hanikrummihundursvin
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User ID: 673
hanikrummihundursvin
3hr ago
That's the case for all anecdotes. On top of that, the nature of some questions can deprive us of our preferred tools to deduce fact from fiction. That doesn't invalidate the questions or unburden us from the consequence of the answers. Using heuristics to help guide us towards some sense of rationality is perfectly valid and reasonable.
A key example of this would be military propaganda. We know it was used. We know there were branches within the armed forces and government whose sole purpose was understanding, disseminating and otherwise advancing propaganda for whatever purpose. Seemingly all the major players in conflict hide or obfuscate their casualty numbers in a variety of scenarios. So without evidence we can reasonably claim that news about Ukrainian or Russian or IDF or HAMAS casualty numbers are at best skewed. Why would the US army be different in this regard? Maintaining a narrative of how strong the US specials forces are, how how powerful the navy is seems to fall within the basic purview of a propaganda arm.
Yes, we are missing fact, but the nature of the subject matter kind of has that problem built in. That doesn't make it unreasonable. In fact, the only position on could argue that point from was if one believed one had a better understanding of reason than anyone else. That one is here to finger wag other people as if they can't understand the nature of the question and the inherent problems just overviewed.
hanikrummihundursvin
16hr ago
This comment got reported a lot. Why?
hanikrummihundursvin
16hr ago
It's not based solely on income. I said that it's based on people and the differences between them.
We can tease out some obvious differences using various proxies, such as the examples I gave before: Income, obesity, or 'race'. But the overarching point is that we have big natural experiments when comparing various different health care systems. Those experiments collapse a lot of the complexities, but they also help verify the proxies we used before and the limited but relevant insights they give into the health care systems.
What kind of evidence are you looking for? That the largest brown population groups in America make less money than the Whites and East Asians? That low income people pay less, despite requiring the same treatment? That obesity is a cause for many medical issues? That doctors can spend up to 30 hours in a week servicing people who don't pay anything at all, ever?
Conceptually it's a simple proposition. The system is based on pooling resources together, and then that pool is used for those in need. People who pay more than they take out can maintain the system. People who pay less make it harder. Both ends of this equation matter.
The problem America has is that it wants to maintain a 'high' European or East Asian standard, but it's lacking the population to maintain it on both ends. Which leads to odd systemic 'errors'. The complexity of the system muddies the water as to why it is so expensive. But it makes sense when you operationalize the population differences.
hanikrummihundursvin
1d ago
It's not about the system, it's about the people.
Low income, high obesity, non-White or non-east-Asian will topple any system.
hanikrummihundursvin
1d ago
Assuming the armed forces does not lie about who dies, how when and where seems... silly. The most obvious reason being that you might not want your enemies to know what is going on.
I find a lot of this skepticism unwarranted. It doesn't take into account that this sort of thing has been par for the course when it comes to military propaganda. The examples that come to mind my mind are the British publishing fake stories on what ships were bombed during WW2. Or repeat claims by western powers that Russia is the one doing the lying about casualty numbers, or accusation to the contrary by Russia. Which makes sense and seems rather straight forward from a military propaganda standpoint, even if it's not honest with the truth.
On top of that, the military isn't a democracy. You don't go around asking questions or digging into graves looking for answers. Not to forget that the US armed forces have covered over bigger events than the ones mentioned here, like the USS Liberty. And that was just for political reasons.
I would find it odd if there aren't internal protocols in place for how to deal with death reports, and how to those are publicized or not in case they might divulge information the armed forces don't want out there.
hanikrummihundursvin
5d ago
Using the wide definition you gave, where 'utility' can be pretty much anything, sure.
hanikrummihundursvin
6d ago
I made a very simple argument relating to a very simple thing and you've been spilling verbiage to get at something that's not that. The rudeness of my language only exists in relation to your condescending tone and asinine word games.
It's not courteous to twist words, walk past context and argue for the sake of arguing. I've explicitly stated what I was saying and why. If you want to argue for whatever it is your view on marriage is, go ahead. But, like I said in a previous comment, I don't know why you are arguing about it with me and would prefer if you just spoke directly.
hanikrummihundursvin
6d ago
I mentioned my coworker as a shorthand for the pervasive phenomenon of people complaining about their marriages in relation to a pontification that marriage was easier than having an employee as a billionaire. To that extent you're not even elevating a point by imagining things about my coworker, just bloviating a cope.
Your axiom says that marriage is a materialist, utilitarian contract that is not of any utility for a billionaire. But the evidence of your own eyes is that very nearly every billionaire on Earth appears to find some kind of utility in it.
