Kevin Beal

According to the Raven's Progressive Matrices test (spatial IQ), I have perfect intelligence (perfect score, booyah!) But so did, like, 5% of people who took that version of the test, so... According to more standard IQ tests, it was more like 120-140. And so, I'll choose the higher end of the measurement, just like I do with my height and penis size I'm curious why the european scale had you (Robin) at a higher IQ level. If 100 is the average, does that mean that the average intelligence is lower in Europe? That would be strange considering some of the folk we've got here in the states who literally can't tie their shoes, haha.

This thread is like the 4th or 5th about this exact response. Stef has stated multiple times that he doesn't want just any audience, and has put out material that swarms of people have used as their "that's it, I'm out! Stef, you've changed, man!" It's always characterized also as Stef failing to meet someone's expectations, without argument, just betrayal, disappointment, etc. Well, not always, but that's a common response. And it's always on issues that seem to me to be totally benign. Perhaps it's a failing of mine to understand, but I wonder if something deeper is happening when people do this. Stef is just a person, and is wrong about things just like the rest of us, but people don't usually feel betrayed by me when I say something they take issue with. What, am I not good enough for your offense?! Haha. So, why is that? Well, probably because it's not Stef you're talking about at all. Is it not a betrayal of rationality and integrity to simply say how offended you are about something without providing rational argument? What was the argument specifically and how is it wrong? If you can't even answer that, then I don't understand how we're talking about anything but some subjective experience that you had, which is anti-philosophical when you frame it as righteous moral outrage. Why should Stef care that you are offended? What are you? His wife? "I'm offended, you should change" is gross.

I decided to make a video about forgiveness after an exchange I had online with some people. They advanced the position you might have guessed: forgive or else you will become a miserable and bitter person. These are my thoughts on this issue, why I strongly disagree. Forgiveness Introduction I was listening to this guy on YouTube named SpartanLifeCoach who’s this life coach who talks a lot about narcissism and things like that. He puts out some interesting videos and would recommend his channel if that’s your bag, but he had this video on black sheeps in the family system and why narcissistic parents would want to make one of the children a black sheep. It’s interesting and I won’t repeat his argument here, but there was one thing that he said, and he probably didn’t mean it in the way that I took it, but he said that you can forgive them for just how sad and petty it is to single out that person in the family like that. But it got me thinking about forgiveness and I made a case in his comment thread as to why you wouldn’t want to forgive them, and arguing that it’s actually a terrible thing to forgive unrepentant and toxic people for harm they’ve done you. I got some really interesting responses that I think are worth telling you about. The primary thing that I got back was an argument that goes something like this: Bitterness is forgiveness withheld, and bitterness infects you like a virus and will eventually erode your body and mind into a hollowed out person. You’ve probably heard it before. It’s this false dilemma: either you forgive people or you become as bad or worse than them. I think this is a really interesting argument that I want to spend some time exploring. What is Forgiveness? I was told that I ought to forgive my parents, and then I will find that freeing. One person called it “letting go”. I’ve always hated that phrase, precisely because of this argument. A couple of people claimed that it gave them a feeling of relief. It’s propped up as if it’s the mature thing to do. It’s supposed to be like this petty thing that only someone with some displaced issues would do, to “hold a grudge”. I’m unconvinced. One reason that I’m unconvinced is because people seem to think that forgiveness is chosen. Forgiveness is not the words “I forgive you”. Forgiveness is a feeling preceded by a judgment about another person, in the same way that I cannot choose to admire someone. I either do or I don’t. It’s my judgment about the other person’s actions, their virtue that provokes any feelings of love, admiration, respect, or forgiveness. The actions that cause in me feelings of forgiveness are acts of restitution. Without someone actually doing something to earn my forgiveness, what does forgiveness really mean? You might argue then that “okay, you can’t choose the feeling, but you can change your judgment about a situation, thereby creating forgiveness within you”. A judgment is your beliefs and your values. What do you believe about a situation and how does it line up with your values? That’s what judgment is. If you can change that, then you can provoke forgiveness. And this is really what people mean when they say they chose to forgive a toxic person. They come up with some kind of excuse or rationalization. “Well, they had an even worse childhood” or “they didn’t know any better”, things that don’t actually matter. Even if it’s an accident, you still have to apologize and make restitution. If I run over your dog, I don’t just get to say “hey, it was an accident, get over it!” And I don’t know about you, but when I’m trying to have rational values, and true beliefs about the world, I don’t start with a desired effect and then make my beliefs and values fit with that. I don’t think that’s very honest. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it’s enabling and you are becoming complicit in something terrible. Hatred One person characterized me as “stewing in hatred” and that I will be in misery while they escape from misery with their magic spell that they call “forgiveness”. Personally, I don’t understand why there would be anything wrong with feeling an emotion. If I feel hatred, it makes little sense to me to make me out to be wrong or bad because of it. But there is something about hatred specifically that is self-propagating. These people could have chosen any sort of angry emotion, like contempt or indignation or aggravation, but they chose hatred. I don’t think that hatred is the only logical response to toxic people harming you, but hatred is an interesting emotion. It’s very different from contempt, for example. Contempt includes in it a feeling of repulsion. I don’t want to be anywhere near people that I feel contempt for. But hatred is different. When I feel hatred, I want to get revenge and fuck up their shit. I want to punish the people I hate. You could say that hatred attracts you to the person you hate. When I realize that I feel hatred for someone, I become skeptical, because I’m an adult and I don’t have to associate with toxic people if I don’t want to and consciously I tell myself that I don’t want to, so the attraction in hatred seems to be in opposition to my values. So, why would anyone ever feel hatred? Where does hatred make sense? I think hatred makes sense when you can’t really get away from the person you hate. I think hatred makes sense for slaves, and I think it makes sense for children with the people in their lives who they are forced to associate with, from bad parents to bad teachers. They can enact at least some form of vengeance and keep from falling into despair. And hopefully the vengeance, whatever it is, stops that person from ever fucking with you again. And because I am not a child anymore, if I feel hatred, I wonder if the hatred I feel has been displaced and it’s not being directed at the appropriate target. There were definitely times in my life where hatred made sense for me. So what then instead of hatred? I think the answer is contempt. Not that you can choose to feel one versus the other. I think rather it comes out of self discovery, “where exactly is the hatred coming from?” Contempt for toxic people is feeling compassion for their victims. Somebody who beats children provokes in me a bottomless contempt. And the repulsion for people who do that makes me that much more repulsed by any part of myself which would feel tempted to harm a child. Contempt breaks the cycle! Changing the beliefs and values you hold to assuage toxic people’s guilty consciences, is not breaking the cycle. What you excuse in other people, you excuse also for yourself. Conclusion So what about people who don’t or can’t make restitution for the harm they did to you? That’s their problem, not yours. Your integrity is worth a hell of a lot more than their comfort. It is sad, it’s very disappointing, but you are not in any way obligated to make them feel better for the bad decisions that they made. If you are going to make sacrifices for people in your life, if you choose to do that, at least have it be for people that actually deserve it. What is your life worth?

