GreenEggsAndJam
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User ID: 2256
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Continuing my theme in the previous comment of springboarding off the QC thread for discussion topics...
War of the sexes, but specifically regarding long term relationships and marriage.
What, in your opinion, should/does a desirable male partner bring to the table? What should/does a desirable female partner bring to the table?
The goal here is not specifically symmetry, if the desirableness is asymmetrical. For example, if you think a woman should desire a man with a stable job, but a man would be neutral or negative towards a woman with a stable job, then there's no need to include that on both lists.
To make the discussion more specific, less hypothetical: excluding amorphous concepts of "chemistry", what is the concrete package of measurable traits the opposite sex needs to offer for you to want to commit to a relationship with them? What is the package you are offering them in exchange? Do you feel this is a "good deal"?
(I'll answer for myself in a reply rather than answering within the question.)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
women are not the people you need to convince to get married — men are
Is that true? The research is that men benefit more from marriage and are much, much more likely to remarry if a marriage ends (in death or divorce). I can't find polls for first marriages/singles but I'd be curious how they relate.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Population bottleneck is not necessarily killer, depends on what bad genes the bottleneck has. There are many cases of bottlenecks ending up fine, it greatly increases but does not 100% guarantee the chance of bad genetic outcomes, and we're already starting with what looks like a very diverse gene pool in the sample. Nonetheless, I agree that basic due diligence would require a genetic screening of anyone being sent to at least avoid the obvious known pitfalls.
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Male accountant. No idea if the substance abuse problem will be specifically relevant once on a different planet. Substance abuse negative sign of self control, holding it together enough to hold down job and family potentially promising if he doesn't keep the problem. Known to not be impotent.
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I agree that the medical student is an obvious choice. Young, decent odds of intelligence and relevant knowledge.
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No relevant skills, short fertility horizon, communication problems, a very middle tier pick, basically just if we need to fill out a spot.
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It's an entire extra person as long as the pregnancy survives! As obvious as the doctor. (also, if we're going for "demonic" it seems fairly obvious we should be asking the remaining women on this trip to also get pregnant, ASAP, from some of the four billion men not being taken who have also passed genefic screening problems)
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Nothing in this entry suggests any advantage of this person of unknown age and gender over our standard for "filler", number 3. Cut.
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Agree that this is a great pick. International, so again more genetic diversity, and young and female.
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Nothing in this entry suggests any advantage for this person of unknown Abe and gender over our standard for "filler", number 3. cut.
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Unlike you, I don't see any reason to believe she's probably older. Female movie stars skew young, only a handful stay famous once older. She presumably speaks English, has decent odds of being younger than 33 (our standard for filler), almost certainly has good soft skills if she's made it to star level in a cutthroat industry. Keep.
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Racist cop. I am concerned about the low agreeability and the part where he's armed. High risk, if he ends up killing anyone on the trip. On the other hand, if he's not killing anyone else would be a good choice. Personally I suspect a survival situation with only 8 people depending on each other should be enough to trigger a "my tribe" attitude towards them, but I don't know. Tentative keep.
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Professional athlete excellent, rest only helps if he'll compromise as needed (gay is easily solved if he'll donate sperm, he doesn't need to actually have sex with the women and could be a stabilizing factor). Keep.
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Orphaned 12yo boy - I like this for the tiny bit of age diversity (otherwise it's all 20+ and the fetus, this gives us a bit of a bridge). 11 is already old enough to be able to be given responsibility quickly. Inclined to keep.
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If this was a university professor I'd say it could maybe be salvaged depending on the field of knowledge, but it's a university administrator and that's not even close to valuable enough a skillset to justify choosing a 60 year old. Obvious cut.
That gives us 3 people to obviously cut, with our remaining choice of who to cut the accountant, the manager, the cop. We've only got three women so the manager is an obvious keep. Need to figure out odds of cop killing his team members and on that basis make the final cut, but overall, it probably needs to be the accountant unless the cop is judged too high risk.
Final cull: accountant, disabled novelist, homephobic clergyman, 60yo.
