Josh F

Yeah he looked like he had just woken up. I do find it ironic that he is so challenging of capitalism but seems to really understand how distribution for his product works.

I worked in a business which intentionally didn't hire women, and in general the industry only hired young and sexy women when they did hire women. And honestly, the real real truth of it was that women made worse employees in this particular business. We were frequently complimented for not hiring eye candy and keeping the staff male. I'm sure I'd run into the opposite if my industry was modeling or porn. So were we being sexist? Yeah maybe, but why is sexism bad?

14 years in a rape dungeon for pointing some laser pen at a helicopter, USA USA!

Okay, well those aren't arguments, right? So, sorry it makes you feel a certain way. I find the idea of threatening someone to prevent them from non-aggressive voluntary action repulsive, personally.

Sure, like designing a website or an app? Well.... nothing stops anyone from stealing anything like that. You can go make your own wikipedia or google or twitter right now

Well the method is simple, you sign a contract with anyone you show the prototype to saying they agree not to use the ideas without compensating you for them. A mix of a non-disclosure and non-compete clause would do the trick. Once sold, that company should be under no obligation to report how they improved their tires, but simply that they did improve them. Then its up to the other companies to reverse engineer it, which takes time, giving the first company the leg up.

This video is annoying. Firstly, it got in a lot of trouble because the majority of the cat-callers, and the most aggressive ones, were black and latino. Feminism and Racism have a long intertwined history, the first suffragists being a bunch of racists themselves. Personally, I find that behavior negative, though regardless of this woman and her video. Its scummy and also its not very effective. I tend to think a lot of catcalling is about impressing men way more than about attracting women. I mean whats the success ratio of catcalling to getting a date? Its gotta be terrible.

If you want to see a video where his pretentiousness is really explored, the Vice interview is great. The girl is just not falling for all the flirty stuff and makes fun of his goofy book. She read a line from it at the end of the video thats just makes me cringe.

Excellent analysis, the only basic assumption I disagree with is that private services will cost the same as their public equivalents. Companies, free to act, will attempt to provide those services at a much lower and competitive rate. This is something you see accross industries. For example, in countries where the government owns the telecommunication companies and protects them with a monopoly, the costs are higher per user and the quality is lower. These services are often subsidized with tax dollars and/or protection against competitors. In Costa Rica, where I lived, the people believed that the government controlled Telecomm company would be the only one willing to spend a fortune on giving internet access to remote and poor locations. In reality, however, once the market opened up competitors were offering those same services at a fraction of the cost making it affordable even for the poor and remote people.

Though a much more ancient approach to philosophy, Taoism has a lot of relevant similarities to volunteerism including an anarchistic or minarchistic approach to government, and a respect for individualism and autonomy. China and many other modern Asian countries draw their ethics from a type of collectivism called Confucianism, which holds individuals in service to the greater good, and sees autonomy as a disruptive element. Lao Tzu himself criticizes the roll of the state which he described poetically as , "laws and regulations more numerous than the hairs of an ox,” and "to be feared more than the fiercest tigers.” He proposes a concept called Wu Wei, which variably means non-action, non-intervention, without control, ungoverned, and more. Wu being similar to the prefix "a" (as in atheist) or the prefix "non" or "in" (as in inaction or noncompliance). Wei is similarly variable, meaning anything from action to control to govern. Rothbard even suggested that Lao Tzu was the first libertarian, and compared the concept of Wu Wei to the idea of spontaneous order. He also praised the later followers of Lao Tzu as similarly anarchistic. "The people are hungry: It is because those in authority eat up too much in taxes." "As restrictions and prohibitions are multiplied in the Empire, the people grow poorer and poorer. When the people are subjected to overmuch government, the land is thrown into confusion." "The greater the number of laws and enactments, the more thieves and robbers there will be." "The wise man says: 'So long as I do nothing, the people will work out their own reformation. So long as I love calm, the people will right themselves. If only I keep from meddling, the people will grow rich.'" This is the first post in a series I'd like to do here, reconciling other philosophies with the ethics of Objectivism and FreeDomain Radio. Namely volunterism (anarchy) and peaceful parenting. I find it interesting how many approaches, how many different ideologies and terminologies and vocabularies tend to coalesce on these fundamental ideas of human liberty. My next one will be a bit more difficult, as I am going to try and reconcile Islam with Peaceful Parenting. Anyone with any information, please share!"

