Jack

I've been perturbed by the number of otherwise politically inactive people on Facebook adding a French Flag filter onto Facebook. One of my more trustworthy friends (who didn't change his picture) posted a status pointing out the trend, and I posted this in support of him. I think I figured out why I don't like the French flag filter, it's because the filter is no-thinking band-aid. When you put on the filter, you can leave it at that and ignore the circumstances that led to this tragedy, like the French Government's arm sales to Arab despots, allowing millions of fighting age "refugees" into their country, and neutering their own populace by making France a gun free country. The French Government has screwed their people by allowing the circumstances that led to the Pairs massacre, and showing your support by flying the French Government's colors isn't going to stop the next attach. Stopping foreign arm sales, increasing deportations, and allowing gun ownership would. What do you fine people think? Should free-thinking people be showing support for France, is the French flag filter a misdirection? Am I just an insane bigot who doesn't care about France in it's time of need?

I also find the term "unicorns" inappropriate. It's very discouraging to men who get into a bad relationship, then turn online and get the message that "all women are that way, you're better off alone." The men who believe that message start looking down on women and become inverse feminists. I've noticed in several of the FDR call-in shows with women that the comment section becomes filled with people saying "she's riding the cock carousel". The name calling and automatic dismissal are exactly the same strategies that feminist use to extract to shame men. A second problem with calling good women "unicorns" is that it shifts the locus of control for the relationship to an external source. A man who starts to believe good women are unicorns won't work as hard in relationships and is much more likely to dismiss a good woman for a single red flag, because after all, "good woman are unicorns." Lastly, telling women that the only women among them worthy of relationships are "unicorns" will discourage women from working hard in relationships. If they believe failure is inevitable, and no matter how hard they work, their man will leave because, "she isn't a unicorn," women won't work nearly as hard to become good women. Sorry if I got a bit ranty there. I've been thinking a lot about how abusive I've seen the MGTOW community get towards women, and I've gotten my Jimmies rustled. Maybe I shouldn't complain though, after all it's less competition for me!

Dig the article. Would love to see a mirror article for what qualities identify a grown-ass-woman as well!

Extending morality is an action who's alternative is inaction, not the opposite action. For example, if I do not eat, that doesn't mean I am throwing up. The argument that other species are incapable of "extending immorality" (hereafter called evil) and should not have evil inflicted on them can also be applied to rocks. A rock is not capable of being evil, and therefore does not deserve to be crushed (a destructive act that would be evil if inflicted on a moral actor) and melted down for gold, treating non moral actors or inanimate objects as moral actors quickly becomes absurd as your every step and breath becomes a transgression. Neither animals or rocks are capable of making decisions or choices on a moral basis. They also won't gain that ability unless they become a new species. This caveat is important so that future moral actors (such as babies) are still treated morally. At this point, there is no reason to suspect that animals will suddenly start making moral choices. I believe I've made a strong moral argument in my previous post and addressed the crux of the original poster's rebuttal. But there is one very important thing to consider, even if humanity wipes itself out, animal species will still continue to wipe each other out until the sun burns out and all life on earth dies. Only humanity has a chance of outliving the sun, and only through humanity can any piece of earth's ecosystem live on. The scale isn't weighing today's species and humanity, it's weighing the inevitable death of the planet and the preservation of known life. I suspect the original poster came here in bad faith in order to troll the forums. I won't be engaging in this thread anymore and only wrote this reply for the benefit of other people who happen by the topic. I'll still respond to personal messages and wish everyone the best! Keep on pondering!

I'm not sure about the last 5 years, but I do know that the number of ISPs was reduced as a result of regulation in the Clinton era. Watch The truth about net neutrality for more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z_nBhfpmk4 That being said, recent rises in price could be a result of sharply increasing demand and infrastructure playing catch up. Netflix, youtube, and other streaming sites entered common use in the last 5 years or so. Their bandwidth requirements are absurdly high compared to text articles and video games.

