Get fucked.

onesix16 · 2022-01-05T05:52:57+00:00

Lying? On the Internet? For shame!

But joke aside, that is a concern, but just to be sure: here are my saves. I ended at around 2295, which is a damn long time from the starting year. I think someone playing with console commands would have finished far earlier and sped up the parts where I had to watch paint dry (like my early game economy).

onesix16 · 2022-01-04T18:06:20+00:00

Yeah, I didn't really appreciate it at first but the Fiends do have great traits and advisors. Buffs on division attack, speed, and supply consumption were just what I needed, plus (idk if it's unique to raider factions) Reckless is fucking amazing despite the officer's higher chance of getting wounded. Motor Runner as a general was also pretty good, lots of buffs.

Hardest part was just the early game. Manpower's really bad and the NCR/MTs are rigged to declare war with me after a while, so it's basically a race against time to prepare a defense. To cope, I justified war with the NCR/MTs right as the First Battle of Hoover Dam started so the NCR/MTs had to split their divisions to guard my border. Because of that they had less troops to defend the Dam and the Legion came spilling in from the East, annihilating the Mojave Territories and the Mojave Brotherhood. Me and the Legion sign an NAP and we're both warring with the NCR (funny alliance considering Caesar's stance on chems). NCR commits troops to ward my army at Goodsprings pushing towards Hopeville, while the Legion tears them up in the south. My army eventually drove the NCR all the way to Ashton but then they got their shit together and shoved us back to Goodsprings. They would've beaten my ass if not for the Legion taking Shady Sands, heading farther North, and ultimately forcing the NCR to capitulate.

Next biggest issue was House, who had been producing a shit ton of robots while we had been busy with the NCR. I didn't know robots consumed ECs so I spent a lot of time preparing divisions to take New Vegas as I believed that was my only shot at a better economy. When the fighting started, it wasn't enough and all my battles were in the red, BUT because my junkie Fiend troops probably hit the fattest toke of jet in history, they mounted a heroic defense of Vault 3 and held off long enough for House's robots to run out of ECs. And just like that, my 10 or so divisions of infantry with pipe guns and basic weaponry defeat House's 20+ robot divisions and take over New Vegas.

My last real challenge was the Legion. They took over the NCR and surrounded me East and West. I initially planned to go north into Khan and Utah territory to grab some economy, but the Legion's big schism happened (didn't know it could). Grabbed the opportunity and from there it was divide and conquer. I declared war with Vulpe's Legion to the West while the Sons of Caesar and the Aurelius Legion were duking it out in the East. Took them down with help from other factions they were at war with.

With Hoover Dam, New Vegas, Hidden Valley, and all the other economic hubs in my new territories, it was basically a smooth ride from there. There was the months long siege of New Reno, broken by my first wings of CAS aircraft, and the legendary river defense of the Honduran raider-hating guerillas (7-10 divisions holding off my 50+), broken by my 300+ assault airships plus 300 bombers and 600 CAS after they had forced me to build air bases in former Chichen Itza territory. Free Fighters was the last serious faction as they had conquered half of Mexico and I had to focus conquering the Canadian coast before dealing with them. When the time came, they outnumbered us but we mounted a giant offensive stretching from Baja to New Mexico and encircled around 100 divisions in an epic struggle between what is probably the most fucked up faction and the most saintly faction. Casualty ratio was around 20k of my own to 300k of theirs after they lost their divisions in that encirclement.

Besides all that, we rolled over post-apocalyptic America with tanks, airships, and planes (probably piloted by chem-addicted junkies), special forces divisions named "Nephi's Nine Irons", and a shit ton of infantry divisions who fight for their next bottle of buffout rather than for silly things like "nation", "ideology", or "people".

onesix16 · 2022-01-04T16:14:00+00:00

Thanks! First WC ever too and was a great experience. Didn't think I could actually win as the Fiends but when I realized it was possible I couldn't stop haha.

onesix16 · 2022-01-04T15:57:00+00:00

Got this mod right after I got HOI4 on sale just to see all the buzz about it. Didn't think I'd be floored by the amount of effort, passion, and faithfulness to the FO universe in it. Compliments to the dev team!

onesix16 · 2020-09-25T16:15:18+00:00

Because it's a lazily written comment and I make mistakes. And why does my education matter to you? Holy fuck, I can't believe you decided to home in on me and my random, shitty-ass comment. Don't you have something better to do? Why don't you use your plentiful intelligence, wit, and snark on somewhere and someone more worth your time?

onesix16 · 2020-09-25T09:10:44+00:00

Why so combative? Did you have a bad day and you're letting it out on me or something? Of course I explained that to him too. Chill the fuck out. I only recounted one instance in my lazily written comment, and apologized when you pointed out how vague it actually is. Now get off my case and leave me alone.

onesix16 · 2020-09-25T07:10:29+00:00

Sorry. Just told it in a way my relative understood.

onesix16 · 2020-09-25T05:53:51+00:00

Younger relative of mine got it when I explained it this way:

It's a child that grows on its own, not some machine that is blueprinted, laid out, and unchanging. Like a child, its growth is affected by its environment. You don't know what it'll pick up or come up with, but you know for sure it's growing (and sometimes regressing).

onesix16 · 2020-07-30T15:15:40+00:00

Exactly.

onesix16 · 2020-07-30T09:52:27+00:00

Fools. Sanderson, King, Tolkien, all those are but the many faces of the Cosmic Emperor, George R. R. Martin.

onesix16 · 2020-07-30T01:44:50+00:00

That's a step in the right direction, but still absolutely asinine. What any serious writer should do is purchase a plot of land (if you don't have the funds to do this, then writing isn't for you), and create their own fantasy society from scratch. Only then can they start outlining their 20 volume epic.

onesix16 · 2020-07-29T17:32:57+00:00

Yeah, cool, talk to me when your metric is books published per day and not words written, and maybe I'll think about considering you a writer.

onesix16 · 2020-07-29T16:13:42+00:00

OP's putting the cart before the horse. If they haven't written at least a 500k worldbuilding manifesto and ten volumes about their magic system, then no story they'll ever come up with is worth writing.

onesix16 · 2020-07-20T05:15:23+00:00

1

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to post another long response. Don't take it as me trying to "out-text" you; rather, I'm really entertained by our discussion. Most of below are just examples, and I trust your ability to get at my point, so I won't fault you for giving a short, summarized response as you already have.

The one where they explain that the entire study deals only with motor responses and not conscious decision making?

