dsayers

Hi, mahayana. I enjoyed your opening post. I think our inner monologues have a similar process of playing devil's advocate with ourselves. I like it because it means when we finally communicate the ideas outward, we already have a pretty good grasp of different perspectives. I don't see structure as something that comes from without. When your daughter learned to speak, you didn't have to hold her lips or press her cheeks. She developed her own structure by observing others and learning how communication works best. When she learned to walk, she observed others walking and developed structure for crawling, balance, and eventually putting one foot in front of the other. The best way to "provide structure" is to model it. The part about cleaning up a mess I think is really important. The next time you make a mess, show her. Ask her what she thinks should be done about it. Ask her why she thinks it should be cleaned up. Why she thinks you should be the one to clean it up. Then the next time she makes a mess, you can repeat the process. It helps a child to understand that actions have consequences. It provides greater self-awareness, pride, and self-accomplishment. I think you'll find she's more careful about making messes in the future if she feels responsible for them. Maybe when you show her messes you make and she comes to the conclusion that you should clean them up, you can bring up what you'd rather be doing and demonstrate how cleaning up after yourself makes it so that you can do what you'd rather be doing. The part about soccer makes for an interesting conversation is well. First of all, why soccer? Was it her choice? Does she enjoy competition? Playing with her friends? Being outside? I don't see her wanting to play with friends rather than listening to instructions as problematic. Not if she's just there to play with her friends. I grew up the nerdy type and wasn't into watching sports at all. But I LOVED getting together with friends and tossing the football around. It was fun! If this is her perspective, then I don't agree with the conclusion that she needs to change to conform to soccer but that soccer needs to change to conform to her. If that means just kicking a ball around with friends in the backyard with friends instead of team style league play, there's nothing wrong with that. If instead she IS in fact more interested in working together with others to accomplish something she can't on her own, and she's interested in team/league play, then maybe the "problem" is that she doesn't understand why drills are important. Maybe sit down and watch a soccer game with her. Ask her what she likes about it. Ask her if she'd like to be able to do that too. Explain to her that just like learning to talk and walk, learning to play soccer well takes practice too. Let her know that chances are, even if a drill doesn't seem relevant at the time, the practice and especially the practicing with other people will help her to do that. If she wants to be a good soccer player, then just explaining this (and relating it to things she already understands like writing) will encourage her to develop her own structure since structure is a tool by which we do something with increasing efficiency. What do you think about this?

I don't see how that answers my question. Or acknowledges my point that you are trying to argue by putting forth outlandish scenarios with no honesty about them being outlandish. I live in a world where people believe in the bogey man while not categorizing the State as a predator. Why would I complicate my life by being "friends" with somebody who would get taken advantage of if I wasn't there to manage their lives in addition to mine? If somebody like that was in your life, you have self-knowledge work that would be more important than trying to work out chain of causality and levels of consciousness. I mean, you're still trying to talk about consent of the raped in a thread asking about the consent of the rapist.

There's a couple problems with this. The first is that "prosecutors dropped the charges" has all the rigor of "these dudes said something this one time." The second being that there's a difference between sleep DISORDER and VOLUNTARILY drinking something that is know to impair judgement and slow reaction time. Why are you friends with somebody who would drink so much, she'd let a total stranger use her body to get off?

You posted this as a response to me pointing out how this contrast casts doubt on omnipotence and/or benevolence. This only serves to reinforce it. Could you address this point? I acknowledge you differentiating Jesus from religion. You mentioned following his examples. In what way? Let's pick way X. Have other people done X? People that perhaps lived before Jesus? I can make an airtight, secular, objective proof that theft, assault, rape, and murder are immoral. If you live life by that code, why would that be following Jesus for example? According to faith, Jesus wasn't just some guy. If you believe that, my question is how do you know? This is where I feel those quotes are competing claims that you refer to as sequential. If you've "logically picked apart religion and christianity many times, using many of the same arguments" and maintain that Jesus was the son of God, then I think this means "Conservative Christians were capable of critical thought and reasoning" isn't accurate.

