happiness

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!
 
 

Only indirectly, as a reaction to the horrors of AI “reasoning”. Of course I am using “can” in the standard Objectivist way, as “possible, based on evidence”, not “imaginable, where anything is possible” and one can “imagine” A and Not A being simultaneously true. I have wasted some time trying to understand the “epistemology” of ChatGPT, and conclude that its greatest weakness is that there is little if anything that passes for a relationship between evidence, and evaluation of evidence.
I was puzzled about how something so fundamental could be missed, but then I realized that this is because the system doesn’t have anything like a conceptual system that constitutes its knowledge of the universe, it has a vast repository of sensory impressions – a gruel of “information”. But furthermore: it cannot actually observe the universe, it can only store raw experiences that a volitional consciousness of the genus homo hands it. If you ask about the basis for one of its statements (ordinary statements of observable fact, not high-level abstractions), it just gives templatic answers about “a wide variety of sources and experts”. It does react to a user rejecting one of its statements, apologizing for any confusion, embracing the contradiction, then saying that usually A and Not A are not both true. It is perfectly happy to just make up facts. Sometimes it says that there are many possible answers, it depends on context, then if you give it some context it will make up an answer.
Human reasoning is centered around conceptual and propositional abstractions that subsume observations, where the notion of “prediction” is central to evaluation of knowledge. Competing theories are central to human knowledge, so when we encounter a fact that can be handled by one theory but not another, we have gained knowledge that affects our evaluation of the competing systems. These AIs do not seem to evaluate knowledge, or even data. Instead, they filter responses based on something – it seems to be centered around "the current conversation".

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? 

Did I influence Thomas Massie to call health bureaucrats snake oil salesman? I think I did! 😁

I think the rules are different when you have a small group where everybody knows everybody else. In such a case, people deal with each other based on their direct firsthand knowledge of each other, and specialization is much more difficult.
Consider that if I were one person living by myself, I could not have a separation of state and economics, because by necessity I'd have to do both functions, since there's no one else to do them. And then, within the area of state, I wouldn't be able to separate executive, legislative, and judicial functions, because again, they're all me. If it were me and one or two other people, that's still not enough people to split them up properly.
Even if there are four or five people, maintaining those distinctions would create all sorts of artificial barriers which would be costly and inefficient. (You're on an island with Bob and Carol and Dave, but Bob is handling the judicial branch today, so if a judicial question comes up between Carol and Dave, you can't work it out yourself; you have to go ask Bob...)
I imagine that if a dispute breaks out, getting a "fair trial," the way you would want one in a large society, would be almost impossible, precisely because everybody knows everybody else, and there's no practical way to separate people's firsthand knowledge of each other from the issues at stake in the case. I mean, if you never liked Bob, you're more likely to convict him just because of that, and even if you could separate your dislike of Bob from your judgment in the case, you would have a hard time proving that you had done so. You could lay out your reasoning in writing, but people would still have grounds to suspect that what you wrote was different from what you were actually thinking. How does Bob get any right to an impartial judge or jury, when the community is that small?
When you have thousands of people who don't all know each other, barriers between people exist anyway; they cannot all know each other anymore, so it becomes possible to use those barriers between people for separations of powers and other specializations.
There have been small "communes" where people allegedly practice Communist principles, but in fact, since they all know each other, they can use their knowledge of each other to make everything sort-of work without genuinely relying on Communist principles at all. (Besides, since the principles are wrong, if they followed them strictly, their community would die out.) When you have a small group of people, such small groups are all very much the same, and any sort of political principles are premature.
So a small group of Objectivist geniuses could well start their own little village or something, but they would have a hard time demonstrating to the rest of the world that it was really based on Objectivist principles, and not merely on the fact that they know each other well and work together well. Objectivist principles would probably help them work together well, up to a point, but if a dispute happened, they would probably fall apart. They are too small of a group. (Or else they might compromise their principles in order to stay together, but that introduces problems of its own.)
(It is also a problem when you have a large society ruled by a small group of people, when each of the people in the ruling clique knows everybody else in the clique... and when they prevent anybody not in the clique from holding office... because they cannot police each other properly anymore, because they are not impartial... and they can collude across "separation of powers" barriers...)
I think America came together because you had a large group of people who did not all know each other but had similar ideas, and they also had a blank canvas upon which to create a country. The blank canvas these days is hard to come by, but not impossible. But you also need the large group with the common ideas. I don't think a small group would be able to do the job. You might think that the Founding Fathers were a small group, but I think what they did was only possible because they were representative of a larger group from which they came.

