SnapSlav

Yet again, after some news-worthy thing happens, Matt Christiansen takes a crack at it, and explains a really great analysis of the popular response, good or bad related ideas, all while still maintaining some level of delightful entertainment. Check it out below: I didn't know that the media (again, don't watch TV anymore) had picked these 2 kids as their gun control darlings. Strikes me as really sick. Then as Matt points out, they completely avoid (deliberate lying by omission) the facts that Little Marco Rubio is open to policies to try to curb gun violence, in favor of painting him as some NRA-funded blood-on-his-hands evil Republican. When I think back to the things I believed when I was in high school, I shudder to think that those ideas could have been allowed to shape the world for generations to come. I'm glad I couldn't vote yet, cause my decisions would've been perilous. But for some reason these kids and their ambiguous "goals" are great ideas? Mleh...

I do think it telling how you can hear all about a particular "event" on certain news outlets, and dead silence on others. I remember walking past 2 different television sets sometime in the last year, and one channel was Maddow droning on and on about "the latest revelations about the Russia hack" and the other channel was Hannity discussing something completely different. It's funny to me how the opposite sides inhabit completely different universes. I heard about this yesterday because some people were murmuring about it at the office. Since I don't watch TV anymore, if other people weren't relaying what they took from listening to their TVs, I might have gone the whole day without even knowing that it happened. (What a world we could live in, if every aspiring sociopath knew that nobody would know what atrocities they could commit tomorrow, because nobody pays any attention to attention-whoring news outlets?) I immediately went to my preferred sources of information about the world: the "skeptosphere", trademark, and nobody had posted a single thing. Nothing from Stef. Nothing from Crowder. Nothing from Sargon. Etc etc. Naturally, my thoughts for WHY they had nothing was "they're taking their time to gather all the relevant, true facts (sad that we have to differentiate these from anything else), before they post anything incorrect." I could of course be wrong, and it could simply have been that they were slow on the uptake. But seeing as Stef ALWAYS comments on these events... later, and with all due caution and tact... I doubt it. I forget what the video was about, but I did watch something yesterday or the day before about an older "tragedy" in which the poster censored any and all mention of the perpetrator, and they even commented that they were deliberately avoiding naming or showcasing the person, because they didn't want them to get any attention. If but that were the norm...

Post all relevant news and thoughts on this topic here. It's barely a few hours since it happened, and already that same, tired conveyor belt of pointless moral posturing can be seen all over the place. "Thoughts and prayers" tweets mixed with "senseless violence" and condemnations of what happened (Mitt Romney included the whole trifecta in a single tweet!) and of course lamentations that the NRA is to blame, Republicans have blood on their hands, the Republicans are NRA puppets, etc etc. Naturally the focus is that this is a shooting, and that guns are the problem. I had a thought just now when I was noting how this happens every time such a massacre takes place. The usual line goes something line this: "School shooting. Get rid of guns, no more school shootings!" My thought was more like this: "School shooting. Get rid of public schools, no more school shootings!" True, that thought is probably just as knee-jerk reactionary as everything else, and I probably felt that way simply because I was already firmly-opposed to public schooling, and I'm probably no more considerate to the pain and suffering that many people in Florida are going through as a result of this event. But I can't help but wonder if that might actually help prevent these such "tragedies" from occurring... It certainly doesn't exterminate the possibility of depraved souls shooting up private schools, or any congregation of crowds of people, but it might do many things that may lead to fewer of these events taking place. Whether from the public education system's erasure resulting in somewhat-more-balanced individuals, to there just being fewer kids congregated at these institutions, I can't help but feel that THIS is just as preferable of a "solution", and nobody seems to even fathom it a possibility... Last I've read, the shooter is in custody, and was an expelled student. I'm not sure how certain these facts are, but that's the latest that I'm aware of.

I'm positive you completely missed the point of what I was saying. I never at ANY point stated (or even insinuated) that the PROCESS of weapons being created was never negative. I stated outright that the evolution of weapons from a primitive level to a modern level was, at its core, an advancement of technology, which is in and of itself neutral in purpose. As one of my favorite quotes puts it: "There's no such thing as 'a pirate ship'! Paint a skull and crossbones on the sails and it's a pirate ship. Paint a seagull on the sails and it's a marine ship." The pistol itself is not evil, it is merely a tool. Its utility and use- or more specifically, the intentions that went into these -are what can be construed as good or bad. The intention of the user determines the individual use of the tool, not the inventor, not the tool itself. It is just a tool, after all.

