stuckinbathroom
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User ID: 903
stuckinbathroom
5mo ago
Not necessarily; it depends on your definition of merit.
By way of analogy (which sadly is no longer on the SAT), we can say highest-SAT-score-ism : meritocracy :: utilitarianism : consequentialism
Consequentialism says that one should act so that the consequences/outcomes of one’s actions are maximally good, but does not itself define what it means for an outcome to be “good”. Utilitarianism is one specific form of consequentialism in which “good” is defined as “utility (of all people in the world, e.g.)”
stuckinbathroom
5mo ago
In a big lecture? Almost certainly nothing, assuming you can get into the building without a student ID. In a small class? You’d probably get found out because your name wouldn’t be on the attendance sheet. But even then, I wouldn’t be surprised if a passionate instructor turned a blind eye out of respect for your dedication to learning for its own sake.
The reason why approximately no one does this is that you don’t get a diploma out of it at the end.
stuckinbathroom
5mo ago
(Then of course there are the more common objections that some last-minute transfers from other life paths, gifted-but-lazy types and "slow but deep thinkers" are in fact also beneficial for the intellectual ecosystem and need a path to admission, which is of course also more cope.)
I agree with all of this except the jab at “slow but deep thinkers”. I think that with regard to mathematical talent specifically, there really is a pool of talented/high-IQ individuals who punch below their weight in math competitions where speed is important, like the AMC and AIME. This is a shame, because the USAMO and IMO are much more “slow but deep”-loaded, but you can’t qualify for them unless you get past the AIME. The USAMTS (a proof-based exam taken over the course of multiple weeks) helps alleviate this disadvantage somewhat, but it still only helps you skip the AMC level; I wish there were a second round of USAMTS for skipping the AIME and advancing to USAMO.
To be completely fair, I think the absolute cream of the crop in mathematical talent are both fast and deep, and hence the current system of contests will correctly identify them. We are certainly not at risk of being unable to field a competitive IMO team, or of failing to identify those who are most likely to become HYPSM math faculty in a decade or so.
But the “second string” of talent tends to be underserved until their strengths shine through in late undergrad/early grad school—assuming they stick with math that long, which sadly many don’t because they incorrectly think (on the basis of math contests) that they’re not good enough for graduate-level math research.
The specific mechanism by which being “deep” helps with research is having a holistic understanding of how different concepts in math relate to one another, and having a greater ability to perceive similarities/analogies between disparate things, which is important when bringing techniques from vastly different subfields of mathematics to bear on unsolved problems; this happens all the time in number theory, for instance, and it’s also what Grothendieck did when he revolutionized algebraic geometry. See also: the Langlands program.
“Fast but shallow” thinkers, on the other hand, are good at quickly pattern-matching problems to known solution techniques, which is also important: you won’t get anywhere in math without a well-developed, organized, and quickly-accessible stock of knowledge in your noodle. But they tend to be unable to generalize/extend/apply those techniques to very different domains.
Full disclosure: I was a “slow but deep” thinker with regard to math when I was in school and I may be just a little bit salty about my lackluster performance in time-constrained math contests.
stuckinbathroom
5mo ago
What I would give to see the president of Harvard standing in the schoolhouse door to block qualified Asians from enrolling
stuckinbathroom
5mo ago
You could settle in Vancouver, Canada, which is certainly 100% BC. Or you could build a Time Machine and travel 2025+ years into the past.
(Aside: if you’re in the UK, wouldn’t you be a BurdensomeEarl?)
stuckinbathroom
5mo ago
I often wonder this about the justice system in general: if it means placating the mob, is it sometimes worth committing an act of injustice to a single individual?
