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actually compilers have a very difficult time with today's processors because of the complex HW architecture. I have written linkers, loaders, assemblers, and compilers and some of the most challenging aspects are trying to avoid producing code that runs, but due to poor L1/L2 cache coordination the performance is terrible. This gets combined with the fact that today we have fewer and fewer computer scientists and mostly "coders" that have completely lost any insight into the underlying architecture. Typically you can look at the code and see it will invalidate the entire CPU cache about every other loop and you just shake your head. Today it seems graduates are primarily "application integrators" and their teachers seem to preach the same ideology; all that matters is to focus on abstractions, modular re-use, makes those design patterns. Coders just keep grabbing entire packages for a simple function, Boost serializing objects to manage a bit status structure...sigh... oh well... In many cases there is nothing wrong with such things because, well, it is something that is getting your email. At the large scale application however such things can prove fatal to 1000+core/super computer systems and that is where much of the big science lives. Software is a good field to get into but make sure to decide what you are looking to do. If you want to do some coding, get a 2yr degree and you will make 50-100k salary without much trouble if you can interview and let people see that you really want to show what you can do for them (you just need to perpetually look for and ride the language peak, maybe Ruby now). If you want to get into computer science (you will be using that 2nd, third, and even forth year math classes hehe) keep going for your masters and decide what specific avenue you want to head down. It is a tougher road and you will find a lot of the post-undergrad spots are filled with "non-citizens" but if its what you want, go for it. Getting your first patent is always fun and feels like you have started to make your mark on moving humanity forward.

Are you saying you have been playing Devil's Advocate, and trying to embody "arguing with irrationality"? It sounds like you claim to bring forward an argument that disproves itself. Like serving up softball questions so others can tee off. If subject could be fully disconnected from object then objective data could exist. Instead we have the observer effect. Objectivity is a misnomer, what is really meant is "normalized" objectivity by comparing 2 peer observers object (after they try to reduce their own subject). You cannot observe an object without a subject. This is what Schrodingers cat is all about. Subjectivity and objectivity cannot fully divide/isolate. I think the moral relativism problem is when people claim there is no "normalized" objectivity and relativity is infinitely boundless (this is the opposite error wherein you falsely believe you can truly isolated subjectivity--sciencism is when you truly believe you can isolate objects). We have a shared reality, but verification of its viewpoint invariance requires others not gas-light us. Epistemologically, verification of truth is gated behind social behavior. This is necessarily true (a priori) because of absolute objectivity being impossible and socially-aggregated "normalized" objectivity being the next-best-thing. Reducing our own subjectivity and reporting our normalized object is how an Invisible Hand can aggregate normalized data towards an approximate truth. A real moral truth does exist for subjects, just like a real object exists. But we can't actually perceive either alone directly, because they are intertwined and have no coherence outside the other's context. There is an objective reality we just can't experience it outside our own subject, and we can't test it outside other's feedback. Social feedback is an important tool to know if you are crazy or not. The Reason->Evidence cycle is only as valid as your sanity. Crazy people are Reason-Evidence cycling themselves to "know" they are Napoleon. Each of our perception of our own ability to judge our rationality is socially-derived. As a child this awareness commonly plagued me when I was told I was smart. Ultimately I had no irreducible access to whether this was true, its just something externals told me. I can't say my existential experience is any different than a mentally-retarded kid being told the same thing. Maybe that is me, as it were. My best evidence to the contrary is socially-derived, because if my thought-process sucked I wouldn't necessarily know/understand it. A reasonable proof doesn't conclusively map to the evidence I have access to. My understanding of this thread is that its intent is more about rhetoric and less about epistemology, although you did bring it up. In general I think we are very timid to name irrationality. When people say they should ostracize and boycott irrationality, they really mean the stronger fortified versions. We are all doing irrational things all the time, and need correction. Just like our spouses, children, others we love. "Arguing" is probably not a good activity re: irrationality, but if we love irrational people we care about helping them. Killing irrational people would start with suicide. We ought to be measured in our punishment of it, because we are aren't perfect.

I was inspired to start this thread by the last conversation with Bill Whittle. I would like this to be a thread on which people share movies and TV series that give an accurate depiction of a culture, so that we can learn about them. By "accurate" however, I do not necessarily mean "historically accurate", but rather something that accurately portrays the mentality of the culture. For some reason, such movies are very underrated. I am currently looking for good movies that accurately represent China, Germany, France, Iran, Turkey. If anyone has any ideas, please post. My suggestions: Japan: Outrage and Beyond Outrage. Japanese Yakuza films, directed by Takeshi Kitano. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1462667/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1724962/ Russia: The Admiral. Russian Civil War era about White Russian admiral Kolchak. (not the 124 minute version,but the 500 minute version) Most beautiful movie ever. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1542498/ North Korea: The Crossing . About North Korean dissidents who escape through Manchuria to Mongolia. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1133922/ WW2 Japan and Korea: My Way. Most accurate ww2 movie ever. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1606384/

Shure. So this problem can be solved if we say: mental properties equal physical properties/ neuronal correlat. There is no need to invent something beyond. Some combination of physical properties (firing neurons in a particular way) create consciousness. What we see when we watch brain waves or when we measure signals from the eye to the brain is consciousness from the outside. This particular arrangement of physical properties leads to consciousness and the ego. As said an conscious ego is superior to any automatic behaviour, since the range of possible actions is much greater. So it comes as no surprise that evolution prefers those physical porperties. Well we could discuss this for ages, but I am afraid we have to wait for scientific progress But since you mentioned the Kopenhagen interpretation and the "blind adherence to western materialism" I bet you have a different favourite. regards Andi

