DoubtingThomas

You are welcome. No mutual exclusivity there. My brother and both parents are in medecine. They require a license to work. They are in a statist conundrum. That's a good question. I would have to say it's because I don't want future suffreing for myself or my loved ones. I don't have kids yet, but I do have two nieces that are near and dear to me. Imagining them and future generations of children growing up under a more repressive statist regime is tragic. Speaking from experience, I have the opposite mindset. I screwed around finding myself as a young adult and only recently found a path that I really wanted to be on. That drive has gotten me through some hellish physics classes. Had I not really cared for the outcome of this degree program, I would probably have failed out by now. I think I understand where you're coming from, but it sounds very nihilistic.

I for one cannot wait to see who his successor will be. Given that Uncle Ben is now being painted as too conservative for his position, one can only imagine the glorious hyper-inflating chairperson to come.

I don't know how that affects the rest of my post in its entirety, but if you insist: 1. My brother is unconvinced that a society adhereing to NAP would work. He cannot clearly articulate why that is, and he seems to accept that voluntary exchange are the best means of accomplishing -most- goals, but like many minarchists he cannot get over the "what if we are invaded or if the mafia takes over," scenarios. 2. I would like to convince them "so bad[ly]," because it is the only non-political means by which a freedom-loving person can help to encourage a better future. Out-breeding statists and simply raising peaceful children one's self is obviously a statistical impossibility. 3. I find that to be a contradictory position. If I do not want to convince others then I cannot claim to have a strong conviction of those principles myself. I could sit on my sarcastic haunches and wax comic about the world around me like HL Menken, and oh how that does appeal to me at a time like this, but if I am to complain about the state of things I feel it is at the very least necessary to make a case as to why that is. Hopefully that clarifies whatever you were hung up on. I look forward to your reply.

If you want to have that discussion then it's incumbent upon you to present some evidence for your pre-historic claims. The modern state is obviously highly exploitive and, based on the information we do have, that could be compared to previous epochs and state apparatus for which we have records. My point was to say that pinning your argument on pre-history is not going to be easy and I think you could more easily evidence your position utilizing more recent and plentiful data.

You have insisted that my methodology, talking to my co-workers who may or may not appreciate NAP, was flawed. In the absence of a better expanation, I had to assume you meant that communicating NAP to a possibly unreceptive audience is wrong by your words. What then is the fundamental diffirence between podcasting to anyone who happens upon your youtube videos and speaking to a captive audience in person? Stef admits to doing both himself. Furthermore, it's quite possible someone googling "parenting," and seeking nothing about NAP would stumble upon one of his videos. I really do not understand the supposed dichotomy here. My post described my personal frustration. Stef is, visibly, frustrated at times himself. Again, what does this have to do with my (our?) methodology of speaking to people on the merit of NAP? Please clarify your position. I couldn't help but notice this comment. It seemed a rather harsh and insulting term to use against yourself. It really isn't your fault that people aren't listening to you. Their words, not my own, but thank you. I do probably blame myself at an unconscious level.

I believe he meant "violence in the context of human society", which precludes taking some agonizingly tedious review of human, mamalian, or animal evolutionary history. In order to validate the claim that exploitation was a profitable long-term strategy (since Alan used the qualifier short-term, I presume this is what you mean to reply) prior to "civilization," which is an incredibly troublesome claim in and of itself due to the flexible definition of civilization; you would have to provide some pre-historic evidence that this was the case. While I do know quite a few anthropologists who would be more than happy to provide you just that conjecture, I don't think they would be able to present much more than their baser assumptions based on some pretty tenuous archeological evidence. To the best of my knowledge, nobody could justify such a claim on the time scale you are suggesting.

So NAP is valid, but you shouldn't tell anyone about it who isn't already comfortable with NAP? You must find Stef's podcasts highly irrational and offensive. It is clear from a lot of the negative commentary that he has statist viewers and by the logic you have presented me here, that makes his an act of evangelism. He is cleraly not being virtuous in your view, right?

I wouldn't say I was unable to convince them so much as some of them are still in statis conundrums through employment either within the state or in a state monopoly. That is a good question. I don't know if I can identify the root cause. I am averse to irrationality and immorality in myself and others. I would prefer that people try to convince me that some illogical or immoral action I undertook was wrong and should be corrected or discontinued, therefor I extend the same courtesy to others when I can. That seems to imply that going to any length to prevent a murder defeats the purpose of protecting human life. I don't find that to be a very compelling argument.

