Pepin

Hard to say because it might depend a lot on the context and the individual. Some people are great speed readers, while others can't seem to do it very well. Comprehension is reduced greatly with speed. This may not be such an issue if you are reading about the history of Pink Floyd, but more of an issue if you are reading a physics textbook, Like audiobooks, I think it may be useful when the information isn't so condensed. I have the issue with certain audiobooks of having to rewind ten or more times to fully understand a point. Better written material will expand out the point to make it easier to understand,but with some material, if you didn't understand it in the paragraph it was explained you won't have a clue what they are talking about after. I am referencing the audiobook Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow, as that was a tough listen. I can read fast, but my comprehension is completely lost when doing so. I am the sort of person who gets half way through The Hobbit to realize I don't know what is going on or who these characters are, even when I was reading slow. For me, reading fast is more about skimming and finding things. I think a big part to reading is finding parts that you don't need to read and skimming them. There tends to be a lot on a page that is predictable but needed and skimming over that saves time. It is like how there are whole parts of a speech which kind of waste your time because either you already know what they are talking about, or what they are talking about is typical speech talk like "how is everyone doing, good? Well my name is X".

Philosophically I would disagree as it isn't measuring health directly. As a proxy? Sure, it might have a good deal of accuracy for 75-95% of the population. There would be issues with the method such as not being able to tell the difference between health and lack of money. Someone who is poor is much more likely to avoid going to the doctor at all cost. The homeless cannot really go to the doctors. There might also be people who don't believe in doctors and instead prefer going to alternative medicine type places. Another issue is that health is dependent upon genetics. Some people can doing awful things to their bodies and never have any complications from it. While others who spend a lot of time taking care of their body seem to have lots of issues just because of their genes. Those outside the standard deviation would be exempt from this measurement. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be a metric that would correlate with health, but rather that it wouldn't be the best metric. It would still be pretty useful, especially if you start to compare it against other figures.

This seems interesting. I might want to look into it just because it doesn't seem to be such a floating abstraction. I can't for the life of me understand communism. Do you know if the idea is that these syndicates would be taken up because they are more efficient and provide more wealth, or is it to solve the issue of wealth inequality by providing an altruistic solution of at least half the population choosing a system which benefits the other half? Might be both as there has been this idea that centralized control is more efficient, but in the modern time the argument tends to be that centralization in the form of socialism or communism is far less efficient than the free market but is superior ethically, so I am not certain which route he'd go. I tend to pitch just anarchism if I talk about it with other people because some people may not choose capitalism. I am quite certain anarcho-capitalism will be what most people choose, but some sort of mixture would be fine as well as long as it is voluntary. The main issue I have with certain anarchic theories is that it doesn't take the kids into account, which gets into the weird sort of Amish vibe.

I find understanding it difficult because it there are so many high level abstractions. There is a common argument that capitalism and social justice are incompatible because capitalism entails unequal wealth distribution, while social justice aims for a more equal distribution. There is so much in there. Reducing capitalism to voluntary trade between individuals is easy, but reducing the concept of social justice is just... uh... yeah. I mean reducing the concept of equality is difficult enough as there are so many different possible meanings depending on the context, and so many implications of any definition.

I see it as a special day that everyone has, and everyone conspires to celebrate your birthday because they will celebrate your's. To put it this way, if declared your own holiday devoted to you, that would be pretty cool, though nobody would probably celebrate it. But if you declared that other people ought to have their own special holiday as well, and they were all to be on a different date, then these people would have an incentive to celebrate your made up holiday so you and others would celebrate their own made up holiday. I think birthdays are somewhat analogous to the above, with a lot of ritual sprinkled in. I really didn't care too much about birthdays before, but the last two years my coworkers have induced pretty good feelings in me on my birthday.

