Ace

For girls it's far more just delineated by physical attractiveness. Pretty well all men pay attention to the beautiful woman first instinctively. Women see that and even less pretty ones still feel pressured to devote a lot of effort to try to be as physically attractive as possible. It's not a sharp line between attractive and not attractive women, it's a scale of course. There is kind of a fixed point though, the prettiest girls that men just fawn over. There are girls who are still very attractive, but not to the point where they get the same massive amount of attention all their life. It's at the highest level where that really manipulative nature develops. Less attractive girls can still use sex appeal to manipulate in certain situations but not at such a widespread level. They never get that experience of being able to use their looks as a currency so universally. Myself, I feel like you kind of learn where your level is for realistically attracting someone. I still find the 9 or 10 most physically attractive the same as anyone else, but realized it's not going to happen lol, so you lower your sights. But, it's still instinctively based on attractiveness - I would, in the past anyways, choose the bitchy 7 over the nice 5 or 6 and suffer the consequences. I can't speak for women, but I think that less pretty girls are still most attracted to the alpha males the same as the most attractive ones are. In kind of the same way, they "settle" at least in the sense of what we're biologically drawn towards. I don't think that less attractive people automatically look towards substance, personality, and so on when choosing a partner - you're still acting on those instinctive drives. And as we know it changes a lot depending on what stage of life a person is in. This is more a description of youth, prior to having children. After that, for women, the priority changes obviously.

It depends where you go though. I don't know about parking tickets. But in Ontario if you have an outstanding bill from the 407 which is the private toll highway, they won't let you renew your license or plates until you've paid it. And there may be credit implications - for everything these days, I had $21 in library fines and they sent me a letter saying I have 60 days to pay or they'll forward it to a collections agency lol. But lots run by private companies I have seen are always very well marked with signs. It was probably an ad for something.

I tend to avoid such things at work in most situations. If you get to know someone better you can be a little more open. I work with one guy who is close to my age. He's not religious, he likes to party and hook up with random women all the time. But once we were traveling together and the topic of religion came up and he said "I think it's bullshit but it's good for kids to go to church". And I challenged him on that a bit but realized pretty quick there wasn't any value to be gained from pressing it. It's nice to have people at work with whom we're friendly, but at the end of the day we're there to make money. So in a sense work relationships are an obligation. If you had someone in your personal life that you considered a really close friend who was ardently religious and you didn't challenge them on it and continued to spend lots of time with them by choice, I think that would be cowardly. I work with people who are terrible human beings but I still have to get along with them. I don't hang out with them outside of work, but I'm friendly to them, they're friendly to me, and I don't see that as me being a hypocrite. It's impossible to completely avoid that in any job. I think the important thing to work on is to be consistent with values in our personal lives. I wouldn't even bother arguing with someone unless I had got to know them pretty well and had some notion that they are open to reason. Changes to society don't come by making arguments as Stef says in a lot of podcasts. People aren't religious, statist, abusive, etc. etc. because they've made a logical and rational calculation that that is the best course to take. I really don't encounter very much religious or political conversation at work. I'll sort of put in my two cents on something if asked but there's just absolutely nothing to be gained from passionately advocating my position, much more the potential to lose something. Religious people love to go whining to HR...

Grand Theft Auto is a pretty open world game, is that beneficial? I think that's a really interesting question. GTA V sold something like 12 million copies within 24 hours of release. It's beyond violent, it's incredibly sick and twisted - the one character Trevor you can play is a psychopathic serial killer. There's strategy involved, especially in GTA V, you do your heists and can choose to plan them in different ways, hire different characters to help you, etc. You can play it online and you interact with others that way. So is the content important? I mean there are millions of young kids who have played it even though it's supposed to be 18+. Or maybe it's just entertainment and there isn't that much effect? I thought GTA V was a lot of fun and played lots of other violent games when I was a kid. Sometimes I wonder whether it has an impact, or, whether the desire to play those sorts of games is the result of some common type of experience in childhood. But they're so popular and widespread that it seems tough to believe there is some common thread there. The one thing is that it's much more a male thing.

