WasatchMan

You are correct, I have not been downvoting you.

I can see your point here and maybe I wasn't clear. I am not saying that religious people should be always shunned for they can be very rational away from religion. I mean any talk of religion should always be treated like it is: non-sense. I understand it can be frustrating at times to communicate an argument to people who do not want to get it, especially when a lot of people have already made up their mind or are emotionally attached to their perspective. Unfortunately, I don't have any advice for how to get around this. However, the fundamentally "anti-reality" side of religion is not something that you can just brush over. What makes religion different than people who just aren't convinced by your arguments are they accept as a premise that faith is an acceptable answer to metaphysics and epistemology. They come to every discussion with reality already subjugated to their whim, and willfully admit it. They have admitted they don't play by the rules, so why should we play with them? Would you play basketball with someone who said they can use a hockey stick to bash out your knees every time you go to the basket?

I don't know if I can speak on what is "suposed" to be. However, I think there is something of potential value in the "extended" family structure, and how having live in grandparents helping with the raising and the practical day-to-day could be beneficial to childhood development.

The purpose of this topic is to discuss why some philosophical people feel the need to extend an olive branch to religious people. For religion rests on faith, superstition, and a metaphysical position that is anti-reality. To go against reality is to go against life, logic, and reason, and as such, religion is antithetical to philosophy. Ask yourself, would you tolerate someones opinion who wanted to make an argument to you about science and told you that his proof rested on faith? Would you tell someone that they had no place in science? What would you tell someone who’s response to you was that you shouldn’t berate or alienate people who believe that faith is part of the scientific method? To me faith has no place in philosophy, or any conversation around philosophy, just like it has in science or any of its theorems, hypothesis, or proofs. We should not make these ideas feel welcome, for this is not an aesthetic preference. This is a fundamental way on how you view reality, and therefore affects all of the branches of philosophy. People who promote philosophy are enemies of religion. We should be shaming religious ideas wherever they arise, not patting them on the back for agreeing with us on other ideas and just acting like it’s a difference of opinion on this certain issue. What are your thoughts? Should we be pragmatic and hold out olive branches and try to pull people out of a deep sticky pool of nonsense, or should we shame and isolate, hoping our leadership and non-wavering support of reason shock people out of their faith?

By pretending that nonsense is an conversation, you sabotage logic.

Who benefits from pretending that believing in superstition is acceptable in adult conversations?

You do realize this show promotes philosophy, which is fundamentally antithetical to superstitious belief systems? Do you think anyone would care if a flat earther feels welcome in a physics conference?

Everyone sees that. The distinction here is that some believe that store owners were further victimized by the state when people don't play by the rules, and others think that the people that break the state rules are causing the victimization. You don't need to know the experience of the store owners to talk about the ethics around this situation. No reason to bring this conversation into non-verifiable hypothesis land.

Its funny how they focus on "eye glares" at her at the beginning to set the tone of the video, which are hardly even quantifiable, and then after making that fuss later on an aside point out that someone "even actually" asked the guy to move stuff to give them more space. This video is a waste a of time.

Unless you are saying that Eric Garner lobbied the state to make it illegal to sell loose cigarettes in order for him to make a profit out of selling loose cigarettes, he is not responsible for the immoral laws. If you are not making that claim all he did was take advantage of an opportunity created by the state. There are lots of good people who make money because of holes in the market created by the law, and as long as what they are doing is not immoral as such, the fact that the state made a law that makes your actions more profitable does not change it to being immoral. In other words, since selling loose cigarettes is not immoral with or without the state, and there is no indication that Eric Garner had anything to do with getting the immoral laws enacted in order to make a profit, he did nothing immoral. The only case I see you making is he did something that you don't aesthetically prefer. That is what I thought too (that Stef was really trying to say the store owners had a non-racist reason to call the cops), but then I came on this thread and saw people genuinely trying to make the out of context argument that Eric Garner was the one victimizing people. That is why in my first post I asked we stop talking about "victims" and address whether or not it was a violation of the NAP. It seems people do believe that it was. Also, if you are just going to come on here to shame people for having a discussion why waste both yours and the forums time?

I wasn't implying that part of the definition of "black markets" is using force. I was talking about how the term isn't really meaningful, and therefore linguistic derivations aren't very meaningful. I get your point about Eric Garner having a harder time selling loose cigarettes if there weren't laws around it. It just really doesn't mean anything to me. The only thing that means anything to me in this context is whether or not he violated the NAP by selling loose cigarettes. You might have a preference against it, but It is not immoral to take advantage of holes in the market caused by the state.

Semantics. One could say that "he was using the power of the State to turn a profit" or one could say "he was taking advantage of an hole in the market that was creed by force enacted by others that he has no control over." Either way, you are still no closer to making an argument that in anyway demonstrated that Garner violated the NAP, and we are still just talking about pragmatic reasoning.

I don't think you were wrong in the slightest. In fact, I applaud your bravery. Think of what the parent who posts a picture like that is doing. They are trying to make their actions seem acceptable by putting it out to their community in a braggadocios/comedic manner, inviting all the other guilty consciences to pile on with "how cute" and such. By pointing out what they were actually doing to their child, you were able to short circuit this, making it less likely other people will jump on the bandwagon of normalizing child abuse.

