Brad Sherard

https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 Found this paragraph to be particularly interesting:

Its fun watching my own progression of ideas mirrored in honest and curious thinkers. I made the case long ago that an end cannot be achieved by means which contradict that end, but we should take care to really be sure what constitutes an actual contradiction. In the more dogmatic libertarians and anarchists, there is an interesting avoidance of history, of data. It tends to dwell more in ivory tower abstraction. I've had to point out numerous times the obvious to people, and this topic is one such time. People ask me how on earth I could ever "support" nationalism and still call myself an anarchist(I don't actually call myself that but it does derive from basic reasoning about morality). This is my answer: Suppose you were a peasant, or an early worker in the growing cities as industrialism overtook the artistocrats who could only institute poor houses as more and more people flowed into the cities during the 1600s. The promise of freedom grows as the will to enact it becomes more popular and acceptable in public discourse. Now also suppose you were a peasant of abnormal moral conscience, ahead of your time; you rejected all enslavement, not just your own. The slave trade would persist even as the monarchs fell away to the somewhat more limited democratic and constitutional republic governments on the horizon. Would you, a moral person, support the rise of western civilization out of serfdom even if what remained contained evil institutions? Would you reject the end of slavery and statist violence for many if a few still remained enslaved? Moral advancement does not come to humans in one giant leap from hell to heaven. Human history is an endless proof that we have come from evil origins to higher ground slightly less bloodied. We are crawling inch by inch over bodies to get to a truly civilized world. So, denying outright any choice that contains any element of evil as if it simply cannot bring us nearer to peace is to ignore all of human history. It doesn't mean any action is permitted, but it does mean we can't just categorically dismiss incremental improvement. So, as far as consequentialism is concerned, choosing nationalism in the face of globalism(and what is globalism but communism without the revolution?), cannot be categorically rejected. And we can also consider the logical case as well. Lets start with the assumption of the validity of the non-aggression principle, UPB, etc. Is there a contradiction in choosing a violent path? Not necessarily. Consider the annoying hypothetical of a train track with one person tied to one branch of a split and two people tied to the other. Some evil cartoon villain is forcing you to choose which will die by putting you in front of the switch as a train approaches. Are you commiting violence by throwing the switch to kill one person rather than two? No, you didn't set the events in motion that forced the choice upon you. It was the villain. And we aren't the ones putting us to the decision between the violent action of choosing nationalism or a multi-cultural banana republic. Maybe there is another choice but until it becomes apparant, I choose to do what I think gives us the best chance for a free and peaceful future.

It would be a wonderful surprise but don't get your hopes up too much. People still tolerate lesser abuse. Even so, it is encouraging to see the universal condemnation of these horrid videos.

The non-aggression principle(It looks like it is sometimes called an "axiom" but otherwise indestinguishable from "principle") is formally defined as follows: The initiation of violence(between humans) is an invalid moral proposition. See here for the history of the concept: https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Principle_of_non-aggression Axioms are indemonstratable but also apodictically undeniable propositions. Meaning they cannot be proven but they cannot be denied(and when I say "denied" I don't just mean they cannot be disproven, but even claimed to be false). The three propositional axioms are identity(A is A), non-contradiction(not A and the negation of A), and the excluded middle(A or the negation of A). Propositions can be apodictic without being axioms. For example, if I say "Humans do not act" that is a performative contradiction, so it is apodictically false(it cannot even be assumed to be the case). However, it can easily be proved(via that very Reductio Ad Absurdum). So it is not indemonstratable. Axioms are ultimately irrational, meaning they cannot be analyzed further and pulled apart and have their logical pieced proven like other propositions. They are the base of the system in which we are contained(a la Gödel's incompleteness theorem). The above example proposition uses the non-contradiction axiom(through RAA) in order to disprove it. Axioms do not make use of proofs; only non-axiom propositions rely upon axioms. So, the NAP is not axiomatic, because it can be proven(see UPB), it has constituent logical components that build up the proof of the conclusion. Also, saying you cannot prove a negative is to assert that "no circumstance exists in which one can prove a negative" which is the form of what you define as being a negative(from your formulation of the NAP in your first line). So you are claiming that what you've stated cannot be proved.

I checked out your post, Jason. The notion of an "on-line public notary system" is interesting but I'd like to know more. Would you briefly walk me through the technical use case of your solution and how it satisfies the stated goal? Always a reason, Boss! I may still release the source code but if I do, there are no take backs. So I'm debating the pros and cons and keeping the code private for now until I decide.

https://github.com/bsherard/BlockExplorer Its just a hobbyist app designed to pad my resume but it also serves to show how easy it is to get into this space. It took about 40 hours of work stretched over a month, starting from when I knew very little of the technical specifics of the blockchain and its script stack to being able to navigate it. Additionally, the last 20 hours or so was spent having fun over-engineering the data abstractions and design patterns; it wasn't time actually needed to build this. It is built in C# using WPF. It should work on any windows 7+ machine with .NET updated to 4.6.1 or higher. Some technical details: it uses services meant for devs, not for production. The Nbitcoin API I use to query the blockchain is designed to work with QBitNinja client and server. That server is hosted freely by the developers of that project. A true production setup would require that I also host my own QBitNinja server and point the app to that. Sample screenshot:

My thoughts on an app for avoiding products that are sold by corrupt parent companies would function like this: You're at the grocery store, and you see a selection of cereal. In the app, you take a picture of a logo like you would scan a QR code. The app serializes the data into metadata including a hashed fingerprint of the image. This is all done locally so far. That data is then sent like any standard JSON rest request to a central service that parses the fingerprint, matches it with a known image fingerprint stored in the server DB. That matched result is associated with a company object, which has a reference to a parent company, and so on until it reaches the top owner. That metadata is sent back down to the client. Rather than deciding on its own, the user can decide whether or not to boycott that company that comes back in the result. He can create a black list in the app at his own pace which will warn the user when a returned name matches the filtered companies. The user can also download mantained blacklists based on his preferences.

