christopherjames

I second that, just got it this evening.

The fundamental point is that children are people. By replacing children with wife in the example above, any programming to the contrary is harder to avoid and suppress. Moreover, children have a remarkable intelligence which is chronically underestimated, ignored, stifled by a paternalistic mindset. I felt when reading the words "children need to be educated" a hint of paternalism. Not a criticism just an observation. On the subject of the intelligence of children have a look at The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love and the Meaning of Life. Regarding success stories... compared to what? If we are comparing peaceful parenting to hitting and abusing children, it's less about defending peaceful parenting and more about eliminating the immoral options. The outcome or benefit is that when you do not hit and/or abuse your child, you must negotiate and communicate with your child. Taking the wife analogy, imagine this: "Can someone point me to success stories of not beating your wife, what are the outcomes of people that follow this not beating your wife method?" In the absence of violence, a great many solutions will manifest, but none will do so until we correct the issue of violence first.

This was my original source for the video from the blog of Sam Harris. It has a better and original version of the clip. The video was from an annual 'peace conference' from a Muslim-Norwegian organization called Islam Net which hosts an annual "peace conference". There are written accounts of the reaction in the crowd here. Although to your point pretzelogik, there still is no definitive way to confirm the video was not edited in someway. Regardless, the sentiments of the organization remain the same, and presumably the majority of those who attend the conference are at least in agreement with a majority of the fundamental beliefs, or they would have gone to see the Lego movie or something instead :-) Oh, it wasn't out yet, ok I understand their choice now... The reason I mention any of this - The Muslim leader in the video makes a fallacious appeal to popularity by arguing that "If the common Muslims believe in these values [stoning adulterers, gays, etc.] that means that more or less all Muslims are radical... Since this is not the case, as Islam is a peaceful religion and so are the masses of common Muslims, these Shaykhs cannot be radical." This is clearly a bullshit argument. The fact that many people have a belief that is insane, is not proof of it's sanity. I would argue it makes it's insanity all the more dangerous. In the exact same way, with the same dangers, Wendy and the woman in this clip rely on a similar appeal to popularity. Bolstered by the crowd's applause, with a dash of appeal to the selfishness of the woman's desire to feel "empowered", they collectively normalize lying to and ultimately raping a man. Similarly again, If challenged the women in that clip would certainly describe such an indictment as "sexist" or "crazy", much as the Muslim would claim "islamophobia" to the description of a stoning as a "radical" act. Both acts are portrayed as "normal" rather than the crimes that they both are. Final thought, before I finally stop typing :-) This truly is a form of rape. Wendy said "men have never been in control of our bodies, we're the one's who are in control." The second sentence of the Wikipedia article on rape states rape occurs via "coercion, abuse of authority or against a person who is incapable of valid consent." We don't have to search to far for this one :-). There is no consent, ample coercion, and certainly abuse of authority in the case discussed here. What's more, imagine a group of men on a talk show laughing about raping a woman. "Woman have never been in control of our bodies, we're stronger and we're in control." I mean honestly, we'd still be counting the bodies from the resulting riots when I'm old enough to start shitting my pants again.

Good point pretzelogik, I will see if I can find some more info there.

How profoundly disturbing. I have such anger upon seeing this clip. What I find more disturbing than the advice that was given, is the jubilation from the crowd. To an extent it reminds, although on a different subject and venue, of this video of "moderate" muslims, responding in not so moderate manner to a series of questions: http://youtu.be/tpeIS25jhK4 We truly are living in the Matrix.

I think that is a very good comparison, jtj. The immune support, hormonal effects, and long term metabolic benefits of breastfeeding are well documented. In many ways products such as soylent are the result of "nutrition label thinking" and the framework of nutritional thought that this tends to create. It is so easy to compare foods based on what is written on the nutrition label, it can be tempting to imagine that that is the only consideration for nutition. There is utility in thinking this way, of course, especially when examining macronutrients - fats, carbs, protein etc. However, other variables such as the contribution of gut flora you mentioned jtj, are a huge and little understood area of nutrition, health, and digestion. uBiome has a product to help quantify gut flora which is pretty cool, for those interested: http://ubiome.com/ I overheard a man at Costco comparing two television sets a few years ago. Out loud he was reasoning to himself, this television is 1080P and this one's 1080P and this one is twice the price, why would I ever pay more? Rather than comparing the other specifications of the TV, or actually comparing the image quality, the decision was made on the most basic metrics. Much as Jelle de Jong was saying, despite it's utility at times,

