Origens

"As enunciated by classic thinkers such as Locke, Montesquieu, and Mill, liberalism holds that the legitimacy of state authority derives from the state’s ability to protect the individual rights of its citizens and that state power needs to be limited by the adherence to law. One of the fundamental rights to be protected is that of private property; England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688–89 was critical to the development of modern liberalism because it first established the constitutional principle that the state could not legitimately tax its citizens without their consent.

At first, liberalism did not necessarily imply democracy. The Whigs who supported the constitutional settlement of 1689 tended to be the wealthiest property owners in England; the parliament of that period represented less than ten percent of the whole population. Many classic liberals, including Mill, were highly skeptical of the virtues of democracy: they believed that responsible political participation required education and a stake in society -- that is, property ownership. Up through the end of the nineteenth century, the franchise was limited by property and educational requirements in virtually all parts of Europe. Andrew Jackson’s election as U.S. president in 1828 and his subsequent abolition of property requirements for voting, at least for white males, thus marked an important early victory for a more robust democratic principle." Francis Fukuyama

Impotência

"Se uma pessoa decide ir contra os factos da História e contra os factos da Ciência e da Tecnologia, não há muito que possamos fazer por ela. Na maioria dos casos, sinto apenas pena por termos falhado na sua educação" -- Harrison Schmitt

Limites e Influências

[An] ethical theory, explicit belief about right and wrong, is not omnipotent in determining our behavior, but it is influential. Good theories of ethics can encourage us to behave well; bad theories can promote correspondingly unethical behavior. Grounding ethics in reciprocal altruism unduly encourages selfishness; ultimate reliance on social, legal, or religious tradition or authority tends to entrench the oppressive or persecutorial aspects of those institutions; and perhaps most insidiously, denial that there is a rational foundation for ethics exerts influence toward ethical relativism, which tends to imply that any adopted ethical standard is as good as any other—and thence toward ethical nihilism, the doctrine that there is no real distinction between right and wrong. - Gary L Drescher, Good and Real.

Definições e Abusos

[A] definition can be anything we choose. But the arbitrariness of definitions doesn’t make truth arbitrary. Rather, it just means that in order to understand which proposition it is whose truth we’re being asked about, we need to know what the words mean. Once again, it is just a matter of pinning down the meaning in order to pin down the truth. [...] whenever something substantive seems to depend on a choice of definition—for example, if whether to take a contemplated action seems to depend on whether the action falls within the scope of some proposed definition of right—we should suspect that a tacit definition is being smuggled in, and a sleight-of-hand substitution of the tacit definition for the explicit one is occurring. Here’s a good diagnostic technique: define some made-up word in place of the familiar one that is being defined, and see what apparent difference that substitution makes. [...] A definition is just an arbitrary association between a symbol and a concept; it has nothing to do with what is true or false about the world. [...] If concepts yielded to our attempts to equate them just by our proclaiming definitions in that manner, then definitions would be like magic spells, capable by their mere incantation of somehow rearranging the substantive facts of the world. Obviously, definitions have no such power. [We need arguments, not definitions] [e.g. ownership] A supporter of libertarian capitalism may argue that you are morally entitled to use your own property for your exclusive benefit, because such entitlement is the very definition of the word own. But by that definition, you have not established that anything is your own until you have (somehow) established that you are morally entitled to use it for your exclusive benefit. However, there is another definition of own that is often implicitly smuggled in—roughly, that if you have obtained an item by purchasing it, inheriting it, building it, and so forth, then you own it. Sleight-of-hand alternation between the explicit and implicit definition creates the illusion of having established that whatever you build, purchase, inherit, and so forth, you are necessarily entitled to use for your exclusive benefit. [You need to argue that the latter implies the former]. - Gary L Drescher, Good and Real.

Tainter - The collapse of complex societies IV

Collapse then is not a fall to some primordial chaos, but a return to the normal human condition of lower complexity. The notion that collapse is uniformly a catastrophe is contradicted, moreover, by the present theory. To the extent that collapse is due to declining marginal returns on investment in complexity, it is a economizing process. It occurs when it becomes necessary to restore the marginal return on organizational investment to a more favorable level. [...] In a situation where the marginal utility of still greater complexity would be too low, collapse is a economical alternative.

