domain:doyourownresearch.substack.com
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
5m ago
Good points, but it bears pointing out that the Gospels record that Pilate repeatedly said "this man has done no wrong" and that ultimately he declared "his blood isn't on my head, it's on yours". So, our primary sources tell us that he knew damn well that it was a miscarriage of justice and that it was wrong to carry that out (otherwise he wouldn't have disclaimed the guilt). I think it's pretty fair to call that derelict of his duty, since it's apparent from the narrative that his duty was to dispense justice. At best you can say that he had two duties in conflict, but that doesn't mean he didn't neglect one of them.
of all the atrocities committed in the name of Rome, the killing of Jesus likely does not even make the top million.
From the secular perspective, sure. From the Christian perspective (which, remember is what this whole discussion has been about) nothing else can really come close to "killing God" on a list of atrocities. So I would say that depends a great deal on your stance on other things.
zeke5123a
5m ago
I’m not saying a single overturned injunction; a single overturned national injunction.
If it is so important for them, a single district judge, to make a national ruling, then they ought to have some skin in the game.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
8m ago
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.
Its on a second date. Unless youre a gigachad, you should assume she does this for people shes second-date-familiar with, possibly less. (A similar logic applies to early sex)
Second, while "willing to lie for you" is a benefit, its also important to be wise about it. I wouldnt go do this myself if you brought it up to me, and Im similarly not excited about her thinking its a good idea.
sun_the_second
10m ago
If my date steals someone's scarf for me, I give it about 1% chance of "she's a master consequentialist who has calculated the utilons of someone potentially coming back for the scarf and finding it gone vs. the utilons of me being comforted" and 99% of "she's from casual petty crime culture and on top of that is 'agentic' enough to participate in it even as a woman".
The latter category isn't someone whose company I want to keep. There's the bro wisdom of "if she'd cheat with you she'll cheat on you" and while "if she'd act like a low trust society specimen for your benefit she'll act like a low trust society specimen at your expense" doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well, it feels plausible enough.
sun_the_second
27m ago
Or the hypothetical future time oriented person could get a 20k raise per year without having to have a kid.
Sub-1 TFR of 120 IQ children or 4+ TFR of 90 IQ children, which one is really more dysgenic?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
37m ago
Ah, I see. You could call it selfless love, though, from Jesus' perspective? I guess I understand how you'd think from a judgement of God the Father's perspective that seems kind of messed up.
Answers obviously vary, but my own religion (LDS/Mormon) actually has a bit of a different view in that God obeys certain laws, and among them are that sinful people literally cannot enter heaven. In our setup, there was basically a big meeting before the Earth was created where everyone already existed, and God proposed a plan for human growth and development, including obtaining physical bodies and learning to overcome temptation. Jesus volunteered to overcome death and make it possible there, and we all also agreed to participate. Thus it's not all about sin directly, it's more about growth, and if you don't grow enough you don't quite go to hell either - you just go to a place where you feel most comfortable, with people of a similar level of purity and goodness together, and sinful-character people wouldn't feel comfortable in God's direct presence. That is to say as well, the Fall and its consequences wasn't a disaster, but a pre-planned opportunity to propel directional growth. I got off topic but in that perspective God is quite literally constrained to set it up this way rather than making a deliberate choice to torture his son to death. In fact, we move the "main event" to the garden of Gethsemane rather than the cross for much this same reason, emphasizing the elective nature of it while the cross is more about the victory over death (why the cross is not used, we view the resurrection as also more important than the crucifixion). Thus it's not purely legalistic, but rather a setup that allows mercy to assist with the innate natural spiritual consequences of bad/immoral choices, while also allowing for true moral agency to exist. Although the details can vary significantly, there are other evangelicals who believe something similar and more in line with what you describe, that sin literally requires punishment, so Jesus was performing a kind of legal act in assuming the sin. You're right that some related framings there indicate God defines what is good and bad, it's not independent, which might be more problematic in that context.
This isn't universal across Christianity, I should note: some sidestep the whole issue and never address if Jesus' suffering was actually necessary or view it as strictly inspirational, others don't think the cross was about guilt at all, but in fact was breaking the power of death as a kind of liberation (forgiveness is free more independently of Jesus), and still others think the cross was more about God identifying with humanity as an act of ultimate empathy (I think Eastern Orthodox is roughly those last two, though I'm sure our motte residents could tell you more).
aaa
42m ago
Historians of Jesus Christ run into a peculiar contradiction when it comes to trying to figure out the precise circumstances of his death. On one hand they need him to be a minor figure of the time that he wouldn't attract the attention of contemporary historians, on the other hand they need something egregious enough that it would lead to extraordinary application of the law.
hydroacetylene
46m ago
Name a eugenic intervention. Face it- the poor and high time preference always are more willing to do stuff like that for cash.
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[1] (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[2] 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.
The men and women who lack the instinct to min-max this way, or perceive the requirement to either be very muted or only have the cosplay of buy/sell on their minds? Those are the real "asexuals". They lose because they just want to be left alone and do their weird thing where they constantly fuck around.
[1] Buyers call this the "beta bucks"/"once she's had her fun" phenomenon; sellers usually just call it "settling".
[2] Their genetics predict a superior product even if their cultural outlook was more hostile to men on average, and it isn't... unless you also happen to be Asian.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
52m 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
52m 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
54m ago
Because it seems like weakness or poor planning, to me, nother of which are attractive in men?
TowardsPanna
58m ago
Why is it extremely poor form?
hydroacetylene
59m 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
1hr 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
1hr 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
1hr 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
☕️
1hr 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
1hr 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
1hr 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
1hr ago
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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.
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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.
All the anime pictures I saw with a cursory look were AI-generated, though. You could make a more persuasive argument that people looking at anime-style erotic art in general have somewhat representative preferences in that department (though even there I would not be sure), but AI art is definitively only appreciated by a niche subgroup, with the modal anime erotica enjoyer being highly dismissive of it.
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