OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
For me, morality and health are intertwined. Any time someone says "should" they are making a moral judgement. Any time someone says, "I shouldn't do this, it's not healthy" they are making a moral judgement. "I shouldn't eat dessert, it's not healthy," is a moral decision that increases the virtue/habit of prudence and fortitude.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
Do you think there is actual benefit to fantasizing about having sex with someone, in the eventuality that you actually get to have sex with that person at some point? I am not very certain that imagining having sex with a woman, picturing her liking this, enjoying that, actually helps when you encounter the flesh and blood woman, who likely acts and enjoys completely different things. In fact, I think it probably hinders a fruitful, mutually pleasing sexual encounter.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
Most people on the potato trial used oil while cooking their potatoes and still saw results. Potatoes are weirdly satiating.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
What stance do you think I hold, based on the tagline, that would qualify as partisan or inflammatory? We have several people here who could probably be described as such, from atheists who meditate for 4 hours a day to full blown Catholic monarchists. I am neither, but it amuses me to describe myself this way.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
I see now, I thought I had established in a previous comment that showing underage minors (under 16 federally, other states have other laws, federally only protects interstate stuff) is a criminal offence outside that statute. Please see here: https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/citizens-guide-us-federal-law-obscenity:
Section 1470 of Title 18, United States Code, prohibits any individual from knowingly transferring or attempting to transfer obscene matter using the U.S. mail or any means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce to a minor under 16 years of age. Convicted offenders face fines and imprisonment for up to 10 years.
It is illegal for an individual to knowingly use interactive computer services to display obscenity in a manner that makes it available to a minor less than 18 years of age (See 47 U.S.C. § 223(d) –Communications Decency Act of 1996, as amended by the PROTECT Act of 2003). It is also illegal to knowingly make a commercial communication via the Internet that includes obscenity and is available to any minor less than 17 years of age (See 47 U.S.C. § 231 –Child Online Protection Act of 1998).
An adult showing a child pornography is something illegal and of a sexual nature. Something that adult could be charged with a criminal offense for. The adult showing the child pornography is the offence, it is a sexual action that the adult could be charged for.
Double checking your citations. They come from Title 18 U.S. Code Chapter 117, which does not use the word "grooming" at all. The section is titled "2422 - Coercion and enticement." This itself is not a legal definition of grooming. As far as I know there are none and it is more of a sociology term. But even so, showing minors pornography counts under the definition you offered.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
Worksheets? Notebooks? How is homework assigned?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
9d ago
I don't really mean for the average person to see percentages. Of course one could calculate percentages after the fact.
I mean for the politicians to only see a percentage on each line item. I mean for politicians to argue that X program should get .01% of the budget, while that program only receives .005%. Percentages are a way of declaring priorities.
And then, after the percentages are selected, the total budget compared to the tax revenue for the previous year is argued about and chosen.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
28d ago
Are we looking at the same Hooper study? It's funny how we can both look at it and zoom on different things:
We found little or no effect of reducing saturated fat on all‐cause mortality (RR 0.96; 95% CI 0.90 to 1.03; 11 trials, 55,858 participants) or cardiovascular mortality (RR 0.95; 95% CI 0.80 to 1.12, 10 trials, 53,421 participants), both with GRADE moderate‐quality evidence.
...
There was little or no effect of reducing saturated fats on non‐fatal myocardial infarction (RR 0.97, 95% CI 0.87 to 1.07) or CHD mortality (RR 0.97, 95% CI 0.82 to 1.16, both low‐quality evidence), but effects on total (fatal or non‐fatal) myocardial infarction, stroke and CHD events (fatal or non‐fatal) were all unclear as the evidence was of very low quality. There was little or no effect on cancer mortality, cancer diagnoses, diabetes diagnosis, HDL cholesterol, serum triglycerides or blood pressure, and small reductions in weight, serum total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and BMI. There was no evidence of harmful effects of reducing saturated fat intakes.
I looked through a few of the studies they reviewed but most don't really demonstrate a low PUFA/high Sat Fat diet anywhere.
The Black Study reduced fat entirely (not substituting PUFA for Sat fat) and found that keeping fat under 20% of calories helped reduce skin cancer.
