Lians

I think the topic of religion has been somewhat artificially divided into different camps. There can be 3 answers to the question, "Does God exist?" "God exists." "God doesn't exist." "I don't know." The answer to this question is binary and I'm allowing for the possibility that people have no idea what the concept of God entails. Everything else that people stuff in between these 3 statements is done for the sake of conformity. Have you seen that political spectrum graph? It can be boiled down to the following: "Do I support the use of violence, or do I reject it?" Again, this question expects a binary answer. How easy would it be for people to stomach their answer to this question? It's because they feel uncomfortable that they throw in all the fog of left-right paradigms and economics. I think the same thing can be observed with regards to religion. As for me and your question, God doesn't exist because the concept of God is self-contradictory. I don't "follow" this conclusion any more than I follow the myriad of self-contradictory propositions that exist out there. "There's no such thing as truth," anyone? I call myself an atheist whenever I'm talking to people without much experience in philosophy. I do it for the sake of conformity and I don't pretend otherwise.

It's not an either-or question. Doing a lot of self-knowledge work on your own will save you some money when you decide to go to a therapist. You'll have most of the basics covered and progress quickly. Going into therapy now will save you time. You'll have guidance and won't have to stumble around on your own. You can always make more money, but you can never buy more time. That's why the second option is better in my opinion. However, if you don't have the cash right now, the first option seems perfectly reasonable.

main() returns an int for both historical and practical reasons. C++ was derived from C, and that was a convention in C. The unix operating system expected that an int value is returned from main(). Actually, it expected some int value to be pushed to the stack as a means of easily composing programs. The next program that was executed at the time your program was closed would be able to read the stack value (or it could be passed to it by the OS) and do something based on that. You could write shell scripts that do particular things based on the value they received from main() (for example, send a message to the system administrator if the program crashed). You could also use the exit information when running other programs from inside your own. It's a good convention, so it became a standard. The issues come from the logical layout of the program, not the correctness of the C++ syntax. Here are the issues I noticed: else if (name != "Lawrence") is redundant. You've already checked for the possibility of the name being Lawrence, so everything else will automatically fall into the else scope. Having global variables (int x; string name;) is a bad practice. I won't go into the reason why because it concerns larger programs than what you have here. You can look it up. It's a big topic. Using bool as a return type for omg() isn't necessary in the context of what you're doing. You're not returning error codes. void is more suitable for these kinds of functions. Putting an infinite loop inside a finite loop is redundant. The program never actually gets to the second iteration of the outer loop. cin.get() in omg() is redundant because of the infinite loop and also because you already have it in main(). You were creating a new ofstream instance and opening a file from inside the infinite loop. This is incredibly inefficient. Compare the code I posted to the one he had before. I recently shared a list of learning resources when it comes to programming. You can find it here.

Apart from making a suggestion to explore these topics with a therapist, I'd like to give you a word of advice. I've noticed that intelligent people are incredibly good at providing rationalisations for their behaviour. They keep wrapping themselves up with threads of abstractions until they look like mummies on the inside and can no longer see the real world. I say that from both personal experience and observations of friends and acquaintances. The sentence I quoted is kind of indicative of what I just outlined. Torture and propagandising didn't make you smarter. Becoming smarter was a survival skill. The fact that you stated this so bluntly also raises my suspicions. Jogging will improve you stamina. Running away from a tiger will also improve your stamina. The two are not the same thing though. The former involves choice, the second doesn't. Be very clear about these things. It's important. I'll give you an example. I'm incredibly good at recognizing dangerous people. It only takes me a few seconds to determine whether I should have my defences up in the presence of someone. It's a survival instinct I developed in my childhood. I can tell you that a child that is raised peacefully will be equally as good if not better at spotting these people. However, my skills are deeply tied to painful memories and emotions (fear, uncertainty, anger and so forth). This is the burden that I carry with me all the time. Because my defences are so deeply enmeshed with these feelings, whenever someone triggers one of these emotions in me, my guard is automatically up as if I'm in the presence of a dangerous person. This is not a problem that child will ever face and she'll still have my "skills". It's like an iceberg. The white, shiny surface is clearly visible from a long distance, but what's really dangerous is hidden underneath the water. Knowing all this allows me to stay alert about potential issues with my bad-guy radar. It also allows me to minimize the false readings.

