DataPacRat's Warren

Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

One of the basic ways we try to change others’ behaviour is through condemning some actions and praising others. There are many ways to do both—including offering awards. One of the more important actions that we libertarians would seem to find praiseworthy, is disobeying an immoral command.

How many militaries have medals awarded specifically for refusing orders?

Is there any reason that we can’t start offering our own awards for such? (For example, how hard is it to find out about actions worthy of receiving it?)

Or, maybe, we could establish a pattern, which anyone could then order from a 3D printer and give away themselves. For example, in Russell’s classic story “… And Then There Were None” is the ‘weapon’, described thus: “a small, shiny plaque … an oblong strip of substance resembling ivory. One side was polished and bare. The other bore three letters deeply engraved in bold style: F.—I.W.” As we’re not used to the initial-slang, it might be better to write it in full: ‘Freedom—I won’t!’.

Does anything of the sort sound like something worth trying?

Thank you for your time,

Addendum:

Zazzle doesn’t seem to do oblong plaques; but these might do as reasonable starts for present-day replacements:

Button

Keychain

Letters from Neale Osborn and DataPacRat

Re: “Libertarian Law: The “Even If” Principle” by DataPacRat

You asserted in the issue of TLE of 1-8-12 that because governments abuse copyright laws to censor people, that it follows that copyright MUST be fully opposed. I must disagree. Copyright LAWS must be opposed, but copyrights, in and of themselves, must not only be supported, they must be vigorously and totally supported by each and every one of us, to the best of our ability. It is governments, not copyrights, that are in the wrong.

I agree that we, as Libertarians, must accept the downsides of supporting personal freedoms. I can’t count the number of times I’ve defended my stance that Social Security MUST be abolished, Welfare ended, Food Stamps stamped out, etc, without counting the short term costs. On SSI only, I have repeatedly advocated killing it for anyone not already on it or within 10 years of being on it. Being sold a bill of goods, and having no time to prepare to retire, we can’t just tell them to starve. But the rest of us must write off the thefts we experienced so far, accept the reduced thefts we will experience to finish off this system, and get on with life. This makes me evil. I understand that.

Copyright must be enforced by any means necessary. I prefer lawsuits to police actions. But enforce them we must. An artist labors to create his art, be it a painting, a sculpture, or a book. Whether his book is a dry tome teaching accountancy or a rip-roaring space adventure, he invested pieces of his life in that endeavor. He has the right to whatever compensation he may finagle. And NO ONE, NO WHERE, has the right, FOR ANY REASON, to steal portions of that life.

If we want artists to continue to produce their arts for us, we must support their OWNERSHIP of these arts. We must join to stomp out any theft of their works, and we must ALSO stomp out any abuses of copyright laws while working towards eliminating the laws and instilling a truly civil, individual, and private enterprise method of protecting the artist’s rights.

Do not stop fighting for rights, you have inspired me in many ways. But on this one, we must, respectfully, be at odds. For now, at least!

To put things in your own words (with a wry grin on my lips and no evil in my heart) EVEN IF the government uses copyright laws to censor or abuse others, we must not let that detract from enslaving artists, authors, and others who produce intellectual properties. And laboring, with others taking the results of that labor without just compensation AS DETERMINED BY THE PRODUCER is slavery.

Neale Osborn
nealebooks@hotmail.com

Reply from DataPacRat

Thank you for the polite and thoughtful response. Depending on how you want to proceed, this rational debate flowchart might offer some handy ground rules for discussion. A related thought is this quote:

“If you’re interested in being on the right side of disputes, you will refute your opponents’ arguments. But if you’re interested in producing truth, you will fix your opponents’ arguments for them. To win, you must fight not only the creature you encounter; you must fight the most horrible thing that can be constructed from its corpse.”
—Black Belt Bayesian

