Mike Fleming

I think the rise of porn will turn out to be a good thing personally. I think there has been way too much focus on the sexual aspect of relationships. And as a result way too much pressure on people in that respect. I mean, trying to find someone who is both mentally interesting to you as a person AND sexually stimulating AND has a similar sex drive AND remains sexually stimulating as the years pass by seems close to an impossibility to me. As pointed out, it is a lot better than going out to prostitutes or having illicit affairs. I would personally prefer to be with someone who fulfilled the position of good friend, confidante, good conversationalist etc, but who may not be the most sexually stimulating to me all the time, but that we understood each other and had other options available in the sexual realm. And porn is the safest of all. It's not a perfect industry and most stuff that gets pushed out is crap, but it's no different from any other entertainment industry in that regard.

I kind of think of it the same way that if you were born as the child of a slave, you too were a slave and had the same obligations foisted on you. It's the exact same process. Except statists claim that their process is somehow legitimate. The obligations to pay the state and do what it says are pushed on you at birth without your consent. Just by being born you are a slave of the state. You can transfer to a different state and have slightly different obligations but you can never fully jettison obligations that you never took on. If the state asked your signature and you said no, the fraud would be exposed. It would only take one person. But there wouldn't be just one saying no.

Well, I don't want to get into a free will/determinist debate on here (I'm in the determinist camp btw) but my general take on Harris is, he's pretty good at science stuff as he is a trained scientist, hence being correct about things like determinism, but very poor when he wanders outside science into things like politics and philosophy. I assume he just really hasn't researched and thought about them much. And determinism does not lead into being a statist. I don't know where that idea comes from. But again, FDR does not really tolerate this debate and it's not the topic of the thread. As far as I know, popular sentiment on the subject is that we do have free will.

http://www.avoiceformen.com/sexual-politics/gender-hypocrisy-in-the-porn-debate/ I think this article really nailed the truth abut porn in a way I haven't seen before.

Mainly because of his views towards Islam , he seems to want to blame the religion and the people for all the terrorist problems and, at least it appears to me, doesn't want to ask questions about the true causes, ie America's constant interference overseas. Also, he seems to have almost blind faith in government. And when he talks about morality in terms of making everyone happy and doesn't seem to look at basic principles. There's a lot of stuff I don't like. Which is a pity, because he's really quite a smart guy with interesting things to say.

I was just comparing these two communities the other day. I came to atheism before anarchism so I tried to connect to that community first. I never felt comfortable. I felt like there were a lot of prominent dickheads and I felt like many of the people had no real principles at all. I understand a lot of the criticism labelled at atheism. I think it is misfiring, because it should be going towards people rather than the idea itself. There is no philosophical problem with atheism. Much of the community however... Contrast this with anarchism and the anarchist community. I don' think there is a prominent anarchist that I don't like. I'm sure I could probably come up with one or two if I really thought about it, but for the most part they are a really great bunch of people. The major conventions and such also seem like they are better places to hang out. Am I being unfair on the atheist community? These are basically my genuine feelings. There are good people involved who I like such as Dawkins and a few others. But I've always felt uncomfortable with Harris's views. Never liked Hitchens. And then you've got some real assholes on the next level who shall remain nameless. I have to guess it's because they don't seem to have concepts like the NAP to guide them. Or maybe it is just my own bias...

The point is when it was going and an accepted practice in society, as it had been for centuries, what pragmatic reason is there to get rid of it?

I agree. If we had taken the cold, pragmatic view 150 or so years ago there would still be slavery today. After all, what pragmatic reason was there to abolish it? You might argue it was pragmatic to decrease it to some lower level.... maybe... But abolishing it completely would have been silly. Pragmatism seems to be the last retreat of those not wanting to face the truth. Or at least that's my impression.

