Food truck and fast food meals can be pretty skimpy. So wouldn’t it be great if we passed a diner’s bill of rights law, requiring all prepared food to come with free unlimited drinks, a fast human waiter, cloth napkins and tablecloths, and a seat by a window? Well no, that wouldn’t be great. All those food trucks and fast food places would go out of business, leaving diners only with the option to eat at expensive fancy restaurants.
Yes, this would interfere with em manufacturers who don't start them off with all these listed things. That's kind of the point. But as long as the ems can waive these rights there's nothing stopping them from taking advantage of opportunities that involve violating them.
This just stops people making ems in order to abuse them.
No, such reasoning says people cannot be forced to live in a geographically isolated area, but they may still choose to live there.
I think that you misunderstand Robin's analogy.
Robin is rebutting the argument that it would be wrong for rich and powerful ems to choose to run so fast that poor ems can't interact with the rich. That argument claims that the rich would then be wrongfully excluding poor ems from the spaces where the rich and powerful decide everyone's fate. Poor ems, it is said, should have a right to have their voices heard in the halls of power.
Robin counters that a similar argument could be made against the right of the rich to live in isolated locations (isolated from the poor, that is). If the rich all chose to live on a private island that can be accessed only by private jet, then the poor would similarly be cut off from physical access to the halls of power.
Robin takes it as given that the argument for the right of the poor to keep the rich from living in isolated places is a bad one, so he concludes that the argument for the right of poor ems to keep rich ems from running too fast is also bad.
Many of the rights listed are rights people are already accepted as having. In this case, you have to explain why people should lose that right.
Also, some of those are just the lack of restrictions. For example, the right to modify your own source code is just a lack of laws limiting your ability to modify your source code. I suppose it could be interpreted as limiting your ability to limit your future self's source code because you don't want to die of stupidity.
Rights are more serious than entitlements, and while they may consider themselves entitled to them and claim rights in them, by no means would everyone, or at least a broad majority, consider those rights. One may possess a right not to be discriminated against in a public establishment, but a right to a table cloth is fictitious, even if a rule were adopted requiring it. One does have some right to a clean and healthy restaurant for valid public health reasons. Abusing the term 'right' to mean any rule adopted for any reason or no reason at all, merely misleads. Pretending they don't exist simply because some one didn't bother to elaborate the reason, also misleads. It is better to seek out such reasons and then decide whether or how valid they may be.
I misread that. I'm used to thinking of ems as being much faster than humans--not because that's likely, just because it's more interesting. Yes, requiring a minimum speed would be legislating some lifeforms out of existence. One can also imagine laws that would forbid the creation of ems below some level of intelligence. But these examples aren't very relevant to the present day, because what they highlight is the incompatibility of modern ideals such as equality (and individuality) with artificial intelligence. Maintaining such ideals would require eliminating all intelligences for which they are not appropriate. No robot pets.
As I said in the post, the requirement to run at human speed can be a x1000 cost increase over an em designed to run at 1/1000 human speed. How is that remotely "trivial"?
The people you are quoting seem, to me, to have been proposing negative rights. You're trying to reframe them as positive rights and then dismiss them. I have the right to own property, but no one is obligated to give me property, not even my parents. And running at human speed seems such a trivial modification that it could only be prevented by engineering in something to prevent it. I'm with you about the harmful side-effects of positive rights, but this is a case of negative rights. Or, at least, I think the negative rights here are important and sensible, while the positive rights are not.
There is a huge diner's Bill of Rights, enforced by health inspectors, which ensures that the food you eat will be free of bacteria and rat droppings, dangerous chemicals, and more; that the kitchen follows a long list of required procedures for hygiene and for food storage; that functioning and clean restrooms are available; that the restaurant has handicapped access; that other diners are not allowed to smoke in the restaurant.
When I was in rural China, it was routine for food vendors to serve me food with utensils that had not been washed since the last customer, or containing dozens of hidden razor-sharp fish or chicken bone shards, or that could kill me in other ways. (I also saw the downside to these "rights"--now I know that pasteurized milk is so bland and tasteless that I would rather run the risk of infection.)
If am em has a right to a body and to run at human speed, then those who create that em are obligated to do something to ensure that, just as if you have a right to free drinks with any meal, your meal supplier is obligated to supply those drinks.
A government subsidy for beef but not for pork, ethanol but not natural gas, or corn but not sugar cane, is a kind of random right. The Plains states certainly think subsidies are a right.
You're interpreting the word "rights" as "obligations". The restaurant example is wrong, because that is a case where someone else is obligated to do something for your "rights". There's an old argument between liberals and conservatives over the meaning of "rights", which you must be aware of.
There are cases where forcing everyone to use a certain "right", whether they want to or not, can be beneficial. If someone invented a cheap drug that let people go without sleep, some people, probably those currently working two or three jobs, would skip sleep, take on a fourth job, and stop renting an apartment, since they don't really need it anymore. Wages would then fall, and a large portion of the workforce would be forced into perpetual homelessness and sleeplessness. (If you doubt this, consider that giving women the right to work caused wages to fall in sync with the number of women working, keeping total household income constant, and obligating women to work.) But your discussion is not about such cases.
Does anyone give anybody random rights? Random is being made to work too hard. Rights are rarely given but taken, and not for randomness but for cause. Certain rights we will find inalienable because of their social effect on those not willing to part with them. The right to copy (or not copy) and the right to self determination would certainly fall under these. No one has any right to enslave themself, however desperate they may be, and no one has any right to enslave others however powerful they may be. Many if not all will eventually be faced with obsolescence and have to face termination. Arriving at a humane resolution will be difficult, but degenerating consciousness and failing patterns shouldn't be allowed to become a never ending burden on the rest of society.
