Earendil
Then over Middle-Earth he passed
I tried to write a motte post and accidentally wrote a book. Chapter one is here.
User ID: 3846
Earendil
Then over Middle-Earth he passed
14d ago
Thanks for the defense.
Someone asked her in another thread whether she actually had any substantive arguments or just intended to be petulant (I'm editorializing here since I don't remember the actual words) and she didn't answer.
Here we have a post that is pure sneering sarcasm without even the most cursory attempt to engage constructively or angle for the truth. Does that even break any rules, technically?
Even so on balance I like having her around and would prefer that she continue to do her thing. Thanks for reading.
Earendil
Then over Middle-Earth he passed
14d ago
Thanks for this. I intend to meditate upon it today.
Actually took an entire, full course on Nietzsche but due to (imo) the deficiencies of the professor got almost nothing out of it and kind of wrote the whole thing off. He was extremely lib and highlighted all the anti-Christian angles without, as was clear to me, understanding them; while ignoring any parts which might be critical of his own biases.
As the years have rolled on I've increasingly come to realize what I missed. Time is harder to come by now, but I can feel Freddy waiting to meet me in the near future.
Earendil
Then over Middle-Earth he passed
14d ago
Ah, right you are to ask!
I explain it a bit in chapter 3.
A baby deer is born not just physically able to walk, but mentally prepared to as well. Getting up and moving feels right to it. It already knows how. A baby bird needs time to get ready to fly, but that knowledge is mostly already within it and only needs to be activated once its fledgling body has caught up. At some point jumping out of the nest will feel right to it. However, it's certainly born already knowing how to eat and beg for food from its parents.
This is related to something called, in evolutionary science, the Edwards Process. In short, it posits that the same kinds of pathways in our brains which form when we learn new things can also be 'coded for' during development, such that creatures with different genetic code are born knowing different things and to different degrees. First a creature mutates the genetic code to instinctively kinda-sorta do the thing, whatever the thing is. It then has an advantage in figuring the thing out, which means it's more apt to reproduce, and its children have the opportunity to mutate further advancements upon the instinct.
You should also be able to google 'Edwards Process', plus 'evolution' and get some good info.
In future iterations I'll include a little c.f. for people. Thanks for the pointer.
I have generally preferred to let you be, but in this case I think you're offering a window into some deep and cool mysteries and others will enjoy a little back-and-forth.
Firstly, you're taking far too mean a view across both space and time. I cannot recommend highly enough The Ancient City by Coulanges. Here are some passages, emphases mine:
In the house of every Greek and Roman was an altar; on this altar there had always to be a small quantity of ashes, and a few lighted coals. It was a sacred obligation for the master of every house to keep the fire up night and day. Woe to the house where it was extinguished. Every evening they covered the coals with ashes to prevent them from being entirely consumed. In the morning the first care was to revive this fire with a few twigs. The fire ceased to glow upon the altar only when the entire family had perished ; an extinguished hearth, an extinguished family, were synonymous expressions among the ancients.
Here we see that it was first and foremost the duty of the man to keep the fire burning. Bachelors had fires also. Yes, when women become incorporated they do take over tending of the flame, but this can be understood on a symbolic level: It is also in women that the male line itself is perpetuated, and only right for them to participate.
This worship of the sacred fire did not belong exclusively to the populations of Greece and Italy. We find it in the East. The Laws of Manu, as they have come to us, show us the religion of Brahma completely established, and even verging towards its decline; but they have preserved vestiges and remains of a religion still more ancient, — that of the sacred fire, — which the worship of Brahma had reduced to a secondary rank, but could not destroy. The Brahmin has his fire to keep night and day ; every morning and every evening he feeds it with wood; but, as with the Greeks, this must be the wood of certain trees. As the Greeks and Italians offer it wine, the Hindu pours upon it a fermented liquor, which he calls soma. ... Among the Hindus this divinity of the fire is called Agni ... Assuredly the Greeks did not borrow this religion from the Hindus, nor the Hindus from the Greeks. But the Greeks, the Italians, and the Hindus belonged to the same race ; their ancestors, in a very distant past, lived together in Central Asia. There this creed originated and these rites were established. The religion of the sacred fire dates, therefore, from the distant and dim epoch when there were yet no Greeks, no Italians, no Hindus ; when there were only Aryas. When the tribes separated, they carried this worship with them, some to the banks of the Ganges, others to the shores of the Mediterranean. Later, when these tribes had no intercourse with each other, some adored Brahma, others Zeus, and still others Janus ; each group chose its own gods ; but all preserved, as an ancient legacy, the first religion which they had known and practised in the common cradle of their race.
