freediver wrote on Feb 2^nd, 2026 at 3:17pm:

Can the people on the island use violence to restrain the bloke who lives on the beach in defence of my right to walk on the beach?

What if the tribe granted the right of all to walk on the beach, with a subclause which withdraws that right during the first week of the new moon after the vernal equinox?

MeisterEckhart wrote on Feb 2^nd, 2026 at 3:22pm:


It is irrelevant. The reality you face is that if you try to walk along the beach, he sees you and tries to kill you.

Do you have the right to walk along the beach?

Quote:


I realise you are about to get as slippery as an eel, so let me skip to the end, pretending you had the spine to give a straight answer. This is where your argument is already falling apart. You already acknowledge here that the pieces of paper are irrelevant, and what matters is what the "societal force greater than yourself" allows you to get away with. And what is the best way to answer the question of what they allow you to get away with? Is it to spend your lifetime looking at pieces of paper and trying to second guess how they will act? Or is it simply to engage your brain and assess the reality you are faced with?

The societal force can take on a whole spectrum of forms, and the "alone on a desert island" is merely one very extreme end of that spectrum. "They" can still take away your rights, or grant you rights either explicitly or by not caring what you get up to, and whether it is codified or not only matters to the lawyers.

I notice you did not answer the question Meister.

The reality you face is that if you try to walk along the beach, he sees you and tries to kill you. Do you have the right to walk along the beach?

freediver wrote on Feb 2^nd, 2026 at 3:44pm:

Maybe you are immune to the effects of self-embarrassment.

If you were attacked for walking along a public-access beach (i.e. you had a right to walk along the beach), your right persisted even during the attack, given the tribe had not revoked it. The attacker violated your right.

freediver wrote on Feb 2^nd, 2026 at 4:05pm:

As I said, you're immune to self-embarrassment.

I have answered the question. A right persists within a social contract. That does not mean your right will never be violated by another for whatever reason.

People complain at or after the point when their rights are violated. They don't decide that they never had the right in the first place because they were attacked for exercising it.

freediver wrote on Feb 2^nd, 2026 at 4:16pm:

Now you're confusing a right with the capacity to exercise that right.

If someone prevented you from walking along a public-access beach by tying you up, does that mean to you that you don't have the right to walk along the beach? Or is it that your right to walk along the beach has been violated?

If you were asleep, would it be reasonable for others to conclude by that fact that you did not have a right to walk on the beach?

Would you argue that you didn't have the right to walk along the beach? Or that your capacity to exercise your right was violated?

freediver wrote on Feb 2^nd, 2026 at 4:37pm:

No, I assumed you weren't this stupid and not immune to self-embarrassment.

A right is the product of a social contract. It does not exist outside of one. Social contracts are written or taught orally...

Jefferson, knowing the religious predisposition of the colonists, introduced a deity into the new nation's social contract to argue for a right's divinely-gifted status that no human could deny to another, to move on towards defining rights that had the implied authority of a deity to defend.

freediver wrote on Feb 2^nd, 2026 at 4:37pm:

I'm sure you don't know what you're asking anymore.

First you confused a right with something that can exist outside of a societal contract.

Then you confused a right with the capacity to exercise that right.

Now it's, yeah but, what is a right in itself, separate from a social contract?

Back to the desert island with you, where you can decide you have the 'right' to make war on your shadow.