Wesley

Thanks for this, it actually seems quite interesting. Though, of course, I am a bit skeptical by the time they get to the week on voting, but I will certainly partake in this. Thanks for the post.

I am so sorry you are in this situation. I am glad you are working to try to get out of it. I also believe that seeking help through therapy or whatever you can accomplish in self-knowledge would be enormously helpful, though I am not aware of what can be accomplished on such a limited income. I do not think that you need to take responsibility for where the money has come from. It sounds like the state has ruined your life. You can consider this to be some sort of penalty to make you whole for the harm caused. In a free society, if this would have happened to you then someone would owe you money, or you would be dependant on charity. Unfortunately, this is not how our current system is set up because the state has it "covered". Do not fault yourself for being here. Just do whatever you can to process past traumas- with whatever help you can get- and build yourself up to be as self-sufficient as you can.

Yes, A Knight's Tale, and the game is called jousting.

Things that exist are defined as things that exist? [bigsmile][head2wall]

He's not wrong, it is obvious that the government is. However, he cannot do outreach if he is locked in jail for 10 years. He also will not be able to change the state no matter what he does. So yes, I do question the usefulness and the point of his actions.

Not if he is dependant on the job. Not if he is dependant on the job. Every single one of them was on the pro-spanking side in the OP. I do not always speak out, but I do sometimes when I think that something positive can come of it. Even then, it can be a flip of a coin. In the OP, they are all already revealed as evil. True, but you still know pretty quickly if someone is able to be changed or not. Most people have no desire to change and will continue to reinforce negative behaviors. People openly advocating that children need more violence is pretty derranged and I would not want to be near those people. If someone is actively hurting a child or threatening a child, then I would stand up regardless to try to get them to feel social shame or at least for the kid to know that not everyone thinks its right. However, this is not the case in this situation at all. I trust the OP's feelings that it was not correct to speak out as things likely would turn negative.

(Potential) Advantages to Speaking up: Feel like you are making a differnce (very likely to be just a self-serving illusion) Possiblly (though very unlikely) make a difference in someone's life by at least getting them to doubt what they are doing (Potential) Disadvantages to Speaking up: Social Ostracism Bomb in the Brain series shows that disagreement can lead to people reinforcing their existing positions, this making things worse Losing Job (somewhat unlikely) Certain straining of any existing relationships with co-workers To me, in a purely economic sense it seems that the positives are almost negligable and will not happen, at least minor to potentially negatives will occur. I would personally start looking for another job or something if at all possible, but I would probably not speak up because of these outcomes and (justified) fear of the likely negatives compared to a likely irrational hope of positives.

I have not done extensive research, but I did see a documentary that laid out two studies arguing for veganism. The first was the China study: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China-Cornell-Oxford_Project Of course, it is a piece of evidence, but it is only correlative not causative. For those who may not see the problem with this, here is a silly example: It has been known for years that Ice cream consumption is heavily correlated with shark attacks. Those who hear this for the first time are confused and ask something like "does the ice cream make you smell sweeter causing you to be irresitible to sharks?" This is not the case. Rather, it is correlative and both things are caused by hot weather. In the summer, more people eat ice cream, and more people go swimming (aka more people potentially encounter sharks). Thus, there could be many differences. For instance, I have already conceded that there are problems with industrial meat, which I am sure most of the meat in China is. There could be cultural differences in occupations or something else that was not measured that would lead to more excercise or being happier in general. I also concede that a vegan lifestyle of natural foods is a vast improvement over the Standard American Diet (SAD) {haha, the abbreviation is SAD} however, this does not necesitate that meat is bad. The other study I do not remmeber as much, but they fed pure casien protein (found ony in dairy) to rats and saw a massive spike in either heart disease or cancer or something. Which is true, however all dairy also has whey protein which counteracts the negative effects of cassein. Thus, this test was sort of stacking the deck. Just like my earlier post about selenium counteracting mercury. You could prove fish is bad and shouldnt be eaten by feeding mercury to rats, but selenium counteracts this, not to mention other possible positive benefits. I will say that many adults should likely not drink milk that is pasteurized, however for very few people is the problem the cassien content. Lactose (as pasteurization gets rid of the lactase enzymes) is much more likely to be the problem. Thus, milk consumption may be negative, but cheese, butter, kefir, and other dairy products may have less lactose or no lactose by the time you get to clarified butter would see no issues at all.

