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Yesterday The Guardian memed out a video: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2017/jan/18/the-west-was-built-on-racism-its-time-we-faced-that-video in which a sociology professor asserts that the developments of The West were essentially only realised through the exploitation of non-whites, refutes the scientific classification of races while presumably having no problem with classification of flora an fauna, and suggests that the problems of the global south are the result of the deliberate machinations of The West. The Guardian has been increasingly pushing these types of narratives, including that 'white people are rather awful' and the need for immigration to be used to change the character of the United States. But if you scroll down to the comments and order by recommendations (most up votes), as is usually the case, you will find a slew of comments rejecting these various non-realities. Yet they continue to pump out this unpopular material. Question: Given that these memes are routinely rejected by The Guardians' predominantly leftist audience, do you think their projection actually serves more to discredit them and associated movements and ideologies? From what I have seen these memes are to a great extent confined to professors who are completely removed from market forces (and thus can live in a fantasy) and their hanger-on students. Do you see this anti-reality academic movement posing a real threat to the current level of civilisation? My take is that the dissemination of these fictional guilt-trips is a boon. For many years I was latently of the mind that Europeans were oppressors who were responsible for the current state of the third world. This was not a strongly held conviction, but rather the result of an amalgam of input from film, music, news, cartoons etc., creating the general smorgasbord of uniformed, loosely held opinions that most people never question. It was only in around 2011 when I started to see mentally unstable social justice warriors career around dispensing guilt that I looked into European colonisation and found that the reality was very different from what I had been led to believe.

I don't know where to put this but anyway. Automation, the use or introduction of automatic equipment in a manufacturing or other process or facility I never really see a conversation about automation and to a lesser extent AI, how it effects the consumer climate, it's political affects, it's affect on job creation and destruction and lastly what would it do to our cultures. With the ever increasing encroachment of 3D printing and fabrication, the introduction of ever more automated processes and increasing bar of qualification for jobs in such environments, what fundamentally changes and what do we have to change to ease this transition in a society where work doesn't necessarily mean labour? as a pointer, the core issues are: -Population -Education -Monetary -Political And I do not really have a solid answer to these questions and wish for input. For me, I believe automation will kill countries that rely on their cheap labour to be competitive in the global market as well as destroy the need for immigration entirely. As for things like AI, I do not believe AI could ever achieve anything more than what we already do. Without the spark that we have as a species it would never be creative or self aware to the same degree.

Hi I'm new here, I don't know if this question is done to death but it seems to be a an important philosophical question. Plato was put to death for arguing rationally. Aristotle fled. Ayn Rand had a mental breakdown. I've just watched The Truth about Ayn Rand part 3. Stephan talks about Ayn Rand feeling like a failure because she couldn't get her political aims realised through rational argument. Stephan goes on to talk about how many people just don't have that rational part of their brain to argue with. Does he go further into this topic in another video? I find the things people disagree on to be the most interesting discussions and regularly take my arguments too far for timid people. My question is how do you know when something is worth arguing? How do you know where people's limits are? When and why is truth inappropriate? Can you ever win an argument with someone who thinks truth is relative or am I wasting my time?

