domain:betonit.substack.com
you-get-an-upvote
Hyperbole is bad
2m ago
Plenty of female-oriented degrees such as psychology, behavioral science, speech pathology, etc. require a Masters in order to really start working in the field. Seemingly, most of the people who study those majors just aren't aware of this.
I'm unsure whether these women just haven't googled the most basic facts of the career they'll spend their next 4-6 years pursuing, or whether they're semi-deliberately deluding themselves.
Do you have any statistics here? It looks like 82% of men and 70% of women are employed full time after college, so it's weird how gendered you're choosing to frame this.
jkf
4m ago
Tell her that Amazon screwed up, you were trying to order something by Ted Kaczynski...
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4m ago
you would ban someone who showed up saying "nobody is trying to take your guns, you stupid paranoid hicks. Why do you want school shootings so much?"
"nobody is trying" is kinda consensus-building, but probably fine. "you stupid paranoid hicks" is an immediate ban because it's needlessly inflammatory.
If, on the other hand, someone comes in and posts "The gun control debate seems pretty absurd to me at this point. I see no evidence that anyone actually wants to confiscate all the guns or shoot all gun owners or whatever, and claims to the contrary seem totally unsupportable. This looks to me like another case where the Red Tribe bought into their own spin so much that they've lost all touch with reality."
...They are totally allowed to do that. I and Gattsuru and about a dozen other people will then bury them under an avalanche of quotes and citations, but we'll have to be civil about it as well. Even when you know the person is arguing in bad faith, even you can't remember when they've argued in good faith, you still have to keep it civil or just stay out of it. This does allow some people to get away with bad behavior long-term, but it makes them work very, very hard for it, and they evidently don't enjoy it much, so that's probably the best we can ask for.
Your way, we're stuck trying to judge who is lying, and that opens up a whole other can of worms. Are they lying if they don't believe in Climate Change? If they don't believe trans women are women? If They think the president is doing a good job?
[EDIT] - The paper you linked is a much, much more persuasive argument than an expression of your emotional state. Just link a couple paragraphs and compare and contrast to the people acting like it isn't happening. That is super-effective rhetoric right there.
quiet_NaN
5m ago
Regarding not having a plan for a career, I have to say this was always the case for me. I am finished school because it seemed the default thing to do, then studied physics because I thought it was interesting (and to keep my options open with regard to kinds of jobs), then went for a PhD. Me being in Europe, living a modest life-style and being supported by my parents meant that I came out without debt at least. I am not sure if I would have been more careful about my career choices if I felt that I was less employable.
--
Another thing which you touch is that it takes money to raise kids, especially if one wants more than one kid, at least by contemporary Western expectations (i.e. one room per teenager). Typically, there are places which have affordable rents and places which have jobs. In previous centuries, a husband in his twenties could start working and earn enough to feed his family and eventually even buy a house. Today, plenty of people feel they need two post-grad incomes to even consider kids, and few have delusions of being able to afford to own a house from the money they will ever make.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
7m ago
I would ban someone for calling people "stupid paranoid hicks." I would not ban them for claiming "No one is trying to take your guns," even if I think they're wrong and even if I think they're being disingenuous. Which I do not think is the case here - but even if I agreed with you that "People who say vat grown meat isn't an attempt to ban real meat are lying," you're still going to have to argue the issues, not demand that mods ban people who make arguments that cause you emotional distress.
jkf
8m ago
Carnivorous birds are hard to feed -- I've tried dried mealworms and grub-infused suet, the ones in my neighbourhood turn up their noses.
On the plus side they seem to mostly do alright on their own; lots of bugs out there I guess. You can get refrigerated/dormant mealworms at bait shops which supposedly you can put in a tray and the birds will go for them once they warm up and start wriggling around -- I haven't tried it, but it would be my next step if there were a bird around that seemed to be in trouble.
jkf
14m ago
There. Is that accurate?
Sure, it's pretty much how it's done in the US.
But it needs to be super clear that this is not in any way instrumental to the production of large amounts of beef -- if those cattle stayed on the range for four months instead of going to the feedlot, they would still constitute a lot of beef. Somewhat less, and quite a bit less marketable (to US tastes) -- but if you banned feedlots tomorrow you would still be able to afford a burger.
I'll also yield to you, for now- that the grazing fields can't be repurposed. I'm skeptical of this but I don't have the means to do a counterfactual analysis on every field at this time.