It's not that surprising to me. Intellectual ideas are a good bait for people who like dealing with abstractions. Working with abstractions is like 90% of what programmers do. For example, the intellectual side of this community isn't all that difficult for me to understand. I struggle with the real life application of my knowledge. I've also found that my emotional skills still need a lot of development. I think most of us were initially attracted to the intellectual ideas but stayed for the far richer content that Stef is putting out.

I got the creeps while reading your post. How disgusting... I'm sorry you had to go through that.

Are you trying to learn how to program by reading other people's C++ code? This program is full of issues, most of which aren't even C++ related. I couldn't reproduce your problem on Linux. Everything works fine. I reckon terminating the program (you've got an infinite loop there) while creating ofstream objects pointing to a file might be altering the binary structure of your text file under Windows. Either that or the default encoding of your text editor isn't configured properly. Here's an improved/fixed version of your code: http://pastebin.com/TxB0rF9P If the infinite loop is intentional, uncomment line 10 and comment lines 11 and 14. He's using cin.get() in main() to prevent the prompt from closing after executing the program outside of cmd. It's not a good practice, but some people like to use it.

It's only natural. After all, the majority of people care more about their pets than their children...

Who experiences your life? The answer is in the question. The world is full of what I call pocket mystics. Better focus on the big guys. Life's too short.

Attach any adjectives you can think of to the word "violence" (post-modernist, transhumanist violence) and see if you can come up with a corresponding explanation for the resulting term. It's quite easy. "Structural violence" is once of those meaningless terms that are deliberately open to all kinds of interpretations. The nature of violence doesn't change depending on a particular context. For example, the state is not evil because it promotes violence. The state, as an abstract entity, has no capacity to do anything. People use the idea of the state to justify their use of violence. That's why Stef's approach (peaceful parenting) is so powerful. It bypasses all the abstract nonsense that people use to cloak their true intentions. Always try to move from the abstract to the concrete. If you notice someone is building an argument on the basis of meaningless terms, you're probably dealing with a sophist.

Why would you watch a video called "Who experiences your life?"

Trolls aren't even trying to be subtle any more. I blame the public school system for the lack of sophisticated trolling.

Thanks for posting these videos! Definitely worth a watch. Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink touches on the work of Paul Ekman and other related research. You should definitely read it if you're interested in this topic.

Stef's YouTube channel has reached a 100,000 subscribers! That's quite a milestone. I think it was a few months ago when I last checked it and it had like 60,000. Stef's obviously found a good bait to lure people into the world of freedom. Again, congratulations!

