Wesley

How does the state get its power?

http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/science-guy-ready-to-debate-founder-of-creation-museum/ That last link will take you here: http://debatelive.org/ Which will allow you to watch the debate for free, live (February 4 at 7 PM EST) Might be interesting to see.

First of all, mining is not useless, but a way to reward and build a mining base by which bitcoin can be built on as miners are who verify and audit transactions. There also is a disadvantage to mining for a purpose in that the more that mining has a purpose, the easier it is to exploit. If you know what the answer or the end goal is already, then it makes rewards easier to get without participating in the system, if that makes sense. This may or may not be a great idea, I just wanted to point out that there is a reason why bitcoin operates in the way it does.

The most telling lines. Powerful song, Kevin. I think I might give you the vote to finally tie me

In case you want to know who paid for this: Special thanks to Learn For Life Foundation of WA City of Wanneroo Aranmore Catholic College Chadwick Model Management Frog Management Muse Bureau Nando's All Seasons Catering Yum Yum Audio Soundbyte Studios Location Equipment Blue Forest Media OCP Emma and Chris Roberts Craig Shand Annette Preshaw Bev Haigh Tanya Muia Andrea Gibbs Joel Crane Sam Winzar Greg Stirling Set Yourself Free is a brand new commercial for the Learn for Life Foundation of Western Australia. www.learnforlifewa.org.au http://www.learnforlifewa.org.au/ But yea. That video was really messed up.... Idk what else to say.

the child-nutrition manager... decided to withhold lunches to deal with the issue Sounds like statist logic. Job: keep children healthy Solution: starve them Punishing kids without warning because the parents may have messed up is pretty ridiculous.

The difference is that I did not do any selective breeding or culling. That all happened in the past. I do not use force or violence in training. I ignore things that I do not like and I reward things that I do like. Generally, he tends to do things that I reward over things that I ignore and over time those behaviors become the norm. I got my dog from a shelter and interacted with him before we went home. So, as much as a dog can, he had to at least be happy with me and want to spend more time with me. Finally, I am a bit confused as to why "we own pets, and if they were moral agents it would be really bad for human morality" is an argument against the moral agency of animals. There are other arguments, but for instance for a lot of human history people owned other people and the argument that "we own people and if they were moral agents then human morality would be terrible" also wouldn't be a good argument for slavery. So I still have issue with the argument/analogy.

I didn't see him insult, but he was trying to point out what the logical possibilities were. He stated you may not understand his point. You on the other hand am calling his posts "mentally defective" which I would consider an insult. If you want a thread to be free of insults, I wouldn't start throwing them around. Platonism is that there is another world outside of this one by which standards of truth can be determined by "philosopher kings" who then translate the implementation to the plebeians. If your standard of truth is the scientific method applied to the real world, then this is just about the opposite of Platonism.

Then they cannot be slaves. Taking an entity where morality does not apply and calling it a slave is like calling my computer a slave or my dresser a slave, which does not make sense. I do not equate an animal with these and hold myself to certain standards with animals, but you saying that "they are not moral actors" and "they are slaves" does not make sense. I also did not enforce that structure on my dog. He loves meeting new people and dogs and gets very excited to do so. I didn't train him on this, but just gave him circumstances where he was able to meet people and when he liked doing it, I kept doing it. Training is also distinctly different from force. The conflation is quite irritating. Also, after years of training empathetic dogs and dogs being bred for that purpose, I would not be surprised if it was instinctual at this point. Originally it wasn't, but many, many generations down the line with selective breeding practices it is easily possible.

I am not sure what dogs and cats you have been around. I know far more about dogs, so I will speak more about them. I do not have a wolf. I have a dog. Almost all of what is termed a "dog" are domesticated animals that were specifically bred for human companionship or to work with or for humans. They are very happy to be able to do this. These animals would often not survive or otherwise do well in the wild. They also would not like being without human companionship as they were bred to have it. Also, you can train a dog without using force or threats and it generally leads to happier, healthier, and smarter dog. I only leash my dog because the state requires me to. In the same way that I need to carry state ID around with me. I also negotiate with my dog. If he chews, I need to come up with something he can chew that he likes and that I am ok with him chewing. If he barks, then I train him to bark on command and reward that and he is much less likely to bark otherwise. He also is well socialized with people and pets. We visit the dog park on occasion, go to the pet store with him if he hasn't seen anyone in a while, have a few friends with dogs (including the person with the apartment above us who is about his age), and he sees some of the same dogs when he is on walks. There are ways to have dogs where they are happy, force is not used except what is required by law, and if given the choice they would choose your house over any other available option- similar to the way that Stef parents where if Isabella were to have a choice, she would choose him over anyone else. There are people who abuse animals (and it may be the majority who hit and yell at their pets just like a majority hit and yell at their kids), but calling all pet ownership as slavery and abuse sounds like projection of past experiences with animals or past childhood experiences projected onto pet ownership as a whole. Dogs as we known them are meant to live humans and be pets and are only happy when filling their job.