A virus is an element of nature and an inherent risk of life on Earth, not a weapon that an infected person goes around assaulting people with. If you don’t have symptoms, haven’t tested positive, or knowingly been exposed to an infected person, it’s rational to assume you’re not infected and go about your business. You can’t live if you have to assume you are infected with a deadly virus. 
Each individual’s health and safety is his own responsibility. The onus to stay home and/or get vaccinated is on those who are at risk.
Every medical treatment has benefits and risks. If you fear the risks of vaccination more than you fear the virus, you have an absolute right not to get vaccinated. No one has a duty to sacrifice himself by accepting potential bodily harm for the sake of protecting others.
The ardent anti-vaxxer’s assessment of the risks might be incorrect, but it’s his judgment, and he has a right to act on it, even if others disagree.

A virus is an element of nature and an inherent risk of life on Earth, not a weapon that an infected person goes around assaulting people with. If you don’t have symptoms, haven’t tested positive, or knowingly been exposed to an infected person, it’s rational to assume you’re not infected and go about your business. You can’t live if you have to assume you are infected with a deadly virus. 
Each individual’s health and safety is his own responsibility. The onus to stay home and/or get vaccinated is on those who are at risk.
Every medical treatment has benefits and risks. If you fear the risks of vaccination more than you fear the virus, you have an absolute right not to get vaccinated. No one has a duty to sacrifice himself by accepting potential bodily harm for the sake of protecting others.
The ardent anti-vaxxer’s assessment of the risks might be incorrect, but it’s his judgment, and he has a right to act on it, even if others disagree.

A virus is an element of nature and an inherent risk of life on Earth, not a weapon that an infected person goes around assaulting people with. If you don’t have symptoms, haven’t tested positive, or knowingly been exposed to an infected person, it’s rational to assume you’re not infected and go about your business. You can’t live if you have to assume you are infected with a deadly virus. 
Each individual’s health and safety is his own responsibility. The onus to stay home and/or get vaccinated is on those who are at risk.
Every medical treatment has benefits and risks. If you fear the risks of vaccination more than you fear the virus, you have an absolute right not to get vaccinated. No one has a duty to sacrifice himself by accepting potential bodily harm for the sake of protecting others.
The ardent anti-vaxxer’s assessment of the risks might be incorrect, but it’s his judgment, and he has a right to act on it, even if others disagree.

What's the big deal? If you like him reasonably well, I don't think this would change anything significantly. It doesn't sound like anything would change.
I don't think it is helpful to start thinking about whether you believe people would hate you if they knew what you were. You actually have no idea, except maybe that they don't agree about something. As I understand it, people generally do this to show what they think is a more respectful way to treat people. It won't necessarily be a big political statement, or self-righteousness. I don't like listing pronouns either, I think it is silly and irrelevant to even care about it. But beyond that, I don't think it's worth concerning yourself about. 
Bottom line though, I think you are wrong to say that this should be taken as a form of hostility.

