SkookumTree
1yr ago
you can reasonably assume he did nothing wrong besides not being the kind of guy to whom she's attracted.
Yeah, thinking about it more, you do have the issue that the disability theorists call desexualization. Very unattractive people transgress social norms by being openly interested in sex or relationships.
Many socially maladroit people end up with the erroneous belief that they are morally bankrupt on the basis of not having many (or any) friends, because they've fully internalised the "likeable = morally good" framework and all it implies.
That is an interesting one; from what I've seen, they generally come to believe that they are misunderstood and secretly valuable but fundamentally unlikable/repulsive. Sometimes there is bitterness and resentment, sometimes resignation.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Yeah - which is why desexualization is a thing. It is very possible for our unappealing hero to make a Faustian bargain: find a way to signal - loudly - that you know your place and are not interested in sex or relationships, but instead in something that is prosocial and noble. A doctor who is "focused on medicine". An engineer who spends all his time when he's not at work focusing on building water filters for impoverished Africans and says that he is more or less married to his work.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Our hero might not start as an amazing shoe-salesmen. But, I'd expect him to get good enough to hold down a retail job at a shoe store, especially with a few years of trying.
There are plenty of people here that could not do this: not even if they were as dedicated to their craft as say Paul Ekman was dedicated to the study of facial expressions. It would - I shit you not - be easier for some of the people here to become literal rocket scientists (or at least aerospace engineers). I am not joking.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Hmm. That is interesting. Hell: someone who hasn't learned to drive and appears healthy...maybe he's just a lazy bum, but he might well have some kind of invisible disability. So too: if I had to guess, if you put a gun to my head? People with poor social skills AND who are also pieces of shit tend not to last that long in a given environment. Successful predatory shitbaggery requires the ability to conceal it at least some of the time and as such not suck donkey balls socially. Yes, you have the shit tier self-identified incels...but they're also lonely people. The Harvey Weinsteins of the world are competent at being predatory pieces of shit. It's basically Berkson's paradox.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
It is also signaling. And countersignaling.
-
I care about being fashionable
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I am willing to spend significant quantities of money on being fashionable
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I can afford to look somewhat ugly/fake/distasteful and still do well.
It's like a peacock's tail.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
A question: why do people believe that people - especially men - who are unsuccessful with romantic relationships are unsuccessful because of a lack of moral virtue? A man who's 30 years old and has never gone on a date or kissed anyone is assumed by default to be some kind of fat, basement-dwelling loser. When he is in fact a short but fit engineer, or a corporate lawyer, or a programmer for Google, he's then roundly criticized for being misogynistic or lacking in moral virtue. Occasionally, darker - much darker - suspicions are raised: let's say that there are reasons why these men frequently avoid being around unrelated children. It seems difficult for people to comprehend that an apparently healthy, gainfully-employed individual could fail to meet with romantic success despite a decade of trying...unless there is something seriously morally wrong with them.
Someone who fails at being a salesman, or a business owner, or even at playing basketball worth a damn...doesn't get that. "I'm a nice, decent, hardworking guy...but I can't sell shoes at Nordstrom, I've been working hard to do this and have dreamt of being a salesman since I was 12" is a kind of absurd complaint. He might be a fine human being and maybe he'd make a great heavy equipment operator, but he just doesn't have the talent for sales. We don't think there's something morally wrong with our hero because he can't sell shoes, or because he's a short, clumsy guy that sucks at basketball.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
I think our Korean hero has deeply unrealistic expectations. Is he insanely charismatic: could he become a politician, or not? Is he making or on track to make a million a year before age 35? If not: he needs to be looking for the type of person that can just barely hold down a job and live independently, not thin, pretty UMC women. Passing the patent bar or the USMLE or running a marathon or even climbing Everest are often a lot easier than finding a partner that is sane, not morbidly obese, works a job, and isn't addicted to drugs.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Yeah. You can often minmax in some ways. Take road bikes. A bike that was good enough for Tour de France riders in 2012 is not that much worse than what the guys in the Tour are riding now, and it's usually much better than anything you could get new for that price. Tires, however...get the best ones money can buy, or at least don't skimp. Same for shoes.
