SophisticatedHillbilly
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User ID: 1964
SophisticatedHillbilly
2yr ago
Additionally, many who would report themselves as paycheck-to-paycheck have assets and are saving money. A friend of mine describes himself as such while putting 30% of his money into an investment account each check. To him, that money does not count because it is not available for spending (by his self imposed rules).
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
The existence of said whiplash likely would have prevented the centralization. Less reason to invest in growing the power of the central authority of your opponent actually gets to use the power once in awhile.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Only a blackpill if you for some reason have no respect for strength or power, which would be odd given how important they've been for all of history.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
The world doesn't need everyone to have a job where everyone needs a 130 IQ to function.
No, because the current world is built around a 100 IQ. In a world where 130 IQ was average, systems would be built in such a way that 100 IQ people would struggle and be mostly useless/a net negative. This doesn’t necessarily mean we need to rebuild our systems around 70 IQ individuals, but it does call into question if building it around 100 is optimal. There are many ways that 70 IQs could be put to use with enough structure, though the increased structure would likely mean the 130s would be even more needlessly constrained than they already are.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Yes, far too many rightists try to ascribe to "Jewish control" what is actually just firm ideological control. The media isn't controlled by shadowy forces as much as it is just staffed top-to-bottom with die-hard true believers in American Progressivism.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Yes, and it is the responsibility of the systems established by society to make sure nothing is done in response to such tantrums. It's fine if they sue, as long as they lose and have to pay the court costs.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Honestly, does this matter? If it takes 1000 years for a belief system to mature enough to perform well, then that's even more reason to stick to established systems.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
almost every single one of those people have no qualms about picking up a $100 bill you just dropped
Speak for yourself and your own fucked up community. The people around me have gone a lot further for me than returning a $100, and I trust them deeply.
However, I understand your point, and the majority of the world's population is principle-less and incentive-driven. At the same time, I believe it is morally required to stand against incentives, and I think your way of thinking too often leads to a race-to-the-bottom mindset of "everyone else has no principles and follows incentives so I have to follow incentives too."
If you can resist that slide while maintaining your mindset, then frankly we're mostly in agreement.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
At this point no one is happy with what they have, but they don’t see eye-to-eye enough to agree on something new.
If this doesn't sum up the era we live in, I don't know what does.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Things like this always make we wonder how much Republicans could drive policy by just adopting the opposite view of what they want as their stance. How many fewer dollars sent to Ukraine if the right demanded aid to Ukraine right at the start? Mostly just a silly thought, but the effect is so strong that sometimes I wonder.
SophisticatedHillbilly
2yr ago
To take it a step further: I happen to know someone who is either a billionaire or quite close to it (I believe he recently complained that his net worth had fallen just under the billion mark due to some supply chain issue) and is still absolutely not elite in any way. His money is in agriculture, and he is very 'country' in his mannerisms. I do think a world where he'd get to be 'in the room where it happens' would be a better one, but he doesn't act the part of the right sort of person, so he's just wealthy and subject to the whims of the worthless social-gamers.
SophisticatedHillbilly
10mo ago
Because actively destroying something is fundamentally different than preventing its creation? This is one of those things that is so intuitive I do think the onus would be on you to prove the inverse, but:
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The end result is not the same. Things that are destroyed leave ghosts, things that were never made do not. Memories, physical damage, emotional attachments, etc are all left behind and change the calculus.
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The process is obviously different, and processes have by-products and side effects. In the case of abortion, a case could be made that normalizing abortion weakens norms around the inherent value of human life, or the value of facing the consequences of your own actions (I don’t necessarily believe this, but it is just an example)
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Different rate of change. Abortion is quick, education and cultural change are slow.
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Different subgroup impacts. Sex education will likely have stronger impacts on the more educable, and abortion on the more avoidant.
This applies to basically every instance of prevention/elimination. Why prevent cavities when we can simply fill them? Why prevent infections when we have antibiotics? Prevention and elimination are only the same in the most spherical-cow utilitarian nonsense world imaginable.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
I've always seen it more as "accept that water runs downhill." Yes, you can pump water uphill, but there is a cost, and it must be done intentionally. Try as you might, you will never be able to get the universe into a state where "water runs uphill or downhill as needed at no cost" is a fundamental law.
People who successfully change things for the better tend to have internalized this. They understand that their actions have tradeoffs, opportunity costs, and that some things, like the past, are unchangeable. Others beat their heads against the brick wall that is reality.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Don't underestimate the ability of a broken government to get in the way though. The government offices being empty doesn't mean buildings get built without approval, it merely means that nothing can be approved at all, so nothing will be built. The enforcement wing is sadly usually the last to break, so it can continue preventing action long after it has lost the capability to allow it.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
The trick is to feed them dinner scraps. My eggs taste like spiced meat. Onion and garlic really comes through especially.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Yeah, expected outcome is absurd in this circumstance. Should someone who is 1% likely to have committed a crime have to serve 1% of the sentence? No, they're either guilty or innocent, and the whole point of the system is to find that out. It is admittedly broken at the moment, but only because we need somewhere around 10X the number of judges/clerks/courtrooms/prosecutors/defenders/bailiffs/police etc that we currently have. Not sure why no one ever seems interested in growing the infrastructure to match the population, but so it goes.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
I remember most of my memories in the same way that I remember that I remember the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. My memories are simply facts that I know, same as any other information.