It is certain, therefore, that at Rome in Ovid's time, and in India in the time of the Brahmins, the fire of the hearth took precedence .of all other gods ; not that Jupiter and Brahma had not acquired a greater importance in the religion of men, but it was remembered that the hearth-fire was much older than those gods. For many centuries he had held the first place in the religious worship, and the newer and greater gods could not dispossess him of this place.
When the people of Greece and Italy began to represent their gods as persons, and to give each one a proper name and a human form, the old worship of the hearth-fire submitted to the common law which human intelligence, in that period, imposed upon every religion. The altar of the sacred fire was personified. They called it Vesta; the name was the same in Latin and in Greek, and was the same that in the common and primitive language designated an altar. By a process frequent enough, a common noun had become a proper name. By degrees a legend was formed. They pictured this divinity to themselves as wearing a female form, because the word used for altar was of the feminine gender. They even went so far as to represent this goddess in statues. Still they could never efface the primitive belief, according to which this divinity was simply the fire upon the altar ; and Ovid himself was forced to admit that Vesta was nothing else than a "living flame."
My suggested takeaway here is that the god(dess) of the hearth being feminine is more a peculiar, incidental, not-particularly-meaningful phenomenon found in specific offshoots, not in any way representative of the deep roots.
If you're at the point where your sexism is rewriting history, I think this entire project works better as a draft for a fantasy novel. Or brush up on what rituals you are writing about so you know what they were, not what you want them to be.
You put me in a difficult position here. Were we in the forum I'd ask for a word with your husband; as it stands I'll just suggest that you might at least reciprocate the courtesy which I have so consistently attempted to extend.
Earendil
Then over Middle-Earth he passed
14d ago
I'd love for you to substantiate this by indicating what you saw in chapter one which suggested to you that I'd be upset about Jews or blacks.
For that matter, I'd like you to tell me if you actually disagree with anything.
He does a lot of exaggerating to get the point across. In the real world, societies were not created on isolated islands. There was cultural and biological spillover through trade, wars, and conquest. So you wouldn't expect the differences to be quite this stark.
As with most (coherent) objections people have floated, this is addressed in the next chapter.
More egregiously, I don't think the implication holds...
I'm not implying any of what you just said.
Meanwhile Europeans, or their American descendants, are hardly genetically wired to be peaceful.
If you ever read something about Tidus with the word 'peace' in it you will know that it wasn't written by me. The word doesn't exist in that world, which is to say that, again, I'm not implying any of what you just said.
If anything, there is an argument that the western colonizers were the actual people that this post is warning about.
We have a winner! Or close enough. Enjoy today's chapter.
Earendil
Then over Middle-Earth he passed
14d ago
Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the Lord.” Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, but He did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.
So the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”
Well sure. Mine can't do karate.
Earendil
Then over Middle-Earth he passed
21d ago
The next target appears to be globalism.
Kinda weirdly the opposite, actually, in a twisted way. Good guess though. But wasn't this chapter against globalism?
Tagged you in another post about the trans stuff. Thanks for reading.
I'm not offended, but will note that I have a lot of smart friends who have argued over this with me time and again, and have convinced many — but never, ever the ones with mixed-race children.
I don't actually know that about you for sure but will guess. And apologies if that seems crass; I think it's both pertinent and illuminating.
Part of the problem here is that most research upon any such lines is explicitly verboten.
Yes, every crackpot will tell you this, but for good reason. It's objectively the case.
Many databases of information which might be used for this purpose are accessible only to researchers who will accede to strict Data Use Limitations (DULs) and Data Use Certification (DUCs) which specifically do not allow for, e.g., 'comparisons across ancestral groups'.
Surely we must all admit that if truth is of any value it's a real problem.
But for your specific question, here's one clue.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0610848104
Now, I believe that this was revisited and a weaker correlation was found, and none for microcephalin, but I haven't dug deep into either study. It's kinda beside the point. I would bet huge money that if real, high-quality studies were conducted they'd find not just this but innumerable similar phenomena.
