Reggio

Haha, nice try. Well, the best answer I have is this. Virtue, honesty, integrity, sensitivity, generosity, all that stuff. Stefan doesn't keep reciprocating those values out of empty dogma, but out of true, hard facts, covered by science. It is literally the best to look out for. I know those things don't sound as sexy as "beauty, intelligence, wealth, vanity, conformity" and so on, but if you think it through rigorously you will notice that it all makes sense. I've thought it through long before finding FDR, so I can affirm this out of own experience. If you came here to read something else though, you probably are on the wrong forum. EDIT: Sorry, I didn't come to the "how" part. You have to think. Use as much free time as possible to think through possibilities, make thought experiments, "simulate" all the what-ifs that come to mind. If you come to a conclusion, put all your efforts into falsifying it. Nothing is more contraproducitve than a false belief. If you lack the data to simulate something, then go get it. Ask couples, ask people around you, date around. All of us can give you hints and data if you ask specifically, but at the end of the day the only understanding of the world that can be of use to you is your own. Cheers

Alright, now I get it. I should have taken the title literary, haha. You're right, life certainly is not a debate, except for if we get into metaphysics maybe. But... The book doesn't state at any point that "life is a debate", either. I will take your example with the bear: If we kept debating over whether there was a bear in the west, according to UPB that wouldn't make any sense because I couldn't present you any scientific evidence of the bear's existence. Thus you going to get this evidence affirms UPB again. With the car you try to make the exact contrary point: While you would question me and take on the risk of getting eaten by a bear just to find out the truth, you tell me I shouldn't take a risk to find out the truth but trust you blindly. That's a double standard!! Shame on you! So you feel entitled to be condescending when you think that you are right about something. That's despicable, and tragic. I guess you learned it from your family, or from your peers at some point. My parents were like that. On one hand, the frustration made me really good and stubborn at arguing; on the other hand, though, it made everybdoy hate arguing with me. I'll state boldly I have overcome this behaviour for the most part and I hope you enjoyed the conversation. I did, for sure. Cheers!

I was saying UPB is based upon life, not the other way around. You didn't disprove me. Then please tell me why you think that. You didn't disprove me now, either. I don't know what you're getting at, I'm sorry. Yup. For more info watch this: https://youtu.be/LYOtZvwNCsc?t=49m1s (j/k, it's a song. But the sampled conversation is exactly about that.) Then, you are talking in circles and not disproving anything. I can see no "You are wrong, and here is why:", while I have brought the necessary arguments. You formulate as if you were correcting me, but actually you're just propagating obvious truths I didn't doubt at all. One more quote: No. That's like saying "According to math I cant count without arithmetics". It upsets me that you keep changing your framework. Are you debating in empiricism or not? UPB or not? Logic yes no? Apparently every time when I make a solid counterargument, you just challenge the whole system. Your last post, though nicely formulated, is puzzling: You focus on why he is wrong, but bring no proof why you should be right; You are downright condescending; You assume Stefan wouldn't seek a reasonable debate with you, which he until now has always done to his best efforts - sure he got sidetracked at times, but still he is the most focused and fair debater I know. You keep on pseudo-falsifying others, but never bring your own proof. Now this statement of mine is not something to debate about, maybe you did at one point; what I am saying now is that you are making it really hard to debate with you and I will lose my will to carry on because you are not right and I'm getting the feeling that each time you are presented with solid proof you just don't want to change your own opinion. To prevent wasting your and my time I will only continue under the following conditions: From now on, you make clear which systems you accept as a base of a debate and won't move away from them - we can only productively discuss one thing at a time, and if you want we can start with empiricism, just as long as the assumptions you have made one post ago will still be the same in your future posts. If your hypothesis isn't built on sufficient assumptions I will only ask questions until the base is established. You bring absolute logical proof of your point: No anecdotes, no pointing to others except for train of thought, no what-ifs, no "looks-like"s, "feels-like"s: you prove your thoughts. I hope that's all we need. I have some psychological idea about what is happening in the conversation, but if so I will talk about that in another thread. I'm giving my best not to become personal here, because it's a lot of information already.

And that, again, leads to the question of what is good for you reproducing and feeding your offspring. I think the question isn't what in this case, but rather how? How will you find the right criteria for you?

Totally agreeing with both prior posts. In my country, college is free, and I tried studying physics for three years. The teachers imo were conditioning the students to become sophisticated calculators. None of critical thinking in the education plan. Now, if you are really really invested in something, university is sensible if you: get there, find out what you need to learn, then analyze which courses really bring you forward and skip all classes with incompetent teachers (which apparently are a lot). Learn at home and know where you are going. - For this kind of thinking, I would recommend to work before studying. Just a year or two, to learn the drill, feel responsible, have the time plan established and not get sidetracked by vices... I at least would do it that way now. In short: University can still guide you in what to learn about a field, but not so much anymore in how.

