Sources of Innovation
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Re: Sources of Innovation
 
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Thus spake Douglas Roberts circa 02/14/2010 02:19 PM:
> So here's mine: we'll either evolve a set of ethics and a level of > intelligence, and a maturity to finally do the right thing with a > certain degree of consistency, or we won't. I'm not holding my breath > though; I would't take even money on us getting there. I do wish there > were some way that we could check back in a few tens of millions of > years so see which way it went, though. Intelligence is a red herring. Intelligence isn't driving the process. In fact, I posit that intelligence is an illusion, as is wisdom and even knowledge. What's real, however, is the _population_ and its density. As the earth grows more densely populated with humans, various infrastructure will collapse and be rebuilt. If the "peak carrying capacity" believers are right, then there might be a catastrophic collapse that will take down most of the ecosystem with it. But I tend to think that the death of the ecosystem will be graceful, lasting as long as the Sun stays benign and we're lucky enough to avoid large cosmic interactions. The two ways we can get to the kind of maturity that will solve these problems are: 1) develop social methods that foster living in very close and increasingly closer quarters and/or 2) stop having so many damned babies. http://gpso.wordpress.com/ -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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In reply to this post by glen e. p. ropella-2
Glen
See http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ and don't skip the bit that says "disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind". A right isn't a natural consequence... but then I think you jest. Thanks Robert On 2/15/10 8:32 AM, glen e. p. ropella wrote: > Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 02/14/2010 10:49 AM: > >> Rights talk is madness. >> > That's the most true sentence I've seen on this mailing list. [grin] > Nobody has a right to anything. Some of us are lucky enough to be in > the right social classes to take advantage of particular legal systems; > but that's the whole extent of it. If there are any rights at all, they > are those provided by our biology. > > E.g. I have the right to be hungry when I don't eat. I have the right > to be euphoric when I hunt. I have the right to pain and death in the > freezing dawn in my cardboard shanty under the bridge. > > Everything else is ideology and illusion. Luckily, there are those of > us who are crafty enough to exploit the gullibility of those around us > so that our rights seem more real than theirs. > > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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I think Glen was just working up a Presidents Day troll. The day we celebrate the births of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln is the perfect day to appear to deny that "rights" exist.
But I think he really means that their existence is problematic, and if you scan the Wikipedia article on rights you'll see how one might come to that conclusion.
-- rec -- On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 9:32 AM, Robert J. Cordingley <[hidden email]> wrote: Glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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In reply to this post by Eric Charles
I stand by "rights talk is madness", but Glen may .... MAY .... have taken
it a bit too far for me.
Quine said something like, "if we had to reason our way to good behavior,
the human race would have died long ago." Empathy and caregiving are as
natural to human beings as lust.
So, while talking about "my rights" or "your obligations" is nutty,
talking about "my obligations" makes sense to me. In any case, it should
be obvious that, in the absense of somebody who feels an obligation, having
a right is worthless.
One other point: "Ideology and illusion"are real things and one has to plan for them in any political philosophy. So is "madness" for that matter.
nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([hidden email])
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
> [Original Message]
> From: Robert J. Cordingley "><[hidden email]>
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group "><[hidden email]>
> Date: 2/15/2010 9:33:17 AM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
>
> Glen
> See http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ and don't skip the bit that
> says "disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous
> acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind". A right isn't a
> natural consequence... but then I think you jest.
> Thanks
> Robert
>
> On 2/15/10 8:32 AM, glen e. p. ropella wrote:
> > Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 02/14/2010 10:49 AM:
> >
> >> Rights talk is madness.
> >>
> > That's the most true sentence I've seen on this mailing list. [grin]
> > Nobody has a right to anything. Some of us are lucky enough to be in
> > the right social classes to take advantage of particular legal systems;
> > but that's the whole extent of it. If there are any rights at all, they
> > are those provided by our biology.
> >
> > E.g. I have the right to be hungry when I don't eat. I have the right
> > to be euphoric when I hunt. I have the right to pain and death in the
> > freezing dawn in my cardboard shanty under the bridge.
> >
> > Everything else is ideology and illusion. Luckily, there are those of
> > us who are crafty enough to exploit the gullibility of those around us
> > so that our rights seem more real than theirs.
