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Hey fellow thinkers, You don't have to be on the forums for much to realize the incredible intelligence and acuteness of most of its members. The simple fact of having signed up here means you are the critical 1%. To tickle your brains, sometimes more so than when debating, I would like to institute a small chess club. Of course free of charge, anyone (from newbies to grand masters) will be able to interact in this alternative incredible form. I've been personally a self taught player for about two years now with over 20 days of playing time (28336 minutes and counting). Anyone feel free to comment down below and if we get enough interest I will start setting everything up. PS. Group link: https://en.lichess.org/team/philosophic-chess- based on lichess.org

I made a new group on Facebook for any philosophers or around Orange County. https://www.facebook.com/groups/785068861547541/ I don't mind driving all over Southern California to meet you, either! Please join! I'm planning the first next Tuesday night (8 pm on Jan. 20) in Costa Mesa. Salute! Andrew

Homeschooling is virtually outlawed in Sweden (except if you have a disease or condition that prevents you from attending school) and I would rather abstain from having children than see them forced to attend school, robbing them of some 9-12 years of their formative years. Even if I would never have children of my own I would still like to be part of an as-voluntary-as-possible community. Because of this I've decided to relocate to another country that allows homeschooling (unschooling) and preferably a country that have a sizeable community of unschoolers (other factors of voluntaryism/freedom would be greatly appreciated as well). Where can I find such a community? Do you know of any websites or forums (besides this one) that might be helpful? I would like to travel to other countries, get to know people and find my new tribe and place to call home. What countries/regions/places would you recommend? I've been thinking about the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand. Also which regions/locations within the country in particular would you like to recommend? Other laws that I would like to avoid would be a military draft/conscription and curfew laws. As a side point or secondary factor I would like to move somewhere where sunlight is more evenly spread over the year. We might have x number of hours of sunlight in Sweden but they are very concentrated in the summers and we have very dark winters.

https://discord.gg/CqGqEEK A little over a year ago there was a group of regulars who met up on Skype and had many a successful and productive conversations. It was great fun overall and I felt a nice connection with other members who frequented there. So I've undertaken the process of setting up a discord server for FDR, a voice chat client originally made for gaming enthusiasts which has become a very respectable piece of software in its own right. What advantages would this setup have over a Skype/Google group? Multiple Text and Voice Channels: This lets us organize our thoughts into sub-categories so if we want to focus on issues such a interpersonal or daily occurrences, we can do so without flooding other conversations people might want to have such as parenting. (Which would be less frequent and require more thought) Easily Accessible: You don't even have to install a client to your computer if you don't want to, it can run through a browser same as the FDR chat (Though you will need your own account) A tiered permission system which allows for more troll-pruning (Typically not an issue but as FDR grows it might come to be so.) And personally I find it preferable to Skype due to a lack of ads as well as less memory bloat. The downsides I'd note are that it's unfamiliar to the majority of people as well as a slightly lower quality than something like Skype. The Channels I think of being useful for the start as are follows. General Chat - Where daily ordeals will be discussed Introductions, Timezone, age, main life ventures Philosophical Discussion: For those who want to dissect and disprove UPB! Peaceful Parenting: Parenting can be tough, so lets make it easier as a community Note that this doesn't seek to replace the FDR forums even if it borrows some inspiration from its setup. Instead I hope it can compliment the community by allowing us to connect through an easy to understand application which also has smartphone integration for those who are so inclined.

Hello everyone, I've been trying to figure out my own self-study program to learn philosophy and it got me thinking about how much fluff is added into your average university major. It seems that much of what is taught could be distilled into half a dozen or so courses that strike at the core of any given subject. For instance, I attempted to condense the UC San Diego philosophy degree and ended up with the following courses. (Feel free to post your own condensed versions of your university major program.) Introduction to Logic Symbolic Logic I History of Philosophy: Ancient History of Philosophy: Early Modern History of Philosophy: Late Modern Metaphysics Epistemology Philosophy of Science Which brings me to the question on the thread. Q: If a Bachelors Degree in Freedomain Radio existed, what would the course load look like and how would it be structured? Would a Freedomain Radio degree be strictly focused on philosophy? Should it be a (B.S.) degree or a (B.A.) degree? Would the course load consist of just reading Stephan's books, or would the course work also need to teach elements of statistical analysis, computer science, and history? What do you all think?