The DART Study advised men to increase ratio of PUFA to SFA, but: "The advice on fat was not associated with any difference in mortality." Men who were advised to eat fatty fish did better, but I'm open to the idea that it's the O3:O6 ratio that matters, meaning increasing O3 might be beneficial to people (especially in the context of a high O6 diet).
Then we get to the Houtsmuller study, which look like it's going to actually address the PUFA thesis. Two groups of people fed a controlled diet, one diet has 4x as much Linoleic acid as the other. Sounds good. He doesn't give a lot of details about what is in each diets how he assessed the Linoleic acid quantity in the study. But let's take him for his word. There are a couple details that stand out to me:
First is, "The linolcic acid content of diet II was 4 times that of diet I, being 20.4 gr/1000 kcal for group II and 5.3 gr/1000 Kcal for group I."
According to the PUFA hypothesis, it's more like a cliff than a gradient. Humans naturally eat around 4-5 gr a day of PUFA without seed-oil or mono-gastric animal sources. This study has the Sat Fat group get twice that.
The other detail is they mention one of the sources of Sat Fat, "except for 4 patients of group I who preferred butter over saturated margarines." The Sat Fat group's intervention included getting fed partially-hydrogenated margarine. Which means lots of transfats. The negative effect this study found can possibly be explained by the amount of transfats in the Sat Fat arm of the study.
I'll admit I didn't check every study, but the ones I checked aren't really applicable to anything I'm concerned about. The only one I saw that clearly substituted Linoleic Acid for actual Sat Fat was the Sydney Study, which showed that substituting Margarine for Butter actually increased risk of Cardiovascular disease.
That said, the Sydney study Margarine probably had transfats. I'm not going to state that the Sydney study proves Sat Fat is the best, but it does support my primary point, which is that nutritional studies on fats are Terrible, do not account for common confounders, and a meta-analysis of a bunch of terrible studies does not make for good data.
which again is fine for people without aspirations to build muscle (which doesn't apply to OP).
I'm talking about OP's wife. OP seems to want his wife to become slimmer, not a body builder. I'm indicating that to lose weight might require cutting protein down to the bare minimum (around 50g), something that is left out of a lot of advice. Losing lean mass when losing weight can actually be quite good, as you don't want a lot of extra skin hanging around.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
28d ago
I'm going to give you advice from a woman's perspective and from the perspective who's been paying attention to the latest in nutrition.
Diet will have more affect on weight gain than exercise, especially as you both age. To stop gaining weight, decrease mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fat. Dairy, coconut, palm kernal oil, and tallow are good fats. Everything else is on thin ground.
To lose weight, cut protein down to around 50g/day. This is a temporary measure, but it will rev up the metabolism quite nicely.
One thing to check before all else - is your wife pregnant? Have you really ruled it out? Are you sure? Ok then, read on!
How to get your wife to join in: Tell her you are interested in contributing to Science! (TM) You are getting really interested in SMTM's Potato studies, and you would like to help provide more data on what the effect would be on someone in the healthy weight range. This would involve eating only butter and potatoes for a month straight, but most people who try it like it.
Just one problem - There's no way you'd be able to do this if you have someone eating normal meals in the house. The fridge space of preparing two meals, the mental effort to avoid eating other food, it's too much. Would she be able to try it with you? It doesn't have to be for the whole time, just long enough to get in the groove. Would she like to weigh herself with you every day so she can be a trial participant as well?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
29d ago
I've written some fanfiction, but I think I'd rather make friendships in the physical world. It's better for my kids, better for networking, better to have someone who can lend a hand in real life from time to time.
If someone in the community I lurked on reached out to me and said, "Hey, I saw your post on TheMotte and recognized that you were talking about us, would you like to join an online game together?" I would accept in a heartbeat. But I don't necessarily want to create a new online attachment.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
True. It would be very hard to get the spirit of that law conveyed into iron clad words, even if I had unlimited power.
