You can’t avoid being a speculator. Any currency or asset you hold is your speculative position. You may believe that one position is more speculative than another. But fiat currencies can go into hyperinflation and become worthless, for example.
There is no modern economic argument to favor saving over spending. What you're saying runs counter to pretty much all economic theory from any ideological camp you could think of.
Do you mean that if we had some renaissance banks during the 19xx until 2022, gold coins instead of our modern currencies, no stock exchanges, no financial whatever and maybe all retro economical entities you can think of… would we be in a different position?
You cannot blame the theory, you cannot blame the system… we have a saying in Italy: opportunity makes the thief. Blame the people, not abstract entities.
I wasn't try to. I'm saying "modern economic theory" isn't really a position of strength to reason from. It's not like economists have done a good job at anything. Endless unsustainable growth, a disaster of a financial system, every natural incentive is completely upside down and inequality keeps rising.
Is a deflationary system better or a solution? I don't know.
To my knowledge, no large society in the past two centuries, regardless of economic systems, has been a particularly good steward of natural resources. You're going to have to do better than that.
Deflationary currencies have been an abject disaster in all fronts, and there is nothing particularly contentious about them from even the most contrarian of positions.
Not exactly true. Fiat currency, in part, gets its value by the fact the governments can throw you in jail for not paying taxes with it. Sure, not going to jail could be a subjective preference, but pragmatically speaking, that's a big, objective value proposition for most people.
There's no "could be" here. Not wanting to go to jail is a subjective preference.
That most people prefer the same thing, does not make value objective.
If it did, Bitcoin would also have "objective value" from its scarcity, difficulty of confiscation, ease of move between borders, and many other properties which are preferred by most.
For me, Bitcoin has value because it can't be inflated, and I can carry it on my head over any country's frontier without governments harassing me because of it.
Sure, Bitcoin is a means to an end, I can only "use" it by exchanging it for something else, but so is any other currency.
If US govt banned bitcoin and the exchange of it to USD, bitcoin will go to zero. And no one will be willing to defend it because it’s quite literally backed by nothing tangible or intangible.
AFAIK a stock that is available to lend does not have voting power. Hence, if you put a stock up for lending (even if no-one actually lends it) you can no longer vote with it.
This can be used to get more votes by borrowing stocks just to hold and vote.
IMO, the best system would be to let anyone who's a beneficial owner cast a vote with the rest of the share class. So, if the float's 1 million shares, and 500 thousand are shorted, then there's 2 million shares held long. Let them all vote. Make this system a requirement for listing on a public exchange.
Whether a long is synthetic/borrowed or primary, their interests are aligned. They both want the company to do as well as possible. It also avoids voting rights shenanigans that exist, even with the current borrow-to-short system. At the very least it seems extending voting rights to synthetic longs won't ipso facto make corporate governance worse. I see no obvious downsides. And the academic evidence shows that removing constraints to short sales makes corporate governance significantly better.
By inner experience, we mean that there's a subject which gets to have perception of such models.
There's no need for such subject to exist.
For example, most people assume that, so far, computers do not have any inner experience.
A computer could, conceivably, execute the same functions as our brain, yet have no inner experience of anything. Numbers get in, numbers get out, without any inner experience being needed.
Sure, just like a thermostat doesn’t experience the feeling of temperature, there is no need for human to feel it, so I understand that we need to explain why is it that we still feel the feeling rather than just observe the signal and react.
So why is it wrong to explain this by the necessary recursiveness of predictive modeling that includes modeling “self”? We observe the temperature but we also observe ourselves observing the temperature. First is the signal, second is the introspection of the model evoked by that signal - the feeling.
Yes but where does this observer come from in the first place? Some theories do presume the thermostat experiences the temperature, just in a less-sophisticated form of consciousness. If an "observer" is nothing more than neurons firing in response to stimuli, then it's not fundamentally different from the thermostat.
It is understandable that having an model of an observer can be useful to a brain.
But how/why does that opens a window to an actual observer, and not just a model, is the question.
And we only know that - an actual observer exists - through first hand experience. It is our most immediate and certain knowledge (Cogito, ergo sum), everything else can be questioned. Yet, there's nothing in physics or computer science that gives a hint to this being the case.
