Wuzzums

You can no more have a government without aggression than you can have a religion without faith.

Celebrities are probably the only problem that if ignored it will go away.

foobar2000 + SoundTouch plug-in (Preferences -> DSP manager) It just speeds it up without raising the pitch so no chipmunk voices. Raise the speed progressively at first, start at about 30% and get used to it, then go higher and higher.

Why not just speed-up the podcasts in your player of choice? By doing this I cut the time almost in half.

Dr. Ben Goldacre wrote a whole book on the subject http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Science_(book) It also seems to me this type of bad research is prevalent in fields where the actual principles are very vague, such as medicine. The medical system does not rely on science in the same way the field of physics does. We don't know all that works, nor do we know why what works works, all we know is that it does hence the phrase "evidence based medicine". Add in the conflict of interest between the drug company and researchers and things get more foggy. Treatments today haven't much evolved since the last century, just tweaked a little here and there. Furthermore all science points towards the understanding that there are no such things as diseases, just only ill people. Yet the research is focused on studying the disease, so a lot of aspects are basically lost in translation. The object of study is far too complex for the alternative to be viable seems to me. I don't know how we could go fixing the research, I'm personally leaning towards throwing it all away to start from a new perspective all together.

In between arguments that correlation does not equal causation, I'm very curious about the source for your nr 7 point. I've studied some immunology and there's not a single pathogen that cannot possibly illicit an immune response, it's all a matter of time. And regarding your nr 2 point. Anaerobic bacteria implies bacteria that can live without air, but the absence of air (oxygen) isn't necessarily required. But with all of this aside I think the statistics are the most telling. The whole tetanus shot craze it seems to me to come from fame. I remember when I was a little kid that if you scratched yourself against a rusty nail or something you had to take a tetanus shot. Needless to say we all were full of those types of wounds and we all hid it from our parents. Not a single case of tetanus. Not even now, I never heard nor do I know anyone that has ever heard of a tetanus case. It's one of those diseases you only read about in medical textbooks. And even if it does occur, it's treatable. But then again so are the side-effects of vaccination. Or there's the possibility the tetanus infection is rampant. We get immunized from the vaccine we get as babies and because of constant exposure to the bacteria we gain lifelong immunity. So further vaccination is just overkill.

So if it is a meditative state why not call it a "meditative state" or "awareness"? What's the point of renaming well established and proven ideas? "Mindfulness" is another term used to describe this very exact same thing and a lot more famous. Why isn't that word used? Again, IFS is describing that which people are fully aware of yet it adds special terms on top to explain things better. If people already know the elements of the IFS what's the point of defining them using specific words? The wikipedia article has a strong emphasis on these terms. Exiles = parts that are in pain, shame, fear, or trauma, usually from childhood. Why not call "exiles" just that: pain, shame, fear, trauma, etc? Managers = parts with preemptive protective roles. Why not call it just "preemptive protectors" for ease of understanding? Firefighters = parts that emerge when exiles break out and demand attention. These parts work to distract a person's attention from the hurt or shame experienced by the exile by leading them to engage in impulsive behaviors like overeating, drug use, fighting, or having inappropriate sex. They can also distract from the pain by causing a person to focus excessively on more subtle activities such as overworking, over-medicating. Another term that describes exiles and firefighters is neurosis. Why isn't that used? Not saying that it should be used, but why not? People are more familiar with what neurosis is rather than what firefighter and exiles are. Isn't the purpose of these terms to make the theory as clear as possible? Furthermore why is the concept of "Self" (the only one associated with great terms) use the word "self" if it's not trying to sound misleading? Why wasn't it called, much in the spirit of exiles and firefighters and managers, something like "the spelunker"? Or, the other way around. Why weren't the exiles, firefighters and managers called something like exiled self, firefighting self and manager self? I come from a medical background and I'm very weary of special jargon. It's usually employed to repackage something old and very often quite obvious, or sometimes used when the speaker doesn't really know what they're talking about, or when the speaker wants to sound superior to the listener (which is quite often the case in the medical field).

