Harlequin5942
No bio...
User ID: 1062
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
If reality and illusion are identical from the observer's perspective, what's the difference?
People's preferences are usually asymmetric over the two.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Why put it in terms of perception or the display to children? A penis is a sexual organ. Is there a context where you wouldn't regard a representation of a penis as sexual content?
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
I'm extremely skeptical that the lower classes are subsidizing the middle class
The claim is that the upper and lower classes combined are paying the majority of taxes, not that the lower classes are paying the majority of taxes.
I don't know if that's true, but there are tendencies that make welfare to the middle classes crucial to political success in most places today, even in ostensibly egalitarian societies.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Yes, and in general, if a man really wants to find a woman who is interested in settling down and having kids, that's hard only insofar as it usually involves things that are beneficial anyway: having a good job, being sober, being responsible/reliable, and being kind.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Not the question.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
But Ancient Rome wasn't polygamous in the modern sense. As you suggested, rich men had access to multiple partners, just like in most Christian societies, but they could only marry one. This was also true of Ancient Greece, another key area for early Christianity. The Jews did practice polygamy, but it doesn't seem to have been common (this is debated) by the time of the early Christians.
It certainly helped that Christianity was compatible with the existing Greco-Roman monogamous approach, but Christianity didn't introduce it.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
You could argue that Christianity solved mass inceldom as an issue even if it didn't solve it for everyone... But was it an issue?
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Case in point: this may be true but would anyone argue that the gains we've made in gay acceptance since then are unnecessary? If you agree not, then the general social taboos matter.
I'm fine with "Christian social taboos matter". I'm not fine with the suggestion that Christianity eliminated the dynamic described in the initial bit I quoted.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Maslow's hierarchy of needs which has wide recognition in psychological circles has love & belonging as a need. Maslow is not without criticism though and basic physiological and safety needs rank higher.
I think that even psychologists who think that Maslow's conjectures will some day be vindicated by evidence are embarassed by that particular part of it.
It's plausible that humans need to love things in order to achieve the highest forms of happiness, but loving things and being loved by people and having sex with other people are three different things.
If most incels would be willing to have sex with women that they aren't attracted to, just to get sex, then they are even more deluded than I thought.
My understanding is that the Greco-Roman take was basically that a man could only marry one wife but he could essentially free access to slave and subordinate class women and males (this sort of system would also be prone to the inequity problem of polygamy - unless you have a broad class of exploited women to use as cheap relief for the lower class men*)
In practice, this has been true in a lot of (most?) Christian societies, especially at the top of social hirearchy. "To wives and sweethearts... May they never meet."
Even in the Enthusiastic ferment of the Reformation, James VI still seems to have been able to have plenty of male lovers, and whether Shakespeare was intimate with men or not, his Sonnets certainly show that had a perfect language for seducing other men. Surely this is unsurprising: if Christianity has been an unreliable way of enforcing chastity among popes and bishops, it will naturally be an unreliable way of enforcing monogamy among other powerful men.
What Christianity has generally achieved is the practice of only allowing powerful men to marry one woman, but that was also practice in a lot of places, including Greece and Rome, IIRC.
Yes, the situation is not symmetric. I'm just saying that it's not simple, either. As you suggest, thinking of it as a lottery with a variety of prizes is a good analogy.
For example, a woman's options are hampered by a big nose, flat chest, saggy breasts etc., but the initial option set is probably better than most men's, e.g. she may not be able to make money as a streamer or model, but she can still attract a larger variety of partners than most men, mutatis mutandis.
Incidentally, I have a friend who started visibly balding at 17. He recently married a hot, sweet, smart chick. He also has the personality that a lot of Nice Guys have, or at least think they have - kind, helpful, not very assertive. He has slightly above average intelligence and a moderately good job. On the other hand, she was his first girlfriend, at about age 27. This exemplifies how the situation for men is certainly not ideal, but it's not necessarily awful.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
since for him it’s the difference between eating and not eating right then and there whereas for Elon it’s not even a rounding error
But it doesn't follow that the marginal utility is higher for the beggar than Elon Musk.
Harlequin5942
10d ago
That's not really 'Irish,' though.
They were in the eyes of Americans at the time, specifically Scotch-Irish. Also, Scots are Celts, though views about that at the time were sometimes complex.
Aside from their Catholicism, there was little to distinguish a typical Irishman from a typical Protestant Highlander. (Their languages would have been slightly different, but equally alien to an English American in 1850.)
