Search the Community

Since Stefan seems to have become an "unreachable", which is to say unreachable unless you have a large youtube audience, or have a special Hollywood agent that can get in contact with him, I figure I will leave my question for Stefan here. It took several months to get "verified" even to reach this website and I have tried twitter, youtube, calling the FDR skype address during it's hours, and emailing Mike, his assistant, with what I consider important information. I will say I am in no way special, except that I suffered this specific collection of diseases for more than a decade that I think they may account for many of the ills effecting Whites and other groups of people, including symptoms similar to: fibromyalgia, depression, low testosterone, estrogen dominance, severe headaches, disk degeneration, memory problems, mood swings, sensitivity to light and sound, and other things seemingly unrelated conditions like dental problems. Clearly, I am not saying every time you have a headache it is Lyme Disease and associated diseases related, I point towards more "chronic" cases for what I am talking about, chronic is now used medically to mean having a long history and never ending. Another way of saying that is chronic diseases never go away without the correct treatment. Here is my email to Mike, ******** Hi Mike, I would like to be scheduled in advance and make an argument before all wise Stefan, I am ordering a new headset to avoid interference and for its new mic, to get my audio quality up. Hopefully the wait list is at least a week long (which it probably is) to give the head set time to arrive via the mail. I am charles5555nc on Skype. My Argument: From your videos it is clear you care about Western European people and their survival. (My links below have references attached usually at the bottom of the web page, short descriptions of a link is usually written AFTER the link). I think the lowering IQ, lowered birth rates, increased Healthcare costs, shortened vocabulary, rising rates of neurological disorders, and increased social spending re disability can be significantly but not solely attributed to slow growing, chronic infections like Lyme Disease and diseases known to be regularly transmitted along with Lyme. (mycloplasma, bartonella, Ehrlichia, Rocky Mountain Spotted fever. HHV6, epstein barr, coxsackie B virus, c. pneumonae, others) I was bitten by a tick in 2005 and my life slowly started spiraling out of control. The tick bite combined with some steroidal anti inflammatories- which temporarily shuts off the immune system, lead to rapid infection growth. Over six months I developed brain fog, joint pain, muscle pain, partial facial droops, confusion/ADHD, extreme anger, sexual dysfunction, night sweats, extreme sensitivity to loud sounds, severe headaches, and a host of other health complaints. I then began my long road in looking for appropriate medical treatment, I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, then Lyme disease, XMRV, Rocky mountain spotted fever, Epstein Barr virus, Cocksackie b virus, C. Pneumoniae, Bartonella, Babesia, Cmv, Mycoplasma infections. I have not been tested yet, but I also suspect I was also infected with a newly discovered disease, Protomyxzoa Rheumatica. This suspicion allowed me to try new tactics and help reduce symptoms further lately. These diseases are often referred to as Lyme and associated diseases, and some of the diseases on the list are as bad or worse than Lyme. -Lyme disease is a spirochete, the same kind of disease as Syphilis and also sexually transmitted, which is notorious for its effects on the mind and body, if left untreated. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/on-the-curious-motions-of-syphilis-and-lyme-disease-bacteria/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Capone Syphilis brought Al Capone down to the mentality of a 12 year old. Was antibiotic resistant. https://www.lymedisease.org/lyme-sexual-transmission-2/ Lyme study suggests Lyme can be sexually transmitted https://rawlsmd.com/health-articles/can-lyme-be-sexually-transmitted Lyme can be passed from mother to fetus. -Lyme's ability to avoid the immune system, difficulty in accurate testing, and its ability to destroy health lead it being studied by the Japanese as a potential bioweapon in world war 2. Also, some history of Lyme. http://www.elenacook.org/bwsept06.html -Lyme is named for Lyme Connecticut and there is a yet unproven theory that Lyme is an accidentally or intentionally escaped bioweapon from Plum Island nearby. For decades, Plum Island was denied as bio-weapon facility by US government, and then finally admitted years later. The US government is very aggressive about down playing the effect of lyme, the number of people who have it, and still maintains it is usually easily treatable with a few weeks of antibiotics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plum_Island_Animal_Disease_Center#Controversy -Official story is that Lyme is easily treatable, especially early on, and if you don't get better then you have "post Lyme disease syndrome" implying that the Lyme has been completely destroyed and something else must be going on (which they dont bother researching further). Other people who disagree that the Lyme is completely gone after a few weeks of antibiotics refer to it as chronic Lyme (and associated) disease. https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/treatment/ -The CDC for decades said that only 30,000 people a year get Lyme disease, kind of like the Liberal talking point of there only being "10 million illegals" for decades. In 2013 the cdc updated their 30,000 people to 300,000 people, ten times their previous estimate. https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/humancases.html 0. Good (but not exhaustive) list of potential lyme symptoms http://www.lymediseaseaction.org.uk/about-lyme/neurology-psychiatry/ 1. Chronic Infections lead to lowered hormone levels- adrenal exhaustion, low testosterone https://www.drlam.com/blog/chronic-lyme-disease-symptoms-and-afs/15753/ https://www.womensinternational.com/hormones-and-chronic-lyme-disease/ http://www.townsendletter.com/July2014/lymeneuro0714.html Conversation between two doctors that treat Lyme re lyme related hormone problems, neurotoxins from Lyme can make even replacing hormones difficult. 2. Lyme and associated diseases severely effect the brain- depression, emotional outbursts, rage, poor concentration, low tolerance to frustration. http://www.columbia-lyme.org/patients/ld_lyme_symptoms.html http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/15/us/personal-health-when- lyme-invades-the-brain-and-spinal-system.html Ny Times 3. Lyme disease effects the joints and spine https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/signs_symptoms/ http://www.dynamicchiropractic.com/mpacms/dc/article.php?id=43498 Spine Pain https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3743303/ Contributes to disk disease in the spine https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3656475/ Joint damage can require surgery if successful treatment of Lyme is delayed. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6249a1.htm Cardiac (heart) damage from Lyme that lead to 3 deaths. 4. Transmission not just from Ticks. CDC says just ticks, but when listening to establishment compulsive liars, I think the opposite of what they say. http://www.lymedisease.org.au/transmission/ ticks, mites, flies, fleas and mosquitoes have lyme in their bodies and can transmit Lyme via bite https://www.lymedisease.org/lyme-sexual-transmission-2/ (already previously sited above) Sexual intercourse (same as with its relative, Syphilis) transmits Lyme. May be passed from mother to child. Summary: So a disease (Lyme) that with some tests, fail to detect it a majority of the time, with there being 100+ different species of Lyme with varying susceptibility to testing, with symptoms that mimic many other diseases, that is slow growing which may make patients not be able to associate the cause of their emerging health problems after a tick or other insect bite, or after sexual transmission. A disease that lowers hormone levels, ability to concentrate, lowers emotional control, may be passed from mother to child. Lyme produces people who are emotional thinkers, cant remember government corruption, desperate for government help, people who cannot physically or mentally resist Soviet era political correctness bullying/guilt trips. People who cannot handle having or taking care of children and/or have hormonal/reproduction problems which prevents them being able to have kids. Some of the "social justice warriors" have banned clapping and prefer snapping. I suspect this is due to the sound sensitivity seen in Lyme. http://lymediseaseguide.net/test-accuracy-elisa Testing failure reference http://www.ilads.org/lyme/about-lyme.php Poor testing rates for Lyme, 50% rate of developing "bull eye" rash (most doctors think it happens 100% of the time), less than 50% even recall a tick bite, over 100 strains of Lyme in USA alone. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/11/17/oh-snap-campus-kids-drop-triggering -applause-to-show-approval.html Social Justice Warriors ban clapping that "triggers" them, prefer quieter snapping. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/when-senior-moments-begin/ "Senior moments" of severe memory loss or forgetfulness being re-branded to apply to middle aged people as well. http://www.prohealth.com/library/showarticle.cfm?libid=21716 Lyme disease makes you more susceptible/leads to higher cancer rates **************** If anyone would like to email me on this or a related topic, my email is [email protected]. I did see Stefan mention he would be talking about Lyme Disease a single time on twitter but dont know if he has followed through on any recent podcasts. -Charles B.