I have no "issues" with Objectivism. I use the philosophy to lead the best life possible in an irrational society. I may be an outlier, but I'm better off knowing and acting on the truth than I would be if I were to invest in a bad cultural movement. I focus on tings I can control and enjoy, and limit my exposure to politics except to the extent that I enjoy crafting arguments on issues I'm passionate about as an end in itself, regardless of the likelihood that my views will prevail in my lifetime. I enjoy going online and saying things that are on a totally different wavelength than the mainstream political narrative, things that people have never heard before. It's an art to me.
Supporting closed borders in our current situation is not a contradiction of Objectivism. Objectivism doesn't have anything to say about borders, it says that life is the standard of value. If open borders would threaten our lives under the status quo, Objectivism leads to the conclusion that we should keep them closed. Although this scenario is perhaps so unrealistic that it's worthless to consider, in my opinion, if a group of Objectivists somehow founded a free country today, a policy of free immigration would result in an influx of people who would corrupt the government in a short time, so I wouldn't support it. 

I wear one when required, out of respect for the fact that a private business is required to enforce the mandate. I never decided on a consistent policy to use in situations where I have a choice. I go for walks in a public park and don't wear one, even though it's required as far as I know, because no one is around to enforce. I'm not interested in wearing one without having a good medical reason to believe they actually work. If this premise were somehow proven, and this was communicated through a source I respect, I would be more interested in wearing one, but right now I feel like this is subjugation with unproven quackery at the hands of health authoritarians. 

The one error I have to point out in your comment is that anarchism does not ignore the concept of government, it misunderstands the concept. The anarchist position denies the validity of government, but has not resolved the problem of thieves under anarchy. One view is that anarchy is a utopian ideal, which can exist only when no person would ever use force – it’s a Platonic form towards which we might strive, but it is excruciatingly unlikely that it will ever exist. A closely related next-most surreal form of anarchism, sour grapes anarchism, declares that anyone using force has ipso facto become a government. If you steal my stuff, you have become a taxing government. The third circle of anarchism, more familiar to us because it is widely held in libertarian anarcho-capitalist circles, maintains that there is no special entity, government, which has a rightful monopoly on the use of force. Instead, anyone can rightfully use force, as long as they do not initiate use of force.
The point about wielding force “autonomously” is obscured by the unmodified use of the word “force”. The problem is that if some jackass threatens me with a knife, I have to act autonomously right then and there, and will not roll over and get stabbed to death because I don’t have the right to use force on the premise that only the government can use force. It is very important that we not suggest that the Objectivist ethics requires you to roll over and die when attacked (Objectivism is not pacifism). Rather, the use of force is to be put under the control of objective law. Objective law mandates that force only be chosen by certain agents of the government who compare the facts and the law to see if force is justified, but it also provides an exception for life-threatening emergencies, where you can defend yourself if attacked.
I know that interjecting law as an intermediary complicates the computation of rightful use of force, but it is an essential complication. Force is to be under the control of objective law. The government states what that law is. A proper philosophy is necessary for the government to devise proper laws.

Anarchy ignores the concept of government—a monopoly on the use of physical force. Whoever is an a position to weild physical force autonomously IS the governor. The “private physical force entity” in the anarchist thought experiment IS a government.

Are all the collectivist “isms”—socialism, communism, fascism—really just variants of feudalism applied to modern states?
I don’t exactly understand how the feudal system of medieval Europe worked, especially in terms of what the unit of political sovereignty was, but my understanding is that there were multiple political entities within a given region that each claimed sovereignty, and these entities fought amongst themselves territory, but each operated as a de-facto communist state, with the lower castes of society being enslaved to the higher ones, who controlled the use of physical force. 
In feudal society, there was no private property, and heavy expropriation of the product of the peasant’s labor by the lords and knights above them, equivalent to modern taxes, or people in modern communist countries working state farms. It’s well-known that there was control of trades by guilds, where the rulers dictated who could sell what by granting favors, like the modern state health departments that license doctors. I’m guessing you wouldn’t have had to look far to find wage and price controls, and debasement of currency feudal governments. 
The feudal King might have rationalized it differently than the President of a modern communist state, but it was essentially the same thing. 
The only fundamental difference I can see is that modern socialist, communist, and fascist states generally assert their sovereignty and maintain their national borders more successfully, whereas the feudal rulers just fought constantly among themselves.
Hence, are modern collectivists really just resurrecting the economics of the Medieval period, whether they realize it or not? 