That's big in Korea. I think it get's pretty raw and the fun is lost. It almost becomes mathematical. In a game like StarCraft they would have it worked out to a science, the best possible strategy taking into account all the factors. There's a big difference between playing games against other people vs. the computer. But to become one of the best requires such an incredible time investment. And I don't know that at that level there's so much value other than towards being better at the game itself. In something like Counterstrike, it involves a lot of hand eye coordination, reaction time, etc. and obviously the more you practice that the better you'll get. But it's a pretty narrow skill to learn. I could be wrong maybe it makes you better at sports or something. But, I think one of the key things in judging the value of a certain activity for children is whether it helps them develop skills that are transferable to other endeavors they will pursue. I think that abstract casts a pretty wide net when it comes to video game playing. They say 97% of kids play over an hour of video games a day? That seems really high to me. I'd have to believe a lot of that includes the pretty mindless "time killer" tablet/smartphone games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush. Not exactly ones requiring really deep strategic thinking.

I've played Minecraft a few times and it is scary even to an adult! You're walking along and one of those guys that blows up comes up and you aren't paying attention and it shocks the hell out of you. Or you go down into the underground caves, you can't see, and skeletons appear out of nowhere, jump scares all over the place. I tend to think that trying to discern negative or positive effects from video games is just so difficult, maybe even impossible. If they even do have an effect one way or the other, how do you isolate that from all the other factors in a young person's life? I think a lot of games could be of benefit if you used it as a teaching tool. I remember we got a new computer and it came with Sim City 2000, this would have been in maybe 1995 so I was 8 or 9. I played it, but a large portion of the game was just over my head. I would do the building part, but the actual management of the city, setting the tax rates, issuing bonds, etc. etc. I didn't understand any of that. If someone was helping me understand that it might have been valuable. But I just played the games myself, my parents never took any interest in it. So a lot of it was just messing around, not playing the game with an objective. So it all depends on the game and how it's played. Some games are specifically designed to be educational, some require a lot of thinking and strategy, others are pretty mindless. So any conclusion a study could make would have to be very specific. People want really broad ones, but it's like saying whether watching TV is good or bad for kids. Well, it depends what they're watching.

Was this downtown in some really busy area where parking is very limited? Otherwise I don't know I can imagine getting a ticket for a sloppy parking job unless you went sideways across 3 spaces or something ridiculous like that. I think probably 1 in 4 cars in any parking lot have their tires on the line, it's not peoples' strong suit very often.

I've always been just a little suspicious of the whole "if you haven't done anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about" argument.

So is every parent in the UK who sends their children to public school going to jail?

Lol some of the guys at work showed me that last week. I got a kick out of it.

"Most happy, then, is the arrangement whereby people who have inherited through the great statesmanship and sacrifice of others both a set of political principles and institutions that limit political authority to its rightful ends and moral habits that favor the civil resolution of differences. Most wise are people who regard themselves as stewards of that inheritance. And most foolish are people who would squander that inheritance for a false dream of liberty." That really describes modern democracies... Limited political authority, civil resolution of differences.

The alpha is the guy who impregnates the woman and the beta is the guy who pays the bills afterwards. It's more complicated of course, but in a nutshell fairly accurate I think. But it's at the instinctive level. A goal of self-knowledge and philosophy in relationships is to rise above the animal motivations for choosing a partner.

Well your sperm don't go swimming for the egg and then realize "oh shit he's not prepared for all the responsibility of parenthood let's hold back guys". In Canada anyways, the US is probably a little lower but fairly close, the average woman these days is 29.5 years old when they have their first child. So I don't know where you get the idea that people are expected to have children in their early 20's. More in the past, and in certain cultures. I travel for work to some Mennonite and Hutterite communities and girls there, if they are 22 without a husband and 3 kids she's an old maid. But that's certainly not the case in society at large anymore. I think with medical technology these days, women can pretty safely have children up to age 35 or so before the risk of complications starts to rise significantly. But even still, there are tons of women having kids older than that. Wait until you meet someone you can really connect with and you're certain you want to be with them for life, and then if you want kids go wild. I'm sure you've listened to some of the podcasts, it's a common theme - just how much of the ills in society are the result of couples in dysfunctional relationships having kids, becoming dysfunctional parents, getting divorced, having a kid raised by a single mother, etc. etc. So I think the key factor in deciding to have kids is finding the right partner first. Rushing into it because society or your family expect you to do so by a certain age is a terrible idea.

