Consept

I think this is a misunderstanding of 'freedom'. If you think about there are many laws and restrictions placed on you in daily life, let's take one for example, driving a car. To drive a car you need to do a test, practical and theory, you need to have a compliant car, you need insurance, road tax etc etc. One could argue that this is a restriction of freedom as if I think I can drive, I should be a better judge than the government and I don't want to jump through all these hoops. I could say the goverment is creating an apartheid against those who don't want to jump through these hoops by making it illegal to drive. In reality we know its necessary because if we have people who haven't passed all these tests it can cause a lot problems in practise, for everyone who wants to drive. You might say 'well this completely different', I mean not really but if you want a closer example, we've needed vaccines to travel to certain countries for decades, shots for malaria, tetanus etc this is of course to protect the person but also the local population from them spreading it. It would be quite ridiculous for someone to say the government is controlling their individual autonomy if they don't want to take it. So the method of placing restrictions on you if you don't follow a certain measure is something that almost has to be for a functioning society. The only difference with covid is that it's a sudden measure bit of course its a sudden thing that happened, keep in mind when measures such as seat belts came in people protested those as well. If you accept that premise then the only argument would be that you think covid isn't real and the government just want to control you for the sake of it or that they've got it completely wrong. Which I'm not going to argue here but personal choice would be to go with experts over conspiracy theorists research.

Will a writer ever create text that will let you know how it feels to eat a banana if you've never tried one?

@Danioover9000 I get where youre coming from and of course as you say some unlucky albeit few people, will get legit side effects. Ultimately it is a measure of risk, is the virus more damaging or is the vaccine? Imo the virus is way more damaging, as in its not even close, but that doesnt mean the vaccine is perfect of course. But of course stay safe and i wish you the best in getting over these issues. This is true, all meds do have side effects. Did you know for example that ibuprofen has been reported to kill over 16,000 people and hospitalise over 100,000 per year just in the US alone? (Deaths are prob closer to 3200 but either way) As far as i know the vaccine is nowhere near those numbers and this for a med that you can buy over the counter and administer yourself. Also less people take ibuprofen (21m) than the vaccine, so percentage wise its actually a lot higher. But ive never heard anyone complain or protest about ibuprofen, does this not seem hypocritical to you that you would be so against a vaccine on the basis that its dangerous but not even bother with other drugs that have been proven to be much more dangerous? This is before we even get to opiods and other medications, why not focus on these more pressing issues?

Thank you bro. To answer your question im slightly weary about giving direct advice because ultimately i could be wrong, although i am currently studying a financial advisor course im in no way an expert. My intention with the post was to give some facts on what i believe to be happening and then people can make their own minds up as to what to do. The reality is you could very well make money from Bitcoin but just know if you are making money from it youve just know someone else has probably lost money, i also doubt that everyone will make 60x their money, nothings impossible but i just cant see it, what goes up must come down. Also keep in mind it only takes a few of these whales to cash out and bitcoin will drop heavily, a lot of retail investors are not seasoned and will get very worried if it freefalls. That being said even if it does drop bitcoin could go a lot higher before that happens. Another thing to keep in mind is that with something like Madoffs ponzi scheme, a lot of the people eventually recouped their money from those that made money and got out early, this is talked about in this FT article - https://www.ft.com/content/83a14261-598d-4601-87fc-5dde528b33d0 With bitcoin if it does go to zero there is literally no chance of you getting that money back. FT makes the argument that this ponzi scheme is actually safer than bitcoin. What i can advise is to only invest what youre willing to lose and recognise that this is very much a gamble. It shouldnt account for more than 5% of what should be a diversified portfolio. Personally im not a gambler and im perfectly fine with fomo so i probably wont put anything into it, Im invested in diversified funds and looking to get into property next year. I understand the desire to make a lot of money quickly, but really imo that time researching bitcoin would be better spent putting together a business that can provide value to people and make money, i think this is a legit better bet than bitcoin.

