The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation

[Stranger]

@Juan

Did Stranger address the little problem that his fictitious IP conflicts with libertarian property rights ? Not that he would be bothered since he’s a socialist/conservative who believes that we live in a ‘capitalist’ paradise where privilege is free-enterprise and black is white.

Fallacy 1, 8.

[Juan]

1 : “Intellectual property is bad due to patents”
8 : “Intellectual property derives from the labor theory of value and is refuted by marginal value theory”

That has nothing to do with my question. I think you fail.

[Juan]

Stranger, in your communist world where individual rights are not respected, would people be allowed to copy industrial designs or would that be a violation of ‘copyright’ ?

[Stranger]

@Juan

Stranger, in your communist world where individual rights are not respected, would people be allowed to copy industrial designs or would that be a violation of ‘copyright’ ?

It’s up to the producer to decide, not me.

[Stranger]

@filc

Indeed! i fell right into it. The ole bait n switch.

Adult Stranger posted, than child Stranger followed through. I’m just glad I didn’t waste my time writing a formal response.

Although the moderators somehow tolerate insults coming from the illiterates of this forum, I have been notified that I cannot respond in kind, and so do not expect any further replies from me.

[Juan]

It’s up to the producer to decide, not me.

Thanks for conceding by evading my question.

I daresay you want a patent system, because you are a mercantilist, and you want to confuse patents and copyright so that you can use the “Even Rothbard supported copyright!!” fallacy.

[pablofrancisco]

@demosthenes

The IP debate just shows me that property rights and the NAP are nothing but gray areas, with any one person defining their own subjective borders to what is just and what is not just in a world of “property rights.” To me, the solution is simple: eliminate the state, let the market handle it, and then we can talk about it. Since the state currently exists, I will consider the current statist system in regard to IP to be completely illegitimate. As for whether I think it’s moral or not, that is my own preference and ultimately inconsequential.

[B]

[Juan]

As for whether I think it’s moral or not, that is my own preference and ultimately inconsequential.

And if cops decide to beat you into a pulp, that’s their preference and ‘ultimately inconsequential’.

[Amanojack]

@DBratton

@AJ

The spectrum may be, but the waves are not.

Actually the spectrum is not scarce. Refer to the Archimedes Principle: For any two real numbers there are infinitely many real numbers between them.

Now substitute frequency for real number and you can see that it is only the capabilities of technological mechanisms for exploiting the spectrum which are limited.

Thanks, I didn’t know that.

[nirgrahamUK]

Mises makes ‘fallacy’ 2:
The formula, the recipe, that teaches us how to prepare coffee, provided it is known, renders
unlimited services. It does not lose anything from its capacity to produce however often it is
used; its productive power is inexhaustible; it is therefore not an economic good. Acting man is
never faced with a situation in which he must choose between the use-value of a known formula
and any other useful thing.

[Stranger]

@nirgrahamUK

Mises makes ‘fallacy’ 2:
The formula, the recipe, that teaches us how to prepare coffee, provided it is known, renders
unlimited services. It does not lose anything from its capacity to produce however often it is
used; its productive power is inexhaustible; it is therefore not an economic good. Acting man is
never faced with a situation in which he must choose between the use-value of a known formula
and any other useful thing.

The formula for coffee is just knowledge, it is not information.

[nirgrahamUK]

i request that you explain the difference or point to somewhere it is explained.

also is the story of a book, and the melody of a song, information, or ‘just knowledge’ ? (and why?)

[Stranger]

@nirgrahamUK

i request that you explain the difference or point to somewhere it is explained.

also is the story of a book, and the melody of a song, information, or ‘just knowledge’ ? (and why?)

Knowledge is bound to the human mind. It propagates through oral communication from one person to another.

Information, on the other hand, is bound to a media. It can only propagate from media to media. Because of strict physical limits of the mind’s ability to process information, it is impossible for people to replicate it. So for example, if I asked you what this picture means:

You would be unable to extract any meaning from it, and you would of course be unable to reproduce it in any reliable form. That means that it is completely different from an idea. It is physical.

[nirgrahamUK]

These definitions, are they from any particular tradition? are they common/mundane? or are they your pets that you encourage others to adopt?

could I use a computer to analyse the fractal and deduce for me a formula by which it may be reproduced?

[Stranger]

@nirgrahamUK

These definitions, are they from any particular tradition? are they common/mundane? or are they your pets that you encourage others to adopt?

