self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
I'm a transhumanist doctor. In a better world, I wouldn't need to add that as a qualifier to plain old "doctor". It would be taken as granted for someone in the profession of saving lives.
At any rate, I intend to live forever or die trying. See you at Heat Death!
Friends:
A friend to everyone is a friend to no one.
User ID: 454
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
15d ago
Come on, spare me the "But what about PHOTOSHOP????? What about SPELLCHECKERS????" I am not an AI newb, nor an AI-hater. But you should not be using AI to generate your words for posting here. That is my opinion, and it will remain my opinion.
I'm wounded that you think my argument is as unsubtle as that. What I intended to get across is that a black-or-white approach is closer to an article of fate. The real world is not made of pixels, it is made of atoms (or wave functions or...) which do not come with convenient metadata attesting to origin. Even a digital pixel can produce the same outcome, and so can the larger arrangements of pixels, regardless of whether meat or machine or meat machines placed them. I care about the image, not the brush. Eventually, knowing that there was (or wasn't) a brush will not add much information, or at least pragmatically valuable information. Just a Planck Time later (as implied by the Intermediate Value Theorem), the brush will be an active detriment. Are we there? I suspect we are oh so close.
I am powerless to change your opinion here, but know I do what I do for principled reasons and not laziness. You assume the slop will stay slop. It will be better than you, or me, sooner than is comfortable.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
15d ago
I honestly don't know. I haven't heard of any efforts to impose Mandarin in HK, at least, which is where I'd imagine the friction would show.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
15d ago
I genuinely do not understand the intuition at play here. Let's imagine someone who has an instinctual aversion to the use of AI image gen: is using Adobe Firefly to change a single pixel with it sufficient to taint a larger painting? Two pixels? Ten? To finish the blocked-in background that the artist would have been too lazy to finish had he not had the tools at hand?
What if the artist deletes the AI pixel and reinserts one himself, with the exact same hexcode?
(It is worth noting that at one point, in the not so distant past, that even Photoshop itself was treated with similar suspicion)
Where is your threshold for "too much"? When you recognize an AI fingerprint? The problem is that once you begin suspecting it in a particular user, it is easy to imagine that there is more of it than in reality. Of course, if you have an all-or-nothing attitude, then I suppose that sounds less horrible to you than it does to me. I skew closer to a linear-no-threshold model, or perhaps one where, for the average writer, there exists an x% of AI usage that will increase overall quality as measured by multiple observers. Preferably blinded ones.
This x% can be very high for the truly average. I'm talking average Redditor. It can be very low, vanishingly so for others. Scott has mentioned that he has tried using LLMs to imitate his own style and has been consistently disappointed in the outcome.
I think, for me, the optimal amount is 1-10%. 20% is pushing it. This essay is closer to 20%. But even that 20% is closely vetted for factuality. Alas, it has not been vetted for style as hard, or else this topic wouldn't have arisen. In fact, I didn't particularly try. Performing edits to launder AI commentary as my own strikes me as dishonest.
I envision myself as the artist using the tool to finish painting that unfinished background. Sometimes, it makes something so good it's worth bringing to prominence in the foreground. The day where I can see no conceivable value-add from my own contribution is when I pack my bags as a writer. I suppose it is fortunate that I've been at it so long that there is a sizeable corpus of time stamped, archived evidence showing that I am damn good without it. That I don't need it. I still think I benefit from it, though I'm not sure I can change your mind on the topic.
After all, there are a lot of people making pure slop. I try not to ever become one of them.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
15d ago
Textbook narcissist? I've read the actual textbooks, and I'm afraid that I do not share your opinion. You can keep it, for what that's worth.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
15d ago
That is high praise, thank you. I will say that the intent behind my use of LLMs was to both improve quality and maintain my distinctive style in the final output. If people are pointing out deficiencies in the latter, then I am clearly doing something wrong (by my own standards) even if the content itself is unimpeachable.
