Tyler Durden

What Robert said, you need to let the justified anger that you feel towards your parents out completely.

I used the word irresponsible because I consider it a parent's responsibility to make sure that nothing damaging happens to the child until he reaches adulthood. There are degrees of damage of course, and getting a piercing is not life threatening or anything, but you're still cutting through healthy tissue to make a hole in an important body part for no practical reason at all. So it definitely qualifies as damage and therefore I consider it irresponsible. I wouldn't forbid children to get weird haircuts, dye their hair, or wear alternative jewelry or clothing because that doesn't damage their bodies, but I place piercings in a different category. As for the hygiene. I thought that the dog was licking it when she took the dishes out but I watched it back and I saw that it was in fact before they ran the dishwasher, so I take that comment about the dog back. I still think the house should be a little cleaner, somewhere in between the two houses is healthy in my opinion, you want it to be clean but you don't want to be neurotic about it. Sorry about your dad man, what an ass.

What kind of things do they say to you?

I think Dayna did an excellent job at the other people's house, she actually brought the father closer to his kids and I don't see anything that she could have done better. However, there were some problems at here house too. For example the piercing, I'd say that it's quite irresponsible to let a 13-year-old get a hole pierced through the middle of his nose. Also, the reading, it's an essential life skill so you should teach it to your children as soon as they're capable of learning it. And the hygiene was a problem too, it doesn't have to be the same as in the other house but you don't let a dog lick the dishes, that's crazy. Besides that, I didn't think they handled the other mom's rules very well. I mean, they voluntarily signed up for this show, and we can assume that the kids took part in that decision as well. So if you agree to live by somebody else's rules for a week then you should just keep your word and do it. And to say that you're not going to do it just because she stayed at a hotel is just lame, I mean, they specifically told here that there were no rules, so she could do whatever she wanted and she chose to sleep at a hotel. Don't get me wrong, the other woman was batshit crazy and her household was nothing short of a prison. But some of her criticism on the Martin residence was correct and Dayna's excellent performance was somewhat undermined by it in my opinion

My pleasure Mr. Hugz

https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/39321-mens-fear-of-women-book/

You're in the very best position imaginable to start your own company. You're 31 and you've invested your time well up to this point, you have an extensive skillset, you have experience, and you seem like a guy who also has some money saved. You're not in a relationship and you don't have children so there's nobody holding you back. You have a good reputation and resume. So if you quit your job in order to start your own company, and after 3 years you realize that it's not working out you will only be 34, you will still have a good resume and you will have a perfectly understandable story for any possible future employer. Someone will hire you again and you will get a new cushy position, don't worry about that. The questions about women even each other out. If you start your own company you will have less time to meet women, especially in the beginning, but you'll be much more attractive to the women you do meet because you're a man who takes control of his life and follows his passion. You would not be setting yourself back in life because you would be choosing the path that leads to the most personal growth. If you keep that in mind you'll see that failure is literally not an option, because the tougher your experience the more you will grow. I know it's scary, but you should do it anyway. You've wanted this for 20 years and you will never be in a better position than now.

Good job, compliments to you and your lady.

That's an unanswerable question, as we would need the definition of philosophy first in order to determine if we are using philosophy in our exploration of the definition of philosophy. The reason I used this conversation as an example is because I assumed you would consider what goes on in the philosophy section of a philosophy forum as philosophy. But we can leave this particular conversation out of it if it doesn't make things easier. Let me try to explain what I meant with my original statement: We live in a physical world and we live in a verbal world as well. When the verbal world and the physical world are in alignment we can say stuff like "apples grow on trees" and everybody is like "they sure do". We're speaking the truth, but because it's such a well established truth most people wouldn't call that philosophy. But when the verbal world and the physical world are not in alignment you can make a truth statement like "taxation is theft" or "spanking is assault" and get a totally different response. Suddenly you find yourself in a position where the truth is not obvious to people and you really have to reason with them to align the verbal world with the physical world. To me, that reasoning is what defines a philosopher. In between the apples and taxation there are many more statements you could make that will elicit some discussion, but the topics that really set people off are the ones related to morality. And the reason those topics set people off is precisely because accepting the truth would mean that they have to change their behavior. So philosophy is definitely related to changing people's behavior. But it's more of a side effect of the philosopher's quest for truth than a goal in itself. Because as soon as you start valuing the change in behavior more than you value the truth then you're not really a philosopher anymore, then you're just a manipulator.