The actual question is how the fuck we ended up with such a terrible roster for final 12 humans to begin with. Ending up with 50/50 on gender is bad but there were only 4 likely to be fertile women in the original set! An 8:4 man to woman ratio is insane for this scenario! And the men in question aren't even all physically fit, let alone passing basic screenings for mental health! If these were the last humans left alive and viable after some catastrophe that's one thing, but the question says they're "selected". In which case the person selecting is so incompetent I'm now left to assume my chosen 8 all have something terribly wrong with them because someone is deadset on sabotaging our last chance.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Ha. I broadly agree in that, like I said, posting on the Motte is a strong signal against what I like in a mate.
I used to value the ability to maintain super intense philosophical discussion more. Certainly it was part of what I enjoyed about dating, probing people's minds in great depth. I find that in the actual day to day nitty gritty of being married it's barely even a half point bonus. I just need a partner who is willing to indulge me occasionally going off at length about a topic— I can find discussion partners with strong opinions online for no cost at all. As long as I feel assured my partner isn't an idiot and his opinions and values come from somewhere sincere and genuine, his being able to obsessively analyze them is, eh. Not very important.
I wouldn't describe "opposites attract" as total baloney, while still basically agreeing with you. I think people are highly attracted to certain very compatible personality opposites that are suited well to complementing their own strengths/weaknesses, and that aside from that they prefer to be as similar as possible. I don't specifically view it as sexed, at least individually, although it's clear that on a statistical level it is. My situation is a slightly weird variation on yours - I consider myself and my husband to be very, very different people, with an excellent match of complementing strengths, but outsiders say we're basically the exact same person, so at least on a superficial external level I guess we are similar. (We're certainly almost the same politically, religiously, intellectually, etc...).
In that connection, I wouldn't hesitate to guess that you are highly conscientious, and a big believer in being organized, dependable, ambitious, careful, and goal-directed. And, in turn, you rather understandably want a partner who shares that disposition.
Hm. I would describe myself as possibly none of those things? I am certainly not organized or particularly ambitious. But I do highly value conscientiousness in other people - I'm the kind of person to immediately offer a 7000 word opinion on anything I'm asked, on the spot, but I've always adored the kind of personality that says "good question, let me think about that" and then comes back two days later with a response. To me that kind of slow, deliberate care IS an area of opposite-attraction-compatibility, a very nice braking mechanism on my own more reactive/impulsive style (which I like plenty in myself, but since I've got it covered I don't need it from someone else).
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Any theories as to what would be causing this? Was this just a temporary decline? What I see around me socially is still a strong expectation of a 3 kid family (especially if you're more rural*), perhaps 2 if you're urban and too poor to afford the third (or a single mother by choice, where 2 also seemed to be the default number they all wanted).
*(The same rural/urban split seems to appear - again, by anecdotal observation only - among religious non-haredi families, where 4 or 5 is an acceptable urban amount but sad and small in a rural context. However, there's too much noise coming from
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If you want to have a larger family and "quality family life" you are more likely to move out of the city (ads for rural areas explicitly target this)
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Zionist religious families strongly tend to be more religious the more rural they are)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
I feel like the ideal relationship has both sides suspecting they've gotten the better edge of the deal (found someone superior to themselves). Isn't that where we get referring to spouse as a better half, etc?
In any case, while I don't relate to most of your particulars (the desire for protection, the specific breakdown of talents), I do relate to the desire to admire. I consider my husband to be one of the best human beings I've ever had the luck to meet, and that obviously makes everything about being devoted to him easier. (not sure why devotion would be degrading?)
(.... This sort of relates to the fertility thread. I just think my husband is really fantastic and if the world has more people carrying his genes that's really good, and I always wonder if the reason some people don't have kids is because they love their spouses but wouldn't want to replicate them. However, I assume that's probably not the answer plus tons of people have kids with real dickheads so there's obviously also a more powerful basic drive)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
...So, does she pick her nose in front of you?
(Fwiw my husband's ability to cry from sheer emotion is something I cherish about him, coming from a family that has all the emotional range of a shriveled peanut. He cries whenever he's feeling really deeply and just thinking about it makes my heart go all melty. He's just so emotionally well adjusted and not fucked up and repressed! I thought that kind of thing was a myth!)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Divorces being initiated by women would support the claim that it's not men who need to be convinced to be married. The benefits I was referring to was married men living longer, reporting higher life satisfaction, etc, than single men (the opposite direction was true of married women)
Being screwed over by family courts is only relevant if you're having kids with someone, and in that case being married/not married is irrelevant, as not being married to the mother of the child you are claiming paternity for doesn't release you from child support payments or grant you more visitation rights.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Smart ≠ highly analytical and inclined to in depth discussion, introspection, navel-gazing.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Getting rid of a dress my husband doesn't like seems obvious to me.