'Some kind of utility' is not relevant as a point of comparison between whether or not delegating a duty to your wife or an employee is an easier way to go about organizing your lives together. The post I replied to gave examples of the utility of having a marriage. I asserted that these examples and others categorically like them are not relevant for a billionaire and are therefor not arguments in favor of marriage for a billionaire.
hanikrummihundursvin
6d ago
I dunno dude, the idea of thinking of a wife as like some kind of utility calculation around chore maxxing or whatever seems like the kind of thing that deranges radical feminists.
That's not what is being done by me to any greater extent than it was being done by the person I replied to.
I'm not interested in your selective disagreement with me. Marriage in this thread was leveraged in two contexts, a material function one, i.e. you wife can do things like organizing, doing housework etc, and an emotional function, i.e. you love them, they are your soulmate etc.
My point was that Bezos, on account of being a billionaire, does not need a wife for material function. So leveraging the utilitarian functions of marriage in support of an argument that marriage is beneficial to Bezos is asinine. I'd even argue that such a thing would be stupid. He probably has more than one giant house. Do we expect the wife to clean all of that? Of course not. Same for organizing big social gatherings. Hell, why even bother to cook when you can have a learned chef cook for you? It just doesn't make any sense.
For the emotional function, you don't need marriage to love a person or spend your life with them.
As for your definition of marriage, I'd argue that the only coherent view of marriage is when two persons want to start a family together. Marriage is a contract, Both a legal and not, between two people who a binding themselves for the ultimate task procreating. It can be because two people feel a very special connection and want to be with one another forever and start a family. It can also be because two people who don't really know one another all that much were pushed together because of necessity, and everything in between. Marriage is important and sacred all the same as a starting point for procreation.
To contrast this with your view, you can pay an assistant to functionally have undying loyalty through sickness and health, and you can marry a person who doesn't have that. I'm sure you have an enviable marriage, but I'm not sure if you leveraging that is conducive to a coherent argument.
hanikrummihundursvin
7d ago
You paint a picture of my coworker in your head based on two lines of text. It holds no value to reality beyond whatever delusions you need it to hold in your own mind so that you can express yourself.
To make a long story short: you don't need a marriage to find genuine love and affection. To insinuate the alternative to marriage is prostitutes is inane at best. And if someone has had more than 6 marriages then I'm not sure what the institution of marriage even means in relation to this argument, beyond being some hold over that men gravitate to because they tend to feel affection for inanimate objects and ideas.
On the flipside, there are a lot of losers getting married every day. And they outnumber the winners. Not that this is a terribly relevant thing, as I don't see the relevance in your argument towards anything I've said.
Beyond that, people having issues with marriages is not a thing that exists within the confines of my workplace. There are examples of this all around us. If you want to ignore that fact and pretend my workplace experience is unique or unrepresentative go ahead. But I think most people can understand the utility of having billions of dollars to employ people who can solve most of the problems in your personal life so that you can spend your free time doing something with your loved one that you both like doing, rather than saddling them with household chores or whatever.
hanikrummihundursvin
7d ago
I wrote in reply to a comment. The intentionality of my reply exists within the scope of the comment being replied to. But I'll try to broach the topic you bring up to demonstrate what I'm talking about.
Here is something which was alleged in the comment I replied to:
Bezos got married young and doesn't want to learn how to do things like plan dinner parties with his friends while in his 50s.
As I tried to imply in my first comment, you obviously don't need a wife to plan dinner parties for you when you are a billionaire. You can just have a 'life assistant' or whatever.
But the big difference in views I think I see is that the “wife guys” are arguing for marriage through the concept of companionate love: “she’s the best part of my day, she makes my life meaningful,” etc. You’re talking about it in terms of economic and sexual utility: “I could have sex with any woman, and get assistants to do things around the house I don’t want to do.”
This is not what I'm talking about. You don't need marriage for companionate love. You don't need marriage for pair bonding. I would however argue that you need marriage as proof of commitment for some long term goal, like children. Marriage, I'd argue, is a 'utilitarian' or 'materialist' contract.
To that end, marriage is not of any utility for a billionaire. Bezos doesn't need the utility of marriage to experience any of the love a woman could give him. And I'm not saying that in some 'penis into hole' utilitarian sexual gratification kind of way. Bezos can get the purest love of any man and would never need marriage to deal with any of life's problems because the material problems marriage can help ameliorate will never exist for a billionaire to begin with.
hanikrummihundursvin
7d ago
Almost. Here's the tidbit I replied to and my reply:
Sure he could hire personal assistants and prostitutes, but he's got a company to run and it's just easier to have a wife.