I can't think of any rational system of measurement that gives non thinking species more value than humans. Economically, no species aside from humans has produced value, so humans are more valuable than all other species. Morally, no species beside humans are capable of being moral actors. Since other species are incapable of extending morality to others, they do not warrant having morality extended to them. Therefore there is no moral argument in favor of ending the human race for the sake of other species. Les Knight talked about the human race being destructive, but it's also the only species to ever create anything besides more of itself. He is comparing the negatives of humanity without ever considering the positives. Animals do not create art, trees do not build spaceships, no other species has created, or has the potential to create as much as humanity. We may very well be the only species to willing create another species (AI). This topic is another flavor of original sin which has been addressed and rebutted dozens of times on these forums, and by the FDR show. Advocating human extinction is intellectually and morally corrupt, as I discussed in the previous 2 paragraphs. That doesn't mean that you are personally a bad person, but you should examine why you're willing to spread and defend a movement dedicated to the extinction of your species. I guarantee it isn't' because you think other species hold more value than humans.

A Republican in my home state has proposed a bill in the Montana legislature that would make illegal, "any device, costume, or covering that gives the appearance of or simulates the genitals, pubic hair, anus region, or pubic hair region." here's a link to an article about it: http://billingsgazette.com/news/government-and-politics/missoula-lawmaker-yoga-pants-speedos-should-be-illegal-in-public/article_71538ba2-d529-5ec3-a289-108de20e9398.html The internet is already up in arms over the "yoga-pants ban," but I have spotted a more dire issue. A Montana paper, The Daily Inter Lake, has reported the law would also ban the exposure of nipples, including, wait for it... MALE NIPS. So say goodbye to river rafting without a shirt, trying to escape the summer heat, or proving your grit by wrestling bears in a jock strap (regular past-time here). So what do you think, grand wizards of FDR? Is this bill a terrible idea because the person pushing for it mentioned afterwards that "Yoga pants should be illegal in public anyway," is it a bad idea because it oppresses women's rights to wear the wonderfully slutty... I mean liberating leg covers. Is it a bad idea because it bans men from being topless? Or is it just a bad idea because it's absolutely ludicrous to send people to jail for what they wear?

I've been looking for ways to teach myself to use the R programming language. I'm an engineer with a lot of statistics and data use education. I learned R is a powerful language for statics analysis and big data usage, but did not get any education in it. Since R is free, and I have too much free time, I downloaded the R language and RStudio to write programs in. While I was looking for exercises and tutorials, I found a 40 video long lecture series that walks you through the functionality of R in a very easy to follow along way. Here's the link to the first video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX532N_XLIs&index=1&list=PLqzoL9-eJTNBDdKgJgJzaQcY6OXmsXAHU So far, R is very much like MatLab, and shares a lot of functionality with Minitab. If you're interested in learning some basic programming (easier than Java), and want to learn how to use some excellent tools for data analysis, check out R and the video series all for free. The series is top notch and the guy deserves way more traffic!

I came across an article on a war jounalists views of why young men are drawn to the military. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/sebastian-junger-knows-why-young-men-go-to-war-f163804cbf6 The article doesn't present very good evidence and puts forth a lot of things without substantial arguments, but it did get me thinking on rites of passage. Junger says that young men are drawn to the military because it's one of the only ways they know to become a man. It occurred to me that young men have no direction from school, family, or media what they have to do to transition from boys to men. So I'm curious, what modern rites of passage have you seen, and how do boys transition to men?

There's lots of tools to decide where to allocate resources in a company, mainly economic returns analysis. When deciding what to spend money on, a company will estimate where they will get the most bang for their buck. For keeping track of assets, prices are still used to estimate resource allocation. This is the whole purpose of accounting practices like GAAP which can be used to track inter-company transactions as well as outside purchases and costs. You're correct about smaller companies having a competitive advantage through quick decision making. Some larger companies try to emulate the smaller company advantage by making different business units as autonomous as possible. Gore (makers of Gore-tex) is a prime example of a diffuse corporate model.