[...]

Collapse occurs, and can only occur, in a power vacuum. Collapse is possible only where there is no competitor strong enough to fill the political vacuum of disintegration. Where such a competitor does exist there can be no collapse, for the competitor will expand territorially to administer the population left leaderless. Collapse is not the same thing as change of regime. Where peer polities interact collapse will affect all equally, and when it occurs, provided that no outside competitor is powerful enough to absorb all. [...] there are major differences between the current and the ancient worlds that have important implications for collapse. One of these is that the world today is full. That is to say, it is filled by complex societies; these occupy every sector of the globe, except the most desolate. This is a new factor in human history. Complex societies as a whole are a recent and unusual aspect of human life. The current situation, where all societies are so oddly constituted, is unique. [...] There are no power vacuums left today. Every nation is linked to, and influenced by, the major powers, and most are strongly linked with one power bloc or the other. [...] Collapse, if and when it comes again, will this time be global. No longer can any individual nation collapse. World civilization will disintegrate as a whole. Competitors who evolve as peers collapse in like manner.

Tainter - The collapse of complex societies III

Any complex hierarchy must allocate a portion of its resource base to solving the problems of the population it administers, but must also set aside resources to solve problems created by its own existence, and created by virtue of overall societal complexity. Prior to the development of modern welfare states it is likely that these increased administrative costs did little for the population as a whole other than to maintain some semblance of basic needs. And often even that was not accomplished. To maintain growth in complexity, hierarchies levy heavier taxes on their populations. At some point even this yields declining marginal returns. This happens when rates are so high that avoidance increases, and taxation-induced infation erodes the value of the money collected.

Rulers [...] must constantly legitimize their reigns. Legitimizing activities include such things as external defense and internal order, alleviating the effects of local productivity fluctuations, undertaking local development projects, and providing food and entertainment (as in Imperial Rome) for urban masses. In many cases the productivity of these legitimizing investments will decline. Whatever activities a hierarchy undertakes initially to bond a population to itself (providing defense, agricultural development, public works, bread and circuses, and the like) often thereafter become de rigueur, so that further bonding activities are at higher cost, with little or no additional benefit to the hierarchy. [...] The alternative course is to reduce legitimizing activities and increase other means of behavioral control. Yet in such situations, as resources committed to benefits decline, resources committed to control must increase. Although quantitative cost/beneft data for such control systems are rare, it seems reasonable to infer that as the costs of coercion increase, the benefits (in the form of population compliance) probably do not grow proportionately [...] These remarks are not meant to suggest that social evolution carries no benefits, nor that the marginal product of social complexity always declines. The marginal product of any investment declines only after a certain point; prior to that point benefits increase faster than costs. Very often, though, societies do reach a level where continued investment in complexity yields a declining marginal return. At that point the society is investing heavily in an evolutionary course that is becoming less and less productive, where at increased cost it is able to do little more than maintain the status quo.

[...]

For human societies, the best key to continued socioeconomic growth, and to avoiding or circumventing (or at least financing) declines in marginal productivity, is to obtain a new energy subsidy when it becomes apparent that marginal productivity is beginning to drop. Among modern societies this has been accomplished by tapping fossil fuel reserves and the atom. Among societies without the technical springboard necessary for such development, the usual temptation is to acquire an energy subsidy through territorial expansion.

Tainter - The collapse of complex societies II

[I]ntensification in agriculture and resource production follows a pattern of declining marginal productivity [...] rationally-acting human populations will first exploit those resources that yield the best return per unit of effort, and still meet the needs of the population. If this is so, then it follows that any change in resource extraction must be in the direction of using resources that are more costly to obtain, process, distribute, and/or market, so that the marginal product of labor and other inputs declines. Thus, hunters and gatherers first exploit foods that are higher in nutritional value, and easier to obtain and process, than resources that are less favorable for these characteristics [...] In other spheres of resource extraction, minerals and energy forms can be ranked in terms of their ease of discovery, extraction, processing, and use. Resources that rank higher in these dimensions will be used before resources that don't, and when these are no longer sufficient, secondary resources will be employed. [...] Among whatever set of resources a population obtains, for whatever reasons, the law of diminishing returns is likely to apply. As demand for a commodity grows, increased production will at some point mean depletion or insuffciency of the least costly sources. At that point, more costly sources must be used, with declining marginal returns.

