Republicans, conservatives, statist-libertarians, etc. all ramble on about personal responsibility. However, this includes owning your own violence, taking power over your own destruction and harnessing this capability instead of creating a collective, omnipotent, 'unfightable' power. There is no personal responsibility in creating a state, it is a collective responsibility.
When individuals are given this collective power and responsibility (Stan Lee, with great power comes great responsibility), they become power hungry psychopaths who think they hold the moral authority of society in their hands. Human beings are nothing but animals, and when these people have this power, they become the artificial alpha (fe)males of society and they are threatened by anyone who would challenge this position. Whats worse, the evil of the state only attracts evil to work for it. Only those that are willing to point guns will actually do it and these are our beloved police and politicians... of course, others may be willing to point the gun as well but what separates the 'bad' from the 'evil' is that, one of them claims the moral authority while being a blatant hypocrite. This is why I love the movie Fight Club as it separates the evil from the, more or less, bad or even, amoral.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
While the Financial Crisis Worsens...
..., the UN focuses on more important matters.
Since we really don't want to hurt the feelings of muslims, we need to limit free speech... especially because we know what happened the last few times their feelings got hurt, people died.
Ludicrous and pointless. The student run government at my university does more than the overpaid thieves in the UN. No pants Friday at McGill makes more sense than this.
Not a bad job if your a diplomat though, at least your immune to laws as long as your living outside of your country. And you move every four years! Miami, Puerto Plata, Cancun, Rio... then retire in Canada! All while living off of other peoples hard earned cash, that is the real gangsta lifestyle.
Since we really don't want to hurt the feelings of muslims, we need to limit free speech... especially because we know what happened the last few times their feelings got hurt, people died.
Ludicrous and pointless. The student run government at my university does more than the overpaid thieves in the UN. No pants Friday at McGill makes more sense than this.
Not a bad job if your a diplomat though, at least your immune to laws as long as your living outside of your country. And you move every four years! Miami, Puerto Plata, Cancun, Rio... then retire in Canada! All while living off of other peoples hard earned cash, that is the real gangsta lifestyle.
Enforcing Will
When you tell people what to do, at the point of a gun, blood will follow... especially when these people don't consider themselves citizens of your country. Unfortunately, this is how states function and it would be nothing less than utopian to expect an end to these atrocities. Whether its arming dictators, establishing coups, preparing for war or even trivial matters like putting potheads in jail, there will always be resistance. In your life, if you want people to listen to you, or if you want people to do as you tell them to, you negotiate, you trade, you enlighten, you interact. You do NOT put a gun up to their heads. Why wouldn't these same policies work within collectivity? We use reason at the individual level, we should not be using guns at the collective one.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Violence against the state
I consider violence against the state (i.e. police, politicians) as self defense. However, I do not advocate using violence for revolution. Gandhi had it right.
Killing politicians is not the answer, stopping the electoral process is. For every politician killed, another one is elected.
Other than non-violence, how a revolution may/should be carried out is beyond me... for now. I will need to get back to this subject later, but for now, I must work on my review of Hedonism.
Killing politicians is not the answer, stopping the electoral process is. For every politician killed, another one is elected.
Other than non-violence, how a revolution may/should be carried out is beyond me... for now. I will need to get back to this subject later, but for now, I must work on my review of Hedonism.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Rationalism, High Modernism And the State
Throughout history, there have always existed many individuals claiming to know what progress is and how to achieve it. Some of these individuals claim more than just intellectual insight, i.e. intellectual superiority, and along with a belief that it is possible to succeed in the reordering of society and nature, they justify and control the powers of the state and use it to create something that is supposedly dedicated to human advancement. With the help of the best available scientist, engineers, technicians and architects, they centralize planning to create the best society possible, according to them. In some sense, these social engineers or economic planners are the creators of what James C. Scott calls, the high modernist state, where technocratic and authoritarian principles are implemented to achieve progress. “Political rationalists” are what Oakeshott, in Rationalism in Politics, calls them. The high modernist approach has bettered many factors of society including health and safety, but there are hardly any positive long term effects. This is because, at its very core, it is impossible for the state to have all the information necessary to truly be able to function so it ends up simplifying the world when trying to understand it. In addition, while the government continually grows, vast numbers of people who have been hired by the state seemingly turn into parts of a machine made only to produce utility. For these reasons, states should not be used to achieve the ends of the high modernist philosophy.
