Is freedom to breed a right?


jts

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I don't know if this proves anything. Maybe it's just interesting.

chris-langan-iq-comparison.jpg

Chris Langan:

People who wanted to have children would apply to make sure they have no diseases. Either we have to do it through genetic engineering, or we have to let only the fit breed. We like to think that it's our right to breed as incontinently as we want to and have as many kids with whoever we want to. Future generations will be saddled with the results of what we do...or don't do. Freedom is not necessarily a right. It is a privilege that you have to earn. A lot of people abuse their freedom and that is something that people have to be trained not to do.

Is Chris Langan's idea of eugenics consistent with Objectivism? His idea seems to be education rather than force of law. But maybe not, because he says "or we have to let only the fit breed". Also he wants to plant birth control in all children at age 10.

A freedom can be a right (something we can do without permission) or it can be a privilege (something we need permission to do). He says making kids should be a privilege. Is this just education or does someone grant this privilege and play God with the birth control implants?

Well, I'd be perfectly willing to do it myself. Just put me in charge.

What he means by this exactly, your guess is probably as good as mine.

Imagine a world with everybody being a super athlete and an all round genius and nobody with any diseases.

I had some reluctance to post this video because most of it is not relevant to the topic. But someone will accuse me of not sourcing the quotes. The relevant part is from 1:20 to 2:40.

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  • 2 months later...

GATTACA.

Translated: we aren't nearly that smart, and neither is dufus..

Is it lost on many that he even looks like Hitler?

He's another fool in love with the singular. ("We have to have a ...") lather, rinse, repeat.

The top

The bottom

The economy

The Society

The Framework

The Basis

The Remains

The Identity

The Mind of The God...

History's latest Totalitarian. We are all One.

Another fool who wouldn't know pluralities if they bit him in his ass.

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So reproduction should be controlled by the same folks who run the post office and who gave us Obamacare?

No thanks.

I will drink to that. L'chayim.

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Whether we call it 'The Law of Unintended Consequences' or Wolframs 'complexity from simple rules', constructivists like this idiot are grossly unable to build 'the' complex world from his limited simple rules and accurately see that world.

Sometimes we navigate, and sometimes we meander, and for sure, not all at the same time in the same way throughout all of space and time.

This guy got bored at the Walmart and decided to try his hand at Guru. Fail.

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On 9/23/2014 at 11:40 PM, jts said:

Is Chris Langan's idea of eugenics consistent with Objectivism?

No.

I normally don't answer this kind of question, but eugenics is one of the worst evils mankind has devised. I don't know how anyone could imagine Objectivism, a philosophy of individualism, could ever be based on the collectivist premises of eugenics.

What an interesting guy, though. Chris Langan is living proof that knowledge is not wisdom. A savant who cannot use his eyes to see the obvious is tragic, actually.

Here's what I mean. What's the argument from people like him? We have to breed deficiencies out of mankind because diseased or retarded or whatever people are inferior to the rest of us and degrade mankind.

Let's leave aside the sheer evil this is for an individualist morality and look at something staring everybody in the face from the mainstream press and bestseller book lists.

In Langan's savant world, he would deny existence and life to Stephen Hawking because Hawking is obviously an inferior human who does nothing productive for mankind.

StephenHawking.jpg

It's kind of, well duh...

Stephen Hawking page at Amazon

You don't need to be a savant to see the problem with that logic.

Michael

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I don't know if this proves anything. Maybe it's just interesting.

chris-langan-iq-comparison.jpg

Chris Langan:

People who wanted to have children would apply to make sure they have no diseases. Either we have to do it through genetic engineering, or we have to let only the fit breed. We like to think that it's our right to breed as incontinently as we want to and have as many kids with whoever we want to. Future generations will be saddled with the results of what we do...or don't do. Freedom is not necessarily a right. It is a privilege that you have to earn. A lot of people abuse their freedom and that is something that people have to be trained not to do.

Is Chris Langan's idea of eugenics consistent with Objectivism? His idea seems to be education rather than force of law. But maybe not, because he says "or we have to let only the fit breed". Also he wants to plant birth control in all children at age 10.

A freedom can be a right (something we can do without permission) or it can be a privilege (something we need permission to do). He says making kids should be a privilege. Is this just education or does someone grant this privilege and play God with the birth control implants?

Well, I'd be perfectly willing to do it myself. Just put me in charge.

What he means by this exactly, your guess is probably as good as mine.

Imagine a world with everybody being a super athlete and an all round genius and nobody with any diseases.

I had some reluctance to post this video because most of it is not relevant to the topic. But someone will accuse me of not sourcing the quotes. The relevant part is from 1:20 to 2:40.

I haven't had a chance to watch the video, but let me just comment on what has been written.

