Chris Laforest

Tasmlab; I think what Bardan is saying regarding your question makes a lot of sense, but it's highly subjective. I think you'll benefit a great deal from really pondering what Bardan is saying. But on the objective side, I just have some question that jumped out to me as really obvious while reading your post. Most interesting to me is that I think your list is quite comprehensive; though I think we could reduce it, simply, to respect.I don't understand what you're having trouble with. For me, as soon as the concept of having respect for children was rightly communicated to me (I can't remember how or when); I was convinced in such a fundamental manner that I understood the very simple nature of the concept; which is to have a basic respect for children. You surely do notice how differently children react to being treated with genuine and honest respect, right? I'm not sure there is much more to it than that; other than going through all of theoretical proofs and empirical tests. What is it that you need to have better clarified?

This isn't something we are going to, or really need to, wrap our heads around. This "debate", and all of the commenters on youtube, are really getting to me and I keep having to force myself to realize that the argument from authority, and the argument ad populum and so on are not real. Childhood lessons die hard. We don't need, and it would be a implicit justification for irrationality, to run around and test for the empirical manifestation of the fact that 2+2 is 4. Stefan's Socratic approach to a dialogue with TZM is, I think, clearly a very good method of calling out to the yearning true-self in people who are stuffed to the gills with logically fallacious habits and so on. However, it is a very fine line, in my humble opinion, between acting as a beacon of truth for the suppressed true-self in others, and self-abuse - abusive in the sense that we encourage abusive and irrational behavior, in general as well as to ourselves in particular, by continuing to imply validity in irrationality by giving it credence, I would say, even beyond one or two aggressive offences. Joseph was extremely offensive in this debate, and his audience relished, erroneously, in Stefan's use of the Socratic method as though he didn't actually know what was going on in the conversation. These people take a lack of knowledge as some kind of Achilles Heel, rather than concentrating on our thirst for further knowledge. This, to me, is a prototype of the argument from authority; where what we know is a whole lot more important to them than how we know it. I don't want to say that it is completely useless to engage with these people further, but I fear that it could degrade the quality of the philosophy if we condone self-abuse. That said, where does one even begin to deal with the arguments of TZM? But, they don't actually have any arguments, as far as I can tell. That seems to put a pretty big damper on my ability to approach their thoughts rationally. Kind of damned if I do, damned if I don't. We can't help any of them out of their trance without discussing with them. But we will, on the other hand, only reinforce the power of their trance by engaging with them if that means self-abusive. Similarly, attempting to approach a bottomless pit where an argument is supposed to be with logic just doesn't make any sense. It seems to me akin to an engineer approaching what he knows is a ravine telling himself that it is a merely flawed foundation in order to correct it. But there is no foundation, and so he is clearly abusing himself. Am I way off here?

I have been "sparring" with TZM people on both youtube posts of this "debate" on and off since it's release; and more and more all I can think of is that this just aren't people we want to engage with. However, despite the fact that I initially thought Stefan could have been tougher with Peter; I realized that his strategy is far more wise than my knee-jerk. Though the Socratic method is very difficult for the user when it is the case (which I think we can all agree on many, many levels that it is) that they have a far greater understanding of complex concepts. This all comes back to the argument for political palatibility. Stefan may have been able to be more stern on obviously ridiculous practices of argumentation, or more accurately a direct rejection of the logic of argumentation. But I keep having to force myself to step back and see the big picture. Peter Joseph has a huge audience, and though he may have been so abused as to be completely incapable of accepting the very simple truths about reality, many of his listeners will see the huge difference in the way that both Stefan and Peter conducted themselves in this interaction. Not all, but certainly some of them will see it and seriously question Peter's behavior. Violence does breed violence, but there definitely is an innate human quality to be free and to be happy by discovering and conforming to the laws and facts of reality.The true self is bound to recognize another entity experiencing the value of conformity to the facts of reality. I think it's important to realize that, contrary to what I was thinking when I was watching the debate, had Stefan been more aggressive; the true self in all of Peter's audience would never have been aroused and, furthermore, the true self of Stefan's audience would have been similarly disrespected. Regarding the actual arguments of TZM, where do you begin? Well, I don't think you have to. I'm not 100% sure about this, so hopefully I can get some feedback about it; but doesn't it seem like a complete waste of time to go through all of the arguments of TZM, which are logically either inconsistent or completely contradictory and on so many levels? I want to think that I am wrong about that. Maybe it just has something to do with the fact that you can never know where the remnant lies, and very rarely will they ever come forward and identify themselves to you as such. But maybe, somewhere in all of those youtube and reddit arguments I've had with TZM people, someone was able to see the fundamental value of true logic in my arguments and actually change sides or at least begin on the road to changing sides. I guess it would be instructive to go through all of their arguments and refute them one by one. But since they were able to justify their conclusions by simply begging the question on such a fundamental level, what is to stop them from either completely rejecting the incontrovertible truth of our refutations, or just creating more to fill their place?

