Nerd
I had sex with a vacuum, it sucked.
User ID: 1024
Nerd
3mo ago
The decline of cheap or free activities specifically for young adults to meet other young adults is a huge problem
Robert Putnam wrote extensively about third space decline in Bowling Along, these trends started long before the smart phone. I think the abundance of technology has caused third space decline. The monetization of them isn't as big a barrier at its been made out to be, indeed people were partying more in the past compared to today, its not like those things were free back then either. Hell, Putnam documented the decline of picnics! In any case, id be fine with a state policy making these spaces low cost to free in order to incentivize socialization. Going beyond that, you could begin a more authoritarian crackdown on technology. Not ideal, but I've been flirting with the idea of doing some kind of creative crack down on screen time. Im well open to (& and I'd honestly prefer) less authoritarian solutions before that.
I keep engaging with the gender wars/fertility crisis topic even though its slowly driving me mad. But its too important to ignore.
I've already written a several write ups about how to solve this. The solution to the current problems are likely combination of getting non-college educated men decent paying work, and increasing socialization. We'd also need women to be more receptive to approaches, in an era where there are too many people attempting to demonize it.
Another thing too add that I think is fascinating, that is even a blind spot of myself, is that we don't really uphold womens end of the social contract in the same way we do with men a la Lauren Chen. Its more permissable to say that men have social/moral obligations (get a job (well, yes, a bum women isnt necessarily praised either, but I think its clear that men have more pressure on them in this regard), military service, etc), but not women, (get married, obey husband, have kids.) Perhaps this double standard should be reconsidered, and applied to women as well. If one wants to shift the needle in the other direction, change material conditions (automate the jobs, build skynet, etc) and "male liberation" would follow.
Personally, I favor the former over the latter - though I would emphasize partner cooperation over just blindly obeying your husband.
Nerd
3mo ago
Meh, I feel as though this is being deliberately naive. Maybe modern "national socialism" wouldn't be a one for one exact copy, but I have a hard time believing those people aren't at least somewhat racist, and potentially willing to inflict that racism as a matter of state policy.
Nerd
3mo ago
I doubt most self-professed advocates for modern-day "national socialism" are aryans in any sense to begin with.
Why would anyone advocate for it who isnt one, given the general knowledge and known history?
Nerd
3mo ago
Um, Im not very comfortable with national socialism. I think a slightly heavy handed moderate form of conservatism, accepting some progressive economic policy is enough. Im not exactly Aryan, so I wouldnt benefit much from it anyway.
Nerd
3mo ago
and most actual financial growth these days is the result of arbitrage, not genuine productivity increases.
I think this is overstated. There’s definitely a larger role for finance and asset appreciation than people are comfortable with, but it’s hard to argue that productivity growth is entirely illusory when you look at sectors like tech, healthcare, or energy. The bigger problem is that the gains from real productivity growth don’t necessarily translate into broadly accessible, non-degree employment.
A lot of men aren't positioned well to move into the sectors of the economy that are growing, some of those sectors pay well, others could pay better, but we have a lot of wiggle room to try some things before throwing in the towel.
Nerd
3mo ago
But even that is a complete misdirection, birth rates won't be much of an issue to begin with. The current problem with an aging society is that the old don't produce as much as the youth do, but still consume resources. But who cares about that if AGI bots can do all the work for humans?
I'm of the belief that more children and families are an inherent good, independent of any societal effect that a declining population may have. Same thing with having less friends - regardless of whatever economic effects come of it, the fostering of love between to close friends, between husband and wife, between parent and child is worth preserving in its own right.
Nerd
3mo ago
I think I know the answers, but I'll ask anyway: Why do you hold prejudice against Blacks?
They aren't even all Indians! Though most are...
As a side note, the 21 an hour job i was offered was by a company full of Indians. They are so fucking annoying. They keep calling me all the damn time even though i've technically accepted the offer (Which tbh, I'm probably gonna be dropping in favor of the internship.) Its fucking ridiculous. And yes, an obvious #notall, but seriously, why are these companies like this?
