Mister Mister

I wonder if the "Theories of Gender and Sexuality" class includes an examination of what evolutionary biology/psychology has to say on the matter

thought you were talking about the hashtag by SJW's http://websta.me/tag/fuckparis

Yes, I agree that it is inaccurate to call these things "illness". But what I was saying, was that this doesn't fundamentally affect the argument.

I smoked pot for a long time, but basically had to take a break for 2 years when I lived in S Korea, when I came back I went back to smoking briefly, but decided I didn't like how it made me feel anymore. In some ways it relieves stress and anxiety, but for me it would tend to make my mind run, causing me to internalize and over-analyze everything, and become neurotic and anti-social. Having learned to manage stress and anxiety through exercise, meditation, tea, self-knowledge, and so on, I didn't find very much positive effects anymore to outweigh the negatives. Mantis - I haven't looked into that specific data, but how do you know that cannabis is causative and not simply correlative with regards to those mental conditions? It seems just as likely that people with certain psychological dysfunction would gravitate towards a soft psychotropic drug like cannabis, not that smoking pot causes these things. Though I do believe it can make them worse in some situations. I think RCali is kind of arguing an irrelevant point - perhaps mental illness as it is often described in the culture is not valid, but nonetheless feelings and patterns of depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive behavior and so on, are very real.

I don't know what spiritual OR acceptable means in this context. I doubt that religious fundamentalism would be compatible with a free society, but as for some of the stuff you are talking about, meditation, asceticism, and so forth, I don't see how it conflicts with anarchism. The foundation of a free society, is a culture where people can disagree without escalating violence, as long as you adhere to this, you can believe and practice something which may seem strange to everyone else, what would the problem be? However, that said, I am a little concerned at your last post, it seems like quite a volatile reaction to the kind of skepticism that you ought to expect on this forum.

I disagree because you can't kill an idea....but when are you enlisting?

Yes I think that this is a little misleading to call this a photograph, rather than some computer model based on measurements. I'm not sure what I'm really looking at. Also, I thought the whole idea about the Copenhagen Interpretation, and Quantum Logic, was that light exists in a state of contradictory or non-identity, until it is measured. In other words, you CAN'T measure light as both particle and wave, you can't picture it, you can't model it, except as mathematical abstraction. Am I wrong?

They are not trying to be political per se, it is probably partially that they are upset about what happened, and partially that they want to jump in on the moral fashion of the week. Maybe next week another black person will die in police custody, or a white male celebrity will put out tweets that could be considered sexist, and people can move on to the next thing. The one thing that annoys me is that what was really tragic about what happened is that over a hundred people were killed, that it is a symptom of the larger problem of conflicts with Muslim immigrants in Europe, and that we can only expect more violence and unrest in France and throughout Europe moving forward, more intervention in the Middle East, more assaults on civil liberties. Showing "solidarity with France" by flying their colors, the way you would wear a jersey from a sports team you support, is so irrelevant in all this.

It seems like both the Right and Left have contributed to this perfect storm - the Right meddles in these countries with highly primitive, violent cultures, and the Left invites and subsidizes the diaspora to move in, at the same time disarming the public. In Stef's video, he mentioned that the French government had mandated everyone to stay in their house for the first time since 1944...I got literal chills. There's no question in my mind that Europe will eventually have a backlash against this and it will be fucking brutal, the longer people ignore this madness, the worse it will be.

are you asking other board members, "why don't we?", or asking yourself "why don't I?" do this? Why WOULD you do this?

That's a very interesting topic, RJ. Maternal guilt trips are very powerful and can be quite toxic. But I don't know if "sacrificing for your kids" quite fits into the same category of altruism as other self-sacrificing behaviors, for two reasons: one is that your children are your responsibility, as you brought them into the world, the other is that it is perfectly in line with biological self-interest to want prosperity for your progeny. The problem, I think, is when a parent claims they are owed something, because of what they gave up for their kids, which reveals duplicity. If you just want your kids to be happy and prosperous, then that's all you should ask of them. If you did stuff for your kids because you wanted stuff back from them in the future, don't pretend it was for some altruistic reason.

