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happiness

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Everything posted by happiness

  1. My study of kinesiology is 20 years behind me, but I remember a lot! these days I’m still exposed to a lot of musculoskeletal anatomy and physiology, but in a medical rather than exercise context (there is a lot of overlap which is why my exercise background allows me to understand medical stuff better than most laypeople).
  2. It seems the link I meant to post didn't come through. Just as well. The outline provided above is enough.
  3. I’ve had an itch to make content pertinent to me. Perhaps no one will care, but I’m still going to do it. I want to start by making a video about my unique form of exercise. In my own opinion, I have a high level of knowledge on this subject that is quite superior to what 99% of successful fitness influencers preach, although it’s difficult to convince anyone of this. The exercise philosophy I subscribe to is like Objectivism in that it is a heterodoxical truth (there is a nexus of leading trainers/influencers in this genre who are in fact Objectivists). Although none are very popular, Influencers in this genre of exercise have already made videos, and each excels at certain things. One is a master of the biology of exercise, one specializes in crunching studies in exercise physiology, another excels at practical exercise instruction. I’m trying to identify aspects of exercise that I excel at, that will be original. The only thing that I can do right now that I’m sure is reasonably original is explain my own intellectual journey and my own use of this form of exercise. In particular, I use this method to overcome a serious physical problem that would cut me off from strength training done any other way, hence allowing me to avoid the ravages of sarcopenia. This would be relevant to many people in a similar boat who have joint and spine problems, although I still assert that this is the best method of training even for healthy people. So I made a video that is kind of a subconscious brain dump of things I have to say on the subject. This is a very rough draft and it sucks, but it was my first attempt. To be sure, I rehearsed this—I don’t have the ability to talk for six minutes straight off the top of my head. in this video, I explained my background with exercise, my condition, and how this method of training allows me to continue training when I wouldn’t otherwise be able to. I briefly explain the overarching philosophy of exercise, then the particulars of this specific technique. Then I explain my routine and demonstrate how I apply it to myself in the context of my debilities and limitations. In closing, I anticipate objections from “haters,” flip off the camera, and declare myself one of the world’s leading intellectuals in the field of exercise. I can easily see that a lot of stylistic improvements (tonality, emotive speech, body language) are needed, and I will remove the tacky cursing and flipping off the audience at the end. These are easy fixes. The harder part is deciding a final script or outline. I consulted “The Art of Nonfiction” for guidance, and it occurred to me that I don’t know how to identify my subject and theme These could be: Me—I’m primarily making a video about myself. Exercise in general This particular form of exercise How I use this particular form of exercise to train through a serious physical problem. According to TAONF, the subject is what your article is about, and your theme is what you want to say about it. Rand recommends explicating exactly why you are writing to help clarify these issues. I never explicated why I made this, so I’m trying to do so now. I have a constellation of health-related interests, of which exercise is a crucial component. I have some original insights on these subjects, and I want to put them into the form of tangible content before someone else does. This video is only original in the sense that it shows how a person with a serious joint disease applies resistance training to good effect. I talk to people in online groups for people with joint and back pain who want to know how to exercise with their condition, and a nicely revised version of this video could be of value to them. But I think on a subconscious level, I intended for this video to be an introduction that could serve several useful purposes as part of an overall platform. It seems I’m trying to showcase myself and my knowledge, even realizing that few people will care. I’m doing so in this video by explaining the basics of why and how I train this way. At the time I made this video, on a subconscious level, I envisioned myself posting other videos that I’ve had ideas for, where I attack the ideas of other fitness influencers whom I see as frauds. Then people click on my channel and see this: a guy who is disabled and has an unremarkable physique and all of 22 followers is claiming to know a lot more than fitness influencers and professional athletes with millions of followers. Most people laugh or block me, but one person in 100 sees the logic of it and follows me. So is my subject really exercise, or is it actually ME? And if it’s me, is this aim legitimate, or am I in danger of becoming a pretentious second-hander whose aim is clicks, likes, and follows rather than originality and legitimacy? Thanks for any insights!
  4. Hypergamy is neither good nor bad. It is metaphysically given, a fact of nature that arises from the biological differences between men and women and the evolutionary pressures that brought our species into existence. Rather than being a good or bad thing, hypergamy is the standard that determines what is good or bad for you. I like to say, “hypergamy is what brings women to me.” Of course, in actuality, it’s what brings certain women to me, and repels others. Understanding it helps me decide where to invest my resources.
