Kevin Beal

Psychotherapy is to mental health what physical therapy is to physical health. Nobody "needs" therapy per se, just like they don't "need" physical therapy (I really dislike the word "need"), it just makes healing much easier. If you have deficiencies in mental health (as we all do to a certain degree), and you don't have the knowledge, awareness, motivation or tools to heal yourself (as very few of us do), then you should consider seeing a therapist. Depression, anxiety, poor or fragile self esteem, etc. are symptoms of poor mental health. If you experience those enough that they interfere with your ability to get what you want out of life, to the degree that is true is the degree to which you should go interview therapists. Certain bad mental health habits contribute to depression, anxiety, poor self esteem, etc. that you'd be working on in therapy. In order to work on these bad habits, false core beliefs, maladaptive behavior, etc. you may have to: explore how these habits formed originally, like in childhood do some kind of exposure therapy by pushing past your comfort zone examining how it is exactly you think about yourself and the world ------------------- Whether or not it's worth the money is only something you can determine. It was definitely worth it for me. In this post, I write about how to be efficient in finding a good therapist who will be worth the money, in my own opinion. ------------------- This podcast is an interview with a researcher who looked into the effectiveness of therapy, defining success and making a case for going:

There's a podcast on this very topic called FDR1927 How to Find a Great Therapist! Fellow board member Max Tsymbalau wrote an article about this too. I have some thoughts on this myself, having had a very successful therapy experience. I'll just assume for brevity's sake that you are dealing with some of the same sorts of issues that I was dealing with, and because they're pretty common (poor self esteem, depression, anxiety, aimlessness, self doubt, etc). ------------- Trust is #1 The research seems to show that the school of therapy a therapist comes from is not a very important consideration when compared to the relationship you have with the therapist. It's really important that you are able to establish a lot of trust with the therapist. Reconnecting with long denied or emerging aspects of yourself is really difficult work and you don't want to have doubts about your therapist's motives or competence because that is going to pull you farther away from yourself. When we develop relationships with people, we internalize aspects of their personality and we anticipate what they will say or do. If they demonstrate a desire for you not to be your authentic self in any way, you will become less of your authentic self when you're around them, without even thinking about it. You don't want that with your therapist. That's especially difficult if that's something you experienced when you were younger and it had a negative impact on your life. Be Fearless Ask for what you want, be ready to say what you don't like, express skepticism if it's there. You are paying them, and if you aren't satisfied with their service, then you need to say so. And even more than that, this is the best way to establish trust in the relationship. As you learn to have productive, healthy disagreements and practice this kind of assertiveness, you will either build a ton of trust really quickly and get the most for your money, or you will find out quickly that you can't trust them and go interview other therapists. Obviously, the therapist has more experience with working on mental health, and you wouldn't be there if they weren't an authority on the subject, but if you don't understand why they say or suggest what they do, you're not going to learn how to be your own therapist nearly as quickly. Don't be a jerk, obviously, but be curious and get the knowledge you need to make therapy work for you. Be Self Directed Some people seem to think that if they go into therapy, they get some kind of points that they can redeem for self knowledge and happiness. Simply showing up means nothing; you've gotta take yourself and your future happiness seriously. (You develop this quality over time with the help of your therapist). It serves as a constant reminder that you are worth the effort, that the quality of your life is important. Your unconscious will pick up on this and lend you creativity and insight. It keeps therapy interesting and useful because you have more skin in the game. Also, your therapist will appreciate it because you'll be clearer on what you want and what is/isn't working for you. You are doing and not just absorbing. People who just receive insight and don't put principles to work in their own lives don't grow. Actions speak, words only kind of do, sometimes. Your unconscious will take your actions more seriously than your words too. You will be more goal oriented. Having some kind of measure of success and being mindful of whether or not you achieve it will improve your self esteem. Having a sense of control over your life is extremely important for self esteem. Beware Therapists have their own issues and may f*ck up in whatever way in the relationship. If talking about it increases the level of trust, and it humanizes them in your mind, then that's exactly what you want. If they don't own up to their mistakes, then that's something which will fester and reduce the level of trust in the therapeutic relationship. You may develop romantic feelings for your therapist. This is actually pretty common and it's called "romantic transference". For a lot of people, therapy is the first place where we experience deep levels of emotional intimacy and that can be confusing or awkward. Just know that you aren't alone. Be fearless and talk about it with your therapist because it's sure to develop trust. There are a lot of bad therapists out there. Trust your gut. If you only grow more doubtful as you try to establish trust, then that is probably because the therapist isn't a good one. There are a lot of therapists out there who have processed very little of the reasons they were drawn to the profession in the first place, and are there to reenact some past relationship in their heads with you as their emotionally absent or narcissistic father. Some therapists may want to keep you there to make money. So, being self directed as possible guards against this. If you suspect this may be happening, or are concerned with how long it's taking, definitely, absolutely bring that up with them! You will have trouble bringing things up. Do it anyway. If it's important for trust in the relationship or important for your future health and happiness, then you owe yourself that. ------------- If you want to talk about childhood stuff, then that's a perfect interview question! You are paying them, so the topic is largely up to you. If you want to achieve closure about childhood grief/trauma, then that's a perfectly respectable and reasonable thing to ask for. It helped me a great deal to talk about it, if only to de-stigmatize it and see if I was crazy for feeling the way I did, or think what I do about it. The best thing you can do at this stage is trust your gut. There are too many things that could be interpreted either way given a certain context. They may say that talking about childhood is not helpful for you at this time, and that may be true or it may be cowardice on their part; it depends. I suggest preparing a bunch of questions for the interview and paying close attention to how you feel when they respond. Here are a few questions that I asked: How do you feel about the prospect of me vomiting up a lot of grief and anxiety all at once in the conversation? Is there a place for breaking contact with family members, esp. parents? Have you had much success counseling people with depression and anxiety? How do you determine success? etc.

