Pepin

My own prefrence is Windows Movie Maker, mostly because it is easy any straight foward to use. Smart Pixel seems rather decent from what I gather.

If anyone wants to see the effects of propoganda on the mind, read some of the comments on Stefan's video about the ordeal.

What is your operating system? Windows, mac, linux?

Uh, I lost control of my keyboard, went to edit the post, and the edit time had past before I could fix the post, and I lost what I said. Anyway. I would suggest not approaching the relationship from a personal level, but rather have it only be business only. I'd also advice to be careful debating philosophical matters at work, as they can drastically change how you percieve your work environment.

M

So in context to a situation involving murder, you are able to derive an universal principal from the situation, and you can generalize the theory to where it is true of many different situations. In the case of a lifeboat scenario, there is no generalization that can occur, even provided that there might be an answer. So if we assume it is the right action to steal a penny to save the world, what sort of generalized universal rule can be made? I would propose none, as any rule stated must contain a reiteration of the scenario. "If you are in a situation where you must perform an immoral action to save the world, the moral thing to do is the save the world". If no universal moral principal can be derived from the scenario, then no universal moral principal can be applied to the scenario, and this also apply to whatever immoral action within the scenario. If we establish that universal ethics do not apply to situation X, then asking if it is wrong to do some immoral action established by the theory in a situation X would not make much sense. Speaking of making sense, I hope I am.

This would disqualify scenarios where a consistent universal principal cannot be extrapolated. This wouldn't mean there might not be an answer in regard to the situation, but that if the answer could not be generalized to other scenarios, it would not be apart of the same class as ethics. Does that sound right?

I think it is somewhat fun to reframe these questions to make them even more abstract. Like, would it be the right thing to steal a penny to save the world from a mildly annoying ear infection. Or maybe, if you don't steal the penny, humanity will never be able to find their keys for at least the first five minutes of looking for them. There could be an interesting game in determining where you'd draw the line in what you'd save the world from.

What do these situations have to do with ethics? Another way of asking the question is, how do we know when the concept of ethics does not apply?

Unfortunately, I still live with my parents, and my father watches MSNBC and he turns up the news quite loud. All it has been the last couple of days in constant coverage of the case, and the use of lanuage is really weird, like a lot of the phrases are in response to something in favor of Zimmerman will be something like "this case is not about that, this is about a 16 year old boy who was killed by no fault of his own, it is about the danger of firearms, this case is about justice holding up for minorities: blacks; hispanics; LBGT, it is about respecting the parents who lost a son they loved dearly, it is about truth in the face of adversity". I'm having a difficult time understanding why these sorts of propogandistic phrases are being dialed up to 11 for this. To conclude, Reverned Al Sharpton is the worst excuse for a person I've ever seen.

You're not likely to find anybody on here that is likely that is able to say that health care is a right, but I can attempt a devil's advocate position, which honestly might be more productive. I used to do these types of arguments on the forums, and I started to get to the point where I was improving and making their attempt at arguments coherant so I'd be able to make a response. The insults weren't even good, so I had to start coming up with better ones, like "why don't you go to Somalia, convinced a bunch of people that your philosophy is the way, and then you could walk down the beach hand in hand with the invisible hand".

I find it more benificial to make arguments and to see if a person argues against them in any sensible way. It is far less about conclusions as it is an objective methodology. The vast majority of friends and people you know are likely to reject your arguments with completely idiotic statements, and you are likely to be bewittled. If this occurs, this is something that is very important to know about your friends. Philosophy changes your life, especially your relationships. Something to keep in mind is that not every friendship needs to involve philosophy.

You are right, I ought to use another term. I meant confused by your response, as in I didn't understand why you were intepreting what I said in a manner that I did not intend.

