Jake Tarragon

Your sole viewpoint seems to be that every freedom has a problem. And I readily accept that, so just listing the problems isn't advancing this discuss...

This first list probably represents the most agreed upon freedoms, though some religious organizations refuse to accept religious freedom. Freedom to ...

So let's discuss "freedom" then. The Nazis put "Arbeit Macht Frei" signs up at concentration camps ("work sets you free") but I don't think many would...

So we can't discuss "freedom"??!!

That is somewhat of a specific gripe to throw into the discussion at this stage! But OK, let's go with it a little ... A) suppose someone says that th...

The fact that some things should be compulsory does not detract from the importance of freedom. I am not saying that everything has to be free to be c...

Freedom is not a fluid concept - what one should be free to do might well be. So there are restraints and caveats. But freedom is a universally acknow...

Nevertheless, the desire for freedom is almost universal, and surely you cannot dismiss it so readily as you have, as being unsuitable as a basis for ...

Few people nowadays would not concede that slavery is unacceptable, so at a very fundamental and important level people are agreed on the desirability...

But if so much effort is spent on moderating freedom of choice, then surely that is a sign that freedom of choice is a commonly occurring desire.

I thought I read it somewhere :)

That's merely the inevitable caveat to freedom of choice...

Some of the parallelism is based on conscious copying of science by art - e.g Picasso's "discovery" of cubism was, I believe, a deliberate take on rel...

Freedom of the individual is about as close as one can get to a widely accepted morality, I would say....

I have been thinking on those lines too. But for it to work it's got to be very low on admin as well as offering a degree of economic security. Modern...

It is certainly possible to conceive of an education system , or stages of it, where competition between students is absent or minimized by design, an...

ummmm well..... all I can say is that Practopia is aimed at people. Not other creatures. I think it is up tp you to focus your concerns - e.g. "people...

I think you are on the right track with that idea, though I think there is a place for it in very specific career related areas. But as part of a youn...

Certainly the "rights revolutions" have been embedded in the education system to a large extent, but unfortunately progress in rights has not been mat...

I think there are potentially some very progressive policies that could be sold to the conservative camp, at least on some major aspects. For example,...

While it is true that people are unlikely to be persuaded through rationality alone, I feel sure that people are reachable through a combination of ra...

Profit can be a side-effect rather than raison d'etre, if the economy is managed. The fact is nobody is going to efficiently organize the development ...

Agreed. In fact, the situation is so bad that I feel sure that a good humanist philosopher with some PR savvy determined to change the world could do ...

Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch packs a punch.

Not at all. My practopia is designed to accommodate a wide range of lifestyles of choice, which is about all one could ask of a society. Sure there wi...

Something it has taken me a long time to realize is that it's a good idea to respect and limit the context in which you engage with most people. There...

As a thought experiment, imagine the world was populated entirely by Mother Theresa stereotypes... In what way would the situation be "good"?

I think you are effectively saying freedom of choice trumps everything .. in which case I agree (with all the typical caveats).Freedom trumps happines...

That is a fair point, and I must accept that this discussion title is badly worded. I started this discussion because on another topic I had started a...

The education system would have to be dismantled and remade first. It's what sets us up to be unhappy workaholics.

Anne of Green Gables How To Stop Worrying and Start Living

The path to Practopia might be a difficult one but I am more interested here as to how Practopia would be organized. I am suggesting that the main des...

I take it you don't like my vison of practopia?

Get the word right at least- it's practopia!

I think you are hung up on the definition of Utopia - using it as an excuse not to think about how society could be better.

Who told you that? Anyways, we are discussing practoipias, mainly in order to circumvent nhihilists.

By acknowledging diverstiy

Oh righty - so call off the search then on the basis of a technicality?

Sure. Imagine if no bad things happen, then what does goodness boil down to? Another way of looking at it is to ask what would the world be like if it...

"Prutopia" could refer to "prudent Utopia" rather than "prudish Utopia". Or are they related? I think we should be told. Anyway, I do prefer "Practopi...

Freedom of choice is the instrument of happiness. As an example, and as mentioned earlier, the freedom to place oneself anywhere on the work-consume s...

A lot of "goodness" requires misfortune or badness for it to be useful or effective, thus making it a poor choice to maximize. The "goodness" in wishi...

I guess it can be whatever you like, as long as the outcome is somehow desirable. Mathematically, and logically, it is only possible to optimize a one...

But all metaphysicses would LIKE to be proved ...there is nothing special about being non-provable is there?

Higher rather than ultra-high. There are various types of happiness - e.g. economic security being close to a few people being self confident feeling ...

Much higher happiness and well being levels all round. I agree that the path to Practical Utiopia .... "Prutopia" if you will, is problematic. But tha...

Things might be getting better in absolute terms, but they are getting an ever smaller fraction of the increasing potential.

It might be instructive (though not creative) to list which aspects of cognition/reasoning are impaired/improved at full tipsy and score them for tend...

Does "creativity" result from being simply absorbed or is a cognitive element necessary I wonder?

mmm not very snappy though is it :). Also a bit misleading because what does "end up" actually mean? There is no "end" as such, just a flow of states,...