Thank you for this interesting discussion. It's been a pleasure reading through your responses. The topic of masculinity has been on my mind quite a lot recently and I developed some really rough ideas while trying to understand it. They're very abstract and I haven't worked out anything from first principles. However, I think they bring an interesting perspective to the subject matter and I wanted to share them with you. Please excuse my broad generalizations. First off, we need some good questions as a starting point. These were mine: Do men and women bring different skill sets to the table? What's the benefit of applying these skill sets in a cooperative manner? If the answer to the first question is that men and women don't, in fact, have different skill sets, then there's no sense in pursuing the topic of masculinity any further. This answer is very unlikely because it ignores the physiological differences between men and women. For example, what's the point of having a different brain structure from an evolutionary standpoint? If a single design works well, why have two? This diversity indicates the existence of insurmountable trade-offs - opposing qualities that aren't objectively practical on an individual basis. A body-builder trades agility for strength. He can't have both because the time he has spent on developing his slow twitch muscles is a time he can't spend on developing his fast twitch muscles. There are physical limitations as well (elephant vs cheetah physique). Different characteristics have utility in different situations so there's no objective way of determining "the right one". I don't find this particularly surprising because much of the world around us hangs on the balance of opposing forces. Before I set out to look for opposing qualities that differentiate men and women, I'll address the second question. This one is much simpler. Cooperation creates a more optimal state of efficiency precisely because there are no objectively optimal characteristics. Some computer algorithms are inherently sequential while others are parallel (there are mixtures of both of course). So, how do you design the fastest and most efficient computational machine that does both? You can't. That's why most modern computers are equipped with a graphics card (optimized for parallel execution) and a CPU (optimized for sequential execution). The combination of both gives you a good, cost-efficient performance. Having established a relatively decent foundation, I tried to draw some conclusions from my personal experience with males and females. Now, here's the problem. I don't have any personal experience with a healthy woman, so it's difficult for me to generalize female behaviour. My solution to this isn't perfect, so all the ladies on this forum should feel free to tell me how blatantly wrong I am. I abstracted what I perceived to be healthy male behaviour and derived the female counterpart by "inverting" the conclusions I derived for men. I feel relatively safe to do that because I already know that I'm looking for opposing/complementary qualities. I think the roles of males and females are related to the expansion and consolidation of human societies. Notice that expansion and consolidation are not opposites, but they're nonetheless related. This is a very abstract way of putting it, but it's as far as I've gotten. I'll share some examples and ideas to support this claim. New theories are often developed by abandoning one's preconceived notions about the subject. For example, Quantum electrodynamics (QED) wouldn't have been developed if people held onto Classical Mechanics (CM). Once the theory was developed, experimental physicists started working on experiments to prove some of the things QED predicted. On the other hand, theoretical physicists set out to find new applications for QED and how it relates to previous theories such as CM. The knowledge of physics was first expanded and then it was consolidated. Both expansion and consolidation were essential for the continued success of the discipline. You can find similar examples in a variety of situations. I have a lot more thinking to do, but right now, my working theory is that masculinity can be defined as the pursuit of skills that are geared towards expanding both the physical and intellectual boundaries of human societies. I can't tell you what those skills are because our societies are quite complex and change all the time. The qualities that are necessary to develop these skills is what people often use as a definition for masculinity. This is why you end up with so many conflicting definitions. Qualities don't change as much, so they're perceived to be a solid foundation for these definitions. I'd definitely question this premise. This theory can explain why you find more men at the forefront of theoretical research in disciplines that are largely dominated by women. Take medicine for example. At its forefronts, you can find a lot of male scientists and engineers, but at when it comes to the practical application, the majority of doctors are women. I'm sorry I can't come up with a good example to support the female aspect of my theory (I already mentioned the reason why it's hard for me to do that). If you spend enough time around scientists and engineers, you'll find out about an age-old question that they like to argue about: Who's more important? Both sides have some good arguments, but neither can exist without the other. I think the feminist movement managed to paint masculinity as the ultimate goal while disregarding femininity as a patriarchal tool of oppression. The imbalance this view has created is at the core of what's destroying western societies. Women abandoned the pursuit of skills geared towards the consolidation of human societies and societies are now collapsing. No amount of science and research can stop that. I apologize for the lengthy and verbose description of my ideas, but I wanted to present both the conclusions and the process I used to arrive at them. Please feel free to scrutinise both.

Can anyone familiar with The Venus Project point me to the theoretical foundations for their work? I can't find their definitions of economic value and efficiency. Good programmers develop a theoretical model before they start writing code. I'm yet to see anything that even remotely resembles a theoretical model with regards to RBE. If such a model exists, why isn't it open to the public? You can't model something that you don't understand even if you're a rock star programmer. Moreover, you can't model something where the complexity or sheer scope of the problem exceed the available computational capacity. Developing a framework for collecting data on available resources and consumers' preferences is laborious yet quite easy conceptually. What I see as enormously difficult is translating these data sets into actions. Even a novice programmer can do this with a random number generator. I don't see the point of RBE unless this is done objectively. Does such an objective approach even exist? Mathematicians throughout the 19th century wasted decades trying to invent a theoretical foundation for mathematics that is both consistent and complete. This was later proven to be impossible. Why did it take so long until someone addressed such an obvious problem? Why has no one involved with TVP published a refutation of the most obvious argument against RBE - Mises' economic calculation problem? If Mises' criticism is valid, wasting your efforts any further will be entirely unproductive. You see, mathematicians didn't have Godel's incompleteness theorems when they set out to develop a "rational" foundation for mathematics. They didn't stubbornly refuse to look at the evidence because no evidence had ever been presented. However, the economic calculation problem was outlined when Jacque Fresco was only 4 years old. What is your excuse for refusing to look at the evidence? Finally, I've heard people talk about the development of an algorithm for efficient allocation of resources. For the sake of argument, I'll assume that you can somehow circumvent the economic calculation problem. Why isn't this algorithm broadly available? There are people out there who specialize in proving the correctness of algorithms. You can leverage the enormous pool of programmers out there. Why are you expecting other people to take you seriously or respect your ideas when you're not taking the same approach with your own work? Set up a site, publish the algorithm there and ask for feedback. It's not possible to see through all the fog surrounding the technical implementation of TVP without falsifiable propositions. When you're dealing with something of such importance, you better make damn sure you've got things right before you proceed with the implementation. Millions of people have died because of bullshit theories.

