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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   34023 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025

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There's a fun dramatic little scissor statement happening in the rationalist / post rationalist corner of twitter at the moment. Started by @_brentbaum talking about his girlfriend's high agency:

i learned something about agency when, on my second date with my now-girlfriend, i mentioned feeling cold and she about-faced into the nearest hotel, said she left a scarf in a room last week, and handed me the nicest one out of the hotel’s lost & found drawer

I, and many others, chimed in saying hey wait a second... this is actually kind of concerning! Some of the negative responses:

  • not to burst your bubble but isn't this kinda stealing?
  • you can just steal things
  • I suspect your about to learn a lot of things

and my personal favorite:

  • was it shaped like a giant red flag?

As I said though, this is apparently a scissor statement because a ton of people also had the OPPOSITE reaction. Some examples:

  • God damn
  • She's a keeper
  • my wife is exactly like this

etc etc.

Now the reason I find this fascinating is that it's one of the clearest breakdowns between consequentialists and virtue ethicists I've yet seen in the wild. Most people defending the girl of 'scarfgate' are basically just saying "what's the harm? nobody ever goes back for those scarfs. besides they're like $20 most of the time anyway."

Unfortunately a lot of folks get drawn into this argument, and start saying things like well, what if somebody comes back for it later and it's gone? Or what if someone's grandma knitted them that scarf?

To me, going down the consequentialist route is doomed to fail. You can justify all sorts of horrible things in the name of consequentialist morality. (Same with deontology, to be fair.) My take is that this is wrong because she directly lied to someone's face, and then proceeded to steal someone else's property. The fact that most people think it's cute and quirky is probably down to a sort of Women are Wonderful effect, imo, and then they use consequentialism to defend their default programming that women can't be bad.

Either way, curious what the Motte thinks? Is scarfgate just salty sour pusses hating on a highly agentic women? Or are there deeper issues here?

It just occurred to me - isn't this exactly what Marla Singer does in Fight Club? Steals clothes out of a laundrette and then sells them to a vintage shop?

I was torn between that and the bike cuck meme, glad to hear I'm not the only one!

Hah brutal. I don't remember but wouldn't be surprised.

One instance is not enough to go by, but I certainly hope he's keeping their finances separate. That's a woman who operates by "what's yours is mine and what's mine is my own", and one morning he may wake up with his bank account emptied (and maybe a kidney sold, as well) if she decides "now we're a couple, your money is my money and I need this money for my dream" 😁

For what it's worth, I'm a woman so I'm not going off "Women Are Wonderful" here.

Why not both? She rapidly solved a local problem and may have had some adverse effects on the commons. She's practical and pragmatic but also a liar and a thief. Fuck, but don't marry. Possibly kill if you're some avatar of zero-tolerance law and order.

Fuck, but don't marry.

And try to go back to her place rather than inviting her back to yours.

Not a fan of this, the taking of a scarf that isn't yours is bad enough but the lying is the real red flag. Smash and pass, if you are inclined that way.

I mean, it's clever, I can't deny that. But it's also very much a confidence trick kind of move, and I have to wonder if she has a vibrant career in social engineering to part fools and their money?

She could slickly lie to his face and be cheating on him and get away with it. Not saying she is or would do so, but that's someone who is not afraid to seize the day, as it were.

People do know that this stuff will often get taken by the employees if it isn't collected, or even donated, right? So even on consequentialist grounds she is quite likely to be stealing from someone poorer than her for small immediate gratification. It's pretty minor as things go, but I agree with others that I wouldn't perceive this as positive. Also, if everyone was like this, lost and founds would literally not exist.

It's like returning the shopping cart. The consequences are so minute that it actually exposes one's compunction to follow the rules when there is no consequence for defection.

This woman is probably a nice and loving person, but I wouldn't put my life in her hands.

Leaving shopping carts strewn about the parking lot is (mild) destruction of the commons. While it may not have any personal consquences, it worsens the world and does so exponentially - each additional parking space blocked or walkway impeded makes it increasingly difficult to navigate.

I think he meant the average punishment for the defector.

  1. If a tree falls and nobody hears it, does it still make a sound? If you steal something from someone and he doesn't notice and he doesn't need it, is it still stealing?

  2. Stealing from the commons is a great life hack until everyone does it. Then you just end up living in a low trust society. The tragedy of the commons is an interesting concept precisely because high trust society created social rules that allowed the commons to exist in the first place.

If you steal something from someone and he doesn't notice and he doesn't need it, is it still stealing?

If you kill someone but nobody misses the victim, is it still murder?

If you steal something from someone and he doesn't notice and he doesn't need it, is it still stealing?

This only sounds plausible because we don't have a good intuition about how it works. Taking the scarf is going to affect things on the margin. There's some probability that someone will come looking for the scarf and not find it. If you steal it they won't be able to. But since this is only a probability, it's easy to say "they probably won't return for the scarf" and mentally round the probablity to zero.

Likewise, if you stole a hotel towel, that's going to marginally use up the hotel towels and slightly push forward when the hotel needs to buy towels--even if nobody points at the particular towel and notices its absence, and even if the advance in when the hotel runs out of towels is within the normal variation in towel wear.

So yes, if nobody notices it, it's still stealing. It can affect people on a statistical level, in a way which averages out to the harm in being one item poorer, even if nobody actually notices the effect.

If you steal something from someone and he doesn't notice and he doesn't need it, is it still stealing?

Yes.

The Blue Cross, G.K. Chesterton:

"The other priest raised his austere face to the spangled sky and said:

"Yet who knows if in that infinite universe—?"

"Only infinite physically," said the little priest, turning sharply in his seat, "not infinite in the sense of escaping from the laws of truth."

Valentin behind his tree was tearing his fingernails with silent fury. He seemed almost to hear the sniggers of the English detectives whom he had brought so far on a fantastic guess only to listen to the metaphysical gossip of two mild old parsons. In his impatience he lost the equally elaborate answer of the tall cleric, and when he listened again it was again Father Brown who was speaking:

"Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don't they look as if they were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don't fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, 'Thou shalt not steal.'"

