder isn't wrong.
DeleteAlso, every society "works". Dictatorships "work". Communist China "works". Muslim Somalia "works".
Also, I already explained how you're presenting a retarded strawman of anarcho-capitalism - ancap isn't a lack of laws, nor is statism merely organized hierarchical society - anarcho-capitalism is all about the rule of law, and VALID contracts that are voluntarily agreed upon? Ancaps don't want to live "outside the law", we prefer other laws.
Private property solves the commons tragedy issue and the free rider issue. Statism actually exacerbates it. The government and all of it's programs are perfect examples of free ridership and abuse of the commons, because the incentives are so misaligned and responsibility is so nebulous. You are so confused and self-contradicting.
Here's another self-contradiction on your part - you would never directly tell your fellow citizens to do something against their will, but you instead cowardly incoherently hide behind armed men to do so - the fact that you statists never speak honestly proves that you're aware that it's wrong, you're embarrassed. For example, statists would never say "give me your money to pay for my kid's education, or I'll cage or shoot you", they always dishonestly say bullshit like "please give us your money, for the sake of the children and some common good [and always omit the nasty cruel violence behind their "request"]". Why the need for this deception?
On this blog, there is a post called "How I Became Amoral". There are several other posts debunking morality. I have told my children that good and evil are delusions. Just because you can't think outside these delusions, doesn't mean I am compelled to believe in them.
DeleteIf you want to debate, how about in voice, so I can post it for the amusement of others?
I'll read your post after you read about Hoppe's idea of Argumentation Ethics, or Kinsella's idea of Estoppel, or Molyneux's idea of Universally Preferable Behavior. All three coherently defined morality. You really seem to have a pattern of creating strawmen, and isolating yourself with them, content in having defeated them.
DeleteSo, when your kids ask you "dad, why shouldn't I kill Bob", what do you tell them? Because you'll go to jail - but if you're sure you can get away with it, go for it? Do you tell them to follow all laws, to be obedient compliant citizens? If a neighbouring country started murdering innocent civilians, you wouldn't intervene - because you wouldn't want to impose your delusions on other cultures right?
I prefer the written form, and being a quirky linux guy we'd probably have too much frustration setting something up.
I have not failed to notice that you aren't answering any of my questions.
All of your questions have been answered by the article itself. The article explains why people Hoppe and Molyneux are wrong.
DeleteI'm not going to waste time debating in text, because I'd just be repeating things I've already written elsewhere. So I won't bother responding to your comments anymore, but the offer of a recorded voice debate stands. I'm sure you could figure out how to use skype on linux.
I read your how-i-became-amoral article, and it's clear that you have never read Hoppe/Kinsella/Molyneux.
DeleteYeah, that's right. I usually don't waste my time reading idiots. And the article I was referring to was the one on anarchism. It refutes anarchism, and thus it refutes Moly and Hoppy and all the other retards.
DeleteSee, this is why text debates are a waste of time. It's not a good medium for debate. Either man up and debate me in voice or get lost. I'm sick of these stupid comments.
No, you only refuted your own dumbass strawman definition of anarchism (no rules, no authorities (anarchism is more properly defined as no ruleRs, not no rules)). You didn't refute rule-based voluntary private property societies. You tried to briefly elsewhere in a youtube debate with someone, by saying that protection of property requires an existing state-infrastructure, but you clearly didn't think about this very much - you were basically arguing based on ignorance and a lack of imagination - you didn't consider how voluntary societies and protection agencies could form.
DeleteThe fact that you are unwilling to read people who are giving you the answers that you awkwardly grasp for, demonstrates that you are not interested in these topics - it's a waste of time for you - so I don't see how a more heated verbal confrontation would help. That fact that you so flippantly discard really highly esteemed thinkers, some with phd's in physics (David Friedman), others with phd's in economics (Hoppe), others professional lawyers (Kinsella) speaks for itself. You even avoided my basic questions, like how you would explain to your children that murder/theft is "wrong", something you never addressed in your amorality article (besides implicitly kinda supporting murder/theft). If you're unable to do the basic foundational reading, and unable to answer the most basic questions, you can't possibly be ready for a verbal debate.
Also, like I said I'm a linux (aka. open source) user. Skype isn't open source. Maybe you can install Tox?
How about discord? You just need a web browser. I can get someone else to record the audio.