The Ones Who Walk Away From Rittenhouse
More seriously, I think the general framing of this question—not mob placation necessarily, but “good” consequences as a potential reason to bend or break the rules—gets at the heart of act-utilitarianism vs. rule-utilitarianism, as well as deontology and other ethical schools. As for my opinion on the matter, fiat iustitia ruat cælum
stuckinbathroom
5mo ago
But it's also a social model … What the hours do is bind the worker to a larger collective. Even aside from idle hands and all that, the social connections formed working act as a kind of behavioral safety net
This is an intriguing take, and one which I had never thought of before, but it makes a lot of intuitive sense! This blog post by an American who purports to have spent extensive time working for Japanese organizations, gestures at a similar idea. Do give it a read, if you haven’t already.
stuckinbathroom
5mo ago
I feel like the better analogy here is not social class but rather the military: ICs correspond to enlisted men, managers-of-ICs to NCOs, and managers-of-managers to commissioned officers. Competence across all three strata is vital to the ability of the armed forces to fight and win wars.
stuckinbathroom
5mo ago
You’re right, this was unbecoming of me. Next time I’ll think twice before drunkposting on a Saturday night
stuckinbathroom
5mo ago
millions of people died as a result.
Tens of millions!
stuckinbathroom
5mo ago
I agree with everything you’ve said here, but I still feel like you’re not answering OP’s question in the spirit it was intended: could we have all those nice things without ~everyone spending needlessly excessive hours in the office?
In theory, I think the answer is yes. But as the great Yogi Berra once (apocryphally) said, in theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice—in practice, there is.
stuckinbathroom
5mo ago
I think your peer group in childhood and adolescence plays a greater role in who you are attracted to than your own or your parent's race
Absolutely true of me. I do think it’s a weighted average of (a) parents, (b) peer group and (c) whatever factors drive the OKC data (slight bonus for white men and East Asian women, malus for black women)
The specific weights probably depend on how close one is to one’s parents (I have a fairly terrible relationship with mine) and how open (in the Big 5 sense) one is. In my specific case, if I’m being totally honest, a big part of it is also a thirst to prove myself, to prove that I am special and can attract a beautiful, high-status woman on my own terms without settling for an arranged marriage like a typical brown beta chump. Incidentally, my favorite Shakespearean drama is Othello
stuckinbathroom
5mo ago
I’m not white, nor does my mother look at all East Asian, but indeed I have a fairly bad relationship with my mother. Bravo, Holmes, very astute deduction!
I came close to broaching this topic last Wellness Wednesday, when I asked for dating advice, but I decided against derailing that particular thread. For context, I’m an American man of South Asian descent who is near-exclusively attracted to women of East Asian descent.
I’ve long struggled with the question of whether or not I “have” the “fetish” of “yellow fever”. Friends have occasionally asked me about this point blank but for the most part they keep quiet about my (probably fairly obvious to them) dating preferences, at least to my face.
In the first place, the term “yellow fever” is ill-defined. Does any strong preference for East Asian women count as ipso facto yellow fever? IMO such a definition would prove too capacious; it would include, for instance, the romantic preferences of a born-and-raised Chinese man who has only been exposed to East Asian women his whole life and thus is exclusively attracted to them. Most people would say that this is a very normal preference given the circumstances. Some might argue that this man uncritically accepts the cultural milieu of his upbringing, or has failed to Do The Work of deconstructing the factors which led to his romantic preferences, and as a result his preferences are Problematic—that’s as may be, but even those who advance this argument would, I think, not call his a case of “yellow fever”.
So I think a definition of “yellow fever” that matches colloquial usage has to be a bit more nuanced. It must be something like “an abnormal attraction to East Asian women”. Unfortunately this just pushes the thorny definitional question from “yellow fever” to “abnormal”.
What are “normal” reasons for being attracted to East Asian women? As we saw above, one generally-recognized-as-normal reason is having grown up being exposed primarily to East Asian women. Others might argue that it’s only “normal” to be attracted to those of the same race, and any cross-racial preference is abnormal. Still others might argue that the cause of the attraction is irrelevant, and what makes a racial preference abnormal is how essentializing/totalizing/fetishizing it is; for example, if someone can’t achieve an erection from nudes of non-Asian women, or would turn down dates with attractive non-Asians, he is abnormal.
Now, is my preference for East Asian women “normal”?
