iprayiam3
8mo ago
I've never heard anyone suggest that it was a moral failing. That sounds like a completely made up strawman to victim oneself against.
Obviously the reverse causality makes sense: bad people should be less datable. But i e never even heard anyone suggest this should is an is as it's plainly not real.
Where are you getting this moral failing narrative from? You need to justify the premise, because it sounds like extrapolated wallowing or self-loathing.
iprayiam3
2mo ago
This is fantastic, compelling conversation. Not tedius at all. Tell me more.
iprayiam3
3mo ago
I get it... It's sad because she didn't give him any grandchildren, right?
iprayiam3
2mo ago
This is a good idea if you're regularly interacting with (or married to) someone into somethign you're not. But it's overkill if OP just wants more general conversational grease.
Moreover, unless he's willing to become a sportsfan all the way, keeping up on the latest talking points will be a tedius waste of time. And he'll still end up bored and anxious of being discovered a fraud in sports talk. Honestly if you want to make good sports small talk with someone, it's probably better to know nothing about sports than to pretend you care. Consider this opener.
"You know I haven't really kept up with college basketball in a few years. Which schools are doing well these days?"
You'll get the sportsfan talking! and you don't have to pretend you know or follow anything. Plus, a little understood phenomenon - you now have the conversation's steering wheel, while the other one gets to talk and like you for getting to talk. Once you start trying to demonstrate your own knowledge or insert your own talk tracks, you actually lose control.
Instead, you can take the converstaion where you want it to by asking questions. Like history? Interject with historical questions. Like strategy and theory, ask a question about that. "So how does a good team get good..." Like the culture war, ask about that. "You think ratings have changed since ESPN has gotten woke?"
Want to get off sports? Let them give you a little schpeel, they'll like you for letting them talk. Then play a game with yourself to see how many questions takes you to X. Say, X is crypto. Sports... Sports Betting... Gambling... Crypto.
Unless, like in your scenario, the topic is regularly the center of the activity, there's no reason to pretend to like it or to learn about it just to make small talk. It will actually backfire (without a genuine interest) because you'll be bored AND worried about demonstrating your boring knowledge.
iprayiam3
4mo ago
To be clear, the spinelessness (perhaps the wrong word) I speak of is strictly that he's too tempted by the upside of Trump losing on lawfare that he dances around outright condemnation of what's happening and won't put any skin into fighting with 'Trump' against this.
Like in a recent interview responding to Vivek pledging to remove himself from Colorados ballot, he made a comment to the effect of ' hey I'm going to compete on every ballot I can, whether or not Trump makes it on. That's the name of the game'
This is effectively admitting to 'playing' the rigged game. Ron appearing on a ballot that Trump doesn't is literally the name of the Democrats' game. It's not the name of the fair primaries game.
I loathe Trump, but Ron's refusal to do more to stand in solidarity against the Democrat bullshit reveals him as a flake, if his Ukraine flip-flop hadn't already.
I would still vote Ron over Trump all day on abortion conviction alone and for every other reason. But I'm now backing Vivek. (Not that it matters anyway.)
iprayiam3
6mo ago
That's all fair. I can accept that this shouldn't have been a top level.
iprayiam3
6mo ago
I'm sorry, is this a different take on our initial exchange? I thought we already shared our mutual points fair enough.
iprayiam3
9mo ago
So in my initial reading of your post, I missed that an in-law confronted your father. I though it was a member of your own family. That is pretty wild to say the least, and an unhelpful approach to any conversation of weight. You have all my sympathies there.
At the same time, if you're response to the others who disagree with your behavior is Deal With It, expect to be returned the same when seeking sympathy that others are behaving ways you don't agree with.
iprayiam3
1yr ago
Natural law has nothing to do with christianity...only became part of catholic doctrine in the 13th century when Aquinas brought it in
In other words, it doesn't have nothing to do with it.
and never got baked into the other branches of christianity like it somehow did with catholicism.
Which is why I explicitly said that was an advantage of Catholicism over Protestantism, in this sense.
iprayiam3
4mo ago
I don't disagree but what are some examples outside of engineering? Boring legal work?
iprayiam3
9mo ago
Yeah that's right. The only two options are to legally mandate or disallow it. quite.
iprayiam3
9mo ago
It's not the same, sure, but where you get residency can be very career defining, especially if you have ambitions at being something other than being a shopping center dermatologist.
I have medium experience wtih academia.
I sympathise with the aims of the system but even so I’m surprised people aren’t livid - I’d never heard of this system before.
My PhD chair was one of these. I found it entirely unremarkable.