This is all very much seeing it from your own perspective. I also used to do that a lot. There are societies in which women climb socially without having sex, there are women who are virgins, good at connecting and yet haven't found a matching man, they are just very little noticeable. To that comes the general media brainwashing painting a picture of society as if all women were OK with promiscuity and what not. That's absolutely not the case! BUT of course it is a great sacrifice for women, in a way, to not squander her sexual market value, to build up inner traits, to stand to her values - which nowadays is harder especially for women due to a higher biological need to socialize. Which means you have to sacrifice too. Sacrifice vices, sacrifice time for money, sacrifice comfort for strength. To find a strong independent virtuous woman, you have to be stronger, more independent and more virtuous than other men in your position. If you can make that connection between challenge and gratification, you're almost good to go. In short: Start with yourself, improve yourself. You will start to attract compatible circles, and so, women. Refrain from negative self-fulfilling prophecies disguised as conclusions.

You say scientists don't go to church to condemn priests, yet you apparently think, in the case of UPB, one should have to go tell children Santa isn't real. That's a contradiction. "Correction requires universal preferences." Correction means adaptation so you can live, for example looking for food in the right place. Correction in a debate isn't necessarily about universal preference and so doesn't necessarily has to do with it. Hating correction occurs because some humans don't like to be wrong (socialists). Evading correction though is unsustainable behaviour and in case of universal preferences will lead to death. (Anecdotal evidence doesn't count.) "An objective methodology exists for separating truth from falsehood." As said, doesn't have to do anything with convincing others of your beliefs. Furthermore, this objective methodology exists, consisting of reason and evidence, which must be agreed upon in the form of empiricism. If you don't agree on empiricism, we get surrealism and no possible debate at all. "Individuals are responsible for their actions." First you want to contradict it, then you fail at drawing a line at who should be responsible for their actions (null-zone) and who shouldn't, and display your own falsification as the falsification of the first assumption. I will bring the proof of the necessity of this assumption: If you assume some individuals are responsible and some are not, you are creating a null-zone, letting way to a two-class society with a ruling class without responsibility and an enslaved class which becomes punished for their every move. A null-zone always leads to inequality, which is well-established in the book about UPB. Citing from the book here: "(...) if I tell you that you are not responsible for your actions, I am telling you that it is universally preferable for you to believe that preference is impossible, since if you have no control over your actions, you cannot choose a preferred state, i.e. truth over falsehood." So you choose to prefer non-preference, which is paradoxic. Just nope. Those "initial preferences" are empirically proven universal preferences which aren't used to force conclusions. Conclusions are built upon these empirical facts. You still can choose to not use UPB at all. In that case, I hope you have good instincts because I don't know any better system I could recommend to you. Your instincts, intuition, feelings and experience, if well-trained, will eventually lead to UPB. Don't forget UPB is based upon our requirements for life. Your way of writing, I have to admit, is foggy. If you could condense that would facilitate the discussion a lot. And: People, don't get sidetracked! This is important!

Can relate. It was a creeping war for my boundaries. She was always giving 101 % of the abuse of yesterday. At one point I realized that she could make me go to jail if she wanted to. She regularly cut herself when she was in a bad mood... It's just so sad because I knew that she was suffering. I wanted to help her and heal with her. But it got me only heartbreak.

In my opinion, evil always comes down to a lack of empathy. Empathy in the sense of universal connectedness. Connectedness not only to humans; to the future, the environment, truth, everything that is real and all universal abstract matters. A person who can extend their empathy to everything becomes truly unable to do evil. I believe you can be connected to the future in form of the consequences of what you do - doing something of great impact without knowing if the impact will be positive is evil.

I comprehend your emotion, but it's not OK to punch anybody just for their preferences. When we come down to that, all ground for debate goes missing :/

Thank you a lot. There is a lot of talk about narcissism going on, but you give really detailed, practical advice. Can imagine where that comes from, you cleared up some essential questions I had lingering about my past relationship. Gotta applaud on the "How to trick narcissists" series. I did that myself even though I hope I'll never get the chance again.

I think MGTOW is merely a stage to go through for men who realized that inconsequential romantical relationships don't yield any experiences nor improvements of productivity at all, or any more. I think there is a mix-up of the standpoints of "I don't know anyone fit to marry" (due to increased standards) and "I don't want to marry at all" (which would be ideological, the way ideological people would want to portray it). Both become the same when there is noone fit to marry in your life, but as soon as that changes, I at least would stop being a MGTOW. So these are the "intake" and the "exhaust" of the group of men in the MGTOW-stage as I see it. Regarding economical questions I say, when there isn't anyone actively stopping them, it's completely up to the person what their finances will be and the time needed for household chores isn't a relevant throwback. A real throwback are vices though: computer gaming, substances, binge-watching are the things which have hold me back the most in my single time. Those are the things which keep you poor, because they consume the most valuable thing we have in masses: time.

I, too, was called crazy. Often during relationships and in more than half of the cases when they ended. I was called crazy by my class mates too, though, and by a whole lot of other people, because I have always been more honest and less adapted than those around me. In my experience it is a way of saying "I can't accept your point of view and I don't have to because you are crazy (and as long as other people have the same belief I don't have to defend myself)", sometimes in a funny, sometimes in a serious way. I had the feeling that it was easier for an ex to distance herself from me by deciding I was crazy. Otherwise they would have had to be sad. It's evading real processing I guess, or at least procrastinating it to a better fitting time.