I am not necessarily intrinsically opposed to the idea of copyright itself… as long as the laws regarding it remain within certain limits. For example, in the “Even If” article, I already mentioned that I’m still all for the part of copyright called ‘moral rights’, if not necessarily the monetary rights. And at [this PDF document] , especially pages 26-29, is an analysis of the benefits of copyright; wherein, even when every aspect is tilted to favour longer copyrights, the optimal duration is found to be no longer than 14 years, and more likely less. If it were possible to maintain a copyright system which kept to such a duration and no longer, I would consider that to be a point in favour of keeping copyrights; however, as far as I can tell, once it becomes in the best interest of even a few people to extend copyright duration, they will have an incentive to lobby their government to do so; and since the out-of-pocket harm done to any particular individual of an extended copyright is so small, the opposition to such an extension will be small, diffuse, disorganized, and no match for the copyright expansionists. This would imply that, in general, copyrights will expand beyond the limits at which they create benefit; and observation of copyright systems over the past few centuries shows that to be exactly what has happened. Therefore, even if I were to grant your point that copyright is necessary to spur the creation of new works, the harm done to me and you and all other members of the public by keeping all those works out of the public domain (that is, restricting our rights to free speech, such as to make derivative works) heavily outweighs the benefits to the authour when such a copyright system is in place.

As you might guess, I’m not necessarily going to grant you that particular point, either. Naturally, if a different form of copyright (or none) is in place, then the economic incentives will differ, and authours and artists will tend to produce different kinds of work—but that doesn’t mean that in the absence of copyright, no new work will be created. I could point to various historical episodes of ‘pirate nations’, but even in the present, we have several interesting data points. To pick a few, Cory Doctorow, webcomics such as Penny Arcade, FanFiction.net, and work released under the the “Creative Commons” license (or related open source equivalents, such as the Firefox browser I’m typing this email out within). In such cases, the work is released for the public to read freely, without the audience having to pay any copyright licensing fees to read the work; and yet, that’s what the authour chooses to do anyway. In the cases of Doctorow and many webcomics, the creators even find ways to monetize their work without relying on copyright, and thrive and prosper.

And even if I were to grant your points about the value to authours of copyright… yet another hurdle needs to be overcome: demonstrating that said authours’ profit is more important than the rights of freedom of thought and freedom of speech are to everybody. From just one angle, part of my current thoughts on ethics are still well-described by the first two pages of the “Rationality Matters” comic, viewable at [this link] ; it’s vital to the survival of sapience itself that we try to arrange matters to maximize the number of new ideas being generated—even if the social system which causes that to happen happens not to maximize the profit any particular artist can derive from any particular art they create. I have seen great piles of evidence that copyrights and patents are used to slow down other peoples’ creation of new ideas; I have yet to see any significant evidence that a lack of copyright would slow down such creation. From another perspective, if the only way to ensure the general public has an appropriate level of freedom of speech is to minimize current copyright laws to something more reasonable than “life of the authour plus 70 years”, the nature of the forces pushing to maximize copyright are so extensive, so wealthy, so good at manipulating politicians, that trying to push for anything other than the absolute minimal copyright possible (including none at all) is like tying one hand behind your back in a boxing match with Godzilla.

With all that said, I’m entirely willing to be persuaded that my current opposition to copyright is mistaken—but that’s only likely to happen if the would-be persuader understands not just what my position is, but the reasoning I took to get to it. If, then, they can create a tower of logic that is sounder than the one I’m currently at the top of, one whose foundations can’t be knocked aside as easily, then (to mix a metaphor) I’ll jump ship and surrender to the better truth as fast as I can. That said, an attempt to persuade me which mentions only the benefits to the authour of a work being in copyright, and neglects to take into consideration the benefit to everyone of a work being in the public domain; or suggests that making a copy of an artist’s work is stealing from the artist, without mentioning that increasing the length of copyright steals part of the public domain from everyone; is unlikely to have given the matter enough thought to create such an edifice of reason. But I’ve been mistaken before and I’ll be mistaken again, so I’m quite willing to argue the matter. (At least for a while; eventually, I’ll find it more productive to argue about other topics.)

And since I have my quotefile open in another tab, here’s a couple of relevant thoughts worth considering:

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”
—Jefferson

“There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.”
—Heinlein

Thank you for your time,

DataPacRat
datapacrat@gmail.com

Neale Osborn Replied:

Well, you certainly gave me food for thought. While I mull it over and determine if I’m gonna leap to YOUR ship or help you over the gunnels of MINE I must ask you one question for YOU to mull over. Why do you want to limit the author’s rights to ANY time limit. Letting the copyright expire with the author isn’t even a good thing (I think).

