Is Ron Paul as dangerous as Bidinotto claims?

[Wolf DeVoon]

... if your mind is ever wrong, then make damn sure you figure out why and try to fix it. Unreliability, especially the kind of making a positive claim that you are certain of that turns out to be bogus, is unacceptable.

I came to rely on documents, esp. videos. Several times I hired someone to follow me around with a video camera, starting in 1975, again in 78, 84, 88, and 1990. Highly instructive stuff. High bandwidth evidence of my personhood that allowed me to unlearn a bunch of embarrassing behavior. Nowadays I rely on the evidence of published writng.

Maybe that's how we should judge Ron Paul (and everyone else), on the basis of what he says and does, personally said and did in the past. I'm trying to stay on topic.

[sjw]

Michael, there can be no study of human behavior that contradicts my inalienable individual rights, there's no method for conducting such a study. I mean it's tantamount to saying you've studied 1000 other human beings, so this is why you're going to put a gun to my head. There are no polite words to respond with. I mean I regard your "studies" with the same level of respect I'd grant to the allegedly "science" communism was based on. In fact, I think what you are arguing for is a revival of that, whether you know it or not. It's back to the "Communism (or any other form of tribalism) is based on science; Individual rights are based on faith." I reject that.

Shayne

[sjw]

High bandwidth evidence of my personhood that allowed me to unlearn a bunch of embarrassing behavior. Nowadays I rely on the evidence of published writng.

I won't ask for your personal history but I am curious about how someone could do something, say rob a bank, and then later only be able to recognize that he did it with a high-bandwidth video. If I saw that I'd be certain that it was a lookalike or a fake video. I know I have never robbed a bank and there will never be any convincing of me otherwise, no matter how much "hard" evidence I see.

Shayne

[Wolf DeVoon]

High bandwidth evidence of my personhood that allowed me to unlearn a bunch of embarrassing behavior. Nowadays I rely on the evidence of published writng.

I won't ask for your personal history but I am curious about how someone could do something, say rob a bank, and then later only be able to recognize that he did it with a high-bandwidth video.

Must have been an infelicity of expression. I hired people to video a 'slice of life' to see how I comported myself. Great feedback. I learned I was vain and abusive (in 75), foolish (78), surly (84), defeatist (88), and impassive (90). Video can be a life mirror, if you hire someone to roll a couple hours of candid camera -- unstaged and unrehearsed. Try it. You'll hate it.

W.

Edited January 14, 2008 by Wolf DeVoon

[sjw]

Must have been an infelicity of expression

You did say something about not knowing whether you killed a man, or so I thought...

I hired people to video a 'slice of life' to see how I comported myself. Great feedback. I learned I was vain and abusive (in 75), foolish (78), surly (84), defeatist (88), and impassive (90). Video can be a life mirror, if you hire someone to roll a couple hours of candid camera -- unstaged and unrehearsed. Try it. You'll hate it.

Not knowing how to evaluate your character or finding it difficult to do isn't lying...

Shayne

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Shayne,

You lost me. Where do individual rights fit in with studying human behavior to see how people tick?

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I won't ask for your personal history but I am curious about how someone could do something, say rob a bank, and then later only be able to recognize that he did it with a high-bandwidth video. If I saw that I'd be certain that it was a lookalike or a fake video. I know I have never robbed a bank and there will never be any convincing of me otherwise, no matter how much "hard" evidence I see.

Shayne,

This is just a nitpick, but such a scenario is within the realm of possibility. Read up on scopolamine. In South America and Central America, our own dear secret service has used this with devastating effect on political stooges, filmed the results of what they had them do, and thus kept them from getting too ambitious.

Michael

[sjw]

Shayne,

You lost me. Where do individual rights fit in with studying human behavior to see how people tick?

Michael

I thought the whole reason we were having this side thread was because you said the allegedly tribalist element in human nature dictated what should go into the law, and that's why we were having the discussion about human nature?

Shayne

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Shayne,

You skipped a step. I said we should see how this impacts ethics. If ethics are to be derived from human nature, it is a mistake to ignore an observable and provable part of human nature. It is also a mistake to derive ethics from a standard other than human nature. That's what religious commandments do.

What to do about law comes much, much later. (Although, ideally, law should sit on ethics.)

I am making a serious inquiry without prejudged conclusions. I have concluded only one thing: human nature is incompletely defined in Objectivism. I have seen too much evidence to deny that or ignore it. So this needs fleshing out.

I don't know how to do it all any other way.

Michael

[sjw]

Michael, I don't know of anything that Objectivist ethics ignores. It certainly doesn't ignore the fact that human nature includes the capacity of lying to yourself. That people often exercise it does not imply that all of us do.

Shayne

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Shayne,

A good example of an incomplete part is the whole "tabula rasa" idea. This is a gross oversimplification. I have already pointed to Steve Shmurak's work. In it he discusses Silvan Tomkins, who has documented a vast number of hours observing infants (including filming them) and the conclusion is that infants have a number of value judgments built in irrespective of experience.

That's just one.

Michael

[sjw]

Michael, I generally agree with Shmurak and think it's interesting and valuable work, but I think that expands on and doesn't contradict Objectivism. I don't regard "tabula rasa" as oversimplified, nor do I think Shmurak has done anything that would influence ethics one iota, so I don't think it's an example that shows Objectivist ethics is incomplete.

Shayne

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Shayne,

We can discuss all this later. I sense we are going to get to an impasse. I have some ideas to bat around in exploratory mode and I don't want to do that against an impasse. So let's put it on hold for a while and let it cook a bit. It will still be there when we get back to it.

After all, neither of us is going to save the world in the short to medium term.

Michael

[sjw]

Hey, something we can agree on!