I am always reminded when I read this kind of thing of the blue eyed, blonde white daughter of two friends of mine, a girl raised from infancy in Japan, who speaks, reads and writes Japanese better than many Japanese.
Yes, and I speak much better English than almost anyone who grew up with it as a first language, if I do say so myself. Joseph Conrad is also this way, and Ilforte, PBUH. General intelligence is a key that opens many locks.
But — and chapter 11 gets into this a lot more — just because you can speak someone else's language, and they can speak it back to you, and everything seems mutually-intelligible, it isn't, necessarily. A great example from Japan (where I also spent many years) is that of face. An American can go a long, long time thinking they understand what it means, using it correctly in sentences, and so on; but do they really? The equipment we use to make sense of symbolic language is evolved, yes? Which means that it can differ among populations, yes? Or do we suppose that all evolution on this front ceased before humanity's Last Common Ancestor? I think that's preposterous.
Or, more naughtily, this is a pretty great tweet, if I've never actually verified it. Google, wikipedia, and the Academy certainly wouldn't be of any help if it were true, would they?
When I speak English, or Japanese, I do it through a brain evolved in a different semantic context.
Speaking of Ilforte, I believe he once suggested that Tolkien can only be fully appreciated by Englishmen for genetic reasons, and I think he's probably right about that. Though I do happen to be an embarrassingly-big fan of the fellow and his work.
I'm talking about something deeper than Sapir-Whorf.
That's because most people who write right-wing apologia are writing 'is' with some predefined 'ought' in mind. ... I'm not convinced 'ought' is the intent here, especially considering the replies to certain comments are done in the same way I'd make them for the same reasons I make them when I'm discussing social dynamics in this way.
I really appreciate this. No, I don't think there's 'ought' in any of what I'm talking about, except in certain abstract and circumspect ways which keep me up at night, horrified. There are little places which point to an ought, but I can't even begin to talk about that yet. Much foundation is still to be laid.
And I think this is why it's correct for me to write this book. I see, uh, idk what term we're using now, but let's say Nietzscheans blabbing about similar topics quite a lot, and I know that much of what I'm saying will be discarded by people who pattern-match me to them, but the difference is that they like it whereas I'm just saying 'hey we need to get our heads around this if there's to be any hope at all.'
Yes it's icky. But get a microscope sometime and observe the holocaust in every drop of water. (Tangentially, I find this video just incredibly sublime.)
Anyway it means a lot to me that you are able to distinguish, here, and grant me the courtesy.
If by "right-wing" one means "here is my ironclad justification to prefer cheap, raw base instincts over [more expensive] co-operation, and I want to bias towards current survival and risk-adversity rather than spend time and calories thinking about longer-term re-investment and optimization", then yes, it's right-wing.
Well, you know, Tidus is an axis, and I'm going to lay down a second one in book two, set in a very different world, that we end up with a sort of coördinate plane. Yes, I think everything I'm saying here is basically true, but it's far from the whole truth. Race... is what it is, but women! Can't say I plan to do a 180 on them exactly but there is certainly going to be a hard turn into a currently-untouched dimension, and I mean it when I say that what I have to propose about them (and us) is liable to break a lot of brains for a little while.
Suppose the world works only like Tidus. It doesn't! But suppose it did. What mysteries might become transparent from that perspective? And along the way there are so many cool little things I get to point out.
All of which is to say that while I'm writing this, and will defend it, it's only a prelude; an exordium to what I actually think is going on.
that derivation remains so far (and, to a degree, I hope it remains) an exercise for the reader.
So what I'm really excited to show people is in chapter 8, because I think there's this enormous Truth staring us in the face about humanity and it's always been just outside the bounds of realization for pretty much everyone alive today, but I will show you, Mods willing and the creek don't rise.
In a sense everything up to that point is just foundation so that I can put something breathtaking on display.
Regrettably, it might be fair to say that the next two chapters after that amount to inchoate screaming. But they're there to explain why we haven't been able to see what I'm building up to in chapter eight. Unfortunately they're also, probably inarguably, exactly the sort of material which @netstack suspects.
But, for the record, I don't touch trans (or even homo) at all. There's actually one point in chapter 10, which might alternately be titled The Woman Question, in which I preëmptively clarify that I'm not going that way, just to clear the reader's mind a little. If I were doing what @netstack thinks I could certainly do a chapter on trans, and would, with relish, but as I say that's genuinely not the point here.