Let me use one of my favorite authors. Louis L’Amour, for an example. With the exception of his earliest magazine stories, his sole publisher was Bantam Books. Louis owned the rights to his books, he never sold them. As he got older, and had over 100 books in print, he neglected to renew the copyrights on several of his books. Another publisher, realizing this, legally printed copies of approximately 10 of his books. They ALSO hunted down earlier versions of several of his books that he allowed the copyright to expire on, since he’d corrected certain errors in the latest copyrighted version. And they bought the originals af several stories from several magazines that he’d sold the rights to, and issued “new Louis L’Amour books”. Now he acknowledged their right to do the final thing, and put out his OWN collections with added material to get his fans to NOT buy the “knockoffs” But on the other books, he actually had to fight in court to get the right to continue to publish several of his own books BECAUSE the other publisher had copyrighted them. Now, I don’t exactly know how to prevent this, but I know it was wrong for them to be allowed to do it to him. Just because a copyright of 14 years seems to be some “agreed on lifespan” for a copyright, WHY does it matter how it benefits society? What matter is how the author is benefitted by his work.

Maybe I want to write a new Win Bear novel, and Neil hasn’t written one in 14 years. Does that give me the right to take HIS NAC world and write what I want without his permission? I’m asking, NOT arguing. I think we can come to some sort of meeting of the minds, even if that meeting is a meeting to agree to disagree! have a great day, it’ll probably be a few days before I get back to you!

As a side-note- see Spider Robinson’s short story entitled “Melancholy Elephants” in a collection of the same name—it deals specifically and interestingly with this topic. I intend to find my copy and re-read it asap. It might have some bearing on this discussion. It was dealing with why copyrights absolutely CANNOT be forever!

Neale Osborn

DataPacRat Replied:

I’m about to head to bed; but as a quick reference to a decent set of answers, I can recommend that as a place to start learning about the arguments of both sides, you take a look at [this], especially the links in the footnotes.

Also, Spider Robinson has put “Melancholy Elephants” up for free reading at [his website] .

An article has just filtered into my newsfeeds, in which the previous head of the Swedish Pirate Party recently posted an article covering the anti-copyright side’s points. (I’m somewhat surprised to see that Nina Paley, creator of the movie “Sita Sings the Blues” (available for free download), is one of the first commenters.)

Thank you for your time,

DataPacRat

Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
—H. L. Mencken

One of the trickier lessons of liberty is that it’s opponents aren’t always complete idiots.

If an authoritarian tries to pass a law increasing their authority at the expense of civil liberties, it would be so much easier to oppose if such a naked power-grab was the only justification for it. Unfortunately, any such law that has a chance of being passed, and thus needs to be fought against, will also come along with some appealing justification for it, such as promoting decency, providing security for the homeland, or the perennial favorite, protecting the children. Most often, those who support the law really do believe that they’re trying to do good.

There is one single reason to oppose such laws – but it’s a form of reasoning that has often fallen by the wayside, especially when ‘news’ agencies try to drum up sales by turning every issue into a battle between two equal sides. And that is that even if the reasons given are good goals, and even if the law will accomplish those goals, then the harms done to the basic civil liberties that allow society to function mean that those laws should be opposed by whatever means are available.

Libertarians do apply this principle regularly in some cases, particularly when fighting restrictions on the right to self-defense and its corollary, the right to bear arms. Even if keeping kids from shooting themselves is a good goal, and even if limiting citizens’ access to guns would accomplish that, it’s so important that the citizens be able to check government power by having the option to overthrow it if all lesser remedies fail, and such laws inevitably result in such harm being done to that citizen power, that they should be opposed on principle.

However, it appears to be much rarer for the same reasoning to be applied to other fundamental rights. For example, another vital aspect to civil society is for people to be able to say what they think is true, and why, and discuss the merits thereof – including when they think the truth is that their rights are being trampled on by a corporate or government agent. Laws that were passed with the justification of enforcing copyright are now being used to censor such opinions outright, without even the fig-leaf of being applied to copyright violations. Thus, in order to ensure freedom of thought and freedom of speech, such laws need to be opposed, even if enforcing copyright is a good idea and even if such laws accomplish that task.

(On a less firmly-established note, I seem to be developing the notion that the right to life is the primary right from which all other rights derive, and all other rights are subsidiary to it; and that it’s at least arguable that those societies which ensure that all members have equal access to the necessities of life, regardless of economic status, are closer to libertopia than they are attributed in common libertarian opinion. If this line of reasoning holds up, then ensuring that every person enjoys the right to life to the fullest can be sufficient justification to support such a system, even if there are good arguments against it.)