Just as a quick note, yes mercury is toxic, but only in isolation of selenium. Selenium in sufficient quantities to neutralize mercury toxicity exists in all fish except I think whale blubber (or some other fish I have never even thought of eating). Thus, to a mild extent at least, mercury isn't that large of an issue. http://www.seafoodbusiness.com/articledetail.aspx?id=4294995864

In the past, Adam has advocated the idea of jury nullification and has tried to get arrested for weed in order to have a jury trial by which his argument is "yes I did smoke weed and have weed in my possession, but the law is stupid so you should find me not guilty" and challenge the government to find 12 random people who would say he is guilty. He owns the guns legally, there are claims that the video was done in front of a blue screen as opposed to actually in DC. So theoretically, what he did "wrong" was to posses marijuana, and likely DMT as well. Thus, the whole thing could be a convoluted plan to go the jury nullification route when the cops wouldn't arrest him for the smoke down prohibition events when he smoked marijuana. Just a guess, who knows.

I also would like to briefly go over that evolutionary development is a good way of establishing theories, however it doesn't mean it it true. For instance, I am of European descent, however coconut oil is very good for me even though it is novel to my bloodline. It is possible to have novel food sources that are beneficial or neutral. You establish a theory by looking to the past, but through testing and science you begin to try to prove out the theory as true or not. It is not true that an identical diet as our ancestors ate would be the optimal diet for us (or for them, really). I am sure you are already aware of this though.

Taking a Large Sample of Primitive Tribes and What They Ate http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v56/n1s/abs/1601353a.html http://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/59677 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291520-6505%281999%298:1%3C11::AID-EVAN6%3E3.0.CO;2-M/abstract;jsessionid=D08A131ABD18E4913BC39ABCAB2EC45E.d02t02 http://references.260mb.com/Paleontologia/Aiello1995.pdf http://atvb.ahajournals.org/content/23/2/e20.short Kitavan Diet as a High Carb Primitive Tribe http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2796.1993.tb00986.x/abstract http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Kitava+AND+%22Lindeberg+S%22 http://www.healwithfood.org/diet/kitavan-diet-foods.php http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0026049599902585 This is just what I found in brief searching, though I'm sure there probably is more out there.

Technically he may be right, but I have no idea what he thinks he is going to get from all of this. Attention? Converts? He honestly is more likely to get several years in jail and I do not understand the point of it. When he had his new show I donated to it and bought some merchandise, but ever since he has been looking to get arrested in some sort of "noble self-destruction" I haven't understood it. We all should forsake the freedom we have in our lives by breaking the freedoms we do not have and get locked in a cage with even less freedom. It really makes no sense to me.

I am certainly not an expert, but I will type my thoughts anyway and leave others to tell me if I am wrong. My understanding is you get an ought from an is when a direction is chosen. For instance, If you want to go to LA from Austin, then you ought to go west. However, without the goal of going to LA, there is nothing inherent in "LA IS west of Austin" that says I ought to go to LA. Now, in the act of debating moral propositions, people claim several goals and ppropositions. So for your example, they are alive and not killing themselves. This means that they prefer life to going and killing themselves, thus they ought not to stand in front of a fast bus. However, some other random person who is about to kill themselves may not have that preference. However, if anyone is alive and debating with you, then it is their preference. Through use of debate and the other person claiming moral propositions that you then evaluate by UPB is my understanding of how you get an ought from an is. If they do not debate and never use a moral proposition, then you are not debating with them about morality, and thus the entire discussion would not have happened.

My understanding is that primitive isolated societies who do not have food industrialization, as well as tribe pre-agriculture often lived long lives without degenerative lifestyle illnesses. There are tribes with diets that were 95% protein, ones that were 85% fat and ones that were 70% carbs in macro nutrient breakdown and they all did not have high instances of cancer, heart disease, tooth decay, allergies, obesity, etc, etc, etc. Thus, the problem is not necessarily food type, but food quality. When the meat i anot grass fed wild animals, but penned animals eating corn and wheat and getting sick and fat having never moved in its life, then it becomes a problem. Wild fats are fine, but industrialized GMO seed and vegetable oils have massive Omega 6 leading to ratios in the average movern human as high as 60:1 Omega 6: Omega 3, when 3:1 - 1:1 was the historical average. Carbs arent bad, until you have GMO wheat and corn, not to mention the ridiculous amount of high fructose corn syrup that can be very difficult to fully avoid. I would say that eating meat is negative, because the meat that the average person sees at their local grocery store is garbage. I also would say that hunting for meat or eating local grass- fed animals would lead to higher meat prices, more sustainable meat production, and less meat consumption overall. Unfortunately the video or program or whatever is blocked at work so I can't see/listen to whatever it is (it just looks like blank white space to me) but when I get home I will give it a listen and would like to apologizr if what I have detailed here was an exact repeat of what you said.