Hello fellow classical liberals, I recently wrote a piece exploring the ultimate truth and the meaning of life, with a focus on science, religion, and language. If you are interested in these topics please visit www.glenwillson.com Thank you!

Hello fellow classical liberals, I recently wrote a piece exploring the ultimate truth and the meaning of life, with a focus on science, religion, and language. If you are interested in these topics please visit my website at www.glenwillson.com Thank you!

Logic begins when it is discovered that A is A, however, how does one discern what is discoverable without first knowing that A is A? Empiricism is a precept to our nature. After all, we are born as little scientists. Empiricism is a given. One cannot argue against it or for it without presupposing it. But if empiricism requires an understanding of logic, then is logic also a precept? (By precepts I mean involuntary knowledge about the world that is not conceptual, no different to how animals know things. It is regulated by our neurobiology.) If logic is a precept, then is it the case that logic is not a concept. But if logic is not a concept, then does logic exist in reality after all? Embedded in the neurons of our brain, so to speak?

I decided to take a look at Carroll Quigley's "The Evolution of Civilizations" not because it is considered a prerequisite for discourse about civilization in these fora, but because, for some time, my own focus is on the abysmal state of the social sciences qua sciences. The social sciences are so abysmally unscientific that it is a revolutionary act of genius for anyone to bring to bear anything remotely resembling scientific method. Moreover, if one attempts to bring the social sciences into consilience with the larger body of human knowledge, one is attacked with religious fervor as evidenced by the treatment of E. O. Wilson by his Harvard colleagues in the 1970s over the nascent field of sociobiology. So Quigley was a revolutionary genius -- not so much because he offered anything fundamentally new, but simply because he spoke of a few obvious truths about science in a field of virtually universal deceit: the social sciences of the 20th century. Quigley's approach, however admirable given the horrid context, can too-easily lead one to accept premises of his which have subsequently shown themselves to be both scientifically inadequate and ethically vacuous. First, and foremost, the ethical vacuity on display in "The Evolution of Civilizations" is shared by the entire field of the social sciences. It may reasonably be summed up by comparing the ethics of medicine. In medicine, even if one has conducted double blind controlled studies of the safety and efficacy of a treatment (ie: one has established strong evidence the treatment causes beneficial effects) -- even then it is considered unethical to apply the treatment to human subjects without their informed consent. Accepting Quigley's proclamation that control experiments cannot be conducted in the social sciences to establish causality, the first duty of the ethical social scientist should be to denounce the use of his findings in a way that would violate the informed consent of human subjects in social engineering. Let me re-emphasize in stronger terms: Quigley, is not only not alone in this absence of ethics among social scientists, his posture is universally de rigueur. Nevertheless, those who hold Quigley up as an exemplar, however justified, have an ethical obligation to point out this ethical vacuity. Secondly, Quigley, himself, describes the social science equivalent of statistical mechanics -- averaging large numbers to make predictions. At the same time, he goes to great lengths in his discourse about "human nature" to emphasize that "culture" determines, for practical purposes, the outcome for statistically significant numbers of individuals. This is, essentially, the Boasian dogma of 20th century anthropology. It is upon this basis that we have seen the diagnosis of "institutional racism" held up as the "explanation" for statistical outcome differences between racial groups. This, in turn, has expended many trillions of dollars in social engineering projects spanning over a half century with outcomes that are, at best, questionable and, in any event, violate the scientific ethics of informed consent when treating human subjects, as described above. Having now made my essential critique of Quigley's otherwise reasonable premises, I want to point out what he got _very_ right in his presentation of scientific method, and how, with modern advances in universal intelligence based on mathematically defining Ockham's Razor in pursuit of automated science, we may be in a position to push beyond Quigley's limits. Ray Solomonoff essentially proved Ockham's Razor as essential to science in terms of computer theory and did so at the dawn of the computer age. However, over a half century into the computer age, we still aren't even beginning to exploring those implications in a practical way. Here's an obvious implication that should have been pursued almost from the outset in the 1960s: Whenever you have a dataset and are trying to come up with a predictive model, you have two basic options that avoid overfitting: Use the data you have, not to create the model but to test it. Approximate the data's Kolmogorov Complexity program as best you can so as to approximate Solomonoff Induction. #1 invariably ends up being impractical since you can't _really_ construct a model out of first principles. In any event, as you start to "consume" your data in tests of your models, you end up refining your models which gets you into the land of post hoc theorization thence overfitting as you consume more data. The best you can do is what Enlightenment philosophers came up with: Experimental controls -- which is to say, you have experimental setups, all identical except being treated in a slightly different way (including no treatment called "the control"). The social sciences have become the modern equivalent of a theocracy given their impact on public policy -- but social scientists haven't reached the level of scientific ethics required for them to insist that their theories not be taken as justification for imposing experiments on massive human populations as is required by Federal arrogation of social policy from the Laboratory of the States. If social scientists had anything worthy of being called "ethics" they would insist on devolution of social policy to the States and Federal support of migration of people to the States whose social policies they find mutually agreeable. This directly addresses the scientific need for experimental variation as well as the ethical need for informed consent when dealing with human experimental subjects. In the absence of such humility, the social sciences did have one other option: Data compression to approximate Kolmogorov Complexity. Note that I am not here talking about a general algorithm for data compression. I'm talking about a much simpler and obvious idea: Comparing theories by how well those theories -- losslessly -- compress the same datasets. And this is where I come to my perception of a "religious aversion" to Solomonoff Induction: Whenever I see arguments against the utility of Solomonoff Induction in the aforementioned role -- comparing theories by the size of executable archives of the same datasets -- they are _invariably_ (in my experience) strawman polemics. Yes, Kolmogorov Complexity is incomputable -- but that's not the argument. We're not trying to come up with a program to compress the datasets! There is a difference between a program that compresses the datasets and a program that DEcompresses the datasets (the latter being the approximation of the KC program). This difference is so obvious that its conflation in these arguments -- its _predicatable_ conflation -- is reminiscent of Orwell's notion of "Crime Stop": Selective stupidity to avoid violations of Ingsoc or the official ideology of The Party. There are other, less obviously stupid, strawmen that arise from time to time but these are almost invariably in the category of philosophical attacks on Cartesianism or the scientific method itself. While it is fine to have those philosophical arguments, it seems rather silly to hold up practical application of Solomonoff Induction on that basis as virtually the entire structure of technological civilization is Cartesian.

