domain:aporiamagazine.com
faceh
1d ago
Miserable.
Both from personal experience and the sheer stats.
Every forum about online dating you can find is dominated by three genres of posts:
-
Male who is struggling mightily to figure out why he can't get matches.
-
Male and Female who are struggling to understand why someone they connected with, maybe even went on dates with, ghosted them or otherwise rejected them without warning.
-
Male and Female who post aggressively toxic interactions they had with their matches, and often insinuating that this is a problem with the entirety of the opposite sex.
And some people in the comments pointing out how these issues interact. (To be explicit: Most men don't get matches, so women are choosing to match with a small subset of guys who turn out to be toxic (but they're hot), and they use this experience to justify being toxic to other guys, and it ends up mostly being toxic interactions that get posted and get attention, so it makes it look like everybody is toxic.)
Admittedly there's the occasional 'hey this app worked for me, I'm getting married!' post, but rare enough that they're not representative.
Nobody, I repeat NOBODY is having a good time on these apps, and yet they all feel stuck because that's where they perceive the equilibrium is. And they repeat the various 'copes' to each other like mantras. "Its a numbers game" "their behavior doesn't reflect on you" "you dodged a bullet, keep looking!" Actually, a handful of sociopathic dudes are probably having an alright time.
Its generally known that paying money for the apps is a waste and doesn't help, yet they don't take the next logical leap and see that being on the apps at all is probably a waste.
So how are the swiping apps these days? (Personally I think it would be more sustainable for me emotionally because swiping right is a much smaller investment. Swiping right on 100 women and not getting any matches would not significantly update my world view, while composing longer texts to three women and not getting any replies would be painful.)
Yeah that's the thing.
Try swiping right on thousands of women, of varying degrees of attractiveness, and getting nothing. Quantity has a quality all its own, indeed.
The dating apps have managed to cheapen the value of any individual connection to almost zero. And most of what we're seeing now is downstream of that.
Swiping-style apps are just a plague. Its easier to see that if you remember long enough ago when there were apps that sort of worked. Now they literally gameify things and pretend they're doing you a favor... whilst also denying any responsibility if the quality of your matches is terrible (but they don't let you search for what you want!) and in fact implying its really your fault altogether.
I recommend avoiding.
He made a big post about how The Motte was pointless because the time for debate was over and it was time for violence. Got a 3 day ban and never came back.
Shame; I really liked him. His Rhodesian catgirl bit was funny, and he made some genuinely good points. I still follow him on Twitter and Substack.
TeknOShEeP
1d ago
perhaps calling Republican Rome atheistic is a stretch
It's not a stretch, its just entirely wrong. It would be wrong for Imperial Rome as well. Like, there are many, many dissertations written about the importance and universality of religious ritual in Rome, but if you really want to experience it first hand, just go there and tour any of the hundreds of temples they built. They didnt do it for aesthetics.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1d ago
On what grounds? Your idea of 'manlyness'? You're generally liberal, but the sex stuff is your achilles heel.
That's a general problem with the old liberalism. Men are still supposed to act traditionally, but then accept worse results for it. A man who stands up for his rights in court will just get slapped down and get a tougher sentence than one who pleads guilty and begs for leniency, and liberals applaud this -- but still despise the latter man.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
1d ago
It's a workstation laptop CPU that is faster than my 5600X and a bunch of Chinese manufacturers (plus Framework) are making mini-desktops around it.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
1d ago
I'm skeptical that there's a rigorous way to show a difference between really experiencing something vs. claiming to experience it for the evolutionary advantage.
I of course knew that in many cases, we would quickly run into this issue of a fundamental difference in perspective. Which is perfectly fine. Not everything has to be for everyone.
