Xero's Rule

... an increase in the power of the State ... does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality which lies at the heart of all progress… - Gandhi

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The public collectively is abundantly ready to impose, not only its generally narrow views of its interests, but its abstract opinions, and even its tastes, as laws binding upon individuals. And the present civilization tends so strongly to make the power of persons acting in masses the only substantial power in society, that there never was more necessity for surrounding individual independence of thought, speech, and conduct, with the most powerful defences, in order to maintain that originality of mind and individuality of character, which are the only source of any real progress, and of most of the qualities which make the human race much superior to any herd of animals. - J.S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy

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Xero's Rule: by the time a species has progressed to the point that they can travel to other inhabited planets...they would have discovered the positive correlation between trading and progress.

While it's entertaining/exciting/scary to watch movies with alien space invaders attacking our planet in order to take our resources...the concept has no basis in economic reality...

1. Scarcity is relevant no matter what solar system you're from
2. Progress depends on how scarce resources are used
3. Different perspectives can see different uses of the same resource
4. Therefore, the rate of progress depends on...
5. - how much difference there is between people's perspectives (diversity)
6. - how much freedom people have to apply their perspectives to their scarce resources

If a species has 100% freedom but no variation in perspectives...then they won't come up with different uses of their resources...which will result in a 0% rate of progress. Same thing if a species has 0% freedom but incredible variation in perspectives. Of course neither extreme is possible...but where a species falls on the spectrum will determine its rate of progress.

In all likelihood it would probably be relatively easy for an advanced alien civilization to enslave/kill/eat us and take our resources. They would then be able to use our resources in their own alien ways. But if they did take our resources then they would be greatly hindering their own progress. This is because if they hadn't taken our resources...then us humans would have been able to apply our very different perspectives to our resources. We would have come up with new and innovative uses that the aliens would have been able to benefit from...but wouldn't have thought of on their own.

The same concept is applicable to different groups within a species. China could certainly try and invade our country and take our resources. And if they were successful...then they would temporarily benefit. They would have more resources...but they would still just be applying the same set of perspectives to them. And having resources isn't nearly as important as what you do with them. Therefore, China would be sacrificing the significantly greater benefit that they would have derived from all future American innovations.

Here's what John Stuart Mill wrote in 1869...

China—a nation of much talent, and, in some respects, even wisdom, owing to the rare good fortune of having been provided at an early period with a particularly good set of customs, the work, in some measure, of men to whom even the most enlightened European must accord, under certain limitations, the title of sages and philosophers. They are remarkable, too, in the excellence of their apparatus for impressing, as far as possible, the best wisdom they possess upon every mind in the community, and securing that those who have appropriated most of it shall occupy the posts of honour and power. Surely the people who did this have discovered the secret of human progressiveness, and must have kept themselves steadily at the head of the movement of the world. On the contrary, they have become stationary—have remained so for thousands of years; and if they are ever to be farther improved, it must be by foreigners. They have succeeded beyond all hope in what English philanthropists are so industriously working at—in making a people all alike, all governing their thoughts and conduct by the same maxims and rules; and these are the fruits. The modern régime of public opinion is, in an unorganized form, what the Chinese educational and political systems are in an organized; and unless individuality shall be able successfully to assert itself against this yoke, Europe, notwithstanding its noble antecedents and its professed Christianity, will tend to become another China. - J.S. Mill On Liberty

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And here's what Mao Zedong wrote nearly a 100 years later...

Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China's 600 million people is that they are "poor and blank". This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing. Poverty gives rise to the desire for changes the desire for action and the desire for revolution. On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written; the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted. - Mao Zedong

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Subjugation/taking greatly slows the rate of progress. This fatal conceit squanders the most valuable resource... individuality/uniqueness/originality. Therefore, the rate of progress is far greater if we rely on persuasion/trading.

Unfortunately, as a species, clearly we still are not aware of the positive correlation between trading and progress. The pattern is there...but most have yet to see it. As more and more people start to see the pattern, there will be more recognition of the immense value of giving taxpayers the freedom to shop for themselves in the public sector. The unique perspectives of millions of diverse people would be applied to public goods and the result would be infinitely beneficial.

If people aren't free to shop for themselves...then the specificity and ranking of their preferences and the uniqueness of their circumstances will not be input into the function which determines how society's scarce resources are used. As a result, the output will be the wrong quantities of an extremely narrow selection of poor quality products/services. Pseudo-demand, pseudo-supply. Garbage in, garbage out.