Libertarians often argue against taxes saying that according to historical data when taxes go down charitable donations usually go up. Logically it makes sense as people of course love naming Universities after themselves, or becoming respected patrons of charities, or giving to research on cancer etc. With Trump reducing funding for scientific research but also reducing burdens of regulations and taxes, having such data which proves benefit for society in form of private charitable donations is urgently needed!! Help to find it, please!!. Because basic scientific research cannot be profitable, for profit businesses will not be able to contribute. So there is growing worry among scientific community... If anybody here knows good sources with data and charts proving pattern of inverse correlation between taxes and charitable donations, i would greatly appreciate it, because to have such data freshly available on the net right now would be helpful in trying to separate govt and science in the minds of most brilliant scientists on the planet (good!), and show how it is possible even with reduction in govt power to have functional civilization and make the case for human Liberty (great!). Thank you in advance!

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?

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction is about an IARPA program which crowd-sourced political forecasting to volunteers. The book studies the methodologies that the absolute best forecasters used to generate such accurate predictions so consistently. Biases, open-mindedness, the scientific method, team dynamics, and things like that are discussed in this book. I found it to be very enlightening and dense with valuable information. It covers excellent practices of analysis including many of the things which I think are necessary for wisdom in general. Since it covers the IARPA crowd-sourcing experiment, the information in the book is supported by scientific evidence. Have any of you read it? What are your thoughts on it? Here's a link: http://www.audible.com/pd/Business/Superforecasting-Audiobook/B0131RM7OK

So I was reading this "Mental Lever" (https://www.zeroaggressionproject.org/mental-lever/social-science-part-1/) at the Zero Aggression Project. ​Near the end it says: The article links to a Wikipedia article on scientism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism). The way the article was written makes it seem like a concept dreamed up by superstitious people to misrepresent and explain away science. For example, in the first sentence they put "authoritative" in quotes. Then they conclude that science "excludes other viewpoints". Anyway, I was just curious if anyone here had heard of "the intellectual error of Scientism" and had more to add than the seemingly biased Wikipedia article. ​If Scientism were valid, it might pose problems to the arguments supporting Universally Preferable Behavior.

Greetings all, Brief: A few weeks back, I was listening to a conservative radio show and the book "The Two Cultures" by Charles Percy Snow was mentioned in regards to the voting patterns. (I can't quite remember as it was weeks ago.) I know that this book is about how "artsy" and "sciency" have difficulty communicating with each other. The talk show stated something along the lines that this leads to voting patterns in America. Like a dichotomy. Anyway, I went to Amazon and purchased a copy of the book. Has anyone heard of it and/or read it? Forgive me as I wrote this on the fly and didn't put as much thought as I would have liked. http://www.amazon.com/The-Two-Cultures-Canto-Classics/dp/1107606144