I’m always open to any errors I make being corrected; but until I do figure out where I’m wrong, I have to proceed on the assumption that I’m at least generally right. This makes for a certain mental discomfort, when I find that I’ve worked out an idea that’s contrary to the position of someone whose opinion I highly respect, such as El Neil. I know that the view on copyright here is not the view that he takes – but having seen some of the more egregious examples of valid opinions and important truths being suppressed with the tools developed to support copyright, I find that I simply can’t offer my support for the idea of allowing a government to have the power to create those tools, even if copyright itself is a good idea. I respect the truth, and so I intend to support authors’ moral rights. I respect other people, and so if I make an agreement with them where they assume certain things about copyright, I will try to abide by both spirit and letter of such agreements. And I have enough of a sense of self-preservation to avoid getting myself thrown in jail for flagrantly violating copyright laws (unless I’m engaging in civil disobedience where that’s the whole idea). But until any errors in my reasoning are corrected, I now find myself fully opposed to copyright laws.

Thank you for your time,
References

Cory Doctorow’s recent speech, “The coming war on general computation”
Transcript

EFF’s article “2001 in Review”

Webcomic “Get Your Censor On”

From the Stanford Law Review Online, “Don’t Break the Internet”

The use of copyright tools to censor the Megaupload song, and then censor a news report about the initial censoring, as reported at biongbiong among other places

The article “Copyright Regime vs Civil Liberties”

An article on a blog being censored for over a year with no due process at techdirt.com

Special/Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add “within the limits of the law” because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
—Thomas Jefferson

I’m still thinking, slowly but surely, through what is required to maximize my (and by extension, everyone else’s) liberty. Two facets of the news have recently come to my attention.

One is that after having spent some time subscribed to the National Police Misconduct NewsFeed, my last remaining vestiges of hope in the police as protectors of the innocent have fallen by the wayside. The essential foundation of the rule of law is that all people have the law applied to them equally; however, if a police officer violates my rights, there would seem to be, in practice, no way for me to get redress.

They can buy a ‘tip’ from a known liar about such things, paying him in drugs. They can raid a completely different home than the one in their warrant, terrorizing you even if you’re completely innocent. They can shoot your obviously harmless dog that is running /away/ and poses no actual threat. They can give conflicting orders and require you to obey all of them, and use force against you when you fail to comply with the impossible. They can torture the residents, even to death. They can plant evidence. They can seize (‘steal’) property from anyone who comes into their power, and not return it. If any video of such activities exists, and they get their hands on it, it will mysteriously disappear… and if anything happens other than an internal investigation clearing all officers involved, it is the exception, not the rule.

(Oh, yes—in case you haven’t been watching the news lately, Harper is currently negotiating a new border treaty which will allow squads of American police to operate on Canadian territory, as long as they can claim that at least one Canadian officer was technically in charge of them at the time, meaning that whatever differences may exist between American and Canadian police will soon no longer matter.)

In short, it seems to be an entirely reasonable view that we civilians are effectively under the thumb of a military occupying power—and thus that, wherever possible, we should try to conduct our business without getting the powers-that-be involved at all.

The other facet is that in spite of whatever political disagreements I may have with the Occupy movement, at least one aspect of how they’re trying to put their money where their mouth is should appeal even to ElNeil: in their General Assemblies, they aim for a practice of “one man, one veto”. Any participant who wishes to block a proposal, can. Which leads to a whole host of difficulties, of course, but somehow, they seem to be figuring out how to deal with them.

The former facet has led me to the thought that, whenever possible, liberty-preferring citizens should try to resolve their differences among themselves, rather than through the current official legal system… including preferring going through some form of binding arbitration process rather than the courts.

However, any such arbitration process requires that the participants at least agree to the overall framework, the rules that will apply, even if they end up disagreeing with the outcome. And this seems to be the sticky point. Even full-fledged libertarians who base their political views on entirely rational bases can have some rather fundamental disagreements about certain important aspects. For example, ElNeil and I have fairly wildly diverging viewpoints on copyright—he sees it as a property right about as fundamental as being able to own a knife, while I see it as a government-granted temporary monopoly. It is entirely possible that I might perform an act which ElNeil considers a violation of his rights, which he would want to seek redress for; but unless the two of us are able to come to some agreement about what rules an arbitrator would follow, neither of us would have any signficant incentive to agree to be bound by arbitration we know we wouldn’t win…

…other than the relatively abstract benefits of being able to participate in a dispute-resolution system which avoids the involvement of the occupying powers-that-be.

