Pepin

I think one that would be good would be Get the money out of politics Start with taxation

The conclusion that consciousness is relevant to the observation of quantum states is not relevant. The term "observe" is a little confusing out of context because it sounds like something that it has to do with people/consciousness, but the term really has no connection. For instance, an electron can be orbiting a nucleus as a wave and because of this its position is spread out everywhere, but when a photon collides with an electron, the photon will observe the electron as the wave function will collapse to a single position. Particles are constantly observing each other and have done so prior to humans ever existing.

Mike, it is most important to define free-will in your argument. To provide an example of what I mean, a basic deterministic claim is that there is only one outcome, only one time line, and that because of this: there is no free-will. What the claim necessarily implies though is that free-will would consist of multiple time lines. As a rough analogy, if a timeline was synonymous with a movie, in a deterministic movie it would be the exact same every time. If there was free-will in the movie, the actors and any other entity that possessed some form of free-will would change, and therefore change their environment during each watching, therefore you would never watch the same movie twice. From the free-will point of view, most likely would not agree with this as a definition of free-will in any sense. A combatilist will agree that you will watch the same movie, but that this is irrelevant to the discussion of free-will. This is the largest blunder in debating the topic, because the conclusions people come to are based on different definitions. Based of the definitions of one person's arguments, I'd agree that there is no free-will because it follows. If free-will doesn't exist due to a single time line, then there is no free will. If free will is as how Stefan defines it, then there is free-will. If free-will is as Ayn Rand defines it, then there is free-will.

The conversation is much better than I expected. The clips of the women talking were just terrible. It is like they throw out the entire idea of objectifying when it comes to men. Far too much collectivist irrational thinking, like "let women rule the world for a little bit". It is just dumb in thinking and idiotic in style. I would claim that a lot of the differences are cultural, but many are biological. There is likely a decent interplay between the two, and also there is likely adaptation that can occur. For instance, the theory that a woman have a biological urge for an older man with resources due to pregnancy may have been the result of circumstance in that biology only cares about resources, not so much about the man. The evidence to support this is the increase in single motherhood can be correlated to the transfer of state welfare. The conclusion would be that women don't have an urge for older men, rather they just have an urge for resources during and after pregnancy, and it doesn't matter who provides it, it just so happens that older men have been the best option for this. Also, if you want to embed a video, use the media tags like below. [media]

Summing it down to a single answer likely can't be done. There does seem to be some correlation in so far as personality type. A primary factor in myself that has made me so easily accepting of these theories is that rationalization was a self-defense mechanism as a child. I had a great enough intelligence to understand logical and the various fallacies at a young age and would always apply them to my own thinking. I really had a difficult time understanding propaganda because I couldn't make any sense of it. I assumed that what I was being told was true, but that there was something I wasn't understanding. I thought that there were better/real answers and explanations, but teachers and other authority figures were not teaching us them because children don't yet have the capacity to understand it. At the end of my high school career, I remember being quite disappointed thinking "that's it?".

Gaming headsets tend to have pretty good microphones. The price is the biggest indicator in quality I've found. Unless you intend on doing a lot of mic work, I wouldn't recommend buying dedicated mic.

The question becomes far more complicated when taking into account that they chose to have the child. If you have sympathy for the parent with the issues from childhood, then you must have a much greater deal of sympathy for the child of this parent as they have far less control over their environment and self as well as having no choice to be born. I'd claim that you can certainly have sympathy, but your focus has to be on the child. To make an awkward comparison, if a parent was raped in their childhood, it makes total sense to have sympathy for the brutal past and all of the complications it has caused, yet if they are physically abusing their children, you ought to not focus on the parent and rather ought to focus on the children. I can go more in depth into this argument, but fundamentally: you can do nothing to affect the parent's past, but you can plenty about the children's future. It is possible that expressing sympathy for the parent may have some positive benefit, but having sympathy for the children compels you to act.

