psychoanaleesis

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About psychoanaleesis

  • Birthday 09/03/1988

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    David Lee Mutia
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    I'm from the Philippines and I am one of few who have practiced the virtues stated by Ayn Rand even before I knew the words for my being. I thank her for naming my philosophy which is her own as well. I seek to understand objectivism more through this forum.

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  1. "In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit." -Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged , Part 3, Ch. 7 Buddhist scrolls might be good for research and historical purposes but I'm afraid in the end, it's gonna have to be this kind of buddhism that will have to step up to the plate of reason and science (not Objectivism per se). Heck, I'm still a student of Objectivism and ultimately, Philosophy. This guy states the similarities between us and them, sure. However, would he care to enlighten O'ists to their tenets, motives, reasons and goals. In fact, who is their representative if they are individualists or should I ask, "Who is your leader?" if they bow down to - or worse grovel at the feet of - another man. I bow down to reality and truth. Revere my intellectual forefathers (my ancestry of choice(?)).
  2. I guess it's time the smoke clears on some issues regarding this putative boogeyman of the Free World. From Forbes.com Read up on this one too: Cracked.com Derek Scissors talks about the myths behind America's "no. 2" (hint, hint) Please read the whole article. I'm not too about some terms so if someone here could paraphrase some economics lingo into plain English, I'd be grateful. This is nice [From the article page 3]: " Every discussion of the Chinese economy, including this one, should be taken with a truck's worth of salt." (emphasis mine) Maybe it's time to take a lil breather fellas? Here's the rundown: Myth No. 1: China is now the leading engine for global growth. Truth: China detracts from the rest of the world's growth in gross domestic product (GDP). Myth No. 2: China could surpass the U.S. as the largest economy in 10 years. Truth: There is a reasonable chance that China will never surpass the U.S. Myth No. 3: China will surpass Japan as the world's second-largest economy in 2010. Truth: China probably surpassed Japan several years ago. Myth No. 4: China is America's banker. Truth: If there was ever any Chinese financial influence, it is not there now. Myth No. 5: The U.S. and China are intensely interdependent--"Chimerica" has emerged. Truth: China depends far more heavily on the U.S. than the U.S. depends on China. Myth No. 6: China's controlled exchange rate is a central factor in the global economy. Truth: The controlled exchange rate is merely one symptom of a larger problem. Myth No. 7: China continues to reform its economy, with perhaps an understandable pause due to the financial crisis. Truth: China's market reform slowed sharply in 2002 and effectively stopped in 2005. Myth No. 8: China is rebalancing toward more domestic consumption. Truth: The dominance of investment over consumption in driving China's economy is intensifying. Myth No. 9: China's greenhouse gas emissions are about the same as America's. Truth: China's emissions are as much as 25% larger, and the gap is widening every day. Myth No. 10: China has an official program to substantially cut its carbon emissions. Truth: The goal is to cut carbon emissions intensity. Actual emissions will soar in the next decade.
  3. Nah, the difference of the 'oral tradition' back then Phil is that they couldn't record it back then. Now, I do agree with the clarity bit because reading it allows the emotional overtone simmer down. One could 'hear' the arguments made with subvocalization (voices in one's head) and come up with a well-informed response. Oh, luckily TED puts their videos into transcripts like the one I posted above.
  4. I completely agree Merlin because if it was an issue of objectivity, watching the vid would be as good as reading the print. I hope Ole Phil would read the whole transcript instead *snickers* He could have watched the vid, it would have been faster than the whole back and forth you two did. So Phil, wherever you are, as a favor to me too, I hope your response to NF's presentation would be insightful, critical and enlightening mmmkay?