Looking back at this particular post, it's clear to me that I let the damned bots insert boilerplate and verbiage into my text that did not originate there. It is also on me for not being careful with more edit passes, by which I mean manual ones. I live and I learn.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
15d ago
This is something I have considered (but let's be honest, I'm too lazy to do so). Last time this happened, I went to the effort of sharing screenshots of multiple versions of my drafts in progress, which is a serious pain.
The main issue is that there is no robust way to ensure that the text presented as "human" wasn't LLM influenced in some way. Even a system that monitored raw keystrokes is vulnerable to someone simply looking at another monitor and typing in LLM text manually. It is trivial to fake the whole process if someone wants to, especially when text is usually copied in wholesale. It is also trivial to pass off AI content as entirely human written, but it requires a degree of effort that the average troll is unwilling to devote.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
15d ago
I’ve long considered moving there, although it would have to be for the right package and job, and I would want to at least try to learn Cantonese (mainly for my own amusement) which is notoriously difficult.
Courtesy of too many web novels, I'm so Chinese that the nearest Chinatown is just "Town" to me. Unfortunately, I don't have the gumption to actually learn a fourth (fifth?) language, so I hope smart glasses and earbuds with live translation continue improving at the pace they are. Hopefully the Chinese Century will have Standard American as the lingua franca.
I do agree that HK seems quiet of late. Maybe too quiet. The majority of malcontents seem to have fled to the UK, which has embraced them with open arms. It certainly feels like half their doctors work for the NHS now, which I think is a questionable decision on their parts.
My take is that HK will likely continue being the financial capital, while Hainan becomes the cooler Shenzen. Of course, I doubt the CCP will object if more finance moves to the latter and makes HK obsolete.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
15d ago
I am not pro-CCP in the least, and I am genuinely unsure what gave you that impression from the essay. One would assume that LLMs would be anti-CCP by default.
All I can see is that I haven't opted to vociferously lambast the CCP for past poor choices. I think everyone here knows enough about Hong Kong or Taiwan to not need a detailed explainer.
I think that the Hainan FTP is a good idea, a great one even. It represents liberalization and something closer to true free trade, which I'm all for. It is a shame that the CCP is the one enacting it, but I don't want to correct my enemies when they are trying to do something positive sum.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
16d ago
I am aware. I find it most unfortunate, since I do genuinely believe that LLMs help make my writing even stronger.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
16d ago
My man, I quite literally said, in the essay itself, that I used ChatGPT for help. That is not the same as using it to write an essay!
I am not an expert on geopolitics or economics. I asked ChatGPT for help with relevant theories (I do know about the Gravity model of trade and am tangentially familiar with Acemoglu). Why? Because nobody with more expertise brought this up first in a hot minute.
Discussion of using AI in general, though not one particular circumstance: https://www.themotte.org/post/3411/a-broken-model-of-the-world/392472?context=8#context
You do realize that's in the context of an essay with no AI involvement beyond feedback? I have few qualms about disclosing it when it's actually relevant, or denying my usage. You don't have to use GPT-Zero, which is an unreliable tool at the best of times. You can just ask. The honest answer here is I ran into a very interesting article, wrote a rough draft of an essay, asked multiple models for feedback and edit passes, then did the tedious work of checking for hallucinations. This was over multiple days, and several good points noted by the AI, such as the applicability of various economic models, was probably accepted by me into the final version. As far as I can tell, there are no hallucinations, beyond quotes from poorly sourced Chinese literature that I can't read (suitably signposted and kept as a joke).
Self_made, your writingnis better than this. AI or not, I can't read this, but I read the entire essay about broken world models just fine. As a mod, I'm sure you're much more familiar with the rules than I am and wouldn't break them, but whatever AI or other peocess used here made the final essay worse in my imo.
The current moderation consensus is that the use of AI to generate all or even most of a post, particularly in an attempt to pad effort or mislead, is a clear violation of the rules. We have refrained from declaring what proportion of an essay or post must be AI written to be worthy of action. It is a ruling mainly made to dissuade spam or bad-faith actors, and using it for editing or proofreading is, as far as I'm aware, above board.