First and foremost, are the people lobbing accusations of racist and xenophobe asking everybody WHY they oppose people coming into their country illegally? Or are they generalizing by saying ANYBODY (I'm familiar with and appreciate your test for this claim ) that opposes immigration MUST be racist or a xenophobe? If this is the standard THEY are putting forth, and your claim here was accurate, then it would just be holding the naysayers to the standard THEY put forth. If you had issue with this methodology, the rational course of action would be to present your criticisms to those who put forth the standard, not those who demonstrate that even within the construct of that standard, their position is flawed. Secondly, you don't have to ask every teenage girl whether they like the Twilight series in order to put forth that X% of Twilight ticket sales were to Y demographic. If you are presented with that data and YOU draw a generalization from it, this doesn't accrue to the person presenting the data. Finally, I think the media makes for a fantastic barometer. When a black guy shoots a white news woman, the media talks about how he was a victim of racism. When a white guy shoots up a black church, it's because he was a racist. Sort of a double standard there! This same media is quick to claim that multi-culturalism is great and not welcoming it makes you a racist or a xenophobe. But you cannot present the data by ethnicity for rationally excluding people coming into your country because that would be racist. In other words, by telling you that this data cannot be discussed, they're telling you that this data is vital to having an understanding of the situation that doesn't require them. If somebody says to you that anybody who opposes immigration is a racist, saying "government is the initiation of the use of force" doesn't even sound like it's part of the same conversation. I've already covered that Stef accepts and has made the case for years. It's been helpful, but some people don't get it because there's so many people screaming in their ear that opposing immigration is racist. So for that people who would otherwise reject that State power is immoral, he simply contradicts what's being screamed at them. Which can precipitate questioning why they were lied to, how perverse coercive incentives are, and eventually that people do not exist is separate moral categories. It's like trying to explain the Pythagorean theorem to kindergartners. They have to understand what numbers are and how they work together before you can present them with ideas such as variables. "You don't need to know numbers because the Pythagorean theorem deals with variables" wouldn't be a useful objection.

When I started getting tattoos, I very consciously and literally wanted it to be that when I died, my body would tell the story of my life. In other words, a voice that couldn't be ignored since I felt my actual voice was ignored. When an abused child "acts out," they're communicating that this is their experience. Even if "this" only refers to the way people will not treat them like a person even though they are experiencing life as a person. Acting out is a way of incentivizing people to acknowledge you. Another aspect is societal norms. For example, it's largely acceptable for people to use makeup or nice clothes to alter your perception of this. This isn't inherently sinister, since it can be as simple as accepting that there are other people, and trying not to disturb them with your presence. Like keeping your voice down in a crowd as able. If everybody dressed in t-shirts, jeans, and tennis shoes, we might say that dressing up in a nice suit was the sign of dysfunction.

ambiguous - adjective, 1. open to or having several possible meanings or interpretations source Saying I didn't SAY ambiguous is a way of avoiding the content of what I posted.

If I say ambiguous text is useless in the formation of a standard, to leave out the qualifier of ambiguous is dishonest. My position is not controversial. If two people can read "spare the rod, spoil the child" and walk away with interpretations that are opposite, then it is clear that this phraseology is useless as the basis for a standard. Besides, for somebody to say "I refuse to hit my child because this passage says this" or "I hit my child because this passage says this," they are confessing blind obedience for the purpose of absolving themselves of personal responsibility. In this context, both claims are meaningless not for their ambiguity, but for their flawed methodology, as well as the impossible conclusion of "I am not responsible for my voluntary decisions."

Right and when you look at the middle-eastern migrant crisis, you see people traveling through nations with no/little welfare to arrive at ones with lots of welfare. This casts doubt that escape is the primary/only motivation. I cannot speak for Stef, but I think this is the mindset it's trying to combat. Saying X number of group Y receive Z is not a generalization, but a statement of fact. If your purpose is to combat accusations of racism and xenophobia, showing that illegal immigration has real consequences accomplishes this.

@jnabors: If you'll recall, in my first post to you, I had shared how as a child, I believed in the creation of man and I believed in the evolution of man. Even if the world unfolded in a way that both are accurate, I had never thought of them at the same time despite them talking about the same thing. I would've LOVED for somebody to help me to understand that I was doing this. There are people in this world that simultaneously believe that theft is wrong and taxation is right. There's EXTREME value to somebody interested in the truth to be shown how their own values/conclusions are inconsistent. Also, you don't owe me or anybody else anything. The proposition that if I speak to you, you must speak to me refers to an unchosen positive obligation, and would therefore be unethical. However, you do owe it to yourself, when faced with contradictions, to examine them. If you publicize something that is then debunked, you probably should either addressed the contradiction or confess that you're not interested in the truth. To clarify, I think that "I have also logically picked apart religion and christianity many times, using many of the same arguments" and "I hoped to demonstrate that Conservative Christians were capable of critical thought and reasoning" are competing claims. This was not my experience. It was portrayed to me as a threat for not obeying. Even if they were wrong to do so, this would cast doubt on omnipotence, benevolence, and intervention. Imagine you were throwing a party and you said that I wasn't invited (be it absolute or conditional). Then a friend of yours (somebody who represented you) said to me that if I didn't do something you wanted me to, you were going to beat my ass. Wouldn't you step in and clarify? Let's say you're the nicest guy in the world; would you want somebody thinking you were the opposite for something you never actually said? I maintain that this level of ambiguity and subject to interpretation disproves omnipotence. Oh and I could also point out that belief in an afterlife is also an irrational conclusion. There was nothing before a person's life, so there is no reason to suspect there to be something after a person's life. Consciousness is an emergent property of matter, so there is no reason to suspect it would remain after being severed from that matter. There's certainly no proof for it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That's my main focus: methodology. I care more about how you arrived at a conclusion than what that conclusion is. Particularly if you engage in an attempt to demonstrate critical thinking and reasonability.

