Pepin

I think it is good to point out that though they induced these effects with genes, that does not imply that genes are the primary cause in humans. There may be many ways that an increase of these connections can develop. Granted that this study is validated, I find it more likely to be a result of neural plasticity, that is that the brain wires itself in this way due to the environment. A child for instance who has to react according to visual stimuli immediately in early life will create more connections between those parts of the brain, and once these connections are made, they are very hard to reverse. I would suspect that there is a bit of a feedback loop where once this becomes the primary method of dealing with stimuli, it reinforces itself through inhibition of alternatives. There are likely genes involved, though the question is to what degree? I'm open to it being a completely genetic feature that is far more noticed in the modern age due to obvious reasons. For most all of human history, we were not really standing still that much, and if we were it was after an exhausting day of survival. I find it more likely that it is a combination.

I just want to make sure I understand, when you do these things you do feel happy in the moment and then choose to stop doing what you are doing when you feel happy? I get that sometimes with meditation. Like I'll start to feel really good, and then I have the strong urge to stop and do something stressful. Pretty sure it is related to the Simon the Boxer metaphor, where we feel like we lose control when we aren't in an anxious state. When we start to move out of this state and experience something better, we become uncomfortable, like something isn't right, and usually revert to something that is going to put us back in that anxious state. Personally I find that I often try to stress myself out and make myself tired, likely because the process of relaxing is so much more difficult to deal with than the stress. I also notice a habit of an instinctual refrain from experiencing and expressing positive emotions. Like my coworkers got me a cake and card for my birthday and I was really holding back how I was feeling. It is very strange because when I consciously realize I am doing it, I try to just let it all go and to experience it in full, but it is like a fight with the rest of me. It is somewhat similar to when you try to say something but it doesn't come out due to internal factors, like the classic example of the child not wanting to apologizing and saying "I'm so-... I'm sss, I'm... sor... [ect]"

Take their actions and words and think about it. A common indicator is the creations of rules that only they are excluded from. Personally I like to make predictions about a person's behaviors and to compare them to their actual behaviour. These predictions are based on gaining an understanding of the person through observation and inquiry. It really is not something you need to do consciously, rather you just need to realize that this is something you do automatically and make use of it as a tool. Confusion is a great indicator for when you are being manipulated. Explain back what the person said, and say that you need some time to think about it. If they continue to coax you, this is likely a bad sign. What I find a lot is that in the moment it can be difficult to understand what is confusing you, but through analysis after you can home in on it pretty quickly. I don't mean to say that this is about sociopaths entirely, but rather about manipulative people and those who are not going to make good friends. As an example from today, I called my Mom to ask her to get my Dad today. They got divorced about a year ago and don't want to interact. She stuck me with the responsibility of driving him around when she left. There is more to this, but she started moaning and complaining about the request, and then started to talk about why he has not gotten his licence yet. This felt out of place to me and I was confused and annoyed as to why she wanted to talk about it so much. Later I realized that she wanted to take the blame off herself for leaving me to be his driver and to solely put it on my Dad. He certainly has responsibility, but she does too.

Thank you. For whatever reason I keep getting those numbers wrong. I think said in an article I'm writing that evolution occurred over 3.5 trillion years, and that wouldn't look good to someone reading it.

I believe that is actually something that comes from Socrates/Plato. It is the result of Aristotle's law of non-contradiction, where something cannot contain contradictory properties.

