shirgall

I think I engage in order to sharpen the saw, so to speak, and to discover new truths. When the conversation isn't going there any more, I exit the thread. What Kevin is reminding me is to be a little more mindful of the effect a troll has on me, and by extension others. I needed a reminder. What I do have difficulty with is feeling empathy with trolls, and that's probably a big blind spot I should fix.

Just to be an edge case, I enjoyed the audiobook version a lot, and if you are *that* kind of learner, you might consider it. There are three classical modes of learning: visual, audible, and tactile. They correspond to movies, audiobooks, and physical books...

Women can be pick up artists, too, and the classic push pull in this one screams player.

People attack discrimination because ultimately they do not trust people with the freedom to choose who they trade with on whatever terms they like. Except, of course, that is the essence of getting to win win negotiations.

Kevin, this is a great treatise. Thank you for posting this!

This idea was pretty popular in the seventies.

I am shirgall.

I did the Vibram Five Fingers thing for a while myself, and got a bit of settlement money from certain health claims...

My Steam ID is pretty obvious.

Well, I engaged for a while until it was clear we were talking past one another. Then I moved on.

My distinction is that only the people that vote for a tax (or a change to a tax) are obligated to pay it.

As someone that works for Microsoft to make Linux run better in Microsoft's virtualization platform, I'm wondering how to comment on this thread without either appearing as a shill or a traitor.

Not only was white guilt inflicted on us from an early age, but when I pointed out I had some family that escaped Europe because of the oppression of Romanian Gypsies and I wondered where *my* reparations were I got some pretty funny looks. http://www.varromskahistoria.se/en/500-years-slavery

The ability to improve land is also finite which greatly mitigates the rest of what you are asserting. No one takes all the land except governments.

I was joking. I had a smiley and everything.

Private property is not "imposing an involuntary state of affairs on others."

That sounds more like a call-in question than a policy.

Agree that people are practical. I seldom get much traction with "initiation of force" but I get further with "others with power over you". We have to make freedom personal.

A social change where everyone distrusts (and therefore truly limits) those with any power over them, and to resist consolidation of those powers into singular entities, might lead to an evolutionary change instead of requiring a revolutionary one.

It's not theft when it's voluntary. If I vote for a tax, it's not theft for me to pay it.

I mention my wife frequently, and she does listen to shows, but generally the "truth about" shows and less the call-in shows. She doesn't post on the forums, but occasionally reads over my shoulder.

If you said you had a Masters in Psychology, were head of the Harvard Debate team, published a number of papers on a subject and then said that an assertion I had made was incorrect because it overlooks important relevant details that affect subsequent arguments, I would feel pretty compelled to listen what you said.

http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/american_studies/the_8_stages_of_scam.php

I'm sorry. I should have made it clearer I was being ironic. When certain thread topics and questions came up I couldn't help but take them personally. My recollection of the thread is one of being constantly baited. And when bad examples get brought up again, I certainly felt deja vu. I also felt deja vu because my podcast reader downloaded the same episode twice. One especial place where baiting goes on is the concept of "Science was wrong". Uh, no. Science is a methodology. A hypothesis can be wrong. Even a theory can be wrong. It's not randomly flinging things at a wall to see what sticks. When Newton's predictions didn't match with the evidence from observations of the orbit of Mercury, it took Einstein's improved theory of gravitation to adequately explain what was being seen. https://www.fourmilab.ch/gravitation/orbits/New evidence leads to improved theories. Science loves new evidence. What's more disappointing is that Stef didn't use my counterarguments. I always hope.