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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1348 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 21, 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.

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Shower thought:

Is there a contradiction between the typical progressive belief in blank slateism and progressive women's (and some men's) choosiness in who to partner up and have babies with? If any baby can be nurtured and educated into becoming an astronaut or [insert high status white collar profession], then what's the big deal about getting DNA from a sub-optimal mate?

I've said it before: women seeking sperm donors transform into hard eugenicists. It certainly a revealed preference of some sort.

"Transform" implies change. I think it is more accurate to say that it is simply more socially acceptable to be honest about such feelings with sperm donation and thus they are more open about it in that case.

Although anecdote from people who work in the for-profit fertility industry is that they select on height a lot more strongly than on IQ or other potentially eugenic qualities.

Which is not the way, as a tall guy. There‘s no advantage to greater height on a societal scale. We have to nip this red queen gigantism in the womb before we grow to monstrous heights like the dinosaurs, and collapse under our own weight like their broiler chicken sons. The easy and practical solution would be to sterilize the women who come to the fertility clinic and select tall embryos. That way, by selecting for preferences, selection squared so to speak, we can multiply our effect on the genome.

I wouldn‘t do that, of course. But I find the battle lines drawn around eugenicism funny. The ‚ethical‘ crowd, as well as the religious, oppose eugenicism for ‚artificial‘ ‚messing with nature/god‘s plan‘. The eugenicists claimed nature‘s plan was being messed with by ‚unnatural‘ welfare, and so wanted to ‚help evolution along‘, the way it was before modernity and medicine fucked up nature‘s plan. In other words, they‘re in a naturalistic fallacy competition. I don‘t care about nature‘s plan, it‘s blind and indifferent to human flourishing.

While there might be some sexual selection for male height going on, I doubt it’s gonna be strong enough to wind up with health problems.

Also height is pretty easy to lie about.

Also height is pretty easy to lie about.

My conspiracy theory as to why there are more men in the trades than women is that women constantly hear a bunch of false measurements, so aren't able to eyeball it (after all, if you always hear that 2.5" is actually 6", and 5'8" is actually 6', then how are you going to place nails every 8")?

More men are in the trades due to the same work-life balance and temperament issues that dictate gender ratios everywhere, with a side of upper body strength. Most men can't easily tell the difference between 5'10 and 6' either. You see plenty of women working parts houses supplying the trades- less lucrative, but more predictable hours and much more predictable, pleasant work environments.

There's a joke in the trades- a little boy has school cancelled, so his mom tells him to go watch the construction site across the street. He comes home for lunch and his mom asks him, 'so, did you learn anything?' He says, yes, I learnt how to hang a door. She says, 'how do you do that?', and he says 'well, you shove that bitch in their, and if it don't fit you shave two cunt hairs off and shove it back in...' and horrified, she tells him to go to his room. When dad gets home, she tells him to go upstairs and ask his son what he learned that day. 'So, son, what did you learn today?' 'Well, I learnt how to hang a door' 'Oh really, how do you hang a door' 'well you shove that bitch in their, and if it don't fit you shave two cunt hairs off and try again' and dad says, 'Go get me a switch' to which he says 'Fuck you, that's the electrician's job'.

Doing that for sixty hours a week is how you get started in the trades. Few women make it past this filter.

Most men can't easily tell the difference between 5'10 and 6' either.

To be fair, most people can put height in about 5 bins -- way taller, a little taller, same height, a little shorter, and really short -- compared to themselves.

Just that to the average woman, "way taller" covers a lot of ground. (and "a little bit taller" from what I hear is mostly fine)

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