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How poor are being helped right now? We have huge government overhead which eats large portion of the money. Also, as others pointed out there are what we call deserving poor and undeserving poor. It is obvious that shovelling money at alcoholics will only harm them. Big central institution have no way to distinguish between the two. Also, how how did you arrived at the conclusion that minority of people who won't help the poor will be enough that poor won't be helped? Lastly, helping the poor isn't restricted to giving money. You can also create jobs which is even more helpful because it creates sustainable money source. In current economy with all the restrictions less amount of jobs are created.

Welcome! I hope you will have great time here.

If you make this about persuading her it won't work and will bring potential problems in your relationship. Instead try focusing on her experience. She expressed her discomfort which is brave and honest thing to say. I would explore that by asking questions like "what does your faith mean to you?", "what happened in your past which caused you to feel this discomfort?" etc. It is important to express frequently that you don't want to persuade her to anything but simply know more about her. Abstract arguments targeted at dogma only hardens it, which was proven scientifically. Having this mindset gives her sense of security and ultimately a choice to re examine her beliefs.

Strange coincidence. Just stumbled upon this podcast (start at 30 minute mark): http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1766_Sunday_Show_10_Oct_2010.mp3 http://www.fdrpodcasts.com/#/1766 There are interesting insights about topic in question by the caller and Stef.

That's interesting. What lead you to that conclusion? You are half right. I don't have many friends but I'm working on improving those relationships. However I'm in a romantic relationship with fantastic person who I have incredibly deep connection with. Thanks to her I started to denormalize my dysfunctions. When I encountered FDR I brought those new ideas to her which lead to further improvement of our connection.

I didn't found out this approach useful. To me listening to music that don't reflect my emotional state does nothing for me. I fully accept that I'm full of sadness and sorrow and don't try pretend otherwise. Therefore I'm drawn towards darker stuff. Of course if in the moment I'm feeling happy or pumped up I tend to listen to more lively stuff. I have particular aversion towards mainstream pop, because in my opinion it sends the message "be happy no matter what" which is no different than base dissosiation. Especially I dislike songs about so called "love". It dawned on me one day that there's kind of desperate undertone in them. Then I concluded that it has to do with feelings of abandonment from childhood which then are projected to the perfect guy/girl in the song. It's unsettling to me because it presents sadness as happiness.

Recently I've been mauling about my present and past music preferences. For majority of my teenage life I was getting into more heavy styles of metal (death metal, metalcore etc.). Back then I lacked the connection with myself and didn't even knew it. Now I understand how my trauma led me to like particular styles. Nowadays, I can appreciate wild range of rock, blues, metal. I can't however connect with purely "happy" music. To me it just feels artificial and pompous (no judgement here, just my subjective experience). When I listen to melancholic sounding tracks I tend to get emotional, sad. Does the music I connect with is good in bringing out the pain of the past or is it used as self-medication to project the emotions somewhere else? I get that when lacking self-knowledge music can be used to avoid stuff but when one accepts true source of pain can embracing darker sounds can aid better connection with oneself? How does your path to self understanding changed your music preferences?

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but this video is interesting from philosophical standpoint. Whole thing is quite good, but really tasty part starts at 5:48: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMb00lz-IfE#t=349 If it were possible to predict behavior of humans given all variables are known this would imply that entropy must be constant, which is impossible. If those quantum effects are totally random how then we can have free will which seems purposeful? Well, complexity and chaos gives purpose and order. In biology it's evident. Some random movement of particles made RNA and then DNA, which started long chain of evolution leading to us - new information was created. You can say that this isn't completely random, because evolution simply responded to the environment. This is false, because everything in the universe obeys basic quantum laws. So bacteria may only respond to the types of conditions on the Earth, but Earth itself is chaotic and complex system. This self referential loop is what gives order from chaos. How free will isn't just simply responding randomly to the environment then? Well sort of it is. But, free will only makes sense in interaction with other human beings. Brain is interacting with other brains. That creates constraints to the randomness of such complex system which makes a set of rules emerge (UPB). One more interesting point. Entropy of the whole universe increases with time. Given that free will requires complexity before some point in time, it was physically impossible.

Hi! It's my first post so I wanted to introduce. Registered here because there's lack of like-minded people in my life. Yay internet! I was always unconsciously disturbed about society and my life. Also, I kinda like science and wondered if the method can be applied to society. When I found Stef's videos on YouTube I was shocked but curious. After listening to UBP everything just clicked for me and I no longer feel alone in my mind. Until that point I thought I was evil or crazy since rarely anyone wanted to talk about this stuff with me. Thanks to this philosophy my current romantic relationship got even better and there's no sign that this will stop. Hobbies: technology, science, programming, guitar. I hope I will have productive discussions here!