dsayers

Thank you for the outburst. I prefer the honesty over the pretense of a conversation. You didn't suggest defying authority, you suggested not trading with people simply because they're victims. Is it okay that I disagree for reasons I have rationally explained? In the context of your outburst, I cannot tell if you're trying to assert that aggression is like gravity or mocking what you perceive to be me making such an assertion. Either way, the first sentence of my last post is that we're NOT talking about natural forces. This is very important to understand. The moment you blame the victim, punish the victim, or pretend they're not the victim, you're protecting and empowering their abuser and painting over their abuser's evil with the pretense of normalcy or worse. What's the point of recognizing that everybody is born into victimhood at the hands of the State? So that we're extremely clear as to the nature of our relationship to the State.

"the rules" begs the question. Third time: The thread isn't about the capability of compliance, it's whether "the rules" are threats. I've made a strong case that they are, which you continue to ignore. I've made a strong case that it does not. IF you do NOT have to and somebody says you do have to, they have stolen choice from you with the threat that resisting their theft is tantamount to escalation.

I really enjoy voluntary ways of ending coercion. Imagine what would happen if just 1/3 of the enforcer class rejected the claim that they belong to a different moral category than every other human on the planet? That number would soon grow to 2/3 as those who were on the fence find strength and allure in the original 1/3. We know that the psychopaths in power wouldn't step down and actually start doing the enforcing themselves. I enthusiastically make this case any time I come across revolutionists. The US was proof that violent overthrow only leads to violent replacement. Besides, a peaceful paradigm shift would serve as a beacon for those who accept the moral argument but find it impractical.

I couldn't possibly know for sure of course, but I don't think this would happen. Can you imagine the overhead a company would have to incur and therefore the customers would have to pay for if instead of just manufacturing a product, the company had to screen each and every purchase. I imagine the free market solution might look more like the same guidance systems such things employ today to be more effective killers, could be used to manage safer deployment. Facial recognition, human body-shaped heat signature avoidance, etc. Or if this sort of thing actually got to be a problem, we could build towers that detected the deployment of such things and shot a laser through it rendering it harmless. I think it would be interesting to see the evolution of these technologies when the companies actually have to serve customer demand instead of being subsidized.

MASSIVE miscommunication here. I'm really sorry if I wasn't clear with what I was saying. You said dependent children can leave. I said to leave is to die. That's not a choice. We know that abusive parents are counting on this (and other factors) because they don't behave overtly abusively to people who can evade them. It doesn't need to be. I already made the case that it is a threat because it claims no choice where choice is present. In fact, upon further consideration, I change my position from it's a threat to it's direct theft. The threat is that if the theft is resisted, the advance will be escalated. This doesn't have to necessarily happen in the form of spanking. As sure as night follows day, those who use irrationale to subjugate others respond to resistance with escalation.

I don't get this. How could you talk somebody out of that which they have no choice to be in? I see this mistake being made all the time. Perhaps you could help me understand how it's made. Violent people require abuse in their life, but it's not causal. There are people who are abused that are not violent; their dysfunction manifests in other ways. If determinism is the solution to human violence and the universe is deterministic, why is it not solved? How can people break the cycle? I don't understand the connection you're making between free will and violence being unsolvable. Violence is VERY inefficient when its consequences accrue to the perpetrator. It's chosen out of an expectation of getting away with it. This used to be due to lack of population and technology. Today it's more to do with the State, it's inefficiencies, and protection of criminals for the sake of its own preservation and expansion. As for your 2nd post, you're saying exactly what I was.

You're not talking about natural forces though. "I can't jump 10 feet in the air. *pout*" "We're all under gravity; what are you going to do?" You're suggesting that the definition of victim (how can this keep moving for you?) requires comparative rarity. All you need to be a victim is a violation of property rights, which being born under a governmental claim subjects you to. It keeps being pointed out to you that you can't avoid aggression. If you just keep asserting it repeatedly, I for one will assume you're not interested in the truth. If you are, then at the very least address the rebuttal. I thought of an analogy for you: Let us say that I throw a punch at you. You dodge, avoiding the punch. But you're not avoiding having been swung on. You didn't choose to jerk back suddenly, you were a slave to a situation you did not choose. Your "choice" was the lesser of unchosen options in the moment. Just as somebody who "avoids taxes" as you describe it is choosing the lesser of unchosen options. Their "choice" is the direct result of taxation

I live in NW Ohio, where we've just had the most brutal winter in recorded history. There were adult motorists whose car broke down and they died trying to walk to get help. I eat three meals a day. I cannot fathom how anybody could make the claim that a child could choose to leave. The purpose of this thread wasn't to explore possible motivations for compliance. It was to point out that "have to" isn't a request like you describe it.

