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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   3588 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 19, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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The bad news is that status game sociopaths exist and will blow those with morals and ethics out of the water for some amount of time before their local society decides to exile them.

This relies on there being a local society. My impression is that a significant cause of the modern destruction of dating and friendships is not just the dissolution of rituals, but also the dissolution of local society. If everyone you know is a friend of a friend of a spouse of a cousin, then there are reputational concerns. The good faith actors can vouch for each other and introduce each other to their friends and therefore recognize each other, while the bad faith actors quickly burn through all their social capital and end up as outcasts. If you have forty trustworthy mutual friends who all know each other, then a viable strategy is to only trust people who are vouched for by other people you already trust, and treat any outsiders with suspicion until they jump through a lot of hoops to prove themselves. But if you're in an atomized society where you've moved into a new city 2 years ago and all of your neighbors are people who have also moved here within the past couple years, each from a different place, that's not an option. The strategy to only trust and befriend people who are vouched for is equivalent to having no friends. You have to lower your standards for reputation, which makes it easier for the sociopaths to blend in. And when they are eventually caught they can just move to a different social circle (in a high population area they don't even need to literally move to a new location), and blend in again because people can't afford to ostracize strangers anymore.

But if you're in an atomized society where you've moved into a new city 2 years ago and all of your neighbors are people who have also moved here within the past couple years, each from a different place, that's not an option. The strategy to only trust and befriend people who are vouched for is equivalent to having no friends.

This is accurate if you've made the choice to delegate personal autonomy to the group.

That is the path of most.

Reclaim your autonomy. Determine what you see as fruitful.

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