As a mathematical concept, infinity seems to have the same validity as any other "number." Where infinity is different is that it is not observable. I can see that there are no eggs in my basket, I can see that there are a billion eggs in my basket, but I cannot see if there are infinite eggs. As for some infinities being larger than others, I remember from limits that one part of an equation would dominate another because it would approach infinity faster than the other. It wasn't that one infinity was bigger than the other, it's that one of the variables or ends of the equation would always be greater than the other, and you could cancel out an infinity that way. The definition of a number according to google is, "an arithmetical value, expressed by a word, symbol, or figure, representing a particular quantity and used in counting and making calculations and for showing order in a series or for identification." Since the definition of a number doesn't include that it needs to be observed, and since infinity doesn't contradict any part of that definition, I can conclude that yes, infinity is a number. It is different from every other number, but it is still a number.

I've heard Stef talk about this phenomenon before. Examples include Rome the republic becoming Rome the empire (why people still think republics will work 2000 years later is beyond me), The English empire that started out as constitutionally limited then collapsed after WW1 and WW2. And right now, the constitutionally bound United States of America that has become the nation with the most laws, the most prisoners, and the most occupied foreign countries in history. I as understand it, when a nation gets out of the way of it's economy, the economy grows faster than the rest of the world. The state leaching off that economy gets bigger and bolder than any of it's competing states. It takes over larger sections of it's economy and oppresses it's people, but does so slowly enough that the majority do not realize it. Since the state also grew more powerful than it's neighbors through the host economy's growth, it can leverage it's power to take what it wants from foreign powers as well as it's own people. Although, any state that can dominate others and it's own populace will, as is evident by empires that never had much freedom such as communist Russia. The reason for this is the very nature of the state itself, which must use violence to accomplish it's ends. Those ends are never for the good of the people. State's began with "Do what I say or I'll kill you," and that's what they'll always will be.

Some support for Stef's argument that officer's pistols were meant to shoot soldiers on their side: >Pistols don't have much stopping power unless they hit a vital organ. There are many records of people being shot in close combat with a pistol and not realizing it for another few minutes. The same thing has happened with rifles, but pistol users experience it more consistently. This lends credence to the idea of pistols as an execution device or a self defense tool rather than an offensive weapon. >Pistol developments in magazine size and rate of fire typically proceed rifle development. For example, in the US military, the Colt 1911 was developed as part of a self-loading pistol competition that originated in the 1890s. A self loading rifle was not adopted until 1936, 25 years after the pistol. If firearm development was about making your forces deadlier, it would makes sense to upgrade the general infantry man's rifle before his officer's pistol. >All officers had pistols. For a rear officer who did not expect combat, weapons as pistols wouldn't make much sense. There are weapons such as PDWs or carbines that were easily carried, would not fatigue a fit person and would be much more effective in repelling a surprise attack than a pistol. For generals and rear officers to carry pistols instead of carbines or PDWs indicates that their weapons had a purpose other than self defense. Pistols do make excellent backup weapons when a soldier's primary stops working, but for rear personnel, there are better options. There is also lots of anecdotal evidence surrounding the purpose of pistols in the military. For example, in Iraq, some American officers would conceal their sidearms as previously, the only people to carry sidearms were Sadam's secret police. So for Iraqis, pistols were associated with executions. I haven't done a lot of investigating, but these are some of the reasons I don't doubt that the primary purpose of a pistol is to execute, and not to fight. Thanks, and keep on pondering!

I head Stef say once that, "no good thought fits on a bumper sticker." I think that would make a great T-Shirt. Love your bumper sticker, it's a great way to promote the show!

I'm surprised at how well thought out the feminist arguments are in this case. I think they are deserving of a rational reply. Kevin did a great job dissecting each of the arguments. If you get the opportunity to talk with the feminist again, I'd be interested to hear what they have to say to Hannah's comparison between the Westborough Baptist Church and feminism. Although, this won't work on someone who isn't an atheist. I think you got lucky with this feminist and found someone who might be converted... might.