Very powerful video. I think I'm scared completely straight about chasing attractive women. Substance over style. Really makes you think hard... If I hadn't come across FDR I just know I would end up in a dysfunctional empty marriage someday, no doubt about it. It just reminds about how important self knowledge is. Otherwise, we just keep trying to fix things the wrong way, and nothing ever gets repaired. And unfortunately most people do that their entire life. But what a miserable ending. Really sad.

It's not their style certainly. The Argentinian government's economic strategy for years has basically been to borrow lots of money and then never pay it back. They prefer that system.

You're much better off just playing along and appealing to their authority. Recognize where you do and don't have choice. When you are under the authority of the police in a specific situation, you do not have a choice. You can do what a lot of people do which is mouth off and start talking about your rights, but for all practical purposes that's just going to get you a worse outcome. You want to do whatever you can to expedite yourself through a situation where you are being compelled to comply by the use of force.

Well, the only way they get away with arguing that a "rape culture" exists is by expanding the definition to the extent where almost everyone can be grouped in. I saw an article in the National Post which looked at some stats put out by a group from a university in Quebec - they consider any instance in which a woman has sex while intoxicated as sexual assault/rape. They also love to reference that book "Body Wars". I haven't read it but the regularly quoted statistics from it are that 8% of men have attempted to or successfully raped someone and 30% of men say that they would rape if they knew they'd get away with it.

Well the unfortunate thing is that I think most people view having children as just another waypoint in a "normal" life. It's almost a social expectation. I can remember my mom always saying that people without kids end up as weirdos. I know a couple who had their first kid a while back. The whole family planning schedule is around how long maternity benefits last, etc. etc. As soon as they ran out, wife was back to work, kid stuck in daycare. And they just whine constantly about how expensive daycare is. Daycare around here is over $1000 per month for 5 days a week. So instead of having one parent stay home and getting by on a little less they decide it's better to have both parents work, with pretty close to half of one's after tax income going to daycare so they can have an extra $1000 or $1500 a month to buy frivolous stuff. None of the choices are based around what's best for the child, it's all about financial considerations. They bought a ridiculously large house for people in their early 30's and are mortgaged to the limit I'm sure. I think most believe that since people can't consciously remember things before they were 2 or 3 years old that nothing that happens during that time sticks with you. It's very sad.

That's so sick I thought it was a joke first time I read about that form of the procedure. I'm no expert but I think Rabbi Cohn's banana peel analogy might be a slightly flawed argument...

So for decades they've been encouraging excessive mortgage lending by allowing financial institutions to pass their risk off to the taxpayer through Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and now they're spending more money to do the opposite.

I think that the definition of the fallacy makes sense. But the examples seem not to really follow it. The conclusions kind of seem like non sequiturs. On Wikipedia it defines it logically as: If P, then Q.P is a fallacious argument. Therefore, Q is false. I think it's more along the lines of - "Nutritionists say that we should eat healthy food. Therefore we should eat healthy food. That we should eat healthy food because nutritionists say so is an argument from authority. Therefore we should not eat healthy food." An argument which contains a fallacy cannot be accepted as true according to the rules of logic. But you can't then logically conclude that because it contains a fallacy that it is false.

That's true, it causes severe injury to have neighbours who believe there are more than zero Gods. It picks pockets and breaks legs.

I thought that was a joke but the photos are captioned. They just cut a hole in your wall with the big Stihl saw and throw in a flasbang and take all your records. The third photo in there actually says that the Ukrainian tax police fired on workers and wounded five during a raid on a business?!? The "gun in the room" isn't figurative at all. Makes me very grateful to just have to deal with the grumpy border services agency people when coming back from vacation. I think it's a pretty universal rule, anywhere that the police wear balaclavas all the time it's not good news.

Funny how they use that "welcome to the carnival check out the weirdos" music throughout. It's pretty typical though, Vice always just scrapes the surface of anything they cover. Everything is sensationalized and the whole model to selling their stuff and drawing in viewers is "check out how f'd up this is!" Some of their documentaries are interesting just in that they cover niche topics in a pretty gritty fashion. But I don't think any of it is very profound. But at least it wasn't like every other Vice piece with a hipster host from New York going out into the wild somewhere and whining about how cold it is the whole time.

The greatest rule in life - it's better to ask forgiveness than permission.