But wearing a dress he got me that I don't like seems a bit much. Why not just... Tell him what style you like instead? Especially because I'd assume that, for example, the concept is "you'd look hot in red lace" and then I could be like "great, gonna get myself something in red lace but {a different shade of red that doesn't clash with my skin tone/a different cut/whatever}". I mean presumably he's buying the dress to make both of us happy so why would I hide not liking it? Anything he wants I can probably find a way of accommodating that I also like.
If he wants something incredibly specific and irredeemable (I don't know, ten inch leopard print diamond studded stilettos?) Then it would need to be an inside the house only deal, I'm not wearing clothing I feel ugly and uncomfortable in outside the house, he can come up with a counteroffer.
As for the rest, he does all the same for me, I'd be a huge hypocrite to not reciprocate.
(And I do buy him clothing I think he'd look hot in, and he does either wear it or tell me it's not his taste, so I guess not being a hypocrite applies there as well. I also 100% expect him to get rid of clothing I find ugly, unless it's something with sentimental value or whatever. But basically we're obviously getting dressed with our number one target audience being each other...)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
I'm fine with answering the question in an ungendered way if you think that's the correct answer.
This is kind of orthogonal but I have felt much better in my relationships when I stopped viewing them in this kind of transactional manner, as being about getting something in return for giving something.
First, this can of course work on an individual level, but any discussing of the dynamics of a "sexual marketplace" or what have you is obviously about broader transactional politics.
Second, I guess I do find that a vaguely strange worldview. Sure, after eight years of deep investment in my marriage, I have a lot of reasons, both moral, emotional, and practical, to stay loyal to my spouse if he stopped bringing anything to the table, although even then I'd probably be struggling with whether I should divorce him or not if it was a true total cessation of everything.
But certainly before marrying him I wouldn't have considered it if he wasn't bringing anything worth having. Why marry someone if marriage to them is not better than being single, and also assumed to be better than at least the most easily available other marriage prospects?
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Need more evidence/citations that they are same.
Anecdotally, using proxies for intelligence like vast breadth of knowledge, grasping new material extremely quickly, getting good grades in very challenging programs, and creative problem solving, I can think of a number of very smart people I know who don't do much in the way of in depth discussion, introspection, or navel-gazing. It doesn't interest or excite them the way, say, a cool engineering problem does. Their approach to their inner selves is -shrug-, to interpersonal politics is "well, it all works out in the end", etc. These things simply don't bother or preoccupy them, they find them tedious and a waste of time better spent on cool problems.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Standard caveat re replication crisis, bad science reporting, etc.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
So in short: you find the premise of the question inherently flawed, and if given the option to implement a policy but with the requirement that it be even-handed, would have absolutely none to suggest?
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
I mean, I assume the men and women I know who never, ever cry — my grandfather was noted as having cried a total of three times in his entire adult life, my aunts/uncles do not cry at funerals or weddings— have plenty of emotions. It's nonetheless also obvious they are uncomfortable with expressing said emotions in a lot of contexts, not just crying. The ability and willingness to cry is a symptom of being more emotionally open, not more emotionally feeling.
It's fine for you if you don't cry, it's not like it even would have been a deal breaker for me, given how used to it I already am. But that doesn't change that it's a relief to me that my husband does cry, and that I appreciate that about him.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
I think we may be in agreement.
I don't see a barter system as not a marketplace.
A barter system is "how convenient, I can provide X and you can provide Y, what a mutually profitable exchange for both of us", instead of "I can provide X units of value, you can provide Y units of value, of X is greater than Y I have lost". I agree that's a way healthier way to think of relationships, but it's still a kind of transaction, with the goal being both parties feeling they have benefited.
