Dennis Hackethal’s Blog
My blog about philosophy, coding, and anything else that interests me.
Tweets
An archive of my tweets and retweets through . They may be formatted slightly differently than on Twitter. API access has since gotten prohibitively expensive – I don't know whether or when I'll be able to update this archive.
But in case I will, you can subscribe via RSS – without a Twitter account. Rationale
“In theory we should have more of a say in how the govt functions and that would be our route to have a say in how private companies function” is code for coercing companies into doing things they do not want.
Yeah it’s voluntary. Also hospital has a PR incentive not to do something like that or lose customers. And even if it didn’t, “sometimes bad things happen” and “bad actors exist” is no excuse for institutionalized theft.
There's no reason to think a free society couldn't solve those problems. Also there’s currently little in place to prevent governments from exploiting people.
BTW voluntary trades cannot be exploitative, unless one of the parties commits fraud.
It would reduce its activities to essential services, slowly hand over more and more of that to private corporations, first through collaboration, then through handoffs, and steadily reduce taxes until they're 0 and the government has been fully replaced by voluntary alternatives
@IdkMike @ValaAfshar @AndrewYang
Again, poverty cannot be regulated away. I understand the urgency, and poverty sucks, but politics won't help. Let the free market continue to lift people out of poverty and in a few decades we may see the end of poverty. Keep interfering and that will only slow things down.
@IdkMike @ValaAfshar @AndrewYang
Not really, no. Inflation artificially reduces the value of everyone's money. It's just a sneakier way to steal.
That's the problem: government has two primary ways of procuring money. Theft through taxation or theft through inflation by printing money.
Na, wenn er so "bedeutend" ist, rechtfertigt das sicherlich den Entzug der Freiheit!
Made my day. I love changing people's minds. twitter.com/vharrelle71/st…
You're welcome. On the topic of science and evidence, this book's chapter 1 may interest you: amazon.com/Beginning-Infi…
And Karl Popper's books, particularly "Conjectures and Refutations" and "Objective Knowledge."
@IdkMike @ValaAfshar @AndrewYang
Yes, taxes, exactly. Meaning the "contribution" would not be voluntary. Meaning you would forcefully burden one part of the population to finance another. That's immoral.
As I said in another tweet, the end of poverty will come, if we don't ruin it through regulations.
@DeliberateZero @IdkMike @ValaAfshar @AndrewYang @ChipkinLogan
In time, poverty will be a thing of the past. But it takes time. One can't regulate poverty away in a snap.
Worst thing that can happen is for politicians to come in and mess it all up through regulation. Best thing that can happen is for politicians to just stay out of it.
@DeliberateZero @IdkMike @ValaAfshar @AndrewYang @ChipkinLogan
Also, to @IdkMike's point, all private citizens of the world are already working on abolishing poverty through trade. There have never been fewer poor people in the world than today, thanks to capitalism.
@DeliberateZero @IdkMike @ValaAfshar @AndrewYang
Yeah, exactly. As @ChipkinLogan has said, why doesn't the government just declare "all problems are hereby solved"?
@IdkMike @ValaAfshar @AndrewYang
Poverty is a soluble problem, yes. But it can't be regulated away.
The percentage from automation, how would that reach poor people? How would it be transferred from those owning the devices performing the automation, and who would be in charge of the transfer?
@IdkMike @ValaAfshar @AndrewYang
And where would the government get that money from?
@IdkMike @ValaAfshar @AndrewYang
Ok how does that information support your claim that we could abolish poverty?
“When a theory has this property, it fails Popper’s test for being scientific, applying his criterion of demarcation. Isn’t that something that a magazine that calls itself scientific should take seriously?”
“Whatever happens, advocates can always rescue their theory in support of lockdowns, and nobody learns anything.”
@IdkMike @ValaAfshar @AndrewYang
How is it defined by the government?
Another issue (I think) is that empiricism kicks the can down the road. For, if knowledge can be derived from the senses, where did the knowledge in that alleged process of derivation come from?
Poverty is natural. Humanity was born into the utmost poverty of nature. It’s the default state of man. It isn’t something one can just abolish. One has to create wealth.
Rising cases don’t justify the castration of freedom. Instead, they should be used to persuade people to manage their health more wisely.
Agreed, healthcare doesn’t strike me as a Randian governmental responsibility.
“[...] visits to the homes of family and friends will no longer be allowed, and only one close contact will be allowed outside the household.”
