Consept

Nah i dont think Brazil are the same as back in the day, too much reliance on Neymar at the moment and hes not really a great leader. I think Spain actually looked great in the Euros and were unlucky not to win it, so I'd say them and France are most likely the favourites, Benzemas playing the football of his life this season but he whole squads top level. Argentina might do something and then for an outside team im gonna go for Uruguay

Dodging bullets like Neo! Glad you got out unscathed, I would say in general investing doesnt have to be a waste of time and energy, for me personally i just have highly diversified funds and put money in every month on auto pilot, I am down a like 8% but not really putting much attention to it I get where youre coming from with some of your points, ultimately youre choosing to make this gamble and youre aware of the downside so that is up to you. Part of the reason I never really liked crypto is the volatility, I dont think i could sit comfortably knowing that at any moment half my investment could be wiped out and thats really enough to put me off. As @ZzzleepingBear said I think you are mis-defining what a pyramid scheme is, as humans we need trade so if I want petrol (as we say in the UK) in my car or food in my stomach, I have to do a deal with someone and what im paying for is not only the food but everything in that supply chain, so thats included in the price but then also, the market depends on what people are willing to pay for it. Either way they are getting something that they consider valuable and worth using what they worked for to pay for that. In a pyramid scheme the value is mainly based on speculation and the idea that you can sell whatever it is to someone else for a higher price. So in the example of bitcoin, it has no inherent value as in theres no use for it, everyone literally only wants it because they think they can sell it to someone else for more. What you described with the other commodities is just how markets work, yes theyre not perfect and companies will try and maximise their returns and there are many entities on the supply chain, but ultimately they are providing something use to people who need/want it. You could argue Gold functions similar to bitcoin which wouldnt be completely wrong, but the key difference is that gold is used in the world, in jewellery, wires etc. Also there is a history with gold that spans centuries, that doesnt necessarily mean it will always be worth something but the foundation it has would give me at least more confidence that its not just going to go to zero. So I would maintain that crypto is mostly a pyramid scheme in a way thats very different to other commodities.

Not posting to gloat, genuinely feel for anyone that lost money in the last week or so, the Luna drop was insane. But Im just curious where people are at with crypto now, have you given up? Are you going to put more money in and double down? Have any opinions changed?

The UK, where I'm from, does a lot of the things you mentioned, including giving free gym memberships. In fact here's a breakdown of what they do and the scale of the problem - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-matters-obesity-and-the-food-environment/health-matters-obesity-and-the-food-environment--2 Obesity is still a massive problem here, people actually protested when they reduced the sugar in soft drinks. Point is the government can only do so much to get people to make the right choices for themselves let alone others especially when disinformation is so prevalent. I'm not really for any mandates but I'm also not for disinformation and conspiracy theories actively clouding people's judgement. I can also understand why a work place might require their workers to get a vaccine if it affects the workplace.

Interesting video from Rebel Wisdom, one of the speakers talks about a test facebook group 'Monster Island' that had zero moderation. Quite relevant to a lot of the topics that pop up on this forum - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nNk7fvxiGM This is the original Monster Island article - https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2020/10/monster-island-free-speech-experiment/

I'd be happy for them to mandate exercise I just don't see how it could work in practise. Like if someone really doesn't want to work out how would you get them to do it? Would they lose their job if they don't work out, how would that help anyone? Would you track the amount of hours per week? The amount of money it would cost just to enforce, you could put that into the health sustem. It just seems a lot of work and restrictions vs a vaccine which is literally 5 mins of your time, much more easy to mandate.

Another way to look at it is, society was completely free and the natural order of things brought us to where we are now, so our society now is the product of what happens when given complete freedom

We have a good idea, if you read the article posted in my first post it talks about an unmoderated forum a guy ran as an experiment for 4 years

I think the key thing with vaccine and the pandemic is that its a community issue and can affect many people, so thats the intention if there are mandates, which seem to only come into play when a person is in a community. For example if you work in a hospital you may have to take one or lose your job but this is specifically because you have to be around other people who may have underlying health conditions. If you live in the woods or just have a job that doesnt have much interaction with others then no ones going to force you. This is very different to abortion which only affects the mother and unborn child. People also say things like 'why arent we mandated to eat healthy or exercise?', again this doesnt affect others. The government generally give you suggestions (not the best) on how to be healthier but they cant really mandate things that only affect you. So there has to be a hard distinction between these two things. Regarding whether abortion should be allowed as is said above you have to draw the line on where life starts, i think its a difficult thing to do, what i will say just to throw something in there, is that its very possible that parents who dont want kids but are forced to could actually cause the kid more suffering but not giving the kid the love and attention they need. This was talked about in the book Freakonomics where they gave an example of the abortion being made legal in a particular city and the crime rate dropping 15-20 years later. So you could make the argument that unwanted kids actually suffer more and cause more suffering.

The Internet is basically lots of tiny vacuums that suck radicals into it. They then become more moderated as the audience grows in which case radicals are pushed out or leave to find another tiny corner where their views can be tolerated. Large websites can only occur because of moderation. If a website 'stays true' and has minimal moderation it usually stays a tiny corner. If no moderation truly worked on a large scale you would have a massive site that has no moderation already in existence, you can't really backtrack and take a site that got big with moderation and then take that moderation away. It's like taking the safety features out of a car once everyone's bought it because its safe.

I think everyone probably feels the same to some extent. The key I think is the awareness around it and ultimately that's what we're all trying to do, become more aware. So if you post with this awareness you're posts become more authentic and then its easier to accept when others don't validate you because you are just being true to yourself.

