Matthew Ed Moran

Hi, I just had a thought about my cannabis usage over the past 5 years (with a 1 year break) that I began in my journal. I wanted to share it with you Cannabis can relieve anxiety in the moment, but if it breaks through, it will be more present. It will be more uncomfortable, and at times nearly unbearable. It will be a physical experience of anxiety without any limitation or method of managing it. What does this remind me of? My mother. I was not able to control my mother's anxiety. I was able to master this anxiety I felt by recreating my own mother in my head, and adhering to what I thought would make her more anxious, and by facilitating what I thought would make her less anxious. Many people experience uncontrollable anxiety when they first use cannabis. I did. Even now I sometimes do - often, in fact. Every smoking experience I've had over the past year has involved at least some anxiety while I've smoked. I think this is a sign of relative health compared to when I was able to smoke without any anxiety. What is the effect of cannabis overall on anxiety? It increases anxiety. This is because if cannabis is being used to manage anxiety, the user will not have to manage their anxiety with their foresight and frontal lobes, or an "inner parent" (not to be confused with an inner abuser). And the body will create more anxiety in response. When the body is then without cannabis, the person is left off unpracticed in managing their anxiety without cannabis. The more the cannabis use, the more frequent, the more well-timed, the more the person loses the ability to manage their anxiety without it. I think I used cannabis despite it making me more uncomfortable in my first uses because I felt insecure that there was not an uncontrollable source of anxiety in my life. I had spent my whole life managing anxiety from my mother, from the fact that I was afraid of being rejected and abandoned (another way of saying from my mother), from public school; that when I was living on my own at 19, doing well in a philosophy college course, I felt insecure by the relative lack of anxiety in my life, and I sought to create more. It was trauma-recreation to create an uncontrollable anxiety in my life that I would have to learn to master, and find ill-found joys in. It is no coincidence that my cannabis use began when I moved out of my mom's at 19, and that my anxiety management (in terms of alleviating it without cannabis) has worsened the more I've used weed. Thank you for reading and I hope this encourages you go avoid becoming addicted to cannabis, and to work to quit (with professional guidance if possible) if you are already addicted.

Your principle that there is an origin to the origin of the universe violates two principles, which are two different ways of expressing the same thing: Occam's Razor, and the physics principle of conservation (this is so ironic because you claim knowledge of what principles truly are, and yet you cannot apply them to validate your conclusions). You claimed principles are primary, but principles are communicated through sense data. Literally everything else we know of besides humans cannot reason from principles, but organisms can exist because of their capacity to sense data and react unconsciously. We derive sense data as primary to our existence - literally, at least millions of organisms (im estimating way under to be cautious) had to exist and reproduce successfully for humans to even exist in this blink of history we inhabit. If "sense data is not primary" is to mean anything at all, then it is clearly to ignore the preponderance of evidence in the evolution of the first sensing organism billions of years ago until the recent Human animal that sense data was primary and abstract principles did not exist to make sense of any of it. I believe I have learned enough about this Kantian/Plato/Religious/Msyticism group of contradictory propositions to spot it here and expose it's fallacies, but please anyone correct me if I'm making a mistake. I want to make sure I'm applying what I'm learning from Stef about epistemology correctly.

maybe a "truth about bill gates" is in order?

Hi, I want to learn about the history of philosophy, but I don't know who is most credible. I am most interested in Western philosophy, but would appreciate any particularly insightful histories of other traditions of philosophy. I already have "Intellectuals" by Paul Johnson on my reading list. Any books, podcasts, articles, or Youtube videos would be appreciated.