Do you really own your time? If you think in the classical description of time as an extrinsic and universal experience shared among everyone, you might wonder what is it that somebody means when they say that they own their time. For example, if I were to build a table, and then you were to steal it - we could say that you've retroactively enslaved me by appropriating the fruits of my labored time. Usually you would just argue that your time is yours axiomatically or rationalistically. That arguing about it would be using your time in the first place. But what is it about time that makes it, well, yours? Enter the theory of General Relativity. Before Einstein, time was understood to be an objective feature of nature. It was a shared and collective experience amongst every person or thing. Clocks were universal. Time on Mars is the same time on Earth. But if something is universal and absolute amongst every person, how can any individual own it? Can you own electricity? You could own an electric generator and the electricity it produces, but you can't own "Electricity" as a universal concept and force of nature. Same with time, but we don't have time generators either, so time would have remained as an extrinsic factor of the world. However, that didn't last long. It would be very complicated to explain it here, but GR changed everything. In GR, time is not an extrinsic absolute, but an intrinsic and relative experience for everyone and everything. Maybe you've heard or seen a recent movie by Christopher Nolan called Interstellar. In it, explorers travel near a black hole and experience a phenomenon called time dilation. The passage of time for one person flows differently for another given different physical conditions. Gravity can affect the flow of time, as well as space travel at high speeds. This effect has been measured to be a real thing that actually happens in the real world. It is used as a way to properly calibrate GPS satellites since time runs slightly differently in space where the force of gravity is weaker than on the surface of the Earth. But you might be wondering, what does it have to do with philosophy or property rights? Since GR posits time as a uniquely personal experience for each observer, every person owns its own version of time itself. Your passage of time is different from mine. My clock will never be ticking at the same time as yours. Time is different on Mars than on Earth. This means that my time will forever be a personal, inextricable, inescapable, relative, subjective-yet-objectively-measurable experience. When I use my labor, energy, and time to homestead and create property, it really is my time. And my time only. When you steal from me your really are violating my time. In the end, a theory of property rights would need not only to be useful, but to be true as well. We understand that the mark of truth requires reason and evidence. It was nice to have reason for property rights. Now I think that we also have evidence.

Old wisdom backed by new research: http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good_life_lessons_from_the_longest_study_on_happiness

They said it could not be done. They scoffed at the very Idea of a private space company. The company had a tumultuous start in the early 2000's as their first 3 launches ended in failure to their critics delight. But they had somehow managed to scrounge up just enough money for one more do-or-die launch and on 28 September 2008 SpaceX became the first private rocket company to reach orbit. This was not enough to silence the critics. Nor was it enough when in 2010 they became the first private company to dock with the international space station. By that time they had delivered enough private satellites to orbit that NASA could trust them with this kind of mission and they would be foolish not to as the cost per launch of a SpaceX rocket was more than 7 times less (~$60 million vs ~$450 million) than that of prior government contractors. On the 28th of June this year; SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket exploded suffered a rapid unscheduled disassembly shortly after launch. It was the first blemish on SpaceX's otherwise flawless record with their state of the art Falcon 9 rocket. The rocket is updated every other mission with the latest aerospace tech, upgrades coming at a pace previously unheard of in space exploration. For example the Soyuz spacecraft used to send astronauts to the International space station is virtually unchanged since the 1960's. (I am so glad that a government is not making my phone!) The critics were quick to exploit the tragedy. It seemed as if they were right all along, it was only a matter of time before all that cost cutting caught up with them. Its was only a matter of time before they went too far, typical capitalist greed. Through all that noise, for 6 months SpaceX diligently combed though the wreckage trying to pinpoint the most likely cause of the mishap. And through this process upgraded almost every facet of the rocket, ultimately increasing its power output by 33 percent. They vowed not only to return to flight but to do so while in hot pursuit of the holy grail of rocketry. See, the problem with a rocket is that it is really expensive and you can only use it once. $60 million a pop (or $450 million from NASA: good luck with that). But, What if you could reuse a rocket much like a plane. That would change the game, lowering the cost of space travel dramatically. SpaceX has had this goal since its inception, they were ridiculed for it and in fact have failed many times trying to land a rocket as a secondary objective after a successful primary mission. But they persevered, the CEO of SpaceX would often say "go down to first principles and tell me why it cant be done?" Let us take a moment to appreciate human ingenuity, Mathematics, Thermodynamics, Science, or just call it rational Philosophy in action. Not political, economic and spiritual mysticism, what have they done lately?

I came upon this article and found hope, seeing that others out there in the scientific community are realizing the effects of ignorance. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/24/opinion/the-case-for-teaching-ignorance.html?ref=opinion Do you think that this will grow and help change the world?