They are part of information theory, which was a field that was only in its infancy during the lifetime of Mises. However, despite not having in-depth knowledge of information physics, previous economists (such as Rothbard) were able to recognize the scarcity of information regardless, and distinguish it from the scarcity of ideas.

As I stated before, it is only necessary, in order to distinguish information from ideas and identify information as scarce and ideas as superabundant, to observe how people act towards these two goods. The fact that there exists a black market for information, that people are willing to pay money to pirates and counterfeiters for it, demonstrates that it is irrevocably scarce. On the other hand, no one will ever pay a penny for an idea! No black market for ideas exist, demonstrating that ideas aren’t scarce.

@nirgrahamUK

could I use a computer to analyse the fractal and deduce for me a formula by which it may be reproduced?

Absolutely impossible. It is a feature of the Mandelbrot Set that you could explore it for the entire lifetime of the universe and never arrive at the same output. Besides, your proposal is equivalent to saying that you can look at an animal and deduce its DNA.

[nirgrahamUK]

@Stranger

They are part of information theory, which was a field that was only in its infancy during the lifetime of Mises. However, despite not having in-depth knowledge of information physics, previous economists (such as Rothbard) were able to recognize the scarcity of information regardless, and distinguish it from the scarcity of ideas.

As I stated before, it is only necessary, in order to distinguish information from ideas and identify information as scarce and ideas as superabundant, to observe how people act towards these two goods. The fact that there exists a black market for information, that people are willing to pay money to pirates and counterfeiters for it, demonstrates that it is irrevocably scarce. On the other hand, no one will ever pay a penny for an idea! No black market for ideas exist, demonstrating that ideas aren’t scarce.

Can you point to an ‘information theory’ primer that schools new readers in the technical definitions of information and knowledge as they are used formally within that science?

I note that we have introduced a third term, we had information and knowledge. now you mention information and ideas. What are you saying about information? the information in a book, is patterns of ink on paper that by looking at and interpreting using a scheme I can form ideas about.
I agree that ink on paper is scarce. media is scarce. but you don’t advocate ‘media rights’ especially. all ibertarians advocate media rights. so, we have our common ground… where do we depart.?

shall we say that the ‘information’ in the book refers to merely the fact that the arrangement of ink has a statistical chance of giving rise to (inexhaustable and non-rival) ideas/knowledge in my mind if I were to observe the scarce physical media… or shall we say something else?

[nirgrahamUK]

@Stranger

@nirgrahamUK

could I use a computer to analyse the fractal and deduce for me a formula by which it may be reproduced?

Absolutely impossible. It is a feature of the Mandelbrot Set that you could explore it for the entire lifetime of the universe and never arrive at the same output

I don’t think you posted a infinity onto the board but something discrete.

[Stranger]

@nirgrahamUK

Can you point to an ‘information theory’ primer that schools new readers in the technical definitions of information and knowledge as they are used formally within that science?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory as good a place to start as any.

@nirgrahamUK

I note that we have introduced a third term, we had information and knowledge. now you mention information and ideas.

Ideas are a form of knowledge. Facts are another form of knowledge.

@nirgrahamUK

I agree that ink on paper is scarce. media is scarce. but you don’t advocate ‘media rights’ especially. all ibertarians advocate media rights. so, we have our common ground… where do we depart.?

Copyrights are media rights. They are limits on the use of media. The intellectual communists do not recognize these limits.

[Stranger]

@nirgrahamUK

@Stranger

@nirgrahamUK

could I use a computer to analyse the fractal and deduce for me a formula by which it may be reproduced?

Absolutely impossible. It is a feature of the Mandelbrot Set that you could explore it for the entire lifetime of the universe and never arrive at the same output

I don’t think you posted a infinity onto the board but something discrete.

You are not getting it right. The amount of information in the Mandelbrot Set is infinite. The slice of information that I posted is one recording made of a unique process of extracting information from the Mandelbrot Set. It is this uniqueness that makes it scarce. Because the amount of information in the Mandelbrot Set is infinite, it is possible to perpetually extract unique information from it to infinity.

The old proverb asks whether an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters would ever produce the works of Shakespeare. According to information theory, the answer is no.

[Amanojack]

This fractal example fizzles as soon as you identify what the IP is supposed to be.

• If the IP is the picture above, if it is seen and recorded (with a camera, etc.) it can be reproduced.

• If the IP is the algorithm, if it is seen and recorded (with a camera, etc.) it “is possible to perpetually extract unique information from it to infinity.”