RenOS
Dadder than dad
No bio...
User ID: 2051
RenOS
Dadder than dad
10mo ago
'Conventional employment' is a pretty broad term. Would I rather take care of children than fight in Ukraine or mine coal? Yeah, probably. Would I rather take care of children than work in an air-conditioned office or as a cashier? No way. Childcare sucks, even if some things suck even worse.
I think you're overgeneralising from yourself here. The majority of mothers I know not only work half time, but would actually like to work less than that and spend more with the children. Even when mothers complain about their husband not doing their share, they will often don't actually want to do more work - they mainly want more quality time with the entire family. Talking personally about my wife and me, she generally tries to actively maximize the time spent on childcare, while I try to have a balance. If we could afford it more easily, we probably would both work less. Also, by all accounts I know, cashier is a notoriously boring and tedious job that people only do if they have no other options.
It was part of a list of things that didn't change in VR and as such not elaborated on in particular. I guess we could have challenged her, but didn't.
If you want me to steelman it, some people essentially consider their public behaviour a (gendered) performance they put on because it is necessary. Once they are either with the right people or in an "anonymous" environment like VR, they just let the mask fall off so to speak and show their true self, which includes mannerisms and body language. Think closeted gay who is trying to act tough in conservative circles and is flamboyant in progressive, but it's a popular enough perspective in some social circles that this applies to essentially everyone.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
Disagree pretty hard. Men have a much lower bar for a partner before they say "I'd rather stay single" than women and men would rather sleep with many different partners than having a single super-high status partner. Or the other way around, some women, particularly while they're still young, apparently even prefer being a high-status man's affair over a low-status man's wife.
Just as an example, I personally know multiple women who "have trouble finding a good man" only to find out that they got hit on by a man who was, quite frankly, better than them. My wife confronted a friend of hers who had this problem and concluded herself that she will probably never find someone unless it's literally Brad Pitt, but he is also an accomplished researcher (her words, not mine). Meanwhile looking at my male friends who struggled, most jumped at the very first chance of getting any girlfriend whatsoever.
You should in particular compare what high-status man vs woman say and what they do, since this is the group that has most agency and can optimize for what they actually care about. High-status man will quite frequently have multiple affairs and rarely complain about finding a partner. High-status woman have much less affairs, and if they have one it's usually with a single man that is often even higher status than them, they will frequently complain about finding a good man and generally invest their resources into finding a single high-status man.
These are very simple, real differences between the sexes, and while you may use any word for it you like, hypergamy is a good one.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
3d ago
I agree - similar to men, who seek an outlet for their competitive and violent drives, women seek an outlet for their maternal and social drives. The problem is that while society is appropriately - sometimes overly - wary of toxic masculinity that results from not channeling these drives into something non-destructive or even constructive, society is completely in denial about the entire concept of toxic femininity; You can't reign in something you deny exists. The only remotely close concept I've heard in the mainstream was the "Karen", and even there it AFAIK only took off because a woman misjudged her position in the progressive stack, and it is generally not used by the mainstream in a way that fundamentally calls into question the feminine worldview.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
25d ago
The steelman of this is claim is imo that conservative christians have been the primary enforcers of the current political landscape where the (mostly secular) center-left is tolerating and even regularly allying with the far-left fringe, but the center-right (which is almost entirely the aforementioned conservative christians) is not even tolerating, let alone willing to ally with the far-right.
For concrete examples from my own life experiences, being a literal card-carrying full-blown stalinist communist apologist at university will certainly make you fringe and most probably bar you from the highest formal position of powers in the university itself, but you're unlikely to get kicked out for it and you can wield considerable influence through student activist groups, unions or similar. A professorship is also not out of question if you're otherwise sufficiently savy. On the other hand being even just a suspected Nazi-Sympathizer can easily get you kicked out from Messdiener or the Landjugend (the two primary rural christian youth groups, at least where I'm from).
As such, it's unsurprising that the far-right is especially negative about christian conservatives; They ought to be allies (at least occasionally), but really aren't.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
25d ago
By contrast, politicians in Britain, America and Australia, which have the same migration situation but less monolithically progressive politics and media, will publicly say more should be done to control illegal immigration, stop the boats, it’s not right, it’s a crisis, propose some measures blah blah (I mean even Biden does this to some extent) but then actually do nothing. And in a way, that seems to stifle some of the dissent.