First-person subjective experience exists. Almost all materialists will acknowledge that humans are not pure behavioral black boxes, but instead they also have subjective experiences that accompany their behavior. These subjective experiences are, in principle, not directly observable by anyone except the person who is having the experience. You know what red looks like, and you know what blue looks like, and you know how they're different, but I can never be 100% sure that your red is the same as my red, nor could you put your experience of red and blue into words that would communicate the experience to someone who has been blind since birth. You can only describe the experience of red in relative terms ("a very dark shade of red") to people who already have some sort of shared subjective experience with you that they can use as a starting point.
I have my own subjective experiences, and other people have theirs, and it seems clear enough that these do not always align. Individual variation in subjective experience is intrinsically interesting and worth studying in its own right. Since we can't actually observe the subjective experience of another individual, we have to ask them to talk about it instead. This will always be fraught with dangers, as there are numerous philosophical problems regarding the nature of introspection and the extent of its reliability (this was essentially the founding problem of the psychoanalytic tradition, of which Jung was a follower), but, since the pressing nature of the inquiry cannot be ignored and we have to start somewhere, we ultimately have to start with the only tools we have, which are introspection and linguistic communication.
If you disagree with any of the above, then Jung's thought is simply not for you. And that's ok! You are encouraged to instead pursue matters that you find more fruitful and useful.
What are those predictions?
Quite a number, but probably the most basic and obvious one is that "introverted feeling" is always paired with "extroverted thinking", which is characterized by a number of traits that center around themes of: driven to use thought as a utilitarian tool to attain tangible, real-world results; low tolerance for theoretical speculation that does not make an attempt to ground itself in "consensus" truth, whether that "consensus" be the facts of empirical reality as observed by the subject, or a religious tradition, or the consensus of the scientific community, or any other source of truth that lies outside the subject; a greater subjective need to have one's own beliefs and opinions grounded in such sources of consensus truth. And "extroverted feeling" is always paired with "introverted thinking" which would be, well, something of the opposite. I am aware that these traits sound somewhat behaviorist, and they are, but you still ultimately have to do a phenomenological analysis to determine whether any given action was performed or any given belief was held for an "extroverted thinking" reason or an "introverted thinking" reason.
And how are they validated or falsified? If not by behavior, then what?
By phenomenological introspection.
I would expect that any correlation with other psychological and personality traits would fall out of the analysis that produced OCEAN.
OCEAN deals with behavior and MBTI deals with phenomenology. MBTI unavoidably does make some behavioral predictions, and if it's wildly inaccurate in those predictions then that would be a problem worth knowing about, but ultimately at the end of the day the decisive factor for the theory is the phenomenology, which empirical psychology does its best to studiously avoid.
If your primary criticism is "MBTI is not empirical science", then yes, I completely agree with you. None of this is empirical science and I do not intend in any way to misrepresent it as empirical science.
Gaashk
1d ago
I agree with this. Every time I watch a board meeting, they're pretty explicit about it. It's what people were actually upset about during Covid.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
I dismantled this claim before but you're going to keep repeating it, I guess. And I will keep pointing it out every time you insist on being dishonest.
You understand what words mean.
odd_primes
1d ago
Schools are supposed to be assessing learning on a more thorough, ongoing basis. If a student can't read at their grade level, that should be made very clear to the parents repeatedly throughout the year. The point of standardized testing is to keep the schools honest and get information on relative performance between schools or districts.
With respect to the bottom 10-20%, spending huge amounts of resources to get someone from a grade 4 reading level to a grade 5 reading level won't help them avoid getting swindled by someone with a law degree. Also, I suspect that there is a very significant overlap between the people who cannot read a basic contract, and the people who would not understand such a contract even if it were explained to them. The latter category cannot function independently in modern society and likely need some form of assisted living arrangement to help them navigate daily life.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1d ago
State-funded daycare
This one is the most important priority by like, a factor of 10
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
1d ago
I'm very skeptical, on Hansonian grounds.
MBTI (or you could say more generally, "Jungian typology") is a language for talking about internal phenomenological experience; it's not a tool for making behavioral predictions
I'm skeptical that there's a rigorous way to show a difference between really experiencing something vs. claiming to experience it for the evolutionary advantage.
