Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "Bite-sized Philosophy" channel.

  1. I think EVERY kid should learn at least ONE trade. Doesn't matter where you go or what you do, you'll always have that trade to fall back on. For many, that trade will be the financial foundation for their further education. For others, that trade might be all they need to live a happy, balanced life. Despite what the current education establishment seems to think, we can't ALL have jobs as full-time protesters or diversity-and-equity officers.
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  2. Guards at death camps were the same as you or I. But they were steeped in collectivist thinking and immersed in identity culture. And it all starts with good intention that is SO good, it's OK to treat others worse than you'd treat an animal, because you're taught - and you BELIEVE - that those people represent EVIL. Sounds like Antifa.
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  3.  @iamsultana  : They're not always easy to spot before they pull some shit on you. But if you're a 7 (mainly on talent and effort) and a smashing 10 comes over and sits down next to you, something's probably up. People who lack the attention they crave are vulnerable. Put up with a lot because they think they're being good friends to the psychopath, and gaining access to a more exiting life, with more friends and maybe a lover after a 20-year dry spell! Everybody just assumes that the driver coming at them at a relative speed of over 100 miles per hour is going to stay in his lane while you stay in yours. We trust people all the time. Without being able to trust people like that, in general, as a CULTURE, there's just no joy in life. The psychopath gets their thrill by winning or getting away with something or walking off with your bank account...
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  4. The psychopath lives in a hell of their own imagining. The more intelligent they are, the more miserable they are. They KNOW the danger of giving anyone trust and they deny themselves the joy of trusting and being trusted. They jump at a million shadows. We're mostly oblivious to the shadows. I think psychopaths probably waste most of their energy worrying about what other people think. And when they're playing the Great Game in a large circle of people, it's got to be stressful as all get-out.
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  5.  @monkeyd6716  : There are almost CERTAINLY more crazy men than crazy women. You even admit, yourself, that more men suffer mental illness... But I agree with much of what you're saying. Women are so caught up in the injustices visited on them that they have zero appreciation for what men go through. We used to muddle through pretty good, with the strengths of men complementing the strengths of women, in a shared responsibility for making our lives better. Now, not so much. Now, basically, all men are bad, and now some men are starting to feel like all women are bad, or things wouldn't've reached the state they've reached. Why don't the GOOD women slap down the neurotic bitches?
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  6.  @chinhandmic6869  : That used to really be offensive to me as a student and later as a lecturer. So I asked a student why they were walking out of my class. I'm always worried I've pissed someone off. It was the babysitter. After asking a few different times, it was always the kids, or they had to leave early for work, or any one of a million things. So now I just want them to leave quietly. I'm the same way about late students. There's usually a good reason, but NO reason to be upset or let it interrupt the class.
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  7.  @HandleDeezNutzVoluntarily  : MGTOW's a little extreme. But there's nothing wrong with a man protecting himself from predatory females.
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  8.  @krazo4Christ  : I'm not sure things were every unequal. Just different. Females got tired of the sacrifices they were making, but seem to have no appreciation for the sacrifices men have been making.
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  9. No, you wouldn't. His content is powerful because it's true, not just because he's a great speechifier.
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  10.  David Vazquez  : Yes. MGTOW and radical feminists can both congratulate themselves on their cleverness as they walk hand in hand to extinction.
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  11.  @TrolleoMcTroll  : Since when is it enlightened to herd our children around like livestock and subject them to the worst element in the community?
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  12.  @TrolleoMcTroll  : Public schools decide who sits next to your kid based on lines on a map. You have no real choice, even if there are a handful of sociopaths dominating the student culture.
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  13.  @captainspire9094  : Homeschooled kids don't judge the world by what is popular amongst their dumb-ass peers. They tend to be BETTER adjusted, because they're not indoctrinated into the culture. I've known some home-schooled kids breaking into public schools, and they come away shaking their heads at the useless, petty, and ridiculous ideas that become Gospel Truth in the Lord-of-the-Flies culture that invariably arises. "Mom? Why do kids make fun of other kids for their sneakers? Why do they make fun of Johnny for wearing the same jeans 3 days a week? Johnny's family doesn't have much, but his clothes are always washed and he's really nice."
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  14.  @geraltblaviken6127  : A liberal democracy has NEVER voted to reduce the size and scope of government. It's always one-way, and I agree, there probably is no end in sight. Just have to get people scared about something like their health care or what have you, and they will PLEAD with you to strip them of their liberties in return for false promises of security.
