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Feel free to link said conversation. Have my upvote in advance as a token of gratitude.

Also, upon reflection. This idea was specific to the Lex fridman talk.

Let me know what you think of it. Me brains are always in flux 🤔

Yes, this. As I’ve often said, the brain is a hermeneutic engine. It’s primary function, like that of a heart to blood flow, is to interpret, whether of the ongoings of the senses or of the comings and goings of the biochemistry in the body.

"What makes humans unique is not reducible to our brains or biology"

Does not Brains and Biology encapsulate everything that lets us make sense of experience?
So you're not reducing anything by making that statement, imho.

Sounds a bit like OP is saying you cant reduce earths existence to the observable and unobservable universe.

I call horse hockey. Many animals benefit from their experiences and learn from them changing behaviors that don't get them what they want and adopting behaviors that do get them what they want.

That was my instant response, “but don’t we use our brains to make sense of experiences???”

Yes I discuss the fact that democratic majorities don’t have inherent moral legitimacy here. And that unjust laws are a breach of the agreement in a previously linked post. But that is not what my comment stated. Just because we don’t consent to certain moral rules doesn’t mean we aren’t morally bound by them. Otherwise, consent is meaningless (because why respect anyone’s consent if we don’t have moral rules?).

Just because you and a majority consent to a moral system, doesn't make the system actually moral. Sometimes one is morally bound to violated immoral laws.

Aren't rights simply social constructs, just as true as morality and religion?

Yeah, I do get their (all of them) practical importance though.

Just because you do not consent to our criminal law regime doesn’t give one the right to commit crimes. People can’t consent out of the moral universe. And those principles of the moral universe shape our very consent rules (when consent is and is not necessary nor sufficient to create binding agreements, what type of consent is required, what is and is not subject to consent etc.)

Reminds me of Sagan's quote,

"The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together. " It's not too say that the sum of the whole is reducible but those interactions can be understood as a system regardless.

One references an action, the other references the state of mind. It is a near perfect theory that encompasses the physical and mental and provides me with one fool proof answer that you still haven't address. It even criminalises pollution, as to pollute knowingly is an action.

And it is the basis of a standard of guilt.

But what do I owe without action? The answer is nothing, or, no more than anyone else. This is the perfect negative right, until you convince me of a responsibility which almost certain demands the physical proof and an evaluation of my guilt before the standard is achieved.

This is how libertarianism addresses the problem. It does so by reminding you what slavery is.

> Laws under these regimes can be compared to an illegal contract. This can include a contract where one party acted under duress, coercion, or fraudulent information. Under our legal system, contracts like these would be voidable,...

Hence, the failure of social contract theory to handle explicit rejection of consent.

That’s basically what my substack is dedicated to discussing. But I answer those questions here here and here respectively.

My head went to the exact same place. Though, most shit these days ends up getting framed in "how would I defend this from my religious family/friends/etc?" To me, consciousness and free will are illusions, emergent neural pathways or something we use to describe our experience of observing our memories. The more detailed those memories, the "more" conscious.

Mens rea and actus reus only refer to mental states and actions. Different crimes require different mental states and actions, so they aren’t helpful for actually shaping criminal law. They’re just legal elements (and this only applies to criminal law).

Involvement is determined by proximate causation, which would depend on reason-based factors (intentions, foreseeability, geography, etc.) Again, it’s not intuitive and even the rights that seem straightforward tend to have exceptions. For instance, you won’t have the right to kick someone off of your property if they have taken that property through adverse possession (which also depends on reason-based factors). The standard which we can say an act is right or wrong is based on social contract principles. Simply declaring rights isn’t helpful for the specification, prioritization, or genealogy problems I discuss in the piece. Libertarianism fails to address these problems.

How can one reason that the social contract is legitimate? How was it consented to? What happens when the state breaks their end of the contract?

Humans are not unique. Problem solved.

I’ve heard about 20 different reasons from different walks of life how humans differ from animals.

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no fucking shit

Mens rea and actus reus is the basis.

It's very basic, you can even find similar ideas in Nietzsche's beyond good and evil because these aren't value judgements or moral rulings. If you're involved, you're involved and that's why it's an exception.

I'm not involved in the pains of randoms, I may feel empathy and I may want to help (often, it's more uncomfortable to not help) but I'm absolutely not obliged and my charity shouldn't be a granted, as the soft slavers I'm describing beleive it is.

> All rights require a duty to be imposed on someone else.

You should have listened to libertarians more before trashing.

An obligation is a positive right, as in you have a right to something and the addition is positive. Negative rights have absolutely no implication of duty, you don't have a duty to fuck off my property and stop spray painting my property, you should just not and doing not costs you absolutely nothing.

But if you continue, then you are now involved with me against my will and I therefore have an obligation to uninvolve you.. By calling the fucking cops.

Because it's absolutely free and easy to not feel entitled to my property. Again, this is why property rights are a thing... Because fuck off.

And what is the basis for exceptions to the rule? It would have to be ethical principles as well.

The same goes for consent, as I describe here, (are we talking about informed consent, implied consent, consent with attorney representation, consent under duress, etc).

The basis which we determine exceptions to rights, like the right to freely walk (or someone else’s right to stop you) or where consent isn’t necessary or sufficient to create an agreement, is the social contact, which is made up of publicly justifiable reasons.

All rights require a duty to be imposed on someone else. And those duties need to be justified. Again, they aren’t intuitive. It’s not as simple as stating “just don’t be a jerk.”