On 10/2/07, Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > A quick question for Richard and others -- Should adults be allowed to > drink, do drugs, wirehead themselves to death?
A correct response is "That depends." Any "should" question involves consideration of the pragmatics of the system, while semantics may be not in question. [That's a brief portion of the response I owe Richard from yesterday.] Effective deciding of these "should" questions has two major elements: (1) understanding of the "evaluation-function" of the assessors with respect to these specified "ends", and (2) understanding of principles (of nature) supporting increasingly coherent expression of that evolving "evaluation function". And there is always an entropic arrow, due to the change in information as decisions now incur consequences not now but in an uncertain future. [This is another piece of the response I owe Richard.] [I'm often told I make everything too complex, but to me this is a coherent, sense-making model, excepting the semantic roughness of it's expression in this post.] - Jef ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=48940364-66d769