> >
> >
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([hidden email])
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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In reply to this post by Roger Critchlow-2
Thus spake Roger Critchlow circa 02/15/2010 09:04 AM:
> I think Glen was just working up a Presidents Day troll. The day we > celebrate the births of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln is the > perfect day to appear to deny that "rights" exist. Heh, I wish! I'm not smart enough to pull that kind of irony out of my hat. ;-) I really do think that "human rights" are a desire, not a reality. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a perfect example of useless "deep, thoughty intricate, theoretical symposia that never touch the real issue" if I've ever seen it! [grin] What a bunch of ideological hooha! Of course, anyone lucky enough to find a way to exploit that hooha to her own benefit gets my full support. To those unlucky enough to live in an inner city or on the Gaza strip... well, too bad, so sad, we don't have enough money to enforce those ideological principles _everywhere_, now do we? We'll only help you if your rich enough, funny enough, can sing well enough, sane enough, intelligent enough, etc. ... or perhaps if you're well connected. [grin] Otherwise, you're out of luck. Am I jesting? Sort of. Really, I'm trying to point out that rights are granted and definitely not inalienable. These rights are totally alien to the slaves and impoverished all over the earth including right here in Oregon and probably there in New Mexico. They are definitely alienable. In fact, they're not "rights" at all. They are privileges and ARE taken away from lots of people on a regular basis. The only way out of that quandary is to see them for what they are, privileges, and make an ethical commitment to find ways for everyone to be so privileged (i.e. raise the standard of living of everyone on the planet). Calling them "rights" and acting all indignant when someone brings up evidence of humans abusing humans doesn't really help. It just starts silly arguments about what is and isn't a "right". Health care is a privilege, one that I provide as base compensation to all my employees and wish I could give away to everyone on the planet. But I can't. However, if I could find a way to pay for it, I would. Similarly life and liberty are privileges. And if I could find a way to pay for them for every human on the planet, I would. After we've successfully raised everyone's standard of living THEN and only then can we call these things "rights". At the moment, those privileges can be taken away by one's parents, the guy who gets you across the border, the guy in the dark alley whose already stabbed and robbed 5 people this year, the bull dozer tearing down your house to make room for the houses of the rich people, etc. I'm not denying that these things should be rights. I'm denying that they _are_ rights. And no amount of "declaring" or pompous, indignant, stamping about shouting about "what should be" will change that. Perhaps realizing that is a good way to celebrate _some_ of our past Presidents? -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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In reply to this post by Robert J. Cordingley
Nick et al.,
A thought on rights, not well-formed. It comes from reading some of Dan Dennett's work on free will and causation, and wondering how I would frame the terms differently if I were not drawing on the long philosophical tradition in discussing this subject, but rather from the work of my ethologist colleagues on how animal personalities, behaviors, and identities develop in the social contexts they both construct and require. My default would be that the whole human notion of causal efficacy and the role of the will has emerged from the need of social animals for group context, first for their mental development, and second for its ongoing function (first and second only in a presentational sense, both are concurrent and ongoing, and probably also logically inter-dependent). It seems to me a problem of distributed control over systems with huge random backgrounds, and small regularities that we notice as the describable parts of function. The evolutionary question has been (over and over), which parts of the regularity will be canalized as part of development "within" the context of the individual, and which parts go under the control of distributed mechanisms constructed by coherent actions of members that form the "group" as an entity with qualitatively distinct dynamics. "Cause" (in the psychological sense) becomes the part of your action that you implicitly recognize depends on group embedding to take one form versus another, and "freedom" is some kind of admission that the large random background is capable of taking on elements of behavioral regularity, but that an appeal to some notion of individuality in isolation is not enough to make sense of what form that behavior will take. I know that this could sprout into a long and exhausting disagreement, but I am hoping there is some form of this argument that could be defended reasonably. But I'll put it down here, except as a framing of some terms. What does this have to do with rights etc.? The notion of right presumably is the partner of the notion of responsibility, and the only interesting sense in which I have a "right" to something is the sense in which you feel a responsibility to help make it available to me, or in which I can act on you to try to induce you to feel and obey such a sense of responsibility. This "I" may be very much a reference to the group coordination, as well as the way I instantiate parts of it in my apparently individual actions. So to the extent that there is a mechanistic or evolutionary question about what are rights, it would seem very wrong to me to focus primarily on individual development while excluding the recognition of the group as a thing that has also undergone development in some evolutionary context. Perhaps more strongly, it seems strange to think that one could even talk