Dylan Lawrence Moore

Austria allows homeschooling. To what extent, I don't know, but I did meet some parents who kept their kids at home there.

Even if you guys weren't translating, simply repeating this information in your languages I think would be a big plus. Making youtube videos of yourself explaining it, or voicing over Stef in the corresponding language for videos you really like (it's done in German over at freiwilligfrei.de). I really feel that the freedom movements/information explosion happening on earth right now is primarily happening in English. On one hand this is really good, as English is more or less the international language of the world right now, but on the other hand we're leaving out A LOT of people who otherwise don't have access to all the information that various people and groups have been spewing forth into the internet the last decade or so. So yea, Russian, French, whatever! This stuff needs to get out into whatever languages it can.

I'm putting together a presentation looking at the how aspects of language can control thinking. I wanted to know if Stef has done any shows looking at the nature of language itself, if anything so I can at least include something from FDR in the presentation notes. Thanks! -Dylan

Dune is sci-fi meets sociology, by the way. The truthsayers are people who are naturally able to tell if someone is lying. The only way to fool them is to actively keep yourself away from specifically knowing something. At one point in the series a truthsayer describes her ability simply by saying that she knew someone was lying because she had the desire to turn her back on the person. That's what reminded me of the study.

Reminds me of Truthsayers from the Dune series. I wonder how much effort it would take to figure out how to actively train in "truth/falsehood detection" as a skill?

I was going to put this under "Statists say the darndest things" thread but I think it's a little too long. A week or so ago a friend of mine asked me to reply to a comment he received on Facebook regarding a meme criticizing the Federal Reserve. Normally I avoid Facebook discussions like the plague, but my buddy (who I have recently gotten interested in logic/sophistry) suggested that I respond by looking at the guy's logical fallacies. I figured what the heck, I could consider it practice and at least try to get some useful sources out to whoever would be reading it. Anyway, I figured I would post it here for a.) everyone's amusement and b.) criticism of my logical analysis at the end. It all starts with this meme: To which our Statist in question makes the original comment: My initial reply: Did I sound reasonable? I sure thought I sounded reasonable. Here's the sophisticated response I got from Mr. Statist: Before I answered this well-rounded, polite, and rational post, I just wanted to check: Statist response: My response: Statist: Oooookay. If you want some facts, I guess I'll just feed you yours. I took a few days to ruminate on it and to make sure I calmed down a bit before dissecting his initial response to me, but here's what I came up with: To which I received no response. Ah well. Maybe I got someone to look into sophistry or the sources I linked. -Dylan

How many sophists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

I don't know of any, but have you thought about translating FDR material in Russian? Russian is probably one of the more vital languages for this information to be disseminated to (along with Chinese and Arabic).

Reading Heinlein is like being trapped between a science fiction story and a trashy romance novel. Not that I've ever read a trashy romance novel, but I've read Heinlein, and I'm not sure how you could get much more trashy. (I generally like his books, but sometimes it's like geez man, can you cut it out with the sex scenes and get on with the story?)

MartV, can you re-write your original post to be a little more syllogism-like? I'm having trouble logically connecting your 3 points.

All three sentences depend on quantification of "nothing", where in reality the word nothing in these sentences is serving as a grammatical negative along with the noun "anything". 1. No it can't. "Filled with nothing" is just a phrase that means "anything is not in it". 2. No it can't. This phrase means "does not contain anything". Again, the "nothing" in this sentence simultaneously takes on the role of a noun ("anything") and a verbal negative ("not"). 3. No he can't. "A person put nothing in a box" is the rewording of "A person did not put anything in a box".

Yup! Glad I can help. I recommend grabbing a copy of The Trivium: http://www.amazon.com/Trivium-Liberal-Logic-Grammar-Rhetoric/dp/0967967503/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394397837&sr=1-1&keywords=the+trivium

My buddy is the one doing most of the interacting with the state government (mainly the Liquor Control Board and the Department of Ecology), and from what he's told me, they're really excited about our plan and totally for it. The only thing the state has done recently that I know of is drop the maximum allowable canopy space by 30% (10,000 sq. ft. to 7,000 sq. ft.), which didn't change a thing about our plans.

