thebeardslastcall

We're already there. When you have dictators it's no longer a free society. We're fighting to get rid of them right now, that's what prevents them. To the degree that we can embed free market principles, peaceful parenting and the byproducts of that, which are free peaceful trading, versus violent parenting which leads to religions, statism, and dictators, is the degree to which we can become resistant to dictators and statism. Nothing is preventing rape in any known society other than raising your children well so they won't be the ones doing it and will fight against such abhorrent activities. What prevents statism in a statist society? Or to flip the coin, what prevents peace and free trade in a dictatorship?

They're trying to rule people and you're resisting and denying that rule, of course they're going to gun you down. It's treason to deny or work to undermine the power of the state to rule. Rulers want unchallenged rule and influence over their herd. From their perspective you are broken in the sense that you aren't working for them anymore. You're an annoying kink in their machine disrupting smooth flow. People that want to be free however hate that machine and see breaking it as a good thing. Broken is only a problem if the thing being broken is a good thing, but if it's a bad thing then breaking it is a good thing. Breaking the bad without also breaking the good is the challenge and distinction that can be difficult to make. Symbolism isn't so much the problem, as you've admitted you only reject some symbolism, because it's more the corruption of symbols that causes so many problems. They need you to first accept a symbol to make corrupting it of any use to them. The better distinction is realizing when a symbol has been corrupted and when it's appropriately used and assessed. Symbols are just a shorthand for something greater, but if we lose the attachment, accepting the symbol, without understanding what the symbol really means, then that is when symbolism turns dangerous and is open to corruption by the media. That is really what they want, blind symbolism, which turns a symbol for some idea or quality into a symbol for someone's rule, like the state. They want you to follow the state flag, the rulers, not following what the government was originally alleged to have stood for, but merely to follow their rule, however divergent it may be from the original idea that the flag was made to represent. That's why symbols are dangerous, because it's hard to maintain them without corruption. Symbolism turns so frequently into tribalism, statism, and dogma. Religious people say stuff like that a lot, but it's a lie. Carlin didn't get to find out he was wrong after he died and neither will your dad after he's dead. Neither atheist nor theist gets to find out and learn if they were right or wrong after they're dead. They're gone and their time for learning is over. He acted smugly, as many do, completely in ignorance of what a ridiculous statement they are making. They're just saying they believe they are right, without any further evidence for their case, as if the possibility (in their mind) confirms the their blind belief. It's a very arrogant thing to say and the commonality of such thoughts and statements shows how arrogant people tend to be. You can only be proven right or wrong if you are right or wrong, but you can't be proven right if you're wrong or wrong if you're right and most people haven't a clue. If I'm right about death then people never get to confirm it when they die, which is interesting I think, in comparison to the counter notion whereby they've setup a situation whereby they imagine they can both prove others wrong and themselves right. Another reason why people like to believe in such things, because they can give themselves a pat on the back for that extra layer of 'win', the common satisfaction people get not just when they've won, but when their perceived or claimed enemy or opponent realizes they've lost. I know I've had that sort of feeling before, the satisfaction from 'complete victory', where your opponent surrenders. That's a natural thing to try to achieve in many ways, which is why we get a reward feeling for achieving it, because it's in line with survival, but people's over-developed egos will extend that into the otherworldly to give themselves a false ego boost, which is in the same basic realm as overconfidence or overestimating yourself which is extremely prevalent for adaptive reasons.