Homesteading is a physical process that takes some amount of time. Two people cannot homestead something at the same time because homesteading requires exclusive control. I think it is also important to understand that we only truly homestead physical things. if a business is founded and there are partners, or a house is equally shared by two investors, we have ways of exchanging and distributing physical goods, including fancy paper at the moment, to represent the disparity in ownership only over physical things. But ownership is exclusive - that is the whole point. if it didn't have to be and we could all use all the same things at the exact same times in the exact same ways for whatever portions of time we wanted, scarcity would not exist. property is fundamentally the recognition of the physical laws of reality, and it is important to emphasize that consistent conceptions of property do not make exceptions for the constant, unchanging laws of physical reality, for the sake of "blue costumes" or "patriotism" etc oh btw, since I didn't notice the OP was referring to homesteading "objects" - is that even possible? You could only ever possibly homestead land, which is transformed into physical objects i.e. ripping a branch off a tree to make a bow. then after the physical objects can be exchanged voluntarily, but that wouldn't be called homesteading

I would say philosophy is objective and not personal. Your opinions and beliefs are personal and subjective; but you apply philosophy to test your beliefs and opinions when they can be compared to physical reality, which is consistent and logical. Physical reality is communicated through sense data, and then validated by philosophy.

certainly it wouldn't be a very substantive critique to just say the video lacks substance or that her words were "empty." I thought her lesson was convoluted - I would have liked to hear more about where her parents were when she "felt like nothing" at 12 years old. It sounds like she felt these emotions in isolation. Is it a coincidence that this whole video is about "doing it for her 12 year old self?" I think she really wanted to share the loneliness and isolation she felt at 12 - she wanted to get it out. But alas, to what does she turn to do this? The nameless, faceless, amorphous blob of "social media"... And this is why I think she is fundamentally not doing anything different than what she describes herself as doing for the past few years. But she is pretending she is, which is harmful because it will prevent her from actually growing and healing her "12 year old self." So really, the video is more about what she isn't willing to do for her 12 year old self.

You're right, they didn't say the data point I mentioned proved/disproved anything. Thanks for the correction. (time to work a bit more on taming my confirmation bias)

"The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics—the standard by which one judges what is good or evil—is man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man." - Ayn Rand One thing that man needs to survive a relationship is a good, trustworthy, reliable, virtuous partner. In order to obtain such a partner, one has to practice sex carefully. Therefore, responsible sex is ethical sex. Promiscuous sex does not lead to a quality relationship, it leads to a life of destruction, danger, and pain. Such sex is anti happiness, thus is anti man and it therefore unethical/immoral." This is just a series of tautologies - I don't think you have actually proven that watching porn is immoral. Engaging in promiscuous sex may be different because there is the possibility of conceiving a child without being able to support him/her, so it may be more useful for you to stick with the action at hand - watching pornography.

Her interview is interesting.. I am only a few minutes in but she is very vague about why she wanted to do porn. She said she "fell into it." Have to finish the video another time, but I just thought that was interesting, since people with little self knowledge or particular blind spots tend to be vague and use deterministic language when describing choices they made in the past. Especially a choice of such magnitude, to enter the porn industry, you would think would be more curious than "oh I felt into it" or "Oh I always liked pushing the envelope" Does she ever talk about her childhood in the video? Btw someone mentioned "bella knox," and in the same post mentioned that those in the porn industry may not be victims of dysfunctional modelling of sex and physical intimacy. I thought that person might want to mention "bella knox" was raped. So yes, she claims she did porn to pay for college, but I don't for a second believe that is any kind of particular reason to do porn - the rape seems much more relevant. And after watching the data point they brought up which they said may "disprove" in part the "damaged goods hypothesis" is that the women who enter porn say they did it for money, sex, and fun - in that order. Well do we expect them to say they are normalizing dysfunctional sexual interactions they had modeled for them (of which I'd include single-motherhood)?

Not an argument.