Philosophy can definitely be used to convince people to change their behavior, but that's only part of it. Take for example this conversation, we are trying to define what a philospher is, but none of us is trying to change or coordinate anyone's behavior. The same can be said for entire sections of the board, such as the atheism section. Nobody is there to convince people to stop going to church or anything, people are just trying to separate truth from falsehood.

I would say that a philosopher is someone who aligns the verbal world with the physical world.

There is so much to say about this topic, I think you could easily write an entire book about it. But I'll just share some of my thoughts. For starters I don't equite having a high IQ with being smart. There is definitely overlap and IQ tests certainly measure some aspects of intelligence but I've always considered them rather incomplete. Some key aspects of human intelligence, such as social intelligence, just don't really get measured on IQ tests even though they're of vital importance. That said, I think these are some of the factors contributing to the difference in IQ scores: -What Sal9000 said. Read the book. It was the first thing I thought about when I read your question. There are a lot of environmental factors that shaped cultures around the world and they're explained very well in that book. -IQ tests were developed in the West and they measure what highly educated people in the West consider to be intelligent. So if you've grown up in the West and you've gone through god knows how many years of schooling and you're used to sitting behind a desk with a pen in your hand doing math problems and fill in the gaps exercises then an IQ test will appear quite normal to you. But if you've grown up in some village in Africa and you've spent most of your time outside doing real stuff in the physical world then an IQ test will actually look rather foreign to you, and you will not score as high as someone who did spend all that time in a Western school environment. This map shows how many people are enrolled in tertiary education (which I think says something about the education system as a whole) and it looks very similar to your IQ map: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.TER.ENRR/countries?display=map -What NGardner said. It's just harder to take an IQ test in the tropics.

I really tried to be nice to you, but I give up. You're not curious at all. You gave me a video about Gary Taubes and I gave you a review that clearly shows that Gary Taubes has lied and misrepresented information in at least one of his books. The guy is a fraud, I know that calling him slick is not an argument that's why I provided the link. If the only way you can respond to that is by throwing more youtube videos my way and using words like "myth", "science-fantasy", "dream up", "irresponsibly", "aesthetic arguments", "pseudo-science" and "cook up" to describe my point of view, even though I gave you several actual scientific publications, then you're just a lost cause. I'm not responding to any more of your posts and I don't expect you to understand.

It's a German movie actually, with a couple of non-German sentences here and there. And it's a classic because it's a really cool movie. It's creative, it has some butterfly effect elements integrated, and it shows you 3 scenarios of the same 20 minutes. I really enjoyed it when I first saw it, back in the day. What happens at the 11:32 mark isn't introjection btw, she's just thinking of who of her friends and family can help her get the money.

I certainly agree with you that there are multiple serious problems with the diet of the average American. We've been talking about meat because that's what this thread is about, but I think that aside from that we are actually in agreement on a great deal of those problems. It's interesting that you bring up Gary Taubes because I have actually watched several of his videos before and I must say that in the first video I watched he really did blow my mind. He presented this completely different approach to fat and I was like "wow, I've never looked at it that way". And this feeling remained for most of the video but at the end of the video I realized that he hadn't really answered the mindblowing questions that he had raised at the beginning. So I watched more of his videos, also debates with other people, and the more I watched the more unanswered questions came up. He's very slick so it's hard to see but once I started paying attention to it I noticed that he simply evaded every question that he didn't want to answer. For me, that's when he lost his credibility. And then I read this critical review of one of his books: http://thescienceofnutrition.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/good-calories-bad-calories-a-critical-review/ Obviously you're free to draw your own conclusions, but I found it impossible to trust anything he says after reading that review. That said, I think we should move the topic of discussion back to meat and meat-free diets, since that is what this thread is about. I think we can all agree that eating meat is a choice, not a necessity. Humans can live in optimal health without eating meat and I posted several scientific publications showing that not eating meat is actually beneficial to your health. If anyone can disprove those claims with actual science I am certainly open to hearing it.

