I would recommend you go read You Can be a Stock Market Genius by Joel Greenblatt. If you've got the stomach to be a contrarian - you're a sure millionaire.

Buy when pessimism is high, and sell when optimism is at an all time high. 100% guarantee. Really just look at the valuations and try to rationalize the reason behind the numbers.

I mean, it depends what you classify as corruption, but yeah, I'd agree that generally countries experience corruption to varying degrees.

Probably because they are without moral compass. If they are capable of summoning the resources to have an ICO campaign, they probably have the funds to run a legit campaign as well. Hell, they could even keep it concept-level and raise funds to do a legit project.

I think it's dangerous to believe wholly in any government. There are simply pros and cons with each, and I simply vote for the one with the most pros and the least cons. There is no absolute believe here though.

The Canadian government at present is alright. They're planning to legalize marijuana, which I agree with (while I no longer smoke it myself), and there's been some other positives they've done. I think in general I'm pretty disillusioned with federal politics though. I'm much more interested in provincial or municipal politics. The province that I'm in (not going to say which) has a pretty decent government. Good for education and the middle class.

I mean, in general, no matter what government we have, Canada's pretty stable.

How can God be male or female? If you think about it, God wasn't reproduced by anything, it just always was.

I don't think we can reasonably assume that God looks like us either, especially since he is able to appear in different forms. It logically follows that God appeared in the form of a human to relate and make sense to humans. Imagine, hypothetically, that advanced organisms exist on other planets. They likely wouldn't look like humans, so naturally, God would not appear to them as a human, but in the form of... Whatever species they are.

If God exists, it's some shapeshifter thing that probably doesn't have gender, and we can't even begin to understand what God really is aside from what it did for us as laid out in the bible.

Good luck with this one. I think video game addiction is something that simply fades with age for the most part. It's hard to beat the immediate gratification video games provide. I'd say just talk to them about the importance of moderation, guide them, and let them make their own decisions.

Definitely investing it is wiser than simply letting its value decrease per inflation. If you're a conservative investor, your best bet is a low cost market index that follows the S&P500. Vanguard's has a 40 year average of about 10%. Nothing can offer the returns the indexes do at such a low risk compared to buying individual company stocks and bonds.

Why not just let people do whatever the hell they want to so long as is it's not destructive? Personally I'm monogamous, but if there are people who consent to having multiple partners, who cares.

This may sound ridiculous, but I take deep breaths and repeat: "I will find my chi amidst the chaos"

Soren Kierkegaard, a famous 19th century existentialist philosopher, noted quite logically that religious people simply lived better lives, and whether or not there heaven or hell existed or not did not outweigh the cons of not believing in God.

His logic was simple, which he coined "the leap of faith:"
1. Believe in God, die, nothing happens.
2. Don't believe in God, die, nothing happens.

OR

1. Believe in God, die, go to heaven.
2. Don't believe in God, die, bathe in a lake of fire.


I actually wish I could be religious, but sadly, I'm a helpless empiricist. I know too much!

Definitely speculative, but still positive news. I've always been a fan of waves.. Might consider buying some for the heck of it (don't follow that kind of thinking).

Hahahaha, I love these flat earth folks, such a great source for a good laugh. Faking a solar eclipse, LOL. What exactly would be the intent behind this conspiracy? To waste money?

I'm sorry, but likening fiat currency to cryptocurrency is just stupid. The value of fiat currencies are supported by a monsterous amount of variables, whereas cryptocurrency is merely supported by... Whoever supports them.

People have argued that the value of cryptocurrency has to do with total supply, but I'd argue that it's more to do with demand (driven by support). For example, I think Litecoin has maybe about a 17% difference in total supply compared to Bitcoin, yet Bitcoin is valued far higher. It's all about popular support.

Yeah I can't see Bitcoin become a topic for discussion among politicians necessarily in the near-term. They're more likely to discuss ICO's as a risk to investors, rather than a cryptocurrency by which they are already benefiting from as a taxable income.

I like how people keep throwing around the word "impossible," even though people were saying the same thing about Bitcoin seven years ago.

Of course it's a roller coaster, considering it's being sustained by nothing at this point aside from expectation. Extreme volatility in the near-term shouldn't come as a surprise. I don't understand how people can even gauge "stability" when it comes to Bitcoin. What exactly keeps Bitcoin stable aside from speculation? You could say the potential, but again, that's speculation.

It's difficult to comment on the merits of any coin, so I'm not sure what people mean by "shit coins." All altcoins are highly speculative, so your best course of action is to look at the merits of each coin based on whether or not they have actually received some sort of regulatory report, on the basis of their team and advisory team, and on the basis of their target market/scalability.

To be honest, I think there are a lot of great projects, and you should do your research to distinguish the good from the bad.

Online dating has always felt inorganic to me.

I've had some great dates through online dating, but never anything that was able to sustain beyond a month. I think it feels a lot better to go out in the world and attempt to find a partner, rather than to take the easy route and simply search for potential suitors on the internet, who probably have unrealistic expectations based on practicalities anyway. At least if you meet someone in real life, they are able to actually get a sense of who you are, rather than choose to talk to you or not based on how clever your initial contact is.

By "Great Financial Crisis," are you referring to the "Great Depression?" You understand that post-WW2 conditions were the best conditions for the average (white) American in history right? I think the conditions you want to look at is Reagan and beyond.

It's ironic actually. You're talking about over-regulation as a fault of economic disparities, but Reaganomics was the beginning of the economic conditions that are present in the US today, and the beginning of what became the political norm for succeeding US governments: cut taxes and increase spending (i.e., deregulate and incur more debt).

I can tell you that deregulation actually correlates with an increase in government spending, because deregulation usually surmounts to cutting taxes to social programs, which exacerbates problems of poverty. To offset the increase in poverty as a result of deregulation, the US government has historically spent more (they borrow in the absence of tax revenue) to deal with the situation. This way, they are able to deregulate and satisfy a majority of Americans, which secures them political power, but sequentially they incur more debt as a result. A homeless man is more expensive on the street than he is if housed (look at Utah).

- Your friendly neighborhood political scientist.