Welcome, Mr. Stalma. Your title suggests a length of time before joining the forums. How long was it? What was your reason for coming aboard? (board, get it? ) It took me a year to finally join the boards. Spent that time studying a LOT. The most paramount value I've received from FDR was Stef's An Intro to Philosophy. An embarrassing admission for a man of my age, but it taught me how to think. So I spent that year studying, learning how to think, applying it, learning about child abuse, effects it has, self-knowledge, etc. At which point I finally decided I wanted to start exploring these ideas in a more concentrated arena. What areas of the community do you think will be your specialties?

A child isn't there voluntarily and is dependent upon them. I'm not responsible for feeding you. If I tied you up in MY basement, I have an obligation to feed you (among other things). In this regard, you definitely have a "higher status" than me on my own property.

First and foremost, we have to ask if non-voluntaryism (coercive; theft, assault, rape, and murder) is moral. If not, then we understand that the minutia aren't terribly important. As we explore, it's under the understanding that voluntary interaction IS moral. You have to look at how we could arrive at a voluntary society. It would require acceptance of moral principles, which includes that violence isn't a solution to problems. This means parents wouldn't abuse their children, who could develop into empathetic creatures capable of negotiation. The incidence of "crazy people" would be significantly diminished. Even today, when parents do abuse their children and coercion is pervasive even as far as schooling, for the most part, the only people using grenades and rocket launchers tend to be those in positions of presumed authority. People who believe that is noble have no such inclination in regards to individuals owning the same things. What this means is that for somebody to ask the question, they are essentially saying that they refuse to accept the moral argument until you can pass some arbitrary test. The problem is that their mind is already made up. The test is just there to distract you and to provide the illusion that the conclusion they choose to hold onto is a principled one. How do we deal with crazy people using grenades and rocket launchers? Don't give them legitimacy, a title, and a license to steal from everybody, lock people up without charging them, torturing people, killing people who are standing near the people they THINK are a problem, etc. "I'm afraid of grenades and rockets launchers in a world where nobody would accept this as legitimate and would try to stop it, so I'm going to legitimize a select few who answer to nobody who use the things all the time," isn't logical.

If a robber breaks in (the initiation of the use of force), telling him he "has to" is collecting on the positive obligation he created when he violated your property rights. The is the basis for what's known as defensive force. To apply this to a child being told by their parent to go to bed, it would look like the child telling the parent they have to leave them to decide for themselves. You have accidentally argued against your position again. As such, I have to ask what your view of the parent child relationship is. Is the child the parent's property? If so, this part of the conversation would be meaningless as there would be no more scrutiny for telling them anything than there would be placing a book on a shelf or tossing it into a fire.

That's right. Your involvement is trading freely with somebody, who traded freely with somebody... The coercion is many steps removed. You could argue that it's demand driven, but demand exists ahead of and independently of the methodology. Thanks for this. This is what I was trying to say. That you cannot actually escape the aggression because even if mechanically it appears that you have, the act took place because of the aggression.

That goes without saying, but such a relationship wouldn't have any "have to"s in it. It seems to that the way you're talking about homework is assuming the existing model works or is the only arrangement. Even within such an assumption, the idea is flawed. If somebody doesn't do the homework, how interested are they in the material? How effective would one be, even with threats, trying to teach somebody that which they're not interested in? Wouldn't they reap the reward when they later lose out to somebody who had made more of an effort to learn in that field? I took care to specify behavior in order to preempt refutations based on laws of physics. "My room" and "your space" denote private property. When somebody sleeps is a characteristic of their body and time. You've accidentally argued against your position. I acknowledge that children particularly in the parent child relationship makes for a lot of grey areas in these matters. However, I don't think this at all detracts from the evaluation of "have to" being the opposite of making a convincing case. If it's of any use, I'm heavily biased against this sort of tactic. My father often speaks to people matter of factly when expressing opinions in an attempt to preempt scrutiny. Kind of like when people call commands backed by threats of violence laws. They do this so that people will not question it since you can't not be bound by gravity. Saying "have to" frames the conversation as if choice isn't present. If choice IS present and somebody is claiming it isn't there, they are acting contrary to your self-ownership. It is a threat, however minute and/or veiled in that moment.

Welcome! Thanks for saying hi, and for supporting the conversation.

Not one word in this sentence is original, so plagiarism as you've implied its definition here would apply to this sentence also. I don't even see the Rogan quote as being the same as what Mr. Bartlet said. How do you know? You're relying on anecdotal evidence to make a truth claim while not making any effort to look into the actual explanation. In response to traumatic experiences, the brain isn't able to maintain certain chemical balances on its own. Those who habitually seek external chemicals to compensate for this seek it out due to this biological need. This is not the same as chance availability or not having anything better to do. If what you're saying here is true, you're not describing addiction.

I've never heard of a voluntary student teacher relationship. Even in regards to university, the student pays for access to the facility, not as a written contract to do any specific work. The whole point of the thread is to reveal that "have to" in regards to behavior is a threat, the opposite of negotiation. Saying somebody has to do something is not the same as making the case to them in an attempt to convince them to do it.

