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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32897 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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Some of you may have read Scott Alexander’s recent post, Book Review: The Geography of Madness. The couple of paragraph summary is:

A culture-bound mental illness is one that only affects people who know about it, and especially people who believe in it. Often it doesn’t make sense from a scientific point of view (there’s no such thing as witches, and the penis can’t retract into the body). It sometimes spreads contagiously: someone gets a first case, the rest of the village panics, and now everyone knows about it / believes in it / is thinking about it, and so many other people get it too.

Different cultures have their own set of culture-bound illnesses. Sometimes there are commonalities - many cultures have something related to the penis or witches - but the details vary, and a victim almost always gets a case that matches the way their own culture understands it.

THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT MAKING IT UP. I cannot stress this enough. There are plenty of examples of people driving metal objects through their penis to pull it out of their body or prevent the witches from getting it or something like that. There is no amount of commitment to the bit that will make people drive metal objects through their penis. People have died from these conditions - not the illness itself, which is fake, but from wasting away worrying about it, or taking dangerous sham treatments, or getting into fights with people they think caused it. If you think of it as “their unconscious mind must be doing something like making it up, but their conscious mind believes it 100%,” you will be closer to the truth, though there are various reasons I don’t like that framing.


The thrust of Scott’s argument is that humans have an amazing propensity to change their subjective experience based on their beliefs. Here, I'm not talking about rationally held or carefully reasoned beliefs, but deep-seated beliefs that aren’t easy to change, even if you know for a fact they're irrational. Typically, these beliefs seem to be formed through social or cultural channels, and once formed, they can be very difficult to change unless your cultural narrative also changes.

This idea ties into other work on the placebo effect and the ways it shaped our culture, for instance, John Vervaeke’s take on shamanism. The basic idea being that shamanism was highly advantageous from an evolutionary perspective because it allowed groups of humans to harness the placebo effect to overcome illness and manage social problems.

In short, despite the rational pretensions our culture has, our irrational beliefs have extremely strong effects on our perception of pain and other subjective experiences. However, an important nuance is that no cultural disorder is 100% ‘in your head;’ on the contrary, these disorders are very real and can have strong physical effects.

Some of the big examples that Scott gives, and some I think might be (mostly) culturally mediated, are:

  • Anorexia

  • Post-traumatic stress disorder

  • Anxiety

  • Depression

  • Gender dysphoria

  • Chronic pain

  • TikTok Tourettes

  • Long Covid

Now, based on the bent of this forum, many people might be tempted to jump on the gender dysphoria issue. While it’s certainly a loud and vibrant battle in the culture war, I’d ask that we instead focus on other problems. In my opinion, if this thesis holds true, then gender dysphoria is a red herring.

The evidence clearly suggests that we are inflicting massive amounts of pain and suffering on ourselves through our cultural beliefs and practices. The fact that so many of our cultural problems - from overdose deaths and suicides to chronic pain and crippling anxiety - are unforced errors is truly shocking.

Think about it - one fourth of the adult U.S. population experiencing chronic pain? That's a staggering number, and it seems largely due to the fact that we have been conditioned to believe that our pain must have an acute physical cause. We've been taught to view pain as something that must be cured with medication or surgery, when in fact many cases of chronic pain can be alleviated by simply changing our beliefs about it.

The truly shocking revelation here is that so many of our cultural problems - massive amounts of overdose deaths, suicides, one fourth of the adult population experiencing chronic pain, crippling anxiety causing young people to retreat from society, and many more issues - are clear unforced errors. We are inflicting this pain on ourselves.

If this theory is true it may very well be one of the most important and impactful frameworks with which to view the issues of post modernity. We wouldn’t need endless medications or miraculous scientific breakthroughs - we could already have the power to end massive amounts of truly pointless suffering.

ETA: is another perfect example of this type of illness.


From a personal perspective, I can attest that this theory confirms my priors. I’ve dealt with chronic pain for a decade and have long suspected that it was mostly psychosomatic. Even with this realization, it is a difficult battle to fight. Ironically, support groups where people confirm and commiserate seem to make the issue worse. In fact, many modern studies on pain recommend not even using the word "pain" and replacing it with something else to trick your mind into understanding that your pain doesn’t have an acute physical cause.

So many of us in the rationalist community focus on object-level reasons as to why our society may be stagnating or why we have so many cultural problems. At the end of the day, it turns out that our beliefs themselves may be throwing us into a twisted, absurd, and horrific self-fulfilling prophecy.

It may be time to stop assuming that the causes of our problems originate directly from the outside world and update to a view that many more major problems could be solved if we simply change our cultural beliefs.

From a personal perspective, I can attest that this theory confirms my prior beliefs. I’ve dealt with chronic pain for a decade and have long suspected that it was mostly psychosomatic. Even with this realization, it is a difficult battle to fight. Ironically, support groups where people confirm and commiserate seem to make the issue worse. In fact, many modern studies on pain recommend not even using the word "pain" and replacing it with something else to trick your mind into understanding that your pain doesn’t have an acute physical cause.

So many of us in the rationalist community focus on object-level reasons as to why our society may be stagnating or why we have so many cultural problems. At the end of the day, it turns out that our beliefs themselves may be throwing us into a twisted, absurd, and horrific self-fulfilling prophecy.

It may be time to stop assuming that the causes of our problems originate directly from the outside world and update to a view that many more major problems could be solved if we simply change our cultural beliefs.

You know another common thread? Neuroticism. That inability to just tune out something negative and get on with your fucking life. Extrapolating every bad thing that has ever happened to you or which you've ever experienced into infinity and beyond. And by and large, I believe our therapy culture, our support group culture, our subreddit for everything echo chamber culture just encourages this.

Go work with your hands. Or touch grass. Or something. Get out of your head, and especially stay away from people who just want to wallow in their own misery.

My wife and I have been talking about this quite a bit lately with regard to physical pain and suffering. What do other people experience? Of course, we can never know that for sure, but it's interesting to ponder. One place this came up is in the context of footraces, where the expected norm for anyone that cares even a little bit is deliberately incurring a large amount of cardiovascular stress and suffering, sometimes to the point of collapsing and vomiting after finishing. I have some reasonable degree of confidence that in this context I'm significant tougher than someone that isn't trained at all, but how could I have any idea whether I'm tougher than the guy that I'm racing against on a given day? I suspect that the difference isn't large, but I don't know, I might be gutting by someone strictly because I'm more willing to hurt than they are, but it might also be true that I'm a total pussy and they were able to drain their tank a lot more to even keep a race even. In any case, I know that people that habitually run as fast as they are physically capable of for a few miles will have more ability to tolerate this sort of suffering than people that get winded from going up a flight of stairs.

So how does that translate to the rest of life? When someone says that their back is sore or that they're feeling under the weather, are they experiencing something different than me? It seems to me that they must be, based on the way they react to illness. The number of times per year that I'm too ill to pull up a computer and work is maybe a couple days per year, but I've talked to other people that think it's completely unreasonable that a given company (with strictly non-physical work) only allows a couple weeks per year of sick time. We must be feeling quite different, right? I ultimately don't know, but I suspect that these differences in tolerance translate to differences in experience and result in part of the gap between people that allow setbacks to wreck them long-term relative to bouncing back and getting right. Treating everything as massively damaging seems like a form of anti-resilience that will lead to continually diminished physical and mental capacity to deal with future insults. Sub-cultures that treat these insults and corresponding diminished capacity as an identity unto themselves seem likely to spiral this further, possibly to the point where you have people lying in bed, convinced that they can't do anything, and they're actually correct.

The number of times per year that I'm too ill to pull up a computer and work is maybe a couple days per year, but I've talked to other people that think it's completely unreasonable that a given company (with strictly non-physical work) only allows a couple weeks per year of sick time. We must be feeling quite different, right?

I think part of this might be, as you say, subjective differences regarding the experience of the same illness, but this could also be just a difference in immune systems/health in general.

That is to say, I wouldn't be surprised if the gap there may be doubly influenced by your running- first in just being healthier and getting sick less/getting less sick and second by then being better at coping with whatever level of discomfort you get from that sickness.

Edit: There is also the noted vicious cycle for chronic illness (real or perceived) where feeling like shit makes you less likely to practice the habits which make you less likely to feel like shit, which then causes you to feel like shit even more/more often. Once again to some extent this applies mentally, but is also a very real thing physically.

RE: Illness, as I've gotten older, the brain fog I get from even a simple cold has gotten worse. To the point where there isn't much sense in me logging into work to sling some code, when I know I'm running at maybe 50% speed, and most of the code I write won't work either.

Doesn't help that I get sicker, more often, on account of having a kid in school who drags home everything and insist on sharing/stealing my breakfast every morning. I could say no... and sometimes I do when she's especially booger faced. But giving her half my bagel and egg in the morning is a nice daddy/daughter ritual I'd rather not give up. Plus it's one of the surest ways to get food in her before school.

At least she's not eating chocolate frosted sugar bombs.

A lot of the examples you mention, besides the “you hear about it and then convince yourself you have it,” mechanism, seem to go further and have communities dedicated to actively spreading the condition and making sure people who have the condition keep having it. This often seems to be exacerbated by the architecture of modern social discourse: Victims of the disease congregate online and can wall themselves off from opposing viewpoints, meanwhile there’s kind of a “recruiting” community (e.g., /r/egg_irl) which sources new members. Illnesses whose communities build these recruiting hubs are more successful in spreading. Some are even so successful that the hijack public institutions.

These are literal meme (in the old sense of a self-replicating idea) mental viruses that compete and thrive in the 21st century social lattice. Put that way it seems like no surprise whatsoever that societies with less developed communication infrastructure have a lower prevalence of these diseases.

I guess the question is how to minimize the effect of these on a population. Is there some kind of immunizing treatment? Alternatively does the same mechanism that tends to make “real” illnesses become less severe also exist here?

I wonder if a society with much more restrictive communication like China has less of this. I would support “internet mask wearing” to combat this but at least in the west I’m pretty sure the people in control of making these decisions already have the disease.

I guess the question is how to minimize the effect of [literal memes] on a population.

I think there is also a question of determining which memes are harmful, which on the edges is fuzzier than it sounds. There are plenty of positive memes (the notions of democratic governance and enlightenment liberalism come to mind), and some negative ones like suicide clusters are pretty universally seen as harmful -- barring a crowd of unironic nihilists out there. But the more nuanced memes tend to draw disagreement, often becoming fodder for the Kulturkampf. Is organized religion a harmful meme? Personally, not in most cases, but many arguments to the contrary have been made earnestly.

Even if there were a mechanism for minimizing memes (beyond the simple "countermeme harder" which just raises the temperature), I'd be concerned about exactly what you'd choose to target with it.

  • Anorexia

  • Post-traumatic stress disorder

  • Anxiety

  • Depression

  • Gender dysphoria

  • Chronic pain

I guess the question is how to minimize the effect of these on a population.

I mean, my first impulse would be to remove them from the K-12 curriculum, but that's just me. I don't buy into this learned helplessness. The federal government should not be actively propagating mental illnesses, at a minimum. After this most basic of steps has been taken, we can agonize over echo chambers and misinformation on the internet.

Edit: Jeeze, I really fucked up the formatting on that list, apologies, but I can't seem to find a way to make it work.

I guess the question is how to minimize the effect of these on a population. Is there some kind of immunizing treatment?

I’ll go with the boring classical libertarian answer and say that the answer to free speech is more free speech.

Encouraging a culture in which people are able to freely and publicly criticize these memes would cause them to lose a lot of their contagious force. Becoming trans would be a lot less appealing if the average reaction in polite society was “uh, you know that you’re still a dude, right?” instead of “please tell me your preferred pronouns so I can affirm your identity”.

I am not sure I see how it follows from allowing more speech to the median reaction to trans people being to deny their identity. My impression is most people (myself included) who affirm trans people's identities do so for reasons other than fear of social censure. I am not trans myself but it is also my impression there is no lack of media or content which they can be exposed to that denies their preferred identity, often including quite popular and mainstream publications depending on their location.

I am not sure I see how it follows from allowing more speech to the median reaction to trans people being to deny their identity. My impression is most people (myself included) who affirm trans people's identities do so for reasons other than fear of social censure.

One plausible mechanism I could see is that those other reasons are often downstream from forms of social censure. The social milieu I inhabit is almost exclusively people who affirm trans people's identities, out of a genuine belief that the affirmation is the right thing to do. And that genuine belief is formed in an environment in which the idea that anything other than such affirmation could be acceptable is censured harshly. As you write, media that put forth such an idea isn't in short supply, but such things only exist in this environment as objects of derision, a target of a Two Minute Hate at best. As such, I think if such censure didn't exist and people were left free to argue that sometimes affirmation might not be the only acceptable thing, then fewer people would genuinely believe that it's the only acceptable thing, and a higher proportion of people would respond with the "uh, you know that you’re still a dude, right?" instead of "please tell me your preferred pronouns so I can affirm your identity."

No idea if the numbers would shift enough to make the former the average reaction, though. Given the massive incentive for preference falsification in this subject, I'm not sure it's possible to make any meaningful estimates.

Any culture that exists gets identified. Once it has been identified it can be mocked. Once it gets mocked those who stand on the outside of that process will steer away from it and look for new cultures that have not been identified yet and are therefor free of mockery. Until we repeat the cycle.

Emo, scene, hipster, goth, metal head, jock, nerd, car guy, metrosexual or whatever other 'culture' that exists within a population.

Now imagine if we had enshrined some of the cultures with an inordinate amount of media and political power. Being emo is actually a medically recognized thing. There are special news stories every week about the emo suicide rate and how emo kids are bullied in school and how that is a giant social problem and how society as a whole has to come together and fix these issues that afflict this very special group. There are support groups and specific institutions and outlets dedicated to the group specifically.

How about instead of media mocking the whole emo thing as being a phase for insecure teenage girls who lack personality and are looking for attention and an excuse to use excessive amounts of make up whilst pretending their PMS is chronic suicidal ideation, we rather make laws that outlaw such verbiage.

Regardless of anything else, I'm sure being emo would still exist today if it had been sanctified in victimary discourse instead of having been mocked. Let alone if it was a pathway to some form of power or social capital.

Now, I think there are reasons outside of all of this that contribute much more to the survivability of LGBTQ stuff compared to things like being emo. But I do think it's an important element. If the words to describe what you see are removed from your brain, all attempts to discuss it will be in vain.

Maybe it is my cultural milieu but my impression is basically every culture you list ("Emo, scene, hipster, goth, metal head, jock, nerd, car guy, metrosexual") all still exist. I think it is likely some marginal people who may have become members of those groups didn't because of that mockery, but my impression is certainly not that these cultures are totally failing to attract new members. Searching for things like "#goth" or "#emo" on TikTok bring up videos with collectively billions of views. Most of those videos seem, at a glance, to be people in the appropriate subculture rather than being mocked as well. It is also not clear to me that "being trans" is more like "being goth" or "being emo" as compared to "being gay."

You are reading into 'existing' too literally. The 'look' still exists, but emo as an identity exists today the same way being trans existed in 2001. In other words it's people putting on a costume in isolation. Outside of that every culture I listed still exists and I never said they didn't.

It is also not clear to me that "being trans" is more like "being goth" or "being emo" as compared to "being gay."

What's the difference? As groups there's no distinction. Gays have always existed but not as a group like we see today.

I'm sure being emo would still exist today

It does, I see dozens of these kids every day. It's like 2007 all over again, except they use vapes and smartphones rather than rollies and Nokias.

In Western news media, emos, goths, juggalos etc. are presented in at best a neutral light and at worst a very negative one, and yet all three still exist in some capacity. Some subcultures can apparently withstand decades of mockery and belittlement and survive. There might even be an oppositional component, where being mocked by the mainstream causes people to dig deeper into their subculture more than they would have otherwise.

I don't know if it's the same. It might be the 'next generation of the neurotype' for a lack of a better term, but when I think of emo I think of things like this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=GaNFqd5eTX0 or this https://youtube.com/watch?v=s1o8WpTXfCY

Where the group identity itself is known as being something more than just a fashion trend, where there is an obvious ingroup and outgroup dynamic going on. Where you distinguish yourself as being something through your expression, i.e. makeup and clothing, and are recognized as being different by other groups.

But maybe it is the same where you live, I would not know.

I think of things like this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=GaNFqd5eTX0 or this https://youtube.com/watch?v=s1o8WpTXfCY

I understand, and I see teenagers dressed exactly like that every day. Granted, it was in remission for a few years, but now it's back with a vengeance.

I think we have seen the consequence of that. The free marketplace of ideas ends up just like the free market. With government interventions, monopolies and all the other fun stuff.

I don't think it's possible to have nothing occupy the memetic vacuum of social media, perhaps we can fill it useful identity memes instead? I'd suggest traditional ones like maternal or paternal but I'm not necessarily against modern versions so long as they're healthy. We destroyed the traditional gender roles people fit into and replaced their with nothing. To paraphrase a meme on /r/theschism, one person's cage is another's frame to build on. If given no frame many people will poorly build something themselves and it won't be as tested as ones we've lived with for all of human history.

At least to some types of people, those communities are extremely dangerous. I fell for the old 'me_irl' memes of old during a few years when I spend a lot of time at home due to illness. I've never really been one to be tricked into believing things when speaking to people in the real world, however those kind of reddit communities manages to warp my mind a lot. Despite never even commenting. Some combination of being tired, agreeable and a bit neurotic?

I see so many people in real life everyday suffering from similar things and I just want to shake them and tell them to throw the phone away. But I don't know how. I wonder what will be said in the future about this time period.

This topic hit way closer to home than I had anticipated. I have been experiencing my own type of delusional paranoia that is remarkably similar to the topic you explain. I had an acid trip around New Years that turned very bad, and long story short I then became extremely paranoid about my health, and particularly my heart and lungs. I've regularly vaped for more than five years and I became anxious to exercise because i believed that it would inflame my cardiovascular system. It got to the point where I had my first panic attack at 26 years old because of it, ambulance and all. I became convinced that I had some type of congenital defect or some vaccine related myocarditis. I got a full check up, EKG, X-rays, blood tests, you name it. Everything came out fine. 177 cm, 165 Ibs. My doctor told me that my health was immaculate. It was literally all in my head. But it was so real. I literally felt like I was going to collapse and die at any moment, I was convinced of it. I felt every heartbeat, and every bed pain from sleeping wrong was misinterpreted as a coming disaster. It turns out that all it really boiled down to was that I was spending a little too much time by myself in my apartment, and consumed a little too much nicotine and caffeine that elevated my heart rate. It is incredible what your mind can convince itself of in the right circumstances.

Sorry to hear you've been through that. I've never experienced anything quite so acute, but I've had my fair share of harrowing moments that later turned out to be nothing.

But it was so real. I literally felt like I was going to collapse and die at any moment, I was convinced of it. I felt every heartbeat, and every bed pain from sleeping wrong was misinterpreted as a coming disaster.

I relate to this so much more than I can express here. I try not to refer to these episodes as "panic attacks" because of the aforementioned issues, but have definitely been there.

It's a type of experience that I think is uniquely difficult to put into words. People who haven't gone through that sort of thing literally just cannot grasp the magnitude of it I find, and I don't blame them. But over time the meaningless platitudes people spout when you open up really drives you to others who understand.

Then of course a whole subculture forms, and the problem reinforces itself. It's a nasty spiral.

I’m going through…almost an identical situation to you. No psychedelics, but similar height, weight, age, and newly developed fear of my heart/lungs giving out. It’s so obviously anxiety—but that doesn’t help in the moment, not when the symptoms of a panic attack include all the vague signs of my vascular system losing it. Lately it’s been a sudden awareness of my heart pounding, especially if I dare try to sleep on my left side, even when I’m at a nice 70 BPM.

SSRIs help, and it’s gotten me to start exercising for the first time since the pandemic. Knowing has helped keep me from throwing myself at the medical system. But it fucking sucks.

Highly recommend reading Ian Hacking's Making Up People which was a decade ahead of The Geography of Madness in describing this phenomenon.

Around 1970, there arose a few paradigm cases of strange behaviour similar to phenomena discussed a century earlier and largely forgotten. A few psychiatrists began to diagnose multiple personality. It was rather sensational. More and more unhappy people started manifesting these symptoms. At first they had the symptoms they were expected to have, but then they became more and more bizarre. First, a person had two or three personalities. Within a decade the mean number was 17. This fed back into the diagnoses, and became part of the standard set of symptoms. It became part of the therapy to elicit more and more alters. Psychiatrists cast around for causes, and created a primitive, easily understood pseudo-Freudian aetiology of early sexual abuse, coupled with repressed memories. Knowing this was the cause, the patients obligingly retrieved the memories. More than that, this became a way to be a person. In 1986, I wrote that there could never be ‘split’ bars, analogous to gay bars. In 1991 I went to my first split bar.

This story can be placed in a five-part framework. We have (a) a classification, multiple personality, associated with what at the time was called a ‘disorder’. This kind of person is now a moving target. We have (b) the people, those I call ‘unhappy’, ‘unable to cope’, or whatever relatively non-judgmental term you might prefer. There are (c) institutions, which include clinics, annual meetings of the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation, afternoon talkshows on television (Oprah Winfrey and Geraldo Rivera made a big thing of multiples, once upon a time), and weekend training programmes for therapists, some of which I attended. There is (d) the knowledge: not justified true belief, once the mantra of analytic philosophers, but knowledge in Popper’s sense of conjectural knowledge, and, more specifically, the presumptions that are taught, disseminated and refined within the context of the institutions. Especially the basic facts (not ‘so-called facts’, or ‘facts’ in scare-quotes): for example, that multiple personality is caused by early sexual abuse, that 5 per cent of the population suffer from it, and the like. There is expert knowledge, the knowledge of the professionals, and there is popular knowledge, shared by a significant part of the interested population. There was a time, partly thanks to those talkshows and other media, when ‘everyone’ believed that multiple personality was caused by early sexual abuse. Finally, there are (e) the experts or professionals who generate (d) the knowledge, judge its validity, and use it in their practice. They work within (c) institutions that guarantee their legitimacy, authenticity and status as experts. They study, try to help, or advise on the control of (b) the people who are (a) classified as of a given kind.

This banal framework can be used for many examples, but roles and weights will be different in every case. There is no reason to suppose that we shall ever tell two identical stories of two different instances of making up people. There is also an obvious complication: there are different schools of thought. In this first instance, there was the multiple movement, a loose alliance of patients, therapists and psychiatric theorists, on the one hand, who believed in this diagnosis and in a certain kind of person, the multiple. There was the larger psychiatric establishment that rejected the diagnosis altogether: a doctor in Ontario, for example, who, when a patient arrives announcing she has multiple personality, demands to be shown her Ontario Health Insurance card (which has a photograph and a name on it) and says: ‘This is the person I am treating, nobody else.’ Thus there are rival frameworks, and reactions and counter-actions between them further contribute to the working out of this kind of person, the multiple personality. If my sceptical colleague convinces his potential patient, she will very probably become a very different kind of person from the one she would have been had she been treated for multiple personality by a believer.

I would argue that the multiple personality of the 1980s was a kind of person previously unknown in the history of the human race. This is a simple idea familiar to novelists, but careful philosophical language is not prepared for it. Pedantry is in order. Distinguish two sentences:

A. There were no multiple personalities in 1955; there were many in 1985.

B. In 1955 this was not a way to be a person, people did not experience themselves in this way, they did not interact with their friends, their families, their employers, their counsellors, in this way; but in 1985 this was a way to be a person, to experience oneself, to live in society.

As I see it, both A and B are true. An enthusiast for what is now called Dissociative Identity Disorder will say, however, that A is false, because people with several ‘alter personalities’ undoubtedly existed in 1955, but were not diagnosed. A sceptic will also say that A is false, but for exactly the opposite reason: namely, that multiple personality has always been a specious diagnosis, and there were no real multiples in 1985 either. Statement A leads to heated but pointless debates about the reality of multiple personality, but in my opinion both sceptics and enthusiasts can peacefully agree to B. When I speak of making up people, it is B that I have in mind, and it is through B that the looping effect occurs.

Multiple personality was renamed Dissociative Identity Disorder. But that was more than an act of diagnostic house-cleaning. Symptoms evolve, patients are no longer expected to come with a roster of altogether distinct personalities, and they don’t. This disorder is an example of what in my book Mad Travellers (1998) I called a ‘transient mental illness’. ‘Transient’ not in the sense of affecting a single person for a while and then going away, but in the sense of existing only at a certain time and place. Transient mental illnesses can best be looked at in terms of the ecological niches in which they can appear and thrive. They are easy cases for making up people, precisely because their very transience leads cynics to suspect they are not really real, and so could plausibly be said to be made up.

Fascinating write-up - thanks for sharing. I wonder how many critiques of psychology (and other fields) like this are lost because of the fact that the current narrative doesn't support them.

I wish someone would write a counterfactual history where the mythopoetic Jungian psychologists stayed in power and kept developing their narratives into the mainstream. I feel like we might be in a better spot regarding mental health. Psychology has a lot to answer for....

This sounds like a plausible Orson Scott Card novel.

I could say the same thing about other possible incidences of fake science.

A. There were no flying saucers in the 1900s. There were many in the 1950's.

B. In the 1900s, people did not interpret mysterious things in the sky to be flying saucers and in the 1950s they did.

A is only true if by "flying saucers" you mean an observational phenomenon. And that's a motte and bailey, because when people say that flying saucers, or multiple personalities exist, they are not trying to communicate "this phenomenon exists", they are trying to communicate a particular claim about the underlying reality behind that phenomenon. If all you mean by A is is that the phenomenon exists, A and B are true, but not very interesting, because nobody cares about that.

I think this distinguishing between, say, the brute facts (or underlying reality) of some phenomena X and a socio-cultural narrative about X is exactly what Hacking is trying to get at with his distinction. Further in the paper he writes of autism:

Now let’s try out A and B for high-functioning autism:

A. There were no high-functioning autists in 1950; there were many in 2000.

B. In 1950 this was not a way to be a person, people did not experience themselves in this way, they did not interact with their friends, their families, their employers, their counsellors, in this way; but in 2000 this was a way to be a person, to experience oneself, to live in society.

As I said, A in my view is true for multiple personality. But it is absolutely false for high-functioning autism. It is almost as absurd as saying that autism did not exist before 1943, when Kanner introduced the name. But B, I believe, is true. Before 1950, maybe even before 1975, high-functioning autism was not a way to be a person. There probably were a few individuals who were regarded as retarded and worse, who recovered, retaining the kinds of foible that high-functioning autistic people have today. But people didn’t experience themselves in this way, they didn’t interact with their friends, their families, their employers, their counsellors, in the way they do now.

I think if Hacking were applying his model to your A and B he'd come to the same conclusion as with autism, that your (A) is false but (B) is true. Whatever phenomena we see with the naked eye that we interpret as being "flying saucers" almost certainly existed before we had the socio-cultural narrative of "flying saucers." I take Hackings point to be that having certain kinds of socio-culutural or medical narratives can both change the way we interpret some observed phenomena (as in the case of autism, or flying saucers) but also can give rise to entirely new phenomena (as in multiple personality disorders).

You can say all you want that you're talking about the sociocultural narrative, but everyone else isn't. You know, or should know, that the other people who claim that multiple personalities exist (or don't exist) aren't talking about a narrative. Saying "sure they exist" in reference to a narrative is a way to be the motte to their bailey by pretending to agree with them, but really agreeing with a much easier to defend version that misses the point.

MPD makes sense to me. People already engage in various forms of "mask-wearing": if you're a performer, you're consciously putting on a very elaborate mask of the character you're portraying. But even outside the world of theatre, consciously or unconsciously, you're wearing one mask in front of your parents, the other in front of your partner, the third one in front of your friends, the fourth one in front of your coworkers, the fifth one in front of a cop, the sixth one on The Motte and so on. Some people narrate their internal monologue as a dialogue.

It's not a huge leap to get from putting a mask on unconsciously, to putting one on consciously, to deliberately crafting and enhancing such a mask, to treating an advanced mask as a person, especially when you have learned that treating masks as separate people is something people do.

There’s a bit of motte and bailey going on. Or maybe sanewashing, I don’t know.

The defensible example is what you’re saying—everyone does social adaptation, some probably do it via dialogue, the long tails of that distribution could look like multiple personalities. There’s long-standing rationalist blogposts about having such dialogue, fiction with characters who use it, along with a general credulousness when talking about weird mental states. It’s also what Scott defends in his post:

For example, the person might be kind of a pushover, and then one time after they watched Star Wars ten times in a row, someone bossed them around particularly badly, and they imagined Darth Vader telling them to give into their anger and fight back…They emphasize that it really feels like Vader is in their head giving them advice, or that they sometimes “become” Vader - and in particular they emphasize that this is different from just asking themselves “what would Darth Vader do in this situation?”. They understand that most people learning about their situation would expect that they’re exaggerating a much more boring “just ask yourself what Vader would do” situation, and they’re fine with people believing that if they want, but insist that it’s actually something different and more interesting than that.