Terence Kealey destroys the myths of government funded science. A good antidote to the excitement over robots on comets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzvr2Co-S5s

I stumbled across an article about a young woman, Brittany Wenger, researching breast cancer that bothered me a little bit. Do I have a right to feel slighted by her message? At the end of the video, she points out the caveat that she is currently only focusing on diagnosing breast cancer, but her technical solution could be extended to "many, or all forms of cancer." Why is she just focusing on breast cancer with Cloud4Cancer? She relates a story of how her cousin got breast cancer, but the odds are she also has a male relative that was diagnosed or will be in the future. In her family picture, she clearly has a father and possibly a younger brother. She makes a point to say that medical research is male dominated field. If that is so, then why are men often considered as an afterthought when it comes to medical funding and research? Why is Brittany's story being used to promote the hash tag, #WomenInspire? https://twitter.com/hashtag/womeninspire http://magazine.good.is/articles/brittany-created-her-own-solution

I have a couple of book recommendations The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog by Bruce Perry Perry is a child psychiatrist who specializes in early childhood trauma. In the book, he discusses many of his former patients who had suffered through terrible abuse and/or neglect and children, and its lasting effects. He goes into great detail about the effects of abuse on brain development. He also tells of his attempts to heal the victims. I had read this book long before discovering Stefan's material, and because of it, I was already on board with everything that Stefan has to say about parenting. Perry had already convinced me that children are not resilient, like so many like to claim, and that most people's adulthood issues stem from early childhood trauma. He made me realize that parents, who seem like great parents to the outside viewer, can do irreparable harm to their children without anyone realizing it. When the child then grows up to suffer from depression, drug addiction or personality disorders, or winds up hurting other people, so many people either think it happened in a vacuum or that the parents didn't spank the child enough. Nurtureshock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman The authors discuss the many mistaken notions that we have about about parenting and how the science disagrees. For example, many people think it's a good thing to praise their child's intelligence in order to encourage them academically. In actuality, this tends to discourage further learning. The reason for this is that when a child is called smart, they don't want to take the risk that they will be thought of as otherwise. So they'll tend to do activities that are easier and they'll shy away from doing things that can't master immediately. Instead, the parent should praise the child's hard work, focus or concentration. The child has to learn that they can accomplish things with hard work. Anyway, I thought you all might like to look into these. If any of you have read them, I'd like to hear your opinions.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but this video is interesting from philosophical standpoint. Whole thing is quite good, but really tasty part starts at 5:48: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMb00lz-IfE#t=349 If it were possible to predict behavior of humans given all variables are known this would imply that entropy must be constant, which is impossible. If those quantum effects are totally random how then we can have free will which seems purposeful? Well, complexity and chaos gives purpose and order. In biology it's evident. Some random movement of particles made RNA and then DNA, which started long chain of evolution leading to us - new information was created. You can say that this isn't completely random, because evolution simply responded to the environment. This is false, because everything in the universe obeys basic quantum laws. So bacteria may only respond to the types of conditions on the Earth, but Earth itself is chaotic and complex system. This self referential loop is what gives order from chaos. How free will isn't just simply responding randomly to the environment then? Well sort of it is. But, free will only makes sense in interaction with other human beings. Brain is interacting with other brains. That creates constraints to the randomness of such complex system which makes a set of rules emerge (UPB). One more interesting point. Entropy of the whole universe increases with time. Given that free will requires complexity before some point in time, it was physically impossible.

Just wanted to get you guys' take on this!

.

Here's an interesting short history of U.S. government involvement in medicine. I hadn't heard a lot of the stuff before. Unfortunately, I think you have to sign up for an account on Quora.com to read the whole thing, but it's free and quick and you can promote your ideals on Quora anyway. http://qr.ae/riG6X Makes me want a "The Truth About Health Care and Medicine."

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/essay-stateoffear-whypoliticizedscienceisdangerous.htmlHere's an excellent article written by Michael Crichton on why politicized science is dangerous. (Another lesson to learn from the tale is why blind faith in scientific consensus is dangerous.) The article was published in the back of his book, State of Fear.