This is totally nitpicking on my part, and I apologize, but it's not empirical. It's actually a priori that we know that no gods exist. The only empirical consideration that can be made is that no evidence has ever been presented. It's by evaluation of the definitions of "god" that we (rightly) make this determination, since it contains within it mutually exclusive propositions, is like a square circle, or an object that falls up and down simultaneously from the same perspective. I became a nihilist, and I didn't grow up with religion. My little sister, similarly, is a moral relativist and was never raised with religion. But there are other reasons for that which we don't have to go into.

No, it doesn't necessarily follow. But if we accept that getting eyes on the content is at least partially causal in spreading the content itself, then it's not irrelevant. It's not like some completely trivial fluff nonsense. I don't know what is best for promoting freedom in the world. All I know is what I can do in my own life, to varying degrees of success. If you have a superior way, or an actual logical argument that says that he shouldn't focus so much on the call in shows, then do that or make that case. I don't really care about what people say, I care about reason and evidence. The quotations you posted are wrong if you accept that What is Art?, Democricide, the recent gay marriage and abortion podcasts had new and interesting content. If that's true, then obviously it takes precedence over what some random people said about the show. If the call in shows fail to attract new listeners then I'm curious to hear the argument for that. It seems like a stretch if they are the most downloaded. You'd think that a show downloaded a larger number of times would be heard by a wider variety of people, unless the core listenership only really listens to the call in shows and not the other content, which I doubt, but who knows?