I wear one when required, out of respect for the fact that a private business is required to enforce the mandate. I never decided on a consistent policy to use in situations where I have a choice. I go for walks in a public park and don't wear one, even though it's required as far as I know, because no one is around to enforce. I'm not interested in wearing one without having a good medical reason to believe they actually work. If this premise were somehow proven, and this was communicated through a source I respect, I would be more interested in wearing one, but right now I feel like this is subjugation with unproven quackery at the hands of health authoritarians. 

This is a story on a guy who went around to small stores and cleaned the shelves of the supplies people are panic buying, and re-sold then online at much higher prices. Of course, he’s being castigated, including by some who claim to be fans of Rand. The supplies he bought would have quickly sold out anyway, and his business provided customers the opportunity to buy things they couldn’t get to the front of the line to get themselves. He did the work, and took the risk to buy all that stuff when there was no guarantee he could re sell it at high prices. The stores he bought from didn’t have a policy against anything he did. I say he’s innocent. Unfortunately for him, he failed to anticipate Amazon’s and Ebay’s PR moves, which resulted in him getting shut down. But does any Objectivist have a problem with this?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/he-has-17700-bottles-of-hand-sanitizer-and-nowhere-to-sell-them/ar-BB11blvS

Citation needed.
I've worked in some academic medical fields. It has always seemed to me that the academic community often doesn't like the FDA, and I'm not aware of any people who like it. If there are people who like it, is probably people who abuse the system, or choose to be part of it by joining it. The FDA is more like an overlord that you must obey, and if you don't obey, your career is screwed. The bureaucrats act as gatekeepers, they determine what counts as permissible evidence, and what counts as worthwhile. So I wouldn't call it symbiotic, I would say the FDA is parasitic upon academia.
 

I’m in the Cayman Islands now, where I just had my second Regenexx-C procedure with culture-expanded stem cells. I saved for it for two years. We treated almost every joint in my body. The first procedure 20 months ago probably saved my life, and I’m stoked to get even more improvement from this one.
 

I’m in the Cayman Islands now, where I just had my second Regenexx-C procedure with culture-expanded stem cells. I saved for it for two years. We treated almost every joint in my body. The first procedure 20 months ago probably saved my life, and I’m stoked to get even more improvement from this one.
 

I’m in the Cayman Islands now, where I just had my second Regenexx-C procedure with culture-expanded stem cells. I saved for it for two years. We treated almost every joint in my body. The first procedure 20 months ago probably saved my life, and I’m stoked to get even more improvement from this one.
 

I’m in the Cayman Islands now, where I just had my second Regenexx-C procedure with culture-expanded stem cells. I saved for it for two years. We treated almost every joint in my body. The first procedure 20 months ago probably saved my life, and I’m stoked to get even more improvement from this one.
 

I’m in the Cayman Islands now, where I just had my second Regenexx-C procedure with culture-expanded stem cells. I saved for it for two years. We treated almost every joint in my body. The first procedure 20 months ago probably saved my life, and I’m stoked to get even more improvement from this one.
 

I'm reading a good book that deconstructs all this anti-woman/ PUA mentality, and offers an alternative approach. One that is respectful of women without putting them on a pedestal, and congruent with Objectivism.
In fact a lot of it seems to be written from a partially Oist perspective (the author fleetingly mentions that reading Atlas Shrugged in college changed his life, in the book, as well). It's from Mark Manson (who's known for "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck", which is the second best "life advice" type book I have ever read in my life), and it's titled "Models: Attract Women Through Honesty". ( I don't think "models" refers to fashion models, but rather "things to model yourself after"...but it is an ambivalent title, on purpose...pretty sure it's meant to mock PUAs).
The two books are very, very different. "The Subtle Art..." is short, it's written in a provocative style (lots of cursing), it throws flashy, provocative ideas around somewhat carelessly, and uses a wide lens to look at life in general. But it's very interesting, and frames a lot of good life advice in some very surprising and original ways.
The "Models..." book on the other hand is longer, analytical, detailed, carefully thought through, and focused on the subject at hand. But, as you go along, you find out something very important: the subject at hand (getting women) is as wide as life itself...because you get women based on who you are, personally and socially, not on what "techniques" or lines you use. So the book actually sets out to encourage the reader to change their entire life, and become an interesting, opinionated, provocative, well dressed and groomed, physically fit, healthy, independent, well traveled, knowledgeable, well read, sexually uninhibited, confident, courageous etc. person. Do that, and women won't be able to resist you...no aggressive, fake alpha behavior needed.