In the context that if nobody was around to receive the waves through the air, it making a sound is no different than it not making a sound. This doesn't even compare to what I said because if you were to say that you think that things make noise when they collide, we would test for this and discover it to be so. Therefore, nobody needs to waste time contemplating IF something makes a sound when nothing is there to receive it, because we know it does.

Ivan, have you checked out the video Stef put out after Hoffman died? It can be found . The first half of it talks about the way abuse can physiologically alter the brain's chemical balances. It was very instructive and helped me to understand the problem of lack of self-soothing. I might be projecting my experience onto you, but this sounds kind of like what you're describing.

You're quoting me out of context. The person I was talking to had said: "If my consciousness," is the beginning of a contingency. I cannot be begging that which is provided as a given. In a philosophical examination, you can assume something to be true in order to test if the theory holds. Allow me to provide an example: "Let us suppose that ghosts exist. They either impress upon our senses or they do not. If they do, then we can measure them. If not, then it would be the same as if they did not exist." Here, I am not saying that ghosts exist. I'm pointing out that either we could measure them or their existence would be meaningless. Therefore, the claim of a belief in ghosts has no value. I believe what Rainbow was doing there was supposing the free will claim and suggesting that determinism provides an explanation for it.

Up above, you said: You were making the point that claiming something doesn't make it so. Therefore, people claiming victim do not have the power to alter the definition of victim. Additionally, you had said: Dead people aren't even capable of making claims. I submit that this entire tangent on the subject of "victim" has been prolonged by your bias on what you feel the connotation of "victim" is. However, I was speaking of its denotation and even made an effort to outline the definition. I hope you will re-examine your position in light of this discovery. This quote is like saying the woman with a short skirt on chose to be raped. Pretty wretched. I've spent a lot of time in this thread pointing out the way aggression removes choice by its very nature. Taxation is theft. Nobody choose to be stolen from because if it were consensual, it would not be called theft. People who pay taxes are not choosing to be stolen from, they're choosing to avoid the "or else" part of the coercive commandment backed by force of, "pay taxes, or else _____." "Let us steal from you or let us steal from you more, and rape, and kill you." That's not a choice at all. "I own myself and the effects of my actions," isn't the same as, "I'm owed not being threatened." Understanding that your body, time, and effort are your capital only serves to interpret such threats as unjust and immoral. I've never heard of a rape victim that wasn't changed by the experience. This is also pretty wretched. This exchange started off as enjoyable and challenging. However, you don't appear to have altered your position or revealed a flaw in mine. In fact, you're beginning to move goal posts and express some pretty inaccurate prejudices. Did you engage in this exchange in pursuit of the truth?

I thought Tyler Durden made a great point on how to do this in almost any situation:

I would not describe passive-aggressively offering feedback about somebody in front of them but not to them as opening up. I didn't reciprocate because I don't think speaking to somebody in an abusive manner is called for even when they're doing it to you. It's a standard I try to hold myself to because, as a victim of much coercion-backed propaganda over the years, one measure of speaking the truth that I've noticed is that one doesn't have to huff and puff to be convincing. I hope you're able to identify where the fixation on post count comes from. First you used it to try and attack me. Now you're using it to fragment the standards you've put forth into "applies to < X posts" and "doesn't apply to > X posts" as an ex post facto justification for putting forth standards for others that you violate. You made no effort to explain how > X posts is fundamentally different from < X posts. If you weren't trying to control me (putting forth standards you don't embody), I wouldn't be wasting your time. The ironic thing here is that walking away from somebody who is wasting your time doesn't require notifying them of it. The act of notification is an appeal to insecurity, which is trying to control me.

Price isn't the only consideration when spending stored value. Even today, people voluntarily pay more for various reasons, including what you're talking about. I made the case that victims exist, they are a violation of property rights, which threats of violence are, meaning the choice between escaping aggression or not is not a choice because a reasonable person would choose there not be aggression towards him. The only thing you've done to acknowledge any of that is to move from, "there is no such thing as a victim," to, [victims only exist in regards to murder]. But the cases I've made aren't at all challenged by this. In fact, it substantiates it because if "victim" requires a violation of property rights, you cannot say that one could be a victim of murder, but not theft, assault, or rape. And if somebody could be a victim of these, then they would be a victim of threats of these since that too is a violation of property rights. I'm trying to help by showing you that you can trade with the governed and not actually be contributing to any problem in the act of trading itself.

No. Irreducible means it cannot be deconstructed any further. As humans, we are capable of manipulating matter and energy. What we cannot do is create life even though life requires matter and energy. We cannot create consciousness. We don't know how it comes to be. This irreducibility is how we know that No, the matter and energy itself could not be what is making your choices. By this are you saying that there is empirical evidence that life exists? If so, what is your definition of life? Under the determinist lexicon, it would just be another classification of matter. In order for this analogy to hold, you would have to provide consistent examples of cups being lifted by matter and energy that didn't also have consciousness.