And, embarrassingly-enough, the target at which this book is aimed is answering a five-year-old question on reddit, from a poster I don't even remember, about why woke media is the way it is. Which I do, in chapter 11, and then, having gotten all this off my chest, I intend to propose something very, very different.
Thanks again.
My studies took me to Hawaii for a time. I was interviewing an authority on the (vast) lava tubes on the Big Island (incredibly-unique ecosystem) and asked him if the natives found them suitable for food storage. 'No,' he told me, 'Hawaiians didn't really ever develop a concept of food storage.' I found this shocking and so looked into his words on my own. They checked out, and part of his sentence has made its way directly into this post.
Their average IQ is 81. They're known for their sloth; for their placidity broken occasionally by bloodlust. (EDIT: They're also America's single most-likely group to be homeless, ref, more than twice as likely as blacks. Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.)
If you'd like to look up more about the Cold Winters Hypothesis I wish I could help you better. Wikipedia seems to have deleted the article.
What really occurs to me here, though, is that you seem to be cattily implying that only those people (like me) could find this persuasive while you, an erudite sophisticate, obviously know better and can reject the idea out of hand, as any right-thinking person should. Maybe I'm misreading you.
Right-wing apologetics.
Yeah, uh, just... just sit tight. But yes. Actually, somewhere around book three, I intend to propose a new perspective on what 'right wing' even is.
There's got to be a fatal flaw in there somewhere.
This will sound uncharitable, but it is uncharity born of excessive experience with charity: In my experience, the 'fatal flaw' people will claim is that because we can't track every impulse to its absolute roots it is only correct to assume that in every such case it's 'just' culture and not genetics. Which, I am telling you, is insane.
I've intentionally been less than forthcoming about my background but already said that I have an expertise in animal psychology and a lot of practical experience. So let me tell you this: There is nothing like working with two closely-related species and Noticing. I'd love to share some stories but may as well give you GPS coordinates and a list of my fears.
I'll have a lot more to say about that in later books. This one is a sort of primer.
Earendil
Then over Middle-Earth he passed
21d ago
Fair enough and apologies if that came off as a complaint.
Earendil
Then over Middle-Earth he passed
21d ago
Spam filter problem. Thought I'd be clear by now but the mods will have to do it manually I suppose. Thanks for your evidently-avid readership!
Earendil
Then over Middle-Earth he passed
21d ago
The Stranger
The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk—
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.
The men of my own stock
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wonted to,
They are used to the lies I tell.
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy and sell.
The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control—
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.
The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.
This was my father’s belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf—
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children’s teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.
Rudyard Kipling
Excellent response. We should be friends.
And yes, I endorse all of the above. Mainly I'm not saying more because later in the series (especially in books three and four) I take all this in what would seem to current readers an extraordinarily-surprising direction and I don't want to tip my hand yet.
Men can be more than brutes, and women can be more than whores. Not in Tidus! But we do not live in Tidus. And book two is set in a different world at any rate.
I'm working on (for a very loose definition of "working") a post detailing my thoughts on the psychosocial consequences of HBD on the members of genetically disadvantaged races
Looking forward to it. I touch on this here and there in this book. Different is generally worse. And that holds true even when it's better!
Secondly, we've seen that 'different' can be a good thing when it comes to mates. As a man myself I happen to feel greatly appreciative of certain specific feminine differences! But even among potential mates, 'different' is still often a bad thing.
Consider the position of an organism looking for a partner. First it encounters a potential mate which is different in terms of being noticeably inferior. This is obviously a bad deal, especially for females, who have sharply-limited reproductive potential. Mating with an inferior organism will produce inferior offspring — quite contrary to the entire point of the reproductive exercise! But then it encounters a potential mate which is different in terms of being noticeably superior. Great, right?
Alas, no. At least, not usually.
This new potential mate isn't interested in coupling with our prospective organism. Why would it be? We just saw that this wouldn't make sense. So instead, the superior organism will go on to find another superior organism, leaving ours alone and very probably heartbroken. Ours may, in time, find something at its own level — but if there are superior ones reproducing out there, their offspring are likely to supplant and thus extinguish those of our organism.
From chapter one.
Earendil
Then over Middle-Earth he passed
26d ago
There is no one-size-fits-all answer. It varied widely by place and time.