I don't know about a specific video but he is pretty famous for being a ladies man.

I'll give him credit in the area he deserves the most: he might be the greatest flirt in history. He can talk women out of their panties like I've never seen.

Most people don't want freedom and the majority are addicted to some kind of violence and power. But why cater our goals to the lowest common denominator?

The motivations of the pope are irrelevant, if he has to sound more secular to maintain his power, it is a sign that PEOPLE are changing, and thats good news.

Yes, a large part of it is about manipulating language. Not unlike the libertarian examples, terms like firefighter over fireman is a refinement that is also more accurate and though fireman isn't a government euphemism, it is a term with implications inherited from a time when women couldn't participate in that job. As with the spanking example, euphemisms can be cultural. Post-modernism spends a large amount of time focused on those euphemisms (they often call them metaphors). We inheret a language with implicit values and changing them is a project to refine those assumptive values. Post-modernists do not spend time trying to redefine biological terms or chemistry or other hard sciences. They focus on cultural metaphors. Post-modernist Richard Rorty has a chapter in his book Truth, Contingency, and Solidarity about the former (Solidarity). He argues that people with cultural values that are bigoted, normative, etc. reduce solidarity. Without going into tons of detail, he compares how different european cities felt about Jews and how that translated during the Holocaust. In places where Jews were considered anything from insects to viruses to sorcerers (like Poland) they were not protected by their neighbors. In places without those connotations, like Holland, far more people were willing to hide Jews. Right, so spanking isn't a politically obfuscated term. It is culturally obfuscated. Post-modernists deal with this stuff often. Yes, gender is an abstract concept which can't be determined by observation, it is subjective. Objectivist often dismiss or struggle to explain cultural, subjective, linguistic or aesthetic concepts. Objectivism, for a less politically charged example, has very little to say about fashion. Rand did have something to say about architecture, but in general these are areas where Post-Modernists have really dominated. Alright I think we made some progress on this topic. I'd like to introduce another idea here: literary criticism. Literary criticism is a favorite amongst post-modernists. I think the best way it has been described as to "drill sideways". To examine a piece of literature from the perspective of another piece of literature. For example, a Marxist interpretation of Oliver Twist, or a Capitalist interpretation of the Wizard of Oz, or one I've seen here an Objectivist interpretation of Harry Potter. I know Stefan enjoys this stuff, he's done a few podcasts like the Truth about Frozen, etc. I think the post-modernists would be especially right to say that calling a literary interpretation "Truth" is fairly inaccurate and ironic. Now, if we can image a room filled with books. Each book contains its own metaphors, style, arguments, etc. Each tells its own story. Then we can take any of these books and think about any other book from the perspective of that first book. In other words, we can examine each book not head on, but by drilling at it sideways, taking the arguments or metaphors of one book and applying them to another. In many ways, this is how a post-modernist sees the truth. Each book is a self contained baby truth, a truism, or true with a lowercase t. We can refine our truths through comparing them to other truths. Similarly, post-modernists consider each human an author of their own book, called an artist or poet (Nietzsche or Derrida).

Yes, property rights means you're responsible for yourself, your actions, and the products of your actions. I don't get the question how or why though, I mean this is language its not like property rights exist in physical space, its a concept and thats what it means.

It is because they are paid to go to college. Any poor person in college can get funding, not just for school, but for housing and other costs as well. Most just have to pay it all back one day. Welcome to indentured servitude.

There is no proof of an afterlife, there is no proof of god. Thats just all there is to it. You can think there is an afterlife all day long, but anyone saying that it exist is lying to you, they certainly don't know it to be true.

