faceh
9hr 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
9hr 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
9hr 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
10hr 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
10hr 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
10hr 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
10hr 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.
faceh
1d ago
Yeah. There's probably a few high-value males out there who would actually constructively criticize a woman's behavior and expect her to listen and change.
But most such men are in such an advantageous position that, to the extent they notice any issue at all, they're not too incentivized to address it, but in the best case they'd rather grab their preferred partner and get out of the pool entirely.
It's a deadlock up until something changes in the media environment.
There's a point there, but the whole issue is that women aren't accepting such correction or coaching.
Men hear the coaching, many will attempt to apply it, and after they put in the work they may even notice improvement but, I'd suggest, rarely do the rewards scale with the effort required. This becomes disheartening. If they complain, the only advice is 'man up and try harder.' Over and over again.
Women, by and large, will interpret attempts to coach or correct them as a critique, will often react badly to this critique, reject it outright, and go to their girl's groupchat or post a tiktok to complain about people trying to 'control women's behavior' and they'll immediately have their opinion confirmed and validated by other women (and the male orbiters) and watch a dozen other videos which claim she's empowered for standing her ground.
They're much more ensconced in a media environment that coddles their emotions and confirms their biases overall.
So attempting to do one on one uplifting of individual women when there's an entire Billion-dollar multimedia edifice screaming the opposite in their ear will probably be ineffective in most cases.
It could still be worth doing, but can we at least be honest about the source of the issue?
I daresay one major reason so many feel completely comfortable heaping shame and pressure on men but leave women's behavior alone is the tacit admission that women won't accept influence or advice from someone they do not respect, and so they wouldn't listen at all (or would attack the person).
faceh
2d ago
The "simp" problem is hard to quantify.
I've come to believe that a lot of it isn't really Western Men obsessed with female validation. Thanks to the internet, its actually millions upon millions of third world males obsessed with bobs and vagene. But for the receiving woman... attention is attention. Money still spends.
I also note how many prominent 'male feminist' types keep getting outed as wanton sex pests and then devoured by the very mob they courted. We are selecting for guys who are able to avoid that trap.
Men really could use a better, coordinated method of keeping each other from pedestalizing women who don't give a crap about them, and, ideally, ostracizing the guys who defect hard and try to become good 'allies' as a means of gaining sexual access.
(Like - suppose I wanted to marry now, the last thing I want to do is to court some old fuck who's probably a backwards boomer opposite of me on politics and all that. I'd rather court the woman, notwithstanding all the woes of modern courting!)
Right, but at least you might expect that dad can be an ally in your quest to win his daughter if he decides you're worthy, he can scare off the other suitors and encourage/push the daughter to make her choice and stick with it.
I've had a bit of a history of pursuing fatherless women and the benefit of not having to earn the respect of a guy who considers his girl a princess is usually outweighed by her having zero discipline in her behavior and lack of experience interpreting male behavior correctly, so its like trying to domesticate a feral fox. You get bitten a lot in the process and they often slip away back into the forest anyway.
faceh
2d ago
I still struggle a bit with the mechanics of it all.
The reason things that upset women are political nonstarters is because they will have a disproportionate freakout, they'll get on TV shows and cry (exploiting DEEP biological wiring), they'll march in the street and scream, they'll directly confront people (knowing they won't be physically assaulted!) and they'll, ultimately, show up at the polls and vote against whomever dared make the suggestion in the first place.
But on the flip side, all you need to do in response, as a male politician, is say "no, we're doing it anyway." The women have no recourse beyond more screaming. They don't enforce the laws, and they can't actually go on strike and bring society to a halt. I note that when Roe v. Wade was overturned there was a similar massive freakout... and a few places passed some new laws, but generally speaking things normalized pretty fast. Abortion remains THE primary voting issue for women, but that's all they can do is cast votes and scream. You can plug your ears.
So I suspect we're just waiting to achieve a critical mass of men who are capable of saying "no, we're doing it anyway."
Either because they're just that Chadly or because they've got absolutely nothing left to lose.
I don't mind RNG when
A) its the natural result of large scale processes that combine the effects of hundreds of different inputs...
and
B) There are clearly steps I can take to change my own odds or move to a different place in the gamespace where I think the odds are more favorable, and thus have some control of my fate.