My focus this entire election cycle has been not on the election itself, but on building on this energy in various ways, particularly after the election is over. Presidents don't matter; believing in them does and that same belief matters beyond merely politics. This momentum can become a cultural rennaisance if we foster it. Whether it be to bring the alt-right populism into a more rigorous philosophical direction while keeping its healthy body energy, or embracing more of the disenfranchised Sanders supporters or newly awakened traditional republican voters. The greatest quality of the alt-right or this trend against the mainstream in general is its pride. It isn't ashamed to be honest. It isn't afraid of being attacked. This is a movement of people who have no fear of peer on peer attack. This is a power that is unstoppable by conventional democratic methods of controlling people. We have to nurture this strength because it is the best damn weapon against social control I've ever seen. But setting aside abstractions for a moment, one practical way we can keep this ball rolling is with the media. It is on the ropes. All we need to do is keep pushing on them for how corrupt they were during the election, how directly complicit they were, conspiring with Hillary, letting her staff write their articles, let them review and edit their articles, secretly be unpaid propagandists for her. They committed fraud, libel, and violated pretty much every notion of journalistic ethics there is. Even the people who oppose Trump on policy can appreciate this election as a fight between honesty and corruption. We need to push this. We can't let them slither away and regroup. We have to keep going until they are all out of business and none of them can find jobs except at 3rd rate tabloids in some disreputable backwater far away from innocent people. Here are some good sources for some of the exposed corruption: http://www.mostdamagingwikileaks.com/

Exactly. Consequentialism is immaterial to the should. All that matters is whether or not the argument is true.

https://twitter.com/realEdwardSzall/status/792136346714374148 (direct youtube link) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njN75nJdCAk All the abstract immoralities in the world don't inspire in me a sliver of the rage I feel having watched this video. This is what I am fighting. Not politicians, but the societies that breed them. The kind of world where this happens and not only does no one else intervene to help, but where the rest of the mob scurry in to tear up her property. This is a kind of pervasive belief in savagery that is accepted as normal and good.

This video helped to remind me that we still have a lot to suss out before we can be sure one way or another about genetics and cultural compatibility:

Thank you and the rest of the FDR team for using the community you've worked so hard to build to spread the truth about this issue.

Fascinating vid. Thanks for putting it up. Its fun to see how the psychology profession applies its own tools reflectively. I also enjoy seeing how those with a measure of self-knowledge behave(even knowing that self-knowledge is something one can obtain is a form of self-knowledge so even the incorrect psychologists are informative in this regard).

Duke Pesta makes a 2 hour case against common core, exposing the negative effects it has for children's education, the indoctrination the curriculum contains, and the motives behind its architects.

To encourage people to make the leap to peace, some require an environment hospitable to peaceful people and hostile to statists. Consider the lone man on some college campus screaming about how taxation is a form of theft. Everyone rolls their eyes and goes about their day. Consider a different environment where several people are all gathered together and all talking about the involuntary nature of taxation and one person joins them. People do not deal with arguments alone. They don't have the time and will not risk the effort to engage in such ideas if the speaker does not display any assurances of stability. People respond to ideas posed by some desperate individual begging them to listen differently than a whole society that dismisses anyone who disregards some belief. People don't evaluate the argument alone. They calculate what it means for them if they accept it. Many religious kids have heard all the arguments refuting deities but do not find them convincing until later when they are away from their parents. An argument is often not even the real issue being evaluated at all. So given all that, providing a community that does more than simply beg for people to listen to reason would go a long way towards inviting more people to the cause of peace and voluntarism. With regards to say comment sections and various social media sites, It can be very subtle things, like a comment section regarding some topic filled with people not all frantically insisting that some topic is right, but people unworriedly knowing thats the case and treating it as obvious, moving on to subsequent ideas. It can be people dismissing trolls and desperate liars rather than pretending they need any honest rebuttal of their sophistry. It can be people having fun and making jokes, being friendly with one another all under the umbrella of the posited idea in question. People coming in to such a conversation do not see a lone wolf begging for an audience. They see a community unconcerned with them. Simple things like that go a long way. A person who sees a guy wasting his time trying to beg trolls to be reasonable is not going to be very impressed. Anyone who ignores reality by trying to argue with liars is going to be estimated to be not very clear minded. Such a person is not likely to have anything worth listening to. So I think mockery, dismissal, jokes, all the social cues that indicate the nature of a group beyond the arguments themselves, but the actual actions of their champions, these are essential to inviting people to new ideas. I was inspired to make this post when I saw this comic. Somehow the mockery seemed more appropriate than the rigorous approach to dealing with some of this statist nonsense: http://redpanels.com/90/