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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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I have little desire to speak outside of this thread sadly, as most people here believe I am fundamentally lesser than them and so cannot converse with me in good faith [etc]

This isn't true at all! You can take seriously the arguments of someone who's dumber, or morally lesser, than you. Ancient kings sometimes heeded the advice of philosophers or commoners, despite believing in something like a great chain of being. Not that it matters, most mottizens are liberals or christians or some sort and hold something like 'everyone is equal morally/eyes of god' and also 'honest and clear discourse is important'

to say absolute statements such as "Women do not know what they want"

It's not an absolute statement though, it describes a tendency. If I say "man, islam sure is sexist" on a visit to the middle east, and you point out the large number of liberal muslims in the US who aren't sexist ... this misses the point? But a lot of women make statements that are transparently incompatible with their 'revealed preferences', especially about sex and dating. Obviously more generally both men and women do it, but there are specific patterns to the way women do it - like, describing the behaviors they like in men, or claiming that PUA stuff universally doesn't work (it does! example, second paragraph), which zinker is referring to.

No sane, healthy person wants to be in a relationship and therefore spend time and money with someone they consider beneath them.

Like, what's even happening here? What do the words "sane" and "healthy" even mean? If I believe the following: women should be subservient to men, God's law is that a husband and wife should love each other, and then enjoy spending time with my wife in the usual way you do, and "explicitly justify this" via the second premise ... I want to be in a relationship and spend time and money, and yet I consider my wife in some sense "beneath me". A sexist might spend plenty of money on their wife as part of a social game to show wealth! That statement's just not true.

He doesn't care much for my thought process and would likely be glad to have me continue to abstain

Yet we all reply, reply, reply, because this place explicitly exists to have autistic long discussions about politics with people we disagree with!

I disagree. You cannot take seriously someone who you think is dumber than you, because if their argument is sound, it is not because you think their reasoning is sound or their character, but that they got lucky enough to say a smart thing.

But women are not a monolithic religion like Islam. They have their own individual preferences that vary between eachother. For example, I think PUA stuff does universally not work, and...where am I supposed to go with "describing behaviors they like in men"? How are you able to tell I am lying about what kind of man I like by the basis I am a woman? Do you have objective evidence to show women are typically lying about something as fundamentally as what they like?

"Sane" and "healthy", in my opinion, fall under "not being with someone who thinks you should be subservient to them or they should be subservient to you". A sexist is not a sane, healthy person. Does your wife know that you think, explicitly, she should be subservient to you?

it is not because you think their reasoning is sound or their character, but that they got lucky enough to say a smart thing.

That's not what the phrase 'reasoning is sound' means? If their argument is sound, their 'reasoning is sound'. Very dumb people often understand things correctly, e.g. they go about day-to-day life normally, and that requires thousands of bits of 'sound reasoning' - what made that sound, did i buy food yesterday, etc. "Get lucky" and "take seriously" are entirely compatible! If someone with 100iq, purely randomly, discovered the true theory of quantum gravity, the 150iq physicists would love to take his argument seriously. And I've learned a lot from some objectively stupid people who still, by coincidence or life experience, had interesting information.

More specifically, I've had teachers in subjects who were, clearly, much dumber than me, but they had lots of domain knowledge that I didn't have, which it was useful for me to learn, so I learned it! It's difficult to say I wasn't taking said teacher seriously as I learned all that stuff from them, in the exact same way I would from a smarter teacher. Yet that's what your argument would suggest.

They have their own individual preferences that vary between each other.

But nothing is monolithic - the reason for the islam example was precisely because there are a lot of liberal muslims who don't share most of the ideas of conservative muslims. And, similarly, that phrase, as it describes women, is referring to a strong tendency among most women, not all women.

For example, I think PUA stuff does universally not work, and...

Then what explains the many women who say it works on them? An example of which I linked, but there are many more. In general, if one observes peoples' stated desires, they are so clearly influenced by social norms, mimesis, and all sorts of complicated contingencies that they are clearly very often wrong. Not as explicit lies, but more as combinations of alienation, general confusion, not wanting to seem weird, copying the desires of others, confusing signs for signified, etc. So I can just do this - from your perspective, both modern conservative women and generally past 'reactionary' women were wrong about their desires, right? So it's clearly possible.

"Sane" and "healthy", in my opinion, fall under "not being with someone who thinks you should be subservient to them or they should be subservient to you

So have 98% of all male humans who have ever lived not been "sane"? Because 'women have lower status than men and are in some what subservient" is the norm, obviously in many different forms, historically.

A sexist is not a sane, healthy person.

Yet sexists can lead ... perfectly normal lives? Again, by this claim, 99% of all male humans who have ever lived are not sane or healthy. Yet they lived very similar lives to male humans today, and we can read their cultural artifacts, books, diaries, and they clearly are, by every conventional meaning of the word, sane and healthy.

Does your wife know that you think, explicitly, she should be subservient to you?

I haven't ever claimed, anywhere, that women should be subservient to men, or husbands should be to their wives. You've conflated my arguments with the general sphere of 'right-wing arguments' you're seeing here.