Phat Unplugged

Kept man is my favorite term for myself. I did very well.
My wife is smart, beautiful, kind and talented. She let's me be me. She is my best friend and we make a great team.

It is, but to be honest I have lots of free time. I don't sit around watch TV and eat chocolate bonbons all day.

I should bring up the biggest problem with my wife. She is 15 years younger. So I am ready to be all retired and travel. Well she needs to work at least another 10-12 years. I just hope I am not dead before she retires.
I know, I know, what a problem to have.

Poor Theo.

I'm working on my health as of late and will not be active as much as I was before, but despite my less than stellar reputation around here, I DO consider constructive criticism around here when it is truly constructive rather than critical. So I took Percy's term which he used to describe my YouTube addiction: ECHO CHAMBER(S). So what does the term mean?

GCF Global:

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Information can come from many different sources and perspectives. But when you’re only hearing the same perspectives and opinions over and over again, you may be in something called an echo chamber. An echo chamber is an environment where a person only encounters information or opinions that reflect and reinforce their own. Echo chambers can create misinformation and distort a person’s perspective so they have difficulty considering opposing viewpoints and discussing complicated topics. They’re fueled in part by confirmation bias, which is the tendency to favor info that reinforces existing beliefs.

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I mulled over the definition. You have to understand that I believe in myself and do not often challenge my own perspectives. After all, while the lot of you are convinced that I am misinformed and willfully ignorant, I happen to believe in myself and my ability to be intuitive and discerning. (Admittedly to a limited degree)So I examined two of my echo chambers.
1) Videos and articles that suggest that the US is basically living on fumes financially.
2) Videos, articles and Christian dogma which I have chosen to accept and incorporate into my personal belief system.It goes against my very nature to be critical of myself and my beliefs.Question: Does the very word "critical" suggest a negative outcome? (I was taught that it was during my childhood.) I am re-examining that conclusion.This topic will unfold slowly. In it, I hope to challenge both myself and others as together we arrive at some sort of consensus. Constructive comments are welcome. Please don't hate.

Let me recommend to you a documentary that I recommended to Faith on 26 Feb 2020 in Message 5067: The Brainwashing of my Dad -- it's even on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS52QdHNTh8 as well as streaming for free on Pluto, FreeVee, Plex, Filmzie, and FREE, as well as bring available through a subscription (Gravitas) or rental (eg, Prime).I wrote: From Wikipedia:

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Synopsis

As Jen Senko tries to understand the transformation of her father from a nonpolitical Democrat to an angry Republican fanatic, she uncovers the forces behind the media that changed him completely: a plan by Roger Ailes under President Richard Nixon for a media takeover by the Republicans, the 1971 Powell Memo urging business leaders to influence institutions of public opinion (especially the media, universities, and courts), the 1987 dismantling of the Fairness Doctrine under President Ronald Reagan, and the signing of the 1996 Telecommunications Act under President Bill Clinton. The documentary aims to show how the media and the nation changed, which leads to questions about who owns the airwaves, what rights listeners and watchers have, and what responsibility the government has to keep the airwaves fair, accurate, and accountable.

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Content

Senko's father, Frank, was originally a "nonpolitical Kennedy Democrat" who began changing into a far-right Republican in the 1980s, she said.[1] On her father's lengthy commute to his place of employment, he listened to conservative talk radio, which Senko believes started the change in her father's personality. In particular, he listened to Rush Limbaugh and watched Fox News. Towards the end of his life, Frank's views mostly changed back to being somewhere in the middle due to his wife exposing him to less biased media. He died in January 2016 at the age of 93.