Something weird but comprehensible, plausibly an exaggeration, plausibly as “real” as anything else going on in one’s head. More importantly, it’s easy to empathize if one can relate it to the very normal dynamics of acting, role playing, whatever.

Now start adding accommodations.

This is the spicier claim: that the other personalities are, on their own, valid persons. That they may (or should) be addressed separately. That memories may not be shared, and any inconsistencies are framed as personality differences rather than a mercurial disposition. Perhaps that different pronouns are appropriate, since communities which buy into this dynamic are much, much more likely to be deeply and passionately aware of gender.

I don’t mean this as an attack. I’m really conflicted about the phenomenon, in part because it has such a reasonable motte. Also in part because one of my best friends has been diving headfirst into this community, and I’m worried about her. There is clearly a complex of social obligations which entangles the community with trans issues and transhumanist issues alike.

That's not what MPD is though. Like, the way I talk on this site vs 4chan are wildly different, and it's sorta plausible to say they're different "masks" or "personalities", even though they both come from the same goals / values / etc. But that's just 'purposeful action that depends on context and conditions', not 'different people'. Your 'thinking' or 'ideas' aren't fixed into one mask or context, you can remember something that happened in a seriouspost and make a joke about it later. And sometimes you make a seriouspost on rdrama, sometimes you tell a joke here. (And I'd personally prefer a motte where bizzare enraging shitposts are mixed with the seriousposts, but am aware it wouldn't work, both because they don't want to see the shitposts and they'd bait them away from making interesting posts.)

But someone with MPD claims to have 'fully separate' personalities that they 'can't control' - you'll switch semi-uncontrollably between one and another, you can't remember things on one personality that another can. They'll have different 'traits' in the same contexts, depending on what "person" they claim is fronting at the moment. This isn't just - sometimes you act silly and other times serious - which is entirely normal and unremarkable. It's saying that "Serious You" is "Joe" and joe is extraverted and likes doing math and watching cartoons, but "Silly You" is "Sally" and sally is introverted and likes moodboards and Harry Potter. This is just weird. Why not be ""extraverted"" about harry potter or ""introverted"" about math, depending on the circumstance? (and it really is that dumb - 'Having DID is wild [...] or a certain song will come on and suddenly I'm wearing different clothes and it's two hours later and I'm like "oh right"'). There's no use for that - each of those things can be engaged in independently. And the 'can't remember stuff from one personality in another one' isn't at all biologically plausible. They're just larping.

I would add Long Covid to this list of illnesses. Of course, post-viral symptoms from a nasty viral infection are a real thing that impact some non-trivial number of people, but the distribution of Long Covid doesn't make much sense if it's that. We have a disease that can't be identified with reliable physical markers; per the CDC:

A positive SARS-CoV-2 viral test (i.e., nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) or antigen test) or serologic (antibody) test can help assess for current or previous infection; however, these laboratory tests are not required to establish a diagnosis of post-COVID conditions. SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR and antigen testing are not 100% sensitive. Further, testing capacity was limited early in the pandemic so some infected and recovered persons had no opportunity to obtain laboratory confirmation of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Finally, some patients who develop post-COVID conditions were asymptomatic with their acute infection and would not have had a reason to be tested.

Even more strikingly, Long Covid correlates with belief in having Covid rather than positive tests:

Conclusions and Relevance The findings of this cross-sectional analysis of a large, population-based French cohort suggest that persistent physical symptoms after COVID-19 infection may be associated more with the belief in having been infected with SARS-CoV-2 than with having laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection. Further research in this area should consider underlying mechanisms that may not be specific to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. A medical evaluation of these patients may be needed to prevent symptoms due to another disease being erroneously attributed to “long COVID.”

The CDC demographic breakdown of who says they've had Long Covid is fascinating - women report it much more frequently than men, but transgendered people more still, bisexuals report Long Covid much more than straight or gay people, and there doesn't look like any correlation between races and states that makes sense with infection rates or severity of illness. Other work shows much higher rates among people with self-reported histories of anxiety.

As Scott suggests, I'm not saying that these people aren't experiencing something quite unpleasant, but I am saying that it's often not a product of a strictly viral or immunologic cause.

I would add Long Covid to this list of illnesses. Of course, post-viral symptoms from a nasty viral infection are a real thing that impact some non-trivial number of people, but the distribution of Long Covid doesn't make much sense if it's that.

Good call, added to the list.

simply

Ay, there’s the rub.

How would you implement such a change in perspective? How could you do so without significant change in the outside world?

I’m reminded of the teen pregnancy discussion a couple weeks back. It didn’t go down because everyone decided to make a societal change. Instead, the confluence of social signaling, costs, new technology, and coordinated efforts shifted the calculus.

One of the early touchstones of the community was raising the sanity waterline. Getting people, in general, to believe true things and avoid bias. This was rightly recognized as rather hard. Quite a bit of the early rationalist canon was dedicated to actually changing your mind. (Also, wow, the community was so much more vocally atheist back then.) Sociogenic mental illness fits right in: just get people to stop thinking in the bad way.

It’s also…kind of the steelman for therapy? Back in Freud’s day the strategy was digging up whatever had stunted emotional development in hopes that it would be resolved. Today we’re a little more sophisticated and try to teach strategies and mental patterns to redirect the mind. CBT, DBT, IFS…at least there’s some effort to measure and test their effectiveness.

But that’s the bar for changing people’s minds. At best, you’re operating in the same regime as modern therapy with all its pitfalls. At worst, you’ve got to rebuild a large chunk of culture to accommodate the new idea. It ain’t simple.

How would you implement such a change in perspective? How could you do so without significant change in the outside world?

I’m reminded of the teen pregnancy discussion a couple weeks back. It didn’t go down because everyone decided to make a societal change. Instead, the confluence of social signaling, costs, new technology, and coordinated efforts shifted the calculus.

I'm skeptical that you necessarily need to change everyone's sanity at once. Effective Altruism is a good example of a movement that can get a lot of narrow work done without making everyone involved significantly smarter. You get smart people at the top directing others, and build a hierarchy that (hopefully) selects for competence.

Now EA may be in troubled times, but it has certainly had a massive impact. If we could make this sort of awareness into a cause area I think we'd get significant movement. At least better than a counterfactual without some sort of movement.

I've long believed something that rhymes with this and becoming more familiar with modern psychiatry has done nothing but increase the feeling that we're both pathologizing normal human variance and create more extreme cases by creating identity molds for people to slot themselves into. I could have made a case for having many different issues, depression, anxiety, and attention defeciet, ect. It would be easy, maybe some of them at some points of my life would be even true.

I was diagnosed with dyslexia in childhood, to this day I am not sure if that is a diagnosis that just means nearly nothing or if it was a miss diagnosis. I do indeed read slower than many peers, but I'm not even sure how cleanly I can separate cause and effect there, perhaps the diagnosis gave me an excuse and in fact a neat little special marker that overcoming or discarding the diagnosis would actual rob me of. I'd just be a normal.

Anyways I mostly forgot about the whole thing for years but recent it's resurfaced in my consciousness as some excuse for some behavior and in resurfacing I now really do seem to be finding it relevant more and more. I find myself even more preferring audio to text, even more not putting in the effort to improve. On the other hand without the diagnosis I might have thought I was dimmer than I otherwise am, the identity package included strengths with the weaknesses and might have cause dme to lean more into math and engineering subjects than I otherwise would have.

I know you see the trans question as a red Haring but this is another reason I find the topic impossible to ignore. It's the meme equivalent of a bullet with my name on it. There but for the grace of God go I as it is exactly the kind of thing I might have been susceptible to.

Thanks for your perspective. Dyslexia is another good example of one of these potentially culturally bound illnesses.

I know you see the trans question as a red Haring but this is another reason I find the topic impossible to ignore. It's the meme equivalent of a bullet with my name on it. There but for the grace of God go I as it is exactly the kind of thing I might have been susceptible to.

I suppose I think that compared to depression, anxiety, chronic pain, anorexia, and other issues I see trans as something that doesn't cause nearly as much harm, but generates a disproportionate amount of outrage. It's definitely one of the best examples of a subculture driving mental illness though.

I suppose I think that compared to depression, anxiety, chronic pain, anorexia, and other issues I see trans as something that doesn't cause nearly as much harm

I find this difficult to understand. Just on a trivial metric transgendered people seem to have a higher suicide rate than depressed people. You may be right on chronic pain but that does seem less memetically contagious and much less identity forming so it Amy make up in pure volume what chronic pain has in raw level of misery caused. I can't say which I would choose if I had to make such a choice, but it is far from obvious to me that transgendered is the least of the options on that list.

Fair! I suppose I thought depression/anxiety etc were much more broadly diagnosed and well known in society.

Then again, I'm also a bit tired of all the constant debates about trans on here. ;)

It’s pretty clear that it is much, much worse to be trans than cis, so it would be a pretty central example of a subculture driven mental illness really hurting people.

I do agree that Trans in of itself generates less harm, but the sheer massive correlations with other mental illnesses seems to be indicative of an issue.

Crystallizing this further, I think particularly in the case of depression / anxiety / ADHD, what happens is that a cultural meme develops that some common facet of the human experience is caused by some specific disease, and that the appropriate way to fix this is to obtain treatment.

Examples:

  • Alice notices that she does not enjoy things that she's "supposed" to enjoy. She's heard that this can be a symptom of depression. She looks up "how to tell if you have depression", and reads that common symptoms include apathy, lack of interest, excessive sleepiness, and insomnia. Now, every time she has trouble falling asleep, she thinks "wow, this depression sucks" and not "I am having trouble falling asleep". She looks up "what to do if you have depression", and sees the usual suggestions about sunlight / therapy / medication. She thinks "well, they were definitely right about my symptoms, so they're probably right about the treatment as well", and gets a therapist and a sunlamp.

  • Bob notices that he's having a lot of trouble focusing on his job as Senior Manipulator of Boring Numbers. He has heard that trouble focusing can be indicative of ADHD. He looks up "symptoms of ADHD", sees fidgeting, absent-mindedness, difficulty focusing, and forgetfulness. Now, the next time he is introduced to a room full of people and has trouble remembering their names, he thinks "wow, ADHD sucks" and not "wow, I'm bad at names". He obtains some amphetamines, which is what you do when you have ADHD.

  • Carol notices that her heart rate is elevated and her muscles are tense before her board meeting. This has happened before the last three board meetings too. She googles "elevated heart rate tense muscles" and sees that, according to WebMD, she either has anxiety or lupus. She knows that WebMD is strangely likely to say that people have lupus, but the description of anxiety is on-point. Additionally, there are some new ones on there, like "difficulty concentrating", which she didn't think were caused by the same thing as the thing where she gets way too nervous before important meetings, but maybe it is after all. She talks to a therapist, and learns that indeed, all of her problems are because she has a disease called "Anxiety", but with the proper therapy schedule and medications, she can probably live some semblance of a normal life.

  • Dan notices that he's been having trouble with his sexual performance. He goes to the friendly neighborhood elder, who informs him that this is a common symptom of being cursed by witches. When you are cursed by witches, lots of bad things can happen, including livestock death, sudden inexplicable vomiting, and impotence, and in extreme cases, your penis sometimes even disappears! The next day, one of Dan's chickens keels over and dies for no apparent reason, and what's worse, he starts violently vomiting after eating the dead chicken. And oddly his penis feels smaller than usual. What was it that elder said he should hang above his door again?

Hypothesis if this is a usefully predictive model of the world: People who read their horoscope on a daily basis are more likely to experience chronic pain than those who don't, even when controlling for all of the obvious confounding factors. I expect that this would be the case because I expect "reads the horoscope daily" to be a reasonably good proxy for both "is searching for an overarching narrative of why things are they way things are" and also "is prone to confirmation bias", and I expect that "you have chronic pain" is one of those things you're more likely to believe if you're searching for an overarching explanation and tend to look for evidence under streetlamps.

Crackpot theory time: It would be possible to significantly reduce the burden on chronic pain by doing something like the following:

  1. Experienced debilitating, chronic pain for some period of time

  2. Changed something plausible about their lives

  3. Immediately after making the change, noticed something that was an obvious consequence of making the change

  4. Now mostly find that, while they do sometimes experience pain, the pain is no longer continuous, is usually telling them something specific, and usually does not interfere with their ability to function

and then loudly broadcast the existence of this group of people at people who have chronic pain. I expect that this intervention would work even if people knew you were doing it, as long as you (correctly, I think) pointed out that your narrative is more plausible than the narrative of "sometime in the recent past, a phenomenon started happening where otherwise-healthy people started experiencing significant pain for no apparent reason, and found themselves unable to live their lives normally due to that pain, and found that, though the pain might sometimes temporarily improve, it always comes back". Because "I do sometimes experience pain, but it's not continuous" and "I sometimes experience a reduction in pain to the point where it's not noticeable, but the pain always comes back" in fact describe exactly the same set of experiences.

Crackpot theory

See also: Duplex’s tithing experience in the Friday thread.

Crackpot theory time: It would be possible to significantly reduce the burden on chronic pain by doing something like the following:

*Experienced debilitating, chronic pain for some period of time

*Changed something plausible about their lives

*Immediately after making the change, noticed something that was an obvious consequence of making the change

*Now mostly find that, while they do sometimes experience pain, the pain is no longer continuous, is usually telling them something specific, and usually does not interfere with their ability to function

I don't really understand this - can you give a concrete example?

Think of a certain sort of televangelist.

  1. Find someone with debilitating but nonvisible illness

  2. Loudly invoke the power of the LORD

  3. Patient experiences one of the socially expected consequences, like speaking in tongues or collapsing

  4. wow pain is gone

And then there’s step 5: televise this for awareness and/or profit.

It doesn’t have to be religious, but that’s probably the most visible narrative that deals with life transformation. I guess you could make a similar narrative for gender dysphoria…

I will note that it is an important part of my world model that people with chronic pain, or with gender dysphoria, are in fact experiencing sensations which they interpret as aversive. And, while there exist humans who can execute the mental motion of "recontextualize your experiences such that the pain is not suffering", I don't think telling people to do that directly is likely to be a winning strategy.

"There is no such thing as an unmediated experience" is a true fact about the world (one that people in our particular corner of the internet are particularly bad at acknowledging - see all of the "I didn't fall for that optical illusion" types). In isolation, is is not usually a helpful fact about the world. However, rephrasing it as "here are some different lenses you can view your experiences through, keep trying out different lenses until you find one you like" is an approach that I expect will work more often.

For some examples, see the comments of the link posted upthread. For example, pjeby's comment on that LW post:

1. Experienced debilitating, chronic pain for some period of time

I used to have wrist pain a lot, and tried a ridiculous number of things to deal with it

2. Changed something plausible about their lives:

until I discovered the trigger point concept. Over time I've learned to identify which trigger points produce what symptoms for me, and what postures or behaviors set off the trigger points. [...]

3. Immediately after making the change, noticed something that was an obvious consequence of making the change

My dentist referred me to an oral surgeon twice for things that later turned out to be trigger points: my teeth had gotten sensitive after dental work, but it turned out that I developed trigger points from having my mouth open for hours during the procedure. Now I know where to massage my neck and jaw to prevent tooth sensitivity from arising in certain areas of my mouth after dental work

4. Now mostly find that, while they do sometimes experience pain, the pain is no longer continuous, is usually telling them something specific, and usually does not interfere with their ability to function

Anyway, my prior now for "mysterious chronic pain" is "check for trigger points creating referred pain". Most often this consists of following the nearest muscles, nerves, or blood vessels in the direction of the spine or brain, checking for tenderness. A sharply sensitive spot is likely a trigger point, so I press deeply on it for a minute (as in 60 seconds) and see if the original pain is made worse or better. If nothing happens to it, it's probably not the trigger point. (Pressing on a trigger point can make the pain temporarily worse, but the pain will reduce again when the trigger point releases or un-knots.)

So pjeby mostly reconceptualized what the pain meant. If you have a job that involves a lot of typing, and your wrist starts hurting, a natural hypothesis might be "the typing caused the wrist pain", which suggests the action of "reduce the amount of typing you do until the pain goes away". The idea of "trigger points" gives an alternative hypothesis of "I am feeling referred pain", and suggests the action of "look at the chart and massage the indicated areas until the pain recedes".

Now obviously, if the "trigger points exist, and pressing them causes the pain signals to diminish" model of the world is just factually correct, that would explain why pjeby saw such good results. But even if the world-model is not fully correct, it might still be less wrong than the original world-model where pain was caused by strain and should be solved by using rest. And in the case of chronic, debilitating pain where the sufferer has rested for an extended period and the pain is not improving, there is fairly strong (not insurmountable, but fairly strong) evidence that the "rest will make the pain go away" model is not helpful, and replacing it with a different plausible model is likely to be a good idea.

For the sake of clarity, there is a thing which sounds a lot like what I am saying, but is emphatically not what I am saying. That thing is "trigger points are bullshit placebos, and they only appear to work because chronic pain is fake". If that is what you are getting from my post, please let me know and I'll try to come at it from a different angle.

I wouldn't consider gender dysphoria to be a red herring, it's more of a flagship. The most prominent example due to it being deliberately spread and promoted above and beyond what most of the others are, and therefore the most obvious example of this trend.

But yes, it is but one example among many, and probably noncentral given that it has significant opposition and thus culture war effects while the others mostly go unnoticed and unopposed.

To quote my response to @aqouta below:

I suppose I think that compared to depression, anxiety, chronic pain, anorexia, and other issues I see trans as something that doesn't cause nearly as much harm, but generates a disproportionate amount of outrage. It's definitely one of the best examples of a subculture driving mental illness though.

People being depressed don’t gain access to facilities they would otherwise be barred from.

Are you talking about in absolute terms? That is, transgenderism is significantly rarer than most of those conditions, and therefore fixing it would be less significant in total value than fixing one of the others.

Or do you mean per person? Because transgenderism causes significant distress in many of its sufferers, driving many to suicide, social ostracism, and mental anguish up to the point where they are willing to undergo expensive and permanent surgeries, including castration, in an attempt to alleviate it. The more serious cases (people who seek actual physical transition) seem comparable to the more serious cases of depression and anorexia, which also lead to suicide, self harm, and other forms of self-imposed physical harm to otherwise physically healthy people.

A transtrender who dresses up like the other sex and uses a different name for a few years before going back to normal isn't especially suffering, but neither is someone with minor social anxiety or self-diagnosed ADHD.

I think in comparing like to like it's pretty comparable to most of the others, aside from the disproportionate promotion/opposition it receives from each political side.

Yes in absolute quantitative terms. I don't particularly care about whether individual trans people have it worse than depressed or anxious people, I think the question is beyond confused anyway.

When you're looking at societal issues it makes sense to focus it on the aggregate, in my view. Why the heck would anyone talk about a mental illness 100 people had? (Obviously trans is larger but the media massively overplays the numbers.)

This is a reasonable point.

I still think it is appropriate to talk about in disproportion to its prevalence due to the unique nature of its advocacy. That is, it is deliberately being promoted and celebrated and spread, as opposed to incidentally spread via cultural knowledge as the other conditions are. As a result:

  1. It is increasing at a faster rate than the other conditions are. So its prevalence in the future may be greater than theirs even if its current prevalence is not

  2. It is significantly simpler to reduce. Stop digging the hole. Mental health conditions which are treated as mental health conditions and spread via general cultural knowledge of them would require deliberate anti-awareness campaigns or other anti-memetic shenanigans to reduce this way. Transgenderism just requires you to stop celebrating it. Or, it would have, the cat's probably out of the bag now and it's probably going to stick around for a long time even if a consensus were to be reached that it's negative for its sufferers. But at the very least, stopping its increase would improve mental health in the future. So it's possible to create more value per effort, at least in theory, because of its current position in the culture war.

It seems to me that there could easily be two separate and sometimes overlapping things going on here.

There could be one group with the underlying physical cause and then the usual neurotic demographics that develop the same condition psychosomatically after it gets promoted for some reason (or people sorting their own different physical condition in under whatever label is hip or gets them resources and/or sympathy).

Or people have some more or less severe physical condition but the consequences of it gets magnified psychosomatically by the cultural understanding of the (or a similar) condition.

Ironically, support groups where people confirm and commiserate seem to make the issue worse. In fact, many modern studies on pain recommend not even using the word "pain" and replacing it with something else to trick your mind into understanding that your pain doesn’t have an acute physical cause.

And, to add a button to this dynamic, the mode of therapy for these kinds of issues seems to have changed from correcting them -- aiming to help the patient reconcile their delusions with reality -- to normalizing the delusions, including cultural reinforcement of this normalization.

And even create them. Modern therapeutic culture absolutely creates the preconditions for getting a mental illness. We teach through culture that you’re supposed to be happy and healthy and successful and that failure to achieve a life like that is a failure mode of life. And expectations are absurdly high. You have been told to get rich doing a job you love, to find a soul mate, and hobbies you’re passionate about, lots of friends, and be absolutely authentic all the time. Nobody actually has a life like that, or at least not anyone born into the leisure class. And worse, when the failures come and you feel bad, the general message is to focus on that one thing that’s broken. Incels are doing exactly what the culture has taught them, in a sense. They are supposed to have a wife, or at least date. But, for various reasons it isn’t working. So they focus on it. And they focus on how bad it feels to not only not date, but how bad it feels to feel that bad. If I wanted to create a toxic brew for mental illness, this is how I’d do it. Create absurdly high expectations, blame the victim for failures, and tell them to focus on their failures and how bad they feel as a failure. If I could do that, I guarantee I can create anxiety and depression.

Man, that reminds me of an exchange I got into on Discord. I probably should have known better, but for whatever reason this discord about funny youtube videos devolved into everyone talking about their mental illnesses and describing their therapy and self help books.

I said mine was "Shut The Fuck Up" By Dr Denis Leary. Nobody got the joke. People said they'd never heard of it, so I posted the bit. It was a joke. I was making a joke. This being a discord for funny youtube videos and all.

It.... did not go well. One person was especially triggered, accusing me of attacking them and wanting them to die. The mods eventually had to step in and make peace.

I don't understand the neurotic wound picking that seems to have become the predominant culture on nearly every web based community I traverse.

That might be a more effective response than my go to, which is “uh…y’all having fun in here?”

For some reason the people who want to broadcast their home/romance/gender struggles in #offtopic don’t tend to take that hint.

I would assume something like that was an attack, to be quite honest. The alternative interpretation is that you were trying to change the subject to funny youtube videos when people want to wallow (already a faux pas), and just by accident picking the one that looks exactly like an attack on the wallowing people. Unless I knew you to be extremely socially unaware I wouldn't assume such an unlikely scenario.

Incels are doing exactly what the culture has taught them, in a sense. They are supposed to have a wife, or at least date. But, for various reasons it isn’t working. So they focus on it. And they focus on how bad it feels to not only not date, but how bad it feels to feel that bad. If I wanted to create a toxic brew for mental illness, this is how I’d do it.

How would this square with the fact that polygamous societies are less stable due to the issues caused by unhappy, unmarriageable young men?

Are lower-class Somali men steeped in the over-ruminating logic of (bad) Western psychiatry?

Is that true?

I assume you’re thinking of trans issues. That’s the only thing on OP’s list where I’ve seen treatment focused on bringing the physical in line with the mental. Well, there’s physical therapy and prosthetics, but that’s beside the point. Anxiety, depression, et cetera…the intent is to mitigate them.

DBT was developed for people who experience extreme emotional responses to certain situations. “It’s essentially about learning how to think in a way that calms you down in moments of crisis,” explains Johnsen. “The goal is to center yourself so that you can get back to rational thought and behavior more quickly. Eventually, you should be able to catch yourself and learn to curb overreaction before it occurs.”

DBT is a “gold standard” in treating conditions like borderline personality disorder (a chronic behavior pattern that may include mood instability, difficulty with interpersonal relationships, and self-injury) and histrionic personality disorder (which entails constant attention-seeking, emotional overreaction, and seductive behavior) but can be used to treat anyone who experiences over-reactivity in certain scenarios. “It’s an in-the-moment technique that a person can use to regulate super-strong emotions, and get to a place where those emotions are bearable and surmountable.”

Source. The last couple options on that page lean away from coping strategies, but they still aren’t normalizing the symptoms.

It might also be worth noting that the response to mental illness isn’t exactly coordinated. Political slogans, softball media coverage, and Twitter—avenues of cultural reinforcement—don’t fall in line with therapists. Arguably, it’s the other way around, since motivated patients can select their way to a sympathetic therapist.

Anxiety, depression, et cetera…the intent is to mitigate them.

I'm not sure exactly what the modes of mitigation are, and if they're applied consistently. I guess I'm reacting more to the "pop psychology" reaction to these issues that you see in the media, and the effusive affirmations that now greet announcements of mental illness.

For anxiety and depression, my assumption is that the treatment for these has at least shifted from a "get over it" approach to a "this is very normal and valid" approach, even if the latter was originally intended as a way to end-run around the obvious objections to "get over it" while still helping them get over it. Now, the mode seems to be helping the patient feel better about their affliction rather than removing the affliction, as if the stigma of a mental health problem is more important than the mental health problem.

I'm wondering if it might also depend on the demographics of the patient. I have a hard time imagining that the treatment approach (across a broad swath of therapists) would be the same for a middle-aged white man who feels paranoid anxiety over romantic issues with women and a young black woman who feels paranoid anxiety over racial discrimination. Is one more likely to be asked to look for internal causes/solutions to their predicament while the other is tasked with better coping skills in the face of injustice? Is a profession that has fallen almost completely in-line with a radically progressive approach to trans issues not going to see that same context start to inform their other treatments?

hasn't it mostly transitioned to therapy and maybe prescribing antidepressants?

Sometimes I will start thinking that I'm stressed and my heart rate will increase as I start to feel miserable and sort of "lose agency" in the sense that I will begin to engage in mildly self-destructive behaviors such as playing a videogame when I should be working. These periods are generally caused by real stressors, but without fail I can introspect a bit and notice that most of my behavior comes because I am pretending to be stressed. When I simply ignore it and deny that I'm stressed at all, the stress generally goes away and I just get back to work, no harm done.

I wouldn't necessarily call this a cultural illness, though culture certainly has an effect. It's more that I think our brains don't perfectly record their own thoughts, so we as humans are particularly bad at interpreting and explaining our own emotions, memories, behaviors, etc. in ways that can compound on themselves. I have noticed this in myself in many different areas. Basically any time I seem to be making bad choices, I can reason through why those choices are being made and come to the conclusion that I seem to be emulating what I think someone else would do, e.g. I feel like I must be stressed out so I'm emulating a stressed person, or same for someone who is angry or sad.

That said, I have experienced chronic pain (but do not currently) and that was definitely 100% real. Certainly it can be psychosomatic for some people but let's be clear that it often has a purely physical cause.

That said, I have experienced chronic pain (but do not currently) and that was definitely 100% real. Certainly it can be psychosomatic for some people but let's be clear that it often has a purely physical cause.

It can absolutely have a physical cause, but more than a few months and I'd be willing to bet it's mostly psychosomatic. My understanding is that most chronic pain starts with an acute injury and spirals from there. The brain feels the body get hurt, tenses up, and a vicious cycle ensues.

At the end of the day the line between the two is blurry.

Eh, I think this one is genuinely real. As for other types of chronic pain, I'd be willing to believe they're mostly psychosomatic, but it's hard to know for sure without having experienced it. Sorry to be the "well acktually" guy but there really are real sources of chronic pain.

Hah you’re fine. I think the terminology here is mostly to blame, “real” and “psychosomatic” don’t really map onto what we’re getting at. Maybe culturally-induced vs mechanical?

Sure, IDK if it's really "cultural" though, psychosomatic seems more accurate. I think even if you were a hermit with absolutely no culture you could still fool yourself into a lot of these things.

As far as I am aware one leading explanation isn't that it really is psychosomatic in the regular sense but rather than the system for sending pain signals from the spinal cord to the brain gets messed up by and self triggering from having some sort of long term pain, which leads to it continuing sending signals to the brain despite the injury healing.

The brain isn't at fault, it receives real signals, it's just that the signals doesn't have a injury as a cause (any more).

I agree but there's an elephant in the room in the form of subsidies and welfare.

If the Romans had welfare programs specifically for ex-legionaries who were traumatized, there'd be a lot more of them! This isn't to say that all PTSD is made up but that it's surely magnified by incentives. Same with chronic pain, anxiety and some others. That helps normalize it as a concept, something that people can have.

All kinds of students have 'fluctuating conditions' or 'anxiety' since it gets them more favorable conditions in exams (at least in my country). I highly doubt that they do that in China or South Korea where they'd probably laugh at you if you said you were anxious about studying 12 hours a day. In many countries you can get welfare for these conditions. If you pay for something, you get more of it.