Health is a high level abstraction containing a large set of different measurements. There is not some thing out there called "health", rather it unifies many different concepts with similar properties. Health might be defined as "a physical state which is preferable". That is off the top of my head and there is a likely a better definition. Anyway, when we say that someone is healthy, we are saying that among the various measurements of health, they check out pretty well. Doctors and physical trainers are capable of providing these tests. Something which improves health would be something that would improve your physical state. In a way, being healthy is more a measure of not being unhealthy. What a doctor does is check across a variety of measurements, and will attempt to identify a problem and gauge its magnitude. If you smoke, the doctor will say that it will have a large negative effect on your cardiovascular system, that it increases your chance getting cancer, and so on. These are states which are argued to not be preferable. As with any high order concept, it is possible to gauge measurements according to circumstance. Someone who is born with a rare genetic disorder will have a different standard of health than someone without it. Someone who picked up an STI can still be deemed "healthy" by either omitting the STI in the equation, or by taking the effects of the STI and readjusting the calculation. The elderly have a different standard of health than the young. With that said, it makes sense to use the term healthy to quickly convey that a person checks out on a number of measurements without providing the particular details, all which is basically saying that the person's physical state is preferable.The term unhealthy tends to be more focused as in "eating that food is unhealthy", but in essence the same is being said, that the physical state is not preferable. Now if someone were to ask "what is healthy/unhealthy about them", you could go into detail about all the various measurements. They might have a great diet, work out frequently, but have a meth problem. Their blood work may be rather good and the few bad things have little effect on their physical state. Meh, it would take a lot more time to flesh out this post completely, especially since a lot of it is providing shorthand instead of accuracy, but I think it gets the idea across. Then again, i am a little sick and sleep deprived, so this post might be more difficult to read than I think.

I'm having a little difficulty in understanding what the issue is exactly, but if the crux is if any printing of the money will lead to a devaluation of the currency, then the answer is yes. This is for the basic reason of supply and demand, in that as the supply of a good increases, the value decreases. From an Austrian point of view, there is no moral judgement about inflating the money supply, just the prediction that the value of money will decrease and those who get the money first will have an advantage. From a libertarian point of view, the act is immoral because it is a government enforced monopoly which is doing the printing. The people cannot use another money, and they have no ability to control the money supply. Essentially, it is tax on the poor.. There wouldn't be much issue if people had a choice in currency, there might be good arguments as to why you shouldn't choose an issuer that inflates their money supply, but it is consumer choice. As a example, there is digital currency called Nubits which aims to peg its value to the dollar. it does this by inflating and deflating the money supply when needed. There is no moral issue with this because the consumers are well aware of that aspect, it is actually why they are using the currency, and because they are voluntarily choosing to use that currency.

Based on the same measurements I have for humans. A common argument among libertarians is that the ability to make a contract is the criteria. Walter Block once said something along the lines of "if cows all of a sudden gained the ability to make contracts, we'd have to stop eating them". I think I agree with this, but think it needs to be filled out a little more as the possibility of decentralized AI complicates things.

I don't think I'd argue, let alone speak, with a neo nazi. That's kind of weird. On the second question, I haven't read the book, but "everyone receiving their due" is the stolen concept fallacy. You talk about a very high level abstraction as if its real world derivation and implications are obvious, and never actually explore the argument on a lower level or even connect it to reality. Where the switch occurs is in discussion the solution to the problem, which will deal with low level solutions. It gives the impression that what was being talked about previously has lower order concepts and behaviors and that these solutions are connected to the theory. Of course what is really occurring is that the measurements of a low level solution are abstracted into a high level concept, and it is presented in reverse to give the appearance of a perfect fit. If that sounds confusing, it is like an infomercial where they spend half the ad talking about a made up problem, and the rest of the ad selling their solution to said problems.

He provides a lot of sources in the Bomb in the Brain presentation. The ACE study might be what you are looking for. If not, I'm sure there is something here in this playlist.

Depends... There are healthy dependencies: like depending on your coworkers to do their job, and unhealthy ones: like depending on your friend for all major life decisions. The distinctions are made in psychology. To get an idea of unhealthy dependence, check out the below. https://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/dependent-personality-disorder

I don't think this is the best way to think about it. Rather I would put it into the context of pros and cons. Bitcoin for instance has little risk in regard to counterfeiting due to the protocol. It is possible, just almost impossible to pull off. The con is that it takes a lot of computer power to ensure this. Centralized fiat money has the benefit of being able to respond quickly to changes in the market. It has the con of the money being less secure. Commodity based money has the benefit of being tangible and difficult to copy. The con is that it is more difficult to secure and transport, as well as the problem of divisibility. A solution to that problem is to have a bank secure your commodity, and you can be given a card which can trade the commodity in any amount, but negates a lot of the benefits of commodity based money as it becomes difficult to verify the tangibility of the assets. I am simplifying a lot here, but my basic message is that you might choose your currency based on your needs and goals. You may want 50% savings in a highly secure place that would gain value, like bitcoin. You may want 20% to be in a hard asset like gold, just incase you lose power due to solar event. You might want 15% in some form of promissory note like cash for convenience. The other 15% you may want in an assortment of random currencies which are used for particular services.

