(Part 3) Best psychology & counseling books according to redditors

It's an interesting phenomenon. People often mirror the people around them to fit in. People will amplify any stereotypes they have about a social group they want to belong to and downplay attributes that do not belong to a certain group.

For instance, black kids will perform worse on a test when they're told it is to measure their academic ability. They do better when they're told it's a strategic test. Student athletes do worse on an exam when they're told all of their jock peers did worse on this exam than non-athletes.

Source: Whistling Vivald: How Stereotypes Affect Us by Claude Steele. The second is from this paper from Stanford. This analysis on the self is very broad overview.

Avoidance of responsibility is a primary characteristic of psychopathy. He ticks off all the other checkmarks, too. Only libel laws are protecting his ass from being called a psychopath openly. Educate yourselves about psychopaths -- I recommend these books I have read to understand my own lifelong contact with psychopaths, starting with my mother:
Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us
Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work
Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
The Inner World of the Psychopath: A definitive primer on the psychopathic personality

He is commonly called a narcissist, but here's a handy rule of thumb. Not all narcissists are psychopaths, but all psychopaths are narcissistic. It's easy to understand why -- they don't see humans as humans, only objects to be manipulated for fun and profit. They, themselves, are the only conscious being, so nothing else matters. Their brains aren't wired to understand we have minds and memories, which is why they lie constantly to achieve their immediate needs. Strangely, the inability to experience emotions (and that includes fear, which is why Trump seems to never give a fuck about consequences) comes with no sense of past or future. There is only the "now."

1% of the population are psychopaths. You know more than one. Some say it's an evolutionary adaptation that exploits humans with emotions and morals, and that they are "intraspecies predators." There are professions that rely on psychopathic behavior, and you can draw your own opinions on them:
The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success

It is also commonly said that psychopaths are experts are reading people. This is false (because, to them, there is nothing to read). They are simply experts, from lifelong experience and practice, at putting people into situations with predictable reactions. For example, Trump likes to insult people because he knows it distracts them and takes them off their game as they try to defend themselves. Psychopaths like to do their manipulating in the background and behind peoples' backs (and in Trump's case, behind NDAs and hush money), thus Trump's biggest problem -- he's the world's most watched person and nothing goes unnoticed, so his previous tactics aren't working. He is thrashing more and more as he gets more desperate to deceive. He is not losing his mind or getting senile. He's a psychopath who can't understand why his old tricks are no longer working.

His apparent "humanness" is a practiced façade, as is true for all psychopaths. They learn, starting in childhood, how to fit in. Some learn how better than others. Trump is good enough at it to fool a large number of voters.
BTW, there's nothing saying a psychopath can't also be dumb as a brick or illiterate.

Seriously scary stuff. When further research is not encouraged in a certain area, then it's clear you are treading in dangerous waters.


I do think these debates are important, especially nowadays when people are crucified simply for bringing up the issue of possibly improving vaccines and not simply trusting corporations blindly.

As I usually say, vaccines do not need to be abolished, they can and should be improved. The issue is not as black and white as people portray it.

The amount of research that has sprung up connecting the usage of heavy metals as vaccine adjuvants to neurological problems, as well as autism is considerable, yet is rarely discussed.

---------------------

>In early December 2017, Dr. Chris Exley of Keele University in England and his colleagues published a paper that for the first time looked at the brain tissue of subjects with autism to determine the level of aluminum (note: they spell “aluminum” as “aluminium” in the United Kingdom) found within their brain tissue. For anyone trying to convince the world that “the science is settled and vaccines don’t cause autism,” the study’s findings are deeply contradictory to that statement. In a blog post written by Professor Exley on the day his study was published, he explained the groundbreaking results:

> “…while the aluminium content of each of the 5 brains [of people with autism] was shockingly high it was the location of the aluminium in the brain tissue which served as the standout observation…The new evidence strongly suggests that aluminium is entering the brain in ASD [autism spectrum disorders] via pro-inflammatory cells which have become loaded up with aluminium in the blood and/or lymph, much as has been demonstrated for monocytes at injection sites for vaccines including aluminium adjuvants.”


I strongly suggest anyone genuinely interested to read the following page, if you wish to see a very different view (filled with research of course) on the vaccine/aluminium link and its possible relation to autism:

-Aluminum in vaccines and the autism epidemic

The man behind this research is J.B.Handley. He has a child with autism and has dedicated his life to solving and researching the issue - and preventing the modern autism epidemic.

He even has a book on this issue, available here:

https://www.amazon.com/How-Autism-Epidemic-J-B-Handley/dp/1603588248/
https://jbhandleyblog.com/home/2018/4/1/international2018

---------------------

Here is another link to a research paper (by Tomljenovic, Exley not involved here as far as I know) connecting the usage of aluminium adjuvants to the rise of autism:

Do aluminum vaccine adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism?

This research is sadly not freely available, but if you wish to read it anyway, you can get around that with a page like www.sci-hub.tw

In which case it becomes more readily available:

https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0162013411002212


--------------

Recently, even a respected (now smeared and his reputation destroyed of course) vaccine medical expert, employed and tasked to destroy the autism-vaccine connection has come out with info that the link undoubtedly exists. There is an interview with him on Shirley Attkinsson that can be found on YouTube.

Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson: January 6, 2019 - The Vaccination Debate

James Corbett: Vaxx Propaganda in Overdrive as Vaccine/Autism Link Confirmed

------------------------------------------------

For an absurdly high amount of research papers, check out this comment here.

On Amazon and Wikipedia.

>So my question is what are the factual bases for Bill Nye's claim that there are more than two genders he makes in his new TV series, Bill Nye Saves the World?

If you're just asking about the gender claim, the factual bases are pretty boring: we just look around in the world and notice there are more than two genders. More info here. Nye also claims that sex is a spectrum, that attraction is a spectrum, and the expression is a spectrum. If you're interested in the evidence for those claims, this book is a pretty good one on sex. Attraction and expression are so manifestly spectrums that it's hard to imagine someone claiming otherwise.

>What are the factual bases of his critics of his claim?

If the critics are people like Breitbart, then the "factual" bases are pretty much nonexistent. Perhaps there are more sophisticated critics that you have in mind, but I would not want to speculateabout the factual bases of their claims without seeing their claims first.

> And as a followup, if there are more than two genders, then how many genders do academics accept as real genders?

I don't think anyone's counted. A quick perusal of the Wikipedia page listed in the first thread I linked turns up at least a dozen, I think. In general this is probably the sort of thing that is too vague to admit of any precise number.

In general, boys' academic performance is struggling compared to girls'. The War Against Boys goes into it quite deeply.

/https://www.amazon.ca/War-Against-Boys-Misguided-Policies/dp/1501125427

Better book, more citations, more research, less anecdotes.

Good read Christina Hoff Sommers the War on Boys:

https://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Boys-Misguided-Policies/dp/1501125427

I understand not wanting to buy a book just to read it's content particularly when it's of a disagreeing political nature (I'm not made of money either) but I'd gladly buy you a copy if you're interested.

Another good read.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-day/why-boys-are-failing-in-a_b_884262.html

Lack of role models, male teachers go where the pay is and many fear claims of being a pedophile (It's a pretty widespread and harmful narrative and one that is openly voiced see: https://www.veooz.com/news/ALDvUG4.html)

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/letters/story/2012-08-19/male-teachers-elementary-school/57145422/1

The educational system used to use Phonics based learning but Whole-language learning replaced it during the Feminization of education. (i.e. In order for girls to learn better it was acceptable for boys to learn less and the method by which girls better learned was brought in)

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/boys-do-better-than-girls-when-taught-under-traditional-reading-methods-7184547.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHe9UJTte-M

We've also stepped away from physical (recess anyone?) and competitive learning which boys tend to very well at.

There's more that goes into this (i.e. Loss of fathers in the home, lack of default parenting, etc.) but it's undoubtedly not as efficient for boys as it used to be leading many to argue that sex-separated class rooms should be considered.

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cha.asp

Women continue to receive affirmative action and gendered scholarships despite this fact.

Dat is net zoiets als zeggen dat iemand die thuis, in de trein en bus graag door het raam naar buiten kijkt, gefixeerd is op glas.
Het gaat erom wat erachter gebeurt. Je zou als docent dit -ook alweer twaalf jaar oude- boek eens moeten lezen. Het is allemaal zo erg niet.

I feel your passion for making change, since you directly asked for help, I would suggest channeling the passion and anger into making change. It it's slow and hard to make change but all we need to reach is the tipping point.

I suggest reading 'Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change' for scientifically researched ways of achieving social change.

Here's the link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159056233X?ie=UTF8&tag=vegancom&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=159056233X

You can gift back How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life, by Thomas Gilovich.

Free PDF version

> IQ is highly dependent on social environnement, family and school education and the subject's personality.

WRONG. That's where you are wrong, kiddo.

1. Attempts by programs like head start to give blacks highly enriched educational environments have failed to produce lasting changes in their IQ’s relative to whites.
   
   
2. Children of black parents that make between $160K and $200K a year are less intelligent than white children from families that make less than $20K a year. Similarly, the IQ difference between rich black kids and rich white kids is even larger than the IQ difference between poor black kids and poor white kids.
   
   
3. Our society has obviously become much less “racist” over the last hundred years. Yet, the black/white IQ gap is basically the same today as it was in 1918.
   
   
4. Genetic theory predicts that the children and grand children of smart people will tend to be ever dumber until they reach the average IQ level of the population. The children and grand children of smart black parents “regress” in this way to a mean IQ of 85 while the children of smart white parents regress to a mean IQ of 100. The only obvious explanation for this comes from genetics.
   
   
5. Whites have larger brains than blacks. This seems to be for genetic reasons since there are also many other muscular and skeletal differences between blacks and whites that are associated with evolving larger brains and because these brain size differences are present at birth. Larger brains are also associated with being more intelligent. Three lines of evidence suggest that this association is causal: first, genes that are associated with being more intelligent are also associated with larger brains. Second, a person’s brain size changes over time ]predict changes in their intelligence over time](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140304141734.htm). And third, smarter siblings have larger brains their their less intelligent siblings who grew up in the same home as them (this suggests that the relationship can’t be explained by any possible confounding variable in the family environment such as nutrition). So it seems that whites have evolved to be more intelligent than blacks partly by evolving larger brains.
   
   
6. Mulattos (people who have a black and a white parent) have higher IQ’s than blacks but lower IQ’s than whites. A genetic explanation would predict this because half of a mulatto’s genes are black and half are white. In fact, even with in black populations those who have lighter skin (because they have more white ancestors) have higher IQ’s.
   
   
7. The Minnesota trans-racial adoption study, which is the best of its kind, found that at age 17 blacks adopted into upper middle class white homes averaged an IQ of 84, Mulattos averaged 93, and whites 102. Thus, being raised in an affluent white family didn’t boost black or Mulatto IQ just as a (mostly) genetic hypothesis would predict.
   
   
8. Some IQ sub-tests are more heritable than others. (That is, twin studies show that differences between individuals on some tests are more due to genetic differences between people than others.) The race IQ gap is largest on those subtests with the highest levels of heritability and the only obvious explanation for this is that the B/W IQ difference is caused by genetics.
   
   
9. Versions of genes associated with intelligence differ in frequency between the races in such a way that favors white people.
   
   
10. Egalitarianism isn’t evolutionarily or genetically plausible. We know that the different environments the races evolved in produced differences in just about every physical trait from bone density to height to muscle size. And we know that the large differences in weather and food availability must have caused people to behave differently. The idea that these different environments selected for intelligence with exactly equal pressure seems incredibly unlikely. Similarly, studies have found that the races differ in the frequency of most (or all) genes and this includes genes that affect brain development. So the races possessing any random single gene in the same frequency is unlikely. In order for them to have to same genetic profile with regards to intelligence, which involves thousands of genes, this would have to happen thousands of times. If we assume that that the probability of the races having the same frequency for some gene is 40% (it’s actually much lower) and that intelligence involves 15 genes (it actually involves thousands) the probability that the races would have the identical frequencies for each of these genes is 0.0001%. Given this, the idea that they would have the exact same frequency for the thousands of genes that affect intelligence is basically impossible.
    

Anti-vaxxers enrage me. That shit is dangerous, ignorant nonsense.

>Liza Greve, president of Oklahomans for Vaccine and Health Choice, which advocates for parental choice, said Oklahomans should take the opt-out statistics with a grain of salt.

Do you know what i take with a grain of salt, Liza? You, because your facebook page is a whole box of cat scratch crazy:

1. You shouldn't send your kids to school on flu shot day because children are being forced to get it.
   
2. That autism is caused by vaccines (see all her posts touting the book "how to end the autism epidemic"
   
3. That the DOJ cancelled expert testimony to conceal "critical material evidence of how vaccines can cause autism in some children"
   
4. Vaccines cause cancer.
   
   This is all within the 5 posts on her page.

A great source of information on this topic is The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men by Christina Hoff Summers.
Some excerpts:

Although many educators recognize that boys have fallen far behind girls in school, few address the problem in a serious way. Schools that try to stop the trend, through boy-friendly pedagogy, literacy interventions, vocational training, or same-sex classes, are often thwarted. Women’s lobbying groups still call such projects evidence of a “backlash” against girls’ achievements and believe they are part of a campaign to slow further female progress.

This book explains how it became fashionable to pathologize the behavior of millions of healthy male children. We have turned against boys and forgotten a simple truth: the energy, competitiveness, and corporal daring of normal males are responsible for much of what is right in the world. No one denies that boys’ aggressive tendencies must be mitigated and channeled toward constructive ends. Boys need (and crave) discipline, respect, and moral guidance. Boys need love and tolerant understanding. But being a boy is not a social disease.

A Reference book of men's issues is probably your best bet for finding relevant studies.

[MRRef] (https://www.reddit.com/r/MRRef/) is more extensive but will require more digging.

Videos:

The Red Pill (NYA)

Everything by Karen Straughan

Everything by Janice Fiamengo

Books:

[Is There Anything Good About Men?] (https://gendertruce.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/baumeister-roy-is-there-anything-good-about-men.pdf) (full book online) by Roy Baumeister

The Myth of Male Power: Why Men are the Disposable Sex by Warren Farrell

The Privileged Sex by Martin Van Creveld

The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men and Boys by David Benetar

The Fraud of Feminism (full book online) by Earnest Belford Bax

Who Stole Feminism? by Christina Hoff Sommers

The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers

Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture by Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young

Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination Against Men by Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young

Sanctifying Misandry: Goddess Ideology and the Fall of Man by Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young

Replacing Misandry: A Revolutionary History of Men by Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young

No More Sex War by Neil Lyndon

A few works that I think deserve more attention. Some are directly related to Men's Rights, others tangentially.

Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior by Christopher Boehm

War, Peace, Human Nature: Converging Evolutionary & Cultural Views by Douglas Fry et. al

Female Forms of Power and the Myth of Male Dominance: A Model of Female/Male Interaction in Peasant Society (paper online) by Susan Carol Rogers

Favoured or oppressed? Married women, property and ‘coverture’ in England, 1660–1800 (paper online) by J. Bailey

The Mothers: A Study of the Origins of Sentiments and Institutions (full book online) by Robert Briffault

Gynocentrism: From Feudalism to the Modern Disney Princess by Peter Wright

Sex and Culture (full book online) by J.D. Unwin

The Manipulated Man (full book online) by Esther Villar

Unknown Misandry (website)

Real Sexism (website)

Son of a Bitch.

Here's an actual cover: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Manliness-Classic-Skills-Manners/dp/1600614620#reader_1600614620

Really, right now, just that it's my job. The fact that it sometimes sucks isn't an excuse. Neither is the fact that I don't feel inspired to excellence every day.

I sit down for two hours every morning and write. It's the habit that keeps me going, especially when writing feels like the horrible chore that it often is.

That sounds bleak, I suppose, but I've actually started to feel a lot better about my work and progress since adopting this perspective. It means that I'm not failing at being a grad student just for not "feeling the love" or whatever. It means that I make incremental (sometimes infinitesimal) progress every day.

This book sort of articulates that perspective. It's a book about writing, on the surface, but I've found that it's also a great "how to cope with this shit you got yourself into" manual (at least, if the size of the task combined with the overwhelming pile of other stuff you need to do is what ails you).

There are two separate ideas that I think are worth responding to in this post:

1. It is great that you have that passion when it comes to animal rights. You do not want to lose this, because the only way it disappears is by becoming generally apathetic about the terrible state of the world and your inability to change it. Foster that healthy outrage you have over the terrible state of animal rights in the world to keep your level of dedication up.
   
2. There is no easy answer when it comes to how to approach people. Keep up your levelheadedness and politeness when interacting with others even if they do not respond in kind. Practice is helpful as well as reading books about effective techniques for influencing others (many techniques generally used by sales-people are very relevant for our cause as well). If I had to recommend one book in this area to read it would be Change of Heart by Nick Cooney.

You could directly apply at SpaceX, they also need business people (and they're the company with the explicit goal of putting 1 million people on Mars before the end of the century). Also potentially of interest: r/colonizemars

Also also, I recommend (a bit randomly) this book which is mostly about how to think better but also contains a lot about how to ensure humanity has a successful future and what that actually entails.

They also sell a book that claims vaccines cause autism, per the description:

https://www.amazon.com/How-Autism-Epidemic-J-B-Handley/dp/1603588248/ref=pd_sim_14_1/134-8776607-1137662?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1603588248&pd_rd_r=fe5e3b59-6ad4-11e9-851c-1df216413549&pd_rd_w=5VDLc&pd_rd_wg=fCD5F&pf_rd_p=90485860-83e9-4fd9-b838-b28a9b7fda30&pf_rd_r=X5H4BT7K56CFKXGTT6NK&psc=1&refRID=X5H4BT7K56CFKXGTT6NK

> but to claim that it's a measure of intelligence is pretty far fetched.

I suggest reading The g Factor to get a better understanding of IQ tests insights and limitations.

To summarize, while it's true that some people are better at certain mental tasks than others, there is a strong correlation between a huge subset of mental tasks. If a person is good at, say, mental spatial manipulation, they tend to be good with language, good with pattern recognition, etc.

Read Boys Adrift by Dr. Leonard Sax. It's an amazing book on the subject. He has one called Girls on the Edge that I just started and it's killing my heart.

Sigh, sex and gender are not the same thing. Your sex is what you are biologically, your gender is what you identify as. I would encourage you to read Fausto-Sterling's Sexing the Body as it is a very fascinating and SCIENTIFIC look at gender and sex and the politics behind a lot of it. Don't want to educate yourself? Here's a link to a pdf Fausto-Sterling wrote titled The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough.

Here are some slides from my Women and Gender Studies class

Also, do you even know about intersex people? What sex and/or gender would you say they have? The world isn't black and white and I would sincerely encourage you to educate yourself as you sound like a right ignorant twat right now.

“Consequences” don’t really work for toddlers. The best kind of consequences they can experience are natural ones. Meaning if they spill water on the ground, they have to help clean it up. Have you read this book: No Bad Kids by Janet Lansbury ? I know everybody recommends it for like every post about discipline, but it is a really good book!

The best way to handle behavior at this age is to guid them into appropriate behavior. If they are doing something inappropriate, guide their behavior into something better. Encourage them to behave well more than you discourage bad behavior. Toddlers are much more receptive to positive than to negatives.

In case anyone ever wants to refute these arguments--which, I hope no one has any doubts how BS it is, but if you want to know just HOW bs it is, I recommend:

1.Intersectional Inequality by Ragin & Fiss

A very small book, from 2017, it details how only the addition of a small number of variables totally undercuts notions of race & ethnicity being related to test scores, shows how social aspects class, gender, race, education etc. all combine.

2.What's the Use of Race ed. Whitmarsh & Jones

A summative book that details all the contemporary debates on race in science and the critique thereof, including the American Anthropological Associations public statement that race is a social construct, the population genetics of it, the bias inherent in research, the role of race in forensics, the role of race in medicine, and the like. In basically shows in sum nothing explanatory is added by the addition of race to any of these (and, indeed, often reduces explanatory power) and the sheer number of analytic, empirical, moral, political & rhetorical issues with the concept should force us to abandon it entirely (except as an analytic social & political category--i.e. in discussions of racism, discrimination, racial policy, nationalism, etc.).

2a.Here's the intro.



3.Inequality by Design, ed. Fischer et al.

An earlier book, this one throws in a massive number of variables to totally quash the Bell Curve. It shows how inequality reproduces itself and affects academic achievement., how "intelligence" is already culturally laden, how intelligence differences even within that are artifactual, about zero sum contests over scarce resources & services, about structural imperatives to reproduce inequality, about the policy choices which continue to do this, about educational solutions, about public investment solutions & a statistical analysis of the Bell Curve.

3a.Intro Chapter on Ethnicity & IQ

3b.Chapter published elsewhere

3c.Related Paper

4.Whistling Vivaldi, a popular press book by the Claude Steele

This popular press book shows how cultural conceptions, frames, roles & priming explain a TON of variance in education & other things. Less sociological, it explains the social psychological micro underpinnings of racial inequality. I also have a source for the same thing but for gender.

We basically know the following:

1. IQ is not a good predictor of educational achievement
   
   
2. IQ is culturally laden and itself is biased and therefore problematic af
   
   
3. IQ is predicted by macro-social variables
   
   
4. IQ is at least 50% explained by environment & upbringing
   
   
5. Small interventions change it, including adulthood
   
   
6. As time goes on, the number of genes IQ is attributed to has expanded so substantially, that no group variation is plausible
   
   
7. The entire relationship between race & IQ and race & school achievement is explained by inequality, discrimination, class, anti-black policy & so on.
   
   
8. It only takes a small number of variables to prove the above
   
   
9. Race is a political category
   
   
10. Within group genetic differences in ethnicities is larger than that of between group
    
    
11. For race its even weaker--genetic diversity is the highest in Africa of anywhere & in the Americas most people attributed to a 'race' are mixed ethnic, geographic & other ancestry
    
    
12. Common environmental stimuli--dairy eating, disease, urbanization, agriculture, climate, culture--have developmental & evolutionary effects everywhere and ascribing "race" to them is absurd
    
    
13. Priming & social psychology frame effects explain MASSIVE portions of all kind of micro-inequality (gender, race, class, sexuality, mental illness) and behavioral differences
    
    
14. On top of this, enculturation & socialization obviously explain a massive portion of individual behavioral differences
    
    
15. On top of this, class & inequality operate on people through kin, culture, upbringing, situations, geography & explicit policy
    
    
16. On top of this, 80% of all behavior is explained by situations, only 10% by personality, and the rest the interaction thereof or unexplained
    
    
17. Humans share between 99% & 99.9% of genes in common, on top which epigenetic variation, development, life course, illness & experience alter gene expression, making it a moot point anyway
    
    
18. Genes display high degrees of pleiotropy, epistasis, geneeplexs, co-option, pre-adaptation, downward epigenetic selection, cultural co-evolution, structural imperatives, direct to RNA coding, non-functional & change expression both developmentally & situationally. Genetic determinism is total nonsense.
    
    There's more than that but you get the point.

I highly recommend Boys Adrift, which has an entire chapter dedicated to video games.

Generally, the book addresses some of the reasons that boys have become disengaged from our modern culture and turned to video games as an outlet. The author is somewhat critical of games (based on the research), but nonetheless adopts a moderate approach. If I recall correctly, the author suggests that there is a clear and direct correlation between students who game over 6 hours per week and decreased academic performance. (The causation versus correlation point is not clear, but the evidence is nonetheless compelling.) Additionally, the author discusses different gaming genres and suggests that some are better than others.

I'm a former gamer myself who had to quit primarily due to family and relationship obligations. However, after reading this book and other resources, I've become more and more convinced that modern, competitive online games (particularly shooters, like Overwatch, my achilles heel) are grindy time sucks that are hard to put down. Although "skill-based" in the sense that you are developing skills to improve at the game, the competitive system effectively grades you on a curve, so it's a constant time-based arms race to maintain your position and increase your rank. That sense of improvement and achievement is what keeps you coming back for more, and it all takes time -- lots of it. And in the end, what do you have to show for it?

In moderation, games are fine, like all things. But these competitive online games do not encourage moderation. I'd tread carefully here. Feel free to PM me if you want to discuss further. I'd be curious to know what game it is that he's so fixated on playing more. I'd also want to understand why he wants to play more and what he is hoping to accomplish or seeking to achieve.

I highly recommend No Bad Kids and Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids. Both books helped me tremendously as a parent, and helped me parent the exact opposite of how I was raised. One of the most important things at this age is consistent, clear boundaries, and standing your ground. Do not make empty threats - follow through.