Ok, so first hand experience tells you an observer exists.
Are you sure that observer has your personality, mind and memories? Are you sure that observer is involved in any way with the world, other than observing it?
Or are those other things just part of the machinery, and quite illusory. For example our perception of time, coherent thought and personality aren't all that consistent, as we know from various experiments and observations.
Here is the crux of my point:
If there's an actual observer, let's call it "primal consciousness", but they are observing the world through the lens of a mind, which is a complex, self-referential, reactive process running on a brain and body, we don't need to say that any particular physical process "creates" consciousness. We can settle with physical processes create something complex and interesting, which runs models of itself and the world, which "primal consciousness" observes. The "mind machine" running on the physics does not contain the observer, it's observed by the observer.
That doesn't "solve" the hard problem, but it's a model with different properties and consequences than some of the other models.
> So why is it wrong to explain this by the necessary recursiveness of predictive modeling that includes modeling “self”?
It's not "wrong", it's just not parsimonious. A system can model itself without being conscious, any time you have state in a program you are doing this.
I like this idea. From my limited reading and understanding, the nervous system/brain and body seems to function as a huge number of feedback loops where the nerves are predicting a response in the body to a nerve firing event, doing the event, and then comparing what happened to the prediction. Moving your hand is a huge number feedback loops. Seems like a similar thing probably happens for abstract things like words. Building up all these sub models to a model of the self seems like a natural progression and could be very evolutionary beneficial, although with drawbacks also (paralyzing self doubt, depression, neuroticism, etc)
It's only wrong because it's not really an explanation. At best, it's a weak one.
Saying that an active model of self "is" what we experience as the consciousness we experience doesn't tell us why we have that experience.
We can just as easily imagine a complex machine with an active self-model that isn't conscious, as one that is.[1] So an active self-model doesn't tell us about consciousness. This shows them to be different concepts, not different names for the same concept. Which means neither "is" the other, and "is" is not an explanation.
[1] (To be a little more picky, we can't imagine that if we insist they are the same thing, but that leads to circular reasoning here. Our questioner can imagine both, and for an explanation to explain it needs to address the question, not wave it away by offering something circular.)
It all sort of falls apart when we only talk about whether an object other than ourselves is conscious or not.
As far as we know[2], we can't distinguish consciousness of other objects by observation. A hypothetical non-conscious machine might tell us it is conscious; we will never know if it's GPT-3000 talking or if it's another being like ourselves. So eventually we'll probably decide that it's moot, and treat it as conscious if it behaves convincingly and consistently like it is.
[2] That could change, it's not ruled out.
But that doesn't deal with the "hard problem" of consciousness, which is ourselves.
For ourselves, we are in no doubt about the direct experience of our own consciousness. We might convince ourselves that it's just an active self-model, processing, because of how we think of data processing machines these days. But we shouldn't, for one because that's a weak explanation that doesn't explain, and for two because there are other active self-models in the universe, and also in the much larger abstract realm of "unexecuted" self-models that could exist (pick an RNG seed and set of rules of your choice). We don't experience those, so the one(s) we do experience are notably distinct, for no obvious reason.
lots of interesting replies, thanks. i'll aggregate my thoughts into single comment to keep this discussion more focused.
it seems to me the only rebuttal is "sure, self-models can exist but it's concievable that they can exist without an observer, so why is there an observer?" and to me it sounds similar to "sure, an eye can exist without abiogenesis, so why do we only find it in organisms that resulted from abiogenesis?"
an eye is just a collection of amino-acids, nothing prevents an eye from spontaneously assembling in a primordial soup and we recognize that's absolutely impossible. however i would posit that due to configuration of physical interactions in our universe, it's virtually guaranteed for an eye to develop in any life-form that is exposed to star's radiation in earth-like conditions.
similarly, just that we can think of p-zombie doesn't mean it's a simpler system to natually occure. we don't have understanding of building blocks of consciousness like we do with chemistry and biology but the answer to the why question seems to be quite simple: we observe ourselves because we evolved to. and we can find more and more primitive examples of self-observation in more and more primitive animals, so it's not some binary phenomena.
