themortalgod

I'd also add in heart rate/breathing rate though they are naturally much harder to observe during a conversation.

Ah, but by that argument, if you were at one point a taxpayer you can feel totally justified in being on wellfare? I do agree with not being dependent on the state though, its currently a very 'what if" scenario, I'm currently employed and have been consistently paying into EI for over a decade since I graduated college and never had even consider tapping into it, but I find that these sort of moral dilemma are better examined at times when you aren't facing any dire need that may clout judgement.

So I was having an interesting discussion recently and thought I'd post here to see how everyone feels. My position is that since EI (Employment Insurance) is a mandatory payment in Canada that the government requires that you pay on every paycheque so that they can transfer that money from you (the employed) to others (the unemployed) that it is no different than a tax to subsidize a form of welfare other than the name that makes it sound like private insurance. Their position is that it is quite different than a tax since it is insurance and if you believe that it is unethical to accept an EI payout then you should also consider payouts from any private insurance entity (such as home insurance) equally unethical. I believe they are very different as with a private insurance company I am entering into a free exchange with a private entity on a negotiable, mutually beneficial agreement where as with employment insurance I am being forced into a payment (effectively as gunpoint as non payment could result in arrest) at a set rate that I have no control over. Other than in name I fail to see any difference between "employment insurance" to cover unemployment and a taxation to subsidize wellfare. Thoughts?

I would define the value of SK knowledge as equipping oneself with the awareness to better understand one's existence in order to better captain one's life in a moral, positive, rational, and objective way.

One thing about religion that has always confused me is that "if" god or some other similar divine being did exist, why would they care any more about us worshipping them than humans care about being worshipped by insects? The film watchmen always gets me thinking about this due to the scene when Veidt think he has destroyed Dr Manhatten only to have Manhatten respond by saying: "Did you really think it would kill me? I have walked across the surface of the sun. I have witnessed events so tiny and so fast, they could hardly be said to have occurred at all. But you, Adrian, you're just a man. The world's smartest man poses no more threat to me than does its smartest termite." Within the scope of that film/comic Dr Manhatten is effectively a divine being (even though he was created from a mortal so retains a connection to humanity) His logic is accurate though, the actions of humans are so trivial to him that they couldn't possibly pose a threat. I imagine an eternal divine being that infinitely predated humanity would care even less about individual humans. I just can't see a divine being thinking: "I need to make sure that these tiny creatures on this one planet of the billions of planets in this one galaxy of the billions of galaxies in my universe spend their short blink of a lifespan adhering to a very specific religious doctrine that I have created and sent to them via subtle visions to a series of select prophets in extremely subjective format." Can anyone make a rational argument for why god would create religion or even care if humans were to adhere to it?

The title is a bit misleading as it claims to disprove that all wars are caused by religion, but instead you are aiming to show that Christianity is not responsible for all wars. Which is absolutely true and easily provable as war predates Christianity. That said, on the original topic I suspect it would be very difficult to name many wars that don't have some religious component to them throughout the entirety of human history. I wouldn't go so far as to say religion causes all wars but it is certainly and always has been a factor in them. That said, given that there has never been a nation, that I know of, that wasn't made up of a majority of religious individuals that suggests correlating religion to war might be as insane as say correlating oxygen breathing war. I think religion certainly has fuelled many wars though. Not all, but many. I always like to think of the famous Steven Weinberg quote: "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion." Its not that religion is inherently bad and its not that religion is inherently warlike. Its that religion often looks to replace individual morality with its own contruction of morality which means faithful individuals often accept the gospel of that morality above their own common sense. This becomes a tremendous problem when a moral doctrine is warped or altered in a nefarious way.

Its hard to really tell, I imagine I'm not the only one who has a different email tied to their paypal than the email tied to their forum account.

Lol so the solution to too much self knowledge is more self knowledge? hahah

This is a really simple and elegant way of putting it.