DeleteAnd there is skype for linux. The reason I suggested skype is that I have a way to record the audio from skype.
DeleteNot it doesn't just need "a web browser", it needs special web browsers with whatever features discord uses compiled in, which I'm pretty sure my webkit-gtk browser doesn't have compiled in.
DeleteAnd anyways, to be fair, I'll have to start ignoring you since you support hurting me, and forcing me to participate in your evil twisted Canadian continent-wide system. It's frightening how you don't even realize how cruel and evil you are - you don't even see the gun you advocate to be held to my head. You're insane.
(Skype for linux is just a binary blob, it's not open-source.)
lol, okay coward, crawl back into your fantasy world, where you'll be safe from rational arguments.
Delete^This coming from the guy who calls people "idiots" without even having heard their arguments. Also, I offered one potential open-source audio-chat option. How about we debate on irc?
Delete@Dennis Why should anyone support Liberland? Liberland is a scam. The founders literally gave a few million dollars to Somalia just so that Somalia would give them diplomatic recognition. You really think supporting Liberland is a good way to bring about the so-called "freedom" and "voluntary utopia" you're envisioning?
DeleteBut as for the more general question of whether I would support people who want to start their own sovereign micro-nation, that depends on the circumstances. For one thing, why should I take the side of the micro-nation instead of the side of the macro-nation, especially if either way would have no effect on me? It isn't always necessarily a good thing whenever some faction wants to break away from its mother state (e.g. Eritrea gaining independence from Ethiopia and becoming a dictatorship, or the Confederates declaring independence from the Union).
Ancaps have been desperately seeking their own country for a long time. Ancaps are peaceful noble good people. There is lots of unused land available, including that tiny island of Liberland. Should Liberlanders violently take over that (officially-legally-unowned) island like most other countries did? Like Israel did? Would that be less scammy according to you? Would that be the more moral thing to do?
DeleteThe fact that you don't support options to opt-out is psycho, and exposes the dishonesty of statists who constantly offer the lame moral justification of "if you don't like it, leave." You're exposing the nasty violent evil global-cartel nature of the current gang system of statism.
Dennis, have you figured out how to use a browser yet?
DeleteThis site still takes forever to load and work with, and requires massive bloated javascript to post, but at least it worked this time.
DeleteBlogger is pretty bloated, like most websites. But I was talking about your inability to use skype or discord to have a voice debate.
DeleteWe can do a voice debate via Rumble?
DeleteI don't know much about Rumble. Can you record audio on it, and then download the audio? There's zencastr, which I've recently discovered. It's very simple: just open it up in a browser and talk. It records mp3s that both people can download.
Deletewith zencastr, you don't need to make an account, if that is an issue
DeleteWe can try either one. Pick a time
DeleteHow about this Friday at 11 AM Pacific time? Zencastr is easiest -- I can just drop a link here and you click on it.
DeleteOk. See you on Friday
Deletezencastr.com says all 3 of my browsers (opera, samsung's one, and my webkit one) are unsupported. so ig let's try mumble? i don't really have any experience with that either, but i think there are public chat servers, and i think you can record the conversations too.
Deletecan you join irc.libera.chat, i'm "dennisn" on that irc network, and we can coordinate things there?
I haven't used irc in years. I connected to irc.libera.chat on a web client, but I have no idea how to contact you or whatever.
Deletehttp://dennisn.mooo.com/stuff/2022-06-24-morality-ancap-w-blithering-axolotl.m4a
DeleteThe shitty app prioritized your audio, so most of the time you're talking over me. I wonder if your recording prioritized me?
I guess skype recognized your babbling as noise, not speech, and so filtered it out, lol. If you were able to cooperate and have a rational discussion, there would have been no talking over. As it was, at least some people had a good laugh.
DeleteYou can download an mp3 from here:
https://www.spreaker.com/user/blitheringgenius/ancapitarddebate
1. Do you think it's just a fluke that every civilization converged upon rules that condemn murder theft rape and assault? Doesn't that hint at some universal underpinning in our natures? Perhaps something to do with our mirror neurons, our herd/social natures and the empathic brain regions that are required for that? (Another example being our innate sense of fairness that even babies have.)
Delete2. If the majority is evil scum like you suggest, itching to defect in our alleged constant state of "prisoner's dilemma", then obviously democracy can't work, so I guess you favor something like North Korea? Or Stalin's Russia? Or Castro's Cuba? But then why do all such less-free places invariably do worse? Maybe we're not all as dangerous and evil like you claim to be, maybe there's something to this freedom and free-market and voluntaryism stuff? Something that makes more voluntary socities thrive more?
