cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
2d ago
Interesting.
The graph does imply that up to four previous partners is fine. That seems like a safe number to me too.
I didn't realize I'd be in the manwhore category, depending on what counts as previous partners I've had between 5 (just counting long term girlfriends) and a few dozen (counting anything).
I'm very satisfied with my wife. I think I would have been far less satisfied with any of my previous girlfriends (which is why I broke up with them). I did learn things from those relationships that have definitely made me a better husband. I'm not sure I would have been able to woo my now wife, keep her as a girlfriend, take the leap to propose to her, or stay monogamous and in love during marriage. There are specific lessons I learned from previous relationships to help me through each of those stages.
Maybe other people learn faster than me, or know not to make certain mistakes in the first place. I was an idiot that required some learning.
It was absolutely a time and resource hog, but I don't really know what else would be worth spending my time and resources on. My free time would have been eaten up with playing video games, watching comedy, and arguing with people online. And those things are fun, but not fulfilling.
cjet79
2d ago
The market solution in this case is just "wait out the conflict". Ships sitting in port isn't free but it's a lot cheaper than insuring against a full loss or calling in protection for the ship.
It's unclear to me how long Iran will be willing and able to sling missiles and drones at its neighbors. I would think that the "wait it out solution" implies an expectation by the market in a short conflict.
cjet79
3d ago
But you've forgotten the most persuasive reason to do space colonization, which is to move all gain of function research offworld and to a place we can easily glass without harming any civilians.
I like this reason. But it will become moot when the next super virus starts on the space station wet market, because a vendor was selling space raised pangolin meat.
cjet79
3d ago
Ya my effort goes down as the thread gets deeper. I try and make my points at the higher level.
I don't know what MIC stands for
cjet79
3d ago
Microwave cooking for one review this was posted over on /r/slatestarcodex. fun quick read
cjet79
4d ago
It's not clear that mammals can even reproduce in low gravity environments
China just recently sent a mouse to a space station, returned the mouse and the mouse has had three healthy litters. So the radiation is at least survivable. But I agree that we don't know for sure.
Keeping an astronaut on the ISS costs about $1M/astronaut per day.
I'm curious how you got this number. When I search for the costs I found reports that private astronaut life support and food supplies can cost about about $35k per day.
The cost of a NASA astronaut on board the ISS might be much higher from a government accounting perspective, because each astronaut is generally supported by a team of people on the ground monitoring and directing them. Its like difference between the cost of an individual owning and operating a car vs the cost of having a Nascar team, where the driver is only a small portion of the overall cost.
I do hope we colonize space, but it does seem absolutely daunting and with minimal reward right now. Any potential payoff is maybe centuries away from when you start trying. This is just one of those projects where I'm less bothered when I see money being "wasted" on it.
cjet79
4d ago
The advice of planning to have multiple partners strikes me as directionally correct for most men. I made some mistakes with girlfriends and women in my formative years. Those mistakes have not followed me cuz things ended with those women. I also had to learn some things about women that just can't be taught. Or at least I was too dumb to be taught those things. The degree of female emotional attachment that comes with sex was hard for me to understand. I definitely hurt some people before I figured that out.
Planning to be a man-whore and rack up a body count seems like taking it too far. Sometimes the red pillers feel like a cargo cult for relationships. They seem to understand the pre-requisites, but have weird beliefs about why those things are pre-requisites.
cjet79
4d ago
Doesn't serve the needs of the generals that want a hot war for promotions. Or the deep state actors that pleasure themselves playing puppet master.
If the people capable of pulling strings and getting America dragged into a hot war, the corporate money makers seem least in control. They are happy to benefit and will make sure the wealth gets shared around, but it's not them alone causing this.
cjet79
4d ago
I'm not seeing much discussion of what would have been a dominant explanation two decades ago: the military industrial complex.
There are companies, deep state actors, and military generals that are more than happy to start a hot war with Iran anyone even if the strategic consequences for the US are negative.
They want to test their latest toys and inventions. And while Ukraine gave them opportunities to test close range weapons (close by modern standards). Iran lets them test long range attacks and defense.
Of course this explanation for getting into the war sounds even worse than "we are Israel's bitch". Trump is usually willing to get up there on the podium and try to sell his policies, even if they are unpopular. I think most politicians would try to justify what is happening even if they didn't have control, because criticizing what is happening proves you don't have control of it. Trump is possibly just throwing a subordinate at this unpleasant job rather than doing it himself.
For the military industrial complex people that could drag the US into this war, making the civilian arm of the government that they don't get along with look bad is just a double win.
cjet79
4d ago
I think there are generally two types of bullying.
The psychopath / thug. They pick on weak targets and torment them for laughs, or because their social in-group has made cruelty into a status boosting activity.
And social jockeying. Where people are in a competitive social environment, and one way to get on top is to put your rivals down beneath you.
I think the useful type of bullying is the social jockeying. Since the bully is often amplifying and signal boosting the social mistakes of the bullied person.
Hollywood loves to portray the psychopath style bullies, and such bullies are the least sympathetic figures, so they just attach whatever characteristics that they want to denigrate to the bully. I have asked around before and not everyone had the psychopath/thug at their school, but enough did that I don't think it's just a fake invention of Hollywood.
I really honestly thought that the Murderbot series was making fun of leftists and that the show was too. I guess it was kind of a reverse Poe's Law situation where I read sincere views that seemed ridiculous to me as a satire of those views.
This is just more and more hilarious as I think back on the murderbot novels I read (a total of 5 of them i think).
One of the aspects of the setting is that the leftist little utopia planet gets to exist mostly because a larger capitalist/corportist system allows it to exist, and indirectly supports its existence. It has the same vibes as a small town deciding to be a little communist commune inside America. The town can survive with a totally anemic economy, because the rest of America is producing food and consumer products at such dirt cheap prices. The town only needs to export and trade a little to keep afloat.
The leftist planet utopia in the novels is in a very similar situation. They can't do anything complex without help from the corporate system. They want to explore a planet for a possible colonization effort. But they can't produce the spaceships to get there. They can't produce the surveying and survival equipment they need on the planet. And they can't produce the security they need while on the planet (they are so naive they aren't even aware enough to realize they need security). They are helpless kids being given expensive toys.
They are left alone on their planet not because they are strong enough to deter aggression, but because they are so poor and backwards that they have nothing worth stealing.
You went over some of the relationship stuff that happens in the novel. It has what I feel is an accurate level of interpersonal drama among sexually fluid and diverse crew (aka a lot of drama). And the main narrator of the story, the murderbot, sees all this drama as pointless and stupid, especially in the face of life-or-death stakes.
To me its a story about some incompetent leftists that are overly focused on pointless and stupid interpersonal drama that get saved by a hyper-competent corporate slave (and then in later novels its an ex-slave). If this is what passes for leftist literature, then maybe I need to go back through some of the stuff I've dismissed. Or maybe the lesson is that as long as the author says the correct things in interviews they can absolutely trash leftists with impunity (are we sure the author isn't a closeted pro-capitalist?).
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