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The Breeding Exam - what would you put on it?

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11:27 / 25.04.03

I'm a pessimist by that distinction, but would take issue with the loaded terminology. I don't think humanity or the world is 'Bad' or 'Good' but in my experience people are mostly stupid and lazy. It's not that only a few (the elite) are NOT these things, but that everybody is mostly stupid and lazy. Everyone does stupid things, everyone is prone to laziness occasionally- that has to be taken into account.
The best system is one in which the 'right' or 'best' thing to do is also the easiest. If the path of least resistance is to do the right thing, no problem. If you are relying on people to put themselves out (considerably in leapworld) to maintain a system, it will fail.
I'm all for personal autonomy, and that flourishes best in a civilised society. For me civilisation implies constraints we willingly accept in order to benefit from others accepting them.
I'm a bit Hobbesian I admit (social contract, life of man in the state of nature is poor, nasty, brutish and short etc) but I think society is like a vastly complex game of Prisoner's Dilemma- it's all about trust.
Leap, you are positing a world where the community is small enough so that everybody knows each other and thus know who they can trust, but the same problems arise in a small society as in a big society- misbehaviour, perceived injustice, feeling constrained, communal services etc. (admittedly huge societies have problems small communities don't but the converse is also true)
There is no way to stop a community growing without introducing some form of eugenics or a breeding exam (to briefly loop past the topic abstract) or otherwise infringing on freedom, which means communities will grow, which leads to the situation we have today.
What I'm saying is Leaptopia is unstable, and will become something else. Because I'm a pessimist.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:39 / 25.04.03

Well, Leap, such as pretty much everything Lurid Archive, Kit-Cat Club and various others have said, not to mention my lengthy and as yet unanswered post. I'm trying not to see this as impoliteness, but the only way to do that is to assume that you actually lack the rods and cones that make other people see arguments.

Your "I suppose it's about optimists and pessimists" statement utterly ignores almost everything that has been said since, in fact, your point-by-point about two pages ago. Clearly people do not agree, because they reject the assumptions on which you base the ideas of optimism and pessimism, or because they find the conclusions you draw untenable. Read the thread, see the dissenting opinions, respond to them with thought, without simple repetition and with fewer exclamation marks, rather than just restating the same if "if x then y" statements over and over again, and maybe people will stop treating you like a rabid and irrational dogmatist.

12:10 / 25.04.03

Haus -

In case you had not noticed, I tend to put more effort into responding to the less abrasive people......

Quantum -

I don't think humanity or the world is 'Bad' or 'Good' but in my experience people are mostly stupid and lazy.

By that I meant that pessimists tend to think that life tends to an imbalance towards suffering and 'downers', and that people are generally incapable (only the elite differ), whilst optimists tend to think that life is biased more towards being ok and that people are generally capable (not needing an elite).

Its a glass-half-full / glass-half-empty thing I guess

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:22 / 25.04.03

You're ducking and covering, Leap. You are also adding nothing. We know that you believe that "good" people do not need government, and therefore that if you believe that people are "good" then they will not need government. Merely repeating this makes it no more convincing. Unless you are defining "abrasive" as "raising any dissent whatsoever", of course, which would explain why you are ignoring everything that people say.

12:31 / 25.04.03

I tend to be an optimist of a sunny disposition, but I still think people are mostly lazy and stupid.
Note "It's not that only a few (the elite) are NOT these things, but that everybody is mostly stupid and lazy. Everyone does stupid things, everyone is prone to laziness occasionally"
There is no special elite, but some people are better at some things than others. Let the musicians make music and the dancers dance.
I'm not a glass half empty person, I'm a why-the-fuck-is-this-glass-not-full-this-is-clearly-not-my-glass-please-take-it-away-and-fill-it-with-absinthe kind of a guy.
And what about "There is no way to stop a community growing without introducing some form of eugenics or a breeding exam (to briefly loop past the topic abstract) or otherwise infringing on freedom, which means communities will grow, which leads to the situation we have today. What I'm saying is Leaptopia is unstable, and will become something else" How do you have a stable leaptopia without a breeding exam? Plague and famine as population restrictors?

12:43 / 25.04.03

Quantum -

And what about "There is no way to stop a community growing without introducing some form of eugenics or a breeding exam (to briefly loop past the topic abstract) or otherwise infringing on freedom, which means communities will grow, which leads to the situation we have today. What I'm saying is Leaptopia is unstable, and will become something else" How do you have a stable leaptopia without a breeding exam? Plague and famine as population restrictors?