Harlequin5942
11d ago
Then it wasn't something that men had as men, whereas women had their immunity from conscription as women. Different from today, but not that different, and no solace for an unmarried man who was conscripted (as many young, unmarried men were, sometimes violently e.g. press gangs).
Harlequin5942
19d ago
Salami tactics. That was apparently what Putin was trying prior to 2022, but changed his mind for some reason, possibly because of Ukraine's arms buildup.
Harlequin5942
19d ago
The only reason the West got sucked into the conflict in its current capacity is because Ukraine put up an impressive resistance
Was it that, or more that Russia is much more pathetic (and apathetic - just look at their public's reaction or the level of mobilisation/defence spending that Putin can muster) than anyone expected?
From what I have seen, it's not so much that Ukrainians have been fighting well, and more that Russia's ability to project power beyond its borders is almost completely gone. Once they could dominate Eastern Europe, now they take months of grinding to gain worthless plains within a country that they once lorded over directly.
Harlequin5942
19d ago
This is not to say that passion is a necessary component of great writing
Do you mean sufficient effect?
For Sonic fan fiction, I bring you the lowest depths to which the human mind and soul can sink: https://youtube.com/watch?v=LCWoZEXyGU0
Harlequin5942
25d ago
Esteem/affirmation culture, in my view, lends itself far more to mere masturbation-by-proxy than a guilt or shame culture does.
Plausible and interesting. I shall look more into this issue.
Though I am not a Christian or against homosexual behaviour as such, I shall say this: their separation of (a) homosexual preferences from (b) homosexual behaviour ("It's ok to be born gay, as long as you don't do gay things" etc.) is already more sophisticated than many of the takes I hear from my students when debating this issues. Again, what people are vs. what they do.
Harlequin5942
28d ago
The Twitter account is run by the character's creator, Andrew Doyle, and has some funny moments. As often happens, the best stuff is the material that is JUST plausible enough to get sincere reactions. Or when reality catches up with parody:
https://andrewdoyle.substack.com/p/the-prophecies-of-titania-mcgrath
Harlequin5942
1mo ago
'Scottish-Gaelic' and 'Irish-Gaelic' can get confusing.
It would be easy if they were spelt Galic and Gaylick, though the former would cause confusion with the French and the latter would cause confusions best not discussed on a family-friendly forum.
Harlequin5942
1mo ago
The truth is rich people aren't actually that much smarter than poor people
Your source fails to support your assertions in two ways:
(1) This source might reasonably be taken as supposedly contributing towards your final claim "The simple fact is, luck actually produces most of peoples fortunes." However, it says, "The work reveals that while exceptionally smart individuals typically earn more, they are also more likely to spend to their credit card limit, compared with people of average intelligence." Is it luck if someone has high time preference? It seems more connected with someone's choices than their IQ, supporting a "Victorian values" style conservativism about "thrift" and "clean living."
(2) The claim in the study is that when you control for other factors (and assume that these are causally independent of IQ) then the link with wealth disappears:
On the surface, people with higher intelligence scores also had greater wealth. The median net worth for people with an IQ of 120 was almost $128,000 compared with $58,000 for those with an IQ of 100.
But when Zagorsky controlled for other factors – such as divorce, years spent in school, type of work and inheritance – he found no link between IQ and net worth. In fact, people with a slightly above-average IQ of 105 , had an average net worth higher than those who were just a bit smarter, with a score of 110.
Worst of all, your sources do very little to support your claim that "What I'm saying here is that society-wide, resource distribution is the most important variable to what's being addressed here." To substantiate that claim, you need to show that "resource distribution" is crucial. A good start would be to clearly define what you mean by that. Then support it with evidence, rather than sweeping claims e.g.:
why it's almost impossible to escape poverty no matter how talented you are or how hard you work.
Is it? Even when including time preference under "hard you work"? Obviously, anyone can avoid wealth if they are spendthrift enough. Mike Tyson is smart, phenomenally physically talented, and hard working, but he still ended up bankrupt.
Harlequin5942
1mo ago
was a non-starter
That doesn't stop it from being Hitler's choice. "I want to do X" is difference from "I was forced to do X."
Harlequin5942
1mo ago
Those are different conditions of forgiveness/non-forgiveness (given grace) not different punishments.
Harlequin5942
1mo ago
Yes, I noted that a Christian can say that there are differences. It's just debatable whether Christianity gives one a basis to say that there is a difference of moral superiority, rather than e.g. a difference of predisposition towards sinful behaviour; of course, that's not an insignificant difference from a Christian perspective!
I don't know what you mean by that phrase.
Why not also in fact? There's nothing mysterious about the notion of someone being trapped in an illusory state.
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