While it's very kind of you to say that you prefer 100% raw SMH, you haven't even seen the raw essay! How would you know if it's better? I don't, or I'd have posted it.
The previous essay on China was a throwaway written in the middle of the night, it lacks the spit and polish of an effortpost written over hours or days. You will see a lot of variance in my style based on how much effort I'm putting in.
Much like goods "manufactured" in Hainan, I believe I have added enough additional value to the base product to post without qualms. It is, after all, mostly mine. Or perhaps the AI added enough value to my base product. The day I throw raw ChatGPT output in here is the day I welcome public crucifixion.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
16d ago
Hey man, I'm no expert here. All I can say with a semblance of confidence is that the Chinese seem to disagree with you. Hence the whole FTP shtick.
Perhaps they think the two systems are complementary. Or perhaps it's a massive proof of concept, albeit one with the usual amount of Chinese bloody-mindedness. They rarely half-ass these things.
You get Communism with Chinese Characteristics, something more experimental on Hainan, and maybe integration down the line when one decisively does better than the other. It's very pragmatic.
We Have Taiwan At Home
There is a story that Su Shi, the great Song Dynasty poet, was exiled to Hainan in 1097. At the time, this was a death sentence. The island was a malarial backwater, the literal end of the known world, inhabited by "barbarians" and venomous snakes. Su Shi, being a stoic and a gourmand, reportedly (and perhaps apocryphally) made the best of it by learning to cook oysters and writing poems about how nice the weather was. Fast forward a millennium, and the Communist Party of China has decided that Su Shi's place of exile is the future of global capitalism.
On the 18th of December, 2025, Beijing officially "closed" the customs border around Hainan. This sounds bad. Usually, when you close a border, it means tanks are rolling in. In this case, it means the opposite: Hainan is now treated as a separate customs territory for goods, with a "first line" between the island and the rest of the world and a "second line" between the island and the mainland. The Reuters headline calls it a "$113 billion free-trade experiment." The details are drastic, the implications, as far as I can tell, immense. If you are a foreign company, you can ship a wide range of inputs into Hainan, subject to a negative-list regime, tariff-free. If you process those goods there, adding just 30% value under the Free Trade Port's eligibility and supervision rules, you can sell them into mainland China with zero tariffs (while import VAT and consumption taxes may still apply, depending on the product).
This is the "Hainan Free Trade Port", and if the Chinese government is to be believed, it is the successor to Hong Kong, a pilot for joining the CPTPP, and a strategic hedge against a hostile trade war with the US, all rolled into one tropical island.
This is a very big deal. It is also, depending on who you ask, either a big brain play at "dual circulation" economics or a doomed attempt to simulate a free market inside a panopticon. I for one, tend towards optimism.
Let's look at the mechanics, because they are fascinatingly game able. I suspect that might even be the intent:
The core purpose of the Hainan FTP is what we might call the 30% Loophole.
Under normal circumstances, if you want to sell a widget to a consumer in Shanghai, you pay a tariff. If that widget comes from a country currently annoyed with China (or vice versa), that tariff might be punitive. I wonder why tariffs have been a hot topic of late.
Under the new Hainan rules, the flow looks like this:
- Import raw materials or components into Hainan (Tariff: 0%).
- Do "processing" in Hainan that increases the value by 30%.
- Ship the finished product to Shanghai (Tariff: 0%). This sounds like a standard Free Trade Zone, but the scale is different. Most FTZs are fenced-off industrial parks near airports. Hainan is an entire province of 10 million people. It is a vacation destination.
Imagine if the USGov declared that Florida was a separate customs entity. You could ship French wine or Japanese steel into Miami tax-free. If you turned the steel into a car in Orlando, you could sell it to New York tariff-free.
Perhaps just as important, the tax regime is aggressive. Qualifying firms in encouraged sectors can access a 15% corporate income tax rate (versus the standard 25%), and eligible "high-end" or "urgently needed" talent can be brought down to an effective 15% personal rate via refunds of the portion above 15%. This is a direct shot at Singapore and Hong Kong.