Or..... they can get out of the way of their own citizens, and you'll find them QUITE capable of kicking out unwanted savages and implementing forms of protection from injurious institutions. I dunno, I'm pretty sure the American settlers kicked out some unwanted types without having fully formed a fully-fledged state to do it form them. But then again, that's just stuff taught in history books; could always be revisionism. It's a bit ironic that you followed a statement condemning over-reliance on government with this comment suggesting that we need to rely on government to do these particular things, as though free citizens couldn't do so on their own. But ironic is all it is; I don't think it's nefarious, or stupid, or offensive, or what-have-you of you to say it.

It's important that we start at the right point, rather than begin on an assumption, only to find out halfway through the process that the assumption was false and only THEN do we realize that all our work has been formed off of a false pretense. Case in point: The idiom "the love of money is the root of all evil" is not some iron-clad absolute. As such, I'd say this is a VERY flimsy place to begin any philosophical conversation. The phrase has been bastardized and bastardized to the point that many people believe the saying is "money is the root of all evil", which when taught to children gets them to thinking that there's tiny aspects of malevolence inhabiting their pockets. It's absurd. So is "the love of money" being the actual source of "evil" more accurate? Highly doubtful, as this was more an idea put forth by societies that valued sacrifice and demonized materialism. If we were to attempt to pinpoint "the root of all evil", that could be a heft conversation with no end in sight. But I do know I plant my flag in the "ignorance is the root of all evil" camp. Although I do take a somewhat etymological approach to the definition of "ignorance" than most people seem to, these days. I don't equate the starting point we all share of "knowing nothing" with "ignorance", but rather what we might call "taking the blue pill" is what "ignorance" is better defined as. You are "ignoring" something, performing an act of discarding information that is presented to you, you are not simply unaware of the information. Thus I find that people actively disregarding knowledge are doing a "bad" thing, and after some necessary distillations and further explanations, I arrive at the claim that "ignorance is the root of all evil". But that's all besides the point. So about money... Although I'm aware of the taxation theory of money that Dylan Lawrence Moore seems to constantly allude to whenever he discusses finances, and I think it appears to be the correct theory on the origin of money, I'm not as cynical about the implications held within the assumption that money is originally derived from its utilities by states to impose taxes upon its citizens. As Siegfried von Walheim explained in his first post referring to the barter theory of money, it IS a more convenient unit of exchange than barter, and thus if it is indeed a creation of the state, it was an invention that people found much greater personal and private use than they found negatives associated with it. Better still, it's an invention that can be utilized in the ABSENCE of the state. Whereas the concept of taxes cannot be disassociated from the embodiment of the state, money can be. If a hypothetical "free society" were to establish itself, in the hyper-libertarian sense, and all of the land and borders and defenses were locally and privately owned, the people would be communicating their exchanges of personal property using a form of currency, whether money or fiat (most likely private bank money). Even if those units of money were immaterial, the confidence element (all economics are realistically the result of confidence, and everything else just provides the reason to have or lack confidence) would still be material. Liens would be contractually enforceable monetary assets used to secure property upon the collateral of other property. Private notes would be backed by some form of valuable. Theoretically, if a stateless society could exist, so could money. Money may have originated from states, but it is the pandora's box that states opened and can never close again. We now have the tool to use at our disposal, and they can never reclaim that from us. So in short: What is the stuff? It's a unit of value for the purposes of exchange. What in hell has it done to us? It's allowed for civilized societies to exist, with all the wonders and pitfalls that come with them. What should it do? It serves its intended function. Really the concerning questions are how big can you blow your bubble before it bursts. Currency was not the cause of the housing crisis of the last decade, but the transition from money to fiat certainly exacerbated the situation. Fiat is wildly less reliable than money, but it is also more useful in certain cases. Again, it allows for wonders and nightmares, depending on how it is used. The stick becoming the club becoming the sword becoming the cannon becoming the gun becoming the nuke is not in and of itself the terror... it's what is done with it. If you spend your hard-earned cash on a pen (or the modern equivalent being a device that allows you to connect to the internet) then you can use it to communicate with the outside world. You can also use it to spread misinformation and lies meant to damage other parties for nefarious purposes. Just because we see some negative aspects to the yang does not mean the yin isn't there.

