ERICOPOLY

Suppose we change the printed paper currency of the US to read... "In God We Don't Trust" Just put it right there, printed on every dollar bill. Further, we pass a law that it's the only legal tender. Is that militancy? Or how about we require every child to go to school, and in the public school we have them recite the following line: "One nation, not under God..." Is that militancy? So... if that would seem extreme... then aren't we already in the realm of militant extremism, only the mirror opposite? Similarly, I believe I've many times seen "Jesus Saves!" signs within clear public street view on Church property, yet I haven't ever seen a "No He Doesn't!" sign within view of any public street. Atheists just don't do that! We don't actively try to push our views on others through organized campaigns. And no, the guys on "missions" who come to my door riding bicycles and wearing uniforms are not trying to save my life! Nor are they at my door "risking their lives, helping others". Well, maybe at some doorsteps they are risking their lives, but I personally wouldn't go that far. Are the "Jesus Saves!" signs erected out of respect for those with dissenting opinions? Is this how people keep their views to themselves, quietly going about their devout lives? Can't you instead put the signs on the inside of your churches, so that your own members can get the message without the rest of us seeing it?

I don't know if you saw the movie about the guy trapped under the boulder. He cuts his arm off to free himself and saves his own life. It was the rational thing to do, but I doubt I could do this rational thing due to the anticipation of pain.

http://nypost.com/2014/08/14/bank-of-america-17b-pact-still-being-haggled-over/ Another week is another $500m of pre-tax earnings... since you asked.

For example, when I was a child one of my best friends had a radical Christian mother. She would have me over for playdates with her son, and show us Bible stories. She told my mother that she thought I could still be "saved". She knew my mother was atheist. Alright, have you ever had such an experience with your children from atheist parents? Or do organizations of atheists target you in your home with uniformed young men on bicycles? Winning for me will simply be when people stop coming to my door trying to push their beliefs on me. Believe what you want to, I don't care. I don't come to your door trying to talk you out of your beliefs. By "you" I don't mean you literally, Paul, I mean "you the people" who come to my door. I don't need a pleasure machine to prove my point. This place is crawling with organic pleasure machines. For example, I'm 41, good looking, trim, rich and retired... in Montecito. My wife is 48. I drop kids off at playdates and their 25 year old nannies are making conversation with me. I had a nanny at last year's back to school picnic make one of those obvious unmistakable winks at me. This place is crawling with 40 something men hooking up with 20 something women. So the pleasure is there, ready for my taking. Yet I don't do that. I am still married after two years of this, anticipating the regret and guilt I would feel if I left my wife for one of the incredibly physically alluring girls. I am socially attached to my family and don't want their rejection. It has nothing to do with religion or higher powers. It's just the amount of guilt and regret I know I would go through, the loss of their company and respect... etc... So I choose the present family over the instant gratification. And they make me happy. Similarly, I have explained that because I have this attachment to my family my instincts prevent me from running off with the pleasure machine that you described. Like I said, "you can't get there from here". I would need to take on a lot of guilt in choosing the machine -- the guilt prevents even the conscious selection. But I did concede that if I was already hooked up to the machine I would probably not choose to be unplugged. It's like how I can rationally turn down crack cocaine because I know about the drawbacks, but once using the drug I could probably not turn down the next hit.

On militants... Wow! Greece's constitution and law forbid proselytizing: http://theweeklynumber.com/1/post/2013/02/one-in-three-countries-worldwide-limits-proselytizing-as-libya-arrests-4-christian-missionaries.html More than one-in-five (22%) European governments or government representatives imposed restrictions on proselytizing, including Greece, where the constitution and law forbid proselytizing. However, as of mid-2010, there were fewer reported cases where Greek police detained people for proselytizing. I suppose that puts a new spin on Bible peddling -- "Ya'll best get back on that bicycle and peddle away before I call the cops!"

Pretty funny. Sounds like she keeps that boy bottled up. Probably thinks he is doing homework on that computer all day. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/gift-gq-magazine-prompts-outcry-203616196.html “My 14-year-old son brought in the mail today & was quite disturbed & fascinated by a ‘gift’ Lands’ End sent us — a copy of GQ magazine with an absolutely OBSCENE cover!!!,” Snapped another, “I ordered Christian private school children’s uniforms from your company and you sold my home address to a magazine company that peddles in soft porn for men???.”

I agree with it. It comes down to attachment. I believe that social groups inviting them to belong from an early age will have a chance at helping them learn to develop attachment. A "lunch club" at school for example that they look forward to each day, rather than the alternative of sitting eating lunch alone and other kids calling them "loser". The former (inclusion) seems a more productive approach than the latter (letting them sit alone at lunch every day and being regularly called "loser"). Unfortunately, religion wouldn't help those people form attachments. Not if they are too far along in the condition. However, I think it is a progressive thing. Like you can be bad at attachment, and get worse over time after continued isolation.