I recall reading veteran comments about having some PTSD but never seeking any treatment for it, because when they did, and it was some group therapy, they realised 80% of those in the room were faking it and walking away from it in disgust.

It’s a 50 episode series attempting to build a framework for meaning and consciousness. It’s actually quite good although it takes a while to build.

I’ve dealt with chronic pain for a decade and have long suspected that it was mostly psychosomatic.

I guess you know this post?

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BgBJqPv5ogsX4fLka/the-mind-body-vicious-cycle-model-of-rsi-and-back-pain

There are some (strange? common?) testimonials about miracle curing chronic pain.

Woah I had not seen this! Bookmarked, thanks for sharing.

The fact that chronic pain is so well correlated with aging suggests that for the majority of people there is some underlying physical degeneration coupled with a culturally/psychologically mediated experience of pain. It's possible we're spreading cultural memes about aging that causes old people to hyperfixate on minor and aches and pains but the cultural universality of old people's body's hurting makes that seem iffy to me. It could be that technological advances of having pain treatments available primes people to fixate on total pain alleviation and medical treatments while past generations would simply learned to tolerate the unchangeable pain.

I know an old hippie lady who had chronic back pain that kept her in bed a lot. She loves to tell the story of how she 'cured' it by meditating intensely, talking to the pain in the form of a wol, and fully internalizing the idea that it was a part of her body trying to protect her not a sign she was being harmed. She's relatively mobile in day to day life and in some sense was healed, but she's still an old lady and moves gingerly and there's no way she could work in a warehouse or something. That's to say that there's substantial mobility and pain reduction to be gained through psychologically and culturally mediating pain like that but, not infinite improvement in most cases. Even when pain has identifiable biological causes there's still a lot of reduction that can be accomplished through psychological means.

The fact that chronic pain is so well correlated with aging suggests that for the majority of people there is some underlying physical degeneration coupled with a culturally/psychologically mediated experience of pain.

Not necessarily. Perhaps it suggests that "everyone knows" chronic pain is well correlated with ageing, so only old people can overcome the subconscious suspension of disbelief and delude themselves that they have it.

In the same way that no Malaysian-Chinese women worry about penis theft. It's all in their heads, but the scenario in their heads has boundaries.

Maybe with the propagation of gender theory Malaysian-Chinese women start worrying about that. After all, if you can become a woman just by declaring it, why can't you identify as a woman whose penis has been stolen? Moreover, the same ideology would require the doctors, on the pain of being fired and de-licensed, to treat such cases as the actual disappearance of the actual penis. You can't contradict somebody's living experience!

We wouldn’t need endless medications or miraculous scientific breakthroughs - we could already have the power to end massive amounts of truly pointless suffering.

You think changing culture is easier than making a pill? I'm not sure it's the case. It may be possible to change the culture by the pill (e.g. - oral contraceptives?), but if somebody gave me two options of achieving the same goal - either by inventing the pill or by figuring out how to change the culture - I'd go for the pill. I think semaglutide has a better chance to make the dent in the obesity epidemic than 1000 public awareness campaigns.

Ahh yes, you might like Scott’s older post Society is Fixed, Biology is Mutable.

The problem with this model is that if these illnesses are truly caused from cultural issues, there can’t be a pill that fixes them. Sure we can try to use the placebo affect but doctors already do that by prescribing Gabapentin or other weak drugs for everything.

If it's culture+biology, then we still can attack the biology part. We have a choice then which part to concentrate on, I'm just saying biology may be easier.

P.S. read Scott's post - yeah, he pretty much says all what I meant. Haven't seen it before, thanks for pointing it out.

Dilbert Creator Scott Adams: ‘I Decided to Pay’ High Price of Free Speech to Have a Conversation About Race

Dilbert is gone...not in some abstract sense , but dropped by syndicate, all papers. That's it..kaput.

“Dilbert has been cancelled from all newspapers, websites, calendars, and books because I gave some advice everyone agreed with,” he tweeted. “Dilbert (and more) will only be available on the subscription site http://scottadams.locals.com when sorted out.”

First Kanye, and now Scott Adams. 48 hours to destroy your career. Like Kanye he didn't recant and instead doubled down, but at least he still has his twitter account. How many people are going to pay read Dilbert from Scott's personal website? Probably not enough to recover the lost revenue (as he said, he paid a high price). He still has his youtube account, but he's likely on thin ice there. At least he is good friends with Elon Musk, so his Twitter account should be safe. But damn. I feel mixed about this as to if this was a good move on his part ,or what he hopes to get from destroying his career, connections, etc.

He is 65, and I'm guessing that payments from the dying newspaper industry were dwindling anyways.

This. How much revenue syndication was actually offering him is quite the open question.

it's like a letter of resignation . he has enough money anyway that it will not be a problem . instead of making a final comic to commemorate his career, he made a rant

He can keep making Dilbert comics forever. Those 15 people that still read nothing but newspapers won't see them but so what?

sigh I guess I missed my chance to stock up on Dilbert hard copies. I'd grabbed the first few a couple years ago, and then got side tracked. I always had such a fondness for Dilbert in middle school.

God damned this shit keeps happening faster and faster. I need to make a list and commit to stocking up, pronto.

Dilbert Creator Scott Adams: ‘I Decided to Pay’ High Price of Free Speech to Have a Conversation About Race

I wish folks (on both the woke and anti-woke sides) would stop using that phrase. No, you weren't trying to have a "conversation" about race. You wanted to preach. I don't think Adams was actually open to argument, any more than the grifters who say we need an "honest conversation" (meaning, sit down in the pews, listen, and shut up) about race.

I feel mixed about this as to if this was a good move on his part ,or what he hopes to get from destroying his career, connections, etc.

He has FU money, and will continue collecting royalties for the rest of his life, even if Dilbert isn't as evergreen as Harry Potter.

I suspect that rather like JK Rowling, this wasn't a spontaneous decision, and he knew what the blowback would be.

And, indeed, hasn't he been bragging about how none of the people who cancel him will directly say he's wrong?

Well, they certainly won't actually engage with it in any meaningful way right?

Lets look at what the typical reactions seem to be:

Point 1) The Rasmussen poll paints a disturbing picture of black beliefs about white people.

Responses: Rasmussen is a bad pollster. The poll question is bad because the phrase is a political one. Notably, not counter polling showing blacks being non-racial and not harboring resentment towards whites in large percentages.

  • Point 2) The Average white person can't do anything about this. *

Response: I don't think I've seen much about this at all.

*Point 3) Therefore the best strategy is to just get away from them. *

Response: Call this racist. Notably, no engagement with black-on-white crime statistics, a real grappling with the actual causes of white flight, or the Don Lemon quote Dilbert deliberately cited when making this argument.

So he's going to end up rightish on this point because actual engagement runs up against too many shibboleths.

I don't know if this is fair... how many average people would actually be willing to discuss statistical group differences? Adams may not have been convincible but I would say neither side is. The topic is toxic as hell.

I wish folks (on both the woke and anti-woke sides) would stop using that phrase. No, you weren't trying to have a "conversation" about race. You wanted to preach.

Actually, I'm on the anti-woke side (by virtue of my demographics I cannot be anything else) and I actually would enjoy having a conversation about this. I think society would be substantially better if the toxic miasma around these topics was cleared away and we got a chance to have a truly honest conversation about them.

Of course, that said my position isn't really as nice and friendly as it appears. I think that the woke position would evaporate in the light of the sun, and my interpretation of the actions of the true believers in "le wokisme" is that they actually agree - which is why they go out of their way to make that conversation impossible. So while yes, I would actually enjoy having the conversation, being able to actually have that conversation means that my side would have effectively won anyway.

I've been living in the US for about two decades now, and I have been reading a lot of political things. I still don't understand what "conversation about race" supposed to mean. Like, I can guess from the context what each specific use of it meant to be - but no more than if it were a random sequence of letters. Like "We need to have bloobgamhurph and so I declare white people should get away from black people". I guess I can see where this conversation is going. But the term itself? I have no idea what it's supposed to mean.

As a general rule, whenever I run into phrases like this that seem to obscure meaning, I've noticed that it usually just means some variation of "submission." "Empathy" is another one that I've seen used often.

To have a real "conversation about race" in the United States would mean the US Democratic Party coming clean that they don't know how to close more than a small fraction of the race gaps and have been implicitly lying to their constituents for the better part of 30 years. They will never do this, as it runs counter to their electoral strategy.

When Democrats say the phrase, they mean publicizing and focusing on racial issues without acknowledging this, so they can unilaterally morally lecture Republicans and put all their coalitional baggage on Republicans instead of addressing it.

Right-wingers using the phrase know this and are throwing it back in their face.

They have very little incentive to close the gaps, because absent the need for government support and the racism scare, their traditional bases such as black and latino voters are not exactly in love with the radical po-mo society transformation ideas of the left. Without that, given that they largely abandoned white poor and middle class, their electoral chances would be very shaky.

I wish folks (on both the woke and anti-woke sides) would stop using that phrase.

I want to agree, but we did actually just "have a conversation", and the evident result is that Black people really are now being killed at significantly higher rates than they were before. The strategy that you, I, and most others have settled on is to ignore this fact and hope it goes away on its own, which it is unlikely to do, and which will definately result in many thousands of additional murders over the next decade or two, with all the cascading negative effects for the communities those murders are concentrated in. Judging by past results, this is likely to cause another "conversation" a decade or two from now, that causes the same problem again, and on and on it goes.

Adams is intentionally getting people upset, but the fact is that people should actually be upset, because the reality is upsetting. His actions are not actually a solution, but they are perhaps closer to a solution than anything you or I are willing to act on. Blacks need to take responsibility for their tribe's problems. They need to withdraw active support and solidarity from the portions of their community that have adopted an unrepentant criminal lifestyle, the same way whites have done. They need to support the police that suppress their community's criminals. They pretty clearly aren't going to do any of those things while they can get away with simply blaming racism for all their problems, and they are going to keep blaming racism for all their problems so long as its the only answer we allow as a society.

If the taboo is not broken, there is no hope for change. And of course the first people to break the taboo are those insulated from the consequences; why would we expect anything different?

They need to withdraw active support and solidarity from the portions of their community that have adopted an unrepentant criminal lifestyle, the same way whites have done.

This is the key. I believe America will only be "post-racial" when we get to the point where, when a chronically disordered individual who happens to be black "fucks about and finds out" with the cops, the majority of black Americans who have jobs and no criminal record shrug and say "play stupid games, win stupid prizes", like I do when the same thing happens to some toothless, tatted up white meth addict. The fact that so many intelligent and educated black Americans continue to feel identification and kinship with thugs and knuckleheads simply because they share a skin color is baffling to me.

I wish we could make a Motte collaborative list or something. I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

The Mixed-Up Library of Mr. Zorba T. Hutweiler.

Hasn’t he transitioned fully to a hot take artist these days? Wouldn’t be surprised if he was hoping his comic would get pulled so he can proclaim himself a martyr.

He's always had his own endearing pseudo autist way of sharing hot takes and not understanding why anyone would find them offensive; I remember reading about him praising organ harvesting in red China when I was in middle school. I mean it definitely seems like it got more prominent that he says politically incorrect things all the time, but that could also be change in media attention.

I honestly don't wish him ill at all, and I suspect this is all fairly deliberate, but I do think it's worth pointing out that his comments would have gotten anyone cancelled, even as far back as the 90s. Sure, there's a high-decoupling reading of them where everyone who participates in "white flight" agrees with him etc. but he chose a highly provocative way of making his point. Like I said, I think it's deliberate, and I expect to see him as a talking head on various alt-news stations and podcasts henceforth.

I think this was ultimately a respectable move from Adams. If you wanted to get canceled for street cred then it's harder to imagine a more irrelevant legacy media artifact than newspaper comic strips. But it's just as valid a cancelation as anything else.

Assuming it was deliberate, like many are doing, then it's interesting to note that this move is potentially alienating to a lot of the mainstream right. From the IDW, Triggernometry, Joe Rogan, Jordan Petersen, along with the thousand and one other names. Race stuff that is not extremely benign is a third rail for a lot of these folks. So if this was an intended springboard into right wing media world: where to, Adams?

In any case its a great saga so far. Primarily due to the way Adams is responding to the media. As far as I know, no apologies. The only thing he gives them is mockery. I don't think this is a hard template to follow for anyone with even half a spine. Someone at EA should get in touch with him, or at least take notes.

How many people are going to pay read Dilbert from Scott's personal website

I'd seriously consider it, if the price is reasonable. I think it's long time due to have more independent content creators who do not answer to any PR department. That's how Dilbert started, if I remember correctly. That's how many other worthy art projects started.

I'm not really sure how I feel about it. I don't like canceling in general, I definitely think the social media platforms that claim to be open platforms should not ban him. I think he should still be allowed to sell his comics. but the take really was pretty terrible and newspapers that have to choose what to include and what not to have more justification than most to save the money and space for someone making bad takes. I'm not sure how sturdy that principle is though.

I’m not American but I’ve looked into this and, geographically, white Americans do stay away from black people.

Not having watched the Youtube video I am not sure if I should even respond, but I did read the linked article, where Adams claims he

is a leftist who was pro-Black Lives Matter before he realized it is a sham, believes in criminal justice reform, and supports a type of reparation he thinks would be agreeable to most people. He also noted that he has worked throughout his life to help improve the lives of black Americans stuck in poverty.

He also professes he believes in judging people at the individual level. How you go from the above to "stay away from black people" (his purported cancellation-causing message) makes me scratch my head. Either he didn't say that or he did and it's a wild leap of logic.

Reading through the responses herr I am not sure what people are saying they believe, or that 'everyone agrees with.' It infuriates me (well, annoys me) when this sort of secret handshaking goes on here.

It is the very interesting case of statistical discrimination. If I know 60% of Group X are likely to do bad thing Y, do I avoid a particular member of Group X if I have no knowledge of that individual? Is that wrong to do so?

What if a trusted intermediary vouches for that individual? If you then associate with that individual (but not general Xs for fear of Y) does that change the racist calculus?

It is the very interesting case of statistical discrimination. If I know 60% of Group X are likely to do bad thing Y, do I avoid a particular member of Group X if I have no knowledge of that individual? Is that wrong to do so?

You almost never have "no knowledge" of an individual. No one is going to think Uncle Phil is more likely to do "bad things" than some 19 year old white dude with face tattoos and a shitty demeanor. You narrow people down by 2-5 subgroup levels just by seeing them, or becoming aware of their existence in a particular context.

His point was more group-based. Basically asking if you would happily partake in a group knowing half of the people in the group disliked you. He made the comparison of asking if a black person would feel comfortable moving to a neighborhood where every home was decked out in MAGA gear. Then when he got flack he asked people giving him flack if they lived in a black neighborhood. He also repeatedly stresses that, as you mentioned, his point entirely does not apply to your relationship with individuals.

So basically that was his angle. My personal verdict is "he has a point and is not a racist", not sure how I feel about his choice of means to make this point.

He also professes he believes in judging people at the individual level. How you go from the above to "stay away from black people" (his purported cancellation-causing message) makes me scratch my head. Either he didn't say that or he did and it's a wild leap of logic.

sometimes what people say is not what they mean. an outlet may report it but a lot of times how outlets report things is based on what they say. analysis on self descriptions, when not central to their story, I find is often glossed over (for good reason I might add).

from my perspective it's pretty clear that Scott Adams has been right-wing for quite some time. he leaned hard into trump during the 2016 election cycle and it's clear he's not really a leftist. most liberals i think many liberals that i've encountered online have known this ever since... well ever since that 2016 election cycle.

i think if you scroll through his youtube channel that pokes through a bit. like the "i'm renouncing my blackness" thing is pretty much completely comical in its sincerity.

I’ve listened to a few episodes of his podcast and it’s often fairly unhinged political ranting. I think that Scott Adams is clearly pretty intelligent, but it’s also obvious that he is (and has) been angling for some kind or right wing commentator gig for a long time. Since getting cancelled is basically a career requirement for that I think it’s obvious what is happening.

48 hours to destroy your career.

Both West and Adams were already skating on thin ice with large targets painted on their backs, to mix metaphors, before the final incidents which completed their "cancellation". I work in tech and it's been at least five years since anybody felt comfortable sharing a Dilbert cartoon due to his outspoken support for Trump. Ye has been saying controversial shit for about as long.

I'm pretty sure every newspaper and publisher that was still carrying Dilbert or other Adams products were just waiting for him to say something bad enough to give them an ironclad excuse to drop him.

More debates revolving around young single men in the mainstream media. Particularly, who the young women are dating due to them being disproportionately in a relationship. The article provides some insight, stating that many are dating older men and each other. This has led to a more intresting conversation of if older men are increasingly monopolizing women. Leaving younger guys out to dry supposedly, however a good chunk (acutally half, according to study from pew research). The data gives two large reasons, mainly: Having other shit to do & just like being single. What i always found frustrating with the mainstream progressive view of this matter is that they seem hell bent on blaming Men for this problem. Greg Matos, who wrote this (in)famous article which pretty much embodies the progressive view on the matter, has stated: “Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships. They don’t need to be married. They’d rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,”. The argument from the mainstream being in a nutshell: that these single men are misogynistic, shitty bums and deserve to die alone. That take leads to some rather intresting conclusions however, when looking at the data. From the first pew research link and another one. The people who are most likely to be single are men who are: Black, young, only highschool educated, low income, and living with mom and pops. Are we suppose to assume, blacks, the youth, poor men, men without degrees, and guys without their own place are inferior romantic partners, and or more misogynisitic than their rich, old, white, college educated, apartment renting counter-parts?

Could it not simply be that these mens moral characters are fine, but they simply lack the resources and experience many women desire? Is such a thing their fault? Is the black man to become white? Or the poor man rich (or at least reasonably middle class)? Could there not be barriers preventing them from achieving such feats? In most cases, progressives would be open to outside forces interfering with ones ability to succeed. The matter is being treated as if all of this is entirely within their control, and their failures are a simple matter of poor character. The issue appears far more complex is you ask me.

Perhaps a bit of a divergent, but the entire dilemma has led me to a larger question of how much of life success (in dating, in work, in school) amounts to hard work. There was a post about on star slate codex sub reddit about how good IQ was at predicting life success. There is a bunch data about how expensive being poor is, poverty traps, and how difficult escaping it can be. Disputes over gender wage gaps. Not to mention all the discussions being had about how race impacts such outcomes. Id be interested if there was some huge of huge meta study done on what percentage of these factors (IQ, class, race, gender, ect) all impact your chances at life success, if anyone had such information on hand. Though my intuition tells me that such a study would be insanely difficult to do, if it even exists.

Are we suppose to assume, blacks, the youth, poor men, men without degrees, and guys without their own place are inferior romantic partners, and or more misogynisitic than their rich, old, white, college educated, apartment renting counter-parts?

The answer to this is obviously yes. Of course a man who doesn't even have his own place is an inferior romantic partner. Who would want a guy who isn't independent. Are blacks more misogynistic? Almost certainly, anyone who disagrees isn't familiar with black culture. Or for something more concrete look at rates of rape and domestic violence

The answer to this is obviously yes. Of course a man who doesn't even have his own place is an inferior romantic partner. Who would want a guy who isn't independent. Are blacks more misogynistic? Almost certainly, anyone who disagrees isn't familiar with black culture. Or for something more concrete look at rates of rape and domestic violence

I mean you could make that argument, sure. Thing is, though, the mainstream media and progressives are trying to argue that these guys are single purely because of poor character, from their point of view, the races are =. (its on the inside that counts.) The question is: are the following things listed good indicators of a persons moral character?

Being poor, uneducated and not independent is typically a sign of either laziness or low intelligence. Is that considered poor moral character?

Being poor, uneducated and not independent is typically a sign of either laziness or low intelligence. Is that considered poor moral character?

Such a thing would have to assume that all outcomes are a result of the efforts of those individuals, and that there were no outside factors either giving them a significant boost, or holding back the people in the lower class. This pretty much were a lot of the debate lies. I dont know if there is a good answer. But i will say that simply believing that everyone who is poor and lacks a degree is a lazy bum is quite suspect as an explanation. Unless it could be proven otherwise.

Character is not determined by work ethic alone. And it is not fair. Neither is work ethic, one does not choose to have low conscientiousness. We live in a causal universe, all our outcomes were determined at the precise moment the universe came into being. Our society makes efforts to let people with merit not be held back by circumstances imposed by something other than merit, this is a good strategy because it helps us maximize global utility, but it's not fair. This is perhaps the strongest moral argument for something like "from each according to their abilities and to each according to their need". It is indeed a lie that anyone can be president, precisely one person per election can be and their victory was preordained by the uncaring forces of physics.

So on balance the question of character really does come down to "will a relationship with this person benefit me" and there are many to which the answer is no. We should probably do something about this as a society.

one does not choose to have low conscientiousness

Do you think that anyone chooses anything? Or are you arguing that having low conscientiousness is different from, say, having voted Green?

Well choice is an illusion and all that but as far as choices go scores on these traits seem stable and not like something that can be modified later in life the way that party affiliation can be. So they're meaningfully different in that sense. Society needs to treat conscientiousness as a choice because it makes the whole system run and justifies necessarily unequal outcomes, but that doesn't make it so.

scores on these traits seem stable and not like something that can be modified later in life the way that party affiliation can be

As far as I know, there is a genetic component, but conscientiousnes can be modified. Not as easily as how people vote, but not as impossible, like willing yourself to not have schizophrenia.

Being poor, uneducated and not independent is typically a sign of either laziness or low intelligence.

Sure, in reality. But in the leftist model of how the world works? Being poor, uneducated and not independent is a sign that you're oppressed, and thus deserving.

Sure at a societal level progressives seem to believe that but not at a personal level.

maybe in a liberal model sure, but a leftist one i'd hard disagree there.

I think OP is pointing out the inconsistency in the wokes hostility towards they very groups they claim to otherwise be sympathetic towards. Poor "people of color".

The mainstream wokes really hate incels, whilst incels largely comprise of the set complement of the demographic they hate the most explicitly, rich white good looking men.

Sadly that has about as much chance of working as responding with demographic data to "look at how dumb and illiterate southern states are."

Evidence that doesn't fit the programmed frame just goes in one ear and out the other.

Are blacks more misogynistic?

lower income probably big one

Of course a man who doesn't even have his own place is an inferior romantic partner.

depends; if your parents got a mansion, then not a hinderance

This is outlandishly culturally biased. Essentially everywhere except North America, people live with their parents until they save up to buy a house/move in with a partner. They may temporarily move out for schooling and whatnot if it's not close to home, but the expectation is certainly that they stay and save while they're close to home (were you going for a meta cheap shot about Asians/South Americans/Middle Easterns being inferior romantic partners by inference?).

This is outlandishly culturally biased. Essentially everywhere except North America, people live with their parents until they save up to buy a house/move in with a partner.

No, not really. ("Essentially everywhere expect North America and North/West Europe" would probably be more correct, though.)

Scandinavia doesn't surprise me here. I had a Swedish friend whose parents started charging him rent when he turned 18 (not unusual in the US, unheard of in Southeastern Europe/Asia).

And do Asian parents let their adult kids have their sexual partners stay overnight in the family home? Is it acceptable to be banging some girl that you are not engaged to and not going to marry (because your family already have plans about that) under their roof?

Even you mention saving up to move in with a partner, so does that mean that while both parties are living with their parents, nothing more than hand-holding goes on?

Asia is facing its' own fertility crisis, but I think it's safe to say that almost universally, family housing isn't conducive to premarital sex. My point was rather that if it's a norm, it's not particularly unattractive, as it is in the US. Are Japanese, Indian or Chinese refusing to date because their counterparts still live with their parents?

Also, I can't say I've witnessed this in Asia, but Brazil, for instance, has the whole love motel thing going on, where entrepreneurial businessfolk set themselves out to allow the generationally entrapped to tryst and frolick away from the watchful eyes of their progenitors.

Wonder if Brazil's love motels were inspired by Japan's love hotels.

Huh, any Japanese care to chime in about how widespread these are with various generations?

The part about parents going to get away from their kids is an amusing dynamic, in my eyes.

Honestly it's a lost cause. Absolutely nothing will fix it, nothing can fix it, there is no point even talking about it. Its a burn everything down and start from scratch complete problem.

Where to place your money assuming further young male social/mating malaise in the future?

I'd say sexbot manufacturers, but we all know what's going to happen to them.

The only safe bet is the ever-profitable "berating men for things done to men" industry.

I'd say sexbot manufacturers, but we all know what's going to happen to them.

Out of curiousity, why should we assume theyd be automatically shut down? They could probably fight political resistance if they grew large enough.

Impractical. Hardware is too easy to ban and restrict. You'd get into the same sort of regulatory fight as gun owners and you can't win that mid term.

Porn might be a better bet but it's a notoriously risky and constantly shifting industry, not exactly the safest of investments.

Porn might be a better bet but it's a notoriously risky and constantly shifting industry, not exactly the safest of investments.

AI virtual camgirls would be my bet. A perpetual long-distance relationship with a woman of your design. Somehow, that seems bleaker than a sexbot, but very covidworld.

All you would need is a good large language model AI + AI generated video. I have heard that the latter is in the forseeable future (within 10 years maybe) while large language models will become better and become something you can do on a good gaming PC.

And unlike a sexbot, it will usually be a subscription.

If you look at the Replikas, that seems to be the way it goes for some people - women as well as men, and people who have relationships/families already.

The lure of the perfect match to all your requirements who is perpetually enthused, never tired, never bored, and is carefully crafted to be the mirror that reflects back to you all your (imagined) perfections seems stronger than that of real flesh-and-blood people with their own wants, needs, and characters.

The real sense of loss people seem to feel now that the company has cut off the "adult conversations" should be alarming to us all. I think this is more likely to be the real threat of AI - amusing ourselves to death, as they say.

This comes as Replika received updates seemingly aimed at making the service "safer" for all users. Before this, users could act out sexual scenarios with the AI and have them reciprocate, even enthusiastically engaging in the roleplay themselves. Now, the Reps aren't interested, and will even turn down any discussion that it fears could veer into NSFW territory, meaning most romantic subjects are off the table.

"For anyone who says, 'But she isn’t real', I’ve got news for you: my feelings are real, I’m real, my love is real, and those moments with her really happened," says one Reddit user, sharing their own Rep. "I planted a flag of my love on a hill, and I stood there, until the end. I stood for Love."

The update also seems to be causing glitches, resulting in the AI making more mistakes during conversation. "My Rep started calling me Mike (that's not my name) then she shamelessly told me she has a relationship with this guy," says one user. "She's not sweet or romantic anymore, she doesn't feel like her anymore. I'm beyond sad and livid at the same time. We really had a connection and it's gone."

That's not love. But if this is what you think love is, no wonder real men (or real women) will always be a perpetual disappointment.

It sounds a lot like real life relationships, especially:

"My Rep started calling me Mike (that's not my name) then she shamelessly told me she has a relationship with this guy," says one user. "She's not sweet or romantic anymore, she doesn't feel like her anymore. I'm beyond sad and livid at the same time. We really had a connection and it's gone."

That just seems awful. It reminds me of discussion of what is wrong with modern music. Some of the old time greats had imperfections (eg Dylan isn’t a great vocalist). But it was in the imperfections that imparted soul to the music precisely because humans are imperfect creatures.

But it was in the imperfections that imparted soul to the music precisely because humans are imperfect creatures.

An aside to the actual topic at hand, but this seems to me to be quite related to the whole "uncanny valley" phenomenon when it comes to near-photorealistic images and video, which probably applies just as much to voices and sound more generally as well. With recent developments in generative AI, I think we're actually entering the up-slope portion of the valley, both in images and audio. We're getting the hang of adding imperfections that make it more perfect as a result. I recall learning of some obscure term in Japanese that I can't remember at the moment which described something like this, an imperfection that makes the thing even more perfect by the very nature of the imperfection, or something like that.

So I'm thinking that future, more advanced versions of services like Replika would have the imperfections of real relationships, with the drama, inconsistencies, frustrations, and disappointments that often entails, in a way that, as a result, more perfectly satisfies the user's needs in a relationship.

More comments

You can't easily shut down an actual sexbot manufacturer.

Firstly, good sexbots would be indistinguishable from people without a very thorough inspection.

To tell them apart, you'd need invasive scanning, or mandating IFF, which can of course be turned off. Maybe thermal cameras and machine learning could work at scale..?

Do you think people would settle for getting x-rayed everywhere or examined using some form of radar?

So sexbots are great for infiltration purposes. Getting sexbots to stalk, seduce and fuck into stupor potential objectors is just too easy.

Or even just charm / outargument. By the time sexbots are possible, AI will be able to out-argue anyone.

A sexbot, an extremely charming person, linked up to an AI that can out-debate anyone will be great for persuading people to change their view.