Mostly this one. And most use the first one based on this one in the self-preservation sense. That is they use intuition to do what they think will give them survival, however well or poorly adapted their intuitions may be to their current environment, which has drastically changed over the last couple hundred years. Survival is an absolute standard of sorts which exists and drove the evolution of those intuitions, but only further survival will prove whether they were sufficiently adept and adaptable intuitions to continue surviving in an ever changing world. For example the evolved sense of tribalism to survive leads people to adopt somewhat arbitrary justice claims based not on general philosophy and reason, but based on a desire to survive even if it means having a contradictory and convoluted definition and application of 'justice'. Meaning they're subverting the notion of justice for self-preservation, which in many ways is the natural development of all tools, language included. They're another tool in the survival belt, lie if it works, tell the truth if it works. As philosophers we like to pretend we are above this, but while we can aim for greater universal truths they will only hold up if we acknowledge that they must support the base truth of the need for survival or they're dead in the water. This is the rock many stumble on when dealing with 'reason' and other such terms as well. Part of my prior questioning was to point out how most have a weak sense of justice based merely on what feels comfortable and understandable to them. Christians often say God is beyond comprehension, but what they're really saying is that not believing in their ideas of God, justice, heaven, and hell is incomprehensible to them, or subconsciously they view it as suicidal in their tribe, so they default to a belief in these things. In the name of self preservation they vigorously deny the obvious truth that they don't know jack squat and won't accept their own stupidity as a valid reason to not believe in God. If something is incomprehensible then the only smart and true position to have is that you must NOT believe in such a thing. They use this exact justification for one side of the equation, but not the other, as if accepting they have no reason to believe in either is an invalid position. If most people were honest they'd say "I'm too dumb to believe in God and I'm also too dumb to be an atheist, neither one makes sense to me, this world is scary and I'm just trying to survive, so I'll play along with my tribe to do so". This is the basic stance on a great many issues because people are just winging their way through life because that's how you survive, you can't dig deep into all topics and sometimes many people find themselves unable to dig deep into any topics, so they're never a chef, always just a cook copying other people's recipes because they never feel able to innovate. They just want their meal and are content using someone's recipe to do so, afraid to not mess up the recipe, so they follow it precisely, because they don't understand it at all, because they've never been a chef. This approach is fine for a while. This works well for most people, but these people need some innovators in the mix to help them adapt to new situations and to advance or make progress otherwise they're just a stagnant species in a stagnant environment. The current environment is changing fast, however, and there is a lot humans can benefit from innovations and a great number of innovations humans will need to continue to survive, especially in this time of fierce competition. This is why we're so entrenched in all these political and philosophical wars, because we're shifting from a stable state through a turbulent state and these shifts from one stable state to another is always tough. Philosophers see this as a good opportunity to leapfrog forward into a new era of peace and innovation, but others are seeing the same opportunity to take it in another direction. I wouldn't call that a true statement. I'd call it a false statement because it requires that you have one Porsche at the least to satisfy the condition. Otherwise you'd have to say the statement "All of my Porche's are green" is also a true statement. "All of my Porche's don't exist" would be the most true statement of that nature. It seemed like the point of your statement was to point out the falsity of the claim, but then you didn't call it false, but true, because you don't see it as a lie or non-truth to make a claim to the state of something that doesn't exist. A Porsche that doesn't exist has no properties. A Hell that doesn't exist doesn't serve justice or injustice, it has no properties. A more accurate translation would have been "If I had a Porsche, I think it would have to be red", but he doesn't have one, so he has no red one. He's saying his dogmatic notion of eternal justice is required because he can't conceive of the universe being anything other than almost wholly a tragedy and also stating he can't conceive or live with the idea that the universe is wholly a tragedy. So he's scared to go down what he perceives as an endless rabbit hole because he denies there's any way out of it and it leads to a depressing state for him. In truth and practice that depressing state he's afraid to confront is likely just him afraid to confront the opposition in his environment, which includes his own ego, to such changes and how this will force him to adapt in uncomfortable ways, which his entrenched adapted fear center tells him not to do for survival sake, because most people survived by not rustling too many feathers and this is fear is heavily ingrained. This means a great many people are easily made to believe in religions, it doesn't mean we naturally do believe in religions. It's not natural for humans to run around like crazy, but put them in a cage with a dangerous animal and then it's pretty 'natural'. Most people say, see, it's human nature to run around like mad and needed to survive and philosophers are like 'let's get rid of the damn dangerous animal and free ourselves from the cage and then you'll see such behavior isn't human nature, but merely a local adaptation to a crazy dangerous and insane environment. That got rather long-winded, hope I didn't lose too many people.