I am a little confused, so I will expand upon my use of the word bypass. In talking to others, debating with a manager or protector part is not going to be productive unles the person is rather rational or has a decent amount self-knowledge. To provide an example, imagine there is a part that causes a person to get angry and yell when triggered. If you were a friend of this person, and wanted to go about helping resolve this, you would not want to trigger the part to resolve the issue, as this would result in getting yelled at and the actions the part takes in the moment are opposed to reasoning. Instead, you would approach the person when they are calm, and do your best to not trigger this person's anger, but to keep them in a cool and reasonable state of mind.The IFS therapy approach would not to be trigger the part, rather it would find a way of activating the part while remaining in self. So perhaps what I mean is more bypassing the trigger which would cause a person to go into an anti-rational state.

This might be wrong, but I feel like when confronting someone about an issue like this, starting off with something like that and then trying to recover can't work. To put it in IFS terms, you are likely activating a protector part with the comment, and though the part doesn't immediately take control, it is ready to jump in to manage the situation or to put out the fire. With some people, it is possible to bypass the defenses, and I'd say this is the best route to take in general.

I'd recommend Calculus Made Easy. It covers Calc 1 and 2 in a simple manner and has a decent number of practice problems. I find calc to be a really amazing topic, especially in how it can be used to find the volume of a sphere. The Khan Academy is quite good for brushing up on a lot of concepts in trig, more because proofs are offered, as opposed to just being stated. An example of this is the law of cosines, a formula often given with no proof. Even worse, not even an explanation as to where the trig identities comes from. Since math is the language of physics, and concepts in physics are fun to comprehend, I'd recommend learning some physics. I can give some recommendations if needed I'd say that the best brain exercise is understanding the concepts and proofs as opposed to being able to solve a multitude of exercise problems. A large issue I had going through most of high school is that I did great on tests as I knew the techniques to solve the problems, but I didn't at all know what I was doing or why. Most other people from what I gather have this issue as well, but aren't as bothered by it.

Take some time to think and understand what you want to do, and how to do it. Write out a plan. Make sure it works on paper before putting it into code.

I'm really rather just a little bit a little lost. The NAP is a theory that applies to humans as a whole, meaning it applies to all individuals that meet the definition of human. It would hold that it is immoral for a human to initiate force against another human.

I wanted to see some fireworks, but found out they were held on the 3rd. Maybe should have been social and invited myself to a party.

Glad I could help, though I'd generalize it to irrational methodologies as a whole. I believe she/he interpreted the purpose of the question correctly.

What was your reasoning at the time for verifying what they said? Why did it matter?

If narcissism is selfishness, and if altruism is selflessness, then narcissism is the opposite of altruism. If both extremes of the spectrum are unhealthy, then it would be argued that a healthy state of being is achieved through in some middle ground of the states of narcissism and altruism.

I can't say I'm the best with making this argument, but I'll do my best. Ownership is to maintain exclusive use of something real through action. Acting on something un-owned, such as mixing your labor with un-owned land to turn a part of a forest into a yard with a house, which would be considered homesteading. Another is to perform a trade with someone who acquired the property through just means: trade. It can be given that you claim to own your body, and if someone attempts to rape you, you have the ability to maintain the ownership of your body through means that do not exclude violence. If you have a bike, and someone stole it, the thief would not own the bike although they have exclusive use over something real, and you would have the ability to regain ownership of the bike from the thief. Likewise, if someone breaks into your house, you can use force to remove them. There is a need to declare that one must continue to act on an object to maintain ownership. The specifics of this are more market based, but to provide an example where it would certainly apply: if someone builds a house and does nothing with it for 20 years, they cannot be said to own the house as they abandoned it. It would be possible for another to claim ownership of the house. This theory would invalidate many claims of ownership. For instance, sticking a flag in the ground and claiming you own everything within a 100 mile radius is only a claim. Claiming ownership of something that someone currently owns would not be valid as it is merely an assertion. Homesteading something that is in a process of homesteading its own body would not work. What I think is interesting to think about is, if homesteading is not a valid method to gain exclusive use over something and to maintain such use, then what method is valid? If no method is valid, what are the implications of such an idea? A video I'd recommend is.