Actually, in the contrary there are quite a few obsessive intellectuals out there who become so obsessed with their work that they forget to bathe or take care of their own hygiene. I'm pretty sure Einstein was guilty of this from time to time. That said I would agree that addictive behaviour is often a marker for lower intelligence so things such as smokers or booze hounds do represent lack of intelligence. (Though, again, not absolute, there are countless high functioning intellectuals who were also prone to addictive behaviour. For example Ayn Rand was a walking chimney ) That statement about men vs women is accurate. I'd also theorize that something like 90% of women are more "well-kept" than the majority of men. (I, of course, have no actual data on this but just based on my own observations throughout life) I also like to always try to remember than even IQ itself isn't a direct marker to define intelligence or lack there of either. It is an effective one and likely the best and simplest one that we currently have but it isn't absolute. To quote Einstein: "if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid" There are many individuals who score excessively high on IQ tests but have effectively no ability to understand philosophy or SK. Meanwhile there are those who score low on IQ tests that understand philosophy reasonably well. An IQ test is really just a test measuring short-term memory, analytical thinking, mathematical ability and spatial recognition. The spectrum of human intelligence is wider than that. (Creativity, intuition, long term memory, empathy, ability to delay gratification, ability to observe, linguistics, time management, etc) It would be like evaluating the quality of an audio speaker by only how loud it is and ignoring other factors such as accuracy, bass, etc. IQ is certainly an effective marker but it paints a very incomplete picture when taken in isolation.

I disagree, Trump needs to make decisive and rapid positive change that will have a quick measurable and beneficial change on the American people. Right now the left's entire rhetoric is that he is this awful bigot who is going to leave their country in ruin by obliterating their freedom and way of life. If a few months from now all the moderates realize their lives are improving under his leadership while none of the atrocities that the left "claims" he will inact have taken place more and more people will begin to support him. In contrast, if Trump takes his time and slowly makes changes things will continue to get worse as a result of Obama's unsustainable social policies and Trump will take the blame for that decline.

I genuinely believe that the long term solution to islam is isolation. Humans don't respond well to force, even if its forced peace. Its quite clear that islamic culture does not mesh well with modern culture. My theory is that this is heavily driven by factors that continually prevent the evolution of mind within middle eastern countries. Over the last century or two this meddling has come from us working to force our values on them. It isn't working. Free countries in the world today are free because their own populations reached a point intellectually where they demanded their own freedom and took it. The only way for a culture to be free is if they choose their own freedom of their own volition. As a result I think our best course of action for the middle east would be complete global isolation. No imports, no exports, no meddling, no immigration in either direction, no refugees, and no tourism in either direction. For all intent and purpose their borders would be closed for the indefinite future. The unfortunate reality is that their internal wars would continue for many years and many would die but its not like we are preventing these wars or deaths now through interference. Furthermore, their entire basis of armament and wealth depends on import/export. As far as I know there is little to no production in radical regions and without our "help" they have no way to acquire guns, ammunition or any other modern weaponry. Furthermore, their only major source of wealth is oil which they would not be able to tap without industrializing as it would lose its export value with all exports being blocked. Once isolated they would be forced to either live primitively again or industrialize which is unlikely under sharia rule and thus they would, over time, evolve and likely let go of it much like the west let go of primitive religious ideologies. We would have to make an investment in prevention of war profiteering by arms dealers who do not respect the isolation policy but I imagine the resource cost to police borders would be far lower than our ongoing cost of repeated wars, frequent occupations, and endless refugee issues.

I think that the value of self knowledge is pretty well established at this point but I have been thinking a lot lately about how much self introspection is too much? Like anything there is always point where too much of a good thing becomes a bad one. Once could invest so much in SK that it becomes an obsession. I'm wondering what everyone thinks about this and how we could go about defining what a healthy level of SK is and how to avoid over investing?

I'd disagree that being well kept is a marker for intelligence. Many of the most intelligent people I've ever met don't prioritize personal fashion, optimal cleanliness, or appearance at all. Where as many highly unintelligent individuals I've encountered have been extremely well-kept. Anecdotal, though, as I do not know of any studies in the matter. But to extend it a bit further, in general, far more women are well kept than men but we all know that women don't vastly outpace men in terms of IQ distribution. In my opinion the two best markers of intelligence are ability to recollect as you mentioned and also the ability to make logical leaps based on the intangible such associating causality. To give a great example from one of Stephen's recent shows those on the left tend to associate the government deporting illegals and breaking up families as the fault of the government as they are directly responsible for the action. Where as in reality the fault lies on the illegal who chose to break the law which lead to breaking up their own families. Unintelligent individuals really struggle to make the logical leap in order to associate the inception of an eventual reaction. This happens repeatedly through society, another common example: "I'm poor because minimum wage is too low" vs "I'm poor because I haven't ensured that my labour is valuable". Unintelligent people have no idea how the value of a wage is inferred where as intelligent individuals are able to trace the link within their minds between the wage and the value of the labour being purchased with that wage.

