Wesley

Science has objectively defined the human being. From the wiki: However, most definitions extend "humanity" to not just include humans, but to encompass any species (real or theoretical) that would be capable of moral thinking.

I would like to make it clear that there are no restrictions on song genre. After all, it is anarchy In fact, I think the goal would be to have as much variety as possible to satisfy the music tastes of anyone who may stumble into the thread. Just to not flood, if you could space posts out to every day or two then it may be preferable to posting a whole bunch of posts all at once, however I do not think it will matter too much. Happy music sharing!

The whole truth series and in general focusing on some more relevant topics, as well as expanding the Call-In Shows to 2x a week. Lots of good content has been rolling out. Mike and Stef (and I am sure many others) have been working hard and it is paying off.

Link: http://healthland.time.com/2013/09/30/fewer-drugs-being-prescribed-to-treat-mental-illness-among-kids/

Stefan is working on his book on parenting right now, so when that comes out you may want to check it out. However, the basics I can tell you now. Children are people. They have ideas, desires, and preferences that may be different from yours. If they have differing opinions or desires, you do not have the right to assault them, yell at them, call them names, demean them, or anything else that would be abusive to a child. Thus, in order for you to guide them and help them to be able to learn, if you deny yourself abuse, then you will have to come up with creative ways to negotiate and to communicate with them so that it is engaging and results in win-win. Children can begin to negotiate as low as 12-18 months I have heard. Once you realize that yelling, hitting, name-calling, and everything else is abuse against a tiny, defenseless child who cannot ever leave you no matter how much they may want to and deny yourself abuse, then you will do whatever you can in order to provide the best life for them that you can by only respecting their wants and desires and negotiating. Others can get into far better detail if you have more specific questions, but I think this is a decent starting overview.

The part that really resonated with me (that I hadn't thought of something similar before) was that this miscarried child was me. This brings up a lot of feelings. I am avoiding those people as I find them dangerous and destructive, but I am leaving the children behind who are there. In fact, my mother feeling agony about my departure could make things worse for them. I do not think there is anything that I could do as anything I tried to do or say would be counteracted by their parents and then I would be demonized, so it is not worth it. I used to hang with them and tried to talk about their relationships and their parents when they were having a hard time. To me, it feels like a smaller form of survivors guilt.

One day, I was out to dinner with my father. Somehow we began talking about politics. I went into some anarchistic things and said my piece and used logic in order to deduce results. He argued with me and got angry until he found out I was correct and then said he agreed with me. On the drive home, he said "You really have different ideas than I thought you did. Do you believe in God?" I told him yes, even though I was an atheist. He then asked what was the one unforgivable sin? I told him that it was to not believe in Jesus (as this is true. You can murder people, rape people, assault children, but if you believe in invisible beings then its all good) and he then was satisfied and didn't talk the rest of the drive. He was satisfied, but I had never felt more fear in my life. This was one of the first times where it was made real to me how non-existent my relationship with my father was. The point is, that for my father, there is no coming out as an atheist. He would entirely disown me. Very soon, I will get away from him and I will not care what he thinks, but if I was ever in his house in the past and said that I was an atheist, I would have been kicked out within the hour. Now, I am not saying that this will be your experience, but it is something to keep in mind that may happen. Your instinct was to pretend to believe. There was a reason you did this as you already know how your family will react in response to this and you were trying to avoid that from happening. However, if you worked at it and used the knowledge you have, I bet you could write a script that would tell you exactly how this meeting with your family would go, how they would react, and what they would say. I would ask yourself why you were worried about sharing this in the past and what would happen if you did share.

They may not consciously remember, but their brain forms around the traumatic event. This child is not going to be the same after this. If it were true, you also would see none of the lasting negatives with circumcision after the event. After all, in America it is mostly done when the child "won't remember". I have a feeling the goal of "won't remember" is only put forward to make parents feel good about the decision and assure them that their child will not remember the abuse later in life when they have a choice.

I am just curious, but why is this something you are looking to do? What is the goal of telling your mom and aunt?