First time I heard of it. Sounds too much like one of those feel-good theories that puts strong emphasis on not taking responsibility of one's actions. "No, no, no, I'm not being mean right now, my mean personality is acting up, I'm actually quite nice, I've got tons of nice personalities, you must just wait a while for them to surface up." "No, no, no, I didn't kill those people, the devil made me do it. I'm actually innocent." "I shouldn't be judged by what I do, I should be judged by what I could do!" A quote from the wikipedia entry: Out of all the phrases pulled directly out of people's asses, this is most certainly one of them. I can do it too. Here's my version of IFS with the addendum: "Beyond the Self there's the Super Duper Self which has super duper healing qualities such as super curiosity, super connectedness, super compassion, and... SHARING." Prove me wrong. There's not a single self sustaining definition in that whole article. "What's the Self? The Self is something that is and it is great! Don't you wanna have a awesome Self, too? What's a subpersonality? Well it's something that makes up personalities, duh!" It's like saying the air is made of pixies. And what are pixies? Well pixies are a collection of dwarfs, and dwarfs are made out elves, and elves are made out of bunnies. There's literally to limit to the bs you could come up with to "prove" a non-testable theory. Anyways, this whole multiple personalities talk reminded me of this gem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tITzDjPf4g

>implying the government takes care of those things in the first place Question, how do you take care of someone that comes into your house at night and is trying to murder you?

I take it Dante finally let that german scientist molest him.

Why wouldn't the steroids I was talking about not be the steroids that are medically approved? I mean yeah, if you're talking about cheap steroids you buy from the guy down the street then your fear of them is completely founded. But you can apply the same logic to aspirin, or cough medicine, or soda. Of course you should be weary of substances that are nothing like the substances you think you're taking. I still don't see it as a quick fix. Given the same routine and the same diet to two different healthy people the one with less testosterone will make slower muscle gain. If he takes steroids it'll just make things equal, more equal nonetheless. The routine and diet are still there, the lifelong commitment is still there... or should be there. Botox takes 1 day, plastic surgery takes just a couple of days, steroid induced muscle gain takes months. The levels of testosterone go down physiologically, most evidence point how this is not a good thing. So why would a 40 year old bodybuilder want to be as good as a 20 year old bodybuilder? Why would a 40 year old guitarist want to be as good as a 20 year old guitarist?

You can get steroids from a pharmacy, they're sometimes even prescribed for older people. I heard nothing but good tales about steroid use from elder folk. Not to mention people with abnormal low level of testosterone. If a young healthy person uses steroids then yeah, you could argue it's a quick fix, but they still have to work for it (admittedly not as hard). But in some people it just replaces that which is missing ie a young male's level of testosterone. A 40 year old natural bodybuilder will never become as muscular as he would've been in his 20s. You mentioned the guy with liver issues that deflated. Doubt it's related to steroid use. In certain liver issues no amount of weightlifting, steroids and diet can help you put on muscle. And a couple of months is time enough, liver disease or not, to lose all muscle gained naturally or otherwise.

I dunno, I wouldn't put steroids up there. They're anything but a quick fix. There's an upper limit to how much muscle a human can pack on and no matter how hard you train and how strict your diet is you won't be able to go over that threshold. The body can produce so much testosterone but with steroids you could go over that limit. But it's anything but easy, it's like trying to fill a glass of water that's riddled with holes halfway up. There's a reason why there are bodybuilding contests and natural bodybuilding contests. The former accepts steroid use and is a lot more hardcore. And with all this rampant steroid use and considering how bad steroids are wouldn't we see cases upon cases of steroid induced illnesses? But there aren't. Most injuries are caused directly by stupidity from what I've seen and a need to out-perform the next guy.