I understand there's quite a bit involved in the situation you have to deal with, but in this reply I'll focus on the question you asked in your original post. I'll give you a big picture overview and some practical information regarding programming. I like to break down the process of learning how to program (well, not just that) into three different categories – the abstract, the concrete and the language specification. The abstract approach will give you an outline of different programming paradigms (imperative, functional, logic etc.) and generalized ways to reason about the structure of your program. Once the basic ideas are established, it may even go into the architecture of a computer and the ways in which your program fits into the massive world of computing. Concrete approaches tend to focus on techniques of writing software for a particular application domain i.e. database programming. Through extensive practice, you should be able to infer some of the general ideas behind what you're doing. The languages specification approach is, in my opinion, the worst out of the three. It steps you through the syntax of the language, and at each step, it will give you some ideas of how what you've just learned can be applied to a particular problem. Unfortunately, most of the introductory courses are centred around language syntax and library features. "I'll tell you how to construct sentences out of words and you should be able to write a great novel," pretty much sums up what I got out of secondary school programming courses. Advanced courses typically focus on concrete applications mixed with a few abstract concepts, which is perfectly fine if you want to specialise in a particular domain. I find the best courses to be the abstract ones. At its core, programming is all about modelling and controlling complexity. If you have a solid grasp of the underlying approaches and techniques, learning a particular programming language is quite easy. This is why I prefer abstract courses. They save me quite a bit of time in the long run. Now that I've given you a general overview, it's time to get to the practical side of the matter. You don't have to go to college to learn how to program. There are plenty of good resources online. One of my favourites is MIT's Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. They made it publicly available and you can watch it from here. The course is taught using Lisp, but you can easily translate the ideas to different languages. A friend of mine fell in love with programming after reading this free online book. It managed to convince a literature student to change his major, so it might be worth a look. I've heard good stuff about this guy. If you want to get into some more advanced (or basic depending on how you look at it) programming, this guy has some very good content. A lot of my university colleagues used the tutorials posted on this channel to learn Python and C++, but I can't comment on the quality of the content. A quick YouTube search yields quite a bit of information related to programming. I'm sure others can point you to additional resources. After getting familiar with the basics, you might want to enrol in a university course. By that time, you should have some clarity on whether you want to pursue programming as a career. You can also turn to books for more advanced content. API Design for C++ is one of my favourites. It's a great example of solid abstraction built on top of concrete substance. The point is, you don't have to drop a few grand to find out if you want to program for a living. Finally, I'd like to give a you some advice regarding the way you think about programming. You don't program because you like programming or you're good at it. You program because you want to solve problems. Programming can be a very powerful tool in your toolbox, but it's just a tool. Let the purpose drive the tool, not the other way around. This article sums it up quite well -- Advice from an Old Programmer. Good luck!

Here's a link to the transcript of a secret meeting between Eric Schmidt and Julian Assange: http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt It's a fascinating read. I made a short list of some of their topics of discussion: The Architecture of WikiLeaks Protecting Dissidents Bitcoin Toward Open Communication Nature of Mankind Inefficiency of Evil Moral Crossroads Impact of WikiLeaks The Market of Sources Disinformation Notable Paragraphs: http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt#1074 http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt#1236 http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt#1318 http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt#1356 http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt#1701 http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt#1868 http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt#2045

I believe this is where most of our disagreements stem from. A computer performing a mathematical operation has no notion of mathematics any more than a river understands fluid dynamics. The computer doesn't do mathematics. It simply runs electricity through an integrated circuit. You, as a human, can abstract out the physical process through a conceptual framework (such as mathematics) because you're capable of concept formation. This is why I asked you if mathematics exists outside the human mind. We've come back to conceptual boundaries and their importance yet again.