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Like many Americans, especially retired men, her father started listening exclusively to conservative media (talk radio, FOX News) and subscribing to a conservative email site, all of which fed him a constant stream of far-right content. I worked with people like that and would walk in on them having a heated self-affirming discussion about huge Democrat conspiracies that I had never heard of. They hear nothing besides that content which is designed to enrage and terrify the elderly (eg, Ailes has been quoted as requiring content that would "scare your grandfather" -- fear and anger shuts down the neocortex, thus disabling rational thought).Another victim of that media was interviewed in the film, a truck driver trapped long hours on the road with nothing to listen to on the radio except right-wing talk radio. The interviewee described the effect on him, turning him into a FOX-bot, until one day he stumbled upon NPR, a rational and informed source to listen to. We should also remember that poll testing respondents' knowledge of current events found that conservative media viewers/listeners knew significantly less about current events than did those who didn't follow the news at all.Watch it. It is after all on YouTube and hence, in your mind, must be true.

That's the mistake. I am always questioning my own views. I guess that's the nature of skepticism. I see life as a state of continuous inquiry. No, it suggests questioning. And we should all be questioning. That includes questioning our own beliefs. There are no negatives to questioning.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect has undoubtedly been mentioned to you before, but it bears repeating. In 1999 Dunning and Kruger published the paper Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. As explained at The Dunning-Kruger Effect:

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In it, they prove the phenomenon that people with very little knowledge of a particular subject are confident and outspoken on the subject. This lack of knowledge leads to two things – firstly, you have little idea of what you are actually doing or talking about, and secondly, your sense of confidence makes it impossible for you to realize just how little you know.

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Combine this confidence with an echo chamber full of confirmations of false knowledge and beliefs (e.g., "Fiat currencies are unviable") and you have someone who (to exaggerate a little) can't even be convinced that rain is wet.A good recent though unfortunately no longer living example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect in action was the California gentleman, Mike Hughes, who, convinced the world was flat, built himself a rocket so he could blast into space and prove it. The rocket crashed and he died. Incredibly, but reflecting his own confidence in his ideas, he was only trying to reach a height of a mile, a height achieved within minutes on any airliner as it climbs to its cruising altitude of about 5 miles. He had undoubtedly been a passenger on such flights many times, probably even had a window seat.--Percy

I'm replying again because I find I'm not sure how you meant this. By "critical" do you mean saying to yourself, "Well, that's a stupid idea!" If that's what you mean then please rest assured that it's not what anyone else here means.What we mean is subjecting one's ideas to constructive critical examination by asking questions like, "What specific information leads me to believe that this is true?" In your case too often the answer is, "I saw a nifty YouTube video."--Percy

Hey, Phatman, you're thinking and talking nuts as usual but now you're getting upset over the pushback. You usually put up, indeed, revel in that. I'm thinking your hard feelings are more chemical imbalance then true hard feelings, maybe?Whether you see it, appreciate it, or not you are one of us. A regular. A mainstay. A noticeable presence in the landscape of this forum. Phat, You're one of our village idiots. You need to get yourself right. Stop with the whining and self-flagellation, get your meds right, get your head right and then come back when you can think like the Phatman again. OK?

I watched the whole thing. It explains a lot about my own family, particularly my father.Overall, it was a well made documentary and explained a bit of my own behavior also.AZ has a point though. Some of my behavior is bio-chemical.

All our behaviors are biochemically mediated.That was a hard lesson for me to learn.Though we have little prior history of mental illness in my family tree, there was quite an eruption in my father and brother, both diagnosed with diverging degrees of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia -- mild in my father, florid in my brother. I feared that fate, and sought multiple psychiatric evaluations for reassurances, which I got. I'm merely neurotic.But when I spent some years in a medical mill of injury, illness, and lengthy hospitalizations with high fevers and heavy opiates, I experienced states akin to ICU psychosis: alternately frankly and mildly delusional, ill-tempered to enraged, infinitely distracted. I threw out the opiates, and focused on my physical health: I returned to normalcy (whatever that is for an Omnivorous).My perspective on "mental illness" changed dramatically. One day, while insisting to myself I wasn't mentally ill, I realized that ALL "mental" illness is physically grounded. It isn't a flaw in character or a snapped mind: the mind is the brain is the body.I'm not suggesting you are mentally ill; rather that when' one's thoughts become notably disordered, first look to your physical health.Plato said, "Mente sana en cuerpo sano.” (“A sound mind and a sound body.”) That's not merely a truism; it's the truth.I have great personal affection for your presence here. Like AZ said, get right, get healthy, come back. I'll still lash you with limp noodles if I think you're wrong, but I hope we'll both be smiling.