He died because of an undiagnosed congenital heart disease. If you're under the impression that an unhealthy lifestyle and Zyzz's physique go hand in hand you must not have done your research. The discipline alone required in bodybuilding is amazing and lifting weights is the easy part. 30% weightlifting, 70% diet and rest... very, very strict diet and rest. Powerlifting is different, but Zyzz was no powerlifter. Don't be fooled by all the scare stories. His actual self was a bit different than what he put out as "Zyzz". He started like most kids do, wanting the things other people have. People that are perceived as "better". So he started bettering himself then he realized that the promised boon he so wished wasn't that great in the first place, in fact it was far bellow him. The 4chan board that made him famous, /fit/, is in fact full of people that follow this narrative. But where others just became disenchanted and depressed, Zyzz just accepted it and somehow enjoyed it which is why people followed him. From his posts alone you can see the contempt he had for people, shallow people anyway. He always said that you could get away with anything if you're just good looking. Bettering yourself will always garner admiration and hatred from others and the guy loved it.

Mary being a virgin is also one of these misconceptions. It's just a bad translation, the original word meant young unmarried woman or something like that. I can be associated with virginity but it doesn't require it. There's this theologian scholar that was so fed up with these bible errors he decided to spend his life correcting them by studying the evolution of the bible text from different sources and languages. Needless to say he became an atheist. And wrote a book about it, "Misquoting Jesus" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misquoting_Jesus

The way a computer works is very similar to how the brain works. The major difference is that the brain has a constant feedback loop, which is very different from shortcuts which are a one-way street. You get an emotion i.e. the response you once had to a previous situation and the brain sort of goes like "listen, there's no need for you to waste time on this situation because you were already in it and here is how you responded last time, I'm not saying this new situation is exactly like the old situation, I'm just saying it has some similar aspects which you shouldn't ignore, if it's entirely different then I'm perfectly willing to store this new event as a new emotion then next time we won't be so quick to judge". Computers don't learn by themselves...yet. Like for instance, let's say each time I turn on my PC I always open a web browser and check my e-mail, check my youtube account and open a music player and choose a certain track. This all takes quite some time but if a computer were to learn from previous experience it would know that if the power goes on then it means the web browser application will start and go to certain pages, and the music application will start and play a certain song. In order to save time it would make all these actions a priority, thus you won't have to wait extra time for background programs to load. Or how a firewall works, at first it knows nothing about anything, it blocks everything, so you have to teach it what to block and what not to block. Power on would illicit a fast response from the intelligent computer, that fast response I assume is analogous to an emotion. If I were to open a video application instead of a music application it would rub the computer the wrong way. Next time the power goes on it won't be so "keen" on switching resources to the music application and in this instance you can say it's showing reason. It's trying to predict future events. It has a choice between switching resources to the music application, to the video application or do nothing and wait. This is how I see reason and emotion, they're different sides of the same coin.

@darkskyabove I'm not sure I understood your definitions of positive/negative emotional responses. So positive emotional responses make feel good, which will make you seek out that behavior, which in the example would mean that it would make you seek out predators to run away and survive from.And by chance alone this constant brush with danger will lead to a drastic decrease in life expectancy, which will give an evolutionary disadvantage to people that follow this pattern. In the example wouldn't a negative emotion response be the one that will give rise to a positive outcome? If you'll develop a phobia of bushes wouldn't that raise your chances of survival? After all, the positive emotion of having survived only comes after the negative emotion of being in mortal danger. I don't think emotions and reason/analysis are fundamentally different aspects of the brain. I think they're the same, one being faster than the other. Reason comes forth only when a new situation is present, emotion comes forth when a new situation is very similar to an old situation. It gives you a quick result without you having to waste time.