Firstly, stopping counterfeiting is subject to market preferences. Consumers do not want that currency to be inflated by counterfeiters, so currency issuers have a large incentive to prevent counterfeiting. There is two main methods of decreasing/stopping counterfeiting. The first is making it difficult. The second is by increasing the risk. Making it difficult might involve the various security implementations we see on modern money. If the currency is non-digital, requiring a very very huge investment to counterfeit properly will create a high barrier of entry. Allowing for easy and accurate verifiability would also increase the detection of counterfeit bills. As far as I'm aware, this has been pretty successful in the modern day as new bills are very very hard to copy. Increasing the risk also helps. If the cost of being found out involves a large amount of economic austracism, then it might not be worth the risk. The risk is also spending all that money on the printing press, just to have the currency issuer release a new version of their money which makes it impossible to copy the money with the previous setup. For digital assets, bitcoin and blockchain technologies are the answer. I know that isn't the answer you wanted, but trustless protocols are the only way to go.

There are neurological arguments that could be made, as love and aggression seem to be in the same part of the brain, but I'm not quite qualified for that. I think it could have been useful from an evolutionary point of view to have mechanisms which would allow for pleasure from aggression. Non-consensual sex is common in many species, and genes don't really care how you were impregnated. If not resisting rape increases the frequency of an individual's genes, then circuits for not resisting would be favored, and circuits which would even make the experience pleasurable would be likely emerge. People gaining pleasure from rough sex might simply be responding to a supernormal stimuli. There is also what I will call the roller coaster effect, where doing things that would usually be dangerous in a safe setting can induce a lot of interesting sensations. Many people might do it because it is safe. Of course, there are those who like the thrill of danger, similar to those who go cliff jumping. Nothing too kinky, but a girl once dug her nails into my back while I was climaxing. It was very interesting because it hurt but also felt so good. If my skin wasn't so sensitive and didn't get itchy after, I wouldn't mind that again. Spankings and some hair pulling can also feel good. Pouring candle wax on me would also feel good, I know this because I've done this to myself for fun, though it wasn't sexual. A girl wanted me to do some light choking with her, which I was uncomfortable with. There was a bit of temptation to do so because it would give me a feeling of power, but it would be kind of weird. Ironically, I think you have to be pretty close to someone for them to want you to choke them. I do think that there is a line where it crosses into childhood disfunction, but I also think that a lot of this might just be exploiting circuits which just happen to be in our brains, with some people having greater dispositions. Perhaps I have a slight bias, but I think some pain play like light spankings and scratching might be within the healthy range, with the more extreme stuff being less healthy. There are some things like blindfolds and being tied up I think are pretty straight forward as to why people get enjoyment out of them.

Evolution. Humans are a very social animal whose primary survival advantage is in meme replication. We like sharing because at some point in the past, sharing useful data with others added to that individual's survival. Though we are now sharing information which is not related to survival, the reward system evolution has programmed is still in effect. Empathy has a lot to do with it as well. Our brains are configured to replicate the emotions of others, so when someone is really passionate about something we are not, our brains will likely replicate the emotions. Empathy is of course related to survival, and it is plausible that having an empathetic disposition to people who are sharing information would be advantageous.

It's difficult for me to come down on this because I feel like this rule would apply in a free society. Like if a website messed up and started selling a thousand dollar product for 99 cents, I don't think the seller is necessarily bound by that mess up. Likewise, I don't think someone who bought the item for 99 cents should be charged full price, rather they should be informed about the issue and asked if they want to purchase it at full price. If someone or something messes up at a casino, I don't think they need to dole out to the people who exploit the fault. I also think that if a customer messes up, say they go all in and accidentally throw the dice off the table, that the casino should give them a second chance and not exploit their mistake. I'm not really sure how casinos work, but you get what I am saying. Of course, all that would be in the terms and services that you don't read but agree to, and not some law that is in some place you'd never find.

Difficult to say because there are so many factors it would depend on. The big issue is that with lower populations, putting a price on something is very hard because how much each individual values the good will likely vary widely, especially since it will depend a lot of the individual's current situation. With more people in the market, individual circumstances and preferences are averaged out. I'd say about 20-50 people for a currency to arrive, with the caveat that it would be very unstable and likely to collapse. I think there is evidence for this estimation given some villages that used tobacco as a currency in the 1700s, and prisons and schools where temporary currencies pop up a lot.

I think I disagree with that. In the modern time, most people aren't active or strong compared to humans from three hundred years ago. What is considered strong nowadays was weak to average in the past. The basic movements like squats and deadlifts played an integral part in everyday life. Now, these movements are not as well favored due to a completely different way of living, which causes issues in how we move. Worse, some muscles get overworked which cause large imbalances in how we move. I am not saying that this is good or bad, rather that most people have to be taught the more natural movements and how to exercise. A good coach or instructor will teach you a lot. As far as P.E teachers, I really doubt they are qualified to teach. We actually have to work a lot harder to achieve the same fitness levels in the past, mostly because our whole day isn't structured around surviving anymore.