So a guy I used to work with back when I was doing retail heard a joke from our supervisor about how when he isn't getting what he wanted from his wife he smacks her and tells her to make him a sandwich. Then the guy stopped showing up to work. Turns out, he thought the joke was advice, and went home and beat his wife then asked for a meal, and instead she called the cops and he was arrested. True story. The moral of the story, and why that has ANY relevance to the above quote? It's this: There are people who cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality, and they're the problem, not the fantasy itself. Too many people see spy thrillers or cop dramas and they erroneously believe these are accurate representations of real life. Some guys watch porn and assume if they parrot the exact same corny lines that they'll suddenly be involved in a steamy orgy. At the end of the day, yes, as long as everyone agrees, we're all good. Some clueless guys will get lucky and their mistake of interpreting fantasy as real advice WILL actually pay off. Chances are most won't have such good fortune. Personally, porn use to me is no different than any hobby or habit. You can take it too far, you can let it rule your life and even ruin your life, or you can enjoy it casually every now and then and it will have a benign influence on you. There's a HUGE gap between "consumption" and "over-consumption", just as there's a wide gulf between "responsibility" and "recklessness".

Anytime I see people either dismissed as "conspiracy theorists" by a critical crowd, or someone trying to defend what they're asserting by saying "I'm not a conspiracy theorist", I'm reminded of a comment made in some video in some program about some thing said by somebody, and none of which I can remember. But the comment was something along the lines of this: "It's not a conspiracy, but it's a series of converging conflicts of interest." Essentially, many times the things that are lambasted as being "conspiracy wacko fantasies" are actually recognition of negative feedback loops, or converging interests, or something that isn't so much a sinister conspiracy, as much as a terrible series of unintended accidents made by people who had no idea what they were doing... but thought that they did. Soy products leading to a massive health epidemic was by no means social engineering, any more than contractors were conspiring to kill off their customers by installing asbestos in their buildings in the 30s through to the 50s. Most of the time, the market generates a demand for a product, only for us to realize WELL after the long-time acceptance of that product, that the product is actually bad- or even dangerous! Cigarettes were popular for decades without anyone so much as suspecting that they had deleterious effects on ones health. It wasn't a conspiracy, just a society-wide mistake in choices. Now more people know the harmful impact of smoking, and some choose to do it anyway because of the benefits in spite of the negatives, and others choose to avoid it specifically because of knowledge of the potential harm. Soy this and soy that and soy those aren't deliberate measures to turn men into effeminate betas and destabilize the nuclear family... even though consumption of these products is leading to hyper-feminization of people resulting in excess negativity and social breakdown. These are just products that flooded the market which we are now learning have very severe drawbacks and are responding to in kind. Another example of non-conspiratorial-but-not-healthy food-additives is fluoride in the drinking water- if you're a fan of Info-Wars you're no doubt VERY familiar with this claim. Supposedly a chemical known to cause brain damage is being pumped into our water supply to dumb us down. The reality is there is a superstition attached to fluoride that it helps prevent cavities, so it's added to water for that very reason. Rhinos are threatened because of the black market for their horns specifically because so many Chinese falsely believe Rhino horns are miracle panacea that can cure many things such as illness to sterility. The sad truth is that there are plenty of "well-informed" people in the west who are anything but, and just as subject to superstitious beliefs, and act according to those mistaken ideas. The good news is fluoride is EASY to filter out of your drinking water, and even if you don't, it takes a TON of ingestion of the stuff to start to see any lasting damage. No conspiracies here. Baby formula is just the natural response from a culture that wants to detach its women from their nurturing roles. It's not a fiendish plot, but a conscious decision by individuals to provide a service that can replace a mother staying at home. They had the best of intentions, but they were grievously wrong. It wasn't a conspiracy though. Bottom line, there's bad stuff out there, and the more we know about it so we can make better-educated decisions, the better off we'll be! But these things aren't part of any conspiracy. Just people making bad decisions... not to downplay the pivotal role in bad decisions bringing down civilizations, though. By all means, take these problems seriously! Bilderberg, on the other hand, NOW we're talking conspiracies...

Well I was rather encouraged when I saw Jordan Peterson's video breaking down the entire situation at Laurier University, and joining him were two teachers, at least one (or was it both?) who taught at that very university. So it was relieving to see that some of them are seeing the trouble and realizing that it's not good. But the flow still seems to be going in the direction that it is...

