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The universe also doesn't respect owning property. Saying that an arbitrary collection of atoms (a chair) belongs to another arbitrary collection of atoms (a hu

by Produce 15y ago

The universe also doesn't respect owning property. Saying that an arbitrary collection of atoms (a chair) belongs to another arbitrary collection of atoms (a human) is delusion pure and simple. It's just a delusion that a lot of arbitrary collections of atoms (humans) share.

Helianthus 15y ago
Which, of course, is the whole point: property is an illusion with utility. For physical things like chairs, the concept 'makes sense.' What OP meant by invoking the universe was really to say that _people_ don't respect intellectual property. And if you look closely, people don't respect physical property to an exact degree. We share, we borrow, we lend, we lease, we sometimes treat human work as property, we're generally just lazy with our accounting of ownership. Which, you know, is kinda cool. Anyway, you use the word arbitrary as if the arbitrary nature of the line makes the line meaningless.
- natural219 15y ago
  I think what Produce means to say is that many of our institutions and cultural facets are made up. There is very little natural backing for many of the laws and customs of human society (human rights? ha.) Invoking natural law to make a point about the utility of an abstraction makes no sense in context of all of the other abstractions that we use frequently in our lives (eg, property).
  - Helianthus 15y ago
    But again, that's precisely the whole point. The natural law is whatever we decide it to be. Whereas you say 'made up' with its connotations of fantasy, the 'unreal' nature of our abstractions does not distract from the fact that they're very real in practice. In other words, there is nothing to invoke but natural law; and there is nothing behind natural law. Invoking natural law is _itself_ the means by which natural law gains utility. What laws do you think are real? The only 'real' law is the Sparrow Predicate: what a man can't do, and what a man can do. _Everything else is built upon this._ That is to say, it is distracting and adding nothing sensible to point out that physical property, too, is an abstraction--it is merely an extension of the original point, which is: people don't buy into the intellectual property concept nearly as much as the physical property concept.
  - Produce 15y ago
    Actually, I was making the opposite side of the same point. Personally, I consider the existing abstractions to be as irrational as these new ones. It seems, to me, that people are hugely over-complicating life while arguing that survival is not possible any other way (or that the current way is the best we've got). The simple fact is that we fall prey to fear very often and construct these elaborate schemes to make us feel more secure. It would be more efficient to, as a species, at least make an attempt to face our fears. The issue is that we're biologically wired to survive in an environment of scarcity. We go kind of crazy (in the sense that our ideas do not match reality) when things are abundant.
- randallsquared 15y ago
  The way in which owning a physical thing "makes sense" is that you can defend a physical thing. You can move it to a location that's easier to defend, or build defenses around it, or whatever. Physical property is about defensibility; it's not a metaphor, but a capability. Information-as-property is a metaphor, precisely because defending the part you "own" of (what is otherwise) someone else's computer is so difficult as to be effectively impossible.

by Produce 15y ago

Helianthus 15y ago

Which, of course, is the whole point: property is an illusion with utility. For physical things like chairs, the concept 'makes sense.' What OP meant by invoking the universe was really to say that _people_ don't respect intellectual property. And if you look closely, people don't respect physical property to an exact degree. We share, we borrow, we lend, we lease, we sometimes treat human work as property, we're generally just lazy with our accounting of ownership. Which, you know, is kinda cool. Anyway, you use the word arbitrary as if the arbitrary nature of the line makes the line meaningless.

natural219 15y ago
I think what Produce means to say is that many of our institutions and cultural facets are made up. There is very little natural backing for many of the laws and customs of human society (human rights? ha.) Invoking natural law to make a point about the utility of an abstraction makes no sense in context of all of the other abstractions that we use frequently in our lives (eg, property).
- Helianthus 15y ago
  But again, that's precisely the whole point. The natural law is whatever we decide it to be. Whereas you say 'made up' with its connotations of fantasy, the 'unreal' nature of our abstractions does not distract from the fact that they're very real in practice. In other words, there is nothing to invoke but natural law; and there is nothing behind natural law. Invoking natural law is _itself_ the means by which natural law gains utility. What laws do you think are real? The only 'real' law is the Sparrow Predicate: what a man can't do, and what a man can do. _Everything else is built upon this._ That is to say, it is distracting and adding nothing sensible to point out that physical property, too, is an abstraction--it is merely an extension of the original point, which is: people don't buy into the intellectual property concept nearly as much as the physical property concept.
- Produce 15y ago
  Actually, I was making the opposite side of the same point. Personally, I consider the existing abstractions to be as irrational as these new ones. It seems, to me, that people are hugely over-complicating life while arguing that survival is not possible any other way (or that the current way is the best we've got). The simple fact is that we fall prey to fear very often and construct these elaborate schemes to make us feel more secure. It would be more efficient to, as a species, at least make an attempt to face our fears. The issue is that we're biologically wired to survive in an environment of scarcity. We go kind of crazy (in the sense that our ideas do not match reality) when things are abundant.
randallsquared 15y ago
The way in which owning a physical thing "makes sense" is that you can defend a physical thing. You can move it to a location that's easier to defend, or build defenses around it, or whatever. Physical property is about defensibility; it's not a metaphor, but a capability. Information-as-property is a metaphor, precisely because defending the part you "own" of (what is otherwise) someone else's computer is so difficult as to be effectively impossible.