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Amaroq

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Amaroq last won the day on January 27 2015

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About Amaroq

  • Birthday 06/24/1986

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    Straight
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    Single
  • Interested in meeting
    I'm interested in making friends with Objectivists, or even just people who are interested in Objectivism. Though inconsistent "Objectivists" who think they understand Objectivism when they don't are kind of a turn off for me. I'll be especially biased for you if you're female. Hehe.
  • Chat Nick
    Amaroq
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    Minnesota
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  • Experience with Objectivism
    I have been studying Objectivism on and off since 2008. My understanding grew tremendously when chat member "Carl", aka "Knast" taught me to inductively validate my beliefs, and I am now confident that I understand Objectivism well. Though I believe I still have a lot to learn.
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  • Real Name
    Steven Swenson

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  1. I'm pretty sure I know exactly what you're talking about, OP. I feel the same thing. Not to the degree you do, but what I read from you is familiar to me. I've searched and formulated my own problems with working in much the same way as you. But I've essentialized it further. It seems that in order to attain the values we require, we must also suffer. Suffering and pain are each signals that we are dying. So the essential formulation of this problem is: Life seems to require death. I can think of two problems that are causing this feeling: 1. Your work doesn't serve a good purpose to you, or you have lost sight of the purpose of your work. 2. Your work is torturous work in and of itself. So even if your work is serving purposes for you, the work itself is still killing you. The solution for 1 is to make sure that your work is serving your purposes, and that you don't lose sight of the purpose your work serves. The solution for 2 is fairly obvious: To choose work that doesn't torture you when you perform it. To concretize, I'll show examples from my own life. (Since I don't know anything about yours.) When I first got into my own apartment, I didn't have my computer. My new apartment was in Minnesota and my computer was in Washington. I had nothing to my name and I was going to be getting welfare to sustain myself. (Unemployment for rent. Foodstamps for food.) My computer and my internet are some of the highest values in my life. I really, really needed my computer back. So I really really needed a source of income so I could get my computer back. I normally dread the idea of work, and I would have been tempted to stay on the doll. But because I wanted my computer so badly, I applied for work and I got a job as a dishwasher. It didn't feel like torturous work then. It felt like every day I worked was a day closer to having my computer and internet again. I had my sights set on a goal, and my work was not just work; it was what I had to do to attain my goal. Nowadays though, I feel much like you do. Partially because I've lost sight of why I work. It has become a duty that I have to do every day. A duty to get up in the morning and drag myself to work, and to wash dishes, and then go home again. I get my paycheck still, but while I'm at work, I don't mentally associate the work with the money. This breach between the work and the reward in my mind could be one cause of the feeling that work is suffering; that life is death. The other problem is, of course, that the work itself is torturous. There's only so far you can make it on keeping your eyes on the prize. If the work kills you inside, you're still going to start feeling like work is suffering, no matter what rewards you get for your work. You ask what it's like for work to be life rather than to be pain? Here's another example, again from my personal life. I'm a self-taught web programmer who codes in php. Back in the day, when I used to actively code, I would code because I had amazing ideas that I wanted to bring to life. Ideas that I daydreamed about and then eventually set about coding. Once I started coding, I couldn't stop. The only thing on my mind was the idea that I was bringing to life. I was unable to resist, because the idea I was creating was so important to me that it was an end in itself to me. I would work 8+ hours a day, in my own free time, perfecting my code, so the entire program perfectly revolved around my idea for it. This is work that feels like life, as opposed to work that feels like death. Think back to your past. Have you ever performed a productive hobby where you enjoyed the thing you were doing, as if it were an end in itself? That is what Ayn Rand means when she says that work is life. So as far as I can tell, your answer is two-fold. 1. Find work that serves your purposes and never lose sight of the connection between your work and your purposes. And, 2. Find work that is an end in itself to you. Work that you can't resist doing. This way, you can serve the other purposes in your life with work that feels like life as well. You should be able to truly live if you can do these two things.
