faceh
11mo ago
Probably more in vein with those who reflexively dislike prudish and puritan religious types (usually right-coded) who want to ban and/or restrict fun things and force everyone to be sexually abstinent teetotalers, so of course in order to stick it to them you transgress against their rules by being lewd, vuglar, and libertine as possible.
faceh
11mo ago
The nice thing about our current world is that it is possible to both get along alright without being an explicit member of a given tribe and to seek out those micro-tribes that best suit your preferences.
To a large extent you learn to send the right signals to keep the major tribes off your back and arrange your affairs so you don't have to interact with them directly too often.
faceh
11mo ago
Without having to put their own forces on the line, and at the cost of a fairly moderate chunk of the US military budget, the US is getting to incapacitate one of their major geopolitical threats.
If that's how the U.S. policy towards the war is being couched, I wonder what that says about the entire U.S. war in Afghanistan taken from the reverse point of view.
I've become exceedingly fatalistic about the 'outcome' of this war because it really feels like the ultimate destiny of each nation (for the next 50 years, at least) is largely baked into the cake at this point.
Ukraine may very well be able to maintain autonomy over most of its' own territory. But their population has been in decline for decades now. Now add in a few facts:
-
Lots of Ukrainian men are dying on the frontlines instead of starting families.
-
Even those men who survive have been deployed for a year+ and probably won't be starting families anytime soon.
-
Russia has apparently been abducting tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Children. The prospects of getting these kids BACK even if Ukraine wins are slim-to-none.
I don't see any way to slice it to avoid Ukraine entering terminal population spiral/decline, and it may as well already be there. If the war drags on for another year then even if Ukraine prevails and all the men return and start enthusiastically knocking up women it'll be 16 or so years before those kids can become economically productive in any way.
In short, win or lose I don't see how Ukraine maintains itself as a functional nation as their demographics become untenable to support economic activity. Unless perhaps all the other nations of the world commit to pouring massive ongoing support into the country.
And most other countries face a similar, though less sharp, demographic crunch.
Russia, well, they're slightly more likely to hold together as a country but it seems increasingly unlikely they'll achieve their overall goals for territorial security and so I would assume they will just continue to fight a war of attrition to their last man rather than return to the status quo ante.
Yep.
As I said I'm fatalistic about it now. Not just because of these stats, but because Russia itself surely KNOWS these stats, and thus they can calculate that they'll outlast the Ukrainians on the longer timescale so long as they are willing to commit to the conflict.
Puts a slightly different spin on "Demographics is destiny" than usual. The massive hole this war blows in their birthrate is going to screw them over regardless of how much goodwill, military aid, or relief work the receive.
Depressing thought that even if Ukraine scores a compelling victory, it's an incredibly phyrric one in the big picture.
But all the focus is on the short term project of expelling the Russians, so the popular conception seems to be that once Ukraine 'wins' we can just help rebuild and get them back on their feet.
IIRC the statistically average Ukrainian woman wanted to be a mail order bride before the war, so it’s entirely possible that the vast majority of the most fertile women leave and never come back.
But gets to my point. If Ukraine wins, they've got a decades-long rebuilding project ahead of them, and their standards of living will be comparatively horrendous in the meantime. How do you convince people (esp. females) to return, stick around, and have babies when they could just retreat to a wealthier country and shack up with a local there?
And if you CAN'T convince them to return and have kids, then the country dies out in a couple generations anyway, despite rebuilding efforts.
That said, the thought has crossed my mind that if my dating life doesn't improve over the next few years, the idea of finding a displaced Ukrainian woman who would presumably be quite grateful to not be in an active warzone vs. the current elevated standards of American women has a certain appeal.
I've noticed an appreciable number of my old acquaintances who have gotten married to and had kids with women who are first generation immigrants, including from Latin-American or Eastern Asian countries. And by all accounts they appear happy and stable.
Compare that to friends who married a woman they met in college, most have kids now, some don't, and a handful are divorced already.
But the real eye-opener is the female friends who didn't lock down a guy in college or shortly thereafter, a few of whom do have kids now, and they seemingly spend most of their time angry at the world/males for letting them down, and 90% of them are clearly letting their personal health slip, too. I'd be hard pressed to think of any who seem happily single AND seem appealing as a potential partner. Thems just the breaks.