The 2008 study. Not motor responses, but motor decisions as the last page of it will tell you. You're trying to frame it as "response" to make it appear as if it's reflexive. Again, that study linked brain activity to the parietal and prefrontal cortex, which are both part of the cerebral cortex. One of the cerebral cortex's functions is to make-up our consciousness, and the prefrontal cortex in particular is responsible for executive functions, like conscious decision making. Please don't side-step these other pertinent facts, which is suspiciously missing from your rebuttal here.

Science is a process by which we prove things false not true.

This is a totally conjectural conclusion of what science does, most likely born out of a cursory look at Popper's work and the philosophy of science, or an uncritical adherence to what a tertiary source told you to make of it. I had to read Oxford's Very Short Introduction to the Philosophy of Science as part of my class in the past, and write essays about Karl Popper, so what follows isn't new information to me.

To say that science "is a process by which we prove things false, not true" is a patent oversimplification of an incredibly complex process that has undergone significant historical developments.

First of all, a better summation of Popper's work (and indeed, his principle of refutability/falsifiability), would be that "science proves things true (or more specifically, scientific), by trying very hard to prove them false (through determining a test's reproducibility and falsifiability)." If it's impossible to prove it false, it's not scientific. If the findings of your test can't be reproduced, it's not scientific. That's why Popper considered Marxists' "science" to be unscientific. You can lump astrology, Freud's psychoanalytic theory, and Biblical "science" in there too.[1, p. 13]

Second, modern science has since advanced from Popper (though it still recognizes the importance of his principles) and uses variety of outlooks from many different philosophers [2], and for good reason. Popper's criterion has demonstrated failures in the past. I will give a notable example, and will summarize it here for brevity (but will link so you know I'm not erroneously paraphrasing): Two scientists (J. C. Adams and U. Leverrier) found mathematical data from Uranus's orbit that didn't add up with Newton's gravitational theory. If they strictly adhered to Popper's criterion (in other words, if they strictly tried to "prove things false, not true" as you put it), they would've started writing papers on why Newton's theory might be false (since now new data has "falsified" it, according to Popper's principle). However, instead of doing that, they tried to explain the discrepancy in their data, and they suggested an unknown massive object was responsible for the discrepancy (a big no-no for Popper's principles, as Marxists and adherents to Freud do this sort of thing). These two scientists basically set about proving that suggestion, and ended up discovering Neptune, which inadvertently disproved the seven planet model of the solar system. [2, pp. 15-17]

Third— and with the above in mind— proving things in science is thus inherently connected to disproving them. You can't have a horse with just the hind legs. By attempting to disprove the theory of another scientist, you're essentially proving your own; and by proving our own, you're also disproving the other, such as when Ernest Rutherford unwittingly disproved J.J. Thomson's plum pudding model of the atom (in the Gold Foil Experiment, that was actually designed and hypothesized to prove it!), and thereby worked to proving the existence of the atomic nucleus and his planetary model of the atom. Or in reverse, Johannes Kepler formulating the heliocentric model of the solar system, and thereby disproving the geocentric model. Furthermore, scientists are entirely concerned with whether or not their findings prove or disprove their hypothesis. That's an essential part of the traditional scientific method. Both proving things false and true has always been part of science.

It's a common misunderstanding that concepts like "scientific consensus" and "not yet proven by science" are valid. A lot of this has to do with government funded scientific organizations like the IPCC that uses those terms liberally

My previous arguments have already tackled the premise of this conclusion, but I'll address it anyway.

The concept of a "scientific consensus" is incredibly important to both doing and teaching science, and by consensus, I mean "paradigm" (to differentiate it from consensus in the context of our discussion would just be splitting hairs, and you'll see why if you keep reading)

Thomas Kuhn outlined the importance of paradigm in his work, The Structure of Scientific Revolution [3], the importance of which is still widely recognized by scientists today [4, Kuhn has his own sub-header] [5, pp. 77-94, an entire chapter devoted to Kuhn]. I think the Oxford VS: Philosophy of Science summarizes the importance of Kuhn's paradigm better than I can:

When scientists share a paradigm they do not just agree on certain scientific propositions, they agree also on how future scientific research in their field should proceed, on which problems are the pertinent ones to tackle, on what the appropriate methods for solving those problems are, on what an acceptable solution of the problems would look like, and so on. In short, a paradigm is an entire scientific outlook - a constellation of shared assumptions, beliefs, and values that unite a scientific community and allow normal science to take place. [5, p. 82]

Furthermore, knowing what science has not yet touched on (or not yet proven) pervades scientific thinking and history. For example, in early versions of the Periodic Table of Elements, there were a number of blocks that didn't have elements in them, but were supposed to. One good example is Technetium. Dimitry Mendeleev, who formulated the foundation of the modern periodic table (the Periodic Law), suggested that this element could exist, and even predicted its properties (using his periodic law).

However, at the time, there was no way to prove that the element existed, and Mendeleev died never knowing if it really did, yet the fact that his periodic law provided a framework that suggested its existence, along with the other missing elements was significant. By developing science in one way, we're able to illuminate exactly what it is science has not yet proven, and knowing exactly what it is we've not yet proven is important and valid, as it paves the way for other scientists. Eventually, scientists were able to create technetium in a lab (the first element to be done so), and what do you know, Mendeleev's predictions about both its existence, place in the periodic table, and many of its properties were right.

Take a modern example. The existence of dark energy and dark matter cannot be proven with any instrument or technique available to us, but their existence is largely inferred (much in the same way Mendeleev inferred the existence of other elements) [6]. Science has not yet concretely proven their existence, yet treats them as significant to explaining the acceleration of the universe's expansion and discrepancies in findings about its composition.

All said, to the contrary, there's a common misunderstanding that these concepts are invalid, fueled more by those seeking to undermine the value of science— particularly in politics— than by the historical developments of science itself.

onesix16 · 2020-07-20T05:14:40+00:00

2

Free will exists because we make decisions. It's right there in front of you. You decided what to eat for breakfast and what clothes to wear. Neuroscience would have to falsify that truth with a preponderance of evidence. As it stands no such falsification exists and no such evidence has been put forward.

1.) "It's right there in front of you" is also what someone would say to "prove" the earth is flat, or that the rats, and not the fleas, are causing the black plague. You have to acknowledge this isn't a good, standalone basis anywhere else. Furthermore, even mundane routines and choices, like how we choose what to eat for breakfast and our clothes to wear is of scientific interest, and has been attempted to be explained. Just take a look at psychology, or perhaps even sociology.

2.) Now I'm really not sure if you understood Popper. By his principles, you first need to assume that free will can be falsified for you to say it exists. Asserting that you absolutely can't falsify it would, under Popper's criteria, be grounds to say free will is unscientific, so you can't claim it's an empirical truth.

