aeonicentity

Because in mathematics, pretty much all proofs come back to the fact that you can prove two numbers add together. In fact, multiplication is merely a property of addition. Subtraction, the inversion of addition, Division a property of subtraction. Powers are an itterative form of multiplication, and square roots, merely the property of dividing a thing by a special number. Fundamentally ALL mathematics is proven by 2+2 = 4. I think where steph is coming from is the logical method of problem solving. This is a very programmatical way of looking at a problem. You find the simplest problem, solve then test. Then you find the next most complex one, and so on, until you have an abstract concept of solutions to specific problems. Then you create something to manage the abstract solutions into a concrete problem solution. Peter Joseph goes about it in an entirely illogical and problematic method. He starts with the solution, and works backwards to prove it right. In this way he comes up with a monstrosity of an idea: Some kind of horrible statist blob that is controled by a 'benevolent dictator' (this idea isn't new by the way, someone's been playing too much Deus Ex. TZM is pretty much a direct ripoff of that plotline, right down to Universal Constructors). The problem with this of course is the same issue you get when you use any videogame for inspiration about your future society: It's total bullshit. What steph says is true. the best and most reasonable idea is to find something that is true, and stick with it until you can move on to the next true thing, building on what was known before. This works because of a few very important things: 1) There is univeral truth (the opposite of this being a contradiction, therefore being false). 2) Reason is the only method by which you can definatevly discern the truth (the root assumption) 3) If truth is universal, every aspect of life must have truth which can be reasoned out of it. 4) If that is true, then it is concievable that you could reason the truth in any particular aspect of life, and by living by it, more closely approximate the Universal Truth. But this process doesn't work backwards. You can't derive from a statement like "A society founded on Universal Truth would be Just" and figure out what that looks like. Just to whom? Just how? For that matter, what the hell is Justice? This is where PJ screws the pooch (Rand did this too for that matter). he makes broad sweeping statements about the future, makes plans, and says 'this will work' and 'that will work' but fails to solve these key problems. As a result he creates schewed ideals of justice. He would think its moral to deny people rights to their labor if they produced more than they needed. He decided that we're incapable of managing ourselves, therefore we need some benevolent dictator. What steph says is true: if we let people be free to decide what they want to do, liberated the markets, and unleashed humanity from the shackles of imposed social order, we would create our own systems. Manage our own problems. Most importantly, we would choose what's best for ourselves as individuals, and that process would make us truely free. That is universally moral. But you can't work backwards. You can't make a free and just society by starting with some kind of framework and archetecture that comes prebuilt from a website into your mind. You need to organically build the experiment through reason and free application.

here's an important point: the growth of the PUA community signals a fundamental shift in women: Women WANT to be 'picked up'. I think the reality is that women are just as frustrated with the dating scene as men are, but they're told that they need to have very high standards about who they should and shouldn't date by parents/media/feminists/peers and don't know what they want or who they should have relationships with. When a man swoops in, says 'all the right things' and tell her she's beautiful, she drops her pants because in this confusing world of conflicting ideals, the one thing many women are looking for is someone to tell them what they want. This is not true of all women. Even accomplished pickup artists have a failure rate. However, the general idea is to prey on these types of women who are unsure of what they want, and how to achieve it, because they're the most suseptible to someone comming in and saying "I have a plan, lets get those pants off". This comes off as easy in our culture because women are being told that sex is the only way they're going to attract a husband. Generally speaking this is true of men as well, we're told that only by having sex (and a lot of it) and success we will be able to attract a wife. In our culture both men and women have been objectified by the overemphasis of sex as a neccessary component of all courtship relationships. This has come at the deminishment of other components, things like emotional depth, sincerity, honesty, commitment, intelectual compatability, virtue, and other traits we should consider as important as sexual attraction in a relationship. I can't count the number of times I hear "He's a duchebag, but I love him!" (translates roughly as 'he beats me, but the sex is great!'). Women often find themselves dating men who they have nothing in common with, but they are attracted to them because of their mixture of good sex, and financial success. Men often find themselves dating women who lack emotional sincerity because the've been having close intimate sexual relationships destroyed since they were 16. Neither side is happy because of the oversexualization of our culture.

