The-WideningGyre
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User ID: 1859
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I think there's the significant point that the job of person making a poll on sexual satisfaction with partners is offering sexual satisfaction as a non-partner. Yes, maybe he could have used another word, but the point was (primarily) to draw attention to that.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
FWIW, I didn't think this was a low-effort sneer, and I thought it was very much relevant and on-topic for what the person brought up. It's the core criticism.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Well, for one, the statistics I've seen for divorce is that there is a very large class difference. My first result of a Google search was this that says overall only 30% of middle and upper class couples get divorced, 41% of the working class, and 46% of the poor (which also disagree with 50% overall).
Result #3 says the overall divorce rate is 44%. It also notes many professions (including SW devs) have a divorce rate around 20%.
Aella's readers are a very non-representative sample. Perhaps not quite as non-representative as the lobby of a divorce lawyer, but not too much worse, IMO, and yes, selling very skewed data as representative data is worse than NO data, IMO.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
The sad part is, apparently many prisons do stop most rapes from happening. It's entirely feasible, but many don't make the apparently not-too-large effort. I'm sorry, I don't have my source handy for it, but it's something that's been looked into.
It's maybe weird -- my only real reason not to support the death penalty is that the justice system makes too many mistakes -- but I really think it's barbaric that this is such an issue in US prisons, and we should be able to do better.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Just wanted to say, awesome engagement here and elsewhere in the thread. It is very much appreciated, and I think this particular post is strong evidence for good faith discussion that was sometimes disputed elsewhere.
I tend to fall into the "the average woman doesn't realize how massively privileged she is" camp (or perhaps more "the average woman doesn't realize how comparatively unprivilegeg the average man is"), but I'd like (1) I'd like us to figure out how make things better, rather than just yell at each other and (2) somehow I still think i wouldn't like to switch (although when I was younger, maybe), which is an indication of something....
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I found the fakes of Gandalf reviewing the Rings of Power pretty funny.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
100% Most conservatives also agree, but, stereotypically, see it as the church helping widows and orphans.
We are a rich society, and I think that behooves us to help the less fortunate. The trick is how much, and doing it in a way that doesn't encourage too much becoming an 'unfortunate'. I think that's a really complex topic, and one, unfortunately that seems hard to talk about.
E.g. I think having decent unemployment insurance and welfare is a net social good, reduces stress, making people more willing to change jobs, and even reducing crime (as you have more to lose). OTOH, it of course incentivizes people who could work, but just don't, which parasitizes society. I don't think you can have the one side without some of the other, and the key to good policy is finding the balance, and ways decrease the bad effects in ways that don't decrease the good effects more.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
FWIW, I think it's a really interesting topic, and it touches on a number of things.
I don't think the narcissism is the key point -- I think you've got those on both sides.
I think the willingness, and push, to break tradition and authority is certainly a part of it. There's an assumption that convention is bad, and to be subverted, which is pretty inherently anti-conservative.
However, I think the biggest aspect is the ... well, to be a bit politer, let's say a good creative is providing services for the upper layers of Maslow's hierarchy of needs -- entertainment, mental stimulation, belonging. And most can only do so on largesse of people who fulfill the lower layers (safety, food, shelter, wifi). So they don't have to worry about how things will work, they just sort of assume it will be there, and they just need to persuade people to give it to them. Someone else characterized it as childlike empathy, and I think that's a part of it too, but to me it's more this idea of things not having consequences -- if people are poor, give everyone a million dollars.
I think that's also where a lot of the frustration with them comes from; maybe that's an area the not-psycho left should work on -- explaining why the things they propose will make the world a worse place, rather than a better one.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
That completely changes things. Without it, very creepy and no borders. With it, sure, betrayal of honesty experiment.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
You sound like a 'character', is that right?