There's a difference between not reacting because you're blind to the alleged threat and seeing the alleged threat as a paper tiger and choosing to ignore or 'resist' the notion of its danger. You might say the idiot savant is thus broken in a useful way, while you're not broken, but can see the situation and assess it properly. You are using symbols in many ways you're just resisting the ones you see as corrupted probably. If this is the case that would be an asset in avoiding lies, while knowing that lies are being told. Why would you think you might be broken if you're asserting throughout your post the virtues of resisting symbolism? Are you afraid of some kind of mockery by the masses because you're pointing out the emperor has no clothes while everyone else is pretending he does? Do you have any specific examples to help clarify what concerns you and what you're specifically resisting (and why)?

How do you define eternal justice (which should include a definition of injustice as well I think)? Do you think a world with life without your definition of injustice is possible or desirable? If you believe in Heaven or Hell does that mean you believe in eternal life (no possibility of death)? Do you view 'eternal life' as a contradiction or no? Is the 'justice' of heaven and hell eternal while the 'injustice' (as you see it) on Earth eternal or not eternal? If an injustice, by your definition, occurs on Earth, and then the murdered person (if that can meet your requirements) goes to heaven, forever, and the murderer goes to hell forever, is that or does that seem like justice to you? Do you believe in Hell (regardless of whether or not you've given sufficient reason to here)? Do you have more reasons to believe in Hell than you've given or does your belief or possible belief in Hell rest or hinge upon your thinking eternal justice is desirable and Hell is the only way to provide it?

I believe there is no Hell (or God) because I believe the universe is ultimately just. I win? Hell is pretty god damned tragic to me. Eternal pain, limitless scope and depth with no remedy for the damned. I don't see what you've solved. I believe in universal justice and this concept as I understand it requires no God and is in fact hampered and undone by a God.

Not really. You're creating a false dichotomy. The right answer for the wrong reason. You're not addressing any of the issues people are bringing up. Are you interesting in understanding new things or are you just trying to demote the relevance and meaning of logic and reason? Are you currently being pressured to join a religion or part of one already and being pressured to solidify your position(s)? What's going on in your life that makes this topic relevant to you now? Intuition is based on a complex logic, so calling it illogical is a false distinction. You know how to raise your hand and the process is quite logical and reliable, but explaining it with spoken reason and logic is another matter.

I think a common problem when talking about rationality is that the scope of the rationality changes and people talk about two scopes of rationality as if they are one. I've seen this sort of issue with various terms that it's starting to become more apparent when it happens, while seemingly being unnoticed by most. Survival is rational. There's a limited scope there, now you can say behavior X is irrational based on some global logic of what is rational, but you're ignoring the specifics of the situation, then you've lost a key element in the decision that determines if it's rational or irrational. A belief may be irrational, but if you have a rational reason to believe it (survival), then it's also rational in a way, because we're talking about different layers or types of rationality where one takes priority or precedence over the other. The more any environment demands 'irrationality' in the global philosophical sense of individuals for survival, the more individuals will rationally (specifically, locally, individually) behave irrationally (in the global philosophical sense). This is how religion becomes prevalent, because it rewards and sometimes demands irrational beliefs. Because at the core of the belief isn't the irrationality of the belief, but the conformity of the belief. Religion needs irrational beliefs because it needs to measure the demanded conformity and the only way it can do that is if it demands you do something that is otherwise irrational. If it were otherwise rational you'd be doing it for survival sake outside of their demands and they'd have nothing to measure your acquiescence to their demands (is he obeying us or nature?). When you're looking to create your own group and to distinctly bind it to a leader you start with an irrational belief to separate it out and differentiate it from base standard survival ideas. It's a bonding initiation right like getting into a sorority you do some dumb things to prove you're with them. Religion just keeps you being a bit dumb and blind till the day you die because they want you proving your loyalty always and forever and to help spread their group maintaining their power and benefits of being within a group.

