Panoptic

Have you done the water experiment? Its not true at all. The experiments are not reproducable. Check Wikipedia for its sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory#cite_note-NatureEditorial-1

Can somebody explain to me why this video says its unlisted and only those with the link can see it?

Ah okay, that makes more sense now.

I thought Stefan banned the discussion of determinism. I am assuming that also includes the discussion of free will since the polar opposite, determinism, always comes up.

I am currently reading my first self-help book. It's The Psychology of Self-Esteem by Nathanien Branden. I heard about it when listening to Stefan's video called "How to Meet a Nice Girl" about half-way through. He said it wasn't until he read that book when he actually began to care about his emotions so I bought it. I am making slow progress on it because of school but thank you for making this topic, it will give me some other books to read after this one.

I don't believe human nature exists. It amounts to an accumulation of "instincts" that we somehow are born with. But how can this be substantiated? I will elicit two quotes from "The Psychology of Self Esteem" by Nathaniel Branden in which he discusses this issue in the first few chapters as an introduction. We can see that "instinct" is entirely oblivious to our ability to learn. It completely ignores the fact that we can learn things as a result of our self-consciousness and therefore concludes that we have some sort of strange, magical knowledge wired into our brain from birth. I believe Stefan has said about the same thing, and has also said that humans are "rational" upon brith, not "good". Correct me if I am wrong though.

I like Vice's YouTube channel. But it doesn't seem to have nearly as much bias as this article does (it is still biased though).

I have not read RTR (Real Time Relationships right?). I have only read On Truth The Tyranny of Illusion. Of course I was planning on reading all of them eventually but if RTR has this sort of info I may jump into it now. In the past it was always the same buddies throughout middle school and high school until my senior year when none were in my classes. It illuminated the real depth of the relationships; once they were not in my classes I did not talk to them. It was always about small talk, unsustainable. Before I began college I made the decision to get friends but I obviously did not have the proper skills since I attempted the same small talk crap throughout my classes. In college its much different though because I think most people are more intelligent and get bored with small talk real quick. If you're asking about me specifically though, I think that I am very confused as to how one would initiate the chain of events to obtain new friends or at least buddies who are potential friends. Small talk is not bad and I believe its the only way to initiate conversation but I never know where to venture beyond that. It seems like a universal problem for socially awkward people. Aside from talking, where the hell should I meet these people in the first place? These questions were leading me to compare the aspects of attempting to meet a girl and attempting to meet a new potential friend. When meeting a girl you go to a place or event where like-minded people are (like hiking club) observe them a bit before talking to them. I was wondering how similar it is if you are trying to find potential friends. I thought meeting a friend would be a little more lenient (as in meeting people in class or anywhere) since it seems like one would be more open to having friends with differing ideas than having a significant other with differing ideas.

The reason I was asking if friendship is important was not because I thought it was important for "validation" from others, I simply thought that having friends would help you to be more emotionally stable since isolation produces depression and anxiety. Also, could you explain "romance does not exist"? That is quite a frightening statement although we may have different definitions of romance. How are you defining it? Also, I am a bit confused when you tell me to ask myself if validation from others is important, but before that you said friendship is important because "friends act as a logical consistency", which seems to be the same thing as "validation". Unless you are saying that validation from significant others is not a good or bad thing, and that I should not ONLY be looking for that, than it is confusing to me. Aside from all of these posts, I actually JUST found this video from Stefan: It is quite annoying that it just came up in related videos now, especially since I'm pretty sure I did a search for "friendship" on Stefan's channel a few weeks ago and nothing even close to this video came up... Anyway, the discussion on friendship it contains is very interesting.

Wow, defoo is definitely a big thing to do before signing up here! Welcome to the boards. Maybe you can free my extended family in that state for me

Pepin, I coincide with you. I watched it, it all made sense to me, but I had almost no reaction, no feelings of anger or resentment. This is hard to admit, but I think for me it might be because I still have some sort of horrid vestige from my childhood that is still causing me to think that the man should be disposable. I constantly fantasize about getting a girlfriend and taking care of her, doing the dirty work, where she can lay back and not have to worry about much. For some reason I enjoy the idea of serving a woman even though this was the case when I had a girlfriend and I only felt anger and rage the entire time.