I remember playing Sid Meier's Civilization games, and how a good strategy was to lower taxes, allow wealth to accumulate during peace time, then raise taxes and build an army to conquer other countries, lower taxes again, and repeat. Similar to an interactive online text based strategy game I play called Utopia, where the amount of taxes you can collect is inversely related to the size of your army, so you want to alternate between having a small army, raising money to build a large army, conquering more land, going back to a small army, and so on. When I first watched Stef's "Story of your Enslavement", this clicked with me, that those with political power think of it as a game, and that modern political systems are a kind of cutting edge strategy that has evolved substantially from the old days of God-Kings...though the game is the same.

I don't have experience in this kind of work setting, and I've heard this kind of "human resources" culture is common in large companies, but one thing that popped in my mind is, why is this important? Why are we focusing on this stuff when we need to be producing for the company and for the customers? Just a thought of how you could address it without getting into the politics of it.

Thoughts? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-04/the-no-1-business-rule-of-this-billionaire-and-buddhist-priest

Hi there, just had to comment that I found it funny your use of the words "turned" and "migrated" with regards to changes in your core values. Warmest welcomes, it's always nice to hear philosophy reaching people at a young age

Yep, it's the difference between a dairy farmer buying shares of another dairy farm, and watering down the milk he sells.

The classic example is that a drunk driver kills a person. I don't know if this is a problem for UPB as much as it is a problem for law, which would deal with these things on a case by case basis

An Unreciprocated Request for Proof of Concept Don't forget bullies.

Lol, such trolling. Do really expect to be able to get away with those kinds of assertions here? We could just as easily say, if people were wise enough to choose the perfect ruler, they wouldn't need to be ruled. There's no such thing as a philosopher king. A philosopher makes arguments, appeals to reason and virtue. A king imposes his will by force. Statist arguments like this are just a way to blame the failure of an authoritarian system on the victims, rather than reflect on any possible failures of the system itself. They'll say democracy is a good idea, but "human nature", is bad, rather than to realize democracy is a bad idea because it is incompatible with human nature. It's just like saying we have to hit and yell at and drug kids because they're "bad", rather than realize that it is people's anxiety as a reaction to a natural human being with needs and feelings and curiosity that causes the abuse.

I agree that it is not immoral, but I've found that as I developed more empathy, I was grossed out with porn. At first I tried to find some that was more affectionate and less degrading, but there's not much of it, which should tell you something. Masturbating is not inherently bad, but I don't know that masturbating with the frequency that many men do these days is psychologically healthy either. We ought not to shame the act, but try to gain some wider perspective about how we are programming our sexuality by giving into every sexual impulse. I also think that the eastern mystics may have a point that it wastes a kind of energy, I find myself feeling depleted for a day or two afterwards, whereas if I go for several days without, I have an extra ooomph that can be directed towards other creative endeavors.

my understanding is that homosexuality is more epigenetic. Some studies have shown that it is strongly correlated with certain hormones being released by the mother, as a result of stress, during a certain part of the pregnancy. It may be that certain genes are more susceptible to these hormones turning the fetus gay. I've also heard that there is a correlation between promiscuity of the mother, and homosexuality in children. And, a radical view held by some more conservative homosexuals such as Milo Yiannopolous and Camille Paglia is that there is some choice involved as well. I don't know how any of this answers your question, but it is certainly a very complicated topic. And it really doesn't matter. The religious conservative bigotry towards homosexuals, especially as experienced by children in a family, where they have to hide a part of who they are, is awful. Similarly, the leftist pandering to homosexuals, and bullying like in the case of bakers who don't want to make cakes for gay weddings, is also not good. I hope we can get past this as a culture and focus on the real moral issues of our time - child abuse, war, mass incarceration for non-violent crimes, and public debts.

My understanding is, when gold was the main currency, prices consistently deflated. This is because productivity increased massively, much faster than more gold was mined. Also, because gold has other utilities than currency - jewelry back then, and now electronics as well, if more is mined than is needed for currency, some of it will be redirected towards other uses, keeping the money supply relatively stable.

I agree and think that's the point I was trying to make. Many people will disagree because they believe human beings are inherently bad and "selfish".

I think it's an interesting idea, that by being born and being protected by societies laws (if they are rational and consistent and universal), you ought to adhere to them when you grow up. But it could only be taken seriously once people en masse adhere to the NAP with children.

Why should we read his book?