thebeardslastcall

You don't need to personally do drugs to realize their effects. I don't need to try death to know I should vehemently avoid it. If you want to know why he is "vehemently" against drugs you'd have to ask him and find out the specific reasons and challenge each on its merits (or lack thereof) and not just suggest he's being irrational because he hasn't done or isn't doing drugs. Some people, like myself, have a very high respect for their mental integrity and things which mess around with that, like pot, are thus toxic to our integrity and mental well being. I do not think it's kind to casually suggest someone is being irrational and should mess with their mental state with drugs without careful consideration. Just because you've done it and may think you're mentally okay doesn't mean it's okay. It's the hurtful things you can't diagnose or notice easily or see symptoms for that kill you and undermine you the most. Not just because they are toxic to you, but because you inconsiderately pass on that toxin to others (the idea and the drug). Don't do drugs and stay out of school, kids!

What does it cost?

If you think your position is the rational and/or virtuous position then and your girlfriend is a true friend yet you seem to be suggesting she is lacking in virtue or rationality or do not believe you can make the case to her as a rational person despite this somehow? Has she listened to that podcast and what are or were her thoughts on the matter? Why is she satisfied with those relationships versus you saying she should not be if she were rational and virtuous? What are her alternatives to going out with these people and why should she value that over going with these people or going to these music events alone? I mean what is she getting out of these relationships exactly? Do you feel she is running and hiding from her actual loneliness and that these relationships are fake in some way or is your fear that they are not fake and she is lacking to your standards by getting something out of these relationships or casual outings? You made it sound like she recognizes that her friends are not the standard she would like, but yet she keeps them anyways. Females have different social needs then men and perhaps you aren't taking this extra 'neediness' into account? Does she value these relationships more than she values you or will she resent you for making her give them up? Just some thoughts and questions to consider.

"No, I'm good where I am and am not giving away my property to thugs because they threatened me. If you don't like my "non-compliance" you can go somewhere else and try to rule someone dumber and more docile." It's like if the robber gave you a call ahead of time "I'll be there at 5 PM to rob you, you don't have to be home if you don't want to, you can go out for the night and leave me to it, but if you stay and leave your jewelry you have only yourself to blame!" You can't just leave it without taking a hit if it's even possible. It's a totally bogus argument that encourages people to yield to thievery and tries to force you into their deluded social contract simply because you didn't move away from a bully. People that make that argument are bastards, they're enemies of freedom. Whether or not there is somewhere to go is irrelevant and if there was a better place to be (moving costs considered) then you'd have left already.

Does not the mere possibility and the millions of dollars they've both already pulled into their campaigns make you want to change now and get it over with? Embrace the light, come to us now, don't fight it!

When did 12 hours start counting as a something worthy of a "fast" type label?... If you finished dinner at 7:00PM... you'd only need to not eat breakfast before 7:00AM to meet that requirement. If that counts as "mini-fasting" then I've been doing the same "strategy" as I go over 12 hours between dinner and breakfast most times. I don't eat any junk food though. Unless you define fruit as junk or something like that (they're out there). My weight has been pretty stable as well. Having a stable weight alone doesn't mean you're healthy.

Such an elaborate response, but nope. Would you like another try? Did you even read what I said after that question?

Why is there not fruit year round? It must be growing somewhere year round to be available year round, yes? Perhaps that climate, where stuff grows year round, is where we lived for a while and adapted to a high-fruit diet before we sprawled all over the planet. When we spread everywhere over the planet our conditions and available diet naturally changed heavily. If you put a cow in a place with no grass where it can only survive by eating non-grass would you claim grass is no longer its best diet because it has to "import" grass from other places? Reality of what you have to eat to survive in any particular environmental situation doesn't dictate the reality of what the body can do best with, given all options. Humanity spread fast far and wide around the world and entering into so many different environments how could it not take a dietary hit from being forced to eat in new ways? What is natural about our current environment and what does that have to do with what is practical versus what is optimal? Is feeding cows grains instead of grass to meat the survival needs of factory farming to produce mass amounts of meat natural or just reality to "survive and thrive"? Also it's kind of silly to compare breathairanism to any diet as it's just a starvation/non-diet. Or perhaps you're making the case fruits and vegetables, often regarded as health foods, are in fact not foods at all? Also I'm confused as to what evidence you're talking about in regards denying vegetarian/vegan type diets. Are you rejecting all the health and longevity studies that show cultures that survive on mostly (if not completely) fruits and vegetables live longer (because...Marxism??) ? Do you imagine all vegans give up meat just because of animal welfare reasons and that none simply don't particularly care and just do it for the health benefits? Most of the studies also showed the longest lived cultures tended to have dementia free elders. Dementia is a more recent phenomena of modern cultures. You keep referring to reality, but simply calling something "reality" isn't an argument. Might as well be saying "Reality dictates that we pray to Zeus to survive and thrive!" If reality demands there is only one food in your underground bunker shelter demanding you eat military food packages to survive, then giving diet advice is kind of pointless.