I agree. If you do nothing else, but hit return in between thoughts, things get 10x more readable.

What zombies are going to get you? What are you trying to protect yourself from? Do the zombies actually exist or are they just what others tell you to be scared of? How do you know they exist? If you were to stay working, would the zombies you face be guaranteed as you are in "the outside"? Does school provide some safety from the zombies? Feel free to go off topic a bit if this stirs up any thoughts or feelings inside you.

This is some of the gray area that I was talking about. Some animals may show elementary signs of complex or moral reasoning where some humans may be mentally retarded or otherwise unable to have the same reasoning level that is generally the standard. As a safety measure, I do not eat anything that could be close. This generally includes things like elephants, dolphins, monkeys, dogs, cats etc. Even if they were culturally-accepted options and available for eating, which they are not where I live, I certainly have some ambiguity at those edges which make it difficult to draw a clear line. Stef used an argument before that I found helpful in determining things. Morality has to do with the use of force. If someone is going to shoot me, then I can use force to defend myself. If someone is trying to steal from me, I can use force to defend my property. If someone is about to eat a cheeseburger, would you use force against them to stop them from eating the burger? I couldn't think of justifying that and I would consider it immoral to use such force. Would you consider using force against someone who was about to eat a gorilla or dolphin or elephant? What about a human that has less mental capacity than that same dolphin, gorilla, or elephant? I would certainly defend the human. I am not sure about the highly intelligent animal. That could be my error in reasoning, but it certainly complicates things. It gets tricky.

I often preface my psychological advice and ideas, but I am bored of doing so. I am going to tell you what I think. I am not sure at what age you were adopted, but it is possible that children given up for adoption can have lasting relationship and abandonment issues, even if the adoptive family is very loving they may have things to work through. That being said, you were not adopted into that kind of family, but adopted into a family that fosters attacks on children. There was no intimacy or relationship between them. This is the template for what relationships are. It is a note to your strength and courage that you did not get into a relationship that is empty and meaningless except in its fostering attacks on children, like the template you had. In fact, in order to avoid becoming like your adoptive parents, you likely, unconsciously sabotaged relationships that could even come anywhere close to that. The only way to improve that is to do a lot of self-knowledge work through therapy, journaling, workbooks, talking to empathetic friends, calling into the show, and anything else that you can do. I know you said you can't afford therapy, but try and call someone. Sometimes they can give discounts. If not, do as much and as many of the other things as you can. It will at least make things go more quickly once you can afford a therapist. It will take time and work before you will be able to establish lasting and healthy relationships in the same way that it takes time and work to learn a new language if the one you were raised with you decide is not what you want to use. You are having nightmares because you feel the fear that you felt as a child. You were terrified they would try to get you and attack you. You also could not show this fear, for fear of an even worse punishment, so you dissociated and buried the fear as a survival mechanism. This fear helped you survive attack. These dreams are your fear awakening inside you again. This is how you felt as a child at the absolute minimum. I am so, so sorry that you had to go through such terrifying experiences. That being said, it is not paranoia. It is a real fear of something that happened to you. You were in danger and fear was a big friend that kept you alive and helped you be attacked less often and less severely. What you need to do is recognize that the AF and AM in your head protected you from the real AF and AM. They attacked you inside your head to prevent real-world attack. What you need to do is empathize with the child who was attacked, talk to the AF and AM inside your head and thank them for protecting you and then tell them that now the danger of your parents is gone and that now you need them to not attack you and become like your AF and AM. However, they can help you by alerting you to other people who are like them and keep you safe so that people like that will never be in your life again. If you can get your parts in your head working together through lots of work and conversation and negotiation, then you will not have nightmares when the threat is not present again. Let me know if this was helpful or if you had additional questions, disagreement, etc.

