domain:astralcodexten.substack.com
faceh
2d ago
If you know an estimator is consistently high, you can account for that in your planning.
If the estimator knows that they're consistently high, why aren't they adjusting the model they're using to produce estimates with to account for that?
If the estimator is wrong consistently but in a predictable way... they should be able to be wrong less often?
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2d ago
I am being performatively lazy here. Turok genuinely isn't worth my time, and I'm confident that almost all of our regulars are well aware of his bad behavior. That being said, I appreciate you sharing the link to previous warnings.
For what it's worth, I don't see anything wrong in continuing a thread in a new CWR. Most users would prefer more engagement or at least eyeballs on their posts, and once the thread becomes obsolete, it's very unlikely that a significant number of people will even read anything you have to say.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
The dream of all men is to meet little sluts who are innocent but ready for all forms of depravity--which is what, more or less, all teenage girls are.
Houellebecq, The Possibility of an Island
TitaniumButterfly
2d ago
Don't worry I've read plenty of Vinge. Was looking for more of a Vingian take on Avatar.
I'll also make a point that isn't an endorsement but is an observation I've made a lot, especially as I'm approaching real middle age.
"Introducing" a newbie to something, in general, is a very gratifying experience. Using your own deeper knowledge to guide them, give them little tips, and see their own development generates a strong sense of frission, in me at least. Hugely rewarding.
When it comes to sex, there's the double gratification of showing someone something new and then getting to partake in it with them for mutual pleasure.
I am told that many guys do prefer an older woman as a partner because such women have worked out their preferences, kinks, and limits and are quite practiced in their techniques and thus deliver a much more enjoyable experience overall.
I believe it. But taking a younger woman (not necessarily virginal) and showing her certain experiences for the first time and getting her unfiltered, completely unrehearsed reaction to such an intense sensation never really gets old. But the woman herself does, eventually after she's tried everything then the joy of new discovery is blunted. Novelty squeezed out. Then its just sex. Fun, but without the extra layer of finding new frontiers of eroticism.
And its not easily replicable! There's a finite supply of inexperienced (yet attractive) young women. Can't be recycled once they're despoiled. So it wouldn't be that surprising if some men try to collect 'em like pokemon.
So while this:
They don't mean he's literally attracted to her prepubescent body, which would be absurd. What they mean is that this man exploits the woman's unawareness of her potential value on the sexual marketplace.
Is an unavoidable factor, I think there's 'obviously' a mutual gain to an experienced partner reaching out and lending some of their knowledge and guidance to an inexperienced one so they don't have to fumble around on their own or with an equally inexperienced partner and trying things out without knowing for sure if they're 'doing it right.'
Whereas a jaded, cynical, "experienced" woman who doesn't need a man's guidance to discover new experiences doesn't give that extra gratifying sense of "I alone have given her this feeling that she's never felt before." And, more directly, you also have to assume she's comparing you to those past encounters and you'll never really know if you measure up.
On net, you'd prefer to be the guy against whom all future encounters are measured, vs. the guy who has to wonder if she's being honest about her past encounters.
And lest I get hit with the leery, suspicious eye, my own preference is for a woman who I've been with long enough to learn all her sensitive spots, favorite positions, her strengths, weaknesses (and vice-versa) and develop a sincere intimacy so you can read them easily and adjust on the fly and otherwise maximize the mutual joy. That's the optimal setup. A slightly more experienced guy, an inexperienced woman, and a long relationship to grow into each other so both get the benefit of knowing that their shared experiences are unique and they're not being compared against some unknown third parties.
Jiro
2d ago
I explicitly agreed above that what we call it after-the-fact seems irrelevant.
"After the fact" is a vague term and can mean two things here:
- We only started calling it that long after it existed (we suddenly called the Air Force the Flying Navy so we could interpret the Constitution in a convenient way)
- We started calling it that immediately as soon as it existed, but long after the Constitution existed. (we always called it the Flying Navy)
"It doesn't matter if we called it the Flying Navy all along" implies the second meaning. And with that meaning, deciding that radio and TV count for freedom of the press is also after the fact. Even if the Constitution had said "the media", it would still be after the fact, because we didn't decide that they are media until they existed, which is long after the Constitution existed.
You don't seem to have engaged with it.
"The scenario with obvious bad consequences is above my pay grade" is not really something that can be engaged with. And as far as that's saying anything at all it sounds like "the Bill of Rights shouldn't be interpreted that way but the reference to armies and navies should". Which seems like arbitrary gymnastics to me--surely if you want to be literal, you should be consistently literal.
