cynicist

That is definitely a change in the definition of reality. Every dictionary definition I've ever seen has defined it as the opposite of conceptual/fictional. Here is an example just from Google: You continue repeating that empiricism is a set of principles. Would you mind enumerating what those are for me? The simplest way for me to understand empiricism is as a theory that all knowledge derives from sensual experience. You are incorrect about Objectivism as well, not that it would sway me if you were. Ayn Rand actually claims the opposite of what you are saying here, as I will quote from The Objectivist: How are these truths you call axioms self-evident, if not through observation?

Why did you surround the word 'reality' with quotation marks in this sentence? I'm guessing you are changing the definition of reality here, because otherwise I don't see the reconciliation. Empiricism is not a set of principles at all. It's knowledge based on sensory experience, which your theory does invalidate. (you are saying that something can fail to be in congruence with reality but still be true if it is internally consistent) That's the main problem that I see. You can't define truth as a relative thing like you have without divorcing it from reality, which ends up not making sense.

I used to be more able to watch gory/horror stuff when I was dissociated, but now I can't watch any of it. It feels too overwhelming. I think people who are comfortable watching that stuff have either normalized it or aren't very connected to their emotions.

Here's a 1959 essay of his which was recently uncovered, on what helps stimulate creativity. Thoughts? http://www.technologyreview.com/view/531911/isaac-asimov-mulls-how-do-people-get-new-ideas/

You kidding? I assume people that are comfortable being vulnerable in our society are either insane or highly dissociated. You are certainly welcome and among friendly company here. Keep in mind this is meant more for those you are close to, or 'think' you are close to when you want to determine the truth of your relationship. Avoid casting those pearls to the swinish among us. Congratulations on finding some common ground, I hope the relationship between you two continues to improve.

I think reassurance from parents in this area is great, and the idea of a ceremony sounds fun. Seems no different than a celebration you might have after getting a new job, learning to drive, or whatever other important milestone comes up.

How do you know? Say that they consider themselves fine now. It's possible that they were resilient enough to make it out ok, but what could they have become if they only had a more positive environment? How much potential was lost? It's an unanswerable question. Then obviously not everyone turns out fine, so overall it's still negative for it to be done even if you consider yourself relatively unscathed.

The end of that line was so unexpected I spit out my coffee. There were some really funny parts to that article, but it was more of a subtle jab at MRAs than anything else. That didn't stop the insane pro-feminist comments though. (who missed that it actually supported their position rather than refuting it)

The fact that they are avoiding government funding and have managed to achieve accreditation are good, but I'm concerned that it seems the whole learning process is designed by one psychologist dean from Harvard who thinks he knows the best way to learn. The description of the teaching style seemed aggressive and weird, but as long as his ideas are open to criticism and change then they'll probably do fine. Ideally this might motivate more schools to find ways to lower the price of entry.

That was teasing as a form of humiliation, and likely the result of childhood trauma. So not nice or positive, but at least it seems like it was unconscious for them, something you do between friends. (not in front of others or girlfriends) I'm guessing they were fine with having that done to them as well? Ideally they would notice your discomfort and apologize. I'd speculate that they don't notice the discomfort because they were trained not to... but I don't know them so that's a wild guess. Oh also I don't want to just say that Mike/Stef tease each other without providing an example so here is one I found fairly quickly that might help people.

What you've done here is what I think of as 'framing'. You've defined and repeatedly called something bad or described it as bad and then asked how it could be good. I can guarantee you when I tease friends it is not pointedly harping on them for small mistakes and I certainly don't intend to embarrass them, it's the opposite. The reason I would criticize them in the form of a joke would be because it might be embarrassing or a difficult subject to talk about, and laughing about it helps relieve tension. That to me is sympathetic. Maybe you would just call that joking and want to keep teasing in the negative category, but the difference between those for me is that a joke may or may not be a real criticism while teasing is. I read your posts very carefully, including the one where you said teasing was 'fundamentally win-lose' and that it seems to be 'recreation of past trauma'. If that's dependent on context you may want to add a disclaimer, otherwise you are contradicting yourself. Why do you think I specifically used kissing/hugging as examples? Let me be more explicit: Couldn't the same argument be made for criticism? Or laughter? I experienced much of that when I was younger, but that doesn't mean I avoid all criticism or laughter, in fact I would lose out on a lot of value that way. In some ways this is similar to the other thread about whether people should use the word anarchy or not, in that many people associate that word with a lot of negativity. So it's not surprising to me that we are at odds here as we were there. Since you see teasing as 'the root of all evil in the world', I think the odds of succeeding with my argument are pretty slim. Anyway, I'm going to leave this thread alone for a bit so other people can throw their thoughts in.