The whole thing seems very weird, probably fake, and not primarily about "agency." What kind of weather situation were they in where he was actually cold, not just making idle chatter, and a "nice scarf" was going to fix that? And then he just went around wearing some random woman's scarf the rest of the evening? It sounds funny, I guess they could have a good laugh over it? Definitely manic pixie dream girl vibes.

But, also, I've been confused about how "agency" is being used lately. Assertiveness? Willingness to take action? It seems kind of new to hear that discussed in terms of agency, but seems to have become a thing lately.

But, also, I've been confused about how "agency" is being used lately. Assertiveness? Willingness to take action? It seems kind of new to hear that discussed in terms of agency, but seems to have become a thing lately.

Agency is literally "you just do things", as opposed to standing around like a deer in headlights, waiting for others to solve your problems, or sitting on your ass making excuses.

I wouldn't describe myself as highly agentic, but I have acquired the superpower (thanks Grandpa for being a role model here) of just talking to strangers in order to get things done, when my friends would rather shrink into themselves than talk to someone they have no mandate to establish contact with. Or just calling a restaurant to find out whether it's open, instead of a full commitment to whatever google says. Or walking into an office and loudly (though politely!) asking whether anyone has some particular bit of infornation. All of this seems exceptional around here because people in general seem to have developed an extremely atrophied sense of their own agency. You can in fact just go and talk to people.

What kind of weather situation were they in where he was actually cold, not just making idle chatter

Modal men don't do that. If we're making idle chatter it's usually about shoes and ships and sealing-wax and cabbages and kings. "It's cold today" is idle chatter, "I am cold" means the dude is freezing.

One has to wonder if he was hoping she'd offer to warm him up by cuddling. Instead she got him a free scarf. 😀

>be me
>on second date with qt3.14
>flirty and even sometimes sexual banter all night
>bros... we're so going to make it
>walking outside when she complains how cold it is
>I say "haha yeah even my cock could use some warmth"
>nooo got overconfident and went too far
>why am I such a cringe retard?!
>she smiles and says "follow me"
>we start walking toward the nearest hotel
>what no way no way ron_paul_its_happening.jpg
>she's talking to the receptionist at the lobby desk
>check-in and girltalk and stuff amirite
>I hover behind her awkwardly
>so nervous I can hardly breath
>vision blurry and ringing sound in my ears
>looking around trying to find the elevators so I can at least lead us there
>she suddenly turns around
>I hear a muffled "teehee this is for you" as she throws something to me
>something soft lands in my hands
>mfw my bare hands get rawdogged by some random guy's dirty compression shorts

Between this and the Bateman pasta, the Motte is becoming a real cultural juggernaut!

It is being used to describe out of the box thinking in this case, as most people wouldn't consider stealing a scarf from a hotel in that manner.

Is it out of the box, or is her box just one filled with low status grifting? Even if I valued out of the box thinking, I wouldn't value the kind of thinking I associate with the underclass or sociopaths.

Yeah, I hate when people use "out of the box thinking" to refer to "strategies that have occurred to normal people, but the normal people didn't use them because they're morally objectionable".

You remind me of the ending of Scott's post on Orban.

There’s an urban legend about a test for psychopaths. Usually the test is some kind of riddle that can only be solved by killing a person for some completely stupid reason - the one I remember hearing involved how to meet with one of your father’s friends, without your father knowing, when you don’t have their contact info - and the answer was to kill your father and assume he would come to the funeral. I assume none of these tests work at all, but the assumption behind them is that if you’re evil enough, it you have more possibilities in your solution set than normal people.

This is what I think of when I look at Orban. He was able to beat everyone else by taking advantage of loopholes everyone else left open because they didn’t think anyone would be crazy enough to use them. I imagine that being Orban feels puzzling, like everyone else is leaving low-hanging fruit on the ground constantly. He’s a fascinating psychological specimen, but everyone else needs to up their game and stop leaving things open for people like him to take advantage of.

I prefer the way Scott puts it in "Book Review: Age of Em":

There’s an urban legend about a “test for psychopaths”. You tell someone a story about a man who attends his mother’s funeral. He met a really pretty girl there and fell in love, but neglected to get her contact details before she disappeared. How might he meet her again? If they answer “kill his father, she’ll probably come to that funeral too”, they’re a psychopath – ordinary people would have a mental block that prevents them from even considering such a drastic solution. And I bring this up because after reading Age of Em I feel like Robin Hanson would be able to come up with some super-solution even the psychopaths can’t think of, some plan that gets the man a threesome with the girl and her even hotter twin sister at the cost of wiping out an entire continent. Everything about labor relations in Age of Em is like this.

For example, suppose you want to hire an em at subsistence wages, but you want them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Ems probably need to sleep – that’s hard-coded into the brain, and the brain is being simulated at enough fidelity to leave that in. But jobs with tasks that don’t last longer than a single day – for example, a surgeon who performs five surgeries a day but has no day-to-day carryover – can get around this restriction by letting an em have one full night of sleep, then copying it. Paste the em at the beginning of the workday. When it starts to get tired, let it finish the surgery it’s working on, then delete it and paste the well-rested copy again to do the next surgery. Repeat forever and the em never has to get any more sleep than that one night. You can use the same trick to give an em a “vacation” – just give it one of them, then copy-paste that brain-state forever.

The thing is, the "test for psychopaths" thing is an example of both: it's a legitimately creative solution, but also a solution that no decent person would consider.

"Steal scarves from hotels rather than paying for them yourself" is only an example of the latter. It's not a creative solution: it's just banal theft. Creativity, bravery and lack of scruples are not synonymous.

The "pretend to have lost one" part is non-salient enough to deserve the label "creative" about as much as the "murder your dad" one, IMO (though certainly "go up to somebody and steal one off her neck" wouldn't).

I mean, is it? Everyone's familiar with the concept of a lost and found box. Surely everyone with IQ 100 with an average level of Machiavellianism could independently arrive at the idea of gaming this system (insofar as it's a "system") by falsely claiming to have lost something they haven't.