I wish I could see a counterfactual world where every company was organized into a co-op like the Mondragon Corp and see what the downsides are, before gaining unlimited political power and imposing that on people.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
I have noticed that Bitcoin goes up in times of uncertainty, and then goes down when things get calmer. But the first rule of Bitcoin is not to buy it when it's back in the news, and it's been reaching highs. So probably don't buy Bitcoin now.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."
The saints are very disgusted with their faults, more so than the average sinner. But that verse also does not exclude the possibility of a saint having sinned in the past, but over time has shed the habit of sin. After all, the next verse is "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
But because I do not think that we will meet the standard of God's law in this life
I think you are correct for many, if not most Christians. But I also genuinely believe that many of the saints were able to completely cease all inclination to sin in this life. And I believe that for the the rest it happens during Purgation after death.
We do not enter heaven by loving God and our neighbor
100% agreed here, we can only enter heaven by Jesus's sacrifice.
When a sin is forgiven it is forgiven because God forgives it. God does not count the sin on you, yes. Jesus has told visionaries that He can't even remember the sins they've confessed. (Obviously a bit of a metaphor, as God knows everything.)
I think the radical thing Catholics believe, that you disagree with, is that the forgiveness of sins is not itself sufficient for Heaven. (The forgiveness of sins means that a Christian is going to Heaven, but it doesn't mean by itself that the Christian is ready for Heaven.) In order for Heaven to not be a tyranny, the people in it need to have willingly let go of attachments to sin as well. We lose this attachment in this life, little by little, by willfully forming the habit of conforming to God's will. And if there is any attachment to sin left over at the moment of death, it needs to be removed by the cooperation of God and the sinner. (Put out of your head any specific idea of a place of Purgatory. I'm referencing just the idea of purgation, whether that's an instantaneous change or a difficult trial.)
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
But Paul isn't talking about that. What Paul is referring to is specifically that having one's sins forgiven, covered, not counted against oneself suffices to make one blessed. The focus is not on how that is attained, but upon how the blessing (and, per verse 6 and verse 9, righteousness) consists in the forgiveness of sins.
Catholics believe in the forgiveness of sins. What are you arguing against?
The proposition that there will neither be sin nor attachment to sin in Heaven?
The proposition that at some point, (in this life or in the next) sinful people lose their attachment to sin through the graces of Jesus' death and Resurrection?
That this purification requires some assent of the sinner's will, some kind of cooperation with Jesus?
Can you go to Heaven without loving God and Neighbor?
Can you love God without keeping His commandments and repenting if you fail?
Can you keep God's commandments without doing good works?
Do good works happen automatically, or does the Christian need to accept Jesus's graces? In other words, can a Christian reject Jesus' graces and refuse to do good works?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
Off topic, but how are you leaning on the DIS fight? Do you think Trian would be an improvement? Is Blackwell Capital even a contender?
A lot of people see it as a fight against woke Disney, or unaffordable Disneyland, or whatever their current complaint is, but I don't think that's a priority for anyone in the fight.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
Paul seems to think that, given that we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God
I think you are referencing Romans 5:1 for this. "Justified therefore through faith, let us keep peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have got by faith access to that grace in which we stand, and let us exult in the hope of the glory of God."
It seems to be saying, with our initial justification caused by faith (in opposite to circumcision) let us act properly and keep peace with God through the grace Jesus has gained for us.
But looking around, it looks like the "Let us" translation is based on some Greek manuscripts, while other Greek manuscripts do not have it as an exhortations. The Vulgate has "iustificati igitur ex fide pacem habeamus ad Deum per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum," which sounds more like an exhortation. Could this be the root of our confusion? The subjunctive seems to be attested to earlier in manuscripts, but both are widespread in the early Church. The official Roman translation used Let Us, and that undoubtedly influenced theology for millennia.
In the absence of knowing what Paul actually wrote here, may I suggest that we both avoid using Romans 5:1 to argue for or against our positions?
But I do think that Abraham must have been justified instantaneously by faith:
Are you still referring specifically to Romans 4:2? Is the Aorist in 4:2 or 4:3? Because Romans 4:2 says, "If Abraham was justified because of his actions, he has reason for glorying; but not before God, since what does the scripture say?" Paul is saying that Abraham was Not justified because he had some innate awesomeness. It doesn't really matter what tense was used when Paul is ironically saying that something Didn't happen that way.