On some utilitarian grounds, the high modernist state may seem to be achieving many positive outcomes. In his book, Seeing like a State, Scott explains how roads were named before states took it upon themselves to name them and how it helped benefit society when it translated this vernacular knowledge into official knowledge. In certain towns, a road’s name would always describe its destination but that created multiple names for the same road, depending on where you’re coming from. If remained unchanged, this would have led to many problems and confusions for tourists, for police and for people stuck in car accidents on a road with many names. The state, in its infinite wisdom, gives an official name/number to these roads so that there would be no confusion between road names. This, along with the state initiative to create and legalize surnames, helped organize society and individual identities so that it would be a lot easier to find, protect and tax citizens. Louis Napoleon’s reconstruction of Paris is another example of a transition into high modernism. He provided efficient roads, decent sewage, relatively clean water, gas lighting etc. but most importantly, especially after the revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848, he formed Paris so that it would have increased security from revolutionaries. Roads and train tracks were made to go directly to the heart of the city from the barracks’ while many squares, where revolutionaries would usually meet, had been torn down. All done in the name of safety, health and efficiency, he was able to justify the protections set for the state.
However, one should be skeptical of any positive outcomes achieved through political rationalism as any claim to have enough intellect to govern is also an impossible claim of being able to attain it. States cannot efficiently allocate resource, land, labor etc. as the worldwide economy is constantly changing; nobody can know what is happening in every local economy in the world. Those involved in the economy, unlike the central planner, can do the right thing in relative ignorance and are not subject to an unattainable obligation of reaching omniscience. People, being capable of solving problems that they don‘t understand, may be blinded from even recognizing a market structure or its effectiveness (Hayek). In effect, the central planner, regardless of his intellect, is still lacking in attaining all the necessary knowledge which, in turn, forces him to create a simplified version of reality. Simplifications are sometimes useful (e.g. maps, mathematics, etc.) but when one has access to the violent monopoly of the state and tries to shape society according to a simplified map, there is a tendency to simplify reality as well. Also, the nature of the state skews knowledge when it simplifies the world. The state only concerns itself with aspects of social life that it deems to be of official or of utilitarian interest. Facts attained are always static, egalitarian and written documents (i.e. verbal or numerical). Also, to be able to make collective assessments, officials find themselves needing to group individuals. Scott gives the example of scientific forestry which had devastated forests and profits when it tried to turn the forest into an efficient lumber producer. Clear cutting and only planting efficient lumber trees not only ruined the soil capital that had been created by the mixed forest which were needed for regeneration, but also eliminated many other resources and animals such as fodder, nuts & berries, medicinal plants, animals, etc. This problem arises from an inability to collect all the necessary knowledge while, at the same time, simplifying the very knowledge available. Cities, much like these forest, can be either planned or created through thousands of individual activities and people going about their regular business. Also, by promising their followers that, if they follow their path, they too can gain superiority in knowledge and understanding, the political rationalists gain the will of the majority as well; which becomes increasingly helpful when trying to implement their philosophy within a democratic state.
Political rationalists are also fully aware of all those who also claim rationality but are disagreeing with them, yet in their valiant effort, they still bring it on themselves to force all those within a certain domain to do as they say and of course, not as they do (e.g. create laws against violence using violence). In contrast, economic rationalism, opposes using the state to achieve desired ends as it humbly admits that it cannot attain the knowledge necessary to be able to fully function properly; for it to dump any negative consequences it causes on society would be unjust. Although both public and private institutions have the capability to standardize cultural diversity, one is essentially coercive cultural homogenization while the other is pluralistic, syncretistic and evolutionary assimilation.
