Mike Fleming

I think you are mixing up business and personal relationships. If I could only do business with people who I was personally comfortable with then I would go hungry. Because that's just the nature of the world at this point in time. FDR is a business. I think it's easy for people to forget that. It is a business with a mission statement, not just a vehicle Stef is using to make friends, although I'm sure he has made many in the process. If Stef only interviewed and was interviewed by people he felt completely comfortable with, the show would be a lot smaller at this point in time. The idea of FDR is to bring philosophy to those who "don't" have it, not just talk to the tiny percentage of the population who do. That's why you interview with the AJ's of this world.

You might as well ask if all the US and coalition soldiers are war criminals. Let's not just single out one person. One thing is for sure is that they will never be prosecuted for what they have done in Iraq. And nor will Adam. Knowing that, I think that dedicating your life to an ideal that you believe in and to help people is the best shot for redemption that he has. I agree with what was said above. He was a misguided young man. But the reality is he was sucked in by a society wide conspiracy, that the war is good, it was indoctrinated into him as child through school and media, and it's difficult for me to condemn him more than society at large. Whatever he did was probably small fry compared to what is accepted by society as being OK. Not making excuses just pointing out realities.

Only by those who struggle to think for themselves. The rational person will understand that you can go on other people's shows and not have to agree with everything that that person agrees with. In fact, if you only did interviews with people who mostly agree with you then you would be doing very few interviews at all. By going on AJ's show, Stef is not saying he agrees with AJ's views any more than if he were to go on CNN that he agrees with their views. It's just about getting ideas out there. With regards to AJ in particular, there is a certain amount of crossover between AJ and Stef and it is a good opportunity to talk to the people who have just started to break out of the matrix, and have come across someone such as AJ, to introduce the real truth and philosophy to them. To give them an opportunity to learn the real truth. It's a good thing that Stef takes every invitation AJ offers in my view.

Well, my personality is very different from my parents, or at least I consider it to be so. So, it sounds right to me, what he is saying about fundamental personality, but that it doesn't negate that abuse (physical, psychological, or otherwise) is detrimental to a person. Nor does it negate Stef's arguments about bad parenting. It seems to me he is talking about the person's underlying, fundamental personality. Their original programming if you will. I guess also in studies where you are evaluating people do you evaluate whether they are abusive or just what jobs they do and things they tend to like? It needs more clarification I think and to cross-reference it with studies about abuse.

Seeing all these coming out means it's getting into the public conscience, opponents realise it's getting into the public conscience and realise they now have to fight it. Unfortunately for them, that just gives more exposure to the ideas and while some will listen to the criticism, there will be a substantial amount who will decide to explore the ideas a bit. And that's how we win. Think of libertarianism/anarchism as something that is in the early stages of going viral. If you think about it like the exponential curve, for the longest time we have been on the flat part, building a base. Now it may be starting to turn up. Has there been any other time in history when there have been so many attacks on liberty ideas? I doubt it. To me it's a great sign. It gives me hope for humanity. And while I agree with Stef generally about liberty taking generations, we may get to see a substantial amount of it, even if not total liberty, in our lifetimes.

Not wanting to drag this off topic but I've indicated before that this is BS. There is no rational basis for the topic not to be discussed. If atheism, which we atheists understand as being a slam dunk resolved, can continue to be discussed, then what reason do we have for determinism not being able to be discussed, regardless if the host thinks it is resolved (in his case, in favour of free will ) or not? It has a lot of the flavour of religious people not wanting atheism to be discussed. I think it would be helpful if this was cleared up by the people in charge here. If the topic is to be banned, can we at least have the reason why?

I actually haven't read that one (I'm not sure why) but I have read many Philip Dick books and enjoyed them mostly. He's someone who makes you think. Bladerunner (the movie) was loosely based on it.

Don't go to dinner with assholes?