I also prefer the standalone content, myself. Whatever that's worth. Mike mentioned that the most downloaded content is the call in show. (I don't know if that's minutes listened, or view counts). And Stef mentions often that he wants the show to be market focused, be about the topics people are most interested in. It makes logical sense that they would then do that, especially since the whole point of the show is to talk about topics raised by the listeners. Stef has argued multiple times that he wants for people to be free in their personal lives, and not focus so much on wider abstract issues, since we can't change the FED or stop people from wanting to vote. To that end he's focused a lot of energy on personal issues, creating connection, self knowledge, and things that people can actually do something about. The call in show serves that purpose, but so can other podcasts he puts out. The call in shows are often about explaining concepts which I'm already familiar with listening to past shows, and it can be good to get another application of the principle or just a reminder, but I revisit old podcasts when I'm looking for that. But most people haven't listened to as many podcasts as I have, are not as familiar with the first principles that were demonstrated earlier in the stream. I'm sure that if I called in with an advanced topic, it would be appreciated and make for interesting conversation, but what most people want to talk about is more fundamental. Which is obviously of a lot of value to people since so many people are downloading those shows. If it's a matter of what you like, there are a crap ton of podcasts that aren't call in shows that I'm sure you haven't listened to yet that are calling your name. If it's a matter of advancing freedom in this world, then maybe what I've said above will be helpful in understanding where they are coming from at least. UPB is not deontology or argumentation ethics. It is a priori, but that's about the only common element. The What is Art? series was all new stuff to me, very interesting and relevant in my own life. Decmocricide had some new arguments against democracy that I'd never heard before. The recent gay marriage podcast, same. The recent abortion podcast, same. I'm not sure that the people complaining about new content are really paying very close attention. I haven't observed that myself (outside the call in shows, as I mentioned). It just sounds like mindless hating to me. Let the haters hate.

I'm sorry you feel that way. I disagree with your assessment, but you are certainly free to elaborate. Specifically, I don't know what you mean by "controversial", "furthering", "productive" or "respectful". It seems that you and I have different ideas about what those words mean. The problem may simply be that these are adjectives which don't explain the actual facts as they are, and more describe your judgment about them. Which doesn't actually further the conversation, which was your complaint, but again, this may be because of our different understanding of those words. I appreciate your concern. I just wish that I had something specific or principled that I could take away from your criticism. All I really know so far as that you didn't like it, which is fine. It's just that, ideally, when criticizing people, you give them something to use, something they can apply. And by that, I mean along the lines of what this post here is about, about the adjectives, the imprecise language, the purpose of criticism, etc. Hope that makes sense. Take care!

Who did it sound like? Are you familiar with the concept of the Mecosystem? Philosopher Kings have premium content specifically about this topic which I find absolutely fascinating. (It used to be available to bronze donators, hmm...). There's also a lot of podcasts in the general stream about it, but which don't go too deep into the theory. I talk about my own experience of it here, and here.

I'm very glad I'm very curious what the process is like for you, if you felt like sharing. I recorded a video where I talk a bit more about it, if you're interested.

The second most common form of female genital mutilation (FGM) after the clitorectomy is the hoodectomy, which removes the clitoral hood. Both the hoodectomy and labiaplasty (reduction of the labia minora) are performed cosmetically. The first is often to increase stimulation of the clitoris and the second because a lot of people don't like large labias (e.x. "beef curtains"). I couldn't find statistics about frequency, but whenever FGM is performed electively, it's almost always cosmetic. When it's not elective, it's done for "religious reasons" (a.k.a. sadism).

I give most people a gentle and sincere smile when we make eye contact, and then I try and make them laugh if that smile has the intended effect of relaxing them. This was one of those instances, except we never really made eye contact in the first place.

Any therapy you do, by yourself or with a professional, should be self directed as much as possible, so I think you've got the right attitude, whatever that's worth to you. But, I found that I was going crazy on my own trying to find confidence in what I was doing. A good therapist will help you see yourself. Nobody I knew was doing anything like that, and I was becoming aware that my entire approach to the health of my own psychology was totally backwards. I was questioning everything, and needed somebody who knew what they were doing to help me out and make sure I'm not walking in the wrong direction. I can appreciate your hesitancy to do psychoanalysis, and indeed there is some mysticism, bullshit sprinkled throughout a lot of it. I can only speak for my own experience, but I found it incredibly valuable, even the stuff that I was very skeptical about, like dream analysis. (I went twice a week for almost 4 years). My therapist would occasionally advance a postmodern, moral relativist or otherwise false position and I told her, with some anxiety, just how much I didn't want hear it (e.x. "collective unconscious"). Working with her on that was, in itself, therapeutic because I was able to work through all the anxiety I had around being "inconvenient" in that way, and asserting those kinds of boundaries. Even with the occasional mysticism, it was well worth the money and the time for me. I think that you have to train your therapist in some ways. Ideally, your relationship with the therapist grows and changes and becomes of increasing utility to you. In letting her know when she pissed me off, or said something which I thought she was absolutely wrong about, our talking about it, negotiating and exploring the difficulty in having those kinds of conversations, that made the therapy I was doing much more valuable and interesting to me. It probably depends also on your personality. Some people probably can do therapy without a therapist to guide them, without much problem. If you are getting what you need without it, then I'm not going to argue with you. That just wasn't me. I needed somebody to hold my hand for a while. And you could always try it and then quit if you don't find it valuable. There is good reason to consider talk therapy, though. Not all of it is mysticism: FDR1517 The Benefits of Therapy - An Interview with Chris Boyce, University of Warwick http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1517_interview_chris_boyce_32_x_happiness.mp3 FDR1524 Mapping the Effects of Talk Therapy on the Brain' - Dr Gabriel Dichter http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1524_mapping_therapy_dr_dichter_interview.mp3

