iBlagg

Short answer yes! to both questions. Genuine change looks possible both sides of the Atlantic. You know the establishment is getting scared when you hear the (supposedly) reputable media saying: Trump will cause WW3, leaving the EU will cause WW3. Vote for StatusQuo (not the rock band unfortunately) or the world will end! Naturally this fear mongering filters down and people have meltdowns. Godwins Law everywhere. It's funny before 2008 economic crash nobody said anything. But this time they're certain the sky will fall if we don't do as the media says. Anyone want a preview of how bad it might get in the US keep an eye on the UK referendum just weeks away. Don't forget us Brit's are supposed to be the keep calm and carry on type.

Thought Hannan was a MEP and was/had been an MP, stand corrected. Wasn't really saying I'd vote for Daniel purely on how Libertarian he is. But compared to average he is very Libertarian. Wants the UK out of the EU. Wants to burn regulations to increase competition. Saw the massive flaw in bailing out the banks, in that it's the middle to low income earners who would have pick up the tab. It's difficult reach Ron Paul's level of Libertarianess' saying we should have stuck to the gold standard, or we should go back to gold standard is one thing. In reality that would like taking a long suffering heroin addict and making them go cold turkey over night. They'd probably die. As Stef's mentioned a few times our system is addicted to cheap cash and spending. But Hannan as PM, I think it would be the step in right direction. Away from socialism in the form of regulation, big government and bail outs. The reason I started this thread is, I didn't know of Daniel Hannan until last week. Had forgotten Carswell's name already. But wanted to know if there are any politicians people like or would even promote and say 'they'd get my vote' from a libertarian community.

With more bad politicians than you can shake a stick at, who would you vote for? This thread was inspired by this one https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/44809-socialism-does-work/ Not wanting to hijack it I've created this thread. After watching that hideous argument from Jeremy Corbyn I found Daniel Hannan. The only UK politician I've seen condemn the Bank bailouts. He wants a return to true capitalism. UK out of the EU. A real libertarian in the House of Commons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZpJeHN0_gw&index=4&list=PLOAFgXcJkZ2x9PEyG6SKpB5rnIf6cRgdS And if you didn't see it in the other thread his argument Why socialism doesn't work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QaZEGcoGXo&index=5&list=PLOAFgXcJkZ2we2fby4wIRwHsnwZ3onNr5 (How do you embed a video? it's driving me crazy) Just how many decent politicians would a libertarian community recommend. Who would you vote for?

This video popped up in my youtube feed also, was just about to post it here. What's worse is this man is about to become leader of the Labour party. Currently there are 4 candidates running and Jeremy Corbyn has 52% of the vote so far. That bit at the start about Cause 4. This was in the Labour party's manifesto, a commitment to state owned industry and Corbyn has openly said he wants to nationalise the energy industry. And my favourite bit in that video was talking about taxing the rich and giving to the poor. What a 'hero'. Not sure how that proves socialism works but...... I'm actually really happy that he's about to become the leader of the labour party. I think right wing are also happy because the last time someone like Corbyn stood for election they were crushed. 28% of the vote I think. And with the Scottish National Party going nowhere Labour haven't got a chance. In contrast this guy gave the best speech in the debate. The only person I'd choose for Prime Minister, Daniel Hannan, Conservative, Liberal, Euroskeptic. And an excellent orator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QaZEGcoGXo If I find it again I'll post. Daniel Hannan was the only member of parliament to oppose bail outs for the banks. Edit: found the video but don't want to hijack this thread so created another https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/44855-who-would-you-vote-for/

Scary stuff since UK government has recently announced a new higher 'living wage' (minimum wage has been re-branded 'living' in UK. Must be opposed to slowing dying wage). At least they're trying to cut benefits at the same time. I already know people how limit themselves to 16 hours per week to meet benefit requirements.

interesting since my other thread I specifically said I don't want to discuss determinism freewill then people did anyway. Which is why I created this thread to meet that demand. Apologies for breaking rules.