  5. Here you go Phil. "One, competition. Two, the scientific revolution. Three, property rights. Four, modern medicine. Five, the consumer society. And six, the work ethic. You can play a game and try and think of one I've missed at,or try and boil it down to just four, but you'll lose." - N. Ferguson --Looking at it now, maybe the fifth should be a "producer society", if most people are "consumers" in truest sense of the word, then the list Niall proposed could break down and will become, in fact, "Killer" apps. What say you guys? Full Transcript: Let's talk about billions. Let's talk about past and future billions. We know that about 106 billion people have ever lived. And we know that most of them are dead. And we also know that most of them live or lived in Asia. And we also know that most of them were or are very poor -- did not live for very long. Let's talk about billions. Let's talk aboutthe 195,000 billion dollars of wealth in the world today. We know that most of that wealth was made after the year 1800. And we know that most of it is currently owned by people we might call Westerners: Europeans, North Americans, Australasians. 19 percent of the world's population today, Westerners own two-thirds of its wealth. Economic historians call this "The Great Divergence." And this slide here is the best simplification of the Great Divergence story I can offer you. It's basically two ratios of per capita GDP,per capita gross domestic product, so average income. One, the red line, is the ratio of British to Indian per capita income. And the blue line is the ratio of American to Chinese. And this chart goes back to 1500. And you can see here that there's an exponential Great Divergence. They start off pretty close together. In fact, in 1500, the average Chinese was richer than the average North American. When you get to the 1970s, which is where this chart ends, the average Briton is more than 10 times richer than the average Indian. And that's allowing for differences in the cost of living.It's based on purchasing power parity. The average American is nearly 20 times richer than the average Chinese by the 1970s. So why? This wasn't just an economic story. If you take the 10 countries that went on to become the Western empires, in 1500 they were really quite tiny -- five percent of the world's land surface, 16 percent of its population, maybe 20 percent of its income. By 1913, these 10 countries, plus the United States, controlled vast global empires -- 58 percent of the world's territory, about the same percentage of its population, and a really huge, nearly three-quarters share of global economic output. And notice, most of that went to the motherland, to the imperial metropoles, not to their colonial possessions. Now you can't just blame this on imperialism --though many people have tried to do so -- for two reasons. One, empire was the least original thingthat the West did after 1500. Everybody did empire.They beat preexisting Oriental empires like the Mughals and the Ottomans. So it really doesn't look like empire is a great explanation for the Great Divergence. In any case, as you may remember,the Great Divergence reaches its zenith in the 1970s, some considerable time after decolonization. This is not a new question. Samuel Johnson, the great lexicographer,opposed it through his character Rasselas in his novel "Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia," published in 1759. "By what means are the Europeans thus powerful; or why, since they can so easily visit Asia and Africa for trade or conquest, cannot the Asiaticks and Africans invade their coasts, plant colonies in their ports, and give laws to their natural princes? The same wind that carries them back would bring us thither?" That's a great question. And you know what, it was also being asked at roughly the same time by the Resterners -- by the people in the rest of the world -- like Ibrahim Muteferrika, an Ottoman official, the man who introduced printing, very belatedly, to the Ottoman Empire -- who said in a book published in 1731, "Why do Christian nations which were so weak in the past compared with Muslim nationsbegin to dominate so many lands in modern timesand even defeat the once victorious Ottoman armies?" Unlike Rasselas, Muteferrika had an answer to that question, which was correct. He said it was "because they have laws and rulesinvented by reason." It's not geography. You may think we can explain the Great Divergencein terms of geography. We know that's wrong,because we conducted two great natural experiments in the 20th century to see if geography mattered more than institutions. We took all the Germans, we divided them roughly in two, and we gave the ones in the East communism, and you see the result. Within an incredibly short period of time, people living in the German Democratic Republic produced Trabants, the Trabbi, one of the world's worst ever cars, while people in the West produced the Mercedes Benz. If you still don't believe me, we conducted the experiment also in the Korean Peninsula. And we decided we'd take Koreans in roughly the same geographical placewith, notice, the same basic traditional culture, and we divided them in two, and we gave the Northerners communism. And the result is an even bigger divergence in a very short space of timethan happened in Germany. Not a big divergence in terms of uniform design for border guards admittedly, but in almost every other respect, it's a huge divergence. Which leads me to think that neither geography nor national character, popular explanations for this kind of thing, are really significant. It's the ideas. It's the institutions. This must be truebecause a Scottsman said it. And I think I'm the only Scottsman here at the Edinburgh TED. So let me just explain to you that the smartest man ever was a Scottsman. He was Adam Smith -- not Billy Connolly, not Sean Connery -- though he is very smart indeed. (Laughter) Smith -- and I want you to go and bow down before his statue in the Royal Mile; it's a wonderful statue -- Smith, in the "Wealth of Nations" published in 1776 -- that's the most important thing that happened that year ...