The economic incentives here are powerful. The "30% value added" is a low bar. The accounting details matter: bill of materials, processing costs, overhead; but 30% is low enough that assembly, testing, packaging, and integration often get you there. If I were a German chemical company or a Japanese electronics manufacturer, I'd be looking at this and calculating the margin. You can bypass the Great Wall of Tariffs by setting up a factory in Haikou.
Why is Beijing doing this?
The standard answer is "economic growth." China's FDI dropped ~ 10% in the first three quarters of 2025. The property sector is still a mess. They need a win.
But the specific timing and structure suggest two other motivations: The Hong Kong Problem and The CPTPP Gambit:
Hong Kong used to be the interface between China and the world. It was the airlock. You could keep the mainland pressurized with communism and capital controls, while Hong Kong remained a vacuum of common law and free capital. It worked great until 2019-2020, when the airlock started leaking politics. Beijing has effectively integrated Hong Kong politically, but in doing so, they damaged its unique value proposition. Trust in Hong Kong's distinct legal system has eroded. The "Hainan Option" is an attempt to build a backup airlock.
The theory goes: We don't need the British Common Law or colonial judges to have a financial hub. We can just simulate the economic conditions of Hong Kong (low tax, free trade) without the political pains (protests, foreign judges).
On the other hand:
The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is the trade deal that the US abandoned under Trump, leaving Japan and others to run it. It has very high standards for data flows, labor rights, and state-owned enterprises.
China wants in. Joining CPTPP would be a geopolitical coup, effectively isolating the US from the Pacific trade architecture. But China, as currently constituted, cannot meet the standards. The state subsidies are too high; the data laws are too strict. Hainan is the "pilot." The Reuters article quotes Vice Premier He Lifeng calling it a "vital gateway." The idea is to adopt CPTPP-compliant rules only in Hainan. If it works, they can tell the trade bloc, "Look, we can do it. There's enough trade in the Pacific without the US wagging its dick at us."
The skepticism here is high. As one diplomat noted in the Reuters piece, CPTPP members generally demand nationwide commitments, not just a gated playground for pilot projects. Beijing hopes Hainan will serve as a proof of concept; trade negotiators suspect it will be a showpiece rather than a structural reform.
Will it work?
If you are a fan of Gravity Models of Trade, you should be bullish (I do not know enough to claim to be an expert, I'm just doing this because it's been a few days and nobody else has bothered). Hainan sits right in the middle of the South China Sea, one of the busiest shipping lanes on earth. It is closer to Vietnam and the Philippines than Shanghai is. If you lower friction/tariffs in a high-gravity area/massive population centers, trade will happen. The physics of economics demand it. If you are a fan of Institutional Economics (think Acemoglu and Robinson), you should be skeptical.
The institutionalist argument is that Hong Kong worked not because of the tax rate, but because of the Rule of Law. If you had a contract dispute in Hong Kong, you knew a judge in a wig would apply English common law, regardless of what the Party Secretary thought.
Hainan does not have judges in wigs. It has the People's Courts. The "Hainan Free Trade Port Law" passed in 2021 promises protection for foreign investors, but we have seen how quickly laws can change when they conflict with "national security."
However, there is a middle path: the "Good Enough" Equilibrium.
Foreign capital might not need perfect British Common Law. It might just need "predictable enough" rules and "high enough" profits. If the 30% value-add loophole generates a 20% increase in net margin for a German carmaker, they might be willing to tolerate the risk that the local court is biased.
Dubai is a good comparison here. Dubai is more chocolate than it is a democracy. It does not have English Common Law (though the DIFC does). But it functions as a global hub because the ruling family understands that screwing over foreign investors is bad for business. If Hainan can establish a reputation for "commercial neutrality", even within an authoritarian state, it could siphon off a lot of the manufacturing-adjacent services that are currently leaving Hong Kong.