Wow, thanks for all the advice. And thanks for offers of help. Way more than I expected. I don't know if I have any great aspirations to true fluency yet. Like I said that will be decided after I've gone through the trial period. After all it's only one aspect of my life and, I may be wrong, but true fluency seems like it takes some serious immersion and many, many hours and well ,we all have limited time. I do speak only one language (English). I studied German in high school for about 3 years. It's funny, because even now I can rattle off the numbers from 1 -100 in German as if speaking English. I don't even need to consciously think about them they just come as automatically as English numbers. Beyond that a few phrases, greetings, how are you, that kind of stuff, but only early beginner stage stuff. This was 20 years ago now and there has been no progress since. I was going to try and restart German, figuring that I would have a little bit of a headstart, and also because I think it is more similar to English than many other languages but I wanted to try something that was spoken a bit more widely. Watching films, TV shows and reading books etc, was something I was planning to do a bit further down the track but I may try to give that more of a try now. I also liked the idea of the children's books, I hadn't thought of that but it makes perfect sense to me considering that was one of the ways I learnt English. I'm very curious about this. I've started doing what you have suggested because I can still do other things while listening to the radio. Of course, as you say, I understand virtually nothing. The speech just goes by so fast I can't even lock onto individual words for the most part. It feels frustrating. How does this work exactly? Does your brain start to just pick things up over time? Is it kind of an unconscious thing? How long before you start to notice that you recognize things? If that's how it works? I don't feel enthused at the moment because I can do exercises and actually end up with a few words in my vocabulary whereas listening to Spanish radio kind of "seems" like a waste of time atm. Yet, I have the feeling you may be correct considering how the brain works and I'm very willing to give this a try. I guess I just would like to know how the progression works. Thanks.

Athesim is, by defintion, not a religion, it is simply a lack of religion. However, the mainstream atheism movement is indeed a religion. They have extended their reason for being far beyond the remit of not believing religion and have extended it to rationality and skeptcism and such. Supposedly. Only for the majority their claims to such rationality are as false as religion and they just want a group that they can be a part of and engage in religious thinking about the state. And claim intellectual superiority over the traditional religious believers.

The brainwashing goes deep. I was a stupid white knight until only fairly recently, maybe 2 years ago. Looking back, I wonder what I've been thinking in this regard for most of my life because it's only led to pain. It's just so ingrained in society more so I think than even government or religion, both of which I'd been skeptical of for most of my adult life. I'd never even had a second thought about my gender role though. It took a lot of deprogramming to get me out of the mindset. I wonder if it's even possible for most guys, because I can turn people onto skepticism about government or religion but when it comes to the male role in society, forget it, the resistance is extreme even amongst some of the most critical thinkers I know.

Yes, it is morally justifiable. They have no right to do what they do and so you are morally justified in resisting them (with force if necessary). As you say, it's a stupid idea, but being stupid or not says nothing about whether it's moral or not. As an aside I don't think it's mentioned in the above video because the video is designed to appeal to the general public. A certain percentage who watch the video will then explore the more radical ideas on the channel.

Thanks for mentioning this. I guess we have 2 criminals, although one at least thinks they are doing the right thing and probably does do a lot of good (not justifying it, just mentioning the reality), but probably also some what we consider bad (but he thinks it is probably good). The other (Brown) I think was under no delusion and was not attacking the cop because the cop was a "criminal", but because he knew that he was the one in the wrong and was trying to avoid having to be held accountable. This is why it's so messed up at the moment. Personally, I find it difficult to reason my way out of one of these situations. If we assume the cop is on the side of the law then it's fairly easy, but if you assume he is working for a gang of thugs (govt) and work from there it becomes virtually impossible to reason out. For me anyway. I don't have an answer to your question, but thought it deserved to be addressed and even fleshed out a bit. It's why I tend to avoid commenting on these situations for the most part. As for attacking cops, it is somewhat justified and people have wrote articles in this regard. I have no intention of doing so myself, and I don't think it's a good idea for anyone to in the current climate (ie. most people statists). But if we get to a certain point and you get in a certain situation where it can be regarded as legitimate self-defence then...

I have recently decided I am going to put in a full effort to attempt to learn another language. It's something I've wanted to do for many years, but the time investment is substantial and there were always nagging concerns in the back of my head saying that it's just too hard or takes too long or whatever. However, I've now approached it in an experimental fashion. I have said that I am going to learn for roughly an hour or 2 every 1-2 days on average and see how far I can get in one year. At the end of the year I'll evaluate the whole experience and decide if I want to continue and even if want to try to become multi-lingual. I like the idea of being able to go to many places in the world and just be able to read and talk to people. And even potentially to increase the number of potential countries I could comfortably live in without too much effort. For my test language I'm using Spanish (partly because it is spoken in so many countries). A European language with pretty much the same alphabet was a requirement, nothing too difficult on the first try because I don't want to end up completely discouraged. I am using this site www.babbel.com and am doing the exercises on my Ipad. It's been about a month and I'm quite encouraged so far and feeling optimistic. The app is friendly and I feel like I'm picking things up. I'm assuming there are many others with more than one language here. Is 1 year a reasonable timeframe to get to a good level of competency? I'm not expecting fluency but am hopeful that I can at least go to a Spanish news site and get a good gist of the articles I am reading and maybe watch movies and pick up some of what is being said.