I'm not sure I understand why this statement is even necessary. I don't see what it explains or adds, unless it's some kind of leveling. But the rephrasing is not trivial. If I've correctly parsed your question, it's a loaded one. Like asking if people think things should be built on truth, or whether or not they want things built upon lies. Further, if my interpretation of your question is correct, then why ask it? It's obviously true that nothing logical can be built on lies. You don't need to ask people to confirm. You were correct the first time: I do not think effects are a valid basis for morality. I'm just saying that it's easier to talk about economics with a person who accepts that free markets are better for the world, even though the praxeological basis is not an argument from effect, but from principle. The question "would you rather..." is not a philosophical question. It's a question of preference. But I get your point that it's not actual morality if there is no methodology (beyond "god said so"). I don't know, but I was under the impression that he was talking about moral conclusions rather than a rational methodology for evaluating moral arguments. But he's done both plenty of times. He called into Michael Badnarik's call in show to discuss UPB with Michael's largely christian audience: FDR1140 UPB - Stefan on the Michael Badnarik Show Part 1 http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1140_20080903_Wed_Badnarik1.mp3 FDR1140 UPB - Stefan on the Michael Badnarik Show Part 2 http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1141_20080903_Wed_Badnarik2.mp3

I'm having a hard time parsing your question. By "create the possibility of moral choice", do you mean to say: form a logical basis for moral arguments? If so, the question can be rephrased to ask if lies can form the logical basis of a thing, which is obviously false. "Because an all powerful deity said so" is obviously no basis for moral theories, and it's hard to say that religious people are truly acting morally if it's out of fear of hell, or to gain access to heaven. That is, if it's not principled, then is it really morality? I would say that hell no, it's not. (Pun not intended). Even still, I would be infinitely more inclined to talk about morality with a religious person than with a nihilist. Nihilists of any variety make me feel like I'm slowly dying when I try and talk some sense with them. If there were a hell, it would be arguing ethics to a nihilist. (Or consciousness to a Functionalist, or naive realism to an advocate of idealism). Obviously, not all atheists are nihilists, but a crap ton of them are. They may not know that's what it's called, or be in denial, referring to it as something like "moral relativism", "personal morality", or whatever other horse shit they tell themselves. Religious people may be totally messed up on the methodology, but at least they have some sense of the effects of morality. Nihilists aren't wrong, they are a virus.

Thanks! I really appreciate that

That's kinda funny since my original design was a dark one very similar to yours

Oppression is a description of the state of affairs in the world, and not a description of the subjective emotional experience that oppression provokes, such as helplessness, anger, etc. It does clarify. Thank you. It could be that I've totally misunderstood, and I can appreciate the complex nature of such a feeling, but I'd like to propose an alternative description, just in case. If, as some have suggested, emotion's purpose is to cause you to act given your judgment of a situation, it would follow that if two very different emotions like helplessness and anger would not occur simultaneously, since they would cause you to act in mutually exclusive ways, or paralyze you. The bittersweet feeling that I sometimes get when I'm grieving is a combination of the grief and a joy I have about connecting with that grief, but technically, the two feelings of grief and joy don't happen simultaneously. First I feel the grief and then the joy comes in, and I may go back and forth between the two as new thoughts come up about it. So why would there be a feeling of singularity between the anger, frustration and helplessness, worthy of a name to describe this mixture? (Like the word "bittersweet", maybe?) What this reminds me of is sadism. For me, that one event, whenever I see it, quickly warrants certain and familiar judgments I have based on my experience of it and those judgments are something like: 1. Someone is intentionally harming my interests or those of someone I care about. 2. I have a desire to act to stop them, but I can't figure out how, or do it quickly enough. 3. I will be unable to convince them that what they are doing is bad and that they should not do it (or if I can it will be at too great a cost). 1 elicits my anger. 2, my frustration and 3, my helplessness. Whatever we have significant experience with gets those pathways in the brain reinforced, and whatever we don't experience that much gets weakened pathways. And since conscious states are realized in the brain, certain clusters of judgments and emotional states will be "linked" together. Some patterns are so involved and heavily reinforced that they result in dissociative personalities. Your mind/brain, probably like mine, has benefitted from having those things grouped together. Just my thoughts. Maybe they don't apply here. Contempt is a complex emotion that can be described as a combination of other emotions, so maybe the same rule applies here as well, but we don't yet have a name for it.

