faceh
5hr ago
Most of my writing style is informed by legal training, I think. Balancing conciseness with clarity, and verbosity with accessibility. I think I use too many words yet I want to make sure I'm conveying the meaning as I truly intend it. Because that meaning IS my Motte, and I will defend it with honor.
But yeah, the shape of my style has been formed by trying to argue effectively with people who can pick apart tiny inconsistencies and will notice when you omit certain words or add unsustainable premises, yet also retain civility. Grandstanding is rarely rewarded, but you have to be a bit entertaining if you hope a few dozen people (at least) will read your text walls.
faceh
5hr ago
LMAO.
@self_made_human is one of my favorite posters. Whenever I find myself nodding along with a comment thinking "oh yeah that's about what I would write" more often than not its one of his. So the resemblance is definitely noticeable.
And to be fair, if I still cared about OpSec, setting up a second account with a completely different profile, then scheduling comments to be posted during my sleeping hours, is definitely something I might do.
I'm really not 'focused' on the gender war per se. I still read all the other topics, and I used to engage a LOT with everything, going back to the reddit days. But Gender stuff is now one of the few areas I feel like I have decent insights, and the topic is getting more heated by the week. Other than AI, it is the topic that is having the single largest impact on political and economic trajectory in the next 30 years, so I find myself engaging with it a lot in part to help myself refine my understanding.
but lol, case in point, I HAVE, in other forums, used the tactic of creating a different account that focuses more aggressively on posting about one particular topic so that it doesn't create too much controversy for my main account, since I prefer NOT to become known as "that guy who only cares about one thing."
faceh
5hr ago
Yep.
A bit of cargo-culting.
"OMG all the successful elites went to college, and they send their kids to college, that must be the shortcut to success!"
And in very small instances it sure would be. Get a bright, talented kid in a room with the future CEOs and political leaders and they might be able to navigate that into wealth and/or fame (shoutout to JD Vance).
But the second tier and below colleges were happy to ride coattails on the implicit promise. Although there's probably still some benefits on a regional level.
faceh
5hr ago
It must be the Millenial in me, but somehow, "take any staid, stodgy, formal, professorial, restrained affair or institution and add raucous profanity and exaggerated reactions while otherwise playing things straight" is instant comedy gold for me.
"Jesus H. Christ, we're on the fucking moon" delivered in the standard professional NASA tone has me cackling.
I just realized there HAS to be some market for accurate, quality reporting delivered with this exact sort of style, and LLMs should be able to provide it.
I'm gonna have Grok do this for any articles I read from now on.
faceh
6hr ago
I have some fatally optimistic faith that we'll figure something out just in time, and kludge together some kind of solution to stave off disaster.
But in my pessimistic days it really does feel like a 'rot' has set in and a 'soft reset' is our best case scenario.
faceh
6hr ago
I'd argue that what is TRULY valuable about university has long been the network of similarly situated intelligent comrades, and the later access to institutions connected to said people, gated by their familiarity with the institution.
The paper cert has value only to the extent it unlocks the right doors.
At this point, I have little problem envisioning university that are basically, call it 'social clubs', where AI professors do all the lecturing, grading, etc., but students are paying to get in the door amongst others who are of a particular class and have particular resources they can leverage once they're done learning.
If there is no difference in the quality of education, the only possible advantage I can see is creating networks that will put like minded individuals in contact and allow them to gain some edge over those in competing networks.
faceh
6hr ago
The stats on the relative happiness of married vs. unmarried women suggest its still a Pareto improvement.
And no, "I'm staying with you for the Pareto benefits" is not how most people want to envision their marriage. Its just, if their alternative is worse you shouldn't discourage the slightly better arrangement if they're otherwise suited for it.
To me, its fair to say "Traditional Marriage, encompassed by a socioeconomic order (likely with religious foundation) that is maximally supportive of marriage happiness and longevity is best suited for human thriving."
It is indeed unfair to say "just get into a trad marriage and you'll be happy," when the the social connective tissue and supporting structures are not present.
Or put a little more broadly, Trad marriage doesn't work as well when society isn't geared towards producing devoted, supportive, loyal men and modest, sweet, submissive women for each other to marry, yes.
But that indicts society, not the institution of marriage.
My huge, blaring objection is that this is all tied up in the same set of incentives that moved us to an equilibrium where the college degree is de facto required... even though it doesn't really lead to higher performance/productivity/pay in most cases.
Yes, that is what was 'promised', but in practice, college degrees don't confer extra prestige, status, or compensation.
The reason college became so critical is because more people started going, and there was a direct push to get female enrollment up.
Quoth:
1994 also saw The Gender Equity in Education Act which made it actual policy to push for more education programs geared towards women, and might be attributable to the general decline in male performance in school, which would then play into the college issue.
Increasing the demand for college and the supply of college degrees has various unfortunate side impacts, which Scott covered in Against Tulip Subsidies.
Remove this incentive, and make it less viable for everyone to attend college, relieve the 'need' for college degrees for many, many jobs. Save people from a ton of extra debt and four years of 'wasted' time.
Basically college is only a 'gate' for such valuable employment because we can't escape the Nash Equilibrium we intentionally created without some top-down policy adjustments.
Leaving aside that women who go to college sort into majors that pay less.
Leaving aside that they end up with far more student debt than males, and take longer to pay it off.
Oh, and let's leave aside that women who become doctors (and thus take up a residency slot) tend to leave the field early. Read that again. We spend a metric ton of resources to train up doctors... and we expect to get a lot of work out of them. We spend the same amount of resources regardless of the gender of the doctor... but for almost half of women they'll duck out early without supplying nearly as much work as their male counterparts. MASSIVE supply constraint in an already constrained and critical field.
But leave all that aside.
Try and articulate specifically why a woman getting a college degree would make her more valuable. Either to a company, or a potential partner, or even the economy at large.
I mean, really, lay out the case for why that is her most economically useful/productive course. I want to hear the steeliest steelman for it. (Bonus points if you don't reference the sudden spike in demand for female laborers that occurred during World War II).
Because I'd just point out that even IF you have an intelligent, driven woman who would accel in a college environment and could be extremely productive in a high-impact field...
It is almost certainly better for her to have some kids with a worthy male and use her talents to raise them as high achievers than it is for her to cut her reproductive window short pursuing personal advancement... which she'll have to cut short to have kids (remember those doctors up there).
We need more smart kids. This means we need smart women to have kids. There's no other way about it. Which means we need to be economizing for smart women having more kids... and that inherently pushes against them using their most fertile years on the dubious benefit of four years (or MORE! Women are more likely to pursue graduate degrees!) of formal education for a degree that won't substantively improve their lives.
And that's only ONE dimension to that argument. I'm not saying this is 'fair' or 'optimal across all possible universes.' But I AM saying its a massively preferable equilibrium to the one we currently find ourselves in.
(And this equilibrium suggests a lot fewer males attending college too, I'm not really making it a targeted gender thing)
And maybe AI obviates the entire discussion, but the other fun bit is that AI is probably going to make college completely obsolete even if it never improves from its current state. You can now get instruction from the equivalent of the greatest professors in any given subject for like $20 a month.
True. Although I note that I find it easy to overdo, many writers think "profanity in odd contexts = funny" without the recognition that you have to balance it so it is actually dissonant rather than just obscene.
I enjoyed the first Season of Stranger Things where there was dissonance from the young heroes occasionally dropping F-bombs under stress. The later seasons they made them ALL potty-mouths, even in front of adults, and even the younger kids.
It has to be somewhat unexpected to work.
See also This video.
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