ZanarkandAbesFan
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User ID: 2935
ZanarkandAbesFan
5mo ago
I’m not sure why wealthy Latin Americans are so invested in their daughters going to American colleges but they are.
To give them the easiest route into elite, wealthy society in the most powerful nation on Earth?
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
I'm not disputing your point that there are anti-semites on the right, but I wanted to respond to this:
most progressives -- even most progressives who are critical of Israel were horrified when such things went down.
Assuming you're talking about actual progressives, not normie liberals, didn't they broadly respond to the "let's kill the jews" marches by reminding us we needed to pay attention to the "context" of such slogans?
Me
Do what you want in your country.
Was Mr B (or anyone else in the chat) Mexican?
In any case, it's not unusual to be scandalised about the possibility of a nation's sovereignty being so flagrantly violated (which is obviously what such an operation would do) - doubly so if the person you're speaking to feels some connection to the country itself. This isn't a criticism of the idea of the US directly intervening in such a way, which I'm too uneducated about to comment on.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
Does anyone know what proportion of clients of prostitution are married vs single men (for any given time/place)? I feel like that's an important detail when discussing the impact of access to prostitutes on monogamy.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
Setting all the moral quibblings aside, the nuclear family is a very beneficial societal force, and prostitution a negative one, so it doesn't seem strange that people would promote the one thing and look down on the other.
While I'm sure there are plenty of people here who share this view, I'm not convinced that the existence of prostitution is inherently negative for society (the reality, of course, often can be). I think it's a good idea, for instance, for there to be an outlet for pent-up male sexual frustration that isn't rape/SA.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
From a rough look at the numbers it seems that if we group Japanese, Chinese and Indian Americans together, they're about twice as numerous as Ashkenazis. Assuming the Ashkenazis have an average IQ 4-5 points higher than that of the "Asian" distribution, it's not particularly unlikely they'd outnumber the Asians on the extreme edges of the distribution. Jews have also lived in America in large numbers longer than the above groups; this means family wealth has accumulated (although the advantage this gives to modern-day Jews is just standard upper-class privilege, nothing to do with collectivism).
Incidentally, I don't doubt that there could be non-IQ factors that contribute to the success of Jewish Americans. I'm skeptical of the collectivism/group evolutionary strategy argument, but that's another discussion. The people who bring these things up though almost universally deny any Jewish IQ edge (and/or tend to be holocaust deniers) which tends to make me treat their arguments with skepticism.
This is a good post by Academic Agent.
I did a ctrl-f for "Nobel" in that article and found the following segment
On the Nobel Prize all I will say is that elite theory can serve us well once more: Nobel Prizes are not a neutral institution; they are not selected in an open manner, but tightly controlled through a committee. They demonstrate nothing beyond what power selects. The claim that prizes from this body are an objective measure of anything, therefore, must be discarded. Nothing else needs to be said.
I'm pretty certain this is the sort of argument that's only persuasive to people who really don't want to believe that Ashkenazis have a higher IQ.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
I actually thought I was making my own Firefly reference to a scene when Mal says "What does that even mean", but honestly I can't find it anywhere so I might have imagined it.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
What does that even mean?
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
I'm pretty sure that most anti-racists would outright deny that if environments were equalized, there would be any significant difference between races.
I don't think you'd even get to that point - most of these people would deny the validity of IQ tests as a means of measuring intelligence in the first place.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
What are they carving off of Lebanon?
One thing that stuck out to me was how much he emphasised the environmental component of IQ. Maybe he genuinely believes this to be the biggest cause of group differences (and to be fair, someone with his education is more qualified than I am to comment on that), maybe it's wishful thinking or maybe it's a hedge against accusations of racism; after all, he's can claim he's not saying that some groups of people are inherently less intelligent than others.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
I dont know if the Palestinians necessarily played the game better. I think it's more likely that they were simply working with a massive headstart, given the general anti-west/third-world ideology if western elites.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
But that's not the entire calculation. The more terrorists you kill, the fewer of your people die in the future (and the likelier you are to save some hostages). A state should absolutely accept the collateral deaths of foreigners as the price for the security of its own.