  5. It would be fake names, free email addresses, and real, unique phone numbers. It’s the company’s choice to respond or not. Is seeking a job for this specific benefit different from seeking a job for any other benefit or form of compensation? I do not understand how self funded insurance works, but my understanding is that companies are somehow insured for their employees’ medical expenses. I still, it is a form of lying.
  6. The industry leader in interventional orthopedics (a new form of medicine that uses biologics instead of surgery to treat orthopedic problems) has a corporate program where they partner with self-insured employers to cover their services, which are otherwise cash only. I want to find an employer that provides this as a benefit, but the list of companies is not public. The only way to find out if an employer provides this benefit is to submit an inquiry through the medical company’s website. You include your name, phone number, email, and employer, and they get back to you and let you know if you are covered. So in theory it would be possible to use fake names and contact information to find out which large, self-insured employers partners with them. But it seems that this word, in fact, be highly unethical, and therefore not the best way to go—correct?
  7. Today I saw a demonstration of an app that counts objects of the same type in a picture. The software isolates a similar characteristic among concretes in a visual field and performs an act of induction to form a concept. Computers are using human epistemology. Others have already noted the similarities between Objectivist epistemology and object oriented programming. Is it possible that a sufficiently advanced form of AI, obeying a rational epistemology and lacking the capacity for evasion, tell us that Objectivism is the correct philosophy, and that capitalism is the correct social system?
  8. My friend has a 7 month old baby. I don’t have much experience with babies, and I disagree with how they interact with him. I think this type of behavior around babies is extremely common. Baby talk, high pitched voices, peek-a-boo, making stupid faces and unintelligible noises that represent nothing, saying overly unrealistic and fanciful things that the baby can’t even understand. Most baby toys are also really stupid IMO, even by baby standards, and I’m concerned that they may screw the babies up epistemologically. It’s not that I don’t like babies, but that I don’t want to interact with them in such “babyish” ways. Admittedly, I’m struggling to put my finger on exactly what I object to here—what does the term “babyish” mean if not in a manner that’s appropriate for a baby? If I had a baby, I would be more apt to carry him around with me while I do regular things, or try to think of ways to stimulate him that are based on helping him grasp objective reality. I get that maybe I just can’t relate to being a parent, am just too boring and slow witted to thing of anything to say to a baby, and that times when you just might want to do anything to make a baby smile, laugh, or stop crying. But how can you do this without doing things like making dumb giraffe sounds when you’re not a giraffe?
  9. Did I influence Thomas Massie to call health bureaucrats snake oil salesman? I think I did! 😁
  10. So, I have a popular media outlet accompanying me for my upcoming offshore stem cell treatment escapade, this being my third such treatment. It’s going to be on TV. They are going to interview me, and I need to be able to articulate why I can’t get this treatment in my own country. The fact that the FDA is blocking it is easy enough to explain, but I’m struggling more with figuring out how to succinctly explain why they are doing so. There are a combination of political and economic conflicts of interests at work. The economic aspect is easier: trade groups representing incumbent drug companies want to control the trade of stem cell products, so they lobby the government for barriers to entry with the future goal of selling FDA approved stem cell “drugs” at very high prices and with no competition. The political side is a trickier because there are so many aspects of it, and I’m not sure which to emphasize, given that I’ll be answering interview questions and not giving a PowerPoint presentation. Politicians sell themselves to the public by pandering to anti-capitalism and promising to “protect the public” from evil businessmen selling snake oil. Most voters are uneducated enough to go for this, not realizing that the politicians are the bad actors they need protection from, and that regulation is the snake oil that’s taking years off their lives. Thee are health authoritarian types who simply live to control other peoples health decisions. The control is an end itself, and they don’t care what the actual decision is as long as they are the ones making it. These are the bureaucrats, who get their power from the politicians, some of whom are health authoritarians themselves. And then there is egalitarianism. In the West, the idea that everyone should have equal access to medical care is culturally dominant. If the government pays for medical care, or controls access to it, then 1) the government has to decide what treatments it will pay for directly, or allow people to access within the system; and 2) it will be strongly compelled to suppress other forms of medicine outside the public system for the sake of preventing discrepancies. I can’t discuss all these issues at length without sounding too scripted and long-winded. The leitmotif running through the whole thing is the government simply violates individual rights in the name of “the public health.” So I would appreciate any ideas on how to effectively answer the question of why the FDA blocks access to stem cell treatments.