There likely are other rational beings out there, but I think the question you are getting at is why we haven't seen them. There is no definite answer, but it is good to think in terms of space, time, probability, and physics. What is the probability of a galaxy having a planet with life? This isn't a question that we can answer, but lets just say that if we were to scour a thousand galaxies, one out of the thousand would contain life. The second question is what is how likely is it for one of these galaxies to be near us? The answer is not very likely, though it is statistically likely to find a huge cluster of galaxies filled with life, you are more likely to find a single galaxy with life surrounded by a hundred or more galaxies without life. The third question is in regard to time, that is if there is intelligent life, where are they in time? The universe is 14.5 billion years old, and the earth has been around for 4.5 billion. The time frame that humans have existed has only been about 100,000 years, and the ability for humans to detect radio signals for about 100. An alien race may of sent out signals to see if there is life out there, but the signals may have already passed by us millions of years ago, and the aliens may now likely dead. There is a problem finding life in that what we observe is from the past. There might be life on some planet far away that is seeing the light from the milky way 5 billion years ago, before there was an earth. There is also the problem of getting there. In order for an alien species to get from here to a potential planet with life, they will have to transverse space at less than light speed, which may take millions of years. Space is huge, far too huge to comprehend, and it is expanding at an accelerated rate. If they do decide to travel to another planet, they are taking a huge risk because they need to expect to be able to survive for at least 100,000 years, and it may also be for nothing because by the time they get there the planet might not exist. As a final possibility, perhaps we are the first planet to contain life. Maybe other planets will sprout life in a few millions years, but if we just so happen to be the first then it isn't at all unusual as to why there has been no signs of life. Someone has to be first, and it isn't like life has to crop up all around the same time. It might also be argued that we are the first to contain intelligent life.

The question doesn't really make sense because the concept of complexity and creator require knowledge gained through empiricism. To go further, the application of the concept "creator" cannot not automatically be applied as the vast majority of complex structures in the universe occur due to the laws of physics. One would inquire before answering the question and observe that the computer is a creation that stems from the human mind, and the human is a product of evolution. Science is difficult and subtle. Assuming that a question is valid before sufficiently researching the entities involved is not rational. If one were to ask "what color is the number 2?", this would make little sense. This problem is especially the case since our brains are the result of evolution and are designed to make assumptions about entities. Philosophy and science is the methodology that gets around this. The sun and other sources of energy. Systems will become more disorganized if no new energy if put into the system, yet on earth there is a giant ball of gas which has been contributing energy to the earth for 4.5 billion years. There are experiments that demonstrate that many of the building blocks of life such as amino acids can be formed by introducing a decent amount of energy into some of the common materials found on earth prior to life. No, typewriters are a recent invention. The ending question doesn't make sense to me. Your existence and the existence of life in general has nothing to do with probability, just as the explosion of a star or the formation of a galaxy has nothing to do with probability. It occurs because the physical requirements that would cause it to occur were met. Not at all. If you have not read up on evolution and physics, I advice you do so. In regard to existence, here is a section from a book I am writing. Later sections deal with the origin on life and how sensation, perception, and consciousness come about.

The title is taken from the article. http://www.iflscience.com/environment/conspiracy-theorists-get-paper-withdrawn-through-bogus-legal-threat I am completely confused by these articles. Climate change might be a thing or might not, I'm not really willing to take a stance, but the tone in these articles feel completely off. The words and the mentality just feels bigoted. It is so weird because I don't see this in any other topic of scientific debate, or even in the atheist community. I am open to climate change being a possibility. I am in the favor of markets to bring about more environmentally friendly practices. So many resources are wasted due to government use and government intervention. I could go on a rant, but these articles make me feel like I might be leaning towards the wrong side. Uhg, perhaps I ought to be focusing on the fact that it got pulled, but I don't think I can.

Oh wow, this is a destroyed mind. So much going on in this. What is completely wretched is that after stealing, he claims to be a victim and morally condemns the real victim. The very fact that he can't see this demonstrate that he has regressed to a childlike mind state in which you do not think about your caregiver.

It is the same as someone going through your journal or computer files without consent. The contents of the mind are property just as a computer is since they both meet the same criteria as: homesteading, exclusive use, and so on.