It's a good point. They're usually put forth in the form of "I'll accept slavery is immoral once you explain to me how I'm going to get my cotton without them." They're often misleading too. This particular question is omitting a couple of key points. In a free society, wealth is accumulated by way of voluntary trade, which happens even in the presence of coercion as seen present day. The second being that living on a specific spot of land doesn't mean you own it.

Actually, being picky is an assertion. I've looked over what you use it to refer to, and you're lying. When you put forth an objective claim, you are also claiming that there's such a thing as truth, such a thing as falsehood, and that truth is preferable to falsehood. What happened here was that YOU put this forth as a standard and then maligned somebody for holding you to that standard. When you say "anyone who fits description X," you are collectivizing and exaggerating. Collectivizing isn't useful in the pursuit of truth and exaggeration is a confession that one believes their argument isn't meritous enough on it's on, so one must overstate it if they are to convince others. This and the constant RP'ing, I would say that not knowing how to talk to others as if they're human beings is a fair assessment. Rejection of that feedback indicates either that you have no interest in speaking to others as if they're human being, or you reject your own capacity for error as a human being and therefore know, before consideration, that's it's not worth considering.

It's counter-narrative. It shows that people against immigration aren't necessarily xenophobic or racist. And by pointing out that the size of the meal is the incentive, maybe it will help some people get that the welfare system is a problem, not a solution. Which calls forced wealth and government intention and competence into question, etc.

Why don't you instead look up what before means and what after means? What chronology and chain of causality are. Whatever you find out about AFTER drinking alcohol would only serve as an argument to NOT drink alcohol. It would do nothing to absolve a person from the direct effects of their voluntary actions. You act as if this claim is inaccurate, yet you refuse to show me how.

My demands? When I became active again, I noticed that I didn't recognize your name, but your accumulated votes suggested you didn't approach problems rationally. I've hit show post every time anyways, and tried to speak with you. As time goes on, I find myself less willing to do so because you don't appear to approach problems rationally. I try not to use the word because it's largely useless anyways, but I'd even go so far as to say I've begun to suspect you are trolling. So let me let you in on something that I don't think should be any secret to you: I view human interactions as voluntary or not. Even if you don't agree with this approach, you will from this point forward understand that I do. This should save you from a LOT of things you post towards me and vice versa. If it's voluntary, I don't care. If it's not voluntary, I care to the point that human aggression has been a scourge on humanity for millenia, we have all the technology and capability to not require it, it is accepted when it shouldn't be, and it's not a valid way to resolve conflicts. And because I'm pretty good at discussing it and finding contradictions in claims that it is not a valid approach. You haven't put forth any way in which I've erred in the arrival of the conclusions I've put forth or any pointed out any error in objective claims I've made. All you're doing is asking me how I would do things. If it's voluntary, I don't care. You can hire somebody to speak for you all you like. I don't care. It's not until you pretend, or they pretend in your stead that it's legitimate to engage in behaviors that are binding upon others without their consent that I care. Got it?

I think you still think that we're talking about consent of the raped when we're talking about consent of the rapist. To remove ambiguity, will you please say that you think it is okay for person A to rape person B since person A is intoxicated and therefore not responsible for their actions? Somebody having a seizure isn't responsible for assault if they happen to backhand somebody because they were not in control of their arm at the time. Somebody who chooses to drink an intoxicating substance and then strikes somebody is responsible for assault. Does this make sense?

I understand that if somebody rejects their own capacity for error, they'd rather not have any self-contradiction brought to their attention. And that were that to happen, the person living in fantasy would lash out at the person pointing it out rather than the people who abused them in such a way that they could hold opposing beliefs and not realize it or find it to be problematic.