"My father did a pretty okay job. My mother has rarely ever been much of a mother. We basically hated each other throughout my adolescence." Then later you said you loved both your parents. I find that confusing. If your mother showed hatred towards you, it is likely you internalized this and began to hate yourself. If you still feel hatred for yourself, it would make sense that you would not hold others responsible for their abuse, and that you would be unwilling to empathize with yourself. Because if you believe you are worthy of hatred then you believe you are not worthy of empathy or restitution, and that you are deserving of abuse and hatred. I think if you want to be empathetic to your own children, you must be able empathize with your own self now and as a child, first. If you are still harboring feelings of self hatred then this will undoubtedly manifest when you are raising children, and it will be 100x harder to deal with then than now. Does that make sense? Btw if your father married a woman who openly hated you, I do not see how he isn't responsible for putting you through some of the worst abuse possible, along with your mother. I'm very sorry you had to go through that.

"The liars paradox and Russell's paradox are two clear cut examples of this. It is curious that you can start with logical elements that are both reflective of the nature of reality, and combine them to arrive at a contradiction." I don't think it's curious. It just proves that when you are claiming something to be a lie, you must be referencing something other than the very claim you are making, otherwise it is self-referential and there is no way of testing it. This does not mean that the concept of a "lie" is universally not very useful and unable to be defined according to some essential characteristics and tested empirically. "My contention is this, if a way of reasoning is entirely founded upon non-contradiction and there is evidence suggesting blind spots in that kind of reasoning, one should approach conclusions made prior to the discovery of the blind spots with a renewed sense of skepticism. I will be calling back to form my argument on this particular issue after I formulate my position and have some materials and sources." There is nothing practical about your conclusion; it changes nothing. If I have a valid scientific hypothesis and I am running an experiment to test it, whether I have a "renewed sense of skepticism" or not will change not change the outcome of the experiment, nor will it make my theory valid or invalid. If you have evidence that a theory is untrue or invalid, then you actually have to make a claim and not just say "your theory could be wrong because of blind spots, and you should have a renewed sense of skepticism." anything can potentially be proven wrong or at least refined, and there are blind spots all over science but we have a method for dealing with this, which includes not violating occam's razor.

"Everybody is horrible except you. You never make jerk-bag comments, never make passive aggressive comments, would never act passive aggressively, always have perfect conversation skills, curious about everything, never pretend any emotion or image. Sounds like you're a perfect person in an imperfect world. To hell with them, am I right?" This is not constructive criticism. This is mockery and passive-aggression. He has said he is mostly a nice guy, and the mere fact that he is not perfect does not mean he is equivalent to the people he is encountering. You received negative reputation from the post but you did not address this. You could show some vulnerability by addressing the fact that your post was not taken well and you could address the fact that you were mocking him, but you did neither. "Your problem isn't unique in any way, but you feel comfortable looking for sympathy. So many other places, cities, countries are in worst shape than Austin, TX right now. So many other people with problems much worse than a bad day and misanthropy. Serves them right? Happy of the murders, rapes, terrorism, riots in the news? I'm not going to feel sympathy for someone who glees on this." And then here you try to minimize his feelings and also put words into his mouth instead of being curious and patient. You tell him he is looking for sympathy and that he feels glee in sight of murder, rape, and terrorism on the news, thereby deciding his motivations and emotional experience. Then you say you're not going to feel sympathy, as if someone is asking you to or demanding you feel sympathy. No one asked you to feel sympathy or engage in this thread, but you feel the need to let him know you're not going to feel sympathy for him. I don't think that is constructive criticism, because the focus is on you withholding your sympathy for him, not understanding his thoughts and feelings. I am not going to continue this conversation here past this post as I do not want to dominate the post with off-topic content.

Hatred is weakness. It is vulnerability. Never do I feel less in control and rational than when I am feeling hatred. If someone said "get in line faggot" to me I'm pretty sure I would feel hatred, but I don't think it would necessarily be because of what they said (after all I could rationalize that their outburst really isn't about me at all). Nothing reminds me of the trauma of my childhood and of what is most wrong with society more than sadism and verbal assaults - things that are said or done for no valid reason, for no wrong-doing you have done, but simply to piss you off and make you deal with their unprocessed hatred and rage. I hate the idea of that. I want to work to not hate people doing that, because I don't think it is rational, but nonetheless I can understand why I feel it. I also repress rage that bubbles up when I'm driving and some lunatic begins tail-gating me aggressively or something like that. Like, you petty fool, there is a car right in front of me! But I like to remember what stef said and ask myself "if a child runs up and punches you in the knee, do you get mad at him?" but it still annoys me that people can be so irresponsible that I have to treat them like they're 2 year olds. Will Torbald, it can help to show some vulnerability when you're criticizing someone. NotDarkYet can speak for himself, but I have a hard time deciding whether you are actually interested in providing useful feedback or just venting because something you read bothered you.

