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So exactly what life decisions should we not be permitted to make without permission from the collective? Where to live, what career to pursue, who to have chil

So exactly what life decisions should we not be permitted to make without permission from the collective? Where to live, what career to pursue, who to have children with?

techsupporter 12y ago
That's a knee-jerk reaction and you know it. The answer is what it has always been: We, as a society, will figure it out as we go along. Right now, the collective says you can't drive over a certain speed, you can't build particular buildings in particular locations, you can't operate on people without training, you can't smoke indoors in several small pockets of society, you can't just broadcast RF at certain frequencies, and so on. No, we don't have central economic planning to the level of detail you sarcastically ask, nor do we have sociological planning like that (though, I do note, that arranged/forced marriages and the accompanying acts of procreation _were_ considered reasonable for hundreds of years). Being told "no" by society doesn't imply any status of rightness or wrongness, nor is it a reason to get all petulant and start asking "illogically-extending-the-argument" questions.
- orangecat 12y ago
  If I'm parsing that correctly without the gratuitous insults, it would be "yes, society has the moral authority to dictate every aspect of your life, but it will probably leave you some degree of freedom, so quit complaining". I profoundly disagree, but I'll leave it at that.
michaelcampbell 12y ago
A quick Googling of the laws of your town, county, state, and country (or your equivalents thereof) would be one place to start looking up that very list.
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
I would think society validly has a say in your usage of zero-sum positional goods.
alchemism 12y ago
How free, exactly, would you like the cells in your organs to be --- free from the social rules regarding nutrient flows and replication rates? Free to do something other than its specification? Go up one or two levels on the scale of life, and we call that cellular freedom "cancer."
- seanflyon 12y ago
  That is a poor analogy (unless you are suggesting that human being have no inherent value). Cells are not people and thus do not have the right to make their own decisions. If some of my cells are not useful I have no problem killing them off. My cells only exist to serve my existence; they have no inherent value.
- closetnerd 12y ago
  What the fuck. Did you just equate the human mind to an organ cell? As if a single neuronal cell can be compared to the collective neural cells organized in your brain?

So exactly what life decisions should we not be permitted to make without permission from the collective? Where to live, what career to pursue, who to have children with?

techsupporter 12y ago

That's a knee-jerk reaction and you know it. The answer is what it has always been: We, as a society, will figure it out as we go along. Right now, the collective says you can't drive over a certain speed, you can't build particular buildings in particular locations, you can't operate on people without training, you can't smoke indoors in several small pockets of society, you can't just broadcast RF at certain frequencies, and so on. No, we don't have central economic planning to the level of detail you sarcastically ask, nor do we have sociological planning like that (though, I do note, that arranged/forced marriages and the accompanying acts of procreation _were_ considered reasonable for hundreds of years). Being told "no" by society doesn't imply any status of rightness or wrongness, nor is it a reason to get all petulant and start asking "illogically-extending-the-argument" questions.

orangecat 12y ago
If I'm parsing that correctly without the gratuitous insults, it would be "yes, society has the moral authority to dictate every aspect of your life, but it will probably leave you some degree of freedom, so quit complaining". I profoundly disagree, but I'll leave it at that.

michaelcampbell 12y ago

A quick Googling of the laws of your town, county, state, and country (or your equivalents thereof) would be one place to start looking up that very list.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

I would think society validly has a say in your usage of zero-sum positional goods.

alchemism 12y ago

How free, exactly, would you like the cells in your organs to be --- free from the social rules regarding nutrient flows and replication rates? Free to do something other than its specification? Go up one or two levels on the scale of life, and we call that cellular freedom "cancer."

seanflyon 12y ago
That is a poor analogy (unless you are suggesting that human being have no inherent value). Cells are not people and thus do not have the right to make their own decisions. If some of my cells are not useful I have no problem killing them off. My cells only exist to serve my existence; they have no inherent value.
closetnerd 12y ago
What the fuck. Did you just equate the human mind to an organ cell? As if a single neuronal cell can be compared to the collective neural cells organized in your brain?