To make my point explicit: It seems like near 100% of friends who married immigrants are still married and currently happy, 75-90% of those who married American women are still married and currently happy, and MAYBE 10% of the women who are still unmarried are currently happy.
The almost inescapable conclusion is that if you're an American guy who is entering his thirties and is single, if you limit your dating options to women who are in your peer group in terms of age, nationality, and education you'll find exceedingly slim pickings. The best partners will have been snagged early and those that remain will have high standards and shitty attitudes to go with it. So finding a woman who isn't a ticking divorce bomb almost certainly does require broadening the search.
faceh
11mo ago
I think I've made similar statements before, but I certainly will add that thought next time I see a thread on it.
The dating market in the U.S. is far worse than it was even 15 years ago, and if you've been out of said market for a while you probably don't realize how the combination of women raising their standards to absurd levels while simultaneously having less to offer in a relationship... SIMULTANEOUS with (and related to) millennial white women becoming far more politically liberal than average has made it absolute hell for your average guy to navigate, and has likely killed many mens' hope of ever finding a suitable long-term partner. Not just creating incels, mind, but creating the type of guy who ends up in Andrew Tate et al.'s orbit because at least they offer a positive view of masculinity and some hope of getting laid.
And literally nobody seems to have any plans on how to improve the situation. Indeed, the not-so-subtle cultural zeitgeist instead tells women that they're doing everything perfectly and don't need to settle... ever, and telling men to suck it up and stop whining.
So my TOTALLY HYPOTHETICAL thought experiment: how might this dynamic shift a bit if we intentionally imported, say, a few hundred thousand attractive and eligible female Ukrainian 'refugees?'
faceh
11mo ago
Not necessarily non-white women are less politically liberal than nonwhite women, but white, college-educated women are across almost every stat I can find the single most overall politically liberal group around.
White women are more liberal than average, across the board, whilst nonwhite women are more likely to be more politically moderate/closer to the average.
faceh
11mo ago
The whole point is I'm not sure that the past is as reliable an indicator, as the sexual marketplace has never been this distorted before. There are more single, 'eligible' guys out there than there has been at any point in the past. It seems unlikely that 'schlubby' guys are the only lonely ones left without partners who would be likely to gain an advantage from an influx of eligible females.
So any event which shifts the balance towards males has the potential to bring, for lack of a better term, 'sanity' back to the situation by driving women to actually settle rather than hold out for the best possible bargain.
Or, it is of course possible that adding MORE females to an already female-driven dynamic would be the equivalent of pouring gasoline on the fire.
faceh
11mo ago
I'm saying that compared to virtually any other demographic white women are more liberal on average, with this especially notable amongst the college-educated ones.
faceh
11mo ago
The very tiny smattering of girls who were there as members seemed to be dating 10+ years older and for either career progression or tapping developed finances.
That's the other "fun" aspect of modern dating. Males are competing not just amongst direct peers, but with older males for the same pool of eligible women.
I won't go so far as to say that older men are actively trying to hamper younger men's dating lives, but imagine being a 25-30 year old of modest means and uncertain future and trying to find a partner, and noticing that many women your age are being taken by 35-50 year olds with more resources and 'experience', and are happy to occupy these women's romantic lives during their 'prime' years, even if there's no intention of a real long-term relationship. When I first started dating in earnest this factor was significant enough it was impossible to really ignore. Losing out on dates to an established guy who had 'more to offer' due to being wealthier is a blow to the ego.
For a younger guy, unless you won the genetic lottery you literally cannot compete with that on equal terms, since wealth and status usually take time to accrue.
Some serious demoralization given the already harsh environment. Older guys have no reason to stop doing this, either, since younger women will keep expressing interest and the plight of younger males doesn't really factor into their decision.
I've been off the market for a few months now due to finding a foreign-born girl who's a sane, reasonably-conservative slender woman.
Another little bit of datum to add to the pile. Serious relationships seem to be a commodity Americans have to import, these days.
faceh
11mo ago
I mean, you have to account for two additional facts:
Divorce rates vary by education
Education levels and religiosity of partners tend to negatively correlate with divorce rate. College educated couples tend to stay married longer. Most married couples first met in their twenties. So it's a small leap in logic to conclude that people are more likely to meet a good partner while in college or shortly thereafter and the odds will taper off afterwards.