1) How can I steal property from people which they haven't bothered to claim, or work for? Is Bill Gates stealing microsoft from me because he invented it first? 2) While wealthy people certainly hold a lot of money, however, there is absolutely zero proof that wealthy people are holding all the vital life-sustaining resources. In fact this is absolutely not the case. Most everyone has houses, food, and even luxury goods. Fewer than 3,000 people starve to death every year in the US, and I imagine most of those people are those with substance abuse habits, or other debilitating mental disorders which prevent them from operating well in society, no mater how egalitarian it is. I think we've already eliminated starvation in our society, its time to make profits. 3) There is absolutely no grounds upon which the claim that "rich people hoard resources" can be founded. If you actually understood capitalism you would know this. Unless they're filling swimming pools with gold coins, and swimming in them like Scrooge McDuck, They aren't 'hoarding' their precious money. Most of the time wealthy people re-invest their wealth in companies which in turn make more money, and create jobs. This actually is a case for why we should give rich people MORE money, because they obviously have an invested interest in making more of it, so more money can then be VOULUNTARIALLY redistributed through the financial system.

Holy shit... You know, what they don't say is this: If you stole all of the CEO of wal-mart's money, and gave it away to his employees they'd make a grand total of (wait for it!) $15-20 a YEAR raise! Same is true for mcdonalds. Actually, this is about standard CEO pay, you roughly make between $10 and $20 per employee per year. When you think about it in those terms, that man takes on the responsibility for medical, dental, pay, disability and pension benefits for all his employees AND the required work to satisfy share holders at the cool price of $20 a head. That's pretty damn cheep for that service. I'd pay someone $20 a year to manage all that shit for me.

Yeah, define values and I might agree with the sentiment. but 'values' like 'fair play' have different definitions between Liberals and normal people. A normal person would consider 'fair play' that if there are defined rules, everyone plays by them. People express good sportsmanship, and show a desire for the welfare of others (i.e. not winning by hurting others). Liberals would probably define it as that + making sure that no one wins excessively, and that winnings should be shared between participants... But in general, teaching values in school is kind of like teaching 'life skills' in prison, or teaching morality to slaves... well meaning, but the wrong place to try. These kinds of things should be taught in the home. You can't replace that.

Damn, I knew there was something wrong with the super pope... I just wasn't expecting it to be that he was a crazy wacked out socialist.

I agree with Kevin. I won't respond further to this thread.

You sir, have just summed up determinism in a nutshell. Just because your physical self is created by an environment doesn't mean the environment controls your actions. These two ideas DO NOT FOLLOW. As for your second rebuttal, We can't even predict human behavior on a large scale level either. Just go ask an economist. Fundamentally determinism is a belief in a 'great big spirit in the sky' that apparently controls our strings for some reason. You can call it the Force if your an atheist, but the reality is that all determinists fundamentally have to believe there is some system, greater than themselves which controls their very existance. When stef talks about abuse creating abusers what he points to is a broad statistical analysis. Steph is NOT a determinist. Abuse does NOT make you into an abuser. Abusing people makes you an abuser. This is an active consious choice that all abusers make, regardless of background. What he points out is that the strong statistical correlation between the two indicates that abusing people causes them to often choose to be abusers as well, for well documented reasons. This is NOT even REMOTELY cose to determinism. The argument he makes is that if A is a cause of B in some people, and B is immoral because it is not universally preferable, A must be immoral because A is not universally preferable behavior. Determinism is an immoral philosophy where people try and justify their evil/innaction/ignorance (or that of others) by saying 'Devil made me do it' or 'Jesus made me do it' or 'nature made me do it' or 'atheismo made me do it', therefore its not my fault! Or, to paraphrase the movie Rodger Rabbit "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way!". Its a way of removing the responsibility you have to own your actions by giving them to the most convenient lie. You should really consider why you want to believe that everything you do is predetermined. What are you trying to seek absolution for? Failure? Abuse? Victimhood?

Fantasy is actually a critical thinking skill. While its not good to get lost in fantasy worlds, children (and adults) utilize fantasy as a way to liberate yourself from preconcived restrictions and exercize critical thinking skills. Often fantasy is a way for children to 'safely' internalize problems and solve them without being hurt by them. Think of this process like sandboxing a virus to see what it does. For example, children can pretend home relationships to understand them, and some times understand relationships that they aren't actually living (like children pretending to be mommy and daddy playing house). These are the beginnings of empathy. Actually, fantasy is the foundation of empathy, since all fantastical behavior is inherently empathetic. Its just as hard if not harder to understand a fictional character as it is to understand a real person.

