Crowstep
2d ago
And they intentionally had twins?
What makes you say that? The babies weren't IVF-conceived according to Scott.
Crowstep
3d ago
Strict textualism just gets you extremely dumb stuff like this, where you redefine the whole neighborhood as a collective private house so you don't have to follow the rules of the sabbath
I wonder if there is some merit to the absurd rules-lawyering that you see in Orthodox Judaism. Clearly, sticking a wire around Brooklyn doesn't make it a 'household' but I can see a more 'spirit of the law' ethos moving the borders of the rules one stage at a time until you're at Reform Judaism and nobody believes in God any more.
Crowstep
3d ago
It's as if the vast majority of the voters aren't interested in attractive women
It's not for nothing that Eurovision is known as the gay olympics. But never forget Poland. The red-blooded man often makes his voice heard.
My favorite were the Icelandic boys
Same, it was classic Eurovision. The audience in the past few years seem to be going for technical proficiency over feel-good nonsense.
I was happy with the prevalence of violins and key changes this year.
Crowstep
3d ago
Israel has done very well with audience votes in the past few years for basically one reason, in Eurovision, you can't vote against a country.
If I'm a pro-Israel partisan, I can vote for Israel 20 times. If I'm an anti-Israel partisan, who should I vote for? Palestine isn't in the contest (lol) and there are 25 other entries to pick from. If I know who the favourite is I can vote for that country, but that can be hard to guess. Sweden was the favourite this year and didn't do particularly well from either the juries or the audience.
I wish Israel had won, for the ensuing political drama. But hey, I'm sure they're very happy with second place, even if their contestant had to perform with a booing crowd (kindly edited out by the producers).
I was also surprised at the dearth of Palestinian flags in the arena. They were allowed (I think I saw one) but people mostly waved the flags of their own countries. I didn't see any keffiyes either. Maybe people are just getting bored about Israel as a topic?
Crowstep
6d ago
Because our welfare system is set up in such a way that they only need to work for five years before being entitled to live off the taxpayer indefinitely. And the statistics suggest that, as low-skilled immigrants from third world countries, they are much more likely to end up doing so than say, Polish graduates.
Crowstep
6d ago
I think it's fundamentally a mistake to think about these foreign care workers as workers. They are not people who migrated in order to work, they are people who are working in order to migrate.
They are simply people who are desperate to move from poor countries to rich countries. The care worker visas were the only way for them to do that, which is why for some countries (Zimbabwe being the best example) there were ten dependent visas issued for every worker. All they needed to do is work for five years and then the whole family can get indefinite leave to remain, access to the British welfare state, the right to import even more relatives. At that point, there's no reason for them to continue working in care homes (or at all, really).
Now these absurdly large holes have finally been plugged, the Conservative government that introduced the visa removed the ability for migrants to bring along dependents, and the current Labour government abolished the visa route to new entrants (although those who previously came in can still work in the sector) and extended the time needed for indefinite leave to 10 years in most cases (we'll see how many exceptions they grant).
I personally am in favour of increasing wages (or at least allowing the market to do so) for care workers. Pensioners are far too wealthy in the UK. The care sector would allow some of that wealth to be transferred to younger, poorer people, allowing them to buy houses and start families. With fewer low-skilled immigrants, the welfare state bill will be less. If that means fewer waiters, so be it.
Crowstep
9d ago
Testing that would run into general statistical illiteracy among the population, I think. if we asked the average person to say how much taller and heavier men are than women, I'm sure you'd get some zany answers, even though people intuitively know how large the difference is from constant observation.
Crowstep
10d ago
I'm not sure how true (being better at learning foreign languages) is, and how much of it is a reflection of interest rather than aptitude.
Interest is a prerequisite to being good at something, at least if that something requires you to put in the hours, as is the case for language learning. But it actually does look like there are differences in how men and women's brains process language, not just a difference in interest.
multi-tasking/task-switching
See my other comment. This has been shown empirically.
Are women faster typists? I think I type faster than every single woman I know.
You may well be. It wouldn't shock me if typing speed was affected by greater male variance. But nonetheless, 82.5% of court stenographers are women. When typist was a job, it was a woman's job. Secretaries (who do/did lots of typing) are almost all women. I don't think these are coincidences.