Commenting a bit late since I had this tab open for a while, but I find this discussion interesting. Even more magical than consciousness itself, are people denying that there even is a hard problem of consciousness to begin with (if you assume the standard model) ;) You started with asking if consciousness is really that magical and finished with basically admitting that we don't have an answer for how it works yet.
The hard problem of consciousness is not just about the why, it's also about the how. That's exactly the magical part: how subjective, non-physical experiences (supposedly) come from physical interactions. Brushing it off as "evolution" is not sufficient to explain the how.
You’re right, I have no idea how and that’s hard to figure out. Probably I misunderstood the statement of the problem by only focusing on the why part.
Coming from engineering background, I would say we need to be looking for self perpatuating loops of neuronal activity (“strange loops” may be quite appropriate concept), but how would we go about looking for them - I have no idea because I’m not up to date on modern brain scanning tech.
Why hard problem is even here? Consciousness isn't magic, because chinese room in conscious, and it has nothing to do with quantum mechanics, because of paradoxes.
That still doesn't explain why I'm conscious, something that I have direct, first-hand experience of.
> Consciousness isn't magic, because chinese room in conscious
That doesn't explain anything.
Does that explain to the person experiencing consciousness why they are? No it doesn't.
It just says "something else is conscious so you are too". Which is not an explanation, it's circular.
Is it relevant if the Chinese room is conscious as well? Not really.
I am curious, though. Do you consider a system (such as a Chinese room) to be conscious if it's only implicit, by writing down the rules it should run, without actually performing any of the rules? What if it's so implicit that we don't even write down anything, we just refer to it by name, and assume we would create the rules if we needed to as the first steps in execution? Is it conscious when nothing happens at all, but it could happen? If yes, does that mean every possible thing that could occur is conscious even if it doesn't occur? Every physical possibility is conscious? The whole world of abstract mathematics is conscious? If the answer to any of those is no, where do you draw the line between conscious things (Chinese room) and not-conscious things?
Hard problem suggests that consciousness is magical, in which case it could mess with physics. But if consciousness isn't magic, then hard problem is a problem of understanding, not a problem of physics.
>without actually performing any of the rules?
Chinese room works like human mind, so it should run to be conscious.
The First Amendment's guarantee of free speech is worded as an absolute, there are no exceptions in the text.
However, no functioning society could allow unlimited free speech. There are many exceptions to the First Amendment – fraud, perjury, defamation, death threats, "shouting fire in a crowded theatre", speech in violation of privacy or duties of confidentiality, etc.
I don't think the original authors of the First Amendment meant it to be unlimited. They didn't intend it to legalise fraud or perjury or defamation.
But, given they didn't leave any guidance in the text as to which exceptions are valid and which are not, it is basically up to SCOTUS to decide. And which exceptions SCOTUS accepts as valid change as the moods of its majority changes – and will likely continue to change in the future.
The equivalent provision in the European Convention on Human Rights is Article 10, which says: "The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary".
I think that's better than the First Amendment in that it acknowledges in the text the reality that exceptions are necessary, and makes some attempt to outline what the exceptions are. However, there is still a lot of room for interpretation by the European Court of Human Rights as to the proper scope of all those exceptions, especially regarding what is "necessary in a democratic society" and what isn't. Few would claim the Court always gets it right. But, at least, the European Court of Human Rights is arguably a far less politicised institution that the US Supreme Court.
> Most (if not all) EU countries protect the freedom of speech in their constitution.
Not particularly well, as it seems when compared to the US.
You can just look at some of the laws that they have regarding speech, on their books, to see how there are definitely more things that are restricted that you can say, in comparison to what it restricted in the US.
You object to one of the specific exceptions in ECHR Article 10, not to the idea of making the exceptions explicit. The point I was defending was that the exceptions should be explicit, not that the particular list of exceptions in the ECHR is the right list
This would imply there are interpretations where it isn't allowed even in the cases of the worst most extreme content. Does any organization/group advocate such an interpretation? As far as I'm aware all groups either support an interpretation that allows the government to censor some speech or supports considering some speech as not counting as speech so it can be censored without censoring speech (using sophistry to hide censorship of speech).
