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Wild Ideas

hanson.gmu.edu

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Re: Wild Ideas

#61

Post by Xcelerate »

bumbledraven wrote: post #19

1. Many times each day, your mind permanently splits into different versions that live in different worlds. True. 2. If medicine were taxed so much that people only bought half as much, they would be just as healthy. False. The "extra" spending in medicine drives innovations so we have better drugs & procedures etc. than we would otherwise. 3. If we keep writing down common sense datums until 2100, we can make comput…

> 1. Many times each day, your mind permanently splits into different versions that live in different worlds. True.

The many-worlds interpretation is nonsense. It's not even science. It makes no testable predictions that differ from any of the other interpretations. I've never understood the weird fascination with "many-worlds". Quantum mechanics provides a very clear set of postulates that allow the prediction of various phenomena through mathematical equations -- that's as far as I read into it.

Re: Wild Ideas

#62

Post by xenophanes »

pinchyfingers wrote: post #48
snitko wrote: post #11

The author is obviously some kind of crazy anarchist. Private law system? You mean that all of a sudden people would become customers of multiple legal firms instead of subjects of one big system and will be able to choose laws they like while at the same time not interfering directly with others who chose different laws? You mean that all of a sudden majority would lose its power to dictate minorities how to live th…

[Edit: Self-righteous anger caused me to stop reading parent post mid-way through and start replying furiously. Nothing to see here.] Crazy anarchist. Because there have been no extremely intelligent, logical, level-headed and productive people who are also anarchists. Start with this guy and get back to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard If you said "crazy statist" I could maybe agree, since statism i…

While there are level-headed anarchists (e.g. William Godwin), Rothbard is a terrible example. He was an anti-semite and thought children were property. He wrote a letter to Ayn Rand about his serious psychological problems.

Re: Wild Ideas

#63

Post by tedsanders »

aasarava wrote: post #13

#2, about health insurance, overlooks a big part of the RAND HIE's findings: people who were sick and poor in the study did have worse health outcomes.

To be fair, their outcomes were not much worse.

Re: Wild Ideas

#64

Post by ckuehne »

aasarava wrote: post #13

#2, about health insurance, overlooks a big part of the RAND HIE's findings: people who were sick and poor in the study did have worse health outcomes.

The overall result, namely, that at the margin medicine has net-negative effects (i.e., after a certain point more medicine equals worse health) has been replicated many times. See for example this meta-study from 2008 about what happens when health workers go on strike [1]:

"[..] mortality either stayed the same or decreased during, and in some cases, after the strike. [No study] found that mortality increased during the weeks of the strikes compared to other time periods."

The authors speculate about the reasons: "The paradoxical finding that physician strikes are associated with reduced mortality may be explained by several factors. Most importantly, elective surgeries are curtailed during strikes. Further, hospitals often re-assign scarce staff and emergency care was available during all of the strikes."

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18849101

EDIT: clarity

Re: Wild Ideas

#65

Post by GuiA »

bumbledraven wrote: post #33
IvyMike wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> False - to run simulate sentient beings with so much suffering would be cruel. I see you've never searched youtube for "The Sims".

I didn't realize the Sims were sentient.

Maybe whoever is running the simulation isn't aware you are, either.

Re: Wild Ideas

#66

Post by Houshalter »

unimpressive wrote: post #53
pinchyfingers wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Edit: Self-righteous anger caused me to stop reading parent post mid-way through and start replying furiously. Nothing to see here.] Crazy anarchist. Because there have been no extremely intelligent, logical, level-headed and productive people who are also anarchists. Start with this guy and get back to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard If you said "crazy statist" I could maybe agree, since statism i…

Since we're now on the subject. I notice that there seems to be a very high turnover of young people from the various forms of anarchism as they get older. Would anybody who fits this description like to elaborate on why that happened? Found a convincing argument? General disillusionment with humanity?

I was an anarcho-capitalist for awhile. I thought it was the perfect system. There would be absolutely no incentives to do bad things. Anything a government could do, could in theory be done by a voluntary system if enough people agreed it was a good idea or it was a benefit to them to do so.