This seems to work across the west, across different topics. Here in Germany we regularly have even greens occasionally admitting the struggles to get the latest immigration waves integrated, that our social system is buckling and that we need to do something. But any policy that has any chance of actually reducing immigration levels is stridently opposed, the "hardest" option on the table seems to be to crack down on crime but that doesn't actually solve the large numbers of social benefits recipients, where the only solution seems to be "support them more, hopefully they'll get a job this time". In science, people are willing to admit that standards in the soft sciences are low and that something needs to be done, but actually firing anybody is apparently impossible (and admitting that they're very biased as well and take advantage of the low standards to advance their own political agenda is usually denied strongly as well).
RenOS
Dadder than dad
8mo ago
Man, I sympathize with your struggle, I also used to have difficulties with women, but this really isn't healthy. Some nature living vacation with hard physical labor and no internet access might help you get a clear head and make you less neurotic, but risking your life is just plain stupid. I'd certainly consider it entertaining, though.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
It depends on what you see as "autonomy". I think a world where everyone is plugged into a simulated world is, if not exactly zero, at least pretty close to zero autonomy. You do not provide for yourself in any meaningful way, you are not capable of substantively changing the material world around you, you are not capable of protecting yourself and instead depend on protection. Of course your examples aren't positive, either. I would like a future where humans are improving their capabilities, try their best to colonize the universe, are meaningful members of society (not just "a" society like an online guild, but "the" society, the one that creates the infrastructure we use, the food we use, etc.) and in a fully general sense are in control of their destiny.
One of the worst possible futures is them becoming glorified pets of safetyist AIs that make sure no harm comes to them and allows them to play in a little golden cage of their own making, one so nice that they don't even consider leaving anyway.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
I'm a longtime mostly lurker and I'd also add that holocaust discussions are usually triggered by a small number of very insistent and highly active poster(s) for a while, and then often stop once those posters either get banned or have a meltdown and leave. There is a number of similar topics, like age of consent laws, where there is like a single super-prolific and abrasive guy that can't shut up about it and who will regularly try to start discussions on it until he is banned again, and then you have some silence for a few months again. The forum as a whole is certainly weirder then the population at large and hence fringe opinions are more common, but I don't think holocaust denial is anything close to a widely held belief here.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
24d ago
Don't worry, as a Paki Indian in the UK you're bottom very slightly above bottom rung in terms of dating, and being a doctor is roughly comparable to construction worker in terms of income there.
On a more serious note, I've noticed that men who are having decent success (in terms of lots of matches) on dating apps seem to run into a lot of crazies, and it's unsurprising that psych med students have the worst ratio of all. Having "doctor/psych trainee" in your dating app bio kind of screams "do therapy for free, but you can tip me with sex". Neurotypical women also don't really want to date, they want to have a stable relationship, so they spend as little time as possible on these apps, so you're already oversampling from a biased sample.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
2mo ago
You sound real fucking depressed. Normally I'd say try to be more active, but as far as I understand you, you're already not terribly inactive. I'm a big proponent of building a family, but you specifically mentioned this is off the list (though I'd strongly urge you to reconsider).
Next on the list is imo leaving Alaska - northern regions are notorious for causing depression, try living in the south for an extended time span, at least several months, and spent as much time outside as possible while there. This is not easy depending on your monetary situation, but as a single guy you can almost certainly make it work.
If that doesn't work, try meds. I know it sounds stupid, depression always feels like a true fact of life when you're in it, but imo it's primarily a chemical imbalance. Problem is that most meds have serious side effects, so I'd try to avoid this if there's other options.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
2mo ago
I do think you underestimate the effect in your last paragraph. Both from my own impressions on dealmaking between employers and employees and basic investment vs return thinking, the employee has significant leverage in that if the company fails, he can just go to another with at most a small pay cut, while the business owner will lose everything he has build up so far. It seems to me that being rich in general gives you more leverage, but being more invested in the thing under discussion gives you less leverage. So everything else being equal, an independently rich employee has the most leverage, while a small-scale business owner with no other large investments has the least leverage.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
4mo ago
Then I'll say the opposite as @token_progressive: In my experience, a) the homeowners I know explicitly state that they plan to stay in their house for a long time b) the renters I know explicitly state that part of the reason why they wouldn't take a mortgage to own a home is because they don't want to be tied to one place and finally c) the homeowners I know, even if they end up selling their house, do in fact stay mostly in one place and are very invested into a tight-knit community there while d) the renters do in fact end up travelling somewhere else very often. Mind you that I very clearly belong to the second category.