Pragmatarianism can't be implemented if the positive correlation between shopping and progress is not clear to most...just like we won't be capable of traveling to other inhabited planets if the pattern is not clear to all. Given that economic reality is not constrained by time/space... convergence is certain: an alien civilization won't be able to visit other inhabited planets before they've seen the pattern.

What I've shared is basically a consequentialist argument against taking. Or conversely...a consequentialist argument for trading/liberty. It should be clear that consequentialist arguments for liberty have far more substance than moral arguments for liberty.

The amount of benefit the future holds depends on you! So please carefully read the following passages on heterogeneous activity...

Solutions to complex social problems require as many creative minds as possible — and this is precisely what the market delivers. - Donald J. Boudreaux

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I’m not here to say that men are to blame for the [financial] crisis and what happened in my country [Iceland]. But I can tell you that in my country, much like on Wall Street and the city of London and elsewhere, men were at the helm of the game of the financial sector. That kind of lack of diversity and sameness leads to disastrous problems. - Halla Tomasdottir, Co-founder of Audur Capital

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Austrians believe that we get more solutions – and better, more creative solutions – if the energy, imagination, alertness and specialist knowledge of many individuals are engaged on the task. In economics, this is achieved through the process of competition, which gives diverse entrepreneurs the incentive to seek out new and better ways of enhancing value to consumers. By the same reasoning, our social and political problems may also be best solved if we give individuals the widest possible freedom to come up with a variety of creative responses, rather than hoping that a single collective approach will suffice. - Eamonn Butler, Austrian Economics

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The generation to which we belong is now learning from experience what happens when man retreats from freedom to a coercive organization of their affairs. Though they promise themselves a more abundant life, they must in practice renounce it; as the organizational direction increases, the variety of ends must give way to uniformity. That is the nemesis of the planned society and the authoritarian principle in human affairs. - Walter Lippmann

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Development happens thanks to problem-solving systems. To vastly oversimplify for illustrative purposes, the market is a decentralized (private) problem solving system with rich feedback and accountability. Democracy, civil liberties, free speech, protection of rights of dissidents and activists is a decentralized (public) problem solving system with (imperfect) feedback and accountability. Individual liberty in general fosters systems that allow many different individuals to use their particular local knowledge and expertise to attempt many different independent trials at solutions. When you have a large number of independent trials, the probability of solutions goes way up. - William Easterly, The Answer Is 42!

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So far as this is the case, it is evident that government, by excluding or even by superseding individual agency, either substitutes a less qualified instrumentality for one better qualified, or at any rate substitutes its own mode of accomplishing the work, for all the variety of modes which would be tried by a number of equally qualified persons aiming at the same end; a competition by many degrees more propitious to the progress of improvement than any uniformity of system. - J.S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy

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It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves, but by cultivating it and calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation; and as the works partake the character of those who do them, by the same process human life also becomes rich, diversified, and animating, furnishing more abundant aliment to high thoughts and elevating feelings, and strengthening the tie which binds every individual to the race, by making the race infinitely better worth belonging to. In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others. There is a greater fulness of life about his own existence, and when there is more life in the units there is more in the mass which is composed of them. - J.S. Mill, On Liberty

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Similarly, Niskanen attacked the monopoly power of public bureaucracies, school districts among them. More recently, Coons and Sugarman have championed the case for parental freedom of choice, indicating that we should "substitute mutual respect as a ground of a social accord" and use freedom of choice to reduce the perils of uniformity. - Daniel J. Brown, The Case For Tax-Target Plans

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While declaring “Let the government handle it” comes across as a solution, it’s no such thing. Instead, it is merely a sign of a simple and baseless faith — a simple and baseless faith that people invested with power will not abuse that power; that political appointees possess or will find better answers than will millions of people pursuing solutions in their own ways, and staking their own resources and reputations on their efforts; that only those ‘solutions’ that are spelled out in statutes and regulations and that have officials paid to implement them are true solutions. - Donald J. Boudreaux

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In 1956, economist Charles Tiebout (pronounced TEE-bow) asked: What is it about the private market that guarantees optimal provision of private goods that is missing in the case of public goods? His insight was that the factors missing from the market for public goods were shopping and competition. - Jonathan Gruber, Public Finance and Public Policy

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Re: Zeno's Rule

Xerographica said:

Xero's Rule: by the time a species has progressed to the point that they can travel to other inhabited planets...they would have discovered the positive correlation between trading and progress.

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It'll never happen.

Before you can get from your own planet to another, you have to get to the point halfway between the two planets.

But before you can get there, you have to get to the point halfway to that point, or a quarter of the way between your own planet and the destination planet.

But before you can get to that 1/4 point, you have to get halfway to it.