I disagree that the language Paul uses makes the claim that Abraham was justified in a single instant, and this seems to be the basis of your arguments against the Faith/Works explanations that I hold.
Short of us both being ancient Greek scholars I don't know how much more productive our conversation can become. We can both start to appeal to authority, but I think our fundamental difference lies in the specificity of a language that I don't speak (and I'm not sure but I don't think you do either.) Which is disappointing, because I usually mock those who think that the Bible is impossible to understand because it's been a game of telephone/translated too many times.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
Trying to nail you down here, if someone followed the law perfectly absent Jesus' death on the cross, however impossible that in itself might be, would that person have made it to Heaven?
If so, I think I understand Protestant's objections to Catholic's veneration of Mary better. Catholics believe Jesus' death on the cross redeems us because Jesus is God. But do Protestants believe His death redeems us because He was sinless (and His divinity was required for Him to be sinless, but it was the sinlessness itself that made redemption possible?)
Just to check—you don't think that Abraham was justified solely by faith, right?
I think James was pretty clear:
"Was not Abraham our father justified by his actions, when he offered up Isaac, his son, on the sacrificial altar? You see that his faith worked with his actions and through his actions his faith was made a thing complete, and so the scripture was fulfilled which says: Abraham believed God, and it was counted as righteousness in him, and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by his acts and not by faith alone."
But the binding of Isaac happened well after Abraham's circumcision, after Abraham's faith was counted to him as righteousness. I think you are incorrect about Abraham becoming justified instantaneously by faith, whatever tenses you might find in Paul.
Yes, Paul seems to disagree with James, and Clement with Clement. But we know that all must go together. Somehow these quotes and concepts didn't seem contradictory to the early Church. No Catholic today would claim that we are justified of ourselves or that we are justified absent an act of divine condescension.
I see three possible ways to reconcile James with Paul and Clement with Clement: (and I'm borrowing from Matthew J. Thomas here)
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One proposal is that the difference is a matter of timing: while Paul is speaking about the initial reception of justifying grace apart from works, James is talking about the verdict of final justification at the last day, for which works as evidence of faith are essential.
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Another possibility is that the difference is the kind of works under discussion: while Paul denies that the Torah’s observances can be made a requirement for justification, it is less clear that the good works prescribed by James are also a target of Paul’s objections
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A third possibility focuses on the nature of faith, which may be more notional in James (a faith such as the demons can have, cf. Jas 2:19), while Paul’s use of the term is more relational and entails fidelity as well (cf. ‘the obedience of faith’ in Rom 1:5, 16:26).
I think all three possibilities are compatible with the Catholic view. Which of these would be compatible with your view? If none, what is your view?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
I'm very hesitant to break out Paul verse by verse and ascribe an individual meaning to each line. Chapters and verses were only delineated many hundreds of years after Paul wrote. He also does not come from the same tradition of writing that we developed, where we write our thesis front and center, then write our supporting evidence, then follow with a conclusion. This can make it hard to understand what the point of any given passage is.
With that said, my reading of Romans chapters three and four would be: The first covenant that God made with Abraham never promised eternal life, theosis, etc. to those who followed it. It did lead to Salvation - out of the Covenant came Jesus - but it does not grant salvation. When people failed to follow the first covenant, they weren't failing to achieve their own salvation. Instead they were merely demonstrating that humankind is weak and sinful.
In your exegesis of Romans 4, it seems to me that you are generalizing things that Abraham did as part of his forming a covenant with God in Genesis 15, into general moral action. I disagree that Romans 4:13 contrasts Faith and the law as opposing each other, but rather Faith preceded the covenant. If you reread Genesis 15 you will see that Paul's referring to it in a very orderly fashion. First you have him quote Genesis 15:6 ("Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.") Then right after that verse in Genesis, God forms the covenant ("On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram.")
In Romans 4:18-25, Paul does generalize to the gentiles - because a huge part of his letter to the Romans is to argue that the gentiles do not need to join the old covenant to also join the new. A Christian's faith in Jesus is like Abraham's faith in God's promise - they both start a covenant. He is saying that Gentiles don't need to follow the old covenant to be justified because the old covenant never justified anyone. Unlike the new covenant, the old covenant never promised justification.
