The mobius strip of property rights

I love watching, or sometimes reading, someone who is in mid-debate on some topic run through what I call a mobius strip of logical reasoning.  The cognitive dissonance sets in and a drunkard blurry haze begins and on the other end is some rambling exposition on how last night went.

This happens quite often when I discuss property rights and those that try to debate me try pinning me down to some other definition they have in their head that they never explained or even try to define properly.  It's like that scene in one of the 'Transporter' movies where the main guy is covered in motor oil and the 6 guys trying to fight him can't grab a hold and fight him properly.

So typically I'll have some debate, usually political, and then say it's a violation of property rights.  Then some person on the email thread will claim that in certain, extreme situations property rights don't exist.  Now, I'll admit that I haven't defined it before hand but the main problem is my debater has a different idea and has no strict definition at all.

So I paused the debate with "let's all be clear on what I mean by property rights..." and proceeded with my definition which is:

Property Rights: "You own the effects of your actions."

Even with this thrown out there, my debate partner still refused to accept that property rights exist in certain situations or that it can be ignored at will.  Then I proceeded to explain how this debate is made possible without a computer, an internet connection, mail servers, rack space, data centers and the physical property that the data centers are housed at.  Clearly, every link in this chain involves property and an owner of the property for this debate to even exist.

Clearly this posed an initial problem.  This had to be explained away in a manner that needed to appear rational.  The position couldn't be defeated on the first strike.

The defense was that the social structure allowed property rights (their definition) to exist because it's in the interest of society.  I put "their definition" in parenthesis because it was obvious that they were thinking in terms of material objects and ownership of said objects and that is how most people frame it.

However, my opponent already accepted my definition so I just had to press further.

Even without all the physical and virtual property involved in our email thread, I told him that his statement that "Property rights do not exist", after accepting my definition, is a contradiction because he can't say the statement and then say he never said it at the same time.  He was confused.  So I explained it to him.

Property rights definition: You own the effects of your actions.

What is the action? You spoke

What did you speak? You spoke "Property rights don't exist" = "You do not own the effects of your actions."

The effect of speaking, "Property rights don't exist": You hold the position that you don't own the effects of your actions.

Based on what you said: You don't own..."the position that you don't own the effects of your actions."

What I had just displayed was his denial of ever saying anything about property rights since he cannot take ownership of what he just said.

Another way to show this is to go through the email thread and edit their portion it so that it appears there is an agreement and acceptance of your superior intellect.  Once you point out and said "....but you just said this...."  And then watch in amusement, their reaction.

They'll predictably respond as "I never said this, this and that."  They are implicitly denying ownership of something they didn't say.

Another, robust way to combat this, is to start replying to a third party by CCing them into the thread and debate how they are wrong for holding such a position.  The original debating partner will say, "Hello???  You're supposed to be arguing me...not him."  Thus affirming that he is the owner of his actions.

Now that I've explained this mobius strip of Content not following Form, we can move on to more important implications of property rights.

As defined, owning the effects of your actions is a long-winded way of defining the word: responsibility.  But you can't just say that word out in public because it's usually an empty vessel in which people pour into it their own definition.  "Owning the effects of your actions" is much more effective in keeping people inline during debate.

However, once we have this idea firmly planted in our minds, we can then extend this idea that effects go more than just speaking, eating and drinking.  It should be obvious that the effects of eating is fullness and drinking is the removal of thirst.  It should be obvious that effects are fully owned by the individual acting.  However, it goes beyond that.  If you are stranded on an island and catch a fish, it stands to logic, according to the definition, that you have property rights to the fish, because you engaged in the action of fishing.  A farmer has property rights to his crops and a laborer has property rights to his labor because they own the effects of their actions.

Now let's take a moment to reflect what we mean by "owning."  This is not to imply that it is impossible to steal someone else's property.  Clearly it is.  If it were possible to magically displace the food in one's stomach, believe me,  it would have been done but let's face it, man's nature has limits.

In the context of property rights, as it is defined, theft is simply an action that doesn't respect property rights.  What my original debating partner meant to say is respect for property rights could disappear at any time.  That, I agree with.