Einstein made that quote about quantum theory because he didn't think it worked. He was wrong. Apparently God very much does play dice with the universe, and he seems to enjoy it. However, just because the relationship between events is causal, doesn't make them determined. Just because A causes B which causes C which presents a choice between D, E and F, doesn't make the universe determined. Why? because there is still obviously a choice, even if those choices are limited by causation. And fundamentally, choices are limitless. If I pull a gun on somone, they don't HAVE to give me their money. They could run, they could pull their gun on me, they could attack me, they could jump and flap like a chicken. There is no gurantee of effect. Even though the effect is LIKELY to be something, doesn't make it always so. The reality is that you could conduct the exact same test of psychology (a scientific discipline) on the exact same group of people and come up with radically different responses on Monday than on Tuesday.

science doesn't accept determinism as a premise. Science accepts causality. determinism is the idea that some constraining external force predetermined all chocies that could be made, and that all choices are merely logical reactions to external stimulus. The problem with determinism is that no determinists have acually sucessfully predicted human behavior, which is a serious nail in the coffin of determinism. If all human choice is determined, there must be some logical reason why certain decisions are reached. Determinism has no good way of explaining irrational actors, or why an infinitely powerful force, capable of controlling the universe would allow evil unless that being was evil. However, causality != determinism. The sun has nuclear reactions which emit radiation which gives me skin cancer. But determinism takes an extra step that falls prey to the slippery slope falacy. A determinist argument goes something like this: the sun is a nuclear reactor, which emits radiation, which gives me skin cancer, which causes me to become a bitter old man dieing a slow painful death hiding in the rockies, living in a tent. A cause B which causes C, and while C might preceed D, C and D are not neccessarally logically linked. Additionally, D doesn't neccessarally follow C, since I might get skin cancer and become a charity magnate, beat skin cancer, and live a full and happy life. Science doesn't prove that last step. Science merely can prove the first 3 are causally linked. the jump from C to D is assumptive, and therefore, fallacious.

Do you mean nations like Kuwait, Qutar or UAE or Saudi Arabia, or Oman? Those people live better than we do, as long as you don't mind being muslim. There is no such thing as a 'fair' price. Fair to whom? Fair by what objective standards? To a person who the cost of bread is 2 cents, they could have the same standard of living in terms of foodstuffs at 1/100'th of the wages of the average 'first world' person.TBH, if we payed people first world wages in 3rd world countries we would collapse their economies. Their currancy would hyper inflate because there would be insufficent goods to purchase at the wages set.

Listen, armor smithing can be fun (I personally know one), but there's not a lot of career in it. If you want to talk to him, https://www.facebook.com/dragonheartarmory there's his facebook page. He's a good guy, and might give you some further suggestions on how it can become a great side buisness. Generally speaking, start with getting skills- VALUABLE skills. If armor manufacturing is your goal, try starting with welding, shop and metal working classes at your local Applied tech college. This will give you skills which will let you work at metal shops, and make real money. Nothing builds confidence more than having new powers and abilities that you didn't have before. Yes, i said powers. Think of it that way, its more em'power'ing. Start there. Its good to have dreams, but start with a realistic beginning. Sit down, and make a 5 or 10 year plan on being an armor smith. Consider what you'd need to do to become good, what kinds of products you'd make, and who you'd sell them to. Approach it objectively, and start with the simplest, most important things first. This method of problem solving really helps at tackling large multi-year problems, and builds confidence.

1) workers are not replacable. Trust me. He's never owned a buisness if he thinks that. Even loosing frycooks at BK costs them a ton of money, they don't like it. 2) garment factories in developing countries are in countries where sexual harassment is the norm for non-financial reasons. THis is a bad example. 3) most bosses aren't He's. This is especially true of low/middle management, which is actually rather predominantly female, mainly because it sits a sweetspot of high benefits/ low risk with sufficent sallary. Going much higher prevents a woman from having kids. 4) In 'Libertarian land' you could simply start your own damn factory instead of working for the one with the horrible boss. Or make your own clothing, and sell your own line without a crazy ass legal department, or clothing regulations.

