Think Free

People do lots of crazy things. This is not a valid argument. Certainly, but we don't have time to argue about it, WE HAVE TO FUND ASTRONOMY WITH TAXES NOW!!!! Anyone who disagrees hates all life on earth.

If by "coming our way" you mean, "has a snowball's chance in hell of hitting us," yes. Yes, an EMP hypothetically speaking may hit us again some day. And yes, global warming is a disaster going on all over Google.

I think Stef's off-base when he implies that "scientists" are doing what they want to do ("hobbies"). I think the world would probably be a better place if they were. Instead, they're probably mostly doing what they have to do to meet the strange and arbitrary requirements of academia or whatever is necessary to try and secure their next grant. And all of this, of course, to pay for the massive debts they've acquired and to justify what they've done with the last 8+ years of their lives. Don't you find it ironic that after Stef talks about scientists creating crises to justify their work you list a number of purely hypothetical disasters (plus sub atomic technology) to justify their work? Now, if scientists actually diverted a civilization-ending asteroid that would be something else. I think maybe you're getting a little hung up on his gross characterization of modern "science" and missing his broader point.

If human nature is basically evil, that's a reason NOT to concentrate coercive power. Only an angel wouldn't be corrupted by power. I am pretty sure, and you can do the research on this yourself, if it interests you, that the U.S. "founding fathers" generally believed that human nature is basically evil and therefore government should be as small as possible. EDIT: Just to reinforce the point. Governments aren't made up of non-humans; majorities or any other group don't seem to be generally more moral than individuals. In fact, if anything, groups of people seem to be generally less moral than individuals acting alone.

Your choice of "2+2=5" is kind of a bad example because you're using a highly technical and accurate language with a single, unambiguous meaning. In normal conversation people use many words that have multiple (sometimes opposite) legitimate meanings and frequently even misuse words. They also misspeak. Furthermore, it is a mark of Stef's experience debating and thinking rationally that he's able to immediately say, "That's not what I said," or "That's not what I meant," when people mischaracterize his position. However, it is an odd element of human psychology that people will often defend and argue for a claim that they don't agree with just because someone expresses an expectation that they do so. Often they will leave the debate feeling confused and as if their position was never addressed, because they ended up defending a position that wasn't what they meant. (As for why this is the case, I think compulsory schooling seems like a good suspect.) If someone says something like, "2+2=5" I would suggest that Stef figure out if that's what they really mean* and whether it is actually relevant to their argument, since people frequently make inaccurate (by which I mean, not a clear expression of what they mean) and irrelevant statements, even when arguing. If it is not an accurate representation of their claims or it is not relevant to their actual reasoning, it's just a red herring, and listeners can go away feeling like their position wasn't actually addressed. --- *Stef already does this a little, but I am suggesting that he should take it further. When people are talking with Stef, they often make almost incoherent claims. Stef will often work with them until they make a claim that is coherent enough to be wrong, but I am suggesting that he go further, as explained above.

Stef, based on your conversation with Bruce (and other's I've heard), I would like to suggest that you, Stef, occasionally take some time to help someone with an opposing view construct their argument before you refute it. I think both the caller and the audience would benefit from that more than when you refute their semi-coherent ramblings.

I have never heard of Dayna Martin before, but I am horrified to know that unschooling is getting smeared by these kinds of stories and characters. EDIT: Based on the blogs description of Dayna Martin, I would have cut off the relationship with her long before it came to any of this. All that can be said for sure about any of this is that at least one person has some serious issues, if not all parties involved. Regarding plagiarism, copying someone else's article and then claiming to have written it yourself is not ethical--not because it belongs to the original author, but because you are lying about your authorship. EDIT2: And in this case it basically turns to fraud because she receives payment for her work as expert in this area.

EDIT: Oops, wrong thread.

Rayne, the good news is there's a difference between respecting a toddler's desires and giving in to his tantrums, so you can (at least, sometimes) have one without the other. If you haven't been doing this already, I recommend that you ask your son to express his desires in a respectful manner. This won't solve the problem in every situation; this won't put an end to tantrums; and it may take a while for him to even begin to learn it. However, I think it's really worth pursuing both because it will help with the tantrums in the long run and because it will help him learn important life skills.