Thanks for bringing some sanity back to the meat eater side of the discussion James Dean, much appreciated. Now we can have an actual conversation. You're right in saying that LovePrevails made some incorrect statements, but to be fair, he was triggered by a post that started with this sentence: Which is ridiculous, it would literally mean that there is not a single healthy person among the millions of vegetarians worldwide. After saying that EndTheUsurpation also was the one who started making evolutionary claims. And in my experience it's usually a meat eater who brings up the omnivore argument claiming that the ability to eat plants and animals means that you have some sort of obligation to eat both, which is simply not the case. Nonetheless, LovePrevails did make some mistakes in his response. When we look at evolution I think the most probable theory is that our ancestors who lived in trees ate mostly or maybe exclusively plants. Just like our closest living relatives still do today (chimps eat meat a few times a year, orangutans hardly ever, and gorillas never). But once our ancestors got out of the trees they started eating meat as well and they started cooking their food, and that has helped them develop into the awesome species we are today. I do think that cooking played a bigger role than meat eating, largely based on Richard Wrangham's book "Catching Fire - how cooking made us human". And if you compare our anatomy to that of herbivorous and carnivorous mammals you'll find that we still have more in common with the herbivores. (http://zh.scribd.com/doc/94656/The-Comparative-Anatomy-of-Eating) But it is clear that we can digest both, especially since we can cook our food. And I totally agree with you that we are not designed to do anything. So I think we should take that idea off the table and look at our situation and arguments in the here and now. From a health standpoint. I think there's a good case to be made for a vegetarian/vegan diet. I provided some links in my first post that show that people who don't eat meat have a lower risk at obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes and on average have a longer lifespan (even after other lifestyle factors are filtered out). (these are the links: http://www.eatright.org/About/Content.aspx?id=8357 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22677895 http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/70/3/532s.full http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/526S.full ) Of course that doesn't mean that it's impossible to eat healthy with little meat. But it does mean that eating meat is not a necessity. You can leave it out completely and live in very good health. If you eat a balanced vegetarian/vegan diet then there is nothing in meat that will make you healthier. Obviously you've given vegetarianism a serious shot if you've done it for 10 years. But if you felt much better after going back to eating meat once or twice a week than either what you felt was only psychological because you thought you needed it or your vegetarian diet was not balanced. You could have been missing nutrients that are present in meat, but you could have obtained those same nutrients from other sources as well. Simply because none of the essential nutrients are exclusive to meat. So I'd love to hear it if you have any evidence to the contrary, but as far as I know the bottom line is still that we don't need meat at all.

Okay, I can clarify that for you: There are 3 types of omega-3 fatty acids that are relevant to us. These are ALA, EPA, and DHA. The omega-3 that you find in ground flax seeds and other plant sources is ALA. Your body can convert this to EPA and DHA itself, so under normal circumstances you don't have to worry about it. However, there are two factors that should be taken into account. The first one is that not everyone's body is equally efficient at converting ALA and you don't know how efficient your body is unless you get it tested somewhere. The second one is that the same enzymes that are used for converting omega-3 are also used for converting omega-6. So if you have a lot of omega-6 in your diet (which many people have) more of the enzymes will be used for that and your omega-3 conversion will become less efficient. One way to deal with that is to make sure your omega-3 intake is sufficient (one tablespoon of ground flax seeds a day) and your omega-6 intake is relatively low. You can keep omega-6 low by avoiding overly processed foods and by only using oil that's low on omega-6, such as olive oil. The other way is to take a supplement for EPA and DHA, in that way you don't have to rely on your body's conversion because you just bypass the whole process. This is essentially what people who eat fish or take fish oil do since the omega-3 in fish is mostly EPA and DHA. What many people don't know however, is that fish get their omega-3 from algae and you can also get it directly from them. So there are vegan supplements for EPA and DHA that function exactly the same as fish oil. Whether or not these supplements are necessary is another question. Some experts recommend them and some experts don't. I personally don't take them because I think the ground flax seeds combined with my low intake of omega-6 is enough. But if you're unsure I recommend you check out these 2 articles: https://www.mja.com.au/open/2012/1/2/omega-3-polyunsaturated-fatty-acids-and-vegetarian-diets and http://veganhealth.org/articles/omega3 Good questions. I don't know where killing insects rates on the moral spectrum but I treat them the same way. I don't kill them intentionally and if I find a fly stuck to a window inside my home I catch it with a glass and set it free. There are of course other insects that are more hostile such as mosquitoes, they don't really target me so I just let them be, but I can understand that other people who get bitten a lot even when they use repellents feel the need to kill them. With regards to killing animals for food I think it's important to realize that the meat industry is essentially not a food producing industry. This is because animals need a lot of food themselves, and most of that is simply used to maintain their body, only a small portion of it is used to grow. So for example if you have 5 pounds of plant based food and you feed it to a pig, the pig will turn that into 4 pounds of shit and 1 pound of meat. In the past animals were hunted or only ate leftovers and people had little choice but now people are actually growing tons of food just to feed it to animals so they can turn it into less food. Of all the land used for food production worldwide about 19% is used to grow plant food for us and 81% is used either to grow plant food for animals or as grazing ground for animals. But plant products supply about 83% of all our energy whereas animal products only supply 17%. So killing animals for food doesn't make logical sense because we would actually have more food if we didn't eat animals. Apart from land the production of meat and other animal products also requires more water and more fuel and it creates more waste. And since it's not necessary for your health either, the only reason for eating meat that people have left is that they like the taste of meat. So to get back to the moral question. I don't know if killing an animal is as bad as killing a human. But I'd say that killing an animal simply because you like the way his flesh tastes is very bad. I think it's really good that you're thinking about this and I hope that you'll go vegetarian. Maybe try it out for a month, see how it goes.

