MillardJMelnyk — LessWrong

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Replying toOwnership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

Ownership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

No, dude. You're thinking backwards. If you can't answer foundational questions, you literally don't know what "it" is, so how are you going to make "it" work? If you can't deal with an idea conceptually, what makes you think you've got the competence to deal with it practically?

I'm not ignoring anything. Focusing on first steps first doesn't mean you deny there are more steps...

But back your claim. You claim that the foundational questions "depend" on whether we can make it work. Explain that dependency. "You can't just ignore that there's no way to make it work..." So, you've already decided there's no way to make it work. How did you do that?... (read more)

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Replying toOwnership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

MillardJMelnyk8mo

Ownership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

You're hallucinating. I didn't ask for praise. I responded to the only statement you made that was discussable. Your upshot was that I wasn't very nice to ownership because I said negative things about it that, according to you, don't apply. That's so vague it's worthless. Your comment as a whole serves the claim that there's nothing worth discussing here, which just raises the question in my mind why you commented at all. "Nothing to see here folks!" Well, enough that it moved you to state the obvious, supposedly. So, naw, there's definitely something to see here. But you'd like to dismiss it as nothing, apparently.

Replying toOwnership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

MillardJMelnyk8mo

Ownership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

Yes, responded as you did. You can't intelligently question what you've got near-zero familiarity with. And again, it was an invitation. No obligation.

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Replying toOwnership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

MillardJMelnyk8mo

Ownership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

Wow, do you habitually make shit up off the top of your head and pretend it's real? Seems pathological.

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Replying toOwnership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

MillardJMelnyk8mo

Ownership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

Have you read Utopia? I have. The problems with More's thinking are the same assumptions that corrupt most thinking on the topic of the structure and operation of society: supremacism and authoritarianism. "Power corrupts" because it's corrupt itself, embodying supremacism and authoritarianism and using violence as its chief tool.

Discussion is in no way blocked if you're interested in discussing. I'm not trying to prove anything. The reactions people have to these ideas prove that they're potent enough. Proof isn't needed.

Your #1 is an example of an almost universal reaction I get once a person sees that there's something to what I'm saying: they want me to tell them how it's going to... (read more)

Replying toOwnership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

MillardJMelnyk8mo

Ownership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

Excellent question!

Like I said in the post, I've been at this particular point for over a decade, as I see from looking back on my notes. My research MO, aside from the obvious, is to educate myself, write up my thinking, expose it for criticism to the most intelligent people I can find, (blogs, social media, the occasional "expert" who'll take the time), endless hours of discussion, and see what comes up in the process. This post is an example of my method. Over the last 1-2 years, I've made heavy use of AIs, lately DeepSeek and Claude. I do the same with them: present my ideas, deal with their criticisms and... (read more)

Replying toOwnership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

MillardJMelnyk8mo

Ownership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

Yes, by that definition, a person has a right to deprive others of sexual access to their body. But that would imply that they are not their body, but that their body is an object they have absolute rights over, like a car. An owner breaks no law by taking their brand-new 2025 AMG GT 63 SE to the wrecking yard and having it crushed. So, then, if we own our bodies, why is suicide frowned on, outlawed, and a sin in many religions?

I happen to find objectifying myself and my body that way to be disgusting, because it's dehumanizing.

Btw, the post is an invitation to discuss. It's completely fiine to decline an invitation. But the fact that you responded as you did makes me wonder why you felt you couldn't just gracefully decline.

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Replying toOwnership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

MillardJMelnyk9mo

Ownership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

I'm not sure what precisely some of your statements relate to what I posted, nor even what you intend them to mean. I'm left guessing.

Maybe you're referring to my lack of mention of other rights often associated with ownership: access, use, disposition, transfer, destruction. However, not only do none of those, or all of them together, constitute ownership -- none of them are necessary to constitute ownership.

"Necessary but not sufficient" doesn't even apply here, because the only necessary right that constitutes ownership is the right to deprive others from the access to, use of, disposition of, transfer of, or destruction of a desirable whether the owner accesses, uses, dispositions, transfers, or destroys the desirable or not. An owner can have completely forgotten about a piece of property for 50 years, has not accessed, used, dispositioned, transferred, or destroyed it in all that time -- but if their deprivation of the property from all humankind is violated, it will be considered illegal or even immoral.

Replying toOwnership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

MillardJMelnyk9mo

Ownership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

The post contains discussable ideas, if you're interested in discussing them. I'm happy to dive in with you. Your request for examples makes no sense to me. I defined what I mean by "ownership", there's no hidden subtext here. Examples are any case in which a person claims the right to deprive others of a desirable.

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Ownership: the principle of "Deprive first, ask questions later"

MillardJMelnyk

9mo

I’ve been investigating and challenging the idea of “ownership” for more than a decade. My findings are:

The defining hallmark of ownership is deprivation.
Ownership is the predetermined, preemptive, universally preclusive right of deprivation of a desirable.
The depths of perversity and sheer insanity of predicating one of our most basic social mechanisms on deprivation while expecting to achieve “prosperity” by its means is simply beyond the power of words to convey.

I have yet to hear, after all this time, credible, convincing arguments to the contrary.

The demoralizing thing is the kinds of knee-jerk, dogmatic objections I get when I try to start intelligent discussions about these findings. It’s like I’d opened with, “I had sex... (read more)

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