Crowstep
10d ago
Most of your claims seem to be stereotypes
Stereotype accuracy is one of the strongest results in social science. The word stereotype is not a synonym for 'myth'.
women aren't actually better at rapid task switching
Crowstep
10d ago
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Better people skills, at least in the sense of tact, curtesy and reading body language. Male charisma is its own thing but in the median social situation, women are better.
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Relatedly, better memories about personal and biographical information. I've noticed that my wife and female colleagues are much better at remembering stuff about people, whereas me and the men I know are better at remembering stuff about stuff.
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Better at learning foreign languages. This should be obvious to anyone who has ever taken a language class.
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Better at multi-tasking/task-switching. This one is well known.
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Definitely more conscientious (at least with certain subtypes of conscientiousness)
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More conformist and neurotic. These are more trade-offs than straight advantages, but if you want to avoid big life-ruining screw-ups and danger then they are definitely helpful.
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Better fine motor control. Women are faster typists and have neater handwriting.
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More organised? I'm less sure about this one but the stereotype of a husband asking his wife where something is and her pointing out that it's right in front of his face is definitely a real thing.
Crowstep
10d ago
They said rap should be subversive, well what did they think subversive meant? Vibes? Essays?
Honestly it's a pretty good song, bizarre subject matter aside. This Youtube link is live as of this writing, although it seems like the platform keeps taking new uploads down.
Maybe I will live to tell my incredulous grandkids about how we were all expected to perceive one specific 20th century dictator through a prism of quasi-superstitious dread.
I wonder if 'racism is the paramount evil' would still be a defining characteristic of western ethics if WW2 hadn't happened? I mean, the Transatlantic slave trade and the scramble for Africa still happened, smallpox still wiped out the American Indians. Maybe we would just find some other kind of racial guilt? My assumption is that it all stems from the fact that we're so outbred and WEIRD, not from the particular events of the early 1940s.
Crowstep
11d ago
Crowstep
25d ago
I agree. The US presidency is powerful inasfar as the US is powerful, but relative to the power of the country, the US president is weak. He is restricted by Congress, by the Senate gerrymander, by random partisan judges and by the Supreme Court. Comparatively, the UK Prime Minister is basically an elected king (albeit one who can be deposed by his MPs if they're not happy with how he's governing).
Crowstep
1mo ago
It sounds like you mostly disagree with the transactivist agenda, which makes me wonder why you have bothered to swallow their (obviously motivated) definitions of sex and gender. But it sounds like we mostly agree, except for a few things.
Sports are not fair, and being female is just one of the many ways someone can be disadvantaged. Why should that be singled out?
Because if we don't single it out, then female sports literally cannot exist. Women are worse than men at every sport (including things that aren't really sports like chess). The only exception I'm aware of is ultramarathon. Without female-segregated sports, women cannot practically play sports competitively. Whether or not there is federal funding (remember that other countries exist) seems kind of immaterial to this fundamental issue.
I view freedom as absolute, so there should be no weighing involved
You can view or define freedom however you want, but the reality is that real life always involves compromises, tradeoffs and zero-sum situations. We need a way to adjudicate these. Given your own limited definition of freedom cannot apply to most of them, how should they be adjudicated?
Crowstep
1mo ago
People should be allowed to choose their gender, because more freedom is better than less freedom
Does that include the freedom to describe the world accurately, for example, by describing the Wachowski brothers as brothers?
Or the freedom for a woman to get undressed without a man watching?
The freedom for women to compete in sporting competitions amongst themselves without being outcompeted by physically superior men.
Transexuals were always allowed to describe themselves as the opposite sex, and to dress as the opposite sex if they wanted. It's the desire to force everyone else to play along that generated the pushback. There are genuine tradeoffs here, and if we're going to use 'more freedom' as the heuristic, surely we should weigh the freedom of the majority more than the freedom of a tiny, tiny minority?
Crowstep
1mo ago
Defining the word "woman" based on biological sex is just redundant and makes it harder to discuss things
The words woman and man have always meant male and female adults. It's only in the past decade or so that trans-activists have tried to redefine them to be somehow unrelated to biology, for the sake of being able to force everyone to pretend that a man in a dress is actually a woman.
Things were easy to discuss before, transactivists made it harder by trying to forcibly uncouple the words man and woman from what they have always meant.