Judging by the size of your post I can only presume you're fairly new to forums on the internet and FDR specifically. First off if you're still doing it at all I'd stop giving Joe any feedback. Take the lesson. He's telling you he doesn't care and you're pretending telling him again will make him care. Only tell him things you're specifically willing to take action for and what those actions will be. Be straight and blunt with him and don't "nag" him about anything. Tell him once what you want him to know and never again, no reminders. Does Joe threaten to attack you if you say "no" to him? Are you afraid to just say "no" to his requests/demands? What's stopping you from being completely straight with him? If he doesn't like "pussy" behavior then be upright and tell him "like a man" what you intend and don't intend to do and importantly be relaxed about it, don't escalate into violence if you can avoid it, as that can get ugly and dangerous very quickly. If you're upset with him not meeting expectations then do exactly what you'd expect a moral person to do in your situation and don't say or suggesting you'll do any more than that and be willing to say that forthrightly, what you're willing and not willing to do. Calmly explain your position to him if that might help, without making any accusations tell him your perspective. And if you can say this without getting hit feel free to say "I'm scared too", because something tells me he's angry because he's scared that his life will be harder with one less person to blame (to evade personal responsibility) and take advantage of in the house. Either way you're going to be out of the situation soon. Good job on deciding to get out of there. You'll be away from him soon and if the other two guys are wise they'll get the guy out of there life too and if not then it's their fault for not getting away from him. Especially after you show them how it's done. If they're the ones who own the place then they'd be smart to just kick him out and find a better roommate, which will be extra easy if he's not paying his share anyways. Or simply stop paying his share so the landlord kicks them out. If you have any parting words of wisdom give them and let them decide for themselves what they want to do with their lives. Some people you can help, some you can't, help yourself first and be a good example if you want to help others. Good luck, you'll be out soon, so focus forward.

I don't really. I was trying to point out that the use of C had no real place and weakened his point with any audience. A philosopher will want to deal with the topic rationally and is okay using abstracts and wants to use base reasoning and logic to discuss the topic, whereas a religious person won't have any use for that part either since it will just serve to weaken the point and make it easier for them to squirm away from real arguments by pointing out common perceived science failures and errors. There is also the audience of potentially convertible people to consider and how they will react to the original argument and how 'debunking bad science' would then help fuel the religious people's irrationality. So if you can avoid fueling their irrationality with points that don't strengthen the argument or point, but instead keep it more lean and concise it will work a bit better in various ways. Where would God come from then? What's the difference? There isn't one, it's a point religious people can't comprehend. They use God to create everything because they can't imagine these things existing without a God creating them, but are perfectly comfortable with a God existing without these same conditions of needing to come from something. The whole point of being atheist is to recognize the contradictions in a God, which is why we reject the notion of God. You can't make sense of a God because it is irrational. Getting back to the original post, What are the (logical) attributes of God?... Well that's the whole point of atheism, the core attributes of God aren't logical. It's like asking a guy why he beat his wife... when he didn't beat his wife or anyone else and doesn't have and never had a wife, it's an invalid question.