However, let's think about what it means to respect property rights and then the opposite.

Let's start off with the opposite.  Let's say that we start off in the world where property rights are not respected.  We cannot start off with any preconditions like a government or band of brothers or tribes or anything of the kind to protect us.  To do anything else of the sort would be cheating because we are trying to understand if respecting property rights is inherently good or inherently bad.

So if we start off with the proposition that respecting property rights is bad then what does that mean?  Well, that means that theft is tolerated and also encouraged.  The next logical question would be, "What would there be to steal?"  Well, that would be the effects of someone else's actions.  However, since everyone else knows that theft is allowed, it is not in anyone's interest to more work than it is necessary to fulfill only the most immediate desires, like eating and drinking.

Picking more berries than you can eat in one sitting is at risk of theft.  Carrying bottles of water is at risk of theft.  You get the idea.  Everyone would be literally living hand-to-mouth, moment-to-moment.  Society, as we know it, wouldn't exist.  It is every man for themselves.  There would be no savings of any kind.

Now....consider the opposite.  Imagine where property rights were respected.  Now, people could save.  However, unlike the previous scenario where thieves could not thrive, savings and now a general acceptance of property rights, theft is now possible.  The only thing that helps prevent it is to adopt a moral code to correctly evaluate the violation of property rights.  The idea of good and bad (e.g. morality) is a strong incentive for people to devote plenty of resources to uphold (Christians tithe, environmentalists gladly pay higher premiums for energy if it comes from wind or solar).  So if we evaluate theft as bad then society, now that it has come to being, can minimize it.

Although we may have to deal with the occasional theft, what we get is immeasurable in return.  With savings, individuals can now engage in exchange (e.g. bartering).  After barter, we learned indirect exchange (e.g. using money as a way to exchange goods).  People could now specialize and do what they're most efficient in doing through the division of labor.  Economies grow and wealth is generated.

However, somewhere someone had it in their head that societies need governments.  The idea is to have a governing body to protect property rights.

And exactly how are they going to provide this service?  Taxes.

Since I've never heard of a voluntary tax (i.e. a donation), it seems we've entered another mobius strip of logic.  "We'll violate property rights to protect property rights."

The way I see it, all governments fail because as societies rise, by respecting property rights, governments grow and violate property rights until all of society's savings has been exhausted and is forced to start all over again by respecting property rights.

I would say that governments is Nature's way of reminding man that he still an animal.

Determinism vs. Free Will

I've struggled with this topic most of my life.  It wasn't until much later in life and lots of self-reflection and going through some big lifestyle changes in an attempt to lose weight and affect my fitness level that I learned lot about myself.  It really gave a lot of substance to the 'All knowledge is self-knowledge' maxim.

There's a scene in 'The Matrix Reloaded' where the Merovingian is discussing philosophy with Morpheus, et. al.  He said the only real truth is Causality while Morpheus held the position that everything begins with Choice.  At the time it appeared that they took diametrically opposed perspectives but really they covered two sides of the same coin.  The reason is they're both right.  Everything does start with choice but like the Architect mentioned later in the movie, it happens at a near-unconscious level.  Everything else after that choice operates in a deterministic way.

So what are these "choices at a near-unconscious level" that I'm referring to?  We'll have to perform a thought experiment to understand what I'm talking about.

Imagine having a baby and raising it the first 2-3 years.  In the beginning, the baby has no means other than to cry to communicate with you.  But slowly, it learns language by association.  If you keep pointing to a cup and say 'Cup' enough times, it understands that the object has a name and that name is 'Cup.'  Now, there's nothing stopping you, as the caretaker, to say 'Fire' when you point to the cup and condition the child to think that word 'Fire' is the name for a cup.  The question is why does the child incorrectly associate the word 'fire' with the object cup?  I would argue that the child implicitly trusts its caretaker, you, that you know what you are doing.

Children are born to implicitly trust their parents.  Once they develop an aptitude to understand cause and effect, then they get to that stage where they ask 'Why?' to nearly everything.  But before that stage, which is pretty early on, children do not have the rational capacity to critically think and therefore must trust their parents.  They really have no choice in the matter.  Even right now, as a reader, you can exercise choice to accept or reject the content you are reading.  But that is a conscious choice.  The choice to trust their parent is what I would argue is the "unconscious choice."

I think it's anecdotally supported in that Indian children speak Indian.  Japanese children speak Japanese as well as children who grow up in Turkey are likely to be Muslim.  Language and religious beliefs anecdotally support this implicit trust that children have to their parents.

I threw in religious beliefs in there because as irrational as they may be, the stories are complex enough and employ large enough circular logic to diffuse even a curious child to the point of simply having to accept the parents' religious beliefs.

However, this provides an excellent segue to how determinism fits into all of this.  So imagine if a child grew up a Christian because that's how they were raised and therefore held the same beliefs and values as the parents.  These beliefs now act as safety barriers to their actions.  This might involve not engaging in pre-marital sex or taking drugs or not listening to certain types of music.  

Now I'm not arguing that everything is set in stone for this child for holding on to their beliefs but what I am saying is based on their beliefs, they now work with a different set of risk/reward and cost/benefit decision making trees.  Any devout determinist would also make the same argument that while the variables in determining action are too many to count, but those decision trees are more skewed to lead a person to make decisions in a certain way.

What the determinist ignores is the early childhood choices that, in many ways, couldn't be helped.  Too much of it was determined by the parents.

Not all is lost though.  It takes quite a bit of introspection to understand why you make the decisions you do and to change.  If you can't do it alone, seek professional help through a competent psychologist.  The only way to understand yourself is to be brutally honest with yourself and reflect back all that you are to yourself and accept it all - the good and the bad.  As they say in AA, the first step is getting past Denial.

There is a branch of psychology that deals with this kind of thinking.  It's called Rational-Emotive Therapy.  It focuses on 'core beliefs' and changing them.  The core beliefs is what drives our emotional responses.  Change the beliefs and the emotional responses change as a result.  This a simplified version of determinism working together with free will.  Beliefs are actually choices.  Reality, the things you experience through the senses, isn't a choice.  Two people both stuck in traffic can't choose not to be stuck in traffic but how is it that one person is getting angrier by the second while another one can remain calm?  Their experiences are quite different even though the stimuli is identical.

Most of life runs in automatic as our actions are directed by situational stimuli but there is an underlying belief structure, or better put, a set of choices that we've made to determine our responses to that stimuli.  

As Morpheus said, "Everything begins with Choice."

Boston Bombings...

I was on my way to the dentist when I got a text from my wife about the bombings.

I know someone who was running it today and I still haven't heard anything from him in the form of a FB posting.  Hope he's fine.

It's pretty obvious that such an event to be orchestrated required planning; implying malicious intent.  Now I have no problem identifying that the actions were immoral.   What I find interesting is these kind of events bring people out in droves to Facebook and Twitter to express their shock and horror.

Maybe I'm just jaded but I think we live in a hyperbolic society.  Everything's a hyperbole.  Try going a day without hearing the word 'Amazing.'   Really?  Was it really amazing?  Were you amazed?

If so many people out there have to express to the public how traumatic they're being affected, how long will it be before they post something about 'Dancing with the Stars'?  Two hours?  Four hours?  Twenty-four hours?

My point is, American society and maybe even western society has become so short on memory that we feel pain, cry and move on without a moment of reflection on the causes anymore.  Like a child.

If we ever catch the perp, who is going to report on his childhood or interview the parents?  No one ever focuses on the causes.

Unfortunately, that's how most people are.  They rarely care about the causes and just want to manage the effects.  In other words...they want to remain blissfully in the 'blue pill' state.  They don't want to understand why when you push them in a philosophical argument but when something like this happens, they want to know how such a bad thing could happen.  It's no different than explaining to a fat person they need to diet and exercise to lose weight but doesn't want to hear it.  But then when they have a heart attack, they wonder how something like that could happen.

The bottom line is bad things happen.  Until you want to roll up your sleeves and do the work to understand the causes, stop complaining how bad things are.

