I probably wouldn't have written it for narcolepsy, but that's my point, isn't it? There's no reason why sleep apnea should be considered grounds for license revocation, because it's super common, almost everyone has it sometimes, even if they're not diagnosed, and there's no reason to think that it poses a particular risk to driving. Where is the data that shows this policy is necessary, that untreated sleep apnea is a risk to driving and treated sleep apnea is not? Where are the droves of citizens dying because they were hit by drivers who have sleep apnea? If the state decided to take it upon themselves to declare this is necessary, what else will they declare it for?
haroldbkny
6mo ago
I don't get it. Why wouldn't it be worth more after having compounding interest for 7 years?
haroldbkny
9mo ago
You're just cleaving 'sides' conveniently. By your description, your wife described the positive aspects of fat acceptance. You only want to be associated with the positive aspects of fat-detraction. Neither is truly a 'side' in any ontological sense, but you're just throwing in a biased gerrymander to accuse your wife of sane-washing.
It might be objectively true under carefully drawn definitions of the central word, but you've just engaged in word-thinking.
This sounds like an isolated demand for rigor.
You only want to be associated with the positive aspects of fat-detraction.
No I don't. I don't think there's much positive to fat-detraction, and I generally dislike fat-detraction entirely, pretty strongly. I know there are hate-filled people who hate fat people. I dislike them greatly. That doesn't mean that the hate-filled fat acceptance movement people are any better, or are suddenly noble. I despise those squeaky wheel social movements who try to shame everyone around them.
I've bounced between a few SSRIs and SNRIs in my life, but haven't seen much difference other than the fucked-up sex drive.
Are you certain they didn't make things better? I had to go on and off of SSRIs and SNRIs like 4 times before I finally accepted that it wasn't coincidence that better things seem to happen to me when I'm on them, and worse things seem to happen when I'm off them. I really thought it was coincidence at first, but eventually realized that I notice and accept the better things when I'm on these drugs.
haroldbkny
6mo ago
First just want to say that you should really tag people with @ when you talk about them. It's not nice to mention people without letting them know.
Second, I want to talk about what I think may be part of the core issue. @Glassnoser just informed me via a comment that it's unskilled wages that seem to be going up, whereas skilled workers pay has been constant for this period of economic growth. So if the core claim is that the economy is doing better than ever because unskilled workers wages are going up to match inflation, then of course people will complain about it here. I'd venture to bet that most people here are in the skilled category.
Furthermore, if I'm not mistaken, this whole thing with unskilled wages rising faster than skilled is rather strange. I'd say it's unprecedented, but I don't know that for a fact. Generally in my life I've expected to see, and I think I've seen, skilled workers being the primary recipient of most economic growth. So for people to say that this is completely normal seems to me to be disingenuous. Maybe it's entirely fine, the economy is great, and there's no smoking gun problem. But at least this is unexpected, and therefore unsettling, and people should acknowledge that instead of just saying "what are your talking about? everything is completed normal"
I agree with everything you just said. But I also wonder, is there a genetic hotness/beauty component to the trend as well? I will admit that when I was in college, I actually kind of thought that there was not such a thing as an attractive black woman (or rather that they were exceedingly rare, like only Halle Berry and other movie stars). I since have come to know black women in everyday life that I think are legit attractive. But I do wonder where my previous belief came from and if there's any truth to it. Is it nature, nurture, or was I just completely wrong in my belief? Does the black female face structure more commonly have more masculine components to it? That's what I used to think. Or is it obesity like you say, or ghetto dress culture of wearing baggy ugly clothes, or even is it that our culture really just doesn't prefer African American features like frizzy hair?
Also, I think that another trend for low dating appeal is personality, as well. This is easier to believe as just being "nurture". You'll hear this from black men all the time, about how black women are unpleasant to be around for being nagging, abusive, and even violent. The causes for this could be many things, from just confirmation bias, to black women being bitchy because they've been told by intersectional progressives that they have the shortest end of the stick, to maybe even them actually having the shortest end of the stick, and getting a raw deal, stuck with the unwanted kids, etc.
haroldbkny
17d ago
Billionaire Jewish donors and powerful Jews in the media are working overtime to pull the most powerful levers possible to put out Israeli propaganda
I ask this out of curiosity: what Israeli propaganda are you referring to? I feel like I only ever see the following messaging these days:
- people and organizations denouncing Israel
- people and organizations staying as quiet as they can
- lone jewish people writing op-eds about how scared they are and how they think everyone is out to get them and they think everyone is antisemitic
I think maybe I only ever saw one billboard that was funded by a pro Israel organization that was specifically calling out Claudine Gay.