File a Title IX complaint with the school's title IX office and with the federal government. Instructions here:

http://knowyourix.org/title-ix/how-to-file-a-title-ix-complaint/

Chances are high that the school and OCR will choose not to act on it, but it's important that boys & young men to leave a paper trail documenting discriminatory behavior. Remember, when it comes to the government, if it isn't documented on paper, it basically never happened.

This is a good book for background information on boys in education:

http://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Boys-Misguided-Policies/dp/1501125427/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1449440710&sr=8-1&keywords=war+against+boys

A good advocacy organization is Boys & Men in Education:

http://boysmeneducation.com/

... they may know of good resources / tactics for your son.

Your son could also organize a men's rights student organization on campus. Most campuses are in dire need of that sort of advocacy.

How old is the toddler? Janet Lansbury has some great books about discipline, like this one. It's geared toward parents, but there's a lot of useful info in there for caregivers. Toddlers are little boundary-explorers, and creating a secure, consistent environment where they know what to expect is the goal, but it's easier said than done. Behavior is communication, so if you can figure out the underlying need that's leading to the behavior, and meet the need, that's the ideal situation. It's a daily balancing act of figuring out where to put the boundary and then how to hold the boundary firm.

Actually, I've read something about tv being somewhat stimulating. Tv these days has so many sub plots that keeping track of it all takes a little brain power.

Playing a video game is more stimulating. You're developing strategies, saving in game money for that next item, etc..

If you're interested, I got these ideas from a book I read a couple years back:

https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Bad-Good-You-Actually/dp/1594481946

Jb handley’s book is great also!

The shaming and attacks only further grows the movement. Anyone who’s not well mannered and can’t provide a rebuttal without spewing an attack added on with mumbled nonsense is discarded by those with rational minds.

I recommend listening to this interview with Chris Exley. A scientist studying aluminum (which is in vaccines) for a very for long time.

https://youtu.be/WyAeQKtVr6U

https://www.reddit.com/r/VaxTalk/comments/bkrk0b/aluminium_in_brain_tissue_in_autism_professor/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app

That's one of my favorite popular science books, so it's wonderful to hear you're getting so much out of it. It really is a fascinating topic, and it's sad that so many Christians close themselves off to it solely to protect their religious beliefs (though as you discovered, it's good for those religious beliefs that they do).

As a companion to the book you might enjoy the Stated Clearly series of videos, which break down evolution very simply (and they're made by an ex-Christian whose education about evolution was part of his reason for leaving the religion). You might also like Coyne's blog, though these days it's more about his personal views than it is about evolution (but some searching on the site will bring up interesting things he's written on a whole host of religious topics from Adam and Eve to "ground of being" theology). He does also have another book you might like (Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible), though I only read part of it since I was familiar with much of it from his blog.

> If you guys have any other book recommendations along these lines, I'm all ears!

You should definitely read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, if only because it's a classic (and widely misrepresented/misunderstood). A little farther afield, one of my favorite popular science books of all time is The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker, which looks at human language as an evolved ability. Pinker's primary area of academic expertise is child language acquisition, so he's the most in his element in that book.

If you're interested in neuroscience and the brain you could read How the Mind Works (also by Pinker) or The Tell-Tale Brain by V. S. Ramachandran, both of which are wide-ranging and accessibly written. I'd also recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow by psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Evolution gets a lot of attention in ex-Christian circles, but books like these are highly underrated as antidotes to Christian indoctrination -- nothing cures magical thinking about the "soul", consciousness and so on as much as learning how the brain and the mind actually work.

If you're interested in more general/philosophical works that touch on similar themes, Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach made a huge impression on me (years ago). You might also like The Mind's I by Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett, which is a collection of philosophical essays along with commentaries. Books like these will get you thinking about the true mysteries of life, the universe and everything -- the kind of mysteries that have such sterile and unsatisfying "answers" within Christianity and other mythologies.

Don't worry about the past -- just be happy you're learning about all of this now. You've got plenty of life ahead of you to make up for any lost time. Have fun!

Anything from Oliver Sacks always worth reading imo.

• Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain!
  
  
• The Compassionate Brain: A Revolutionary Guide to Developing Your Intelligence to Its Full Potential: How Empathy Creates Intelligence!
  
  
• Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain!
  
  
• Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions!
  
  
• In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind!
  
  
• The Man with a Shattered World: The History of a Brain Wound!
  
  not really neuroscience, but interesting imho:
  
  
• How the Mind Works!
  
  
  *(hopes formatting works)

All paranormal phenomena are essentially of a Trickster variety.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Trickster-Paranormal-George-Hansen/dp/1401000827

My opinion/belief is that paranormal events are "real", but they are consciousness-level events. This belief requires another, that the physical world is nested within some kind of metaphysical consciousness.

You are not alone. And you are not a bad mom.

I have lots of bad days when I don’t live up to the standard I’ve set myself—and PS if you’re looking for learning what TO do rather than just what not to do, I highly recommend No Bad Kids. If you google Janet landsbury you can check out her blog and podcast and search for topics that ring true for you.

Anyway, onto sharing some tidbits: just recently I let loose and just YELLED at my 18 month old. I am very sound sensitive and he likes to screech like a banshee and I was having terrible headaches... so finally I just really let loose and almost screamed at him to stop. He looked at me in shock and started crying in earnest.

I took me a second to even feel bad because I was so relieved to have the high-pitched screeching stop. And my yelling? It was premeditated. It’s not like I just hit a breaking point and lost control. No, I just decided I was going to do it and I did.

I felt bad of course and hugged him and he went about his day and it was all fine.

I have lots of low moments. I haven’t hit my son, but that is by virtue of my tendency to simply check out. When his volume gets high and my system goes into overwhelm, I walk away either physically or I dissociate. Now, you may think hitting is worse, but this is my biggest fear: that I will be the unavailable and dissociated mother who comes out of it only to yell and terrify her offspring.

And yeah, I have the desire to hit. I come from a terribly abusive family history and the urge is strong. I can only offer what has worked for me: I verbalize it. “I want to hit” and just hearing my voice saying it can snap me out of it. It’s worked so far, but I am always scared that I am one tantrum away from spanking.

Sooooo you are totally not alone. It’s very hard to break the cycle of family trauma! And in case it makes you feel any better... I am a god damn therapist myself. I know how I “should” be doing this parenting gig. Doesn’t make it any easier.

Hugs and love.

No Bad Kids by Janet Lansbury was a big game changer for me. It helped me understand why 2 year olds tantrum the way they do, not just tools for working with them.

Been through the same. Got quite depressed because people just couldn't see the harm they were doing, or didn't care. But then someday I wondered why didn't I see the harm I was doing sooner? Why didn't I go vegan years earlier? I could have saved dozens of lives, not to mention taken better care of myself and the planet. So I dove into the currently available literature on human psychology which explained why people are so susceptible to social norms[1], why we so often can't reason ourselves out of a position were in [2] and why it is so difficult to come up with an idea like going vegan on your own [3]. After having read that I still get frustrated from time to time but much less so than first. I feel it's a bit like being angry at the earth shaking every now and then and tearing my house down. There is no one to be angry at, not really. You've just got to build a better house[4].

Chaos magick is the bare bones, a system distilled by stripping away all cultural content and context. It works, like all magick, on the premise that a change within produces change in the external world; as above, so below.

Why are serious practitioners of the occult not uniquely successful and wealthy?
Because the practice of magick transforms our idea of what constitutes wealth and success. Personally, I feel both wealthy and successful, but I have no money and few possessions because these things have ceased to hold meaning or provide satisfaction for me. Whose definition of these terms should we be applying?

How have these traditions never been quantifiably studied?
No scientist wants to risk their career and reputation by taking seriously something the scientific establishment has dismissed as nonsense. There's already strong evidence from reputable scientists demonstrating the effects of human consciousness on matter at a distance, in both time and space, but since there is currently no theory that accounts for the results it rarely progresses beyond the dry statistics in research papers. (See, for instance: The Trickster and the Paranormal)

Magick works, so those who are doing it see no need for proof or evidence. There's no conspiracy, no-one is 'kept' in the dark, the only thing stopping you from using magick is you. The proof is always in the doing, in the process that reveals the true nature of our relationship with the world. It's always personal and particular; each of us must prove it for ourselves.

No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame - Janet Lansbury

Read this book. It's short, practical, and doesn't get into any of that 'spirit of writing' snake oil. It's just about how to maximize your output and quality simultaneously. It was written by a Psych. guy, and he cites various studies to back up everything he says. You can read it in an hour or less, and it works well for sciences or humanities.

>Non-triggered sociopaths also tend to excel in a lot of professions due to the same traits that seem cold.

yes.
bomb disposal experts, pilots, the more successful surgeons and lawyers, etc..

you can read this book The Wisdom Of Psychopaths.
https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Psychopaths-Saints-Killers-Success/dp/0374533989
for an interesting take on this.

the author basically said psychopaths are not all serial killers. it's just a trait some people tend to have and be good at their chosen jobs because they veer towards those jobs somehow.

edited: formatting.

Hi carbuyer throwaway, a lot of people have mentioned that it's hard to get racist people to stop being racist. I agree. However, you might want to read a book called Whistling Vivaldi - It is a book about racial stereotyping in the Unites States and small steps you can take to overcome them. Truly enlightening book. Also, I'm so sorry about your experiences - from one American to another. It's important to remind yourself that you are not defined by what other people say and do to you. Much support.

The author expanded this into NurtureShock which I can highly recommend. It's a primer on evidence-based parenting.

Read the 10th chapter of NurtureShock for good information on language development. From that, two things babies need to learn language (there's a lot more but these are relevant):

1. They need to see a person talking. Voice-overs are useless; they do absolutely nothing.
   
   
2. They need to be responded to.
   
   At the very least, Baby Einstein is a waste of money. Might as well just turn the TV to a random channel.
   
   Do your babies not entertain themselves for a few minutes at a time?

The education system is failing our boys and young men. Because it is primarily run by women, the education system is tilted to benefit typical female learning abilities, while chastising the boys' way of learning. We can see the results of such a system today. Boys are significantly more prone to drop out of high school and college. The female population in most universities is much higher than that of males. Here's the kicker: a lot of universities have programs and departments that are set up to help women go to college and stay in college--but these opportunities do not exist for men.

This book outlines perfectly well the problem and it proposes a few solutions. However, these solutions cannot come into place, unless we as a society get to work together to change the system.
http://www.amazon.com/Boys-Adrift-Epidemic-Unmotivated-Underachieving/dp/0465072100

Not doing summaries/reviews, cause it's late and I'm tired. On request, I suppose. Mostly books, with a couple docs and a few blogs.


Less theory, more personal experiences:

• Stone Butch Blues (fiction)
  
• S/He
  
• 3 to Infinity: Beyond Two Genders
  
• Gender Failure
  
• Neutrois Nonsense
  
• Asexy Sex
  
• (a)sexual
  
  Actually Theory:
  
  
• Not Your Mom's Trans 101
  
• My (new) Gender Workbook
  
• You and Your Gender Identity (The author also has some videos)
  
• Any of the videos or articles Zinnia Jones does
  
• As Nature Made Him
  
• Whipping Girl
  
• Queer Theory: An Introduction
  
• Gender Outlaw
  
• Gender Outlaws (same author, different books)
  
• Transgender Warriors
  
• Sexing the Body
  
  And a couple links I make it a point to share whenever I can:
  
  
• Trans 101 (for trans people
  
• there are some things I need to tell you

It is from this book: Rationality: From AI to Zombies which is an edited collection of the authors essays.

How to write a lot

Dear Yarcofin,

Whilst I admire your desire to demonstrate yourself as a gentleman, despite the fact that no plebeians, such as yourself, shall ever be true gentlemen--as plebeian blood is many shades from blue--I shall endeavor to guide thee nearest, by way of the written word, to the state of the cavalier.

I shall hope you will find much erudition, form, and poise betwixt pages and pages of the following ledgers:

How to Be a Gentleman

The Affected Provincial's Companion

How to Be a Man

Gentleman: A Timeless Guide to Fashion

Dressing the Man

The Art of Manliness

Regards,

Curtains

You guys should also check out

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Manliness-Classic-Manners/dp/1600614620/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344199802&sr=8-1&keywords=art+of+manliness

and

http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Mans-Survival-Guide-Rediscovering/dp/1596985704/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1344199802&sr=8-4&keywords=art+of+manliness

There's a really good weekly show called The HighWire with Del Bigtree that is presented by one of the producers of Vaxxed. It is quite well produced and I can't think of a better way to get familiarized with the anti-vaccination side than to watch some of the shows.

For example:

Del Bigtree interview with Al Jazeera

interview with Andy Wakefield


It's also important to realize that the reason so many people - especially parents - have come to question the safety of vaccines is because they have seen first hand one of their children get injured after receiving a vaccine. Most of them will freely admit that until that point, they had no reason to question things and were quite happily following the CDC vaccine schedule. So to understand why this is such a large movement, it's really useful to read or watch some of the testimonials of these parents.

written parent's testimonials

video interviews

2 particularly heart wrenching interviews:

The McDowell triplets in Michigan

Gardasil (HPV vaccine) injury


If you want a couple of book recommendations:

How to End the Autism Epidemic by J.B. Handley

Unvaccinated: Why growing numbers of parents are choosing natural immunity for their children by Forrest Maready

Vaccine Epidemic


Some articles:

No, the Safety of the CDC’s Routine Childhood Vaccine Schedule Has NOT Been Scientifically Demonstrated

RFK, Jr article

Confessions of the Vaccine-Educated

In no particular order:

The Gift of Fear

Meditations on Violence

Facing Violence

Verbal Judo

Surviving Armed Assaults

On Combat

The Little Black Book of Violence

Street E & E

I could probably come up with 10 more if I looked through my library.

Whichever system you decide on, the tactics in these books will be important. Reading them before choosing a school will help you know what to look for. Sadly, some self-defense school will teach things that are either not practical, or will have devastating legal consequences for you (like how to take a knife away from someone, then use it on them).

Here is most of my library, broken down, with links and some thoughts on each.

Karate Specific

• The Bubishi by Patrick McCarty (Amazon) - I think this book needs to be in every library.
  
• Classical Kata of Okinawan Karate by Patrick McCarthy (Amazon) - One of the first books I purchased by McCarthy. Details older version of classic kata found in a lot of traditional styles.
  
• Karatedo by My Way of Life - Gichin Funakoshi (Amazon) - Great read! I really nice view at the life of Funakoshi.
  
• The Twenty Guiding Principles of Karate by Gichin Funakoshi (Amazon) - Another great read. While I'm no longer a practitioner of Shotokan, I believe the teachings of Funakoshi should be tought to every karateka.
  
• Okinawan Karate : Teachers, styles and secret techniques by Mark Bishop (Amazon) - Great amount of historical content, and helped link a few things together for me.
  
• The Study of China Hand Techniques by Morinobu Itoman (Lulu.com) - The only known publication by Itoman, this book detains original Okinawan Te, how it was taught, practiced, and some history. This was one of my best finds.
  
• The Essence of Okinawan Karate-do by Shoshin Nagamine (Amazon) - Great details on Matsubayashi Shorin-ryu kata, and some nice historical content.
  
• The Way of Kata by Lawrence Kane & Kris Wilder (Amazon) - Fantastic book on diving deeper into kata to find the application of the techniques.
  
• Classic Kata of Shorinji Ryu: Okinawan Karate Forms of Richard 'Biggie' Kim by Leroy Rodrigues (Amazon) - Not quite accurate as to the title, this book details the versions of shorinji-ryu kata as if they were taught by a Japanese school. Still able to use, as long as you understand what stances and techniques have changed between Okinawa and Japan.
  
• Black Belt Karate by Jordan Roth (Amazon) - This was a gift from a friend. I have a First Edition hard cover. Shotokan specific, and has some nice details on the kata.
  
• Karate-do Kyohan: The Master Text by Gichin Funakoshi (Amazon) - Love this book, especially for the historical content.
  
• Kempo Karate-do by Tsuyoshi Chitose (Shindokanbooks.com) - The only known book from Chitose, highlights his history, his thoughts and ideas for practicing karate-do as a way of life, and contains steps for practicing Henshu-Ho. Chitose is the creator of the style I study. I have this book for obvious reasons. Your mileage may vary.
  
  Kobujutsu Specific
  
  
• Okinawan Weaponry: Hidden methods, ancient myths of Kobudo & Te by Mark Bishop (Amazon) - Really great detail into the history of some of the weapons and the people who taught them from Okinawa.
  
• Okinawan Kobudo Vol 1 & 2 (Lulu.com) - Fantastic books detailing the kihon and kata of Okinawan Kobudo. Anyone who takes Ryukyu Kobujutsu, and doesn't want to spend hundreds of dollars on the original texts by Motokatsu Inoue, this is the next best thing.
  
• Bo: Karate Weapon of Self-Defense by Fumio Demura (Amazon) - Purchased it for the historical content. Doesn't actually apply to anything in Ryukyu Kobujutsu, but still a decent read. I also have his Nunchaku and Tonfa books.
  
  Other Martial Arts
  
  
• Applied Tai Chi Chuan by Nigel Sutton (Amazon) - A great introduction to Cheng Style Tai Chi, detailing some of the fundamentals and philosophy behind the teachings.
  
• Tai Chi Handbook by Herman Kauz (Amazon) - More Cheng Style Tai Chi, but this one has more emphasis on teaching the shortened form (37 steps).
  
• Tai Chi Chuan: Classical Yang Style: The Complete Long Form and Qigong by Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming (Amazon) - Just received this for Chirstmas, and looking forward to diving in. Includes some history of Tai Chi Chuan, Yang style Tai Chi, philosophy, and has instruction on the complete long form (108 steps)
  
• The Text-book of Ju-Jutsu as Practiced in Japan by Sadakazu Uyenishi (Amazon) - I have a very old version of this book (1930ish). Picked it up for the historical content, but still a great read.
  
• Tao of Jeet Kun Do by Bruce Lee (Amazon) - Notes on technique, form, and philosophy from Bruce Lee. Another must read for every martial artist, regardless of discipline.
  
• Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: The Ultimate Guide to Dominating Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts Combat by Alexandrew Paiva (Amazon) - Excellent step by step illustrations on performing the basic techniques in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Easy to understand and follow. Contains several tips on what to watch out for with each technique as well.
  
  Health and Anatomy
  
  
• The Anatomy of Martial Arts by Dr. Norman Link and Lily Chou (Amazon) - Decent book on the muscle groups used to perform specific techniques in martial arts. On it's own, not totally useful (but not useless), but with the next book, becomes gold!
  
• Bodyweight Strength Training Anatomy by Bret Contraris (Amazon) - Brilliant book that details what muscles are use for what type of action, and gives examples on body weight exercises that pin-point those specific muscle groups. My best purchase of 2014, especially when paired with the previous book.
  
• Martial Mechanics by Phillip Starr (Amazon) - Slightly Chinese Martial Arts specific, but contains great material on how to strengthen stances and fine-tune technique for striking arts.
  
  EDIT: I can't believe I forgot this one...
  
  
• The Little Black Book of Violence by Lawrence Kane & Kris Wilder (Amazon) - Fantastic book about situational awareness, what happens during fights, and the aftermath. LOVED this book.
  

It will, you should read Everything Bad is Good for You

Good arguments for the upsides to gaming.

Anyone that's read much of The g Factor will immediately dismiss the notion that Jensen was some racist crank. You can borrow it here, not sure how that works.

I would go with Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow". It can be rather tedious at times, but it's such a great summary of recent work in social and cognitive psychology that it's worth it.

Oliver Sacks, as mentioned before, is another great author. Very approachable, very interesting, yet quite informative.

I have heard that Dan Ariely is a great author. Predictably Irrational might be a great read.

Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works is also great, but I would recommend Kahneman over him.

Finally, I would recommend a classic: William James - The Principles of Psychology. It's old, and some stuff is dated, but the guy had amazing insight nonetheless. It'd be a great intro reading just to see where psychology came from.

I would stay away from Jonah Lehrer, since he was accused of academic dishonesty. His book "How we Decide" was an extremely easy read, and a bit watered down. On that tangent, I would also avoid Malcolm Gladwell. Sacks does a better job at explaining psychology and neuroscience to a general audience.

Hope that helps!

Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele is a really good book on the topic of stereotype threat.

Then let me hijack your comment to recommend the book "Boys Adrift" by Leonard Sax (The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men).

He talks about the lack of motivation in males and brings it down to a few key points (that include over-medication).

As a father of a three year old boy, this book has been really informative (just the right amount of science for me!) and I recommend it for other parents and potential-parents (don't drink from plastic bottles while you're pregnant with a boy!)

If you're in you're under 30 and lack motivation, it might be worth finding enough to at least listen to it on Audible. If you prefer dead-trees or bits, it's on Amazon.

There is a book by a Dr. Sax called "Boys Adrift" that had a lot of research about this subject.

http://www.amazon.com/Boys-Adrift-Epidemic-Unmotivated-Underachieving/dp/0465072100/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376947109&sr=8-1&keywords=boys+adrift

With the caveat that I haven't read any of these yet, but when I found out I was having a boy I looked for similar recommendations and this is my reading list:

• Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men
  
• Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood
  
• Boys Adrift
  
• Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys
  
• The Trouble with Boys: A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Problems at School, and What Parents and Educators Must Do
  
• It's a Boy!: Your Son's Development from Birth to Age 18
  
  (I got caught up in reading childbirth and infant care books, which seem more pressing. If anyone has actually read any of these, I'd love to hear your opinions, especially if it can help me prioritize them.)

>Haha fuck off.

Logic and reason, presumably?

>I don't have all day to hang around reddit, and even if I did, I wouldn't care enough to go searching through threads to find reasonable comments that have been downvoted,

So you admit to making a politically motivated judgement based on incomplete data?

>Do you believe that no reasonable, or correct opinion has been downvoted for the way it was said in, Qeraeth?

Everything gets downvoted here, unfortunately.

>with me saying that if you have XY-chromosomes, you're born man, and XX, born woman. That is absolutely my entire point, and I'm not discriminating.

I explained at length why those conclusions are entirely inaccurate, ground in social ideas and not science, and that biological essentialism is inextricable from the discrimination trans people face. It is scientifically inaccurate (i.e. pop science), and it buttresses discrimination. So, no, you cannot escape the title of 'bigot' any more than a modern day phrenologist would.

>For the purposes of that statement I'm excluding all of the weird medical cases

Weird? My intersex friends send their regards to your arbitrary normalness.

>abnormal (which doesn't mean bad) chromosomal conditions.

You cannot separate the judgement of "weird" and "abnormal" from the implication that they are wrong, less-valid, or bad. Your disclaimer does nothing other than show the fact that you're trying very hard to have it both ways: cling to unscientific social ideas while saying you're all for equality.

You exclude intersex people (who are a lot less rare than you think) because they are an inconvenience to your argument. What makes them abnormal per se? Inability to reproduce? No, actually they can do that as long as surgeons don't butcher them at birth (you know, because they think they're weird and abnormal, and that there should only be two sexes). They empirically exist and for you to exclude them from any analysis of sex seems bizarre and table-tilting.

>Explain to me exactly how that makes me a woman-hater and a transphobic please.

Because it is not a fact.

You are going to discover that how we sex people is considerably more motivated by social ideals and politics and not purely objective science. You keep pretending your chromosome fetish is some kind of fact. It isn't, simply put.

Others might say you are "technically fact" (whatever that means) because we all still live with an understanding of essential sex, but others will tell you that there is no 'technical maleness' about trans women other than what people like yourself choose to project onto them. You cannot argue that trans men are essentially women or that trans women are essential men and not be called a transphobe.

You don't get to decide what transphobia is; the people who suffer from it do, (I know it's shocking, really, but the people who actually live with it may just know it when they see it).

It also makes you misogynist/misandrist because you're essentially defining women and men by their body parts rather than their selves. You'll probably wave your arms and go "but gender gender!" Gender and sex are both distinct and connected, and in a society where we tend to give more ontological weight to what we define as sex, it is problematic when you elect to label people against their will in these matters.

The essential idea that XY chromosomes or penises essential make men is not scientific. That's just how we chose to label things. The presumed essential sex is really just a laundry list of body parts, and as I said in my prior comment to you on the matter, even that changes when it comes to trans people.

I notice you also ignored the question about political correctness. Or have you realised that it's an empty concept used to bludgeon people who have a hard time being automatically respected on their own terms?