I am sad that this topic has received so little attention. It's both a good question, as well as one I would love to have answers for my own use, like yourself. Planning for the future, and not being "in the position" to need it right now. I suppose the latest video from Stef kinda addresses your questions of "what happens when someone suffers all of this" and "an example of someone who does not overcome it as an example". The answer is "Charles Manson". The man had almost every kind of childhood trauma piled on top of him, and he turned into a psychopathic cult-leader implicated in a mass-murder conspiracy, and he clearly did not "overcome" his traumas. In essence, #12 is Charles Manson. I know that really just answers 1/24 of your question, but... hey, more progress than has been seen previously? =/

The problem with this hypothesis is that it asserts that a potential cause of increased racial tensions is the focus on the ethnostate. The reality is that racial tensions are already rising as a direct result of what's going on with the focus on leftist politics. A focus of "diversity is our strength", which is the absolute antithesis of promoting an ethnostate. Actually IMPLEMENTING an ethnostate will eliminate these racial tensions. But certainly, if the country suddenly decided to "purify" itself and become a white ethnostate, there would be roughly 100 million people being displaced and that would cause some "tensions", to say the least. But does that mean they have the wrong idea? Again, racially homogeneous countries stand as an example of peace rather than conflict. The problem in their ideas is that there is something in-between points A and B, and many people will not like the transition. It's a question of how do you justify a preferable end when there's no optimal means to suggest to get to it. This is kinda obvious, but sure, we should. The problem is that you're projecting a capacity to rationalize and think critically on the rest of the population, and most people lack this capacity. Smart people are the tiny minority, and confusing them for everyone else is going to lead to trouble. Most people WANT to focus on race, because they're inherently tribalistic and the most immediate example of "their tribe" is "their race" and that's where they will default. "If everyone could just stop this tribal way of thinking, we could eliminate all these racial tensions!" That's just socialist-utopianism all over again... pretending that human nature can be altered. Well, it can't. Utopia is impossible, so don't even dare to attempt it. It will only result in the worst of atrocities. Instead, try to come up with solutions that can actually be executed within the limits of human nature, because those are our only options. The Alt-Right is at least doing that much. I'd say we just need to culturally reinforce the value of Free Speech, so the Alt-Right can continue spreading its message, and people can respond to their message with their own messages. The disagreements can be hashed out with weapons, or with words. I prefer words. We'll figure out the "right" solution somehow only if that's what we do.

Some people are saying it's great that she had the foresight to record the meeting, and that it's the only way things will change. But... nothing's changing. Not improving, anyway. (Just look at Evergreen University.) Those "apologies" are just blips in time where these administrations play a political game of shedding some crocodile tears right before they go back to resuming their status quo. They're not being put through the wringer. They're not being pressured to change. Their university isn't going to revamp its structure. This is all just Monica Lewinsky all over again: public outcry, they're briefly embarrassed, some new "shiny object" will come along to distract everyone, fast-forward to 19 years later and people will have fond memories of them. As I indicated in my description of my reaction to the audio recording.. these people believe that they're not being Left enough! Nothing's changing, except that they're just moving further and further in the wrong direction...

So I just watched the full video of the audio of the interrogation of Lindsay Shepherd. Wow. I am blown away by what I heard. I knew that leftists believed their bullshit, but now I hear them saying that their worldview is that people aren't left enough! It's a disturbing listen, so those who look up this video (provided by 1791L youtube channel), be forewarned, it is both dull and horrifying all at once. For those who don't know, a graduate student Teacher's Assistant, Lindsay Sheperd, played a few minutes of a youtube video of a Jordan Peterson discussion in a classroom setting. Some students complained, and she was disciplined for her actions. As a result of the ugly process she was put through, she's grown totally disillusioned with academia and is going to leave the university setting. This video is just the audio of the meeting in which the administration grills Ms. Shepherd for playing Jordan Peterson, and it was just the beginning of the trials and tribulations for Shepherd... all because some students' feels got hurt. As someone who lived through something similar, this disturbed me greatly. Listen at your own peril. Thoughts?