3. You said you would nuke any group that wants to secede from the current cartel of nation states. So I guess you strongly support a one-world government? Ie. you're unwilling to risk having some other country on the planet that you can't control, right? I guess the US should invade China and Russia right?
4. Instead of murdering a peacefully seceding ancap group for fear of it spreading nuclear pollution or something, why didn't you first consider peaceful sane ways to resolve your fears - maybe with agreements to randomly inspect each other's places for radiation - similar to the way Iran currently allows 3rd party inspection of it's sites? What do you think of US's original secession from the British Empire? Do you think that bloodshed was necessary or unavoidable? You don't think the Brits should simply have allowed Americans to peacefully opt out of their empire?
5. Will you teach your kids that there is no such thing as "good" or "bad", that they can steal and kill if they really want to, but ig to just make sure they don't get caught? And I guess you'll marry a similarly amoral wife, someone who doesn't value heroism or nobility, just an amoral opportunistic girl, right? "Heroes" are just cringe fictional people, right? Just fantasy. According to you, we're all spineless violent animals, unworthy of admiration, unworthy of freedom, right? Adam Back isn't a hero right - you need to keep him enslaved, for his own good right?
6. Doesn't bitcoin throw a wrench in your tire spokes? Every gov opposes it, it undermines statism, it's purely voluntary and peaceful, it's spontaneous organization. Somehow people are mysteriously converging on the most ancap money - the most voluntary money - the hardest soundest money - it's anarchic organization and it's thriving.
Come to ##libertarian on irc.libera.chat if you want to address these points live.
Blithering (non) genius..I enjoyed the sounds of your dick sucking..but not quite the asmr i signed up for. And idk why you're complaining about Dennis not having been rational during the convo, 'cause he was at many points..and altho I'm not a huge fan of Dennis i have to admit he really tried, poor guy. And why did you delete that last comment that Dennis made? Sigh..i can't with you man boys
DeleteOh nvm Dennis deleted his own comment..what had you commented, den?
DeleteI'll answer your questions in skype if you can stay quiet for at least 2 minutes per question.
DeleteWhen's a good time for round 2?
DeleteA ROUND TWO of this faggot's fake condescending Dr Evil voiceover?! Dennis you really love doing charity. He (blithering)'s so obsessed with sounding fake knowledgeable but you(den) don't have to talk to a retarded idiot saying pseudo smart shit, you're not going to fix his head. Make an actual coherent argument AGAINST fucking morality you coward wannabe high school level bully, instead of saying shit that you think is going to land you some pussy because YOUR little retard head thinks that you sound like someone who deserves sex. Oh boy, if you're not doing this to land some dumb girl's pussy tho...then I'm legit creeped out man, because then you're legit unironically being a dumb fuck for NO REASON. Dennis, let him talk to his dumb yoga girls and let him get some bitches so that he finally *feels* like a man so that he will finally stop pretending to be a school bully who has to desperately act like he knows what he's saying because otherwise real life will fuck him over and his genes will not be propagated.
Deletelol, your little worm friend is AFRAID
Deletemust be tough to have your ego invested in an ideology, and have it exposed as a fraud
worm: stop making comments on my blog if you can't be polite and make a rational argument. If you want to insult me, let's do it in voice. Otherwise, crawl away.
Dennis: monday 11 AM would probably work
Aight.
DeleteI'm the person who made the Liberland comment that revived this whole comment thread 10 days ago (btw Dennis, I never said that Liberland shouldn't exist. I couldn't care less one way or another). Now that I'm revisiting this blog, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I sparked a voice debate between BG and Dennis. I listened to the whole thing, and I will congratulate Dennis for debating BG in voice because that's way farther than most Humanists would ever go, especially since there were many points where Dennis sounded noticeably distressed and heartbroken by BG's sound reasoning.
DeleteTo paraphrase just a few of Dennis's naive assumptions, he believes that morality is self-evident, "objective", and has unclear origins from evolution and/or "pure" logic. That said, I will strongly recommend that Dennis read BG's essay "What is Morality?" since he has never read it before. For the record, I myself used to be a hardcore Voluntaryist who was obsessed with chasing after "objective" morality until I eventually became post-moral. I can't tell you enough how liberating it is to let go of morality and throw it out the window.