But you are not obligated to drink them.
Yes, this would interfere with em manufacturers who don't start them off with all these listed things. That's kind of the point. But as long as the ems can waive these rights there's nothing stopping them from taking advantage of opportunities that involve violating them.
This just stops people making ems in order to abuse them.
No, such reasoning says people cannot be forced to live in a geographically isolated area, but they may still choose to live there.
I think that you misunderstand Robin's analogy.
Robin is rebutting the argument that it would be wrong for rich and powerful ems to choose to run so fast that poor ems can't interact with the rich. That argument claims that the rich would then be wrongfully excluding poor ems from the spaces where the rich and powerful decide everyone's fate. Poor ems, it is said, should have a right to have their voices heard in the halls of power.
Robin counters that a similar argument could be made against the right of the rich to live in isolated locations (isolated from the poor, that is). If the rich all chose to live on a private island that can be accessed only by private jet, then the poor would similarly be cut off from physical access to the halls of power.
Robin takes it as given that the argument for the right of the poor to keep the rich from living in isolated places is a bad one, so he concludes that the argument for the right of poor ems to keep rich ems from running too fast is also bad.
Colloquial usage of 'random' to mean 'arbitrary' has been on the rise for some time
Many of the rights listed are rights people are already accepted as having. In this case, you have to explain why people should lose that right.
Also, some of those are just the lack of restrictions. For example, the right to modify your own source code is just a lack of laws limiting your ability to modify your source code. I suppose it could be interpreted as limiting your ability to limit your future self's source code because you don't want to die of stupidity.
Rights are more serious than entitlements, and while they may consider themselves entitled to them and claim rights in them, by no means would everyone, or at least a broad majority, consider those rights. One may possess a right not to be discriminated against in a public establishment, but a right to a table cloth is fictitious, even if a rule were adopted requiring it. One does have some right to a clean and healthy restaurant for valid public health reasons. Abusing the term 'right' to mean any rule adopted for any reason or no reason at all, merely misleads. Pretending they don't exist simply because some one didn't bother to elaborate the reason, also misleads. It is better to seek out such reasons and then decide whether or how valid they may be.
I misread that. I'm used to thinking of ems as being much faster than humans--not because that's likely, just because it's more interesting. Yes, requiring a minimum speed would be legislating some lifeforms out of existence. One can also imagine laws that would forbid the creation of ems below some level of intelligence. But these examples aren't very relevant to the present day, because what they highlight is the incompatibility of modern ideals such as equality (and individuality) with artificial intelligence. Maintaining such ideals would require eliminating all intelligences for which they are not appropriate. No robot pets.
As I said in the post, the requirement to run at human speed can be a x1000 cost increase over an em designed to run at 1/1000 human speed. How is that remotely "trivial"?
The people you are quoting seem, to me, to have been proposing negative rights. You're trying to reframe them as positive rights and then dismiss them. I have the right to own property, but no one is obligated to give me property, not even my parents. And running at human speed seems such a trivial modification that it could only be prevented by engineering in something to prevent it. I'm with you about the harmful side-effects of positive rights, but this is a case of negative rights. Or, at least, I think the negative rights here are important and sensible, while the positive rights are not.
There is a huge diner's Bill of Rights, enforced by health inspectors, which ensures that the food you eat will be free of bacteria and rat droppings, dangerous chemicals, and more; that the kitchen follows a long list of required procedures for hygiene and for food storage; that functioning and clean restrooms are available; that the restaurant has handicapped access; that other diners are not allowed to smoke in the restaurant.
When I was in rural China, it was routine for food vendors to serve me food with utensils that had not been washed since the last customer, or containing dozens of hidden razor-sharp fish or chicken bone shards, or that could kill me in other ways. (I also saw the downside to these "rights"--now I know that pasteurized milk is so bland and tasteless that I would rather run the risk of infection.)
If am em has a right to a body and to run at human speed, then those who create that em are obligated to do something to ensure that, just as if you have a right to free drinks with any meal, your meal supplier is obligated to supply those drinks.
A government subsidy for beef but not for pork, ethanol but not natural gas, or corn but not sugar cane, is a kind of random right. The Plains states certainly think subsidies are a right.
You're interpreting the word "rights" as "obligations". The restaurant example is wrong, because that is a case where someone else is obligated to do something for your "rights". There's an old argument between liberals and conservatives over the meaning of "rights", which you must be aware of.
There are cases where forcing everyone to use a certain "right", whether they want to or not, can be beneficial. If someone invented a cheap drug that let people go without sleep, some people, probably those currently working two or three jobs, would skip sleep, take on a fourth job, and stop renting an apartment, since they don't really need it anymore. Wages would then fall, and a large portion of the workforce would be forced into perpetual homelessness and sleeplessness. (If you doubt this, consider that giving women the right to work caused wages to fall in sync with the number of women working, keeping total household income constant, and obligating women to work.) But your discussion is not about such cases.
If these descendants don't even exist yet, I don't see how there can be any coincidence to explain about what they will or won't argue.
If your aren't trying to benefit the people you give rights to, then my comments aren't relevant.
How does any of your points hold true if you are not an utilitarian or belong to (a subset of) deontological libertarainism?
Hint: they don't.
Does anyone give anybody random rights? Random is being made to work too hard. Rights are rarely given but taken, and not for randomness but for cause. Certain rights we will find inalienable because of their social effect on those not willing to part with them. The right to copy (or not copy) and the right to self determination would certainly fall under these. No one has any right to enslave themself, however desperate they may be, and no one has any right to enslave others however powerful they may be. Many if not all will eventually be faced with obsolescence and have to face termination. Arriving at a humane resolution will be difficult, but degenerating consciousness and failing patterns shouldn't be allowed to become a never ending burden on the rest of society.