Tainter - The collapse of complex societies I

Despite a institutionalized authority structure, an ideological basis, and a monopoly of force, the rulers of states share at least one thing with chiefs and Big Men: the need to establish and constantly reinforce legitimacy. In complex as well as simpler societies, leadership activities and societal resources must be continuously devoted to this purpose. Hierarchy and complexity, as noted, are rare in human history, and where present require constant reinforcement. No societal leader is ever far from the need to validate position and policy, and no hierarchical society can be organized without explicit provision for this need.

Legitimacy is the belief of the populace and the elites that rule is proper and valid, that the political world is as it should be. It pertains to individual rulers, to decisions, to broad policies, to parties, and to entire forms of government. The support that members are willing to extend to a political system is essential for its survival. Decline in support will not necessarily lead to the fall of a regime, for to a certain extent coercion can replace commitment to ensure compliance. Coercion, though, is a costly, ineffective strategy which can never be completely or permanently successful. Even with coercion, decline in popular support below some critical minimum leads infallibly to political failure. Establishing moral validity is a less costly and more effective approach.

Adaptação

"[The Dis] wanted their civilization to last forever— that's the one thing we do know about them. They built for the ages in everything they did. The evidence is that they did last a very long time— maybe eighty million years. But early on, they discovered a disquieting truth we are only just learning ourselves. It is this: Sentience and toolmaking abilities are powerful ways for a species to move into a new ecological niche. But in the long run, sentient, toolmaking beings are never the fittest species for a given niche. What I mean is, if you need tools to survive, you're not well fitted to your environment. And if you no longer need to use tools, you'll eventually lose the capacity to create them. It doesn't matter how smart you are, or how well you plan: Over the longest of the long term, millions of years, species that have evolved to be comfortable in a particular environment will always win out. And by definition, a species that's well fitted to a given environment is one that doesn't need tools to survive in it.

[...]

"It's the same with consciousness. We know now that it evolves to enable a species to deal with unforeseen situations. By definition, anything we've mastered becomes instinctive. Walking is not something we have to consciously think about, right? Well, what about physics, chemistry, social engineering? If we have to think about them, we haven't mastered them— they are still troublesome to us. A species that succeeds in really mastering something like physics has no more need to be conscious of it. Quantum mechanics becomes an instinct, the way ballistics already is for us. Originally, we must have had to put a lot of thought into throwing things like rocks or spears. We eventually evolved to be able to throw without thinking— and that is a sign of things to come. Some day, we'll become like the people of Dis, able to maintain a technological infrastructure without needing to think about it. Without needing to think, at all…

"The builders of Dis faced a dilemma: The best way to survive in the long run on any world they colonized was to adapt yourself to the environment. The best survivors would be those who no longer needed technology to get by. They tried to outlaw such alterations, but how do you do such a thing for the long term without suppressing the scientific knowledge that makes it possible? Over tens or thousands of millennia, you can only do this by suppressing all technological development, because technologies intertwine. This tactic results in the same spiral into nontechnological life. So inevitably, subspecies appeared that were better survivors in a given locale, because they didn't need technology in that locale. This happened every time, on all their worlds.

"The inhabitants of Dis had studied previous starfaring species. The records are hard to decipher, but I found evidence that all previous galactic civilizations had succumbed to the same internal contradictions. The Dis-builders tried to avoid their fate, but over the ages they were replaced on all their worlds by fitter offspring. These descendents had no need for tools, for culture, for historical records. They and their environment were one. The conscious, spacefaring species could always come back and take over easily from them. But given enough time… and time always passes… the same end result would occur. They would be replaced again. And so they saw that their very strength, the highest attainments they as a species had achieved, contained the seeds of their downfall.

