Milky Jade

The mimic octopus. Always has been and always will be... Its mimicry is just too awesome. So awesome, in fact, you cannot find yourself able to behold it.

Chosen at gunpoint, BK Otherwise, subway or gtfo

An economics 101 for all people wishing for infinite money

What are the rules on "removing the lack of something" or "the nonexistence of something"? I'd probably choose stupidity, but idk afaic, stupidity is a deficiency And so is hunger unhappiness etc. etc.

Don't worry about it. So basically you're saying: You can't be really (morally) happy unless you're unselfishly happy. You reply to this contradiction beautifully below, if I may say: And whenever faced with a contradiction, review your premises. The premise that altruism is good must be therefore wrong. Do we agree? Now, let me explain: Happiness is your own, personal reward for achievement. The fact that you and I get happy over different things can only mean that your personal happiness is directly integrated in your personal values. If your personal value is to be a charity worker, then by doing charity work, you achieve your values, and happiness is the reward. If there would be no such reward, you would have nothing to win or to lose. It'd be absolutely ghastly. (It's not good) I know why people try to circumvent selfish happiness. They can't wrap their heads around the fact that happiness is selfish by default. But we already established that selfishness is bad, mkay? Again: we face a contradiction. Happiness is good. Selfishness is bad. But happiness is selfish. Therefore the premise that selfishness is bad, must be wrong. But if selfishness is encouraged, we'd face decadence, worldwide depredations and anarchy! Good point. The thing about selfishness is, that you can be rationally selfish. Selfishness is to act in accordance to your values, and with the goal to achieve them. If you put stock in pilferage, murder and slavery, you're not being rationally selfish. The system that allows us to be rationally selfish in the first place does not condone the initiation of force. Rational selfishness is only possible when your achieved values are not for others to be claimed. That includes your life, property and freedom. Bottom line, you can be constructively selfish, or destructively selfish. This idea is completely alien and often unacceptable to people, because I don't even know. They probably eat their cake unselfishly, I guess. Yeah they are I think the response to this fact is two-, perhaps threefold. One faction says "I'm going to die, so I'll enjoy life while I can" The other says "I'm going to leave my mark on this planet for reasons I'm not too sure about" And others don't even think they're going to be dead permanently. If you recall some of the above, a little addendum: we can have values because we're alive. Life is the source of all values. When you are dead, you cannot have any values anymore, but that doesn't mean you can't insure that your tombstone has a witty epitaph and that your grandchildren will profit from your death monetarily, or your body goes to scientific research, and so on. A question: Why do you care for what happens after you die? Except for the off-chance that you might have an afterlife? An anwer: Well, it doesn't really cost me much, and the current generation profited from *their* dying grandparents, as did science. It's a virtually costless tradition that is actually constructive. Except for the tombstone business, or tombstones at all. Graveyards are not a profitable business. You can't invest in graveyards. And people keep dying. God help them, they keep dying. The graveyards are getting fuller and fuller because everyone wants their witty epitaph to shine through the forsaken stone forests. The maintenance has to be paid, the gardening has to be paid, the caretaking and paperwork, all for a non-profitable business. All hobbed upon the tax-payer. Moving on from this transgression, I think the whole deal about "making a difference" is the burnishing of your regular trophies with a different shine. The difference you made lies within the things you wanted to do. Did you want to do them to make a difference, or did you make a difference by wanting to do them? I ought think you can now tell by yourself in which directions things traverse. In summary, it can be put to record that you will not be here to revel in your fame post-mortem, nor will you be there to enjoy being extolled. But: if your values extend just a little beyond the grave, then you can die happy knowing that you achieved them by dying. And that's just how it is. EDIT : I forgot the other thing I stressed visually in the quote. Uhm well, your life gives itself meaning. To not exist means to have no meaning - To exist means to exist, but "meaning" is tantamount to "purpose", and unless you think (and can even show me) that you are the product of purpose, then there is no inherent meaning in your existence. That is why I say life gives itself meaning. It means something to *you*. Your life is not meaningful and valuable because god or the universe make it so. It's a value to you, and the purpose it serves is as a vehicle to the achievement of other values. So much as to the meaning of life. It's a really simple question - but people have different expectations of the answer depending on their fundamental convictions.

You seem to have given this a considerable amount of thought. Or the opposite. Anyway, yeah, I think you made your case clear as day to anybody here. I said what I wanted to say on the 'actual' topic. I think I covered it all, albeit tersely, already for everybody else, too.

And so did many humans, in the name of god. I'll take this as a concession, then You keep bringing things up I can't really settle without sounding like Hitchen's living mouthpiece. But I - Don't - Care ♪: Any questions?