Nerd
3mo ago
Love isnt just a feeling, its an ability. Every time you meet an emotional need, take her out on a date, show warmth and affection. You are choosing to love that person. The free will behind this choice is what makes it special, not just the action. I dont know if you are in a relationship, but think of it like this: What if you found out your partner was being coerced into being with you (someone threatened her, maybe a forced marriage a la Taliban). Would that person go on dates, kiss you, and have sex with you? Yeah. Would most consider this love? No! Without agency, we are left with a disgusting imitation, a fake "love" built on falsehood. The ability to stay means nothing without the ability to walk away! True love requires agency.
I think one reason you're having trouble finding work is that there's been a major oversupply of white collar degreed workers for what the economy actually requires. Those sorts of jobs are very cushy and high status, but too many people have been going to college trying to get them, and now we're seeing an overshooting of the demand.
This might play a role. Even if I'm making it to the last round, Im still competing with a guy with 4 years of SysAdmin experience. Its so fucking annoying, especially because i try and put in a lot of work into my resume and my interviews. I dont see any solution though - the best thing could be to try raising the pay of retail and non college avenues artificially, but those notoriously have negative consequences, such as a reduction in hiring and increase in the price of goods.
IMO, (2) is not really going to move the needle wrt birth rates / relationship rates. The sociological finding that women prefer a higher status male is robust.
I mean, yes, but women are flexible enough in this area to where the gains can make real impacts. Much of the decline in marriage is with non-college educated women. College educated women are basically eating up both college educated men, and men with money but no college education. I think men having money will shift the needle a good chunk, as it will be giving women more options for attractive mates. Its also worth noting that just having a good chunk of change to spend creates status in its own right.
Nerd
3mo ago
When I first started searching I was having a tough time even getting call backs. Probably would help if i updated my linkedin. Surprisingly, ive been able to get call backs better once in began timing my application, which meant applying to a job within hours or a day of the posting. It works!
It also helped that i lowered my standards a bit and decided to just work more "entry level" work for longer (Im in the IT industry) but honestly, at this point any full time IT job with benefits is better than contract work, internships, or 21 an hr with no benefits at all.
Im making it to final interviews often in many of these cases. But its a huge pain in the ass sealing the deal! Im waiting to hear back from 2 full time job interview though, fingers crossed!
Your predecessors said the same about jerking off, or gay sex, or interracial relationships.
Good thing none of these shift the environmental incentives the way stated technologies do
If she cuts out the middle man, the LLM will at least not cheat on her and give her STIs.
Yes, true love has its risk. It is precisely because of these risk, human love is valuable. I can make a conscious choice to love my wife, give her romantic gifts, stay loyal to her. An LLM has no such free will. Anyone who really loves you is gonna choose to be with you, its a sign of actual love. We deserve people who have the ability to love and respect us of their own cognition. A machine is nothing but a pale imitation at best.
Nerd
3mo ago
Most of the problems in US housing come from being unable to do explicit racial segregation so you therefore need to do regulations to make housing expensive enough to keep the poors out or they will ruin your schools and commons.
How about we focus on policy to help them be functional individuals, instead of condemning them? Many black people used to get and stay married, the chaos we see now in the community is, in my opinion, a resulting combination of the sexual revolution, the war on drugs, and perhaps some perverse incentives from the welfare state.
Nerd
3mo ago
I get what you're saying, obviously, but you are comparing the imperfect reality (sometimes a machine is better than nothing) with an IMO overly-positive could-be (everyone or nearly everyone starts interacting more in person and becomes less lonely and gets into a happy, healthy relationship). A change in ideology can move the tipping-point of misery but only so far. As far as I'm concerned, the ability to mass-manufacture companionship and something as close to genuine care as makes no odds is genuinely miraculous, and makes me more optimistic about tech than I've been for a long time.