I could believe that well-situated individuals or organizations are using more shadowy means to put pro-Israeli pressure specifically on large organizations, but I don't really feel like I've seen much in the way of propaganda that's pro-Israel. I'm thinking of propaganda as big funded things like ads, flyers, commercials, demonstrations, people giving away free stuff, benefit concerts and generally things that are designed to change the mindsets of average individuals. Mostly things seem either neutral or anti-Israel, and certainly the popular mindset seems to be moving slowly towards anti-Israel, so I'm wondering what sort of things you're referring to.
Since then, the behavior of Israel, Zionists, and frankly Jews in general has made me hate Israel just as much as I hate Iran or Saudi Arabia
Once again, I am genuinely curious about what behavior you're referring to. This might be totally obvious to everyone, and I might just be the odd-man out simply because I don't pay attention to the news very much, but I want to know what things have you seen that have changed your mind. I have seen Jewish people and Zionists I know be very defensive and quick to call things antisemitic, but that's no different now than it was before, just ramped up a bit.
haroldbkny
18d ago
I'm glad you posted this, because I wanted to rant about this, since it's the most irritating feminist trend I've seen since 2017ish, but I didn't know how to phrase any of it in a way that would be "leaving the rest of the internet at the door".
I do think that, like other commenters have called out, the trend is childish and virtue signaling, and no one is being sincere. I think takes like this:
If a bear attacks you, people will believe you, if a man attacks you, people will not believe you.
do more to show exactly what feminists think about men, as opposed to how women are actually victimized by men in society.
What is the difference between a bear and a man? Maybe that men are people and bears are not? Men have other people who love them, and trust them, and care about them. Is that perhaps the reason why people may give men the benefit of the doubt in the case of an ambiguous he-said-she-said situation, but not give such benefit to a bear? Do men not deserve such a benefit over bears, because, you know, they're actual people and bears are not?
haroldbkny
1mo ago
Well, someone has to, if this forum is going to be anything other than a complete echo chamber
No, no one has to reflexively argue the opposite. A principled leftist would do more than just spitefully fight for the sake of fighting and as such turn mottezians further against leftism by providing examples of the ideology they despise. He would lead with empathy while providing legit counterpoints that open up people's hearts and minds and make them think.
haroldbkny
5mo ago
There's a lot of good hypotheses put forward in the thread, many of which I hadn't considered before. I have generally thought that that reason they're having less sex is largely due to that generation having internalized the prudish leftist messaging that "sex is harmful, you're likely to harm women if you don't ask for permission every minute, no wait, 30 seconds, no wait 10 seconds, no wait just don't ever stop asking for permission just to be safe. Or just avoid fucking alltogether because only jerks and potential rapists feel like they need to have sex in order for a relationship to be fulfilling, and if you feel that way then you're just someone who thinks that women owe you sex, and you might as well be raping them."
In addition I've felt like there's a component by which younger people (and even millennials, too) kinda feel like bodies are gross. This has been a trend for a long time, with promotion of obsessive cleanliness to the point of it probably not even being useful, like people feeling they need to take showers multiple times per day, and also wear deodorant and cologne/perfume. I hear about historical views towards sex, like apparently Napoleon might have written a letter to Joséphine telling her not to bathe for 3 days before he came home to her from war, because her smell turned him on. The modern reaction to that story generally disgust and confusion. But think about how much the world much have smelled strongly like people's bodies, and bodies must have smelled really strong, for milennia before regular bathing was a thing, and people still has lots of sex back then.
Sex is very connected to bodies, sweat, fluids, and smell. People are raised on porn these days, with tissues at the ready to mop up any fluids shortly after their release. Sometimes when I watch porn, I think about how different it is to watch these recorded sex acts than it probably was for the actors to make them. Just thinking about the smell is interesting, considering that that sensation is completely absent when watching porn. I suspect that many people these days may have watched so much porn from a young age that the thought of sex being so much more messy and smelly with someone else's body that they'd rather just keep their nice, contained, fairly clean method of getting off to porn instead.