There's nothing intrinsically superior to either SCOTUS or any group or organization's interpretation.
I'm pretty sure you are able to interpret it as not allowing even in the worst and most extreme cases, you just don't want to. There's no need for an argument from authority.
I'm not trying to claim any one group is authoritative. I'm saying that I'm not aware of any group, regardless of their level of authority, who uses an interpretation that includes the worst material. Everyone (that I'm aware of) makes an exception for at least one form of material, even the ACLU or similar organizations. Even the Libertarian party, one of the groups most in favor of limiting government, is not against censorship of the worst sort of material.
> This would imply there are interpretations where it isn't allowed even in the cases of the worst most extreme content.
That would be the interpretation where someone actually reads the text of the Constitution instead of making up exceptions out of whole cloth.
> Does any organization/group advocate such an interpretation?
Yes, obviously. The Libertarian Party is one example:
>> … we oppose all attempts by government to abridge the freedom of speech and press, as well as government censorship in any form …[1]
>> We support full freedom of expression and oppose government censorship, regulation, or control of communications media and technology.[1]
Direct threats of harm are still actionable, of course. In that situation you aren't punishing the speaker for what they said but rather defending yourself in response to a reasonable expectation of imminent and irreversible harm. The speech is merely evidence of intent.
The issue is what is classified as free speech? Perjury for example might not seem like a free speech issue, but under the most extreme versions it must be allowed.
As such it’s common for groups to carve out what the want limited as simply not qualifying as speech. Aka we can ban spam because we are banning the medium and not the message. This then gets into issues like should flag burning be allowed which blur the line between message and medium. Thus simply saying you support free speech is a rather meaningless statement. People need to look at the specifics on what each group considers speech etc.
> Perjury for example might not seem like a free speech issue, but under the most extreme versions it must be allowed.
If your perjury gets someone else punished when they shouldn't have been, you are an accessory to that unjust punishment. Conversely, if your perjury shields someone from just punishment then you are an accessory to the harm they caused their victim, and potentially future victims who would have otherwise been protected. Once again it is not the speech which is the problem but rather the actual harm which you helped to cause.
> This then gets into issues like should flag burning be allowed which blur the line between message and medium.
That isn't even a question of speech, just private property. If it's your flag then you should be able to burn it, for any reason or no reason. Banning flag-burning on the basis of the message the act is attempting to communicate would obviously infringe on the freedom of speech under even the narrowest of definitions. If you're burning someone else's flag then that can be punished as theft and destruction of others' property independent of any speech which may or may not have been intended. Freedom of speech is not a "get out of jail free" card. If in the course of making your speech you also take actions which harm others then you can be punished for those actions; the fact that they were accompanied by speech is no excuse.
> Thus simply saying you support free speech is a rather meaningless statement.
I kind of agree with you here. Freedom of speech only takes on concrete form when combined with consistent support for private property rights, in which case you get freedom of speech as a natural by-product. The question becomes not "Is this speech?" but rather "Does this action cause injury or otherwise infringe on anyone else's property rights?"—something that speech per se can never do.
> Once again it is not the speech which is the problem but rather the actual harm which you helped to cause.
Unfortunately that doesn’t work as outlawing harm from speech ends up outlawing political speech because someone doesn’t get elected. Similarly, advertising your product is detrimental to your competition.
Effectively you need to define what kinds of harm speech is allowed to produce. Anti Vaccination videos for example actually get people killed, and we accept that as a valid trade off in the US.
Again, it’s really tempting to define something as outside of free speech but selecting what is and isn’t allowed is kind of the point. So, you can’t simply punt this issue.
I don't think the Brazilian government has this responsibility as it is the most at fault for Brazil's lacking free market.
Maybe when it becomes a champion on that, removing barriers of entry, protectionism, subsidies and it's public companies monopolies, then it can be a fair judge on this issue.
So we have no benefit of "open access to the mechanism" but with the deleterious effect of the "temporary (1/5 of a long human life) monopoly".