TheRobin

With pretty much everything that has to do with the psyche, the unconcious or subconsious (or however you want to call it) or those parts of yourself you normally don't have or get access to, my experience was that asking politely and respectfully worked really well :)And trying to force it doesn't work well at all

I have found, that in order to gain knowledge (be that self-knowledge or other) it is essential to understand the question first and formulate it in a way that is as detailed and explicit as necessary. Because what can often happen is that one states a question with a lot of either vague or implicit assumptions or premises that are unchecked and that never leads anywhere productive in my experience. About 80%-90% of the time the answer becomes incredibly obvious once you truly understand what it is that you're asking in the first place. (The other times it usually becomes obvious who to ask or where to look for answers because of that). At least that's my experience. So, to give you some feedback: I don't really understand what you're asking, could you maybe try and make that more clear? (Maybe I just miss something though, that's of course also a possibility)

wow, this site is actually serious? I thought it was a satire-site when reading the title, damn...

best in what regard? You/FDR covers a wide area of things that are talked about and even more ways of expressing the thoughts itself, ranging from funny/humorous ways to look at things over clever metaphors that make more foggy things more obvious to simply bluntly stating the facts as they are in an uncompromising manner.I'd have a hard time calling some ways better than others (though there are certainly expressions/quotes that are a lot better in terms of clarity and style than other quotes that are about the same things/areas) and an even harder time trying to find the "best" quotes, if you know what I mean.

I think it would be a good start to differentiate between note issuing banks and investment banks.A world without state enforced currency would most likely have a stable currency, therefore also a lot more stable economy (as long term planing would be easier and not so much dependant on the whims of politicians (at least in the financial sector)) and maybe would make it a little harder for politicians to bribe people (as they couldn't simply ask for loans by having banks print them money).If there were no investment banks, then a lot of people wouldn't be able to get a lot of the stuff they have today. Whenever an individual would want to have a loan, he'd have to go around asking other people for it, instead of conveniantly going to a bank and ask there, most likely making it either a lot more difficult or completely impossible, thus making saving the only way to aquire capital for bigger investments (like a house, or a car, a higher education maybe), this would also impact other areas and entrepreneurs which currently produce these goods etc.Anyway, these are my thoughts so far, based on my understanding (which isn't much anyway). Curious what others have to say to that though.

First of all: Awesome that you managed to change 5 parents minds! That's really great! Alfie Kohn's "Unconditional Parenting" talks a lot about it and has tons of footnotes citying studies. I think you/they can also get a lot out of the 2 hour presentation with the same name (you'll find that online, one way or another )as he really makes obvious the reasoning and logic behind it (he also quotes some studies to back it up, but it's obivuosly not as detailed as the book, still a very good starting point to get people intersted in peaceful and non-punishemnt/non-skinner-behaviour-modification parenting and the dangers and problems that one ends up in when going with the punishment-way of "teaching" a child.)

The way I undestand it (which doesn't mean much) isn't that you should buy gold/silver to make it into coins, but rather as a store of value. Seeing as both metals are used in the industry, so you know there will be a demand for it in the future, so whatever new currency will emergy, you'll have buyers for gold/silver and you don't lose the value of your work/savings because it is stored in paper, which becomes worthless.Btw for the same reasons you can just as well buy platinum or other usefull and easy to store metals with a high $/kg ratio.

First, let me tell you how sorry I am about what happened to you and your brother. That's a really awful and horrible childhood you had. I'm a bit lost for words on how to express my sympathy here, but I'm really really sorry to hear what you've been through and I can't even truly imagine how bad that must've been.In regards to the relationship between you and your borther: It seems you never had a relationship with him, that was based on mutual respect and empathy for each other. No doubt thanks to your parents, who, it seems, also weren't that capable of treating you two with respect or empathy and furthermore enabled your brother to be abusive towards you, which was just as damaging to his deveolpment of empathy as it was towards yours. I don't want to say he isn't responsible for anything he did, but I personally have a hard time assinging full responsibility for one's actions to a kid before somewhere in his/her teen-years, as just so much of the behaviour is dependant (or a reaction) of the environment and the people a kid grows up with and how he/she is being treated by them.That being said, it still needs to be talked about an acknowledged if you want to have a meaningful relationship with your brother. Else it's just that big elephant in the room that both just try to avoid looking at all the time. (I mean, him almost drowning you and abusing you emotionally and physically and almost sexually is really not something that can (or should) just be brushed away that easily, regardless of whether or not one wants to hold him fully responsible or not).Whether or not you can even have a relationship with him depends a lot on him wanting that too though and is not something that can be willed or done solely from your end. You can state what you want/need out of the relationship with him and ask him whether or not he wants that too (things like maybe honesty, more openness, respect, him not being abusive towards you or ridiculing you etc.), if he doesn't or can't accept those terms then there's nothing you can do, I think, as you can't make another person want to behave a certain way (or want to want certain things). My opinion would be to try as hard as you can to establish an actual relationship with him and tell him honestly how you feel when he treats you disrespectfully and see how he reacts to that, but if you find you really can't have any meaningful connection with him then I'd advice to not torturing yourself by continuing to try, as that would seem to me to be just a continuation of the theme in your relationship that he has power over you and you being powerless and begging for him to change his behaviour.On a side note: I wouldn't be too quick to jump to the conclusion that he might be homosexual just because he makes gay jokes and doesn't date women. From what you tell here he seems extremely unable to form any meaningful or intimate relationships from a lack of empathy towards other people, so that alone can make him feel anxious or frightened to try to date (regardless of orientation). Also, I think, in some cases the anger towards homosexuals can also be the result of experienced sexual abuse that was never acknowledged (and considering he also tried to sexually abuse you, that might really be worth asking him, although of course it's an extremly volatile topic).I hope some of that can help you somewhat or give you at least some ideas. I personally don't have any older siblings with whom I grew up with nor am I in any way an expert (or even amateur really) on relationships or psychology, so this is really just an opinion of some guy on an internet board and nothing more.