I think so too about introverts or the relatively less outgoing. "loner" was a bad term for what I'm thinking about, because the term "loner" conjured images of quiet, introverted, yet happy well adjusted people in your mind. So it didn't communicate the idea that I had in mind -- thus, a bad term. So let's not call them "loners" anymore. I don't know what the term is, so here is how I'll phrase it instead of using a term: There is a subcategory of people who have attachment disorders -- if you have trouble attaching to a group, you will not really properly internalize it's morals. Thus you would feel less guilt if you violate it's rules. You might try and try and try to belong to the group, and thereby appear to be social, perhaps even hyper-social, but if you can't really get close to the group emotionally, then perhaps the guilt will affect you to a far lesser degree.

I tend to believe that... Being an outcast makes you susceptible to toss that social group and it's rules on the rubbish heap, and if you are driven by instincts to live within a group you will then go and join or create a new one. From there, you can grow your new social group by recruiting the disenfranchised. This might be the Hitler angle. Had he felt included early in life, where would the motivation be?

It's just a special case so it is interesting. "Evil" is basically when somebody witnesses the act of another that doesn't fit into "morality". But not all social groups have the same rules (evil to some is not evil to others). A loner would not belong to a social group of any sort, and thus would not experience "guilt". Perhaps the examples of Hitler and Stalin and the school shooters who acted together were not really loners at all. Perhaps they had just invented new social groups with new rules that were "immoral" from the standpoint of pretty much every other social group in existence.

People feel guilt if they violate the rules of their social group. If somebody if firmly socially integrated into a social group, that is the case. Yes, there will be people with attachment disorders that will never socially integrate -- they will just take ideas from the church and wind up with the god delusions that you mention. Your example about street gangs and mafia... same thing, they will experience guilt if they rat out one of their own. They have different rules, and thus different morality -- compared to something like a church group. My example previously clarified my viewpoint -- an army works hard to integrate the soldier into the "band of brothers" social unit, and can have a set of rules that would make him feel guilty for fleeing order to commit murder on people he has never met before. Yet this "morality" is different from that of the church group. Many groups with bad morality easily recruit loners, or the disenfranchised. So, if we are to try to protect ourselves from such groups, it's not a bad policy to try our best to ensure that everyone feels included by a group with generally civilized morals/rules/

I can't tell if you're joking or not, Eric. I'm not joking. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1303804/Adolf-Hitler-loner-rear-area-pig-according-WWI-regiment.html

Both Hitler and Stalin were poorly attached socially. Loners. The young guys who shoot up schools in recent history. Loners. The part of religion that benefits all of society is the "inclusion therapy" aspect of it. It's what the school psychologists focus on at our heavily funded public elementary school here in Montecito. These employees are "inclusion specialists". We need those employees at all schools more than we need the armed guards. Make sure everyone grows up with a sense of belonging, else their behavior will never properly be governed by the anticipation of guilt. Don't leave it up to the church groups to pick up the slack -- their grip is on the wane... we'll keep seeing more of this violence if we don't fund it as part of the public schooling. Once you view people as pack animals, rule #1 is that they must belong to the pack if they are to adhere to the pack's rules. Otherwise, they are a "lone wolf" -- and the lone wolf by definition is not bound to the rules of the pack. The lone wolf can engage in remorseless behavior as he does not suffer emotional feedback from violating pack rules. This is the root of "evil". But you need to debate religion to get people to understand this... otherwise no progress will be made because they will claim that morality is infused in our brains by God, and refute the idea that it's based on social pack behavior.

I agree. They try to include everyone. Even the annoying person who doesn't have any friends. Or the most socially awkward. They will include him. Inclusion therapy is an important thing. My belief is that a person only has a moral framework (reinforced by guilt) if they are socially attached to a group. So the risk of not having religion is that we'll have more loners shooting up schools. Given that their rules are generally civilized (don't lie/cheat/steal/kill), I then certainly benefit by having the million of people that surround me feel guilty if they violate the rules of their church group. Many of these rules are simply doubled-down by the rules of the government. The difference though is that the churches genuinely try to find a place for the loners to belong. I believe that's the key thing -- Church groups are like a government that offers inclusion therapy to loners.

I'm the same way in that I don't care who believes what. I don't even tell my kids what to believe. I sent my son to a pre-school down the road ("All Saints By The Sea") and he came home talking about the baby Jesus. I didn't correct him, I don't want him to not fit in with his group. I just let it be. I don't want him over at a friends house rudely telling them that Jesus stories might not be real. He will be old enough one day to make up his mind. Interestingly, I was walking around the yard at that school and came across a tile mosaic in the garden with donors names inscribed on the tiles. There was Charlie Mungers name -- just a bit unexpected to see when you are standing around waiting to pick up your kid from his preschool. Regarding what you said about the relatively polite Jehovah Witnesses though. Have you ever had an atheist come to your door in an attempt to convert you? They may seem polite and soft-spoken, but I feel like they've no place walking up to private homes trying to convert others to their beliefs. Put an ad in the newspaper and be more respectful of our privacy. I've never seen a Bitcoin -- do we finally have a hope for a currency that doesn't explicitly proclaim we trust in God? There are a few obvious ways in which the devout could take the lead on being respectful to others.