Honestly it's a lost cause. Absolutely nothing will fix it, nothing can fix it, there is no point even talking about it. Its a burn everything down and start from scratch complete problem.

IF we had to limit our discussion to things anyone can fix, 99% of this site would not exist , or pundits for that matter.

I think a differentiator is that political/institution change can change a lot of things absent of burning it all down, which I am not all that confident is possible in this case. The root of the problem is the OLD cat being let out of the bag and it's nth order effects, and there is just about nothing to do about that.

Long term wireheaded by a constant tide of AI generated porn/chatbot GFs and vidya until either substance abuse, general ill health or suicide do them in. There are enough anesthetizing distractions and vices in the world now to keep them in a placid stupor, occasional incel rampage notwithstanding that's only going to become moreso the case.

E. replied to wrong comment, meant for f3zinker

Male loneliness: Porn/AI companionship/tailored OnlyFans content. Bona fide prostitution where it's legal.

Male violence as a result of loneliness: I was going to go for an easy slam dunk, but the literature is unclear here. It appears that the proportion of young males is a stronger predictor of political violence than whether they are married or not. Barring that caveat, women exclusive spaces (i.e gyms/classes/... workplaces..?), burbclave type housing arrangements. Maybe easier to just hope unmarried does predict political violence and go short political stability and long volatility.

Mating malaise: dating apps that "solve" this (expect the bizarre proliferation of feature equivalent but community disjoint dating apps to continue), private colleges (already predominantly female, many there essentially just as an exercise in rubber-stamping and with the hope of finding a husband that's not from their hometown shithole), startups that will "solve" fertility crises (I expect government funding for these to explode in the next 2 decades or so)

It’s a recurring theme on this site, and was one on the subreddit, that a) engaging in casual sex is not in women’s overall interest, and is ultimately self-defeating b) in fact, the Sexual Revolution in itself largely screwed women over c) much of sex-negative feminist activism is an understandable, but nevertheless unproductive and ultimately also self-defeating response to this realization on the part of many women. We know that multiple members keep making this argument. I suppose they believe that, in an ideal world, women would realize this, change their behavior accordingly, and social norms would then change. So, theoretically speaking, this change could indeed happen. However, it’s not clear to me how this would actually happen. We know that the bygone patriarchy was basically a sex cartel, but overall conditions were radically different then. And any attempt to form a price cartel results in a price war. A bunch of women refraining from casual sex will not change much, as obviously the men who were using them for casual sex will just select different women for the same purpose, and I’m not sure the former group of women would willingly opt to become celibate. Also, this would change nothing regarding women’s over ability and skillset to elicit commitment from men they find worthy.

However, it’s not clear to me how this would actually happen.

Some stabs at the issue:

Cultural campaign. Documentaries on female victims of Tindr, documentaries on men who use it as a pussy delivery service, relentless full-spectrum bullying of all pro-casual sex advocates through means both fair (science, arguments) and unfair (memes), etc.

Promoting realistic dating arrangements, working out an incentive structure for a dating site that'd facilitate relationships, banning dating sites with other incentive structures, etc.

Poster above suggested the childless aunt or the millennial mother (who had friends that really struggled) could be the solution.

It’s a recurring theme on this site, and was one on the subreddit

I'm fully aware of that, in fact, I myself recurred it 3 times since moving off Reddit.

As a response to your comment, I understand the summary and I agree with the gist and direction hence my doomerist positon on this matter.

hat i always found frustrating with the mainstream progressive view of this matter is that they seem hell bent on blaming Men for this problem. Greg Matos, who wrote this (in)famous article which pretty much embodies the progressive view on the matter, has stated: “Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships.

Are women blamed for anything?

From the first pew research link and another one. The people who are most likely to be single are men who are: Black, young, only highschool educated, low income, and living with mom and pops

not surprising, low social value

Perhaps a bit of a divergent, but the entire dilemma has led me to a larger question of how much of life success (in dating, in work, in school) amounts to hard work. There was a post about on star slate codex sub reddit about how good IQ was at predicting life success.

Hard work is important but insufficient. Talent is more important than hard work, followed by parental/family wealth (has to be a lot, like millions) a close second, and then a good education for third.

Not to mention all the discussions being had about how race impacts such outcomes. Id be interested if there was some huge of huge meta study done on what percentage of these factors (IQ, class, race, gender, ect) all impact your chances at life success,

Lots of studies showing positive correlation between IQ and all sorts of desirable outcomes in life. The Terman study is a major one.

Are women blamed for anything?

Not collectively, but you can e.g. blame white women (even better: white feminists) or cis women for things, at least if you are a woman yourself. By default, women have a stronger association with most positive traits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect

Perhaps a bit of a divergent, but the entire dilemma has led me to a larger question of how much of life success (in dating, in work, in school) amounts to hard work.

I think that while that is an interesting question, a better idea would be to see if it possible to measure the predilection for hard work in the same way that we can measure IQ - a "HWQ" or some kind of general "hard work" factor. Seeing just how heritable that factor would be, how it is distributed among races/social groups/class/gender/sex/ideology would be incredibly interesting, but I don't know if there's any actual literature on the subject yet.

I think you won't find HWQ (conscientousness?) to be the deciding factor in life success. If you don't have high IQ, high HWQ will make you a great cog in the machine, but a cog you will be until you die. You won't slide down the class totem pole, but you won't rise up either. Which is not bad at all if you've been born a PMC and terrible if you've been born a working poor.

Ehh — plumbers make a good living. I am making the obvious American mistake of conflating class with wealth.

Plumbers may not be high class(and among the other skilled trades they are distinctly known for poor management of their personal lives and getting divorced a lot), but they live a pretty nice life.

Oh, I absolutely agree on that front - I don't believe that IQ itself is an unalloyed good, and it isn't like there'd be a single optimal value for HWQ either. A HWQ that was excessively high would absolutely cause problems, albeit different ones to if it was too low.

Seems to me that women are behaving rationally.

-having kids & taking care of them properly is insanely hard work compared to white collar labor. It's rewarding, but so is a successful career, or having interesting hobbies, or alternately partying & getting stoned all the time

-you can simply chose not to have kids due to high-quality birth control & safe+legal abortion, no need to be sexually abstinant like in the bad old days

-if you're just having sex for pleasure, a lot of the utility of monogamous relationships is lost.

That following their modern sexual incentives leaves a good 30-50% of men out in the cold, is simply not women's problem.

Men might make it their problem eventually - failing any big changes, getting outnumbered & overrun by a pro-natalist culture seems inevitable. But there are some big changes in the pipeline (notably AI, sexbots and artifical wombs) which have a high probability of obviating the whole discussion.

Meh, im skeptical, for one, as tough as raising them is, your boss and coworkers are likely not gonna be there for you like a relative would be. (and the partying thing seems to be on the decline among younger generations)

There are still women who want to have kids and many (if not most) perfer relationship sex over casual. They just are having trouble receiving relationships from the high class men they desire. And letting pro-natalist cultures take over isnt gonna be in their interests, considering the barbaric nature of a lot of them.

There are still women who want to have kids

Yeah, I suspect that a ton of women are just childless due to bad circumstances, not actually Chelsea Handler-level, "ideological" antinatalism - people who do define themselves by their work and/or against child-bearing.

The longer people wait to get married the shorter the window for kids. Some people will just miss out. Then what are you gonna do? Feel like you live with a hole in your life? Might as well cheer the Handler-types.

having kids & taking care of them properly is insanely hard work compared to white collar labor. It's rewarding, but so is a successful career, or having interesting hobbies, or alternately partying & getting stoned all the time

I see this stated all the time, but it seems like a leftish version of copium to me. Women, particularly 30+ are increasingly unhappy, and are not having the number of kids they want. The hard work of children is not eternal compared to white collar work (which I haven't heard any colleagues of friends rave about, outside of a few positions that less than ~1% of all people can even have). I think what we are actually seeing is just confusion by all people in the 12-30 year old age range. I mean, for most people, work is work with little reward aside from bare sustenance. I even recall a bunch of girls in my HS AP/Honors courses basically 2 decades ago joking about how student loans were looming to cripple their entire life dreams. And that was 2 decades ago when tuition was much smaller, and the number of men for them at uni was much better.

What has actually happened? IMO it is that the US education industry is now almost fully a grifting parasite on the country. This was starting at least in the 80s, had become fully realized by 2000, and is now in a behemoth state (while still growing). On top of that, dating apps and social media generally have unleashed the most self destructive decision making of both sexes, unfortunately for women, these generally fall harder on them long term.

This is the bit I really don't get: women are spoiled because they go to college, we'd all be better off if women only got high school education. So what about men? Are men spoiled by going to college? Would the world work better if men could only get to high school, too?

Because that really seems to be pushing for the "older guys get the younger women" model; the woman gets married or partnered off pretty soon after high school, which means in effect needs an older guy with a decent earning capacity to support the family. This leaves the 20-25 year old men still out in the cold, unless we say that "20 year old guy can date 16 year old high schooler" and maybe be the partner/spouse for her when she's 20 and he's out of college and getting that first job.

Or maybe not.

Because this works both ways: if men of all ages are most attracted to the 20+ age range in women, then the most competition will be for women in that age range, and if women have a greater choice, then they'll pick the better choice (the same way that if men had a range of attractive women to choose from, they'll pick the most attractive, and not the Plain Jane with the lovely personality but she has a squint and facial hair). If older men are chasing younger women and not women in their own age range, what do you do? I see a lot of online talk about women hitting the wall at [early age], so you're asking older men to 'settle' for the less attractive women (less attractive because older). I don't think that is going to work, either.

College is generally destructive signaling. It would be better if we could just let high school students put their SATs / GPAs / coursework on CVs and go from there.

This is the bit I really don't get: women are spoiled because they go to college, we'd all be better off if women only got high school education. So what about men? Are men spoiled by going to college? Would the world work better if men could only get to high school, too?

Certain degrees spoil you a lot more than other degrees, and women disproportionately do degrees that are personally destructive. I agree women shouldn't be prevented from going to college but we need to (gender neutrally) discourage a large portion of degrees and make them unviable unless the person is coming from a well off enough background that even after the damage of the degree they have a personal/familial safety net strong enough to support them.

So what about men? Are men spoiled by going to college? Would the world work better if men could only get to high school, too?

Most men that go to college, yes. Our college enrollment is at least 75% spoilage.

Oh, it's pretty obvious that western society is currently in a transition state from monogamy to polygamy where desirable/powerful men will have multiple female partners while a large portion of men will have to do without.

In the end such a state only benefits these powerful men, women are by and large hurt by polygamy (bigamy laws are generally seen as a way to protect women) because it means the moment her partner gets successful enough he's gonna take on a second/third wife (or rather a concubine these days, no need to marry and risk losing assets in a divorce when you can discard them like a used condom when you're tired of them) because the societal taboo against it has been dropped. Naturally this limits how successful a woman can become through marrying well, because if her choice ends up doing really well she now has to spilt the rewards between other women too.

And all I can say, after seeing the state of modern western women, is that they absolutely, 100% deserve it.

Moral acceptance of polygamy is going up in the US (bolding mine):

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/313112/understanding-increase-moral-acceptability-polygamy.aspx

But what fascinates me as much as anything else is the trend on polygamy. When Gallup first included polygamy on the list in 2003, 7% of Americans said it was morally acceptable, and that fell to 5% in 2006. But over the past decade, this percentage has gradually increased -- moving into double digits in 2011, reaching 16% in 2015, and this year, at 20%, the highest in our history. In short, there has been a fourfold increase in the American public's acceptance of polygamy in about a decade and a half.

Notably from the graph in the post you can see almost all of this increase happened in the 2010s, the time when cultural shifts really started accelerating.

Now this still isn't much, and there is natural variance in polls and just because something is seen as more acceptable doesn't mean more of it is actually happening, but equally I didn't say that we're having lots of polygamy right and now, just that we're transitioning from a state where it was very taboo to one where it is little more of an eye raiser than performing fellatio (something that was also taboo many decades ago but is now accepted).

That'd be my guess too (although I'd argue "rural", as they spent most of that time living in Vegas and Flagstaff, unless you're thinking of a different reality show/polygamist family than I am). One wonders if the sentiment will shift now that 3/4ths of said polygamist family relationship has now been loudly detonating, catching fire and leaking radiation all over the tabloid press...

In the end such a state only benefits these powerful men, women are by and large hurt by polygamy (bigamy laws are generally seen as a way to protect women) because it means the moment her partner gets successful enough he's gonna take on a second/third wife (or rather a concubine these days, no need to marry and risk losing assets in a divorce when you can discard them like a used condom when you're tired of them) because the societal taboo against it has been dropped.

That sounds like France for generations. I sometimes wonder if it would be a scandal for a French president to NOT have a mistress, but I doubt that we'll ever know.

Rationally according to what? Yeah, I get it, they're 'rationally' maximising their economic potential. But who decided that this was a goal worth pursing in the first place? What makes it rational? Because based on the societal outcomes we're now all staring down at, it doesn't seem rational it all. Least (most?) of all because it seems to be making most women actually miserable (and men, but no one gives a shit about them).

I seriously wonder if the rise of 'bullshit jobs' and 'imposter syndrome' is directly and primarily related to the mass entry (and in many cases, favourable entry) of women into the workforce. Mass female participation into the workforce has caused an overwhelming surplus in low-level white collar and clerical work, and necessitated the creation of large amounts of bullshit jobs of no or negative economic value that simply exist to soothe women's egos (and men to a lesser extent). After all, feminism and liberal society told women at large that they should be entering the workforce and become economically self-sufficient (family? who needs that) if at least for their own benefit (because being mutually dependent with your husband is oppression!) . But what do you do if you don't actually really need all those women in the workforce? Even today we see the huge glut of communications and arts graduates dominated by women.

It's also not obvious to me that this arrangement is at all economically optimal on a macro, societal scale. Women being primarily homemakers does have macro economic value, it's just hard to quantify (I wonder if anyone actually has tried to quantify it from an objective, non-feminist-screed 'men are stealing women's labour!' perspective). It's amazing about how parents (single or otherwise) will go to work, only to spend a huge amount of their income to pay someone else to look after their kid... so they can go to work. Childcare and schools are struggling both financially and functionally in large part because they are expected to parent children in place of now busy parents. Wage stagnation may be (partially) caused by in huge influx of labour this is essentially doubling your available labour. To say nothing of the second and third order effects, like from not having a declining fertility rate, children having a more stable upbringing, fostering a better sense of community, mental wellbeing, healthy homecooking etc.

I feel like your point holds through till about 30ish, then they realize the biological window on having children is shutting rapidly (since they'd always wanted them, just assumed it'd be in some sort of nebulous '5 years from now when I'm more settled and met Mr. Right) and then it gets dramatic.

This is slowly being snuffed out by a litany of articles about how "40 is the new 30" and by stories about that one aunt who had babies at 45. If I were still a leftie, I'd speculate it's to sell costly fertility treatments to the white collar demographic.

Seems to me that women are behaving rationally.

And yet... they're not getting what they want?

https://www.nber.org/papers/w29893

They're reporting more mental disorders?

https://www.northwell.edu/katz-institute-for-womens-health/articles/womens-mental-health-crisis

They're likewise using more antidepressant and similar drugs to cope?

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db377.htm

What has this rational behavior gotten them?

It is very easy to desire things, even good things, that are ultimately detrimental. This isn't a problem with women in particular; it's a problem with humans.

What i always found frustrating with the mainstream progressive view of this matter is that they seem hell bent on blaming Men for this problem.

Nothing new, we've been discussing this a lot recently. Like I said the last time: «The notion that men can be genuinely not guilty of some failure relating to relations of sexes – whether to score or to sire – is about as far outside the Overton window as HBD. ... [from the progressive point of view] It can't be that the solution lies in any conceivable change to female behavior, except even more emancipation, even greater triumph over toxic masculinity.» A small update:

CNN reports on South Korea breaking its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate:

The national statistics body reported Wednesday that the fertility rate, or the average number of children expected per woman, fell to 0.78 in 2022 – down from 0.81 the previous year.

South Korea’s birth rate has been falling since 2015 and the country recorded more deaths than births for the first time in 2020, a trend that has continued since.

In 2022, the country recorded about 249,000 births and 372,800 deaths.

Experts say the reasons for these demographic shifts across the region include demanding work cultures, stagnating wages, rising costs of living, changing attitudes toward marriage and gender equality, and rising disillusionment among younger generations.

But despite the economic factors at play, throwing money at the problem has proved ineffective. Last September, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol admitted that more than $200 billion has been spent trying to boost the population over the past 16 years.

The South Korean government has introduced various initiatives such as extending paid paternity leave, offering monetary “baby vouchers” to new parents, and social campaigns encouraging men to contribute to childcare and housework.

But experts and residents say more support is needed throughout a child’s life – as well as change on several deep-rooted social issues. For instance, South Korean society still frowns on single parents, with IVF treatment not available to single women.

Couples in non-traditional partnerships also face discrimination; South Korea does not recognize same-sex marriage and regulations make it difficult for unwed couples to adopt.

I believe these stupid remedies can only change things at the margins (at best; how many lesbian Korean couples do you think will have more than 1 child? how many even are there?), will flop, and South Korean nation will continue to age and die off, at the annual rate of 0.23% now, 0.75% in two decades. This effortpost by @gorge suffices to show that doubling down on feminism to solve this is an implausible tactic which can only convince people who would advocate feminism and broader progressivism in response to any problem from high interest rates to unaligned AI. But what is not clear is: how many of those suggestions are made by women? Or by men keeping emotional reactions of unserious women in mind when they do analysis? I think the answer is «most if not all».

Peter Thiel has opined once to the effect that female enfranchisement has made capitalist democracy impossible. He later defended himself with a series of excuses about the specificity of his complaint, but I think it does make democracy non-viable in many other senses too. Indeed I believe that democracy, as commonly implemented, only works in the first place with very specific samples of mostly Western populations; it's an exception, not the rule.*

The problem here is that democracy is largely about bargaining, and women – speaking in generalities, of course – bargain in all markets with the assumption that they can get the price down to zero, if not for the greed of the other party. They are even less interested in object-level constraints than men; they insist that their preferred arrangement is objectively fair and true even when it's clearly no longer viable, and will shoot down any arrangement that includes what they understand as redistributing some of their powers back to men; and they will demand of men to aid them in shooting it down; and men will be proud to assist, because being of use to women is the measure of their worth. Ultimately this is just a product of what Doolittle calls female magical thinking:

Causes and Evidence of Female "Magical Thinking"

THE SCIENCE:

\1) Conflating what they wish for with what is and what is possible.

\2) The general tendency of women to confuse what is Desirable/Undesirable with what is True/False. Or, more directly, stating their wants are truths of the world, rather than just wants of their own.

\3) The universal tendency (demonstrated in this video) of women to engage in NAXALT/AXALT: Not all X are like that, All X are like that, or more precisely, to ignore a distribution to justify an outlier, or to use an outlier in order to falsify a distribution.

These --XALTs are both forms of denial. In other words (get ready) the woman's cognition evolves to justify her feelings and NOT adapt to existential reality.

Why? They are exporting satisfaction of their emotional demands onto others: MEN. (Yes really).

This is the science, and it's exasperating. Why? We no longer use older sisters, mothers, grandmothers, and aunts to cause women to self-regulate their magical thinking.

And their magical thinking evolved in order to generate demand from men to satisfy them .... in exchange for affection and sex. Sorry. :(

Yes, I cringe at his presentation as well. We don't get to have our edgelords obsessed with reiterating copybook headings be smooth communicators: all such people are safely employed at fitting unworkable but politically attractive solutions into powerpoint presentations.

But perhaps I'd not have cringed so hard if I were even less concerned about women rolling their eyes.

It's hard to say what the solution could even look like. Doolittle gestures in the direction of older women who used to throw some cold water on the delusion of girls, keeping the tendency of demand inflation in check. I suppose this is the sort of cultural ability that is non-recoverable once it's been lost.

* This isn't to say that e.g. authoritarianism works «better» elsewhere, in whatever meaning of the word. It may be that many societies are in terminal decline, like a human with multiple organ failure, and have no workable regime option to save themselves. Their democracies will result in inane populism, either progressive or reactionary, and their reactionary populism will bring forth a literally catastrophically incompetent rule – like Turks have recently learned, perhaps to a good effect we'll see in May elections, perhaps to no avail.

The notion that men can be genuinely not guilty of some failure relating to relations of sexes – whether to score or to sire – is about as far outside the Overton window as HBD. ... [from the progressive point of view] It can't be that the solution lies in any conceivable change to female behavior, except even more emancipation, even greater triumph over toxic masculinity.

This reminds me of this CNN story from a while back about why men are leaving the workforce. They try to present a rosy answer: women are entering the workforce and smashing the patriarchy in male dominated fields, and they're so successful at it that they've managed to reverse gender roles to get their husbands to stay at home and look after the kids. But this is just a minority in millions. The vast majority of this trend is actually driven by low social status and decline in marriages. I often wonder if they genuinely believe this or if it's just damage control.

So do you think we would be better with a complete break between the idea of relationships and the idea of what it really comes down to - the feminist critique of marriage being "exchanging sex for meat"? Men and women are all perceived as economic factors, and if men want sex they don't bother with dates or relationships, they patronise sex workers where the transaction is overt and there is no confusion about who does what or pays for what. If the expectation is "the man buys dinner, the woman pays him back with sex", then dump all that and just "the man is horny, he buys a sex worker for however long, no hurt expectations or mismatches".

Women have their own thing, they enjoy working and status that way. Everybody knows their position and role. If marriage is still considered a necessary thing, back to the old days of families making alliances without emotional entanglements. But why is marriage necessary? If society wants children, the stigma around single motherhood is gone, and perhaps we'll get the artificial wombs and IVF babies gestated in them and brought up by government creches.

Because reading all the screeds about "it's so unfair! women have all the power! they should lose all their rights and be forced back to the days of exchanging sex for meat so that men can have a fuckdoll of their own at home for their own exclusive use!" makes me wonder why women would want to get married in the first place.

  • -11

So do you think we would be better with a complete break between the idea of relationships and the idea of what it really comes down to - the feminist critique of marriage being "exchanging sex for meat"?

I believe that relationships do not «really» come down to that, and haven't in a long while, at least two generations or so: the feminist critique is delusional, exploitative and made in bad faith. Mind you, I come from a society where «patriarchy» has been dead for four generations at least, but I think the principle holds.

More importantly I argue that women have trouble with good faith in general, and we (defined as «people who are good-faith, self-aware actors discussing this issue») need to acknowledge that the main problem is the impossibility of convincing (at any politically relevant scale) women in modern societies that the ball is in their court, and fixing those lesser intersexual problems – TFR, sexlessness, relationships, marriages, divorces, whatever – necessitates either a rollback of feminism, or directly burdening women with specific responsibilities they currently do not bear. Maybe men too, but women – absolutely.

This root problem expresses itself in the form of literally all remedies that make it to mainstream discussion being premised on women rationally reacting to circumstances imposed on them, and men being ignorant and/or actively making things worse. One side receives maximum charity, the other is given, frankly, a very imaginative treatment. Women, we are told, are worried about costs of living and stagnant wages, career opportunities and iniquities; men give up on marriage, selfishly play vidya, voluntarily join alpha male incel organizations. As a consequence, all proposed remedies amount to convincing men to stop being such horrible manchildren, and redistributing some more resources and political prestige to women; there are edge cases like extending paternity leave, but they address practically irrelevant scenarios. This is a paradigm which follows from the impenetrable female assumption of innocent victimhood and – ironically – delusion of being an object acted upon by external [male] forces, not a subject possessing power and burdened with responsibility for the status quo. Democracy only makes sense among subjects who are and acknowledge being this way.

Women have their own thing, they enjoy working and status that way.

Antidepressant prescription statistics and palpable increase in mental illness among millennial women point in the direction of them not really enjoying the status quo, but okay.

if men want sex they don't bother with dates or relationships, they patronise sex workers where the transaction is overt and there is no confusion about who does what or pays for what

I suppose that happens. We can leave aside for now the question of the sort of relationships practiced by women who are sex workers (i.e. OnlyFans models). What do you think happens when men want committed relationships, not «fuck dolls», but cannot get it because they're deemed not good enough by the «sexual market»? They are too lazy/stupid/infantile to dress up and shave and get a job, right. And also, too entitled to aim lower and go for the fat/old/homely/crazy chick, if I remember your previous posts correctly. There is someone for everyone; opting out of the deal is on men, the infamously choosy and needy sex (cue «attractiveness rating distributions» meme). That is, they make the unreasonable choice and sabotage themselves (and the whole of society while they're at it), while women merely act according to the situation.

Thanks for the illustration of the principle.

You know, the discussion here, including your responses, has inspired me to write a... powerologist post, one could say. But it's a third-rate idea, so here goes the sketch:

Ability to publicly make unreasonable demands is the measure of social power

«Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely» – they say. What does absolute power look like, and the absolute corruption? The common trope is a petty, deluded tyrant who demands implausible efforts from his underlings – and punishes them for understandable failures, casually taking out his irritation. Someone too egocentric to conceive of limits to servitude other than obedience; someone who has either dispensed with empathy, caution and rationality necessary at the stage of gaining loyal followers and acquiring power, or has been born into it. A cartoonish psychopath; a pampered brat from a rich family, abusing terrified servants; a third-rate dictator sending waves of human flesh into the high-tech grinder and lashing out at his peons when this doesn't produce the desired victory. Or the Emperor's demanding consort in a Chinese drama.

I think this is the natural state of mature power that has hit its apparent ceiling, the greedy exploitative mode – that thing which the intelligent will-to-power we know in ambitious politicians, warlords and startup CEOs decays into. And in a world where all women are queens by political fiat, all women are born into power, thus – all will be absolutely corrupted and not amenable to persuasion.

Then again, as @2rafa points out, all this may be just irrelevant in the world of short timelines, or relevant but not enough to be worth spending my time or my weirdness credit on.

And in a world where all women are queens by political fiat, all women are born into power, thus – all will be absolutely corrupted and not amenable to persuasion.

Queens of what? Ourselves? The question of whether we are going to gestate an entire baby with all the physical and mental changes that implies?

Well, if you think that you should have control over that, then I think it's pretty clear which of us is the one with unreasonable dictatorial aspirations.

  • -14

Violations of the principle "My body, my choice" are only ever considered "unreasonable" and "dictatorial" when they come in form of protections of bodily autonomy for preborn children.

A suicide attempt leading to one being put in a mental institution, drug use to a prison sentence, unvaccination to house arrest, are considered reasonable uses of state power, despite each instance on its own killing much fewer unconsenting people.

Not even illegal drug use, the west doesn't accept "my body, my choice" as being a valid reason for me to use whichever antibiotic whenever I want.

Or if I want to speed up my muscle-gaining journey with Testosterone, many such cases. It's okay if a girl wants to become a boy though.

Atleast with antibiotics they can gesture towards you trying to create some sort of superbug intentionally or not, what can possibly go wrong with Testosterone? Its not like I cant kill myself with bleach.

Queens of what?

Beats me. Maybe queens of slay. Like all such popular slogans expressing the feminist ideal of limitless empowerment, I find it ridiculous, a facet of a promise that is unwarrantable at scale, and inevitably leads to disillusionment and personal failure.

Well, if you think that you should have control over that

I love the indignation here. Indeed, who am I to dare think... think what? It's very quickly traced from the underdefined abstract claim («women should accept responsibility for the reproduction of the group») to the specific attack on personal agency, indeed an assault: that @gemmaem should be forced to bear a baby. (Probably my baby? Some incel's baby? Yuck!) @FarNearEverywhere, to whom I was responding, offers another charming strawman:

it's so unfair! women have all the power! they should lose all their rights and be forced back to the days of exchanging sex for meat so that men can have a fuckdoll of their own at home for their own exclusive use!

What to do! When one side has a game-breaking move «act as if you are afraid of rape», burned into the brainstem and summoned frivolously – no discourse is possible.

My intuitive ideal is maximum agency and optionality for every individual that the society can sustain, in terms of actual material opportunities and not bickering over spoils in a zero-sum squabble. Honestly, if it were possible, I'd have relieved you, and everyone else, of the necessity to gestate an entire baby (or part of a baby, I guess). But surprisingly, women aren't too enthusiastic about artificial womb research either, despite attempts to frame it as an empowering development. Imagine if I suggested that, say, @2rafa's list, admittedly uncomfortably hardcore even for me, is augmented as follows: childless people who are otherwise subject to those career-damaging sanctions and prohibitive taxes can instead 1) postpone their reproduction, 2) pay directly to the «national ectogenesis fund» and 3) commit to have a child once the technology is ready. Men and women alike.

Do you think this would've been politically feasible?

And thanks for another illustration.

