prohexa

Ouch... We've already paid a small fortune for flights and hotel, so we'd prefer something cheaper if possible... Would it possible to book parts of a restaurant or something or just have them reserve a few tables for us? Or book a pub, or a café? What about Stefan's hotel itself - maybe it comes with conference rooms or some other area we could use for less money? By the way, what has Stef himself said about the meetup? Is the 26:th really the only date that works for him, and at what time/for how long will he be available? I'm guessing that could effect both the price and availability of places to meet... PS. We don't have facebook accounts, so it would be great if this thread could be updated when new information is posted on facebook! Thanks!

Hi all! My talented girlfriend has made some awesome t-shirt designs for you Bronies out there! Here's a preview of the designs: They look really good on the t-shirts, you can check them out in the Zazzle store: http://www.zazzle.com/leave_the_farm-235032811418232469 http://www.zazzle.com/my_little_ancap_pony-235572185427110713 http://www.zazzle.com/anarcho_capitalism_pony-235856942757066029 If you have a good idea for other philosophy related designs for t-shirts, posters, coffee mugs or whatever, just send me a PM and we'll try to make it happen! (Christmas is coming! )

Haha, alright, it's "Stefan" with an "f"...

(I'm not sure how this is related to anything...) (...but I can't think of this and not smile!)

I look at TVP much like I look at determinism. In a theoretical world were we would have a supercomputer with all the information about every particle in the universe we could probably both predict the future and tell the past. But we don't have this, and we never will, for both technical and theoretical reasons. Too much of the TVP debate seems to be centered around the technical implementation details. I personally don't think TVP could succeeed before we have reached the technical singularity, which obviously would be quite a game changer. In other words, from the technical aspect, I think the best TVP can hope for is (True A.I.) -> (Technical Singularity) -> (Magic Resource Machine) or something along those lines. But that's irrelevant, because even having the ability to perfectly allocate resources globally does not mean that everybody has access to everything at all times. Only magic could solve that, which means that at least distribution itself would demand a free market. Imagine that (in TVP-world) I'm taking a walk in the forest, hungry, with a can of soda in my pocket. I meet a fellow comrade who only has a sandwich but is very thirsty. May we voluntarily trade drink for food? That's the free market, right there. In principle I'd have nothing against TVP, assuming it is introduced as a part of the free market. If you really can create a magic machine that sufficiently fulfills all needs and desires for everyone - peacefully and for free -, then don't let anybody stop you. I'm certain you would soon outcompete every other company on the planet. The only reason to not join this futuristic TVP society would be that something else solves my problems better, right? And if that would happen to be the case, no one would use force against me for solving my issues through voluntary trade with other likeminded people, right? Otherwise TVP would only be another totalitarian, tyrannical system, right? In the end, it does not matter if we are being beaten up by policemen, soldiers or robots. If you can't take coercion out of the TVP equation then it is not something anyone should strive for.

Let's say a man claiming to be a wealthy doctor chats up a woman in a bar. They leave the bar together and end up having voluntary sex, both happy with their catch. In the morning the woman discovers that the man is in fact neither wealthy nor a doctor, but rather a poor taxi driver. Is that rape? Should the man be treated equally to a violent assault raper? Should the woman receive the same sympathy, help and support as one that was brutally raped under gun threat? What about a similar situation in reverse? Let's say the woman lies about being single without children but turns out to be a married mother of four? Would that mean she raped the man, and should she suffer the same consequences? My point is exactly that using too vague and broad definitions for rape does normalize it. For example, I live in Sweden. Do you know which country in the world has the second highest amount of reported rapes, just after Lesotho in South Africa? That's right, Sweden! Do you remember the rape charges against Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks? The "rape" he committed was simply that the girl he was having voluntary sex with thought he was using a condom, when he in fact was not. Yes, that was in Sweden too. The radical feminist movement in Sweden has successfully inflated the term "rape" to become more or less all-encompassing, including everything from forced violent sexual assault to not having an excplicit (preferably written!) contract of commitment before participating in voluntary sex. The implication of this has been that rape victims - "real" or not - are now being scoffed at by many swedish men. Their first reaction to news articles about raped women is often "she probably just got drunk, dragged some not-so-attractive guy home, regretted the whole thing in the morning and is therefore pressing rape charges afterwards."

I haven't actually read the study myself, but it was discussed in a controversial article that claims the study is mostly "radical feminist propaganda". They point to some interesting quotes from the study: The article then goes on to say that the study neither defines its use of the word "rape", nor does it state the actual questions used in the interviews but uses rather vague formulations like "forced sex". Instead it refers to another study, also without definitions, that in turn refers to a third study that states the exact question as: Is that really the definition of rape? Wouldn't that be unjust towards the women (and men) that get assaulted, beaten and violently forced to sex? Anyway, I'm too lazy to go through the studies in detail and the article I referred to is not from a particularly trustworthy source, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

I fully agree, but I suspect this is actually worse. To children this is not overt propaganda but rather hard facts, delivered by the seemingly all-knowing adults around them that they love and trust. It's difficult to later question what you already know are facts. Of course, displaying the propaganda this openly at least provides a chance for the few involved and thinking parents to step in and explain reality to their children but I'm afraid they are an extremely small minority. I've been reading up a bit on North Korea recently and it's scary how even the most blatant lies and ridiculous myths are accepted as absolute truths by the vast majority there. Propaganda doesn't even have to subtle, only constant...