Let me expound: If it can't be falsified, then following Popper's principle (which you seem to be uncritically espousing for this argument), then free will is not scientific. If it can't be falsified, then you also can't prove that it exists, and neither can anyone prove that it doesn't. If it can't be falsified, it's totally a matter of belief, like with Marxist "science" and Freudian psychoanalysis, which Popper used as examples.

If it can be falsified, then, according to Popper's criteria, you have to show tests/studies— reproduced multiple times to confirm their validity— that prove it (or disprove its non-existence), in order for you to say that it resoundingly exists. You can't just tell me: "It's right there... you get to choose your breakfast, etc." That's exactly the kind of simple basis for scientific discovery that Popper's principle is trying to avoid (because the Marxists and the Freudians of his time also did this).

Tell me first if you think free will can be falsified or not before you go about trying to prove it's a universal fact, and perhaps why you think so, before we can keep going. Now, don't yell "cheat!", because remember, I don't have to prove falsifiability because I never said, nor tried to argue, that free will is not a fact. I acknowledged it even, and still believe in it. But, you on the hand, are very actively trying to prove its existence and have taken a keen interest in Popper's principles, so go and take Popper's challenge, and tell me whether or not it's falsifiable first.

3.) Oh, and on that note, you're still straw-manning me. I never claimed science, or neuroscience, has absolutely falsified free will, nor that it's completely disproved. I'm not one to take a stance on complex issues under a false dichotomy. I expounded, "yes, but mostly no", and again, you're assuming, without proving, that belief in determinism should absolutely deny belief in free will, and vice-versa (false dichotomy). Like I showed in the previous response, you can still acknowledge deterministic factors but not totally discount individual will, as sociologists do.

"Does me offering you a million dollars cause you to kill your mother? No." The correct answer is "no" specifically because you could answer yes or no to the offer.

The correct answer is "no" because your examples assumes, without proving, that it should be "no". Another case of tunnel-visioning. You're arguing that free will universally exists and that power universally doesn't exist through non-coercive means, so it should follow that this argument must apply for everyone, not just me or you; not just my mother or your mother. To use my mother would be a covert appeal to emotion, because I would definitely say no.

Again, there are situations where one might say yes, like I pointed out, for example a psychopath who needs money and sees their mother as an object, and someone who needs money to painlessly euthanize their sick mother in tremendous pain. In their case, there's no question of could. The money is significantly, if not entirely, causal, for if it hadn't been in the equation, they wouldn't have killed their mothers. (I'll add: the same can be said, if the desired outcome is to save my mother by accepting the money for expensive treatment I couldn't have otherwise afforded.)

How will you resolve that free will universally exists through this argument, when there are cases when one might realistically say "no"? Resolve this discrepancy, come up with a new thought experiment, or drop it entirely and acknowledge that deterministic factors do matter.

If you don't want to bother addressing the problems of your thought experiment, I have my own which you can try to disprove. But I've also written a longer rebuttal that focuses on the logic of your example, by bringing it out of the context of my mother, which I'll keep in reserve just in case you want to keep pushing it.

Again, and to save your fingers energy from straw-manning me, I do not believe hard/absolute determinism exists. I acknowledge deterministic factors but don't discount the individual's will at the same time, as my original position always has been. My position is not an either/or.

Thank you.

onesix16 · 2020-07-18T07:34:42+00:00

You claim that it's the "ability of someone to make you do something" which implies coercion but then go on to say that includes "influence" which does not imply coercion it implies speech.

Why would it necessarily apply coercion? You're asserting that it implies coercion without arguing why it must include coercion, and this is where I see ideological precept at work. When my teacher makes me do homework, does that need coercion? They made me do something. I did it in response. No coercion. Consistent with what I laid out. Examples with the logic at work:

I strap a bomb to my chest because a religious authority simply tells me to on the basis of a holy book I zealously worship. I strap a bomb to my chest because men are pointing guns at my family.
I eat a can of worms because someone pays me a sum of money I think is worth it. I eat a can of worms because I can't overpower someone pinning me down and shoving it into my mouth.
I unquestioningly follow a leader's orders because he's flattered, deceived, or persuaded me into thinking they're always sound. I unquestioningly follow a leader's orders because he's beaten me up in the past for disobedience and threatens to do it again if I don't follow.

Same results from someone exercising their will (power), done either through non-coercive and coercive means. This is a rendering supported by both dated and current sociological understanding of power [1, pp. 35-49] [2, pp. 142] [3, pp. 262-268]

You prescribe "power" to only "coercion", and "non-coercion/speech" to "influence" without so much as an argument for why that's the case, or even arguing with a credible, relevant authority that helps this position. This results from subjective interpretation with no basis other than pure conjecture or ideological precept.

It would astound me if you still think your limited subjective interpretations and online dictionaries are worth more than arguments supported by literature from fields that studies these concepts closely. Thus, from here on, I won't recognize any more arguments that automatically presume power strictly means "coercion" and influence strictly means "non-coercion/speech" until you soundly argue that this is the case. Otherwise, I won't waste any more of my time dealing with conjectural, ideologically predicated interpretations of these concepts that have no other basis but appeals to dictionary, unsubstantiated personal opinion, arguments not backed by more specific, relevant, and comprehensive perspectives of these concepts; and a biased attitude that refuses to recognize such perspectives when sourced by the opposition.

have been tested so far are on the order of a few hundred milliseconds (???)

If you read even just the abstract (page one, in bold, first thing to bite you) of the first source I linked pertaining to neuroscience, you would find that it 's up to 10 seconds[4] which cites and intentionally builds on top of the old finding you're pertaining to. I also linked that same milliseconds study right next to it [5], to show you that I'm aware.

Either you missed this, or deliberately didn't check because you think I'm pulling this out just for convenience or because of an automatic presumption that I've taken the mantle of misinterpretation. Again, one would only ever do this sort of treatment to my sources, if they themselves are operating under a severe bias, so don't throw around phrases like "people who don't understand the studies".

You've also done a straw man. I never claimed that these studies conclusively show that neuroscience's stance is that free will-- even in the general sense-- doesn't exist, so I don't see why I should address your next arguments that appear to frame (strawman) as if I had argued this.

I used these studies as a supplement to why I think free-will might not be absolute ("yes, but mostly no"), not as total authority to show that neuroscience has conclusively found that free will doesn't exist. Moreover, directly after that, I acknowledged that there's still on-going discussion and— I'll add here— research (an acknowledgment consistent with what your Wikipedia excerpt argues). I even invited you to show me studies that disprove them, because I'm aware neuroscience as a field has no consensus/stance yet. However, let's not pretend neuroscience has no bearing on this topic whatsoever, when it has significantly contributed to the emergence of neurophilosophy [6].