As a general rule, we should accept authenticity over bullshit. No machine can love a human in the same way a human can, and dying alone is superior to a false fantasy. But that aside, I don't think there is a great way to guarantee that only relationship challenged individuals get their hands on it. People are probably gonna try and get their hands on an android partner by either purchasing used or gaming the system. The drawbacks outweigh the positives.
I fell like much of the current discourse around social trends, such as birth rates & loneliness, need to do a better job at taking the current environmental constraints into consideration. My favorite video surrounding this topic of how environments produce cultural outcomes comes from the now defunct 1791L. (Honestly it sums up my views of current society)
On its face, this makes sense,(In response to an article by Ben Shapiro saying American spiritual ills are caused by culture) but it isn’t as though those cultural forces emerged from nowhere and spread purely by word of mouth. As argued before, it is not difficult to see how skewed incentives have developed not only through government influence, but also through market forces. This may be reflected in phenomena like pornography, which offers the convenience of sexual gratification without the associated effort, as well as media conglomerates broadcasting cultural messages into every American home. Additionally, the sexual liberation that has more recently reshaped society was facilitated in part by innovations such as birth control and the automobile, both of which were enabled by capitalist development.
After all, the number of men women can find desirable shrinks, (As women excel in the workforce) and men who are either unable or unwilling to attain those positions will grow resentful, bitter, and depressed. Whether they lack the willpower or the cognitive horsepower, the outcome is the same. “Will grow depressed” may not even be the most accurate description, considering that process is already well underway. Fundamentally, this is attributed to the cult of market success overtaking earlier moral foundations—the idea that raw economic gain nourishes the human soul rather than something higher. In their push to adopt traditionally male forms of competition, some women may find that status and excess income do not deliver the meaning they were led to expect. As some men perceive it becoming more difficult to meet standards of attractiveness, they may disengage, especially given the abundance of alternative habits available. Video games are progressing rapidly and transitioning toward virtual reality, while pornography’s exaggerated depiction of human sexuality can strongly engage the brain’s reward systems. In that context, there may seem to be less incentive to develop personality or skills if easier, more immediately rewarding alternatives are available—after all, the human subconscious has not fundamentally changed from the one shaped by evolution.
So, what might help if people are beginning to engage in actions that (I personally would consider to be) bad. Is finding a way to effect environmental structures. If one is a conservative , who values marriage & children and general human connections, you'll probably want to do this. I've talked about some solution previously. But not really targeting the environmental variables enough. I've also taken various other past critiques into consideration.
First
There needs to be a massive reconsideration of the current technological advancements. Here is a women falling in love with an AI. In Japan, this is notably worse - people paying for companion ship, and marrying dolls. Im gonna sound authoritarian here, but this shit needs to straight up be banned. There is no social positive for computers and humans to emotionally intermingle in this way. Its only emotionally harmful, for basically all involved. Same deal with "Only Fans" and any other technology that seeks to make an easy way out of human face to face interaction.
Second
Get men, especially those without a degree, into a decent paying job. I've been on the market, I Have a degree, Its fucking brutal. Ive only been able to secure a Network Engineer Internship (Paid with benefits) and a 21 an Hr job with no benefits, after about 7-8 interviews. I havent gotten an full time job with benefits offers yet. Its not fun. I can't imagine what the men who lack my experience & degree are going through. There are two sub problems with this one, mainly:
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Actually getting an interview to begin with
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Getting a good, well paying job after that
Both of these can be discussed at length. But im gonna give what I think is a good course of action. Make more vocational schools cheaper, and perhaps even free. Many states have done this. There also needs to be a cultural push to get men & boys to actually stay in these programs, and ensure an internship or entry level job after training is complete. I've been made aware of legislation to increase these jobs, Id like to see more of it.
Third
I think a lot of past discussions I've had miss an important piece by not really examining how incentives are affecting women differently.
