Songbirdo

Are you coming from the standpoint that what we call "fraud" is just having superior knowledge in a transaction? I think I can see your point of view, especially when it comes to things like pawn stores, that fraud may be unsavory, but not immoral. If someone comes into your shop wishing to sell a broken 22k gold bracelet and asks "Is this worth anything?" the pawn broker can pretty much assume the customer has no idea how much gold is worth or even what 22k really means; in fact, the customer must think the bracelet is worthless because he thinks it's broken which is why he asked a silly question like "Is this worth anything?". The pawn broker offers $20 for the bracelet, the customer is grateful to get $20 for his broken bracelet. Is that defrauding the customer if the real value of the bracelet (the melt value of the gold) is nearly $1,000? I don't think so: the pawn broker just has superior knowledge and it's his job to have that superior knowledge. The customer doesn't know the real value of gold and that is his shortcoming. If the customer has a working relationship with the pawn broker, the pawn broker would probably feel obligated to give him the best deal he could (I think the average rate is 40% of the melt value?) because he is a valued, repeat customer. But some new customer, off the street with no history or foreseeable future prospect? Hell no.

Since you mentioned driving, my pet peeve is what I'll call the "Impatient Sunday Drivers". Unwritten rule: if someone else has to modify their driving to avoid crashing into you (slowing down, swerving, whatever), you are doing it wrong. If there isn't enough space for you to fully accelerate without making the other drivers slow down for you, don't go, there isn't enough space. Ok, onto the I.S.D. This happens daily: I'm the only person headed in my direction. There's nobody for a couple miles in front or behind me - plenty of room. An intersecting road crosses paths with the one I'm on, and they must stop because my road is a higher "level" (?). Guy pulls up to the stop sign, barely touches a full stop, and then goes because he sees me coming and wants to get in front of me. I have to slow down to about 50-70% of my speed or I'll hit him. Had he waited literally five seconds for me to pass, he would have had a clear shot to enter the road and ample time to accelerate up to speed at his own comfort rather than stomp on the gas because I was bearing down on him. I typically drive about 4 miles or 10% over the posted speed if I have the option (49 in a 45, 59 in a 55, etc): I'm comfortable at that speed and I know the roads are designed to take that speed safely. That said, I don't mind getting stuck behind someone doing a few miles under the posted speed as long as they PICK a speed. The "sunday driver" comes into play when they are finally on the road and going at their comfortable cruising speed. They always drive one or two miles below the speed limit, which as I said, fine, whatever. The slow driving doesn't quite mesh with the fact they just dove out in front of me rather than wait the five seconds, but anyway. They don't meet the second condition: they do not use cruise control. Their older model vehicle indicates they probably don't have it rather than someone just choosing not to use it. Their speed is all over the place because they use only their feet. Five below, one under, two above, six below...ugh! If their speed is all over the place, I'm in constant reactionary mode to compensate for their constant fluctuation. Pick. A. Speed! Yes, the extent cruise control fluctuates varies from car to car when dealing with hills/vallies, but it nets out in the end and you hardly notice. And the variable range is only a couple mph/kph vs these I.S.D. which can have a range of 10+ mph/kph. I usually just give myself enough distance from them that I can set my cruise to their average speed and they'll still get closer/farther but at least I can use the cruise. If they are really bad I'll just pass them on one of their really low speed dips. The last part of the I.S.D. is when they reach their destination turn to finally leave my path. They begin their slowdown over a mile before the turn and of course their turn is a left with a lot of oncoming traffic to wait for. Or if it is a right with a dedicated turn lane, they slow down on the main road rather than utilize the invention of a turn lane. Hint: they give you plenty of time to slow down safely in these turn lanes; use them! /endrantbaddrivers

I've never seen a Christian celebrate someone's death, either. They only seem to mourn.

He says in the end screen: "If war is about who has the most vases, you don't use vases as ammunition."

Of course we are more than just some joints. I was just giving you an example of where we lack the processing power to perform a "simple" function that even animal brains can.

