November 18, 2006
Vigilante
Some time ago, I posted about an episode of The Sopranos in which Tony Soprano's therapist is raped. The police bungled the handling of the evidence and as a result, the rapist got away scott free. The doctor then considered telling Tony what happened because she knew that he would have the man killed.
That post is among those lost when I moved to Munuviana, but I argued that the doctor should have told Tony so that justice could be served.
I no longer agree with that argument.
I can't say that I've really given a whole lot of thought, but suffice it to say that in light of my previous argument, I do certainly sympathize with those whom the state fails or even betrays.
But Diana Hsieh posted a link today in which some commentor on that Forum of Dubious Thought talks about how he would kill judges, regulators, and even neighbors if he would "ruined" by some unjust law.
When I read about these legalized crimes, I can feel the grip of my AR-15 in the palm of my hand, smell the cleaning solvent (I keep 'em clean), see the front sight settling on the target (some bureaucrat, judge, or neighbor's head) and the cool pressure of the trigger against the center of the last pad of my finger...
Um. That's not OK.
My thought on the case with the Sopranos is that there is no doubt about who the criminal is and what he has done. Because the state failed to perform its duty, justice could still be served by the victim going after the bad guy.
The problem with that is that although the case is clear to the victim (and us the television viewing audience) beyond even the faintest shadow of a doubt, the case is not clear to the rest of the people in the community.
If you run off throttling bad guys, even if you are right in doing so, you present a threat in the eyes of those around you who will see your actions as unprovoked acts of aggression.
Let's say that I walk out of my apartment and I see one of my neighbors beating up some other person. I would want to ask why they're doing that, but my neighbor might just be a psycho. As far as I know, my neighbor is a mugger and they now present a threat to me. I can't live in peace because there's a crazy next door.
The point of the government in criminal proceedings is to put all of our minds at ease about the psychos next door. The police come in and collect all the evidence and the in a courtroom they present the evidence to the public and show us all that my neighbor is or is not actually a psycho. Then, if any throttling needs to be done, it is done by the state so that everyone can see that justice is being served.
What if, in the Soprano case, Dr. Malfi wasn't sure who her rapist was? But she told Tony it was some dude who works at the burger joint down the street and then Tony has him killed? An innocent person would suffer that mistake.
Here in America, we rely on the innocent until proven guilty rule and standards of evidence so that we don't accidentally lock up the guy from the burger joint down the street even though he hasn't done a thing wrong.
The point of having a government at all is to ensure that individual rights are protected and in order to do so, we all have to know that both our rights and the rights of those who may be guilty are equally secure and equally subject to the same, cool reason in the eyes of the law.
All of this struck me with a bit more clarity when I saw that lunatic, John Wakeland's comments and the commentors on Diana's site helped clear things up a bit more.
So, much thanks to the folks over at Noodlefood. No thanks to that psycho Wakeland, though. He just freaks me out.
Posted by: Flibbertigibbet at
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"he problem with that is that although the case is clear to the victim (and us the television viewing audience) beyond even the faintest shadow of a doubt, the case is not clear to the rest of the people in the community.
"If you run off throttling bad guys, even if you are right in doing so, you present a threat in the eyes of those around you who will see your actions as unprovoked acts of aggression."
I take it you are referring only to "eye for an eye" cases, in which the damage has already been done and you are seeking just compensation. Because if you wait for the community (your neighbors or your international allies, for example) to agree with you that someone represents a direct threat to your existence, then that is not serving your best interest regardless of how the others may view it -- you could be dead by the time they came to a conclusion.
Also, if a real criminal gets away with a crime due to a botched case, then he still represents a threat to your existence and your loved ones. If the severity of that crime is high (attempted murder, rape, etc.), then it may not be wrong to take him out. Though your standard of proof should be incredibly high (i.e. you saw him do it).
Posted by: Justin at November 18, 2006 08:08 AM (Agd+c)
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I wouldn't go so far as to extend this to the international community. I would have to give it more thought in the international context.
I'm not even talking about cases where you believe that someone might come rape you or rob you again, although that may also apply.
But I am talking about cases where someone manages to evade getting what they deserve. "An eye for an eye" so to speak.
In emergency cases, where someone is swinging an axe at you (or presenting some other clear, eminent threat) and you don't have time for the community to agree, I think it is ok to stab them in the neck first and explain it all later.
Posted by: Trey Givens at November 18, 2006 08:27 AM (W/5UZ)
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Trey, remember the scene in Firefly where Mal points a gun at Simon and announces, "And you're a gorram fed." Click.
I don't know Mr. Wakeland and I don't agree with his statement but I must say that I can understand the anger he feels when dealing with petty bureaucrats and I must admit to feeling a certain visceral satisfaction when I saw that scene in Firefly.
If you have ever had adversarial dealings with the gorram feds (and I have), if you have ever sat before a petty bureaucrat to beg for him to please not ruin you financially (IRS)or to please let your spouse stay in this country (INS)and you have witnessed the utter contempt with which you are treated by these weasels who hold enormous power over you, then I think you will understand the absolute rage that these people provoke as they dispose of other people's lives like so much jetsam.