(Laughter) You bet. There was a little local difficulty in some of our minor colonies, but ... (Laughter) "China seems to have been long stationary, and probably long ago acquired that full compliment of riches which is consistent with the nature of its laws and institutions. But this compliment may be much inferior to what, with other laws and institutions, the nature of its soil, climate, and situation might admit of." That is so right and so cool. And he said it such a long time ago. But you know, this is a TED audience, and if I keep talking about institutions, you're going to turn off. So I'm going to translate this into language that you can understand. Let's call them the killer apps. I want to explain to you that there were six killer appsthat set the West apart from the rest. And they're kind of like the apps on your phone, in the sense that they look quite simple. They're just icons; you click on them. But behind the icon, there's complex code. It's the same with institutions. There are sixwhich I think explain the Great Divergence. One, competition. Two, the scientific revolution. Three, property rights. Four, modern medicine. Five, the consumer society. And six, the work ethic. You can play a game and try and think of one I've missed at,or try and boil it down to just four, but you'll lose. (Laughter) Let me very briefly tell you what I mean by this,synthesizing the work of many economic historiansin the process. Competition means, not only were there a hundred different political units in Europe in 1500, but within each of these units, there was competition between corporations as well as sovereigns. The ancestor of the modern corporation, the City of London Corporation, existed in the 12th century. Nothing like this existed in China, where there was one monolithic statecovering a fifth of humanity, and anyone with any ambition had to pass one standardized examination, which took three days and was very difficult and involved memorizing vast numbers of characters and very complex Confucian essay writing. The scientific revolution was different from the science that had been achieved in the Oriental world in a number of crucial ways, the most important being that, through the experimental method, it gave men control over nature in a way that had not been possible before. Example: Benjamin Robins's extraordinary application of Newtonian physics to ballistics. Once you do that,your artillery becomes accurate. Think of what that means. That really was a killer application.(Laughter) Meanwhile, there's no scientific revolution anywhere else. The Ottoman Empire's not that far from Europe, but there's no scientific revolution there. In fact, they demolish Taqi al-Din's observatory, because it's considered blasphemous to inquire into the mind of God. Property rights: It's not the democracy, folks; it's having the rule of law based on private property rights. That's what makes the difference between North America and South America. You could turn up in North America having signed a deed of indenture saying, "I'll work for nothing for five years.You just have to feed me." But at the end of it, you've got a hundred acres of land. That's the land grant on the bottom half of the slide. That's not possible in Latin America where land is held ontoby a tiny elite descended from the conquistadors.And you can see here the huge divergence that happens in property ownership between North and South. Most people in rural North America owned some land by 1900. Hardly anyone in South America did. That's another killer app. Modern medicine in the late 19th century began to make major breakthroughs against the infectious diseases that killed a lot of people. And this was another killer app -- the very opposite of a killer,because it doubled, and then more than doubled, human life expectancy. It even did that in the European empires. Even in places like Senegal,beginning in the early 20th century, there were major breakthroughs in public health, and life expectancy began to rise. It doesn't rise any fasterafter these countries become independent. The empires weren't all bad. The consumer society is what you need for the Industrial Revolution to have a point. You need people to want to wear tons of clothes. You've all bought an article of clothing in the last month; I guarantee it. That's the consumer society, and it propels economic growth more than even technological change itself. Japan was the first non-Western society to embrace it. The alternative,which was proposed by Mahatma Gandhi, was to institutionalize and make poverty permanent. Very few Indians today wish that India had gone downMahatma Gandhi's road. Finally, the work ethic. Max Weber thought that was peculiarly Protestant. He was wrong. Any culture can get the work ethic if the institutions are there to create the incentive to work. We know this because today the work ethic is no longer a Protestant, Western phenomenon. In fact, the West has lost its work ethic. Today, the average Korean works a thousand hours more a year than the average German -- a thousand. And this is part of a really extraordinary phenomenon, and that is the end of the Great Divergence. Who's got the work ethic now? Take a look at mathematical attainment by 15 year-olds. At the top of the international league table according to the latest PISA study, is the Shanghai district of China.The gap between Shanghai and the United Kingdom and the United States is as big as the gap between the U.K. and the U.S. and Albania and Tunisia. You probably assume that because the iPhone was designed in California but assembled in China that the West still leads in terms of technological innovation. You're wrong. In terms of patents, there's no question that the East is ahead.Not only has Japan been ahead for some time,South Korea has gone into third place, and China is just about to overtake Germany. Why? Because the killer apps can be downloaded. It's open source. Any society can adopt these institutions,and when they do, they achieve what the West achieved after 1500 -- only faster. This is the Great Reconvergence, and it's the biggest story of your lifetime. Because it's on your watch that this is happening. It's our generationthat is witnessing the end of Western predominance. The average American used to be more than 20 times richer than the average Chinese. Now it's just five times, and soon it will be 2.5 times. So I want to end with three questions for the future billions, just ahead of 2016, when the United States will lose its place as number one economy to China. The first is, can you delete these apps,and are we in the process of doing so in the Western world? The second question is, does the sequencing of the download matter? And could Africa get that sequencing wrong? One obvious implication of modern economic history is that it's quite hard to transition to democracy before you've established secure private property rights.Warning: that may not work. And third, can China do without killer app number three? That's the one that John Locke systematized when he said that freedom was rooted in private property rights and the protection of law. That's the basis for the Western model of representative government. Now this picture shows the demolition of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's studio in Shanghai earlier this year. He's now free again, having been detained, as you know, for some time. But I don't think his studio has been rebuilt. Winston Churchill once defined civilization in a lecture he gave in the fateful year of 1938. And I think these words really nail it: "It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs,the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained. That is civilization -- and in its soil grow continuallyfreedom, comfort and culture," what all TEDsters care about most. "When civilization reigns in any country, a wider and less harassed life is afforded to the masses of the people." That's so true. I don't think the decline of Western civilization is inevitable, because I don't think history operates in this kind of life-cycle model, beautifully illustrated by Thomas Cole's "Course of Empire" paintings.That's not the way history works. That's not the way the West rose, and I don't think it's the way the West will fall. The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos. That's one of the most profound insights to come out of the historical study of complex institutions like civilizations. No, we may hang on,despite the huge burdens of debt that we've accumulated, despite the evidence that we've lost our work ethic and other parts of our historical mojo. But one thing is for sure, the Great Divergence is over, folks. Thanks very much. (Applause) Bruno Giussani: Niall, I am just curious about your take on the other region of the world that's booming, which is Latin America. What's your view on that? Niall Ferguson: Well I really am not just talkingabout the rise of the East; I'm talking about the rise of the Rest, and that includes South America. I once asked one of my colleagues at Harvard, "Hey, is South America part of the West?" He was an expert in Latin American history. He said, "I don't know; I'll have to think about that." That tells you something really important. I think if you look at what is happening in Brazil in particular, but also Chile, which was in many ways the one that led the way in transforming the institutions of economic life, there's a very bright future indeed. So my story really is as much about that convergence in the Americas as it's a convergence story in Eurasia. BG: And there is this impression that North America and Europe are not really paying attentionto these trends. Mostly they're worried about each other. The Americans think that the European model is going to crumble tomorrow. The Europeans think that the American parties are going to explode tomorrow. And that's all we seem to be caring about recently. NF: I think the fiscal crisis that we see in the developed World right now -- both sides of the Atlantic -- is essentially the same thing taking different forms in terms of political culture. And its a crisis that has its structural facet -- it's partly to do with demographics. But it's also, of course, to do with the massive crisis that followed excessive leverage, excessive borrowing in the private sector.That crisis, which has been the focus of so much attention, including by me, [url="http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/niall_ferguson_the_6_kill
  6. I saw this on a friend's facebook wall. Perhaps I should have posted this under rants but I think under politics is where this belongs.