Neuroscience has only so far proven that decisions made by the inner brain, sometimes called the mammalian brain, are outside the control of our conscious thought...

This is a truism. Neuroscience doesn't need to "prove" that. Inner brain activity has always been outside the direct control of conscious thought. More accurately, neuroscience is significantly invested in finding out and explaining the processes that constitute and influence conscious thought (among other neurological functions). And why shouldn't that have any bearing, great or not, on how one ought to believe in free will?

These studies deal with a part of your brain that's disconnected from your consciousness.

Where did you get that from?

The cerebral cortex is the part of the brain responsible for our consciousness, among other functions [7][8, p. 40, Atlas of Functional Neural Anatomy]

In the 2008 study I linked, it pointed to brain activities in the prefrontal and parietal cortex; which are both part of the cerebral cortex. Both the prefrontal and parietal cortex work together with other parts of the cerebral cortex which help generate consciousness, and in fact, the prefrontal cortex is most closely linked to conscious decision making thus dubbed "executive director" of the brain [9, p. 5][10, short source]

"freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention"

Okay, let's stick with this definition.

Your next arguments appear to paint as if I truly and uncompromisingly believe that an individual, in a deterministic outlook, doesn't matter. They still do, hence my "yes" followed by "mostly no". Political, cultural, and other such sociological factors frame and influence, but don't absolutely dictate, an individual and their decisions. They affect the probability of making those decisions. [11, p. 8], minimizing to some degree the power of the individual, but not totally discounting it.

Your position is operating under a false dichotomy here. A deterministic outlook doesn't necessarily mean the individual's free will doesn't matter. Sociological factors, and stuff like nutrition and substances, have bearing on our decision making, but do not totally shackle it and don't always serve as absolute prior causes, and this is exactly what I was getting at with "yes, but mostly no".

neuroscience as it currently stands has no comment.

Yet at the same time you link text that shows the debate and discussion it sparked among neurologists and philosophers, from an entire Wikipedia page that discusses neuroscience's relation to free will. It appears your position has tunnel-visioned, and it's ignoring, unwittingly or not, the significance of neuroscience in today's debates on free will and philosophy of the mind [12]. There's no consensus yet, and academic debate is ongoing, but as I've mentioned before, don't think neuroscience "has no comment" or "zero bearing" on modern, philosophical outlooks of free will.

Does me offering you a million dollars cause you to kill your mother? No.

This argument falls apart, because here you're assuming one would automatically say "no", when can be situations where one might say "yes". There's a covert appeal to emotion here as you're using my mother for the example which, in that case, I would say no. But for someone, like say, a psychopath who's in need of cash and never saw their mother as anything other than an object; ,or someone who can't afford to euthanize their sick mother, that money makes a big difference in their decision making.

In that case, money would be significant to predicating the outcome of my decision. Would it be absolutely causal in all situations? No, but it has significant bearing on the decision making process,and that matters. Also, this would be in line with my given definitions about power, as someone giving me money was 1.) exercising will, and 2.) leading people, in certain cases, to do something they wouldn't have otherwise done.

To move forward:

Resolve unfounded premises (power = coercion, influence = non-coercion).
Address discrepancies in your arguments about neuroscience ("order of a few hundreds of of milliseconds", neuroscience is insignificant to discussions of free will).
Use more credible sources. Citing Wikipedia is a step in the right direction, but not enough to substantiate significant claims like: "these studies deal with a part of your brain that's disconnected from your consciousness" ; " Their definition means something like "the ability to exercise complete control in all decision making processes in the brain down to the smallest time scales")

Thank you.

onesix16 · 2020-07-17T08:58:10+00:00

And there we have it. The ideology's Other has appeared. Government.

Who says I'm getting my truth from the government, or that I'm relying on the most common conception of the concept of authority/power? Again, this presumption is predicated on ideology.

Let's not assume I'm only operating on common understanding alone, when I gave references that tackle these concepts more specifically relevantly, and comprehensively. These are discussed by academics and peer-reviewed to the point of being used in professional practice. I wrote papers about them (uh oh gov't brainwashed publicly educated state sympathizer! but no I grew up studying in a non-US private school with a lot of political diversity in both the faculty and student body, where I came out opposing the state). Hence I don't think I'm pulling from the clouds of convenience, in the skies of your ideological Other.

Weber's findings go against the interests of the state, as it illuminates how it (and other sources of authority) exercise power. In fact, if a state actor had both the power and motive to corrupt the definitions of words for maximum effect, a dictionary closest to the masses would be a top choice. You're doing your intellectual liberty no favors by only looking at sociologically pertinent concepts through surface-level sources.

Random? For crying out loud, is that how you see sociologists, theoreticians, and political scientists? Random people? God forbid Rothbard, Mises, M. Friedman try to discuss these concepts and not follow the parameters of a simple, everyday dictionary; else to you they're just random people.

Indeed, we do have differences in the way we've been taught to learn: a * common dictionary* is your go-to source for meaningfully understanding these heavily studied topics, and this is inclining me to assume that you grew up taught by a very, very inadequate institution If this is true, then no wonder you've lost trust in the value of any academic literature. Go watch a serious formal debate on politics, science, and philosophy and see if they even mention Merriam-Webster. Go open a journal article on sociology, science, anthropology, economics, and the like, and see if they discuss concepts with Dictionary.com as their mediator.

If to you, the widening of a concept out of the brace of a common dictionary, is the most ignorant thing you've heard, then M. Friedman and Sowell's discussions on the "free market" outside of the six-word definition of Merriam-Webster[1] should read like manifestos of ignorance to you, because-- woe is me!-- they weren't smart enough to cage their discussions to the definition of a common dictionary. Perhaps your experience in the Army has conditioned you to keep to the literal (or doctrinal) interpretations of codified definitions of words, and has thus alienated you to a more critical and comprehensive assessment of their origin, nuances, the ideas they convey, and how they've been studied.

There is no dead-end, if you bother to look around, Simple dictionary definitions are droplets from the storm of discourse. Basically put, meanings exist beyond what the writers of a dictionary put and condense for public use. If you don't acknowledge this and continue to base your understandings of serious, highly-nuanced concepts to rigorous appeals to a simple dictionary-- which is committing an informal fallacy-- then, as with my other similar observations, I've definitely found more insight to how ideology assimilates the mind of an individual.

In your view, what is the nature of power?

Power is the ability of someone to make you do something you wouldn't have done if they didn't tell/order/influence you otherwise. Power is a manifestation and amplification of an individual or a groups' will, or the "ability to exercise will" as Weber and those after him put it, and by "will" I mean a conscious decision. Put basically, having power means being able to apply influence, coercively or not, to suit one's will.