Crowstep
1mo ago
That's pretty much the position of professional demographer and pronatalist Lyman Stone. Polygamy reduces fertility, because although a polygamous man has more children than otherwise, his wives (after no. 1) have fewer. Funnily enough that's what happened with Musk. He had six kids with his first wife, but 'only' four with his bottom bitch Shivon Zillis.
Of course, we can also consider quality rather than quantity. If Grimes had a baby with a rockstar, he probably wouldn't change the world. But a baby with a genius, maybe.
Crowstep
1mo ago
I mean, the paper says that obesity isn't caused by a 'broken' lipostat but one that is set too high, which is what I meant by 'broken'. I assume they use 'broken' to refer to things like Prader-Willi Syndrome.
The lipostatic model not only explains why some people become obese whereas others do not, but also allows us to understand why energy-controlled diets do not work
That is precisely what I'm arguing. CICO (as in calorie controlled diet) doesn't work.
The 1970s also didn't see a novel virus or chemical triggering adverse reaction leading to "broken lipostat".
No, but it did see a stratospheric rise in the consumption of vegetable oil, which is what I think caused the obesity epidemic. Seed oils are definitely novel, as is a diet with 5-10x the amount of linoleic acid that humans need.
Crowstep
1mo ago
Isn't that just moving the tautology up a level? Since CICO in its thermodynamic sense is just a description of weight loss, then giving the advice 'follow whatever scheme it takes to lower CI to be beneath CO' is the same as giving the advice 'follow whatever scheme leads to long-term weight loss' (which frustratingly doesn't include deliberate CICO).
Crowstep
1mo ago
I'm not sure what the page you're referencing is referring to (can you link it?), because I'm referring to the consensus among obesity researchers for explaining the obesity epidemic:
But there’s a third model, not mentioned by Ludwig or Taubes, which is the one that predominates in my field. It acknowledges the fact that body weight is regulated, but the regulation happens in the brain, in response to signals from the body that indicate its energy status. Chief among these signals is the hormone leptin, but many others play a role (insulin, ghrelin, glucagon, CCK, GLP-1, glucose, amino acids, etc.)
Crowstep
1mo ago
You misunderstand me. I'm arguing that successfully following CICO as diet advice is counter-productive. The Biggest Loser study showed that contestants who purposely decreased their CI (through having their food intake managed by the producers of the show) and massively increased their CO through exercise permanently reduced their metabolic rates, even after they regained the weight after the show was over. These people, who absolutely did follow CICO as advice ended up making things worse for themselves.
A person can choose to eat less. But eating less increases hunger (duh) and reduces metabolic rate. Homeostasis trumps willpower.
But obesity isn't caused by a lack of willpower (the whole world didn't get lazy in the 1970s for no reason). It's caused by a broken lipostat. This is the consensus among obesity researchers and it lines up with what we actually see. What caused the broken lipostat is still up for debate, I think it's vegetable oil but it could be something else.
As others pointed out, CICO cannot be debunked in so far that thermodynamics is immutably true. It's just different factors can contribute to these variables on either side.
The best way of thinking about it is that, CICO as an accounting tautology may be true, since it just describes weight loss/gain. But CICO as actionable dietary advice absolutely can (and has been) refuted. Simply deciding to eat fewer calories or exercise more (without doing something hacky like keto) doesn't work.
Crowstep
1mo ago
Getting fired has nothing to do with free speech
This is a particularly American understanding of free speech, in that the US constitution prohibits the government from restricting speech.
But it isn't the be all and end all of the principle of free speech. When JS Mill was writing about free speech, he starts be assuming no government coercion whatsoever, instead talking about public opinion.
Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one with the people, and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in or opposition to it. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
It seems pretty obvious to me that 'you can have any political opinions you want, except these ones. If you have these opinions you will get fired' is not meaningful freedom of speech, if applied more generally.
Crowstep
1mo ago
He seems to be opposed to excessive government getting in the way of his growth agenda/state capacity, and has told his cabinet to stop hiding behind quangos.
Of course, Labour gonna Labour, so they're still setting up new quangos and implementing new rules about diversity and stuff, so we'll see how it shakes out.
Antinatalism may not have been left wing, but it is definitely left-wing now and that's what matters for both movements, not what men from a century ago thought.
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