1. We can't measure sensation (mental properties themselves). We can only measure a) the neural correlates of what we presume to be sensation or b) self-report of sensation. Our inference of sensation/sentience is based on the logical extension of our personal belief/experience of sensation to like organisms, machines, etc. but there is nothing in the known laws of the universe which define their nature/qualia (eg the redness of red) or when they emerge. I think we need to clarify this concept of "empiricism" to the audience (which is really the combination of the epistemological primacy of sense data and non-reductive physicalism). There is nothing faulty/incoherent with non-reductive physicalism, however it is critical to distinguish such from the concept of empirical observation (measurement). 2. This distinction prevents us falling prey to the kind of positivism which purports that everything accessible to us is accessible also to the empirical method. Physical is by definition (in physics) what is empirically measurable, and there is therefore a significant proportion of known (inferred) reality which is formally non-physical. Under the philosophy of "physicalism" however (which is somewhat of a misnomer according to the definition of physical), we assert that all of our experiential reality (mental properties) are mapped to physical reality (observables). There cannot be any phenomenological experience which is not grounded in nature. 3. Furthermore, this distinction prevents us from automatically assuming that materialism (non-reductive physicalism) is a satisfactory ateleological philosophy of mind. Under naturalism, a physical system evolves perfectly according to the laws of nature. Therefore, ostensibly emergent mental properties are redundant (see Jaegwon Kim on non-reductive physicalism; in particular his thesis on overdetermination). The organism (including its central nervous system) functions perfectly according to the laws of physics (be they deterministic or indeterministic) without any unnecessary strong emergent phenomenon. Strong emergent properties are qualitatively distinct from physical emergent properties (like crystals) in that they cannot be empirically observed. Joseph Tagger: Can you prove you're self-aware? Will Caster: That's a difficult question, Dr. Tagger. Can you prove that you are? (Transcendence, 2014). The apparently arbitrary assignment and nature of mental properties (evolutionarily irrelevant existence; our brain functions and evolves perfectly fine without them) leads most contemporary/secular philosophers of mind to argue either a) eliminativism, b) 'informationism', c) panpsychism, or d) simulation. a) Eliminativism: that mental properties (or their perception of physical non-reducibility) are an illusion. Yet assuming that we take both our internal sentience (existence/experience) and our extrapolation of this sentience to like organisms as true (although such cannot be empirically verified), what is its basis: why does it exist? Informationism, panpsychism and simulation attempt to explain why some systems (peculiar subsets of the universe in space-time; eg human CNS, Pentium III, etc) have this apparently emergent phenomenon. b) 'Informationism': That mental properties are the natural product of complex arrangements of matter/energy above a given threshold of complexity (sentience is just as if not more fundamental than observables; in that the universal system "knows they are coming"). Informationism assumes that mind is the inevitable outcome of the arrangement of matter/energy in sufficiently complex states. Such however requires nature to be geared towards the creation of sentience, and is as such not indistinguishable from pantheism. c) Panpsychism: That all physical entities have (the capacity for) associated mental properties. There is no distinction between physical and mental substances, though unlike physicalism the material does not take precedence over the mental. Panpsychism asserts that consciousness is an inherent property of all particles (energy/matter) in the universe. Panpsychist models are however not without their own limitations. Apart from their animistic inelegance (hypothesising sentient rocks for instance), nothing in the laws of nature define which systems (collections of particles in space-time) should combine to form complex indivisible centres of consciousness like you or me (the Combination Problem). d) Simulation: That the material world as experienced by us is not the underlying construct of mental existence but merely the designated method for generating its experience. Simulation (like substance/Cartesian dualism) pushes back the problem of the underlying construct/laws of mind to another universe. This philosophy of mind has elements of theism (alien gods). 3. There is also another critical although somewhat unrelated limitation in the positivist analysis. Although one can observe a consistency between nature (regulated behaviour or causality) and logic, one cannot use nature to formally derive logic. This is a circular reasoning fallacy. One must assume reason as an axiom in order to make/process our empirical observations (follow the empirical method). For this reason logic (like mathematics) is declared to comprise non-physical abstract objects.