Ah so for example, the above geometries are all wrong (or incomplete)? Is that what you mean? So help me understand this then. While certainly any empirical conclusion which is irrational is suspect, I see logic as self-contained. That is to say logic is not invalidated or validated by any sense data. Sense data, on the other hand, certainly needs to be processed using logic. We can't, for example, observe gravity and then conclude "mass always repels." So while both contribute to objective truth, they operate on different principles (or methods). Is this right? Well I'm into Objectivism, been here on this website a long time. I think that when it comes to technology and science there is nothing relevant in post-modernism. The circle I am trying to square is post-modernism and objectivism (I know, sounds impossible). Whats interesting about post-modernism is that it doesn't negate empiricism as a useful practice. Certainly the majority of post-modernists employ empiricism on a daily bases. I don't know if you saw a recent FDR video where Stef was making fun of the "argument by quantum theory" malarky we hear so often. He was saying that if you think quantum theory throws physics out the window, you might as well jump off a building and try to fly. Fundamentally, quantum physics doesn't negate actual physics, yet it is valuable regardless. Unlike physics, quantum physics attempts to explain sub-atomic phenomenon which seems to contradict basic physics. Similarly, and this is just an analogy not an argument, I think post-modernism is a school of thought full of extremely valuable tools which explain how our perception of reality forms within our mind regardless of how it actually 'is'. Let me repeat an above example to explain this point. There was an effort by people to stop using terms like 'Policeman' and 'Fireman', and instead replace them with gender/sex neutral terms like 'Fire Fighters' or 'Police Officers'. The goal is to change the value, not the meaning, of those words. The idea being that by changing it we don't automatically assign the profession to a specific sex. This is a small example of deconstructionism. We libertarians attempt to do the same thing as well, they create their entire own vocabulary and change the value of specific terms: taxes, government, statism, etc. Taxes are theft, government is violence, statism is a religion. Now, I don't want to debate my motives, but if you're curious I can explain it simply. It is naive to think libertarianism/objectivism is appealing to the majority of the planet. The world contains, for example, 1.6 billion muslims completely uninterested in free markets (as the Koran encourages the mosque to set prices, welfare, etc). The world contains a vast number of secular, relativists, as well. While objectivism has been an epic tool for developing ethical principles that I value greatly, it is unappealing to many people. Secularists tend to fear anything objective since that sounds religious to them, and religious people already have their own goofy objective arguments. I think squaring the principles of free markets, volunteerism, and most importantly peaceful parenting with other ideologies is a useful approach to changing the world. And since this is a field of philosophy I'm fairly well versed in, I thought I'd give it a shot.

The distinction is formal history, the history of human beings, as opposed to the history of physical objects. One is based on scientific deduction and observation, the other is based on something akin to literary criticism, which is reviewing documents and scatterings of evidence which remain and interpreting that information. This is why historic (human history) claims are not, or are rarely, objective. We might be able to say that this or that Roman lived and cooberate some information about those actions, but our scope is limited to the historians and writers of the time and the occasional physical evidence that comes out of anthropology.

I was "taught" by my parents, maybe we went out a handful of times, they were extremely anxious and insulting and then just let me out into the world. My first few years as a driver were a disaster! I crashed my car parking, driving, etc, several times. I total'd my car twice. There is a sincere danger to bad education when it comes to driving. It wasn't until I was around 18 that the frequency of mistakes became so overwhelming that I finally had to really teach myself to drive. Though a young girl did whack my car a couple years ago, I've avoided causing any accidents since then. Firstly, go somewhere where there is no hazard, like an empty parking lot, and just go wild. Set up cones if you have them. Really learn how to control your car, what happens when you take certain turns, etc. Then you need a philosophy. For me my driving philosophy includes things like 1. don't hesitate, better to make the wrong choice than no choice 2. be comfortable with missing a turn off and just going back to it, no reason to ever cut across traffic or make sudden hard turns just to get the right street, you can always go back 3. follow the rules of the road, don't 'wave' people on 4. Don't trust other drivers, assume they're all suicidal maniacs trying to get you killed and avoid driving side by side with them, or trusting someone else who 'waves' you on. I was once waved on by a woman while making left from a stop sign on a small street to a larger one, and I couldn't see behind her car. When I went out into the street, a car in the lane next to hers whacked into me. 5. Don't go faster than you're comfortable with, and ignore anyone honking at you for going too slow, they can suck a butt 6. 'Measure twice, cut once' applies to making turns at an intersection as well as it does in carpentry