So in other words... if you're 14, dating is off-limits unless they're older than you. Got it! Kidding, of course. But that's an interesting rule of thumb to go by. Not sure that I agree, but somewhere around that sounds reasonable. After all, 32 now, and I'm gonna start looking around the early 20s when I get back into the game, so 16+7=23, going by that rule I shouldn't touch anything that's 22. Well I dunno about that. Anyway, this is off-topic... . . . . . I'm not exactly sure how "does not exist i.e. it is not a physical object that has an existence in the universe, but is a concept that we value therefore we support it" is such a difficult concept to grasp. I often tell people "science does not exist" for the very same reasons Stef says "the state does not exist". I'm not saying I hate science, but that when someone looks at accumulated human knowledge and acts as if there's some physical, gigantic almanac somewhere on the planet, and refers to "science" as some kind of resource, I have to counter that, because it's not a tangible thing. It's a method. It's like BBQ; if you point to a grill and call it a BBQ, you're just wrong. There is no thing called BBQ; BBQ is a method. A building is a tangible thing, but what that building represents is not tangible. "Protection from the elements" is a concept, not an absolute found within nature. Indeed, it is opposite to what is naturally found. Human beings are capable of abstract reasoning, so understanding that what we're doing is abstraction of non-physical concepts is important. It doesn't mean those abstractions are pointless just because we recognize their intagibility. On a slightly tangential note... I don't believe it's been brought up, but how about liberties? I learned it like this: God gave us Liberties, Man gave us Rights. Whether you're theistic or not, the premise is that one is inalienable (cannot be separated from the being) while the other isn't. The U.S. follows the premise that our three absolute Liberties are life, freedom, and pursuit (not guarantee) of happiness. But we have a Bill of Rights which is CONSTANTLY being amended- added to and subtracted from -and debated. By existing, we have the inalienable capacity for those three liberties, but the rights have to be defined by some form of agreement between individuals. Such is the case with property rights. When you're born into the world, some random object isn't inextricably linked to you forever and ever, but at some point you can claim it is yours, and there has to be some form of agreement that it is or it isn't.

I dunno... I think ALL I needed to see was that TERRIBLE grammar in both posts. Hey, we all make mistakes, but "Not typical, but I'm not your typical" redundancy? "[A] man that for his shit together"? No thank you. I don't think you have enough of the genes associated with IQ for me to be interested... Those "I make terrible choices and I don't take ownership of that" signals were just cannons fired at an already-sinking ship.

Assuming this was directed at me, cause it was part of the post following quoting mine... Presently no. I'm too busy getting my business off the ground, so I'm putting dating on hold. I briefly started doing "beginner-level pickup" around late last year or early this year, doing my approaches and all that to get over the social anxiety, then I started my new career in April and had to abandon that pursuit for the time being. In my younger years (early 20s) I went through a spell of reckless philandering, and if I ever made the mistake to assume that all women were like my worst interaction, then I might've sworn off women altogether. But I knew she was just a particularly nasty person, and I just got unlucky/careless associating with her. I should count my stars that stealing a couple hundred bucks from me was ALL she took! (That and all the time... and the headaches...) When I first heard about MGTOW, I was sympathetic to their cause, because they're not wrong about how slanted the legal system is against men in women's favor. But the more I observed it, the less sympathetic I was. (Kinda like the first time you hear about the alt-right, you initially think, "Hey, that sounds like me!" Then months later you watch as it distills itself into something very different, and far from relatable.) Just too much whining, beta-cuckery, excuse-making, and fleeing from problems rather than trying to tackle them and resolve them. I don't begrudge men from checking out, if that's what they wanna do. But there are better ways and outlooks with which to do it than MGTOW. Jordan Peterson may have been a bit too rough on them in his infamous answer about it a few months back, but he wasn't exactly wrong, either... Luckily for me, my line of work (sales-heavy) demands going out and interacting with people CONSTANTLY! So when I finally do get back in the game, I won't exactly have fallen completely off the horse! =D