The fact that anti-vaxxers keep going on about it is interesting in of itself, why is it you have to convince others on your position? If you really don't want take it then don't. There are consequences for not taking a malaria vaccine if you go to certain countries, so it is what it is, unless you want to protest that too. The pov of the anti-vaxxer, esp on this forum, seems to be that everyone is just stuck in their echo chamber and they don't get the truth that you somehow hold. This forum specifically engages in critical thinking, as well there are many scientists and medical professionals on here. Did you ever consider that your information was considered and then decided that whatever risks you bring up are for outweighed by the net benefits? Either way a decision has been made by the person so realistically you're not going to convince someone, unless you can prove all the experts wrong and show how the vaccine is worse than covid.

They dont pay dividends directly, you are right but as late adopters put in money at a higher price it puts more worth in the pockets of the early adopters, the value is based on more people putting in money which is why early adopters or anyone whos invested, would encourage others to get in. It is beneficial to everyone but it works somewhat like a pyramid where its very beneficial to those at the top and a little beneficial to those at the bottom. When it drops its very detrimental to those at the bottom if theyve bought at a high price, whereas not so much in overall terms for those at the top. OK i want to be very clear on what i mean here, i probably have a similar definition to you though. So speculation is investing in something without much knowledge on it apart from the fact that you believe it will go up in the future. Now youre right, no system can really stop this from happening, but my central premise is that this is a pyramid scheme and that still stands, obviously all pyramid schemes are inherently speculative. The common belief with bitcoin is that its going to make everyone rich and my point is that a lot of people are going to lose out. Essentially an argument against this would be to say that its a pyramid scheme that is going to work out for everyone and i just cant see that happening. True but then land and other investments can pay out as they provide value to someone. If you buy some a rental property, you will probably be able to rent it out for continued income or worst case if no one rents it and it goes to zero, live in it yourself saving money on rent. Bitcoin doesnt pay out dividends or rent so the only way to make money is the price rising which you will need others to keep pumping money into it and storing value there Yes i agree, as a store of value it does make sense, but again i dont think people are putting in money just to store value, i think its about making as much as they can. It doesnt no, but i want to make a distinction between the technology and the way the tech is being used. People are buying in thinking this is some great equaliser and wealth is going to transfer (which ive heard firsthand from bitbros). Its simply not the case and those buying in at the top dont realise that when one of these whales takes a bit of profit, theyre the ones providing this profit. Agree with most of this. The trouble is again though, this hype is not going to last forever and i think when people dont see the returns they expected or another crypto overtakes or a whale takes out a chunk of bitcoin, the price is going to drop heavy. Most of the people in bitcoin dont love or care about bitcoin, they love money and theyre trying to pimp bitcoin for it, when that drys out there will be problems. But overall i like the tech i think it will change society but i think the pyramid aspect comes in because society is mainly orange and this is really a yellow technology.

Thanks for your comments first of all. I agree its not a very good replacement for fiat currency and it may not have been designed as such, however a lot of people are gambling on that being the case. Also my point was that it is purely speculative if its not going to be used for transaction, the speculative bet being that if i put something into bitcoin today, someone will pay me more for that at a later date. I was taking out the use case for it, which i guess you agree with from your comment. Its somewhat speculation as of course bitcoin is anonymous, but there are numerous publications that have looked into it and found out whos most likely to own them. Also this wouldnt really affect the numbers even if those at the top are all early adopters, its still the same pyramid structure. https://currency.com/who-has-the-most-bitcoin https://www.investopedia.com/articles/people/083016/who-are-top-5-bitcoin-millionaires.asp https://river.com/learn/who-owns-the-most-bitcoin/ Theres a lot more Yes we give the value to gold, but of course gold has a reputation spanning centuries, also gold is not priced at 50k an ounce, so in that sense as a store of value its been extremely consistent. Also should be noted people dont think gold is going to make them rich and so most investment portfolios dont have a large amount of gold, maybe 10% or so is usually recommended as a hedge. Regarding fiat currencies, again no one is holding them to make money in the future, the whole point is that it is consistent which is why it has its reputation, bitcoin because of the amount of speculation will have a different kind of reputation. That being said, blockchain is here to stay and can change a lot of things, however if this was a technology that people couldnt personally make much money from, they probably wouldnt care about it. Its the money potential that has led to peoples interest, not the tech itself. A pyramid scheme can still include a valid product, its just the value can be pumped up ridiculously. So im not arguing about the tech, im arguing most will find themselves in the grip of a pyramid scheme.

