cynicist

It's true that the origin is borne out of necessity as a child, but I don't think the definition suggests otherwise. You could append something like, "and it originates in childhood as a survival mechanism" if desired. I think this is correct. We subsume ourselves to our parents to live as children, but exploring the pattern as adults is a choice. I remember feeling quite helpless before it in the past but as I work on myself the frequency and strength of the anxiety does get lower.

How is that obvious? You mean just because you can sell many other things that you own? If you include 'ability to be sold' as a criteria for ownership that would be true, otherwise no. If you accept that an individual has ownership of their actions and the effects thereof, then by this idea I should be able to sell my responsibility for a crime away to someone else.

Yes, just like both a computer and a sandwich can be my property but I can only consume one of them for nourishment. Or how I can own a pool and a car but can only swim in the former. Property can have different characteristics. My body happens to be property that is not transferable. At the same time, ownership is similar in all these cases. I act to acquire or sustain things through trade, maintenance, or improvement and I am responsible for the results of that behavior.

You can't transfer ownership of your own body while remaining in it, since you are your body. You can destroy yourself but selling ownership of your whole body is not something you can physically do. (although obviously you can do that with parts of yourself, like selling a kidney for example) The question you are asking is equivalent to, "Can I sell you the idea of a toothbrush that you can then use to brush your teeth?". It's nonsensical.

The body is owned like any other property. The difference between them is that the body is also the origin of ownership itself.

We are, but not every action falls into the 'moral' category, which is what you are implying in your argument when you bring up "consequentialist perspective". (which deals specifically with moral action) Just because you are responsible for lowering the value of your neighbor's house indirectly, through for example not taking care of your own property, doesn't mean there is an obligation on you to do anything about it. Contrast this with one neighbor destroying another neighbor's yard and lowering the value that way, and now you have something that is morally actionable. (ethics specifically deals with enforceable preferences)

I never said or implied that. If I did I would be calling myself an idiot, since I wasn't aware of the contradictions when I was an agnostic. You can be an intelligent person and still have irrational beliefs and unprocessed trauma. Whether they recognized the contradictions or not is irrelevant to whether those contradictions exist.

Well that's new. I know faith is belief without evidence but rarely do I see christians acknowledging that. Facts and evidence don't generally present a problem for religious beliefs; There always seems to be some corner of the unknown they can scurry to in order to preserve themselves. I hope his book is useful for you -- it is aimed particularly at the god described by the main three religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) so I'm sure it will be relevant.

Something more clear would be, "Social Anxiety is the result of relying on the judgments of others to validate your choices instead of your own"

"You know you're not actually making any arguments, right?"

She has no idea who his friends are or if he has any... and when he brings up that painful reality she snaps at him for 'shutting down her idea', and then after he points that out, she makes the conversation about her and her pain... the entire conversation revolves around HER. This is really cold and narcissistic behavior (likely not the only example), and with the OP's history it is not too shocking that this is the kind of person he ended up involved with, it's just really unfortunate that he didn't see this before he had children. Your post seems very unempathetic to me. This is really sad, and I'm sorry that this is where you are at. A broken home is a terrible thing, but speaking from experience, so is being raised by a narcissistic mother. There is obviously no easy answer here, I don't even know what to say. I'm just glad that you are focusing on what you can do for your daughter even though your parents didn't do that for you.

There is no good and quick way to do it. You either go into the difference between faith/science or you don't bother having the conversation. I mean you can if you want, but this problem is exactly why I don't argue with irrational people. (you can't win) Hey I recognized your picture from a comment on one of Stefan's youtube videos, welcome to the boards. Atheism is not a kind of faith, it is an acceptance of the lack of evidence for a deity and the contradictory nature of the deities worshiped by the most popular religions of today. The god that christians worship has self-contradictory properties, and with the knowledge that self-contradictory entities don't exist in reality we can rule out the existence of the christian god. You can learn more from Stefan's free book "Against the Gods? A Concise Guide to Atheism and Agnosticism" (in PDF or audiobook format). I considered myself an agnostic for a long time while under the same belief as you (that disproof was not possible) but finally became an atheist after reading the compelling arguments made by Stefan and not having any rebuttals for them.

