Critics are out in force, arguing that...the state sabotaged the program by not efficiently distributing treatment resources to addicts... I do sympathize that better public services and addiction resources that people actually trusted would help
Object level conversation already lengthy below, but want to take this in a tangent... about this reverse moral proscriptive perspective of government. It's not quite horseshoe theory because it inverts around pure liberalism.
On the one side, you have this idea that the government can prohibit or regulate certain behaviors. Rules against drugs, prostitution, gambling, buying alcohol on Sundays, etc. have traditionally existed within a concept of appropriate government power. These things may be associated with social conservatism, but more broadly the whole range of government's regulatory power is not broadly understoods as allowed only narrowly through a liberal perspective but as a (varyingly constrained) right of the democratic government to govern.
In the middle you've got a liberal ethos, where we should be maximizing personal freedom, only intervening where it threaten's another's freedom. Here most government regulation would be understood as only justified through protecting freedoms.
But then you get to the other side where you allow behaviors but demand socialized payments for the costs of those behaviors. Here the idea is flipped from the right to regulate to the obligation to provide additional services. Instead of saying, 'hey you can't gamble" to the gambler, we say, "hey, you have to subsidize the externalities of his gambling" to his neighbor. The druggy has the right to drugulate, but I don't have a right to not pay for the addict's access to hotlines, resources, etc (let alone the costs I have to pay for the infrastructural externalities).
I'm struggling to find the right words to describe this framework, but it's definitely a phenomenon.
And I want to add that very rarely would any individual be maximally inside one of these three frameworks across their political beliefs, but rather it's about the proportion and scope. All forms of general welfare do exist inside of this third frame, but it's traditionally seen as something to be limited and something that ideally comes from true disadvantage and need, not as a ballooning response to greasing self-destructive 'freedoms'.
To go full circle:
I do sympathize that better public services and addiction resources that people actually trusted would help
I completely disagree, and this is a runaway bad idea. If you want to make something legal / unregulated, then it stops being the government's job to prop it up against it's bad effects. Leave that to charity and NGOs.
If drugs are illegal, then I'm all for also pouring tons of money into helping people who use them. I'm all for a flexible justice system that can substitute help and supervised second chances for punishment and imprisonment. But if drugs are legal, then suck it up and use your freedoms responsibly. Don't demand the rest of the public to pay for the government to be the 'cool parent' who bails you out for the rest of your life.
iprayiam3
1mo ago
I'll say a few things.
-1 is having a family is far more detrimental to my ability to socialize than any and all technology. In my entire childhood, I don't recall my parents really ever doing anything social without it being related to their children. I at least hang out with friends about once a week. But with 3 kids, that's a ton!
My point here is that I think 'too much technology's is the wrong issue. It's young people not starting families that's changed. Any comparison between what single people in their 20s-30s are doing today vs 1985, is a weird comparison of we're not considering that they were having and raising kids in 1985.
-2. Have siblings close to you in age. Live nearby them as an adult. Built in social club. If you didn't get that, do it for your kids for fucks sake. Build a strong close knit family life, and provide whatever financial support you can to allow your kids to stay in the community as an adult.
-3. Get involved in your church. There's not a lot of substitute that get you a group of people who share your core values, orient their lives and worldviews around those values, ground them in a physical place visites weekly and build social clubs around this.
If you're a young adult get involved. My closest adult friends I met though young adult activities while single.
-4. Be a conservative, or more specifically a conservationist. Find something you believe in preserving and get involved with other people who want to preserve it. Maybe being an progressive activist can give the same thing here. I'm not sure.
-5. Run clubs.
iprayiam3
2mo ago
Part of my clients' clammed-up demeanors rests on a deluded notion that I won't fight as hard for their cases unless I am infatuated by their innocence. Perhaps they don't realize that representing the guilty is the overwhelmingly banal reality of my job.
Help me understand more clearly why this is 'deluded'? it might be wrong but deluded? You talk about your clients' poor theory of mind later, but don't offer any reason why, in their shoes they should know and beleive that you work just as hard for clients you believe are guilty.
I know it is a light hearted article, but the whole spirit of sneering and literal anecdotes of mockery and sarcasm with these people is good evidence that you might treat them psychologically differently. Maybe you really really would never work a little harder, polish a little more, fight a little better for a client you were sympathetic too, but that hardly seems deluded to assume.
