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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   4053 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 19, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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ELIRetarded: Why has service gotten worse, and why is everything expensive and smaller now?

When I Google this I get a bunch of one-sentence explanations about "inflation" and "supply chain problems" but those just sound like things that most people think a smart person would say and/or that they heard from the TV box. There are also conspiratorial comments amount money printing, M2, the "true" inflation rate, etc.

Inflation and supply chain issues don't just fall out of the sky, they're the result of government policy. My economics-illiterate impression is that technocrat morons freaked out and started pulling levers during covid, ruining the economy in the process by causing mass unemployment and killing SMBs and pumping massive amounts of free money into an economy where money was already free, which caused serious inflation nothing to see here citizen, inflation is low, CPI is normal, everything is fine, don't trust your lying eyes or wallet and now another band of technocrats are raising interests rates to control the mess their comrades caused in the first place, compounding everyone's pain.

If the above is true, I don't know why there isn't a mob in DC with pitchforks demanding to cook and eat the bureaucrats responsible for flying the economy into the ground and royally fucking everyone who isn't independently wealthy. Please tell me my understanding is incorrect so I can stop being mad about this every time I buy groceries.

I guess you're asking three questions here:

  1. Why has service gotten worse? - Has it? In a measurable way? It's plausible that a tight labour market and some cost-saving measures put in place have made service worse in some sectors, but it would help if you could be more specific.

  2. Why is everything expensive? - Assuming you're from the US, incomes (inflation-adjusted) have either decreased by 4.7% or increased by 3% between 2019 and 2022. However, wealth is up significantly. This article is worth reading.

  3. Why is everything smaller now? - Do you mean consumer goods? Shrinkflation for food is definitely a thing, but it's just a manifestation of regular inflation. Over the long term, food costs are static, which with growing incomes means food is getting cheaper in real terms. Again, can you be more specific? Houses are getting bigger while households shrink. TVs are obviously getting bigger. Cars are getting bigger.

Thank you for patiently dissecting my incoherent rant.

#1 When I've been back in the States, store hours have been reduced, services have been cut, and menus shortened. Maybe it's just my perception or the places I've been, but it seems different than 2019.

#2 The article was interesting, thanks. But this was concerning

So anyway, the basic story here appears to be that Americans saved a lot of money since 2019, and the value of their houses and retirement accounts went up in spite of rate hikes. That’s great news, and it suggests that much of the pessimism Americans are feeling about their finances is really more about the general unrest in American society and the scary stuff on the news.

and

Now, one slight note of caution. A bit of the increase in wealth — about $8300 for the median household — came from an increase in the value of used cars.

If my income is $100k/yr, and the price of consumable goods goes up 30%, BUT the estimated value of my house and car go up 50%, I guess on paper I have more wealth, but buying groceries and vacations is going to feel more expensive.

Also, as the article points out, if you don't have big far assets that have appreciated over the last few years, you're missing out on this wealth boom. Maybe that's why I'm feeling the squeeze.

#3 I don't have any specific examples for this one off the top of my head. I'll need to keep an eye out.

On bad service, I did read some discussion that this is downstream of the tight labor market. Service jobs are struggling to hire good people because good people would rather get other jobs if they could. So they have to hire crappy people or nobody at all. I'm also seeing anecdotally that teenagers are delaying drivers licenses and jobs, so I think the talent pool is smaller on that side.

There was some talk about service being the best during recessions when all your laid off engineers/etc got jobs at Dairy Queen and crushed it.

In addition to teenagers delaying driver's licenses and jobs, those that do try both are trading their time against extracurricular that can be marked on a FAFSA or CommonApp, and it's extremely unlikely any entry-level job will be as remunerative in the long run, especially with how scholarship-focused a lot of programs have gotten.

I think there's also been improved outreach from blue collar work to skilled- or smart-but-not-college-bound students, which on the upside means that they're getting pulled into more serious careers instead of spending a few years at McDonalds before seeing something more serious, but it does mean you're not seeing the sort of person you'd trust to reassemble a car engine doing customer service.

But more morbidly, the educational system has also just very strongly moved away from practical skills. I see it more clearly in STEM outreach, where it's now typical to see students who've never handled a wrench (and sometimes not even a screwdriver!) nor had a serious long-term project to manage, but almost all of the nearby schools have completely closed down their shop classes, and classical reading-writing-math has moved away from larger-scale or longer-term projects without immediate oversight.

I think there's also been improved outreach from blue collar work to skilled- or smart-but-not-college-bound students, which on the upside means that they're getting pulled into more serious careers instead of spending a few years at McDonalds before seeing something more serious, but it does mean you're not seeing the sort of person you'd trust to reassemble a car engine doing customer service.

This has not been my lived experience in highly skilled blue collar work- functionally all the decline in smart non-college types’ availability is from increased pot use. Young people entering the trades mostly went to college, discovered that they still didn’t like school, and then left to go to trade school because it will at least be over quickly(or had a relative in the trade in question).

I don't know why there isn't a mob in DC with pitchforks demanding to cook and eat the bureaucrats responsible for flying the economy into the ground and royally fucking everyone who isn't independently wealthy.

What do you think 1/6 was?

Primarily about the future of the nation and social/political/moral grievances. The economic suffering was a catalyst but not the main point.

There are also conspiratorial comments amount money printing, M2, the "true" inflation rate, etc.

Why do you think these are conspiratorial? The Fed makes the data publicly available! The obvious explanation that growing the money supply by more than 40% in a couple years actually does increase prices substantially remains the obvious explanation. As an Occam's Razor appreciator, I don't really feel much need to find better explanations than that one. The only reason that inflation data isn't even more horrifying is that much of the newly created "wealth" wound up saved or stored in housing rather than actively circulating.

If the above is true, I don't know why there isn't a mob in DC with pitchforks demanding to cook and eat the bureaucrats responsible for flying the economy into the ground and royally fucking everyone who isn't independently wealthy.

People believe the claim that the government had to do something about Covid, that lockdowns were a reasonable short-run response, and that shoveling money at people was necessitated because they couldn't just go earn it with normal economic transactions. This is the majority position. Bringing up your (and my) conspiracy theory that this was probably not a good idea will get a lot of, "yeah, but we didn't know that then" even from people that half agree.

On the hand, with regard to the pitchforks, you may have noticed that the Summer of 2020 really was marked by endless left-wing riots, then there was also a right-wing riot at the beginning of 2021. The federal government took sufficient action to persuade many right-wingers that they would not be treated as gently by the legal system as they had observed their left-wing counterparts being treated in 2020. Prosecuting a thousand or so people for whatever you can make stick has a way of dissuading many people from continuing with the same plan, at least in the short run.

Bringing up your (and my) conspiracy theory that this was probably not a good idea will get a lot of, "yeah, but we didn't know that then" even from people that half agree.

I just can't understand people who think this way. If we had Athenian democracy by random citizens I could probably forgive this huge mistake, but the Experts™ who make up the administrative state literally have one job. They should at least all be purged and a full retrospective should be done on how to prevent this sort of policy disaster from occuring again. I've said it before, but the docility and lemming-like behavior during, but especially after, covid have almost completely convinced me that the vast majority of people should have zero political power.

If we had Athenian democracy by random citizens I could probably forgive this huge mistake, but the Experts™ who make up the administrative state literally have one job

Their one job is to give options to politicians. The politicians then make choices based on that advice..plus an idea of what will be popular among the people they were elected by and want to be elected by again.

If most people want something done, then politicians will do something. This is a feature not a bug. Democracy isn't optimized for the best outcomes. It's the rough outcomes that the majority of people want, tempered by advice, depending on how strongly the people feel about it. That's it.

Giving people political power is not so we get better decisions, it's so that we get decisions that are somewhat representative of what the people want. Even if what they want is stupid or counter-productive. That's the deal.

Their one job is to give options to politicians. The politicians then make choices based on that advice..plus an idea of what will be popular among the people they were elected by and want to be elected by again.

I might agree with you.... except that approximately 9000% of the experts gave the advice of "lockdowns aren't severe enough, every single one of your constituents is going to die". This was blatantly wrong- it wasn't a best guess at the time, it's obviously stupid in retrospective, readily available data made it obviously wrong then, it was a political narrative to make ruling conservative parties look bad. And the experts constantly spitballing fantastic hypotheticals about how it could be true was something they fed to politicians as facts.

So yes, experts take the blame here.

except that approximately 9000% of the experts gave the advice of "lockdowns aren't severe enough, every single one of your constituents is going to die".

This seems to not be correct. See the recent leaks from Boris Johnson, where he privately says the expert studies show him that lockdowns are not necessary and that the risk to under 40's is negligible. Then a week later announces another lockdown. Not because of what government experts were telling him, but because of public pressure on his MPs.

I hear a lot of people talk like this and I genuinely wonder what ‘experts’ means here.

If it’s the statements of scientists as filtered through news or politics, then I don’t really think of that as ‘expert’ since it’s mixed with other idealogical frames. I don’t actually know what the expert is saying in that case, or if they even represent a qualified authority.

In general, when a headline references ‘Experts’ or ‘Researchers’, I replace it mentally with ‘Some guy’. Not because I don’t trust experts or researchers, but because broadly the media has a bad record of science communication.

That's a fair point, but communications given directly by government employed experts like Fauci and Wallensky were pushing the exact same trivially-false chicken little syndrome drivel, just with fewer basic math errors.

Not sure about people having no power, but I'm with you in that it's very frustrating how willing people are to just forgive the massive, society shattering mistakes made during 2020 and the next couple of years.

We are only just beginning to see the negative effects play out, personally I think the fallout from kids losing socialization during developmental years will be massive.

The problem I have with your theory is the assumption that things would have just continued along as normal if it hadn't been for those meddling lockdowns and stimulus payments. The weekend before lockdown I was at a birthday party at a restaurant in Pittsburgh, and the place was practically deserted. This was at a popular restaurant at 7 pm on the Saturday of St. Patrick's Day weekend in one of the busiest nightlife destinations in the city. After businesses had reopened, owners complained about capacity restrictions, but even at 25% capacity I had no problem getting a table the few times I went out; it's not like people were lining up out the door to get one of the few available spots. I also think that the politics of the lockdowns shaped how a lot of people viewed the virus. If you thought the lockdowns were a prime example of government overreach, then chances are you also thought the virus wasn't that bad. I know I thought this way. I don't know that this happens to the extent that it did if businesses stayed open the whole time and no restrictions were put in place, the upshot being that conservative leaning people would have been more likely to be concerned about the virus since tribal politics weren't implicated to the same extent. If the virus began running rampant in some parts of the US in late March or April, there would have been a major depression of economic activity, even if it were clear that business closures weren't on the table.

A lot of businesses wouldn't be able to justify keeping staffing levels at pre-pandemic levels in such a scenario, and they'd be forced to make cuts. It's hard to see any scenario where there's no stimulus payments, no mortgage forbearance, and no student loan pause that still sees the COVID recession being as short as it was. People seem to forget that the market was in freefall in the early days of COVID, and it was only when it became clear that the US government would put some kind of protections in place that the market started to recover. If all the predictions the Treasury Department was making in March 2020 had come true, we could be in a situation now where instead of complaining about inflation we're complaining about a persistently high unemployment rate, and instead of complaining about housing costs we're complaining about a moribund housing market that's caused massive layoffs in the construction sector. I'm not trying to argue that the powers that be made all the right moves with respect to the pandemic, just that we aren't in a position to second-guess them and assume things would have necessarily been better had they done nothing.

As mentioned in my post, people believe that the government had to do something. I stand by the position that the panic was a result of media and government messaging rather than an organic development, but I obviously have no way of proving that. Whether I'm right or wrong about what the governments should have done and how people would have reacted, governments did what they did and it had the completely unsurprising consequences that we've seen play out. I think it's weird that people still defend it even with the current available knowledge, but it doesn't really matter what I think, it matters that most people think it was basically fine (or not aggressive enough!), so there are no riots over the consequences of lockdowns, restrictions, and helicopter money.

The initial wariness during early COVID was reasonable under ignorance. To sum up what my faulty memory tells me I thought in early 2020: "New respiratory virus, something about 5% death rate, seems to spread very quickly." It seemed reasonable to stay home a bit more.

I believe you're correct about government/media messaging, more correct as the pandemic (response) went on, but in the initial stage I think the "panic" was much more organic.

When I Google this I get a bunch of one-sentence explanations about "inflation" and "supply chain problems" but those just sound like things that most people think a smart person would say and/or that they heard from the TV box.

Sure, but the other explanations you have don't really seem much better. Can M2 really cause unemployment to skyrocket? Or do you just know that both these things are 'bad' and therefore must be connected?

Inflation and supply chain issues don't just fall out of the sky, they're the result of government policy.

They don't fall out of the sky, they spring from the earth. Inflation and supply chain issues were here in the world long before our current government policy, before our government, before your nation, before nations themselves. It is simply the natural order of things that pieces of paper don't have any value and that it's very difficult to coordinate supply chains across the entire planet. To the extent that we've made things otherwise, it's the result of (among other things) government policy.

Second of all, even in the narrow sense you mean it, it's not government policy. Japan, for example, has avoided high inflation despite continuing to pursue the kind of easy money policy you rail against. Despite this real wages have been eroded - caused by high commodity prices, which are not in the gift of the Japanese government to control.