Thanks, tasmlab and company for your helpful insights.

tasmlab, thanks. This is kind of helpful. I look forward to any tips you have after paying special attention. Here's another question for you or anyone who wants to answer: Do you use any non-spanking coercion, like moving the child against their will, taking things away from them (against their will), or confining them in rooms or locations that they don't want to be in? (Edit: And when/why do you use it?)

This is a pretty horrible argument. Maybe you can figure out why.

tasmlab, thanks. I have a few questions for you. Please don't feel like you have to answer these, but if you have some good insights I'd appreciate them. These are not "undue burden"-type questions where I'm requiring an infallible solution. 1. What did you do about bedtimes and naps in the 2-3 age range? I have a two-year-old and a going-on-four-year-old, both girls. The conventional wisdom is that children need to be forced to go to bed early and to have naps to not start losing it. Sometimes I am able to negotiate or coax my kid into taking a nap, but the younger one, in particular, seems to hate it and will typically cry and protest even though she's so tired that she falls asleep after a few minutes of yelling. 2. What do you do about conflicting goals between young children in the 2-3 age range? When I try and negotiate conflicts between my daughters, the best success I seem to have is where one child forgets about their original desire. 3. Almost all of the little boys I have met seem to be more wild, aggressive, and violent than girls. In your experience, is that completely the result of spanking?

Below are some arguments or claims made against spanking that seem potentially weak, and why they seem weak to me. I am posting them to argue, yes, but fundamentally so that the arguments can either be amended or clarified to make them better, or abandoned if they're invalid. 1. One argument that is made against spanking is that it is inconsistent with the way we treat other humans, but this argument seems to have some potential problems to me. First, suppose I walked up to someone on the street, hit them and grabbed their GameBoy. What would happen to me? I think I might be arrested, sued, or beaten up, etc. Would anti-spanking advocates say that a child that hits another child and takes their toy would be better off if they were arrested, sued, or beaten up than if they were spanked? If not, this argument seems weak when applied to spanking for activities that would invite punishment for adults too, because it seems adults are treating children better than they would treat another adult, even if it might still be a wrong way to handle it. Second, it seems to me that the reasons for not spanking adults is primarily cultural and pragmatic, not moral. On the cultural side, I would be angry at being spanked even if it didn't hurt at all. Why? Because of the symbolism of the act. Adults don't like being treated like children, even in positive ways. Maybe this is because we dehumanize children... or maybe it's just because adults aren't children. (I wouldn't like being treated like a woman... because I'm not a woman. Treating someone like something they're not is a form of mocking them.) Suppose I was visiting a remote tribe where I planned to stay for a few days and discovered that I had inadvertently greatly dishonored the chief's wife by sitting next to her, or something. If I learned that the culturally normal way for dealing with was for me to be publicly spanked on my bottom, I would probably go through with it, if I didn't have to take my pants down, and despite my (cultural?) distaste for the punishment. On the other hand, I would be very unlikely to accept such a punishment in the US where I know it wouldn't be culturally appropriate. My wife told me the story of how a 15-year-old in her high-school had told his friends that his parents had spanked him. The response all around was, "Why are your parents still spanking you, and why would you share such an embarrassing secret?" Showing that in that case the children perceived the spanking as culturally inappropriate and therefore embarrassing, more than bad or wrong, even though they themselves wouldn't be treated that way. On the pragmatic side, it seems that spanking wouldn't be a deterrent for adults against most crimes unless they spanked so hard as to cause lasting, if not permanent harm. If ancient cultures could have deterred theft, murder, adultery, etc., with just spanks, they probably would have. If you could forgo a fine by being spanked, how large would the fine have to be? I suspect it wouldn't be too large for myself. But I would probably just pay $15 instead if that were the option. On the other hand, if I could forgo a $15 fine by sticking a 9v battery to my tongue, I would be much more likely to do that, even though I would consider it more painful. Why? The cultural connotations of the two acts. I think this thought experiment shows the cultural and pragmatic reasons that we don't spank adults. Showing the existence of such cultural or pragmatic rules doesn't disprove that spanking adults is immoral, but if there is a cultural and/or pragmatic law against spanking adults, we don't need to invoke a moral law to explain the behavior. 2. Another argument made against spanking, especially spanking in response to violence, is that it's self-contradictory. But suppose there's an IT manager--we'll call him Stefan. If Stefan observed one of his employees reprimanding another employee for an issue that isn't his concern, would it be self-contradictory for Stefan to reprimand the first employee for reprimanding the second? Likewise, is it inconsistent for the police to confiscate stolen goods? Is the issue that the child is too young to understand the distinction? If so, is it fine to start spanking your kid for hitting when they turn 8? 3. Anti-spanking advocates sometimes say that spanking is just a euphemism for hitting. This doesn't seem correct to me. Spanking is a relevant subset of hitting, just like being paid is a relevant subset of receiving money. Saying, "Mr. So-and-so pays me," isn't just a euphemistic way of saying, "I receive money from Mr. So-and-so." It clarifies the reason that you receive money. Spanking someone, depending on context, usually means, among other things, that they did something wrong. Hitting does not. "Spanking" someone in the eye is not spanking. So when someone says they spanked someone, they mean, among other things, that they didn't hit them in the eye. You get the point. 4. I have heard anti-spanking advocates, even on Stefan's show, claim that young kids don't understand cause and effect yet and then suggest that you provide rewards for good behavior instead. This seems self-contradictory.