"I came up with this outside-the-box tactic called 'lying'." Woah, get a load of this guy.

More comments

Same, I also despise the complementary idea that refusing to engage in such behavior makes you soft, naive and stupid.

I used to often commute to work by cycling, and I scrupulously observed all relevant traffic regulations. When I came to a red light, I would stop and wait for it, but my fellow cyclists would often ignore it. There are few more satisfying feelings in the world than waiting for the red light to turn green, then overtaking a cyclist who ignored the red light. The thought going through my mind is "look at me - I'm so much better than you at this that, unlike you, I don't even need to break the rules".

I get the same feeling when I hear someone bragging about how they've lied on their CV in order to make it look more impressive - and I realise that I make more money than them.

Wouldn't it be even better to watch the cyclist running a red get justifiably mowed down by a car taking its rightful green?

Steady on, Dirty Harry.

I don't consider it a good thing to do either, I was just describing why @_brentbaum called it agentic in the first place. I presume he was ok with the status quo (feeling cold), and hadn't considered doing something to feel less cold (problem solving is agentic), let alone deceiving a hotel and taking other people's stuff.

Is that how it's usually meant?

It seems like I've mostly heard it applied to women in a context I assumed was criticizing the tendency to want a man to take initiative, but maybe that's just my interpretation, and not the actual intent.

It's not usually meant like that, but sometimes people do consider doing things others wouldn't as more agentic.

I haven't noticed any gendered patterns of how the word is used yet. I have mostly heard it in context of it being promoted as a virtuous trait, for self-improvement and to improve society by believing you can do it (especially in tech-adjacent discussions).

If you're prepared to go in and steal scarves, why not steal from a self-checkout machine? The corporation is not going to miss the $20. But when everyone does it, stores close and we have to go back to cashiers rather than an efficient, human-free experience.

Why not just torrent games for free or get repacks? I'm not totally innocent on this but it's still bad to do even if I'm tempted to say 'oh well the marginal cost of distribution is zero and i probably wasn't going to buy it anyway'. When everyone does it, all we get is AAA slop catering to people too stupid to torrent.

Consequentialism should consider the long-term consequences of behaviours.

self-checkout machine

efficient, human-free experience

What kind of machines do they have where you live?

They replace one checkout worker manning a single line with that worker overseeing half a dozen self checkout lines.

It is enormously more efficient.

Enormously more efficient for the store, maybe. As a customer my perspective is that they just moved the cashier's job to you and gave you a shittier and slower interface to do it with.

The local self-checkout I'm familiar with requires you to scan items one at a time, takes a second to check the change in weight after you put each item in your bag, and if anything goes slightly wrong in this process you need the cashier's manual intervention which takes at least a minute. I'll usually take waiting for a couple people in line over that awful experience.

This whole thing only looks more efficient because the store isn't having to pay the customers to do this.

In terms of my time: self checkout is so clearly faster. I can wait in line a long time, or do it myself real quick.

Years ago self checkout machines were terrible about weight checking. Now they are very forgiving. I assume they made them very numb to decrease their false positive rate.

It's true that the actual act of scanning items and paying for them takes longer, but with one nominal cashier thus overseeing "half a dozen" self-checkout lines (not an unrealistic number) also spreads the customers that would normally wait in line for one cashier over six lines, which should cut waiting times by a lot more than the time lost to slower scanning.

The local self-checkout I'm familiar with takes a second to check the change in weight after you put each item in your bag

The self-checkout stations that I've used (at Costco, Target, and Home Depot) do not have this problem.

Yes, because this process is the source of 90% of the problems self checkout machines create (the other 10% are alcohol purchases), and an employee has to come and fix those problems.

In my casual survey of self checkout machines across cities and countries, I've come to the conclusion that only supermarkets in extremely low-trust cities use the scales. For everybody else, it's just not worth it, since you can literally increase the machines/employee ratio by 10 if you don't need to use the scale functionality.

My local supermarket doesn't sell alcohol ind is in a high trust region. Tens of self checkout machines are running without employee oversight, if there's a problem the store manager comes to deal with it.

torrent

I think copyright is state enabled thievery, actually. Art existed before it, and it will exist after it. In fact it is scandalous that I can't freely make, modify and distribute the myths of my people because they have been monopolized by a corporation using the State, or that I can't mod my games without people trying to stop me, all because of this farce.

I think you'll find that even under rule utilitarianism, it isn't justifiable in its current form.

Preach, brother!

(Low effort contribution, I know, I know 😛)

AO3 and FFN are a thing... though I do agree the whole GW/Nintendo 'Total Fanwork Death' policy is unacceptable.

is scandalous that I can't freely make, modify and distribute the myths of my people because they have been monopolized by a corporation

Corporations do not own the copyrights for old works such as myths, traditional stories or even modern 19th century works.

You can make your own Little Mermaid story. Just don't copy Disney's distinctive cartoon styling. Don't draw her with red hair and a seashell bra, or the Disney corporation's lawyers will go after you. Just make up any other possible look and styling.

What stories did you grow up telling and being told? What characters did you and your friends pretend to be when they played? Sure some did come from the old books that have been elevated in the public domain. But most of them were not, were they?

I claim that you're being robbed of a natural part of the human experience in this way, and mostly to support rent seekers rather than the people who originated those stories.

It's been 50 years, you and I should be able to make our own Star Wars if we want, and it is insane that we can not. At the least it is insane that we won't be able to once Lucas is dead + 70 years because somebody paid money to buy an exclusive license to our collective experience.

Owning a 150 year old story is absurd. It's an unnatural privilege borne of proximity to power with not a shred of legitimacy, not to mention a State established monopoly. Whatever minute rules it administers itself with does not change this.

It's been 50 years, you and I should be able to make our own Star Wars if we want, and it is insane that we can not. At the least it is insane that we won't be able to once Lucas is dead + 70 years because somebody paid money to buy an exclusive license to our collective experience.

Actually, the original Star Wars movie was published in 1977, just seven months before the Copyright Act of 1976 went into effect. So it falls under the 95 years from publication rule and will enter the public domain on January 1st, 2073.