I would like to get peoples' feedback on what they think of this situation. Romantic relationships are said to "tie down" people from being able to do what they would like. How true is this? Also, as a disclaimer from me to all of you interested minds who are always digging from more truth, VICE is an excellent channel whose media never shys away from any subject and will do whatever it takes to get the truth to you (although they sometimes tend to forgot objectivity in their reporting). Because of this, I would highly recommend watching their videos, but stay AWAY from their series on Syria. Unless you can stomach the most graphic content you may ever see, you do not want to watch that. Me saying this should be enough for you to understand the message the video gives...

Wow thank you so much for your view on tattoos. I have been thinking about getting a tattoo for a while now, but I have been designing it myself and was planning on getting it someday. I really should think about the real reasons I want it.

There have been multiple topics just like this one. I started one just like this about 2 months ago. I had been electrical engineering at my college for 3 years. I started my 4th year a few months ago and I came on here. Here is my topic. It sums up how I was feeling. Since I started that topic, I have made a bunch of important decisions. Even though I was very stressed out about the way school was going for me my best option was to stay in school. I ended up switching majors to systems engineering which has made my life much easier. All of the other engineering fields dismiss it as the "easy" engineering field, but it turns out that I enjoy the material much more. You do not have to switch majors to get the most out of school though. Here is what I did to get myself back on track: First I switched majors and got my classes all figured out I then sat down with myself and thought about the things I need to improve on the most I realized that I had no project experience, which is the #1 thing employers look at I also realized that I had no connections/college buddies So I laid out the last two years of my college career on paper and wrote down what I was going to focus on each semester. My main goals for this year are to get some sort of project experience in my area of interest, and to network as much as possible. This includes joining clubs in the field you want to work in which will allow you to network and get project experience. My plan next year is to continue to get more project experience and also start applying for jobs before I graduate. This plan is great because I used to put huge expectations on myself such as join all of the clubs, get all A's, get tons of new friends. I of course would fail at one thing and the entire plan would collapse and this caused me to procrastinate. This plan gives me 2 simple tasks for the entire year aimed at strengthening my weakest points. I understand the apathy thing. It is so difficult to find effort to put into other parts of your life that are important to you when school sucks that effort and motivation out of you. Also, I feel like in college, you realize how much you want to do with your life and attempt to do it all at once and fail. This is what I did. I realized that you cannot change your entire life that quickly. You really need to simplify the things you want to do to make them easier for you to perform, and work at them slowly until you get better. Motivation is key. What I do is imagine myself taking that last final exam of my college life and walking out the door screaming with excitement. I then play with the time after in my head. What would I do that day after the last final? What would be the first things I do after the graduation ceremony? Your life will be waiting to be written out without school in the way. You can write your life out now as well, but you must factor in school. I am not saying to feel like a slave until you graduate, but ask yourself what you can improve on and how you can best use your time in your last years of college because in this world that degree will only help you, especially if you used your time in school wisely.

I can sympathize with being with a girl who you end up realizing has a lot of emotional problems, and you end up wanting to help out, it happened with me. I think you really need to think about why you really ended up with this girl in the first place. What were your psychological reasons? Did you just see her one day and think that she is physically attractive and decide to go up and talk to her because of that? Be 100% honest. When I was finally 100% honest with myself about my previous issue of not knowing if I wanted to be a certain major in college, I learned more about myself in 3 days than I ever have, and it helped me an enormous amount. I really don't believe in "crushes". They tend to be a matter of physical attraction and have no bearing on the value of the relationship. But let's ignore that and look at helping her out. First of all, the can be no value in the relationship where there is no communication/compromise. There can be no communication if somebody is not telling the full truth. Communication means explaining your emotions and how you feel to the other person. Nobody is perfect, and we will all have problems to work through in our relationships. But if one of the people simply cannot even contemplate ending a horrible lifestyle, then that is not somebody I would want to be with. I can see helping her out as friends, but I think that issues like that are best left entirely out of romantic relationships. Some people are just not ready for change, and change doesn't happen too quickly either when they are ready. I am not trying to dishearten you. I would like you to see if you have gotten yourself into a mess and get out if you have. I know you feel bad for people like that, but if they are not ready for change then there is not much you can do. As a matter of fact, leaving might make the greatest impact on how she thinks about it. You have to be strong about it. If you are going to help her, I think the best thing to do is to sit down with her and ask her questions like we are. Why do you feel the need to impress people? Why do you want to stay friends with people who you cannot even tell that you hate drinking? What kind of problems did you have at home? What kind of problems did you have with your parents growing up?