Well I think Stef (and maybe others on this site) has said that virtue would require things like honesty and courage. However, in the light of examples like these it would be his own personal preference and I could make up weird situations that portray the opposites as virtue through the eyes of another person. Thus, virtue is completely subjective and if anyone makes a claim to virtue, it is irrelevant as virtue could be achieved by any action and its opposite (as long as it doesn't violate UPB). Thus, my love would be a subjective response to the arbitrary virtues that I hold dear, while someone else could love someone with the opposite virtues being displayed.

What if someone is dying in a burning car. One man runs away for fear that they will be killed themselves. Another man tries to save the dying person. Both of these people could be determined as virtuous by people with different standards. I could say the runner was safe, cautious, and he went home to his family. This self interest bought his children years without a dead father and this makes him a virtuous man because he was safe for what was really important. The saver I could say was courageous and kind. When there was a burning car he ran towards it to try and save someone's life regardless of his own safety, and this is an example of virtue. These both seem to be actions that could be judged. They also seem to be opposites of sorts. Can they both be virtue?

E=Mc^(2) proves this wrong. Mass and energy are equicalent when multiplied by a fixed constant. Claiming that energy does not exist would be making a claim that matter does not exist and debunk all of reality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence In physics, mass–energy equivalence is the concept that the mass of a body or system is a measure of its energy content. In particular, any physical system has a property called energy and a corresponding property called mass; the two properties are always present in the same (i.e. constant) proportion to one another. This means (for example) that the total internal energyE of a body at rest is equal to the product of its rest mass m and a suitable unit conversionfactor which transforms units of mass to proportionate units of energy. Mass-energy equivalence arose originally from special relativity, as developed by Albert Einstein, who proposed this equivalence in 1905 in one of his Annus Mirabilis papers entitled "Does theinertia of an object depend upon its energy-content?"[1] The equivalence is described by the famous equation: where E is energy, m is mass, and c is the speed of light. Thus, Einstein stated that the universal proportionality factor between equivalent amounts of energy and mass is equal to the speed of light squared. The formula is dimensionally consistent and holds true irrespective of which system of measurement units is used. Since there are different ways to define the mass of a body, E = mc2 can indicate slightly different meanings. For instance, m orm0 is called the invariant mass or rest mass of a body, which is related to the rest energy by E0 = m0c2.[2] In other texts, the mass is defined in connection with relativistic momentum or energy, called relativistic mass mrel. So in this context the formula E =mrelc2 indicates that energy always exhibits relativistic mass in whatever form the energy takes.[3] Mass–energy equivalence does not imply that mass may be "converted" to energy, but it allows for matter to disappear, leaving only its associated energy behind, as non-material energy. Mass remains conserved (i.e., the quantity of mass remains constant), since it is a property of matter and also any type of energy. Energy is also conserved. In physics, mass must be differentiated from matter. Matter, when seen as certain types of particles, can be created and destroyed (as in particle annihilation or creation), but a closed system of precursors and products of such reactions, as a whole, retains both the original mass and energy throughout the reaction. When the system is not closed, and energy is removed from a system (for example in nuclear fission or nuclear fusion), some mass is always removed along with the energy, according to their equivalence where one always accompanies the other. This energy thus is associated with the missing mass, and this mass will be added to any other system which absorbs the removed energy. In this situation E = mc2 can be used to calculate how much mass goes along with the removed energy. It also tells how much mass will be added to any system which later absorbs this energy. This was the original use of the equation when derived by Einstein. E = mc2 has sometimes been used as an explanation for the origin of energy in nuclear processes, but mass–energy equivalence does not explain the origin of such energies. Instead, this relationship merely indicates that the large amounts of energy released in such reactions may exhibit enough mass that the mass-loss may be measured, when the released energy (and its mass) have been removed from the system. For example, the loss of mass to an atom and a neutron, as a result of the capture of the neutron and the production of a gamma ray, has been used to test mass-energy equivalence to high precision, as the energy of the gamma ray may be compared with the mass defect after capture. In 2005, these were found to agree to 0.0004%, the most precise test of the equivalence of mass and energy to date. This test was performed in the World Year of Physics 2005, a centennial celebration of Einstein's achievements in 1905.[4] Einstein was not the first to propose a mass–energy relationship (see the History section). However, Einstein was the first scientist to propose the E = mc2 formula and the first to interpret mass–energy equivalence as a fundamental principle that follows from therelativistic symmetries of space and time.