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  15. I sofa that.
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  16. Unless a kid is dead set on a particular field, shows an aptitude for it, and works their butts off on it, I don't think they should go to college. Learn a trade, like plumbing, or dry-walling, or electrical work. You don't have to make a career of your chosen trade. But it can support you while you decide what else you'd like to pursue. Try taking a couple courses at the local community college. See if it suits you, and build up your core courses, so that when/if you decide to go all-in on college, you just have your specialty to focus on. Then do your research on the college/university. If they're associated with Antifa and other nonsense, discard them as a choice. You're still going to encounter SJW BS anywhere you go, just about, but you can avoid the worst of it. But do it from a platform of relative economic security. You can be a dry-waller, work in wood-frame housing construction and a lot of other things without nearly as much training as a plumber or electrician. Right now, you can be earning 6 figures a year in a year or less, just by heading out to the oil fields and working hard and learning. One career path is to apprentice under a plumber, and then an electrician, and then a carpenter. Get certified in those 3 areas (which is no walk in the park, mind you), maybe learn how to pour a foundation, and become a general contractor! I've known guys who did that, and they spent the rest of their working careers just building houses more or less by themselves.
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  17.  @eyesky6809  : You sound like a person who would chastize the woman in the express lane with 11 items.
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  18.  @robertwoodpa6463  : I wish I could be as succinct. Atheists seem to be oblivious to the fact that their "morality" is NOT independently derived, but informed by thousands of years of culture. And the culture wouldn't exist without religion as an organizing force.
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  19.  @jp.089  : That's why their followers are so neurotic.
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  20. Because it's easier to just label someone your tribe hates than it is to listen and make an argument against Jordan Peterson's ironclad arguments. All you can do is attack the messenger and avert your eyes from his truth. They can't handle the truth.
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  21. Peterson's right up there with Thomas Sowell as a scholar with a genius for communication. We are blessed by their existence.
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  22.  SURREY CROSSING  : If you're comfortable in your own skin, you're going to be more socially successful in real terms.
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  23.  @danielvitous5530  : The real "lord-mentality" people are the ones who insist that most people are too fucking stupid and helpless to do anything for themselves. This breeds stupidity and helplessness. Those who insist on compulsory attendance in public school are the REAL elitists. "You're too stupid to find an education product for your children." Blacks had a higher literacy and achievement rate under Jim Crow, when they had no help and a lot of anti-help. Seeing this, blacks started up their OWN schools in their OWN neighborhoods, and were clawing their way to equality in all things. That progress ended when the Democrats passed Great Society, and they put half the blacks and about 10% of the whites to sleep.
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  24. Shit I opened my big mouth before I read what came out of yours. A rec of your superior comment would've been more elegant. And now I'm wasting your time apologizing.
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  25.  @MrNo13  : If only we would limit the size and scope of government in the FIRST place, we wouldn't have to waste all this time worrying about politics. It would be a pimple on a gnat's ass that didn't really affect anyone. They could have all the scandals in Washington, DC that they wanted, and it wouldn't matter one bit. We KNOW that government is a cancer that wants only to grow, but we don't have to feed that cancer. I just despair of ever turning back. It's just more and more and the most we have to celebrate is when we slow them down a little bit, by electing a Trump.
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  26.  @acruzp  I think they're saying "I'm a GROUCHO Marxist."
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  27. The "performs surgery" part might need a teensy re-write, but that's really good stuff.
