Randidly Ghosthound, from the series with the same name.

Actually the shooting at gay night clubs in the states are usually not white Christians

citation ?

(legitimately, i’ve been looking for a useful resource for stats like this)

TL;DR;

The rules might be considered a list of “immoral things” but in my experience it was treated more as a list of “distracting things”, YMMV.

Then why is it on the list of horrible things?

You mean the list specifically titled “precepts” ?

It does indicate that it’s a list based on what is considered “moral conduct” so i suppose it could be considered a list of “Immoral” things.

I personally read it as “Rules and Guidelines to prevent distraction during the process”.

While i don’t personally prescribe to that kind of moral absolutism i was willing to adhere to the guidelines for a short period to experience the process in it’s intended form.

Attendance isn’t mandatory so people will have to make that call for themselves if they are considering going.

The list doesn’t mention communication, and in fact specifically prohibits lying. That suggests that speacking truly is permitted,

The section titled “Noble Silence” 4 paragraphs down, specifically goes in to the details of the non-communication i was referencing.

and this is a list of bad things

Not sure what you mean here, but hopefully i’ve covered it above.

That’s a list someone makes when they don’t approve of sex (or intoxicants, but that’s another conversation).

Very possibly and i’d guess it comes from the Buddhist origins.

I will state that my experience is that it wasn’t preachy at all, the video recordings do reference some Buddhist stories/teachings but only really to use them as examples for teaching the meditation process.

Given that you aren’t supposed to be communicating in general there is very little leeway in which preaching could occur.

It’s not considered bad , but it is a distraction, there’s supposed to be no communication between attendees.

It’s supposed to be full introspection, afaict.

Don’t know if its the same in all places but men and women were completely separate in the one I went to.

Even if you went with your wife you’d not really be there with her, you’d be two people in the same place at the same time, not communicating.

It’s not really a relaxing holiday kind of place.

I genuinely have no idea if it’s an option for you or if it’d even help but for 10/11 days of relative isolation you could try vipassana

Not sure what the northern US wait times are like, but you generally need to book ahead.

It’s free, it works on a volunteer basis, no idea how if it works for people with no fixed abode but proof of residence was not required where i am.

Do check if it’s suitable for you though, there are rules (albeit not many), they seem reasonable to me but might not be for you.

Isolation wise, there is no communication between attendees, but there are group meditation sessions (though they are also non-talking).

The three aspects that weren’t silent :

• the meditation instruction, it was a one hour-ish video playback per day explaining the process.
• the final day, discussion is allowed.
• optional question time with an instructor.

Same, they are currently still working through the 2019 backlog.

There is the option of going through “Right To Choose” system, which is ostensibly quicker but i think you have to pay for things yourself.

GP or doctor can give you proper advice about that though.

There are officially recognised tests that potentially lead to officially recognised diagnoses. For ADHD specifically that can lead to access to medication you wouldn’t have without the official diagnosis.

For me specifically, the setup and config oftentimes is what I’m doing with the computer, the learning and knowledge gained from the practice is what I’m after, which is good because it’s significantly less fun than it used to be.

Admittedly mine is probably a non-standard case and it ties in with other things in my life.

Condolences on your loss.

Depends on how you define ‘cost’ I suppose, but seems like the trade off isn’t worth it for you, which is fair.

Some might value the perceived benefits much higher than you do.

What if the life I’m imagining I’m protecting is one where I have the option of choosing a platform/application that isn’t scraping the absolute dregs of the barrel to squeeze out that last bit of profit margin.

That’s a win win right?

I know of it but I’ve not put any effort in to specific practice.

My personal opinion is that most communication between anyone contains manipulation, even if they aren’t doing it consciously, it’s an intrinsic part of how we deal with each other.

The difference is that i don’t have much of a natural instinct for it, i have to practice and be much more intentional, which brings benefits and drawbacks.

I find that a lot of people in general can be manipulated in similar ways (I’m no exception to this) but techniques vary by culture, upbringing, experience, context etc, i don’t like to do it , however, for the reason stated a bit further down.