For anyone who's interested, Reason.tv did a small series about anarchy in Detroit. One of the focuses was Threat Management Centers, a successful private defense company operating in the city. You'll just have to watch for youself because the main guy gives some really good info on why their operation is superior/more effective than police operations.

Hello everyone! I wanted to let you guys know, that every saturday 20.00 CEST a skype call is hosted, for the purpose of getting european FDR listeners together and hanging out. It is called the Philosophy Europe Call! We are usually 3-5 people in the call, and we talk about everything we can think of. From economics to the insanity of statism, from philosphy to more personal/self-knowledge matters. I'd like to invite you to this call, if you want to connect with some people from FDR. And no, you don't have to call from europe, the rest of the world is welcome to call in as well (several weeks in a row, we have actually had 2 americans call in). To join the call, add the skype handle ''philosophy.euro.call'', and when it is 20.00 CEST, you just call that contact. We also have a Facebook page you can like, and a Facebook group you can joln. https://www.facebook.com/PhilosophyEuropeCall?fref=ts the page https://www.facebook.com/groups/philosophyeurope/?fref=ts the group Hope you'll join us!

Hello, I have watched Stefan's videos for a few months. I have not seen them all, I have watched a few of them more than once, and I donate every time I believe that I could not live without having seen other people agree with me on the issues discussed. I also like the comments on the youTube pages. I joined the members group recently and started to chat this morning. I was very happy to talk with a guy from Australia sharing similar views on immigration, the nature of academia diluting the national spirit etc. Then another member comes into counter balance these nationalistic preservation views, and a discussion comes up, and the views I saw as being either Liberal or passive. Eg Liberal in that he saw the frame of humanity as a global ethno mixing group, and passive in that he wanted to convince me that any effort in voting is in vain, and makes no difference. Later on, other members assisted in degrading the value of voting and supporting the activity of abstaining from voting. They presented videos to stress that Stefan does not vote or even support it. I thought in spirit, that he would support voting and activism. My question is this: >>> Does the community here, discourage voting? (yes/no) Does the community here have a nihilistic approach to not taking actions and placing value on actions to assist change? <<< At first I accused this member of being a professional agitator/troll because I considered it unbelievable that someone who is concerned with change from many issues Stefan discusses, would be anti-voting and anti-activism. The large number in the chat room convinced me that this was their line. Is this so?

I've been away from this community for a lot of time now since I last discovered FDR and some of you may recognize me from a couple of mouths ago (or something like that I'm not sure) and since then some things have happened with some FDR members that have been troubling me.... a lot, torturing me emotionally really and this is the reason why I have been away for so long. This topic is not about what happened in and of itself but the consequences that it has on my credibility in this community. Ok enough with the abstactions. I was in a Skype group with some FDR members and sometime after the formation of said group I did something extremelly inapropriate and dysfunctional (that I'm not confortable telling here) and some of the members deemed it evil (which now in insight I don't find it to be the case at all). After that I felt very disaproved off and some time after I got ostracized from said group. After these events the true nightmare began. In the midst of my thoughts and emotions an argument arose which has been haunting me: P1-The FDR community is based on reputation. P2-People with bad reputation or who did horrible things get ostracized. P3-I did a horrible thing. P4-FDR members know each other to the extent that they will tell each other to not engage with me. C1-I'm gonna get ostricized from the whole community P5-Generally people who are ostricized by the FDR community are bad people. C2-I'm a bad person. And this argument has made me very anxious and fearful of ever engaging with anyone other than zombies (almost becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy). Untill now. Sorry for the long post. I just wanted to get it of my chest. Comments, sugestions, thoughts, opinions... they are all very welcome. Thank you for your atention.

For a while I've wanted a site that allowed me to find people based on degrees of interest match. For instance, if I'm really interested in skydiving, I want to see other people who are also really interested, not just minorly so. Not finding this anywhere, I went ahead and built it. I figured, it would be specially suited for this community. I know there are meetups, but that requries someone start the local meet up and then organize events. That goes beyond what a lot of people are willing to do for unknown outcomes - will anyone even join the meetup. With my site, its individual based, not group based. The effort put in towards either meeting someone or setting it up so that someone can meet you is minimal. The site is at http://interest.zone This is the first version - and, I'm a programmer not a designer, so it has minimal styling. So, please try it out, give me some feedback if possible, and perhaps clues as to where I might promote it (besides to the one person reading this on here).