I did recently move in August, though I stayed in Vancouver proper, though not by choice. I was unexpectedly renovicted. (a loophole here that allows the landlord to suddenly evict a fixed term tenant at the end of their lease based on the grounds of wanting to renovate with only a month's notice. The landlord then immediately re-lists at a much higher rent). At the time Greater Vancouver was cresting the rental crisis so availability was incredibly low, especially for someone with a large dog. I hunted for the month and the place I'm currently in was the only one that was even remotely viable. (Believe it or not I looked at once place that had duct tape windows that was listed for $1800/month) Though the nearby suburbs didn't offer much savings even if I had found a place. In order to lower that nasty price I think I'd have had to be looking in the 2-4 hours per day of commute range. It just is what it is though. I'm no victim, I choose to live in this city. I was more or less just pointing out that by most cities standards of income I'm fairly well off but by Vancouver's there is no way I'd be able to support a family so I'm not "that" well in the eyes of say someone looking to start a family. I have more resources than most people my age but that just means I get to live alone instead of with 3 roommates. Its why Lauren Southern claims to have left Vancouver, men with good jobs don't have the resources to support a family. Ha, thats fair, perhaps a paper bag? hahah kidding. Rationally I don't necessarily feel that the aspect of myself that I dislike are aspects that most people would comment on or care about. Its more an internal thing. I've always been very hard on myself in regards to everything I do. In my creative life I have kinda developed a perfection or failure mentality with my work and I imagine that has bled into my perception of my own appearance. (Which is why I think im probably objectively 5 or 6) I have been working on my physique quite a bit, though my body has a tendency not to really react visibly to working out. I get lighter, thinner, and stronger, but I never develop any definition no matter how hard I work out. That said I'd rather be tall and slender than tall and pudgy so I will keep working at it. I also have a bit of a posture problem, its not horrible but I had a back injury when I was younger and have had a bad back ever since (despite medical help), over time I've developed a bit of a slouch. I'm also working to correct/marginalize it and recently ordered a medical device designed to help pull me back erect. I'm not sure if its a big factor driven by my subconscious but I've never had anyone express physical attraction to me in any way shape or form. I recognize, though, that this is just as likely a product of me not making myself available as it is a reflection of me being unanimously unattractive. I certainly recognize the benefits of religion as a social construct, unfortunately I really struggle seeing past it as a series of objective delusions used to manipulate ignorance in a positive way. I don't bemoan those who choose it. to each his or her own. Its just for me I can't imagine ever being compatible in an intimate relationship with someone who has a distinctly contradictory perception of reality. In a sense I see religion in a similar sense to drugging all the boys to act like girls. Sure it works, but do I agree with it? No. Personally I define myself as Agnostic as I haven't ever encountered objective evidence that proves that a divine being does not exist so I can't claim atheism. That said, if a god does exist I suspect that it does not care about our worship any more than we care about being worship by insects. Regardless of the existence of a divine being I'm fairly sure that religion is strictly a human creation. (Though again, I lack decisive evidence to prove it so cannot claim in the absolute). In all though, I respect the believer's right to believe but in my persona intimate relationship I'd prefer to build it based on shared beliefs that allow us to have discussions and make discussion based on the same values.

I would quite agree with that in theory. Though I think there is also something to be said about making that first impression. Being open and honest is a given, but I imagine I also want to put my best foot forward then move into the rest over time.

Thanks for your thoughts. I'd tend to agree with the issue that the lack of experience may be a red flag that would turn someone off who would have been fine with it had they got to know. I feel like this whole dating game is so critically about first impressions that odds are that even if you encounter what might be the perfect person often you are two passing ships in the night as either or both of you filter each other based on some trivial red flag used to weed out undesirables. For example, in this case, I can imagine a woman thinking they don't want to deal with a man who has never dated because it likely means he is unconfident or a basement dwelling neckbeard. That isn't the case for me, but if I'm already filtered away based on that characteristic before I have a chance to overcome the bias and prove it wrong there is a potential for loss. And yup, certainly been trying via joining outdoor activities and intend to continue using that. So far the groups I've tried have been mostly full of left wing hippie types that love nature and spend half the hike/climb/whatever talking about identity politics. I intend to certainly keep trying though, I'm assuming that while that sort of mindset may be prevalent in this city it certainly is representative of all. The other major problem I've run into is that I HAVE met a few women who actually are very likeminded but unfortunately, they are always in long term relationship before I meet them. (not really a surprise, amazing people tend to find amazing people and they tend to stay together). For example, one friend who I met through another friend at an convention last year. She doesn't live locally but we quickly became fast friends and she is very much into objectivism, self knowledge, etc. If I had met her 5 years earlier I suspect we would be soul mates but she was in a committed, long term relationship on the day I met her.