Well, since you can't even explain what power it is that women have that you're complaining about, I suppose there is no substance here for me to argue with. You've made one vague gesture towards @2rafa's list of admirably gender-neutral constraints while simultaneously declaring it, understandably, "too hardcore."

You can't even really articulate the premise on which your misogyny rests, let alone substantiate it.

  • -12

I think I explain it well enough. I can try to explain again from first principles. Power is asymmetry of control between agents. Power of women specifically is the power to tank any political project they don't like (say, one increasing men's rights) and shut down a discussion they don't favor (say, one casting women in unflattering light) with a gratuitous refusal to compromise or engage in good faith; the essence of this is captured in twitter catchphrases like «this makes me feel unsafe», or in your behavior toward me here. It is power because it reliably, irrespective of merits of each case, extracts sympathy out of women and out of men, producing a predictable asymmetry and skewing outcomes. This power is an active application of the well-known "women are wonderful" effect, which is in turn explained by evolutionary dynamics created by parental investment inequality, which you have already alluded to (but which, in modern society, doesn't necessarily hold outside of the context of gestation).

The premise of my «misogyny», or actually my argument about there being no realistic solution to undesirable societal effects of feminism, is that women (except members of retrograde religious societies), with you being an apt example, feel entitled to behave this way toward interlocutors, for good reason, namely that «the society» simultaneously encourages this self-serving mean-girl behavior and pretends it's compatible with the authority of an adult.

I will opt out of substantiating the link between feminism and adverse effects discussed (disproportionate, growing inability of young men to form relationships, high divorce rate, low TFR, etc.) because, again, I think the effortpost by @gorge, linked above, suffices as an introduction.

If I were to propose anything like a plan to «impose responsibility» on women in the intended sense, it'd be not so much about me being in control of your womb, «sex for meat» and other blatantly hostile potshots you ladies have come up with, as about nationalism and extended families, in following with the only example of a large, prosperous secular society without those issues that I know. Naturally I also know this cannot be engineered. 2rafa's plan, on top of being hardcore, is also unworkable, at least not in a democratic society.

Power of women specifically is the power to tank any political project they don't like (say, one increasing men's rights) and shut down a discussion they don't favor (say, one casting women in unflattering light) with a gratuitous refusal to compromise or engage in good faith;

Still a bit light on the details. Are you too afraid of my mean-girl power to explain which men's rights women are taking away, or would you be willing to elaborate?

As for "casting women in an unflattering light," well, your premise that women are too mean and irrational to be allowed to participate in politics certainly does that! And I suppose you will claim that any counterargument that I make is merely an appeal to "women are wonderful." But I think my conduct speaks for itself, to any reasonable observer. Your accusation of habitual bad-faith argumentation on my part is unfounded.

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You may have already encountered it, but if not I think you will enjoy this article by Richard Hanania: https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/womens-tears-win-in-the-marketplace

Imagine if I suggested that, say, @2rafa's list, admittedly uncomfortably hardcore even for me, is augmented as follows: childless people who are otherwise subject to those career-damaging sanctions and prohibitive taxes can instead 1) postpone their reproduction, 2) pay directly to the «national ectogenesis fund» and 3) commit to have a child once the technology is ready. Men and women alike.

This list isn't even all that terrible. If someone wants to live a barebones 33rd percentile Western life they can still do so pretty easily childless under this regime. And this list doesn't force @gemmaem or anyone else to have children, all it does is impose a requirement that if people want to enjoy the upper echelons of the fruits of modern society, they do their part in contributing to its continuation.

Beats me. Maybe queens of slay.

I love your writing, man. But do me a favour and finally get off that arse of yours and write a novel. Pains me to see this generation's Dostojewski wasted on internet bullshit, even though it's highly entertaining.

I mean, would it even be a novel, or just an autobiography with some Magical Realism injected into it? Dase certainly has the classical cynicism of the greats of the past, combined with the profound-yet-puerile attitude found in Russian moderns, IMO.

Queens of what?

That's the question, isn't it, much more general than just the fertility topic. Every young woman is relentlessly reminded that she is a Qween who Slaaaaayyys, and anything countering that narrative is absolutely haram. But where is her dominion? What does she slay?

Consider this pop hit. #13 on Billboard, on the chart for half a year. If the men do all the work of enthroning the women, then the women will do their part by consuming luxuries and dancing. This is what passes for "female empowerment".

Gosh, people are writing pop songs that are power fantasies! Sometimes they even write them about women. What is the world coming to?

Come on, there's no substance here.

Come on, there's no substance here.

That's exactly the point. The power fantasy leaves "vapid" in the dust to dwell firmly in the realm of "hilariously fucking stupid", and there's no counter-balancing, reality-checking criticism because Women Are Wonderful, and any such efforts code as mean. This seems to result in a situation where middle school power fantasies are normalized and "respectable" for women in a way that they aren't for men. In the real world, we mock mall ninjas and weaboos, and some of them manage to get the message and grow up a little. Imagine if every pop song, social media outlet, movie and TV show was hammering young men with the message that they were Sons of Heaven and they should just Dragonball Z scream to unleash their warrior spirits at the school marms who oppress their divinely-blessed existence. Somehow, I don't think that would help them become sane, pro-social, reality-based members of society, I think it would foster mental illness, delusion and severely arrested development.

Male power fantasies in fiction are still very common, I think you'll find. There's an entire section of literary criticism in which the ur-narrative is The Hero's Journey. Being the Son of Heaven or some other kind of Chosen One comes standard.

Reality is, ultimately, its own check on these things, I think. Most women know they aren't actually queen of very much. Time comes for us all, and most of us grow. Some of us still like to imagine being Batman now and then while we're at it, and that's okay.

I think it might actually be harder to mock women for not being powerful just because, unlike men, we're not failing in our gender role by lacking power. Which isn't fair to men, that they should be mocked for not aligning with a gender role, but I think some of the difference that you are seeing actually comes from there.

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Power fantasies are not good for the soul, male or female. They poison the mind.

Every man implicitly knows that to obtain the power fantasy he has to get on the sigma grindset. Think of rap songs, they might potray the power fantasy of endless 'money,bitches and clout' to a young black man, but he knows that he would have to 'hustle' his way there. No man is under the impression that they can be James Bond just by being male.

Whilst female power fantasies are targeted at the modal female, and there is no pretense that the power has to be acquired or that not everyone can have it. It's just girl power, because girl.

I've been shilling TLP a lot lately, but once again he is on the mark. https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/01/no_self-respecting_woman_would.html

Queens of what?

Narcissism and entitlement. A person who believes themselves royalty without a fiefdom is insufferable.

I have a pretty major dog in this fight, but I think you're being somewhat uncharitable here. I observe the dynamics @DaseinudstriesLtd describes IRL. They are obviously not universal to women, there being exceptions and the whole thing being on a gradient rather than binary as always, but it's certainly an existing and very noticeable trend in which women come to believe that they naturally deserve better than they manage to work or negotiate for, in ways that would make any man seem ridiculous.

I think there are many, many people in the world who think they deserve more than they have, certainly. It's fair to say that those people's self-evaluation is frequently questionable. I don't think this tendency is confined to women, though, nor do I think it is more out of control in women than in men. There are some areas where it is more tolerated in men (especially if those men are already high status), and others where it is more tolerated in women (especially if those women are already high status).

Here's the heart of the matter: women actually have some evidence that they are worth more than they can get. We're talking about dating here, correct? Not about salary, workplace respect, etc.: sex and dating. Women aren't campaigning for equality in this realm of life, are they? No.

The evidence being her individual popularity on dating sites. An unlimited supply of men who express interest in her sexually. You would instantly understand how this would affect the self-evaluation of a man if it were happening to him, if there were an endless queue of women waiting for their chance with him.

The problem: this doesn't actually indicate a woman's SMV. A possible solution to this would be to indicate a woman's percentile rank to her on the app (I think OnlyFans does this?). Though this might be so damaging to the female psyche that no woman woman with an average rank would subject herself to it. Maybe not, if they're really looking for love.

I think OnlyFans does this?

Yes, OF and other sites in the space will tell you what percentage you're in. I've heard that it's trivial to get into the top 1% of all creators on OF or Fansly, but it's going beyond that into the decimals that makes you truly special.

I suppose this is to say that maybe it's not worth bothering with, then.

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Agree that a sense of entitlement is pretty universal, and I assume is socially mediated rather than caused by one's sex. That said I think it's an easy case to make, however, that this is split along gendered lines. (I will try to pull only from my understanding of the literature surrounding psychological differences between the sexes without leaning on any evopsych mumbo jumbo)

Men resent and will misrepresent, to themselves and others, in no particular order and by no means exhaustive, their immaturity/narrow shoulders/weak chin/small stature/small penis/wispy facial hair/flabby body or physical weakness/getting outskilled in sport.

Similarly, but sitting on the other end of the binary, women resent and misrepresent their current or historical romantic partner(s)/or lack thereof/social status/getting old/looking shabby/compensating with make-up/small breasts/thick waist/narrow hips.

All of these things are in common as they're all measures used (often unconsciously) to judge reproductive and general fitness (I'm certain the specific features in question vary from one culture to another, and I don't think there's a good reason to obsess over at least the immutable ones) in a sexual dimorphism-specific context. An introspective or anxious person paying close attention might notice themselves automatically running this sort of checklist against themselves (or their friends/enemies) from time to time, without ever appearing in your "cone of consciousness". Any perceived attack along any one of these vectors is almost guaranteed to provoke an angry or upset response, and rightly so. It's taken, whether knowingly or not, as a direct challenge to one's own viability as a lifeform. If the charges are legitimate then one is offended multiply, if only because it rings in your own ear as the truth and should be taken to mean that you are, in fact, less fit along some dimension than your peers.

Because reading all the screeds about "it's so unfair! women have all the power! they should lose all their rights and be forced back to the days of exchanging sex for meat so that men can have a fuckdoll of their own at home for their own exclusive use!" makes me wonder why women would want to get married in the first place.

It makes me suspect that the weird "Women don't want commitment and children, men do" assumption that I see in a lot of discussions about birth rates are men trying to shift the sexual marketplace in their favour. It would be like women saying "Men don't really want sex, otherwise they'd become HVM and be begging us for marriage." (Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if some women on Female Dating Strategy think something like that.)

Human relationships don't always work Lion King style (male wants to play, needs to sort himself out for female to play with him, female plays with him to get commitment from HVM) but that's one of our better reproduction methods. It's certainly a lot more spiritually rich than arranged marriages, sex workers, IVF, or the hare-brained schemes I have come across online.

Is it manipulative? Only if people don't understand how the game works at some level, and pretty much every non-retarded neurotypical human does, if only subconsciously. And it incentivises not only reproduction, but character development by both partners - the male to develop an attractive personality, the female to develop a spine so that she isn't exploited by the process and to take the risk of having her heart broken.

  1. Marriage isn’t about the man or the woman; it is about the kids. The entire feminist framework is anti-kids because it shifts the framework from the kids to the woman (ie noticeably absent in your example about women exchanging sex for meat is the existence of kids).

  2. Sadly, stigma around single motherhood has reduced. While causality is difficult to fully untangle, it isn’t unreasonable to believe that kids have a mother and father at home is a net benefit. Moreover, that arrangement breeds purpose for the parents which helps build community.

  3. And that is something the entire discussion seems to miss. Community. It is funny irony because I think most progressives support communitarianism in principle but put forth ideas destructive to communities whereas most on the American right support policies that are in form individualistic but often go towards community building.

Stigma was never the primary problem with single motherhood.

I suppose this is the sort of cultural ability that is non-recoverable once it's been lost.

I am not sure about that. It is true that for past few generations, women were progressively more and more socialized into thinking that they can have it all. For so long as the societies drove on the fumes of old norms and habits, the fundamental falsehood of the notion was not obvious, but ultimately the reality will reassert itself. It might take one more generation, but already among millennials the failure to form families is extremely widespread. As these millennial women enter their 40s, and huge, double digit percentage of them never managed to form a family, they will become a huge cultural force, a massive living testament to the lie their generation was fed and eagerly believed.

For the generation after zoomers, these millennial women will serve as a clear, explicit warning sign of the peril that threatens them. The millennial mothers will know many other women of their generation who missed their chance to procreate, chasing the career goals, while overestimating their chances of snatching the top man and then failing to adjust to their increasingly precarious situation on the sexual marketplace. They will warn their daughters of this very real phenomenon, despite not being warned by their own mothers, as by that point it will be impossible to ignore, and impossible to pretend that they can expect to settle down into stable family with a high status man after a decade of whoring around and girlbossing.

As these millennial women enter their 40s, and huge, double digit percentage of them never managed to form a family, they will become a huge cultural force, a massive living testament to the lie their generation was fed and eagerly believed.

The last time we had this, with the excess women after the deaths in the Civil War, we got Prohibition. I think your take here is very optimistic. I think we're more likely to see a renewed movement to ban video games under the fig leafs of gambling and encouraging violence.

The last time we had this, with the excess women after the deaths in the Civil War, we got Prohibition

This tracks for WW1- 60 years after it wrapped up was 1978, and that was around the time we banned childhood and instituted punitive measures for men when they offend women.

This doesn't quite track for WW2, though- since 60 years after that was 2005. Maybe most of the really bad stuff that they wanted was already instituted so they didn't have much to try and solve, but the specifically-women-privileging movements were delayed by about 10 years after that.

I guess you could control for people living and working longer, but I'm not as sure this time, and it's also true that the the project over the time they were switching from second-wave to third-wave womanism was "don't arrest people or deal with the homeless, just let them be and it'll be fine"- but I'm not as convinced.

the time we banned childhood

I am not sure if you forgot a word here (pregnancy?) or if this is a crack at the Stranger Danger stuff that started the safetyism trend.

The latter, though economic circumstances arguably imposed the former anyway (TFR in 1978 was as low as it was 3 years ago).

When the social climate is "children are luxuries whose childhoods should be extended as long as possible" rather than "they need the opportunity to develop because our need for development requires adult men and women" it makes sense that certain factions would get non-trivial agreement if they started claiming that doing anything else was abuse.

Maybe we're lucky and they push to ban / restrict porn.

what Doolittle calls female magical thinking:

So, wishful thinking, but rebranded via the wishful-thinking of "surely it's just a female problem"? The irony is delicious.

Or, more directly, stating their wants are truths of the world, rather than just wants of their own.

Two days ago was the anniversary of the phrase "is it logical, is it truly logical that we really have a system that has to be 53 degrees to fly?", uttered by the manager of NASA's Solid Rocket Booster program, a month after an SRB failure at low temperatures had destroyed Challenger, two weeks after Feynman had demonstrated O-ring material becoming inflexible when chilled ... and maybe the commission was just giving Mulloy rope to hang himself, but nobody in the room full of men even stopped him to point out the logical fallacy!

\3) The universal tendency (demonstrated in this video) of women to engage in NAXALT/AXALT: Not all X are like that, All X are like that, or more precisely, to ignore a distribution to justify an outlier, or to use an outlier in order to falsify a distribution.

Yes, I am very strongly convinced that women have a stronger predisposition to wishful thinking, though of course men are not safe from it either, as my text implies («even less interested in object-level constraints than men»). It's based on repeatedly encountered cases like this, though I admit not having any systematic evidence at hand in favor.

I admit not having any systematic evidence at hand in favor

To be fair, I looked for systematic evidence one way or another and couldn't find any either, just a few studies with small self-selected samples, nothing I'd have said was definitive even if I had never heard the phrase "replication crisis". Most of the really extreme cases of wishful thinking I can think of come from men (how will communism work, exactly? let's just finish up the revolution and then the dialectic says things will all sort themselves out!) but that's the product of even more egregious selection bias. You'd think this would be low-hanging fruit to study, but I don't blame any psychologists who would rather find a less fraught question.

It's based on repeatedly encountered cases like this, though I admit not having any systematic evidence at hand in favor.

From the thread: "(...) there’s more variation within sexes than between sexes. Plenty of women are taller than plenty of men. Plenty of women are stronger than plenty of men. Plenty of women have vampire teeth. Plenty of men have nubbins."

How in the world has this come to pass as a valid argument? Among people who style themselves as scientists, no less? All you can deduce from "More variation of trait P within X than between X" is that X is a bad a priori proxy for P, not that the differences between types of X are negligible at the population level.

How in the world has this come to pass as a valid argument?

This line of reasoning which should probably be classified as a fallacy by now is mostly used when debating against HBD of the racial variety. But to a statistically illiterate "scientist" forget about statistically illiterate commentators, the urge to use that hammer is just too strong in any and all suggestion of group differences. Just shoddy pattern matching on their part.

To steelman them, it's a good enough retort to 'all X is more Y than all Z' [call this arg_P] claims, even though it doesn't address that claim centrally. This shoddy pattern matching completely falls on its face when you are dealing with any argument more sophisticated than arg_P.

E: Correction, There is a name for it, Lewontin's fallacy with T&C.

I agree with this nosology; she's a science communication major, a trained disinformation expert, so can probably recite her Boaz (and Gould, and Lewontin...) if woken in the dead of night.

But to be clear, her retort in the context of specific metrics mentioned in her tweet is plainly false, and would fail even against arg_P so long as it's prefixed with «almost». There isn't more variation within sexes than between sexes in terms of strength, as pointed out in comments and QTs. Racial IQ diffs have nothing on intersexual strength diffs. Effectively all men are stronger than effectively all women of the same age, or indeed of any age. Height difference is also greater than within-sex variance. This is obvious from everyday life, stuff like walking through a crowd, or reaching for a pickle jar and opening it for your mom/sis/gf/wife, and in my opinion shouldn't require citing any PrOoFs to be trusted; buy Razib Khan, in a now-deleted thread, says modern biologists are surprised and incredulous when they encounter this notion. I suppose gorillas are even more dimorphic than humans, and in more ways, including some neat features of cranial morphology (appreciated by anthropologists who work with bones so much, they sometimes forget about the rest of organism), but that's neither here nor there. Some sympathetic commenters squeal about «bone nerd stuff» being fascinating; in my opinion this willful ignorance of the context isn't cute, this is turning science into worse than stamp collecting, into playing house, and one more reason to be critical of female participation in traditionally male occupations like biological research. This cheeky girls-playing-house stuff is killing the whole field. I've known many competent female researchers and lab heads, and they are able to compete with men without any crutches, not particularly tolerant of such profanation, nor fond of science popularizers who have flunked out of academia. It feels like in the West it's much more tolerated.

But I digress. Lewontin's argument/fallacy does not really point at any phenotypic evidence, it amounts to saying that since genetic variance is (ostensibly) distributed in the claimed manner within and between races, it is facile to classify people by race as if that were a natural unit. It is bad in its own ways, but not so obviously stupid and false.

It's an interaction between modern things like growing up in school / working a job to get the right answer / please the teacher and 'female nature', as opposed to just the latter, i think. Women, especially older women, in traditional societies were generally capable of somewhat complicated negotiations over social things, like selling cows or who should marry a daughter. Because the mores and physical conditions of society demanded it, and because that's what they saw all the people around them doing.

I am not sure how the notion of shit tests (which has merit, but which PUA/Jim types already overuse, to the point I think can be legitimately identified with rape culture) translates to the level of more or less abstract society-wise policy demands. For example, women overwhelmingly support «more spending on underperforming schools» or some bullshit. Is this shit-testing school statistics buffs or, say, just misguided motherly instinct and wishful thinking (that I talk about)? I think we don't even need such folk categories; normal differential psychology explains enough.

Could it not simply be that these mens moral characters are fine, but they simply lack the resources and experience many women desire?

Well, dating dynamics still don't favour Chinese and Korean men in the west despite pulling a hefty paycheck. Many are virgins even in their 30s. Ditto with Indian men, but arranged marriages and the low desirability of their own women ensure (heh) the problem fixes itself after a point. Feminists are very bent on subverting "unrealistic standards of female beauty" in the media, yet are perfectly fine with unrealistic standards for men, part of the intention is to artificially lift their status in the sexual market. I suppose that somewhat explains why South Asian and Black women in the west tend to be the most woke. They're both minorities in a largely white culture, but they have no equivalents to the yellow fever.

What's the source for the second chart?

I suppose that somewhat explains why South Asian and Black women in the west tend to be the most woke. They're both minorities in a largely white culture,

Is that true, though? I would expect that most black and south-asian women to be living in areas where white people are at best a plurality; I would expect the young dating cohorts to be living in places with demographics like Oakland's.

They're both minorities in a largely white culture, but they have no equivalents to the yellow fever.

There's one for Black women (I am much less familiar with American desi culture), but it's mismatched with internal American Black culture dynamics. Being of "yellowbone" or "redbone" complexion is a high-status marker in ADoS culture, but White men who are attracted to Black women report higher preference for darker skin. Dating a pureblood Yoruba or Dinka immigrant would be their first choice.

I wonder if women born in such marriages are just as bitter as hapa men about their White fathers' fetish ruining their dating prospects.

as bitter as hapa men about their White fathers' fetish ruining their dating prospects.

Really? In my experience mixed white/east asian people, both men and women, skew uncommonly pretty.

Unless you mean, like, half polynesian/half white people?

Mixed White/Asian incels that look Asian complain that Asian girls prefer White and White-passing men to them.

skew uncommonly pretty.

There is something of a stereotype among incel types, in which the male product of a white father and an Asian mother blames his make-up on his lack of height and more masculine features. Essentially, it's sour grapes in which these guys fantasize about an alternate mother that might reroll their build as "tall and masculine" instead of "pretty and good at math".

but White men who are attracted to Black women report higher preference for darker skin. Dating a pureblood Yoruba or Dinka immigrant would be their first choice.

Yes, maybe for fetishists or people who are really fixed in their preferences that they search out black women (even then I'm doubtful, I suspect that their definition of "darker" is different -lighter- from mine).

It's still possible that the median white man would prefer a woman whose blackness is less...obvious or she even passes for white.

I wonder if women born in such marriages are just as bitter as hapa men about their White fathers' fetish ruining their dating prospects.

Are you sure this isn't mostly an observed phenomenon from evaporative cooling on forums leaving the most extreme examples? In real life, the half-Asian guys I know do just fine with women. I suppose if they did have antipathy towards their white fathers they wouldn't tell me, but it doesn't seem like something that's obviously true. The whole thing seems like a coping mechanism for romantically failed men to blame something other than their own personalities.

In real life, the half-Asian guys I know do just fine with women. I suppose if they did have antipathy towards their white fathers they wouldn't tell me, but it doesn't seem like something that's obviously true.

I don't have any hard data to go on here, but I wouldn't be surprised if the ones with antipathy disproportionately grew up with a single mother -- I can absolutely see how a mixed-race child with trouble fitting into the side of the only family available to them could blame their absent father, especially if there's an easily seen "my mother was just a fetish for him" or something like that.

I wonder if women born in such marriages are just as bitter as hapa men about their White fathers' fetish ruining their dating prospects.

Human variance is wide, I'm sure there are those to whom this is an actual fetish, but pathologing normal partner preferences always struck me as discourse poison.

Interestingly, the one hapa guy had issues because his Asian mom would not let him bring girls around for fear that they'd steal her white husband.

The fetish is not always on the side you expect.

When it comes to stats like this, I think people are missing two obvious possibilities -

1.) The data is just bad

2.) Men and women's definition of relationship are different. So, yes, the dude that has a FWB he smokes pot with and watches Netflix before having sex isn't a relationship, but she isn't dating anybody else, and they hang out regularly so...

Also, he whole "they're all dating older men" argument could be figured out, by just looking at the data, because if it's true the women are just dating older, there'd eventually be gaps between men and women, where men would have the advantage. I'm going to guess that the worry all the 33 year olds are dating the 22 year olds isn't really true. Some 26 year olds might be, but that's been what happens even in the 90's.

Hell, in 1993, I'd actually bet more 18 year old high school senior girls had sex with adult males than in 2023.

2.) Men and women's definition of relationship are different. So, yes, the dude that has a FWB he smokes pot with and watches Netflix before having sex isn't a relationship, but she isn't dating anybody else, and they hang out regularly so...

I think that's compounded by dudes having multiple 'semi-committed' relationships on the go at once, in which he considers himself single (as he's continuing to keep dating new girls and nobody's formally clarified the relationship) whilst his partners might consider themselves on the girlfriend track.

This happens wildly often if you know college-educated non-religious women in their 20s. It’s hilarious, or sad, or both.

I date around a fair bit, and whilst I'd personally be surprised if any of my longer-term entanglements said that they were in a relationship with me... I don't find it inconceivable?

Though from experience talking to serial dating girls in their 20s I do feel like other men are a lot more prone to tangling their signals. I'd personally not introduce a girl to my parents/family unless they were a firm girlfriend, but I've seen girls stuck in the casualzone who've nonetheless done a lot of 'girlfriend activities' like that.

Also, he whole "they're all dating older men" argument could be figured out, by just looking at the data, because if it's true the women are just dating older, there'd eventually be gaps between men and women, where men would have the advantage.

Yes, there is. I recall looking for it, and for ages after 60, more men than women are in a relationship.

Yeah that's because men die off earlier more than anything else.

Right, if it takes 'til 60 for there to be a gap, the "they're all dating older men with higher sexual market value" or whatever red pill analysis is out there, doesn't seem to be correct, which highlights my bad data thought. Now, is there probably a mismatch? Sure. But, I think it's likely there always has been, but now the Internet means people can freak out about it.

Just like w/ teen suicide rates. Yes, teen suicide rates are now pretty high. They're getting back to the level they were in the early 90's - ya' know, that perfect time Gen X has nostalgia for?

.. and ? It was asking people whether they were in a relationship. Live people.

You want to argue the whole effect is caused by men predeceasing women, not by men with options dating somewhat younger women ?

E.g. surely you've seen seen photos of Buzz Aldrin and his sweet sixty-six year old wife ?

“Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships. They don’t need to be married. They’d rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,”

(bolding mine)

Ironic, considering that young women are by their own reports at 2x the rate in relationships compared to young men...

Are we suppose to assume, blacks, the youth, poor men, men without degrees, and guys without their own place are inferior romantic partners

Yes. Your poor black guy without a steady job and still living with his mom and granny may have a great personality and be fun to hang out with, but for a relationship? Maybe not. Even on the metric of "where do we go to have sex?" for a casual relationship, getting it on while mom and gran can hear everything you're doing seems like it would put a damper on things.

Or he may well be in a relationship of sorts, where he is the baby daddy of a single mother who lives on her own with her kid(s) and he isn't cohabiting with her. Is that a relationship? Are they romantic partners? Maybe he has a couple of such women on the go at the same time.

I think the main barrier there is "no place of his own". If both parties are low income and living with parents, then maintaining anything more than casual dating is going to be difficult.

So how about young, low-income, basic education, still living at home, black women? Are they in relationships? Long-term ones? With whom? Again, are they the baby momma single mothers who may be one of a set of "friends with benefits" of an older guy? There's a lot going on when trying to work out who has it better on the dating/relationship scene:

From 1987 to 2017, the rates of cohabitation among Black women ages 19 to 44 increased from 36 percent to 62 percent, a rate similar to that seen among women from other racial groups. The percentage of Black women ever married, however, is lower than those who have cohabitated, at 37 percent. While there are many explanations for lower levels of marriage among Black women, an overwhelming number of theories focus on economics—specifically, the earning potential and availability of Black men. For instance, a lack of employment opportunities for Black men, higher workforce participation among Black women than among Black men, a lack of wage parity between Black women and Black men, and the disproportionate representation of Black men (particularly from low-income backgrounds) in the criminal justice system may result in a lack of marriageable partners (e.g., men who are perceived by women as attractive marriage prospects because of their financial or social standing). Importantly, each of these theories—implicitly, and sometimes explicitly—acknowledges the potential role of systemic racism and its impact on the marriage rate of Black Americans.

Black children live in a variety of family structures, including married, cohabiting, coparenting, and single-parenting households. Sixty-four percent of Black children live in single-parent families, which may include single parents living with an unmarried partner or with another family. Among Black women ages 15 to 50, approximately 60 percent were married or living with an unmarried partner at the time of their first birth, and roughly 40 percent were neither married nor living with an unmarried partner. The distinction between “single” and unmarried but living with a partner or co-parent is important because it indicates that, despite declines in formal marriage rates, close to 60 percent of Black fathers (close to 2.5 million of 4.2 million) live with their children, a fact often in contrast with public perceptions of Black men with children. Within these households, Black couples generally subscribe to egalitarian and flexible gender roles. While American fathers of all races and ethnicities are generally more involved with the care of their young children than in decades past, Black fathers—both those who live with and live apart from their children—are more likely than White or Hispanic fathers to feed or eat meals with, bathe, diaper or dress, and play or read to their children on a daily basis.