My economics-illiterate impression is that technocrat morons freaked out and started pulling levers during covid, ruining the economy in the process by causing mass unemployment and killing SMBs and pumping massive amounts of free money into an economy where money was already free, which caused serious inflation nothing to see here citizen, inflation is low, CPI is normal, everything is fine, don't trust your lying eyes or wallet and now another band of technocrats are raising interests rates to control the mess their comrades caused in the first place, compounding everyone's pain.

So which one do you want? Easy money or tight money? Or do you just want to believe what you want to believe?

Easy money or tight money? Or do you just want to believe what you want to believe?

No idea, man. Whichever one doesn't make less able to afford stuff with the same paycheck, I guess. You say it's the result.of government policy -- which ones?

I don't think it's the result of government policy.

Oops, yeah, I misread. You say government policy is the tool we've used to mitigate economic issues that spring from the earth.

I'm not really sure how to respond to you tbh. You seems to be criticizing something in my post, but I've already admitted in the first sentence that I don't claim to understand much about economics.

If the above is true, I don't know why there isn't a mob in DC with pitchforks demanding to cook and eat the bureaucrats responsible for flying the economy into the ground and royally fucking everyone who isn't independently wealthy.

All of the stimulus and money printing was wildly popular at the time (and probably still is). People love getting checks from the government. They don't connect printing a ton of money with inflation, they instead blame corporate greed. The other side of the coin were the coronavirus lockdowns but those were also broadly popular in most places.

Your impression is basically correct, but with the caveat that there was already a structural tightening of the economy on the horizon for generation size and prior debt reasons and bureaucrats reacting to Covid fear mongering was a major accelerator and also screwed the pooch on a bunch of soft landing options. I don’t expect most people understand how screwed we are; for population size reasons most government pension funds are already going to burst one way or another, and for political reasons that’s going to be dealt with by money printing.

Now customer service is shitty partly because the service worker class got used to not working and resents having to have a job. Again, that’s society losing their shit about Covid.

My thought is basically “they can get away with it.” If you can make a cheaper product and it doesn’t cost in sales, then you get to keep the money left over. And likewise with services, if I can get as many customers offering shitty service as I can by offering full service, why not lower costs by cutting services?

Software career advice- I'm a junior React dev in the UK at a "local" 50 person company. I was approached and may be able to get a similar job at a large multinational (AutoDesk). On average, is it better to work for an American multinational? I'm pretty comfortable where I am, and it's not great timing to jump ship as I'm quite sure I will get promoted in 2-3 months, though I might be able to use an offer to negotiate an immediate promotion. I presume AutoDesk is a step up in the trimodal nature of software jobs. But am I missing something? It is an obviously easy decision to leave to work for a billion dollar company? Is it a big boon to my CV?

Are they offering a higher salary? Career step ups are usually represented in the salary

I don't know yet, a friend just reached out so it's very early. I expect salary to be revealed after a successful interview, but I will ask for a range.

I don't expect it to be that much higher, which is why I'm wondering, all things equal, if I should switch. Of course a much higher salary makes it an easy decision.

At some point in the process, before you start talking numbers, I recommend (re-)reading Patrick McKenzie's guide to salary negotiation.

One benefit of an American Multinational is that eventually you might be able to transfer over to the US where sweng salaries have like a 3x multiplier compared to the UK.

Housing market predictions anyone?

As a couple we are at a point where we would be given a mortgage of a small size house in the city or a somewhat larger one in a suburb (this is a very expensive Western European capital and collectively we earn upper middle class salary). But the prices are so crazy that whatever we buy would definitely not be enough to raise a decent size family as long as we stay in range for our jobs.

The obvious plan would be to get a mid sized place now and then sell and upgrade to a larger house in 5-10 years.

I am very paranoid that the current prices are a massive bubble and if we get a loan today we will be left holding a massive bag when the prices crash and we won’t be able to meaningfully upgrade to a larger house. But on the other hand throwing a large fraction of our income down the toilet with the rent feels ridiculous when we can afford not to.

My prediction is that there is no giant bubble waiting to pop, that the 40% runup in money supply had to go somewhere, and that housing was a logical place for people to put money. The high interest rates might turn back the highest of the prices, but I would not generally expect a return to 2019 pricing.

If I knew I intended to stay in a given area for 5+ years, I would just deal with the pricing being what it is and hope to refi for lower rates in a few years.

Don't you live in Turkey? It seems to me that considerations would be a bit different there, the crash isn't going to be that the nominal price drops but the real price drops.

Besides, my guess is that this is true for most places, only more so in Turkey. The drop isn't going to be so much in nominal value as in real terms.

No I don’t. I haven’t lived there for almost a decade

What do you consider small vs medium vs large? How many bedrooms/bathrooms?

Small is about 50m2 with 2 small bedrooms or one larger. Medium would be 80ish with 3 bedrooms. Houses are small here

I'm not sure it's possible to make general housing market predictions at all. Even at the height of the 2008 mortgage crisis in the US, the housing market was actually pretty okay in the great majority of the country, the real issue with housing prices only actually happened in 5 specific counties. Someone would have to be familiar with the local market where you are to take a guess at whether your local housing market is actually in a bubble.

the real issue with housing prices only actually happened in 5 specific counties

Do you have a source for this? I couldn't find anything on Google.

Man, I definitely remember reading about this at the time, but I can't seem to find anything solid on it now easily. I'm pretty sure that the severe real estate price swings were limited to a few counties in IIRC South Florida, Southern California, and around Vegas. Everyone else was mostly okay, at least as far as real estate investments, provided they didn't take out a crazy mortgage for something that they couldn't actually afford. Most of the nationwide and worldwide pain was from the knock-on effects of the banks' investment instruments collapsing.

Although the phenomenon might have been more severe in those places, it happened in Chicago, Washington, DC, the SF Bay Area, and Phoenix. But not in Pittsburgh or Houston

I think the catalyst for lower home prices is going to be rising unemployment rates. As the higher for longer interest rate strategy by the Fed plays out we could start to see increasing unemployment. This is because higher interest rates mean that less business endeavors are profitable so less employees are needed. Rising unemployment results in defaults/forced sales in a time where there are less people that can afford to buy homes.

I don't have any confidence in predicting if unemployment rates will significantly rise. The fed might pull off a soft landing and if that is the case there wouldn't be much of a catalyst for lower housing prices.

I felt this way around 10 years ago. I bought a condo thinking I'd lose money on it. I sold it a few years later for a massive profit with shockingly little tax liability.

Then I bought another place and sold it for another huge financial windfall. Now I'm in another place with enormous unrealized gains that someday I'll sell with much less tax owed than you'd think.

Past performance is not necessarily an indication of future success. But I had your mindset long ago and good thing the woman in my life demanded we buy a place.

We keep importing more people. We keep not building nearly enough to house said people in and around major metro areas. I'd say look at Canada for a glimpse of America's future. Housing prices ain't coming down, except for minor short term crashes here and there that hardly slow down the relentless trend upwards.

Why are salary or yoe ranges in job descriptions a thing? Maybe I'm just especially unimaginative today, but I can't crack it. And everytime I see them in a JD it makes me irrationally angry. Oh also gpt-4 is being a bitch and not willing to play along with why this is a stupid practice, and just hitting me repetedly with empty corporate speak.

Salary should be a max not a range. Why would you tell a employee the lower bound? The lower bound should be 0 or negative infinitity.

Same with years of experience. Why is it not a min? The upper bound should be infinity.

Think of what would happen if companies took your advice and only listed max salaries and minimum years of experience. You'd see postings like "Salary up to 100k minimum 3 yoe". This doesn't tell the prospective applicant anything. If the company is only offering the 100k salary to people with 10+ years of experience but most of the applicants are in the 3–5 year range and get offered 65k then you're going to waste a lot of time interviewing people who think their 5 years will gat them somewhere in the neighborhood of 100k and laugh in your face when you give them the real offer. If, on the other hand, the post lists a salary range of 65k–100k and 3–10 yoe, then the implication is that those with more experience will get offers at the higher end of the range and vice-versa. Also consider the factor that if someone has another job they're usually not going to waste their time interviewing with a company that's offering less than they already make, and being up front about the minimum can avoid that as well. You can obviously negotiate, but the company is more likely to get the offeree to sign if he knows going in that he's going to get an offer in the range that he's looking for.

Yes htey make sense when ranges for both are given. I've seen JDs with mins/maxs and ranges for the other.

The world is like a video game where winning is learning not to take things literally. Being successful in your career (and dating) is knowing which requirements can be ignored. People with huge reality distortion fields like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs can ignore almost everything. That probably won't fly for your average person, but max salary and minimum years of experience are very flexible.

Personally, I also prefer explicit communication, but most of the world doesn't operate that way.

This is very true but I don't want it to be.

Think of all the flexibility and license it gives you.

I feel like others are better suited to take advantage of this than I, and thus that I am at a disadvantage.

Really, it's antithetical to how I want the world to be.

One answer I remember reading somewhere is "they have a heuristic that if you accept less than X money for a given job or linger for more than Y years at that position, something must be wrong with you as an employee". I cannot confirm that this is something real HRs think of, and in any case I'm convinced most HRs blindly follow the rituals.

For years of experience: one of the major costs of employees is turnover. You don't want to hire someone who is going to quit before they learn where the bathroom is. If you hire someone with 10 years of experience for a super junior role, there's a good chance they'll jump to a better position before you even integrate them into the team.

For salary, consider that because it's typically expressed as a range, if I saw an ad that only offered an "up to" I would assume that number was bullshit and that the average wage for the advertised role was significantly below industry standard. Same as a clearance sale advertising you could save "up to 70%" means the vast majority of items are 15% off and a few random items are 70% off, a position that pays "up to $100k" would be assumed to pay less on average than one that pays "$60-100k."

Now for either you could say, well just negotiate, but that's ignoring all the friction in the system.

There's a lot of reasons but in as a hypothetical negotiating tactic, I think this is backwards:

Why would you tell a employee the lower bound?

Suppose I want to buy something from you, (like your time in exchange for money). If I come out of the gate and tell you the absolute most I'm willing to pay, you should read that as a floor. (and in, every one of the 4 full time jobs I've ever had, I negotiated higher than the stated 'ceiling', twice very significantly higher).

As a general rule, pyscologically speaking people don't open with their final offer and it's bad negotiation technique because it's hard to make the other party believe you're being fully transparant rather than unwilling to engage.

This is why usually, jobs don't list salary ranges and the recruiter asks you your starting price before telling you the actual range. They're trying to understand whether your expectations are within their true negotiation band.

When companies do tell you their range (min and max), sometimes it's legally mandated, and other times, it's to signal actual transparency about their negotiation range or trick you into thinking that at least, and bounding your negotiation. If I tell you my range is 100-180, people uncertain about their candidacy are going to ask for less than if I tell them the max is 180. Because the former signals that 180 is for the improbably qualified candidate, the latter could represent a true range of say, 160-180.

Suppose I give you only one number my (supposed) max. What are you going to ask for? Something around the max*. So what's the supposed harm in them giving out a min if they've already given a max? Even in the off chance that you still super lowballed yourself out, you're either an idiot, are hiding something or you've created a flight risk as soon you realize your mistake. Companies don't budget for 'steals' from rubes, and the risk isn't worth the possible reward of a few thousand saved paying under market rate.

*If you've only been given one number (or even a range, and it isn't a legal transparency thing like a gov job), then you should ask for slightly above it, especially early in the process, but convey willingness to lower your expectations if the job seems great. Then after you get the offer, push for a little more than slightly above what you asked.

If you haven't been given a number before they ask you, you should try to guess slightly over what you think the max is.

Tolkien’s letters. Fun reading him admonish CS Lewis’ rhetorical tactics regarding modern concessions within Christian marriage.

Do you happen to have a link to those?

https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Letter_49

https://www.faithandlaw.org/uploads/docs/Why-C.S.-Lewis-Was-Wrong-on-Marriage-and-J.R.R.-Tolkien-Was-Right-_-Christianity-Today.pdf

Thanks!

So, what are you reading?

I'm going through Fedorov's Common Task, which has been a pleasant surprise. It's delightfully eclectic, and something in its sharpness is compelling.

A truly moral being does not need compulsion and repeated orders to perceive what his duty is- he assigns to himself his task and prescribes what must be done for those from whom he has become separated, because separation (whether voluntary or not) cannot be irreversible.

Still finishing up Tolkien's The Two Towers.

It's still very comfy. I find myself liking how much he dwells on descriptions of landscape, weather, the passage of time...it evokes a sense of journeying. Intentionally and successfully so, I suppose.

I read "Back" by K.C. Green and Anthony Clark over the last few days. It was dumb and fun, and the art was cool. Would recommend.

Stalling out on the Count of Monte Cristo. I’m on page 640 out of 900 and I’m moving through it very slowly. It’s surprising to me. I’ve seen so many people recommend this as one of the greatest books of all time, and I just feel like…it isn’t? The first 180 pages of Dante’s false imprisonment and escape were enjoyable, but since then it’s been 500 pages of upper class French parlor room conversation and gossip. Now to be fair, the gossip, conversations, and side storylines are interesting, but I can’t help but feel that this book could have been half the length and double the entertainment.

