Aapje58
7mo ago
I think that sexuality as an identity is either a very narrow and selfish identity, when it's separate from a culture and community, or when it is part of a community, it is not very healthy to center that community around sexuality.
Aapje58
7mo ago
Experts do not determine who buys or sells stocks and commodities. That is the free market. Economic experts are clearly not able to predict the functioning of the market, as they constantly make utterly wrong predictions. Steve Keen has made a strong case in Debunking Economics that many of the basic models that are used, are not actually valid unless you unrealistic preconditions are true. In reality, we also see that companies do not in fact hire economists to set their prices, but use other methods, like trial and error, because that beats the experts.
It seems to me that the functioning of the financial markets is largely a matter of trial and error as well. For example, the subprime mortgage crisis involved "experts" developing the innovative idea that if you bundle low quality mortgages, they suddenly become the most reliable assets to hold. Only after people starting defaulting on their mortgages and the bundles were proven to not be triple-A quality, did the "experts" suddenly realize that the triple-A status was a delusion.
When so-called "experts" are not in fact able to predict whether their solutions works in practice, then we cannot trust their claims on that front.
Aapje58
7mo ago
The argument seems to be that you have fundamentalist Muslims and non-Muslims pretending to be Muslims for social acceptance, but not actually showing any sign of actually being religious.
Aapje58
7mo ago
Yet there are fields where the experts and textbook writers are plain liars and no one cares because it's not going to end up on the news even if it does end up on television
The occasional news item about a fraudulent researcher just reinforces the idea that scientific malpractice consists of a tiny number of evil researchers who clearly violate scientific standards by fabricating data and that all other researchers do a great job.
In reality, most bad science consists of fairly subtle manipulations or bad practices like p-hacking, tiny data sets, misrepresenting the actual findings, measuring the wrong thing, etc. Much of this is due to incompetence, where the researchers get taught 'this one weird trick' which is good enough to get their papers accepted, but without actually understanding what the strengths and weaknesses of their method(s).
This incompetence is fueled by the scientific reward system rewarding those that do bad science and punishing those who do good science (limited by the ability to get away with BS, which is why fields like physics are a lot better, because engineers and the companies that employ them call out scientists when they can't make working things that are based on the scientific discoveries).
Convincing people whose worldview is based on trust that our elites take good care of us, based on mostly solid science, that science is fundamentally broken and most money spend on it is wasted, is quite hard though.
Aapje58
7mo ago
The rule that 80% of federal funds must go to direct workforce is also an attempt to ensure that wages are prioritized, if not having raises literally mandated.
But the side effect is that technology that reduces the workload of nurses is discouraged, since you run into problems if you spend money on technology, rather than nurses. Thus making the nurse shortage worse.
Aapje58
7mo ago
But being neither Muslim nor Jewish and having only one friend who's either, I struggle to think of a plausible conduit by which shenanigans in the holy land could ever become relevant to me.
In a globalized world, these shenanigans impact Muslims and Jews living in my country. Muslims in particular are feeling unfairly treated, which can cause attacks to happen against Jews or non-Jews.
Aapje58
7mo ago
There are people in control or at least having a lot of influence over people, but they don't understand the forces that they are playing with and think that they can just stir up anti-white hatred, but set limits where people are not supposed to notice that the arguments for anti-white hatred are even more applicable to Jews.
Aapje58
7mo ago
I just found that, compared to more traditionally feminine methods of flirtation, explicitly expressing interest in men is often unsuccessful.
But that is a false dichotomy, because almost all flirtation happens when people are talking already, so that's when the approach has already happened. Of course, it is possible to signal interest (or flirt) from afar, but I believe that only a relatively small majority of approaches by men happen only after the woman has specifically signaled her interest in that man and he actually noticed.
In many cases, the man responds to a more general indication that the woman is open to being approached (like wearing revealing clothing) or simply makes the attempt without indications.
I think that the current situation where men don't have clear rules of what is allowed, don't get taught as much what to do and there is less room for making mistakes, leads to fewer and fewer men approaching women without any indications of her interest and putting less trust in ambiguous signals that do signal interest. So women's flirtation game is also not working as well.
The result is then that women who depend on men approaching them are effectively all fighting over a decreasing percentage of men, which automatically means that women are increasingly going to miss out, because the numbers don't match. But the consequences are actually more complex than just women missing out, because the increased bargaining power of those men means that men who do have the natural and or learned ability to deal with the new reality, or the lack of self-preservation instincts, can now 'pump and dump' women or otherwise treat women in ways that are ultimately bad for women.