The low self-esteem I think can be found in some bullies. Eh, perhaps this self-esteem isn't the right term. I've noticed that people who tend to latch onto a particular form of bullying tend to be really afraid of that being lobbed back at them. A guy at my high school for instance liked to bully the victims by calling them gay and harping on that. I heard from a friend that there were rumors in the 7th grade that he and someone else were gay for each other, and when I brought this up to him he went a little nuts. It was like the prospect of someone calling him gay was a sword in the gut. It honestly really threw me off because his reaction was so unexpected. A big issue with bullies I have is that they aren't at all creative or intelligent with their harassment. In my experience, it tended to be the same theme and insult all of the time, nothing clever at all. I understand this isn't exactly a good aspect to complain about, but the monotony and brain deadening insults really drove me a bit crazy. Something I'm really reluctant to share, but will anyway is that I have an urge to bully them back and to do it in the proper way. I really don't like enticing these thoughts because my brain begins to generate far too many ideas. The plans I start devising are really rather genius and would be far more effective than the standard bullying. Fortunately this is an aspect of my personality that I don't entertain. It does come out in some minor ways when I am under a lot of stress, not really all that bad though.

Not really sure how I'd answer that question. Attacking beehives repeatedly isn't exactly like letting one retaliation occur, but any sane person who attacks a beehive once wants to get stung. If multiple times: they are begging for a swarm.

Hacker, if you're interested in physics and quantum physics in particular, I suggest this channel. You start to get a pretty good idea of what QM is. What is rather difficult for people who aren't familiar to get is that QM is a statistical theory in that it deals most with probabilities. Many people conclude that QM is random because of this, but this isn't true, it is predictable in the same way that flipping a coin is predicable. The probability of getting heads up or down is 50%, and though you can't predict if it'll be heads, but you can predict the probability of getting heads.

Is that directed towards my post?

In terms of not using the scientific method to arrive at a conclusion that can be correct, you are guessing because all of the variables you are taking into account are completely independent from the subject, meaning that the validity of your claim is just a function of probability and whatever reasoning involved is completely irrelevant. It is like if I use a random number generator to pick a number between 1 and 100, and you say that the number will be 59 because your age plus your brother's age is 59.

I'm rather annoyed of my tepid and frustration trying to get involved. I was aware of bitcoin back when it was very cheap, and was interested in getting some, but gave up after not being able to get funds. This has happened a great number of times over the last two years and it was of course my fault. If I would have just gone with it and pushed past the technical hurdles I could have made a ton. I was about to buy some amount the other day, and then didn't, and now its at $730. Finally bought .01 tonight, not much, but I'm really aiming to get into this.

In my experience in going to Walmart, Walmart workers tend to be very unskilled not very good at their jobs. There is a strong tendency for them to be overweight, above the age of 50, and not particularly nice. The entire argument that TAA makes is that the condition of the employee is the result of the wage Walmart provides, as opposed to being the result of the choices the employees have made in their lives with the addition of other factors. There is a preference on the left to see these results in more immediate terms than looking at the broader picture, which is a fatal mistake. It is like looking at the health of a man who's smoked for forty years, and attributing all of ill health effects to present circumstances and factors as opposed to the choices taken over a long period of time. Why is someone who has had twenty to thirty years of work experience and a greater amount of time in attaining knowledge, skills, and resources: working for minimum wage? As pointed out, Walmart doesn't have very clean hands in far as subsides and so on, but I think that is a separate argument/topic. TAA brings up the subject to berate profit and to lambaste greed, though he does make this argument. "If Walmart has made a $16x10^9 profit, why not pay their employees $5,000 more a year?". TAA isn't very good at thinking and making arguments, especially in regards to politics. He had a little feud with this guy a little while back and it was quite bad.

Essentially: an employee thought it would be funny to relocate the Christian Bible to another section, religious customers complained, and the entire store is taking the heat. I assume it is an employee that did it as opposed to management/corporate for obvious reasons. What I like about the story is that the store is taking responsibility as opposed to blaming it on the rouge employee. What I don't like is that they shouldn't be apologizing.

Welcome to the boards. Have you watching Stefan's series on free will? If not, here is a link. I only say this because you aren't arguing against the definition he presents in his argument. Also, it may help to also do some reading on compatibilism since I get the impression that you haven't heard of that position, otherwise I feel you would have addressed it in your post. I understand that you are coming at this from the incompatibilist side in that determinism and free will are logically incompatible, but if you are going to make an argument to convince a compatiblist, stating that we live in an deterministic universe doesn't do anything because there is no point of contention in that regard,

No, I'm making an argument that is devoid of opinion and not only has reason and evidence to support it, but empiricism as well. Bias is irrelevant to my argument as well as deities. That is my entire claim in response to this article as well. True compared to what and true in what sense? Certain claims, most claims, or all of it together? For instance, a Christian will claim that the Bible is true as a whole, but will say that there are some mistakes such as the earth being at the center of the solar system. What?