There is absolutely some nonsense going on with vaccines. My momma always said the truth is somewhere in the middle, and that's probably the case here, too. But here's my theory on why this is happening right now:

1. This book came out in the fall that points to a whole lot of links between vaccines and autism. https://www.amazon.com/How-Autism-Epidemic-J-B-Handley/dp/1603588248
   
   
2. The movie Vaxxed details how Dr Thompson was a whistleblower in the CDC, admitting they covered up data showing a link between MMR and autism in African Americans boys. You can watch Vaxxed free this week here http://vaxxedthemovie.com/24hourvaxxed/
   
   
3. Dr Zimmerman a PRO VAX CDC EXPERT admitted vaccines can cause autism. He was subsequently fired and not allowed to be their expert witness anymore. https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/425061-how-a-pro-vaccine-doctor-reopened-debate-about-link-to-autism
   
   Some people think all of this is easily explained away. But there is a whole lot of smoke.
   
   
   ETA my only conspiracy-type-thought is that maybe there's another bombshell about to drop and they want to get as many people vaccinated as possible before that. Maybe it's something to do with Merck being sued for falsifying the data on mumps efficacy for their MMR. https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/lawrence-solomon/merck-whistleblowers_b_5881914.html

I've found that reading a few books with different viewpoints helps. You'll be able to get a big picture of things and get ideas for what would work for you.

I only have a 2 year old, so I'll follow this thread for sure to see other recs. I've read Lansbury's No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame , and Ive also read the "Taming your Toddler" chapters of The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems: Sleeping, Feeding, and Behavior--Beyond the Basics from Infancy Through Toddlerhood.

I've got some problems with both books, but Ive also taken good points from both and made use of them.

https://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Boys-Misguided-Policies/dp/1501125427/

You must read this book

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1501125427/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=8ZE1KBX66DPZTY1HR3J6&dpPl=1&dpID=51l6k66X5%2BL

Interestingly, it has sparked some valuable discussions on the subject amongst my circle of friends. So I would actually describe their efforts as effective, though it puts a lot of pressure on the rest of us to explain what they're saying and why they're saying it.

I posted the following quote on /r/vegan:

>A long time environmentalist was speaking to an enthusiastic group of young environmentalists at a rally. He warned of the precarious situation the environment was in, the toll that corporate greed had taken on forests, and the dire consequences that lay ahead if serious changes were not made.

>He then shouted out to the crowd, “Are you ready to get out there and fight for the environment?”

>To which they answered an enthusiastic, “Yeah!”

>“Are you ready to get arrested and go to jail for the environment?”

>“Yeah!!”

>“Are you ready to give your life for the environment?”

>“Yeah!!!”

>“Are you willing to cut your hair and put on a suit for the environment?”

>The crowd fell silent.

>Whether this is a true story or a colorful fable, the lesson is one we should all take to heart.

In my research (with data) I believe you can write at least 3 paragraphs when starting any project.

1. Introduction - what has been done (ish - then do a lit review) and what problem are you trying to solve
   
2. Data - this is the data we're using
   
3. Discussion - why should I care even if you succeeded in your results section in getting good results?
   
   These will change (maybe not data), but they at least get you started and writing. Highly recommend the book "How to Write a Lot" (https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Lot-Practical-Productive/dp/1591477433)

Masks = no go zone for me. Little Black Book of Violence sez: no social violence.

One of my favorite resources is "The Little Black Book of Violence." It gives only a little discussion to direct combat –there's no substitute for consistent martial arts or firearms training– but it summarizes enough stuff about situational awareness, de-escalation, first aid, dealing with trauma, and other stuff to be a good general guide.

https://www.amazon.com/Little-Black-Book-Violence-Fighting/dp/1594391297

PDF: https://educatebiology.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/the-little-black-book-of-violence-what-every-young-man-needs-to-now-about-fighting.pdf

70% of autism cases are profound, meaning they need assistance and can't function on their own

Your anecdotal experience with a mild case of autism sounds like a variation of the vaccine quack talking point that autism is just some mild social awkwardness

People aren't born with autism

Autism is induced, by things like Rubella infection / CRS

There's a best selling book entitled "How to end the autism epidemic"

https://www.amazon.com/How-Autism-Epidemic-J-B-Handley/dp/1603588248

Did vaccines cause your brain damage? Or did something else cause your brain damage ?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vaccines-autism-and-brain-damage-whats-in-a-name/

I'm a vegetarian. But I don't have qualms with eating locally grown fish/livestock on rare occasion. So maybe! If I'm ever over there. Also, great response.


This book may be of interest to you btw: http://www.amazon.com/How-Know-What-Isnt-Fallibility/dp/0029117062/ref=cm_lmf_tit_1

Address the root cause, not the symptom. They have misunderstood science, the scientific method and sprinkled conspiracy theory on top. They probably harbor a distrust in science as a whole.
Luckily for you, the topic at hand is more accessible to laymen than physics; it's introductory philosophy of science, but you can avoid the academic jargon.

You have to establish trust in science first. Questions you need to raise and discuss are (in no particular order):

• what is science and what is it not? (I.e., what is pseudo-science and demarcation)
  
• what is the scientific method?
  
• what counts as evidence? (Also evidence levels, from opinion to randomized controlled trials for instance).
  
• what counts as proof?
  
• whose burden is it to provide evidence or proof?
  
• what is research? (Present them an actual paper, many have never seen one. Take for instance one by Einstein, LIGO's gravitational waves or why not Angela Merkel).
  
• where is research? (Present them to journals, etc.)
  
• peer review
  
• how can we trust science?
  
  Obviously you need to learn these topics first. Use a book on philosophy of science or equivalent. In my country it happens to be a mandatory very short course for all engineers.
  
  How you go about introducing these topics to them depends on their personality. You can discuss IRL, motivating them to take a course or, if they'll read it, give them an book such as the one above or something simpler. Regarding conspiracy there are plenty of fun books, especially on self-delusion, like How we know what isn't so or You are not so smart. The latter is also a podcast.
  
  In general avoid using youtube as a source, but if they won't listen to anything else there's a ton of videos raising the topics above, see the veritasium channel for instance.
  

So this got a bit long, sorry for that but I didn't want to work. When I get home, I'll try to add some sources for what I said about the human brain and maybe some stuff about neural networks Who's in Charge and Incognito are really great popular science introductions from well-known neuroscience researchers. There's also a BBC documentary which I found very fascinating. For neural networks, I'd recommend coursera.org or any odd intro book.

The rest is basically what I think about the whole issue extrapolating the above, and I have neither good data nor yet found good sources which deal with it. I simply have some objections concerning the ease of creating intelligence.

Feel free to criticise and update my views!

---

That's still not enough. The problem lies within what I call robustness and the fact that by relying solely on correlation, you lack the 'theoretical' part of science, i.e. you cannot postulate general principles before observing them. Let me explain:

1. Robustness.
   
   I'll use an example. Let's say we have a machine which we want to use to increase the efficiency of air ventilation in one of our tube (BE for subway) stations. It is equipped with several sensors: temparature, visuals of the tube station, the amounts of gases at any one point, etc.
   
   Now let's say this machine is only based on correlation, as really all things are up to now. This means that they get data on which preprogrammed software finds patterns, and more meta-software decides - after a few cycles of attempting the task - which is the best strategy to reach a preset goal. This works sufficiently well in sufficiently many cases, and at one point a human decides a treshhold at which an increase in efficiency makes a strategy viable for actual use (maybe test it for bugs, etc.).
   
   So this machine runs well for several years, until one day a whole group of passengers suffocates because the air conditioning is not turned on as they leave the tube wagon. How did it happen? The machine, after all, did its job marvellously beforehand. The problem is that external conditions changed in a manner not predicted by the engineers, and that in fact we only engineered the machine's behaviour indirectly without really knowing how it operated.
   
   The problem was, interestingly enough, that the machine learned that the most efficient way of predicting when tubes arrived was to correlate the arrival of trains with the time on the big clock in the main entrance. It's fairly reasonable, if our tube system is usually on time (So maybe we are in Switzerland, not the UK). However, during the night before, the clock broke and stood still. Since the machine didn't understand what it was doing, it didn't go "Hey, the clock's standing still but I know the concept of "being broken", hence I'd best alarm someone/switch to a different strategy and I don't want humans to die in any case .. " etc. It has no concept of death, or killing, or humans. It might not even know how to correlate anything beyond time and arrival, because it has worked so well beforehand, discarded everything else and was unable to re-train itself quickly enough. Even worse, from the POV of the machine nothing was wrong in the first place.
   
   Sure, you can fix it. But then, are you really confindent you are able to eliminate all possibilites for such bugs in the future? Same goes for testing beforehand. All in all, it doesn't sound very 'autonomous'.
   
   The problem is that by only using correlation to understand even simple problems in a very complex environment, even minute changes in said environment can render your whole correlation strategy useless. In other words, the strategy is not robust under changes in our environment. This is something which is acceptable in a very specialised environment that can be controlled by beings which think more robustly (such as humans or strong AIs) and grant the required oversight, and it is also where AFAIK all of the examples in the video came from. But this means that the machines can never be truly general purpose and act autonomously.
   
   Getting more machines only gives more strategies which work, and if done correctly can indeed increase robustness of a system. Though it is not clear by any means that this is always or even often the case! Bigger systems might just attract themselves to more narrow strategies as one strategy becomes dominant in a sufficiently large minority of the systems' members. You need a lot more than just a system - you need a way of controlling the precious tension between homogeneity and heterogenity of strategies.
   
   Quick side remark: there's one hypothesis in neurology that this is exactly why our consciousness gives an evolutionary edge; it acts as an arbiter between competing strategies and solves dilemmas which would otherwise lead to infinte loops or other bad stuff. Do not be angry at boredom. It's your brain going "we are stuck in a loop, change strategies or re-evaluate goals".
   
   That's where the second point comes in.
   
   
2. Postulating, or creating a model of the universe in your mind.
   
   What do you think is the reasons that it takes a decade or two for a human being to be able to act intelligently on most occasions? It's because it takes that long for us to use the hard-wired architecture of the brain and the given data from our senses to create a reasonably well functioning model of our environment in our minds.
   
   Our brains not only correlate, we postulate.
   
   The best way to see this is our eyes. You see only a fraction of what you perceive to be seeing. The rest? Your brain postulates it from the given data. This makes us quick, but also faulty. Such heuristics drastically diminish our processing requirements to survive in a very complex and ever changing environment. And they're everywhere, our whole architecture runs on it.
   
   But that's only the first part.
   
   Even when we close our eyes, our mind has learned to create a model of the entire environment we live in. Guess why you can "go through" situations in your head. You, consciously or not, simulate engagements that might happen in your head to react better when they do occur. But that's still not the best part. The best part, to me at least, is that we can take this physical model and add abstract notions to it.
   
   If I gave a reasonable intelligent human being the task of our machine in the first example, he or she would have been far worse in regulating the air ventilation. But, unless they slept, were unconscious or actively wanted to kill people, they would understand that the reason for air ventilation is to allow other humans to breathe, ergo they would always activate the ventilation when a train arrives.
   
   But this requires them to understand the concept of an arriving train, of human beings, why you do not want to kill them (very complex reasoning here, I'm serious), that not giving them air will kill them, etc. This can all be, somehow, encoded in a machine as well, but it must all be done before the machine is trained. A human can do so because they're a very well trained machines that postulates on its own all the time.
   
   But this is impossible, by definition, for a "correlation only" machine which resides in an environment which changes in a way the engineers didn't postulate themselves. The reason your brain simulates? So that that margin is relatively small for you. And even if it does, our brain somehow reflects upon itself and knows when it's outside its own comfort zone. That's where consciousness sets in and we mysteriously manage to quickly adapt and develop new strategies on the fly.
   
   And what I just said is so fucking incredible I'm in awe just writing this. From my own experience, I've learned stuff which I just shouldn't be able to ever learn, from an evolutionary point of view. For example, there is no reason my brain should be able to understand infinity. This doesn't occur in nature, and it only occurs within the context of civlisation. But I can, and we all have no idea how. We are so damn adaptable that you can throw us into any environment on this planet and we thrive. We change our own environment, and we still thrive.
   
   So in short:
   
   People shitting over human brains don't realize that our greatest strength are robustness and heuristics, combined by postulating (i.e. model building) and, as ultima ratio, our conscioussness as an arbiter between conflicting strategies and a "self-programmer" when we're out of our comfort zone (which we somehow are able to detect, meaning that we have in fact a model of our own mental abilites, and maybe a model of that, and ... ).
   
   We can do so because we benefit from billions of years of evolution, thousands of years of history which gives us an environment that teaches us (this is so important and is entirely overlooked in AI research AFAIK) and - for an adult - roughly two decades of 'real time learning' within that environment which allowed our brain to create a model of the physical world for itself which is constantly updated and for which we constantly predict outcomes. We have language, which allows us to do our own version of "networking", and it is so important that the ability for language it is hard-wired in our brain.
   
   You want to brute force all that? It might work. But I think we need, at least as our first step, to emulate all of the above and make thinking machines that are similar to us. Then we can abstract away from this. The correlation machines we are developing now are the first step to it, and they are marvellous. But they're just that, a first step.
   
   Edit: You only know more than 3 numbers because our civilisation developed it. Some tribes do not have higher numbers. Intelligence might be inseparately linked to access to communication with other intelligent beings.
   
   Edit2: Finally got hold of the books I thought about when writing this. I should mention that the example I used is actually taken directly from Peter Watts Drifter trilogy, a hard science story very well rooted in actual science with lots of references at the end of each book.

> Not that I disagree with them on a lot, but they're a bunch of sad fucks.

Note that these self professed sociopaths agree with them on many ideas. They just don't like the people. Reminds me of some rpers who say they don't mind RP ideas, but don't like TRPers (majority people who subscribe to and get advice from TRP subreddit).

This serves as evidence for my virtue theory: that virtue ethics / valuation is how people judge rpers poorly. Many people don't naturally understand how to moderate behaviour, and to the rest of us this is a sign of lacking virtue. I.e. it's something learned through practice rather than theory. And it seems these people (bpers and self-professed sociopaths) are just criticizing "autistic trpers" for the same reasons. (Autism ==> not understanding how to moderate behaviour)

> Finally, the dark triad worship. I don't cringe often, but this one does it for me. I mean, I get it; I'm awesome, they want to be awesome. But, it's hilarious that they find something categorized as a disorder so appealing. It's like they don't understand that a bunch of people with the same characteristics are incarcerated. It just reeks of that neckbeardism 'women like bad boys'.

IllimitableMan's posts are too long for me to read, but one thing I caught on quickly that even he doesn't want to become DT... and he's the primary person writing about DT on TRP subreddit. I don't think anyone actually does want to become sociopathic. They talk about why sociopaths may have advantages over normal folk. This is no different from Kevin Dutton's own study on psychopaths:

https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Psychopaths-Saints-Killers-Success/dp/0374533989

Does Dutton want to be a psychopath himself, or was this merely a topic of interest?

I'm guessing this self-professed sociopath doesn't read his sources. He probably doesn't have to if he can convince people he does just by sounding confident enough.

> There's nothing strange about that, humans are not just information processing machines.

I would like to refer you to the book How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker, because it turns out that humans are information processing machines. Our brains don't work by magic, they follow the same laws of physics as everything else.

How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker.

> Teachers and parents may spot for signs to indicate that a child is gifted and it is often spotted at an early age in preschool

Research has shown that you "cant" spot gifted kids at early ages. Instead they are misidentified since they experience a cognitive growth before their peers. This is classic extrapolation and all the teachers that fall for this should have their grades in any statistics class changed to an "F" and if required, any degrees revoked.

Now, as a child that was selected as "gifted" I actually came to resent the designation. When your young adults are soooo impressed. As you get older your parents get mad at you for acting like a dumb-ass kid. "We expected something dumb like that from your brother, you are gifted and should have known better." WTF! Then again, maybe they were right since I did go to a top tier university and majored in a pretty tough subject (which I think is less about intelligence and more about hard work). Then again if I had been 10 years younger its likely they would have drugged me up with ADHD meds.

The following book has a section about failures in early childhood identification.

http://www.amazon.com/NurtureShock-New-Thinking-About-Children/dp/0446504122/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241818816&sr=8-1

I have read "Why Gender Matters," but I think you need to read the most recent book from Leonard Sax because there is a subtle but important shift in his theory about (gender) role models. His most recent research has focused on the troubled boys: "Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men."

http://www.amazon.com/Boys-Adrift-Epidemic-Unmotivated-Underachieving/dp/0465072100

The fifth factor in the book is "Revenge of Forsaken Gods," i.e., many boys today are missing male role models due to absentee fathers. But Sax concedes that a compensation mechanism may be found through other male role models in the community. Of course, this task should not fall upon a child. If gender role models are important, then a responsible single parent or same sex couple raising should seek out such a role model (whether a relative, church leader, or neighbor), but that implies a biological mother or father is not absolutely necessary (although it is easier).

Not sure if its the one he's referencing, but check out.

Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men

Also, here is a book on the same topic from the perspective of a biologist.

"One of the major claims I make in this book," she explains, "is that labeling someone a man or a woman is a social decision. We may use scientific knowledge to help us make the decision, but only our beliefs about gender--not science--can define our sex. Furthermore, our beliefs about gender affect what kinds of knowledge scientists produce about sex in the first place."

If you need academic citations, Anne Fausto-Sterling is a good source.

She's also the author of the very readable Myths Of Gender and Sexing the Body, which both deal with this topic in a very scholarly way.

True, although RickRickshaw mentioned how this could fall into the "happy" category. And if caring for your dying parents truly makes you miserable, one has to ask, should you really do it?
Harry Browne goes into this question in great detail (tl;dr his answer is no, you shouldn't). http://www.amazon.ca/How-Found-Freedom-Unfree-World/dp/0965603679

I would also like to recommend "How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life" - From a footnote in one of Sagan\Dawkins\Hitchens' works, can't remember who exactly. Good book

http://www.amazon.com/How-Know-What-Isnt-Fallibility/dp/0029117062

It's hard to make sense of the world without an understanding of basic science and statistics. Our brains are constantly looking for patterns and associations. We make a large number of correct observations, but also a good number of false ones. Rejecting a false observations relies on our rational thinking to overcome our emotional response. If you have a child who gets a bunch of vaccines, and two months later start to exhibit signs of autism, your first instinct is probably to blame the vaccine. Your baby is fine before hand, and not okay afterwards. It's only be going back and testing this observation in a scientific manner can we determine if this is an anomaly, or factual. Before you dismiss these people, look at how many irrational beliefs you harbor. Do you believe that basketball players have hot streaks? Clutch hitting in baseball?

A good book about perceptual biases, etc:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Know-What-Isnt-Fallibility/dp/0029117062

I'm currently reading this, heh. Figured it's one way I could prepare myself in dealing with patients.

Proof:

Intelligence
http://www.amazon.com/The-Factor-Evolution-Behavior-Intelligence/dp/0275961036
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289610001340

Genetics
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18212819
https://www.soc.umn.edu/~uggen/Caspi_SCI_02.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25082653
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4369574/
http://www.antoniocasella.eu/archipsy/Beaver_2013.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16801953
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A#Aggression_and_the_.22Warrior_gene.22
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2756753

Tool to study crime in the US
http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/

Also I never claimed inferiority of peoples. Don't try to strawman me. I claim big genetic differences lead to violent conflicts.

Because that statement is false.

There's another statement used where the number of neuronal connections in a cubic mm of our brain is greater than the number of stars in the milky way. But this assumes the average of tens of thousands of connections to neuronal connections to neighboring neurons. You can find this in the book summary for this book: http://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/dp/0307377334/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311852390&sr=8-1#

Edit: But since there are only about 300 billion (3x10^11) stars in the milky way, and one mole of water (only 18 mL volume) is approximately 18x10^23 atoms, it becomes fairly obvious why, mathematically, it's absurd to even imply that the number of neuronal connections in the brain can be more than the number of atoms in the universe.

This reminds me that I need to read his new book already.

If you're interested in the inner workings of the brain and it sounds like your are, there's a new book out.

Incognito

That's this book?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Psychopaths-Killers-Success/dp/0374533989/

I might pick it up!

I agree with The Selfish Gene and Surely You're Joking and would like to add:

• How The Mind Works by Steven Pinker
  
• Phantoms In The Brain by V.S. Ramachandran

I recommend a book by Steven Pinker called How the Mind Works.

The experiment was not an actual measure of ability (which the WSJ doesn't seem to understand), it was about student responses to perceived expectations, in this case based on their gender. The concept of "stereotype threat" is undergoing an enormous amount of study in the field of psychology and has profound implications for educators. The book Whistling Vivaldi is a great layman's introduction to the concept.

And if you want to focus on real, actionable solutions like whistling Vivaldi down the street, that would be an admirable MO to have. Sticking up for the anti-gov't, doomsday prepper by insulting us, and showing it off to... the current crowd here. That's... pretty sketchy.

I'm in the same boat as you, so I don't have any experience, but I do have the same concerns. In the research I've done it seems there are pros and cons to both having siblings, and being an only child. There is a good chapter in book NurtureShock about the issue.

One example in the book is the idea that children with siblings develop better social skills. The evidence suggests that siblings do help each other develop some good social skills, But they can also develop many bad social skills (because the little sister will still be around tomorrow even if big brother is mean today). It take only children longer to develop their good social skills, but they tend to develop fewer bad social skills (because if they are not nice to the other kid on the playground, she'll just go play with some other kid).

Basically, any factor they tried to objectively measure turned out to be a wash.

NurtureShock is less about raising a newborn as it is overall child development. If they like analytical books with studies behind what they say, it is a good read.

http://www.amazon.ca/NurtureShock-New-Thinking-About-Children/dp/0446504122

BTW, the best book I've read so far:
http://www.amazon.com/NurtureShock-New-Thinking-About-Children/dp/0446504122

I'm reading a book called Nurtureshock right now (now that I'm a parent) that begins with a chapter that goes a long way to explaining this phenomenon. Citing several studies, they say that kids who are praised for being innately smart suffer many problems in comparison to those who are praised for working hard. It is especially problematic for trying something you aren't naturally good at (which after a certain point is almost everything). If you were praised for being smart, you don't want to take the chance of failing at the new thing and proving that it was all a big mistake and you're not actually smart at all. On the other hand, if you were praised for being hard-working, trying to learn new things with the inevitable failings only proves that the people who praised you were right and you continue to be hard-working.

I strongly recommend Dr. Leonard Sax's book "Boys Adrift."

http://www.amazon.com/Boys-Adrift-Epidemic-Unmotivated-Underachieving/dp/0465072100

Especially for any fathers here, concerned about these excellent points raised by JayGatsbyFan.

Thanks for the book suggestions! (If you use the formatting help button (to the right of the "save" button) you can add hyperlinks to your titles. In your case: Boys Adrift and Girls On The Edge.) Cheers!

The best resource is Sexing the Body by Anne Fausto-Sterling. It presents a recolection of scientific papers, research, experiments since 1800 to the present in sexuality and gender and where we are now and her own take on the subject. It presents critisism to the androgen developmental path (the idea that we are "female" and testosterone makes us male), it introduces the concept of an estrogenic developmental path, it challenges the idea of gender and sex as two distinct characteristics, and joins them in a moebius band, both being part of a more complex structure than a binary pole.

The first half of the book is a very well written recolection of these ideas, the second half is basically for supporting the first half with scientific data. I loved it.

One of the books on your list that looks promising is Sexing The Body. While it may not provide an in depth overview of human biology it will likely provide the appropriate background information. Many other books under the gender studies umbrella do explore and explain biological sex (male, female, intersex), prominent scientific studies, and current areas of research. One book not on the list is Delusions of Gender and it is just one book to explore these issues.

At the end of the day that's a reading list to get the PhD student started. By the end of their PhD they will have ready 3-4x that many articles and books. Those of their choosing will focus in on areas of research that they are interested in. That may include basic research on human anatomy, biology, and sex.

I guess the question is what do you think is missing from these books that discuss gender and sex from a biological perspective that can only be gained from human biology textbooks?

For the science lovers:

Gender

• Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine. Lecture here.
  
  
• Through the Labyrinth: The Truth About How Women Become Leaders by Alice Eagly and Linda Carli
  
  
• Myths Of Gender: Biological Theories About Women And Men by Anne Fausto-Sterling
  
  
• Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality by Anne Fausto-Sterling
  
  
• A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Behavior of Women and Men: Implications for the Origins of Sex Differences by Wendy Wood and Alice Eagly
  
  Race
  
  
• The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould

If you're looking for some basic lifestyle type of reading:

Harry Browne - How I found freedom in an unfree world

1. Power of Now. Changed my life. Read with an open mind. Let the spaghetti stick to the wall where it will. Not all of it will stick. But some will.
   
   
2. How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World: A Handbook for Personal Liberty. Opens your eyes to common social traps.
   