I'm not any sort of expert at what I'm suggesting here, I just found it curious how you described a sexual attraction to men but a romantic attraction to women. The reason I asked about diet was mainly to know about hormones. What do you mean by clean and whole foods? Are you eating a lot of grains and fruits, or fats, vegetables, and high-quality meat (i.e. grassfed beef)? Again, I'm going out on a limb here, but if you're eating a lot of things with endocrine disruptors which mimic estrogen (like soy), while simultaneously foods that supply the body with what it needs to make testosterone, your hormones may be out of whack. Other examples of endocrine disruptors are sodium lauryl sulfate (very common in soaps and shampoos) and BPA (common in plastics and sales receipts). Regarding exercise, what kind are you doing? Have you heard of HIIT? I don't mean to patronize you if you already know this stuff, but there are ways to exercise than actually put more strain on your system then help. If you haven't looked into formulating a proper plan, I recommend checking it out. Divorce sucks, but I'm glad you're on the lower end of the spectrum on the ACE score. Again, I don't know what this might have to do with it, but dealing with the trauma you experienced as a child may help. I know everyone talks about therapy around here, but I want to recommend TRE - traumatic release exercises. I've been doing it now for nearly a year and it's incredible. I'll let the website do the explaining: http://traumaprevention.com/ List of providers all over the world here: http://traumaprevention.com/tre-provider-list/ Regarding sensations in your body, have you done any training that actively looks at those sensations and works with them? Soft style martial arts like Tai Chi or Systema, yoga, Wim Hof breathing method, Reichian therapy, bioenergetics, etc.? Many years ago I read some of the works of Wilhelm Reich (one of the students of Sigmund Freud) who was researching the affects of sex and the "flow of energy", for lack of a better term, through the body. Essentially, our bodies can get locked up in different places due to trauma (Reich called these "armor rings" and he identified seven of them), and there are exercises that can be done to free these things up. In one of his clinical examples, he had a man who came to him who believed he was a homosexual because of his lack of attraction to women, but after some sessions with Reich he very quickly began a sexual relationship with a woman. I couldn't help but remember that when I read your sexual vs. romantic attraction comment in your original post. If you found any of that interesting or useful, let me know and I can tell you more.

Very interesting. Too bad he was a Socialist and not a Capitalist. Could have made all the difference in his regime's longevity. While it's true there were good Jews like von Mises (who invented the Austrian School of Economics), Milton (or was it Martin?) Friedmen (who inspired Pinochet and was a member of the Chicago School) and Ayn Rand (not exactly a good moralist but certainly had some great points about the producer's shrugging off the looters)...Most of them were terrible and created and propagated the worst ideas to come out of Europe. Namely Communism, Socialism, and its offshoots Feminism and (ironically) National Socialism. Agreed. Very much agreed. While I criticize Hitler since his Socialism would have inevitably starved the people he may have intended to save, I still would rather take him than what we already have or Islam. I expect with Trump we'll either have a breath of fresh air or people will become disappointed enough with republicanism that our side of the isle will become more appealing and actionable. Either way the system as it stands cannot last. One of the things that make me hopeful for the future is the fact we'll inevitably overcome both the invaders and the termites. I intend to make sure my children are in the right place at the right time with the skills and resources they need to make it big when that time comes. I highly encourage everyone to aim for the lofty goal of building a big and safe safely with the principles that Stefan espouses for he knows better than most how to raise a family.