Switzerland is interesting. They have a small regular army which has conscription and the majority of their armed forces are militia. They are very good about staying neutral in wars, even in WWII, although they currently take part in "peace-keeping" operations and such. There have been several attempts to completely abolish the regular military in the past few decades, but of course, after 9/11 people totally changed their minds about that.

I say, if power corrupts, then is God the devil?

I don't think something that improves your health has to be an interest. Have you tried taking him to work out with you? I used to be just like that, all I did in high school was play video games and that's all. I heavily regret that I wasted so much time (but I do not dwell on the past). For me, I started working out just for my high school weightlifting class, but I found that the more I did it the more I enjoyed it, especially after seeing results. Is he stressed out about something? You can ask him about that, and also explain that working out is an awesome way to relieve stress even though it may be counter-intuitive. I am no parent but I can sympathize with the, working out is not fun, idea. Also, if he becomes frustrated when you talk about things that will not help him achieve his goals, maybe he does not REALLY know what he wants to do. Maybe he has apathy towards his future. 9-years-old does seem pretty young to be thinking about this stuff, but this is exactly how I felt my entire life until I got out of high school and I was way behind. For me, I think my apathy came from the horrible public education system and my parents' apathy towards life as well. They never seemed to show emotions about anything, not even excitement. They always told me that in life, you just have to get a job and get paid, it doesn't matter if you like it or not, as long as you are bringing food to the table. This obviously did not help to install any motivation to find something I would have enjoyed to do. I would say try to figure out why he feels apathetic. What you could also do is go find information for him about what it takes to become a video game designer and maybe even make a plan/timeline with him about achieving this goal. This is something I do when I think I want to do something with my life in the future, and I can see how realistic it is. It usually installs motivation and excitment in me. You could also do research on other careers with similar skill-sets and show those to him as well. Of course, his ambitions will probably change over time and so it is something that you can continue to help him with.

Awesome. You know, humans can adequately survive off of just potatoes and milk their whole life. And, just out of curiosity I'm pretty sure they're speaking Russian, which is interesting because of how high crime rates are there. ANYWAY, thank you for sharing. I'm still not giving up my beef though...

So you are saying that friendship forms from bonds of going through tough times. But then what about romantic relationships? You get into one by going up to women and introducing yourself for the specific purpose of forming a romantic relationship. There are no hard ships in going up to talk to them, and asking them out. And yet these romantic relationships evolve to be stronger than friendships. I guess they evolve through tough times, but what I am saying is that it does not start out that way. So how can a friendship start in comparison to how a romantic relationship starts? Or am I comparing two things that are not even compatible? I just feel as if I try to talk to guys in my classes, and continuously try to find something that both of us are interested in, but the other person usually seems too busy with life and doesn't bother too much to advance anything. Maybe I just have to keep talking to more people until I find one that actually has time to hang out.

The reason initial blame is placed on the parents is because you, as a human being, did not make the decision to come into this world. You learned everything you know from your parents. If they never let you express your emotions in the home, then you learn to contain your emotions (which is dangerous). If they beat you as a child, you learn to beat your children as well. Of course, they were also brought up in the same way, but we are all responsible for our actions once we become adults. We have the option to reteach ourselves. Cutting communication with your parents is a last resort. It is suggested that you talk to them and express how you feel about everything. If they acknowledge their mistakes, and actually work to change themselves in order to accomidate you (because if you are not gaining any happiness out of a relationship then there is no point), then it is okay to continue the relationship. But the problem is that usually they are already too far into their life to change, and they usually will not change. You cannot change them, and they will usually continue manipulation even though you are an adult now. This can take the form of "family obligations", guilt trips, finacial binding, etc. And why would you continue a relationship that gives you no happiness? Friends or family? There is nothing naturally virtuous in family, or DNA. And when you realize how they have brought you up, and how much they have either neglected you or abused you, and they cannot even acknowledge that fact deep down, then you will realize that it is not possible to work with them. It would be like trying to continue a relationship with somebody that murdered your wife. Except, it was your parents who destroyed your childhood, and those bad experiences will come back and continue to cause you misery unless you can free yourself. - In other words, those past experiences hold very real consequences in the present if you do not free yourself.