Sure you can get to the truth without logic and reason, but without logic and reason how will you know that's what you've got or be able to functionally share it? You can get rich by winning the lottery, but that's not a game plan for how to be successful. Someone getting lucky and winning the lottery doesn't mean their method is better than other methods towards the goal of getting money. But really what do you mean by getting to truth without logic and reason? You can guess that the Earth is circling the Sun prior to any evidence or reason to come to that conclusion, but it's just a guess. Guessing is a steady and necessary part of life, so it's logical to guess since you can't know everything or have all the relevant details to make the 100% optimal choice. We're just squirming are way forward and using science to up our game where we can, but there's a logic and reason to both methods. It's still logic even if it's based on a very minimal amount of information, but we must still understand in the end when it comes to actions we're always guessing in a way. When it comes to math we can say 2+2 always equals 4, but in life it's like you can use logic to know 2+2=4, but to determine what is a 2 in an infinite reality to logically conclude the answer is 4 may be a guess based on a reasonable probability. With all that said, this statement here is your biggest error. People aren't rational in the universal philosophical sense. They're partially rational at best. Life is rational to the degree that rationality continues or propagates life.

Yeah that's kind of the point. Christians are irrational and not using rationality to decide what is a just war. They call it just if they're for it and unjust if they're against it. So the same war is often viewed both just and unjust. If there is no rational basis for justice then it isn't justice and the entire notion of a just war based on religion, based on irrationality, is totally lost. It's a contradiction to build a notion of justice or rationality on top of a base of irrational religion. You say Christianity has the notions of morality and justice and the just war, but I'd contend since it's all based on an irrational religious belief that these are all invalided as legitimate and thus not actually provided, but only provided in name and under false pretense.

I thought of one more clarification to make on the genetics front. People frequently say 'half and half from parents' and then you think 'half of me', but genetically that isn't accurate. People when they say that are only referring to a small subset of the total genes that is variant in the human species. Meaning the 'variable human' portion of your offspring is 50% you 50% the other parent, but overall this could be the difference between 99% you and 98.5% you or something like that (just making up numbers in the ballpark). As many of your genes are shared with the other parent as animals of the same species and possibly even the same sub-species. Your neighbors may be 97-98% alike and other humans could be less than 97% and other species get quickly divergent. Also a small percentage difference in the gene pool is the difference between humans and other apes, so it's not doing yourself justice to discard the relevancy of a 'small', but potentially highly significant, difference between you and others. A 0.5% or even 0.05% difference could be the difference between reason and religion, peace and violence, survival or death, happiness and miserableness. Do you want to increment humanity towards your life or leave it up to others to increment it towards theirs. Evolution happens in little increments generally, but that leads to wide and very relevant differences over time.

I think any logical argument you can make to establish a religion as peaceful can also be used to establish it as violent. Likewise any logical argument you use to say the religion isn't violent can also be used to say it isn't peaceful. If you can discredit members of a group based on some criteria that same reasoning can likely be used against an equivalent case trying to establish the religion as peaceful. They're all irrational and lies in the philosophical sense. That's what distinguishes them from science, whether they're rationally, logically, and empirically based (science) or not (religion). Rational faith is believing in something that can be possible, but which you can't prove or have no evidence for. Irrational faith is believing in something that can't be possible and which has been empirically or logically disproven (like God). All Muslims and Christians are spreading a great many falsities. How that short circuits each individuals brains towards different insane or irrational behaviors are just the symptoms (whether they be explicitly violent or not).