Uprising Muse http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8KQmps-Sog Lyrics Snippet: The paranoia is in bloom, the P-R Transmissions will resume They'll try to push drugs Keep us all dumbed down and hope that We will never see the truth around (So come on!) Another promise, another scene, Another package lie to keep us trapped in greed With all the green belts wrapped around our minds And endless red tape to keep the truth confined (So come on!) They will not force us They will stop degrading us They will not control us We will be victorious Song Meaning: (Copied from a comment on songmeanings.com) "The paranoia is in bloom, the P-R Transmissions will resume" The evening news thrives when they grip the public in paranoia. Their motive is not to deliver news. It is to keep you glued to the screen. "Another promise, another scene, another packaged lie to keep us trapped in greed" Presidential candidates debating about nonsense and promises to make our lives better. Their resounding theme for economical growth is 'consumer spending' so they keep the public trapped in the never ending cycle of consumerism and greed. "With all the green belts wrapped around our minds. And endless red tape to keep the truth confined" To me, this could mean the fear of environmental collapse on our planet. And then the real climate issues are shrouded in red tape, politicized and regulated in such a way to bring the government more power. "Interchanging mind control" Right wing, Left wing, it is all interchangeable in terms of the long term impact to this country. Less freedom. More government power. "Come let the revolution take its toll if you could flick a switch and open your third eye, you'd see that we should never be afraid to die" The unprecedented focus on self today means that no one is willing to make the sacrifices to make the change we all desperately need. "Rise up and take the power back, it's time that the fat cats had a heart attack, you know that their time is coming to an end we have to unify and watch our flag ascend" We have been lulled into complacency by a lifestyle of comfort and false prosperity. When in truth, we have evolved into beings that are dependent on government and are unable to take care of our own selves. We need to put our petty differences aside and take back the power we've given to big governments and big corporations! They will not force us They will stop degrading us They will not control us We will be victorious

Relevant past details: My mother raised us in the church building as she worked there. During summers, we often would spend many hours that and at one time I considered it a sort of second home. My mother's job for at the church for most of my childhood was to teach the children- to run Sunday school. I have recently gotten my own apartment and moved in. I see them much less, and once I make sure everything in my life is set up properly, I do not want to see them again. The dream: My apartment was in the church's basement and I was looking for a way to turn on the lights for the upstairs area. I found the circuit breaker panel that is in my apartment and flipped all of the breakers on. I then went upstairs to the church to tell everyone that the lights should be working now. Instead, I saw the children having really fake expressions of happiness. Like when you know someone is really worried or anxious or sad and then they plaster a happy face on and say happy things. I could see right through it and started to worry and ask what was going on. I went to some of the teachers and they also had these fake expressions. One of the teachers in particular was so anxious that he had on rubber gloves and a kind of environmental suit because he was so worried about germs being in the world around him. However, he had this stupid happy face plastered on himself to try and show people that everything was ok. So finally I turned to my mom and asked her why was everyone like this? She was their boss/ teacher, why would she teach them something like this as a good way to live? Someone who I grew up with who was a couple years younger than me blurted out "It was because he lost it in the second!" and then immediately shut up as she wasn't supposed to talked about it as there were astonished gasps around the room. In the dream, I took this to mean that she had been pregnant and had lost the second trimester. She then pulled me into the other room where the others weren't and confessed that she had been pregnant, but had had a miscarriage and that she was really broken up about it. Then I woke up What I have so far: Moving out and turning on the lights is me making good life changes and revealing things that are going on around me and it reveals that everyone is fake and actually has a lot of issues going on. Even more sad, that this is being inflicted on children. I realize that my mom has a hand in it, but then I try to figure out why she would do this. The part I don't understand is the miscarriage and the pregnancy and what that means for her. Why would she have been so ashamed about this? Why would this cause her to make everyone else act fake? If anyone can fill in some of the blanks on this dream, then I would really appreciate it. Thanks in advance!

Ah! I remember listening to someone reading through this book on YouTube. It is actually pretty good in explaining this concept. Edit: Here it is:

That is common, however you often can talk to a therapist about what you can afford to get a discounted rate. This is often done for people who cannot afford that much. As a slight aside, it will be expensive, but you have to evaluate the benefits of getting it done and the costs of not getting done. Stef has done this in a podcast or two where he tries to roughly estimate the costs of gifts and time with corrupt people, emotional issues you are not aware of and the costs in job or happiness, the chances of finding a wrong partner and possibly getting divorced with alimony and/or child support. Spending a good amount now for large future gains is common in the intellectual realm with college. This is a similar thing in the emotional realm. A good amount of upfront cost and work for a larger, long-term pay-off.

Beautiful guys. Quick turn-around to find a solution to the "problem" of growth. Great stuff!

I said there are likely many more hurdles. I was assuming that calculation is possible, and these were just the technology gaps that I could see to start with by which calculation could be achieved if you had the nearly infinite data. I do agree there are many more problems. I was going from the angle of practicality without addressing the psychology or virtue or whatever as FriendlyHacker seems to do. Even assuming it is possible to do, we are at least tens of years off (from the first two technological problems) from being able to achieve this. I think I may not have been as clear in writing what I was thinking as I meant to be by claiming theoretical impossibility, but hopefully this post clarifies some. Sorry for the confusion.

