I don't think i will be buying, reading or commenting on Stef's new book Real Time Relationships: the logic of love, but I will take this opportunity to make the most superficial of remarks: Worst. Cover. Design. Ever.

Dylboz, you must agree, no?

Yes; it looks absolutely terrible. It's hard to imagine it being worse.

Same goes for the colours of the forum they've been using for some time.

I'm halfway through this video btw { http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ24bz6jy3U } and I think it's very good so far.

EVER? Well, hmm. EVER is a long time.

- NonE

The logic of love? Fantastic! He's found the underlying logical structure for ethics and now he's gone and figured out love! What's next math, language, the universe?

Also, Niels:

Nielsio wrote:

I'm halfway through this video btw { http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ24bz6jy3U } and I think it's very good so far.

How can you keep watching those videos? What is good about a vindictive and intolerant clown rapist giving relationship advice? It seems like relationship counseling from a cult leader would never be filed under the category "good".

He just doesn't understand fonts at all, let alone color, balance and basic layout design. Oh well. If it's not the worst ever, at least it's the worst EVAR (or since the UPB book).

Free will has absolutely got to be limited by the constraints of physical reality, even Stef would agree that you can't violate the fundamental laws of physics (he's quite fond of them, actually, what with his constant reference to the scientific method). So, if the laws of physics dictate your brain state, and that brain state is the result of previous interactions between physical objects in space-time (of which, your brain is one, or made of many, depending on how you look at things), acting in accordance with the laws of nature, then it can be said to have been determined by them. So, just as atheism is the same as monotheism, in that atheists believe in just one fewer god, determinists allow for one fewer choice. Stef could defend his rather rudimentary notion of free will by saying that, limited by the constraints of reality, if you could choose even one of two courses of action, then, you have free will. Determinists would say, you really could only have chosen the one that you did take. I'm still not convinced of hard determinism, but I think I'm sort of a compatiblist, insofar as obviously, you can't make choices that are outside the constraints of reality, and that reality is obviously shaped by prior action, it's just a question of how limited that range of choices really is.

given Stef's 'dietician' analogy everything he says about love, friendship etc. is very likely not worth anybody's time though.

but yeah, it may very well be that there are good things in it, I'm just not putting in the effort of suppressing my loathing anymore

i think this was said by others before, but the idea that morality requires free will may be akin to the idea that morality requires a God, or a state

that statement requires way more thinking and elaboration though.