Revolutions (social or otherwise) take somewhere around 10% or so of the population, I think. It's never been a majority it's always been the "irate minority". Think about the US. 10% would be roughly 30 million people! Just think if you had 30 million people disobeying. 30 million people saying no we aren't going to do as we are told, we aren't paying our taxes, we aren't paying our fines, etc. How would the government get these people through it's justice system? I don't think it would even require half that or less to overload the system. Just think of it in the terms of slaves and their masters. One or two slaves standing up can be made an example of. But once you get to a certain number, there isn't much the masters can do, and the bigger the slave population is, the lower the actual percentage of people required. With the growth I've been seeing in this movement over the 5 years or so I've been involved I'm starting to think it is going to be possible in my lifetime, which I never even considered even 2 years ago as a possibility. The growth appears to be exponential to me and it's surprising how fast things can grow when using that paradigm.

All of us make up the free market by our daily trading activities with other people. So I'm not sure what your issue is with the army and the police not serving us. What exactly do you mean by "the country"? Are you referring to the people in the country, or are you referring to the actual land itself or the government? As for your suggestion, I am largely fine with this. I have said this before to many people. "You can keep your government as long as you release me from all obligations. By the same token I can not take any of the benefits of government (what paltry few there are, govt workers aren't known for providing many goods or services that people want)". It's relevant to note that I did not ever voluntarily choose these obligations, but instead had them thrust upon me at birth, much the way that the children of slaves automatically had slave obligations conferred on them at birth. Of course this means that there will have to be free market competition in all the services provided by the government so that I can contract with them. I want protection and the benefits of law, I just don't want them provided to me by the government. Oh, and I should have free passage across the border too without having to use a passport. And I can still use the roads. etc, etc If you can do all that, basically if I can live a free life, then others are welcome to have a government lording it over them and paying their money toward it if that's what they want. As long as I don't have to have anything to do with it.

I have a few things to say about the boomers. Please forgive the rant. Boomers you are a disgrace of a generation. An utter, fucking, complete disgrace. You will be remembered in the history books as the worst generation ever. The one with the most benefits, most chances in all of history and the ones most willing to sell it all away for a few pieces of silver. You almost led humanity into a technological dark age. A dark age that might never have ended. And you didn't just allow it. You encouraged it! You wanted government to do all the things that you wanted. You were willing to go get the thugs to "pass a law" every time something didn't fit what you wanted. You were willing to let the government get it's way, if it would just throw you a few scraps back from the table. When it comes to selling out, you don't even have a high price. Most of you will sell out for pennies. I have met a few boomers in my life that I can say I genuinely like. There have been a few but they are a small (tiny) minority. Most boomers are assholes and/or dickheads for the most part. It's no wonder they need to spout the "respect your elders" line all the time. Anybody who actually does command respect doesn't say that. If you hear that line from someone you can be almost 100% sure that they are a complete loser. And what of today? Well, we can be sure of one thing, boomers will support the government to their graves. How else are most of them going to get money from their kids? Most boomers I know treated their kids shitty. Many of them would extract a huge price for any material assistance that they gave their kids as adults. They would imply uselessness. They would try and infantilize them. And much more asshole behaviour. So the last thing most of them want is to have to go back to them selfsame kids when they need material help. They know what it means. They would much rather just be able to get stuff from their kids via the thugs in government. That way they don't have to face the reciprocal shaming and other shitty behaviour that they were so willing to inflict. Boomers. They gave up hard fought freedom for 30 pieces of silver. Freedom that others died for in history. We, the younger generations, will be cleaning up your messes for decades. Boomers. You are a fucking disgrace of a generation!

I think so. I think anarchism is becoming dominant. I used to argue the minarchist position 4-5 years ago but found I just couldn't sustain it. It has no consistency. You have to ignore certain facets of it that don't make sense and I personally, and I think other intellectually honest people, just can't do that in the long run. There is only one consistent position. No state. And when you actually think about the workings of it, it just makes more and more sense. I think in the era of the internet where all ideas are out out there in the open for every to look at and tear apart inconsistencies that anarchism will eventually emerge supreme. I have seen a great many arguments against it and it holds up against them all. Most, if not all, of the arguments against it are based fundamentally on the fear meme and more and more people have had enough with scare-mongering.

It's true that determinism and free will is not a true dichotomy. And what the final truth is about determinism regarding possible first causes or infinite causes or quantum indeterminancy or whatever is unknown. But what we do know informs our opinion about our own nature and leaves no room for the concept of free will.