Right, but that would be a homonym, which is a completely different, although similar, concept (man being a male human vs. just "human"). In this context I was very clearly referring to "male human", and even if one would want to make the argument that this is ambiguous, I think I made it rather clear when I mentioned that "man" could be replaced with "groom". The fact that a single phonetic symbol has multiple meanings doesn't make it impossible to focus in on one of those meanings, although in some cases it can get tricky. There is an objective meaning in this case for the word man (and objective meanings in other cases, as we just mentioned), because if there wasn't, no one would have a clue what I was talking about if I said "Jane married a man". To say that a single symbol has no objective meaning because it can represent multiple concepts is like saying that because the word "light" can mean a form of electromagnetic radiation, a tool which emits visible electromagnetic radiation (a lamp, for example), and the opposite of heavy, that there is no way to objectively understand the sentence "Turn on the light". Certainly. Tomorrow we could all hold screwdrivers backwards and use them to hammer in nails and start calling them hammers. That doesn't change that they are screwdrivers now and, even if generally recognized as hammers in the future, doesn't mean they can't be used as screwdrivers in the future. The arbitrary and subjective choice of phonetic symbols to describe objective reality is simply the creation, usage, and development of tools to deal with that reality. Just because we might develop a new set of tools in the future doesn't mean the current set isn't objective.

Language has an objective and a subjective component. Strangely enough, after studying 4 languages (Japanese, ancient Greek, Sanskrit, and German), I would have sworn up and down that language was subjective. I argued that anyone could come up with any list of sounds to describe any arbitrary concept in his head. I received a lesson when I read The Trivium. Here's the example in the book that convinced me otherwise. It involves 3 sentences. 1. Jane married a man. In this sentence, we have to know what a man is in order to understand the sentence. Jane didn't marry a rock, a house, or an abstract concept. She married a MAN. In fact, we could (subjectively) call man whatever we wanted, and as long as everyone was aware of the word, the sentence would still be understandable (examples: Jane married an architect, the groom, a Russian, etc.). This demonstrates the objective nature of language is called the first imposition. 2. Man is a monosyllable. In this sentence, knowing what a man is is not necessary to understanding the sentence. We're analyzing "man" as a phonetic symbol, and we could replace it with any monosyllable word and the sentence would still be understandable, even if we didn't know what the word meant. This demonstrates the subjective nature of language is called the zero imposition. 3. Man is a noun. In order to understand this sentence, we need to both understand the objective nature of "man" and the use of its phonetic symbol. This combines both the objective and subject qualities of the word "man" and is called the second imposition. Grammar is the science of the second imposition. Hope that helps! -Dylan

Holy crap. I turn around for five minutes and the thread goes crazy. I'm... just going to stick with what was quoted from me. I don't mean to sound like I'm implying that the legalization of weed in the current economic climate would be anything more than a drop in the ocean of economic recovery, but you can still create jobs and middle class people in a system where everyone is owing more of an increasingly scare and inflating currency. I'm living in Washington (recent "legalization" state) and two of my buddies decided they were going to make a producing and processing business, and they drafted me into it because I have a chemistry degree and they need to show the Liquor Control Board here that they have professional people on their team. From what we've been able to plan out so far, at least five of us (the board of directors) and going to start off with a salary well into the middle class. As the plan stands now, we will probably be operating entirely without bank loans. I point this out because this means we won't be creating money via the fractional banking system. However, we've located commercial property and have gotten the owner to finance us and we're looking at having the greenhouse-building company finance us with the greenhouse as well. These don't create money, but they create credit. Thus we're able to go into business to move toward middle class while the other parties are (hopefully) able to maintain middle class living standards. Same goes for the people who will be installing our heating system and those who financed us the building we ordered from Pennsylvania. We're going to be getting investors to invest in the business, which means that we'll probably be freeing up money that would have otherwise rotted in bank accounts at 0.000000135% interest, or whatever it is these days. This facilitated money will also be going to the 20ish employees we'll be needing at start-up, and from what we've seen we'll be paying them more than the median for the area. Whether or not it will be enough to lift them into middle class will remain to be seen, but it will at least get some people closer to being out of poverty. So yes, I do believe that the legalization of weed would aid in increasing numbers of the middle class. Enough to reverse economic blackholism? Not in the slightest. But this looks to me like a case of less violence = better economics. -Dylan

Wouldn't the providing of jobs in the creation of the new businesses create new members of the middle class?

Man, are you going to show us the math for that or not?

Just to emphasize on what dsayers said, of course legalizing weed would create more jobs. Any time you take government coercion out of the mix you're going to get increased economic productivity. However, would legalization of weed end economic devastation? Uh... no. Bit more complicated than that.

I see this person has never tried to move to another country. Rebuttal: "So then where exactly is the place I can go with no social contracts?"

I used to be so nervous about approaching girls that I would freeze up and not be able to say anything to them when one I liked was near. This was, of course, because I was afraid of rejection. What really changed the game for me is when I decided "okay, I'm just going to go do it, make an ass of myself, fuck everything up, and call it practice". I started getting dates practically immediately after taking on this methodology.

...context?

Try actually screaming. If you have an inhibition to speak, then it's something actually within your muscle memory and you're going to have to develop new muscles and "neural pathways" to fix it. And like with any other muscle, the only way to develop it is to work out with it.