haroldbkny
6mo ago
This study shows that people who have never been married are at higher risk for car accidents: https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/10/1/33
This study shows that people who are more angry are at higher risk for accidents: https://www.apa.org/monitor/jun05/anger
I don't think most people would be in favor of the government telling you you have to be married to drive. I don't think most people would be okay with the government putting microphones in your home to hear if you shout too much, and revoking your license if you do.
haroldbkny
6mo ago
I started following Shoeonhead in maybe 2015 or 2016, and I haven't followed her since like 2018, but even back then she seems like she was all about the based takes, mostly ridiculing leftists. When did you know her as a socialist? Was it before I started following her, or after I stopped following her? She started dating Armored Skeptic (whom I'm guessing you're referring to) during the time I was following her and also got engaged to him, but she seemed pretty anti-woke to me before that happened as well.
I don't disagree with what you wrote at all. In fact, I wholeheartedly champion basically everything you said. My first exposure to that kind of feminist sophistry first got me totally tongue-tied and I didn't know how to fight back against it, but I knew that they were doing something wrong. Then when I saw people like Scott calling out this sort of thing as a motte and bailey in posts like Social Justice and Words Words Words, Another Brick in the Motte, and Untitled, I was able to recognize exactly where the sophistry was, and I grew to hate feminists for their abuse of logic, and getting large swaths of society to fall in line, because they make fallacious arguments that aren't super easy to spot and refute as such. After all, the way to win a debate with a 2 minute speaker limit is to make arguments that take 2 minutes and 10 seconds to refute.
But all of this was pointed out by tons of MGTOWs, MRAs, and other anti-feminists, along with the more scrupled people in the rationalist movement like Scott back in 2015. I'm sure that 99.99% of people posting on the Motte already know that patriarchy theory is one of the biggest divisive arguments of the past decade, and I'm sure that 95% of Mottezians would agree with you that it is pure sophistry, and one of the more infamous and abused motte and bailey arguments. This is all to say that I think that everything you said is old news, so I'm wondering, why did you bring it up? Is there some greater context surrounding your post that would be relevant to it, that would cast it in a new light, to spark debate amongst the Motte?
Sorry, I don't want to be too hard on you as a first time poster. I'm far from the arbiter of what's insightful and what's old on the Motte, and it's not like I've never said anything that was obvious to others before. It's just that people on the Motte are always (rightfully) wary of us becoming an echo chamber, and I worry about that, too. So I'd rather focus on new things that we have lots to say about as opposed to retread ground.
haroldbkny
9mo ago
Well, for whatever it's worth, I've always been someone who hates people who hate other people for hating people. That's just the way I am. I'm a 3rd order hater. I guess I feel like the proper response to dealing with bigots is to admonish them, but try to do better yourself, not to debase yourself like they do, and not to play the victim.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
I'm tall, charming, with a beard that's far less scraggly after some (poorly adhered to) minoxidil, in a promising career (hahahaha),
Do people use minoxidil to grow hair on their face? I've never heard of that before.
so please skip the kind of blue pills (psychiatric pills) you'd feed the dearly departed Skookum and the like.
Uhh, I hesitate to ask what this means. Do you mean departed like he's not on the Motte, or do you mean departed like he died while attempting to do the Scag (or whatever that wilderness thing was called that he was doing)?
haroldbkny
2mo ago
I feel like any life script involves people going into a dominant industry. It would have to be known for years that this industry is up and coming or well established enough that it can accommodate everyone at good salary for their entire lives. I know that I personally want to instill the value into my kids that they when they come of age, they should have a good look at the world, consider what are the major dominant fields, and get a degree that will help them get a job in a dominant field. Doing this drastically reduces the luck required to be and stay gainfully employed. I know too many people with English degrees who have far too much trouble finding work, or finding work that pays more then $50k/year. Also, any industry where the labor market it demand-driven is going to make employees more comfortable, whether we are talking about salaries, benefits, or even just the leeway to not have to be "on" all the time.
For the boomer generation, I'm tempted to say that this dominant field was education. For whatever reason, I know a lot of teachers from that generation. And I certainly know that they were paid much better then teachers are now, including amazing benefits and pension. However as we all know, education generally no longer offers benefits like that and no longer offers even middling salary.
For our generation, perhaps the dominant industry is software. Of course it's possible that now software is under threat of no longer being able to hold this title. There are fewer jobs, lots of layoffs, lower salaries, and everyone feels under threat. Perhaps this is what happens when the boom is over and an industry is no longer dominant. In which case, I only hope that there will be a new dominant industry that springs up so my kids (or even I) can feel like there's a new, safe way to have our lives be supported.
