Tree
4mo ago
Theta gang.
Other people do predictions all wrong.
Step one: they feel a slight change in temperature . Maybe they think polarization has increased, or atomization, resource use, artificial intelligence, immigrant problems, low TFR , etc. Could just be a vague feeling of unease with the way things are going.
Step two: they extrapolate that one thing to hell. So if you want a picture want the world in a hundred years, just delta times a hundred, aaaand you’re done. So one guy predicts the earth will be boiling, the other guy predicts total wireheading, another a 1000 IQ machine god, another complete resource depletion, another constant civil wars, yet another a zero point zero fertility rate, or a 99% amish population.
Why all the doomers are wrong:
Step One: It’s a very limited, myopic view. There’s a lot of randomness in the world. Where you are likely experiences some rate of temperature rise that is not typical. Some of the delta is pure gut feeling, nothing solid. There’s a lack of absolute assessment of the situation on a larger timescale. Are we as polarized as catholics and protestants in the religious wars? No, we’re very far from that.
Two: All the predictions are mostly contradictory, they refute each other, even though they may look like a sure-thing syllogism when looked at individually. The system is full of negative feedback loops that stop the simple extrapolation of even correctly identified trends. If a thing causes problems, the thing will eventually be limited, the problems mitigated.
Some of the arguments just look like an excuse to give up: they force this binary we’re screwed/we’re not screwed which doesn’t actually tell us anything . Even some of the worst ‘we’re screwed’ future scenarios they come up with would just be comparable to situations humanity already went through (civil wars, vast migrations, losing your home, starving poverty), and those people didn’t give up either. And that’s a small likelyhood. So chill and grill. Without forgetting to participate in the negative feedback loop of stopping the problems.
Tree
4mo ago
I would prefer it if someone was just trying to harpoon an heir or heiress like some Becky Sharp or Bel-Ami. You wish to live on yachts? I respect your moxie.
Some women love you because you have a french accent, or you made them laugh once. I’m told some wives love you because you leave a love note on the fridge for five minutes everyday. But others want the whole 8 hours. Just in a cubicle, being miserable for money, so you can hand it over. It’s as costly a signal of love and commitment as it gets. For the one ‘buckling up’. The requiring party’s love and affinity is more doubtful.
Anyway, nothing against you, obviously it’s a very very common requirement. Some people say it’s hardwired in the female psyche, although I don’t know how nature would hardwire a wealth preference into humans in an ancestral environment where wealth was just ‘being fat’, and some sticks and shells. How could Lucy in the savannah have learned to be turned on by zeroes on a bank statement. By contrast the male ‘gaze’ seems more clearly hardwired to like certain aspects of the female form which have remained the same.
Tree
4mo ago
It’s always been weird, because rafa would lose enormous amounts of status in such a system. Right now the PMC, doctors bankers lawyers are at the top of the status pyramid because it’s their bourgeois regime. Replace it with rigid generational classes, and rafa’s title and status would be downgraded to ‘banking clerk‘. Just like it was in the good old days. And rafa works like 60 hours a week or something, which is huge, but most people do not feel this pressure, and they don't need to be "liberated" from it/re-enslaved in a guild by the revolution.
Tree
4mo ago
An 11% (or 30%, depending on how you calculate) difference is not much. Plus the fact that most of the effort of courtship is still expected of men (granted, it’s not that much in the modern world). But it’s easy to imagine those 11% men ‘would be open’ to a relationship with a woman who showed up all baked and ready to go at their door, but aren’t willing to text various women for weeks/face rejection.
Plus the general tendency of women to undercount their sex partners and men to overcount them. That is, men are supposed to want it, women aren’t supposed to want it. If you abandon the chase as a man, you're a loser, and if you're mancrazy as a woman, you could be a slut or a bad feminist. That alone, the shy loser and the shy slut, could explain the discrepancy.
Tree
4mo ago
Everyone’s entitled to their preferences and requirements (abs, height, penis, tits, age, religion, veganness etc), no matter how high, unrealistic or weird they are, but somehow I dislike this cash requirement the most.
Maybe it’s because I’m lazy. Or because feminism has always presented the heavy burden of providing as a male privilege. Or because it seems materialistic and exposes the harshness of the transaction. If a funny guy is with a beautiful girl, in a way he’s exchanged his jokes for her tits. But I find this far more pleasant and acceptable than if he had used actual dollars (if he’s a successful comedian and she doesn’t find him funny). I don’t condemn it morally, I don’t condemn prostitution either, but there’s something distasteful about it I can’t quite explain.
Maybe it’s just the old nagging desire to be loved for yourself alone, unconditionally and forever, which no lover has ever achieved. If she loves you because you're tall, you can't test her love by losing a few inches, and her love is somewhat secure. Otoh you can test or lose her cash-based love by abandoning or losing your job. So that kind of love never feels secure, it's more a sword of Damocles hanging over you. In the neighborhood where I grew up, two fathers who lost their jobs killed themselves.