As for quantifiable or not, I guess my impetus for writing this question is in discussions of the "war of the sexes" I constantly get the impression of people struggling to think of the other side as a full agent in a transaction. They'll fall back on complaining that men/women are "shallow" or whatever, whereas to me it makes perfect sense to conceive it as, for example, both sides want a partner who they are sexually attracted to, women want a partner they can trust to provide adequate parental investment in offspring, men want a partner they can rely on for sexual loyalty/paternity, etc. I don't see why this needs to end up turning into an antagonistic market relationship when it could just as easily be a mutually profitable market relationship.
But then, I'm happily married. So my perspective is obviously shaped by the market having "worked" for me. I guess I am trying to understand what makes it so hard to work for others.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
To repeat what others have already said.
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If this friends of yours is transing their kid, this letter is the worst, most insane way to go about convincing him otherwise and will permanently burn your chances of finding a more sane way
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This was way too long even before I hit the "continued in a reply".
You're clearly so culturally different from him you don't even have perspective on how what you're saying would be perceived by someone outside your bubble, like a very poorly trained missionary who didn't get the basic missionary 101 memo about how to do effective missionary work and is instead standing raving on the street corner.
Focus on there being no rush to decide, that it's kind of sexist to assume feeling like a girl is something only girls can do, that a boy can have girly interests. Stick in some testimonies from detransitioners, point out that transitioning to a girl creates much more pressure on him to not detransition than transitioning to "nonbinary" does, that there's no rush for him to commit to anything. If your goal is to save this kid, your goal is anything that keeps them off puberty blockers, off hormones, and away from surgery, and anything that leaves them as much space as possible to safely grow out of the phase without crushing their parents.
I do also think you have a completely delusional view of how women experience the world, but that's not the point here so I'm not even going to bother arguing it, except to say that it's part of the general pattern of this letter being way too long, way too distant from the actual point, and way too online-incel speak to be effective. The point here is helping this kid away from a life path that ends in being Jazz Jennings with all the horror that entails. You exclusively need to focus on the dangers of medicalizing a totally normal appropriate exploratory developmental stage, and how the parents, by rushing to be too supportive, can in fact smother the kid, making it harder for them explore without it being a huge dramatic life-upturning event, thereby trapping them. Tell the dad that labeling Skylar a she is myopic and limiting, not that Skylar is defined by his lack of a pussy pass.
I'm not TracingWoodgrains but I'm very very sympathetic to his point, and my personal limit would be text describing the product, and images of the product.
You're allowed a professional photoshoot of your product, even though I give this allowance very reluctantly (black and white text, no images would be preferred), because I grudgingly admit people prefer to see the thing they're deciding to buy. Absolutely no videos. I don't see a realistic way to get rid of endorsements, unfortunately, but they should be strictly regulated.
Culture building around a product should be banned — no dove beauty campaigns, no mulvaney beer bottles, none of that. "This skin product will do this for your skin, and you can buy it for this price, here". Information sharing between seller and buyer only. The mind of very basic ads you see in local newsletters.
As a side effect this means corporations will effectively be banned from expressing any political, cultural, or controversial opinions publicly (since that is also an advertising campaign, building tribe loyalty to a product) which is wonderful and should be pursued to the extreme— in my ideal universe corporations are essentially politically gagged. Talk about your product alone, or shut up.
Basically, rewinding back as much as possible to the kinds of ads they had back in the very, very early days of advertising before they realized people buy based on emotions not based on facts, with as many emotional factors removed as possible. There's no sticking the genie all the way back into the bottle but cutting off as much of its limbs as possible is still a worthy goal.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
I'm making the (ludicrous*) assumption that all relevant information for the decision is included in the descriptions, so anyone not specified female is male, and if the gay athlete isn't mentioned to have AIDS he doesn't.
Whereas the cop being armed and with an existing history of excessive force is explicitly mentioned. I still think he probably will be okay, but having someone with a gun and already established violence and low agreeableness is definitely a big gamble. The odds of his losing his temper and killing someone may not be high, but the the degree to which we'd be fucked if he does it is high. Now I can't remember if risk is the word I'm looking for or if risk includes probability, but what I meant was the word for "how bad the bad thing is", not "probability of the bad thing happening".
*Ludicrous because this question sucks, but without the assumption there's just no point playing at all.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
I would have thought so, but I get a lot of side-eye for it.