But I'm not living in an ultra-expensive large american city, merely in a moderately expensive middle size city.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
5mo ago
It's generally worth trying imo. You can dislike a hobby initially but it grows on you with time, and dancing is actually a prime candidate for this. I also didn't really like (the thought of) dancing when I was a teen, but where I'm from it's social suicide to not take dancing classes so I joined everyone else. If you're (sufficiently) honest to others and say something along the lines of "yes dancing makes me a bit awkward, but I want to get out of my comfort zone and try something new" then they'll understand. Just don't go for bald-faced lying a la "dancing is amazing I totally love it", that's what puts (most) women off. Ideally you have a platonic female friend as a standard dance partner, and it goes without saying that you make extra sure to be very well-kempt. If you don't have any platonic female friends, afaik in some places it's relatively easy online to find a dance partner beforehand. Dancing is still often skewed quite feminine, and many women feel extremely self-conscious about turning up without a partner and then not being asked out. Needless to say, these women also are very often looking to date.
It's also a great kind of desensitisation training to make you less awkward around body contact with women, which is extremely useful for the neet-adjacent and will greatly help you with general dating. Nothing is more off-putting for women than a guy who struggles to even touch them, and vice-versa dancing is a great precursor to sex. So even if you go bar-diving or online-dating and subsequently meet in a bar, it'll probably help you.
Finally, if you want to do it for dating, you should try to look especially for dancing in informal settings. For example, in my city a bar had a "salsa night". But for those you should have some experience beforehand, and you will usually not automatically get partnered with a women, so it's extra important to bring someone with you.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
5mo ago
I've seen a few variants of "Dunning-Kruger doesn't exist" papers, and nowadays I agree that the common version you usually hear needs to be greatly amended. My favorite one so far was someone showing that a) stupid/smart people do generally know that they're stupid/smart, they just on average tend to underestimate their distance to the mean and b) optimal bayesian reasoning will always lead to something that looks like this (if you start from the assumption that you're average in everything, and then update this prior based on new evidence, exceptionally smart and exceptionally stupid people will tend to underestimate their smartness/stupidity, even if they know in which bucket they fall). I unfortunately don't remember where I have that from.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
8mo ago
It's not really a slur by modern understanding, though. "Germanisch" is widely used in german science as well to refer to just about everything descendant from germanic tribes.
My bigger gripe is that in german, the important "deutsch vs germanisch" distinction is very obvious linguistically, while the "german vs germanic" distinction is super awkward in english. "Deutschland/germany" is a specific country in middle europe, "germanisch/germanic" is an extremely large and diffuse group that can refer to the majority of the developed world depending on your criteria (for example, germanic languages includes the scandinavian group and english).
RenOS
Dadder than dad
10mo ago
Ironically I increasingly think that these kind of thought experiments are net negative to pose, i.e. making people think about them causes them to make real-world decisions that are worse by most reasonable metrics than if they haven't thought about them. The reason is that they regularly make assumptions that are almost universally untrue, in this example the claim that we have perfect knowledge whether it has practical benefits to the person. Some people will then over-apply their conclusions from these thought-experiments into the real world (in this case, keeping secrets by finding lazy, convenient excuses), and some people will smell that something is funny and go to the other extreme (in this case, practising impractical radical honesty).
In the end, the extremely vague "Think about how you think this particular person will react to you telling them the secret, whether that reaction is good by what you judge their own moral position to be, whether that reaction is good by your own moral position and to you worth the hassle, how likely they are to find out regardless, how likely they are to find out you knew, how they'll react when they find out that you knew but didn't tell them, and so on" and further weighted by things like your own risk tolerance will lead to the best decisions. This is obviously quite bothersome to do and explains the appeal of simple approaches like radical honesty or "it's none of my business", which are also the best starting points for less important secrets which aren't worth making a huge calculus of (but which also runs the risk of falling prey to lazily call everything unimportant).
Yes, this is also really important. I use "this person is weirding me out" as an important cue, but on it's own that would probably be a 10% false-positive rate. A lot of left/progressives seem to take a super strict line where a person is only counted as not-passing if they're so obvious that you would be like 99% confident that they're trans, while for me there are several gradients.
This is also related to how non-sex-conforming people are kind of the biggest losers of the current trans wave. There is a decent number of both men and women that already lost the genetic lottery with their looks, and in the past might have been insulted with "you look like a dude/girl". Nowadays, people will not say anything, but might think that you're actually the other sex.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
I agree on Elon having the tendency to make people deranged in any direction, not just against him, but saying he is "just a guy" seems similarly wrong. He's certainly quite unusual, probably very smart in at least some way, also clearly socially awkward & extremely petty (which codes as "bad" for large parts of current society, whatever your opinion might be), and with the achievements he has already accomplished he will probably be considered at least a notable celebrity for decades.
