site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2252 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 30, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Has anyone ever met a conservative, atheist, vegan before? I have this friend that is all 3 and he feels like such a niche character. 1 in 2k? 1 in 10k? I'm not sure, but I'm informally curious how many folks with this similar set of beliefs there are out there. Particularly how many are women. As this topic is related to finding a mate with compatible values, and I think if he sticks to requiring them to meet his values, he's going to die alone.

I have a friend who pretty closely fits the description. I don't know if he fully deserves the conservative label I suppose, but he's an atheist and strict vegan. He's pretty well read in Western philosophy, though he seems to gravitate towards thinkers that I'm personally skeptical of, especially Hegel, though I don't really care enough to study him and other historicist philosophers to really have a substantive debate with him, beyond the bad vibes i suppose. Relatedly, he seems to occasionally be sympathetic towards some socialist economic theories, where we have the opposite situation in terms of how well-informed I consider myself vs. him. However, on all the other culture war issues he's way in the conservative camp.

On the dating thing, I think he should realize that if a woman likes and respects her man, she will adopt his values or at least change to become more compatible with them. Speaking also from personal experience, having impossibly high standards like this is also a way to rationalize avoidant behavior, stemming from anxiety about interacting with the opposite gender.

Not exactly, but I have known multiple conservative athiests, a few of whom were vegetarians, not vegan. They all tended to be odd in other ways as well.

Conservative atheists are a dime a dozen honestly. Vegan-Conservative are much less common, but tend to be religious, it's this weird hybrid trifecta thats unique.

Conservative atheists are a dime a dozen honestly.

There are dozens of us!

Vegan-Conservative are much less common, but tend to be religious

Yeah, Seventh Day Adventists were the first to come to mind, but I guess many of them are vegetarian, not vegan (and they're obviously religious).

Anyone who sticks to requiring some strict set of criteria from a partner wants to die alone. Trying to debate him without addressing his real motivations and goals is a waste of time. Arguing with him about the odds is telling him: your method is going to be very effective at achieving your goals.

This is a really bad take. It's trivial to conceive of a preference ordering consistent with any standard, being:

  1. Having a partner who adheres to X standards

  2. Having no partner

  3. Having a partner who does not adhere to X standards.

As a typical example for non-strict standards, consider X = "does not regularly smear shit on themselves". Most people would rather die alone than live their life with a shit-smearing partner, but still would like a partner in general as long as they can find one that meets their standards. If these standards are stricter then they're making a larger trade-off: stricter standards are going to drastically lower the probability of finding someone who meets them, but presumably increases the value of finding such a partner.

So if they have a strict set of criteria and stick to it anyway despite knowing it reduces their chances, it means their preference for those standards is stronger than their preference for having any partner, which is nonzero evidence that their preference for a partner is small, but it's absurd to extrapolate from that to concluding that their preference for a partner is negative. That scaring off most potential partners is actually the goal rather than an unfortunate side effect. If that were the case they could just call themselves asexual and not mention standards at all.

Small non-negative numbers exist.

I have met one. Male, retired marine. Very very Covid obsessed(which is why I don’t still know him). He was married, held social policy views which could have fit in with either party, but supported republicans because he homeschooled his kids and loved guns.

Has your friend tried dating vegan hippie chicks and convincing them of whatever he agrees with the GOP on?

Has your friend tried dating vegan hippie chicks and convincing them of whatever he agrees with the GOP on?

Yeah feels like best path is to assume reasonable suggestibility on vegan hippies and emphasize the tradbits.

I think the overriding problem is that hippie chicks are progressive and this man is too autistic enough to not immediately bring up where they disagree or entertain the idea of not talking about politics long enough for them to develop feelings and then slowly bring it up.

I have met one.

Do you know if his wife was vegan? I'm assuming this was from before the time of hyper-polarized politics that dogs these past two decades?

This was the late 2010’s. His wife was vegan, they were pretty into environment and animal stuff and they were homeschooling for partly that reason.

Plenty of eccentrics in the trades. Usually more of the white nationalism and a pet monkey version, but still.

Values are pretty important in a partner. He should at least know where he is willing to compromise or meet in the middle.

I'm atheist my wife is Catholic. I agreed to raise our kids catholic, but I never agreed to convert. And by raising them catholic I made it clear that I meant getting out of the way, and not undermining her efforts, but very little active assistance.