The whole problem with apps is they're manipulating the RNG for their purposes, and in so doing skewing outcomes in a way that is REALLY bad for the players, and in a way that the players themselves are unable to influence.
Even in a Casino I can at least make the choice between playing Poker, Blackjack, Slots, or Roulette, with the varying influence of 'skill' on the outcomes that is available there, even knowing the house always wins.
I mean, one of the few situations where an average man will suddenly find himself on the receiving end of attention from multiple attractive women is going to a (decent) strip club. Where, of course, they are trained and optimized for getting you to pay as much money as quickly as possible.
So you figure out real quick that attractive women showing spontaneous interest are usually being put up to it by some other third party with other motivations.
And it is very hard to identify the rare case where the intentions are genuine, and the further along you go trying to figure it out, the more you're exposing yourself to whatever scam is being run.
One time I made a profile on a sugar-daddy website, and had the crazy experience of the hot women (well, assuming they were real) crowding into MY inbox. Including, through random utter chance, one girl I knew from high school.
Quite the clearpill for me.
faceh
2d ago
This is maybe the worst factor.
If you approach (or are approached) in a public setting, you can expect a White Knight or bridge troll to intervene, at least passively, with the attempts you're making to advance things with your target. Suddenly you're having to put on a performance for a larger audience.
And sure if your charisma rolls are high enough maybe this isn't a failure condition
But its an added order of magnitude having to pass her shit-tests while there is a hostile-ish interloper you also have to pacify.
And wingmen seem to be a less common thing these days?
faceh
2d ago
I remember being an awkward teenager and once asking a stunningly beautiful waitress for her number. She turned me down, saying something like "I have a boyfriend, but that took balls. Girls like that." It was an unambiguous but positive rejection, and didn't cost her anything.
Yeah. Tons of younger women seem to be unable to effectively flirt OR to effectively and gracefully reject an otherwise polite advance.
You can give men all the coaching you like, but if the women they're targeting either completely shut down/retreat... or get nasty in response, then they will RAPIDLY decide there's no point to it.
Doubly so if the reward for a 'successful' approach is just further humiliation on the actual date. And they know marriage and kids are probably not in the cards.
Yep.
This is why I keep throwing myself against the tide trying to point out how the problem is systemic and advice that focuses on what any individual man can do is going to fail for the vast majority of them, which will make them more angry.
Because the men need to cooperate and there's various interests who would feel extremely threatened if men started coordinating to advance their interests, so they expend substantial wealth and effort to disrupt any attempt at coordination.
And I'll also throw in that part of the reason is that women almost instinctively cooperate on the social level even if they are in breakneck competition with each other on the individual level. If they perceive a threat to the interests of the gender, they will very rapidly array as a unified front, and peck any defectors into line. It is uncanny to watch.
Hence social movements can spring up almost overnight to advocate for a women's social issue. Whereas any pressing male problem tends to be stifled for years for simply being unpopular to rally around.
Compare the funding that goes into curing Breast Cancer vs. Prostate Cancer, despite both having similar fatality rates.
faceh
2d ago
Consider that these protestors were acting specifically in resistance to the current regime, though.
Practically, this makes them a much more useful tool.
Morally, well, its usually better to lend support to people who are actually asking for it and, in turn, have some capacity to act on their own once you give them that support.
Likewise with Venezuela, we have a friendly party to throw in with.
faceh
2d ago
Do you think that the US military has magic AD protecting Trump that it has never deployed anywhere else in the world?
... I'm not counting something like this out entirely.
But I don't think any other country has a capability that they could deploy with any confidence that it would ensure Trump's demise, as long as he is serving in the Office of POTUS.
Yes and no.
Even moderately attractive women have a ton of options in front of them. They could go on a new casual date every single day if so inclined.
The stopping problem is basically the ENTIRETY of what they face. But most don't have anything resembling a strategy.
And the very fact that they have so many options inflates their self-perceived value, so their immediate incentive is to keep going until their PERFECT candidate arrives.
But that perfect candidate is likely a dude who, himself, has many options. And so the market devolves into something like the Redpill model of women in active pursuit of those perfect candidates, and those perfect candidates able to passively select/exploit casual hookups almost at will.
For the guys who don't have options, there's not much to be done about their stopping problem, since they can't select from what they don't have.
I really think its just the gamified nature of the apps that makes it unworkable even for those with a good strategy as it mixes in people with very different expectations and backgrounds.
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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