How would you strip rape down to love making? Hint: You cannot secure consent of every individual when you collectivize them. Crowd is a concept, humans actually exist.

Well before I respond to this, I want to let you know that I'm not one for throwing the baby out with the bath water. By that, I mean that if you were to demonstrate rational thinking, I wouldn't say you're an irrational person even if there was one topic I felt you didn't demonstrate rational thinking with regards to. That said, I have to point out that "Christian capable of reasoning" is a pair of competing claims. I don't think it's controversial to say that Christianity is an expression of faith. Reasoning is based on the objective arbiter of reality. They're opposing approaches. I guess what I'm saying is that if you want to present yourself as a rational thinker, leading with "I hold a conclusion I did not arrive upon by way of logic, reason, or evidence" may not be the best approach. It's led to this conversation, so I for one don't regret it. People speak in shorthand for the sake of efficiency. Like when I pointed out the additional claims being made any time somebody puts forth an objective claim, or say "God exists" specifically. So let's be honest. It doesn't matter how you word it, saying you believe in God is saying that you believe God exists, you believe that "belief" has meaning, you believe faith is a sound methodology for arriving at conclusions, and so on. That's okay, but stand by your claims even if challenges are uncomfortable. I could tell you the price of tea in China, but even being factual, it would be meaningless in this conversation. My point was that when you're talking about whether God exists or not, things like beliefs and opinions aren't meaningful. They are meaningful when you're telling people about YOU. But when you say "I believe in God," you're not actually telling them about you, you're telling them about God, because belief has no value beyond the motivation I originally mentioned. Imagine I said to you that I believe in ice cream. Is that an expression that makes sense? Specifically, why not? Do you see how that expression isn't about me whereas "I like ice cream" is about me? The triangle wasn't meant to reference anything other than a 2-dimensional object that has 3 sides. "Triangle" is a competing classification to "square" since they both reference a different, finite number of sides of a 2-dimensional object. I only brought it up as a way of demonstrating that in order to learn about our reality, positing things that exist in not our reality is not useful. I say reality now because I acknowledge that your point about the story of the Christian God existing before our universe reveals my use of the word universe was imprecise. Good point! However, I don't think this assails my point that ambiguity serves as a disproof of omnipotence. If you're omnipotent and wanted to communicate with your creations, you could project clarity, you could write it into our DNA, you could do anything other than utilize a language that is imprecise and subject to interpretation. Additionally, the use of specific numbers also strips away ambiguity. If instead, the phrase was "in the seven days of King Josiah," we'd know that the author was referencing specifically 7 days. If it turned out that King Josiah was such for a different period of time, then we would recognize that the author was in err. Since the Bible is presumed to be the word of God, if he says 7 days, we don't have the option of thinking the author was simply in error. Well your initial claim was "I don't see intelligent design at odds with either version of evolution." If it could be shown that one approach says everything happened in 7 days and another approach said it happened over billions of years, I think it's safe to say that the two approaches are in fact mutually exclusive. You don't think think "thou shalt not kill" leaves room for interpretation? One of the most important questions you can ask of anything--indeed, the genesis of humility itself--is "How do you know?" How do you know you shouldn't kill? Because somebody said so? Is that a sound methodology? How does man receive nourishment without killing? If somebody kills somebody next to you and is coming for you, and the only way to stop him leads to his death, are YOU the sinner? Similarly "thou shalt not commit adultery" isn't straight forward at all. What is committing adultery? Is it penetration? Is it flirtation? I've heard translations that said if you even think of such things, you have committed adultery. As if humans (especially in the context of being manipulated by a demon) can control what they think. Want proof? Hey, jnabors, don't think about the color blue. What did you just do? Shame on you! That's a problem! One of my strongest LIKINGS of going to church was the way every single week, the sermon spoke straight to me. Kind of like the way you can apply fortune cookies or horoscopes to YOUR life. Or the way you can be presented with a bunch of dots and see this text on your screen right now, which is actually flickering at an imperceptible rate. The point is that it is well established that the brain NEEDS to find meaning in things so much that it will actually insert things that aren't there just to makes sense of something. Which is another requisite for humility: Accepting one's own capacity for error. "Different denominations" is a seemingly innocuous way of saying "people willing to kill each other for disagreeing." Any methodology that ends up with that HAS to be flawed, wouldn't you agree? I also think it's deceptive to say that "The Bible isn’t a club used to gain political power". What would happen to the career of a politician who claimed to be an atheist? Why do politicians say things like "God bless our country"? How did Ronald Reagan justify gambling human existence on this planet during the Cold War? For that matter, if somebody had their finger on the button, wouldn't you rather they accept that humans exist in the same moral category than thinking that nuking their enemies would be righteous and they would receive treasures in heaven for doing it? Is God into eugenics to the point of not only creating and allowing things like pestilence, famine, and natural disasters that he would intentionally inject genocide as well? Does this sound like the description of somebody who should be accepted out of hand, treated as benevolent, praised, and worshiped? If a man held a gun to your kid's head and said to give him $10,000 or the kid gets it, I suppose in the literal sense, you could say you have a choice. But the reality of it is that the person with the gun took choice away from you by imposing a severe penalty. Threatening eternal hellfire is not giving free will. Doesn't the Bible say kill those who do not believe? Is that freedom to believe?