about what the individual is, in proper context, without constant reference to the group embedding. i agree with what I think is one of your impulses in this, which is to resist supposing that too much of this is really conscious social choice or negotiation, because that may constitute only a small part of the mechanism by which norms can form or change. On the other hand, deliberate negotiation may constitute _some_ part of that mechanism, and if we think it has ever had durable effects, it is worthy of part of the discussion. Sorry to argue obscurely and drag in things that probably could have been better omitted, but this is a subject I have been wondering for a while about how to frame in some coherent or interesting way. Thanks, Eric On Feb 15, 2010, at 9:32 AM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote: > Glen > See http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ and don't skip the bit > that says "disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in > barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind". A > right isn't a natural consequence... but then I think you jest. > Thanks > Robert > > On 2/15/10 8:32 AM, glen e. p. ropella wrote: >> Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 02/14/2010 10:49 AM: >> >>> Rights talk is madness. >>> >> That's the most true sentence I've seen on this mailing list. [grin] >> Nobody has a right to anything. Some of us are lucky enough to be in >> the right social classes to take advantage of particular legal >> systems; >> but that's the whole extent of it. If there are any rights at >> all, they >> are those provided by our biology. >> >> E.g. I have the right to be hungry when I don't eat. I have the >> right >> to be euphoric when I hunt. I have the right to pain and death in >> the >> freezing dawn in my cardboard shanty under the bridge. >> >> Everything else is ideology and illusion. Luckily, there are >> those of >> us who are crafty enough to exploit the gullibility of those >> around us >> so that our rights seem more real than theirs. >> >> > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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In reply to this post by glen e. p. ropella-2
I think you argue *for* the UDHR! It is not a statement of 'what is'
but 'what should be'. It provides a common ground of understanding and says quit arguing, this is it, this is where we need to be. It can form a basis for common law if you don't have one in your emerging country, state, etc. On privilege: is it a right to not be a slave or is it a privilege? Whether it touches real issues or not is a measure of the quality of our education and maturity and how many good people remain silent. Thanks, Robert On 2/15/10 10:25 AM, glen e. p. ropella wrote: > Thus spake Roger Critchlow circa 02/15/2010 09:04 AM: > >> I think Glen was just working up a Presidents Day troll. The day we >> celebrate the births of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln is the >> perfect day to appear to deny that "rights" exist. >> > Heh, I wish! I'm not smart enough to pull that kind of irony out of my > hat. ;-) I really do think that "human rights" are a desire, not a reality. > > The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a perfect example of > useless "deep, thoughty intricate, theoretical symposia that never touch > the real issue" if I've ever seen it! [grin] What a bunch of > ideological hooha! > > Of course, anyone lucky enough to find a way to exploit that hooha to > her own benefit gets my full support. To those unlucky enough to live > in an inner city or on the Gaza strip... well, too bad, so sad, we don't > have enough money to enforce those ideological principles _everywhere_, > now do we? We'll only help you if your rich enough, funny enough, can > sing well enough, sane enough, intelligent enough, etc. ... or perhaps > if you're well connected. [grin] Otherwise, you're out of luck. > > Am I jesting? Sort of. Really, I'm trying to point out that rights are > granted and definitely not inalienable. These rights are totally alien > to the slaves and impoverished all over the earth including right here > in Oregon and probably there in New Mexico. They are definitely > alienable. In fact, they're not "rights" at all. They are privileges > and ARE taken away from lots of people on a regular basis. > > The only way out of that quandary is to see them for what they are, > privileges, and make an ethical commitment to find ways for everyone to > be so privileged (i.e. raise the standard of living of everyone on the > planet). Calling them "rights" and acting all indignant when someone > brings up evidence of humans abusing humans doesn't really help. It > just starts silly arguments about what is and isn't a "right". > > Health care is a privilege, one that I provide as base compensation to > all my employees and wish I could give away to everyone on the planet. > But I can't. However, if I could find a way to pay for it, I would. > Similarly life and liberty are privileges. And if I could find a way to > pay for them for every human on the planet, I would. After we've > successfully raised everyone's standard of living THEN and only then can > we call these things "rights". At the moment, those privileges can be > taken away by one's parents, the guy who gets you across the border, the > guy in the dark alley whose already stabbed and robbed 5 people this > year, the bull dozer tearing down your house to make room for the houses > of the rich people, etc. > > I'm not denying that these things should be rights. I'm denying that > they _are_ rights. And no amount of "declaring" or pompous, indignant, > stamping about shouting about "what should be" will change that. > > Perhaps realizing that is a good way to celebrate _some_ of our past > Presidents? > > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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In reply to this post by Eric Charles
