Hecatonchire

You can't reach a conclusion without evidence. If the evidence is shown to be faulty, then conclusions need to be withdrawn until there is sufficient evidence to arrive at a conclusion. Nice post, Gorilla. I wasn't aware of the problems in twin research. Nobody gives enough credit to people that actually follow the scientific method's peer-review process. Like that recent caller that was talking about corruption in science, everyone just wants conclusions and wants to jump to the end and get their money. There's often very little reward for testing to see if other published works are accurate or not. Kudos.

In the most recent Trump podcast, Mike mentioned that he's begun following Scott Adams. He has an interesting commentary on the election, but I would like to listen to him and Stefan talk about rationality and how it relates to the mind. He has an openly stated position that human beings aren't rational, just rationalizing, and since that seems to run largely counter to a big part of what I think FDR is, I think a debate on that topic would be really interesting to listen to.

Same reason we have state legislatures and courts in America.

That is how he treated people on the apprentice. He expects the best of people and doesn't tolerate preventable mistakes. That doesn't mean he abused his children though.

I was really quite surprised to see a message from Ben today insinuating that the only reason Eric Trump likes and supports his father is because he wants to stay in his will. I'm not sure if he's playing the same "blind barrage of insults" tactic that Marco Rubio did right before he fell out, or if he really doesn't live in a world where children love their parents. Made me feel kind of sad, and it connected some lines that might explain why he's been acting this way.

"The degree to which..." x9001

Hello, all, I saw this on Scott Adams' blog, and figured I should repost it here. It's the most beautiful thing I've seen come out as a result of Trump's campaign and revolution. http://blog.dilbert.com/post/140353736681/a-letter-to-donald-trump-from-a-voter-not-me

I was thinking today and put two ideas together that I hadn't previously connected. Stef has said in previous podcasts that countries like Germany and Japan, which were previously very aggressive, had a reversal and became pacifists to a fault after the war left an impact on the women at home. I was wondering if this is the case. Studies show that single mothers often raise aggressive and violent children. Is it possible that this is merely the case for low-IQ boys? Two generations of men died in Germany, and Japan lost just as many with America's nonstop bombing of the island. I don't have numbers, but it stands to observation that large numbers of children following these wars were raised by single mothers, setting up the precedent for effeminate men that is now common in the west and in Japan. Low-IQ single-mothers tend to raise criminal children. High-IQ single-mothers tend to raise effeminate and pacifist men. Is this reasoning flawed? I haven't seen this particular framework put on the single-mother problem before, in any podcasts. It's a simple enough statement but one I hadn't thought of before. It raises more questions on the differences. Is IQ the differentiating factor in femininity vs. criminality? Is there something else at play here that I (we) might be overlooking? What does FDR think?

It's not that he has money. Rubio, Clinton, and Jeb!'s donors all have money. It's that he's spending his own money on this campaign to do something he believes in. Your second sentence isn't an argument.

It might be the first step in eliminating it, and freeing the currency. There are no measures to hold politicians accountable, but given that Trump is spending his own money, and risking bullets every day, there's a higher-than-average chance that he believes what he's saying, as opposed to the other politicians.

He's talked about the Fed before. In 2012 he said the same thing Molyneux has said about the Fed and debt, that we're spending our childrens' futures. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/232839851945390080 In this video he mentions how the interest rates are giving him free money but lightly alludes that it's not good for the economy And here are some other tweets of his: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/357928308618428416 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/384736592776032256 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/185436481958068224

I'll be back in nola until the week after Mardi Gras. A meetup could be fun.

I have small groups. Usually about 10 students, but often they ask me to take one for 10 minutes, which isn't long enough to do anything meaningful. But sometimes with the individual ones I can talk about their plans for the future. I always enjoy that. So when I have group discussions it's 5-10 students.

Hello, thank you for your reply. First of all, I'd like to say that I'm a visiting teacher. I wasn't hired with the intention of keeping me here forever. Usually this job (at each school) turns over someone new every year, or every other year, which is my case. I got to stay an extra year. Secondly, I'm not trying to challenge or debate my students on capitalism, anarchy, etc. I'm trying to give them a small bit of time where they can be free to express themselves. If the topic moved on its own towards morality, government, etc., I would be pleased and let the discussion evolve in that direction, but if you come across a starving man, you can't take him to eat a huge feast. It'll hurt him. I'm starting small and just trying to give them a little freedom and the opportunity to sort of steer the car even if the gas pedal is on full-throttle. Last week I got questions about Star Wars which ended up evolving into a discussion about Americans and our optimistic culture. They see lots of American movies here and French culture is so pessimistic they honestly can't understand why we want to always win. This was a really fun class. I shared my own optimism and dreams for my future with them, asked them about theirs, and we talked about the future. They were almost stunned by my optimism and how I never accept that I can't do something. You said that I'm hired to develop language skills, nothing more, but I have also explicitly been told that the school wants me to share my culture with the kids here. The "French" English teachers are responsible for their formal linguistic classes, and I'm here to sort of be a "fun guy". It's another reason why the program I'm in doesn't hire for more than a couple of years at most. Maybe bureaucrats at the Ministry of Education wouldn't be happy with me talking about capitalism but I share detailed reports of my activities with the teachers here, and while nothing has hit deep philosophy (I can't go too deep in this setting, but I can leave breadcrumbs), nothing I've done has caused any problems. I'm leaving at the end of this school year but I still want to do the best I can for these kids while I still can. @n1d0, thank you for your advice. I will remember to ask them more "why" questions and see how far I can push things.