I don't know if there is enough information to tell exactly what that emotions is. Maybe if you described the events it might be clearer. Contempt is a kind of anger that is mixed with repulsion or even horror, usually as a result of witnessing immorality. It's designed to get you away from injustice. Feeling contempt for victimizers is feeling compassion for the victims. Hatred is a lot like contempt, except that you don't feel repulsion so much as you do a desire to fight back and fuck their shit up. It's a lot like rage in that way, except that hatred is usually not as intense or immediate. Wanting to smash people's heads in who are unbelievable assholes is more hatred than contempt. I'm not sure about the helplessness though. Maybe it's overwhelming just how unjust or repulsive it is? Maybe you are simultaneously empathizing with the victims of the injustice who are themselves feeling helpless? Is it a single feeling? Often, we have a variety of perspectives that we hold simultaneously about an event, and each of those perspectives presents a different emotional state. I'm not an expert, but I think that it's a one to one relationship between perspective and emotional state. If two emotional states are present, I assume that means there are two different thoughts that you have about the situation. I may feel anger, frustration and grief simultaneously about the way someone talks to me, but these can be broken down into different thoughts that I have about that interaction. I am angry about that person's desire to humiliate me, frustrated by knowing it's meant to antagonize and knowing that I will only satisfy that by expressing that anger, and grief when I think about the times in my life that I've been attacked in that way before.

Hi Matt! Welcome to the boards What was your journey like to anarchism/atheism? Was it dragging you kicking and screaming toward the truth, or was it more of a lighthouse in the storm?

If someone takes out my eyes and I learn to adapt and gain crazy good hearing, I don't thank the person who plucked out my eyes.

That's too logical to be true

Welcome to the boards! I'm very interested to hear more about your ideas concerning DRO's, and also I'm interested in the philosophy of mind and what you have to say about it. I only heard that term and started looking into it last year. The philosophy in this show is a lot more to do with ethics and epistemology so it's not often that philosophy of mind comes up on the forums. Are you familiar with John R Searle? You are free to talk about anything philosophy on the boards (with only very rare exceptions) and there is a lot of philosophical and moral concerns surrounding men's issues, and there is a sub forum devoted to that topic on the boards here, so go right ahead. That's what it's for.

That's really interesting. Why does the fakeness and/or lack of originality cause that strong a reaction in you? Not that it makes you weird or wrong or anything like that, but obviously, many people don't have the same reaction. (Maybe you have terrific reason not to celebrate). I do sometimes dread birthdays and other obligatory celebrations, especially if it's with people that I don't have much of a relationship with. I'm fond of my coworkers, for example. I think they are nice and funny people generally, but I don't like making chit chat, polite conversation for more than 5 minutes. And the more I feel like that's what I am going to have to do, the more I dread it. I hate small talk with a passion and a repulsion. I do however like creating rituals of my own. I like my journaling ritual, my morning ritual where I settle in at work, the ways I celebrate my own birthday (by myself). I think ritualizing things makes them more real in a sense. People celebrate holidays for a reason, obviously. In my opinion, that reason is that they want to reinforce something. If it's reinforcing things which are repulsive, like the pretense at a relationship where there actually is none, then I don't want to participate in that. But if I make my own birthdays about self reflection, my goals, self care, etc., then I'm reinforcing something very particular. I'm honoring my values, goals, achievements. In my journaling ritual, I'm trying to reinforce a sense of self. In my morning ritual at work, I'm trying to reinforce preparedness, focus and being present. These rituals prime me for a particular conscious state. So, that's where I'm coming from, but perhaps there is a better word than "ritual" to distinguish between the two cases.

Hi Brad! Welcome to the boards Why do you think you were as receptive as you were to the message in the video? Most people, it seems, can't let go of the propaganda.

And this post here is something other than pseudo intellectual snobbery? Do I understand that correctly? Apparently, you are so superior to your detractors that you can simply claim that they are uncivil, unintelligent, are mindless party liners, have no social life and their opinions are idiotic, and that's it, it's established. It's hard to imagine something more deserving of the label "pseudo-intellectual snobbery". My eyes have rolled so far back into my head that I can see my prefrontal cortex turning green, ill, while I try to comprehend your response, haha. Oh, please. Who are you trying to convince?