Indeed, your odds of getting married AT ALL taper off after college, hence why marriage rates in general are dropping so heavily.
So whether people are late bloomers or not, the odds of finding and marrying that ideal partner are highest in those early-twenties/college years.
Almost by definition, the best partners are most likely to end up in the most stable relationships, so they fall out of the dating pool and stay out of it.
You don't have to be a scaremonger to simply point out that the pool of likely suitable partners will get smaller as you get older. Which means that you have to search harder for them. And in all likelihood, you'll have greater competition for them.
All I ask for is acknowledgement of what appears to be blunt reality. I'm not doing it to elicit any particular reaction, just so that any discussion is founded on accurate facts and not solely anecdotes and feelings.
faceh
11mo ago
I mean, it seems likely that Russia chose to initiate the invasion when they did because 2022 was the last year before their population of fighting-age males starts to drop off
It was quite literally now or never, from that perspective. Don't have to project far in the future to see what's happening now, just notice the trajectory.
faceh
11mo ago
The point I'm trying to make is less about whether Russia is committing war crimes or not and more about those kids being removed from the Ukrainian population, sharpening the demographic crisis.
Ukraine needs kids if it is to continue to exist as a nation, and this war is blowing a hole in their already-sinking birthrate.
As others have posited, this might just be a backlash/increasing disgust with what liberalism presents itself as.
For instance that transgender influencer pulling out her breasts in full view of cameras on the White House lawn. Sam Brinton, a man wearing lipstick and full women's clothing... that he evidently stole from somebody else's luggage, being a relatively high-ranked Government official. The increasingly aggressive push to permit kids to get gender reassignment surgery. And Disney mucking about with their classic stories to wokeify them probably wouldn't help.
Basically it is entirely possible that people's personal beliefs aren't changing much, but their personal and policy preferences are getting more conservative because they're not happy with the current trajectory of the zeitgeist and, while they don't necessarily want to ban or restrict LGBTQ rights, they'd rather keep the worst of its' excesses away from themselves and their families. Basically "I have literally no problem with gay or trans people but I also don't need to hear about them 24/7 in the news or have them inserted into every piece of media I consume." Cultural conservatism, so to speak.
This is probably just wishful thinking on my part. But I do honestly believe we're going to see a political split that is basically drawn along the lines of "people who spend all their time screaming about victimization and acting like children" and "people who had to put up with the former group and are sick of it."
faceh
11mo ago
It think the issue is that this will be subject to a power law distribution, not a normal distribution.
It won't be the case where if a guy is at least moderately attractive/charismatic, puts in constant efforts and is reasonably intelligent he will on average land a six figure job by 27. It's going to be more like a 20% chance he lands a massively high paying job, another 20% he lands something paying high-five to low-six figs, and like a 60% chance he ends up in a standard job paying 'enough' but not extravagantly. (Figures are blatantly asspulled at this point, can look for actual figures later)
There's just so many pitfalls that can prevent a guy from breaking through to true wealth early on.
And of course consider that a guy who busts his ass to this extent in his early life might actually hamper his dating chances during that time because he won't be nearly as fun for women since he works all the time.
So what you're proposing sounds like it could be a recipe for creating the older, established guy who leverages his wealth in his late 30's to play around with the younger women he couldn't get when he was younger.
Now, I agree it's a good ideal to strive for, but I'm pretty sure that the only way there's actual change in norms is to reign in female behavior somehow.
faceh
11mo ago
Yep.
When the military is (rightfully, imo) seen being used to defend other country's interests, or to line special interest pockets, and is also used as a tool of the regime to attack the exact values that people would otherwise join the military to uphold, AND your society starts undermining the privileges that society usually extends to veterans to honor their sacrifice.
What the hell is the point of joining up?
Especially when private sector jobs are offering commensurate pay with much less risk.
I think a lot of the reasons come from the elites no longer having significant skin in the game and little connection to the real meat potatoes and dirt road.
I have chosen to make this the drum I'm beating every time I see institutional failure raise it's head. Which is near-daily.
