Pepin

For the most part I'd agree. As far as concepts go, they are not real, but we are capable of measuring the relation of a concept to reality. For instance a design for a bridge is not a bridge, but we can say that a bridge which is designed according to those plans is related to the bridge in the design. Ethics is much the same way, ethics does not exist as something in reality, but we are capable of measuring the relation between ethical theories and reality through the actions people take in regard to the circumstance. An ethical theory such as "one ought to be in two places at once" will never result in a positive measurement, meaning that the theory has zero relation to reality. It is like designing a bridge with non-existent materials. What you said about language reminds me a lot of Ayn Rand. I disagree with it as I often think in more visual terms when it comes to concepts. It is very difficult to describe, but I am sure it isn't too unusual. Where I think language is really essential is in conveying concepts.

Obviously chemicals like seratonin and dopamine are involved in mental health issues, but more as effects than causes. I think chemical imbalance claims are misguided in that they are likely not the ultimate cause. It is like preventing a ship from crashing by changing water currents, as opposed to getting the captain to turn the wheel. Certainly the currents can cause a crash, especially unpredictable and violent ones, but current control would only be useful to help get someone to a calmer body of water. More so, guiding people away from violents waters to begin with would be a far better strategy. With that said, drugs in conjunction with therapy for extreme cases might be needed to prevent a crash, but current management is very costly and ineffeciently beyond that. There are studies which show SSRIs and therapy are the most effective, with just SSRIs being not very effective at all, so I am unable to disreguard their use altogether, but I think the focus needs to be on prevention. If someone gets in an accident and four of their close friends die, drugs with therapy might be the best path to deal with that. But in general, I do not thinks drugs are useful.

The story is pretty rediculous. Whether the individual ought to be in that financial state is very testable, and though bad luck can occur, it likely is mostly bad money decisions. She would likely be resistant to pro bono financial counseling, or simply not follow through. I have been pushing back against this stuff at work. Someone said that they did not even have enough money for food on thanksgiving, so I asked about how they were handling their money. They said that despite three jobs, they were broke, to which I pointed out their new top of the line phone complete with expensive monthly rates. They cited some stats on the economy and said it was not their fault, to which I said that they are nor managing their money well. There are young girls with kids at my job, and I hold them fully responsible for that. Unfortunately, most people are happy for them, especially the parents. If they paid the full cost, that would be one thing, but the costs are instead socialized in so many ways. I think Rand had a lot to say on this, which is pretty valid. The culture of no responsibility is very appealing to people.

Hunting and domestic farming have their similarities. The idea that meat from a farm is good, while meat from the wild is bad does not make sense. Though not an argument, if raising animals in an enclosed environment for their meat is bad, it may not imply that getting meat from animals in an unenclosed environment is bad. I can not quite see it as a universal matter as I would not condemn someone who hunts to survive. Learning to hunt could be argued to be an important survival skill. But when there are plenty of other available food resources, the subjective value of mass animal farming may be negative, while hunting may be seen as a back up skill incase something goes wrong. I do not know, but I think looking into the differences and similarities between hunting and farming could be helpful. I don't agree with hunting for sport, but I would not use force to stop it. Hunting and farming for food seem morally permissable to me, though I think prices need to determine its value. I think meat would be a special meal more than an every day thing. This subject hurts my head, so I refuse to make any real argument, and instead just look at it from a "would I use violence against this person" and "may this not be preferable behavior, but not unethical". It is not clearly unethical to me, but I do think we ought to consider that mass meat consumption may not be needed.

To avoid a long post, I will make bullet points of the sequence Got into libertarianism Found Mises and Reason tv Watched a lot of videos Stumbled upon a Bob Murphy video on anarchism and was convinced. It wasn't an idea I had even contemplated. I didn't really even know what a government was. An anarchist popped up in a Reason video, someone in the comments posted about Stefan Molyneux being a great anarchist source for anyone interested Look him up, saw "The Story of your Enslavement" and everything clicked. It was the only explanation of government that I understood.

If you are in the beginner position, realize that there are hundreds to thousands of well qualified experts with conflicting opinions, and very few likely agree with that guy. I think it is important to teach people. If someone is interested in problem x, and you have a lot of knowledge about problem x, don't show off, rather open a socratic dialogue. They may actually have some unique thoughts and good reasoning that will intrigue you. What I find really interesting is what people think and believe, and why. Figuring and finding it out I find far more interesting than the sound of my voice. The calculations that people do before every sentence as to phrasing, word choice, and what this will and won't say is so fascinating. You are also in a better position to understand and talk to them when that it your goal.