my afternoon has just been freed up. Why do I think we don't have freewill? Part 1 My own untested, uneducated thoughts on the subject. It's clear we don't have absolute freewill. We can't change who we are at the drop of a hat It's impossible. We're defined by our life experiences, genetics, hormones what we saw on the news this morning. Theirs a book called Buddism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagan. He in a describes thoughts like travelling through a Jungle. The first time is slow and difficult you have to hack your way through some tough bush. The next time isn't so bad cos' you already cleared stuff. Keep travelling to the same place and eventually you could run on a path cleared by constantly going to this place. Although not a scientific book it makes a lot of sense. When you learn a new skill like kicking a field goal you're terrible at first you have to consciously think about it. Keep doing it and you get better. What's happening is the neurons in your brain are firing off in a way they're not used to. They're hacking through the Jungle, one day they might run. As a baby our brains are much more supple at forming connections or killing connections as we grow old this ability fades (until one day we're lecturing grandchildren about why our generation had good taste in music). If this is what happens when we learn a muscle memory skill what about when we get angry? What if we get angry watching the news and we always watch the news. You can apply this to everything, I guess it's your attitudes (that's right plural) to everything. Through the course of our lives we create responses to everything. We copy our parents, friends and family, are influenced by media. Did all those girls decide Ugg Boots are great out of freewill? Or was it more to do with the herd mentality that is genetic in us? Another section in same book talks about trying to pin down who you are. We consciously think 'I am me, I think therefore I am'. But who are you? Let's say you wake up, as you. With all your opinion, thoughts memories and attitudes to the world. On the way to work a clean shaven business man wearing a sharp suit stands next to you on the subway. You notice he smells of weed. Until that moment you never thought of stoners as businessmen. Sitting on the train next stop a skinhead punk rocker heavily tattooed with swastikas helps an old lady onto the train and gives her his seat. By the time you arrive at work you're no longer the person you were when you woke up. Note: Wastern thinking generally tries the freaze their view of the world. 10 commandments, right and wrong etc. Eastern thinking is much more fluid. Buddhism in general sees the world in constant flux and our lives are like streams. So the idea that you'd be a different person in each moment is more easily accepted in Eastern culture. I don't understand it but those experiences are in your brain, the next time you think of tattooed swastika people the neurons in your brain will fire in a slightly different way. Same with businessmen and weed. All the little life experience help programme our brain to react to the world. And in that sense we don't have free will. It's preprogrammed behaviour. In the next moment we can't freewill change our attitude to something else. Not without something externally influencing us to do so. Guess that would be my answer to Carls question about the mind being like machinery. That's what it is to me, think you hear that voice speaking your language? No you don't, the ear transforms sound waves into... electric pluses I think? (someone will correct me) Then the language part of our minds fire neurons, you put it into context, more neurons fire and hey presto you're having a conversation. If we had absolute freewill, couldn't I decide not to understand English for the day? That could be fun everyone I meet just blah blah blah blah... ahhh this is relaxing not having to deal with stuff. Part 2 Heads or tails? What could be more free will than heads or tails. But wait, as a child I heard people say always go heads it lands more often. Has my free will been corrupted. What if I'm writing my results down HHHHHTHTHH at this point I'm thinking go tails now, so many heads it's surely it's going to land tails a little more. What if I see myself as a particularly scientific minded person who understands probability? Stick with heads a coin toss has no memory. My ego grows as I see myself above superstitious thinking people like those who keep track of lottery results. So you can see already a free will heads or tails our free will can be affected by who we are. Time to bring science in. This link is heavy reading about how scientists have observed the process of a thought being made before we're couscous of that thought. The implication being how can we have free will if we've already made our minds up before we know it. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0021612 Crallask in another thread responded with this:- http://hplusmagazine.com/2015/05/08/new-algorithm-illuminates-free-will/ Some evidence that our subconscious minds make decisions but we have the freewill to change our minds and override them. Score 1 for freewill. Again personally I think the next step would be finding out what would cause our conscious mind to step in and change things. This is far as I go, stuff about quantium mechanics and free will is above my head and something I need to have a look at. Hope this has been interesting, who will decide to share there thoughts or not?