"This discovery finally explained to us why toolmaking species are rare to begin with. It takes an unusual combination of factors to create a species that is fit enough to survive, but at the same time is so unfit in its native environment that it must turn to its weakest organ, its brain, for help. Reliance on tools is a tremendous handicap for any species; only a few manage to turn it into an asset.

"The builders of Dis knew they were doomed. We all are: technological civilization represents a species' desperate attempt to build a bubble to keep hostile environments at bay. Sentient species also never cooperate with one another over the long term, because the environments they need in order to live are incompatible. Some, like the Chicxulub, accept this easily and try to exterminate everyone else. Even they can't stop their own evolution and so eventually they cease to be starfaring species. Destruction or devolution are the only choices."

Karl Schroeder - Permanence

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (2/2)

"Comrade Members, like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master. You now have freedom--if you can keep it. But do remember that you can lose this freedom more quickly to yourselves than to any other tyrant. Move slowly, be hesitant, puzzle out the consequences of every word. I would not be unhappy if this [constitutional] convention sat for ten years before reporting--but I would be frightened if you took less than a year.
"Distrust the obvious, suspect the traditional . . . for in the past mankind has not done well when saddling itself with governments. For example, I note in one draft report a proposal for setting up a commission to divide Luna into congressional districts and to reapportion them from time to time according to population.
"This is the traditional way; therefore it should be suspect, considered guilty until proved innocent. Perhaps you feel that this is the only way. May I suggest others? Surely where a man lives is the least important thing about him. Constituencies might be formed by dividing people by occupation. . . or by age. . . or even alphabetically. Or they might not be divided, every member elected at large---and do not object that this would make it impossible for any man not widely known throughout Luna to be elected; that might be the best possible thing for Luna.
"You might even consider installing the candidates who receive the least number of votes; unpopular men may be just the sort to save you from a new tyranny. Don't reject the idea merely because it seems preposterous--think about it! In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes far worse than overt tyrannies.
"But if representative government turns out to be your intention there still may be ways to achieve it better than the territorial district. For example you each represent about ten thousand human beings, perhaps seven thousand of voting age--and some of you were elected by slim majorities. Suppose instead of election a man were qualified for office by petition signed by four thousand citizens. He would then represent those four thousand affirmatively, with no disgruntled minority, for what would have been a minority in a territorial constituency would all be free to start other petitions or join in them. All would then be represented by men of their choice. Or a man with eight thousand supporters might have two votes in this body. Difficulties, objections, practical points to be worked out--many of them! But you could work them out. . . and thereby avoid the chronic sickness of representative government, the disgruntled minority which feels--correctly!--that it has been disenfranchised.
"But, whatever you do, do not let the past be a straitjacket!
"I note one proposal to make this Congress a two-house body. Excellent--the more impediments to legislation the better. But, instead of following tradition, I suggest one house legislators, another whose single duty is to repeal laws. Let legislators pass laws only with a two-thirds majority . . . while the repealers are able to cancel any law through a mere one-third minority. Preposterous? Think about it. If a bill is so poor that it cannot command two-thirds of your consents, is it not likely that it would make a poor law? And if a law is disliked by as many as one-third is it not likely that you would be better off without it?
"But in writing your constitution let me invite attention the wonderful virtues of the negative! Accentuate the negative! Let your document be studded with things the government is forever forbidden to do. No conscript armies . . . no interference however slight with freedom of press, or speech, or travel, or assembly, or of religion, or of instruction, or communication, or occupation. . . no involuntary taxation. Comrades, if you were to spend five years in a study of history while thinking of more and more things that your governinen should promise never to do and then let your constitution be nothing but those negatives, I would not fear the outcome.
"What I fear most are affirmative actions of sober and well-intentioned men, granting to government powers to do something that appears to need doing."