Has there ever been this kind of tyranny in the free world? How long will it take for people to rise up against it? twitter.com/FridaGhitis/st…
@AndreaW09647358 @markusabsent @SwipeWright
I added a sun to it! https://t.co/3N6T9ECi3N
I agree that we shouldn't blindly ignore them though!
Not so—evo psych is largely false. Premonitions may well result from knowledge we develop ourselves during our lifetime.
New guest post by @ChipkinLogan about the three deepest theories of reality blog.dennishackethal.com/2020/10/27/thr…
Inwiefern das mit Ihrer zweiten Frage zusammenhängt, weiß ich nicht.
Kommt drauf an, was Sie mit „KI“ meinen. Wenn Sie eine vollwertige Simulation des menschlichen Verstands meinen, dann per definitionem „ja“, da dieser ja alles kann, was der Mensch auch kann.
@Jorgensen4POTUS
BLM is a Marxist organization. You’re not a libertarian.
On the love triangle between open borders, social-justice warriors, and murderous Islamism. twitter.com/Ayaan/status/1…
Yeah. Note her lamenting when kids "get what they want." :(
New blog post. Also, this is the new home of my blog now.
To those arguing in favor of lockdowns based on outcomes alone, will this change your mind?
And if not, what will?
“When you ask them to stay home, in many cases you’re asking them to starve.”
Translates to “those who seek freedom are selfish.” You’re making totalitarians proud.
No he didn't. He specified it's the air he considers filthy.
Evidence-based epistemology wouldn’t help with that (it’s false). Popperian epistemology would.
@DrunkenMighty @DavidDeutschOxf
Depends on my mood. If I'm interested in the machinery and stored goods I might find the warehouse more interesting.
Plus, I think people can create much more enjoyable environments than forests (and enjoyable for much longer). Homes, for example.
There is also an underlying assumption that it's a politician's job to ensure the health of people, regulate (directly or indirectly) hospital usage, etc. (It isn't.)
In some countries, people are paying (through taxes) for the enforcement of their own house arrest. It's nuts.
I agree that solutions can lead to other, better problems, and then that's progress—the lockdown doesn't seem to fall into that category.
Yes, there's definitely that. And it's possible that I'm fudging "solution" and "common preference" as defined by the TCS glossary.
That said, a lockdown might solve a politician's problem but still ruin other people's lives. So, morally problematic.
RT @ClimateWarrior7:
While Stalin went off the rails a bit, Lenin was actually responsible for no more than 3 million deaths at the most, a…
@DrunkenMighty @DavidDeutschOxf
Why should complexity afford moral significance/protection?
RT @ClimateWarrior7:
I remember when human rights were about people not being tortured or arbitrarily detained.
Fortunately that's all bee…
I’m curious, was there a penalty for not wearing masks at the time?
My criticism is that its important to know if lockdowns are solving any of the problems they’re meant to solve. If so, how? If not, why not?
For this, see my other tweets to you about coercion. Pretty much by definition, coercion does not solve problems.
And freedom granted restrictively or conditionally is not freedom at all (those aren’t my words but they’re poorly enough remembered that the source may not want to be attributed).
I agree with you modification and with your first and last points that you mentioned above.
If you agree that freedom is necessary to solve problems (which you said you did), that means freedom cannot be reduced arbitrarily to solve problems.
Ok. And yeah to be very clear, I don't want to put words in David's mouth, this is my application of what he said to a different (but imo related) topic.
My answer is to critique them in terms of how well they solve the problems they purport to solve
That’s thinking exclusively in terms of outcomes again, although you agreed that “the outcome isnt all that matters, how we get there matters as well.”
...in psychological suffering and countless more problems. Coercion steamrolls over people. A solution to a problem means everyone involved prefers the solution. It’s not a solution unless that happens.
the fact that a policy is coercive does not mean that it isnt solving the problem that it is aimed at solving
Coercion, by definition, doesn’t solve a problem, because it means there are parties affected by the coercion that do not want to be subjected to it, which results...
its common for policies to be put in place to solve certain problems that are at least somewhat coercive…
That coercion is common doesn’t mean it’s good.
Ok but if you think it's easy to vary it's best not to agree with it or think it's true. I don't think easy-to-vary explanations could possibly be true.
@MartvMegen @HeuristicAndy
Survival rates don't change my argument, but should change that of lockdown advocates. I'll make it easier: let's say the survival rate was only 1%. That would make it easier to persuade people of the necessity to stay home. I know I would. So, still no place for coercion.
@ForwardIsGood @liberty_deity @ibuildfreedom
There's no vote to end taxation. And those who don't vote aren't exempt from taxation.