Part of it is that it was released in chunks, something like 12 serialized releases. And it really reads that way. I’m going to finish it, but it’s been a bit of a slog.

Yeah, it gets sidetracked often in its unabridged form between the prison and the finale. If you cut out the pointless parts, it's a good mix of entertainment, villainy and moral posturing. It's a guilty pleasure which is high-minded enough that it stands out in the crowd.

Just finished The Everlasting Man by Chesterton, excellent book. Such beautiful prose.

Now I'm listening to Thinking Orthodox which is a great book on the Orthodox Christian mindset. Also reading The Last Superstition by Edward Feser, a rejection of the New Atheism. I'm.... somewhat impressed by Feser, but he takes the whole Catholic legalism and rules lawyering stereotype waaaay too far. Saying things like you can use Artistotilean logic to unfalsifiably say that homosexuality is evil and bad, same with contraception, etc.

I do find the metaphysical logic of Aristotle quite interesting, but these assertions that natural law theory can have absolutes strike me as hamfisted. Maybe I just don't understand it well enough, I'm sure @DuplexFields could explain better. Or someone.

Yesterday I finished The New Science of Narcissism. I was disappointed to find it no better than any other pop science book I've read in the last few years, and quite a bit worse in a couple of specific ways (the author rings the "DAE orang man bad???" bell a lot despite himself including a bar chart showing that Trump is no more narcissistic than many prior Presidents; and he completely lost me when he argued that the Goldwater rule ought to be abolished). I was expecting something a lot more useful and/or a lot more discomforting, but for the most part it told me a lot of things I already knew (everyone has narcissistic traits to some degree, narcissism can be an asset in certain contexts, you can be narcissistic without full-blown narcissistic personality disorder etc.). The book also includes an entire chapter about how geeks are narcissistic, which seemed a bit tangential. Probably the only thing I really got from it was a better understanding of "vulnerable narcissism" as distinct from the grandiose narcissism with which we're all familiar.

Yesterday evening I started Ted Chiang's short story "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", and finished it at lunchtime today. Readable and entertaining, but a fairly conventional time-travel story for the most part - it didn't get me thinking the way "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" did. Planning to read Bones and All next, having enjoyed Luca Guadagnino's film adaptation far more than I expected to, to the point that it's my favourite film released in 2022 aside from Tár. (The film of Bones and All incidentally represents a massive step-up in quality from Guadagnino's previous collaboration with Timothée Chalamet Call Me by Your Name, about which I still cannot understand the hype.)

The last book I read was: The Dictator's Handbook -- https://www.amazon.com.au/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

It was a really interesting take and an entirely different mental map of power than I am used to. The unfortunate side effect of this book is that if it's 'true' then it engenders a heck of a lot of cynicism in the reader about political power and government in general. The TLDR video by CGB Grey effectively covers 80% of the content in the book -- https://youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs&t=3s&ab_channel=CGPGrey

Because the prevailing sentiment here is that anti-semitism is stupid but not particularly threatening. People who really care about anti-semitism are 1) Jews 2) wokes and 3) boomercons.

Because the prevailing sentiment here is that anti-semitism is stupid but not particularly threatening.

It's not unthreatening, I just don't put it in a different category than other grand narratives about who/what is really responsible for modern woes, and I find it faintly disgusting that it is elevated to a special dais by tastemakers. Ideas are dangerous. That's the nature of the beast. Communism will be the obvious whipping boy here, but it wasn't too long ago Jacobins flew into a bloody frenzy over ideas we today consider utterly banal.

People who really care about anti-semitism are 1) Jews 2) wokes and 3) boomercons.

And with #2, it turned out to be negotiable.

In my experience, they mostly get a fairly negative response, if not necessarily right away, assuming they actually are bad. As do most comments advocating for other types of general bias against any type of identity group. Can you link any that you don't think got enough pushback?

Arguing about things you really care about can be challenging here, as you need to maintain high standards even against whatever viewpoint you hate the most. I tend to recommend that if you feel a certain category of generalized negativity against a group personally offends you due to your identity, you refrain from responding to those posts, as you are likely to make poor arguments that attract downvotes and bans. Find some other things to discuss instead. If you see something like that, just note it and come back to it a few days later, and you may be pleasantly surprised by the responses it has gotten.

In my opinion, if there's any identity group that this board is a little too hard against, it's women. I feel a bit weird about how highly upvoted comments I've made critical of feminism get. I know at least one woman has left the board because of it. It's a shame, but we have plenty of other great female posters here who can take that in stride.

Re: Women, I would agree - and I say this as someone highly critical of feminism with some sharp-edged posts under the handle.

It would be great to have more female posters, but I'm too exhausted from moderating my tone in literally every other space in my life.

Then possibly most people considered it too obviously dumb to bother trying to refute. But it's hard to be sure without evidence. Which doesn't exist, at least partly because you keep deleting your comments.

I've mostly responded to you at face value, but I'm honestly at least 50% odds you're actually an anti-semitic troll. Mostly because you keep deleting any evidence that might prove you aren't. I see you've now been officially asked by a mod to stop and have agreed. If you're legitimate and you do, you may work your way back into being trusted by most of the forum. If you don't stop, that'll make it nearly 100% that you're at the very least engaging here in bad faith, and quite possibly actively trying to promote anti-semitism too.

I don't find it valuable to engage with arguments I consider silly, nor do I feel that occupying a website with silly thinking sullies me, nor do I find it onerous to collapse uninteresting comments, nor do I think the average person here is too unintelligent to spot fallacies, nor does their existence on the motte seem to cry out to heaven for redress. Antisemitic conspiracy theorists do not seem evil to me. For the most part their reasoning is just poor. Also, there are a few arguments the mainstream calls 'antisemitic' I find convincing, and that will be true for thoughtful liberals/leftists too.

The rules here do a good job keeping this space pleasant, at least for my preferences. I acknowledge there's no accounting for taste.

The bigger question would be: why are you trying so hard to promote antisemitism?

I find it incredibly amusing that it is actually an open question whether or not someone called "jewdefender", who is currently asking why people don't defend jews enough, is actually trying to promote attacks on jews.

It's pretty clear who he is.

I actually have no idea who he is, but he just pushed his shtick way too far at one point, for me to believe he's actually against antisemitism.

On one hand, yes it's undeniably funny, on the other, I find the idea of being roped in to some wignat's galaxy-brained plan to make their arguments for them incredibly annoying. Say what you will about SecureSignals, at least he says what he means, and you can take it or leave it.

It's only an open question for those who don't pay attention. Responding to jewdefender in earnest is the 4chan equivalent of taking the bait. Newbies take this one-sided charade at face value, while from a higher vantage point, the hard right only dupes itself. That would be alright with me, if it didn’t lower the quality of discourse in the process. To be fair to oblivious newbies, they probably expect a guy with such a long and unquestionable history of bad faith (just to name one, his deletion of all his old comments to prevent just that discovery) on here to be banned, as he should.

I don’t think it’s actually an open question.

Generally, by deliberately making bad anti-antisemitic arguments to provoke a reaction (like posting your sources so someone feels inclined to deboonk them), and by being pro-woke while wagging your fingers at antisemitism.

More specifically, seeing a list of pro-pedophilia advocates, and daring people to expand it with Jewish names was a bit of a giveaway.

I can only speak for myself, but it's some combination of:

  1. Most of their positions are fairly-well-reasoned from premises I disagree with. I think the fundamental points where I'd disagree with the anti-Semites would be "are Jews biologically inclined to be less moral than white Gentiles", "what proportion of ethnic Jews are strongly identitarian", "what degree of influence does Jewish identity have on Western policy" and perhaps "to what degree can #2 be fixed via melting-pot"; the anti-Semite answers are of course "yes"/"almost all"/"lots"/"none" whereas I tend toward "no"/"significant but minority"/"little outside of the US; significant but narrow within the US"/"near-total". #1/#2 especially are very much empirical questions that need large amounts of legible evidence to convince someone to flip; my opinions are from my illegible personal experience, not studies I can quote, and in the case of #1 I'd probably have to go out and do the study myself given how ludicrously-radioactive that question is. I've explicitly laid out my point on #3 at least once recently (although not in reply to an antisemite), and I don't recall #4 coming up explicitly very often.
  2. They kind of all blur together and are mostly from a couple of highly-active posters, and it can seem a bit pointless to keep engaging over and over again.
  3. I don't read the Israel-Gaza thread except from Quincy, which is where I presume most of such comments are. It's just not an area of world politics that interests me very much insofar as there's no obvious way for it to blow up and my preferred action is "do nothing" which doesn't require a lot of knowledge.

We are supposed to take every argument at face value here even if it means feeding the trolls, but there's a specific brand of argument that goes like this:

  • there's a nearly universal consensus that is not a subject of the culture war (Americans landed on the Moon, we live in year 2023, Nazis exterminated Jews on an industrial scale)
  • it's so universal that we don't need to arm ourselves with facts to defend it
  • someone comes and challenges the consensus by citing various sources that support his claim
  • then you can either:
    • disregard the thread and not change anyone's mind
    • spend time and effort digging up counter-claims and most likely not change anyone's mind

Yes, I know the same pattern can be applied to all other topics we discuss here, but there's a big difference: Holocaust denial is not an active front in the culture war, but racial discrimination is.

Because most of the arguments I see are stupid, predictable, and propagated by the same few people, and I simply don't have the time. I've done it in the past, but I don't have time to post about things I actually find interesting let alone talk to a wall about something that's been rehashed a thousand times.

Question for Motteizeans who natively speak a language with cases(I know we have at least a few Russians and East Indians and one German, Finn, and Hungarian apiece)- in English, there's a pattern of young speakers mistaking cases which is shared with more-poorly educated ones, eg "Me and John got a burger" where the correct would be "John and I got a burger".

Is difficulty with cases English specific? I am a fluent Spanish speaker and it seems like most people speaking Spanish have no difficulty distinguishing "yo" from "me", but I also don't interact with children in it very much compared to in English and most of my Spanish communication is relatively unambiguous and/or omits or implies pronouns, either because of the verb or because it's obvious from context. I have some experience communicating in Latin but we can assume people who know Latin to be IQ selected and also using careful phrasing- does the average Russian or Tamil or Finn have some trouble figuring out how to use cases growing up, and is making errors with it a hallmark of a stupid or poorly educated speaker(which statistically must exist) as opposed to simply a second language speaker(which there are probably also plenty of)?

Can't help with much in this but I'm not sure I'd agree "stupid or poorly educated" would be my immediate assumption. Nothing is more boring than discussions of descriptive vs. prescriptive grammar, but I don't consider myself either of your adjectives above and might nevertheless be caught saying something like "He's better than me at basketball." Or simply, "He's better than me." Instead of, yes, the correct way. "He's better than I" sounds off. And I never, at the doorbell question "Who is it?" would say "It is I."

This is more contextual idiolect and the linguistic residue of having grown up in the South, I imagine.

I know the Germans like to complain that no one uses genitive case anymore.

However I can't think of adult Russian native speakers that continue to make mistakes with the cases. Well, with one huge exception: cardinal numerals. "I wanted to buy a phone with 64 gigabytes of storage (instrumentative), 128 gigabytes tops, but the sales assistant told me that 128 won't be enough ("не хватит" genitive) and I should l look only buy those with 256 gigabytes" is impossible for the majority of Russians to get right and most people will switch to "a phone on 64" (accusative), "128 is too little" (nominative) and "those that have 256" (accusative again) to avoid complex cases.

Do Russian children make other mistakes with the cases? Yes, but in the language acquisition phase. I can't think of any typical mistakes schoolchildren make.

Do Russian children make other mistakes with the cases? Yes, but in the language acquisition phase. I can't think of any typical mistakes schoolchildren make.

I mean American toddlers say things like ‘I singed you a song tomorrow’, but double negatives and case are the big mistakes a school age child would be expected to make. It sounds like Russian children don’t make errors with case past the level of saying things like that.

Cardinal numbers make sense; I’m actually mildly surprised they’re declinable(in Latin they mostly aren’t and in Spanish only the number one is- because it’s identical to the indefinite article).

We actually have at least three Germans here that post somewhat regularly.

That said, oh boy yes, Germans have trouble with all kinds of grammar. For what it's worth, I'm about as eloquent in my native tongue as I am in English, but I am not knowledgeable about the actual rules of grammar. I can't really pinpoint what it is they do wrong. But there's hardly any need, since they get so much wrong

Now, which Germans are they?

Practically all but some of the old and some speech elitists. Language is in decline, as always.

Older Germans make mistakes because of a lifetime of bad habits. Younger Germans make nothing but mistakes because they never heard anyone speak correctly. Younger Germans also intentionally make mistakes because they're too cool for grammar and vocabulary both, speaking mostly in meme phrases, and stumbling when they're forced to leave that space. Younger Germans additionally do their best to emulate immigrant speech patterns, since those are also considered cooler than any native dialect or high german. And I suppose I needn't mentioned the "Germans".

Even well-educated Germans run roughshod over grammar. Maybe there are some ivory towers of Germanistik somewhere in which the language is still used by the book, but that's nowhere in real life. Politicians and news anchors may sometimes speak flawlessly, but they do so from a very reduced playbook that's hardly suitable for everyday use.