Emotions are shortcuts your subconscious shows your conscious self. If you see some rustling in some bush you could go "that is a bush, it moved, bushes don't move, there might be something in the bush" and then BOOM some predator jumps at you yet somehow you manage to escape it. Next time you're in the same context it could go exactly the same (i.e. go through all that long reasoning once more and risk getting caught) or you could feel fear, which is unpleasant, which will cause you to run. I see emotions as the lessons learned from previous experience. They don't spring out of nowhere. If I feel affection for someone it's either because they have proven themselves worthy of affection (again, all about prior experience) or they're similar to someone else from my past which had proven themselves worthy of affection. In the latter case you could feel conflicting emotions. You've got the unwarranted emotion of affection combined with the emotion of suspicion towards unfamiliar people. Both emotions are useful if you understand their origin. But were you to choose one over the other based on which is more pleasurable then it's just another belief without evidence.

You're throwing baseless claims. You say the theory of relativity is wrong yet offer no proof, just some "thought experiments" which in science equal to zero. Thought experiments are a way to explain a theory, NOT to prove it. You ignore several major aspects of physics, like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, or the blue/red shift, and so on. And when faced with evidence to the contrary of your theory you retort to saying "no, no, I'm not saying relativity is wrong, I'm saying that Einstein was wrong!". There's a latin name to that kind of argument. And if there's a latin name for it, then you can be certain it's nonsense. You also fail to realize how science works. In order for a new theory to replace another it has to explain EVERYTHING the previous theory explains PLUS something new. Yours fails on all accounts. I have no idea what your purpose is here. Are you trying to show us how clever you are (because you keep constantly implying you outsmarted famous geniuses)? Or are you trying to prove your theory? Because saying someone else was wrong doesn't mean you are right.

The theory of relativity has no bearing on moral relativism other than the word. The theory of relativity doesn't state that everything is relative, it actually contradicts it somewhat because it shows that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant. Everything may be relative to the speed of light, but the speed of light isn't relative to anything. As for your theory of gravity. If all matter is expanding, then it means that The Moon should be expanding as much as the Earth, and if all matter is expanding (emphasis on matter) it should mean that the space between bodies of matter should shrink thus making the Moon look bigger. We do know however that space is expanding, how does your theory factor that in? You also said that the Earth isn't hot enough to propel the Moon... what does that mean? Why is temperature needed to propel an object?

I remember something similar happening in my country but the woman died unfortunately. They even made a movie about it http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2258281/ People will go to extremes easily if they're led to believe they're doing the right thing.

Let's say you own a dog. And the dog just did something you don't like. And you want to teach it not to do that thing anymore. Do you: a) beat your dog every time it did that thing b) explain to the dog why it shouldn't do that thing c) try to persuade the dog into doing another thing whenever it wants to do the thing you don't like d) ignoring the problem, dealing with the problem, etc If you answered a) and you spank your kid then why do you feel it's ok to teach your kid as if you're training a dog? If you didn't answer a) and you spank your kid then why do you feel it's ok to apply the non-aggression principle to dogs but not to kids?

What type of non-guitar playing do people like?

I'm highly skeptical as to what people in the past found beautiful or not, if it's to be objective. You gave the example that bulky guys were unattractive because it meant they had low status and had to do manual labor. This is cultural, the status of the person is taken in account and not the appearance. I think the best way to determine this is not to hear what anyone has to say on beauty but to look at the individuals in society. What are the common traits most people have? Because if those traits are common throughout mankind then it means they're preferred traits to have in order to gain a reproductive advantage. Good thing someone already spent some time on this:

The title is disingenuous. He said he experienced mild pedophilia and it did not cause lasting harm on him. He mentions the incident in one of his books, can't remember which, in the context of child abuse by the church or something like that. It's quite obvious he tells of the incident as anecdotal evidence and does not want his arguments against religion to be taken in account just because he was a victim. "Oooh, he was abused as a child therefore that's why he's against religion, not because he brings logic and empirical evidence to the table." I also find it quite funny how "critics" of him only now seem to put forth this ghastly tale as "news" even though they would've known years in advance about it had they actually read some of his works.