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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   27274 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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The last time I participated in this community I was in November. When as part of some discussion about how DnD had gone woke or something, /u/RandomRanger posted a very long comment where, to paraphrase, he said that black people were an inferior stupid race who bring crime and dysfunction wherever we go and that in order to stop the west from being "overrun" with blacks, white racists would need to "block" us in a way the didn't account for "international law" and "human rights". I replied calling him a cracker bitch and was temp-banned by the mods.

Now I know my outburst was against the rules, it was uncivil, I was reacting with anger, and I knew at the time I'd get banned for it. But I don't know, when I see someone essentially laying out a justification for bringing back slavery, how am I supposed to respond, as a black person? Am I expected to lay out some "well have you considered..."-ass intellectual rebuttal, Am I supposed to beg and plead for my own rights? "No sir, Please sir, I'm one of da good ones see!" I'm sorry but I don't have the patience for that

When made my first comment here where expressed profound distress over the possibly that HBD is real. I got a lot of responses along the lines of "well, what's it matter to you? you're an individual and population level statistics don't apply to you." I never thought that they applied to me. But when people in this community use HBD and crime statistics to argue that things Jim Crow and Apartheid were good and just and maybe should even be brought back THAT FUCKING AFFECTS ME. I'M BLACK

I remember another person asked me if I sincerely related to black underclass criminals and no I obviously don't but I relate to people like Toussaint Louverture, Malcolm X, Steve Biko. The intelligent black men who dedicated their lives to fighting the people who wanted to keep us in eternal subjugation for all the same goddamn reasons. And when I read what RandomRanger says about how society ought to forcefully disempower black people for the sake of having a "civilized" country. I'm reminded of the poem written by Claude McKay during Red Summer when white supremacists were terrorizing black people across America:

If we must die, let it be not like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow! What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

So bring it on! I don't care if we won't win but I'll FIGHT LIKE HELL for my people and if I die I know I'll have died a proud black man who stood for dignity instead of cowering negro who submitted to slavery. I'LL NEVER BE ACCEPT BEING A SLAVE!!!

  • -12

For what it's worth, I think the HBD folks are usually obsessed with IQ in an unhealthy way. Black culture, despite the bad parts, has some really lovely vitality and openess and warmth that a lot of more standardized western culture lacks. I for one think HBD, while true in some narrow sense, doesn't even come close to justifying bringing back slavery.

Black culture, despite the bad parts, has some really lovely vitality and openess and warmth that a lot of more standardized western culture lacks.

Huh? Like what? Rap? Scam culture? So confused by this comment.

Men clap each other on the back and are extremely warm with each other. Black people gas each other up all the time. There's a physical vitality and liveliness that I don't see celebrated as much in white culture. A focus on athleticism, and physical strength.

There's also a general rootedness, less of a willingness to just pick up and leave your entire family on a whim for a better social scene or career prospects. All of these are good things, imo.

Black culture is more warm in the sense that people are gregarious, speak louder, touch each other more, and have more large raucous social gatherings than certain types of borderline autistic northern Europeans or WASPs who stand six feet apart, never talk over each other, and eat meals of boiled potatoes and beef in respectful silence. Of course, not all western cultures are like the latter, and southern whites in the US are noticeably more similar to their black neighbors in behavior, food, accent, etc. compared to northeners.

For what it's worth, I think the HBD folks are usually obsessed with IQ in an unhealthy way.

Hey that's not fair, many of us are also obsessed with violent crime rates. That, and how many more decades of complete abject miserable failure on that front it's supposed to take before "anti-racist" views on the subject are considered refuted.

I'm definitely in favor of more hardcore sentencing for violent criminals, at least repeat offenders. Three strike laws for instance, when it comes to violent crime, are totally fine for me. Definitely not woke myself in other areas.

That doesn't mean that I think black people are inferior, subhuman, or deserve to be treated overall with less dignity than white people.

That doesn't mean that I think black people are inferior, subhuman, or deserve to be treated overall with less dignity than white people.

Good for you?

The thing is, reducing violent crime is not that hard. I mean not brining it to zero, but bringing it to a place where it's not an everyday concern to a layperson. It has been done, and it has been undone, and in both cases it not a function of genetics or races or any of that stuff. It's just the question of resources and consistent unyielding enforcement. You just need to catch the criminals and put them in jail and keep them there. You don't need to analyze their genes or skin color to do that. It is true that people who un-do it, very much look at genes and skin color as a justification of why they are not doing the right thing, but there's no reason to uphold their framework and only change the signs. It is possible to toss the whole broken framework altogether and replace it with one that looks at the actual behavior and not genetics. You don't put people in jail for their genes, just for their crimes. If you do that, you don't need any HBD. I mean, you can still do a PhD in theorizing about what causes people to do crime, but practically it doesn't matter - if the criminals are in jail, nobody cares about their biology. Everybody cares that they are in jail.

HBD comes in when you do that, then look at the people in the jails and notice they don't look like the general population.

Crime does not look like the general population, because criminals aren't general population. That's why we lock them up in jails. If everybody would be equally likely to commit crime, locking people up would be useless. But it's actually very useful, because only a very small number of people, compared to the whole population, does crime, and even smaller one - does crime repeatedly. But again, you do not need to have scientific explanation why every person does crime to lock up criminals, no more than you need to study quantum gravity theory to build a bridge that does not collapse. The practical way is easy.

You don't put people in jail for their genes, just for their crimes. If you do that, you don't need any HBD.

Until five seconds later when someone accuses you of being the Grand Wizard because the people you locked up were disproportionately black. C'mon now, I know you didn't just fall off the turnip truck.

You are saying "I must be racist because other people are racist, so I need to be exactly like them, but with different sign". No, you don't. You missed all of my point exactly. The people that would accuse you would be racists, but you do not need to build your own racism to defend against them. I just showed you the correct way, and you treat it as some kind of weird nonsense. That's the problem.

Oh okay, when a bunch of wokies paint me as Hitler and try to terminate my career because I colorblindly arrested six times as many black guys, or whatever, I'll just pass them a copy of your post. It'll fill their hearts with a sense of civic virtue and society as a whole will decide that actually it doesn't really want the answer to that question after all. Then, finally, at last, no one will "need" the actual answer and you can quit hearing about HBD.

I'm not sure how this even computes. OK, I understand you are pissed off at the wokes. I am too. They are totally wrong. But then something bizarre happens. I am saying "yes, we should ignore the wokes and arrest as many black guys as commit crimes. And as many white guys as commit crimes". But you say - no, that's not gonna work. You see, the wokes are in the way, so the only way to solve it is to build this theory that treats black people as low quality humans, and somehow introduce it it into all the society, and obsess about wide-populational statistical differences. And when I am asking - well, how exactly that is going to help with arresting the actual criminals and keeping them in jail? You tell me - but the wokes! The wokes!!! The wokes!!! Yes, I know, the wokes. The wokes are bad. The wokes are racist. They are making everything worse. I got that. The part I didn't get is how exactly HBD is helping you here? I am saying the practical way to solve the crime is to put criminals in jail. You are saying it's impossible because the wokes would interfere and thus we need HBD. But how HBD is helping you? Sure, you could start despising black people for their supposed statistical inferiority... and? How that solves anything?

I am saying the practical way to solve the crime is to put criminals in jail. You are saying it's impossible because the wokes would interfere and thus we need HBD. But how HBD is helping you?

The wokes get their justification by claiming that disparate sentencing alone proves that law enforcement is racist and illegitimate, and having wide public agreement for this because HBD arguments are taboo and can't be uttered in polite society. If HBD became common knowledge, this would stop working.

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For what it's worth, I think the HBD folks are usually obsessed with IQ in an unhealthy way.

From the perspective of some, doing anything other than burying one’s head in the sand with regard to racial IQ differences is ipso facto unhealthy.

Black culture, despite the bad parts, has some really lovely vitality and openess and warmth that a lot of more standardized western culture lacks.

Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

High violent crime rates, lifetime net tax consumption, and racial narcissism and outgroup hostility are quite the vibrant way to express lovely vitality and openess and warmth.

I for one think HBD, while true in some narrow sense, doesn't even come close to justifying bringing back slavery.

Indeed, many wrongthinkers would agree that US slavery and its outcomes were a mistake—albeit for reasons different from progressives—and to not make the same mistake twice.

There's a small subset of commenters here that are experts in what is covert, effectively bad-faith argumentation, perfectly calibrated to the rules. You will post a substantive comment arguing/claiming/observing A B C D and they will nitpick B, and respond to D with their most full-force argument. Of course, ignoring entirely A and C. If you're interested in light and truth of course, this is a most strange way to respond, but many of these people aren't. To many of them forums are about WINNERS and LOSERS and they are determined to be 'winners'. Tragically, most people in this forum seem inclined to let them get away with it. Who cares if someone ignored A and C? Disagree = downvote, rebuttal to D was strong = upvote. "Hey you ignored my point" = crickets. Then, for bonus points a week later, a toplevel post with a gish-gallop of blue-links chosen for maximum effect. It's effectively the loophole here.

Personally I'm not interested in playing the game back, I value my own integrity too highly, so I'll begrudgingly accept reddit-hivemind downvote patterns, block a few people who are particularly egregious, and accept that I'm here purely as a mix of fun and intellectual hobbyism. I'm not here on a crusade to change minds because the personal cost is too high. I'll say my piece and maybe people will find it interesting. But if you're wondering if this community lives up to its billing the answer is no. Is that depressing? Yes, a bit. Is it ironic considering some of these bad-faith people are some of the very same lamenting the slide of society into a "low-trust" paradigm, which is, of course, allegedly the fault of progressives and minorities? Yes. It's not even really the mods' fault because a) their job is really hard and b) some of these people are just way too good at skirting the rules in just the right way.

It's very unlikely that slavery will come back for blacks, at least in the US. White TFR in both the US and Europe is sinking. Why? Feminism, cost of living, more educated women, contraceptives, the list goes on. Only in Africa is TFR still high, and it's possible that there will be substantial black African immigration to the US in the future to replace an increasingly aging white workforce.

You should be rejoicing over the current population trends. The US will be increasingly black, and it's not as if black people will choose to enslave their own tribe. Or actually, the US might be increasingly latino, so the risk is that latinos decide to enslave blacks.

Let me suggest a course of action to better secure the future for all blacks. With no sarcasm, just impregnate as many females as you can, focusing particularly on latino and white women. Impregnating white women reduces the threat of a a white majority eliminating the 13th amendment, like you fear. Impregnanting latino women is securing the near future, which is likely to be latino dominated. Latino TFR is dropping too, so after that it will just be black TFR maintaining the world population.

Mixed race children with black ancestry are often treated as just black. The larger tribe is usually safer, especially in a democracy.

TLDR:

Don't want to be a slave? Make your tribe bigger, embrace democracy. HBD says my tribe is dumb? Who cares, I impregnated your tribe's women, we are all my tribe now.

The black population in America is declining as a percentage. Immigration comes heavily from everywhere but Africa, the AADOS TFR is lower than the white TFR, etc.

Yes, very much so. US black TFR is low - but their TFR is not the one that matters, it's the black African TFR that will immigrate and likely assimilate into US black culture. US/Canada are immigrant powered capitalist countries traditionally powered by immigrant labor. Even though AI is reducing the need for some labor, AI will not replace blue collar labor anytime soon. If we AI can replace my roof and fix my plumbing, we are in a very different, nearly post-scarcity society.

When latino immigration and TFR eventually dries up, as it is already doing, the last source of able bodied blue collar workers will be from Africa. The US by then will be older, much more latino, and in need of immigrant labor that can only be sourced in sufficient numbers from Africa. No one else will be willing to do blue collar work. We see the first signs of this in Somali immigration to the US, who are highly incentived to immigrate for a better life, and they are working blue collar jobs Americans don't really want.

The US will be increasingly black, and it's not as if black people will choose to enslave their own tribe

The transatlantic slave trade was largely Africans enslaving other Africans then selling those slaves to Europeans for transport.

Yes, true. But the culture of preindustrialized African societies is not the same as US blacks. Unless you are thinking that the propensity to enslave is genetic, rather than sociocultural, economic, and political opportunism. From the perspective of the Africans selling slaves back then, they were mostly selling the populations of rival tribes who were enemies. The romans enslaved the gauls, and they probably had a similar skin tone too. Selling off slaves of enemy populations was both profitable and weakened them in potential future conflicts. It was a good idea to sell them to distant strangers if possible, so the slaves would be unlikely to return for revenge.

So, the colonial age Africans who sold rival Africans were just doing what all of warring humanity had always done until the modern age. It does not mean US blacks will be more likely than average to sell other US blacks into slavery.

I don't think anyone is bringing back chattel slavery, since the economic conditions that made it useful no longer exist. The closest thing we have to modern chattel slavery, human trafficking, is mostly same race people victimizing each other. I don't think any US race is interested in enslaving any other race; it follows that the relative population of whites vs blacks is irrelevant to slavery in modern terms.

Somehow the question of who evil whitey was buying the slaves from gets forgotten. For example, Biden’s apology to African leaders for America’s “original sin” of slavery. One summary made by wrongthinkers: “sorry for buying what you were selling.”

Well, it's fair to say the original sin of slavery is probably held by any large states that exist today, and thus indirectly by all modern populations except maybe the tiny islanders like the Sentinelese. Rome, Chinese dynasties, pretty much everywhere that won wars used some form of slavery.

America's slavery was in more recent memory and the ex-slaves have not fully genetically mixed into the descendants. Also Biden wanted to score some points with his voting base, so that was just tossing red meat (blue meat?) to the base.

Other than that, the justification for slavery, uplifting from barbarism, is bad from a modern Christian perspective. So a constant Christian apology must be given for the original sin of the past. The apologies will continue until the US is gone or until all of the US could be considered black.

I've concluded that most people think Americans caught them in Africa with big butterfly nets.

(Side notice: why is parent modded to -14? Are there so many lurkers who disagree with him? I see this as evidence that the voting does not confer useful information beyond the alignedness with the local groupthink. Some sites (LW) do manage a culture where contrarian-but-interesting takes are upvoted. If anyone has css ready to hide post votes, I would be interested.)

The poster child for HBD is the intelligence advantage of the Ashkenazi Jews, to the point where Scott himself used them to tentatively advance that idea. Yet for some reason, I do not recall anyone here suggesting that only that group should have the franchise. Instead, HBD is used to argue for propositions which for some strange reason happen to rhyme with racism of old.

Personally, I am in favor of colorblind meritocracy all the way. We do not need to use ethnicity as a proxy for intelligence or whatever, we can simply select directly for it. Picking people who are known to be intelligent is much more effective than picking Ashkenazi in the hope that the individual variation is in your favor. Ideally, we could do this regardless of HBD.

The only reason to bring up the HBD hypothesis at all is if the SJ whines about disparate impact and unequal outcomes, which for them imply that the system is racist and unfair, and needs to be changed. And sometimes they might be right, in that our systems (e.g. criminal justice) are less colorblind than we would like them to be. But sometimes the answer may well be that genetic or cultural group differences are to blame for the unequal outcome, and we should just shrug and move on.

I have another, less savory reason to insist that people are treated equally before the law. Good old Niemoeller. If I were to grant that small racial differences in genetic inclination to violent crime are a reason to disenfranchise one ethnicity, I will have no reason why I should not lose the franchise for being a man -- after all, the crime sex gap is rather impressive.

The issue with your position is that you are wrong and RandomRanger is correct. Black peoples ruin civilization and the best thing you can do is to create barriers to being around black people. It’s obviously not ALL black people but 20-50%. If a city has 200k black people then 40k of them will ruin everything without doing mitigation.

I like living in dense walkable urban environments. That does not exists in America because black people ruin the commons. I have to live abroad in order to live the lifestyle I want because black people are in my country.

Black people have been present in North America since the 17th century. The time when North American urban environments have become practically unwalkable was sometime around 1980 or 1990, as far as I can tell. Are you really sure that it’s the presence of blacks that is responsible for this development?

White Flight atleast in Chicago is assumed to have occurred between 1950-1970 with the peak in the 1960’s. America building only “non-walkable” cities would be just after white flight had been completed so a 1980 date fits with the timeline. Wikipedia tells me in 1900 only 20% of blacks in the South lived in cities and >90% of blacks live in the South.

I am confused by why you would question my claims by saying blacks have been here since the 17th century? They literally were not in cities or out of the South in large numbers until the 1950’s. Before the 1970’s we had explicit segregation laws. Timeline wise American cities being unwalkable in the 1980’s fits with black migration patterns and the end of segregation.

In the 1970’s 80% of blacks now lived in cities. By your own timeline the very next decade was when America quit making urban walkable cities.

You can disagree with my claim that blacks caused the end of urban America but you can’t disagree with my claim that the timelines agree.

You’re specifically and categorically claiming that blacks ruin civilization, including the commons. That’d mean that they’ve been ruining everything around themselves in North America ever since they started arriving there, that every urban environment where they have been present should have been unwalkable from the start. Which, I argue, is not the case, because the transformation of US urban cores to unwalkable wastelands was a complex and decades-long process that had multiple causes, many of them unrelated to the issue of race. I’d tie this to another suggestion of mine, namely that we can make the same argument about the causes of white flight.

Also, I doubt there were segregation laws banning blacks from walkable urban areas altogether.

Less than 10% of blacks lived in urban environments before 1910 and virtually zero outside the South.

I am quite confused and feel like you are being ridiculous. The civil rights act wasn’t passed until 1964. So you could just arrest blacks for being in the wrong place before then.

So yes when you can take extreme mitigation (by modern standards) then blacks didn’t ruin nearly all urban environments in the US.

Many would also claim the urban environments began to fall apart before the 1980 date you chose. White flight was earlier.

I feel like you’re trying to force me into a ridiculous claim that a black person in Alabama was ruining Chicago. Black people didn’t show up in Chicago until later. And then Chicago lost the Southside in a handful of decades.

I'm just suggesting that your worldview is simplistic in this regard.

I don’t care if some things “simplistic”. I care if it’s an accurate model of the world. The end of the American walkable city perfectly correlates with the timeline of blacks moving into cities. If I made the exact same argument and said - “White flight occurred because white people are racists and moved to the suburbs (or redlined, zoning, etc) when black people moved to the city. Robbing the urban environment of economic resources to make strong comminities” - I would be a Professor at Harvard and you would likely praise my intellect. Instead of blaming white racism I am saying white people fled cities because black people came to cities and littered, trashed public spaces, killed people, couldn’t behave in schools, etc.

https://x.com/atlanticesque/status/2049111059613495356?s=46

Um, aren't the best places abroad also typically places with porous borders and thus ever more melanising? If they'll let you in, they're not going to discriminate on race against others?

Yeah, I'm gonna tap the sign.

Let's imagine for a second that someone does not agree with you. What the fuck are they supposed to say? "Nuh uh"? At least when people cite crime statistics, they can have an actual argument over whether they're real, representative, whatever. What you've got here is made-up numbers and venting.

Fair. I was tone matching. And doing a generalized argument. From personal experience my hood in the 2010’s and more post covid in downtown Chicago faced falling property values with one of the reason being that violent crime increased. Just a month ago my old condo building had its convenience store robbed at gun point.

The process of white flight that largely occurred in the ‘60s was once again occurring in Chicago. Ken Griffin being the most prominent participant.

/images/1777224022404828.webp

I like living in dense walkable urban environments. That does not exists in America because black people ruin the commons. I have to live abroad in order to live the lifestyle I want because black people are in my country.

That was an ironic and underdiscussed part of the “Japan is Wakanda for white people” dicussion a few weeks back. To the extent Japan is Wakanda for white people, a large part of that is because Japan is generally devoid of the type of people who look like Wakandans.

when I see someone essentially laying out a justification for bringing back slavery, how am I supposed to respond, as a black person?

I remember another person asked me if I sincerely related to black underclass criminals and no I obviously don't but I relate to people like Toussaint Louverture, Malcolm X, Steve Biko. The intelligent black men who dedicated their lives to fighting the people who wanted to keep us in eternal subjugation for all the same goddamn reasons.

Reject community. Embrace individualism.

Well brotha we can’t exactly “embrace individualism” so long as the RandomRangers of the world view us as part of a community. I don’t think you should be the kind of reflexive tribalist who defends whatever a black person does. That’s the kind of mindset that makes race relations and “our community” much worse. But the reason I’m invested in “the black community” is the simple fact that how ousiders perceive us as a collective DOES IN FACT affect US as individuals. They did not spare the “good blacks” the last time and I don’t want to have to rely on rolling the dice and hoping that they will the next.