Only 48 more years to go!

(The sequels are more complicated; do they count as works for hire, in which case they also fall under date of publication + 95, or are they the personal creation of George Lucas, falling under death + 70?)

I took "myths of our people" a bit too literally. Sure, copyright lasts too long. As best I know partially the fault of the Disney Corporation. Death of author plus 70 years is excessive.

I mean, Disney was part of it, but the underlying problem is that it was cheaper to bribe politicians to extend copyright than it is to continuously make good new works. Disney wasn't the only rent-seeker there, after all; it's a constant temptation to all copyright holders. The only way to not have copyright holders be continuously working to extend copyright for rent-seeking purposes is to have no copyright holders.

Patents serve an important-enough function that they're probably worth keeping around despite this problem, although patenting questions needs to be obliterated from the face of the Earth. Copyright, no. We have Kickstarter now to make patronage easier, and we have more media than we can use. Burn it down.

(NB, @RandomRanger: I actually have an ethical policy of never paying for softcopy anything. If you're not selling a physical object, I don't recognise it as something sellable. I'll buy a physical book because there's at least an object there, you're not just buying a copyright licence. But I don't have Steam/Kindle/etc. Only time I ever got something from Steam was when they had free Portal, and even then I wound up deleting it and pirating it instead for portability.)

Which is why you torrent triple a slop and pay for indies that deserve it. You shouldn't be pirating because you are poor, you can get games cheap easy enough, you should pirate because FUCK THE VIDEO GAMES INDUSTRY. Burn that fucker to the ground and salt the earth behind you. Then Nintendo or whoever can start again, again.

Why not just torrent games for free or get repacks?

Physical good differ from digital goods that (barring Star Trek tech), you cannot multiply physical goods. If you take a scarf, the total number of scarf stays the same and somebody is short a scarf. With digital good, magical act of multiplication happens and there are more of them than before. Therefore, digital copyright infringement is never equal to stealing. It may still be wrong but it is definitely significantly less wrong than stealing.

Someone who'll cheat with you will also cheat on you.

Someone who'll steal for you will also steal from you.

The second sentence doesn't strictly follow the first. Stealing from an out-group (e.g. the faceless forgetful hotel patron) is not an indication they'll do the same to an in-group. On the other hand, cheating is necessarily harming an in-group person (the romantic partner), and as the current romantic partner you should be worried.

Think of the "I against my brother; I and my brother against my cousin; I, my brother, and my cousin against the world" proverb.

The second sentence doesn't strictly follow the first.

I have to disagree. "One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much." She has demonstrated that she has no problem taking advantage of third parties, so if a situation arises where it benefits her to take things from him, why should I believe she will hesitate to do so out of outmoded scruples about trust and intimacy?

I think it's presumptuous to assume that a girl considers you part of her in-group just because she agreed to go on a second date with you.

My girlfriend is currently trying to persuade a close friend of hers (I'll call her D) to cut ties with one of her friends (A). I disliked A literally from the moment I met her, as not only do I find her vapid and annoying, she also seems like a legitimately shitty person. (It was a relief to find out that my girlfriend dislikes A just as much as I do). A openly announced that she goes on dates with guys from Tinder, goes back to their houses, then steals shit before leaving. Of course D laughed it off like "oh yeah, she's just being a girlboss" and insisted that she'd never steal from one of her friends." Mais quelle surprise when A starts borrowing clothes and other items from D and never returns them (or loses them and doesn't offer to replace them); or when D invited A to stay in D's parents' house, and various expensive items mysteriously went missing while she was staying there. D's parents now despise A, understandably enough.

But this is cheating for you, which is a little different. I can totally see the appeal of a Bonnie & Clyde romantic partnership where you places your mutual interest above other moral concerns. “Felt cute, might violate the Geneva convention later.”

I know this is going far afield based on one instance, but do we know that the girlfriend feels the same way about OP as he does about her? She might be in a relationship with him because it's currently beneficial for her but she is not in love with him or deeply attached, and would dump him if a better opportunity came along. And possibly empty out his bank account on the way out the door, to boot (well after all she needs to be recompensed for all the time she wasted on him).

Someone who demonstrates on a first second date that they have no problems lying and stealing is not someone indicating long-term trustworthiness.

I believe Jimmy from South Park had a relevant angle on this.

Is scarfgate just salty sour pusses hating on a highly agentic women? Or are there deeper issues here?

Yo I'm just gonna speak my deepest monkeybrain here and tell you that this little story about stealing a scarf is either gross or adorable depending upon how hot the girl was and what the vibe felt like. Like imagine it twice, once with like peak Wynona Ryder getting her crazy stealies on, and then once again with some ugly broad. Yeah you know what's up.

My first thought when I saw that was, “wouldn’t the higher-agency thing be not forgetting your scarf in a hotel room in the first place?” My brain couldn’t comprehend the concept of portraying dishonesty like this as a positive attribute.

What if there was no scarf? What if the cleaning lady was already on thin ice and then had to answer for allegedly stealing a scarf?

What if it wasn't a $20 scarf but a Hermès scarf? There would indeed be consequences for hotel staff handing over something that easily to a stranger.

I wouldn't trust anything I read from an account on X, especially a high-profile account on X, to be real. Most high-profile X accounts who were not already famous before joining X are engagement bait grifters, and some of these grifters are precisely in the business of crafting scissor statements to get maximum engagement. Even if the genesis of this particular story is a real-life situation, I wouldn't trust a high-profile X account to convey it accurately instead of conveying it in order to mine maximum engagement. The entire nature of the medium, with its short clippy posts (yeah you can pay to write long ones, but this comes off as geeky so is not used as much as one might think) and its monetization, makes it a melting pot of scammers, grifters, and con artists. I have tried many times to start genuine political/cultural discussion on X, and 95% of the time it doesn't work. X rewards cheap engagement bait vastly more than it rewards serious conversation. It is a brutal Darwinian power struggle in which masters of scissor statements, controversy bait, and so on rise to the top.

OP posted bait on X but all the stealing-defenders appear to be real people defending that position. I don't think they're all just trolls.

