This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Why do a lot of women not like acknowledging the practical aspects of dating? By this I mean that women appear to be put off by me simply discussing:
Of course I'm not discussing these topic with women I'm trying to actually date, I'm not that autistic. But if you're trying to actually find a partner to settle down and have kids with, how do you not take all of these into account? Not only does it reek of impracticality, but on an even deeper level, it appears that any attempt to practically model the dating world at all produces a negative female reaction.
(Maybe it's because some of these women don't ever intend on having kids and therefore don't ever have to be realistic about dating.)
There was an old post by Scott Alexander about lies that improve the outcome if everyone pretends they are true. His example was secular movements like UU failing to replicate the success of the churches sticking with the "old man in the sky" stuff.
What will happen to the society if everyone agrees that looks and youth are incredibly important and form a significant part of your SMV?
SMV is a zero-sum game. If your goal is finding the partner with the highest SMV, then it doesn't matter if the values are 1,2..100 or 95,95.05..100. Everyone will be constantly trying to optimize their SMV in a race of incredibly hot rats.
Imagine every single woman frantically looksmaxxing as soon as she hits puberty because she doesn't have time, she has to be at her hottest when she's 16 or 19 or whatever age you consider the best.
Instead, we all repeat one nice little lie: "somewhere in this world there's your other half waiting for you, one day you'll understand you're made for each other". We look down (at least performatively) on people that want to get "the best", because they openly reject the shared lie instead of saying, "we just didn't click, you know?" The lie lets millions of people settle down with a person that is good enough instead of constantly striving for the best achievable pairing.
This is definitely not in the set of "lies that improve the outcome if everyone pretends they are true". It can mislead people into:
bombingat first sight, right?)I once saw this summarized most succinctly as "every woman I know who thinks there is such a thing as a "soulmate" is still single".
The converse of this doesn't have to be some sort of heartless "Sexual Market Value is a commodity and you should upgrade whenever you find a better deal" antithesis philosophy, though. Perhaps the best way to express the synthesis here is "soul mates aren't just found, they're made".
The phrase "sexual market value" does seem to reek of commodification and oversimplification, but ... we still talk about "the housing market" despite the word "the" being something of a misnomer, right? Even if two people have exactly the same budget for housing: One person can place more value on proximity to big city amenities and another on proximity to rural open space. One can place more value on square footage and separation and another on neighborhood density and walkability. One can place more value on modernist style and another on history. Etc. etc. We still try to quantify the point where supply meets demand with a single cash value, although doing this is a full time real estate appraiser job ... and once a place is sold, it's not likely to be resold just because the local relative price goes up a few percent to pay the agents' fees, is it? When people own a home they put a lot of effort into moving everything in, redecorating and repainting and landscaping and even renovating it to suit their tastes, setting down roots in the neighborhood and the city, etc. etc. People will notoriously hang on to a specific house that might have become suboptimal for them based on their original less-individual criteria, because of the "memories it now holds" or just "to keep it in the family".
Love is kind of like a much more extreme and two-sided version of that sort of attachment. Both people do have to bring something to the table from the start, and there are a lot of romantically valuable qualities that are nearly universal, and none of that should be ignored because it seems impersonal to do so. But exactly what sort of "something" is most valuable is still somewhat personal and subjective, such that even if you can say "he's a 6" and "he's an 8" in some sort of "averaged over all partners' preferences" sense, it shouldn't be surprising to see the "6" end up with an "8" and the "8" with a "6" and all four people thrilled by the results. And despite the common phrase "end up with", that's never the end, right? Even simply dating causes attachment to grow, helps people to get better attuned to teach other, and helps people find out who they're already attuned with in less obvious ways (sometimes you really don't "just click"), ideally reaching the point where even a "10-to-average-partners" can't compete with an "11-to-me" ... and marriage and kids aren't simply an epilogue to that process, they're an accelerant. In the end you do end up with a soul mate, not because you found the one Out There Waiting For You, but because both of you made yourselves and made each other that way.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link