Hey man, echoing what @Amadan says. I am not convinced by the HBD stuff though, unlike him. But I am also open to just come to this "public square" to listen in and see what it's about. I suppose the way that I stayed here so far was that I treat my presence here like Louis Theroux on an investigative trip. Only recently did I take a more proactive approach of actually contributing or starting conversations. I would encourage you to fight! fight on! And yes, it means in certain places and at certain moments, we fight by the rules the arena setup and rewards us for. Thankfully I trust in the mods of this arena, and also I guess a healthy boundary between knowing that "these people who I disagree with is out there" and "these people who I disagree with is harmful and dangerous to me imminently". This is after all just one corner in the vast internet, and the true public real life world out there has plenty spaces for me to fight, and not just by writing.

In addition to what others have said about how the rules do in fact require you to be civil, I would encourage you to make use of the block function. I have a handful of users blocked (including the one you were responding to) because I find them to be toxic posters who almost exclusively make hateful posts about how terrible their outgroup is. I have no interest in reading that shit, so I blocked them. It makes the experience of participating in this site far more pleasant for me, and you may find it does the same.

I agree. This site's block function is really good. I would've stopped coming here a long time ago if it didn't have it because some posters are so predictable and irritating that I'd rather not see the site at all than see what they have to say.

Overall, a few bad apples(quite a few..) doesn't prevent this site from being my favourite place for politics.

On a side-note, I'm curious which user has been blocked the most times, and which user has the most other users blocked.

Unfortunately, the blocks page is in chronological order. And also might not be generally visible. You might be able to extract the data, though.

And also might not be generally visible.

It's not. 403 Forbidden.

Only mods can see that, which I think is a good thing.

I'm betting on SecureSignals for most blocked user. I haven't blocked anyone, but I minimize their particular contributions and move on.

Edit: this person previously blocked me. I don't think I ever interacted with them other than this comment. They are not kidding about exercising the block function.

Blocking people are for people who are weak emotionally especially the people describing why they do it in these comments. The legitimate reason to block someone is if they are essentially spam. Blocking because you can’t emotionally handle their positions is for losers.

I'm also blocked by them. I'm honestly surprised anyone thought I was noteworthy enough to block.

He must be a Luca Goers or Al Bhed Psyches fan.

Edit: on second thought, he's probably not a Psyches fan, the Al Bhed are too Jew-coded.

Good point!

Isn't there a rule against mass blocking? We have a handful of relatively prolific posters who seem to have blocked every other prolific poster.

No, there's no rule against blocking people. You can block anyone you want to. (Some people even block mods. This does not prevent you from being modded.) If you use it to taunt the people you've blocked, you might be modded for antagonism.

There was one back on Reddit, because they prevented the blocked from replying to the blockee at all, rather than just hiding the response from them.

Ah yes. Well, blocking worked differently there. We allow people to block mods, for example (though I think @ZorbaTHut should change that so mod-hatted messages can't be blocked) because mods can still warn and ban posters who block them. (And if you block me, and I warn you, and you don't heed the warning, we will not distinguish between "couldn't read it because I blocked you" and "chose to ignore you.")

In addition to what others have said about how the rules do in fact require you to be civil, I would encourage you to make use of the block function. I have a handful of users blocked (including the one you were responding to) because I find them to be toxic posters who almost exclusively make hateful posts about how terrible their outgroup is. I have no interest in reading that shit, so I blocked them. It makes the experience of participating in this site far more pleasant for me, and you may find it does the same.

My general sense is that when people attempt to silence so-called "racist" speech, it's not so much that they don't want to hear it as that they don't want other people to hear it. They don't those ideas being propagated. From this perspective, a block isn't going to work.

Yeah, that tendency does exist. And if that's where @Chi_Wara is coming from, then he will certainly be disappointed in that desire. Hopefully, though, he will be ok with merely not having to wade through racist posts even if they still exist.

The central lesson of social justice is strength über alles. If your people are weak, they will be subjugated - you must fight. If my people are weak, they will be subjugated - we must fight. There is no tolerance or coexistence. There's only power relation.

What's the point in having this conversation? Social skills are also a weapon, but only where people who matter might hear them.

Amadan's reply said most of what I was going to say far better than I would say it, but I want to emphasize this.

It makes sense to me that reading these words, knowing that people have these thoughts would upset you. I get it. Rage in the existence of such a thing is not a productive emotion and at the same time it is an understandable one. That rage lies to you though. It might tell you that such and such belief is widespread, or "real" - I imagine the most of the sayers are keyboard warriors who would wilt at the thought of actual implementation for instance.

Channel that pain somewhere productive - know that every time someone says something brutal and mean about Republicans or Whites or Men (and even about Democrats and Women!) that a similar pain is produced.

Don't contribute to that pain in others, yell at people who generate that pain - do unto others etc.

how am I supposed to respond, as a black person? Am I expected to lay out some "well have you considered..."-ass intellectual rebuttal

As someone who has frequently been mod-slapped on the wrist and eaten temp bans for responding immoderately, I can only advise you:

  1. Bite your tongue. Hard. No, harder than that. Bite all the way through if necessary.

  2. Yes, you are angry and hurt and taking it personally. This is a "you" problem, not an "OP" problem so far as the mods are concerned.

  3. Play by the rules. Even if you feel very strongly the rules are stacked against you.

  4. You can call the [expletive deleted] all the bad names you want in the privacy of your own skull, but when writing on here you must - and it will not be excused if you do not - adopt the persona of an early 20th century academic in an M.R. James tale. Well dear dear, I was somewhat taken aback by the proposal as set out by my good colleague KillTheScum about killing the scum, i.e. me and those of my ilk. Perhaps some gentle converse and exchange of views in a civilised manner at a tepid degree might be in order? Though I quite understand if the community feels that would be outrageous over-reaction on my part!

  5. This last is just my own means of dealing with the tension. It may or may not help you. Recite to yourself while typing the tepid, moderate, response the verse of Hilaire Belloc:

Heretics all, whoever you may be,
In Tarbes or Nimes, or over the sea,
You never shall have good words from me.
Caritas non conturbat me.

Hilaire Belloc

Aside from his Cautionary parodies, I was always a fan of his Epitaph on the Politician Himself:

Here richly, with ridiculous display,

The Politician's corpse was laid away.

While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged

I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.

You can call the [expletive deleted] all the bad names you want in the privacy of your own skull, but when writing on here you must - and it will not be excused if you do not - adopt the persona of an early 20th century academic in an M.R. James tale. Well dear dear, I was somewhat taken aback by the proposal as set out by my good colleague KillTheScum about killing the scum, i.e. me and those of my ilk.

"Killing scum is certainly not a policy humans innately abhor, but the wide variance in definitions of 'scum' seems to me worthy of attention in discussions such as this one. It appears to me that a large plurality considers those who espouse the views you are arguing for here to be scum worth killing. If this be the case, how should we proceed?"

"No sir, Please sir, I'm one of da good ones see!"

That sounds better than whatever you are trying to do here. Is this post an attempt to convince the racists that they should include you and people like you in the future? My understanding of present-day white racists is that the violence and attitude are exactly what they would rather do without.

Note that in some ways the racists of slavery or Jim Crow days were perhaps less racist than the current racists. I don't know of any anti-black racist who would let a Mammy into their house to nurse their children. There are certainly white racists in nursing homes being taken care of by black workers, but I can't imagine that this was their own device.

While I'm sympathetic to the straightforward expectation from a black US citizen to get some considerations from other Americans, I do not understand why some people think they deserve to live in the vicinity of white people. I would never move to China and demand the Chinese people start supporting me and share the products of their hard work.

Regarding actual slavery, I would wager a guess that your best bet is still team White Power. Actual slavery is still going on in Africa and the Middle-East, as is traditional in these areas when Europeans people are not controlling them. It seems to me that East Asians are also less accepting of Black people than Europeans. What I'm saying is that if you in the future were at risk of being captured by some kind of enemy forces, you probably should be hoping that they are Europeans rather than any other race.

Just like it would seem that a Black highschool celebration would be more likely to get shot at than the equivalent White highschool celebration, in the US.

Therefore actually being friendly with White people may in some way be the best option for you. Even if that may hurt your ego.

Therefore actually being friendly with White people may in some way be the best option for you. Even if that may hurt your ego.

As I explained earlier, the humiliation is the grievance. Blacks don't have to be enslaved to be treated as a slave race, which is the necessary conclusion of HBD-inspired right-wing thought.

Blacks don't have to be enslaved to be treated as a slave race

Yeah, they pretty much do. Anyway, that's not a conclusion of "HBD-inspired right-wing thought". When slavery was still a thing there were those who thought blacks were natural slaves, but I believe the HBD types believe that blacks actually make terrible slaves.

In fairness, I admit that the exact phrasing of "treated as a slave race" is too extreme. Still, any real measures to address black dysfunction would necessarily entail the solidification of disproportionate outcomes between whites and blacks, which would inevitably fuel the resentment towards whites that has burned in the heart of the black man since 1619.

but I believe the HBD types believe that blacks actually make terrible slaves.

Aww, you ruined the surprise - I was building up to that. But yes, the widespread acceptance of HBD among whites is an existential threat to blacks, and in varying degrees to all non-whites.

In fairness, I admit that the exact phrasing of "treated as a slave race" is too extreme. Still, any real measures to address black dysfunction would necessarily entail the solidification of disproportionate outcomes between whites and blacks, which would inevitably fuel the resentment towards whites that has burned in the heart of the black man since 1619.

Blacks already resent whites. If blacks insist on equality of result as a condition for ending their resentment, they (and white people) are just going to have to deal with the resentment.

Aww, you ruined the surprise - I was building up to that. But yes, the widespread acceptance of HBD among whites is an existential threat to blacks, and in varying degrees to all non-whites.

No, it isn't. Widespread acceptance of HBD among whites is unlikely to lead to genocide of blacks, and certainly not of East Asians.

Blacks already resent whites. If blacks insist on equality of result as a condition for ending their resentment, they (and white people) are just going to have to deal with the resentment.

They have not, and will not, simply "just deal with the resentment", as evidenced by all of American race relations since Reconstruction.

Widespread acceptance of HBD among whites is unlikely to lead to genocide of blacks, and certainly not of East Asians.

You're right writ. East Asians, hence my qualifier "in varying degrees". But towards other non-whites, and especially towards blacks, the argument put forth by Teddy Roosevelt (and in my linked comment above) is simply correct, and by extension blacks are correct in doing everything in their power to hold back the day when acceptance of HBD reaches critical mass among whites.

"Whether the whites won the land by treaty, by armed conquest, or, as was actually the case, by a mixture of both, mattered comparatively little so long as the land was won. It was all-important that it should be won, for the benefit of civilization and in the interests of mankind. It is indeed a warped, perverse, and silly morality which would forbid a course of conquest that has turned whole continents into the seats of mighty and flourishing civilized nations. [...] it is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races."

- Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning Of The West

They have not, and will not, simply "just deal with the resentment", as evidenced by all of American race relations since Reconstruction.

They're not going to have a choice. Because the alternative simply doesn't work.

Note that in some ways the racists of slavery or Jim Crow days were perhaps less racist than the current racists.

Probably not Jim Crow, but slavery in the United States had a sincere paternalistic dimension, and that social dynamic no longer exists. Slave Owners actually did have a social responsibility for their slaves. Whites today do not have a similar social burden because blacks have equal rights. Social Justice rhetoric tries to infuse the paternalistic social burden onto whites even in the state of equal rights, through racial guilt and scapegoating whites as the cause of persistent dysfunction in the black community, but that's what modern racists reject.

It's not because they are more hateful per se, it's a totally different social dynamic and Whites no longer have a duty to uphold in that dynamic.

You have to think of The Motte as a zoo. There are dangerous animals here, but they're in cages and can't do anything unless you jump in the cage.

It's not like the people you think are awful cease to exist based on the existence of the Motte. And yes, I certainly think some people whom I won't name are awful human beings. But sometimes I want to know how they tick. I want to know how they react to evidence which contradicts them. And often not responding is the best course, because there's nothing to be gained.

My question to you is what does "fighting" entail? There's never going to be a magical utopia where everyone gets along. There's always going to be some percentage of assholes. "Progress" is just a reduction in the number of assholes and the degree of their assholishness. But it can never reach zero.

There has to be a balance between advancing your beliefs and realizing that caring too much about the mere existence of distasteful things just makes you unhappy. There's no "killing" in debates, so the end result of debates is 1% of the time someone changed their mind and 99% of the time nothing changed.

The people here are extremely used to being told by other people they're bad people. They don't care. What are you hoping to accomplish?

My question to you is what does "fighting" entail?

I'm saying that if /u/RandomRanger got his way and there was some "reawakening" in society where they agreed to "block" black people using state violence I would fight

  • -10

As far as I can tell, even the alleged racists themselves don't think it will happen. As far as I can tell, the people here see themselves not unlike a country about to fall and barely holding on. Conversely the left is culturally dominant, held back only by squandering power on absurd causes.

And you would be right to do so, if indeed that happened. But it's not happening, and the chances of that happening, however much any random ranging racist wants it, are pretty low nowdays. And that's a good thing.

There's no "killing" in debates

Yeah, and Charlie Kirk faked his death.

There's no "killing" in debates,

Eh, there kind of is. The cancellation movement inflicted RL punishments for people's Internet speech (including, outside the US, some people being jailed), and even in the literal sense it's not usually impossible to track down someone from the Internet and murder him (though there are a few on theMotte in particular who have taken massive precautions against that).

There are dangerous animals here, but they're in cages and can't do anything unless you jump in the cage.

Cue the classic tweet.

So bring it on! I don't care if we won't win but I'll FIGHT LIKE HELL for my people and if I die I know I'll have died a proud black man who stood for dignity instead of cowering negro who submitted to slavery. I'LL NEVER BE ACCEPT BEING A SLAVE!!!

For what it's worth, this is the correct response.

But I don't know, when I see someone essentially laying out a justification for bringing back slavery, how am I supposed to respond, as a black person?

Briefly: "You appear to be advocating the unlimited oppression of, at a minimum, ~40 million of your fellow countrymen. Why should they accept this oppression, and why do you think your way of life will survive if they do not?"

Less Briefly:

"No side, after all, will ever accept a peace in which their most basic needs are not satisfied — their safety, and their power to ensure that safety, most of all. The desire for justice is a desire that we each have such mechanisms to protect ourselves, while still remaining in the context of peace: that the rule of law, for example, will provide us remedy for breaches without having to entirely abandon all peace. Any “peace” which does not satisfy this basic requirement, one which creates an existential threat to one side or the other, can never hold."

To the extent that you believe such people are worth being concerned about, I think the proper response depends on your values.

From a practical materialist perspective, the proper response is to cultivate the coldness of heart necessary for effective long-term resistance. It seems to me that this involves not only the willingness to fight, but also the willingness to endure whatever hardships are necessary to maximize chances of winning that fight, including humiliation, misery and despair.

From a Christian perspective, one is required to love their enemies, as maddening as that requirement may be.

It seems to me that this involves not only the willingness to fight, but also the willingness to endure whatever hardships are necessary to maximize chances of winning that fight, including humiliation, misery and despair.

If you're willing to endure hardship, the other side will be glad to provide you as much as you can stand (and more); this will not improve your chances to win.

But I don't know, when I see someone essentially laying out a justification for bringing back slavery, how am I supposed to respond, as a black person?

You’re supposed to bring facts to demonstrate that he’s wrong.

People much higher on the Actual Power totem-pole than “internet randos” lay out justifications all the time (followed by, y’know, actual laws) that white and asian people deserve to be discriminated against in hiring for high-prestige jobs (proportionally squeezing more of us into menial labour in the cotton fields), and most of us manage to respond to this without resorting to autistic screeching. Maybe they’re right! Maybe you, or I, do in fact deserve to be toiling on the plantation. If it’s right and true and just, then it’s to be celebrated, not struggled against. The only way we determine if it’s right and true and just is clear-headed discourse.

If it’s right and true and just, then it’s to be celebrated, not struggled against.

If society decides that it’s true and just for black people to be subjugated than I will struggle against it. Simple

More power to you! The society we live in has currently not decided that though, so why don't you instead engage in debate on the terms of the website which you have chosen to use?

But I don't know, when I see someone essentially laying out a justification for bringing back slavery, how am I supposed to respond, as a black person?

Block them. Or, if you are stronger person than me, ignore them. Or, if you are a real life hero, a model to us all and an enviable example to many, calmly and artfully demolish their argument. But calling them slurs would probably only please them (and the inevitable ban that follows would delight them even more). If your enemy loses it, that means you are getting to them, and that's a kind of winning. To some, the only kind they could ever get.

I'LL NEVER BE ACCEPT BEING A SLAVE!!!

But is it really what is happening? I mean, what are the chances for the reincarnation of slavery in the US, practically? I would say, zero. I mean, if the current civilization collapses - even less, even only the Western civilization collapses, and the US territory is captured by another civilization - then the slavery would return. In fact, the slavery exists right now, in our times, outside the West. But as long as the current United States exist, and are rooted in the Western civilization values, the return of the slavery is impossible.

Thus, these people are not a real threat to you, at least as far as return of slavery is concerned. They are a threat to you as far as making you appear weak, incoherent and unable to argue your side.

Am I expected to lay out some "well have you considered..."-ass intellectual rebuttal, Am I supposed to beg and plead for my own rights?

Actually, yes, if you choose to participate in a forum like this (a free choice), some kind of intellectual-ass rebuttal is what is expected. That's what this particular place is for. Nobody could ever force you to play this game, moreover, nobody would think less of you if you opted out, but if you're playing then those are the rules. You don't have to plead or beg - you can appear as strong and forceful and confident as you like - but just throwing abuse around is not going to do any good.

I would say the renewal of chattel slavery isn't impossible in US - but it would require dramatic changes in culture and/or government to be possible. It would at minimum take a constitutional amendment and broad social acceptance.

At that point, historians would be looking back and say, yeah, that's the end of 'classical' western civilization and the rise of 'neo-western' civilization.

I would say the renewal of chattel slavery isn't impossible in US - but it would require dramatic changes in culture and/or government to be possible. It would at minimum take a constitutional amendment and broad social acceptance.

I think changes in technology would have a greater impact; e. g. Alien Space Bats zapping away everything from the steam engine onward. (It's not a coincidence that the Industrial Revolution and the Abolitionist movement came from the same island, and contra Stuart McMillen, the fastest route to the reinstatement of chattel slavery of human beings would be the abolition of the so-called 'energy slaves' of Buckminster Fuller; baruch haShem, fossil hydrocarbons are not the ultima Thule of energy abundance.)

No need for alien space bats, a nuclear barrage exchange is sufficient to reduce our tech base level if the destruction is thorough enough. Like the cannibal slaver gangs from Fallout.

Alien Space Bats was just the first thing I thought of; a nuclear exchange, supervolcano, or asteroid impact of sufficient magnitude, or a political victory by the degrowtherismists, would also fit in that space.

(e. g. = for example; i. e. = in other words.)

Even pre-industrialization Medieval/Early Modern Western Europe and Medieval China, while having forms of coerced labor, did not have Chattel Slavery. While I'm not 100% percent certain about a grand theory of 'where do societies have chattel slavery', industrialization seems to be a sufficient, but not necessary, ingredient of a society that doesn't have chattel slavery.

True; I only referred to chattel slavery because the previous posters were arguing whether or not its restoration was an absolute impossibility. A society deprived of machines might very well turn not to chattel slavery but to serfdom, casteism, enslavement of petty criminals combined with an extremely strict and micromanaging legal code, enslavement of prisoners of war combined with a bellicose foreign policy, or some form of unfree labour not currently attested in history. What wouldn't happen is everyone accepting a life of drudgery without complaint. People want to make their lives easier, and obtain greater creature comforts for less toil; if they can't shift their workload onto machines, they will seek to dump it on to people weaker than themselves.

People want to make their lives easier, and obtain greater creature comforts for less toil; if they can't shift their workload onto machines, they will seek to dump it on to people weaker than themselves.

That is very good insight. I think the clearest case today are hard manual laborer jobs in the first world; you either get coercion in the form of parolees and/or prisoners doing them, or third world immigrants often of dubious legal status doing them. I don't think there is a way around this except growth and automation to the point where robots do those jobs instead, which is another example of your point.

posted a very long comment where, to paraphrase, he said that black people were an inferior stupid race who bring crime and dysfunction wherever we go and that in order to stop the west from being "overrun" with blacks, white racists would need to "block" us in a way the didn't account for "international law" and "human rights". I replied calling him a cracker bitch and was temp-banned by the mods.