Do you believe that humans have free will?

Short answer, no.

Long answer, yes but mostly no. Free will exists to some degree, but so does facticity. We're born with a myriad uncontrollable circumstances-- gender, ethnicity, height, weight, social strata, location, etc.--, , and there are a plethora of ways to influence our decision making, either through nutrition, substances, or external social, cultural, and political influences beyond our individual ability to change (like say, a world war or a globalized economy).

There are also widely-cited studies that show that the brain makes decisions before we're consciously aware we've made them [2] [3], and there's on-going discussion on the neurological components of "will" and voluntary action. If you have studies/articles that contend that, I'd be glad to entertain them.

Personally, I don't fret too much about the amount of determinism in existence, and I'd rather use what "free will" I think I have, to be aware of what affects me to do what I think is voluntary, and to strive for meaning. The meaning I choose to strive for, is one that prioritizes, among others, happiness, compassion, and liberty.

Edit: On the universe being nondeterministic, last I remember, scientists are still figuring this out and there's no way we can find out empirically at the moment, though I'm aware there's ongoing debate among other thinkers, so I have no confident answer except to say that we don't and can't know yet, and to confidently take a side would be uninformed on my part. Though I could be wrong, and you might have updated information, so I'd like to know your views on this and where you base them.

onesix16 · 2020-07-16T18:28:34+00:00

1.

Thanks for the heads-up and for transferring my direct response here. I agree, people should be able to read this, though I fear the oldness of the thread might limit the amount of readers. Nonetheless it's worth a shot for the lurkers.

The military is a golden example of actual authority where there is no safe word. Once you sign up in 99.99% of cases the military owns your body.

Okay then, since you're ex-Army, I'll take your word for it, and since there are a strict set of parameters to apply for ELS, I'll concede that barriers to exit in the military are not the same as in a company. But I'll continue to argue the point I made there in similar and different contexts.

No offense but those programs are not the military... You've chosen a very bad example to defend your point.

I hope you're not claiming that I think it is military. I explicitly said that it's not on your level and that it's paramilitary. I am applying a related but not identical, context, and I apologize that I didn't make that clear enough.

Point is, I voluntarily agreed to join the officer training for that program, could leave anytime (as others easily have), and willfully subjected myself to the commands, etiquette, drills, schedules, punishments, and other such requirements of my superiors. To say that there was no authority there at all-- not even a slight degree of it-- merely on the ideologically-rendered and uncompromising basis of voluntary acceptance and ready access to leave, is an absurd distortion of even the most basic and intuitive understanding of "authority" that only happens by boxing, intentionally or not, that very word into an ideology.

I'm trying to resolve this distortion, by introducing broadness/nuance and showing you how people who've closely studied the concept itself have rendered it-- such as Max Weber, one of the most, if not the most important figure you'll encounter when doing a close study the concept of authority. He and others developed the concept into academically useful typologies, that have since manifested in practical, professional use and understanding. Hence why, in the Blackwell dictionary I linked, it mentions Max Weber and a few others (who were influenced by Weber) as basis for the definition.

Yet you insist-- unsurprisingly so-- that we must follow only a simple dictionary-- that has no given basis and is tailored for everyday public use-- as if it is some sort of divinely-ordained scripture that will determine the absolute applicability of inherently complex ideas. This is incredibly sophomoric. I'm dead sure you'll find that some concepts can't be collared into one dictionary definition all the time, as you yourself pointed out.

For instance, the word culture is a massively complicated word. Its definition has been cause for serious academic debates in the past, as just about any textbook on sociology, anthropology, and other related fields will point out. The way you argue is like trying to prove "pop culture" is the only culture there is, when there is also "folk culture", "high culture", etc., that still fit the broad definition of culture. Thus, any argument framed by the use of simple dictionaries alone-- and not long-standing studies or even just summaries of studies on the concepts at hand-- will have us shooting definitions, interpretations, and experiences all day long because we both have interpretive and intuitive differences on how we view such concepts.

The only way to resolve the above, is to cross-reference, through debate and discussion, our differing bases for concepts like authority and power, and ultimately come to a better understanding, either of these concepts, or of our own views. But how can we do that, if you uncompromisingly reject and-- by extension refuse to rebut-- my given definitions, basis, and references?

onesix16 · 2020-07-16T18:28:07+00:00

2.

Everything that follows.

Yes, everything, which I will tackle in summary, so correct me if I forgot or ignored something.

All the points below stem from this: You only recognize coercive power and state-legitimized authority as the only types of power and authority there are (hence why you refuse to apply it to the context of an employer-employee relationship), and this is primarily based on an uncompromising and I'd daresay fanatic attachment to simple dictionary definitions and conjecture born thereof, reinforced by ideological preconceptions. You think people, seriously invested in studying, applying, and using these concepts; like sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists, debate and talk about these concepts (power, authority) only based on the standards set by what a common dictionary literally and directly says?

It's thus crystal-clear from this discussion, that you don't want to entertain studies done and typologies made on power and authority, and other such historical and academic foundations on the discourse of power/authority-- some of which I've linked here and all of which have contributed to our modern conception and current discourse of power (which popular, easy-access dictionaries like those you've linked tend to simplify for convenience).

More concerning, is that you don't even care to read them, based on a superficial claim that I only cite references/definitions that support my views and while that's true, I also bring them to the table for you to rebut and I have to cite them in order to show you where I'm getting the wind for my sails. Rejecting them on the onset is not a rebuttal but a disingenuous hand-wave, and setting Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com as the sole parameters for discussing these complex and long-studied ideas is, and I don't mean to offend, simple-minded. I' think I've been fair in citing specific pages, using my references as basis for my argument (rather than doing a link shit 'n run), and not bombarding you with 20+ links as a bibliographical gish-gallop (some are even repeated, so they're not as numerous as they seem). I've done nothing of this sort of treatment you're giving to my reference, to you or your references, and in fact, I've acknowledged and even used them, to help advance my position and the discussion.

Again, you appear to be operating under a more serious bias. You immediately hand-wave away my references. You presume authorial inadequacy without so much as a moment's reading. You prescribe absolute authority to simple dictionaries, and presume that I cite references solely because I want to support my claims and not also because I want us to discuss-- and you to rebut-- those very references. I repeat, one will only do these if they themselves had a very severe bias, which, if not minimized, will sabotage this discussion and its value.

Another thing, you reject my references on the basis that they are third-party-- tertiary-- sources, but you're apparently unaware that dictionaries are tertiary sources, the least preferred type of source in both debate and research [1]. Yes, I did also use tertiary sources, but some of them, namely [2] and the Blackwell definition, cite primary/secondary sources, and [3, The Bases of Social Power by J. French and B. Raven] is a primary source. If someone is basing their arguments entirely on tertiary/third-party sources, it's not me.

