Wesley

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.

Bitcoin I think is a currency that people can use now that does not require interest for its creation, is controlled by no one except logic, math, and cryptography, able to be used anonymously and locally, has no inherent transaction costs, is limited in scope, and many, many other benefits. I would much prefer localities to use bitcoin or create their own bitcoin dollars/ coins that "using" them prevents resale, or making a local bitcoin spin-off that is exchangeable for other bitcoin types in a market. This satisfies anonymity, interest at creation (but still allowing interest between users) and many other things. I have researched the mountain hours concept a whole bunch, and love it as an alternative and would use it if it was available near me. However., I much prefer that we advance technology of money fully to make a superior product to that provided by the government, which I believe bitcoin and wider bitcoin acceptance could provide. I think Wade would still be an interesting interview for some, I just have heard him 4-5 times now, so I personally do not think I would gain much from the interview. This is just evidence of my interest in alternative currencies, not in his quality of being interviewed.

I would not think that anyone would say they "follow" some form of atheism any more than I consider myself a "follower" of anti-leprechauns or anti-fairies. Atheism is not something you follow, but that you recognize the fact that god does not exist (at least as commonly defined). The attempt is to use logic, reason and evidence to determine the possibility of god existing, and when you realize the number of contradictions present in the concept of "god" then you realize that it is impossible for something that contradicts itself to exist. For more info you can listen to some of the early podcasts on religion and/or do a search for some of the atheist threads on the boards.

If you post a .mp3 link then it automatically converts it to a player. I go to the podcasts page and find a podcast and then right click on it. Then I select copy audio link and then paste it here. The forum software does the rest.

This may be slightly off-topic, and if so I am sorry for that, but I had a health teacher who pointed out to my class in high school that more people fear public speaking than those who fear death. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-real-story-risk/201211/the-thing-we-fear-more-death It was stated to me that "If there was a funeral, more people would prefer to be in the casket than giving a eulogy" which I think is somewhat exaggerating it, but the sentence still stuck in my head. In order to support Cheryl's post, here are the podcasts that came out of a search of "social anxiety": FDR1152 Social Anxiety -- A Couple Convo http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1152_Social_Anxiety_Couple_Convo.mp3 FDR1702 Social Anxiety http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1702_Social_Anxiety.mp3 FDR1730 Social Anxiety Part Two http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1730_social_anxiety_part_2.mp3 FDR1950 Social Anxiety - A Listener Convo http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1950_social_anxiety_convo.mp3

I voted up the post and think it would be a great idea as well. I have some mixed feelings on this and would be interested to see what angle Stef would go from.

Maybe I missed this part, but where did he say this? To me it seems like you may have inferred it unjustly, but feel free to correct me.

I find some of it interesting. I like to try to do things similar to what Stef does where I draw conclusions about society, or I pretend the whole thing was a dream and what might certain things be as symbols or meanings, or try to imagine what the histories were of the writers/producers when the story is told as if it is an accurate view of the world. I certainly watch less than I used to and find many things sadistic and stomach-turning more than I used to. However, I find that this view of media can make it enjoyable and challenging on occasion. It has helped me with metaphor and symbolism for my own dreams at least.

I did a point-by-point refutation with my response with each response after the relevant quoted text. Maybe you can tell me which section is confusing and then I (or someone else) can reply to that part.

Well you can't market a "genius formula" to people who are already intelligent! That would be silly and redundant!

However, that suffers from the "lack of coincidence of wants" problem. As well as all of the other benefits of good money including store of value, fungibility, durability, divisibility, etc. all of which are not present in a purely resource based economy. However costs can be measured in resource costs, capital costs, labor costs, and opportunity costs. They all are different, but still costs.

There is a distinction between paying for something and something's cost. Animals have costs all the time, namely in energy expenditure in order to achieve something else.

Not to mention opportunity costs. Like going outside to get sunshine for an hour costs you nothing in the accounting sense, but in the economics sense it costs you everything that you could have done otherwise with that hour, which could be something small (enjoyment on watching a YouTube video) or something quite large (missing an important job interview for your dream career).

If this is something you are going to get into for yourself, a good place to start is the CryptoParty Handbook. From there you can look more into a specific area. Using many redundant methods for hiding information would be the only way to ensure security, and even then it is not completely ensured. It is a large opportunity cost to learn and use cryptography, so make sure it is worth it to you to do it. Often, it becomes easier to assume online activity is monitored fully than to try all of these methods to hide it.

