What's the point of freedom? Is it god-given? an illusion? is it utilitarian (for example to promote innovation and economic growth through market participation) within certain threshhold levels to the degree that it helps maximize our mutual odds of persistence? Personally, I lean at least towards the latter justification for promoting certain amounts of free agency for people in society. But I think it's a bit arbitrary that freedom can be curtailed to forestall death from a threat in one hour's time, or one day's time, or one week's time, but not in a few decade's time (as would be attempted with the compulsory medical trial participation example).
By request of the community, an Open Thread for free-form comments, so long as they're still related to the basic project of this blog.
A word on post requests: You're free to ask, but the authors can't commit to posting on requested topics - it's hard enough to do the ones we have in mind already.