PizzaMan

Game development requires no understanding of game theory.

Then I have misunderstood the term, I apologize.

when not only did you never form a relationship with God, but you never even learned Jesus's teachings.

You cannot speak for me. At the time I fully believed I had such a relationship. And I absolutely was raised as a christian, having been tought Jesus' word.

I quoted from the Sermon on the Mount to you. This is literally Gospel.

That doesn't mean it is true though.

Again, I strongly advise you to study Matthew 6:24-34.

Yeah, it's all kind of just meaningless to me. It would be like if I told you to read a passage with a vague moral from a Star Trek book. It's all just fiction, made by men.

That is the specific nature of our dominion.

Yeah, that aligns with what I say.

There can be no evidence showing cause-and-effect for something that we didn't cause in the first place.

And so when we have evidence it shows we did cause it. It seems you are starting your argument with the premise that we aren't responsible, and then concluding that we aren't responsible. You cannot have your conclusion as one of your premises, because that's just a circular argument.

So now all prophets are heretics? Are you joking?

That's not what I said.

You != all prophets

Show me one Christian scientist who believes people caused climate change.

So there are a number of problems with this question. Number one, somebody doesn't need to be christian to hold true beliefs or have valid arguments, so this is a question with a really useless/mislead goal. Second, it's an argument from authority. Third, it's a setup for a no true scottsman fallacy, because no matter who I bring up you'll call them a false christian because you've already defined a christian to be somebody who holds your own views exactly.

This question is a ridiculous goal post that quite clearly on wheels, able to move the moment I name a name.

We're not responsible for climate change because it's not the result of our own actions.

It objectively is, the evidence is overwhelming. And we've known this for over a century at this point:

https://www.livescience.com/humans-first-warned-about-climate-change

We accept God's word without question because we are His humble servants.

Then like I said earlier, you have no method to determine what you worship is a good being. That should terrify you if you are a good person and immediately make you second guess everything.

And yet you continue to demonstrate clear evidence to the contrary. If you're not plagued by demons then show me your embrace of God.

This is a false dichotomy.

You put understanding before faith. That's backwards. I assure you, this is something you are wrong about.

Nope, it's the correct way around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)

True, but we have a thousand times more evidence to confirm that God exists.

If you think you have evidence that I haven't seen before I am all ears.

If (A) I was asking you to lie to yourself, and (B) lying to yourself will never make you happy, then (C) actively religious people cannot be happier than irreligious people.

This argument is based on the false premise that religious people would see their religion as a lie. I'm an atheist, so if I were to embrace christianity I would see it as a lie.

Your perspective is that you're too smart to believe in God

Nope. I have no evidence for it, so I do not believe it. It has nothing to do with my intelligence.

You believe that intelligent people choose unhappiness despite the obvious fact that it would be rather unwise to intentionally choose unhappiness

Once again, belief is not a choice.

And correlation does not imply causation, therefore you cannot rationally say that being religious makes you more happy.

The only possible explanation for your insistent rejection of God is your unknowing loyalty to Satan

No, the actual explanation is my responses above. And this is also a fallacy:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Holmesian_fallacy

I'm done arguing this point, as I'm not an economist or a game theorist, and you're not either.

I'm probably more of a game theorist than you if I am being honest. I've done game development on the side for a little while now.

But I think my point still stands because you haven't identified a flaw in my argument.

We can lose all of our material possessions, and all of our food

People can't afford to do that though. It is a financially bad decision to put yourself at financial risk of losing your home, transportation, or food source.

The government has a responsibility to protect our nation as an institution; not to protect us each individually.

And the government cannot protect one if it fails to protect the other. Our nation is our people. It's not just the land itself.

Except it's not. You frequently come across as confidently incorrect.

It's objectively true:

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

If corporations were not greedy there would be no gap between productivity and pay.

Do you have any awareness that 99.9% of businesses in the US are small businesses?