Nice one. Although it has some occult/esoteric aspects to it (especially when coming close to the end) still very intersting interpretation of the movies.I always wonder though how much was actually intended by the filmmakers and how much is only Mark's interpretation due to his knowledge and contact with the occult.

You're welcome Isn't "bot" short for "robot"? (not sure I'd call it pejorative, but a robot is characterized, by a lack of emotions, lack of free will and is a machine to do its master's biding, so all in all certainly not the friendliest term one could call another (especially when asking for a favor). Unless "bot" actually doesn't stand for "robot" in which case, I have no idea what you meant and my reply has nothing to do with what you said )

not a bot though, but..is this the video you're looking for? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLCEXtpTNYUIt's mostly non-cartoon, but is about the geocentric models and morality

As McAttack asked before: What do you want out of therapy? I mean, why did you want to go there? What in your life does currently bother you that you need help with?My experience is that things in the present can prompt an emotional reaction which is tied to past experience. When this happens its very useful to be curious about the emotion and what originally prompted it etc. This is especially true if the emotional reaction is somehow not appropriate to the evidence or facts at hand (meaning, some assumptions/experiences from your past are tied into a situation from the present, which they have nothing to do with. That imo usually means that there some repressed emotions that were appropriate somewhere in your past when this same or similar situation happened, alongside with not being able to act in accordance with those emotions)But yeah, simply talking about the past as in "When I was x years old, I did y and z" or something like that doesn't sound too useful to me either, if that's what you meant with "talking about the past". (Which doesn't mean much, just my thoughts)

btw did you also link the original post from Stef with all the data and statistics etc.? when I went over their comments I saw one guy asking for a written form (out of not wanting to go over an hour long video).That way people could actually direct any critique at the actual data (or at least explain why data might or might not be of importance, depending on their views)

Maybe you should clarify what you mean with "work" first.Do you mean work in the sense of going to work (at a company, be that someone elses or your own)? Or do you mean "doing stuff" be that either leisure (and end in itself) or the stuff ones "has" to do but isn't an end in and of itself like preparing food, laundry, travel?

Sure, feel free to free up somebody else by doing his job for free, so he gets more freedom We didn't get increased work, we got it decreased heavily. just because we still work about the same hours doesn't mean we don't have more free time now compared to 50 years ago (just think of all the things you almost spend no time doing outside the working hours, that used to take you hours to days to complete, like laundry, communication, transportation (to see friends for instance), just to name a few. Now mentally go back 150 years and think about how much time was freed up thanks to technology for us now.)

@oldtincan: I'm not quite sure I undestand the first point. Isn't any reward necessarily arbitrary? Or do you mean that in a way that the reward is presented only as vague and uncertain and one party basically has no idea what it would be or even if there was an actual reward, that would be wanted?to your second point: I think in order to even call it "reward" it necessarily needs to be voluntary in nature, else it'd more sound to me like one person makes the other do stuff and then gives somethign for restitution or so.I think I remember Dayna Martin (in one of the two interviews with Stef) mentioning housework and reward. iird she said that they once made it like this: They had a list in the house with chores and respective rewards and if their kids wanted to earn some money (or extra money) they could do those chores if they wanted (or not if they didn't). But my memory is quite fuzzy on that one.@Joe: Just read a bit in Kohn's book about competitiion, my bad. I misinterpreted his interview and you're correct in that he makes a case even against competition in the economy. Though I have to say, so far his data seems to be really clear in that competition does not create an incentive (and often the exact opposite). This seems to be even true in soem business world examples. Anyway, I'm just at the start of the book (and now I'm actually really curious how it goes from where I am). I don't want to hijack this thread though, but I might open a new one, once I finished the book. As it seems a very intersting topic (also one that seems to have conflicting data in regarsd to commonly accepted free market theories, which would make it all the more intersting imo)