I recently chewed through the Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor and I've become smitten with the work. The book is research focused and contains sources that backs up claims and is well foot-noted. Despite the heavy academic emphasis, the text is easy to read and understand. Achor has developed 7 'principles' for improving work performance through positive psychology. Adopters of positive psychology can expect statistically significant increases in work output and quality of life. The Happiness Advantage starts each principle with a anecdote that is then explained by the author. Next is supporting research and then methods for taking advantage of the principle. As the FDR community loves self-improvement, I recommend this book to anyone who is struggling to bring positivity to their work place and personal relationships. This book may be especially helpful for people just breaking out of the matrix and going through the "there's no hope, everything is not awesome" stage of philosophical development. Here are some videos by the author, I don't think they're a substitute for the book, but they'll help get you started. Shawn Achor's Ted Talk (20 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLJsdqxnZb0 Shawn Achor's Talk at Google (1 hour): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Muce2TxDlMw I'm interested to hear what the rest of the FDR community has to say on this book, so please leave your opinions. If you haven't read it, I'd suggest you buy it, right after you donate some more to FDR! Thanks, and happy pondering!

I've done a lot of thinking on this subject as a hunter myself. My conclusions was that animals do not have the capability to be moral actors or to become moral actors and are not subject to the same moral concerns as people. Ethics around animals includes respecting other people's animal property and other people's access to wild animals. In other words, hunting should be conducted in a universally sustainable manner. Right now, the state oversees the rules governing sustainable hunting, but I would bet there would be an oversight and licensing agency in a free market and that nonconforming hunters would be ostracized. The rest of the post is how I came to that conclusion: I started with the idea that something separates people from animals. In terms of UPB, I believe that the difference between people and animals is that people are moral actors capable of making choices while considering UPB or other ethics systems. Animals, on the other hand cannot. As animals are not moral actors, morality does not extend to them. I found that this argument would also mean that morality would not extend to young children and needing amending. As such, morality should be expanded to not just moral actors, but intelligence that can become moral actors. This would include children, aliens, artificial sentience, and talking rocks. Wild animals, as non-moral actors, can be considered a type of public resource. No one puts explicit effort into raising the animals or providing resources to them, so they are not property. Shooting an animal on someone's property can still be considered wrong as you would have to trespass to retrieve the carcass, and that if you didn't retrieve the carcass, you would have vandalized the property. As a public resource, wild animals would be subject to similar ethics as waterfalls, lakes, grassy knolls, and mountains. Wild animals would need to be treated in a sustainable fashion such everyone could follow the same guidelines you use in interacting with the animals and that these behaviors could be maintained. In order to monitor sustainability, hunters would likely contribute to an company or non-profit that would devise guidelines for hunters and oversee their activities. An ethics system would naturally develop just as it in business interactions or interacting with other people's children. Nonconforming hunters would suffer as people who became aware of a hunter's unethical activity would have less desire to interact with them socially or commercially. One aspect of UPB as it applies to animals that I have not come to a conclusion on is the bounds of animal abuse. One the one hand, I see dismembering a living cat as wrong, but shooting a deer as not-wrong. Killing an animal in order to survive is not-wrong, but killing one for amusement is. I suppose at this point, the ethics of hunting come down to the purpose of the hunt. Are you hunting in order to avoid buying beef, because you believe the cows are treated less ethically than the deer? Or are you hunting in for sport, and throwing away the meat? I'm interested what everyone else has to say on the question. Keep on pondering!