You already brought this up in a different thread. You may have missed it so I will copy and paste:

• I'm not sure that data is really helpful for determining true business size since so many people have more than one job, and corporations like to own other corporations to hide how big they are. And employee count is only one factor in how big a business is. Market share, net worth, profit, all of which contribute to a business' size. It also doesn't take into account the power/influence a company has. A media company of 20 people has far more power and influence over a pizza shop for instance. A restaurant/grocery store might only employee about 50 people in total but have a fraction of the market share for the local area or no market share at all on a regional/national level. And on the other hand a landlord might own a company with 10-20 people, and owns a huge chunk of the city's housing.

In other words, judging a company of less than 500 employees as automatically being a small business is a terrible methodology for determining how much power/how big a company is.

Other thread: https://kbin.social/m/conservative@lemmy.world/t/305925/New-York-City-Using-Brooklyn-Parks-as-Migrant-Housing#entry-comment-1680242

Please start a business. The only reason you have not to is if you're afraid of realizing that your entire economic theory is bunk.

I have plenty of reasons. I don't want to lose what little assets I have. The time and effort requirements for such an endeavor is huge. I have no capital to start a business with. I have a disabled girlfriend who requires a lot of care (time). On top of all that, I don't really intend to live my whole life in this country, and feel I might have to leave soon due to the rise in fascism here. Why would I start a business in such a place? It just doesn't make sense.

As is I barely have enough time at the end of the day to relax to myself, let alone start a business.

Then how did we always have one without the other until recent times?

We haven't. We have always had both. It has always been the law that you are allowed to practice whatever religion you want, or no religion at all. And it has always been the law that there is a separation between church and state, a prohibition on government to be religious.

If you deny God, you embrace Satan, and until fairly recently that would have meant you'd be locked away in a mental asylum.

Our country has a history of poorly following the constitution, but the law is the law, and the law says we have the freedom to believe or disbelieve.

You're so fixated on this.

As are you it seems.

If you insist, yes, a light-bulb "serves" its master

A light bulb has no agency to server anything.

We have two possible states, in which we cling to God or Satan.

It's not just the states I take issue with though. And the states you list are a false dichotomy as evidence by the sports analogy from earlier.

The evidence is within you every time you choose to reject God. Indeed every time you type a character in reply to me, you evidence free will.

Just saying something is evidence doesn't make it evidence.

"The complete lack of life in the universe outside of our planet is evidence that god doesn't exist!"

One can say that and be entirely wrong.

The entire premise requires us to arrogantly suppose we could possibly control the whole planet, which is contrary to everything God tells us.

God gave us dominion, what is dominion if not complete control? And again, we definitely have the power to do so because there is mountains of scientific evidence showing that humans are responsible for climate change.

And they are entirely applicable to the climate agenda. When we are humble, we put our trust in God, not ourselves.

That's all assuming you know god's plan which is heretical. Unless you know his plans (you don't) then you should assume the worst case, that god intends for us to deal with the problem on our own.

Responsibility for our own actions should be the default. I don't mean to be glib but of all people I would have hoped a conservative would understand that.

To choose just one of many possible answers.

So you just don't question whether or not god is good or evil, have I understood correctly? If so, then you have no method of determining if you are worshiping an evil being. That should immediately alarm you if you have any goodness in you.

I mean literally.

Like I said earlier, whichever way you mean, nobody is whispering anything in my ears.

How sure are you that you do a good job questioning everything before you believe it?

It highly depends on the matter at hand. The ridiculousness of a claim is tied to how much I look into something before believing it. If my friend tells me they got a new dog, I'll probably believe them simply because my trust in them is sufficient for an ubiquitous claim such as that. If they tell me they bought a ferrari, I'd be a little more inquisitive and ask for pictures. If they tell me they bought a dragon, nothing short of seeing it in person will convince me because my understanding of the world is such that dragons do not exist. For a claim as ridiculous as that I would need very strong evidence.

Holding belief until you have sufficient evidence is what you do to avoid errors. I'm not perfect, there are certainly things I am wrong about. But to the best of my ability to understand, this is not something I am wrong about.

Are you just as quick to deny that dark matter exists?

We have pretty strong evidence to suggest that dark matter exists.

Again, I ask you: is it intelligent to want to be happy?