Good "moral choice" games are a huge recommendation from me. Contrary to what many publishers would insist, simply advertising "tough choices" is NOT the same thing as a tough choice. Todd Howard insisted that it would be a difficult choice to weigh your options when choosing to drink contaminated water or to not in Fallout 3, but the reality is there were no heavy consequences in that game, and zero tough choices. It insisted it was a morality driven game, but it was just childish interpretations of hard choices, not actual hard choices. Bioshock is a good recommendation, not because the "choices" you have are particularly compelling, but because the game does a damn fine job of blending ludonarrative elements with the story. Your ability to choose to spare or kill the Little Sisters isn't a really tough choice, and if they'd spent more time building up the two characters who advocated for opposite choices (The good guy advocating kill, the "Nazi scientist" advocating save, who do you believe?) then maybe the choice would have been tough or compelling. But it's the fact that the story plays on the role of free will that makes the opportunity given to the player so compelling. Not only are you directed by glowing objects telling you what to interact with, giant floating compass markers telling you where to go, and a voice on the radio instructing you what you've got to do, the game's story LITERALLY hinges on the point that you had no free will the entire time... except where the Little Sisters are concerned. So since this was your one and only act that was entirely up to you to choose, it makes the choice actually quite poignant. It's a brilliant indictment of games as a whole, that advertise how "open" they are when in reality they're just really big railroads, rather than small ones. I don't really see the problems that Stefan alludes to when he dismisses the game, because I found it to be an insightful introductory to Objectivism, not a scathing criticism at all. It's a brilliant thinker's game, and the more you think about it, the deeper it gets. It's a real shame, then, that the two sequels did everything in their power to completely negate all the good ideas that came of Bioshock. I'd highly recommend the first game, and advise to avoid the following two. My favorite games are ones that have fantastic writing that makes me doubt my choices constantly. Namely the (good) Fallout games: 1, 2, Tactics, and New Vegas. I've recently started playing Wasteland 2 and so far in I'd say it also deserves a mention. When you're given an opportunity to make a choice in THESE Fallout games, it's not some cartoonishly simple view of morality. The villains have very good reasons for doing what they're doing, and when you face off against the end-game adversaries, you find very human people trying to do good things, and you realize that doing good by your standards is going to ask to do bad... by your own standards. You're not presented a simplistic, "Do I save a bunch of innocents, or do I torture them and laugh like a nefarious villain?" Instead, you're given a real conundrum, such as, "Do I shut off this damaged reactor and stop the contamination of these crops, or do I transfer power over to the survivors so they can escape, dooming the crops?" In either choice there are winners and losers, and it's up to you to decide your own justification for why you should pick one or the other. The game won't judge you either way. It'll just present the opportunity to you, and let you make your own decisions. Unfortunately, Fallout and Fallout 2 haven't aged terribly well (better than some, but not ideal), so I can understand some people having a tough time enjoying them. But if you can get past the outdated interface and the old graphics, they are amazing games to play. Tons of fun, and very thought-provoking. But it should go without saying, DO NOT play FO3 or FO4 and expect the rest of the series to even REMOTELY resemble those atrocities... If you don't want to think too hard, and you enjoy pointless, mindless catharsis, then by all means, play them. But if you like your games treating you like independent-thinking individuals and respecting your moral agency, then skip over Todd Howard's abominations. Play the originals, and New Vegas. They warrant your attention.

Got my copy a few days ago, and I'm only a couple pages in so far. Loving it for the most part, but I did find a disagreement fairly early on. Early into the book, he defined two distinct types of arguments, truth arguments, and value arguments. He asserts that truth arguments don't matter if we don't value the truth, and value arguments only matter if they're true, so the two aren't inseparable. I have a criticism for this outlook in that I think there may be a bit of a conflation going on. In economics, we're taught that there are two types of statements: positive and normative. Contrary to what many think, positive statements are not reinforcement or compliments, they're just statements of fact. Normative statements are meanwhile statements of how things "should be" rather than how they are. So you can see the parallel between the two pairs of categories; truth arguments are another name for positive statements, and value arguments are another name for normative statements. My criticism comes with his assertion that the two aren't always separate, because of the aforementioned cyclical "only if we value truth and only if true" validations. Well, my understanding of normative versus positive statements is that you can make a sort of "prescription" using solely positive statements, rather than relying on normative ones. The example given by one of my former professors was him teaching his daughter about the different chemicals in sodas and why she "shouldn't" drink this soda or that. He could have made prescriptive normative claims that it's unhealthy so she shouldn't, but instead he gave her positive factual descriptors about caffeine and sweetness additives whenever she'd ask "what about this soda?" until she came to a drink where he had no facts to give her that would compel her not to drink it. So he in effect conveyed a "as should be" argument, but not by using a value or a normative claim, rather by sticking to facts (as he knew them). It's not that you think drinking soda is unhealthy, it's that you know the following consequences come from the following components of the following drinks, draw your own conclusions. A value argument was completely unnecessary, in spite of "preferable" behavior being advocated. So perhaps I'm just saying there's a bit of a simplification going on. But then again... isn't that the whole point of the book? It's not for the intellectual titans exclusively, it's for those who love philosophy as well as those just dipping their toes in the philosophical waters. So some simplifications are necessary, I suppose. The important thing is I am enjoying the read. =)

It was pretty damn obvious that "the left" wasn't trying to brainwash people but rather actually believed in its own bullshit back when Project Veritas Action uncovered the bird-dogging scandal at the tail end of the election. These people, caught on undercover camera, weren't talking like they knew they were wrong but waned to win. They expressed genuine belief that they knew what was best, that they were going to make the world better with "their way", and that their enemies REALLY were as evil as they insisted that they were. "Liberalism is a mental disorder". The thought process of pushing boundaries for the sake of boundary pushing, the mentality that change is always an improvement, the belief that humans can be "changed" and that there is no such thing as human nature, the ability to inhabit other characters' minds as if they were yours because you have no mind of your own, has always been the product of a broken mind. Liberals are the way they are because they've always been diseased of the brain. The adages "Every villain is the hero of the story in their own mind" and "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" have long existed for a reason.