@Rventurelli, thanks so much for the details response, il try to answer your questions as well as possible: Regarding Acne treatment: I saw many dermatologists and tried a miriad of treatments over the years. Most were ineffective, some made things worse. Nothing helped. And in the spirit of openness at the time I didn't really care as much as I probably should have so refused to stop eating junk food which likely was making things worse. Thats on me though, my family did push me to eat healthier. I think, looking back that I ate as a coping mechanism for the bullying but also because I really really loved food hahaha. If you had asked 16 year old me to choose between being healthy and the bottle of Pepsi in my hand, he would have chosen the Pepsi. I do have a reasonably decent job. I live in Vancouver (most expensive city in north america) so the money doesn't go terribly far but I am well ahead of all my friends in terms of income. (almost 6 figures). As for looks, I've never liked the way I looked. (Thus stuff that can't be changed, shape of my eyes, ears, etc) So personally based on my own perception I'd rate my self really low. That said, objectively to an outsider I'd probably be higher than that. 5 or 6 maybe? Its hard to say, my instinct is to say 0 but I know thats not true. I'm 6'3", athletic. I do have acne scars but they have faded quite a bit. I can't grow facial hair (or body hair) so I tend to look younger than I am but I also have a receding hairline and am starting to go silver a bit. Strange mix of a 14 year old and middle age guy hahaha. Personally, I don't see a relationship ever working with someone who is religious, at least for me. While I do recognize the positive influence christianity has had on communities It would drive me insane always being put up against completely irrational arguments based on evidence coming from a book that appears to be a work of fiction. I have some friends who are religious and while we can move past it, I do often find their reasoning and objectivity extremely difficult to deal with. I should mention that my goal in all this isn't intercourse, its more the relationship, companionship, and partnership that I'd be focused towards. And yup, no single mothers for me. @aviet: Also big thanks for your thoughts. I have been trying online dating. I've worked on online dating services before in my career so know how much of a scam they are designed to be (their business model is all about making think you almost have found someone but not actually finding someone so you keep paying). I figured it can't hurt to try a OkCupid though which I've been using to mostly poor results. I find that it quickly runs out of local results and starts bombarding me with matches from the states (even though I have my settings set to limit distance). I'm not really looking for a long distance thing that means years of having a relationship with instant messaging so it does make it tough. So far my experience has been pretty poor, I'm amazed at how many profiles, at least in my local area are of women who take no responsibility for their physical health. Which is important to me, I'm not looking for a model but I also would want someone who is committed to being healthy like I am. (now) The words "single mother" and "feminist" seem to come up very often which I'd consider also an immediate "no". I recognize that it is possible that I'm in the wrong city (Vancouver) which is incredibly left leaning so the number of Feminists/SJWs here are pretty concentrated. Of the women who I have messaged, only one (1 in 40 messages) has responded and she turned out to not even be local and only set her profile to local because she was "thinking" about moving here but after talking with her if she was to move it wouldn't be for years and I'm not really after a relationship with an IM client. My benchmark certainly isn't FDR. If it was I think I'd be on a hopeless hunt. Like you said, most women who are like us found their prince charming years ago and rode off into the sunset. My criteria is more or less pretty simple in that they seem reasonable and open to new ideas while holding some semblance of conservative values. I'd also like there to be some level of physical attraction, I'm not hunting for 9s and 10s only but there needs to be some attraction. I also would love to find someone who shares my love of hiking and adventure outdoors but I don't consider a lack of that a deal breaker. I'd also like to find someone that will make a great mother which means she probably has to be younger than me, I'm thinking the optimal age would be mid twenties and needs to be at least open to concepts like peaceful parenting. thanks again!

Reading through this thread, I'm a little late to the game but was wondering, where does your girlfriend stand on this greater political spectrum. This has mostly be characterized as you vs her parents where they seem to be swaying her more. Is she also right leaning like you? If so why is she able to be swayed by baseless reasoning such as "texas will ruin your life", "you won't be able to get health insurance in texas", etc? Aren't those things that can be easily and objectively refuted with some research? I'm just curious why your girlfriend wasn't rejecting these poor arguments? Ultimately, in my opinion, this has nothing to do with your relationship with her parents and everything to do with you relationship with her.