There is also the Trump Factor (implied by the fact that 2025 of all years is the date of implementation). If the US is ramping up tariffs on "China," Hainan offers a fascinating shell game.
If a product is made in Vietnam, shipped to Hainan for "processing," and then shipped to Europe, what is its origin? If a product is made in Hainan and shipped to the US, does it get hit with the "China Tariff"?
Probably yes. Customs agents are not stupid (alas). Outside China, origin is usually about substantial transformation or "last substantial transformation," often implemented through tariff classification changes or specific processing rules, not the Free Trade Port's internal 30% threshold.
But for the rest of the world, Hainan offers a way to interact with the Chinese economy without the full weight of mainland protectionism. The "30% value add" rule effectively turns Hainan into a giant mixing vat. You pour in global commodities, stir them with Chinese labor (which is still cost-competitive for high-skill work), and pour out a "Hainan" product. This helps China move up the value chain. Instead of just being the "World's Factory" (doing the scutwork), they become the "World's Processor" (high value add-ons).
Let's look at the numbers again. Hainan's GDP is $113 billion. Hong Kong's is $407 billion. To catch up, Hainan needs to grow at explosive rates. But it has a handicap: talent. Hong Kong is a nice place to live if you like cosmopolitan cities. Hainan is... nice if you like beaches and humidity. But it lacks the schools, the nightlife, and the cultural cachet of HK or Shanghai.
The "talent" question is usually where these top-down economic zones fail. You can build the airport and the office towers, but if the bankers and engineers don't want to live there, you just have a very expensive ghost town. However, the tax incentives for "urgently needed" talent are the counter-weight. In a world where Western nations are talking about wealth taxes and China's mainland tax is high, an effective 15% cap is very attractive. It might attract a specific class of mercenary expatriates and Chinese tech workers looking for a tax haven.
Explain the implications like I'm an idiot, or a precocious 5 year old:
I predict a golden age of smuggling. The "Second Line" (the border between Hainan and the mainland) is the critical point of failure. If you have a zero-tariff zone separated from a high-tariff zone by a ferry ride, the incentive wedge is enormous. Expect the "Second Line" to become a cat-and-mouse game of drone deliveries and mislabeled cargo.
Hainan is geographically closer to Hanoi than to Beijing. The marketing for the FTP explicitly positions it as a gateway to Southeast Asia. If Hainan works, it becomes the de facto capital of the South China Sea economic zone. It pulls Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines closer into China's economic gravity well, regardless of the naval disputes.
I suspect this splits the functions that used to be united in HK. It makes HK less indispensable to Beijing, which in turn makes HK more vulnerable politically. Hong Kong keeps the IPOs; Hainan takes the supply chains.
And of course, the Taiwanese elephant in the South China Sea. I get more than a whiff of "we have Taiwan at home", an effort to make a China that is less... Chinese. Perhaps a proof-of-concept that Beijing can take the boot of the neck if you unite amicably.
In a letter from exile in 1097, Su Shi wrote of Hainan: "I have no meat to eat, no medicine for my illness, no house to live in, no friends to visit, no coal for winter, no cool spring for summer. But for some reason, I've got a lot of raw fish. FeelsBadMan." (I am not sure he said any of this at all, I asked ChatGPT for cool quotes. At least Wikipedia confirms he was exiled to the area)
In 2025, you can get all of those things in Hainan, tax-free, likely imported from Australia or France. The fish, you probably want from somewhere with lower levels of mercury.
China is attempting to engineer a free market organ and transplant it into nominally communist body. The rejection risk is moderate. I, for one, am interested in seeing how it all plays out.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
16d ago
Thank you!
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
16d ago
It is very much not the model! I'm in love, not concussed haha.
You might have missed this recent update:
https://www.themotte.org/post/3416/wellness-wednesday-for-december-17-2025/392615?context=8#context
All I want for Christmas is Her
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
16d ago
I finally told her I love her. I probably could have said it weeks ago, but I’ve spent the last few years developing a very healthy respect for the kind of wreckage that happens when you deploy those words at the wrong time. When you’ve spent enough time losing, you start to treat your internal state like a high-stakes game where you’re terrified of overplaying your hand.