If you're not extremely adept at seeing this kind of thing through from start to aftermath, run, do not engage! There's nothing tricker from a management perspective than a romance gone bad, and you're going to get the brunt of any negativity (even if only perceived), not the company if they can help it.

Maybe this country still has a sliver of decency,  but the people who oppose this don’t.
The Hill
House passes 'right to try' drug bill
BY RACHEL ROUBEIN - 03/21/18 

The House passed “right to try” legislation on experimental drugs largely along party lines Wednesday, sending a bill backed by President Trump to the Senate.

Last week, House Republican leaders put the bill on the floor under suspension of the rules. Democrats objected, expressing safety concerns over how the measure would bypass the Food and Drug Administration, and it fell short of the necessary two-thirds support it needed.

But leaders made clear the House would take up the bill again. On the second try, the House only needed a simple majority to pass the bill, and easily did so in the 267 to 149 vote.

Thirty-five Democrats voted for the bill, and two Republicans opposed it. 

Now, the measure goes to the Senate, where a version of the bill passed in August by unanimous consent.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who has championed the bill in the Senate, urged his chamber to quickly pass the measure. 

“Right to try needs to become the law of the land. It passed the Senate unanimously last summer, and I’m disappointed the House didn’t pass that bill and send it to the president for his signature," Johnson said in a statement.

"Nonetheless, I plan to ask my colleagues to pass right to try again immediately. Terminally ill patients and their families have waited long enough.”

House Republicans revised the bill amid objections from some supporters who had hoped the Senate version would pass, wanting to prevent the measure from ping-ponging between the two chambers. They worried that could make it harder to get the bill to Trump’s desk.

The bill lets terminally ill patients request access to drugs the FDA hasn’t yet approved without going through the agency. Patients can request the drugs from manufacturers if the medicine has gone through a small-scale clinical trial and is still under FDA consideration.

Though no senators objected to the bill, the legislation — which had been revised — proved controversial in the House.

Democrats there, as well as more than 75 patient advocacy groups, have voiced several different concerns, and patient safety was chief among them.

“By allowing patients access to investigational treatments that have only completed a phase 1 clinical trial, patients will be exposed to treatments with no or relatively little data that they are actually effective,” the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.), said during the debate on the House floor Wednesday.

“These extremely small trials only examine the safety and toxicity of a drug and do not determine the effectiveness or potential side effects.”

Opponents of the bill also point to the FDA’s compassionate use program, saying the agency approves 99 percent of requests to let a patient use an experimental drug. They argue the legislation provides “false hope,” as drug manufacturers aren’t required to provide the drug to patients who ask.

But House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and health subcommittee chairman Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) maintained that their version of the bill struck “the right balance for patients and their safety.”

Supporters of the measure have argued that people with a terminal illness should have every tool at their disposal to try a drug that could possibly help them.

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) said that if faced with a terminal illness, he’d “take any risk, including injecting monkey urine if that meant I could spend a few more days, months or years with my children.”

Proponents of the legislation have also argued that the drug approval process takes too long, and that the bill isn't unsafe, as medicines must have passed a phase 1 clinical trial and still be in FDA’s pipeline.

The legislation has powerful backers.

President Trump has urged Congress to pass the bill, notably in his State of the Union address in late January. Vice President Pence is a staunch supporter of right to try, signing the bill into law when he was governor of Indiana. And groups backed by conservative mega-donors Charles and David Koch have also been pushing for its passage.