Was the comment significantly edited? It's not particularly long. There's 3 paragraphs laying out the basic case that race, as fuzzy or distinct as it is, is distinct enough to be weaponized against white and asian people. Which seems to basically be true, if we want to do racial abolitionism and agree not to see race then we can't at the same time use it for a bunch of other purposes. And then 2 paragraphs of pretty hot culture war fodder.

when I see someone essentially laying out a justification for bringing back slavery

There's not really any way to interpret what he said as endorsing slavery. Slavery isn't just what happens when racism gets sufficiently supported and all he actually endorsed was anti-immigration, and yes a rather racist perspective.

how am I supposed to respond, as a black person?

you're supposed to make an argument addressing at least some of the points. You could have pushed that racism is indeed fuzzy and pointed out that it's not like all black people are responsible for the DEI edifice. The Average black guy has absolutely no hand in Havard's anti-asian racist policies. You could have tried to dispute the facts of his more spicy stuff. You could just collapse the thread and ignore him. Same as anyone else, when I run into some anti-white rhetoric in the wild, which used to happen fairly regularly, and still does occasionally now I either go point by point dispassionately or ignore it and move on. I know that black history is more painful but stooping beneath the level of the racist position isn't doing you any favors even if it was within the norms of the site. Do you think your outburst won you any support?

Am I expected to lay out some "well have you considered..."-ass intellectual rebuttal, Am I supposed to beg and plead for my own rights?

Not beg, argue, this is a place for arguing. @RandomRanger cannot take your rights from you only defeat you in an argument.

Your feelings are perfectly fine, but consider where we are. This is an online debate club for heterodox opinions.

It's not inappropriate to use one's indignation to bolster rethoric, but if there's no content to what you're saying besides that you feel bad people think a certain way, that means you have nothing to say.

I despise the views of some of my mottizen brethren, and I'm quite certain some despise my own views. So what?

This is what reality is like beyond the veil. People have abhorrent, insane, malicious, despicable opinions and they act on them. But wise men in all eras recognized that it's better for them to say them openly lest we lose the ability to find the truth altogether. And all the comfort in the world is not worth losing sight of the truth. Delusion is damnation certain.

Now that you know what the trench of intellectual rigor smells like, you can either embrace the suck or walk away. That's your choice to make. But there's no sense in complaining about the smell, it's been there for thousands of years.

You should say what you believe in about yourself. This is, as far as I see, allowed and encouraged on this forum. "I will not be a slave" was not the bannable offense, "you cracker bitch" was.

There are many people here who I not only disagree with but find their propositions for what the world should be abominable and ridiculous. For some of them, I still hold the minimum of respect, and that is because they do not descend to shit-flinging. This is despite their projects being, in my view, more hopeless than yours.

It is not within your power to stop people from noticing that group IQ differences exist, and some of them will irrationally extrapolate them on all members of your group, in all aspects of life. Those people you can't change. Fortunately, what I see is that such people who zealously believe in IQ graphs and ignore anything in front of their eyes are in the minority.

What you can change is change how you act, and those whose view of black people is informed not just by IQ curve graphs, but also by their observations of how black people act, will see that you do not act as a racist would predict you do.

No, you don't have to plead that you're one of the good ones. You want to actually be one of the good ones. It's unfair that you might have to try harder compared to whites, but it's life. What appears to hurt black-white relations a lot in my observation is when you start seeing "being one of the good ones" as some kind of a shameful thing, a performance you must put on for the snobby whites, you start taking pride in doing the opposite of putting up appearances for the whitey, and then all of you appear worse than average.

Am I missing something here? As far as I can tell, the OP is commenting specifically on the issue of migration from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe and North America, and argues that such migration should be blocked/stopped and that such migrants should not be given ‘free stuff’ / handouts / welfare. That’s it. How does that equal promoting slavery or Jim Crow or Apartheid?

See this is an important and valuable post. He knows my ideas are a threat to him. He's not interested in abstract logic or the interests of other ethnic groups. Nobody could ever persuade him to give up power or his co-ethnics position for the sake of some universal value or the interests of others. The thought would never enter his mind. He would much rather fight and die than lose power. He doesn't spare a sentence to justify his case based on universal values (besides the value that blacks deserve more), he holds the very idea of justifying in contempt. Why should he need to justify his ethnic group's position?

He sees a threat to the power of his ethnic group and he rails against it as hard as he can. Because losing power is innately bad. Anything that reduces the power of blacks obviously threatens him, even if it's a random person deep down in the comments of a tiny internet forum speaking with people who either already agree or despise the idea. The interests of other groups? Totally irrelevant.

Likewise he appeals so deftly to the mythology that's been so painstakingly established, like I want blacks enslaved again. Who thinks blacks would add value as slaves? Machinery would do a much better job. But it's a great uniting narrative.

This is politics in action, that's the core of it fundamentally. You get power for you and yours, any threats to your power you identify and rail against. You unite your allies against the threat with myths, songs, poems and culture.

The guy who doesn't even proofread his final dramatic statement 'I'LL NEVER BE ACCEPT BEING A SLAVE!!!' has given us a masterclass in how normal people, non-WEIRD, non hyper-intellectual people actually see things, how things actually work. First-rate post that many here could learn valuable lessons from.

This is how and why schools give blacks all these bonus marks for admission, why Biden promised to appoint a black woman to the supreme court, why there are all these subsidies and contracts for nominally black businesses that then subcontract to whites when work is needed, why there is affirmative action in hiring, why there is an outcry when blacks are shot by police and why the AP style guide capitalizes Black and not white. It's a highly effective political strategy when left uncountered.

You say all that as if "not being disenfranchised, particularly within the country they're very much not first-generation immigrants in" is an interest that's so uncommon and morally unreasonable for a group to hold that it can only be viewed with amused dispassion. "Look how politically effective their strategy is, asserting that they won't be second class!".

that it can only be viewed with amused dispassion.

Are there any left-wing arguments that right-wingers are allowed to have emotional spergouts about, and you will personally defend them if they do?

I do not care to project my position on every issue ever ahead of time to prove to you I'm not a committed partisan or something. You can check my post history if you're really curious and go with that.

I'm not asking you to prove your past track record, I'm asking if you can think of a similar argument from the other side that you would treat the same way.

If there was a similar argument on the "other side" that convinced me, it would be an argument on my side. I reject your attempts to shoehorn me as a leftwinger, whose arguments must be scrutinized for sincerity if they happen to oppose rightwinger arguments.

If you think there's no discussion with me because I'm partisan then there is no discussion to be had. If you have specific evidence of my partisanship then you can list that.

I'm not shoehorning you with anybody. I'm just bemused that these "group X should be able to react emotionally to your arguments" demands are seemingly only made of me, and literally never on my behalf. I couldn't care less which group you belong to, or if you don't belong to any group at all, I care about the dynamics.

There appears to be plenty of emotional reactions to all sorts of arguments here.

More comments

Yeah, it's insanely politically effective.

That's why they have all these special privileges, why they have these holy words that only blacks can use. If a white says the word, many consider it a justification for violence. A company hires too many whites, that apparently means blacks can sue them or get cushy jobs there to restore balance.

They shriek about not being slaves or having to sit at the back of the bus 70 years ago. Now, feeling emboldened, we see all these videos of blacks making massive scenes on public transport, playing the knockout game, pushing people onto the rails in subway stations, threatening and leering and occasionally murdering white people like Iryna.

Some black drug dealer gets choked under arrest or dies of fent and it's a global event of massive significance, all this evil racism. A black ties up and beats a 3 year old white girl to death and nobody could care less, this is apparently trivial news of no racial significance.

https://www.wesh.com/article/man-arrested-for-death-3-year-old-child-marion-county/70432617

They enjoy being treated like noblemen in some feudal backwater and shriek about being oppressed or how they might be treated as second-class in the future, it's a comical inversion of reality. Meanwhile the people who are being treated as second-class, who are being spat at and harassed in the present are often defending them or oh so careful to say they're not racist or prejudiced.

Is it morally unreasonable for a group to assert that they will not be second class citizens?

It's unreasonable to do so while victimizing other groups at hugely disproportionate rates and getting preferential treatment across society.

In each of my posts I bring up examples in the present of how whites are being treated badly in favour of blacks. What argument do you think I'm making with those points?

Is a particular black man responsible for a proportion of other black men victimizing someone or having gotten preferential treatment, that he should not argue for the bottom line of not being made into a second class citizen because of what the others did?

I think you're making the argument that currently, the powers that be are overly protective of the bad blacks in the way that they are not of bad whites. I agree with that assessment.

He knows my ideas are a threat to him. He's not interested in abstract logic or the interests of other ethnic groups. Nobody could ever persuade him to give up power or his co-ethnics position for the sake of some universal value or the interests of others. The thought would never enter his mind. He would much rather fight and die than lose power. He doesn't spare a sentence to justify his case based on universal values (besides the value that blacks deserve more), he holds the very idea of justifying in contempt. Why should he need to justify his ethnic group's position?

Suppose I made a utilitarian argument that the bottom 90% of whites (and other races) are dead weight loss that only survive because of taxes from the top 10% and we should strip their citizenship. Additionally, members of this group may, at any time, be harvested for organs, used for medical experiments, neutered and raped for our pleasure, or deported. Are you going to offer a counter-argument on utilitarian grounds? Or will you say something more like "fuck you, go ahead and try" chambers automatic weapon. You can only make a deontological argument that this is sick and evil.

I'll make my point very clearly.

He is dressing up a desire to retain wealth, special priveliges and high status as 'seeking equality' because these words are effective politically, especially against people who go in for these abstract logical points, who try to be charitable and fair and honest.

Blacks rape and murder whites for their pleasure all their time, culturally abetted by all these tropes about 'white women's tears' or 'To kill a Mockingjay'. Reality is the sickest possible inversion of the point you're trying to throw at me.

American girl, Stanford Graduate, Fulbright Scholar, anti-apartheid activist, goes to South Africa. Gets murdered by some blacks who hates whites. The blacks all get let off by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The father of the girl goes to South Africa to meet and forgive them:

The most important vehicle of reconciliation is open and honest dialogue... we are here to reconcile a human life [that] was taken without an opportunity for dialogue. When we are finished with this process we must move forward with linked arms.

You've got the parents of the murdered girl setting up a foundation to empower the murderers, directly employs two of four... That's what I'm saying is sick and evil, this bizarre worship of blacks that Americans have developed.

See this is an important and valuable post. He knows my ideas are a threat to him. He's not interested in abstract logic or the interests of other ethnic groups. Nobody could ever persuade him to give up power or his co-ethnics position for the sake of some universal value or the interests of others. The thought would never enter his mind. He would much rather fight and die than lose power. He doesn't spare a sentence to justify his case based on universal values (besides the value that blacks deserve more), he holds the very idea of justifying in contempt. Why should he need to justify his ethnic group's position?

He sees a threat to the power of his ethnic group and he rails against it as hard as he can. Because losing power is innately bad. Anything that reduces the power of blacks obviously threatens him, even if it's a random person deep down in the comments of a tiny internet forum speaking with people who either already agree or despise the idea. The interests of other groups? Totally irrelevant.

There is a difference, not just of degree but of kind, between "I refuse to give up a superior position and be equal to my neighbour." and "I refuse to give up an equal position and be inferior to my neighbour."

It is entirely consistent to condemn the former while holding to the latter.

What's really going on though isn't so much a matter of principles. That's my whole point:

Demonic pigskin talking about bringing back slavery. Fuck the "norms" you deserve to killed fuck you cracker bitch

I know armchair philosophizing is bad and we really shouldn't try to psychoanalyze people we've never met. But I'd bet that the guy who gets so angry about my comment that he responds with this and then comes back months later, still enraged, is not really motivated by abstract, consistent moral logic. It's pure group identity. He sees someone that says something bad about blacks, he pattern-matches it to slavery (I never even mentioned slavery), he's enraged past the point of reason.

He comes back and dresses it up more but the underlying motivation is clear.

is not really motivated by abstract, consistent moral logic. It's pure group identity

Yes actually. I care about my group identity. I don’t understand how this is supposed to be an argument against me

I don't have any problem with you caring about and working to advance your group identity. Do you have any problem with whites caring about and advancing their group identity in the way you do? If you say no, I will consider you a hypocrite, but I still won't have any problem with you objecting to your own race being discriminated against or enslaved, of course.

Everyone can see you care about your group identity.

You are using abstract moral logic as a tool to defend your group identity and claims to resources. And not sincerely, not actually using it, invoking these talismans like slavery or Jim Crow and hoping that credulous white people think they've done something wrong and don't play the same game. For if white people advance their own group interests as energetically as your group advances yours, you'd be in lots of trouble.

But is Mr Wara objecting to his group being treated as equal when he thinks it entitled to superiority, or is he objecting to his group being treated as inferior when it deserves equality?

But I don't know, when I see someone essentially laying out a justification for bringing back slavery, how am I supposed to respond, as a black person?

On this forum, you are supposed to respond to abhorrent claims with dispassion, equanimity, and unearned civility- with reason, insight, and numbers. The sins of another poster are their own. They are not an invitation to join. That is the entire point.

I'm currently reading Tim Keller's "The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism", and so I'm knee deep in the apologetics of a theologically orthodox pastor capturing a key part of his experience, essentially, running his church in Manhattan in the 1990s and 2000s and raising the kinds of objections he got constantly from New Yorkers who engaged with him and more traditional Christianity in that context. And quite a number of his interlocutors (from the quotations he includes, but also this is obvious if you know the culture he's talking about anyway) overtly think the world would be improved if his entire belief system, everything he valued, and everything he sacrificed for, disappeared from the face of the earth... I mean, obviously. I certainly have encountered this stance in my life from plenty of people too when it comes to the beliefs of more traditional Christians.

And the reality is, there were and are a bunch of obstinate, noisy fundamentalists who make that dynamic much worse. The frustration with certain high profile strains of traditional Christianity is a complicated phenomenon, but it didn't come out of nowhere.

I'm leading with all of this to say, I could easily imagine being Keller and finding it enormously exhausting to go thrust yourself in conversations with people who would like to see your way of life and deepest beliefs dwindle away and disappear (but then, that's also why I'm not Tim Keller). But I also think he was right, in an important sense - he recognized that he couldn't reach everyone, but that when he publicly fielded questions from skeptical New Yorkers after his sermons, there was often a curious audience there, and a spectrum of skepticism, and while that might've meant he had to field particularly unsympathetic or even unfair questions from certain perhaps unreachable audience members, how he fielded those questions mattered in how he reached other people, and how he developed his capacity to reach such people. It would be the easiest thing in the world for someone like Keller to cultivate a thin skin about the public bigotry against traditional Christians that legitimately does snake through many of our higher status institutions, and perhaps Keller would even be morally justified in doing so... but that version of Keller wouldn't have affected all the people he did, and it would have prevented him reaching people like, well, me.

I suspect the audience here is, in some ways, like the audience Keller faced at his churches, but for a bunch of progressive stances at this point. There is a spectrum of skepticism. And exactly like those high profile fundamentalist voices had a way of poisoning the well that Keller had to deal with, the obliteration of the older racial conversation detente by a bunch of extremely loud, aggressive progressive activists and their influence in major institutions over the last decade and a half means that a lot of us now have a huge amount of skepticism when now it comes to the new social justice "consensus" that has been rammed down our throats (especially if we exist within high status progressive social spaces, as many of us do). And a big part of the obliteration of that consensus is a new willingness, on the part of people like the ones here, to entertain ideas that the consensus wants to police entirely out of existence, because there's a sense that the man behind the curtain has been revealed, and a sense that truth seeking and authoritative boundary policing are increasingly sharply at odds. But that does mean many of us have a willingness to entertain all sorts of really unpleasant ideas, because we've noticed that some of those ideas do come true, and we've also noticed the one way ratchet of the social policing of unpleasant ideas has been aggressively used as a tool to grab social power and engage in ideologically driven social engineering. But all these dynamics come together to make a space where really morally awful (by most lights) ideas get entertained, too, and when a group relaxes boundary policing, some people use that relaxation to grind their axes and engage in overtly hostile behavior.

At this point, I think Progressives need their own small army of Tim Kellers - public thinkers who are willing to endure the hardest critiques of the fundamentalisms of their movements, actually hear those critiques, and publicly endure the truth in them in good faith and engage with them. I don't think the overwhelming majority of people who are extremely skeptical of progressive shibboleths or even accept the general HBD frame want to bring back slavery or even be particular unkind to decent, law-abiding black citizens. But there is absolutely a spectrum of skepticism here, about a great many received social justice fundamentalist critiques of our inherited culture, and we've reached a place where it is very, very difficult to publicly discuss empirical reality as we see it without the morality police stepping in and inadvertently torching their own public legitimacy at very high volume to drown everyone else out.

But it might not be your role to be a Tim Keller but for babysitting the skepticism of anti-woke people in the context of topics about black people. It might not be your role to engage with a spectrum of skepticism and respond winsomely. And I totally get that - my capacity to endure being around doctrinaire progressives at this point has fallen off a cliff, too, even though I've often had relatively good rhetorical success gently drawing conversations out of their inherited partisan frames and adding a bit of nuance and complexity and so on and persuading people to see some issues with more nuance, if I'm dealing with people who aren't too radicalized. But it often means enduring a lot of thoughtless NPC bumper sticker slurs and bigotry along the way, and eventually it just makes me tired. To be honest, if I were black or a woman, I'm not sure if I would stick around here either - it is absolutely the case that there are selective demands for rigor here on some topics, obviously. But I think think that may be necessarily tangled up with what works about this place at its best, too.

At this point, I think Progressives need their own small army of Tim Kellers - public thinkers who are willing to endure the hardest critiques of the fundamentalisms of their movements, actually hear those critiques, and publicly endure the truth in them in good faith and engage with them.

I'm not sure I see how this would work. Progressivism doesn't have the sort of separate magisterium firewall we've been culturally evolving for recognized religions probably since the Roman Empire, where people agree to a game of partial make-believe around it. By its own lights, it's supposed to be the for-real, actual undistorted picture of reality, no myth-making or noble lies. So if it turns out there were noble lies placed into the foundation after all, it's not an idea you can entertain in a discussion, it's an existential threat, you need to set up a totalitarian system of suppression and taboos around them or risk your whole edifice crumbling.

By its own lights, it's supposed to be the for-real, actual undistorted picture of reality, no myth-making or noble lies.

The same is true of Christianity if you actually believe in it, which by all accounts Tim Keller does.

That's what the texts Christians are supposed to believe in say, but the reality is pretty complex. Educated people in medieval Europe probably could claim Christian metaphysics as the correct theory of reality and not get pushback, but at some point pretty long ago this stopped being a thing. I'm pretty sure things had moved from thinking this was literally true to lip service by the late 1800s, and by now the Christians themselves know this too. There's a lot of twisting your brain to apologetics-pretzels to keep things going, and everyone openly knows that apologetics-pretzels-work can be necessary even for the people on the inside and there's no deep exchange of ideas with people on the outside because outsiders will just point-blank reject essential premises of the religious worldview. There's also very long tradition of co-existing with religions you don't share, which relies on things being explicitly labelled with "this is a religion", which is only a thing if you're living in a cosmopolitan society where you actually need to routinely deal with multiple religions.

Progressivism right now is a lot more like what religions might have been like in societies before things got to the point of a cosmopolitan Roman Empire. At that point people weren't saying "this is our religion", it was just the shared understanding how to act in the society and what the world was like. Once you need to interact regularly with people who have a different religion who you can't just conquer and subjugate, your own religion has a new authority problem and you start needing words like "religion". Once the world starts being much bigger and more advanced than when your religion was formulated, so your religious dogma both looks absurd at face value and your clerics start getting curbstomped in public debates because people don't share their load-bearing assumptions about how their worldview works anymore, you have more problems. Progressivism is still new enough that it hasn't really run into either of these problems, while they have been undeniable reality for religious people for centuries now. You can say Christianity is the literal truth, but with the sociological support not being around anymore it will look like performing to everyone, and people will assume even you treat it as performative more than literal.

running his church in Manhattan in the 1990s and 2000s and raising the kinds of objections he got constantly from New Yorkers who engaged with him and more traditional Christianity in that context

I feel like the older I get the more evidence I have that religion (and sadly, bigotry, although I'm not going to comment on the relationship between those) are a kind of zero-sum quantity in human nature. We can recognize them when we see them, and make efforts to move away from them, but those are doomed to just ooze out in other, often less well-understood places. New Atheism thought it had defeated God, but it really just built its own idols and called them something else. I don't think years of progressive anti-racism activism has managed any broader changes than merely changing the acceptable set targets of bigotry (in "proper" circles) in the modern era (in: Jews and rural white people, out: everyone on the "progress" flag).

