domain:doyourownresearch.substack.com
This has got to be the craziest explanation for domestic violence I've ever read
The question I think about is "why would a battered housewife not only stick around, but defend her husband's actions?". There's no rational reason for that, so this has to be a function (or malfunction) of some basic instinct.
I posit the basic instinct is "sell sex in exchange for resources", and that violent men tend to, for some women, result in the seller perceiving that the price the buyer is paying is high enough to labor as a very literal punching bag. Which also explains a few other weird things, like "women obsessed with serial killers".
It also explains why the modern women is choosier: on an intellectual standpoint/when women have other options, the odds they'll be selling sex for anything resembling a reasonable price is lower and they'll only consider lower prices when the "Reproduce Now" instinct turns on (this is the "beta bucks"/"once she's had her fun" phenomenon, just stated more neutrally- the flipside, of course, is that higher-quality women are now available at a bargain price if you're willing to look for them, which is to a point why so many software guys marry Asians when they hit 30). The selection effects on the sexual marketplace are simply downstream of this; the reason men who can't pay as much still get laid regularly is because not every woman is Homo Economicus, and even when they are they aren't that way all the time.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
9m ago
Couldn't agree more. High agency is often just a code wood for tearing down mores and norms for personal gain. I said something similar in a tweet myself.
Are you on twitter? DM me I'd love to follow you hah. Your writing is solid.
Tree
10m ago
I’m not too worried about dysgenic effects at this juncture, we have so little children that I’d take even lower class stock. Besides ,such subventions already exist in a similar form with dysgenic effect, in germany we have ‘children’s money’, which is at 255 euros/month/kid for the poorest (297 if you work), then you get the same in tax credit as you go up in income.
Of course, most of those subventions are officially justified on the grounds that every child should have a “minimum” to live on, which some courts and left-wingers keep increasing like they do every other minimum. And when the right’s at the helm, they increase it for more natalist and family values reasons.
So it’s hard to get a big part of that into a randomized payout, but it kind of ruins the bonus psychological effect of gambling if it’s just tax credits over years.
What I want to do is psychologically trick people (the ultimate decision lies with women) into having kids. Not pay them the full cost, and even less enormous sums in tax credits so that rich women in banking and medicine who understand opportunity costs have children, just cheaply manipulate them for cents on the dollar.
(I’m trying to keep this fun for the thread’s sake, but I can’t help veering into the culture war, broadly defined.)
Side-note:
those who are poor and relatively high in negative risk aversion.
You could say the lower class are true risk-takers, mavericks and entrepreneurs, not scared bean counters like the middle class who insure everything and buy bonds despite having a stable job.
And yet, usually less risk aversion is correlated with higher economic status:
Although I’ve also read that it’s U-shaped, with the middle class most risk averse, like the cliché above. In that perspective, it’s likely that a randomized bonus has a stronger positive effect than a fixed sum, ie more bang for your buck, also and especially for the rich.
I was discussing the, imo, incoherent, common view of risk a few days ago. I don’t think you can call the risk averse “those with a modicum of future time orientation” – The main distinction between losers and winners in this game is: how much are they willing to pay for their risk aversion, or for their risk taking? Buying insurance or a lottery ticket both make you a sucker, of opposite risk aversions.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
12m ago
Because it seems like weakness or poor planning, to me, nother of which are attractive in men?
TowardsPanna
16m ago
Why is it extremely poor form?
hydroacetylene
16m ago
Where does his actual thinking lie? I don't know.
It's obvious if you read between the lines that Matt Walsh belongs to the hardline end of red tribe conservatism- skepticism of the federal government, not particularly a white supremacist but thinks the station of black people is the fault of black people, perhaps less philosemitic than average but still more sympathetic with Israel than Palestine, anti-feminist, not crunchy.
Well that's the first time I've read the term "goombling.'
But yeah, and the second course does at least offer a small( vanishingly small, but present) chance that you actually hit it rich and can, if you're halfway smart, parlay that into some semblance of 'happiness.'
The former course has a lot of fringe benefits, yet the task of convincing another human being to come into and stay in your life for the long term does NOT become much easier the more effort you put into it. The social pressures you're fighting are simply beyond what any one person could oppose. Hence even billionaires don't bother.
