Last week, after a trip to Nice with my wife (facebook), I joined some friends in Istanbul—Hans Hoppe, Saifedean Ammous, Greg Morin, and a few others (facebook) (some additional pix below). Had several interesting conversations, with Hans in particular. Since I sometimes act as his amanuensis—his Boswell to Johnson—1 I might as well record some of his comments I found interesting.
Touch as the most important sense.
First, we were discussing Hoppe’s admiration for the work of Peter Janich 2 and my view that manipulation and the use of one’s hands is crucial to real AI ever developing—that AI agent needs not only a mind, but also a body with the ability to act—to move and grasp and use things—and of course the ability to feel and detect things by the sense of touch. 3
Hans nodded along and observed that in some sense this is why touch is the most important sense—unlike, say, sight, where illusions are possible, human action requires actual causal manipulation of objects, touching, detecting, grasping, and wielding them. Thus, arguably the sense of touch is the most essential and primary, just as Janich emphasizes the importance of grasping and manipulating—one of Janich’s works cited by Hoppe is Handwerk und Mundwerk: Über das Herstellen von Wissen—Craft [handwerk] and Speech: On the Production of Knowledge.
One on spreading oneself too thin
Hans is notorious for refusing to grant interview or podcast requests, a notable exception being Michael Malice’s interview of Hoppe in 2018, but that was only because Malice was with Hans in person in Bodrum at his Property and Freedom Society conference and I pressured him into it. 4 The others were commenting on how many repetitive interviews I have given in podcasts on intellectual property and other topics, and Hans commented that perhaps I should make myself a bit more scarce, like he does. “Why do you do so many interviews on the same topic,” he asked? “I figure once I do it, it is done.” I said…. “I suppose it never occurred to me to say ‘no’!” He said, “It never occurs to me to say yes!”
I joked that maybe I should take his advice and start saying no. But then Thomas Jacob, who was there, said, no! I like the repetition! So, we’ll see.
Bankruptcy.
I also mentioned to him my tentative views on bankruptcy; 5 after hearing me out, he said that makes sense. As I posted elsewhere, I don’t mind operating without a net, but it’s nice to have one.
Optimal amount of money and demonstrated preference.
I also gave Hans my explanation of the error made by Block about the optimal amount of money, 6 and he completed my sentence before I had time to get it out and immediately saw it the same way. Again, “I don’t mind operating without a net, but it’s nice to have one.”
From Jay Baykal’s Facebook post.
More pix:
- I enjoyed James Boswell’s, The LIfe of Samuel Johnson (1791), and as a former Objectivist I always recall this savage review of Barbara Branden’s biography of Ayn Rand, Louis Torres, “Boswell’s Johnson—Branden’s Rand: ‘The Passion of Ayn Rand’ in Historical Perspective,” Aristos 3, no. 5 (May 1987): 1–6; see the obituary for Branden in Aristos, Dec. 2013. [↩]
- See, e.g., Hoppe, My Discovery of Human Action and of Mises as a Philosopher; KOL272-2 | Q&A with Hülsmann, Dürr, Kinsella, Hoppe (PFS 2019); also Hoppe on Falsificationism, Empiricism, and Apriorism and Protophysics. [↩]
- KOL464 | Law, Rights and Hoppe | Tyrants’ Den Ep 4; KOL461 | Haman Nature Hn 119: Atheism, Objectivism & Artificial Intelligence. [↩]
- Interview by Michael Malice on “YOUR WELCOME”: Ep. 018 – On the Right – Hans-Hermann Hoppe. [↩]
- On Bankruptcy in a Free Society. [↩]
- On Gold, the Optimal Amount of Money, Hypersubjectivism, and Demonstrated Preference. [↩]