From what I have heard (I've yet to read the book), UPB is about defining universally preferable behavior, in distinction from universally preferred behavior. So if I didn't want someone to look at me, then looking at me could not be universally preferred, but it could still be universally preferable. I don't know how helpful that is, and I think there might be more to your question - so please call in!

Was that you who recently called in to chat about ol' Wittgenstein and the nature of language with Stef? If so, I want to say I really appreciate that call. It was one of the most enjoyable and informative philosophy discussions I've listened to since a call several months back. Have you changed any of your positions on this topic directly as a result of that call? If so, I'd be interested to hear about that. Btw, just to share how I am understanding the "liar's paradox" is that the sentence actually has no truth value because it is just made up. It doesn't actually refer to any empirical reality and is just a statement purposefully constructed to be nonsensical. I find it really interesting you think it has such profound philosophical implications.

I think you're making excuses for your mom here (correct me if I'm wrong). "She was also the one that protected us from our Dad who was actually physically abusive." This is not valid. She married an abusive person and chose to have kids with an abusive person. If she did not bring this man into your life, you would never have been abused by him. She could have chosen someone who was against hitting kids, right? He didn't abuse you while she was around, but so what? That is like her bringing a lion into the house, keeping it in the cage while she is there with you, but then letting it out when she is not around. Would you say your mom protected you from the lion she brought into the house and which was an eminent danger to you when she was not around? My mom protected me from an abusive man can't possibly mean my mom married an abusive man, and sometimes left me alone with an abusive man.

"He was a friend of my older brother and had access to do this over 5 years." So your mother raised a child who became close friends with a sexual predator, and this sexual predator preyed upon you for FIVE years, and then she claims NO responsibility? She raised a child so dysfunctional that he was BLIND to the fact that he was friends with a serial sexual predator who was preying upon his own SISTER. Your brother was the gateway through which this predator had access to prey upon you. And she raised your brother. So through her actions, you were incredibly exposed to horrible trauma. And this wasn't just any friend.. It was someone your brother was friends with for 5 YEARS.. So this is someone a good parent would want to know a lot about, because good parents are interested in who their children are friends with, because they know their children are vulnerable and therefore they take the proper precautions to understand the character of those intimately involved with their children, how they are raised at home, etc. So just to be clear, if it were not for the fact that your brother was raised so dysfunctionally that he would be friends with someone who was preying sexually on his sister, you would not have been subject to sexual abuse that occurred for 5 years under her nose. "She said to me that she could not apologize for something that she did not know about." Bah.. what a stone-cold response... The tragedy that would be in my heart, the incredible guilt I would feel if I had a child who was being sexually preyed upon for 5 years right under my nose.. I don't know how I would bear it. Your mom? Meh, can't apologize if I didn't know about it.. I think that is just one point of your mom's responsibility for this happening to you. I think there are other factors involved, too that she was responsible for (the lack of lines of communication between you and her, and the fact that you feared her). But I wanted to share my thoughts on that part just for now and hopefully my reasoning is valid and it was helpful for you to hold your mom accountable.

"ESPECIALLY when she told me during a day at school that she made the decision to get into a relationship with that guy on a whim at midnight." I think there is also some grief to be had about the quality of women in our society and how R selected they are. Hot/fertile women are looking for cheap romance and one-night stands instead of stable providers with strong characteristics, and I know the evidence of this hit me hard in the nuts when the "party scene" (get drunk, have sex with the nearest warm body of the opposite sex) became present in my mid to late teens. I wanted the pretty girl, but I didn't want to be the kind of guy who the pretty girls went after (generalizing, there were exceptions), and this left me conflicted.