TitaniumButterfly
2d ago
Yes I've read both and loved them. The latter held up better on a second read, imo, whereas I couldn't get back into the first.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2d ago
Was it? I don't seem to recall that being the case. And even if that's the nominal explanation, there's no way in hell it would work IRL.
quiet_NaN
2d ago
I think that the main benefit of explaining a ban is not to the user (especially in the case of a permaban), but to the wider community.
So I think that it is helpful to link to the last warning (afaik).
I think another factor might be that the correct place to criticize a top level post from three days ago is as a reply to that very post. Starting a pristine comment thread on Monday in medias res with a reply to another comment seems like a really bad style. By definition, a continuation of a last weeks debate is not about current events, so my personal expectation would be that the comment would strive to be an excellent top level comment in all other regards, charitably paraphrasing a broader debate so far and then adding some useful new commentary. Instead, what he served us was re-heated leftovers from three days ago moisturized with the ketchup of his own opinion.
While most of his comment reads to me as not particularly coherent (but that might be a problem on my end), and also does little engagement with the quoted comment except to sneer and in the "P.S.", I think it is the "P.P.P.S." especially where he goes of the rails completely.
I do not think that we have many regulars who are central examples of "prole", posting long texts on a discussion site seems to select for somewhat educated people, mostly. It is not that he was correct that this was an insult which hurt especially badly, and it was just that he was banned for blatant name-calling.
--
While "you do not represent the true spirit of the left, I do" has been done to the death for a hundred years, I would nevertheless register an objection to him describing himself as ""left-wing"". While his sneering dismissal of the working class is certainly reminiscent of similar dismissals by the woke left in the past decade (e.g. Clinton's "despicables"), I think that it is stupid to give up on the working class. Wokism completely failed to engage with these people ("in my rich neighborhood, I get along fabulously with Blacks and immigrants. If you in your poor neighborhood fail to get along with them just as well, that is because you are a dirty old racist!") and then they decided to vote MAGA instead. But Trump's tariffs have the potential to be a very educational lesson for low-income voters, it is just up to the Democrats to offer these people a stomach-able alternative to populism.
Mantergeistmann
2d ago
Now I want an effortpost on wines... I personally am only really familiar with the Niagara region, but would like to become more worldly.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
"Low class people could be here" he thought, "I've never been in this neighborhood before. There could be low class people anywhere." The cool wind felt good against his bare chest. "I HATE LOW CLASS PEOPLE" he thought.
aldomilyar
2d ago
I mean that's part of the Epstein thing to me.
If a given client didn't realize that barely-illegal girls were on the menu it's not like he's gonna be able to tell immediately that somebody's 17 years, 364 days and 23 hours from their aura. Going to dodgy orgy island with Escorts isn't illegal in of itself.
faceh
2d ago
but alas, the mechanism underlying it is even more fictional than anything Avatar has to offer.
Wasn't it very, VERY specifically implied that the "zones of thought" were a mechanism implemented by a (much!) 'higher power' to prevent rogue malicious superintelligences from simply eating the entire galaxy?
faceh
2d ago
Its a hell of a vehicle to create tense action scenes showcasing cool-looking scifi military materiel vs. equally cool-looking fantasy creatures.
And from a writing perspective, coming up with clever-yet-plausible ways for the technologically inferior faction to win over the industrialized and heavily armed invaders (that isn't just Zerg rush tactics) is a fun exercise.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2d ago
I think even the label of "ephebophile" is an artificial one. It probably encompasses almost all men. The average man cannot tell, at least by looking, if someone is 16 years old or 18 and a day. If they've got tits and a nice figure, they'll make just about everyone sexually attracted regardless of age. The only difference worth noting is that, at least in the West, there has been so much social conditioning that people are loathe to accept this fact, and those who do take the risk knowingly likely have other issues.
Back when OkCupid's blog wasn't a joke, they shared a chart showing response rates for women by age. The curve peaked at 18, and declined after. I am convinced that if the platform allowed younger women to sign up, then the actual modal value would be ~16 or 17. We have successfully pathologized very natural behavior, but oh well. I'm lucky enough to have a thing for MILFs, albeit they're just women my age these days.
As good place to ask as any. When in A Fire Upon The Deep nobody in-unverse could understand the purpose of a broadcast sent by the Blight
OliveTapenade
2d ago
I would be shocked if ThomasdelVasto is a fan of Elon Musk.
The mottezien is immunized against all dangers: one may call him a cuck, nazi, bigot, fascist, it all runs off him like water off a raincoat. But call him a resentful prole and you will be astonished at how he recoils, how injured he is, how he suddenly shrinks back, calls you egregiously obnoxious, and then bans you from the forum.