Literally NOTHING is objectively immoral. Murder is subjectively bad if the people getting murdered are people that I care about (like Blithering Genius), and murder is subjectively good if the people getting murdered are Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-Un, Vladimir Putin, and/or the Golden State Killer for instance (from my perspective anyway). Many people are morally opposed to the death penalty though.
@Dennis As for what I think about the American Revolution as a natural-born American citizen who chooses to obey the American Rule of Law, I'll just quote this paragraph from "Industrial Society and Its Future" since it answers your question:
Delete"109. The American Revolution does not provide a counterexample [to Ted Kaczynski's Five Listed Principles of History]. The American "Revolution" was not a revolution in our (Kaczynski's) sense of the word, but a war of independence followed by a rather far-reaching political reform. The Founding Fathers did not change the direction of development of American society, nor did they aspire to do so. They only freed the development of American society from the retarding effect of British rule. Their political reform did not change any basic trend, but only pushed American political culture along its natural direction of development. British society, of which American society was an offshoot, had been moving for a long time in the direction of representative democracy. And prior to the War of Independence the Americans were already practicing a significant degree of representative democracy in the colonial assemblies. The political system established by the Constitution was modeled on the British system and on the colonial assemblies. With major alteration, to be sure there is no doubt that the Founding Fathers took a very important step. But it was a step along the road that the English-speaking world was already traveling. The proof is that Britain and all of its colonies that were populated predominantly by people of British descent ended up with systems of representative democracy essentially similar to that of the United States. If the Founding Fathers had lost their nerve and declined to sign the Declaration of Independence, our way of life today would not have been significantly different. Maybe we would have had somewhat closer ties to Britain, and would have had a Parliament and Prime Minister instead of a Congress and President. No big deal. Thus the American Revolution provides not a counterexample to our (Kaczynski's) historical principles but a good illustration of them."
And as for whether or not Bitcoin or crypto would "throw a wrench" into our plans to make people pay taxes, that's not possible because I am proposing to abolish income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, etc, and replace all that exclusively with Economic Land Value Taxation (including Natural Resources and much more). It is not possible to hide or conceal land from the government if the government possesses satellite technology, so it's obviously impossible to get away with tax evasion if the government is only collecting Land Value Taxes. Any landowners who attempt to avoid paying LVT would simply forfeit their land, and that land would then be put up for auction by the state. Crypto would not stop the tax collectors at all.
@Anonymous
Delete> I'm the person who made the Liberland comment that revived this whole
comment thread 10 days ago (btw Dennis, I never said that Liberland
shouldn't exist. I couldn't care less one way or another).
You should care, if you claim to care about consent and justice.
> To paraphrase just a few of Dennis's naive assumptions, he believes that morality is self-evident, "objective", and has unclear origins from evolution and/or "pure" logic. That said, I will strongly recommend that Dennis read BG's essay "What is Morality?" since he has never read it
before.
I strongly recommend that you read Molyneux's Universally Preferable Behavior - a secular proof of objective morality. After you read that you'll realize that you're proving the case for UPB right here - you're demanding I respect objective reality and logical coherence, etc. All these things are implied in argumentation.
> For the record, I myself used to be a hardcore Voluntaryist
Oh, you aren't any longer? So ... what should people be INvoluntarily violently forced to do?
> who was obsessed with chasing after "objective" morality until I eventually became post-moral. I can't tell you enough how liberating it is to let go of morality and throw it out the window.
It's a trap :p. It might feel liberating in the short-term, but the cost will be an inability to love and be loved, a loss of meaning and purpose, etc. We're moral animals anyways, so I'm sure this will just be a fad for you.
> Literally NOTHING is objectively immoral.
What about chopping off a newborn's head with a rusty butter knife?
> Murder is subjectively bad if the people getting murdered are people that I care about (like Blithering Genius), and murder is subjectively good if the people getting murdered are Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-Un, Vladimir Putin, and/or the Golden State Killer for instance (from my perspective anyway).
Those people you mentioned are objectively evil (they killed or threatened to kill others), or support it, so they deserve to die - killing them wouldn't be classified as "murder". Notice how we all agree that they're evil, and should probably be killed.
> Many people are morally opposed to the death penalty though.
