Carl Green

How much would you personally have to be spanked for that method to work, for us as well, and get you to stop spanking kids? (The rhetorical nature of this question is pretty obvious but you see where I'm going with it, right?)

I bet you don't know what I see about you, though.

I interpreted the words at face value. A cop serves his superior officer, who serves his superior, etc. If you want to test this, tell a cop to slap his captain (or any superior officer) and see who serves who. I'm only here trying to point out the wolf in sheep's clothing that's trying to appear as a sheep in wolfs clothing.

I'm glad to hear it helped you out like this. It would be nice of we could find out more about it altogether for sure. Vice is liberal as all get-out (and blocked from my work computer or I'd link the article. I'll add the title of the piece later if you wanna search it) but I did find a recent piece about a guy using the Bufo Alvarus frog (that's probably not spelled right) and its gland secretions as an entheogen to help with addictions. Might be worth your time to watch if you can find it.

Where'd they get that money from? (who should be thanking who here?)

You can reply to the topic in the thread explaining how/why you up/down voted for all to see it, or you can send a private message. This requires effort on their part more than just clicking a single button, though.

My goal of clarifying who here's actually for personal liberty has been accomplished.

Merrifield, Please try putting yourself in my shoes real quick. Here's what I hear from people, like my brother, who justify being a cop because they FEEL they're improving the world. "I am a direct threat to your freedom and I will put you in a prison cell because these people told me to" How do you respond when someone threatens you? Do you smile at them? I sure don't.

I call bullshit on your justification. Can you tell if you've made any progress as far as your "changing these shitheads from the inside" approach? I can tell you one thing, I wouldn't give two flying fucks what you thought about liberty if you had me in the back of your squad car for cannabis possession. You'd be exactly like the rest of the cops, "just doing what i see is right". Taking away someone's freedom is taking away someone's freedom.

(this is to Harris, not you, Antony) Who. gives. a. shit! Take your good intentions and shove them up your ass.

Just keep in mind, public/private school isn't the greatest at teaching you anything really. You'll end up studying a bunch of stuff just so you can forget it in a week. If a subject is of interest to you, it might stick, but the other 3.5 years worth of stuff that you'll just end up forgetting will be a waste of time other than the experiences of hanging out with your current friends, who might not even end up being in your life after school.

Thanks for all your news links Alan Chapman. I don't typically seek out news so these help me keep up with what's worth knowing about some of what's going on out there.

I am by no means equating my talent to that of Mozart's. Or even Salieri's for that matter. But for a very few people, a 'thing' can just come naturally. I also see this as spectrum sort of thing in that it's not a "you've either got it or you don't" situation. We can all tap into creativity it seems, just at different 'levels'.

Absolutely. It's very important that the child gets a good example. And when you do speak up, if what you say is telling someone what they should do, they'll learn that you should tell people what they should do.

I was saying the parent was right in saying that the confronting individual shouldn't be telling the parent how to parent. Not what someone should do. The part I left out is the big IF that's attached to that should. If you want the parent you're confronting to get closer to thinking about parenting without coercion, you should not be telling them what to do. Because it will only get their defenses up to block you out and reaffirm their shitty parenting.

Thanks Pepin, you covered it beautifully. This is pretty much what I was talking about. Since we can't just 'see' what's going on down there, we have to do experiments to find out what's not going on, and like you're saying, it's done by finding out what it isn't. (which when there are unkowns it means the possibilities of what IS going on, are practically infinite so how can you finally know what it actually is, and not just what it's not)

Maybe I'm only getting that impression about modern science because it's the only one I've experienced, but what I'm talking about is when someone gets an idea of how they think it is, they test to see if they're right. "___ phenomenon has occurred. it was probably because of _____. I'll run experiments to see if I'm right" Now I understand it's pretty naive think it's possible to not do this in all situations and still be able to do certain science and such. Of course you have to have an idea of what you think is going on in order to design experiments to test out what's going on. I'm probably way off and projecting a lot but I get the sense that we're currently trying what they were doing with the geocentric astronomical chart. It was wickedly complex and hard to figure out and only got harder the more you tried to figure it out. Then along came the heliocentric model and it simplified everything. I have a feeling that this is currently what's going on in quantum theory and the like but I'm well ignorant of the subject so a feeling is all I have to go on.

I get the impression with modern science that there's too much trying to fit a model into a theory.

They did chat for a bit. At least I'm pretty sure they did.

I'm very rarely around such situations so I've yet to even be able to test this theory. I just know how these types of people react to their own medicine. I think it works on some level though as I've used similar reasoning when just discussing the topic with family/friends on FB and it usually stops their excuses and arguments. It's a good start to possibly get them thinking and at least it doesn't end up as a typical battle of opinions.

I know this is probably just a matter of terms but they're right. You shouldn't be telling them what to do. Just like you shouldn't be telling anyone what to do unless you're their boss or something. Use a different tactic if you don't want this response. Instead of saying what they should do, share a possible consequence of their actions. "I was yelled at/spanked/hit like that as a kid and now I don't even talk to my parents." might get some sort of equally shitty response, but at least it's less likely to raise the abuser's defenses and might actually be better at getting 'em to think about what they're doing.

Am I missing something here? What did that replier (coachadam) think you were stating as a knowledge?

Instead of making the topic 'off-limits', why not just make a separate subforum and label it something like "Determinism/Free Will, waste your time here if you want but you won't get anywhere" Would it possibly take up too much storage space or something? It seems to me that banning it just gives people room to complain about hypocrisy or something like that.

Follow up question: Would you rather someone treat you the way you would like to be treated, or how they would like to be treated? The whole idea behind the meme I was thinking about is to point out how unsympathetic and self-centered the most popular "golden rule" is.