He's talking about your unique line. We share many similarities, but the proximity and the physical transfer of genes and information from one line to the next is direct and exact in a manner. Put another way, two people have similar ideas, but they aren't exactly the same, and the idea even within you doesn't stay as the same, but from split second to split second within you the idea has a continuity and direct replication. If you value your life you want to value a direct continuation of your life more so than some similar idea or life. You don't have to care about this and you can support other life that's similar to yours, but if you don't reproduce your life in a manner comes to an end. Really just depends on what you value, life in general, or your line in particular. Lots of animals have many genes in common, but would you be happy if all humans went extinct and it was just up to these other animals to carry on a portion of your genes? Life is more than just genes and there's a difference between the physical matter even if it has a similar vibe. You're also losing the opportunity to raise your own kids where you tend to have a greater environmental influence on these little growing individuals than you would over say a nephew or cousin. Ending one strand while letting another keep going on becomes the difference between ant, ape, and human. Who knows where your line will lead? If you don't reproduce it's over and that's one line that never gets to flow its own divergent path from the rest of life, however small or large the differences and the lines will go, they'll be unique in their own right.

I think the biggest difference between Muslim religion and Christian religion is that Christianity has gotten very subtle and clever while the Muslim religion is in a more overt and direct stage. They're both irrational and violent in their own ways, but they have a distinct difference in their overt versus covert balance in how they propagate their religion. Both Christians and Muslims, whether labeled as terrorist or soldier, are currently engaged in killing many people with guns and bombs. Both religions also command a large portion of many state's government officials. Trump is a Christian who wants to kill Muslims and many Muslims want to kill Trump and others. You could argue by being more covert Christianity has become more docile, but Christians are still behind a great many killings, just or not, and even without all the explicit killing is still quite sinister in its subterfuge against rationality and reason. Donnadogsoth represents this anti-rationality here quite regularly while trying to promote his religion and defend it against attacks. He's (probably) not out killing people with guns, but he's still engaged in the war against rationality that is religion (Christian, Muslim, Mormom, and more).

Made me think of this Ali quote:

I haven't looked at it recently, but the world record is somewhere around 11 days or so. If you go too long without sleep you die. I've never heard of any exceptions and don't think any humans are capable of doing it indefinitely. Many tales of people who 'didn't sleep' were people who chronically 'napped' during the day and didn't really avoid sleep, but just broke it up into minimal 'power naps' to hide the truth. I personally find sleep to be highly important to a healthy lifestyle and widely underrated for not just general health, but mental health in particular. People who don't get enough sleep are less sane and stable and much more easily agitated because they can't handle more stress without their mind freaking out at the extra pressure and waste while they're already on the brink. Sleep deprived people tend to lash out at stresses because it's literally very threatening to them in their current state. If your tank is empty a few drops of something bad aren't anything to worry about if you can handle them with ease, but if you're sleep deprived and the tank is nearly full each extra drop is very threatening because once the tank overfills you're taking hard damage which leads to death. I sometimes equate disturbing someone's sleep unnecessarily or preventing someone from sleep as equivalent to pulling someone off life support or preventing them from hooking up when necessary. It's an assault to keep someone from necessary health processes (like by blasting someone awake repeatedly with loud noise in an apartment).