I'm no paragon of grammar myself, mind. But I am saddened by how most just don't care at all, and many actively try to do worse.

The worst bullying I ever got in my life was from fellow academics over my german grammar ability.

My grandfather was a hardline grammar conservative and a locally known intellectual on it, among other things. No wonder he got choleric with age.

I grew up bilingual which i think messed with my ability to learn non colloquial grammar rules as both languages are so closely tied in my head, with blurred borders and rules. Thats why i personally think anglicization in the youth is to blame.

Sophisticated grammar checkers have been a godsend(although I didn't use one for this post.) But especially in german seem to fail me quite often.

I consider myself an above average wordcel too, the grammar part of my brain is just irrevocably broken. I'm supposedly a native speaker but memories of akkusativ and dativ classes wake me up in a cold sweat.

My German is not great, so I was quite proud when I was able to identify a grammar mistake on a sign in a grocery store, where I think they used the nominative instead of the dative case.

Turkish has a case system that can be quite daunting for learners (not because we have weird cases but because of how they interact with the whole suffix based grammar). Natives definitely get them wrong quite often, but when you hear someone make a mistake it’s always very obvious and a bit cringing. A common failure in Turkish is it’s tempting to make very long sentences where the grammar pieces interacting with each other are very far apart from each other. Then you just start forgetting and mixing up cases. If I am writing a formal text then I will definitely vocalise long sentences in my head while proofreading to make sure they sound correct.

What's happening is linguistic evolution, in real time.

Old English used to have an extensive case system, which changed to the limited form that we currently have. The use of 'me' is the example you gave is just a continuation of that evolution. There's nothing wrong with 'me and John got a burger' because it sounds perfectly fine to native speakers. And if it sounds right, it is right. Language is formed by consensus. 'Me got a burger' sounds wrong, so it is wrong. But if enough people said it, it would become correct.

In English, a bunch of historic linguists tried to make the language work in the same way Latin does, leading to absurd rules like 'you can't end a sentence with a proposition'. Real languages laugh at prescriptivists' petty rules.

Devil's advocate time. I think there's an is/ought conflation here. Is it the case that languages change, meaning that "Me got a burger" could one day be accepted as "normal?" Yes. But whether that's a good thing, or whether something is lost by those changes, are different questions.

I'm very sensitive to correct grammar usage and accurate diction (by writing this, I have now guaranteed that there will be at least one egregious mistake in this comment). I use both as indicators of conscientiousness, and as a conscientious person myself, I give greater weight and credence to the words of people who can follow grammatical rules and use words correctly. I think it's good to have grammatical rules and "correct" definitions for words for this reason, even if they're just conventions and there's no platonic world of word meanings we can appeal to. to which we can appeal.

Another, narrower argument is that the trend in English evolution seems to be towards simplification. As pointed out elsewhere, English used to have cases. We express the same meanings without cases today, though probably less precisely. And although we have added many words to our language, I'd wager they're mostly describing new things, and at the same time we have lost many colorful synonyms and their subtle shades of meaning.

There's also what appears to me to be an egalitarian pressure (that may not be unique to English, I'm not sure) where rhetoric has gotten simpler and coarser over time. Compare American political speeches written around the 1860s, with those written in the first half of the 20th century, with those written in the second half, with those written today. The only reliable source of eloquence in American government today seems to be our higher courts. Some of our Supreme court justices are still a pleasure to read.

Edit: Found and corrected four mistakes.

I mean, you're always going to have the prestige dialect of a language, spoken by the powerful and well connected...and then other separate dialects.

Another, narrower argument is that the trend in English evolution seems to be towards simplification. As pointed out elsewhere, English used to have cases. We express the same meanings without cases today, though probably less precisely.

IIRC old and Middle English had word order rules of their own that were different from modern English rules and in practice a lot of the cases were pronounced the same anyways.

And although we have added many words to our language, I'd wager they're mostly describing new things, and at the same time we have lost many colorful synonyms and their subtle shades of meaning.

My impression is that it’s actually the opposite case, and modern English actually has a meaningfully richer vocabulary- hence why the King James Bible and Shakespeare use a relatively smaller lexicon- with words generally having more specific meanings and far fewer awkward phrases and calques(eg orange used to be called ‘red-yellow’ until the word was borrowed from Dutch, ‘evil’ used to be a generic antonym of good whereas it now has a specificity towards the moral valence, ‘happy’ used to mean any of a half dozen related concepts).

Generally, complaints over grammar or language use are held up as examples or causes of society degrading. Pointing out that language changes isn’t so much about is/ought, as it is to say that this change isn’t new.

I agree that grasp of the rules is an indication of conscientiousness, but you also have to acknowledge that those rules are arbitrary. I would dress nice when showing up for a date to signal my competence as a mate, but I also know that the specific character of my clothes is arbitrary. Chances are my grandparents would find jeans and a henley vastly too casual, but it works today.

If I had to be held to a standard, I would say that the only way a language could get worse is if it somehow lost the ability to express certain ideas or concepts. But as far as I can tell any idea can be expressed in every language, so that seems unlikely to happen.

I'm in the top 400 in the card game Legends of Runeterra. This is by far the best I've ever done in a competitive game. The other games I've done okay in were League of Legends, where I've made it to Plat II at my best, and lichess, where I got 1500 elo. Legends of Runeterra doesn't make it clear how many people play it below "Masters", after which there is a leaderboard, but even if we're only looking at Masters which has just over 6000 people, I'd still be in the top 7%. It feels pretty good.

What game(or anything else that has ranks) are you highest ranked in?

Congrats.

Got top 100 in rankings of CODM, a phone game

~15 years ago I regularly played Halo: Combat Evolved. I never lost a single 1v1 match, and frequently had a K/D ranging from 2 -> 5. Obviously no ELO back then, but my Clan tracked stats for thousands of players over the years. Anyone who ever approached my performance was eventually outed as a hacker.

In Company of Heroes 2 I was ranked around 100th worldwide for a while in 2v2, but my partner carried me quite a bit and it's not a widely popular game.

I remember liking Halo CE a lot back in the day because of the unreasonable effectiveness of the backup pistol. It was arguably the best weapon in the game - certainly the most well rounded - and you just got it for free every time you respawned. Didn't matter if your opponent had a rocket launcher, a sniper rifle, or a tank. You always had the means to kill them with three headshots.

Proficiency with the M6D was required to be good at the game. Grenades was second-order, since the frags were so impactful with interesting fuse timing algorithms, while the plasma grenades could be used to break even if you missed your first pistol shot and your opponent hit theirs.

A further wrinkle unique to the PC version was that Microsoft mandated 56k modem support. This meant the overall netcode and hit registry presented totally unique problems to players. Figuring that out, in conjunction with the removal of reticle stickiness, was what made good players successful.

While I loved the pistol, after something like 3,000 hours of playing the game I found a lot of joy in the events we put on without it.

1500 on lichess is the starting rating, and the average.

I know, I meant that was my top after I dropped down to ~1100 then climbed back up as I got better.

I have multiple 4 and 5 rune ascensions in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, including two in a row. Almost 3 in a row if I didn't get cocky with Lerny.

Which is something many players could simply never do and other players could do right now in a streak of wins in a few hours. The depth of this game and possible range of player ability is enormous.

I was in the top 1000 in Europe wc3/TFT 1v1 for a little while.

I've also been high rated in dota2 and have played most of the older pros and some of the younger (I've not been playing much for the past 5 years or so), both in dota2 and in HoN. In dota2 this was pretty humbling. The top 1% is an extremely wide skill range.

I reached level 500 on Ivalice MUD (RIP).

Ivalice, as in Final Fantasy?

Ivalice, as in Final Fantasy.

I was ranked #3 in North America for PUBG solo during the times when PUBG was popular. Still not sure if it was accurate or I should be proud of it or not lol

I’m generally shit at video games.

My brother made Challenger in TFT a couple times, though.

Runeterra is fun, but I like weird combos and nonsense too much to climb. Thought to get top 400…how do you do that? I assume there’s more to it than just picking a meta deck off the Internet.

I like weird combos and nonsense too. I almost exclusively play decks I've made myself. In the past before rotation I'd play a crappy Vlad deck that never got past diamond. After rotation I got into Masters 0LP playing a Shyvana deck and a Galio deck.

My recent success has been with a Nidalee transformation deck that I'm at 400LP with and rank 300. Part of it is just that the current meta really favours it, I was playing the same deck on the previous patch and was at about 50 LP and about rank 4000. Then the patch before that I peaked at about 300LP rank 500 with the deck. Decks that it has a lot of trouble with like Jarvan Shen, Frostbite, and Lurk just haven't been as common. Plus Janna was nerfed making that match up easier too though it can still easily go either way.

The two biggest skill expressions are a) figuring out what would be the worst card for your game plan your opponent could have and what would be the best response you have assuming he has it, and b) figuring out when you have have no winning moves if he does have that card so might as well play the best move assuming he doesn't. I'm pretty rarely surprised by my opponent playing a card lately

I once made it to mythic on MTG Arena for Historic Constructed, although only for a short time and now I only draft.

What deck were you playing?

Rakdos sacrifice with cat oven.

Would you recommend the game? How is the monetization, any pay to win?

I would recommend the game. As far as card games go, it's among the most free to play friendly there is, you can easily craft a new top tier deck every couple weeks for free. And you only really need one high tier deck to climb high although you may want multiple if you enjoy variety.

It's more complex than Hearthstone and is lighter on the RNG. But it's not as complex and has less craziness than Yu Gi Oh or MtG.

I got all 120 stars in Mario 64.

Grats, that game has some game to it..

My best game was probably Battlefield: bad company 2, where I would do silly challenge matches and kill servers. Eg, stand on the point nearest the enemy spawn and just never let anyone take it on my own while picking up every kit I saw dropped, etc.

BF:BC 2 was imo the high water mark for skill expression in mass market shooters; probably for the best they leveled it out in later installments. The level of oppression that good players could achieve in the attack helicopter or with smoke was too much for a casual knock around game.

I spoke to a friend earlier today. She could tell I was on the spectrum but found it hard to describe exactly what made it apparent to her. After talking a while, she said that I always paused before I said something, or before I smiled. It was probably that deliberateness that was a tell. She did make it clear that there was nothing I had done (or failed to do) that was offensive in any way, although I'm reasonably sure that there's proto-offensive shit that doesn't rise to the level of conscious thought and is difficult, but not impossible, to put into words. Ekman and his team might be able to do it.

I also don't think all that many people can put into words the things that I do or say that make people think I'm autistic, or that offend people. If I had to guess, maybe ten percent of psychiatrists or psychologists, and maybe one average person in a few hundred.

I still think that a true UMC gentleman - like aristocracy in ages past - has things that they are fundamentally willing to die over. Like, a lot of duels were fought over things like "honor". I'm well aware that there were plenty of off-ramps in the dueling process that allowed both participants to be satisfied gentlemen. In the case of pistol duels the duelists didn't always shoot straight, and dueling pistols weren't usually that accurate. Even so, quite a few promising young gentlemen met a premature end on the dueling ground.

As a Hockist: perhaps a decent ideal to strive for is better to die than do your utmost to be graceful. It seems fitting and proper for an awkward person to adopt this as an ideal...at least until he is no longer awkward. The Hock is an idiotic and meaningless way to prove that I've got a high level of grit and determination.

I'm also guessing that many of you would think that my view of the 'UMC gentleman' - or the 'petty aristocracy' he described of people with two college educated parents - is out of whack and some fever-dream cross between Japanese bushido and what we think Victorian-era gentlemanly conduct was. And that if pressed, maybe a couple of awkward UMC dudes in a hundred would go on the Hock even if they were guaranteed to not be awkward after.

What's your take?

My take is that UMC that compare themselves to petty aristocracy are annoying upstarts.

Agreed. I'd also add that if you are at all unsure about your status as a member of the aristocracy or think you need to reinforce that status, you are not a member of the aristocracy.

Yeah, fair enough, my family's basically bush league new money at best.

better to die than do your utmost to be graceful.

Let me see if I have this correct: "Rather than try hard to have charm, poise, cool, grace, one should die." ???

This is counterintuitive and nonsensical to me. What is the problem with trying to "have grace?" or "be graceful?" Am I not following your terms here? And how is this related to class, or the aristocracy? Isn't part of class grace? Why is death preferable? If someone is charmless or awkward, should they just die and rid us of their awkward presence? That kills off most all of the world's teenagers, male and female.

It's likely I'm misunderstanding. Clarify if you're so inclined.

hmm. The hock is indirectly going to help me have charm, poise, and cool. After you've almost died in the fucking alaskan wilderness, a lot of things seem trivial by comparison. I hope I'll be more determined, more conscientious, and less neurotic. I suppose it'd be good if the least graceful five percent or so of teenagers decided to undertake a challenge as dangerous as the Hock, although everyone rolls their own Hock. Doesn't have to be wilderness, even.

The hock is indirectly going to help me have charm, poise, and cool.

No it won’t. Go to chilis and strike up political conversations with random other tables. Mentor at risk youth. Start teaching yourself a new language and frequent pool halls that do business in it. Something to interact with people you have nothing in common with until you develop enough cool to have a hitchhiker’s towel effect on grace, charm, and all the rest.

