Harlequin5942
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User ID: 1062
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
I think that, in current year, "birth control issues" don't affect women per se differently; the people they affect are Humans with Wombs. So, with consistency, they wouldn't come under that category, though women would still be more likely to be Humans with Wombs (womb-men?).
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
I am not being cute or trolling and don't know how to say otherwise.
Stop engaging in rhetoric and deflection, as opposed to defending your substantive claims or acknowledging your mistakes. This will remove the appearance of trying to be a cute troll.
Harlequin5942
1yr 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.
How does this square with the other online sexual politics assertion that ‘looks are everything’, though?
I don't know, but I think that that assertion is generally wrong, especially if we're talking about women's evaluations of men, where "chemistry" and "personality" are if anything more important than looks.
For example, I could just as easily say that an attractive man who makes close friends with a single woman before hitting on her probably will be able to successfully seduce her with this method. And that’s not even wrong! Pretty much all my relationships have started like this, so have those of many of the people I know well.
So your argument is "In my experience, when A is true, B is always true, therefore, generally, if B is true, then A is true"? Or do you have other evidence to think that this is a highly successful ("probably"!!!) method for seducing women?
A lot of men who advocate this ‘don’t get into the friend zone’ approach have a strangely esoteric view of female sexuality. It’s not that they’re wrong, it’s more efficient to make your intentions clear by all means. But if you’re close friends with a straight, single woman and hit on her and she says no, it’s not because you somehow got ‘too close’ to her and she just ‘doesn’t see you as a sexual being’ or you’re ‘like a brother’ to her, it’s because she doesn’t find you attractive and probably never did.
I agree that there's no guaranteed way to avoid the friendzone. I do think there are reliable paths to the friendzone, or at least behaviours that increase that chance.
Note that the friendzone is different from not being seen as a sexual being or seen like a brother. I have women whom I regard as purely friends, but also as hot, and definitely not as "like a sister" (ew).
I’ve literally never heard of a woman becoming close friends with a very attractive man and deciding not to date him because they were friends.
Right, but that's very far from what I'm talking about. After all, nothing I have said rules out the existence of women who only date men who are already close friends; I've dated a few, and I know even more.
In general, your comment doesn't conflict with what I said, so I would have liked it if it was either been more interrogative (if you wanted to criticise what I said) or made it clearer that you weren't disagreeing with me (if you were just following up with further related thoughts).
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
This has always been somewhat of an issue (hence the Family Guy joke from years back about 23 year old girls: "Here's the first three digits of my phone number, email me") but I can't imagine that social media has helped, since it gives girls and young women less experience of interacting with people, including older women who have more experience.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Makes sense. I was in a Chinese place during part of covid and their culture + personalities were perfectly calibrated for obeying absurd covid restrictions.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Anecdotal: I have a look recently at women playing Super Seducer. I thought it might be an insight into how at least some of them think of seduction and dating. Plus, Richard La Ruina operates in an interesting borderland of acceptability, where e.g. the woker girl gamers feel like they should demonise him but keep on saying "Huh, that's actually good advice."
Where they tend to fail is that their basic plan for a man to pursue a woman is to try and make them his friend. This makes sense: for straight women and even lesbians, befriending is their main interaction with other women. Many women, even seemingly "awkward" women, are actually very good at this task. They know how to flatter women, find common interests, make women feel comfortable around them etc.
While these skills can obviously be useful for dating women, it's not surprising that a lot of these women's advice are textbook paths to the friendzone, because that's what they're designed to do.
Also, even if a woman thinks "How do guys seduce me?" it's hard to answer that honestly, because a woman being seduced is potentially a status loss, so it's necessary to say things like "He has to know me for months and be kind and just treat me like any other friend" etc., because something like "His best strategy is to be confident, asserive, push things forward, one step ahead, and stand out from all my other guy friends in some way" suggests that she's prone to manipulation, and nobody likes to admit that. Men too: I have seem men been obviously lured into a relationship and hate to admit that the woman was actually the one coordinating the interaction. Never me, of course...
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
One of the great ironies of this all is that institutions can't even be bothered to reward the meek men and women they claim to want.
The appeal of the meek is supposed to be exactly insofar as you don't have to reward them to elicit compliance. At the limit, if you have to reward them like e.g. disagreeable but talented people, then you might as well just hire the latter.
The challenge that I suspect many with power would love to solve is "How do you turn disagreeable/moderate people into meek people?"
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
If a conservative shares these views (strawman/slanting aside) why do you expect this to be a problem for them?
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
quoth @dr_analog on conservative* role models
happy embracing fatherhood devoted/providing husband works hard successful at work proud of work
I'd add brave and principled. One of the organic male figures, developed in living memory, is Rocky Balboa, who appeals to lots of different Americans, but who perhaps fits best with normie conservative ideology. He's brave (willing to e.g. risk losing his eyesight or his life to provide for his family/get revenge) and principled (plays by the rules, tries to live up to standards of masculinity etc.).
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
And just supply-side issues. What conservative wants to be an actor, TV writer, comedian etc.? Everything I know about political psychology suggests that these professions should repel the vast majority of conservatives: insecurity and family-hostility in return for wild adventures and living in a world of creative ideas.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
No, because Stalin, bad as he was, was not as bad as Hitler.
I'm not sure I agree, but I think he was more easily contained than Hitler. Effectively, appeasement worked with Stalin: the US and UK granted him dominion over Eastern Europe, but unlike Hitler, Stalin didn't try (through direct force) to advance further.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Churchill was the one who declared war. It was his choice.
It would be pretty hard for Churchill to declare war in 1939. You might not know as much about WWII as you think.