The petty bureacrats who wield their power so carelessly do need to understand that they can push a person too far, that a man with nothing left to lose is a very dangerous creature.
Hope I haven't creeped you out, but that is the way I see it.
Posted by: Ice Scribe at November 20, 2006 03:06 AM (WWjB7)
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It's not that I don't sympathize with those feelings of desperation, anger, and frustration. That is far from the case. I think I've voiced those emotions on this blog in more than one occasion, actually.
In Firefly, the context is a bit different -- the government is a dictatorship of some sort and that makes all the difference in the world.
I have a dark outlook for the direction of things in this country, but things are not quite to the point where I would support armed violence against the gorram feds is all.
Posted by: Trey Givens at November 20, 2006 03:36 AM (hSSAt)
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November 16, 2006
More Frustrating Statements from Irrationalists
I don't like Bertrand Russell, but I will admit to not knowing very much about him. It seems like every time I run across something he's been involved with, I leave it sniffing with disgust.
I was just over at Leitmotif, reading a "debate" he had with Father FC Copleston back in 1948. I didn't get more than four sentences into it before I had to stop and blog about a bit of idiocy.
Copleston: Yes, but what’s your justification for distinguishing between good and bad or how do you view the distinction between them?
Russell: I don’t have any justification any more than I have when I distinguish between blue and yellow. What is my justification for distinguishing between blue and yellow? I can see they are different.
*sigh*
How about the fact that yellow and blue ARE different? It seems sufficient justification to me to simply point to reality. The color yellow is defined by a range of light within certain defined and accepted wavelengths in the visible light spectrum. Blue is a different range on the same spectrum.
If you're Objectivist, you "justify" moral right and wrong the same way. You point to reality and say "good" is that which sustains and benefits my life as a human being. Evil is that which works to my detriment as a human being and even death.
This mealy-mouthed, widespread skepticism and uncertainty is bothersome and silly. Folks like Bertrand Russell are too scared to put their foot down about anything and declare their certainty even when the fact is, literally, in front of their eyes.
Reality has arrived and that point is not up for debate!
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Isn't Russell pointing to reality and saying, "Look -- Blue and yellow are different"? He just may not have put it in very clear terms, but he clearly says "they are different because I can see they are different."
Although, that's kind of pulling the cart before the horse. You see two distinct colors -- meaning they are different -- and you define one as blue and one as yellow. In this way, blue and yellow can ONLY be different colors, because if they weren't, then you messed up in your definition!
I read *The History of Western Philosophy* by Russell, which I thought was a great survey, but you can really tell whom he likes and doesn't (for instance, he doesn't seem to big on Aristotle, but loves Spinoza -- a Rationalist if ever there were one). I think Russell himself was a Positivist, who I think believed that no statement could be ultimately shown to be true or false, only valid (i.e., since you cannot prove axioms through logic, you cannot assume their truth). This is only true if you do not start with the right axioms!
Posted by: Justin at November 17, 2006 07:27 AM (ToYLF)
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When I read those statements, I knew immediately where Russell was going, but perhaps I should I have provided a couple more statements.
Copleston: Well, that is an excellent justification, I agree. You distinguish blue and yellow by seeing them, so you distinguish good and bad by what faculty?
Russell: By my feelings.
From there, it becomes more an more clear that the only thing he is certain of is uncertainty.
As for axiomatic conceppts, you can't really have wrong axioms, as far as I know. A "wrong" Axiom would likely be either a deriviative concept (like causality) or a tautology. Well, I guess you COULD have a wrong axiom, but you'd look like a bonehead.
Posted by: Trey Givens at November 17, 2006 08:22 AM (TGk/b)
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You don't mean to imply that all tautological axioms are wrong, do you? Because, as my understanding of "tautology" goes, the axioms of Objectivism are tautological. Existence exists, A is A, consciousness is conscious of something... I'm pretty sure these statements are tautologies. Enlighten me if I have it wrong.
By "wrong" axiom, I meant either they were derivative, or they were arbitrary (or contradictory) with respect to reality. For axioms that are derivative, for example, Leibnitz began with the axiom "every entity is composed of parts." From this, he deduced that there must be some fundamental entity of which everything is made, which has only one part. But if all matter is composed of PARTS, then these fundamental units cannot be made of matter, hence they must be composed of the mind. Therefore, reality is all mind and no body. Or something like that. Obviously, Leibnitz was a very smart man (see: Calculus), so I'm sure there weren't blatent logical mistakes in his work as there are in my summary of it. The point is, he started with something insignificant and not fundamental about reality -- that everything is made up of parts -- and pulled a lot of crap from it. That is a "wrong" axiom if ever I saw one!
Posted by: Justin at November 17, 2006 10:45 AM (ToYLF)
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Hmmm... This reminds me that I need to brush up on my axiomatic epistemology.
The short of it is that axioms are not tautologies. Tautologies are things that are always true eg. "Heads I win, tails you lose." An axiom has two "test" criteria, one of which is that in order to attempt to disprove it, you have to assume it. (I can't remember the other right off.)