I've never had a single person tell me it's easier to have a wife. In fact it's the one thing I hear most guys complain about at work.
Now, maybe that connection wasn't clear to people, even if I directly replied to that short comment, thinking it did not need a quote to be clear. So I clarified in this comment chain:
I understand the point but in relation to Jeff Bezos you are not explaining how having a wife is easier than having paid assistants do all of the things that need to be done.
Is it easier having a wife than a paid assistant if you are a billionaire? (Maybe if that assistant has a termination clause of 36 billion dollars.) Queue the wifeguys talking about how great their personal marriages are and how good of an arrangement it is for them. Now, was I to assume they are billionaires or middle class joes when interpreting their comments?
I wouldn't really care but I get the feeling of... I don't know, groupthink and fallacy? when getting a reaction like this:
You have a coworker who is just a bitchy wuss of a person. You can identify this by all the bitching he does. You should exclude his bitchy opinions from your mental map of the opinions of capable people.
This sort of internet tough guy talking coming out of thin air just seems like a silly overreaction to me. Like... You don't know my coworkers. Same with some other comments. What are these people trying to prove and why? I don't see the reason why one would assume that marriage was a necessary or hold the same or similar utility for people like Bezos compared to the average joe.
hanikrummihundursvin
7d ago
You and your fellow 'wife guys' need to focus on what the argument is rather than circling the wagons around your own marriages.
hanikrummihundursvin
7d ago
Having a wife is a job in itself - my coworker every day.
hanikrummihundursvin
8d ago
Jeff Bezos is one of the rarest.
hanikrummihundursvin
8d ago
I understand the point but in relation to Jeff Bezos you are not explaining how having a wife is easier than having paid assistants do all of the things that need to be done.
hanikrummihundursvin
8d ago
I don't think men will be eating a lot of take-out sandwiches if they are billionaires and can afford a private chef.
hanikrummihundursvin
8d ago
I think there are two moving parts here: Jeff's marriage and the average dudes marriage. I don't think these two are comparable. And I doubt Bezos doesn't have a bunch of personal assistants and potentially prostitutes.
To that extent the argument that monogamy is a huge time saver does not apply to someone who is in the position to outsource the work. Nor would it apply to Bezos like it would some average guy.
So I'd agree that the average guy is better of with a wife to the extent he can not achieve his wants without one, but that's not saying much in my mind.
hanikrummihundursvin
8d ago
My recently divorced coworker begs to differ.
A thing: If Bezos is on a lot of gear it might be messing with his libido/sexuality.
A more likely thing: That woman is a turn on in more ways than just physical. Maybe smart, confident and sexually aggressive. On top of that she is probably motivated to keep her man.
To that extent it shouldn't be a wonder a 'feminist' of sorts wouldn't like her. Similar to how Amy Coney Barrett is disliked by many feminists, despite being a power feminist wet dream. Lauren Sanchez might just be a go-getter who doesn't care about what the patriarchy tells her and instead does what she wants.
It's kind of funny. Two women expose the lived experience of most feminists as kind of pathetic and their ire against the 'system' as rather fraudulent. Apparently some women can have it all. So why don't you?
I'd be interested in knowing if there is some feminist literature out there on this topic. Inequality between women is a subject usually broached through terms of class and race, but barring that, most of the stuff I can find reads more like a lot of cope. To take a maximally aggressive angle: Why should the women who win at life pay heed to the women who lose? And why should anyone take the advice of the women who are by comparison losers?
A part of the upheaval of Andrew Tate was the fact that he wasn't a 'loser' whilst doling out MGTOW/incel talking points. Does he have a female counterpart somewhere on the internet?
hanikrummihundursvin
8d ago
I've never had a single person tell me it's easier to have a wife. In fact it's the one thing I hear most guys complain about at work.
Feels like Labour and the UK had their socialism experiment with Corbyn. Didn't last long nor did it do much good, but it was an interesting case study in just what modern day socialism is in practice:
A young and naïve base of support. An old guard of political weirdos who can't decide on if they are doing principled economic classism or third world brown nationalist ethnic warfare. A principled adherence to the former alienates the young, the rhetoric of the latter alienates the old.
It felt like an indictment of the entire left wing project. Insofar as leftism isn't enabling the worst excesses of capitalism, it hardly gets anything done. And what it can get done for its own good takes a lot of time and a lot of hard work, which is not very appealing to young voters who are having their brains bombed with the most impactful political extremism the algorithm can throw at them.
I suspected it, but I did not think it to be this pronounced or shameless.
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