I was thinking about what Eric said and realized that I don't know what happens if an uninsured person suddenly needs massive medical treatment to avoid death or crippling consequences. If he can't pay, do we just let him suffer the consequences? At this point, I just want to find out what the current practice is. The question of what we should do is another matter. ________________________________________ From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of ERIC P. CHARLES [[hidden email]] Sent: Sunday, February 14, 2010 12:53 PM To: friam Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Health care [was Sources of Innovation] But Owen, we are NOT required to buy car insurance! It is an if-then thing: If you want to drive, then you need insurance. That doesn't map on well to health care. I agree that the health care debate is not just about profit. At least one other thing it is about is whether or not to consider health care a "human right". I for one (and I anticipate being skewered for saying it) don't understand this line of reasoning. I am told that "it is unfair that rich people get better medical care than poor people", and what I hear is "it is unfair that rich people drive better cars than poor people." If we really just wanted to make health care cheaper we would up training for people to self-diagnose and self-treat easy problems, we would reform malpractice litigation, and we'd invest a boat load in grief and end of life counseling so that people were, in general, more accepting of death (their own and other's). If we wanted reform in the industry, the best we should be pushing for is to enforce contracts so that the insurance companies pay out what they are supposed to. Insurance is a business. It is a gambling game, where you try to get people to give you more money than you think you will have to pay out. It is true that some times insurance companies make insane profits, but it doesn't take too many people who cost them a million dollars each to shift things around. The basic model for any insurance situation should be to give a security blanket to people who are not at much risk (i.e., give healthy people insurance against crippling disasters). You know, like the home owner's insurance you don't go running to every time your toilet is stopped up, but you are glad you have if there is a bad fire. And even if you think that people have the right to health care, how can anyone argue that people should be guaranteed the right to be insured?!? Car insurance companies turn down people who are high risk, ditto home owner's insurance, flood insurance, business insurance, etc., etc., how is health care any different? The whole medical situation in this country is crazy, I got in a 15 minute long argument with a doctor who wouldn't tell me how much a procedure cost, only that my insurance wouldn't cover it. The notion that I would consider simply paying for something the insurance didn't cover made no sense to her. Blah, Eric P.S. Aesthetically, I would actually be much less offended by fully socialized medicine - take the business out of it, and have the state run everything - just stop trying to tell perfectly reasonable businesses they can't follow simple and intelligible business models. On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 11:26 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote: I don't buy the health care debate being quite so one sided. Certainly there is self interest in the insurance world, but there is equal opposing interest. Businesses both large and small realize health care in other countries is subsidizing their competition. Thus Detroit was first in line to lobby for health care. Doctors too are lobbying against the absurd malpractice litigation which has become a barrier to practice. There are a few steps that could be made that would get little resistance from the corporate devils you paint. For example, why not require people to pay for a reasonable insurance plan? We are required to do so for car insurance. Our current practice drives folks to use the emergency room for their doctor at a huge and silly additional cost. So: 1) Require universal health care insurance. But 2) Remove preconditions. See the yin/yang? Insurance companies have already said that pair would work for them, as have the AMA/doctors. And yes, 3) Subsidize those who cannot afford the base rate. And 4) limit malpractice litigation. It is claimed that just these 4 steps would reduce the cost of current health care and increase businesses competitiveness significantly. And properly put in place the right market counter forces to the evil corporations. We ourselves need to change. How many of us spend as much on medical care as we do our cars? In my calculations, cars and their care still cost more. Compare auto leasing costs for two cars for the standard family and insurance for same and they're surprisingly close. Add upkeep of the car and they are way ahead. -- Owen On Feb 14, 2010, at 9:04 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote: Pamela, I think the healthcare issue goes way beyond just the usual corporate profit protection, pay for play political game. Look at how polarized the nation has become over just this issue alone. Look at how many people don't believe that the healthcare issue is really about healthcare insurance industry profit protection. We truly are a nation of idiots. We deserve Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Pat Robertson. Model that, if you like. The agents in the individual based simulation won't need much sophistication. --Doug On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 8:00 AM, Pamela McCorduck <[hidden email]> wrote: When Kennedy envisioned going to the moon, no lobby existed to fight ferociously for the sole right to take the profits from going to the moon, and the sole right to decide who gets to go. If you read the not-very-deep subtext in this fight, you will see that it's not about giving better healthcare to Americans (which we desperately need) but about protecting the enormous profits of the healthcare insurance industry. It's dressed up in "right to choose," and "privacy between doctor and patient," and "keep the government out of medical care," but it's really about profit protection. From several different