   
3. The Empty Boat: Encounters with Nothingness. This one's hard to get through, because ego, but worth the slog. Read #1 first.
   
   I wish you well. Know that you're not alone. I understand the feeling. Also recommend therapy, ideally someone of the same gender. There are certain gender-specific issues that are best understood/empathized with by a therapist of the same gender.

I haven't watched this yet. Is there a significant difference between what Tom said and the things Harry Brown written in his book "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World: A Handbook for Personal Liberty" (https://www.amazon.com/How-Found-Freedom-Unfree-World/dp/0965603679)?

OP is referring to this book by Harry Browne

You may be correct (and I believe he did turn them into a book). Still, even so, "read the Sequences" sounds exponentially more creepy than "read Plato's Republic," no?

The foundation is also fraudulent and refuses to actually conduct research on the supernatural because it is afraid of what it will find. I suggest you quit embarrassing yourself now and actually study this subject properly http://www.amazon.com/Trickster-Paranormal-George-P-Hansen/dp/1401000827


>the guy is on his deathbed

How unfortunate he will have gone through his whole life being so ignorant and willingly fooled. We will have one less cretin in the world though.

I think the Occult can be explained scientifically, eventually, just the same as somebody will eventually figure out where we fucked up in physics. The Higgs has proven either everything we know is wrong or as some scientists whisper the universe is designed for life i.e. non-natural.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/complications-in-physics-lend-support-to-multiverse-hypothesis-20130524

Now you can dress that up in a multi-verse theory if you like, a religious concept based on no evidence other than some loose math and a few acid trips, or (Occam's razor here) the universe is primed and built to produce existence.

How? I don't know, but I do know the military has accepted the idea of a sixth sense and is training troops for it: http://time.com/4721715/phenomena-annie-jacobsen/

From the article:

"In 2014, the Office of Naval Research embarked on a four-year, $3.85 million research program to explore the phenomena it calls premonition and intuition, or “Spidey sense,” for sailors and Marines.

“We have to understand what gives rise to this so-called ‘sixth sense,’ says Peter Squire, a program officer in ONR’s Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare and Combating Terrorism department. Today’s Navy scientists place less emphasis on trying to understand the phenomena theoretically and more on using technology to examine the mysterious process, which Navy scientists assure the public is not based on superstition. “If the researchers understand the process, there may be ways to accelerate it — and possibly spread the powers of intuition throughout military units,” says Dr. Squire...

Active-duty Marines are being taught to hone precognitive skills in order to “preempt snipers, IED emplacers and other irregular assaults [using] advanced perceptual competences that have not been well studied.” Because of the stigma of ESP and PK, the nomenclature has changed, allowing the Defense Department to distance itself from its remote-viewing past. Under the Perceptual Training Systems and Tools banner, extrasensory perception has a new name in the modern era: “sensemaking.”"

Don't forget the actual data of successful Remote Viewing experiments:
http://www.remoteviewed.com/remote_viewing_history_military_b.htm

I get into this argument alot with people in the scientific community, and what they don't realize is the layer of "truth" in the lab(coughminus the whole replication crisescough) is not the same bar everywhere.

For the military it's about something working, less about how or why; in the law it's pushing something past a reasonable doubt.

I see a universe with parts we don't understand, I see military outfits training people to pick things up from sense they aren't aware of, and at the same time I'm getting results when I burn certain candles on a money jar?

Good enough for me.

If you want a truly, TRULY scientific run at this go get this book: https://www.amazon.com/Trickster-Paranormal-George-P-Hansen/dp/1401000827

"Which is very interesting, and very true, but how is your specific outlook different than say Marx's dialectical materialism or that of psychology?"

None in the sense that the Black Peace Stones in South Central LA seizing more territory from the local Latin Kings outfit is I suppose.

Marx's dialectic can just as easily be called Will to Power. As for psychology it absolutely could be called that I guess.

Jungian psychology that is.

I believe you are looking for this book. There is a chapter that discusses fraud, names names, and discusses the role of fraud in paranormal / occult subcultures.

http://www.amazon.com/No-Bad-Kids-Toddler-Discipline/dp/1499351119 No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline by Janet Lansbury might be a good read for you.

Does she indicate why she's removing them at all? Is it a game? Does she not like the look? Do they feel weird?

This sort of thing is fairly run-of-the-mill 2 year old testing of boundaries, to some degree. Whether she's laughing during this, or screaming and crying, might help narrow the cause.

If it's a game, I'd suggest just walking away and explaining that "we can't do X until you're dressed". I've had luck with star charts too, though she may be a bit young for that concept. Basically, don't play the game with her if she thinks it's funny, or is doing it to get a rise out of you. Yes, this makes your morning longer, but it will work over time.

If she doesn't like the look, as my son started doing, we chose things together. Really, he's given a false choice between a couple of things we've already deemed acceptable, but basically it's the illusion of him deciding what he's wearing.

If they feel weird or it's a sensory thing, that's also normal and something you can work through via the type of clothes you buy (i.e., sticking with stuff that's tagless and has minimal seams). Eventually you'll find "safe" items that feel ok. My daughter actually had Sensory Processing Disorder from about 4y6m to 6y6m, which led to a lot of screaming and crying about clothes "feeling weird". But with OT and a lot of patience, we worked through it. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but can go into more detail over DM. I do think yours is too young to have those issues, they don't present until around 4 or so.

If this is your first toddler, there are a million books out there you can read too. We really liked No Bad Kids, by Janet Lansbury. She has a great podcast called Unruffled, too.

This is my next read, now that I find myself saying, "no!" Like allllll the time :)

Feminism is about privilege for women, and responsibility for men.

Feminism started off by claiming the same privileges as men (voting, able to enter into contracts, etc.) and went on to demand more (affirmative action quotas, special programs for women in STEM, no responsibility for sexual activity, reshape school to female needs and learning styles, etc.)

Feminism did not adopt the responsibilities of men - conscription, mandatory fire brigades and response to hue-and-cry laws, financial responsibility for spouse's debts, etc. It later demanded additional responsibility for men (waiving due process, he for she, men must be quiet in the face of feminism, etc.)

I suppose that "facilitating the needs of women and children" does resemble taking on extra responsibility for women the was feminists demand. However, male children are included; feminism has led to what Christina Hoff Summers calls "The War Against Boys" So here, traditionalism is less gynocentric than feminism.

Traditionalism also allows men to be men, and allowed for male spaces. Feminism is opposed to "toxic masculinity" and demands entry into any male space it detects, even informal ones (see gamergate for an example ...) Traditionalism allowed men competition, excellence, independence, and many other virtues that feminism tries to snuff out society wide.

This is not to say I encourage traditionalism; I am merely pointing out that just like MGTOW, tradcons are not "just like feminists".

Uhh, no that's a really bad idea. That will just make her way overly defensive and it will do more harm than good. You would also be fighting fire with fire. Remember that quote, don't argue with "stupid" people because they will bring you down to their level and beat you with experience? Yeah.

Just be honest with her about your convictions and offer to answer any questions she has about it, plus watch a video about the truth. This woul dbe a good book for you to read

This Melanie Joy lecture should be essential viewing for all activists.

There are a lot of different philosophies to vegan activism. read up on them from Animal Liberation Front to open rescues to Gary Francione's pacifism and his loathing of single issue campaigns to Nick Cooney's psychology-informed approach. There's a lot more, and don't feel like you have to be a professor in it or 'pick a side' before you do anything, but you'll find a lot of food for thought.

Also, of course, keep learning the facts about how animals are used, the philosophies of animal rights, how the environment is affected, etc. so you can speak with confidence and answer people's questions.

Podcasts are a great way to get insights to what other activists are doing and why they are doing it. I'm currently following The Bearded Vegans, Which Side, Vegan Warrior Princesses Attack, Not Your Milk, and Our Hen House.

The best thing to do is keep looking for others, facebook is a good resource. If there's not a group started, see if you can find other vegans to start one with.

There are small things you can do, like order business cards with positive messages and links to resources to stick under the sleeves of meat packaging or in egg cartons in supermarkets.

If you can't find others around you, it's possible that if you take a strong, uncompromising stance people will come and join you. See how Anita Kranjc started the Toronto Pig Save, she would persist often standing alone or with just a couple of others, and now there are hundreds that attend. However, you must be aware of how emotionally draining (but also rewarding!) being an activist can be, even when you are surrounded by a support network. So if you go down that road, be kind and look after yourself and remember that even if you do not have support where you are, around the world there are lots of us who admire you just for taking the steps you have taken so far.

Buy it here

I think any/every activist should read this book. It's basically a how-to guide for activism, all backed by scientific studies/research.

I read the book this past year, and I went back and created the outline to summarize and share the content with fellow activists.

Give it a gander, and, if you like it, please buy the book. There's a lot of content that I've left out of the outline.

I'm working on my MA right now, and this term I've taken a writing seminar for academic publishing.

This class has changed my life.

This book and this book were required for the class, and they have been really, REALLY helpful to me.

If you get the books, just ignore the parts that aren't relevant for you. "How to Write a Lot" is specifically about academic publication in the field of Psychology, but it is written in a way that is clear, makes sense, and relates way more to building better work/study habits than it deals specifically with publication. It's worth getting just for the parts that will be relevant to you.

Belcher's work-book is less relevant, but it has a lot of great advice on how to write better papers, and it covers pretty much every discipline.

You should seriously spend the $10 on "How to Write a Lot," you won't regret it. In case you don't...

How to Stop Procrastinating and Study More

For me, the problem was "writer's block." For you it's procrastination. They are two different names for the same thing. The solution to them sounds extremely unpleasant... until you try it.

You have to study every day. Yes, every day.

Currently, if you are like how I have been for about the last 20 years, you wait until a few days before your test or class or whatever, and then you spend hours upon hours studying until you are exhausted and pretty much hate whatever you were studying, right? If you get around to studying at all?

Stop doing that.

You know what kind of person you are, morning person, night owl, whatever.

Want to make it easier on yourself? Spend the next week recording everything you do over the course of every day- every hour should be accounted for. You don't have to share this with anyone, so if you spent an hour jerking it... well... that's fine, but it's probably time better spent studying.

When you do this, you will find that you are not as busy as you feel like you are. You probably have one hour from every day that you could use to do something more productive.

Even if you only use half an hour every day for studying, doing it EVERY DAY is what is essential. You have to turn the process of binge-studying and procrastination into a daily habit.

If you are like me, this sounds absurd, and you are probably thinking you aren't going to do this because it sounds stupid and won't work.

That was what I thought, until I did it.

I thought, "but I can't just MAKE myself write (study), I have to be in the mood for it."

No, you don't. If you do it every day you will find out it's actually really easy to pick things up and put them back down again, once you know it will happen every day.

It ceases to be some stressful thing you have to actively think of and remember to do.

If you KNOW that from 3pm to 4pm every weekday, you will be studying, then it becomes completely natural to pick up your books, work at things for a while, and then put them away at the end of it and move on to whatever else you want to do for the day.

"But I won't remember what I was working on."

Yes, you will. You don't remember what you study from your marathon sessions because you can't process that much shit at once.

If you spend about an hour every day on it, it becomes much more easy and natural to recall what you were studying. In fact, you will probably find yourself thinking about it more often than you ever would have expected of yourself.

"But people interrupt me."

Of course they do, people interrupt everything. But you don't say "I'm too busy to go to work/class," because that's absurd. It's an obligation, so you do it.

You need to jealously guard your study time. I'm not saying you can't be flexible and shift things around to be most convenient for you, but if you have your dedicated "study time" blocked off and a friend wants to go party, tell them you can't, but in an hour you'll be free.

Your friends are horrible influences. They WILL try to get you to do fun things instead. Mine did, and most of the time I listened to them.

Now, I don't. I get my shit done, and I feel immensely less stressed because of it. The time I invest on writing rarely ever actually interferes with plans I have made, or even spur-of-the-moment stuff that comes up.

"But I'm busy every Saturday/sunday/Whatever."

That's fine. Take a day off, have a day where you just enjoy yourself and don't study, but make sure that you develop a schedule for studying, and stick to it. Make it a time you know works well for you.

Lastly, your "study time" doesn't have to be strictly you, cramming from books, day after day. Use this time to work on homework, to organize your notes, to work on all of the shit that is related to studying that you need to work on, including studying itself. Studying is the act of studying, sure, but "studying" also includes working on homework, emailing professors, contacting peers you study with, organizing notes; whatever you can think of that is tied into the process of studying, this is your dedicated time to do that stuff.

Some days, you just won't feel up to cracking open the books, and that's fine. Use that day to organize your notes, or email your teacher that question you've been wondering about, or whatever. What, specifically, you do, is less important than blocking off the time so you can work on what you need to work on. Some days WILL be less productive than others, and that's okay, because you will be studying again tomorrow, and you can make up for it tomorrow, or the next day, or whenever; the point is, since you aren't procrastinating and binging on studying all at once, you KNOW that you will have regularly scheduled time to work on things.

__

As far as how to actually study better, being organized and breaking tasks into groups of things that need to be done helps, but ultimately the best way to do this is read up about different things people do, different strategies/techniques, and try them out. Some will work for you, some won't. I'm a visual/tactile learner, if I write something down it tends to stick; if I hear it and don't write it down, it's gone.




I'm at work right now, but I'll be heading home soon, if you are interested I can put some of the material from the book up here for you, so let me know if you'd like that.

Read a lot and practice writing have already been mentioned, and those are great and necessary practices that should continue throughout your academic career. Getting external feedback is also great advice. I'll add the following: Writing and editing your writing are two different jobs, so don't edit and write at the same time.

A few books I recommend regularly to Ph.D. students in the social sciences: How To Write A Lot has some tips and tricks about writing routines of academics. If you're writing ethnographic works: Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes and Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography are worth reading.

How to write a lot. Ironically, the book is quite short!

I think everyone in academia could find useful tools in this book. Not to sound like a late night infomercial but I went from low productivity to publishing way more than my colleagues using some of the principles covered here. It's essentially just CBT for writing. How to Write A Lot

[The best book I've ever read about fighting] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Little-Black-Book-Violence-Fighting/dp/1594391297)

TLDR. Don't.

First, I'm not saying that it's either/or. However, just as there are a lot of people who mistakenly think that waving a gun around will magically make the evil go away, there are also a lot of people who mistakenly think that martial arts give them some magical advantage over anyone wielding a firearm. I'm going to assume that neither of us are subject to this kind of magical thinking.

Owning and carrying a firearm responsibly takes training and practice. Most law-abiding gun owners go to the range more than police do. We also learn the laws in our states regarding when it is legal or not legal to use a handgun in self-defense or defense of another.

Firearms work at a greater distance than martial arts. By the time someone is close enough for hand-to-hand fighting, you simply aren't going to have time to draw and fire a gun outside some very narrow circumstances. So, yes, martial arts can be useful, but they are not the be-all, end-all defense against firearms that some people like to claim. Nor are firearms the be-all, end-all defense against everything that some people like to claim, either.

Run if you can (I can't because I'm waiting for knee replacement surgery in both legs).
De-escalate if possible.
Fight or shoot as a very last resort.

My decision to get my permit and to carry was not made lightly, but three encounters I had in my taxi (when I was still capable of running) helped change my mind. You better believe I'm familiar with the laws regarding defensive gun use in my state. I also did a lot of reading about de-escalation and conflict avoidance, because even though I understand that I might someday need to shoot someone to defend myself, I'd really rather not have to. I recommend these four books:

The Art of the Con by Gary F. Cornelius;
The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker;
The Little Black Book of Violence by Lawrence Kane and Kris Wilder;
Meditations on Violence by Rory Miller.

So there is something to novels/tv shows/movies/video games which aren't "educational" as it's normally described.

One of the biggest advantages is the ability to critically think and compartmentalize important information and discard irrelevant details.

For example, when reading a particularly complex book you might need to keep track of a half dozen characters, a variety of details of history of those characters and motivations, their goals, and the background of the world and how that all relates. Being able to "get it" is good practice for dealing with complex situations in your own life. The story may be cheezy, or unrealistic, but if it takes some thinking to get what's happening that has value itself. That's the case even when the media is (insert novel/tv show/video game/movie you consider trash) as long as it isn't extremely straightforward.

There is a really interesting book which goes over this that I recommend Called Everything Bad is Good For You (Amazon link)

https://www.amazon.com/How-Autism-Epidemic-J-B-Handley/dp/1603588248/

the book is already out of stock.

Get your copy if you want to help getting the truth out.

>My child is much safer with vaccines mate, rather trust decades of scientific research than minutes of facebook research.



Well that's just not true at all.


>Seriously scary stuff. When further research is not encouraged in a certain area, then it's clear you are treading in dangerous waters.
>
>
>I do think these debates are important, especially nowadays when people are crucified simply for bringing up the issue of possibly improving vaccines and not simply trusting corporations blindly.
>
> As I usually say, vaccines do not need to be abolished, they can and should be improved. The issue is not as black and white as people portray it.
>
>The amount of research that has sprung up connecting the usage of heavy metals as vaccine adjuvants to neurological problems, as well as autism is considerable, yet is rarely discussed.
>
>---------------------
>
>>In early December 2017, Dr. Chris Exley of Keele University in England and his colleagues published a paper that for the first time looked at the brain tissue of subjects with autism to determine the level of aluminum (note: they spell “aluminum” as “aluminium” in the United Kingdom) found within their brain tissue. For anyone trying to convince the world that “the science is settled and vaccines don’t cause autism,” the study’s findings are deeply contradictory to that statement. In a blog post written by Professor Exley on the day his study was published, he explained the groundbreaking results:
>
>> “…while the aluminium content of each of the 5 brains [of people with autism] was shockingly high it was the location of the aluminium in the brain tissue which served as the standout observation…The new evidence strongly suggests that aluminium is entering the brain in ASD [autism spectrum disorders] via pro-inflammatory cells which have become loaded up with aluminium in the blood and/or lymph, much as has been demonstrated for monocytes at injection sites for vaccines including aluminium adjuvants.”
>
>
>I strongly suggest anyone genuinely interested to read the following page, if you wish to see a very different view (filled with research of course) on the vaccine/aluminium link and its possible relation to autism:
>
>-Aluminum in vaccines and the autism epidemic
>
>The man behind this research is J.B.Handley. He has a child with autism and has dedicated his life to solving and researching the issue - and preventing the modern autism epidemic.
>
>He even has a book on this issue, available here:
>
>https://www.amazon.com/How-Autism-Epidemic-J-B-Handley/dp/1603588248/
>https://jbhandleyblog.com/home/2018/4/1/international2018
>
>---------------------
>
> Here is another link to a research paper (by Tomljenovic, Exley not involved here as far as I know) connecting the usage of aluminium adjuvants to the rise of autism:
>
>Do aluminum vaccine adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism?
>
>This research is sadly not freely available, but if you wish to read it anyway, you can get around that with a page like www.sci-hub.tw
>
>In which case it becomes more readily available:
>
>https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0162013411002212
>
>
>--------------
>
>Recently, even a respected (now smeared and his reputation destroyed of course) vaccine medical expert, employed and tasked to destroy the autism-vaccine connection has come out with info that the link undoubtedly exists. There is an interview with him on Shirley Attkinsson that can be found on YouTube.
>
>Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson: January 6, 2019 - The Vaccination Debate
>
>James Corbett: Vaxx Propaganda in Overdrive as Vaccine/Autism Link Confirmed
>
>------------------------------------------------
>
>For an absurdly high amount of research papers, check out this comment here.
>
>
>
>

> The foundation is also fraudulent and refuses to actually conduct research on the supernatural because it is afraid of what it will find.

The onus is on the person claiming not on them. Odd how everyone so far has failed miserably. Like the Dowsers that couldn't find buried pipes, Uri Geller etc.

> I suggest you quit embarrassing yourself now and actually study this subject properly http://www.amazon.com/Trickster-Paranormal-George-P-Hansen/dp/1401000827

Yeah or i could by a book about how fairies are real and at the end of my garden

> How unfortunate he will have gone through his whole life being so ignorant and willingly fooled.

Fooled by disproving shysters? Hopefully you will need surgery sometime soon, get that lump sorted with psychic surgery, it's painless! Also want to buy some copper bracelets to smooth out the ion flows in your blood? Or some magnets for your fuel line that gives you better MPG?

EDIT: Also your source is self published? Neat i can write /u/BeyondTheOptionsMenu is gullible and still can't back up his claims for 500 pages and have it be just as valid.

There is a great deal of subjective evidence. When it is analyzed using the tools of comparativism, it becomes much stronger. Overwhelming, I dare say.

But there is objective evidence too. It's important that atheists never stop seeking it out. To that end, here are just a few of the books that I have read that I think every atheist should also read.

https://www.amazon.com/Varieties-Anomalous-Experience-Examining-Scientific/dp/1557986258

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Parapsychology-Harvey-J-Irwin/dp/0786430591

https://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Knowing-Science-Skepticism-Inexplicable/dp/0553382233

https://www.amazon.com/Outside-Gates-Science-Time-Paranormal/dp/1560259868

https://www.amazon.com/Mysticism-Evelyn-Underhill/dp/1463612354

https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Faces-Collected-Joseph-Campbell/dp/1577315936

https://www.amazon.com/Trickster-Makes-This-World-Mischief/dp/0374532559

https://www.amazon.com/Trickster-Paranormal-George-P-Hansen/dp/1401000827

https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Goddess-Complete-Being-Hughes/dp/0571166040

The researcher who really brought it to light is George Hansen. He wrote a book called The Trickster and the Paranormal. I can't vouch for any of these links because I haven't reviewed them, but maybe this will help:

Where did the road go? Interview -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM38ilurOqk

The outer edge interview -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk_3qlEryrE

His book for money: https://www.amazon.com/Trickster-Paranormal-George-P-Hansen/dp/1401000827

His book for free: https://www.scribd.com/doc/138075574/The-Trickster-and-the-Paranormal-Hansen-George

A liminal dialog with George Hansen - that's another word that comes up a lot. Marginalized people. Paranormal events happening during moments of great upheaval and anti-structure. Liminal. http://auticulture.com/liminalist-2-bollixed-liminal-dialogue-george-p-hansen/

Discussion on paracast: http://www.theparacast.com/forum/threads/george-hansen-the-trickster-and-the-paranormal-questions-space-fans.15677/

A write-up review: http://www.intuitive-connections.net/issue3/book-trickster.htm

http://disinfo.com/2013/07/two-talks-on-parapsychology-from-george-hansen-author-of-the-trickster-and-the-paranormal/

Admittedly I’m not where you are yet, but I have recently read this toddler discipline book for help with my 11 month old. She’s been pulling the cats’ tails and petting them roughly and I felt I wasn’t getting through to her. The book is Janet Lansbury’s No Bad Kids. I’m following her sample script of “I won’t let you touch the tail,” and removing my kid from the situation. She goes into wayyyy more detail and I really like her approach. I read the ebook pretty quickly.

Edit: I know 11 months is pretty young but I’m proud to say she is petting the cats much more gently now! We have success at least half the time after only a week. Admittedly she was never being rough with them out of anger, but it’s still a learning curve for her. She looks over at me while doing it to gauge my reaction.

Yes. I didn't recognize my mom as a narcissist until after I had a baby (who's now a toddler), but I think about this a lot now. I'm actively working on it by reading a lot of books on how to be a good parent, like No Bad Kids and Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child. I've also been talking about this worry with my therapist. She pointed out that I'm approaching empathetic parenting with intention, so that already seems to set me apart from my mom. That makes me feel like I'm on the right path.

I've also been thinking lately about how my mom and my MIL, who is also a narcissist, expect my husband and I (and our siblings) to take care of them. They're not infirm or anything - they've acted like that our entire lives. I remind myself frequently that it's my job to take care of my kid, not the other way around. When he acts out, it's because he's having a hard time. It's not something he's doing to me.

To be honest, it is sometimes a challenge. Even when I feel like I'm doing everything right, I wonder if he'll feel more positive about me than I do about my mom when he gets to be my age. But working on my relationship with him isn't draining in the way that my relationship with my mom is. I feel like all the hard work I put into myself and my relationship with him will pay dividends. If he knows I love him for who he is, I will have succeeded.

Check out this book: https://www.amazon.com/No-Bad-Kids-Toddler-Discipline/dp/1499351119

And more from the author on her website (and facebook page): http://www.janetlansbury.com/

I just bought Janet Lansbury's No bad kids, an book on toddler discipline without shame.

https://www.amazon.com/No-Bad-Kids-Toddler-Discipline/dp/1499351119

But you may want to look into some of the "facts" behind 3rd wave feminism. [Here] (https://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Boys-Misguided-Policies/dp/1501125427/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=J5D4SKX8NC5V3C3HF5H9) is a great place to start.

