Subject: Re: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Encyclopedia
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2001 20:46:48 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3214068424351186@naggum.net>

* Daniel Lakeland
| So by making a copy of a CD (for example) I deprive no-one of anything [...]

  It seems that some people consider property as "that which you can
  deprive other people of".  This is commensurate with the "all property is
  theft" line of reasoning, but it is fundamentally silly and offers no way
  to reason about property.

| The market value of the medium can't be what you're getting at though.

  No, you are quite right, it is not.

| It's a complete false start.

  Then it is a really good idea not to think people begin with completely
  false starts.  It make a conversion _so_ much more intelligent if people
  would not assume that the other party is an utter moron and believes
  easily refutable positions.  It is fantastically annoying when people do
  believe in the easily refuable and do not stop doing so even after it has
  been refuted, repeatedly.

| I think the whole thing comes down [economics].

  The value system of any economy is founded on the ontology of the objects
  valued and people's willingness to prioritize their acquistion.  Starting
  with economics is like studying language by watching how people react
  emotionally to each word or phrase.  It may give you some information,
  but what you learn form it is not _meaning_.

  It is _not_ the economy.
  
///
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