And so on, infinitely. Since you must pass through an infinite number of “halfway points”, in a finite amount of time, you will never reach your destination.

Re: Zeno's Rule

Bob Blaylock said:

It'll never happen.

Before you can get from your own planet to another, you have to get to the point halfway between the two planets.

But before you can get there, you have to get to the point halfway to that point, or a quarter of the way between your own planet and the destination planet.

But before you can get to that 1/4 point, you have to get halfway to it.

And so on, infinitely. Since you must pass through an infinite number of “halfway points”, in a finite amount of time, you will never reach your destination.

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Is that why you can't go home again?

Based on your theory, aliens can get within a few inches of Earth but can never actually land. That's why they outsource their abductions.

Re: Zeno's Rule

This premise relies on the idea that an alien race would view humans as being worth inteligent interaction.


When you want your lawn to look nice, do you debate with and try to persuade the ant colony to yield ground?

No, you just kill them, and take their land.

Re: Zeno's Rule

ANY life form that has mastered interstellar travel would know no scarcity. Scarcity doesn't exist. The mind is an infinite resource. A space faring race would have no need of anything that we have on this planet. Perhaps they might wipe us out for sport or land on the White house lawn for their own self-aggrandizement but somehow I simply must believe that their morals and ethics would have somehow developed along with their technology so as to make either scenario an impossibility. In the grand scheme of things, in a Cosmos that is 13.7 billion years old and 93 billion light-years in diameter (observable) we are just barely out of swinging in the trees, I mean unless they think our women are hawt we have nothing to worry about

Re: Zeno's Rule

KevinKohler said:

This premise relies on the idea that an alien race would view humans as being worth inteligent interaction.
When you want your lawn to look nice, do you debate with and try to persuade the ant colony to yield ground?
No, you just kill them, and take their land.

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In order to get here, they will probably be a carbon-based life form with sufficient manipulative skills to construct a FTL space-ship. As revolting as humans are, I doubt we'll be viewed as the level of ants.

Everything you did today would have seemed to be magic 200 years ago. When we encounter primitive tribes in Africa, we don't tend to want to harm them. Besides that, Mr. Blaylock has demonstrated that they will never arrive anyway.

Re: Zeno's Rule

They won't want to violate the prime directive and since we are light years away from developing warp drive
they will have to pass us by

Re: Zeno's Rule

specklebang said:

Based on your theory…

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It's not my theory.

When you figure out whose it is, my post will make more sense. Or perhaps it will make less sense. But whatever sense it does or does not make, you'll never get as long as you assume that I was expressing my own theory.

Re: Zeno's Rule

Bob Blaylock said:

It'll never happen.

Before you can get from your own planet to another, you have to get to the point halfway between the two planets.

But before you can get there, you have to get to the point halfway to that point, or a quarter of the way between your own planet and the destination planet.

But before you can get to that 1/4 point, you have to get halfway to it.

And so on, infinitely. Since you must pass through an infinite number of “halfway points”, in a finite amount of time, you will never reach your destination.

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un... believable.
The knee-jerk conservative mind at work. The Tea Party unwittingly exposed.

Using that theory you can't get to the grocery store either. (not to mention the moon, where we've already been)

Can posts really be that Obtuse... gratuitously spreading 'likes' to other posts/posters of equal 'value'?
Yes, there are several wellsprings of absolutely thoughtLess author/patronage.

Re: Zeno's Rule

Dude seriously Zeno's Paradox? I think it was really funny Well played Sir

Re: Zeno's Rule

Bob Blaylock said:

It's not my theory.

When you figure out whose it is, my post will make more sense. Or perhaps it will make less sense. But whatever sense it does or does not make, you'll never get as long as you assume that I was expressing my own theory.

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What if the aliens are anteaters and we would have nothing else to trade and therefore they would have no use for us---we wouldn't ever be able to progress with people like you having carpet-bombed your yard with ant killer? You have ruined us, you anarchist!!! :2razz:

Re: Zeno's Rule

mbig said:

Can posts really be that Obtuse…?

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Re: Zeno's Rule

Bob Blaylock said:

It's not my theory.

When you figure out whose it is, my post will make more sense. Or perhaps it will make less sense. But whatever sense it does or does not make, you'll never get as long as you assume that I was expressing my own theory.

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Including you as I did was meant to be humor and acknowledgement that your post makes perfect sense. And being saved from an alien invasion is to all of our credits.

If only the earthlings knew how much we do for them.