For someone who is supposedly really smart, Langan seems completely clueless about concepts such as "freedom", "right", "privilege", and "earn." Let's start with the concept, "earn". Something is earned if it is obtained from another person through a voluntary and mutually agreed upon transaction for mutual benefit. For example, a man earns a paycheck if he voluntarily agrees to work for another person who voluntarily agrees to pay him for his work. Once the work has been completed, the man has earned his pay and the employer owes it to him to pay him.

By saying, "freedom is a privilege that has to be earned", Langman is implying that freedom is something that a person obtains by a voluntary and mutually agreed transaction. But, the person being subjected to the gauntlet of earning his freedom to reproduce is not a voluntary party to the transaction.

Langman also misuses the word "privilege". A privilege is not something that is earned. Something that is earned is a right. Once the hypothetical man in the example above has earned a paycheck, he has a right to be paid. Being paid is not a privilege. A privilege is something bestowed upon a person without requiring any action on that person's part. A privilege can also be revoked, which provides some insight into Langman's thinking.

The words "freedom" and "right" are similarly misused.

Langman's ideas clearly are not consistent with Objectivism.

Objectivism views freedom as a right, not a privilege, and that includes the right to reproduce. In broad terms, a person has a right to do anything that doesn't involve coercing someone else to do something against his will or coercively preventing him from doing something he wishes to do. Since, the mutual decision by myself and my wife to have a child doesn't require Mr. Langman to do anything or prevent him from doing anything, he doesn't have any business telling us what we can or cannot do in that regard.

Darrell

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Chris Langan on a radio show.

Published on Jul 20, 2014

Recorded radio talkshow by BBS Radio with Christopher Michael Langan, aired: July 15, 2014.
READING MATERIAL FROM LANGAN DOWN BELOW:


"A NEW KIND OF REALITY THEORY" :
http://www.docdroid.net/f02b/christop...

"CHEATING THE MILLENNIUM" :
http://www.docdroid.net/f02c/christop...

"SELF-REFERENCE AND COMPUTATIONAL COMPLEXITY" :
http://www.docdroid.net/f02d/christop...

INTERVIEW BY SUPERSCHOLAR.ORG :
http://www.docdroid.net/f020/c-m-lang...

"INTRODUCTION TO THE CTMU" :
http://www.docdroid.net/f021/c-m-lang...



"ON THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PEOPLE, BIRDS, AND BEES" :
http://www.docdroid.net/f022/c-m-lang...

"PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS" :
http://www.docdroid.net/f023/c-m-lang...

"THE RESOLUTION OF NEWCOMB'S PARADOX" :
http://www.docdroid.net/f024/c-m-lang...

"THE THEORY OF THEORIES" :
http://www.docdroid.net/f025/c-m-lang...

"ZEN AND THE ART OF THE DEAL" :
http://www.docdroid.net/f027/c-m-lang...



"AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO REALITY" :
http://www.docdroid.net/f01x/c-m-lang...

"BRAINS AS MODELS OF INTELLIGENCE" :
http://www.docdroid.net/f01y/c-m-lang...

"FLASH FROM DEEP SPACE" :
http://www.docdroid.net/f01z/c-m-lang...

"A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME" :
http://www.docdroid.net/f01w/c-m-lang...

"A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOJO EINSTEIN, STREET CLOWN" :
http://www.docdroid.net/f01v/c-m-lang...

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Langan is a fraud. He claims to have a formal theory that can determine consistency. Goedel showed that any system powerful enough to do arithmetic cannot determine its own consistency. Or to put it another was any system that can prove its own consistence is inconsistent.

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  • 3 years later...
On 5/28/2018 at 5:35 AM, jts said:

I dont know how he can write this with a straight face: "Since there are plausible scenarios in which the survival of the human race would depend on the self-sacrifice of one individual... this amounts to the assertion that letting the human race expire in order to ensure one's survival is virtuous..."

I'd like to hear just one "plausible scenario". These amoralists consider life is just one emergency after another, with individual conflict against the "collective"** at every turn.

Ah, one scenario. You are out there in your spacecraft with a nuke device you have to launch at the immense meteorite zoning in on Earth. But. Mishap. Rockets don't fire. Can't launch the nuke. What does the rational egoist pilot decide without hesitation? Duh.

** I have to meet this "collective" one day. Where is it? What is she?

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50 minutes ago, anthony said:

I dont know how he can write this with a straight face: "Since there are plausible scenarios in which the survival of the human race would depend on the self-sacrifice of one individual... this amounts to the assertion that letting the human race expire in order to ensure one's survival is virtuous..."

I'd like to hear just one "plausible scenario". These amoralists consider life is just one emergency after another, with individual conflict against the "collective"** at every turn.

Ah, one scenario. You are out there in your spacecraft with a nuke device you have to launch at the immense meteorite zoning in on Earth. But. Mishap. Rockets don't fire. Can't launch the nuke. What does the rational egoist pilot decide without hesitation? Duh.

