Re: [Ianaplan] A draft for your review

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

cc:s trimmed

On Sun, Nov 02, 2014 at 01:52:05PM +0100, JFC Morfin wrote:
> 
> >At 17:52 01/11/2014, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> >But that didn't happen, which suggests to me that the division of labour,
> >again, is working.
> 
> IMHO, to make the past the guarantee of your future is to ensure that you
> will be fooled.

I too have read Hume on induction.  It's worth noting that, despite
his position, he would retire to the Poker Club and play billiards and
backgammon.

But anyway, I wasn't looking for a guarantee.  I think you'll note
that my sentence makes assertions in the present tense ("is working").
It is possible that the future will be quite different; at that point,
it seems to me, we'd have to respond according to what changed.
Others seem to hope that they can write down, in advance, a procedure
for every possible case.  That is, IMO, complete folly.  What we need
are mechanisms that allow actors to work effectively, which includes
good incentives to work out differences co-operatively.

The only ways I know to provide those incentives are to provide
another authority or to provide power of independent action.  Some
argue that the NTIA has been serving the former function; I think that
interpretation is a little fanciful, but I don't have some
transcendental access to the truth _sub specie aeternitatus_.  I think
that the potential of independent action is a more powerful way to
focus the minds of the various actors in the case of ill behaviour,
and a meaningless detail when actors are collaborating as well as they
have been.

Regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]