From FDR2440:

This was an amazing conversation, thanks to the caller and Stef for sharing it. It's certainly provoked a lot of thought and examination for me; I invite everyone to give it a listen. It's a long call but it is most certainly worth it.

There is something I'd like to make the people of FDR aware of... A few months ago, I made contact with a person from FDR through a skype group conversation I am currently hosting, the Philosophy Europe Call. He lives in Sweden, like me. His name is Henrik Eriksson. We started talking to eachother on a daily basis through skype. He was in a very emotionally rough position, so I thought that I'd try to help him out a bit by listening to him and talking to him. From the first time I came into contact with him though, and all our conversations ever since, there was something ''off'' for me in the interaction. I felt uncomfortable. But instead of bringing this up, I pretended like it wasn't there, that it was some fault on my end. However, one night when we talked, I told him that I felt uncomfortable talking to him. I told him that I had been in the wrong fro not bringing it up sooner, that I hadn't been honest with him. It went really bad from here on. Henrik was very upset with this, asking me why I felt uncomfortable. I told him I didn't know why, but he wouldn't settle with that, asking me ''What do you mean you don't know?'' in a very aggressive tone. The next day, I hosted the weekly Philosophy Europe Call. Henrik called in. There were 3 of us in the call at that time. At first he pretended like everything was alright, he came into the call laughing. However, he was very passive-aggressive with the third caller, asking him when he was going to start ignoring Henrik (apperantly Henrik has been ignored by other FDR users before). Also, Henrik started to question caller number 3 about his exercise program, telling him that it was stupid. It was a very, very tense conversation. A few days later, he started to write to me on Facebook, telling me I had no principles, and that I should leave FDR, that he was much ''higher up'' than me, whatever that means. I asked him a few times if we could try to sort things out, but he said he didn't want to have anything to do with me, even though he kept writing to me on Facebook telling me how horrible I was. Then came the call that was the final straw that broke the camel's back for me. It was 10 minutes before I was going to host the Philosophy Europe Call. Henrik called me on skype. I asked what he wanted to talk about (I was quite mad at him at this point because of all the things he had written to me on Facebook). Henrik told me he didn't want to talk about anything with me, yet he still wanted for us to be on that call! I told him I was hanging up on him to host the Philosophy Europe Call, and so I did. He joined that call, and that third caller I mentioned before was in this call aswell, so it was me, Henrik and number 3. Henrik came into the call, pretending once again that everything was all good and joyous, even though he 10 minutes before had said he was very upset and mad. I told him that I didn't want to brush past this tension that was between him and I. But he simply said ''I don't want to talk with you''. I then asked him why he was in the call then. ''I want to talk!'' he than said.Number 3, after telling Henrik that he was annoyed with him saying he wanted to talk, and at the same time he didn't want to talk, dropped from the call after approximatly 10 minutes. I then decided that I couldn't let this shitty interaction with Henrik ruin the call experience for the rest of the coming callers, since there was no reasoning with him. So, I blocked him on skype and on Facebook. However, a week ago, he started calling my cellphone on a private number (meaning I can't block it). The first time he rang, his first words were ''You blocked me from the euro call''. I hung up on him, not wanting anything to do with him. He has called me several days now, 4-6 times a day. Most of the time, I just shut my phone off because he would keep calling even though I kept rejecting them. I wanted to tell you guys this, to give you a heads up about Henrik. I thought I could help him out, but I couldn't. Instead, it turned out really ugly. It fucking sucks to write something like this, but I believe that I am doing a service for other people who might come into contact with Henrik in the future. I don't want anyone else to get into this situation that I am in now. I have experienced it, and I will serve as a warning.

Hello genius philosopher people! I need your help and guidance on a new project I'm undertaking. I'm setting up a website for the thousands of people who are newly being inducted into rational philosophy, psychology and voluntarism through resources like Freedomain Radio. It's going to be a blog, a podcast, a listener call-in, meetups in the UK, a monthly bookclub and in time also a forum. The focus is on living with integrity to our values and connecting both online and offline to build community between us everyday philosophers. First things first, the name. The one I'm liking the most at the moment is Ethical Canary, with the tagline "Virtue is the air we breathe". The name should hopefully capture our shared values of philosophy, self-knowledge and freedom but also focus on connecting as a community. What do you guys n gals think of it? Does it work? Can you think of anything else I can call it? One drawback of my idea is that it requires that everyone understands the metaphorical reference to a canary being used in a mine to test that the air is breathable. I'd love to gather your ideas and put together a poll to so we can vote for the best one. Thanks in advance for your ingenious input! I will no doubt be asking many questions like this in future so I can put the website together using the best suggestions we agree on.