As someone who spent a lot of time playing Counter Strike in the past, I can agree with some of these, like inquiring about breast size and attractiveness. I think the issue with most of these points is that the gender is claimed as a cause, when it is rather just douchbag players who will act like douchbags in regard to any factor they can possibly be douchbags with. The main ones I have a problem with are the ones that deal with the protagonists being males. It is pretty easy to figure that if the primary market is males, that the games will target males. I don't see how this is at all a problem that needs to be proactively addressed because the market will cater more to females as more females become gamers. I think their argument is: Games are created for men because men are the primary consumer Women are uncomfortable with the material as it isn't catered to their preferences Most women are discouraged from getting into video gaming because of this factor Video games will continue to only be catered to men The issue claimed is that there is some semi-permanent barrier that requires intervention on the societal side to fix due to the arguments self-reinforcing nature. This isn't at all needed, as if there is the demand, then it will be incredibly profitable for people to cater to female gamers. I also think it is good to talk about the subject in terms of cosmetics. We don't often see lipstick marketed towards males, rather the whole cosmetic industry seems to be directed towards females. Men who want to put makeup on feel uncomfortable about the lack of male role models in the cosmetic industry. If a male does where makeup, they are likely to be bashed and harassed by both genders, and it is all because they have a penis. Not saying the above is the same, but saying that video games should market to all sexes is like saying that the cosmetic industry ought to market to both sexes. Why aren't they at the moment? Lack of demand. Now if you know for certain that there is a huge demand for the product, then it is probably best to put it all on the line and to make a product marketed towards the opposite sex. Personally, I always play as female characters in games. I don't like it when I don't have the option to. I also like strong females characters, though I also like strong characters in general, doesn't matter the sex. I do think there are serious issues in gaming and social media when it comes to females, like how half the comments on female youtubers channels are about how the person want to have sex with them, but these are likely the same idiots who post other moronic comments elsewhere. There can certainly be annoying dicks who don't shut up about how a girl is playing video games and how she should be back in the kitchen, but these these are the same idiots who yell the n word every time they die.

Like a few other posters said, I do not think that it can be generalized to abuse. I do think it may be the case in many instances though. When I was young, I broke a glass saying "#1 dad" on it belonging to a close family friend. I knew that he did not have livinv children, but he had a child who died, and I felt so bad and cried because I thought I broke something which may of had a lot of emotional value to him. It had nothing to do with the fear of being hit, but rather just the sadness that I permanently destroyed something which he may of valued so much. Of course it was not a big deal and I overthought it all, the magnitude was likely overblown due to certain factors, but I do not think the sadness was not justified. Though we can think as adults "it is just a glass, what is the big deal", a child likely does not have the same frame of refrence. They might thinking breaking your glass is like you breaking one of your toys. There is also the scare factor of a glass breaking, which the child can represses initially, but will release when comforted by a parent. Again, I think abuse may be a factor, but another factor is teaching the child about these circumstances beforehand. A child who has never broken anything in this manner is likely experiencing a lot of emotions and is unsure of what to do and how their parents will react.

It is something to be aware of. I am often unsure if something actually happened, or if it was a dream. I often get memories mixed up. I do think I can identify true memories very well for reasons that would take a while to explain and likely bore people. To put it this way, I have a very good memory, and any friend attest to this.

Aww. That makes me rather sad.

I feel tepid in making a reply, but the tides of gratitude for the generations we have lost so long ago compel me to greatest ends of my ability to take up the duty for which I have been chosen to represent, to take the reins of responsibility from the steer who does not steer, to look through the haze far out and to see glimmers of sunshine like beams of like glimmering in the mid summer's night, to do what no one else is is able to do due to their incandescent bulb like brains shining dim inefficiently as an economy dragged through the chains of recourse, buckled down by seat belt laws, as spontaneous as a duck's echo, the law knows no bounds like the theoretical universe expanding in the vast chasm of here and forever.

It was his primary means of relating his will and his values into reality. There are a number of lectures on Objectivism which might help out with this. Reading Atlas Shrugged would help out a lot as it is more speech heavy, whereas The Fountainhead is more subtle. This Cliffnotes link may be a quicker source to look up, but I highly suggest reading or listening to Atlas Shrugged. Personally, I understood Roark very quickly as I was quite like him growing up.