That is so unrealistic. No one would have stood for that. Maybe you weren't in America at the time, or maybe you weren't even born yet. But trust me it was a harrowing experience well before Bush said anything. No leader would have simply done nothing in response to an unprecedented attack of American citizens on American soil, and if he had, no one, not even most of the people on the left would have stood for him.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
One reason is we don’t have COVID so fewer bored leftist.
I hope you're right! But I've always viewed the crazy COVID response itself as being because of leftism. I remember the leftists in my life talking about how COVID was Trump's fault and saying they need to take the pandemic response into their own hands. And people did this, making everyone think that COVID was the most serious illness ever that was going to destroy our country, which caused businesses to have everyone work from home because they didn't want to seem like they were uncaring. And before you know it, we had 3 years of lockdowns. I think that if a disease as non-deadly COVID happened 20 years prior, it's possible we wouldn't' have locked down like that, it was maybe only because the leftists had such groundswell power.
The second reason is it’s tough to cry wolf for the tenth time and still get people outraged
That's what I keep thinking, but they keep proving me wrong!
haroldbkny
3mo ago
I also didn't think that c++ was a quant trading thing. I remember actually that I had a friend at Jane Street that talked a lot about OCaml.
haroldbkny
4mo ago
I read Dune maybe 6 years ago. You know, I'm always surprised that I didn't see more progressives trying to cancel Dune immediately before or since the film release, for the books clearly stating that Baron Harkonnen is a gay pedophile who wants to have sex with Paul. That seems like the sort of thing that they'd be against, because it's "punching down" or something. Even I think it's a little annoying in the book, since it's like a "puppy kicking" trope, to get you to clearly see Baron Harkonnen as a bad guy.
haroldbkny
6mo ago
Silly question, but why are you only making 120k/year? How long have you been in the industry? That's like entry-level for software engineers these days.
Has your time in the industry taught you anything about management at all? If I were you, I'd try to leverage your experience to become a tech lead. But maybe you could tell us more about why you don't want to be in the software industry anymore?
haroldbkny
6mo ago
I still don't get it. We're talking about concrete value of money invested, and what it is now, vs what it will be in 7 years. You seem to be talking about some sort of philosophical experiment about what money might hypothetically be worth if we accept certain premises, or something.
A little pointless thing: I found a fairly benign, non-political, scissor statement. I was watching the Sixth Sense and wondered whether Cole knew Malcom was a ghost all along. My wife thought differently than me, fairly matter of factly. I took to the internet to see what others think. Everyone seems to have their own answer, with their own strong convictions, and they think everyone else is a moron for not seeing it their way. I personally could see it either way. I guess I always wanted to believe that Cole knew Malcom was dead, but also didn't think there was enough supporting evidence from the film to justify it. So I'm strangely more on the "he didn't know," side , even though I would rather the movie had convinced me that he did know. What do you think?
haroldbkny
11mo ago
if an adult male wants to have their penis fashioned into a crude neovagina, then that's their business, more power to them
I am generally in agreement with you, but I have had scenarios thrown in my face that I don't know how to answer. I would like to hear your opinion.
You and I both say that it's an adult's personal business what they want to do with their bodies, but when does it become someone else's business? When they want you to call them a specific pronoun? What about if you're hooking up with them? What about if you're in a long term relationship with them? Do you think that it's a man's business if his wife is actually an mtf, or is that solely the wife's business? What about if an mtf goes out to a bar looking for a man to bang, would the fact that they're not really a woman be the one night stand partners business? I don't know the answer. I love to think of things as people's personal business, I really do, but then there are all these edge cases that everyone I know wants to have encroach all the time.
[Epistemic status - totally conjecturing] Has anyone else noticed that women these days refers to their husbands as their "best friends"? I hear it in every wedding vow I've heard from the millennial generation. Was this the case before our generation? Is this the case in more conservative places? I guess I always felt like this is emblematic of marriage becoming less religious and less sacred (i.e. it's just a fun thing I'm doing with my best friend as opposed to a sacred vow I undertake in the eyes of God). Also women are married to the state to such a degree that they don't need men anymore, so marriage has just been relegated to "just for funsies!"
Alternatively, maybe everyone's always referred to their SO as their best friend throughout history, and I'm just wildly projecting.
More options
Context Copy link