tjohnson

Yes, greed has been around for a long time. We have these periodic breakdowns because it takes a while for the house of cards to be built but when it actually falls down is anyone's guess.

Very good advice! I do this with Rands use of 'morality' which I take to mean 'rationality' because she uses it in a non-standard way; I take this to mean that if you don't use your head (rationality) you will die when left to you own devices but she calls this 'morality'.

This seems to be very similar to the issue with contextual knowledge.

I can't resist nitpicking: But isn't "regurgitat[ing] words" behavior too? Yeah, but parrots can do that.

Hey Tony, I agree It's easy to fall into the "intellectualism" and lose sight of the fact that the purpose of education is to alter behaviour, not be able to regurgitate words.

I think the biggest issue in all this is getting people to recognize authority, whether it's private or public. This is part and parcel of "law and order". Even in public run systems if enough people disobey laws then they can't be enforced because it would use up too many resources. This whole thing hinges on people being "reasonable" (sane) and I think this is the ultimate goal of mankind. The question is can you get people to become reasonable by immersing them in a totally free system or do they have to be reasonable first before it will work?

I don't see any special problem with these, but I'm not sure what you're getting at. Did you have a specific example in mind? Well, suppose I come home and find my wife murdered, do I look in the yellow pages to hire a detective to investigate? If he finds a suspect do we hire a police agency to apprehend him? Then what? An arbitrator to decide if he's guilty? I'm confused.

The idea of having a choice of which "justice provider" to use is novel to me but it sort of sounds like binding arbitration? But would this work for capital crimes like murder, etc.? Maybe I'm not getting it.

Maybe I should mention that part of general semantics involves training oneself in proper (according to the theory) semantic reactions. This is an ongoing affair that one does everyday of their life - you can't just "be" sane, it's a constant struggle, if you will. I have been doing this for around 35 years and I have found it invaluable to my life. So from my point of view, GS makes sense on a theoretical level and a practical level and that is enough for me. Perhaps others who have a more academic interest might want to explore the history of Korzybski's ideas but I have no interest in doing so.

Yes, it is merely my speculation. I find it odd that I have to keep mentioning that with you. It seems obvious to me that when someone says "I think" or "I feel" bla bla bla then that is speculation. You have speculated above as well and I find your speculation quite interesting. So you think that our space exploration to this point has been overly expensive and you attribute this to government involvement? Perhaps you're right but how would private business fund this? What kind of revenues could they expect as a return on their investment and what timeframe could they expect this return? Just asking.

Life is full of surprises But why do I have the feeling you might be less cavaliar were we talking about a thinking or set of ideas you disagreed with? LOL, I don't know, why do you? Why don't you just say what's on your mind instead of beating around the bush? Korzybski created the first (and only AFAIK) theory of sanity. No matter what his intellectual influences were none of them were in the sanity theory business.

I feel that any species capable of interstellar travel would likely be very peaceful in nature because I don't think this can be achieved without the entire population of the planet being under one political umbrella which would put the future of the race above all else. In other words we would not be wasting time and energy fighting amongst ourselves.

Life is full of surprises

How the hell can you discover morality?? I can understand how you discover gold, but not morality.

Rich, I hope you had her permission to post her picture on the internet.

Yeah, hate them. Possibly the stupidest idea surgeons ever came up with. Made them lots of money though.

Every tax, regardless of its purpose, constitutes a confiscation of a value under threat of force. So no tax can ever be justified. If a society cannot figure out how to defend itself from force without resorting to it itself, then it cannot have a moral government. But it can have a 99% moral government. You and I should live so long. 99% moral, I'd call moral. It would make no more sense to call a 99% evil government a moral government because of that lack of ideological purity than to call a 99% moral government immoral because of that lack of purity. Like Ayn Rand the anarchists want perfection which makes as much sense as the scientist-engineer wanting the achievement of absolute zero. Take the world as it is and work from there, not as it "should be" and despair! For if you don't you'll live in a world of these intellectualizations and mere chit chat! This is why after all these years it's the conservatives who have the moral gravitas and not the Objectivists or libertarians. The former want the perfection of man and the latter want the perfection of a system. Well, hell, you'll never get there; there is no "should be;" there is only "is." The "city on a hill" isn't on a hill; it's within us. We put it on a hill so it can be strived for. "God" isn't an old man with a beard in the sky; "God" is within us. We put him in the sky so we can strive for the sky not tear ourselves apart! --Brant please, get real!; the perfection of man is the (bloody) totalitarian vision, ultimately--especially for the communists and the Nazis

A government without the power to tax. Is this possible? There would have to be some sort of infrastructure like offices, salaries, computers etc. even to administer the referendums about voluntary contributions. This basic cost would have to be in the form of a small base tax would it not?