Harlequin5942
1yr 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
1yr ago
if true it would support the core claim that the US intentionally tried to push diversity on its puppet states via the mass importation of non-western people.
It wouldn't, because the intention of the US, according to the text you quoted, was "wanting to stabilize and create goodwill from a potential ally." That Turks were so different from the Germans was an inconvenience from a US point of view, not a goal.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
True, but it's also true that the Soviets were hardly trying to flood East Germany with Third World immigrants, which was his point.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
For what it's worth, I didn't interpret your post as condescending, but as simply regretful.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
I agree on the black space leather. In the Dune video games (Dune II and IIRC Emperor of Dune) the Harkonnens are mostly in red, which is cool because it's a colour associated both with allure (red fruit, roses, red lips etc.) and violence (blood). The Sci-Fi miniseries goes with similar aesthetics and generally portrays the Harkonnens as cool/sexy, which helps explain how e.g. Feyd could plausibly have sufficient popularity among the Great Houses to become Emperor. I thought Dune Part Two did a good damage mitigation job on this point, by making Feyd more honourable than he is in the books; I don't know if that was deliberate, but it helped.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Those are different conditions of forgiveness/non-forgiveness (given grace) not different punishments.
Harlequin5942
1yr 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!
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
strongly imply that you think there is no ranking provided, and that the Bible states that all sins are equal. Further discussion has provided more evidence of this.
A comprehensive ranking and a ranking are different, right? I put in "comprehensive" exactly because I know that there are some Bible passages that could be interpreted as elevating some sins as more morally important than others.
For example, consider the set {1, 2, multiplication, blackbirds}. We can put two of its elements into a numerical order, but not all of them.
Sure, but tabooing the word "morality" for a moment, what exactly would the Bible need to say to convince you that not all sins are equal? "God dislikes some sins more than others" is covered in the Bible. "These commandments are more important than these other commandments." is covered. "You will be forgiven of some sins but not others" is also covered. I can't think of anything the Bible could say to contradict your point that it hasn't, besides using the exact same word that you are using.
"Equal" in what sense, given our taboo? Also, a sufficiently similar synonym would be a contradiction. After all, we're really talking about texts in Ancient Greek and Ancient Hebrew, so any such term will not be the taboo word or a grammatical modification of it.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
It certainly factors punishments too, both divine and temporal. The Law of Moses punishes different sins differently, and Jesus on many occasions implies that the punishment for some sins is worse than others.
Hmm, that's a good move and a plausible argument. I hadn't thought about differences in temporal punishments. The other arguments you cite are less persuasive, e.g. shifting from "God hates X more" to "X is morally worse," given that it's not clear what an attitude like hate means for an omnipotent and otherwise incomprehensible being. So I don't think it's clear, but I grant that there is a plausible argument to be made.
But to claim the Bible preaches DCT
When did I claim that?
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
It's not that all sins are equal, it's that without grace, one sin of any magnitude is sufficient to send you to hell. This doesn't imply that all sins are exactly the same in magnitude.
It's not the only explanation, but if God doesn't treat them as morally different, it indicates that they are morally equal. If there was a moral distinction, wouldn't that (a) be made clear in the Bible and (b) factor into punishments?
Well why was it named as the second commandment then, the one which in addition to the first supports the rest of the law and prophets? Clearly it has some sort of exalted position over the other commandments. There's no way Jesus was just referring to chronological order when he called it the second commandment.
Some sort, maybe, but it doesn't follow that this distinction is a moral one. For example, it could be more important as a test of faith than some other commandments, which is not the same as being more morally significant.
I was more looking for verses that say this directly
I think that the Bible was created by scholars and outlaws in a largely illiterate and philosophically alien time, with no more or less divine inspiration than any of the other thousands of bewildering religious texts that have emerged from human minds, so it doesn't surprise me that this sort of issue is not made clear in the Bible, any more than it doesn't surprise me that the Bible doesn't actually give a clear answer to the Problem of Evil (for instance, the Book of Job raises more questions than answers, e.g. what is God doing chatting with Satan and playing tricks on mortals like some Olympian or Norse deity?) or to avoid about 1500 years of debate on whether the Holy Spirit processes from the Father or from the Father and the Son.
Many Christians do believe that God can say what's good and what's bad, but I'd argue that most of this is a practical belief rather than a theoretical one. It's not that God is defining good and bad, it's that he's right about what good and bad are, and if you disagree with him you'll always be wrong. However to describe it as I have--God as a perfect, omnipotent being, but not one who actually invented the concept of morality--is to "limit" God and so was seen as increasingly unpopular and heretical by the medieval Church.
I'm not too sure about the exact history, but I do know that Augustine was a divine command theorist. I wouldn't be surprised if the question is anachronistic in the context of early Christianity, so if you asked Paul or Jesus, they'd say something that unsettled you further. Perhaps Paul would say something about miasma or the Word being the Good, while Jesus might throw you off by saying that your conceptual framing is wrong: there is intentional sin and rebellion... and unintentional sin.
So I won't argue that DCT isn't popular but I don't think the Bible supports it at all.
That may well be true.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Sorry, to clarify, I hope that I have throughout distinguished Christian intellectuals and DCT fans, e.g.
"from a Christian perspective, God is not morally obliged to save anyone. In fact, from a Divine Command Theory perspective, the very notion of moral obligations for God is a category mistake, like a moral obligation for the number 11."
The idea that grace is a gift of God, not an obligation of God, is more or less unanimous among Christians, AFAIK. The DCT is not.
No, this is no more likely to be his meaning (in the sense of the factual content he wanted his listeners to impart from his words) than Bill Clinton wanted people to believe that he hadn't had vaginal sex with Monica Lewinsky.
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