Thanks to both of you for taking the time to add to this conversation. The issue is truly important to me and I am very grateful. You have given me some new thoughts, and I am going to consider them. I'll report back when I have something of meaning to add with regard to my experience. I think I may have been too closed and lectury in the past and that this has reminded her of her father. I have been trying lately to be less so, and more open to listening to her since that is what I want from her. We had a great conversation the other night and I actually enjoyed what she had to say. I think it's a good start. Thanks again

I have a rather personal issue to bring up in order to get some feedback from "outside of the glass" on what exactly is going on in my relationship. That said, I understand (I think) that outsiders can't possibly know better than I can about what is going on in my own relationships with others (in this case my girlfriend). I certainly have day to day experiences which lead to my creating this topic, but the issue I am having and why I think I would benefit from some outside input is quite complex. In summary though; I think both my girlfriend and I are irritated and frustrated with each other far too often. I have always been fairly straight forward with the emotional doors I am trying to open when I talk to people, sometimes to my detriment perhaps - though I feel as though I can't go wrong in the long run with the truth. However, as our relationship has moved forward and I have been able to culminate my understanding of it, I am more and more honest about what I feel when I feel it - and more importantly - what I think those feelings mean and why. To give an oversimplified overview of the relationship; she thinks I talk too much about politics and philosophy and I think that she is living a nightmare where she refuses to converse about her feelings and then trumpets how happy she is about our relationship despite being highly irritate with me on an all too regular basis.To give a broad but I think telling background, my girlfriend is studying anthropology and is in her 4th year. She has few philosophical interests and isn't all that interested in discussing issues like philosophy in general. I, on the other hand, am very interest in philosophy. As far as the relationship is concerned, I am interested in the application of the methodology of consistent ratiocination. This is key; if it weren't the case that philosophy has so many important implications with regard to relationships, then I wouldn't care a whit about whether or not she cared about philosophy. However, it does have said heavy implications and so I expect her to demonstrate to me that she is at least concerned about the health of our relationship through actively trying to discuss emotions, intent, emotional projection, and so on. I don't think it is at all too much to expect that she should want to actively invest in the health of our relationship. Now, I think it's important to delve into why I think this kind of thing is happening. To start off, my girlfriend's father has always been very outspoken specifically on matters of political philosophy, and economics, and business, and pretty much anything he can draw out a basic, though usually completely false, conclusion for. But that is making it sound nice. The reality is that he is an alcoholic watermelon. He is anti-logical, verbally abusive, deeply cynical, and narcissistic . Having to listen to him make a variety of quickly-fleeting claims every day, from very unimportant issues like "Why don't they just make dishwashers so that they collect your dishes from the counter and then put them away after they are clean?" to more important issues like "The government should just nationalize the cell companies because I can't be bothered to understand the tragedy of the commons." have taken their tole on her ability to trust, or to empathize with the concept of a comfortable and inspiring objective truth. Now, this doesn't bother me because she doesn't want to talk about politics with me. I really don't think that is the case, though I would certainly probably get on her nerves about it anyway. But I understand that completely. The problem is that, because of her dad having effectively destroyed her ability to empathize with truth by constantly destroying the spirit of rationality, she has been forced into this pie in the sky land where up is down and black is white. My very far-fetched opinion is that her method of dealing with her father's emotional issues was to simply stop accepting that there can be such important truths at all that would arouse the attention of her fundamental emotional framework. The twist is, again only opinion, that though she has been right to deny any credibility for her father, she has essentially still internalized his consistent entrenchment of anti-rationality in also denying that credibility to the scientific method by false correlation. In other words, I think she is denying arguments as a whole rather than the specific qualities of people's arguments which she experienced as misleading and false in her father's constant rambling