The question can be difficult to think about due to the framing, where the question of morality becomes confused with the topic of virtue. What is not trying to be ascertained is if you ought to help them, rather if there are ethical implications of not helping them, that is whether the person with the broken leg can use force against you if you choose not to help. The question becomes much more clear if rephrased in the form of: "If you are walking out of a restaurant, and somebody in front of you falls and breaks their leg and you refuse to help, are they ethically justified in using force against you?". Like with a lot of circumstances where force is justified, it is difficult to know what sort of force would be appropriate. If we assume that they can use force, can they point a gun at you to force you to help them out? Or is it only acceptable for them to sue you? How would the damages be calculated? These are technical problems, though important to think if this were to be put into practice. Another question to ask is if you initiated force against person? If not, then if the person responds with force, then they are the initiator. At least in the general case, it isn't at all clear that you are initiating force, rather you are using your ability to not associate. It doesn't seem to me that this would indicate that the person would be right in using force against you, nor do the implications of the person using force against feel right. Of course whether somethings "feels right" isn't an argument, but the uneasiness in accepting the implications likely is a valid shorthand calculation. With that out of the way, I do wish to make the case that though the person cannot initiate force against you, they can use voluntary means against you. He can broadcast "hey, that's the dick that wouldn't help me when I broke my leg", and in a rational society this would have a lot of social implications. To take the more extreme example of letting a man drown that could have easily been saved, though it would be immoral for people to use force against you, it is perfectly fine for people to use the same freedom of association with you used that resulted in the man's death. Businesses won't serve you, nobody will allow you to use their roads, your electricity and other services are likely to be cut, and all without the use of force. If you are literally dying of hunger, nobody is obligated to give you food, just as you were not obligated to save the drowning man. The above example likely goes a little to far, but it is important to understand that there are peaceful ways of dealing with douches.

Something that has really stuck with me is Stefan's claim that "we are from the future", in the same way that those who say the immorality of slavery were from the future. A large issue with libertarians is that they are intellectually oriented towards reason and logic, which is great when applied to problems that do not activate their fight or flight response, but when it is activated their reasoning center becomes an over-powered self defensive mechanism. This wouldn't be so much an issue if their emotions were not so distant, but reason and logic are their primary means of existence. Really, I would argue that the reasoning centers attempt to take on the emotional processes. It is so strange to hear libertarians talk about awful acts of immorality in a completely monotone voice. I used to be this way, but now I have an incredibly difficult not getting emotional when talking about this subject matter. It's like, "you are forced at gunpoint by cops and other government officials to hand over your property, if you do not comply they will throw you in rape rooms for 20 years and completely destroy your life... this is scary, this is extremely fucked up", as opposed to "the government takes your money through taxes, which it justifies through the concept of the social contract, but this is immoral according to the non-aggression principal which I will now explain in complete intellectual detail".

With the popularity of everyone covering that song about building a snowman from the movie Frozen, perhaps Fdr ought to make a cover. First, does it sound like a good idea? Second, what ought it be? The title implies what direction I think it should be taken, and I might start on the lyrics for fun. Anyway, what does everyone else think?

I am interested. nathan.a.pepin

None really. I could really care less about the government's involvement in my personal affairs as I do not do anything illegal, nor do I have any burning secrets. If I was buying or dealing drugs, I'd certainly take measures to hide it, but I am not. My privacy concerns mostly center around other people. I have a password on my computer to inhibit people from gaining access. There is an annoying tendencies for certain types of people to go through your pictures and personal documents when you are away from your computer, and they will often change your desktop to some shock picture. This was more of an issue in high school than it is now. If there is any vital information, or dirty pictures of a girlfriend on my computer, I usually put them in an encrypted folder. Again, this behavior has little to nothing to do with the government, and rather to do with other people and maybe computer viruses. If say laptop was stolen, I want to disallow people from gaining access to this information for obvious reasons. If I was going to go through a TSA checkpoint, I'd likely take some measures to protect my information as the people who work there can be quite sleazy. I can imagine if there was anything embarrassing or nude photos of a girlfriend that they would upload them to internet quite quickly. There is also the issue of avoiding hassle, as if they were to see a book on anarchism I'd likely be held up for a number of hours. The issue of protecting your privacy from the government is not one I can relate with. The intrusions are certainly immoral, but I am more apathetic to it happening to me. I can understand why others are concerned and take measures to protect their privacy from the government, but I just don't care.

Because I have an interest in philosophical matters and to inform you that your communication of the argument is unclear. This isn't really a bad thing, as conveying philosophical issues to another is extremely difficult. As so many great thinkers have found, the idea might make complete sense in your own mind, but it will never make sense to others unless it is clearly communicated. Even really basic ideas can be a challenge to get across. Worse, poor communication and phrasing leads to disastrous misinterpretations. The vast majority of debates are centered around two people thinking they are talking about the same idea, when they aren't. As anyone can attest, this is incredibly frustrated and beyond unproductive. I've had intricate hour long debates with people only to find out that we had no real disagreement to begin. Often times when I try to explain a complex concept to others, I might present it in a way that doesn't make sense to them. They want to understand my argument, and since they are quite certain they don't, they tell me that they don't know what I am saying. I take responsibility for this and attempt to find a way to present the idea in a way that can be understood. I would far prefer someone to tell me that I am not making sense to them, than for them to respond as I made complete sense to them. If I find that the person has concern or questions that don't really make sense with the argument I am making, then I realize that I failed somewhere in my communication and try to find where. I hope this is helpful, as I am trying to be helpful. This is an issue that all thinkers deal with.