When I recieved a serious speeding ticket, which I beleived was somewhat in err, the exact thought was in my mind as I debated how to discuss it with lawyers. Yes, yes, they're all going to fight for me to get out of it, and yes it's routine boring shit. But with even a chance of outcome unpredictability in the air, and knowing that I won't be there when the lawyer negotiates with the DA, is it really, not just incorrect but 'deluded' to wonder whether the lawyer, who's not getting any bonuses for better outcomes here, might advocate a little better for me if he likes me? (also I, a PhD, wasn't 100% confident exactly what the rules were about incriminating yourself to your lawyer. I can only imagine some level of lingering uncertainty with an uneducated criminal, especially if their lawyer talks to them with sarcasm and playful mockery that goes over their head.)
Even if that's not a conscious thought, we all want to ingratiate ourselves to people who hold some sort of power over us. You might see yourself as 'working for' this guy, but every time I interact with a doctor, a mechanic, or much less often a lawyer, I have a strong pang of recognition that my outcomes are somewhat at the mercy of this busy stranger's scruples. I become over eager to prove myself worthy of their esteem and extra consideration. Is it stupid and often counterproductive, sure. But your sneering about it to strangers on the internet only reenforces my perception that professionals are contemptuous of a lot of the pleebs they have to boringly 'serve'.
iprayiam3
6mo ago
The most charitable read here is that Musk thinks Wikipedia deserves less money, not no money
That's not the most charitable read, that's the obvious straight-forward read. Do you really think it's possible that Elon Musk doesn't know that servers cost some amount of money?
As others have noted below, Wikipedia doesn't need the money it raises to run itself, and hasn't needed it for years. Wikipedia could put it's assets / raised capital in a safe financial vehicle and run its servers forever on the profit. Elon Musk is 100% correct Wikipedia simply doesn't need a large yearly donation campaign to run itself as a website.
Musk is in an even better position to make this argument as he just massively cut the operational waste of a major website to prove the ridiculousness of the actual costs to bloat ratio. He is the only person who has ever done this at this scale, and thus is the best person in the world to listen to about wasted operating expenses.
I am not an Elon stan, but this is a willfully anti-Elon take that requires squinting his comment into absurdity just to prove how stupid he must be.
If you have been tricked into thinking Wikipedia needs your individual donation to keep the lights on, that's on you and on Wikipedia for lying to you, not on Elon.
iprayiam3
2mo ago
He's not sneering. People really are this stupid.
Making fun of stupid people for being stupid is sneering.
If you fucking lie to my face about stupid shit that I know is a lie, and moreover this is a shitty dumb lie that harms your case, then I'm still going to do my job, but by God I'm not going to give you the benefit of the doubt or try and help you out of the holes you are digging for yourself.
Well this kind of proves the point that you're going to give a different service based on your perception of the person you're dealing with.
Now of course, lying is a stupid and self fulfilling way for you to lower your esteem and because they're stupid, they're stupid liars. But the premise that OP immediately dismisses as deluded, is proven out here.
My biggest problem here is the claim that it's deluded to suspect one might be treated differently based on perception of sympathy.
I know ymkeshout enough to believe that he wouldn't consciously do that. But have no reason to extend that to any given professional wouldn't. And I don't believe that ymkeshout or anyone doesn't unconsciously. Replication crisis and all that, but the principles of influence and persuasion aren't totally false.
Of course lying to your lawyer is the wrong way to deal with that, but the premise as argued is wrong.
This article is 1 part dismissing as delusional to suspect you might get difference based on perceived sympathy. 1 part the fact that non Lawyers don't know ahead of time what is or isn't a lever in the legal process and 2 parts laughing that stupid people make stupid decisions.
And consider that this whole discussion exists in a world where lying about something as obviously stupid as, your gender can get you put into a better prison. So...
iprayiam3
2mo ago
So, separate a couple things out.
-
The fact that she was deviant and horney and naive enough to do this, is certainly a flag. "Youthful indiscression" is a bit of a euphemism or handwave or cope, because most youths don't make that kind of indiscression. I would be wary that this kind of outside-the-norm behavior is not some isolated trivia but representative of unreliable behavior traits that could be easily avoided in most other women. I'd be curious whether, aside from this she really is super normie now and what exactly that means. Sex norms and appetite vary widely with young women.