I've seen other forums (often for technical support or similar) where, before you can start a new thread, you have to give your intended thread a title. The board will then automatically search for and suggest similar threads (based on the given keywords), forcing the poster to actively dismiss the suggestions and claim that "my post does not fit in any of the suggested threads". I think that could help reducing these often-repeated new threads, but I don't know if IP.Board has a plugin or built-in support for this...

Great idea! It would be really fun and very interesting to hear her views on all kinds of issues!

This debate never gets old, does it?

In a boxing match both contestants enter the ring voluntary, and either of them may leave at any time they choose. In the case of taxation you are instead born right there in the boxing ring, and if you try to leave you'll only exit into another boxing ring, and so on. See the difference? Rape is by definition coerced sex against the will of the other person. It does not translate to "rough voluntary sex". Even if a person has been so tragically manipulated that he "wants" to pay taxes, he still has no option to to decline. Asking for money while leaving no option to decline is by definition theft. Let's assume a mugger points a gun to me and asks for my wallet. With your logic one could claim that I'm in fact voluntarily trading my wallet in return for my life. Do you see the flaw in that reasoning?

As always; it depends on what type of programs you want to make. Desktop apps? Android/iOS apps? I would probably recommend C#. While Java is best known for its portability, C# has good support on Windows, Linux, Mac, and even mobile phones and some embedded systems. But the best thing about C# is probably to be able to develop your code using Visual Studio (2012), no other IDE comes near it in terms of functionality, debugging tools and rapid development. C# is also easy to learn, fairly quick in terms of performance, and comes with tons of ready-to-use libraries and classes/components that saves you loads of work. It looks nice, is easy to read, has good type safety and many really neat features like generics and Linq. C is old fashioned, no real need to bother with that. C++ is a superset of C, so basically it contains everything from C plus(plus) some extras. If you really want to make a career in programming it's great to know the low-level stuff from C/C++ to get a better understanding of what's really happening "under the hood" of more high-level languages, but you probably won't need that for some time to come. Maybe a quick peek on the details of pointers and memory allocation would be useful. Oh, and don't worry too much about wasting time learning the "wrong" language - once you've learned one of them the others are mostly variations on syntax and minor details.

So a lot of yours are economic too like others. And besides those, you just wonder what we might be able to do that we aren't even aware is possible. Again, not that motivating to the average person if you compare it to the types of things that really get people feeling oppressed to the point of wanting to change society. I think this thread is showing why most people, though they feel some annoyances at taxes and red tape, don't really perceive a "lack of freedom" as a major problem in the West. They don't wake up feeling all the things they really want to do but can't because of the government. Oops, I realize now that this thread was probably more about what arguments would convince the average voter of the illegitimacy of the state, rather than the day-to-day implications of it. I had mistakenly focused on this part in the first post: As for arguments of economic factors not being very convincing I absolutely agree. As usual it's "the argument from efficiency" vs. "the argument from morality", as often mentioned by Stef. The short summary is that people will do and accept pretty much anything, as long as they think it's morally good. I remember all too well how I used to think that the state was simply the better choice of two evils; some unfortunate but necessary oppression vs. starving people, poor children and chaos. It was not until I was properly confronted with the moral arguments that I finally accepted that the state was fundamentally immoral. After I had accepted the NAP as an absolute principle I had no other choice than to reject the whole idea of a state, even though such a society initally seemed unthinkable. I believe this is the best approach to get people over to our side...

It's a tricky question because we have nothing to compare our current society with. I can't say that in a free society I would do X, becase I'm not aware of what X would be. Also, many activities are directly tied to economic factors, so again it's difficult to say what my economic situation would look like without the state. Anyhow, I'll throw in a few examples for good measure; 1. I would have more spare time to play music, write poetry, etc. If I didn't have to pay >70% of my income in taxes I could easily cut down on my working hours to do all kinds of creative, fun and entertaining things instead. 2. Maybe I would go ice-skating? While we don't have a local skating rink today, the free market might have produced one under different circumstances. Maybe I would take joyrides in my flying car? I could go on forever... 3. I'd live longer, perhaps? Limitations by organizations like FDA currently prevents tons of different medications from ever reaching the market, and even from being developed. It's just not worth the cost to research drugs for many kinds of diseases. I'll call this activity "reading books in my late years". 4. I'd go for relaxing nightly walks around the city. This isn't possible today because of the very high risk of getting mugged or otherwise assaulted (in particular in certain areas) and the police is either unwilling or unable to do anything about it. I'm sure that this type of security would be handled much better in a free society, because the demand is certainly there. Which brings us to the next point; 5. I'd be able to arm myself and my house as needed. Currently it's near impossible to even own a weapon here. Even purely defensive arms like tear gas or stun guns are strictly forbidden to civil persons. If this doesn't count as an activity I'll call it "going to the shooting range". 6. I'd be able to start a business whenever I feel like it. I've had tons of business ideas that were never implemented due to the problems and complexity with the current system. We tried once, and we were thoroughly screwed over. The second time we didn't even get started until that business plan was thwarted by useless regulations. We won't go down that road again. 7. I'd be able to smoke marijuana or medicate with other drugs as I would see fit. I try to avoid most drugs, but I've personally seen classical weed make wonders where prescribed painkillers would do nothing (or even make it worse). 8. I'd be able to educate my (future) children in alternative ways. Homeschooling is currently forbidden here, and don't even mention unschooling. It's fairly easy to see the most obvious and directly visible effects by the state, like taxes and business complications, but I suspect that the really important things we are missing out on are the invisible ones - in particular those that we don't even know...