I've been doing the coffee and the diet as well. The coffee allows for added energy and focus, good amounts of healthy fats, and helps promote intermittent fasting. It also takes care of the first meal of the day, which saves time and provides a nice routine which I enjoy. The foods, are a vast subject, but blended cooked veggie soups - along the lines that Dave talks about in his cookbook - are one of my favs. They are easy to make, easily modified to taste, and allow me to get many more veggies that I could stomach otherwise. Also, if you have not already, checkout the Bulletproof Diet info-graphic on his website - http://bit.ly/1kxL8F5. Make sure to pay as much attention to the "When to Eat" section as the "What to Eat" as macronutrient timing is an important aspect of the diet. He is planning to release a new "Bulletproof Diet Book" in the not too distant future FYI which, I imagine, will amalgamate the cookbook with the dietary information even further. One word of caution, it can become easy to get caught up in an 'paralysis by analysis' loop with a lot of this stuff. Keeping a 80/20 perspective has value in that regard. In other words, fundamentals first, details later. Also, elimination of bad foods and replacing them with healthy food you enjoy has huge physiological benefits; you don't feel deprived when you replace a doughnut , with an awesome steak or wonderful buttery coffee, for example. A simple rule for identifying a bad food is, huge generalization warning :-), if it comes out of a box, or if it claims to be healthy it's probably not optimal. Start with real foods, and be very sceptical of processed foods. They are not all bad, don't get me wrong, its just a useful heuristic. Ultimately, you have to let your own experience be the judge. So at some point after getting the fundamentals down, make sure to give a good two weeks of strictly clean eating as per the guide above. This provides an accurate baseline to judge what is truly working and what is not for you. One other thing, sleep. 8 hours a night is optimal. You can get free sleep tracker apps for your smart phone if you've got one. If not just note what time you go to sleep and wake for a week or so. I do not agree, and the data is behind me on this one, that the limited sleep model that Dave talks about is a healthy one. He talks about 5 hours a night, in some cases. As a newish Dad I can promise you, there is a world of difference between my performance on 8 hours vs. 5 :-) Anyways! Enough ramble. Hopefully some of that is useful. Hit me with any questions, it's a huge topic. Best.

Thank you, for the welcome! That's so cool you're from Kamloops, did you first here FDR on a road trip to Vancouver by chance :-) I really enjoyed Kamloops. We ate at a fantastic greek place downtown. Spent some time at the TRU campus where my wife was at a conference. Went to the Wildlife Park with my daughter. I was genuinely impressed by the place.

Jake, First of all, I am so sorry you feel like you have never experienced love and that your father is abusing you. That is truly terrible and I hope you are successful in finding a safe place to live, you deserve better on both counts. It take a lot of courage to stand up to peoples attacks as you are experiencing. What's more, it seems you have aspirations to move beyond your world today towards something better. You not only have an the interest in, but have experience with organic farming. You may want to checkout Joel Salatin's work at Polyface Farms (http://www.polyfacefarms.com/). Full disclosure, he's a Christian Libertarian :-). Despite this, he has some interesting ideas surrounding farming and you may find his work fascinating. Reflect on the possibility that your own love for yourself is part of what is causing your pain, a force from within demanding better from your life. Pain tells us a lot about ourselves, so do listen to its messages and remember pain is healthy. Also, Jake, I would argue you probably have a lot to love about yourself. Give yourself permission to love you. When dreaming about the farm you're going to own, for example. I don't know you, but I promise you're worth it :-)

Hello FDR! My name Chris, and would like to introduce myself to the community. I am a 26 year old male living in Vancouver, Canada. I am an immensely proud father to an amazing 16 month-old girl and loving husband to my beautiful wife. Transitioning from my current job in computer repair, I recently started a small business doing aerial photography with unmanned aerial systems. I love ‘geeking-out' on technology generally, and have a soft spot for gadgetry. I have long been an advocate of Austrian economics, but prior to FDR, have found few people who share my philosophy, I hope to change that :-). I have an interest in food production and for the past two years I have purchased half of a pasture raised cow directly from a ranch in BC, I also own a share in a dairy cow for raw milk, cream, and butter. I make Bulletproof coffee every morning, and have found it transformative. Like I said already, I would love to ‘geek-out’ anytime, on any of that stuff with you guys :-) There’s always more to learn, and I have many more interests and subjects that I’d be happy to explore with the community. I first started listening to Stefan/FDR after his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience late last year. I must admit, my first reaction upon hearing his introduction as “The largest most popular philosophy show on the internet”, was one of skepticism. Luckily, at the time I was driving with my wife and daughter from Vancouver to Kamloops, which is the British Columbian equivalent of the drive from Penn and Teller’s Desert Bus Game. This uninterrupted time was exactly what I needed to begin an unexpected and ongoing philosophical journey towards a life of greater honestly, truth, and virtue. Since this first exposure, I have worked my way thru On Truth, Real-Time Relationships and countless podcasts digesting as much as I can manage. I purchased the app Downcast just to help deal with the load. My aim is to complete the rest of Stef's books by the end of this summer. My upmost personal goal is to be the best possible father to my daughter. It goes without saying that I am an advocate of peaceful parenting. My wife and I have structured our lives so that at least one, if not both of us, are her primary care givers day-to-day; no day-care. I feel so very fortunate to have this amazing little life to guide thru existence. My biggest anticipation is for my daughter to start having the “Why?” conversations with me, I can't explain how excited I am for this phase to start. I feel, therefore, that the more I explore philosophy, the better father I can be to her, the better husband I can be to my wife, and the stronger family we will have together. I have been, and continue to be, humbled and inspired by the courage of the FDR community. As I introduce myself today, I know I have only scratched the surface of my own self knowledge and understanding of philosophy. This fact is incredibly exciting to me. To know that I have so much left to learn, and so much more growth and discovery to explore. I became a subscriber yesterday to further this journey and take action towards living these values even more completely in my life. I can’t wait to continue down this rabbit-hole with you guys! All the best, Chris