We've been running a smallish ancap community for about a year or so, called /r/AgainstAllArchons. It's a spinoff of /r/ancap that got started at the time the pro-spanker "ancaps" overwhelmed the minority of ancaps that do not support aggression against children. Our community is "clean" in the sense that it won't accept abusive and manipulative people -- a report against someone acting in that way gets an instaban after only one warning. It's intended to be a safe space where people can come and share tips, knowledge, articles and other information of interest to voluntaryists that do not support any form of aggression, and don't want to be bullied by toxic people. I invite all of you to subscribe to the community and post anything you'd like. Welcome and enjoy!

Hello everyone. This is my first post. Lately I have been thinking about life, what is important, and what is currently missing in mine. I love my husband, and I love my son and we have another child on the way, so overall things are pretty good. However, what is missing for me, I think, is a community of peers. I am past the point of diminishing returns in terms of happiness of just acquiring more stuff and checking the boxes of societal expectations. I know now that our relationships with people are what is truely important, not how fancy your countertops are or how many trophies your kids get. I long to live in a place where people have time to visit eachother's houses, maybe even on a weekday, and just hang out and talk and our kids can play. Where people are not so swamped by the hectic day to day expectations of careers, and activities and commuting, that they can't make these bonds with neighbors. Has anyone found it? Have any of you found an oasis of real people who have time for the important things in life? Where in the US or the world would you live if you had the choice?

The Small print “Oh, and btw this community is closed to outsiders and new ideas” I know this not just by what is said but what is done. The message I am getting is, “We have are fearless leader Stefan to do all are thinking for us. All we do, it talk about how smart he is and how stupid everyone else is for not listening to him. Oh if you don’t agree with him, then you must not understand what he said. Here read the Bible, .. oh I am sorry I mean UPB. There's a difference between having information and having knowledge, and there's even a difference in terms of being able to apply it. Sorry regurgitating information, is not going to work, everyone has to do their own homework. Maybe in art history you can get buy with regurgitating of other peoples ideas, but if you want to learn to program, you got to do the work, or it’s not going to work out so well for you. Do you really want change, or is it more fun to poke fun at people, and turn your noses up at ever knew idea, because it might smell to you like statism. You are Stephan’s representatives, if this is how you treat people that are willing to cough up money for this silliness, than enjoy your footnote in history because you will be the anchor around his ideas. If you do not take seriously my questions, and scoff at me, as an uneducated pedaphilic Moran. Then you deserve the syspool of misfits that this forum will become, if it has not already become that backwater of malcontents. No one is free of biases, and yes that means me. It was once said to me, “If you find me at fault go and make yourself a better person.” The knife cuts both ways and I am more then willing to use it on myself, but are you willing to use it on yourselves You need me far more than I need you, there are other communities, that might actually understand the importance of new ideas, and work with me instead of against me. I have come here to work, and I put my pocket book where my mouth is, and I don’t have it to give. So far all I have seen is intellectual cowardness, when it comes to real application, you duck and cover. No Michael DeMarco I am not hunting unicorn, and the mere fact that you would suggest it, Confirms that I am dealing with an intellectual lightweight, but deffently a coward. Prove me wrong, because I love eating crow. I have a waistline to confirm it. Yes, I am willing to use what ever props I have at my disposal, to get a point across, does that seem familiar?

Hi all, I'm a freelance graphics designer, RWVA instructor and art student looking for ways to spread the word of liberty. I have two online stores which sell pro-liberty merchandise, and I'm trying to get my ventures up and off the ground! Check out HomeGrownRebel.com for top quality $17.76 Pro-Liberty T-shirts, including 2nd Amendment, Liberty or Death / DTOM, and Sacred Cows Make the Best Hamburgers! Also, check out zazzle.com/RiflemansCadence for a great selection on Pro-Liberty t-shirts, including Anarchist, Peaceful Parenting, 2nd Amendment, Civil Rights & more... I also create custom designs for single or bulk T-shirt & other merch orders. PM for details. Thanks for looking! In the name of life and liberty, Melissa McWilliams

Does anyone have experience/interest in Intentional Community? Self-reliance? Homeschooling? I'm at the very initial stages in exploration and would love to have any personal anecdotes or good references in researching.