Comments on: Xenomy

By: fotrkd

fotrkd — Sat, 04 May 2013 18:21:22 +0000

Admin: have you been here? It's wonderfully and magnificently bonkers.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:56:05 +0000

“I didn’t see that one coming.” — That’s the response it’s counting on.

“How do you get self-protective? Everything can and will be tinkered with.” — Tinkering arms race needed.

By: spandrell

spandrell — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:46:39 +0000

Heh, I didn’t see that one coming.

How do you get self-protective? Everything can and will be tinkered with.

By: spandrell

spandrell — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:42:07 +0000

I agree with that. In the end it’s never a problem of design.
Any system depends on the people wanting it to survive. All laws can be amended.

The great insight on politics must be how to make people want a functional system.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:42:05 +0000

” A good constitution is just a delay mechanism.” — A really good constitution is a self-protective artificial intelligence that sustains a free society irrespective of demotic threats or elite factional machinations. Which is not, of course, to say that we are anywhere close to that yet.

By: Peter A. Taylor

Peter A. Taylor — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:15:10 +0000

Guenter Lewy is an atheist sociologist who started to write a book defending atheists against the claim that religion is critical in promoting moral behavior. He wrote in his introduction, “A funny thing, if one can call it that, happened on the way to the completion of this book….” The result was _Why America Needs Religion: Secular Modernity and its Discontents_. My review of it:

http://home.earthlink.net/~peter.a.taylor/lewy.htm

Jonathan Haidt’s recent book, _The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion_, is also excellent.

By: Peter A. Taylor

Peter A. Taylor — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 23:33:11 +0000

“Anything less robust has surrendered to democracy in advance.”

Maybe I misunderstood you. The US Constitution was intended for a republic, which only differs from a democracy in the long run if the voters say it does.

But even if you’re trying to write a constitution for a limited monarchy, I still don’t see how you can defend it against a dysfunctional Cathedral.

I recommend _In Defence of Politics_, by Bernard Crick. Crick mentions an old Whig saying, “No constitution is better than the character of the men who work it.” A good constitution is just a delay mechanism.

By: nydwracu

nydwracu — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 20:19:06 +0000

I’m… not. But it’s basically inevitable that I’ll read him at some point.

La Wik says Bataille was a Nietzschean when it was unpopular to be one, and seeing as how reading Nietzsche is the closest thing I’ve seen to reading a proper articulation of the things I’d already been dimly half-thinking, I’ll have to read him at some point.

By: admin

admin — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 07:03:58 +0000

“There isn’t all that much room for improvement.” — It would have benefited from much better intrinsic protection against abominations such as the Commerce Clause, just for starters. Another obvious flaw is the mechanism for appointment of Supreme Court justices, which fundamentally subverts their supposed independence (even some kind of lottery would have been preferable).
The missing principle is Constitutional Autonomy. If the constitution is seen as serving the people, it’s already over. Instead, the constitution should be designed to defend itself against encroachments from all sides. Once that foundation is in place, an adequate design can be incrementally realized, through a cyclical procedure of self-improvement. Anything less robust has surrendered to democracy in advance.

By: spandrell

spandrell — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:38:07 +0000

Guenter Lewy?