We already have an unstable population so this needs dealing with whatever happens.....that said: By decentralising society food production would be reduced, so that poeple would have to control their own birth rate to suit the (then stable) food levels instead of this lunacy of constantly seeking higher yields.............

12:43 / 25.04.03

Modesty and self-restraint, Quantum. Please, do pay attention.

12:47 / 25.04.03

MJ - 12 -

You would perfere what?

Option 1: Enforcement (the numbers 1 9 8 and 4 spring to mind)

Option 2: Unrestricted population growth (the number 10,000,000,000 springs to mind!!!)

12:57 / 25.04.03

excluded middle

13:03 / 25.04.03

pardon?

13:06 / 25.04.03

he means he wants option 1.5

13:11 / 25.04.03

..and I suggest the only way people will willingly control the population is if they have assurances everyone else will too. People are unwilling to make sacrifices if it makes them feel they are at a relative disadvantage- makes you feel like a sucker. Like you and benefit scroungers, imagine if we were having this discussion in Leaptopia about someone who was having a big family. Why should we restrain our breeding if they're not? It only takes one person not to be restrained and the whole edifice collapses.
What will happen is Famine, which while it will control the population has the side effects of war and crime, and the wrong type of anarchy. Self restraint can fuck off while one is fighting for food for one's children.

13:21 / 25.04.03

Why should we restrain our breeding if they're not? It only takes one person not to be restrained and the whole edifice collapses.

Hence my reliance on education rather than force - change the hearts and minds (soft measure

) as that is the key (not to perfection, but to better than this).

As for version 1.5 any suggestions what it would be?

We either restrain ourselves, have others restrain us, or not be restrained..........anyone see an opening for another option?!!!!!!

13:25 / 25.04.03

I think I need to give this a break now. It has been interesting, but I don't think that leap is really able to understand dissent and hence one can't really engage with him. The binary oppposites "good" or "evil", "optimist" or "pessimist" are straight out of Donnie Darko and I have wondered at times whether he was just taking the piss. All that talk of morality for someone who thinks slappers and the jobless should be left to starve and that lynch mobs are the ideal form of justice to control a forcible population reduction. Chilling.

13:26 / 25.04.03

I think I need to give this a break now. It has been interesting, but I don't think that leap is really able to understand dissent and hence one can't really engage with him. The binary oppposites "good" or "evil", "optimist" or "pessimist" are straight out of Donnie Darko and I have wondered at times whether he was just taking the piss. All that talk of morality for someone who thinks slappers and the jobless should be left to starve and that lynch mobs are the ideal form of justice to control a forcible population reduction. Chilling.

13:27 / 25.04.03

May I suggest that in fact in countries with good education and health systems the birth-rate is in fact low; many European countries have stable populations, and some even have declining birth-rates and falling populations. Surely, given this, it is better to attempt to raise levels of education and health in countries with high birth-rates? (This is, of course, not feasible under Leap's system; he's already admitted that health and education provision would decline in quality, I think).

13:36 / 25.04.03

Lurid -

If you are going to tell people what I say, do try to be accurate.

The only ones who should be left to starve are those who refuse to work, or who use children as welfare cheques - the rest is a matter of personal charity to give what you can afford to those you can see are not the above, rather than have a centralised system that is easier to abuse (bureaucrats are easy to fool with the right bit of paper), discourages personal acts of charity, often gives regardless of the above measure of character, and takes regardless of our ability to afford such.....................

Now answer that if you will instead of claiming to accurately represent what I have said (or will this just be altered by you or Haus and waved up as something it is not)?

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:42 / 25.04.03

So, the "lazy" or "those who use children as welfare cheques" should starve. Others may starve, depending on the amount of spare capital sloshing around in that community to be assigned?

I think the worst thing any critic of your policies could do is represent them accurately...

13:46 / 25.04.03

Others may starve, depending on the amount of spare captial sloshing around in that community to be assigned?

Is that really so different to here/now?

15:52 / 25.04.03

Lurid: it's very much a roleplayer's - sorry, historical re-enacter's - view of Ye Olde Englande Howe She Shouldde Be (and if I ruled the world, every day would be the first day of June). Leap is unable to define his terms, so arguing with him is like punching marshmallow. You need to take a break.