Gold lacks 'intrinsic value'. ask people deing of thirst if they'd rather have a pound of gold, or a pound of water.

My nephew has deveopmental difficulties which prevented him from speaking cogently until recently. We taught him to sign (and several other of my nieces and nephews) in 'baby talk'. Often children can sign more effectively than speak because verbal control is more difficult than physical. Signs like 'milk' and 'food' 'please' and 'thankyou' are intentionally simple for little children to grasp, and a couple of my nieces grew up saying please with signs before saying please verbally. In fact, its really cute, she'll ask for things in sign because she knows its 'cute' and she'll get more out of it! Sign is VERY good for babies. Try the serries of videos called "Signing Time". Lots of singing, and social lessons in signlanguage for babies.

Not sure if this classifies as parenting, but its the cosest thing to the subject I need to talk about: Free Domainers: To begin, I’m usually not so forward about my personal life on the internet, but I’ve got no alternatives at this point. Specifically I’m looking for advice on dealing with abusive siblings. The content of this post is personal, and sensitive. Do not reply to this with frivolity, or useless suggestions. What I’m looking for here is accurate, useful advice on how to RTR this situation. Background: I’m the last of 7 kids. My oldest sister is 40, and has 4 kids. Most of them have asperger’s syndrome. For the purpose’s of this post she will be referred to as S. S has serious issues with her mental psyche. By all accounts she’s always been smart, but very unstable. S has never been particularly clean, and neither has her house. However, usually, it wasn’t in horrible shape (If you’ve ever seen my room, you know I don’t have a leg to stand on here.). S has always had problems with disciplining her children, either over reacting to them or under reacting to their behaviors. This has caused some stress in the family, but nothing that can’t be overcome. Seven years ago, S had her youngest child, who was a real trial. He was born with serious allergies to just about all food. We (as a family) spent a lot of time taking food away from him and preventing him from eating things which would kill him. As a result he’s developed posessiveness issues, and oppositional defiance in addition to his aspergers. I’m concerned that he’s also developing sociopathic tendencies. All of thishas been very tough on S, and she’s snapped. She’s asking us to validate her, her parenting, and all her life decisions, even as she does things which we cannot condone or support. Specifically, she’s projecting the abuse she puts on her kids onto her husband, accusing him of abuse (who knows, she might be right, but I can’t tell.) and asking all of us to side with her despite none of us knowing what’s going on. She’s in the process of separating from her husband, and currently has de facto custody of the children, and control of the house. The house is degrading, and is so filthy that when her kids show up to our house for a weekend, they reek of rabbit shit (because she’s taken to raising them instead of a back yard). She doesn’t raise the kids,she spends her entire day sitting in her room complaining on facebook about them. This abuse is particularly disturbing to me in her older two children. Her oldest daugter is failing highschool spectacularly, and can’t concentrate because she’s got all the responsibility of raising three kids. She’s disciplined by extremely harsh groundings, and emotional manipulation. Her oldest son is coming of age, trying to cope with being sexually abused by a peer all of this with a mother who won’t leave her room, and posts excessively about how horrible her life is on facebook. I can’t just let these kids stay in this environment, it tortures me to even think about it. But what recourse do we as a family have? We all pretty much agree that S can’t actually raise these children by herself (although some of us disagree about where the children should go instead). There has to be something we can do legally! What options do people have when adults can’t handle themselves, and you need to take kids out of the situation?

Being upset at George Zimmerman behaving violently after all this is kind of like being upset at a dog for biting a human after you beat the shit out of it. You still put it down, but you don't justify killing dogs over it.

The world may indeed have sufficent resources, but all people face the issue of a society with limited resources. Even in America, we face limited resources.

I think a more accurate statement is that polution is more like government feces...