Stef knows this as does any rational thinker. Presentations like this one aren't meant for people who accept that State power is the problem. Right now, we're living in a world experiencing a "migrant crisis." One which polarizes a lot of people, leading to people who object being demonized as racist, xenophobes, etc. This presentation shows how telling people they cannot come into your backyard is a valid position based on very real consequences. It reveals migrant choices to be based on incentives (which leads to people understanding that the incentives themselves are perverse). Finally, we're also living in a world where you cannot talk about ethnicities without being called a racist. It's nice having data to show that there IS a difference between ethnicities. Probably the best quote in the entire presentation went something like "If people all act the same, then to treat them differently would be racist. If people act differently, then treating them as if they act differently is not racist." It's a good point! One you're not going to find anywhere else with this level of resolution and clarity.

laowai had expressed in a few places that he was done with this place and it was a waste of his time. To not allow him to post on the forums would be taking him at his word. Perhaps it would be more rational to take issue with people using claims like "waste of my time" as a way to manipulate others instead of people taking him at his word.

Already covered: "rottenx51 pointed out that the choice to imbibe is voluntary. That's true whether you have 1 or 51 drinks. You pointing out what happens AFTER the drinks are imbibed doesn't challenge the claim that choosing to imbibe BEFORE doing so is voluntary." So if you have an objection, you have yet to voice it.

You referenced something, somebody asked for clarification, you mocked them. When you communicate, in addition to what you're actually saying, you are also communicating that you expect your communication to be received. Clarifying your communication is part of this endeavor. When asked to do just that, you refused. Why should anybody take such an individual seriously? We might as well offer a soliloquy to a brick wall.

The first sentence here could use some definition of terms. "over-reaction" and "justifiable" seem to be competing claims. The second sentence competes with the first since "feel it is too severe" is not compatible with "principles." Anarchy is everywhere. Try and pretend as they may, governments don't influence every single interaction with people. Picture a bar fight. I'm not talking about the sensationalist "one punch gets thrown, a brawl ensues" like you see in the movies. I'm talking about a bunch of people some place to have a good time that feel that people being obnoxious and fighting is incompatible. Do they pile on and start kidney blasting the people involved? Or do they grab those involved and pull them off of one another, holding them until they submit to taking the fight elsewhere if they insist on even continuing now that the adrenaline of the moment has been interrupted? Now imagine the fight was voluntary. As in both participants wanted to test their mettle against the other. Would interrupting this fight be an over-reaction? No because while the participants may be consenting, the people near them, that might catch a stray elbow or get a drink spilled on them didn't consent. Finally, I think my putting such exchanges in terms of debt, which is an accurate description of the real world, does a good job of differentiating between defensive force and retaliation. If you think otherwise, could you help me understand in what ways it could be improved upon?

Already covered: "A piece of paper is not binding. History is rife with empirical evidence of a piece of paper being unable to protect property rights." "It's like getting excited about an ad in the back of a comic book. 'But it SAYS it provides x-ray vision!'" As for slipping in "as do bylaws of a company" at the end, you're comparing apples to oranges, which is misleading. A company is a collection of people voluntarily trading and working together. In the event of a violation, there is consequences, recourse, and the ability to appeal to arbitration. Are you saying that rape is justifiable because it's mechanically identical to love making? Or can we agree that consent is a requisite for moral behaviors? "No loan can be for a rate of more than 10% interest" is just a promise. If they later offered somebody a loan for 11%, the person could just not buy the car and/or their reputation would suffer. And yes, their claim refers to all cars in "the area" since "the area" is the land of the company they finance, which would in fact own every single car. "No employee may racially discriminate against any customer" would be a stipulation of employment. It would be information that was presented before employment commenced and the potential employee could choose to not work there. You cannot use voluntary exchanges to derive characteristics of involuntary ones.