One approach to solving this would be for each of us to try convincing the other of the logical and rational foundations of our viewpoints. (For example, I have a handy reference demonstrating that the maximum benefit comes from copyright durations of 14 years or less, especially pages 26-29, and could probably be convinced by ElNeil to agree to respect copyrights of that duration.)

But what if such agreement can’t be reached? As in the Occupy movement, any individual involved can veto any arbitration rule they don’t want enforced on them. I’m not entirely sure what a good answer to this problem will be; but after spending a good bit of time thinking hard about it, I have a fairly strong suspicion that at least part of the answer can involve people announcing, beforehand, what standards of behaviour they want to be held to. To let other people know what actions they do not want others committing against them, and thus what actions against they wish to be held accountable for themselves, should they perform them. A sort of cross between a personal legal code, a declaration of principles of honor, and a statement of casus belli. I’ve already published “DataPacRat’s Draft for a Libertarian Compact”—such an announcement would be similar, only going into more detail, enough so that an arbitrator would be able to read it and apply it against the announcer, should a dispute arise. It might also be useful to include additional details such as standards of evidence, nature of recompense, and what should be done when someone has provided very strong evidence from their behaviour that they are likely to infringe on someone’s rights in the future, how to deal with later revised versions—most of the various things a government-provided legal code covers beyond listing actual criminal acts.

If such announcements are made, with at least implicit agreements to accept arbitration that abides by such standards, then that would seem to go a long way to solving the problems of non-governmental arbitration. Not necessarily all of them, but until such time as a full solution is found, a partial solution seems better than none.

I’m currently working up a draft of such an announcement for myself. I’d like to get the first version as good as I can before publicly releasing it, in order to allow as many like-minded libertarians as possible to be able to use it as a base for any similar announcements they wish to make for themselves. If you would like to offer any input, you may, as always, reach me at datapacrat@datapacrat.com.

Thank you for your time.

Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

I haven’t sent any messages recently about the directions my thoughts have taken, so have decided to compile some of the highlights.

My pet SF setting, ‘New Attica’, involves a collection of independent orbital habitats faced against the oligarchies of Earth in a MAD-derived cold war. Only recently, I realized that there’s at least one possible way the independents can end up living their lives in peace without the constant threat of a missile launch from Earth destroying them all: deliberately initiating a Kessler Cascade, creating sufficient chaff in orbit to create a chain reaction of satellites getting turned into junk, until all of LEO is filled with a cloud of fragments whizzing at a dozen miles a second, essentially forming an impenetrable barrier to anyone trying to travel to or from Earth.

While such a plan could save the New Atticans, it would also come at the cost of the thousands of lives of the people in LEO who couldn’t escape, up or down, in time… which led me to consider under what circumstances it would actually be moral to use such a level of force. I was able to resolve this problem by resorting to my “I’m a selfish bastard, but I’m a smart selfish bastard interested in my long-term self-interest” approach, and re-developing the idea of proportionality in the use of force from scratch: I don’t want too many people using excessive force near me where I might end up as an accidental casualty, so it’s in my own general interest to support a system where people use the minimal level of force required to defend themselves. (This minimization being countered by the necessity of using whatever force is required, when force is necessary.)

An additional conclusion is that when someone does use force to defend themselves, in order to use it morally/ethically, an additional necessity is to take responsibility for one’s actions, in all senses of that term; specifically, by informing one’s peers of the act, and not trying to disclaim responsibility for it, or, perhaps worse, hide it. There are several reasons for this, but one that’s sufficient in and of itself is that about the only way to make sure that you’re not going insane without realizing it is to get some external feedback from other people.

* * *Skimming through a present-day criminal code, to see if it could be pared down and simplified to a list of actions even libertarians would agree on as being unethical, I ended up with the same result as when George Carlin took on the Ten Commandments: “Don’t be a dick”.

* * *I’ve spent some time working on my theory of oligarchical politics. (Ie, that there exist some individuals and groups which are roughly equivalent to superpowers, in that they can do whatever they feel like to anyone not on that level and mainly compete among each other; that such oligarchs use somewhat varying strategies to try to gain power over each other; that respecting ordinary peoples’ rights more than other oligarchs puts them at a disadvantage, so they tend to do so to the minimal degree possible.) My newsfeeds gave me a piece of evidence that, while not necessarily supporting this theory, is at least consonant with it: there is a very small group of 147 companies which have interlocking boards and a disproportionate control over the economy. (Googling ‘147 companies’ will give a set of articles on this report, such as [this one].)