All acts of thinking are manifested in physical reality through electrochemical signals in the brain, but that doesn't mean that all products of thinking have a descriptive or predictive value in the context of said reality. You're conflating the medium of existence of a conceptual construct with its applications. I made no such claim. What I said (and implied) is that language is a conceptual construct with a very specific structure. You're implying that they're discrete entities. It would be correct to say that a bear is an animal. It would also be correct to say that a bear is a mammal. The two claims are not contradictory because one is a subset of the other. Providing additional information doesn't invalidate the key argument. Physics is a conceptual construct whose structure contains the notion of the scientific method. What people accept as true and how you communicate truth is irrelevant to the topic of discussion. Again, I never claimed that mental conceptualization is the sole requirement for proof. Physical artefacts have physical properties. Truth is a property of an abstraction (statement). A physical artefact can't be shown to demonstrate truth because truth is a measure of congruence between (physical) properties and knowledge statements. The level of complexity is of little importance in this discussion. If mathematics is not just conceptual, what is it? Where can you find mathematics if humanity disappears from the face of the planet? The second sentence implies that proof can exist outside of human understanding. Where can you find "proof" in physical reality? I fail to see a difference between the two definitions. Internal consistency implies that a proposition or a state can be derived from the system's defining axioms and, if necessary, a set of initial conditions. There's no notion of internal consistency when dealing with axioms. I believe you're talking about systems of axioms. Mathematicians have accepted that a system of axioms can't prove its own consistency and that there are unprovable statements within every such system. Moreover, direct applications of the incompleteness theorem are relevant only when you're dealing with formal systems. The two incompleteness theorems say nothing about any statement in particular. What's interesting is that the scientific method conforms to both even though it was developed centuries prior to Gödel's proofs. The requirement for a null hypothesis is due to the fact that certain statements are unprovable, and empirical testing is designed to push the boundaries of fixed theoretical models (and their respective systems of axioms). This is why one of the fastest growing fields in theoretical physics is the pseudo-science of string theory. It piggybacks on the traditional notion of science while ignoring the scientific method. It's funny you should mention incompleteness, because any physicist working on theoretical models "applicable" outside our universe should immediately quit his or her job if s/he is serious about the subject matter. The fact that none of them will actually do so tells you everything you need to know about the integrity of their research. I have no idea what you're talking about. Mathematics is very old and so broadly used that over the years it's become saturated with concepts belonging outside of its domain (usually coming from the sciences). That doesn't make it a science any more than sticking feathers up your butt makes you a bird. The force equation can be analyzed mathematically without understanding what the variables (or the equation itself) describes. You can solve a system of equations without knowing what the variables mean. Whether these systems describe actual physical behaviour is a different matter altogether. Go to a mathematician and ask her to run experiments on her mathematical proofs. She's probably going to claim, "That's not my job," and rightly so. Just to be clear, when I talk about "science", I talk about Baconian (now I'm hungry) science. Of course, definitions of science vary a lot. Why is that? A lot of people want to ride on the wave of success and respect that modern-day science has garnered. When people settle on definitions they inevitably put structural boundaries around the various fields of human knowledge. If you ask mathematicians studying chaos theory about how well the general public understands the subject matter, they'll inevitably start complaining about ridiculous publications claiming spectacular applications of the theory and how these authors give chaos theory a bad name. Part of the reason why this field is so open to exploitation is because most people aren't trained to analyze conceptual constructs. If they were, the greatest and most dangerous abstract construct of all, the government, will be revealed for the primitive superstition that it is in a matter of seconds. If you're in power, you definitely don't want that. Since Feynman was brought up, how does this statement fit your philosophical frameworks: "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics"? A 4 year old can take apart the logical constitution of this statement and laugh at it. Those of us that couldn't do that prior to joining this philosophical conversation should weep. This turned out to be longer than I anticipated. I hope you found it somewhat valuable.

Excellent point and an ugly reality.

