percentient

It's probably best if he sticks to criticizing specific things Stefan says, instead of offhand interpretations. This is kind of sloppy. For one, what does "beneficial to society" mean? Literally everyone has a good time? Pareto optimal resource allocation? GDP? Average happiness? Second; it does follow that if all individual interactions are voluntary, then the market is free of coercion. That's what it means

If you look at the most common causes of death in the 19th century (tuberculosis, pneumonia, influenza, and other infections), we haven't eradicated them, but they are certainly not the same as today. Actually the most common deaths are only possible because of advances in material wealth, safety and medicine. And what happened to the business of physical health? It boomed, we now spend a larger portion of our time in the pursuit of health. Rationally so. This parallel goes only so far, but I think it illustrates that while health problems are alleviated, people's standards and priorities change.

Goes to show that it matters where the money comes from.

I wonder what the context is that he makes a deistic argument in a book about Christian apologetics. What does this have to do with redeeming our sins through masochism? To me, this is enough to dismiss the argument. He appeals to skeptical use of trust, but has to trust a lot of things on bad evidence to be a Christian. It is not a very good argument anyway. If creativity and intelligence don't give us reliable thought, creativity and intelligence "behind the universe" doesn't give us reliable thought.

I can think of two objections to Rainbow Jamz' involuntary response argument against insults, and this is one of them. I think it does not quite cut it. Yes, you can modify your personality, over time, for example by internalizing the fact that the bullies do not equal the tribe. You can be safe even if people hate you. Buddha's response to a bully according to cracked.com goes: Asshole: “Buddha, you are one fat piece of work. Wow. I hope you eat some bad pork and die.” Buddha: “If a man offered a gift to another but the gift was declined, to whom would the gift belong?" Asshole: “To the one who offered it…but I really don’t see where you’re going with—“ Buddha: “Then I decline to accept your abuse and request that you keep it for yourself.” and if you can achieve that; great. What does that have to do with the NAP, though? I can also carry around armor, making me impervious to some subset of violent attacks. That does not diminish the aggressors' ethical burden. I think the real difference is that you can leave. If the crap-slinging idiot doesn't respect your rejection, they are invading your space in a very physical way, and it is not an issue of insults any longer. Defamation, however, hurts even if you are not around.

Just like there is a distinction to be made between threats and verbal abuse, there is a difference between defamation and insults. The former deals with verifiable, specific actions (e.g. the aforementioned terrorist or rapist -- many would rather be raped than credibly be labeled as a rapist), and the latter appeals to subjectivity, emotions, and what people already believe. Insults attempt to be passive. If I call someone an asshole, this vague metaphorical insinuation has no precise connection to reality, the only deductible piece of information is that I dislike that particular person. If I call them fat, the literal meaning is a matter of simple truth or falsehood, and in essence I'm just invoking their insecurities and the connotations people have about overweight people. If I'm more sophisticated, I'll use wit: Lady Astor: “If you were my husband, I’d poison your tea.” Churchill: “Madam, if you were my wife, I’d drink it.” These are threats, or even libel, they just convey a degree of disrespect. They say: "I have personally come to this conclusion about your personality or moral nature". In a real sense, insults are undisputable facts. I think this distinction has the potential to help us to think of defamation as a violation of NAP, with less fear of slippery slopes. If I'm credibly but falsely called a terrorist or a rapist, I might lose my job and suffer an assortment of social consequences. Am I in that case entitled to compensation? I'd say definitely.

Reminds me of a conversation (with generally empathetic people) in which I said I mourn and grieve what wasn't there in my childhood. The response was that "well the fact is that it wasn't" which parallels what you hear often about regret and apologies. I get it, I can't change the past, that's why we call it the past. The meaning of grief is to accept that it could have been different, and that I don't want to repeat it in the future. The same goes for anger, with an additional moral element.

These are great examples! I'm pretty sure that when humor was invented, this is the sort of things that were said. Climate change is not a hoax and I haven't found that stance to be a consensus here. Also, the story has not changed much as far as science goes. It's just that the media reports on things with bias. (When global temperatures cooled, the scientific consensus was always on the warming side, but some people were worried that it was going to lead us to a new ice age -- global cooling. Now there's a pause in warming, and interest in media has dropped. The scientific consensus is that carbon dioxide may have a net positive economic effect up to three degrees of warming or so, but you don't hear about that a lot, instead climate change is almost uniformly portrayed as a disaster.)

http://chalkdinosaur.bandcamp.com/album/sediment It's silly and fun. And may seem flat, but has surprising replay value. This is the most explicitly introspective album I've heard.

lol I feel like I've been cheated.

They have a point, though. Pastafarianism doesn't require you to wear any headgear.