Robert A. Heinlein - The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (1/2)

[...]But I'm no Marxist; we Fifths have a practical program. Private where private belongs, public where it's needed, and an admission that circumstances alter cases. Nothing doctrinaire."
"Capital punishment?"
"For what?"
"Let's say for treason. Against Luna after you've freed Luna."
"Treason how? Unless I knew the circumstances I could not decide."
"Nor could I, dear Wyoming. But I believe in capital punishment under some circumstances. . . with this difference. I would not ask a court; I would try, condemn, execute sentence myself, and accept full responsibility."
"But--Professor, what are your political beliefs?"
"I'm a rational anarchist."
"I don't know that brand. Anarchist individualist, anarchist Communist, Christian anarchist, philosophical anarchist, syndicalist, libertarian--those I know. But what's this? Randite?"
"I can get along with a Randite. A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as 'state' and 'society' and 'government' have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame. . . as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world. . . aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure."
Robert A. Heinlein - The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

Modelos

"What we see of the real world is not the unvarnished real world but a model of the real world, regulated and adjusted by sense data - a model that is constructed so that it is useful for dealing with the real world. The nature of that model depends on the kind of animal we are. A flying animal needs a different kind of world model from a walking, a climbing or a swimming animal. Predators need a different kind of model from prey, even though their worlds necessarily overlap. A monkey's brain must have software capable of simulating a three-dimensional maze of branches and trunks. A water boatman's brain doesn't need 3D software, since it lives on the surface of the pond in an Edwin Abbott Flatland. [...] The point is that the nature of the model is governed by how it is to be used rather than by the sensory modality involved. [...] The general form of the mind model - as opposed to the variables that are constantly being inputted by sensory nerves - is an adaptation to the animal's way of life, no less than its wings, legs and tail are." Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion

Identidade e anonimato

"Opponents of online anonymity often repeat the platitude that “real name” identification promotes civility. While that may be true, it is often at the expense of free expression. Not only does anonymity enable dissidents in oppressive regimes, but it also helps the small-town kid experimenting with his sexuality or the abuse survivor starting a new life.

Internet intermediaries offer tools that allow users to maintain civility without sacrificing anonymity. On social networks, users can moderate offensive comments or block users who are harassing them. Newspapers can institute systems for flagging inappropriate comments.

Concerns about cyber-bullying and other online crimes shouldn’t be dismissed, but law enforcement already has tools to identify anonymous criminals. [...] We should not be willing to sacrifice free expression for the possibility of civility, especially not when there are more effective alternatives." Eva Galperin, Jillian C. York @ DeepLinks

Selecção Natural

Uma citação de Richard Dawkins retirada do livro "The God Delusion" que resume o essencial da selecção natural, do ponto de vista genético:

In its most general form, natural selection must choose between alternative replicators. A replicator is a piece of coded information that makes exact copies of itself, along with occasional inexact copies or 'mutations'. The point about this is the Darwinian one. Those varieties of replicator that happen to be good at getting copied become more numerous at the expense of alternative replicators that are bad at getting copied. That, at its most rudimentary, is natural selection. The archetypal replicator is a gene, a stretch of DNA that is duplicated, nearly always with extreme accuracy, through an indefinite number of generations. [...] In the world of genes, the occasional flaws in replication (mutations) see to it that the gene pool contains alternative variants of any given gene - 'alleles' - which may therefore be seen as competing with each other. Competing for what? For the particular chromosomal slot or 'locus' that belongs to that set of alleles. And how do they compete? Not by direct molecule-to-molecule combat but by proxy. The proxies are their 'phenotypic traits' - things like length or fur colour: manifestations of genes fleshed out as anatomy, physiology, biochemistry or behaviour. A gene's fate is normally bound up with the bodies in which it successively sits. To the extent that it influences those bodies, it affects its own chances of surviving in the gene pool. As the generations go by, genes increase or decrease in frequency in the gene pool by virtue of their phenotypic proxies.

[...]

For didactic purposes, I treated genes as though they were isolated units, acting independently. But of course they are not independent of one another, and this fact shows itself in two ways .First, genes are linearly strung along chromosomes, and so tend to travel through generations in the company of particular other genes that occupy neighbouring chromosomal loci. [...] The other respect in which genes are not independent [...] concerns embryology which - the fact is often mis-understood - is completely distinct from genetics. Bodies are not jigsawed together as mosaics of phenotypic pieces, each one contributed by a different gene. There is no one-to-one mapping between genes and units of anatomy or behaviour. Genes 'collaborate' with hundreds of other genes in programming the developmental processes that culminate in a body, in the same kind of way as the words of a recipe collaborate in a cookery process that culminates in a dish. It is not the case that each word of the recipe corresponds to a different morsel of the dish. Genes, then, co-operate in cartels to build bodies, and that is one of the important principles of embryology. It is tempting to say that natural selection favours cartels of genes in a kind of group selection between alternative cartels. That is confusion. What really happens is that the other genes of the gene pool constitute a major part of the environment in which each gene is selected versus its alleles. Because each is selected to be successful in the presence of the others - which are also being selected in a similar way - cartels of co-operating genes emerge.