Sloot
21m ago
I've read such a tip before, but with phone chargers instead of scarves. That if you're in need of a phone charger, to approach the nearest hotel lobby and tell the receptionist you left yours there, and you'll have a mountain of chargers to choose from.
I'd be impressed with her agency (far right tail for young women, who are generally incredibly passive) and find it endearing that a chick would take action to increase my comfort level instead of getting the ick from and penalizing me for my unforced error of expressing vulnerability in front of her.
However, at the same time, her acquiring the scarf like that would give me the ick—the nonchalance in handling some stranger's article of clothing and having someone she presumably cares about (e.g., me) wear it. Especially if that article of clothing is from a hotel. Do you want bedbugs? Because that's how you get bedbugs. This ick is just instinctual, but to rationalize something deeper it could also suggest that, for even a short-term relationship, we're incompatible with regard to conscientiousness, hygiene, and/or cleanliness. What next, dumpster diving for me if I say I'm hungry?
The lying and stealing or "stealing" aspect is actually secondary for me. We could have a fundamental difference in values/etiquette, as for me it's ingrained not to lie and not to take other people's belongings (especially in front of a date), even if they otherwise would have been unlikely to recover them.
On one hand, it's worrisome if a chick is so blasé about lying—if she so casually lies to a hotel receptionist in a low stakes situation, what if she's similarly down to lie to me in a higher stakes situation? On the other hand, a chick who's down to lie to others for my benefit could mean she's ride-or-die for me. Similarly, a chick who's down to take from others and give to me is based and good. Far better than the opposite, a chick who's down to take from me and give to others out of chronic pathological altruism.
Overall for me, things wash out in both directions, but I'd say it's a net-negative. It pains me to say it, because otherwise it'd be such a pleasant surprise for a girl to take the initiative to increase my comfort level instead of penalizing me for the gaffe of bringing it up, especially if I haven't banged her yet.
hydroacetylene
28m ago
“maybe Pontius Pilot shouldn’t have signed that one guy’s death warrant, because letting an angry mob override the fair application of law and due process is wrong”
Saying this would, in the mainstream, be criticized as antisemitic, not anti-Christian. It is no longer allowed to believe that Pilate put Jesus to death at the urging of the crowd, because the crowd is Jewish.
The handful of fundamentalists who don't care(the bible is, in fairness, entirely clear about the role of the crowd) would agree with you.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
34m ago
I will be very interested to see if English persists as a lingua franca for business even if the US and UK have their influence significantly decline. It may be that English has hit a critical mass among businessmen that it is self-sustaining, though I'm not totally confident this is the case (and perhaps AI translation is already at a point where it becomes less necessary on an everyday level). For example, if someone from Japan wants to talk with someone from Germany, chances are they do so in English, right? The nature of international trade is often such that major bilateral partners only covers a smallish percentage of the total, so a mutually common language is useful for practical reasons. Though that dynamic will have more to do with how large Chinese bilateral trade links grow in other countries.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
40m ago
This is a microcosm of the problem with the agency people. “High agency” often just means “putting all cognition energy into obsessive self-gain”. AI that lies to people about dieting? High agency. Made something addicting with little social benefit? High agency. Foregoing relationships and social identity in order to be like the dude from Whiplash with low mood and a TFR of 0.50? High agency.
When all of your elites become high agency, the culture is ruined. No one will have the desire or the ability to solve collective action problems. Something wrong with crime? Sorry, all the high agency people have simply moved to a higher income area. Cheating scandals? All the high agency people know to use chat AI to scaffold their essays. Obesity? No one is there to consider longterm causes, because that’s not high agency. And when America is finally ruined, all the high agency will be on the first flight out of the country.
hydroacetylene
42m ago
This really is one of those cases where 'imagine if the genders were reversed' actually tells us something- and that something is not positive. There are definitely things that are less bad when a woman does it, but this really doesn't seem like one.
hanikrummihundursvin
42m ago
The veneration of Churchill does not sprout from just winning 'a war' but what war, against who and for what cause. As I stated before, it makes little sense for a fan of British imperialism to idolize the man who functionally ended the empire with his decision making.
We can also see by Murrays own words and actions that he is haggling against progressive morality as he presents his own interests in terms of his sexuality.
To that end nothing I say is a mischaracterization, only a realistic clarification of where Murray is coming from and why.