So superficially it may seem like your approach is working quite well, because unlike men who complain about them failing, women do typically end up having casual sex and/or end up in a relationship with a guy who never gets serious and whom she leaves after a few years to try again, only to be alone for some years, only to get into a relationship with another non-serious person, until she gets close to infertility and either she never ends up with the family she wants or goes for one of the desperation moves (single motherhood, picking some shitty man who does want children, but is a bad parent and partner, etc).
But are those really successes for most women? And at the same time, we have perfectly fine men who end up alone and men who had potential, but were left to whither on the vine.
I believe that unless you change our culture (for which you supplied no plan at all), women in general and at least a solid subset of women, would be better off in the long term if they would adapt to the current situation and would approach shy men and diamonds in the rough. However, what probably won't work that well, is if you start to approach the subset of men that do well with women in the current culture. It's actually in their interest to discourage you from approaching men, because that would give their shy competitors a chance.
It was not the $20 bill on the ground that the other commenter believed it to be. That's all I was claiming.
You are actually the person who came up with the "$20 bill on the ground," not the other commenter. He said that women who approach men would gain rather than lose. He never said that it was trivially easy for women to do this, which your "$20 bill" comment implies.
You also very single-mindedly interpreted that 'gain' as what makes you more comfortable during the initial dating process, which is certainly not the only way to look at it. By that standard, having children is never a 'gain' over remaining childless, as children cause plenty of discomfort, certainly initially. Yet a large majority of people do believe that the benefits are worth it overall.
You may of course believe that the costs of having to approach men are too great (for you), but I don't think you've been charitable to the opinions of f3zinker or myself, when you apparently refuse to even entertain the idea that the downsides you experienced are perhaps solvable (for most women) or are fairly minor inconveniences that you only get so upset about because you've got a bad mindset; and bring upsides that may be larger than the downsides, especially in the long term (by having a substantially higher chance to end up with a better man).
Aapje58
7mo ago
It's morally wrong, all the time, in every society, to treat people worse for some arbitrary reason before you get to know them.
This statement is wrong on so many levels.
You conflate treating someone differently with treating them worse. It can actually treat them better on average if the needs of members of the group differ from other groups. The entire idea that something is always better or worse is silly black/white thinking anyway. If you ask a person whether they eat pork before setting up an event with food, you treat them worse if they do eat pork, because you are wasting their time. If they don't eat pork, you probably treat them better if you do ask. And it is perfectly plausible that asking by default is a net-negative for let's say a church event, where the main groups that don't eat pork are self-selected out, but it is a net-positive for an event where the group that you ask contains a certain number of Jews/Muslims.
You also beg the question by assuming that race or other differentiators are arbitrary, even though they clearly are not. Culture differs by race. Biology differs by race. Stereotypes typically do reflect actual statistical differences. Very often, people consider actually it morally wrong if you don't treat them according to their stereotypes. Try treating women like you treat men. It offends them.
You also ignore that getting to know people and tailoring policy to them personally has a substantial cost, may not be possible and can be open to abuse.
Aapje58
7mo ago
It's far from obvious that it's globally beneficial to create a situation where two groups are both underserved and where they each form negative opinions about members of the other group.
Aapje58
7mo ago
When feminists say "porn is exploitative" and "all sex is rape", this dynamic is what they're getting at- the former because it means that women for whom having sex is a job [that pays a wage] now have to compete with free.
This doesn't ring true at all. Many of those feminists are against sex work too.
It seems more based on on the very conservative idea that women need friendship, support and other things from their partner, which require a lot of effort from the man, but that porn teaches men that they can get sex from women without providing these things. Not: "she had sex with me because I put a lot of effort into the relationship", but: "here's your pizza, sex?"
Aapje58
7mo ago
That's a fine theory, but it goes against human nature to expect people to not detect patterns like: each time I investigate, it turns out to be a rat. So you then need a mechanism to prevent people from acting normally, which is a hard problem to solve.
Aapje58
7mo ago
Perhaps you should reread my comment with a more charitable mindset, because you seem to be missing the points I make by a mile. For example, I didn't at all say that it's a red flag that you didn't like an interaction with a man who assumed that you were open to have sex right away. What I did say that it is a red flag that you considered such a single incident, that to me seems a fairly minor inconvenience, to be a strong argument to not want to approach men as a woman. If it were to happen all the time, it would be different, but that was not what you claimed.
Note that I did agree with you that what the other person said was wrong and that there are women for whom approaching men will be very unpleasant (just like it is for some men). So I'm not sure why you are acting like I was saying any different. I have my own beliefs and don't feel obligated to accept the narrative of the other person you were arguing with or your narrative. I can disagree with both of you; and do.
What do you want me to say? “My God, I’ve been under-appreciating heroic men all this time, putting themselves out there! Now I see this is a real skill. I will never again complain that a clumsy attempt repulsed me!”
