rkbabang

Exactly. The US is the absolute worst country, except for all the others. I can go on for hours about what is wrong with the US, but I'm still here and not going anywhere else. You can pick and choose within the US as well which is one of its great advantages. Living in NH, FL, or TX is much different from living in MA, CA, NY, or NJ. Unless you are taking a STEM program, college is mostly BS anyway. What we need is a school that removes all the humanities/liberal arts crap from the curriculum and prepares someone to become an engineer in 3 years rather than 4.

Exactly. Instead of deciding on what is moral and what is not on an issue by issue basis, he looked at all the organized religions and picked a pre-packaged morality from what was available. But it was still him making the decision, not some external being. He hasn't given us any indication that he had a discussion with God about any of this, just that he himself made a decision about what is true (Christianity) and what isn't (literally every other religion that has ever existed). He picks and chooses just like atheists do, only atheists are flexible enough to pick issue by issue, where he picked a package deal. It reminds me of the party system in politics. You pick a side then you can stop thinking. I picked blue so I'm for gun control, expressive taxation and regulation, gay rights, and the environment; or I picked red so I'm for lower taxes, no new gun control, no immigration, no trade with China, and bombing the shit out of the third world.

So you yourself are the final arbiter of what religion is true or not? Had you settled on Islam then that would be true and not the whole Jesus is god nailed to a cross thing? Interesting. You have the ability to decide what created the universe and what this being wants, but you have no ability to decide for yourself what's right and wrong? I just skip the whole god on a stick thing and go right to deciding my own morality.

Yes, I forgot. Theory 3: Out of all the religions any human has ever believed in, yours just happens to be correct. Ok.

Theory 1: god doesn't exist and they are both delusional. Theory 2: God's the universe's best troll. I'm partial to theory 1, but I do get a chuckle thinking about God messing with the minds of the faithful and LOL at the results.

Eventually maxis will realize crypto doesn't equal BTC. Not everything needs to have a monetary premium to be useful. You just restated what I said, but for different reasons. I said BTC != crypto and you said crypto != BTC. (BTC!=Crypto) = (Crypto!=BTC) Yes. I agree. Only BTC will have a long term monetary premium which makes it a completely different animal than anything else in crypto. Crypto (not including BTC) will also be tremendously valuable, but there will be lot's of money lost as well as a lot gained. There will be hot crypto assets which will eventually crash. It will be more akin to investing in companies, you will need to research what it does and who or what is running it, analyze its addressable market and what its competition is, what the roadmap looks like for improvement, etc. And right now, this early in, it is akin to investing in startups not mature companies, in an industry which hasn't existed very long. It is highly speculative, even if the potential rewards are immense. But my point was that no particular crypto, nor crypto in general, should trade with any correlation to Bitcoin.

Eventually people will realize that BTC doesn't equal crypto. I think it's prudent to have 10-25% of your net worth in BTC, but absolutely insane to have that much in dogshitmemetothemooncoin.

Most people DO think Nazis are bad. I think Nazis are bad too, but I also realize that if I lived in a Nazi society my thinking that Nazis are bad wouldn't matter. You said "is that fair?" earlier. No its not fair, the universe isn't fair and never has been. If you live in a society where most people have the same moral compass that you do then you are simply incredibly lucky. Ask someone starving in North Korea if life is fair. Ask the hundreds of millions tortured, starved, or murdered by Hitler, Stalin, Moa, Pol Pot, etc if life is fair. It isn't. There is no god doing these things, stopping people from doing these things, or making life fair. It's just us.

Have you brought it to an Apple store to see if they could look at it for you? I've still got an iPhone 10 and I've had no problem with ios 16

Yes exactly. Rape is wrong because we think it is. Again, what's your point? If you live in a society where most people disagree with what you think is wrong, then you are out of luck. For example I think taxation is wrong. In my opinion it is violent theft of property not morally different than someone putting a knife to your neck and demanding your money at an ATM on a dark street. But most people in my society think it's just fine, so I just have to live with it. There is no god making these decisions, just people.

Yes, what is your point? You could have been born a conjoined twin or with a cleft lip, or with a love of rape and murder. It IS pretty random. You inherit half your genes from your mother's side and half from your father's, but the specific genes you have from each is pretty much luck of the draw. Then there is random mutations of which we all have some (some more than others) which is also just random. So yes, you could have been randomly born without a sense of empathy and be someone who enjoys killing others. This only bothers you because it isn't how you were born, if you were born that way it wouldn't bother you at all.

