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TheLooniBomber comments on The Fallacy of Gray - Less Wrong
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I am embarrassed that I accidentally clicked "close" before I was done writing my comment. While I was off composing it in the sandbox, you saw the first draft and commented on it. And you are correct, I think. Is my face red, or what? I have retracted my original comment. My browser shows it as struck out, anyway.
So, yeah, saying that government is "coercive violence" is a straw argument. I think we agree.
I think we agree. What are "actual rational agents"? I am new here, so maybe I should do some more reading. I'm sure Eliezer has published extensively on defining that term. My prejudice would be that "actual rational agents" are entities which "rationally" would want to protect their own existence. I mean, they may be "rational", but they still have self-interest.
So what I'm saying is that "government" is a system for settling claims between competing rational agents. It's a set of game rules. Game rules enshrined by rational agents, for the purpose of protecting their own rational self-interests, are rational.
Rational debate, without the existence of these game rules, which is what government is, is impossible. That's what I'm saying.
Here's another way to look at it. The Laws of Logic (A is A, etc.) are also game rules. We don't think of them that way because we don't accept the Laws of Logic voluntarily. We are forced to accept them because they are necessarily true. Additional rules, which we call government, are also necessary. We write our own Constitution, but we still need to have one.
Bringing party politics into a discussion about rationality makes you the straw man, my friend. Attacking a philosophy of limited government would imply that every government action is the same shade of grey, and all must be necessary, because a group of people voted on a policy, therefore it must be thought out. Politics in itself is not the product of careful examination and rational thinking about public issues, but rather a way of conveying ones interests in a manner that appears to benefit the target audience and gain support. Not all rules are necessary or of the same necessity, simply because they are written.
I would also add that we do, in fact accept the Laws of Logic voluntarily, but only if we are not indoctrinated to do otherwise. To believe that we don't, would suggest that the first philosophers had to have been taught, perhaps by some supernatural or extraterrestrial deity, or perhaps the first logical thought was triggered by a concussion.