Re: Zeno's Rule

Fisher said:

What if the aliens are anteaters and we would have nothing else to trade and therefore they would have no use for us---we wouldn't ever be able to progress with people like you having carpet-bombed your yard with ant killer? You have ruined us, you anarchist!!! :2razz:

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Quite au contraire. Anteaters don't have hands and I don't care how sentient you get, fingers are pretty important when you're sealing up your quantum reactor. And I suppose this is a Liberal pitch for redistribution of insect control supplies.

Re: Zeno's Rule

specklebang said:

Quite au contraire. Anteaters don't have hands and I don't care how sentient you get, fingers are pretty important when you're sealing up your quantum reactor. And I suppose this is a Liberal pitch for redistribution of insect control supplies.

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Strange that you assume that alien anteaters will be like earth anteaters. If I recall correctly, the aliens who starred in that true-life documentary V preferred rats yet they looked nothing like earth cats.

Re: Zeno's Rule

Fisher said:

Strange that you assume that alien anteaters will be like earth anteaters. If I recall correctly, the aliens who starred in that true-life documentary V preferred rats yet they looked nothing like earth cats.

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You're the one who coined the term anteater and I'm just a helpless victim.

Now, cats with hands would be the ****s and now I feel bad that they can't land.

Woe is me.

Xerographica said:

Xero's Rule: by the time a species has progressed to the point that they can travel to other inhabited planets...they would have discovered the positive correlation between trading and progress.

While it's entertaining/exciting/scary to watch movies with alien space invaders attacking our planet in order to take our resources...the concept has no basis in economic reality...

What I've shared is basically a consequentialist argument against taking. Or conversely...a consequentialist argument for trading/liberty. It should be clear that consequentialist arguments for liberty have far more substance than moral arguments for liberty.

The amount of benefit the future holds depends on you! So please carefully read the following passages on heterogeneous activity...

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You focus your argument on trade and economics. Those factors have contributed to, but are not the sole cause of aggressive imperialistic action in human history. To project them as the prime motivators of Extra Terrestral Intelligence (ETI) in a first contact scenario is over-simplifying the equation.

This is not to say that ETI will automatically be aggressive or intentionally domineering, but if you are going to use human ideas in support of your position then you really need to admit many examples of aggression related AND unrelated to trade and economics. Let's look at a couple of examples before we adress your trade and economics position.

Throughout our history religion has shown itself to be a mighty motivator of conquest and dominance. "God Wills It" has been mimicked everywhere; in the crusades, the moslem jihad, and other examples. It is entirely possible that an ETI encounter would be based upon their desire to convert by force our entire species to a new religious order. Maybe we would not agree with that and conflict would result.

Then, there is the simple ethnocentric desire to dominate that is exemplified in such conquerors as Xerxes, Genghis Khan, and Hitler. There is always the possibility the ETI believes in it's innate right to rule all other species it encounters.

There is also a corollary xenophobic possibility; a drive to eliminate all other species simply because they are different and not "true" life deserving of preservation. A good example is the long-standing European xenophobia of Anti-Semitism, leading to a tendancy to isolate and destroy Jews as an undesirable race. There are other examples in Turkey and the Armenians or Iraq and the Kurds. So we might encounter an ETI that would simply want us exterminated like rats or roaches.

But returning to your trade and economics thesis, we have two possibilities; A. Encountering freindly ETI's who harm us unintentionally, and B. Encountering unfreindly ETI's who couldn't care less about trade and simply want our resources.

A2. When Columbus first arrived in the New World, it was with the intent to set up a new trade route to the Indies where he thought he'd actually arrived at. Two problems occurred after discovering the truth. The first was the clear technological advantage Europe had over native americans. The second was the differences in resistance to disease.

In the first case, even though the natives had things Europe wanted (gold, spices, rare woods and minerals) trade was imbalanced i.e. Europe got more than it gave. It also served to disrupt the local societies as divisions occurred between those who wanted all the tech advantages offered and those who saw how it was undermining the social order. The same thing could happen today, as Alien tech disrupts and destroys local economies that simply cannot compete creating a trade imbalance. This does not even address the possibility of their simply saying "screw it" it would be easier to just take and control resources and use the natives as labor, just like the Europeans eventually did.

A2. Well, despite arguments to the contrary, it is entirely possible that ETI contact could flood our planet with new and destructive species (like the Norweigian Rat) and diseases that could decimate out planetary population. Imagine plagues we could not cure, or beast that acted like locusts we could not control. Things the ETI's never considered when they contemplated contact.

B1. Our history is replete with technologically superior nations deciding it is easier to conquer and control a low-tech civilization than merely trade with it. You get a free labor force and complete access to all the resources without the problems of negotiating with the natives. All it takes is a show of force, and periodic examples of force to keep most of the natives in line. Whole economies were based on such colonial enterprises, and quite successfully too.