If I kiss or hug my girlfriend, that's normal and playful. If a random guy does that, it's harassment. The act itself isn't inherently abusive, it depends on the context. Maybe you don't see any benefit, and that's fine, but I can see plenty of examples where I would welcome it. If I was into some woman only for her looks, for example, then teasing from a good friend can help remind me of my values in a light-hearted way. Something like, "Yeah, she sure looks like someone who reads a lot of Nietzsche" or "Let me guess, you two met in a library didn't you?". Teasing to me is a form of criticism through jokes. It can be playful and creative or ingenious and destructive. Do you ever make fun of yourself or would that be pushing a button for you? Whenever I've seen it done right, both people are laughing about it. That's win-win. Sure it is mostly used to harm, but that is true for criticism and jokes as well, and you wouldn't say that there are no positive forms of those things. So what exactly makes teasing different? Honestly, positive criticism is great but someone who knows me well enough and is clever enough to deliver it in a way that makes me laugh earns the most respect from me. It shows intelligence as well as sympathy and love for another person. I don't know if you've noticed, but Stefan makes fun of himself all the time on the show. And both him and Mike have teased each other as well. Do their jokes strike you as the result of past trauma or a close bond and ease with each other?

Teasing can be playful if you know the other person well and they know that you have their best interests in mind. If I get teased by someone at work who barely knows my name it tends to be because they want to put someone down while appearing to be 'friendly'. I think the OP nailed it when he mentioned 'marker of trust' because in my opinion trust is exactly what enables you to tease without being abusive, or as Wuzzums noted, it's how you know whether the other person is serious or not. It might help to imagine a stranger teasing you. What would you think of that person?

Yeah it's just another way of saying the same thing. Ironically, the purpose of that was to add clarity since people aren't used to seeing the phrase 'inflicted behavior'. Yeah this just confirms that it's a defense to me. It's really not as complicated as you trying to make it out to be. Ethics refers to enforceable preferences, and enforceable means that it's acceptable to compel compliance/obedience. A non-enforceable preference would then logically be one where it's not acceptable to compel obedience. This is explained on that very same page (p. 48) using this example: It is universally preferable (i.e. required) to use the scientific method to validate physical theories, but we cannot use force to inflict the scientific method on those who do not use it, since not using the scientific method is not a violent action. So yes to your last question. I have to second Mike's suggestion of calling into the show with a question. There is no doubt in my mind that the difficulty you are experiencing with understanding UPB is emotional and connected to your history. That's not to say that UPB is not difficult, it certainly was for me, but judging by your posts I don't think your intelligence is the problem.

Neither, as I don't want to encourage this intellectual defense of yours. Quoting from UPB (p. 48) under the heading of UPB: ETHICS OR AESTHETICS?, Non-violent actions by their very nature are avoidable. Ethics is the subset of UPB which deals with inflicted behaviour, or the use of violence. In general, we will use the term aesthetics to refer to non-enforceable preferences – universal or personal – while ethics or morality will refer to enforceable preferences. It is universally preferable (i.e. required) to use the scientific method to validate physical theories, but we cannot use force to inflict the scientific method on those who do not use it, since not using the scientific method is not a violent action. I don't believe that you are having this much trouble with these ideas while also being intelligent enough to think about them without something in your history preventing you from doing so.

Do you realize that you are intentionally going around in circles trying to distract yourself with abstract details or questions already answered in the book?

I've been using Linux for over a decade, starting with Gentoo. Now I'm running the latest Ubuntu Dev release (14.10) since it is quite stable and up to date. I have a huge amount of respect for what Canonical is doing in the Linux space and enjoy their take on a desktop UI. I think Ubuntu is miles ahead of most other distributions, but if it didn't exist I'd be comfortable in openSUSE. Their one-click installer is brilliant and they have a pretty impressive software collection, it just takes longer to tweak all the things that bother me. Unfortunately it seems that most distributions need to be dragged kicking and screaming to some semblance of usability. Even top tier distros like openSUSE have major problems. Not enabling network manager by default was a stroke of sheer stupidity that they managed to fix only recently... probably after so many people complained about not being able to connect to a network on a fresh install. Did they really expect people to deal with network configuration themselves? Or know how to change that setting in YAST? It has changed a lot since Valve decided to get into the console market and base SteamOS on Linux. Some games are being ported over but you are more likely to see new titles (like Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth) having support from the start. I'm also sure some titles will just never be ported over. WINE can be quite stable but it depends on the game. You can go here to see how well supported applications are, and if you click on 'Browse Apps' on the left hand side, you can also search them all. It's not very user friendly but it is better than nothing. If you end up wanting to switch and have questions or run into problems I'd be happy to help.