Which social media do you trust, and for god's sake why?

That's not really an effective disarmament tactic for scissor statements anyway (which is another reason they're so effective), because it doesn't matter whether the story happened or not - nobody really gives a shit about that scarf or the hotel or whoever really owned the scarf, they care that there are other people talking about it who don't share their values and have the audacity to judge them despite being sick, perverted scarf stealers/opposed to manic pixie dream girls/insert-your-own-description,-I-can't-take-this-seriously.

I'll tell you what the real scissor statement part of that story is - I can't possibly have been the only guy to read this guy explain how he told his girlfriend he was cold and immediately think 'cuck' can I? Aww is the widdle man cold? Does he want some mittens for his fingies too? If it was really that cold you would only have to wait a few minutes for hypothermia to kick in, and then you'll feel warm again you bitch! It's a damn sight better than letting a woman see you being weak when you haven't even jizzed. That's the only time you should ever show a woman weakness - only after she's seen you bang can you let her see you whimper.

That's how it always starts, by the way, first they steal a scarf for you, next thing you are walking funny and telling people pegging can increase a couple's intimacy.

If it was me on an imaginary date with Agent Scarf Stealer I'd have autistically insisted on trying to get the exact scarf she left at the hotel, and thought the genius part was her suggestion that one scarf is much the same as another. I'm very used to quirky nonsense though, in my defence.

Edit: iprayiam, I should have guessed you'd tackle the real issue, high five! I swear your post wasn't there when I read this thread earlier though.

only after she's seen you bang can you let her see you whimper.

Nominating for an AAQC based on this clause alone.

I'll tell you what the real scissor statement part of that story is - I can't possibly have been the only guy to read this guy explain how he told his girlfriend he was cold and immediately think 'cuck' can I?

Cuck might be an overstatement, but yeah. That definitely had me raise an eyebrow. At least, the way the story is told, it sounds like something he volunteered. I'm not sure I would admit it to my wife if I were cold and she asked, but I am certain I would not bring it up myself, and if I were on a second date I would marshall all my self-control to suppress any possible tell that I am cold.

It might be terribly old-fashioned of me to say, but men don't bring up their personal problems for their SO (and even less a date!) to resolve.

I'll tell you what the real scissor statement part of that story is - I can't possibly have been the only guy to read this guy explain how he told his girlfriend he was cold and immediately think 'cuck' can I?

I wouldn't take it that far, but do also feel that stealing a scarf because your man is cold seems more snarky than caring. Could be in a fun, flirty way, it would depend on specifics.

If it's actually cold, because it's cold out and he isn't dressed warmly enough, go into the hotel and drink a coffee with him. A scarf won't help all that much. What, the hotel happened to have one of those enormous chunky knit wool scarves on hand that's kind of a long blanket? Really? If he's not particularly cold and is just saying stuff, the way everyone in Phoenix mentions that it's hot every day, then a scarf will also not help, there's nothing to be helped. I have a lot of scarves, and do like wearing them as wraps, but no man would be willing to do anything like that unironically.

If you forgot a scarf at a hotel, would you really go back to the hotel, presumably in another city, to get it?

If I forget a scarf in a hotel, that scarf is community property now. I hope it gets used for something useful instead of just getting thrown away.

I call and have it mailed to me.

Do you tip them for that?

If by any means possible, yeah, on top of paying for the shipping.

How is this different from the bike cuck meme?

People don’t hate bike cuck because he is using a defective utilitarian moral heuristic. They hate him because it’s his bike, and the way he immediately rolls over and justifies his own victimization reeks of weakness.

My power bank was lost near a lake in the wilderness (not by me) and I would prefer someone finding & using it compared to "my property" junking up the environment.

I'd still prefer a dishonest finder that could have returned it ( = pretty much stealing, except that the alternative would have been that it's lost instead of "it stays in my wife's pocket") it and kept it compared to the thing going to a landfill/staying at the lake.

I would argue that's slightly different, since there's no centralized place for you to retrieve your lost item, nor has the finder going there specifically to impersonate you to take your item.

The bike cuck meme is kind of a brain worm in that while that example is egregious, there are plenty of ways in which reframing a loss as at least helping someone else or something else can by psychologically beneficial. I didn’t get the promotion, my friend did, framing that in your own mind as ‘well, at least I’m happy for them’ is better than stewing in resentment.

That depends a lot on whether your friend was actually more qualified for the promotion.

Lax morals are not a good thing. Trying to feel good to paper over what is right gives people a sense that small transgressions aren't really that important, but that same perverse toleration simply leads to larger transgressions.

Sure, wallowing in resentment isn't useful, but rationalizing you getting fucked over is learned helplessness. That guy should get appropriately mad and adjust his local politics to give greater consideration to the maintenance of public order. And if he doesn't, he's just on a merry journey to his town becoming a crime den because he's too nice to get upset when he is wronged.

Bike cuck is chanelling the spirit of the Last Man.

Because the scarf wasn't stolen from me. I lost it.

If I lost something useful, I would prefer that somebody find it and uses it rather than it going to waste completely.

Here's a slight rotation of this: if I buy something online and don't end up needing it, instead of throwing it away I usually post it on a "buy nothing" group, or put it in the alley so that somebody who wants it can take it. It feels like less of a waste than if I throw it in the trash.

This seems rather different from raiding a lost-and-found while pretending to be the rightful owner.

The people at the hotel know what's going on. She knows what's going on. The guy knows whats going on, and even the person who lost the scarf all know what's going on and if anybody in this chain of people cared, then it would break the chain and the behavior wouldn't happen.

This is just a totally different thing than stealing and the fact that so many people can't understand this is illuminating.

You can't make a display of enlightened magnanimity out of shitting in your own pants.

Challenge accepted.

"I shat my pants recently. I was pretty bummed about it. But after reflecting I realised that the need to buy a tub of White'n'Brite Max Stain Remover provided an infinitesimal benefit to the institutional shareholders of Big Chem Industrial Synthesis Corp, and by losing control of my bowels I'd helped contribute to a faceless pension fund supporting wealthy retirees and their fund managers. The total happiness in the world increased, so whatever!"