My take is that the guy that gave you the advice to find an asian/latina partner that is more concerned with your ability to be kind and provide than your skill at social etiquette is probably the way you should go. Better than dying on 'The Hock'.

I recall making the same suggestion, there are plenty of cultures where women are more pragmatic in terms of who they marry instead of daydreaming about Prince Charming. In their eyes, he might well be a catch instead of someone to grudgingly tolerate.

Seriously. Go to the Philippines or Thailand or almost anywhere somewhat touristy in Central America, and this guy is guaranteed to get a decent looking girl. He can even try Eastern Europe if he’s willing to deal with a higher rate of rejection.

My experience is that Latinas are never single, are super stranger-danger-y, and too people-pleasing to just fucking say no, thus wasting your time.

What does UMC mean?

And why are you fundamentally willing to die over your awkwardness? The reason people died over things like honor is because their entire society for generations and ages formulated these precise moral guidelines and virtues. They weren't randomly picked out of a hat based on one person's life experience.

Upper Middle Class?

UMC: upper middle class

And why are you fundamentally willing to die over your awkwardness?

Personal convictions.

Personal convictions.

That's answering a question with a question.

I am a socially awkward person. I struggle to make sustained eye contact. I'm hopeless at talking to people I don't know (in bars, parties, clubs etc.), and have literally never gotten a girl into bed from a cold approach - about 95% of the women I've had sex with were through dating apps. Extended family gatherings are torture for me. I'm Irish, a race famed for our gift of the gab, and even other Irish people have complained to me for years that I speak too quickly to be easily understood. I have very few friends. I use alcohol as a crutch to overcome my social awkwardness, a strategy which has led to more than its fair share of embarrassments.

Have I thought about ending it all? The thought has crossed my mind from time to time.

Have I thought about ending it all specifically because I'm a socially awkward person? No, of course not, that's ridiculous.

Do I think spending several weeks in the middle of the Alaskan wasteland without talking to or interacting with another soul would do anything to improve my social awkwardness? Honestly, I think the question kind of answers itself. The cure for social awkwardness is to practise one's social skills, not to allow them to atrophy even further.

But I'm sure you're already writing up a big long screed about how the fact that your stupid hike won't cure you of your social awkwardness is actually the entire point and it's supposed to be stupid and pointless and narcissistic and self-absorbed because isn't the very idea of dating you stupid and pointless and etc.

I wish you'd just give it a rest and find something to talk about other than how sorry you feel for yourself. Or at the minimum if you're going to throw this big pity party so often, stop involving the rest of us in it.

He should be less concerned with his obsession of being totally undateable, and more concerned with how he is going to function as a medical doctor when he has such a one track delusional mind, autism and awkwardness, and ugliness to the point that no one can stand to look at him (so he claims). Though, he would be far from the first MD with horrendous bedside manner.

how he is going to function as a medical doctor when he has such a one track delusional mind, autism and awkwardness, and ugliness to the point that no one can stand to look at him (so he claims).

I am 20th percentile for physical appearance or so. Not deformed, but decidedly below average. As far as bedside manner: that is...okay. Not bad, although it used to be. It is possible that the attendings I've talked to are now simply blowing smoke up my autistic ass for some reason. I can't think of why they would do so now and wouldn't do so a year or two ago.

Ok, good. Once you're working as an MD, you'll be able to get a pragmatic woman. Let go of your delusions and hang-ups. They're what's keeping your from a decent life. You don't need the "hock", you just need to stop running the same bullshit story in your mind every day. It's not true. None of what the mind throws up is real.

I am 20th percentile for physical appearance or so.

I really, really doubt this.

Last time I saw people ask him for pics to substantiate the claim, he changed it to "well, I guess it's more about being awkward".

I think I've always maintained that I am rather unattractive - just barely attractive enough to not experience desexualization, as the disability theorists define it. I've also said that my physical appearance does me no favors, but is not Quasimodo tier. There are a lot of ways to be unattractive, and it is not just physical appearance that does it. For me...if I had to pull some numbers out of my rear end, it's 2 or 3 parts awkwardness to 1 part physical appearance.

He did it again!

There are a lot of ways to be unattractive, and it is not just physical appearance that does it.

Except you said "I am 20th percentile for physical appearance or so". Pics or it didn't happen.

I actually wonder what "20th percentile" even translates to in terms of physical attractiveness. Like, are we considering all humans, all males, all men, all men of a certain age range, all single men, all single men of a certain age range, or what? In any case 20th percentile isn't so far in one direction as to be unbelievable; I'd wager well over 20% of the posters here are below the 20th percentile in attractiveness - when controlling for age, wealth, nationality and such. But I'd wager that very few are below 20th percentile if you consider all men, since there are so many men out there who are malnourished, sickly, deformed, or unhygienic who are unfortunate to live in very different societies than us. If SkookumTree is closer to the former 20th percentile than the latter, it's both believable and also a situation that's nowhere near as hopeless as he's making it out to be. If it's closer to the latter, that's definitely worth doubting.

A lot of men don't put any effort into their appearance at all, so putting in effort should at least make you average. A lot of men are overweight or obese, are you really claiming they are more physically attractive than you?

Have you gone through the effort of getting a toned body, skincare, hair care, self-grooming, etc? If your face is really physically unattractive even after doing all that, plastic surgery is an option.

I think it's easier to learn to be quick with a smile and a laugh than it is to train for an idiotic and meaningless way to demonstrate grit and determination. Then again, I spend very little time wallowing in self-pity, so I might be underestimating the difficulty of being quick with a smile and a laugh.

It doesn't even matter whether it's easier. It will be dramatically more effective.

What's your take?

My take is that I've never seen so comically insane of an instance of Goodhart's Law (When the measure becomess the target, it ceases to be a meaningful measure).

Having values you are willing to die for is getting badly translated into Being willing to die for something gives it/you value. Dude you are way off base, and you should take it as a sign of your ultimate disappointment and disillusionment that everyone EVERYONE has told you so, and you stubbornly refuse to adjust your perspective even a little.

I approve of setting goals and taking on endurance challenges etc, so I have no reason to talk you out of that, generally. But you cannot allow yourself to go do something until you've cleared yourself as mentally competent enough to take on the risk. So here is a quick sobriety test:

1. You do fully understand that completing the Hock will not make you not awkward? It won't directly or indirectly help awkwardness at all.

In fact, I would bet it will make you feel slightly more awkward in social settings because it will be another point of distance between your inner self and those around you. "These people have never been through what I have been through" will become a resentment crutch, when you realize it did nothing to directly affect your social awkardness.

2. Do you understand that it will make you only slightly more attractive to women? Slighlty and in a very limited way, which will be quickly undone and reversed if you try to milk it.

Let me unpack that. I recall you said previously that you used to do competitive downhill skiing in high school. I'd put the Hock at objectively 30% as attactrive as that, but with the compensating benefits of recency. (If, you're say, under 35, I imagine the skiing will remain more interesting). Thriving in a competitive social and physical environment is far more interesting to women than pursing a loner hobby.

For another comparison, it will register as about as attractive as if you've recently completed a marathon. Maybe slightly more if the "I put my life on hold for 3 months" registers as financial secuirty. So, I'd say about as interesting as recently completing a marathon during a trip to Europe.

Now here's why I say it is limited and will be quickly undone, and listen closely because it has everything to do with the awkwardness issue: To present it attractively, you can only bring it up briefly once or twice, and should mostly act uninterested in talking about it, like it wasn't that interesting, so mundane for your life that you're amused she's even interested. Basically, if you harp on it in any way like you have here, you'll be repelling the ladies like youre name is Pepper Spray. Thus there is a hard and very low cap with the usefulness of this bit of 'proof of value' that can be used with any given woman. (Unless she is herself an autistic survivalist, which is fine. Maybe even seek those out after this)

If you in anyway try to: Go into long details about the trip, get too enthusiastic, present any philosophical musings, bring it up regularly, make it obvious that your sense of identity or self-worth is connected to this, call yourself a Hockist etc, you will be flagged (unfairly or not) as weird and unattractive by the average woman.

EDIT: By way of analogy, overall I feel like you're a guy trying to prove he isn't autistic and directionless by... building a giant model trainset in the basement. The harder you go all out on this, the more counter-productive it's going to be.

Don't get me wrong, a giant train set sounds fun and cool, and I endorse it. Just be clear about what it is and isn't going to accomplish for you.

You do fully understand that completing the Hock will not make you not awkward? It won't directly or indirectly help awkwardness at all.

It will potentially make me more conscientious: the attitude that lets me survive the Hock might let me pay a shitload of attention in social situations so I don't miss anything.

Do you understand that it will make you only slightly more attractive to women? Slightly and in a very limited way, which will be quickly undone and reversed if you try to milk it.

Yes. The Hock is going to freeze most or all of the hypocrisy off of me, but not much of the awkwardness. I'll probably be less neurotic.

Thriving in social situations is arguably not about "paying a shitload of attention so you don't miss anything." In fact a rapt focused interest is very commonly off-putting, especially if you start asking questions.

I'll be honest here, I don't think anything anyone says in this forum is going to cause you to change your tune regarding this topic (You) and it's possibly an unconscious way for you to draw attentive concern your way in a kind of internetty, 2023 way.

If your declarations regarding this planned trip contained questions or queries of advice on specifics (if anyone has experience cold-weather camping, best ideas for lightweight cooking gear, knowledge of knives or ropes or fire or best campsite practices in icy terrain etc. etc etc.) I would be more compelled to follow the outcome.

As it is this seems so half-assed and ill-conceived as to make Chris McCandless seem like Sir Edmund Hillary by comparison. It's like the kid who says he will tunnel to China over the weekend, just you wait.

This is not a dare. Far from it. And despite your suspicion that you've invested so many internet hours talking about this that surely now you'll have to do it, I would say literally everyone (at risk of "speaking for the group") would commend you if you decided to immediately drop this plan and never mention it again.

Edit ok maybe not @Southkraut

Oh no, I'll also commend him for dropping it, but only if he's candid about it. It takes some spine to admit that you've been a bonehead for months on end, and that it was necessary to change your ways.

If he just quietly turns back at the airport, disappears for a while, then comes back with an alt, I'll be disappointed.

Hmm. My questions are rather obscure, but someone might be able to give me some advice here. I do have them - I've just been asking them on different forums. I've been putting off writing to people that have completed the Brooks Range Wilderness Ski Classic - I need to get on that, thanks for reminding me.

  1. What type of snow is commonly found in the Brooks Range in Northern Alaska? I've heard that it was generally homogenous depth hoar or sugar snow, but don't know for sure. If it is depth hoar, is it possible to pile a lot of it up, pack it down with skis, and build a snow cave or quinzee out of it? For what it's worth, I built more than a few of these as a kid.

  2. How common are avalanches in that area, given the snow conditions? I am guessing not uncommon; most of the trip will be on the flat but there is going to be a mountain/pass crossing involved.

  3. How likely are bear encounters in Arctic Village or Sagwon in February? I know that bears should be hibernating at that time, and polar bears rarely travel that far south.

  4. River travel: I've read that travel on the Sheenjek River is dangerous when it is 10 below zero, but safe when it is 40 below. Much of the water in the Sheenjek River comes from upwelling groundwater, and this erodes any ice that forms. Are other rivers in this region of Alaska fueled by upwelling groundwater and similarly dangerous? If they are - how do you tell that you're on a river (vs. flat ground) and how do you balance this hazard vs. avalanche hazard?

  5. Generally speaking, is the avalanche danger any greater or less in March in this region than it is in February?

I suppose that I might also want to post about some items I'm interested in purchasing. Namely, men's medium or large 8000-meter expedition grade down pants and a sleeping bag rated to 40 degrees below zero. Also, a Primus OmniLite stove pump. I wouldn't exactly suspect any of y'all have this kind of esoteric and specialized shit just laying around.

I hope that I'm at least at Chris McCandless tier here.

What other forums do you post on?

I took this trip into the northern reaches of the Brooks Range because I wanted my perspectives to be challenged, to reexamine long held anxieties, and to explore a rare wildness. This experience was a dialogue about how to be at home in the world: an openness to fear, a grasp of limitations, and an attentive spirit. It is the language of humility.

Above are the words of a woman who hiked in the Brooks Range, in June of presumably 2014 or 15. You can read all that here.. Maybe you already have.

Here's a reddit post and this person also went in June.

Another blogpost (1 of 3) where the blogger was in the BR, but in summer time, back in 2009.

Here is a Sierra Club trip where they take you through there (not currently accepting reservations) and has a writeup on it. I bet they also go in June.

Here is a site of a bunch of women and trans folks who went in August of this year. No cis-men were allowed. Yes, you read that right. I have no idea how it went for them.

Finally here is a hardcore dude who claims to have traversed 1000 miles solo through the Range. In...wait for it...June.

I think there is a theme here, and it isn't February. Maybe you've read all these, or more, I don't know. Maybe get in touch with some of them (perhaps not the person who did not want to hike with "cis-males.")

I am not encouraging you. I am trying to help inform you before you start buying things.

  1. It's probably pretty compact for skiing on, with various layers due to wind or melt events. Don't consider snow caves, take a tent. (also note bene that the above is a perfect description of snow that is likely to (unpredictably) slide off in refrigerator-sized chunks from any slope > 30 degrees or so)

  2. Based on Google Earth there will be more like two passes, and there's maybe sort of a plateau there -- if you don't already know which passes are passable, you will probably not find out until you are past the point of no return (avalanches, see above -- they can run a lot further than you probably think)

  3. Unlikely

  4. It probably won't matter much -- if you are in a potentially hazardous avalance area travelling next to the river, you will also be there when you are on the river. You are by yourself -- any avalanche you are involved in will probably kill you DRT

  5. Depends on the weather

  6. Add a tent and some boots that fit to your list

Yeah. I doubt that Mottizens are looking to unload one- or two- person mountaineering grade tents...but I might be wrong.

As far as avalanches: there are relatively broad valleys as much as a mile or two wide with meandering rivers there. The mountains are a couple of thousand feet above the valley. I am no avalanche expert, but I am not sure that I'd be likely to trigger an avalanche over half a mile away that can endanger me...while traveling on flat ground. Of course, there are also narrow valleys as well. Ridge travel is a possibility, too - but I really need to seek out some local advice, which I'll be doing by writing to people living in the village of Anaktuvuk Pass. They've got to be riding around on snowmobiles and have some level of local knowledge and metis about travel in avalanche terrain...

Wind slabs are a concern, especially with the sugar snow/depth hoar I might encounter, but melt events seem very unlikely when temperatures haven't been higher than 10 above for months.

As far as avalanches: there are relatively broad valleys as much as a mile or two wide with meandering rivers there.

There are but those are probably not the ones that you are going to need to travel in if you are planning to cross the mountains. A class three (moderate) avalanche can indeed self trigger and run over half a mile; you are not going to want to be travelling on ridges. (especially if you are pulling a sledge)

Local info would be good, but probably people don't snowmobile around up there for fun; it's pretty remote for backcountry skiing, but those are the people you'd want to talk to -- I'd be very surprised if they told you it was safe to cross the range by yourself. (or without a transceiver in a group)

It will potentially make me more conscientious: the attitude that lets me survive the Hock might let me pay a shitload of attention in social situations so I don't miss anything.

There is no reason to think it will do anything like this. if you want to become more conscientious, go do something extremely social for 3 months. Go be a missionary in Uganda.

If not net 0, the Hock will make you more detached and withdrawn in social situations. Consider the soldier who comes home from war, and has trouble adjusting back into civilian life. If not nothing at all, you're going to mostly experience a wall between you and others.

Imagine you're at some social event, say some meet-up at a bar. You're standing there, drink in hand, watching everyone else, seemingly mingling effortlessly. Why not you, dammit. You're hyper-conscientious about your own milling around, you try to stand next to others talking to eachother, but feel unsure where and how to jump in naturally. Damn you feel awkward. Still! What's more, now you feel resentful, angry even at the frivolty of it.

3 months ago, you were struggling to get a match lit with your half-frost bitten hands. It was a race against the cold and wind, and you were losing. Once that fire was roaring, your body was still in freezing agony sore all over, but hell, the relief and triumph was simultaneously better and worse than anything you'd ever known.

Back to the room. Fuck these people. You survived that night, and so many other after it. Something significant, something none of these people will ever know. What are they talking about now, some twitter drama? So shallow, they have no idea. Your triumph would humble them if only, anyone cared to ask. If only there was a way into the conversation... fuck it, these people have nothing in common with you. You've been through so much.

This is the optimistic way of it playing out.

Survivormanning alone in the woods will not address social competence in any kind of a positive way or provide any useful frame for engaging social scenarios more healthfully.

Yes. The Hock is going to freeze most or all of the hypocrisy off of me,

I don't know what this means, so I'll reiterate. In small, very temperate doses, it will make you slightly more attractive to women, but not anywhere near proportional to the effort you are putting in.

I'll end by granting you that on some deep level, it's quite possible this will improve your self-possesion and perspective in a way that will manifest much deeper into a relationship in a much more nuanced way. But these effects will not appear (and may appear counterproductively) on a group-level or in initial and high level interactions.

Again to the soldier analogy. The things he learned and survived in the hellishness of war may make him a demonstrably better father, with deeper values and worldly detachment. But those are mostly going to come at the cost of social grease and 'gracefullness' and connectedness to the people around him.

I don't know what this means

Skookum has explained to me at length his theory that women suffer greatly as a result of voluntarily being in relationships with socially awkward men who aren't especially good-looking, to the point of believing there's a 1 in 20 chance that a woman in a relationship with such a man suffers more than a woman in a relationship with a man who literally beats her up (yes, really). He hence thinks it's hypocritical of him to ask a woman to suffer for his benefit without him having suffered a comparable degree beforehand. Completing his stupid hike is his way of demonstrating his willingness to undergo pointless suffering for nobody's benefit.

If this chain of reasoning makes no sense to you, that makes two of us.

1 in 20 chance that a woman in a relationship with such a man suffers more than a woman in a relationship with a man who literally beats her up (yes, really).

No. I said I was like 95% certain that a woman in a relationship with such a man suffers much less than a woman in a relationship with a man who literally beats her up. The other 5 percent is basically some devil's advocate stuff like "maybe he is so incompetent socially that he makes her isolated and miserable, and that's worse than being beat up" or some stuff like that. It most definitely can be very charitably considered a stretch; I'm simply leaving the option open that there is some very non-obvious way that Awkward Andy is a worse partner than that Henry guy from Radicalizing the Romanceless. Personally, I'm stumped, Andy's got to be better as a partner than Henry and Henry's just a fucking con man to Andy's crap marketing. However, I was sort of hoping that someone here would come up with some eloquent argument for how Awkward Andy sucks rotting donkey balls as a partner in a way that is very much not obvious at first glance. I can't think of it, to be honest, although admit to perhaps being unable to grok just how Awkward Andy might suck in some sort of weird illegible way that ultimately cashes out to worse than being in an ER with a black eye and broken arm courtesy of Henry.

maybe he is so incompetent socially that he makes her isolated and miserable, and that's worse than being beat up

This doesn’t happen; women can manage their own social relationships just fine.

Really struggling to see how what you just said differs in any way from my gloss of your position.

It's a subtle difference: you'd said something like "1 in 20 women in a relationship with Awkward Andy are as bad off or worse than those being beat by Henry"; I'm saying "Dude, Henry sucks and is a terrible partner, but I'm open to the possibility that Andy sucks donkey balls in some weird way and is just as bad. Although exactly how has me fucking stumped."

I explicitly didn't say "1 in 20 women in a relationship with Awkward Andy are as bad off or worse than those being beat by Henry"; I said:

to the point of believing there's a 1 in 20 chance that a woman in a relationship with such a man suffers more than a woman in a relationship with a man who literally beats her up

Which means exactly the same thing as what you just said.

You can throw around the phrase "extremely non-obvious" as much as you like, it doesn't change the fact that what you're arguing is grotesque. You're so myopically mired in self-pity that you actually think there's even the remotest chance that a woman would rather be in a relationship with a man who beats her up than you. You shouldn't be "open to the possibility": it's preposterous and a grave insult to every victim of domestic abuse in history.

When you qualify as a doctor, I pity the poor women you'll have to treat whose shitty boyfriends land them in the ER. Knowing you, you'll be too busy asking them "but was he handsome tho??" to set their jaws properly.

More comments

Hmm. Let me say something about my reasoning.

When I was 11, I feared [redacted] happening to me - a fate which most of you on the Motte would agree is a terrible one. I believed that skill at public speaking and rhetoric could reduce my odds of suffering this fate, so I practiced diligently in front of a mirror. I did this for a few years.

I was never nervous about any presentation I ever gave after that. Why would I be? Blow a school presentation, and what's the worst that happens? I get a C? If I'm really unlucky, a fistfight with some asshole bully that's probably going to leave no more than bruises? Laughable. I also became an excellent public speaker - better than say 99 percent of high school or college students. Any time there was a speech or presentation that needed to be given, my classmates and the faculty would agree that I was the best in say my classroom of 25, and by a pretty decent margin.

I had just been training in earnest for a goddamn rhetoric Hock, and it had benefits in other areas - such as being genuinely confident and unafraid when presenting and public speaking. Also it made me a decent if overwrought writer. Why fear being rejected or making a fool of yourself, when you've just stared death by avalanche or hypothermia or wild animals in the face day after day?

As far as frivolity: that is the point. The Hock is just pointless Twitter drama writ large and played out in the Alaskan wilderness.

I do have a question for you - have you ever survived any kind of life and death shit like war or something like that? I haven't, and I'm sorry if the question is offensive. If it is, it's probably offensive for its trite meaninglessness and dumbass attempt to ask about shit that you have to be there to know anything about.

I do have a question for you - have you ever survived any kind of life and death shit like war or something like that?

I dunno about the guy you’re replying to, but I have and I agree with him. You can read the rest of my advice in replies to your ‘hock’ posting.

What's [redacted]?

The Hock is just pointless Twitter drama writ large and played out in the Alaskan wilderness.

So three days into your Twitter drama you get yourself killed and your remains are not found until the summer thaw, if ever. If you are the only person in your world, that's fine. But if you have family or any one else involved with you, be that work or life, it's shitty for them.

Why fear being rejected or making a fool of yourself, when you've just stared death by avalanche or hypothermia or wild animals in the face day after day?

Because it won't make you fearless, it will make you resentful that it didn't work.

Notice in your "presentation Hock" comparison, the thing that made you not fear public speaking was practicing for public speaking? There is no analogy skill transfer between wilderness survival -> improving social awkwardness. You are comparing practicing something that directly improves the thing it applies to, to doing something completely unrelated in hopes that it will reframe you into being better at it. IT WON'T WORK the way you are hoping.

I do beleive that if you went and worked as a mission in a 3rd world scenario, surrounded by others, it would, in fact improve your socialization.

I suppose if he does go ahead with this (hopefully in a shortened version that is better planned) it will indeed do a lot to change what he worries about; as you say, getting twisted into knots over a silly conversation at a routine party will be less of a thing when compared with "I nearly froze to death that time and had to save myself". So that may work to reduce social awkwardness because the stakes will be, by comparison, so trivial. Not caring about "am I coming across as too needy?" may indeed help him over a lot of social barriers.

But he has to be alive to do that, and so far this trip is sounding like an elaborate form of suicide. Taking risks because there's no way to reduce all risk is one thing, taking risks because you want risks that are literally life-or-death in order to achieve some psychic transformation is quite different.

The Hock is basically a homebrew form of psychological chemotherapy. Its aim is, among other things, to kill the neuroticism before it kills the human. Of course, chemotherapy administered and brewed by random jackasses is best described as 'risky as all hell'.

Having values you are willing to die for is getting badly translated into Being willing to die for something gives it/you value.

  1. Human life has value: the economists put it at around $10 million per head, if we're talking about Americans.

  2. Things are worth what we sacrifice to get them.

Therefore it seems self-evident that a thing has value because someone is willing to die for it: that person, even if he's a deranged lunatic, has staked his life on that thing. The value of it has been upped to "one deranged lunatic" from whatever it was before.

Also, I know damn well that the Hock is dumb and that people becoming aware that I've completed the Hock is not going to do much for me. I think that the Hock is going to irreversibly alter my character and personality, though, and that's what I'm after. I'll carry myself differently (I hope) after surviving the Hock...

Therefore it seems self-evident that a thing has value because someone is willing to die for it

A carjacker getting shot dead while trying to lift a lemon from a parking lot doesn't mean it'll go on auction for a cool $10 million.

Between 2008-21, 379 people were killed during the act of taking a selfie. The combined value of these selfies is not $3.79 billion. If you were to somehow to collect all of them and try to auction them off, I'd be impressed if you made a few hundred bucks.

If you read this story of a man who fell out of a moving train while trying to lean out to take a selfie and think "God, what a fucking idiot - what a stupid, pointless way to die", then try to understand that that is exactly how we all feel about you.

That's the wrong way to think about it. You'd have to instead multiply it by the risk they took, or consider the value of all such risky selfies.

According to Skookum's logic, if you die for something, that thing therefore has value equal to a human life. Following this logic, a selfie of some random nobody is worth nothing - unless they die in the act of taking it, in which case it's worth $10 million.

Therefore it seems self-evident that a thing has value because someone is willing to die for it: that person, even if he's a deranged lunatic, has staked his life on that thing. The value of it has been upped to "one deranged lunatic" from whatever it was before.

You're just wrong here. Compare: I love my dog, therefore, I would risk my life for him. to I don't love this dog, but I wish I did. If I risk my life for him, it will make it so. you have causality backwards. In the latter scenario, you are de-valuing your life down to what you value your dog. Not the other way around.

Human life has value: the economists put it at around $10 million per head, if we're talking about Americans.

This bit is a nonsequitor. Risking your life for something without value, doesn't give it $10m in value.

Therefore it seems self-evident that a thing has value because someone is willing to die for it: that person, even if he's a deranged lunatic, has staked his life on that thing. The value of it has been upped to "one deranged lunatic" from whatever it was before.

Correct, but note that deranged lunatics or careless idiots who win a Darwin Award are not worth the full 10 million. Those 10 million are a human living a productive life for as long as possible. And even then the transfer of value may not be successful; the manner of the dying may have more impact on the value of the final product than the nominal value of the man who died.