Alfie Kohn has written a book called "The Homework Myth." This book is based on the study that Lians referenced here and Stef referenced in the show. Since my own views on the value of homework are conflicting, I went hunting for data. I then decided that I didn't want to piece together tables, so I decided to go with the most comprehensive source I found. What I stumbled upon was a page by the center for public education. The page goes over a history of studies and summarizes their conclusions. On the value of homework, they wrote: Does homework affect student learning? Myth 1: Homework increases academic achievement. What researchers say: Cooper (1989a) argues that reviews on the link between homework and achievement often directly contradict one another and are so different in design that the findings of one study cannot be evaluated fairly against the findings of others. Myth 2: Without excessive homework, students’ test scores will not be internationally competitive. What researchers say: Information from international assessments shows little relationship between the amount of homework students do and test scores. Students in Japan and Finland, for example, are assigned less homework but still outperform U.S. students on tests (Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development 2004). Other studies find a positive relationship in math, but not in reading (Fuchs et al. 2004). Myth 3: Those who question homework want to weaken curriculum and pander to students' laziness. What researchers say: Kralovec and Buell (2001) note that homework critics rarely question the work assigned but rather the fact that the work is so often performed at home without adult supervision to aid the learning process. - See more at: http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Instruction/What-research-says-about-the-value-of-homework-At-a-glance/What-research-says-about-the-value-of-homework-Research-review.html#sthash.DgIeC0lR.dpuf There's more fascinating reading there, so I suggest you check it out. There's no conclusive proof one way or another, but it seems that homework has assumed value that can't be proved. Just like religion and the state, homework also has significant downsides such as limiting time for the parent child bond and penalizing children learning at a different rate. I know that several people have mentioned that they wouldn't have learned a subject without homework. I want to say, what you would have failed without was practice, not homework. If the teacher hadn't assigned homework, and you failed the first test, you'd either turn it around, or fail out of the class. In which case, homework wouldn't have saved you. I hope you all had as much fun reading this post as I did reading the rest. Thanks guys and keep on pondering!

Engineering licensees are not necessary to legally practice engineering in the US. The professional certification is done by an engineering society to endorse an engineers abilities. The professional certification is like a CPA in that you do not need the certification to build something, but when you have, people will assume your good at it. As a recent graduate in industrial engineering, I have to say congratulations (or almost congratulations) to DSEngere! Personally, I consider a professional engineering certification a bigger accomplishment than a PHD, way to go!

You sir, are a badass. Well said.

I've heard Stephan say that you are morally responsible for your choices when you start holding others responsible for theirs. That makes a lot of sense to me and was useful for apply to my own choices and the choices other people made around me. For example, if your mother told you not to hit other children, she is holding you morally responsible and is thus responsible for her own actions. If she then hit you, she was acting immorally by her own standards and should be held responsible. Even if she claims she it happened during hard times or because she was stressed, she is still responsible because she still held someone else responsible for their actions. I know it takes a while to get one's head around the concept of when moral culpability starts, but I hope this helps. Good luck and thanks for the post Hugz! Jack

Nice post Ron, it sounds like you've found yourself in a potentially dangerous situation. As Dolly is married and still pursuing you, it would be safe to say that she does not like one-partner relationships. That means that even if her husband died tomorrow and you married her, eventually, she'd probably cheat on you. In addition, since you didn't mention she's coming off of statism or religion, I'd bet she's not serious about an intellectual connection. Dolly seems to be obsessed with you because of your intelligence, uniqueness (atheist anarchist), and I'd assume honesty. My first inclination is to say, "tell her flat out you're not interested and stop taking her gifts," but that may not be the best idea. If you come out against her affection too strong, she may try to damage your relationship with Stephanie. It's very hard for me to feel free empathy for Dolly because it seems like she's trying to use you to validate her power as a woman. For how to reject Dolly (that seems to be what you want to do), I can't really give advice. Your closest to the situation and know more about it than I do. I can say, that you should keep track of what happens when you're with Dolly, especially alone. Keep a journal, and make copies of records when you can. It may come down to Dolly trying to leverage sexual harassment against you and you'll want evidence of the truth on your side. I wish you luck for dealing with Dolly and Stephane, and I hope it won't disrupt your life. Thanks for the post, Jack

People's resistance to self-knowledge drives me to a lot of isolation. It's damn discouraging thinking "No matter how many times I talk to, or debate them, they may never get it. They may never pull themselves out." As for getting people in the matrix to think a little more, I've found that it really helps to start picking at an issue they already have some philosophical sympathy for. For example, if someone says, "Democrats and Republicans are all liars!," I can start talking to them about how the people drawn to politics are naturally more despicable than average. Although, again, I usually get to the point where they get delusional and won't give something up and I fool myself into thinking that some combination of words will get them to see reason. It's depressing.