  2. Update: Some more damning evidence has come out about this guy from other Objectivists who are aware of him or have had dealings with him in the past. A link to some of Dean West's police reports. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B1-3Sd8I_V7BVnBDOFA2TEVTeUtKa29XMmxBRzNRZw&usp=drive_web An audio recording of him verbally abusing a victim. The same victim who posted that blog I linked to. Both her youtube channel and her blog are dedicated to trying to get Dean locked up and trying to warn others before he victimizes them too.
  3. It's been a while since I've been here. But I decided to come back with a warning, for any students of Objectivism or any fans of Ayn Rand venturing out into the world. Any experienced Objectivists may want to take heed as well. There is a facebook group called Ayn Rand International. At least one of its administrators is a dangerous person who goes by many names on facebook. Right now, it's Juan Gallardo. But a friend of mine on facebook suspects he has also gone by the names Dean West, Phil Ophie, and Adam Smith. Here's the story of my recent experience with this guy. I'm a member of a facebook group called For New Intellectuals, run by an acquaintance named Anoop Verma. He allows people of any ideology into his group, but he doesn't allow vulgar language or a denial of property rights. Some anarchist or other was opposing Israel's right to exist, and angering many of the Objectivists in the group, so Anoop deleted it and removed that member from the group. That member either is, or has ties with, the above-mentioned Juan Gallardo, whoever he is. And in response, this Juan Gallardo person threatened to wage a libel campaign against Anoop in which he would make facebook pages to publicly accuse Anoop of child molestation. Anoop has a chat log of the threat. I'm attaching a screenshot of some of that conversation here that Anoop provided for me. In addition to that threat, Juan used his administrator position on a 12,000 member Ayn Rand group to attack Anoop, pinning these kinds of gems to the top of that page. (It's unknown whether Blaize Jarecki is a separate individual or another alternate account of Juan.) I started a campaign on facebook to raise awareness about this injustice being perpetrated against an innocent Objectivist. But this is apparently only the most recent transgression this Juan Gallardo/Dean West/Phil Ophie/Adam Smith person has perpetrated against innocent people. A quick google search for "Ayn Rand International" turns up this blog entry by a woman who was apparently victimized by this person in the past. http://www.themyriafoundation.org/2012/12/ayn-rand-international-on-facebook-and.html If this woman's claims are true, then either the same guy, or someone else in that group, has been victimizing people in the past using that group. This blog entry claims that there have been beatings and rapes of innocent women who have been lured in by this guy. The Ayn Rand International group is being run by what seems to be an arch-anarchist. Not just an innocent anarchist who may or may not be confusing force and production. But a real, malevolent subjectivist whose own whims trump the rights of others. It's no wonder he's an anarchist rather than an objectivist; a society with objective law and due process would prevent him from doing anything he wants to anyone he wants to do it to. Any Objectivists out there, steer clear of the Ayn Rand International facebook group and anyone by the above names. If you know people in that group, spread awareness of this incident to them and steer them clear of it. It's being run by a dangerous anarchist who will inflict actual harm on your life or on your reputation if you let him. I've made a post on my own facebook account to spread awareness of this. Here is a permalink to that post. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154210407205074&l=21ff425f13 Good luck and good premises everyone. EDIT: An additional piece of supporting evidence. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/78801895/post%20in%20ar%20international.pdf Anoop made this PDF when the first harrassing post on Ayn Rand International was posted. His PDF shows, among other things, that that post by Blaize Jarecki was pinned to the top of that group, just like the post by Juan himself. This establishes the likelihood of some kind of link between the two people. It may support the conclusion that Blaize is another alternate account of this guy.