On another note, if we are reborn and lived past lives, then how do you explain expanding global populations?

As I've said before, it's entirely possible that his game is simply to separate the people with integrity from the people without. He doesn't want to spend eternity with just anyone. He is selective. So you pass his criteria by adhering to what you believe in, rather than believing in God merely because you are scared.

Do you think Buffett didn't know how to value the non-US (Mexico, Asian, etc.) income streams of Citi? Or do think it was the same concerns the Fed have about safe guards and risk system? Didn't get a chance to see the interview where he stated that. He's invested in foreign banks before. He should be comfortable with non-US economies. Domestically, he seems to know JPM, WFC, BAC, UBS, etc... so, that's quite a statement, if you think about it. It's not like Microsoft that punts. Banking is in his wheelhouse. He also said he would invest in Microsoft, for what it's worth... but hasn't done so because of the conflict with Bill Gates on the Berkshire board.

My theory of why we feel guilt would predict that those who don't "belong" to a group, or feel alienated from society, would therefore not feel guilt or would feel less of it. It's not "immoral" if you aren't violating a social rule -- you don't have any if you are not a part of society. You know they exist, but you don't feel bound to them from a moral standpoint -- you won't be guilty of betraying a group to which you don't belong. After all, if it's really the emotional embodiment of social pain, then you won't experience it if you don't belong to any social group that has a rule you are violating. Let's say I wanted to get an 18 year old kid to kill another person. I'd probably recruit him to a camp where I'd limit his interactions with outside society. Within this camp, we would have a bunch of rules about how it's okay to kill the enemy in defense of yada yada yada. We would haze him to tear him down and make him desperate to join our group -- then we would build him up and let him into the group. He now feels close to his new group, so close they are his "band of brothers". Now, he will feel guilty if he violates the rules of our group. Like if he tries to run away from the group, he will feel guilty. So we can tell him to strafe a bunch of people on the ground from a gunship, and he'll actually do it! People he doesn't even know. It's amazing. He does all of this because he can't violate the rules of the group he now belongs to. Amazing, he'll actually feel guilty about running away from orders to commit murder. Surprising? Not really, it's been done before to control soldiers.

I think it can be minimized through meditation. Like those guys who hang themselves from meathooks or who put needles through their tongues. But my mind is too weak for that.

Paul, What is guilt? It is a form of social pain. You feel physical pain when you harm yourself -- like if you cut your finger off. You experience social pain when you harm your social group -- like if you cheat at the rules of your group. This pain is experienced as an emotion, and it is what we call "guilt". Social creatures are motivated by avoidance of guilt. Violate the rules, experience the emotional pain (guilt). Social creatures communicate a set of rules to each other. These rules serve the best interests of the group. Staying with a group had advantages to the individual. But there must be an evolutionary trait that motivates all members of the group to stick together and to work within the agreed-upon rules. That trait is guilt. It is the punishment you privately experience when you work against the rules/goals of the social group. It's obvious to me (me alone perhaps). You might be able to completely block out guilt -- but not me. No more so than cutting off my finger and trying to think about chocolate cake to avoid the pain.

Are you talking about a character from a Marvel comic? Were it to be possible to have such mastery of rationalization, guilt would never be experienced. However, back to the real world. We anticipate guilt and adjust behavior to avoid it. Just like physical pain.

There could also be an anchoring bias at work here. You believe there is a God/Supernatural that explains your feelings of love for your family. That might be hard to reject (due to anchoring bias) when a chemical-electrical based alternative is presented. I admit, the former is far more romantic and that belief in itself might bring you more enjoyment... so you would feel a bit depressed to give up that drug. A bit like being anchored to a wonderful outcome, adjusting to those beliefs, and later on not finding it a happy thing to accept a more sober reality even if the observable evidence tends to favor it.

The thing is, I believe I try to live rationally, knowing that sometime seemingly irrational choices are rational given my known limitations (given what I know about myself). For example, if I believe that it's in my nature to feel regret, I will rationally make choices that will spare me from regret. Or if I believe that it's in my nature to feel guilty, I will position myself with actions that will minimize my guilt. A snowboarder, for example, wants to pull off some amazing stunts... but ultimately he hedges a bit and keeps the stunts within the bounds of what he believes he can control, and part of that is based on what he understands about his own flexibility and mass, and his relationship to the Earth and it's gravity. He takes other things into consideration, such as the quality of the snow, etc... My expectation of guilt is my gravity. I know it's in my nature just as much as the gravity of the Earth guides the snowboarder. So I just look for a way to "shred", keeping within my own psychological gravity. Over time, you learn not to stick your finger in an electrical socket -- guilt works the same way. The rational thing is to anticipate the pain and figure out another activity instead.

I would be working at Microsoft still. So there's one life you've changed. I can't do this without the help of your board. I needed ideas to cheat off of. I had a similar experience and similar thoughts in 7th grade.