You can't trust people's words but with repeated actions one can infer motivation. Individual decision making is aberrant behavior to them and they seek to root it out. Education programs and the social sciences have taken a dark turn in the last couple of decades and a lot of them view classic male behavior as toxic masculinity that must eliminated from the culture.

A feminist wrote a book about it

The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501125427/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_IaHiybSP69RXY

The question is what you prioritise:

1. Is it more important for you to be able to speak the truth in any manner you wish at anyone?
   
2. Is it more important to get other people to share your views?
   
   If there's one thing I've learned from many years of vegan activism it's that it does not matter how correct or scientific your statements of fact are - if someone has adopted behaviours or beliefs that go counter to those facts as part of their personal identity, they will find ways to reject those notions. And that is not just Muslims, and not just religious people. That's even scientists.
   
   From behavioural economics to psychology - anyone who studied the human mind in a behavioural context (as opposed to a primarily atomic/physical neurological context) will attest to you that people, all people!, are utterly irrational creatures.
   
   Good and effective activism acknowledges this irrationality and elegantly works around it. A recommended read here is
   Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change
   
   I wish everyone would read and adhere to the short essay Keep Your Identity Small by Paul Graham. But as long as people are attached to X or Y as part of their identity, they will remain highly biased and irrational about those things.

> Insults, shame, aggressiveness are excellent tools for moving people closer to 100.

How I wish that were true! Nick Cooney, an esteemed animal rights advocate, wrote a whole book about what actually does work. It's called Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change.

Animal rights advocate and psychologist Melanie Joy has several YouTube videos about effective advocacy as well. This is a well-researched area. If we were planting seeds by being angry, insulting and shaming people, it would be a lot easier.

Yeah, I was atheist for ~ 4-5 years during college. I'm 23 now and consider myself a nonaffiliated theist.

I grew up vaguely Christian. My father and mother had, respectively, been raised in Protestant and Catholic churches and had had issues with their practices. My brother and I were never raised in any church, but were told that God exists.

I also had a number of "spooky" experiences growing up. Ghosts. A dead great-aunt maybe visiting me before family deaths. These mainly occurred during my high school years. They make me strongly believe in some sort of afterlife. I describe them here.

In college, I grew skeptical of God -- Problem of Evil, the incompatibility of free will and "a divine plan", and whatnot. I adopted a materialistic worldview, and my spooky past experiences were essentially ignored because they couldn't be reconciled. But they humbled me and made me a bit skeptical of my own worldview.

I graduated this year in March with a BA in philosophy. I needed some sort of direction/purpose, but, after reading Change of Heart and Predictably Irrational I grew skeptical of human reasoning. And of course our senses and memories are flawed. Of all the animals in the world, from worms to cows, with all their limited perceptions of the world, why do we humans assume that we have a correct perception of the world?

I concluded that we can't have a firm, certain grasp on anything. And so my endeavor to live the best life was impossible. And my reliance on science and reasoning were shattered because humans and their reasoning are flawed.

• Note that science is built upon theories/principles of knowledge founded in empiricism, a school of metaphysics. Science uses metaphysical and epistemological principles and applies them to the world. But science isn't capable of looking at its foundational principles. That's a job for philosophers.
  
  
• And science makes only objective observations, not normative ones. Science can't make moral claims. It can inform morality, but it can't arrive at moral conclusions alone.
  
  
• On top of that, we have no fucking clue what consciousness is or how it arises. The Problem of Other Minds reminds us that we can't be sure of who or what is also conscious. We just do our best to make sense of how something acts and how much its anatomy resembles ours (because I know that at least I'm conscious.)
  
  On top of that, as a graduate, I no longer had college professors telling me what to do. I had no clear goals in life to work towards. And so now, post-college, all the responsibility was on my shoulders to choose what to do and pursue with my life. That's a big responsibility. But how do I make decisions if I have no certain grasp on anything? I spiraled into depression.
  
  So I sought wisdom.
  
  I talked to friends and family about wisdom. I looked at the Greek philosophers who spoke of wisdom and virtue.
  
  I looked at all the major religions to see what wisdom they might hold. I looked for patterns between them in hopes of finding something universal that they all described.
  
  I also became increasingly focused on immediate sensory and intuitive knowledge as opposed to the theory and abstract nature of science and philosophy. I started reading from NDERF's archives of self-reported near-death experiences to look for patterns.
  
  -----
  
  ....
  
  Anywho, I've arrived at the conclusion that everyone does their best to make sense of the world. I try not to judge others. Even if they're Mormons or Scientologists or Wiccans. I have my spooky history. I've come to believe that an afterlife exists. I see what others think about the supernatural, and I see if it appeals to me. I think Sikhism is pretty reasonable and beautiful, and I think my attachment to the afterlife belief almost obligates me to believe in a higher power. Sikhs seek to create and maintain chardi kala, a happiness in life by being content and thankful, which greatly appeals to me. But Sikhism does have a fair bit of ritual (albeit with legitimate purpose) and some guru praise which, given my history, seems a bit too much of a commitment.
  
  What I can say with some certainty is that it's good to live a life of virtue. It is good and feels good to help others. It's good to enjoy life and not take it for granted. Everyday, I consciously make an effort to be virtuous and to be thankful for my blessings. Veganism and activism are obvious applications of virtue and helping others. If God exists, I thank It everyday for all the good I experience. I thank it for the beauty in the world. As flawed as the world is, it's certainly more wonderful than horrible.

There's a great book called How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing, which I found to be immensely helpful while working on my thesis.

It's geared towards academics, but much of the advice and strategies in the book can be applied to any kind of writing.

Hope that helps.

Real talk:
How to Write A Lot

Nearly all PhD students face this as they come to the final years of their degrees. Coursework, reading groups, and teaching are often (sometimes artificial) ways to give structure to your life and allow you to escape the reality of confronting the hard work that needs to be done on your dissertation. Realizing that you're totally alone to structure your time and organize your research can be daunting.

When it comes to difficult knowledge work, don't feel too bad and realize that you will go through spurts. Many people only get a few (2-4) hours of genuine writing done a day: this isn't something you can crank out for eight hours a day continually for a few months like experiments or coding.

I read a book "how to write a lot," and found it helpful in accomplishing this:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Lot-Practical-Productive/dp/1591477433

The advice about scheduling writing time is good. The book "How to write a lot" goes through several "myths" of non-productivity and suggests setting a schedule and sticking to it will help you overcome these difficulties. I wish I had read through this short work earlier: http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Lot-Practical-Productive/dp/1591477433/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334677315&sr=8-1

How to Write A Lot
https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Lot-Practical-Productive/dp/1591477433

Maybe check out The Little Black Book of Violence as well, it really goes deep into things directly related to Krav Maga that Krav books don't go into too much detail about. Stuff like awareness of your surroundings, the consequences of a physical confrontation, different levels of force, and de-escalation. Most of the instructors at my class recommended it, and its a really interesting read for anyone.

So you say you want to learn "Self-defense". Self-defense isn't about fighting, actually if you're intelligent, you'll avoid fighting unless it's absolutely necessary.

You can try to find a self-defense school, although those are often women-only. If you find a good school, you'll learn about Awareness, Avoidance, De-escalation, a little bit about fighting and running. In general it's all about avoiding the threat before it becomes a danger.

Alternately, you also read this and this. Warning: graphic content (a bit). But violence isn't pretty, and if you want to learn about it, you need to learn about the ugly side.

> Rory Miller books

I like The Little Black Book of Violence. It's just not something normal people go around thinking about until it's too late.

I think we are indeed describing two different kinds of reading. Sure I "read" a lot of things online, but if I tell people I love to read as a hobby and, after they ask what I like to read, tell them that I read the news and online forums, they'll laugh in my face. That's not what being "someone who reads a lot" is.

If that's the definition you're going by, then I'm a huge reader. I read dialogues of a lot of video games, I read instruction manuals when I need to learn how to do things, I read online comics, I read blogs, I read comments Reddit for hours and hours a week. All I do is read. But I've hardly touched a book in the last 11 years, when they stopped forcing us to read books in school.

Would you honestly call me someone who loves to read? I'll give you the credit of assuming that we both know that that's not what it means to be someone who "loves to read" or "reads a lot".

Also ironically, the only book I actually have read in the last decade disputes that reading is better for you than watching TV. It's called Everything Bad is Good For You, and it talks about why reading, particularly as a teenager/adult, is a very mentally passive activity, versus more mentally stimulating activities like playing video games, and that reading is generally only helpful as a child when you are still developing the language parts of your brain.

I think you're embracing the fallacy that pop culture is bad.

May I suggest reading Everything Bad is Good For You by Steven Johnson or Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman for an alternative perspective?

Just because popular culture includes stuff like The Jersey Shore and P. Reign doesn't mean that it is without value. The value in it may be different than the value some people THINK is in it, but value there is.

People like Johnson make the argument that the increasing social complexity of our popular culture actually makes us smarter. To answer against the usual critique that literary theorists don't engage "actual science," he takes a neurological approach to the argument using elements of an indisputably "hard science" to support his argument.

Klosterman takes an admittedly more theoretical route, engaging semiotics and post-modern theory to make a similar argument -- that popular culture has value, and the recent backlash against what many consider "valueless" pop culture is actually rather short sighted.

Anyhow, I agree with both of them (and many others) that pop culture intelligence is now a social currency with inherent value. Whether or not pop culture consists largely of morons like the Kardashians is actually beside the point. It doesn't matter what the pop culture is, it still contains millions shared references for humanity.

http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Bad-Good-Steven-Johnson/dp/1594481946/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246955706&sr=8-1

i was very surprised at how well done this book was. does a fantastic job of analyzing pop culture today (including video games) and how as dumb as we may think some things are (movies, video games, reality tv, etc...) they're all actually making us smarter and making us think more critically about what we are actually seeing compared to pop culture in the past.

The Art of Manliness
Website &
Book

Where's his father? Also use this guide The Art of Manliness: Classic Skills and Manners for the Modern Man

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Manliness-Classic-Skills-Manners/dp/1600614620/

send him this

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Manliness-Classic-Skills-Manners/dp/1600614620/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417545010&sr=8-1&keywords=art+of+manliness

The Art of Manliness by Brett and Kate McKay.
It teaches you simple life skills, but the good stuff is in the back where the "100 books every man (and woman!) should read" list is located. A lot of great books mentioned in this thread are on the list too.

The Art of Manliness?

link?

Edit - it ain't free. Link

I don't think information should ever be lost, even if people disagree with that information. Copying/pasting the parent comment just for information sake.




>Seriously scary stuff. When further research is not encouraged in a certain area, then it's clear you are treading in dangerous waters.
>
>I do think these debates are important, especially nowadays when people are crucified simply for bringing up the issue of possibly improving vaccines and not simply trusting corporations blindly.
>
>As I usually say, vaccines do not need to be abolished, they can and should be improved. The issue is not as black and white as people portray it.
>
>The amount of research that has sprung up connecting the usage of heavy metals as vaccine adjuvants to neurological problems, as well as autism is considerable, yet is rarely discussed.
>
>────────
>
>In early December 2017, Dr. Chris Exley of Keele University in England and his colleagues published a paper that for the first time looked at the brain tissue of subjects with autism to determine the level of aluminum (note: they spell “aluminum” as “aluminium” in the United Kingdom) found within their brain tissue. For anyone trying to convince the world that “the science is settled and vaccines don’t cause autism,” the study’s findings are deeply contradictory to that statement. In a blog post written by Professor Exley on the day his study was published, he explained the groundbreaking results:
>
>“…while the aluminium content of each of the 5 brains [of people with autism] was shockingly high it was the location of the aluminium in the brain tissue which served as the standout observation…The new evidence strongly suggests that aluminium is entering the brain in ASD [autism spectrum disorders] via pro-inflammatory cells which have become loaded up with aluminium in the blood and/or lymph, much as has been demonstrated for monocytes at injection sites for vaccines including aluminium adjuvants.”
>
>I strongly suggest anyone genuinely interested to read the following page, if you wish to see a very different view (filled with research of course) on the vaccine/aluminium link and its possible relation to autism:
>
>-Aluminum in vaccines and the autism epidemic
>
>The man behind this research is J.B.Handley. He has a child with autism and has dedicated his life to solving and researching the issue - and preventing the modern autism epidemic.
>
>He even has a book on this issue, available here:
>
>https://www.amazon.com/How-Autism-Epidemic-J-B-Handley/dp/1603588248/ https://jbhandleyblog.com/home/2018/4/1/international2018
>
>────────
>
>Here is another link to a research paper (by Tomljenovic, Exley not involved here as far as I know) connecting the usage of aluminium adjuvants to the rise of autism:
>
>Do aluminum vaccine adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism?
>
>This research is sadly not freely available, but if you wish to read it anyway, you can get around that with a page like www.sci-hub.tw
>
>In which case it becomes more readily available:
>
>https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0162013411002212
>
>────────
>
>Recently, even a respected (now smeared and his reputation destroyed of course) vaccine medical expert, employed and tasked to destroy the autism-vaccine connection has come out with info that the link undoubtedly exists. There is an interview with him on Shirley Attkinsson that can be found on YouTube.
>
>Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson: January 6, 2019 - The Vaccination Debate
>
>James Corbett: Vaxx Propaganda in Overdrive as Vaccine/Autism Link Confirmed
>
>────────
>
>For an absurdly high amount of research papers, check out this comment here.

I've been reading this book and am about 1/3 of the way through. The author makes some really good points about how we arrive at beliefs and the mechanisms we use to discredit things that conflict with those beliefs. I can't go thought point by point in the entire book but here is a couple things he brings up:

>People's preferences influence not only the kind of information they consider, but also the amount they examine. When the initial evidence supports our preferences, we are generally satisfied and terminate our search; when the initial evidence is hostile, however, we often dig deeper, hoping to find more comforting information, or to uncover reasons to believe that the original evidence was flawed.

and

>The important point here is that although evidence and reality constrain our beliefs, they do not do so completely. For nearly all complex issues, the evidence is fraught with ambiguity and open to alternative interpretation. One way that our desires or preferences serve to resolve these ambiguities in our favor is by keeping our investigative engines running until we uncover information that permits a conclusion we find comforting.

A brief search on Amazon brought up these:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Know-What-Isnt-Fallibility/dp/0029117062/ref=cm_lmf_tit_1
http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscience/dp/0805070893/ref=pd_cp_b_2

What do you think?

And I must say, I like your approach: First teach him critical thinking, and then, if necessary, point out to him that religion is one of the fields where he should apply the rules of scepticism. If he's not too deluded (which I'd expect since he wasn't indoctrinated as a child), he will probably come to the only reasonable conclusion.

Am reading Henrietta Lacks ATM and really liking it.

I also recommend ...

The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins

The Demon Haunted World - Carl Sagan

God Is Not Great - Christopher Hitchens

Risk - Dan Gardner

Bad Science - Ben Goldacre

Why People Believe Weird Things - Michael Shermer

How We Know What isn't So - Thomas Gilovich

EDIT : MOAR

Quirkology - Prof. Richard Wiseman

Tricks Of The Mind - Derren Brown

59 Seconds: Think a little, change a lot - Prof. Richard Wiseman

How to Lie With Statistics - Donald Huff

https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Know-What-Isnt-Fallibility/dp/0029117062

Wow. Well I apologize for being lazy and posting an unreliable source. However I think you wasted your time "debunking" that article. Firstly, both of your sources are the same thing. Secondly here and here: "http://www.metabolismjournal.com/article/S0026-0495(01)73890-5/abstract" are two more reliable sources. The purpose of these studies are to explain why African American men are at a dramatically higher risk for prostate cancer.

That was not my main point anyways. My point was "pseudo-science" is called when it involves racial differences, even if the reasoning is sound.

> IQ is heritable. It is also influenced by numerous other factors, as listed in your wiki link, such as access to education, health, nutrition, pollution, socio-economic status, etc, etc, etc.

Of course it is. It is influenced by environment and also genetics.

> There is a shitton of studies showing this. However, there is not a single credible study which remotely concludes in any way that race and IQ share a causal relationship.

Have you heard of The Bell Curve and The g Factor?

> Never heard of the guy. Sounds interesting. I'll look into it.

Oh are you familiar with most human genetics professors? Yes, do look into it. I provided you two sources.

> But that doesn't mean big brains = big smarts.

It addresses that in the article

Crime by Race
Because of the obscure way in which the FBI reports the race and ethnicity of offenders, we had to make several approximations. First off, Hispanic data is separated from race data and is broken down to "Hispanic" or "not Hispanic" for the entire dataset. While it is safe to assume that most Hispanics were classified as white because of the colour of their skin, we didn't want to make any assumptions. To figure out the percentage of Hispanic offenders and separate it from the white, black, asian etc. race categories, we used Census data on how Hispanics identify themselves racially. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of them identify as white, and very few consider themselves black. Given the very low percentage of black Hispanics, we counted "Some Other Race" as white. Another problem with the FBI dataset was the vast number of "Unknown" reported offenders. Because we couldn't make any reasonable assumptions about the race of the unknown offenders, we used the arrest tables as a proxy for the distribution of crime by race.
https://www.fbi.gov/...n-the-u.s.-2014
http://www.census.go...-04.pdf#page=15

2014 City Crime Data:
City data from the U.S. Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov
City Crime data from the FBI: https://www.fbi.gov/.../tables/table-6

Historical Crime
http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/

Unemployment
http://www.bls.gov/c...013.pdf#page=43

Poverty and Welfare
http://cis.org/Welfa...tive-Households
http://www.cam.ac.uk...-prevents-crime
http://www.dailymail...sity-study.html

Single Mothers and Divorce
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss.htm
https://www.census.g...a/families.html

Intelligence
http://www.amazon.co...e/dp/0275961036
http://www.sciencedi...160289610001340

Genetics
http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/18212819
https://www.soc.umn....aspi_SCI_02.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/25082653
http://www.ncbi.nlm....cles/PMC4369574
http://www.antonioca...Beaver_2013.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/16801953
https://en.wikipedia...Warrior_gene.22
http://www.ncbi.nlm....cles/PMC2756753

Spanking Prevalence
http://www.childtren...toward-spanking
http://www.nbcnews.c...hildren-n221171
http://www.scienceda...90924231749.htm

I don't think life is completely fair, just as it's not fair to short people, people that are unattractive, etc. But the question is, is the "unfairness" the primary cause of the problems in the African American community or is it something else?

This is difficult to talk about, and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. There are certainly many very smart people of every race and each individual has to be judged on their own merits.

But many of the problems facing the black community may be explained by that graph. That is a horrible thought but that doesn't make it an untrue thought.


The gap exist, even when one controls for socio-economic status. I'm not saying the SES isn't relevant, only that it doesn't explain the difference. Roughly speaking, caucasians in the poorest 1/5 of the country score about the same as African American's in the richest 1/5 of the country. So I don't know that your "redneck" analogy is accurate, or at least I would ask for evidence.

Here is a 2nd hand graph taken off researcher Arthur Jensen's book showing the effect of SES on IQ. The same stats exist for SES and SAT scores.

It's not clear whether or not anything can be done about all of this. But if there is, that would seem like it would be the first thing we should do, because none of the other issues are going to go entirely away if that one isn't solved.

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

It will blow your mind

I don't think we make choices. I read a book called Incognito that made me wonder if maybe we're all just caught up in a flow of brain chemicals and societal influences. We're all affected by each other's "choices" from yesterday, last week, last year, a hundred years ago, moral rules established two thousand years ago, the universe exploding into existence, and so on and so on. This mostly includes our family and friends, but strangers and ghosts - people long gone - influence our "choices" as well. (I love this question! I can't wait to read all the responses.)

Wisdom of Psychopaths

Supposedly from an actual interview with a Navy Seal.

> I'm a med student

Obviously not a good one if you read what you posted and thought that means there's a statistically significant effect from those treatments.

Seriously, I gave you a great source and I can give you more instead of relying on wiki. There are SOME effects on SOME individuals on the lower end of the spectrum but for people pouring bleach down someone's throat, they HAVE NO GOAL. They can't be convinced to work within the letter of the law because they aren't working towards anything. I don't get why that's so difficult for you to grasp.

Along with that paper, you can read this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Psychopaths-Killers-Success/dp/0374533989 which is a great case study of sorts.

There are plenty of other papers I can link you to but it seems like you're just ignoring what I'm linking anyway so no point in wasting my time. I don't care if you're a med student, that doesn't mean you can't be wrong about this. I have a personal interest in the topic and have studied it for my own pleasure so your lame claim to authority is meaningless.

The paper/book I've given to you is written by doctors not cartoonists.

I recommend reading: The User Illusion by Tor Norretranders, Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter, and I Am a Strange Loop also by Douglas R. Hofstadter for some interesting reading on the subject (Warning: Gödel, Escher, Bach isn't for everyone- it's a bit strange, but I love it). I read a lot of books on science in general and, based on that, it seems like many believe consciousness and also free will is just an illusion. In fact, just a few days ago, physicist Brian Greene sorta-kinda said as much in his AMA - granted, he's talking specifically about free will and not consciousness per se, but I think the two must be very related.

I, too, believe in God and also have a very strong belief in and enthusiasm for science, so this is an especially fascinating question for me.

BTW: if you're interested in the way the brain works in general, I highly recommend How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker.

I'm reading How The Mind Works right now. I can tell you, no extra-natural explanation is reasonable to entertain for consciousness. They are not necessary. My prior reading deals with this as well. What happens to our brains affects our conscious experience with such fidelity that the only way to imagine that consciousness doesn't emerge as a property of a brain is to ignore what we know to be true.

Here are some examples of articles I am amassing that relate to brains and therefore consciousness:

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2009/11/11/learned-helplessness/

https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/3048

http://loiter.co/v/the-mysterious-you-dont-understand-me-workings-of/

http://www.livescience.com/23283-east-vs-west-coast-culture-differences.html

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2006-07/mental-workout

http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/article750838.ece

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-humans-are-biased-toward-good-news-20120924,0,1690699.story

http://www.nih.gov/news/health/aug2012/nichd-28.htm

http://www.mindflash.com/blog/2011/02/how-does-the-brain-retain-information/?view=mindflashgraphic

http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/this-must-be-heaven

http://loiter.co/v/mathematician-participates-in-an-experiment-design/

http://www.kyb.mpg.de/fileadmin/user_upload/files/publications/pdfs/pdf2059.pdf

http://www.sparkpeople.com/mypage_public_journal_individual.asp?blog_id=2300277

This one is solid science, it's not directly relevant, but I'll leave it here since the wikibot is already on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_choice_quantum_eraser

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_oTEhFAAARE

I'll leave this one here, because psychology is fun http://loiter.co/v/how-to-fool-a-baboon/

http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-tech/molyneuxs-question-gets-answered-after-300-years/story-fn5fsgyc-1226037177460

There is pseudoscience here, but it makes me think: http://jewels.hubpages.com/hub/Consciousness__Thoughts_and_the_Brain

http://www.33rdsquare.com/2012/06/will-neuroscience-lead-to-new-type-of.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx53Zj7EKQE

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S096098221300002X

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7456588.stm

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/03/21/174830095/frans-de-waals-bottom-up-morality-were-not-good-because-of-god

http://www.nicolelislab.net/?p=369

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/03/20/174729853/where-did-life-come-from-the-mind-the-universe-can-we-even-know

http://www.nature.com/news/see-through-brains-clarify-connections-1.12768

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/cns-mta041613.php

Pseudoscientific thought experiment, fun to argue with http://www.west.net/~simon/brain-soul-consciousness.html

http://www.livescience.com/28941-physicist-proposes-new-way-to-think-about-intelligence.html?cid=dlvr.it

http://www.treehugger.com/health/study-shows-walk-park-fixes-fuzzy-brain.html

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/understanding-the-brain-of-a-man-with-no-conscious-memory/

Interesting, still no idea what to make of it, though: http://www.gizmag.com/quantum-entanglement-speed-10000-faster-light/26587/

More pseudoscientific thought experiments. http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_paradigmaholo06.htm

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/11/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath/

http://www.businessinsider.com/cognitive-biases-2013-8?op=1

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23431793

http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/three-years-later-the-girl-in-the-window-learns-to-connect/1186860

Edit: I accidentally lumped some links in there that have nothing to do with the subject. I will be reviewing these and deleting them in the next minutes.

Edit 2: done deleting stuff. If anyone wants anything back, or wants to discuss part of it, go ahead.