So I've been listening to some of Stefan's videos about not spanking, and I still have a lot of questions. I thought I'd post them here and see if I could get some good answers: 1. All of the studies I've seen that suggest spanking is destructive don't seem to take the short-term and long-term goals, methods, and parenting environment into consideration. It seems that, given the complexity of human relationships, such information would be very important. My own experience as a spanked child reinforces this--not all spanking is equal. We wouldn't say that belittling and insulting your child is good because studies find that talking to children is good. Does anyone know of any studies that look into spanking in more detail? (The one that I found seems to support certain kinds of spanking.) 2. Are there any good studies that compare spanking to things like time-outs and other forms of discipline? 3. Can anyone point me to an anti-spanking advocate who had/has at least three children that are close in age? Likewise, does anyone know of an anti-spanking advocate who has adult children that they never spanked? It seems to me that a surprising number of anti-spanking advocates have one to zero children, that are frequently very young. I hope that someone who has multiple and/or older children might be able to give me a better idea of what spankingless parenting looks like and what the results are. 4. Other than Parent Effectiveness Training (which I am planning to read), are there any other good resources that explain a philosophically sound positive (ie. more than just "don't spank," what do I do instead?) parenting philosophy and methodology?

The short answer to this is that, the way I see it, even if everyone else in the world were an NAP libertarian anarchist, I would still be much happier with the situation than I am now. Therefore, I see no problem with supporting non-minarchist becoming strict NAP followers. Do I personally believe in the NAP as anarchist understand it? No. Do I think being an NAP anarchist is better than being what the vast majority of people in the world are? Yes.

The basic premise is very easy to summarize, but the book itself is very wide-ranging in application of the premise, makes a lot of good other points, and provides a lot of very interesting information. Therefore, it might be worth reading even if nothing in my basic summary seems interesting or new. The basic idea of the book is that most, if not all, knowledge is created by the same basic mechanism of conjecture and criticism. So, for example, biological evolution creates knowledge through the "conjecture" of new random mutations and the "criticism" of natural selection. He makes some good arguments that this is the way humans develop knowledge, contrary to a lot of the normal explanations for how humans develop knowledge. Therefore, he argues, the beginning of sustained technological and scientific growth was the "English" enlightenment which enshrined a value for and appreciation of criticism. (Before, criticism of your ideas or traditional ideas was generally (though there were temporary historical exceptions) considered a kind of attack against you, but afterwards it has more and more become considered a way of doing you a favor.) Based on the above he talks about what he calls the "first moral principle" (or something, it's been two years since I last read it, and my Kindle app isn't opening right now), which he states as something like "Thou shalt not destroy the ability to criticize," from which he derives the non-aggression principle, and (I think) the rest of morality. I think that covers the basic idea of the book, although there's a lot of other peripheral interesting arguments. (Some of them seem more like personal axes to grind, but are nevertheless interesting.) I don't think his arguments and ideas are without flaws, but I nevertheless derived a number concepts from his work that I have been able to effectively use a lot in my own thought since then.