There are a few families which have remained wealthy for hundreds of years, but they are the very rare exception, not the rule.

I'm not exactly certain what you are talking about. Do you mean economic mobility? The basic idea is that you don't want to measure the percentage of people who are in certain income brackets over time, but rather that you want to measure the change in income of individuals and families over time. The reason is because the percentages might give the illusion that the same people are stuck in that income bracket, while it is more likely the case that they have moved up and have been replaced. For instance, people who make close to minimum wage tend to move up to the next income bracket within a couple of years. But if you look at the percentages, it would seem like there had been no improvement. Yet,what is really happening is that minimum wage workers who move up the ladder are replaced by new entry level workers. There is also falling down the ladder, which happens a lot in the top 5%. Very few people at the top are able to hold onto their wealth. Of course, the impression we get is that the top 1-5% are the same people, yet it changes yearly. I'm recalling most of this off the top of my head from a bunch of lectures I heard a while ago, but I think it may be what you are looking for.

I think it is a false dichotomy to oppose evil and virtue. A man in a coma is not evil, but neither is he virtuous. One question to ask is "why should an individual choose not to be evil?". A completely different question to ask is "why should an individual choose to be virtuous?": I would say that virtue is a category which contains behaviors that are preferred according to a rational belief system. All this means is that we determine whether a behavior is preferable or not by putting it through the test of rationality. The rational belief system is what attempts to make it universal, so that everyone does not have their own subjective idea of what virtue is. Another way to put that is that people with a rational belief system will prefer these behaviors upon hearing the argument. Given that the above makes sense, people would listen to an argument about why a particular behavior is preferable, weigh the argument against reason and evidence, and if they accept the argument that it is preferable, then they will also by consequence prefer that behavior. Of course that would leave a huge grey area as there are plenty of topics where skepticism is needed regardless of reason and evidence. But as far as well established research and facts, the above holds up. This argument would need a lot of work and filling in the gaps to be fully realized, but as a basic outline without any examples, I think it works.

This makes me angry. It is teaching them not to think. This is the religious method of indoctrination.

Granted that this is something most people aren't in favor of, I'd do a bunch of research and have a lot of links stored on your phone about it, especially if there are scientific studies. If they start disagreeing, tell them that you have done a lot of research and haven't found that be the case. Offer to send them some links for them to look over from places they find reputable. If they are open to evidence and you list some sources they find credible, they might start to question their belief. It's a good way to find people who are open to the ideas, as well as a way to shut people up who have done no research. Personally, I am pretty skeptical about most anything I hear second hand. If someone is trying to tell me about a study or some fact and I express skeptical, and they want me to check out some source I've never heard of, I tend to not look it up and assume its bullshit. Now if there is a really good argument behind it, I will probably look into it, even if it is from an obscure source,

To be entirely clear here, this person is proposing that is someone is wearing yoga pants, that a man in a costume ought to fine the person and remove themselves from public space. If the person refuses, they are to be fined and forcibly removed and temporarily imprisoned. If they refuse to pay the find, they will be taken from their home and imprisoned. If they resist arrest, they will be shot. The solution to yoga pants is to threaten to kill offenders.

I'd read Plato and Aristotle. Plato was Socrates's student who wrote the Platonic dialogs. You won't actually find anything Socrates wrote himself because he didn't write anything down, but you can use Plato's second hand account well enough. Just be aware that in some of the later works, Socrates becomes more of a spokes person for Plato than anything else. You can find the total collection of his writings as well as Aristotle's here. It can get a bit confusing at times, but it tends towards being an easy read. A lecture series which covers the particular book helps a lot, as certain things need context. A really great podcast is "History of Philosophy without Gaps", which covers those detail very well and more. Another book I'd recommend is The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. While it isn't philosophical per se, an understanding of evolution is quite critical in understanding philosophy. For the most part, I listened to lectures instead of reading the source material for most of my information. I have an easier time digesting the information, and plus I can listen to it while driving. I have read a lot of Plato and some Aristotle, as well as reading almost all of Rand, but most of my knowledge of the others is informed by lectures. I've tried reading a lot of other philosophers, but an issue I run into is that 90% of what I read is filler and context, while about 10% is actual content. The three I've read the most of are mostly all content. Oh yeah, read Rand, especially Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.