I have been struggling to make friends from the new people I've been meeting and so I thought I would come on here for discussion. I want to define two terms: friends (those who you can talk to about anything, emotional and personal issues), and buddies/acquaintances (those who you can simply hang out and have fun with, but are usually boring besides that) I have only ever had buddies, no friends. Although I do think that "buddyship" can be important in a void of friends because at least you're having fun with your time. My motivation for asking this question was this: I had been thinking about the issue of romantic relationships when I suddenly imagined getting a new girlfriend where everything would be going good for a little while, then one day she would say to me "You should introduce me to your friends."; after which I would say I don't have friends, and I pondered what the reaction would be. I then thought about the importance of friendship which led me to start this topic. So answer this: Is friendship important? If so, why? ALSO, is it important to have friends before getting into a romantic relationship? Does it have any bearing on your "being happy with yourself" (aka your personal well-being and satisfaction with yourself)?

I think this point can be abstracted to: What is the goodness or badness of aesthetic pleasure? I don't think there is anything wrong with aesthetics in itself. We all like to see things that look nice whether it be art, house decorations, clothing, and our bodies. But I think it is bad for somebody (for themselves, not for others) to only care about looks. For example, when you go looking for a romantic relationship, you can go all for looks and not get very much else out of it except maybe sexual pleasure. But if you care about the functional values then it will be much more rewarding. I think you can look at working out in the same way. You can do it for looks, but it provides so many health benefits that overlooking them would be absurd. If working out only made you look good, then it would just be something to add on to your schedule for your own and other peoples' eye pleasure. If it only made you healthier, it would be foolish not to do it. Just like in a romantic relationship, if a girl/guy you are interested in has good "functional value" it would be foolish not to take that regardless of looks. Also, aesthetics come from the natural state of things. Something that looks good gives your eyes pleasure, just like something that smells good gives your nose pleasure, or something that tastes good gives your mouth pleasure. So how come we get concerned about lust (which comes from eye pleasure) but not about how good another person smells, or how good they taste (LOL), or any other senses? Its not my fault, and I cannot change the fact that, my eyes enjoy another person, or my nose enjoys their perfume, etc. And I know it sounds like I am speaking about some random issue, but my point is that looks aren't a bad thing, but too much of it may be bad. I guess you could make an argument about the reasoning behind wanting to see another human look good. For example, if you are in a romantic relationship with a woman and she has some poster on her wall of shirtless brad pitt or something. I don't know how I would feel, but its really interesting to think about the reasoning for that action. Of course, its definitely not something to become outraged about IMO. We should ask the question, how does seeing a good looking human being register in the brain compared to seeing some inanimate object that looks good. But that is for another time. My final point: If aesthetics are not taking away from your life then I do not see a problem. I would say don't base your life on it, but its nice to have some. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how this 21-year-old mind sees it right now.

I have never had a full on panic attack, but I believe I have been very close to one a few times. I have some sort of anxiety disorder that I have been dealing with for 3 years now, but it only has affected me in phases, not the entire 3 years. I am currently working on my anxiety, and while I haven't cured it yet I have made progress. So I hope my little advice can help out. I think it is definitely caused by childhood experiences. I am new to this whole "listing to your emotions" thing, so I can't tell you that I have figured out my root cause yet. But I will give you some advice that I have to help you get rid of it while you figure out the root in your own life. Anxiety is induced by your mind. If you think about it, it is actually quite rediculous. The irrational thoughts your mind creates are quite stupid and not founded on any fact. Anxiety comes from fear of the FUTURE, but you have full control over your own future. Your brain is just trying to protect you. I was recently going through a phase of anxiety. It always happens to me at night, when its dark outside and just before I'm going to sleep. One night I was sitting here in my computer chair. Anxiety was taking hold, I was slouched over, feeling miserable. I couldn't get comfortable, and it slowly was getting worse. Then, I suddenly had a revelation. I realized that I was LETTING anxiety take hold of me. I was fed up with it. I suddenly decided that I did not want to feel this way anymore. I said, I am not going to live my life like this, I am a human being, I have control over my mind and I am not going to LET this control me. I got into a mental state of determination to get rid of it. It has been working quite well. Sometimes, my determination fades, and I have to reignite it. But you must understand that you have a choice to stop it. It is not something that you can't get rid of. It is more difficult for me because I have not a single person to talk to about it. I don't have friends, and I realized this. So I decided to CHANGE that too. I am not going to be a miserable human being that suffers from anxiety and has no friends. I will change it by continuing to work on it, and it has been continuing to become easier. The previous posts mentioned good ways to get rid of it. It is all mental. But you won't be able to unless you get the right state of mind. You have to WANT to get rid of it. Obviously you want to stop feeling like crap, but you have to take a step back and think of it from a life perspective. This is your life, so take control. Here are some resources I found: http://charliehoehn.com/2013/05/19/how-i-cured-my-anxiety/ This blog talks about how anxiety is caused by stress (or traumatic experiences, which cause stress). He doesn't mention childhood experiences, but I think that anxiety is caused in the short term by stressful times in your life even though it may originate from your childhood. This girl essentially did the same thing I did. You have to make a decision yourself to stop the attacks. She talks about the cure at 11:55 I would probably avoid reading peoples' comments though. Too many people are worried about complaining about their own problems and specific situations instead of trying to actually do something about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_attack#Causes ALSO, here is some good info on what may cause anxiety if your life. Still not the root cause, but it reveals a lot about the person who gets them. The most interesting one I read was that panic attacks usually affect people with above average intelligence. "If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude."

