If there’s someone you trust, have them fill out the questions about you.

Theres a list of things that they ask to figure out if you have ADHD. If you have like 8 out of thirteen things you have ADHD. Pay attention to the qualifiers though. To the extent that your life is negatively impacted, and in comparison to your peers. Everyone loses their car keys and wallet sometimes, people with ADHD lose everything all the time, and it’s a hindrance to their everyday life. People who know you comment on your propensity to lose things. Everyone hates the tedious parts of their jobs, people with ADHD lose their job because they can’t do tedious things.

It may also be helpful to think about the things we can do. People with ADHD can access the expensive creative part of their brain and the detail oriented task focused part at the same time. This gives us the ability to think creatively while doing a task. There’s also hyper-focus, the ability to focus on just one thing for extended periods. When the two abilities combine, you can slip into a flow state that can be very productive.

My Mom was a teacher. Her opinion was that bad teachers with poor classroom management skills were causing ADD hysteria. In a way she was right. I didn’t have discipline issues, so nobody at school pushed for me to get treatment. I had this story about myself. I was lazy and apathetic. That’s why I had trouble doing homework. That’s why I failed out of college. As an adult, realizing that I suffered from untreated ADHD, that my life could have been easier…its hard. Coming to terms with the injury that our parents inevitably cause is uncomfortable. I try to remember that fallibility is the human condition. I know I’m making mistakes with my son. I just hope that I’m getting more right than I get wrong.

MeBurger!

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I don’t think using terms that you disagree with is necessarily a straw man. If we had been arguing about the possibility of flight and my position was that all previous attempts had failed, you’d come back and say, “those weren’t attempts at flight, those were bad bird impersonations.”

On a separate note, I’ve got a question for you. If capitalism inevitably leads to people being poorer, why does this graph show that over the last 200 years the number of people in poverty has steadily declined?

“We’ll never survive!” “Nonsense. You’re only saying that because no one ever has.”

I really want to believe that a communist world is possible. Maybe I’m like the pessimists that doubted humans could ever fly. I just don’t see it ever working.

I really like that you defined all these terms. It makes it much easier to discuss the ideas when the language doesn’t get in the way. Thank you.

Would it be correct to state that every attempt at bringing about communism has failed thus far? From the Bolsheviks to Mao to Castro, none of them have succeeded. Is communism not what those movements were attempting to accomplish? Yes, things went badly, and the end result was not communism, but that doesn’t change the fact that those movements had the aim of ending capitalism, in favor of communism.

Every unregulated capitalist economy has devolved

Right, but I’m not arguing for unregulated capitalism. I think capitalism should be highly regulated. I’m arguing for fair markets that reward good actors and punish bad. I’m arguing for continually refining capitalism and fixing the problems. Which is why I keep having this argument. You’re obviously an intelligent person, motivated to change society for the better, with a good moral compass. I want you on my side. I want people to want to work on the actual problems, and not pin their hopes on some big idea that will fix everything, because that doesn’t exist.

Sure, there have been authoritarian governments that said they were socialist for PR.

This is the cognitive dissonance about Marxism that bugs me the most. You believe that a system such as Capitalism is so flawed that it must be replaced with something else, but you are unwilling to see that Socialism is also flawed in different ways. If you adhered to the principles of pure Marxism, you would see that Socialism as well must be discarded for a better alternative. Instead of seeing that, you will label every failed Socialist state as a fake. We need something else.

Steam engines literally led to the development of electric motors. Steam engines led to steam turbines which led to dynamos which led to electric motors, each invention building off the knowledge gained at the previous step.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Algernon_Parsons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo

Your analogy is doubly flawed. Each type of engine you mention has strengths and weaknesses that depend on external variables. Internal combustion isn’t better at producing electricity for instance, which is why we mostly use external combustion to do that. Electric motors aren’t better than internal combustion, except that internal combustion is causing climate change. It’s also flawed because history has shown that Socialism doesn’t work better than Capitalism. I could see, if this were purely theoretical, someone arguing the benefits of Marxist ideas, but it’s been tried. In several places around the world, people tried to put in place the kind of changes you’re advocating. In every case it led to authoritarianism, brutal repression, and starvation. Does it suck that poor kids don’t have enough to eat, while Bezos builds space yachts? Yeah it sucks, but it’s not millions-starving-to-death levels of suck like we actually, not theoretically, got every time we tried Communism or Socialism or any kind of take-their-stuff-and-give-it-to-me-ism.

Was it straw man, or ad hominem? Are you thinking that I shouldn’t have called Marx stupid, or that I misrepresented his concept?

China, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, Cuba. Every single time, the state becomes authoritarian and repressive, ignoring human rights, starving and imprisoning huge populations. Eventually it either fails, or the state keeps the authoritarianism, but gets rid of the communism. Look at China and Vietnam. They’ve transitioned to a mostly market based economy, but kept the authoritarianism.

These are examples of everyone starving because centrally planned economies are a bad idea.

Russia

China

North Korea

Why do Marxists always assume people who disagree just aren’t smart enough to understand Marxism? It’s not difficult to understand the concept, it’s just dumb. Marx was old school I-am-very-smart.

I can absolutely draw you a line from the development of the steam engine to the electric motor to NASA. Every little thing that was wrong with steam engines led to better and better technology. Marxism is like saying, “the steam engine has problems, obviously mechanical engineering is doomed, lets breed better horses.”

Damn it. I fell for another stupid internet fallacy.

A couple reasons off the top of my head, 1.) You can’t let 20-30 kids loose without it ending in pandemonium, but you need kids to practice time management skills before college. Homework is a time where kids can learn to manage a workload, outside of the controlled environment of school. 2) Kids can’t candle a 9 to 5, they need recess and art, and music, and gym to give their brains a break. In the 7.5ish hours that kids go to school, there’s probably only 4 hours of work done. (but Bob, I only work like 30 minutes of any given day, and I’m an adult…)

She doesn’t want to be pregnant or she doesn’t want to have a kid? Two different problems with two different solutions.

I think we should prevent as many abortions as we can, while preserving everyone’s right to body autonomy.

How did your hypothetical woman get pregnant? In my hypothetical, ideal world that scenario should be exceedingly rare.

A person’s body is their own. From the skin in, it’s yours to do with as you please. You can’t make somebody wreck their body or risk their lives to satisfy your morality. I’m willing to debate this issue with someone who has done everything I’m their power to mitigate the risk of unwanted pregnancy. If not, I assume they’re just trying to control women’s bodies in order to secure their place in heaven, because the rest of christianity is hard.

And she doesn’t want to put the child up for adoption? That’s valid. Pregnancy has long term negative health impacts. Morally, I’m not opposed to abortion. I know some people are. I feel like I’m unwilling to debate the morality while all the practical steps to mitigate the risk haven’t been taken.

I would add, free, easily accessible sterilization should be the norm. I don’t want more kids, so I got sterilized.

Apply the scientifc method. Look at places and times with wide economic disparity. Were/are those good stable places with happy healthy populations, or was it bad. If you decide it’s a problem based on evidence, then look at solutions. If you don’t have examples, try things out and record the data. What worked and what didn’t. Don’t let your values bias you. I think that welath inequality is a problem, but I’m willing to listen to thoroughly researched, peer reviewed, data backed conclusions.