  7. Michael, I didn't know TED was partial to certain views. I thought it was like the Ford Hall Forum where Rand spoke -- or something... In any case, I see your point. Mr. Ferguson did not identify or endorse Capitalism per se (did not name it). Politically speaking, yes, I could strive to live with fellows who take a different metaphysical or epistemological view albeit can we expect them to be honest with others - mostly with themselves and identify their stance when asked? I wonder if they have something to show and offer goods instead of the mystical tricks and mind warping lies they spread as you say. *Sigh* Here's hoping in the spirit of Nietzsche.
  8. I don't know who this woman is, but I wouldn't even think of getting someone as high as a senate seat anywhere in the world with what she said. How can a contract, even a "social contract" at that, have "underlying" terms or implications? Contracts are supposed to be explicit, clear to all the invested parties and enforceable by the laws of the land. The truth is, the businessman never asked for any of it if it came from society at large. They paid their dues to have what they want and invested based on the prevailing conditions. Neither did the "workers" whose parents made it a point that they go to school. The phenomenon of "public property" that Ms. Warren points out came from a choice of each individual's selfish motivation that they are better off sharing the expenses of their neighbor. They were hedging their funds. The businesses - being entities that aim solely facilitate to create wealth - under such a system, took the brunt of it via the premise of, "the richer you are, the more you should pay" - but that is a deadly, abhorrent concept. I could sympathize if businesses found a way to exploit that system back then, in the industrial revolution and now since that is what its brain or owner does best - capitalize. The businessmen would have found workers, hired them overseas or took their business elsewhere had there not been enough resources around. They capitalize and take advantage of what is around especially as you see now that they flee from the arbitrary, on the fence, control of your government to one that has absolute but clear controls like China. They'd rather end up in a system where they know they will be robbed and be left to die than somewhere where they are asked by society to give their riches to looters and act nicely about it as if it was all voluntary. The businessmen or only a handful of individuals see the potential in things that most people cannot even fathom. They have the vision, plans and means to pursue it. They have the courage to initiate, take risks and, if needed, withstand the losses. They need fellows who can share that, appreciate those things with their individual judgment and selfish interest at heart. Back then, and even more so now. They are men who created wealth on their own independent pursuit of happiness. They are self-made men. A self-made man is the true American. --If Ms. Warren is personifying the concept of the businessmen or the capitalists, pioneers, individuals she must be talking to an absolute. That is, she is speaking to those that understand nature, have selfish goals and motivations and are self-formed by their vision of what man's life should be. She should be saying something equivalent to, "let's benefit from this endeavor mutually..." instead she played the guilt card or, "we're all in this together..." very un-American, a very sub-human response. She toyed with baser emotions rather than appealed to reason - it makes me sick.
  9. I think u misspelled. Isn't this supposed to be "A trick question..."?
  10. I just noticed. Obama's smile is fake. If the reason why he raised his hand is the one mentioned above and it was a spontaneous reaction (not due to a teleprompter), it indicates that he was probably displeased by the "joke" but his movement shows otherwise (scrambling to stay in his seat perhaps?)
  11. Philippine President Aquino wearing the bright blue tie to Obama's left. Looking like a retard as always. No policies, no principles just a new slut on his bed every night according to his chauffeur who told a friend of mine.