Among all people currently alive he also seems to be among the ~top 10 most likely or so to actually have a considerable influence on the course of history I guess? Hard to make a judgement call on that, but with all the weird things he has done and plans to do it seems likely that something is going to stick that would not have happened if it wasn't for him.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1yr ago
Does this happen because Christianity is largely not viewed as a threat and because since wokeism is this community's main out-group and Christianity is vaguely right-aligned in the modern West, people here tend to follow the principle of "the enemy of an enemy is my friend"?
Ding-ding-ding, we have a winner! I grew up in a conservative christian environment (even went to a private christian school), was just about the only kid who actually read the bible, and relentlessly mocked the absolute silliness of it back then. Despite being overall conservative, my religious teachers were surprisingly accepting (mostly along the line of "we're sad to see you not wanting to be part of us but will always welcome you back") and I got into no meaningful trouble for being an edgy atheist.
Ironically, once I went to university I realised that they do not take kindly to disagreements about certain dogmas, and that here, I can get into real trouble if I point out the wrong kind of basic biology lessons. Ultimately I think that Mainstream Christianity is far past its prime, knows it, and largely behaves accordingly. I don't consider myself on the right, but I also don't consider Mainstream Christianity a threat, so I'm fine with treating them nicely.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
18d ago
Always remember, dating for long-term relationships is one of the things where rates mean nothing, a single true success is enough. I also was struggling badly to get any positive attention whatsoever from women until I met my wife.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
2mo ago
Yes, Narnia has always been a bit too much of an obviously christian setting with a christian message for me to really enjoy. I wouldn't feel awkward calling it "christian propaganda", I guess. I'm not full on death-of-the-author, but authorial intent is not very high in my book and so I only marginally distinguish between "explicitly intended for propaganda" and "the author is so steeped in a certain ideology that his entire writing is indistinguishable from propaganda, even if he does not intend to do that".
RenOS
Dadder than dad
3mo ago
I'd be fine if the left would, in fact, show some humility on this question. Pretty much all traits that we have looked at are ~30-70% genetic, and vary accordingly along ethnic lines, so the humble HBD position is just that. And nobody generally has a problem with this finding on any other trait, it's just the moment intelligence is involved people go crazy.
And if anything it's the other way around; Most HBD advocates I'm aware of don't claim it's all genetics, just merely that genetics is involved. On the other hand it's the left that wants to claim it's 100% environmental or that it's a magical kind of genetics that doesn't vary along ethnic lines. This post is a perfect example, he tries to reduce everything to his own pet theory, stress levels.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
5mo ago
The good thing is that in my experience blue tribers greatly prefer denial & misdirection over blatant lying/fabrication when the facts don't go their way (yes I know the story of the harvard honesty prof, no I don't think this is a major problem currently). This means that it's often trivially easy to read the truth between the lines if you care to look. There's plenty of papers that put some left-friendly conclusion into the title, intro and discussion but if you look even just at the tables in the paper itself with a critical eye, you'll come to a very different conclusion than them. If they're very dedicated, it may only become obvious after looking at the raw data bc they tailored the tables well, but you can usually still find it.
That said, I consider myself in no way red tribe, and I also consider the "grey tribe", which is the closest to my own position, merely a subgroup of the blues and not a proper third faction.
So I think there is some room for non-woke centrists and even red tribers to generate a history from the evidence left behind. Probably something along the lines of a well-meaning movement that caused a lot of damage by being unwilling to deal with tough choices and instead engaging in increasing levels of make-believe and blaming others every time their plans fail.
I'm usually a fan of this viewpoint, but in this case I'm not entirely sure if it's true. If you have a scientist and a christian, for example, and both subscribe to the sentences you picked for them, but they are also both fine with letting the other one be then you don't have a culture war on your hand; you merely have a disagreement.
A culture war happens if at least one side decides that the other side is so wrong/dangerous that it needs to be converted. In which case @satirizedoor's dichotomy holds. Though you may argue that often enough both sides actually want to control the other side, so it's rarely a conflict between pure freedom and pure control and instead a conflict with different preferences for what to control and what should be free. But the basic fact would remain that culture wars may be about any topics in the first order, but they are always ultimately about controlling people with other viewpoints.
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