and reliable sources (one of them a congressional candidate) I have heard that since early last summer, the insurance and pharmaceuticals industries have been spending over $1 million per day on lobbying. It continues. You can do the arithmetic. The media regularly reports on how much better, cheaper, and more effective medical plans are all around the developed world. It doesn't penetrate $1 million-plus per day. On Feb 13, 2010, at 3:55 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote: Where does all this whining about health care come from? Everyone in Germany has a health insurance, it is obligatory. There is general agreement here that the European (and esp. the German) health care system is better and more social than the one in the US. The USA obviously needs a better health care system. Where is the American optimism and the "i believe we can do it" spirit? I've heard that optimism and positive thinking is a typical American attitude. America is lacking a vision, something like Kennedy's vision to bring a man to the moon and back. Military and NASA won't do it this time. A vision or a common dream which would foster technological innovation. Schmidt mentioned "renewable energy" and green technology. What about a clean L.A. with fresh air? A large scale scientific initiative to create the first AI would be another one. America would have the resources to do it, it has the companies with the largest data centers. It should be proud of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple. It is difficult to understand why it disputes about health care so long. -J. ----- Original Message ----- From: Roger Critchlow To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Sent: Saturday, February 13, 2010 6:54 PM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Sources of Innovation [...] We're too busy defending ourselves from hedge fund vampires and health care ghouls to worry about growth. Say what you will about the undead, they steal their profits fair and square and invest them in the rule of law. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org Eric Charles Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601 Eric Charles Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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Did someone just take a rare peek at the view outside of his Ivory Tower? Pardon me for commenting, but that is one of the more naive questions I've heard in a very long time.
So, to bring you up to speed: there is a huge homeless community in this country from which members die every day due to lack of health care, lack of food, lack of shelter, lack of practically everything else that us comfortably employed, comfortably insured "intellectuals" enjoy.
There, hope that clears up for you what our current "uninsured treatment policy" is.
On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 11:15 AM, John Kennison <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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In reply to this post by Robert J. Cordingley
Thus spake Robert J. Cordingley circa 02/15/2010 10:07 AM:
> I think you argue *for* the UDHR! It is not a statement of 'what is' > but 'what should be'. Abstractly, yes. Concretely, no. Let's take Article I: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." Those sentences are FALSE. Many human beings are not born free. And they certainly aren't equal in the rights granted to them by their government, society, or whoever controls them. I agree they are all born in equal dignity, though. Similarly, many humans are not born endowed with reason or conscience. And while the sentiment of acting towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood is a nice thought. I would not treat Sadam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, or George W. Bush as brothers of mine and they would not treat me as a brother, either. They are not my brothers in any sense of the word. Of course, that doesn't mean I would treat them like I treat plants or animals, either. I would treat them as misguided humans, perhaps even criminals, and make every attempt to either rehabilitate them or lock them away so they stop hurting others. And I would do the same to any (hypothetical) brothers of mine. But that doesn't mean that I would treat those men like brothers. So, in the VERY FIRST article, we have not only a vague ideological statement; but we have blatantly false assertions. And although I understand the principle "Hear what I mean, not what I say", these flaws make it a mostly useless document. > On privilege: is it a right to not be a slave or is it a > privilege? It is a privilege not to be a slave. When a prisoner makes a license plate, he is simply underprivileged. If he's innocent of the crime for which he was convicted, then well, that sucks. But we took away his "right" not to be a slave when we convicted him. (Yes, feel free to mince words about the meaning of "slavery" if you'd like. But the essence is adequately captured by "bound in servitude".) > Whether it touches real issues or not is a measure of the > quality of our education and maturity and how many good people remain > silent. No. whether it touches real issues or not is a measure of the degree of privilege of the authors. You won't find those of us who are so underprivileged as to, say, not be able to read or have access to the internet, understanding these things, much less writing them. And of the practical men who live in and recognize privilege when they see it, most don't have time to sit around writing hoity-toity manifestos. They spend their time inventing things, poking in the dirt, shooting guns at other people, or hitting the assembly line from 9-5 every day. The Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Lincolns are pretty rare. And as the POPULATION grows, the labors of such domain-crossers are made less and less effective. And although the absolute number of such men increases, they are harder to find and cultivate. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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In reply to this post by glen e. p. ropella-2