No it isn't.

The subject bothers me. I have been trying to stay away from it, with the exception of FDR.

There is more to the hammer experiment as far as what is going on. Derren Brown actually uses the effect very well.

Might put you into an odd spot with your friends. Though you may not mind that in the long run. I can't think of anything good, I'd just advise being aware that it might hurt your friendships in the long run. The issue with these topics is that if you were to attempt to talk to them about the evidence, they realize that if they are wrong that it puts them into the same awkward social situation you are in, and will overcompensate in their reaction.

I'm a lot better than I used to be, but I tend to overvalue people who are attractive, particularly women. I tend not to judge people as more intelligent from appearances, unless they are wearing glasses or look nerdy, but if you are an attractive woman, I tend to want to hear what you have to say a little more. I work in fast food so I am pretty good at reading people and I tend to be correct about my predictions. People go out of their way to communicate who they are and what they want. Though sometimes I am rather surprised by people who are the complete opposite of how they are. Something I've noticed is that people with bad childhoods who have done work on themselves tend to send out bad vibes that turn out to be false. This I have found to be an issue with myself. Like there was a girl at my last job who seemed to everyone like she was going to be snobby, but was actually way down to earth. What was strange was that everyone had that impression of her. This is of course is not scientifically proven, but I could imagine some experiments that could be done to test it.

If that is what some people prefer, there is nothing wrong with it. Many people aren't likely to prefer it as a problem of the commons would occur in some instances. Some people might not care to maintain the property, leaving others to have to pick up the slack. If you've ever had roommates, this ought not to be a stretch of the imagination. There is also the issue of agreement, as without full control you are not always going to be able to have your way. The problem would not be a single owner's preferences, but rather all owner's preferences. It may work out in instances where people have very similar values and goals, but people are diverse and often change. I could go on with various problems people would have with it, but a major one is that selling a co-owned house might not work out very well. What are you selling exactly, the right for someone else to live there? Is this not something the co-op must agree to? Doesn't the new co-owner have to accept all of the various rules established? How many people are going to pay a substantial amount to become a co-owner, when there may be cheaper alternatives. I'm not saying that there wouldn't be ways of dealing with this, but the risk of loss is very high, and the risk of wanting to move at some point is also pretty high. Hopefully this post isn't dumb. I think I understand the idea, and I'm certain it has worked out well for some people, but I feel like I am not understanding something.

I'd agree with your post. Though I do acknowledge that there may be various barriers in obtaining a higher wage, I always act to improve my value as an employee. So far as a result, I've been promoted to supervisor and have gotten a pay higher to those who have been there far longer. believe a large factor in income inequality is inflation. New money is received first by banks and then by their lenders, which are typically large corporations. The money is moving throughout the economy very slowly, which is resulting in a slower inflation rate. I don't think banks or corporations actually have any additional wealth, rather that they just have the pre-inflation advantage. It is like if I printed up a million units in a fictional economy, which when spent would cause a 90% loss of value in the currency. I would look far better before I caused the inflation by spending the money as the current value of the money is quite high. But after the inflation, having that same million units is like having a hundred thousand units previously. Perhaps a clunky example, but I think it helps to explain a lot.

I find this subject matter very interesting and have read a good number of books on the subject. The book Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow being a great one as it talks about what comes very easily for humans, and what does not. I find this sort of information useful as it allows me to be aware of where my senses and thinking is likely to be mislead. Though I am rather annoyed with the current skeptic movement to invalidate the senses and almost any reasoning. It is in many ways a continuation of skeptic philosophy from over 2000 years ago, though it at least has physics and science as a basis. It may sound strange, but I feel as though the large amount of focus on how the human brain can be very faulty is intended to counteract a large amount of the current culture. The significance of the findings are overstated because of general distaste for those who never question their thoughts and perceptions. In an IFS sort of way, when a part of the culture is out of whack, another part is created with an equally extreme opposing agenda to balance things out. I find myself in a difficult spot as I really like hearing about these experiments and ideas, but I also hate hearing people drone on about how humans are so stupid, and how our cognitive biases disallow us from doing anything sensible. Personally, I am not as prone to many cognitive biases, and it may be because I've taken an interest in them since I was seven. In reading various books with tests, it isn't that I am always right, but rather that I pass a lot of the tests and the ones I don't I tend not to guess on because I just feel unsure. Statistical thinking is something I am very good at for whatever reason. Ironically I am pretty bad with math ones, like the classical ball and bat question.