It's funny how places like Saudi are denigrated by many in the West but that in some respects, at least, they can be easier to live in than Western countries sometimes. What the Saudi's obviously need is democracy. Then they will have a large public service, heavy taxes, tons of regulations and a generally stagnating economy which needs regular stimulus injections to create credit bubbles to keep the appearance of everything being economically sound. True freedom!!

I upvoted this.

You know, I never got that feeling from receiving Christmas cards. It just seems like an empty gesture to me. Like I'm just on someone's mailing list and I have to send one in return if I want to remain on it. I think Birthday cards are different and most people I know have a lot less Bday cards on their mantle than they do XMas cards. And I think that says something.

What do people think of the whole Christmas cards thing? You know, the "let's send a card to all these people that I hardly know/met once/don't particularly like/ hate their guts/etc". Just basically so you can have a mantle full of cards. Look at all my friends and family... I've never done it personally. It seems very similar to the people who have hundreds of Facebook "friends".

Well, if the ultimate idea was to just to re-establish the old government I would probably be a little reluctant to be a "freedom fighter" or support them. Depends how bad the invaders are. The new guys might come in, take away all benefits and promises and regulations of the previous government, just demand maybe 10-20% from people (which still adds up to a lot when you are not re-distributing, but significantly less than the current government) and let us go about our business. In that case I say "viva invaders! Thank you for liberating us from our oppressive government and it's insane taxes and laws" Then after awhile we realise we don't even need these guys and then anarchy.

Kind of on the fence about this one. Willing to be convinced by a good argument. How do you imagine the advert might go? What it would it address in such a short time?

Ooohhh, don't like the medical disorder description for it at all. But I guess everyone is "supposed" to be happy at this time and so if you aren't there is "something wrong with you". I wonder how many people are truly happy though. I think the number of people putting on a brave face is likely to be significant if not a majority of the population. But yeah, same here, can't remember genuinely enjoying Christmas family time. Just dredges up bad memories more than anything else. I prefer to be able to not need special dates to enjoy and appreciate life. And having good will to all men? I guess the rest of the year you don't have to be nice... Reminds me of the WW1 thing where the enemies all shook hands at XMas time and then blew bits off each other the rest of the year. Because hey, you have to be nice at Christmas time... The rest of the time? Doesn't really matter so much.

The fact that Stef is atheist when so many other prominent libertarians were religious to one degree or another was one of his biggest drawcards for me.

Just pointing out that that's what it feels like to me. Probably being a bit antagonistic about it, and I apologise for that, but I think the analogy is a valid one. You've kind of lost me here to be honest. My understanding of quantum physics, (I'm not a physicist) is that the quantum effects don't effect the macro world. That they essentially cancel out. But regardless, even if they don't that just makes the macro world more random, and more difficult to understand as a result, but still doesn't provide any more of a concept of free will than determinism. It just means that choices that people make are random which, to me, doesn't really fit the facts. People seem to make choices based on accumulated knowledge and experience to me.

Determinism does not mean people are not responsible for their actions, imo. If you were looking at a deterministic system from the outside, then yes, you would say the actors inside are not responsible. Like for example, if you had a bunch of robots in a closed environment. But we aren't outside it, we are inside it. And our actions do have consequences. We may be in a deterministic universe but there is no way to predict the future from inside a deterministic universe completely. We can have rough approximations but that's all we'll ever have. It's important to understand that it is a deterministic universe so we can look at the past and see reasons behind people's actions. To use the classic FDR example, we can look at the reasons for violence and abuse and trace them back to bad environment's people had as a child. We can then use that information to improve the future. I think for people who do hurt others, we should look at them as basically people who are malfunctioning. They are detrimental to the system as a whole and need to be assisted in becoming productive members of society. It's because I am a determinist that I think the justice system should be more focussed on rehabilitation than punishment. The ultimate goal, of course, should be prevention which is why I am so interested in Stef's work. I like to say that Stef is my favourite determinist on the web. If he doesn't want to put that label on himself, well, whatever... No biggie.