If you support terrorists you are a terrorist, regardless of whether you're the one blowing yourself up or not. If you support the state you are the state. If you support a violent superstition then whether or not you're part of the minority that takes it extreme doesn't spare you from some guiltiness. One of the freaky things about statism and violent religions is how everyone becomes to some degree put under duress as they risk or don't risk their life to oppose the violence and lies. Morality in the way most people care about it and that is more relevant only matters when it's in opposition to evil at some level of threat. If people were getting some obvious and easy benefit with no risk for doing the right thing that it's not fighting evil, because it's a given. If someone is in danger for renouncing the religion then you can't say it's not a violent religion. If they're not under such threat then giving up the religion should be easy and they'd have no good reason not to do it if they wanted to move towards rationality and honesty. So while the religion may be rampant are people giving it up like some Christians do or is there a notably lower defection rate, implying it is much more violent in current practice? But really, why should America let these people in? You should only let people immigrate if they're going to benefit the society they join and Muslims, I would argue, tend to be distinctly less advantageous. Why put qualified good immigrant applicants through a huge ringer just to let some damn refugees through with ease because why? If this was sovereign land in a free society we'd send the ships back where they came from and not let them ashore as we'd have gotten rid of violent people who could give them a beachhead. Now the state serves as that beachhead, not to protect Americans, but to undermine and endanger them further beyond the danger the state already presents. Religious freedom isn't the freedom to be violent under the guise of a religion. I'm not saying we should kick out all religious people (or any really), but we have good reason to be picky about who is allowed in, especially if they're rationally undermined by a more dangerous religion and pose an extra threat. Every religious person cherry-picks, but what they are cherry picking from is relevant, whether they acknowledge it or not as are the current trends in various interpretations of the religious text. Tricky thing is Muslims are doing acts of terrorism, but so too are state back Christians fighting in the US military directed by a Christian Commander in Chief. So which religion is really killing more people? Do the presidents not say things like "God Bless America" and do other religious things to back up their actions before and after they order hundreds of thousands of people killed? Muslim extremism is what Americans have a chance of fighting off right now, so that's a logical place to start and then dealing with the statism and religiosity that supports it will continue in a less popular strong and polarizing fashion as dealing with Muslim extremism and immigration (which includes mostly non-Muslims). As for warrantless searches, yeah, no surprise he's for that crap. He's an ego heavy guy that wants to be president, he obviously doesn't have a strong moral base for his choices and doesn't mind ruling people. I'd guess he'd gladly be a ruthless king if he could to get things done his way. If you're pondering a Trump presidency don't confuse him for a moral person that will stand up for individual rights.

I would disagree a bit, perhaps, if you weren't talking selectively about most car horns. As a horn or other sounds are physical in effect, you can deafen someone with a horn blast to the ear. So I would clarify your statement to say if it's up to a certain threshold it's APA, but if it exceeds that threshold it could rightly be considered a physical attack. Basically beyond the threshold it becomes a sonic weapon which can damage you. It's like the difference between hitting someone with a weak flashlight, which might be annoying, but not too harmful, and a concentrated or UVA light which can burn or blind you. I think in a stateless society people would have the means and reasons necessary to establish acceptable noise pollution levels as well so they could be friendly neighbors. If you want to play loud music for example you would need to take the necessary precautions to contain the noise from your neighbors or in an unfriendly area where people couldn't come to terms people would be more inclined to put up sound walls to guard from 'noisy' neighbors (which is distinct from sonic blasting neighbors who you might rightly attack back). Degrees with these things matter, like the difference between creating a light breeze and a gust of wind capable of knocking over trees and buildings.

This seems like a statist issue specifically. Since in a non-statist society all areas would have agreed upon rules and if someone is being a dick you're actually allowed to disassociate from them. You can get them tagged as a problematic or aggressive or excessively noisy person and society will give them an appropriate level of ostracism to encourage them to behave better. I also think people are far more prone to these aggressive and noisy behaviors because we're living in statist societies which deny justice and leave most of the population in a depressed and frustrated state more prone to lashing out in various ways. I find honking cars annoying, particularly with all the damn honk-on-lock standard 'feature' of many of the newer cars. Part of me wants to take a sword and just drive it into the front of the car and kill the noisy beast when it's being excessively noisy in public. I feel violated by excessive noise in public and by smokers, but it comes with the territory since even in semi-public/private areas it's something that just has to be tolerated to a degree if you can't do anything about it. Find a more peaceful place if you can and reward businesses that have owners or strip-mall managers that will discourage such people. We still have a little bit of a monetary vote in today's society to the degree that owners still have a little bit of control over free-association that hasn't been ruled illegal discrimination (which is basically like legalized evil tolerance to my ears).

Calling them racist.... while displaying massive aggressive and violent racism towards them.. this madness must have been scary for them.