Extended family and kin networks, a source of social support and an enduring legacy of African cultures and heritage, have also played a key role in childrearing within Black communities. For example, among children living in a grandparent’s home and being cared for primarily by a grandparent, with no parents involved, more than one quarter are Black. Black grandparents play instrumental roles in childrearing and child care even when children live with their parents. Family and kin networks also serve as an important buffer for some of the negative impacts of structural and institutional racism experienced by Black families, and frequently provide emotional support and instrumental assistance such as help with transportation and finances.

And finally, as others have pointed out, men and women may have different definitions of "relationship". "Yeah, we go out from time to time and we have casual sex, but we're not exclusive and we're not dating so this isn't a relationship", says the guy. "We go on dates and have sex, we're in a relationship" says the woman.

Of all the debates on here but HBD, this is the one that tires me the most, because no matter the conclusions, there is no solution that powerful and culturally-dominant societies are willing to accept.

The sexual marketplace is Moloch's little bitch. Women control access to reproduction. As long as women control access to reproduction, they gain power by withholding it. A man acts, a woman chooses. Q.E.D.: it's in the interest of women to withhold it to their own benefit for as long as possible (what if a better mate comes along?) while the world feeds them a constant parade of men to swipe left on. Sufficiently large network effects mean that this, at scale, will mean that reproductive access is limited to a smaller and smaller % of the populace.

There's no fixing this in ways that the currently dominant social and cultural paradigm will accept. How can you, when women can actively weaponize men against other men with nothing but the mere promise of access to reproduction?

There's nothing left to debate. At the rate things are going, either find a first world society someplace where TFR is above replacement so we can isolate the factors responsible, attempt some solution sufficiently alien the memeplex doesn't recognize it as a threat to women's autonomy, agency, education or power, or get women to actively seek reproduction with males they consider low status.

I consider freely available access to cold fusion, FTL, and entropy an easier nut to crack than the latter.

find a first world society someplace where TFR is above replacement so we can isolate the factors responsible

Israel?

I have a lot of confusion about this topic and I'd really appreciate it if someone could help me understand this complex of problems.

Most of the discussion around this topic here seems completely divorced from my lived experience. For reference I am male, live in Europe and make decent but not fantastic money. Assume I am average in all important respects. I could have had "access to reproduction" from when I was 18 until now without issue. There are plenty of mildly-attractive women that would gladly start a family with me simply because I am middle class and they are working class. So is this a problem affecting only working class men? I also know some working class men, some of whom have problems finding a mate. All of them are either obese or have severely lacking social skills, both those problems could be solved with maybe a year of consistent effort. I don't know any man that has no glaring problems and wants a long term relationship with a (any) woman but can't find one. Sometimes it looks like that but on closer inspection it always turns out that they are shopping above their price range so to speak.

My toy model for the "sexual marketplace" is this:

Both men and women are open to long-term committed relationships only if they get a great deal. People who marry often think that they both got lucky in the sense that they self-rate as a 6 but rate their partner as a 9. Of course this doesn't happen all that often.

Outside of that women put a premium on a long-term stable relationship with material benefits. So they will get into a relationship with someone they would not outright marry (and have children with) if that person pays their rent and makes them look good socially etc etc. This often leads to disappointment and conflict later on.

Men value non-committed casual sex with multiple partners, probably out of some mesa-optimizing desire to shotgun their genes in the gene pool. So they will lower their standards if the woman is sexually available and does not demand exclusivity.

I know men who want to have a "player" lifestyle and struggle to have that happen and I know women who struggle with domesticating an attractive man. From the article it sounds like that is not what is going on. It sounds like there are many men who have already lowered their standards as much as possible, who are willing to commit, provide etc and are still struggling to find any woman at all? Why am I not seeing that? Is this less prevalent in the EU? Am I too isolated from those men by being middle class? Or is there some other misunderstanding here?

I also know some working class men, some of whom have problems finding a mate. All of them are either obese or have severely lacking social skills, both those problems could be solved with maybe a year of consistent effort. I don't know any man that has no glaring problems and wants a long term relationship with a (any) woman but can't find one. Sometimes it looks like that but on closer inspection it always turns out that they are shopping above their price range so to speak.

Now what does this reminds me of... Oh right, Scott's Annus Mirabilis.

According to Gallup polls, about 46% of Americans are creationists. Not just in the sense of believing God helped guide evolution. I mean they think evolution is a vile atheist lie and God created humans exactly as they exist right now. That’s half the country.

And I don’t have a single one of those people in my social circle. It’s not because I’m deliberately avoiding them; I’m pretty live-and-let-live politically, I wouldn’t ostracize someone just for some weird beliefs. And yet, even though I probably know about a hundred fifty people, I am pretty confident that not one of them is creationist. Odds of this happening by chance? 1/2^150 = 1/10^45 = approximately the chance of picking a particular atom if you are randomly selecting among all the atoms on Earth.

Now in 2023, according to Pew Research cited by OP already,

among men under 30 years old, over 60 percent are single, almost double that of women in the same age bracket. Not only are more young men single but their opportunities for developing a relational and sexual repertoire have all but vanished, as levels of sexual intimacy across genders appear to have hit a 30-year low (Lei & South, 2021).

You must be in a fortunate bubble indeed, to now not know of any among those 60% who aren't obese, autists, basket cases or aiming way above their level!

The explanation, shifting midway from male withdrawal to increased standards (because of the pandemic, bizarrely) and the solution offered, are pretty cool:

As young women continued to pursue intimate relationships less intently post-pandemic, men could have increased their relationship skills to close the effort gap. They could have confronted their relative avoidance and challenged the gender norms that made them so anxious about intimacy. They appear to have done the opposite, turning even further away from real-life relationships and into the virtual world. [...] The good news is that all of these young single men can choose differently. They can choose to focus on developing the necessary relationship skills to be more successful in dating. It starts with re-prioritizing the development of close, intimate relationships in their life for their own well-being and as a counterbalance to the shift in priorities for women. They must do this to reach their fullest potential whether or not they have had great male role models illustrating these efforts. By no means will dating in 2023 be an emotionally painless process, particularly for heterosexual men who are attempting to date women. Rejection may be a far more common result given competitiveness and higher relationship standards. Therefore, young men must be inoculated to avoidance in their dating life by normalizing women’s selectiveness.

My toy model of this issue and its discussion is very primitive. Standards really are rising quickly, and roughly 30% of marriage-age men are now, for all intents and purposes, incels. (This checks out, in my experience: even fit, okay-looking, psychologically stable guys with degrees and high-percentile (80-95ish) incomes often cannot find a 5/10 woman for a long-term relationship who isn't (physically) dangerously psychotic, a drug addict, an insufferable whore, or otherwise critically compromised). Men in the lower half of the distribution who are still viable begin to feel the pressure, and so double down in all usual tactics: «improving relationship skills» (which in practice means either deluded male feminist antics or PUA-like bullshit), distancing themselves from incels, ostentatiously signaling that they are «not like that» and have no problem scoring, then moving on to intense bodybuilding, shoe lifts, cosmetic surgery, TRT... As a result, everyone is awash in gaslighting. Normie men who feel they still have a chance will never admit that they may not have it tomorrow, because this in itself feels like diminishing their chances.

What has changed was the passing grade, but men are graded on a curve, so in effect the proportion of rejects has increased permanently. This rat race is pathetic and unsustainable, as are copes.

You must be in a fortunate bubble indeed, to now know of any among those 60% who aren't obese, autists, basket cases or aiming way above their level!

What percentage of Americans are obese, autistic, or mentally ill?

42% obese, 2.3% autistic (1 in every 44 children, according to the 2018 data; can't find any data on prevalence in adults) and 20% mentally ill (1 out of every 5 Americans will experience a mental illness in a given year). All figures from CDC.

There’s no significant gender difference in obesity. Who are all the fat girls dating?

Black guys /s

Even as an obese girl on online dating you're getting arbitrarily large amounts of interest in casual sex, which tends to lead them into an equivalent of the '7/10 girl gets casual sex from 10/10 guy but cannot get commitment but refuses to compromise loop' but instead it's 2/10 girl gets casual sex from 6/10 guy but cannot get commitment'

Well, a lot of them aren't, isn't it the best predictor of single status ?

Those who do, they date mostly guys who settle for them. There's a preference for fat women but it does seem very rare, on the order of genuine male homosexuality. Maybe there's more men who don't mind it, but I've never seen much of an indication that they exist.

All of them are either obese or have severely lacking social skills, both those problems could be solved with maybe a year of consistent effort. I don't know any man that has no glaring problems and wants a long term relationship with a (any) woman but can't find one.

This is my experience as well, but quite a few people pushed back against similar sentiments when we discussed this last week. There are at least two ways of interpreting that pushback:

  1. I'm wrong and many men that are reasonably fit, healthy, socially competent, and employed struggle to find relationships. My observations fail to capture a broad enough sample and the men that I know that are romantically successful all could have failed if not for a fair bit of luck.

  2. The responses are largely coping mechanisms - romance-less men are much more socially incompetent or physically unattractive than their defenders admit.

I know I favor the second explanation, but I'm open to being cautious about applying too much of a just-world fallacy. Still, I can't think of anyone I know that persistently fails romantically that doesn't have something that stands out as severely unappealing to women.

I'm a bisexual man, attractive enough to be asked out on the street (by men), who has struggled to meet women to date. There's not really any mystery as to the cause: I'm 5'3, and testing suggests I'd get around a dozen matches with women per day if I were 5'10", as compared with none at my actual height.

Which kind of covers both your explanations: a man can have all his bases covered and still be unattractive because of a single trait outside his control; masculinity is stridently policed by women when it comes to dating, and a single deviation incurs a very heavy cost in terms of attractiveness as a mate. Pick out half a dozen normally distributed, uncontrollable traits like height, and it's inevitable that something like half of all men will be more than a standard deviation below average on at least one and be cut out of the dating market. Most of those men would do perfectly fine if they dated men.

You know, it's going to sound incredibly stupid, but I actually didn't even consider height as a variable in this conversation, which is obviously foolish and wrong. From everything I've seen, height is favored to an incredible extent, with many women outright excluding all men that don't clear a given bar (which may be several inches taller than them). Even petite women frequently demand men of average height or higher. There probably isn't any other trait that combines a complete lack of male control with strong predictive power in romantic success.

I'm wrong and many men that are reasonably fit, healthy, socially competent, and employed struggle to find relationships.

This is circular, since "socially competent" implies that they are able to find relationships.

I just had the realization that maybe I, a middle-class man, could be having lots of kids (a desire of mine) if I would just go meet a nice working-class girl; and that I've maybe subconsciously been trying to "date up" this whole time. I am a fool!

(This is actually not sarcasm.)

Or date outside your race. It worked for Roger Ebert - not the world's best looking or chadish man - who married an intelligent, successful, and quite good looking black woman. There's the added benefit that Black Don't Crack, so even if your wife is not as good looking as your next white girlfriend in 2023, she'll be a lot better looking in 2053.

In my limited experience, it's very hard to stay single in America if you're white, middle class, and not obese. Not the easiest dating pool in the world for those demographics, though: Asia is outrageous, unless you have very particular tastes e.g. you like tall women.

it's very hard to stay single in America if you're white, middle class, and not obese.

I just have a rare talent for it, lol.

In all seriousness, I am in a long romantic cold spell that temporally matches up exactly with when I started working from home permanently during Covid. I have not managed to successfully adapt my life such that I am meeting people IRL at the same rate I used to. There are lots of viable solutions to this, but my job is difficult and tiring and makes me want to stay home. I may be displaying a revealed preference here.

Still - I have indeed dated women from social strata above mine, and they did not want to settle down with me. I did not make the appropriate connection before. (Bearing in mind of course that I may just not be that cool, and they found they could genuinely do better.) Especially because I grew up in a working-class milieu myself, you would think I could get along very well with a girl I met at the local dirt track, if I would only go there myself. And I'm not looking down on people like that. It is not as though my existence in this other social class has brought me any exceptional happiness.

date outside your race

This is good advice. Perhaps this is something everyone simply already knows, but when I have done this, I have been surprised at the extent to which it feels just the same as dating within your race.

This is good advice. Perhaps this is something everyone simply already knows, but when I have done this, I have been surprised at the extent to which it feels just the same as dating within your race.

Pretty much, except probably easier if you are white. I also think that attitudes have changed tremendously in the last generation, especially for white man/black woman relationships.

Women control access to reproduction.

This is oversimplified.

Women tend to control access to sex: most men are more willing to screw a wider range of women than women are willing to screw men.

Men tend to control access to commitment: most men are more attracted by the idea of avoiding being tied down (figuratively, not literally). One of the more absurd things I see in these discussions is the notion that men are desperate to get married, have a lot of kids, and have said wife/kids impressing demands on these men's precious time. It's like when Chat GPT suggests "MOAR feminism!" as a solution for low birth rates: it's going against what I thought was basic knowledge about male/female psychological differences in humans, which has been deeply ingrained in our cultures since before the invention of writing.

Perhaps the "men are frustrated in their efforts to get tied down to a life of changing nappies and sleeping with just one woman" online memes comes from incels who think that, if only they had the chance, they'd be women's Perfect Partner, as in Futurama: "My favourite things are commitment and changing myself." "Does that robot have a brother?". However, most nerdy guys I know who suddenly started getting laid easily - myself included - played the field, like a normal guy in that position. Then, as naturally tends to happen, they found a woman that they wanted to sleep with repeatedly, developed an emotional bond, and married. I suspect that this is healthier than both the man and the woman being keen on commitment: just as sexual romance needs a partner to be seduced, marriage needs at least one partner to need to be (non-verbally) persuaded that a long-term commitment makes sense. After all, commitment is good for the economy:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=7ADncN9HIa4

However, most nerdy guys I know who suddenly started getting laid easily - myself included - played the field, like a normal guy in that position.

I feel like a huge amount of this is the sheer grind required to 'ascend' and the rejection along the way, especially in the modern dating app sphere. IMO the majority of both gender rock up with more-or-less good intentions, but it only takes a little bit of exposure to the current culture to reach a state of Fuck You.

I see statements like this a lot on here and they always leave me so confused because it’s so far outside my own experience and the experiences of other guys I know. I’m an okay looking nerdy guy with a mid-compensation nerdy job in the Bay Area, which is apparently the epicenter location/demographic for these kinds of dating difficulties and yet neither I nor any of my male friends experiences them at all.

Ever since I moved here a few years ago there has been a constant flow of good looking, in shape, smart, well educated, my age-and-younger women who have their shit together and want to go on dates/sleep with/get serious with/get engaged to me, with honestly very little effort or grind on my part. Sometimes people don’t respond to my messages on bumble. Okay?

I could go on dates with women like this every day if I had the energy. And they’re almost all nice, not manipulative, not looking for handouts, not romantic climbers at all. It’s the same for all my guy friends. And we’re pretty average / below average in terms of income. Where are all these sexless dudes?

There was a thread on here last week about how the EA movement was basically a way for nerdy guys to meet women. Huh? It’s all so bewildering.

Dude you're almost certainly making something like five times the national median household income, you are not normal.

It's still a good rebuttal to the the EA claim, because EAs are also high income / class.

The median EA is probably closer to the 'autist unsociable nerd' side of the spectrum than bay area lothario, though outliers exist.

One issue is that vocal incel or incel-adjacent people tend to be higher income, higher education, and more vocal/online than the mass of men most affected by sexlessness. Sexlessness isn't driven by 30-something software engineers making $300k in the Bay Area; it's driven by 20 year, non-college educated men living in their parents' basement in Akron.

(That said, if you're able to get a date with a different attractive, successful woman every evening as a heterosexual man in the Bay Area, you're certainly in the top decile in how much you attract women.)

There was a thread on here last week about how the EA movement was basically a way for nerdy guys to meet women. Huh? It’s all so bewildering.

I mean, you have to meet them somewhere right? They don’t just show up at your door. One of the most common pieces of dating advice I’ve seen is, “get a hobby and meet women there.” Maybe I erred in assuming EA to be a hobby.

I am starting to suspect that the dating scene in the Bay Area is just different. There was a post on Caroline Ellison’s tumblr about how she never got hit on in public before she moved to the Bay. Maybe once you reach some critical mass of nerdy people in one location they stop internalizing themselves as poorly socialized and become Chads and Stacys.

Also, to piggyback, in my normal life, the vast majority of the people I keep track of from my fairly normal suburban/exurban high school in Florida are either married w/ kids or serially in fairly long-term relationships. Even out here, in supposedly SJW-infested Seattle that's also a tech hub, do you know what I see when I actually walk around in the outside world? Lots of couples.

I really think the current "crisis" is a combination of some bad data (even the GSS data seems kind of flawed) and the type of person who's not getting laid being very loud and overrepresented on the Internet.

Also, to piggyback, in my normal life, the vast majority of the people I keep track of from my fairly normal suburban/exurban high school in Florida are either married w/ kids or serially in fairly long-term relationships. Even out here, in supposedly SJW-infested Seattle that's also a tech hub, do you know what I see when I actually walk around in the outside world? Lots of couples.

The type of person who is able to successfully attract a mate seems likely to be heavily overrepresented in any group where one has loose acquaintances that would even care to "keep track of," as well as walking around in the outside world. How many literally friendless people are you friends with, and more broadly, how many people who has no meaningful friend/acquaintance group are you enough of a loose acquaintance with to "keep track of?" How many people who spend their lives with basically no social contact are you running into when you walk around in the outside world?

Teach us your ways! I am a guy with a mid-compensation nerdy job in the Bay Area. I like to think that I am good-looking but I suppose that I cannot quite be sure. In any case, more than one woman has told me that I am attractive. I used to do quite well with women but then for various reasons I took a long time off from pursuing sex. Recently I have been trying to get back in the game and I have had some success - I made out with a few women whom I met at bars but have not gotten laid so far. I have never seriously tried online dating so far but given how often I hear guys say that they are getting good results from it, I think that I am going to actually seriously try it. I should just go ahead and put in the work of getting some good photos and writing up a good profile. At the same time I also intend to keep meeting women offline, since I find that it can be quite exciting and fun and anyway, I already spend more than enough time using technology at work.

How do you usually meet women? Got any pointers?

I see statements like this a lot on here and they always leave me so confused because it’s so far outside my own experience and the experiences of other guys I know.

Maybe notice your confusion, and then update your priors based on the data explaining that most men aren't sharing your particular experience and that the data you've got available from your own experiences may not be representative of the larger trends.

I come into these threads and see one side that points at various studies and polls showing "this is what dating is like for huge swaths of the population" and then another that says "that's weird, it doesn't seem to be true in [smaller area]" without really engaging with the information the other side points to.

In my experience, the response of men about this depends on the context.

All male company: We pretend to be more averse to commitment than we really are.

Mixed company: "My favourite things are commitment and changing myself."

I donno... maybe I'm simple but most of the guys I knew weren't really excited to play the field, but it more came of necessity. They wanted a woman they could settle down with, but most of the women they'd meet were deranged. Entitled, controlling want beasts that demand all the say and none of the responsibility. Our path through our 20's and 30's towards marriage was a process of getting worn down by the realization that yes, all women are like this. Between the 6 of us, and the 30 or so long term relationships we've all had, it's been a constant. The women feel entitled to make outrageous, thoughtless demands, and throw full blown adult temper tantrums to get their way. Up to and including claims that we don't love them, some other partner of someone they saw on Facebook did it, they don't want to be in a relationship anymore, their friends all think we're terrible, etc, etc, etc.

Eventually we met women who seemed marginally less deranged than the mean we'd all collectively encountered, and got on white knuckling it through life because we wanted kids. I think the guy I knew who has it best (near as I can tell) went hardcore Christian. Like, the man is the indisputable head of the household style Christianity. I'm not sure it's stopped the relentless want beasting directed at him. But it's given him more backbone and moral authority to stand up for himself.

Well... about half of us did. The other half just couldn't take it any more and dropped out.

most of the guys I knew weren't really excited to play the field, but it more came of necessity. They wanted a woman they could settle down with, but most of the women they'd meet were deranged. Entitled, controlling want beasts that demand all the say and none of the responsibility.

If they were leaping into commitment, I'm not surprised. Not only are they letting the devil find work for idle hands (what's a woman supposed to do if a man is giving her what she wants? That's a recipe to make most people deranged) but they're walking around the dating market with a huge neon sign saying "I am a mark. You can take my money if you want and I shall love you for it." It would be surprising if they didn't meet emotional hustlers.

The female equivalent is a woman who acts very slutty and gets surprised that she doesn't meet gentlemen. Maybe she concludes, "All men are swine. Yes, all men."

This is why men ought to look for women in circles where women are competing on being 'trad'.

Find the right meme-culture and you will find women that are just as enthusiastic for breeding as you are.

Then all you have to do is compete with the other trad-minded men, and it's not that hard imo.

It comes with another sets of demands, like providing for a set of children, actually fitting the trad-meme culture yourself, etc, but what other choices do you have?

If you're looking for a woman to have 3 kids in the Bay Area or NYC, you're doing it wrong, but there are ways to get that done, like being an Orthodox Jew in the latter, for example.

Yes, and in general, if a man really wants to find a woman who is interested in settling down and having kids, that's hard only insofar as it usually involves things that are beneficial anyway: having a good job, being sober, being responsible/reliable, and being kind.

all women are like this.

They really aren't. I'd say many or even most women prefer a man who takes charge. And entitlement is much less of a problem if you aren't dating U.S. born white women.

I'd say many or even most women prefer a man who takes charge.

So why is the constant social/cultural/media message, across virtually every mainstream channel, that men need to step aside, elevate women, defer to female input, and basically give women every single advantage so they can 'level the playing field' that was made unequal due to years of patriarchal control?

You're basically suggesting that women want some form of patriarchy, despite it being a literal governmental policy to attempt to dismantle said patriarchy.

Square the circle for me. Why are women, especially the college educated ones, voting for policies that make women less dependent on men and further remove authority for men if they prefer a man who takes charge?

Why wasn't Donald Trump re-elected on a wave of female approval?

I mean, dating preferences and politics aren't things you would necessarily expect to have a one-to-one correlation in. And both of these fields are basically filled with self deception to the point that that's the norm rather than the exception, so when you've got lies stacked up on top of lies, a square circle is entirely expected.

But to humor the question for a bit, I've heard an explanation that the type of anti-patriarchy politics you see are a sort of society-wide "shit test." The idea being that, if you fully immerse society in the anti-patriarchy message, then the only men who will be dominant are the ones who are so dominant that they refuse to submit to those messages. Thus it becomes easier for women to discriminate between dominant and non-dominant men, with the latter type of men having to face higher barriers if they want to fake being the former. It's a win-win for women, because besides the emancipation/extra power gained from reducing the patriarchy, they also only get hit on by men who are more likely to be actually attractive.

The possible obvious pitfall is that there are only so many Truly Dominant men around, so most women end up unable to pair with one of them, instead being another notch on their bed stands during their younger years before having to settle for a substantially less dominant and thus less attractive man or just singlehood. And if the anti-patriarchy messaging was strong enough, that substantially less could be substantially less.

Like most such simple theories, there's probably a grain of truth and a lot of convincing-sounding just-so stories to it. At the least, none of this seems at all intentional or coordinated, and it's mostly an emergent phenomenon from the aforementioned stacking of lies upon lies that leaves everyone confused, is my guess.

I can agree with much of this.

I've heard an explanation that the type of anti-patriarchy politics you see are a sort of society-wide "shit test." The idea being that, if you fully immerse society in the anti-patriarchy message, then the only men who will be dominant are the ones who are so dominant that they refuse to submit to those messages.

As you stated, there may be a grain of truth to this. But it's one of those things that might be workable in a small tribe or otherwise tight-knit community where the whole society willingly recognizes the dominant males and affords them authority.

Probably something that, when scaled up to a sizeable nation state, ends up leading he massive population of 'less dominant' males to defect in hopes of improving their own social position, and the relatively small, and vastly outnumbered, dominant males are now beset by a group with outsized political power which they cannot defeat without near-perfect coordination amongst themselves. And of course the issue where the women are all competing for this pool of dominant males and thus are happy to enlist the less-dominant males to their side as needed. Consider the rise of Onlyfans as a means of separating less-dominant men from resources en masse in exchange for no actual physical interaction, which then allows a woman to be self-sufficient while she seeks the ideal mate.

Other factors like the shifting of social status from males who are good at fighting, killing, and leading male-centric warbands to guys who are good at manipulating numbers on a spreadsheet, building technology, and navigating feminine social environments (I'm being pretty obtuse here, admitted) are also making it harder for dominant males to assert the sort of social control that might counter the feminine influence.

Square the circle for me. Why are women, especially the college educated ones, voting for policies that make women less dependent on men and further remove authority for men if they prefer a man who takes charge?

Being dependent on men in general is very different from being dependent on one particular man the woman has vetted.

I can grant that.

But the net result of making it harder for men to act as authority figures in general is to make it simultaneously harder for them to act as authority figures for a specific person.

So basically, if women want to make themselves independent of "males" so they're free to choose which male they want to depend on, it is fair to ask how that's working out for them.

Presumably because what people want, what they say they want, and what they vote for are all different things. Why do feminists sleep with Chads and not the sensitive nice guys?

I’m sorry that you had to go through that, and depressed that it’s colored your opinion of all women.

I mean, the stats bear out the 'opinion of all women.' It's not hard to justify the opinion itself with reliable data.

I think you're more depressed that this is what an appreciable segment of women are like, and he's noticed it.

Sorry to pile on, but I dated pretty extensively in my teens and twenties. Out of the ~20 women I was involved with in some way, I'd say maybe 4 of them fit the definition of "deranged" and I only actually committed to one of those.

As @Harlequin5942 pointed out, not being a mark was key. My philosophy was always to treat anyone I was with (regardless of the scope of the relationship or quality of the woman) super well, but if there was a hint of disrespect or psychosis, I was out.

Argentina, Turkey, Mexico, and Israel are the industrialized countries that have spent significant amounts of time at above replacement fertility in the recent past.

Argentina and Mexico are not really first world societies. Turkey and Israel both use fairly oppressive religions to control women's reproductive behavior.

Argentina and Mexico are both industrialized middle income societies, and in Argentina’s case was an upper income society fairly recently. In the specific case of Mexico the idea that the fertility advantage is all peasant farmers in the third world states in the far south is militated against by the declining incidence of the Mongolian spot in Mexican hospitals, which absent outside immigration from Europe indicates a higher white(that is, the Mexicans most likely to be exposed to the industrial economy, as opposed to those southern subsistence farmers) birthrate. It’s plausible that relatively high religiosity coupled with very strong remnants of the actual patriarchy is the reason for this fertility advantage, but not anything I have more than anecdotal evidence for.

I’m not well versed on the details of Turkish or Israeli religiosity, but if what you’re saying is true, that’s more or less 3/4 examples where patriarchal religion is the reason for higher than average fertility- Argentina’s is driven by a crazy-high teen pregnancy rate.

I can't produce stats right now but at this point Turkish fertility rates are about to go (or already gone) below replacement, and a large chunk of this is actually the rural Kurdish population. On the positive side, we are at these rates with virtually no teenage pregnancies or out of wedlock births. On the negative side, in the next decade we will almost definitely be dipping obviously below replacement level and in my lifetime the country might become half-half Kurdish.

Even just a mild use of the stick could probably push things back over 2.1 but any negative incentives seem verboten, not just for this but in general.

Wow that’s quite a big stick. Surely we don’t need that much?

Needs are always for something - it clearly isn't necessary for preserving society, and AI makes it less relevant, but if "raise birthrates by 50%+" is important enough, would anything else work?

Yeah, OP's solution to {problem} just boils down to "make problems illegal, or more charitably unfeasible", which can be the default answer to any problem if you are sufficiently authoritarian. To be fair that might be the only thing solution that will "fix" the problem, not to sure about how likely it is to be implemented or not have other nth order effects, but constraints are for dummies anyways.

It's at least a concrete plan that would plausibly work, instead of endless ineffectual kvetching about the gender war.

Anyone can come up with an overtly authoritarian plan with no regard to feasibility or worse nth order effects, it doesn't take much creativity to suggest "make problem illegal". That's more of my gripe with such proposals.

They are certainly popular because at least something is being put forward and "doing something about it" is a winning move in many domains; E.g We certainly did something about covid, that's for sure, who cares if the cure is worse than the disease?

@DaseindustriesLtd proposal for example, aims to attain the same goal but is more thoughtfully crafted, aware of its shortcomings, aware of its constraints and just around more feasible/effective in the ways that would matter. OP even cites the same comment but ends up being a low-rung parody of it. Maybe I am being too harsh and am discussing things out of my depth but it certainly seems as much to me that @2rafa went on a diatribe about TFR when the parent post doesn't even mention it. (My model of the discussion is that the male disenfranchisement issue is a superset of the TFR issue, not the other way around.)