He definitely has said he comes from the objectivist camp and has talked about Ayn Rand.

I remember it as an off-hand comment at some point. There is almost no way I would be able to find it, so I will rescind the claim and instead proposition it myself. I still need to review APA and make sure I know what is going on, but my understanding is that it is entirely subjective. Thus goodness (as long as everyone follows UPB) is subjective. This means that (according to the virtue list) someone who is generous and someone who is selfish could both be good by different people's standards. Someone who is obedient and someone who is defiant could both be good by different people's standards. Unless some of these are not able to be defined as virtues, it seems that goodness is highly subjective. This is a little bit of a wrinkle in the effort to logically set up morality. However, objective virtues would not make sense in the face of the definition of love that is used. Then, a handful of people would be loved by everyone and all else would not be loved. Thus, I am asking for clarification and definition and trying to see if there is a way to define virtue. If only so that I cannot say that being a rollover is not a virtue or being a snob is not a virtue. Maybe virtuousness cannot be made objective, but can be made more refined in scope such that it is not entirely arbitrary. Finally, there is always the nod to old philosophy (which easily could be entirely wrong as they have been with, say, the state). In which it would seem that we shouldnt be able to overturn the old ideas of goodness and virtue without at least having a solid case to do so. My understanding was that they were in the goodness being subjective, but generally resides in this list of 10 arbitrary virtues or so. This is pretty poor, and I am hoping something better can be done, but maybe that is the best we can some up with now.

I do understand that that is where it currently resides. I also believe that Stef has expressed some dislike for this and that it seems dispariging to classic forms of goodness or virtue. This may be because it is impossible to define an objective "UPB good", or because it hasn't been thought of yet.

[]rhythm in chat added FDR1867 and FDR1868 and FDR1869 to the conversation as being Stef's series on an introduction to virtue. He seems to also bring up some of the issues I had and claims that UPB is not sufficient for virtue. He claims that (good) philosophy attempts to make virtuous things mainstream by which being courageous for them no longer requires virtue. For instance, it is hardly courageous to stand up against a racist. It is very courageous to stand up against child abuse. Virtue is only present when a good act is abnormal, namely in an advancing way. I need to go now and will add more when I get to listen to the rest of the podcasts.

Just for good measure and a bump, I also expressed interest in this interview in this thread. http://board.freedomainradio.com/forums/t/39247.aspx

I may be wrong, but often questions are asked truly for curiosity. I could not presume to know what is going on for you or why it is a big deal, so I ask questions in order to clarify it more. Others here do the same, while others at least think they know what is going on and will try to direct things more. Not all questions know the end. Back to the issue, I would begin to analyze this situation. It seems like it is a way to manipulate you that someone could claim a chance occurance of numbers that have existed sometime recently and associate it with something religious and use that to control you or keep you in your place. This isn't really your fault as it is how your brain has wired itself to survive in an environment that demanded this. Your effort should be to analyze these instances and to not be manipulated by them. In a strange way, your knowledge of this issue now makes you responsible for not being maniulated by it in the future. How many possible religious numbers or days could exist? How often can these occurances happen by chance? Even if it did mean something, why has this day not happened when 1000s of these predictions were made in the past? You will find that these are not signs or wonders, but mathematically occourances and scientific events. You may always pause a bit when someone claims this, but the goal is to get to a situation where you are able to stop, logically analyze it, and reject it as a sign or wonder. Rather, it is just something that happened. It only means something more if you attach that meaning to it.

The argument is that it is a coincidence that may happen once when you have 100000's of occurances of random numbers (random number of lots of zeroes). From experience, it is unlikely that a rational argument will be able to penetrate this. Why do you think it would be able to?