BenjaminRVA

Thought there were some interesting insights and responses in this crowd-sourced inquiry into the implications of lower IQ...in this case around 70. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3ygt9k/what_does_an_iq_of_70_entail_cognitively/

I'm in the USA, so I won't be of much help, but I want to wish you the best of luck and say how greatly I admire your courage to move to a new home in order to pursue your values! Inspiring to read.

I stopped watching porn because I couldn't get an erection to anything but porn in my early 20's. I'm less interested in the moral aspect of watching the models and their situation in life, etc...but I relate to your empathy for them, certainly. I wouldn't enjoy watching a video of someone being hurt (not because my viewing is an endorsement of the behavior or encourages it, but just because of basic empathy), and insofar as people in porn could be part of self-destructive lifestyle, that's a bummer. But that's not what made me stop. Porn:Sexuality::Junk food:nutrition. If you've ever dropped processed foods in favor of whole foods, you know how your tastes change. I know, for me, I used to find dark chocolate rather uninspiring, compared to super-sweet milk chocolates and other sweets. As I eliminated all the artificially salty and sweet foods I was eating, the taste of dark chocolate changed, dramatically....all kinds of subtle yet intense flavors emerged that my brain completely failing to register, before. The same thing has happened with my sexuality. When I was using porn, my brain was convinced I was fertilizing a harem of super-attractive women (with artificially-enhanced secondary sex characteristics) numbering in the hundreds or thousands, every day. At my leisure. My brain was convinced I'd hit the evolutionary jackpot...I was as genetically successful as a homo sapien could hope to be. In browsing this material, my brain produced a flood of dopamine, in response to all these receptive partners...and as with any neurochemical that gets produced in massive quantities, this drives down the numbers of receptors for dopamine, as your brain recalibrates to this new world where you can have as much "sex" as you want, around the clock. Problem is, dopamine doesn’t just get produced as a signal to pursue sex, it also serves as the “go get it” neurochemical for pretty much everything we do. As my dopamine receptors reduced in number, I became less responsive to the dopamine my brain produced to pursue real-life values and pleasures. I was lethargic and unmotivated...things that I used to find pleasure doing became dull. And, as I mentioned, it got to the point I couldn't respond sexually to real-life partners. And beautiful women in real life? I hardly noticed them, let alone pursued them. As with my tastes for 85% cocoa chocolate, women in my everyday life have never been more beautiful. And yes, I've eliminated the ED. Not everyone who uses porn goes so far, just as not everyone who goes to Wendy's or McDonald's becomes obese. But it's not healthy. I notice people get defensive about their porn use, and I think this makes sense: you’re threatening their access to the harem. For the porn user’s brain, you’re threatening genetic death. But, I encourage every man to at least do a one-month experiment, where they give up porn, completely, and maybe reduce masturbation to once a week, or every other week. If you have a partner, I encourage you to abandon masturbation for the entire experiment. The important caveat is that, during masturbation or intercourse, focus on physical sensations or the body of your partner and not visual fantasy. The point is to avoid firing up the neural pathways activated during porn. If those reward pathways lay dormant for a month, what are the benefits? If you do the experiment and don't notice any benefits, great! But if you notice a difference in your motivation level in daily life, your sex life, your attraction to women in real life, etc....you might want to consider making the experiment permanent. And another important note: if you find you cannot climax without visual fantasy or porn, that should tell you something! Further, a lot of guys experience a sort of withdrawal called a flatline. Zero libido (and I mean ZERO! Penis feels completely devoid of life), dramatic mood swings, symptoms similar to depression, etc. This isn’t an indication that giving up porn or masturbation is bad for you….rather, it shows how deeply ingrained the need has become. There is another side of the flatline where things return to “normal,” except normal is about 100% improvement from where you were, before. Mine lasted more than two months, but it was so worth getting to the other side of it. Here’s the video that got me started on the path to resetting my brain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU

With all the content about R vs K and the recent call-in show about hypergamy, it would be great to have a discussion focused on "pick-up" from a sound perspective. Mark's a guy with a background in Objectivism, a big fan of Nathaniel Branden, and a solid writer and thinker. His book "Models: Attracting Women through Honesty" was the best book on dating/relationships that I've ever read. I would love to have him as a voice on the show. So much of what's out there in the context of genetically conscientious relationship advice is sort of adversarial....it's women trying to outsmart men, or vice versa....questioning motives and obfuscation. Manson's approach would be really great to delve into, in some depth, and I think it'd be really beneficial for all the men in the rational/liberty movements to up our game. Here's an outstanding "Ask Me Anything" from Manson on Reddit that delves into the principles in his book: https://www.reddit.com/r/seduction/comments/12rn3g/i_am_mark_manson_former_pua_coach_self/