This is me just exercising some ideas, but I am sure that other people will be able to contribute to this. Stef has often talked about how certain ideas that are found to be illogical can often be traced back to childhood stages of development. These are the points where they did not continue to develop and thus got stuck. Just for curiosity, I thought I would float some theories as to how TZM analogizes with a child's view and see what others can add/deny. First, is there is some anger at the current state of the world. This could be entirely logical, or could be rebellious, but I thought I would add it. As far as the ideal society, it is an all-knowing machine controlling infinite resources and properly allocating them. This seems to analogize to a child whose parent seems to know exactly how to manage everything to give the child all of their needs met. (and possibly anger that the current world is not providing this.) Let me know what your thoughts are and if there are any other analogies that you could see that may make sense.

I believe it could happen (theoretically) once quantum computing becomes mainstream. A quantum supercomputer could theoretically test all billion decisions at the same time to search for optimal outcome. I would very much agree that it is functionally impossible with modern computing technology. Even with a quantum computer, the software would have to have an insane amount of monitoring which would become the next hurdle. How to gain input from everywhere about everything, which would not be possible for the foreseeable future until social media turns into an actual life recording that counts/categorizes events. Those are just the massive hurdles that TVP would need to begin to be overcome in order to see what the next hurdles are. You easily could build a simple model around a handful of variables, but that would not approach the many multiples (exponentials even?) of decisions that occur in the world.

This was not a structured debate. There were nothing like this: 1. First Affirmative Constructive (1AC) a. Cross-examination of First Affirmative by Second Negative 2. First Negative Constructive (1NC) a. Cross-examination of First Negative by First Affirmative 3. Second Affirmative Constructive (2AC) a. Cross-examination of Second Affirmative by First Negative 4. Second Negative Constructive (2NC) a. Cross-examination of Second Negative by Second Affirmative 5. First Negative Rebuttal (1NR). 6. First Affirmative Rebuttal (1AR) 7. Second Negative Rebuttal (2NR) 8. Second Affirmative Rebuttal (2AR) Instead, it was pretty much PJ ranting on, and then Stef trying to ask questions, being frustrated by non-arguments, and then PJ going back to an earlier point that had already be resolved. Then by the end, Stef tried to throw in something meaningful to a pretty bad debate. Stef didn't really propose anything that I saw. It was just "what the hell is going on?" It is not exactly fair to say Stef did a bad job. PJ hardly put together any kind of argument that could be debated. Stef tried to argue what bits of arguments he could scrap up, but it is not meaningful at all. If I was trying to debate with nonsense (slight exaggeration), its not like it would be possible for me to do an amazing job as nothing even makes sense. At some point I'll just throw in something meaningful and hope someone sees that- similar to what I think Stef did by the end.

I would say that personally, I would prefer in-person to online as there would be a lot of potential communication loss compared to not being in person. However, online may easily be better for other people. Here are some good resources I found by some Google searching, though others may be able to recommend someone they found who they like. http://psychology.about.com/od/psychotherapy/a/onlinepsych.htm http://psychcentral.com/resources/Psychotherapy/Online/ I also would highly recommend Stef's podcasts on how to find a good therapist and to put those techniques and questions into practice to find someone who is good. 1716 http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1716_Sunday_Show_1_Aug_2010.mp3 1927 http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1927_how_to_find_a_great_therapist.mp3 Here is an article from Alice Miller that is good as well and helped me in the past: http://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?force=faq

So I am not supposed to have sex with a woman I love? Why not?

He seems to be straw-manning and then using argument by adjective again (religion, narrow-minded, utilitarian) I do not think I would be disappointed to not see or hear from this guy again. It is getting to be beyond pathetic.

Not safe for work. Usually in reference to nudity, but could also be foul language or violence or other such things

Phew! Good thing I went for the sophia pink color. Great to know that investment is still working for me!

If you want to learn about existence, knowledge, truth and such, I would spend some time going through and understanding the Intro to Philosophy series. In general it is a great thing to start with before getting into these kind of discussions and will be helpful to you I think.

You can start with podcasts 13-15, but if you go to the podcast page, in the bottom right you can select the Category: Religion/Atheism and just start from the beginning until you get the idea. In general there are two types of definitions for god. 1. The Contradiction A god that exists, but without form, that is omnipotent and omniscient, that solves the problem of creation, but wasnt himself created (and many many other things). 2. The Attribution God is the world, or god is the series of scientific steps that lead to the world being created. Luckily, we already have words for these or will find a way that the happened scientifically, thus you are just attributing something else to the idea of god by calling something else by a different name. This may be a good time to bring up ignosticism which is the idea that god is essentially a meaningless term and cannot be evaluated until it is properly defined using other terms. I also would like to make clear that the goal is not my opinion, or your opinion, or open-mindedness. The goal is to figure out what is true and is irrelevant of anyone's opinions. Truth about existence is external to the mind.