"Whistling Vivaldi"

http://www.amazon.com/Whistling-Vivaldi-Stereotypes-Affect-Issues/dp/0393339726

Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious by Timothy Wilson is personally one of my favorites
Anything by Malcolm Gladwell (I really enjoyed Blink)
Anything by Robert Cialdini (He was my social psychology professor and one of my favorite authors / public speakers)
Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (Issues of Our Time) by Claude M. Steele (Who basically uncovered stereotype threat research)
The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Phillip Zimbaro (famous for the Stanford prison experiment)


Older books:
Mindfulness by Ellen Langer (about automatic processes and how mindless we can be)
When Prophecy Fails by Festinger, Riecken, & Schachter (To understand how cults work, a group of researchers infiltrate a join a cult. Mainly about cognitive dissonance but details what happens to a cult when the world doesn't end like predicted)
Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View by Stanley Milgram if you want to know all about the Milgram experiments

Sorry that is all that comes to mind now. . . (edited for formatting)

Hello friends! I'm very excited about this whole process and just trying to better myself. Every day seems to be a different struggle, but I really think it's worth it - seeing a whole community of people really pushing to better themselves every day is awesome!

• Listening So I'm a huge Hans Zimmer and 8tracks fan (computer version, I don't like the mobile interface) and I have a big playlist of epic/superhero/soundtrack music that really gets me going every day. I have that on repeat, for sure.
  
• Reading Textbooks and journals for class. And when I'm trying to avoid screen time before bed, I pick up Whispering Vivaldi, a book that is about stereotypes.
  
• Watching Recovering Netflix addict, here. Currently watching Criminal Minds straight through. I try to keep myself to only about one episode a day.
  
• Playing around with baking. I'm really into trying to convert recipes into healthier options, so I've gone on a crazy oatmeal muffin kick.
  
• Loving where I'm at in my life right now. I'm in a transition point, I'm back in school, I have a great support system... I really couldn't ask for more in terms of my overall place in life. I love this community and support it offers. Just overall happy thoughts!
  
• Hating that I'm stressing about applying to doctoral programs. It consumes my thoughts.
  
• Hobby-ing I believe my cooking falls under this category!
  
• Excited about Going for a walk outside tomorrow - it is beautiful!
  
• What else? Just a little about me: I am in a one year (which really equates to less than one year) master's program in which I'm expected to do the research for and then write a thesis (I know I'll be okay) while taking classes. It's stressful. I gave up on life today and took a nap. I binge on rice cakes. But I'm trying to learn to move through it. I love where I am in life, but at the same time I know it's a short transition so I am also stressing about applying to doctoral programs. Just really stressing about this next step, all while trying to enjoy where I am. rant over
  
  Thanks for listening!
  
  Edit: bit-->big

NurtureShock: New Thinking about Children

Parenting From the Inside Out

The Whole-Brained Child

Read the following two books by Dr. Leonard Sax

Boys Adrift - https://www.amazon.ca/Boys-Adrift-Epidemic-Unmotivated-Underachieving/dp/0465072100

Girls On The Edge - https://www.amazon.ca/Girls-Edge-Cyberbubble-Obsessions-Environmental/dp/0465022065/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=J7MABB5PHM632QKWHD2Q

I...wasn't expecting to find myself talking to a reasonable person on Reddit. I'm a little scared, now.

> Well it seems like I have to read a bit more about nature vs. nurture.

Unfortunately the nature/nurture debate is rife with gender ideologues (feminists, antifeminists, etc) and that makes it difficult to wade through what we're told and discern what is true, and what is not. When someone comes out and says "women usually prefer X, because of biological characteristic Y, they're often criticized as being called sexist (as the Telegraph article linked above demonstrates). This has lead to a lot of bad research getting put forth as "fact".

My general rule of thumb? If it is unflattering toward men/women then it's probably true. For example: "Men have a greater tendency toward violence than women". This is both unflattering, and true. Or, "women generally prefer men who have higher income/social standing than their own when it comes to partner selection". This is also unflattering, and (usually) true.

> having different standards for female and male education

Different standards, certainly not. The sticky subject comes up when we examine how education has undergone a change in the last 30 years which has increasingly favored the way that girls learn and put how boys learn at a disadvantage. I recommend reading Boys Adrift if you'd like to know more.

If you are interested in further reading on these subjects in general I suggest the following people, topics, and resources:

• Steven Pinker
  
• Gaad Saad
  
• Evolutionary Psychology (just make sure you're reading from actual scientists, and not some guy with a blog making far flung conclusions based on said research).
  
• The Red Queen
  
• Michael Gurian
  
  As for the pay gap, here is an article from the Huffington Post which will give you a good start on a deeper understanding of why it exists and why "sexism" is not the cause.
  
  Have a great day!

I agree that The Myth of Male Power is basically the MRM bible - read it first. However, my favorite book - by far - is Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men. Also, if you have a young boy I suggest Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men for it's medical advice.

To have a really indepth understanding read Anne Fausto-Sterling's "Sexing the body", it is very informative.

https://www.amazon.com/Sexing-Body-Politics-Construction-Sexuality/dp/0465077145

A person is not born "either male or female."

First, there's biological sex. According to Fausto-Sterling (2000), roughly 1.7% of all live births are intersex. Other estimates put the figure somewhere between 1-2%. Intersex conditions are conditions in which a human body cannot be classified as distinctly male or distinctly female. There are numerous variables that factor into this, and it isn't well understood yet. Some intersex conditions include hormonal insensitivities, or chromosomal mutations, such as XXY, XYX, XYY, or XXX instead of the standard XX (female) or XY (male).

Second, there's gender, which your second question specifically asks about. One may identify as any variety of genderqueer, such as two-spirits, genderfluid, bigender, trigender, pangender, agender, "third" gender / "other" gender, gender-neutral, gender-ambiguous, transgender, etc. Likewise, one may be born into one sex (or intersex), but identify as another gender, as is often the case when surgeons "assign" intersex children.

The assumption that a person is "either male or female" is called gender binarism, and it's exclusive, antiquated, and presumptuous.

The only one that did it is How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne.
It was two weeks ago and I'm an avid reader.

> Think Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman, this would be the place to start, he is essentially the father of the study of cognitive biases

I came to recommend that. It's pretty readable, though I don't recall it having a big focus on personal insight and growth.

Another one is the LessWrong Sequences by Eliezer Yudkowsky, that does cover some similar material (and other); a big chunk of it has been edited and published as the book Rationality: From AI to Zombies (which I haven't read; I read the original sequences). It's pretty well-written, fun, grounded in science and is more focused on "personal insight and growth"; not everybody likes his style tho.

I don't categorize 'em like that as I read 'em, but Dataclysm, Rationality; from AI to Zombies, Everything Bad is Good For You, Country Driving, Freakonomics, and The Mathematics of Love are all 'thinky' nonfiction books I've recommended recently because I've retained new ideas and methods from them. In addition, nearly every essay written by DFW is successfully grist for my mill (even the ones about tennis, a subject I would have to work at caring less about.)

I stuck with nonfiction because even that feels a bit overwhelming. Fiction is too much for me right now; I really enjoyed and recently quoted from The Bell Jar, for instance, but what I got from the book was life-affirming and sensual and I have friends who got vastly divergent or even contrary methods (and I also got some solid advice that I'll take to heart if I ever decide to commit suicide.)

Edit: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest makes me want to watch the movie too, now. The book was not what I expected and was more engaging for all that, but also depressing. Set in an asylum. Read it because of a reference in a recent Neal Stevenson book, and because I'd been meaning to for some time.

Of course - but if you keep asking "what is the evidence?" and "how do you know that?" you will get there. To say that there is not much difference between an irrational and a rational process is just nonsense.

It is not as if this stuff is a big secret http://www.amazon.com.au/Rationality-From-Zombies-Eliezer-Yudkowsky-ebook/dp/B00ULP6EW2

This is the post that got me banned from /r/SamHarris due to breaking rule 3 in that subreddit regarding relevance to Sam Harris.

I'll to to make my case on why I think it is relevant:

Sam is a big proponent of rationality. Specifically, this is a theorem that Eliezer Yudkowsky, a guest in Sam's podcast is a big proponent off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaNLX71Hl88 <---Link to relevant Podcast

Relevant book:

https://smile.amazon.com/Rationality-AI-Zombies-Eliezer-Yudkowsky-ebook/dp/B00ULP6EW2/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1426182905&sr=8-9

No it is not. There is a significant probability that the person breaking into your house isn't a murderer, but will startle and shoot you if approached. Or kill you for some other reason. It is stupid to believe that you can just shoo a burglar out of your house unarmed. If there is someone stealing your stuff that might find and kill you, or kill you if you approach them, you do the sensible thing and don't take chances. You really are not appreciating the situation.

Think. You are in your house, listening as a man rummages through your stuff downstairs. He might have a gun. Eventually he grunts in frustration and goes up the stairs, thinking no one's home. He approaches. He's almost found you. You have a gun. Do you a. Lie in wait and shoot him, b. Try to shout and startle him into leaving, c. Threaten him, or d. Start talking calmly and politely.

Answer: a. Any of the others has a significant risk of him startling and shooting you dead.

As an aside, you might want to read the book Rationality: From AI to Zombies. You can get it at amazon for $5, or here for free but with a bit more hassle.

> she can't deny certain things that she's felt

That was where I was for years. I knew there were problems, but I was holding on to feelings from the past.

Then, I got on a kick (unrelated to church stuff) reading about cognition, sociology, psychology, rationality, etc and I put together a set of concepts and realized that it added up to my experiences being based on all of that rather than a spirit telling me something was true.

In that second I stopped believing.

This playlist has a bunch of the psychology stuff

[This book](http://www.amazon.com/Rationality-AI-Zombies-Eliezer-Yudkowsky-ebook/dp/B00ULP6EW2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426482361&sr=8-1&keywords=from+ai+to+zombies has a) collection of good rationality tools.

Have you read HPMOR or Rationality: AI to Zombies? Might help.

You have a moral worth and value as a human being beyond your intelligence and work ethic. Being smart and productive makes you useful to a capitalistic society, but you don't need to be useful in order to have a right to exist. You don't have to continually prove your worthiness or value. The idea that you have to is super toxic.

Those qualities might make you better able to help people (perhaps by helping with the Value Alignment Problem). If so, you should take advantage of the fact; if the fast-takeoff theories of AI are correct, you are living in the time between us identifying the value alignment problem and it being too late to do anything about it. Living in this time, we have a chance to shape the future of humanity; to save it, or destroy it, depending on whether or not we solve value alignment or not. Or, if the hard takeoff theory is wrong, then you probably don't have much to worry about, research will be the last thing to be replaced.

And if you help successfully shepherd humanity through a hard AI takeoff, you can retire afterwards fully confident in your contributions to the human race.

Even if it turns out that's not where your talents lie, there is a lot of suffering in the world right now, and no automation here to save us all yet.

More likely, though, you will eventually have to adjust the way that you value yourself and derive your self-esteem. I planned on going into research; in retrospect, not because I wanted to, but because it seemed like the thing to do. Turned out I suck at research; I spent a couple of years depressed in a PhD program, escaped with a Masters, taught for a bit, and then went out and got a programming job. And man, it turns out that being intelligent isn't worth jack flipping squat if you don't do anything with it. And I enjoy building and improving software way the heck more than toiling in a lab all day, especially when I get to hear the people using the software thank me for making their lives easier. It still aches a bit that I didn't finish the PhD; some part of me still wants to prove how smart I am. Getting paid a bunch of money is it's form of respect, and I'm way happier now. It was extremely not fun at the time, though.

On a more mundane note, I really don't expect anyone to automate away programming or research any time soon, and as a former cell biology student and programmer, I think Elon Musk underestimates how hard getting real utility out of neural laces is going to be by at least an order of magnitude.

https://www.amazon.com/Rationality-AI-Zombies-Eliezer-Yudkowsky-ebook/dp/B00ULP6EW2

Good book that discusses topic of AI and it's a cat to our ird

Your comment was automatically spamfiltered, presumably because of the Amazon link with the referrer tag. If you edit the comment to use the plain referrer-free Amazon link, I can reapprove it.

Rationality from AI to Zombies and Inadequate Equilibria by Eliezer Yudkowsky are both free on-line, though you can get both of them as ebooks [here](https://www.amazon.com/Rationality-AI-Zombies-Eliezer-Yudkowsky-ebook/dp/B00ULP6EW2] and here, as well as hardcopies of the latter here.

Rationality from AI to Zombies is a high-resolution overview of both the theory and practice of how to have a more accurate model of reality ("epistemic rationality") and how to be more personally effective ("instrumental rationality"). It focuses mostly on the former.

Inadequate Equilibria is about how society gets things wrong and what beating the odds on that looks like.

Discrete Mathematics - Ross and Wright. Once you get into it, this shit is amazing. Epiphanies for days.

The Language Instinct - Stephen Pinker - an utterly fascinating book on language and the brain, chock full of 'well, shit' moments. He's also written a bunch more equally fascinating books - The Blank Slate and How The Mind Works being among them.

Rationality: From AI to Zombies This is a collection of essays on cognitive biases, fallacies and how to kid yourself that you're avoiding them. It will make your brain hurt.

The Philospher's Toolkit - Julin Baggini - a kind of cliff-notes introduction to a wide range of concepts in philosophy

If you'd like to learn how to implement vaccines in a safe manner, I suggest this book:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1603588248/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8

He explains the problem with the current vaccine schedule and teaches you, with facts and science, how to implement vaccines in a way that is safe for your loved ones.

And then there's this https://www.amazon.com/How-Autism-Epidemic-J-B-Handley/dp/1603588248/ref=pd_aw_fbt_14_img_2/138-3139197-7280332?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1603588248&pd_rd_r=73e89c47-6ae5-11e9-9f47-dd789adca390&pd_rd_w=AAPi4&pd_rd_wg=IKvKS&pf_rd_p=3ecc74bd-d08f-44bd-96f3-d0c2b89f563a&pf_rd_r=Q9F6RNT74Y9VNDY8X33T&psc=1&refRID=Q9F6RNT74Y9VNDY8X33T

A good start would be this book, although it's not the real reason why I think this way. In fact, I think there are quite a few holes in the theory.

The truth is most likely that we, as human beings, have a set worldview that filters everything. That makes everything make sense. For normal people (people that don't have a lifelong history of so called 'paranormal' events) this worldview or OS shell can be perturbed from time to time enough for something like this to happen.

This 'shell' is cultural baggage, personal memory and cognitive typing, but mainly it's all those things that we learn to be true. "This is how the world works." type of stuff.

That's really all one can say about an event with this line of thinking though. We don't have a clue outside intuition and speculation what any of these types of events really mean, although personal meaning is often readily attached to them.

A handful of my own childhood experiences only happened when I was away from home with relatives, which was out of the ordinary, spur of the moment type things. I believe it's part of cognitive development to experience waking up and not immediately recognizing where you are, or how you got there, and your mind has to scramble to come up with the details. To make the world make sense again, right? That's a small example of perturbation. There are much bigger ones.


This doesn't offer any explanation as to why notable paranormal events are not entirely subjective, or in other words, why they are experienced by multiple people, and therefore not just something one could dismiss, or chalk up to 'I'm going crazy' or 'I must not be getting enough sleep' or some other thing. Those things do happen, and who knows what a fly on the wall would witness, but like I said, they usually get dismissed or at least never talked about.

Also you should add The Trickster and the Paranormal by George P Hansen. All Georges must stick together.

Books are my first, and favourite, way to expand consciousness - for one thing, you can do them anywhere.

Currently reading More Than Allegory by Bernardo Kastrup.

A scientist arguing against the reductionist materialism that dominates not just science, but the whole of modern culture, that ignores consciousness because it cannot quantify it, and for a rehabilitation of the understanding of traditional mythologies that allow us to find meaning in the material world, in everyday life.

Not finished yet, might report back when I'm done.

Also Mutants and mystics: science fiction, superhero comics, and the paranormal - Jeffrey J. Kripal and Trickster and the Paranormal - George P Hansen.

Perhaps not true psychonaut literature, but stuff about how consciousness and culture interact, and how mind can affect the world at large.

The Trickster and The Paranormal by George Hanson

https://www.amazon.com.au/No-Bad-Kids-Toddler-Discipline/dp/1499351119

Now that you are entering into this stage of development, I suggest the two following books.

"No Bad Kids" by Janet Lansbury http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1499351119/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1499351119&linkCode=as2&tag=janetlansbury-20&linkId=JW6MS6RW3DRKLN7Z She also has a blog that's mostly pretty handy.

"Love and Logic in Early Childhood" by Jim Fey https://www.amazon.com/dp/1930429002/ref=cm_sw_r_other_awd_lfEIwbTM3Y95V

Your baby is testing boundaries. He's testing to see if he can get a different reaction from you. And he does! Sometimes you snap at him, sometimes you say no, sometimes you ignore him, sometimes you give him a swat on the bottom... Different reactions.

A 13 month old is too young to respect an abstract boundary. It just is. My suggestion is that whenever it is at all possible, rearrange your environment so that he can't get in trouble. I know its tough because the dog has to get to water, but if its conceivable to move its location, do that. (Laundry room with a doggy door, maybe?) Control the environment, not the baby. When that is not possible, keep your cool and stay consistent.

What your gender is programmed for is irrelevant. The jig is up: boys are graded more harshly. In my opinion, it's a big reason many more men than women flock to objectively-graded majors in college: to escape sexism in academia.

http://people.terry.uga.edu/cornwl/research/cmvp.genderdiffs.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Boys-Misguided-Policies/dp/1501125427

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/884262.html

Et cetera. The sexism is there. But it's not a narrative that goes well with the 77-cents-on-the-dollar crowd.

So have I

In many cases that is accurate, especially in education. Men are having a crisis where we are falling far behind in schooling in all almost all subjects and in getting degrees. The system is set to favor women and not men. It's such a big problem that is literally affecting the economy. Men are being affected primarily in America, but also around the world.

Yet Australia, New Zealand, and England, among other places, all see it as a problem and are actively promoting ways to help men rise to the status of women (boy only schools that encourage things like rough housing, tag, etc, as an example) while America is doing the opposite. There are major lobbying efforts by women organizations to go against men and stop such policies here. It's literally a war against boys

> I am not comfortable painting the shooters as the victims here.

The Parkland shooter was relentlessly bullied and tormented for years before he finally snapped, and the fucking kids admitted it.

> Nor am I comfortable with saying that society treats boys so bad their only recourse is to go on a shooting spree.

Recourse?

When your single mother beats you because she doesn't understand discipline, your overweight female teachers want to put you on Ritalin because they can't handle how much energy you have, and then when you do everything you're told to do to get female approval and it winds up backfiring horrendously, someone in that situation is eventually going to snap.

Now say something really dumb, like 'you have a chip on your shoulder.'

> The victim mentality has to end, along with all the mass / school shootings.

https://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Boys-Misguided-Policies/dp/1501125427/ref=sr_1_1?gclid=Cj0KCQiAtrnuBRDXARIsABiN-7AXtT-XvJl8jQypTQq74EDR_hDWQyhtWL3gCW72iSvB8hdNxV3YAIIaAi9dEALw_wcB&hvadid=241909021669&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9033589&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=10007966018918261274&hvtargid=kwd-132846382&hydadcr=24634_10399776&keywords=the+war+against+boys&qid=1573856052&sr=8-1

When feminists are pointing it out, you know there's a fucking problem. Sometimes people are victims, and sometimes policy needs to be redressed.

Do you know what the most common correlative factors are among mass shooters, I mean besides virtually all of them being men?

Here's a good book that summarizes the research:

https://www.amazon.com/Change-Heart-Psychology-Spreading-Social/dp/159056233X

Also check out Nick's other book, Veganomics. It is also very informative. Change of Heart is a bit broader in its focus on how activists with various causes can use psychology to better influence people, whereas Veganomics was written with the intention of giving animal advocates insight into what kind of people go vegan/vegetarian, why some people give up, etc., all with the larger goal of helping to formulate better messages and guides to help people cut back/cut out animal product consumption and maintain this for life.

Green is the new Red Is a great book about animal rights activism.

Change of Heart Is a great book about the psychology of spreading social change.

Edit: I'd also recommend watching Cowspiracy and Specisism: The Movie.

Sounds like you might find these four books useful:

Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change
by Nick Cooney

How to Create a Vegan World: A Pragmatic Approach by Tobias Leenaert


Beyond Beliefs: A Guide to Improving Relationships and Communication for Vegans, Vegetarians, and Meat Eaters
by Melanie Joy PhD

Motivational Methods for Vegan Advocacy: A Clinical Psychology Perspective
by Casey T. Taft

I'm not sure where would be the best place to hang out if you want to avoid those kinds of people. I'm currently reading Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change and it's really crazy and unsettling to see what the psychological and neurological research shows about our ability and likelihood to take in and rationally examine information that goes against our held beliefs.

It is a thin book though: https://www.amazon.de/How-Write-Lot-Practical-Productive/dp/1591477433

It helped for academic writing in grad school, but many of the lessons carry over: How to Write a Lot. https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Lot-Practical-Productive/dp/1591477433

Check out this book http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Lot-Practical-Productive/dp/1591477433

Suggested reading:

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Black-Book-Violence-Fighting/dp/1594391297/ref=pd_sim_sg_1

I haven't read it yet, but I understand it puts the emphasis on avoiding and escaping violent situations.

In a situation like the one in Wisconsin, the goal is to avoid harm to yourself and your family. Don't mistake it for some sort of chance to play tough guy.

If you do seriously hurt or kill someone then you'll likely only incite further violence against yourself and people with you. You'll also start a feud with the guy's friends or family.

I'm not saying you should be intimidated. Just keep your eye on the prize (survival, not vengeance).

I'm sorry you had to experience that, I had a similar experience happen to me about 8 months ago. May I recommended http://www.kravmagadc.com it's a self defense system that is aimed at realistic street encounters. You'll train for multiple opponents, at positions of disadvantage, and development improvements in this areas in a relatively short period of time compared to other martial arts.

may I also recommended this book. The first 1/3 of the book details very well criminals choose their targets.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Little-Black-Book-Violence/dp/1594391297/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344953697&sr=8-1&keywords=little+black+book+of+violence

you made it out of that situation alive. Value that.

https://www.scribd.com/mobile/document/295142235/Bruce-Tegner-Self-Defense-pdf


https://www.uvm.edu/~asnider/IDAS_2011_CD/Teachers/Steve%20Llano's%20Materials/Strategy%20Books/Book%20of%20Five%20Rings%20-%20Musashi.pdf


https://www.amazon.com/Little-Black-Book-Violence-Fighting/dp/1594391297

there's a great book called "Everything Bad is Good For You" by Steven Johnson that talks about how video games, TV, and pop culture in general are actually making us smarter as a society due to the rise in media complexity. it's a great read, not too long, and definitely makes you feel better about binging a Netflix show or playing video games for a few hours. worth checking out if you're interested!

There's a book you should read, by Steven Johnson, called Everything Bad is Good For You. Specifically a chapter about television and how increasing plot texture and complication is causing or correlating with the increasing intelligence of viewers. In it, he graphs the plot lines of older shows and newer ones to show comparison, and it really is quite interesting. I agree with you, OP, but only to an extent. That scene happened so fast that even Saul wasn't expecting it and didn't know what was going on, and the behind-the-scenes footage shows us that the pick-pocketing wasn't supposed to be noticeable at all. You caught it the first go round, whereas someone paying less than full attention might have needed to watch it another time or two.

Sounds like Everything Bad is Good For You by Steven Johnson.

https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Bad-Good-You-Actually/dp/1594481946

http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Bad-Good-You-Actually/dp/1594481946

There's a good book with a catchy title that talks in depth about this very thing.

There are a few summary points:

• In general terms: Video Games > Pleasure Reading (Non-Educational) > TV
  
• The TYPE of video game, TV, or reading you do matters much more than the format, for example:
  
• Puzzle solving games like the Zelda series is much better for the mind than Call of Duty type shooting games.
  
• Novels, especially of a high complexity, are better than Magazines.
  
• Shows that require you to think (examples used were Sopranos and The West Wing) are better than those that don't (examples used were Big Brother and American Idol).
  
• Video Games as a non-educational activity improve test scores the best because they are interactive, you have to both analyze a situation and then respond to it. This is especially beneficial if you are solving puzzles.
  
• Pleasure Reading, while not interactive, requires you to take in and analyze situations in order to understand the story. The more complex the analysis required, the better.
  
• Watching TV only requires sporadic analysis. In the more complex show your brain seeks to solve and connect storylines to make sense of it. In the less complex show you only passively absorb.
  