MBTI makes additional predictions about Fe and Fi being correlated with other (rather specific) psychological and personality traits, instead of simply treating it as an isolated and free-floating random variable.
What are those predictions? And how are they validated or falsified? If not by behavior, then what? I would expect that any correlation with other psychological and personality traits would fall out of the analysis that produced OCEAN.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1d ago
Oh man, Inland Empire was something else! I've seen it described (I think) as a journey straight through the subconscious, and it's a good analogy. Like a series of dreams, it meanders through its scenes, some seemingly furthering previous scenes, others jarringly discordant on the surface, but regardless of the relationship of each scene to the next, there's a constant symbolic undercurrent that propels the movie forward. I can see why it's not for everyone, given that I felt it was a little too long (which, tbf, may have been because I was watching it as part of a larger David Lynch retrospective) but it was still quite an experience. If I happen to find another screening of it at some point in the future, there's a good chance I'll catch it again, as I will with most of his work.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Correct. A long and running complaint of the conservative base about their elites.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
Yes, the Oklahoma legislature spends a ton of money on jobs programs for leftists and progressive indoctrination.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
1d ago
For those of you who aren't Christian, I'd like to hear more about what your own spiritual/moral system looks like, and what your own vision of the future of society going forward is.
As for what I think religion is going to look like in the future, I think it’s very tough to predict what AI is going to do and how it will shape people’s religious experiences. I’m loath to make an attempt at prediction just yet.
What I’d like future religion to look like, once the hyper-advanced one-world technocracy takes over, is a paradigm that leaves room for both a High Religion and a Low Religion. The High Religion would be highly centralized, universalized, and cosmopolitan, filling a similar social role to medieval Catholicism. It’d be the religion of the State, a hierarchical and orderly religion with grand cathedrals, inspiring awe.
I’d like this to look, theologically and aesthetically, something like Zoroastrianism, or, for a fictional example, the Faith Of The Seven in A Song Of Ice And Fire. There is a central overarching godhead, but it is split into multiple personae/sub-identities which act as intermediaries between its incomprehensible hyperintelligence and mankind. Those personae don’t all share the same motivations and intentions, which can explain why so much of the world seems chaotic and not guided by some grand unified “master plan”.
The Low Religion would look more like Shinto or Proto-Indo-European religion, centered around ancestor worship and personal tutelary deities. Guardian angels, the spirits of specific locations or families, nature spirits, etc. It would allow for a far more eclectic and personalized range of worship practices rooted in specific communities, and could be theologically integrated in some way with the High Religion such that they are understood not to be in inherent tension.
As for my personal spirituality, I’m very much still trying to figure that out. Like you, I’m trying to balance the competing demands of, on the one hand, attempting to locate a worldview which intuitively seems true and meaningful, and on the other hand trying to make sure my religious practices can integrate me into a larger cultural and communal framework that isn’t a total weirdo LARP. If there was a thriving modern Hellenist community in the United States today I would probably join it in a heartbeat, but there isn’t, so I have to try and figure out what actually-existing thing works for me. I’ve been reading into Hermeticism and esotericism more generally, in the hope that it will allow me to engage in an existing religious tradition on a level beyond the literal/exoteric.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
1d ago
For those of you who aren't Christian, I'd like to hear more about what your own spiritual/moral system looks like
What my mind knows to be true at the level of rational, propositional judgement: There is no meaning. There are no morals. All value judgements are nothing more than subjective sentiments. The world described by fundamental physics is the only world there is.
What my "soul" knows to be true via perceptual, lived experience: There is such a thing as meaning, and there is such a thing as "The Good" that exists outside of us, although saying anything about it in concrete terms is virtually impossible. It is the height of arrogance to think that The Good would allow itself to be encapsulated in straightforward principles like "justice" or "fairness" or "duty". The Good is a trickster; it delights in doing strange things and keeping people on their toes. The only way to know anything of The Good is to humble yourself, be quiet, and listen closely to what each individual moment is telling you. After a lifetime of cultivating this practice, it is possible that one may obtain something that could be called "knowledge", but it will only ever be one piece of a larger whole.
your own vision of the future of society going forward is.