  11. The Family Medical Leave Act forces my employer to let me take up to 12 weeks per year off of work for reasons related to having a medical condition. The company doesn't pay me for this missed time, but the state does, and because they're so incompetent, they pay me significantly more to miss work than I make in a day by actually going in. When I need to take time off for a medical procedure, I could use my normal sick and vacation time, or I could use FMLA time and save the regular allocation of time off for later use. If the company did not want me to use FMLA time, I would not do so, as it's a violation of their rights. This is a huge company whose business model seems set up to absorb the impact of FMLA, and the managers of my outfit don't seem to mind if I use it; in fact, they recommended it to me. But at the end of the day, either my absence hurts the operation, or I'm not providing value to the company, and not really needed. So, as an Objectivist, I am inclined to say that I should not use FMLA. By doing so, I am being evasive and slothful, and failing to advance in my life as much as I could if I did not allow myself to use it. Thoughts?
  12. I haven't studied the Kelley-Peikoff split and don't want to. I know only two things: I have the upmost reverence for Dr. Peikoff, and take anything he says seriously, including his repudiation of Kelley. While I don't consider him infallible or blindly accept everything he says, I do grant him great credence in matters I don't understand. I also know that Kelley's idea of "open Objectivism" is a contradiction on its face. That starts his study of Objectivism—the philosophy of non-contradiction—with a contradiction causes me to regard him with great suspicion.
  13. I would focus less on the meaning of “mandate” and more on the lines along which physical force are directed. The government can protect the individual against physical force initiated by criminals, or it can behave criminally and initiate physical force against the individual. Objectivism is anti-health mandate or anti-mandate in the sense of forcing the individual to act against his own judgement and interest for the sake of the “public health.” Construing “mandate” to include forcing you not to initiate force against others seems like context dropping or equivocation.
  14. The mind is the human tool of survival. If the climate changes adversely, our only chance is to unleash free minds to counteract the threat.
  15. I don’t think RT’s theories are based on rationalism at all. They are induced from facts of nature one can observe, and at least ostensibly vindicated by experience.
  16. Arbitrary: there is an afterlife in Heaven where we will be reunited with our loved ones, or where God will meet our justice. Wild speculation: maybe the huge filaments of galaxies we can see are analogous in scale to what sub atomic particles are to the human brain, tiny fundamental components of some greater superstructure, existing within the universe and still bound by the laws of the nature capable of recording and recreating the fact of an individual human consciousness. Logical conclusion: there is no reason to believe anything other than that your consciousness is extinguished upon your death.
  17. I know little of the background of writing Atlas Shrugged but I would think Rand would have consulted professional physicists for help coming up with a concept of something extremely elusive, but not impossible.
  18. I don’t know enough about physics to know. Not that Ayn Rand’s novels are the standard of truth and falsehood, but would Rand have wanted to base Galt’s motor on a concept so flawed that amateurs know it to be wrong?
  19. If something is impossible in reality, shouldn’t it also be impossible in an Ayn Rand novel?
  20. If the events of Atlas Shrugged are not possible in reality, what is the disconnect between the book and reality?
  21. Not that I am naïve enough to hope to live to see it, but is it possible for a free country to come about by any means other than a multi-generational cultural change that will swallow up the lives of everyone alive at the time of its inception? Could a core group of young Randian geniuses pull off an Atlas Shrugged amidst the chaos?
  22. I’d be more enthused if Musk worked on something like Galt’s motor, Rearden Metal, or life extension technology; something that would enable I and my contemporaries to lead better lives. Of course, he owes me nothing, and I respect his right to work on whatever project he wants. Is Musk’s goal of reaching Mars analogous to Columbus’ activities? The latter wanted to discover better routes for commerce, to make money. I don’t want to constrain a genius like Musk with my own small mind, but I don’t see that he’s Columbus. Is Mars a rational value? Is he going to turn it into a profitable enterprise in his lifetime? Are humans suited to flourish there? Is civilization so irrational that man needs a new planet now that all the good continents are taken? I don’t have the answers to these questions.
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