  In the book they looked at a study which took groups of kids/teens of varying ages (I remember it being 4th grade, 7th grade, and 10th grade) and divided the kids into 4 groups: Gamers, Readers, Watchers, and Listeners. The Listeners did nothing but listen to popular music and socialize. They tested all the kids at the beginning, middle, and end of the experiment. They used the test average from previous years as their baseline for comparison.
  
  They found that kids that played puzzle-solving video games improved their scores the most, readers the second most, and watchers the third most. Listeners scores actually decreased as compared to the average.
  
  The book also looks at a second study that used adults and finds similar results. Gamers > Readers > Watchers > Listeners.
  
  ------
  
  The tl;dr of it is, doing something with your brain is good regardless of the format, and the more interactive and engaging that medium is the better it will improve your thinking.
  
  /u/Rambo_Brit3's and his/her wife need to be more concerned with WHAT video games their son is playing rather than the fact that he enjoys video games. I don't know how complex "League" is (I'm assuming League of Legends simply because of its popularity). And the complexity of the game is an important factor.
  
  At least he's not getting stoned and listening to pop music.

Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter, a book by Steven Johnson, would fit well into your research. Also, you definitely need some empirical data if you want to draw any meaningful conclusions, so look for published studies and objective articles on topics like aggression, physiological arousal, and prosocial development in game-playing demographics. The best thing for your thesis is to find some credible academic papers that arrive at a conclusion you disagree with ("games are bad, mmkay") and use them, as well. Biased research isn't valuable research.

Perhaps this is too obvious, but this series is actually quite good.

The Art of Manliness

Art of Manliness also has a book I've been meaning to pick up myself.

I’ve become fond of Emily Posts Manners for Men

And

The Art of Manliness

The Art Of Manliness Book is something that I would highly recommend

Speak with class

look fancy doing it

and

...

Dress with style and sophistication

...

How to play the part

and

also

The Art of Manliness.
It has some humor in it, and is fairly informative.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1600614620?ie=UTF8&force-full-site=1&ref_=aw_bottom_links

If I could just recommend an amazing book that concerns things like this:

How We Know What Isn't So by Thomas Gilovich is absolutely one of the greatest and most life-changing book I've ever read.

I recommend you read How we know what isn't so for understanding what is wrong with using yourself and/or those you know as the reason spanking does not cause violence.

Spanking is correlated with increased violent behavior later in life. Is that because violent kids are more likely to get spanked? Maybe. Is it only those who got badly spanked (abused) that end up violent? Maybe. Is it only those who got spanked capriciously? Maybe.

It doesn't really matter that we don't know if those confounding factors are more important or not. You cannot say that spanking doesn't cause violent behavior when the two are correlated unless you have data that shows either that they are not actually correlated or that they have another cause. Your sample set sucks and the conclusion you draw from it is a hasty generalization.

I'm not trying to sound like I'm attacking you here, and this will likely be my last post.

I just want to say anecdotes are NOT evidence because the conditions are unknown and uncontrolled. Another good read about that here. They can be extremely misleading. At best, they are observations that can serve as the basis for deciding to study something. I know what you mean, but this is a really important point. I also didn't miss the part where you mention the treatment could have been something you didn't know about (like steroids). This is an example of why anecdotes cannot be evidence. I also think the secret steroid thing doesn't need to come into this discussion; I have heard similar reports of acupuncture effects.

I did not mean to single out your memory in particular, but I wanted to make the point that with anecdotes memory IS an issue. Check out this book. Our recollection of events can be significantly distorted, though its hard to believe.

The articles I cited above address your point of a dog having no concept of treatment and placebo. Most likely true! But my point was that the placebo effect can appear because of perception or situations around the animal - i.e. there are other factors involved.

You can't know "it wasn't some postivie experience for her that perked her up" or anything else. Even the stress you mentioned might have contributed to the placebo effect for all we know. I don't see how you can say the possible explanations I provided are out of the question.

Again, I don't want to sound like I'm being a jerk or attacking you. I did want to address how science views anecdotes. It sounds like we are on the same page at any rate. My points were just that placebo effect is a broad term that encompasses a lot of errors and bias and that it may well exist in animals.

Certainly. You aren't racist ... but.. black lives matter dont understand black people are racist too. You aren't one of those crazy anti science global warming denialists... but ... celebrities and nazi pedophiles, right? And denialists shouldn't be picked on because because they are pointing out some science is dodgy. And while you can split hairs by carefully saying " I didn't say" this or that, it was carefully implied which allowed you to imediately deny that was your intention when you are called on it. Please read the book, follow it with https://www.amazon.com/How-Know-What-Isnt-Fallibility/dp/0029117062 and https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman-ebook/dp/B004R1Q2EG

Define the features you place on this word "god."


All of this proves what I call god doesn't exist.

God has one or more of theses features:

• transcendent mind
  
• telepathy
  
• magic
  
• consciously controlling reality
  
• using nothing to make something
  
  Why these things fail:
  
  
• every mind we know about requires a physical brain and people used hyperactive agent detection to decide things without minds have them
  
• many versions of god exist in imagination yet nobody can prove any of them for reality
  
• violates physics and never observed
  
• without a mind this is impossible
  
• everything comes from something before it (until you reach a scientific nothing which is still something in the philosophical sense)
  
  Also :
  
  
• the kalam's cosmological argument is about a first state of existence not a first being
  
• if god is greater than anything we can think of by also existing it is complex requiring a precursor
  
• god can't evolve from simple to complex failing kalam and anselm before anything else exists
  
• outside of reality means imaginary
  
• http://www.humanreligions.info/hyperactive_agent_detection.html takes the facts and explains them logically
  
• https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0029117062/65536-21 shows how intellect is flawed
  
• the levels of cognition are instinct, intellect, and knowledge
  
• knowledge means knowing things, when you know facts you know the truth
  
• verifiable facts require empirical evidence
  
• I provided evidence
  
• you provided argument to the stone
  
• just because god is obvious to you doesn't mean it exists
  
• if you can't show me god exists you don't know that god exists
  
• if you can't prove me wrong you don't know that I don't know god doesn't exist
  
• if you define god as something that obviously does exist I don't consider it god
  
• my definition of god does not exist
  
• if I'm wrong prove it
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_the_stone - since you say I'm wrong and can't prove it
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_assertion - since you say evolution proves god but you can't prove that either.
  
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/01/31/the-four-scientific-meanings-of-nothing/
  
  The scientific nothing used for a universe from nothing is not the same thing as a philosophical nothing. The philosophical nothing is never observed and may not exist except outside all existence. Nothing at all can exist outside all existence because that is no place and no time with no properties whatsoever. Outside existence doesn't exist basically.
  
  What happened before the big bang? Nobody actually knows and that is okay. Everything after the big bang was completely natural and we have no indication that before it was any different. "God did it" is only valid in a fact debate if you can prove it.
  
  The deist god literally uses magic to take a philosophical nothing and turning it into something yet has no place or time to exist within. The theist god is based on religious text and those fail on things we can test easily.

I know what the anthropologists say but I really do not believe them in the slightest.

I can't really seem to find anything to back up "adopted children perform less well in school" theory so the study is pretty conclusive it's simple biology.

If you really think it's not biological still then you did not actually read anything I posted in an unbiased matter.

Also:

Source 1: http://www.jbhe.com/latest/index012209_p.html

Source 2: https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/why-ses-does-not-explain.pdf

Source 3: Is from this book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve) page 288

Source 4: Is from this book (https://www.amazon.com/Factor-Science-Evolution-Behavior-Intelligence/dp/0275961036/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1453624876&sr=1-1&keywords=the+g+factor) page 358

Any study on opportunity should at least control for general mental ability.

(continued)

>In a Raven Standard Progressive Matrices test, the subject is tested with patterns and geometric figures which are culture-independent and a computer calculates the score.
http://books.google.com/books/about/A_question_of_intelligence.html?id=5ggRAQAAIAAJ

>These tests correlate significantly (over .50) with IQ
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1996reviewRushton.pdf

>And as expected, despite having no cultural bias, they continue to show the large, measurable, and significant intelligence gap between Whites and Blacks.

>To date, despite claims that IQ tests are biased, not one single intelligence test has ever displayed equal scores for Blacks and Whites; one must either make the test so difficult that nobody can manage to get the questions correct or so easy that everyone obtains a perfect score to show testing equality, yet that would make the test meaningless and invalid.
http://charlesdarwinresearch.org/Intell03Ravens.pdf
http://charlesdarwinresearch.org/Intell00Ravens.pdf
(down?)

>Trillions of dollars have been spent in attempt to erase this Black-White IQ gapand all have failed.
http://books.google.com/books/about/A_question_of_intelligence.html?id=5ggRAQAAIAAJ
http://www.charlesdarwinresearch.org/2006 PSnew.pdf


>In fact, "public schools now spend more per capita on black children than on white." Also, "Contrary to environmentalist predictions, intervention beginning at age three makes no difference to the intellectual development of blacks [into adulthood]."
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Race-Matters-Michael-Levin/dp/0965638359

>The famous Milwaukee Project which spent $14 million in attempt to prove that the IQ gap could be removed with improved environment ended with the principal investigator "convicted and imprisoned for large-scale abuse of federal funding for private gain. Two of his colleagues were also convicted of violations of federal laws in connection with misuse of project funds… However, the project received uncritical acceptance in many college textbooks in psychology and education."
http://tinyurl.com/ygneat8 (Google)

>As Albert Einstein famously wrote, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." All of the excuses for Black underachievement have been refuted ad nauseam yet egalitarians refuse to budge, persisting that race doesn't exist and that this gap is the fault of White racism.
http://menghusblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/understanding-human-history.pdf

>Egalitarians often suggest that White racism lowers Black self-esteem and causes an inferiority complex. However, "Past research indicates that black adolescents consistently have higher self-esteem than white students. Other research demonstrates that self-esteem has positive effects on academic achievement. However, black students have lower academic achievement than white students while concurrently exhibiting higher self-esteem."
http://web.archive.org/web/20100722165055/

>Indeed, even the psychologist Claude Steele who coined the term "Stereotype threat" (anxiety or concern to conform to a negative stereotype) admitted that it does not explain the gap between Whites and Blacks through personal email. One study reports that "research is widely misinterpreted… as showing that eliminating stereotype threat eliminates the African American-White difference in test performance."
http://tinyurl.com/cpnt8q6

>IQ gaps between Whites and Blacks are observable at the age of three, prior to cultural influences or potential effects of racism.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Race-Matters-Michael-Levin/dp/0965638359

>Blacks mature faster than Whites
http://www.charlesdarwinresearch.org/Race_Evolution_Behavior.pdf

>The IQ gap reflects this; the gap is 0.7 standard deviation (1 SD is 15 points) at early childhood, 1 SD at middle childhood, and 1.2 SD into early adulthood.
http://www.amazon.com/Factor-Science-Evolution-Behavior-Intelligence/dp/0275961036

>About 37% of Blacks have an IQ below 80, while only 9% of Whites do. Blacks are 6x as likely to have an IQ of 70 or less as Whites, 12% of Blacks compared to 2% of Whites. Half of Whites have an IQ over 100 (average) but only 16% of Blacks do. Only 1% of Blacks have an IQ over 120, but 9% of Whites do.
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/retard.htm

>The ASPM gene of Chromosome 1 has been shown to effect brain morphology and defects lead to smaller brains and low IQ.
http://hmg.oxfordjournals.org/content/13/5/489.abstract

>A new ASPM allele arose in Eurasia and has been suspected at increasing intelligence and has been demonstrated to be absent in Blacks.
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/26/10944
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/309/5741/1720.abstract

>The MCPH1 gene of Chromosome 8 with alleles known as "microcephalin" partly determine brain size and morphology
http://hmg.oxfordjournals.org/content/13/11/1131.short

>Beneficial alleles are common in Eurasians but rare in Blacks. The MCPH1 and ASPM gene correspond with the development of hand-crafts and the development of sophisticated cities which were common in Eurasian populations but unheard of in sub-Saharan Africa.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/309/5741/1717.abstract

>The DCDC2 gene of Chromosome 6 effects brain morphology and the ability to read.
http://www.v-weiss.de/majgenes-full.html

>One alelle results in dyslexia
http://www.pnas.org/content/102/47/17053

>"The allele frequency of the A allele rs2274305 of the dyslexia-gene DCDC2 is about 0.28 among Eurasians and 0.99 among Yorubas from Nigeria, about 0.80 among African-Americans."
http://www.v-weiss.de/majgenes-full.html

>The DTNBP1 gene has also been linked to intelligence, specifically the rs:760761, rs:2619522 and rs:2619538 alleles. For rs:760761, 18% of Whites carry the T allele, which takes off 8 IQ points, compared to 37% of Blacks. For rs:2619522 carrying the G allele takes off 7 points, and is found in 18% of Whites and 35-36% of Blacks. The rs:2619538 T allele increases IQ by 6.5 points and 61% of Europeans carry it vs 67% of Blacks.
http://www.behavioralandbrainfunctions.com/content/3/1/19
http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/11/dtnbp1-gene-and.html

Do you want to post the link again? Sure beats quoting a passage from it that proves your straw man?

Here I'll post it too.
https://www.amazon.com/Factor-Science-Evolution-Behavior-Intelligence/dp/0275961036

> Which is?

The ones I directly linked to in his thread. The collected academic papers of experts put together by Nyborg, the summary of the entire field by Haier, the work on the g factor by Jensen, I even directly linked to the American Psychological Association which makes the same claim.

When the APA comes out and takes your stance on the issue, I'll 100% retract my claim.

I don't hold onto references. Why would I?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Factor-Evolution-Behavior-Intelligence/dp/0275961036

https://iq-research.org/en/page/average-iq-by-country

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

> Placing something on a spectrum doesn't invalidate the application of categories, in this case race, to spots on said spectrum

The application of categories (taxonomy), in general, isn't invalidated. What's invalidated is the use of race, which is primarily defined by a narrow set of phenotypes, in particular skin color, as the method for defining these categories because it obscures greater genotypical similarities between groups and also has less predictive power than groupings based on other genetic differences, such as clines and clusters.

Even if you use continental origin based on AIMs to match self-identified race and ethnicity with most recent ancestry, that doesn't yield a grouping that has any utility whatsoever as a unit of analysis for biology and genomics.

For example Michael Jackson's daughter is self-identified black. So is Barack Obama. Both have one white parent and one black parent, but Obama looks black and Paris Jackson looks white, like really white. Blue eyes and everything. You could trace both of their genetic ancestries to Africa and group them on that basis, and it would match their SIRE 100 percent, but if you put them in the same environment, same SES, etc., Paris Jackson would be treated like a white person.

> By this reasoning you can't distinguish between red and green because there is no clean dividing line as you move through the electromagnetic spectrum from one to the other.

I would say that this is a clever bit of sophistry were it not for the fact that it's totally unoriginal and I've heard it used so many times that it has become cliche.

It's a false analogy. Color is defined by one specific property, i.e. wavelength, that is fixed and uniformly agreed upon to be a set value 510 nm. Phenotypes are influenced by thousands upon thousands of different alleles, most of which—particularly the ones for intelligence— have not even been identified. Even skin color involves hundreds of genes.

A difference on the electromagnetic spectrum between green (510 nm) and red (650 nm) is not analogous to the genetic difference between any given population, even defined in the most narrow sense, i.e. clines, much less in a broad sense using archaic 19th-century folk taxons like Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid.

The genetic difference between any two groups or individuals is less than 10 percent, so a more accurate analogy would be a comparison of two different shades of green at 510 nm and 515 nm, which would be indistinguishable.

> The far ends of the spectrum can't interbreed

Yeah, isolation-by-distance is a thing but it hasn't existed as a phenomenon for long enough to actually result in substantial differences between say Native Americans and Bantus, except for certain specific climate-related adaptations, like sickle-cell anemia.

> So if you want to throw out race because of this you'd have to throw out species too.

No, I don't have to throw out the concept of species or the concept of subspecies but in order to apply the taxonomies in a useful way, biology requires a non-arbitrary genetic threshold for defining them, and race doesn't meet this criteria (between 17 percent and 25 percent genetic difference). Again, there is only one subspecies of Homo sapiens. It's called sapiens and like it or not, we're all part of it.

> It means exactly what I think it means, it's a ratio between genetic and environmental variation. So, yes, it changes in different environments

OK, so if you understand it so well, then you also understand it only applies to differences between individuals in the same population with the same environment and it can't be generalized to apply to average group differences between populations.

To do so is a misapplication of the concept in the same way that Rushton abused r-K selection, using it in a way that no respectable biologist would.

As I already noted elsewhere in the thread, Mackintosh, the author of "IQ and Intelligence," notes that at the lowest SES, heritability approaches zero.

And even Rushton and Jensen, the most vociferous proselytizers of hereditarianism, had to acknowledge: "A high heritability within one group does not mean that the average difference between it and another group is due to genetic differences, even if the heritability is high in both groups."

Of course, that didn't prevent them from trying to push this argument over and over and over and coming up short each time when their theories were put to the test by other more scrupulous researchers.

In fact this statement by Jensen directly contradicts his earlier statement in which he critiqued Lewontin's seed and soil analogy. Jensen said in 1970 that a high heritability increases the probability that genetics play a role in average group differences. And repeated this claim in his 1998 book.

So what happened in between 1998 and 2005 that caused Jensen to qualify his statement?

In a little more than three decades, we see Jensen walk back his position from "differences in IQ are mostly genetic" to "differences in IQ are about half and half" to "differences in IQ are partially genetic but in some unquantifiable amount that can't be 100 percent falsified with existing research methods.

Respectable scientists like Wicherts don't a priori rule out the role of genetics in between-group difference, but that's just good science. In other words you retain a healthy amount of skepticism until empirical evidence can tell you with a degree of certainty the cause of an observed phenomenon.

Race reductionists use this uncertainty to keep the dream alive much like creationists.

> If I control for environment tightly enough to yield a high heritability and I still have a gap, then a large chunk of that gap is likely due to biological factors not the environment.

Now we are getting into the limitations of social science. What I find most ironic about "race realism" is that many of its proponents frequently malign the social sciences as not "real science," yet the entirety of the argument is based on a few psychologists that I can count on one hand all drawing from the same tainted well.

This disdain for the social sciences also manifests in an inability to actually understand social science methodology and interpret the results of research accurately. It also causes them to erroneously assign equal weight to studies that make highly speculative claims that fail to achieve consistency with the bulk of scientific literature (Lynn and Rushton) as studies that do (Nesbitt et. al)

And here's the rub: You're never going to be able to control for the social effects of blackness, such as stereotype threat, stigma and institutional racism/discrimination. And to dismiss those factors offhand as irrelevant or non-existent is unscientific.

Even if you control for SES and differences remain, it doesn't necessarily follow that the basis of those differences is purely genetic.

As anthropologist John Ogbu observed, there is a difference between "caste-like minority groups," such as blacks who immigrated involuntarily and voluntary immigrants like Chinese and Jews who carried with them a culture of self-respect..

In the social sciences, one could conceivably construct an experiment in which you compared the educational outcomes of half-black white-presenting students from similar backgrounds as half-black black-presenting students, and measure the effect of the appearance of blackness on social outcomes. But it would be hard to get a big enough sample size and to replicate.

I much more prefer the relatively straightforward (and falsifiable) tales that genetics tells. Namely that variation within species is very small.

The only way to test differences between races in a concrete falsifiable to determine how much is genetic would be to identify all or most of the thousands of genes that contribute to intelligence and to define get a massive DNA sample that is representative of the various population clusters that exist within the black and white races. Then you would have to compare the samples for allele frequency.

The cost of doing this is prohibitively expensive at the moment even as GWAS costs go down. But given the overall low variation between population groups, the default position has to be that differences in IQ are mostly, if not entirely, environmental.

David Eagleman, in his book Incognito makes a good argument that who we are one day is not necessarily who we will be in the future. When someone commits suicide it is taking the life not only of the (often emotional and irrational) person of that moment, but also taking the life of the (potentially happy) person who might exist in the future.

In my own experience, I have found ways to deal with depression and become a happier person since I have matured. So I feel this is a very important point to consider. Suicide is almost never the best option to alleviate overall human suffering and it should never be a decision made by a single individual who may not be thinking rationally.

Currently reading Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain by David Eagleman

Thank you for your well thought out response. It is these discussions that foster the most thought, which is beneficial to everyone involved. Also, please note that I am going off of very little sleep and apologize in advance for any silly errors.

You start with my point about proving a negative, and in order to refute that claim you give two examples. You first example is irrelevant. It is an example of disproving a negative or, rather, proving a positive. This is clearly possible, and not what I was talking about when I said proving a negative. Discovering the pigmies disproved the negative belief. However, if we had never found them we could still not say that is proof of their nonexistence. Merely that we have not found them yet. We could conclude that they probably don't exist, but unless we scour the face of the entire planet, including underground, we cannot prove that they do not exist. This is what is meant by proving a negative. Your second anecdote is more accurate to my claim, but I still have a problem with it. You have proven that little green men do not exist in your bathtub because when we look, they are not there. Let's ignore the case that they are out for a stroll or can become invisible as it would get us nowhere. What you have done is proven the negative because you were able to search the entire relevant space that the negative was implying. I agree, I may have overstepped my bounds when saying that it is impossible in all cases to prove a negative. A better statement would have been unfeasible in general cases. In order to disprove any negative, one would have to search the entire set of things relevant to the subject of the statement and show that, indeed, such a thing is not there. If I say there is a magical rock somewhere in the world that grants three wishes, you have not proven it does not exist until you have found every single rock on the entire planet and shown definitively it is a normal rock. So, you could prove a negative, but you would agree that it is beyond reason or practicality in this case to do so. I believe that this case more closely mirrors our spiritual image since the space of where to search for a god or gods is bounded only by the edges of the universe.

You next mentioned that an atheistic view is no more or less justifiable than a theistic view. I understand your reasoning and how you got to this point, however I would again like to disagree with you. Firstly I must impress the viewpoint that atheism is merely the lack of belief in a deity, as I stated in my previous post. It is not the claim that no deities exist (however many do take it to that point). Atheism merely says "I do not believe in any gods." As I mentioned one can take this idea further and say "I believe that there are no gods," however the general idea is that it is a lack of belief in deities. For many atheists, their justification for this is simple: without one shred of scientific evidence for any deity, it is unreasonable to believe in said deity. You mention at one point that a theist has evidence of their deity in hand and an atheist discounts it. This is because that "evidence" is not verifiable or falsifiable, probably spiritual and personal in nature. I'm talking about the "I can feel the holy spirit" and "the bible is true because it was written by God" sort of logic. Either we can not test the theist's claim (and thus, by scientific reason we can NOT count it as evidence) or their evidence is dependent upon itself (circular logic). To this point in time, I have heard of no "evidence" for religion that actually falls under the category of evidence by scientific standards. Atheists discount the theists evidence because, in layman's terms, it sucks. It simply is not evidence.

I have touched on a couple of your points in this last segment, and would like to finish off with talking about your last two blocks. You say that I am looking at this as if the mind were a computer with only 2 states. I'm sorry if I gave off that impression, but that's not at all what I was implying. I earlier mentioned the difference between "I do not believe in any gods" and "I believe that there are no gods." There, already, we have 2 states within this area that I have coined the "null state" which is, in itself, one of many states. Your point that it is impossible to disbelieve without a conscious rejection of theistic claims is certainly true; so it's a good thing I never said anything to contrary. You seem to be making a false implication here, however. Atheism ABSOLUTELY IS the rejection of theistic claims, but you try to take it one step further and say that it makes another claim to replace those rejected ones, specifically the claim that there are no gods. As mentioned a couple of times, while this is indeed atheism, atheism in the purest sense is a lack of belief in any deities. It makes no inherent claim. Thus it is, in fact, a state of disbelieving while still a rejection of theistic claims.

It is for this reason that it is the default state. One is not born believing in gods (thus containing a lack of belief which is defined as atheism), one is taught religion. We could further claim that there is no god or gods, but then we would fall into all of the pitfalls your post has lined out for us. Scientifically speaking we can only go so far as to say there is no evidence for god, and thus no reason to attribute belief in such a being. But any further than that is just as unsupported as a theistic view (there can be a debate about probabilities, but this is inane pandering). However, if you realize that atheism very simply is the rejection of theistic claims without the necessity to replace those claims, then we can realize that atheism really is the default stance. Pure atheism makes no claim, it simply asks "why should I believe you?" And we haven't yet gotten a good answer.

I hope I have helped you better understand atheism. Many people have an incorrect view on us, and it seems like you are the same way. It is important to note that we do not inherently make any claims about deities, we simply say we reject all theistic claims. There are many who do make that claim, but it is NOT inherent in atheism. Absolutely not!