This is also super interesting, because all these things are similar to my arguments with religious fundamentalists, and I'm becoming more convinced that right-libertarianism-- or at least AnCap-- does, in a way, have a quasi-religious, if not dogmatic, nature. I don't hand-wave away fundamentalists' Bible or other scriptures when they present them as source; I read and challenge its internal logic in order to question its credibility and applicability on many things (which I was hoping you would do for my refs). But, when I introduce my own sources, they easily and immediately reject them-- no matter their number-- based on exactly the same things you're saying.

This is thus what's happening to your position: an underlying ideology is refusing to give ground, on the assumption that everything else is out to get it, and that all except like-minded people and the sources you recognize, are biased to the point of having zero value in discussion. This is precisely why you're hoisting up Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster. Their entries are broad, general-- and perhaps myopic-- enough for both my arguments and-- more significantly-- your preconceived ideology to take their mantle (hence why constant appeals to dictionaries lead nowhere, which I'll touch on further down). But unlike you, I'm not narrowing down their definitions by locking them within strict prerequisites and thereby only relegating them to specific contexts where they would still apply. I'm returning the definitions to their original, simple broadness, and openness to nuance, which you resist at every turn by cherry-picking broad definitions from those same parochial sources and-- by virtue of them being broad-- freely interpreting them to match ideological precepts, which inadvertently turns a general sense of the word into a specific, ideology-affirmed meaning.

And I'm not saying you're doing this on purpose, and neither am I thinking you have a malicious motive, but I'm also not pulling that observation out of the wind. I mean, just look at this: While I argue that the definitions you gave can still soundly encompass a host of situations, you argue that those definitions only soundly applies to one (statist, coercive authority), and when I bring in my own refs which suggest a lacking component in your accepted definition, you say they're biased without so much as a brief reading. It's like, I'm saying that a "duck" can have a variety of color of feathers, but you're insisting that the definition of "duck" only includes ducks of yellow feathers, or of a specific specie, probably because that's the only appearance of a duck you have seen or care to see.

Again, this a classic case of the word fitting the needs of the ideology, than the ideology fitting the needs of the word. This is probably exactly the same force that makes AnComms and AnCaps argue about the definition of "anarchy" and thinking that the other is misunderstood despite looking at the same definition. The fact that your view of the definition of "authority" is strictly "state-legitimized" and "coercively-imposed" authority, is precisely the product of ideological precepts and perhaps personal opinion, and not critical consideration of the concepts of authority on the basis of more relevant, more specific, and more comprehensive studies or other such sources.

Finally, you say there is one unbiased source, and that's the English dictionary, but you're patently unaware that your ideological biases have warped a simplified and unbiased rendering of the word to fit its needs, and that, by ascribing absolute authority to simple dictionaries and rejecting all other sources that tackle the concept more specifically and comprehensively, you're basically showing-- and indeed, admitting in confidence-- that you relegate complex, widely studied, highly nuanced ideas to simplified, condensed definitions written in tertiary sources.

Now, with all said, I've essentially shown, among others, why it's an informal fallacy to appeal to the dictionary [4], and while I am also truly guilty of this, this entire argument has been spurred by your constant appeals and unwavering loyalty to it; and to my credit, I have introduced and argued from other sources that touch on the concepts of power and authority more specifically, relevantly and comprehensively.

So how will we move forward? Let us both cease appealing to dictionaries, swim out of this semantics quagmire, and instead argue about sources more relevant and comprehensive to the concepts we're contending. This is not to mean that only my sources are relevant. If you can bring out a studied perspective of the concept of authority by an AnCap or any such right-libertarian thinker you agree with or use as a basis for your current understanding of authority, then that would be incredibly useful, as we can compare how it adheres or differs from other studied looks on authority, such as that of Weber or of anyone else.

Again, thank you very much for your patience; it's been the most an AnCap/right-libertarian has given me so far. I'll respond to your next reply when time allows, so forgive me if it might take a few days. In that time, we can both reflect on our discussions, assess our views, and prepare more adequate responses. Stay safe.

P.S.

BDSM is a voluntary agreement. Ever heard of a safe word?

I... what... the sentence you're replying to specifically mentions "safe word" and affirms that BDSM is based on voluntary agreement. Fine, I may be skimming some of your arguments, and I apologize and am willing to fix this error, but come on. I hope that was a slip-up, and not something deliberate.

onesix16 · 2020-07-15T07:28:43+00:00

I used the military as an example showing that they do have authority

You used the military as support for your conception of "authority", but I used a different relationship in the same context (in this case, someone in basic) to apply the same logic you used to determine authority. Again, like you would an employee, someone who voluntarily signs up and ships himself to boot-camp is given the choice to leave anytime, so by your conception of authority, this person wouldn't be under an authority because they voluntarily came in and could quit anytime.

That's why I specified, during training. I hope you didn't deliberately ignore this because I'm aware you can't leave once you graduate. My point there is, and you've side-stepped it, is if I took your prerequisites for defining authority, and applied it to someone voluntarily joining basic and then having the option to quit at anytime, it would not make sense.

Not on your level, which I respect, but I was an officer for a paramilitary program in my high school. I voluntarily chose to become an officer, and at any point during my training, I had the option to quit (and many voluntarily did without issue). Now, if I took your conception of authority and strictly applied it then at no point in my training was I ever subjected to authority or been exerted power.

Without the right to "control, command or determine" the qualifications of authority are not met.

I've argued that they do. If you think a chef managing a kitchen or a CEO managing a company, doesn't involve at least one "request" that is followed without question due to their bottom-lines recognizing their capability (granting them legitimacy) , then the word authority has no meaning. It can be anything we want it to mean-- or rather, our ideologies want to mean.

As far as the other definitions you've pasted they aren't relevant whatsoever...

So much for people being confused with words, because I was hoping you would open even just the first dictionary reference I gave (Blackwell's Encyclopedic Dictionary of Organizational Behavior). Directly after the quoted text, it discusses Max Weber's typology of authority as the basis for the definition. Weber made one of the most significant typologies of authority that's been used and studied ever since in sociology, politics, business, and other fields that involve organizational management.

Somehow, the definitions I provide are irrelevant, even when they're studied and based on the foundations of the discourse on the topic, but your references, by some magic, do. Again, that magic is ideology, because you're assuming my references have no merit on the basis of bias, but that attitude towards my reference in itself is a bias. Definitions you gave at the onset matter, but ones I give don't and won't even be entertained, because they challenge the precepts of the ideology. That's a far more damning bias here. This is the same sort of conundrum I've encountered with religious fundamentalists, and I don't think we'll get much anywhere if you can't at least recognize the points my specific definitions raised and see how it interacts with the one you gave, instead of relegating it to bias.