Sure, but lying to yourself will never make you happy. You're asking me to lie to myself.

I doubt any economists would agree with this. Even with declining demand, the addition of every grain of rice is a contribution to the economy.

There are many actually. There are markets for which the demand cannot increase. And like I said earlier "contribution to the economy" isn't the issue here, the market's capability for demand is. As a result there are industries that are zero sum games, with an overall tendency to move towards zero sum.

The cost of business loss is equivalent to gained experience.

Not when your house or car is collateral. Not when it is the only thing paying your rent and keeping food on the table.

But I was talking about God's provision, and there's no limitation to that.

We were talking about homesteading, which absolutely has a limit.

Nowhere in our Constitution does it say that government is supposed to protect the people.

Then why do we have an army? If the government has no responsibility to protect us, then we could easily save hundreds of billions of dollars of tax payer money by disbanding all armed forces.

Every time you imply that corporations are "greedy", you sound out of touch and inexperienced.

I don't care about how it sounds, it is the truth.

You make it so clear that you've never run a business and hired anyone

This is just an ad hominem.

Businesses have tight budgets.

Only because they budget boat loads of money for executives and shareholders.

But freedom of religion is not freedom from religion.

You can't have one without the other.

It's a good comparison because I'm trying to make a point about possible states.

And the states you are comparing are inherently a bad comparison because the state of a light bulb is in no way representative of serving, which is an active action.

You don't need to understand something in order to accept that it's true, or that it exists.

You know what I meant. The evidence for free will is lacking, therefore I do not believe it exists.

Once you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, and you live in a state of perpetual prayer, you will know what God wants from you personally. You will learn that His will often goes against your own, and that it sometimes makes no sense to you.

That doesn't answer my question. How do you know that god doesn't want humans to solve climate change on our own? "Just pray for an answer" doesn't tell me anything about the methodology of how you came to your current conclusion of "no".

Did god personally tell you that the answer was no? Is it just a feeling you have? Was it some "sign"?

I was referring to the big-picture point he made in the whole last 11 minutes of the video.

I am aware that isn't the focus that you had in mind, but it was one of the bigger reactions I had to it. My overall view is that he is deeply out of touch and incapable of using anything other than a strawman argument. He fundamentally does not understand what he is criticizing.

It's not as if people are rejecting Christ and converting to Judaism.

That's not what "The decline in chrstianity" describes.

Rather it's a secular movement driven by Satan's success at convincing a vast swath of the populace that God is imaginary.

That's just not happening.

Western civilization is Christiandom.

No it's not. Western civ is a pretty arbitrary phrase that is used in a million different ways, and christianity is only a subset of that. Words and phrases change over time, and this is one of those things that has changed.

the project of undermining Western civilization.

There is no such project, at least how I define western civilization.

I'm not sure exactly what points you're referring to here. Skimming through it, I'm pretty sure I already know all of these details.

If you're aware of all the details then you should also be aware that the enlightment (a huge part of western civilization) was the birth of science, the scientific method, and secularism. Meaning christendom != western civ.

It is the height of hubris to criticize God. His wisdom is infinite

I am criticizing a fictional, human made character. As a result of being human made, there is no such infinite wisdom.

if yours was too then you'd understand why certain children are given cancer.

There is no good reason.

It's not for us to try to understand. It's for us to accept in our worship and prayer.

How have you determined that you aren't worshiping an evil god if you haven't questioned god? How do you know that it isn't the case that both god and satan are evil?

You have demons whispering lies into your ears, and you believe them unquestioningly.

Nobody is whispering anything in my ears, metephorically or literally, whichever way you mean. And I question everything before I believe it.

Comparing Zeus to God is far worse than apples and oranges, because at least apples and oranges are both fruits. It's like comparing icebergs to smartphones. They have absolutely nothing whatsoever in common, to the point that it's nonsensical to even try to compare them.

Both Yahweh and Zeus are fictional characters which people irrationally use to explain why things work. That was the basis for my comparison and therefore makes it a valid comparison.

And then people start to deny that you exist because they have the theory of how the basketball goes through the basket. The whole idea is absolutely ridiculous.