I don't think you have to have developed ideas before making the change since your first attempts will probably fail. It's just like Stefan was saying in the videos. Its risk taking and it takes patience. That doesn't mean that he should just drop out and immediately try to start a business. He can drop out and start working somewhere to save money while working on his ideas in his free time. It might be better than staying in school, stunting your brain, and collecting debt while working on ideas in your free time. I am in a STEM field and I just told him he might want to drop out ha. If you are in a STEM field, it doesn't matter how much money you'll be making after you graduate if you can't find any motivation to get through. This is what I have experienced. I was a day away from dropping out and the only reason I'm still in college is because I switched majors the next day to a more interesting engineering field for myself. You really have to know what you want to do in order to get motivated to get through college. Of course, engineers get paid a good salary, but if you don't know if that's what you want to do then you will probably slip up at some point. Knowing what you want to do is the most important thing about getting through college. If he really wants to be a STEM major, then he should do it. But if you're not sure, or maybe just doing it for the money or prestige (which was the case for me, I had to be quite honest with myself to figure that out), then you may not want to pursue that. I was able to fake my want to become an engineer for two years until suddenly I burnt out and failed 2 core classes when I got to a particularly tough semester. I couldn't figure out why I lost my motivation until a year later when I realized I really wasn't sure deep down that I wanted this. If OP is only a year or two into college, then it will be far easier to get out earlier rather than later if you are collecting debt. It will save you a lot of time as well. This is NOT to say that you will NEVER be able to go back to school. You can do the "take a break" thing like so many people do nowadays. The college doesn't care and will help you to do what you want. This will affect your ability to get federal loans in the future if you come back and you will have to immediately start paying off any accumulated debt you owe to the federal government. These issues are minor though if you have little debt (which you should if you're only a year or two in) and you don't think college will work out. Since you are still probably a bit young and may decide later that your decision wasn't the best, it is good to remember that you can always go back to school if need be. I am 21 though, and I think they're right when they say your brain isn't fully developed until age 21 because I make far less decisions that I regret later on than I used to. You should also read this article about STEM dropouts. About 50% of people who start off in a STEM major never graduate in that field or even ever get a degree. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2010/04/tougher-grading-one-reason-high-stem-dropout-rate A lot of students claim that "boredom" is the reason they dropout after looking more into the topic. I also don't want OP to think I am some angry college student who hates the world I live in. In my first post I was explaining how I felt when I fully realized the situation I was in. I felt helpless, and I was pretty angry about it. But my best choice was to keep going and finish because there was no job that was going to help me pay off $60k in debt in a reasonable amount of time if I had dropped out. I've changed my attitude about things and am trying to make the best of my last 2 years in school. I plan on getting a salary position immediately and trying to pay off my debt ASAP. But then, I am thinking about starting my own business for myself once I am free from debt. The idea of starting your own business is really motivating because you can do whatever you'd like, get experience in the field you want to, and not have to play by societies expectations of going to school, getting in debt, getting a salary job, and being taxed 20% and up every pay check for the rest of your life.