I'm not interested in joining the debate about the assertions. I only object to Constant's use of an unfair rhetorical trick; namely, interpreting the interlocutor in a way such that (s)he sounds silly. That some assertions in a paragraph of text are obviously unproblematic is hardly worth pointing out. It would be very difficult to write a longer stretch of text consisting purely of dubious statements.
For illustration, consider this fictitious dialogue (edited to give a better example):
A: The proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is incorrect. That's as obvious as that two plus two is four.
B: That sounds overconfident and is probably false.
C: It would help to pinpoint one particular false claim. Do you for example disagree that two plus two is equal to four?
C's reaction is an unfair distraction although it's not obvious that A's assertion is wrong. If C isn't an idiot he must see that B's objection is directed towards the claim that the proof is faulty, not against the fact that 2+2=4.
In your fictitious example, it is obvious what A is objecting to
In the actual discussion in question, it is not at all obvious what you and Mercy are objecting to.
Recently the relatively awesome entrepreneur invested 1.25 million USD into this (seasteading institute website here).
It seems such a wonderful concept, finally somewhere where new forms of government could be tried out. But I'm just wondering how in the world they hope to deal with existing governments since their reaction to any kind of serious alternatives, especially one that either economically or ideologically presented a significant challenge, is bound to not be positive.
I was just wondering what LWer thoughts are on this matter? Also has there been any discussion of seasteading in the past that I've missed? Also I'm wondering if anyone would hazard to perhaps offer a prediction or judge how likley this is to succeed (maybe on predictionbook)?