I can come across as "talking down" and pretentious, though as a close friend and I are pretty certain that this is a misunderstanding of my personality. Not that I am OCD, but I am pretty compelled to explain anything in a very simplistic and logical manner and to cover all of my bases, and some of the things I point out are obvious. The catch 22 is that most people won't make the connection if it isn't pointed out just because it tends to be on top of a lot of information, and by pointing it out they feel like I think they couldn't have figured it out. The pretentiousness confuses me a little more. To a large degree, I'd argue it is self-confidence in my knowledge of the subject as I tend to be an amateur expert on a lot subjects due to an excess time researching and learning and a great memory. Anyone who gets to know me will say that I'm not pretentious at all. Though, I'm also open up to the possibility that some effects of my early childhood are showing, particularly this feeling of being special and better than everyone else. I started to get this around 5th grade, where I felt like I was better than everyone else and that only I could do things. I didn't at all believe it as I realized that empirically it wasn't the case, and so I spent the next five years reminding myself it wasn't true whenever the feeling popped up. It is possible that this is showing up in the present, but in most circumstances I don't think it is.

That doesn't imply that time is an illusion, rather that time is more complex and relates to relative velocity and the speed of light. To be more specific, prior to the special relativity, the relation of time in two difference reference frames was thought and measured to be the same, meaning: t'=t simply means that the time measured in your reference frame and the time measure in someone else's reference frame can be assumed to be the same. If there are two clocks that are synced up, they will not deviate from each other. In the case of special relativity we have the equation Which shows that there is a difference in the time measured by each person, and it depends on their relativity velocity. If you are moving at relative velocity of 150,000 m/s in respect to someone else, if you measure your clock it will be normal, but if you measure the other person's clock it will be slowed. The same will be true for the other person in that they will measure their clock to be normal and your's to be slowed. As the graph shows, the effect really only becomes noticeable around 1/3 the speed of light, meaning that t'=t is accurate enough for most everything on a large scale. Hope this helps. --- Just read the article you posted, and its a hypothesis that hasn't been proven or accepted at the moment, and the argument wouldn't exactly invalidate time, it would just move it to the conceptual realm and the mechanics of what we call time would be instead substituted for time. I partly read a book that seems to have the same conclusion and similar evidence and reasoning, and I'm quite open to these claims, but I feel like it really only has an impact on how physicists contemplate and understand time.

Welcome to the forum Dave. Do you think that this argument is convincing to an atheist? What I mean is, how do you expect an atheist to perceive this argument, and what kind of responses and rebuttals do you anticipate?

Calling this science is beyond misleading. Using the many-world's interpretation of QM and then proceeding to through a barrage of nonsensical claims on top makes this incoherent. That's how reading the article was for me, incoherent.

A related but slightly unrelated note is that introverts and extroverts tend to have different eye communication strategies. An introvert when talking to someone will often not give eye contact, but they will give eye contact when listening. An extrovert is the opposite in they give eye contact when listening and don't when being talked to. From the source I learned this from (a FDR post), this seems to be more a result of neurology and data processing than psychological issues. I bring it up because you really start to notice like crazy when you look for it, and I've been pretty accurate in guessing whether someone is introverted or extroverted just based off this. This isn't the post, but it has the same information the other person posted.

Thinking a little more about the reason for it being on the front page, atheism is a rather important topic given the religiousness of world. It is a little difficult coming at it from my point of view since it is something I really only think about when it gets brought up, and outside of the internet it doesn't get brought all that much. It is also a great starter topic for philosophy as it is completely abstract, and with the arguments you get a pretty good feel for philosophical thinking. The book Against the Gods in a way is in a way an introduction to argumentation, logic, and empiricism.

My guess would be that Stefan uses atheism as a hook for many people. In earlier podcasts, he talks about putting ads up for FDR on atheist websites.

Can you explain how this is sophistry? I can understand how it might be argued to be rhetoric, but I'm having a difficult time understanding how it can be said to be sophistry.