glen e. p. ropella wrote:
> I'm denying that they _are_ rights. And no amount of [..] stamping > about shouting about "what should be" will change that. > To me -- to the extent the concept of `rights' is meaningful -- `rights' are the just kind of entitlements that when restricted, either 1) result in the granters of the entitlements being removed from power, or 2) increasingly strict controls on privilege being imposed such that no competing groups can gain power. If there are no rights, there can be no perception of legitimate power... Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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In reply to this post by David Eric Smith
On Feb 15, 2010, at 12:27 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
> Nick et al., > > A thought on rights, not well-formed. It comes from reading some of Dan Dennett's work on free will and causation, and wondering how I would frame the terms differently if I were not drawing on the long philosophical tradition in discussing this subject, but rather from the work of my ethologist colleagues on how animal personalities, behaviors, and identities develop in the social contexts they both construct and require. > > My default would be that the whole human notion of causal efficacy and the role of the will has emerged from the need of social animals for group context, first for their mental development, and second for its ongoing function (first and second only in a presentational sense, both are concurrent and ongoing, and probably also logically inter-dependent). It seems to me a problem of distributed control over systems with huge random backgrounds, and small regularities that we notice as the describable parts of function. The evolutionary question has been (over and over), which parts of the regularity will be canalized as part of development "within" the context of the individual, and which parts go under the control of distributed mechanisms constructed by coherent actions of members that form the "group" as an entity with qualitatively distinct dynamics. "Cause" (in the psychological sense) becomes the part of your action that you implicitly recognize depends on group embedding to take one form versus another, and "freedom" is some kind of admission that the large random background is capable of taking on elements of behavioral regularity, but that an appeal to some notion of individuality in isolation is not enough to make sense of what form that behavior will take. I know that this could sprout into a long and exhausting disagreement, but I am hoping there is some form of this argument that could be defended reasonably. But I'll put it down here, except as a framing of some terms. > > What does this have to do with rights etc.? The notion of right presumably is the partner of the notion of responsibility, and the only interesting sense in which I have a "right" to something is the sense in which you feel a responsibility to help make it available to me, or in which I can act on you to try to induce you to feel and obey such a sense of responsibility. This "I" may be very much a reference to the group coordination, as well as the way I instantiate parts of it in my apparently individual actions. This idea of "I-as-bridge" between rights and responsibilities nicely parallels some recent conversations elsewhere about some of the problem created by according legal/constitutional rights and limited liability protections to "juridical persons" like corporations. It also highlights the absolutely critical public-facing side of that "I" -- i.e., identity or identifiability. You could be the most trusting, most trustworthy/responsible entity that ever lived, but it wouldn't matter at all if "you" cannot be consistently and reliability identified, i.e., distinguished from all of the other entities populating your world, based on some other independent criterion. > On Feb 1, 2010, at 3:36 PM, Tom Vest wrote: > >> Getting a bit closer to the ground, perhaps we could say that the phenomena of "trust" is possible IFF there is some kind of consistent, durable linkage between (a) the capacity to be "trusting," i.e., to distinguish between reassuring consistencies and troubling inconsistencies in the behavior of third parties, and (b) the capacity to be "trustworthy," i.e., to consistently publicly manifest the kind of behavior that third parties could recognize and interpret as an indicator of continued reassuring behavior. BUT: Is that critical linkage the possession (or non-possession) of the hypothesized ineffable-"something," or is it the entirely effable distinction between discrete, persistent, embodied actors who cannot change identities over time, in whole or in part -- not in any legally meaningful way anyway -- vs. composite entities that can be created, dismantled, partially decomposed and/or reorganized in many different ways for a variety of reasons, many of which have the effect of absolving whatever remains of all previous transgressions? Apologies in advance if that sounds too academic; it's a practical question for me, as this is actually one of the looming, potentially existential threats/challenges facing the global Internet. TV > So to the extent that there is a mechanistic or evolutionary question about what are rights, it would seem very wrong to me to focus primarily on individual development while excluding the recognition of the group as a thing that has also undergone development in some evolutionary context. Perhaps more strongly, it seems strange to think that one could even talk about what the individual is, in proper context, without constant reference to the group embedding. > > i agree with what I think is one of your impulses in this, which is to resist supposing that too much of this is really conscious social choice or negotiation, because that may constitute only a small part of the mechanism by which norms can form or change. On the other hand, deliberate negotiation may constitute _some_ part of that mechanism, and if we think it has ever had durable effects, it is worthy of part of the discussion. > > Sorry to argue