[ExI] Nolopsism

Spencer Campbell lacertilian at gmail.com
Sun Feb 7 21:13:44 UTC 2010


JOSHUA JOB <nanite1018 at gmail.com>:
> Problem: Who do you punish? This imaginary entity that damaged the property of another imaginary entity? If you do it like that, then I don't see any difference between that and a legal system based on actual "selves." And without a victim, there is no crime. I can't see the purpose of law without individual rights as its basis (rights based on principles derived from the nature of human beings), and if you eliminate the individual, you'll have a hard time justifying anything, ultimately.

Solution: No one needs to be punished. In theory, the only
justification for legal punishment right now is to modify future
behavior on a societal scale. There are far more effective and less
draconian methods of doing this. See: Norwegian open prisons.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/europe/091017/norway-open-prison

There are other justifications which make punishment a much more
attractive option. Prisoners of war in ancient Rome were made to fight
as gladiators. Justification: entertainment. An eye-for-an-eye system
is self-justifying: justice for the sake of justice.

JOSHUA JOB <nanite1018 at gmail.com>:
> Corporations are entities made up of people ultimately, and they are created and owned and controlled by people. Hence a crime against a corporation is a crime against a group of people (the owners or employees). Without individuals, you can't say make laws based on happiness, or prosperity, or anything else, because all of those reference individuals and minds. And obviously "rights" go right out the window.

A measurement of prosperity need make no reference to individuals or
minds unless corporations, countries, and planets count as
individuals. You could define the Earth's prosperity as equivalent to
its biodiversity, for example, and just start tracking all the DNA. I
don't know why you would, but you could.

My argument against happiness is the same as my argument against
punishment: it is valuable only as a tool for behavioral modification,
heartless as that may sound. Look at how happiness evolved. It's just
an arbitrary reward for survival. This is the attitude with which I
regard my own happiness, and it doesn't seem to impair me in any way
practical or philosophical.

Finally: obviously "rights" don't go out the window at all! In fact,
we would only have more of them. A brand-new car would have the right
not to be crushed into a tiny cube, because such would be blatantly
wasteful and wrong. Similarly, a brand-new human would have the same
right, but a totaled junker or a corpse would not.



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