Theists: Hitchens Wager

[Edwardo Piet]

If you're really serious/interested in the game, you should look into what people are doing in no limit poker now.  You're still using no limit strategy from like 2006.

No I already updated my game a lot a few months back. I did exactly that. Looked up on the newer strategy.

I bought a poker book the other day, but it was old, and fucking hell was it outdated lol. The best new strategy is on the internet.

Of course, it doesn't take rocket science to defeat the average plebs.  The fish are still the same, they're just more maniac loose aggressive fish instead of loose passive fish. So that means stuff like check raising becomes more powerful. The advanced poker strategy has changed over the years, and the ABC game has a little bit (as I said, the fish are different now) but the players are just so god awful on the low levels that it doesn't really take much to defeat them lol.

But I did look up on newer stuff just to help maximize my wins and cut some losses, because despite being really godawful on average, they're still not quite as bad as they used to be. And dealing with aggressive idiots is slightly trickier than dealing with passive idiots.

I see talk of "thought crime" here all the time and I dont understamd why people take issue with it. Don't you think a person's thoughts, intentions, etc, says something about their character? Or so you think they are completely irrelevant?

There are no bad thoughts if those thoughts are just random thoughts. The idea of bad thoughts can lead to O.C.D.

The thought in itself isn't bad, I mean. Intention is different. If you are thinking something and planning on acting on it, then that's bad. Intention is different.

Someone with severe O.C.D. can randomly have violent thoughts and thoughts involving rape and thoughts involving hurting people they care about, and they and their conscience react in disgust and hate those thoughts.... and that gives the thoughts attention and actually makes the scary thoughts worse. It's not just that they are suffering from mental illness, it's also that the idea of thoughts being bad can make O.C.D. and stuff worse, or even lead to it.

I agree with you that intentions are bad, but thoughts themselves aren't. I could think the most horrible thought in the world right now, and as long as I know it's just a meaningless thought, and I don't actually mean it, it's okay. I can also think the thought "I believe in God" in my head. But it doesn't mean I actually mean that. You can think in your head "I am an atheist", but it doesn't mean you're an atheist, and you shouldn't feel like that's a blasphemous thought or something. It's just a thought. Intention is different.

I think bad intentions are ultimately bad because they can lead to bad actions, but still, that gives intentions a moral weight. They can be good or bad. It matters not that it's because they lead to actions... I agree with you that intentions can be good or bad. But automatic thoughts that pop into your head and aren't thought intentionally at all, just random thoughts, however bad in content are scary, that's all fine and just thoughts... and trying to rid yourself of them could actually make them worse. Because the brain feeds you more of what you pay attention to, whether it's negative or positive. That's what happens with suffers of O.C.D.

Like for instance, imagine an obsessive hand washer. Even that involves 'bad' thoughts about unclean hands, and they can't stop thinking about it, so they try to relieve that by washing their hands. But then because they gave that negative thought attention, it pops into their head more often, so they wash their hands even more often, and even more obsessively until their hands become really sore. Does that make sense?

And the key point here is, the brain works that way for everyone...  that's what negative thoughts are like... it's just more extreme in people with O.C.D.