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I wish the people who wrote about this stuff valued precision in their language. Of course if they did, then it would open the nonsense that they spout to criti

by ouid 5y ago

I wish the people who wrote about this stuff valued precision in their language. Of course if they did, then it would open the nonsense that they spout to criticism. > The ultimate in democracy, in the sense of a positive-sum maximization of individual agency and control over their lives to the greatest extent possible short of anyone’s agency infringing on anyone else’s, is universal consent of the governed. And in this sense, a permissionless, stigmergic organization, in which all individual activity is self-chosen, is the ultimate in democracy. What on earth are the assumptions and conclusions here? What is the mechanism of inference? Maybe this person should spend some time trying to formalize their beliefs.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago
Yeah. Pro-anarchists seem to do mental gymnastics to validate their beliefs. On a long enough timeline an anarchist society would necessarily become democratic.
justicezyx 5y ago
I don't even follow this sentence after reading a few times...
- Waterluvian 5y ago
  Yeah. It’s word soup to me. If an idea is a good one it’s usually possible to describe it in very plain language.
kragen 5y ago
What are you having trouble with in this passage? It seems straightforward to me. Maybe if I restate it as the contrapositive it will be clearer: any rule imposed on someone without their consent reduces their agency and control over their lives, although if their agency was infringing on someone else's, that rule might increase that other person's agency by a greater amount. That seems so straightforward as to be almost tautological. You could maybe criticize it for speaking in abstractions that are open to misinterpretation instead of parables, but parables are notoriously imprecise, so your criticism would seem to be the opposite. There's a little bit of conflict between the two sentences you quoted, in the sense that the second sentence doesn't explicitly take into account this possibility of one person's agency infringing on another's, but if there's an unstated assumption that imposing activity, as opposed to forbearance from activity, is never necessary to prevent that kind of interference, that would clean it up nicely. The overarching theme in the passage you've quoted, as in the whole essay, is that there's an inherent tension between democracy and coercion; the employment of coercion endangers (Kevin's definition of) democracy at best, destroys it at worst. Is that of any help? I'm kind of shooting in the dark here, since I don't understand the root of the difficulty, so it's possible that my explanations are just as opaque to you as the original text. Can you elaborate a little bit on what part you're having a hard time understanding?

by ouid 5y ago

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

Yeah. Pro-anarchists seem to do mental gymnastics to validate their beliefs. On a long enough timeline an anarchist society would necessarily become democratic.

justicezyx 5y ago

I don't even follow this sentence after reading a few times...

Waterluvian 5y ago
Yeah. It’s word soup to me. If an idea is a good one it’s usually possible to describe it in very plain language.

kragen 5y ago

What are you having trouble with in this passage? It seems straightforward to me. Maybe if I restate it as the contrapositive it will be clearer: any rule imposed on someone without their consent reduces their agency and control over their lives, although if their agency was infringing on someone else's, that rule might increase that other person's agency by a greater amount. That seems so straightforward as to be almost tautological. You could maybe criticize it for speaking in abstractions that are open to misinterpretation instead of parables, but parables are notoriously imprecise, so your criticism would seem to be the opposite. There's a little bit of conflict between the two sentences you quoted, in the sense that the second sentence doesn't explicitly take into account this possibility of one person's agency infringing on another's, but if there's an unstated assumption that imposing activity, as opposed to forbearance from activity, is never necessary to prevent that kind of interference, that would clean it up nicely. The overarching theme in the passage you've quoted, as in the whole essay, is that there's an inherent tension between democracy and coercion; the employment of coercion endangers (Kevin's definition of) democracy at best, destroys it at worst. Is that of any help? I'm kind of shooting in the dark here, since I don't understand the root of the difficulty, so it's possible that my explanations are just as opaque to you as the original text. Can you elaborate a little bit on what part you're having a hard time understanding?