It must be realized that to say that the child is owned is to say that the child is a slave to the parent'. If the concept of slavery is invalidated by the NAP, if the NAP applies to humans, and if a child is a human, then the conclusion that a child is inherently enslaved to their parent cannot stand as true. To expand upon this. Like any theory, the NAP must universally apply to a class of objects, universally only because the theory intends to make propositions about the entire class. It is quite possible to subdivide the class through the use of words, and to say "people within the government have the right to kill, while those outside do not", but such a distinction is merely arbitrary division of the class. It is also quite possible to subdivide the class in terms of certain properties, such as race, gender, age, or any other real characteristic. It might be said that "the white man has a right to enslave the black man", yet the question becomes: why? What does the color of skin have to do with the concept of ownership? How does color divide two groups into opposites, slave an master? The argument being made is that "children are produced by parents labor and are therefore products of that labor", which is to subdivide the class "human" into two categories based off the idea that the child must by necessity be enslaved due to being the result a the parents labor. If the classes were not to be subdivided, which I would posit that they aren't, the resulting statement would be "people are produced by the labor of people, therefore people are enslaved to people", which would not make sense. I would suggest that the relation of labor and ownership in regards to humans owning humans is not a good theory, especially in relation to the NAP, as it is ascribing two contradictory properties to the same class, and also the NAP intends to apply universally across the class. Also, Walter Block has an interesting piece on children that I'd recommend reading. http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/block-children.pdf

It isn't at all a quick-fix as it takes a lot of time for many to even begin to hold their parents to any objective standard. There is an unsubtle dodge occurring in which she is ignoring whether the parents were to blame for the abuse they inflicted, and ignoring whether a particular action is abuse. This is rather nonsensical, especially with the vast amount of scientific research correlates issues in childhood with issues in adulthood. To not put responsibility on the parents for their abuse is to either to claim that a child must take responsibility for the abuse that was inflicted on them, or to deny the concept of responsibility. More importantly, this objective self-reflection in regards to the past and who did harm to you as a child is very important in the process of not inflicting unprocessed abuse onto others, particularly other children. A result of this is that those who don't objectively analyze their childhood and hold those who are responsible for inflicting abuse are likely to normalize it and to reenact such abuse. This is to say the ones who are not self-reflecting and confronting difficulties: are the parents. It is very easy to say that the parents are not learning from the past and making positive changes. It is an odd concept to protect a "family" that did not protect you when you were at your most vulnerable. Not really sure how to respond to the later part. From reading on, what I gather is that is that they are claiming that it is best to resolve the issues behind doors with a therapist and to not make any of the abuse public as it will likely make bad light of the abuses in an inaccurate/untrue fashion. This to me, this concept is logically equivalent to telling a rape victim to not talk about the abuse publically and to instead do it with a therapist, to not mention who abused you as you are going to ruin their image, and to tell them to deal with their problem and to move on. I doubt that many people would suggest this as a standard, rather people would encourage you to get the word out. A personal example in regards to myself is how the concept of Hell and the rapture was beaten into me as a very young child. The effects on my life were all to my detriment, yet people are likely to dismiss the effects I experienced as a function of myself, as opposed to being the result of the ideas themselves. Some people maintain that what I went through was awful, but is not a valid interpretation of Christianity or how most handle it, and that it is rather sad that I received such a improper/negative view of religion. Anyway, the conversation gets far muddier as it goes on from there. I wish I knew how to describe it, as it has happened to me. To now criticize you, assuming you are Anthony: Much of this is ineffective because it is a little hard to follow in context to spanking, and some of the claims being made can't effective if the person doesn't already agree or haven't thought about the subject. For instance: "We still live in a world where if chldren don't study for tests we give them big fat Fs and tell them they are never going to get ahead in life" might be useful if the person agrees with the statement and they understand how it is in contradiction to their previous claim, but if not, it is going to be perceived as rather disconnected and as a weak form of evidence. What is likely to occur with this sort of argument is that it is likely to be ignored or not understood, or the argument will begin to focus on whether the argument is valid. For the most part, I like the other posts you made. I assume that Scilla is someone you know, not just because she is replying to something on your facebook, but more because the discussion has that odd vibe I refrenced earlier. It doesn't seem like a normal discussion/debate. Though maybe I'm seeing something that is not there.