Double-blind scientific studies have shown that the archetype psychedelics induce genuine religious mystical insights. See the Good Friday Experiment at Boston University's Marsh Chapel on April 20, 1962, conducted by Walter N. Pahnke and assisted by Timothy Leary using psilocybin. See also the 2006 Johns Hopkins University's experiment with psilocybin conducted by Roland R. Griffiths et al. All the below works are available in full for free at the website of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) at http://www.maps.org/books/pahnke/ . Walter Norman Pahnke, Drugs and Mysticism: An Analysis of the Relationship between Psychedelic Drugs and Mystical Consciousness, Ph.D. thesis at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. (June 1963). Rick Doblin, "Pahnke's 'Good Friday Experiment': A Long-Term Follow-Up and Methodological Critique", Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Vol. 23, No. 1 (1991), pp. 1-28. R. R. Griffiths, W. A. Richards, U. McCann and R. Jesse, "Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance", Psychopharmacology, Vol. 187, No. 3 (August 2006), pp. 268-283, doi:10.1007/s00213-006-0457-5. R. R. Griffiths, W. A. Richards, M. W. Johnson, U. D. McCann and R. Jesse, "Mystical-type experiences occasioned by psilocybin mediate the attribution of personal meaning and spiritual significance 14 months later", Journal of Psychopharmacology, Vol. 22, No. 6 (August 2008), pp. 621-632, doi:10.1177/0269881108094300. There is an ultimate insight provided by the archetype psychedelics (e.g., LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, etc.), but most people only catch glimpses of it, and are unable to hold on to that insight as they come down from the psychedelic. Which, even so, is still an utterly profound and life-transforming experience. Those who have had an entheogenic dose of an archetype psychedelic are typically familiar with the experience of having a transcendental sense of understanding, of everything in the universe making perfect sense, of there being a deep interconnectedness and purpose to all things, but as they come down, the typical case is for that deep sense of understanding to be lost, and to be merely left with the impression that one once understood the great secret of existence. If one is able to give the correct name to this ultimate insight, and further, to properly understand one's own relation to it (i.e., to give the correct name for oneself), then it is possible to bring this ultimate insight down with one: for then one has the terminology, the label, for this ultimate insight and one's own relation to it, which greatly facilitates apprehension and cerebration of the matter. That ultimate insight is this: You are God. It's all just You. You are all that exists, has ever existed, or will ever exist. You are the totality of existence, forever and all times. Now of course the conscious portion of your presently limited viewpoint is not the totality of existence, it is just a finite subset of the infinitely greater consciousness of God. But at the ultimate level, you are that greater consciousness, i.e., God. You are God experiencing and discovering Yourself. Thus, the word "entheogen" is quite an apt name for the archetype psychedelics. An equivalent formulation of this is that God, who is existence itself, is the Logos: i.e., computation, logic, thought, reason, cogitation, ratiocination, cerebration. That is, God is logic itself, i.e., mathematics itself. And mathematics is infinite. God is Georg Cantor's Absolute Infinite. And the set cardinality of God is that of the continuum: 2^aleph-null. Interestingly, God has been proven to exist based upon the most reserved view of the known laws of physics. For much more on that, see Prof. Frank J. Tipler's below paper, which in addition to giving the Feynman-Weinberg-DeWitt quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics, also demonstrates that the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics) require that the universe end in the Omega Point (the final cosmological singularity and state of infinite informational capacity identified as being God): F. J. Tipler, "The structure of the world from pure numbers", Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964, doi:10.1088/0034-4885/68/4/R04, bibcode: 2005RPPh...68..897T http://math.tulane.edu/~tipler/theoryofeverything.pdf Also released as "Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything", arXiv:0704.3276, April 24, 2007. Out of 50 articles, Prof. Tipler's above paper was selected as one of 12 for the "Highlights of 2005" accolade as "the very best articles published in Reports on Progress in Physics in 2005 [Vol. 68]. Articles were selected by the Editorial Board for their outstanding reviews of the field. They all received the highest praise from our international referees and a high number of downloads from the journal Website." (See Richard Palmer, Publisher, "Highlights of 2005", Reports on Progress in Physics website. http://webcitation.org/5o9VkK3eE , http://archive.is/pKD3y ) Reports on Progress in Physics is the leading journal of the Institute of Physics, Britain's main professional body for physicists. Further, Reports on Progress in Physics has a higher impact factor (according to Journal Citation Reports) than Physical Review Letters, which is the most prestigious American physics journal (one, incidently, which Prof. Tipler has been published in more than once). Tipler is Professor of Physics and Mathematics (joint appointment) at Tulane University. His Ph.D. is in the field of global general relativity (the same rarefied field that Profs. Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking developed), and he is also an expert in particle physics and computer science. His Omega Point cosmology has been published in a number of prestigious peer-reviewed physics and science journals in addition to Reports on Progress in Physics, such as Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (one of the world's leading astrophysics journals), Physics Letters, the International Journal of Theoretical Physics, etc. For a great deal more regarding the physics of this issue, see my following article: James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708; PDF, 1741424 bytes, MD5: 8f7b21ee1e236fc2fbb22b4ee4bbd4cb. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974708 , http://archive.org/details/ThePhysicsOfGodAndTheQuantumGravityTheoryOfEverything , http://theophysics.host56.com/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf , http://alphaomegapoint.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/redford-physics-of-god.pdf , http://sites.google.com/site/physicotheism/home/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf Additionally, in the below resource are six sections which contain very informative videos of physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler explaining the Omega Point cosmology, which is a proof (i.e., mathematical theorem) of God's existence per the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics), and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE), which is also required by the known laws of physics. The seventh section therein contains an audio interview of Tipler. A number of these videos are not otherwise online. I also provide some helpful notes and commentary for some of these videos. James Redford, "Video of Profs. Frank Tipler and Lawrence Krauss's Debate at Caltech: Can Physics Prove God and Christianity?", alt.sci.astro, Message-ID: [email protected] , 30 Jul 2013 00:51:55 -0400. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.sci.astro/KQWt4KcpMVo , http://archive.is/a04w9 , http://webcitation.org/6IUTAMEyS The plain text of this post is available at: TXT, 42423 bytes, MD5: b199e867e42d54b2b8bf6adcb4127761. http://mirrorcreator.com/files/JCFTZSS8/ , http://ge.tt/3lOTVbp