While I'd heard similar groups had gotten caught, I'd heard mixed things about performance. It would actually be encouraging if it were more performance based, and less random-seeming, as it does from the other side of the Atlantic, where the cuts aren't all through yet.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I think the more present danger is it reinforces the echo chambers and denial of truth science. People will point to chatGPT answers, just like they do censored wikipedia articles.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I felt that was true pre-pandemic (and I used it, and wrote reviews), but Trip Advisor's coverage seems crap now, and it's scores not really to be trusted.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Yes, I think when it's distributed / public there are interesting ethical questions, but inside people's heads it seems entirely their business, and no moral issues whatsoever. (The only hints of moral issues are that it increases the chances of it making it outside of their heads).
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I'm going to also not read other comments yet.
I would guess that the editor endorsed comments will consider AA to still be a regrettable necessity. And trot out some disparity stats as to why. I would guess the reader picks would be mixed, overall less supportive, but still with some of the 'regrettable necessity' getting votes, but also some "don't fix discrimination with more discrimination also doing well".
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
In Germany, we have quite a few refugees, including in our town. They are all women and chlidren. There are no men that I know. Perhaps some very old ones, but I haven't seen them.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I think the bigger difference is willing to engage with what makes good or bad science. Scientism, as you call it, just get religious again "believe the Science" (with a capital 'S') but only if it's things I agree with and a study I support, not if it's, e.g. personality differences between men and women, or ... just about anything to do with Covid...
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I would offer an and/or for (2): get competent at something useful / popular / impressive.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
As a minor point, I think the poverty line is set relative to the population (that is, it's set as an amount of money, but that amount is set by percentiles). So the change could be significant if, e.g. the poverty line was set at 25%, so you've effectively chopped 7% over to 2% over.
I don't think anything this big is happening, but it does make the change slightly more significant, in the sense that the baseline isn't zero.
Also 'provides strong support' is a fairly "strong" statement. I would have expected "provides some support" or "adds some weight to".
I'm personally not very convinced by the 'cycle of poverty' argument, having seen rich families fail, and having come from a fairly poor one myself (and seeing others of my friends improve their lot as well). Culture & genes seem much more significant factors, and I think both are passed down through generations much more effectively and directly than wealth.
The difference in crime rates between the poor Amish (or Vietnamese refugees) and the not-as-poor in Detroit seem to support this.
I think poverty does encourage crime to some degree (less to lose!) as does disparity of wealth, but I think it's a much smaller factor than the idpol folks make it out to be.
Oh, I just remembered another nice counter-example given on the original motte site -- Catholics and Protestants in (Northern?) Ireland. The Catholics were systemically literally discriminated against (couldn't hold certain jobs, etc). Once that legal discrimination was removed, they had essentially equalized in ~2 generations. Sorry for the vague recollection, but I found it a really interesting and relevant data point for all of these "cycle of poverty" and reparation claims.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
At what point would you consider it a credible threat? You seem to be setting the bar incredibly (and unfairly) high.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Callous treatment of tech employees, especially politically active ones -- I'm sure there were a bunch in the SF audience.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I think simpler is pyramid schemes need a large infeed / network effect. He killed off a competing pyramid, so more people to feed his base.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
He has the perfect recent example in the OneCoin mogul, Ruja Ignatova, where it's unclear what's happened. Top theories are hiding in the Arab world somewhere, or killed by the Bulgarian mafia (or is that cover for the hiding?).
She arranged a diplomatic passport to Dubai a while before her disappearance.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Because that one can easily be mapped to "(white) men bad"
It's not just "network effects, more capital, more talent".
I'll just speak for Germany, which I know fairly well. It's fairly anti-tech -- suspicious of digital technology. It limits, with laws, the ability to innovate or create. Agreed that the pay is much below the US (for top folks) and even fairly far below Switzerland. Start-ups are also harder (for (at least) the reasons you give).
Germany has things like the GDPR, it resists hire & fire (which I think is mostly good, but has economic costs), it requires annoying things like putting email signatures with your company owners in your mails, putting Impressums on your websites listing how to reach, getting double confirmation before being able to send a mail, or even remind you about an upcoming doctor's appointment.
I think mainly it's the lack of payoff, and lack of startup culture.
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