Hmm... seems to me that 'voluntary taxation' is a contradiction in terms. If the concept is that individuals are to be free to contribute to a fund for some purpose then possibly some other formulation would be better? From Wiki it says; But there would have to be a minimum tax to start with - at least enough so "the state" could send out forms in the first place?

Really, you don't see any difference between science and the history of science? Is it necessary to follow the evolution of science in order to understand current science? While I agree it may enhance your understanding it's by no mean necessary to appreciate it. Such a difference is not as important, I feel, as you believe. What I mean is that if you want to evaluate any science (and I'm using this term in a wide sense here), you'll probably need to know how those particular conclusions -- the current state of theory and knowledge -- was arrived at -- in other words, something of the history of the science. You might also find that current views are mistaken and might even be the result of losing or missing some aspects of previously held views. I think this has happened in economics -- at least, in certain parts of it in my understanding. For instance, business cycle theory and capital theory seems to have gone down the wrong path for decades now. (And if you think I'm only saying this because I don't know much about economics and am partisan, think of how all the mainstream economists, both in academia and outside of it, to a man didn't even see the 2008 meltdown coming. Even their policy recommnedations when they did admit the crisis was real seems to have had more the whiff of "do something, anything" than of science.) The problem is Korzybski more or less started a science - a science of man, which he called general semantics. He chose that name in the same tradition of general vs. special relativity. There were some earlier fields like semantics, semiotics and semiology but general semantics is more widely applicable, "The discipline of Semantics is distinct from Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics, which is a system for looking at the semantic reactions of the whole human organism in its environment to some event, symbolic or otherwise."

If I understand Mike correctly I believe he is saying that an objectivist government is a more desirable goal than no government?

Hi Mstar, sorry to hear about your troubles. I know a little about therapy and I will tell you this much. When you are a child you evaluate things differently that you do as an adult, in particular, you take things much more personally. So if you were beaten as a child you are likely to think there is something wrong with you whereas in reality there is something wrong with the parent. As you grow up and mature these feelings can become buried and interfere with your ability to adjust to this world and be happy so the idea of therapy is to talk about what happened but re-evaluate it as an adult. I would say ultimately it would be very nice if you could reconcile this with your father but I would not hold my breath. It's more important for you to make sure you have healed before you try to heal your father. You can try but if you feel the same old irrational emotions returning then you will know it is too much, too early and you should delay until you are stronger.

LOL. I didn't realize I lived in an inferior, socialist country - what a joke. People do not live "in" countries. They live on geological land formations and go about the business of their lives within the context of a legal jurisdiction exerted by cretins who operate the Machiavellian machinery of a State. If that State is of the form of a national empire, then it is called a country. If the State is of the form of a federal republic, then it is proper to refer to it as a federation or a confederation if the member States have equivalent legal power to that of the federation government. The later case applies to the United States of America, however, the cretins at the helm have for a long time worked hard to advance the fiction that the USA is configured in the former manner. None of this is to say that I do not like you or respect your opinions. I wish you and yours long life and prosperity. Well thanks Bob. BTW, there is a power struggle between the provinces and Federal government here in Canada too. Always was and alway will be I suspect.

Really, you don't see any difference between science and the history of science? Is it necessary to follow the evolution of science in order to understand current science? While I agree it may enhance your understanding it's by no mean necessary to appreciate it.

I would venture that Korzybski put those names in because he referred to their work often during the researching and writing of his book. In some cases he may have been negatively influenced and others positively, but influenced never the less. If he was aware of Brentano in any significant way I see no reason why he would not mention it. After all, he has some 619 titles in the bibliography, whats a few more?