  12. Adam: Has it not been proposed (here in OL or somewhere else in the interwebs) that Obama was actually a manchurian candidate and now incumbent? If you really want to lord over others, don't bank on the wealthy and wise, those people have limits and standards. Instead, let the hoi polloi lift you up and over and they'll also have you use their backs to sit on as your throne. And boy, is the internet the place to be when it comes to the masses. In fact, the tactics you mentioned were the same that the Philippine President also used in his campaign. If I remember correctly, Obama-rama even reached these shores during election period there. Yes, Adam, I know who's 50 Cent... I actually happen to like his rap songs too Baal: Avoidance of polemics is effective and refreshing. Add that dry euro wit and accent, it's becomes captivating as well.
  13. Most of what you assume is wrong, in this case you're not sophisticated enough to tell one way or another. You insulted my argument, while at the same time failing to actually address it. So it is safe to assume that you're an obnoxious nitwit, particularly given that you think that copy paper gets moldy after a year; it's not "highly perishable." Fruit is "highly perishable." Paper stores for a long time. Please explain why I must point this out to you. Shayne Your argument when you quoted me basically boiled down to this: It is better to consume now than store it because there are risks and the universe is malevolent or unpredictable ergo it is not worth storing things that endure and are hard to come by and is universally recognizable as such. Is this the kind of metaphysics you subscribe to? Gold has been used as a standard of currency because it is as rare as cowry shells are used by a tribe somewhere. But independently, in almost every civilization, men held it as a value and used their governments to spread the news or "back it up" and store it - for a fee - against groups who wish or try to loot. In a rational society, the best bank and holder of any standard the society - its individual citizens - believes to be righteous is the government. Are we still talking about concretes? Sigh... Copy paper already has notable changes in quality after a year - even if it didn't get moldy and would not be of equal value as a new one. If I had new copy paper, what use would I have for your old one? But let's exchange an ounce of 24k gold, one mined this year and one mined last century - barring sentimental value and use- I'd raise an eyebrow, shrug and say, OK. I insult your argument? You insult the reason and ability to plan long-term since according to your argument, there can be no certificate of his achievements to be shown save for a day or a week. Whether or not the government endorses your currency, the fact remains that your fellow values it because you both know its rarity and other properties which make it objectively valuable. In a land where gold cannot be found or hasn't been discovered, the principle applies: rarity, permanency and use make something of value.
  14. To the handicapped, a walk in the park is gymnastics. Are you a moron? So you mean to say that a moldy paper is as good as one that is fresh from the presses? Hardly. OK, so you are a moron. Shayne Sorry. I assumed you're cognitively sophisticated. Oh you clever boy...how'd you gather my intelligence from clarifying your proposition? If I was wrong, explain. If I was right, agree. you said, "Sell 1-year-old copy paper for brand new copy paper." (emphasis mine) so I take it as an old highly perishable material still holds an equal value to a new one.
  15. Everything is "perishable" in the relevant sense, even gold. Supposing you want your gold reliably secured, you are going to have to pay some kind of storage/security fee, and you are subject to the political winds (yes, they will break into your safe deposit boxes and take your gold). You could try to store the gold yourself, but there is a risk that someone finds your special hiding place and steals your gold. These risks are a cost. So, no matter what you do, your gold will, over time, be whittled down to nothing. It is, in effect, perishable. What is the rate by which gold perishes as compared to other things? That is a highly variable thing, depending on technology and political context. One can't assert that oil is more perishable than gold in the relevant sense without doing a complicated analysis. Shayne I don't think mental gymnastics is necessary here. Can one bring back the gasoline that has been used as a fuel? Because gold can be recovered from the things that used it quite easily I hear but that is not the case with other things such as oil or copy paper or corn. So you mean to say that a moldy paper is as good as one that is fresh from the presses? Hardly. But an ounce of gold today would still be an ounce of gold 50 years from now albeit their purchasing power might be different. Oil would degrade after decades of not being used but is not the case for gold. Are you implying also that people are traitors by nature since they will break the deal we have made - eventually? My fellow cannot be trusted? That even in a rational society, the government established by reason will turn its back and wreak havoc? Revealing much? I'd gladly pay security fees same as I pay for everything else. The beauty of life is knowing you can afford it.