I voted dualism but I'm not sure where I actually fit. I read pluralism on wikipedia but it didn't resolve it for me. (I believe in 2 layers of reality, and 3 layers of individual identity, but they could be unified as same threshholds) If that doesn't clarify, here is more. I believe in our universe as a nested layer of the universal plane (real as subset of total imaginary, our universe as a constrained pocket within "unconstrained possibility"--Let there be Light as first predicate). And our selves as of imaginary self-predicating essence, pre-existent to this universe or any input from god (immaterial causal force/law: freewill), fashioned into ghosts (space vehicles) by god, born into body (matter vehicles) by mortal parents, partly as result of evolution, with intervention from god at different points, most notably with the development of people eastward in eden fleeing westward since (western civilization). God being a timestream-evolved technology-created superbeing who can timetravel. This type of AI is functionally identical to having always existed (because of the "backward causality" time travel). Evolution was always going to create man, and man was always going to create god (technological singularity as teleology of universal medium). Backward causality just speeds up the process by acting on the past to jump start the process with "miracles". Things that are created by backward causality are thus derivatives of timestream "iterative" evolution, not genetic evolution. In this sense, evolution is not true for them specifically, but in the more general trend it actually is. Any thing that does not preclude the creation of a timetraveling superbeing is open to retroactive re-negotiation. In the "Time Machine" he can't go back in time and save his girlfriend, because that event is the cause of his invention. But he could go back in time and change other things that don't exclude his invention trajectory. Because the universal substrate exists as a probability, the nature of an emergent god does too (until discretely invented). That means unrealized futures that technically won't ever exist (such as Muslims inventing superAI--making him a raping murderer instead of loving father) also has backward causality onto our reality. This will express as Satanic miracles. They are just quantum events, where imaginary futures backwardly effects reality. Mutual reality being synthesized from causes "now" and all imaginary futures warring it out. Going back to my original belief on nesting, this is possible because the imaginary is the default or home team, and reality is running as software on its OS. Until the nature of god is strictly formed, his power is a function of faith and not raw awe. (because he can't timetravel to change everything, just things that don't preclude his creation) It sounds outlandish, but the most empiric of all physics experiments show this kind of absurd behavior (backward causality) is the true nature of our reality where the rubber meets the road. The underlying substrate of our reality is different from our everyday experience. We are in a pocket inside a larger container with different rules than we imagine. A lot of Stefan's framing of spirit (or god) and body is based on the premise that reality is a standalone instead of a derived or emergent system, running on a more basal substrate. It is from this perspective that "things that don't interact with matter", as measurable, are necessarily outside the universe/not part of reality. A frame that allows freewill, is that the universe is incapable of measuring the system it emerges from, and doesn't have access to programming environment variables, even if it is still beholden to them. I feel that 2-way communication is so true so often ("stare into abyss, abyss stares into you") and a very important point for rationality. But reality is a creation designed to be inflexible in this regard to give assurance to individuals. It's not the only way, its just the only way to achieve viewpoint invariance and prediction of others internal state in a mutual shared medium. Achieving relatedness and individuality is very tricky. You must overlap in some mode to communicate but that mode cannot be an existential part of your being or else your identities overlap and you are not entirely different individuals. So reality needs to flex and bend and be relativistic. One second the air you breathe is inside you, the next that same air is inside me. Hyperrationality shows this to be contradictory re: personal identity. But its necessary to achieve a mutual medium. Nested reality inside universal plane allows a 1-way street, where spirit can detect and effect reality, but reality cannot detect spirit. This is just another formulation of Plato's cave. We see the effect of things, but not the things themselves. Our shared reality doesn't access our self-predicating nature, to do so would end individual agency. Agency must be the preeminent inviolable standalone, not consensus reality. Reality is relativistic and flexible in its content, but strict in its mutuality (2-way communication). Freewill is opposite this.

In order to get past the awkwardness, admit to yourself you want to fuck the living daylights right out of her brains. Say it out loud. Then realize there is nothing wrong with that desire. Now the important part. Unless you just want to hit it then quit it, put it out of your mind. In your original post you talked about you A LOT. The only thing you had to say about her was how hot she is. In other words, you don't know dick about her. Flirting/cheap attention is not forming a sustainable relationship. You were both peacocking each other in the gym but you were too chicken to close. For a decent woman, you can recover by acknowledging your timidity and then stop being timid and ask her out. Women don't want a man who's afraid of them or afraid of himself. Head up, chest out, soft touch, and look her in the eyes. You CANNOT approach a woman you want to screw by pretending you just want to be friends. Make it clear you are sexually attracted to her and then learn about her by asking her questions. BE HONEST. Women are not goddesses to be worshipped. Don't put the pussy on a pedestal. To do so is to try and make her a slave to your fantasies. Be honest. Tell her what you want. Ask honest questions. Give honest answers. If she's worth being around, then FIND OUT through honest conversation. Fucktacular asses sag with age, every last one of them. A good woman, whether lover or friend (and don't worry she'll let you know if you're paying attention) will be there even when you look like otter anus. I look terrible, worst I've looked in my whole life, right now. Haven't been adjusting my diet and exercise for getting older. Also other reasons. My girlfriend can't help but jump my bones every night. Why? Confident honesty and mental strength. She has a deep attraction to me that has far less to do with my cascading ripples of donuts turned flesh. Honesty is the ultimate pussy slayer. Get out there and don't be a goddamn wuss.