Posted in the wrong thread.

I would advice lifting weights and to work on the mind muscle connection. The ability to relax is critical to thought, and being able to identify when your body is not relaxed and then being able to relax the muscles into a extreme state is incredibly helpful. For instance, most people when they get stressed will tense up their shoulders, and even after the stressor is gone, the shoulders are still in the tense position. With having more awareness of your body, you are able to identify this much more quickly and are more able to completely relax the muscle. Really, exercise in general would do the trick, but I think weight lifting is best. I would say you develop a far stronger connection to your body and what it is telling you than if you were to just run. Also, an issue with running is that you can adapt pretty quickly to a program, which makes it more difficult to create growth. When starting, your goal should be to stick to exercising for a month. This is because after about 20 days, exercise becomes addictive, which makes motivation to go to gym far easier. If you go for a bodybuilding or a strength program, seeing the results will also keep you coming back. Initially I didn't care about how bodybuilding would change my looks, rather I just wanted to be more healthy, but as I got results I became much more motivated to keep going. http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/features/train-your-brain-with-exercise http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/stress-management/effect-of-stress-on-the-brain.htm http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/09/study-stress-shrinks-the-brain-and-lowers-our-ability-to-cope-with-adversity/

I do not have a clue as to what you are claiming.

I am incredibly confused.

To add a thought I just had on this subject, let us assume that we are in the matrix, which is to say that the reality we experience is not the reality that exists. Despite haven woken up to the "actual" reality, not too long after we realize that this reality might actually not be real as well. If we are then to awaken to another "actual" reality, the same applies. The matrix concept of "this may not be the true reality" would still apply even after awakening to an infinite amount of universes. Provided the statement "this may not be the true reality" is valid, from an observers point of view, he can never know if he is in the actual reality regardless of the properties of each reality, regardless of somehow being aware he has woken up into a higher reality, and regardless if he is in the actual reality. It isn't like there is no null hypothesis, rather it is like there is no hypothesis. The statement is completely meaningless as it not only lacks predictive power, but it is fundamentally opposed to the concept of prediction, not to mention that it applies in all circumstances regardless if it is true or not. To quote from a paper I am writing, which is still a work in progress.

Why are you unsure?

Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology answers this pretty well. Concepts are abstractions of properties of what exists and represented by a single unit in the form of a symbol. The choice of the symbol is arbitrary, not subjective as personal tastes and feelings are irrelevant. By this, I mean to say that the choice of the symbol has no affect on concept that it describes, the concept and what the concept describes are completely independent from the symbol. In physics you could use the symbol 'm' to describe the concept of velocity or the gravitational constant, but the concept that the symbol describes and its relation to reality is a matter of objectivity. The concept of 'up' is an abstraction from reality made through the observation of movement. Assuming that people are using the same coordinate system, say up is away from the earth and down is towards the center, in saying that an object is moving upward, objective information is being conveyed. By objective, this is not to say that the object is actually moving upward, but rather that the claim "the object is moving up" is related to reality and can be falsified or verified through observation of object. There is a lot in regard to the subject, but I think the responses of others as well as mine are enough.

I'm not quite certain that I understand. Could you expand on your question and give some examples? I just want to make sure that I respond to your actual contention as opposed to something unrelated.

I am at the point where the concept doesn't make any sense. The more I progress intellectually, the less and less I understand what people are claiming. I had a conversation with a friend who claimed that it would be fairer if the salary of a CEO was tied to the lowest wage worker. I don't even know what that means, let alone how to argue against it. Spent about half an hour with him defining terms, refining the claim, finding implications, establishing a null-hypothesis, and so on and it was a great and productive conversation. I prefer to not argue against someone's theory, but rather to help them make it better... And as a result, most realize that they aren't making much sense.