It'll continue to muddle on as it always has. Different races, civilizations, forms of life are always constantly ascending or declining, this is nothing new. I do believe that it's possible for the universe as a whole to reach a "bad ending", although how likely this is to happen is anyone's guess.
haroldbkny
1d ago
Sure, I just feel like I haven't seen it land pretty much anytime since about 2013, such that it ultimately made me question whether they actually understand anything they juxtapose.
thejdizzler
1d ago
And putting up with bad behavior in a relationship for absurdly long amounts of time. This same guy has had a "girlfriend" in California for nearly 3 years. Cheats on her constantly. She must know unless she's being extremely willfully blind. He won't officially claim her as his girlfriend unless it's convenient. Yet they still talk on the phone every single day.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1d ago
I feel like as I get older I realize more and more why there’s so much suspicion against men among women. That said, it’s bewildering how… lacking in instinct for manipulation a lot of young women are. Or even basic “don’t do something completely insane” instinct. I went on a date with someone once who told me she’d met a man in a park in the middle of the night. You did what?
FD4280
1d ago
This brings to mind a What? Where? When? question that's much funnier than it has any right to be.
Одно иностранное слово ты знал
Везде, где возможно, его ты писал:
Забор ли, стена ли, ограда...
Но больше всего ты оставить мечтал...
(finish with a slightly modified literary quote for the last line).
thejdizzler
1d ago
Yea dude. I've called this guy out on it multiple times, but he never changes. Starting to come round to the idea that this type of man needs to be castrated (or forcibly married). Women do eventually learn, but for some reason there's always more to take their places.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1d ago
At least in my case it's the combination of relatively few matches (about 1 new match a week), plus the lack of response to relatively thought out initially messages (+sometimes follow-ups). What's worse is one of my roommates has loads of success, but he's pretty scummy when it comes to women on dating apps. Leading 3-4 of them along at once pretending that he's going to commit.
And this is a vicious cycle — getting played leads women to leave, or the stories lead them to never download. I met my girlfriend in college, and she told me she’d be scared to use the apps and she’s glad she met me in person.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
1d ago
I'd point to the wealth of social science evidence showing that religious people are happier, have more friends, give more money to charity, have more trust, have more children and, my personal favourite, have more satisfying sex lives. In our atomised, lonely, anxious, childless and sexless age, all that stuff seems even more important.
How do you know you’re not mistaking correlation for causation, or even getting the causation reversed? Perhaps people who are inclined toward pro-social and conservative temperaments are more likely to express religious belief to pollsters because that’s the social software into which they were raised? Meanwhile the people with the same basic temperament (and same basically successful and pro-social life patterns) who live in Japan — a country where Christianity has had very little impact, and in which most people’s engagement with religious practice is extremely sporadic and surface-level — would either express wishy-washy belief in Buddhism, or honestly report that they are not sincerely religious.
Only the Abrahamic religions seem to have a strong pronatal effect
Why is “having a lot of kids” the most important thing a religion can inspire its adherents to do? African and Haitian Christians routinely have families of 6-7 children, and that certainly hasn’t made their lives or their countries better. I’d much rather those places have smaller families, but for geopolitical reasons and for their own good.
Islam leads to gestures wildly at the Middle East.
Islamic societies were the most advanced in the world for centuries. Look into the Islamic Golden Age. The civilization that built the Alhambra and founded the first universities in the world, institutions which directly inspired the Europeans who founded the oldest centers of higher learning in Europe.
thejdizzler
1d ago
Why are the current religions the only alternatives? Rome before its days of decadence around the time of the Gracchi thru to Caesar had an extremely pronatal society that was built around civic virtue. Same with Athens during the Persian wars. I'm not familiar with the exact demographics of Confucian China, but I would imagine it's also similar.
Someone sent for me?
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