I'm going through the same struggle myself. I can talk about some things that helped for me, but I'm still overweight so take it with a grain of salt. Not literal salt though, salt is bad mkay. Nutrition and Exercise are my two focuses. Something that helps with both is establishing a schedule. A schedule is extremely important because it helps establish habits. I eat my meals at the same time each day. I work for about the same amount of time, then I work out for a couple of hours. If I have more work to do in a day, I do it after working out. For a weekly schedule, I only go to the gym on work days, Saturdays I take off, and Sundays, I play a team sport. The sport helps keeps me motivated to keep working out and helps get me some extra social contact. It's important to realize, that not every day of every week will go perfectly. I do miss some days. When I do, I make up the workout on Saturday. When I go out to a meal with someone, I generally don't keep control and have to make up for it with a weeks worth of health meals afterwards. I find the schedule to be extremely important and I strive to make up for any misses I get. Oh, and If I miss two days, then I make up for it by going to the gym twice on Saturday. Now for the nutrition. I'm an engineer, so I like some science and proof in my nutrition. The most convincing plan I've found is the one proposed by Dr. Joel Fuhrman in his book Eat to Live: http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=joel+fuhrman+eat+to+live&tag=googhydr-20&index=stripbooks&hvadid=18834042149&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13250508124531663551&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_1310oavcuu_b Fuhrman argues for a fresh foods diet of fruits and vegetables. In general, I do 80% of my grocery purchases in the produce section. The remainder is buying canned beans (I can never re hydrate beans successfully) and the occasional treat (my treats tend to be chips and salsa or a dish with small amounts of meat in it. I admit, I'm horrible about having treats and it's kept me from living a truly health lifestyle. If you can eliminate the treats, you'll be way better off. For exercise, I signed up for a gym. My gyms has a huge array of facilities and was the most expensive membership in town. The advantage, is that I can do what ever workout I want there. I can do cardio, cross-training, weight-lifting, core, stretching, and swimming. All without leaving the building. I also shelled out for some personal trainer lessons. The first few lessons were about setting up a workout routine. The routine consisted of me writing down and entire weeks worth of planned exercises and keeping track of my progress. I strongly recommend you work with a personal trainer to establish a week long routine that you can cycle through. After the routine was set up, I kept meeting with the trainer once every two weeks for the minimum appointment time so that he could keep track of my progress and offer further advice and recommendations. The route I took was probably the most expensive for working out, but it was worth every penny for me and I now consider a gym membership an essential expense. Now, I'm the kinda guy that tends to do things at a 110%. As a consequence, I can burn out really easily. Establishing a schedule and an outside contact for keeping track of my fitness was essential for me. I recommend you do the same. I'm 5' 11" and started out at 240 lbs. I got down to 200 lbs, but got sick with bronchitis (totally unrelated, I think). I had a major hiccup with bronchitis, but now I'm back on track, eating well and working out. When I'm on track I lose about 2.5 lbs a week. The weight loss is very consistent, although it can slow down as my body gets used to working out, or if I slip on food. I expect I'll lose another 30 lbs under this plan, but the wonderful thing is that I can and will do it for the rest of my life. I'll never have to worry about fitness again and I'll be much better prepared to fight off illness later in life. I still need to work on self knowledge to find out why I got fat in the first place, but I'm confident that I will continue to grow in philosophy and shrink in waist size. I hope you meet with the same success. Good hunting, Jack