Identifying which markers work for which people is a a lot of the battle initially.

Unfair is relative and heavily context dependent but in some circumstances yeah it can feel a bit like a cheat, what I’ve found over time is that I’d be cheating myself just as much as anyone else, my goal in general was/is better communication and understanding, if I’m intentionally manipulating outside the norms then the interaction is tainted in terms of learning natural communications patterns.

If they are intentionally manipulating outside of the norms then that’s significantly more interesting and useful for gaining samples from uncommon behaviours.

Lots of practice.

For me it works like an elaborate pattern recognition tree.

e.g. This face in this context means x thing 75% of the time so far.

Then it’s “strong opinions held weakly”, you now have a working hypothesis but it’s just that, a hypothesis.

Every facial/body/word/etc change could be a modifier to the previous assumption. You could also match some newly remembered memory to the situation that also changes the impression of what is going on.

It’s exhausting, but it becomes easier with practice.

It’s gets more refined the more you are around the same people, as you get a ‘feel’ for their patterns.

You also start to build up a library of ‘shortcuts’ that you can sometimes apply to unfamiliar situations/people.

At some point it starts to become ‘muscle memory’ and the energy required to do it is greatly reduced.

YMMV however, I’ve no idea if this will work for anyone else in the way I have described.

I’d also say to remember that everyone is guessing to some degree or another it’s just that your guesses might require a bit more intention, whichever method (s) you settle on.

You do what you can with what you have, that is the best that can be reasonably expected of anyone.

I mean, yes? That’s a good summation.

The part where you get to call something “open source” by OSI standards (which I’m pretty sure is the accepted standard set) but only if you adhere to those standards.

Don’t want to adhere, no problem, but nobody who does accept that standard will agree with you if you try and assign that label to something that doesn’t adhere, because that’s how commonly accepted standards work, socially.

Want to make an “open source 2 : electric boogaloo” licence , still no problem.

Want to try and get the existing open source standards changed, still good, difficult, but doable.

Relevant to this discussion, trying to convince people that someone claiming something doesn’t adhere to the current, socially accepted open source standards, when anybody can go look those standards up and check, is the longest of shots.

To address the bible example, plenty of variations exist, with smaller or larger deviations from each other, and they each have their own set of believers, some are even compatible with each other.

Much like the “true” ¹ open source licences and the other, “closely related, but not quite legit” ² variations.

¹ As defined by the existing, community accepted standards set forth by the OSI

² Any other set of standards that isn’t compatible with ¹

edit: clarified that last sentence, it was borderline unparseable

“It’s not libre / free as in freedom so it’s wrong”.

I think it’s more “It’s not libre / free as in freedom so it’s not open source, don’t pretend it is”.

The “wrong” part would be derived from claiming its something that it isn’t to gain some advantage. I’m this case community contributions.

There’s not a handwaving distinction between open source and not, there are pretty clear guidelines.

Damn, all but 2.

Nearly had me a bingo, oh well.

TL;DR;

Probably a troll, possibly just confused, either way uninteresting

See the end of the post for a reply bingo card.

Nope. The onus is not on me to prove that God exists as I’m not the one using God to substantiate claims. I hope this is not difficult to understand.

The difficult to understand part is where you are referencing things that didn’t happen.

Perhaps i’m misunderstanding though, so if you point out where i was using god as justification that should clear it up nicely.

No, you claimed that religion is, as social constructs go, somehow less real than all the other social constructs that are equally observable around us - do you need me to remind you?

Again, point at where this happened, if you keep referencing things without related references it’s going to seem like you are making things up.

At least here you provided a quote, though unrelated. it’s a step in the right direction.

Just in case you meant to use that quote, nothing in the “Just to pre-empt…” quote mentions relative "real"ness.

Atheists are always the first to purport themselves as (pardon the pun) God’s gift to “rational thinking”… yet their (supposed) “rational thinking” falls apart rather quickly under investigation.