No_one
51m ago
-
The image sample result is based on a huge sample of people looking at anime-style erotic art and rating it. Hundreds of thousands of users.
-
the assumption that 'willingness to fuck sex dolls' is orthogonal to any other preferences someone might have, is .. somewhat brave but not that brave, and anyway, only supporting evidence bc 1) is fairly persuasive.
some cherrypicked evidence
I'd disagree with that. He may underestimate the historical prevalence of cultures where women were expected to be fat, it does look like that was quite common although it's not sure to what degree that was status related. Today last vestiges of this are in Mauritania and that region. Back in the early 1930s many women in coastal parts of Turkey were reportedly too fat for central Europeans, which I imagine meant like 180 lbs or something like that but more conservative local men liked it.
But apart from that I don't think he's unfair or cherrypicking.
Too prolix, yes.
Before getting to the stealing, I'm more stuck on my aesthetic distaste to the vignette of a man on an early date telling the woman he's cold, and her giving him an article of clothing to comfort him (among the more feminine articles to boot). It's too perfectly set up as a subverted cliche, that I am 50-50 (edit on reflection, 70:30) that it's made up. I suspect many if not most of the people defending it are doing so on those very aesthetic grounds, and it's not remotely about agency, morals, or consequentialism. This is basically a manic pixie dream girl scene that crossed with light 'gender swapped' tittilation.
There's a very real trope about a certain kind of proclivity toward strong female to femdom fantasies, that is disproportionately represented in ratty kind of spaces, and people who like this stuff are likely to make up, hyperbolize, or latch onto real anecdotes online as a substitute for the actual paucity of it in the real world. The high agency stuff is just a laundering of a titilating fantasy about a strong female, playing provider to a meek guy with 'low agency', aka the sub.
OK
Regarding the lying and stealing, yeah morals aside, there's a russell's congugation here: My: high agency, your: unscrupulousness , their: low impulse control
To the extent that this is a real story, yeah run buddy. A girl who casually lies and steals for immediate time preference satisfaction (even (maybe espectally) if charitably done by proxy to near empathetic aquaintances) is bad news.
quiet_NaN
1hr ago
Children benefit from stay-at-home moms; I did, anyway.
I believe you, but I would still argue that there are opportunity costs. A one-year-old requires a caretaker 24x7, and presumably might benefit from that caretaker being their mother. A ten-year-old requires much less adult supervision. Someone to cook dinner and make sure that they either attend or have called by then is certainly helpful, but 24x7 supervision would be actively harmful.
Now, if your model stay-at-home mom starts having kids age 18 and then has a child every other year for as long as nature will allow, I will grant you that she will have her hands full taking care of her kids for a significant fraction of her work life. But in most Western marriages, it is not like that. Instead, she will have two or three children, which will keep her occupied for a decade, but once her smallest child goes to school, she will have a lot of time on her hands for the better part of her work life.
I am not arguing that working 40h a week is the only valid model of how to spend your life, and if someone is happy playing video games or join some club or have an OnlyFans career or dedicate their life to gardening, who am I to tell them that they are wrong? Still, having opted not to have earned a degree seems somewhat likely to limit your options at self-actualization, and earning a degree remotely at age 40 is likely going to be harder.
And if your values differ from those of the broader culture, daycare is likely to drag your kids at least part way to that culture.
I think that this is unavoidable in general. I would advise to raise kids in a culture you are at least halfway comfortable with. Even with homeschooling and everything, you can not completely shield your child from the local culture. Sure, there are some who try, like some Muslim families trying to raise their daughters according to Sharia law in the middle of Western cities, but I think that their success is mixed at best.
Personally, I would not fret overly much about it. I was raised (mildly) Roman Catholic, and it did not stop me from seeing the light of Igtheism at 15 or so. While I am sure that there are some horror stories about some overachieving kindergarten teacher telling white kids to hate themselves, I think the median version of the SJ creed taught to kids is much less harmful. Like Santa Claus, blank-slatism is the sort of lie which is unlikely to harm the development of a kid much. They can still learn about the Ashkenazi intelligence hypothesis and HBD later.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
1hr ago
Personally I think it's extremely poor form for a man to expose a vulnerability on the second date. I also don't think I'd wear someone else's scarf, that seems like a pretty personal object. I've heard of people doing this with phone chargers and I know I'd never go back for a lost charger, so that hasn't bothered me vis a vis the other people's stuff angle.