And I say this as someone generally neutral on religion: I have my own beliefs I'm content with, and I'm happy to let-live with reasonably wide bounds on others'. And I find racism and bigotry generally to be pretty abhorrent and I'd love for there to be less of it in the world. I'm just not sure how to actually fix human tribalism and it's downstream failures. But I'm open to suggestions.

And I find racism and bigotry generally to be pretty abhorrent

It's rare for me to find someone complaining about both. No, really! Most people say 'racism' (by which they mean 'bigotry') and leave it at that.

How are you distinguishing between the two?

IMO racism is the belief that there are, on average, substantial genetically-rooted differences in behavioral proclivities among different populations, which is at this point beyond question -- not that it ever should have been otherwise (we did just get this cool new paper in Nature though! https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10358-1). In other words, racism is simply right and true.

Now, whether acting accordingly to that knowledge is 'bigotry' is an interesting conversation, but not one I almost ever see anyone have.

We can recognize them when we see them, and make efforts to move away from them, but those are doomed to just ooze out in other, often less well-understood places. New Atheism thought it had defeated God, but it really just built its own idols and called them something else.

As usual, there is nothing new under the sun. Bonus amusing phrasing from wiki:

YHWH told Moses what the Israelites were up to back in camp

"Psst, Moses, you won't believe what those rascals are up to!"

Demonic pigskin talking about bringing back slavery. Fuck the "norms" you deserve to killed fuck you cracker bitch

Now this is the kind of energy holocaust deniers need to cultivate. Proactive. Assertive. 'The holocaust didn't happen, but keep citing Nizkor and it might! Right here, right now!'

I've long felt that the reason progressives and similarly minded don't do well here is that the ruleset is kind of stacked against them. They argue differently. It's a lot more emotional and haughty. It challenges you on a different level. It's more personal. And, frankly, it's also more earnest and fun. They're more viscerally and honestly channeling their emotions through text.

But the flipside of that is well... everyone else can also do that. So whilst this might not be the venue for that kind of clash, I'd also ask, do you really want it to be? I have had faith in some progressives I've argued with. Their wit and tenacity was impressive, if nothing else. But are you one of them? If this is all you can muster before crashing out then I don't fancy your chances.

You're getting a fair amount of sympathy because you're black. I don't understand why. Your post was probably the worst thing one can write and I find everyone coddling you to be absurd to a point where I barely have the heart to engage with it.

Now I know my outburst was against the rules, it was uncivil, I was reacting with anger, and I knew at the time I'd get banned for it. But I don't know, when I see someone essentially laying out a justification for bringing back slavery, how am I supposed to respond, as a black person?

If white people can muster the strength to walk past all the white victims of black crime without just calling every black person the n-word all the time, I think you should be able to do something comparable when one of the whites finally has enough and allows themselves to verbally wonder in a scarcely populated recess of the internet whether this whole civil rights thing was worth it.

Comically, your reply was probably the least dignified and most validating argument in favor of such skepticism possible. You offer no sympathy, no understanding, just go straight into the most selfish and aggressively verbalized ingroup/outgroup pathology possible. Leaving no room for interpretation other than that there will be no sympathy for the white devil. He shall continue to give life and limb to the continuous project of racial reconciliation in America to the benefit of your ingroup pathology.

I can't imagine a position less deserving of sympathy than yours. Why you are receiving any is, again, absurd.

Comically, your reply was probably the least dignified and most validating argument in favor of such skepticism possible. You offer no sympathy, no understanding, just go straight into the most selfish and aggressively verbalized ingroup/outgroup pathology possible.

To be fair though, if someone was talking about hurting you, then is there much of a meaningful difference if they say it with an emotional passion vs a deadpan matter of fact tone? Either way their intent and meaning is the same, they want to hurt you!

"I want to kill people like you" vs "I want to fucking kill people like you" only really differs in that maybe the emotional passion behind the second makes it more believable. But if we believe both to be equally honest, then what difference is left in actual meaning? Even if we dress it up as "I believe it is beneficial to me and my group if we killed people like you" it's basically the same.

If we have an issue with the swear one but not the other two then it comes off more as prudishness about swearing or "conduct" rather than anything else.

Like look at the mod response

You may even believe that they are enemies who should be fought to the death. But here we do not fight over words, but meet the arguments of others with arguments of our own.

So if they said "I politically believe that people like me are benefited from seeing people with views like you as demonic monsters and that killing you would be a net positive to my group's quality of life" is that really gonna be ok?

So if they said "I politically believe that people like me are benefited from seeing people with views like you as demonic monsters and that killing you would be a net positive to my group's quality of life" is that really gonna be ok?

There are many screeds on this site against Jews and to a lesser extent East Asians (mostly Chinese?) which are dignified with coherent, if scathing, responses. While I sympathise with the poster insofar as that his "team" is much more sparse than a Jewish or an East Asian poster's would be in this arena, and the animosity against blacks here would definitely be extremely unpleasant for a black person, it's not like 2rafa flames out on the regular when one of the resident jooposters posts another novella's worth of holocaust denial.

So if they said "I politically believe that people like me are benefited from seeing people with views like you as demonic monsters and that killing you would be a net positive to my group's quality of life" is that really gonna be ok?

Yes, those are the rules. Anyone is free to express their desire to commit torture, rape, and genocide as long as they are polite about it. That may seem ridiculous, but it has worked out for us so far, while other comparable fora have died from lack of engagement or collapsed into (greater) ideological conformity.

It's an interesting sort of prudishness to find support for something like the Holocaust as acceptable, every slur imaginable is allowed, but a little bit of swearing could be beyond the pale if it's found to be "rude".

as long as they are polite about it.

Is "I am politically working towards the goal that you and your entire people are subhumans who will be subjected to cruel torture and genocide" a polite statement? If so, how about "I'm gonna beat your mother, cause fuck you". Both are hypothetical goals of enacting violence on the other speaker.

I think most people in general society would agree that genocide and murder is worse than just beating someone up and calling them a few swears while doing it, but hey maybe the normies just don't understand what being polite actually means.

while other comparable fora have died from lack of engagement

As if this place isn't mostly like 7-8 people who are that active

or collapsed into (greater) ideological conformity.

Yeah, it's already severely conformist with how aggressive people are (refer back to how it's circlejerked so hard that calls for violence against someone are seen as more polite than a little swearing) but I'll admit I've seen worse among some of the online tankie groups.

  • -10

It's an interesting sort of prudishness to find support for something like the Holocaust as acceptable, every slur imaginable is allowed, but a little bit of swearing could be beyond the pale if it's found to be "rude".

It's not the swearing. Generally, you can swear all you want, though a post that seems to be full of swearing used as punctuation just to be edgy might be modded for being low-effort and trollish.

And slurs are allowed in that you can use the words, but you cannot call people slurs.

What you can't do is engage in personal attacks.

You also cannot make general statements about your outgroup, and generally we will also mod calls for violence.

The Joo-posters are always walking a fine line, because "Here is why the Holocaust is a lie" is an argument you are allowed to make. "Here is why Jews have too much political power" is an argument you are allowed to make. "Here is why we should kill the Jews" (the argument they really want to make) is not an argument you are allowed to make.

Is "I am politically working towards the goal that you and your entire people are subhumans who will be subjected to cruel torture and genocide" a polite statement?

No, which is why they aren't allowed to explicitly advocate for that. Steelmanning the Joo-posters and white nationalists, I am sure many of them would say they don't want to subject their enemies to torture and genocide, they just want to send them somewhere else. (You know, like the Nazis just wanted to send the Jews "somewhere else.") It's almost plausible in some cases. And you can make an arguable case for peaceful separation; that's @Hoffmeister's thing, and while I think his project is both infeasible and immoral, I believe he's sincere about it.

I think most people in general society would agree that genocide and murder is worse than just beating someone up and calling them a few swears while doing it, but hey maybe the normies just don't understand what being polite actually means.

Obviously, literal genocide and murder is worse than "beating someone up and calling them a few swears."

But the actual comparison here is "using words" versus "actual physical violence."

You're using the "words are violence" framing here, which is absolutely toxic to the very idea that we can have heated discourse and free speech.

Which is worse: me saying "I think your kind should all be murdered" or you physically assaulting me for saying that?

I would argue that while my words are insulting and inflammatory (and in certain circumstances, but certainly not an internet forum argument, could even be considered threatening) and your anger is understandable, you are not justified in physically assaulting me for saying mean words.

As if this place isn't mostly like 7-8 people who are that active

We have more than that, but sure, what's your point? We're a bunch of losers who don't matter, but you hang around here because you need to argue with the losers who don't matter or they might commit genocide?

Yeah, it's already severely conformist with how aggressive people are (refer back to how it's circlejerked so hard that calls for violence against someone are seen as more polite than a little swearing) but I'll admit I've seen worse among some of the online tankie groups.

Who has called for violence against the OP?

If white people can muster the strength to walk past all the white victims of black crime without just calling every black person the n-word all the time, I think you should be able to do something comparable when one of the whites finally has enough and allows themselves to verbally wonder in a scarcely populated recess of the internet whether this whole civil rights thing was worth it.

What's with this hard-on all you reactionaries have for collective punishment? Some black people commit crimes targeting white people, so now every black person is guilty and deserves to be greeted with the most inflammatory word you could throw at them?

And oh, what a magnanimous sacrifice it is, apparently, to simply not racially abuse strangers who have no connection to the events you're citing. You're absorbing crime statistics, almost certainly wholly unrelated to you personally, and Chi_Wara is sitting in a forum reading a direct argument for his own ethnic subjugation. These are being presented as equivalent burdens requiring equivalent restraint. They are not.

What are the reactionaries reacting to? I'll just make the case as quickly as I can since you brought it up.

Collective guilt is the game being played on all sides. That's why, when black outcomes aren't on par with whites, we blame systemic racism, which is allegedly perpetuated by the existence of white people.

So whites swallow their ingroup bias, funnel trillions to a minority group that disproportionately rapes, robs and murders, all whilst being continuously bombarded with crap about how evil whites are. Yeah, it is a pretty... 'magnanimous' thing to do. I'd call it hateful and coercive to do that to whites or any other group of people, but whatever.

Given that state of affairs, I don't feel like an increase in the black share of my environment, near or far, is unrelated to me. So to borrow a phrase from our friend: THAT FUCKING AFFECTS ME. I'M WHITE.

Chi_Wara is sitting in a forum reading a direct argument for his own ethnic subjugation. These are being presented as equivalent burdens requiring equivalent restraint. They are not.

Hmm. Maybe we should take a step back here. Unless I am missing context, RR didn't say blacks should be subjugated or enslaved.

Regardless of that, my point was that two people had an ethnic grievance directed at each others group. One chose to make a point that can be verbally engaged with, the other called him slurs and said he deserved to be killed.

It has long been Noticed as a trope that: in their responses to hate facts, wrongthink, malinformation—blacks tend to reinforce the bases behind such hate facts, wrongthink, malinformation via the level of impulsivity and (lack of) erudition in their responses. And yet, still get coddled with the Gordon Ramsay “oh dear, oh dear, gorgeous” treatment.

@The_Nybbler is actually slinging some hopium in positing that OP is a troll, although it’s possible he’s right. Poe’s Law.

But when people in this community use HBD and crime statistics to argue that things Jim Crow and Apartheid were good and just and maybe should even be brought back THAT FUCKING AFFECTS ME. I'M BLACK

Honestly, I don't fucking care. I (and many other "fucking white men" and "stale pale males" or whatever) sat through a lot worse during the earlier parts of the Culture War. I kept arguing back without resorting to insulting outbursts, but even holding my position was sufficient to result in bans and worse. If you can't keep a moderately civil tongue when you're typing (and thus have the ability to tone it down before pushing 'send'), that's on you.

So bring it on! I don't care if we won't win but I'll FIGHT LIKE HELL for my people and if I die I know I'll have died a proud black man who stood for dignity instead of cowering negro who submitted to slavery. I'LL NEVER BE ACCEPT BEING A SLAVE!!!

OK, now I suspect you are not sincere but rather a refugee (or invader) from /r/drama.

I (and many other "fucking white men" and "stale pale males" or whatever) sat through a lot worse during the earlier parts of the Culture War

I think Jim Crow is worse than DEI actually

  • -11

I think Jim Crow is worse than DEI actually

Is it? While Jim Crow was in vogue, USA prospered. The last remnants of Jim Crow fell in 1968 and USA started going to shit in 1971 ...

I think Jim Crow is worse than DEI actually

On the books, its possible, in practice DEI actually held back far more people with potential.

On the books, its possible, in practice DEI actually held back far more people with potential.

The harm from Jim Crow was largely not from the suppression of Black talent, but in the message it sent to the Black man - that even after he was freed, he was still the White man's strict social inferior.

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"-- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

- Martin Luther King Jr., Letter From A Birmingham Jail

The law is a teacher. If it is correct that is good

Yes, it is good - for Whites. I do not dispute the facts of HBD, I simply note that the interests of the White man and the Black man are fundamentally at odds. I hope dearly it is not so, but this is the only conclusion I can draw.

The harm from Jim Crow was largely not from the suppression of Black talent, but in the message it sent to the Black man - that even after he was freed, he was still the White man's strict social inferior.

I feel I should note that I could switch some words around in this sentence ("suppression of male talent", "the woman's social inferior") and then draw a line between DIE and "quiet quitting".

All of these sting but truth still stings today. Now that there are almost no practical barriers to success, African-Americans still lag behind. They still lag behind fresh-off-the-boat immigrants who recently learned English as a second language.

The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.

I'm curious about what he would have thought of the current state of the respective nations of Asia and Africa. Would he have changed his mind about the necessity of political independence for Africans after witnessing decades of barbaric civil wars, horrible mismanagement... etc?

Can somebody predict the next thing African-Americans will blame their relative lack of success on in the next century?

DEI elevating useless sycophants and grifters, attempting to shoehorn black talent into a 'systemic racist' white academic system instead of focusing efforts on building a separate black one? White people refusing to have children that black parents could send their kids to school with to 'integrate' them? The racist government-subsidized industrial food system? The coke-to-diabetes pipeline? Greedy marketing executives forcing black mothers to feed liquid corn syrup to their innocent children?

Can somebody predict the next thing African-Americans will blame their relative lack of success on in the next century?

DEI elevating useless sycophants and grifters, attempting to shoehorn black talent into a 'systemic racist' white academic system instead of focusing efforts on building a separate black one? White people refusing to have children that black parents could send their kids to school with to 'integrate' them? The racist government-subsidized industrial food system? The coke-to-diabetes pipeline? Greedy marketing executives forcing black mothers to feed liquid corn syrup to their innocent children?

The excuses and just-so narratives can keep coming longer than you can remain solvent.

Institutional Racism
Socioeconomic Factors
Food Deserts
Food Insecurity
Nutritional Inequity <- We’re already here.

Was worse. Jim Crow does not exist anymore - in fact, it is so officially banned that a lot of freedoms which were considered absolute before - such as freedom of association, freedom of conducting or refusing business, locality of power, etc. - had been abridged by the government to not let it ever come back. I am not going to argue whether it was worth it - that's not my point is. My point is - DEI is with us right now, right here, and impacts the lives of millions. Something bad that happened in the past may be really bad, but it was the past. We can not influence it, and it can not influence us anymore. But DEI is something that is happening in the present.

Dollars to donuts YOU never experienced it. And speaking favorably about Jim Crow isn't Jim Crow. And further, /u/RandomRanger didn't even do that. He pointed out some unfavorable things about blacks, and made some unflattering generalizations against them. But the only things he advocated for (and those only implicitly) is to not let foreign blacks move to Britain, Australia, and America and to not give blacks in those places free stuff and special privileges. But I understand that when one is accustomed to privilege, equality can feel like oppression.

Did you read the second linked comment? He pretty explicitly advocates for the barring of blacks from public office.

Consider a thought experiment - what if all the politicians and powerful officials in America had to be black? Give it 20 years for the effects to settle. What do you expect the outcome would be in terms of performance? Would it look more like a high performance country (Japan, Switzerland) or a low performance country like South Africa? [...] Now consider the reverse. All the politicians and powerful officials in America have to be non-black. Give it 20 years. Would the outcome be better than the alternate? Is the US really losing much by banning them from office? All that would happen is some rioting, which can be quickly and easily put down with a little effort.

Did you read the second linked comment? He pretty explicitly advocates for the barring of blacks from public office.

He actually didn't explictly advocate for that; he presented two thought experiments, one in which all public officeholders were black and one in which they were all non-black, and claimed the outcome would be better in the second. But that's still not "Jim Crow".

Arguing over semantics does you no good. The logic presented in his comment also justifies the mass disenfranchisement of blacks ("as to minimize their deleterious effects on national politics"), their segregation from whites in public spaces ("to spare whites from their criminality"), and the banning of interracial relationships ("to not pollute the white gene pool"), just as any Southerner would understand how to keep the blacks in their place.

Arguing over semantics does you no good.

It's not semantics. "Implicitly" means a completely different thing than "explicitly", and your argument is nowhere near as strong if you meant the former.

The logic presented in his comment also justifies the mass disenfranchisement of blacks

It might, or it might not, depending on many other factors. Reacting aggressively before determining what he said was true, is actually giving more strength to that argument than he did.

The logic presented in his comment also justifies the mass disenfranchisement of blacks

It might, or it might not, depending on many other factors.

Any other factors in question are contingent on the truth of HBD, which I assume you and I are in agreement on.

"Implicitly" means a completely different thing than "explicitly", and your argument is nowhere near as strong if you meant the former. Reacting aggressively before determining what he said was true, is actually giving more strength to that argument than he did.

RandomRanger's argument is sound, I don't dispute that. Before I elaborate further, I'd like to know: what do you think my argument is?

Arguing over semantics does you no good.

Semantics is meaning. WTF else are we to argue about, syntax?

And "he implicitly makes arguments which, if extended, would result in segregation" is a long way from (explicitly) advocating for Jim Crow.

I, too, would like to reduce black criminality. I don't want to do it by segregating blacks (I live in a suburban town that has a substantial black population -- this was partially due to black flight from Newark, NJ and its inner suburbs, and those blacks weren't fleeing whites). I want to do it by arresting and convicting actual criminals who commit crimes against persons and property which would be recognized as crimes throughout most of history -- that this might have a by-catch of white criminals also is fine. But I recognize that those caught, at least in most urban and suburban areas of the US, will be rather disproportionately black.

I sympathize. I really do.

I, personally, do not like racists. I do not like antisemites and Holocaust deniers. I do not like misogynists. I do not like a lot of people. I sometimes struggle to be polite to the most hateful people here. It's a daily exercise, trying not to hate the haters.

But the answer to your question: are you expected to lay out some "intellectual-ass rebuttal" to people saying, in so many words, that black people are orcs, is yes.

There are Jews here. They have to read people talking about how Jews are responsible for every evil in the world and are secretly conspiring against the goyim because Jews are sneaky evil parasites who hate everyone else. They aren't allowed to just go off on the antisemites and call them names. They have to engage politely, or choose not to engage.

There are women here. They have to read people talking about how women are non-sapient hypergamous slutwhores who should be kept the property of their fathers for the good of civilization, and definitely not allowed to work or vote or even have a say in who fucks them. They have to engage politely, or choose not to engage.

We have Democrats and liberals here (not the same thing but for practical purposes almost always treated as the same thing here). They have to read people talking about how "Blues" are hypocritical amoral stupid mindless traitors with no principles or reasoning abilities and we can't wait to line them up against a wall. They have to engage politely, or choose not to engage.

That's hard, and not everyone can do it, and now and then we have someone who flames out because they can't. Being a black person, I understand why you'd be tempted to flame out at people advocating Jim Crow or apartheid or just casually talking about black criminality and low IQ.

But the Motte is a weird place. It's intended to allow the most outrageous views, the ones that are unsayable in most places, to be civilly debated. Hopefully views that are truly outrageous and offensive- like "Black people should be slaves" or "The Holocaust didn't happen and it's good that it did" - will be debated and pushed back against. And usually they are! But you may be disconcerted to realize that many people in fact agree with those views. Is that infuriating? I am sure it is. Sometimes I'm angry at the shit people say about black people or Jews or women, and I am not black or Jewish or a woman. But the Motte lets you bring your hottest take, your most controversial opinion, the things you want to propose that you know would get you kicked off most mainstream sites, and put them out there and see what people say about them.