That's not really how that works.

it's self-evidently true, as anyone who denies God cannot be said to be very intelligent.

That's not true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence

scientific disciplines are certainly attractive to atheists who want to devote their lives to pretending that they're disproving God by collecting the evidence of the basketball.

That is absolutely not why people do science. They do so because they want to learn more about the universe, do some good for humanity and advance it. Do you even know a single scientist?

The production of anything means it's not zero-sum. Demand can expand and contract over time in any market, but that doesn't matter. If you grow an apple or produce a nuclear fuel pellet, you add value to the economy. Now if there are multiple sellers competing, then it'll drive down the price. But we're not discussing prices here.

Value to the economy isn't the issue here though. The topic is about whether or not a company hurts another through competition, and economic value cannot explain or measure the of hurting other companies.

If 10,000 fuel pellets are needed for the year, then the market will create and sell roughly 10,000 pellets for the year. If company A sells extra pellets, going from 1k/yr to 2k/yr those sales need to come from somewhere within that 10,000 demand limit. As a result all other companies lose 1k/yr in sales. Maybe the majority of that loss goes to company B or C, or maybe it is spread out. It would only be a positive sum game if the 10,000 pellet demand was able to increase, but it can't due to the restrictive amount of reactors. As a result of all of this, this industry is a zero sum game.

It's a matter of drive.

That's a part of it, but not the whole.

Again you can start a business for $0 or next to nothing.

Even if that is true (which it is instead highly misleading), it has nothing to do with the impact of losing a business. One is the cost of startup the other is the cost of loss.

Why would we Americans care what other countries think?

I didn't say that we should, but you said that kids are naive when it is instead developed nations that are implementing these policies.

We're blessed by God to be the greatest country on Earth.

Seems to me that having the highest number of school shootings should instantly disqualify us from such a title.

If some other country wants to give out "free" ice cream to all of its citizens (in exchange, of course, for an obscenely high tax), they can have at it, for all we care.

Actually it doesn't quite work out that way. Americans overall spend more on healthcare than most other nations because of how inefficient it is to have insurance companies leeching money away from the american people.

Overall countries spend less on healthcare with socialized medicine.

My point was that it's subjective what the "necessities" are.

Only to a degree. We can objectively measure the amount of food and water you need, what kind of shelter is the mimimally viable product while still being healthy, etc.

Again, grow your own food, haul your own water up from the stream, and build your own shelter out of logs you felled yourself. $0, just like our forefathers.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Whoa, I thought we were discussing your notion of a "livable wage" as an abstract concept, but now you're changing it to minimum wage.

The two are tied together. There should be a minimum wage, and it should be a livable one. That's how it was started and it should have stayed.

The concept of a minimum wage is evil for multiple reasons.

No it's not. Poverty wages are what's evil and the solution to them is a minimum, livable wage.

If I want to hire someone for $1 a day, and that person agrees to the compensation, it's nobody else's business. Not yours, not the government's, nobody's.

It is the business of the government to protect the people, and greedy corporations who pay poverty wages is one such thing that we need protection from.

Secondly, minimum wages are absolutely disastrous for the economy, and that has been shown time and again.

I disagree that it is disastrous, but even if it was I wouldn't mind much since the economy is the main driving force for pollution.

Let's say you want to hire two people to help you, and you can afford a maximum of $100 per day

Right there is your lie about it being $100 per day. These companies absolutely have the money to pay a living wage yet they only set the "maximum" they are willing to pay such that it is a poverty wage. These companies rake in billions upon billions of dollars a year in profits. The money is absolutely there they just like to pretend that it isn't.

What system? We're all individuals.

The government/capitalism.

The aspect of that arrangement which is freedom from sin is represented well by the definitions.

Neither of these definitions mention god, sin, or serving god though.

That's the whole reason why the US was established as a republic, if we can keep it, instead of a democracy.

A republic is a type of democracy.

Many people would gladly vote away our freedoms, and indeed you yourself are part of the effort to eliminate the Christian foundation of our culture.