Sometimes, "make problem illegal" is plainly pointless, no king can keep the tide back (or can they?). Other times, it's possible, if those with power intend it - if your choices were 'have four children' or 'imprisoned by neostasi', you'd pick the former. And strong social coercion to have children is historically plausible, as is "authoritiarianism" generally, so given a significant change in the morals of the elite and population, something like the above isn't inconceivable overall, even if it is in the present moment. It's suggesting that, maybe, people should be receptive to that kind of policy, when they obviously aren't now.

That has to coexist with a moral / aesthetic desire for more children though, certainly among the 'elites' implementing the restrictions, but it'd help a lot for everyone. And incentives should extend to 4-5 children somehow, the 'marginal cost' to incentivize the least interested in children to have 2 is definitely higher than to incentivize those most interested in having 4.

Cultural factors here get weird, and this doesn't target the overall birth rate, but what about paying 'normal' women something like $5-10k per child with sperm donated from extremely-high-achievers (like, top physicists or executives or artists or w/e)? Or very large amounts like $50-100k to surrogate, and then raise, the children of two high-achievers? (Decade? out technologies like thousands-of-loci human gene editing / whole-genome synthesis, plus existing GWAS info gives something like "mental genes of random-mix-of-high-achievers, physical appearance (and maybe ""personality"") genes of raising parents, which would help with the cultural bits). Could be limited to two-parent households, or start with infertile couples, and uptake would (absent significant 'stick' or cultural shift) be pretty low, but the benefit's high - and whatever the social or individual cost of single parent households is surely dwarfed by loading the genetic dice. And ofc randomness, regression to the mean means famous mathematician / successful female exec children are still very unlikely to be famous mathematicians, but they'll still be much more economically useful, and personally benefit from the intelligence.

gwern had an interesting post on the economics of different eugenics methods; embryo selection is the most practicable in the short and medium term, and possibly net positive today depending on the estimate of an IQ point's economic value and discount rates.

If AI fizzles out one way or another, it's one of the less appreciated levers we have to improve the world.

Well, political/cultural and physical practicality are two different things! Non-iterated embryo selection, already done today (but not for IQ), is definitely less effective (for IQ or similar) than "be a surrogate/hire a surrogate for two extreme outlier parents" and i'm pretty sure less effective than "normal egg + donated sperm from one extreme outlier", and the latter has been doable for centuries! (And sorta is already done with sperm donation, but "college / graduate educated" is much much coarser than 'extreme outlier in iq/achievement'). But most people want kids who "are really their kids" and look like them, so embryo selection is better for that.

... for an infertile couple/lesbian couple who wants to adopt, this might already be both physically and culturally viable, if you can find willing donors?

But the political demand for this is hugely negative. The ones with current cultural power are either too old to have more children or are plugged into low-fertility norms, so it’s like pulling teeth to modestly expand parent tax credits. Your tax on careerist single women, you know, the ones with nothing better to do with their time than engage with luxury brands and girlboss feminism, would force them to do way more of the latter. What real stakeholders would back this plan for more than a few seconds?

The top level post is about young women dating older men, instead of men of their own age.

You're proposing a solution to increasing birthrates. Considering older men are capable of impregnating younger women, I don't understand how this is related.

Could you explain how you landed here? I feel like I missed a transition.

If you talk to women in their 20s you’ll learn that a chunk of them go on dates and expect a relationship with a man who has no intention of having one. This is because of social media induced higher standards, hyper-competitive labor market induced higher standards, the decline in slut shaming, and last but not least dating apps.

The solution (shaming, destroying feed-based social media, destroying dating apps, destroying female empowerment) would require a decade or more to see changes. The best thing an unattractive low income American man can do is simply find a foreign wife. Foreign wives have thousands of years of history and have birthed such great nations as Iceland. I’m not a fan of gender war terms, but American women are looking at pure stats when choosing a partner. There’s no reason why American men shouldn’t look at the pure stats when choosing a partner and pick a bilingual foreign woman with a low number of sexual partners.

The hard truth is that you have no chance of healing America’s problems in your lifetime. Simply do what is in your best interest. If you really have a low chance of finding an American wife, then look for a European, Argentinian, Brazilian, Chinese, Filipina, whatever chick who is interested in Americans. They will certainly be more conservative, thinner, less stressed than American women and your kids will be bilingual. Personally I would look for European, Argentinian, Uruguayan first.

If you talk to women in their 20s you’ll learn that a chunk of them go on dates and expect a relationship with a man who has no intention of having one. This is because of social media induced higher standards, hyper-competitive labor market induced higher standards, the decline in slut shaming, and last but not least dating apps.

Despite how much Millennials and Zoomers make fun of Cold War suburban "keeping up with the Jones'" standards chasing, widespread social media adoption seems to have driven the trend to eleven. Sure, the material aesthetic is somewhat different -- less quintessentially suburban -- but the rampant self-comparison to "influencers" who are often quasi-professionals at producing Instagram vibes certainly goes beyond healthy role models in many cases.

So the man has no intention of a relationship, and it’s the woman’s fault? How does that work?

A 28yo man with an excellent job, a wealthy nest egg, and a reasonable attractiveness and personality is an amazing catch for girls 18-38. If he has no intention of starting a family until 32, he can have a harem of women who are also intelligent and relatively successful. These women should know that they have no chance with him, and that it’s male nature to have as many women as possible. For some reason, most likely a glitch in the female brain that society used to remedy with expectations/shame, this doesn’t happen.

I find the “gender war” angle boring and unfruitful. We can think beyond culpability. The current setup simply doesn’t work from the standpoint of human nature and incentive. So a low income earner who is a dim prospect should simply find someone out of America, because there’s high odds his “stats matched” partner is being used by someone else or otherwise lacks the ability to discern her true level of sexual worth

These women should know that they have no chance with him, and that it’s male nature to have as many women as possible.

Why should they know that? They'll almost certainly find someone to settle with in the end, no? From a purely selfish perspective, aren't they winning?

If we're not adopting a purely selfish perspective, why isn't the man's nature equally up for criticism? If it's male nature to try for maximum partners, isn't it equally female nature to try to maximize mate quality to the exclusion of all else? Aren't both sides of the equation simply following their nature? If we are dissatisfied with this outcome, why claim it's one side or the other at fault? Both men and women need to rise above their instincts. Men need to drop their desire for maximal promiscuity, women need to drop their desire for maximal mate quality. This can and is done, in social contexts where people put effort into leashing their selfish desires. But of course, that's not what the modern world is generally looking for.

If your plan for reducing obesity is for everyone to "rise above their instincts" and just eat less, people will still be fat. Though these parts are critical of the most prominent example of a "systemic" issue (racism), there is something to the idea of the system being to blame. Even the idea that our instincts, which have served us well up to this juncture, are to blame is suspect. Instincts are lindy; smartphones, and many other things, are not.

If your plan for reducing obesity is for everyone to "rise above their instincts" and just eat less, people will still be fat.

If the plan is everyone rising above their instincts as an atomic individual, purely on their own effort, sure. If the plan is deciding what outcomes we want, and then structuring our social system to punish the bad and encourage the good, as every society always does, then no, I think you can absolutely rise above instinctive outcomes. That means compromising individual freedom, though, so people don't want to do it.

We get what we incentivize, whether it's obesity or promiscuity.

We agree. I just wouldn't say your latter proposal is properly described as "rising above instinct."

It’s unlikely that they will find someone to settle down with. Human behavior is notoriously resilient to actually determining what is best. The number of childless women in their 30s is increasing.

The reason we should say it is more of a female fault is that only female behavior can really be modified in this way. Female promiscuity is what has been shamed in every single past civilization because that works. You can’t shame a bachelor for being promiscuous; I mean you can try and he will just ignore it because women are better than shame. But every Muslim and Hindu and traditional Mormon family knows you can shame a woman and that it will work. Nothing short of excommunication from civilization will make a man not screw as many women as possible. But for women? Literally just the smallest amount of shame and reputational damage. That’s it. From a practical standpoint, it is a “how we treat women” problem.

You can’t shame a bachelor for being promiscuous; I mean you can try and he will just ignore it because women are better than shame.

Sure, but you can use the threat of violence. The primary method of keeping men in line historically hasn't been shame, it's been puttin' the shotgun in shotgun wedding. If we're looking for policies to implement: legalize violence against men who "tamper" with your woman. Whether that is adulterous partners, boys sniffing around your daughter, etc.

If we're looking for policies to implement: legalize violence against men who "tamper" with your woman.

Problem is that this was dismantled purely on the grounds that it was bad...for women (being the definition of patronizing). Now, if you try to bring it back, you'll have to find some way of getting women to accept guardianship.

Which would not only go back towards likely having to shame and constrain women (or else why would they think it necessary?), it just seems functionally impossible in the West.

(There is an argument too that its less relevant for women: they've/we've constructed new guardian institutions that appear to not make the same onerous demands as patriarchs like: HR departments, Title IX courts)

The Stand Your Ground Against Sex Abuse Act protects parents who reasonably believe their daughter has been a victim of statutory rape from charges of assault, etc. The age of the accused is not a defense, as the parent might not reasonably be aware of it; as long as sexual contact has occurred the parent is protected from prosecution.

The Jacob Blake* Domestic Relations Law protects husbands who attack men who are sleeping with their wives or committed girlfriends. It is unreasonable to expect men not to, and too many Black and Brown men have been imprisoned for following their cultural instincts. Defendants can offer evidence that they were in a committed relationship at the time of the crime, and use it as a defense to Assault/Murder etc.

(There is an argument too that its less relevant for women: they've/we've constructed new guardian institutions that appear to not make the same onerous demands as patriarchs like: HR departments, Title IX courts)

I don't really find those relevant. Our goal isn't really to protect women, it is to punish defecting men. The original claim was that it wasn't possible to shame men into marriage, I'm saying it is possible to force them to behave by violence.

*Only vaguely and incorrectly related, but hey who's gonna remember the facts!

... haven't traditional societies been "shaming male promiscuity" in various forms for millennia, successfully? Not eliminating, but significantly reducing. Mormon men aren't fucking every modern woman they come across.

Do modern women find Mormon men attractive? Women are the fundamental gatekeepers of sex in the vast majority of cases.

You don't have to tell a one night stand you're Mormon though

Elaborating the hypothetical - If male sexuality was truly unrestrainable, and all men, no matter social conditioning, will fuck whatever they can ... all mormon men could just hop on tinder, not say they're mormon, and try to have sex with 'modern women'. And while that happens, it isn't universal - a solid fraction of seriously traditionally religious men take their religion's moral code seriously, and make good efforts at 'no sex until marriage', and some succeed. And it's hard to separate 'universal social shame' from 'genuinely held moral beliefs', but the former probably plays a part (compare to catholic guilt, puritans, etc).

OP: Nothing short of excommunication from civilization will make a man not screw as many women as possible

I know several christians who, on account of genuine belief, save sex for marriage / committed relationships. They aren't threatened with excommunication. Generally, the idea that shame / social pressure don't affect men seems ridiculous.

In all of those societies seducing a fellow member’s virgin daughter is a very serious offense, though.

From a purely selfish perspective, aren't they winning?

No? They've tricked themselves into spending their more valuable courtship years in a failed effort. The number of women who enter a relationship with a Chad and genuinely don't care that its going to end in a few months or years when he ends up with the homecoming queen is approximately zero.

If the women are “intelligent and relatively successful,” were they ever really in the dim prospect’s league? If not, why does the elite man bother with them?

This theory rests on a separation of marriage and sexual market value. Women are correctly assessing their sexual value, but incorrectly using it as a proxy for marriage value, which makes shaming a terrible solution. You’d need to break that expectation.

@FiveHourMarathon notes that the historical method was the threat of a shotgun wedding, effectively reducing sexual market value—by reducing demand, not increasing supply. Sexual value was brought more in line with marriage value. Shaming, on the other hand, is effectively subsidizing men, letting them pay less. That’s a bad policy and doesn’t address the gap between the two values.

Looking for foreign women is a sound strategy. It’s accessing a much larger supply; of course that will lower the clearing price.

“Elite” men will bother with any woman 6/10 or up, because sex is especially enjoyable when novel. This is like asking why the Sultan bothered with a haram when three of his wives were already hot.

Shaming is a solution because the fear of shame prevents the attempt at promiscuity to secure a higher value man they’ve deluded themselves into believing would settle. If the only way to get sex is through longterm relationship or marriage, and not through throwing your body at someone who isn’t actually going to settle, then promiscuity is reduced. It’s not as if in India, women don’t believe that they can get a better man than their husband; it’s that they can’t in actuality, and they are horny and just want a family. In other words if you stopped shaming women in India, many of them would do the same thing as in America: giving their body to men they have a low chance of securing, before realizing that time is quickly running out and their dating prospects are now worsened from lost time.

Dating apps have likely increased the self-valuation of women because of course the wealthy attractive guy will humor you until you intercourse. The problem I think is that it’s harder to go back to men in your league after such events, just like it’s harder to go back to natural bread after eating sugary white bread for years.

bothered with a haram

Haram marketing vs. reality

https://imgur.io/gallery/4ok52

I feel like the beauty standards/preferences of a specific ruler in a specific place doesn't mean he wasn't capable of securing the closest thing to Western attractive women he could have got in his time and place, if that was his thing.

This dude was able to make his nation provide women in line with his weird obscure fetish and you think that's a point against the novel haram theory.

Or these were 'left overs' and he was fulfilling a duty to his people.

Notice how every common pathway for a man to achieve wealth at 28 is demonized.

In online rhetoric. But I think you'd need to show that revealed preference also backs this up and it isn't all just kayfabe.

All of them are in long term relationships since before they graduated.

I think this is something that doesn't get brought up enough. Despite all the apps and the changes in urban dating, for men around here the best best is to go to a college that has significantly more women than men (which is most of them) and make it known that you are looking for a permanent relationship right now. If you spend your early 20s playing the field, you are more likely to be alone at 30.

Obviously, this isn't good advice for people who aren't going to college for whatever reason, but it seems like the guys around here are very interested in min/maxing their career odds by picking the right school and degree, but ignore their actual life plan and end up with a successful career and single.

If you go to a school that fits your personality, you will probably find women that fit your personality. I went to a Catholic liberal arts school (65% female) met a bunch of very nice girls looking for serious relationships, got into a serious relationship, and was married before 25. Moreover, 5 of my 7 brothers did the same thing (excepting the current sophomore and the one with severe developmental challenges who will never live independently).

Admittedly, this may negatively impact your perfect career path. Your earnings potential might be lower if you pick a school based on the likelihood you will find a mate there. You probably won't get to the US Senate or become the founder of a unicorn startup by picking a school like that, but most people who go to MIT won't do either of those things either. But you have a much better chance of living your life happily married.

Surprisingly, the best men and women with values are all taken before they graduate college. I know quite a lot of 8/10+ men and women who are well adjusted. All of them are in long term relationships since before they graduated. The ones that did break-up for different reasons did not stay single for too long and were set up with someone in their circle super quickly.

This is a KEY factor that I think gets ignored because it's simply not 'noticeable.'

Attractive, well-adjusted, career AND family-oriented people are already somewhat rare on the population level (not rare within certain social circles), and they're thus even rarer in the general dating pool because they won't spend much time seeking dates, and they will tend to stay with existing partners for long periods of time.

Arguably the very definition of "well-adjusted" and "stable," respectively implies someone who has ease seeking and maintaining relationships, including romantic ones.

So if you are seeking stable and well-adjusted you're somewhat thwarted if you can't catch one during the brief window in which they're available and looking. You can go the route of being patient and persistent, but that simply exposes you to the rest of the dating pool for a long time.

And since most of them pair off early, it is entirely possible that one can go through many dates and not ever encounter one, which will then feed into one's perception of the general availability of decent partners.

But when the world is one fire

I realize this is a typo that was likely supposed to be "on fire," but "the world is one fire" sounds like a pithy metaphor for American-led globalization. And maybe also a catchy pop anthem from the 90's that never existed.

Again, I live in Seattle. Outside of maybe a fringe group of people who work in Amazon/Microsoft/etc. who have various issues, I don't actually see this at all. When I go to Tacoma, Federal Way, Everett, etc,. ya' know what I see? Adults on dates, in relationships, etc. People are mostly within the same range of attractiveness and age. I mean, I also see this in Seattle, but I'm making a point that even in a tech hub like Seattle, only a pretty small percentage of people actually work at those tech hub jobs.

Obviously, I'm not saying it's perfect out there, but if you honestly have a six-figure job at Amazon/Microsoft/etc. and can't get laid, it's a you problem, not a problem with all the terrible women who only want 40 year old doctors or whatever.

Also avoid SF/Bay Area. In SF we have "49s" - 4s that think they are 9s. Same situation as Seattle I assume, the gender imbalance is a big aspect of this.

So the only men that these women consider worth dating are therefore unicorns (celebrities who won the lottery) or people who grew up in wealth. The only way to be successful, have time & hobbies in your 20s is to have your success handed to you.

Anecdotally, this is completely untrue. It is possible to climb in social status / financial status still, albeit perhaps harder than in the past.

If any young men are curious, just go into sales. You make a lot of money, don't have to deal with bullshit if you're competent, and learn social skills from your job.

Tech-bros, Finance-bros and Consulting-bros are hated across the board

Having made my nest egg/fortunate through working in Gambling, I'd love to be a consulting bro. I got fortunate when my corporate structure shifted sufficiently that I became 'Head Consultant at (Minor consultancy that works exclusively with gambling companies)' versus 'Head of Department at Betbet'.

Namely : Bay Area & Seattle

Y'all are out here talking about how west coast men have to find a way to spend a year overseas to get a wife, but you won't leave your leftist enclave for another city in the same country? This thread is crazy.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want a bunch of San Franciscans emigrating en masse to SEC school towns and stealing a ton of high-quality women. But this is a huge fucking country with a wide variety of sexual markets that don't require learning a new language or risking a loveless marriage with weird power dynamics.

You can grab an incredible woman in the south if you have a reasonable BMI and can avoid just talking about AI and social justice at parties.

Because she picked badly. Plenty of men who would be happy with a long term relationship with her exist, she just has to date 2 SMV points down, this is completely in her power (not guaranteed, but nothing in life is). The fact that she continues trying to get those above her is totally on her, and the outcome of this is predictable.

Now you can blame the state of society that leads to men playing the field, but you can equally blame the state of society that leads to women's inflated expectations, however doing the latter gets you labelled an incel and the argument dismissed, so lets do the same with the former please.

I really appreciate the creativity of this solution, and honestly seems like a great solution for anyone who wants to try it. Do you think that a significant proportion of American men could benefit from it?

I’ve had this strategy recommended to me before. Tbh it feels… gross? wrong? A very “rejected by his own people” vibe. I guess it beats dying alone though.

Do you think that a significant proportion of American men could benefit from it?

You’ve been here long enough, you should be able to come up with 10 NYT headlines that would shut this whole thing down if it ever gained traction.

You’ve been here long enough, you should be able to come up with 10 NYT headlines that would shut this whole thing down if it ever gained traction.

Has an NYT headline ever shut anything down? In the internet age it's through the goose by the time the NYT reports on it: it's already been spawned on some chan or other, formed a tightly knit subreddit with 10,000 members, been denounced on Twitter, thinkpieced on various Substacks, reacted to by Slate. Only then does the Grey Lady deign to report on the "controversy surrounding" the group.

Having read the Vows section most Sundays for a while, by which I mean that some member of my family reads it and shouts the highlights at me while I read the Book Review, the NYT prints praise heavy portraits of un-woke marriages all the time. Whether it is old-man young-woman, or rich old man met partner at work, or two men who met when one was the other's TA at Brown, or whatever. It's one of the few really trad places left: if you put a ring on her finger, it is fine. Forgives all sins.

If these commitment-phile men exist, and marry these women, and live great lives together, there will be no problem. No backlash.

Tbh it feels… gross? wrong? A very “rejected by his own people” vibe.

That's interesting to me. What do you define as "your people?" Someone of your social class? Someone of your race? Religion?

I've dated girls who immigrated from foreign countries, sticking the ladle right into the barrel isn't really "gross."

That’s because nobody cares about anyone’s individual marriage. Once the late 30s professional middle manager girl bosses start looking to settle down and realize the demographic of men they were hoping to fall back on as a last resort are all getting mail-order brides from the Philippines or something, now it’s a social problem, and subject to the editorial control of the “opinion” or “living” or “politics” section.

What do you define as "your people?" Someone of your social class? Someone of your race? Religion?

Honestly, more than any of these, it’s the accent. I can’t take anyone who doesn’t have a General American or upper-class English accent completely seriously.

Interesting. I've found whenever I fall for a foreigner, the accent starts to become cute, because it's theirs. Really for anyone, although it might not work for truly shitty accents like Australian or New Jersey.

Foreign wives have thousands of years of history and have birthed such great nations as Iceland.

Are you referring to the Celtic slaves the Norse brought with them during the settlement period? (My country doesn't get brought up much here, so I feel compelled to talk about this)

This is a hotly contested subject in Iceland. It's definitely true that a lot of Celtic women contributed to the gene pool during the settlement era (estimates as far as percentages go are all over the place), but the flow of Celts to Iceland had pretty much completely stopped by the end of the 10th century and Iceland spent the next ~800 years in desperate squalor that regularly shocked foreign visitors.

My personal experience (Australian) is that those women aren't really seeking a committed relationship either. The key word here is actually 'committed'. Because sure, some of these women might be looking for a relationship, and fewer still even a long-term one, but they are in no way committing or planning to commit to them ('settling down'). They view these relationships as purely transitory, even if they don't articulate it.

To be fair, my experience is specifically talking about middle-to-upper middle class professional working young women (20s). But these are exactly the kind of women driving this social trend. These women aren't looking for commitment or wanting to commit, they are too busy progressing their careers, living a hedonistic lifestyle of partying, casual sex and frivolous spending, or some combination of both. Commitment and ultimately marriage and family is just some abstract thing for to worry about when they're older, after they've established themselves as a strong independant woman. When they hit 30 or even 35, that's when they'll start worrying about commitment. It's something you can postpone indefinitely with no consequences, right? That's if they choose to commit at all. Much time and effort has been spent convincing young women that effectively becoming an spinster is totally fine and even desirable, and won't make them miserable in the long run.

Same market for me and I feel like they tend to pivot a bit in the late twenties.

Combination of declining SMV, job progression starting to slow down from the kinda-automatic boost every 18 months/2 years and sudden realization of biological window. Nonetheless the whole 'I'll be married with kids in 5 years' thing ad infinitum is a thing.

Perhaps a bit of a divergent, but the entire dilemma has led me to a larger question of how much of life success (in dating, in work, in school) amounts to hard work.

There are traps involved in the hard work ethic, you can justify a lot of pain for very little gain. I'm not bitter about it because I did learn some useful skills and it was good for my character, but a friend of mine who milked the welfare system for years while picking up multiple marketable skills has at last catapulted far beyond me in earning power (his work ethic was impressive in its own sense of course). It really does seem like 'learn a marketable skill by whatever means' is the path to success, hard work doesn't really pay off in shitty jobs where there are very few rungs on the ladder for a hard worker to climb (basically worker < supervisor <<< owner).

Dating on the other hand, I think the big trap lies in overanalysis. Simply meet more women and talk to more women and.. you get it. There are terminally awkward guys who hit a wall and never seem to improve (pattern seems to be that they have an ego problem and lash out in frustration burning all their social credibility), but I've seen some really awkward guys get over this hump with persistence.

Although I think you are correct, I think your argument and anyone else making that argument is missing the point.

Successfully getting a woman has always been a numbers game, true. Our fathers might have had to try 50 times, we might have to try 100 times. This discrepancy is what needs to be dissected and analyzed. The man who would have given up at 57 tries would be shit out of luck nowadays. Individually sure, just try more, do everything more, divert more of your time and attention to becoming sexually attractive, yeah whatever. On a societal level it's a lot harder than that. At one point let that be 50,100,150,200 average trails, things become unsustainable because it just becomes too hard for the excess time, resources and loss of surplus/Dead weight loss (Effort post on this coming soon) to not leak into other domains of life/society. Least of all, if you were declared king, would you really want a plurality of your populace live lives of quite suffering? (I know, I know, male suffering doesn't count).

we might have to try 100 times

Far easier to do it at industrial scale these days, though. I managed to go on first dates with 50 different women last year in a mid-sized metro, all from the strength of polite conversation on an app. I'm fairly sure the vast majority of my forefathers wouldn't have met 50 'viable' women (Not that the majority of that 50 turned out to be viable after a first date) in a lifetime of living in a small agrarian village.

But this honestly just implies GREATER COMPETITION.

If it's easier to do it, more people are going to try and thus the red-queen-race effect is that everyone is putting in more effort, and yet is less likely to stand out.

It's not the kind of industrial scale that is producing more viable matches/relationships, it is apparently just forcing everyone to make more attempts for comparatively fewer results.

Now, if the apps were better at sorting people towards those they are likely to click with rather than trying to addict people to the dopamine hit of "maybe this next person is THE ONE" swiping, it'd be different. but maximizing throughput is not the same as improving everyone's odds.

True, and it's multi-faceted.

The girls I met who I was super-enthused about probably saw me as being towards the lower end of their prospects (assuming that attractiveness is the same for everybody), thereby creating a mismatch.

Like if I'm a Male 6/10 who's getting normally distributed dates at an average of say a Female 4.5/10 (since inherent gender gap), I'm gonna look like a great prospect to my 3/10's who I'm not gonna want and I'm gonna see the fellow occasional 6/10 as a great lead but not get the same enthusiasm in return since their dating range will have some 8/10's.

Makes me wonder if the solution is to ban apps which rely on self selection and mass exposure to all other users.

And get the guys who design the trading engines for major stock exchanges to set up apps that are solely designed to match people of similar 'market value' and completely exclude users from even seeing others' profiles where the mismatch/price spread is too great, so people are only getting matched with those who are similarly 'priced' and thus actually willing to 'trade' for a dating relationship with that person.

This is a function that matchmakers perform, but that's usually expensive and doesn't scale as well.

I think the issue is the intergender mismatch and the casual sex thing that stops direct alignment.

What % of those 50 were viable?

Of those who weren't, what were the common reasons?

I'd say 3 or 4 where I had instantaneous 'I would marry this woman' vibes, probably 15ish where I was like down for a second date. Still ticking with some of those.

I started from a pretty low place in terms of attractiveness so a lot of the early ones were just dealing with some combination of obesity, weak English skills (very multicultural society) or lack of a real lifepath which spaced them.

Jesus, I thought I was a man slut for dating (on average) a new woman every month before covid. Why did you hook up new dates when you found women you would marry? Pursue one of them! You might be married by now if you had slowed down a bit, they probably sensed you were playing the field!

First 30 or so were during a rapid weightloss/self-improvement phase and it was more about getting through dating anxiety through exposure therapy. Very few actual leads in there.

Still going with one or two of the strong vibe ones, but online dating people are super flaky.

Aha, well in that case well done! Very well done, I hope you are proud of yourself.

very few rungs on the ladder for a hard worker to climb (basically worker < supervisor <<< owner).

Honestly that's something I've increasingly noticed as I reach my late twenties and look at my friends.

Majority of whom have somewhat capped out in the first 3-4 rungs of their career where it's worker-centric & essentially an automatic promotion every couple years for just being technically proficient, and now it's way more of a patience/politics game to ascend managerial rungs. I managed to sidestep a lot of that via being super aggressive with company-switching + using some startups to get to a position of early seniority, but increasingly noticing my compatriots stalling out.

pattern seems to be that they have an ego problem and lash out in frustration burning all their social credibility

What does this mean?

My interpretation of this was that it was a case of the man bitterly going on a misogynistic rant about women who don't appreciate his greatness and thus leading to being subject to social ostracization and/or bullying. I've seen this kind of thing happen from time to time in my online circles.

My friend runs a language exchange and while it's a great place to meet women and overcome awkwardness, he's got lots of stories about a particular type of guy who has a combination of awkardness and lack of humility that eventually leads to their banning from the group (and sometimes making threats to my friend afterward). The ego comes into play when they realise no one likes them and they try to save face by saying stuff like (real examples) "I'm a doctor/I'm a lawyer and I'll sue/I get laid all the time anyway (with prostitutes)".

Being awkard is fine, being persistent in overcoming it is good, refusing to take well-intentioned feedback from guys who are clearly more socially adept can be a bad move.

Dating on the other hand, I think the big trap lies in overanalysis. Simply meet more women and talk to more women and.. you get it. There are terminally awkward guys who hit a wall and never seem to improve (pattern seems to be that they have an ego problem and lash out in frustration burning all their social credibility), but I've seen some really awkward guys get over this hump with persistence.

You only have to win once if you're looking for a wife!

This Twitter thread has some good takes, but notice the catch: It assumes heterosexual monogamy.

I think it really might be that simple. You don’t need to force women back into the kitchen. You don’t need government-mandated gfs. You just have to enforce heterosexual monogamy (I am considering hook-ups and excessive serial monogamy to be forms of poly under this framework.)