Quick geographic reminder: Liechtenstein is one of those tiny countries in Europe nestled between Austria and Switzerland. It's got a population of about 36k, about 5 miles wide and 10 long, and shares most of its policies with Switzerland (along with its currency). I've been recently applying for jobs in Austria, and managed to stumble upon a position in Liechtenstein. I figured what the hell and sent an application off, not really expecting anything back, and was rather shocked when I got a personal email asking me for an interview. Being the investigative person that I am, I immediately began looking up information on Liechtenstein (if anything, to not sound like an idiot to the person who would be interviewing me). In my search, I quickly stumbled across the following article from mises.org: http://mises.org/journals/jls/22_1/22_1_14.pdf The premise of the article is that Liechtenstein enjoys the most freedom within the western "free" world because it never made the shift over to democracy from monarchy. Some of the freedoms of Liechtenstein include: -Lowest tax rate of all Western countries (maxing out at 17%) -ZERO national debt -Not even a budget deficit -Tax "evasion" considered a civil offense, not criminal -Only 20% of budget consumed by welfare (apparently 50% is standard in "civilized" countries) -Absolutely no subsidies for business and industry This is despite the fact that Liechtenstein has a constitutional monarchy--the standard type where the monarch has the authority to disband parliament whenever he wishes. He's the head of the executive branch and has the ability to veto legislation and appoint judges. However, in the monarch's defense, the people voted to keep him in and apparently reserve the right to kick him out. The author of the article explains this apparent contradiction with a few basic points: -A monarch is in for the long haul, whereas a president or a prime minister is short-term -A monarch's debt is traditionally considered his alone, whereas a republic's debt belongs "to the people", encouraging the monarch to live within his means, and encouraging leaders of democracies to steal as much as possible as fast as possible -Generally, a monarch has to pay for his own armies, greatly limiting the scope of war (in comparison to democracies, where you can just stir up nationalistic fervor to get people to enlist). The author even goes to suggest that most of us are mistaken in our understanding of the amount of freedom associated with the Western world's transition from monarchies to democracies, and that monarchy is really the lesser of the two evils. This article blew me away. Of course, I don't think it's fair to compare a country the size of a football field with a "normal-sized" country. I'm sure a huge part of the freedom of Liechtenstein has to do with the small geographic size and the low population--things are a bit more personal when the prince is your neighbor. The modern extent of technology, specifically communication and travel, I'm sure also have a lot to do with it, especially in the Schengen border area, where the population literally has the option to "vote with their feet" and just drive across the border. However, the author makes some very good points about the long-term thinking of a monarch vs. the short-term thinking of a democracy stooge. The article really illustrates how a locally-managed, small geographic area really exemplifies freedom, even when done so under the ridiculous concept of royalty. I wanted to post it here because I thought everyone else would enjoy it. -Dylan

It looks to me like it's a public announcement that you need to walk on eggshells in my presence because I feel you need to. Sounds like the guy is displaying typical bullying behavior, in which case any attempt for you to rationalize with him is not only a waste of breath, it's a win for him because he gets to throw around emotional attacks while you attempt to rationalize. It's like he's throwing fists and you're playing chess, and in response to his fists you think harder about your chess moves, which in reality is just taking energy away from you actually defending yourself. I spent a large, large amount of my life living like that. I originally developed it from living with my mother who more or less acted to same way you just described this roommate of yours, but I went from one living situation to another where that was the case after that before I finally learned my lesson: speak up. I had to get emotional back; I had to learn how to say NO, THIS IS MY SPACE. The first time is always hard, and as soon as you do it the first reaction you'll get from the bully is that you are the one bullying and being irrational. Just ignore this and keep at it. The bully's rhetoric may not change, but his behavior sure as hell will. The interesting thing about a bully, like most predators, they only go after the weak and sickly, as the full-grown and healthy adult prey are too difficult and, frankly, too dangerous to deal with. As soon as you let the bully know that you're a healthy full-grown adult, he's going to look somewhere else for weak prey. If I were in the situation, I simply wouldn't let the guy speak to me like that. When he says "that the bathroom needs to be cleaned" in that manner to you, arguing about the state of the bathroom automatically makes you lose: you're still putting yourself under his commands. I would try to come back with something like, "Yea, that may or may not be the case. But what's more pressing is that you need to speak to me more respectfully. Until then, I'm not doing anything." If he were to argue that he IS being respectful, just keep repeating it until he changes his attitude. In my experience they usually do. Also, I would recommend doing this before moving out. You mentioned (like me) that you've had these experiences before. So if you don't learn how to deal with them, you're going to have them again and again. Good luck. -Dylan