The Belief in Supernatural Free Will as a Significant Source of Human Suffering
I just had a possibly interesting idea: what is it that makes it possible for religious people to look at a image on TV of…
Category: Mix
A Simple Technique for Successfully Debating the Ignorant
What follows is my new method of addressing someone who doesn’t create sound arguments during a debate, i.e. those backed by fact, data, or some…
Be Like Han | Daniel Miessler
So Han’s walking down the halls of Bespin with his old friend Lando. Leia’s there, and lookin’ good. Han thinks he’s off to dinner –…
Free Will vs. Determinism as the Core of Political Disagreement
Ultimately, there are two primary political belief systems, and they are poorly captured by any label such as liberal, conservative, republican, or democrat. These two…
How to Have a Good Debate: Definitions
The majority of conflict within any sufficiently complex debate originates from semantics related to the core terms, e.g. atheist, agnostic, liberal, conservative. The primary goal…
Nmap: Use the –top-ports Option for Both TCP and UDP Simultaneously
I’m a big fan of nmap‘s –top-ports option, which gives you the ability to leverage Fyodor’s latest Internet research on open ports on the Internet.…
Free Will Again (A Response to a Reddit Question)
In response to this thread on Reddit: — Free will is a necessary delusion. The big bang happened, and then we do things. If true…
From Reddit: An Essay on Why It’s So Hard to Leave Religion
What follows is an excellent piece from Reddit on why leaving a religion can be so incredibly difficult. Here is the original thread, which is…
No, It’s Not Just “Those People” Who Current Healthcare is Failing
62% of bankruptcies are from medical bills. Most medical debtors are well educated and middle class. Three quarters of those who filed bankruptcy had health…
A Wake-up Call for “Moderate Religion” Apologists
I have debated here at great length the degree of benefit or harm offered to society by religion. My position is that religion–even in its…
Extracting Meaning from Emptiness | Daniel Miessler
I saw this quote on Reddit recently, and it resonnated with me. It reminded me of my thoughts on meaning, which basically conclude that meaning…
From Password Reset Mechanisms to OpenID: A Brief Discussion of Online Password Security
For those not familiar, OpenID is a system that allows you to sign in to multiple websites using one identity. So, rather than have a…