No claim to more rationality than you, no claim to atheism either, citation please.

Not big on history, are you?

Vague and fallacious. especially given i was responding to this passage of yours :

Howzabout the Inquisition? Or Saudi Arabia’s “religious police?” Or the vast riches the Catholic Church has stolen over the centuries? I’d say no - they are pretty darn “physical.

You really are obsessed with God’s existence (or lack thereoff), aren’t you? I guess I had a hard time following because it’s not something I care about in any way whatsoever. It seems that this differentiates me from atheists, doesn’t it?

Again, no assertion of atheism on my part, feel free to quote the part where i did.

The only reference to the existence/non existence of a god is in relation to the original post i responded to , it’s not a point i added to the conversation.

But i suspect you know this.

This is my reply bingo card ( if you so choose to make one )

• Bad faith arguments
• References to things that didn’t happen, with either no actual reference or one that doesn’t relate to the “argument” being made
• Fallacies in place of actual points
• Personal attacks
• Claims of my devout atheism, again with no references or proof
• Complaints that i’m pointing out any of the above, but without substantive refutations
• Equivalent of “I’m not arguing with someone who clearly doesn’t understand <Pseudo-point with no coherent supporting argument>”
• lol
• lmao

They could just be deeply confused about how a conversation generally works?

Nope. I’d declare said statement propandistic shite unless they can prove they are privy to what God does or does not allow.

Most communication is propaganda to some degree, you’ll need to be more specific in the particular viewpoint you have here if you want a useful response.

Prove that god exists and i’ll immediately get on to finding out what they do or do not allow.

Just so we’re clear, faith isn’t proof, in fact its definition is almost universally “belief, in the absence of proof”

Lots of people believing also doesn’t equal more factually correct, it just means more people believe.

What do you think churches, mosques and temples are? “Non-physical”? Howzabout the Inquisition? Or Saudi Arabia’s “religious police?” Or the vast riches the Catholic Church has stolen over the centuries? I’d say no - they are pretty darn “physical.”

Correct, you have accurately described physical objects, not a single one of which i have denied the existence of.

If you could point out which one of those is the physical manifestation of a being that “would or would not allow” something then we can get on to the conversation part.

Just in case there’s any confusion, i’m all aboard the " organised religion is mostly bullshit people doing horrific things on a large scale over even longer time frames" train.

Note the “organised”, it’s important.

Also the “religions are just socially acceptable cults” train.

It might seem like I’m on two trains but in reality it’s a venn diagram in the shape of a train and it’s basically a complete overlap.

See the above.

The above wasn’t addressing any of the points so I’m not sure how it relates to this one either, but feel free to let me know.

I’m not exactly sure what you are trying to say here. I don’t see how ascribing magical powers to religious people changes the fundamental idiocy of the quote you used.

I genuinely think you are misunderstanding what was being said here, intentionally or otherwise.

Just in case it’s unintentional, I’ll try again, but with more describing.

The vs statement was used as an illustration of the difference between the description of a tangible manifestation of a being vs the description of actions of a groups of people with “belief” in a being.

One of those things is a “being”/manifestation performing an action, the other is a group performing actions due to a shared belief or “construct”.

Also the first “quote i used” was from the original post, the second was a comparative example, neither of which i was stating as fact, purely as a demonstrative example.

So you’d be good with phrases such as “God would never allow any species to ever disappear or arise over time” to be considered factually incorrect, as god(s) is/are a social construct?

Just to pre-empt, yes, money and borders are also social constructs but they also have physical manifestations, national identities are similar but not quite the same and all, including classification systems, have agency/effects through people’s shared belief in them.

Shared belief in god can have effects, but those effects wouldn’t make statements about a singular manifestation having independent agency to do something a correct statement.

“God would never allow any species to ever disappear or arise over time”

vs

“Peoples belief in God would never allow any species to ever disappear or arise over time”

A quick perusal of comment history makes it seem more like a “day ending in y” kind of deal