On Wed, May 03, 2017 at 01:27:05PM +0000, \0xDynamite wrote:
That's some good bit o' history. It was you who asked the question "Without a State, would we have electronics? Radio?"
Yes and I was being serious. I hadn't encounted that history before.
I was really referring to the level of existing order needed to create *more* levels of order. That sounds like gobbledygook to me. What do you mean by this? What is a "level of order"?
It's not gobbledygook at all. Just as single-cellular life gave rise to multi-cellular life, a new LEVEL of order was made beyond the cell. In this sense, you could say all the problems that we've been having with "the State" are birthing pains bringing about the solutions to solve this endless conflict at the current level.
Einstein was credited with saying "You can't solve the existing problems at the same level which created them" (or something like that).
It could surmised that no amount of "self-oganization" could create that transformation seen in biology -- it had to be a GOVERNOR of some kind. By which I intimate that leadership, with a greater view of it all, can generate better, meaningful, and virtuous levels of order and that it HAD to happen at some point in the past, in order to give rise to the mammalian life which we cherish..
And why do you (apparently) think that government is somehow necessary (or even desireable) to act as a driver of technology. I think the opposite is true.
It's not that government is the driver, it is simply a large force that can assemble huge amounts of resources and human effort to solve problems.
Like hoax a moon landing or imperially dominate the world? The problem with government is that it is coopted by opportunistic scoundrels also justly described (many/most of then) as sociopaths - fundamentally they leech and dominate, creating far more problems than they solve, and the problems they do solve, are often created by government, and the other problems they solve, they solve by creating more problems, or worse problems, or both. In principle governmnet is founded upon principles which: a) a worth upholding, and b) are upheld (by said govt) In practice, we haven't yet found a system which encourages enough humans to put the principles first, rather than their self interest and the self interest of their friends and family. Create an empire on "democratic" principles, and it will descend into kingdom with an "blood-ordained" emperor and ultimately despotism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire It's all very well to agree that a benevolent dictator may achieve far greater results that "humans without any leader", but there are logic and causality presumption problems here: - "we won't get good outcomes without a system that enforces leadership and compliance by the masses" - "if we don't have government, we will miss out on the benefits to society if we actually got a benevolent leader, so we better hang on to government system" And other assumption problems: - "without government, we will never achieve great things" - "government is the best way to get big (mostly good) outcomes" We conflate our desire for order, safety and achievement with the existence of government, perhaps because for a good 5 to 6000 years, we have not known political anarchy. Also the word anarchy tends to lead thinking and discourse into the presumptions of the colloquial understanding of chaos; political anarchy, anarchism, or just plain anarchy in the context of "political system", is an entirely different beast, so I say the word itself is quite problematic in most newbie situations. The most PC alternative term "generally accepted as closely related and somewhat similar" seems to be "direct democracy" but with added in "absolute right to personal conscientious objection". Look at software development: - Microsoft is the democracy, enforced order system of development - Linux is the anarchy software development system, and the system where the truly benevolent dictator rose not by force, but: a) by being more benevolent than the opposition b) by have a truly libre license (i.e. anarchistic terms of entry and participation in the community) And we can readily compare not only Linux with Microsoft, but Linux with Minix, Linux with FreeBSD, and Linux with GNU, and, IN EVERY SINGLE CASE, Linux succeded and ultimately dominated the competition - yes, building upon and incorporating the competition (GNU, even bits of BSD), and the truly and ironic catch phrase we all used and laughed with over 20 years ago was that the primary intention / goal of Linux was (still is) "world domination" - which was and is so funny because how can you dominate others with freedom, by have no force, no compulsive enforcement of usage nor participation, merely a better license and better (truly at-your-free-will) participation terms. Anarchy won. That is, the anarchy software development system won. And not just won, absolutely, overwhelmingly, globally dominates - the BSDs had to properly establish their libre license to come back to their rightful and dignified position. Minix ultimately (metaphorically) got a kick up the arse and it too changed (I think) to a proper libre license. GNU, the ultimate free software "cathedral", has repeatedly had to learn the fundamental lesson: gcc -> egcs -> gcc GNU -> Linux -> GNU/Linux (facing reality) gcc (without modules) -> Many companies have had to learn the lesson, like the QT folks who ultimately changed to a true libre license to compete with "the community" who simply had learned that a libre license was the only option for putting their efforts behind (KDE/GNOME). And most recently Microsoft has joined the Linux foundation. So, which software development model is truly achieving global domination (and back in the day, in the face of overwhelming odds against, thanks to the incredible commercial might and global dominance of Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and the rest)?? Now here's a little secret - Linus did not quite nail it: In the face of the incredible stand of Richard Stallman and the FSF (notwithstanding their sub-optimal development zeitgeist) Linus Torvalds and his loud and explicit proclamations of "utility, not freedom thank you very much" were the single most effective way to facilitate, in the long term, corporate greed and centralisation of UNdemocratic corporate power, sidetracking an incredible opportunity for true system anarchy across the world, beyond mere software development. And that is a very unfortunate thing that few see.
You would never get equivalent levels of order in an anarchic situation.
Please be a little more rigorous with your conversation, if you wish to avoid pointless reactions and descent into bickering. Such a sentence is patently unfounded, and also without any citation by you of the assumptions and reasons for your belief, and worse you don't even acknowledge with the words you use, that this is nothing but your personal belief, which doesn't matter except that it leads to reactive and emotional responses which, as we see so often, lead to worse places than nowhere.
It would take some extreme urgency bording on panic to assemble such forces (because anarchists don't want to join someone else's causes, right?).
When folks say to you "I can't make sense of what you're saying", we're saying that there are many assumptions, beliefs, and possibly also projections, fears and delusions, which must be at the foundation of such a sentence, and therefore there are multiple possible meanings you are trying to get across, and combining these two things (unspoken points and potential intended meanings), a combinatorial explosion of possible responses. I.e., such a sentence puts far too high a load on those who would sincerely like to respond/engage with you in the conversation. Regards, Zenaan