I also think we might not have the same terminology when we talk about Righteousness, Salvation, Justification. Sometimes Catholics and Protestants disagree about how much we are disagreeing because we just don't use the same words to talk about the same things. To be clear about the terminology I am using here are some definitions:
Justification - A formative process in which Christians are made righteous over the course of their entire lives. It is a gift from God, unearned, provided by Jesus' death on the cross to all who accept that He is Lord. This is something that can be lost or stalled and then picked up again. It is comparable to being born. It is unearned gift, but there are certain things you can do that hasten your (spiritual or physical) death.
Protestants often define justification as "To be declared righteousness," in a one time event. This dramatically changes how we read any Bible verse with the word "Justification" in it. Instead, Catholics would use the word "Salvation" in places where Protestants commonly use "Justification."
Salvation - Actually getting to Heaven. Not the same thing as Justification.
Righteousness - Correct behavior. Jesus imparts (not imputes) righteousness to us.
In the Catholic view, faith is an unmerited gift from God. Without God providing the grace of faith, there is no human effort that will grant a person faith. Faith leads to Justification, in which Christians become righteous over the course of their lives. At the end of our lives, we reach Salvation through this process of Justification, which we did nothing to earn but do need to participate in lest we lose it anyways.
This is a good video that examines the differences (an similarities) between what Catholics and Protestants believe on Justification.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
Aquinas seems to believe that angels can perform psychokinesis to produce physical effects. They can use psychokinesis to make sound waves, alter light, apply force, etc.
He lived in a world where everyone agreed that the mental and spiritual affected the physical on a daily basis.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4mo ago
You definitely know more on the topic than I do, my background is a class I took on copyright that only tangentially spoke on this.
That said, I think about medical malpractice lawsuits, which are notoriously difficult to win, expensive for everyone, etc. And yet the tiny amount of medical malpractice lawsuits that go anywhere have had a huge effect on how every doctor and hospital system conducts business. I guess the main difference is that medical procedures take place in a specific location in the US, and so jurisdiction is simple?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4mo ago
I agree that the policies targeting websites are more nebulous and throw a wrench into the matter. But most people don't even seem aware what the current legality of pornographic content even is. That people think pornography is protected shows that most people (even well-educated people on the Motte) have no idea what is currently on the books. This is an area where it seems the law and the culture have diverged dramatically without much attempt to update the laws. Alternatively, many very-online people have no idea what the average US citizen thinks of Porn use and how available it ought to be.
The only sane application of the law to me would be to streamline a system where parents can sue content distributors or individuals for serving a specific pornographic image to their specific minor without sufficient age verification. That keeps half the burden of proof on the parent to show A) their kid saw porn, B) the party being sued is responsible for the child viewing the porn and C) the party being sued did not use sufficient age verification (defined by the state.) Depending on the damages and how simple this is to file, this could have a dampening effect on even less-than-legit-venues and individual actors on Discord.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6mo ago
I take about 5g a day with Bulk Supplement's Glycine Powder. It's pretty cheap stuff, but I can tell the difference in how smooth my skin gets.
I recommend checking out /r/SaturatedFat for some unorthodox health advice. They are pretty interested in eliminating inflammation, reductive stress, and insulin resistance and I think they are finally onto something.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6mo ago
Yes, please present me with that evidence? The whole comment was a request for the iron clad evidence.
Hooked on Phonics is how I learned to read. Now they have a subscription/app model with most instruction taking place on the app, and supplemental books being sent to you. You get weekly progress reports asking you to target certain lessons/games. I have the app on the adult profile of our tablet because it's something I need to direct and observe.
Before this I tried All About Reading, but it wasn't clicking with her. It got to the point where she wouldn't even look at the words. There were also a lot of pieces and crafts. Hooked on Phonics app at least has some novelty/fun to it and is better at building confidence.
Duolingo also has a reading program now. I don't like it as much because it lets the kid brute force their way through each lesson. But it's free and I can leave it on the kids profile for practice.
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