B2. Although entertaining, "Independence Day" also poses a real possibility of a "Harvestor" civilization; nomadic and devastating. It is entirely possible that an ETI race would simply act like locusts, traveling from system to system consuming a planets resources and then moving on. In which case, we ourselves might be no more than food for them, so why trade with food? Do we trade with pigs, fish, or cows?

I do not presume hostile intent, and it is also possible that ETI's will have benign intents. However, it is better to be prepared for the worst and be happily surprised than to expect the best and be surprise attacked.

Captain Adverse said:

You focus your argument on trade and economics. Those factors have contributed to, but are not the sole cause of aggressive imperialistic action in human history. To project them as the prime motivators of Extra Terrestral Intelligence (ETI) in a first contact scenario is over-simplifying the equation.

I do not presume hostile intent, and it is also possible that ETI's will have benign intents. However, it is better to be prepared for the worst and be happily surprised than to expect the best and be surprise attacked.

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A damn well written post. However, I am certain that this planet has nothing unique to offer that a star-faring society would be intent on destroying sentient life. As dumb as we act sometimes, we're actually beautifully complex in design. Just look at how your hands function. You're using only a fraction of your brain and brains alone are a miracle of engineering.

So, it's not just Xero protecting us. It's the fact that we are interesting. My bigger concern is that they will come in hopes of trading and we will nuke them from sheer paranoia.

the other races you mentioned are humans, they would be a completely different species and

there are NO resources on this planet that don't exist everywhere else in the Universe
they would have access to all the elements present in space It is only us who are for the time being marooned on this little rock

they would just destroy us from high orbit and move on happy in the knowledge that they had rid the Cosmos of a future pest

specklebang said:

A damn well written post. However, I am certain that this planet has nothing unique to offer that a star-faring society would be intent on destroying sentient life. As dumb as we act sometimes, we're actually beautifully complex in design. Just look at how your hands function. You're using only a fraction of your brain and brains alone are a miracle of engineering.

So, it's not just Xero protecting us. It's the fact that we are interesting. My bigger concern is that they will come in hopes of trading and we will nuke them from sheer paranoia.

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LOL...I appreciate the comment.

I was reading an interesting article about this issue and it touched upon your point about our being "interesting" too. I believe the article points out that we might be conquered simply because we are interesting, and kept as pets or vehicles for entertainment purposes...like we do with trained seals and dancing bears.

Here is the paper:

http://sethbaum.com/ac/2011_ET-Scenarios.pdf

nope destruction from high orbit we are so arrogant that we actually believe ourselves 'interesting'

Captain Adverse said:

LOL...I appreciate the comment.

I was reading an interesting article about this issue and it touched upon your point about our being "interesting" too. I believe the article points out that we might be conquered simply because we are interesting, and kept as pets or vehicles for entertainment purposes...like we do with trained seals and dancing bears.

Here is the paper:

http://sethbaum.com/ac/2011_ET-Scenarios.pdf

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AngryOldGuy said:

nope destruction from high orbit we are so arrogant that we actually believe ourselves 'interesting'

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Thanks for the link - I'll read it later.

We're primarily combative over territory. We've created these stupid nations and we fight to influence others. If you've got FTL, real estate is NOT one of your issues. And who want a high maintenance, monkey shaped pet anyway? I bet if they just asked for volunteers, they'd be flooded with applications.

Most likely they'll just feel sorry for us. They definitely won't be giving us FTL though.

specklebang said:

Thanks for the link - I'll read it later.

We're primarily combative over territory. We've created these stupid nations and we fight to influence others. If you've got FTL, real estate is NOT one of your issues. And who want a high maintenance, monkey shaped pet anyway? I bet if they just asked for volunteers, they'd be flooded with applications.

Most likely they'll just feel sorry for us. They definitely won't be giving us FTL though.

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They don't have to have a need for us themselves---they could just trade us to someone else who have what they really need.

Fisher said:

They don't have to have a need for us themselves---they could just trade us to someone else who have what they really need.

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Once they meet our Fearless Leaders, they'll rocket on out of here before their IQs are permanently damaged. You want a bunch of humans eating, sleeping and ****ting all over your starcruiser? I think NOT.

specklebang said:

Once they meet our Fearless Leaders, they'll rocket on out of here before their IQs are permanently damaged. You want a bunch of humans eating, sleeping and ****ting all over your starcruiser? I think NOT.

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They don't need to keep us alive--they might just harvest our skulls for Planet Chia to have materials to grow their grass on.