An example of what faster processing power can accomplish: To represent a point in space you need six degrees of freedom. Three direction (x,y,z) and three orientation. I took a class on robotics and several more on kinematics. To locate the end point of a member you need to calculate the effect each joint has on that end point. Every joint usually adds a degree of freedom. Robotic arms can have any number of degrees of freedom, but any more than six is considered redundant and is avoided unless the extra joint is absolutely required. Your arm has seven: three in the wrist, three in the shoulder and one at the elbow. If you know the joints position (linear/angular) you can calculate the end point. And vice versa. These equations form a matrix and there are usually a lot of trig functions. The reason I’m bringing this up is a topic we briefly touched upon was the Jacobian matrix, which is the derivative (Calculus) of the above matrix to calculate the position/orientation of the end of the arm. So there’s even MORE trig functions: “The time derivative of the kinematics equations yields the Jacobian of the robot, which relates the joint rates to the linear and angular velocity of the end-effector.” Our computers aren’t yet powerful enough to calculate these massive Jacobian matrices in real-time. Your brain does this easily.

I'm not sure if you're making fun of GPS tracking in general, or the fact phones have the capability and he got one with such a capability? He said he moved to a new city. I'm sure he was able to navigate to familiar places with ease, but to a completely new place is difficult. How often do you navigate to new places, really? If you don't look up where you want to go before leaving the house, you're left with your directional instinct and prior knowledge. This is a problem if you've never been to the area where you want to go. Most cities don't have street-level maps readily available, and if they do, they don't have every address marked. They can't fit all of it on a useable map so they just put the street names. You manually scan the streets marked on the map, and hopefully where you want to go is a numbered street and not some named one like "Acorn Blvd". And these maps are only updated yearly at best, so you could be looking at an outdated source. Your best bet is to Google it rather than use a preprinted map of the city/county/state. So you get a turn by turn printout from Google Maps prior to leaving, which is how I've done it up until two weeks ago. This requires the equivalent "startup capital" of a smartphone which consists of a computer, mouse, keyboard, internet access, router, modem, printer, paper and ink. That dumb piece of paper doesn't tell you where you currently are in relation to where you want to go, it uses reference points that you must find and follow to get you to your destination. It doesn't tell you how far you currently are from your next turn (you could estimate it manually with a trip meter). It doesn't tell you a whole lot except the bare essential, point by point directions to get you there. Now, the phone has all of that in one device. You don't need to print anything so you don't need a printer/paper/ink. You can get directions for any number of locations, not just one per piece of paper. The phone updates dynamically and shows you how to get where you want to go from your exact current location. You can even call someone if you get lost. GPS navigation saves a lot of time and prep work in finding new places. I don't understand why you are making fun of it or him for utilizing the amazing technology.

I -just- got my first smartphone two weeks ago. Before that I had a four and a half year old flip phone with a mini keyboard. Only used it for two things: calling and texting. The old phone was getting...old: battery not lasting very long, operating system was noticeably slowing down, etc. It was time for a new phone. I decided to upgrade to a smartphone for multiple reasons. I've been getting more and more into crypto currencies, and I wanted to have access to them away from my computer. I don't personally have a GPS but wish I had one. The smartphone is one. Remote access to weather information. I recently got stuck in a Walmart during a bad storm. Had no idea how bad the weather was getting until they told us to take shelter. These phones have up to 16 megapixel cameras! Girlfriend dropped my regular camera in the ocean last year, the phone saves me from buying a new camera. Notepad, camera, flashlight and tons of other tools. Internet access: I can deposit checks with my phone, check e-mail and track orders. Apps, apps, apps. I agree with the others on the touch screen: I wasn't a fan. I've had an iPod touch and a Kindle for years and absolutely hate the flat, touch keyboard. However! The technology is improving to where I now like the touch keyboard over the regular button one. They've improved the auto correct which allows you to press the wrong key in the general area and it tries to guess what you meant. In addition, they've developed a drag-touch keyboard: drag your finger across the keys and it is in my experience 95% accurate at guessing what the word is. I draw some scribbles and it fills in the word. It saves so much time compared to the button keyboard that I wouldn't want to go back to a button keyboard on my phone. On the cost, go for a limited minutes plan instead of "Unlimited talk/text + data". Between the five of us on a shared plan, our maximum minutes used was around 400 minutes total for that month. If you pay for the X number of minutes, then it's like $10 per phone to add a line, not $30 per phone/$40 per smartphone for unlimited talk/text. Texting is $20 for the whole family, not each phone. Then pay by the gig for data ($10-15 per gig per month).