Oakeshott explains rationalism as a balance of a politics of perfection and a politics of uniformity and categorizes it as using technical knowledge, that which can be learned through formulas, books and being able to learn how to learn, rather than practical knowledge, that which can be learned through continual practice. To them, perfection is indeed uniform and they strive so that all of mankind, or at least the ones within their domain, reach it, whether they like it or not. Using violence against their own people, all to reach their own views of perfection, dehumanizes them. The reality is, especially when states have differences among themselves, expansion will become the primary purpose for the state. Since it has no problem using violence against its own citizens, it definitely should not have any problems with minorities and those outside their state. So all who disagree must either be assimilated or be destroyed. However, even high modernist states recognize that violence is inefficient when it comes to profit so, as Scott portrays it, the creation of institutions to help with the constant exploitation of other countries, like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, was only natural. To be more efficient in turning humans into nothing but parts of a machine made solely for utility maximization, the high modernist state needs to socially engineer their lives through public education, public healthcare, state imposed correctional facilities, a unitary monetary system, a federal bank and of course, a military to impose it all. The three institutions listed above help western countries gain control over all these factors in countries they do not have direct power over. Brasilia would be a good example of a working high modernist state that had been built from scratch. Instead of representing the country’s history, people and culture, Brasilia was built for an abstract citizen living an abstract idea of what a great internationalist city should be. There are no street festivals, no crowds and no landmarks; just big empty squares and architectural repetitions which help emphasize collective uniformity and devalue individual heroism. Foucault, in Discipline and Punish, explains that high modernist states, like Brasilia, are made so that we all act like slaves, even when there is no master. It has the ability to subject its citizens into submission and control, making them become part of this modernity by giving them schedules and timetables for everyday life. Brasilia had been made into a machine where the state holds the vast majority of employment opportunities, narrowing choice and standardizing pay. Also, in its quest for complete transparency, the state strives to minimize the number of languages spoken, extinguishing the histories of past cultures. Doctors actually ended up treating a clinical condition called Brasilitis; a depression caused by living a home and work lifestyle within a socially deprived environment. Society exposes its weakness in its inability to resist, succumbing to high modernism.
Accordingly, it is impossible for high modernist states to run properly as they can never achieve the knowledge necessary for governance. Much like centrally planned forests, high modernist states create many economic and social issues that are not necessarily recognized at first but which ultimately dispossess citizens of their humanity. It may be fine to build a city that preserves health and safety, but when this is done without using the leviathan, there is no fear of depression caused by social and cultural deprivation.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage, 1995.
Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” The American Economic Review, Vol. 35, No. 4. (Sep., 1945), pp. 519-530. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002- 8282%28194509%2935%3A4%3C519%3ATUOKIS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1
Oakeshott, Michael, and Timothy Fuller. Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. Danbury: Liberty Fund, Incorporated, 1991.
Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State : How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New York: Yale UP, 1999.
On some utilitarian grounds, the high modernist state may seem to be achieving many positive outcomes. In his book, Seeing like a State, Scott explains how roads were named before states took it upon themselves to name them and how it helped benefit society when it translated this vernacular knowledge into official knowledge. In certain towns, a road’s name would always describe its destination but that created multiple names for the same road, depending on where you’re coming from. If remained unchanged, this would have led to many problems and confusions for tourists, for police and for people stuck in car accidents on a road with many names. The state, in its infinite wisdom, gives an official name/number to these roads so that there would be no confusion between road names. This, along with the state initiative to create and legalize surnames, helped organize society and individual identities so that it would be a lot easier to find, protect and tax citizens. Louis Napoleon’s reconstruction of Paris is another example of a transition into high modernism. He provided efficient roads, decent sewage, relatively clean water, gas lighting etc. but most importantly, especially after the revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848, he formed Paris so that it would have increased security from revolutionaries. Roads and train tracks were made to go directly to the heart of the city from the barracks’ while many squares, where revolutionaries would usually meet, had been torn down. All done in the name of safety, health and efficiency, he was able to justify the protections set for the state.
However, one should be skeptical of any positive outcomes achieved through political rationalism as any claim to have enough intellect to govern is also an impossible claim of being able to attain it. States cannot efficiently allocate resource, land, labor etc. as the worldwide economy is constantly changing; nobody can know what is happening in every local economy in the world. Those involved in the economy, unlike the central planner, can do the right thing in relative ignorance and are not subject to an unattainable obligation of reaching omniscience. People, being capable of solving problems that they don‘t understand, may be blinded from even recognizing a market structure or its effectiveness (Hayek). In effect, the central planner, regardless of his intellect, is still lacking in attaining all the necessary knowledge which, in turn, forces him to create a simplified version of reality. Simplifications are sometimes useful (e.g. maps, mathematics, etc.) but when one has access to the violent monopoly of the state and tries to shape society according to a simplified map, there is a tendency to simplify reality as well. Also, the nature of the state skews knowledge when it simplifies the world. The state only concerns itself with aspects of social life that it deems to be of official or of utilitarian interest. Facts attained are always static, egalitarian and written documents (i.e. verbal or numerical). Also, to be able to make collective assessments, officials find themselves needing to group individuals. Scott gives the example of scientific forestry which had devastated forests and profits when it tried to turn the forest into an efficient lumber producer. Clear cutting and only planting efficient lumber trees not only ruined the soil capital that had been created by the mixed forest which were needed for regeneration, but also eliminated many other resources and animals such as fodder, nuts & berries, medicinal plants, animals, etc. This problem arises from an inability to collect all the necessary knowledge while, at the same time, simplifying the very knowledge available. Cities, much like these forest, can be either planned or created through thousands of individual activities and people going about their regular business. Also, by promising their followers that, if they follow their path, they too can gain superiority in knowledge and understanding, the political rationalists gain the will of the majority as well; which becomes increasingly helpful when trying to implement their philosophy within a democratic state.