Case in point: Existence exists is an axiom. The existence of god is offensive to Objectivist metaphyisics because it requires assuming that something exists outside of existence. But if one exists, then one is a part of existence, which means one has a defined nature -- something defied by the "god" anti-concept.
As for the Leibnitz example, I would say that's a "premise" not an axiom if only because it's reducible to smaller concepts. For example, in order to say something about parts and wholes, we have to have a concept of the existence of those things. We also have to have a notion of what it means to be part of a whole or a whole broken into parts.
This is an interesting line of discussion and I'm frustrated that I can't remember the other part of the "Axiom Test." I will post more on this later... perhaps this weekend.
Posted by: Trey Givens at November 17, 2006 01:17 PM (TGk/b)
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An Annoying Argument from Irrationalists
In the movie
Contact, which is based on a book by
Carl Sagan, there is a scene in which the preacher character, Palmer Joss, played by Matthew McConaughey is talking to the scientist character, Eleanor Arroway, played by Jodie Foster.
She challenges him to prove the existence of God and they have the following exchange:
Palmer Joss: Did you love your father?
Ellie Arroway: What?
Palmer Joss: Your dad. Did you love him?
Ellie Arroway: Yes, very much.
Palmer Joss: Prove it.
She is dumbstruck by this and appears thoughtful. It is as if he has won the argument.
There are a couple of things that are ridiculous to me.
First, it's absurd that Palmer Joss is trying to use reason to prove that reason is insufficient to prove things. If that were true, then he would not be able to prove his own argument. Since his case is false, he is unable to prove his argument.
The reverse of a tautology is a contradiction, but I kind of want to call that line of reasoning a "tautology of stupid." Feel free to use that phrase to describe similiarly idiotic lines of reasoning.
Second, it's not impossible to prove that someone loves someone else even if that someone else is dead. You could look at their house and see if they have pictures of that person set in special places. You could watch that person and see if they regard things that remind them of their loved one with special care. You could scan their brain activity and compare their emotional responses to various things including the one they love.
Even if that person doesn't actually love the person in question, the worst situation would be that they're lying to us and the evidence we have is part of a ruse. In such a situation we still are given reasons to believe, whereas in matters of faith, no evidence is offered in the least. None is even possible!
Simply because one is unable to present the evidence for such a phenomenon in a cocktail party does not mean that it is not possible to present evidence at all.
I came across this quotation from Voltaire a while ago. "A witty saying proves nothing." It seems apt for smug, irrational people like Palmer Joss.
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Thanks very much for this. I love that movie, but despise the Matthew McConaughey character. It makes it really hard to watch him in any other role, either.
I really enjoy most of the movie, but it has this crucial epistemological flaw at the end of it, where Palmer says that he takes Dr. Arroway's account on faith, *completely ignoring the fact that her testimony is evidence*. I read the book when I was young, and I don't think it was this bad epistemologically, but I don't really remember.
Posted by: John Stark at November 16, 2006 08:22 AM (PGzrn)
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I read the book after the movie and found the two to share only surface similiarities.
The book does a better job at communicating the sort of agnostic that Carl Sagan was, which is to say it is extremely skeptical. It does present somethings as items people take on faith, but chips away at them by presenting evidence for the belief.
The movie on the other hand regards faith as untouchable and sacred.
Thematically, both are harmful, but the movie is far worse, I think.
Posted by: Trey Givens at November 16, 2006 09:38 AM (TGk/b)
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"Thematically, both are harmful, but the movie is far worse, I think."
I don't disagree. I hardly ever recommend the movie to anyone else. I know what I like and what I don't like in it, but if I do recommend it, I have to clearly explain the parts that I don't like.
I'm guessing it would be similar to recommending Dostoevsky, but I don't know because I couldn't get very far into The Brothers Karamozov.
Posted by: John Stark at November 16, 2006 12:49 PM (PGzrn)
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you're missing the entire spirit of Palmer Joss's argument- He is not asking eleanor to LITERALLY prove the she loves her father- he is merely using that as an example of something in all of our lives that we all feel but may not be necessarily explainable by science.
"tautology of stupid" indeed....
"fanatical atheists are just as pathetic as religious fanatics- because they refuse to see the beauty of the spheres"- Albert Einstein
Posted by: Lance Gochet at December 03, 2006 08:37 PM (6z7PG)
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November 08, 2006
LOSERS!
You know, reality television is oft decried as a sign of the degradation of our culture. People are always talking about bawdy, shallow, simply idiotic they are. But I want to call your attention to a reality program that is compelling, wholesome, and even inspiring.
That show is The Biggest Loser.
In this show, they take some very overweight people and they compete to lose the most weight. They teach good exercise and diet. You get to see before and after shots of these people and the changes are dramatic.
It's just great to see these people affirming their personal efficacy and claiming life (in a very physical sense) as primary value as they realize how detrimental their unhealthy lifestyle was to their enjoyment of their own existence.
And also, when I see them doing the challenges, I want to play, too.
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