God put your leader in power, and so as a God-fearing individual you must obey your leader because the leader is a proxy for God. If your leader (government) does terrible things it is because God is punishing you because your people have sinned. And then the God-fearers blame the citizens for "deserving" such a terrible government because of their sinning: abortion, homosexuality, porn, etc... and not the government for being an agency of immorality and evil in the first place. *eye roll*

At age nine (third grade) when I started doing the cursive drills in school, we were also being sent to the computer labs for keyboarding drills. There was a short transition period of "If you do this assignment in cursive, you will get extra credit." But by the time I reached junior high all mention of cursive, even as a bonus, was gone. This was due to those writing assignments now being required to be word processed, and any handwritten assignment would have been marked down.

The reasoning was akin to letting your child hang around other children that have the flu (only worse). Is it cruel to deprive the allegedly flu-sick child of playing with a healthy one?

Quick Google search surfaced: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/06/30/326926331/companies-can-refuse-to-cover-contraception-supreme-court-says Some excerpts from the article: It notes that the owners of the "closely held for-profit corporations have sincere Christian beliefs that life begins at conception" and that they object to the part of the ACA under which employers are "required to provide coverage for the 20 contraceptive methods approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including the 4 that may have the effect of preventing an already fertilized egg from developing any further by inhibiting its attachment to the uterus." Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which "provides that the government 'shall not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion' unless that burden is the least restrictive means to further a compelling governmental interest," _______________________________ That meme makes it sound like all birth control is being outlawed, when all that's happening is removing the subsidy for it through the A.C.A. and, as a result, the mass theft to pay for that subsidy. It wasn't even an overwhelming majority, it was a 5-4 vote. But, Patriarchy.

Cracked me up in the recent call in show "You Can't Fix Stupid". "It's like there's gold three feet in the ocean, and everyone is scuffing up and down on the beach saying,"There's not really much gold here. There's no gooold. Where's the gooold? I want some gooold."And it's like...it's in there three feet, just gotta go pick it up."Well that's wet. I don't wanna get my feet wet. Where's my gooold? I want gooold...How come other people get all the gooold? I want the government to get me some gooold..."Like...IT'S THREE FEET AWAY! GO GET THE GOLD! IT'S IN THE OCEAN! RIGHT THERE! It's not a pufferfish that's going to bite you! It's not a gold shark or anything like that! It's not a rappers discarded teeth! It's real gold!"I want some gold...where's my gold...I want some gold..." Start at 1:00:10https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhNGOrLv0Q0

My favorite was the one where he was laughing uncontrollably about Christians rejecting the theory of evolution because it didn't have enough evidence to satisfy their high requirements for proof.

I know this is probably obvious but...why are you still choosing to live in NYC?

Thank you for sharing. A great, short clip on the double standard.

How do you define marriage? Why not? - polygamy. And what about getting married then divorced immediately? You got married (if not only for five seconds) and then unmarried. Kind of a meaningless gesture, but you could still do it at birth and everyone could be moral without much of a hitch. This is why defining your terms is important. Do you mean between only two people, once, and for all time? What is marriage?