I grew up in heavily East Asian immigrant communities. Indeed, in almost every school year, I was one of maybe 3 South Asian kids in my class, with a slight majority of my peers being East Asian (primarily Chinese and Taiwanese, some Koreans) and the remainder being white. So, to the extent that having grown up around East Asians is a valid reason for my dating preferences to be “normal” and not “yellow fever”, I’m in the clear.
What about the claim that the only “normal” racial preference is for one’s own race? To this, I ask: how is “one’s own race” determined? Or in other words, how does a “normal” mind/body deduce what race is “one’s own” for the purpose of determining romantic or sexual attraction? One possible answer is that it comes down to biology: different races have different phenotypes—skin color and texture, amount and distribution of muscle and body fat, shape of the eyes and other body parts, perhaps pheromones—and a “normal” person is genetically hardwired to find the traits of his own biological race attractive. If this is the case, then I am guilty as charged of being “abnormal”. Curiously, though, I’ve never heard an accusation of “yellow fever” leveled at me or anyone else by someone who believes that race is a biological fact. Invariably, the charge is made by “social constructionists”.
So what is their argument for what “normally” constitutes “one’s own race”? On some level, it must boil down to nurture/socialization as opposed to biological nature. But as I said above, my upbringing was in heavily East Asian communities, so by “nurture” standards, it’s not clear my preferences are abnormal. Yes, yes, it’s true that my parents and relatives are all South Asian; perhaps that’s the only sort of “nurture” that counts for “normal” determination of “one’s own race”, but I’ve never heard it spelled out in those terms.
Is my preference for East Asians essentializing, totalizing, or fetishistic? Again, we run up against yet another inane definitional shell game. Some facts which may assist us in teasing out the truth of the matter:
- I am capable—perhaps too capable, in some unfortunate circumstances—of achieving erections from photos or videos of naked women of any race, so at least I’m not that far gone; though in fairness, when it comes to porn, my eyes are inexorably drawn to the genitals, which look mostly the same regardless of race.
- Moreover, I wouldn’t be attracted to an obese, severely disfigured, or even just ugly East Asian woman; indeed, purely going off of looks, I’d say only ~50% of dating app profiles of East Asian women in their 20s appeal to me.
- Of the women I do find attractive, am I attracted to them “only” for their race? Put differently, if the traits I like about Asians were present in someone of non-Asian descent, would I find that person attractive? It’s hard to say definitively. It’s true that there are a few (e.g.) white women whom I find attractive; invariably, they are gracile, endearingly cutesy, and have dark hair coupled with fair skin and neotenous facial features. What makes it hard for me to answer with an unqualified “yes” is that one of the biggest turn-ons for me is East Asian eyes (either monolid or double) … and I struggle even to imagine a non-East Asian with that particular trait.
stuckinbathroom
6mo ago
A dyed-in-the-wool ethnonationalist (which I assuredly am not) would argue that a nation is, literally, an extended family, i.e., the biological descendants of a specific group of human beings. There are many problems with this argument, but being abstract is not one of them—except, I suppose, insofar as any super-Dunbar group of people is an abstraction.
stuckinbathroom
6mo ago
Absolutely no desires or aspirations
…
Yeah, they make fat stacks of cash writing CRUD apps for big tech
Surely this proves the existence of at least one desire/aspiration?
depravity
IME there is a fairly hard upper bound on the depravity of sons and (especially) daughters of Asian immigrant PMC strivers, who of course constitute a solid majority of Bay Area high schoolers. The occasional use of molly at raves notwithstanding, I’ve never known any of them to go seriously off the rails (pun very much intended) with hard drugs, alcohol, partying, casual sex, etc. But perhaps you have a different definition of “depravity”; indeed I think it’s safe to say that many of them show a depraved lack of empathy for their fellow man.
(I actually agree with the broader sentiment, though: Bay Arianism does tend to produce an unhealthy amount of soulless money/status optimizers)
stuckinbathroom
6mo ago
My understanding is that if you get reported by more that a certain number of users in a certain timeframe (I think I read somewhere that it’s 2 users within 3 months, but that may be incorrect or may have changed over time), your Hinge account gets banned.