Tree
4mo ago
People jump on slogans, they want the ten commandments version, not the 2000 page discourse. Under those constraints, they should err on the side of telling the truth no matter what, instead of 'white lies' and 'necessary myths'. I don't think giving them the cliff's notes version counts as a lie. They're welcome to explore the topic in depth if they have the time.
everybody is equal before law, every vote counts
Those aren't lies. First one is an aspiration : "Everyone should be treated as if they are equal before the law" - it just means there are no special categories of people, like aristocrats, as far as the law is concerned. Second one, well, every vote is literally counted.
lying to Kant's axe murderer asking where your wife is
Obviously that is justified, but I don't consider that a white lie
(wiki definition: A white lie is a harmless or trivial lie, especially one told in order to be polite or to avoid hurting someone's feelings or stopping them from being upset by the truth. A white lie also is considered a lie to be used for greater good (pro-social behavior))
It's not trivial nor polite, nor do I justify it on simplistic utilitarian grounds ("I just lied because my wife shouldn't die/the greater good." That's too weak a justification imo.) Essentially, a state of war or permanent defection exists between this evildoer and you, and acts which would be immoral normally, like murder and lying, are permitted or required in this case.
Like some autistic rationalist "telling the truth" about some weapon of mass destruction
I think some exceptions can be made in the face of nuclear armaggeddon, at the margins of neurotypical society.
By contrast, our personal lives and our politics are saturated with unnecessary, harmful lies.
Tree
4mo ago
We need phrases like that because the last years have shown that if you leave people any wiggle room, they will lie every chance they get. I hear ‘it’s just a white lie’ all the time now, and there are no limits and no brakes on its runaway use. The thing I found most shocking about the woke establishment is not that they would lie (about corona, discrimination, race), but that they would casually justify it if caught. And maga/trump casually lie even more, and then deny, so there’s not even the attempt at coherence left.
Tree
4mo ago
"Every social practice"? With how diverse they are, that's a sure sign that you're not correctly evaluating contrary evidence you might come across, and you're running entirely on confirmation bias.
I gave examples of people choosing men over women, which should count as proof of at least comparable worth. You're basing your entire theory of human value on the fact that an attractive 20 year old female can get resources in exchange for sex. I guess we won’t reach agreement today.
Tree
4mo ago
Well, there's no obligation obviously, especially if it could be used to incriminate yourself. I'm not interested in debating hume's nonsense myself. Until next time.
Tree
4mo ago
I think humanity has wasted enough time on hume’s clever mind games that were never real.
You didn’t clarify the ought situation about daughters versus sons. You ought to, what? Do nothing? Save the son, perhaps? Are you taking the fifth because you can't derive?
Tree
4mo ago
Just because a man produces, by my count, 5 billion more gametes per month than a woman, and so his gametes are slightly less valuable individually, does not make a man fundamentally less valuable than a woman.
This ten-year-old child died in a house fire through no fault of his own And That's a Good Thing?
No one says this, that's my point. “this ten year old died in a fire, and that’s obviously a bad thing that ought not to be”. There, derived the ought from the is, like everyone always does.
It is a conceit of philosophers than an ought cannot be derived from an is. The is is the motte, the ought is the bailey. “I just described capitalism, I never said it ought to be destroyed. I never said men ought to sacrifice their daughters for their sons.(edit : I meant sons for their daughters)” I think if you honestly ask yourself, you think they ought.
Tree
4mo ago
Men appear to enjoy sex more than women. How this factoid relates to this discussion I do not know. Unless.... you're saying that the ubiquitous island scenario is just a harem fantasy concocted by horny men and they don't have a serious opinion on this?
Tree
4mo ago
We disagree on the is anyway. The is/ought distinction is not real. That's why we disagree on the ought.
Tree
4mo ago
I'm more of a case by case guy, but I think that's true on average, in the modern west. But that's culturally dependent. It's more typical in history for parents to let the daughter drown, because a dowry will have to be found for her, while a son will stay in the house and have the obligation to provide for his parents in old age.
You're basically saying it's a fact of nature that parents prefer to send their daughers to college rather than their sons. Now, they do. For most of history, they really didn't.
Tree
4mo ago
You make universal claims about male psychology I can refute with a single example, me.
You’re saying if a man sees a boy and girl drowning (perhaps his children, perhaps not), he always saves the girl?
Tree
4mo ago
I think people are whitewashing their political opinions by calling them ‘facts of human nature’. You say most men feel an instinctive urge to protect female people from physical harm, but in numerous cultures it was normal to beat women. In honor cultures, even related men can kill them for a smile. Obviously rape was widespread, etc. This isn’t the feminist litany of oppression, men suffered terribly too. I just don’t think you can look at all that and see the instinctive urge to protect women. And I personally don’t feel the discriminatory urge to save a random woman over a random man.
