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 -
An article is making the rounds on rat-adjacent twitter entitled "The Nerdy Escorts Cashing In On Silicon Valley’s AI Boom."
I can't bypass the paywall, but someone posted on X:
I know that aella, the famous rationalist whorelord, popularized this niche of pseudo-intellectual prostitutes appealing to rationalists and other tech nerds for extreme amounts of money. It's obvious that aella has become obscenely wealthy and gained a ton of social status from her pursuits, but I'm still somewhat shocked at the sheer amount these women are making.
I work a pretty boring, standard corporate marketing job, and apparently these prostitutes are taking home almost my entire after-tax yearly income in one weekend.
Even regardless of the moral aspect of the situation, the fact that a prostitute can make so much money is a huge slap in the face to people working hard for a living. That, combined with the fact that close to 18% of the economy is now in healthcare, has got me a bit depressed on the economy.
Also, Tyler Cowen had a bit of a viral moment yesterday saying he wouldn't be surprised if 15 to 20% of all jobs in the near future are elder care. This of course sandwiched in a talk where he insists AI is great and making jobs not losing them!
Anyway, all of this recent discourse combined is making me feel more and more like a retarded schmuck for working a 'real job,' as opposed to just leeching off the government, doing some sort of NGO/media grift, or even just getting a random remote job and going to live cheap in Thailand or some other extremely cheap country. And this is someone who has a pretty chill office job where I don't have to work too hard, and get to work from home a few days a week. I can't imagine how people who actually bust their asses in physical labor and make less than me feel!
Either way, the optimism from the pundit class around AI and the economy is feeling more and more hollow to me by the day. If the numbers keep going up but everyone is employed wiping the asses of boomers and sexually pleasuring tech AI millionaires, have we really improved society? How will things go otherwise without some sort of relatively radical disruption? I try not to be a 'doomer' about AI, but I'm increasingly finding it hard to be optimistic on the impact of it on society.
If it were an easy niche to fill, the price would be driven down. Aella is genuinely a uniquely talented person in her ability to occupy the two different niches involved at the same time. That's obvious when I listen to her on podcast appearances.
I have to disagree. In my experience I feel like the whore market is one of the least well arbitraged markets in the world.
One limit to arbitrage would be that market participants have a limited shelf-life to figure out the market and outsourcing to management (pimping) is much enforced criminally. And sharing information and tactics online seems more difficult than other markets.
I am going to assume the very best girls don’t even become whores. Steve Jobs wife would never become a whore because Stanford MBA and attractive makes it trivially easy for her to marry well. So I feel the supply side of the whore market can’t be power law because the far right tail just does marriage. Depending on your taste the far right tail of females are Tom Brady or Steve Jobs wives.
And then you have Miami. Where the strip clubs are basically brothels and like $500 gets you a girl hotter than these SF escorts. The price in Miami really is 5-10% of San Francisco. If you believe these girls and their $4k/hour claims.
So my guess is this is much more a story of market inefficiency. Some girls probably did find a magic marketing technique and location. And few hot girls want to live in San Francisco. So the high price is a lack of knowledge by other whores on marketing and a huge premium for having to live in San Francisco.
I believe a lot of this is just search costs. Whores don’t know how to market to tech nerds. Tech nerds don’t know how to find whores. The ones that know how to connect the two make a lot.
Listen I get all this, this all makes sense to me. What I'm saying is that the subset of women who are likely to become escorts don't get this and it doesn't make sense to them. Start talking to them about arbitrage and they'll fall asleep before you finish, in either sense.
You don't have to be a genius at economics to understand "Less hot girls are making more money than you in escorting while doing less. If you want to make more money, you just need move to where there are more rich, lonely, awkward guys." While I don't finish that fast, I'm pretty sure you don't need to elaborate much more for this to be within intellectual reach of anyone with an IQ of 95. Probably 90.
And I think the market situation tells us, clearly, that women with high enough IQ to comprehend and execute that plan, while also being willing to be prostitutes and prostitutes to nerds, are in short supply.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link