Sounds like Commie hokum. The ultra rich- like the moderately rich -all do the same thing: they invest and they give to charity. Both of these things are the opposite of "hoarding", they're actively throwing their capital out into the world. Every time someone bemoans "the 1%", they're usually just pernicious and envious, and this is an even greater exaggeration of that, because it's the top 10% of 1%. Extra envious. Even the worst of the worst "amoral billionaires" are doing the opposite of this "hoarding" claim, disproving this assertion. As Stef pointed out in his recent video about Soros, the man has donated $18 billion dollars to his open society organizations. So even the worst isn't "hoarding". Stop it with this "the rich need to spread the wealth" nonsense. They already are. They need to STOP, because they're paying people to continue being impoverished and unproductive. The impoverished need to worry about themselves, not blaming everything on the rich. The problem isn't wealthy people, it's this absurd notion that wealth needs to be "spread" amongst the people. No, no it does not.

Don't go deliberately misrepresenting change in law. That's wrong. Or, if you genuinely believe that's what happened, I'd suggest this video on the subject: He breaks it down excellently, explaining what the law change actually does, while still being entertaining. So your "it's a-okay to purposefully infect someone with HIV" is just pure bullshit. A misdemeanor is not "a-okay". Most states have it as a misdemeanor or less of a crime, so California was CORRECT (for a change) on the matter. Being a lesser crime like most states, and to match its own criteria for similar actions with other infections, is not remotely the same thing as approval. Not even close. Don't get me wrong, I'd WAY prefer that it wasn't lowered to a misdemeanor, and still a felony, but they did not make it legal, let alone "a-okay". Again, see the above video. Matt does a damn fine job explaining the law change. Either way, the law (even its previous harsher-punishment variant) is almost impossible to enforce, because proving intent in law is ridiculous.

Well, they DO have an aunt and an uncle, according to you. It's just that they're not in the children's lives. I can sympathize with your conundrum. I don't have wife or kids yet, but I've resolved that "certain family members" will never ever meet my children, when I do. So obviously my answers will probably lean toward "no keep doing what you're doing" rather than telling you to invite them into your kids' lives. I think the justification for staying the course and removing your parents/siblings from your children's lives is that your children need stable, loving parents infinitely more than they need orbital family. If someone strikes a chord with a cousin and the two grow close and stay close for life, that's nice, but the first step would be that neither are bad influence on one another. It doesn't sound like the rest of your family qualifies as "not a bad influence". At one point in your story, it almost sounded like your parents mellowed out, until it became clear that they were just being manipulative. But even if they had genuinely mellowed out, I'm a big believer that you don't accept "repentance" from someone when they lose all their power and influence. It only matters if they mend their ways when they still have the power to be abusive, but decide against it. When someone's old and feeble, of knocking on death's door, any apologies they have amount to less than nothing. If your father was abusive when you were younger, and that really only stopped when you were big enough to fight back, and now that he's arthritic, his chumminess is even less convincing. So, yeah, I'd advocate severing ties. The simple presence of more family is not in and of itself worth it if the family in question is so abusive, hostile, dishonest, manipulative, and unhealthy. That's my 2 cents, anyway.