Im not disagreeing in some aspects, there of course can be a reflex of quick judgement and labels. In some senses this is how human beings almost have to operate as it would be difficult to delve into everything and fully understand it, this is why labels even exist in the first place to make life easier, of course there is the trade off that you will not be accurate in every judgement. I think simply having awareness of this quirk of having a human mind would solve a lot of issues, so for examples you recognise youve made a snap judgement and that you might be wrong. Having said that this snap judgement is based on whats happened previously, for example brands are built up on reputation in terms of good marketing or products, this ties an association of quality to a persons mind if theyve had good experiences with the brand, therefore they may just buy the product because the brand. This works the same with conspiracy theories, if someone looks into conspiracy theories and recognises that theres a certain faulty logic within them, they may not want to look deeper into more of them because of this brand or 'label', but theyre not necessarily wrong and even if they are is it worth the time to go through all claims just in case one might be right? From my personal experience i have some friends that are deep into the conspiracy rabbit hole and what i realised was that there was a massive weight of proof that they put on the scientific narrative as opposed to basically no weight of proof on their conspiracy. I would listen and ask questions but i realised this was more of a belief system than anything else, i spent a lot of time looking into what they said, most of the time i could see why they might think that but ultimately there was so much flawed logic. So then ive got to say do i spend time looking at all these conspiracies or do I look at them as theories that no expert agrees with and have spotty, arguable research, of course i will go with the latter. This information is completely dependent on what your agenda is in the first place. Of course to someone into conspiracy theories, theyll say that Canada is monitoring all its citizens and theres some nefarious thing going on, but their mind is set and already looking for this pattern and things that it can tie to this pattern. There have been countless theories that ive seen pop on social media that turned out to be proven wrong and im not talking about fact checking (although i think thats valid), for example there were military vehicles being transported in London at the start of the pandemic, people started claiming that the military was being brought into lockdown london, of course this never happened. The only information they had was video of the vehicles being transported on the motorway. Because their mind was primed, they saw something which is routine and turned into something completely different. Regarding the Canada stuff, logically it wouldnt make sense that if it is a conspiracy that they say exactly what theyre doing on a government website open to the public. Theres a fear of being watched and monitored which is a consistent worry of conspiracy people, but whats funny is the contradictions, most have phones, most dont live off grid, most have social media, so theyre literally opting into being monitored but then complaining on monitored platforms about being monitored, even after its come out that facebook was violating privacy, you cant make it up. But when the given reason behind monitoring is public health then they want to question that.