16:13 / 25.04.03

Ganesh, you are so very right. I think the combination of my natural (ha!) obsessiveness and outrage at what leap was saying kept me going much longer than was worthwhile. I'm over it now. Honest.

Regrettable Juvenilia

16:14 / 25.04.03

Can I just say, Leap, that to myself as primarily an observer rather than a participant of this thread, Lurid's summary of your position seems entirely accurate? I doubt I am the only person who feels this way.

rat did an excellent job of summing up why I don't feel able to participate in this thread a few pages back - put simply, the implications of LeapWorld produce an emotional reaction akin to a red mist - and I sympathise with Lurid for growing weary after a valiant and indeed often very conciliatory effort at intelligent discussion.

One thing I would like to add is: Leap, Lurid has mentioned many times the idea of conflict of interest, as a reason why crime may occur without people being "good" or "evil". Let's use an example. Say that I have a teenage daughter, and I discover that she has been meeting with and may have been having sexual relations with a young man. I feel strongly that this is both indecent and immodest (no daughter of mine is going to be a feckless slapper), and impose a curfew, denying her from leaving the house. She feels this is a violation of her rights. One day, I return home from a hard day's farming my own crops to find her and the young man loading her possessions into the back of his car. I ask them to cease this course of action. They refuse. I attempt to remove my daughter's possessions from the young man's vehicle, and a scuffle ensues. We both draw our melee weapons...

...Now, violence is about to occur. Who will be the 'criminal', and who the 'victim'? How would such a conflict of interests be resolved in LeapWorld, or would it simply not arise as a result of EDUCATION?

17:39 / 25.04.03

It your teenage daughter is a child still, then her boyfriend is in the wrong. If she is past being a child then you are in the wrong for using force to control her. Such it the price we parents pay; we may have to see our child do something we disagree with but we must respect their right to do it and live with the consequences (unless they are actually being a danger to others, in which case it is our duty to prevent them from doing so). If you do not want to make that decisions do not have children.

21:06 / 25.04.03

Sorry, Leap, I know you have a lot of people posting at you and you can only get to them one at a time, but in what way is 'you're either an optimist or a pessimist' an answer to the objections I raised? What have I misinterpreted about your proposals? What part of the post was an unreasonable extrapolation from the positions you have adopted? What makes certain services different in that they may be delegated to others (whether a perceived elite or no) where some aspects of modern life (a police force, a nation state, an army an exchequer e.t.c.) are an imposition? How can the break-up (if not break down) of modern society you advocate lead to anything other than the abandoning of millenia of human development and a return to universal subsistance living?

I have made a care to avoid all rhetorical flourishes, ad hominem attacks and my natural sarcasm. I appreciate I cannot demand an instant response, but I would be grateful if you could explain the reasoning that leads you to believe this is not an inevitable result of Leaptopia. Oh, and if you could do so without using the words 'natural', 'modest', 'privicy' or 'lunacy' I would be much obliged.

Or am I on your list of the rude to ignore?

21:24 / 25.04.03

Essentially, what we're confronting here is a philosophical divide between pragmatism and moralism.

The libertarian position is, at heart, wholly pragmatic. It says You can't save everyone, and you shouldn't even try. The socialist position is wholly moral, saying You've got to try, using any means necessary.

These are extreme, polar arguments, and only make sense if you argue from their strengths.

When socialists make claims for the practical superiority of the socialist system—"The productivity and efficiency of our 30-hour-workweek-100% guaranteed-lifetime-employment Worker's Paradise is unparalleled! No, really! Stop snickering!"—they sound ridiculous.

Just the same, the libertarian position inevitably comes off the worst when you try to claim that it's morally preferable to let poor people die of hunger.

We're on opposite sides of an irreconcilable philosophical divide, my friends, that no amount of reasoned argument is going to bridge.

Or unreasoned argument, either.

Time to hang it up and go to bed, folks.

21:43 / 25.04.03

I get that, Jack. I know that Leap and I will never see the world the same way. I'm just trying to understand what he's putting forward. Every time I think I've got a handle on it, his vision seems to broaden and encompass more. I'm fascinated by an outlook that appears to be so antithical to my own. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm not looking to win or convert, merely to comprehend.