As for weight lifting: the bottom tier item is literally just some heavy-ass rocks lifted in the woods and a tree branch for pullups.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
I suppose, but they're not exclusionary, at least not anymore. I am not sure that the "ethno" part is necessary and indeed don't really think that it is. It's also very possible that there might be new ethnicities or even castes in a generation ship society if it was large or long-lasting enough. It'd be an interesting social experiment, but not one I'd want to live on, and due to island isolation the cultures that emerged from these things would be interesting as hell, given the constraints of having to survive on a fucking spaceship.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Not even that is necessary; if I was a billionaire who wanted to recruit people like this, I'd find a way to screen for women with puny jaws but otherwise good-looking faces. I'd then offer them free jaw surgery and braces in exchange for participating in my study. Picked jaws because clinical micrognathia - to the point where a surgeon's thinking about breaking and resetting your lower jaw or sometimes both - makes you look rather unattractive. Fixing it is pretty easy from a surgical perspective and the transformation is dramatic. Massive weight loss is impressive and admirable but whatever bad habits contributed to the weight are a confounder. Jaws are given out in the genetic lottery.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
GodDAMN Jill, have you been working out?!"
That is creepy/gross to say unless you guys are very close friends, IME. Of course, my experience might not be the norm. You can compliment the clothing - say "Cool bikini" - but not her body.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Is the ability to conduct yourself like a gentleman while intoxicated around more skin than a strip club something that needs practice?
Unironically yes. Try talking to hippie Burner dudes or something like that. I'm not kidding.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Only someone who can comfortably afford to lose a certain amount of money or goods, which means little to no ill-effect on himself, would express such an attitude.
Fair enough, but even in the Wild West - where horse thieves were hanged when caught - petty theft was treated differently. During the California Gold Rush, petty thieves were flogged and released.
I don't think I've got the stomach to shoot someone over a bike; I might feel differently if that bike was what stood between me and homelessness...if it was as important to me as a horse was for a cowboy in the Old West. And law enforcement wouldn't throw me in prison for it.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
I kinda expect it to be an ethno-religious group like the Mormons in the Expanse.
I don't know about the "ethno" part, but I'd be betting on the "religious" part; what you have is basically an ideal society (like a kibbutz) IN SPACE and so you need religion to keep it together for more than three generations.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
So - as a rough ballpark estimate - around the top 0.1 percent in America? That makes sense. Doctor tier salary is doing very well, but you wouldn't call them straight-up aristocrats...maybe either jumped-up tradesmen or managers or very bushleague aristocrats, not the real deal. IMHO you're not rich until you've got $15 million in the bank (and so don't have to work unless you want to) and you're not rich rich 'till you're making five million a year.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
I don't know. I'm going to be a medical doctor. Once I'm an attending? Can I work just enough to keep my medical license and be a stay at home dad? I'd prefer the quant. She seems pretty intense and like she'd pass that on to the kids. Also like she would be blunt as fuck.
My bar for "extremely bad" is set a bit lower than "kind of a workaholic asshole"... that's bad, yes, but not on the order of "beats the kids", "denies them dental care when their teeth are rotting", "is an alcoholic and can't hold down a job", and other delightful things. This is bad, but not quite that terrible. Haven't met many quants. If they are anything like the female MIT students and radiologists and neurologists I met... sounds good. Maybe I'd think differently if they were surgeons just bc surgeons are often assholes.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
It was no accident that second wave feminism got going in the cities.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
I suppose. Okay, maybe not nice but certainly interesting.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Squat, deadlift, and bench press plus pull-ups and/or chin-ups are a pretty decent and somewhat fool-resistant training program. They will get most people stronger.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Most women who go to the gym are afraid of "getting big", they want to look "toned", not "muscular", even though practically none of them will ever get past "toned" without steroids.
I knew one woman that this happened to - she was stocky and spent a summer lifting weights and wound up with stretch marks and broad shoulders. It ran in the family; her brother and father were extremely strong. She's the exception that proves the rule.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
The optimal level of bike theft isn't zero, given an environment with bike thieves. Legitimacy is also a continuum, as well...a "candidate" that wins in a 99% landslide isn't exactly stealing an election, he's robbing it at gunpoint along with a bunch of voting booths, election officials, and the whole damn building. The threat of civil unrest or worse - much worse - keeps a lot of politicians "honest". We'd both prefer an actually legit election. But like the bike dude: are we willing to get in a gunfight with the thief over it?
SkookumTree
1yr ago
No, I mean that the environmental context that made traditional religions well-adapted to their environment didn't change all that long ago.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
I honestly don't know about that. Neither of us are probably going to be alive to witness the birth of a modern industrial religion. Hell, I'd argue that modernity is barely a hundred years old or so, for what it's worth. Before then there was a LOT of infant and youth mortality, and I think that that changed things quite a bit. Germ theory was a game changer: African peasants have better health outcomes than Roman emperors and their children.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Yeah. Basically, "They cheated me out of it, fair and square". It's a lot like doping in the Tour de France. People weren't pissed at Lance, King of the Dopers, because he doped, they were mad at him for being full of shit about being clean.
It's not just short guys. I'd argue it's the invisibly disabled and essentially those that look at least decent on paper. The physically disabled and deformed get a different but somewhat adjacent kind of bullshit.
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