The post is more of a question. I'm saying I believe we'll find that we don't have it. But I'm asking what do you think? As a lot of people round here know more on the subject than me. I certainly don't have the definitive answer. But to argue against Free Will with all the references and what not. It'll have to wait until at least Saturday before I have the time to do it justice. Until then I hope people dive in and share there thoughts

Had started a topic elsewhere from the assumption that we don't have free will. The discussion of how much free will we do or don't have was so good I felt it deserved it's own thread. Plus lot's people know a lot more on this than me and I'd like to hear what you think. Personally I can't see how we can have free will. Our minds work like complex pieces of machinery that can be predicted and manipulated to an extent. Practically in the moment it doesn't matter, we have the illusion of free will and have to make decisions based on whatever we think is relevant at the time. And a little prediction, we hear people say 'we went to the moon and discovered the Earth.' In the future I think we'll say 'We developed Artificial Intelligence and discovered ourselves'. How much Free Will do you think we have?

Sorry RoseCodex thought you were being sarcastic And think I got it wrong it was Adrian Peterson not Ray Rice and might have been a different video to bomb in the brain now I think about it. Just seen these, this is part one, Gene Wars It might not literally be about free will. But it's an example of how in this case epigenetic's dictate our behaviour.

So many things I want to reply to, might have to multi post Like your whole post in general. But sometimes people will thank you for correcting their maths. For example during my childhood I was on the receiving end of a few clips around the head. Nothing too bad. And upto about 6 months ago I used to wish some parents would take a tougher stance and give their children a clip too. Shut the little brats up and teach them respect! Whilst I didn't want to be as aggressive and short tempered as my father, I probably wouldn't have ruled out a clip around the head, the naughty step stuff like that. Then I stumbled by accident across Stef's Ray Rice scandal vid'. Agreed that what he did was totally wrong. But this Stef' guy what about him isn't he going over the top a little? I turned out okay after all? This lead me to dig deeper the defining moment was I think the bomb in the brain. The hard scientific evidence that physical abuse of children stays with them for life. But that's me scientific data can override any sentiment, I think? And I thank Stef for correcting my Maths. For others maybe they won't be so thankful. But then why spend all this time debating and discussing stuff unless you're trying to convince someone of your point of view. Very interesting stuff. Makes a lot of sense because it's our unconscious minds that people like Derran Brown like to play with. Our unconscious minds are the most predictable. Free Will having the power of veto on choice it pretty cool. Next step; what would cause free will to step in? Something did. It also supports that we're doing a lot of things on auto pilot. I would re-read my second post with the metaphor of how I see us as people laying the tracks for our lives. It kind of fits with what Crallask linked as well. Unfortunately I've barely begun my argument. My first post was very rough. As mentioned it's a sketchy idea that I've asked for help putting together. And everyone who has posted has helped even Dylan (glad you came back). I wanted to avoid a discussion on does free will exists as I thought it would de-rail my idea, but it's all helped. Plus I thought the idea that we have at least very limited free will was more widely accepted. It's also clear a lot of you know a lot more than me on the subject of determinism and such. It probably deserves it's own thread. So how does this help fight Socialism? Are we doing it wrong? Extreme socialism like 'pay everyone the same wage for whatever work' has already been defeated because we know how humans work on fair trades. Why have a stressful hard job when I could earn the same money sweeping the street. We simply all won't pull together for the good of humanity. As pointed out earlier in the thread we're all looking for fair trades. Plus we've seen Soviet style socialism fail anyway. What else could we brush aside. What about socialism is hurting us most? Taxes. Currently a lot of corporations have been caught not paying their 'fair share' of tax. We have the usual public outcry. Or Individuals don't pay tax. Or politicians fiddle their expenses. People facing a life of low paid jobs see having a large family as a ticket to no work (this might not apply to your country, I'm from the UK where the Tax Credit system is abused). We have taxes to pay for school, health care, everything. It's all very inefficient, keeps us in debt and it's madness when you take a step back and look at the whole mess. And people still call it capitalism. Currently the political argument is who should pay the tax. Rich, Poor or business. We've got it all wrong because that's all socialism. Somebody is going to get taxed. And they argue over what tax policy is ethical or fair, it's all just blurb to cover the fact they're bribing certain voters. But if the general public knew that we have, lets say 'limited free will', that the human condition is that we'll always look for the best trades to benefit ourselves, we'll always try to beat the tax man and have a better, easier life. We'll always do that because of the way the human mind works. And we're not changing without a great deal of time and evolution. That we can't just decide to pull together for the common good and have some kind of Starship Enterprise future where money is obsolete. Knowing this on it's own won't defeat socialism. But should serve a foundation for all arguments. If the problem is people will always abuse the system, now we can argue against tax. We can argue that people should pay for their education, health care, they shouldn't receive money for having more children but should decide if they can afford another child. The first people to argue against paying for education will be the working class. Ironically they are the ones who are repeatedly over taxed compared to the wealthy. When a politician says lets tax millionaires, someone will argue against citing how millionaires will simply hide their income. Stef recently did a video on Greece and how austerity hits the poorest most. So my point is, cos' I'm running out of time here. That when the Librarian party of the not so distant future, wherever you live is on the News arguing that we need to stop relying on tax and pay for everything directly. Wouldn't it be a great help if the general public at home sat nodding on their sofas thinking. 'That makes sense, after all everyone would avoid paying tax if they could'. There has always been tax avoidance since the beginning of tax. Now we're starting to understand, it's not because people decided with total free will to hoard wealth. They were doomed to do so from the start and will continue to do so long as their is a tax system. Could we raise a generation where everyone is indoctrinated so they willing give up all taxes owed? Possibly Religion was pretty good at convincing people to hand over wealth. But that was built on lies and false promises. It just seems logical to me, remove the tax. Fair trades, fair world. This is just one small example. Just a small part of socialism. It's already a big post. Sorry if it was difficult reading, didn't have much time to edit and correct etc. If you have other ideas how this could be applied to socialism, religion or feminism please go for it. (also I might come back and edit this into neater sections)