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  28. Belief in any religious doctrine is kind of irrational, as is disbelief in the existence of a creator. We just don't know. Agnosticism makes sense, in the absence of any proof or disproof. Speaking pragmatically, I think belief in something bigger than yourself is very beneficial, or CAN be very beneficial. What's more, people WANT to believe in something bigger. And if you don't have a God, there's a tendency to place that "faith" in leaders and institutions, which are anything BUT omniscient and omnipotent, although leaders definitely try to create that impression under whatever label or banner, if it means the people will take what they - the 'experts' - say on faith. What I've come up with is more of an "If God is and God is good, then how does my reason tell me how to behave?" My REASON tells me that if God is and God is good, then God wouldn't fuck up so badly as to make a huge swaths of humanity believe in DIFFERENT gods, unless there's some over-arching God Principle that encompasses EVERYONE. My God is mostly the Christian God, because that's how I was raised, but I don't buy into any one doctrine, and I don't believe in the Christian Afterlife, which seems to me is more what the most successful sects pushed in order to grow those sects as POLITICAL institutions of THIS world. Somehow, I don't think God - if there is one - thought Church hierarchies was a good idea. So I end up being pretty eclectic, taking wisdom wherever I find it, but my God Principle is more of a Life Principle. If it's good for Life, compassionate and kind, I like it. If it's good for balance in life, I like it, which is why I incorporate a lot of Taoist (Daoist?) ideas into my thinking. Chaos and Order, in balance. Duty and Joy in balance. Hard work and relaxation in balance. But I have no "Authority of God" or "Authority of the State" worked in there. It's just a general sense of The Good, and if I serve THAT, then I'll be as close as possible (for me) to what a good god intended, and all the rest is just men trying to seek power over other men through the power of SOMEthing bigger. Merit is how the economy should run. Compassion is what the meritorious show to their less fortunate brothers and sisters. And there is no merit in spending somebody ELSE's wealth on what you consider a good cause. That's just you trying to garner status by taking from others. All these rich liberals need to put their money where their mouth is and shut their mouths, and most of all stop seeking to use the power of the state to create YOUR idea of utopia. Just help as many as YOU can.
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  29.  @fealdorf  : The purpose of prisons is to keep victims from becoming vigilantes.
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  30.  @DeadEndFrog  : A 1-yr-old cares not for your philosophy, Horatio.
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  31. If you once relent, the child will learn that "No" means "maybe," and you're lost. This is tough, because up to that first "No," the baby crying SHOULD mean that you're right there fixing whatever problem they have. Responding to crying is how your child exerts some control over their environment, and when you let the 1-month-old cry without response, you turn them into fussy, insecure cry-babies. When they start crawling around and you give 'em their first "No" and they cry about it, you have to understand that this is an inappropriate use of crying to manipulate you, which they will do, if you're weak. And you'll be the parent whose child is throwing tantrums at the grocery store. My parents were pretty old-school. Acting-out in public was a fast path to a spanking worse than the gentle reminders at home. They were pretty tolerant of us at home. Absolutely strict out in public.
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  32. Wolves don't have that understanding. It's just the ones who behaved purely selfishly didn't survive to pass on their genes. That's one of the issues I have with theories of evolution as presented, say, in nature shows. That mutation didn't arise to solve a problem. It was a random mutation that happened to be more survivable. Evolution is a process by which nature throws shit at the wall and sees what sticks.
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  33.  @DEMcouver  : Nice. Yeah. And when he's besieged by his conscience, after the fact, it can only come from the (irrational) belief that Ivanovna's life has its own intrinsic value. To an atheist, with "strong morality," she's immoral, and why should he respect her life at all, given her detrimental impact on the Common Good? Without something ABOVE us all, then what's stopping you from reasoning that Your Life Is Good and others' lives not so much, especially if You, in your perfect state of perfect reasoning, conclude that she's detrimental to Your Life?
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  34. The atheist responds with "But MY morality says ALL life has value!" My response to that is "Why?" Without God or your being steeped in a set of values constructed by people who STARTED with "God Is" and "God Is Good?" You're blissfully unaware of the foundations of what you think is abstract reasoning from essentially NO set of axioms. I get caught on the OTHER side of this when religious dogmatists resort to "Because God Said" arguments, and I respond with "That's not an argument." Full of contradictions, am I? Of course I am. I'm a mortal in a universe that is not very kind to mortals, generally. Behaving morally is essentially a choice one makes without any questioning of whence that choice was derived.
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  35. @Folk Aart : Yeah, because they're raised by a bunch of fuckin' atheists in the public schools.
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  36.  @richardmarsh4993  : The point, here, is not that atheists lack a moral compass. They just don't fully grasp their own immersion in societies that wouldn't exist without a common religion as an organizing principle. And the psychological benefits from believing in something greater than our mortal existence are undeniable. Some (most) people function better, more morally, when they believe in God and a meaning to our existence. The atheist is making a HUGE leap of faith deciding to follow a morality that aligns with, for instance, the Christian God's. Maybe you're just the perfect atheist. But many atheists descend into hedonism and nihilism. There's no overriding reason NOT to, unless, by chance, the atheist's moral compass is (unconsciously) informed by a morality informed by ancestors' belief in something greater. As a mathematician, I understand that there's always an underlying set of assumptions in ANY conversation. In math, we make these assumptions explicit (Axiom of Choice (Zorn's Lemma)), and everything else follows. I think the axioms under which most people operate are largely unconscious, and atheists are extremely arrogant and prideful to believe that their logic isn't ultimately resting on a foundational belief in the sacred.