On this part I guess you just need to spend some time out west? Most of the time when you run across ranging beef cattle it's not even anywhere you might call a 'field' -- it's like literal woods where I am, and in other parts borderline desert. You don't need to believe me, but you could maybe cross-reference BLM leases (in the US) with Google Earth or something? Working ranches will keep some self-owned pasture around that's more fertile, and grow some hay and stuff for winter feed -- but water is a problem out here. Hay will grow a crop a year with ~zero inputs and no irrigation -- I don't know too many crops for human consumption like that.
If you wanna talk about high-impact use of fertile land, I'd turn your gaze towards dairy cattle. Their lives seem pretty pleasant, but goddamn they eat a lot of corn and produce a lot of shit. The footprint of the cows isn't that much, but the acres and acres of silage and alfalfa could be better used if you ask me. People seem to like milk for some reason though.
Gaashk
19m ago
The "yaslighting" thing is cute.
It seems like a case where something can be good enough advice at an individual level, while also not being very useful systemically, or in a way that's relevant for fertility rates. To the extent that a trend is effecting America, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, etc, it's unlikely to be primarily a matter of personal or subcultural choice.
Sometimes the people in the middle are hardest hurt--those who haven't bought into the modern secular ideology or the trad religious one. Women who don't go all-in on their careers, but also don't actively seek out husbands in college, and so end up in dead-end jobs with whatever mediocre husband they end up with.
Maybe they are themselves mediocre? Not everyone, nor every job can be above average. Thinking of that as a harm is a large part of the problem. A civilization where people won't have kids because their house and job and man are average is not in a good place.
AvocadoPanic
21m ago
Inferior in what sense or to what end? Would be a more sensible response than agreement.
Inferior typically applies between variations of a type or catagory, and then often for a specific use. Horses would make inferior men, and men inferior horses. Your usage makes little sense.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
24m ago
Ok, then if you're in any shape to continue the experiment, insult someone directly and compare the results to insulting their mother (you probably should pick a different dude though). You really think they'd beat you up more?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
26m ago
I think one angle missing here is why women want the ability to have their own careers, income streams, etc. This post seems to reduce it to a kind of cultural brainwashing which is far too simplistic. Women want the ability to have their own careers and income streams for the same reason men do: they want to have some control over their lives. They want to be able to mitigate the downside risk that comes with being completely financially dependent on someone else. Imagine you're a woman. You give up your career, education, etc to become a homemaker for a man. Half a decade in (perhaps with two or three children) he becomes an abusive alcoholic. What kind of options do you have for protecting yourself and your children? For exiting the relationship? I know, as a man, I would be pretty uncomfortable being completely dependent on someone else due to the potential for abuse. it seems totally rational to me that women feel similarly. I suspect many women have heard stories from family members or friends about such relationships and so the concern seems especially salient to them. How prestigious does motherhood have to be for women, as individuals, not to care about that downside risk?
BahRamYou
26m ago
This is all well and good. I find myself continually amazed at how good normies are at unconsciously separating reality from social reality and smoothly living by them both without acknowledging the contradictions.
It really is necessary, when we live in a society that puts so many contradictory constraints on us. I think that's why "autistic" and "creepy" have taken off so hard as insults lately- it labels a certain person who can't just "let it be," but consciously questions those unwritten social rules, which makes everyone else uncomfortable because it highlights the contradictions.
And things change in response. Like, maybe it was fine in the past to get an ".Mrs degree," as long as it wasn't made too explicit. But once you go around explicitly talking about it and make everyone aware of what's happening, they have to change their behavior to regain some plausible deniability.
SteveKirk
28m ago
Japan is so weird I hate speculating about it. Just the strangest behavior by consumers and companies. I want to find a reliable expert on the subject, so please let me know if you find one.
Throwaway05
43m ago
To conclude, is therapy helpful when administered by someone who knows what the fuck they're doing? Yes.
This point is the whole thing. I notice here that a lot of people seem to have complaints about "endless therapy" and "never getting better," but reputable, well trained therapy involves a constant progression towards "being done" (well typically anyway).
I suspect this is equal parts misunderstanding and a surplus of shitty therapists, which makes sense since it's far harder to regulate, train, and assess than "traditional" medicine.
Small amounts of therapy that anyone with diligence and training can do (like motivational interviewing) can radical improve care for any specialty.
Shit is good when done well. And even more fluffy and "less evidence based" therapy modalities like psychodynamic therapy work great when done by someone who cares and knows what they are doing (and are shocking similar to CBT anyway).