I've noticed that people seem to get really invested for some reason, insisting upon one or the other. The (psychosexual?) motivations for this are interesting but I only dimly grasp their roots.
Sometimes it was not so bad. Sometimes it was very, very bad. That's all.
But for reasons of the Christmas Tree (chapter 2) I think that 'not so bad' is about as good as it gets for most men, outside of highly-unusual boom times.
This is probably far too-general a statement. Really depends upon place and time. In some societies men must purchase wives, there's much competition, and the most successful often have many wives and perhaps dozens of children. For obvious reasons of arithmetic this leaves many lifelong bachelors.
Consider also that many women will simply be unmarriageable, or forced into mostly-unrecoverable social positions (e.g. prostitution), or die from one cause or another, leaving more men competing for acceptable mates than there are women. It's not uncommon, historically, for a man to have two or three wives over the course of his life as one dies in childbirth, one from illness, etc. The math is hard here in the sense of brutality but not complexity.
Then we get into, uh,
When groups of hunter-gatherers come into conflict with each other, they typically show no mercy to males from the other group. Females from other groups don't fare well either, as they are vulnerable to capture and subsequent slavery in their new group, but over time they can eventually obtain full rights of group membership in most societies. These rules of conflict are so pervasive that we often see sex-based signatures of ancestral conquests in the genetic remains of ancient men and women. Time and again, archaeologists discover different origins for ancestral male and female lineages, with most or all the men suddenly being replaced by another group while the female lines become absorbed rather than disappearing altogether.
William von Hippel, "The Social Paradox"
War is one of many natural relief valves for this problem. Excess men get pared away while the remainder suddenly have a much larger pool of women from which to select. Next week's chapter touches upon this a bit.
In modern times, in Europe, Korea, and Japan, e.g., we're seeing young cohorts of men where 20-30% look to be lifelong bachelors, and this rate seems to be skyrocketing.
Earendil
Then over Middle-Earth he passed
27d ago
Even so I like the comment.
There's a meme about how women just aren't functionally aware of any but the most-attractive/successful men (or at least their immediate male relatives). @faceh wrote about this a bit here.
Seems to be powerfully on display in this case. I write about the bleakness of the both sexes' reality, and apparently all HereAndGone saw was... well, the post speaks for itself.
Okay so I'm going to make a general apology @HereAndGone @Chrisprattalpharaptr
Yes, this is laying it on a bit too thick. No, I don't 100% believe everything I say here (call it 99.9 tho), but it's instructive. Directionally-correct. Necessary.
Our societal ability to have conversations about what really matters has become sclerotic due to overreddit.
If you're discussing human evolution, why not drop the Tidus framing and just call them humans? And write a sourced post instead?
Because there is not a paragraph in this book which could not be its own essay with citations, if not its own book, which precisely three other people could actually comprehend and none of whom would read it because I already know them and they already know what I think.
I'm writing for a more general audience. I'm taking a leap. I'm trying to show you what I'm seeing in front of me, because I think you're probably seeing it too and just don't know it yet; are in conflict with yourself about it, and no one else is going to speak the words you need to hear.
Man, I am trying to show you the forest. We rationalist tree-enjoyers have gotten rather out of hand, wouldn't you say?
At times in this book I take hard, perhaps even indefensible positions, because I think that they're angling at the truth and I don't know any other way to impart it. I'm painting. A picture. I understand that we're all trained to quibble over pixels but I'm using oil. Gloss.
Let me show you this thing that is staring at us. C.f. the first invocation from chapter one.
I can, and would, defend everything I'm saying here, were it not beside the point. I value this community because it is the only place where I think I can make an honest fresh argument. It might help to know that in book two we take a step back and come again at everything from a very different angle; portray the same subject in a very different light. I'm hinting at truth where I can but some things can only be said between the lines; or in poëtry.
Today's chapter, about to go up, is sure to upset some people. So remember here that I'm painting with purpose. I don't want to lose readers, but let's please stop focusing on trees. Let me show you what I'm seeing, and then we can fight over details. I'd love to, actually, and don't know anywhere else it can happen.
Put another way: The argument could be made rigorously, and long-form, only in theory. In practice, there's no other way to speak than elision. Else vital truths go unsaid.