Heres a breakdown of the CIA thing, which itself could be considered a conspiracy theory - https://theconversation.com/theres-a-conspiracy-theory-that-the-cia-invented-the-term-conspiracy-theory-heres-why-132117 But going deeper into your original question. I get what youre saying as any theory that is different to the accepted one is labelled a conspiracy theory. This may seem egregious to you if you believe in one of these fringe theories. The question is though, 'should some theories be dismissed?' and I would actually argue that yes some should, probably whatever theory you believe there will be some aspect of it or some other theory that seems like nonsense to you. For example a lot of people might believe in 9/11 inside job but then might also believe that flat earth is complete bullshit, im sure they would argue that time shouldnt be spent researching flat earth when it can be so easily disproven. So people that dont buy into conspiracy theories believe this about most conspiracy theories, its just a matter of degrees. There has to be some criteria for dismissing theories, most people use a scientific criteria or take expert opinion on the subject. In my opinion what takes something into 'conspiracy theory' territory is when its 'self-locking', so for example the expert opinion wont be taking and in fact the expert opinion now becomes part of the conspiracy, as in they must be on it. People will often retort with, well expert opinion can be wrong, look at history, and although this is true, one, its the nature of science to disprove itself, its actually a feature not a bug, two, if they are disproven by someone, that someone is usually an expert in the field not someone who does 'research' without any expertise, and three, a scientific consensus logically makes the most sense to follow, at least more sense than the minority. I understand people dont like to be dismissed for what they believe in, but the emotional reaction would to me signal evidence that one is too attached to their theory. If you were taking a strict search for truth, an attachment to any theory or idea would actually hold you back from finding the truth. A hypothesis is an educated guess that youre trying to prove wrong, not trying to prove right. So theres nothing wrong with having a theory that is where investigation starts, but buying into the theory and attaching your worldview to it is the antithesis of finding truth.

I mean it depends on what your goal is, for me its long term investment, putting it into things that can hold and grow value . Crypto, apart from being highly volatile is not really tied to anything of value, for example a property or a company, in my personal opinion its not far off a ponzi scheme, although i accept that some form of it might become currency. So yes you can make money from it but that completely dependent on someone else losing money, at the moment anyway. Its just my opinion but i see it as a gamble and im not really much of a gambler, at most id put in 5% of my capital but really just out of fomo and in all honesty i dont even think i would do it.

Nope

Leveraging credit is fine if you have a proven strategy that you want to scale up. In your situation I would start small with what you have and try and put some kind of strategy together, really this is the testing period so if you make mistakes with $200 and lose it, it's not the end of the world. Whereas if you borrow money to run experiments and you lose that it will be even more difficult and take even longer to recover. So I would say either work with what you have or save up more and work with that. The knowledge is the most important thing now so just get started and things will become clearer

Because its infinite, so everything has to exist

Out of one matrix and into another, it's funny what we go through as humans

I hadnt actually got to the last bit of it and after watching it i think youre right. The problem is Jordan is stuck with this ideas you can see hes very inflexible, even when he saying them theres an anger and tension that comes with holding on. He cant really go against his normal points because his fan base is basically built on them, but you can see how impractical they are in this conversation. Of course the bystander effect is what keeps racism going, having grown up in London myself i know this first hand, its when you let it go thats the problem. The individual of course should be punished but people 100% need to take responsibility for allowing an environment where racism can even exist. For example there are many white households where the odd racist remark against black people might happen, however everyone involved might be very careful not to say this in public, if this is the case is it not likely that this racist sentiment will spill over in various aspects of peoples lives? Going by Jordans take, thats irrelevant as only the person who says something in public that could be deemed racist should be addressed not the system, in this case the household. This is obviously flawed, the public racism is just a spill over of the systemic.

Im not really a Peterson fan but i wouldnt say he embarrassed, i just dont think hes that educated on UK political issues, but he didnt pretend he did he was asking questions which seemed to be to understand more which i think is fair enough. There maybe a question of why he was even on there but i actually think it was interesting having an outsider asking obvious questions.

