Life in Biosphere 1 was Re: [extropy-chat] Professor Being Sued Over Anti-Aging Comments

[Brett Paatsch]

Brent Neal wrote:

> (6/21/05 8:29) Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>No, Bill, they don't. You don't have a right to safety when you engage
>>in commerce ignorantly, just as you don't have a right to police
>>protection. Who says you shouldn't live in a world full of fraudsters
>>if you don't take your personal responsibility to litigate against
>>those who defraud you? Most infomercials on tv today are frauds or
>>scams: weight loss products, cheap exercise machines, beauty products.
>>Frauders abound in the email world.
>
>
> Of course, you discount the cost of all of this.  Not in terms of 
> 'chilling
> effect,' but in terms of precious, valuable time.  How on earth am I
> supposed to have time to contribute in a meaningful economic way
> when I'm in court battling everyone under the sun.
>
> This particular vision of "Libertarian Utopia" seems particularly stupid
> to me.

I see Brent's point, its hard for most individuals to have the sort of
generalist or multi-specialist knowledge required to be 'caveat emptoring'
every time they buy a product. And its also inefficient. And kids and
the vulnerable, (ie people who are largely harmless except perhaps in
that they vote) don't have the skills to be 'caveat emptoring' for
themselves especially when unscupulous sellers can specialise in
identifying classes of marks to exploit.

Yet ultimatey I think Mike is more correct on this point. Rights don't
arrive from need alone. There is no and cannot be a general right to
ignorance.

Earth is biosphere 1. Adults, voters anyway, are not equally equipped
to thrive in biosphere 1 and to make good personal use of the social
constructions and tools like governments, the legal system, the media,
but so long as we are all in biosphere 1, its just nuts to think that there
are ultimate rights to ignorance when the exercise of that ignorance
feeds back into the biosphere.

Every fool that buys a crap product empowers a pest. The number
of pests then increases to feast on that particular species of fool.

Hard as it is I also think that Mike is sort of correct about the
solution. Ultimately there is no real security in ignorance. To thrive
in biosphere 1 a person does have to be a geek of many trades.
One has to be lawyer enough to use the legal system, mathematician
enough to weight one's risks, politician enough to stay on side or
avoid getting offside with too many rougues and so on and on..

And then if you actually want to make anything happen to improve
the circumstances of your life in biosphere 1 just have to expect
that their will be a tax on your creativity and innovation.

Scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs are all accountable to
some degree to exogenous planning shocks every three of four
years when the voters vote in their wisdom or otherwise.

While we are in bioshphere 1 there is no escaping the need to
educate and enlighten the voters other than to stop them from
voting.

'Extropy' in biosphere 1 has to deal with the fact that we are
in biosphere 1 with a bunch of other people, all things being
equal the faster those people get enlightened the better it
will be.  Educating other people when those people are going
to vote, and buy products, isn't a side issues its a design
necessity.

Thoughts of getting rid of governments or imagining away
institutions will remain just thoughts, and probably should
remain just thoughts, until we realise that what exists in
biosphere 1, all the human constructions, exist as a result
of evolutionary pressures.

The above is not necessarily thoroughly thought through.

Brett Paatsch