It might seem like I'm making the deterministic argument, but I'm fundamentally not, because I'm always advocating for personal agency. You always have agency in your decisions, even if the decision is just, "I'm not going to associate with someone whose genes are the reason they're that type of person." That's because when it comes to the matter of "nature vs nurture", I'm nowhere near the fence, I'm unabashedly on the "nature" side of the yard. I place the bulk of the emphasis on genetics. But that doesn't mean the nurture effect isn't real, and I do recognize that many things that people are up to are a direct result of their childhood. (See Sieg's comments for a perfect example, in how he's probing for childhood history to answer his questions.) But that does mean that I'm ignoring the nurture element because it's a minority of responsibility, to me, and therefore not as important to address. I'm not discarding the effects of environment, nor am I advocating that anyone just do whatever-the-fuck they want because it won't affect them at all (it really would), I just don't want to add tedious little disclaimers of "not all [insert]" or "not every time" to all of my statements, just to acknowledge that 20-40% of developmental impact. That's a waste of time. It's much more expedient (to me) to just assume that we all understand that there are exceptions to the rule, but that doesn't discount the rule automatically. The obvious difference between a "true" alpha and a bad boy is empathy. A real alpha would not extract pleasure from corrupting others, or witnessing them experience any kind of pain. But this is not a characteristic that you can gauge by simple observation. Just like how a genuinely good person and an absolute sociopath can both exhibit amiable behavior outwardly, the distinctions that differentiate the two won't be observed until you delve deeper and discover the things about themselves that they actively hide. But are there other differences that are easier to spot? Yeah, there are: the friends they keep. You can tell a lot about someone by their company. It will tell you 2 very powerful things abouthem: 1) Who they want in their company, and 2) Who they despise. You can learn a lot about someone by who/what they hate. If you walk into someone's room, and it's immaculate, with everything neatly organized, color-coded, etc, you might conclude that this person despises disorderliness, and that makes them neurotic, and chances are you'd be right. A person who keeps a lot of weak people around him might not be a true alpha, because he's surrounding himself with people that make him look good. People who are easily influenced and pose no threat to that person's authority. But what if a person is surrounded by egotistical giants who act very competitively? Clearly that person isn't out to control them, because he can't. Maybe that means he's confident that he deserves their companionship? Maybe that means he knows he can compete with them (and win)? That's an alpha. The problem with women seeking out the defining characteristics is that they don't embody them, so they can't readily identify them. Hyper-competitiveness is a distinctly masculine attribute, so guys will more easily identify drive and motivation in a competitive environment, whereas women might instead identify threats or obstructions. Big differences in perception. So yes, they "have no clue", because you're asking them to understand a language they do not speak. It's not a deterministic point, because it can be learned (in a manner of speaking), but inherently they do not start out equipped with it.

Oh, I didn't forget to mention their arguments... They didn't present any arguments. Remember, I said the subject came up as an explanation for why they said they wanted to adopt instead of having their own children, and then everyone else just affirmed them when they expressed that. There was no arguing, and when I pushed back against that even slightly, they had no "points" at the ready to make. I avoided going full debate-mode, because these are people in and around my work-space, and I didn't want to make my working area/office antagonistic towards me, so I didn't even put up any effort. A little background... I'm from Southern California, which has been dubbed "Commiefornia" by many, and not without good reason. We're a "hip/young" culture out here, and hip and young is socialist. We're inundated with leftist platitudes in the news, the movies, TV shows, and even everybody's favorite youtube channels (just look at the hosts of Buzzfeed, all kids, all sickly, all "rainbow-haired"). Everywhere you go, you're bombarded by leftism, and it's just taken by everybody who's out and about that these things are a given. They regurgitate, they don't cognate. By contrast, the conservative or non-liberal people keep to themselves. They don't speak up, they don't rock the boat, much like how I was cautious around everyone else at work. But we're not silent, we just gauge our audience before we say anything. Having done a lot of door-to-door, I know I've seen MANY good-minded people, but they're usually shut up in those houses, not interacting with anybody, because they don't want to find themselves on the receiving end of a pitchfork. They're the silent Trump voters that the NY Times didn't predict, because they didn't make their intentions loud and clear. They're there, but you don't know that they're there. So if a leftist ideology ever comes up in conversation out here, people are likely to just agree out of habit. They don't ask tough questions, they don't stick out their neck and say that they disagree. The couple times when "overpopulation" was mentioned around the office, everyone just nodded, looked solemn, and said "right". One guy I spoke to at the office said something that I had thought on my own, when the both of us had gauged each other as "safe" to confide in: "liberalism is a mental disorder". These people are just mental children. They don't have arguments, they just repeat what they've been told. So the issue is a tad more complicated than having valid points to bring up to them. It's also how you approach them with those facts. "Hey, remember that conversation we had earlier? Well I was thinking about it, decided to do my research, and I'd like to tell you now that you were completely wrong. Interested in what proof I've got?" Might go over well with an analytical person like myself, but these touchy-feely kids will just explode. To me, the Socratic method, and constantly begging the question might be the most effective. On the other hand, it might just make the "conversation" repetitive and go nowhere, because asking them questions will yield no results. But I do agree with you. The people you described are evil. The question isn't how we save them, it's how do we save the victims of their virus-like ideology from becoming them in the future? These people I'm talking about were kids. Late teens, early twenties. They grew up in that socialist bubble of Commiefornia. They grew up in Plato's cave, and the light will blind them temporarily, so they won't accept it without some kind of a fight. The question is how do you introduce them to that light as gradually and comfortably as possible. I think I might just be TOO gradual to be effective... But that "anyone who thinks there's too much of something doesn't value that thing at all" point was pretty good. I think I'll rework that in a disarming way the next time they say that... >=)

INTJ-T, the "Architect". From the title I wouldn't have agreed, but upon reading the description it made much more sense. "It's lonely at the top." Indeed it is.