** I have to meet this "collective" one day. Where is it? What is she?

What if an opinion is shared by a billion inhabitants of earth? Does that grant that particular thought, scientifically proven veracity?  In a sense the concept of “the collective” could be defined by the number of thumbs ups you get on a net account, a media show, beneficial personal and national alliances, or at the political polls. “The collective” is constantly changing. Politicians try to stay in front of or influence “the collective.” If you get one person with too much psycho-epistemological influence, it is always a factor of reality, but the “ether or the stuff which makes up the collective” is always shifting. Taylor Swift, or a movie franchise, or a television show, may be “in” today but not popular tomorrow.

As long as the “individual’s influence” over “the collective” is voluntary, I see no lasting harm in it. Rock and Roll was going to be the downfall of kids, but those kids grew up to be grandparents who are still trying to bring universal freedom to the world. The Soviet Union, Attila the Hun, and Nazi Germany were not voluntary and millions of people were murdered.  

Peter    

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1 hour ago, anthony said:


Ah, one scenario. You are out there in your spacecraft with a nuke device you have to launch at the immense meteorite zoning in on Earth. But. Mishap. Rockets don't fire. Can't launch the nuke. What does the rational egoist pilot decide without hesitation? Duh.

Immense meteorite headed for Earth, about to destroy all humanity. Rockets don't fire. Only one way left, ram the spacecraft into the meteorite. 2 options.

Option 1:  Perform an act of selfishness (or whatever) by saving self and letting all of humanity die.  This seems to be consistent with Ayn Rand's virtue of selfishness and perhaps would be a heroic act. Or perhaps this would be an exception to the principle that selfishness is a virtue.

Option 2:  Perform an act of altruism (or whatever) by giving one's life to save humanity.  Under Objectivism perhaps this would be an unspeakable evil. Or perhaps an exception.

Maybe we can come up with some sophistry (or whatever) to show that option 1 is altruism and option 2 is selfishness.

 

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Agreed. Dig into Rand a bit more and you will come to the realization that brave acts may not be altruism, but profoundly rational acts. What is important to you?

Somebody going by in a motorhome just had a backfire in front of my house but they kept moving on. Ever see a sleeping cat wake up and yell meow, meow?  

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1 hour ago, Peter said:

Dig into Rand a bit more and you will come to the realization that brave acts may not be altruism, but profoundly rational acts. What is important to you?

The right to work, a chance to succeed and thrive, European citizenship?

-- whatever rational personal philosophy formed the backbone of this man's character, his action appears more instinctively-human than derived from speed-of-thought cognition; impulse to act baked-in early at least, whether by instruction or not. But appearances of instinctive anything may deceive.  Barbara Branden has already schooled me ...

 

Edited by william.scherk
Added jabber, link to Barbara Branden schooling me; reordered rational goals of 'altruistic' acts ...
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William, Altruism is not manifested in any action, it is in the moral demand upon you of a lifetime of altruist actions.

Sometimes you may find yourself in a position where you can do something for another being (for no reward), so you do it.

Check Langan against Rand. He claims:  "But this [independent stand] does not require that we dispense forever with empathy and compassion, even when the author acidly assures us that such sentiments are contemptible and counterproductive".

What's contemptible is his deliberate misrepresentation. Rand assures no such thing. There is a passage where she remarked on helping a stranger in trouble, and asks (and answers) what emotion one feels seeing them go on their independent way again?

"Pleasure!"

Altruists see people in trouble as the norm, in order to goad one into selfless service. Rational egoists say suffering is and should be an aberrancy, it's not man's rightful state.

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3 hours ago, jts said:

Immense meteorite headed for Earth, about to destroy all humanity. Rockets don't fire. Only one way left, ram the spacecraft into the meteorite. 2 options.

Option 1:  Perform an act of selfishness (or whatever) by saving self and letting all of humanity die.  This seems to be consistent with Ayn Rand's virtue of selfishness and perhaps would be a heroic act. Or perhaps this would be an exception to the principle that selfishness is a virtue.

Option 2:  Perform an act of altruism (or whatever) by giving one's life to save humanity.  Under Objectivism perhaps this would be an unspeakable evil. Or perhaps an exception.

Maybe we can come up with some sophistry (or whatever) to show that option 1 is altruism and option 2 is selfishness.

 

Hmm, "sophistry" - jts? Can you entertain the image of life without any value, whatsoever? i.e. the lives and creations of everyone and everything presently existing, and their potential in your future?

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For you the pilot, the reality is all lose-lose. End of your life  - or choose to continue a bare, solipsistic existence without values, a self-sacrifice. In recognizing that fact, your life must be reduced to minimal/zero value compared to human life surviving on Earth and what has to be your last rationally selfish chosen action to ram the meteor: value won - not a self- sacrifice. So much for mental emergency "scenarios" and sophistry. ;)

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