There’s been some talk about shifting incentives away from women’s education:
So I'd suggest this has a number of impacts:
Women start attending college more often. Which has them burn more of their most fertile years, and the added debt load makes them less appealing as partners and less able to support kids.
Men start accruing more debt too, which stunts their personal wealth acquisition in their 20's and thus makes them less appealing to women... and just less able to support a partner/kids in general.
Obviously this allows economically nonviable majors like "Women's studies" to grow, which has some clear downstream impacts. Probably causes women's standards to rise, they wouldn't accept a partner without a degree if they have one.
Of course turned College into the 'default' life path rather than hopping into a career and getting married as the best practice for advancing socially. So putting us back to the status-quo ante of 1990, and NOT expanding access to loans for college, we might be able to avoid the worst excesses of Feminism entering the mainstream. I dunno.
Unfortunately, that framing skips over a few structural realities:
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Housing has become a much higher barrier to entry. Access to good housing in good neighborhoods is significantly more expensive than it used to be. That raises the threshold for economic stability. In this environment, the college wage premium matters more, not less—it’s one of the most reliable ways to clear that bar. This also makes single-income households harder to sustain, regardless of preferences.
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Women have fewer viable non-degree paths to stability. As the economy has shifted away from industrial and physical labor toward knowledge and service work, many of the historically male-dominated “no degree required” paths (e.g., trades, manufacturing) haven’t translated as easily for women at scale. That makes higher education a more central route to security.
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The modern economy rewards the traits women are, on average, better positioned to leverage. The college wage premium exists for a reason: today’s economy places a high value on a mix of cognitive ability and social/interpersonal skills. As demand has shifted in that direction, women—who on average tend to score higher on certain social skill dimensions—are relatively well-positioned to benefit.
It’s not that education is arbitrarily driving behavior. The causality runs the other way—economic and environmental changes have increased the returns to education, and women, given the available pathways and comparative advantages, are responding rationally to those incentives.
The easiest way around 1 is to just, well (clears throat): BUILD MORE FUCKING HOUSES. Yes, politically difficult, but If I had it my way, I'd adopt a similar housing policy on the state level, like Japan does.
I'd love for someone to add Ideas for how to deal with points 2 & 3. I'm not a well versed economists, so solutions are lost on me. Feel free to add your own thoughts, please!
Nerd
3mo ago
Every now and again, im in my late 20s now. With my friends especially. It helps me relax.
Nerd
3mo ago
Yes. I would rather adulthood be granted by IQ test. An optimized by-race system would just use racial IQ means instead of the test itself.
Thats interesting, so this girl could be 25, but not be an adult, ever?
That kinda works sort of, but has another problem, your essentially saying that a 14 year old with a higher IQ should be an adult, with all that entails. I dont think many people would accept that.
Nerd
3mo ago
I don't really care if some high IQ, but emotionally immature people get to be adults at the age of 14. It's not a big deal.
Meh for you maybe, but I feel like a lot of people would reject a 130 IQ 14 year old dating someone who is in their 30s. It just seems intuitively wrong on many levels, even if someone has a really high IQ.
Nerd
3mo ago
Are they black? It may depend on the race. Steve and Maddy don't sound black, but 4 „teenagers“ with guns going carjacking sounds black. I think it's hard to talk about this without race. r/K selection theory says some races reproduce under an earlier, lower investment pattern than others. Different races also have different levels of adult neoteny, different developmental timing, and so on. It's not impossible to consider that the average black person becomes adult-in-their-race earlier than the average Asian or white person.
Im honeslty curious for your answer here, because this reply is unique in taking race realism into consideration. For our car-jacking situation, we'll say they are poor white kids. Steve (Black) & Maddy (Hispanic) are in an interracial relationship.
On a side note, It probably be rather difficult to set maturity levels into law based on race as well, but im guessing this is a moral judgement, rather than a legal implementation.
So its no secret that people, particularly zoomers, like to bitch and moan about age gaps in relationships. Should someone who's 30 date someone who's 18? Does it make you a pedophile if you do?