How about this: Logic is about determining whether arguments are valid....do the premises lead logically to the conclusion? The scientific method is about testing the validity of our premises. When you combine valid premises in a valid argument, the product is sound conclusions, or truth. Probability is the grayscale when our premises are untested by the scientific method or the results are inconclusive. When our premises refer to the natural world, they require the scientific method to test their validity. When they refer to abstractions, it's a simple logical test. Insofar as science is always open to new evidence, arguments with reference to the natural world will always have conclusions that are plotted somewhere on the probability grayscale (even if that's functionally 99.99999% probability that it's true). Arguments which deal only in abstractions, however, can be known to be 100% true ("A cannot be both A and non-A at the same time and in the same way").

I thought this statement by Nassim Taleb was an interesting way of framing things and wanted to post it here and see what y'all thought of it. Do you think this is an appropriate characterization? The way I would paraphrase it is "Logic is for what we can't test, the scientific method is for what we can, and we use probability in the space between the two." Is there anything wrong with that perspective? Any way to clarify it, further?

Just a horrifying read. I know I can't control this kind of stuff . . . . . the best I can do is to be my best self and be worthy of an outstanding partner. But the odds are really good that any intelligent women who is around my age will have come through this kind of culture in college. And, honestly, it depresses me. http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/08/tinder-hook-up-culture-end-of-dating

I've lost about 100 pounds and really transformed my energy level with Paleo, Intermittent-Fasting, and Paleo-compliant Ketosis for fat loss. These were excellent layman's intros to Paleo and Intermittent Fasting. Highly recommended, if you're interested. http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2010/10/04/the-beginners-guide-to-the-paleo-diet/ http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2013/08/06/a-beginners-guide-to-intermittent-fasting/ That website does a really good job. They also have a ton of other informative writeups. On supplements (http://bit.ly/1i42N2h) and caffeine (http://bit.ly/14BL5SO), for instance. Mark's Daily Apple is another site with excellent research and sources for all their claims that I'd highly recommend.

I don't mean that in a bad way....I mean they're potentially turning the internet into one computing machine by enabling micropayments...which will provide financial incentive to coordinate processing power, globally.

Really excited for grid-level storage, along with storage in homes. Electrical production, like much else, is going to get decentralized to the individual level. Here's a great primer on the disruption facing centralized utilities, from an industry think-tank, the Edison Electric Institute: http://www.eei.org/ourissues/finance/documents/disruptivechallenges.pdf

21, Inc is apparently building Skynet. Or so it would seem. They've raised the most money of any Bitcoin startup, and no one knew what they were planning to do, until recently. The implications are crazy. I'm still in the process of catching up with this news and wanted to put this in front of you for feedback and response, if you had any. If you're not familiar, 21, Inc. was founded, in part, by Balaji Srinivasan, founder of Counsyl Genomics. To get a feel for his worldview, check out this talk he gave in 2013 focusing on "Voice and Exit" and changing established systems. Balaji sounds like an AnCap to me. I'm putting the links to the things I've worked through below. On the relationship with Qualcomm, one of 21's largest investors: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/336f1w/its_not_about_21_inc_its_all_about_qualcomm/ http://www.qualcomm.com/invention/1000x http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p2suMVsKow http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/35m8df/qualcomm_21_incthis_is_whats_going_on/ The release from Srinivasan on the chip, and one of the more thoughtful comments: http://medium.com/@21dotco/a-bitcoin-miner-in-every-device-and-in-every-hand-e315b40f2821 http://medium.com/@elisklar/free-broadcasting-network-for-micro-messages-already-fully-deployed-and-accessible-61c00f52a6ca Leaked slides from 21, Inc presentation, and commentary: http://imgur.com/a/q9cbL#hkzYfyI http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/36j3lv/21_inc_investor_slides_embedded_bitsplitbitshare/ A discussion on Whaleclub and some really awesome commentary on the Bitcoin sub that follows up...check out the comments for elaboration from u/elux : https://soundcloud.com/elux-1/21-inc-embedded-engineer-on-whaleclub-teamspeak http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/370rko/21_inc_engineer_everyone_assumes_humans_will_be/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/372bhf/not_science_fiction_in_case_you_missed_it_this/ If you get through all of that, I'd love to hear what you're thinking. I'm still processing it....but my mind's asploded....especially those last three links.