Dopamine! without it I wouldn't even bother eating. Dopamine is also the reason you're motivated to play video games. Every time you win, level up or unlock an achievement you get a little dopamine hit. Away from biochemistry of motivation. This is a difficult question...... I literally don't know. I'm self employed and haven't 'made it' yet. Would say I'm at the point where I can take a low income wage. Have a roof over my head, good food, good sex, 6 month old son. What else do I need and why do I bust my balls 7 days a week to get it. Guess I'm motivated to make a better life for my family and me. Motivating yourself when working alone is tough. But it's become a lot easier now that I have a son. Before I was happy with my standard of life. But now I need more money to make sure he gets a good start in life. We live in a rough area and I really don't want him growing up there. I'd really like to give him enough money at 18 where he can either pay himself thorough Uni or put it towards a business or buying a house, whatever he wants to do.

Is anger really healthy for you? To that question I'd say no, of course not. Not expressing anger can lead to mental health problems. The same as suppressing or faking emotions. But I think we can avoid anger and that would be better. Buddhist teachings offer a practical guide to nirvana and part of that is dealing with people who mistreat you. Buddhist Monks are human after all if someone acts like a jerk to them they'll feel it. Instead of getting angry or sad. They've trained themselves to feel sympathy for the abuser. If this person goes around being a dick all the time how much happiness do they miss-out on? How many relationships have they destroyed? Are they alone due to them being this way? Instead of getting angry they just feel sorry for that person. And if you can offer help. I've done the above a couple times to calm myself down and it really works. I'm by no means good at it. It doesn't solve the problem of someone mistreating you repeatedly. But without anger we can think more clearly and in that way you might come up with a solution that works. Anger is proven to reduce creative thinking and reaction times. There has been a couple times in my life where I failed to see the creative solution due to anger in the moment only for it to become clear after I calmed down. When it was too late. I don't think we need anger to help us stop someone abusing us. Not in the same way we feel pain when we put our hand in a fire. We can still be motivated to stop someone abusing us, not by a negative emotion of anger. But of sympathy and wanting to help them or others who might be abused.