No, my claim is that you, and every women I've ever seen complain about their experience while approaching men, seem to expect a level of guaranteed ease and lack of bad experiences that seems very unrealistic. It's like having men complain that approaching women doesn't work because they fail when they put in as little effort as Brad Pitt or George Clooney presumably need to do. It's my belief that a man who would complain like you, would at best be kindly told that he's having completely unrealistic expectations and at worst would be called an entitled creep who deserves jail time.
I do believe that women are often under-appreciating men, for example, by being very unfair to men who have difficulty with the dating process, but this is not actually part of my argument, as it's beside the point (except for the effect it has on their own perception of how easy it is to be the one approaching). I believe that women have it way easier when approaching men. For example, women are considered creepy far less quickly and even if they are, they are far, far, far less likely to get beaten up over it or excommunicated due to it. I do get that men are often not used to getting approached and may thus react relatively poorly compared to situations where people have a pro-social script ready, as many people operate based on scripts and are not very good at freestyling. But everything I've seen, from my own personal experiences to video's with a hidden camera where women approach men with weird requests, tells me that men almost always act way nicer to women than how men act to men or women to men. So a woman approaching men seems to be playing the game on easy mode. Of course, you can still lose on easy.
In a cultural context where men overwhelmingly approach women, people tend to assume on some level that if a woman approaches a man, she must be 1) joking 2) desperate or 3) looking for something casual. I found those were difficult assumptions to overcome.
Men who approach women with the goal of a long term relationship actually also have to overcome an assumption that they may just want sex and/or are desperate. It's a hard challenge in general to shift the person you approach to a sexual mindset where they start to evaluate you as a potential partner, but without them getting upset because they feel forced into a sexual dance that they don't want, or having the wrong idea about what kind of relationship you are aiming for, or considering you the lesser person just for being the one who is making the offer.
An issue is also that women are actually already approaching men. These are often called 'groupies' and they do typically seem to want casual sex or at least, use sex to get a shot at seducing a top tier man. If anything, this willingness by women to approach a small subset of men, and the ease with which they have sex with these men, but very rarely approach those who are not very attractive, makes the problem worse.
I don't know what kind of men you were approaching, but I have heard a decent number of stories where introverted men found a relationship by being approached. It seems likely to me that the paucity of women who approach men who are not rock stars, also enables approaches that are much harder for men to use, like corny pick-up lines or extreme bluntless, like telling introverted men that you approach them because the introverted men that you are attracted to don't dare to approach women and that he better not get the wrong idea and that you still expect him to impress you to have a shot. By using such an approach, you shift the frame from you wanting something from him, to you being so kind to give him a chance. Of course, it needs to be sufficiently true for it to work and it shouldn't be too aggressive or not aggressive enough.
As always the approach needs to be tailored to those you want to seduce, though, and I don't know who you tried to seduce. If you try to approach men who are very successful by approaching women, it's probably a lot harder of a sell.
Anyway, my point was primarily that I'm unconvinced by your arguments for your claim that approaching men isn't viable for you. I think that getting upset over a single person getting the wrong idea strongly suggests that you expect a level of success that is unreasonably for the vast majority of men and women. Attributing being perceived as desperate or such to being a woman who approaches men, rather than even entertaining the possibility that it is the way you do go about it, is also very unconvincing to me.
Of course, it is possible that you cannot achieve a decent success rate (by male standards, which you may consider absurdly low), but I am simply unconvinced by the evidence you present.
Aapje58
7mo ago
I agree with you that there are women who would have a bad time, just like there are men for whom having to approach women means having a bad time. On the other hand, there is also the outside view, from which you can also judge how much nastiness happens to a person by standards that are independent of personal traits/feelings. For example, I think that it is reasonable to say that a WW I soldier in the trenches has a harder time than someone born into wealth and safety, like Richard Corey. Yet as the poem describes, the person of privilege can nevertheless be extremely unhappy. But that doesn't mean that they had to deal with tough circumstances.
It seems that the extent to which people are content depends heavily on what they expect of life or what people get who they consider to be peers. Yet when those expectations aren't met, it doesn't mean that they are truly hard done by. And the big issue that we are dealing with is that many people nowadays seem to have expectations that are unrealistic (in the sense of what behavior/effort on their part will have what result), with unmet expectations. And especially for women, some expectations get cut off due to age, due to infertility and a greater decline in attractiveness due to aging. And it seems that women often only seem to realize that their approach is bad once they get close to 'the cliff' and it is hard to salvage things this late in the game.
Anyway, I have noticed that women who complain about the result of approaching men pretty much always throw up red flags that suggest to me that they don't recognize that it is far harder to learn how to do this than how to wear makeup or dress up nice; and expect a level of success and a lack of bad experiences that is utterly unrealistic. Your story does indicate that you at least tried multiple times, but it is a red flag that you seem to attribute being "ignored, laughed off, or generally regarded as awkward, pathetic, or desperate" to being a woman who approaches men, rather than a lack of skill (and yes, the cold call is way harder than a warm call, so approaching people is way harder than reacting to an approach). It's another red flag that you even consider it worth mentioning as a bad outcome that one(!) man expected sex right away.