Sure, I'll be happy to answer your questions. I became a vegetarian 21 years ago and I've been a vegan for quite some time now. I think the lifestyle is great for 3 main reasons: 1. Animals don't suffer and get killed. 2. It's better for the environment. The production of animal products is extremely inefficient compared to plant products and it creates more waste. 3. It's better for your health. (see my answer to the health question for details) Yes, I see eating meat as wrong and I see eating fish as equally wrong. I understand the reasoning behind your statement but I don't agree that morality isn't involved. I would argue that being moral means that you don't cause unnecessary suffering and death. These animals have never hurt anyone so killing them is a completely unprovoked act of aggression which I consider highly immoral. Yes. Most people that I've convinced to stop eating meat actually became quite disgusted with it in a matter of months. There are actually 2 things you can do to make them go away as fast as possible: 1. Inform yourself about the meat industry. Read for example Jonathan Safran Foer's book "Eating animals", the more you know about the meat industry the less appealing their products become. 2. Learn to cook well without meat. Most people who give up meat are so accustomed to meat-centered dishes that they really don't know how to cook a great meal without it. As a result you end up comparing lousy vegetarian dishes to the most tasty meat dishes and that doesn't work. Actively learning a new of cooking helps because your meals will taste better and because you'll have something to focus on. I highly recommend you try out some of the recipes suggested by Mango or buy one of the easy everyday cookbooks recommended on this site and start trying out new recipes: http://www.vegan.com/cookbooks/ You're certainly not the first to experience this. The problem with food is that it's a large and complex topic and there's a whole lot of money to be made from misinformation. So there are many conflicting stories going around, often very well presented, but also often incorrect. I've done a decent amount of research on the topic and I've come to the conclusion that whole food plant-based diets are definitely among the healthiest diets possible, if not the healthiest. It basically means that you focus on plant-based food and you make sure that most of your food comes from the ground instead of from a factory. If you google "whole food plant-based diet" you'll find lots of information. Eating like that decreases your chance at obesity, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, and if you keep it up long enough it will also increase your life expectancy. (sources: http://www.eatright.org/About/Content.aspx?id=8357 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22677895 http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/70/3/532s.full http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/526S.full ) The diet provides more than enough of almost every nutrient but there are a few that need special attention. This is what I advise to people who adopt a vegan diet: -Take a vitamin B12 supplement (very important) -Mix 1 tablespoon of ground flax seed through one of your meals once a day (this is for Omega-3, there are other sources as well but I've found this to be the easiest way) -Drink 1 glass of soy milk with added calcium or use any other product with added calcium once a day (there are also vegetables like kale that contain lots of calcium, but this habit is easier to implement) -Take a vitamin D supplement on days that you don't get into the sun (this is actually not a vegan thing, everyone should do this) If you're interested you can find very extensive information on many more nutrients, that are unlikely to ever become a problem, here: http://www.veganhealth.org/ If you eat a whole food plant-based diet and follow these recommendations you'll be eating healthier than 9 out of 10 people. As Mango said before me, the problem is most likely that you're looking for the wrong products. Everything you need can be found in an average supermarket and if you buy whole, basic foods it should be quite affordable.