Yeah I don't mean to say religion without that component is ok; I just reach for the most egregious practices first because otherwise you get pedantry as a defense. Catholicism is so obviously horrible even compared to other denominations that I am shocked when reading posts like his. As a survivor, I am confident in saying that anyone raised in that manner grows up absolutely terrified1 and sexually dysfunctional2 at best, and in the worst cases you will be dissociated, insane, or experience mental breakdowns. I'm also not saying that you have to have been a Catholic merely to have an opinion on it, but if you have not been raised in that tradition (/spit) then saying it's not abusive by default is the equivalent of a teenager who plays Call of Duty saying that war isn't horrific by default. How the fuck would you know? (I get that you are likely defending your own religious upbringing for the sake of protecting your parents, but I'm seriously not going to let you do that at the expense of my childhood experience or the continued suffering of literally millions of children) 1 You are a sinner and god is always watching 2 You are trained to be ashamed of your natural bodily functions

If you can talk to them about your anger in a productive way then by all means keep going. I had imagined that you were silently stewing over these grievances. If you can't talk about what is bothering you with them then it makes sense that it would build up and boil over eventually. I see the options as basically: accept that you will be this angry around them, talk to them about your anger and try to work something out so that it can diminish some, or leave. (not necessarily cut them out, but leave to get some space and see how your mood changes)

And yet you're qualified to say it's not abusive? They don't record the parts where you are threatened with eternal damnation... The fact that you find this indoctrination cute is disturbing as hell; You are defending the destruction of a child's rational mind, whether you want to admit that or not.

Is this like a word game? I could easily reverse it and say that peaceful parents are strong for resisting the pressure of conforming to their past trauma and abusive parents are weak for giving in.

I'm not sure how this argument (which is fundamentally anti-nature) is any different than the religious argument that we are born sinners and must repent for our innate evil. The more sentient something is the more reservations I have about eating it but I have to agree with others that overstating the case is just going to turn people away from the message entirely. Rather than making it into a moral argument and trying to guilt others into changing their behavior, why not post more about the benefits of a plant-based diet? I'd be a lot more interested in that than flawed reasoning about how god wouldn't put animals on the planet to be murdered by us... (oh perfect example here. I didn't watch past the 2 minute mark out of disgust, but judging by ProfessionalTeabagger's post there was actually some really interesting information about diet in the video) Damn, he makes a good case...

Seems the pattern here is that either people won't apologize for their abusive actions or the apologies don't actually mean anything, like in the case of your brother or parents. If you are still in the proximity of some of these people it would make sense that you feel an appropriate level of anger/rage towards them. It's like if I were a mechanic and you were bringing me a car because it sounds loud, I'd have to tell you it's just what happens when you turn on the ignition. I like Stefan's analogy of anger being your immune system for toxic people. Anger isn't something you should 'feel comfortable' around. Imagine if you had the flu and went to go ask a doctor how to make your body 'more comfortable' with the illness since the headaches and fever are distracting you at work. He would hopefully tell you that those are good signs, that your body is responding appropriately, and that if you didn't feel that way THEN there would be cause for concern. (Yes you might take something to help with the symptoms, but those symptoms only go away once your immune system has killed the intruders) Maybe I just don't know the details and you aren't in contact with any of these people, in which case I'd say visiting a therapist would be a good choice. If you are though, I would stop trying to figure out how to make that a more comfortable situation and start thinking about why you are still around them.

Oh jeez, it had to be catholic. I'm having flashbacks over here : The stuff this unfortunate child is saying is basically repeated every sunday at churches by the priest in order to reinforce the drone mentality, alongside all the repetitive hymns. I'm glad that I was just confused by the whole thing and didn't try to understand it; I might have done irreparable harm to my brain if I had.

Sounds like a positive reason to use Anarchist to me. Not only does it serve as a useful shorthand, it also allows you weed out people who cannot see past the emotional impact of words to their actual meaning. Thinking Person: What do you mean you're an Anarchist? Isn't that when you throw Molotov cocktails at police and terrorize store owners?You: Well actually...