Even leaving this aside, what you said seems to imply that the ratio of Palestinian civilians to Hamas militants is particularly inhumane. From what I've seen, it seems to hover between 1:1 and 2:1. Is that particularly extreme by the standards of urban warfare?
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
Yeah and those cultures were terrible, for women especially! I really don't want to emulate almost anything about them. I'd much rather have married women's safety guaranteed by the police than by roving gangs of male relatives getting into street fights with each other.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
"What counts as consent" is exactly what is at issue; if you think marriage counts as permanent and irrevocable consent (as various human cultures have held), then "marital rape" is analytically impossible.
Sure, we could redefine words so that you couldn't call women being physically forced to have sex with their husbands against their will victims of "rape", but I'm not sure what the value of that is.
But when you take that away from marriage, it becomes rather less clear both what the point of marriage really is,
Do you mean that the point of marriage is that the man can have sex with his wife whenever he wants?
As I read, I reflected somewhat on the model sometimes taught to college students today, that "consent is voluntary, informed, and enthusiastic," and should be re-affirmed periodically throughout every sexual encounter. I perceive a very strong likelihood that this can, will, and probably already has led to some serious sexual dysfunction in Western relationships. Many people find themselves psychologically unable to express sexual desire in an overt and expressive manner; this is one reason why people sometimes consume alcohol with the intention of getting laid. People enjoy being swept away in emotion and sensation, becoming inarticulate with desire, etc.
I broadly agree.
Realistically, the most common application of "marital rape" laws is to prosecute men who, prior to the finalization of a divorce, force themselves on their soon-to-be-exes.
I would imagine the most common application of marital rape laws is invisible, i.e. deterring husbands from forcing themselves on their wives against their will.
But since the advent of "marital rape" laws, I have seen a gradually increasing number of people (usually, women) wield the concept of consent as a form of control: by default, sexual activity becomes locked to the mood of the lower-libido spouse, with no compromise (or "maintenance sex") possible. After all--wouldn't that be rape?
No, half-hearted maintenance sex isn't rape. There's a healthy compromise position between "Everything is rape" and "nothing in marriage is rape".
So when you say "consent issues don't disappear in monogamous marriages," my inclination is to respond, sure, not necessarily--but they can, and ideally probably should, and the evolution of "sexual consent" as a concept in premarital and extramarital contexts is in this way directly corrosive to marriage as traditionally practiced.
I don't hold traditional ways of doing things as sacrosanct. I think it's entirely worth knocking down the Chesterton's fence of forcing women (and probably some men) to stay in relationships they don't want to and to submit to sex against their will. This doesn't mean I want to end marriage as an institution, rather that I think there are things from the past worth keeping and things worth discarding.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
Except that, unlike the terribly old-fashioned practice of "celibacy when single, monogamy when married," the clarity of consent seems to break down in the absence of clearly-delineated relationship boundaries.
Unless you don't believe in the idea of marital rape, consent issues don't disappear in monogamous marriages.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
A whole range of possibilities. There are choices between "give them what they want" and "we have to exterminate them all".
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
If Zelensky will give up the disputed territories the war ends today, and young Ukrainian men stop dying.
In such a scenario, what makes you think Putin would either respect the ceasefire (see point 7 in the OP) or not just use the time to prepare and re-arm for another invasion?
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
I'd imagine success in running a porn-related business would be just as g-loaded as running any other business.
Unless, by over-representation, you're talking Jewish porn actors/actresses? Because that would be a new one, to me.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
Like many I industries
I was under the impression you'd expanded the scope of the discussion to over representation in fields beyond porn.
Higher IQ seems like a satisfactory explanation.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
I'm not sure this is an English/Japanese-specific phenomenon. It certainly seems like the PMC in most of Europe are reacting in much the same way to similar problems.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6mo ago
Honestly, if it came out that the people in Detroit had these grooming gangs, would there be actual violence happening or would Pakistanis get a pass because they're poorer, more foreign and Muslim?
My bet would be that being Muslim trumps being black when it comes to the progressive stack.
How much of this is stated vs revealed preferences? Would many modern day Russians actually go back to communist living standards?
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