Hopefully, if your views are just stupid and offensive, you will be persuaded to rethink them. (Yeah, this rarely happens.) But that's the purpose- to allow the conversations that aren't allowed anywhere else. People can talk about HBD here. People can talk about evpsych here even in the most reductive "are-women-actually-people?" way. People can talk about pedophilia and accelerationism and the Holocaust and trans people here in ways that make peoples' heads explode everywhere else.

The Motte is a weird place. A lot of people are offended by our very existence. We have trolls who come back again and again to call us a bunch of Nazis because they just can't believe we allow literal Nazis to post here. I have been attacked, personally, for participating and modding here. The assumption being that if I enable a place that allows horrible views, I must support those views. Of course I don't. But I support having a place where those views can be expressed, so I can see what sort of people seriously espouse those views. I have learned a lot about the real, unironic Holocaust deniers and white nationalists and rape enthusiasts from people who were mostly just Internet boogeymen until I started talking to them. I like to think it's made me better at arguing with them, but I can understand why those who think we simply shouldn't platform them at all would think this is delusion.

I am proud of what the Motte is, as an actual bastion of free speech, and disheartened by what it's become, when you actually allow free speech. I would not want every other place to be like the Motte. I assure you I would prefer not to deal with Holocaust deniers and segregationists and pedophiles on my other social media sites. At the same time, I am like many disaffected liberals who have been driven off of many other social media sites because even asking questions that offend people is unsayable there.

Since this is personal to you, let me make it personal. I am a Gen Xer. I grew up in a world where we believed everyone was supposed to strive for the goals of that Martin Luther King speech. We were all supposed to become "colorblind." We wanted racial harmony and believed it was possible. We believed in racial equality and thought all we had to do was stop being racist and it would happen.

Those hopes and dreams have crashed and burned. Not just because I have come to the sad realization that HBD is real and that, in fact, there are racial differences in behavior and IQ. No, hear me out, I am not trying to make an argument for why the racists are right! I am telling you that eventually people like me notice things and have a hard time reconciling them with our ideals... and then we're told that Noticing such things makes us racist. I have had... mostly unpleasant interactions with black people. I wish this were not so. (I also have black friends. Yeah, yeah, "Some of my best friends...") I still believe every individual should be treated as an individual. I still want a world where we can coexist. But what has happened is on the one side, we have the most awful people in the world who unfortunately make some compelling arguments, and on the other side we have people saying "Shut up. Stop noticing things. Racist!"

Who do you think is going to win?

I wish you would stay. I wish you would participate, even if it means gritting your teeth to make "intellectual-ass arguments" against people who want you put in a reservation. I get that it's probably not easy, but we have a lot of people putting up with awful things being said about their group who do put up with it. Yes, if you just call people "cracker bitches" you will be banned. But I assure you even the most racist people will engage with you civilly if you engage with them civilly. And if they don't, they too will be banned, because while we allow "controversial" opinions, we also do not allow people to just say "Black people are orcs/criminals/subhuman." (And people have been banned for that.)

You can decide whether the Motte project is for you or not. It's not for many people. We have very few people at the pointy end of debates here who stick around, and it's easy to see why. Who wants to hang around with a bunch of people who barely consider them human and have to be polite to them? But I hope you will give it a shot.

I grew up in a world where we believed everyone was supposed to strive for the goals of that Martin Luther King speech. We were all supposed to become "colorblind." We wanted racial harmony and believed it was possible. We believed in racial equality and thought all we had to do was stop being racist and it would happen.
[...] Not just because I have come to the sad realization that HBD is real and that, in fact, there are racial differences in behavior and IQ. [...] and then we're told that Noticing such things makes us racist.

I am strongly in favor of institutional color- and gender-blindness. Give everyone the same admission test, and if half of the people with the top scores are Ashkenazim, that should be of little interest to the university.

I think that this is what MLK argued for -- let everyone compete on equal footing, and let the outcome be what it may. Racial equality before the law seems an excellent idea, but does not imply racial equality of outcomes. Nor is the latter required for peaceful coexistence.

When it became apparent that equal(ish) opportunity does not lead to equal outcomes, it was the SJ left who defected from colorblindness, and pushed for racial discrimination. This creates perverse incentives. If medical school was colorblind, then I as a not overtly racist patient would have no reason to care about the skin color of my doctor -- after all, they all competed on merit. If the schools practice affirmative action, then as a rational patient I would prefer a doctor whose racial group would be overrepresented in a meritocratic system, e.g. someone White or Asian. It is hard to overstate how fucked up this is. We have the tools to measure individual merit much better than what racial stereotyping -- even if backed up with decades of HBD research -- could ever accomplish. And then we forgo these tools, so crude racial stereotyping will be the most effective tool for the individual. (I think the reason is that SJ does not really believe in individual qualifications. High-earning careers are simply deserved.)

But that's the problem - when institutional and color-/gender-blindness happens and fail to achieve equitable outcomes, people lose their minds, because any explanation other than structural bias is unacceptable. If they resort to explanations that are Less Wrong, then everything implodes.

"What can be destroyed by the truth should be" is something that most of the world won't agree on when they are what will be destroyed in the process.

Yep.

As an Elder Millenial I can recall the colorblind world that the Gen Xers were trying to create being very close to fruition...

But the snag came because disparate outcomes were inevitable. Once you'd done everything you can to level playing fields and boost disadvantaged players, the remaining disparities are probably intractable. Whatever reasons you think cause that, its still resulting in one group seeing better performance, better outcomes on average, and your other group is still lagging and you've already skimmed the cream of the crop.

And if you sneak in an assumption that equal outcomes is the true goal, this can't be allowed to stand.

I've lived through both the realization that the actual goal was to ensure equality of outcomes, and the increasing ham-handed efforts to achieve such a goal...

AND the ultimate realization that to make things equal, they have to actively disadvantage people who would otherwise find success and contribute more to society, and they feel this disadvantaging is morally justified and right.

Even as this gnaws at the load-bearing infrastructure of your civilization in more ways than one. The colorblind world was probably possible, but it was an unstable equilibrium that required us to be okay with some groups just continuing to 'win' fair contests and certain groups hitting a ceiling that we can't guide them past.

It's because if the reasons are subject to the hard reality that there's nothing that will make a poor white kid run a marathon faster than a Kenyan, there's no point in the kid trying in the first place. And that's not something people are willing to say.

It's one thing to design society to be Gattaca, it's another thing entirely to be told that Gattaca already exists and statistically, certain things are close to impossible for you and your children. An entire generation that was told growing up that they could be President or go to space hasn't come to terms with it.

That's probably a part of it.

There was an element of inflated expectations that kids in my generation grew up with. I get the sense that Gen Z does NOT have such a core belief of "I am a being of unlimited potential I just have to choose my goal and work at it!" So they're more nihilist, whereas a lot of millenials had to learn some hard lessons about their own

I, personally internalized something like The Mewtwo Lesson. But it turns out that the "circumstances of one's birth" are pretty damn relevant to your long term outcomes, and you can either lean into your existing strengths or you'll inherently underperform and end up fighting twice as hard for half the success. And that's assuming nobody has actually stacked the deck against you.

Cold meritocracy pokes through either way. We have more ways to make people's skill differentials apparent than ever before.

I, personally internalized something like The Mewtwo Lesson. But it turns out that the "circumstances of one's birth" are pretty damn relevant to your long term outcomes

The original Pokemon games were lowkey based for teaching children a lesson.

You can give your Pokemon team all the tender loving care in the world, the best socioeconomic factors, take them on bike rides, play them the Pokeflute, bring them on cruises like the SS Anne, nurture them from the time they were level 5 with careful battle experience and with the best potions, ethers, elixirs, and rare candies that money can buy.

Yet, a Mewtwo who spent half his life experimented upon in a lab and the other half of his life isolated in a cave can solo your carefully-crafted, nurture-maxxed team.

Funny anectdote on that. In the original Red, Blue, and Yellow games the early version of Effort values meant if you leveled up your Pokemon the standard way, just constant battles, its 'under the hood' stats would actually be higher than if you cheated it with rare candies to reach level 100. I chose to level my favorites by grinding the Elite 4 and Cerulean cave.

So one time I battled my cousin using the Gameboy link cable (how's that for old school) and his team of straight level 100 'mon, and me, my strongest being a level 98 Mewtwo, and it turned into a surprise stomp in my favor, although it did come down to both of our Mewtwos in a slapfight to end it. I had NO CLUE about the hidden stats, I just chose to believe that because I had raised my pokemon with more care and attention as opposed to just pumping them with chemicals, they wanted to fight harder.

So the lesson is that yeah, sometimes pure effort does win over mere pedigree and performance enhancing drugs.

I think that this is what MLK argued for -- let everyone compete on equal footing, and let the outcome be what it may.

I have to correct you here- MLK was very much in favor of Affirmative Action and reparations. Yes, his ultimate goal was a "colorblind" world, but he was not in favor of institutional colorblindness until the scales were balanced. He wrote about this quite extensively.

A lot of people today, even conservatives, like to throw their arms around the shoulders of MLK's ghost and claim ideological kinship with him, but the fact is, if MLK were alive today, he'd be very much a SJ. Perhaps a more intellectual one than Ibram X Kendi, but I doubt he'd accept HBD as an explanation for why blacks aren't achieving equal outcomes.

He was in favor of AA as a temporary corrective required to rebalance the scales. It is not at all clear that 70+ years later he would still endorse it. And in a decade or so, everyone in the US will have been born after the CRA.

At the very least, consider Return of the King as the alternative view.

well were there any people who said something like "after NN years of AA, i changed opinion and don't endorse it"? Quite a lot of people only doubled down on that.

if MLK were alive today, he'd be very much a SJ

Agreed, we can extend this to a host of other progressive thinkers and even creatives as well. See the modern-day genre re-readings of Ursula K. Le Guin, who was already ahead of her time and could be considered woke even today.

Age Gap Relationships

So its no secret that people, particularly zoomers, like to bitch and moan about age gaps in relationships. Should someone who's 30 date someone who's 18? Does it make you a pedophile if you do?

A lot of this discussion hinges on whether or not these people are actually "adults" that can make logical decisions. I've been pondering this myself so I'm going to run by two hypotheticals (Both for and against 18 year olds or "teenagers" being adults) and see what you guys think:

Case 1

Suppose you are on your way to work and are at a stop light. A convertible pulls up beside you, in it, 4 boys, all 18 years of age. One has a shotgun, two others have a glock. They tell you to hand them your wallet and the keys, or you die. Here is a clip for reference. Now, lets say that you have your own gun here, and instead of a wallet, you open fire, and successfully kill one of them as they drive off.

Is it fair to say that you killed a child? Probably not. You killed teenagers? Technically. Did you kill some grown ass man thinking he could jack you? Many would say yes! On top of this, many people would judge these boys as adults, and have them take a prison/jail sentence as adults. It seems that in the eyes of many, if you do adult things, and are expected to take accountability as an adult, we should rightfully call you an adult. Make sense? Maybe lets consider case 2.

Case 2

Two teenagers, Maddy (16F) & Steve (15M) are in a relationship, and are maddly in love. One day, Maddy finds herself pregnant, and gives birth to baby boy. Steve decides to marry her, and get a job at a factory to support her and the baby.

Now, both Steve & Maddy choose to do an adult action (have sex) with an adult consequence (reproduction), and took responsibility as "adults" (getting married and getting a job). Would we say these 2 are adults? It seems the answer here, for many is no. You shouldn't want teenagers to be having kids: that's what adults are expected to do. That fact that Steve & Maddy have done adult things, and are now taking on adult responsibilities, doesn't make them true adults in the eyes of many.

So far, Im what I'm thinking with both of these cases is that the cognition needed to make adult decisions perhaps simply lie at different ages, based on said decision. Maybe its easier at 14 to know that car jacking & killing is wrong, than it would be to have the knowledge and maturity neccessary to handle a sexual relationship. And that the whole "lets have one universal age of adulthood" is looking at it wrong: Different actions simply have different complexities to them, and thus a universal set age of adulthood ignores those complexities. But assuming this is true, where does sexual relationships lie on the age scale? Is a 16 year old really too immature to date some one who is 19? 20?

If we should have universal age of adulthood, that tracts onto everything (alcohol, crime, sex) where would it be? Currently, all of these have different ages (21 is for alcohol if you are in the US). What do you guys think?

Is it fair to say that you killed a child? Probably not. You killed teenagers? Technically. Did you kill some grown ass man thinking he could jack you? Many would say yes! On top of this, many people would judge these boys as adults

Now, both Steve & Maddy choose to do an adult action (have sex) with an adult consequence (reproduction), and took responsibility as "adults" (getting married and getting a job). Would we say these 2 are adults?

Are they black? It may depend on the race. Steve and Maddy don't sound black, but 4 „teenagers“ with guns going carjacking sounds black. I think it's hard to talk about this without race. r/K selection theory says some races reproduce under an earlier, lower investment pattern than others. Different races also have different levels of adult neoteny, different developmental timing, and so on. It's not impossible to consider that the average black person becomes adult-in-their-race earlier than the average Asian or white person.

If we should have universal age of adulthood, that tracts onto everything (alcohol, crime, sex) where would it be?

Why would that be a good idea?

But assuming this is true, where does sexual relationships lie on the age scale? Is a 16 year old really too immature to date some one who is 19? 20?

We don't know. I've never seen any persuasive scientific evidence on the matter. History goes one way, the current culture goes the other. My guess is that cultural fads come and go and that this one isn't beneficial for fertility, so it will go eventually. As a libertarian I hate to see governments treat the violation of the current fad as a serious crime, but it's mostly isolated to the Anglosphere and especially the United States, where most of the awful culture and toxic fads come from and circulate. So at least there's that.

Are they black? It may depend on the race. Steve and Maddy don't sound black, but 4 „teenagers“ with guns going carjacking sounds black. I think it's hard to talk about this without race. r/K selection theory says some races reproduce under an earlier, lower investment pattern than others. Different races also have different levels of adult neoteny, different developmental timing, and so on. It's not impossible to consider that the average black person becomes adult-in-their-race earlier than the average Asian or white person.

Im honeslty curious for your answer here, because this reply is unique in taking race realism into consideration. For our car-jacking situation, we'll say they are poor white kids. Steve (Black) & Maddy (Hispanic) are in an interracial relationship.

On a side note, It probably be rather difficult to set maturity levels into law based on race as well, but im guessing this is a moral judgement, rather than a legal implementation.

On a side note, It probably be rather difficult to set maturity levels into law based on race as well, but im guessing this is a moral judgement, rather than a legal implementation.

Yes. I would rather adulthood be granted by IQ test. An optimized by-race system would just use racial IQ means instead of the test itself.

For our car-jacking situation, we'll say they are poor white kids. Steve (Black) & Maddy (Hispanic) are in an interracial relationship.

Hard to say since it comes down to intelligence for me instead of race. Poor whites are close the median blacks.

Yes. I would rather adulthood be granted by IQ test. An optimized by-race system would just use racial IQ means instead of the test itself.

Thats interesting, so this girl could be 25, but not be an adult, ever?

That kinda works sort of, but has another problem, your essentially saying that a 14 year old with a higher IQ should be an adult, with all that entails. I dont think many people would accept that.

Thats interesting, so this girl could be 25, but not be an adult, ever?

Yes. Preferably. I don't think most people should vote. The main issue is deciding who their guardian should be. It may be infeasible to give them a guardian but many of the non-guardian related restrictions can apply to them. It would solve a lot of problems. These same people can't handle alcohol or gambling. We could scuttle a lot of credentialism by just having their status disqualify them for jobs like doctor, lawyer, and pilot. That girl in particular is a character which is supposed to be retarded, so I think she would have a guardian even under our present system.

your essentially saying that a 14 year old with a higher IQ should be an adult, with all that entails. I dont think many people would accept that.

Yes, well, that's because they're self-serving stupid people who want to continue despoiling society. It's sad.

That kinda works sort of, but has another problem, your essentially saying that a 14 year old with a higher IQ should be an adult, with all that entails. I dont think many people would accept that.

Adulthood ideally requires a level of emotional control that gifted 14-year olds are less likely to have than normie 21-year olds (but plenty of 14 year-olds have it and plenty of 21-year olds don't) and an ethic of taking adult responsibility which 14-year olds have not generally had the opportunity to develop in our society, and particularly not in the PMC milieu where most gifted kids are going to come from (but would do in a better-run society).

Right now, my guess is that less than half the gifted 14-year olds with the cognitive ability to pass an "early adulthood exam" are emotionally ready for adulthood, but 80% of them could be if we raised gifted children with that expectation (and most of the 20% are sufficiently autistic that they will never be emotionally ready for adulthood - part of the purpose of academia in a world where it isn't ruined by woke activism is as an artificial environment which makes geniuses who can't adult maximally useful)

Try to think of the situation in reverse. If my niece or one of my younger cousins when they come of age at 18, told me they were currently dating a 30 year old man, it would certainly give me pause and reflection to wonder where his particular interest comes from, that's distinct and different from someone in the same age group as they are. Would you feel differently if the tables were reversed in your case? It's a matter of differences in the stage of life. An "adult" at 30 isn't even on the same level as an "adult" at 50. It's less questionable because there's likely mature development from both parties from 18 to their present age that's taken place. A person at 18 though is too green to have that life experience that feels right. Would you take advice from yourself at 14? How about 18? I know more about everything, including myself; today in 2026 than I ever did back then, but looking back, although I was lacking in knowledge about certain things, I was every bit on the right track.

I was rejected once by a woman who was 1 year older than me and said it she felt it she would be like dating her younger brother. Seemed petty to me and it would've landed better without the insult. My ex-girlfriend of almost 8 years was a year and a half older than me. We'd known each other prior to dating, so there was already an established history there. Maybe that was something that softened any kind of weirdness. Looking at most of my age cohort today, I've done amazingly well by comparison when I see so many women who still act like 16 year old girls. If I ever got a word with mom and dad and I'd tell them they clearly failed as a parent.

If my niece or one of my younger cousins when they come of age at 18, told me they were currently dating a 30 year old man, it would certainly give me pause and reflection to wonder where his particular interest comes from

I agree that it's kind of a red flag. (And I say this as a man in his 50s who is engaged to a woman who is 18.) The issue is that there are men out there who are "in love with a number," i.e. they are kind of obsessed with dating young women. Such a man can be expected to quickly lose interest in the woman he is seeing, because everyone ages. Which isn't necessarily a problem if you are looking for a fling, but if the woman is interested in a long-term serious committed relationship, that's a problem.

Fundamentally, the situation is no different from when a woman dates a man who is known to be a "player" type. To me, that's an even bigger red flag. I find it annoying that society is far more tolerant of "f*ck boys" than of older men in relationships with younger women.

(And I say this as a man in his 50s who is engaged to a woman who is 18.)

Were you married before? Are you a widower? My main problem with age gaps like this is they're often the product of cheating or divorce. They also take away from young men.

Were you married before? Are you a widower? My main problem with age gaps like this is they're often the product of cheating or divorce. They also take away from young men.

I don't want to delve to deeply into my personal life, mainly because I don't want to dox myself.

But in general I agree that (1) polygamy (and polygyny) are bad for society; and (2) age gap relationships can act as a kind of polygamy -- since (1) they can result in one man monopolizing the reproductive years of multiple women; and (2) they can result in a man not giving one set of children his full paternal attention.

That being said, the trope of the man who becomes successful and ditches his first wife for some young hottie is a bit like stranger kidnappings and police shootings of unarmed black men. All of these things are rare but splashy and get far more attention than they realistically deserve because they serve some kind of narrative. In reality, most divorces are initiated by women who are bored and/or monkey-branching and high class polygamists like Donald Trump, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Elon Musk are pretty far down on the list of things undermining society and making life more difficult for young men.

I don't want to delve to deeply into my personal life, mainly because I don't want to dox myself.

Surely you can give a broad coverage of how you came to be in such a wide age gap relationship.

And I say this as a man in his 50s who is engaged to a woman who is 18.

I certainly have no moral problem with that, provided you both have honorable intentions. But, on a prudential level, how are you thinking about your future marriage in the context of aging? A six-year gap may get smaller as a couple ages, but surely a thirty-five-ish–year gap will get larger; in thirty years you will be in your eighties and she in her forties.

I don’t mean this as a gotcha. I assume you have thought about this, and I am curious about those thoughts.

But, on a prudential level, how are you thinking about your future marriage in the context of aging? A six-year gap may get smaller as a couple ages, but surely a thirty-five-ish–year gap will get larger; in thirty years you will be in your eighties and she in her forties.