I don't think it would fundamentally change very much, but what do I know? I think I would write a book where I cataloged as many similarities and differences there were based on feeling and journaling and whatever I could think of. Being the first person who was male and then woke up one day as female it would be at least a very interesting anecdotal case for what kind of differences there are between males and females and what is just cultural bull.

I don't know if there are others, but you might want to look at @Melissa McWilliams who I think does freelance graphic design. I bought a t-shirt designed by her a few months ago. http://wingspangraphics.com/ Might be a good place to start at least.

I mean, I was raised as a Christian and considered myself a Christian. At some point, I came across ideas where I had to question what I thought and realized that God didn't exist and everything that comes with that realization. I am not saying the odds are very high, but it is possible she has never heard X argument before. You can't just write off a doctor from the 5th century as "unthinking" because they don't know about antibiotics and everyone they ever talked to said leeches were the best. However, you present the argument and the evidence a few times and find out if they can think or not. Not to mention that clarity can be valuable. Even if she cannot think, trying to reason with her will lead to the certainty rather than doubt as to what may have happened. The argument is happening because some part of him believes that she will be able to reason. Nothing answers that question better than empirical evidence through trying every possibility until the situation is obvious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism Scientism may refer to science applied "in excess". The term scientism can apply in either of two senses: To indicate the improper usage of science or scientific claims.[16] This usage applies equally in contexts where science might not apply,[17] such as when the topic is perceived to be beyond the scope of scientific inquiry, and in contexts where there is insufficient empirical evidence to justify a scientific conclusion. It includes an excessive deference to claims made by scientists or an uncritical eagerness to accept any result described as scientific. In this case, the term is a counterargument to appeals to scientific authority. To refer to "the belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or other inquiry,"[18] or that "science, and only science, describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective"[12] with a concomitant "elimination of the psychological dimensions of experience."[19][20] I would appreciate if you would define what scientism is in your usage and for the area where science has overstepped its bounds, what other method should be used for determining truth from falsehood. It may help frame the discussion better if terms are defined properly.

Lets pretend she would pay for the roads. Would she pay for foreign wars? Would she pay for the financial regulators who watch 8 hours of porn a day before the financial crisis? Would she pay for every little thing the government does? This is the easiest way I can see to reach her is to find her pet peeve of spending that she doesn't agree with. At least that portion of her taxes is stolen as she wouldn't pay for it voluntarily. The "I would pay for the roads" argument is then shown as somewhat silly as the roads is such a small fraction comparably to the entirety of taxes. She just picks the one thing that you couldn't argue with as people should pay for their use of whatever roads might exist in a free society, therefore it clouds the issue heavily.

You can send any amount, for free, to anywhere in the world within a few minutes. It does make you look at the current financial system with pain and laughter simultaneously.

I updated my post to add more support for Coinbase as a way to buy bitcoin and changed the Coinbase link to the FDR affiliate link so FDR gets a little bitcoin for anyone who buys using that link. If you are going to buy bitcoins, that is definitely the way to go.

Wow, that's really unfortunate.

Just for clarity, Bitcoin doesn't have a CEO and he is a CEO of an exchange. His exchange site hasn't been operational for a while (possibly because of this) and used to be one of the easiest ways to get bitcoin. Charlie Shrem is also of the ancap/libertarian bend and did some work with AVTM where he was a guest on the show and participated in debates and such. It seems to me that all he did was exchange bitcoins, and then when things looked suspicious twith what his friend was doing he might've said to the guy "don't look so suspicious" instead of telling the authorities on him. I don't know if there are laws that require you to "tattle" when suspicious activity might be occurring, but overall by what was in the story it looks like their evidence isn't super strong. I like the guy and hope he isn't held captive for too long.

Ah, that does sour me somewhat to the idea. I wonder how they are created.

If you only want the pro-doge argument, it is that there is little knowledge of it. Thus, if it become popular, the upside is nearly infinite even with a small amount of investment. Thus, with $5 you get $5 of risk and a very high potential reward. Bitcoin already has risen from 10,000 BTC for 1 pizza to 1 BTC to 100 pizzas which is about 1 million times the amount. If the doge gets as well known as bitcoin is now, your $5 will be a few million dollars. This is somewhat unlikely, but it is more likely to be worth a few thousand. There certainly are arguments against, but that's what I know of as a pro argument for doge from a purely investment standpoint. Similar arguments exist for other altcoins, but dogecoin being based on an internet meme is trying to use those ideas to get it more well-known than most other altcoins which increases the odds of that kind of asymptotic rise.