The people who are working on a vaccine and other ideas are indeed working toward a solution. But politicians who are coercing us are not working on solutions because they're coercive.
takingchildrenseriously.com/node/50#Coerci… vs takingchildrenseriously.com/node/50#Common…
Bringing coercion back into the equation: "some precautions, with variable degree, are being undertaken" is a gross understatement of the amount of coercion that's being applied.
I have given the example before of forcing one's child to give up smoking. Even assuming the child will be healthier for it, it is unacceptable to coerce him. Persuasion is preferable. If people were persuaded to stay home instead of forced I wouldn't have an issue with it.
I haven't focused on coercion much because @falibilista requested to put that aside (twitter.com/falibilista/st…). But it's a huge part of the problem. Even if coercion led to a better outcome, I'd still oppose it because it is coercive.
That's a pretty good start, yeah. I'd add that lockdown effects on knowledge creation are also unpredictably bad.
What's missing is that it's not only about the outcome, but also about how one is getting there—whether it is coercive or not.
...I don't know yet if you agree with my modification of Deutsch's tweet.
...then I don't think keeping "soft" lockdown policies is an option. Even if it's true that my criticism is too easy to vary, there's no other way out. You stated that you agreed with the first and last point from my previous tweet...
In any case, if you agree that any amount of lockdown policy reduces freedom, and you agree with my modification of Deutsch's point (twitter.com/dchackethal/st…), and you agree that freedom is required to solve problems (including vaccine development)...
I then clarified more here twitter.com/dchackethal/st… and twitter.com/dchackethal/st….
I'll respond to that here: twitter.com/DorfGinger/sta…
For clarity, you asked for specificity here (twitter.com/DorfGinger/sta…)—twitter.com/dchackethal/st… and twitter.com/dchackethal/st… were my attempts to be more specific, so I believe I have done what you've asked.
Maybe that's what's going on here. To those who despise coercion, they never, ever want to use it. It's just not an option for them. To those who think that some coercion can sometimes be appropriate, that seems like overkill. Could that be the core of our disagreement?
You raise an interesting problem I have wondered about in the past, which is that sometimes an explanation can seem universally applicable to some—it has great reach to them—and to those who disagree with the explanation it can seem easy to vary externally because of that reach
@HeuristicAndy
You’re being really sneaky with this shitty argument of yours.
That’s unnecessarily hostile and derails the conversation. It’s also not the strongest move. I suggest you calm down, deescalate a bit and maybe we can continue the conversation later.
@HeuristicAndy
Bars are closed = Science is dead.
I also never said that.
@HeuristicAndy
Lockdowns don’t solve the problem. Doing nothing doesn’t solve the problem either. So we need to come up with something else.
@HeuristicAndy
People are also dying because of the shutdown. Livelihoods are being destroyed. For a virus whose survival rate is like 99%. I think that’s unacceptable. Do you not care about those people?
@HeuristicAndy
People dying = “Ok so?”
That’s a misrepresentation. By “Ok so?” I meant that I didn’t understand what you were getting at. You could have just clarified. Instead you chose the least charitable interpretation possible.
@HeuristicAndy
I am not asking for a foundation and you know it.
I don’t know that. And this wasn’t an insult, btw, but you seem to have interpreted it as one.
Any amount of restriction of any lockdown policy reduces freedom. And those stricter lockdowns you prefer would reduce freedom more (because they're stricter).
Is that the most charitable summary of my criticism that you can come up with?
Replace "holding an idea immutable" with "restricting the services industry."
Do you see how those statements conflict?
Not just any libertarian's, it turns out, but from the one and only @ChipkinLogan.
I did, but can you answer "yes" or "no" to this one?
Do I understand correctly that you're saying both that you prefer more restrictive lockdowns and you that agree that freedom and wealth are required to solve problems (which includes developing a vaccine)?
@HeuristicAndy @DorfGinger @falibilista
It is one example of millions of chains of dependencies in the economy that can lead (among other things) to serendipitous encounters that spark creativity.
This is in conflict with the Deutschian notion that wealth and freedom are required to solve problems. Do you have a refutation of that notion?
Also, do you see the moral problem with (both more and less restrictive) lockdowns?
@HeuristicAndy
A person having to work all day is artificial & arbitrary.
Not really. Why would it be?
A family losing their breadwinner to covid is arbitrary too.
Ok so?
@HeuristicAndy
You didn't ask for decisive evidence. Or insurmountable evidence. You asked for evidence. I gave you some.
"Baseless" isn't Popperian criticism, btw. Criticize the claim by showing that it can't be true, not by claiming that it has no base.