-
What's exactly her disposition now? Does she find prostitution morally wrong? (does Bob)? is this a repentance situation or a "not for me" scenario? These are very different starting points. Has she done actually 'work' to change? Has she had a transformative epistemic outlook, or was it more like, whoops! that went to far, etc? Would she disapprove of her daughter doing the same? If she's "reformed" and frames her past perspective as a moral failing and a cautionary tale, I'd probably leave it alone with Bob. Sinners deserve forgiveness. If she's still open-minded and women's choicy about it, but it's just not for her... I'd really talk Bob out of this one.
-
On a personal, disgust level, yeah I wouldn't personally be able to handle it. It's possibly worth mentioning that to 'normalize' the disgust reaction and give Bob an out to interrogate whether he's accurately evaluatoin his own. But I wouldn't take it to far.
In sum, the current nature of her today and her position on her past mistakes is super important to judge the context. Plenty of people are repentant of their past and it's good that they find people who can forgive them. Other people get fucked by overlooking severe lapses in discernment. Overall, I'd consider how she feels about prostitution in general today as more important than what's she's done in the past. Based on what you've written it's impossible to tell which is which here.
If forced to choose, I'd rather marry a hardcore born again trad-wife who stood firmly against sexual misconduct but had dabbled in the past and repented than a progressive minded virgin, who was outspoken about the right to sex work and rejected sexual prohibitions as patriarchical and unjust.
iprayiam3
2mo ago
Speaking of other professions, I'm not a lawyer, but I've worked at a mechanics shop, and the perspective is similar. The more truth you tell us about how your car got broke, the faster and easier it is to fix.
I think my point was entirely missed by everyone who's responded. Which is clearly my fault. I am in no way advocating or justifying lying to professionals.
I am saying that the professional has a great deal of power over your outcomes, limited time and attention for you, unknown scruples/ levels of quality, and will conduct their work on your behalf behind a veil of your own ignorance.
These factors can lead to a lack of trust and a desire to influence the interaction. LYING is a BAD strategy to resolve these issues. But it is understandable how and why someone kind of dim might develop that bad strategy in this context. Especially if lying has been an effective strategy in other interactions with people they don't trust or want to influence.
The definition of 'polyamorous' that I find cleanest, for me, is not forbidding your partner from having extra-relationship intimacy. It doesn't matter if they're acting on it or not, it doesn't matter if you don't feel like banging anybody else, as long as your partner could go have sex/love someone else if they wanted, then to me, that's polyamory.
I'll try to respond to more of your post later, but this definition is just nonsensical to the point that I can only assume it intentionally throws mud in the water.
Defining an orientation or proclivity based on non-nullifcation of your partner's activity is such an unintuitive and messy way to approach it. If you're not defining polyamory by what you like/do, you're not offering an honest definition. Aella is obfucating and virtue signalling, by trying to frame the core of polyamory about generosity toward others' preferences, not one's own.
Imagine if I said that the cleanest definition of being a fan of action movies is not vetoing your partner/friends from choosing an action movie on movie night. It doesn't matter if they like action movies or not, it doesn't matter if you don't feel like picking action movies when it's your turn to decide, as long as your partner could pick an action movie if they wanted, then to me, that's being a fan of action movies.
Does that defintion make any fucking sense? it's hard to be interested in engagement past such a goofy and self-serving opener.
You know, it's really a shame because with a little more effort, the guy could have taken this in so many interesting directions and still kept up posting. e.g. an earnest training log, or better discussion starters about what makes a 'Hock' or a literature review to look for any precedence, etc.
But it's clear at this point, these posts are just a lazy masterbatory exercise. I do feel for the dude. I suspect these posts had become a parasocial avenue for emotional engagement, to be cared about to some degree and evoke some sense of desire for his well-being.
Might I request that you only ban him until the end of the year? He (supposedly) takes off in mid-February, and as roped into his exhibitionist sympathy bait as we are, it's worth knowing whether he went out and his state of preparation and mental fitness. I think many of us would rather suffer a few January posts from him and provide him some last human empathy and discouragement, rather than go on wondering whether that one guy from that forum ended up killing himself.
iprayiam3
3mo ago
I can tell you the honest perception of my in-laws, is simply that Trump did a very good job as president the first time, and would have 'gotten the job done' if he had a second term.