I'm not thrilled about the age gap situation. The trouble is that it's just so hard to find a woman in the West who is (1) not obese; (2) not a single mom; and (3) not into woke progressive nonsense. Sadly I am not 6'2" with a chiseled jawline, so I have to compromise.

I don’t mean this as a gotcha. I assume you have thought about this, and I am curious about those thoughts

What can I say? I try to eat carefully and go to the gym a lot.

I'm not thrilled about the age gap situation. The trouble is that it's just so hard to find a woman in the West who is (1) not obese; (2) not a single mom; and (3) not into woke progressive nonsense. Sadly I am not 6'2" with a chiseled jawline, so I have to compromise.

Whatever your degree of "compromise" is, it's not nearly as significant as the compromise the woman marrying a man 30+ years her senior is making.

I have a corner of the extended family that includes a man who, after his kids were grown, divorced his wife and remarried someone slightly older than his kids and had a full second family. They are nice folks that clearly love each other and I like them, but I can tell it's been rough on them in various ways due to the age gap: the dad hit (practical) retirement age while the youngest kids (one with special needs) were still in middle school, and I know the wife has had to start working, presumably to close the budget. I know she's been having to take care of him (now in his 80s) physically too since before the last kid left the house, and I can't help but occasionally think about how she's actuarially likely to be widowed in maybe her early 60s, and how she'll handle that long-term.

Nothing against them personally, but I think they'd have been happier overall if they were closer to the same age and met earlier. I wish them well, though. Life throws things like that at you sometimes. I hope it goes well for the GP here, too.

This situation is also rough on the kids from the first marriage, who suddenly acquire a stepmother who isn't old enough to be their mother, but will need to play the social role of mother unless the kids spend ~100% of the time with their biomum. I'm going to date myself by pointing out that acquiring a stepmother young enough that she could just about have dated him instead of his father was what pushed Bill of Bill and Ted over the edge into loserdom. (Ted was just as thick as two short planks).

From the purely pragmatic/actuarial standpoint, if the gap is 10 years or larger, you as the male had better make some kind of preparations that will ensure financial security for the family if you die, and definitely to cover those last few years of care.

I mean you should in any case, but doubly so if you're asking them to sign up for a very high chance of spending their twilight years alone and unable to earn much.

Whatever your degree of "compromise" is, it's not nearly as significant as the compromise the woman marrying a man 30+ years her senior is making.

That's an interesting question, because she has a thing for older guys and is therefore getting what she wants out of the age gap, or at least what she thinks she wants. Presumably she is compromising on other things though. Sadly, everyone does. (Well, almost everyone.)

The trouble is that it's just so hard to find a woman in the West who is (1) not obese; (2) not a single mom; and (3) not into woke progressive nonsense. Sadly I am not 6'2" with a chiseled jawline, so I have to compromise.

This really is the issue.

In many cases there's not a huge, noticeable 'maturity' difference between a 21 year old woman and a 28 year old woman. One will just have a lot more 'baggage' than the other.

There's definitely an experience difference... but rarely does a woman take those experiences and learn good lessons and improve from them, i.e. mature. Oftentimes it just spirals as she justifies further bad decisions as a mere incremental step from what she previously did. So if the choice is between a 21-22 year old or a 28-29 year old, you're signing up to deal with an emotionally unstable partner with a naive idea about how the world works either way.

But the latter is also going to be bitter and have higher expectations and be more judgmental, and the former is more likely to be pleasant, inquisitive, and eager to experience new things. The light hasn't been snuffed out yet.

I had the very dark thought recently, that it would be very helpful if we could develop amnestic drugs of some kind that a late 20's woman could take that would 'reset' her memories and mental processes back to its youthful state. Literally have her forget all the previous mates, all the hookups, all the horrible breakups and emotional trauma and debauched decisions she's made over the past decade.

If she's otherwise physically attractive and now has the attitude of a 20-year-old, she's suddenly much more appealing as a mate. Unless she has a kid, can't easily remedy that issue.

But the latter is also going to be bitter and have higher expectations and be more judgmental, and the former is more likely to be pleasant, inquisitive, and eager to experience new things.

I agree that this can be an issue, but for me it's not necessarily a deal-breaker -- depending on the degree of bitterness, of course. The bigger problem, in my opinion, is that secular women are fed a constant stream of anti-male propaganda through their smartphones.

Same difference, ultimately.

The singular best green flag I can see in any woman, if she passes the other basic filters, is NOT being utterly addicted to screentime. And specifically, not having instagram, tiktok, dating apps, or certain other apps that do little but feed mental distress. If they have a loop of checking their phone every 30 seconds, or being stuck on it for long periods, or are addicted to posting every detail of their lives/choreographing things for maximum appeal, I tend to write off any further interest in them as a partner.

I've had the displeasure of watching behavior shifts in real time of young, 18-24 year old women who were generally pleasant to be around, and through a combination of the corrupting influence of algorithmic feeds AND the massive influx of digital attention any attractive woman gets if she posts herself online, basically becomes entitled, narcissistic, and usually fairly dismissive of her IRL relationships in favor of cultivating the online following.

I, personally, have spoken to a depressed, anxious young woman who knows she is mentally unwell, and knows to some degree that the apps are driving her down a bad path, and I had literally said "hand me your phone and I'll delete every one of those apps off of it for you" and she balked and did that Gen Z stare thing, said 'no thanks' and then walked away to do something else.

I think it's a good heuristic for young men too. The manias are different but the causes are the same.

In many cases there's not a huge, noticeable 'maturity' difference between a 21 year old woman and a 28 year old woman. One will just have a lot more 'baggage' than the other.

As a sage on twitter put it:

The reason women get upset about age gaps in relationships that they're not in is because they're worried men will notice there's no difference in dating a 35yo who never matured past 14 and dating a 21yo who never matured past 14

It gives me no happiness to report it, but my generalized experience with women is that by age 26, their personalities aren't ever improving from what they've displayed up until then.

This is not to say a single woman automatically becomes unmarriageable after that point! If their personality is good, its probably going to stay that way too.

But that age appears to be when the traumas and bad decisions will pile high enough that they can't be suppressed so long.

The Hail Mary of having her pop out a kid and see if that unlocks the nurturing part of her brain has many risks.

Its such a cruel/weird trick of nature that the age of 18-25 is when men should be doing their best to gain life experience and toughen themselves up... whereas women should be doing their best to avoid getting debauched and should be protecting their general positive life outlook as long as possible.

And under current social paradigms, we basically encourage the opposite arrangement.

If my niece or one of my younger cousins when they come of age at 18, told me they were currently dating a 30 year old man, it would certainly give me pause and reflection to wonder where his particular interest comes from

The same place all male interest in females comes from. Historically, 30 year old men (or even older) routinely sought out 16-18 year old women to form families with. The question is entirely in the quality of the man. I happen to have this exact situation in my family, with a cousin dating and then marrying at 19 to a man 12 years her senior. He is a very good dude who happened to really, really want a large family. To my knowledge, he adores her, never speaks down to her or has treated her as less than an equal partner, and 8 (or maybe 9? I've lost count) kids later they are one of the happiest families I know.

It goes without saying men are biologically attracted to women. Not all desire is a form of healthy expression or interest. There are a lot of very attractive women in my family and a good handful of them I view like younger sisters. That men would find them attractive is no surprise and I don't hold it against them for thinking that. I'm against a man who would manipulate them into sex without requiring love, mutual commitment, support or investment. Yeah, sexual congress is universal. I get it. The goal has never been to prevent that. The goal is to keep that within context.

I wouldn't inherently reject a man who comes along and tells me he's interested in one of my relatives. I've had it happen before. Like you, it depends entirely on how I vet him to be. When I was a teenager, a group of my friends were out in the city once late at night doing things they shouldn't have been doing. As the night continued to get late, I drop word in with my best friend that my younger cousin (which they all knew) is out at a party past her curfew so I asked him to swing by to pick her up and join them while they walked her home. At one point one of the guys in the group made a pass at my cousin and my best friend who was there walked up and popped him in the face pretty hard, and told him to "shut the fuck up." After she was dropped off, they rolled through my place as it was nearing the morning and they told me what happened. Me and said friend in that group are still friends to this day and he apologized the night that it happened, but our relationship has been strained for decades after that. He's definitely been out on the periphery of things ever since then. But that was all par for the course with how we grew up. We policed each other's behavior and kept one another in line. It was a strongly enforced norm. Homeboy chose to make an degrading attempt instead of keeping his mouth shut.

It's about the kind of man you are and how responsible you are. If you can prove you're a mature suitor and a respectable man, that's more than enough social proof for me to have my blessing, but "proof" is the key word in that sentence. If he was much older than her but came from my friend group and we'd had a multiple decade long pedigree with each other, I'd know the man well enough to know whether he's a good fit for someone in my family or not. One of my best friend's cousins is married to one of my cousins and they have two kids with each other and it's a very happy marriage. We've long passed the point of being best friends, we've been in-laws now for quite awhile.

I'm against a man who would manipulate them into sex without requiring love, mutual commitment, support or investment.

Absolutely, and this is one of the advantages of a strong family, as it has been historically. If a man knocks up a woman and doesnt do the honorable thing, the womans family has certain duties involving pitchforks and/or shotguns. But an age gap is not a good indicator of lack of commitment, I would argue both historically and currently its the inverse. Even the sour-grapes danger-haired feminists who shriek about such things couch their argument in terms of power imbalances rather than a lack of commitment.

"Congratulations, I hear you're marrying my sister," treatment in the bathroom. We haven't seen him since his separation, but we know where he's at. He 100% knows he's a dead man walking if he shows up around our family again.

The girls in our family were always on a much shorter leash and were more controlled than the boys were, and I think it's for good reason to this very day.

The short leash and overprotective brothers thing doesn't seem to work though. It didn't work in your example your cousin still ended up a single mom and it didn't work in among the kids at my high school. The girls end up sneaking around anyway and half end up pregnant out of wedlock. The girls from middle and upper class liberal families whose brothers don't care who they date seem to have much better results. And you might say it's a class thing and sure maybe it is but still that's the half of it I can't imagine a family of respectable doctors and engineers getting together to force some disreputable boy to marry one of their relatives.

Does it work in every case? No. But it worked an overwhelming amount of the time. They're still married to this day and he walks around in fear of retribution. I don't see any logic that gives way to the notion that the situation improves further by a complete withdrawal of that attitude.

Does still married matter if they are separated and your family will beat him if he ever shows his face at Thanksgiving? That doesn't seem like a successful outcome to me. And I don't think that attitude has much effect. Middle class American young women and girls tend not to have family with that attitude and they don't get pregnant out of wedlock or indeed get pregnant much at all anymore.

A lot of lowerclass and working class young women with protective family attitudes like that do end up pregnant out of wedlock because single motherhood is accepted in their social milieu.

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couch their argument in terms of power imbalances rather than a lack of commitment.

Well, the argument being couched that way merely conceals the complaint about a lack of commitment; gynosupremacists feel entitled to male commitment.

"Power imbalance" is the way they legitimize that entitlement, as the power imbalance has favored the woman in any relationship for the past 50 years or so. Compare "eat the rich" (and the people who say it); in both cases, it's just a fight over whose version of entitlement is enforced at gunpoint.

I've always adopted the approach that whether we're talking about employment, gender relations, family, interpersonal interactions, whatever it is, if you want to live and be independent of the group that's your right to do so, but you in turn receive no benefit by your lack of membership in it.

If I and other men are implicitly held to be responsible for how the men around us behave, such that it's our job to keep them in line so women feel comfortable and happy going about their business, then they're in turn obliged to follow men's rules at the end of the day. I can fully understand why a woman wouldn't like to constantly live her life in deference to men, but there's no good alternative around this. The only other way to live is by accepting the risk that your independence makes you fair game for anybody and everybody. If we have to compete and you wind up getting in a fucked up situation, you signed onto this, so don't ask me to have pity for you. Despite what others told you, you knew what you were getting yourself into. Every man understands this in his dealings with other men.

If you're complimentary to me, then I obviously owe you certain rights and privileges in virtue of our obligations to serve out the roles we carry for one another. If you're my equal then you're a competitor to me in all aspects of life and your misfortune and pain is a natural consequence of "losing" in the game of survival we're playing. The fact that you lost isn’t proof of your innocence, all it proves is that you’re weaker than me. Sorry, but that's how it is. Life is full of trade offs.

A lot of what men deal with in life they figure out through difficult experience, trial and error. Life is a catch-22 for us because if I don't go to work, I starve. For women (yes, not all of them), plenty of these choices are optional, such that you don't 'have' to work if you don't want to. Or at least as hard as a man does. Women have options where men often have no choice. So a lot of the bad choices women end up making for themselves are expressions of their desire to engage in that activity; and so they’re there by choice. So when you end up getting "burned," you aren't a "victim," you're simply an idiot.

Every man understands this in his dealings with other men.

Sorry, what exactly is the "this" here? Every man understands that they're signing up to compete and potentially get fucked up?

Yes, the common understanding is that choosing to play means a risk being the loser, and that there will be at best magnanimity, but certainly not sympathy.

I live in a world where large age gaps are socially acceptable if a bit unusual. In the rad trad world they are recognized as a choice that people sometimes make(and typically there are more 18 year old women interested in men significantly older than them than the reverse; teenagers are normally annoying and the former category is not actually selected for maturity. This is not to say that most or even very many high school seniors want to be going out with men in their thirties). It doesn’t cause any social problems(social problems in rad trad dating exist; they are not this one), but we also live in a world with functionally no premarital sex or divorce, and it’s noted as sometimes making things awkward at family gatherings. The prevailing opinion is that the secular world would not be able to handle it. Wives significantly younger than their husbands will have a second diaper changing phase, but women don’t really mind changing diapers and tradcath men are all smokers so it’s not the longest phase anyway.

So its no secret that people, particularly zoomers, like to bitch and moan about age gaps in relationships. Should someone who's 30 date someone who's 18? Does it make you a pedophile if you do

It depends. There are definitely people who are sketch and seem like they'd go a lot lower if only it was allowed and those people are pedos, but actually spotting them vs just finding someone who is on the younger side hot isn't an easy task so people fuck it up often.

But assuming this is true, where does sexual relationships lie on the age scale? Is a 16 year old really too immature to date some one who is 19? 20?

A lot of places (including most US states) do have 16 as the age of consent so they could sleep with whoever! And even many of those that don't have "Romeo and Juliet laws" allowing small age differences.

Now legal vs moral are different questions though. I think 16 year olds are generally mature enough to handle body responsibility and should be treated that way both morally and legally for most things. There are some who are still stupid, but a lot of that is just from coddling our kids too much. For example, many parents will get a babysitter for their sixth grader nowadays whereas sixth grade just a few decades ago were the babysitters

If we should have universal age of adulthood, that tracts onto everything (alcohol, crime, sex) where would it be.

Age of adulthood has always been arbitrary, the point of a single age is mostly for simplicity and being consistent. It's way easier to know and enforce the rules when it's simply "18" instead of having to roll the lottery each time if police and a judge disagree with your assessment of maturity. As for that exact age, it's generally between 16-20 in modern culture. Some do go higher and some go lower but it is mostly in that range. Doesn't matter where exactly, just has to be reliable.

Doesn't matter where exactly, just has to be reliable.

I mean, it matters that it's set as low as possible unless you see people as mere cattle of the State. Setting it higher than it needs to be, by definition, only has costs to individuals, although maybe not the State.

There are definitely people who are sketch and seem like they'd go a lot lower if only it was allowed and those people are pedos

legal vs moral are different questions

I have several questions of my own:

  1. Assuming consent and good intentions, what actually makes pedophilia immoral? I remember my days as a horny 14 year old; there were definitely some hot women in their thirties I would have consented to banging. Would even a consensual, non-manipulative act of sex with a much older woman showing me the ropes have caused me irreparable psychological harm?

    • I mean, maybe. I'm not an expert in human psychology, so it's possible that giving me exactly what I wanted would've been the worst possible thing to happen to teenage me. But I have a hard time seeing it.

  2. And the thing that makes pedophilia immoral -- why wouldn't it make a larger age gap relationship immoral? Imagine a rich 70 year old white man being with a hot 22 year old -- not unheard of here in the third world. I would think he's got at least as much power to manipulate her as a 30 year old with a 14 year old.

  3. And of course I understand there is a gendered difference between the scenarios, as much as the left may not want to admit it. A 30 year old man fucking a 14 year old girl produces a much stronger ick than the reverse. Why is that?

To be clear here, I said a lot lower. The types of dudes who are getting off to loli content and actually she's a 2000 year old dragon sort of things, where they obsess over "barely legal" and "jailbait" because they are pedos and just don't do anything because of the law. And the existence of such people should be expected if we assume the deterrent argument of law is true.

Aren't "barely legal" and "jailbait" referring exactly to the teenagers I'm talking about?

But suppose we lowered the age further. Again, assuming consent -- as in, the child wants to do something with an adult and the adult allows them the opportunity to do so, which I think already implies a minimum threshold for age -- what exactly is immoral about that, and how wouldn't that transfer across different age gaps? Doesn't the hypothetical still hold?

(I say assuming consent because non-consensual acts of sex are obviously unethical regardless of age.)

It's easier for a 30 year old to manipulate a 14 year old than a 70 year old can a 22 year old. In particular, young minds aren't fully developed and are susceptible to saying yes to things they don't actually want to do. This is why "but the kid consented!" is not a good defense, even if true. Further, pedophilia in general causes psychological harm to the vast majority of minors, so even if we grant for the sake of argument the many claimed cases of people saying they would've totally been fine if they had sex when they were 14 (or actually had done so), it would be enabling pedophiles who would then go on to harm the many people who are not fine with having sex at 14 years of age. This is similar to why you can't consent to being murdered, and murderers who only murder "consensual" victims are still murderers who are still imprisoned for murdering people. We also want to discourage rules lawyering, and if we allowed exceptions in the case of consent, that would open the door to endless litigation over whether the 14 year old really consented, which would result in adverse outcomes for many cases because most 14 year olds don't consent.

It's easier for a 30 year old to manipulate a 14 year old than a 70 year old can a 22 year old.

This is probably true for some 14 year olds, but not others.

it would be enabling pedophiles who would then go on to harm the many people who are not fine with having sex at 14 years of age.

Do you value virginity at marriage? Most people don't. Let's say the hymen doesn't matter, and sex is fun and it feels good. Most people believe this. Obviously, the sex with the 14 year old is voluntary, not forced, or else it would constitute rape. Why do you need staturtory rape laws? On the basis of what harm? The problem is that when it comes to everything but the age of consent, men lose out because „the hymen is a social construct,“ „it can be broken by a bicycle,“ „Onlyfans at 19 is a human right,“ but when it comes to the age of consent it's suddenly Great Harm if a girl consents to sex and then regrets it. What great harm? The law does everything it can do to make sure her virginity is blown out by another man at marriage, but suddenly if she loses it to a loser man who is not her age, it's Big Bad. Why? What harm?

This is probably true for some 14 year olds, but not others.

I'd be hard pressed to find a 14 year old for which this isn't true. For it to be false, they would have to be already financially and emotionally independent, mature enough to know the full consequences of sex, have the self-worth and courage to say no, etc. which are all traits that vanishingly few 14 year olds have, if any.

Why do you need staturtory rape laws? On the basis of what harm?

The harm when a minor agrees to sexual acts without fully internalizing what they entail and then being too scared to say no once it starts.

„Onlyfans at 19 is a human right,“

I don't agree with the existence of Onlyfans.

The law does everything it can do to make sure her virginity is blown out by another man at marriage

I'm not aware of any laws in Western countries that prohibit premarital sex between consenting adults.

I'd be hard pressed to find a 14 year old for which this isn't true.

It was true for me.

they would have to be already financially and emotionally independent

I don't know what emotionally independent means, financial independence doesn't matter, 99% of people don't have this.

The harm when a minor agrees to sexual acts without fully internalizing what they entail and then being too scared to say no once it starts.

I hope all 14 year olds understand pregnancy and STDs. Is there any other harm? If a man wears a condom, what's the big harm exactly?

I don't agree with the existence of Onlyfans.

Great.

I'm not aware of any laws in Western countries that prohibit premarital sex between consenting adults.

I think you misread me, I was complaining that they don't prohibit it.

I don't know what emotionally independent means

Having a strong sense of identity, of self-worth, being able to handle big problems like running out of money, not having to rely on your parents for typical socialization or emotional support. Things like that.

financial independence doesn't matter, 99% of people don't have this.