How is there not theism? Dear, your soaking in it right now. Phillip brought it to this board. It's manifested right here by Phillip's beleif. The god doesn't exist, but the belief in human minds seems to be not just real, but downright pervasive in the last 6,000 years across billions of people. I get what you are saying, but nit-picking the term ruins some of its short-hand utility, in my opinion. I'm not sure I follow his meaning, but I agree with disliking how the term "atheist," has come to be used in "short-hand." As far as I am concerned, an "Atheist," is one who is not a theist. That includes deists. Most people don't like that and I understand their qualms, but what else is an atheist? I certainl wouldn't try to describe all atheists are devoid of irrational beliefs or faith. Most of the self-proclaimed atheists I know are statists who worship the federal government. Hopefully that wasn't too much of a tangent and for the record, I would term myself a strong atheist. I have no reason to suppose god(s) exist and find the concept to be either self-defeating or unprovable.

This is 100% accurate from the point of view I have here in the liberal stronghold of Athens (not Greece). When Bush was president, we had daily anti-war rallies. We had regular speaking guests at the univesity from every -stan country you could imagine come to represent the embattled and impoverished nations that were being victimized by imperial thugs. The very DAY Obama took office, the protests ended. People set about celebrating the president that would "change everything." Now that he has effectively changed nothing, the atmosphere is simply apathetic if not quietly pro-war. The liberals have revealed themselves as hypocrits of the highest order. They hold an unflinching alliegance to their political masters the likes of which would make even bible-belt conservatives blush.

Working with statists and being in a classroom with them on a daily basis is slowly eroding my will to care about or debate with them. I did a stellar job convincing my family to renounce their statist tendencies (for the most part), but those who aren't so close to me are clearly impervious to the against-me line of argument. To say that I have made no headway with my classmates and coworkers would be too generous. In-fact, I would say that most of the (liberal) statists I work with in-particular now hold a special antipathy for anyone who quesitons the validity of taxation, morality of spanking children, etc. I have two more years to finish my engineering degree and it is hard work. Other than my daily bike commute to campus, work, and back home, I don't have much time to think, let alone socialize; so the isolation that has come from being an outspoken "libertard," has brought me a bit of grief in the form of having little to no social outlet. At this point I am strongly considering roleplaying the most caricatured of statist that I can come up with just to see if they notice the absurdity. In any event, I have all but lost the will to dish on the subject now. It all seems like pissing into the wind. Am I alone in thinking that convincing statists not to hit their kids is like trying to convince a biblical literalist that the world is more than a few thousand years old?

Down is up, freedom is slavery, voluntary interaction is oppression. You can always defy gravity. -Statism

He seems quite enamored with politics and mass movements for a fellow who is in so much trouble with the State I was also quite amused to read Eric take him to task over the question of redaction and "harm control," and it was all the more humerous when Julian admitted that he actually has no interest in reporting fact, but merely verifying the source. In essence, I think he's well positioned to be a stooge of State power and censorship. I wouldn't count on anything he drums up to be ground-breaking unless it flatters hypocritical leftists political movements. All in all he appears to be a very confusing character indeed. I don't know much about him, aside from the media smears which aren't worth repeating, but based on this interview alone I would say he's not interested in peaceful parenting, non-aggression, or free markets.

Has he been jailed again? And in any event, what people are going to say what to whom and about what? Sorry if that sounded pedantic, but I think the idea that mere people (as in, non-political-players) speaking up about something makes a bit of diffirence flys in the face of history and indulges far too much into the mythology that we live under a wonderous social contract democracy which represents us all as "equals," before the just and impartial laws.

Well said and very amusing (in a morbid sort of way).

I think this is the kind of view one would take if they were, as many of us are, over-exposed to the non-traditional media of liberty movements on the internet. Not to be a complete cynic here, but I travel (too much) for business these days and the only voices I hear in critique of the State are those who believe that their own State apparatus could do the job better. While it's true that free market folks have cropped up in record numbers (relative to what I expected years ago), they're still an infinitely small minority in a sea of people who are quite willing to grasp at every political straw within reach. If there is not a gobal shift toward much more authoratarian power before any kind of repreieve, I would be pleasantly suprised.

I'm inclined to agree with this entirely. The more I debate with my most rational (perhaps an oxymoron in the case of statists, but in relative terms...) of my colleages, the more I understand that the social contract and "you can leave," bits are not meant as arguments. They are meant as a show-stopper to the debate, period. Once you hear "well, you can always leave," then you know that you've crossed the last line of their comfort threshold(s) and have entered territory that their mind has yet to chart. You've made them so uncomfortable in their asessment of reality and their relationship to the state (as indicated: stand-in for their parents) that they would MUCH rather you dissapear from the picture than attempt to re-draw the universe as they know it to account for all the logical steps you've taken them through. As with debates on religion, I think we run into the same problem: You cannot use reason and evidence to make someone appreciate reason and evidence. If they've decided mentally (or subliminally) to suspend logic in the instance of Jehova or the social contract, then you have no appeal.