The people who have been appointed to make the decisions are insulated from any negative consequences for policy failure (here defining failure as "not achieving purported objectives") but are allowed to reap benefits of their decisions. Hell they often get to reap benefits even if there's a failure. Lori Lightfoot leaves Chicago worse off than when she found it (quite a feat!) and immediately gets a cushy job at Harvard teaching leadership. It's like they're intentionally mocking the idea that rewards go to those with merit and that outcomes matter when judging a person's competence.
Chesa Boudin allows crime to run rampant in San Fran to the point it becomes a national embarrassment. He gets FUCKING RECALLED BY VOTERS because it was too much for even SF libs to stomach... and he lands a teaching job at Berkeley "Failing upward" doesn't even begin to describe it.
And the Biden family, especially Hunter. ye Gods.
When the rewards the elites reap are completely uncorrelated with the impact their decisions have on the rest of us proles then you simply can't expect them to make good decisions, to implement functional policies, or to listen to feedback from constituents. Quite the opposite, you'd expect them to exploit the system for personal benefit at every chance, given that they know that the institutions that are supposed to be holding them accountable are just as compromised and ineffectual.
They've gotten so far entrenched that it is impossible to even discuss consequences for them. Post-Covid it's becoming clear just how many ways various institutions failed, and not just missing goals, but straight up making the situation worse through their action or inaction. And not a single person who had decision-making authority will be taken to task or suffer any lick of punishment.
EDIT: I revise the previous statement to point out that Andrew Cuomo did in fact get punished. But this ends up being the exception that proves the rule because his removal from office had NOTHING TO DO WITH HIS BUNGLING OF COVID and of course he was still hailed as a shining beacon of competence for his handling of Covid.
Just farcical.
Eventually the proles will start to conclude that the system is in fact SET UP so as to ensure elites are guaranteed to thrive regardless of the state of the country and that perhaps the only way skin gets re-inserted to the game is if the proles taken action themselves.
I'm not sure going from being the Mayor to the third largest city or a District Attorney to teaching at a college is failing up.
Let us be clear: he's a "founding executive director" for a program at a Law School Ranked NUMBER 10 IN THE COUNTRY, and probably making around $300,000/year if he's paid similar to their professors. He was making About $140,000 at his previous job.
EDIT: He was making $210,000 in 2023
Calling it "teaching at a college" is GROSS understatement.
Failing.
Upward.
Teaching his tactics and ideas that have already failed in practice (although perhaps not by his definition), no less! The message here is "we don't care that your ideas got roundly rejected when actually implemented, we want to teach a whole new generation to do the exact same thing everywhere!" Literally ENDORSING the ideas that the people who actually had to endure them decided to reject.
And in all likelihood, this is just a temporary position and he'll be called up to some other high position of authority in a few years. It is completely possible that a future Democratic president appoints him as head of the DOJ, because why not?
I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect one term politicians to sink into ignominy.
I think it is unreasonable for politicians whose track record demonstrates they're incapable of leading well to be given a position teaching leadership. But of course her entire claim to fame is being the first LGBT and Black Female Mayor of Chi town, so it's easy to explain this all as simply keeping her around as a useful example of how well they treat their people so long as they check the right boxes.
It really wouldn't do to throw her under the bus if they're trying to claim they're committed to diversity and inclusion even at the expense of maintaining functional institutions.
It is GENUINELY FARCICAL at this point, when the voters express their intense displeasure and yet the elites decide that such outcomes don't matter and simply shuffle a failed politician off to a position where they don't need voter approval to keep their job, making them EVEN MORE INSULATED than before.
I'm not asking for them to 'fade into ignominy,' just... go away? Like, you had your shot, you blew it. Go try something else. Maybe come back after you've had some time to contemplate and come up with better ideas, beg forgiveness, see if they'll let you make another go of it.
Being a high ranking politician is low paid compared to the other options available to those with the skills and connections to get elected, and attracts considerably more unpleasant scrutiny and stress.
What other options do they have? Be explicit. If you lack any technical skills or knowledge, if your background is in law or activism, and if you've spent most of your career in the public sector, how can you expect to thrive in a private sector job without a truckload of nepotism?
What high-paying role would you slide into that ISN'T directly related to your connections in government?
I think you're missing the part of the equation where political positions bring significant status and often power over some particular area of interest, which can usually be converted into renumeration, and can definitely be used to push forward you own ideological goals even if you don't personally benefit. Especially if you lack any real talents that might get you such status outside of the halls of government.