What do you think about making the arguments contained in it? Certainly, it would be a more persuasive way of getting people to read a book – by giving people a taste of the reward they will get by reading it. At first glance, it appears that you think the old testament provides a good model for how one ought to live their lives, so I'm inclined not to invest time and money into something which has a good chance of being nonsense; not without more than you saying so. Presumably, you want people to talk about the ideas contained in the book if you are bringing it up, so help us out here.

Perhaps you could do us the courtesy of making an argument presented in the book? I don't really have any reason to read it beyond the claim that it supports your conclusion about tradition and religion, but you also say other things which, on the surface, appear to be crazy, so I don't have much incentive to do a bunch of reading in order to have a conversation.

You're a troll. You're baiting people with this sentence.

Yes, I think that's part of it. I've known women who were in stable relationships to try and tell me that I'm sexist, but they are the minority of women, to be sure. Most women are very uncritical of the things I say about men and women (I don't know how much of that is simply my boundless charisma). A huge part of male identity is wrapped up in his worth to women. If a man is not confident about the value he can bring women, maybe because he's not in a happy relationship, he will try to reassure himself in some way, often by being a soulless white knight and/or mangina. Guys who feel desired and loved by women for just being themselves know how important their masculinity is to women and wouldn't delude themselves with such pathetic castrating nonsense. I am skeptical that this actually increases his chances of finding a mate. I can't imagine how women could find that valuable in a man to disown large parts of his own masculinity. Feminists hate nice guys who prove just how much they want a dominant man by being so unattractive to them.

http://www.meetup.com/topics/freedomain-radio/

YAD Principle - Short for "You're A Dick", the YAD principle is a method of cutting through grey areas in ethics. Is it immoral to buy up all the land around a village, build a moat and charge the villagers to cross? (It is his property, after all). We don't need to go into all of the many considerations that could be made because the YAD principle makes short work of this ethical conundrum: the moat guy is a dick.