*Everyone is equal, but some people are more equal than others. [6]

This is inspirational and I am so glad you posted your experience! My only wish was that I could do that kind of skillful programming. I took a night-class on java once and it was absolutel drudgery. The instructor was also a useless prick who essentially left us to self-teach with extremely difficult assignments, but it forced me to quickly realize I was not cut out for a career of staring at an IDE and trying to figure out what was wrong with this picture. I would say that I regret my decision to go to college, but I met my wonderful wife there so it wasn't entirely wasteful. Unfortunately I cannot supply much useful information on what to do while searching for a career because I am still searching for my own, but my advice to the OP (in terms of what not to do): a. Don't take a job to take a job. Take the time to find a job in the field that interests you. Don't be the student who gets stuck in the retail job he doesn't particularly like (nothing against retail, some people love it, and it is voluntary!). b. Don't let educators sell you on educaiton. I got a history degree during a recession because "employers respect a liberal arts degree," and that (outside of academia and the odd eccentric) is simply not true. Terrible investment. c. Don't sell yourself short on something as broad as "math," or "science," or "writing," because you probably can do much better than you think. I had afwul math teachers in highschool and worse in college, but I am now learning calculus with help from online tutoring. It amazed me how easily the subject became once I overcame this fear. d. Don't let the confusion of life and career seraching get the best of you. It is easy to become depressed or overwhelmed, but you don't have to. Staying up-beat and continuing to pursue self-knowledge no matter what happens will ultimately be what leads you out of hard times. Best of luck!

I think in this situation the spade is a club. Card counting isn't the same as picking a card at random from a deck. Archeological and anthropological data aren't entirely worthless, they're just too often subject to the kind of elaboration that is unscientific. If the color of the sky were demonstrably flexible to the extent that human culture is, you would have a point there. Present that evidence. I used to work in the fields of history and anthropology and I don't know anything about stoned ape theory. Secondly, I think we've established that a television definition of "what we know," about what "many," prehistoric societies did from nat geo is inconsistent with what a professional would elaborate on. I don't mean to sound pedantic, but I know what you responded to. The point was to refute the idea that those mentions were anything like a strong empirical hypothesis.

No, we don't guess. We elaborate on data from archology and extrapolate from anthropological studies (such as those you mentioned on modern tribes). It is a guess in the sense that we don't "know," with any huge amount of certainty, but not the same as calling heads or tails in the air. Of course they are, but what does that have to do with nat geo and anthropology? It seemed you were attempting to validate the information attributed to Joe in the OP (ie the socialist tribes are our ultimate history nonsense). Sorry if there was some misunderstanding.

No, actually, we don't just watch a bunch of modern day tribes and claim to know about all of human pre-history. Tribal culture isn't uniform and none of today's tribal cultures are identical to prehistoric parallels. The contrast of modern tribal culture with archological data is what forms our best understanding of the past. That and hefty research and elaboration based on hundreds of random sites in a given region. There is no television network, not even national geographic, that would run the incredibly tedious and dry expositions one reads in a journal of anthropology. This is simply confirmation bias. You want to believe something about human prehistory, about our ultimate ancestory; however, what makes sense to us (as modern human beings) is not always what makes sense to the ancients. If you are serious about taking in the information, take it in. There are dozens of periodicals on anthropology (be prepared to filter everything through the lens of a liberal statist) full of data to help formulate a view of how tribal groups in diffirent areas treated their children. It varies from culture to culture. Some will validate your point of view, others won't. My point was not to impicate you or Joe as socialits, but rather to disabuse you of the notion that he or national geographic has anything like a handle on how all or even most prehistoric human cultures were strucutred.

Surely you knew that the lizard people would bring reenforcements when their economic charade was coming to a head?

Making excuses for someone who expresses sincerity in their views is not skepticism. I know that Joe isn't a philosopher, but the least we can do is be honest about his predelections and call a spade a spade. If you still like to hear him talk, that's fine. Nobody is going to judge you here for enjoying a little light socialist banter. Two very small parts of the puzzle that make up our ancient past. I'm sure a nat geo special would go out of it's way to elaborate on what they can glean from the limited information/artifacts at hand, but what we watch on the tele and what's our best scientific understanding of pre-historic culture are two diffirent things.

Fixed that for you.