This sums it up perfectly

I think the issue is if you tell disenfranchised people that 'it's all your responsibility and you need to sort yourself out' it just doesn't produce results. If you think in terms of a child and a parent, if the child is being bad and disruptive, it would be ineffective for the parent to just say 'you need to be better, work out how to do that'. What might be more effective is if the child is given the tools to be better, support, love, community, positive role models etc. I agree that it doesn't help just to blame others for your situation but I think it is necessary to be aware of the past and the context of things, this in itself can be empowering because there are legitimate reasons for your situation. However once aware of this it's important to not use it as a crutch and take responsibility for it. But you have to appreciate this is not easy, most people even in wealthy circumstances, don't take responsibility for themselves, it just so happens if you don't in a poverty stricken area you will be heavily affected. To me it doesnt really matter what the left media says, I'm more concerned with solutions, most people in those situations probably couldn't care less, as I said in my personal experience the cuts to funding for youth services is definitely a masdive driver in inner crime and general disenfranchment. You cant really cut things like that which are proven to have a positive impact and then say 'well it's their own personal responsibility'. In theory it would be great if everyone could take responsibility for themselves that are in poverty but numbers wise, it just doesn't work like that, some will and some won't and its not really the case that it's even a choice, some are just not aware enough to make that choice, in which case there has to be help on a social level. Basically it's a complexed problem and you're not wrong, I agree in principal but there's just a lot more to it, which I can say from first hand experience.

I see this view a lot, that it's just personal responsibility, of course its very important but the fact is to change mindsets where people do take personal responsibility there needs to be education around that. I've worked in youth services and yes usually the family is at fault for having a negative mindset (this was not limited to black kids btw), but what created the really naughty kids was the whole environment which included teachers telling kids they'll end up in prison from about the age 7 or 8, having no strong, positive role models, having the school system basically give up on them, having criminals in their area groom them for crime. I don't think you appreciate how hard it is to get through that when your mind has been skewed essentially to think what is negative is good, it's hard to just say 'yeah I'm going to take personal responsibility', when you're not even aware of what that means. You need role models and people that care for you and can give you good advice and keep you on track. Also, in my country, UK, they cut youth services budget buy a massive percentage which led to the closure of youth clubs which then correlated to higher crime statistics. So there's an obvious link that once less effort is made on a social level with kids from poor neighbourhoods, there is more crime or at least more poverty mindset. Saying essentially, people just need to get hold of themselves and take responsibility, really minimises the problem and doesn't take into account the full context of it. The answer includes personal responsibility but is not limited to it. Kevin Samuel's has some good points as to what the problems are and possibly becoming aware of them, but his content is very simple, he has no idea about socio-economic factors or doesn't really look at how the mindset develops, usually he's talking to black, somewhat wealthy women, which is very specific and different to the issue of poverty mindset, it's it's own thing.

You have to learn how to deal with the defence -

By definition conservatives are trying to conserve the status quo, that naturally would bring more fear, anger and hatred as youre essentially fighting against progress which must be crazy stressful.

During the pandemic I let my hair grow out into a decent sized afro, it felt good in the same way the monk is talking about, didnt really have to worry about it, felt more free etc, one thing i noticed though is that i did get almost shamed by a few people for growing it out, not in any particularly insulting way, but to make me aware that this was not smart or like what everyone else is doing. It didnt really bother me but it is interesting how people put pressure on each other to conform to whatever is 'cool' in society and i dont even have large social groups but still felt a bit of pressure. I did end up cutting it if youre wondering, but just cos i got bored of it, had it well over a year

lol It really isnt, its just a thought experiment for both sides to look from a different perspective, if it was whataboutism I would have to say an actual thing that happened. But thanks for your reply though, i mostly agree

The flip of this is - what would be your opinion if a 17 year old Liberal kid went to protect the capital building from the protesters on Jan 6th and ended killing a couple people in self defense after being attacked? Would you say he had a right to be there or that he had as much right as the stormers, would your view be any different in that case?

In theory it would be self defense, he didnt randomly shoot people, but of course he shouldnt have been there with an assault rifle. If you go into a heated, protest situation of course walking around with an assault rifle is going to make things worse, theres a reason why you cant just be a vigilante on the street, its bloody dangerous. The argument that the protesters shouldnt have been burning things down is completely irrelevant for the same reason that anyone else committing a crime shouldnt be doing it but its not the place of random, untrained people to try and stop them and if they do its obviously going to cause problems which is why you have trained law enforcement in the first place. If you do try and stop someone committing a crime you need to weigh up the risks and accept the dangers, not travel however many miles to specifically put yourself in that danger.