Well said. I have no complaint about pickup artists personally. i honestly seriously doubt they will have long term happiness and fulfilment but if they want to use certain techniques to achieve voluntary sexual relations then I have no problem with that. I don't think it's a great idea personally but whatever. It seems to me to be satisfying short-term wants and needs at the expense of long-term wants and needs so in that way it seems like somewhat of a trade-off. It's not like I've never done that, I have, but it's something that I had to get out of my system. I tried it, didn't really work out for me. I think it is a problem with society at large at the moment. I think it goes towards what a lot of the Men's Rights people say. Women have broken out of their traditional roles but men haven't. Women have taken their privileges and left men hanging. This has resulted in a lot of disharmony in people's relationships. How many times do you see men make offhand comments about how their wife basically rules over them? I saw it 2 times in quick succession on another forum recently and we weren't even broaching the subject. It seems like men are trying to get their frustrations at the situation out even if they haven't considered it properly. So ultimately I think it is just another symptom of the current disparity between the sexes. We have addressed women's traditional roles in society, we need to address men's traditional roles now.

Can't remember where else I stated it but I said the same thing so it doesn't matter. The point is that the way God is defined leaves no room for HIm when you take into account scientific facts. For an atheist the interesting question is not "Can we design an experiment to prove God?", the interesting question is "Why do so many people believe there is a God?" Or at least it is for me. Asking if we can do an experiment seems pointless to me, though I am always happy to look at whatever may come up. The problem is that the whole concept goes against scientific facts and so it is much the same as asking about unicorns or bigfoot. I don't 100% know they don't exist, but honestly, there was no reason to think so in the first place so why bother? The same is true of free will. It is, in all honesty, a bizarre concept to me now that I have taken into account the scientific facts of the universe. How could it possibly work? I would not even have the slightest conception. It just doesn't make sense. If someone's got something for me to look at I'll look at it, but I've looked at all the major free will arguments, including the one on the host's channel and dismissed them all. The more interesting question to me at this stage is "Why do people believe there is free will? How and why did the idea come about?" I haven't answered it satisfactorily yet but it has something to do with the fact that it is our intuition to think so and, like with so many things, our initial intuition turns out to be wrong the more we learn about the universe. Religion incorporates many intuitive ideas that people have of the world because we had little information of the world at the time. That's why you have things like Genesis story, the explanation's about thunder, sun revolving around the Earth, etc. which turn out to be incorrect. Free will falls into the same category.

So, is this just another case of someone ignoring the huge elephant in the room when it comes to the economy (the government)? Caveat: I haven't watched it. TED doesn't have any quality control when it comes to their speakers in my opinion.

Many times I have just observed 2 people (or more) debating a subject and it has informed my opinion. I have never seen a live debate on any subject where one person has changed the other person's mind. The value in having debates in my view is not so much that you are trying to change the other person's mind, but you are helping the silent viewers by providing them information to inform their views. That's why debating in forums, where the debate stands forever and anybody can come along and read them, has value. It's also why you are better off not using ad hominems, getting angry and such because it tends to turn people off. There's always a point in every debate though where further debate becomes pointless.

I've answered this one before. It is like a religious person asking me "What experiment would change my mind that their is a God?". Are you an atheist? What would you say to a believer who asked you the above?

There have been experiments showing that people's brains have made decisions before they are consciously aware of the decision. As for calling yourself a robot simulating a person, this is all just semantics. If we are all robots and not persons then what is a person? They don't exist if you use that definition so how do you simulate it? We are people, but we are also fundamentally deterministic machines. We are carbon-based rather than silicon based. But if you think about how we are created from the sperm and egg and in the womb it is an entirely physical process. For those who claim we have to prove there is no free will, it is basically the same as religious believers saying atheists have to prove there is no God. The burden of proof is on the free will believer. Unlike the religious believer, who can always say we just don't know, the free will believer has a much more difficult time because it's much more tangible and down-to-earth. You don't need to prove that other realms don't exist in order to disprove free will. Should you call in with a bad case of atheism? Or anarchism? The more I think about it the more important I think determinism is. Some reasons why - first and foremost it is the truth. It is important for our brains to know the truth of the world so we have an accurate map of reality. I know that thinking in terms of determinism, when you know and accept it to be truth can lead to a great deal more clarity when applied to various aspects of life. - what about our justice system? Is it fair to punish people for, say a murder that was always going to happen? We certainly don't want to allow murder but we need to ask the question of what is most appropriate. The current system relies on the fact that people have free will. - I think it is a more devastating blow to religion than atheism is. What sense can anyone make out of heaven and hell if there is no free will? Unlike with atheism, where believers can always say you can't prove there isn't a God, determinism is provable. As we learn more about the brain it will become more and more obvious.