I presume you are referring to the Tillerson comment that everyone is fussing about. I don't think anything will come of North Korea anytime soon. On another note... Best movie about North Korea ever:

The candidacy and resulting election of Donald Trump has caused evident chaos and confusion among many in the libertarian movement. I've always maintained that support for Donald Trump from libertarians is a mistake and explicitly aligning ourselves with the emerging Alt-Right represents both a strategic and ideological betrayal of our supposed principles. I voted third party as I always do yet I could appreciate some libertarians offering an extremely qualified preference for Donald over Hillary. I am thinking of people like Walter Block and the late, great Ralph Raico. The pre-election rhetoric coming from the Clinton campaign against Russia was extremely frightening. Substantial elements of the Deep State (in particular the CIA) and many Neo-Cons threw their support behind Clinton because they were desperate to continue arming the Al-Nusra front and other terrorist groups in Syria in order to overthrow Assad. Clinton and her handlers supported imposing a No-Fly Zone in Syria which would have required the shooting down of Russia airplanes. She could have bungled us into a Nuclear War and that is no exaggeration. The best reason to prefer Trump to Clinton in my mind was the former's supposed desire to improve relations with Russia and tamp down the new cold war hysteria. This was the main argument offered by Walter Block and can respect that though I think he was far too generous in his praise. What I cannot respect, especially after the first month of Trump's presidency, is the more explicit and in many cases enthusiastic endorsement coming from people like Alex Jones, Chris Cantwell and, yes, Stefan Molyneux. Consider this video posted right after the election results came in: I find it extremely hard to understand how a supposed anarchist could be so euphoric over the democratic victory of a character like Trump without abandoning any lingering fealty to libertarian and anarchist principles. I subscribe to a similar position as the one elucidated by Robert Higgs recently on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robert.higgs.568/posts/10154923867869400?pnref=story.unseen-section To preempt the inevitable, my citation above is not a fallacious "appeal to authority". I've got plenty of arguments of my own so I've no need for such appeals. I'm only using this quote to demonstrate what ought to be the plum-line, and correct, libertarian and anarchist position. My concern is that some libertarians, including Stefan, appear to have thrown in their lot with the Alt-Right. Yet the Alt-Right represents it's own unique brand of authoritarianism. Or perhaps Stefan, since he is reliant on donations and YouTube views, has a monetary incentive for making appeals to Trump supporters since there are certainly more of them than there are of us. The worst crime the State commits is to wage aggressive war. Trump's cabinet picks show that despite his alleged desire to improve relations with Russia, he clearly wants to wage war against "terrorists" using every unethical tool that Bush and Obama provided for him. Nearly indiscriminate drone strikes have been continuing constantly. A recent attack in Yemen included the murder of Anwar Al-Awlaki's 8 year old daughter and more than a dozen additional civilians. I'm sure this wasn't intentional, but this murder is extra concerning in the wake of Trump's campaign promise to "go after the families" of alleged terrorists. https://www.libertarianinstitute.org/2017/02/her-name-was-nora/ https://theintercept.com/2017/01/30/obama-killed-a-16-year-old-american-in-yemen-trump-just-killed-his-8-year-old-sister/ He seems to want to provide so-called "safe" zones in Syria for refugees which could have a practical effect similar to the imposition of a no-fly zone. And with the ouster of Michael Flynn, the CIA may yet goad Trump into escalating tensions with Russia despite his campaign rhetoric! http://tomwoods.com/meanwhile-the-real-trump-disaster-goes-unnoticed/ To top that off Donald has spoken belligerently against Iran and may rip up the Nuclear Deal which would again pave the way for a war against that nation. This is something that Hillary would have been unlikely to do. Obama's single best accomplishment as president was the Iran Nucleal Deal in my view. The threat of launching a preemptive war against Iran was ever-present and this ostensibly took this option off the table. Trump may well undo all that. The effect of such a move would mean that, even if he himself does not launch a war against that country during his tenure, he will bear a good deal of responsibility should his successor wage aggressive war against that nation. He doesn't understand the motivations for suicide terrorism in the least. He, like Bush, thinks they "hate us for our freedom". He has no knowledge of the research of Robert Pape who conclusively demonstrated through empirical study what should be obvious to any thinking person, that Muslim terrorists hate us for our foreign policy and our military and CIA's meddling in their affairs. http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=6720 His penchant for writing Executive Orders like they are autographs show he has no appreciation for our Constitutional separation of powers. His actions reveal him to be an authoritarian through and through. His advocacy for Protectionist Tariffs and could start a Trade War against China in addition to the military wars he intends to continue and start. He seems intent to make belligerent demands of private businesses who are threatened to comply with government edicts concerning where they may build and maintain their factories lest they face retribution and harassment So what aspects of his presidency could possibly appeal to a libertarian that could even remotely excuse the above? His desire to build a Border Wall and control immigration? The border wall project will undoubtedly violate the private property rights of thousands who will have their land seized through Eminent Domain. Aggressive Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement will doubtless be given carte blanche to harass employers and peaceful immigrants. The Border Wall project is likely to end up as one of the most infamous boondoggle infrastructure projects ever undertaken by our Federal Government. https://www.libertarianinstitute.org/2017/01/isolationism-without-peace/ There are a few (very few!) silver linings. His Supreme Court selection was likely better than anyone Hillary would have chosen. Doubtless there is nuance to Stefan's argument in support of the Donald that I have missed. I know many, if not most, members of this forum are supporters to one degree or another of this president. I don't often have substantive debates with libertarians, so I'd like to see what ya'll think. My hope, echoing Higgs, is that libertarians soon snap out of it. I'd rather we put forward plum-line libertarian anarchism.