Er, but... you're the one using 'resentful prole' as an insult.
You're banned, so you can't answer this, unfortunately, but it's unclear to me why being a member of the proletariat would be at all bad, and if you do in fact believe that wealthy urban leftists are bad (contemptible, leading America down a bad path, etc.), resenting them seems like a reasonable response. So shouldn't the answer here just be the chad "Yes"?
(Well, it may not be accurate in my case depending on what you mean by those terms. I work for a wage, so I suppose in the Marxist sense I'm a proletarian, but generally when I hear 'prole' I think 'industrial working class' or something, which I am not. Nor do I think I'm particularly resentful, since I did in fact go to a fancy big city university. But that's just quibbling facts. I would certainly be much more offended if you called me a Nazi or fascist.)
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
2d ago
tl;dr ephebophilia is not just an artifact of a fixed age of consent, but an attraction to specific psychological traits
I've been thinking about all the classic American porn paperbacks I've read and it made me realize something about the various flavors of MAPs. A lot of classic smut features ephebophilic scenes. Or, to not mince words, jailbait characters have sex in these books. Why would someone put a well-developed minor (and go into explicit detail about her womanlike voluptuousness) into his story? I could come up with three reasons:
- The titillation of the forbidden. It's like eating a Kinder Surprise in the US vs the EU, it's made better by the fact it's illegal. You scratch off number "18" and put "15" instead and suddenly the story is hotter. It's like ubiquitous step-incest in modern video porn.
- The needs of the story. Maybe the author wanted his cast to span generations and pushing the numbers down made it easier to explain why everyone involved in the story had no sag or wrinkles or other signs of age.
- There's something different with their attitude to sex. And this is exactly the option that I want to explore further in this post.
Reading the books actually shows what this difference (in the mind of the writers) is. A grown woman has barriers around sex. Of course, it's porn, so everyone is a happy slut by the epilogue, but the journey of a woman is about taking down these barriers: she has a lot of ideas with whom it is appropriate to have sex, when, where and what kind of. A girl in a woman's body has no such qualms. Well, maybe she has a few, passed down from her mother or her Sunday school, but as soon as she realizes that sex is a pleasurable experience (or "neat", as the books from the 70's put it), she's willing to have it for the sake of it (and suffer no ill consequences, because it's porn).
And it is my opinion that this attraction to easy-going relationships instead of torturous courtship is what defines ephebophiles and lumps them together with other flavors of MAPs. They want someone who can decouple sex from the rest of the cultural baggage around relationships, even though they are not attracted to actual physical traits of prepubescence. A literal pedophile might be attracted to specific physical traits, but he's also attracted to the idea that it's much easier to explain sex as a harmless game or a sign of special friendship.
However, I don't want to say this approach is exclusive to MAPs only. They are in a good and diverse company. People joking about "genetically-engineered catgirls" express a very similar sentiment: they imagine a female that is naturally loyal and attracted to them, unlike the messy natural femoids (curiously, this sounds more like a dog than a cat). Dudes mail-ordering brides from abroad expect them to follow a simple and straightforward contract: provide meals and sex, get citizenship. And of course, promiscuous gays are living every horny man's dream (modulo the sex of their partner).
This also explains why certain redditors* brand a 45-yo man dating a 20-yo woman a pedophile (steelman incoming). They don't mean he's literally attracted to her prepubescent body, which would be absurd. What they mean is that this man exploits the woman's unawareness of her potential value on the sexual marketplace. He can outbid her 20-yo suitors simply because he has 25 years of career growth on them. The woman should either practice perfect price discrimination or reject him in the name of... social justice?
Does this mean that the instigators of the sexual revolution, who, according to some posters whose names elude me right now, did it all only to bamboozle young and attractive women into no-strings-attached sexual promiscuity were ephebophiles? I guess they technically were.
* just today I noticed a major vibe shift on Reddit. People were discussing the latest anti-porn initiatives in the UK and were mocking those who think a 17.99-yo is a "literal child", treating them as their outgroup.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
2d ago
You know what's funny that just occurred to me? In the background of nearly every optimistic old school sci-fi property is just the assumption that gene editing will be deployed for the good of all humanity. You're enjoying your giant stompy robot Battletech novel, and it just has throwaway lines about how humans live longer and with less disease thanks to the Star League 300 years ago. It was viewed as such an obvious gimme that sci-fi didn't even dwell on it. It was boring, like the precise mechanics of a faster than light drive, or how the Enterprise's computer worked. Give it a few throw away lines and move on with the story. There was a humanity wide genetic uplift program that was 100% successful, now moving on...