[...]

Different kinds of gene cartel emerge in different gene pools. Carnivore gene pools have genes that program prey-detecting sense organs, prey-catching claws, carnassial teeth, meat-digesting enzymes and many other genes, all fine-tuned to co-operate with each other. At the same time, in herbivore gene pools, different sets of mutually compatible genes are favoured for their co-operation with each other. We are familiar with the idea that a gene is favoured for the compatibility of its phenotype with the external environment of the species: desert, woodland or whatever it is. The point I am now making is that it is also favoured for its compatibility with the other genes of its particular gene pool. A carnivore gene would not survive in a herbivore gene pool, and vice versa. In the long gene's-eye-view, the gene pool of the species - the set of genes that are shuffled and reshuffled by sexual reproduction - constitutes the genetic environment in which each gene is selected for its capacity to co-operate.

Força

As convicções são inimigos mais perigosos da verdade do que as mentiras -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Uma causa ou um sintoma?

Excertos do prefácio de John Gray ao livro de Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Ethics of Redistribution

Bertrand de Jouvenel's study in the ethics of redistribution is distinctive, in the first instance, because it focuses precisely on the morality of redistribution and not on its side effects on incentives. This is to say that de Jouvenel's critique embodies a fundamental challenge to the values expressed in redistributionist thought which in no way depends upon an instrumental or utilitarian assessment of the consequences of redistributionist policy. De Jouvenel is concerned with the impact on individual liberty and on cultural life of redistribution rather than with its effects on productivity. His study is significant for another reason, which is that he is careful to distinguish redistributionism from other, superficially similar doctrines. Thus, he shows clearly how it differs from agrarian egalitarianism, which aims to equalize a resource - land - but does not seek to control the distribution of its product. [...] De Jouvenel makes another fundamental distinction within redistributionism itself. Modern redistributionism encompasses two wholly disparate elements: the belief that government should be centrally involved in the relief of poverty, and the belief that economic inequality is itself unjust or evil. These two beliefs have indeed been conflated in the increasing acceptance of the view that it is the responsibility of government to ensure rising popular living standards. A further move in the direction of egalitarian redistributionism is taken when to the proposal that government supply a subsistence floor beneath which no one may fall is added the proposal that there be instituted a ceiling beyond which no one may rise. [...] He further notes that a policy of redistribution is bound to discriminate against minorities, since it will inevitably favor the preferences and interests of the majority [...]

For de Jouvenel, however, the most profound result of redistributionist policy is the impetus it gives to the baleful process of centralization. [...] De Jouvenel goes on to speculate that the underlying causal process may go in the opposite direction: Redistributionist policy may be an incident in a process of centralization that has acquired a momentum of its own.

Razão e ETs

Uma citação longa, mas que vale a pena, da novela que inspirou Stalker de Andrey Tarkovskiy:

I must warn you that your question, Richard, comes under the heading of xenology. Xenology: an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic. It's based on the false premise that human psychology is applicable to extraterrestrial intelligent beings."

"Why is that false?" Noonan asked.

"Because biologists have already been burned trying to use human psychology on animals. Earth animals, at that."

"Forgive me, but that's an entirely different matter. We're talking about the psychology of rational beings."

"Yes. And everything would be fine if we only knew what reason was."

"Don't we know?" Noonan was surprised.

"Believe it or not, we don't. Usually a trivial definition is used: reason is that part of man's activity that distinguishes him from the animals. You know, an attempt to distinguish the owner from the dog who understands everything but just can't speak. Actually, this trivial definition gives rise to rather more ingenious ones. Based on bitter observation of the above-mentioned human activities. For example: reason is the ability of a living creature to perform unreasonable or unnatural acts."