@Joe: The way I understand it he uses the term "competition" differently that the free market idea of comeptition. The kind of comeptition he critizes is where people participate in win/lose situation (like sports, where you ONLY win when the other loses), not the ones where different ideas compete with each other to see which is best. Or like the free market where its about maximising efficient win-win situation.So can I presume, that you haven't read or listened to his material and this is mostly a reaction to the title? Or did I get Kohn's claim wrong? (I haven't read the book yet either, but I listened to an interview with him about this book)

Well, I haven't read the book (I started another one by Kohn, and heard that argument there, also on youtube, maybe you want to give that a shot before trying to work through the book btw). But Kohn usually bases his conclusion on studies (I never saw a man use that many pages of references and footnotes in his books).

I didn't mention the movie to deny the argument that jobs would dissapear, but to counter David's idea that the rich would create some sort of self-sufficient robot-run society, in which they basically got all their stuff for free and wouldn't need any human labour.The point would be that, to even make only one of those machines, one requires about a thousand (or most likely more) different skillsets, connections, procedures and tons of specialized knowledge etc. so the idea the a select rich few, had a) all that knowledge and b) somehow had the time to oversee the procedure at all ends is really quite impossible (or at least as I see it).(and of course the more robots you require the more you need to know, as you need to be able to maintain and produce each of those robots, this problem also doesn't disappear even when you have more robots maintaining these robots)The real problem of automatiion, as I see it, is that, the people which are being replaced usually don't have any skillsets and no knowledge how to require a better skillset, which would enable them to create something else of value in another (maybe more specialized) field. Seeing as most people who end up making burgers (to take that as an example), do so only, because they lack any good eduction (thanks to public schooling) or opportunities in entrepreneuRship (thanks to regulation and high taxation).Else the whole automation would just be an easy to see benefit (= less costs for consumers, more efficiency, meaning more leftover time/money to buy other goods and services from other people). Or so my amateurish understanding of the economy in broad terms.

Maybe I misunderstood your article somewhat then. Are you saying that people speculated on the longterm demand of gold then, as the basis for their use of money? That was more my guess than anything else. My reasoning was, that IF gold had been used too much to make goods, then it wouldn't have been good basis for money as the total amount of it would have been decreasing quickly. Another reason was that goldproducts (i.e. jewelry (I don't know of any pracitcal products at those earlier times)) could only be afforded by the aristocracy or rulers of the times, and since the ratio of rulers:rest is quite low I assumed a low demand in goldproducts as well relative to its use in exchange (which everyone else used it for). Btw I'm looking forward to reading your part 2 on this

Interesting read.I still don't udnerstand why gold would fit the description needed for being considered "money".The demand for gold (especially in the middle ages or early inudstrial revolution) wasn't that high (or was it?), not many goods were produced with gold and only a small percentage of the actual gold in circulation was used to make those goods. Nowadays there's more usage to it, but back then, all that comes to my mind is goldsmiths making jewelry with it (which wasn't that high in demand, seeing as barely anyone had the money for such fancies).Also, out of curiosity: What would you trade your gold against with a goldsmith? Seeing as there you'd exchange one form of gold for another form of gold (which would imply that the value came from the form of the material in that trade not solely from the material itself).

The way I undertood Kohn in this is like that: When you pay something for it, their motivation is the payment, and not the thing they do. So, IF you want your kid to value something then paying them to do it, will result in the exact opposite and they will even lose interest in it, if they don't get paid to do it. (Like you wouldn't mow a neighbours lawn without payment).So if you want to pay them to do something "for their own good" then paying them TO do it, will simply decrease the value they see in doing it in and of themselves.Or that's how I understood it. Hope my explanation makes some sense, not sure I formulated it perfectly

Have you seen the short (~6min iirc) movie "I, Pencil"? Maybe that will give you some perspective on how erm, impossible the scenario is that you're talking about.

Well, that's not really different as if those same people still paid other indiviuals to make a product (They wouldn't "need" to buy it (or rather, "only" pay 95% of its cost (which is about the cost of production in general relativ to the profit made afaik)) So how's that relevant?

The measure would be morally sound even if it had a 99% death ratio. The crucial point is, whether its inflcited upon another person or voluntarily applied. And if you lie to them or keep them in the dark about the possible outcomes in order to got them to comply, that's fraud and also immoral. I wouldn't know for certain how to answer it, if the person would be in a coma or something like that. (Say one had a 90/10 chance of either getting them to wake back up or die). But since, no one has the unlimited recources to keep them in a coma forever idk, at some point it's probably "inevidable" to try it (as death would be certain either way). But that's for sure a more tricky one. Btw I'm actually quite curious what its really about. I don't think misunderstanding would be a problem much (seeing as we're both quite capable of communicating after a few tries) and I don't disbelief out of some prinicple. So would you be willing to share what this is really all about?