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It’s right for the law to address and prevent the arbitrary, and that’s about more than just property. See #1345.

But the law against murder isn’t a dumb law even though it doesn’t refer to someone’s body being scarce property.

If current law isn’t based on what you claim it’s based on then that does make it less true.

Ridiculous definition of murder. Classic libertarian thought bending over backwards to reduce everything to property rights. Please cite a legal text where the definition of murder invokes scarce property.

I do expect innovation to suffer from current copyright infringement, yes. Just add up all the infringed copies being shared times the average price, that’s the damage being done and it discourages creators from creating more.

But digital money isn’t physically scarce like someone’s body. Your argument rests on physical property being special in some way.

Laws (against murder and other crimes) don’t reduce to physical property.

Libertarians often think that the purpose of the law is ONLY to define and enforce property rights. In reality, the purpose of the law is to prevent and address the arbitrary in social life.

It’s true that it would be arbitrary if anyone could just take your property against your will, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only kind of arbitrariness the law should prevent/address.

One can steal value without stealing physical property (as happens when you transfer someone’s digital money without their consent).

That could be happening though, so agreed that it isn't a good argument.

‘Lawbreakers get away with it all the time so it’s fine.’ How is that an argument?

‘To stop someone from murdering you you have to infringe on his private property by claiming an exclusive right on prohibiting his use of his privately owned gun to shoot you’ How is that different?

Copyright encourages creativity because the most creative work is done by the original work’s creator, and copyright protects that creation. Without that incentive, many original creators wouldn’t publish their creations in the first place.

Another way copyright promotes creativity is that it doesn’t allow creations that aren’t sufficiently creative.

People can still publish fan fiction as long as they get the copyright holder’s permission.

This idea isn’t marked as a criticism but presumably should be. (Though it need not be marked as a criticism anymore if it’s going to split up into multiple separate submissions as per #1324.)

This idea contains at least two claims and one question:

1. Copyright stifles creativity.
2. Fan fiction does not damage creators.
3. “Where is copyright good?”

It’s unwise to submit multiple ideas at once as they each become susceptible to ‘bulk criticism’. That can unduly weaken your own position.

Try submitting the ideas again, separately.

Not a lawyer but I believe such fan fiction would be considered a derivative work.

Copyright protects original creators’ exclusive right to create derivative works. So, selling your Star Wars fan fiction without permission from the copyright holders would be copyright infringement.

See this article.

I am not allowed to sell my Star Wars fan-fiction. Why not?

If we use Claud Shannon’s framework of understanding information as reducing uncertainty, a light switch doesn’t contain information. But the problem with all kinds of information is that it is dependent on how you subjectively define states and uncertainty. Information is always relative to a certain «perspective».

If we define a computer as anything that processes information, the brain is at least partly a computer, since it also processes information. But that doesn't necessarily mean that a brain is only a computer. Information processing can be done without subjective experience or qualia.

A brain's properties therefore transcend information processing. It is completely conceivable that you can construct a physical brain with identical information processing without accompanying experience (zoombie argument), unless you wan't to say that this instance of information process is dependent on also having the experience.

I disagree that the universe would remain an object if we remove all objects, because an object must have properties. If we define “the universe” as the totality of all objects, then removing them leaves only a word with no metaphysical referent, and therefore can’t be thought of as “existing”. So I agree that it doesn’t work when applied to “all of existence”. This is why I think your point about the excluded middle makes nothingness impossible. But generally speaking, “nothingness” as a quantifier typically involves no logical contradictions.

A useful distinction in talking of non-existence and nothingness is nothingness as a quantifier and nothingness as an object. Nothingness as a quantifier, is the concept of a universe with no objects. This doesn't have any inherent contradictions in classical logic. It would simply be a world where all objects are subtracted, as in an empty set.

Nothing as an object is inherently paradoxical. Nothingness as an object is something without properties, but paradoxically therefore has the properties of at least:
1. Immutability: it can't change, because change requires something
2. Boundarylessness
3. Indeterminacy: undefined, without qualities

I kind of relate to Graham Priest in that existence and non-existence is dependent on each other - kind of like the ying-yang symbol. For something to "be", it must be distinguished from "not-being". It might therefore not really be a resolution to the problem. Just like the rabbit in the rabbit-duck illusion is dependent on the shape of the duck, non-existence is dependent on existence.

Wouldn't the more correct framing be the mind has automatic programs and consciousness? In other words, the mind has a dual process of explicit thoughts and conscious reflection on the one hand, and ingrained habits or "mental programs" on the other.

I know.

I’m not quite sure, but it sounds like you are reverting your stance on having misread #696. Does that mean #1192 should be marked as a criticism after all?

But we don’t don't know if consciousness can emerge as a byproduct of computation […]

We do know that. From the laws of physics. From BoI ch. 6:

[E]xpecting a computer to be able to do whatever neurons can is not a metaphor: it is a known and proven property of the laws of physics as best we know them.