obscurely and drag in things that probably could have been better omitted, but this is a subject I have been wondering for a while about how to frame in some coherent or interesting way. > > Thanks, > > Eric > > > > > > > On Feb 15, 2010, at 9:32 AM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote: > >> Glen >> See http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ and don't skip the bit that says "disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind". A right isn't a natural consequence... but then I think you jest. >> Thanks >> Robert >> >> On 2/15/10 8:32 AM, glen e. p. ropella wrote: >>> Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 02/14/2010 10:49 AM: >>> >>>> Rights talk is madness. >>>> >>> That's the most true sentence I've seen on this mailing list. [grin] >>> Nobody has a right to anything. Some of us are lucky enough to be in >>> the right social classes to take advantage of particular legal systems; >>> but that's the whole extent of it. If there are any rights at all, they >>> are those provided by our biology. >>> >>> E.g. I have the right to be hungry when I don't eat. I have the right >>> to be euphoric when I hunt. I have the right to pain and death in the >>> freezing dawn in my cardboard shanty under the bridge. >>> >>> Everything else is ideology and illusion. Luckily, there are those of >>> us who are crafty enough to exploit the gullibility of those around us >>> so that our rights seem more real than theirs. >>> >>> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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In reply to this post by John Kennison
Below, my defense of John and Doug's reply. I accidentally responded off
list.
------ I wrote ---->
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Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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In reply to this post by John Kennison
On Feb 15, 2010, at 11:15 AM, John Kennison wrote:
> I was thinking about what Eric said and realized that I don't know > what happens if an uninsured person suddenly needs massive medical > treatment to avoid death or crippling consequences. If he can't pay, > do we just let him suffer the consequences? At this point, I just > want to find out what the current practice is. The question of what > we should do is another matter. I believe all emergency rooms are required to provide care, whether the person is insured or not. I've been in the emergency room every year with family members needing care and they always are clear that payment and/or insurance is not mandatory. Also, NM, and most states, provide insurance for those who cannot afford it. I forget the name it goes under, but my son Gil is insured with it. -- Owen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
Thus spake Marcus Daniels circa 10-02-15 01:44 PM:
> To me -- to the extent the concept of `rights' is meaningful -- `rights' > are the just kind of entitlements that when restricted, either 1) result > in the granters of the entitlements being removed from power, or 2) > increasingly strict controls on privilege being imposed such that no > competing groups can gain power. If there are no rights, there can be > no perception of legitimate power... That makes alot of sense. However, the concept of "legitimate power" is, at best, shaky or, at worst, self-contradictory. Either the power is there, or it's not. And if it is there, it's not the power that riles us; it's the actions of the powerful. E.g. many of us have the power to take another's life. But having the power to do so isn't wrong. Exercising the power is wrong (in some cases). (1) is not a concept of power, either. It is a concept of actions and their consequences. Those "in power" can take certain actions with a lessened or different set of consequences than those "out of power". But a "rights" document, like the 1st 10 amendments to the constitution don't talk about or provide the consequences for actions taken by the powerful. Rather, they provide the basis for a byzantine edifice of very complicated rules. Those rules can only be interpreted by those privileged enough to interpret them. So if the interpretation favors those in power, they stay in power. And even if the interpretation does not favor those in power, they often stay in power because the consequences are also all tied up in the complicated rule set. So, those in power can remain in power in spite of "rights" abuses, as long as they are privileged _enough_ to successfully navigate the both the interpretation of the rules and the execution of consequences. Hence, a delineation of "rights" doesn't really make that much difference w.r.t. (1). There are _other_ bases for removing people we don't like from power. Re: (2), I think a good case can be made that a delineation of "rights" doesn't help there, either. All the powerful need do is embed overly complicated hoops in the grouping mechanisms so that the groups they don't want to form will not form. And even if they do form, the complicated rules will help the powerful to disassemble or knead those groups over time. In the end, those with power will retain power regardless of a delineation of "rights". There will be groups (e.g. Google) that _look_ competitive to the reigning groups (e.g. Microsoft); but, in reality, they are of the same kind and don't really compete at all. Why is it, again, that so many small businesses fail? [grin] The triggers and mechanisms for doing (1) and preventing (2) are much more practical and earthy. Hence, any effective "rights" declaration will be more practical and earthy. In fact, an effective "rights" declaration probably wouldn't mention an albatross concept like "rights" at all. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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In reply to this post by David Eric Smith
Thus spake Eric Smith circa 10-02-15 09:27 AM:
> What does this have to do with rights etc.? The notion of right > presumably is the partner of the notion of responsibility, and the only > interesting sense in which I have a "right" to something is the sense in > which you feel a responsibility to help make it available to me, or in > which I can act on you to try to induce you to feel and obey such a > sense of responsibility. I think there are other interesting senses in which the delusion of "rights" is useful. The best example lies in the determination of appropriate consequences for conflicts between two sets of "rights". E.g. if I kill someone because it seemed to me like they would kill me otherwise, then my "right" to life would help me argue that the consequences of my actions should be less than someone who kills for lesser reasons. On the other hand, if I kill someone because he stole my car, then my violation of the criminal's "right" to life outweighs my "right" to own property and my (negative) "right" to expect protection from such actions. While it's true that the particular "rights" will be context dependent, the base concept of a "right" is not. They are a mechanism for proscribing actions and prioritizing the consequences for such actions. This goes beyond inducing a sense of responsibility in one's group members. In fact, it works counter to that and attempts to make rational the proscription and prioritization, which is so often irrational. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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In reply to this post by glen e. p. ropella-2
glen e. p. ropella wrote:
> the concept of "legitimate power" > is, at best, shaky or, at worst, self-contradictory. Either the power > is there, or it's not. And if it is there, it's not the power that > riles us; it's the actions of the powerful. E.g. many of us have the > power to take another's life. But having the power to do so isn't > wrong. Exercising the power is wrong (in some cases). > To clarify, I meant not only having license to act, but acting. Another category of powerful people would be those that don't have license to act, but have sufficient power than no one in the group can stop them. Another would be socially unsanctioned acts which could be stopped if detected. I mostly agree with your other remarks. Overall, rights don't mean anything outside of a group context. For example, it can be a right of an IT worker at a small company to have a computer, while a mother in Rwanda gets denied access to available water for her family by a local militia (and thus simply has no right to it). Reason being that in the former case the group context soon dissolves without the right, and in the latter it doesn't -- that mother has an inadequate social network, money, weapons, etc. to resist the militia and the government is indifferent, unaware, or unable to act on her behalf. To have a right implies that there is some local equilibrium concerning entitlements that all members of the group can understand and influence, and that the absence of those entitlements will disrupt the group. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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In reply to this post by Owen Densmore
Thanks Owen and Eric for giving me a simple answer to my simple question. Thanks also to Doug for the reassuring private email he sent me. I do have a question for Doug: I don't see how the facts that you list pertain to my question of how uninsured people are treated when they suddenly need medical help. The facts that lots of people get poor health care, or even that the question is naive don't really give me the information I asked for. ________________________________________ From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore [[hidden email]] Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 5:36 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Health care [was Sources of Innovation] On Feb 15, 2010, at 11:15 AM, John Kennison wrote: > I was thinking about what Eric said and realized that I don't know > what happens if an uninsured person suddenly needs massive medical > treatment to avoid death or crippling consequences. If he can't pay, > do we just let him suffer the consequences? At this point, I just > want to find out what the current practice is. The question of what > we should do is another matter. I believe all emergency rooms are required to provide care, whether the person is insured or not. I've been in the emergency room every year with family members needing care and they always are clear that payment and/or insurance is not mandatory. Also, NM, and most states, provide insurance for those who cannot afford it. I forget the name it goes under, but my son Gil is insured with it. -- Owen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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Again, apologies to all for my cranky outburst yesterday.
I suppose I teed off on the broad nature of the question: "...what happens if an uninsured person suddenly needs massive medical treatment to avoid death or crippling consequences...."
Given that out the the 350 million US population there are many millions of people who fit that definition, there are numerous answers to the question. There is no single policy that defines how to handle a sick, uninsured person. One of but many of the huge gaping flaws in our society. Which naturally is a reflection on but one of the huge gaping flaws in our own collective character. --Doug
On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 8:49 AM, John Kennison <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Health care [was Sources of Innovation]
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Having to deal with this within my own family (Gil), there are a surprising number of ways people can get help, both in terms of emergency room access and subsidized insurance.
The bad news is you have to be pretty bright and insistent to find the solutions and to work through the bureaucracy. But things like the Library and Public Health offices are hip and helpful. -- Owen On Feb 16, 2010, at 9:01 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote: Again, apologies to all for my cranky outburst yesterday. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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