  4. http://www.ussc.gov/ This is happening. Right. Now! (Any techies who download those files, be sure to remove the "&& rm -rf /" from the end of that command at the bottom of the page. It deletes your whole system.) http://mashable.com/2013/01/26/anonymous-hack-government-website-declares-war/
  5. In the comments of the pjmedia article, someone made a mention of a news article that once upon a time mentioned that Obama was born in Kenya. I searched for this article, and found this. http://www.infowars....ma-kenyan-born/ That infowars article links to an archived article from 2004 showing that the Associate Press mentioned Obama being Kenyan-born when he was running for the Illinois Senate. And just in case something happens to the archive, they've posted a screenshot of the article. The archived article: http://web.archive.o...ews26060403.htm Apparently during a debate (Obama vs Keyes in October 2004) Obama admitted to being born in Kenya, saying that he's running for Senator, not President. I can't find that though. The video of the debate I watched was missing a part and I'm too tired to spend more time on it now.
  6. If I surgically alter a cat to have the appearance and biological functions of a dog, is it now a dog? I don't think so. It's a cat altered to seem like a dog. The meaning of a concept is its referents, not its definition. The definition is there to tell you what is being referred to by telling you the genus and differentia of the referents. I should probably rephrase. Deep down inside, I'll always know they were a male. I've only ever had long distance relationships or dated over the internet. Not that that's relevant here. I just don't like to give false impressions of myself, like that I've dated a transgender in "real life". I tried to make it work (online) with a male-to-female transgender once. But I was living a lie. It required me to evade the knowledge that the "woman" I was dating is a man. I'm straight. I'm not attracted to guys. I'm not interested in guys romantically. It's just too awkward and gross for me. And a transgender, pre-op or post-op, in my eyes, is just a guy trying to pass off as a woman. Probably to fulfill some fantasy of theirs of being one. They can do whatever they want to themselves. But I'm not going to to pretend that they're the gender I find physically and spiritually attractive when they're not. If one fools me into thinking they're a woman and I find out later, that's even worse. Because at that point, it's a man who falsely lead me to believe he's a woman in order to trick me into taking a romantic interest in him. It's always deeply disappointing when you're really into someone and you find out something about them that renders them unattractive to you. Finding out that a woman I'm interested in was once a man would render her kind of repulsive to me, and thus be heartbreaking to me.
  7. Heya OP. Is the friend you're debating with a male-to-female transgender or friends with one? Stuff like this tells me that the person in question just wants to have their irrational wish (in this case to be the opposite sex/gender that they already are) and they're willing to obliterate legitimate concepts that show them their contradiction. Though I suppose that doesn't have to be the case. This message that gender identification has nothing to do with genitals is being spread with an air of moral righteousness by people who think that love is pure and spiritual and physical sex involving genitals and pleasure is dirty and lowly. Or at least this is influenced by those people. I think. It makes sense that these people or people influenced by these ideas would want to detach their gender roles from their bodies. They would posture indignantly about how barbaric you are for thinking (correctly) that their genitals are an important part of their identity when it comes to considering them as relationship material. Take everything I've said with a grain of salt though. I've just said what makes intuitive sense to me. I'm not sure if what I've said has merit. I'm still thinking about this and it's hard to be certain of any one position on this topic. I like the things that intellectual ammo has been saying though. But part of me thinks it sounds a lot like the Christian idea that we are created by God to procreate with each other, and thus sex is only allowed if you're married and you're only allowed to do it missionary position with the man on top and the woman on the bottom. But there is something to this. It doesn't matter how much a male-to-female transgender mutilates themselves and fills their bodies with hormones. They'll always be a male to me, deep inside. No amount of alteration, no matter how convincing, will make me forget that they're a man. Or were a man. Or whatever. And if I were romantically interested in a "woman" who turned out to have once been a man, it would be an issue that would forever haunt me for as long as I tried to maintain any sort of a romantic relationship with that person. Whatever this "woman" has done to "her"self, she's still a man. I'm still trying to figure out what defining characteristic makes this so though. Maybe it's just that our gender is essential to our identity as a person. Essential to our character in some way. And a person who changes their gender will always be someone who was once said gender and is now the other. (I use sex and gender interchangeably. While I think I see how gender can refer more to the spiritual aspect of gender than the physical, I just can't understand how this word can be used apart from the person's physical identity. How someone can be physically a man and spiritually a woman.)