I believe you, I just also find that very strange (and sad, I guess). And if it was your friend who thought it was ugly, would you also be judged for not keeping it? Or is it only your husband's aesthetic opinions you're supposed to ignore?
To be clear, I don't wear things I actively dislike, just things I wouldn't buy for myself - e.g. I get no thrill out of activewear. I own more yoga pants than I need, purely because he has a thing for them. And hey, they're comfortable and practical, so why not? If you buy more, darling, please avoid black and capri lengths.
Oh okay that makes much more sense. (Although I personally love black and capri length 😅)
The women I know often seem anxious that, by taking on more around the house to support their husband's career, or by making sacrifices or compromises in their own aspirations in order to be with someone, they're doing something terribly retrograde.
I think with my husband and I, we simply accepted that at different points in time one or the other of us would be making the bigger sacrifices, but that overall it would balance out. It doesn't seem to me to be realistic to have a family without ever making any sacrifices. Maybe for DINKs it's possible?
In any case it feels really unhealthy to call compromise and balancing each other's needs "degrading", unless only one side is doing all the compromising. Again, I trust you're describing things accurately, it just sounds incredibly sad :(
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
I simply don't feel that "interesting ways to solve energy output problems from solar cells" can be described as "in depth discussion, introspection, navel-gazing".
If you think that any contemplation of a complex problem is "in depth discussion, introspection, navel-gazing", then sure, a total lack of desire to interact with complex problems is not well correlated with intelligence.
But if people are inclined to "live life and vibe" outside their professional fields + areas of special interest, that doesn't intrinsically reflect on their intelligence.
(I think this whole comment thread kicked off with someone dropping in to say prioritizing a smart mate is important, which I interpreted as a response to my claim that constant in-depth quality discussion turned out to not be nearly as meaningful to me as I'd imagined when I started dating. Hence my initial response resisting conflating the two. I really believe it has much more to do with personality than intelligence)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
I should have specified further that not only do men remarry more, they also express a desire to remarry more. This could of course be a sour grapes type situation where women claim to not want to remarry because they're aware they'd have difficulty doing so if they wanted it.
In any case, if anyone has statistics about desire for a first marriage among men vs women it would be interesting to see numbers.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Do you enter relationships with the intent of finding a long term one, or do you expect to perhaps stumble into a long term one maybe? Is long term commitment a goal or just a possible thing that might one day happen to you?
If the latter, your strategy makes sense to me - have fun now, maybe it'll lead somewhere - but if the former, I don't get why you'd waste time on people who have none of the traits you'd want to commit to.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Good to know, thanks. It sounded pretty horrifying to me, but I never can gauge what internet stuff about far off places is real or not...
Since I have you here anyway — Is there general expectation of/support for high levels of paternal involvement like I described?
The quality contributions roundup has a lot of discussion of fertility. I found it pretty disconcerting to read, since it all seemed to assume that the only way to get women to have kids is to enforce a top down dystopia. This is not my personal experience in my social surroundings★, but of course I live in Israel so I don't count‡.
Anyway, here is my follow-up question:
If you had the ability to set policies that will encourage increased fertility, what policies would you be implement across the board for both men and women simultaneously?
In other words, not "women can't be allowed access to higher education until they've had at least two children", but "people of child-bearing age can't be allowed access to higher education until they've had at least two children". Or "new parents of children are given twenty additional paid vacation days", or whatever. Are there any such policies you think could actually be effective?
★ if anything what I see is women regretting not being able to have more kids
‡ In Israel, fwiw, having kids is simply by default assumed to be a shared responsibility of men, women, and society. It is expected that men take (government paid) sick days to stay home with sick kids. It is not blinked at for the manager to show up to a meeting remotely with a sick kid in his lap. It is expected that men will leave work early several times a week to pick up kids from school — at least in all the places in Israel I have lived I have seen reasonably close sex splits of the parents at pickup/dropoff. I am not clear on whether or not this is equally the case in America — I don't get that impression, but as my knowledge of America is limited to TV and internet discussions, I could be wrong. But I see fathers at the park supervising their kids all the time, and the internet discourse re America is about men getting assumed to be pedophiles for being around kids... So I assume there must be some difference...
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