"Yes, that's about us, about me, and those like me," Noonan agreed bitterly.

"Unfortunately. Or how about this hypothetical definition. Reason is a complex type of instinct that has not yet formed completely. This implies that instinctual behavior is always purposeful and natural. A million years from now our instinct will have matured and we will stop making the mistakes that are probably integral to reason. And then, if something should change in the universe, we will all become extinct—precisely because we will have forgotten how to make mistakes, that is, to try various approaches not stipulated by an inflexible program of permitted alternatives."

"Somehow you make it all sound demeaning."

"All right, how about another definition—a very lofty and noble one. Reason is the ability to use the forces of the environment without destroying that environment."

Noonan grimaced and shook his head.

"No, that's not about us. How about this: 'man, as opposed to animals, is a creature with an undefinable need for knowledge'? I read that somewhere."

"So have I," said Valentine. "But the whole problem with that is that the average man—the one you have in mind when you talk about 'us' and 'not us'—very easily manages to overcome this need for knowledge. I don't believe that need even exists. There is a need to understand, and you don't need knowledge for that. The hypothesis of God, for instance, gives an incomparably absolute opportunity to understand everything and know absolutely nothing. Give man an extremely simplified system of the world and explain every phenomenon away on the basis of that system. An approach like that doesn't require any knowledge. Just a few memorized formulas plus so-called intuition and so-called common sense."

"Hold on," Noonan said. He finished his beer and set the mug noisily on the table. "Don't get off the track. Let's get back to the subject on hand. Man meets an extraterrestrial creature. How do they find out that they are both rational creatures?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," Valentine said with great pleasure. "Everything I've read on the subject comes down to a vicious circle. If they are capable of making contact, then they are rational. And vice versa; if they are rational, they are capable of contact. And in general: if an extraterrestrial creature has the honor of possessing human psychology, then it is rational. Like that."

"There you go. And I thought you boys had it all laid out in neat cubbyholes."

"A monkey can put things into cubbyholes," Valentine replied.

"No, wait a minute." For some reason, Noonan felt cheated. "If you don't know simple things like that … All right, the hell with reason. Obviously, it's a real quagmire. OK. But what about the Visitation? What do you think about the Visitation?"

"My pleasure. Imagine a picnic." Noonan shuddered.

"What did you say?"

"A picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. A car drives , off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out of the car carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Gas and oil spilled on the grass. Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around. Rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind. Oil slicks on the pond. And of course, the usual mess—apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody's handkerchief, somebody's penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow."

"I see. A roadside picnic."

"Precisely. A roadside picnic, on some road in the cosmos. And you ask if they will come back."

"Let me have a smoke. Goddamn this pseudoscience! Somehow I imagined it all differently."

"That's your right."

"So does that mean they never even noticed us?"

"Why?"

"Well, anyway, didn't pay any attention to us?"

"You know, I wouldn't be upset if I were you." Noonan inhaled, coughed, and threw away the cigarette.

"I don't care," he said stubbornly. "It can't be. Damn you scientists! Where do you get your contempt for man? Why are you always trying to put mankind down?"

"Wait a minute," Valentine said. "Listen: 'You ask me what makes man great?' " he quoted. " 'That he re-created nature? That he has harnessed cosmic forces? That in a brief time he conquered the planet and opened a window on the universe? No! That, despite all this, he has survived and intends to survive in the future.' "

There was a silence. Noonan was thinking.

"Don't get depressed," Valentine said kindly. "The picnic is my own theory. And not even a theory—just a picture. The serious xenologists are working on much more solid and flattering versions for human vanity. For example, that there has been no Visitation yet, that it is to come. A highly rational culture threw containers with artifacts of its civilization onto Earth. They expect us to study the artifacts, make a giant technological leap, and send a signal in response that will show we are ready for contact. How do you like that one?"

"That's much better," Noonan said. "I see that there are decent people among scientists after all."