I'm being as concise, accurate, and sober as I can here while still managing to say anything worth saying. I am not calculating for provocation or unrest. Those come naturally along with the truth.
But this is The Motte and I should address some specific concerns.
Females too need to develop intelligence for politics
Yes, and they're about to in today's chapter. I'm not trying here to make a point about modern women, but rather to show how these things developed in a way that is intuitively comprehensible.
Polygenic traits frequently have very significant environmental influences (Even in animals, and even in genetically identical animals) which you also do not discuss.
I gesture at it occasionally. Bits of new substances working their way in, etc. And next week's chapter is substantially about cultural environment. But also left untouched are: epigenetics, and memetics more generally. That's more the subject of book two.
I suppose you would argue that I could never prove to your satisfaction that those mice experience the world differently, but that would just a be waste of everyone's time.
Correct. While I'm admittedly partial to an omnigenic model, and don't think it's probably quite the case — some things maybe really only do one thing, and have little to do with anything else — I still think it's generally true that this is a better framework, starting point, for the average (highly-preselected) reader than the usual one we're given. Better to start with omni and work back than start with mono and work forward, which is how it's usually taught. YMMV I guess, but then you're also free to write your own book. What needs to be understood here is that genetics is less a bake than a stew.
What is the cliffnotes version of the data supporting this hypothesis?
Not entirely sure what you're asking here but the basic idea is that more-fit organisms displace less-fit ones, which I shouldn't think is objectionable. The conceit of the mountain and the tides does a lot of work. Social space and physical space map onto each other in Tidus, and tides abstract away famines, plagues, etc. It's a simplifying thought experiment. And also nifty. If you want more details go ask Razib; he'll be happy to tell you where it's all to be found in the literature.
Personally I am at pains to stay anonymous, if such a thing will even be possible five minutes from now. I don't want to divulge sources, or drop hints, or leave background information about myself. The most I can say is that I have an expertise in animal psychology and a great deal of practical experience, from which I'm drawing these insights.
don't know what you're referring to here, but this sort of polygenic interaction is impossible to keep track of with our current level of understanding.
Yes; my assertion was that computers help, not that we've solved the problem. In retrospect I can see how the way I put it was a bit ambiguous.
Were you HelmedHorror on the old site?
The name faintly rings a bell but no.
I find is disquieting how many people reject psychology when it concludes that racial diversity improves team efficiency, stereotype threat or whatever other bullshit and then happily eat up evo psych slop that flatters their own biases.
To be honest, Chris, I didn't expect you to like this. I'm a long-time fan of yours but our politics are different and I think we're just seeing through different lenses. I am happy that you finally showed up in the comments. Though the particular places you've chosen to nitpick don't make a lot of sense to me except through the lens of politics. I know what you don't want to think and why, and I respect the goodness in you which makes you this way.
Can we make a deal? Please continue to call out anything that you think is specifically bogus. Either I will answer your concerns along the way or else I had better get around to fixing my model. It's an unfair card for me to play, I know, but I'd appreciate the scour. In many cases, as you said, we actually just don't know, and in those I find that the default assumptions are at least as unsupported as the ones I'm making here, but mine shed a lot more light on the general situation.
Please forgive any errors in form or syntax as I am in a greatly-weakened state. Especially when I get sick am I reminded that English isn't precisely my first language; only my best. I hope she enjoys such liberties as I take with her. Even so it feels like I'm trying to burst out of a too-tight suit. But anyway I didn't want to let you sit any longer unanswered.
Thanks, I appreciate some constructive feedback.
Totally fair. All I can really say is that more material than you'd probably believe is on the cutting room floor. I do gesture at what you're talking about in places, but the deeper truth at which you're pointing here is more the sort of thing that will be important in later books. Then again the crescendo of gender (in book one at least) isn't until chapter 10, so I suppose you'll have to wait and see.
One thing I'll suggest for now though is that 'hard' control of women pushes them, if anything, further toward adultery, since they're shorter on less-objectionable options. Who has harder control of his women than the Emperor? Yet he's also the guy deploying eunuchs to manage them.
Would you mind elaborating? I don't really remember doing that and this may be a case where I implied something accidentally. Related to the below?
Yes, well-said. We do get to that next week and then again the week after. Only so much development can be covered in each chapter and only in so many dimensions. I think you're slightly overstating things here but you'll need to let me know down the road whether I end up scratching this itch for you.
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