and deeply disturbing verbally abusive behavior. I think that it is a result of this that she is now so irritated when I ask her to consider fundamental questions of philosophy as they effect our relationship. Rather than get to specifically into who said what and why, I want to just get my main point across and see what people have to say. I think that the things I have to say are important, and even though I always intend on backing them up with an argument. It therefore deeply hurts me that my girlfriend can so easily shrug off, even just my own personal inspirations, but more importantly; the truths which I have reason to believe deeply affect our relationship. In fairness (and that is the goal after all), my girlfriend has also been vocal about my lack of interest in her interests; things like wanting to dress up for halloween, to give a perhaps oversimplifying example because it is recent. And it isn't like she feels rejected because I don't actively want to dress up and do that thing with her. Clearly, it is more complicated than that. Given the open sense I pose her with questions about our relationship, she - from simple things like halloween and other not singularly ground-breaking issues - is concerned that I don't have a very long list of "Reasons I Love Her". But I think she's right about that, and it scares me. It hit me today and I tried to explain it to her - when we got together at first, we had more in common and, of more import, less out of common. However, not knowing each other that well, and more importantly neither possessing the inclination to rationally analyze our emotions - personal or inter-personal, we perhaps allowed ourselves to emotionally continue signing those long-term verbal contracts prematurely - out of touch with a sensible reciprocity to our ability to understand the meaning of our relationship. Of course, she wasn't interested in this concept, but was instead stunned and distraught at this apparent attack on the foundation of our relationship, or at least that's what it seemed like she was reacted to. My girlfriend is never the one to raise these questions, she will only get upset when she perceives that something I am doing causes her frustration. One of the main issues or at least indicators for me is that my girlfriend can be so distraught, as if to be caught off-guard like she had no idea we had issues, when I pose these very fundamental questions, and yet so professedly happy about the state of our relationship and silent on any position regarding the fundamental questions. I believe that if every time she stormed out or stone-walled me, I had for some reason never gotten irritated and begun asking these questions, she would never bring them up and so they would never come up. Our relationship would then be a completely logically dysfunctional relationship, where we routinely professed our profound love to those around us, but snapped, screamed, and refused to speak to each other 85% of the time. It seems to me that rather than confront the issues we clearly have, my girlfriend would rather just express feeling betrayed when I disappoint her with a lack of concerted interest in specific instances. With that said, it is a common issue with us that I have changed my mind fundamentally a couple of times. This hasn't helped with her view of me in comparison to her father, regardless of whether or not that is fair. When I first came to care at all about politics, it was because of hallucinogenic drugs and I gravitated naturally to the extreme left. From there, I began to realize that I had very little in the way of explaining important concepts. Ron Paul sprung me out of that, and at that time I was sure that his word was gospel. My girlfriend sees this as a flipflop. I then moved on to Rothbard and began denouncing Ron Paul where I could then see fit. This was seen by my girlfriend as a flipflop. But part of my moving on to Rothbard was a transcendental difference in methodology and understanding. It was that it didn't matter that it was Rothbard putting forward any given argument. It was now clear to me that truth wasn't derived from authority, but that truth was derived from a rational investigation of reality through the medium of our sense. But now my girlfriend will always warn me not to be too vociferous with my claims for fear that I may later retract. As one may presume, I take this to be extremely offensive, a sort of paternalism intended to protect me from my own lack of intelligence. I have tried to explain to her that this last transition was truly different in kind, and that if she had any particular concerns to voice them so I could deal with them. But she never does so. All she does is lash out in this paternalistic way. The only reason to continue on like this would be for some reason to believe that she may yet come around to the logic of my thinking, or at least show me the error therein. I'm not sure if I really believe she is capable of it, or if I simply want to believe it because of the clear short term emotional pain it involves. Thanks for taking the time to read my personal rant. I appreciate any advice anyone has to offer.