ouroboros (was Re: [PLUG-TALK] Re: [PLUG] Mad SCO Disease)

gepr at tempusdictum.com gepr at tempusdictum.com
Fri Jul 2 19:41:20 UTC 2004


Russell Senior writes:
 > Confidence might thwart attack.  Maybe gun-toters and society would be
 > better served by counseling than packing heat.

Maybe... and maybe not.  We're currently part of the ongoing
experiment to find out.  And if nobody bears arms, then the data
will be heavily skewed.

 > My suggestion is only that the probability of injury or death is
 > greater for the principal antagonists than for bystanders, not that
 > the probability for the latter is zero.

Often, however, it's not.  (Often doesn't mean "most often", just
for those who might not read me right.)

Examine, say, two gangsters that start a fight on a public street
with guns.  Yes, gangster 1 is shooting _at_ gangster 2 and vice
versa.  But, the gangsters _know_ what fighting is about and 
take certain measures to protect themselves.

The innocent people in the cones behind gangsters 1 and 2 may or
may not _know_ what fighting is about (or that a fight is even
in progress).  Given that those people are not expecting a fight,
don't want to fight, and don't live a life of fighting means that
they are _more_ at risk of injury or death than the two gangsters.

At the very least, they did not purposefully engage in the gangster
social contract, which means they risk _more_ than the gangsters
risk by being in that place at that time.

So, again, I don't think your point is sufficiently strong.  Even
when you make the cone smaller by swapping guns for knives or fists
or even discriminating epithets, the case I'm making still applies.
If I'm arguing with good friends and I scream out, "You Nazi!", my
friends are likely to laugh but the elderly Jewish man in the corner
is more likely to suffer in some way from the action.

Bystanders without the effector-of-choice are _not_ necessarily safer
than the participants in the effects.

 > When I used to fence competitively (many years ago), *the* most
 > important thing was managing distance.  When the opponent is out of
 > range, whatever they try, it isn't going to be effective.  The
 > analogous thing here is to be aware of what is going on around you and
 > to withdraw when danger emerges.

To strengthen the point I make above, I'll say that this holds only
"because you were one of the combatants".  The guy who just happens
to stumble in between you two while you're poking each other is more
likely to get hurt.

 > I think it is better to say: "there may be other factors that make it
 > not so in particular circumstances".  I find it a plausible
 > generality.

OK.  I can't argue with that! [grin] But, those particular
circumstances are many and difficult to capture.  Some people even
claim that "the devil is in the details" in almost anything that ever
happens.

 > gepr> [re: universal declaration ...] Why?  Because equilibrium means
 > gepr> _death_ to a biological system.  So, if we achieve it, then
 > gepr> society (if not the whole biosphere) will collapse.
 > 
 > Russell> Isn't the assumption that violence-mediated access to scarce
 > Russell> resources is immutable a kind of equilibrium?
 > 
 > gepr> No.  Violence is an interaction. [...]
 > 
 > I don't see how that follows from my question.  You say "equilibrium
 > means death".  Not precisely sure what that means, I wonder if
 > sticking with the tried-and-true violence-mediation isn't a kind of
 > "equilibrium" that brings the same or similar death.

Well, equilibrium, as I'm using the term really means a kind of
"simple" stability.  One usually can't talk about equilibrium unless
one can delineate the non-negligible (a.k.a. canalizing) forces
involved in a dynamic system.  In such a system, it is clear how 
one force offsets another force and how any constituents involved
stay at roughly the same magnitude/number/quantity inspite of 
constant conversion or motion.  Also in such systems, there is a
clear (again "simple") path from a perturbation back to the stable
state.  The path that is the response to a perturbation is not a
branchy or cloudy path.

Living systems are permanently in a "far from equilibrium" state.
So, to reach equilibrium for a living system is to die.

And, FWIW, I agree that "equilibrium" as a term can be broader than
this particular definition.   But, when it goes that broad other terms
are usually used like "stable" or "robust".

 > Basically, I postulate, given the obvious negative features of
 > violence-mediated access to scarce resources, that there exists a more
 > optimal method of mediating that access.  I don't know for sure what
 > it is, but I am interested in thinking about what it might be.
[...]
 > I think that sharing wealth reduces conflict, reduces violence,
 > increases prosperity and health overall, thus reduces population
 > pressure and thus reduces the scarcity of resources which itself
 > reduces conflict.
 > 
 > Seems like a big win for the system as a whole.

Yes.  And again, I agree in principle.  And I'm optimistic about
other forms of resource access mediation.  In fact, I think we have
several already... they're just not as universal as violence and 
money.

The tricky part of the issue lies in the efficient cause of the
_sharing_.  Do we coerce (force, violently make people do stuff) the
populace into sharing their wealth?  If so, how?  By making an agency
like the IRS and threatening a loss of liberty or putting them in
heavy debt to the state if they don't obey?

Or do we rely on anarchy and the compassionate share while others 
hoard?

Or is there a hybrid between those two that would work well?  If so,
where does one draw the lines?

These are all _extremely_ difficult questions.  And I posit that we 
could pay researchers billions and billions of dollars for millions
and millions of years and they'd never come back to us with an answer.

So, we arbitrarily pick some wealth redistribution mechanisms that the
loudest, smartest, richest, most charismatic, ones with the biggest
guns, of us think are the best first choices and we run with those.

Again, putting us right back where we started.

-- 
glen e. p. ropella              =><=                           Hail Eris!
H: 503.630.4505                              http://www.ropella.net/~gepr
M: 971.219.3846                               http://www.tempusdictum.com





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