They believe that he did build the wall, and did deliver on every other promise. Even arguments that he tried to deliver on X but the deep state stopped him, have been met with an insistance that he did deliver and that he will be smarter against the deep state this time around. There's no hatred here, there is percieved in justice, but that's not the driving force for them, and you could call it personal loyalty, to a degree but in their minds it's loyalty to a job well done. My in-laws beleive that Trump delivered a great first term and that the following are true: Trump:
- built the wall, and was well on his way to fixing immigration until Biden
- fought valiantly against lockdowns and Covid authoritarianism
- appointed good judges
- gave us the best economy
- kept us out of foreign wars
- had great foreign policy
- started to drain the swamp (I'm not 100% sure how hard they would go on this point)
Some of those things are more true than others. But to answer your question, I think some of voting for Trump is simply believing he was a known, great president, and while I think that's wrong, it doesn't need a completely different explanation.
You are describing what I used to criticize here as liberalism of the gaps: the theory that the solution to culture and institutions falling to progressivism via post-detraditionalization liberalism is MOAR liberalism!
No, the solution to protecting tradition and institutions is protecting tradition and institutions, both through fortification and legal protection. Libertarian solutions to protecting / building institutions cannot work in a legal landscape that makes a key component: free association, illegal.
OP is pointing this out with the fact that 'no politics' is subverted when you declare X value neutral. But the other side of the coin is also on display. When X is value neutral, anti-X is illegal discrimination / harassment. Start your own... cannot work without first winning back the neutral ground, which cannot be done when you spend all your time abandoning your institutions and fortifying elsewhere.
Show me an example where conservatives/traditionalists abandoned X to go build their own X-prime, where X-prime remains both not a ghetto and not actively infiltrated.
Your question about why traditionalists don't build their own X is easily answered in that they can't build their own X, and part of the reason is ironically because half their rank are actually liberals who keep telling them to build their own X.
Example:
Jonny Vanheusterwhilton is a made up character who used to get picked on as a child for his ridiculous last name, but that is completely irrelevant to this story so let's call him JV and we don't need to spell out his last name again.
Jonny V (JV), has lived in his neighborhood his whole life, even buying his parents' house when they retired. It's June 1st, and bigot that he is, JV (Jonny) bemoans that the neighborhood is plastered in Pride Flags and preachy yard signs. He's saddened that his neighborhood July 4th picnic has been discontinued and replaced with a late June Pride Party.
Jonny's actually not even a bigot, not even by modern standards, nor even a conservative. He is very pro-LGBT right, a believer in letting people live their own lives etc. He's just a combination of patriotic, nostalgic, and finds pride to be tacky and over commercialized. Yet this gets Jonny labeled a right wing bigot, which almost frustrates him as much as getting picked on for his name as a child.
Eventually his friend, @Primaprimaprima encourages him to just build his own neighborhood. (+) Out of options and tired of being picked on JV sells his family house and buys some farmland with several others in a less desirable exurban part of the town to turn into a new neighborhood. Saddened by the lack of mature hardwoods, history, culture, or accessibility to the broader city, JB puts that aside and focuses on the upside: no more Pride Month.
Although JV is not a conservative, it took partnership with a lot of them, and some outright bigots to even get this neighborhood started. No worries, though, because they aren't banning anyone. JV has a simple liberal solution: Their HOA will just say, no value-messaging yard decorations.
The HOA includes a lot of other shit JV doesn't like. His old neighborhood didn't have an HOA, but now, just to get back to neutral JV has to accommodate regulating EVERYTHING, even the length of his grass. He hates mowing. Almost as much as he hates his last name. Or being called a bigot.
Trouble begins when some of their conservative neighbors put up a cross on their front door, or Easter decorations. 'Hey,' yell the libertarian sect. NO MESSAGING. The French neighbor, Le Prima, convinces everyone that secularism is the best they can hope for in this new arrangement, the conservatives mostly* sadly acquiesce, telling themselves, at least it's better than Pride Month. (*A few with conviction move away to an even shittier, further exurb, to find out what happened to them scroll up to the + above and start reading. Continue recursively.)
This satisfies JV until July 4th comes around, JV's favorite holiday. There will be no J4 parade, and he is forced to take down the American flag he hung must come down at once.... Oh well... at least in the name of fairness this is a compromise.