Hello, FDR community, I'm an American working as an English teacher a French high school. I started listening to FDR podcasts last year and for a long time have had problems with the public school system but after listening to a lot of various podcasts around here (I just recently found schoolsucks, and have to run through their content now too). Being a foreigner, I have an extremely privileged position in the educational community here. My job is to work with students' speaking and listening skills. We practice to make our English more "authentic" and to improve casual fluency. A lot of what I do everyday is conversation in small groups, We talk a lot about current events or discussing what they're doing in their other classes/practicing things from other teachers' lessons. When I don't have to practice specific topics, I've taken to asking them what they want to do. I'm trying to get my classes of students to take the reigns and steer the class to where they want it to be. I'm just a tiny blip in their lives of people that isn't trying to force them to do things, but I want to believe that I'm not wasting my time. I'm certainly getting current value out of this job, at least for the moment. I don't intend to be here forever (I can't even if I wanted to), but while I am here, I want to try and to the best I can. All of that said, I'll now list some problems I've encountered that I'd like advice with. First of all, I'm living in the heart of the socialist France. The country's politics are slowly changing (VERY SLOWLY), but I live in one of the few regions where the socialist party is the only game in town and nobody even thinks about voting for anything different. I'm not trying to make this about politics, and I haven't had the opportunity to talk about philosophy in regards to socialism. I'm only mentioning this to describe the environment I'm currently in, and what my kids have grown up in. It has influenced their thinking. Because of the above issue, I have some students that to me seem completely broken. They don't know what they want anymore. They just want to be led around, and they freeze when given the chance to have a little blip of freedom in what they want to do with their time with me. I always tell them that we can do anything at all as long as we talk in English. I've been asking some classes since the year started in September to tell me what they want to do and I still haven't gotten clear ideas. When I do get topics, it's often that they want to talk about entertainment and sports. I let them do it because it's what they want, but it does tend to get stale, and I can see that often they just bring up these kinds of topics because they don't know any better. I have one class that I've fallen in love with. They're in an advanced program and they came to me and complained that my classes didn't have enough structure and that they wanted to learn about american government. I lament that I can't have them more than once a week. That said, we've gotten to discuss lots of meaningful topics like small government and gun control, which is another topic that fascinates them. You know, when I began typing all of this out it seemed like I had more problems than students having their passion circumcised. It's a huge problem, but at least it's only one. What can I do to help my dispassionate students? Is the system actively sabotaging my efforts and is the situation hopeless? I don't expect to change their lives or be revolutionary, but if I can demonstrate some good ideas, maybe I can make a tiny difference to them.

Peaceful parenting is western culture. Philosophy is western culture. Stephan says all the time "finish the war or go home", instead of Obama's endless meddling that has no end in sight. It seems to me like his opinion right now is that continued leftist governmenta policy does very real damage to generational IQ and the foundations of philosophy. Donald Trump is possibly one of the best we can get right now. Stephan says all the time that it's impossible at the moment to go after the FED and that doing so is a waste of time. The Trump story is interesting because he really is dismantling one of philosophy's great enemies, and that would be the sophist media. Not ideal, but it's a possibly tiny step in the right direction. Just my opinions and observations.

He said in his infowars interview that he agrees with libertarians on a lot of issues, but re-asserts that America needs to use its muscles to defend itself right now. I found myself wondering if he would agree to weaken state control over the economy after America is "great again". Has he been invited? It's worth a shot one way or another.

Hi, Overmind. Post your Skype info. I'll send you a message.

His interview with Xi Jinping was hilarious

I don't know if the FDR community follows what all goes on in France, but yesterday there were extremely violent protests aimed at AirFrance, and it reminds me of the ones held against Uber this summer. Every time they act like this, I feel like I'm seeing into the truth of how violent socialism/communism really is. All of society's violence that goes hidden by the government's smokescreen is suddenly out in the open. When these protests happen, French society is not shocked. It often sympathizes with the people that openly attack and brutalize people trying to survive. AirFrance needs to make cuts or else the entire company will go bankrupt and they do this to someone bold enough to tell them the truth. In the Uber scenario, the cab driver's union attacked people that drive for Uber. Links: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/11911943/AIr-Frances-HR-boss-his-shirt-as-he-escapes-furious-mob.html http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/26/8852461/paris-uber-protest-interviews-uberpop-taxi-drivers

Hello, This is my first post here. I am a recent college graduate and while I consider myself an anarchist in that I do not want to actively contribute any energy to the state, I am also finding myself interested in law, consistency in its application, justice, and fairness. I'm not sure at the moment if this is simply an intellectuall interest of mine or if I would / should actually get involved and go to law school. I am acutely aware that very few lawyers actually work in courts. Most are employed by companies to help them navigate bureaucratic red tape. And even if I were to finish law school and end up in courts, I have doubts that I would end up doing work that I could consider ethically "right". Judges and the whole electoral process they have to go through is incredibly corrupt. My ideal society that I want to live in would just have the nonaggression principle as the only law, which would sort of put me out of a job in a libertarian/free society. Is it even possible to contribute towards that by going to law school? What does FDR think? Thank you.