Would he be fine with a vegetarian?

Would he be fine with someone that is mostly apolitical?

In general, the more strict your filter is the more you are going to filter. I always had the approach that nothing was truly off the table. There are gonna be things you like and dislike in a partner. You want it to be net positive in the moment, and for it to be likely to remain a net positive in the future.

You can maybe get your friend thinking in the direction of tradeoffs by asking about age, weight, and looks tradeoffs. Since those things are more of a sliding scale and we all recognize that one of those characteristics being slightly off from perfect is fine if there are other positives to balance it out.

My understanding is that while he is open to marrying a Christian woman, he like you would not convert. Around where we are, supposedly that is a non-starter for enough conservative woman. They want a man to "lead them in loving Christ" I'm not entirely sure what that means exactly, but I can infer.

As far as Veganism goes, I think he's pretty inflexible on that. He thinks its downstream of values, and vegetarians are just copping out, making their life easier because being moral is hard. He of course is morally righteous, objectively. He has a very black-and-white moral absolutist stance on a lot of topics. Apolitical is fine, but anyone even slight left of center is: "infected with a virus that makes them dumb sociopaths screeching about empathy" There is actually a lefty woman who seemingly likes him, follows him around, goes on runs with him, but because she advocates for feminism and socialism, that's a red flag for him.

I am increasingly convinced he, like many incels, has gotten stuck in this red-pill rage phase and is fed by constant social media, content creators, and crab-in-the-bucket blogposts that make him think woman having rights is bad for him and his dating life. He of course dresses this up as "what's good for society" and "illogical decisions by woman to risks in the modern dating market".

In general, the more strict your filter is the more you are going to filter. I always had the approach that nothing was truly off the table. There are gonna be things you like and dislike in a partner. You want it to be net positive in the moment, and for it to be likely to remain a net positive in the future.

I agree. I also think you need to go where your potential mates are, figure out what they are looking for, figure out what are the bare necessities are for you, and make everything else flexible. Having extreme minority political views from multiple distinct tribes leaves a subsection of the populous that is just too few. Doubly so because woman cluster closer to the middle of social views.

age, weight, and looks tradeoffs.

These are expectedly not things he wants to budge on, ditto for divorce or kids. The biggest issue is that he's in his late 30s at this point, he is quickly approaching the mirror of "bitter middle age woman who thinks there are no good men and blames society", expressing this to him gets a screed about how its asymmetric and he doesn't have the same decisions/control/power that woman had.

Any thoughts on how to deradicalize a friend?

There is actually a lefty woman who seemingly likes him, follows him around, goes on runs with him, but because she advocates for feminism and socialism, that's a red flag for him.

There is a reason the "lefty chick + most racist man alive" meme exists, and it's for this man and this woman.

The biggest issue is that he's in his late 30s at this point

It is not a good sign that he's in his late 30s and hasn't realized that a woman doing those things is flashing every green flag she can to tell him that she's willing to be converted.

If his failures in life haven't deradicalized him I don't know if you will.

I was painfully lonely for a period and that made me drop some of the strictest requirements I had for a partner. That painfully lonely period was only months though, not years or decades.

You are a better friend than me. I would have probably dropped this bitter pill of a person from my life. Such bitterness and negativity will only get worse, not better.

I see my younger self in him a lot, though I am currently younger than him. I was very black-and-white. I went through an MRA and Red-Pill phase, which is funny enough how I found the motte back on reddit. I mellowed as I got older, learned to see the grey in the world. Some self reflection/introspection, points to the possiblity I'm trying to reach back through to my younger self and help him by helping this friend.

If his failures in life haven't deradicalized him I don't know if you will.

Yeah my fear. He is already too stubborn to take advice.

You are replying to a filtered comment.

comment approved.

I've been posting for several years at this point. Obviously my comments are not making it past the new user filter. I swear me being filtered is a more recent thing. Can downvotes push someone back into being filtered?

I recall you being no longer filtered also. As far as I know, once you're unfiltered you should not go back into the filter.

A fascinating conundrum, apparently the machine spirit of The Motte hates me specifically.

Perhaps Zorba built in an automatic filter for any post containing "vegan" and "atheist" within certain number of words of each other.

I wish, that would be an easy topic to avoid lol, but this has popped up several times recently. Maybe the mods prefer first dibs on responding to me.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats