domain:lesswrong.com
ABigGuy4U
6hr ago
I think that’s also a very good counter example to all the people who say that there are no conspiracies because they are impossible to keep secret. This organization wasn’t even actually secret and they still managed to conspire undisturbed for forty years.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
English has an enormous vocabulary, much like French and unlike far cruder highly-inflected languages. Latin, Russian, Spanish- they all just come out and say things. English and French use a variety of expressions and innuendos.
Anyone know how welsh or Gaelic talk? Might be an areal feature for the northwestern fringe of Europe.
ABigGuy4U
6hr ago
’sexual innuendo’
Ok, now you’re just being pointlessly obscure. Mods! Mods! This man is violating the rule that everyone must speak plainly!
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
It’s technically a diaresis.
LiberalRetvrn
6hr ago
Borders are a perfect example of something arbitrary. They have no physical significance, them being set up the way they are has no justification other than historical precedent. We are all entitled to go wherever we want.
but falling marriage rates do not in themselves indicate that "no one is finding a partner."
Yeah, the increasing numbers of people who report not having a partner indicate that. actually.
If you think this data is just wrong, fine.
But its all kinda points in the same direction. Fewer relationships, women being more choosy, men losing ground, and marriage rates tumbling, along with birth rates.
I keep posting data from various countries, from various sources, and asking someone to find me data that disagrees with this, that shows a different story.
And about the best that I've seen is that SOME PARTICULAR SUB-POPULATIONS, say the Amish, the Mormons, other religious sects, are doing pretty well overall.
If you were proposing we ban dating apps, I'd have qualms about the legality and the implementation, but I'd probably approve in principle.
Well here yah go, from me:
Identify the cohort of males who are carousing and stealing women's most fertile years and cull them. Just straight up kill 'em.
If that's too extreme, we can just castrate them. Compromise!
That cuts out a major factor that is both preventing women from settling AND is making them less marriageable. Heavily punish males who exploit young women's emotions and leave them worse off than they found them.
If that's still too extreme, then maybe just ban dating apps altogether.
If THAT is too extreme, just require every dating app to VERY publicly disclose their actual success rates for men and women forming relationships, so people can make an informed decision when using them. There's a reason they don't disclose them normally. They're abysmal.
And then, reduce or remove all economic policies that explicitly favor hiring women so that women are less likely to marry a corporation. There's enough competition amongst biological men without having to compete against Megacorps anyway.
Then reduce or remove most policies designed to allow an unmarried women to live 'comfortably' on the public dime, thus becoming brides of the state.
Basically, remove the economic policies that keep women from enduring any significant difficulties, ever, from childhood on, so that women will actually need a man in their life for more than just happy fun sexy times. This is called "ALIGNING THE INCENTIVES."
I'm standing by each of these suggestions.
Do you want to go full Dread Jim (literally make women property)? Do you want to retvrn to traditional (pre-Enlightenment) Church rules?
No.
I'd like to return the a legal status quo of approximately 30ish years ago, where there wasn't nearly as much direct economic support for women to pursue additional degrees, or hang around in the long term in corporate jobs, or to remain unmarried even with kids b/c the state and the corporation will pay their bills regardless.
I'm not hiding the ball, I've stated my main position/suggestions openly. I'm not out here yelling "REPEAL THE 19TH." I know guys who are.
Just even the playing field and the incentives and I think we see improvement. Women need some reason to prefer marrying a guy and sticking with him, rather than being able to just extract the same resources via the state, or from hundreds of microhusbands on Onlyfans.
But Gen Z men are turning further and further right. (Caveat, of course, Gen Z women have made an even more pronounced swing left, which makes them even less appealing as partners.)
And let me just point out. These are men who were raised, in some large portion, by single moms. As in, steeped in female influence literally from birth.
They were taught mostly by female teachers.
They've had their lives guided by female academic administrators, HR staff, hiring managers, and they've had their dating lives governed pretty much completely by female standards since they hit their teen years.
They have their entire upbringing defined completely and utterly in terms of female guidance and authority. I won't go into the concept of "the longhouse," but that's just the facts.
And they're turning right. They're listening to Andrew Tate, and they're voting for Trump and Co.
What do YOU think this cohort of men will do if they hit their 30's and find themselves unable to form families or hit the other life goals that they'd expect to achieve by then?
Just throw some thoughts out there.
I'm offering the moderate options, but these guys are even less likely to give a shit about women's input.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
6hr ago
Not the commenter you were responding to, but I'll bite:
First, re-create high social penalties for promiscuity for both men and women. I'm not the first to say this but the sexual revolution of the 1960s can be accurately viewed as the fight to let women behave in the same ways as the absolute worst of men. Being a "cad" or a "cocksman" should be socially treated the exact same as being a homewrecker. Dating is fine, but it should be used to figure out if there is an alignment of values and a shared vision for the future.
But, but, consenting adults! Who cares if two people just want to f*ck! Well, everyone, judging by this thread and many others like it. You have the situation now where promiscuity is not only tolerated, but lauded as some sort of expression of personal discovery, autonomy, and that most meaningless of words, _"empowering." Leaving aside the fact that this isn't true, the circumstances create a situation where the most antisocial of people can hit "defect" a million times and benefit greatly from it while those who are looking to cooperate are in a constant state of paranoid suspicion about any sort of medium length relationship they may find themselves in.
Second, get rid of no fault divorce. I know this is politically untenable, but I'm offering what I think is a correct solution. Marriage has to be meaningful and a real commitment, or else it's just a temporary tax arrangement with unbalanced incentives for the two people in it. Because of the history of marriage and family law in the US, women are usually the one's with the counter-incentive to staying in a marriage long term.
Much like @Amadan, I'm not actually that worried about following marriage rates because 1) I think most marriages today are shams anyway and 2) We're approaching a situation where 1/3 to nearly 1/5 of children are born out of wedlock. Marriage is so hollow now that policy positions that try to nudge people toward it aren't really serious about solving the problem.
I also agree with @Amadan in another way - blackpilling is not only (by its own definition) futile, I think it's just wrong. Once you pair secular materialism with battle-of-the-sexes blackpilling, the question has to be asked; why not just blow it all out in a cocaine-and-hookers weekend and then end it with a 9mm breakfast? Usually, the responses I hear are along the lines of, "I don't want to take such a cowardly way out", "I still want my life to mean something", "You should still try to be a good person." Hmmm, interesting how that kind of sounds like there's actually a higher level moral and ethical framework in play. Maybe these hardcore secular materialists really are trying to both fill and not acknowledge the God Shaped Hole.
Not to blow the scope of this comment into the stratosphere, but I do often think that we might be living through an inflection point in human history on par with the invention of writing, if not even moreso. The technological and political change over the last 100 years (which is a single long lifetime or about 1.5 - 2 "standard" lifetimes) is truly a phase change when compared to all of human history before. We've mostly outpaced our cognitive hard-wiring. So we see the effects of that across nearly every facet of life. I don't doubt that in 1000 years, it's likely some humans, looking at our times, will say "lolol, they totally had no idea wtf was going on during pre-Nuke early-AI." But this is no excuse to smash the like button on fuckItAll.mpeg. Do the best you can and try to find genuine happiness where you can. Even better do the "right" thing, so long as what you define as the right thing is a self-contained and demanding moral framework.
BahRamYou
6hr ago
One way of looking at that is that Iran is 600,000 square miles, much of it mountainous, so there's roughly 1 bomb per 3 square miles. So not nearly enough to destroy the country with bombs alone.
Another way of looking at is is that Russia has been firing something like 10,000 shells a day for years on a country less than half the size of Iran, and it's still been a slow grinding war of attrition.
I'm pretty sure no one in the air force would claim they have the capability to destroy Iran with air power alone like what's being discussed here. Not to mention that Iran has spent decades building up its defenses against such an attack.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
6hr ago
When the stats are lining up with the anecdotes are lining up with the personal observations, and EVERY SINGLE person on the other side says "No, can't be true, I know a guy that is doing fine" while offering zero verifiable evidence...
It's not "I know a guy," it's "most guys I know are not experiencing this."
Offer me an alternative hypothesis.
Marriage rates have been falling because younger generations don't value marriage as much, and more and more people live in "situationships" without ever getting married. There is certainly an argument to be made (and frequently is made) that this is bad for society and does not promote stable families, but falling marriage rates do not in themselves indicate that "no one is finding a partner." They indicate people are not marrying their partners, and that most people are having many more relationships of shorter duration.
Anyway, here's an extremely recent article from The Economist bemoaning the fact that despite the fact women are now outperforming men in EVERY school subject, but can't seem to keep up in Math, so OBVIOUSLY we need to close that gap.
Okay, so women get unfair perks in the name of ending sexism. We talk about that a lot here. I don't see that having a lot to do with whether or not men can get a date.
That's just objectively true if we restrict our examination to dating apps
Dating apps are hellish, as I said. There probably is something commodifying and unhealthy about treating a potential relationship the same way you treat looking for an appliance on Amazon. If you were proposing we ban dating apps, I'd have qualms about the legality and the implementation, but I'd probably approve in principle. But I have it on good authority it is actually still possible to meet a fellow human being in real life.
What now? Shall we try even harder to give them MORE choice?
Or just let the status quo continue?
You tell me.
I've already told you. Why don't you tell me, in unambiguous language without waffling. Do you want to go full Dread Jim (literally make women property)? Do you want to retvrn to traditional (pre-Enlightenment) Church rules? You've thrown together a lot of correlations to fit your narrative, but you don't seem willing to commit to a solution. If you think women just shouldn't be allowed to choose, say so. If you think fathers should decide who their daughters marry, say so. If you think something vaguer like "Women should be persuaded to be less picky and settle for an 80% guy instead of demanding 100% of what they want" - okay, that probably is not a bad idea. How do you propose getting there? (And would it apply to men also having to settle for women who might not check all their boxes?)
faceh
7hr ago
Of course not.
I contend, however, that fewer people in the younger generation meet that definition of "sane people." Particularly young women.
Its becoming more common because people are becoming less sane.
This is a completely compatible set of views, supported by the evidence.
Because more of them are exposed to exactly this sort of ragebait and manipulation, constantly.
The internet isn't real life, but its correlating with something.
Anyway, here's a tiktok video with over 600k likes and 8000 comments where a woman breaks down in tears b/c a man she considers ugly gave her unwanted attention. (read: asked her on a date)
Is it a lie? MAYBE! But a lot of people believed it and completely support her position anyway!
Here's one with 367k likes and 64k comments claiming MEN are the ones not putting in enough effort into their appearance and there's just not enough hot men out there.
Ragebait? Could be, but a lot of women happily gobbling it up and affirming it. There's a comment with 64k likes claiming "I see a decent-looking man once a week."
Is it true? Do the people liking the comment BELIEVE it is true?
You tell me what one should make of this.
faceh
7hr ago
Frankly, I believe my lying eyes more than I believe a collection of blackpill-curated stats from places like the Institute for Family Studies.
They're stats from literally everywhere I look. Stats that have been tracked for decades. Unless something radical changed with definitions or analysis (possible, I grant), then the trends are all pointing the same way, and demonstrating the same underlying phenomenon.
I've been through it, I've had multiple close friends and acquaintances who are all having the same difficulties. I find it on reddit forums, I find it on my groupchats, I find it when I hear from people in my age cohort and younger in hear.
Its a rising chorus of voices that some people claim not to here.
When the stats are lining up with the anecdotes are lining up with the personal observations, and EVERY SINGLE person on the other side says "No, can't be true, I know a guy that is doing fine" while offering zero verifiable evidence...
I'm not going to update very heavily in favor of that.
There is literally not a single piece of statistical evidence that supports the idea that relationship formation is improving.
I can't find ANY single person who is having a 'good time' in the 'find a partner' game.
None.
Zero.
Marriage rates are about the most objective stat you can find that are tracked by the Census, and the definition of marriage is about as standardized as you can get.
They're in the tank., especially among the younger generation.
This is downstream of something.
Offer me an alternative hypothesis.
No, the game is not rigged against you. No, there are not zero acceptable single women in your city. No, the solution is not to contrive reasons why women should not have agency to choose.
If you say so.
Anyway, here's an extremely recent article from The Economist bemoaning the fact that despite the fact women are now outperforming men in EVERY school subject, but can't seem to keep up in Math, so OBVIOUSLY we need to close that gap.
Very evenhanded analysis.
Here's direct evidence that Lockheed Martin very directly discriminates against White Males in deciding on who gets bonuses.
Would you wager on them being the only major company doing this?
What does 'rigging the game' look like, to you?
No, there are not zero acceptable single women in your city.
Never have I said anything remotely like that.
What I HAVE said is that the competition for the pool of 'acceptable' single women is high enough that its guaranteed that many men will lose out.
And women having the perception of more choice makes them less likely to settle, at all.
Too many men chasing too small a pool of women, full stop.
That's just objectively true if we restrict our examination to dating apps
No, the solution is not to contrive reasons why women should not have agency to choose.
They've been choosing quite freely for a long time, and they're less happy than ever. TFR is in the gutter. Women are suffering from more mental illnesses than ever
What now? Shall we try even harder to give them MORE choice?
Or just let the status quo continue?
You tell me.
No_one
7hr ago
” It’s such a clownish statement you would never believe it actually came out of someone’s mouth, but it did.
You live in clown world. A CRS insider published a book bragging how he and his colleagues have been secretly stage managing race riots, race controversies and so on, in confidence from everyone but maybe some senate committee and president since 1962.
Yes, they only tell congress what they want to tell congress, and they're not subject to FOIA. Book was published in 2020 or so.
Most everyone assumed this crap was managed and CRS was even mentioned because they're not that secret, but e.g. knowledge of this book only came up in 2025.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56253400
In short, it's a clown world so I'm not sure why you're surprised people act like clowns.
Hadad
7hr ago
I vehemently revile Muslims and think they're the greatest threat to myself and the things I care about. I want them wiped out; failing that, I want them globally castrated, and unable to project meaningful power outside their war-torn shithole of a theater.
Jews, for all their purported failings, want to leech off systems, not destroy them entirely with Bronze Age barbarism.
hanikrummihundursvin
7hr ago
Why? For some reason that's not some nebulous human flourishing?
No_one
7hr ago
In case you really, really do not get it, it's what's called 'sexual innuendo'. English has a relatively impoverished vocabulary so people just substitute whatever words seem roughly appropriate and arrange them in a way that's suggestive.
Hadad
7hr ago
The woke have largely backed down from their most extreme positions during the summer of george, on BLM riots, covid restrictions, metoo nonsense, DEI, etc. And the anti-immigration position is getting a lot more play in the halls of power. I wouldn’t say it’s the best of all possible worlds yet, but it’s fine. In time, all problems can be solved.
This is completely false. They haven't backed down even slightly. Every step back they've taken has been forced by people like FC bringing constant attention to their actions, opposing them at every level possible, organizing opposition, securing legal victories, etc., etc., and woke is still trying to escalate relentlessly.
You did say you were going to coerce me, or else the woke (earlier you) would coerce me. So it looked like it will be only the fault of people like you if I can no longer live in the peaceful modern vacuum. But sure, if you're willing to renounce coercion, I can do peaceful coexistence with anyone.
You're free to decide Woke coercion is preferable. Myself, FC, and many others have decided it's not. What are we to do now?
Hadad
7hr ago
That's fine. I don't take responsibility for those future tradcops throwing hoes in the slammer, either.
Hadad
7hr ago
No, the Muslims chanting death to America are not my friends, no matter how much you, I, or anyone else hate Jews.
Hadad
7hr ago
As a lefty, can I have your support on having a robust social safety net? Because I guess the budget doesn't matter now.
You cannot have my support for your pet projects, no. I don't want to fund them.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
7hr ago
Right, that and the fact that, as I understand it, the Iranian regime strictly bans Western music and most other Western cultural output, to the point where their people have to find bootleg version of American artists’ music. Yeah, very “friendly to Western culture.”
I'm honestly pretty confused as to how this got communicated so poorly, but you seem to be acting in good faith so I'll take responsibility for the miscommunication.
No, I see what you mean now. You're imagining a much more significant investment of resources into Iran than I've advocated, one that would meaningfully cripple us in the face of China. At no point would I suggest we drain ourselves (comparatively) dry.
There is no universe in which the USA is bombing TSMC facilities. I'm really not sure how I gave that impression, but to be clear that is not happening. There are allegedly "kill switches" in fabs to make the machines not work anymore in the event of an occupation.
No, I'm saying that's what is really keeping China out, and what our munitions would be better purposed for. We would never let them dominate the chip factories utterly, we'd absolutely destroy them. Whether that be kill switches or utter destruction. We can't 'conquer' China, or even do much to stop it absent nuclear armageddon. But Taiwan's much easier pickings. Better to destroy a resource than let an enemy seize it.
Tree
7hr ago
Listing random problems does nothing to justify:
- your dire, ever-postponed predictions
- your proposed solutions
The woke have largely backed down from their most extreme positions during the summer of george, on BLM riots, covid restrictions, metoo nonsense, DEI, etc. And the anti-immigration position is getting a lot more play in the halls of power. I wouldn’t say it’s the best of all possible worlds yet, but it’s fine. In time, all problems can be solved.
You did say you were going to coerce me, or else the woke (earlier you) would coerce me. So it looked like it will be only the fault of people like you if I can no longer live in the peaceful modern vacuum. But sure, if you're willing to renounce coercion, I can do peaceful coexistence with anyone.
Iran is actually pretty friendly to apostolic Christianity, so long as it doesn’t proselytize. Hezbollah controlled Jerusalem would probably maintain Christian religious sites unde the current arrangement.
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