At the time I wrote the previous post, there was no appeals process; it seems like now there is, but I only found out about it after the appeal deadline passed. So I’m out of luck: my account is permanently banned, and I can’t make a new account using the same device/phone number/photos or it’ll get banned as well.
I have no idea who reported me or why.
stuckinbathroom
6mo ago
Agreed; if anything, what’s abnormal about modern life is the paucity of different adults with whom we interact during early childhood. These days, it’s pretty much just parents and perhaps daycare staff, rather than all manner of extended family plus usually members of a religious community.
stuckinbathroom
6mo ago
But he mowed down women and children! But they were probably a bunch of racists!
stuckinbathroom
6mo ago
I feel like the clubs really use it to take advantage of guys like you.
Yeah that was my guess as well. I suppose there’s no way to insta-convert money into dating/sexual success, short of soliciting sex workers and/or sugar daddy-ing (but I repeat myself)
stuckinbathroom
6mo ago
lol I didn’t mean sex with anyone, I meant sex with a woman who’s my type. If I can get to sex, converting to an LTR shouldn’t be too hard, in my experience.
I’ve actually had decent success dating “my type”: I’ve had 4 long-term (6 months+) partners and roughly 20 short-term partners, nearly all of whom were intelligent, well-educated native English speakers of East Asian descent. But now I’m off Hinge, IRL dating seems to have largely gone the way of the dodo, and frankly I just want to outsource this whole damn process and not have to worry about it. Hence the price I quoted.
(Also, I wouldn’t be willing to pay this much every single night; maybe a couple of times a year, depending on the experience)
stuckinbathroom
6mo ago
I’m not banned from CMB and fully intend to use it if/when I get back to dating apps.
I’ve used CMB in the past, and in fact met my first serious girlfriend on it back in the mid-2010s, but was having significantly greater success with Hinge prior to the ban.
In my experience, CMB is more popular among fobs (of whom there are lots, especially Chinese and Indians) but I’m more interested in women who were born and raised in the West, or at least moved here at a young-ish age (high school, perhaps college at the latest)
If you have good insight- figure out why you aren't successful. If you are moderately attractive you should be drowning in women at that wealth level. Are you fatter than you want to admit? Fashion style not making it obvious you are bringing in money? No rizz?
Not fat, but not especially good looking either. Like I said, pretty average bespectacled brown dude.
I don’t have that many opportunities to meet single women IRL: my hobbies and social circles are pretty male-dominated and the attractive women in them are already taken; plus work keeps me pretty busy.
I don’t have flashy, expensive tastes, nor does my fashion sense immediately indicate that I have lots of money, although I definitely don’t dress like a slob.
I do think my day game/night game “rizz” has taken a hit over the past few years, as dating has increasingly moved online; it’s honestly quite rare now to find a girl by herself, without AirPods, in a public place where it would be appropriate to cold-approach. But my rizz is definitely not terrible: I really was having decent success on Hinge (multiple dates per week, getting to sex with a new girl about once every 1-2 months) before I got banned. And that was before I started lifting!
In short, my lack of success is due to being banned from Hinge (the best dating app I have ever used), plus online dating having largely taken over all of dating, to the exclusion of meeting women IRL through activities or mutual friends. This, I think, is especially true when it comes to women who are my type (well-educated Asian-Americans), as they tend not to just hang out in bars or whatever waiting for guys to approach them; if they’re in the dating scene at all, it’s through apps.
stuckinbathroom
6mo ago
I’m…if not estranged from my family, definitely not close enough that I would trust them to find me a life partner. In any case, they wouldn’t know any women who are my type (see parent comment)
Re: plastic surgery, I’ll start with LASIK/PRK and see how much that improves things. If it goes really well, I’ll consider further measures.
stuckinbathroom
6mo ago
Relocation in maybe 2-3 years time is an option, so what’s your other advice?
Also, doesn’t NYC famously have a very favorable sex ratio for men, as well as plenty of Asian women?
Hmm, what was the black percentage before they went test-optional (which was of course also pre-SFFA v. Harvard)?
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