Given the overlap in ideology between Stefan Molyneux and David Deutsch, I am surprised that a search here has produced no reference to David Deutsch or his related movements (Taking Children Seriously, The Beginning of Infinity). Of particular interest to me is the fact that Molyneux and Deutsch seem to reach similar conclusions via sometimes very different and possible even contradictory arguments. I believe that there could be a lot of constructive dialog between the two communities. If Stefan hasn't read The Beginning of Infinity, I highly recommend that he do so, as well as anyone else here on these forums.

I just want to throw in my support for Stefan's next debate (especially if it's with PJ) being moderated. Also, he should make sure that they're on the same page about whether it is a debate or an opportunity for the other party to monologue.

Hobbes is only the beginning of the argument, as I eluded to, which is why I recommended Google first. Considering how far we are from even minarchy, let alone anarchy, I don't think it makes sense for libertarians to spend more time trying to convince each other of their specific kind of libertarianism. The vast majority of what the government does is NOT catching and prosecuting violent criminals or defending us from invasion. If you really want someone to try and convince you on this topic, I would recommend someone who is already trying to do so. Google is one way to find such a person.

Good thoughts. I think you are right--sometimes it's not a problem of communication. Very often I think it is. As someone who has been improving in his communication skills for a long time, I have come to realize that most of us come out of school as very very poor communicators and have a long way to go in improving our communication skills, both in general and on specific topics. My success rate is also not high, but I have seen a marked improvement as I have improved my skill at communicating the libertarian ideal. How did you become a libertarian? Great question which I cannot give time to at the moment, but I am sure you could find some decent stuff via Google, etc. If that fails, Hobbe's Leviathan should put you onto the beginnings of the argument.

Maybe I don't understand your question, but I think it's pretty obvious that what I would want to do, and want other people to do with the ability to communicate better is to communicate better. Right? EDIT: I suppose the best case scenario would be that we all convince everybody we meet of libertarianism, and model how best to communicate it to everybody they meet. I don't see that as ever happening, of course.

EDIT: Not to double-post I thought I'd just put some of my thoughts up here. The impression I got from the "debate" is that Peter is not actually used to arguing for his position. It seems like he's used to simply stating his position and beliefs and having people respond with, "Oh, wow! You're right!" This makes me think he doesn't talk to many experienced and skilled philosophers. Maybe his intent was to argue for his position eventually, but he would just talk on and on and never actually get to an argument. (Although sometimes he seemed to think that statement of his highly controversial views amounted to an argument.) (Disclaimer: The following is a slightly amended version of a post I made over on the TZM forums.) It seems to me that Stefan and Peter's disagreement might have been primarily (though not wholly) semantic. Peter, in his usage, seems to implicitly amend the term ("free market") to mean "voluntary interaction of individuals operating under certain (in his view, false) paradigms of economic thought". This video was my first exposure to TZM, so I may be completely off-base here, but it seems to me that TZM might agree with libertarians that the removal of compulsion and violence (by libertarian standards) from our human interactions is necessary to solve the problems facing society today, but go on to add that just the adoption of the non-aggression principle is not a solution. If I understand Peter correctly, he would claim that we additionally need a revolutionary change in our attitudes about things such as trade, competition, and scarcity. It seems that it would be to our advantage in future engagement with TZMers to pin them down on the issue of whether they believe aggression is ever justified, or whether they can at least agree that violence is unjustified for the purposes other than protection from violence.

Hello, everyone. I am a minarchist theist but I think the issue of not using violence for any purpose other than to protect from violence is important enough that I want to support Free Domain Radio. I found out about Free Domain Radio because I thought YouTube could be important for getting the libertarian message out there. But when I looked I was sad to see that Stefan Molyneux was just about the only coherent consistent voice carrying this message, for which he deserves props. I hope that in discussion here we can help each other learn to better communicate the message of non-violence.