Exactly. Also it might not even be that our repulsion to rape and murder gives us an evolutionary advantage (although I think it does), it could just be a side effect of something else that gives us an advantage. If trait A gives a massive evolutionary advantage, but causes trait B which is a small cost, it would still be worth it. So, say having the ability to put ourselves in another beings shoes and understand what that being is thinking and feeling, and thus what it will likely do, gives us a huge advantage, that "empathy" also comes with a revulsion to rape and murder may just be an insignificant side effect, evolutionarily speaking. Either way the universe is what it is and we have evolved the way we did.

You don't understand evolution very well. It isn't by sheer chance that we don't get high off of murder or rape. If wiring us that way gave us an advantage that's the way we'd be, the fact that most of us aren't wired that way tells me that having the moral compass we have is what gave us a survival advantage. There is nothing in the universe that cares about humans, except for humans.

Oh well, you win some and lose some.

+1 @nafregnum. As I said in my last post in the DIS thread. The only way to end something you think is immoral is to convince your fellow humans to agree with you. Slavery was opposed by a minority of people all throughout human history and no god or gods ever did anything about it. Once it was opposed by a large enough number of humans it ended. That is the only way progress in human rights is ever made, one human mind at a time. Zeus isn't going to strike anyone down with a lightning bolt and Yahweh isn't going to smite you dead for enslaving someone. Your neighbors who think it is wrong and will try to stop you.

I'm just going to hold my 2025's and not add anything. By then this will have played out one way or the other. It is a small enough position that I'm prepared to just consider it a total loss if that's how it turns out.

I wish I had the time to read every post to this board. I tend to follow certain topics, basically stocks I own or are interested in + some general topics that interest me. I probably miss a ton of good discussions and ideas in the topics I don't read, but there is only so much time in a day. My goto link is "activity -> unread content" then I click on the topics of interest.

Ouch! I own some 2025 $12.5 calls which are down substantially today.

I think grocery stores will be the last physical retailers to get rid of human cashiers. I don't mind going through self checkout if I have 3-5 items, but for a weeks worth of groceries, I'd just assume stand there and wait while someone else rings it all in and bags it.

Since no one can predict the price of natural gas (that being the topic) we might as well talk about cooking. Wok cooking would be a downside to induction, but I never use a wok and don't own one. I have all induction compatible pans with flat bottoms. The only gas exposure I have in my portfolio is WMB. I've owned it for a few years and it pays a nice dividend 5.8% at it's current price, but my cost basis is $24 so 7.3% on my initial investment.

induction > gas > electric. I switched to induction ranges and will never go back. You get the same instant control you get on gas with quicker more powerful heating. And nothing gets hot except the pan. If a little kid turns on a burner which has no pan on it nothing happens.

Exactly, the Fabian society has had a long term plan for over a century to turn the planet into a prison ruled by the elites. That is why I specifically said that I’m talking about the US.

No, neither. The right has traditionally been more an enemy of freedom than the left, it is only the last 10-15 years or so that the left has been far worse. So much so that it is easy to forget that the right used to be the main enemy of freedom, especially if you are somewhat young. (I’m talking about in the US, not Europe or Asia).

Probably disabled by your company for your protection.

Those on the right can often be more oppressive than even the extreme left. The book that @Dave86ch recommended somewhere on CoBF explains this quite well and is worth the read. It's called "The Network State" (https://thenetworkstate.com/) (https://www.amazon.com/Network-State-How-Start-Country-ebook/dp/B09VPKZR3G) Both the left and the right can be broke into two groups, the people of the state, and the people of the network. On a topic like Bitcoin the people of the network (on both the left and the right) will hold similar views and the people of the state (on the left and the right) will hold similar views. The people of the network tend to be younger (on average) and the people of the state tend to be older. The network is the 3rd leviathan (religion being the first and the state being the 2nd). The transition from the 1st to the 2nd (called the Renaissance, industrial revolution, ...) has been complete for a while in the western world, not so much in other parts of the world. The transition from the 2nd to the 3rd has barely begun. The next hundred years or so is going to be an interesting time indeed for humanity as the transition is made.