"I have a tiny excuse for a penis and I get off by pressuring my wife into having unprotected sex with other men, but even I wouldn't violate by proxy the sanctity of a hotel's lost property cupboard. What if that scarf belonged to a real man with a raging trouser truncheon? OP should have waited until half a dozen virile rugby players could watch him shivering outside his own bedroom window, begging them to let him rent his date's panties to wear as a comically ineffective neck warmer. It's pathetic."

"My ADHD made me so late that I ended up taking a bike I'd found dumped in the canal because keeping my date waiting was giving me unmedicated anxiousness. When I arrived he'd been waiting for me outside getting cold so quick as a flash I went into a hotel reception and pretended to be the purse inspector. When I came out to give him the £400 I'd conned out of some woman's husband he was gone, and so was my bike! Twitter, AITA?"

I think that a lot depends on the goals of the guy on the date. If he is looking to get laid, or for an accomplice in a bank robbery, her showing risk-taking behavior and a disregard for conventional morality is certainly increasing her value.

If he is looking for a long term relationship as a well-regarded member of society, that would indeed be a red flag. On the second date, people (I think) still bother to try to hide their flaws. If it does not occur that "I have a very loose morality around the subjects of property and (more importantly) truth" might be worth hiding, one might start to wonder what kind of flaws she might actually be hiding on top of that. Perhaps she is in a marriage she has not told you about, or works as a con artist or pickpocket.

A) I don't think the impact is going to be very large. Scarfs are a commodity. Harm is small. Arguably it was going to get thrown out anyway. Maybe there's a small net benefit in the world where that scarf helps bolster a relationship.

B) That said... scarfs are a commodity. Wouldn't it be just as thoughtful/romantic to pop into the nearest store and buy one? Does the fact that she broke a mild social taboo make it a more meaningful act? Either one demonstrates 'agency.'

C) Its surely less bad than something like going around to all the hotels in the area and collecting nice scarfs to resell on Ebay, since she can at least claim altruistic motives. But then there's the question: if we 'approve' of her doing this one thing in this one instance, what precisely lets us object when someone else exploits this for more direct personal gain.

At any rate, my COMPLETELY UNWARRANTED speculation is that this is Manic Pixie Dream Girl territory. It was so TOTALLY RANDOM and it introduced some harmless spontaneous fun into his life which means he'll overlook the more troubling implications.

Maybe there's a small net benefit in the world where that scarf helps bolster a relationship.

Oh my darling velvet hippo may bite other dogs and people, but they'd never turn on me!

Next thing the owner is in the news about how their sweet cuddlebug chewed their face off. Someone shows you who they are by their actions, believe them.

Its surely less bad than something like going around to all the hotels in the area and collecting nice scarfs to resell on Ebay, since she can at least claim altruistic motives.

Now you're making me wonder, because if I believe the account as-is, that sounds a bit too confident and practiced for something she just thought up on the spur of the moment. Maybe she does make a habit of false claims about lost-and-found property like this, and uses it or resells it on!

It actually sounds like it would be a viable business model for a side hustle.

It looks like Gucci scarfs can sell for $60-$150(!) on ebay. Spend two hours hotel hopping and that's a pretty good return if you find some good ones.

Yeah, if she turned out to be a habitual shoplifter or something I wouldn't be at all surprised, neither would I be surprised if Granny's porcelain figurines end up on eBay after he brings her home for a visit.

It's a 'yellow flag' at the very least.

It also occurs to me that she could 'return' the scarf to the hotel at the end of the night, thereby mitigating the possible harms.

I guess I'm trying too hard to read motives, but this is not what I would say a high conscientiousness person acts like.

If my date steals someone's scarf for me, I give it about 1% chance of "she's a master consequentialist who has calculated the utilons of someone potentially coming back for the scarf and finding it gone vs. the utilons of me being comforted" and 99% of "she's from casual petty crime culture and on top of that is 'agentic' enough to participate in it even as a woman".

The latter category isn't someone whose company I want to keep. There's the bro wisdom of "if she'd cheat with you she'll cheat on you" and while "if she'd act like a low trust society specimen for your benefit she'll act like a low trust society specimen at your expense" doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well, it feels plausible enough.

I came up with a suitably pithy wording before I read your comment.

There's the bro wisdom of "if she'd cheat with you she'll cheat on you"

For me, the distaff version of this is all the "other women" and mistresses lamenting that the married guy cheating with them is, in fact, lying about getting that divorce and marrying them because his marriage is a sham and in name only while his wife doesn't understand him and is cold and they're only staying together for the sake of the children.

Wow, you mean someone who has demonstrated he will happily lie and deceive close family in the cause of getting his dick wet is also lying to you in the cause of getting his dick wet? How can this be?

Some of them at least realise how things are and are open-eyed about the affair being an affair and that it'll never be more than that, but a surprising number can't get over "it's been five years, he still isn't divorced, am I wasting my time?"

I've read such a tip before, but with phone chargers instead of scarves. That if you're in need of a phone charger, to approach the nearest hotel lobby and tell the receptionist you left yours there, and you'll have a mountain of chargers to choose from.

I'd be impressed with her agency (far right tail for young women, who are generally incredibly passive) and find it endearing that a chick would take action to increase my comfort level instead of getting the ick from and penalizing me for my unforced error of expressing vulnerability in front of her.

However, at the same time, her acquiring the scarf like that would give me the ick—the nonchalance in handling some stranger's article of clothing and having someone she presumably cares about (e.g., me) wear it. Especially if that article of clothing is from a hotel. Do you want bedbugs? Because that's how you get bedbugs. This ick is just instinctual, but to rationalize something deeper it could also suggest that, for even a short-term relationship, we're incompatible with regard to conscientiousness, hygiene, and/or cleanliness. What next, dumpster diving if she’s or I’m hungry?

The lying and stealing or "stealing" aspect is actually secondary to me. We could have a fundamental difference in values/etiquette, as it's ingrained for me not to lie and not to take other people's belongings (especially in front of a date), even if they otherwise would have been unlikely to recover them.