Are we speaking past each other? By financial independence, I mean not being dependent on anyone else for money, and the typical signs of this are things like having your own job and owning your own place. I bring up financial independence because a classic groomer tactic is to shower a child with gifts they wouldn't be able to attain themself. An adult is financially independent and can just buy whatever they want so such a tactic would not work on them.

I find it hard to believe that you at 14 years of age could just buy whatever you wanted and wouldn't be susceptible to a grooming tactic like that.

I hope all 14 year olds understand pregnancy and STDs. Is there any other harm? If a man wears a condom, what's the big harm exactly?

Sex is a hugely emotional and intimate act and there's more to it than just wearing a condom. A child is highly likely to feel complex emotions they hadn't felt before if they end up in a sexual encounter, and highly likely to want to back out and stop, but also highly likely to be too scared to say no. The harm is in having sex with the child when they don't want it, and the subsequent emotional damage, feelings of powerlessness, lowered self-worth, etc. not uncommon when someone gets raped.

I mean not being dependent on anyone else for money, and the typical signs of this are things like having your own job and owning your own place.

Arbitrary line.

I bring up financial independence because a classic groomer tactic is to shower a child with gifts they wouldn't be able to attain themself.

How is this different than the usual courting of women by well-off men?

A child is highly likely to feel complex emotions they hadn't felt before if they end up in a sexual encounter, and highly likely to want to back out and stop, but also highly likely to be too scared to say no. The harm is in having sex with the child when they don't want it, and the subsequent emotional damage, feelings of powerlessness, lowered self-worth, etc. not uncommon when someone gets raped.

Okay, then prosecute for forced rape then. If it's not forced rape, what is the issue? Even causing emotional damage, feelings of powerlessness, lowered self-worth is not a felony level harm. Intelligent motte commenters and society make me feel like that all the time. Am I raped?

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Ok, I agree with most things you say, but just to clearly separate out the practical rules that must be put in place to protect the median case, versus the purely ethical side of things:

Is it or is it not fine for a 14 year old who wants to fuck a 30 year old to be allowed to fuck the 30 year old? If not, where is the psychological harm coming from?

This is similar to why you can't consent to being murdered, and murderers who only murder "consensual" victims are still murderers who are still imprisoned for murdering people.

But why? Why should it be illegal if there's ample documentation that the person being killed actively consented to and wanted to be killed?

Is it or is it not fine for a 14 year old who wants to fuck a 30 year old to be allowed to fuck the 30 year old? If not, where is the psychological harm coming from?

No. The harm comes from the 14 year old not knowing what they're agreeing to and being too scared to say no once it starts.

But why? Why should it be illegal if there's ample documentation that the person being killed actively consented to and wanted to be killed?

Because we as a society have agreed to grant as much protection as possible to everyone, even to people who are either stupid or mentally disturbed enough to want to be killed, because we generally value human life. There is also the fact that if consent was an exception, so many murderers would claim the "but they actually consented" defense which would drag out the (already unbelievably long) criminal justice process of putting murderers in prison.

The harm comes from the 14 year old not knowing what they're agreeing to and being too scared to say no once it starts.

Okay, the latter is something I hadn't considered. But the former: what do you mean by "what they're agreeing to"? They're agreeing to stick their dick into someone they wanted to stick their dick into anyways.

Because we as a society have agreed to grant as much protection as possible to everyone, even to people who are either stupid or mentally disturbed enough to want to be killed

I don't see why this is a useful protection to grant.

because we generally value human life.

But we're not talking about the general case. We're talking about the specific case of someone who no longer values their own life and actively wishes for it to be taken away.

There is also the fact that if consent was an exception, so many murderers would claim the "but they actually consented" defense which would drag out the (already unbelievably long) criminal justice process of putting murderers in prison.

This would be trivially solved by requiring a high bar of evidence for this defense. Can they produce the amount of documentation that Meiwes and Brandes had on hand, signed and notarized and what have you? 99.9% of murders are not going to have that on file.

But the former: what do you mean by "what they're agreeing to"? They're agreeing to stick their dick into someone they wanted to stick their dick into anyways.

They may have agreed to that. But they don't know about the complex emotions that comes with the act and their minds are not mature enough to handle it. It's more than just the raw physical act that takes place.

I don't see why this is a useful protection to grant.

The theory goes that suicidal people are not in their right mind and if they were cured of their afflictions would no longer wish to die. By giving up this protection we would be causing thousands or even millions of unnecessary deaths.

We're talking about the specific case of someone who no longer values their own life and actively wishes for it to be taken away.

We still do everything in our power to prevent suicidal people from taking their own lives. We don't just ignore them and leave them to their own devices or even actively encourage them to kill themselves.

This would be trivially solved by requiring a high bar of evidence for this defense. Can they produce the amount of documentation that Meiwes and Brandes had on hand, signed and notarized and what have you? 99.9% of murders are not going to have that on file.

It's not just being able to eventually adjudicate the claim, it's also the amount of judicial resources spent on frivolous claims (especially since, as you admit, the defense would only be successful in vanishingly rare scenarios). Do you know the saying, "the process is the punishment"? How the process for resolving disputes or incidents, and it being dragged out for a long period of time, is itself a punishment? Defendants can cause that sort of punishment too. The defendant and/or their lawyers will do absolutely everything they can to keep the defendant out of jail, and that includes claiming defenses that have no hope of success, but still result in delays and time, effort, and resources spent having to rebut the claim by prosecutors and witnesses.

As I said, allowing this sort of defense at all would result in the second-order consequences of spawning endless litigation over whether someone consented to being murdered, especially if there was a high bar of evidence.

"They totes consented to it, the document was notarized by this guy!" "Hang on, is that notary even licensed? Looks like his license expired." "Yes, but, he got it reinstated, so it's valid!" "Yeah but, look at this recent state law, says he has to renew in a month, and he didn't." "Hang on, what about..." and so on, arguments like that, ad infinitum. It's already hard enough to put away murderers, we don't need to make it harder.

The theory goes that suicidal people are not in their right mind and if they were cured of their afflictions would no longer wish to die. By giving up this protection we would be causing thousands or even millions of unnecessary deaths.

That's only one way to look at it, no? By demanding such "protection" we cause a lot of unnecessary suffering.

As I said, allowing this sort of defense at all would result in the second-order consequences of spawning endless litigation over whether someone consented to being murdered, especially if there was a high bar of evidence.

If ad infinitum problems crop up, that's a bug of the legal system, not of the moral code behind the legal system. Not every legal system has this issue.

Was the notary licensed at the time of notarization? If so then it's legit. If not no. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes of the court's time with a sufficiently competent legal system.

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so even if we grant for the sake of argument the many claimed cases of people saying they would've totally been fine if they had sex when they were 14

Is there evidence of 14 year olds being uniquely damaged in countries where the AoC is (or was) 14?

because most 14 year olds don't consent.

Until about 30 years ago the average age of virginity loss was around here, so this is obviously false. Unless you can't tell a 14 year old and a 4 year old apart, which is perhaps useful rhetorically but not realistically.

to why you can't consent to being murdered

Sure you can- break into a Texan's house. Though this is just splitting the difference over "breaking into a house defended by armed homeowner will definitely get you killed" and "all cases of self-defense are murder".

Is there evidence of 14 year olds being uniquely damaged in countries where the AoC is (or was) 14?

Yes. The origin of age of consent laws came about because Britain in the 1880s had literal child prostitutes who were constantly being raped, but no legal recourse could be taken since the defense was always "the 14 year old consented."

Until about 30 years ago the average age of virginity loss was around here, so this is obviously false.

Just because someone loses their virginity doesn't mean they consented to it.

Sure you can- break into a Texan's house. Though this is just splitting the difference over "breaking into a house defended by armed homeowner will definitely get you killed" and "all cases of self-defense are murder".

If you break into a Texan's house because you want to die, that's arguably just suicide that involves a third party, not murder. Suicide by cop, for example, is (sadly) a popular suicide method.

child prostitutes who were constantly being raped

Sounds like wage theft to me, which is a problem distinct from what you've described. You don't need AoC laws to fix that, you simply need to enforce the existing ones.

Just because someone loses their virginity doesn't mean they consented to it.

Perhaps, but the desire is there for the vast majority of cases where a 14 year old loses it; typically to their similarly-aged companion of the opposite sex, sometimes even in the context of a marriage [as at least one sibling comment describes]. (Alternately: since a young age, I've suffered self-abuse. I always told myself no, but deep down, I knew I wanted it.)

Sounds like wage theft to me, which is a problem distinct from what you've described. You don't need AoC laws to fix that, you simply need to enforce the existing ones.

The problem wasn't that they weren't being paid for their services. The problem was that they were being raped. No amount of payment makes it ok to have sex with someone who doesn't want it.

typically to their similarly-aged companion of the opposite sex

I wasn't talking about sex between people close in age, I was talking about the hypothetical scenario of a 30 year old having sex with a 14 year old.

Until about 30 years ago the average age of virginity loss was around here, so this is obviously false.

Not in cisHajnal countries, which not coincidentally are also the countries where consent in something approximating the modern sense formed part of traditional sexual morality. The average age at first marriage in England never dropped below 25 for men/23 for women (see here for example) until the 1950's baby boom. Pre-marital sex obviously happened, but since it tended to result in a shotgun wedding I don't find the idea that losing your virginity a decade before marriage was common.

Marrying your daughter off at 14 is for royals and goatfuckers, and in neither case is her consent relevant.

Would even a consensual, non-manipulative act of sex with a much older woman showing me the ropes have caused me irreparable psychological harm?

If you have the wherewithal to ask that question the answer is no, trivially, but there are a bunch of people (and you'll see them come out in this thread when they wake up tomorrow) who will claim otherwise. The steelman of their opinion is that it's difficult to know which kind of person you are at that age, but they also don't know what it's like to be someone who isn't affected like that and can tend to be jealous of that trait.

A 30 year old man fucking a 14 year old girl produces a much stronger ick than the reverse. Why is that?

For women, biology (it's to a less desirable woman's advantage that more desirable men [to them] are forced to accept an inferior product for the same price). For old men, it's internalized misandry; for young men, it's jealousy.

As for why it's not that way in reverse (outside of people faking their orgasms offense as an extension of the pretense that men and women are the same- 14 year old men aren't allowed to fuck because that would lead to 14 year old women doing the same, and see above for why they don't like that), it's because men and women are different, so the way they bring value to relationships is also different. Women [and I'm talking about the statistic mean here] bring beauty and are attracted to dollars, men bring dollars and are attracted to beauty.

It's very confusing and incoherent to the average human being for older women to prefer to fuck men who can't offer dollars; usually it just marks the man as a dumpster-diver [because older women are less beautiful -> less valuable], and marks the woman as someone so undesirable she couldn't even give herself away. (The predator angle is usually invented; human instinct says men can't be raped, you need to be educated to believe otherwise.)

If you have the wherewithal to ask that question the answer is no... The steelman of their opinion is that it's difficult to know which kind of person you are at that age

Well, I most certainly was not thinking about potential psychological harm when I was rubbing one off to adult women. But regardless of what kind of person you are at that age, how exactly does a horny teenage boy get harmed by having his fantasies met in a non-manipulative and consensual manner?

Again, I'm not saying there's no harm. But if there is, can somebody please show it to me, because I'm having trouble seeing it myself.

The predator angle is usually invented; human instinct says men can't be raped, you need to be educated to believe otherwise

It's certainly possible (English version here).

But what is interesting is the idea of statutory rape. It comes across as this thing that is simply axiomatically wrong, even under ideal circumstances where the adult is not intending to manipulate, groom, or otherwise inflict harm on the child. You can account for everything unwholesome, and yet somehow the act itself is still seen by society at large as so obviously morally wrong as to not need any further justification.

What you said about this being merely the self-interested motivations of different demographics makes sense to me. But this would seem to morally justify sexual relationships with willing girls of any age; the only limiting factor is societal opprobrium, not ethics, which somehow feels like the entirely wrong conclusion to draw (unless this is just my internalized misandry expressing itself).

the only limiting factor is societal opprobrium, not ethics, which somehow feels like the entirely wrong conclusion to draw

It's the entirely correct conclusion to draw, but you're also forgetting that (and I can't believe I actually have to say this) most men don't want to fuck little girls. Men want huge tits and a nice ass; tweens have neither.

Though of course there are exceptions on the margins, or when the woman initiates; human nature can't grok the concept of women initiating sex because it's massively counterintuitive, biologically-speaking (re: pregnancy risks), and in large part doesn't even attempt to do this (which is also why the concept that women can sexually abuse men is completely foreign- this is why female-dominated professions like teaching is obsessed with teaching 7 year old boys they're secretly girls, among other things). It's actually harmful for women to acknowledge it because their self-interest dictates they pretend sex is a chore, for the same reason your self-interest dictates you seek a high wage even for a job compatible with your interests; men take this at face value sometimes.

And by "little girls" I mean "not women", which per the thread's topic I consider to be <=12; ancient societies, including European societies until the Industrial Revolution, had this anchor point for reasons that have a lot to do with both biology and the fact that economic productivity wasn't yet gated behind a decade of credentialism and manual labor was still economically productive; both things that aren't true in modern times, so you get the 13-23 set acting super weird because their biology demands adult treatment that society pretends is illegitimate (because they simply don't have room for them in the economy, and segregation breeds contempt).
We pay for it in events where one of them runs amok and kills a bunch of their peers and consider this acceptable for some reason.

you're also forgetting that (and I can't believe I actually have to say this) most men don't want to fuck little girls

I'm not forgetting that. But there's a huge amount of societal attention placed on the few men that do want to fuck little girls, which is the whole reason that this is even a topic of discussion in the first place, right? Otherwise it'd be a fringe nothingburger concern.

It's actually harmful for women to acknowledge it because their self-interest dictates they pretend sex is a chore, for the same reason your self-interest dictates you seek a high wage even for a job compatible with your interests; men take this at face value sometimes.

Good observation.

so you get the 13-23 set acting super weird because their biology demands adult treatment that society pretends is illegitimate (because they simply don't have room for them in the economy, and segregation breeds contempt).

We pay for it in events where one of them runs amok and kills a bunch of their peers and consider this acceptable for some reason.

Well, we've only started truly paying for it in recent decades, whereas the phenomenon of segregated teenagehood has been going on for quite a while, right? But what solution is there? There is even less room for them in the economy now, and even if there were, the general public would be aghast at the idea of reintroducing child labor.

But there's a huge amount of societal attention placed on the few men that do want to fuck little girls, which is the whole reason that this is even a topic of discussion in the first place, right?

It's more that they're just the motte of the "all sex is rape, all men are predators" argument that women draw a socio-financial salary from repeating. It makes sense for them to do this, just like it makes sense to spam "all young people are subhuman/mentally invalid until 25" for all people whose station in society would be threatened by the presence of younger competition (doubly so for women who #fightfor25).

There's also the fact that, for people who are not you or me, sex is very special (in a way described as spiritual, which makes sense as it's fundamental to human existence); it's core to the way they experience the world and as such has to fall into specific buckets. This is why early '70s academics were all like "well, if you fuck in childhood, maybe you won't grow up to be such a square?", and why that didn't actually end up working.

(Note that said academics generally treat opposition to this as 'closed mindedness' and treat pushing it on those people as 'liberating' them; ignoring the fact that for a lot of people, their instincts are smarter than they are, or they're already at maximum capacity for resisting the instincts that are maladapative to the situation and forcing them to bear even more is not tenable. Compare "hatching eggs" for transgenderism.)

the phenomenon of segregated teenagehood has been going on for quite a while

It actually hasn't, though; the word only dates back to the 1930s, and between 1945-1980 the post-WW2 economic boom created space for [older] teenagers to enter the workforce. Before that was peak "children in the mines", of course (and if they were as useless as the average adult thinks they are, they couldn't have been so employed), but the Depression forced most of them out and into the asylum school system because there was wasn't enough work for adults at the time. Creating more schools and legally mandating a captive audience attend them was a great way to employ more people, too.

Things started getting worse for the under-18 set after that time ended; that was the beginning of the "CPS will come abduct you if you're playing in your own front yard" era.

While the word "teenager" as a marketing term only dates to the 20th century, I don't think the evidence supports this idea that adolescence simply didn't exist before the industrial revolution. The teenage years have always been considered a transitionary between childhood and full adulthood.

Yes, children would start assisting with household and agricultural labor from an early age, but it's not like you turned 12 and your father immediately threw you out to start your own farm. It was a gradual escalation of responsibility. A typical 13th century teenager might be an apprentice, a novice, or a squire, but they wouldn't become a journeyman, priest, or knight until their early twenties, and would spend most or all their teenage years assisting a "real" adult with their work until they were experienced and economically secure enough to start their own household.

Outside of the nobility and rare exceptions, medieval people didn't marry until their late teens or early twenties, and would often stay under their fathers' roofs (and their fathers' authority) for even longer.

Certain coming of age rituals like bar mitzvahs would occur shortly after puberty, usually around 14-15, which might symbolically represent passing from childhood to adulthood. But, again, very few 14-15 year olds were actually treated like full adult members of the community. The age of majority almost everywhere has almost always been betwen 16 and 25. Rome started unusually early at 12 and 14 for girls and boys, respectively, but Roman law was weird in that essentially everyone of any age was considered an adolescent dependent of their pater familias. And the Romans had all sorts of other age-gated requirements for full participation in adult society. For example, you weren't eligible to stand for public office until you were 30 and had spent 10 years in the legions, and you could sue to overturn contracts on the basis that your youth and inexperience were being taken advantage of until the age of 25.

those people are pedos

Look I don't disagree it's sleazy as fuck but "pedophiles" are attracted to prepubescent kids. Maybe you're right at least some of them might go younger if they could, but a 50yo man dating a 19yo girl is not an act of pedophilia.

Age of adulthood has always been arbitrary

I've seen tiktoks arguing we should raise the legal age from 18 to 21 or even 25 and see who gets mad. I'll put up my hand right away, I just turned 25 and I'd hate to just become legal when I'm like 5 years into my career.

Now yes, as you point out moral and lawful categories don't always align, and indeed the idea is that at some point you gotta take accountability for all your decisions, including bad ones.

I also suspect it's gendered, reactions to female teachers having sex with male students tend to be more intense among commentators (especially feminists) than the "victims" involved because the reverse is categorically harmful. But men who engaged in sexual activity with adult women as adolescents describe it more positively and report less trauma. Doesn't mean that it is healthy long term, but there are pronounced gendered differences in psychology and hormonal behaviours reflected in these surveys beyond just "he doesn't know he's a victim".

Look I don't disagree it's sleazy as fuck but "pedophiles" are attracted to prepubescent kids.

Is that really what pedophile means though? It seems like 99% of the time it's used, it means an adult who likes teenagers. Child molester is more reserved for adults who do stuff to prepubescent kids.

but a 50yo man dating a 19yo girl is not an act of pedophilia.

A lot of zoomers think otherwise.

than the "victims" involved because the reverse is categorically harmful. But men who engaged in sexual activity with adult women as adolescents describe it more positively and report less trauma.

Logically, voluntary sexual intercourse can't be traumatic no matter the age gap. Claiming otherwise is a bizarre social fiction. Which is why we are left always asking what the real motives are for age gap laws and norms.

the reverse is categorically harmful

So this relates to the sibling thread I have, but what is the categorical harm being done when it's a male teacher having (consensual, non-manipulative, insert qualifiers, etc.) sex with female students, and what makes for the gendered difference?

But men who engaged in sexual activity with adult women as adolescents describe it more positively and report less trauma.

That study you linked only describes public perception of such acts, not the actual trauma from the act.

what is the categorical harm being done when it's a male teacher having (consensual, non-manipulative, insert qualifiers, etc.) sex with female students

Those qualifiers reduce this to essentially an empty set. And even if you can come up with some hypothetical where it is possible, there's no way to tell between that and the vastly more common situation where the relationship is manipulative.

The answer to the sibling comment is the same: Given the nature of children, consensual, non-manipulative, pedophilia is essentially impossible, and the weird hypothetical where it's possible is not something you can actually distinguish from the rest.

And even if you can come up with some hypothetical where it is possible

I already provided an obvious one that myself (and I'm sure millions of other teenage boys) went through: horny 14 year old me jerking it off to a whole lot of different adult women.

Suppose it were somehow made known to me that I could have sex with one of those women, I just have to say the word and she would allow me to have my way with her. The consensual qualifier is already satisfied, so that leaves the manipulation one. Would she be manipulating me by simply allowing the act to happen?

I don't see how this is a weird hypothetical at all. I may not have been exposed to any such situations myself, but given the amount of news articles where an adult woman was caught doing something like this, there are likely to have been far more unrecorded instances of this happening where an adult woman was not being manipulative, unless your definition of "manipulation" is far more expansive than mine.