http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/science-guy-ready-to-debate-founder-of-creation-museum/ That last link will take you here: http://debatelive.org/ Which will allow you to watch the debate for free, live (February 4 at 7 PM EST) Might be interesting to see.

I'm not a physicist, nor a theologian. (or a philosopher for that matter) I'm just a dude with free time. /disclaimer I've been YouTubing physicist Lawrence Krauss and his lectures/debates about how the universe came into being out of "nothing". There was a debate between him and theologian William Lane Craig. One of the things that Craig kept harping on was the definition of "nothing". While watching that debate, I found myself agreeing with Craig. This led me to realize that either Krauss was wrong, or I just didn't understand what he meant by "nothing". Fast forward through many of his lectures and debates and I think I finally understand what the problem is and why he runs into so much resistance when trying to convince others about the universe arising from "nothing". Indeed, the problem is in the definition of the word "nothing", which is simply "not anything". A synonym that is much more revealing is the word "void" which is defined as "being without something specified". Now up until very recently in the history of the human race, we have understood the "void" of space to contain absolutely no matter or energy. If you wanted an empirical example of what "nothing" and "void" were, all you had to do was create a vacuum in space. And of course, the vacuum of space happened naturally and made up most of the universe. The creation myth says that God created the universe from nothing, out of the void. Iron age myth makers would look at an empty sack, empty cup, or up in the sky and say there is nothing in there. They would have a concept of what nothing actually is. Therefore, they could imagine "a great void". As mankind became more technologically advanced we began to understand that while a sack or cup may appear to be empty, in fact there are billions of microscopic particles dancing about inside them; and the sky we now know to be an atmosphere full of all kinds of particles. The concept of "nothing" arose out of the human mind's inability to directly experience something that appeared to not be there. In other words, "if I can't physically see it, it's not there. PEEK-A-BOO!" The way that scientific advancement played out, though, created an overlap between what we previously believed to be empty to a new concept of empty. No longer was the glass empty or the atmosphere empty, outer space was empty. Then later, the space between electrons and the nucleus of an atom was empty. As long as the concept of nothing had empirical evidence to show that nothing was a valid concept, then theologians would always be able to claim that before the universe there was nothing, with full confidence that "nothing" was something that could be fully understood by even the most mentally challenged individual. Enter quantum mechanics. We now understand that all of the visible matter/energy in the universe makes up about 1% of the total matter/energy in the universe. If you are to look at the vacuum of space, where we once thought we could look into nothing, we now understand theoretically and empirically that there are "ghost particles" popping in and out of existence. The void of space is not void. And since space is everywhere, there is no such thing as "nothing" or a "void". Everywhere in the universe, there is something. Nowhere in the universe can you find an true example of "nothing". What does this do to the creation myth "God created the universe from nothing"? Well, it relegates this to the category of creating an alternate dimension to define God. "nothing true can be said about our reality, because another reality may exist where truth equals falsehood." (Against the Gods? pg20 describing the agnostic argument) The truth about our reality is that it is completely full. We are fish becoming aware of the water. The human race has had a concept of what "nothing" is for so long that it seems obvious that it is a valid concept. Is the glass half empty of half full? It's always full! It is either full up on beer or it contains half beer and half atmosphere. There is always something there. The concept of "nothing" is completely invalid. It is no different than talking about pink polka dotted unicorns orbiting Saturn on a unicycle while whistling Dixie. So both concepts in the creation myth are now gone. God and Nothing. Both imagined fantasies that cannot be logically derived from observable reality. The difficulty that even non-believers have with the idea of a "Universe from Nothing" seems to be a psychological attachment to the idea that "nothing" is a real state of being. Lawrence Krauss would do better if he were to rework his approach to include the psychological implications of these findings. Being a total layman in these matters, I'd love to hear what you all think.