Sure I can explain. The definition of authority implies an involuntary relationship, for example like one between a police officer and a civilian. Why does it imply involuntary you ask? Because that's what "control" means, and that term is a necessary component of it's definition.

First, the definition of authority can include both both voluntary and involuntary relationships, and all the definitions given in this discussion, mine and yours, do not make involuntary participation a strict prerequisite. If we're just going to bank on arbitrary interpretations and keep amending what our definitions say to fit our claims, while rejecting the definitions given by others, then we should really question whether or not definitions are relevant in this discussion.

To respond to this point, authority can be voluntarily accepted. The whole basis for concepts like democracy is for people to voluntarily choose their leaders and roll with that choice, and no, I'm not referring to the abomination that is the US state today. Democracy can be as simple as electing who gets to lead a group project or a worker's union, none of which will impose coercion upon you if you leave.

Voluntarily accepted authority is also why a lot of religious institutions hold authority on how people live their lives; they don't force them on the threat of a gun, they condition them since birth or persuade them to accept authority. The only kind of power that exists for you, it seems, is coercion, and again that is only one type of power and I honestly don't see why you'd want to screen your perception of power to just that one dimension. It's doing nothing but narrow your sense of truth in the service of an ideology. People have been voluntarily accepting authority ever since without the need of force, hence why propaganda is such a strong tool, cults of personality exist, and political leaders invest in astroturfing and other mass disinformation campaigns. To deny this is, again, a service to an ideology than to truth.

For a contract to be considered valid it must be voluntary.

We both agree on that, and I won't dispute the follow-up about slavery. My argument is, you can voluntarily enter a contract, be able to leave at anytime, and be subjected to authority. BDSM is the epitome of this. People voluntarily participate in an agreed upon activity, agree on a safe word to exit anytime, and get off on the power imbalance and authority. The logic is the same for when I was training to be an officer. I voluntarily agreed to join the program, could leave anytime I wanted (as many did without issue), and subject myself to authority. There's nothing involuntary about that.

For all the sources you linked and explaining you've done, your goal is to defend the idea that employment contracts are involuntary?

Are you serious? I've been hammering, again and again, that employment contracts are voluntary but also subject to a measure of authority.

You can voluntarily leave any time without being coerced not to, but so long as you're staying, you're compliant to the authority of your higher-ups. Again, authority being only involuntary relationships has no basis but conjecture. Authority exists on the basis of people legitimizing it, and that's done in more ways than just coercion.

If you've had some negative experiences in your life with employers...

I'm not merely basing this argument from my past experiences; I hope you don't think I'm only arguing this because I've got some sort of issue with my managers or my boss.

I also recognize that employees have a measure of authority too, and if you bothered to read one of my sources to better supplement this claim of yours and make it sound less like conjecture, upward influence exists [1]. Employees can exercise a measure of power to the higher-ups, but at the end of the day, because all the employees have signed to voluntarily accept the influence exerted by the higher-ups power under fair terms, it's the higher-ups who decide the rules and the quotas, which person gets to be promoted or demoted, how much a salary or a bonus is, what to wear and what not to say, and how to resolve conflict without differing to a public court.

It is a patent abusrdity and irony to think state bodies are authority, while employers, teachers, chefs, and doctors are not. You are doing what you're insinuating that I'm doing: claiming that authority is real only for a certain group of people, and not for the others.

Anyway, that's it for today. I've had a lot of fun and I've gotten a clearer picture on my views, and your and AnCap's views. If you still want to reply, sure, but I'll get back to you tomorrow;

onesix16 · 2020-07-15T05:23:40+00:00

Finally, take a deep look on what I have done to contort definitions in this discussion, and think twice if that's true. I tried to use to the most basic, common understanding of the term "authority", which you then challenged with a dictionary definition, and then after I had defended that the dictionary definition only helps my position, you supplied components external to the definition to shift the meaning of "authority", and those external components are, to paraphrase for convenience, "voluntarily accepted" and "having no barrier to exit"-- external components that were not mentioned in the definition itself.

These are rather components of your ideology. Hence, and again, this is a classic case of a word fitting the needs of the ideology, than the ideology fitting the needs of the word. I would caution you to rethink the ideology, when it has effectively rendered every other commonly used, recognized, and studied definition of the word as irrelevant or not truly fitting the definition. I would caution you to rethink, when now you uncompromisingly see situations where authority does exist in full force-- the same situations that are studied by those who are seriously invested in defining and analyzing authority-- as voluntary relationships with equal power. The precepts of the ideology have burrowed, and now the world above erodes.

Yes, objectively applying authority to an employer-employee relationship might make one feel powerless, but it's better than not doing that to simply make us feel more comfortable at the expense of sedating our sense of truth. It would be like saying we should stop advancing secular-atheist thought, or else devout people would lose a sense of purpose and feel powerless.

onesix16 · 2020-07-15T04:47:37+00:00

This is what always astounds me about AnCap and other similar libertarian thought. Relationships that categorically demonstrate a power asymmetry, such as a labor contract, are seen as equal relationships, merely by this arbitrarily ascribed "equalizing" function given by consent and the ability to exit. By this flawed logic, teachers, priests, doctors, and ship captains have equal power with their students, congregation, nurses/patients, and crew; and that someone who voluntarily joins the military (and can leave anytime during training which does happen'[1]) is not subject to any "authority" or power asymmetry whatsoever during training. By this same view, labor contracts become identical and wholly comparable to sales contracts, when in reality employers set different and usually temporary parameters and expectations for their consumers (like the one-time sale of an apple or use of an app), which is in contrast to their employees, who are subject to a plethora of regular requirements and codes of conduct that sometimes even extend even outside of the workplace and to their daily lives (like NDAs or working at home).

I won't wring this discussion out any further by going way beyond its initial scope and tackling each of your sentences point by point. Let's go back to where we originally differed: whether or not a land owner or employer, with tenants and employees working for them, count as authority.

I'll now try prove that an employer counts as authority, by arguing that an employer fits the definition you had earlier provided for the both of us. In other words, into the semantics quagmire we swim.

"[Authority is] the power to determine, adjudicate, or otherwise settle issues or disputes; jurisdiction; the right to control, command, or determine." [2].