People like her can't tell the difference between work and being productive. She's also blind to what is sapping the productivity and profitability of workers. She's not getting enough people calling her on her misguided thieving notions. All these Lefties have turned 'fair' into 'free stuff for me'. They all act like somebody owes them. "But there's always some 1% I can label as the bad guy and steal from, there is always more to steal! It's evil keeping us from the limitless fields of grass and greatness!"

It's not speaking out if no one can hear you. You're invaliding the statement.

I agree polls should be scrutinized. I haven't listened to the presentation yet or looked at the polls, but one thing to remember with many people is they hate looking dumb and will very often give made up answers because they don't know what is being asked of them or can't give a competent answer. For example: People will often just pick whichever answer they think is socially acceptable for their respective group. Blindly guessing when they have no idea what they're really advocating. People are pretty dumb and dishonest in general, sadly. Dishonesty tends to amplify effective stupidity as well. That's how 'good intentions' so often go astray.

It's easy to say you'd kill evil when you've clearly identified it and are doing so in an imaginary scenario where you're free from the consequences of that action. Would he do it if he'd be labeled as a horrible child murderer and put to death? And who's to say that would even fundamentally make things better? It's an impossible theoretical. Perhaps the dangerous idea here is if they believe in God and they believe God has told them some child is destined to do great evil and then they murder that child on this psychotic idea. How would they expect that to go? But yeah, if you can clearly and correctly (sanely) identify and destroy evil without harming good life, why wouldn't you? That's just basic self defense. He's not looking much like he's going to win this nomination. Marco Rubio seems much more likely.

Do you realize that definitions 6 and 7 are properties of an object as distinct from property in the ownership sense? Definitions 1 through 4 deal with the physical and 5 is a bit confused. If the person 'owns' an idea, they only control it so long as they keep it to themselves and once they 'dispose' of it, they've released it and no longer control it. But someone else can still come up with the same exact idea independently, so it's not like the idea is owned, just that they have the ability to limit its dispersion from themselves, but have no control over it elsewhere. And 'common property' would be better stated as common knowledge, as it refers to 'secrets', which upon their 'disposal' are no longer secrets and giving up a secret makes it a non-secret, but doesn't remove the idea from the original secret holder. Just because it's in a dictionary doesn't mean it makes sense. Lots of definitions are logical contradictions as they're made by confused people and based off of common understandings and misunderstandings of what a word means. Like defining morality off of a notion of God versus philosophy. Even if you find a definition that agrees with you it doesn't mean you're right. It might mean the definition lacks good form. How are ownership and possession independent? The terms are synonymous. Perhaps you've broken them apart because you're claiming false ownership over that which you have no possession over and want to deny ownership to people who have actual possession of something? This seems to be around the focal point of contention and lack of reconciliation for what you consider to be owned. From the same dictionary, bolds are mine: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/own "1. of, relating to, or belonging to oneself or itself (usually used after a possessive to emphasize the idea of ownership, interest, or relation conveyed by the possessive):" "2. (used as an intensifier to indicate oneself as the sole agent of some activity or action, preceded by a possessive):" "3. to have or hold as one's own; possess:" In what way are puppies infinitely reproducible? Does that mean humans are also infinitely reproducible? Is there anything in your view that isn't infinitely reproducible? If it's owned it is already property. Being property and a property or object having new properties is talking about two different things, about different types and meanings of property. There are many definitions of property because they mean different things and it's an error to use all the definitions of a word as if they are one notion because they share the same word. Pick one. Giving an object a new 'property' in the attribute sense doesn't have anything to do with ownership and property in the sense of this conversation and you seem to be confusing having a new attribute with having a new ownership. You want to possess a pattern, but you continue to avoid addressing why you think you can possess and own an intangible that is beyond your control or actual realistic ability to have possession of this intangible. On a side note your use of coloration makes your text hard to read. Also I'm about to tap out of this as nothing I'm saying seems to be registering with you.