I’m still new to syllogisms and logical proofs and I’m not sure if I’m begging the question (if that’s even the right description of this?), some other logical fallacy in this regard or if I just missed something simple in the formulation somewhere. Where I’m having trouble is with using “the coma test” as a litmus test to disprove positive actions as UPBs, especially to disprove the big three as positives: rape, murder and theft. On page 67: And then at the bottom of the page it explains the requirement for capacity of performing moral actions: If the positive action as UPB is “rape is moral,” then if you don’t rape you are considered immoral. If you cannot rape, you are excluded from the consideration because you are not able to make the choice. You are not condemned as evil because of the lack of choice. So my question is which of these is conclusions put forward on this page are true: Common sense tells us that a positive moral action as UPB creates the situation where a coma patient is immoral because they cannot abide by it, therefore no positive moral actions as UPB are valid. Also, avoidance of committing a negative moral action does not necessarily mean you are moral. Or Where choice is absent, so is moral consideration absent. Because the coma patient cannot make a choice, he is neither moral nor immoral. So, attempting to assign a positive or negative moral action as UPB to the coma patient is invalid. Because of this, “the coma test” as a whole is inapplicable for moral considerations because someone in a coma is not a moral agent. Not sure if it is a false dichotomy and I’m missing a third (or fourth) conclusion I’m not realizing? If the latter conclusion is true, where no choice = no morality basis, then it also applies to the next part on murder: If he’s stranded on an island with nobody to murder (physical state that objectively differentiates him), he does not have the “to murder or not to murder?” dilemma. So the man is neither moral nor immoral since he does not have the ability to choose. It's very late and the caffeine has long been out of my system. Any help in clearing this up will be greatly appreciated. (Edit: Added tags, thank you TDB) (Edit: Corrected the logical fallacy, I think I may be begging the question, not presupposition)

Thanks Kevin. I hadn't come across that debate yet.

I do not fit into that gung-ho category. For the longest time I had the notion that "Well, if this idea that important you should be giving it away for free so that it is more accessible. And in doing so your idea could change the world. But, by charging for it, you just creating a hurdle most won't pony up for to sample" and Stef was doing the former, giving it away for free. But I didn't connect that I was also spouting the other side to myself: "Well, since you're giving it away for free, I don't have any obligation or reason to give you financial support." The conscious-twinging aspect is what finally did it for me: "Your sub-conscious pays attention to what you do, not what you say. If you want your sub-conscious to actualize that this thing you've been spending time on called 'Philosophy' is important, you should commit some of your resources to help it grow. You obviously think it's important because you've come this far in the podcasts expending all this time listening to them and learning the material. Since you can afford to commit some cash to it, pony up." or something to that effect. It just clicked after hearing that argument.

Not sure if splitting hairs over that last 1% of government is worth it at this point when the other 99% of government is still in the way. It reminds me of an earlier podcast call in show (mid 400's) where a caller asks whether or not shining a light in someone's face would violate the non-aggression principle. Who cares! We've got bigger evils to deal with. And so, on a similar notion, minarchists, anarchists and wherever libertarians say they lay on that spectrum could really benefit the preferred direction of the growth of government (towards reduction) if they just banded together. Both sides agree on eliminating 99% of the government evils. Let's get that 99% out of the way first. If we can get it back to 1%, then we can begin the debates on whether shining a flashlight in someone else's face is a violation or not. Yes, once the government is reduced to 1% the fundamental source of the evil (theft) is still in effect. However, when its role in our lives is nonexistent compared to what it is now, I think it will be a much easier step for the minarchists to see the remaining 1% isn't actually "needed". They will make the final push to anarchism with the knowledge that the now-tiny government was this small before and the beast grew out of control within the next couple succeeding generations.

Where did you hear this? How do we know there's exactly 17 of them yet not know what they are?

If you don't mind sharing, what convinced you to donate that first time? What was the pitch or argument that made you and your brother say "We should donate."?

Why for?

Not weird at all, at least not to me. Also good for role-playing and walking through scenarios you may encounter. It's how I prefer to think and mull things over: out loud. Talking myself and my parts through the reasoning, accepting rebuttals and weighing the arguments. Let's just say you wanted to sit next to me during exams.