Neat find! I respected him for his acting ability of course but those quotes make him sound very intelligent. I wonder if he's read any philosophy or if he just realized the contradictions on his own. His performance in True Detective as a fairly religious character is also interesting in light of that. Does it become significantly harder to do those roles knowing what he does about the bible now?

Chill tune, really nice background music.

You don't start with that as an assumption, even if it's likely. Based on his replies either he will learn something about himself in the call with Stefan or he will keep believing what he is repeating here. Either way a forum post evidently isn't going to change anything.

It can't really be more clearly described than it is in the book...

If he's testing and comparing to parents from the same area then if there is a stigma against a certain skin color, that stigma will remain present regardless of the difference in parents. I mean these people aren't exactly raised in a locked room are they? I assume they are interacting with others besides the parents and will be influenced by them, as well as the parents being influenced by others they come into contact with. I'm not rejecting the data, I'm saying that your conclusion is stretching the results to fit your perception. So before you begin accusing me of ignoring the evidence you should think about the results more carefully...

He does that in the book... have you read page 7? What I'm referring to would be more like typical mistakes people might make while looking at the arguments for the first time, based on some incorrect assumptions or premises they might have prior to reading it.

Well it sounds like your parents are quite the experts in this area. I'm assuming they both are highly successful and ended up in careers that they enjoy beyond their wildest imaginations when they were younger. I mean since one example from 20 years ago of someone who is not you is hardly a reason to do anything.... If someone 30 years ago managed to find a winning lottery ticket while digging through garbage would they consider that a perfectly viable long term plan for your life?

Yeah that's all it means. Hypocrisy is not relevant for UPB, it's the logic that matters. The problem is Stefan is choosing his words carefully in the book and constructing the arguments from the bottom up as a proof. If he tried to make it 'simpler' or 'cleaner' he would risk being incorrect and invalidating the book. Maybe there should be a companion guide to help people understand the idea more easily, I know there were a few areas that confounded me for a while. Doing that in a way that is useful but also correct would be a challenge. (might be better to just release a UPB v2) I like Pepin's explanation too, except the where he said it's not a test and then mentioned the possibility of a theory being false. (that's the test part!!!!)

The statistics around blacks committing a larger proportion of crimes or whites being victims more often can be entirely valid while having nothing to do with 'race' itself. It depends a lot how you define it. (whether culture is included really) If like me, you see 'race' as being physical differences like skin color, facial structure, etc, then it would hard to say those characteristics determine someone's behavior. (Though they can affect people's behavior, through faulty perceptions for example) In order to factor out culture you would have to compare people of similar 'races' growing up under different circumstances. Poor vs wealthy blacks, blacks from different countries (UK vs USA, or those from Africa), etc. If there are certain behaviors that they all have in common you could at least say that it was possible this behavior has a 'racial' component (unless of course it is something specific to all human beings, like eating) It's all pretty ridiculous though. Since we are fairly similar genetically, the main differences are necessarily going to come from our environment and our choices. (which will also impact our genes) How your skin looks or where your ancestors originated from is not going to determine who you are. Here is an interesting excerpt from Wikipedia quoting Richard Dawkins on race:

The best encryption is always client-side, since if the mail provider has your encryption keys it's no better than what Google does. The problem is that average users don't want to configure mail clients with encryption or have to manage keys. So the best possible security requires some technical knowledge, and would be worth teaching in the case of really sensitive documents or communication under very authoritarian governments, but the cost is not worth it in the US yet. Until then Google offers the second best option, which is encryption at the link level for traffic heading to their servers or from their servers. You won't see easy-to-use encryption at anything but the application layer if you want true security. As more revelations of government spying come forward we'll see more developers working in this area.

And where is the evidence that this has anything to do with an inherent attribute like 'race' instead of culture? (ie. parenting practices)

Absolutely, and I would agree with you if Anarchism was an ideology. If anything it's the dismantling of a prior ideology, that the state is some benevolent institution required for society to function. Is there not enough evidence for you that the state is a coercive monopoly? Or that voluntary interactions are better for everyone? With the evidence of Minarchism failing in the US, why would believing that Minarchism is the way to go not be a leap of faith?