Political rationalists are also fully aware of all those who also claim rationality but are disagreeing with them, yet in their valiant effort, they still bring it on themselves to force all those within a certain domain to do as they say and of course, not as they do (e.g. create laws against violence using violence). In contrast, economic rationalism, opposes using the state to achieve desired ends as it humbly admits that it cannot attain the knowledge necessary to be able to fully function properly; for it to dump any negative consequences it causes on society would be unjust. Although both public and private institutions have the capability to standardize cultural diversity, one is essentially coercive cultural homogenization while the other is pluralistic, syncretistic and evolutionary assimilation.
Oakeshott explains rationalism as a balance of a politics of perfection and a politics of uniformity and categorizes it as using technical knowledge, that which can be learned through formulas, books and being able to learn how to learn, rather than practical knowledge, that which can be learned through continual practice. To them, perfection is indeed uniform and they strive so that all of mankind, or at least the ones within their domain, reach it, whether they like it or not. Using violence against their own people, all to reach their own views of perfection, dehumanizes them. The reality is, especially when states have differences among themselves, expansion will become the primary purpose for the state. Since it has no problem using violence against its own citizens, it definitely should not have any problems with minorities and those outside their state. So all who disagree must either be assimilated or be destroyed. However, even high modernist states recognize that violence is inefficient when it comes to profit so, as Scott portrays it, the creation of institutions to help with the constant exploitation of other countries, like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, was only natural. To be more efficient in turning humans into nothing but parts of a machine made solely for utility maximization, the high modernist state needs to socially engineer their lives through public education, public healthcare, state imposed correctional facilities, a unitary monetary system, a federal bank and of course, a military to impose it all. The three institutions listed above help western countries gain control over all these factors in countries they do not have direct power over. Brasilia would be a good example of a working high modernist state that had been built from scratch. Instead of representing the country’s history, people and culture, Brasilia was built for an abstract citizen living an abstract idea of what a great internationalist city should be. There are no street festivals, no crowds and no landmarks; just big empty squares and architectural repetitions which help emphasize collective uniformity and devalue individual heroism. Foucault, in Discipline and Punish, explains that high modernist states, like Brasilia, are made so that we all act like slaves, even when there is no master. It has the ability to subject its citizens into submission and control, making them become part of this modernity by giving them schedules and timetables for everyday life. Brasilia had been made into a machine where the state holds the vast majority of employment opportunities, narrowing choice and standardizing pay. Also, in its quest for complete transparency, the state strives to minimize the number of languages spoken, extinguishing the histories of past cultures. Doctors actually ended up treating a clinical condition called Brasilitis; a depression caused by living a home and work lifestyle within a socially deprived environment. Society exposes its weakness in its inability to resist, succumbing to high modernism.
Accordingly, it is impossible for high modernist states to run properly as they can never achieve the knowledge necessary for governance. Much like centrally planned forests, high modernist states create many economic and social issues that are not necessarily recognized at first but which ultimately dispossess citizens of their humanity. It may be fine to build a city that preserves health and safety, but when this is done without using the leviathan, there is no fear of depression caused by social and cultural deprivation.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage, 1995.
Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” The American Economic Review, Vol. 35, No. 4. (Sep., 1945), pp. 519-530. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002- 8282%28194509%2935%3A4%3C519%3ATUOKIS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1
Oakeshott, Michael, and Timothy Fuller. Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. Danbury: Liberty Fund, Incorporated, 1991.
Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State : How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New York: Yale UP, 1999.
ACTIVISM, trivial ideological debates and what unites us
My rant on anti-state.com forums:
I joined this website today because im sick of the state of the world. We need to start moving but we are stuck in our ideological wars over what type of anarchism is the right type. I used to think of myself as an anarcho-capitalist, but FUCK IT. Left, Right, it does not matter, the main point of anarchy is "DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO." Taxation is theft and all anarchists agree with that. Now, after the state is abolished, we can go make our liberal/conservative/communist/capitalist societies or whatever, with or without state-like institutions... as long as its done with consent!