That seems like a really bad argument to use against a religious person, because C is just some measured limitation on reality as we know it, but there could be other dimensions, within time, whereby there are no such limits on the transmission of information. I mean to say you've brought in some scientific measurements into a theoretical and abstract discussion that tends to obscure the base principles of logic that are the relevant and needed tools for discussing the topic, which gives people something to argue against while avoiding the meat of the issue. A more theoretical approach within that same avenue that avoids the whole 'evil science that I can disregard as going to be wrong later' is to abstract the point out from the start that the transmission of information either has or doesn't have some limitation. For example God could be all-knowing in that he can simply see everything always, including the past and future, which thus makes it sound like he is outside of time since he can see all times simultaneously and that his sight has no transmission rate thus saying the universe, past, present, and future, is all immediately visible and thus known to him. This however skirts the issue a bit, as he is outside of standard time in a sense, because his knowledge or "vision" is not limited to the "present", but he still operates within time if he has any interactions at all. So he can't be completely outside of time if he is a being who operates within time. But action and thought and consciousness are movements, not immutable states, and thus must be inside of some sense of time. So is this view of God inside or outside of time? Both it would seem to some. That may seem a bit paradoxical to some, naturally and leads to the next issue as well. If God is all knowing and can see the future, does that mean he has no power or will to change it from what he sees? Thus is he not in a sense devoid of free will if he is all-knowing and practically the opposite of all-powerful in that in many ways he is powerless because his path is not just set, but known as well? Saying God is all-powerful is also another one of those paradoxical statements that gets said because it sounds nice and fancy, but it's rather meaningless, because there is no such possibility of all-powerful. All power must have limits, that is reality, and I don't mean this reality, but any reality is only a reality if it has limits. Limits are what define reality and all-powerful is a paradoxical claim that helps you identify them as just making stuff up to make their God sound grand. Other people have settled for a feeble and pathetic God of late it seems, when faced with reality, but being unable to embrace the rejection of God, as evidenced by the recent call in show #3047 caller number two. Next time someone says they believe in God get them to define God. They generally struggle with such a request and will begin evasion and fogging maneuvers. Most people know the more they concretely define God the more their God can be shown to not make sense, so they just settle for "God is beyond human understanding" and say that is the answer and leave it at something akin to that. Religious people specialize in non-answers after all.

I think you don't have to forgive someone, but acceptance is what's important. If they are a bad person and you aren't willing to accept that then you're in an unhealthy situation. People want to force you to "forgive" someone who hasn't earned it and that is an unhealthy denial, as they're telling you to no accept them for who they are, but to deny and live with them (people do this because they don't want you to reject them should they deserve it). Likewise denying forgiveness can also center you away from the necessary acceptance of the fact that some people won't change and you simply need to remove them from your environment. In that way you haven't forgiven them, but you've accepted them for who they really are and allowed yourself to make the necessary life changes to avoid the harm they cause to your life. So you haven't forgiven them, but you're no longer holding onto active anger against them because they no longer pose any particular threat to your life, because you accepted the truth of who they are and moved away from them. As said, forgiveness is either earned or not earned and not in your control. Acceptance however is in your control and will determine whether you remain angry over the situation or not. Remaining angry means you haven't accepted the situation and done what you need so you should pay attention to that and make the necessary changes so you can stop being angry about it and find some peace and health in your life. People who tell you to just forgive and forget everything are not interested in your well-being. Acceptance however is important for well-being, so you can make the necessary changes in your life.

That's the whole point of the issue. God is a logical contradiction, so how can you define it? If you can define it in a way that is no longer a logical contradiction it is no longer a God, but a powerful being at most. And God is generally just a fabrication based on wishes and hopes that are detached from evidence and reality. To get around this many turn God into a euphemism for other things, like love or goodness. There are no beings outside of time. To be you must be in time as motion is a requirement and time is motion. Some people like to say God is outside of time because it sounds extra powerful, but they don't understand what they are saying, they're just making up more ideas with disregard for their lack of logic. Like how some spiritualists misuse the term 'quantum' to sound fancy all the time, with disregard to what it really means.