WOW it's been a week already. I really don't have much free time. Thanks for everyone who posted. Would have been easy to read, disagree and just leave it at that. But you took the time to point out huge wholes in what I'm trying to explain. Which is a big help. And to Dylan who stopped reading. You're funny dude. When Dawkins debates Evolution it's not for the benefit of the Creationist sat opposite. It's for the undecided watching. The people who can handle a change of stance. Will Dylan come back and read this? who knows. Best thing to do is explain & define what I mean when I say there is no free will. I used to be into fitness, hit the gym 5 days a week. As my life has changed and broken that routine I'm pretty unfit, but I'd really like to get back into fitness. My weights bench leans against the wall of my sitting room unused, but I won't put it out of sight. The benefits of exercise are far greater than being physically fit. It gives your mental health a good boast. Is linked to improved memory and in turn is being linked to decreased risk of dementia and alzheimer. And in all honesty theirs a bit of vanity in there too. All these things I've learned about fitness and my past experience of fitness push me to actually do some. But sill I find it difficult to get started and do some fitness. Where's my free will? oh yeah it's busy thinking of a million excuses to not do fitness. Free-will why do you have to be a jerk. If I have absolute free will I could simply say tomorrow when I awake, I'll be a health nut. I'll exercise and 2 days later I'll exercise again and I'll eat a healthy diet to support my body. I'll keep in going until I decide not to be a health nut. How easy would life be if we could do this. When I awake tomorrow I'll stop smoking, drinking, drugs, procrastinating, being a total jerk to everyone. But it's not that easy. When we awake tomorrow our pattern forming brains will want to continue along the same track. With time and effort we can break those habits. 'Ah-ha! you decided to break those habits with free will, we've got you!' Well no, lets say I've got back into fitness. I didn't decide by free will to do it. My mind opinion was formed by my previous experiences, vanity, my dad not being happy with his weight, how much I used to enjoy fitness. Knowing the benefits of fitness etc. Sub-consciously all those Calvin Klein adverts must have had an effect? I grew up watching He-Man and Thundercats. Lets say I don't decided to get back into fitness as has been happening daily. It'll be down to influences of habits, laziness and now I'm 33 and probably have declining testosterone levels. So here's my metaphor our lives are like trains on a track, We're laying the track as time goes. And like a train we can change direction and head to a new destination, like Fitness Town. But because there is no absolute free will we can't turn 90 degrees and head in a new direction, we'll de-rail. We can't jump track. In essence we've preprogrammed ourselves to react in certain ways to certain situations. At this point you might think "well duh, yeah you can't just change your personality with a click of your fingers but I do have free will to change my personality over time and I can definitely choose red as my favourite colour and I'm going to roll this dice and bet it lands on...... hmmmm 3! yes I chose 3 and nobody but me did that. And not I wasn't preprogrammed to choose 3." Here's where it gets interesting (for me anyway I'm a right geek for this stuff). Egg heads in white coats have observed the minds of people making decisions. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0021612 it's heavy reading but put simply they had people watch a screen it just flashed up letters. Participants had their fingers on both hands on 4 button each. They were told to relax watch the screen if you feel like pressing a button press a button. Then they were asked about what letter was on the screen at the time of pressing and such. But essentially, feel like pressing a button? then press it. What could be more free will than that! The egg heads through means that seem like magic to me can actually observe the thought of pressing a button form in part of brain milliseconds before it gets to the concious mind. They literally decide to press the button before they know it. It's like our minds are a complex work of gears and cog's someone cranks the handle the gears turn out pops an action and at the last moment our concious mind says "I THOUGHT OF THAT! that was me my idea! it's all me" Naughty conciousness taking the credit for all the mechanism and workings of our deeper mind, shame on you. So we have our illusion of free will even in the most simple decisions. Just as an off shoot though. If our unconscious mind decides stuff for us why have conciousness? why don't humans run on zombie mind unconscious thought? why evolve conciousness what is the benefit? To answer webdever and shirgall's questions; why bother if there is no free will then we can't change peoples minds? and questions of things being predetermined. Am I saying the hand of fate controls everything? God NO! (see what I did there :-)) Yes we can change peoples minds, but they'll think it was there idea, of free will. Or they'll know someone's worked to change their mind but ultimately they'll think they chose to. Or we can change our own minds and we'll think we did it all. Wish I knew how to embed this, 6 minutes of Derran Brown showing just how much you can manipulate someone's 'free will'. What's all this got to do with fighting socialism? This is already a wall of text we'll leave it here for now. I look forward to your responces and help hammering this idea into something useful. I hope.

American news can be terrible. '35% of Americans WOULD expatriate' quickly turns into 35% of american would consider expatriating. As in it's a thought they are capable of having. Do 35% of Americans even leave the country for a holiday?