Indeed, I suspect the average man would think it was a far graver crime to assault an elderly (i.e. menopausal) woman than a woman in her early twenties.
That's because they are less of a threat, like a child, or a cripple. Doesn't have anything to do with the inherent biological value of women.
Tree
4mo ago
The birkenhead drill is not rationally justified, is my point. I doubt it would apply today, and I certainly wouldn’t go along with it if it did. Of course some people may still worship the ground women walk on like they used to worship cows, a sacred tree, or a magical stone.
Tree
4mo ago
The average human alive has twice as many female ancestors as men.
Complete non sequitur.
Biologically humans produce offspring at 50/50 sex ratio by Fisher's Principle.
Your statement is a vague, theoretical, general principle that most species tend towards a 50/50 ratio. Mine is the actual sex ratio of humans, which slightly favours males. The two statements are not necessarily contradictory. Mine is just more precise and empirically supported.
Consider if you could choose to found your Rome with a population fixated (stably) on genes for 25% male babies or 50%? By the 3rd generation the first group has more men than the latter.
I already decried this reasoning in this thread. You’re assuming infinite resources like it’s a bacterial culture. And Romulus was a reference to the rape of the sabines, where the male-skewed romans just stole women from their neighbours. The only 25% men tribe would get overrun quickly.
“Behold, I will now prove the undeniable superiority of women:
Imagine you’re on an island. There’s no war to be fought, ever. No work to be done, either. Not even a jar to open. All there is to do on this magical island is to go shopping. And the goal is to produce as many babies as possible. Would you prefer 100 men and 1 woman or 1 man and 100 women? Checkmate.”
Tree
4mo ago
That’s the definition of an analogy. You did say the female body is one of the most valuable possessions on earth. Your thesis is that her high value makes her insecure. I think it is the gulf between her appraisal of her own value, which is externally reinforced, and her actual, lower, value.
Tree
4mo ago
Musk-level value was OP’s analogy, but the problem with your framing is that the being women are valued for is actually a doing, the producing of children.
Doing has obvious value, I’m not sure being has value. Valued for being could just be an echo, a reminder of someone’s past, real doing-value, like the late aristocrats who were once warriors.
Tree
4mo ago
Both have value. I’m just pushing back against the view that most men have no value while all women have huge, elon musk level value. Usually this theory of value is backed by nothing more than an island hypothetical, with unlimited resources and no enemies.
Tree
4mo ago
Another hopelessly confused feminist who cannot express a coherent thought. Women like her have been indulged, coddled and lied to their whole lives. As you note, almost subconsciously, she senses that something is not adding up (“the lingering shadow “, “performative reverence”, “dimmed”, “faint echo”).
Echoes of the white lies she has been fed, of her incomparable value, of her oppression, and that she can have it all, and do anything men can, and better. The problem is not that she’s elon musk and people value her too much and don’t value ‘her for her’. It’s that people lie to her about how valuable she really is, like an AA hiring panel, or a loving parent.
Because the male body has little to no intrinsic value
This argument has to die. Nature itself thinks men are as valuable as women. Slightly prefers them even, at 1.05 to 1. Most rawlsian babies would prefer the male body, it’s the practical choice. Most parents do too. And if you’re founding a city, every romulus in his right mind would choose a hundred men over a hundred women. Women can always be procured. A weapon is as valuable as an incubator. Even more so in the modern world, where the incubators are faulty, and we’re all tools.
Tree
4mo ago
Trump on his assassination attempt:
"They briefed me and I'm satisfied with it," Trump said. "They should have had someone in the building, that was a mistake, they should have had communications with the local police—they weren't tied in—and they should have been tied in. So there were mistakes made. And that shouldn't have happened."
"But I was satisfied in terms of the bigger plot, the larger plot," he continued, "I have great confidence in these people. They're very talented and very capable—they had a bad day, I think they'll admit that." "This is a very dangerous job being president,"
Trump’s claims of stolen election have led to much recriminations that he is no mere crook or liar, but damaging to democracy. His supporters otoh, have ramped up the anti-elite conspiracy to include this assassination attempt, in order to show loyalty/outbid themselves, even here on the motte. This rejection by the principal actor/TV star sends a clear signal where the truth lies in this matter, whether you agree with Trump’s politics or not. Test is over, results are in, you can calibrate. If you bought the assassination conspiracy, consider that your brain may have been fried by the culture war.
No, I want you to be psyched! Life is the ultimate experience, anything can happen! One day you could find yourself in South Africa or Lebanon, without leaving Ohio! Everyone's in trouble. The only question is: are you on top of that trouble or not ?
But in all seriousness, some people literally act like we’ll all be dead in 10 years because of AGI, climate (in Germany they often call them the ‘last generation’ protests ffs), elite mismanagement & evil and what have you. They just throw down their arms: "oh, we’re finished, it's over". The prospect of a civil war, properly considered, should cheer them up. It's not over till the fat lady sings.
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