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Alexandros Pagidas
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Re: General announcement
« Reply #15 on Nov 12, 2004, 3:12pm »		[Quote]

Quote:
“I argue that idleness offers a useful measure of 'vitality' (for want of a better word). For if a grazer's efficiency and environment results in high idleness, then high idleness implies that a grazer is efficient at converting grass into useful energy, and/or lives in somewhere with abundant grass, or that someone comes and feeds it carrots every morning, or maybe something else. Given the idleness of some living creature, we have a measure of its vitality, health, or well-being, even if we do not know precisely what are the causes of such vitality. In fact there may be any number of interlinked underlying causes, not all of them energy-related.”


I have no qualms assenting with the above. I posted my criticisms because I think certain passages give the impression that something stronger than the above is being asserted. However, it is one thing thinking that stronger assertions might be mistaken, and another believing that ‘this idleness business is entirely redundant and immaterial’. In fact, I’m in complete agreement with your last paragraph:
Quote:
I simply try to offer it to others as another way of thinking about things, alongside all the other ways. And if I'm rather playful about the way I present it (including giving it a playful name), it's because I think we should play with ideas, and never get too serious or dogmatic about them. If Idle Theory is of any value, then other people will pick it up and fool around with it like I have, and perhaps (not difficult) to develop it a little more rigorously and carefully. And if it is of no value, well then I hope it ends up in the wastepaper basket where all bad ideas should end.

It is the same spirit that animated some of my favourite philosophers, like Feyerabend (I highly recommend his classic ‘Against Method’, it alters the standard views as to ‘method’ in science) and Nietzsche. The latter even gave an appropriate title for one of his books to signify this type of thinking: The Gay Science, is all about being playful with ideas (obviously ‘gay’ didn’t mean in the 19th century what it means today). Being playful does not mean being false. The greatest truths emerge at play. Perhaps as a metaphor it captures the meaning of life like no other. For life’s meaning is like that of a game. One does not play it because there is a purpose, anymore than we play basketball in order to put balls into hoops, but because of the enjoyment one derives from the activity itself.

For man’s maturity consists in regaining that seriousness of a child at play.
(Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, section 94).

I look forward to future discussions,

Yours,

Alexandros Pagidas.
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Stphane Paquin
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Re: General announcement
« Reply #16 on Mar 24, 2007, 5:22pm »		[Quote]
Hello Chris,

I've found your page while working on a paper where I was citing Darwin. The first thing that got to my mind while reading about your theory was the similarity that she have with a current in different fields of study that is called cybernetics.

I'm not here to debate, let's just say that I am close to your ideas and that I believe your idea is probably a lot more spread than you think.

Cybernetics is the study of different systems believed to be autoregulated and so seeking constantly to return to an equilibrium state. That equilibrium state seem to me to be very near of what you call idle.

A well known author that describe a theory very near to yours is called Niklas Luhman, he is a German contemporary sociologist that has been translated a couple years ago.

If my life was idle, be sure that I would have write longer.

sincerely,

Stéphane
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Chris Davis
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Re: General announcement
« Reply #17 on Jun 21, 2007, 8:42pm »		[Quote]
Hi Stephane,

Sorry so long replying. I've read a bit of cybernetics, but not connected it with Idle Theory. Cybernetics seemed to have something to do with control systems.

In Idle Theory, the idle state is just one of two states that any living creature witll be in - the other one being busy. At some degree of idleness a living creature will alternate between these busy and idle states. The equilibrium is found in the alternation, not in the idle state.

Of course, I'm also saying that living things are better off the more idle they are, and that the idlest will survive where less idle creatures won't. And I argue that much of human civilization is about increasing human idleness with tools, ethical codes, etc. But if humans are trying to make life easier for themsleves, there's a lot that makes it harder. It's much easier for idleness to fall than it is to rise. It's much easier to break things than it is to make them.

Anyway, I'll bear your comment in mind next time I read some cybernetics.
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zealotforliberty
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Re: General announcement
« Reply #18 on Jul 17, 2009, 5:33pm »		[Quote]
Quick and easy question. In the introduction to the Outline of Economics, you mention "the Idle theory of evolution", then you mention "Idle theory's ethics". Do you consider them each seperate theories in their own right, or just one theory with many applications? Or do you think both ways of putting it are correct?

By the way, in The Dragon Economy 2 page (about 3/4 down) you say "if tool prices fell to just prices...". You probably mean "costs" in that sentence. Also on the Idle Theory: of Humen Life page, there is a sentence fragment, "And to the extent that we forget this, and eat for the sake of culinary delight, or build houses to advertise our social status, or wear clothes and shoes dictated by fashion, to that extent we forget the primary, original, and real purpose of these things, and become lost in delusion. "...?

Sorry if my editorial impulse is unwarranted.
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Chris Davis
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Re: General announcement
« Reply #19 on Sept 9, 2009, 3:14pm »		[Quote]
Sorry for this extremely slow response.

No. Idle Theory's ethics is the same as its economics. Same idea of idleness maximization, anyway. There's only one idea in Idle Theory, and I apply it to everything I possibly can - life, evolution, ethics, economics, and so on.

Just prices. Yes, just prices usually means cost prices. They don't always have to, however.

Currently (Sep 2009) I have my own blog - http://frank-davis.livejournal.com/ - which is about smoking bans. But anyone's welcome to ask me questions there rather than here.
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