I am so sorry this happened to you. Being manipulated by adults into these terrible actions happens too often. This was a big moment where you were taught that causing negative emotions means that sadism is a justified response which is just horrible. It was makes me wonder what happened when you cried as a child (and may not remember) for the several years before that. I think you should also realize that this was indirectly demanding obedience from you. As in if you cause in your mother an emotion like that, then a punishment like your aunt received is just. I am very, very sorry that this happened. A kid should never encounter anything anywhere close to this.

In a debate, "self evident" is contained to those things that are necessary for the debate to occur (see argumentation ethics) and then those things by which both parties agree to during the course of the debate. Everything else needs a case built using logic, reason, evidence (and tricks if you find you have the worse position and are just trying to win. However, if you are trying to be right, then these shouldn't be allowed.) By Peter claiming things as evident that Stef did not agree with, then it was Peter's duty to prove them. His only arguments were many, many adjectives in order to disparage Stef's view and elevate his own (which Stef took issue with a few times) and a couple instances of anecdotes that were strangely extrapolated to world trends even though Stef could easily explain them using his theories and that even if he couldn't, anecdotes never make a trend. This is why the debate was sad. Almost no arguments, anecdotes, argument by adjective, and a decent helping of begging the question. I would be very disappointed debating in that environment as there is nothing that can even stand on two legs for me to knock down, except that people who are not used to logic or debate may still accept the arguments.

I would agree. It stinks of avoiding analysis and criticism. Either post the science/studies or at least the theory, and then provide a product that fits the claim. Without openness people cannot decide for themselves except to be goaded by empty information. Also, if the copyright is used to prevent people from telling others some basic ideas, then that would be some major use of the state to bully people to not reveal information through the idea of IP. That in itself would be enough of a reason for me to not support it, if it could be shown to work. Not that he has a patent on the product or whatever. You gotta do what you gotta do to get by in a statist society sometimes, but using IP to bully anyone who reveals information with threats of lawsuits in order to prevent exposure and criticism is rather repulsive to me and it sounds like that is what Jack is trying to cover himself from by asking them for permission before releasing a simple definition.

"Peter raised one point on which I would be interested in hearing Stefan's point of view: most socialized countries show more equality and less violence then say, the USA." This is what happens when you do not count the violence of taxation, imprisonment, war, and other such state crimes (or assume that the USA is not socialist). "Many will prefer a less free and less productive environment to gain on security and equality - i.e. why live in a free jungle where I can die at any time when I can choose to "live" in a peaceful prison?" False dichotomy and also ignores the violence of the prison. "Peter seems to have a point that this is human nature and won't go away." Arguments from human nature are almost always personal experience that has been normalized to include the world. The goal is to raise children not knowing violence or their parents of spanking, timeouts, verbal abuse, and sexual abuse so that they can see taxation, imprisonment, and war as violent actions that they will recoil from. Then, it will not be human nature any more than there being slaves in society is human nature (even though it existed for many years before being abolished).

Maybe I am confused, but wouldn't using a Content Delivery Network have the content on multiple servers which would each have their own network interface speed? Thus, it would be something like 100 mbps for each distinct server. Maybe I am completely misunderstanding. Short Overview of CDN costs/benefits: http://whatismyipaddress.com/cdn Many of the older podcasts may not need the boost in download speed, or the torrents could be encouraged. However copying the newest/ most trafficked podcasts to many servers to download from would improve latency and would make it so you wouldn't run into the network speed cap. If someone has better knowledge to weigh in on this, please do.

The methodology is the most important part. If people cannot agree as to how a problem can be solved, then it is as meaningless to debate as it is to argue how many angels can dance on the head of a pin (Though plenty of people have done that). Yes, some basic theory is needed, but I can almost guarantee that you have at least a decent lay of the land if you have been listening to these topics for a year or so and listened to the audiobooks. You can give yourself some credit for the work you have done. Finally, just try to recognize when you do not know things and ask questions and be curious. Especially in self-knowledge things can be less scientific and more about feelings and experiences, so the experiences and advice of others can get you through a "sticking point" where you cannot figure something out or can't seem to make a connection. In general, I find people on the boards to be very willing to explain things or define terms as long as there is not an overly heated debate going on, and especially when it comes to the self-knowledge area. I look forward to seeing you around!

http://www.cachefly.com/plans.html Plan pricing page for comparison purposes.