Not at the moment but it's definitely an interesting topic and one I'll probably go in depth on, I'm looking to do some videos on a few different subjects so I'll keep you posted on it. Edit: actually I do have one talking about whether paying for an online course is a good idea, but tbh I want to update a lot of the content so I may have a different take on it now but have a listen anyway - https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/VckhK

I actually feel quite sorry for him, you can feel the pain behind what he saying in terms of looking for someone to blame for censoring him. The key thing as you say is that hes not accepted that his previous teaching could be harmful for women, there could be the argument that its a net positive as it does help guys and he was kinda getting them into spirituality and trauma release etc, but the problem was the whole pick up scene was so toxic. Its interesting how the brain works as he probably cant confront that reality so the only other avenue is this meta narrative. The problem is it doesnt at all solve the problems of free speech and this marketplace of ideas simply doesnt work, as has been proved with the pandemic and trumpism and other things, it doesnt take into account how strong the fear response is and how easily that can be manipulated to cause real world consequences.

Interesting insight and i guess you know him a little bit but it makes sense. I agree i dont think hes doing it for money but i think it would be hard to not be aware that when he talks about conspiracy orientated topics he gets more views, at the very least he will try not to alienate his audience that do believe in that stuff. For example in a recent video i watched he was talking about the will smith slap and he was very charitable to it being a set up although he didnt think it was, it jus struck me that although his point was the opposite of the conspiracy take, he still had to appease that side of his audience. Also i get the impression with him that he does want to get to almost Tony Robbins levels, that seems to be the goal and to get there so it would be hard to not take all these conspiracy fans with him. Having said that i think he does have excellent insights in terms of social and spiritual and i think its great that he can put those two together, because thats not often done. I just dont think he realises how these wild ideas affect his credibility.

Yeah i think its similar to how a lot of youtubers became right wing and trumpists, theres certain audiences that just yield better fruit in terms views and then money, although the money might not be important. If you think Rupert Spira is one of the most respected non-duality teachers in the world right now but only has 152k subs with around 20k-40k views per video. Compare that to Russell Brand who has 5.5 million subs and gets literally millions of views per video, add to that his channel blew up only when he started doing conspiracy content during the pandemic ( https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UCswH8ovgUp5Bdg-0_JTYFNw/monthly ) for a few years before it was growing slowly. His own spiritually focused channel has not seen anywhere near the growth of his main, now conspiracy orientated channel. So I think its interesting how easy it is to get drawn into whats selling, theres a huge incentive for Owen to lean into conspiracy stuff because his audience is susceptible to it, the way he talks sometimes is almost like he doesnt believe some of the stuff but he also doesnt want to condemn or say its stupid because he knows that a deal breaker for his viewers. This is the same with Brand, he'll say something like 'whatever your theory is on the vaccine...'. They may say that they have to do that just to get more viewers and once they get them in they can give them very important information, but im not so sure i think playing into it actually makes the viewers focus more on the conspiracy stuff as now this person they respect is kind of agreeing with them. Also its a good analogy for revolution, you can say that Brand & Owen are constantly screaming for one, but now that they have some power in terms of their audience, theyre very quick to manipulate this audience by playing into their audiences fears and getting them more engaged in this way, essentially doing what they criticised the mainstream media of doing, so this revolution of media is the same but not regulated.

It's sad that you see that as an attack

Do you ever question why you get into conflict with a lot of people on here?

You didn't do anything wrong bro, if you give advice the person has to be receptive to it, it's not on you how people take that. There's a difference between attacking someone and giving an uncomfortable truth

Good insights, keep em coming!

OK no worries, I'll take that answer, genuinely wish you the best with connecting with people x

Yes true but its not your job to fix people and if it was its very difficult. Also in a sense they don't really matter because we don't know them, we know you and are trying to help you, so in that way we can only advise you on how to grow and improve yourself. If you want us to condemn these people even if it is valid, that we have no context, for we can do that but I'm not sure it will help you. My question would be do you want advise on where you can grow or improve or do you want us to agree with you on the traumas of these other people?

OK I guess what I was asking is, is everyone else the problem or are you at least something to do with the problem? To me the fact that you are not taking responsibility in anyway for your situation would be a red flag. Taking responsibility could even look like you expected too much or you were too full on from the start. If you're expecting someone to be completely loyal and to like you intrinsically for you straight from the jump you have to know it just doesn't work like that, relationships have to built and for that time is needed. Most people initially will like you because you make their life better in some way and then eventually a deeper connection may be formed. But for you personally I think you need to recognise why you might be putting people off. This post is even a good example because essentially you wanted justification and people to agree with you that the people you were friends with are bad and that friendship itself is an illusion. Any attempt to address what you may have done and how you could grow have been shut down. This is very off putting for a potential friend because they will get all the blame from you for something not going right. I'm aware that you will even see what I've written as an attack on you, which is nit the case, but I'd encourage you to really go deep on yourself and look at where you may be going wrong in this aspect. I know this is hard to do but it is the only route, posts like this just enable behavior that has not been working for you.

OP would still be in the same position, maybe she'd feel more justified that she doesnt need to connect with others.

Would you say there's anything you're doing to push people away? Or is it mainly others lack of effort and/or the concept of friendship is an illusion?

No doubt this will be the case in the future but i think there will always be a space made available for people without those enhancements. For example in the body building world many people compete using steroids but there are also many 'natural' competitions. If you think about the whole womens category in sport in general it has been specifically protected from men because men will have an advantage over them. So i think there will always be an effort to have 'natural' competitions, the popularity of them may change but who knows