Think Free
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Posts
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Joined
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Everything posted by Think Free
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I mean acceptance in a practical sense, not in the sense of internally believing in the goodness of something.
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Some good thoughts. The reason I wanted to add acceptance is because violent opposition is trying to leave people with only one ethical alternative: acceptance.
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Here's an interesting short history of U.S. government involvement in medicine. I hadn't heard a lot of the stuff before. Unfortunately, I think you have to sign up for an account on Quora.com to read the whole thing, but it's free and quick and you can promote your ideals on Quora anyway. http://qr.ae/riG6X Makes me want a "The Truth About Health Care and Medicine." -
Yes, the image needs a lot of work to be clear. Legislation against discrimination and hate speech is violent opposition of non-violent opposition. Make sense?
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Nothing sinister is going on here...
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I second this response. Cut the Gordian Knot.
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Why Politicized Science is Dangerous
Think Free replied to Think Free's topic in Science & Technology
Exactly. The rise and fall of eugenics as "science" was political. But that's not occurring anywhere today... right? -
Why Politicized Science is Dangerous
Think Free replied to Think Free's topic in Science & Technology
This is just semantics. You're not wrong, but I don't see how this will help. Certainly the majority of people perceive what you call "just politics" to be "science." -
"'<Insert pretense>, therefore you cannot be free!'""The Constitution is a warning label." (No surprise there.)
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"Broken families cause poverty" is definitely truer. The U.S. is richest nation in history (even our poor are rich by international or historical standards), and we have world-topping rates of divorce, abortion, out-of-wedlock births, imprisonment. But the sections of our society in which the family broke down first are the poorest. On the other hand, people who get and stay married in the U.S., on average, die twice as rich as those who don't. Another true statement that you don't mention is this: "Many of the systems that reinforce poverty in the West also break up families." This fact is often confused with your second statement.
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Privatisation and deregulation: ?????
Think Free replied to Vuk11's topic in Libertarianism, Anarchism and Economics
I rarely say "taxation is theft." Instead, just talk through the issue like this. "So, let's recognize that when we make a law about something, it means that people who don't agree with that law are now going to be forced, by people with guns, to follow that law, or else be thrown into prison. Do you think it's ethical for anyone to use violence against those who disagree with them on this point? Or can we agree that whatever solution we can come up with needs to be peaceful?" Try that. It works better with people with whom you have some rapport. -
To be fair, it seems to me that most people believe in God in the same way that most people believe in most things that they're not personally an expert in or have personally experienced: They have no direct experience of it, but they've been told by the "experts" that it's true. They're vaguely aware of some of the evidence for it, some of which is bad, distorted, or even outright falsified. They also are almost completely unaware of the arguments from the other side--and those that they are aware of tend to be straw men or at least poorly constructed versions of the argument. They would never be able to hold their own against an experienced debater from the opposing view point. In fact, in my observation, the average person's belief in evolution fits neatly into this description. For this reason, I concur with the OP's original point.
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I was calling your second post incoherent. I literally can't make sense of it. I did read what the Bank of England put out, but I just don't understand what you're saying. I tried to get you to clarify but don't understand your response.
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I looked it up. While there's a lot of stuff on exogenous and endogenous money supply, I can't find anything that makes sense of your first post, let alone this incoherent mess.
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You state this as if there's a difference of opinion over how money is, in fact, created. Is that accurate? Because that seems unlikely.
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Darwin's Myth is not "quite credible"
Think Free replied to ccuthbert's topic in Science & Technology
So, this discussion has been going on for a while now, and I'm just curious: Have any of those disagreeing with Rainbow Dash actually read the book he's suggesting you read? -
I watched the video. It's interesting, but I don't see how that could decrease density. Also, I was just reporting what the expanding Earth theorists had themselves offered as an explanation. They cited larger animals in the past as evidence that the Earth's gravity has been increasing. If the Earth was increasing in diameter but not in mass, surface gravity would actually be decreasing, from about 34.7 m/s2 (or 3.5 g) when it was the diameter of Mars.
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Then I don't think you're looking hard enough. "Climate change science" might be the most egregious example, but almost every field of science has a minority position or "competing pseudoscientific theory" that is treated in the way that seems completely inconsistent with rational, openminded science, even if it is completely wrong. You can read about some examples in Kicking the Sacred Cow by James P. Hogan. Or you can read about another example in The Trouble With Physics by Lee Smolin. It seems to me that "science" isn't what is used to be. Specifically, it's increasingly a tool for shaping public opinion. This in the face of mounting evidence that "scientific" "rigor" is disastrously ineffective.
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http://www.michaelcrichton.net/essay-stateoffear-whypoliticizedscienceisdangerous.htmlHere's an excellent article written by Michael Crichton on why politicized science is dangerous. (Another lesson to learn from the tale is why blind faith in scientific consensus is dangerous.) The article was published in the back of his book, State of Fear.
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I looked into this theory a while back and I would just like to clarify one thing: According to this theory, the mass of the Earth is increasing along with its volume. Indeed, all planets in the universe are increasing in mass, according to this theory, through a speculative process. (Before you go pointing out the law of the conservation of mass prohibits this, remember that energy can theoretically be converted into mass.) The process is increasing the mass of the Earth at a (somewhat) constant rate. Thus, by basic laws of geometry, the rate of change in the diameter of the earth decreases over time. It was slow to begin with and is at its slowest now. Assuming a (low number) of 5 billion years between the size of Mars and Earth's current size, it would average out to about 1 millimeter a year, but, of course, the current rate would be much lower than that.
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The Structural Violence of Wage Slavery
Think Free replied to Think Free's topic in General Messages
I just mean what occurs most of the time. Like right now, among people who work, most are salaried, I believe that in a free future, that won't be the most common case. Exactly, we need to point out what the government does to push people into being "employees" not just as a means of earning money, but as a member of the "employee" class. -
A lot of people seem to have a (perhaps intuitively based) sense of repulsion at the thought of being a "wage slave." This repulsion seems to be part of the reason for the popularity of The Zeitgeist Movement and collectivist ideas. Of course, there's no reason to think that the employer/employee model will be the dominant one in a free society. I personally believe the dominant model is likely to be one wherein everybody is a contractor and people hire a bunch of contractors to complete their projects. The person hiring on one project might be a contractor on the next project they work on--it would be a question of expertise and vision. Anyhow, the point I'm trying to make is maybe libertarians can do a better job of taking advantage of this discontent with the current system. For the record, I don't actually believe that "structural violence" and "wage slave" are helpful terms--I was just being provocative in my post title.
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http://memegenerator.net/instance/47694759 http://memegenerator.net/instance/47695116 http://memegenerator.net/instance/47695325 http://memegenerator.net/instance/47695624 http://memegenerator.net/instance/47696065 http://memegenerator.net/instance/47696216 http://memegenerator.net/instance/47746371
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Darwin's Myth is not "quite credible"
Think Free replied to ccuthbert's topic in Science & Technology
Well, I think we (except Friendly Hacker) can all agree that we should get the government out of science and schools and stuff, and that that would help bring clarity to a number of scientific issues. -
Just thought this answer to this question was interesting. Doesn't the author know that poverty is supposed to trap them, not spur them on to success? http://qr.ae/hWnih