If a man would argue that approaching women doesn't work because he was "ignored, laughed off, or generally regarded as awkward, pathetic, or desperate," or would complain that he can't deal with having a single women get the wrong idea and want his baby right away, he would get raked over coals.
Now, an argument can be made that it's not realistic or fair to expect women to take on this task, for biological or cultural reasons. Perhaps women would even become less attractive to men if we increase their stoicism by the same methods that we use on men, so they can deal with even a fraction of the rejection rate that men commonly experience. It's quite likely that we can't even do that, as people appear to have an inbuilt biological drive to treat male children differently, since we apparently don't need a cultural mechanism for much of it. For example, research shows that parents ignore crying male babies much more, but I can't see a cultural mechanism that teaches parents this.
So perhaps only less liberalism would help, although the incredible stupidity of the people that currently are in a position to steer our culture doesn't exactly make it likely that they'll analyse the problem correctly, let alone come up with a working solution that is spread through the propaganda system.
Aapje58
7mo ago
I was ignored, laughed off, or generally regarded as awkward, pathetic, or desperate. One man did assume that, since I approached him, obviously I was DTF on the first date. That was very uncomfortable and I walked away feeling bad about myself.
And yet men have bad experiences while approaching women all the time & have to learn how to not be perceived as awkward, pathetic, or desperate. Frankly, I think that the attitude that most women seem to have where they only want to do the things that are fairly easy and that feel good, at the expense of men who then have to pick up that slack, is exactly the kind of attitude that needs to change to fix things without having to curtail women.
Aapje58
8mo ago
Europeans and other supporters of protection of origin (like India) like to pretend this isn't true but it is
That's a pretty silly way to put it. People also use product names like 'googling stuff' for other search engines, yet the US still allows Google to trademark their name and then bans other companies from slapping Google on their search engines. That's not some sort of denial about how people use language. Legislators simply don't allow language use to dictate things like trademarks and in the EU, product names.
Aapje58
8mo ago
The FBI guy at Twitter specifically told them that the laptop was misinformation. You have to be pretty naive to think that he didn't ask the FBI.
Aapje58
11mo ago
The problem is that when the models fail, they just shrug and continue on their way. Also, just like in a lot of 'scientific' fields, core premises that are assumed to be correct, have actually been disproved. Yet this is simply ignored.
You should read Debunking Economics by Steve Keen for a good criticism of neoclassical economics.
Aapje58
1yr ago
Your definition just rationalizes away success, where if someone gets objectively better outcomes, but their expectations are higher, they somehow aren't doing better because the gap between expectations and outcomes is similar.
Aapje58
1yr ago
Because the 10% exists at all means an 11% can exist, and therefore a 12%, and so on.
So because I can turn my neck and some people can turn their necks more than others, I could turn my neck 270 degrees like an owl and be fine?
Aapje58
1yr ago
Why would men try to sleep with a class of people they find so unattractive?
Men don't sleep with a class of people though, but with individual women.
And I don't see why you'd need to respect the intellect or such of a person to be able to engage in an activity that is fun regardless of how smart the other person is, whether that is tennis or sex. I also think that the entire argument is in bad faith, as plenty of women have complaints about their partner and talk about them in disrespectful ways. So why is this presented as something that men do?
It seems more like a feminist post-hoc justification than a fair argument. Men are upset at how women behave in dating -> can't actually be any truth to the complaint as then women wouldn't be wonderful -> if we claim that complaining is evidence of misogyny, then every complaint can be dismissed.
However, this argument completely falls apart when you notice that many women complain about men and male dating strategies. By the same logic, these women should then fail at dating and their arguments should be dismissed as evidence of them being man-hating.
You're missing the point. We are told to "trust the experts" when they make their predictions. However, when the predictions are at best guesses that need to be validated in practice, then we objectively cannot "trust the experts."
If the media and politicians would honestly tell us that these opinions are imperfect and cannot just be assumed to work, I would have no problem with that. But of course they don't say that, because they use the 'expert opinion' as a way to win debates and project power.
Arguing that some experts can be trusted more than others just proves my point that the generic implicit or explicit demand to "trust the experts" is wrong*. In fact, it allowed the fraudsters to hide behind those that do better. In debates, if you question how experts are presented to us, the defenders will invariably point to the better experts, rather than adopt a nuanced position where some experts are better than others.
After all, the nuanced position is not compatible with the power games being played.
* For example, I almost never see a justification being given for why a certain expert is any good.
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