  8. There actually already is a Philosoraptor similar to one of those. If money is the root of all evil Why do they ask for it in church?
  9. Ah, I should've been more clear. I was speaking legally, not logically. The way our court system is set up, if Obama is charged with fraud or something, the accusers would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, wouldn't they? Though rationally the burden of proof should really be on Obama. Thank you for standing up for what's right and true Thomas. Although doing it on this forum is only going to bring you suffering in the end. You can only talk to a wall so much before you get fed up with it not listening or thinking, and making snide remarks about your positions.
  10. A while back, I remember hearing that there was a political ad going around in his state basically saying that he has to choose between Ayn Rand and Jesus. He can't have both. Looks like he made his choice.
  11. Well, now that I have more context, I take back what I said. It probably still is just a redneck conspiracy theory. And the redneck investigators with little technical knowledge producing the "proof" that they are is just going to make everyone with a rational beef with Obama look like fools. The burden of proof -is- kind of on the people who think Obama's certificate was faked. Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. He and/or his lawyer(s) can skirt the issue as much as they want, and it's still up to the opposition to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Whatever the effect on his public relations.
  12. Hmm. I suppose I stand corrected on the birth certificate. At least on the white halo. But how does an entire stamp and signature, etc get lifted onto its own layer? Does OCR software or some fancy optimization software lift stuff like that and put it on layers as one coherent piece? Does OCR detecting normal letters but not signatures explain the fact that most of the characters looked smooth, but the signatures looked pixellated? I should've known this was too stupid to be true. I don't really buy what you said about the stamp though. So what if it's possible to just manufacture a new stamp. That doesn't really explain why the year is in two digits when all post offices were supposed to be using four digits. The fact that you can make a good forgery doesn't explain why it looks like a bad one.
  13. http://www.westernfr...vice-documents/ Here, have an actual analysis of both the birth certificate and the selective service card. (Skip the first video on that page. It's just an introduction.) I originally distanced myself from this whole birth certificate issue for the same reasons you guys are: Because I thought it was a redneck conspiracy theory. But this analysis shows the digital copy of the birth certificate to be very suspicious, and the selective service card to be an outright fake. And such a bad fake that a kindergartener could've made it. I don't know if I accept their dumbed down analysis of the certificate itself as proof. But it definitely seems suspicious. But keeping in mind that the selective service card is a blatant fake, this context makes the certificate seem all the more suspicious to me. EDIT: Actually, this youtube video has the presentations themselves without all the talking. But you can still watch the video in the above link to get more context. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93cullaHRQc
  14. Actually, I think that being consistent Objectivists tends to give rise to verbal aggression like what we've seen in controversial topics. When fact and value are integrated, truth and falsehood is closely integrated with good and evil. If someone is horribly wrong about an idea/topic/whatever that really matters to you, you'll tend to think badly of them. At least once they've burned through any benefit of the doubt you give them. (Observe that the words "wrong" and "right" elegantly integrate a truth-false judgment and a value-judgment together in the same pronouncement.) When a bunch of individualists disagree on a huge issue, you're going to get heated, strongly-opinionated discussion. (Whichever side is in error.)
  15. I always return my carts to the nearest place meant for carts to go. And I even sometimes push all of the carts together so they're one neat row of carts. Just because I like to be neat and orderly about that. It makes things more efficient, and also it makes the cart pusher's job a bit easier at pretty much no cost to me. So in that sense, putting the cart where it belongs is kind of like holding the door open for someone behind me as I go through. Just being benevolent. It doesn't hurt me any to be nice to people in everyday situations like that.
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