You're using the concept of morality very loosely here - you meant to say that many people feel uncomfortable about the death penalty. Good for them. Only the victim (or those closest to the victim) ought to have a say in the punishment. It's nobody else's business. (Anyone who says the death penalty is *objectively immoral* is simply wrong. Murderers, by their act of murder, consent to being killed themselves. See Hoppe's explanation of Estoppel.)
> As for what I think about the American Revolution as a natural-born American citizen who chooses to obey the American Rule of Law
What do you think about your natural-born British citizen ancestors who disobeyed the British Rule of Law?
> And as for whether or not Bitcoin or crypto would "throw a wrench" into our plans to make people pay taxes,
You misunderstood the context of this wrench throwing. BG was arguing that a top down hierarchy is needed for money - the existance of bitcoin disproves this assertion. The existance of gold should also have made this clear, so it's weird that he tried to argue that.
> if the government is only collecting Land Value Taxes. Any landowners who attempt to avoid paying LVT would simply forfeit their land, and that land would then be put up for auction by the state. Crypto would not stop the tax collectors at all.
Yea, obviously land owners are AML'd/KYC'd. Bitcoin isn't a panacea. But it is unconfiscatable and unstoppable. Thugs can steal the land, but they can't steal/take the bitcoin.
> You should care, if you claim to care about consent and justice.
DeleteAnd if you truly cared about consent, then you would be an Anti-natalist since there are millions of people who never consented to being born. If consent truly mattered in this world, then parents should never be authorized to create new sentient life.
> "Objective morality"
"Objective morality" is an oxymoron. Blithering Genius already explained why in his essay "What is Morality?". There is no such thing as a universal good or a universal evil.
> So ... what should people be involuntarily violently forced to do?
It is okay to have children, even if they never asked nor wanted to be born.
> It might feel liberating in the short-term, but the cost will be an inability to love and be loved, a loss of meaning and purpose, etc. We're moral animals anyways, so I'm sure this will just be a fad for you.
Nah, it's actually really empowering to have a consistent moral philosophy. Life is intrinsically selfish and violent, and I would rather be honest about myself (and everyone else) instead of pretending that I have moral high ground over everybody else.
If I'm on a deserted island with 20 other humans, but there's only enough food for 10 humans, then I will shamelessly do what I must to survive. You've said that you wouldn't kill other humans if you were struggling to survive in the Amazon Rainforest, but you claimed that BG didn't know what it was like to get mugged (even though he has), so it's fair game for me to counter-argue that you don't know what it's like to be hungry. If you're hungry enough, you'll probably kill your competitors too.
> What about chopping off a newborn's head with a rusty butter knife?
If that newborn baby would've grown up to be Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Elliot Rodgers, or a notorious criminal, then I don't believe that it would be evil to kill the baby. We don't know if the baby is going to grow up to be "good" or "evil".
> Those people you mentioned are objectively evil.
How many times do we have to say it??? Literally nothing is objectively evil. Some examples:
- Hitler's wife and comrades did not believe that Hitler is evil. Millions of contemporary Germans and Nazis thought that Hitler was a really great man who cared for his people. Hitler was widely seen as the leader who moved Germany out of the Great Depression and rightfully sought vengeance against the Jews and the Allies who stabbed Germany in the back during the Treaty of Versailles.
- The eldest daughter of the Golden State Killer has written a lengthy letter to the Judge saying that she loves her dad and that he's the best father she ever could've had.
- Trump supporters think that Donald Trump is good. Never-Trumpers think that he's bad.
- Some people are pro-Israel. Others are pro-Palestine. And other people are neutral.
- The professor who gave me a failing grade since he didn't know how to teach science at all is subjectively evil because I think he's unfair and that he wasted my tuition money. On the other hand, his wife and kids would say that he's not evil and that he's a really "good" guy.
The bottom line is that morality depends on perspective. Blithering Genius has already explained this in far fewer words than any of your favorite authors. You could read BG's essay "What is Morality?" in less than half an hour, whereas it would take hours and hours to read all your suggested books. How about you give me the cliff-notes version of what you think I should read?
> What do you think about your natural-born British citizen ancestors who disobeyed the British Rule of Law?
I don't have any British ancestors. And even if I did, I wouldn't care if they wanted to obey or disobey British Law since it depends on both the context, the perspective, the time period, and moral values. The only reason why I obey the Law is because I don't have any strong incentives to break the Law, given the circumstances.
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