"Here's another one. The Visitation has taken place, but it is not over by a long shot. We are in contact even as we speak, but we are not aware of it. The visitors are living in the Zones and carefully observing us and simultaneously preparing us for the 'cruel wonders of the future.' "

"Now that I can understand! At least that explains the mysterious activity in the ruins of the factory. By the way, your picnic doesn't explain it."

"Why doesn't it? One of the girls could have forgotten her favorite wind-up teddy bear on the meadow."

ROADSIDE PICNIC, Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky

Efeito corrosivo

"One of the worst things about breaking the law is that it puts one at odds with an indeterminate number of other people. This is among the many corrosive effects of having unjust laws: They tempt peaceful and (otherwise) honest people to lie so as to avoid being punished for behavior that is ethically blameless." Sam Harris, Lying

Guilherme de Ockham

Ockham [...] deplored the inaccuracy of the terms used in philosophy, and spent half his time trying to make them more precise. He resented the Gothic edifice of abstractions- one mounted upon the other like arches in superimposed tiers- that medieval thought had raised. We cannot find in his extant works precisely the famous formula that tradition called "Ockham's razor": entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem - entities are not to be multiplied beyond need. But he expressed the principle in other terms again and again: pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate - a plurality (of entities or causes or factors) is not to be posited (or assumed) without necessity; and frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora - it is vain to seek to accomplish or explain by assuming several entities or causes what can be explained by fewer.

The principle was not new; Aquinas had accepted it, Scotus had used it. But in Ockham's hands it became a deadly weapon, cutting away a hundred occult fancies and grandiose abstractions. Applying the principle to epistemology, Ockham judged it needless to assume, as the source and material of knowledge, anything more than sensations. From these arise memory (sensation revived), perception (sensation interpreted through memory), imagination (memories combined), anticipation (memory projected), thought (memories compared), and experience (memories interpreted through thought). "Nothing can be an object of the interior sense" (thought) "without having been an object of the exterior sense" (sensation); here is Locke's empiricism 300 years before Locke.

All that we ever perceive outside ourselves is individual entities- specific persons, places, things, actions, shapes, colors, tastes, odors, pressures, temperatures, sounds; and the words by which we denote these are "words of first intention" or primary intent, directly referring to what we interpret as external realities. By noting and abstracting the common features of similar entities so perceived, we may arrive at general or abstract ideas- man, virtue, height, sweetness, heat, music, eloquence; and the words by which we denote such abstractions are "words of second intention," referring to conceptions derived from perceptions. These "universals" are never experienced in sensation; they are termini, signa, nomina - terms, signs, names - for generalizations extremely useful (and dangerous) in thought or reason, in science, philosophy, and theology; they are not objects existing outside the mind. "Everything outside the mind is singular, numerically one."

Reason is magnificent, but its conclusions have meaning only in so far as they refer to experience- i.e., to the perception of individual entities, or the performance of individual acts; otherwise its conclusions are vain and perhaps deceptive abstractions. How much nonsense is talked or written by mistaking ideas for things, abstractions for realities! Abstract thought fulfills its function only when it leads to specific statements about specific things. From this "nominalism" Ockham moved with devastating recklessness into every field of philosophy and theology. Both metaphysics and science, he announced, are precarious generalizations, since our experience is only of individual entities in a narrowly restricted area and time; it is mere arrogance on our part to assume the universal and eternal validity of the general propositions and "natural laws" that we derive from this tiny sector of reality. Our knowledge is molded and limited by our means and ways of perceiving things (this is Kant before Kant); it is locked up in the prison of our minds, and it must not pretend to be the objective or ultimate truth about anything.

Will Durant - Story of Civilization, vol.06, pp.246-49

Liberalismo

"[Liberalism is] a philosophy that champions the right of individuals – regardless of rank or creed or color – to be free of the choking grip of enforced traditionalism, free of the stupidity of superstition (including the hyper-lethal superstition that is nationalism), and free of the arbitrary will of their ‘betters.’

Classical liberals (and many “conservatives”) champion free markets and private property rights, therefore, not to defend “elite privileges against challenges from below” but out of a sincere conviction that markets and property are necessary for maximum possible freedom and for astonishing material abundance." Don Boudreaux