But I no longer think it's a perfect system. People don't behave like perfect rational market actors, there are edge cases like natural monopolies where normal market mechanisms don't lead to the best outcome, and then there is just enforcing altruism (like looking out for animal rights or children's rights, who couldn't buy legal services under this system, or redistributing income so you don't end up with people starving to death or in poverty.)

Of course the current system we have is so far from a perfect system it makes these problems seem trivial. But at least it seems ok and generally stable, whereas what would happen in an anarcho-capitalist world is a complete unknown.

There still might be a near-perfect system. Robin Hanson's ideas on prediction markets for making policy decisions might be a huge improvement, at least in some areas, and a semi-private legal system for some things might work. And I think libertarian policies in general are better.

Re: Wild Ideas

#67

Post by Gormo »

snowwrestler wrote: post #34
snitko wrote: post #11

The author is obviously some kind of crazy anarchist. Private law system? You mean that all of a sudden people would become customers of multiple legal firms instead of subjects of one big system and will be able to choose laws they like while at the same time not interfering directly with others who chose different laws? You mean that all of a sudden majority would lose its power to dictate minorities how to live th…

The strongest argument against private law is that that is how law used to operate, and our ancestors deemed it so unworkable that they invented the system of open public law we know today.

Whether or not something is "workable" depends entirely on what it is you want it to do. The questions are which of our ancestors deemed polycentric law "unworkable", and why. The fact that something was done doesn't mean it was done for the right reason, or that it had, on the whole, beneficial effects.

Re: Wild Ideas

#68

Post by hakan »

unimpressive wrote: post #57
jjoe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the "info" is in the heart... And for those who downvoted, you need to read more about the functions of the heart besides blood pumping. The heart has neurons too and an electromagnetic field far stronger than the brain's. Update: some links The little brain on the heart: http://www.ccjm.org/content/74/Suppl_1/S48.full.pdf Does changing the heart mean changing personality? A retrospective inquiry on 47 heart…

Then exactly what would the brain be doing? Then how come when you poke around the brain it changes peoples behaviors? How come people who get a heart transplant don't become different people?

https://www.google.com/search?q=heart+transplant+food+cravin...

Re: Wild Ideas

#69

Post by kamaal »

snowwrestler wrote: post #34
snitko wrote: post #11

The author is obviously some kind of crazy anarchist. Private law system? You mean that all of a sudden people would become customers of multiple legal firms instead of subjects of one big system and will be able to choose laws they like while at the same time not interfering directly with others who chose different laws? You mean that all of a sudden majority would lose its power to dictate minorities how to live th…

The strongest argument against private law is that that is how law used to operate, and our ancestors deemed it so unworkable that they invented the system of open public law we know today.

Private law does/did work for nearly all definitions of 'workable'. Heck it was more scalable than the current system of law. In India private law is/was pretty common even until now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gram_panchayat , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panchayati_raj

The only real problem with this kind of a set up is, systems by and large become culture centric. And this leads to medieval mindsets. Stuff like banning couples from having falling in love or having a love marriage, or laws against polygamy, support for child marriage, unfair treatment to widows, honor killings ... stuff like that.

There are also some extreme cases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khap

Where does this leave us? Despite all their flaws(basically their own definitions of morality and thereby their own laws based on that) these sort of systems are the easiest and cheapest way of resolving a dispute with a very high rate of acceptable justice. Which continues be the case in many places in India today.

Re: Wild Ideas

#70

Post by babesh »

quink wrote: post #14
foxylad wrote: post #6

Migration to millions of star systems in 10,000 years? Speed of light says NO.

You don't seem to get what the speed of light is. The speed of light isn't the problem. Acceleration, time dilation and deceleration are. But barring the g-forces and enough of an engine we could travel to Alpha Centauri in less than 4 years, which may surprise you. Although that would be less than 4 spaceship years, not less than 4 Earth years.

If you could transmit sentience via light you won't have any issues at all.
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