On one hand, it's worrisome if a chick is so blasé about lying—if she so casually lies to a hotel receptionist in a low stakes situation, what if she's similarly down to lie to me in a higher stakes situation? On the other hand, a chick who's down to lie to others for my benefit could mean she's ride-or-die for me. Similarly, a chick who's down to take from others and give to me is based and good. Far better than the opposite, a chick who's down to take from me and give to others out of chronic pathological altruism.

Overall, things wash out in both directions, but I'd say it's a net-negative. It pains me to say it, because otherwise it'd be such a pleasant surprise for a girl to take the initiative to increase my comfort level instead of penalizing me for the gaffe of bringing it up, especially if I haven't banged her yet.

What next, dumpster diving if she’s or I’m hungry?

More dine and dash, I'd say. Or some kind of food delivery fraud:

First-party fraud

Also known as friendly fraud, this involves a customer using their own details to pay for an order and then claiming the charge was unauthorized after delivery is made. Nearly 1 in 4 (23%) consumers who have filed chargebacks admit the claim was fraudulent.

Promo abuse

Some customers may create fake accounts to exploit special offers, discounts, or free trials multiple times. They can also receive rewards for referrals to fake accounts. Another method of promo abuse involves customers using counterfeit vouchers or working out how to generate promo codes, costing businesses money and blocking trusted customers from using genuine codes.

The fake hotel claim does sound in the general area of "shoplifting is not a crime, businesses expect this kind of stealing, insurance pays for it all" thinking and does indicate a willingness to cheat/scam. Which may be confined to small things, or may lead to more serious crime, or at least scamming/lying in the relationship. "Oh, your mom's antique vase went missing? Gosh, I hope she finds it, I wonder what happened?" checks eBay to see if any buyer has bid yet

it'd be such a pleasant surprise for a girl to take the initiative to increase my comfort level instead of penalizing me for the gaffe of bringing it up

I mean sure in theory, yes. People don’t need to stick exactingly to red pill gender roles, but this anecdotes is so on the nose as a gender bent reversal of the cliche of all cliche examples of the ‘female comfort test’ with an outcome that digs into the gender reversal (he ends up with not just a scarf, but the “nicest” scarf), it has to be made up.

On one hand, it's worrisome if a chick is so blasé about lying—if she so casually lies to a hotel receptionist in a low stakes situation, what if she's similarly down to lie to me in a higher stakes situation?

For a lost item, the lying part is weighting much heavier than the stealing part.

Now don't get me wrong, I lie. Not for profit, and generally not to people close to me, but certainly to authorities to make interactions go smoothly. If I get into a traffic stop and I am asked if I take any medication, then I could be truthful and give them a list of drugs, and hope that they will eventually figure out that these drugs do not impair the ability to drive a car. Instead, I will simply lie to their face that I do not take any medication. But I generally do not seek out situations where I will lie.

Happily lying to a receptionist for shit and giggles and because you want a scarf is a whole other ballpark. Dark triad territory.

If I get into a traffic stop and I am asked if I take any medication, then I could be truthful and give them a list of drugs, and hope that they will eventually figure out that these drugs do not impair the ability to drive a car. Instead, I will simply lie to their face that I do not take any medication. But I generally do not seek out situations where I will lie.

I used to self-report my tiny keychain swiss army knife at land border crossings. I don't bother anymore, and I think the border guards are happier for it, because ultimately when they ask, "do you have any knives", we both know that isn't what they're referring to and isn't what the actual question is.

I agree with this. It would be far less troubling to just slide the hotel clerk a few bucks and ask if they have any scarves that haven't been claimed for a long time.

On the other hand, a chick who's down to lie to others for my benefit could mean she's ride-or-die for me. Similarly, a chick who's down to take from others and give to me is based and good.

Its on a second date. Unless youre a gigachad, you should assume she does this for people shes second-date-familiar with, possibly less. (A similar logic applies to early sex)

Second, while "willing to lie for you" is a benefit, its also important to be wise about it. I wouldnt go do this myself if you brought it up to me, and Im similarly not excited about her thinking its a good idea.

This is a microcosm of the problem with the agency people. “High agency” often just means “putting all cognition energy into obsessive self-gain”. AI that lies to people about dieting? High agency. Made something addicting with little social benefit? High agency. Foregoing relationships and social identity in order to be like the dude from Whiplash with low mood and a TFR of 0.50? High agency.

When all of your elites become high agency, the culture is ruined. No one will have the desire or the ability to solve collective action problems. Something wrong with crime? Sorry, all the high agency people have simply moved to a higher income area. Cheating scandals? All the high agency people know to use chat AI to scaffold their essays. Obesity? No one is there to consider longterm causes, because that’s not high agency. And when America is finally ruined, all the high agency will be on the first flight out of the country.

Great comment.

Something wrong with crime? Sorry, all the high agency people have simply moved to a higher income area.

I (we) cannot fix crime. We can flee it though. I do what I am capable of, not what is hypothetically possible if hard coordination problems were solved.

As @quiet_NaN said below, agency (that is, the ability to be an independent agent) is not necessarily correlated with asociality (that is, the tendency to devalue/neglect the collective good). While there's a degree of social conformity that's required to maintain the commons, a dearth of distributed agency/agentic elite causes a society to follow the path of least resistance, usually to its detriment. Some(well, most) societies are built to require less distributed agency/more social conformity (e.g. East Asia), but they tend to be outcompeted by more individualistic but still commonwealth-respecting societies (e.g. the West).

I think that agency is somewhat orthogonal to morality.

Low agency people (like myself, TBH) who do what all the others around them are doing are unlikely to stand out in either a good or bad way much. (They will still have a large overall impact which could be good or bad, though.)

Some high agency found EAs and try very hard to make the world a better place. Some high agency people try to rip off people to fund their underage sex islands. Some build successful companies producing dental drills. There is a much larger variety of ethical impact per person, but one can hardly say that they are all bad.

Couldn't agree more. High agency is often just a code wood for tearing down mores and norms for personal gain. I said something similar in a tweet myself.