Is she going to off herself while she can to prevent herself from being just another excessive old person? I would guess not. And involuntary euthanasia is colloquially called "murder". "You can give one elderly person euthanasia under the condition that we can then give you the death penalty; still want to do it?" People love to couch their language for murder into various other terms to make it sound less offensive. Is anyone pulling the hate speech card or any others on this person advocating murder or are most just giving them a pass? Why does she care anyways? People only demand and hate other groups often because they are given government money to be supported, which is stolen from them. They hate their own system, but since the government is behind a cloud of propaganda they are blind to it and instead they focus on the elements they can see; the symptoms in the form of welfare recipients as if they were directly stealing the money from them. Newspapers, where you can advocate murder of or theft from an entire class of people, but if you say something slightly racist sounding you get fired and receive visceral hate-mail.

Everybody makes assumptions. They are necessary to live. Just because something is an assumption that doesn't mean it's wrong. Many assumptions are correct and if you lived under a "false assumption" that happened to be right for your whole life, but then the "rules" changed afterwards, then you were still right in a way, if all actions under the assumption had the desired and intended effect. Assumptions are just another tool for figuring out how to behave and if you can "shorthand" a rule to get what you need, then that is an effective use of your limited knowledge and understanding. You may not know whether you're in some "vat" or not, but as pointed out, what difference does that make if you have no way to tell the difference? You have no way of judging whether something is right or wrong in this imagined possible "external" 'real' reality and thus no way to modify your behavior one way or another based on the various possibilities that might or could possibly exist. You act in a sensible fashion based on the reality you can know. This is why it's silly to believe in many religions, because they claim they know the rules for external worlds outside of the vat without any real evidence for their point of view. They do this because of the difference their actions and claimed beliefs have in this reality, not outside of the vat. Solipsism is a dangerous idea too, thinking you're the only real person, as if you were in a vat and everyone else was a simulated and irrelevant person, a non-being. You're both making some assumptions to have a conversation. So you acknowledge it and move on. Being based on assumptions doesn't undo your ability to have a conversation, but in fact grants the ability. Each of you independently knows you exist and the other exists in some form, whether it is deceptive or not, it's something. Even illusions have an objective existence, it's just not objective in the way you think.

Malcolm Gladwell on the perils of introspection: https://youtu.be/964va3YwPms?t=22m33s (starts at 22 min 33 secs) Translated, you may know what you want, but can't verbalize the reasoning in a satisfactory way and thus if limited by simply what you can verbally rationalize to others you will often make the wrong decision (about whether to stay or move in this case). If you are confident what you want to do is right, don't let your inability to explain it hold you back.

And yet he lives and works. He must be getting something out of life. "Life is miserable" "Think I'll stick around for a while" "Life is pointless" "Think I'll make some movies about how life is pointless" Silly. I wonder how much he enjoys saying how miserable life is, seems like he gets a hit off saying it.

With a compatibilist viewpoint you can see how Determinism, Free Will, and personal responsibility all go together and are not opposing ideas. People often include the supposed logical conclusions of Determinism or Free Will into the definitions putting the definitions in opposition when they need not be. Just as people who include the conclusions of their God with the definition of their God and thus define opposition to their religion out of existence, but this is an erroneous way to do things. In religion is shows with people defining God as "good" and thus atheist as, by definition, "bad". Not the best example, since I don't believe in God, but the point is that if you define contradiction into the word then you will only ever see concepts as contradictory, without ever comparing the actual underlying concepts to see if they are really in conflict or not. Many anti-free willers simply take the stance because they have defined it a specific way, but the real question is often whether or not they believe in personal responsibility and some kind of choice in life. What is important isn't so much whether you believe in Determinism or Free Will, but how you treat and behave with other people and how you hold or don't hold them responsible and the consequences of treating people different ways and whether or not you're willing to acknowledge the realistic consequences of different beliefs and actions.

Calories is a very rudimentary measurement produced by the burning of foods which is far from the same way the human body actually digests the food. It doesn't factor in the cost of digestion and the degree of digestion and how efficiently the body will use the chemical energy gathered from the food. Some people absorb a lot of their food, others pass stuff through largely undigested. It's not some simple physics as people like to portray it. Unless the body absorbs it, it isn't part of the body. It's complicated and the simple calories in calories out model is an erroneous oversimplification.