My take is you should give it a rest and celebrate becoming a doctor by going to the Philippines.

Look, I’ll believe you lack certain social graces through no fault of your own, that this meaningfully impacts your ability to find a romantic partner, and that this is agonizing for you. But you will soon be a doctor with US citizenship; if you want female companionship and are willing to commit there is no shortage of cultures which considers that deal the equivalent of hitting the jackpot.

Also, 5’6” is roughly median height for a man over there.

Seconded. Just go to South Asia and get yourself an apartment for like 6 months in an upscale area. Let it be known you are an American doctor and you just came here for a quick break before you start practicing. Go to upscale meeting places like art galleries and cultural attractions etc. and mention in passing that you are single but wouldn't mind getting married and you will quickly find yourslef a not too religious not too traditional woman who commits to you. You'll pobably find many such women, giving you your pick of the pack, and as an added bonus these women will probably be more honourable and less kooked in the head than your average westerner.

Has anyone here said anything positive about you doing the hock?

I am asking because if you die and they trace your online history to here, I want to be able to say that we unanimously said it was a stupid idea.

Autistic guys can slay. Get good at standup comedy instead. Some of the best comics in the business are at least a little autistic. They just focused their autistic powers on getting laughs, and their inability to pick up on social cues was an advantage cuz they could do horribly offensive jokes.

Okay, contrarian time: The Hock is a noble endeavor. Stupid but brave. Self-destructive but benign. I think Skookum is crazy in an entirely undesirable way (IMHO his biggest problem isn't awkwardness, sexual frustration or autism, but being straight-up delusional and obsessive), but I also don't think that him doing his Hock thing is necessarily bad. It won't solve his problem and it won't get him what he wants, but if he actually goes through with it then women will not consider him one jot better than before, but I for one sure as hell will be impressed. A rare display of masculine virtue in a domesticated age. Even if it kills him. Maybe even especially if it kills him? Don't quote me on that last part, I'm not sure about it.

I find myself nodding along and basically agreeing, but one thing...

The Hock is a noble endeavor.

Do any of us know what the fuck this is? I kind of love that it now has mythical status, means a thing in and of itself on this board. You'd know what I meant if I said, "it's kind of my Hock" even though I literally don't know what the Hock is.

"The Hock" is a long-range wilderness hike through extremely inhospitable terrain, alone, at serious risk to one's life. Skook's plan is to hike through something like a hundred miles of Alaskan wilderness, alone, in the dead of winter, with no communications or access to emergency services if something goes wrong. His explicit plan is to either complete the hike successfully, or die in the attempt.

Does it even matter? It's outdoor activity in nature - I'm already on board by that point.

You support people doing any "outdoor activity in nature"? Christopher McCandless starving to death in Alaska? Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend getting eaten alive by bears? Green Boots? The Titan?

It's bad for those people that they died and bad for their families. But in the end, nobody forced them as far as I know. Yes going out of doors is dangerous. Yes its better to correctly judge the risks and to not do anything overly stupid and to come back alive. But there's always some danger, and there will always be some people who happen to be the bad end of some bell curve by disposition or by bad luck. Someone will die.

I fundamentally don't understand the idea of exposing yourself to extreme danger for no discernible payoff other than to satisfy your own ego. The whole thing just seems so pointless and masturbatory.

Exposing yourself to extreme risk in order to save someone else's life? Noble. Exposing yourself to extreme risk in order to expand the range of human knowledge? Admirable. Exposing yourself to extreme risk just 'cause? Why not just OD on heroin instead of going to all this trouble?

I don't get the big egos either, but wanting to be outdoors I understand. Wanting to be more outdoors to the point of ignoring potentially fatal risks I understand. So I don't actually understand Skookum, because he's crazy, but I'm not fundamentally opposed to wanting to be outdoors so bad it has an elevated risk of killing you. It certainly beats ODing on drugs.

But in the end neither of us understands his motives.

Christopher McCandless

Respect for the guy

Timothy Treadwell

Respect, but jackass got his girlfriend eaten

Green Boots

Respect

The Titan

Some respect, but also come on guys, you cut too many corners.

If he survives it, and right now it doesn't sound survivable. "Well that was dumb but I have to say I'm kinda impressed" isn't the problem here; nobody is much concerned about trying to keep everyone from ever doing anything stupid. What it sounds like is the kind of hairbrained notions that get people killed, from "I know all about bears" to all the climbers who die on Everest.

Gallant death is not wrong, but "he died because he was too stupid to live" isn't a good way to go out.

Autistic guys can slay.

Maybe if they're fairly good looking, tall, and insanely dedicated - I'm talking at least as determined as a Navy SEAL. Since they were in single digits. The kind of person that could write courses on communication and facial expressions. The kind of person that makes a social blunder once a decade while sober. The kind of person that can inspire people, ironically, to endure Hock-level privation for no good goddamn reason. As far as I'm concerned, every word and gesture a neurotypical makes is a performance not much less graceful than that of a concert pianist or professional ballet dancer, and they can often inspire people to endure immense hardship in order to make them happy.

As far as positive comments: people almost unanimously said that it was stupid; many had respect for it but thought it was no less stupid.

Does Mark Normand look good, Jerry Seinfeld? I'm not the best judge, but they seem passable at best.

You don't really have to look that good as a guy anyways. The most sexually active guy I ever knew was fat and had what I would consider some unattractive facial features. He was a terrible listener in conversations, he was dyslexic, and he came across as very goofy and happy go-lucky. Prior to covid he was probably averaging sex with 5 different partners a week. He was a divorcee, so he could also claim to have managed to do the whole long-term relationship thing too.

The Hock doesn't sound like it is something that will impress women. It something that might impress other straight guys.

Does Mark Normand look good

He looks like Jim from The Office, of course he looks good.

We must be thinking of different people.

Prior to covid he was probably averaging sex with 5 different partners a week. He was a divorcee, so he could also claim to have managed to do the whole long-term relationship thing too.

How old was this entertaining character at the time?

I think around 30

Look, there's autism or at least "on the spectrum" and/or Aspergers in my paternal family line, and yet many of them manage to get married and have families. You seem to have set up some impossible standard in your mind for success with the opposite sex. Maybe recalibrate a bit on that? And yeah, this is depressing advice, but "lower your standards" may help. If you're looking for the Perfect Woman, she doesn't exist. And you may be overlooking better chances with women who are below the standards of "wants tall, dedicated, rich, handsome guy".

And yeah, this is depressing advice, but "lower your standards" may help.

Let's say my standards are something like...

  • Not morbidly obese
  • Can do basic hygiene
  • Can work a job, any job; preferably employed
  • Not a danger to herself or others
  • Not addicted to any hard drugs
  • Able to manage her own affairs

Is that realistic, for someone like me? Is that shooting too high? I hope not; I don't want to be running a goddamn nursing home in my household for someone whose choices were part of what led her to need that level of care. On the other hand, one of my classmates in medical school lived What's Eating Gilbert Grape and did okay for herself, so...

I don't see "can write courses on communication, extremely dedicated to being socially graceful, capable of gracefully enduring Hock-tier hardship and perhaps inspiring others to do the same" to be an impossible ask for a guy on the spectrum, for what it's worth. For example: I know ten guys who are 5'4" or shorter IRL. Only one managed to get a girlfriend who wasn't morbidly obese...or a danger to herself or others. He is, I shit you not, our class president, charismatic enough for a career in politics, and a future neurosurgeon. The four short residents I know are all focused on their careers unlike their average height and tall counterparts. Top 1 percent charisma + being on track for a million a year seems to be what it takes...although if you are OK with someone half again or twice your weight, and you're short, all you need is a body like a Greek God while being otherwise average. I'm talking...can compete in amateur physique bodybuilding competitions, like one of my college classmates. I don't think any of this is bad, for what it is worth.

Is that realistic, for someone like me?

What do you mean by "someone like me"? That only makes you sound like you have a neurotic, distorted self-image and are determined to follow this course of action based on how you think it will make you feel. Which okay, it's your life, but it has nothing to do with "get a woman" and I wish you'd drop that part of it. Most women don't care a damn about "I did a really stupid hike that could have killed me", and indeed will be motivated to avoid a guy like that, because if you get into a relationship with him, what is to stop him doing an equally stupid could-kill-him stunt? Then if you're married and have kids, you're left a widow with orphaned children and probably a heap of debt and look, it's all too much hassle. Find a man who won't decide to throw it all up and go hiking in the Arctic in the morning because he thought somebody said something mean at work.

What do you mean by "someone like me"

I mean: dreaming of a career in the NBA would be pretty realistic if I was seven feet tall, the NBA scouts for pretty much anyone seven feet and breathing - but at 5'6" I'd be the second-shortest player in NBA history, after 5'3" Muggsy Bogues. And even for a six-footer who loves basketball, it's more of a pipe dream than anything realistic.

I was asking essentially about whether or not my standards, as I'd described them, were unrealistically high. For what it is worth, based on what I've seen: unattractive people who would like to date need to choose where they want the ambulances. No, not the Hock. The Hock is stupid and pointless, and it may be a kind of prologue for things that will happen later in my life. Let me just say that I personally know two autistic women that knew damn well that they were very vulnerable to predators yet chose to date anyway. They fell prey to said predators. One is happy that she chose to date and the other has some mild regrets and thinks whatever wisdom she got wasn't worth it. If she had it to do over, she'd have been celibate. On the male side of things...let me see. Morbidly obese wives, supermorbidly obese wives, wives that tried to strangle their 10-year-old child, one attempted stabbing by a girlfriend, one successful stabbing by a girlfriend that very nearly killed the guy but he made a full recovery. Attempted stabbing guy's in a healthy relationship with his wife, one of the autistic women had a husband that raped her who she then divorced and then got in an OK relationship with a reasonably functional and well-off civil engineer that smokes pot and cigarettes like a chimney. So there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and if it's an oncoming train it usually doesn't kill you.

As I've said repeatedly here - I do not think that things are any better for unattractive women and they are probably worse. As a man, I'm not privy to as many of the tales of woe from that side of things, but hear other short and/or spergy guys - or their children - sharing stories of the things they or their parents endured. I believe I'll be going through Hell of one form or another. I realized, I think, rather late, possibly too late, that the question facing unattractive people who want to date is this: "Where do you want the ambulances?" But you need to and should choose, and that choice, freely and willingly undertaken, is in itself noble.

For what it is worth, I do not think that telling people about the Hock or even people learning that I Hocked and survived is going to do all that much for how attractive I am. In the words of Steve from the Friendly Southern Gossip discord: Sufficiently extreme challenge will just be thought of as stupidity or mildly suicidal. No, any benefit from the Hock will come from freezing the neuroticism or perhaps the hypocrisy off of me and making me accustomed to pain, discomfort, and struggle. That this pain, discomfort, and struggle are considered pointless and idiotic is a feature, not a bug: living What's Eating Gilbert Grape or some other shit is kind of on a par with that. Ask @Southkraut; he warned me in no uncertain terms about how bad an idea it was to marry someone that was digging herself a very early grave with knife and fork - or any other addiction.

I realized, I think, rather late, possibly too late, that the question facing unattractive people who want to date is this: "Where do you want the ambulances?"

I don't know where you got this idea that every unattractive person who wants to date people will at some point end up in an ambulance as a result, but it's bullshit. To illustrate my point:

  1. Attractive people can be victims of domestic violence. Rihanna. April Hernandez-Castillo. Tina Turner. Robin Givens. Bree Olson. Whitney Houston. Tyra Banks. Denise Richards. Brett Rossi. Oksana Grigorieva. Alice Kim. Kelly LeBrock. Pamela Anderson. There are numerous other examples, but I think I've made my point - none of these women are unattractive, and all have been victims of domestic violence.

  2. Many unattractive people in romantic relationships go their whole lives without needing to call an ambulance for any reason, including domestic violence. This point seems so self-evident that it hardly even needs justifying, but if you must see hard data before considering that you might be simply wrong, Women's Aid Ireland reported about 30,000 contacts with Irish women reporting domestic abuse in 2022. Even allowing that this is a huge undercount of the real number of victims (let's say, of a factor of 3): if 90,000 women are victims of domestic abuse in Ireland every year, there's something like 2 million adult women in Ireland. This suggests that (thankfully!) domestic abuse is something only experienced by a minority of people, between 1.5-4.5% of women in a calendar year. Even the most pessimistic feminist campaigns I've seen suggest that 1 in 4 women will experience it in their lifetime, which obviously means that 3 in 4 won't (and this 1 in 4 figure sometimes includes types of abuse for which no ambulance would be necessary). We're privileged to live in an era in which even the most passionate progressive campaigners must begrudgingly acknowledge that violence is the exception rather than the rule.

Perhaps you're making an inappropriate generalisation from a social circle made up of unusually unlucky people. Perhaps your social circle is actually no more unlucky than average, and you're just fixating on the one or two unusually unlucky people it contains as a means to justify/excuse your self-pity and avoidant tendencies. If you can show me hard evidence that literally every single unattractive person who wants to be in a romantic relationship will at some point be the victim of domestic abuse severe enough to require an ambulance, I would love to see it. You won't show it to me, because we both know it doesn't exist and this is all just part of some weird mind game you're playing with yourself.