Unless you're talking some scifi situation or some weird borderline case, this is very unlikely to happen without something being seriously messed up with the woman. Maybe "non-manipulative" is a bad word for that, but it will have bad motives and dynamics. And it would still be impossible for an outsider to distinguish a "good" case from the mountains of bad ones.

it will have bad motives and dynamics

Ok, but why do you assume that? Or what do you mean by "bad motives"?

Ok, but why do you assume that?

By observing humans?

More comments

What you describe is purely abstract and doesn't reflect real life dynamics though. The asymmetry is layered with differences in non-trivial physical risks (pregnancy and greater exposure to physical harm), developmental vulnerability, and reputational consequences borne by female students from both peers and family. The bodily stakes aren't nearly as equivalent for male students in analogous situations. If the adult female gets pregnant, she bears the physical, social and legal risks, not the adolescent. And peer perceptions are the inverse for young boys. Through porn and other media, teenage boys spend their developmental years admiring and fantasising sex with adult women above their own age bracket. So for better or for worse, sex with an adult woman is a status symbol for male students.

Except for "developmental vulnerability", by which I assume you mean damage to underdeveloped internal organs, doesn't everything else (pregnancy, reputation, etc.) also apply to really old geezers dating really young adult women?

Also, I wouldn't be so sure about legal risks, given that even a 15 year old boy was ordered to pay child support to a 34 year old adult woman. But that seems almost tautological: it is immoral to fuck a child because society might hurt the child if you do.

If we should have universal age of adulthood, that tracts onto everything (alcohol, crime, sex) where would it be? Currently, all of these have different ages (21 is for alcohol if you are in the US). What do you guys think?

My position is that we have the technology to directly test for capacity to engage in the behaviors in question. So the legal proscription on, e.g. alcohol consumption, sexual relations, gambling, taking out loans, etc. the 'incapacity' we impose on minors can be lifted on a case-by-case basis rather than an arbitrary birthday fiat.

There's additional mechanisms I'd attach to this, but it makes good sense to me. Some sixteen year olds are probably mature enough to handle parenthood. Many twenty-four year olds are probably not quite mature enough to grasp why buying lotto tickets it not a sound financial decision. And capacity for one of those doesn't inherently imply capacity at the other. Rain Man probably understands odds/statistics enough to let him gamble, but maybe doesn't get how sex works.

The age at which they are competent to do these things is unlikely to be the exact same, based on their brain development, life experiences, and emotional maturity.

And I like the idea that if there is an 'objective' testing process in place to gain 'adulthood' privileges... then this gives kids incentive to study and prepare for these tests... meaning they actually work at grasping the topics and mentally engaging with them, rather than just expecting to gain them with passage of time.

This is not dissimilar from requiring teens to pass a driver's test before being permitted on the roads (inadequate as that may ultimately be).

My position is that we have the technology to directly test for capacity to engage in the behaviors in question.

We'd have to test for emotional maturity, not factual knowledge, which is itself a problem, and it would be subject to Goodhart's law; a test would just end up measuring ability to take the test since no test can test everything.

Also, given the history of tests for voting, it's likely that general maturity tests would be abused. Age is easy to measure, so it can't really be gamed the same way.

Yes, which is why I somewhat tongue-in-cheek suggest the ant-glove test as an option for figuring out if somebody has control of their emotional state.

A decent test of emotional maturity is putting someone in an objectively painful/uncomfortable situation, and require them to 'suck it up' and not break down in tears or flee. Sound familiar? Its all just testing emotional regulation, the ability to react proportionally/not overreact, and to endure discomfort to achieve later rewards.

We also have the marshmallow test, which could be adapted to something that would tempt adults too.

"I'm giving you a $100 bill to put in your wallet. If you can bring me back that exact same $100 bill in one week, you will get a second one." I expect low-impulse-control individuals will spend that sucker inside a day or two.

ant-glove test

Blatantly plagarizing gom jabbar.

Blatantly plagarizing gom jabbar.

The reverse, no? I think this is a savage tribe that's been doing it for a millenia.

Dune Isn't Fiction It's a Historical Novel

A decent test of emotional maturity is putting someone in an objectively painful/uncomfortable situation, and require them to 'suck it up' and not break down in tears or flee.

I don't think this would be a decent test for emotional maturity, even if modified for the real world. There are situations where we should accept people breaking down in tears or fleeing. And I absolutely don't trust any bureaucrat or scientist to figure out what sort of reaction is proportionate and what is overreacting, when people's liberty depends on the answer and when overreacting is strategically used for political purposes.

So who should be held liable when an emotionally immature 18-19 year old signs a contract and then has a breakdown when they're unable to complete their end of it.

If they're considered mature enough to sign contracts, they should be considered mature to have to follow through on them. If there are measures taken against this, they should be age agnostic. (For instance, allowing the discharge of student loans in bankruptcy, which also discourages banks from giving out loans for useless majors in the first place.)

If they're considered mature enough to sign contracts, they should be considered mature to have to follow through on them.

And therein lies the problem. If they're not mature enough to follow through on them (as the facts in evidence show), why are we assuming they were mature enough to understand them at the time they signed them?

Females in particular might have a hard time grasping compound interest.

And yes, bankruptcy is an answer in many cases... but the practical point there is that banks won't lend to people who are likely to declare bankruptcy.

So that becomes the de-facto maturity test, whether a bank considers you credit-worthy.

And I absolutely don't trust any bureaucrat or scientist to figure out what sort of reaction is proportionate and what is overreacting

And I don't trust the masses to figure out that it's all good at a certain age. It would be better to just ignore emotional maturity as a concept and hope it correlates with IQ a lot (it probably does). I don't really care if some high IQ, but emotionally immature people get to be adults at the age of 14. It's not a big deal.

I don't really care if some high IQ, but emotionally immature people get to be adults at the age of 14. It's not a big deal.

Meh for you maybe, but I feel like a lot of people would reject a 130 IQ 14 year old dating someone who is in their 30s. It just seems intuitively wrong on many levels, even if someone has a really high IQ.

Meh for you maybe, but I feel like a lot of people would reject a 130 IQ 14 year old dating someone who is in their 30s. It just seems intuitively wrong on many levels, even if someone has a really high IQ.

But that's because they're stupid, and they foolishly think they get to control more intelligent people with their stupid gut feelings and half-assed, self-serving heuristics. That notion is everything wrong with society, more or less. It's the most toxic idea in the universe so far.

I don’t think other than legal issues age is a good qualifier of adulthood. The reason is pretty simple: what actually matures a human brain is that it’s forced to be responsible. You can find all sorts of examples in history of people the modern world would consider too young to be allowed to hold a job at McDonald’s. Alexander Hamilton was born in 1755, and by 1771, the age of 16 which is when our kids get baby’s first fast food job, our boy Alexander was mature enough to run a port for 5 months.

I can point to lots of my own family history where women were routinely getting married at 14 and having children by 15 or 16. It wasn’t all that rare for kids in the 19th century. It would not have been unusual for kids on farms to be doing things that we’d cringe at and probably charge people with neglect for allowing. Kids of 9 could tame calves, sheer sheep, help with livestock, and so on. Those kids were much more mature than their modern peers because much was expected of them at much younger ages. Our kids not only don’t do mature work, but increasingly aren’t really expected to help out around the house or do homework (at least in some districts).

I do think a universally accepted age of adulthood makes sense from a legal perspective. Having to individually decide on every milestone whether a person X years old can do it means a good deal of legal chaos. If you had a universal standard (say 18) then it’s no longer necessary to say “is he able to be treated as an adult?” If you’re 18, you can do everything any other adult can do.

I think it's important to first identify who the principal opposition to age gap relationships is and at least in my experience, it's almost always women. "Dirty Old Man" and the like. In particular, it's older women. (Not absolutely old but older than the younger age gap partner). Which makes sense. Men famously have a rather constant age of women they find attractive. IIRC in practice age gap relationships are actually rather rare but if an average guy got to choose an idealized partner she'd probably be about 20-25 in age. Which is usually just biology. Just like an idealised female would pick a 6'3 billionaire.

Women are on average better at things like using emotive language and at enforcing and creating social norms ("the longhouse"). Indeed, I can think of no real social norms that have recently been created by men. Women excel in doing things like creating social legitimisation for personal bugbears (see the proliferation of female-centered therapy language). Since we live in a post-violent, heavily language and discourse centered world and since the discourse creators are now all female, you should expect "the discourse" to reflect the issues and wishes of the women forging the discourse.

So that's something to keep in mind with age gap discourse, a lot of it's probably the collective grievance of older women in terms of not wanting to compete with younger women for higher-value mates.

IIRC actual research finds that large age-gap relationships aren't that common but also that they tend to produce slightly better and more durable relationships. I think that 18 is a reasonable Shelling point for these things. People are allowed far more destructive things from that age than dating someone older than them.

a lot of it's probably the collective grievance of older women in terms of not wanting to compete with younger women for higher-value mates

I propose a different explanation. If we take a broad look at the age-gap relations where the woman is above the age of majority and the man is older than her, we can see that they are not universally bad (unlike, say, forty-year-old men raping ten-year-old girls). However, there's a specific subtype of this relationship that, while definitely not illegal and not universally immoral, still isn't something that improves the overall quality of truth and love and beauty in the universe.

I'm talking, of course, about a relationship with an expiry date. An older man uses his greater access to material resources or his greater relationship experience to have sex with a young attractive woman and then breaks up with her. Just a few decades ago this wasn't a problem: the young woman's parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents would all immediately see through this man's nefarious plan and forbid the problematic relationship. If the suitor had noble intentions, he would have to prove himself to them.

However, it's $current_year, and this kind of direct personal interference in a woman's private life is now taboo. She's an adult, and no one can tell her who to date and who not to date. On the other hand, she's no longer protected from this form of exploitative relationship. How do you square the circle? You transform personal interference into impersonal. Instead of specific women being told, "no, you cannot date this man", all men are now told, "any of you that dares to date a 18yo is definitely a disgusting predator".

There's an unspoken carve-out for men with noble intentions, just like there's one for attractive men in "don't hit on women in bars/gyms/etc", but it doesn't work well, given the amount of heat this topic generates.

I don't know that this is true. I used to do a fair amount of genealogy for work and large age gaps were pretty common in the old days. Even in my own family, my great aunt married a guy in 1931 (when she was 20) who was about 20 years older than her, and only a couple years younger than her parents. This aunt was like a grandmother to me but I never knew her husband, as he died in 1963, and I didn't really know much about him. Years later, my dad a comment about him along the line of the following when we were talking about the family history: "I don't know what she saw in him. He was like an old man, he never had a steady job, he was mean. I don't understand why my grandparents let her marry that guy." My uncle told a story about his first driving experience, when Uncle Lee asked him to take him to Oakland so he could buy a piss urinal for his basement. He used to tinker around down there and didn't want to walk upstairs and was tired of peeing in a bottle. So he asked my uncle, despite the fact that my uncle was only 13 at the time. My uncle said "Don't you need a permit or something?" and he just waved his hand and said no. So my uncle drove him to Oakland. He had a winter coat on and turned the heat up all the way in the car even though it was June. When they got there the place didn't have one and Uncle Lee got pissed off at the manager. Then when they were leaving my uncle backed into the alley and ran over a bicycle that was lying in the street. Uncle Lee got out and threw it while yelling "Goddamn kids with their toys!" Apparently my grandfather hit the ceiling when he found out about it.

I don't know that this is true. I used to do a fair amount of genealogy for work and large age gaps were pretty common in the old days. Even in my own family, my great aunt married a guy in 1931 (when she was 20) who was about 20 years older than her, and only a couple years younger than her parents.

Some of those age gaps I've noticed in my own genealogy research was a much older man marrying a 2nd wife after the first wife died (new wife then helps care for existing kids plus having some of her own with him). Not always, as your example shows, but trying to tease apart the particulars complicates it.

Yes - pre sexual revolution the vast majority of marriageable, single older men were widowers. If a man was a bachelor at thirty there was a reason. "Confirmed bachelor" was a euphemism for gay.

I propose a different explanation. If we take a broad look at the age-gap relations where the woman is above the age of majority and the man is older than her, we can see that they are not universally bad (unlike, say, forty-year-old men raping ten-year-old girls). However, there's a specific subtype of this relationship that, while definitely not illegal and not universally immoral, still isn't something that improves the overall quality of truth and love and beauty in the universe.

I'm talking, of course, about a relationship with an expiry date. An older man uses his greater access to material resources or his greater relationship experience to have sex with a young attractive woman and then breaks up with her. Just a few decades ago this wasn't a problem: the young woman's parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents would all immediately see through this man's nefarious plan and forbid the problematic relationship. If the suitor had noble intentions, he would have to prove himself to them.

However, it's $current_year, and this kind of direct personal interference in a woman's private life is now taboo. She's an adult, and no one can tell her who to date and who not to date. On the other hand, she's no longer protected from this form of exploitative relationship. How do you square the circle? You transform personal interference into impersonal. Instead of specific women being told, "no, you cannot date this man", all men are now told, "any of you that dares to date a 18yo is definitely a disgusting predator".

There's an unspoken carve-out for men with noble intentions, just like there's one for attractive men in "don't hit on women in bars/gyms/etc", but it doesn't work well, given the amount of heat this topic generates.

I agree that there may be an element of this in play, but consider a situation where a young woman who is dating a man who is roughly her age but also is a "player" or "f*ck-boy" type (or gives those vibes off). Applying your historical view of things, in the past the young woman's family would have arguably identified such a man as a "cad" or a "rake," and forbade the relationship.

Nowadays, there is some degree of impersonal social disapproval of "player" types, but it's nowhere near the ferocious hostility displayed towards older men who are in age-gap relationships. So I have to think that there's more in play.

Large age gaps are rare and have always been rare. The reason they draw disproportionate attention is because they serve as a way to psychologize one’s opponents in the battle of the sexes. We might say similar things about concepts like “the wall”, the debate on catcalling, so-called “chadfishing”, the “body count” debate and so on. All of these relate to similar neuroses. So let us psychologize, then.

The “age gaps are nothing bad wink” imagines his opponents as middle aged harpies. Sad about their declining looks, he imagines they are very upset at seeing men their age date much younger women, and so they lash out. Forget the fact that most of these women are married to men (broadly) their age, and that most middle aged men are married to middle aged women, and that he himself is likely either with a woman close to his age or, if he is single, is unlikely to be dating a far younger woman statistically. It is the idea that matters. It is more of a taunt than anything.

Similarly, the “age gaps are bad” /r/fauxmoi regular embarrassingly invested in the romantic lives of various celebrities is also posturing. Not to the opposite sex, though, but to the same one. Consider the line “I was catcalled every day from the age of 12 to 20. Men are pigs, they want the youngest possible girl who doesn’t yet know how to recognize their bullshit - don’t make my mistake”, which one sees variants of in every one of these discussions in women’s communities. What is this line saying? It’s saying “I was once an extremely beautiful young woman. I had great currency, and you should listen to me”. It is no less an invocation of one’s own attractiveness as status as hitting on your uglier friend’s boyfriend in front of her. Men do this too - the ex-playboy telling young men that casual sex isn’t all it’s set up to be while still emphasizing just how much of it he had, for example. There are the rich people who will tell you money isn’t everything. The beautiful people who tell you looks aren’t everything. Many of the people saying these things aren’t even rich or beautiful.

And none of them, really, are wrong. There are elements of truth to every one of these narratives. But they’re all motivated. In the end, these people go back to their average wives and average husbands and find, I hope, some average happiness. The gender debate rolls on.

I suspect that the current age-gap discourse actually serves to benefit powerful/wealthy older men, as they become the only ones with enough clout to ignore the social shaming... and the only ones with enough appeal to convince a woman to ignore the social shaming. Acquiring a hot young girlfriend thus becomes even more of a flex and proof of their own status.

And of course it encourages them to keep it on the downlow, and this also suits the guy because she won't be pushing him as hard to make them 'official' or 'public' and gives her less leverage to push for a marriage.

And finally, by making it taboo, it actually becomes more appealing for a certain kind of woman to seek it out.

Bill Belichick is simply not bound by by same standards as your average guy. And because he isn't bound by them and can't be influenced by shaming, the shamesters won't target him, they'll go after the class of males they think they CAN influence, who were less likely to be able to attract a young lady anyway.

So as with many other things, the main effect of such social rules is to restrict behaviors of the middle group of men who are cowed by status games and shame.

And of course the bottom class of dude who is so outside the normal status hierarchy that it doesn't effect him will go after younger ladies regardless.

I suspect that the current age-gap discourse actually serves to benefit powerful/wealthy older men, as they become the only ones with enough clout to ignore the social shaming... and the only ones with enough appeal to convince a woman to ignore the social shaming. Acquiring a hot young girlfriend thus becomes even more of a flex and proof of their own status.

Well this is gonna be a fun little narrative violation then. That is just about marriage rather than girlfriend but wealthy people are also significantly less likely to divorce as well. They tend to marry when they're young and then stay with their wives.

Haha but you see the issue there.

Bill Belichick isn't married.

Leo DiCaprio doesn't marry his girlfriends.

Nor does Toby Maguire.

Likewise, consider the rise of Sugar Dating as an informal institution.

This is my point. It actually relieves the pressure to marry these women since they lose any real leverage they might have had.

They're getting to have the cake that is off-limits to normal guys, and eat it too by having no legal or social commitment obligations imposed.

I mean most of the age-gap relationships I see are more of the 'lifer hospitality worker in his mid thirties and random 19 year old cashier' type than the rich or wealthy involved in them. They're also generally more towards lower socioeconomic ends of society for a variety of reasons.

I agree that some subset of the rich and/or famous date down, but the majority of the rich don't have that much social clout and your average UMC middle-high manager with a mortgage and a 5M networth is generally not in any position to find a wife who's 20 years younger than him.

The whole point @magicalkittycat was making (which I agree with) is that these guys are exceptional among rich/powerful/successful men. Most R/P/S men are still married to the mothers of their children, so they are facing weaker taboos against taking up a younger girlfriend than they used to - both the taboo against adult age gaps and the taboo against adultery in 2026 are weaker than the taboo against adultery was in 1980.

The informal institution of "rich men having mistresses but being discrete about it" was not created by seekingarrangement.com.

The purpose of the age gap taboo from the point of view of the feminists and allies imposing it is to force middle-aged divorced men with options to date middle-aged divorced women rather than dating prime-age never-married women. Middle-aged divorced women, and women who want to improve their options should they choose the life of middle-aged divorced woman, are the core constituency of feminism.

Solid point.

Socialization is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If someone has been socialized to be an adult by twelve, they'll mostly live up to that. If they've been socialized not to be an adult until 40, they'll do that too. It's mostly a function of what we all demand of adolescents. "Teenagers" are a modern invention. Legally and socially we need a clear line, which has for the past fifty years or so been eighteen. For the most part, that's not a bad compromise. But the socialization about what is expected of those age groups changes much faster than law.

"Teenagers" are a modern invention.

Indeed. Invented at the end of WW2 as a concept. Really quite modern.

But the socialization about what is expected of those age groups changes much faster than law.

Especially in the age of social media.

One factor that I'm seeing with the rise of streamer culture, a lot of the streamers (i.e. the role models many of these kids are glued to) are getting into their 30's and are still 'stuck' in a loop of playing video games all day, going out and partying and drinking, using light drugs (or hard ones), and obsessing about social drama amongst their cliques.

And they make good money doing this so there's no clear reason they should stop.

A handful of them make good eventually, but those who get families and responsibilities... tend to drop out of streaming.

So kids are getting socialized by role models that don't even know them, in social groups that only exist online, and whose norms are basically that of a particularly low-class high school, and that are incentivized towards anti-social activities, more often than not.

I don't blame the streaming sites for this per se, but I don't think our core social structures were prepared for the rise of this alternative culture that scales internationally.

And they make good money doing this so there's no clear reason they should stop.

Makes you wonder how. Presumably people with "real" jobs and things happening outside of streaming are sending them money?

Yeah.

I think there's an oversupply of lonely youngish people with decent-paying jobs who enjoy living vicariously through a streamer they identify with/find sexually attractive. Parasocial behavior is a bit under-studied I think.

I've been in the streamer loop and a decent amount of them are children of privilege to begin with, which is why how they got through the initial clout-building stage for years on end before graduating to actually have enough partnerships to self-finance somewhat.

Also a lot of streamer lifestyle goods aren't really that expensive to produce especially if you're a big enough influencer to have the providers of Coachella Tickets and expensive alcohol giving you them at cost.


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