Steve, just because an argument only applies to a narrow domain of things, as long as the domain is valid and universal, the argument is valid. Tangent is only defined from -pi/2 to pi/2, that doesn't mean tangent is an invalid mathematical theorem. the NAP only applies to humans, do you feel that is an unreasonable domain? I think its a valid, and nessessary one. When we discover other sentient species with reasoning capacities similar to humans, we may need to rethink our philosophy to incorperate them. Untill then, your problem is invalid. Animals cannot reason. When an animals philosophise, we can talk about this again. Anything with a feedback loop 'feels pain'. It is possible to react to external stimulii without feeling pain. However, not all external stimulii are painfull. I think that fundamentally, NAP can only apply to things which can understand the NAP. Otherwise, you're forcing your moral structure on beings which do not, and cannot understand the NAP. While it is admirable to try and live principals related to the NAP towards beings which are incapable of understanding the NAP (for example, animals), it isn't neccesary under the NAP. That being said, people who perform violence against animals, eat excessive meat, and abuse animals psychologically, tend to violate the NAP against humans as well. Violent behavior towards plants and animals should be viewed as suspect unless there are good reasons (i.e. harvesting for food, self defense, spaying an neutering animals for population control). Without this kind of exception, behaviors which are reasonable, rational, and neccessary couldn't be right. The kinds of behaviors I think the author wouldn't even like to give up, including but not limited to: Use of animals for capital labor Ownership of pets. Spaying and neutering Use of animals as physical or psychological aide Use of animals for food, even in times of famine Management of land (private or public) by controlling animal populations

The right to life is different that the ability to live. We don't take cancer to the Hague for war crimes because it violates people's 'right to life'. Just because you have a right to life, doesn't mean you have the ability to live. A man drowning in an ocean certainly has the right, but not the ability. People starving because of drought or famine have the right to life, but not the ability. This issue is at the heart of forced morality. We all recognize that it is unfortunate that people have the right to live, but not the ability, and so we want to force people to help them. To this end we mistake the right to live with the ability to live, and tell people it isn't just a moral responsibility, but a societal obligation to help the poor and the unfortunate. What people don't understand is that this forced morality is more imoral than the lack of help from free men and women. While it is a moral responsibility of man to help those who are less than able to protect themselves, or survive, that doesn't make it a violation of 'rights' when they don't. Rather a failing on the part of all parties to live a just and moral society. What I feel is lacking from your understanding of the issue Boris, is an understanding of the idea of rights, and abilities. to restate, everyone has property rights (even if they don't own property). They have these rights because they are an inseperable part of the human condition and psyche. Rights include things like life, property rights, right to labor, etc. They have these things because they are fundamental to living a full and successfull life. However, just because you have a right to a full and sucessfull life, doesn't mean you have the ability to have one. For example: Your mom makes a wonderful pie. She offers the pie to everyone in the family. However, you can't eat pecan pie without an alergic reaction. Did your mother violate your right to this freely offered pie by baking it with pecans? no! Hell, you could eat the Pecan pie too, but you'd suffer the consiquences of it. You choose to not have the pie (to which you have a right) because you lack the ability to eat said pie. Less fortunate examples would include people who have rights to work for a living, but refuse certain jobs because they either lack the ability, or lack the desire to perform them.They're not being denied their right to work, they're choosing not to work under given circumstances- And there's nothing wrong with that. Rights exist independent of your ability to act on them. So while you have the right to life, you may choose not to act on it and sacrifice your life for some cause. That doesn't invalidate your right to life. While you have the right to life, if you're born into a world without sufficent resources to support you, you can't claim injustice because you lack the ability to live. If this were the case we're all war-criminals for aiding and abeding our parents who knowingly brought life into such a world!

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/interactive/2013/nov/20/which-fossil-fuel-companies-responsible-climate-change-interactive In a marvelous attempt to prove just how 'bad dirty evil capitalism is' the Guardian inadvertantly point out that while 90 companies produce the majority of all the world's poution, they fail to point out that 60 of those companies were owned by governments...

the NAP is not silly and impractical because it only applies to people. what I disagree with is that you equate living and having a brain to reason. Both plants and animals respond to external stimuli. They both will react when damaged, or when violent behavior is foisted upon them. Animals differ from plants in WHY they respond to these stimuli, but that doesn't mean they don't 'feel' it. And if we're going to be expanding the definition of sentience to "the ability to 'feel' pain" then we pretty much have to extend it to all things which respond to external stimulii.

way to ignore the point Steve. If everything has rights, then you'll have to get rid of your clothes, your posessions (maybe your computer doesn't wan to be owned, who knows?) Your pets, and anything else. Oh, and good luck eating, because there's really not a big distinction between plants and animals philosophically...