No, it's not. (More below). That's because the position is nonsensical. Only people like Daniel Dennett, who have lost their minds and don't believe consciousness exists can say such things with a straight face. That would be a religious or dualist conception of free will. Ironically, materialists are a kind of dualist, it's just that materialists try and do away with subjectivity (e.x. determinism, epiphenomenalism, functionalism, behaviorism, etc.), rather than integrate it into a broader philosophical framework. That's not the position of Ayn, Stef and other more modern philosophers who accept free will. They just say it's a function of an emergent phenomena in the brain and is no more magical than the liquidity of water. It's just a biological phenomenon like photosynthesis, digestion, etc. The confusion comes mostly out of an equivocation of unlike things. First is a "deterministic universe" and the actual determinist position. When people say "deterministic universe" they mean a rational universe in which causal relationships between objects can be modeled and predicted. The determinist position is not that, because if it was, it would make no comment on free will. Free will doesn't require an irrational universe. The determinist position is that free will is an illusion and other causal forces fully account for our behavior.

An "event" is a model. It's not a thing in reality. When we talk about causes and effects, we are describing the properties and functions of objects. "Event" and "causation" are not scientific concepts but philosophical ones. An "event" could be me deciding something using my free will. I am the object and I have a function called "volitional consciousness". What free will is "free" of is determinism. Determinism is the proposition that our subjective experience of choosing our behavior is an illusion. In other words, our behavior is as determined as a purely instinct driven animal. (Determinism is not "causes have effects" because that equally describes the free will position).

Conscious agents with free will cannot violate the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, etc., nor would that be required of the free will position.

If the global warming reference wasn't clear, it's because Bill Nye recently said that global warming was the primary cause of terrorism in Paris.

No

I don't think that logic is separate from reality, and evidence clearly trumps internally consistent logic. I'm just saying that you focus on the logic first because if the logic is wrong, then evidence doesn't matter. Evidence doesn't make errors in logic magically become not-errors. If you say or suggest that there are errors in UPB but don't elaborate on what they are, and resist elaborating, and make me out to be presumptive or entitled to your time and effort for asking for elaboration, then there just aren't any errors. You are making it up. It's not reasonable to ask me to reread UPB with all your adjectives and vague implications in mind simply to verify your assertions. I guarantee I've read it many more times than you have, remember the quotations you provided in context and have a far deeper understanding of the theory than you do. I could be wrong and you could be right, but without providing arguments, I'm just not going to do your work for you. But clearly we aren't making progress here, so discontinuing is wise on your part.

Ultimately Anarcho-Capitalism will be the order of things, but until then, Nationalism appears to produce better outcomes than ethnically diverse societies.

I'm genuinely confused. It seems like you and I read two different books. This is not my memory of the book at all. Citation needed? That is your incorrect "opinion". You have to start from the logic before you bring in the evidence. If the logic is wrong, then no amount of evidence matters. This is basic philosophy. No, it's not "exactly". You totally blew past the part where you asserted several nonsense things without any evidence and I pointed that out. How is falsifiability affected by the distinction between aesthetics and morality? Put up or shut up. Criticism (noun): "the analysis and judgment of the merits and faults of a literary or artistic work." When criticising a philosophical work, it is the philosophy itself that you are expected to criticize. That means pointing out errors in logic or factually incorrect statements. It would make no sense, for example, to point out how the book makes you feel, it's story arc, it's characters, etc. You already accept this because you say your criticisms should be tested against the framework. Test what? The word "sloppy"? Give us something to test. That's all I was saying. You don't "use" epistemology, and you don't "integrate" axioms, there are no such things as "epistemological abstracts", you don't even know that the metaphysics in the beginning of UPB is of human choice. You have no idea what you are talking about and you just make shit up as you go along. And this isn't an argument. And it is not all implied by the OP.