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  37.  @richardcagle5475  : I think he's talking about a father or mother who insists that you treat people with respect, but treat you and/or their spouse disrespectfully. I had many go-rounds with my father for that, because I'd speak to my mother the way HE did, which was absolutely intolerable. Parents who argue in the hearing of their children are teaching their kids everything they say is bullshit.
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  38.  @pratimshankar  : It's kinda touchie with a niece. You sort of have "parent authority," but not really. As an uncle, I'd probably figure out a privilege that I could deny at greater cost to the niece/nephew than to myself. Something like that, where they're not going to die because they disobeyed me, I probably wouldn't push it. But when it came time for ice cream or a trip to the movies, I'd calmly tell them "You don't have time for ice cream or movies. You're too busy with your phone."
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  39.  @parraphrase  : Yup. And be cheerful doing chores, rather than making them a big fight with the kids every night to do the dishes or constant nagging to mow the lawn. Just see they need doing and do them when the kids don't. Give them a small allowance or privileges based on their chores, and well, they're not getting paid this week. Not mad. Just not paying for work not done, or not taking you swimming or out to eat with the family, this week. Grandpa was old-school. He'd have you cut him a hickory switch for your spanking. But he never punished in anger. He was just calmly assessing the well-understood penalty for the behavior. He'd have a rueful smile when he let you have it, and then he'd act like it never happened. And he never acted like he didn't like us or didn't have any time for us. The advice not to allow your children to do things that will cause you not to like them is very good advice. Mom would let us get away with stuff and spend weeks just not liking us and even telling the neighbors what brats we were. We all grew up knowing Mom and Dad had a low opinion of us. We spent OUR time finding the threshold above which Dad would deliver a spanking when he got off work, and trying to master the art of being just bad enough not to get spanked. That was how the game was laid out for us by a weak mother and a manipulative father. Made me terrified of my girlfriends. I knew that I'd find fault with them and talk shit just like Dad did to all of us. So when one would start exhibiting nesting behavior (like cleaning my apartment), I'd cut them off. "It's not you. It's me."
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  40.  @skimmer521  : In my opinion, most of the socialization gained in the public schools is negative.
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  41.  @alankwellsmsmba  : Yup. It was largely to free up Mom so SHE could work, too. And they tricked us into thinking that was a good thing. Then they made it so it's really hard to get by without Mom out in the work place. The emancipation of women shouldn't mean they MUST work. It should mean that maybe some families, the woman goes out and works a shit job while the man stays at home, with nobody much caring which.
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  42.  @MrNarcus  : Inaction is a form of action. And it also has consequences.
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  43. If you're not secure with and within yourself, you're not going to find it in the eyes of someone else.
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  44. In the USA, we slather 'em with bread crumbs and pop 'em in boiling oil.
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  45. You've gotta want it. The lecture is what everybody craves. 90% of the learning is away from the professor. Professors fall for this trap of personality, too. They get kudos for giving lively, entertaining soliloquies, and start thinking nobody could learn anything without their marvelous teaching talent. If you want it, not only don't you need a perfect lecturer, but god help the idiot professor who wastes your time.
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  46.  @BloodSoakedGoat  The trades DO exist and you sound like a guy who's too good to start working for them for $20/hour with no real skills. From the POV of someone who HIRES those guys to work on my house, they're ALL making out very well, and they hold guys like you in great scorn. There's no shortage of work for them, because people like you are too good to take such a "dead end job." The lawn-care/landscaper I contract with can't find young people who'll start at $17/hour with full benefits! They're too good for that. You sound like someone who expects to go to college for. 4 years and just walk into a gig for $100,000/year and are mad at the world when the world says "What can you do other than complain about the system?" It's no walk in the park going the college route. I know guys who started out in grocery as box boys, who were 10 years from retirement by the time I was just hitting the job market, taking a $30,000/year gig as a full-time temp, with a math PhD! LOL! If I weren't physically handicapped, I wouldn't've spent so much time in school. Unlike most, I worked my way through, rather than borrowing, so my situation wasn't as bad as some. But I see plenty of people getting their 2-year degrees in electronics/IT/welding/carpentry, who go out and start earning pretty much immediately. With everybody going to 4-year "college," without regard for job markets, there are a lot of "educated" people chasing a very small number of positions. Lay a financial foundation with a SKILL and branch out from there. And yes, many - if not most - who lay that foundation, just end up sticking with it and climbing the ladder from that base, without troubling themselves with a massively over-priced and over-rated college degree that is de-valued every year by colleges' definition of "success" being "You passed," even though the standards of passing are much lower and the actual skills these graduates bring to the workplace are pretty slight.