JV wonders how previous generations like the one he grew up in were able to use maintain communities with shared traditions, while keeping out the elements they didn't like without over-regulating everything. JV can't ponder long before his neighbor accusingly reminds him about the types of discrimination that happened in yesterday. Remembering quickly that nostalgia for any aspect of the past is for bigots, JV quickly stops his musing, and never follows his train of thought to the answer: The type of community JV is describing is found alive in the neighborhood he left, albeit with different values.
Well all goes well for 2 more years until, as the city grows, his neighborhood does too. His exurb becomes a desirable suburb, and now folks who would have simply ignored the neighborhood move in. Doesn't matter thinks, JV, they'll have to live by our rules just like everyone else.
Imagine Jonny Vanheusterwhilton's shock on June 1st of the current year, when after returning from a trip oversees, he sees PRIDE FLAGS everywhere and a flier for a neighborhood pride parade.
"But.. but...but...," stutters Jonny. "I thought we didn't allow value messaging!"
"We don't," his helpful, new neighbor replies. "But... this was brought up at the HOA meeting you missed. You see us new neighbors quickly explained that this isn't about value messaging. It's common decency. To suppress it wouldn't be neutral, it would be bigoted and hateful. They saw it our way.
There were a few hold-out undesirables, but our lawyers were there to make sure they understood this is not negotiable, it's equality. I mean, anything less would be like not allowing you to hold your wife's hand while walking around the neighborhood."
"I'm actually gay," says Jonny.
"And a happy Pride Month to you!," the neighbor replies cheerily, while handing him a school board voting guide for the candidates who most protect trans youth.
That night, JV's visiting his old friend distraught. "It's simple," says Primaprimaprima as he opens a beer and hands to JV. "Just start your own neighborhood."
iprayiam3
4mo ago
This is pretty wild, but from my own experience a woman's pet love really ramps up when she starts getting 'ready for kids' and diminishes when the kids arrive.
My wife needed a dog when we got married (we had never even discussed it before). That dog was the world to her up to the day we came home from the hospital with a baby. Then it was just a nuisance to her.
My feelings towars the dog meanwhile never changed: he was always my bud and never a surrogate kid.
But in your case yeah shes going overboard, it's not normal and so I'm hesitant to tell you to shrug it off. But I'd also put money on the probability that it's related to her biological clock firing in weird ways.
iprayiam3
2mo ago
Every month I begin to see some of my female friends and acquaintances, generally middle-upper class women, getting married and having children (age=27 - 32). After the birth their social profiles become typical of a mother with a child; continuous social media posts of their children, mom's initiatives, kindergardens, lovely picture with their newly wed husbands etc.
I think you're compressing too much into a single life stage. There's no reason to think that the stage of life of newly-weds are much like mothers of babies, are much like mothers of school children. I got married in 2016, we had kids quickly, and my first only entered kindergarten this year. That's almost a decade of life and 80% of my wife's time out of college, to sweep together into one motion.
I wouldn't expect being newly married to change much at all, compared with having children, so mixing those two together seems confounding to whatever effect you're noticing. As a mother of 3, she has nothing in common from a 'stages of life' perspective with newly weds. I would consider a newly married woman to be much more similar to a single woman than to a mother.
If your pool of new moms is too small to notice a trend without also including newlyweds or mothers expecting, then I suspect you don't have enough data beyond an anecdotal impression. If the trend actually reverses or moderates if you look at only mothers, or only mothers of children older than 3, then there's your answer. If the trend seems just as strong without newly weds, then I see no reason to combine them in your observation.
iprayiam3
7mo ago
This is the first time I've heard of it and I hang out in rat spaces like theMotte, which are the only places ive ever ever ever heard anything about Hananai. My theory is as simple as this, I think your information bubble has led you to vastly over-estimate Hananai name recognition / brand awareness especially among the age demographics likely to buy books.
I think you're searching too hard for a reason, when your null hypothesis should be that he doesn't make the list and try to test the theory of why he would
iprayiam3
2mo ago
I believe this in many cases, but it is overstated. Dog HBD is real... And some early life traumas like premature mother separation don't seem overcomeable imo
iprayiam3
6mo ago
I think the best answer to both @Ben___Garrison and @Frequent_Anybody2984 below is found in this recent NYT article:
New Normal or No Normal? How Economists Got It Wrong for 3 Years.