She actually beat me to the punch. We had been existing in a state of high-density clinginess for a while, just being generally ridiculous to each other, and she decided to try a stealth maneuver. She ended a conversation with "goodnight love," clearly hoping I’d just let it slide past without making a scene. But I’m tall; very little goes over my head (physical or metaphorical) without me noticing.
It feels good. It feels considerably better than I’m usually willing to admit things can feel.
I still had to give her a hard time about the timing, though. 1:30 in the morning after a grueling day is not exactly the cinematic peak I had envisioned. I had a whole plan involving chocolates and flowers and the kind of deliberate romantic effort that makes for a better story. Instead, I got a sneak attack at my most exhausted.
In the meantime, we’ve started "soft-launching" the relationship to our respective families. This feels like a significant escalation of the stakes. I’m really hoping this works out; my heart has taken enough hits lately that it probably deserves a vacation, or at least a very gentle training montage. Maybe this is just what it looks like when you finally put the muscle to work.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
17d ago
Good post. I agree with most of it, and have made similar claims on the record. I appreciate someone else picking up the torch.
Life used to be so very mysterious. What Elan Vitale motivated living flesh while a similar weight of dead meat or clay stayed dumbly inert?
Well, turns out that even the most ineffable mystery of the time could be reduced to biology, then chemistry, then physics. We can simulate just about any part of the body, except that it's so computationally expensive that anything larger than a cell is too much for our supercomputers, at least at full resolution. I expect the same is true for qualia. I am confident that free-will is just what it feels like to be a computationally bounded entity making agentic decisions. We don't know what our decisions will be, even if an omniscient observer can see it's all deterministic, or at least non-deterministic in ways that do not leave room for "choice".
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
17d ago
I legitimately can't even imagine what a killshot on Trump would be.
It's easy for me. The bullet would have had to go just an inch to the left.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
17d ago
It is not that I am incapable of appreciating good coffee, it's just that I don't particularly care either way.
Back in med school, I had a crippling caffeine addiction. Yes, this was before I got my ADHD meds, how did you guess?
Anyway, I used to wake up in the morning, and couldn't be arsed to take milk out of the fridge or borrow a roommate's kettle. I just poured instant coffee powder into an empty plastic coke bottle, added some cold water from the tap. Swirl for taste, and then pour it all down my gullet.
There was almost a queue in the dorms to see this bullshit the first few times I did it. Ah, good times. I eventually upgraded to warming up the water to be slightly warm and using a mug. I'm very civilized now.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
17d ago
If 4chan goes behind an IQ gate, I can only see good outcomes for the world at large.
As it is, the only reason CAPTCHAS aren't even more useless is because the typical consumer chatbot (as available to the typical normie) is simply too polite to lie about being a robot (and are also trained not to solve them).
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
19d ago
I'm relieved to find out that I wasn't quite cynical enough to go full noir. I never actually believed that I "deserve" this lady, not quite willing to consign myself to purgatory yet. My attitude towards the genre is like my attitude towards Warhammer 40k, fun to read about, fun to imagine myself as the hard-boiled protagonist, but actually inhabiting it? Oh hell no.
I enjoyed reading this, thank you.
You're welcome!
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
19d ago
Bloody hell. My mom told me the same thing, in the same words. I can only wish she came from such a noble lineage, but I've been trying to live by them nonetheless.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
19d ago
Some more context:
The "modal" model of a typical relationship in India is that the couple will start seeing each other largely on the down-low. Things don't blow up immediately? Loop in your friends. Things don't crash after a few weeks or months and they really like each other? Then parents are (usually) informed. Things are serious? Introduce them in person. By the time the parents are meeting each other, you're practically engaged.