Please don't insult my intelligence by backtracking and claiming that "ambulances" can refer to something other than domestic violence. You said 'the question facing unattractive people who want to date is this: "Where do you want the ambulances?"' You can be single your whole life, never seek out a relationship with anyone, and still end up in an ambulance from a heart attack caused by your obesity.

Please don't insult my intelligence by backtracking and claiming that "ambulances" can refer to something other than domestic violence. You said 'the question facing unattractive people who want to date is this: "Where do you want the ambulances?"

The guy with the 450-pound partner and the woman married to Smokestack our engineering hero aren't facing domestic violence in relationships. The ambulances can be and often are domestic violence, but they can come from plenty of other things as well. Like congestive heart failure from supermorbid obesity. Or good old-fashioned lung cancer from a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit and smoking pot like fucking Snoop Dogg.

Consider the sky high - 80 percent, by some metrics - abuse/victimization rate reported by autistic women. This is still well north of half even if you just look at autistic women with normal IQs.

More comments

I'd side with Southkraut that it's not necessarily a terrible idea. I don't expect it will do anything at all for your social skills or success with women, but it could still be a cool accomplishment. It's at least as cool as climbing Mount Everest in my book, and less over-hyped. The big asterisk is your preparation, which I have no idea about and as far as I can tell you haven't posted much about.

If you're otherwise a generic suburbanite physically who occasionally runs a few blocks when the whether is nice, then you will definitely die doing this and you should abandon the idea if you have any brains at all. I hope you're not that unprepared, but that's one extreme.

If you're spending the 2 years leading up to it training hard at extreme cold weather wilderness survival, long-term hiking and survival, wilderness navigation, solo mountain climbing, and other related skills, then you might be able to do it. Have you at least accomplished something 5% as hard as that already? Hell, 5% as hard should feel so routine as to be boring before you think about trying this.

As someone who has been outside every day of his life and spent a lot of time with like-minded people, it's not really even that extreme of an accomplishment. It's basically just a backcountry ski trip with more complicated logistics than doing it in Maine or Minnesota. It's not hard to get an airlift to a spot in the wilderness if you have the money and know where to look; it's a thing people do, and most of them come back okay. The thing is, most of the people who do it go through outfitters who provide gear and provisions and tell them where to go, even if the tours are self-guided. As such, he's not going to get dropped at some arbitrary location, but a spot where the pilot can actually land the plane, which is going to be a spot that people normally use for these types of adventures. There's a decent chance he may even run into other people on this trip.

That being said, as I mentioned in my last post on the subject, most people who aren't in the outdoor world won't know the difference between any of the finer gradations of how badass something is supposed to be. I wouldn't go out of my way to plan such a trip myself, but if a group were going and I were invited and cost/time off work weren't an issue I'd jump at the chance. I have friends who do a ski touring vacation every winter and they love it, though the fact that they have small children they bring along means they usually stick to the kind of trips where you ski between cabins on well-marked trails. To the uninitiated, though, it doesn't matter. Some people — even outdoorsy people — seem shocked that I've backpacked overnight solo without being scared in the woods. Non-outdoorsy people often ask what kind of gun I bring with me. When I tell them that, aside from the weight alone making it a nonstarter, that a pistol isn't likely to do anything against any animal that could do serious damage, they change tack and suggest that the woods is crawling with deranged hillbillies. If Sookum wants to do something other people will find impressive, a few overnighters on a local trail will probably be sufficient without the additional risk and cost.

It's basically just a backcountry ski trip with more complicated logistics than doing it in Maine or Minnesota.

Also quite a bit colder at least than Maine; Minnesota can sometimes get as cold. I know that people use Ely, Minnesota as a training ground for polar expedition training. Fifty degrees below zero is no joke. As far as the airlift, bush pilots are expensive and I plan on carrying gasoline with me as stove fuel, so I'll be leaving from Arctic Village and attempting to reach the town of Sagwon.

attempting to reach the town of Sagwon

Alright, I'm going to stop you right there. Sagwon is not a town. Sagwon is an abandoned airstrip that was built to service the construction of the Alaska pipeline. The best you can hope to find there is a passing truck on the Dalton Highway you can flag down for an awkward six-hour-plus ride to Wiseman. It would make more sense to start at Sagwon since at least you'd have a real town to aim for. This is relative, though. When you first talked about this you kept mentioning a trek through the forest so I though you were talking about the lowlands in the vicinity of the southern entrance to Gates of the Arctic National Park. What you have proposed is crossing the Brooks Range in an area where I'm not sure anyone crosses it. Do you have avalanche training? What ski setup are you using? Are you going backcountry xc, tele, or full backcountry touring? Do you have an ice axe, crampons, and screws? How's your downhill skiing ability? Can you at least drop into an easy bowl without more than a cursory look? If so, can you still do it with open heels? How many passes will you have to cross? I could go on but I think you get the point. On second thought, start from Arctic Village; at least then you aren't committed and can turn back.

Do you have avalanche training?

No, but I've read some stuff online, does that count? Going to read some books on that.

What ski setup are you using?

Backcountry touring.

Do you have an ice axe, crampons, and screws?

Yes, or I will have these.

How's your downhill skiing ability

In high school, I was a mediocre ski racer; I can ski black terrain but not glades or moguls, at least not well at all. Hopefully that means something.

Can you still do it with open heels

I hope not to find out.

How many passes will you have to cross?

One, hopefully.

Thing is: if I started around Sagwon, and missed Arctic Village by ten miles due to a navigation error, I could potentially be fucked. If I start at Arctic Village, I just need to head in the general direction of the Dalton Highway, and I should be able to, as you said, flag down a passing truck. The plan is to hitchhike from wherever I finish the Hock (assuming I survive) back to Fairbanks.

DM me your real name before you leave so I can pray for your soul.

From "Catholic Tumblr Gothic":

You pray for your followers by their urls. “God, please pour your blessings out upon lesbiantonystark.” He knows what you mean.

I'll walk back my earlier comments in part, in that skis are indeed a reasonable pick for this area -- you will however need boots that fit, and the plastic ones you have are not what I would choose.

People use something like this: https://www.alpinasports.com/en/nordic/backcountry/alaska-75-50082

They are even called "Alaska"!

You can get neoprene booties to go over them, but if you are making enough miles to get where you are going before running out of supplies, cold feet will not be your problem.

I would worry quite a lot about avalanche danger as a solo traveller there -- not sure what the Brooks looks like on the ground, but based on Google Earth everything resembling a pass is quite exposed -- and when you are by yourself even a small slough could trap you enough that you will die through no fault of your own. (other than engaging in solo travel through exposed avvie terrain in the first place, ofc)

The fact that you think navigation errors are even on the table makes me think that you should do some better planning -- the original '100 miles through the forest' plan actually seemed pretty survivable with appropriate gear, but mountain travel is a thing where small mistakes kill even experienced people quickly.

I plan on carrying gasoline with me as stove fuel

Okay I've never hiked or camped or the like but that does not sound like a good plan. How much weight can you carry? How much weight are you expecting to carry? You're going to burn more fuel than you expect just to keep warm, and you'll likely run out before you reach your destination, not to mention possibility of accident (spilling or losing fuel) or not being able to make your mileage goals because you're too loaded down.

Polar (both north and south) expeditions have foundered on things like this. Scott of the Antarctic was brave and experienced, but things went badly wrong and we know how that ended up. Don't die because of a stupid miscalculation.

Gasoline is the fuel I'll be buying in Arctic Village. The stove is only for melting snow for drinking water, not for warmth - using a liquid fuel stove for warmth seems like a rather impractical idea.

As for weight carried: something like 40 pounds on my back and another 40 to 60 in the sled.

What’s your plan once reaching Sagwon given no one lives there?

Also quite a bit colder at least than Maine

I like to bring up the time back in 1999 the local Air National Guard had to rescue a Navy SEAL team from the mountains outside Anchorage when a cold spell hit during their training exercise.

Go down to the streets and talk to 10 women right now. It will be harder than the hock.

If you are gonna die anyways, might as well die after tryinf a few new things you havent before.

I may have missed some lore. Is the gist that you think being airdropped into the Alaskan wilderness will make you better with girls? And that you’ve become so obsessed with the idea that you’ve created your own term (“hock”)? My takes are:

  • This comes off as sufficiently delusional to warrant a trip to a psychiatrist.

  • Being airdropped into the Alaskan wilderness will guarantee that you come back less socialized than before, meaning you will be worse at picking up social cues. You will have higher stress than before, meaning you will lose hair and your testosterone levels will plummet. You might develop a stress disorder on top of this. This will not help you with girls.

  • There are a number of eminently feasible ways to develop more confidence around women. If you want a dramatic flare you can pick up MMA or boxing, which will decrease stress longterm and increase your testosterone and feeling of competency.

All I've been able to find on it in the history, for as much as I care to dig, is this small picture. No idea if it's some quest he made up or an actual thing. I can't find any reference to it anywhere else. Assuming Rov_Scam's description of Sagwon, the supposed destination, is correct (a quick glance at Google maps satellite view suggests that it is), it sounds more like something made up, and I don't have high hopes for it.

No idea if it's some quest he made up or an actual thing

The former.

My take is that Skookum wants to rationalize avoiding human interaction. Despite absolutely everyone making the same point that isolating oneself will result in decreased social skills, he still somehow comes to the conclusion that this will help him with the ladies.

How's your preparation coming along? How much cold weather backpacking have you done so far?

(1) I too think that "honour" is a meaningful concept and not a figleaf for hypocrisy or 'good is dumb' or the rest of it. Sometimes I find myself reacting like an 18th century novel about "this impugns my honour!!!" and have to cool my jets

(2) You're planning to do something very difficult and dangerous. I don't know your reasons, but if you're doing it to impress women - women aren't impressed by stupid, and women do tend to think "endangering my life for funsies" is stupid, and the kind of women who are impressed by that stuff aren't the kind of women you want to impress

(3) If you do go ahead and do this, be careful. There's nothing dishonorable in "planning not to get myself killed when five minutes thought would have saved me". I don't know how old you are, but just yesterday I read a news report about four young men who got themselves killed and who probably never expected anything could go wrong. Don't be an idiot, I guess, is what I'm trying to advise you (but depending on your age, young men are idiots)

women aren't impressed by stupid, and women do tend to think "endangering my life for funsies" is stupid

Can't speak for women but I imagine they're somewhat impressed by competency and leadership/status, and one route to that competency and status is to do things that no other man has been brave, foolish or pig-headed enough to do before and succeed*.

Once success is demonstrated the unorthodoxy cashes out among men as being a pioneer. And now hundreds of thousands (millions?) of men admire people like Rodney Mullen for something as pointless and trivial as mastering standing on the wrong side of a skateboard. It's the "people said it couldn't be done" factor. And that status among men is in turn what cashes out as making an impression on women.

In this case it would only work if Skookum can lever his expedition into the likelihood of consistently impressing men within the social awareness cone of women at a degree proportional to the risk of freezing to death. That's very dubious, and that's what really makes it stupid suboptimal. I mean, if he comes back with pics and maps to post and a gripping tale of high jeopardy that he pursued in spite of everyone here near unanimously telling him it was dangerously misguided, I think that counts as some variety of impressive. But that doesn't cash out easily oustide The Motte, and it all turns on a not inconsiderable "if".

* If they don't succeed they often fail catastrophically, which I think is something like Skookum is pointing at when he brings up the honour factor of how in his eyes it might be a better society if socially unsuccessful men died trying, because at least they're trying and if they die then they die with the honour of pursuing some variety of success (and society has relieved itself of something it didn't value anyway). Very Gattaca.

And now hundreds of thousands (millions?) of men admire people like Rodney Mullen for something as pointless and trivial as mastering standing on the wrong side of a skateboard.

And how many women?

For skateboarding? Or for being a figure of narrow but significant acclaim?

For the first, who knows. Roughly as many as there are women skateboarders. For the second, tautologically more than without the acclaim, and they don't have to be into skateboarding because the people who are will provide the information.

To offer a less niche example professional sportsmen aren't swimming in top tier fanny because they moved a ball into a net, it's because men want to associate with them, recruit them for their team, and use them to put a ball into a net more than the other team's men can.

There's a complex blend of prestige status and dominance status involved (you can't fail to be the best if you're the only one that does it, etc) but both of them reduce to status, and status rests on a foundation of external validation. That's the vital difference between a hypothetical woman who sees a bunch of men being impressed by the guy who stood on the wrong side of a skateboard (or hiked across Alaska) versus the guy who thinks he will impress women if he tells them about how he can use a skateboard wrong (or hiked across Alaska). Show don't tell, yes, but there's a third way by telling a third party and letting them do the showing.

"And succeed" being the salient part here. "Do dumb thing that is 99% likely to end up with my corpse becoming bear food" is not that thing.

If only socially unsuccessful men do things that they will die doing, then it won't be perceived as "the honour of some variety of success" but rather something more like "annual pest control". Nobody is impressed by the nobility with which rats succumb to poison. If this kind of activity is one reserved for "socially unsuccessful men" then it will be as low status as the rest of the social lack of success.

I don't think elaborate suicide makes you look better than quiet suicide.

I think you're violating the single-issue posting rule. You've made your point. The community has given its feedback. Kindly fuck off with your hock.


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