We can go back and forth one whether the underlying datasets were right or wrong all along, whether the forecast models were accruate within an exceptable margin, and how far out, whether your own prediction or post-hoc interpretation is vindicated.
But the fact is that the 'experts' in their communication, reporting, framing, advisement, and forecasting were wrong. It is plain, and clear and widely known. To disagree, is to disagree with the experts on what the experts believed.
To express confoundedness at this trickling down into people updating priors against experts' guidance or to make silly analogies that this is just 'vibes' from out-of-step, misunderstood lived experiences, is incorrect.
And to alternatively admit, that 'yes, yes experts were wrong for the past 3 years, especially in what they communicated to the public, and in ways very obviously and coincidentally partisan, but please believe the current diagonsis of the economy right now because it's what the expert data tells us', well sure, I'm listening, but you need to do better than make insulting hokey analogies about lived experience or tell me that your Muslim friend is smart, but jihadistic so, I should just listen to the experts now.
iprayiam3
1mo ago
I certainly don't have the option of "reducing stress" as is advised, what am I going to do? Quit my job and lay about?
I mean, yeah... If your job's stress level can't be reduced below the threshold that it might permanently blind you, then yeah if we were friends I'd strongly advise you to quit or reconsider how immovable the stress level is.
iprayiam3
10mo ago
This post and the thread in response is unreadable, as it and most responses are a long collection of unrelated ideas and only the ability to respond to some before branching off into dead ends and redundancy.
I suggest we don't do this. It's extraordinarily annoying.
Perhaps you meant the thread discussion to be confined to the meta-discussion about discussing such topics, but it clearly didn't turn out that way and you shouldn't have itemized several dozen.
A top level post that throws out 73 disparate discussion topics is an abuse of the concept of topics. This is essentially 73 low effort posts that amount to "controversial statement... discuss."
Not buying it. That's an extremely idiosyncratic and unituitively gerrymandered way to describe it.
Are you suggesting that polyamorous refers to the relationship model and the relationship model alone?
People describe themselves as polyamorous all the time. Proportionally moreso than people explicitly identify themselves as monogamous. So we've got 3 options
- The word polyamorous should now have an extensively different definition when describing a person as when describing their relationship.
- People identifying as polyamorous should fit Aella's definition.
- People identifying as poly are essentially stating they are looking for a poly relationship via Aella's defintion
#1 upends the idea of "clean" defintions proving my point, #2 makes your objection moot, and #3 is observably false. The central concept of a person looking for a poly relationship, is not general permissiveness that the other person might seek outside relationships. (Yes some people have a cuck fetish, but that's not 1:1 being polyamorous and it's not even what Aella's defintion describes)
You might further object then, that the polyamourous person is seeking a reciprocal relationship of Aella's model defintion. But
4 Aella didn't describe reciprocally in her definition. She used you pronouns, which linguistically imply a personal defintion not a relational definition.
The definition of 'polyamorous' that I find cleanest, for me, is not forbidding your partner from having extra-relationship intimacy. should be:
The definition of 'polyamorous' that I find cleanest, for me, is not forbidding eithe partner or "one or both partners".
Describing it as your partner makes the claim that it's describing a relationship rather than a person suspect.
Regardless, even if Aella just used poor wording, her defintion isn't described reciprocally, so again should we take it as implied or not necessary. If not necessarily reciprocal, then we're back to the issue with #3. The "cleanest" way of defining something doesn't even capture the core part of what many people are looking for in a poly relationship.
5 If it is necesasrily reciprocal, beyond Aella not describing it that way, it's now fails to capture many actual polyamorous configuirations. Is 'mormon style' polygamy now not polyamorous? Or even worse, the girlfriends who have only the one partner are technically polyamorous, but the man with multiple partners technically isn't? This is a very backwards definition.
At the end of the day, wouldn't it be much cleaner, to, instead of hi-jacking polyamorous to mean something ideosyncratic, describe the relationship model with the already existing word, "open relationship"?
No? Because Aella isn't describing an open relationship, she's producing nonsense.
iprayiam3
8mo ago
I think this is a tired drumbeat from your side, wishing over and over for pro-lifers to not actually be prolife. I get that it's inconvenient that the religious right is not up to your snuff. It's counterpart is Kulak's old saw that if prolifers really believed it, they'd be more terrorists.