Thanks for bringing this up Ashton. I am for one surprised that the results are so ambiguous. I do have some criticism, though. For one, you report a lot of conclusions and summary, which is essentially just opinion. And that's OK, I doubt they are speaking out of their asses in such an easy to criticize format, I'm just saying there isn't that much to argue against. One of the articles is in German and I can't say anything about that, and the last one assessed the influences of different setups within day cares and found nothing significant. People can come by very different conclusions biased by their funding and ideology: a Heritage Foundation report on the effects of day care (http://familyfacts.org/reports/2/the-effects-of-day-care-on-the-social-emotional-development-of-children) disagrees with an article in Journal of Feminist Family Therapy (Deconstructing the “Mommy Wars”: The Battle Over the Best mom; http://www.workandfamily.chhs.colostate.edu/articles/files/Mommy_Wars%5B1%5D.pdf) which basically says that women are oppressed by the media and poverty. Who would have guessed? Stef has quoted authorities such as Burton L. White (author of New First Three Years of Life) and http://www.williamgairdner.com/war-against-the-family/ who are both very critical of daycare. Second, like NGardner suggested, maybe the ambiguity of the results just says more about the standards of modern family life. Third, you criticize Stef for portraying day care as a negative environment, when the science is more nuanced, but you are not responding to anything specific he says. His main claim is that you should stay with your kids for the first three years, and a lot of daycare research doesn't focus on the very early development. These are some arguments/claims/facts in support of staying home with young kids: - The benefits of breastfeeding last up to one or two years. - Toddlers show significant attachment insecurity with varying responses. This study https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTsewNrHUHU was criticized for being unethical, yet it's a day-to-day occurrence in many families. - If you don't bond with your kids at a young age, you are more likely to have problems in their teenage years. "More hours of [early] nonrelative care predicted greater risk taking and impulsivity at age 15" -- Vandell et al., 2010 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2938040/), which I think is consistent with the results presented in the Bomb in the Brain series. - Day care centers just don't have the (wo)manpower to interact with kids one-on-one, which means that kids are effectively taught by their peers. "Children who experienced more center care were reported by caregivers at 54 months to have somewhat higher externalizing [ie. fighting, cursing, stealing etc.] behavior problem scores than other children" (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0885200604000389). - The first few years is when most of their personality is developed, and you owe your kids an environment you can control. In bad homes, the kids statistically may even benefit from day care (where they are probably less likely to be hit), but generally in higher income families, day care is associated with adverse effects. For example, an ancient study by Desai et al., 1989 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2583316) concluded that boys in middle class homes are more stupid because the mom is working. - Why would you even want to have other people raise your kids? - The daycare environment is a playground for disease. Kids in daycare are around twice as likely to be sick, according to what Stef quotes in "Working Moms, Daycare and the War Against the Family". At a later age, there is no difference in health one way or the other (I don't remember the source on this one), but that doesn't help much, because in some cases the diseases are fatal or leave lasting effects.

Anuojat: oma uusi aihe mistä? Ajatus oli että on helpompi sopia asioista pikaviestimin. Toki tapaaminen on teema.

Double post: Because it's about Finland, I'll be idling in the IRC channel #vapaapiiriradio at the server irc.freenode.net for potential organization. A dedicated IRC client should be relatively easy to set up, but it can also be accessed via http://webchat.freenode.net/

In addition to the problems above: if someone makes the choice of blocking me, I don't want to automatically be subjected to the confusion of partially hidden conversations. The chat works best as a lobby anyway. It seems that even though it's very easy to create your own ad-hoc spaces on the web, people are just kind of lazy, if you don't mind me saying. Once a musician dude performed live on tinychat and youtube, and virtually nobody bothered to check it out...

FDR Chat aktiivi ilmoittautuu! Tykkään Hubotin suuruusluokka-analyysistä. Ancapistanissa (http://ancapistan.com/) meitä on suunnilleen suhteessa 10:50 verrattuna länsinaapureihin, ja jos se ennakoi tän laudan jäsenyyksiä niin päädytään suoraan tohon 0,3 prosenttiin. Kai ne on kaikessa meitä edellä. Meikä on peräisin Aapo Puskalan mainioilta kotisivuilta www.lintukoto.net joissa tyyppi kirjotteli aikoinaan valtiosta kriittisesti ja linkitteli Stefania. En sitä poppoota tunne enää ollenkaan. Toinen melkein-paikallinen vapausradikaali on tietysti ilmasto-Pasi, joka on myös tykännyt mainostaa FDR materiaalia.

Okay, then maybe I was projecting. I'd still like to point out that without donating, he wouldn't get very far at all, and (as far as I can remember) during the last few months, there's been more talk about listeners' time being wasted, and that there's a queue. So that may be relevant. Another thing that comes to mind is that you describe this dream like it's a movie, without any expectation or emotion. 10 storey tall Stef sounds intimidating.

In real life as well, am I right? I know I've thought about calling in for some things, but now feel like the bar is too high. For how long have you been listening? When did you start regularly donating?