Let me be clear, these are not my terms. Axioms are common within math and philosophy. Praxeology is an axiomatic approach to economics, for example. They are self evident because of their definition. 1+1=2, for example, strictly by definition of 1, +, =, and 2 in mathematical nomenclature. One does not need to count apples, repeatedly, collect data and validate a hypothesis to prove that 1+1=2. None of these terms necessarily relate to physical or phenomenal objects, though they can of course be applied to physical objects.

When I say it is the same definition, it is akin to an atheist talking about 'god,' he means the same thing but doesn't believe it. But I understand your point. The principles of empiricism are the scientific method, sensory experience, evidence, etc. Then within different sciences there are more principles: Archimedes principle, principle of binominal nomenclature, anthropic principle, principle of relativity, uncertainty principle, cosmological principle, etc. Freud even authored one called the pleasure principle. Science even has principles on the roll of the observer. Physics is full of principles. Now, I've seen the argument that logic is a type of observation, but I have to be honest that I don't really understand the argument. In the quote by Rand, does she go on to prove the argument that logic doesn't exist apart from experience? When contemplating a simple math problem in your head, are you using observation of the phenomenal world to prove or falsify the information?

Liberty has made odd strides under dictatorships. King John of England was a dictator (king) that signed the Magna Carta, the first real constitution in the world. George Washington had an opportunity to take complete power. Cromwell also comes to mind. Franco. These aren't truly benevolent human beings, thats for certain, they all have a death count. They did however serve historically to unite and liberate people. I think George Tenet had a better grasp on how to deal with Afghanistan than anyone who subsequently became responsible. I read the army's manual on counter-terrorism and it contains some very brilliant and insightful military strategy about how to combat insurgencies. Afghanistan, in its early months, was conquered with less than 20,000 feet on the ground and limited military engagement. But... they weren't running up high enough bills for the private contractors and that had to go. Some gems out of the field manual include 'Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction' and 'Sometimes, the more force is used, the less effective it is.' So ignorance isn't an excuse. The application in Iraq was especially poor, but even in Afghanistan the adopted strategy of the insurgents became going dormant and waiting, knowing eventually the Americans would leave behind a poorly funded under resourced puppet government, and they could seize control again. Now that America has withdrawn the combat troops the Afghan interpretors who worked with them are being hunted down and slaughtered.

Yeah I can see that. The thesis is called the Coherence Theory, and it states that things are true when they are coherent within a set of principles. It is in contrast to the Objectivist counterpart called the Correspondence Theory of Truth, which states things are true based on their correspondence with reality. I'm not changing the definition of reality, only that within this model of truth there is not considered to be a tangible or objective reality, so the quotes are there to imply that it is fictional or conceptual, but the meaning is the same. In post-modernism reality is considered to be conceptual, bound by our experiences, language, etc. and incapable of being observed objectively. Sartre explained it this way, "Existence precedes and rules essence." In other words, perception (existence) defines what we consider reality (essence). Empiricism is a set of principles comprising a theory that knowledge is obtained through observation. Einstein said, "It is the theory that describes what we can observe." We don't consider Empiricism to be the only mode of truth, which brings me back to some of the above examples of Geometry. The principles of geometry are axiomatic, as is math and logic. Truth is not deduced through observation, but self-evident truths called axioms and the extension of their logical implications. Even within objectivism there is considered to be two separate modes of acquiring the truth, reason and science (logic and empiricism).