FistfullOfCrows
1hr ago
While cute it's a bit concerning
Sloot
1hr ago
C) There's literally no reward for resisting this message, and fewer women are worth BECOMING adequate for.
"What's the reward for passing the years grinding hard and working on yourself?"
"If you're lucky, maybe one day you'll meet a girl who'll settle down with you after she's had her fun."
"What's the reward for passing the years gooning and goombling?"
"If you're lucky, maybe one day you'll meet a girl who'll settle down with you after she's had her fun."
"Well then..."
There a fun dramatic little scissor statement happening in the rationalist / post rationalist corner of twitter at the moment. Started by @_brentbaum talking about his girlfriend's high agency:
i learned something about agency when, on my second date with my now-girlfriend, i mentioned feeling cold and she about-faced into the nearest hotel, said she left a scarf in a room last week, and handed me the nicest one out of the hotel’s lost & found drawer
I, and many others, chimed in saying hey wait a second... this is actually kind of concerning! Some of the negative responses:
- not to burst your bubble but isn't this kinda stealing?
- you can just steal things
- I suspect your about to learn a lot of things
and my personal favorite:
- was it shaped like a giant red flag?
As I said though, this is apparently a scissor statement because a ton of people also had the OPPOSITE reaction. Some examples:
- God damn
- She's a keeper
- my wife is exactly like this
etc etc.
Now the reason I find this fascinating is that it's one of the clearest breakdowns between consequentialists and virtue ethicists I've yet seen in the wild. Most people defending the girl of 'scarfgate' are basically just saying "what's the harm? nobody ever goes back for those scarfs. besides they're like $20 most of the time anyway."
Unfortunately a lot of folks get drawn into this argument, and start saying things like well, what if somebody comes back for it later and it's gone? Or what if someone's grandma knitted them that scarf?
To me, going down the consequentialist route is doomed to fail. You can justify all sorts of horrible things in the name of consequentialist morality. (Same with deontology, to be fair.) My take is that this is wrong because she directly lied to someone's face, and then proceeded to steal someone else's property. The fact that most people think it's cute and quirky is probably down to a sort of Women are Wonderful effect, imo, and then they use consequentialism to defend their default programming that women can't be bad.
Either way, curious what the Motte thinks? Is scarfgate just salty sour pusses hating on a highly agentic women? Or are there deeper issues here?
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1hr ago
I would say if the judge is repeatedly doing something like this and they’re constantly issuing injunctions that get overturned, then yes. Would not think that a single overturned injunction would reveal partisan hacking unless the injunction is so bad on the merits of the case that he clearly shouhave known better.
dr_analog
razorboy
1hr ago
I could imagine 20 years from now where an increasing share of international business is done in Chinese rather than English, I guess.
It's not a huge win, just possibly more useful than Spanish.
faceh
1hr ago
Yep.
There's a 'clumping' effect on the bottom end when there aren't strong incentives to stay in the middle road (due to that not getting you what you want, and STILL carrying the risk of losing it all).
You either have so much wealth that you can afford to lose tons of it, or you have like NO wealth, and don't give a single care due to having nothing TO lose.
And as you indicated (and as young men are noticing...) if you can't catapult yourself to the former position of fuck you, then it starts making MORE sense to drop down the latter, and lower position, because at least you can do what you WANT to do, rather than play by rules you can't change and punish you heavily.
Sloot
1hr ago
This would be dysgenic though, for it would most influence the reproductive decisions of those who are poor and relatively high in negative risk aversion.
Something like a 20% of chance of 100K paid out linearly over 5 years in the form of non-refundable tax credits would work better. Thus, for one kid, you get a shot at getting a tax refund of 20K in a given year for five years, but only if in that given year you paid at least 20K in income taxes. Non-refundable, so if you only paid 15K in income taxes in a given year, you only get a refund of 15K that year; if you paid zero or less you get refunded zero. This would stack, so a pair of twins could get up to 40K knocked off your taxes a year for five years.
Having a lottery reward capped at annual income taxes paid would still preserve a lot of the fun and hype, but would be less dysgenic. The payout over five years has the added benefit of selecting for those with a modicum of future time orientation.
Name a eugenic intervention. Face it- the poor and high time preference always are more willing to do stuff like that for cash.
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