Isn't it just awful?My wife is 12 years younger and just retired at a youthful 60; I'm about to turn a well-worn 72, medically forced into retirement years ago. She is now a professor emeritus with retained university privileges, giving me enormous access to academic libraries and online journals.There are classical and Shakespearean warnings against boasting of one's wife, but fuck 'em, i just won't name her. She's a brilliant poet, a lovely, petite woman who stays toned and trim with Pilates, yoga and hiking with me, an enormously popular professor whose students stay in touch for decades, and for reasons I classify alongside exotic matter, she loves me without reservation.Folks have asked how I caught a wife like that, and I say I used to be a lot cuter; she says I have a great big heart.I've waited impatiently for her to join me in retirement. She has had to endure being told several times in hospital waiting rooms that I might be slipping away. My physicians speak of a Lazarus syndrome: the patient multiple times balking at death's door. They speculate on some quality in me.Me? I credit her.If death knocks, Theo, just say no in your wife's name. If love can't save you, nothing will.NB: I don't watch TV of any kind. I read. The last time my set was turned on was January 6. I tuned in to watch an historic peaceful transfer of power with a sense of great relief, but instead I spent the day watching fascist scum defile every value that raises the U.S. above just another oligarchic empire.I couldn't look away, my big heart broke, and now, like the fascists, the TV sits in a dark corner and broods.

To: Peanut Gallery
From: Phat
RE: Using words rather than videos
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So this morning I'm watching YouTube videos. My apologies for not reading serious material nor acquiring a master's Degree at Age 64, but I feel I am no rube. Right now im watching an interview with Adam Taggert. Earlier I listened to an interview with Jim Rickards. YouTube TV is a giant experiment in freedom of speech. These people are sponsored and have nothing to "sell" more than their reputation and integrity.One of my favorite YouTubers(bear with me ) recently had a talk refarding CBDC's potentially infringing on the First Amendment. Knowing how you chafe at the videos being reposted themselves, I am taking the liberty (and responsibility) to try and frame the points made in my reaction and response. Thus I will only offer quotes from the transcript.Right now as I type this, Taggert is talking about an inevitable decrease in purchasing power of the dollar. Rickards, earlier, was talking also about the CBDC and how every purchase made by Americans can be tracked.Rickards brought up examples of how such tracking could be utilized merely by scanning all transcripts and focusing on certain patterns of human behavior exposed through the receipts.Can we discuss the transcripts?

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One of my favorite YouTubers(bear with me ) recently had a talk refarding CBDC's potentially infringing on the First Amendment.

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That is already something that requires explanation. I presume that it actually means that it -at most - potentially enables infringement of the First Amendment (and even that looks like a stretch)

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Right now as I type this, Taggert is talking about an inevitable decrease in purchasing power of the dollar.

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I know that’s one of your hobby horses but it isn’t relevant to the claim.

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Rickards, earlier, was talking also about the CBDC and how every purchase made by Americans can be tracked.
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Rickards brought up examples of how such tracking could be utilized merely by scanning all transcripts and focusing on certain patterns of human behavior exposed through the receipts.

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If individual purchases can be tracked now, without a CBDC, how is the CBDC going to make that much of a difference? At most it could make it easier, and surely the credit card companies already have access to a very large amount of that data. Also it very much depend on what the CBDC is for - if it’s just for the Banks it isn’t likely to expose consumer data.I’ll look at the transcripts if you post links but it looks like scaremongering