Reasoned Consideration

[This article constitutes some rough 'draft thoughts' and is a work-in-progress, potentially subject to substantial re-editing - input and comments welcome - these ideas are not 'fully-formed', and it's a complex issue. The slightly ambitious question is really, what political changes 'should' we make in Africa if we were to broadly expand liberty and increase the protection of individual rights.] "Africa Before the Scramble, 1876" The concept of "illegal immigrant" as it pertains to African countries is historically based primarily on colonially defined borders (e.g. Berlin Conference 1884-85 , i.e. the "Scramble for Africa", and later 'tweaks' to the lines drawn on maps ... in some cases the colonists even effectively drew these lines right through local communities , splitting them - e.g. the Batswana groups have been split across four countries: Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe). As compared to p...

[ Image credit ] Marlise Richter , a self-described “Sex Positive Feminist”, writes on the apparently vexing question of whether women should be 'allowed' free agency: " Stripping the tears of bleeding-heart feminists and other sex abolitionists ": "Liberal feminist Emma Powell visited Mavericks Revue Bar to investigate two pressing questions. One was how “places like this” could exist under the South African Constitution. The second was whether the stripper “girls” looked happy. Her impressions were captured in a Daily Maverick article dramatically titled “House of the Rising sun, built on misery” ... I ask to meet some of the dancers. Early one evening, before their work starts, I sit with four well-groomed women. They are from the UK, Romania, Brazil and South Africa. I give them copies of Ms Powell’s article. (Yes, they can read! Yes, they have opinions!) Indignation and annoyance reign. With voices high in irritation, they describe the ...

"Generating Discussion" is not  per se  virtuous - after all, Hitler also "generated discussion" - a lot of discussion. It's only a virtue if you generate useful discussion.

"Please don't kick me!" This article contemplates  Extending Legal Protection to Social Robots : "Even for fully informed adults, the difference between alive and lifelike may be muddled enough in our subconscious to warrant adopting the same attitudes toward robotic companions that we carry towards our pets. A study of Sony AIBO online message boards reveals that people were dismayed to witness the story of an AIBO being tossed into a garbage can. Not long after the Pleo robot dinosaur became commercially available in 2007, videos of Pleo “torture” began to circulate online. The comments left by viewers are strikingly polarized – while some derive amusement from the videos, others appear considerably upset, going so far as to verbally attack the originators and accuse them of horrible cruelty. The Kantian philosophical argument for animal rights is that our actions towards non-humans reflect our morality — if we treat animals in inhumane ways, we become inh...

Briefly: I think GMO is just a technique/technology - it can be used for good or bad. Blanket bans on GMOs are akin to banning "phones" or "the Internet" - it is wrong and ultimately damaging. If someone is misusing a technology for evil, then the evil practice should be banned, not the technology. It's true that particular companies involved in the development of GMOs are doing bad things - but the positive potential for GMOs in the right hands is enormous - these are ultimately separate issues. This is by no means apologism for the aforementioned.

(For those familiar with the BHL blog, where they are known to sneak in justifications for using force): The very phrase ' Bleeding Heart Libertarian ', if you think about it, is 'in and of itself' actually a subtle contextual ad hominem and ' poisoning the well ' attack on 'actual' (i.e. non-force-advocating) libertarians ... the only way it makes sense to prefix the "bleeding heart" adjective at all is if you're sneaking in a sort of suckerpunch claim that your opponents ('normal' libertarians who presumably, we are to take it, don't have 'bleeding hearts') are 'heartless'; it is essentially a claim that much pain and suffering would be allowed and ignored if 'ordinary' 'non-bleeding-heart' libertarians were ever in charge - it automatically frames all subsequent discourse and debate within this mindset, and it's 'smart' but sneaky in that it puts debate opponents immediately on...

Durban beach sand art bulldozed “Durban Metro Police have removed dozens of unlicensed sand sculptors from the beachfront today ...  the move is part of ongoing efforts to ensure that only traders with permits are allowed on the beach-front ...  Those wishing to make sand sculptures are required to pay a monthly permit fee ” So you now need a "permit" to create sand sculptures on Durban's public beaches (presumably if you expect someone might tip you), and poor people trying to earn a living are having their livelihoods bulldozed by the government. Meanwhile, taxpayers foot the bill for expending police resources on this, instead of on real crime. It should seem like common sense to say, but provided you aren't interfering with anyone else, you should have a natural right to create a sand sculpture on a public beach. And if a passerby wants to give you a bit of spare change, that too is his/her natural right - neither party should have to ask anyone's "p...

Hrm, evidently Friday was International Women's Day ... maybe a good opportunity to reflect on a seldom-discussed but common form of violence against women - namely, how "modern", "civilized" society continues to brutally violate the rights of many innocent women by forcibly locking them in cages for victimless consensual crimes: http://www.csun.edu/~psy453/prosti_y.htm Decriminalization of (adult, consent-based) prostitution would restore to the justice system its proper role of protecting the natural rights of citizens, rather than violating them - providing not only protection against being locked up at gunpoint, but also legal remedies against abuse by the very forces who are supposed to protect society's most vulnerable: http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Most-sex-workers-abused-by-police-study-20120822 "About 70% of sex workers have been abused by police" ... "Sex workers experience violence during arrest by police officers...

From this post, " Moderate Rationality ": "First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice ... who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom" - Martin Luther King Jr. "Imagine what "moderation" in mathematics would mean. It would mean not that 2 + 2 = 4, but that it's more or less 4, maybe we can "agree" that 2 + 2 = 4.2. You don't land a man on the moon with this sort of attitude about ideas. The field of ethics is even more important than the field of m...

[ Edit (Sep 2020) : I no longer entirely agree with everything I wrote 2009 below. I don't think we should subscribe to any view that appears to almost romanticize or frame human obsolescence in an almost sort of 'positive' light, or to fatalistically accept it as any supposed 'inevitability'. Even if we eventually invent "superior" machines, we can and should assert our right to exist, and can and should do what it takes to survive and thrive in such a hypothetical world [notwithstanding our own obligations to uphold rational ethical principles - the existing of violators of ethical rights are not a reason to end the species, rather, we have a justice system for that]. Also, we could improve ourselves in various ways to remain 'competitive' with increasingly better machines, for example through augmentation (e.g. systems like what Neuralink aims to be), or perhaps in future through genetic modification. Furthermore, there are also two different c...