This video was fantastic and a huge help. I had already been well aware of the negative impact of social media and already started to vastly decrease my usage of it but learning about the Facebook Eradicator has been wonderful. I've now eliminated all "endless scroll" content from my life completely and it has been such a refreshing and positive change.

Hey friends, long time listener/lurker, first time poster. I've got an interesting (though likely not uncommon, situation) that I thought I'd toss up here for discussion. I've managed to shoot through my 20s without dating whatsoever and am now finding it quite difficult date due to a combination of personal barrier that I've self imposed and social barriers that many women in my age range look down on men who have no experience whatsoever. (Not even a first kiss or romantically holding hands) I recognize that this is entirely my own fault and thus it should be something I overcome. I've always rationalized away dating for one reason or another. Some more rational than others. Probably worth giving a quick overview of my history but I think it is an issue that plagues many guys. When I first reached dating age I was quite small and suffering from a fair bit of bullying (14 or so). Which didn't really put me in a dating headspace. As I progressed along in puberty I managed to shoot up like a weed which nicely rid me of the bullying. Unfortunately, with the growth spurt came obesity and severe acne. The obesity was more or less my fault, I ate too much junk food. The acne less so. As a result I never really had the confidence to date at the time. The acne was very severe, far more than most. At any given time I looked like my face had been recently dipped in acid. Fortunately, at that time I had discovered philosophy particularly enjoying stuff like Plato and Aristotle. Which did me a world of good building my confidence and bringing me back to being positive in live which led to a quite happy existence though at the time I never really considered dating. This transitioned into college where I was very focused on my work. Which went great, I graduate with a 4.0 and it led to a fantastic job upon graduation. I was a very happy person. For the job I moved to another city and immediately started making personal changes to become healthy. At the time it was for me, I didn't really think much about dating at the time. I figured I was building a career and working on myself, I could always worry about girls later though at the time I really had no interest in pursuing marriage or children as I felt the earth was already way too overpopulated. It wasn't until years later that Stephen's arguments on the value of higher IQ people having children that I started to reverse my position. My health improved dramatically, I shed almost a hundred pounds over a year and a half and transitioned from being obese to being an athlete. I was never happier. The acne, however, stuck around so I really would have had no confidence to date even if I had wanted to. This persisted for the majority of my 20s, despite trying virtually everything I could to get rid of the acne it didn't finally bugger off until I was 27 or so and had given up on it ever going away. At the time I was knee deep in a business venture and from then through until about my 29th birthday I was working too many hours to ever even consider a social life let alone dating. Which leads us to my position now. My life is freeing up a bit and I'm starting to wonder if I'd made a big mistake not trying to date sooner but the past is the past and I can't change it. My future, however, I can. As I'm starting to try to date I've run into 3 very specific barriers that I was wondering if anyone had any advice on. Hopefully they are the sorts of barriers that I'm not the only one who has encountered so that others can learn as well. 1. I'm not sure whether to hide my inexperience or be honest and open from the get go. Friends I've discussed it with all think I should hide it as it is a "major turn off" but I'm struggling with beginning a potential relationship on a lie. Should it be something I just don't mention unless it comes up? My goal is to continue to invest in being the best possible person I can be but I've run into a chicken/egg scenario where I can't build by dating "value" without becoming experienced and I can't be experienced without having value. 2. Finding like minded women to ask out is also a huge problem. I imagine my inexperience isn't helping things but being a non-religious, objectivist individualist has been making it spectacularly hard to find like minded potential partners. The vast majority of women in my social circles are very left leaning. (I'm a photographer so models, makeup artists, etc). I've tried joining social groups based on other shared interests (co-ed sports, for example) but found similar and on the off chance I encounter someone with similar more right wing beliefs they tend to be quite religious and uninterested in dating a non believer. I've also tried going to events related to the alt right (example, The Red Pill screening but those evens seem to be a bit of a sausage fest with maybe one woman in a room full of guys) 3. Overcoming and building my own confidence in this venue. As a whole I'm a pretty confident guy relating to things I know I'm good at. (you have to be as a portrait photographer). But this is a blind spot so I always find myself too stuck in my head which kills my ability to be socially confident in potential dating situations. When reaching out to a gorgeous model il be shooting I have no issues whatsoever. When potentially asking someone on a date its like any potential charm hides deep away in my mind. I know this is just a mental barrier but I'm really struggling to overcome it. Anyhoo, hopefully my wall of text wasn't too big. Thanks so much for listening if you got to the end and any advice would be very much appreciated.