* * *Having a great deal of power isn’t necessarily evil in and of itself— compared to a person from a century or millennium ago, I have immense and extraordinary powers. But from my “smart selfish bastard” viewpoint, plus the rule of thumb that in any given interaction I’m probably going to be on the worse end, it becomes somewhat unpleasant to consider that there are a collection of people who could have me killed without any significant consequence to themselves. I’ve gotten used to the idea that anyone who really wants me dead, and is willing to put the effort into it, can kill me; and that there are, in fact, people who really and truly would honestly prefer me dead to alive. (I’ve even exchanged messages with a few—I even tweeted about it, at [this link].) Part of the reason that none of these people have actually carried through on those desires is that they would have to deal with the consequences of doing so, such as dealing with murder charges; this legal system also offers them similar protection from people who might want to kill them, and since most people are more interested in avoiding being killed than in killing others, having the legal system impose such consequences is generally a positive thing all around. … except for those people who have the wealth, power, and resources to avoid legal consequences for their harmful actions. Finding some way to neuter them seems to be the most important political goal of the day, if not the century.

The main part of my own efforts against such people is by using the few tools I have that might be able to get around their massive advantages: my mind, and my keyboard. Specifically, I’ve been trying to work out what is the right thing to do in general. However, I’ve started to come up against the limitations of this technique: even if I do manage to figure out the basic principles and derivations thereof of a true objective morality, and live my life by them… that doesn’t necessarily mean that anyone else is going to. I need to try to figure out not only what is the right thing to do, but how to convince other people that that’s the right thing to do… and, as far as I’ve been able to tell, it’s a Very Difficult Problem to try to persuade anyone of any idea that’s more than one inferential step away from their existing beliefs.

Some people say that if you have the truth on your side, that should be all you need to convince anyone. The fact that the word ‘should’ is in that sentence is probably enough to tell you how wrong it is. There are various techniques that can convince people of an idea regardless of its truth, the epistemological ‘Dark Arts’, and rationalists have learned to dislike them with good reason—but in a conflict where what is true is important, and where the other side doesn’t care about truth, then it may be necessary to start using these Dark Arts out of sheer self-defence.

I wasted a few hours as I considered what it would take for me to become adept enough at persuading others to be able to apply such Dark Arts. (I’m introverted to the extent of being schizoid (which is an entirely different thing from being schizophrenic); in non-psychobabble, I’m happy being a hermit. Learning advanced social skills would be at least as difficult and uncomfortable for me as, say, a featherweight nun trying to teach herself how to face a heavyweight boxer in the ring, sans teacher or coach.) This did help me to realize that this aspect of my personality, which is closely tied to my self-identification as a member of the geek/nerd group, really is a weakness with disadvantages that aren’t necessarily over-weighed by being included in that in-group—that it really would be to my benefit to ‘level-up’ in this area. However, I wasn’t able to figure out any realistic way for me to even start developing in this area…

… and then I nearly face-palmed when I realized—I don’t necessarily have to. I’m not the only fellow traveller heading in at least the same general direction, and if I can find someone else who has the persuasive skills I lack, then all I have to do is help them in supporting their strength, instead of trying to turn my weakest area into one of my strongest.

My most recent thought in this area is the idea of certain ‘gates’ of ideas. That is, there are certain ideas which anyone who has learned enough about rationality shares, though having those ideas isn’t necessarily a guarantee of their rationality. For example, someone who understands the odds of lottery tickets is unlikely to spend much (if any) money on them, so knowing that someone buys such tickets is fairly strong evidence that they haven’t passed through that ‘gate’ of probability theory yet. The list at http://whatstheharm.net/ could make a fairly decent checklist—knowing what anyone things about everything on the topics listed there could give a fairly decent prediction of how they’ll respond to a rational description of an objective truth that few people currently believe, told without use of any of the Dark Arts.

* * *… and that’s about as far as I’ve gotten as of now. If any of the above sounds like I’m going crazy, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know.

Thank you for your time.
DataPacRat my be found online at datapacrat.com