P.S. I mostly avoided the topic of human thought because there wasn't much to say there. I actually love the processes of the human brain and love learning about it. It seems you do too. On a completely unrelated note I would recommend you read the book Incognito. It's not perfect but it's tooled toward layman readers and still gets its point across in an interesting way, a very fun read. Thank you for your discussion!

i recently finished reading "the greatest show on earth" by richard dawkins, it is a book about the evidence, beauty and elegance of evolution. it really was an amazing and informative read, yet still accessible to the layman.

i am currently reading "incognito:secret lives of the brain" by david eagleman. i originally heard about this from a talk he had done on npr a couple months ago. the basic gist of it is something like this: the vast majority of what goes on in your brain is controlled by your subconscious and goes on just fine without your consciousnesses ever needing involvement. occasionally a conflict arises that cannot be resolved by your subconscious, and a request is sent to the conscious to solve the issue. i'm probably butchering this explanation, and as i have only started the book, i can't give a good review one way or the other on it, but so far it seems interesting.

From what you are saying, I think you'd like the book Incognito as it kind of touches on that topic. I have to say, you pulled it off wonderfully in your video.

Sometimes it's really good to read something you fundamentally disagree with. I can't speak on the gravity or depth of this particular book, but it's not a philosophy book from 100+ years ago, so it's a little unfair to compare them on those terms.

I'm a fan of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, by David Eagleman a very accessible recently written book on what goes on beneath conscious awareness. It's pop-science, but that's no reason to dismiss a book. The subject is fascinating and the arguments are very thought-provoking.

I think I read about this in "Incognito: The Secret life of the brain" was an amazing read I recommend you guys should look it up.

So, this was always a topic of interest for me since I've always found it quite natural to be energetic and extroverted. I've recommended the book "The Wisdom of Psychopaths" by Kevin Dutton a few times in my comment history, and I will again here because it's truly a fascinating book.

In answer to your question, to appear more energetic to others, focus on your posture and your eyes. Someone standing up straight and confidently looking at someone's face/eyes when they're addressing them looks far more awake then someone slouched over and averting their gaze. Interestingly enough, you'll also feel more awake if you focus on your posture! Don't get me wrong, when I'm sitting down I have awful posture (6'5... most desks/tables are too low for me) but when I'm standing up I'm always up straight or potentially casually leaning on/sitting against something.

Another thing that's interesting is potentially down to empathy. People who "catch yawns" from others often seem more tired because they're always yawning when in actual fact a potential link has been shown (people have tried proving it and disproving it and neigher side of the debate has manage to 100% prove their point) between empathy levels and yawning.

That's just a couple things that I can think of off the top of my head, but the second paragraph is probably the more important of the two as it's easier to work on posture and where you're focusing your eyes than it is to work on not catching yawns.

> https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Psychopaths-Saints-Killers-Success/dp/0374533989
> Does Dutton want to be a psychopath himself, or was this merely a topic of interest?
> I'm guessing this self-professed sociopath doesn't read his sources. He probably doesn't have to if he can convince people he does just by sounding confident enough.

To set this argument straight: "He doesn't know why RP or what RP says about DT" or what is it?

> I personally don't know that much about real INFJs (I mostly know about my type, INFPs, INTJs and INTPs)

Yeah, it's the same with me. I know about all 16 types in a really vague way, but I am only well informed on INFJs and their common mistypes (especially INFPs).

INFJs love pleasing other people. We see enhancing other people as our function in life. We absolutely hate hurting people. Things you might not think twice about will eat us alive. We love to beat ourselves up over the damage (real or imagined) we do to other people. We pay way more attention to other people than we do ourselves. Basically the opposite of an INFP.

Which is why I said in the beginning he's not an INFJ. We would never ever do that. Even an unhealthy INFJ would not behave that way. Unhealthy INFJs are scheming and manipulative. An unhealthy INFJ would still at least feign interest in order to manipulate you...they would not simply bail on you.

> So I already made up my mind, that I personally don't know enough about him to confirm or contradict his statement, thus he gets the benefit of the doubt. For now. Doesn't mean that I am not listening to you.

I am just providing information. I will never know your situation as well as you do. I only have your posts here to go on. What you do with it is entirely up to you.

> Yeah, I am still not sure, what exactly he is lying about though.

It's possible it might not be anything. Some people are like that. They like the power that lying gives them. There may be no reason other than that.

In this situation (Straight guy, straight girl?) I would assume he's lying to get into your pants maybe.

> That's something I noticed about INTJs as well.

INTJs are actually really similar to INFJs. We have the same congintive functions; the two middle ones are just swapped. INTJs will still care about people too, sometimes almost to the same degree as INFJs. It's just not a priority for them like it is with us.

> I think you might be confusing them with psychopaths. Sociopaths are quite impulsive and thus rather easy to detect.

There is no clear distinction between the two. In Psychology, both terms are used interchangeably. From what I can tell, people generally use the term "sociopath" to refer to Psychopaths that are still functional. Meaning Psychopaths that can control their impulses. But the actual clinical definitions are not distinct from each other.

I don't know if you're a reader, but there is a great book on them - "The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success" - https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Psychopaths-Saints-Killers-Success/dp/0374533989

It goes into a lot of detail about how they think, and the ways they use to manipulate people.

> I have a huge interest in people in general. So, I don't even stay away from getting to know assholes better, because I wanna find out how they "work".

As long as you're aware of it. That's all that really matters.

I can school you on book recommendations the same as at the dinner table and volleyball court;). Here is another: https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Psychopaths-Saints-Killers-Success/dp/0374533989/ref=nodl_

The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374533989/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_WYogzb3H20HN7


That's the book. They asked a question along the lines of "what's the difference in this group of pictures?" And the difference wasn't the subject. The difference was the persons hand in all of the shots had six fingers, and for some reason psychopaths tend to notice those things more than others.

It gets a lot of hate, but I'm a fan of Atlas Shrugged.

Neil Gaiman writes some good stuff too, but that's fiction.

I enjoyed The Wisdom of Psychopaths by Dr. Kevin Dutton. That was a non-fiction one I read in the past year or two.

Really?

Dutton K The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success (2012)

Are you going to tell me you will purchase this book and read it? Or do you want to use the summary used in the Wiki?

I mean, he is a CEO and successful businessman (debatable).

You don't get to that level without having sociopathic tendencies.

some great books on this are The Wisdom of Psychopaths and The Sociopath Next Door

I think that the sub sociopaths seems depressing to the observer. But there is actually a book that took your theory with psychopaths('Be a little of a psychopath to stay healthy and meet your goals') https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0374533989/ref=mp_s_a_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522137521&sr=8-1-fkmr2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=kevin+dutton+psycho
I would not say that I'm reponsible for others, but I definetly want to change something. One task I aim at is to find or build a Community that share ressources and makes political changes. More like Prometheus, go figure.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but just as an alternative view, I don't have much respect for the 'forefathers' of psychology, especially Psychoanalysts.. In fact, I think that they are responsible for leading psychology down the pseudo-scientific path that has been hard to shed for so many years (despite meticulous efforts by Skinner, James, etc.)

What someone called "unified theories" were not unified in the sense of all-encompassing, but were rather shoddy attempts to synthesize rote observations and philosophical mumbo-jumbo. Other sciences were way more advanced than psychology because they were inventing new technologies and methods (Cajal, Darwin, Mendel, to name a few) several years before Freud and Co. came along. Therefore, I don't think they deserve any sympathy. Rather, they were willfully ignorant.

As for OP's question, I think as broad areas of research, there are TONNES of good books to read in case you are (rightfully) moving forward from the dark ages of psychology. For example, Cognition is quite a fantastic coverage of brilliant scientific research in psychology, so is Psychological Science. There is also Choices, Values, Frames which is a bit more applied, and How the Mind Works, which may be a bit more speculative, but fascinating.

If you're really interested in the evolution of the human brain and how evolution has shaped our psychology, I suggest reading Steven Pinker's "How the Mind Works." It's not a light read, but it's incredibly fascinating.

For a more general look at recent human evolution, I enjoyed "The 10,000 Year Explosion." The authors argue that genetic changes have led to higher than average IQs among European Jews.

Actually, according to Steven Pinker, there are two really fundamental metaphors, so to speak, at the level of so-called mentalese, below the level of any particular language:

• Space or place
  
• Force, agency
  
  So, we talk about "friends in your life," etc; and we don't hesitate to talk about, say, computer programs that "want to shut down," etc. Zillions of examples; totally pervasive.
  
  So, I guess it's not surprising that agere is so widely used.

Before you get too far into the artificial intelligence you may want to update your knowledge of the real thing: Steven Pinker's the stuff of thought and How the mind works will get you most of the way.

And read or skim The Big Book Of Concepts by Murphy. He shoots holes in some very basic assumptions of GOFAI and AGI and points out how weak is our knowledge of the structure of human thought.

Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do

Yes, absolutely, I've had feelings like this!

An other perspective which you might find helpful is the idea of 'Stereotype Threat'. Here, the problem is that the self-consciousness and pressure you might be feeling could be distracting you from doing your true best.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat
http://www.amazon.com/Whistling-Vivaldi-Stereotypes-Affect-Issues/dp/0393339726

Claude Steele has been studying the phenomena for decades, in an effort to understand why minorities traditionally underperform despite equal credentials and clear talent. Stereotype threat experiments have repeatedly shown that when people are reminded of a negative stereotype related to a difficult task (one that requires focus), they perform worse on the task. For example, in an experiment with Asian women, they reminded half the participants that 'women are bad at math' before giving them a math test and the other half that 'Asians are good at math'. The participants reminded about the negative female stereotype performed significantly worse (in a p-value sense) than the other group.

Furthermore, in his studies of college students, he found that most minority students studied alone. As a result, they learned more slowly -- partly because they had to figure out everything on their own and partly because they missed the opportunity to explain things to others, which is a great way to solidify what you know. This also made them feel isolated, so they don't see how much everyone else is also struggling with the material. So my advice is to try to find some like-minded souls to program with; at minimum, try to do your homework in labs and libraries and strike up conversations with others. Nothing spots a bug like a fresh set of eyes.

And also, please try to keep a growth mindset about learning so you don't sweat every test grade and assignment. Practice makes perfect. Mistakes are opportunities to learn. None of the supposed 'naturals' at coding where born with that skill. Have you ever seen a baby try to the code? They suck at it. They can't even read.

PS - In countries where negative stereotypes about women and math/computing/science don't exist, women frequently outperform men, shown in the following graphic

https://mathbabe.org/2013/02/10/gender-bias-in-math/

Here's an interesting book that is predicated on this very action.

http://www.amazon.com/Whistling-Vivaldi-Stereotypes-Affect-Issues/dp/0393339726

Next time try whistling Vivaldi.

neepuh wrote:

Hi carbuyer throwaway, a lot of people have mentioned that it's hard to get racist people to stop being racist. I agree. However, you might want to read a book called Whistling Vivaldi - It is a book about racial stereotyping in the Unites States and small steps you can take to overcome them. Truly enlightening book. Also, I'm so sorry about your experiences - from one American to another. It's important to remind yourself that you are not defined by what other people say and do to you. Much support.

I recommend checking out the book 'Nurture Shock'

this one! http://www.amazon.com/NurtureShock-New-Thinking-About-Children/dp/0446504122

there's a chapter in there about it

http://www.amazon.com/NurtureShock-New-Thinking-About-Children/dp/0446504122

It comes from a book but the authors have written several articles going into more detail about the study behind the claims. Here's one.

They go into this "chance of getting away with it" in Nurture Shock

Check out NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children where they devote the whole first chapter to this subject. It's a fascinating read, especially for new parents.

1,000,001 upvotes for you.

A good book related to raising children that includes the info from the first link: Nurtureshock (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0446504122) and other info based on research; not anecdotes.

(Typing on my phone)

The binary sex system was socially constructed by cissexed (or cissexual) humans. It has no place for transsexual or intersexed people. I think more people are realizing how limiting it is towards intersex people, but it's just as limiting towards transsexual people.

It's not like I ever got a choice whether I agreed or not with this cis system of binary sex. I don't agree with it. Therefore, discussing it is a little tough, because every discussion of it assumes that trans people "must" accept "the truth". It's not the truth. My existence disproves it.
I've generally had this discussion with cis folks, and those that seem to be trying a little to accept trans people do seem to want to put us in some "female men" and "male women" categories--but if we can think of gender as socially constructed, it's hard to see why we can't see the sexes as such. We generally assign sex based on appearance of genitals at birth. For the vast majority of people that works out fine.
But not for all people. And being one of the people it doesn't work out for, I'm not likely to accept cis explanations for how I'm wrong.

And it's not like there hasn't been scholarly research on this topic. I'm thinking of Anne Fausto Sterling:
http://www.amazon.com/Sexing-Body-Politics-Construction-Sexuality/dp/0465077145
as one example.

In college I took a "History of Gender" (gender being used to mean both sex and gender) course and at the very end, the professor asked us for our conclusions--what we had learned. I knew this was going to be hard for the cis people in the room to accept, but I said "there's a lot of documentation of the fact that sex is just as socially constructed as gender--I had no idea" (I was 23 at the time and pre physical transition.)
The prof absolutely lit up at my response and said, exactly. It gave me a lot of hope and it was one of the things that encouraged me to transition rather than just accepting the common knowledge of my body as my identity.

> Like what reading? I like to read!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sexing-Body-Politics-Construction-Sexuality/dp/0465077145

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Bodies-Matter-Discursive-Limits-Sex-Routledge-Classics/041561015X/ref=pd_sim_14_5?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CNDN34DGBXQGMJRNHAEQ

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sexing-Brain-Lesley-Rogers-2000-06-01/dp/B01HC0RD82/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481591782&sr=1-2&keywords=sexing+the+brain

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Delusions-Gender-Science-Behind-Differences/dp/1848312202/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CNDN34DGBXQGMJRNHAEQ

http://bennorton.com/gender-is-not-alone-the-social-construction-of-sex/

http://www.dana.org/Cerebrum/2003/Extreme_Problems_with_Essential_Differences/

would be good places to start, plus numerous other papers, some books and blog posts I don't have quite the google-fu to relocate, and a lot of more tangential stuff. (I originally came to this mostly through the study of the theory of bodies and embodiement in art, as well as my spouse's academic studies in gender and sexuality). In getting to grips with this material and the general position it's important to move away from the facile strawman of the idea that biology is disregarded in a social constructionist view; more profoundly, social constructionists realise that social environment reshapes biology.

>Yeah it is. If you believe trans women only transition because of quote unquote "gender" which is purely social...you're wrong.

But what is a 'gender role'? If you restrict it to something as facile as 'girls like pink' then you can make anything absurd. It's worth remembering that the term 'gender roles' was originally coined by the sexologist John Money to describe the behaviours inhabited by unassigned intersex individuals trying to express a single binary gender identity. From a performative standpoint, gender roles are the entirety of the behaviour with which we signal the gender identity we wish to and are trained to project towards society. To say such things are not bound up in the trans experience is simply wrong; many trans folk experience feelings of dysphoria at being identified as their wrong gender, and lessening of these feelings or even positive counter-feelings at being identified as their correct gender. This is purely a matter of social perception. Therapeutically speaking, people transition because it helps to alleviate their feelings of dysphoria. Whether the underlying cause of the dysphoric state is genetic, epigenetic, foetal or psychological (or even spiritual) or some subtle combination of factors which differs on an individual basis is immaterial to the benefits provided by transition to the majority of those who seriously seek it. This is, it is important to note, only the medically legitimised narrative of the trans experience.

I know it's very easy to assume "biology" is always right, but it actually fucks up big time, quite often. It's not that simple to divine gender from a sex organ when that organ is neither a penis nor a vagina. Intersexuality is rare to odd (depending on your interpretation of the word 'intersex'), but it's an abnormality that brings some light to your belief that nature is always right about things. I encourage you to read even the first chapter of Sexing the Body. While many of the statistics Fausto-Sterling cites are disputed to this day, it opened my eyes to a lot of issues most of us would consider silent, and the history is solid. To assume biology can't be argued with is to ignore that a lot of things get messed up on a moment-by-moment basis within each cell, let alone a complex system like the mind which is the center for extremely complex ideas such as gender identity.

The following comment by unstoppable-cash was openly removed.

The original comment can be found(in censored form) at this link:

np.reddit.com/r/ btc/comments/8fmf4g/-/dy4qeos?context=4

The open modlog reason it was removed as reported by /r/btc was: Removed, url shortener - see sidebar rules

The original comment's content was as follows:

---

> > try to be part of this incredible disruptive technology that is looming.
>
> Excellent point-Agreed!
>
> Disruptive to TPTB... meaning returning power back to the Individual (the ultimate minority)!
>
> EDIT: added below...
>
> > Imagine a government where you can...
>
> I do my best to imagine government rulers dont exist, and do everything in my power to avoid them. Yes, they make it difficult. But there are ways to minimize their tyranny. One small thing I found that helped me some yrs ago (of many avail) is Harry Brown's How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World
>
> But of course Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash will likely be THE tool to dislodge the shackles in our lifetime!

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne helped me realize that a lot of the restrictions on my life were imaginary or easily avoided.

His marital and parenting advice was bonkers, though.

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World

http://www.amazon.com/How-Found-Freedom-Unfree-World/dp/0965603679
http://www.amazon.com/The-Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising/dp/1589795474
http://www.amazon.com/Mind-For-Numbers-Science-Flunked-ebook/dp/B00G3L19ZU
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm

you need to read http://www.amazon.com/How-Found-Freedom-Unfree-World/dp/0965603679

Yes! In fact we are working on a couple of longterm projects primarily with Dr. Kirk Wilhelmsen at UNC Chapel Hill (as well as some other researchers) looking at this, as well as from a perspective of addiction (how addiction causes genomic changes and vice versa). He is publishing a lot of alcohol-related studies (ETOH easy to get your hands on like tobacco) of this sort, but we are working through the gamut of substances using the same model - looking at changes in the genomes of users versus non-users (it's striking). There's no reason this can't be applied to other substances, although the best results come from sampling a large group of individuals that consume a substance regularly.

The word is that the $1000 genome is not possible right now, but it is. We run more samples than anyone else in the SE. That, along with our facility's status as a CoRE allows us to do a lot of wheeling and dealing in order to test out new technologies (that we get at a discount as the first customer) and do trades for services and equipment.

We primarily support our own researchers, but with our reputation growing, we now have large private projects (from big companies) coming in the door frequently. I can't confirm or deny that we've done personal genomes, but theoretically the tools and protocols exist, as well as the critical mass needed to make it cheap. And lab ninjas that can be in and out with data before dawn.

edit 1: also your family physician will have a desktop sequencer in his office within the next 9 years to provide personalized treatments. The future is here!

edit 2: found it.

edit 3: another guy (Dr. William Valdar) working on the effects of drugs on genomes.

edit 4: I believe you can volunteer as a test subject in these clinical studies if you meet the criteria, but that's just hearsay in the department.

I largely don't care about politics any more because my individual influence on it is limited. I find my energy is better directed towards improving my personal quality of life.

My views are close to those outlined in 'How I found freedom in an unfree world' which are roughly libertarian, but I also agree with some social policies as they influence the culture and I don't want to have to raise kids inside a gated community.

Good points.

In addition, if you read up on the subject (e.g., by reading Anne Fausto-Sterling's [Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality](http://www.amazon.com/you-can-put-anything-you-like-here-i-have-put-a-unicorn-and-a-piglet/dp/0465077145 "Read a book! :)"), you actually find that “biologically female” itself as a nebulous term. You have external physical anatomy, sex organs, genes, and so on. Of course for most of us, these all align the same way (and match gender presentation and gender role), but the key here is that it is most but not all.

For that reason, I have a bit of a problem with the name of this subreddit too. By being “cute” and saying “two X chromosomes”, we slap some women in the face, namely women with Turner Syndrome (only one X), and AIS (XY chromosomes), as well as allowing in some men, such as those with Klinefelter's syndrome (XXY).

I didn't experience anything that Mystics and shamans haven't been experiencing for tens of thousands of years. I'll only get specific about my experiences with fellow Mystics, shamans. But I might consider getting specific with a skeptic who has read all the following books.

https://www.amazon.com/Varieties-Religious-Experience-Study-Nature/dp/1439297274

https://www.amazon.com/Varieties-Anomalous-Experience-Examining-Scientific/dp/1557986258

https://www.amazon.com/Mysticism-Evelyn-Underhill/dp/1463612354

https://www.amazon.com/Trickster-Paranormal-George-P-Hansen/dp/1401000827

If you feel like a bitch then you are a bitch.

Get into shape and learn how to fight. Did your father not teach you this?

No one respects a weak man, regardless of what the internet tells you.

EDIT: Sorry, I was too glib and too assholish. That's what I get for posting before coffee.

Read this book and figure out for yourself what you are willing to take and what requires you to fight.

It's a no bullshit examination of the physical, psychological, social, legal, and economic consequences of fighting and it contains graphic photos of post-fight injuries to force you to think about how YOU will deal with fighting. And it's not full of tough guy macho posturing either, which is refreshing for books on martial arts and violence. It's really very practical.

The Little Black Book of Violence: What Every Young Man Needs to Know About Fighting

I would definitely suggest either

The Art of Manliness - Manvotionals: Timeless Wisdom and Advice on Living the 7 Manly Virtues
http://www.amazon.com/Art-Manliness-Manvotionals-Timeless-Virtues/dp/1440312001/ref=la_B001UES87M_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406065160&sr=1-4

or

The Art of Manliness: Classic Skills and Manners for the Modern Man
http://www.amazon.com/Art-Manliness-Classic-Skills-Manners/dp/1600614620/ref=la_B001UES87M_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406065160&sr=1-1

Good for you, you must feel real smart.
Maybe start with this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-End-Autism-Epidemic-Revealing/dp/1603588248
Or don't. Good luck. Peace.

Interesting discussion. I remember readinging Thomas Gilovich's How We Know What Isn't So: The Infallibility of Human Reasoning and one of the points he made was that in sports, the away team almost always receive harsher punishments from referees and are viewed as aggressors and penalized more.

He stated that the reasoning for this was that the darker colors away teams wear are associated with violence and aggression in western society so it is easier for referees to inadvertently reach biased conclusions so that a 50/50 call might actually be 45/55 or whatever.
Source

Perhaps this viewpoint on color carries on to race and 'colors' our perceptions of others subconsciously.

> Wealth and its correspondingly corrupt power are the real culprit.

I disagree. The problem is not wealth but humans per se. There is always someone who wants to be the boss and this is in any GROUP of humans. It doesn't matter if its a tribal society or a big nation. The difference is that in a big nation the power of the government is much stronger so there is a stronger need for checks and balances. When these fail, well, better be smart, don't try to fight the government head on, because you'll lose.

A good book:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Found-Freedom-Unfree-World/dp/0965603679/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228837816&sr=8-1

I would argue that within the current system of CS there is implicit oppression of gender and racial minorities. Providing access points for girls to get exposed to computer science isn't sexist, it's an attempt to balance the gender inequities in CS.

If anyone is really interested in the racial imbalance there are some great books that deal with this topic, two of my favorites:

Stuck in the Shallow End is about disparities in CS.
Whistling Vivaldi is about strereotype threat (whose principles are directly related to these issues).

Edit: I should add that a potential error in these programs is that in effect they may feed into developing the stereotype of girls being inferior in CS.

Some ideas in 4 categories:

Body Language:

• What Every BODY is Saying
  
• Unmasking The Face
  
  Speed Reading:
  
  
• Breakthrough Rapid Reading
  
  Evolutionary Psych / Behavior:
  
  
• The Blank Slate
  
• How The Mind Works
  
  PUA / Attraction:
  
  
• Bang
  
• Mystery Method

Honestly, get into STEM. Get everybody into stem. The reason people fall for psuedo-science so much is a fundamental lack of scientific literacy.

Even though the war that's being fought is cultural, it's only been made possible by the dynamics today by scientific literacy. Jordan Peterson himself has a background in clinical psychology and has years of Academic experience behind him, so he knows how to structure his talks to hit the right notes of the audience he has. The platforms that's enabling us to have these discussions are built by HTML, CSS, PSP and Python programmers. Mathematicians and statisticians structure and analyse the data that's used to gauge voter preferences and target impressionable people with propaganda and advertisements. If you're not extremely educated in this landscape, you're going to lose. It's easy to shit on people like Zucc as being an emotionless lizard man now but he created the platform that arguably controls a good amount of the public discourse.

We have computers in our pockets, and the majority of the people that use them don't even know how they work. If you haven't the privilege to get into a science or technology field then at least start reading books like Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World and some Thomas Gilovich.