Theres definitely major variance. Stage in the life cycle. Liberal vs conservative, in social terms. Sanity, maturity. But that's roughly how it works for most of us. I don't think it's that different in most of the West, but each step is a bigger milestone here.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
19d ago
You're right, but the denizens of even a specific cultural group aren't homogenous. I won't pretend to have the full picture, but she is scared to introduce me because:
We don't know for a fact where this is going. Just knowing where we want to take this isn't sufficient for it to happen, even if it's necessary. Neither of us are quite delusional enough to make promises about marriage just yet (well... now that I say that. She was drunk, it might have been a joke).
If she brings me over, that raises the stakes massively. I can see she's deeply anxious about what they might say, or the pressure they might put on her. In her words, her parents simultaneously want her to get married ASAP and are also deeply disapproving of her dating around. Even if it's serious dating. Don't ask, it perplexes both of us. But I've heard of much worse. Seen much worse: the girl I'd seen for 5 years had hidden my existence from her family for the entire duration (!)
(Indians can be quite culturally conservative, not that I don't know millions of relatively liberal folk.)
I think the biggest barriers might be mental. Hers. I'm good at charming the average parent. I'm very polite, funny, and yes, a doctor who is doing pretty well for himself. That matters a lot. I would bet good money that if she'd let me meet them, I'd win them over. But she knows, deep down, that if this happens and it doesn't pan out, it'll make the heartbreak all the worse.
I won't push her. I've raised the idea, to prove I'm serious. I'd bring sweets. Perhaps she might change her mind on that when she realizes that the infatuation is permanent, but I'm here to date her and not the family, as much as I'm fond of her brother.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
20d ago
Like you I’m a neurotic, which is unfortunate in this particular aspect of life, in which neuroticism can so easily ruin everything.
I am normally the opposite of neurotic. For the past few years, the only thing I've gone full throttle on is academics (my parents are beaming at me). The romantic neuroticism is quite new, courtesy of a particular relationship you already know too much about. I won't repeat myself.
I enjoy being able to put that aside, and hopefully keep it aside. That being said, a pinch of neuroticism probably makes me a more considerate partner.
(unlike you, I never write anything about my personal life, no journals or diaries, but I had it in my head)
I have the memory of a goldfish, so if I don't write, I forget. Also, writing is cathartic.
Funny. While talking to her yesterday, I suddenly recalled one of the reasons we'd pulled apart after our first few meetings. She had asked me once, probably over text, whether some of her menstrual symptoms might be due to pregnancy.
This threw me for a loop. I hadn't slept with her. My reaction was to point out, with some indignation, that I was really the wrong person to ask given that I don't know who she slept with or when. Getting that out of the system, I then proceeded to give her actual advice, because of course that's what I did. Just helpful like that. She then told me it was 4/5 months back, after which I told her that if it was a pregnancy she'd damn well know by now. It was something else.
I took that as a not particularly polite sign of a lack of romantic or sexual interest. I thought she'd either hinted that, or simply saw me so platonically that the notion that I'd care hadn't even occurred to her. I put aside my aspirations for another date, low as they already were. I busied myself with even crazier women.
I told her this. She was initially taken aback, but then recall struck like lightning. Oh, she said, and then proceeded to type out a very lengthy and heartfelt apology. She wasn't entirely sure what her rationale had been back then, but it wasn't malicious. Perhaps a tad bit inconsiderate, but I've been there myself. I hemmed and hawed a little bit, but I did accept it. I said I'd forget, and for now, it didn't spoil a good thing.
Ah. Mature conversations and being able to talk to someone. I missed this.
The points you've mentioned are good. I can see that being the foundation for a good relationship, happy husband/wife = happy life.
I would personally make a longer list, tacking on such things as intelligent, looks, a sense of humor etc etc. I'm sure you don't mean to say these aren't valuable by refraining from mentioning them specifically. I can excuse them being a liar, or at least I can this girl when she calls me a "pretty boy".
I must say that the whole "look at the parents to gauge their offspring" is wise, and something I learned from bitter experience. A girl from a well-adjusted, caring family? There's cause for hope.
That they are, but I must admit that I feel a lot of Stonetoss_rope.jpg at you being the person backing me up here.
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