Are you on twitter? DM me I'd love to follow you hah. Your writing is solid.

This really is one of those cases where 'imagine if the genders were reversed' actually tells us something- and that something is not positive. There are definitely things that are less bad when a woman does it, but this really doesn't seem like one.

It doesn't necessarily ring that way for me. The kind of guy that will break into a campus building so you two can... "watch the stars" on the roof. Or the type of guy that goes backpacking for a few months in developing countries, street smart can adapt. Lying your way into a club or fancy party. All sorts of things that happen in rom-coms. There's a spectrum between goodie two shoes and felony lowlife.

You're changing too many variables, I'm afraid. None of those involve irreversably claiming someone else's possession.

Before getting to the stealing, I'm more stuck on my aesthetic distaste to the vignette of a man on an early date telling the woman he's cold, and her giving him an article of clothing to comfort him (among the more feminine articles to boot). It's too perfectly set up as a subverted cliche, that I am 50-50 (edit on reflection, 70:30) that it's made up. I suspect many if not most of the people defending it are doing so on those very aesthetic grounds, and it's not remotely about agency, morals, or consequentialism. This is basically a manic pixie dream girl scene that crossed with light 'gender swapped' tittilation.

There's a very real trope about a certain kind of proclivity toward strong female to femdom fantasies, that is disproportionately represented in ratty kind of spaces, and people who like this stuff are likely to make up, hyperbolize, or latch onto real anecdotes online as a substitute for the actual paucity of it in the real world. The high agency stuff is just a laundering of a titilating fantasy about a strong female, playing provider to a meek guy with 'low agency', aka the sub.

OK

Regarding the lying and stealing, yeah morals aside, there's a russell's congugation here: My: high agency, your: unscrupulousness , their: low impulse control

To the extent that this is a real story, yeah run buddy. A girl who casually lies and steals for immediate time preference satisfaction (even (maybe espectally) if charitably done by proxy to near empathetic aquaintances) is bad news.

A girl who casually lies and steals for immediate time preference satisfaction (even (maybe espectally) if charitably done by proxy to near empathetic aquaintances) is bad news.

Yeah. For those thinking this is not so bad because she's doing it for his benefit, it was only on a second date. Suppose someone who is a close friend or family member of hers needs something? If she's willing to deceive strangers to get benefit for guy she barely knows, she's equally likely to be willing to deceive guy she barely knows for someone much closer to her. 'Look, that spare two grand was just sitting there in your bank account, you weren't doing anything with it, my sister needed to pay rent after she broke up with her boyfriend so what's the big deal? I should have asked you first? Yeah well you would have given it to me anyway, right? So why did I need to ask?' followed by 'What do you mean you mightn't have given it to me, I'm your girlfriend' argument.

Before getting to the stealing, I'm more stuck on my aesthetic distaste to the vignette of a man on an early date telling the woman he's cold, and her giving him an article of clothing to comfort him (among the more feminine articles to boot). It's too perfectly set up as a subverted cliche, that I am 50-50 (edit on reflection, 70:30) that it's made up. I suspect many if not most of the people defending it are doing so on those very aesthetic grounds, and it's not remotely about agency, morals, or consequentialism. This is basically a manic pixie dream girl scene that crossed with light 'gender swapped' tittilation.

I also am struggling to get past the cold man part of the story.

Personally I think it's extremely poor form for a man to expose a vulnerability on the second date. I also don't think I'd wear someone else's scarf, that seems like a pretty personal object. I've heard of people doing this with phone chargers and I know I'd never go back for a lost charger, so that hasn't bothered me vis a vis the other people's stuff angle.

Depends a lot on the aims for the date, imho. If the main goal is to have sex with her, then being the perfect and tough guy who is of course not whining about the cold and will in fact lend miss little princess his jacket if she should feel cold could be the winning strategy.

On the other hand, if you are looking for a long term relationship and don't want to keep the princess/servant dynamic in the long term, you might want to show a bit of imperfection and vulnerability just to see how she will react. Will she ignore your plight? Will she be willing to go into a clothing store with you and let you pay for a scarf? Will she gift you a scarf? Will she do something completely unexpected, like conning a receptionist? Will she dump you on the spot?

Why is it extremely poor form?

There is little to be gained by a man expressing transient physical discomfort. If you have a reputation for toughness, you can express mild preferences in limited circumstances - rarely in the moment - and it must always be clear that you can perform when needed.

Why do you accept such a strict gender role?

I prefer women who hold themselves to similar standards. I would recommend other men follow it for the reason Throwaway05 states, the downside is virtually none existent compared to the upside.

Hmm. I see. I don't like "quick complainers" either. Gotta have some stoicism and standards, regardless of gender. I just don't want it divided into strict gender roles. That's too superficial. Individuals differ widely within groups.

This kind of ‘holding frame’ game seems pretty exhausting, I really don’t think most women don’t care if a man says fuck it just got cold, as long as he isn’t whining about it for the rest of the day and just goes into a store to buy a sweater.

Some women insist that the man pay for things on a date, some women legitimately don't care and some women lie about which category they are in.

Nobody is penalizing you if you just pay so that is the best strategy, especially since nobody knows the ratios of the above.

Same thing goes for a lot of dating norms.

Addendum: You never sit in the car because it’s too hot or too cold if a tire needs changing. But you also don't want to be a tough guy to the point of becoming a liability. Being prepared is a finer line, and you can definitely cross into being an overly equipped “EDC Boy Scout” dork.

A story: Late this winter, we went to a cabin with a group of friends. An admittedly complicated snowfall occurred the night before we were set to leave. A friend ended up putting his car in a ditch. Trying to be a “tough guy” (in reality, embarrassed and rushing), he refused to wear a jacket, attempting to dig out the car, hook up pull straps, and put on chains in just a t-shirt. He started shaking uncontrollably, his hands stopped working, and I had to yell at him to get back in his car to warm up. He then sat there as my wife and I did the grunt work to get his car to the highway.

Because it seems like weakness or poor planning, to me, nother of which are attractive in men?

While cute it's a bit concerning

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