This is what it comes down to for me. If you don't like someone or think they are a troll there should be an ignore feature which allows you to turn off their posts. A one-click simple and easy option. If they are disruptive to the board, they should have a certain amount of warnings that eventually lead to a ban (temporary or permanent). Or even you could have an option to say, "ignore all people with a reputation lower than x". But it should be a personal setting. The reality is that people with negative reputation are still allowed to participate in conversations. It's like a soft form of censorship hiding their posts from everyone. And the number itself will be pretty arbitrary whatever you pick. I think the negative feature itself is not bad. it's good to have a reputation system. I just don't think the current global effects of it are warranted. (Almost feels like totalitarianism ) Maybe the reputation number could be made more prominent?

It does seem some atheists seem to have a grudge against Islam in particular. I'm not saying Stef is one of those, but I can certainly think of one or two who do... For me, it is fundamentally just as irrational and crazy as Christianity. It's just that Christianity has been tamed somewhat and is fading in the traditional Christian countries whereas there are still some Islamic theocracies around and seem to be many more fundamental Muslims who seem to have a lot more effect on their society than Christians. Where many people in the West treat Christian proclamations like "hurricanes punish us for accepting gays" and such as the stupid garbage that they are, many equivalent stupid proclamations from Islamic preachers seem to be taken more seriously by muslims. I personally think it's just because Islamic countries haven't had the chance to develop and educate themselves in the same way that the West has. They just haven't had their enlightenment yet. But it's coming... If we look purely at the religious books themselves, they are both equally insane and shouldn't be taken seriously by any rational thinking person.

The debates on atheism are frustrating for those who believe in God. The arguments for free will very much remind me of the way that people try to prove God exists. Just like the latter can't be done, of course, the former cannot be done either, but you see all this equivocating from them, all these different creative ways to try to prove free will, when the simplest most obvious answer is determinism. I assume you are talking about quantum mechanics when you talk about indeterminacy here? I don't see how that gets you to free will. Saying either things are determined or things are random doesn't in any way prove that people actually get to choose. As for the asking about whether determinists want determinism to be true. Speaking for myself, no I didn't. I wanted to prove it wrong. I didn't like the idea at all and wanted free will to be right. But I also promised myself I would go with whatever the facts showed. And so, after a long time exploring the subject, reading about it, watching videos, listening to podcasts, etc and thinking about it I came to the inevitable conclusion that there was no free will. It took me some time after that to realise that the idea wasn't as bad as I initially thought it was. There's an analogy to the believing in god/atheism transition there also.

Yes, which was wrong and acknowledged as wrong by most people today. I'm saying animals are different because humans can own animals. I think most people wouldn't claim there is anything wrong with humans owning animals but there is something wrong with humans owning humans. Making animals and humans at least somewhat different.

Let's talk about anarchism this time and find out where Joe stands.

I guess Peter likes the concept of his "soldiers" following orders and not asking questions. It's how religious orders and cults tend to operate also. Hitler didn't go around telling everyone he wanted to be a dictator. You had to read between the lines. Most people didn't until it was too late.

It's interesting Kevin, because I have been a meat-eater my entire life and never thought twice about it, never felt like I had to justify it for most of that time. I still am but I don't feel that comfortable with it any more and have been considering giving it up for a while (a few years) now. It's a hard habit to drop though and I wouldn't feel happy condemning others for eating meat regardless of whether I was still doing it or not. The feeling of being not entirely comfortable with meat-eating has coincided with my transition to libertarian and anarchist thought so I think there is something there in non-aggression compelling me in that direction. OTOH, I don't know whether animals should be on the same level as humans or not. I would say that humans cannot be owned by other humans, but animals can certainly be owned by humans. As pets at least. Does that mean it is OK to kill them for food? I don't know tbh. I do hope, and think, at some point in the future it will become unnecessary when we eventually develop synthetic meat and things like that. A thought I had on sadism.... I think sadism can only be practised on willing partners. Animals cannot give consent because they cannot communicate with us.