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.
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Notes -
People are terrible, a person can be great.
People will do the right thing after first exhausting every other available option.
The stock market is completely divorced from productivity, profit, market share and consumer satisfaction.
For all the good the internet has done, many load bearing systems in society were not prepared for the effects of globalism and the information superhighway, and we have been suffering from the network effects and scale effects of the internet ever since.
Racism is a form of bias, and bias is impossible to truly eliminate as long as differences exist. It can be mitigated, but never truly removed.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes. People want to think in binary, they want absolute X and absolute Y, hard reality, a right answer and a wrong answer they can die on a hill over. Unfortunately, when the binary solution doesn't work, people lose their minds.
Any system of government works under a certain amount of people. I am uncertain as to the exact number but it's probably lower than Dunbar's.
Societal paradigms and dominant modes of thought take hold because they advantage the people, not because they are correct.
Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity; however, JJ's razor applies. If you can't tell the difference, what does it matter?
Sadly, Porn is the most important TLP idea, even more than narcissism, and it explains modern consumerist hyperculture. We are all buying or consuming facsimiles of things to approximate or satiate the need for the thing we actually want, and numbing that need sufficiently is one of the great triumphs and tragedies of modern civilization.
Oof.
Yeah. Even as I actively try to avoid accepting the facsimile and pursue the authentic article, I find that every nudge and unyielding social pressure is driving towards the commodified artificial version as the core urges go unsated and the avenues that will reliably lead to the desired outcome seem shut down (unless you can buy your way through).
Well, it's also because genuinely trying and pursuing and then failing to get it is cringe.
And better to die cool than live cringe.
That really only matters if your attempts are broadcast to the world/your larger social group. Which for Gen Z, many times they are.
Also I'm now at the point in my life (maybe an age thing) where I simply do not feel significant 'shame' over attempting to do things authentically, without hiding behind a veneer of irony or detachment.
You might have an insight there as to why people are completely unable to break out of their 'self-imposed' equilibrium. Gooning away to an OF model or, heaven forbid, an AI girlfriend is a private act that nobody will judge you for since it isn't broadcast. But hoo boy, approaching a real woman entails risk, and even if you acquire a woman you're still going to have to be on your best game since she can d0 all kinds of things to try and embarrass you if things sour.
Based. And I do think it's an age thing. Perhaps it's because as you get older you feel secure in your social circumstances (you have found your people, you know they aren't going to ditch you even if you make a momentary fool of yourself), but either way it seems to come with age. Or as CS Lewis put it: "When I was ten I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly."
There's absolutely a lot of the "I'm secure now and to some extent I can either enforce or flout social norms because I have higher status relative to others."
I also worked through a lot of my remaining insecurities in the wake of my big breakup.
I've also mastered the art of 'doubling down' when you do something cringey... just roll with it man. As long as nobody is hurt or seriously offended you can make something funny or cool just by recovering smoothly.
Tools that would have been useful to me in my twenties, but back then I wasn't even self-aware enough to know when I should feel shame, so...
This is gesturing towards a Sunday question I've been thinking about, which is how many Xers/millennials had Silent/Boomer same-sex parents that they thought were in any way useful in providing advice in the realm of sex/dating/marriage. It seems like a lot of guys I know (I know far less about women's opinions on this issue) had to reinvent the wheel during their 20s and even into their 30s on those topics, and there seems to be a strong overlap with a not-very-helpful-with-advice Silent/Boomer father.
I sure did.
My parents were high-school sweethearts, who divorced when I turned 18, which meant my conception of idealized romance was suddenly rugpulled out from under me, and I didn't have any other good models to latch onto. And then MY high school sweetheart broke it off with me the first semester of college, which spiraled me pretty hard thereafter.
And the next ten years was exactly that, me trying to reinvent the wheel... WHILE living in a world where the standard romantic playbook was actively being destroyed.
I can't even blame my dad, he did find love afterwards, eventually, but he didn't have the experience needed to help me navigate the world I found myself in.
Yeah, I don't mean it in a blame way, or even to suggest I would've listened to my dad had he provided advice. More of a Noticing a pattern kind of thing.
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