Philosophy and Human Transcendence

"So who am I? Since I am constantly changing, am I just a pattern? What if someone copies that pattern? Am I the original and/or the copy? Perhaps I am this stuff here—that is, the both ordered and chaotic collection of molecules that make up my body and brain."

Ray Kurzweil asks this question in The Singularity is Near. A classic metaphor, the Ship of Theseus, makes one wonder of we are who we were yesterday, or even last week.

"But there's a problem with this position. The specific set of particles that my body and brain comprise are in fact completely different from the atoms and molecules that I comprised only a short while ago. We know that most of our cells are turned over in a matter of weeks, and even our neurons, which persist as distinct cells for a relatively long time, nonetheless change all of their constituent molecules within a month.14 The half-life of a microtubule (a protein filament that provides the structure of a neuron) is about ten minutes. The actin filaments in dendrites are replaced about every forty seconds. The proteins that power the synapses are replaced about every hour. NMDA receptors in synapses stick around for a relatively long five days."

So will it be that unexpected when we merge with our technology to become God's? Arthur C. Clarke said that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  Rest assured that what we may do someday would look like magic to us today.

Sherlock Holmes on Discrimination

From Doyle's story A Case of Identity, reminding us that to discriminate is simply the act of making reasoned, informed decisions:

"I have seen those symptoms before," said Holmes, throwing his cigarette into the fire. "Oscillation upon the pavement always means an affaire de coeur. She would like advice, but is not sure that the matter is not too delicate for communication. And yet even here we may discriminate. When a woman has been seriously wronged by a man she no longer oscillates, and the usual symptom is a broken bell wire. Here we may take it that there is a love matter, but that the maiden is not so much angry as perplexed, or grieved. But here she comes in person to resolve our doubts."

Another great book focusing more on the act of making reasoned decisions is professor Walter Block's the Case for Discrimination, available from Mises.org. 

Discrimination and Property Rights

Conceivably, all of these decisions may be “justified.” Perhaps employers are more powerful or have better bargaining power than employees.145 Even if this is so, this is unrelated to racial or gender discrimination. If this is legally offensive, per se, then mere wealth should be irrelevant. After all, the rapist cannot defend his actions on the ground that his victim is richer than himself. In any case, it is the customer, not the owner of the restaurant, “who is always right.” If there is any imbalance of power in that scenario, it presumably cuts in precisely the opposite direction. For example, since the patron of an eating establishment holds a thumbs up or thumbs down vote, then it should be, if anyone, the owner and not the customer who would have the right to freely pick and choose.

This court’s finding is also philosophically flawed in that it ignores the fact that private property rights are in effect a license to exclude. The entire point of such rights is to draw a line between “mine” and “thine.” If a man cannot exclude others from his premises, then there is a strong sense in which they are not his premises at all.

From Walter Block's book, The Case for Discrimination.

The Strength, and Weakness, of the State

"A government strong enough to act in defiance of public feeling may disregard the plausible heresy that prevention is better than punishment, for it is able to punish. But a government entirely dependent on opinion looks for some security what that opinion shall be, strives for the control of the forces that shape it, and is fearful of suffering the people to be educated in sentiments hostile to its institutions."

Lord Acton, Freedom and Power

Give up and Live

You have to give up. You have to accept that someday you will die, and until you do, you are useless. What you do in life might not matter, and you might not leave evidence of your existence when you go. Or maybe you might. Either way, make your mark on the world and on time. Say something worth saying, do something worth following. Champion logic and morality at once. Seek truth. Be an inspiration to our children.

Don't Get Out the Vote, It Makes You Look Ignorant

Stop voting, it doesn't show you can think rationally, but only through groupthink. Sheldon Richman says it shows a lack of individual responsibility:

"A mass democratic system encourages voter irresponsibility, says Sheldon Richman. Because the consequence of any single vote is negligible, individuals have an incentive to vote on some basis other than an understanding of current issues — which would require, among other things, the costly acquisition of a grasp of basic economics. Voters, then, are free to vote their biases. This voter mentality is known as rational ignorance."

More:
http://reason.com/blog/2014/02/16/sheldon-richman-says-dont-get-out-the-vo

Why We Should Steal Ideas from Each Other

People act like idea-processing machines combining individual thinking and social learning from the experiences of others. Success depends greatly on the quality of exploration and that, in turn, relies on the diversity and independence of our information and idea sources. 

By harvesting from the parts of our social network that touch other streams — that is, by crossing what sociologist Ron Burt called the “structural holes” within the fabric of society — we can create innovation. When we choose to dip into a different stream, we bring up new habits and beliefs, and it is these innovations that help us make better decisions, and help our community to thrive.

More: Why Startups Should Steal Ideas and Hire Weirdos | Wired Opinion | Wired.com

Firms and individuals should be free and encouraged to "steal" ideas from others to promote innovation. Rarely are there any truly new ideas, most are derivative, and we refine and improve those ideas that came before.



Unfortunately, IP (a contradiction in terms) law tends to reward those who claim they have a new idea and seek protection from competition. Seeking protection from competition to me means that one is not secure in their ability to capitalize and market their ideas better than others.



Competition drives innovation, but the process is also cooperative (we work together as a firm, yet compete against other firms), and the results benefit society as a whole rather than a small minority of shareholders. By letting go of the idea that ideas are property that can be owned, innovation can move into high gear and we can start to realize the benefits of advances in technology to improve the quality of life across the board.



Theft occurs when one party denies another party access to a tangible thing. When we "steal ideas," we are sharing and propagating those ideas. They are multiplying, benefiting those who choose to capitalize on them to serve others.

Stephan Kinsella points out some of the flawed logic in the debate over IP and how it affects innovation in the market here, and in his book Against Intellectual Property:

However, the argument that the incentive provided by IP law stimulates additional innovation and creativity has not even been proven. It is entirely possible — even likely, in my view — that the IP system, in addition to imposing billions of dollars of cost on society, actually reduces or impedes innovation, adding damage to damage. 

But even if we assume that the IP system does stimulate some additional, valuable innovation, no one has established yet that the value of the purported gains is greater than the costs of the system. If you ask an advocate of IP how it is that they know there is a net gain, you get silence in response (this is especially true of patent attorneys). They cannot even point to any study to support their utilitarian contention; they usually point to Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, as if the back-room dealings of politicians two centuries ago is some sort of evidence. 

In fact, as far as I've been able to tell, virtually every study that attempts to tally the costs and benefits of copyright or patent law either concludes that these schemes cost more than they are worth, that they actually reduce innovation, or the study is inconclusive. There are no studies showing a net gain. There are only repetitions of state propaganda.

More: The Case Against IP: A Concise Guide - Stephan Kinsella - Mises Daily

Vanishing Privacy With Real-Time Facial Recognition

A recet article at the Modern Survival blog brings up the issue of privacy in an increasingly-connected world, technology that recognizes faces in real-time:

The latest is the ‘NameTag’ smartphone or Google Glass app, which enables a person to simply snap a picture of someone (purportedly who you want to connect with) and see their entire public online presence in one place… Everything about you…
 
Your most unique feature – your face, enables the real-time facial recognition technology to link your face to a single, unified online presence that includes your contact information, social media profiles, interests, and anything else which the app may discover about you based on your electronic footprints of online activities.

When someone passes you on the street (or anywhere), they don’t know who you are – unless they ask or already know. With this new technology they will apparently be able to discover all sorts of things about any stranger by simply pointing their smartphone at them (or apparently when wearing Google Glass or other such technology). So much for asking…

http://modernsurvivalblog.com/communications/vanishing-privacy-with-real-time-facial-recoginition

The idea that technology which can on one hand make the world a smaller place gives reason to be optimistic about the future, but privacy concerns might tarnish those advancements. New technologies need to continue to hold privacy at the front of efforts to digitize the analog world.