This has the benefit that my memories have little emotional impact. The primary drawback seems to be that my memories have little emotional impact.
I will say that while my memory is quite good, my voluntary recall is very bad. If anything comes up that is even a few steps removed from being related to a memory, then that memory will come to mind, but if it doesn't, I have no way of actively thinking of memories in general easily.
I have a small handful of memories that play as videos, but they certainly aren't historically accurate videos.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
That's perfectly reasonable from an individual perspective. I suppose my concern is more with the "layabout poet son of a hedge fund manager" who ends up being handed a sinecure sort of job, or worse, one of actual importance. If that person gets paid $200,000 a year to be worthless, they have already had a worse impact on society than almost any petty criminal. The impact is double if their lineage somehow gets them into a position they're less-than-capable in.
I am much more okay with garbage humans living garbage lives than with mediocre ones rising above their deserved station unfairly, if only because I believe that "who sits at the top" has immense downstream effects on basically everything.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Banning women from the workforce makes such wages possible, because it more than doubles the labor bargaining power of men in middle-class and white-collar lower class jobs.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
None, short of murder, violence that causes permanent or long-term physical harm, or selling them into slavery.
The breadth of parenting options should basically range from "take them to the drag show" to "don't even let them look at a person of the other gender"
This is a case where I actually genuinely believe that "Everyone gets to follow their own values" is actually legitimately superior to "everyone adheres to my values." I have parenting methods that I think are best. But those are methods for parenting MY children, made of MY genes. If everyone did them it would probably be a disaster.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
I think you're short on what I would call Tier 2 social events, and heavy on Tier 1 events.
Tier 1 events are things like the Meetups where people would have to make a conscious effort to seek them out, or have minimal opportunity for extended social or physical interaction. Women don't usually attend these (relative to men at least) unless they're extremely female-oriented activities, or are an opportunity to show off (think dancing/clubs/bars)
Tier 2 social events are things like house-parties where you have to be invited by either the host or someone else who was invited. As you can expect, single women tend to get invited to things more than single men, so it creates a good ratio. The purpose of Tier 1 events is to make friends to invite you to Tier 2 events. Parties, formal events etc. This is where the "make female friends" advice comes in, but really just "make friends that are either female or sexually/romantically/socially successful is probably more accurate.
Typically, all social networks are comprised of interconnected social Hub People, each of who is a center of a social circle comprised of Spoke People who are connected to the rest of the group (other than 1 or 2 people) through the Hub. If you've ever met one of those guys who just seems to know everybody everywhere, that's a Hub. If you aren't a Hub, then you have to find one.
P.s. (I suppose there's probably a distinct Tier 3 sort of event, like a sex party or orgy, where you more or less know you're going to be sexually involved, but I've never participated in such things.)
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Honestly I don't believe this entirely. The issue of try-try-try again-pass is real yes, but as Brexit shows it's an advantage inherent to the "Anti-Status-Quo" stance rather than inherently an advantage for progressives.
The problem is that conservatives believe you can just rest on your laurels and do nothing whatsoever to uphold your beliefs beyond voting, while progressives understand that to win you have to fight for your beliefs every single day. If conservatives tried half as hard to ban gay marriage as the progressives did to legalize it, it would be illegal.
Progressives collectively throw hundreds of billions of dollars towards their social goals, have numerous people whose entire lives and careers are dedicated to furthering the cause (many of whom abandoned more profitable avenues to do so) and have millions more who make art, put the values into their work, make public displays of loyalty, etc. Conservatives aren't even in the same ballpark of effort and commitment.
The sole exception would of course be Christian Evangelicals, who do all the same things progressives do to to actually attempt to win. And would you look at that, they did in fact get Roe v Wade overturned! Turns out conservatives can win if they actually care and put their money where their mouth is!
SophisticatedHillbilly
2yr ago
Consider two identical twins. The parents force one twin to get good grades, play sports, practice piano, etc. The other twin is completely ignored and follows his base instincts (video games, probably). Unsurprisingly the first twin ends up with better life outcomes,
So I don't disagree with your actual point, but twin studies tend to converge on the idea that these twins will actually have roughly the same life outcomes.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
It seems like traits like the ones mentioned should be selected for within a mere couple of generations though. If the slightly-too-neurotic and slightly-unhorny women aren't having children, then the problem is self-solving. Seems like a waste of resources to gene-engineer away a problem that is on its way out.
I believe this applies to me. I have gone from: highly introverted (and I mean never spoke unless spoken to, never attended a single social event, etc) to extremely extroverted (arranging the social events, and being a hub of my social circle instead of a spoke.) The shift was part gradual, part lurching, and quite difficult. The largest shifts were when I joined an improv troupe, acted in a play, and began going dancing at clubs. No drugs, no alcohol, nothing of the sort was involved.
Basically I think the crux of it was forcing myself to do things that were completely contrary to my nature for an extended period of time (constantly for months). Eventually the nature gave out and adapted to the situations it was forced into. Any extended period where I went without social contact resulted in me getting reset very quickly. It has to be maintained for years to stick.
After a couple years with basically 0 days without extended social contact, something flipped in me and I actually enjoy it now.
Why did I do this? I deeply believe that wide social connection would cure effectively every social ailment of the postmodern era, and was determined to make my own little piece of the world a bit better. It has largely worked, though the work never stops. Such is the nature of good things.
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