I don't necessarily agree with this, because I see it more as a linguistic argument than an actual description of reality. Sure, "black market" could be described as a direct result of the initiation of force, but that would mean you are defining "black market" as trade defined as being unacceptable by those with the power to initiate force. Which would just make the argument circular, or a tautology ("Black markets" are a direct result of the initiation of force, because those with the power to initiate force are the arbitrators of what "black markets" are). Furthermore, if you simply make a subtle, and acceptable, change to your definition of "black market" to be trade not sanctioned by those with the power to initiate force then you would come to the exact opposite conclusion. The conclusion you would have to come to is all trade that is not sanctioned by those with the power to initiate force are part of the "black market", and therefore, in a society where nobody has the right to initiate force everything would be the "black market". Which would make Garner an anarchic capitalist, something that I would not be comfortable in claiming either. "Black markets" are neither statist or anarchic, as such. The only purpose of the word is to serve as a statist propaganda word to shame people who aren't "playing by the rules".

I am not sure how this follows what I was trying to say. My only point was that in order for "off-screen guy" to be able to make a claim to the effect of "Stef's strategy for spreading liberty is for liberty minded people to out-breed the state", he would of had to first had the prior knowledge that Stef's actual position that we need to spread peaceful parenting to undermine the acceptance of the state. This is because the two statements are so unfamiliar (therefore could not be a misunderstanding) but only share a loose intersection at parenting. My claim is this spin would need to be consciously constructed, and could not arise from a misunderstanding. The only other explanation is that the guy just goes to Stef's haters website, and parrots that without actually checking the facts and then still has the gall to claim that he "likes Stef".

I thought it was more telling when the off-screen guy said that Stef's strategy for liberty was for liberty minded people to out breed the state. That is such an obvious strawman of Stef's actual point that we need to spread peaceful parenting in order to spread liberty, that he obviously knows Stef's real position and is therefore intentionally spinning it.

Eric Garner created no victim. A person can only be responsible for not initiating force against other people, not managing the results of force being applied to other people. Instead of talking about abstract "victims" lets cut to chase and ask the precise question: Did Eric Garner violate the NAP by selling loose cigarettes in front of another store?

Yes. How would sharing those secrets benefit you are anyone around you? How is anyone entitled to secrets that have no bearing on the conditions of your relationship with them? The only way I could see even wanting to do this was if there was someone you were close to and trusted but they were very poorly adjusted and self critical, and your hope in sharing these types of secrets would for them to reflect on their view of other people and not hold themselves to too high of a standard and self attack.

I agree with shirgall. Fracking and horizontal drilling are expensive ways to get oil and pretty much requires $100/barrel oil prices to be economically viable. Saudi Arabia doesn't have to spend much to get their oil. In fact, they have typically held back production to keep oil high. However, now North American oil production is rivaling which is messing with their previous strategy. So what they are doing is increasing production so that oil prices stay too low for fracking and horizontal drilling projects to be viable. I was just in Alberta (a major oil producer) over the holidays and they are already getting ready for major layoffs in the oil industry. The thought is that once the already existing projects are completed, no new fracking or horizontal drilling projects will start. Oil will go back up once they have sucked the momentum out of the fracking industry.

I don't think Stef means that rights don't exist as a concept, I beleive his argument could be better sumarized by saying: "The concept of rights aren't very helpful at achieving freedom because the concept is too broadly applicable, and therefore cannot be delimited to only concepts that actually promote freedom."

Without dipping into the moral questions, I would say that neither option is a very practical choice. The anti-gun propaganda is way too entrenched in Canada, and the politicians don't want the laws changed. Ask yourself, how much you would be willing to bet that your actions (either writing/voting/protesting) will result in positive change on gun control. Then ask yourself how much your time is worth. I am pretty sure you will find that it is not worth your time. Especially since this is an issue resulting from the consequences of bad ideas, and not the actual cause the bad ideas themselves. In other words, if you want to spend your time making this world a better place, I would recommend spending it on pulling out the roots of evil (i.e. abusive parenting) instead of cutting back the vines.

Resources are not limited, it is only our reach that limits us. For the Universe is one of near infinite space, matter, time, and energy - and it is our home. However we are told that our condition is to live in a limited environment, where the consumption of resources today means less for tomorrow. It is said we should feel guilty of this, for it is the sin of living. Well to them I say 'look up', the Universe is ours and the key is your mind. So don't crawl back to the cave in fear of an end, reach for the stars and free humanity to the unlimited.

Here are my thoughts on this report: 1. Compares self reported homework time vs. standardized testing and compares self reported homework time vs. GPA. These are measures of homework and the ability to take tests. 2. The self reported homework time seems pretty unreliable since between the two data sets there is almost a 40% discrepancy in the average time students self reported that they spend on homework. 3. Even if the self reported homework time was reliable, this methodology would still be problematic due to the fact that people are different in their need to do additional study to grasp a subject, and that grades and tests are typically designed so that a B to C average is the outcome. I had friends that all they needed to do was show up to class and they could get a good grade. I had to study on my own in order to get the same understanding. However, at the end of the semester, we both had the same grade. If we were to use the same methodology as in the study, we would be left with the conclusion that I wasted my time studying, because my friend was able to get the same grade without studying. In order to get real numbers, the study would need to control for this. 4. This methodology is looking at the results of homework in a state run primary education system. In other words, GIGO.

Self directed wasn't what I intended as the context. "Self" was intended to mean "on your own time". I think there will always be a value, especially in voluntary societies, to obtain services from an expert to guide you through the subject.