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say. Are these two things correlated? Negatively? A reward is more credible than a belief? Are beliefs credible? What? I would tentatively suggest that this is highly convenient, if I may: The plagues sent by god to devastate egypt were then somehow.. not his handiwork? Did humans rally the locusts, lice and flies to be unleashed on themselves? Transformed rivers to blood and killed their first-borns? Made it rain frogs? They ordered two bears to kill 42 children? Among all the exercises of rationalization and confirmatory biases, this has to be the most paltry one. I'm sorry but.. are you for real? Of course all the manslaughter is said to be sanctioned by god, which is actually isn't, but then why grant that he exists only in order to cherrypick? In order to make of him the best while all the information he have on him come from the bible? And Goddess? I don't think I have to go deeper into this than to quote Hitchens. Or better yet, I'll defer to him: Watch all of it, though if you don't want to, the quote starts around 5:25.

For this, you have to assume a different point of view. It's like a mosaic picture that only makes sense if looked at from afar. And then you can open this can of worms: Since when has heaven been interested in human affairs, and if so, why is this the way to go about it? A human medium reporting on goldenageofgaia.com? Why does this article sound like some smart-arse penned it that absolutely sucked at making it sound like he *didn't* converse with himself (read: roleplay?)? Why aren't the red carpets being rolled out yet? Why does there exist a perfect record of this conversation, but none that we could have? THIS THING. http://goldenageofgaia.com/accountability/ So bottom line, what the actual...? If I let this taylor series converge, I would most certainly be landed with Bullshit. I know this because I've seen many a Bullshit in my time. Don't buy a pencil from this site's cup.

But it's a pretty cool ability Save for you know, that it's highly inconvenient

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn#Fabricated_evidence The fossilic record is incontrovertible: Unicorns are a fabrication, like any other mythical creature. It is right up there with the annual angel/nephilim skeleton findings. Tell me another story...

I hate to sound dismissive, but this seems to be little more than Bullshit cloaked in No Sources

Yes Anything with a velocity with have no defining property of motion and the motility of particles with halt There's no light No warmth Nothing but death

I think if you really need to smile (externally), you could always take out your phone and pretend you're amused by something you're seeing. ..

I didn't plan to go too deep into this, but let it be marked that I think that valuing oneself is a prerequisite to valuing other things. A person that does not value themselves cannot value anything or anyone. Think of it like this... a value constitutes a binding between an object or concept and your value judgement - you evaluate by a certain standard (something with which to tie all your decisions together), and choose your values in accordance to it. The moment you choose something as your value, it becomes your value. The values which you choose are a projection of your self: they are the result and the sum of your fundamental, personal convictions. To not value yourself and your ability to evaluate is a contradiction in terms therefore. If you're still with me, then let me make another thing a bit clearer: There exists an infective thought which goes something like this: "dabbling with material goods and values is distracting us from what is important: love, beauty, soul, I could go down the line..". It is the idea that there are different sets of values in dichotomous arrangement. It is the idea that some values are part of ourselves, and some aren't - the idea that not our ability to evaluate is good, but only what we choose to value, is. While it is true that there is a hierarchy of values, this isn't the order that values take. The only important distinction of values is between "life" and "everything else". Once you recognize that without life, there are no values, then you can fill the rest of the pyramid yourself. With "hierarchy of values", strictly speaking, I mean something to apply to decisions which are more complex than "yes/no". For instance, the construction of a building: The order in which things are erected or applied is strictly following the hierarchy of values. You want something which harbours hundreds of offices over multiple storeys and a nice view on the town. You can have no windows without first having the concrete to frame them. You can't have a looming tower of concrete without girders of steel to support it. Somewhere at the bottom the colour or accessories, and at the top, the fundament. If you invert this hierarchy, you'll end up with something like a dozen-odd desks on a puddle of green paint. When I see people devoted to something, I think first "their ability to value something freely and by own volition made this possible", and only secondly, "oh my god, what a nerd". To others, it is the inverse. Why? Because, according to me, "the ability to value is the source of all values". It is therefore a higher value in the hierarchy, without which values could not be possible. It doesn't mean I approve of the mindless obsession over say, paperclips or sacrificing goats or something, but I wholly disapprove of compulsory values. Where ever there is a value, there is the implicit question: "of value to whom? and why?". Choice is implicit in values. Whenever there are no alternatives, there exist no values. Compulsory value is therefore a contradiction in terms, and like the leper's bell of the depraved person.

1, 10 and 13 are positively disagreeable, though the other points might be different, those three were the ones that actually really mattered. Maybe it isn't such a good idea to listen to somebody that was kicked in the face for most of his life, I don't know

1. Why not? 2. Are happiness and usefulness/compassion mutually exclusive? 3. Difference to whom?

Having erections in public People might actually be induced to pay attention to where they're walking and whom they might bump into On the other hand, in crowded areas, all hell breaks loose

Daria, from Daria. Anyone? That show was.... something. EDIT: Though she's less sarky than cynical, and pessimistic..... Though she's still pretty sarky at the times she is reluctant to outright use her strange humour (this isn't supposed to be humour, it's the entire point of daria): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LndSMPpOAIw

Gabrielle is the French feminine form of Gabriel, which means "hero of god" or "God is my might" in Hebrew. fear me

My sewing machine, closely followed by my book collection