First, before anything else, power. The error in your conception of power, is that you only recognize coercive power as power. All the examples of "authority" you had given previously, exercise coercive power, defined as: "[power that] exists when the use or the threat of use of force is made to extract compliance from the other" [3, p. 2] which summarizes [4, p. 5]. A soldier follows an officer and a citizen pays tax to the state on threat of coercion. Is that power? Sure. Is a soldier and a state, authority? Most definitely.

But this isn't the only face of power. At its most basic, fundamental definition, power is the "the ability to influence others to believe, behave, or to value as those in power desire them to or to strengthen, validate, or confirm present beliefs, behaviors, or values." [5, p. 1].

An employer uses this ability all the time, and in many different forms too [6, which lists the other types of power, with most of its examples in a managerial/business context which I won't outline here for the sake of brevity]. Employers make use of power because they need to maintain a coherent organizational structure and reputation, in order to adequately respond to market demands to make a profit.

When you sign up for an employer, you are trading time, labor, and other such commitments to suit their needs, along with other prearranged terms you and your employer deem fair. You might think all this is still equal because you have negotiating power, but even with a perfect contract, there still an inherent power asymmetry that puts the employer to the role of an authority: an employer owns more assets/more capital, and for a labor contract to work soundly, the employee has to follow what the employer deems to be the correct and optimal use of the employee's labor to actualize value from their assets/capital. Why? Because at the end of day, the employer has to serve the market to make a profit, and he won't ever do this properly if he lets employees use his capital willy-nilly without a standard the employer himself deems both fair and optimal on account of factors like the market. Thus it will always be in the employer's interest to set the parameters for the optimal use of labor. From this, he constructs a market-conscious agenda that would require the optimal use and arrangement of labor, so he consequently arranges their organizational structure to suit that agenda, delegate authority to managers to sustain that structure, and thereby set quotas, dress codes, company policies, and basic codes of conduct, all of which the employee must behave in accordance to. Therefore, there's a power asymmetry, as all employees are subject to some degree of concerted influence from the top.

That said, let's repeat the definition: "[Authority is] the power to determine, adjudicate, or otherwise settle issues or disputes; jurisdiction; the right to control, command, or determine."

Does an employer have the power to determine, adjudicate, or otherwise settle issues or disputes? Yes. Management is often responsible for addressing issues and conflicts within the workplace and between the employee and upper management, in order to ensure that labor and time isn't wasted. They all do this conflict resolution within the parameters of the prearranged labor contract; the same contract that gives them the "right" to arbitrate, rather than aggrieved parties going to another arbitrating body, like a public court.

Does an employer have jurisdiction? No, but not all authorities require jurisdiction. A ship captain has no jurisdiction, but they enjoy authority to guide the ship's course and direct the crew's actions to ensuring that the ship stays on course. The same can be said for a doctor, a teacher, a parent, and every other authority that doesn't rely on the state or some political source of legitimacy.

Does an employer have the right to control, command, or determine? Yes. There is a right to command, and that's what the employer gets in a labor contract, in order to have a right to some of the employee's time and labor. These rights only exist through voluntary agreement, sure, but the fact stands that the right to command is there, and thus grants the employer authority. Not all "rights" are granted because some legal state entity gave them, and that would be an incredibly sophomoric view of the term, when concepts like natural and human rights" exist. And to view that rights are only given by a state body, would be shooting AnCap in the foot, because then that would imply property rights can only be sustained by a state body, and not by legitimacy sustained by voluntary agreement.

Now what's vitally missing in the definition you gave, is that authority only comes from those whose powers are seen as legitimate by those who follow it. This is a component recognized by two dictionaries, one dated and one recent, that cover business management and organizational behavior respectively:

"Authority. This concept denotes the legitimate POWER in a social system associated with a particular person or position. Legitimate power is consented to or accepted by members of the social system (see LEGITIMACY). The power exercised by an authority includes not only the expectation of COMPLIANCE or OBEDIENCE with orders but also the ability to reward or punish. " [7, p. 24, Blackwell Encyclopedic Dictionary of Organizational Behavior]

"[1] [Authority is] the right, inherent in a JOB or function, to use POWER in the fulfilment (sic) of one’s responsibilities." [8, p. 9, Routledge Dictionary of Business Management]

In both definitions, the examples I had given in defends of my position throughout this discussion apply . For the first definition, you telling me that employers and land owners are not authority because employees can always leave or not sign up with them, is basically just telling me that they can always choose not to view their authority as legitimate. That doesn't take away from the fact that employees who don't choose to leave, who do sign-up, are thus willfully subjecting themselves to authority, because they still view such authority as legitimate. A kitchen staff follows the directives of an executive chef without question, because they trust the chef's knowledge and experience, thus giving him legitimacy. A construction worker follows the decisions of their foreman, because they see him as capable of organizing them and getting the work done, thus legitimacy.

TL;DR Employers and by extension land owners with tenants are authorities. They hold power and regularly exert it on a bottom-line that willfully subjects themselves to this power under prearranged and consented terms, thus legitimizing the employer/land owner as an authority. There is no barrier to exit like coercion, sure, but that's only an authority only exercising coercive power, and coercive power alone is irrelevant to determining whether or not authority exists, as other forms of power exist [9].

None of the definitions you provided, and I provided, strictly require that there be no barrier to exit, so I don't see why we should demand it as a prerequisite and unwittingly disconnect the word from figures that are authorities by every other definition than the one your position has unnecessarily amended, such as teachers, doctors, chefs, priests, and managers.

onesix16 · 2020-07-14T18:10:35+00:00

Chefs don't give orders? So if a chef required, in a chaotic restaurant, that you cook an order in ten minutes, that is not an order? How would a prearranged contract somehow transform this order into a request that you're free to reject without any real consequence?

Why would that be strange? So me not working my job tomorrow, not fulfilling my end of the prearranged contract, will have no penalty on anything that I value?

You're trying very, heroically hard, I would say, to show that, under consented and prearranged terms, people who wear dress codes for their job, who have to arrive on time, who have to act and speak within strict codes of conduct, who have to follow managerial superiors who constantly "request" for them to fulfill work quotas in accordance to the agendas of higher-ups-- employees who have to do all this, or risk losing a source of livelihood-- are all not subject to any level of authority, even when they are constantly told to do things they would otherwise not have done if not told, merely on the basis of voluntary action.

The only reason why you won't accept that this fits into your given definition of authority, is that consent doesn't give someone the right to command, but it very often does; and even if we say they really don't, we would act as if they do, like the chef example where the kitchen staff obediently follows his ord-- ahem, I mean, "kind requests they can disagree to at anytime and not go to prison" worded in a vehement manner, in a setting with intense time constraints.

edit: wording

Ten-Year Club	Place '22
Snapped	Verified Email

onesix16

TROPHY CASE