A lot of this discussion hinges on whether or not these people are actually "adults" that can make logical decisions. I've been pondering this myself so I'm going to run by two hypotheticals (Both for and against 18 year olds or "teenagers" being adults) and see what you guys think:
Case 1
Suppose you are on your way to work and are at a stop light. A convertible pulls up beside you, in it, 4 boys, all 18 years of age. One has a shotgun, two others have a glock. They tell you to hand them your wallet and the keys, or you die. Here is a clip for reference. Now, lets say that you have your own gun here, and instead of a wallet, you open fire, and successfully kill one of them as they drive off.
Is it fair to say that you killed a child? Probably not. You killed teenagers? Technically. Did you kill some grown ass man thinking he could jack you? Many would say yes! On top of this, many people would judge these boys as adults, and have them take a prison/jail sentence as adults. It seems that in the eyes of many, if you do adult things, and are expected to take accountability as an adult, we should rightfully call you an adult. Make sense? Maybe lets consider case 2.
Case 2
Two teenagers, Maddy (16F) & Steve (15M) are in a relationship, and are maddly in love. One day, Maddy finds herself pregnant, and gives birth to baby boy. Steve decides to marry her, and get a job at a factory to support her and the baby.
Now, both Steve & Maddy choose to do an adult action (have sex) with an adult consequence (reproduction), and took responsibility as "adults" (getting married and getting a job). Would we say these 2 are adults? It seems the answer here, for many is no. You shouldn't want teenagers to be having kids: that's what adults are expected to do. That fact that Steve & Maddy have done adult things, and are now taking on adult responsibilities, doesn't make them true adults in the eyes of many.
So far, Im what I'm thinking with both of these cases is that the cognition needed to make adult decisions perhaps simply lie at different ages, based on said decision. Maybe its easier at 14 to know that car jacking & killing is wrong, than it would be to have the knowledge and maturity neccessary to handle a sexual relationship. And that the whole "lets have one universal age of adulthood" is looking at it wrong: Different actions simply have different complexities to them, and thus a universal set age of adulthood ignores those complexities. But assuming this is true, where does sexual relationships lie on the age scale? Is a 16 year old really too immature to date some one who is 19? 20?
If we should have universal age of adulthood, that tracts onto everything (alcohol, crime, sex) where would it be? Currently, all of these have different ages (21 is for alcohol if you are in the US). What do you guys think?
Nerd
4mo ago
I gotta say, Im really fucking disappointed in Trump for this. Alienating his base and attacking his own supporters, and then starting a insane war for what seems like no particularly good reason. And to top it all off, the blockade? Why? Seriously?
Its one thing to not like the Iranian government. Fine. But going all out and attacking them in the way he has been doing is really goofy, and is making many on the right utterly regret their vote, and making blue tribe go "I told you so".
The only thing I can hope for is that the public has a short memory and that this all comes under control during midterms. But chances are looking quite slim that that happens....
Nerd
4mo ago
Consider it a blessing if this is how they lead with things. This company clearly failed your test.
A shame too. They were late with both the phone screening and the initial in person interview, I had to email them to get an update on what had happened. I was actually curious about the role.
I'd like this forums advice regarding the two current job opportunities I have:
Network Engineer Internship: 17 an HR with benefits. 3-4 months. Recruiter says I have a 25-50% chance of a full time offer if they have a spot available and if I perform well!
IT Support Engineer: Full Time, no benefits. 21 an hour. Basically another helpdesk job, Id accept it if there were benefits, but there arent any, so theres that.
Honestly, I feel that the Network Engineer internship is gonna look much better on the resume. I'll get the touch real equipment! And something tells me if I do well performance wise I can move up and stay permanently. But I'd like advice from other people who've been there. (Obviously, If a fulltime job with benefits pulls through, Ill take that ideally, but I'm playing the cards I've been dealt here.)
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