Certainly the fields of physics and mathematics have been damaged by government, and the evils of seeking funding take precedence over any real progress. By connecting mathematics to the public school system, sure it is easy to argue mathematical science is bad. There is certainly a large part of mathematical activity that is conceptual construct, including the axioms. In that regard it is like you say, a fantasy novel. But fantasy novels do not require proofs. What I am talking about is the relationship between the axioms (which we may regard as fictional) and the conclusions (when isolated they may be regarded as fictional). With the advent of automated deduction and automated proof checking, it has become easier and more empirically certain whether or not such a symbolic relationship exists. We have dealt with this kind of thing in science for a long time. In the classical physics equation F=ma the letter "F" is fictional and only a conceptual construct. Only by connecting the letters to some apparatus (a spring scale or whatever) do these letters have meaning and the truth of the symbols "F=ma" are only true in the fictional realm where the letters mean what you have decided they mean. In the same way, when I write a computer program to generate prime numbers, and my apparatus proves 3433 is prime, my claim "3433 is prime" is only true in the fictional realm where digits and symbols (what is "3",etc.) hold the meaning I have decided upon. Despite all that fiction, I am able to make a prediction about what a physical system will do much like F=ma. When a prime number generator is made of atoms, simply an apparatus, I predict it will generate 3433. What about the fiction? Well if the computer is built so that "3" and "4" are reversed, then 4344 will be produced, but 4344 is not prime. But 4344 is prime in a fictional world where symbols are chosen differently (1,2,4,3,5,..). The numeric value of the speed of light will also be "different" now that 3 and 4 are switched. Nevertheless, I am able to predict 4344 in such a reversed-computer will be generated using the mathematics that I already know, because the reversal of the symbols is something I can learn about. This kind of generalization is exactly the same as physics, where experiments are performed in a specialized environment (a laboratory). When principles and predictions are made and proven, they can be applied to new situations in places and in other symbolic languages where those results have previously not been empirically verified. I'm not disputing the value of mathematics in physics. What I'm talking about is turning mathematics into what it's not. Using your example, evaluating the equation F=ma for m=0 has a meaning in mathematics, but not in physics. Physics has a built in validation mechanism (scientific method) that ensures its constructs are accurate relative to physical reality. Mathematics is geared towards high-level abstraction. Mathematics and physics are complementary, but one has to have a clear distinction of boundaries in order to utilize their facilities. These boundaries are incredibly important. However, they are often ignored because they're philosophical in nature (yikes!). To give you another example, if you're programming in a high-level compiled language, your compiler is your bridge between physical reality (machine instructions) and abstraction (source code). A microprocessor has no idea what a class is, yet it's able to utilize the logic encoded with it. Your phys-gcc compiler is applying the scientific method to your mathematics source code, allowing you to manipulate physical hardware. There are obvious limitations with this example, but I think it gets the point across. As for language and proof, if you think about it, mathematical proof is a method for checking internal consistency. We're doing the same with language, but it's hardware accelerated by our language centres to the point that we're not even conscious of it. It's what allows you to have a chuckle at a google translation.

Religious people often identify with their ideology. They internalize all attacks against religion. Instead of focusing on religion as a discrete entity, a more productive approach would be to concentrate on her needs that are met only through religion. Does she want to maintain her relationship with friends/family by going along with their beliefs? Does religion provide some sort of comfort that would otherwise be lacking? If you're curious and sensitive about these topics she's much more likely to open up to a discussion. A direct attack on religion is very likely to backfire. Be careful!

I wonder if theories like rape culture are a result from the epidemic of fatherlessness that we have in the west. As far as I know, one of the primary roles of the father is to provide a sense of security in the parent-child bond. People discussing this topic often seem to be in a state of panic/fear. Sprinkle some marxist/patriarchy theory on top of an already volatile mix and you've got a mainstream movement.

You seem to agree that there's no null hypothesis in the question of determinism versus free will, yet you instist on being able to debate it. I assume you understand that pursuing such a topic would be an exercise in futility. What consitutes a debate? I would say that finding the answer to this question would be a more worthwhile endeavour. On a side note, wouldn't it be funny if a bunch of threads debating "foo vs bar" started popping up, with people arguing themselves into a frenzy?