Here is the point: if your born into your parents system of government, and they agree to it and you don't, you have every right to break from their contract. Anarchy is basically fighting for the right to be able to break contracts. A contract that does not have a clause to be able to break from the contract is slavery and this is exactly what the government runs on.
If you agree with this, (the point that you should be able to break contracts), you are an anarchist.
Anarchy is not about 'anti-capitalism' or 'fuck free trade' ... its about freedom. So stop writing that shyt on your signs.. its not what we are about and it makes all of us look stupid as fuck. Instead, write things that ALL anarchists agree with like 'taxation is theft' and 'fuck the police' ...
and we should not use violence against non-state entities... (I regard using violence against the police as self-defense).
If you agree with what I say and live in Toronto/Montreal, message me. Do it. Just say "I agree with what you say and I want to help make a difference."
Help us with future protests.
If you disagree, tell me why I am wrong and I will be happy to debate.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Gold
Warren Buffet at Harvard on Gold: "It gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head."
Gold is to us as a bone is to a dog... well, not exactly, chewing a bone is a source of calcium.
Gold is to us as a bone is to a dog... well, not exactly, chewing a bone is a source of calcium.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Thoughts on the Economic Crises
If a theory does not work in practice, it is a failed theory. Statements such as "communism works in theory, but not in practice" or "its not the religion, its the people" are completely meaningless.
Now here we have invertebrates protesting, the theory being the backbone. All of them are against the bailout but most proposed solutions are less than adequate.
In france, many advocate the nationalization of the banks. In iceland, they advocate the reformation of the government. In New York, they advocate more rights for the worker.
Many have come to the conclusion that capitalism has failed, but if you look at the amount of government intervention in the last, well, ever, you would realize that capitalism had never actually been given any room to breath.
Everybody has lost faith in their state, but instead of coming up with new methods to deal, they revive the debate on how one should bring on a proletarian revolution. Luxemburg and Lenin are at it again.
In economics, The Chicago School has died with Friedman and the Austrian School is the last remaining refuge for those who still advocate economic freedom.
I fear that, once again, tomorrow will be disappointing and end up looking like yesterday. And I wonder, how many times must we fail in order to get something right?
Our time may be now, but we are the minority. We must not give in, not this time.
Now here we have invertebrates protesting, the theory being the backbone. All of them are against the bailout but most proposed solutions are less than adequate.
In france, many advocate the nationalization of the banks. In iceland, they advocate the reformation of the government. In New York, they advocate more rights for the worker.
Many have come to the conclusion that capitalism has failed, but if you look at the amount of government intervention in the last, well, ever, you would realize that capitalism had never actually been given any room to breath.
Everybody has lost faith in their state, but instead of coming up with new methods to deal, they revive the debate on how one should bring on a proletarian revolution. Luxemburg and Lenin are at it again.
In economics, The Chicago School has died with Friedman and the Austrian School is the last remaining refuge for those who still advocate economic freedom.
I fear that, once again, tomorrow will be disappointing and end up looking like yesterday. And I wonder, how many times must we fail in order to get something right?
Our time may be now, but we are the minority. We must not give in, not this time.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Free Will and Time Travel: A Look at David Lewis' "The Paradoxes of Time Travel"
David Lewis’s essay in The Paradoxes of Time Travel has many underlying implications on the ongoing philosophical discussion regarding free will. Here, free will can be defined as a power to make a choice independent of external agencies. Of course, all of our choices are made because of some instance of cause and effect - e.g. because one is inquisitive, one chooses to learn more about the world so one chooses to go to university - but the question lies in the extent of which these external forces influence our choices. In this case, Lewis convincingly uses arguments concerning time travel, which are backed by modern day theories in physics, to take on a compatibilist position in the free will debate, arguing that although a fixed and predictable timelines exist, otherwise known as external time, the fact that we have, as he calls it, a personal time gives us the freedom of choice that we so desperately need and strive to argue for.
