ParaSait

I love to teach things to my 5 & 10 year old half-sisters. I was thinking of telling them about St Nicholas and Santa being fictitious beings this December. Or rather, ideally, I want to guide them in reasoning it out for themselves, basically by Socratic questioning. However, I'm not sure how this will affect them. I'm kind of concerned because it means I may be the one to pop a bubble of trust between them and their parents. Think it's a good idea? Please tell me what you think.

Wow, congratulations on the success Tuur! You've certainly spent some effort into this. You've sifted through so much information about Luc's life, and ended up with no less than 10 pages of relevant material. That is remarkable and I'm glad the effort paid off. Popular musicians are a special kind of person, in a social sense. They're persons that a huge amount of people have a strong, very real emotional connection to. We look up to, take an example from and identify with them. If you want to effectively reach a large audience, this is pretty much the way to go. Your essay may change a lot of people's lives for the better. That's such a wonderful way to do justice to Luc's death. Cheers!

What a bait video. I would click this video to hear some of the positive effects of playing video games. Instead you get lectured by a bunch of feminist doofuses.

Parents seem to claim that children get shocked and upset when a glass breaks. I'm inclined to say that that may be projection. It's the parents who get shocked and upset, whereafter they resort to shouting or even beating their kid. The reason why the child cries is not because he gets upset over it, it's because he gets scared at his parents getting upset over it. At least that's been my experience. (for the time being, I live together with my dad, his wife and my two young stepsisters -- it hurts sometimes)

Looks like a zeitgeist troll, ignore.

Structural violence! You forgot about structural violence! You have one messed up frame of reference, son. At least I have some differential advantage.

I buy my games from gog. T_T Some of the games on my gog shelf are for linux, though. Then again, only some.

I'm a linux user since recently and not going back to windows! Well, unless I want to play a video game...

I'm an exception to rule, but I'm a mghow simply because I can. I'm asexual, aromantic and I dislike children. I can only see the miserable, expensive, freedom sacrificing part of it all. It's my natural state of being, and getting to know mgtow I now feel glad about it too. The vast majority of mgtow are straight men with a normal to high libido, though. That being said, I hugely empathize with those. It must be tough. My opinion about the mgtow phenomenon in general is that it's a long-term stress response to feminism going completely out of hand. It's no wonder that Canada is the greatest feminist country as well as the greatest mgtow country.

A couple questions that popped up in my head as I was reading... What was your history like? Are you feeling alright? Does anything or anyone seem to bother you? It's hard to step forward if certain problems or people in the moment are holding you back. How did you figure your values out? How do you know that what you believe are your values are really your values? What do you do instead of pursuing your values, and why? Try to pay attention to not only your thoughts, but also your emotional state.

Objectivism by Leonard Peikoff.

It's violence if attacking another person is the intent (usually as a means of gaining something at the other's expense). A drunk driver accidentally killing a child isn't violence. That doesn't mean he's not responsible, though. And dumping dangerous chemicals into the water supply is violence if the perpetrator is aware that it's hurting others (he gains something at the expense of others - cheap waste disposal at the expense of other people's health)

I would say it's like lying. Not UPB, however it doesn't break the non-aggression principle. Manipulation isn't preferable, but since there's no force going on (you can decide to stop your association at any point if you want) it's unreasonable to retaliate with force. EDIT: I'm assuming something like manipulation through shame and pity here. Of course it does break the NAP if the manipulation includes threatening.

I got my first job recently at a small company (also in the field of programming), and I didn't put on any kind of masks during the interview. I was entirely honest, wasn't telling half-truths and wasn't sugar-coating any of my flaws. They could tell I was being honest and I could tell that they appreciated it. From this personal experience, I'd say be honest at all time, as in any other healthy human relationship. Being dishonest may get you a job perhaps, but then, keeping it is another thing...

Brilliant ending thanks for sharing!

I've only read the titles while scrolling through and I'm already feeling pissed off. Didn't even watch any of the videos...

Our mind and person consists of nothing more than our brain's content. Your identity, that which makes you "you", is in essence the sum of all your memories. Your memories exist entirely inside of your brain. When you die, your brain stops functioning, and your memories are gone. If a person gets born with no memories of any past life whatsoever, then in what sense is it reincarnation? If it turns out that someone does have memories of another person who was real in the past, then we're getting somewhere. We're getting something tangible and testable. But until then, there is no reason other than wishful thinking to believe that that's actually true.

That doesn't make sense. Evolution is just an effect of matter, it can't break the laws of the material world. Can you clarify what you mean?

State money is stolen money. The people who this money came from did not want to give it to you. Don't you have any moral problems with that? How would you feel about it if the violence wasn't invisible?

See the following post! https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/41366-empathy-overload/?p=378428 I'm strangely attracted to being terrified (if I know the danger isn't real). It feels good to me in a way I can't explain. I watch mind-fucking psych horror all the time, play horror games, and I even chronicle my own disturbing dreams and nightmares so that I don't lose the great memories! I know it's kinda crazy. It's certainly a part of me that's worth inspecting.

I for one love any form of horror fiction. However, I prefer psychological horror over the bloody body horror, as the latter is usually a bit too dumb for me. I'm actually curious if I'm the only one around here.

Well, the reason we moved there is because you're nitpicking about it. So, as for the distinction between ethics and aesthetics, let's put things straight. Ethics deals with the objective and universal principles. Aesthetics deals with the subjective preferences. If I say that murder is wrong, that's an ethical statement (and it's correct according to UPB, because murder cannot be universalized as a rule, etc...). If I say that I prefer green apples over red ones, or that I think the guy with the story is annoying, then those are aesthetic statements. Green apples aren't objectively better than red ones and the guy with the story isn't objectively annoying. If something is ethically wrong, then aesthetics isn't even a question. I can't subjectively prefer that someone murders me in any way (or else it's not proper to call it murder). However, if something is ethically right, then aesthetics becomes the question. So how do you know whether or not aesthetics is a question? Look at whether it's ethical or not. And the line between the ethical and the unethical lies in the use of force, which you can argue is identifiable by whether or not self-defense is the only option.

You cannot avoid robbery or murder without defending yourself. It's true that violence isn't the only option, you can also flee or set an alarm in your home, but the possible options you're left with are all forms of defense either way. The things you can do to avoid the guy with the annoying story aren't forms of defense. It's more like just not associating. Choosing not to associate is an option here, because the association isn't inflicted (unless his intent is harassment).

When I said "simply saying no", I mean that in a broad sense. Obviously, it also includes walking away. The point is, you don't need to use violence to enforce your preference of not having that guy bore you. (If walking away doesn't work, and it becomes clear that he's coercing you into listening to his shaggy dog story, then it's harassment and it becomes a question of ethics. Of course, that's a pretty ridiculous scenario, this isn't ever gonna happen in real life )

If the teaser stops teasing if his subject tells him to, it's really teasing. If he doesn't stop, it's bullying. Teasing is voluntary, but the agreement is simply unspoken.