I don't seek to prevent anybody from practicing their religion, nor do I vote to do so. I do however vote to maintain the separation between church and state which is something else entirely.

Our republic enforces our freedom to worship God and do His will whether we like it or not, and that's a very good thing.

The 1st amedment explicitly states otherwise, that our government shall not enforce religion.

Tyranny of the majority is a disastrous problem.

There effectively is no such tyranny in a majority, and effectively by definition. And to the degree that there occasionally is, it is far better to have a government with a tendency towards tyranny of the majority than towards tyranny of the majority.

I'm telling you that as a light-bulb you must be either on or off.

And a light bulb doesn't serve anybody which makes it a bad comparison.

so I'm not going to get into it here.

I am aware, so I will also not get into it here. Just know going forward I don't really see free will as something that makes sense.

I do not advocate for brainwashing children into believing falsehoods

You advocate for school prayer

Nearly 100% of the scientists who insist that's true are funded by the government.

That's because nearly all of the research done on the climate is funded by the government. This is kind of like being surprised that the water in a puddle is shaped exactly to fit the hole that the puddle is in.

There have been quite a few cases of rogue scientists questioning that established dogma, only to be silenced and to lose their government funding.

They get kicked out because they make shit up and mislead the public, not because they're going against "established dogma".

The governments have a vested interest in spreading the lie that humans are responsible for the climate because it gives them an excuse to expand their power and pass arbitrary powerful laws controlling people.

Not really. National security is the excuse the government uses for this purpose, not the environment.

There's nothing in the Bible about carbon emissions.

Just because something isn't in the bible doesn't mean it isn't true.

We cannot "fix" a "problem" that God wants.

Did you ever think that maybe god wants us to fix the problem? Have you considered that you might be going against god's will when you say we should do nothing to prevent further damage to the environment/god's creation? It seems pretty straightforward to me that if god exists and created us and this planet, that such a god would want us to take good care of the planet.

Wiktionary's definition of "freedom"

I find it interesting that what you believe to be a better version of the definition of freedom still says nothing about serving god, and still backs up what I say about how obeying god and serving god are anti-thetical to freedom.

servitude to God is a little complex, and seemingly contradictory on the surface

It's not just the surface. To be a servant is to be controlled, and to be controlled is to lack freedom.

we see the encroachment of positive rights such as the "right" to vote, etc.

An increase in the people's control over the government is a good thing. You seem to be implying it is not.

You're forced to the same way you're forced to either be awake or asleep

Not really. I can choose when to sleep and when to blink my eyes. And yet you believe I am a servant (of satan), therefore controlled, therefore not free. Sleep and blinking on the other hand isn't a form of control by some other being.

But you can choose to trust just as you can choose to have faith. Free will is a powerful thing.

To be honest I don't think that is a choice either. I don't think there is any good argument out there to prove that we have free will, even under a theistic world view.

We have a moral responsibility to persuade children as best we can to foster a relationship with God.

Or in other words, to brainwash children into believing falsehoods. That's an immoral thing to do and thus not a moral responsibility.

Nobody can physically force someone else to pray. It's impossible.

That kind of misses the entire point, that social pressure of this kind on children is a bad thing. I haven't claimed it is a physical force.

To suppose we're responsible for "the problem" is shockingly arrogant, considering your appreciation for the great outdoors.

The scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that humans are responsible for climate change. I can provide you with sources if you like.

We're tiny and insignificant. To suppose we're capable of "fixing" it is equally arrogant. We're barely capable of anything at all, let alone changing the entire planet.

We've released a mind mindbogglingly huge quantity of greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere, and it has the effect of trapping heat from the sun which warms the planet. To fix the issue we need to reverse course on our emissions, which is absolutely within our capability.

let alone changing the entire planet.

After the 1940s, after all the nuclear experiments we've done up until the 90s, we have forever changed the entire planet because now there are radio active molecules basically everywhere on the entire surface of the earth.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/03/how-nuclear-testing-transformed-science/607174/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

Needless to say, I side with dominion.

You cannot have control over something without also having responsibility. Therefore even within your own world view we ought to fix this problem.