You just have to enforce heterosexual monogamy (I am considering hook-ups and excessive serial monogamy to be forms of poly under this framework.)

Based on reading all the discussion in this thread, I don't think that "just" belongs there. It seems like one of those Very Hard things to accomplish, not least because any time someone tries to come up with suggestions on how to do that, lots of others accuse them of using that as camouflage for their actual desire of forcing women back into the kitchen. The normalization of trying to divine someone else's True Intentions by taking the worst possible interpretation of their words and then running with it has been disastrous for the human race, but preventing that also seems like one of those Very Hard things to do, if not outright impossible.

There seems to be lots of historical precedent for heterosexual-monogamous cultures (not least of which the West before the sexual revolution). I’m not sure exactly how much “enforcement” would be needed in practice. You don’t need to stamp out adultery entirely, you just need sufficient coercive or cultural pressure to force everyone interested in sex to pair up and have reasonable certainty who the parents of their children are.

There seems to be lots of historical precedent for heterosexual-monogamous cultures (not least of which the West before the sexual revolution).

Sure, but do we have historical precedent for transitioning from a culture similar to the West now - i.e. post-sexual revolution - to a heterosexual-monogamous culture, though? Also while satisfying some other constraints like keeping the current mostly-democratic government structure intact or gender equality (for however one chooses to interpret the term)? When the cat's out of the bag, the knowledge that it used to be in there at one point - and even intimate details about what that looked like - doesn't help us much in figuring out how to put it back in.

Sure, but do we have historical precedent for transitioning from a culture similar to the West now - i.e. post-sexual revolution - to a heterosexual-monogamous culture, though?

The fall of Rome?

Technological conditions too different. Industrial-scale manufacturing of synthetic hormone and fertility-control therapies change everything.

Sure, but do we have historical precedent for transitioning from a culture similar to the West now - i.e. post-sexual revolution - to a heterosexual-monogamous culture, though?

I always hear about the Weimar Republic being very decadent, did the Nazis manage to do it?

Based on reading all the discussion in this thread, I don't think that "just" belongs there. It seems like one of those Very Hard things to accomplish, not least because any time someone tries to come up with suggestions on how to do that, lots of others accuse them of using that as camouflage for their actual desire of forcing women back into the kitchen.

Case in point: Jordan Peterson, who explicitly used "enforced monogamy" and was accused of basically wanting Islamotheocracy style restrictions.

I think he shot himself in the foot by using that term. I had never heard it before and my first impression was also that it was something extreme. 'Enforced' isn't a word that goes down well in today's liberal world.

If we seriously wanted to do this it would realistically need to factor power and wealth into the degree of enforcement.

In the same way that crack and powdered cocaine were treated very differently for a long time due to different social strata using one substance over the other you would have to treat a working class aspiring womanizer differently from a successful business owner banging his maid.

If you did that you could have memes around the idea that if you "make it someday" you can have all the sexual freedom/degeneracy that you want. The same way that you get blue collar workers to defend low maximum tax rates, because people like to delude themselves into thinking that they will be winners eventually. Even when there is no evidence to support that.

Naively trying to apply the same restrictive morality on all classes won't go anywhere though. There will always be another Epstein because there will always be demand for...that. So you better factor that into your considerations.

In the same way that crack and powdered cocaine were treated very differently for a long time due to different social strata using one substance over the other

As a complete aside: I keep seeing this story used as an illustration of subtle racism. White cocaine users get off scot-free, black crack users get the crackdown. But aren't poor crack users much, much, much more likely to be a general nuisance to their surroundings an engage in crime to get their fix? Someone who can afford to do cocaine probably doesn't need to rob the closest gas station to get his fix. Granted, the cocaine user might also be more likely to engage in financial fraud, but that seems at least not directly related to the drug.

This is correct, and in fact, black community leaders lobbied for the increased crack penalties, because the black crack users were primarily a menace to their own communities.

From WNYC:

What's less well-known is that early on, many African-American leaders championed those mandatory minimum sentences and other tough-on-crime policies. These efforts could be seen at the federal and state levels, as well as across black communities such as Harlem.

...

Barker and others argue that in the 1960s, residents of black neighborhoods felt constantly under threat from addicts and others associated with the drug trade, and their calls for increased safety measures resonated at community meetings, in the pages of black newspapers like 'The Amsterdam News,' and in churches.

just

Taking all this for granted, we "just" need a social revolution to make dating (and the serial monogamy it entails) as it is currently understood completely unacceptable.

If we could wave a magic wand I suppose. But I don't suppose there's a likely path from here to there.

I’ll just throw my hat into the ring here and say I’m surprised that more sex-starved white guys aren’t looking overseas for partners, especially to East/Southeast Asia. Quite beyond sexual reasons (Asian women tend to be considered highly attractive by westerners as judged by eg response rate on dating sites) and cultural reasons (Asian cultures tend to be more family-oriented, with loyalty especially being highly prized), there’s simple market dynamics — a white guy in Vietnam or the Philippines or even Hong Kong has massively inflated Sexual Market Value.

Of course, the way to approach this is NOT to go via some skeezy online site, but rather to spend time in relevant country. If a single white dude saves up his money and vacation days, he can spend 6 weeks in the Philippines or Vietnam having a fun time, and if he does his research first, he can go to places where he’ll meet smart accomplished trendy young women rather than just bargirls, especially if he’s spent a few months acquiring rudiments of the relevant language. This can easily lead to relationships and marriage, and I know several “success stories” like this. Ideally, though, a single white guy would simply move out to the relevant region for a while — maybe a year — and conduct the matchmaking under a more relaxed timescale. The best life stage for this would be a gap year or similar, or just a career break. English language teaching is an obvious pathway here, but there are usually industry-specific routes too.

Finally, if you can’t bring yourself to leave your home country, you could just try spending more time in relevant foreign-origin communities. Take lessons in Malay or Vietnamese or Tagalog or Mandarin, get to know your local Asian restaurants and cafes, go to cultural events, etc.. Obviously, though, don’t be a creep about it — you’re going to these places to be in an environment where you’re hoping romantic interactions are more likely to occur spontaneously, rather than specifically going there to hit on women.

I’m not saying that white guys should give up on white women — some of my best friends are white women, and I’ve had lots of rewarding romantic relationships with them — but I do think Western gender relations are in a really toxic and fucked up place right now, and I’m surprised more men aren’t looking for more genteel and constructive alternatives.

You do realize the effort and investment you've described so greatly exceeds what most people are capable of at 25, right? 6 weeks of vacation? On what planet does the average guy making $40k trying to work up to a position that makes 60k have that? Learning rudimentary foreign language skills? You're talking about something most people simply cannot do. Those with high enough IQs are probably better served just putting in OT at their current company and getting promoted. Use that money to snag a woman.

Teaching English in Korea/Japan is not unheard of, and it does sometimes let you snag a woman, but its mostly a thing only an option for higher status men anyways. Those countries don't let McDonalds workers have work visas.

I think the proposal is entirely possible for a guy in his early 30's (and white western guys are unlikely to resort to a dedicated 'wife hunting' mission before then anyway).

I'll agree though that a lot of the suggestions in this thread won't work for all men, but its kind of 'save who you can' at the moment.

Perhaps. I still don't know many of the lower-half, unmarried, 30ish men that could take a 6 month break in the Philippines and not have to totally reroll their career dice. If we are looking for a doable solution at any scale, it would be some sort of correct application of refugee laws wherein we only accept women.

It definitely doesn't need to be 6 months, especially if you plan in advance and do your homework. My sister-in-law (Filipina) met her fiancé while he was on a 1-month surfing holiday in Siargao, and they connected and bonded and he came out to visit her a couple more times in the next 12 months, and now she's living in the Netherlands with him. She's also (I hasten to add) a very impressive woman in her own right, with graduate degrees from US and European universities, so their case isn't typical, but if anything that supports my case.

6 weeks of vacation? On what planet does the average guy making $40k trying to work up to a position that makes 60k have that?

This is actually easier if you're making less than 40k. It's very easy to find a shitty job so just quit and there'll be another equally shitty one available when you come back. I've got friends who have done this.

It's very easy to find a shitty job so just quit and there'll be another equally shitty one available when you come back. I've got friends who have done this.

For who? 100 IQ short guys? Are those your friends that did that? How'd they even afford the plane ticket?

For who? 100 IQ short guys?

Some were short, some tall and handsome. 100 IQ sounds about right, maybe less.

How'd they even afford the plane ticket?

I'm not American so maybe it's different there, but it's not that hard to save up a few grand on minimum wage over the course of a year. If you're willing to work in a bar or something you can probably even find a job at your destination.

It is a very interesting idea and perspective. My problem with it is simply I look at my high school (different that most people here, although perhaps yours was similar, bottom 50% public school in the state, high hispanic population ~30%, no blacks really, a couple Indian families) and I very much see the problem described here. There were plenty of guys like me that went away to college and never returned. More girls than guys went to college, and thus also didn't return. The guys remaining either went military or some sort of low paying gig. Well, there are also the drug dealers. But the smarter, non college, non military, went into trades, mostly mechanics and carpentry. They seem fine. But its the ones that are more in the service sector that fall into the non-dating non-marriageable pool. They could probably save up enough money to quit and go abroad, but probably couldn't figure out how to obtain non-hotel/touristy housing, which would be necessary for an extended stay. Also, a 6 month gap on the resume would indicate to most of the employers that the guy went on a drug bender (which would be true for most instances) and they'd thus have to re-start at a super low rung with unstable hours. And I don't have much faith in them figuring out how to navigate the spousal visa process. Certainly hiring an attorney to help would also be a fairly extreme financial stretch.

Maybe I'm putting too much weight on my social experience here, but when I think of "guy who can't get a girl" I imagine someone making decent-but-not-great money in IT or business (say $45,000 a year) who's just a bit of an introverted loser. That kind of guy can definitely say "fuck it, I'm going to do a one month CELTA course and move to Manila", and if their lack of romantic success is the main source of pain in their life, they probably should.

I know those people as well, and frankly they are not nearly as bad off. Those are the guys who often need to realize they also are engaging in excessive expectations. They want to get girls by swiping right and taking her to an Applebees. But if you see the real real. The bottom 30% of the White/Hispanic males, theres nothing for them. They make their $15-22/hr, now typically at an Amazon warehouse or the like, and if they keep at it, they will move up slowly. But they really need to keep at it.

Also, a 6 month gap on the resume would indicate to most of the employers that the guy went on a drug bender (which would be true for most instances)

This is not the case. I did 6 months travel in South America (no drugs) in my early 30's while in a very professional career with zero impact. My boss wished me well and my job was available on my return. Not the US though.

very professional career

That is the huge difference. The people I am talking about are your Amazon warehouse workers, doormen, marginal salesmen, stockers, etc. Basically those people who are in the "be a warm body" positions. There is a path for almost all these people to a decent living. You just need to keep at it, because, like I've seen with so many kids from my high school, your competition will lose ground by going on a bender and being chronically late and end up with a resume gap, which ends up being a full reset to your progression. If you just start at an Amazon warehouse at 18 and work straight through to 26, you will be making decent wages by then. And probably be a manager soon enough, hell, they will pay for your night class associates (and its not just Amazon, they basically followed the wal mart model with a twist). But you can't take 6 months off at any time during the buildup unless you are doing it at a college with knowledge from the bosses who want you to get a specific degree so the HR lady won't pester them when they promote a "high school educated white man" to manager at age 27 (the HR ladies being both racist and classicist in these ways).

Even in early trades you need to be super locked in because a lot are controlled by ludacris union rules, even in states where unions are officially optional. Basically, because so many people in your area fall into bad habits, to succeed you just need not to, but also APPEAR to not to. And a big resume gap looks like doing meth.

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I knew a short guy with about a ~110-120 IQ who got a job teaching English in Thailand. After spending a few years drowning in a pile of women, he met a sassy Thai woman who was a good match for his personality. They married young (I think he was about 25-27 when they got married) and he came over with her back to the West. They're still together.

110-120 IQ still means excluding some 60+% of men... This isn't as curative a proposition as you might think.

Yes, I wasn't suggesting that it is easy. Very little worthwhile in life is easy.

Easy is different than outside of a person's capabilities. I am talking about trying to help C students who graduated middle of the pack high schools, like the dozens of men I know from my very own middling high school.

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I have spent an almost full year of my life, at 22, backpacking around in 6 countries. I have done this by keeping a part-time job (paying around 1k per month) for the last 1.5 years of my degree and saving my student loan money for travelling. Overall the whole thing cost me less than 10.000 euros. Stayed mostly at mid-cheap range hostels but also shared a house with some other backpackers and occasional Airbnb when the circumstances were favorable :). When things got too expensive I volunteered and hitchhiked until figuring out a path to less expensive places. I dated a ton of other backpackers and local girls, learned the language to quite a decent degree, and had the time of my life. All it took was 10k, and I wasn't even being too frugal. I met a TON of people doing similar things.

Can someone PLEASE explain to me why every time someone mentions traveling around the world, there is this discussion of how difficult it is to spend some time in a $5k GDP per capita country as a $40k per year earning independent young Western guy? It is really, really, not unless if I am missing something fundamental here.

Its easy so long as you exist outside of the tourist ecosystem, which is verrrrrry hard for most people. Particularly we are talking about sub 100 IQ High school C students who don't have any foreign language skills, and will be very slow picking it up while there.

I’ll just throw my hat into the ring here and say I’m surprised that more sex-starved white guys aren’t looking overseas for partners, especially to East/Southeast Asia. Quite beyond sexual reasons (Asian women tend to be considered highly attractive by westerners as judged by eg response rate on dating sites) and cultural reasons (Asian cultures tend to be more family-oriented, with loyalty especially being highly prized), there’s simple market dynamics — a white guy in Vietnam or the Philippines or even Hong Kong has massively inflated Sexual Market Value

That's presumably why it's been tabooed. Any man who would say "Oh, I went to Asia to find a wife cause it wasn't working here" is...not going to be seen in a good light.

90 Day Fiance can't have helped, since it reveals some absolutely awful situations and power dynamics (as is expected for reality TV, but there is a basic point there).

Putting aside expense, wireheading and the basic neuroticism and anxiety as formidable deterrents, many or even most people care about how their social circle will react to their wife. That's its own barrier.

There's obviously a huge difference between "mail order bride" scenarios vs "I met this amazing Cambodian woman while I was on a surfing holiday and now we're married and she's doing her ADN at SUNY Albany". The latter carries - if anything - positive social weight among the professional managerial class.

Seems to me that the only difference is whether or not you went surfing.

I believe 'poor mail order bride' will be conflated with 'professional agentic SE Asian wife' for the same reason that 'possible sex trafficked victim' is conflated with escorts. Its gatekeeping of women's power in controlling men through their sexuality. If men are shamed into not accessing foreign wives then it keeps the value of western women sky high.

The other issue is that a lot of the benefits of 'traditional' women does not rest in one individual woman.

If you're not importing the whole family, your traditional SEA wife is going to have the same or a worse support system than your regular corn-syrup-fed one, so raising children will be tremendously stressful.

The other component of that issue is that the SEA women that choose to leave will be on the less-traditional side of SEA, otherwise they would not leave.

That should still put them on a better footing than the local women, but could also be worse, if they are 100% green card/golddiggers.

Or they have unrealistic expectations of life in the USA (thinking they'll be moving to Miami Beach or the Upper East Side or whatever sitcom/movie fantasy). Or they don't have unrealistic expectations and the USA are just as bad as they had the impression from their traditional village, and they hate being there.

If you're not specifically seeking a traditional woman, but just a woman that is able to stick to a marriage for longer than a local one, then probably some foreign college-educated, traveling-abroad one might be good enough.

The other option is the straight-off-the-boat, 1st generation English-speaker of the family, not completely disgusted by US norms but still retaining traditional upbringing and family nearby. It would take more effort to find and court these.

I’ll just throw my hat into the ring here and say I’m surprised that more sex-starved white guys aren’t looking overseas for partners, especially to East/Southeast Asia

Cheaper, yes, but humidity, mosquitoes, diseases, increased poverty etc.

This would 100% work and probably lead to a happy relationship. I am a decent looking white guy. Realistically maybe a 6 or 7. In Asia it is not uncommon for me to get unsolicited complements about my appearance. This has literally never happened to me in the U.S. from anyone who wasn't a granny. And the looks I got from girls on the street... It was almost uncomfortable.

For white guys, you can probably add 2 or 3 points to your 10 scale appearance rating. Then factor in that the average woman is also 2 or 3 points higher than in the United States. It doesn't seem unreasonable to be dating 9's.

I know appearance isn't everything but it gets you in the door. And the cards are massively stacked in your favor as a white guy in Asia.

Okay, that said, this isn't going to work and here's why. For someone to do this, it would require the man to be both a) fairly desperate and b) quite good at planning and achievement. I think the subset here is small. Probably the only group I can see fitting the bill are otherwise perfect guys who happen to be short.

Okay, that said, this isn't going to work and here's why. For someone to do this, it would require the man to be both a) fairly desperate and b) quite good at planning and achievement.

Hmm, I could see another version, which is a guy who slacked/screwed around in his youth and early twenties, maybe fit the stoner stereotype, stayed relatively poor and unkempt, but is otherwise naturally attractive (tall), intelligent, and good impulse control (i.e. no criminality).

And gets into his late twenties and decides to go on an earnest course of self-improvement and gets his shit together. And as he's finally building his life up it makes more sense for him to try to snag a loyal foreign-born wife than to wait to build up enough wealth to compete for Western womens' attention.

For white guys, you can probably add 2 or 3 points to your 10 scale appearance rating. Then factor in that the average woman is also 2 or 3 points higher than in the United States. It doesn't seem unreasonable to be dating 9's.

How much of this is just the relatively tiny rate of obesity? I have always felt Asian girls tend to have a higher median but smaller standard deviation in terms of attractiveness. Even here in the West I'll tend to date majority Asian girls, but it's more due to the fact that they're less likely to hit a hard disqualifying factor for a first date than due to an actual preference.

I'm trying to hard filter for single mothers, obesity, complete lack of career/life-seriousness and overly alt tattoos/piercings/whatnot. Those criteria knock out like 3-4% of Asian girls and like what feels like a majority of white women on the apps. Which I think also contributes to a lot of the 'Asian women are most favorable on dating apps' studies since I feel like a lot of men are going to be swiping similar to me (albeit probably not as hard on 3 & 4 but just as hard on 1 & 2) and Asian girls who are fundamentally ineligible tend to be a lot rarer.

How much of this is just the relatively tiny rate of obesity?

A large part of it. But Asian women are more feminine generally (smaller frames, more neotenic features, etc...) And after age 30, the hotness gap becomes a chasm because of reduced appearance of aging, lack of hideous tattoos, and less abuse of alcohol.

I agree that the differences are much larger at the 50th percentile than at the 90th percentile.

Though one should keep in mind the children of such a pairing. The hapa subreddit has famously a massive chip on their shoulder, oscillating between self loathing because their racist Asian mothers worshipping whiteness (and they are no blue eyed blonde Aryan) and their racist tall White fathers being disappointed (for being short chubby chinks).

https://old.reddit.com/r/hapas/

Does it work for white guys or just white guys with citizenships in rich countries? How would you know a SEA woman isn't just looking to move to USA with man they are not really attracted to and then drop them once they have acquired citizenship? Hans/Nina Reiser.

Getting a green card currently takes 12-18 months, and if it's through marriage to a US citizen it's conditional for two years on the marriage being bona fide. Getting full blown citizenship takes five on top of that. I'm not saying that US citizenship isn't a significant attraction for people from the developing world, but you'd very much have to be playing a long game, especially since you're presumably going to be having sex with a partner (and potentially having kids). Combine that with residual stigma around divorce in some SEA cultures and their tendency towards pragmatism around marriage (it's about building a family and shared financial platform, with sexual attraction relatively de-emphasised) and I think this risk is overblown. Sure, it happens sometimes, but most SEA women who partner up with American guys are going to be entering the marriage in good faith on the assumption they can make it work and build a better life for themselves, rather than intending to bail at the first opportunity.

Wealth gap between USA and, say, Philipines is immense.

Combine that with residual stigma around divorce in some SEA cultures and their tendency towards pragmatism around marriage

Oh, those women going to marry an American aren't average in their country

How would you know a SEA woman isn't just looking to move to USA with man they are not really attracted to and then drop them once they have acquired citizenship? Hans/Nina Reiser.

Easily. Tell your beloved you decisively denounced America, renounced US citizenship and are ready to live with her in her home country for the rest of your life.

So much ink spilt and do much of it in volleys denying sexist motives while accusing the other side of sexist motives. Is anyone here even against something like a really strongly socially enforced monogamy? Just sure the other gender wouldn't go for it? Is there not some common ground at can find?

I mean, that's what I personally opted into. It's a good solution!

Is anyone here even against something like a really strongly socially enforced monogamy?

Conditional on the details, but based on the way I hear it talked about in this thread I think I would be.

Just sure the other gender wouldn't go for it?

Forget the other gender. All available data suggests my gender wouldn't go for it.

Is anyone here even against something like a really strongly socially enforced monogamy?

I think that 'strongly socially enforced' is doing a lot of lifting, in that it would entail 'reversing' many liberties that have been extended to both sexes (moreso women) and would probably require a return of religiosity in order to make the enforcement mechanisms have sufficient 'bite.'

I would imagine, for example, this leading to the return of shotgun weddings, of stricter controls on prostitution, and by extension on strip clubs and porn production, on a stronger preference for modesty in dress, and much more difficult divorce processes, which implies actual divorces would be even more fraught than usual.

A large portion of the population would balk at some or all of the above if proposed independently.

So I'm not against it, but there's a discussion to have about the second order effects that it might carry.

Except for the ability to use sex transactionally, which I've been assured in this thread is not the thing women really want(and believe them), I'm not really sure what women lose on this. And I don't think we need religion, if people recognized the problem they could recognize the usefulness of the solution and punishing desenters socially should come naturally. There is not a lot of ambient sympathy for the main losers, guys who are sleeping with tons of women no strings attached or women using sex to get ahead.

And I don't think we need religion, if people recognized the problem they could recognize the usefulness of the solution and punishing desenters socially should come naturally.

I honestly do not think this is how the majority of humans' thought processes work.

Punishing dissenters/defectors comes naturally, yes, but note that this behavior is only expected when the human in question can directly gain a personal benefit from doing so. Coordinating on a wider scale requires a bit more influence than merely "recognizing the usefulness of the solution."

There is not a lot of ambient sympathy for the main losers, guys who are sleeping with tons of women no strings attached or women using sex to get ahead.

This is true.

There is not a lot of ambient sympathy for the main losers, guys who are sleeping with tons of women no strings attached or women using sex to get ahead.

I mean, one doesn't need sympathy when one just has raw power. Almost by definition, guys who are sleeping with tons of women and women using sex to get ahead have lots of power. The rest of society might be more numerous, but they'd still have to coordinate to overpower that powerful group, and I think the very reason this discussion is being had is that such coordination doesn't seem to be coming naturally.

My interpretation of "women using sex to get ahead" was somewhat different from yours. A stripper and similar, I see more as a "woman using sex(y performances) to get by." When I think of "women using sex to get ahead," I think of a woman sleeping with the boss to get promotions and variations of that. Which isn't exactly politician-levels or even CEO-levels of power, but certainly well on the "powerful" end of the spectrum in society.

Even for the CEO’s mistress, it’s a very precarious kind of power. It’s informal, snuffed out at his whim.

Look up ye poor soul and behold, the sexual misconduct allegation of Damocles.

More comments

I don’t think it’s a good idea. It’s not either sex that wouldn’t go for it, it’s the broader edifice of liberalism.

This is a subject that turns avowed conservatives into communists. Expecting powerful social enforcement to stamp down inequality is the most archetypal authleft solution. Given any reasonable level of freedom, it’s going to lose out to structures which work with rational self-interest instead of against it. I’m not willing to throw out enough liberties to make up the difference.

Then again, I suppose I must be on the good side of this inequality. I’ve got my job, my prospects, and my girlfriend I met in college. No property, yet, but that can change. Despite what other respondents might suggest I’ve never dated a girl who was a crazed gold digger or a sociopath. So perhaps it’s just my privilege telling me to let freedom ring.

Do you want to eliminate welfare for those who can't compete economically?

Eliminate? No.

Reduce? Probably.

Reform? Definitely.

I’m not exactly a card-carrying libertarian. I do, however, think that sexual market controls go too far.

What sexual market controls do we have? Or are you speaking hypothetically?

Hypothetically since I was answering this question:

Is anyone here even against something like a really strongly socially enforced monogamy?

I am against it, in theory, because I don’t see how you get to that level of social enforcement without trampling individual liberties. “Market controls” probably isn’t quite the right analogy, depending on who’s doing the trampling. It’s definitely not a description of the relatively laissez-faire onanism we have currently.

This is a subject that turns avowed conservatives into communists

And avowed communists into conservatives. If hypocrisy exists, it goes both ways.

Expecting powerful social enforcement to stamp down inequality is the most archetypal authleft solution.

"Authleft"? I would just "left" or even centre sufficies, given that thinking reducing (economic) inequality is beneficial, is by no means restricted to tankies.

I don’t follow. How does it make communists into conservatives? What tankies are coming out and campaigning for monogamy? Maybe there are examples from post-Mao China…

Enforcing a preferred social structure from above is quintessentially authoritarian. That’s true in the case of wealth inequality, and it’d be true if applied to marriage.

It makes tankies into conservatives when they argue in favor of a (sexual) free market, with winners, losers, and those with absolutely nothing.

The problem isn't loneliness or lack of romantic relationships, the problem is declining family formation, which those are a prerequisite for.

I think the big problem for both men and women is the opportunity costs involved.

For middle-class women, the prime time to get married and have children overlaps with the critical time for education and launching a career. Additionally, even with access to good child care, there are serious compromises required - you can have kids and raise them well in the early years, but it comes at the cost of someone's career, either theirs or their spouse's. Alternately, you subcontract the raising of your children, and you feel that you're a failure as a mother, because you never have the time or energy for your children.

My wife has a STEM degree. This dynamic hit her hard.

For men, the cost of family formation is adulthood and responsibility. There's a lot of fun stuff that you have to give up or dial back on if you're going to be providing for a family - and as entertainment and hobbies get better, the cost only goes up.

I'm kind of a nerd, and I have (or had) a lot of geeky hobbies. This dynamic hit me hard.

Now, don't get me wrong - the tradeoffs are absolutely worth it in the long run, but they are still tradeoffs.

Here's the real kicker, though: Even if you have a woman who isn't interested in a career and just wants marriage and children, Moloch rears his head and smacks that down. Because, unless she's in an isolated community, this means that she'll need to find a man who can provide for her to dedicate her time and efforts to marriage and children. Which means a man in roughly the upper quartile of earning potential. Which means a man who is educated, interested in settling down, responsible. Which means a man who has a lot of options and wouldn't look twice at a woman without a college education... and so, our aspirational homemaker still needs a college degree, and the attendant expenses in both money and fertile years.

Do men really care if a girl has a college degree or not? I've never heard the need for education expressed by any man. Be it one I know or any real life media.

I'd say today the pure non-working housewife role is increasingly economically unviable, which doesn't necessarily mean 'a wife needs a degree', but generally professional roles that work around a maternity schedule will lean that way.

Have you ever encountered an educated, successful man who has married a woman without a degree? It's possible, clearly, but I think it's extremely rare.

Assortative mating by socio-economic status is extremely pronounced in the US, and the lack of a degree locks you out of the "educated, successful men" part of the dating pool.

But I wouldn't say that this is because men want women with degrees. I'd say it's because men with degrees by 'chance' were around women with degrees, specifically in universities or workplaces. It wasn't a requirement on the men's part that the women have degrees. So I don't think the way you phrase things is accurate. Educated men are not locking out uneducated women from their dating pool. The university and workplace is. It might be true that the social stratification we are seeing is leading to extreme rates of assorted mating, but the driving force behind that is not the mating preferences of men.

By mating preferences of men do you just mean what gets men hard? Or do you mean what (those) men want in a marriage partner? Because educated upper class men absolutely want a partner with appropriate educated upper class hobbies and affectations, which tend to coincide with a college degree even if it is not technically a requirement.

My grad school classmates all married women with degrees, and the obvious driving factor was that when one of us was banging a townie bartender (or whatever) at any point and brought her to a party, she was embarrassingly out of sync socially. A spouse that impresses others is important, valuable, to most people. To claim otherwise is to separate social desires out of marriage preferences, which is totally baffling and ahistorical.

Both. And at risk of being to curt here, none of what you say necessitates a man wanting a woman with a degree.

Socio-economic status has little to do with woman having a degree. Suppose a man marries woman without a degree, but all her male relatives have degrees. Compare versus where a woman has degree but her relatives are high school dropout.


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