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  47. Income distribution is a red herring. What matters is how well off the people at the bottom are. Do you care if there's a billionaire if you're working a good, good-paying job, and ascending the ladder, yourself? When you focus on income distribution and attempt to fix it by authoritarian means (forcible redistribution), the main effect is that the upward mobility of people at the bottom evaporates. "We'll prop you up in relative comfort, but you will never challenge the elites." Take away the redistribution and you find people from the "lower classes" clawing their way up to the top. When you perfect socialism, only the bureaucrats are on top, and they'll do everything they can to hide their prosperity from the people they exploit. Soviet dacha out in the woods.
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  48. The catastrophe and uncertainty of life are nobody's fault. And no authority figure can change the human condition with other people's money.
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  49. If you suppose there is no God, how is it that Genesis follows the exact sequence, from letting light be, to separation of the heavens and the Earth. Then the separation of the lands from the water. Then the creatures in the water? Then the creatures on land and in the sky? Then, finally, US. Pretty much how things happened. Broken into epochs that were translated as "days." How did these Bronze-Age shepherds get the sequence of events so right? And it's conceptualized in terms that are relatable to a Bronze-Age shepherd, who can maybe count to 19, because he lost a toe in a hunting accident. To the extent that ancient texts survive to the present day, you have to admit those texts have some real power. There's a universality to them, somehow, that transcends time. That is something to be respected. Something one may consult for wisdom. For instance, all that kosher stuff is a pretty smart way of handling your food. Shellfish bad? Hey, maybe one time, the tribe ate the mussels that were downstream of their own sewers or (more likely) an area that had been polluted, previously, and the people who did it were gone, but the clams were making a comeback in the mud flats. I was raised in the Church, so I was raised to believe in a God who had our best interests at heart, promised us everlasting life in return to our unswerving belief, and gave us His Own Son to die on the cross for our sins. It all hangs together pretty good, until you start asking some obvious questions. I feel that way about any religion, now, although I think Daoism (Taoism) is pretty good in some ways. I don't consider it a religion, but there's some good stuff in Wicca that's right up there. I can get behind a religion that says good comes back to you 3-fold and bad comes back to you 7-fold. You just stay on the 3-fold side, and life is pretty darn good! And really, that was what Jesus was talking about, too. God's Kingdom on Earth is when we all just stop being assholes to each other. Treating people good makes life good for everybody, and 'most everybody knows this and lives this. Anyway, it's good to have that archetype planted so deep within me. Even if I don't buy the hook about Everlasting Life for All Believers. That's just for the Church to prosper in this world, with eternal life as the promise. And I'm not one to tell kids fairy tales, but Grandma telling you "You just got to believe and you will be saved," when you figure out for the first time that everybody dies. Grandma and Grandpa are "old," Mom 'n' Dad are pretty old, and they'll go NEXT, and THEN it'll be YOUR turn! Jesus can help kids with night terrors. Some kids can suffer severe existential angst, especially those who've been through serious trauma. Heh. Got far afield, there. Started off to say that I think it's good to have an archetype of All Love and All Good like Jesus, who stands as your model of behavioral perfection. "What would Jesus do?" is a question I still ask myself, even though I left the Church a long time ago. I couldn't do Communion without lying, or I'd feel like a hypocrite. Then around the time Dad died, I saw how good it'd make Mom feel if I swallowed my pride and bent the knee in her sight. Besides. I was interested in how good the grape juice was gonna be. Hadn't had any grape juice in a long time, and that's how the Methodists roll. LOL!
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  50.  @vinayseth1114  : I think he summarized it quite nicely. You can delve into the minutiae and feel very smart, but you're succumbing to being baffled by bullshit and flowery phrases.
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