And getting a position because of who you’re sleeping with is the dictionary definition of nepotism. This is word-thinking. I don't care that it's called, nepotism. It isn't just not bad. It's good. Liberalism should be subordinate to the family, not the other way around.
At least if they limited it to marriage or shared children there would be a higher bar to climb.
Sure No disagreement there.
iprayiam3
9mo ago
You seem to think hereditary positions and nepotism protects societies against intelligent sociopaths
No I don't seem to think that. My post was an argument against that narrow interpretation. I think strong, and robust institutions that are somewhat protected from the whims of personalities currently occupying them limits the fallout. Hereditarianism in and of itself doesn't make this, and to any extent @2rafa thinks so, I disagree with her
iprayiam3
11mo ago
My point exactly. (with the caveat that these people aren't conservatives. They are right-wing, republican liberals.)
iprayiam3
2mo ago
I find surface-level convos boring and tend to detach myself if we move down that path.
Of course some people really are duller than others, or just worse fits conversationally for each other. Some people do like more or less substantative discussions, more or less argument, more or less critique, etc.
But taken too far this becomes a cope. And it's best not to self-frame like that. Almost everyone enjoys a good conversation. If you want to check out of a tedius or boring conversation, by all mean, it's your right, and might be the best use of your time.
But recognize internally that it's usually because you don't have the patience or interest in fishing, and probably NOT that the other person likes standing with his pole in the water not catching bites.
Two people go out fishing. Both are bad at it or are in an unfamiliar lake. They fumble around, leading eachother to different spots, as often moving on too quickly from a promising spot for other's taste or linger too long in an apparently bad spot. Neither one has the confidence, knowledge of the lake, or strategy to lead, so they keep stepping on each other's (and their own) attempts at catching something.
After an unproduction adventure they both walk away thinking, "It's too bad that guy didn't want to catch any fish. What a waste of time."
Maybe there's a minimum amount of "normie" (I hate that word, but you get the idea) topics I should keep up with?
Thinking they're being charitable and getting the entirely wrong message, the fishermen later say to themselves
"Maybe I should spend more time practicing puttering around in bad fishing spots, since the other guy seemed to like that."
No, that's not necessary at all.
iprayiam3
6mo ago
It's not even that. Imagine a guy, with 3 kids, who's wife homeschools, who bought a house in say, 2021, paid a fortune for an old house needing tons of maintainance but locked in at a good rate. The guy could be making 100k+ and is likely still living so tightly that he couldn't imagine buying luxury jewlery for himself or adjusting his budget by 5k without significant pain.
iprayiam3
6mo ago
Re 1, I'm mostly where @2rafa is on Adderall. I used it to get stuff done in college on occasion, and yeah it was wild. I also found that I enjoyed it quite a bit, which deterred me from really ever using it anymore or ever trying a stimulant recreational drug.
As I've gotten older, I similarly enjoy the feeling of caffeine buzz, somewhat more in quality (though not as intense of course) than alcohol. Sometimes I'll find myself taking extra caffeine drinks not because I'm tired or need to focus, but for the buzziness.
I constantly have to cycle down my caffeine tolerance, so that I can build it back up again. Possibly relatedly, I can fall asleep on caffeine quite easily, and sometimes if I'm already tired (fatigued or lacking in sleep), it knocks me the fuck out and I'll sleep sounder on a cup of coffee than not. This is supposedly a symptom of ADHD, so, who knows. (@self_made_human is that true or am I mistake?). I don't know how exactly to describe it, but it works both as a stimulant/nootropic and as a sleepy drug sometimes at the same time.
Finally, and this is probably 100% placebo, but am I the only person who feels like they can snap themselves into adderall-esque state (with out the fun / high feeling)? It doesn't last nearly as long and it's not as intense, but on Adderall, my brain was in a state of focus / flow that I remember quite distinctly, and can basically 'recall it' when necessary to focus.
I can't consider it because I've never seen it except in these scenarios where i'm assured it's true by its detractors. I especially haven't seen this in real life.
Again, Ive never seen this. Get better friends people. Romantically unsuccessful men are to the contrary some of the most sympathetically talked about people I know. Even where it's not sympathetic and just pathetic, that's not the same as immoral.
If you're contorting my comment into moral repudiation of someone for specifically being poorly undatable, I think we've found the disconnect.
This looks like nothing more than a victimhood mentality looking for a bully.
Even if it were somehow morally (I'm not) maligning the OP it's not for being single or unlucky in love.
If a Jewish guy stands up in a movie theater and shouts, 'AntiSemites are trying to silence me!!", His point isn't proven when people shush him.
Similarly, if you come in and say, 'how come I'm morally maligned for being undatable!", I'm not proving your point by repudiating that claim.
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