I am neither - what can you pay me? edit: my apologies

Thanks so much for sharing. I found your post well written, astute, and mature. I am so sorry she treated you with such dishonesty and abused your vulnerability by hanging out with people who you consider enemies, after lying and saying she wouldn't. That must leave a scar.. Why do you think she made these choices (to chose them over you, and to be so dishonest about it)? Why do you think she was attracted to spending time with you in the first place? I really respect that you acted with such esteem in the end. I think it was courageous and showed great character to refuse to let a woman manipulate you and compromise your pride.

Hi, Mothra. I think you ask a great question and I hope other parents chime in for the benefit of you and your daughter. I'm also interested in what brucethecollie has to say since your reply to her. That said, I did want to share my curiosities and I hope they are some use to you. "I think about this with my own daughter, who doesn't seem to have a lot of self discipline." You said she goes to school (full-time?), is involved with an after-school activity, helps your mom with chickens, and does chores. Are you saying you think your daughter should be doing more than this, or doing different things, or something else? "I just want her to be happy and functional. But I worry that she will not succeed in this world without more drive." Do you think your daughter is happy and functional now? If not, why not? If she is, what are you worrying about? I do not understand the "drive" comment if she attends school full-time and does a few more things on the side. The comment does strike me as a bit euphemistic and I wonder if you can be more specific about your concern. "Maybe that's okay... but it [daughter not reading for pleasure] makes me sad." Why does it make you sad? "It's just that she comes home from school and her natural inclination is to spend the entire evening playing Animal Jam - this online video game." How does that make you feel? How much quality interaction time do you have with her if she is in school all day and then plays video games all evening? Is your main concern that your daughter is playing video games when she comes home rather than reading, or are you concerned about more than this? I think it is good you have asked this question and I hope others with more experience than I can chime in. I remember a call with Stef on this exact topic but I cannot remember the name - if I find it I will link you.

The structure of this article is SO confusing to me. This guy clearly is a WRITER first and a PHILOSOPHER second. He just throws his thesis in at the end of the article. Don't we learn in HIGH SCHOOL that the thesis/argument comes at the BEGINNING? This guy probably has like a really average IQ. Sorry if I sound snarky, but I feel really ANNOYED by this article. If you can't even follow a basic high school format of argumentation - stay out of the battle-field! Anyway I hope I can help you a bit. "Government creates the infrastructure we live in." No, government steals the infrastructure we live in. This would be like saying "I created a fine piece of art!" when all I did was steal it from an artist and sell it. "Government sets the rules that guide our economy — you know, that place where jobs come from." The "economy" doesn't exist. PEOPLE exist. The economy isn't guided. PEOPLE are guided. The only "guiding" that government gives people is that they better pay their taxes and follow government orders or really bad things will happen to them! "that places where jobs come from" is just an emotional plea to Rs who are afraid of having to compete in a market that doesn't give them welfare, unemployment insurance, unions, SS, medicare, medicaid, ETC ETC ETC "Government even influences where you vacation; when our dollar dips, a lot of places look less inviting." Great point! The government has devalued the currency by 95% over the last 100 years! "Government tells you who our enemies are — and, in this election, if that’s not enough reason to go out and vote, I don’t know what is." LOL "Government decides how much privacy — another human right — we actually have and, again, that is a major issue in this federal election." Can I please just do hanky panky without the NSA watching me via webcam?! "Because we have the freedom so many others in the world do not have." YOU-ESS-AYE, YOU-ESS-AYE

Thanks for sharing. I do not have more to add that I think will be useful, but I was curious about that in particular. Have you considered calling into the show about this (someone else asked this, but I wasn't sure if you missed it or not or chose not to respond)?