Tenaz
1hr ago
Jesus is the only reason for the "probably," but yes. I can't count the number of Catholics who argued that Mary was greater than Jesus because she was his mother. If I brought up Mary's mother as someone who was therefore even greater than Mary, they didn't have a good response, but I don't think I convinced anyone that way either.
Catholic doctrine holds Christ above Mary (right?) but I'm pretty sure most Catholics worship and respect Mary more.
I'm rethinking it now though--altogether, Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha are probably held in higher esteem.
To_Mandalay
1hr ago
Horses are better than humans at running but the number of people throughout history who would disagree with the statement "horses are inferior to human beings" is very small.
Lies aren't a "dissenting view." They're evil tricks by people who don't believe anything except how they want to manipulate other people.
The mods should ban liars, because right now the community has to self-organize to do it, as with Guesswho. And that kind of shunning, while necessary, also has corrosive effects on discourse. It's much healthier for mods to say "we see how you're lying to manipulate people, we don't allow forcing consensus with lies, you're banned"
A good example: you would ban someone who showed up saying "nobody is trying to take your guns, you stupid paranoid hicks. And anyway there must be something wrong with you if you don't want guns to be banned. Why do you want school shootings so much?" Because the trolling he's trying to pull is fucking obvious and you've seen the same script a thousand times before.
This is exactly the same. Get rid of it, or it makes real discussions impossible, either because the troll is allowed to enforce consensus or the community's immune response shuts it down destructively.
The question was about moral responsibility for having to defend themselves.
Your trans scenario would have to be something like "trans people have done things which anger cis people, such as demanding to be in the wrong bathrooms. If an angry person then attacks the trans people and gets hurt when the trans people defend themselves, the trans people are morally responsible for that". Under those circumstances, I'd agree that the trans people were defending their existence and aren't responsible.
In real life, "they just don't want trans people to exist" never means "trans people are not at fault for hurting someone in self-defense".
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1hr ago
Feel free to post quotes and argue about what you think they mean, what they say about some group's intentions.
Other people may choose to engage and express a different view. They may think those same quotes do not say what you think they do.
Discuss. Civilly.
If you just start talking about how you want to throw things because people with different reads are lying gaslighters, yes, eventually that will result in you being banned if you can't control yourself and can't cope with dissenting views.
I will post a thousand quotes saying exactly what they're trying to do. One a day for the next three years, nonstop, until the lying stops or you decide to side with the liars and ban me.
I fucking HATE lying leftists who do the "it's not happening and it's good that it is" trick. They are evil. They are not humans you can have a conversation with because they do nothing but lie and lie and sneer. They should be banned from every community they try to pull that shit in.
You know it too. You've watched it happen over and over again. There is no value in tolerating it.
dasfoo
1hr ago
To claim that modern society has devalued motherhood and femininity, or made them low status, is completely backwards. Motherhood and femininity in general have been devalued for as long as patriarchy has existed, so pretty much the whole of human history.
I see comments like this a lot, and it goes with the general sentiment that men don't respect women and only think of them as sex objects. The truth is that men do value women greatly for certain things that are unique to their womanhood and less for other things that are not unique to women. It's contemporary women who have devalued the qualities they have which men do value.
It's the reason you occasionally get figures like Elizabeth I or Catherine the Great who are praised for being essentially men in women's bodies, but you never get men praised for being essentially women in men's bodies.
I know this is controversial to say these days, but the bodies of men who act like women cannot do the things the real women can do with their bodies and, generally, women are highly valuable because of what their bodies are built to do: nurture life. If I owned a goat who just wanted sit in my chicken coop all day, he wouldn't be very valuable to me because he can't lay eggs.
I'm not saying that all people should be strictly limited to traditional gender roles -- there are outliers that just can't perform those roles. However, society is currently obsessed with making outliers the new normal, which is wreaking havoc on both the healthy operation of human interactions and the self-worth of those who have been yaslit into devaluing their natural gifts.
Indeed. When I need to send someone to a therapist, I tell them it's a sign of both confidence and competence when they make it clear that's there's a time limit for that. Either they note you making good progress, with an end goal in sight, or they tell you straight up that you're not a good fit and send you on.
Not that people can't need prolonged therapy, but maybe I'm just jaundiced from all the girls I've spoken to who should be wearing grippy socks. But they need Jesus, or his brother in the asylum.
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