The question is not whether we need money or not, the question is about force. If these people don't like money and don't want to use it, that's perfectly fine. But if they don't like money and want to force everyone else to stop using it too, then they're a bunch of assholes. That's really all you need to know, any discussion beyond that point will simply be a waste of your time because these people are far from rational.

The fear is understandable because you would be putting yourself in a vulnerable position. But it would be a very wise and mature thing to do and I highly recommend it. They may thank you for it, they may not reply, or they may get angry or mock you. But all of that is outside of your control. What's important is that you're doing the right thing.

You only need to listen to the first 11 seconds to find out that he's not pretty clever. Pretty clever people show curiosity when they ask a question, this guy is showing the exact opposite right from the start. I didn't feel like listening to the rest of it so I'll leave the remaining 5 minutes and 49 seconds for someone else to comment on.

Q: (for 1mil) How do laws make us free? A: They prevent theftB: They prevent violenceC: They prevent children from getting indoctrinated and druggedD: They fucking DON'T

He's confusing respect with obedience. What he's meaning to say is: "you cannot have obedience without fear". This shows two fundamental errors in his way of thinking. The first one is that he beliefs that children should be obedient. That there is a hierarchy in the family and that his opinion and preferences are superior simply because he is the parent. The second one is that he only knows how fear can lead to obedience, but doesn't know how love can lead to cooperation, which is way more valuable. My guess is that he's had a pretty terrible childhood. The fact that he mentions that he's not going to hit his child with objects because of scientific research shows that he's probably been hit with objects himself, otherwise he wouldn't even mention it. He probably feels like he's taking a huge step forward by not continuing with the objects. So my advice would be to focus on his own childhood and ask him about that. How was he punished as a child? How often? I recommend you also do the Stefan thing where you ask him from what age to what age he was hit and how often and then calculate how many times he was hit in total. How did he feel about that? How did it change his perception of his parents? Did he feel closer to them because of this? Since you grew up together you can probably relate and share some stories of your own from that time. Or how you perceived his parents when you were little. If you can get him to connect emotionally to the time when he was at the receiving end of the abuse you're more than halfway there. If you can say something like "looking back on it, I would say that both of our parents made some serious mistakes when we were young, they should never have hit us, but we're not young anymore, now we're the adults, and it's up to us to not repeat their mistakes" and get him to agree with that, and shake on it, then you're all the way there. It might take a few conversations to get to that point, but if you were close when you were growing up it should be doable. Good luck!

To whoever downvoted me without leaving a reply: Let me to explain why I recommended "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that. I was just curious." It's not because I approve of bad parenting or anything like that. It's because I think it's the most effective response if you actually want to change people's behavior. When someone says "Don't tell me how to raise my kids!" what they're actually saying is "I'm scared and I perceive you as a threat." It's a clear signal that what you're doing is not working, that you've pushed them too far. In fact, it's such a clear signal that you've probably missed or ignored a couple of more subtle signals that came before. When people say this they no longer see you as someone who is on their side and trying to help them make better decisions, they see you as someone who is out to get them. Of course you can choose to respond by telling them why they are wrong, and why it actually is your business how they raise their kids, and how they don't own their children, and why the non aggression principle overrules any ideas of parenting they may have, and how it is scientifically proven that spanking is bad. But all they're going to hear is "I don't give a fuck about you or how you feel, you should just listen to me and do what I say." If you go that route they're not going to leave the conversation with thoughts like "What a nice guy that was, and he had such insightful and scientifically proven ideas about parenting, I really learned a lot today, you know what, I'm going to implement them in my parenting style right away!" No they're going to feel bitter and humiliated because you wouldn't listen to them or take their objections seriously, they're not going to implement any of your ideas, and in the worst case scenario they may even take out their resentment on their kids. So instead of going that route, I recommend going the other way. The way where you take a step back, where you realize your mistake of pushing them too far too soon, where you acknowledge that they feel threatened and you show them that you didn't mean to threaten them. Because you can't bully people into being better parents. You can coach them, but you can only do that when they feel understood and listened to first.

I think a quote from Stefan would be best because it could lead people here, but I couldn't find a good one that fits your criteria. Maybe one of these will work instead: “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”― Albert Einstein“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”― Daniel J. Boorstin"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."― Aristotle“Never confuse a hunger for knowledge with a thirst for truth.”― Marty Rubin “Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.”― Jonathan Safran Foer