I do wonder how much of this was an artifact of the high trust society America used to be, where public works could actually be completed to the good of all with state capacity to spare. Now it's impossible to envision a future where all our children have their disease genes filtered out, have enhanced cognitive functions, and might reasonably be expected to live in relative health until 140. In our low trust hellscape of highly dysfunctional state capacity, corruption exceeding any ability to accomplish anything, massive corporations enshittifying their golden geese with 3rd world scams, and a high time preference work force that can't do even the most simple jobs with trust and correctness, we can only envision the technology heightening the war of all against all.
Add to that the people who (rightly) won't trust the technology, given the institutional own goal "the science" has inflicted on itself the last 10 years. Even if it were possible for everyone to benefit from a genetic uplift program, a portion, possibly a large portion, would choose to be left behind.
Oh the future we could have had. Alas.
Bartender_Venator
2d ago
I wish you had posted this yesterday. It would have gone well with my wine - I had a South African Cape Coast sav blanc, from an east-facing vineyard at the foot of a coastal valley, where the sea air and rocky soil produce a really crisp, refreshing white with an almost salty minerality. Paired that with a very mild, milky cheddar and some raspberries. In the evening, when it wasn't so hot, I cracked a Salamino di Santa Croce lambrusco. Again, that's a bit tarter and more acidic than your typical fruity lambrusco, but I paired it with a rich mushroom bruschetta. I don't actually know that much about Italian wine (the family place in Italy is on the coast, quite some way from the real wine country), but I know what I like.
P.S. I know you're supposed to capitalize "Sauvignon", "Lambrusco", etc., but that's always struck me as a little pretentious.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2d ago
Thank you for the tip! Dover took a lot out of me, but I should be down in England for a while yet and might find the time to see the Sisters (if they're single). If not, then I'll bookmark it for another date.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
2d ago
Sounds like the American version of calling a Baden-Wurttemberger a Bavarian. (I am not an expert on German regional politics, but Germans have confirmed that "Bavaria is the Texas of Germany" is a good approximation of the regional stereotype.)
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
2d ago
If you like white cliffs, I strongly recommend the Seven Sisters walk from Seaford (or Exceat) to Eastbourne. It is the most popular day hike in the UK for good reasons. (There are better routes in the north, but they aren't within commuting distance of London)
The White Cliffs of Dover are where the North Downs meet the sea, the Seven Sisters are where the South Downs meet the sea. The absence of, well, Dover, means that the Seven Sisters have been less affected by development, and you also get Beachy Head thrown in, as well as nicer endpoints. (Seaford and Eastbourne are both traditional south coast resort towns with noticeably fewer chavs, foreigners, and annoying chav-vs-foreigner action than Dover).
The full walk from Seaford station to Eastbourne station is 13 1/2 miles, with the possibility to save about 1 1/2 miles by wading Cuckmere Haven at low tide. Most people get the 12X bus to Exceat (referred to as Seven Sisters Park Centre on the timetable - it is where the bridge over Cuckmere Haven is) for a 9 1/2 mile walk.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
You figure it out, by deciding which one it's more similar to based on the Founders' intentions.
I kinda did (it's not authorized, and we should specifically authorize it and determine what rules to use). But you don't like the conclusion.
you can't just say "it doesn't mention the air force so we can't have one at all"
Good news! You'll notice that I am not just saying that. I've said more things.
By this reasoning if by some quirk of English we had actually called the Air Force the Flying Navy and not just made it up, the Constitution would allow an air force after all.
Nope. Please try reading my argument again. This is not what I've claimed. I explicitly agreed above that what we call it after-the-fact seems irrelevant.
And you haven't really addressed freedom of the speech/the press
I wrote:
There is significant interpretive difference between individual rights recognized in the Bill of Rights, due to the background of natural/retained rights tradition, as compared to enumerated, limited powers of government. In fact, much jurisprudence actually roots rights WRT television in the free speech clause. Whether or not that is accurate, and whether there should be more of a revival of the free press clause, is above my pay grade (though I have thoughts). But the entire interpretive framework is significantly different from the first step.
You don't seem to have engaged with it.
I think a case could be made for making exclusive ephebophilia a pathology. Like "eww, that girl is 22 and has a real job, I don't want to stick my dick into her". Evolutionarily speaking, that would be maladaptive. I do not know if it is very common, however.
I agree that "fuck every woman (except those closely related to you) who looks fertile and healthy if you can", which was probably adaptive for males in the ancestral environment and is probably the most common sexuality in men today does not need a special term.
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