I think Stefan's book On Truth is related to the conversation. Ostracism is the primary means through which people perpetuate the state. Enforcement is ultimately not carried out by the police, or the military, but rather the citizen.

What makes an emotion rational or irrational is its relation to reality. Was the emotion triggered or did it come from nowhere? If triggered, what triggered it? Should that event trigger that emotion? Is the intensity appropriate? Classifying your emotions allow for a greater ability to introspect. If you feel anger all of a sudden, and have no idea why, you are able to look inward to find to cause. If you are speaking about being hit as a child, and you are laughing and giggling, you'd ask if this is an appropriate response. After determining that horror and anger are more appropriate with the stimulus, you are able to figure out why you had an irrational reaction to a memory. Why do you find being hit as a child funny, when it was an awful event that had a negative impact on you? The intensity is also a factor to analyze. If a coworker says something a little snarky to me, and I become completely livid, then I can look at the situation and realize that the intensity is too high. It is not that the emotion is wrong, rather that it ought not to be firing on such a level. I can use this information to figuring out if there is a reason as to why I was more mad than I should be. Is there something bothering me that I am ignoring? Am I projecting my anger from something else? Or am I tired and in a grumpy mood? A good example of out of whack intensity is when driving. Someone may cut us off, take too long to pull out, or be driving a little too slow, and it is likely that our response to this is far greater than it needs to be. Does it really make sense to cuss and yell for five minutes because someone slowed down your trip by a few minutes? Does it make sense to wish death upon someone simply because they didn't see or understand that it was their turn to turn? The idea is not to ignore your emotions, but to be honest about what you are feeling, and to only act on emotions which are rational. If someone says something to me which makes me angry, but has no reason to make me angry, then I just need to admit that I am feeling angry and I don't know why. The cause of the emotion ought not have caused the emotion. In the case of hating all men, this is more of a rational problem than anything. The claim being made is not so much the subjective one, that "my preference is against men", but rather a more objective one", such as "men are bad, I do not like bad things, I do not like men". Extrapolating hatred to all of men based on a limited number of interactions with men is not very scientific due to the sampling rate. Worse, it is prone to so many psychological biases, especially since our minds are kind of designed to stereotype. The solution to the above is to realize that the emotion doesn't relate to reality very well, and to uncover the cause of your emotion. It isn't to reject your emotion, but that it doesn't make sense, and to find the cause. I am in general agreement that past relationships, especially family relationships, have a lot to do with irrational emotions... But I am tentative to claim that there is always some past event which is the cause of an irrational emotion. It might just be random. It could be because you understood the subject in one way, and then you realize it is actual something completely different. It might just be because you are tired, or some of your neural chemicals just happen to be temporarily out of whack. Getting mad at your girlfriend for some dumb irrational reason might be because of some prior conflict with your mother, or it might also be because you pulled an allnighter and just cognitively drained.

Having read quite a lot of Rand and having gone through some lecture series on Objectivism, I don't recall this concept the way Stefan describes. The way I'd portray it is that people will avoid responsibility and reality to extreme extents, even resulting in their death. It isn't so much that they prefer death, but rather that they'd prefer to die over thinking. There is a scene in Atlas Shrugged which describes this pretty well, and of course it has to do with trains. I don't want to spoil the book if you haven't read it, but it deals with the consequences of those who accept bad philosophy.

From: https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/36752-freedomain-radio-affiliate-links/?p=336770

If you can prove that you were under the influence during the time of agreeing to go to college, and during college, then you might be able to say that you were taken advantage of while under the influence. It'd have to be something like alcohol, as marijuana doesn't really impair judgement, and you'd likely need documentation proving you got a liver transplant recently. To be more serious, refusing to pay is going to complicate your life to an extreme degree, especially in terms of interest. It is completely ok to not pay if you accept the risk of garnished wages, no credit, little financial opportunity, and debtors prison... But if you want to avoid these things then paying it off ASAP is your best bet. It is the same with paying taxing. My reasons for paying them is because I don't see any benefit to not paying them. Nobody will care, nobody will know, and the only impact it would make is on my quality of life.