I'm not sure how saying sodium is essential has anything to do with consuming excess salt by eating added refined salt outside of whole foods. Are you suggesting we should all be pouring (lots of?) salt on all of our foods? I'm not sure what you're talking about or suggesting. Of course you need to eat foods with a sufficient level of sodium to be healthy. Are you saying all whole foods are deficient in sodium and eating refined salt as an additive is necessary to have sufficient levels or that there isn't a significant risk of over-consumption of salt when using it as an additive? I don't see what it has to do with what I said. Excess water retention for toxin dilution doesn't mean your body doesn't need lots of water in general and won't store it for standard purposes. You also make it sound like you use up all your glycogen storage simply by not eating carbs and that it remains depleted. Sounds like you're saying carbs are needed for glycogen storage and carbs are bad, so no glycogen storage is a good thing to you? You talk about glycogen like it's a toxin that is diluted resulted in weight gain when you eat carbs and weight loss when you don't eat carbs. Do you think glycogen is a toxin and is bad? Have you ever run a race with depleted glycogen levels before? What do you think your brain runs on? You think people who eat a lot of fruit are damaging their livers without realizing it? I don't know what you are talking about as I've studied nutrition and you aren't making much sense to me, please explain. Yeah one of the big problems with most studies is they have no useful baseline or control. They almost always use a really unhealthy baseline for comparison, which makes the study rather worthless to someone who wants to eat healthy. Toxin B being worse than Toxin A then has them recommending Toxin A and tells you nothing of what isn't a toxin as is good to eat or they may do the "Everyone in our diet eats Toxin B,Product C dilutes Toxin B, so people who consume more C are healthier and C is good for you!" except that on a healthy diet without Toxin B, C would be bad for you.

Are we supposed to expect feminists to being saying rational and reasonable things? I sometimes wonder if labeling irrational people "feminist" or whatever the case happens to be just distracts from the issue of their absurdities. Such labels just group people which then gives them a sort of herd immunity to attacks.

I lost my excess fat weight when I was doing little to no exercise while eating a high carbohydrate diet and then when I started exercising again I added weight (muscle) and now that I exercise regularly and continue to eat lots my weight is fairly steady. I agree that it isn't simply about calories in and out. What you eat matters a great deal as fat and excess water in the body are generally diluting agents for toxins in the food as opposed to simply due to excessive calories, including excess salt (water retention), that the body isn't able to eliminate yet (usually because you keep eating more toxins). I would also like to add that telling people to avoid carbohydrates and sugars is very imprecise and generally bad advice because it fails to make the critical distinction between refined and unrefined sugars. Eating 100g of carbs/sugar in whole fruit and eating 100g of sugars in a glazed donut are totally different. Fruits have lots of healthy nutrients and their sugars are healthy compared to unhealthy refined sugars and other refined food products that create tons of health problems. Many studies cited by news articles fail to make this distinction and are very misleading.

How long do you think it takes to have or notice serious brain degradation from not eating animal products (as an adult for simplicity) ? Are there not lots of vegan animals with brains with similar composition percentages that do just fine? Why do you think humans need to consume cholesterol to have enough cholesterol? Why do you think consumed animal cholesterol is better than the cholesterol produced by the body?

I wonder not just about the issue of feeding trolls, but with those that are fed by trolls. People give away money because they get something out of it. People feed trolls because they think the troll is going to give them something they aren't getting elsewhere. What does this troll feeder need that non-trolls aren't giving to them? Is it a healthy or unhealthy desire that drives the engagement? It's easy to say don't feed the trolls and to make a case for why feeding trolls is bad, but what happens to the troll feeders and their needs that led them to such feeding tendencies? Do they simply not know better or do they long for some level of interaction, even if it's totally nonsensical, that they feel they aren't getting from others? How can we feed the troll feeders to stop them from feeding the trolls and to help them engage in more "healthy" or productive activities and to solve any issues they may have? I can hear the troll whispering into my ear now "Well if he wasn't feeding my trollism he'd be feeding an even worse troll, I'm doing people a favor by engaging the troll feeders with a higher level of trollism". Evil socialist then whispers "This is discrimination against trolls, oh the injustice!" Evil political libertarian then whispers "The evil anarchists are trying to take away our right to feed trolls!" Evil conservative then whispers "We should imprison all the trolls for their sins!" Evil religious person then whispers "But if we don't feed the trolls, how will they eat? What you do to the least among us you do to Jesus himself."