I want to point out, something else though:
forced into having more babies
This is a tremendously biased frame. It's a sister of the constant misinterpretation from pro-choicers that prolifers think people having unprotected sex should 'suffer the consequences', when it's nothing like that at all.
Forced into having babies has implications that are simply not true. Except on a negligable and understandably hotly debated margin (i.e., rape) nobody is 'forcing' babies on them, and even then it's not the same person as the pro-lifer.
At most, they're being 'forced' not to kill babies they already made. Your frame begs the question too much.
I get you can make arguments all day long about the non-existent impulse control of the population, but that still doesn't causally or morally get you all the way to arguing that Republicans are forcing them to have more babies any more than me not giving you money for drugs, 'forces' the drug user to steal.
iprayiam3
6mo ago
very substantially restrict their actual freedom
Here in America, speech is actual freedom, my man.
What's your take?
My take is that I've never seen so comically insane of an instance of Goodhart's Law (When the measure becomess the target, it ceases to be a meaningful measure).
Having values you are willing to die for is getting badly translated into Being willing to die for something gives it/you value. Dude you are way off base, and you should take it as a sign of your ultimate disappointment and disillusionment that everyone EVERYONE has told you so, and you stubbornly refuse to adjust your perspective even a little.
I approve of setting goals and taking on endurance challenges etc, so I have no reason to talk you out of that, generally. But you cannot allow yourself to go do something until you've cleared yourself as mentally competent enough to take on the risk. So here is a quick sobriety test:
1. You do fully understand that completing the Hock will not make you not awkward? It won't directly or indirectly help awkwardness at all.
In fact, I would bet it will make you feel slightly more awkward in social settings because it will be another point of distance between your inner self and those around you. "These people have never been through what I have been through" will become a resentment crutch, when you realize it did nothing to directly affect your social awkardness.
2. Do you understand that it will make you only slightly more attractive to women? Slighlty and in a very limited way, which will be quickly undone and reversed if you try to milk it.
Let me unpack that. I recall you said previously that you used to do competitive downhill skiing in high school. I'd put the Hock at objectively 30% as attactrive as that, but with the compensating benefits of recency. (If, you're say, under 35, I imagine the skiing will remain more interesting). Thriving in a competitive social and physical environment is far more interesting to women than pursing a loner hobby.
For another comparison, it will register as about as attractive as if you've recently completed a marathon. Maybe slightly more if the "I put my life on hold for 3 months" registers as financial secuirty. So, I'd say about as interesting as recently completing a marathon during a trip to Europe.
Now here's why I say it is limited and will be quickly undone, and listen closely because it has everything to do with the awkwardness issue: To present it attractively, you can only bring it up briefly once or twice, and should mostly act uninterested in talking about it, like it wasn't that interesting, so mundane for your life that you're amused she's even interested. Basically, if you harp on it in any way like you have here, you'll be repelling the ladies like youre name is Pepper Spray. Thus there is a hard and very low cap with the usefulness of this bit of 'proof of value' that can be used with any given woman. (Unless she is herself an autistic survivalist, which is fine. Maybe even seek those out after this)
If you in anyway try to: Go into long details about the trip, get too enthusiastic, present any philosophical musings, bring it up regularly, make it obvious that your sense of identity or self-worth is connected to this, call yourself a Hockist etc, you will be flagged (unfairly or not) as weird and unattractive by the average woman.
EDIT: By way of analogy, overall I feel like you're a guy trying to prove he isn't autistic and directionless by... building a giant model trainset in the basement. The harder you go all out on this, the more counter-productive it's going to be.
Don't get me wrong, a giant train set sounds fun and cool, and I endorse it. Just be clear about what it is and isn't going to accomplish for you.
iprayiam3
2mo ago
It seems much easier for Satoshi to simply also have a second (or third fourth and fifth etc) wallet with enough millions in it that there's no need to touch the original for most values of living large.
Dude, you went less than a week. That is not enough time to update on how much social media affects you. I know it's oversimplified, but remember the saying - it takes 21 days to form a habit. Point is, id give any lifestyle change a month before speculating on how it affects you.
More options
Context Copy link