For a time traveler, Tim, the personal time is the time on his wristwatch, or the time it takes for his beard to grow regardless of what is happening in the external time. If there is no such thing as personal time, Tim would presumably shrink in age when traveling back in time or grow old rapidly when traveling forward through time. Lewis does not consider this, but it helps distinguish between the two types of timelines as one is traveling on the plane of the other. Lewis describes the shape of the personal timeline when traveling towards the past as a zigzag streak, towards the future as a stretched-out streak and towards either way instantaneously as a broken streak. The differentiation between the personal and external timelines may seem trivial at first, but that is exactly where our free will originates. The determinist view would need to deny any view which states that we have our own time, meaning that it would deny any non-classical form of physics.
As with any good philosophy, it is always best to create and examine the extreme form of the example and that is exactly what Lewis does by supposing that Tim has an unstoppable motivation to go back in time to kill his grandfather in the grandfather paradox. If we were to rule out all factors stopping him from killing his grandfather, there would be no reason for him not to do so. Although there would be a contradiction in Tim’s past if he was to pull the trigger, all it would do is fortify the multi-verse argument - meaning that there are many more different four-dimensional worlds - as there is absolutely no way that anything could stop Tim. Just as there are many different personal timelines, there are many different external timelines. Our choices help choose which paths we take on these external timelines. The determinist would argue that there is only one external timeline and it would be impossible to kill the grandfather as it would necessarily result in a contradiction; it would destroy any possibility of free will as every time Tim tries to kill the grandfather, he would always need to somehow survive.
Lewis’s argument, however, does rest on the notion that time travel is indeed possible, but his conclusions imply that we should be able to travel between these external timelines meaning that we can travel between the various choices we have made. His argument finds that free will exists because the external time is unrelated to our personal actions made within our personal time. His conclusions and the possibility of time travel, are, however, supported by most non-classical physical theories including the many forms of string theory.
For a time traveler, Tim, the personal time is the time on his wristwatch, or the time it takes for his beard to grow regardless of what is happening in the external time. If there is no such thing as personal time, Tim would presumably shrink in age when traveling back in time or grow old rapidly when traveling forward through time. Lewis does not consider this, but it helps distinguish between the two types of timelines as one is traveling on the plane of the other. Lewis describes the shape of the personal timeline when traveling towards the past as a zigzag streak, towards the future as a stretched-out streak and towards either way instantaneously as a broken streak. The differentiation between the personal and external timelines may seem trivial at first, but that is exactly where our free will originates. The determinist view would need to deny any view which states that we have our own time, meaning that it would deny any non-classical form of physics.
As with any good philosophy, it is always best to create and examine the extreme form of the example and that is exactly what Lewis does by supposing that Tim has an unstoppable motivation to go back in time to kill his grandfather in the grandfather paradox. If we were to rule out all factors stopping him from killing his grandfather, there would be no reason for him not to do so. Although there would be a contradiction in Tim’s past if he was to pull the trigger, all it would do is fortify the multi-verse argument - meaning that there are many more different four-dimensional worlds - as there is absolutely no way that anything could stop Tim. Just as there are many different personal timelines, there are many different external timelines. Our choices help choose which paths we take on these external timelines. The determinist would argue that there is only one external timeline and it would be impossible to kill the grandfather as it would necessarily result in a contradiction; it would destroy any possibility of free will as every time Tim tries to kill the grandfather, he would always need to somehow survive.
Lewis’s argument, however, does rest on the notion that time travel is indeed possible, but his conclusions imply that we should be able to travel between these external timelines meaning that we can travel between the various choices we have made. His argument finds that free will exists because the external time is unrelated to our personal actions made within our personal time. His conclusions and the possibility of time travel, are, however, supported by most non-classical physical theories including the many forms of string theory.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
What NOT to say in a debate
When you are not adding to a debate, your either not doing anything or taking away from it. Here I will outline ways that can actually take away from a debate.
Value Judgments with no backing of the 'why' something may be wrong.
Saying something such as "well, that's just your opinion!"... I don't need anyone to tell me that.
Meaningless and undefinable answers such as 'god did it' which stops all further questioning.
Usually when people do this, I loose any motivation for further debate as I know I will gain absolutely nothing out of the discussion, and I advise you to do the same...
...of course, you could teach that person about these things but that is up to your discretion.
Value Judgments with no backing of the 'why' something may be wrong.
Saying something such as "well, that's just your opinion!"... I don't need anyone to tell me that.
Meaningless and undefinable answers such as 'god did it' which stops all further questioning.
Usually when people do this, I loose any motivation for further debate as I know I will gain absolutely nothing out of the discussion, and I advise you to do the same...
...of course, you could teach that person about these things but that is up to your discretion.
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