I am no expert on physics, but I believe you have mischaracterized progress in physics, and indeed in ethics. Einsteinian physics has a foundation in mathematics, folk physics, first principles, etc. It's not as if it was Newtonian physics 2.0. It's foundation is reason and evidence. When you establish the study of any new domain, you must provide an account of the it's metaphysics and epistemology. That is to say, you must say what it is specifically that we are studying and how we determine come to have knowledge of these things we're studying. If the people who've come before have got their metaphysics and epistemology wrong and yours is right, then it is incumbent upon you to provide a superior metaphysics and epistemology. That's how philosophy and science progress. UPB doesn't do it backward. That is a misunderstanding on your part. UPB is the framework, not a synonym for "morality". It includes aesthetics and is perhaps exactly as falsifiable as you perceived it to be before you came across the distinction between morality and aesthetics. And I don't know what "nearly zero falsifiability" means. Whether or not this is a failure of the theory or just the nature of the domain we're studying is not clear – nor is it explained why it would make something more or less falsifiable simply because it describes fewer behaviors. Without further explanation, all I know is what you've concluded about it, and maybe you have no idea what you're talking about. You don't seem to be aware that UPB evaluates aesthetic arguments as well as moral ones, so I'm inclined to think this is a failure in your thinking rather than a failure in the theory. No, you've misunderstood. To the degree a person has choice, they are morally responsible for those choices. This is consistent with every other theory of ethics that I'm aware of. This should not be controversial. UPB evaluates moral arguments, fundamentally, not people or even behavior. If robots executed otherwise immoral behavior, it would not be immoral. Human action is a volitional, intentional process and embedded in actions are propositions, logic. People do what they do for a reason, and if they don't, then it's not a choice and they aren't morally culpable. UPB is used to evaluate that aspect of behavior, specifically. This isn't a criticism, it's just an adjective. Point out what errors result from this supposed sloppiness and then you will have a criticism. [citation needed] This isn't a criticism. It's saying that a criticism exists elsewhere. Explain how this negative action is insufficient or not testable. [citation needed]

That's fantastic to hear, Violet!

Virtuous people tend to have virtue, generally. It's like intelligence. You may have strengths in one area, but you will tend to have strengths in other areas. If you are empathic, then you are also probably an appreciative person. If you are hardworking, you are also probably motivated and passionate. The distinction between these groups of characteristics seems arbitrary to me, but perhaps that's because I'm missing something.

One kind of implies the other.

Welcome Natalia! That is some very ambitious studying! I'm looking forward to learning from each other How'd you come across the show? Speaking just for myself, I don't care so much about the conclusions that people come to so much as whether or not they are capable of critical thinking. Wherever you lean political is fine by me, whatever that's worth. See you around!

No. You've misrepresented my argument. You cannot get around the fact that transexuality causes suffering. This is not true for homosexuality. Saying that homosexuality is different is exactly my point. "Homosexuality is no longer something people must suffer" accomplishes this. You say there is a contradiction, but you've made my point for me. You say "no," you were just referring to my previous post, but it seems that I interpreted your comment exactly as it was intended. My last post is a direct response to exactly this objection. It's like saying that I contradict myself when I say that a brain tumor is bad because being gay used to be considered bad and no longer is, as if this should cast doubt on the badness of brain tumors. Transexuality is not like homosexuality. They are very different things.

Who's that handsome guy?

You must have edited your post because it's not showing up in the thread, but if we go by the title of the thread, you've mischaracterized the argument. "You cannot argue against objective preferences without it necessarily implying an objective preference for truth over falsehood, thus it is self-defeating" – is a good starting point. It needs further refinement to actually describe what is talked about in UPB, though. In UPB, an objective preference actually doesn't describe what we normally think of when we use the word "preference". It should be thought of as being synonymous with "objectively required". When I say that you should not murder, it is clearly different than saying that you should pull my finger (so I can let rip a big fart). The "should" here has a different meaning. That is the objective preference versus the subjective preference. It is objectively required that you not murder in some sense. If I'm mowing your lawn for you and I'm checking my text messages to chat with my girlfriend, and you say that I should do the work you already paid me for, then I need to do it as a matter of principle. I don't need to do that in order to achieve something else. I need to do it because it is the right thing to do. UPB is about objectively evaluating these things where it is the right thing to do, and not just what you should do in order to achieve something else. So, when you argue against UPB, implied is that I should make true statements and reject false ones. I should do that because it is the right thing to do. Maybe UPB, the framework, is wrong in some way, but the primacy and logic of having universal preferences, in the way I described, is something that must be accepted, or else it is a self-detonating argument.