The overarching issue is that no matter how much damage an elite causes through their decisions, no matter how foreseeable that damage was, no matter how incompetent and unsuited for their position they are, the system as it currently operates does not allow them to actually suffer in any way that matters. There's no 'feedback loop' or filter that catches bad elites early on and keeps them from advancing to positions of greater power or enacts harsh consequences when needed to dissuade others from misbehavior.
This is exactly what Nassim Taleb was getting at in his book. We don't just want properly aligned incentives, we want sufficient negative incentives that bad actors are deterred from entering critical positions, and bad actors that slip through are filtered out rather than sticking around indefinitely, causing increasing damage by their mere presence.
Elites are basically acting with impunity because they've got a safety net for their wealth, and status below which they cannot fall. If you crack into the ranks of the elite, there is literally all upside available to you and no downside, so your decisions need not consider the needs of anyone outside your bubble.
If the worst possible outcome for screwing up an entire fucking city is you get to teach at one of the pre-eminent educational institutions in the country making a comfy six figure salary, what possible motivation is there to take actions that will make things better for others when you could instead focus on enriching yourself and boosting your cronies' careers to create a self-perpetuating wealth siphoning machine that allows you to live the good life regardless of what happens to everyone?
This is what happens virtually EVERYWHERE ELSE in history when the incentives become so asymetric. We're just at the point where it is impossible to hide and ignore, and they're quite openly favoring themselves to the point that they consider voter sentiment irrelevant to the operation of government.
The situation with Trump's latest indictment is also indicative of the issue. If mishandling classified docs is indeed a criminal offense to be punished, regardless of whether there was any harm resulting, then we KNOW both Hillary Clinton and, eventually, Joe Biden should face the exact same consequences.
But they won't.
They know they won't.
We know they won't.
We and they know there's no mechanism available to us through which we can impose consequences within the system they control.
Everyone who sees this happen is going to make certain calculations based on this knowledge. I expect the elites will realize that as long as they don't upset the gravy train as Trump tried to, they are protected. The proles, however...
faceh
11mo ago
Let's talk about the fact that we can see Nancy Pelosi using insider knowledge to make stock trades. EVERYONE knows she's doing it, but she's never even forced to fucking acknowledge it because the whole journalism class is effectively a captured entity, and they couldn't impose any consequences on her if they wanted to anyway.
Yeah.
I don't really know enough about Catholicism to say, but I assume that that advancement of clergy to higher positions doesn't directly select for who seemingly believes the hardest in the doctrine. I mean, those who genuinely lose faith are probably going to self-select out, but someone who doesn't really have a deeply-held belief in the truth of the Bible could still be a loyal cleric simply because they see the church and its' teaching as an overall net good in the world that should be maintained. Or because they personally gain from it.
And that element of belief also seems like the easiest part to fake?
I mean, assume that you commit to the cloth out of a true belief in the divinity of Jesus, the supremacy of the Pope et al., but after many years you simply do not observe the evidence that would support the churches' teaching about God (I do not make a comment on whether he exists or not, here), and see the churches' failures up close. Do you continue to present yourself as a believer on the basis of simple inertia, do you double down on your faith, or do you decide to simply 'game the system' and see how far you can get?
The whole thing about martyrs is that they demonstrated their ultimate belief by maintaining it in the face of the most serious oppression and sanctions which tends to make it quite obvious that they were acting on a true belief that held serious meaning to them. We don't see many martyrs for Christianity these days.
So returning to the topic, I also would guess that Scientology does NOT select for 'true believers' in terms of who gets leadership positions, and the whole thing seems even more prone to abuse than most other mainstream religions, so I would absolutely bet in favor of Miscavige being a fairly convincing charlatan, if you were to stick him in a high-resolution brain scanning device and probe the nature of his actual vs. stated beliefs.
faceh
11mo ago
Interesting. It sounds like the Vatican is looking for a set of factors which contribute to the long-term success of the church.
I think Kiwifarms is like the last place that carries that 'old internet' vibe forward, complete with the crude sense of humor and disdain for social norms of civility.
Twitter is still pretty fun in certain spots if you follow a good combination of people. That is, after Elon loosened the thumbscrews off the spicier posters a bit.
The true 'fun' stuff really has been relegated to discord/telegram/slack or other groupchats.
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