Regrettable Juvenilia

23:05 / 25.04.03

It your teenage daughter is a child still, then her boyfriend is in the wrong. If she is past being a child then you are in the wrong for using force to control her.

Who decides at what age she stops being a child (presumably not the state - that would be an imposition)? On what basis is this decision made? Is there really no middle ground?

07:59 / 26.04.03

Firstly, Orr, I have not forgotten you and will try to get back to you later (it is my birthday today so I do not intend to spend it all on this damn

board)

Secondly, Flyboy -

Who decides at what age she stops being a child (presumably not the state - that would be an imposition)? On what basis is this decision made? Is there really no middle ground?

We do, through discussion with our communities. That is life (or are you proposing a need for a state to answer all the difficult questions in life for you?).

Jack Fear -

We're on opposite sides of an irreconcilable philosophical divide, my friends, that no amount of reasoned argument is going to bridge.

Or unreasoned argument, either.

Time to hang it up and go to bed, folks.

It is a matter of seeking morality in commonality rather than universality (the latter eventually leading to such things as bacteria being given the same value/treatment as humans, when taken to its logical extreme)............

I think you may be right though (although I will seek to address Orr's points later for the sake of discussion)

Nietzsch E. Coyote

08:28 / 26.04.03

We do, through discussion with our communities. That is life (or are you proposing a need for a state to answer all the difficult questions in life for you?).

Congratulations your community just became a state.

10:07 / 26.04.03

Nope, it remained a community (advisory) not a state (mandatory).

Tryphena Absent

11:31 / 26.04.03

But an advisory state means that the daughter could remain a child at the age of 45.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:41 / 26.04.03

Yeah, if the community decides who's in the right in the proposed scenario vis a vis age, then would "But it was only advice!!!" count as a defence when your neighbours killed you?

12:06 / 26.04.03

Anna -

But an advisory state means that the daughter could remain a child at the age of 45.

Anna, if the father recognises the commonality of humanity between himself and his daughter, the common human nature they both share as human beings (a recognition that is generally only denied in cases of a society encouraging immaturity in its general populace (and thus arguing for an elite to guide them) and thus a denial that would be contrary to my whole idea of people being allowed and encouraged to actually "grow up" and become fully adult through being fully responsible (rather than relying on said elite)), he will apply rules to her that would essentially match the ones he applies to himself (sort of "do unto others...").

Mao -

Yeah, if the community decides who's in the right in the proposed scenario vis a vis age, then would "But it was only advice!!!" count as a defence when your neighbours killed you?

Only in a stupid society (as these people will be setting the same standards for themselves to be treated by).

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:21 / 26.04.03

Not to mention that, in general, the argument between protective father and boyfriend might have a greater chance of a comparatively happy resolution if, in the heat of the moment, neither had access either to a shotgun or a +2 Vorpal Blade.

Jack:

Essentially, what we're confronting here is a philosophical divide between pragmatism and moralism.

I think this is not entirely accurate. Partly because "I believe morally" and "I believe pragmatically" are both, in essence, ways of saying "I like". The idea that "pragmatism" is based on a set of self-evident rational precepts is dubious at best.

Further, to describe Leaptopia as in any sense pragmatic is questionable - it seems reasonably clear that it would make life both generally and individually far less pleasant, except for a small section of the population currently not very well off, resentful about the levels of taxation they are suffering, and skilled with melee weapons. That is, Leap. In that sense, it's a highly pragmatic system, if the pragma in question is Leap's happiness and personal fulfilment. On the other hand, and given the ruinous effect on the section of the populus we shall for the sake of convenience call "not-Leap", we should perhaps look at the deeply-held moral convictions that underpin Leaptopia - a belief in the basic goodness and self-sufficiency of mankind, a distrust of central government, a dislike both of taxation and the use of taxation to support the "feckless", and a profound annoyance that all that training with broadswords that the Flagon and Weasel Historical Reenactment and Real Ale Tasting Society does not currently provide an advantage in everyday life.

13:25 / 26.04.03

Not to mention that, in general, the argument between protective father and boyfriend might have a greater chance of a comparatively happy resolution if, in the heat of the moment, neither had access either to a shotgun.

In which case let us castrate every man, and only allow him to be reconnected through a licencing procedure, because lets face it....in the heat of the moment every man could be a rapist!!!!!!!!! [shock horror]!

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