Lost in the sea of post-modern subjectivity bullshit

I recently had a mini-debate on youtube with someone who didn't agree with my definition of the word, knowledge.

I plainly defined it as: 'That which is true.' And basically this person disagreed and said that I proceeded to define what are known as 'facts' but not knowledge. What I find interesting is the choice of words in the little blurb. So 'facts' are known as 'that which is true.' So in an attempt to disprove my definition of the word 'knowledge', this person proceeded to use the word 'known' to express an equivalency between two sets of syllables.

This person then proceeded to express that 'truth' is something that is somehow personal (e.g. A Personal Truth). Now I won't be the first one to admit that it could be true for someone to say, "When I eat chocolate, I break out in hives" and that if I eat chocolate that I won't break out in hives. However, to call this a 'personal' truth seems like an odd thing to say since we already live in a world where we expect variance and use statistical methods to describe a population.

The thing that science provides is a methodology to discover a deeper truth than to simply say "It's true for me that after I eat chocolate I break out in hives." Maybe there is some gene or protein sequence due to geographical adaptations that predisposes certain individuals to break out in hives after they eat chocolate. If it was discovered that it was true that such a relationship existed, that relationship is then a 'universal truth', per se.

However, the idea of 'personal truth' is more embedded as an ideology in western culture due to societal tolerance of multiple religions and cultural backgrounds. It is this idea that if a Christian sees a magnificent view of Mt. Fuji and then ponders all the wonders of the universe and that God had created it, that belief is no more or less valid than if some Indian Hindu attributing the same wonders to their god(s). They are somehow both 'True' and yet 'Personal.' I'd call them 'personal falsehoods.'

This is basically sums up the bullshit I call the 'It's all relative, subjective philosophy.'

There's no such thing as 'your philosophy' or 'my philosophy.' There's just philosophy. It means 'the love of knowledge.'

Which takes us back to defining what knowledge is. If you accept the definition of 'That which is true,' then you have to create a construct in which things are allowed to be true and false. The only tools we have at our disposal is sensory perception. Unfortunately, most people cannot simply adhere to that. What most people do is implicitly accept the constructs of sensory perception and then abandon those constructs in defending their beliefs.

The reason why I know this is because people who engage in a debate cannot do so without using their sensory perception. They must first hear my arguments in order to respond. They must see my emails or postings on a server before then can write back. This is the contradiction that the "It's all relative" and "Reality is subjective" camps fail to see. They fail the consistency test. Of course, this doesn't bother them since they already believe in that everything is subjective. But then they'd have to abandon the idea that anything can be known and therefore be true. Everything would have to be both true and false.

I really have to blame Kant for this mess. He argued that all that can be known is 'phenomena' and not the 'noumena.' In other words, he said that all we can really know is the experience of things and not the things themselves. So take a desk, for example. All we will ever know about it is how it feels, how it looks, smells and how it sounds if you knock on it. But the desk, in and of itself, can never be known. This idea gave birth to the subjective experience as the only thing as true. It's unfortunate that these ideas gave birth to numerous political philosophies that killed over 100 million people by their own governments outside of warfare. How's that for protecting the general welfare?

Hello World!

I titled this as such because my career background is in IT and computer programming and often our very first program involves what is called the 'Hello World!' program. As such, this is my first blog post. So why Red Pill Life? Well, I'm a huge fan of the Matrix and the red pill represented the ones who knew the truth. The color red indicated the pain of knowing the truth while blue represented the blissful ignorance of the truth. So the focus of the blog is to cover topics of philosophy and its application in real-world ethics which covers areas like political philosophy and economics. As I've learned, 90% of philosophy is in the definitions of the words you use. So as readers and those who wish to debate, keep this in mind. As a person who comes from a technical background, it's important to realize that in order to build something, like knowledge, you need a solid framework on which things need to be clearly defined. If the framework cannot be established because definitions cannot be agreed upon, no progress can be made. It is also a common tactic in debating that in order to keep the debate going, one party changes the definition and as a result create a straw-man argument. Just things to keep in mind!